It seems we have a fundamental problem within the Catholic Church…or maybe I should rephrase that…within the Catholic Chuch leadership. The Pope being the ultimate authority on matters of faith and morals whereas he cannot err according to the church. To put that into comparison, even I cannot err when it comes to matters of capitalism vs socialism; one does not have to be immoral to be a successful capitalist. Pope John Paul II believed in capitalism but the problem of greed within that system was his major concern (my viewpoint is the same; greed is the mortal sin of capitalism). In the book, God and Money: The Moral Challenge of Capitalism, John Paul answers the question of whether capitalism should be the “goal” of developing nations, in particular, those that are rebuilding after failed experiments with collectivism. If I were writing the same book I would change that line to read, “All nations fail when they experiment with collectivism.”
In the history of mankind there has never been a
successful form of collectivism…aka socialism.
Even the English settlers of the 1600’s tried it in what is now
Massachusetts and it was a miserable failure.
Capitalism on the other hand has proven to be successful until that
element of greed creeps into the proletariat or lower class who want something for
nothing from the upper class. For this
to happen, the upper class would already be exposing their greed in the form of
excess profits. What is a fare and
reasonable profit? I leave that question
unanswered and instead bring you the wisdom of an earlier pope, Pope Leo XIII:
The Blaze
The New Catholic Scandal: Pope Francis Courts Raul Castro and Forgets What Communism and Atheism Have Done to the World
This weekend, the Communist President of Cuba Raul Castro met with Pope Francis in private for an “unusually long time,” according to Gerard O’Connell, Vatican correspondent for America Magazine.
When he emerged from his meeting with Pope Francis, which a Vatican spokesman called a “very cordial talk,” Castro exchanged gifts with the Holy Father. Castro gave the pope a commemorative medallion in honor of the 200th anniversary of the building of the Havana Cathedral, and a locally produced painting “inspired” by the pope’s advocacy for progressive immigration policies.
In return, Pope Francis gave Casto an image of St. Martin covering the poor with his cloak, which Pope Francis called “an insight into what we have to do.” His second gift was a copy of his controversial Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium. America Magazine reports: “Looking at [Castro] with a smile, [Pope Francis] remarked, ‘There are here some declarations that you will like!’”
When Pope Francis first issued Evengelii Gaudium shortly after his election in 2013, much was made of the conservative backlash.
“This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope,” said conservative radio show host Rush Limbaugh, citing the document’s use of buzzwords often found in the rhetoric of the anti-Christian left. “‘Unfettered capitalism?’ That doesn’t exist anywhere. ‘Unfettered capitalism’ is a liberal socialist phrase to describe the United States.”
Limbaugh was, of course, quite right. And many Christians devoted to facing down the Obama administration agreed with him. After all, the infamous Health and Human Services mandate was still fresh on American Catholics’ minds. It was a blatant attack on religious liberty which operated precisely by means of attacking the economic liberty of Christian employers such as the Little Sisters of the Poor.
For any serious Christian, the culture war against the left was as much a defense of free markets as it was a defense of pro-life Christian doctrine. But some Christians were less serious, and more eager to defend the pope, right or wrong, than to defend the Church.
One stalwart Catholic journalist who agreed with Limbaugh, Fox’s Adam Shaw, boldly denounced the pope’s “misguided” Apostolic Exhortation in an op-ed. He was promptly fired from his job with the Catholic News Service.
Back to Raul Castro’s visit with Pope Francis: After their meeting, Castro revealed to reporters he had assured the pope that Cuba’s leaders read his speeches “every day.”
Castro had even told the Holy Father, “If you continue talking like this … I will return to the Catholic Church. I am not joking. I may convert again to Catholicism, even though I am a Communist.”
Castro offered some context for his attraction to Pope Francis’s Church, citing his friendship with a man named Frei Betto, described in America Magazine as “a Brazilian Dominican priest and liberation theologian.”
Two weeks ago, a top KGB defector revealed that the “liberation theology” movement in Latin America was a Communist “invention” designed to dupe Catholics into the atheist ideology of Marxism. The ploy was especially effective among the vulnerable Christians of South America during the 1960’s and 70’s, where Communist operatives planted deep roots.
Neither Pope St. John Paul II nor his trusted friend and successor Benedict XVI were taken in by liberation theology. John Paul fought Communism throughout his pontificate, and Benedict was equally forceful against liberation theology’s interpretation of the traditional “preferential option for the poor” as a preferential option for violent state-mandated wealth-redistribution.
According to historian Nikolas Kozloff, Pope Benedict called liberation theology a “singular heresy,” and “a ‘fundamental threat’ to the church.”
This “fundamental threat” to the church is now welcome in Pope Francis’s Vatican, where the Holy Father is making headlines by his efforts to “rehabilitate” liberation theology.
In a matter of months, Pope Francis has announced a desire to “quickly” beatify a deceased liberation theologist bishop, reconciled with a Sandinista activist priest who once called Ronald Reagan a “butcher” and an “international outlaw,” and even invited the founder of the liberation theology movement, Rev. Gustavo Gutierrez, to speak on the need for a “poor Church for the Poor” at an official Vatican event this week.
It might be added that Raul Castro’s friend Frei Betto is a Marxist who once compiled a series of interviews with Fidel Castro and published them as a pro-Castro book called “Fidel & Religion: Conversations with Frei Betto on Marxism & Liberation Theology.” As Victor Gaetan reported in an enlightening 2010 series at the National Catholic Register, Fidel used the book to insist, again and again, “that Christianity and his revolutionary goals, namely full socialism, are compatible.”
Raul Castro has expressed a similar hope of reconciling Marxism with Catholicism. When asked about his own faith, he once responded, “I’ve kept the principles of Christ … and the revolution carries them out.”
What the revolution in Cuba carried out was 30 years of mandated atheism, the persecution and near-starvation of a Christian people, the state imposition of free-abortion-on-demand, and, even today, the suppression of the dissident wives and children of numerous Catholic Cuban men arrested by the Castros for daring to demand religious liberty.
Catholics who condemned “anti-Catholic” whistleblowers and rushed to the defense of bishops who covered for predator priests during the sex abuse scandal must now live in shame. Today’s Catholics who defend Pope Francis against his critics ought to remember who some of those poor critics are.
For the most part, Pope Francis’ critics are not the anti-Christian leftists who have berated the Church all along. Rather, his critics are Cuban Catholics who feel crushed to see Pope Francis fraternizing with their oppressors. They are American Catholics whose long, thankless battle against the culture of death seems to be of little concern to a pope intent on making friends with the enemies of religious liberty.
While journalists are being fired by Catholic news providers for questioning the Bishop of Rome, Christians ought to consider how much longer they should put their sacred faith in a position that requires defending Pope Francis’s views.
A new Catholic scandal is upon us, and not since the sex abuse scandal have so many Catholics defended the powerful and demonized the weak.
Stephen Herreid is an Associate Editor of the Intercollegiate Review and a contributor to TheBlaze.com. His work is archived at candidworldreport.com, and has been published at Crisis Magazine, Aleteia.org, CatholicVote.org, The Intercollegiate Review Online, and other publications. Reach him at sherreid@candidworldreport.com. Follow him on Twitter @StephenHerreid
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Excerpt from God and Money: The Moral Challenge of Capitalism
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To remedy these wrongs the socialists, working on the poor man’s envy of the rich, are striving to do away with private property, and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies. They hold that by thus transferring property from private individuals to the community, the present mischievous state of things will be set to rights, inasmuch as each citizen will then get his fair share of whatever there is to enjoy. But their contentions are so clearly powerless to end the controversy that were they carried into effect the working man himself would be among the first to suffer. They are, moreover, emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community.
It is surely undeniable that, when a man engages in remunerative labor, the impelling reason and motive of his work is to obtain property, and thereafter to hold it as his very own. If one man hires out to another his strength or skill, he does so for the purpose of receiving in return what is necessary for the satisfaction of his needs; he therefore expressly intends to acquire a right full and real, not only to the remuneration, but also to the disposal of such remuneration, just as he pleases. Thus, if he lives sparingly, saves money, and, for greater security, invests his savings in land, the land, in such case, is only his wages under another form; and, consequently, a working man’s little estate thus purchased should be as completely at his full disposal as are the wages he receives for his labor. But it is precisely in such power of disposal that ownership obtains, whether the property consist of land or chattels. Socialists, therefore, by endeavoring to transfer the possessions of individuals to the community at large, strike at the interests of every wage-earner, since they would deprive him of the liberty of disposing of his wages, and thereby of all hope and possibility of increasing his resources and of bettering his condition in life. (Circa 1891)
So the effects of
socialism the working man himself would be among the first to suffer and
deprive him of bettering his condition in life.
Well said, Pope Leo, well said!
One could conclude from this is that socialistic policies inherently
maintain a lower class. If you don’t
think this is true, tell me where you find an all equal society that is
perfectly happy. Completely socialist
countries enjoy equal misery.
In a nutshell, more good
has come from capitalism than any other form of government.
But when it comes to forms
of government ideologies the present Pope may have just committed the biggest
blunder of all time…or at least prior to the time of Pope Leo XIII. More than his lopsided views on economics (I
guess he never heard of the notable economist, Fredrich von Hayek…one of the
greatest), his views on liberation
theology may qualify as a mortal sin against his own church. Strong words you say… read on, the following
story just breaks my heart. ~ Norman E.
HoobenThe Blaze
The New Catholic Scandal: Pope Francis Courts Raul Castro and Forgets What Communism and Atheism Have Done to the World
This weekend, the Communist President of Cuba Raul Castro met with Pope Francis in private for an “unusually long time,” according to Gerard O’Connell, Vatican correspondent for America Magazine.
When he emerged from his meeting with Pope Francis, which a Vatican spokesman called a “very cordial talk,” Castro exchanged gifts with the Holy Father. Castro gave the pope a commemorative medallion in honor of the 200th anniversary of the building of the Havana Cathedral, and a locally produced painting “inspired” by the pope’s advocacy for progressive immigration policies.
In return, Pope Francis gave Casto an image of St. Martin covering the poor with his cloak, which Pope Francis called “an insight into what we have to do.” His second gift was a copy of his controversial Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium. America Magazine reports: “Looking at [Castro] with a smile, [Pope Francis] remarked, ‘There are here some declarations that you will like!’”
Pope Francis waves to well-wishers upon arrival from Sri Lanka, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2015 at suburban Pasay city, south of Manila, Philippines. (AP/Bullit Marquez)
“This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope,” said conservative radio show host Rush Limbaugh, citing the document’s use of buzzwords often found in the rhetoric of the anti-Christian left. “‘Unfettered capitalism?’ That doesn’t exist anywhere. ‘Unfettered capitalism’ is a liberal socialist phrase to describe the United States.”
Limbaugh was, of course, quite right. And many Christians devoted to facing down the Obama administration agreed with him. After all, the infamous Health and Human Services mandate was still fresh on American Catholics’ minds. It was a blatant attack on religious liberty which operated precisely by means of attacking the economic liberty of Christian employers such as the Little Sisters of the Poor.
For any serious Christian, the culture war against the left was as much a defense of free markets as it was a defense of pro-life Christian doctrine. But some Christians were less serious, and more eager to defend the pope, right or wrong, than to defend the Church.
One stalwart Catholic journalist who agreed with Limbaugh, Fox’s Adam Shaw, boldly denounced the pope’s “misguided” Apostolic Exhortation in an op-ed. He was promptly fired from his job with the Catholic News Service.
Back to Raul Castro’s visit with Pope Francis: After their meeting, Castro revealed to reporters he had assured the pope that Cuba’s leaders read his speeches “every day.”
Castro had even told the Holy Father, “If you continue talking like this … I will return to the Catholic Church. I am not joking. I may convert again to Catholicism, even though I am a Communist.”
Fidel Castro with brother Raul.
Two weeks ago, a top KGB defector revealed that the “liberation theology” movement in Latin America was a Communist “invention” designed to dupe Catholics into the atheist ideology of Marxism. The ploy was especially effective among the vulnerable Christians of South America during the 1960’s and 70’s, where Communist operatives planted deep roots.
Neither Pope St. John Paul II nor his trusted friend and successor Benedict XVI were taken in by liberation theology. John Paul fought Communism throughout his pontificate, and Benedict was equally forceful against liberation theology’s interpretation of the traditional “preferential option for the poor” as a preferential option for violent state-mandated wealth-redistribution.
According to historian Nikolas Kozloff, Pope Benedict called liberation theology a “singular heresy,” and “a ‘fundamental threat’ to the church.”
This “fundamental threat” to the church is now welcome in Pope Francis’s Vatican, where the Holy Father is making headlines by his efforts to “rehabilitate” liberation theology.
In a matter of months, Pope Francis has announced a desire to “quickly” beatify a deceased liberation theologist bishop, reconciled with a Sandinista activist priest who once called Ronald Reagan a “butcher” and an “international outlaw,” and even invited the founder of the liberation theology movement, Rev. Gustavo Gutierrez, to speak on the need for a “poor Church for the Poor” at an official Vatican event this week.
Pope Francis leaves at the end of an Armenian-Rite Mass to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, in St. Peter’s Basilica, at the Vatican, Sunday, April 12, 2015. Pope Francis sparked a diplomatic incident with Turkey on Sunday by calling the slaughter of Armenians by Ottoman Turks “the first genocide of the 20th century” and urging the international community to recognize it as such. Turkey, which denies a genocide took place, immediately summoned the Vatican ambassador to express its displeasure, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said in Ankara, speaking on customary condition of anonymity. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Raul Castro has expressed a similar hope of reconciling Marxism with Catholicism. When asked about his own faith, he once responded, “I’ve kept the principles of Christ … and the revolution carries them out.”
What the revolution in Cuba carried out was 30 years of mandated atheism, the persecution and near-starvation of a Christian people, the state imposition of free-abortion-on-demand, and, even today, the suppression of the dissident wives and children of numerous Catholic Cuban men arrested by the Castros for daring to demand religious liberty.
Catholics who condemned “anti-Catholic” whistleblowers and rushed to the defense of bishops who covered for predator priests during the sex abuse scandal must now live in shame. Today’s Catholics who defend Pope Francis against his critics ought to remember who some of those poor critics are.
For the most part, Pope Francis’ critics are not the anti-Christian leftists who have berated the Church all along. Rather, his critics are Cuban Catholics who feel crushed to see Pope Francis fraternizing with their oppressors. They are American Catholics whose long, thankless battle against the culture of death seems to be of little concern to a pope intent on making friends with the enemies of religious liberty.
While journalists are being fired by Catholic news providers for questioning the Bishop of Rome, Christians ought to consider how much longer they should put their sacred faith in a position that requires defending Pope Francis’s views.
A new Catholic scandal is upon us, and not since the sex abuse scandal have so many Catholics defended the powerful and demonized the weak.
Stephen Herreid is an Associate Editor of the Intercollegiate Review and a contributor to TheBlaze.com. His work is archived at candidworldreport.com, and has been published at Crisis Magazine, Aleteia.org, CatholicVote.org, The Intercollegiate Review Online, and other publications. Reach him at sherreid@candidworldreport.com. Follow him on Twitter @StephenHerreid
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