Monday, July 13, 2015

More unbridled, careless rhetoric from Pope Francis

Quick, someone get a bridle on this pope, and pull back hard on the bit!

Once again Pope Francis feeds anti-capitalist ammo to his leftist enemies, who, lately, have been hanging on every word that can possibly be quoted or misquoted as "anti-capitalism" and/or anti-Western.  Nearly every Bing hit for this story has him saying "capitalism is the dung of the devil".

The Daily Caller, one of very few exceptions, quotes the pope precisely and concludes:
"No, Pope Francis Didn’t Call Capitalism ‘The Dung Of The Devil’"
The Pope has been attacking "unbridled capitalism", "greed" and "climate change" as the source of all evil in the modern world.  This is both ignorant and weird because:
(1) the first world, where poverty is least prevalent and justice, democracy and freedom most prevalent got that way in no small measure thanks to free market capitalism.  Furthermore, nowhere in the first world is capitalism "unbridled".  It is very bridled, and in most cases too bridled.
(2) all the third world hell-holes on the planet (many of them very Catholic, by the way) are suffering from grinding poverty, injustice and lack of freedom because they are subject to unbridled totalitarianism, unbridled socialism and/or unbridled dictatorship. Why doesn't Pope Francis speak up against these evils? If he had half a clue, he would.
Get a grip, Francis! Those leftists who love to quote your careless rhetoric are not your friends.  In fact most are at best indifferent (many are hostile) to religion and not a few despise the Catholic Church in particular. And, encouraging them like this will lead to more poverty and suffering in the world, not less.

Update: I particularly liked this comment in the NP article, from EarlP
... His failure to understand the good that has been done in the world by capitalists and capitalism, actually leaves him in the position of becoming a useful id#ot (as Lenin might have said) for those opposed to the promotion and expansion of liberty and democracy.
We need a little more John Paul II, and a lot less Hugo Chavez from this Pope.



5 comments:

fernstalbert said...

I am disappointed in the rhetoric and needless lecturing of the West - next thing you know he will be advocating for the "ends justify the means" approach. I will exercise my civil disobedience by withholding funds and direct my hard earned "capitalist" dollars to charities and causes that I choose. Perhaps the godless greens and climate alarmists will fund the Church. lol

JR said...

Yes, it is extremely disappointing.

It is possible that Francis is concerned mainly that the lure of material wealth is distracting people from living a more "spiritual" life and draws them away from the Church's influence (maybe this is the Vatican being "greedy" for more power over more people's lives). This trend is no doubt true in the wealthy, increasingly secular West but it completely ignores other relevant facts, for example: (1) the undeniable good that material wealth has brought to people world-wide in medicine, food production, communications technology, etc, etc. (2) large, over-populated countries like China were exceedingly poor under godless, unbridled socialism. Life is improving materially and in freedom (at least in the market sense) for millions since adopting capitalism. While this won't likely make most people more spiritually inclined, it won't make them any less; and otherwise their quality of life is much, much better than it was.

Francis' views are a distortion and over-simplification of the situation and he appears to favor top-down socialistic governance as a way of improving things. While this pleases leftists it certainly won't achieve what the Pope wants and won't improve anyone's quality of life either. Quite the opposite.

Anonymous said...

Lets face it, Francis is less a Pope than an advocate for communism. Its very disappointing that the church has decided to become a political lobby group for the far left Marxist cause rather than a religious order. As someone raised as Catholic I find Francis's actions simply estrange me further from the church, not my belief and love for Jesus Christ and his teachings, just the corrupted church and this radically political "Pope".

JR said...

I'm not Catholic but I do respect the church's role in fostering Christian spirituality and morality across the world. Unfortunately, this Pope is straying, as you say, into the political realm. He seems ideologically bent to the left and not inclined to back away from anything he's said so far. If anything he'll double down.

Anonymous said...

This numbskull socialism advocate convinced me to walk away from the Catholic Church and never look back.
NO QUARTER