Thursday, December 12, 2013

Evangelii Gaudium

COMMENTS


Mark Q. Rhoads said...
I am a Catholic and the reason that I am annoyed by the criticism of Pope Francis of the free market is that his analysis is so completely uninformed. He is a Jesuit who has never lived in a country that had a responsible free-market system under the rule of law. He has no experience in free-market economics so he criticizes something he knows nothing about. If it were not for the success and prosperity of the free market over many decades, there would not be extra money to donate to Catholic Charities, universities, and hospitals. Where does Pope Francis think that money comes from? Corrupt socialist governments that are broke most of the time? The teachings of Jesus Christ do not include any immoral mandate for corrupt governments to take from one person to bestow on another person simply because some elitist somewhere decrees that a person who did not earn a dollar is more "deserving" than someone who worked hard to earn it for he love of his or her family.
Mark, you are right that Pope Francis' remarks on economics are not particularly deep or sophisticated. But the economics was not primary, not secondary and barely even tertiary to his Exhortation. And on two occasions in it, as he speaks of economics, he notes that it is not his responsibility and that he is not the expert. He invites the laity to unleash their creative and intellectual energy to direct socioeconomic systems towards accomplishing giving all opportunity. In this piece, I have responded to his invitation.
I worry that reducing this to an economic argument utterly obscures the critically important things he says about evangelization - which he notes IS his responsibility.
You are also right that he has no experience with market capitalism. Small wonder he is a bit off on what it is designed for - particularly when the premier capitalist country in the world is now dominated by crony capitalists who seek the favor of government as their path to prosperity rather than meeting genuine market needs. I would guarantee you that Pope Francis would have no criticism at all of the model of say, Hobby Lobby or Chick Fil-A.
Instead of ignoring the point of his Exhortation so as to criticize him on what he missed, why not recognize the substance of his call and respond to his invitation by re-establishing the capitalism in this country that lifts all boats, that bubbles up through the entire society, while rejecting the perverse cronyism that this administration has helped it become. Do that and I suspect you will make a believer out of Francis - in authentic market capitalism as opposed to the crony capitalism he sees at work here.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous12/13/2013

    The Pope is not a politician. The liberal left do not understand this since their political radicalism IS their religion. Therefore they try to put the Pope into one political camp or the other....The fact is that the Pope is not a Socialist (Democrat) or Republican (capitalist). He is a man for God.

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