It is a good adage. However, even a good adage never stands alone. The simpler a slogan, the greater its limitation. As to the rest, I never had an opinion one way or another as to your situation. I do not view it as relevant, except as a way to understand where someone is coming from. I was mainly addressing the context of that specific Scripture. You are not the first to mention it.The rest doesn’t seem worthy arguing about because it seems like a good adage and Saint Paul was certainly taking it from the Torah .
Newton,It is a good adage. However, even a good adage never stands alone. The simpler a slogan, the greater its limitation. As to the rest, I never had an opinion one way or another as to your situation. I do not view it as relevant, except as a way to understand where someone is coming from. I was mainly addressing the context of that specific Scripture. You are not the first to mention it.
What’s off topic about working for it?I am sure the Holy Father is well versed in Pauline theology and will address those things he sees need attention in this day and age. All that other stuff might make an interesting thread topic, but I do not wish to wander off topic any further.
Pristine 2,A very good discussion.
One reason I’m so very thankful that I’m Christian is that our faith encourages wisdom and the maturity of the individual intellect. Our scripture, especially the Gospel, is in many ways defined by the absence of rigid political prescriptions. There’s a reason for this.
Just compare that to Islam, whose adherents are shackled with explicit laws and punishments conceived by 7th century warlord. Much of the Islamic world functions as a giant social prison.
The scope and mechanics of the secular state are entirely our own responsibility. Of course pendulum will swing – gently, we hope – left and right as the seasons change. How we influence this process as Christians should be a function of the examination of conscience. Extremes are mitigated and softened by adherence to fundamental principle.
The injustices of corporate power would seem to be an entirely fair subject of discussion for the Holy Father, just as JP II highlighted the abuses of state power. Both state and corporation are wholly human, and therefore flawed institutions, with the capacity for good and evil.
Exactly. I think most of us agree that a social safety net is needed - for those who have become physically or mentally unable to work, and for those who have recently lost their jobs and who are actively seeking new employment opportunities. St. Paul was talking not about those unable to work or being temporarily out of work due to circumstances beyond their control. No, he was talking about people who, though able and with ample opportunities, refuse to work. In other words, why help people who feel, quite simply, that the world owes them a living for simply existing?Pristine 2,
Amen, I agree entirely. I hope that I am in communion with the Holy See. The expression or perhaps application, of Catholic social teaching has seemed to be problematic.
I try to keep it lite and throw some change-ups in there. I sometimes write in prose, my wife says I’m a storyteller.
It’s not about Pauline Theology. He was a Jewish Pharisee. They followed the Law, the Torah, They were steeped in tradition.
We need to apply our teachings to a public square that is not always that friendly.
Best, Patrick
Strange, for the Church has emphatically shown the solution.powerofk #106
I don’t know what the solution is,
That’s not what I meant. Of course Jesus wants us to work and share the fruits of our labor with others. The problem is more this: what is the best way for us, as compassionate people, to share our goods with those, who, through no fault of their own, cannot work or participate in free enterprise? Surely we should help out those who we personally can - we cannot be like the rich man who ignored the existence of Lazarus. But, I know that for every one child with severe disabilities that I help educate, there are thousands of elderly in nursing homes who are rarely, if ever, visited. My point is that we, as a society, have pushed the “undesirables” out of sight and out of mind. We have made being homeless a crime. And, if a person can’t be seen, then, well, hey, he/she must not be a person at all (which is why shots of ultrasound imaging can easily change the mind of a woman seeking abortion, especially if she’s on the fence about it - once she sees the picture, the baby becomes real to her).Strange, for the Church has emphatically shown the solution.
It is free enterprise as taught by the Popes over many years, as Fr of Jazz has shown with detailed references in post #90, based on Christ’s Parable of the Talents which most strikingly acknowledges Christ’s respect for the work of business, as does the Parable of the Dishonest Steward. Christ is preaching and rewarding prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance.
In my view, you’ve misrepresented the Holy Father’s perspective on economic freedom, corporate power and social justice (which has nothing to do with Glenn Beck’s definition of the term).Government corruption explains the poor of Argentina and Latin America far more than free market forces.
I think the main problem is that when the Pope speaks, we Americans take it too personally, and we assume that he is addressing us directly, as if there is ONLY America in the world.Why is it that only capitalism is argued to be based on greed? As if greed is not common to all human systems of governance and economics? That’s actually a hoot… but people seem to buy it if it’s presented in the right manipulative way. Should we suppose that Marxists have immunized themselves from greed? Do we suppose that any system where some men have authority over others will ever be devised where power and greed won’t be dominant features? The free market is the best containment for greed. Socialistic policies make it far worse
Pope Francis seems to want to present economics in the context of liberation theology. Wiki has a nice article on Latin American liberation theology: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_theology
Here is a clarification offered by the pope’s closest aid: whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-perspective-of-gospel-in-francis.html
Here is a quote: “He does not let himself be deceived by the trickle-down theory, which is based on the conviction that if the market is allowed to freely unfold itself this would favor general economic growth which at length is the way out of misery. As someone who lived with the poor, Francis rejects such theory, since facts speak another language and never ever have confirmed this.”
The use of pejorative terms like “trickle down” is bothersome. That is a term invented by Democrats to criticize and ridicule Ronald Reagan’s economic proposals. Using terms of ridicule to describe free market economic principles denotes a distinct bias.
I don’t care for the way this pope presumes to lecture folks over “the poor”. The two-room shack I first lived in in Appalachia in the mid-1950’s had no running water and hunger was real in my party of the world. I’ve experienced real poverty, not the kind where people have cars and A/C and cell phones. If I had been born in India would I have had the opportunities a more capitalistic country offered me? No, I’d be stuck in a caste because that trumps the free market in India. There is one economic dynamic that allowed me to prosper, and that is economic freedom, limited as it is in this country. But we have/had more of it than anywhere else. It works, I’ve lived it. Government corruption explains the poor of Argentina and Latin America far more than free market forces.
No, free enterprise has done more worldwide to reduce human suffering than any other sort of economic system. Consider China. China was a nation with a huge population that was starving under communism and before that under dictatorship. Only when free market forces were allowed to take hold in China was it able to feed itself and people no longer starve in China. It was not Mao’s centrally planned economy that fed them, it was the introduction of capitalistic forces in their economy. With full freedom China would outcompete all other countries because of their vast resources, human and otherwise. And that is their trend. It is proven everywhere it is tried, not just in the United States.I think the main problem is that when the Pope speaks, we Americans take it too personally, and we assume that he is addressing us directly, as if there is ONLY America in the world.
I think you might want to read more of the church’s stance on economic freedom and the role of the state. It’s been dealt exhaustively on this thread. The pope is no Marxist, and nothing in his stance reflects the core logic of liberation theology, which indeed rises out of Marxist dialectic thought. The influence of liberation theology on the church at large is limited to a few regions in the world where income and political inequality are at truly absurd and extreme levels. That’s entirely understandable.How have I misrepresented anything?
Did you read the wiki article I linked? Near the end it discusses Pope Francis’ relationship with Liberation Theology and some of its main adherents. Let me be clear, I am not alleging that Pope Francis is a Marxist.I think you might want to read more of the church’s stance on economic freedom and the role of the state. It’s been dealt exhaustively on this thread. The pope is no Marxist, and nothing in his stance reflects the core logic of liberation theology, which indeed rises out of Marxist dialectic thought. The influence of liberation theology on the church at large is limited to a few regions in the world where income and political inequality are at truly absurd and extreme levels. That’s entirely understandable.
Many claimed Microsoft was a monopoly and required government intervention to break it up. What is it’s position today? The free market takes care of monopolies. This idea that corrupt men in governmental positions will do a better job of protecting the poor than corrupt men in business is highly misguided. Marx was motivated by a desire to reduce human suffering under abuses that were rampant in Europe during the height of the industrial revolution in the early 19th century. His goal was good and laudable. His method is flawed because it presumes too much goodness on the part of labor leaders and too much evil on the part of business people. Human nature being what it is, the free markets work better every time. It has been proven time and again. I’ve offered China’s free market reforms as just one example. The Holy Father, and his spokesperson, seem to ignore this or be ignorant of it when they say otherwise.The problem is when there are far too few of them, making them far too powerful, leading them to extinguish competition unfairly and distort the course of public policy.
As someone who grew up in abject poverty of 1950’s Appalachia, my heart goes out to the truly poor as well. I mean the kind of poverty where people don’t have running water, no cars, no cell phones, no air conditioning, and who suffer hunger. I’ve lived that so I know what it is. No one needs to lecture me on being a rich American who doesn’t know what poverty is. As a free-market capitalist, reducing human suffering is a motivation of my heart. No system has ever done a better job of doing just that in the history of the world than the forces of a free market where men and women exchange freely between each other on mutually agreeable terms. It is a powerful force that I don’t believe Pope Francis fully understands as well as he should. I’m not sure he has ever experience it or observed it first hand.Pope Francis is pope of ALL the Catholics, not just those rich ones in rich countries. His heart goes out to the people severely harmed by our evil form of today’s global capitalism, in which we are not even aware of the people across the world harmed for our benefit. We are like elephants stepping on ants.
Surely you understand that this is not always so, especially if the government itself enforces those monopolies. The anti-trust efforts of the early 20th century translated into several periods of unprecedented prosperity, each more wide reaching than the last, irrespective of whether the federal government was in a Keynesian mood. The Depression notwithstanding, the cycle of prosperity didn’t really end until the 1970s, when environmental costs could no longer be externalised, unions became parasitic, government became bloated, and energy ceased to be cheap.Many claimed Microsoft was a monopoly and required government intervention to break it up. What is it’s position today? The free market takes care of monopolies.