Vatican.va: "worst enemy is the worship of money generated by capitalism"

[smndtupidisaftr]

That doesn’t mean he made an oversight yesterday. What it means is he didn’t mention them in this particular sermon yesterday. I happen to agree that some regulation of capitalism can be beneficial, such as regulation of monopolies without which we see the price greed the Pope is mentioning. But that doesn’t mean I think he must “only” have capitalism on his mind. To do so, I think, is to read the Pope’s words yesterday with a confirmation bias.

No monopolies have ever existed outside of government assistance.

 

[Tighty_Whitey]

Well, it may not exist currently in the US but it has in the past, and the whole point of the “Tea Party” wing of the GOP is that the Us should return to unregulated capitalism. So if nothing else, the Pope’s statement is a rebuke to “Tea Partiers”, and a merited one.

What does the Tea Party movement have to do with “hot spots” around the world? Why do you perceive the Tea Party movement as wanting to return to unregulated capitalism? When did we last have unregulated capitalism in the U.S.? A hundred years ago?

 

[smndtupidisaftr]

What does the Tea Party movement have to do with “hot spots” around the world? Why do you perceive the Tea Party movement as wanting to return to unregulated capitalism? When did we last have unregulated capitalism in the U.S.? A hundred years ago?

Never. Even before Roosevelt and Wilson the US had a history of protectionism.

 

[stinkcat_14]

No monopolies have ever existed outside of government assistance.

Debeers?

 

[mitex]

So I guess the pope has condemned pure capitalism.

As the old hymn goes “The Truth is marching on!”

 

[Bartolome_Casas]

This country grew much faster and the state of the poor improved at an unparalleled rate during that time of “unregulated capitalism”.

The perception of that age is more a result of revisionist history than what actually happened…

During the Golden Age of “unregulated financial capitalism” in America described above, the average lifespan of the average factory laborer was about 40 years and the average lifespan of average factory was about 70 years.

 

[Bartolome_Casas]

Well, it may not exist currently in the US but it has in the past, and the whole point of the “Tea Party” wing of the GOP is that the Us should return to unregulated capitalism. So if nothing else, the Pope’s statement is a rebuke to “Tea Partiers”, and a merited one.

Yes.

The popes January 1, 2013 messages were a rebuke to nations like Russia, China and India, where many or most of the workers have as a practical matter no human rights or democratic at all, but are virtual slaves whose lives are “poor, nasty, brutish and short” (quoting Thomas Hobbes), and is also rebuke to powerful, dynamic parties and movements in the USA and Europe which are urging for a return to the prior tradition of “unregulated financial capitalism” in those nations.

 

[_Abyssinia]

Well, it may not exist currently in the US but it has in the past, and the whole point of the “Tea Party” wing of the GOP is that the Us should return to unregulated capitalism. So if nothing else, the Pope’s statement is a rebuke to “Tea Partiers”, and a merited one.

Tea Party stands for fiscal reponsibility, not unregulated capitalism. You misunderstand the Tea Party

 

[_Abyssinia]

In his book Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI wrote about “…the cruelties of a capitalism that degrades man to the level of merchandise…”

So it isn’t an “out-of-the-blue statement”.

There’s also his uncle:

Pope Benedict said in n 28, Encyclical Deus Caritas Est

My emphases

The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person − every person − needs: namely, loving personal concern. We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything, but a State which, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need. … In the end, the claim that just social structures would make works of charity superfluous masks a materialist conception of man: the mistaken notion that man can live ‘by bread alone’ (Mt 4:4; cf. Dt 8:3) − a conviction that demeans man and ultimately disregards all that is specifically human

Blessed John Paul answered whether capitalism should be a model for every country in Centesimus Annus

The answer is obviously complex. If by “capitalism” is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a “business economy,” “market economy” or simply “free economy.” But if by “capitalism” is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality, and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious, then the reply is certainly negative

 

[_Abyssinia]

The Pope’s non-existent ‘attack’ on capitalism

---

First things first… let’s get this straight from the beginning, he never attacked capitalism.

Speaking against many of the evils that plague Mankind, Pope Benedict specifically stated:

“The prevalence of a selfish and individualistic mindset which also finds expression in an unregulated capitalism, various forms of terrorism and criminality.”

I’m sure none of us would disagree with his condemnation of terrorism and criminality, let I’ll focus only on what he said in relation to capitalism.

Has anyone else noticed he never called for an over-regulated style capitalism? No… he didn’t.

What Pope Benedict spoke against was unregulated capitalism. Big difference. (Emphasis mine)

Not all that long ago, children worked in mines, sweatshops, slaughterhouses, etc. And I mean children… 8 and 9-years-old.

What stopped that? Well, regulation.

The Pope never called for over regulation, nor for oppressive regulation. Just regulation.

So What Is The Catholic Definition Of Regulation…?

Now I ask of you, dear reader, please keep in context what the Catholic definition is.

Initially, we adhere to the Four Sins that Cry to Heaven for Vengeance (note: only the 3d and 4th apply to this particular topic at hand):

• Murder (Gn 4:10)
• Sodomy (Gn 17:20-21)
• Oppression of the poor (Ex 2:23)
• Defrauding workers of their just wages (Jas 5:4)

If that isn’t enough, there is the official teaching of the Catholic Church as found within the catechism:

The Church has rejected the totalitarian and atheistic ideologies associated in modem times with ‘communism’ or ‘socialism.’

She has likewise refused to accept, in the practice of ‘capitalism,’ individualism and the absolute primacy of the law of the marketplace over human labor.

Regulating the economy solely by centralized planning perverts the basis of social bonds; regulating it solely by the law of the marketplace fails social justice, for ‘there are many human needs which cannot be satisfied by the market.’

Reasonable regulation of the marketplace and economic initiatives, in keeping with a just hierarchy of values and a view to the common good, is to be commended."

Did anyone else notice the first two words in the last sentence?

“Reasonable regulation.”

Should our employer have to pay us for overtime? Do we have to work in a firetrap? Do we deserve a reasonable break for meals?

We all know the answers to those questions.

And above all, none of us want our kids chained to a sewing machine for 16 hours a day, do we?

That’s just reasonable (regulation).

 

[Seeker1961]

We must take the Pope’s words literally and do exactly as he says…when he agrees with us. When it looks like he might be criticizing something we hold dear, then we spin and rationalize and justify.

 

[Brendan]

We must take the Pope’s words literally and do exactly as he says…when he agrees with us. When it looks like he might be criticizing something we hold dear, then we spin and rationalize and justify.

No I take him at his word. When he condemns abortion and gay marriage, I work against that. If he condemns someone putting a dollar bill in a Monstrance and bowing down before that, I will work against that too

In all seriousness, the Pope is telling us exactly what St. Paul told us, that the love of money is the root of all evil. But neither St. Paul, nor the Pope are condemning money itself, nor even capitalism. The Vatican has it’s own investment bank, so clearly the Pope is not opposed to that. The problem comes into play when an individual person gives a status to money that is contrary to it’s real purpose.

Money is a tool, nothing more, nothing less. It is a means of exchange of goods to accommodate needs (real or perceived). And I will chide anyone who raises it above the status of ‘tool’ in the same way that I will chide anyone who proposes gay ‘marriage’, abortion or other evils.

 

[GaryTaylor]

I disagree while money isn’t intrinsic, then its first priority goes to the extrinsic. And if that extrinsic isn’t rooted in the Redeemer, then there’s a problem.

 

[Elizabeth502]

We must take the Pope’s words literally and do exactly as he says…

Precisely. Which means exactly as he says. Not exactly as he doesn’t say. Not exactly as he doesn’t generalize. Not exactly as he doesn’t condemn. Not exactly as he doesn’t define.

Uncontrolled anything can become an evil. Even a Good can become a vice, when ego or some other motive manipulates that Good to a different end. Exploitation (through money) and excess (like avarice) are evil. The tools and the system – unless manipulated and exaggerated and exploited, are not themselves evil. It is human motive and human results of selfish motives that are evil. Worship of money, he said, Not money.

Capitalism can generate good.
Capitalism can generate evil.

Our Holy Father did not condemn capitalism in essence. He condemned the perversion of that – i.e., in his words, “Worship.”

 

[Bartolome_Casas]

We must take the Pope’s words literally and do exactly as he says…when he agrees with us. When it looks like he might be criticizing something we hold dear, then we spin and rationalize and justify.

Seeker1961’s astute (and a bit sarcastic) comment reminded me of scene I read in a book on Lincoln and Civil War.

As everyone knows, Lincoln ran for president as a non-abolitionist. He said over and over again that he believed that Southern whites had a constitutional right to maintain their institution of black enslavement. He was only against expanding slavery to the new Western states. Even so, many people in the Republican Party were abolitionists, and this always created a difficulty for Lincoln and his non-abolitionist faction of the Party.

Then one day, towards the end of the Civil War, after he had issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln and his cabinet went out on the portico of the White House, toasted each other, and one of the said, with a laugh “Well, gentlemen, we are all abolitionists now.”

How is that applicable to Catholics in America? It’s applicable because we are all Cafeteria Catholics now. Thus, I would paraphrase Seeker1961’s comment as: “Well, ladies and gentlemen, we are all dissenters now.”

Liberal Catholics reject, spin, distort, or downplay the Church’s teachings on divorce and remarriage, on sex in dating, on abortion, homosexuality, pornography, etc., and Conservative Catholics reject, spin, distort, or downplay the Church’s teachings on social justice matters such as the Just Family Wage, Full Employment, World Government, the positive value of government, solidarity, subsidiarity, the Common Good, etc., and a big majority of both Liberal and Conservative Catholics use birth control pills and condoms and yet receive Holy Communion.

I propose that the number of entirely faithful Catholics in the USA might be a small as 1,000 or 2,000, with 99% of those being in monasteries or convents.

What must Jehovah’s Witnesses and such think when they get to know us?

This is a Dark Age. To me, we are in a period much like the 1930s in Europe, right before the big catastrophe came. It’s the same Right vs. Left struggle to death all over again, with once again Catholic voices of reason, moderation, and fidelity to Church teachings getting drowned out in the sea of anger, fear, lust, greed, race hatred, class warfare, desperation, and paranoia.

Yesterday on Catholic Radio (I think was a show from the Ave Maria network; it may have been Al Kresta or some man substituting for him) the host said that what was need was a “Catholic First” mentality, in which Catholics put fidelity to God and Church and Faith above loyalty to party, nation, class, ethnic group, and self. Maybe that will happen. God make it so!

 

[LilyM]

As far as I can tell the hot beds of conflict in this world have virtually nothing to do with discrepancies between rich and poor. I’m sure I’m forgetting a few but the key ones that come to mind are:

Syria
Afghanistan
North Korea

Au contraire. In each of these countries you have stinking rich and powerful elites (just read about how lavishly Assad and particularly his wife live, or the late unlamented Kim Jong-il) who become so at the expense of the majority of people. The tension between the two groups is a significant factor in all their present situations.

 

[Robert_Sock]

Finally, a Pope who will speak the truth on the dangers of money worship and unregulated capitalism. Now, if he would please define “unregulated capitalism.”

 

[lerapt78]

Finally, a Pope who will speak the truth on the dangers of money worship and unregulated capitalism. Now, if he would please define “unregulated capitalism.”

Not to put words into the Pope’s mouth, but one example of what he meant could be the practice of American companies who outsource their labor/manufacturing and then receive tax *credits *from the American government on the foreign taxes they’ve paid (which go into the coffers of the foreign government).

 

[Bartolome_Casas]

Finally, a Pope who will speak the truth on the dangers of money worship and unregulated capitalism. Now, if he would please define “unregulated capitalism.”

Yes, I agree, very good question, one I’ve had many times myself. For a long time, I wondered if the Church had failed to provide meaningful guidance on this question.

Then I finally started reading the Vatican’s 2004 document “Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church.” vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/justpeace/documents/rc_pc_justpeace_doc_20060526_compendio-dott-soc_en.html

This Compenium does, I think, in essence, give a pretty good sense of what “regulated” means in the context of “regulated Capitalism.” After reading it, and reflecting on it, I felt that I had a pretty good sense of what the Church’s moral teachings on economics are.

The Church has so many documents on its “Social Doctrine” that reading and studying them all is very time consuming. The popes, the bishops conferences, and the Second Vatican Council (in Guadium et Spes) have all produced documents. My guess is that there are about 12 key documents of this sort one would have to read to get a full and balanced view of the Church’s teachings on the morality of and benefits of Capitalism and of the moral necessity for governments to regulate Capitalism for the common good.

The 2004 “Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church” provides an official Vatican summary of all these documents (except for the social doctrine encyclicals of the current pope), and it is, I think, easy to understand is not very long.

This Compendium answers many other common sense questions, such as whether the Church’s social doctrine teaching are really binding on Catholics, and whether they are really “moral” teachings or not.

God bless you. God bless us all.

P.S. Here’s a bit of my conclusions about why the Pope’s comments against unregulated Capitalism are relevant and important:

The USA does not have “unregulated capitalism” now. I think everyone agrees with that. Perhaps most would agree that it did have unregulated capitalism in the era of President Jackson, and maybe for all of the history of the USA prior to President Theodore Roosevelt (the first anti-monopoly laws went into effect then, I believe), and that from that time forward capitalism gradually was more and more regulated up until the time of President Reagan. Since President Reagan’s time, most people, I think, would say that the regulation of Capitalism has not changed that much.

So, it seems to me, that no one could correctly say that Pope Benedict’s condemnation of “unregulated capitalism” would not and could not constitute a condemnation of the regulatory situation in USA currently.

Pope Benedict’s condemnation probably applies mostly to Russia, China and India, where workers (and most citizens in general) have no real rights, and many (or most?) are little better than slaves.

But, Pope Benedict’s condemnation still has much relevance to the USA because there is a powerful movement in the USA that repeats, over and over, a simple formula for America to follow: SMALL GOVERNMENT PLUS CAPITALISM UNLEASHED. The people in this movement do not generally directly say that they want capitalism to completely unregulated, but, I think the impression that most people get is that businesses and employees need to be utterly and totally free from government interference in their free choices. So, in essence, this movement is a movement calling for the “unregulated Capitalism” that the Catholic Church views as being immoral. Even worse, there are some lay Catholics in this movement who proclaim that the Catholic Church, because it is and has always been anti-Communist, is therefore in favor of unregulated Capitalism, as if our only choice is between the social doctrine of Marx, Stalin, Lenin and Mao, and the social doctrine of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton.

Consider this quote from the Compendium:

1. The Church’s social doctrine, while recognizing the market as an irreplaceable instrument for regulating the inner workings of the economic system, points out the need for it to be firmly rooted in its ethical objectives, which ensure and at the same time suitably circumscribe the space within which it can operate autonomously.[729] The idea that the market alone can be entrusted with the task of supplying every category of goods cannot be shared, because such an idea is based on a reductionist vision of the person and society.[730] Faced with the concrete “risk of an ‘idolatry’ of the market”, the Church’s social doctrine underlines its limits, which are easily seen in its proven inability to satisfy important human needs,…

Thus, if anyone says that the Free Market alone can meet the basic needs of all hardworking, responsible people, and that poor people just need to stop being so lazy and so dependent on government, a Catholic can quote passages like above to say that the Church says such a view is both immoral and empirically incorrect as a matter of economic science.

 

[livingwordunity]

In his book Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI wrote about “…the cruelties of a capitalism that degrades man to the level of merchandise…”

So it isn’t an “out-of-the-blue statement”.

There’s also his uncle:

He didn’t write Jesus of Nazareth as the Pope.