In his recently penned 224-page
document, The Joy of the Gospel (Evangelii Gaudium), Pope Francis criticized
the following.
-
The current capitalist inequalities
(Were
socialism and communism ever equal, inclusive, kind to the people, and fair?
No, there were two classes, the haves, composed of communist party apparatchiks
and the have-nots, composed of the proletariat.)
-
“The idolatry of money”
(Who
pays for the salaries of priests and the maintenance of the churches around the
world for its 1.5 billion Catholics? The Holy See is quite flush with cash and
wealthy beyond belief if you consider thousands of priceless works of art, marble
statues, gold and silver icons, urns, crucifixes, chalices, and marble cathedrals
around the world. Should they not follow their own direction and distribute all
this vast wealth to the poor?)
-
“The inequality that spawns violence”
(Were
violence and wars around the world borne by economic inequality or were there
other reasons such as religion, land disputes, drug cartels, plundering, and
natural resources such as oil, gold, coal, diamonds, silver, and power and
control conquests?)
-
“Trickle-down economics” as a theory that “expresses a crude and naïve trust
in the goodness of those wielding economic power.”
The Washington Post immediately
included the papal criticism in its editorial and pointed out that Democrats
and liberals have rejected the “trickle-down economics” theory and used the phrase
derisively to define it. http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/pope-francis-denounces-trickle-down-economic-theories-in-critique-of-inequality/2013/11/26/e17ffe4e-56b6-11e3-8304-caf30787c0a9_story.html
“The phrase has often been used derisively to
describe a popular version of conservative economic philosophy that argues that
allowing the wealthy to run their businesses unencumbered by regulation or taxation
bears economic benefits that lead to more jobs and income for the rest of
society. Liberals and Democratic officials have rejected the theory, saying it
is contradicted by economic evidence.”
As a matter of fact, “trickle-down
theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will
inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the
world,” have been proven correct.
There is a good reason why
the United States citizens have done so well economically as opposed to
centralized, socialist, and communist countries where indescribable poverty is
rampant while the ruling, tyrannical elite live luxuriously at the expense of
the masses. Even the poorest of the poor in the United States live far better
than the rest of the world because capitalism works.
The Latin American Pope
from Buenos Aires lamented that the masses are still waiting for “social
justice.” United States is one of the first countries in the world to donate
and help the poor and others when tragedy strikes and Americans give generously
of their wealth, time, and expertise. “Social
justice” is an entirely different manufactured creature.
According to Gen. Pacepa, the
Soviet communist-led idea of “social justice” was infiltrated successfully by
the KGB into Latin America’s Catholic Church as a religious movement called “liberation
theology.” The goal was to “incite Latin America’s poor to rebel against the ‘institutionalized
violence of poverty’ generated by the United States.” (Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, Disinformation, Washington, D. C., WND
Books, Inc., 2013, chapter 15, p. 106)
What kind of “social
justice” are the masses waiting for when pining for socialism and communism?
They are waiting to vote again and again for the same individuals and the same socialist
or communist governments that brought them to the brink of poverty and kept
them perennially downtrodden. They are waiting for socialist governments to
give them welfare and free minimal health care through Castro clinics while
they stay home and procreate more dependents. They are waiting for the
redistribution of wealth from productive citizens. They are enslaved to their governments
who decide their daily lives yet they are told it is the United States’ fault.
Robert Spencer wrote an article around the Pope’s
statement that “Authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed
to every form of violence.”
The following is an excerpt from paragraph
253 of the papal document: …“We Christians should embrace with affection and
respect Muslim immigrants to our countries in the same way that we hope and ask
to be received and respected in countries of Islamic tradition. I ask and I
humbly entreat those countries to grant Christians freedom to worship and to
practice their faith, in light of the freedom which followers of Islam enjoy in
Western countries! Faced with disconcerting episodes of violent fundamentalism,
our respect for true followers of Islam should lead us to avoid hateful generalisations,
for authentic Islam and the
proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.”
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium_en.pdf
The Christian victims of
jihad violence in Egypt, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Syria carried out daily by
Muslims who use the Koran to explain the burning of churches and the killing of
innocents certainly contradict his Holiness.
Based on prior history, we
know neither appeasement nor reverse psychology works; on the contrary, appeasement
creates war and more violence.
Robert Spencer explained that “The Bishop of Rome, by virtue of his
position as successor of St. Peter, can, according to Catholic teaching, speak
authoritatively about Catholic doctrine: he has the authority to delineate what
is authentic Catholicism. This, however, is a statement about "authentic
Islam." It would be interesting to know how he came to this conclusion,
since the Pope of Rome has no counterpart within the Islamic world: there is no
Muslim authority to which he can appeal in order to discover what ‘authentic
Islam’ consists of, and many Muslim authorities would disagree with his
statement that ‘authentic Islam’ is opposed to every form of violence." http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/11/pope-francis-authentic-islam-and-the-proper-reading-of-the-koran-are-opposed-to-every-form-of-violen.html
The Washington Post writer
Reza Aslan stated in his November 30, 2013 column on faith, “If you don’t like
the Pope, you won’t care much for Jesus.” That is because Jesus, he said, “is
advocating a chilling new reality in which the rich will be made poor, the
strong will become weak, and the powerful will be displaced by the powerless.”
Following this redistributive logic, sloth should be rewarded while enterprise
punished.
Pope Pius XII, the
anti-communist and anti-Nazi Pope, saved many Jews and ethnic groups from
pogroms. He was the voice of the Catholic Church to protest against Hitler’s
attack on the Jews, the Polish people, and on the prisoners in the
concentration camps.
He even used Castel
Gandolfo, the Pope’s summer home, to shelter thousands of refugees. In fact, “his personal bedroom was converted
into a nursery and birthing area, and about forty babies were born there during
the war.” The World Jewish Congress estimated that 860,000 Jews were saved by
the Catholic Church and the work of Pope Pius XII. (Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, Disinformation, Washington, D.C., WND
Books, Inc., 2013, p. 66, as quoted from the testimony of P. Guglielmo Hentrich
before the Ecclesiastical Tribunal of Rome)
Would the current Pope Francis
succeed in “nudging” the Catholic Church into the direction of Latin America’s
brand of “social justice” complete with wealth redistribution?
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