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A Missing Papal Encyclical?
Pope Francis and the U.S. Catholic bishops are openly critical of President Trump’s immigration policies and plans for increased deportation. Compassion for people in difficult circumstances is understandable and entirely consistent with the mission of the Church, but why isn’t there more attention on the political, cultural and social failures that drove those people out of their own country? Why has there never been an encyclical expressly condemning autocracy, tribalism and the perpetual failures of collectivist economics?
Thomas Sowell made the point that Marx and his followers obsess about redistribution of ownership of factories, mines, railroads or machinery but never wonder about the origins of wealth or how the various means of creating value came about in the first place. Similarly, the pope and the bishops focus on the uses and beneficiaries of wealth but do not condemn practices, policies and ideologies that curtail the creation of, and thus deny access to, value and basic needs. The cultural and ideological failures of a number of nominally Catholic countries cause widespread poverty. Where is the moral guidance on that issue?
The pope has made no secret of his general preference for redistributionist economic systems. (Dare I say “socialist”?) But is there any theological or practical reason he could not issue a formal directive that unless and until non-capitalist systems fully provide for their people, it is a moral imperative to imitate political and economic systems that do work, to withdraw popular support for kleptocracy and to reject wealth-killing Marxist ideology? Why isn’t it a serious moral failing to turn your own people into refugees? Is it moral for Mexico to use its own population as an export cash crop? Shouldn’t other nations with sizeable Catholic populations launch an intervention (crusade?) to forcibly reform basket cases like Haiti or Honduras?
Wealth is not an inert substance existing in a fixed quantity readily divisible into equal shares. It is roughly the sum of human actions fostered by laws and culture conducive to productivity. You can’t claim that a failure to more broadly share that output is a sin as great or greater than that which prevents its creation. Don’t we also need to hear that said in the context of urging material support for the needy?
Published in General
I recognize the problem. I don’t know how to solve that problem but the direction we have been moving in is making it worse. The result of concentration of productive ownership and wealth accumulation in the marketplace just makes things worse. The unrestrained free enterprise system that fosters concentration and eliminates competition needs a responsible restraint that promotes competition and entry into the market. A look at our federal bureaucracy tells us all we need to know about why organizations that grow and concentrate power without limit don’t serve humankind. In other words, BIG is bad. Identifying the problem and what causes it is not difficult, solving the problem is.
I welcome arguments contesting my thesis.
Some apples and oranges there. The size of big companies is not the same as wealth concentration. And the fundamental problem with government bureaucracy growth is that it is not subject to the kinds of cost-benefit pressures that exist for players in competitive markets.
In theory, the WEF gatherings of international super rich trying to make policy is an enormous threat to democracy and efficient, broad-based economic growth. In practice, it could be merely one big grift, a well-staged kabuki to make the marks feel important. If instead, the super rich fund useful charitable, scientific, educational and public health programs that governments can’t do or do well, then income inequality has a happen ending.
Even big corporations have to face an uncertain future.
William Rodgers published Think: A Biography of the Watsons and IBM in 1969. The last paragraph looks forward.
In 1976, two twenty-somethings set up in a garage in Los Altos, California that would challenge IBM’s domination of the world of computing. It turned out that the American dream wasn’t dead quite yet.
The WEF isn’t any better at economic central planning than the Politburo was.
I’m not sure the WEF has a plan for globalization where America is not participating.
Are you seeing the above as the objective of the WEF?
No. The goal is to make policy for the planet. Do-gooder projects showcase the wonderfulness of Davos in the meantime.
Can the WEF get there without American participation? Will they try a partial without America? Does the WEF policy for the planet include some form of population reduction resulting from their policy plans for the planet?
In 2021, the Sri Lankan government followed WEF guidelines for sustainable development and mandated organic farming instead of relying on fertilizers. The tea crop collapsed. Tea is Sri Lanka’s main cash crop. The rice crop collapsed. Rice is Sri Lanka’s main food crop. So, to sum up: no food, and no money to buy food. The Sri Lankan citizenry expressed displeasure.
There are governments in Europe just stupid enough to be headed in the same direction.
Exactly.
Because it would only get an eye-blink of attention. Far more interesting for the legacy media to report on the Liberal Pope SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER by railing against the United States and the capitalist system.
These things take time. The Papal Encyclical will be out once Vice President Harris finishes up her work:
Pope Francis has not yet had a chance to read Michael Novak’s book “The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism.” The book explains the source of the tremendous differences in wealth and freedom between the northern nations in the western hemisphere and those in the south. For a more recent explanation, maybe the Pope can watch the documentary “Poverty, Inc.”
Well, there is an awful lot of our money available to the USCCB to use because of these problems. If they fix them, they lose the money. But guess what (as Joey would say), with Trump closing the border to illegals and deporting the worst of them, the coffers will dry up. And because the bishops do such a poor job of leading their flocks, they are going to be in a bind money-wise.
And, there is plenty in the CCC, the Compendium of the CCC, and the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church that details what needs to be done for a just society. But then again there is all that money. Follow the money – always.
I could be mistaken but I think Jesus spoke briefly about not confusing the things that are properly Caesar’s and those that are God’s.
She urged them to be unburdened by that which has been.
There has been a papal encyclical which speaks against collectivism – just not from this pope.
Pius XI and Pius XII condemned communism because of it atheism and the levels of control that violates dignity and conscience. John Paul II had no illusions about communism. Howver, I don’t think there has been any express papal guidance that law, culture and governance involve an ex ante moral obligation to foster the production of adequate surplus rather than just an ex post obligation to share the output. I would be happy to be wrong about that.
I may have thought some of these things before but I can’t recall ever having open extended discussions about them. Growing up during WWII in a relatively poor environment most discussion touching on this area was focused on people with not enough food to eat, little discussion about shelter. The WEF approach takes a single directional view of this as far as I can determine. The 15-minute city and the rent mentality led by the “you’ll own nothing and like it” statement is not appealing to many people with an entrepreneurial bent.
The landlord business process required in real estate rental activity is entrepreneurial but I don’t see that in the financial investment part that is carried out by organizations like Blackrock. Most of the profit from the increase in real estate comes to these investors by excess inflation in the monetary base and does not serve people, in general, at all.
When Pope Francis, or bishops speak on issues that start confusing the Church Militant with the Church Triumphant I tend to ignore him and them.
I would suggest that he read Rerum Novarum written by Pope Leo XIII:
There are other Encyclicals he should read and promote involving education and one that was a clear rebuke of Nazi policies and the Statists, Mit Brennender Sorge.
I had in mind Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum. Here are two paragraphs from that encyclical:
4. To remedy these wrongs the socialists, working on the poor man’s envy of the rich, are striving to do away with private property, and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies. They hold that by thus transferring property from private individuals to the community, the present mischievous state of things will be set to rights, inasmuch as each citizen will then get his fair share of whatever there is to enjoy. But their contentions are so clearly powerless to end the controversy that were they carried into effect the working man himself would be among the first to suffer. They are, moreover, emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community.
5. It is surely undeniable that, when a man engages in remunerative labor, the impelling reason and motive of his work is to obtain property, and thereafter to hold it as his very own. If one man hires out to another his strength or skill, he does so for the purpose of receiving in return what is necessary for the satisfaction of his needs; he therefore expressly intends to acquire a right full and real, not only to the remuneration, but also to the disposal of such remuneration, just as he pleases. Thus, if he lives sparingly, saves money, and, for greater security, invests his savings in land, the land, in such case, is only his wages under another form; and, consequently, a working man’s little estate thus purchased should be as completely at his full disposal as are the wages he receives for his labor. But it is precisely in such power of disposal that ownership obtains, whether the property consist of land or chattels. Socialists, therefore, by endeavoring to transfer the possessions of individuals to the community at large, strike at the interests of every wage-earner, since they would deprive him of the liberty of disposing of his wages, and thereby of all hope and possibility of increasing his resources and of bettering his condition in life.
There are more paragraphs that are relevant to the discussion at hand, but instead of reprinting them, I suggest you read the encyclical at :Rerum Novarum (May 15, 1891) | LEO XIII
Because that wouldn’t confirm and communicate their virtue.
I think Christian morality originated at a time when wealth was more of a fixed commodity—the way marxists tend to think of it—than it is in the modern world where it is the product of innovation and labor. This may be why Catholic moral teaching about charity and social justice seems to be behind the times.
What do you mean by “Catholic moral teaching about charity and social justice seems to be behind the times”? Do you know what Her teaching is?
“Behind the times”? Catholic teaching about morality and justice are based on foundational principles. They aren’t subject to the whims and fads of time (if you want a church that does go with the times, look no further than the Episcopal church, on the verge of dying out entirely because it went with the world, having no foundational principles).
I don’t like this pope. I don’t like the USCCB, a collection of mostly spineless wonders. That said, the Church will survive both because she is not founded on the morality of the current times.
Oddly, I don’t see this Pope addressing primum movens when it comes to immigration. He’s happy to criticize the fallout, when it comes to the negative reaction of those who find the ongoing and illegal streams of migration into their native countries, but I don’t seem him talking about what’s wrong in Sudan, or Albania, or the Middle East, and/or so many Latin American states whose citizens (largely military-age-males) are deserting them in droves for a “better life” in the West.
Why is that, does he think? And does he think there might be something wrong in the countries folks are leaving in droves?
Perhaps if His Holiness and some of his minions could bring themselves to speak about bettering the lives of those in what Donald Trump has, in years past referred to as the ****hole countries, there wouldn’t be all this need for illegal migration in the first place.
And there’s a thought.
Fractional reserve banking, and the inflation it requires. They lie about the inflation figures. They don’t know what they are doing. Then everybody except the 1% and the somewhat lucky are the only ones that make out.
A.I. is deflationary.
Computers are deflationary.
Automation is deflationary.
Global trade is deflationary.
God, common sense, and initiative make purchasing power go up constantly. Then the governments force it down for some reason. Few benefit. They don’t know what they are doing, and it’s going to fall apart the hard way.