¡Hola! How’s that whole papal outsourcing thing going?
Liberation Theology is taking over the Vatican a quarter of a century after Jean-Paul II systematically sought to stamp out the ‘singular heresy’ in the radical parishes and dioceses of Latin America, a task carried out with dutiful efficiency by Cardinal Ratzinger at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Shift change!
The conservative power of the Papal Curia is being broken. All of a sudden the Vatican is the spearhead of radical economic thinking. The best-known of the Pope’s newly-minted Council of Cardinals is none other than Archbishop Reinhard Marx, the firebrand ‘Rote Kardinal’ of Munich and author of Das Kapital: A Plea for Man.
…I really think this is overblown. But, I can’t really top the Matt Walsh response…
http://themattwalshblog.com/2013/12/16/pope-francis-and-karl-marx-best-friends-forever/
What he said.
This would make sense if Pope Francis supported liberation theology which he doesn’t:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/getreligion/2013/05/pope-francis-affinity-for-liberation-theology-wait-what/
When the Catholic Church starts selling off a tiny fraction of its fabulous wealth to pay for helping the poor, I’ll be impressed.
Until then, it’s all talk and posing.
But though I am an atheist, I have no grudge against the believers among us, value their contributions, and I think the world would be better off with a humbler but morally stronger church.
Say- do you have a billion dollars to buy Saint Peter’s Basilica? It might be on sale when the missionaries take the time to put it on the market but, you know, with all the hospitals and schools and other charities, who has the time?
Wow! Thanks bryceman for the link to Matt Walsh!
Poor people have been around forever. “Helping” them has ALWAYS been a useless exercise and has NEVER yielded results.
It’s time for the church to stop foisting this guilt trip on the rest of us.
I don’t really have a dog in this fight (well, I grabbed someone else’s dog and tossed it into the ring), but –
The fact that his last name is Marx is completely irrelevant – just a coincidence – but “Rote” in German means “red” in the political sense (the colour red is spelled “rot” in German), and….”Das Kapital” is… an unusual title for a book written by a “Rote” Cardinal…named Marx.
From an outsider’s point of view, I find the notion of papal infallibility (or so), and the fact that it’s so consistently reflected in the response of Catholics in this particular case, kind of interesting; I’ve yet to find a single “outlier” in this regard.
I *do* feel compelled to add here — it’s important to me — that the many friends of mine who were raised Catholic tend overwhelmingly to be the most constant, polite, intelligent, discrete, and gracious people extant, compared to the…others. I just find conservative (fiscally) catholics’ silence on, and/or defense of, Francis’ criticism of capitalism — which isn’t a surprising position for a South American Pope – to be a kind of interesting phenomenon. Stephen Harper must be a bit jealous..
Btw, I am aware that Francis was less unequivocal in his subsequent statements/clarifications.
[…] “Contrary to popular impression, the Vatican is a spartan operation. Its annual operating budget is about $277 million. The University of Notre Dame’s annual operating budget, by comparison, is $700 million. The Vatican’s endowment is about $770 million. By contrast, the University of Notre Dame’s endowment is $3.1 billion. The Holy See is indeed in need of financial support from the Catholic world, and American Catholics usually supply about 25 percent of the annual operating budget.
“What about the artwork—the Pietà, the Raphael frescoes, and so on? These treasures are literally priceless, but they appear on the Vatican books with a value of one euro. According to the [laws] of the Vatican City State, they may never be sold or borrowed against.”
The “wealth” of the Vatican has accumulated over the centuries and is basically art work, historical documents, and buildings. The Vatican views these buildings, historical documents, and works of art as belonging to all peoples – they are merely under the care of the Vatican. They are not for sell because the Vatican doesn’t view them as its personal property too sell. Why not sell all the works of art in the Louvre? Or in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art? Why not sell the Mona Lisa to feed the poor? Why don’t museums sell off their Rembrandts and Van Goghs and Picassos to feed the poor?
Again, from John Allen’s essay: “About 20 years ago, Peter Drucker, the management consultant, concluded that the three most efficient organizations in history were General Motors, the 19th-century Prussian Army, and the Catholic Church. He put the Church on his list because it manages to hold a worldwide organization together with an exceptionally small central headquarters. For the 1.1 billion Catholics, there are about 1,700 people working in the [Vatican]. As Drucker pointed out, if the same ratio were applied to our government in Washington, D.C., there would be 500 federal employees working in the capital, as opposed to roughly 500,000.”
http://catholicwvengeance.wordpress.com/tag/wealth/
That was interesting.
I would have thought that the usable wealth of the Catholic church came mostly from real-estate – churches, schools, etc often in areas of extremely high real-estate value, often in locations where the importance of the church has waned over the years. But I have to confess that I can’t provide specifics or numbers.
You are right. Walsh had a great commentary. The leftist media and shame on Rush Limbaugh for distorting the Pope’s words to suit their particular agenda. The leftist media wants the Pope to become like the Canadian example of a church like the United Church of Canada that has largely left God behind and embraced Karl Marx.
Matt Walsh is certainly right about mentioning the Pope’s use of the word consumerism being the culprit for not helping the poor, and I am as guilty as the rest of us. We certain;y have more crap than we as a society did for a couple of decades after WW II. The sad part is that much of the money that is given to help the poor ends up in Swiss bank accounts or in the pockets of bureaucrats or administrators.
I’m glad I’m not Catholic. It is essentially the totalitarian impulse of the senior clerics of that church. Free people
will engage in commerce, and the smarter ones will make money at it. The Catholic church was opposed to
banking, which is essential for businesses of any size, for centuries. See Murray Rothbard’s history of economics –
a surprisingly good read, as economics enters into so many aspects of society.
The general South American opposition to industry, trade and commerce has done nothing for them except
keep them backward. What the Church starts the Communists finish. “Venezuela is a s***-hole”, as a younger
friend says.
Okay:
– I’m sure that “Rote” thing is a coincidence
– papal infallibility means what the Pope teaches on moral matters is not wrong (ie- comes from Christ’s teachings)
– the Church has recognised at least three patron saints of dogs and their humans: Saints Hubert of Leige, Vitus and Roch. A notable shout-out to Saint Dominic de Guzman whose mother had a dream that he was a hound with a torch in its mouth sent to set the world on fire. He is the patron saint of astronomers. That’s Catholic dogma for you.
– the buildings and artwork aren’t just ancient bits of culture but are unsellable, anyway
– why would communists keep the Church around if it agreed with communism and was never a threat to it?
Good comment.
I’m not Catholic either and God gave choice to people for a reason.
If governments coerce taxes from people for social welfare and act as a 3rd party(3rd party charities always have sticky fingers, including ‘the Church’) how then does the ‘giver’ of these ‘alms’ acquire the Blessing for charitable giving if the ‘gift’ is taken from them by coercion?
And make no mistake here, taxes are taken by coercion.
Yeah right, the Pope doesn’t support liberation theology, just all of its principles. I read Walsh’s article and I think it’s contemptible nonsense. He’s polishing a deuce, and doesn’t understand capitalism any more than the Pope does. Surely it’s time Francis was provided with a copy of Ayn Rand’s Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.
Let’s set out some facts: Man lives in a material world and requires material sustenance to survive. Everything one consumes must be produced first. People do their work and then trade voluntarily with others for mutual benefit, i.e., profit. All increases in the standard of living stem from producers finding ways to make more or better or cheaper goods and services. The system in which this trade is allowed to proceed without hindrance from the authorities is called capitalism. Those who claim it “isn’t perfect”, like Walsh, are actually saying that freedom isn’t perfect and that some government intervention, i.e. coercion, is necessary. And that is wrong, both intellectually and morally. The adjective “perfect” is not applicable to capitalism or any other economic system, as it might be to a gemstone. Walsh also tries to gloss over his ignorance by referring to a “third way”. But there is no middle way between freedom and coercion. A lot of the problems with the economy are caused not by capitalism but by its absence, that is, the aforementioned government intervention. This includes the existence of the Federal Reserve and the moral hazard that it and banking regulations create.
In Rand’s book is a chapter in which she lays waste to Pope Paul VI’s anti-capitalism encyclical Populorum Progressio. I reckon Francis’s encyclical is in line for a similar treatment.
“…the many friends of mine who were raised Catholic tend overwhelmingly to be the most constant, polite, intelligent, discrete, and gracious people extant…
Let me finish that sentence for you.
…except for the Mennonites.”
Ken said: “…consumerism being the culprit for not helping the poor…”
I find this notion to be hogwash, Ken. No disrespect to you, but the most consumeristic place on Earth is the USA, also the most generous place on Earth. The major health problem facing The Poor in America right now is obesity.
What is destroying The Poor in North America and Europe is idleness and lack of purpose. They have nothing they need to be doing, the necessities of life and many luxuries are not only there for the asking, in a lot of cases they are pressed upon people whether they want them or not. Even the most addled, determinedly antisocial and repulsive street beggar gets food and services despite considerable effort on his part to avoid them.
Really, there is no “The Poor” anymore. We have so much wealth in our society its impossible to be Poor. There’s always a big screen TV, right? Instead we have The Lazy, we have The Venal and we have The Stupid.
We would have a lot fewer of them if not for 50%+ taxation. People are generous but they won’t voluntarily subsidize laziness, venality and stupidity.
What keeps people poor and starving world wide in this modern era are taxes and corruption, otherwise known as tyranny. I think the Pope would be a lot better off focusing his considerable power on the MORAL HAZARDS which socialism represents, and fighting socialism’s corruption with the sword of individual moral choice.
Western Society exists because most people do the right thing because its the right thing, and they do it even when nobody is looking. You send a guy off to do something, and he does it. Stealing is an aberration, not a career. You put money in a bank, its still there ten years later and they paid the interest on time to boot.
That’s what makes us tick, and that’s what makes us the strongest, biggest, scariest culture on this mudball. The Muslims, the Hindus and the Chinese don’t have this quality. Its not in their cultures. That one thing is what makes us stronger than them, and its that lack in them which we see and its what drives us crazy when we see it.
If you can’t leave the candy machine open without grown men and women stealing all the candy out of it, you’re in serious trouble. That’s where we are right now, and that is what the Catholic Church (and every other church) ought to be focusing their guns on.
I don’t see much of that. I see a lot of self-serving mummery, and a lot of corruption in high places. Which is why I never go to church (and never did since I was a teen), and why I never give to charities. Somebody wants to steal my money, why should I make it easy for him?
http://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-biggest-landowners-2011-3?op=1
The Catholic church in Canada was given large tracts of land by various Royalty in exchange for pacifying the Natives and spreading the word of God.
One such tract I know of was in Prince George,B.C., an area now called “College Heights”, which was owned by the Diocese until the late 1970’s and was mostly developed by the time I moved from that city.
According to the above linked article, the Catholic Church is the world’s third largest landowner, owning 177 million acres of land.
The Church exhorts its adherents (and anyone else who’ll listen) to give alms and care for the poor, the unfortunate, the outcast, etc. It also affords people the opportunity to do so through a variety of charitable organizations that it sponsors (but it does not coerce people to do so). And the Church itself is not another NGO (at least Pope Francis recognizes that) or a social work agency.
The State does coerce people to part with their money, and the Church should have no business in those affairs, other than reaffirming Jesus’s injunction to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s”. That is one of the reasons that Pope John Paul II told all Catholic priests that they were not to hold public office but had to choose between serving Church or State. I don’t think that Pope Francis has any plans to reverse that ban; if he does, then I will start to wonder about him.
Im not a Catholic, they lost me at Papal Bull
however , there was a time that tithing. (10%) covered welfare , hospitals and mental health needs and councilling. check out your gubmint on that
I should make one clarification.
It’s not so much that I think Pope Francis is a Marxist by belief, or that he’s sold his soul to do their dirty work. It’s that Marxist claptrap has so permeated Western culture that people unthinkingly parrot its empty nostrums at almost every opportunity. Francis is doing this too, and he has no idea how to do anything differently.
The villain in all this irrationality is altruism, the moral code that believes no person has the right to live for his own sake, and that every person has a claim on everyone else. And the irrationality in Western culture arises from the philosophies of its twin destroyers Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel.
COUE, I think Jesus foisted that guilt trip about the poor onto us.