Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan
On arrival in La Paz, Pope Francis was presented by Bolivian President Evo Morales with a wooden crucifix carved in the form of a hammer and sickle, the symbol of Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Fidel.
Had Pope John Paul II been handed that crucifix, he might have cracked it over Evo’s head. For John Paul II had seen up close what communism did — to his country, his church and his people in 45 years of Bolshevik rule.
On his arrival in the Nicaragua of Daniel Ortega in 1983, Pope John Paul castigated a priest-collaborator who dared to serve that Sandinista Marxist regime as culture minister.
And, while in Managua, he warned Catholics they were being threatened by “unacceptable ideological commitments.”
Today we have a pope for whom free-market capitalism is the “unacceptable ideological commitment.”
As The New York Times reports, Pope Francis does “not just criticize the excesses of capitalism. He compares them to the ‘dung of the devil.’ He does not simply argue that ‘greed for money’ is a bad thing. He calls it a ‘subtle dictatorship that condemns and enslaves.’”
In South America, Pope Francis “made a historic apology for the crimes of the Roman Catholic Church during the period of Spanish colonialism — even as he called for a global movement against a ‘new colonialism’ rooted in an inequitable economic order.”
“The Argentine pope seemed to be asking for a social revolution.”
Now the church has a long tradition of criticizing capitalism, dating back to the encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891.
In “American Church: The Remarkable Rise, Meteoric Fall, and Uncertain Future of Catholicism in America
This pope goes beyond that. His words about capitalism echo what Cold War Catholics said of communism, that it is a tree poisoned at the root that can yield only bad fruit, and, as the Gospel teaches, ought to be cut down and cast into the fire.
What is wrong with the pope’s neo-socialist sermonizing?
While capitalism does indeed generate inequalities, freedom, too, produces inequality. For all men and all women are unequal in abilities, energy and opportunities. In a free society, some inevitably succeed, others fail.
For as the Biblical parable teaches, some are given 10 talents, others two, and God judges us on how well we use the talents we were given.
The only way to achieve absolute equality is absolute tyranny, the remorseless redistribution of wealth by an all-powerful regime.
The pontiff says the capitalist “idolatry of money” creates “the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose.” But it is egalitarianism that has proven to be the road to dictatorship, dictatorships run by egalitarians in the name of the “proletariat.”
Free enterprise has brought more millions out of poverty, enabled more billions of people to live longer, freer, healthier and happier lives, and produced more widespread prosperity than any other economic system.
What is the superior system the pope believes we should adopt?
What has Argentina produced but an economically failed state, incompetent socialist rulers, and an occasional Peronista in sunglasses and shiny boots? Is Latin America a fine model?
The pope used the phrase “dung of the devil.” Is that not a good description of Karl Marx’s “Communist Manifesto” and “Das Kapital”? And is not satanic the precise word to describe the scores of millions of dead that 70 years of Marxist-socialist ideology produced?
The 100 million people of Eastern Europe, the 300 million of the late Soviet Union, the 1.2 billion people in China — are they not better off the further they have moved away from Marxism, and the closer they have moved toward free-market capitalism?
As for the pope’s apology for the sins of Spanish Catholicism in Latin America, why does he not speak up for the culture Catholicism helped to create, the eradication of paganism, and the termination of such practices as human sacrifice among the indigenous peoples?
But, then, we Americans are no strangers to “apology tours.”
The pope is calling for a “social revolution.” But what country, among the 190-plus in the U.N., comes closest to the utopia the pope has in mind? Or does his utopia exist only in the mind?
The pope is saintly man. But he has no special understanding of economic systems or of climate change. He is the Vicar of Christ, of the Savior sent by the Father to teach us what we must believe and how we must live to attain eternal life.
Christ did not come among us to end colonialism, or redistribute wealth, or start a social revolution against the empire of the Caesars.
As he told Pontius Pilate, “My Kingdom is not of this world.”
Pope Francis is the infallible custodian of that truths Christ taught. Is that not sufficient, Your Holiness? Why not leave the socialist sermons to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren?
maybe he can apologize for all the baby touchers and pedophiles too. Religion and govt are the two most dangerous creations of man. Why so many otherwise intelligent people continue to believe in this nonsense is beyond my comprehension. I have a lot of catholic family, and it bothers me to no end that they still show up every sunday, and still give money to this organization. I went to a service since my nephew was being baptized right after it, and within 10 minutes I took the kids to the ‘crying room’ just so I could stop hearing what the guy was saying. The amount of govrnment, police, and military worship he spewed was appalling. You cannot praise those things while also worshiping someone known as ‘the prince of peace’ at the same time.
This pope is also the first one to receive a bunch of praise from the left, which should also be alarming. He is actively helping bring about the end of what remains of freedom in this world, and hundreds of millions of otherwise ‘conservative’ catholics continue to support his organization.
Somehow, the USSA representatives were able to convince the Pope-a-Dope to favor the totalitarian Marxist ideal. How the Dope could not see that this screws the poor and only caters to the rich elite in power.
Was it NSA blackmail?
All “isms” are diabolic
Marxism
Communism
Socialism
Capitalism
etc,etc.
All manufactured by the owners to control and enslave.
Barnhardt:
I guess this idiot pope has never seen this photo (Hope it’s not too big)…[img
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Aw crap. It’s North Korea from space.
@ Bea lever- there is nothing ‘diabolical’ about capitalism. All capitalism, or free markets, are is a mechanism for people to make products other people want and sell them. What we have today is not capitalism, or anything resembling a free market. This is fascism, where the government FORCES the markets act in a certain way, and forces people to buy or not buy certain products. If it wasn’t for capitalism, this site wouldn’t exist, neither would the machine you are using to post on it
I want a tee-shirt that says, “I’m A Devil-Dunger!”
Devil Dung gave me a pretty good living. Still does, even after 81 years. I award his Holiness the Royal Order of the Rigid Digit.
Premise 1: Something that is flawed cannot produce something perfect.
Premise 2: Mankind is flawed.
Conclusion: Mankind cannot produce a perfect economic system.
To modify Winston Churchill’s comment about democracy —“Capitalism is the worst form of economics, except for all the others.”
Buchanan is full of shit when he says the Pope is the “infallible custodian”. Fuck you and your bullshit Catholic infallibility-bullshit. Ignorant fool! Crazy Eyes Ann is right about the Pope being the anti-Christ.
I mean, you have to see the picture, to appreciate it … that straight-from-hell commie crucifix
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I wonder how many young lads he hides under that dress of his?
The term “conservative” Catholic always makes me laugh. If all people of Roman Catholic faith voted in lockstep they could swing any national and many state/local elections in this country. If they really voted their faith on issues like abortion and gay marriage the Dem’s wouldn’t be able to win shit on the national stage. Instead Catholics are a majority D voting bloc. The pope is echoing the shit the faithful want to hear. Sheep and their Shepard.
What if Francis was deliberately installed to hollow out christendom and undermine its core values, so as to weaken it as a moral belief system?
Ratzinger a few years ago gave a speech before the German Bundestag about Christianity and natural law. I’d say that 70 % of his listeners didn’t even know what he was talking about. The few who understood hated him for that.
“Sheep and their Shepard.” ——- Aquapura
Shepard? As in Shepard Smith from Fux newz?
I’ll take the Pope seriously when he starts selling off all the treasures of the Vatican and gives the money to the poor. That would be some serious wealth distribution.
Fuck the Pope. If it wasn’t for capitalism he wouldn’t have more money than god.
I drive past a Catholic church daily. They have an electronic billboard – they are forever raising money: Bake Sale, Rummage Sale, Pizza dinner, silent auction, you name it they rake in money at least weekly.
Hey I got an idea. Let’s just all get along. Then we wouldn’t need any money. Maybe the Pope took it up the butt one too many times and it’s affected his brain.
Whatever happened to the idea of debt jubilies?
I have been thinking this current pope is a dipstick for a while now. Now I am convinced of it.
Any reasonable religious leader would have shoved that abomination up Evo Morales’ ass. That is some kind of seriously fucked up shit right there.
Capitalism works really well as long as folks do not fuck with it. But people cannot help themselves. It starts around the edges, and petty soon the entire system s over-regulated. And then the corrupt jump in and start manipulating laws to take advantage of politician’s willingness to fuck with the system – loopholes to protect agriculture, or manufacturing, or banking. Then you end up here.
Some basic rules to protect the environment and basic worker rights, and then get the hell out of the way, were all that were needed. But nope. Gotta try to control what is essentially a pure and 100% efficient system, that gives folks the incentive to produce, to save, to invest, and the opportunity to advance themselves by their own efforts and skills.
Try to advance yourself under communism or heavy socialism. The only way there is to be part of the political apparatus or a government appointee, and crony-ism in those systems is rampant. And the number of folks killed and enslaved under those systems are massive.
llpoh,
It’s a common error to blame “capitalism” for the evils produced by whatever variant is in vogue. This pope, while without doubt a kind man, is not an intellectual heavyweight. What separates a market economy from any form of collectivism is that the former is a product of nature and nature’s laws while the latter a construct purely from the minds of men. Which is more godly?
uhuh, and il bett the Vatican can’t wait to return all that south and central American gold they still cling to.
“The Vatican has large investments with the Rothschilds of Britain, France and America, with the Hambros Bank, with the Credit Suisse in London and Zurich. In the United States it has large investments with the Morgan Bank, the Chase-Manhattan Bank, the First National Bank of New York, the Bankers Trust Company, and others. The Vatican has billions of shares in the most powerful international corporations such as Gulf Oil, Shell, General Motors, Bethlehem Steel, General Electric, International Business Machines, T.W.A., etc. At a conservative estimate, these amount to more than 500 million dollars in the U.S.A. alone.
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the wealth of the Vatican, which in the U.S. alone, is greater than that of the five wealthiest giant corporations of the country.
So what direction is the flow of refugees and migrants?
Capitalist countries to non capitalist and socialist countries or non capitalist and socialist countries to capitalist countries?
And why do you suppose it it that way?
Both Buch and da’ Pip are wrong. There is no “free market” capitalism.We have a corporate controlled state which is to say we have a state controlled market system.. The days of free market capitalism have just about blinked out.
When people say “capitalism has failed” or “capitalism has succeeded,” we have to ask: what type of capitalism do you mean? Authentic capitalism, in which capital is placed at risk to earn a return in a competitive, transparent marketplace, or do you mean cartel-state capitalism, or crony-capitalism, or monopoly capitalism or finance capitalism, i.e. the types that dominate the global economy?
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjuly15/capitalism-cannibalism7-15.html