I've been seeing a lot of comments in the news from the pope, his views of capitalism. I have no intention of criticizing our current pope on this issue of capitalism, all I have is questions: Would Catholic schools exist without capitalism? Should the Church do away with paying lay teachers at all Catholic schools? We can have priests, nuns & lay volunteer to teach for free. Parents of all Catholic children would not have to work so hard in order to create capital to pay for tuition.
The Pope is not against capitalism, he is against 'total capitalism' or 'unfettered capitalism' which puts the emphasis on the power of a few greedy people who control the systems, which makes it impossible for others to own property, make a living wage, snuff out and marginalize those who don't have status in the political world that capitalism becomes. Capitalism without morals, without God, will always fail. I believe this is what our Pope is referring to.
It is similar I suppose to the ideas proposed by Hilaire Belloc in his book "Crisis of Civilization". I recall reading it many years ago, and considered if one of the more important books I have ever read regarding the mess we are in now (and he predicted it in this book back in 1937). I would suspect the Pope has read Belloc, and I would like to think everyone should read his works. He called it "unbridled capitalism" and "unrestricted competition", considering it one of the major problems with the evolving form of capitalism (where ultimate competition is held as "sacred" to the ideals of capitalism). He foresaw that it would result in endless mergers and acquisitions, depriving the small of most of the productive property, and returning most of us to slavery, by a slow decent. Here also placed a lot of blame on the Protestant reformation, and Calvinism in particular, whereby the usury that was allowed fostered the rise of the banking systems and started this problem in motion. He proposed not socialism, (the knee-jerk Bolshevism that many clamor for when oligarchy reigns), but rather what he (and I believe Chesterton) called a Third Way. This third was was called Distributism, and is only possible in a Catholic culture governed by Christian principles. He said after the decline of feudalism, the Distributist model reached its best example in the high middle ages, when productive property was well distributed, the serfs had started rising out of serfdom into property ownership, and the technology was locally held and regionally protected by the guilds, that kept the small from being bought out by the large.
I watched a DVD one time of Catholic missionaries in a village in the mountains in Peru. One of the things the people were doing in order to survive was to regularly eat their own excrement. We in wealthy countries have no experience of such things; the Pope has. I can see how his heart is on fire
Fatima, I think you may have have thought out the best answer to what some people, me included, have come to believe about the Pope's off the cuff and often clumsy remarks ........... and also why The Storm is necessary to save future generations of Earth. The entire "Centralized" godless Global Government ideal that has crept into the World since 1945 will be dismantled. God has a plan and we know that He Knows Best ...However ... I wish I could watch it all unfold from the Moon! GOD GUIDE AND SAVE ALL HERE!!
MMM, I watched the first 20 minutes of the video you linked above and discovered something: It is absolutely NOT a documentary based on the GREAT 1937 book "The Crisis of Civilization" by Hilaire Belloc. It is instead, a video about a new book (with the same title unfortunately) written by a modern Muslim academic, who has a confused, pro-Islam, mess of ideas he proposes. Much of the video is a global warming commercial that he has produced because of his "beliefs". Please, everybody read Belloc (a great historical Catholic writer and thinker), and don't be confused about the above video. It is not Belloc. This is very important to understand. Belloc, a staunch Catholic Historian and peer/collaborator with G.K. Chesterton, is arguably a must read for all Catholics. Here is a link to the proper title on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Crisis-Of...p/0895554623/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8
Belloc believed so strongly in his analysis of Western Civilization that he opened the book with nothing less than this: [O]ur civilization, that is, the civilization of Christendom, today occupying Europe, especially Western Europe, and radiating thence over the New World… has arrived at a crisis where it is in peril of death. I propose therefore to describe how that civilization arose, upon what main lines it developed, what institutions it produced and depended upon, and when it was at its height. I next propose to show historically how it became disunited and thereby spiritually enfeebled while materially progressing, until at last with the destruction of the moral tradition by which it had existed and was precariously maintained, even while that tradition was weakening, it lost its very principle of life and may therefore, unless we return to that principle, dissolve. This is essentially what the book is about.....
I don't think Pope Francis is breaking new ground here. Many previous popes have written and exhorted on the topic. In fact, I think the CCC of the Church goes to the heart of the issue of economics and distribution when it looks at subsidiarity and solidarity. I thought this commentary linked below did a nice job on the subject. In he end, it cones down to love of neighbor. http://shamelesspopery.com/how-to-understand-catholic-social-teaching-solidarity-and-subsidiarity/
