President Obama has described Pope Francis as a good and warm-hearted man. No doubt he is. His expressions of care and concern for the poor overflow with compassion and his sense of social justice. If those were the only variables, his prescriptions and pronouncements would be beyond debate. But they’re not.
The Roman Catholic Church recognizes its pope as the supreme apostolic authority on matters of Catholic doctrine, dogma and faith. But the pope’s infallibility doesn’t extend to politics, economics, foreign policy, national defense or climate science. When he strays into those areas, he’s certainly entitled to his opinion but not to unquestioned agreement.
As the religious leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, the pope’s influence is substantial. But, apparently, less so with others, like a significant faction of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims given the propensity of its jihadist terrorists to slaughter what they regard as Christian infidels.
It should also be noted that the pope is himself the creation of a Vatican political process through his election by the College of Cardinals. Pope Francis is a man, not a deity, and a man whose political views were forged by his life experiences. He’s a Jesuit, the very first Jesuit pope. Jesuits have long been regarded as the intellectual elitists of the church with a distinctly leftist ideological bent.
John Lehman, former secretary of the Navy, once compared a public policy pronouncement to “the sex education I received from the Jesuits: intellectually brilliant, analytical and useful but yet lacking that certain wisdom derived from first-hand experience.”
As a young man, Pope Francis — born Jorge Mario Bergoglio — was influenced by Juan Peron, Argentina’s populist socialist president who talked the talk but governed as an autocrat. While archbishop of Buenos Aires, Bergoglio wrote “Dialogues Between John Paul II and Fidel Castro,” which expressed his undisguised disdain for capitalism. His attacks on capitalism have continued since becoming pope. To describe them as simplistic and uninformed is being kind.
In his recent speech to Congress, Pope Francis invoked the welfare of thousands of Latin Americans heading north to the United States “in search of a better life for themselves and for their loved ones, in search of better opportunities.” He urged Congress to take them all in.
The irony of this is striking. The U.S., the world icon of capitalism, should take them all in? Why aren’t these refugees from poverty and government oppression flocking instead to Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia or other bastions of socialism and government control of personal freedom?
The pope’s criticism of “unfettered” capitalism is a straw-man argument. Unfettered capitalism doesn’t exist in any real-world society, and certainly not in the U.S. government. Regulations and mandates on business continue to escalate, especially in the energy sector, as we labor under an increasing national debt driven overwhelmingly by the soaring cost of social spending “entitlements.” Those nations of the European Union flirting with bankruptcy aren’t suffering from an excess of capitalism; it’s their creeping socialism that’s doing them in.
When the pope decries “competition and the survival of the fittest” in capitalist systems, he seems unaware that competition protects consumers, offering them choices and forcing competing suppliers to hold prices down. It’s unfit competitors that rightly perish, what political scientist Joseph Schumpeter called the “creative destruction of capitalism.”
As columnist Irving Kristol noted, capitalism isn’t the best of all imaginable systems, just the best of all possible ones. Capitalism is the economic dimension of liberty. The track record of government-controlled economies is dismal by comparison.
The pope’s narrow focus on the redistribution of wealth cavalierly takes the creation of it for granted. A now prominent secular carrier of this misguided philosophy is Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
Freelance columnist Mike Rosen’s radio show airs weekdays from 1 to 3 p.m. on 850-KOA.
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