Occupy Wall Street's Most Unlikely Ally: The Pope

[rug]

October 25, 2011

The Vatican released a document on the world economy on Monday that will cause heartburn in the Tea Party, but will be cheered by the folks occupying Wall Street.

This will surprise most Americans who think the pope is a Republican because he opposes abortion and gay marriage. But when it comes to economic justice, Pope Benedict XVI is to the left of President Obama. Heck, he is even to the left of Nancy Pelosi.

Those who read the pope's 2009 encyclical "Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth)" will not be surprised by this new document. In that encyclical, the pope decried "corruption and illegality" among economic and political elites in both rich and poor countries. He told financiers they must rediscover the ethical foundation of their activity and stop abusing savers. He wants a radical rethinking of economics so that it is guided not simply by profits but by "an ethics which is people-centered."

Benedict notes that economic "inequalities are on the increase" across the globe. He does not accept the trickle-down theory, which says that all boats will rise with the economic tide. Benedict condemns the "scandal of glaring inequalities" and sees a role for government in the redistribution of wealth.

http://www.npr.org/2011/10/24/141659992/occupy-wall-streets-most-unlikely-ally-the-pope?ft=1&f=1016

Thomas J. Reese is a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, and a former editor of America, the national Catholic weekly magazine.

[Lionessa]

1. I have really mixed feelings about this. Anyone else?

[NewEngland4Obama]

2. I think its great!

[Lionessa]

4. But no organization in world (and yes I may be exaggerating a little but not much)

is wealthier, owns more property, or has benefited from not having to pay taxes than the Roman Catholic Church!


So unless, and until, they are willing to pay taxes on their apartments, churches, hoospitals, day care and schools, the property underneath all of it, sales taxes where applicable, .....

Yeah, mixed feelings, for sure.

[Recursion]

14. The Vatican has less money than any Fortune 500 company

The church holds roughly a billion dollars in assets worldwide. The inflated figures people drum up seem to come from assessing a "market value" on the Vatican and its collections, which doesn't really make sense to me.

And nobody is getting rich working for the church; they take a lot of money in and they send all of it out.

[DailyGrind51]

7. The same concepts were published in June '09 in "Caritas in veritate".

This encyclical which also supported strong labor unions and government redistribution of wealth was pretty much ignored in the U.S., especially by conservative Catholics.


"The Church has always held that economic action is not to be regarded as something opposed to society. In and of itself, the market is not, and must not become, the place where the strong subdue the weak. Society does not have to protect itself from the market, as if the development of the latter were ipso facto to entail the death of authentically human relations. Admittedly, the market can be a negative force, not because it is so by nature, but because a certain ideology can make it so. It must be remembered that the market does not exist in the pure state. It is shaped by the cultural configurations which define it and give it direction. Economy and finance, as instruments, can be used badly when those at the helm are motivated by purely selfish ends. Instruments that are good in themselves can thereby be transformed into harmful ones. But it is man's darkened reason that produces these consequences, not the instrument per se. Therefore it is not the instrument that must be called to account, but individuals, their moral conscience and their personal and social responsibility."

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html

[calimary]

8. Lifelong Catholic here. I would MUCH rather His Holiness use his clout and the

attention and publicity he can attract, talking about an issue like this, than always obsessing about MY right to have the last word over what happens to MY body. I would MUCH rather the Pope talk about issues he can advocate for, logically. Yes, the Vatican is ridiculously wealthy, and as its head, so is he. BUT HE CAN ADVOCATE. USE that position and that advantage to make his voice heard. After all, the Guy he's supposed to represent here on earth was all about poverty. ALL about poverty. ALL about "the least of My brethren." All those people the republi-CON faithful sneered or hooted at:

The poor.
The guy Chris Matthews refers to - "lettin' 'em die on a gurney" because he can't afford insurance.
The condemned, and imprisoned.
The gay soldier, and gays in general.
The homeless and those threatened with foreclosure.
The young.
The old.
The unemployed.

It was the money-changers, the businesspeople, the bankers, whom Jesus drove OUT of the Temple, not any of those in the list above. Those in the list above were the ones He would have put at the front of the line to get INTO the Temple. How we treat "the least of these" is how WE get into Heaven, according to what we're all told Jesus said. According to Him, it's the rich who get the short end of the stick. These people on the other side of the aisle have NO compassion whatsoever, and they're even lauded for it, in many circles. On the other hand, Jesus was ALL ABOUT compassion.

It's about time Pope Benny spoke up! I'm quite pleased.

[Jester Messiah]

10. My feelings aren't mixed at all. Allies like that we don't need. [nt]

[customerserviceguy]

11. I say don't trot out the pope as some sort of moral authority

unless you agree with him substantially on pretty much all he says.

I don't use Ron Paul as an example of why we shouldn't go to war in places where we have no damned business.

[Recursion]

3. How on earth is he an "unlikely" ally?

The Catholic church has been criticizing wealth inequality for decades.

[Lionessa]

5. Read post #4.

They themselves are part of the wealth inequities.

[Recursion]

13. Ridiculous. No organization has worldwide has *given* more, either

Nobody's sitting in Rome getting rich.

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Recursion]

12. Nobody is getting rich off of it (nt)

[trotsky]

15. So as long as "nobody is getting rich off it," it's OK for the church to amass...

And hoard untold billions of dollars? Strange reasoning.

[Recursion]

16. They aren't "hoarding" anything; the church holds about a billion dollars in assets

They get a lot of revenue and they send pretty much all of it out.

The only way people come up with "hoarding" numbers is if they imagine some sort of Vatican Fire Sale where they liquidate all their historical collections, and then pretend they're sitting on that money.

[laconicsax]

18. What splendid doublethink.

They aren't hoarding--they only have about a billion dollars in assets.

[trotsky]

19. And that's after we ignore all the things the church owns...

That the poster says we should ignore.

[Recursion]

21. Right, if you assess the Vatican's collections and some millenia-old cathedrals...

...then the "assets" of the church surpass a decade or so of the world's GDP, but those are absolutely illiquid (which is the problem with taxing churches: the archdiocese of Boston sits on real estate and buildings whose tax income would be about three times what the archdiocese takes in every year).

A worldwide organization with about a million employees sitting on a billion dollars of liquid assets simply isn't "hoarding" in any realistic sense of the word; the church has about $1000 for every priest, monk, and nun.

[trotsky]

22. Please document all your figures.

Thanks!

[Recursion]

23. The Holy See's fiscal reports are public record

I'm not your research assistant.

[trotsky]

24. Do you have a link to them?

Thanks!

[Recursion]

25. I'm amused at how this has taken about 10 times as long as it would for you to simply google it

I wonder how long we can drag this out.

[trotsky]

26. You made the claims.

Generally you would be expected to back them up. I would like to see the document that proves the Catholic Church has only $1 billion in assets, which was your claim.

Again, thanks!

[trotsky]

28. Still waiting for some kind of documentation for your claim.

Didn't realize it was going to be so difficult to find - good thing it's not my responsibility to back up what you say.

[Recursion]

20. Yeah, for a worldwide organization, that's not that much. Less than the JS/JK Knight foundation

Less than the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation. One fifth of John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's assets.

There are plenty of valid complaints about the Catholic church; this just isn't one of them.

[laconicsax]

27. Matthew 19:21

[dtexdem]

9. He carries over a pre-capitalist mindset.

That can be jarring to those who don't expect it.

[LuvNewcastle]

17. The Pope should be commended for this

just as he should be criticized when he is wrong. You can't expect a person to ever learn unless you give him positive as well as negative re-enforcement.