“A Pope Francis Lexicon” is a new volume collecting 54 essays by a range of prominent figures on the different words that have become important in the ministry of Pope Francis. Available now in the U.S. from Liturgical Press, the volume is introduced with a foreword from Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and a preface from Boston Cardinal Seán O’Malley. The volume is co-edited by Cindy Wooden, Rome bureau chief for Catholic News Service, and Joshua J. McElwee, Vatican correspondent for National Catholic Reporter. Following is San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy’s chapter in the “Lexicon”, which focuses on how Francis speaks about capitalism.
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Pope Francis has at times excoriated the logic of the capitalist system as “the dung of the devil,” a “subtle dictatorship,” and a “new form of colonialism.” At other moments the pope has pointed to the achievements of market economies in alleviating global poverty through creativity and freedom, applauding in his address before the U.S. Congress in September 2015 “the right use of natural resources, the proper application of technology and the harnessing of the spirit of enterprise [that] are essential elements of an economy which seeks to be modern, inclusive and sustainable.”
While the experience of John Paul in the statist dictatorship of Eastern Europe after World War II led him to underscore the ways in which government control threatens the freedom of the human person in economic and social life, Pope Francis brings the perspective of the Global South to bear, revealing that free markets can generate a totalitarian ethos no less dangerous to the common good and the dignity of the human person.
The question of capitalism is for the pope not a matter of speculative debate among competing abstract systems, but the moral imperative to recognize amidst the creative capacity of the current global economy the presence of destructive patterns that destroy lives, physically, spiritually and morally. This economy kills!
The first destructive pattern of twenty-first century global capitalism is the strangling force of inequality that it breeds in the world. As Pope Francis wrote in Evangelii Gaudium, “The need to resolve the structural causes of poverty cannot be delayed…. As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems, or, for that matter, to any problems. Inequality is the root of social ills” (EG 202).
The Second Vatican Council condemned grave economic inequality, as “a source of scandal [that] militates against social justice, equity, human dignity, as well as social and international peace” (Gaudium et Spes 29). And each of the modern popes has identified the multi-dimensional harm of grave inequality that is destructive on the material, cultural and spiritual levels. But in the concept of exclusion, Pope Francis has captured the devastation wrought by global capitalism, and its capacity to effectively annihilate human identity in society.
If direct destruction to human lives and the human community constitute the central failing of the global economy of our day, the destruction to the world which is our common home constitutes a second, powerfully devastating consequence of capitalist structures, according to Francis. The logic of market systems that privatize profits while placing the environmental destruction wrought by such profits in the public sphere has contributed enormously to the cascade of destruction that is suffocating the earth.
Commenting on the manner in which the very structures and moral claims of the free market system threaten the earth, Pope Francis sorrowfully observes: “Whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which becomes the only rule” (EG 56). And the structures of inequality endemic to capitalist economies accentuate the disproportionate devastation of the poor which takes place through environmental degradation, resulting in the inversion of the preferential option: the poor always suffer the first and most intense effects of environmental damage.
The final central defect that Pope Francis identifies in the global capitalism of the present day is a spiritual one. In its twin foundations of the ever greater accumulation of material possessions and economic power, capitalism is inherently spiritually corrosive. The driving force of a capitalist system is the desire to accumulate. It is not rooted in the drive to create, or to benefit society or to build culture, but in the need to acquire. Such an economic system makes it ever more difficult to build a culture which is not trapped in materialism and the drive to dominate.
Only when it is recognized that free markets are not a first principle of economic justice, but merely a means to achieve such justice, can the construction of an effective and balanced juridical order within and among nations realistically advance.
* Robert McElroy is the Bishop of San Diego, California. He has doctorates in theology and political science and serves on the U.S. bishops’ administrative, ecumenical, domestic justice, and international affairs committees.
Full story at La Stampa.
The Pope, like all dictators, just makes things up. These made up “principles” are then cited to justify heretical activities and to make up new outrages against Tradition. Capitalism is the greatest system of human controlled economic organization and wealth production ever seen in the entire history of Mankind.
The Pope hates free enterprise, as he hates personal freedom. The history of Latin America is one form or another of economic centrism and elimination of personal economic rights. The sad stories of Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and others shows that socialism never, ever, never is successful.
You are so correct sir. This is the message that needs to be sent about Francis.
He is so disjointed. Leftist lack coherence to any of their arguments against free market capitalism. I believe Jesus and papa Joe were free market capitalists. True, the early church held all things in common, but that is somewhat against human nature and is unweildy once the church is at a certain size, population wise. China, No Ko, Cuba, Venezuela all have records staring this “ideologue” in the face, what does he not get about the human slavery and misery produced. We hear no commentary. ever, about the oppulance enjoyed by Cuban dictators, and at the expense of their people. Why not? Free market capitalism has raised more people out of poverty than any other system, what does he not get about that, oh yeah, he likes it sometimes,…
The multiplicity of words adds to the confusion of the argument
other times, no. Papa, why not conduct a world wide Rosary Crusade, stop the amateur antics in the realm of economics. Embarrassing when you consider free market capitalism has raised more out of poverty than any other system ever, and has the best record on free elections, and protection of human rights, ….did I mention religious liberty?
Spoken like a true socialist-communist would…..please go live in Cuba or Venezuela for awhile and see how that system really works…for the good of the middle class and peasants…..take a good look at the real corruption of communism…..from all our other Popes….
I did notice how the good Pope Francis did demand lots of $$$$$$$ from our capitalist system in NY for the salvation of the corrupt bankrupt Italian hospital……
Pretty incisive.
an editor’s pen needs to work through the run-on paragraphs and break this into more sentences. it feels bloated with ideas tumbling over each other.
I very much agree with this observation. The dehumanizing Bethamite machine, along with its hedonistic pleasure/pain calculus, is the fulfillment of capitalism. Many perceptive traditionalists like Richard Weaver have pointed out the destruction of property that capitalism causes. Or as Chesterton put it:
It cannot be too often repeated that what destroyed the Family in the modern world was Capitalism. No doubt it might have been Communism, if Communism had ever had a chance, outside that semi-Mongolian wilderness where it actually flourishes. But, so far as we are concerned, what has broken up households and encouraged divorces, and treated the old domestic virtues with more and more open contempt, is the epoch and Power of Capitalism…
The Church is being used to promote economic and political ideology.
Saint Francis promoted an economic ideology. For that matter, so did Jesus.
If McElroy weren’t a bishop nobody would listen to anything he says. If Francis weren’t the pope, same thing.
Not that many people conversant in economics listen to McElroy EVEN THO HE IS A BISHOP. What most people see in him is a leftish, redistributionist, “blame America first” Democrat apparatchik too much in love with the camera and the sound of his own voice.
Neither of those men knows what he’s talking about.
Holy Father and Bishop McElroy, do you have anything to say about Jesus and the salvation of souls by His great sacrifice on the cross leading us to eternal life? If so, I would be most attentive.
The question you raise Father Richard is the pertinent question.
I don’t need to be saved from communism or capitalism.
I need to be saved from my sins.
Viva Cristo Rey !!
The injustices committed in either system are sins..
This book has essays by people that CCD readers find triggering like Cardinal Cupich,and Father James Martin, S J. There are others that people here used to kvetch about years ago, like Sister Pat Farrell, Sister Simone Campbell, and Father Timothy Radcliffe.
An interesting concept for a book; I wish the essay writers were people I could trust more.
One of the editors is from the National Catholic Reporter.
Francis, Cupich, McElroy and a few others have been placed on Ignore by me. If any of them so much as offered to tell me the time of day, I could not believe them. To pay attention to them simply invites stress into one’s life.
Pope Paul VI famously said that the smoke of Satan had entered the Church. These days I think you can find the dung of the devil in some parts of the Church, and boy does it stink. Instead of cleaning it up, some prelates seem to want to pile up more of it.
Both Capitalism and Socialism can be corrupt. Capitalism is corrupt when people profit from pornography, abortion and so forth and contribute to immorality and the break up of families. Socialism is corrupt when it takes from hardworking two parent heterosexual families trying to raise their families decently, and gives to those who are profiting from immorality or corruption. In other words, Holy Father, speak to our individual sins as Jesus did and you cannot go wrong.