By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
Pope Francis’s criticism of capitalism continues to be a hot topic through the first half of the Christmas season, Save Jerseyans, although as a friend pointed out to me earlier today, the Holy Father’s distrust of free markets isn’t anything new for Catholic hierarchy.
Francis is a good man with plenty to teach us. Economics isn’t one of those things. His latest literary offering wasn’t wrong: “the excluded are still waiting,” especially in his poverty-stricken native Argentina, but his home country is a model of socialism, not “trickle-down” capitalism. How can he not know that?
My humble suggestion: the His Holiness should seriously consider with whom he’s siding on the economic front. He can start by signing up for the email list of U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-Twitter).
“[…] the Supreme Court could decide that for-profit employers can limit access to birth control by constraining insurance options available to their employees,” Booker said in a Saturday morning email blast referring, of course, to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to consider an Obamacare contraception mandate challenge. “Allowing employers to inject themselves into these intensely personal decisions would be a huge step backward.”
But it’s okay for the government to inject itself by telling an employer that he or she MUST purchase, even in the event that it hurts their bottom line or violates their morals?
You, Francis and I are likely to agree on the mandate itself, Save Jerseyans, albeit for different reasons.
Unfortunately for the unity of our right-of-center global coalition, those reasons couldn’t be more different. Francis and the Church are opposed to contraception because they believe the object itself is intrinsically immoral and contrary to the will of God. You and I couldn’t care less what adults do on their own time, but we’re fundamentally and immovably opposed to government coercion.
Therein lies the problem. If the Roman Catholic Church, my church, is ever going to retake its lead position as a constructive player is advancing the cause of human dignity, justice and equality across the world, then it’s going to need to get over its truly Medieval skepticism towards the free market’s proven ability to empower human beings.
In 2013, statists like Cory Booker are a bigger threat to our Judeo-Christian values (and the principles of religious liberty that protect them in Western countries) than all of the Ebenezer Scrooge’s and Gordon Gekko’s combined. Catholics can’t have their cake (a large, unrestrained welfare state) and eat it to (maintain their God-given free well and right of conscience). That’s what’s truly naive! Not “trickle down” economics. I love my Church and my Holy Father, but if Catholicism is ever going to retake its lead position as a global moral authority, then it’s going to need to break-up, once and for all, with the statists who are putting it at risk.
So please follow Cory Booker on Twitter, Holy Father! His own corrupt and impoverished failed state of Newark is analogous from your native land. Do it for an afternoon or just a few hours (if you, like me, find you can’t take much more than that). He’s Kirchner in a Brooks Brothers suit. Trust an old altar boy. You’ll be a registered Republican by Noon.
WELL SAID–JUST BE A POPE FOR YOUR FLOCK AND STAY OUT OF THE POLITICAL ARENA-IF YOU DONT–YOU WILL LOSE ALL THAT YOU STAND FOR AMONGST US CATHOLICS.
It'd probably make them both better socialists.