A friend sent me a link to a Reuters story on Pope Benedict XVI’s New Year’s homily. The article carried this headline: “Pope hopes for 2013 of peace, slams unbridled capitalism.”

It is always a good rule of thumb with media reports like this to read the actual speech or document being cited, and not just go by the headline. From the Reuters report one gets the impression that the point of the statement and its theme is that the “Pope slams capitalism.” When you read this in context you immediately see that Pope Benedict is actually calling for conversion. The operative phrase employed by the Holy Father in his homily is, “The prevalence of a selfish and individualistic mindset which also finds expression in an unregulated capitalism, various forms of terrorism and criminality.”

I say in Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for the Free Economy that “global capitalism can’t of itself supply the cultural and moral formation worthy of the human person … our increasing interconnectedness holds great potential for offenses against human dignity. Advances in technology munication can make it easier to sell pornography – or to traffic in human beings…” and so on.

In other words, I stand with the pope, that sin (what he calls in this case a “selfish and individualistic mindset”) can find expression in the context of human liberty lacking moral orientation, (what he calls in this instance, “global capitalism”).

Is the pope saying that capitalism is in and of itself “selfish and individualistic”? No. Can it express the vices (and for that matter the virtues) of people living in free economies? Yes.

That is why the Acton Institute exists — to promote virtuous free economies.