Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Pope’s compassion for the poor doesn’t acknowledge benefits of free markets
Pope’s compassion for the poor doesn’t acknowledge benefits of free markets
Dec 24, 2024 3:33 PM

Pope Francis will begin a tour of Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay on Sunday, returning to the continent of his birth for the first time since his election in 2013 and visiting areas of extreme poverty. Peter Johnson, the Acton Institute’s external relations officer, told the Associated Press that the pontiff’s criticism of the free market neglects to account for the economic improvements made in Latin America in the last decade.

The three countries on Francis’ tour all have made economic advances over the last decade, improvements that business leaders say e thanks, in part, to the very sort of capitalistic ventures the pope recently has criticized as materialistic.

Bolivia, for example, has cut the number of people living in extreme poverty from 37 percent to 19 percent in less than a decade due in large part to increased natural gas exports under President Evo Morales.

“Francis is constantly impugning the free market and never holding up the good that it can do,” said Peter Johnson from the Acton Institute, a Grand Rapids, Michigan-based think tank focused on the intersection of economics and religion.

Johnson lived and worked in Paraguay with the Peace Corps in the early 2000s. In response to Pope Francis’s recent eco-encyclical Laudato Si’, Johnson recently wrote that the pope’s goodwill toward the poor is wonderful, but displays “a very romanticized—almost Rousseauian—view of subsistence farming.”

And while Pope Francis clearly has a heart for the poor—in much the same way I do—I am also very troubled by the overall economic incoherence of his message.

Read the full text of the AP story here.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Samuel Gregg: An American Archbishop, Conscience And Unions
A week ago, we reported here the puzzling remarks made by Chicago’s Archbishop Blase Cupich regarding Catholic membership in labor unions. Acton’s director of research, Samuel Gregg, has plenty more to say regarding Cupich, the formation of one’s conscience and membership to unions. In Crisis Magazine, Gregg first tells readers what Cupich recently said when questioned about someone being in the state of sin and receiving Communion: While recently discussing the question of whether those who have (1) not repented...
6 Quotes: Russell Moore on Religious Conservatism
“There is a kind of religious conservatism that can simply be another form of nostalgia,” says Russell Moore, “There is a kind of religious conservatism that can easily present itself as time travelers from the past. Those who are seeking to bring forward the values of the 1950s. We are not time travelers from the past. We are pilgrims from the future.” Moore, the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, recently delivered a...
Zambia Asks God to Save Their Currency
Will God save the kwacha? The Zambian kwacha—what some are currently calling the “world’s worst currency”—has been falling against the dollar for most of the past year. This currency crisis prompted Zambian President Edgar Lungu to call for a national day of prayer and fasting last Sunday. “I personally believe that since we humbled ourselves and cried out to God, the Lord has heard our cry,” Lungu said in an address on Sunday. “I appeal to all of you to...
The frontier spirit of ‘The Martian’
A new film set on Mars taps into the quintessential American story, says Dylan Pahman in this week’s Acton Commentary. After the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel to outer space in 1961, Nikita Khrushchev remarked, “Gagarin flew into space, but didn’t see any god there.” The Soviets would not pass up an opportunity to deride religion, even though, reportedly, Gagarin himself was a Russian Orthodox Christian. Americans, by contrast, are the sort of people who...
Samuel Gregg: A New View Of Natural Law
At Public Discourse, Samuel Gregg (Acton’s director of research) discusses Adam Macleod’s Property and Practical Reason, which Gregg says attempts to rethink this key element of economic liberty and renews “the manner in which natural law scholars have traditionally addressed this topic.” Gregg first outlines classical reflections on natural law. Then, he offers what he sees as Macleod’s insights: In addition to drawing on new natural law theory (of which he provides one of the most accessible explanations that I’ve...
How Should Christians Think About Socialism?
Calling a political candidatea “socialist” used to be a political slur. In almost every U.S. election over the past hundred years there have been conservatives who have claimed a major political party candidate running for president was—whether they admitted it or not—a socialist. But our latest presidential race includes someone who calls himself a socialist, Bernie Sanders. Faced with the prospect, albeit unlikely, that an avowed socialist may actually e the Democrat’s nominee for president, many apolitical Christians are asking...
Raw Craft: The Art of Bookmaking and the Glory of Craftsmanship
Throughout itshistory, the American economy has transitioned from agrarian to industrial to information-driven. Given ournewfound status, manual labor is increasingly cast down in the popular imagination, replaced by white-collar jobs, bachelor’s degrees, and ladder-climbing. Whether due to new avenues and opportunities or a more general distaste for the slow and mundane, work with the hands is either ignored or discouraged, both asvocational prospect andconsumeristic priority. Amid this sea of new efficiencies, the art of craftsmanship is at a particular disadvantage....
How Faithful Churches Create Economic Flourishing
What is the pastor’s role in affirming the various callings within hiscongregation? How might churches empower the people of Godin pursuing vocational clarity and economic transformation? How can webetter encourage, equip, and empower othersin engaging theircultures munities? In a talkfor theOikonomia Network, theologian and author Charlie Self explores these questions and more, relaying many of the themes ofFlourishing Churches and Communities, his Pentecostal primer on faith, work, and economics. “Faithful churches create munities,” says Self, “bringing the joy, peace, and...
HELP WANTED – Griff Tannen’s Hoverboard Emporium
Hey McFly! Put on your self-drying jacket and your self-tying shoes, because I’ve got a job offer you can’t refuse! Hi, I’m Griff Tannen and my business, Griff Tannen’s Hoverboard Emporium is looking for part-time sales clerks. You probably know me from that time I smashed into the courthouse and was instantly sentenced to jail: That’s me. I wasn’t really framed. You might think of that as my lowest moment. It was certainly humbling. But now I look back at...
Infographic of the Week: Where Does the Federal Government Spend Our Money?
Every year some pollster asks Americans what percentageof the federal budget goes to foreign aid. And every year Americans make a guess that is wildly off the mark. The average answer we give is 26 percent; only 1 out of 20 of us correctly guess that it’s less than 1 percent. Part of the reason we are wrong is that we’re just really bad at guesstimation. But another reason is that we rarely take the time to find out what...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2024 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved