Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Rev. Robert A. Sirico: Pope Francis and the condemnation of money
Rev. Robert A. Sirico: Pope Francis and the condemnation of money
Mar 18, 2025 1:37 PM

The following article is the Acton Institute’s English translation from the Italian “Il Papa e la condanna dei soldi. Parla Padre Robert Sirico” written by Matteo Matzuzzi and published inthe Rome-based daily Il Foglio on November 8. Readers should note that there is no official English translation of Pope Francis’ November 5 address to leaders of lay movements gathering inside the Vatican. The original speech in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese can be found here.

“It certainly would be absurd to criminalize money if one’s sincere concern is the well-being of the poor. Lamenting the struggle of the poor is not the end goal of passion. Ameliorating their concern is. And at least at the material level, this requires the production of wealth,” said Rev. Robert A. Sirico, president of the American think tank, the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, which aims to promote a free, virtuous and humane society.

Rev. Sirico shared his views with the Italian daily ll Foglio following the Pope’s long speech delivered last Saturday before an audience of charismatic lay movement leaders who e to the Vatican for their third world gathering. During the audience, Pope Francis relaunched his accusation that money is “an idol that rules instead of serves, which tyrannizes and terrorizes humanity.”

It is money, continued the Holy Father, “that rules with the whip of fear, inequality, economic, social, cultural and military violence. [It] generates ever more violence in a seemingly unending downward spiral. There is a basic [form of] terrorism stemming from the global control of money on earth and which threatens all of humanity.”

And “all tyranny is a terroristic,” the pope added.

“When this terror, sown in the peripheries by way of massacres, looting, oppression and injustice, erupts in [urban] centers with different forms of hateful and cowardly violence, citizens are tempted by the false security of physical or social walls while still clinging to a few rights.”

“Of course”, observes Sirico, “wealth can be abused, both in its production and in its use. Of that there is no doubt. But so can many other gifts entrusted to human being.”

“I think of sexuality in this regard, yet when directed toward God, sexuality es a Sacrament. So too wealth can have a moral origin and a moral finality. I would trust that the Holy Father doesn’t disagree with any of this, for to criminalize such a process would abandon the economically vulnerable.”

Bergoglio’s attack on the capitalist system itself was harsh. Yet, in terms of what is meant by the “capitalist system”, Fr. Sirico said, ”I would ask for clarification.”

“I find [clarity] in the encyclical Centesimus Annus, specifically number 42, where St. John Paul says that if by capitalism [we mean]‘the free economy’ rooted in a moral and religious foundation and situated in a juridical context, then this mendable.”

The problem, if anything, is to reconcile the idea of a free economy with the Church’s social doctrine.

The president of the Acton Institute thinks that this is a difficult undertaking because “there is a general confusion as to what it means, especially if one is only familiar, not with free economic actors, but with business people who exclude people from the circle of economic exchange and place money, rather than human being, at the center of their concern.”

“This is ‘the economy that kills’, petitive markets,” said Sirico.

“When people do not understand economics and markets, it is easy to assume that successful economic actors e wealthy at the expense of others. This is known in economic as the ‘zero sum fallacy.’”

The Church’s social doctrine, Sirico observes, does not teach us this. Nonetheless, in his opinion, the sad fact is that sometimes “people love [the poor] so much they advocate policies that will produce more poverty.”

The risk is to look at the problem in the wrong way, he said, from an erroneous perspective, as one might conclude, for example, that fundamentalism is a consequence of the idolatry of money.

“If you begin with the definition that all global markets by their very nature ‘exclude people’, then of course, this is unethical and to be rightly condemned, as is any form of the worship of money, which is what the idolatry of money means,” he said.

“There is, however, two other forms of what might rightly be called economic fundamentalism: This is, on the one hand, when one demonizes [the rich] simply because they are economically successful, or when one canonizes the poor simply because they are not economically successful. The former is known as the ‘Prosperity Gospel’ and the latter is known as ‘Liberation Theology.’”

“I prefer,” admits Sirico, “the insight of St. Teresa of Calcutta, who said: ‘We do not take it upon ourselves to have the right to condemn the rich. We do not believe in class struggle or class warfare…We believe rather in class encounter where the rich save the poor and the poor save the rich.’”

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
Something Vastly More Powerful Than Evil
In his latest Forbes column, Rev. Robert A. Sirico explains why despite the tragedy in Newton we can speak of joy during this Christmas season: When we ask our bewilderedwhy? –we are not looking for data points.Even less should we offer glib responses in the face of this shattering loss – this modern-day slaughter of the innocents. We are, instead, seeking themeaningin the face of thismysterium iniquitatis.The meaning we seek is not so much the significance of evil as the...
Should We Tax Volunteer Work for Charities?
During the debate about how to resolve the fiscal cliff crisis, lawmakers on both sides have considered reducing the charitable tax deduction. That strikes many people as the wrong approach (especially those of us who work for non-profits!) even though we may not be able to explain why it’s such a bad idea. Fortunately, John Carney has provided a superb explanation for why reducing or removing this deduction is counterproductive. For instance, changing the charitable deduction as Carney notes, has...
Conservation and Entrepreneurial Environmentalism
I found this profile of Mark Tercek, the former Goldman Sachs managing director who was tapped to head the Nature Conservancy, raises some profound issues concerning the relationship between economics and the environment: Tercek, 55, e to the Conservancy to fight financial brush fires. With the help of his board and the input of the Conservancy’s 600 scientists, he wants to remake the face of the American and global environmental movements. He has no quarrel with the current model—largely built...
Free Kindle Ebook: ‘A Field Guide to the Hero’s Journey’
Acton is offering a free Christmas gift: a free Kindle download of the new book, A Field Guide to the Hero’s Journey. The book, co-authored by Jeff Sandefer and Rev. Robert Sirico, has been called a “the modern ‘how-to’ for entrepreneurs working on plishing big things” by Andreas Widmer, and is a terrific book not only for adults but for young people. You can also listen to the authors discussing their collaboration on this book on this Radio Free Acton...
How Should Christians View Property?
Étienne Cabet, a French philosopher and founder of a utopian socialist movement, once said: “Communism is Christianity.” The concept of property has existed longer than Western Civilization; trying to understand what property is and who can claim it has been an important issue for centuries. But, what is the Christian view of private property and ownership? Cabet, and others who believe that Christianity supports the concept munism or socialism, base their opinion on one particular passage of Scripture. In Acts:...
Court: Justice Dept. Can’t Just Say ‘Trust Us, Changes Are Coming’
“There is no, ‘Trust us, changes ing’ clause in the Constitution,” wrote Judge Brian Cogan in his ruling issued two weeks ago against a Justice Department motion to dismiss the Archdiocese of New York’s lawsuit against the HHS mandate. “To the contrary, the Bill of Rights itself, and the First Amendment in particular, reflect a degree of skepticism towards governmental self-restraint and self-correction.” More federal judges ing to the same conclusion. Earlier this week a federal appeals court in Washington,...
Social Engineering Makes For Poor Economic Policy
Writing over at The Atlantic, American Enterprise Institute scholar Christina Hoff Sommers shares the unsettling story of what a growing number of Swedish activist groups and political factions are attempting to do to “traditional” gender roles. Is it discriminatory and degrading for toy catalogs to show girls playing with tea sets and boys with Nerf guns? A Swedish regulatory group says yes. The Reklamombudsmannen (RO) has reprimanded Top-Toy, a licensee of Toys”R”Us and one of the largest panies in Northern...
When I Grow Up
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” That’s mon question asked of children the world over. ChildFund International has put out their global survey of children for 2012, and that’s one of the questions they asked, with some intriguing results. When asked, “If you could grow up to be anything you wanted, what would you be?” there were some rather remarkable disparities between the answers of children in the developed and the developing world. Kids in the...
Economics is Too Important to be Left to Economists
I rather like Serene Jones’ piece in Huffington Post, “Economists and Innkeepers.” Jones got some things right. She knows that Christian Scripture teaches many economic lessons, like subsidiarity and stewardship (although she doesn’t use those terms.) She says, “Economic theory is replete with theological and moral assumptions about human nature and society” and that is correct. As Istituto Acton’s Kishore Jayabalan reminds us, Things like the rule of law, a tradition of equality for the law, which should cut down...
Why Christians in Business Should Read Poetry
Writing for the Harvard Business Review, my friend (and coauthor) John Coleman argues that business professionals can benefit from reading poetry. While his article is not directed at people of faith, I think his claims are particularly relevant to Christians in the business world: Poetry can also help users develop a more acute sense of empathy. In the poem “Celestial Music,” for example, Louise Glück explores her feelings on heaven and mortality by seeing the issue through the eyes of...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved