As believing Catholic I accept my Church’s teaching as
regards Papal infallibly. Specifically,
the Church hold that papal pronouncements are inerrant on matters of faith and
doctrine if and only when he speaks ex
cathedra – and this has happened only twice. Since infallibility is limited to Church
doctrine, the Pope is neither infallible nor or even within his competency when
commenting on other topics. To be sure
Catholics do look to Rome for expertise on medical treatment, automotive
maintenance, information architecture or much outside of the moral or spiritual
realm.
The Pontiff may be our spiritual leader par excellence but he is literally no rocket scientist, nor should
we expect him to be. After all, our
first Pope, St. Peter, has humble fisherman from a backwater town. Although Peter was tutored at Christ’s feet
on matters of divine import, it is safe say that he knew little to nothing
about the Egyptian mathematics, Greek astronomy or Roman engineering of his day.
All of this is preface my alarm and frustration when
churchmen, and the Holy Father in particular, conflate moral teaching with
wishful economic thinking. Just the
other day, Pope
Francis decried “trickle-down” economics .
Sadly, the Pontiff adopted the rhetoric of Marxism of class warfare
saying, “Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival
of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless.” He ignored the facts
of material progress asserting that “some people continue to defend
trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free
market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and
inclusiveness in the world.” Like many on the Left, he confuses income
inequality with poverty by assuming the upper crust is taking a larger slice of
a static sized pie. And, one would
expect, he roots his critique in Scripture.
While it is a morally compelling argument is factually and
conceptually off base. Thus the
prescriptions that might flow from such ill-founded rage could be harmful and
destructive rather than curative and productive.
The Biblical perspective is based should be understood in
the context of the ancient world. In
that day the “rich” were primarily of aristocratic or warrior class. These powerful elite employed the violence or
the threat of violence to extract material comfort from the peasantry and the
artisans, leaving little behind for those who produced the economic staples of
life. In his 1974 book, The
Socialist Phenomenon, Soviet dissident, Igor Shafarevich, traces the
evolution of a novel form of social structure in the ancient Near East, the
state. This new institution united “human
masses on an unprecedented scale and the subjugation of these masses to the
will of a central power. The "technology of power" and not the
"technology of production" was the foundation upon which the new type
of society was based. “
As we can see, the technologies of mass wealth creation had yet
to be created. However those select few who
had mastered the techniques weapons production and deployment subjugated the defenseless
many. Thus we can see how in ancient
times the “rich” truly were a class that unjustly extracted their riches from
the subjugated masses. Thus it is understandable
how Jesus and biblical prophets inveighed against “the rich”, and their
oppression of the “poor” of their day.
However an economic, scientific and social revolution began
in the 17th century that would ignite wealth creation and forever
alter the concepts of rich and poor. This century witnessed the advent of three earthshaking
intellectual innovations in England. These
are classical liberalism, free market economics and Newtonian mechanics.
The liberalism of John Locke would follow the Christian
notion of human equality before God and the law to its logical conclusion. According
to Locke’s logic King and commoner, price and pauper stood as equals before the
Lord and no man could rightly claim to be born with a right to power over
others. This philosophy would take root
in American and come to full fruition in the Declaration of Independence and
other founding documents of the American experiment.
The economic insights of Adam Smith expose the mercantile economic
fallacies of the day. Mercantilism was
the crony capitalism of its time whereby, governments intervened in commercial
activity to outcomes to the benefit of a well connected few. Smith
demonstrated how free and unfettered markets deliver superior outcomes for all
strata of society, enriching all, impoverishing none.
Finally the scientific insights of Sir Isaac Newton provided
a technical foundation for Industrial Revolution.
The combination of new found personal liberty, free markets
and fueled an unprecedented economic production. Nearly
90% all wealth creation that has occurred over the past two millennia has occurred
over the past two hundred years as a result of capitalist revolution that was
launched by the aforementioned English gentlemen. The following illustrates the progression:
In the natural state, wealth, that collection of material
goods that sustains life and makes it livable, does not exist. In the natural state, human beings eke out a tenuous
hunter-gatherer existence that is completely vulnerable to the vagaries of
nature. The natural state is a state of
poverty. To overcome poverty, wealth
must be created, and more of it is being created and at a faster rate than
ever.
The question that the Vicar of Rome might pose is whether
this new found wealth is finding its way to the masses or is simply accumulating
in the hands of select few?
Certainly corporate titans, Wall Street tycoons, tech
innovators, show biz magnates, and top tier entertainers and athletes are racking
up outlandish fortunes. That cannot be
denied. However it is also true that
world poverty is falling at unprecedented rates.
According to a 2010 World Bank report, the number of people
living in “extreme poverty” which is defined a $1.25 or less per day has fallen to
22% of the developing world’s population – or 1.29 billion people from 43%
in 1990 and 52% in 1981. That’s
decline of nearly 58% in less than 30 years.
Granted, $1.25 is not much but other indicators of life
quality have improved, According the
organization, HumanProgress many major
indicators of material improvement speak to improved living conditions throughout
the world including increased life expectancy, decreased infant mortality and increases
in things like paved roads and access to healthcare and communications
technology.
This progress is attributable to the global spread of
economic and political freedoms. Even Bono
has come to realize that only free enterprise capitalism will lift Africa out
its economic woes. And Sting is correct
when he sings that “there is no political solution to our troubled evolution”. That
is because the political solution is the way of the state, the way of coercion
and violence.
Murray Rothbard succinctly defines the State as “that
organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of
force and violence in a given territorial area; in particular, it is the only
organization in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution
or payment for services rendered but by coercion."
As such, the State or State sponsored measure will never
lift the human race out of misery because to alleviate poverty wealth must be
created. However, the State produces
nothing. It only steals and
redistributes the hard earned fruits of others’ risk, investment and labor.
The German sociologist, Franz Oppenheimer, clearly
enunciates how the working world earns its keep versus how the State supports
itself. In his book, The State” Oppenheimer observes:
“There are two fundamentally opposed means
whereby man, requiring sustenance, is impelled to obtain the necessary means
for satisfying his desires. These are work and robbery, one’s own labor and the
forcible appropriation of the labor of others. . . . I propose in the following
discussion to call one’s own labor and the equivalent exchange of one’s own
labor for the labor of others, the “economic means” for the satisfaction of
need while the unrequited appropriation of the labor of others will be called
the “political means“. . . . The State is an organization of the political
means. No State, therefore, can come into being until the economic means has
created a definite number of objects for the satisfaction of needs, which
objects may be taken away or appropriated by warlike robbery.”
So when clerics such as the Pope decry
capitalism and call for State intervention, they are calling for theft, for
robbery, no matter how well intentioned they may be. . No society that is rooted in theft can prosper.
When they employ the language of class struggle,
they are falling prey to utopian illusion of state socialism. The world’s greatest socialist endeavors Nazi
Germany, Soviet Russia, Communist China and Cuba have killed, tortured and imprisoned
millions while failing to improve the lot of the masses as capitalism clearly
has done.
When the Pope speaks of a misplaced “trust in the goodness
of those wielding economic power” he misses the mark
entirely. Over two centuries ago, Adam
Smith taught us that it is not good intentions that advance civilization's prosperity. Prosperity, the wealth of nations, and of the
world, advances because of the aggregate transactions of individuals, each
acting in his or her enlightened self interest.
“It is not from the benevolence (kindness) of the butcher,
the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to
their own interest.” “by
directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest
value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases,
led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.” The unforeseen consequence of free and
voluntary production and trade is the material advancement of the nation and
the human community.
Yes, my Pope is infallible in the realm of spiritual
doctrine. The Church is dead on correct
its defense of life and religious liberty.
The Pope is also correct in calling out us on rampant consumerism and
reminding us of our obligation to ease the lot of the poor and suffering. He is on solid ground when he calls on us to
withhold judgment upon those whose lifestyles depart from Christian norms. After all, judgment is the Lord’s alone.
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