Render unto Caesar …

Pope Francis is taking a left turn for the Catholic Church.  He is attacking Capitalism as being exclusionary and depraved.  And mostly he is right.  Capitalism does pick winners and losers … just like any other economic system. And Pope Francis, with his huge Christian heart, is railing against the winners and gushing angst for the losers.  In a way this is his duty as the leader of the church whose founder taught us to “love thy neighbor as thy self.”

However, Capitalism has one thing going for it that Pope Francis doesn’t deem to acknowledge … it is a wealth-creation engine nonpareil.  And lots of wealth creates lots of largess.  I know that the Pope’s message dismisses “trickle-down economics” (probably a politically-inspired mistranslation), but, in fact, a capitalistic society such as the United States defines “poverty” at a level of possession that someone in the Sudan could only dream of achieving.  For more critical discussion on the Pope’s teaching see: UK Telegraph Opinion Piece.  I wish I could reliably quote the original source, but some wag once said that all other economic systems create as their objective “trickle-up poverty.”

Although there are world problems that I would think Pope Francis might have moved up his list of concerns … such as the wave of Christian killings by radical Muslims … and the depravity that exists within the walls of the Vatican … the injustices of Capitalism do need some attention.  This is particularly true when capitalists form an unholy alliance with the secular state and winners are not picked by the marketplace but in the White House.  Christ did say, when asked about paying taxes (and noting whose visage was on the coinage), “render unto Caesar what is Caesar's.”  But in my mind, it is often the reverse flow of this pelf where the real corruption occurs.