Centesimus Annus, Communism & Capitalism

Pope Francis is a Capitalist after all? He says he is. Yet, WSJ’s McGurn reminds “Everyone’s a capitalist these days,” incl lefties like Warren & righties like Rubio, who push to ‘civilize capitalism’. Then there’s John Paul II…

As the columnist waxed: “Sen. Elizabeth Warren once surprised everyone by announcing, ‘I am a capitalist to my [Native American] bones.” Last year, President [Regulate ‘Em Til They Drop] Biden joined the club, insisting he too is a capitalist. Now [leader of the world’s most conservative org] Pope Francis, while not quite declaring himself a believer, says he isn’t as hostile to capitalism as people might think. ‘I do not condemn capitalism in the way some attribute to me,’ he says in ‘El Pastor,’ a just-published book based on several interviews with him by 2 Argentine journalists. ‘Nor am I against the market [economy].’ Who knew? Pope Francis, in other words, wants to improve capitalism, not do away with it.”

McGurn recalls how the “left” has long pretended to “civilize capitalism” by killing it under the weight of big, socialistic government regulations aka control. But, he also suggests many conservatives like GOP Sen. Marco Rubio are now sounding a lot like Bernie Sanders, esp when he goes on the speaking stump (I heard him a couple of yrs ago at DC’s Catholic University) conceding that “fair capitalism has to be tempered by some mix of wise regulation, corporatism & wealth redistribution.” Maybe it would also be wise to recall Saint Pope John Paul II telling the world in his encyclical Centesimus Annus that capitalist nations mustn’t let themselves be blinded to the collapse of Communism & the need to “repair injustices in their own economic system.” Who knew? What did Ecclesiastes say about change again?

Davd Soul