In the first place, it is obvious that not only is wealth concentrated in our times but an immense power and despotic economic dictatorship is consolidated in the hands of a few, who often are not owners but only the trustees and managing directors of invested funds which they administer according to their own arbitrary will and pleasure.
—Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno
Pope Francis’s words stating that “while the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few” and “this imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation” have sparked many negative reactions——even among those who think of themselves as devout Catholics. “Some,” noted Fr. Diego Alonso-Lasheras, “have tried to water down the words of the pope on economic issues citing the pope himself, who says that his job is not to offer a thorough analysis of contemporary reality—that is, of the economic reality. Others have tried to diminish the importance of his words by saying that it is only an apostolic exhortation, and therefore it is a magisterial document with less weight than that of an encyclical.”1 Among these was also Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, who in a television interview said, referring in general terms to the content of Evangelii Gaudium: “It seems to me that the Holy Father made a very clear statement at the beginning that these are a number of reflections that he’s making that he doesn’t intend them to be part of the papal magisterium. . . . They are suggestions—he calls them guidelines. . . .I don’t think it was intended to be part of the papal magisterium. At least that’s my impression of it.”2 And then there were those who explicitly stated that the pope has very little understanding of economic matters.
But let us start from the most resounding attacks from the outside. Francis is a “Marxist,” and the Catholic Church would be “hypocritical” if it criticizes capitalism when this is the system that finances her. This, in a nutshell, was the frantic attack launched in his typical verbal assault mode by radio commentator Rush Limbaugh against those sections of the pope’s exhortation devoted to social issues. Limbaugh’s words were reported all over the world, and many of course criticized his rudeness. But it would be wrong to underestimate similar attacks, because they represent the tip of the iceberg of a much broader resentment of Pope Francis coming specifically from the conservative world within the United States.
It is significant in this regard that the headline of one of Limbaugh’s broadcasts was: It’s Sad How Wrong Pope Francis Is (Unless It’s a Deliberate Mistranslation by Leftists). The pope is wrong, downright wrong in writing what he wrote, unless—this is the only justification coming from Limbaugh—what arrived in the United States was a mistranslation of the apostolic exhortation considered to be the programmatic document of Francis’s pontificate. The most popular commentator of the extreme right avoided conciliatory tones: “It’s sad. It’s actually unbelievable. The pope has written, in part, about the utter evils of capitalism. . . . It’s sad because this pope makes it very clear he doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to capitalism and socialism and so forth.” Limbaugh described Evangelii Gaudium as an assault on the “new tyranny of capitalism” and an attack on the “idolatry of money,” and then criticized it, saying: “I have been numerous times to the Vatican. It wouldn’t exist without tons of money. But regardless . . . somebody has either written this for him or gotten to him. This is just pure Marxism coming out from the mouth of the pope. Unfettered capitalism? That doesn’t exist anywhere. Unfettered capitalism is a liberal socialist phrase to describe the United States. Unfettered, unregulated.” After explaining the evils of socialism and the benefits of capitalism, including “trickle-down” economic policies, Limbaugh said he was “befuddled” by Francis’s words: “The American Catholic Church has an annual budget of $170 billion. I think that’s more than General Electric earns every year. And the Catholic Church is the largest landholder in Manhattan. I mean, they have a lot of money. They raise a lot of money. They wouldn’t be able to reach out the way they do without a lot of money.”3 It is not the case here to dwell on the character and past of Francis’s “accuser.” But we must not forget that Limbaugh’s radio talk show has about twenty million listeners, and his contract for the show is worth $400 million.
Another explicit attack directed toward Pope Francis came from Jonathan Moseley, a member of the American Tea Party movement, who in a WorldNetDaily article went so far as to write that “Jesus Christ is weeping in heaven hearing Christians espouse a socialist philosophy.” Apparently, Jesus Christ (with whom the Tea Party is in direct communication) has rejected the theory of redistribution. Why? The answer appears to have been given by Jesus himself when asked whether it was right for a person to share an inheritance with other family members: “Jesus spoke to the individual, never to government or government policy. Jesus was a capitalist, preaching personal responsibility, not a socialist.”4
In addition to the words of Limbaugh and Moseley, also worth mentioning are the negative comments on Francis’s exhortation published by Forbes, the American financial magazine, according to which the pope is weighed down by his Argentine Peronist past, a search for a “third way” between capitalism and socialism, the ideas of liberation theology, and the closeness to the analysis of Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz.
Another famous public figure who declared himself preoccupied, better yet puzzled, by a few words written in an apostolic exhortation was the openly Catholic capitalist Kenneth Langone, cofounder of Home Depot, who owns an estimated wealth of more than $2 billion. Langone is actively involved in works of charity, supports numerous Catholic initiatives, and in 2007 was made Knight of St. Gregory the Great by Pope Benedict XVI. The Catholic magnate said he considered Francis’s criticism of capitalism as “exclusionary” with regard to wealthy Catholic donors who, as a result of the pope’s words, may stop funding the same Catholic Church.
We could also mention here a commentator at Fox News who proclaimed that “Pope Francis is the Catholic Church’s Obama,” or Sarah Palin’s reaction, who referred to the Bishop of Rome as a “liberal,” or Senator John McCain (R-AZ), who more reservedly said that he was “not particularly enamored with” Francis’s economic vision. Even the Catholic congressman Peter King (R-NY) said that the pope does not understand the emancipatory aspect of the American free market economy, which in his opinion is the best economy for helping the poor raise their standard of living. While another Catholic congressman, Paul Ryan (R-WI), said that Pope Francis does not properly understand the situation: “The guy is from Argentina, they haven’t had real capitalism in Argentina. They have crony capitalism in Argentina. They don’t have a true free enterprise system.” His argument, as we shall see in the following pages, was taken up and expanded by an authoritative exponent of American conservative Catholicism.5
The allegations against the “Marxist” pope thus mark the end of an era. As we shall see in a later chapter, even a few sections of Pope Benedict XVI’s social encyclical Caritas in Veritate drew harsh criticism from American conservative circles. But it is equally true that the frantic reactions to the social message in Evangelii Gaudium are comparable to a sudden awakening from a dream that led some influential intellectual circles to theorize the indissoluble alliance between the church and its hierarchy, between Catholic thought and the capitalist world. An alliance that some tried to build and demonstrate through a wise and guided “pick and choose” among documents of the social doctrine of the church, selecting more “suitable” pages and lambasting others. An alliance advocated particularly in the first decade of John Paul II’s pontificate, because of the common fight against communist totalitarianism represented by the Soviet empire and its allies. The battle for religious freedom fought by John Paul II—who came from behind the Iron Curtain and supported the Polish trade union Solidarnosåcå (Solidarity)—and the objective convergence with some of the goals of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, together with some passages of the 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus in the aftermath of the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of the real-socialist regimes, induced some intellectuals to think (and theorize) that the Catholic Church had indissolubly married—and the doctrine of marital indissolubility is undoubtedly Catholic—a specific financial-economic system. A system that was considered not only the best (or most acceptable) of all possible worlds but also the one that, in its own way, was more “Christian,” more respectful of human freedom and human initiative. In short, an arrangement that has its supporters among theorists and intellectuals who do not certainly mind that the church does charity work, and invites others to do the same, but cannot stand the possibility of someone who challenges the current configurations and systems. What’s more, they also consider inappropriate even to just ask questions on certain topics, accusing those who do that they know nothing about the economy.
We also cannot fail to notice that in recent decades the most significant episcopal appointments in the United States have somehow favored candidates who more clearly adhere to this system of thought. They are less accustomed to speak out on social issues—the consequences of globalization and the financial crisis, new forms of poverty, illegal immigration, the dignity of work, and welfare—and instead focus exclusively on issues such as the fight against abortion and the opposition to the recognition of homosexual unions.
In this sense it is not wrong to think that the real point of friction after Francis’s election is not so much (or not only) the pope’s minor insistence on the so-called “nonnegotiable principles”—which are clearly proclaimed also in Evangelii Gaudium—but rather the new pope’s social message and his words on poverty. A message that, despite being clearly in line with the teachings of the social doctrine of the church, resonate more powerfully not because of its content but because of the amnesia in which that same content has fallen in recent years (at least in some Catholic circles).
There is the feeling, in fact, that even Pius XI’s eloquent and prophetic words in Quadragesimo Anno, written more than eighty years ago, in the aftermath of the Wall Street crash of 1929, but still applicable following the recent economic and financial crisis, are considered too extreme or radical even within certain Vatican spheres. It is not uncommon, in fact, to encounter there some discomfort for the insistence on social issues, which until now has been justified on two grounds. First, there is the risk of ideology—that is, the manipulation of faith for political purposes—as in certain currents of liberation theology. Second, priority must be given to evangelization—that is, the proclamation of the gospel today, which should be the main focus of the church and its representatives—as if evangelization has nothing to do with men and women’s living conditions and, therefore, with the commitment to human advancement as its immediate goal. But insisting on justifying this generalized discomfort in speaking of the poor, of poverty, of “unequal” economic systems, ends up obscuring not just some sections but entire pages of Catholic social teaching.
We mentioned at the beginning of this chapter some of the more vehement and direct attacks against Pope Francis’s exhortation coming from the United States. A few weeks after the publication of Evangelii Gaudium, a more cautious, articulate, and reasoned criticism has come from the pen of Michael Novak, author of The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, in which he sanctified the union between Catholics and Republicans in that religious, but also political, alliance sponsored in the 1980s by President Ronald Reagan against world communism.6 In an article published in the conservative weekly National Review, Novak writes:
“Reading the new exhortation by Pope Francis after the wildly misleading presentations of it by the Guardian and Reuters (both from the left side of the U.K. press), and reading it with an American ear for language, I was at first amazed at how partisan and empirically unfounded were five or six of its sentences.”
“But reading the exhortation in full in its English translation, and reading it through the eyes of a professor-bishop-pope who grew up in Argentina, I began to have more sympathy for the phrases used by Pope Francis.”7
Novak recalled having had the opportunity to study the early writings of John Paul II: “From 1940 (under the Nazi/Soviet occupation) until 1978 (when he moved to the Vatican), Karol Wojtyla had virtually no experience of a capitalist economy and a democratic/republican polity. To come to understand the concepts behind that sort of political economy, he had to listen closely and learn a quite different vocabulary.”
Novak’s words suggest a conviction that Francis, as John Paul II did before him, will eventually learn how to speak properly of “capitalist economy.” Novak, recalling that he had lectured “in Argentina and in Chile since the late 1970s,” said that he read “the entire exhortation with an ear for echoes of daily economic and political life in Argentina.”
“In my visits to Argentina,” continued Novak, “I observed a far sharper divide between the upper middle class and the poor than any I had experienced in America. In Argentina I saw very few paths by which the poor could rise out of poverty. In the U.S., many of those who are now rich or middle class had come to America (or their parents had) dirt poor, many of us not speaking English, with minimal schooling, and with mainly menial skills. But before us lay many paths upward. As Peru’s Hernando de Soto stresses, the U.S. had the rule of law and clear property rights, on which one could safely build over generations.”
“Virtually all my acquaintances while I was growing up had experienced early poverty. Our grandfathers,” wrote Novak, “were garment workers, steelworkers, store clerks, gardeners, handy-men, blue-collar workers of all sorts, without social insurance, Medicaid, food stamps, housing allowances, or the like. But they labored and somehow were able to send their children to colleges and universities. Now their children are doctors, lawyers, professors, editors, and owners of small businesses all over the country.”
Novak then explained that in his Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), Adam Smith compared the economic history of Latin America with that of North America and “noted that in Latin America there were still many institutions of feudal Europe—large landholders, plantations, plantation workers. In North America, only the southern United States was something like that. Throughout Latin America, for almost two centuries at the time Smith wrote, many economic powers and permissions were doled out by government officials in far-off Spain or Portugal.”
“Besides, experience in the Anglosphere had led to a distrust of monarchs and their courts, and later of barons and dukes and the aristocracy as a whole, since these people could not be counted on either to see or to serve the common good. By contrast, the opposite habit of mind had grown throughout the Latin world. There, officials of the state were regularly entrusted,” observed Novak, “with minding the common good, despite a long record of official betrayals of duty, outbreaks of tyranny, and the use of economic resources to enrich successive leaders of the state. In Latin America, the pluralistic private sector was mistrusted, but not the state.”
Novak’s article continues with a presentation of what happened in the United States, where “under a government strictly limited by law, there grew up almost universal property ownership by individuals (except under the evil institution of slavery, America’s primal sin), a large swath of small enterprises, and a huge base of prospering small farms. Smith described the creation of wealth in North America as welling up from below, from the prosperity at the bottom, where frugal habits led to wise investments in railroads, canals, and other large business corporations.”
According to Novak, John Paul II
recognized this huge social change in Centesimus Annus (The Hundredth Year, 1991), of which paragraph 32 opens: “In our time, in particular, there exists another form of ownership which is no less important than land: the possession of know-how, knowledge, and skill. The wealth of the industrialized nations is based much more on this kind of ownership than on natural resources.” The rest of this paragraph is concise in its penetration of the causes of wealth and the role of human persons and associations in the virtue of worldwide solidarity, of which globalization is the outward expression.
Pope John Paul II quickly recognized that today “the decisive factor [in production] is increasingly man himself, that is, his knowledge, especially his scientific knowledge, his capacity for interrelated and compact organization, as well as his ability to perceive the needs of others and to satisfy them.”
Novak then cited paragraph no. 42 of the same encyclical, in which John Paul II “defined his ideal capitalism, succinctly, as that economic system springing from creativity, under the rule of law, and ‘the core of which is ethical and religious.’ In his first social encyclical ten years earlier, Laborem Exercens (On Human Work, 1981), directly rejecting orthodox Marxist language about labor, the pope had already begun to project ‘creation theology’ as a replacement for ‘liberation theology.’ ”
In the following years—according to Novak—John Paul II addressed the concept of human capital. “Step by step, he thought his way to his own vision of the economy best suited to the human person—not perfectly so, in this vale of tears, but better than any rival, Communist or traditional. John Paul II set it forth as ‘the model which ought to be proposed to the countries of the Third World which are searching for the path to true economic and civil progress.’ ”
Let us not lose track of the path delineated so far by Novak, an advocate of the “holy alliance” between Catholicism and capitalism. According to him, the church, with John Paul II’s pontificate, has taken the path of rapprochement. And to validate this there are concrete historical reasons.
“As the 20th century began,” wrote Novak, “Argentina was ranked among the top 15 industrial nations, and more and more of its wealth was springing from modern inventions rather than farmland. Then a destructive form of political economy, just then spreading like a disease from Europe—a populist fascism with tight government control over the economy—dramatically slowed Argentina’s economic and political progress. Instability in the rule of law undermined economic creativity. Inflation blew to impossible heights. (I brought home from Argentina in the early 1980s a note for a million Argentine pesos that had declined in worth to two American pennies.)”
“Over three generations,” added Novak, “very little of the nation’s natural wealth and opportunity for social advancement has overflowed into the upraised buckets of the poor. Upward mobility from the bottom up was (and is) infrequent. Today, the lot of Argentina’s poor is still static. The poor receive little personal instruction in turning to independent creativity and initiative. . . . Human energies are drained by dependency on state benefits. The visible result has been a largely static society, with little opportunity for the poor to rise out of poverty.”
According to Novak, if Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium refers to this situation, his analysis is actually accurate. In many Latin American countries, “today’s corporate leaders are often the grandsons of the great landholders of the past. Some of these are men of vision, invention, and personal initiative who have built their own firms. Yet as of now most Americans cannot name a single household item invented by a Latin American.”
To put it bluntly, Novak’s point here is that Pope Francis may be right, as long as we confine his words to the situation in Argentina or, at most, Latin America. But if we shift them to a global context and apply them to the United States—always the real point of contention—then the pope is wrong.
Novak believes that some of the “swipes are so highly partisan and biased that they seem outside this pope’s normal tranquillity and generosity of spirit. Exactly these partisan phrases were naturally leapt upon by media outlets such as Reuters and the Guardian. Among these are ‘trickle-down theories,’ ‘invisible hand,’ ‘idolatry of money, ‘inequality,’ and trust in the state ‘charged with vigilance for the common good.’ ”
Citing “one of the shrewdest observers of Latin America today,” Mary Anastasia O’Grady, Novak asks, “Why is it then . . . ‘that most of today’s desperate poor are concentrated in places where the state has gained an outsize role in the economy specifically on just such grounds’? Ever since Max Weber, Catholic social thought has been blamed for much of the poverty in many Catholic nations. Pope Francis inadvertently adds evidence for Weber’s thesis.”
Novak considers it desirable that some economic historian set “each of these highly inflammable and partisan charges in context,” to explain “what each meant to the author who originated them, as opposed to the partisan usage of today’s media.” In the rest of his long article, Novak deals with the pope’s words on “trickle-down” theories, contesting the English rendering of the Spanish derrame with “trickle-down”: “the English translation introduces both a sharply different meaning and a harsh new tone into this passage. Only those hostile to capitalism and Reagan’s successful reforms, and to the policies of Republicans in general after the downward mobility of the Carter years, use the derisive expression ‘trickle-down,’ intended to caricature what actually happened under Reagan, namely, dramatic upward mobility.”
The observation in Evangelii Gaudium according to which the positive aspects of “trickle-down” theories have never been confirmed by the facts is understandable “in Argentina and other static systems with no upward mobility,” but in nations like the United States, with “generations of reliable upward mobility, it is not true at all. . . . Despite its glaring faults, especially in its entertainment sector—obscene and sexually explicit pop music, decadent images and themes in movies—the American system has been more ‘inclusive’ of the poor than any other nation on earth.”
Novak concludes that he appreciates two aspects of the exhortation: the affirmation that “the entire cosmos, and the whole of human life, are upward-leaping flames from the inner life of the Creator, from caritas—that outward-moving creative love that is God”—and the focus of Evangelii Gaudium on “the main practical task of our generation: breaking the last round of chains of ancient poverty.”
Of course, Novak reiterates that “whatever one prays in worship on Sunday gets its truthfulness from what Christians actually do in their daily lives to help the poor. If one doesn’t come to the aid of the poor, one does not love God.” Evangelii Gaudium therefore does not claim to be “a teaching document laying out a careful argument—that is the task for an encyclical. Rather, it is more like a sermon, a somewhat informal occasion for the pope to set out his vision as a pastor.” While in the future, Novak adds with a hope, Pope Francis “will unfold his fuller arguments about the political economy that best helps the poor to move out of poverty. I can only imagine that consultations on the subject have already begun. I hope the pope’s aides will begin with the experience-impelled conclusion, a bit reluctantly advanced, in the well-reasoned pathway of paragraph 42 of John Paul II’s Centesimus Annus.”
Notice here two specific statements. First, the downgrading of the papal document to a simple “homily” and, second, the hope that Francis will follow in John Paul II’s footsteps and that before writing other documents on social and economic issues he will be assisted by his “aides,” along the lines of certain U.S. circles and think tanks.
The dogma that Novak has been theorizing and arguing for so far is simple: let the church go on speaking about the poor and charity; let her remind us that we ought to give alms; let her offer us ethical guidance; let her fight her battles in defense of life and against the deterioration of certain customs in our decadent Western societies; let her remind us that we must strive to be good and honest. But may she never dare to ask one single question on the current system of capitalism—that same system that at present has no more contact with the real economy and is dominated by the financial markets.
To quote Pius XI’s words (another pope who evidently had no adequate “aides”) in the encyclical Quadragesimo Anno at paragraph no. 109:
The ultimate consequences of the individualist spirit in economic life are those which you yourselves, Venerable Brethren and Beloved Children, see and deplore: Free competition has destroyed itself; economic dictatorship has supplanted the free market; unbridled ambition for power has likewise succeeded greed for gain; all economic life has become tragically hard, inexorable, and cruel. To these are to be added the grave evils that have resulted from an intermingling and shameful confusion of the functions and duties of public authority with those of the economic sphere—such as, one of the worst, the virtual degradation of the majesty of the State, which although it ought to sit on high like a queen and supreme arbitress, free from all partiality and intent upon the one common good and justice, is become a slave, surrendered and delivered to the passions and greed of men. And as to international relations, two different streams have issued from the one fountain-head: On the one hand, economic nationalism or even economic imperialism; on the other, a no less deadly and accursed internationalism of finance or international imperialism whose country is where profit is.
These words were written in 1931, but they are still extremely valid today—better yet, especially today. Thus, is there the possibility for us to question—not to eliminate, but to try to change—the system? “When I give food to the poor,” said Hélder Câmara, bishop of Recife, “they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.” The pope has been called a “Marxist,” or to put it more mildly, they say that he knows nothing of economics.
“Novak’s resentment,” says the philosopher Max Borghesi in an article published on the website Il Sussidiario, “is understandable. Exalted as the ‘Catholic’ Max Weber, who instead of Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism has placed ‘Catholic’ ethic as the true foundation of ‘democratic’ capitalism, now finds himself with a pontificate that has no faith in that system that he, for quite some time now, helped legitimize and raise above any possible accusation.”8
According to Borghesi, Novak did not like “especially the idea that the capitalist model has not been confirmed by the facts as a source of general well-being.” Novak’s criticism, wrote Borghesi,
demonstrates, in its edginess, that Evangelii Gaudium has hit the mark. . . . After 1989, as we have grown accustomed to the legitimization, with no ifs and buts, of capitalist globalization, celebrated as the “end of history” and as a panacea for all evils, any criticism to this system is perceived as being tainted with crypto-communism. Evangelii Gaudium breaks through this wall of silence, and is like a formidable pebble thrown into a still pond of ideas. Benedict XVI had already given it a shot, with his Caritas in Veritate, an encyclical that contained important points, and good critical insights. If we compare the two, Francis’ apostolic exhortation appears more resolute; it takes the bull by the horns, and is not afraid to proclaim to the world the limits, obvious to everyone after the 2008 financial debacle, of an economic model that, left to itself, is likely to overwhelm the world.
“How many words prove irksome to this system! . . . We can no longer trust in the unseen forces and the invisible hand of the market,” wrote Francis in Evangelii Gaudium. The economic bodies cannot claim absolute autonomy, or, even less, have priority over politics, which instead appears today, as we shall see, almost at the service of the financial markets. We need therefore a return to the primacy of politics, inasmuch as it has the common good at heart.
“One thing is certain:” observes Borghesi, “rarely has a text of the social teaching of the Church spoken more forcefully. What strikes, in Francis’ exhortation, is the tone, the shift from the descriptive mode to the first person, the pope’s direct involvement, the indignation in the face of a world that would have all the possible means to alleviate the suffering and marginalization of millions of human beings and yet does nothing. ‘The Pope loves everyone, rich and poor alike, but he is obliged in the name of Christ to remind all that the rich must help, respect and promote the poor.’ A provocation that, apparently, neither Forbes magazine, nor Michael Novak, liked much.”
Although Evangelii Gaudium focused on evangelization and social issues, it drew criticisms from the world of investment banks as well. On December 2, 2013, JP Morgan Chase economist Jim Glassman, without ever naming the pope, defended market economies and their “effectiveness” in saving people from poverty: “Those concerned about global poverty,” wrote Glassman, “have more to be thankful for today than to complain about. The commonly-heard complaints that today’s economic systems fail to address the plight of the poor ignore several fundamental facts.”9
Glassman then added in his research note that “poverty is not a modern phenomenon.” Then he went on to explain that “the developed economies are still recovering from deep recessions and in time will reach their full potential. That is, of course, why central bank policies remain so stimulative. Those hurt by the recession will be restored as the developed economies continue to recover.” (This is not, however—regardless whether one is religious or not—the true picture of what we are facing.)
The third point in his memorandum is that “despite the cyclical problems of the developed economies, the average global living standard is at a record high. . . . In other words, market-oriented economic systems are doing more to cure global poverty than any other effort in the past.” Thus, according to Glassman, the current market-oriented economic system works and helps; it is doing very much indeed. We must trust in it and not complain, or make ill-chosen questions. We must believe in its dogma.
Another similar critique of the pope’s words came on December 23, 2013, from John Gapper, a well-known columnist for the Financial Times, who, commenting on the exhortation, said that Francis is “wrong” on the issue of global inequality. The commentator of the authoritative newspaper on economic and financial issues took aim at paragraph no. 56 of Evangelii Gaudium against ideologies that defend the absolute autonomy of the markets and financial speculation. “His words resonated with many people who face the seemingly inexorable rise of the richest 1 percent,” wrote Gapper, who admitted that the gap between rich and poor has grown in the West, but in recent years economic inequality has declined globally. Citing the Gini Index on global inequality, the Financial Times columnist noted that in China, India, Brazil, and other emerging countries where the vast majority of the world population lives, inequality has declined due to “global capitalism.”10
“Not only has income distribution become more equal,” said Gapper, “but capitalism can take the credit.” Evangelii Gaudium is merely the expression of the discontent of “the Western middle class” affected by the financial crisis and the recession.
According to Gapper, the 2008–9 financial crisis was only a glitch, an unpredictable factor. There is no need to change the model, the system, or better yet, the dogma.
Alessandro Corneli, in an article in Global Research & Report Group, observed that the Financial Times, by juxtaposing the data on global poverty while highlighting progress in emerging countries, is avoiding an “answer [to] the real question raised by the pope: the philosophy behind this economic mechanism that increases the gap between the richest and the poorest, as recently admitted by President Barack Obama himself, who pointed out that while in the past top managers received an income of 20 to 30 times higher than that of an average worker now it is 273 times higher.”11
The criticism expressed by certain capitalist circles have found within the church no lack of support. Cardinal Franc Rodé, former prefect of the Congregation for Religious, gave an interview in September 2013 to the Slovenian national press agency, criticizing Pope Francis. For the Slovenian cardinal the pope is “too much of the left.” “No doubt,” said Rodé, “the pope is a genius of communication. He communicates very well with the crowd, the media, and the faithful. . . . A great advantage is that he seems likable. On the other hand, his opinions, on capitalism and social justice, are excessively to the left. One sees how he is shaped by the environment from which he comes. In South America, there are enormous social differences, and great debates on this situation emerge every day. But those people talk too much, and solve few problems.”12
Rodé, who lived for many years in Argentina at the time when Slovenia was part of communist Yugoslavia, as archbishop of Ljubljana led the Slovenian church toward a strong capitalist model—a model, however, that has had disastrous results. For instance, the Slovenian Diocese of Maribor suffered a financial crisis due to bad investments, which included financial holdings and embarrassing financial links to a television network that at some point even aired pornography. Already at the time of Pope Benedict XVI the Holy See was forced to intervene.
In order to understand how certain circles are irritated by the church’s increased attention to social issues, the case of Francis’s appointment of the new archbishop of Chicago is particularly enlightening. On September 20, 2014, the successor to Cardinal Francis George was announced; the new bishop at the helm of the Archdiocese of Chicago is Blase Joseph Cupich. Born in 1949, and bishop since 1998, first in Rapid City, South Dakota, and then Spokane, Washington, Cupich was not even considered among the initial favorites for the position.
In the preceding months, however, it was precisely Cupich who embraced the words of the apostolic nuncio concerning Francis’s instructions for the American church: “Pope Francis doesn’t want cultural warriors; he doesn’t want ideologues.”13 In 2011, Cupich encouraged his priests and seminarians to refrain from organizing and participating in sit-in prayers at abortion clinics. He recalled the political polarization on this issue by noting that decisions on abortion are not usually taken outside clinics but “around kitchen tables and in living rooms and they frequently involve a sister, daughter, relative or friend who may have been pressured or abandoned by the man who fathered the child.”14 Therefore, priests needed to intervene in those moments and not later.
In April 2012, the American press noticed the restraint with which Cupich had reacted to Obama’s health care reform; he confirmed the opinion shared by the episcopate on certain issues, but not as vehemently as his fellow bishops. So rare was this in the ecclesial landscape and American media that it became immediately newsworthy. In a post on his blog, Bryan Cones, editor of US Catholic defined Cupich as “the bishop who can speak without shouting.”15 Such an approach can, according to Cupich himself, “really produce something in the long run,” whereas the caustic jokes and belligerent style soon run out of steam.16
Cupich had also defended the more social sections of Evangelii Gaudium from criticism of the ultra-libertarian American conservatives, reminding them of the value of solidarity between peoples and denouncing their positions as inconsistent with the social doctrine of the church. We should not forget that when Cupich was bishop of Rapid City the diocesan “Pro-Life Committee” became the “Social Justice Committee.” Anti-abortion messages did not cease to circulate, but the spectrum of the operations broadened, as the committee began targeting the death penalty, immigration reform, and poverty.
In a letter written from Rome after the appointment of Cupich, Kishore Jayabalan, director of the Acton Institute (a Catholic think tank whose mission is to disseminate the principles of a free society and free-market system) in the Italian capital, revealed his discontent for the change of course evident in the appointment of the new bishop.
“With the recent nomination of Bishop Blase Cupich as the next Archbishop of Chicago, we are likely entering the latest round of polemics over the purported incompatibility of Catholicism and capitalism, Windy-City style. In honor of Sean Connery, we’ll be sure not to bring a knife to this gun fight.”17
One of the reasons that induced Jayabalan to write his letter was “Bishop Cupich’s participation at a June 2014 conference at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. The title of that conference, Erroneous Autonomy: The Catholic Case Against Libertarianism, tells you all you need to know about its conclusions. The videos don’t reveal how many people took part, but it took place around the same time as Acton University, where we had nearly 1,000 people from all over the world trying to bring markets and morality together in a constructive fashion.”
A second reason for concern, according to Jayabalan, was “the portrayal of Cupich as a new kind of leader—a ‘Francis Bishop’—who eschews the culture wars over abortion, same-sex marriage, and other contentious issues—all having to do with the Church’s teachings on sexuality—and focuses on supposedly non-controversial matters like immigration and youth unemployment because ‘this economy kills.’ (Cue Rodney King in the pulpit.) Many on the religious left are hoping for the demise of nasty ideologues like Paul Ryan and the Acton Institute who have the gall to promote economic liberty as a path to material and perhaps spiritual well-being, and may even commit the mortal sin of voting Republican.”
Notice here the clear reference to Evangelii Gaudium and the expression “religious left.” Apparently, for these think tanks the mere allusion to issues such as poverty and social justice in terms that do not exalt the progressive and happy destiny of capitalism is reason enough to cause alarm.
“This recurring animus against free markets” continued Jayabalan, “may come as a surprise to those of us who have, and especially to those who haven’t, enjoyed the benefits of freedom, innovation and wealth creation. Didn’t we put the mythology of ‘real socialism’ to rest with Pope St. John Paul II’s 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus? John Paul certainly didn’t idolize the market economy and warned that it will succeed only to the degree that it respects moral and ethical principles that come from outside the field of economics. The world’s financial and business scandals continually remind us of this truth. At some point, however, we have to regard this hostility to markets as the ideological equivalent as that some libertarians have towards the State.”
Jayabalan did admit that Cupich’s positions are more nuanced than those of Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and president of Caritas Internationalis, evidently considered by Jayabalan as lost to the faith in capitalism and its indisputable dogmas.
“To be fair,” wrote Jayabalan,
Bishop Cupich’s reading of libertarianism was not nearly as extreme as Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga’s account. I’ve heard the latter give similar talks in person on several occasions and his views never seem to change, no matter what evidence exists to the contrary. His Eminence has no patience for reforming or improving “the idol” of market economies; he wants to smash and replace it with nothing but love (try paying your bills with that!), where Cupich asserts that libertarians simply don’t believe in solidarity and apply economics to every aspect of life. Cupich, of course, is American and Rodriguez is from Honduras, so the differences in perceptions and realities between North and South America are definitely major factors in how one appraises capitalism. But I think there’s more to these kinds of remarks than geography or even culture.
According to Jayabalan,
It has something to do with accepting the idea that economic thinking inevitably becomes the only way of looking at the world and crowds out everything else; it’s a new form of the materialist determinism expounded by Marx and his followers. While religious critics of capitalism often fashion themselves as simple pastors and allies of the downtrodden, “men very often find themselves in a sad state because they do not give enough thought and consideration to these things,” as Pope Paul VI put it in his encyclical on development (Populorum Progressio, no. 85). The problem is the denial to see economics for what it is, or at least what it used to be before the mathematicians took over, i.e. a fundamentally human science.
“I don’t expect bishops to have PhDs in economics,” continued Jayabalan, “but some appreciation of the new opportunities provided by free markets would be very much welcomed by those of us who want to see growing economies lift people out of poverty. Would it be so bad to hear a bishop say that onerous levels of taxes and regulations make poverty more, rather than less, likely? Would it be impossible for a bishop to say that the freedom to buy and sell licit goods and services doesn’t mean we have the freedom to beat our wives or exploit each other sexually? Would it be that hard to convince their flock that they can run successful businesses without endangering their eternal souls?”
Jayabalan is here reproposing, as we shall see, the paradigm that tends to blame the states’ control and interventions, the welfare system, and taxes for all our financial problems—problems that no doubt would be solved if only there was more freedom within the marketplace.
As we might expect from such a conservative critique, the bishops are the ones who speak of these issues without fully understanding them, or understanding too little. Apparently, they need an education first. “In order to be truly effective pastors,” judged Jayabalan, “bishops need to be more than ‘pastoral’ in the simple-minded sense of the word. As a highly-educated segment of the Church and the population in general, they have the responsibility of understanding the intellectual challenges presented by modern society, where authority, tradition and order have much less appeal than concepts such as liberty and equality. The alternative is to allow even more radical notions of autonomy to take root, placing the Church at an even greater disadvantage. Unfortunately, these intellectual challenges require thinking more seriously about mundane activities like commerce than most theologians and philosophers would like to do.”
“Thanks be to God,” concluded Jayabalan,
the survival of the Church does not depend on its intellectual sophistication, so I have no doubt the Church will survive this latest bout of misinformed economics and overheated rhetoric among its leaders. As an Acton colleague of mine puts it, personal sanctity is the most important thing and some of our bishops will probably be assigned to the “bad economics” part of heaven. That would be ok if so many others didn’t have to suffer the consequences of bad economics (poverty, stagnation, wasted resources, increased frustration and envy, and yes, even youth unemployment) in the meantime. Let’s assume that religious leaders are acting out of sincere concern for the poor. So why do bishops hold views that manifestly hurt those they are trying to help? Perhaps, as the French poet Charles Péguy once remarked, “It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been motivated by the fear of looking insufficiently progressive.”
No doubt about it; it was enough for Cupich to participate in an event during which the absolute autonomy of the markets was discussed, along with his defense of the more social sections of Evangelii Gaudium, to deserve this sarcastic reaction. Alas, this poor pope and his poor bishops speak of poverty and capitalism, social justice, and the idolatry of money without knowing what they are talking about. They should study economics; they should be advised by experts. Only then will they understand that they should be dealing with only certain issues, such as the fight against gay marriage. Know your place; don’t step out of line, dusting off old and obsolete concepts of the social doctrine of the church that seem imbued with socialist theories.
To conclude, it is worth citing also the response that Cardinal Francis George, archbishop emeritus of Chicago and Cupich’s predecessor, gave during an interview on Francis’s social teaching, pointing out the extent to which the new pope’s concerns are “only” for the poor.
“There is a gap between any Pope and those who would accept our economic system uncritically. The major criticisms of any economic theory are in Catholic Social Teaching: the universal destination of all material goods, the treatment of the poor as the gauge of a just economic system, the need for some regulation of markets so that return on capital does not completely outrun gains from wages, the social mortgage of private property, etc.”18
“Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict,” continued Cardinal George, “contributed to rather sophisticated advances in the church’s teaching on economic order. They were able to address the technical challenges of supply-side economics, the production of wealth so that more wealth can be distributed, the creation of an economic order founded on ‘gift.’ Pope Francis, so far, with the poor uniquely at the center of his concerns, has focused on distribution. This is a common criticism of religious leaders: they understand distribution but not production. As challenges to an economic system that is still far from what the Gospel would encourage us to work for, Pope Francis’ statements ring true; as judgments on economic theory as such, a lot more has to be said.”
“The Pope speaks, it seems, from the experience and the analysis of South Americans,” added the cardinal, “who believe that some are rich because others are deliberately kept poor, that the ‘system of neo-liberalism’ captures capitalism in its entirety. It remains true that no Catholic can view the operation of our economy uncritically.”
Notice here how the cardinal rephrases, albeit with cautious and respectful words, the same cliché of the pope who speaks from his experience as a “South American”—the same cliché used by certain ecclesial circles and the U.S. media, as in Europe and Italy, as a way to belittle the pope’s message.