The Vatican’s assault on capitalism (part 2) — VOICES for REASON

The Pope’s latest encyclical, Caritas in veritate, is not an isolated assault on capitalism. It is part of a longstanding antipathy toward capitalism.

For example, in 1967, Pope Paul penned a seminal encyclical in this assault, Populorum progressio – “On the Development of Peoples” — in which he (surprise) blamed all the world’s problems on the profit motive, and called for mass redistribution of wealth as the key to the “development of peoples.” By Pope Benedict’s own statement, his own “Caritas in veritate” cannot be understood without reading “Populorum Progressio.” And there is no better way to understand “Populorum Progressio” – and to understand the soul of the Vatican — than to read “Requiem for Man” — Ayn Rand’s profound analysis of “Populorum Progressio.”

Here is Benedict explaining the importance of the earlier work:

In 1967, when he issued the encyclical Populorum progressio, my venerable predecessor Pope Paul VI illuminated the great theme of the development of peoples with the splendour of truth and the gentle light of Christ’s charity.

At a distance of over forty years from the Encyclical’s publication, I intend to pay tribute and to honour the memory of the great Pope Paul VI, revisiting his teachings on integral human development and taking my place within the path that they marked out, so as to apply them to the present moment.

“Requiem for Man” fully unmasks Populorum progressio as a call to sacrifice all the world’s productive for the sake of the unproductive, and reveals that the Vatican’s “splendour of truth and the gentle light of Christ’s charity” is in fact

hatred for man’s mind — hence hatred for man — hence hatred for life and for this earth — hence hatred for man’s enjoyment of his life on earth — and hence, as a last and least consequence, hatred for the only social system that makes all these values possible in practice: capitalism.

I could maintain this on the grounds of a single example. Consider the proposal to condemn Americans to a lifetime of unrewarded drudgery at forced labor, making them work as hard as they do or harder, with nothing to gain but the barest subsistence — while savages collect the products of their effort. When you hear a proposal of this sort, what image leaps into your mind? What I see is the young people who start out in life with self-confident eagerness, who work their way through school, their eyes fixed on their future with a joyous, uncomplaining dedication — and what meaning a new coat, a new rug, an old car bought second-hand, or a ticket to the movies has in their lives, as the fuel of their courage. Anyone who evades that image while he plans to dispose of “the fruit of the labors of people” and declares that human effort is not a sufficient reason for a man to keep his own product — may claim any motive but love of humanity.

Read it.