Pope Francis on Tuesday called capitalism “a new tyranny” and very explicitly called on global leaders to act on poverty and growing inequality.
Francis’ remarks are part of an 84-page document known as an
apostolic exhortation, which makes official the platform for his papacy.
The document is incredibly direct in its call for specific, policy-level action to fight institutional inequality rather than speaking broadly and loftily about poverty as some kind of abstraction or something to be addressed exclusively by charitable giving at the community level, as some of his predecessors have been content to do.
An excerpt (emphasis added):
How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.
Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a “disposable” culture which is now spreading. It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new. Exclusion ultimately has to do with what it means to be a part of the society in which we live; those excluded are no longer society’s underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised – they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the “exploited” but the outcast, the “leftovers”.
In this context, 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. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting. To sustain a lifestyle which excludes others, or to sustain enthusiasm for that selfish ideal, a globalization of indifference has developed. Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own. The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase; and in the meantime all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us.
(Credit: AP/Gregorio Borgia)
(Credit: AP/Gregorio Borgia)
4 comments:
And so they twist his words again,... Is any thinking person who has been educated by this blog and others not appalled by the worldwide "Cleptotacracy". That is not true capitalism. He did not use the word capitalism. He said the current system. Well the ponzi scheme that is the federal reserve note and all the other theft including the petro dollar, fractional reserve banking, naked shorting, ie counterfeiting,.. the poisoning of the masses to more easily steal from them with their consent and much much more is not true capitalism. The current system is THEFT,.. not capitalism. I am not defending the man,.. But let us keep honest debate on ideas and systems and not twist and misquote those who enter the debate.
WELL - IF HE REALLY BELIEVES THIS -- THEN GIVE AWAY THE TRILLIONS THEY HAVE TO THOSE WHO ARE LIVING IN SQUALOR, POVERTY --- AND STOP THE RHETORIC.
TIME FOR ACTION.
ACTION SPEAKS LOUDER THAN --- WORDS -- WE HAVE ALL HEARD BEFORE
BUT NOTHING CHANGES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
DO THEY (pTB) REALLY THINK WE ARE "ALL" STUPID SHEEPLE???????
not.
I will start believing again - when THOSE WHO HAVE COMMITTED WAR CRIMES
ARE PROSECUTED AND THROWN IN JAIL....ALL OF THEM.
--- til then ----
stay grounded.
The mere title concentrating on "new" is not anything new. It's just the fact that the masses are awakening and finding out what has been perpetrated on an unsuspecting population since the dawn of the ages. It's all without the truth and honest consent of the masses; thus, trickery and other forms of deception has been used to get people to go along to get along...NO MORE WARS!
"The Love of Money is the ROOT of all EVIL!
AND the Catholic Church is the richest business in the world.
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