Understanding Economics and the Poor

For John, BLUF:  Rush misreads Pope Francis.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Recently Talk Show Host Rush Limbaugh rushed in where others fear to tread and challenged Pope Francis on some of the things the Pope had said.  Things were not helped by the Main Stream Media making a hash of what the Holy Father was saying about economics.

Here is the counter, an Opinion Piece in The Boston Pilot, "An Economy of Gratuity", by Professors David and Angela Franks.

Is the pope a Marxist?

To be a conservative should mean recognizing that any true progress depends on receiving a tradition, being open to what Chesterton called the democracy of the dead.  To be a conservative means to recognize that we belong to the great organic continuum of humanity, where past, present, and future are under our stewardship.  It means being realistic enough to see the hubris of utopian schemes which, in the name of the powerless, slaughter the powerless on the altar of "progress" and revolution.  To be conservative means recognizing that there are no silver bullets in politics, but only the unceasing labor of prudence and mutual deliberation.  Conservatism should mean recognizing that we are not God, and that the indispensable communal act is that of thanksgiving and praise of the all-provident Creator and Sustainer of all things. Conservatism should mean humility, piety, and gratitude.

What was Rush Limbaugh thinking, to accuse the Holy Father of giving aid and comfort to the inhuman ideology of President Obama, a man who speaks of addressing inequality but is uncompromising in his advocacy for abortion?  The president would like it to be so that the pope is on his side, but that just means he doesn't understand anything Pope Francis says about solidarity with the powerless.  Not the first thing.  But a supposed conservative feeding the president's delusion?

Conservatism needs Pope Francis, because it has become riddled with the same disease that has bedeviled the Left from its beginning in the French Revolution: secular contraction of consciousness, partisanship, radical individualism, and a hatred of religion unless it simply serve the interests of ideology.

One expects the Left to carry through Jacobin hatred against Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular.  But what is left of conservatism if it becomes anti-Catholic and if it will not entertain the possibility that there are truths bigger than our way of seeing things?

Note the reference to the French Revolution.  As Americans we are lucky we did not have to go through the French Revolution.

Regards  —  Cliff