The Christian Pope
- May 21, 2014
- 5 min read
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The Economy: Ron Paul vs Zeitgeist
Pope Francis made one of his strongest attacks on the global economic system on Sunday, saying it could no longer be based on a “god called money” and urged the unemployed to fight for work. “The world has become an idolator of this god called money,” he said.
“And I believe in God, not in a Catholic God, there is no Catholic God, there is God and I believe in Jesus Christ, his incarnation. Jesus is my teacher and my pastor, but God, the Father, Abba, is the light and the Creator. This is my Being.”
“The church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules. The most important thing is the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you.”
The selection of Pope Francis I as the leader of the world’s approximately 1.2 billion Catholics in March marked a major turning point in the trajectory of the Church. Already, he’s become a lightning-rod of change, from stating that:
Pope Francis has issued his first Apostolic Exhortation (a lower-ranking document than an encyclical), entitled Evangelii Gaudium—an 84-page document that serves, in a sense, as the official platform of his papacy. Here Pope Francis decries an “idolatry of money” and warns it would lead to “a new tyranny:Evangelii Gaudium
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“War is madness. It is the suicide of humanity. It is an act of faith in money, which for the powerful of the earth is more important than the human being”. For “behind a war there are always sins”.
In stark contrast to the mitered-and-Prada-shod Benedict, Pope Francis stands as a humble pontiff who chooses to avoid flowery, high-minded rhetoric in favor of “the language of the people.” This makes him the perfect religious figure to tackle climate change.
Pope Francis made the religious case for tackling climate change on Wednesday, calling on his fellow Christians to become “Custodians of Creation” and issuing a dire warning about the potentially catastrophic effects of global climate change.
Speaking to a massive crowd in Rome, the first Argentinian pope delivered a short address in which he argued that respect for the “beauty of nature and the grandeur of the cosmos” is a Christian value, noting that failure to care for the planet risks apocalyptic consequences. “Safeguard Creation,” he said. “Because if we destroy Creation, Creation will destroy us! Never forget this!”
The pope centered his environmentalist theology around the biblical creation story in the book of Genesis, where God is said to have created the world, declared it “good,” and charged humanity with its care. Francis also made reference to his namesake, Saint Francis of Assisi, who was a famous lover of animals, and appeared to tie the ongoing environmental crisis to economic concerns — namely, instances where a wealthy minority exploits the planet at the expense of the poor.
“Creation is not a property, which we can rule over at will; or, even less, is the property of only a few: Creation is a gift, it is a wonderful gift that God has given us, so that we care for it and we use it for the benefit of all, always with great respect and gratitude,” Francis said.
Francis also said that humanity’s destruction of the planet is a sinful act, likening it to self-idolatry. “But when we exploit Creation we destroy the sign of God’s love for us, in destroying Creation we are saying to God: ‘I don’t like it! This is not good!’ ‘So what do you like?’ ‘I like myself!’ – Here, this is sin! Do you see?”
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The culture of selfishness and individualism that often prevails in our society is not, I repeat, not what builds up and leads to a more habitable world: rather, it is the culture of solidarity that does so; the culture of solidarity means seeing others not as rivals or statistics, but brothers and sisters. And we are all brothers and sisters!
Please, I would like to ask all those who have positions of responsibility in economic, political and social life, and all men and women of goodwill: let us be “protectors” of creation, protectors of God’s plan inscribed in nature, protectors of one another and of the environment.
People occasionally forgive, but nature never does. If we don’t take care of the environment, there’s no way of getting around it.
Pope Francis met with executives from the United Nations Agencies, Funds and Programmes on Friday, led by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Speaking to the men and women who manage the UN’s vast network of humanitarian offices, he urged them to challenge “all forms of injustice” and resist the “economy of exclusion”, the “throwaway culture” and the “culture of death” which nowadays – he said – “sadly risk becoming passively accepted”.
Growth in justice … requires decisions, programmes, mechanisms and processes specifically geared to a better distribution of income, the creation of sources of employment and an integral promotion of the poor which goes beyond a simple welfare mentality.
I am far from proposing an irresponsible populism, but the economy can no longer turn to remedies that are a new poison … We need to be convinced that charity “is the principle not only of micro-relationships (with friends, with family members or within small groups) but also of macro-relationships (social, economic and political ones)”. …
Each meaningful economic decision made in one part of the world has repercussions everywhere else; consequently, no government can act without regard for shared responsibility. Indeed, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find local solutions for enormous global problems which overwhelm local politics with difficulties to resolve.
If we really want to achieve a healthy world economy, what is needed at this juncture of history is a more efficient way of interacting which, with due regard for the sovereignty of each nation, ensures the economic well-being of all countries, not just of a few.
“Who am I to judge a gay person?”
“A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person.”
“Who are we to close doors”
Pope Francis has said that he would be willing to baptise aliens if they came to the Vatican, asking “who are we to close doors” to anyone – even Martians.
Pope Francis is not the first one to hint at alien baptism. Vatican scientist Guy Consolmagno suggested in 2010 that aliens might have souls and could be baptized if they asked for it.
“Any entity – no matter how many tentacles it has – has a soul,” Consolmagno said in a talk preceding the British Science Festival in Birmingham.
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