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Glenn Beck Needs a Team to Teach Him About Catholicism: Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome Vol. IX

Glenn Beck Needs a Team to Teach Him About Catholicism: Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome Vol. IX

Last updated on: April 7, 2018 at 12:03 am by Scott Eric Alt

Glenn Beck Needs a Team to Teach Him About Catholicism: Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome Vol. IX 2018-04-07T00:03:27-04:00 Scott Eric Alt

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Glenn Beck, with the selfless charity of one who thinks well of himself, has offered to put together a “team” that will teach Pope Francis what capitalism really is. Oh boy. Here we go again. I will quote the free part of the audio, provided by The Blaze, with the banter and guffaws left out. This is Mr. Beck speaking.

I met with somebody who is high-up with the pope. … And I said, “So tell me. Is the pope … a communist?'” And he [said], “No. Uh. No.”

[Mr. Beck does not tell us who this source is. I get that. But then, no one can check any of this out or know how reliable this person is whom Mr. Beck is pressing for inside information. This has the tone of the anecdotal.]

The pope has lived in Latin America, where he has seen cronyism. He has seen that; and he’s seen Marxism. He doesn’t like Marxism; he doesn’t like cronyism, which he defines as capitalism. He’s not seen let-me-serve-you capitalism. So I have asked the pope’s people if I could put together a team of people that could actually teach the pope and find examples, left and right, and go visit the pope and say, “This is what capitalism is. And it’s not being done.”

[If it’s not being done, where are the examples to be found?]

Whenever I see stuff like this, I always wonder whether those saying it have read the pope’s words first-hand. Have they read Church social teaching, in the Church’s own words? Do they think they need to? Or do they get all their information about the Church and the pope from the secular press? Veritas? Quid est veritas? Rush Limbaugh held firm to his conviction that the pope is a Marxist based solely on a misquotation in Reuters. He was asked to check the transcript. He did not, though he himself confirmed that he was asked. (See here and here for my two discussions of this. Fr. John Trigilio also discussed the topic on his blog here. And Mark Shea also weighed in, on his blog at the National Catholic Register, here.)

But maybe I am wrong. Maybe Mr. Beck has read Evangelii Gaudium. (It’s on the Vatican Web site here. EG was the papal document that started all this talk.) If Mr. Beck has read it, then I would ask him to quote the pope’s actual words. Where does the pope say “cronyism is capitalism”? Where? Anywhere? Buehler? I did a keyword search of the entire document; I can’t find the word “cronyism” or the word “capitalism” in the text. Maybe it’s not in EG. Maybe Pope Francis says “cronyism is capitalism” somewhere else. Mr. Beck should tell us where. There are a whole lot of papal statements at the Vatican’s Web site, just waiting for Mr. Beck to comb through them all and find this papal utterance. [Article continues below.]

Another Day Older and Deeper in Debt

Now, there are two places in Evangelii Gaudium where one could attempt to come to the conclusion that the pope attacks capitalism. Here’s the first.

[S]ome 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. (§54)

Some might read this and say, Wait! the pope condemns “trickle-down”! That is capitalism! Except: No, it’s not. Trickle down is nothing other than a subset of capitalist theory which did not come into prominence until the 1980s, thanks to economists like Arthur Laffer. It has to do with the supposed benefit of tax cuts in an economic system that is already capitalist. So the two are not one and the same. You can have capitalism with or without trickle-down.

Nor does the pope say that trickle down, of itself, is necessarily bad. What he rejects is the idea that it will inevitably bring about a more just society. That’s his own word. He rejects the idea that all one has to do is create the perfect economic system and tax laws, leave them to their own workings, and one is then free to neglect his personal obligation to the poor. That is what the pope is getting at here.

But wait! someone else will say. The pope has harsh words about “the prevailing economic system.” Isn’t that capitalism?

Well, no. If you listen to what Glenn Beck says, it’s not. Mr. Beck, on his television program, says that true capitalism is “not being done.” Well, if it’s not being done, it can hardly be the “prevailing economic system.” Can it? The pope attacks what is being done, not what has been left untried.

So one has a problem if he wants to read an attack on capitalism into this passage.

A second passage from the text that one could cite would be this one.

The causes of this breakdown [in how the Catholic faith is passed on] include: a lack of opportunity for dialogue in families, the influence of the communications media, a relativistic subjectivism, unbridled consumerism which feeds the market … (§70)

This passage is the closest I can find to an attack on what the secular media falsely quoted as “unfettered capitalism.” But the pope did not say that; he did not use those words. What he attacks here is consumerism. He attacks greed. Well, in case Mr. Beck is not aware of this, the Church has attacked greed for a long time now. You may recall that it’s one of the Seven Deadly Sins—a list that dates back to the fourth-century monk Evagrius Ponticus. (Of course, Jesus attacks greed too, but let’s not remind ourselves of that. Mr. Beck might worry that Christ was a commie.)

But wait! you say. The pope attacks the greed which “feeds the market.” So, see! That’s capitalism!

Again, no. This is not an attack on the market. This is an attack on the market’s diet. The market has fed itself on people’s lust for more and more stuff. And if you want to tell me that the market can exist only on greed, and must starve on anything else, then the market is not worth keeping alive. But that is not what Mr. Beck claims about the market, if I understand him right.

The pope’s real concern is obstacles to evangelization, and he names one of them as “the idolatry of money.”

We have created new idols. The worship of the ancient golden calf (cf. Ex 32:1-35) has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose. The worldwide crisis affecting finance and the economy lays bare their imbalances and, above all, their lack of real concern for human beings; man is reduced to one of his needs alone: consumption.

There’s no mention of capitalism here, not as an economic theory in its own right, apart from how it is practiced. The pope does not say, “All this comes of Adam Smith.” Benedict XVI, it should be said, also attacked the “idolatry of money” in his encyclical Caritatis in Veritate (here). So has just near every pope who has ever poped. Jesus condemned it, for Christ’s sake! Pope Francis does have harsh words for the “impersonal economy” which prevails, but remember—listen to what Mr. Beck tells us—that cannot be capitalism; since, search the the Earth from shore to shore, you won’t find capitalism anywhere. It’s not being done!

Well, a-Bless My Soul!

If Mr. Beck wants to find a papal attack on capitalism, I would suggest he go, not to Pope Francis, but to Pope Benedict XVI. Here is what the former pope had to say, on January 1, 2013.

[T]he world is sadly marked by hotbeds of tension and conflict caused by growing instances of inequality between rich and poor, by the prevalence of a selfish and individualistic mindset which also finds expression in an unregulated financial capitalism.

So Benedict XVI equates “unregulated financial capitalism” with selfishness. Now, would that be cronyism? Pope Benedict—he’s from Germany, right? That’s not in Latin America. Somehow I don’t recall any outcry from Rush Limbaugh, or Glenn Beck, in 2013. Perhaps Mr. Beck should send his team to Castle Gandolfo.

I want to know who put Glenn Beck in charge of papal interventions. That has me worried.

You Load Sixteen Tons; What Do You Get?

I am always intrigued by this idea—it’s not a new one—that Pope Francis confuses cronyism with capitalism because he’s from Latin America. That kind of stuff is rife there, we are told. Please. What do people think is rife in non-Latin America? Can we hear what Sarah Palin has to say on this? She sure seems to think there can be a crony form of capitalism, practiced right here in the good ol’ US of A. Does she also need the help of Glenn Beck’s team?

Pope St. John Paul II was from Poland. Mr. Beck might know that. In Poland, the free market was suppressed for years by the Soviet. And yet read what he had to say in his 1991 encyclical Centissimus Annus (here).

Can it perhaps be said that, after the failure of Communism, capitalism is the victorious social system, and capitalism should be the goal of the countries now making efforts to rebuild their economy and society? If by capitalism is meant an economic system, which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, [and] private property … then the answer is certainly in the affirmative. … [Now watch what follows.] But, if by “capitalism” is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridicial framework … the core of which is ethical and religious, then the reply is certainly negative. (§42)

So here John Paul II recognizes two potential forms of capitalism. And one of them is the “cronyism” Mr. Beck seems to think is just some odd confusion on the part of Pope Francis. But it is not just John Paul II; the very Catechism itself (no document of Latin bishops alone) also attacks cronyism.

A theory that makes profit the exclusive norm and ultimate end of economic activity is morally unacceptable. The disordered desire for money cannot but produce perverse effects. It is one of the causes of the many conflicts which disturb the social order. A system that “subordinates the basic rights of individuals and of groups to the collective organization of production” is contrary to human dignity. Every practice that reduces persons to nothing more than a means of profit enslaves man, leads to idolizing money, and contributes to the spread of atheism. “You cannot serve God and mammon.” (CCC 2424)

I wonder whether Mr. Beck would say that the Catechism of the Catholic Church thinks that cronyism is capitalism. Who approved that book? … Oh, yeah. John Paul II.

In fact, none of this is new at all. There is a consistent teaching on these points, in which pope after pope, and document after document, have all said the same thing, going back to Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum. Leo XIII was the first pope to talk about the new challenges posed to the Church by an economy developing out of the Industrial Revolution.

It is beyond my purpose here to go into more detail about those earlier texts. I have, in part, done so here. It is enough to say that the current pope, far from giving us some new and shocking teaching, is simply telling us what the Church has always told us.

And what she tells us is this: Greed is bad. The idolatry of money is bad. If these are the engines which power your economic system, whatever its other virtues, then something has gone amiss, and you do not help the poor. That does not make the pope a commie. It makes him a Catholic.

Maybe Mr. Beck should send his team to teach the Holy Spirit. I’m sure the Holy Spirit has a lot to learn from Mr. Beck.

I Owe My Soul to the Company Store

In Centissimus Annus, John Paul II said that a capitalism that recognized “the positive role of business” was a good capitalism. It is the kind of capitalism that Mr. Beck describes as “let-me-help-you capitalism.”

So you may ask: Is there anywhere in Evangelii Gaudium where Pope Francis speaks of this? I’m glad you asked—because, in fact, there is.

Business is a vocation, and a noble vocation, provided that those engaged in it see themselves challenged by a greater meaning in life; this will enable them truly to serve the common good by striving to increase the goods of this world and to make them accessible to all. (§203)

Why, that sounds just like … let-me-help-you capitalism!

Pope Francis does not need Glenn Beck to teach him anything.

***

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