Aside to Rob Kall: Dante also famously portrays the devil as representing the ultimate depths of coldness -- in short, Dante's devil is the prototype of your cold-hearted psychopaths.
Now, Pope Francis has shown no evidence of understanding economic theory -- as conservative commentators have correctly pointed out.
In this respect, Pope Francis can be described as the Roman Catholic Church's equivalent of Rush Limbaugh. The difference between those two guys is that Pope Francis may be deeply motivated by love of his fellow human persons -- but Rush Limbaugh, not so much.
In light of Pope Francis's veneration of the church's Tradition, what resources of thought does he have available to him to formulate a possible encyclical about economic matters today?
I would suggest that he should look to the church's teaching about the Second Coming of Christ.
If he were to draw of this part of the church's Tradition, he could argue that Catholics today should see themselves as helping God and Christ by advancing the spirit of the Second Coming on this earth today.
But the spirit of the Second Coming on the earth today is also the spirit of celebrating the milk and honey of capitalism today.
Basically, capitalism works as an economic system.
But modern forms of representative democracies also tend to work. However, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the rest.
In a similar way, we could also say that capitalism is the worst form of economic system, except for all the rest.
Now, the Roman Catholic Church's Tradition of thought is deeply rooted in European feudalism and its land-based agrarian economic system.
Moreover, Roman Catholic popes in the past have blasted Protestants as well as democracy and capitalism.
As a result, perhaps I am imagining too much of a departure from the old Tradition of popes in blasting everything under the sun in their encyclical letters to practicing Catholics.
Nevertheless, it is perfectly obvious that Americans have never tired of criticizing our American experiment in representative democracy -- or in criticizing our capitalist economic system -- usually without wanting to throw out the baby with the bath water.
It would be refreshing to have Pope Francis mount a carefully considered critique of capitalism without sounding like another Rush Limbaugh.
I know, I know, Rush Limbaugh is a noisy American conservative -- and Pope Francis is a noisy spokesperson for the programmatically conservative Tradition of thought of the Roman Catholic Church.
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