Truth be told: Frank needs no lawyers to defend himself from the unfair portraiture done of him such as that lately by Adam. He can speak for himself, which he will shortly.
Adam is not your original ancestor of Genesis 1, just a modern relative in 2014. His name is Adam Shaw, a News Editor for FoxNews.com. And Frank, you may have guessed, is your current Pope – the utterly frank and ever-news-hugging head of the Catholic Church.
Adam is young and Catholic and very political. If you haven’t ever read or viewed FoxNews at any time before, do so now and agree that the erudite youngster is quintessentially Catholic Right – a label unfortunately one has to use to cut a lengthy discourse short.
He believes that Frank is rather unsympathetic to his plight, even snubbing and deriding his “struggle for prosperity” which in former times, he claims, the Church now headed by Frank used to quite strongly support.
Says Adam: “The Church has traditionally understood and encouraged this aspiration [for prosperity]. Unfortunately, this pope does not, possibly due to his career in bureaucracy that unusually contains zero experience at parish level, in which he would have at least had experience bringing in money.” Adam, writer and editor, do you really think this to be factual? You do have fact-checkers at FoxNews: career in bureaucracy, zero experience at parish level, no experience in bringing in money?
Or aren’t you merely overly resentful of Frank’s criticisms of capitalism as practiced now with all the harm it does to so many? You don’t like him doubting the truth and effectiveness of the trickle-down theory and the unfree-ness of the free market economy. You don’t quite believe him when he says he is not a Marxist because you had heard him say he knows many good Marxists. You then suspect he may be a secret admirer of many failed Latin American socialist experiments. You don’t seem far from saying that the present Pope is not a Catholic at all.
Your literary talents like those of [probably your Guru] George Will have made you look askance at Frank’s rejection of the Right as if, thereby, it constituted an identification with the Left. Why are you unable to see that he may be neither Left nor Right nor Center but quite simply and profoundly Catholic Social Thought?
Here he is in some of the lines you referred to. First of all, Adam, I don’t think it’s so much that Frank wants to snub the rich whose contributions you insist his church, your church, does not tire of receiving till now – but he wants you and all to go to the poor first: “[The Church] has to go forth to everyone without exception. But to whom should she go first? When we read the Gospel we find a clear indication: not so much our friends and wealthy neighbours, but above all the poor and the sick, those who are usually despised and overlooked, ‘those who cannot repay you’ (Lk 14:14). There can be no room for doubt or for explanations which weaken so clear a message.” (From the lengthy letter of Frank, “Joy of the Gospel”)
Secondly, Frank does not claim to speak as an expert economist or sociologist nor even as an expert theologian, believe it or not. He merely cautions that we may “not be well served by a purely sociological analysis which would aim to embrace all of reality by employing an allegedly neutral and clinical method.”
He says that what he “would like to propose is something much more in the line of an evangelical discernment. It is the approach of a missionary disciple, an approach ‘nourished by the light and strength of the Holy Spirit’”. That’s frankly Frank.
“It is not the task of the Pope,” this Pope says, “to offer a detailed and complete analysis of contemporary reality, but I do exhort all the communities to an ‘ever watchful scrutiny of the signs of the times’. This is in fact a grave responsibility, since certain present realities, unless effectively dealt with, are capable of setting off processes of dehumanization which would then be hard to reverse.”
Ah, the signs of the times. Adam says he’s a Catholic in his 20s, recently married and with a baby. He writes: “I was never much interested in making money when I was single; I was happy to have enough to pay my rent, with some left over for a few books and a season ticket to my soccer club. But like millions of fathers, I am now working hard — not just to put food on the table, but to give my wife and child as comfortable and secure a life as I can.” And now he thinks he has a Pope who derides his struggle for prosperity.
Is that true, Frank? Could you repeat yourself? What are the signs of the times you refer to?
Frank says: “In our time humanity is experiencing a turning-point in its history, as we can see from the advances being made in so many fields. We can only praise the steps being taken to improve people’s welfare in areas such as health care, education and communications. At the same time we have to remember that the majority of our contemporaries are barely living from day to day, with dire consequences. A number of diseases are spreading.
“The hearts of many people are gripped by fear and desperation, even in the so-called rich countries. The joy of living frequently fades, lack of respect for others and violence are on the rise, and inequality is increasingly evident. It is a struggle to live and, often, to live with precious little dignity. This epochal change has been set in motion by the enormous qualitative, quantitative, rapid and cumulative advances occurring in the sciences and in technology, and by their instant application in different areas of nature and of life. We are in an age of knowledge and information, which has led to new and often anonymous kinds of power.”
Well, then, what now? Frank says: “No to an economy of exclusion!
“Just as the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say ‘thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills.” This Pope surely knows how to make news.
He frankly asks the Editor of FoxNews: “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.” Adam is quite irked by this.
Adam says: “Francis has no time for nuance. Like his vague, open-to-every-interpretation interviews, he blunders in, slamming the market and its adherents without any clarification. He goes on to say that trust in the free market ‘has never been confirmed by the facts,’ and that those who do trust in it express ‘a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power,’ which is ironic considering his crude and naïve trust in the goodness of politicians to redistribute wealth.” Wow, Adam, how could you jump so quickly to that conclusion?
Frank meantime keeps at it, and this is what he means: “We have created a ‘throw away’ 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.”
But Adam really thinks this Pope from down south is a secret defender of Latin American state socialism. Certain biases out of FoxNews are really hard to exorcise. So, sardonically Adam asks: “Please, your Holiness, tell me again about the raging prosperity of socialist Latin American countries?” I did not hear Frank say it but maybe he could have said, “Touché!”
But he did say: “I encourage financial experts and political leaders to ponder the words of one of the sages of antiquity: ‘Not to share one’s wealth with the poor is to steal from them and to take away their livelihood. It is not our own goods which we hold, but theirs’. (Saint John Chrysostom, De Lazaro Concio, II, 6: PG 48, 992D.)
“Money must serve, not rule! The Pope loves everyone, rich and poor alike, but he is obliged in the name of Christ to remind all that the rich must help, respect and promote the poor. I exhort you to generous solidarity and to the return of economics and finance to an ethical approach which favours human beings.”
More could be said, but here the Gardener rests.
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