Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome IV: A counterblast to Rush Limbaugh on Evangelii Gaudium 54.

o there I was, folks, mind­ing my own busi­ness, check­ing my Face­book on the Wednes­day before Thanks­giv­ing. And I see a sta­tus update from Mark Shea to the effect that Rush Lim­baugh has attacked a sin­gle sec­tion of Evan­gelii Gaudi­um (here) and called Pope Fran­cis a Marx­ist. All this is dropped on Catholics right before a long hol­i­day week­end. All this is dropped on Catholics before most of us have had a chance to read and digest all of what the pope has writ­ten. It is a long text, you know. Per­haps the hope is that enough time will have gone by before we can respond intel­li­gent­ly, and thus the accu­sa­tion will have been fixed in the Pub­lick Mind: The pope is a Marx­ist. Rush Lim­baugh has joined the dri­ve-bys.

I actu­al­ly had the inten­tion of read­ing the full text of the pope’s words over Thanks­giv­ing so that I could write about themes larg­er than these sil­ly side-argu­ments about Marx­ism. And I will do that; but now, thanks to Mr. Lim­baugh and his dri­ve-by ten­den­cies, there’s a mess to be cleaned up first. But we will get through this, folks. Hang with me. I’ll be back after the obscene prof­it break.

You Scream from Behind your golden eib microphone

Okay, folks, we’re back. Now, what Mr. Lim­baugh had to say was long, so I’m going to be tak­ing out the key parts of it and giv­ing my own run­ning response. But as you will see, it’s sad—because he makes it very clear that he does not grasp Catholic social teach­ing. Nor (appar­ent­ly) did he read the pope’s words in their orig­i­nal con­text. In fact, he does not seem to have read them at all. At the bot­tom of the tran­script, he cites a sin­gle arti­cle from The Wash­ing­ton Post. So this was all very thor­ough show prep on Mr. Lim­baugh­’s part. His stack of stuff has grown small. [The link has appar­ent­ly been removed from Lim­baugh­’s site—SEA, 9/14/19.]

Here’s how he began:

You know, the pope, Pope Francis—this is astounding—has issued an offi­cial papal procla­ma­tion, and it’s sad. It’s actu­al­ly unbe­liev­able. The pope has writ­ten, in part, about the utter evils of cap­i­tal­ism.

STOP THE QUOTE!

Actu­al­ly, if you turn to the pas­sage in ques­tion, the Holy Father does not use the word “cap­i­tal­ism” once. Not once. (Check me out, if you like. It’s called a key­word search. You can go to the link above and search the whole text. I looked for it; can’t find it.) Here is what the pope does say:

[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. (§54)

So Fran­cis is talk­ing about trick­le-down specif­i­cal­ly, not cap­i­tal­ism more broad­ly under­stood. Before I am accused of split­ting hairs here, it is worth point­ing out that trick­le-down is a rel­a­tive­ly recent sub­set of cap­i­tal­ist the­o­ry, dat­ing to the 1980s. All it has to do with is the idea that tax cuts for busi­ness­es and the rich will cre­ate a larg­er flow of pri­vate cap­i­tal that will, in the end, ben­e­fit the poor. Dr. Thomas Sow­ell, in a pub­li­ca­tion for the Hoover Insti­tute, says that high­er tax­es reduces the prof­it motive, and there­by impedes the flow of mon­ey in a pri­vate enter­prise econ­o­my. That is to say, trick­le-down is not itself cap­i­tal­ism, but instead a polit­i­cal the­o­ry about the ben­e­fit of tax cuts, with­in the con­text of an econ­o­my that is already cap­i­tal­ist.

To return to Mr. Lim­baugh:

Up until this, I have to tell you, I was admir­ing the man. I thought he was going a lit­tle over­board with the com­mon-man touch, and I thought there might have been a lit­tle bit of PR involved there. But nev­er­the­less I was will­ing to cut him some slack.

STOP THE QUOTE!!

Real­ly, folks, I won­der whether Mr. Lim­baugh under­stands what a pope is. First of all, the “com­mon-man touch” is not PR but per­son­al­i­ty. More importantly—and the rea­son I point this out—the pope is not a politi­cian. He is the spir­i­tu­al leader of Catholics. But so much of what is said about Fran­cis is an attempt to inter­pret his words with­in the polit­i­cal con­text of lib­er­al vs. con­ser­v­a­tive. That is not the con­text in which they should be under­stood. Catholi­cism tran­scends polit­i­cal debates, and you will not under­stand it until you for­go the habit of talk­ing about it polit­i­cal­ly:

“If it weren’t for cap­i­tal­ism, I don’t know where the Catholic Church would be.”

STOP THE QUOTE!!!

Folks, the his­tor­i­cal igno­rance in this remark is stun­ning. Cap­i­tal­ism has been around for only ten, maybe fif­teen, per­cent the length of time the Catholic Church has. The word cap­i­tal­ism was not coined, even, until the mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, accord­ing to the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary. The Catholic Church has been around, by con­trast, for two thou­sand years. As I recall, it got by quite well under feu­dal­ism.

“I got­ta be very care­ful,” Mr. Lim­baugh said. “I have been numer­ous times to the Vat­i­can. It would­n’t exist with­out tons of mon­ey.”

STOP THE QUOTE!!!!

Where does this idea come from, that the mon­ey with which to build grand places can only exist in a cap­i­tal­ist econ­o­my? Where does this idea come from, that with­out a cap­i­tal­ist econ­o­my all the mon­ey will dry up and peo­ple will have to barter in cows or some­thing?

This,” Mr. Lim­baugh cried,

is just pure Marx­ism com­ing out of the mouth of the pope. Unfet­tered cap­i­tal­ism? That does­n’t exist any­where. Unfet­tered cap­i­tal­ism is a lib­er­al social­ist phrase to describe the Unit­ed States.

STOP THE QUOTE!!!!!

Yes, but the pope does not use that phrase at all. Not one time. Check it out; it’s called a key­word search. I looked for it; can’t find it. “Unfet­tered cap­i­tal­ism” is the (false) para­phrase of Fran­cis found in the dri­ve-by media. Mr. Lim­baugh, who seems to have become a dri­ve-by, will now read only the dri­ve-bys. That’s what dri­ve-bys do: They read each oth­er, and make a mess of truth.

The pope’s words were “trick­le-down the­o­ries which [some believe] will inevitably suc­ceed.” Now, there has been a lot of debate in the blo­gos­phere over whether the bet­ter trans­la­tion is “inevitably” or “by them­selves.” But I have not found that debate very pro­duc­tive. The near-fever­ish attempt to cry “But the pope was mis­trans­lat­ed!” only accepts the premise that the pope was attack­ing cap­i­tal­ism in the first place. Mr. Lim­baugh real­ly should learn not to accept the premise.

you cling to the things they sold you

But the pope attacked no such thing. Rather—and this is very clear if you read ahead a mere one section—he attacked the idol­a­try of mon­ey:

One cause of this sit­u­a­tion is found in our rela­tion­ship with mon­ey, since we calm­ly accept its domin­ion over our­selves and our soci­eties. The cur­rent finan­cial cri­sis can make us over­look the fact that it orig­i­nat­ed in a pro­found human cri­sis: the denial of the pri­ma­cy of the human per­son! 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.

For Catholics, a papal attack on the idol­a­try of mon­ey is far from new; popes have been attack­ing the idol­a­try of mon­ey since there have been popes. Bene­dict XVI did the same in Car­i­tas in Ver­i­tate.

On his show, Mr. Lim­baugh expressed his high admi­ra­tion for John Paul II, the pope who helped to defeat com­mu­nism. But while John Paul II was defeat­ing com­mu­nism, he was also pro­mul­gat­ing the 1994 Cat­e­chism, which says this:

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)

And hav­ing said that, the Cat­e­chism goes on in its very next para­graph to attack Marx­ism:

The Church has reject­ed the total­i­tar­i­an and athe­is­tic ide­olo­gies asso­ci­at­ed in mod­ern times with “com­mu­nism” or “social­ism.” She has like­wise refused to accept, in the prac­tice of  “cap­i­tal­ism,” indi­vid­u­al­ism and the absolute pri­ma­cy of the law of the mar­ket­place over human labor. (CCC 2425)

In oth­er words, an attack on “absolute” cap­i­tal­ism is not the same thing as a defense of Marx­ism. The Church rejects both. Here is John Paul II again, in Cen­tisimus Annus:

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. … 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. (CA 42)

So, while accept­ing the pos­i­tive role of busi­ness, John Paul II also attacks any cap­i­tal­ism which does not oper­ate with­in eth­i­cal bound­aries. And though he attacks the idol­a­try of mon­ey, Pope Fran­cis also prais­es the pos­i­tive role of busi­ness:

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. (EG 203)

The point is this—this is impor­tant to under­stand: The pope’s words about the “idol­a­try of mon­ey” can­not be under­stood with­in an ide­o­log­i­cal or dual­is­tic pol­i­tics of Cap­i­tal­ism vs. Marx­ism. Instead, they must be under­stood with­in the frame­work of the teach­ing of the Church about ethics and our respon­si­bil­i­ty to the poor. The pope says what the Church has always said.

Mr. Lim­baugh is at pains to point out that he is not Catholic but that he admires it and has often want­ed to learn more about it. He should. If he did, he would know that the pope’s words about the econ­o­my are not polit­i­cal. He would know that they are con­sis­tent with the Church’s social doc­trine on the mod­ern econ­o­my, dat­ing at least as far back as Leo XII­I’s 1891 encycli­cal Rerum Novarum. If Mr. Lim­baugh had read Evan­gelii Gaudi­um itself, rather than a sin­gle dri­ve-by arti­cle about it, he would also know that Pope Fran­cis went out of his way to say that he was not rec­om­mend­ing a par­tic­u­lar eco­nom­ic sys­tem to coun­tries. Rather, he was describ­ing obsta­cles to evan­ge­liza­tion, as well as the eth­i­cal prin­ci­ples to which all eco­nom­ic sys­tems are bound.

Far from being  Marx­ist, in fact, Pope Fran­cis says that Marx­ism “par­a­lyzes man [and] is an opi­ate that makes him a con­formist [but] does not allow him to progress.” He attacks both Marx­ism and trick­le-down.

the rich declare themselves poor

In this arti­cle on the Catholic League Web site, Bill Dono­hue takes to task a pho­ny Catholic group, fund­ed by George Soros, that attacked Mr. Lim­baugh for his com­ments about the pope. Mr. Dono­hue was right to do so. If it was wrong of Mr. Lim­baugh to describe the pope as Marx­ist, it is equal­ly wrong for “Catholics in Alliance for the Com­mon Good” to defend Fran­cis for the wrong rea­sons. Mr. Lim­baugh is wrong, not because Marx­ism is a good thing, but because the pope is not a Marx­ist. Any defense of the pope, and any crit­i­cism, is wrong if it is meant in the con­text of lib­er­al vs. con­ser­v­a­tive. Catholi­cism tran­scends such cat­e­gories; its teachings—which the pope is con­sis­tent with—are premised on eth­i­cal cat­e­gories, not polit­i­cal ones.

That is the rea­son this series on Pope Fran­cis Derange­ment Syn­drome exists. It is impor­tant for Catholics to defend the pope, but for the right rea­sons. Pope Fran­cis Derange­ment Syn­drome is a phe­nom­e­non of both con­ser­v­a­tives who fear that the pope is lib­er­al and lib­er­als who dream in vain that the pope is one of them.

He is not. He is Catholic. To attempt to inter­pret the pope’s words polit­i­cal­ly, if in praise or if in blame, is an abuse of the Vic­ar of Christ.