Mark Binelli rolling stoned on Pope Francis, part trois.

f Mark Binel­li’s claim in Rolling Stoned (here)—that the pope’s cri­tique of “unchecked free-mar­ket cap­i­tal­ism” in Evan­gelii Gaudi­um is the “most aston­ish­ing” aspect of his papa­cy thus far—not much need be said in this post. I had at first thought to write a review of the bulk of Catholic social teach­ing to help out Mr. Binel­li (for I assure you he reads each word). I blithe­ly thought I could do that in two thou­sand words or less, but it soon began to grow like the blog (I mean blob). So I leave all that for a dif­fer­ent day and a dif­fer­ent series. It is enough, for now, to make just these few notes. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

First, as has been point­ed out by Catholic blog­gers to the point of sleep (and I need more cof­fee too), Pope Fran­cis does not once use the word “cap­i­tal­ism” in Evan­gelii Gaudi­um. (See here for one such post.) It is not there. Go to the Vat­i­can Web site. Find the text. Search the text. Seek and ye shall not find. Search as oft and deep as ye shall like; it is not there.

In fact, the phrase “unfet­tered cap­i­tal­ism” does not come from Fran­cis, but from this arti­cle in Reuters. The arti­cle was Rush Lim­baugh­’s one and only source for his brazen attack on the pope as a “Marx­ist.” Reuters at least was hon­est enough not to put the words in quo­ta­tion marks. Though he was invit­ed (and he admit­ted as much) to run a key­word search of the doc­u­ment on the Vat­i­can Web site, Mr. Lim­baugh would not do so. He had his dri­ve-by media arti­cle and he was keep­ing his foot on the gas, no mat­ter the wreck of truth he would make. As a result, a myth has emerged about the object of the pope’s cri­tique; and like all myths, facts do not kill it no mat­ter how oft they are told.

Yet I will repeat: It is not there. The phrase the pope does use is “unbri­dled con­sumerism.” And that is not the same. The pope does not use the word “cap­i­tal­ism” even once, but he uses the word “con­sumerism” three times. Here is one such place in the text:

The great dan­ger in today’s world, per­vaded as it is by [What’s the word?] con­sumerism, is the des­o­la­tion and anguish of a com­pla­cent yet cov­etous heart [That means greed.], the fever­ish pur­suit of friv­o­lous plea­sures, and a blunt­ed con­science. (§2)

Far from being an attack on free mar­kets, this is an attack on the end­less pur­suit of stuff. Greed is well known to be a prob­lem in all economies, at all times, from A to Z, dawn to dusk, north to south, Adam to Armaged­don. The gist of what the pope says here is not that mar­kets are bad, but that greed does not sat­is­fy the human heart and blunts the con­science. How­ev­er enam­ored he is of cap­i­tal­ism, I doubt that even Mr. Lim­baugh would deny that greed is a sin.

And an attack on greed is far from new; popes have been attack­ing greed since there have been popes. Fran­cis calls it “the idol­a­try of mon­ey.” To say that it is a sin is part of some­thing called Chris­tian­i­ty. Mr. Binel­li may have heard of it: “The love of mon­ey is the root of all evil” (1 Tim. 6:10). It was St. Paul who said that. “You can­not serve God and mon­ey” (Luke 16:13). It was Christ who said that. You may search for popes who taught some­thing else, if you have such time, but you will not find one.

Sec­ond, even if the pope had used the word “cap­i­tal­ism” (for he does attack “free” mar­kets when they are fueled by greed), oth­er popes have said much hard­er things on the sub­ject. Take, for example—oh, I don’t know—Benedict XVI. When Mr. Binel­li tells us that the new pope’s attack on “unchecked free-mar­ket cap­i­tal­ism” is “aston­ish­ing,” he seems to want us to believe that the old pope was as cap­i­tal­ist as Mr. Lim­baugh him­self; yea, even Ayn Rand and John Galt and the Broth­ers Koch and the vast oil lob­by that fueled the Bush years and burned the poor and sent storms into the Gulf. But Mr. Binel­li should take one more look (if not his first) at these words:

[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”—[Watch this, now.]—“an unreg­u­lated finan­cial cap­i­tal­ism.

Did you catch that, Mr. Binel­li? Pope Bene­dict XVI—the dour, night­mar­ish Fred­dy Krueger of Catholi­cism, who will slash you as you sleep and steal mites from pious crones—blasts “inequal­i­ty between rich and poor.” He says that “unreg­u­lat­ed finan­cial cap­i­tal­ism” is “self­ish.” How—oh, I don’t know—aston­ish­ing! That sounds so very much like … Fran­cis! Why did Stoned not seek its muse to sing the praise of Bene­dict? Were all of the nine dumb that day?

Third, no pope—not Fran­cis, not Bene­dict, nor any pope before—ever attacks cap­i­tal­ism per se. Rather, what they attack is cap­i­tal­ism unchecked by our moral oblig­a­tion to the poor. What they attack is cap­i­tal­ism as a path to the get­ting of more and more stuff. The Cat­e­chism puts it well; per­haps as an act of char­i­ty, or penance, one should send this to Stoned.

A the­ory that makes prof­it the exclu­sive norm and ulti­mate end of eco­nomic activ­ity is moral­ly unac­cept­able. The”—[Note.]—“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. [Strong words.] Every prac­tice that reduces per­sons to noth­ing more than a means of prof­it enslaves man, leads to”—[Watch now.]—“idol­iz­ing mon­ey, and con­tributes to the spread of athe­ism. “You can­not serve God and mam­mon. (CCC 2424)

It sounds like our fuzzy new pope might have writ all of that. Odd, then, to find it in the author­i­ta­tive source for what the Church has always taught! How could that be, and Stoned not know?

Fourth, the attack on “unchecked” cap­i­tal­ism does not mean, as many fear on the right and hope on the left, that the Church—or some pope—is for social­ism or Marx­ism. (As though the pope thinks that reli­gion is “the opi­ate of the Mass­es.”) The Cat­e­chism goes on to say:

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)

Take out your red pen and mark this. Score it thrice and put stars in the mar­gin. The Church has always reject­ed both social­ism and “unfet­tered” cap­i­tal­ism. What the pope says is not any dif­fer­ent from what the Church has always said. The Fran­cis of Mr. Binel­li’s day­dreams, no less than the pre­vi­ous popes of his night­mares, has called Marx­ism an “opi­ate” that “does not allow the peo­ple to progress.” (See this arti­cle for the source.)

Fifth, the Church’s social teach­ing in this regard—that both social­ism and unchecked cap­i­tal­ism are evils to avoid—has been the same since Pope Leo XIII first wrote on the top­ic, in Rerum Novarum, in 1891. In that encycli­cal, Leo called social­ism a form of rob­bery. It is “man­i­fest­ly against jus­tice,” he says. “For every man has by nature the right to pos­sess prop­er­ty as his” (§6).

At the same time, says Leo, we all have the duty to care for the poor and to not gath­er wealth at the expense of oth­ers. “To mis­use men,” he says, “as though they were things in the pur­suit of gain … is tru­ly shame­ful and inhu­man.” An employ­er’s “great and prin­ci­ple duty is to give every one what is just” (§20). Moreover—and this is a key pas­sage:

[T]he rich should trem­ble at the teach­ings of Jesus Christ. [The new pope has said noth­ing as strong as that.] [A] most strict account should be giv­en to the supreme Judge for all we pos­sess. … It is one thing to have a right to the pos­ses­sion of mon­ey and anoth­er to have a right to use mon­ey as one wills. (§22)

Sixth, all this has been the teach­ing, not once changed, of every pope who has tak­en up the ques­tion since Leo XIII. It was the teach­ing of Pius XI (here); of John XXIII (here and here); of the Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil (here and here); of Paul VI (here, here, and here); of John Paul II (here, here, and here); of Bene­dict XVI (here); and now of Fran­cis (here).

Those who know Catholic social teach­ing like they should know that the Church favors nei­ther Marx­ism nor cap­i­tal­ism, but instead the “third way” of dis­trib­utism. Leo XIII and his suc­ces­sors have set forth the prin­ci­ples of it at great length and detail. Dis­trib­utism is a scan­dal to both right and left, who insist on think­ing in the false dichoto­my of cap­i­tal­ism vs. social­ism. It is a scan­dal to those who want to paint Dorothy Day as a com­mu­nist, although she was not. And it is a scan­dal to those who want to paint a pic­ture of Fran­cis as some­how “aston­ish­ing­ly” at odds with his pre­de­ces­sor; which he too is not.