‘When it comes to economics, Pope Francis is an ignorant demagogue’: Donald R. McClarey

 

• Donald R. McClarey  April 13, 2021

The Pope never fails to attempt to make the crudest ideological arguments:

 

Pope Francis on Sunday argued that having received mercy, Jesus’ apostles became merciful themselves, sharing ownership over everything, calling such an arrangement “not communism, but pure Christianity.”

“The Acts of the Apostles relate that ‘no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.’ This is not communism, but pure Christianity,” he said.

Go here to read the rest.  A few thoughts:

 

1. This was done through free will donations not through the coercion of Caesar.
2. Holding goods in common was a brief experiment at Jerusalem, and to a lesser extent among other Christian communities in the first decades after the Crucifixion, and swiftly abandoned, living on only in the convents and monasteries of the clergy.
3. Saint Paul was already noting ill effects from this policy, and the necessity of making amendments to it:  [16] If any of the faithful have widows, let him minister to them, and let not the church be charged: that there may be sufficient for them that are widows indeed. [17] Let the priests that rule well, be esteemed worthy of double honour: especially they who labour in the word and doctrine: [18] For the scripture saith: Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn: and, The labourer is worthy of his reward.  (1 Timothy 5: 16-18)
4. Comparing a brief experiment among a religiously homogeneous and small population to the economic policies of modern day nation states demonstrates that when it comes to economics, Pope Francis is an ignorant demagogue.