Religion & Liberty Online

What Should a Pope Say About Capitalism?

2716popefrancis_00000001928Pope Francis’ recent comments about economics has raised concerns among conservatives and libertarians. But at National Review, James Pethokoukis says free marketeers shouldn’t take the critique so personally:

If you are a free marketeer offended by Pope Francis’s Evangelii Gaudium (“The Joy of the Gospel”) — in which he critiqued “deified” market capitalism and attacked income inequality — ask yourself: What should the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church say about economics in 2013? Should he take a victory lap over free enterprise’s defeat of Communism as if it were 1993?

[. . .]

Certainly now is not a time for “end of history” triumphalism that fails to recognize every human construct is imperfect and generates tradeoffs. We live in a fallen world. Such understanding is actually crucial to conservatism. Leave utopianism through “smarter policy” to the Left. Pro-market advocates need to consider that faster GDP growth may be necessary but not sufficient, that a rising tide may not lift all boats if accelerating automation means a vast swath of workers face unemployment or stagnant wages, as some economists on the left and right warn.

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Joe Carter

Joe Carter is a Senior Editor at the Acton Institute. Joe also serves as an editor at the The Gospel Coalition, a communications specialist for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, and as an adjunct professor of journalism at Patrick Henry College. He is the editor of the NIV Lifehacks Bible and co-author of How to Argue like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History's Greatest Communicator (Crossway).