{"id":977,"date":"2014-01-08T13:05:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-08T13:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/01\/the-pope-the-bible-and-trickle-down-economics.html"},"modified":"2014-01-08T13:05:00","modified_gmt":"2014-01-08T13:05:00","slug":"the-pope-the-bible-and-trickle-down-economics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/01\/the-pope-the-bible-and-trickle-down-economics.html","title":{"rendered":"The Pope, the Bible and Trickle-Down Economics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
Several weeks ago, conservative politicians and pundits paused from brutalizing the interests of poor Americans long enough to attack Pope Francis for daring to criticize certain aspects of the prevailing economic order in his address,\u00a0Evangelii Gaudium<\/em>\u00a0(\u201cThe Joy of the Gospel\u201d). He charged it with being \u201cunjust at its root\u201d and \u201cincapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor\u2026 as though all this were someone else\u2019s responsibility. We know that talking about responsibility for your neighbor is always a deal-breaker for the libertarian crowd. But what really raised conservatives\u2019 blood pressure, libertarian or not, was the pope\u2019s read of trickle-down economics. He declared, \u201cSome 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 in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and na\u00efve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
Because a dunce cap would not fit over the pontiff\u2019s miter, his angry critics chose to declare his words foolish instead. Fox News\u2019 Andrew Napolitano condemned the pope\u2019s statements as \u201cwide of the mark.\u201d The radio comedian, Rush Limbaugh, carped, \u201che [the pope] doesn\u2019t know what he\u2019s talking about when it comes to capitalism and socialism.\u201d One Catholic leader called him \u201cthe Joe Biden of our era.\u201d Conservative congressional budget guru Paul Ryan echoed Limbaugh\u2019s dismissal of the pope as clueless, albeit in nicer terms. \u201cThe guy is from Argentina,\u201d said Ryan. \u201cThey haven\u2019t had real capitalism in Argentina.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
However, with the approach of the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty which, by the way, conservatives have always staunchly opposed, they are eager to keep their opposition to the social safety net out of the spotlight. So some of them have softened their public tone by claiming to share the pope\u2019s deep concern for the poor. Conservative leaders like Ryan and Newt Gingrich have publicly lauded the pope for his stand against poverty. Ryan praised him for \u201cbreathing new life into the fight against poverty,\u201d despite being a foremost advocate of the economic policies the pope so passionately targeted. However, what Ryan, Gingrich or any conservative politician will not praise is the pope\u2019s stance against the structural forces that cause and maintain poverty. And chief among them, according to the pope, is trickle-down economics.<\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Several weeks ago, conservative politicians and pundits paused from brutalizing the interests of poor Americans long enough to attack Pope Francis for daring to criticize certain aspects of the prevailing economic order in his address,\u00a0Evangelii Gaudium\u00a0(\u201cThe Joy of the Gospel\u201d). He charged it with being \u201cunjust at its root\u201d and \u201cincapable of feeling compassion at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Pope, the Bible and Trickle-Down Economics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Several weeks ago, conservative politicians and pundits paused from brutalizing the interests of poor Americans long enough to attack Pope Francis for\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/01\/the-pope-the-bible-and-trickle-down-economics.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" 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