Catholic World News
October 14, 2016
Pope Francis questions genetically-modified crops, urges action to combat climate change
Pope Francis contrasted the “wisdom of rural communities” with “the logic of consumerism and production at any cost, a logic that, cloaked in good justifications, such as the increasing population, is in reality aimed solely at the increase of profit….. a model of production that is entirely to the advantage of a limited group and a tiny portion of the world population. Let us remember that it is a model which, despite all its science, allows around eight hundred million people to continue to go hungry.”
In reality:
“The first examples of capitalism appeared in the great Catholic monasteries”, about the ninth century. (John Gilchrist, The Church and Economic Activity in the Middle Ages, St Martin’s Press 1969, I; cf. The Victory of Reason, Rodney Stark, Random House, 2005, p xii, 55-58).
St John Paul II affirmed categorically his support for the market economy:
‘If by "capitalism" is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a "business economy", "market economy" or simply "free economy".’ [Centesimus Annus #42, 1991].
The world’s next great leap forward
Towards the end of poverty
Nearly 1 billion people have been taken out of extreme poverty in 20 years. The world should aim to do the same again
Jun 1st 2013
“Much of world poverty has in fact been reduced or alleviated, as a recent essay in The Economist has shown. Christians often seem not to know that this change has happened or why it happened.”
“….the world has lately been making extraordinary progress in lifting people out of extreme poverty. Between 1990 and 2010, their number fell by half as a share of the total population in developing countries, from 43% to 21%—a reduction of almost 1 billion people.”
http://tinyurl.com/ldjt6go
The fact is that Catholic philosophy and theology, based on reason and faith, enabled and nurtured the birth of free enterprise.
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