What happened to the daily Wall Street bashing? The market is tanking, the stimulus was a joke, and no one wants to talk about how many jobs will be lost when healthcare and energy become organs of the state. Have you finally run out of stories about how it is all Goldman's fault?

OK class, repeat after me:

Right-wing anti-capitalism is not the same as left-wing anti-capitalism.

For those needing further elaboration:

Right-wing anti-capitalism: see also: reactionism, Heidegger, National Socialism, fascism, paternalism, paleoconservatism, etc.

Only in the US, where our intellectual horizons are limited to pro-redistributionist liberalism and anti-redistributionist liberalism would such an analytic mistake be possible.

/Lesson

The Vatican speaking out about the overprotection of knowledge? Now that's a good one. The Catholic Church hides millions of pages of documents in its library, seeks to elevate those "knowledgeable" on the holocaust and has such a strong history of protecting scientific knowledge and those who seek explanations of our universe. I trust Microsoft and Google alot more than I would trust the Catholic Church.

And every moral decision has an economic consequence. This pope should pay more attention to the disastrous economic (and ecological) consequences of his church's failure to accept contraception as a necessary aspect of modern life. This leaves third world citizens trapped in hopeless poverty.

The poor are bullied by their religious leaders to have children they cannot afford. Women in third world countries who are powerless to say 'no' to their husbands are forced to bear children that the family cannot possibly afford. This pope says that the decision to have sex while practicing birth control is a sin - end of story.

Where is this man's compassion? He is just looking at an alternative power source (rich economic systems) and condemning them. Get rid of the beam from your own eye, sir.

Next on the Factor: the Pinhead in the Pope hat!

Why don't you go and ikuiku yourself?

I was raised Catholic and I am thrilled to finally hear the Pope make a sort of commentary that is nothing if not current and perfectly suited to the current troublesome economic circumstances.

And as for the hysterical oh-so-enlightened hags that go after all things Catholic in a knee jerk fashion as a matter of dogma, they should all go and ikuiku themselves as well.

It is worth remembering that the Catholic Church has been around for a few years. And that it has a better institutional memory than, say, any institution in the United States.

Which is to say that the Popes were around when the modern political philosophy of Liberalism first arose -- as the primary ideological backer of modern capitalism. Since at least the mid-nineteenth century, the Church has stood in opposition to both socialism and liberal (or as we say nowadays, "neoliberal") capitalism.

Pope Benedict's encyclical against the excesses of capitalism may be better argued than some Church documents, but it is nothing particularly new -- and, welcome as it may be, it is definitely not "liberal" in any meaningful sense of the word.

The only question that cries out for an answer is the one that Max Weber took on with at best mixed success a century ago: why is it that American Christianity, for a long time alone of all the Christianities of the world, made peace with the "greed is good," individualistic economic philosophy of capitalism?

If Jesus were alive today he would have some very harsh words to say to Republicans' "Every man for himself" philosophy.

Republicans worship money and control and the paint themselves as Christians with one thing in mind, to use the Bible as a means to control human behavior that is contrary to Republican values. This is about as far from Christianity as one can get.

The GOP negative reaction to healthcare reform illustrates this perfectly.

"rigid assertion of the right to intellectual property, especially in the field of health care.""

So long as it aint anything with stem cells. They have souls.

What a joke.. The Catholic Church... lecturing anyone about anything is a joke.

The only wealth they spread around is when they pay off families in Ireland to keep their mouths shut about what happened to Timmy.

gay rights or womans right to choose.

the Catholic Church comes down hard on priestly pedophilia I'll give a shit what they think is moral.

I agree with fnwtvr: "This just isn't anything new in Catholicism." I'm no longer practicing, but grew up a Catholic in southern Africa in the 80's. Perhaps this is a function of a developing world setting, but priests and nuns I knew in the townships and rural areas were all admirable for their lack of materialism and took seriously their vow of poverty. Politically, the Church also always stood up for the poor and disenfranchised. As a middle class child in a very poor country, the story about it being harder for a rich man to get into heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, was always rather terrifying.

Perhaps the more interesting question here is: how is it that in the US the Catholic church appears to be so right wing compared with the Church in other parts of the world, especially perhaps the developing world? For example, I don't recall Pope John Paul's trenchant criticism of the war in Iraq gaining much traction over here.... And when the Church is publicly politically active, deeply conservative anti-abortion sentiments appear to dominate the airspace.

I would love to hear other readers' thoughts on this, and wonder if any other non-US people have been wondering whether more left-leaning US Catholics (if they exist) will become more public and vocal?

It sure isn't going to be anyone in THIS country.

Wow -- who would have thought these statements would have come from a pope? They make perfect sense for me, except for the hard part: Figuring out how to put the sentiments into action.

I can already hear the shouts of "socialist!" and "communist!" against what he's saying. But I think his message transcends those 20th-century labels, as such labels were never designed to be applied to a global economic structure.

The challenge to our current model of capitalism is what happens when expansions of trade markets are no longer possible. We're running low on all of our resources, including georgraphical ones. In addition to evening out areas economically, we have to find ways to raise standards of living while collectively decelerating growth rates.