Perhaps the Cardinals should wear white...

Telegraph

...and the Pope Red!

We have created new idols. The worship of the golden calf of old (cf. Ex 32:15-34) has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly humane goal.

 In circumstances like these, solidarity, which is the treasure of the poor, is often considered counterproductive, opposed to the logic of finance and the economy. While the income of a minority is increasing exponentially, that of the majority is crumbling. This imbalance results from ideologies which uphold the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation, and thus deny the right of control to States, which are themselves charged with providing for the common good. A new, invisible and at times virtual, tyranny is established, one which unilaterally and irremediably imposes its own laws and rules. Moreover, indebtedness and credit distance countries from their real economy and citizens from their real buying power.

These financiers, economists and politicians consider God to be unmanageable, unmanageable even dangerous, because he calls man to his full realization and to independence from any kind of slavery.  In this sense, I encourage the financial experts and the political leaders of your countries to consider the words of Saint John Chrysostom: “Not to share one’s goods with the poor is to rob them and to deprive them of life. It is not our goods that we possess, but theirs”

~Vatican~

The Capitalist reply

Wholly missing from the papal argument is the fact that business expansion, and the attraction of investment therein, is based on profits. Greater profits don’t necessarily guarantee more jobs in existing business and businesses of the future, but you can’t expect those jobs to materialize absent profit.  Profit isn’t what drives poverty, profit is what overcomes poverty.

The short of the matter is that capitalism is the engine of the general betterment of the human condition and profits its essential tool.

George Pieler, Jens Laurson - Forbes