Cardinal Maradiaga Slams Free Market Libertarianism:
'This Economy Kills'
David Gibson ("The Huffington Post," June 4, 2014)
Washington - Taking direct aim at libertarian policies promoted by many
American conservatives, the Honduran cardinal who is one of Pope Francis’ top
advisers said Tuesday (June 3) that today’s free market system is “a new
idol” that is increasing inequality and excluding the poor.
“This economy kills,” said Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, quoting
Francis frequently in a speech delivered at a conference on Catholicism and
libertarianism held a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol.
The pope, Maradiaga said, grew up in Argentina and “has a profound
knowledge of the life of the poor.” That is why, he said, Francis continues to
insist that “the elimination of the structural causes for poverty is a matter
of urgency that can no longer be postponed.”
“The hungry or sick child of the poor cannot wait,” the cardinal said.
Maradiaga, who heads a kitchen cabinet of eight cardinals from around the
world that Francis established to advise him shortly after his election last
year, also argued that personal charity was insufficient to solve global
problems.
“Solidarity is more than a few sporadic acts of generosity,” he said.
Instead, he said, solidarity with the poor, as envisioned by Catholic
social teaching, calls for “dealing with the structural causes of poverty and
injustice.” The cardinal stressed that the church “by no means despises the
rich,” and he said Francis “is also not against the efforts of business to
increase the goods of the earth.”
“The basic condition, however, is that it serves the common good,” he
said.
A charismatic churchman who speaks fluent English, Maradiaga was animated
in his criticism of the effects of today’s free market capitalism and he
peppered his remarks with digs at economic conservatives.
Trickle-down economics, he said, is “a deception,” and he declared that
the “invisible hand” of the free market — the famous theory advanced by the
18th-century philosopher Adam Smith — was instead being used as a cruel
trick to exploit the poor.
Maradiaga at one point brushed aside the fierce criticism that many
conservatives have leveled at Francis by noting that “many of these
libertarianists do not read the social doctrine of the church.”
“But now they are trembling before the book of Piketty,” he said with a
laugh, referring to the controversial best-seller on the wealth gap by the
French economist Thomas Piketty. “At least it is making them think,” he
added.
Maradiaga was the keynote speaker at the conference, called “Erroneous
Autonomy: The Catholic Case Against Libertarianism.”
The daylong seminar waded deep into the contentious American political
debate over the economy and the role of government, and it showed once again
how the moral implications of that debate are playing out most vividly in the
Catholic Church.
Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who chairs the House Budget Committee,
is a Catholic who is also his party’s champion for budget cuts for social
programs, cuts that are opposed by the church hierarchy. He is also a
disciple of the libertarian philosopher Ayn Rand.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., while not a Catholic, is the GOP’s most prominent
exponent of libertarian ideas and is being widely touted as a leading
candidate for his party’s presidential nomination in 2016 — a race that
increasingly looks as though it will serve as a national referendum on
libertarian
ideas.
Tuesday’s conference was sponsored by Catholic University’s Institute for
Policy Research & Catholic Studies, and the speakers — bishops and
theologians, as well as pundits such as Mark Shields and academics like John
DiIulio — were almost universally antagonistic to free market libertarianism.
Yet it was CUA’s own business school that last year sparked a controversy
by accepting $1 million from the foundation of Charles Koch, a billionaire
industrialist who is an influential supporter of libertarian-style policies.
Critics accused the university of taking money to promote ideas that are
opposed to Catholic social teaching. University officials rebuffed those
charges, joined by many bishops and conservative Catholics who have become
prominent advocates of the idea that Catholicism and libertarianism can coexist
or even support each other.
That notion, however, found little backing and much opposition at Tuesday’s
sessions.
Bishop Blase Cupich of Spokane, Wash., one of the U.S. hierarchy’s more
prominent champions of Catholic social teaching, warned that growing
inequality is creating “a powder keg that is as dangerous as the environmental
crisis the world is facing today.”
Cupich said political leaders cannot wage this debate “from the 30,000-foot
level of ideas” but must take into account the real-life implications of
policies as they play out on the ground. “Reality,” he said, quoting
Francis, “is greater than ideas.”
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