E. Michael Jones: Pope Francis good with economics?

[LaramieHirsch]

I posted this elsewhere, but I'm also interested to read what folks here might have to say about this. 



I just read an article/summary by E. Michael Jones about his new book, Barren Metal.  He stated that it is pretty much a sequel to The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit. 

 There was one part in this article that caught my attention.  I thought it rather peculiar.  Maybe I'm reading it wrong.  But it seems like he supports Pope Francis' economic opinion about capitalism.  In fact, Jones makes it appealing to accept Pope Francis' condemnation about capitalism, and he does this under the premise that pure unleashed capitalism is very destructive: 

http://www.culturewars.com/2014/Strangled.htm

It’s clear that a new wind is blowing from Rome. The pope and Cardinal Rodriguez of Tegucigalpa, his right hand man, are open in their criticism of capitalism, whose pernicious effects are exponentially worse in third-world countries like Honduras. In addition to condemning Capitalism, the pope has also shown himself willing to intervene when he feels that a bishop is not doing his job. The pope’s intervention into the management of the Vatican Bank is one example of what I’m talking about. The case of the Bling Bishop in Germany is another. On October 23, 2103 Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst was suspended from his post as bishop of Limburg for cost overruns on the renovation of diocesan facilities. Six months later, on March 26, 2014, the pope accepted Bishop Tebartz-van Elst’s resignation.[13] Is allowing the subversion of Catholic Social Teaching less of an offense than spending too much money on a bathtub? If that is not the case, then hasn’t Bishop Walkowiak forced the Vatican’s hand by refusing to act against Sirico and the Acton Institute, both of which are notorious in Rome? Why is a man who spent his earlier career as a promoter of sodomy and his current career as a promoter of usury a priest in good-standing in the Catholic Church? Aren’t sodomy and withholding the wages of the worker sins that cry to heaven for vengeance?  Even Wikipedia knows that much Catholic theology.[14] How can a priest who has made a career of promoting two of the four sins that cry to heaven for vengeance be a priest in good standing in the Catholic Church? Does the Church stand for anything anymore? Is Rome willing to act when the local bishop isn’t? Is paying too much for a bathtub worse than condoning sins that cry to heaven for vengeance?

I've been looking forward to Barren Metal all year.  In this book, I believe Jones will lay out just how specifically the Catholic people here in the United States are screwed by an evil Judaic system of usury.  But to think that Jones might be sympathetic to Pope Francis in any way--I find that interesting.  Myself, I'm not a fan at all of our new pontiff.  I can't think of one thing he's done that I'm grateful for.  Yet, here we have E. Michael Jones, fighter of the Christ Killers himself, and he's found something seemingly positive about Pope Francis.  Jones has always been able to think outside the box.


 ---

 About the book, here's a little more:

Barren Metal is, among other things, the story of the rise and fall of economics as the self-regulating mechanism. It is the story of the rise of capitalism as the regime of state-sponsored usury. It is the story of the awakening of the German mind in the face of this threat and the creation of the Germanic-Catholic alternative to the English Newtonian model of economics as pseudo-physics. It is the story of the theft of labor.

In addition to being a history of Capitalism, Barren Metal is the sequel to The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit.

 On one of his walks through Paris, Honore de Balzac, the French novelist, encountered the richest man in France strolling arm in arm with Heinrich Heine, the revolutionary who did his best to overthrow Capitalism during the Revolution of 1848. Viewed from a political or an economic perspective the two men should have been on opposite sides of the revolutionary barricades, but Balzac was smart enough to see that ethnic blood ran thicker that political water, no matter how turbulent. Heine the Revolutionary and Rothschild the financier could walk arm in arm because both men were Jews and because together they embodied “tout l’esprit et tout l’argent des Juifs.”

In America, both the spirit and the money come together at think-tanks like the American Enterprise Institute. Rich Jews funding revolutionary Jews and their movements is nothing new. Jacob Schiff funded the Bolsheviks. Lloyd Blankfein supports gay marriage, the prime Jewish revolutionary movement in our day. Rich Jews, like David Rubenstein, co-founder of the Carlyle Group, fund the American Enterprise Institute, which paid for Michael Novak’s book.  That book has corrupted the mind of every single American bishop, if not directly then through initiatives like the Manhattan Declaration, orchestrated by Robbie George, another mouth that feeds at the AEI trough.

Thoughts?

[Pheo]

Well the rest of the article focuses on the evils of capitalism as promoted by "Fr" Sirico, you know, that priest he mentioned who is in good standing with his diocese but who also ran a gay slave auction?  Yeah...

He builds off the definition given in Centesimus Annus.  As far as I can tell, this is a condemnation of usury under the guise of capitalism.

[trentcath]

ran a gay slave auction?

WTH?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Pheo]

ran a gay slave auction?

WTH?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At least he's in "full communion"?

One year later Rev. Sirico dressed in a black clerical suit with a Roman collar, made the pages of the Seattle Post Intelligencer under the headline “Male Slave Mart Raid in LA called a Mistake.” On April 10, 1976 Los Angeles policemen dressed in riot gear arrested 40 persons participating in a homosexual “slave market” held at the Mark IV Health Club in Hollywood. The bathhouse was operated by a sadomasochist cult called the Leather Fraternity. Nude “male slaves” were led on stage by an auctioneer and inspected by potential buyers. “Slaves” went for $10 to $75. [even more disgusting part redacted - Pheo]  The event was sponsored by the Los Angeles Gay Community headed by Rev. Sirico, who told the PI reporter that the Los Angeles Police Department was “out to get” the gay community. Rev. Sirico called the event a “harmless fund-raising event” staged to raise money for the Center’s venereal disease clinic.

Point of the article being...this is one of the men charging the usurious cause.

[trentcath]

ran a gay slave auction?

WTH?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At least he's in "full communion"?

One year later Rev. Sirico dressed in a black clerical suit with a Roman collar, made the pages of the Seattle Post Intelligencer under the headline “Male Slave Mart Raid in LA called a Mistake.” On April 10, 1976 Los Angeles policemen dressed in riot gear arrested 40 persons participating in a homosexual “slave market” held at the Mark IV Health Club in Hollywood. The bathhouse was operated by a sadomasochist cult called the Leather Fraternity. Nude “male slaves” were led on stage by an auctioneer and inspected by potential buyers. “Slaves” went for $10 to $75. [even more disgusting part redacted - Pheo]  The event was sponsored by the Los Angeles Gay Community headed by Rev. Sirico, who told the PI reporter that the Los Angeles Police Department was “out to get” the gay community. Rev. Sirico called the event a “harmless fund-raising event” staged to raise money for the Center’s venereal disease clinic.

Point of the article being...this is one of the men charging the usurious cause.

Thanks for clarifying that. I am not sure I will ever be shocked again...

[Jacob]

Capitalism needs to be criticized using Catholic tools.  I think Jones here is making a mistake in supposing that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

[Pheo]

I think you're right Jacob, and it would be interesting to see how he goes about making his point in the book, but I can't afford it.

I suppose I should say that the claims against Sirico are alleged, but they were public statements.  Engel is the one who asked for Rome to investigate his ordination given his (hopefully former) stance on these things.

[nmoerbeek]

Well the rest of the article focuses on the evils of capitalism as promoted by "Fr" Sirico, you know, that priest he mentioned who is in good standing with his diocese but who also ran a gay slave auction?  Yeah...

He builds off the definition given in Centesimus Annus.  As far as I can tell, this is a condemnation of usury under the guise of capitalism.

Whether or not you like Father Sirico their is no reason to doubt his holy orders.  Calling him Reverend, Presbyter or some other title would seem to be better than calling into question his ordination by putting "Fr" in sneer quotes.

What he did when he was a rabid liberal in the 1970's and a pseudo christian protestant is not what he believes today.  To my knowledge he became/returned to the Catholic Church in the late 70's and was not ordained as a priest until 1989.

Unless we want to embrace some flavor of Donatism, a homosexual even if they are prohibited from receiving holy orders by Canon law, once they receive it are still Priests.

One does not need to dig hard to find that he does not support sodomy today, while his confession and abhorence of sodomy falls short of St Bernardine of Siena it appears to be in line with what most people in the Church say today:

"In particular I see the current “impulse to redefine marriage in order to recognize same-sex and multiple partner relationships [a]s a symptom, rather than the cause, of the erosion of the marriage culture.” In this regard I believe the ‘gay marriage’ question arises today because as a culture we no longer fully understand what marriage itself is in its biblical and theological meaning. To abandon the Church’s view of marriage will erode the marriage culture itself, with wide and deleterious repercussions. "

Source
http://ncronline.org/blogs/distinctly-catholic/fr-robert-sirico-gay-marriages-he-once-performed

Many people have written objections to Father Sirico association with the Acton Instiutute and how it comes into conflict with Catholic Social Teaching.  By all means raise your objections, but he has repented of his past, and he is a priest, if God has forgiven him by all means let us not sneer at him.

 

[Pheo]

It wasn't intended as a sneer quote, but that wasn't clear at all.  He wasn't a Catholic priest at the time, although he was dressed up as one.  He was the head of a "church" specifically founded to be gay friendly.

ETA: I wouldn't hesitate to say he never should have been ordained though.

[Angelorum]

It's like I always suspected - Pope Francis' ideas on economics are nearly identical to those of Chesterton, Belloc, and those who support distributism.

If Trads are offended, well they shouldn't be - it's the truth.

[nmoerbeek]

It wasn't intended as a sneer quote, but that wasn't clear at all.  He wasn't a Catholic priest at the time, although he was dressed up as one.  He was the head of a "church" specifically founded to be gay friendly.

ETA: I wouldn't hesitate to say he never should have been ordained though.

Ok 

[james03]

  The pope and Cardinal Rodriguez of Tegucigalpa, his right hand man, are open in their criticism of capitalism, whose pernicious effects are exponentially worse in third-world countries like Honduras.

LOL.  I suggest E Michael Jones try to run a business in one of these supposedly capitalist states.

Actually there is a sick book called "The Mystery of Capital" by de Soto.  He went to these supposedly capitalist states with a couple of typical business type transactions: forming a business, selling property, etc....  The sick part is he actually went through the rule books and documents all of the steps, permits, licenses, forms, etc... the government in these capitalist states requires you to fill out.  He then gave an estimate of how long it would take to do one of these transactions.  It's been a long time since I read it, but a typical number would be 3 years to sell a piece of property in Honduras.  DeSoto's conclusion was that the reason these countries are poor is because of the humongous government intervention.  That would also explain why corruption is so wide spread.  Want to sell your house?  Pay the government slug $100, and he'll give you the stamp you need.

[KingTheoden]

Jacob is correct and this is not uncommon amongst traditionalists.

There is a prominent Catholic 'traditionalist' professor, whose name I will retain, who has gone overboard in a) critiquing every aspect of America's capitalistic system b) celebrating Pope Francis's blatantly socialist economic program and c) appealing to 'distributism' as a very thin artifice to cover what effectively is an endorsement of another evil.

Human nature what it is, we tend to have the most problems with those things (or people) closest to us.  So, since capitalism and its usurious, craft-destroying, greed-enhancing attributes are most obvious to us, there is a temptation to think that the grass is greener on the other side.

The devil that we don't know, some half baked 'redistribution' that some trads pine for will not end well for any of us.  Perhaps some think that the powers that be really could be coaxed into breaking their mechanism of control and equitably distributing property (in my view, a purely insane perspective to take.)  Others think that a civil war/rebellion led by the likes of George Soros's Occupy Wall Street is going to lead to better days (again, purely insane.)

Practical and morally sound advice?  Work within the environment you find yourself and do what you can. 

The Rockefellers will not be breaking up there holdings to fairly give to people anytime soon (and even if they did, within two generations there will be tiers of socio-economic classes, which is why so-called Distributism is not a real solution.)  And I highly doubt that the sick dreams of a rebellion will go any farther than the imaginations of leftists.

God placed us here and thus did not make a mistake.  So, that practical advice: Become technically skilled and after a time, offer such services independently.  Not easy, not something most people are willing to commit to.  But if you want to support a family, and have some modicum of autonomy, and own your production, that's your option.

[Akavit]

To put what KingTheoden said in another way, if you want to have an influence for the better on the economy, you have to do the work yourself.  It's better to become a fair and just employer than to agitate for radical social changes that attempt to force others to be fair and just.  The latter cannot be done effectively as there are always ways to game any system.

Immoral people manipulate the flaws in both capitalism and socialism and that will always be the case.  However, the flaws of socialism are greater because by its very nature, it destroys the autonomy that the little guy needs to conduct a fair trade.  Socialism puts all the cards in the hands of the elite and leaves everyone else with whatever the elite condescends to offer.

Of course capitalism can never be in and of itself the cure to all ills.  The love of money is the root of all evil and sooner or later, successful entrepreneurs will discover that growth becomes easier when greedy political leaders are presented with bribes in return for favors.  No law can protect against this forever because immoral politicians can always change the laws to protect their interests.

[Christopher McAvoy]

Few people are entirely wrong or entirely right. That pope Francis should be right about certain economic ideas is of no surprise. Some peoples views here seem a bit ridiculous, to assume His Holiness is entirely wrong all the time is silly. Even I'm not entirely wrong all the time.