Pope Declares World Capitalism "Obsolete"

Once again, proof that it’s always dangerous to stereotype. Pope Benedict XVI, the conservative Roman Catholic pontiff I was about to blast for Vatican inquisitions against American sisters (nuns if you will) for activities as mainstream as practicing Reiki, came out this week with an encyclical on the world economy that is literally earth shaking. The radically progressive declaration was the biggest news story of the week, maybe of the year, and almost no one covered it.

Titled Charity in Truth, the encyclical was so radical in its renunciation of prevailing economic wisdom that it made Bush vs. Obama and Olbermann vs. O’Reilly look like locker room squabbles between Ivy League teammates. And almost no one covered it or gave it the weight it deserved.

What did the Pope have to say? The catchphrase of the 144-page document is ethical capitalism and in the words of economics professor Stefano Zamagni, a consultant on the encyclical, the phrase is more than the kind of “sentimental” porridge fed to business school students. According to Zamagni, as reported online by Time/CNN, the Pope believes “that capitalism as such is now effectively ‘obsolete’ and must be replaced by a new form of market economy whose driving force is not the maximization of profits.”

Quoting Benedict directly, the idea most Americans were fed from childhood — that the pursuit of individual profit magically works to the benefit of all — is a falsehood. It is not “ethically neutral,” Benedict writes. “Profit is useful if it serves as a means toward an end. Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty.”

Introducing the long-awaited encyclical on behalf of the Pope, economist Zamagni says, “Capitalism is an old idea, where the market was supposedly morally neutral … where efficiency became an ethos. … If we can instead incorporate the idea of the social element into the economy, the market itself becomes a force for civility.”

So the Pope, the leader of the world’s largest Christian body, has declared our current economic system “obsolete,” and not “ethically” or “morally neutral.” Praise God! How long have we waited for someone from the spiritual realm, someone charged as a truth teller — someone outside the sphere of politics, economics or government — to step forward and speak with forthright courage. Now it has come from one of the most conservative religious leaders we have known, which I suppose gives it even more weight. It is the most dramatic challenge to economic powerbrokers at least since FDR’s New Deal. The Pope steps up and says for the sake of social justice the rule of world capitalism as we know it must end. It’s time for a radically different economic system.

The entire Christian church, itself in danger of becoming obsolete, has needed this moment. Now we should run with it. Jesus never shied away from telling the truth, but the church has. Is it not obvious why this is so? And when Benedict stepped out and declared the emperor naked, isn’t it just as obvious why the mainstream media on both the left and right ignored him and refused to cover the story?