Sola scriptura By Robert T. Smith
In this recent article, New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan is the apologist du jour for the Pope's demonization of capitalism comments. To add insult to injury, the Pope saw fit to use the collectivists' pet phraseology of trickle-down economics as a pejorative. Is this Pope that unworldly, unknowing…ignorant?...or a collectivist?...these seem to be the only two choices. Envy and covetousness appear as the basic theme of the Pope's message. In a Pope-apparent, unholy and insidious manner, the pontiff has deemed that there are haves who have purposefully and unfairly taken more than their share from the have-nots. The Pope's message is that a finite amount of wealth has been inappropriately allocated to the few… quintessential collectivist thinking. One has to wonder who determines what each person's appropriate share is…is this to be a function of God or man, or apparently the Pope? Is this the every-mom admonishment to finish your lunch PBJ sandwich because there are starving kids in Africa, or is this our high-holy signal to kill Africa's Marxist leaders and convert these people to Christianity to free them from their man-made deficient economic conditions? The unqualified sweep of the Pope's comments is quite staggering, and difficult to calibrate what a Pope-approved response may entail. The Pope seems to suggest we should all enjoy a more equal level of man-made suffering, rather than the uplifting of all to an improved condition in life - arguably a more Christian-driven approach. Somewhere in the distant past of even a collectivist Democrat lives the phrase…"a rising tide lifts all boats." There has been no greater system devised to lift the most people from dependency to self sufficiency than capitalism. Capitalism allows the most good to be spread through entrepreneurism, gainful employment of others and a free exchange of goods and services… true wealth re-distribution, and personal charity to the less fortunate to please ones God. Capitalism is a system based on individual rights, freedom of interaction and exchange, the rule of law…a free market. This is the system the infallible-one thought to attack as he proverbially came out of the closet. The apparent problem with the Pope is that he places his demonstrably fallable, fallen self, between Catholics and their God. At this point in history, there can be no excuse to continue to attack capitalism and to defend or tacitly approve of the humanity-killing sociopolitical systems of collectivism. Fallable man as the master of other men and the collectivist state, versus each individual working at the direction of their God as the master shouldn't even be a question at this point in history, yet the Catholic Church's new leader doesn't appear to see it that way. Look about the world and pick the better conditions under which people live, and there you find capitalism. Coercive taxation, mans dictates to convolute the natural exchange of goods and services, and the envy and covetousness used to control others in the man-made collectivist systems are the failed alternative to capitalism. In early days, a lay person had no access to, or ability to read the Holy Bible on their own. The Catholic Priests were the keeper of God's words, and it was not for the lowly individual to have a direct relationship with their God. Well stated by King Henry's personal physician upon his first acquiring and reading the actual text of the Bible, "Either this is not the Gospel, or we are not Christians." For this and other related reasons, the reformed religions arose to reject the Catholic Church's deficiencies. As attributed to Luther: "a simple layman armed with Scripture is greater than the mightiest pope without it." Cornerstones of Americanism are these two ideals…the innate relationship between each person and their God – a Christian nation, and the free exchange of goods and services - capitalism. There is no room for a system of envy and covetousness, man-chosen winners and losers, a socio-political system that stands between the individual and their God. Sola scriptura…by scripture alone…not by this Pope alone. Robert T. Smith is an environmental scientist who spends his days enjoying life and the pursuit of happiness with his family. He confesses to cling to his liberty, guns and religion, with antipathy toward the arrogant ruling elites throughout the country.
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