Here is my Politico column today on the Pope’s economics (filed yesterday, before the Pope’s speech to Congress, which could have been much worse):
The Catholic Church’s traditional discomfort with modernity happens to have some cachet at this moment, especially when it is wrapped in the fashionable causes of income inequality and climate change. In this sense, Pope Francis is (inadvertently) a genius marketeer by taking crackpot attitudes about economic development and getting them a respectful hearing.
He discusses these matters with essentially the same point of view as a stereotypical black turtleneck-clad graduate hanging out at the university cafe and hoping one day to hit the big time and get one of his pieces excoriating global capitalism published at The Nation.
The pope’s anti-capitalist broadsides have helped make him the adorable mascot of the American left, which enthusiastically defends infanticide, pitilessly scorns traditional sexual morality and heedlessly tramples on the the conscience rights of people with the wrong social views, but holds up the Vicar of Christ as confirmation of the economics of Bernie Sanders and the climate alarmism of Al Gore.
