The Pope Gets One Thing Right

As readers of this blog can easily deduce, I am no fan of the Catholic Church, nor any of what I call the patriarchal religions. But during his trip through Latin America this past week, Pope Benedict did get one thing right by denouncing both Capitalism and Marxism in the same breath. At this stage of history, to denounce Marxism is tantamount to whipping a dead horse. As for Capitalism, he gets his criticism partly right when he says that it has failed to bridge the “distance between rich and poor.” He gets it wrong, however, when he blames Capitalism for “giving rise to a worrying degradation of personal dignity through drugs, alcohol and deceptive illusions of happiness.” While Capitalism most certainly fosters deceptive illusions all across the board, drugs and alcohol are hardly its most noteworthy manifestations. For a survey of its most insidious faults, read Benjamin R. Barber's new book, Consumed, in which he describes the capitalist process of infantilization that has been steadily degrading the nation's adulthood by keeping us forever trapped in a state of arrested development.

A more astute observer of the ideology known as Capitalism might note that not only does it fail to redress social inequality, but it doesn’t even try. In fact, Capitalism as it has emerged since the death of Communism has absolutely thrived on inequality. As the capitalist media has itself been forced to admit, all of the recent gains in American productivity have gone directly into the pockets of the rich. The harder American workers work, the less they earn as a share of their own sweat. Work hours are lengthening, as benefits evaporate like dew in the capitalist dawn of a glorious new age of Feudalism. So thanks Pope for getting things half right. Unfortunately in your earlier capacity as a Vatican policy maker, you squelched the Latin American movement known as Liberation Theology. You tried to explain that stunning bow to Latin American Feudalism by stating that “This political task is not the immediate competence of the church.” Yeah, Pope, of course it's not. Except, of course, when your American bishops tell their parishioners how to vote, as they did during the last election.

When it comes to keeping neocon patriarchs in office, the church eagerly undertakes just the opposite of Liberation Theology. Call it Subjugation Theology, in which all the sheep are scolded into minding their neofeudal bosses. What can one say about a form of spirituality that doesn’t even want to address social justice? I’ll answer that for you: it ain’t true spirituality. It’s iron-fisted Patriarchy, through and through. If you want true spirituality, dear reader, go straight to God and bypass the gatekeepers, who in the darkness of their own souls worship their own Higher Power: Mammon.