Wow, I can’t believe it…Pope Benedict XVI has issued an encyclical letter, Caritas in Veritate, saying that we are in a global economy and that the right to form labor unions and collectively bargain is unjustly under attack! And I thought he was going to be a conservative Pope.

I am going way out on a limb here, because I haven't checked with Colbert Conservatism central and found out the position of the great Conservative Stephen Colbert on this subject. You see, Stephen is a practicing Roman Catholic.

In his Papal Encyclical he chastises governments that limit unionization! He harkens back to Rerum Naoarum [[1891) of Pope Leo XIII.

http://www.ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/L13RERUM.HTM

“Working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition.... the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.”

The current Pope says that the Church backs the right of workers worldwide [[“in the advancement of humanity and universal fraternity”) to unionize. The letter says that a worker's right to join with others to assert their rights is even more important today than over a hundred years ago. He says he doesn’t want to interfere in any way with the “politics of state,” but it seems he wants to use all the moral suasion available to influence the “politics of state.”

This so-called conservative Pope also notes Pope Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio. In which Pope Paul VI noted the right to private property is not absolute and unconditional.

"As St. Ambrose put it: 'You are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back what is his. You have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of everyone. The earth belongs to everyone, not to the rich.' [[22) These words indicate that the right to private property is not absolute and unconditional."

Mon Dieu, this quote is spitting in the face of so many great rich Americans, not the least of whom was the great Robber Baron, George Pullman.

The Pullman Company rejected any attempt by “citizens’ committees” to arbitrate differences and end the strike of 1894. Since the strike was between the company and its “ex-employees,” there was “nothing to arbitrate.” When asked why he would not submit to arbitration, George Pullman replied to the U.S. Strike Commission that such arbitration would violate a principle: “The principle that a man should have the right to manage his own property.”

I just hope that all true-believing Roman Catholics can see through this Papal "claptrap." I pray that they will join me, as a Social Darwinist, in declaring the maximization of short term profits through the commercialization of everything from health care to automobiles is really the way our Lord wants the world to be run.

This new Papal letter mocks those who are dedicated to the unregulated free market and to the “mere accumulation of wealth.” It's clear to me Pope Benedict XVI should read Adam Smith and learn if we all act selfishly, the invisible hand of God will make everything workout to everyone’s benefit.

I mean if the bishops, priests, deacons, men and women , religious, the lay faithful and all people of good will [[to whom the encyclical letter was addressed) pay attention…short term greed could suffer a painful setback everywhere in the world! Come on DY posters, we can’t let Pope Benedict XVI’s letter go unchallenged. The man is worse than President Obama; he’s a communist!

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/be...ritate_en.html