Snowden showed us the educated and wealthy aren't entirely free. Francis reminds us the poor aren't even given a chanceEdward Snowden was not chosen as Time magazine's Person of the Year, and for this many in the media are outraged. Instead Time chose Pope Francis, a man who in the last year has been transforming the Catholic church by focusing on the searing inequalities brought about by poverty. In one of his many poignant quotes recently, he asks: How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?His stunning 224-page "Apostolic Exhortation" is a treatise on the corrosive effects of capitalism and a call for empathy. It is a must read, whether you are Catholic or not:Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting.I keep going back to the line "those wielding economic power". They are the ones who have come to dominate our society, a society that over the last 40 years has slowly ceded to the ideology of free markets. When I worked on Wall Street in the 90s, I traveled for... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2013-12-12 00:00:00 UTC ]