VATICAN CITY (RNS) Noting a “rising sense of frustration” at the worldwide economic recession, Pope Benedict XVI said that a more just and peaceful world requires “adequate mechanisms for the redistribution of wealth.”…. The pope’s words appeared in his message for the World Day of Peace 2012, released on Friday (Dec. 16) at the Vatican. The message laments that “some currents of modern culture, built upon rationalist and individualist economic principles, have cut off the concept of justice from its transcendent roots, detaching it from charity and solidarity.”
It’s not exactly breaking news to say that income inequality has with good reason become one of the topics du jour. It seems that even Pope Benedict XVI is jumping on the income redistribution bandwagon.
There’s just one little problem, though. I can’t be the only one thinking that the Pope’s stance is a wee bit hypocritical given the Catholic Church’s vast wealth. If the Pope is truly serious, then you’d think that he would want the Church to be setting an example by redistributing some of its own wealth to those Catholics in need. Think of the good that could be one if the Pope would put the Vatican out front and center in the struggle to restore some semblance of equity and fairness.
Anyone think there’s a snowball’s chance in Hell that this will happen? Call me cynical if you need to, but I can’t see the Pope agreeing to loosen the Vatican’s purse strings…and so his admonition will likely (and justifiably) be written off as just so much empty rhetoric.
Nice try.
