"The worship of the ancient golden calf has returned.........

[Fred Sanders]

in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose ... While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few.”

Pope Francis has got it going on.

Commentary: America has lost its moral compass, killing the economy



http://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-1-quote-and-who-said-it-prove-capitalism-is-dying-2014-05-10

[Arugula Latte]

1. All right! Can't wait for him to open the Vatican coffers to the poor!

[leftyohiolib]

2. and when it's all gone what then

[LeftyMom]

3. Then poor people will have food and the Vatican will have followed Jesus' explicit directions?

I mean, he said to do it in Matthew, Mark and Luke, which leads me to believe that if you're a believer you might start to get the impression that he was serious about that selling your goods and feeding the poor thing.

[leftyohiolib]

15. what ever money the vatican will get for selling the vatican will only go so far then the poor

will still be poor and hungry, the vatican and ALL the churches will be banrupt and no one gets any help all the nuns and priest homeless now as well, great idea . btw the church already DOES feed and clothe needy people but collecting,storing and distributing clothing and food requires money . the vatican selling the vatican is a short-sighted dumb idea proposed by people who are more intrested in seeing the church go down than recognizing the good it does do. got a beef with the church? just burn it all down and say fuck-u to the billions of people who derive comfort from it.
sell the vatican,like the pope could do that anyway. it isnt his to give away

[LeftyMom]

17. Isn't it Jesus'? Because he specifically said not to stockpile treasures.

Matthew 6:19
19 Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.

Isn't the point of Christianity to follow the directions given by Jesus? Because you're saying that you know how to handle wealth and care for the poor better than Jesus did.

[Fred Sanders]

21. Open to interpretation.

You could interpret that writing to mean you CAN store treasures, but make sure you protect them from decay and theft. Which the Vatican does very well.

[LeftyMom]

22. Nope.

Luke 14:33

Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.

[Fred Sanders]

23. Who was the audience for that, because that was said early on to collect disciples....and it

was not the first time in history someone said a similar thing. But taking my take on the original writing, am I wrong?

[LeftyMom]

24. There are umpity* verses about selling one's posessions, serving the poor, the early church having

goods in common, the exclusion of the wealthy from heaven, etc. Making the case for a wealthy church requires disregarding a dominant theme in the New Testament. Tortured interpretations of one verse or another don't change that overall economic message. (Tortured interpretations also require one to assume that the early Christians were Doing Christianity Wrong, which is a bit silly, don't you think?)

*technical term

[Fred Sanders]

25. My "tortured"interpretation of your quoted passage in the NT misdefines the word "tortured".

The rest of your last post I agree with. Christianity teaches sharing of wealth, as all religions do.

[Arugula Latte]

5. What LeftyMom said, plus the RCC's hypocrisy will be wither away.

[BrotherIvan]

11. Yeah!

I've had my eyes on a jewel-encrusted chalice for some time. Would look great on my end table.

[Arugula Latte]

13. Sounds good. I'm going for something a bit bigger, though.

I'm not exactly sure what this is but I think it might be helpful for storage. Plus, it makes a statement and would add a bit of unexpected whimsy to my decor.

[BrotherIvan]

20. A lot of "poor people" said this was tasty

This papal tiara fed a whole family of 5 for a month!

P.S. I love your new storage box. You'll have to invite all the poor people over to taste it!

[Blue Owl]

4. The Great Wall Street Baal-out

n/t

[reformist2]

6. Capitalism isn't working the way it's proponents claim - it's not only a religion, it's a false one.

[Igel]

7. This confused me.

I tend to think of the golden calf as idolatry and apostasy, sensu lato. More a stepping away from God than a specific kind of narrowing of worship.

Except that in Spanish becerro de oro is metaphorical for wealth. http://buscon.rae.es/drae/?type=3&val=becerro&val_aux=&origen=REDRAE

So he's playing off of a specific idiom as the real meaning of a probably larger problem. After all, the first step in creating the golden calf was *sacrificing* and *giving up* their gold so that the calf could be made and be a collectively held and worshipped object. The gold itself wasn't doing them a lot of good, as far as the context of the narrative goes.

[Xipe Totec]

8. You mean this one?

[snooper2]

9. no, this one

[Xipe Totec]

18. Well, yea. That works too, but mine is older so there!

[JDPriestly]

10. The wisdom of common sense:

You cannot keep on shifting income from labor to capital without having an excess capacity and a lack of aggregate demand. That’s what has happened. We thought that markets worked. They’re not working. The individual can be rational. The firm, to survive and thrive, can push labor costs more and more down, but labor costs are someone else’s income and consumption. That’s why it’s a self-destructive process.” Why capitalism is killing America.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-1-quote-and-who-said-it-prove-capitalism-is-dying-2014-05-10

[Brigid]

12. To me, the idiom of worshiping the golden calf means worshiping a false idol.

We have worshiped at the false idol of unfettered capitalism for far too long, and it is finally coming back to bite us.

[el_bryanto]

14. It is a great quote - and well worth considering

I wish he would extend his moral leadership to other areas (like Uganda) but it is a good quote.

Bryant

[bvar22]

16. The Graven Image

[font color=white].....................[/font][font size=4]The Golden Calf on the altar
[font color=white]...........[/font]of the Church of the Invisible Hand[/font]


Sorry, Virginia,
but there is no such thing as "Free Trade" or "Free Markets".
There is NO All Powerful Invisible Hand
that reaches down from heaven and protects the American Middle Class.

Like other religions with invisible deities,
this new religion is a SCAM invented by The RICH to get more money for themselves,
and sold to the gullible by Smooth Talking Con Men.

[jmowreader]

19. Speaking of the golden calf...

In the days of Moses and Aaron, the official punishment for any transgression was to forfeit part of your food supply, either a meat animal (remembering that the law required you to give up your best animals - "a ram without blemish" IIRC.) or grain. If Moses or his priests really wanted to run someone out of town, they'd just have to trump up enough charges to destroy all his food.

Would not then the Golden Calf, which would substitute for destroying food, be a defensive move against vindictive priests?