Pope Francis gums up the global economy. What are the faithful to do? Since Evangelii Gaudium is only an apostolic exhortation, I presume American Roman Catholics will be heading out to the malls today along with the rest of their fellow consumers. (For proof of how indistinguishable American Roman Catholics are from American Protestants, see this.)

The earliest debates among American Roman Catholics over the pope’s latest statement concern the poor and capitalism. Those Roman Catholics on the Left are using Francis to beat up on Roman Catholics on the Right. Sean Michael Winters writes:

Anyone who was still hoping to usefully deploy the concept of intrinsic evil as the touchstone for the Church’s engagement with politics must now overcome this paragraph. The pope is aware that negative proscriptions of the moral law – thou shalt not murder – have a precision that positive proscriptions – you must care for the poor – do not. By invoking the same “thou shalt not” language, he is raising the status of the admittedly non-intrinsic evil of poverty. And, this blunt talk about the economy makes me hope that Catholic University’s business school cashed that check from the Koch Brothers already! They gave the money to study “principled entrepreneurship,” but me thinks they will not be thrilled if the school is applying the principles Francis articulates here.

In the next paragraph, for the first time in a papal text, Pope Francis specifically names “trickle down economics” and condemns it. “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,” he writes. I made the exact same point, albeit less trenchantly, in my debate with Fr. Sirico last January. But, Francis goes even further in the next paragraph, #55, when he refers to the “new and ruthless” golden calf, and the “dictatorship of an impersonal economy.” Thank you Papa Francesco for stating this. I am reading Samuel Gregg’s “Tea Party Catholic” – a review of which is forthcoming – and he constantly derides the impersonal bureaucracy of government but fails to note the impersonal bureaucracy of the modern economy. Conservative Catholics warn darkly about government bureaucrats interfering with people’s health care due to Obamacare, but fail to mention that insurance company bureaucrats have been interfering with people’s health care for decades.

Meanwhile, the Acton Institute’s Samuel Gregg and his book, Father Sirico, try to explain basic economics to Pope Francis:

There are several problems with this line of reasoning. First, opening up markets throughout the world has helped to reduce poverty in many developing nations. East Asia is a living testimony to that reality — a testimony routinely ignored by many Catholics in Western Europe (who tend to complain rather self-centeredly about the competition it creates for protected Western European businesses and other recipients of corporate welfare) and a reality about which I have found many Latin American Catholics simply have nothing to say.

Second, it has never been the argument of most of those who favor markets that economic freedom and free exchange are somehow sufficient to reduce poverty. These things are certainly indispensable (witness the failure of planned economies to solve the problem of scarcity), but they’re not enough. Among other things, stable governments that provide infrastructure, property arrangements that identify clearly who owns what, and, above all, the rule of law are just as essential.

It hardly need be said that rule of law (mentioned not once in Evangelii Gaudium) is, to put it mildly, a “challenge” in most developing nations. The lack of rule of law not only ranks among the biggest obstacles to their ability to generate wealth on a sustainable basis, but also hampers their capacity to address economic issues in a just manner. Instead, what one finds is crony capitalism, rampant protectionism, and the corruption that has become a way of life in much of Africa and Latin America.

(No doubt, the lead singer of Jason and the Callers is delighted with the pope, given his anti-globalization views, though why economic globalization is bad but spiritual globalization is good, is one of those mysteries that even development of doctrine won’t ‘splain. At the same time, Jason might find appealing papal authority that allows lots of contrary opinions to thrive within his communion.)

Arguably the best piece written so far comes from John Allen who sees a tension between evangelism and the Social Gospel:

That combination between proclaiming the faith and living it out may seem natural and compelling, but it’s often not how things really work at the Catholic grass roots.

From personal experience, I can say that one can spend a lot of time at conferences and symposia on the new evangelization without hearing much about, say, the war in Syria, the human costs of the Eurozone crisis, or the impact of global warming. Similarly, one can attend a truckload of “social ministry” gatherings without getting much on the sacraments, the life of prayer, Marian devotions or growth in personal holiness.

That’s an overgeneralization, but anybody who’s been around the block in the Catholic church will recognize the scent of truth.

Protagonists in both the contemporary Catholic renaissance in apologetics and evangelization and in the church’s social activism sometimes regard what the other party is up to as a distraction. Evangelizers sometimes say that a nongovernmental organization or a political party can fight unemployment, but only the church can preach Christ. Social activists reply by insisting that rhetoric about a loving God means little to people whose lives are broken by misery and injustice.

From the point of view of Catholic teaching, both are absolutely right, which leads one to wonder what they might be able to accomplish by working together. Promoting that spirit of common cause, one could argue, is the beating heart of “Joy of the Gospel.” . . .

The deepest ambition of “Joy of the Gospel” lies in Francis’ dream of a church that breathes with both lungs regarding mission and justice, uniting its concern for poverty of both the spiritual and the flesh-and-blood sort. The drama of his papacy, in a sense, lies in how well he may be able to pull it off.

Maybe if Vatican City would imitate the evangelicals in New York City who have figure out the third way between conservative Protestantism’s convictions about the sole importance of the gospel and liberal Protestantism’s social ministry, Pope Francis could follow Tim Keller and find his way.

Or perhaps Christians could turn to the actual words of God’s inspired and infallible word and let the apostle Paul have more authority than either Rome’s or New York City’s pope. “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Cor 4:16-18) I understand it sounds fundamentalist (even Platonist) to insist on the priority of the spiritual and eternal to the physical and the temporal. But given what we know about human physical existence, Paul only makes sense. Our conditions here do not correlate to our existence in the world to come. Jesus himself said something about the poor being blessed and inheriting the earth. I don’t think he was saying that his kingdom came with running water, internet access, or a credit card. As convenient as those conveniences are, I sure hope that the new heavens and new earth bring comforts that last longer and that make Black Friday look like the passing affliction that it is.