A spokesman for the liberal organization Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good (CACG) has posted on the group’s website a denunciation of what he states were “incendiary remarks about Pope Francis” by conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday.
Limbaugh said that Pope Francis was wrong in his apostolic exhortation released this week in which he appears to blame capitalism for the reason why people are poor in the world.
CACG’s Christopher Jolly Hale wrote on Wednesday:
Catholics of all political stripes are disturbed by Rush Limbaugh’s incendiary comments this afternoon about Pope Francis. To call the Holy Father a proponent of “pure marxism” is both mean spirited and naive. Francis’s critique of unrestrained capitalism is in line with the Church’s social teaching. His particular criticism of “trickle down economics” strengthens what Church authorities have said for decades: any economic system which deprives the poor of their dignity has no place within a just society.
Contrary to what Mr. Limbaugh suggests, the Catholic Church isn’t built on money, but on the firm foundation of Jesus Christ.
We call on Mr. Limbaugh to apologize and retract his remarks. We urge other Church organizations and leaders–both ordained and lay–to also condemn Mr. Limbaugh’s comments.
We proudly stand with Pope Francis as he provides prophetic leadership for the Catholic Church and the entire world.
Following the release of the pope’s exhortation, entitled Evangelii Gaudium, Hale wrote:
Pope Francis’s words have given new vigor to what the Church has been saying for decades: ‘trickle down economics’ and other economic agendas which work against the poor and promote inequality have no place in a just society. Pope Francis’s words should have particular resonance here in the United States as we enter into next month’s budget negotiations. The pope makes it clear that these budgetary decisions should above all else benefit the poorest of Americans.
We make Pope Francis’s words our own: “I beg the Lord gives us more politicians who are genuinely disturbed by the state of society, the people and the lives of the poor!”
In 2009, Accuracy in Media (AIM) reported that CACG had received $200,000 in funding from George Soros’s Open Society Institute.
A leader of another Soros-funded Catholic organization, Faith in Public Life (FPL), a group that was founded with the help of John Podesta’s Center for American Progress, also praised Pope Francis’ view of the “tyranny” of trickle-down economics.
John Gehring, Catholic Outreach Coordinator of FPL, praised Pope Francis for his “headline-grabbing comments that Catholicism must not be known exclusively for obsession with a few hot-button issues.”
About the pope’s exhortation, Gehring wrote:
In many ways, this is traditional Catholic teaching about economic justice that builds on the foundations laid in the first social encyclical about capital and labor released in 1891 by Pope Leo XIII. But to contemporary American ears accustomed to hearing full-throated Catholic arguments only when it comes to abortion and same sex marriage, this unequivocal economic critique of unfettered markets packs a punch.
Directing his comments at Republicans Speaker John Boehner and Rep. Paul Ryan, Gehring said that while they “slash billions from nutrition programs and are daily communicants in the church of free-market fundamentalism, Pope Francis rejects trickle-down economics as a moral and practical failure.”
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