Your Opinion: Pope's views, Catholicism and capitalism

Dear Editor:

In a recent encyclical the Pope seemed to take aim at the evils of capitalism. Perhaps he should spend time improving the situation in nations populated by a majority of Catholics before blaming capitalism for the ills of the world. (Even with all the influence he wields in Italy, its economy flounders about and needs bailing out by the more capitalistic nations of the Eurozone.)

Some of the most capitalistic countries are Germany, Singapore, Australia, the United States and New Zealand. All are in the top 10 on the UN's Human Development Index. (The HDI is a composite statistic of life expectancy, education and per capita income indicators.)

There are 33 nations in the world with populations that are over 60 percent Catholic. Twelve of them made it into the top 50 of the HDI. The highest-rated Catholic nations were Ireland 11, Liechtenstein 18, France 20, Austria 21, Slovenia 25, Italy 26 and Spain 27. (Monaco does not have a current HDI rating. It was rated 25 in a past report. It's GDP per capita is $167,000). Of these 33 nations, four of them are part of the five-nation PIIGS group. (PIIGS nations are five Eurozone nations with weak economies. In 2010 European leaders approved a 750 billion euro bailout package for these nations.)

The GDP per capita for the Catholic nations averaged $17,900 while the GDP per capita of the capitalist nations averaged $52,000.

Why isn't the Pope working with the Catholic nations to bring up their HDI ratings, by some mechanism other than robbing the capitalist nations? With populations that are 60 percent plus Catholic the Catholics should pretty much be able to set the nations' policies.

If the Pope is such a great economist why aren't those nations all Utopias? Probably the self-help concept (running your nation in a manner that benefits all) is not politically correct in today's climate of "I'm not accountable, it's not my fault and someone else needs to be punished so that I can be rewarded." (As bad as liberal/progressives paint U.S. capitalism the vast majority of people in the world envy the lifestyles of our "poor".)

FYI. Of the 43 nations whose populations are more than 60 percent Muslim, five of them made it into the top 50 HDI rating. Qatar and Saudi Arabia headed the list with scores of 31 and 34.

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