Aide to Pope Francis Demonstrates Why Separation of Church and State Is So Important for Freedom

Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, a top adviser
to Pope Francis, attended a conference on “The Catholic Case
Against Libertarianism” and, surprise!,
came out against libertarianism. The native Honduran, you see,
thinks he and Pope Francis, formerly an Argentine cardinal, know
all about free markets. Why? Because they grew up in the midst of
them. The pope, Maradiaga argued, “has a profound knowledge of the
life of the poor” in part because he grew up in Argentina.

The two may be well-meaning but are profoundly
ignorant on economics and
the kinds of policies that actually alleviate poverty, as
opposed to the policies that
claim to do so while allowing its proponents to amass more
power and demonize their opponents. Argentina is a land of “too
many messiahs,” in the words of Jorge Luis Borge, which The
Wall Street Journal quoted in explaining how Argentina was a
sort of
paragon for crony capitalism. State capitalism, of course, is
not about free markets but about government control and
manipulation of markets for the benefit of the politically
connected. Sadly, it’s a condition far more prevalent around the
world than any actually existing free markets.

Were the cardinal, and the pope’s other advisors, interested in
seeking the truth rather than assuming it, they might come across
and critically engage the idea that free markets, and
libertarian leanings, have helped
lift billions out of poverty. The Catholic church has certainly
not done so, either historically or contemporaneously. Indeed, no
matter how benevolent or well-intentioned the institution, central
planning is not an effective way to combat poverty. Maradiaga says
that the pope insists on the “elimination of the structural causes
for poverty.” If so, he should embrace free markets, which have the
power to do so without relying on the oft-misguided and easily
appropriated wisdom of men, and reject books like Thomas Piketty’s
(which Maradiaga praised) that suborn the
truth in favor of pleasant propaganda. Social justice is

supposed to be about speaking truth to power. John F. Kennedy,
America’s first Catholic president, once suggested that the basis
of human morality was the ability to “stand against the flow of
opinion on strongly contested issues… in spite of personal
consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures.”
Parroting mainstream anti-free-market opinion in the service of
accumulating temporal and material power is quite the opposite.