To the editor:
Tony Magliano’s reflections on Pope Benedict’s Day of Peace message in the January 10 Catholic Herald is relevant to this time and place. As noted by the pope, inequality has been increasing for decades as a result of selfish and individualistic deregulation of financial markets.
Deregulation caused the financial crisis of 2008 and recession. Millions lost their jobs, families lost their homes, and $16 trillion in household wealth evaporated. But since then, 93 percent of new wealth has accrued to the richest one percent.
A week later followed the economic column in the Catholic Herald by Anthony Esolen about some of Pope Leo XIII’s views on socialism in his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum. The pope denounced socialism because it deprives working people of the gains of their wages in the form of private property.