Breitbart Attacks the Pope, But Fails to Supply Proof
Breitbart ran a scathing report on the Pope's attack on libertarianism. How scathing? Very. It quoted him verbatim. "Foul!"
Here is the problem. It created a hot link to the text of the Pope's statements. You can see it highlighted in blue.
I clicked the highlighted word, message. I wanted to read the entire document. Lo and behold, the hot link produced this:
I don't know how this got by the editor. Here is the rule: if you quote a major figure, you must include a link to the original source document. You don't assume that everybody is going to believe what you have just written. On the contrary, if he is a major leader, you should assume that a lot of people will not believe it. An effective way not to achieve credibility is to supply a hot link when the link is dead. This makes it look as though nobody is minding the store.
Breitbart offers no way on the home page to contact the editor and warn him. This compounds the error.
LIBERATION THEOLOGY
I have no doubt that the Pope said exactly what he was quoted as having said. I have repeatedly said that he is a liberation theologian. Liberation theology is a system of theology that is opposed to liberation. It is socialist to the core. It was popular among Latin American Catholic Marxists in the 1970's and 1980's. But then, in late 1991, the Soviet Union did the unforgivable. It committed suicide. That left liberation theologians in Latin America high and dry. They have been on the defensive ever since. Only now, when one of their own is Pope, are they getting good publicity. But he never mentions the phrase "liberation theology." He just presents the system's economic ideas as if they were gospel.
Liberation theology is bad economics and even worse theology. I published David Chilton's book on this in 1981. The book was a response to a Protestant Leftist who promoted the system in 1977, and did so in a best-selling book jointly published by an evangelical Protestant press and a Catholic liberation theology press. You can download a free copy here.
Because this Pope is a liberation theologian, he gets a lot of coverage from the mainstream media because the mainstream media share his economic views.
I think it would be a good idea for Catholic theologians and economists to critique the Pope's economic announcements. I think they should assume that his announcements are not the equivalent of statements ex cathedra. Popes stopped excommunicating people for their opinions two generations ago unless their opinions led to the creation of a new church. Frankly, I think a free-market Catholic economist could make a career out of responding to the unofficial statements of Popes on economics. He should simply assume that none of the statements are official.
It's always easier to say you're sorry than to get permission.