PATHETIC/DISGUSTING CATHOLIC LEADERSHIP IN VENEZUELA

PATHETIC/DISGUSTING CATHOLIC LEADERSHIP IN VENEZUELA

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP://WWW.CINOPSBEGONEBLOGSPOT.COM - WED. APR. 24/19

SOCIALISM VS. 'THE PERSON'

BY MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, MON. APRIL 22, 2019

    "This week Roman Catholics mark the octave of Easter, a time when the glory of the Resurrection fills believers with anticipation of good things to come - if not in this life then in the next.

But hope is hard to come by in Catholic Venezuela these days. The nation is racked by despair as it faces privation so extreme that families eat garbage from dumpsters. Millions have fled, often with only what they can carry.

    Venezuela was once the richest country in South America. Now it's a place of malnourished children, starving adults and pullulating disease. Yet its corrupt and cruel military dictatorship clings to power. The world looks on in horror as Venezuelans are helpless to combat this evil. Inside and outside the country the refrain is the same. How could this have happened?

Venezuela's abundant supplies of petroleum reserves played a role in corrupting the nation. But the real problem is ideological, and it's a lesson for Americans. Venezuela's intelligentsia spent much of the 20th century inculcating the population with socialist pap. If you're not sure what that means, listen to Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They spout the same nonsense.

    Intellectuals, educators and politicians promised that sticking it to the rich was the path to socialist paradise. As government intervention in the economy was the path to socialist paradise.

as government intervention in the economy - particularly through price and exchange controls - damaged living standards, Venezuelans voted for more of it. Little did the know that by targeting the rights of successful entrepreneurs in the name of social just, they were setting up the country to fail.

Venezuelan socialism fomented envy and deep distrust of business. This destroyed respect for persons who dared to be creative and build wealth. Poverty and dystopia were inevitable. Climbing out of this hole will take more than removing Nicolas Maduro. The country is devastated, but Venezuelans haven't abandoned the collectivist cause.

    Many popular opposition politicians still call themselves socialists, unwilling to defend the creative class and its members' rights to the fruits of their labor. Venezuela needs an ideas revolution that recognizes business as an endeavor of the human spirit.

Socialist pose as humanitarians and some times even as Christians but their system strangles the person, who is at the heart of Catholic teaching. Catholic University of America research fellow Father John McNerney, author of "Wealth of Persons" (2016), describes "real wellspring" of human progress as emanating from "the unique, irreplaceable ... reality of the individual acting in relation to his neighbor."

    We more than simply individuals, because it is in relation with one another "as persons" that we discover ourselves, Father McNerney told me by email last week. "As persons' we have intellect and will, allowing us to go 'beyond' the material. It is as 'persons' that human creativity unfolds."

Economists understand that the profit motive is integral to entrepreneurship. But it is about much more than material gains. Father McNerney illustrates the point in his book with the story of Agnes Morrogh-Bernard, a Sister of Charity who worked in the west of Ireland...."

George H. Kubeck

   

    The biggest question is, "Whose side is the Vatican on?"  There is a call for mass demonstration on May 1st. Without doubt, the infiltration of Cuban communist propaganda for decades is responsible for the mindset in Venezuela today. We may get rid of this communist cancer within the next few years with the call for free elections, supervised by the U.N., not only in Venezuela but Cuba and Nicaragua.