I'm not religious but why should it be bad to shift to the poor?
I mean -this is the way the jesus-dude went,therefor it is not about bad or good but about:will we follow the way our religious founder has gone or not .This is not a PR competition but about idealism and ideologie-as long as the pope is not corrupt.
A shift to the rich is surely not needed,as the rich and the bankers got so much money(though they don't need it) in the past and things only got worser while they got richer.-that's a normal effect,as you need to take from a lot of poor people to make one rich man richer.

About protestants:the protestants I know in europe are not about money or:"you get what you deserve"
.They are less interessted in money than the catholics and more tolerant.I guess this is only an american protestant point of view that is based on the corruption of chritian religion by the banker shill calvin(original name:cauvin,spoken:cohen)that has nothing to do with the teachings of the jesus-guy or luthers protestantic reformation,but with greed and money and the legalizing of usury in christian religion.

Also, by spiritual negative, I mean because the biggest problem humans tend to have with problems is to see them as someone elses responsibility or fault. This allows them to close themselves off to realization and self development.

For example, racism is hitting a stumbling block because most people still see racism in the terms of the big bag southern guy who's willing to shoot a black guy saying hello to his daughter. Or just outright racists refusing things purely on the basis of someones skin.

Such a focus, and worry about "bad racists" tends to cause us to ignore well meaning people who are racist... and well, pretty much everybody, since pretty much everybody is to some degree racist because we are programmed that way by society.

By worrying about others who are "pure old school racists" we overlook our own faults. For example, we never even think twice about how we react to acquaintances even though it's been shown most people subconsciously react negatively to a black face. Totally unaware that we may unknowingly be treating people of different races wrong. (or sexes or what have you.)


In the same vein, a focus on wealth redistribution, vs personal charity, sacrifice and removal from the physical focuses soley on those with the most. So people focus on them, and government to fix things, and things end up getting worse, and support actually shrinks a lot of the time.

It's likely why you more often then not find a weird inverse when it comes to charitable giving and support for more wealth distribution. Those who are looking at others to do more, rarely ask what more they could do.

Religion is meant to look inwards on ones self and reflect on ones own deficits. Whenever the focus changes from oneself... that's when trouble occurs.

The world's nations and other organizations would do better fo focus less on forcing certain people to be better people, and focus more on teaching them to be better people by forcing them to look within themselves and where they lack.   It's like with communism.  It works in theory, but only in theory because the people aren't good enough for it... and if they were... ANY system would work, because people would act the same without any rules telling them what to do.

The idea reconciling the two is that we as hypothetical, nominal good Christians should willingly build a worldly system of redistribution, with all of us participating willingly, and thus build a properly Christian society here.

I think this pope will really help the Catholic Church a lot. There is nothing wrong with helping the poor.

Which already exists... in the form of the Catholic Church.  

This guy gets it. Charity has always been a focus of the Catholic Church. Volunteer work, feeding the hungry, clothing the needy, nursing the sick, etc. are all good. The government can't do it right. The Church asks that you be active in helping. The government forces you to pay so it can hand out to others. Biiiiiiig difference.

To be fair.   I do think government COULD do it right when it comes to charity.

They just rarely get it right due to politics which usually lead to bad programs, and then the further funding of bad programs due to the need to be right even if you aren't because the slightest change will be held against you.

Essentially as long as politicians care more about their own well being then the actual well being of those they help, it will only cause problems in the long term.

That and course the problem of it turning the people more towards themselves outlined above... meaning such government policies soon fall out of favour unless kept in place out of simple fear of falling into such circumstances themselves.

It's hardly optimal as far as society evolving.

Part of what I wrote would connected some notable Catholics out there who speak of people being where they are in life, due to themselves, and life is what one makes it alone.  In short, there are no victims, so everyone is where they are, due to their own fault.  In no way do legitimately competent people not make it, if they are legitimately competent and free markets NEVER fail, or in this blessed by God America, with its exceptionalism, means NO ONE is behind where there are.  Oh sure, one is supposed to do some charity, and natural disasters do happen.  But systemically and economically?  No way does that happen, unless the goverment gets involved.  

One of these Catholics is Paul Ryan when he, when it was convenient politically, trumpeted how great Ayn Rand was ON ECONOMIC ISSUES.   

You also have Bill O'Reilly who says that people are poor because it is their own fault (almost ALWAYS comes back to personal responsibility):

http://mediamatters.org/video/2012/02/02/bill-oreilly-names-true-causes-of-poverty-poor/184685

And have Sean Hannity, in the mix says he can't believe one one who is talented enough couldn't make it.  In short,

There was another incident where a talking head speaks about how it is unscriptural (A Catholic) that you would take a poor person into your home.

I would argue free markets never do fail.  Sometimes less then great results occur for people, but that's different from failing.  It's simply people evaluating the market wrong and failing because of it.  Often just due to a lack of trasnparency or piece of information that comes down the pipeline.  If you opened up a VHS manufacturing company right before DVD's released.  The free market didn't fail... you just made a bad choice. 

All career paths do involve risk, and people want to blame failures for why it didn't work out for them... when it wasn't a failure.  It was just one of the possible outcomes you signed up for.

As for nobody getting involved systematically and economically... that's demonstably false.  I'm not sure if you mean from somebodies point of view or what... but there are tons of orgnizations that do get involved economicaly... mostly all of them are organizations of faith.

As for Ayn Rand... though she disagreed on many philosophical issues, economically she more endorsed Mises views.  Mises was a bit rigid but overall he's pretty straight on and right about a lot of stuff... and an obvious choice for someone who believes in more conservative economics.

I think your confusing social issues here with economic issues.  Whether or not money should go to help the poor or not is a social issue.  Not an economic one.  As can be shown by a number of countries out there with booming economies who adhere to much more conservative economic doctrines but have stronger social saftey nets.

From a pure economics point of view, the free market that has a few simple laws to keep it free and transparent will always be superior... because it's just letting the economy grow and shrink perfectly according to supply and demand.

We put in other rules not for the economys sake, but to make the economy more tailored to our moral guidlines. 

Ayn Rand was actually pretty solid when it came to pure economics, even if she did argueably want the poor to all die.


Edit: Oh and for Bill O'Reily... that poverty almost always comes back to personal responsibility (Or poor education and a couple other things he listed.)

Well... that's true.   I really don't think you'll find anyone who would argue that.

It really depends on how they handle it.

If they simply want to promote more church programs to help the poor and needy, then I'm all for it. But if they're going to try to exert political pressure on countries to create more welfare programs... Then there is a huge problem with that. It typically gives governments more power (look at Venezuela and the "Champion" of the poor - good ole Hugo).

Also, like Pope Francis said, they do have to focus on the gospel too, or they stand to simply become an NGO.

So nothing wrong with helping the poor, but the real question is how they handle it.