So? Cant be critical of parts of Western Culture? We do it all the time.
What? Religion? Politics? Economics?
Not really in general... More of a condemnation of extreme inequality, greed, and deregulated capitalism. But he is to the left, he is apart of the liberation theology movement.
What the pope has to say:
"I recognize that globalization has helped many people to rise from poverty, but it has condemned many others to hunger. It's true that in absolute terms it grows world wealth, but it also increased the disparity and the new kinds of poverty.
What I notice is that this system is maintained with the culture of waste, of which I have already spoken several times. There is a politics, sociology, and also an attitude of rejection.
When at the center of the system there is not anymore man but money, when money becomes an idol, men and women are reduced and simply instruments of a social system and an economy characterized, indeed dominated by deep imbalances.
It is that attitude that rejects children and old people, and now also affects young people. I have the impression that in the developed countries there are many millions of young people under 25 years that don't have work. I have called them "nor-nor", because they don't study and they don't work: they don't study because they don't have possibility to do so, don't work because they can't find it.
And therefore, searching for a response to the question, I would say: Let's not consider this state of things irreversible; let's not resign ourselves to it. Let's search to construct a society and an economy where man and his good, and not money, may be the center.
And at the same time I am convinced that there may be [a] need that these men and these women commit -- at every level, in the society, in politics, in economic institutions -- [to] putting at the center the common good.
We cannot wait more to resolve the structural causes of poverty, to heal our society from a disease that can only lead to new crises. Markets and financial speculation cannot enjoy absolute autonomy.
Without a solution to the problems of the poor we cannot resolve the problems of the world. They serve programs, mechanisms and processes oriented to a better allocation of resources, creation of work, [and] integral promotion of those who are excluded.
Pauperism is a caricature of the Gospel and of the same poverty. Instead, Saint Francis has helped us to find the profound links between poverty and the evangelical path.
Poverty is far from idolatry, from feeling self-sufficient. Zacchaeus, after crossing the merciful gaze of Jesus, donated half of his possessions to the poor. The Gospel message is a message open to all, the Gospel does not condemn the rich but idolatry of wealth, that idolatry that renders insensitive to the cries of the poor.
Jesus has said that before offering our gifts in front of the altar we must reconcile ourselves with our brother to be at peace with him. I believe we can, for analogy, extend this request even to being at peace with these poor brothers.
A month before the opening of the Second Vatican Council, Pope John XXIII said: "The church presents how it is and wants to be, like a church of all, and particularly a church of the poor."
In the following years, the preferential choice for the poor entered in the documents of the magisterium. Someone could think it new, while instead it is an attention that has its origins in the Gospel and is documented already in the first centuries of Christianity.
If I might have repeated some passages of the homilies of the first fathers of the church, from the second or third century, on how we should treat the poor, there might be someone who accuses me that mine is a Marxist homily.
[Repeating from Paul VI's 1967 encyclical "Popolorum Progressio"]: private property does not constitute an unconditional and absolute right, and that no one is authorized to reserve for their exclusive use what he does not need, when others lack necessities.
In new interview, Francis strongly defends criticisms of capitalism | National Catholic Reporter
"Eastern cultures" cant/dont/havent had capitalism?
He has condemned ISIS, just as he has condemned greed, and hunger.
Ok. I think he knows this...
