This Pope is too good to be a Christian

I have a new hero. I find myself with the most unlikely soul-mate in Pope Francis. I trust that the poor fellow is not too embarrassed to find himself being endorsed in this column. I have just been reading an Apostolic Exhortation published by Pope Francis, entitled Evangelii Gaudium in which he delivers a ringing denunciation of our dominant neoliberal ideology. This economic situation we find ourselves in is the real legacy of Margaret Thatcher and is described by the Pope as

" Just as the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say “thou shalt not” to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape. ....
Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a “disposable” culture which is now spreading. It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new. Exclusion ultimately has to do with what it means to be a part of the society in which we live; those excluded are no longer society’s underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised – they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the “exploited” but the outcast, the “leftovers”.

I trust you will recognise that I am not jumping on any bandwagons here, and that such sentiments are what I have been publishing since I started this blog. Thus, what we have in this country is not just an economic and political problem, it is also a deeply moral and ethical problem. I have repeatedly warned that the British establishment are determined to reduce working people to a situation of modern slavery and that they remind me of the Nazis who considered the excluded to be ballastexistenzen and useless eaters. Here we have the Pope telling us that throughout the so-called civilised world, the poor and disadvantaged are leftovers, not even part of the society. The Pope goes on.

"While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few. This imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation. Consequently, they reject the right of states, charged with vigilance for the common good, to exercise any form of control. A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules"

Well done the Pope, such sentiments on an international stage from a position of influence are long overdue, but remember, you heard it from the Doktor first. You have been warned

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat