Time constraints are not allowing me to dedicate as much time to this topic now as I would like, but it bears reminding some circles that casting a critical, even doubtful, eye on some of the occasional marks of our current Pontiff, Pope Francis, is not tantamount to a radical rejection of either his pontificate or the many instances in which he faithfully upholds the Catholic Church’s teachings on, inter alia, the devil, sin, just war, society, and economics. In fact, as Rorate Caeli noted not long ago, Francis and traditional Catholics, i.e., those traditional Catholics who faithfully adhere to Catholic Social Teaching (CST), are substantially united on economic matters. The problem, however, is that some traditionalists, like their (somewhat estranged) neo-Catholic and liberal Catholic brethren, fall into the trap of assuming that Francis is saying something radically new when he condemns usury or reminds world leaders that “the goal of politics and economics is to serve humanity.” Such claims rest on woeful ignorance of CST, particularly its modern formulation which, in large part, began with Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum.
