Catholicism is incompatible with Romney/Ryan Republicanism

Pope Leo XIII issued the encyclical Aeterni Patris in 1879, in which he promotes, to the point of instituting, the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas as the official theology and philosophy of the Church. In it he quotes Pope Innocent VI 1362†, “His teaching above that of others, the canonical writings alone excepted, enjoys such a precision of language, an order of matters, a truth of conclusions, that those who hold to it are never found swerving from the path of truth, and he who dare assail it will always be suspected of error”.

Gordon Gekko is the protagonist in the film Wall Street. He is a composite character of several financiers, Ivan Boesky foremost. Gekko makes the statement, “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the U.S.A”.

Pope Benedict issued the encyclical Caritas in Veritate in 2009. He wrote, “Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty”. His Secretary of State and Camerlengo (Chamberlain), Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, a few days later addressed the Italian senators. Bertone countered the film, when he said, “Greed market has substituted free market”.

Willard Romney made a fortune as a venture vulture capitalist on Wall Street. Paul Ryan, the disciple of Ayn Rand, believes as she did, taxing the rich for the common good, and societal altruism is wrong. The economic and political difference between Romney, Ryan, Rand, and the fictional Gekko and his real antecedents is nothing. Rand was an atheistic materialist.

Book is opened to pages reading Summa Theologica, Summa Philosophica

St. Mary Seminary, Cleveland

It is to be remembered that the words: avarice, covetousness and greed are equivalent.  St. Thomas writes on that deadly sin in Summa Theologica II-II. Question 118. The vices opposed to liberality, and in the first place, of covetousness

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I answer that, in whatever things good consists in a due measure, evil must of necessity ensue through excess or deficiency of that measure. Now in all things that are for an end, the good consists in a certain measure: since whatever is directed to an end must needs be commensurate with the end, as, for instance, medicine is commensurate with health, as the Philosopher observes (Polit. i, 6). External goods come under the head of things useful for an end, as stated above (117, 3; I-II, 02, 1). Hence it must needs be that man's good in their respect consists in a certain measure, in other words, that man seeks, according to a certain measure, to have external riches, in so far as they are necessary for him to live in keeping with his condition of life. Wherefore it will be a sin for him to exceed this measure, by wishing to acquire or keep them immoderately. This is what is meant by covetousness, which is defined as "immoderate love of possessing." It is therefore evident that covetousness is a sin.
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Reply to Objection 2. Covetousness may signify immoderation about external things in two ways. First, so as to regard immediately the acquisition and keeping of such things, when, to wit, a man acquires or keeps them more than is due. On this way it is a sin directly against one's neighbor, since one man cannot over-abound in external riches, without another man lacking them, for temporal goods cannot be possessed by many at the same time. Secondly, it may signify immoderation in the internal affection which a man has for riches when, for instance, a man loves them, desires them, or delights in them, immoderately. On this way by covetousness a man sins against himself, because it causes disorder in his affections, though not in his body as do the sins of the flesh.

As a consequence, however, it is a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, inasmuch as man contemns things eternal for the sake of temporal things.
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