Scroll down for this very good analysis from a Deerfield man: (boldface, bracketed comments added)
Pope and economics
The pope’s heart is in the right place, but he demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding of free markets and capitalism in his recent economic speech. It is only when China abandoned [reduced?
moderated?] paternalistic government that had kept a billion souls locked in poverty and turned to free-market capitalism that it went from Third World status to a superpower.. . . more people were lifted from poverty to middle class than the total population of the United States.
Better that capitalism resulted in a few superrich and 500 million lifted out of poverty, than no superrich and 500 million who never left poverty. [Room for papal allusion to obsession with idle rich in
public discourse, including churchly]The results of free-market capitalism in breaking the chains of poverty are not limited to China; rather, they are evident in every Asian country that adopted it.
John F. Kennedy understood that lowering taxes results in wealth creation for the greatest number of citizens. Conversely, Barack Obama’s imposition of increased taxes and regulation has resulted in the weakest economic recovery on record.
The facts are clear: Free markets and capitalism are the road to prosperity.
Rob Klein, Deerfield
Klein calls it “an economic speech,” which apologists deny. I’d say that the pope’s meaning well extends to the “apostolic exhortation” label he gave it. If he did not know the apostolic part would get drowned out by the economic part, he needs a media advisor in a hurry.
Blithe Spirit 
Reblogged this on Diary of a Catholic Reader.
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In my opinion, the Pope has conflated capitalism with the free market. His reference to ‘capitalism’ resembles that of Karl Marx, the famous community organizer and founder of the Communist Party. Marx did not make a seperationn between the government and the free market. In his theory, both worked together as a single system to oppress the wage-earners. In contrast, free market ecnomists, such as Luwig von Mises make a sharp differentiation between the two in their analyses. So, capitalism in the socialist/communist analysis is a system whereby property owners, the bourgoirsie, the middle class, use the government to increase their profit margins. The government and industry work together in a cooperative effort. For example, the federal government built the Hoover Damn so that farmers could grow their crops. It created the Tenessee Valley Authority to control floods and subsidize agriculter. I bailed out the the banking company Goldman-Sachs to the tune of a trillion dollars and it bailed out General Motors. All the different levels of government either help particular industries or harm them, depending upon the political needs of the people in power. This arrangment has also been called ‘corporatism’ and ‘fascism.’ In such a system, the government creates winners and losers, the losers being classed as ‘poor people’ and exploited workers. The fans of such ‘corporatism’ and ‘fascism’ refuse to look at the ways in which government action hurts industries and employees. Rather they insist that more government will solve the social problems. Ultimately, their criticism is self-referential, although they lack the intellectual tools to see this. In many cases, this represents willful ignorance, since the final goal is total control over the economy by means of a didctatorship, as Vladimir Lenin, another famouse community organizer remnarked, “Dictatorship is rule based directly upon force and unrestricted by any laws. The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is rule won and maintained by the use of violence by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws.”
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Very interesting, as in the Mises and Lenin references. I must pursue that capitalism-free market distinction. Thanks.
Jim Bowman
http://www.jimbowman.com
https://blithespirit.wordpress.com/
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Top clarify, the distinction rests in the use of the word, not in a dictionsry definition.
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Yes. Usage matters. Oxford Dict., for instance, documents all definitions by usage examples. A marvelous tour through language, page after page.
Jim Bowman
http://www.jimbowman.com
https://blithespirit.wordpress.com/
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