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Article: The Pope and the West. (Pope John Paul II's new encyclical and Catholic Church social policy) (editorial)
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- May 13, 1991
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1991 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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STUNNED by the collapse of the socialist idea, socialists in the West are eager to change the subject, to, well, something like "the sins of capitalism." That, in any case, is the approach taken in an article by John Wyles in the Financial Times, which predicts that Pope John Paul II's new encyclical of socialist democratic values this year." Mr. Wyles calls John Paul II "one of Europe's leading socialists," who nourishes "a quiet loathing for aspects of liberal capitalism."
So extreme is Wyles's portrait of Catholic social thought since Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum--whose centenary will be the occasion of the new encyclical--that he ignores one gigantic fact. The ...