In writ­ing about the joy of the gospel, Pope Fran­cis over­looked some very good news – about mar­kets, about com­pas­sion, about poverty.

His first encycli­cal (Evan­gelii Gaudi­um, “The Joy of The Gospel”) has drawn atten­tion less for its focus on mis­sions than for its eco­nom­ic pro­nounce­ments. Pres­i­dent Oba­ma favor­ably cit­ed the doc­u­ment in his recent remarks on eco­nom­ic mobil­i­ty, while some con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tors have offered up harsh crit­i­cisms.

The Pope sees a world marked by exclu­sion, finan­cial dom­i­na­tion and a “new idol­a­try of mon­ey” [para­graph 55]. Our time, he writes, is a his­toric “turn­ing-point” for human­i­ty [52]. Acknowl­edg­ing that tech­nol­o­gy, both a result of pros­per­i­ty and among its caus­es, has “improve[d] people’s wel­fare,” the Pope cor­rect­ly reminds us that many “are bare­ly liv­ing from day to day,” that their “hearts … are gripped by fear and des­per­a­tion,” that “inequal­i­ty is increas­ing­ly evi­dent” [52]. He attrib­ut­es inequal­i­ty to “rapid and cumu­la­tive advances occur­ring in the sci­ences and tech­nol­o­gy,” which have bred “new and anony­mous kinds of pow­er” [52].

Belief in the “absolute auton­o­my of the mar­ket­place” has pre­vent­ed gov­ern­ments from “exercis[ing] any form of con­trol” over them, engen­der­ing “a new tyran­ny” that is “invis­i­ble and often vir­tu­al,” and that “uni­lat­er­al­ly and relent­less­ly impos­es its own laws and rules” [56].

The Pope, in short, is no fan of mar­kets. Nor is he much for the clas­sic lib­er­al notions of indi­vid­ual lib­er­ty and prop­er­ty. He crit­i­cizes what he calls “the inor­di­nate defense of indi­vid­ual rights” [190]. When it comes to prop­er­ty, he gets a bit more cryp­tic, sug­gest­ing that pri­vate own­er­ship is more a “social func­tion” than a right.

Sol­i­dar­i­ty is a spon­ta­neous reac­tion by those who rec­og­nize that the social func­tion of prop­er­ty and the uni­ver­sal des­ti­na­tion of goods are real­i­ties which come before pri­vate prop­er­ty. The pri­vate own­er­ship of goods is jus­ti­fied by the need to pro­tect and increase them, so that they can bet­ter serve the com­mon good; for this rea­son, sol­i­dar­i­ty must be lived as the deci­sion to restore to the poor what belongs to them [189].

The “social func­tion” of prop­er­ty involves “the uni­ver­sal des­ti­na­tion of goods.”  Pri­vate own­er­ship is sec­ondary to that social func­tion.  It is sim­ply a way to induce peo­ple to “pro­tect and increase” the val­ue of prop­er­ty.  Once that func­tion has been accom­plished, the “increase” is to be “restore[d] to the poor” since it “belongs to them.” So if you own a piece of land, you are to plow it, plant and tend it, then “restore” the fruit of the har­vest to those to whom it “belongs”: those who nei­ther own the land nor cul­ti­vat­ed it.  Such are the moral demands of “sol­i­dar­i­ty.”

Con­ser­v­a­tives who believe in mar­kets and in the Constitution’s pro­tec­tion of life, lib­er­ty and prop­er­ty may find this pas­sage jar­ring. They should bear in mind that the Pope is say­ing very lit­tle new here. The doc­u­ment is gen­er­ous­ly sprin­kled with quotes from his pre­de­ces­sors, who have writ­ten sim­i­lar things. The Church nev­er embraced John Locke (much less Adam Smith) or the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion, and cer­tain­ly not the French Rev­o­lu­tion or even Ital­ian Uni­fi­ca­tion. It was con­ser­v­a­tive in the Euro­pean sense, sup­port­ing (and, in the Papal States, prac­tic­ing) feu­dal­ism and then mod­ern monarchy.

In both, prop­er­ty own­er­ship was con­cen­trat­ed in the hands of the few. Serfs gen­er­al­ly didn’t own the land they worked and were denied rights that we take for grant­ed, includ­ing enjoy­ing the fruits of their labor. The land-hold­ing class, how­ev­er, had an oblig­a­tion to pro­vide for the safe­ty and well-being of those who lived and worked on their prop­er­ty. They (the­o­ret­i­cal­ly) used their wealth to pro­tect their charges.  The rela­tion­ship between lord and serf was one of mutu­al com­mit­ment, sealed by an oath. The Church retains some­thing of this faint­ly medieval impulse, pro­fess­ing that it holds ines­timable wealth in prop­er­ty and trea­sure only for the ben­e­fit of its mem­bers and the broad­er world.

From this per­spec­tive, mar­kets seem chaot­ic and bar­bar­ic. If every­one has rights, where are the mutu­al oblig­a­tions and who assures that they are being met? The Pope’s hor­ror at the mar­ket­place is, in that sense, inte­gral­ly relat­ed to his hor­ror at mod­ern sex­u­al norms. Unreg­u­lat­ed sex resem­bles unreg­u­lat­ed mar­kets, with indi­vid­u­als free to pur­sue their own pref­er­ences. No good can come of either. It is no acci­dent that the doc­u­ment inte­grates crit­i­cism of free mar­kets with crit­i­cism of free access to abor­tion [213]. Con­ser­v­a­tives who cheer that affir­ma­tion should under­stand its insev­er­able tie to the eco­nom­ic pro­nounce­ments to which they object. Sim­i­lar­ly, pro­gres­sives who cel­e­brate the Pope’s dis­taste for mar­kets should also bear in mind what he says about abortion.

The Church can­not be expect­ed to change her posi­tion on this ques­tion. I want to be com­plete­ly hon­est in this regard. This is not some­thing sub­ject to alleged reforms or ‘mod­ern­iza­tions.’ It is not ‘pro­gres­sive’ to try to resolve prob­lems by elim­i­nat­ing a human life [214].

Like it or not, the encycli­cal mere­ly reaf­firms Church teach­ing on mar­kets, prop­er­ty rights and abor­tion. The Pope can hard­ly be crit­i­cized for restat­ing and repack­ag­ing the Church’s phi­los­o­phy, how­ev­er it may be received by mod­erns on the Left and Right. What I would crit­i­cize is the document’s dark and despair­ing tone in speak­ing of pover­ty and inequal­i­ty. The Pope states that free mar­kets ren­der it impos­si­ble to solve any of the world’s problems.

As long as the prob­lems of the poor are not rad­i­cal­ly resolved by reject­ing the absolute auton­o­my of mar­kets and finan­cial spec­u­la­tion and by attack­ing the struc­tur­al caus­es of inequal­i­ty, no solu­tion will be found for the world’s prob­lems or, for that mat­ter, to any prob­lems [202].

It is here that the Pope, in my view at least, ven­tures beyond expound­ing Church doc­trine and miss­es one of the most promis­ing real­i­ties of our age: mar­kets and the wealth they pro­duce are mak­ing great strides toward solv­ing the prob­lem of glob­al pover­ty.  Con­sid­er this chart, which appeared last June in The Econ­o­mist:

The per­cent­age of peo­ple liv­ing in extreme pover­ty – defined as the equiv­a­lent of $1.25 per day – dropped by half between 1990 and 2010 and is pro­ject­ed to con­tin­ue its steep decline. The chart, which the Econ­o­mist adapt­ed from a recent Brook­ings Insti­tute study, shows that, under some sce­nar­ios, extreme pover­ty might be vir­tu­al­ly elim­i­nat­ed by 2030.

This is a remark­able and stun­ning devel­op­ment. Extreme pover­ty has been ram­pant through­out the ages. In most coun­tries, as the Econ­o­mist recent­ly not­ed, “Pover­ty was not even a prob­lem; it was a plain, unchange­able fact.”

That fact is now chang­ing and chang­ing abrupt­ly, rais­ing sub­stan­dard liv­ing con­di­tions that have per­sist­ed through­out most of the world for mil­len­nia. The pover­ty rate is falling across the globe, in large part, because of the growth and lib­er­al­iza­tion of mar­kets in devel­op­ing economies and the tech­no­log­i­cal improve­ments and eco­nom­ic growth they have engendered.

Pover­ty also has declined because of the char­i­ty of wealthy indi­vid­u­als (some reli­gious, some not) and their gov­ern­ments (which derive the bulk of their resources from wealthy indi­vid­u­als and pro­duc­tive mar­kets). To cite but two exam­ples, Con­gress, at the urg­ing of for­mer Pres­i­dent George W. Bush, in 2003 launched the Emer­gency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), as the largest effort by any nation in his­to­ry to com­bat a sin­gle dis­ease.  The Glob­al Fund coop­er­ates close­ly with PEPFAR, fight­ing AIDS, tuber­cu­lo­sis and malar­ia. It is a pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship that com­bines gov­ern­ment aid with pri­vate phil­an­thropy. 54 coun­tries have togeth­er pledged $28 bil­lion to the effort. Suc­cess­ful cap­i­tal­ists also are doing their parts. The Bill and Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion has pledged $1.4 bil­lion to the Glob­al Fund, Coca Cola $1 bil­lion, and malar­ia ini­tia­tives spon­sored by the Methodist and Luther­an church­es an unspec­i­fied amount.

It is not mere­ly the mag­ni­tude and gen­eros­i­ty of these efforts that impress­es. While the Pope notes that “a num­ber of dis­eases are spread­ing” [52], the most preva­lent and per­ni­cious are being pre­vent­ed, treat­ed and, in some cas­es, are on the verge of being erad­i­cat­ed. Dur­ing its first five years, PEPFAR sup­port­ed the pro­vi­sion of treat­ment to more than 2 mil­lion peo­ple with HIV, care to more than 10 mil­lion peo­ple, includ­ing more than 4 mil­lion orphans and vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren, and ser­vices to pre­vent moth­er-to-child trans­mis­sion of HIV dur­ing near­ly 16 mil­lion preg­nan­cies.  It recent­ly announced the mil­lionth child born HIV-free as a result of these efforts.

Glob­al AIDS infec­tion and mor­tal­i­ty rates are dra­mat­i­cal­ly declin­ing, in part as a con­se­quence of these inter­ven­tions. Polio cas­es have plunged by 99 per­cent since 1988. Malar­ia inci­dence has fall­en by at least 50 per­cent in one-third of the coun­tries where the dis­ease is endem­ic and the Bill & Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion has com­mit­ted $2 bil­lion in pur­suit of its eradication.

The pos­i­tive effects of these efforts by suc­cess­ful cap­i­tal­ists and the gov­ern­ments of advanced, mar­ket-based economies are too numer­ous to men­tion. Between 1970 and 2010, glob­al life expectan­cies improved by 11 years for men and 12 years for women, an aston­ish­ing advance in the course of a gen­er­a­tion.  Annu­al deaths of chil­dren under 5 have declined from 12.6 per mil­lion to 6.6 mil­lion since 2000. Edu­ca­tion also is improv­ing, with glob­al lit­er­a­cy rates reach­ing 84 per­cent in 2010 . Progress is being made against mal­nu­tri­tion, with 156 mil­lion few­er peo­ple not hav­ing enough to eat than in 1990.

I could go on, but the point is clear enough: though they still have a long way to go, efforts to reduce pover­ty by address­ing its caus­es and alle­vi­at­ing its con­se­quences are enjoy­ing a lev­el of suc­cess nev­er before seen in world history.

That isn’t to say that aid pro­grams are with­out their crit­ics or flaws. But even in his recent scathing piece on West­ern aid to Africa, Paul Ther­oux acknowl­edged, “Nev­er have so many peo­ple, so many agen­cies, so many strat­a­gems, so much mon­ey been deployed to improve Africa.”  Even if Ther­oux is right that they’re under­achiev­ing (and sta­tis­tics seem to belie that assess­ment), the amount and extra­or­di­nary nature of this aid sug­gests that the Pope may have it wrong when he argues that eco­nom­ic free­dom breeds indif­fer­ence toward the poor.

The encycli­cal depicts wealthy nations and indi­vid­u­als as moral­ly obtuse con­sumers who neglect their neigh­bors’ needs.  They are, the Pope writes, “in thrall to an indi­vid­u­al­is­tic, indif­fer­ent and self-cen­tered men­tal­i­ty” [208].  Though that descrip­tion sure­ly fits in some cas­es, it miss­es a larg­er real­i­ty.  The free­dom to acquire wealth and its antecedent right to own prop­er­ty not only dri­ve eco­nom­ic growth and raise liv­ing stan­dards but also enable human­i­tar­i­an acts.  Far from hard­en­ing hearts, pros­per­i­ty often soft­ens them, inspir­ing acts of char­i­ty and gen­eros­i­ty.  The aggre­gate effects of those acts are seen in declin­ing rates of extreme pover­ty, mor­bid­i­ty and child mortality.

The Pope’s focus on the poor is well-placed. Glob­al pover­ty con­tin­ues to pose a daunt­ing chal­lenge, despite remark­able progress of efforts to reduce it. Car­ing for the poor is a mark of faith, mer­cy a char­ac­ter­is­tic of those who cel­e­brate God’s mer­cy, grace a trait of those who have been embraced by God’s grace. It is at the heart of the gospel, the good news that ani­mates Chris­tians of all confessions.

The Pope is right to remind us that Jesus came to “pro­claim good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18). He might per­haps con­sid­er that his mis­trust of mar­kets has caused him to over­look their role in pro­duc­ing some very good news about the poor.