they do this in and out of channel. one of the questions we have gotten up here goes direct to that. to ask you both to comment on the news reports that appeared monday thats" on intelligence assessments of isis at varioustered points. this was mostly in the dia. to downplay their strength. when i read that story the other day i was thinking to myself, this is the same debate that played out during the pentagon papers in 1969. where history of the vietnam war suggested that the government had overestimated our success against the viet cong. except we were seeing played out in real time with the isis struggle. when you read something like that and maybe you have had some discussions with the intel community on that.

tell us a little bit about that dynamic. are concerned about the politicization of intelligence and it has long been a political football that there is always of theions politicization of intelligence. i have never viewed al qaeda as on the run. it makes for good political rhetoric. gives the market people who do not want to be fighting wars, wemakes them feel good but still have enemies out there and enemies are growing. by the storyprised or -- i was surprised that it sounds like now there are whistleblowers that are coming forward. >> there is an ig investigation. >> that will be of interest to

both of us to figure out what that is all about. to have an open avenue for whistleblowers to come forward. it has not been easy in the past for whistleblowers. some of thease whistleblowers came to my colleagues at "the times." could they have come to the committee? >> absolutely. we have a process in place for whistleblowers to come forward. anyone in the intelligence committee has the right to come actively -- sometimes it is not even whistleblowers that adam and i, we meet with people when we travel or even here in washington. our doors are always open to people within the ic to come with complaints. >> thanks for the refresher on the pentagon papers case.

i took a class but it was at 8 a.m. and i slept most of it. >> we started at 8:15 a.m. and we gave them 15 minutes of caffeine knowing that you guys would be out here. >> excellent. i think the chairman's point is exactly right. make itevery effort to possible for whistleblowers not only to can indicate with us but to -- communicate with us but to have avenues to raise concern so they do not feel they need to leak information to be heard. that onnot to say policy differences that we will agree with someone who disagrees with the policy of the intelligence community, but we do need to make sure that there is an avenue available for overnt, for any concern wrongdoing or failure to adhere to the guidelines or politicization of intelligence. all of us have in mind concerns

expressed over intelligence on iraq and none of us want to see anything like that happening with respect to iso-or any other challenge we face. there have been cultural changes that have encouraged dissenting opinions that develop alternative analyses that question assumptions that seems to be part of the ethic of the intelligence community in a way more than the past. this is obviously not a perfect science. the analysts can reach for different conclusions and we want that to be reflected in the work product we get. impressions can be different. i mentioned this to highlight within the last 24, 48 hours something that i think is telling in terms of the perspective we bring reading the

same intelligence. just this week all of the republican members on our committee have come out against the iran agreement and in part on the basis of their reading of intelligence. although democratic members have come out in support. similarly on the basis of our reading of intelligence. we are reaching contrary intelligence reading the same intelligence. the director spoke yesterday and it was interesting. john negroponte speaking earlier before the panel today about the impressions of what he had to say. i read them in the paper today because it was not present yesterday and i have one interpretation of what he said in terms of our capability of catching iran if they were to cheat. people who heard him may have at completely different impression of whether it was likely or not likely we would catch them. this is not a perfect science. we do want to hear those range of opinions within the ic and

what level of confidence they hold. i have a lot of confidence we do get that range of opinion. >> you provided the perfect segue into that topic. i was out in vienna for the and of the iran talks and we spent a with secretary moneys, the energy secretary who you have heard a lot from and engineeringnuclear department at m.i.t. for many years and has come to you folks with a fair bit of credibility as a result of that. his public assessment on this is if the iranians are engaged in activity involving nuclear materials, our chances of catching them are extraordinarily high because the technology of finding even trace , it is is now so good

hard to hide that. hand, they arer going back and doing what the iaea is supposed to be sorting out with them, weapons design, triggers, the kind of work they may have done and so forth, that is much harder to suss out because it does not leave a radioactive trace. you have to get to the human to get into the university labs that are being used for these purposes. as you look at these intelligence assessments and i said -- let me start with you. give us your assessment about what kind of thing we would likely to be good at catching. what kind of thing you are worried about and how you balance those two as you came to your determination to vote against this deal. >> what you have to do is back up a little ways and you have to start with should we ever -- have ever been at the

negotiating table to start if part of eating at the negotiating table meant the iranians would keep any of their nuclear weapons at all or any of their nuclear capabilities at all. my answer would be no. if the iranians wanted to come to the table and they agreed to immediate inspections always and completely getting rid of all the clear capabilities, then i would have went to the table to negotiate. without that i want to see more sanctions. i realize that to your point on technologies are always changing and perhaps the technologies are better than they once were 10 years ago in north korea when we thought they would not have a nuclear weapon and then they did develop a nuclear weapon. it has been more than 10 years now. the fact of the matter is technology changes for the bad guys, too. we do not know what technologies

they are developing to hide their development of nuclear capabilities. i would argue that -- >> you think the original sin here was abandoning the bush administration rule which even -- that administration not one centrifuge could stand. >> that would be my position. most of the republicans who are against this proposal, that would be their position. >> i would go further to say that we really see this as a gamble. if you look at what president obama, if i understand his lot that areare a off having these folks at the table, having some inspections and perhaps over time as discussing and being at the table with these -- with the mullahs will lead to some downfall of the regime.

>> the administration response has been yes. in a perfect world we would love to see not a single centrifuge spin. we do not live in a perfect world and we are much better to get 15 years with a small number spinning and have the bush administration not stuck to the position that the chairman just laid out. you might have had a deal in 2005, 2006 to have a few hundred spinning and we would the in better shape. you're looking at the same assembly of risk, the same intel picture. where do you come out on that? >> i start out from a different perspective as you point out, in the early bush ministration they had 167 centrifuges. had we gotten a deal than that required them to diminish that number by two thirds, they would

he down to about 50 centrifuges. instant of 5000 under the steel. nonetheless, my hope -- hopes at iran wereing is if allowed to have an enrichment capability, it would have been a choking -- a token one. the fact that they have capability after 15 years is a bitter pill for me to swallow. but that begins to look good when you compare it to the alternative. the alternative is we go back to where theyre before had thousands of kilos of enriched uranium. they had close to 20,000 centrifuges. where there are no limits to whether they could bring a new generation of centrifuges and reach the capability much sooner

than 15 years. that that analysis is a great -- is exactly right. -- you are iran, it will be difficult to create a path to enrichment. givens nearly impossible the vigorous inspection regime, given our intel capabilities. i do not think they can develop an alternative pathway of enrichment. we have to be on guard for a couple things. that they seek to get the material from outside the country. >> mostly north korea. >> or elsewhere. that is a difficult proposition for iran but not his called as creating a covert pathway of enrichment. unless they make the decision

they will break out. where they are likely to test us and are likely to cheat is in the non-radioactive weapons development. an computer modeling of what explosion with the client and the development of the warhead itself. they may do this in ways that they believe they can argue is not prohibited i the agreement. of ambiguity.age they may do this in sites we would be less likely to be watching. whether it is universities rather than military sites. they will test and push their two timelines. there is the timeline for enrichment and time to develop the mechanism of the bomb. the enrichment timeline will go down to a matter of weeks so us ino not need to cheat terms of the enrichment to

reduce that timeline. where they may try to cheat and we will have to train all our inources in detection is that weaponization work that may be hidden in that 24 hour time. that challenge. and so even under perfect agreement we have the challenge of making sure they did not get material from elsewhere and they were not doing militarization work. we have much better capabilities than we have had in the past. not omnipotent in our ability and therefore there is risk. like many things these agreements are a balancing of risk it is a risk we can mitigate that we cannot make it go away. that: there is a theory

the supreme leader in iran is going to have to buy off the i/o gt for the fact that if this agreement goes through it seems likely they will have 15 tough years on the nuclear program. whether they cheat or do not, their activity will be restrictive. they are brought down to 300 kilograms and they will take some of that money and effort and put it into support of terrorism. they may take a chunk of it and put it into cyber. on the theory that the supreme leader [indiscernible] someve already seen skills. there were the attacks of the banks, somewhat crude denial of service attacks. what do you think the chances are that we are going to see iran move from an incipient

nuclear power to an incipient cyber power and -- as a result -- as a result? few nunes: there are very making decisions within that regime. i think you bring up a good point about where they are going to spend this money. they are the largest funder of terrorism locally. when i talk about i think it is always important to understand and i try to define it as this jihad triangle because you have al qaeda, isis and people think they are always fighting because they are different religions. we know for fact that at times

the iranians have harbored al qaeda and sheltered al qaeda. there is talk now in the last few days in some of the press report to see that al qaeda is talking about and need to work with isis. i do not believe in long term. , when theyhadists say they are going to dull the west i think we should believe them. rep. schiff: they are already menace andnger and a increasingly sophisticated. you have this tension in iran between the ayatollah and the as recently as yesterday were talking about there is not going to be any combination -- accommodation with the great satan. at the same time you hear ronnie saying we are open to working

with the rest of the world on syria, on combating isil. so there is a tension within iranian society. i think the ayatollah will try to mediate that tension because at the end of the day, there is and one prime directive that is the perpetuation of the rule by the ayatollah and the mullahs. they must view this as an agreement as a way to let off some of the steam of that younger demographic in iran that is plugged into the rest of the do not likeose who what they have. i would not be surprised to see initially after the agreement the mullahs and the irgc flex their muscles to show this is not a sweeping change and the revolution is not over. and we going to have to push

back hard. what i have been advocating for some weeks now is we need to figure out how we can strengthen the constraints on iran and the agreement and mitigate the risks and the agreement. think that means forming a much more effective alliance with the gulf states. iran spends $15 billion on its defense. they do not spend it as cost-effectively or in ways that are effective in pushing back against hezbollah, hamas, and the sheer proxy forces. we have to work with them much more effectively. could discuss thethreshold where intelligence community would

share intelligence information with the community on cyber , but this not only requires declassification, it requires huge speed at doing this. you have to do this at networks be. not at declassification speedway to is causing a lot of heartache ache in the intelligence community as you can imagine. you have to assume that as soon as you spread this information a lot of itndustry will appear in public. maybe in industry publications but it will make its way out faster -- as it began to spread out in 2010 and let us to understand the american and israeli operations. tell us what that threshold could be.

rep. nunes: the first thing the committee started with is not making it worse. seen how hard it is just to get even with all the cyberattacks, daily growing cyber threats, you mentioned sony pictures earlier, we had two major health-care companies in the last six months get compromised, you had opm get compromised. you would think there would be the political will to get something done. we have moved this legislation quickly. in the senate it is still hung up. it is largely over privacy concerns, i guess for good reasons. at some point there will be a weping point where i think have already reached that point.

rep. schiff it affected 22 million americans including everybody with a security clearance which means most of the people in your audience here today. why wasn't opm that tipping point? are trying toes: we get to that first step of allowing company to talk, company to company to talk. sanger: frequently when i see intelligence community warnings on an intel threat and

i go out and talk to the people in the industry who look at this , you are calling me now on this, it is september, we were dealing with this in may. where have you been, where has the intelligence community been? i think that is right. by the time there is public dissemination of information it was on cnn for weeks ago. and we are very slow to move. in terms of sharing information on cyber threats, that can happen in classified channels. if we happen very quickly have the mechanism established which we're trying to do to this legislation. there are going to be times when we learn about the source of an attack in such a sensitive way

where we are not going to want to share the information. we want to share it in ways that don't tip off the generator of the attack that we are aware of where it came from or the nature of the code. merge two topics here is going to be an issue very much ash respect to our iran work well. the iaea will discover what it discovers. we may discover a lot more through our intelligence capabilities than they do with their eyes on the ground but we will have a dilemma which we can always -- we can easily anticipate where we will catch iran cheating but we will have caught them cheating using a very sensitive capability or human or whatever. we will have to decide, are we willing to burn this source to

make the public case that iran is cheating? this will be a difficult constraint and a difficult debate. mr. sanger: we have had this before. the laptop that contained the data that led to the iaea's 12 questions to iran. we were able to track back where it came from. that was a year or so delay. is one of thehis challenges that we are going to face because particularly if it is not graphic, over cheating, advantagens will take of any ambiguity in the case and when you see how russia has dissembled, about what is going on in ukraine or its activity in the whole russian position on who was using

chemical weapons, obviously, some of the p-5 plus one are going to be strongly predisposed to adopting and accepting whatever the iranian position may be. that is going to be a considerable challenge. does the committee have concerns with the proliferation of drones as both tools and threats to the ic? you spent a lot of time on the question of do you want to use this as a tool to create more terrorists and eliminate and so forth but this question is asking you to go beyond that and to think about the threat that drones may pose to the intelligence community and to the country as a whole. rep. nunes: it is an issue that is being looked at by the entire congress.

even in my hometown, once in a while you see a drone. one of these three by three drones flying around create this is an ongoing problem. there will have to be regulation brought in to how you deal with drones as it relates to the intelligence community. i have always cautioned people that using drones for counterintelligence and counter terrorism, i should say counterterrorism measures is ast a tactic but it is not strategy that ultimately leads to success. there has to be many more tactics with a good strategy en route to ultimately defeat this kind of jihad problem that we are facing. rep. schiff: in california we see quite vividly the pros and cons of expanding drone use with all of our wildfires we're responderrgency

aircraft have to be grounded. aircraft cannot operate in the same space. it could literally bring the aircraft down if it was sucked into the engine. we have problems with drones interfering with firefighting efforts. in terms of the intel world, one thing we have to be mindful of is we may have been the leaders in this technology but we are not the only ones utilizing it poses not only challenges to our intelligence community but it also tells us that we have to be very aware of the fact that whatever rules we establish with our own use of tones, we have to be able hold up to the rest of the world in terms of their use of drones. and you can easily see how this technology might be terribly misused by other nationstates.

in terms of surveillance but perhaps even more pointedly in terms of a platform for lethal fire. mr. sanger: what is the doingigence community together this intel? what we had to do was rely on partner agencies to do this and so you always run into the potential problem. the bigger challenge is digital. it is hard to -- back in the old movies, someone can show on a mask and sneak

into a country, maybe they speak a foreign language. nowadays between your cell phone device that anybody can track with enough money and enough technology, with -- whether you are on facebook or twitter, everyone has visual dust. -- digital dust. just the whole kind of big picture problem, how do you even identify and meet and develop new human intelligence sources is becoming more and more difficult. i think you hit it where we are going to have to will things -- these relationships with allies and partners to try to leverage contacts within countries and people who have access into very difficult places like the middle east. a number ofwe have questions about the organization of the intel community and in some cases, we have a number of questions about the disorganization of the intel community.

one of the more interesting ones makes a point. not included in the formal ic. they are part of homeland security, right? this enhances fragmented oversight and it enhances budgeting fragmentation and makes more difficult executive branch management. moving thoseport entities into the icy given jurisdiction to your own community and developing a panel who authorizes oversight on all intel budgeting. this would require for you to get out into an arm wrestling match with fellow chair men who are overseeing other parts of the intelligence community and probably do not want to give up that privilege.

rep. nunes: it is one we have taken on an, with some solutions. under homelandre security and we are involved -- what we focus on is anything that is outside of the united states. sometimes there are gray areas because you have terrorists who come in our -- or you have a tax. -- attacks. but we have done to deal with these jurisdictional fights, we essentially eliminated them on the house side create if you look at the areas that we cover, we cover the intelligence , the defense appropriations committee, and the armed services committee. for the first time now we have had the chairman of armed services community -- committee and the -- read in.

they are not voting members. with the defense appropriations chairman and the defense appropriations ranking member. that is how we are dealing with getting past these jurisdictional fights that are very unhealthy, don't leave -- lead to good oversight of what dogoing on out in the ic and not allow us to get anything done if we are fighting amongst ourselves in congress. mr. sanger: we are down to five minutes. let let me throw to you the next one and give it an additional twist. preciousstries are equity that needs to be protected. wouldn't it be wise to develop a mechanism comprised of industry partners and ic members that would effectively create a fusion of effort that would eliminate this information sharing problem?

we just wrote about two major american companies, microsoft and apple that are basically at war with the u.s. government on the question of encryption because they know that if they cannot protect and encrypt their users' data, they are not going to be able to sell a broad. ats has caused great angst the justice department and great angst among the intel chiefs. address bothou to sides of the question, is there a way to do a fusion of the ic somehe industry, and for of our most entrepreneurial companies, the intels, microsofts, apple. when it be in their interest to stay as far away from that

fusion with the icq entity as they possibly could, most of which are in your state? with what they mean by a fusion. areas where we need to work much more closely hand-in-hand and i think it is shrewd of our defense secretary to establish a presence in the silicon valley combine forces and bring our heads together to solve some of these challenges. i was just in the silicon valley i.t. week meeting with people from facebook and google and twitter to deal with a couple of twin challenges, the one that you mentioned which is the end-to-end encryption of medications as well as the encryption of devices.

but as well the extensive use that isil has now made of social media for the purposes of recruiting and disseminating information and helping generate attacks within the united states. to talk about how are we going to deal with these encryption issues, is there an answer? at this point i think there is no consensus at all. not even the beginning of a resolves about how to the so-called going dark problem. i do think certainly on the one hand there is a need for us when we can obtain legal process and make the requisite showing to and on theto devices other hand it seems to me very compelling that even if we succeeded in encouraging american companies to build in a decryption capability and it was

done in a secure fashion with multiple keys, etc., it does not answer the question of the fact that there will be other providers providing the encrypted applications. non-american providers. and so you could have users migrate to that to do their nefarious work but you also have the competitive challenge if they are viewed as a facilitator or armor of the nsa. that argument seems equally unassailable to me. o unassailable arguments. i am not sure where this leads but it will be a tremendous challenge going forward. we do not want to chase this business out of the united states. we need it economically but there are national security advantages to having this -- these companies in the united states. -- we are atve to the nascent stage of looking at this broad issue and i can begin

to tell you how it will be resolved except to say i think it is extraordinarily unlikely that the congress will try to provide some kind of legislative mandate. that does not seen\m political -- seem politically feasible even if it were desirable. one of the things i found fascinating to conclude on this discussions in the silicon valley. they framed it with some ic is coming the to us and saying, you are brilliant, you figure it out. why don't they give us a proposal and lettuce weigh in on it? that is an unusual argument to me -- for me to hear as the legislature -- legislator. we often hear the opposite, let us come up with the answers. here the attitude is quite a bit different. mr. sanger: they do not want to hear the answer. are -- therethere

is an economic alignment of their philosophy and their here.ss they do not want to be in the position of coming up with a solution because this is not in their economic interest to do so. is a phenomenal challenge and it makes the metadata debate we had look trivial by comparison. to give youi want the last word on this and i know you have to make it up to the hearing. when the nsa oversight committee reported to the president 18 months ago, it's answer to the issue that ranking member schiff said, just described was the u.s. intelligence community should support industry in strengthening encryption.

there were people who came out of the intel community on senior levels. rep. schiff: i have not read the report. dealing with this issue, especially when you look at the fbi trying to track criminals all over, it is really a challenge. it is very complicated on, how do you come up with a solution? asking thectually government to provide a solution, that is the first i heard that. it is something we have to grapple with. i think it will be very complex for congress to come up with a solution.

host: i think all of you for your questions. hearingorward to your on cyber issues later on this morning and i appreciate your views. >> pope francis visits. he has been critical of some aspects of capitalism. , donald trump and the international space station. pope francis, who visits the u.s. next week, has been critical of some aspects of capitalism. on the viewsate

about capitalism. we hear from the president of catholic university. the cato institute hosted this event.

[inaudible] -- this is saint john paul ii. teach theow can we concern for other vulnerable beings if we failed to protect the human embryo? this is pope francis. much of what he says can seem new, even shocking. situated in aly catholicition of

teaching. the media like to draw from his predecessors. as francis himself said, apropos about his own teachings about contraception, i am a son of the church. i want to talk about what he has begin about -- let me with the poor. care for the poor has been a major theme of his teaching. when he chose the name francis it was in part, he said, because , st. francis is the man of poverty. the emphasis isn't surprising. he's the first pope from latin america, where the rates of extreme poverty are much higher than those we see in the united states. his idea that we who have more have a responsibility to people who have less, sometimes called the preferential option for the poor, isn't an original idea

with him. idea that we who havee have a responsibility to those of less sometimes called the preferential option for the poor is not an original idea for him. quotes st. john, the homily on lazarus and the rich man. here's what st. john of christendom said, not to share one's wealth with the poor is to steal with them and take away from the poor. it is not our own goods we hold, but there's. we have a couple responsibilities to rise from a couple catholic ideas. children of god, not just catholics. says thatf genesis every man and woman is created likeness.'s

another is the notion that we are made to live in community and g gives us creation not just to serve our own good but to serve the common good and the way we serve property. -- quoted from st. thomas aquinas, man should not consider his possessions as his own, but to show them with others who are in need. the mistake we all make in hearing this is thinking the pope is making a political argument. the idea that we ought to share our wealth isn't a plank from the socialist party platform, it's a spiritual counsel. if you want to inherit eternal life, jesus told the rich young men, go and sell what you have and give to the poor. this is the message the pope delivered when he made a trip to korea in 2014.

he said to the young people there, that they needed to combat the materialism that stifles authentic spiritual and cultural values and the spirit of unbridled competition, which generates selfishness and strife. still, in writings like in the speeches and homily, pope francis has pretty harsh words for free market capitalism. he calls the economy an economy of exclusion and inequality, an economy that kills. he criticizes trickle-down theories of economics and the economic changes he calls for seem more revolutionary than reformatory. these are strong words for a system that seems both necessary and beneficial. you just heard some interesting data about the effect that free market capitalism has had. i recently read in arthur

brooks' new book, the conservative heart, the expansion of free market capitalism is responsible for a great reduction in world poverty. the number he says living in starvation level of poverty, which he defines, declined by 80% between 1970 and 2010. and he says the institutions that deserve credit for this decline are globalization and free trade and property rights and the rule of law and entrepreneurship. so what's up with the compared to brooks the pope seems like a cryptosocialist with a little confidence in free market capitalism and little understanding of the benefit of growing the economy. so who's right? it isn't quite that simple. in the first place the pope believes that work is important even holy. he says in -- that it is a noble vocation. for this reason he says we don't want a comprehensive welfare state. welfare should be a provisional

solution not a permanent one. our goal ought to be to provide a dignified life for everybody through work. and businesses and markets are an essential part of this task. the second place it's true that francis understands the importance of growing the economy to provide jobs. he recently spoke to leaders in paraguay and following of every culture needs economic growth and the creation of wealth. what he asks of businesspeople is that they not only increase the goods of this world but also make them more accessible to everybody. so why the seeming condemnation of the market? the central point of his teaching, i think, is that the market is a tool that's subordinate to the good of human beings. it mustn't be the measure of human goods or the ends to which we bend other things. when that happens the problem is even human beings themselves are considered consumer goods to be used and then disguarded.

-- discarded. this summer he gave a speech at the world meeting of popular movements in bolivia and spoke words very much like this. he described the global economy as a system that imposes the mentality of profit at any price. when he was in paraguay he said, on the altar of money and profit. it would be tempting to dismiss the pope's words as inflammatory rhetoric if they weren't literally true. today as the pope has highlighted on many occasions we throw away children more than 40 million a year through abortion. the great majority from the developing world. this summer the center for medical progress released a series of videos about planned

parenthood selling the limbs and organs of aborted children as commodities to medical researchers. limbs and then to god nipped have becomethe womb line items on an invoice. a human being made and known by god is deemed more valuable dead than alive. francis also points out we throw away the elderly in nursing homes and poor in slums and young people who are struggling to find work. the unemployment rate for young people in italy is north of 40%. and the pope's goal in speaking so often about the poor is to bring them to our attention. he decries the fact that poverty has become so commonplace it's acceptable. he asks, how can it be that it's not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure? but it is news when the stock market loses two points? this is a case of exclusion. can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? this is a case of inequality. almost without being aware of it, he says, we end up being

incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor. so i said i wanted to talk about the poor, the environment, and then about the authoritativeness about his teaching. a word or two about the environment. the most surprising thing about this encyclical is how little space francis actually devotes to the thing we usually talk about when we focus on the environment of the in the first chapter he spends a lot of time talking about pollution and global warming and a loss of bio diversity, the standard fare of ecological talks. he's just as worried about a deterioration in what he calls human ecology. he finds symptoms of that in almost every aspect of human life. he talks about the loss of green spaces in the cities, about an increase in violence, about social exclusion, about the rise of drug trafficking. even has bad words to say about the internet. he says that there's a deterioration of interpersonal communication when we talk to

one another on phones and devices that shield us from direct contact with the pain, fears, and joys of others. these are all symptoms of the same disease. francis condemns what he calls a technocratic paradigm in modern society. a tendency to treat it as open manipulation for us to master and transform. but, it it's not, he says. nature is god's art. it's impressed on things. and living beings, not just people, have a value of their own which we should respect. we have, we might say, rightly, a moral relationship with the earth itself in all of this he sounds like peter, or the sierra club. he goes on to say man, too, is god's gift to man. we are part of creation. our own relation was one

another, he says, are an ecological issue, and he, unlike the usual proponents of the environmental movement, condemns the idea that we should have a reduction in the birth rate, especially in the developing world, as a solution to climate change. and he stresses the , inconsistency of those who would protect endangered species while promoting abortion. even says our own bodies are god's gift and we must accept our own femininity and masculinity as part of his ecological program. this encyclical got a lot of criticism more from the right than from the left before its publication. some people pointed out shades of galileo that the church has no expertise in science and shouldn't attempt to settle scientific matters. and he acknowledges this. he says on many concrete

questions the church has no reason to offer a definitive opinion. but he is concerned that the lack of clarity should become an excuse for our doing nothing. we have to choose to treat the environment one way or another. and we have to make those decisions with the best information available and when we do act, our actions should be guided by the same principles that he invokes to govern the economy. he says that environmental action can't come at the expense of the poor or of future generations. his most significant point, i think, is that environmental debate is not a scientific prerogative. scientists should measure temperatures and shorelines and predict trends and so on, but when we act on this information, we need a moral perspective. that's what he says the church ought to offer. let me close with a few words, too, about the authority of thesstatements that he's making. the first of the two words i want to offer is that we should all, especially catholics, pay respectful attention to what

he's saying. some conservative catholics responding to the pope's comments on the economy and the environment sound like nancy pelosi responding to church teaching about abortion and marriage, they say that the pope ought to leave science to scientists, economics to businesspeople and stick to theology. but this has not been the church's understanding of her responsibility. faith is not a spiritual hobby. it affects every aspect of life and there is a long tradition of popes on economics. i might quote again pope leo xiii, founder of the catholic university of america, who wrote about the interconstitution of private property and the right of laborists to unionize and bargain collectively. that's the first point. he does have something to say and worth listening to. second, i do want to adjust a note of care or caution maybe because i'm a lawyer but attentive to these kinds of things. catholics are expected to teach church teaching as authority but this authority is a complex thing. not every statement a pope makes, for example, is to be treated as infallible. the doctrine of papal infallity is something like the clear

statement rule that courts use in interpreting statutes. the actual ruling is that it -- the actual ruling is that a pope speaks only when he, quote, he proclaims by a definitive act some doctrine of faith or morals. the phrase definitive act here means that he must make perfectly clear his intention to speak infallibly and otherwise it's not that kind of statement. now, not to say we can cast aside the rest of them, below the level of infallible statements, there are many documents with different weights of authority. for example there was a big rash of news stories last week about changes in the annulment process for failed marriages. in may the pope published an encyclical, one on the environment. this carries more weight than what's called an apostolic exhortation. less authoritative is still a homilies that the pope gives on

scripture readings at mass. beneath that, far beneath that are the chats he has on airplanes with reporters. who are here. francis makes clear his recommendations are not intended to have infallible force. here's what he says. neither the pope nor the church has a monopoly on the interpretation of social realities or solutions to contemporary problems, it is difficult for us to put forward a solution which has universal validity. this is not our ambition nor is it our mission. it is up to christian communities to analyze with objectivity the situation which is proper to their own country. we, americans, are the most intellectually imperialistic of cultures. we imagine the pope is speaking to us. forget it. we are just a small fraction of the churches population of around the world. there are other countries around the world that need to listening even more at ban you do.

-- that need to listen more than we do. let me add one last thing about authoritativeness. of papal teachings also varies with the subject matter, this, too, is an idea a familiar one to lawyers. that the united states supreme court has ultimate authority to interpret the federal constitution, but as every first year law student knows, erie railroad holds the court has no such authority in matters of state law. it is with the church whose jurisdiction is limited to matters of faith and morals. now, not to say that the environment, economy, don't have implications for those, but the pope's teaching on astronomy rightly deserve less respect than galileo's. within the domain of faith and morals there is a spectrum of issues. again, i don't mean to say we should cast this a aside. there are things revealed in the gospel message as the canon lawyers say. these are obvious aspects of the church'srts --

magisterium. there are things which have been taught, always and everywhere, like the evil of certain sins. you know what they are. then there's a range of other things to which the church speaks with diminishing degrees of authority recognition. the definition of a church council as ecumenical. the canonization of saints and so on. i don't mean to say we need to discount all of this. only that this is a really complex matter in the ways that many moral and legal questions are. don't put too much stock in what you hear the pope said on an airplane. joe. thanks very much. [applause] joe: thank you very much. our next speaker is michael winters who writes an award winning blog, distinctly catholic. he is at the national catholic reporter a daily commentary in politics, religion, and culture. he's also the u.s. correspondent

for the tablet, the london based international catholic weekly. he worked as a speechwriter on general leslie clark's presidential campaign anti-is the author of "left at the altar" how democrats lost the catholics and how catholics can save the democrats. he is a visiting fellow at the catholic university's institute for policy research and catholic studies. please help me welcome mr. winters. [applause] michael: i also have never been to cato before. don't often get to start a talk with latin, but i thought i would do so with perhaps his most famous line. phrase]g latin which we usually shorten, cathage must be destroyed. if we replace the word carthage with the case free market ideology, we can imagine pope francis using the most famous of cato's lines. popes don't usually use such language as the verb to destroy.

perhaps we could say pope francis could say that free market ideology needs to be repealed and replaced. i have heard that phrase in the last few years. but in any event we don't have to speculate about what he has said. we can look at what he has said. i'll borrow on some of the same quotes that president garvey did. "this economy kills. some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth encouraged by a free market will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. this opinion which has never been confirmed by the facts expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in d workings of the ." heiling economic system

has repeatedly condemned the idolatry of the market. he has said in the speech to which president garvey referred to, when capital becomes an idol, you get pain, death, and destruction and the stench of what basil of seize rea called the dung of the devil. these are strong words. i would like to make the case that the pope's critique of premarket ideology is traditional, systemic, ethical, and finally anthropological. it is supremely traditional, pope benedict xvi said the position of the economy must be autonomous. must be fielded from influences of moral template led man to view the process in a destructive way. pope john paul ii said the state of inequality between individuals and nations not only still exists, it is increasing. it is obvious that a fundamental defect or series of defects, indeed a defective machinery, is at the root of contemporary economics and materialistic civilization which does not allow the human family to break free from such situations. john paul ii also said in speaking of the poor and disadvantaged, a question of not only alleviating the most

serious and urgent needs through individual actions here and there, but uncovering the roots of evil and proposing initiatives to make social, political, and economic structures more just and fraternal. pope paul vi condemn autonomy. -- condemned the erroneous economy. condemned erroneous autonomy. a phrase i see professor steve here the director of catholic university's institute for policy research, we ran a symposium last year called erroneous autonomy, the catholic case against libertarianism. we had a follow-up conference in june on faith and solidarity. again using erroneous autonomy as highlighting the differences between libertarian thought and catholic social thought. one of my favorite quotes is from pius the 11th who wrote, just as the unity of human society cannot be found on opposition of classes, so also the right ordering of economic life cannot be left to free competition of forces.

for from this source as from a poisoned spring have originated and spread all the errors of individualist economic thinking. we could go back even further to the gospel in which the blessed virgin mary says, he has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty. so what is the difference with pope francis? i would submit that it is he is quite blunt and you can't spin him. john paul ii and benedict xvi were often interpreted by conservative voices to an american audience. they brought a distorting lens to what both those two great popes had to say. with pope francis there is no need to interpret him. it's funny one of the early criticisms of pope francis, he's very confusing. there's nothing confusing about him. you can talk to some immigrant workers who work picking the tomatoes that will help with our salad at lunch, they are not confused by the pope. the people leveling that charge don't like what he has to say. the critique is systemic. the change that pope francis calls for is not merely the individual capitalist become more virtuous. he's in favor of virtue and opposed to advice, it's deeper than that. if that was the case, only a matter of people behave more virtuously, any system would do.

madison saying if men were angels, there would be no need of government. the pope's critique of the free market system has two tracks. one based on facts on the ground. the other at the level of theory. in both he's not only condemning excesses, he's condemning the system itself. as a theory, free market ideology opposes almost all government and intervention in the market. but pope francis and catholic social teaching do not share this horror of government. government an expression of the common good. government is called upon to enact justice.

john paul ii said quote it's not directed against the market but demands the market be appropriately controlled. ,ou can compare this with liberty is always freedom from the government. as benedict xvi markets out, it provides no room for gratuitous us in. pope francis would add mercy. the mosaic law which provides for tithes to the poor. the biggest problem i think was self-interest vs. the universal destination of goods. self-interest is a sin and can't be wiggled into a virtue by reference to its socially creative consequences. as david schindler has pointed you out, christians mean something very different by creativity from what capitalists mean. pope francis when he deals with some of these issues pulling on -- schindler pulls, the overlap

is obvious. primary foundation for social teaching is the universal destination of goods. which means all the goods of the world are to be distributed so everyone has enough to live and to participate in society. this claim is prior to property rights. classic to mystic theory holds that private property rights can be recognized but only as a consequence of the fall. the original sin. another point of divergence that comes up all the time is that free-market ideologues always have seemed to have it in for organized labor. going back the church's explicitly endorsed the right of workers to unionize and never drawn a distinction between public and private sector workers and their right to organize. turning to the lived reality i think this is even more important for pope francis. he has said on several occasions reality is more important than ideas. it is often asserted with some basis in fact as marian pointed out at the beginning that

capitalism and others have lifted millions out of poverty, but if at the same time it excludes others, it is an unjust system and unworthy of the human person. inadequate as an economic system. with a look at the transpacific trade deal which seems to be stalled but if it goes through, one of the things we can anticipate is certain jobs in factories in the nations currently subject to the cafta accords in central america will go to vietnam and malaysia. these trade accords, they invite a race to the bottom with wages. we could look at the issue of debt crises. austerity which harms the poor, why is that always the first option? i was pleased to see last month that the puerto rican bishops and other religious leaders have called for a different approach to the crisis that puerto rico is facing where it's an odd

situation in puerto rico. they fall between the stool of -- they are not a sovereign nation, they can't work with the i.m.f. they are not a city or state so they can't go into bankruptcy. they have asked for the fed to help them restructure the debt and start not with mandating austerity but giving a haircut to the hedge funds. i'm for that. that's a good idea. we can look at the 2008 economic meltdown here and around the world. even alan greenspan, who i'm sure as devoted to free market ideals as anyone in public life in the last 50 years admitted the crisis forced him to rethink his assumptions. at the microlevel we can point to, again this attack on unions. we saw scott walker roll out an attack on that. i will stand with leo xiii who defended unions. we can consider the circumstance of a shop owner who wishes to provide a living wage. the phrase living wage entered the american lexicon in 1906. john a. ryan's dissertation at

catholic university. based on leo's writings. catholic belief is every person is entitled to a living wage. but if this shop owner who is a good catholic and wants to live by his faith, extends a living wage and his competition across the street doesn't, what in the market rewards the good guy? it was observed in the book unintended reformation, commenting on the transformation to a capitalist system, outside the price protection accorded by guilds, capitalist practices compel competitors to act as if they were driven by desires even if they were not. it was described the shift from the good society to the goods society. which raises an additional \problem with capitalism. it is married to consumerism. i suppose in some theoretical construction that was not necessary but that's how it's played out. i think you can say we capitalists in the west have succeeded where the communists failed.

making a culture that is thoroughly materialistic. instead of one big party we have many idols in our department stores. i think of the war on christmas every year when fox news gets worked up because this department store, chain, has dropped merry christmas in favor of happy holidays. if you walk through a department store between thanksgiving and christmas, and you think the choice of happy holidays is the problem with what modern consumer capitalism has done to christmas, i would suggest you have missed the point. they have taken a holiday about god becoming poor in human flesh and turned it into a chance to teach young children how to be greedy. that is exactly what christmas has become in this country. i turn now to the ethical considerations and difficulties. there is some debate in free market circles about whether or not the free market ideology even contains a moral sense. milton friedman said economic

freedom is an end in itself. freedom has nothing to say about what an individual does with his freedom. more on the issue of freedom in a bit. hiatt compared free market to a game which there is no sense in calling the result just or unjust, close quote. in this view the market is a mere tool that can be used well or badly with efficiency as the only relevant criteria. i think this is wrong. tools always imply results can be efficient and unjust at the same time. pope francis warned about using efficiency and technology as the only criteria for evaluating economic and other social activity in his encyclical on the environment. i would argue there is a very obvious ethics at the heart of market ideology by posing a few questions.

what values does the market celebrate? who are its heroes and comparing these with the catholic view? the market celebrates the self-made man. not the man who evidences solidarity. it celebrates thrift and frugality, not gratuitousness or generosity or simplicity which has a different flavor from frugality. the market demands self-assertion not self-surrender. the market celebrates success and pope francis like all catholics worships a crucified god. the market runs on competition not cooperation. need i go on? american capitalism was celebrated in a show called "lifestyles of the rich and famous." pope francis has ministered in the name of christ to the poor and forgotten. the christian ethical vision has been clouded in u.s. culture. we have tended to confuse fortune with blessing. pope francis reminds us that the good news of the gospel is brought to the poor. or if i may quote that great ethical wit, dorothy parker, if you want to know what god thinks of money, look at the people he gave it to.

[laughter] finally we'll turn to the anthropological difference. i'm not talking about excavating for tools from 500 years ago. the church means something very rich and specific when it refers to the human person. and that is a social meaning not autonomous understanding. i think these examples will highlight this difference. critics of government entitlement programs complain that they create a culture of dependency. in a pedestrian sense this criticism is valid. programs should not -- should create on ramps to participate fully in society not create disincentives to work or form a family. but at a deeper level a culture of entitlement and dependency is precisely what free market ideology cannot different but what the christian vision demands. people really are entitled to a living wage. they are entitled to a roof over their heads. to a secure retirement.

they are entitled to access to health care. and for christians, the human person is radically dependent. first on god every time we say grace, from thy bounty. and secondly on one another. the bond of dependence is called solidarity or neighborliness. i'm reminded it was said we would gain, quote, from not treating one another as neighbors, close quote. jesus said we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. the christian vision requires a focus on the holy other god and on the face of the other our fellow men and women. indeed, for the christians a disposition to generosity and human retions always takes priority. david schindler said selfishness becomes mutual is not yet mutual generosity. another point of difference the anthropological level is this word freedom. a deeply ambiguous word made to carry far too much weight in a variety of political discussions. negative freedoms that we have at the basis of our constitutional system and that the freed men in hiatt quotes

referred to earlier, this is not the freedom of the children of god. the catholic church cannot accept negative freedom from conception as a freedom as adequate. we saw this in the debate over the decree of religious liberty. everyone focuses on the big debate between the advocates of religious freedom versus its opponents. but the more interesting debate was among the murrayites who did embrace the kind of american constitutional, very rigid concept of freedom, and the intelligence who saw the problems when asked about this because that document like many documents was a consensus document, a year later it was said this was an issue we have to skate around. as we have seen in the issues surrounding the h.h.s. contraception mandate, and i would argue here on these issues of economic liberty, we can no longer skate around. the ice is gone far too thin.

the catholic faith teaches that we humans are called to communion to solidarity with god and with -- communion to solidarity with god and one another. everything the church teaches about human relations including economics flows from our belief the human person is created in the image and likeness of god. our most foundational belief about god is the trinity that god is himself a communion of persons it is in this image we are created. to denounce or demean solidarity, to celebrate an autonomous self and build and economic theory around that is to challenge the christian's basic belief who god is. in this great free country of ours we are all free to stand, i'm much happier to stand with pope francis.

[applause] marian: thank you very much. our last speaker is jay w. richards, a research professor in the school of business and economics at the catholic university of america. he's an executive editor of the stream and senior fellow at the discovery institute. richards is author of many books, including the new york times best-selling books infiltrated" infiltrated in 2013, and "indivisible" in 2012. he's also the author of money, greed, and god which won the 2010 templeton enterprise award. his articles have been published in harvard business review, "wall street journal," "washington post," and many other prestigious venues. with that please welcome jay w. richards. [applause]

jay: it's fun to you with you and here for these subjects. since i went last i realized many of things i was going to say are things that president garvey has said or michael said. i'm going to change my plans a little bit. i do want to address this question about how we understand pope francis because most -- unless you are a full-time pope follower, you write for a catholic publication or each at a public university, virtually everything you know or think you know about any pope except this one is coming second or third hand from the media. very often what he actually says is something different from what he says. michael quoted his statement about the dung of the devil. you quoted the actual statement that pope francis said. if you google that, what you'll see is pope francis called capitalism the dung of the devil. though in the speech he doesn't use the word capitalism. that's what odd about many of the things that pope francis says. he very rarely actually uses the word capitalism. that perhaps is deliberate. my favorite example, though, is media distortion has nothing do with these topics.

last year pope francis spoke to the pontifical academies of science and was talking about how the catholic and catholic theology understands god. it was reported in the english speaking press the pope said to these scientist that is god is not a divine being. alright now let that sink in. , the pope said that god is not a divine being. so when i saw this if i could make money just finding media distortions i would try to monetize it. but i thought this can't , possibly be right the pope would not would say this. i went to the vatican news site, look at the english translation there. it was there. that's where the media had gotten it. so i went to the original speech which was in italian, what he said is god is not a dimier. a technical philosophical term that says god is not just the top member of the universe. he's a transcendent creator over everything. straight forward christian catholic theology.

once translated, like a game of telephone internationally, had the pope saying god is not a divine being. so, whenever you are tempted to think, i know for sure what the pope is saying, remember that. that's how bad it can get. what we are going to talk about here for a few minutes today and much of what i wanted to say has been said, is this idea of capitalism through the eyes of pope francis. that's really what i want to focus on. i mention pope francis very rarely actually uses the word "capitalism." until yesterday i hadn't been able to find an example of him using the term at all. it turns out if the story is to be trusted a year ago or two years in 2013, he gave a talk to a soup kitchen in rome in which he referred to something called "savage capitalism." i thought ok, perfect. here we go. when you look to see what he meant, the way he defined this term savage capitalism, was the logic of profit at any cost.

that's a very specific idea we can debate that a fair interpretation of capitalism as it's normally defend. it's clear to see that's what he had in mind. as president garvey said, many of the things the pope writes, including in this most recent encyclical, he doesn't say a lot about these particular things. in fact, in his apostolic letter, if i'm correct it was only about eight pages in which he discusses economic topics at all. he does say this from pages 53 to 60. he says we must say no -- this is a direct quote. economy of no to an exclusion. we must say no to the new idolatry of money. a financialno to system that roles rather than serves.

and, we must say no to the inequality which spawns violence. so if you're a defender of the free market, ask yourself the question, do you disagree with that? anything that he said here? would you say no to an economy of exclusion or idolatry of money or to an inequality that spawns violence? he does, however, say he specifically condemns when he calls "the absolute autonomy of markets." this is a term he's used several times. as michael said pope francis and benedict also used the term like that. the same document, i want to reiterate these things even though you have heard them once, he says first of those who continue to defend trickle-down theories which assumes that economic growth encouraged by free market will inevitably succeed in bringing about great justice and inclusiveness of the world. such a view, he writes, which has never been confirmed by the ands, expresses a crude that naive trust in the goodness of those wielding the economic

power in the workings of the revealing -- prevailing economic system. we can no longer trust in the unseen forces and in the invisible hand of the market. i think it would be fair to say, i'd love to try to spin this and some people try to do, this especially those of us who think of the alternatives that economic freedom is the best thing to go, like to spin this away. i do think at least pope francis has an impression -- let me fix this. i will keep going. -- michael was telling me beforehand this is the reason he does not use powerpoint. there you go. stick with the yellow pad. i do think it's fair to say that his view of capitalism at least as he understands it is generally not positive. he does have positive things to say about business and its role in creating wealth and jobs. i think that's the best that we could say.

taking together, so his apostolic letter in his most recent encyclical, i think the better thing to do is focus on what pope francis primarily is saying. what he's intending to say and what he does say because he says many things over and over. and so, i think we can take these as sort of recurring terms in his own dogma. he speaks frequently about what he calls speculation. he used it last week speaking in italy, believe, to a cooperative bank association. actually in rome. he talks about economic ideologies that deny human dignity. that embrace selfishness and greed. talks again a lot about the idolatry of money and ideologies. a lot about greed. as we said, it comes up again and again. this doesn't distinguish him from virtually any other pope in the 20th or now the 21st century. he does invoke, as you heard a

minute ago, the idea of the invisible hand. to paraphrase, you can no longer trust in the sort of guidance of this invisible hand which is the term that adam smith came up with. interestingly smith, so far as i can tell, never used the term twice, that's what most people remember that he said. behind all this, i think this is a crucial point, whenever pope francis is talking about these things, invariably he has one subject in mind. poverty. poverty is precisely the thing that motivates everything that he says about these. if you tend to be very skeptical of the things francis says about the economy, at least understand this. that the things he says he says not simply because of some kind of ideological predilection, -- but because he's

profoundly concerned about the poor and has president garvey said, the reason he took the name francis is because of his concern about the poor. nevertheless, i think it's fair to say someone -- my twitter handle incidentally is freemarketjay, so you know where i'm coming from. some of the thing he says deals sometimes like a caricature. that's not anything i would ever defend. it's not anything that any of the people i admire would defend. the question is where does he specifically get the ideas that he has about what free market capitalism or entrepreneurial capitalism are? i think actually a fairly clear reason for that. it requires us to make the useful distinction. many of the things he says about the global financial system, about the financial crisis, as marian said i wrote a book in 2013 on the financial crisis. this is an abiding interest of mine. many of the things he says about the financial system ring true. when talking about that. it's just when i read him on that they ring true to me not as a critique of free market capitalism but as a critique of something we might call cronyism or corporatism. insofar as you understand what he talks about and what he's saying, in that light, if you say ok, what he is could he noting or denoting, what he's referring to is, not the views

of smith but the corporatism and cronyism that often stands in for those things. some degree in the united states but certainly in many countries in south america. this i think is really important because pope francis as an argentine has experienced for his entire life a particularly brutal form of what i would call sort of hard corporatism, if you want to call it that. many of you may not know much about argentina, there are a lot of things to realize about his experience and things he says when he speaks about things like the socioeconomic system in terms like this that he uses fairly vaguely. in 1900 argentina was one of the world's 10 wealthiest nations. because of this there was massive immigration from northern europe.

you don't think of it this way anymore. it's largely the result of juan peron and his wife who came into power in an ideology that's very difficult describe and is certain left, right american spectrum. you sort of think of it as a populous leftism which is many ways a kind of aristocratic contempt for the commerce class highly the bourgeoisie, populist rhetoric which appeals to the common people. implements political programs essentially a form of cronyism in which large economic actors work in collusion with the state to enrich themselves not the common people. if you think about what pope francis is saying in that light, think about his experience of cronyism in argentina, much of what he says makes sense. i don't want to say he clearly makes the distinction.

he does not distinguish between the type of cronyism that's rife in argentina and the free economy you have in a place like hong kong are the type of general free economy you would have in a place like south korea. he doesn't make these distinctions and i would like to see him make those. it's absolutely important in reading what he says to understand his experience. what about argentina is an economic basket case. the most recent index comes in 169th out of 178 countries on the planet in terms of economic freedom. so, it is between the democratic republic of congo and the republic of congo. countries that do worse are venezuela and cuba. so whatever you want to say about argentina, it is not a

bastian of freedom. it is a powerful, overbearing state. several large, presumably economic actors. not the kind of benign inequality that defines everyone in this room and bill gates. form oflignant inequality. in cahoots with the state and pageantry in shantytowns. that is your picture of the global economy, then what pope francis says makes sense. so, here's the question. what to do? imagine you are a catholic philosopher or economist and you study these things. you have looked a different political economies. thereve no delusions that is a utopia. nevertheless, on empirical grounds, economic systems and freedoms as it tends to be

defended and role of law, private property rights, low levels of corruption, a populist,virtuous wide-ranging freedom, is the best economic freedom for lifting people out of absolute poverty. that is, if you are aware of many things that you follow on better every single day. these are much empirical facts. we're not having to compare philosophies. what makes of economic touctures is most abusive human flourishing and lifting large numbers of people out of property -- a ready? you are convinced in his free economic systems that do this? what are you to do? this is the dilemma.

to understand a few things about the way in which authority works in the catholic authority in the magisterium. president garvey has covered when i was going to say here, but you have to make distinctions. everyone that is not cap i, so far as i can tell, all of my evangelical friends, i ask them, but this bulletin fallibility entail? they say it means that everything in the book is infallible. but you can discover this within five minutes with a really good google search, but it tends to be people's idea of how it works. historical body of text that has come to be called catholic continueaching, which to the peasant in which the are applying particular themes from catholic theology and natural dividinge current

questions of economics and politics. refer to the central abiding and infallible corner of these things as the sum of these things at uc berkeley's the best in these documents. at the same time, is a mistake to think catholic social teaching equals some detailed catholic political policy. it is not as if it articulates in detail the precise detail of how a tax system or immigration policy should be together that is just and prudent. provides a clarifying lens for thinking through this issue but it does not provide the catholic political position. that is why catholics of good politicaldisagree on topics while nevertheless adhering to catholic social teaching's.

here's how pope john paul ii put it. i do not think he is saying anything that is idiosyncratic in this regard. meanne said, it does not that it is medically sealed from economic concerns. that is an economic fundamental mistake. a fundamental philosophical category, by which of you are catholic you want to reflect on. the intrinsic dignity of a person. solidarity. subsidiarity. the common good. the categories you must and to bring to these categories. it is not going to answer every single question. that is a venture question based

on your analysis and conclusion based on the empirical details as far as you understand them. pope benedict the 16th, pope francis is immediate necessity that this way. before he was pope, when he was head of the doctrine of faith, he was talking about morality and economics and how he thought these things should interact. as, yes, catholic teaching is not a third way. it is not a fully filled out system, but neither is it adverse to rhetorical. , a morality that believes it self able to dispense with the technical knowledge of economics laws is but economists

him. what we need is a maximum of economic and a maximum of moral reflection, so when these things come together i hold it much greater than the sum of its parts. , for the faithful catholic who is a faithful son or daughter of the church was also appreciative of the good that economic freedom brings to human beings. that would -- i would say, ought to be our goal. it would not to sort of separate these things. not say that catholic teaching is one thing but economics just involves is sort of impurecal questions. it's rather is this. it's distinguishing the economic ideologies that pope francis talks about, that michael talked about. from the empirical results and discoveries and the theoretical insights of economics and integrating those things with the perennial principles of catholic social teaching. i would argue if that's done

properly, they can be an advocate of economic freedom. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you very much. we will now open it to q&a. please wait to be called upon. that's for the benefit of our viewers. microphone will come to you. and would you please be so kind to make your question really short and in a form of a question so we can get through as many of them as possible. so are there any questions in the audience? the gentleman over here. >> wonderful talks by everyone. my name is steven shore. i have a question that -- of a dog that didn't bark. a classic distinction between accidents and substance, and when the holy father talks about the capitalism, is he clear as

to whether he's attacking unfortunate accidents or the very substance itself? >> so far as i can tell he tends not to make that distinction. pope john paul did make that to capitalism. i'd frankly love them to make the difference but pope john paul ii, st. john paul ii said if by capitalism we mean this then no. if by capitalism means this then yes. but let's call it something else. and very often i think not just catholics but many people, many critics of free market economics don't distinguish the metaphysical assumptions and the ideologies that might be the package of someone making the case for economic freedom and

the real system itself or simply the question, just the empirical question. if we look at the types of systems and institutions that societies have, in which do societies tend to do better off or not? and frankly i did this as a college student is i confused say, the moral assumptions with the case for economic freedom. but the catholic doesn't need rand. there's plenty of ways to make the case for economic without that. i would argue we don't want to do that. if you want to be a catholic that is sort of in this area is use authentically catholic resources and develop the case for economic freedom based upon our empirical knowledge and key insights that are not dependent on ideologies. division of labor, these sorts of things. subjective theory of value versus the labor theory value, these are insights drawn from economic study but they're not dependent on any particular ideology.

marian: in the back. just one second. >> the man with the baby. >> i was wondering how you would define economic freedom and if that concept exists anywhere in the papal and cyclicals and formal documents? jay: is this for anyone? >> no. jay: the passage i referred to in a 2005 incyclical by benedict xvi, the only case there is a reference so far as i know in a papal incyclical to the role of -- i forget if he uses the market or freedom, lifting billions out of poverty which may be a bit of an exaggeration. it's one sentence.

there's a reference -- he is aware of the fact that india and china they've lifted people out of poverty. there's not a lot of reference to that. there's reference to freedom. the freedom that's discussed in catholic teaching is not a merely sort of negative freedom from. it's a freedom for, what i would call freedom for excellence and developing our purpose and the end to which we are designed for. >> yeah. i think this is my problem with jay's comments is i don't think you can't just say rand, we can dispose of this but keep that as if the one did not flow from the other. and i think this is where the rubber hits the road. all the way do you to the prudential judgments. this idea that somehow we have these theories but then we have these prudential judgments where we can all disagree. there's something to that obviously, and we all have different experiences that we bring to our judgments of given situations.

but prudential judgment is not a get out of jail free card. there are still things. what was just forced on greece, what is about to be forced on puerto rico is not just and therefore it is not acceptable and the economic system that makes those things necessary is itself implicated and indicted as unjust as well. and i -- we can talk all we want it's all so rosey and wonderful and this, it's not. i don't think we can benefit from, you know, -- the only other thing i just have to object to is the idea pope francis the poor benigned argentinan because he knows is crony capitalism. it's walk and you gone on to that, cronyism. it's like walking into a burning house and complaining about the color of the curtains. i don't think that's the problem. i find it insulting because i don't think anyone saying of

pope bennedict, he came from this snow globe village. he's capable of speaking of the universal pastor of the catholic church. he's an argentine and -- i think that's nonsense. jay: it's grotesque reference to what i said. i didn't say that. what i said, read pope francis and look at argentina and see if that helps you understand why he's saying what he says and if that's shaping what he's saying. i of course didn't say he must be relevant or device because he's from argentina which of course would be a ridiculous thing to say. marian: that side over there. >> hi. my name is nona, a card-carrying economist. and i'm also probably a disappointed catholic. i was -- i was really put off by the handouts.

marian: can we ask the question. forgive me. the time. >> i guess i want to say, even the question if you believe in capitalism the pope is saying we can do better and my childhood there is what we called liberation theology, which my irish mother -- marian: ok. thank you, thank you very much. can we do better and what about liberation theology? >> i take can we do better part because that's certainly an easy one. sure, we can. i, like both jay and michael sean, there is a danger in flattening what the pope has to say in the same way as political

writers in the united states or members of political parties in the united states tend to flatten things for public consumption. i think what the pope has to say about this is enormously complicated and sophisticated and i think it should be understood in the same way and not flattened. let me just give one example. when we talk about the economic recession that we went through in the united states in 2008 and affected much of the western world then and then has traveled around the globe to the other side, there's a tendency to say on the one hand, this is the fall of the bankers who were gouging people and just concerned with the profit motive and repackages mortgages and deceiving people. that's one theory, popular on the left. there is another theory, popular on the right, that it's the fault of barney frank and fannie and freddie which forced the banks to give loans to those who really shouldn't be getting them.

when the pope talks about this thing, he talks about both of those sides and a third side which is the kind of materialism or the consumerism of the borrowers. he said, look, you're all guilty of the same sin which is a lust for consumption and for acquiring things. the bankers want to make more money, the government can't be trusted because they're human beings like the bankers and given to their own prestigious and desires and the consumers who take out loans for 100% of their property value which they can't repay, they, too, are guilty of the same kind of materialism and consumerism. so we can all do better but we have to begin with ourselves. so in this kind of world, there isn't a solution that says that unregulated free market capitalism will be the right way to go. he says we need the government

to tame the excesses of capitalism, but we shouldn't trust the government either, and he knows that better than anybody having lived under fernandez. this is a personal message as much as it is a message of political reform. marian: anyone wants to comment on the liberation theology, does it have a place in the catholic teaching today? michael sean: the condemnation was not -- there are other liberation theologians that waeren't condemned. it is the condemnation, the understanding of the human person that certain theologians put forward and certainly materialistic reductionism in understanding of the person.

i have argued you could cut, copy and paste that condemnation of certain liberation theologians and apply it to, say, an institute today. you would have to change some direct objects. but they make the exact same mistakes in their effort to defend or to baptize free market capitalism which is a -- which is something that cannot be done and at the level of -- at that theoretical level which is the differences i quoted in my remarks, these are directly in contradiction with one another. so i think -- but the night he was elected, i spoke to a friend and i had to go on their tv show and talk about him. i didn't know much about him. a lot of us didn't. the thing to remember -- we knew that he was opposed to -- he said the latin american bishops never stopped asking the question -- what does it mean to exercise a preferential option for the poor?

even after this condemnation. this gets to earlier the discussion of the levels of authority that, you know, the pope obviously when he's speaking on the plane, it's a different level when he's writing an encyclical. the level of authority could not be higher even on the plane because he's speaking straight from the gospel and there is no higher authority in the catholic faith than the gospel of jesus christ. this is where some of us -- oh, we can part this level of authority we are suspicious of that. and we americans don't always like to hear that. jay: i think michael is right. i would object to certain aspects of liberation theology on impurecal grounds, again.

just to give one example. an idea from an argentina person which held the southern hemisphere, at least south america and central america was poor because north was rich. the fundamental theme in the prominent liberation theologian gustavo gutierrez, if you read his entire argument, it hinges on this dependency, the poverty of the south is a causal relationship between the poverty of the south and the wealth of the north. even gustavo gutierrez in later editions of theology liberation based on the empirical details of economics actually abandon impurecal questions are very, very important here. there are many questions we are talking about economics that are not merely theoretical, not merely philosophical. there is data on it. it's important, sort of respect the catholic has on science. to take a look at these kinds of things. >> i'm not an economist but i

was a lawyer and i was 15 years on the staff on the senate banking committee. so i want to read something here from the actually incyclical itself where the pope says the principle of profits frequently isolated from other considerations reflects a misunderstanding of the very concept of the economy. now, you can have different types of capitalism, in my view. in the united states, from world war ii until about 1985 or so, we can stakeholder theory of capitalism that you had responsibility out -- marian: could you please ask a question. >> the idea that capitalism has responsibility to its workers, to its community and others and then we shifted into this shareholder capitalism where the only responsibility is to your shareholders and the c.e.o.'s who did tie to shareholder value, that's quite a different capitalism from what we used to have in this country 30 years ago. i think that's the important

thing to understand. you can have different types of capitalism. it's not capitalism as such but whether capitalism can be moderated to produce benefits for the whole society. jay: i think you are talking about particular business models in which, for instance, managers are rewarded, according to short-term sort of monitoring of profits or something like that. i think it's a very bad business model. i think there's a lot of evidence to that. on economic grounds you can make the case that it's immoral to treat profits as the only end of a business. i think the opposite of profit is loss. if it's not an indicator you'll probably be in trouble. nobody will have a job. the short-term indication, the incentive structures that encourages managers and c.e.o.'s to work for short-term profits but long-term destruction are very bad business models. i totally agree.

>> given pope francis's views, what are his perspectives on taxation and more broadly, what are his views on what the state should do to battle inequality? >> i think i can answer your question in a different way. there was a photograph in "the washington post" about three weeks ago when they were having the horrible wildfires in washington state. there is a man whose home was saved. he had on a t-shirt that said lower taxes, less government equals more freedom. [laughter] now, that firefighter was not only a government employee but i can guarantee you he was a union member and this guy whose house had just been saved was probably a tea partier because they make those t-shirts. that is the problem. now perhaps they should have let it burn and he would be not

concerned about all the possessions. the man was on -- it was like the people who are opposed to obamacare when they first passed it and keep the government's hands off my medicare. what? again, the government -- the catholic church has never had this kind of hostile view which goes all the way back to before the american revolution. this hostile view of government. as, you know, the leviathan. that's not how catholic culture and theology ever viewed it. i think that's -- to answer your question, we wouldn't view taxes as repatience. when i ran a business, i remember the owner saying, unless there's 100% tax, you always still have an incentive to make more money. we forgot that since the reagan years, haven't we? this idea that oh, if you raise the taxes, people will lose their incentives. they got to put their money in something. i never bought that.

marian: one question over there in the back. a gentleman. >> yes. this is for all of you because you are all in higher education. where do you see sort of the practical implementation of francis's vision coming from within higher ed outside of sort of professional ethics courses? john: i couldn't quite -- >> where you can see an implementation of francis's position? jay: well, to plug in catholic u, what we're trying to do is bring together economics and economics as science but economics was originally part of course of essentially ethics, of ethical philosophy. the business school of catholic u is trying to bring together an integration of catholic social teaching with economics and philosophy. it's at least one place that's

being done. i'm not saying it's the only catholic institution trying to do that but it's the ssion of the school in trying to do that. john: i second that point. one of the interesting points that francis's predecessor make, universities are called universities because they aspire to a universal view of human knowledge that we should not segregate disciplines into economics and political theory and ethics and philosophy that these disciplines ought to be talking to one another. one of the aspirations of our university is to do that very thing. economics divorced from ethics brings about the kind of problems that the pope is worrying about. michael sean: in our little institute of catholic u, i shouldn't say we have 50 fellows but we will keep going on our erroneous autonomy theories.

we'll do another one next june. we are at the beginning levels of trying to put that together and it focuses on these issues very, very clearly and we keep waving the pope francis flag. marian: that's all we have time for. i'm deeply grateful to the panel for this discussion. thank you so much for coming. lunch is upstairs. please come again. [applause] [captions copyright national [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] announcer: in august, workers for the epa caused a rupture for a holding callmind. congress is now investigating the toxic spill. gina mccarthy will testify

tomorrow before the senate environment and public works committee. we have live coverage at tim cook eastern on c-span3. the fda is trying to improve the food safety process. in the afternoon, the commissioner will testify along with other officials. more coverage at 2:00 eastern also on c-span3. >> now gop candidate donald trump holds a rally in san pedro, california. aboard the battleship uss iowa. mr. trump talks about national security and veterans' issues. this is 15 minutes. [applause] >> trump, trump, trump.