My response to this article.

The issue I raise with the belief, purportedly held by Pope Francis and the cardinals quoted in the article, is the idea that "today’s free market system is 'a new idol' that is increasing inequality and excluding the poor." What the Pope and the cardinals should be attacking is not free enterprise, but materialism and consumerism.

Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga says that we must "deal with the structural causes of poverty and injustice.” "The cardinal stressed that the church 'by no means despises the rich,' and he said Francis 'is also not against the efforts of business to increase the goods of the earth.' 'The basic condition, however, is that it serves the common good,' he said."

A free market that creates new products and increases the quantity of scarce goods in general serves the common good. The same free market can produce a lot of stuff that does nothing or little to serve the common good. Our economy produces and consumes massive quantities of goods that serve no or little social value but exist mainly to feed the gluttonous ego.

The Catholic Church should be attacking the specific industries that produce and profit from materialism, gluttony, and hedonism. Those are the resources that should be repurposed to serve the common good. That's not what I hear when I hear Pope Francis or a cardinal attack free-market capitalism or the "invisible hand" by name.