The Importance Of Human Inequality In Pope Francis's Evangelii Gaudium

There is a common root to most (or perhaps all) grave forms of social injustice: the rejection of human equality and the influence of this rejection on human relationships and institutions.

Human persons are fundamentally equal in their worth and dignity. A person’s worth is not dependent on their lineage, how they fit in some utopian scheme, how much they produce or consume, their autonomy or independence, or their race, intelligence, age, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic status. Human worth is innate and cannot be forfeited. And it is equal in each person.

This is a radical notion. It cannot be reconciled with utilitarian thinking. It conflicts with the desires of many powerful people. It seems farcical if one is a strict materialist. It is not based on a person’s capacity to feel pain or engage in critical thinking or some other capricious standard.

This belief in human

He condemns the libertarian mindset that focuses so much on autonomy and individualism and calls for the creation of more just social structures and policies that address the structural causes of poverty. He is explicit in his rejection of an approach that relies too heavily on free markets: “We can no longer trust in the unseen forces and the invisible hand of the market.”

This is nothing new in Catholic Social Teaching. Pope Paul VI condemned the “flagrant inequalities” in both the enjoyment of possessions and the exercise of power. In Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI writes, “The dignity of the individual and the demands of justice require, particularly today, that economic choices do not cause disparities in wealth to increase in an excessive and morally unacceptable