Libertinism is not Libertarianism

In recent weeks I have heard from many different athorities that then Cardianl Ratzinger during his homily at The Mass for the Election of the Pope mentioned Marxism, and Libertarianism as false doctines of the modern age. He did nothing of the sort! Well yes he did say Marxism is a false doctine, but he never once mentioned Libertarianism. What he did say is this, "The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves - thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth."

Note that he said libertinism, and not Libertarianism. Why is this important? Well for one it is a a miss-translation that we have been hearing for the last three weeks. Second, with this miss-translation they, that is the old-gaurd "Spirit of Vatican II" catholics can say "sure the holy fahter says where wrong on the whole abortion thing, But what about you? He also says your wrong about the whole free-market thing. Therefore, if you shop at Wal-Mart and say your still a good Catholic, than I can tell people to have abortions and I am still a good Catholic." Further, this is one more example of what we all saw during the election. Kerry was going against Church teaching on abortion, but Busch was going against the Pope's wishes in invading Iraq.

Back to the miss-translation for a bit. I guess in the postmodern world where all we have is irony and relativity, than it makes perfect sense that what is for Cardinal Ratzinger a great evil, libertinism, is for us (the Oh So Enlightened Ironists) the great evil of Libertarianism, and its deformed love child, the free-market.

If that is the thinking behind the continual use of this miss-translation than we do live under the dictatorship of relativism.