Over at Millennial, Robert Christian looks at the brouhaha unleashed by Pope Francis' tweet earlier this week: "Inequality is the root of social evil." Christian does a good job dissecting the difference between inequality generally and inequality in the specifically economic sphere. But, he really hits the nail on the head when he writes, "It’s a mistake to focus on the semantics rather than the core message....Is economic inequality the root of social evil? Is the love of money really the root of all evil? This strong language is not an empirical claim to be taken literally or analyzed scientifically, but a wake-up call to open our eyes to the gravity of the threat economic inequality and injustice poses to human dignity and the common good. We would be wise to respond to this call to action rather than to fixate on the phrasing of the pope’s tweets."
