[In the following essay, Winters discusses John Paul's opposition to Marxism, capitalism, and modern technological societies.]

In a country accustomed to one message and one messenger, the Pope's visit to Cuba is the stuff of high political drama, certainly a more provocative threat to Castro's regime than the Helms-Burton Act. For weeks now, the U.S. press has been buzzing with speculation as to whether the Pope may precipitate the fall of communism in Cuba—finally succeeding where generations of U.S. policy-makers have failed. After all, as Newsweek cheerfully notes, “this well-traveled Pope has crusaded with fervor against his old Communist foes.”

But make no mistake: while the Pope is happy to praise democracy, he is no champion of capitalist values out to slay the last defender of Marxism. In fact, as Castro has gleefully observed, the Pope “has done all his criticisms of communism. Now he's criticizing capitalism.” That's because John Paul is guided by a theological vision that is as hostile to capitalism as it is to communism. And while some high-profile neoconservative Catholics are content to celebrate the collapse of communism—and bask in the capitalist afterglow—John Paul is already retrofitting the arguments he used against Marxism and the Marxist-tinged liberation theologians of the 1970s for use against advocates of U.S.-style capitalism during the 1990s.

Though always more popular on U.S. campuses than in the barrios of Latin America, liberation theology was an ideological threat to John Paul's Christian vision. It borrowed heavily from Marxism in an attempt to equate the Christian gospels with the socioeconomic struggles of the poor. But John Paul's objection to the movement was never based on economic or geostrategic considerations. (The Catholic Church can live with shoddy economics and confused politics—the Vatican, after all, is in Italy.) Rather, John Paul argued that the “liberation” promised by liberation theology was inadequate because its conception of the human person was too limited. Marxism reduced the human person to a homo economicus. So, as Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete, a key theological ally of John Paul's in the attack on liberation theology, puts it: “What do we say to a man who is dying? That he should place his hope in the end of economic exploitation? When the Church ceases to be concerned with eternity, it ceases to be the Church.”

To the Pope, the capitalist, consumerist ethic of the West is just as unsatisfactory an alternative, since it also entails a reduction of the human person to its economic dimension. Thus, John Paul and his followers within the Church view capitalism's cold war victory over Marxism with ambivalence. They're glad to be rid of an alarming threat to Catholic principles, but unenthusiastic about the strengthening of what they perceive as a different—but equally serious—menace.

At a synod of bishops from North and South America held in Rome last autumn, a prevailing theme was anxiety over the extension of U.S.-style capitalism into the traditionally Catholic cultures of Latin America. Some bishops even used the term “invasion.” While praising the restoration of democracy throughout Latin America and acknowledging the free market's ability to break up the often corrupt oligarchies that dominate many Latin American economies, the bishops expressed dismay at capitalism's general disregard for individual suffering in the name of overall economic progress. They condemned economic models that ignore the needs of the poor. (After all, it's as dehumanizing to reduce a poor person to a mere statistic in an IMF austerity program as it is to lump him into the ranks of the faceless proletariat.) And most of the Latin American bishops at the synod endorsed John Paul's call for a severe reduction—if not outright cancellation—of the debt burden of poor developing countries.

The bishops' concern for the human impact of free-market policies also shapes their pronouncements in the United States. Recently, in both St. Louis and Los Angeles, the local bishops strongly opposed the selling of Catholic hospitals to for-profit conglomerates. As Roger Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles explained, “the primary goal of health care delivery is not to generate a profit for shareholders; rather, it is a public asset to be directed toward the common good of the society.” Bernard Cardinal Law of Boston was even more blunt: “Business considerations should not take precedence over mission.” This may seem a naïve and ultimately unworkable position, but as Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk of Cincinnati explains: “We are pastors. We ask, ‘How does this affect the poor?’ Whatever the economic presuppositions, this is a question we can't stop asking.”

Despite its economic implications, John Paul and his bishops' critique of U.S. capitalism is fundamentally centered on cultural concerns. Specifically, the Pope worries about the free market's power to break familial and social bonds that may not be profitable but are nonetheless humane. In a recent statement, U.S. bishops pronounced this withering critique of modern culture:

In our country, the modern, technological, functional mentality creates a world of replaceable individuals incapable of authentic solidarity. In its place, society is grouped by artificial arrangements created by powerful interests. The common ground is an increasingly dull, sterile consumer conformism, so visible especially among too many of our young people, created by artificial needs promoted by the advertising media to support powerful economic interests.

How to rescue mankind from this bleak new world? A recurrent theme of John Paul's writings is the need for a new humanism to serve as the foundation of a new postmodern culture. This new humanism should not be confused with the humanism of post-Enlightenment philosophy. In fact, to John Paul, it is precisely the rationalist approach that is at the heart of the problem. For the “technological, functional” mentality he decries is rooted not just in capitalist or Marxist materialism, but in all modern, post-Enlightenment thought. The culprit here is not Karl Marx or Adam Smith but René Descartes! In short, the Pope's visit to Cuba is part not of a battle against communism but of a lifelong crusade against modernity itself. And that's a good deal more challenging than confronting Fidel Castro.