Please read this (good book)
http://www.amazon.com/The-Rise-Christianity-Religious-Centuries/dp/0060677015
The Early Church grew, and then took over, a society that viewed life much cheaper than we do today. One of the main reason Christianity grew is that they did something the prevailing culture did not do. They kept their little girls alive.
The law was such that it encouraged the killing of babies, and girls more than most. Yet the Church flourished.
Eventually, the law changed (though it took the germanic barbarians coming in to do it).
That is why I don’t see the change in the law as the whole issue. It isn’t even the main reason. The Church isn’t under the same persecution as it was in the bad old days, yet if you look at the abortion stats many “Christian” people are pro abortion.
We went from a religion that valued life, to one that values money. Why? What changed? It wasn’t just the law. The culture inside the church changed.
“That is why I don’t see the change in the law as the whole issue.”
Straw man. Read what I actually wrote:
“Law and culture shape each other.”
It goes in both directions.
“We went from a religion that valued life, to one that values money.”
Although the culture may value money above most else, my religion does not. Not that there aren't plenty of Catholics who don't value money most, but it can hardly be said that that is an authentic expression of Catholic faith. Rather, it is a defect in the practice of their faith, to the degree that they practice it at all.
As well, although lay Catholics have many flaws (when my sons are here, we spend much time together lamenting the problems of both our hierarchy and our laity), but among the devout Catholics that I've personally met and known (and I am a cradle Catholic who has never not been involved with my church), overvaluing money has not been a common problem that I've encountered. In fact, the opposite has often been the case, in that many Catholics have really messed up economic ideas based on how little they appreciate money and how difficult it is to earn it, especially in great gobs.
As to what changed in the culture generally, it was in some ways a good thing that changed. As issues of class status, of station, of nobility and aristocracy, of position, of all the ways by which people are snobby toward each other, as all these ways receded in importance, one of the last surviving ways to distinguish oneself from the others, one of the last bastions of ego, has been money.
You can trace this desire to be better than the next guy to something we call Original Sin.
sitetest