....Since the inherent inequality of various individual economic zones endangers the free play of the market, attempts at restoring the balance have been made since the 1950s by means of development projects. It can no longer be overlooked that these attempts have failed and have even intensified the existing inequality. The result is that broad sectors of the Third World, which at first looked forward to development aid with great hopes, now identify the ground of their misery in the market economy, which they see as a system of exploitations, as institutionalised sin and injustice....
....This reminds one of Max Weber's thesis about the inner connection between capitalism and Calvinism , between the formation of the economic order and the determining religious idea. Marx's notion seems to be almost inverted: it is not the economy that produces religious notions, but the fundamental religious orientation that decides which economic system can develop. The notion that only Protestantism can bring forth a free economy — whereas Catholicism includes no corresponding education to freedom and to the self-discipline necessary to it, favoring authoritarian systems instead — is doubtless even today still very widespread, and much in recent history seems to speak for it....
.... this cannot proceed purely as a dialogue within the Church. It will be fruitful only if it is conducted with those Christians who manage the economy.
The notion that capitalism is somehow necessarily and inevitably a friend of Jesus Christ is one of the greatest American delusions of the past century. That doesn't make capitalism evil. It makes it a "philosophy according to human tradition" and no necessary part of the Faith.
-- Catholic apologist Mark Shea, in the thread Capitalism, Colossians and the Miller Brewing Company....Catholics, even devout Catholics, are not ideologically conservative, as currently defined. We don’t view low taxes, less government regulation, more capitalism as obtaining to the level of the moral law.
-- Catholic FReeper sitetest, on the thread Puzzling Over Why Catholics Back DemocratsCapitalism has failed in less than 300 years. No surprise that a system of calvinistic puritan Freemasons would not be able to understand and maintain TRUE freedom.
-- Catholic FReeper stfassisi, on the thread Pope to issue encyclical on economicsShow me just one Catholic bishop who will speak up against coveting your neighbors’ goods. That is why Catholics ignored the Bishops on abortion. They know abortion is wrong but overlooked the Dems on that point because those same politicians pandered to their covetousness. Same for protestants and evangelical pastors, leaders and activists. American politics and government at all levels is driven by government-mediated coveting. Until the Church takes a stand against this we can expect to sink deeper and deeper into socialism and, oh yeah, abortion.
-- Catholic FReeper all the best, on the thread With the Help of Catholics…Obama’s Victory
Jesus and his family were active participants in a relatively free economy of building trades. He never spoke out about the evils of that system.
More from Cardinal Ratzinger(Pope BenedictXVI)-who truly understands that unbounded freedom is NOT really freedom at all and is geared towards destruction of the family and a form of marxism
http://www.communio-icr.com/articles/PDF/ratzinger31-3.pdf
It must be admitted: by means of this remarkable synthesis,
Christianity had stepped once more onto the world stage and had
become an “epoch-making” message. It is no surprise that the
socialist states took a stand in favor of this movement. More
noteworthy is the fact that, even in the “capitalist” countries,
liberation theology was the darling of public opinion; to contradict
it was viewed positively as a sin against humanity and mankind,
even though no one, naturally, wanted to see the practical measures
applied in their own situation, because they of course had already
arrived at a just social order. Now it cannot be denied that in the
various liberation theologies there really were some worthwhile
insights as well. All of these plans for an epoch-making synthesis of
Christianity and the world had to step aside, however, the moment
that that faith in politics as a salvific force collapsed. Man is, indeed,
as Aristotle says, a “political being,” but he cannot be reduced to
politics and economics. I see the real and most profound problem with
the liberation theologies in their effective omission of the idea of God,
which of course also changed the figure of Christ fundamentally (as we
have indicated). Not as though God had been denied—not on your
life! It’s just that he was not needed in regard to the “reality” that
mankind had to deal with. God had nothing to do.
One is struck by this point and suddenly wonders: Was that
the case only in liberation theology? Or was this theory able to
arrive at such an assessment of the question about God—that the
question was not a practical one for the long-overdue business of
changing the world—only because the Christian world thought
much the same thing, or rather, lived in much the same way,
without reflecting on it or noticing it? Hasn’t Christian consciousness
acquiesced to a great extent—without being aware of it—in
the attitude that faith in God is something subjective, which
belongs in the private realm and not in the common activities of
public life where, in order to be able to get along, we all have to
behave now “etsi Deus non daretur” (“as if there were no God”)?
Wasn’t it necessary to find a way that would be valid, in case it
turned out that God doesn’t exist? And, indeed it happened
automatically that, when the faith stepped out of the inner sanctum
of ecclesiastical matters into the general public, it had nothing for
God to do and left him where he was: in the private realm, in the
intimate sphere that doesn’t concern anyone else. It didn’t take any
particular negligence, and certainly not a deliberate denial, to leave
God as a God with nothing to do, especially since his Name had
been misused so often. But the faith would really have come out of
the ghetto only if it had brought its most distinctive feature with it
into the public arena: the God who judges and suffers, the God
who sets limits and standards for us; the God from whom we come
and to whom we are going. But as it was, it really remained in the
ghetto, having by now absolutely nothing to do
Yet God is “practical” and not just some theoretical
conclusion of a consoling worldview that one may adhere to or simply disregard. We see that today in every place where the
deliberate denial of him has become a matter of principle and where
his absence is no longer mitigated at all. For at first, when God is
left out of the picture, everything apparently goes on as before.
Mature decisions and the basic structures of life remain in place,
even though they have lost their foundations. But, as Nietzsche
describes it, once the news really reaches people that “God is dead,”
and they take it to heart, then everything changes. This is demonstrated
today, on the one hand, in the way that science treats human
life: man is becoming a technological object while vanishing to an
ever-greater degree as a human subject, and he has only himself to
blame. When human embryos are artificially “cultivated” so as to
have “research material” and to obtain a supply of organs, which
then are supposed to benefit other human beings, there is scarcely
an outcry, because so few are horrified any more. Progress demands
all this, and they really are noble goals: improving the quality of
life—at least for those who can afford to have recourse to such
services. But if man, in his origin and at his very roots, is only an
object to himself, if he is “produced” and comes off the production
line with selected features and accessories, what on earth is man
then supposed to think of man? How should he act toward him?
What will be man’s attitude toward man, when he can no longer
find anything of the divine mystery in the other, but only his own
know-how? What is happening in the “high-tech” areas of science
is reflected wherever the culture, broadly speaking, has managed to
tear God out of men’s hearts. Today there are places where
trafficking in human beings goes on quite openly: a cynical
consumption of humanity while society looks on helplessly. For
example, organized crime constantly brings women out of Albania
on various pretexts and delivers them to the mainland across the sea
as prostitutes, and because there are enough cynics there waiting for
such “wares,” organized crime becomes more powerful, and those
who try to put a stop to it discover that the Hydra of evil keeps
growing new heads, no matter how many they may cut off. And do
we not see everywhere around us, in seemingly orderly neighborhoods,
an increase in violence, which is taken more and more for
granted and is becoming more and more reckless? I do not want to
extend this horror-scenario any further.