[fishtank]

A lot of the modern Cistercians I know are socialists.....

The RCC might have had some role in the birth of capitalism, but it was the predominantly Protestant countries of Western Europe that matured and guided capitalism through the Industrial Revolution. The mostly RCC countries of Europe have traditionally lagged behind the Protestant economies of northwestern Europe and America.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

The RCC might have had some role in the birth of capitalism, but it was the predominantly Protestant countries of Western Europe that matured and guided capitalism through the Industrial Revolution. The mostly RCC countries of Europe have traditionally lagged behind the Protestant economies of northwestern Europe and America.

To the contrary, Protestantism took the industrial revolution in its beginning from Catholic Belgium and Germany. They did not invent it or perfect it. What was done in England in textiles was a conscious copying of Catholic Belgium, in mining, a copying of the German mines in Bohemia and Transylvania, in shipping and trade, a copying of the Hanseatic League

There certainly has always been just as much wealth and progress in Catholics areas such as Belgium, France, Northern Italy, Bohemia, Austria, Bavaraia, Rhineland, Silesia, Argentina, Brazil, as in similar Protestant areas. Certain too, is that progress in England and the Netherlands, which lead only from the 18th century on, was far ahead of progress in the Protestant parts of Germany and Scandanavia. Protestantism provided no magic elixir of capitalism somehow denied to Catholicism.