All Too Fallible
Earlier today, Severely Ltd pondered the comments made by the Pope in his New Year address and found them “not at all helpful.” I’ll say. Writing yesterday over at the sinister, godless realm that is Secular Right, I was perhaps a little less polite.
I was reacting to a BBC report on the Pope's remarks. Here’s (part of) what the Beeb had to say:
The Roman Catholic Church leader spoke at a Mass in the Vatican, then greeted a crowd outside St Peter’s Basilica. He deplored “hotbeds of tension and conflict caused by growing instances of inequality between rich and poor”.
Those “hotbeds” also grew out of “the prevalence of a selfish and individualistic mindset which also finds expression in an unregulated financial capitalism”, as well as “various forms of terrorism and crime”, he said.
My comment:
I don’t know what is worse. The ignorance (if there’s one thing that the financial markets were not, it was unregulated; whether they were sensibly regulated is a different question), or the clear signs of a visceral loathing for “financial” capitalism and, of course, the Pope’s attempt to smear it with guilt by association with “various forms of terrorism and crime”.
If the Pope's remarks were designed to be "helpful", I dread to think to whom.
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Comments:
Sep '10
Re: All Too Fallible
I'm so happy to know about the website you referenced. I could not agree with you more.
Sep '10
Re: All Too Fallible
You might want to re-read Severley's thread and the later comments on
Edited on January 3, 2013 at 12:31amSep '10
Re: All Too Fallible
By the way, I don't understand what this means:
Eudaimonia is in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and he certainly wasn't a British empiricist or Enlightenment rationalist. How do you resolve the metaphysical difficulties?
Apr '11
Re: All Too Fallible
It depends on what was meant by "financial capitalism."
If it meas the the international bank system and the outrageous privileges bestowed upon it - which privileges amount to titles of nobility for banking institutions - then I'm an Orthodox christian in complete agreement with the Pope on this one.
If it means free markets, then I'm an Orthodox christian in complete disagreement with the Pope on this one.
On the principle of charity, I take his meaning to be the former.
May '10
Re: All Too Fallible
John Paul II had a line or two that could've been taken as luke warm on capitalism, too, and yet he proved to be an anti-communist par excellence, so I'd be willing to give Benedict the benefit of the doubt here.
Still, a quick reminder that a free market economy is not a zero-sum game -- and therefore "gaps" are nothing to fret over (unlike, say, poverty-causing egalitarianism) -- can be useful to anyone, even His Excellency.
Re: All Too Fallible
Although scarcely an expert on the Vatican, I tend to attribute the Pope's remarks not to "visceral loathing" but to the sloppy, lazy, eurocratic thinking of so many of the curial officials who surround him. But although it pains me to say so, Andrew--in light, that is, of our much larger disagreement over the Act of Supremacy--you are right and the pontifex maximus is wrong.
Sep '10
Re: All Too Fallible
Some useful background to the audience.
Apr '12
Re: All Too Fallible
I work in the finance industry, at the heart of capitalism. We work long hours and get paid fairly well but I can tell you my brother in the government is now able to retire. He gets 80% of his best 3 year's of pay plus benefits such as dental, hearing aids and drugs which are not covered by our so called free Canadian health care. Now he gets that paid, no matter what happens on the stock market and he does not have to find a wealth manager, supervise them or pay them for looking after his capital.
As a greedy capitalist working in finance and paying the employee taxes, corporate taxes, sales taxes by Province and Federal jurisdiction, more goes to greedy government than to reinvestment in my business, or to my employees or to me.
I have now left the business and have a salary but still no government pension like my government employee brother. What shocks me is this big corporate finance company is still on Microsoft 03. I empathize.
so the Pope means well about having values to treat others well, but, the heavens above, it is the Government and their unions who are greedy.
Re: All Too Fallible
Pseudodionysius: By the way, I don't understand what this means:
Eudaimoniais in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and he certainly wasn't a British empiricist or Enlightenment rationalist. How do you resolve the metaphysical difficulties? · 1 hour ago
Pseudodionysius is quoting the 'mission statement' (dreadful term, but it'll have to do) of Secular Right. That was written before I signed up for SR, so you'd have to ask the author about the specifics. But, to me, the key point is that conservative (loosely defined) principles do not require (although they need not exclude) supernatural backing. As for "metaphysical difficulties", I've never worried too much about them. To me such questions are pointless--and not particularly interesting--speculation. But to each his own!
Sep '10
Re: All Too Fallible
That's clarifying. I misunderstood and thought you were originally involved as a founder and had some hand in drafting the mission statement. For now, I'll have to file away my Terence Irwin translation of the Nicomachean Ethics.
Re: All Too Fallible
Pseudodionysius: You might want to re-read Severley's thread and the later comments on
Edited 1 hour ago
1 hour ago
Pseudodionysius provides a quote that is well worth remembering, but it does not contradict the fact that the Roman Catholic Church has long (well before Rerum Novarum) been suspicious of capitalism or proto-capitalism. If it has an 'economic' ideology it is corporatism, which probably finds its most benign expression in "Rhineland Capitalism" and/or the "Social Market", although there are plenty of other, far less attractive, variants....
May '10
Re: All Too Fallible
Pope Benedict XVI is an exceptionally wise and holy man. I welcome his input on everything.
Catechized Catholics understand that not every word from a bishop — even the bishop of Rome — is spoken authoritatively. They, too, are human.
Apr '11
Re: All Too Fallible
Short version: I agree
Slightly longer: I think that the somewhat vigorous debate on Severely's thread has simmered down a little now, but that a number of people have agreed that BXVI is a fairly mainstream fiscal social democrat. On the downside, this means that he's not enormously fiscally conservative, but on the upside, his proposals tend to be tweaks (focusing on full employment, strengthening unions, increasing worker's rights etc.) rather than revolutions. He has quite a lot of nice things to say about globalization, free markets, etc., as well as unkind things, and objects to his ideological adversaries on his left even more than those on his right. He is wrong to not be more conservative, but it could easily be much worse.
Sep '10
Re: All Too Fallible
Andrew Stuttaford
Pseudodionysius: You might want to re-read Severley's thread and the later comments on
Edited 1 hour ago
1 hour ago
Pseudodionysius provides a quote that is well worth remembering, but it does not contradict the fact that the Roman Catholic Church has long (well before Rerum Novarum) been suspicious of capitalism or proto-capitalism. If it has an 'economic' ideology it is corporatism, which probably finds its most benign expression in "Rhineland Capitalism" and/or the "Social Market", although there are plenty of other, far less attractive, variants.... · 7 minutes ago
I hasten to remind everyone of St Antoninus of Florence, the Renaissance Thomist thinker and theorist of economics, unknown to most Catholics as well as Protestants.
Re: All Too Fallible
Peter, it's very ungracious of me to quibble when you are agreeing with me, but I don't think that it's quite right to use the "eurocratic thinking" (lazy or otherwise) of Curial officials as an alibi for the Pope's remarks. That's because the EU, corporatist to its core, was from the beginning clearly designed as an expression of Roman Catholic ideas of how Europe's economy--and, indeed, society--should be run (you can even see that in some of its jargon: "subsidiarity" and all that). The project was then flavored by the likes of "founding father" Altiero Spinelli with the socialist elements that added further poison to the mix.
Sep '10
Re: All Too Fallible
May '10
Re: All Too Fallible
By the way, Americans, being the most influential nation in the world, often make the mistake of assuming that comments from the Vatican are directed at us or at the West broadly. The Church includes Christians from every nation in the world, and our Pope represents them all. His typical focus is the poor and downtrodden, not the movers and shakers.
Edited on January 3, 2013 at 2:50amSep '10
Re: All Too Fallible
Correction. It was an expression of the ideas of certain Roman Catholics, not Roman Catholic ideas. Otherwise, Fr James Schall, SJ's book entitled Roman Catholic Political Philosophy would have been a manual for the creation of the EU.
Apr '11
Re: All Too Fallible
Andrew Stuttaford
Peter, it's very ungracious of me to quibble when you are agreeing with me, but I don't think that it's quite right to use the "eurocratic thinking" (lazy or otherwise) of Curial officials as an alibi for the Pope's remarks. That's because the EU, corporatist to its core, was from the beginningclearly designed as an expression of Roman Catholic ideas of how Europe's economy--and, indeed, society--should be run (you can even see that in some of its jargon: "subsidiarity" and all that). The project was then flavored by the likes of "founding father" Altiero Spinelli with the socialist elements that added further poison to the mix. · 0 minutes ago
Do you accept that the Catholic Church has moved substantively to the economic right since the 1950s? If, as I take it you do, you also agree that the Eurocracy has not, would it not be reasonable to describe the relatively unreformed Curia as Eurocratic? Thanks to the other threat I've been rereading social encyclicals from the past, and BXVI really does seem less radical, more inclined to the advocating of tinkering than his predecessors.
Sep '10
Re: All Too Fallible
BENEDICT XVI (2005 - present):
“We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything”
Benedict XVI
“The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person − every person − needs: namely, loving personal concern. We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything, but a State which, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need. … In the end, the claim that just social structures would make works of charity superfluous masks a materialist conception of man: the mistaken notion that man can live ‘by bread alone’ (Mt 4:4; cf. Dt 8:3) − a conviction that demeans man and ultimately disregards all that is specifically human.”
(Encyclical Deus Caritas Est, December 25, 2005, n. 28)