But those tempted to consider different economic systems must remember that only free enterprise (accompanied by necessary regulation and proper social safety nets) has helped fulfill the noble antipoverty goals of our faith for billions of people all around the world. And who could blame them? The great G. K. Chesterton voiced this objection in his classic essay “Three Foes of the Family.” “It cannot be too often repeated,” he wrote, “that what destroyed the Family in the modern world was Capitalism.” He charged that the ethos that accompanies free enterprise had “broken up households and encouraged divorces, and treated the old domestic virtues with more and more open contempt.” Pope Francis put forward a similar point in his 2013 apostolic exhortation “Evangelii Gaudium”: “In this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule.”. How we choose to lead our lives is something different. Stock buybacks (to boost stock prices) totaled nearly $7 trillion from 2004 to 2014. When a family welcomed a new child into the world, it was announced at church, and the deacons had little trouble securing meals to help the family with the transition. It is so wrong it would take 200 pages to refute. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. http://AuntieGreed.blogspot.com. Religion is not politics so they should not be confused. Something went wrong. He was ordained priest in 1904. China’s People’s Daily notes, "Democracy is already kidnapped by the capitalists..." The Democracy Index places the US last on its list of “full democracy” countries. And how can you possibly expect to be taken seriouisly when you say that the FACT that rich people are benefitting at the expense of the poor is "ill-founded?" The morally relevant issue is how these people are actually living. We need to understand that industries and trade gropus regulate themselves in ways that do not involve the government: plumbers, truck drivers, medical teams, etc. 1913 edition. This problem became more acute when the US Supreme Court allowed corporations to contribute unlimited amounts of money to political action groups. A few months later, I started the conversion process at my local parish in Seattle. Confessions of a Convert: The Classic Spiritual Autobiography from the Author of "Lord of the World" Robert Hugh Benson. There's a problem loading this menu at the moment. We took deep pride in our Reformed culture. At age 15, I visited the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe as part of a school band trip to Mexico. Once we accept that economic reality, then we can even ask how to #RegulateGreed within our world? We talked, sometimes for hours, after church. There was a problem loading your book clubs. Today, the share of income that flows to the top 10 percent is higher than it has been since at any point since 1928, the peak of the bubble in the Roaring Twenties. Free enterprise—which has brought so much good to billions of people—is not the culprit. Reverend Robert Hugh Benson was one of the finest Catholic writers of the 20th century. All the same, it may be helpful to other potential converts, as well as those who will encounter them, to describe what is lost as well. As a convert myself, I always find this topic interesting. I “knew” what everyone knows: Capitalism is great for the rich but terrible for the poor. All income groups in the United States have seen dramatic increases in their standard of consumption—not just since colonial times but also over the past few decades. It is another temptation to be avoided. When faced with suffering, we often ask a conventional question: “Why are some people poor?” But grinding material poverty was the norm for the vast majority of people through the vast majority of human history.

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