During Mass one Sunday after the reading of the Gospel, I settled into the pew for the homily. I expected the usual treatment of the day’s readings and a passing reference to how we can apply the words of Scripture to our everyday lives. However, on this day, the homily would have a relevant meaning for individuals and churches throughout America.
Up to recent times, the Catholic nations and regions were considered the poorest part of Christendom, “underdeveloped” not only financially but also materially. Lately, this has changed considerably, and today France and even Italy are economically stronger than predominantly Protestant countries such as Great Britain whose GNP they have overshadowed. In Europe, generally, industry is shifting its weight from the North to the South and East.
The phone rang at 3:30 a.m. on Tuesday, April 5th. “Her heart gave up” was how a mutual friend announced Mia’s death. Marie Immaculée Antoinette Acton, later the Hon. Mrs. Douglas Woodruff, was dead at 89. I had seen her scarcely two weeks prior and knew that the end was near: “One can live too long, Jim,” she had said. Though she had often joked about the nuisance of what she described as her “creeping decrepitude,” there was a different tone of voice this time.
In the marketplace, the consumer is “king.” To become wealthy in free enterprise usually involves mass production for mass material consumption. The free market rewards entrepreneurs for their correct anticipation of consumer demand. It showers people like Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Alexander Graham Bell, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie with tremendous wealth, because they dramatically improved the consumer’s quality of life.
It is sometimes said that capitalism lacks poets. In twenty-five books and a career of lecturing and teaching all over the world, Michael Novak, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, had devoted much of his life to poetically explaining the crucial role of private initiative in public life. In doing so, he has roused the moral imaginations of scholars around the world.
If you take for granted your attendance at the church on the corner, it may be a good time to stop. You are about to be introduced to what many believe has become the worst threat to religious liberty in America: local zoning laws.
“Sin Taxes” are so called because they are levied on those commodities, such as tobacco and alcohol, which are the objects of widespread disapproval. “Such taxes,” Paul Samuelson says, “are
Edmund Burke spoke a great and noble truth when he observed that the kind of society and government a nation has is an accurate reflection of the character and intellect of the people who inhabit it. A corrupt, careless, sluggish people will have a government to match their ill nature.
During the summer of 1980, I met weekly for breakfast, prayer, and study with a minister friend of mine. A warm-hearted, intelligent man, Bob Hager kept challenging me to broaden my interest from the biblical studies, theology, and apologetics that were my great loves to include social concerns. One week, he told me of a book he’d read recently – Ronald J. Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. “Cal,” Bob said, “you’ve simply got to read this book. It’ll change your life.“
Lord Acton, the great historian of freedom, understood that “liberty is the delicate fruit of a mature civilization.” The liberty of which he spoke embraced a broad scope of human freedom, including dimensions political, intellectual, economic, and, especially, religious. The civilization of which he spoke was the West, whose heritage of Greek philosophy, Roman law, and Christian faith indelibly marked it and inexorably pushed it toward the full panoply of liberties we enjoy today and to which the rest of the world looks.
The culture these days seems distinctly unfriendly to both freedom and virtue. For all of the rhetoric about the end of big government, the GOP Congress has made peace with Leviathan. At the same time, evidence of moral decline, from family disintegration to artistic obscenity, lies all around us. Superficially, at least, enhancing state power in order to make society more virtuous seems to be a losing strategy.
Environmental thought is being used increasingly, not to preserve nature’s beauty, but to restrict economic prosperity. As a priest, I am concerned about this movement, not only because I believe that economic development is good for the human family but also because, under the guise of environmentalism, certain heresies are making inroads into our houses of worship. Of late, we have witnessed the rise of what some have called a “green spirituality,” said to blend nicely with traditional faith.