Let’s not sacrifice Catholic teachings on the altar of capitalism (COMMENTARY)
Charles Camosy | March 29, 2016
(Charles C. Camosy is associate professor of theological and social ethics at Fordham University)
(RNS) How could 50 percent of Florida Catholics vote for Donald Trump?
One major part of the story is how Christians have blurred the lines between what God asks of us and what the idols of capitalism ask. For many Christians, Trump’s appeal is that he “gets” the need to “run things like a business.”
But Catholic convert and intellectual G.K. Chesterton said capitalism “destroyed the family in the modern world.” In addition to breaking up households and encouraging divorce, he wrote, capitalism “has driven men from their homes to look for jobs” and “forced them to live near their factories or their firms instead of near their families.”
It is difficult to escape the blanket coverage of Pope Francis’ capitalist critique. He rarely passes up the opportunity to undress our “crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.”
http://www.religionnews.com/2016/03/29/catholic-teachings-vs-capitalism/
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