Capitol Ideas: Losing One's Soul
Bethell, Tom
CAPITOL IDEAS by Tom Bethell Losing One's Soul T he one time I met the Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich, about ten years ago, I suggested that if he really wanted to get world population down, he...
...The Lambeth Conference, the once-adecade meeting of the Anglican bishops in Canterbury, provided more food for thought...
...Man cannot serve God and Mammon ("money," in the crass modern translations of the Bible...
...24 November 199 8 • The American Spectator been slow on the uptake, why should we expect more from clergymen who think that good will and good intentions are all that's needed to make good things happen...
...are well off...
...The saying that the devil makes work for idle hands may give a clue...
...The disciples themselves were amazed at what Jesus had said...
...Martin's Press...
...was confident that he had kept the commandments...
...It may be that getting into heaven involves a higher standard than we imagine, and that there are many ways of failing to do so without descending to the levels of misbehavior that are tolerated by the Bishop Spongs of the world...
...The "social problem" was one of hardship, not over-abundance, and this remained the predominant view in the twentieth century, with the pro-socialist faction in Rome gaining strength until Populorum Progressio (1967...
...Foreign aid...
...With God all things are possible," he allowed...
...These questions are hardly addressed in the papal encyclicals of the past century...
...Laying up treasure in this life tends to make us feel so comfortable that we forget about the next...
...N of all the facts fit...
...In fact, I would go further and say that those who do believe in the next life are for that reason not greatly concerned about inequality in this...
...Those who think of religion as a mere comfort for the weak should read Jesus's words...
...Entrepreneurs and the creators of wealth are often disciplined enough to keep working hard, long after they "need" to do so...
...The rights of illegal immigrants...
...But still, Jesus said, he "lacked one thing...
...His new book, The Noblest Triumph, was recently published by St...
...Good statistics on crime and illegitimacy in England were kept in the nineteenth century...
...But there's no doubt where Jesus stood on the spiritual hazards of wealth...
...Catholic birthrate is the same as the all-American rate," he points out...
...He was rich, and he should sell what he had and give to the poor...
...Even though it creates abundant wealth, the rich countries barely achieve zero population growth...
...In fact, the inheritors of large wealth may be doubly jeopardized...
...The left has opposed capitalism not because it creates too much wealth, but because it creates too little, too unevenly distributed...
...As to whether this means that prosperity weakens traditional morality, Wattenberg doesn't think so...
...And in Centesimus Annus (1991) at last we find warnings of "the phenomenon of consumerism," the correction of which will require "a great deal of educational and cultural work...
...CAPITOL IDEAS by Tom Bethell Losing One's Soul T he one time I met the Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich, about ten years ago, I suggested that if he really wanted to get world population down, he should preach the virtues of capitalism...
...Here we find Paul VI arguing for planning, construing compulsion as charity, and demanding that "the superfluous wealth of rich nations" be "placed at the service of poor nations...
...He gave me a wan smile, and allowed there may be some truth to that...
...International debt relief...
...they asked...
...In my book The Noblest Triumph, I note that many countries have been unable to put in place the legal and political system that gives security to property...
...That is why the Vatican teamed up with Islamic countries at the 1994 Cairo population conference —to check the revolutionary juggernaut, Bill and Hillary at the helm...
...27 percent own two or more cars...
...Leo Xlii's Rerum Novarum (1891) was a compromise between those who argued that economic liberalism (the free market) was the best guarantor of workers' rights, and those who argued for intervention—trade unions, labor regulations, minimum wage laws, Sunday observance...
...The conference left one wondering what, if anything, "the West" now means...
...Income distribution and redistribution...
...Which brings me to a simple question: Is wealth itself morally corrupting, either to individuals or to societies...
...The United States, the wealthiest country in the world, now seems to be leading an undeclared crusade to undermine traditional morality all over the world...
...Judging by Clinton's approval ratings, the sexual revolution has now largely succeeded in the U.S., the only regret of our elites being that it has not yet gone far enough to render hypocrisy unnecessary...
...The rich are not normally thought to lead exemplary lives...
...But compared with Biblical times, maybe most of us are rich...
...We see this reflected in the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, which, without acknowledgment, represents the point of view of the Catholic left...
...This, surely, is the source of at least some of the malice that unmistakably energizes American liberalism today...
...Population Conference in Mexico City in 1984...
...They are tempted to indulge themselves, and inclined to despise a system that lavishes rewards on the non-meritorious (themselves...
...In recent years the conference has taken an interest in: Land mines...
...There's no doubt, though, that the Biblical injunction "be fruitful and multiply" is obeyed more frequently by the poor than by the rich...
...As a result, they have not created much in the way of wealth...
...Incidentally, by world-historical standards, many of the 3o million so-called "poor" people in the U.S...
...With these inequalities supposedly removed (by state ownership), wealth would "gush forth abundantly," in the promise of Nikita Khrushchev...
...The earlier understanding of the role of institutions had by then been lost...
...The pupils, still remembering their lessons, returned to remind their teachers of what they had once believed...
...Economists themselves have only recently acknowledged it, after all, and if they have Facing up to the spiritual hazards of wealth...
...It's the people in poor countries who keep on having babies...
...According to the latest news from the Census Bureau, 70 percent of "poor" households own a car...
...delegation to the U.N...
...How can this be...
...Throughout the latter half of the century, a time of great increase in national wealth, both the crime and illegitimacy rates fell...
...Its poor population is shrinking in size...
...Our unpopular position was that economic growth tended to suppress fertility, and that free markets tended to grow economies best," he recalls...
...It was one of the few times when Jesus softened his own remarks...
...When it goes `below replacement' — and stays there for an extended period—it gets dangerous...
...More recently, planning having failed to deliver the goods, John Paul II has returned the balance of the debate more or less to where it began in 1891...
...Jesus repeatedly warned that riches threaten our salvation: "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven...
...Mark adds a slightly more reassuring qualification: "How hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of heaven...
...There's no doubt now that prosperity does lead to smaller families...
...But maybe all that means is that Catholic social teaching—along with Catholic pulpit preaching—has declined along with the mainstream Protestant variety...
...ring to the effects of prosperity on morality in general, not just sexual morality...
...If leftist clergymen were to put out a pastoral letter, condemning capitalism on the grounds that the prosperity it creates powerfully tempts us away from the straight and narrow path, I for one would read the document with interest...
...Problems are apt to arise for those who inherit, however...
...They are so preoccupied with the inequality—and therefore, as they see it, the unfairness—of this life that they are wont to overlook the next...
...But a recent study in Philadelphianoted that "while self-reported [Catholic] church attendance averaged 75 percent, observed attendance was actually 33 percent" So maybe hypocrisy should be added to the vices of the prosperous...
...The man "went away sorrowful...
...the obsession about equality arises precisely among those who think that justice is "now or never...
...John Shelby Spong, the wicked bishop of Newark, New Jersey, complained that Africans have "moved out of animism into a very superstitious kind of Christianity...
...They may become not just wastrel heirs but filled also with a spirit of revolutionary resentment...
...But that is not the way leftists think...
...Many of these countries are in Africa, or more generally in the Third World...
...The salvation of souls hardly seems to enter their world-view at all...
...Here's something else...
...It has not received much attention, partly because the evidence is complex and contradictory, and partly because the Christian left, which in its antagonism to capitalism might have been expected to raise it, hasbeen comparatively silent on the subject...
...Arms control...
...Maybe we are quietly going to hell in ways that neither contribute to the illegitimacy rate nor add to the Uniform Crime Statistics: Being selfish, uncharitable, idle (although there's probably less of that in a competitive economy than in any other), and smugly self-satisfied...
...We do know what one man thought...
...The left has not raised moral objections to wealth per se, because its worldview is no less materialistic than that of the right, and perhaps a great deal more so...
...This is one of his many discomforting remarks that Christians tend to downplay...
...What might connect wealth and demoralization...
...Of course, the left has only recently (if yet) been reconciled to the idea that capitalism is the true wealth-creating system...
...And so on...
...One might say that the poorer countries upheld traditional morality against subversion by the rich...
...But Third World bishops, Africans in particular, held the line...
...The U.S...
...Where your treasure is, there will your heart be...
...More to the point, however, they have basically been oriented toward worldly salvation, and have been more inclined to deplore the unequal distribution of wealth than its potential spiritual hazards...
...The rich young lord who asked, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life...
...Ben Wattenberg of the American Enterprise Institute was a member of the U.S...
...And it is why conservatives should support immigration, by the way...
...I think he saw my suggestion as rather a drastic remedy to the "population problem," as he saw it...
...Having in large measure abandoned traditional moral teaching, the British and American (Episcopalian) bishops had planned a typically pointless statement about Third World debt forgiveness, and some of them were hoping to use the occasion to advance the cause of the sexual revolution still further...
...His italics...
...Which brings me again to the question: Is wealth morally corrupting...
...The problem is that fertility has never fallen so fast, so far, for so long in so many places...
...What are we to make of the birthrate in Russia...
...But in this article I am referTOM BETHELL is TAS's Washington correspondent...
...The American Spectator • November 1998 25...
...We were hooted at by the Explosionists who characterized our position as 'Capitalism is the best contraceptive.' Funny thing: it probably is, both in itself, and because it ushers in modernization which then includes urbanization, contraception, et cetera, which pulls down fertility...
...It is not the hopeful poor but the resentful rich that we should fear...
...The protection of the environment...
...But of course, it wasn't what he had in mind...
...If wealth were de-moralizing, these indices should have risen...
...Then again, a police force was added just before the crime rate fell, so maybe people were increasingly wicked in their hearts—but afraid of getting caught Another apparent contradiction: America the rich is said to have a high rate of church attendance...
...In fact, they are the same countries that held the line at Canterbury...
...Michael Novak, the American Enterprise Institute theologian who often writes on economic themes, thinks that the problem "is not inherent in wealth, but it is a temptation, especially for those in the second and third generations...
Vol. 31 • November 1998 • No. 11
