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James T. KeaneJune 24, 2014

In Graham Greene’s novel The Power and the Glory (1940), a soon-to-be-martyred Mexican priest on the run from government troops encounters a haunting sight while saying Mass: local peasants who, having toiled all day at their backbreaking work, come before the altar and spread their arms as if on a crucifix, imitating Christ on the cross. “One more mortification squeezed out of their harsh and painful lives,” thinks the priest.

While the Marxist lieutenant chasing the priest sees the answer to their torment in the overthrow of the ancient alliance between an exploitative economic system and the church, the priest sees the answer in trust in the afterlife. After all, “If they really believed in Heaven or Hell,” as the lieutenant later mockingly parrots him, “they wouldn’t mind a little pain now, in return for what immensities....”

One can admire Greene’s novel while also noting that he was not particularly subtle in his characterizations. There are the passing things of this world, and then there is the eternal glory of paradise, and so what’s a little injustice, economic or otherwise, in the meantime? Added bonus: it builds character.

His depiction speaks to a tension present in Christianity and Christendom since Luke recorded Jesus’ mention that “blessed are the poor, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” When, and where? In paradise? In the here and now? Depending on one’s worldview, Jesus’ words are a call to economic revolution and the widespread redistribution of wealth or a justification for economic inequality and laissez-faire capitalism. In the United States, many of us seem to view Jesus’ words as a promise to the poor that one day we’ll make it up to them.

Pope Francis, who saw the Argentine economy shrink by a third in only four years at the turn of the millennium, has raised eyebrows and ruffled feathers in recent months by referring to American-style capitalism as “a new tyranny” and the equivalent of idol worship for the way it exploits the poor. Other prominent church leaders have gone further: “This economy kills,” Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga of Honduras recently told an audience in Washington, D.C., “That is what the pope is saying.” For some American Catholic public figures accustomed to a close alliance with the Vatican on all matters but war, it has come as a bit of a shock to be compared to the high priests of Ba’al.

In fact, a prominent American prelate recently argued that Francis wasn’t referring to American-style capitalism at all in his condemnation of this new idolatry: “[W]hat many people around the world experience as ‘capitalism’ isn’t recognizable to Americans. For many in developing or newly industrialized countries, what passes as capitalism is an exploitative racket for the benefit of the few powerful and wealthy.”

Prescinding from the question of how many Americans see our current system as exactly such an exploitative racket, there is another problem with this argument: Francis’ own words. “We discard a whole generation to maintain an economic system that no longer endures, a system that to survive has to make war, as the big empires have always done,” the pope noted in a recent interview with La Vanguardia. “But since we cannot wage the Third World War, we make regional wars. And what does that mean? That we make and sell arms. And with that the balance sheets of the idolatrous economies—the big world economies that sacrifice man at the feet of the idol of money—are obviously cleaned up.”

Of course, Francis is no economist, nor do his remarks have any binding force. But we shouldn’t fool ourselves as to who he thinks are the tormentors of the poor, or who are the idolaters. He is not blaming the banana republics and crony capitalists of the third world. He’s blaming us.

Ironically, Pope Francis would have found an ally in Graham Greene, despite the latter’s earlier convictions. Greene came to believe that the economic suffering of the poor was neither necessary nor favored by God, and that the proliferation of the Western economic order threatened Catholicism everywhere. A vocal supporter of liberation theology and critic of unfettered capitalism, he once told a journalist that Marxist regimes could only destroy the church physically, “whereas the Americans destroy its soul.”

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Frank Gibbons
9 years 8 months ago
Greene's actual quote that was delivered to Malcolm Muggeridge was "Russians only destroy its [the Church's] body while Americans destroy its soul." Muggeridge recorded this in his diary in 1948, so Greene is speaking specifically about Stalinist Russia. The radical materialism of Marxism as it was played out in the Soviet Union destroyed both soul and body. Greene had a point of view that contained some truth mixed with fancy.
Vincent Gaitley
9 years 8 months ago
In 1948 Greene was a British Crown subject and participant in the long Imperial destruction of half the world, especially India. Perhaps the Russians do destroy the body, Americans the soul, but those British took the land and stayed, stayed, stayed. Look around the world, the problem areas were all once part of Greene's kinship, not ours. But we got the bill, economically and politically.
Vincent Gaitley
9 years 8 months ago
Graham Greene was also a multi-millionaire from the sales of his books. He loathed America even as he benefited from book buyers and Hollywood; he befriended several dictators, too. If the pope thinks that all capitalism--the American version especially--is evil, he should say so clearly once and for all. At that moment I'll become some fashion of protestant, or something else. Since the pope and the Church have no expertise in economics (neither did Jesus) this is an area for the laity who must earn a living. If the pope needs examples of benign profits then he should speak to Archbishop Chaput who just sold some nursing homes for $145 million dollars, leased some cemeteries for $83 million, and sold off other Philadelphia holdings earning nearly $20 million. Honestly, no person in Argentina is qualified to speak about money, the whole government there has spent years borrowing from the American banks (the deposits of the poor and rich) and scheming ways to default on this sovereign debt. Gimme a break, Francis.
KEVIN DOYLE
9 years 8 months ago
The "prominent American prelate" is our Timothy Cardinal Dolan. Why not criticize him by name? This -- along with, for instance, America's failure to express outrage over St. Joseph's Seminary hosting Henry Kissinger -- makes me wonder whether America has forgotten its duty of fraternal correction. Too often the secular media, out of ignorance or bias, open an egg with a hatchet when it comes to criticizing Catholic Church leaders. America should muster the courage to fill the role of the responsible, forthright critic. The joke goes that, once a priest becomes a bishop, there are two things he never again suffers: a bad meal or the truth. Christ's church deserves better.

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