The one God of Christians is also plural; appropriately, then, the mind becomes accustomed to seeing pluralism-in-unity throughout creation, even in social systems.Read more at location 5709
Under democratic capitalism, the individual is freer than under any other political economy ever experienced by the human race, and this fact has led some scholars to speak of anomie, alienation, fragmentation.Read more at location 5748
Yet the scholars who write of such things do not appear to be particularly anomic, alienated, or fragmented; nor do their readers; nor our own families, loved ones, and mediating communities.Read more at location 5750
Under democratic capitalism, each individual participates in many vital communities.Read more at location 5755
God did not overpower history but respected its constraints.Read more at location 5764
The Incarnation obliges us to reduce our noblest expectations, so to love the world as to fit a political economy to it, nourishing all that is best in it.Read more at location 5825
Judaism and Christianity are religions of narrative and liberty. In every story in the Bible, attention is focused upon the moment of decision. In any given story, dramatic interest is aroused because the outcome remains in doubt until the closing lines. King David might, or might not, betray his closest friend. In some episodes, David is virtuous; in others, vicious. The same human being, in his liberty, may say yes to grace, or like the rich young man turn sadly away in declination. Judaism and Christianity, in other words, envisage human life as a contest. The ultimate competition resides in the depths of one’s own heart.Read more at location 5838
“What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?” (Mk. 8:36).Read more at location 5842
to compete—com + petere, “to seek together although against each other”—Read more at location 5883
Among the things for which humans compete, money is neutral and may be used in wise stewardship or foolish. Since it is impersonal and instrumental, its possessors may accept it with an infinite range of human attitudes and use it for a vast range of choices.Read more at location 5905
The force of the word “original” may, however, need exposition. Its effect is to deflate human pretensions of unambiguous virtue.Read more at location 5927
Outsiders like Solzhenitsyn are often shocked by such a nation’s public immoralities: massage parlors, pornography shops, pickpockets, winos, prostitutes, pushers, punk rock, chambers for group sex—you name it, democratic capitalism tolerates it and someone makes a living from it.Read more at location 5943
The classic text is: “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Mt. 22:21).Read more at location 5957
the importance of structural pluralism to democratic capitalism.Read more at location 5959
the political system of democratic capitalism cannot, in principle, be a Christian system. Clearly, it cannot be a confessional system.Read more at location 5961
Dietrich Bonhoeffer has written about the impossibility of a Christian economy.9 For one thing, a market system must be open to all regardless of their religious faith. Economic liberty means that all must be permitted to establish their own values and priorities.Read more at location 5966
The highest of all theological symbols for Judaism and Christianity is the one closest to the personality of God: compassion, sacrificial love, caritas. Caritas is the proper name of the Creator.Read more at location 5992
Consider such passages as these: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mt. 22:39). “Love your enemies” (Mt. 5:44). “Love is the highest law” (Rom. 13:10). “The greatest of these is love” (I Cor. 13:13). Such passages make clear that something considerably more profound than feelings is involved.Read more at location 5994
The distinguishing feature of Jewish and Christian conceptions of love is that love is realistic. It is the very energy of reality itself.Read more at location 5999
the lover must will the good of the other, not simply illusions about that good.Read more at location 6005
It means that the lover must not be led solely by desire, pleasure, or the wish to please, but must attempt to activate a more difficult capacity for realism and judgment.Read more at location 6008
Love, then, is a great teacher of realism about ourselves. Marital love, in particular, the most intimate and noble of all human friendships, is ruthless in destroying the illusions of each about each.Read more at location 6018
The problem for a system of economy is how to unleash human creativity and productivity while coping realistically with human sinfulness. To love humans as they are is to accept them in their sinfulness, while seeking a way to transform such sinfulness into creative action for the commonweal.Read more at location 6055
Almighty God did not make creation coercive, but designed it as an arena of liberty.Read more at location 6112
Democratic capitalism has been designed to permit them, sinners all, to follow this free pattern. It creates a noncoercive society as an arena of liberty, within which individuals and peoples are called to realize, through democratic methods, the vocations to which they believe they are called.Read more at location 6113
