Michael Novak è l’autore che meglio ha inquadrato una possibile teologia simpatetica con il capitalismo moderno, il libro “The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism” è un punto di riferimento imprescindibile nella sua opera.
L’avvento del capitalismo democratico (CD) ha rivoluzionato la storia dell’uomo…
… Of all the systems of political economy which have shaped our history, none has so revolutionized ordinary expectations of human life—lengthened the life span, made the elimination of poverty and famine thinkable, enlarged the range of human choice—as democratic capitalism…
Eppure, nessuno, nell’ambito della dottrina sociale della Chiesa, ha saputo produrre una teologia all’altezza di questo fenomeno epocale…
… Yet no theologian, Christian or Jewish, has yet assessed the theological significance of democratic capitalism…
Ma cosa significa CD? Il CD presenta almeno tre elementi caratterizzanti…
… a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is pluralistic and, in the largest sense, liberal…
Tra capitalismo e democrazia la connessione è robusta…
… the link between a democratic political system and a market economy is merely an accident of history. My argument is that the link is stronger: political democracy is compatible in practice only with a market economy. In turn, both systems nourish and are best nourished by a pluralistic liberal culture…
Il nesso è stato autorevolmente riconosciuto anche da chi avversa il sistema…
… Karl Marx recognized this link in his term of contempt: “bourgeois democracy,” he called it…
Cio’ non toglie l’esistenza di forme “bastarde”…
… While bastard forms of capitalism do seem able for a time to endure without democracy, the natural logic of capitalism leads to democracy…
Capitalismo e democrazia sono il frutto dei medesimi impulsi sociali…
… (1) to limit the power of the state, in defense against tyranny and stagnation; and (2) to liberate the energies of individuals and independently organized communities. Such impulses gave birth to modern European cities, whose first citizens took as their battle cry “City air makes men free.”2 Such citizens sought liberation from the crippling taxation, heavy bureaucracy, and dreary regulations of state and church…
Capitalismo e democrazia condividono valori comuni…
… Not only do the logic of democracy and the logic of the market economy strengthen one another. Both also require a special moral-cultural base. Without certain moral and cultural presuppositions about the nature of individuals and their communities, about liberty and sin, about the changeability of history, about work and savings, about self-restraint and mutual cooperation, neither democracy nor capitalism can be made to work…
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l’avvento del CD ha inaugurato una nuova era dell’uomo. Il 1776 è stato un anno cruciale…
… The watershed year was 1776. Almost simultaneously, Adam Smith published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations and the first democratic capitalist republic came into existence in the United States…
Qual era la situazione precedente?…
… Famines ravaged the civilized world on the average once a generation.5 Plagues seized scores of thousands. In the 1780s, four-fifths of French families devoted 90 percent of their incomes simply to buying bread—only bread—to stay alive. Life expectancy in 1795 in France was 27.3 years for women and 23.4 for men. In the year 1800, in the whole of Germany fewer than a thousand people had incomes as high as $1,000.6…
Qual è la situazione laddove il CD non ha preso piede?…
… In Africa, the wheel had never been invented. Medical practice in vast stretches of the world was incantatory. Illiteracy was virtually universal. Most of the planet was unmapped. Hardly any of the world’s cities had plumbing systems. Potable water was mostly unavailable. Ignorance was so extreme that most humans did not know that unclean water spreads disease…
Ma laddove ha preso piede, a partire dal XIX secolo, il mutamento è stato radicale…
… After five millennia of blundering, human beings finally figured out how wealth may be produced in a sustained, systematic way. In Great Britain, real wages doubled between 1800 and 1850, and doubled again between 1850 and 1900. Since the population of Great Britain quadrupled in size, this represented a 1600 percent increase within one century.8 The gains in liberty of personal choice—in a more varied diet, new beverages, new skills, new vocations—increased accordingly…
Purtroppo, la Chiesa non ha capito la nuova economia e ha perso l’appuntamento con la storia.
Ha considerato il nuovo sistema materialista, secolarista e dannoso per la religione, anche se non la impediva materialmente.
Ma il vero demone, poi, è stato considerato l’individualismo.
Pio XI…
… Pope Pius XI said that the tragedy of the nineteenth century was the loss of the working classes to the church.10 An even deeper tragedy lay in the failure of the church to understand the moral-cultural roots of the new economics…
Eppure la teologia cristiana conteneva tutte le premesse per un accoglimento.
Sono i cristiani, più di altri, a vedere il mondo come qualcosa che l’uomo è chiamato a valorizzare attraverso la sua opera…
… Judaism and Christianity are distinctive among the world religions because they understand salvation as a vocation in history. It is the religious task of Jews and Christians to change the world as well as to purify their own souls; to build up “the Kingdom of God” in their own hearts and through the work of their hands…
Nisbet su cristianesimo e progresso…
… The Lord of History is purposive. Through his word, human existence aspires upward. Robert Nisbet in his brilliant History of the Idea of Progress (1980) shows, against J. B. Bury, that the sense of a future different from the past was crucial to Judaic and Christian theology…
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Purtroppo, alla tradizione cattolica i meccanismi dell’economia non sono mai interessati…
… “The popes have no need to study modern economics” —The Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Catholicism…
In sé la cosa non sarebbe assurda, nella misura in cui la Chiesa non parlasse continuamente di economia.
Conoscere almeno i rudimenti della disciplina diventa allora importante per un teologo…
… First, theologians must consider economic realities present in every economic system in every age. They need clear and critical concepts about such realities as scarcity, work, money, capital accumulation, production, distribution, inequality, technology, division of labor, and the like. What do such realities mean for religion, and what does religion mean for them?…
Nel corso della storia l’uomo ha sperimentato diversi “sistemi”…
… The human race has experienced systems based on hunting and systems, like feudalism, based on grants of land to nobility. Among other major systems have been state-controlled mercantilist systems, democratic capitalism, socialism in several forms, and communism… To think theologically about economics is, first of all, to learn some economics…
In questo senso i “cattocomunisti” sono più “avanti”: mentre i cattoliberali non studiano Adam Smith, loro studiano Marx…
… There is in our day an extended literature on the theology of socialism3 as old as early religious socialism in nineteenth-century Britain4 and as new as liberation theology in Latin America.5 There is virtually nothing on the theology of democratic capitalism…
Ma bisogna andare oltre il “fondamentalismo letteralista” per cogliere lo spirito del cristianesimo e vedere in che misura è compatibile con il CD…
… To move from the myth of Exodus to Marxist theories of exploitation and liberation, on the one hand, or from the parable of the hidden talents to a Spencerian theory of competition, on the other hand, is mere fundamentalism… neither Judaism nor Christianity is reducible to Karl Marx or Herbert Spencer…
Il capitalismo resta allora incompreso dalla teologia, l’imprenditore è un estraneo per il teologo cristiano…
… Over the years, I have slowly become convinced that the actual practice of democratic capitalism is more consistent with the high aims of Judaism and Christianity than the practice of any other system. Democratic capitalism respects the imperative of self-reform and self-transcendence. It has already changed much and is capable of indefinite future transformation. Yet for various reasons, the Christian churches have failed to comprehend its inner spirit…
Questa incomprensione è preludio di ostilità…
… “Any serious Christian,” Paul Tillich once said, “must be a socialist.”…
Nei documenti ecclesiastici il CD è chiamato “liberalismo”…
… the favored ecclesiastical word for democratic capitalism has been “liberalism.” This word is almost always used pejoratively in the papal documents…
I gesuiti sono sempre in prima fila nella condanna…
… In 1980, the superior general of the Jesuits, Father Pedro Arrupe, S.J., wrote: “. . . the type of social analysis used in the liberal world today implies an individualistic and materialistic vision of life that is destructive of Christian values and attitudes.”…
In realtà, almeno la “democrazia” sembra oggi riabilitata agli occhi della Chiesa…
… The traditional accusations against democratic capitalism fall into two categories: those against democracy and those against capitalism. Over the years, the former have fallen away…
Ma le resistenze verso il capitalismo restano. Il capitalismo è “individualista, materialista e anarchico”. E poi produce “diseguaglianza”.
La categoria dell’individualismo ha un padre nobile…
… The first known use of the word “individualism” occurs in an essay by the French writer Joseph de Maistre in 1820…
La sua condanna è totale…
… “for this deep and frightening division of minds, this infinite fragmentation of all doctrines, political protestantism carried to the most absolute individualism.”…
Altri la ripresero e l’aggiornarono…
… In 1829, the prominent French Catholic writer Lamennais assaulted “individualism” as a doctrine which nourishes “power without obedience” and “law without duty.”…
Entrambi questi autori sono francesi, non a caso…
… They were disturbed by the anti-clerical, anti-religious revolutionary secularism of France…
Pio IX s’incardinò su questa strada. Un italiano, non a caso…
… Pius IX (whose reign lasted 32 years, 1846–78), embittered by his experiences with Italian anti-clerical republicans, condemned nearly every thesis of a liberal society root and branch in his famous “Syllabus of Errors.”…
Il liberalismo francese e italiano era profondamente anti-clericale, se solo l’incontro fosse stato con il religioso liberalismo anglosassone le cose sarebbero andate diversamente.
Leone XIII fece qualche passo avanti ma sempre restando nel solco…
… He roundly condemned socialism, even in its milder forms. He upheld the notion of the limited state and the critical role of private property as the protector of liberty.14 But he was soundly critical not only of certain practices of capitalism but of some of its philosophical bases, especially its individualism and its radical dependence on the free market…
Su impulso della Rerum Novarum, dai vescovi americani venne una spinta verso l’allineamento con i sindacati dei lavoratori…
… The Catholic bishops of the United States played an important role in persuading Leo XIII to defend the rights of labor…
Pio XI…
… Pius XI, not quite as hostile to liberalism as Pius IX had been, nonetheless described individualism and collectivism as “twin evils.”…
In lui si percepisce comunque una certa asimmetria tra socialismo e capitalismo…
… Because of the Catholic tradition favoring limited government and private property, his treatment of the twin evils was not symmetrical. He described “Christian socialism” as a contradiction in terms, and held, “No one can be at the same time a sincere Catholic and a true socialist.”…
Ma le accuse al capitalismo restano: è la condanna del lavoratore alla mera sussistenza…
… Pius XI made a grave charge against “capital”: Capital, however, was long able to appropriate to itself excessive advantages. It claimed all the products and profits and left to the laborer the barest minimum necessary to repair his strength and to ensure the continuation of his class. For by an inexorable economic law, it was held, all accumulation of riches must fall to the share of the wealthy, while the workingman must remain perpetually in indigence or reduced to the minimum needed for existence…
Per Paolo VI - Octogesima Adveniens, 1971 – il liberalismo fomenta l’illusione dell’autonomia dell’uomo…
… The liberal ideology . . . asserts itself in the name of economic efficiency, for the defense of the individual against the increasingly overwhelming hold of organizations, and as a reaction against the totalitarian tendencies of political powers. Certainly persônal initiative must be maintained and developed. But do not Christians who take this path tend to idealize liberalism . . . while easily forgetting that at the very root of philosophical liberalism is an erroneous affirmation of the autonomy of the individual in his activity, his motivation and the exercise of his liberty…
Nella Laborem Exercens del 1981 Giovanni Paolo II introduce però una nuova nozione di lavoro…
… He identified as “labor” many sources of creativity—the work of inventors, intellectual workers, management experts and the like—which go far beyond blue-collar workers…
Non lavora solo l’operaio. Esiste nel lavoro un elemento creativo che va esaltato…
… Finally, he emphasized the creativity of modern work by drawing on the theological symbols of the Creator and his creation…
Per la prima volta la figura dell’imprenditore comincia a trapelare. Si va a verso la tradizione di John Locke e Adam Smith.
Ma le timidezze prevalgono, il cattolico non è né carne né pesce…
… To be anti-communist and anti-socialist, and only halfheartedly committed to democratic capitalism, is to represent not a “middle way” but a halfway house. Such movements collapsed of their own lack of a serious ideal…
E chi, almeno dopo il Concilio, spinge per un’identità cattolica più definita, spinge di fatto verso il marxismo e il socialismo. I vescovi tedeschi, per esempio…
… chiefly in Germany, the new “political theology” began to move in a socialist direction…
Alcuni personaggi di vertice hanno le idee chiare…
… Johannes Metz… It has shown contempt for bourgeois society, favored a “Christian-Marxist” dialogue… More recently, in Latin America and in the formerly French, Belgian, and Portuguese colonies of Africa and Asia, another form of socialism has arisen under the title “liberation theology”…
Le due parole chiave della dottrina sociale divengono “pace e giustizia”…
… peace and justice commissions were opened in many dioceses around the world. These commissions freed many priests and sisters from traditional pastoral duties so that they might engage in social action…
Pace e giustizia consentono di smarcarsi dal marxismo agendo come i marxisti. Dei “marxisti educati”, insomma…
… Many such activists deny that they are Marxists or even socialists, but one seldom hears them employing the ideas or the methods of democratic capitalism…
Manca del tutto la parola libertà…
… Perhaps their fatal flaw lies in the omission of the symbol “liberty.” Peace and justice there may be even under authoritarian societies…
Perché? Forse la cosa dipende dalla formazione dei teologi…
… Is it possible that there are some intellectual lacunae in Catholic teachings on political economy? Are there some insights missing? Such reflections as these have led me, over the years, to believe that just as the Catholic tradition has something to teach America, so also American democratic capitalism has some new things to add to the Catholic tradition…
Manca la necessaria apertura verso la cultura anglosassone…
… The Catholic church has heretofore learned from the intellect of Greece and Rome, Germany and France. Why not also from America?…
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Arthur McGovern ha sintetizzato così l’evoluzione del rapporto con il capitalismo nella dottrina sociale da Leone XIII a oggi…
… “From Anathemas to Christian Marxists.”…
Una deriva, insomma. Una deriva costellata da intenzioni nobili.
Per un cattolico, il marxismo puro e semplice presenta comunque qualche difficoltà…
… There are several difficulties in Marxist thought which, as Christians, they wish to avoid. They are not atheist. They are not materialist. They favor neither complete collectivization under the state nor one-party rule. They do not hold that divisive class struggle is the key to history. And they cannot be totally opposed to private property—a decisive limitation on the power of the state—for they generally favor land reform, rural cooperatives, and the ownership of one’s own home and personal goods…
Ma non si tratta di difficoltà insormontabili. Basta poco – giusto una rispolveratina - per diventare marxisti di fatto…
… After their rejection of atheism, materialism, state collectivization, party rule, class struggle, and the abolition of private property, it is hard to see what is left of the Marxism of Christian Marxists…
Giovanni XXII fornì le categorie adatte per essere marxisti “di fatto”…
… he denies that cooperating with the “historical movement” of Marxism necessarily commits him to its basic “philosophical teachings.”…
Insomma, si puo’ dire “non siamo marxisti ma possiamo fare un bel pezzo di strada con loro, poi si vedrà”.
Da un lato, i ponti venivano costruiti da Bloch…
… Marxist thinkers Ernst Bloch and Roger Garaudy tried to show that Marx never intended the individual to be “sacrificed” to the totalitarian state…
Dall’altro da Metz…
… Catholic theologians like Johannes Metz tried to show that the primary impetus of Christianity is “eschatological,” that Jesus should be seen as “a revolutionary,” and that the church should consider itself an institution for the collective criticism of society…
Intanto, in America, John Ryan si dava da fare con il catto-sindacalismo…
… Monsignor John A. Ryan had foreshadowed this effort, in an essay titled “May a Catholic be a Socialist?”4 He distinguished between socialism as a social movement hostile to religion, as a social philosophy committed to materialism, and as an economic technique of limited public ownership. He thought that this last, which he called “essential economic socialism,” respectful of home ownership and the private ownership of personal goods, might or might not work in practice. But it is, he taught, consistent with Catholic moral teaching…
Ecco un esempio di come veniva considerato il capitalismo dopo il Concilio…
… According to the Slant Manifesto of 1966, to be a Christian is to be committed to building community in the world and thus, logically, to oppose capitalism. In the Slant view, capitalism is thoroughly destructive of community…
I cattolici, a partire dai vescovi, adottarono con entusiasmo il gergo marxista…
… as Raymond Aron notes, has become the lingua franca of the educated classes of the West…
Moltmann, professore di teologia sistematica a Tubinga, fu probabilmente la figura di maggior spicco in questa fase.
Conosceva meglio Hegel di Tommaso, da qui la sua sensibilità verso Marx. Fu lui a elaborare la “teologia della speranza” o “teologia politica”…
… political theology has focused the attention of Christians upon the future (rather than on the past), stressing the eschatological aspects of Christian hope…
Mettere al centro il futuro era un modo per sintonizzarsi con il concetto di “rivoluzione” tanto caro ai “compagni di strada”.
Anche il concetto di “segno dei tempi” aveva questa funzione.
Per Moltmann il nemico era l’anima, un concetto che portava con sé un fastidioso residuo individualista: come faccio ad eliminare l’individuo se poi nel giorno del Giudizio saremo giudicati individualmente?…
… it breaks away from centuries of Christian emphasis upon the struggle of the individual soul. While it clings to the teaching “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?” (Mk. 8:36), it emphasizes the social nature of the Christian vocation…
La teologia non doveva essere dottrinaria ma pragmatica: doveva condurre l’azione. Un chiaro richiamo al concetto marxista di “prassi”.
La vicinanza con l’impostazione marxista, infatti, è evidente: c’è una lotta da fare qui e ora, non un pensiero da concepire per discernere torti e ragioni.
I numi tutelari di questo pragmatismo furono Maurice Blondel, William James e John Dewey.
I libri dove Moltmann espone il suo insegnamento…
… books have been The Theology of Hope (1967), The Crucified God (1974)…
Lo scopo: fornire un’etica cristiana al socialismo…
… His intention seems to be to articulate a new “Protestant ethic” that would bring Christianity to the support of socialism…
Il dialogo auspicato…
… He then posits two parties of the middle ground, whose dialogue gives most promise for the future: (1) “humanistic Marxism aligned with the downtrodden and the humiliated” and (2) humanistic Christianity which is chiliastic, future-oriented, and concerned for the poor….
Il Cristo crocifisso, poi, ci indica da che parte stare in questa lotta (con i poveri&oppressi contro i ricchi&potenti)…
… crucifixion of Jesus, which for him reveals the ambiguity of history and identifies Christianity with the poor and the oppressed…
Naturalmente, chi si colloca tra poveri e ricchi, è come se non esistesse…
… overlook the present situation of millions who live along the broad continuum between being poor and being rich…
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La dottrina sociale cristiana invita i ricchi a sentirsi colpevoli per la povertà dei poveri. Una citazione d’obbligo direttamente dalla conferenza episcopale di Medellin…
… The principal guilt for the economic dependence of our countries rests with powers inspired by uncontrolled desire for gain, which leads to economic dictatorship and “the international imperialism of money” . . .—Conference of Latin American Bishops, Medellín, 19681…
E come al solito, da dove arrivano i maggiori guai in tema di dottrina sociale? Dall’America Latina…
… On few continents of the planet is the socialist myth more vigorous than in Latin America…
L’ideologia socialista lì spopola, il fatto è che – vera o non vera – fornisce comunque una scusa all’intero continente: “se sono povero la colpa è degli altri”…
La retorica centro-periferia sta poi al cuore di questo discorso…
… Democratic capitalism, they say, is responsible for the poverty of the Third World. It typically creates a “center” which oppresses “the periphery,”…
Ma sono davvero le nazioni ricche a causare la povertà delle nazioni povere?
A volte si dimentica che certe nazioni sono povere da sempre, quando tutti lo eravamo…
… It is odd, on the face of it, to blame the poverty of the rest of the world on democratic capitalism. Such poverty, after all, is hundreds of years older…
Persino quelle nazioni dotate di grandi risorse naturali, come molte dell’ America Latina…
… In those early days, Latin America seemed to have greater physical resources than North America…
Cosa differenziava Nord e Sud America? Cultura, valori e quindi anche istituzioni…
… The moral-cultural system of North America placed great emphasis on building and working for tomorrow. The moral-cultural system of Latin America favored other values…
Perché, partendo alla pari, il Sud non si è arricchito per primo? D’altronde, all’epoca aveva più risorse. Inoltre, non c’era la “dipendenza” dal Nord visto che, appunto, si partiva alla pari.
Risposta: cultura e istituzioni retrive lo hanno appiedato fin da subito…
… Suppose that Latin America had developed industries and manufacturing before the United States did. Clearly, the resources were available. Latin America is rich in oil, tin, bauxite, and many other important minerals. Its farmlands and tropical gardens are luxuriant. Why, then, didn’t Latin America become the richer of the two continents of the New World? The answer appears to lie in the quite different nature of the Latin America political system, economic system, and moral-cultural system…
Ma quella cultura che ha consegnato un continente alla povertà da dove veniva? Da secoli di cattolicesimo.
Dalla Chiesa Cattolica. Questo è un fatto triste per noi cattolici ma è un fatto.
Ora sembra molto più chiaro il perché la Chiesa di laggiù ancora oggi flirti con ideologie pericolose come un certo marxismo ripulito: la Chiesa Cattolica non puo’ accusare se stessa di essere alla fonte di molti mali latinoamericani, e per stornare ogni sospetto abbraccia le tesi del più rozzo terzomondismo: siamo poveri perché i ricchi ci “sfruttano”…
… Yet its Catholic bishops do not blame the Catholic church, the systems of political economy they long supported, or the past values and choices of its peoples. They blame the United States…
Eppure, i ricchi USA, che con la loro invadente presenza tengono sotto scacco un continente, sono ancora più presenti altrove. Perché allora lì non c’è “sfruttamento”, perché non c’è “dipendenza”?…
… Moreover, U.S. investments in Western Europe and Japan during that same period were many times higher, without producing similar “dependence.”…
Ma anche oggi gli investimenti USA sono troppo esigui per poter parlare di “dipendenza”…
… the total investment made by U.S. corporations between 1950 and 1965, as given, averages out to $253 million per year. This does not seem like sufficient money to make all of Latin America “dependent.”…
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Qui è bene vedere meglio il legame tra cattolicesimo ed economia nella storia.
Le tesi di Weber sul capitalismo sono arcinote: nacque in ambito protestante facilitato da una certa etica religiosa che misurava le probabilità di salvezza dall’arricchimento personale. Ma Hugh R. Trevor-Roper ha qualcosa da aggiungere…
… Hugh R. Trevor-Roper, for example, discovered that many of the great entrepreneurs of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are to be distinguished less by the fact that many were Calvinists than by the fact that nearly all were immigrants. Among them were some Calvinists, but also others who were Jewish or Catholic. Thus, Trevor-Roper asks, what made these entrepreneurs migrate? Why did they find some cities and some regimes hospitable and others (including Calvinist ones) inhospitable? The details of Trevor-Roper’s argument, which I here summarize, are rich and the scholarship he cites broad. The basic picture he draws indicts Catholic Counter Reformation economies, particularly that of the Castilian monarchy of Spain, then at the zenith of its imperial power…
La culla del capitalismo moderno, quindi, si collocherebbe in effetti nei territori protestanti ma molti protagonisti di primo piano furono cattolici immigrati: la soffocante alleanza controriformista tra Stato e Chiesa aveva reso asfittici i loro affari.
La cosa quadra con quanto riscontriamo prima del 1500: il proto-capitalismo ferve soprattutto in ambito cattolico…
… He discovers the remote origins of capitalism, both as a system of production and as a technique of financing, in Catholic cities like Antwerp, Liège, Lisbon, Augsburg, Milan, Lucca. “These were the centers of European capitalism in 1500,”…
Anche le teorizzazioni migliori della logica capitalista vengono partorite in ambito cattolico. Qualche nome: Francisco de Vitoria, Juan de la Mariana, Pedro de Navarrete, Azilpcueta, Lessio, Medina, De Molina, Pietro di Giovanni Olivi.
Ma tra il 1550 e il 1620 la decadenza dell’economia capitalista nei paesi cattolici è drammatica. Perché? L’ alleanza stato-chiesa in funzione anti-protestante rende la società molto più soffocante e meno libera spiegando molto…
… For Trevor-Roper, the decisive factor was a new alliance of church and state, more intolerable with each passing year, which drove the new class of Catholic businessmen in some cases out of their church but in many more cases out of their native cities and homelands. They sought out cities no longer under the control of princes and bishops; they sought self-governing cities of a republican character…
Molto ma non tutto: in fondo anche nei paesi protestanti si realizzò qualcosa del genere (in funzione anticattolica).
Senonché tra stati cattolici e stati protestanti c’era una qualche differenza. Guardiamo solo al più potente impero cattolico di allora: la Spagna…
… Spanish Empire. Made rich by silver from South America, the Spaniards, who represented the dominant Catholic state, misperceived the basis of their new economic strength…
Era un impero ricchissimo che aveva drenato una montagna d’oro dal nuovo mondo appena scoperto e che quindi poteva permettersi anche un’economia inefficiente pur di accentrare il potere. Un po’ come oggi i paesi mediorientali: annegati nell’oro nero possono permettersi economie risibili.
I principi tedeschi (amici dei protestanti) non potevano invece concedersi un simile lusso, l’economia doveva funzionare, ovvero, doveva fondarsi necessariamente su istituzioni capitaliste, la libertà dei mercati doveva essere garantita.
Il matrimonio tra Chiesa Cattolica con la Spagna in epoca di Controriforma corruppe per sempre l’insegnamento cattolico in ambito sociale, un insegnamento prima tanto promettente…
… The Counter Reformation state impugned the religious value of commerce. It banned or restricted enterprise in the private sector. It licensed certain entrepreneurs to develop state monopolies; it favored state mercantilism over private mercantilism. “It was a change,” Trevor-Roper reports, “which occurred predominantly in countries of the Spanish clientele”…
La Chiesa latina da allora – presa com’era a difendere il potere delle monarchie assolute - fu sempre ostile ai liberali. Anche per questo nacquero fenomeni come il laicismo, qualcosa di sconosciuto nei paesi del nord…
… the tragedy of the seventeenth century, setting in motion the tragedy of the nineteenth, was the failure of Catholic thinking to grasp the creative potential of democratic capitalism. One result was that many early republicans and liberals, opposed to premodern ways of thought, were confirmed in the practical necessity of being anti-clerical and anti-Catholic. The revulsion against religion on the part of liberals and republicans was most pronounced in Latin lands, which to this day still suffer under the legacy of “laicism,” as did Pius IX in Italy before he issued his “Syllabus of Errors,” and as Mexico has since its anti-clerical revolution…
Un altro spiacevole effetto collaterale di questa dinamica è il clero latinoamericano…
… “We are the victims,” the bishops say. They accept no responsibility for three centuries of hostility to trade, commerce, and industry…
Siccome poi la Chiesa latina era la più potente, almeno in ambito cattolico, fu naturale che i suoi orientamenti perversi si estesero a nord, negli USA, per esempio…
… Yet this intellectual failure appears, as well, among North American bishops. In an unsigned pamphlet, “Development-Dependency: the Role of Multinational Corporations” (1974), the Catholic bishops of the United States say of themselves and their people, “We are a people so deeply committed in theory, if not in practice, to the philosophy or the ideology of free enterprise in the old-fashioned sense of the word . . .” This statement, in form an empirical statement, is not true of the bishops themselves…
***
Se ascoltate un sacerdote latinoamericano parlare di sviluppo e società, potete fare il conto alla rovescia: dopo massimo 15 secondi introdurrà il tema centro/periferia. Si tratta di un linguaggio marxista che ritroviamo ancora oggi in bocca a papa Francesco…
… Marxist thought today uses the theory of center and periphery as an accusation against democratic capitalism…
Per un sacerdote latinoamericano, specie se gesuita, il paradigma marxismo spiega al meglio la realtà sociale del suo continente, e non solo…
… Baum believes that the Church’s social teaching “has accepted the neo-Marxist theory of dependency which argues that corporate capitalism enriches the center of the system at the expense of the periphery.”…
Il centro sfrutterebbe la periferia.
Il che in sé è già abbastanza curioso poiché sono proprio i socialisti a voler centralizzare tutto.
Ci sono poi altri problemi col modello centro/periferia. Prendiamo gli USA, dov’è il centro? New York? Si puo’ dire che New York sfrutti Atlanta? O che Milano sfrutti Varese? O che Varese sfrutti Arcisate? Non scherziamo…
… Is there a “center” within the United States today? Is it New York City, and is that city being enriched at the expense of Atlanta, Miami, Dallas, and Los Angeles? No region of the United States is poorer than it was in 1900…
Prendiamo allora un minuscolo scoglio alla periferia di tutto: Hong Kong. Dobbiamo attenderci che qui si concentrino le forze sfruttatrici del lontanissimo Centro, invece…
… What, then, does “the center” mean? It appears to mean any place where there is a great deal of economic activity, even if on a large rocklike island (like Hong Kong) far from its markets…
Conclusione: il centro è il posto dove ferve l’economia, dove si lavora e si produce ad alto valore aggiunto, non un luogo geografico dove hanno deciso di far base gli sfruttatori.
Il capitalismo innovativo ha bisogno di relazioni strette, di scambi di idee, di connessioni fisiche, esalta quindi l’urbe, ovvero la concentrazione, ovvero il centro. E’ un processo naturale, non un piano studiato a tavolino per sfruttare chissà quale fantomatica periferia. Il centro puo’ anche variare quando variano le produzioni e il sistema si riconfigura…
… The theory of the “center” and the “periphery” is merely a clever restatement of the proposition that the poverty of the poor is explained by the wealth of the wealthy…
Ad ogni modo, la critica della Chiesa al sistema attuale resta aspra. Ma uno si chiede, dov’è mai la controproposta? D’altronde, nessuno in un dibattito serio darebbe credito ad una critica senza controproposta. Purtroppo, dopo essere entrata nel merito per criticare, la Chiesa si ritrae al momento di proporre…
… Do the bishops of Canada, under Dr. Baum’s advice, propose the Catholic church as a model of a sinless structure? Would they have Canada organized as Cuba is organized, or as Nicaragua is organized under the Sandinistas?…
***
Un simile andazzo raggiunse il suo apice con la teologia della liberazione, frutto naturale del congresso di Medellin del 1968, lì il matrimonio tra cattolicesimo e marxismo fu celebrato…
… The Medellín statement and others subsequent to it have increasingly adopted a Marxist perspective, analysis, and future…
La teologia doveva fondarsi sullo studio della scrittura (basta con le astrazioni cervellotiche della dottrina!) mettendo in evidenza l’elemento ribellistico di Gesù…
… Recent Catholic theology has deemphasized philosophy and systematic theology in preference to Scripture studies. Reading Scripture as a story of liberation—as Exodus was a liberation—theologians began applying it to problems of poverty and development…
Fateci caso, i gesuiti divennero tutti “esperti di scrittura”
La cultura anglosassone fu sempre tenuta a distanza…
… The Anglo-Saxon tradition is perhaps the least known among Catholic theologians trained (as most liberation theologians have been) in Europe…
Certe profezie, come si sa, si autoavverano: se gli imprenditori sono tutti criminali per definizione, ben presto saranno solo i criminali a fare impresa…
… Economic activism is not given high spiritual value. It follows that even many who engage in it do not hold themselves to spiritual standards which are not, in any case, widely embodied in Latin American literary culture. Business in Latin America, therefore, seldom carries with it the tacit sanctions so powerful in British or North American culture…
Ma non era solo il marxismo a sprezzare il mondo dell’impresa, il vecchio mondo aristocratico del latifondo non era da meno…
… The great Catholic thinker of nineteenth-century Spain, Donoso Cortés, for example, whose work is cherished by conservatives in Latin America, is profoundly opposed to Anglo-Saxon liberalismo….
Sia i cattolici progressisti che quelli tradizionalisti avevano dunque un comune nemico.
Utopia allora era un termine positivo: la Chiesa era esplicitamente chiamata a teorizzare l’utopia, doveva guardare avanti, al futuro, alla speranza. Proporre anche lei un “sol dell’avvenir”…
… Dodson claims the current rise of liberation theology is highly theoretical. He calls it “prophetic politics.” Latin American theologians like Juan Luis Segundo are explicit about their preference for the utopian vision…
Il concetto base del marxismo è sempre stato quello di “falsa coscienza”. L’operaio doveva essere “risvegliato”. Ma questo è un gergo che va a nozze con la sensibilità cattolica…
… In this sense, Marxism is a form of illuminism familiar enough in mystical and religious writings…
I preti dovevano uscire dai seminari e andare per la strada…
… As the liberation theologians themselves picture it, they were too long sheltered in divinity schools and too long content with tepid reformism and scholarship as usual…
I fedeli dovevano imparare dai poveri più che dal Vangelo (sembra di sentire papa Francesco!)…
… Instead of learning from the gospel “and then applying their insights to the actual world,” Dodson observes, the liberation theologians “try to learn from the world and then ‘locate’ their experience in the gospel.”…
Ma in questa retorica qualcosa non quadrava. Chi erano i poveri e i ricchi del Sudamerica?…
… Predominantly, the poor of Latin America are peasants in rural areas and now an urban proletariat. Predominantly, the wealthy of Latin America are landholders rather than industrialists…
E la dipendenza di Cuba dall’URSS, quella non va denunciata? Come mai?…
… the dependence of Cuba (and other socialist lands) upon the internationalist socialist system is treated in an altogether different manner. It is simply ignored…
Le multinazionali erano messe all’indice… e poi chiamate in gran segreto ad investire…
… Latin American liberation theologians seem to be ambivalent with respect to multinational corporations. Even if in theory they loathe them, in practice they often seem to think they may be useful. Fidel Castro is said to have advised Nicaragua in 1980 to keep lines open to an internal private sector and to Western financial markets, in order to avoid excessive dependence upon the Soviet Union…
Tuttavia, ripeto ancora, quel che sconcerta è che gente tanto impegnata nel sociale non avesse proposte in positivo degne di questo nome…
… Further, one finds in liberation theology little reflection on the new institutions which, after the revolution, will replace the old… They have much to say about poverty—for which, invariably, they blame malevolent others—but little to say about the causes of wealth…
E allora l’unica alternativa concreta era quella che molti trovarono già bella e pronta. il marxismo. E fu subito Teologia della Liberazione: argomento base…
… Dodson summarizes the belief of liberation theologians: “Capitalism fosters individualism, competition, materialism, and greed. Socialism offers an alternative set of values, which stress the virtues of participation, community, equality and sacrifice.”…
E le falle evidenti dei regimi socialisti non si denunciano? No, la reticenza dei vescovi cattolici sul punto è formalmente giustificata…
… In Christians and Socialism, the English Catholic John Eagleson defends the unwillingness of liberation theologians to be more concrete: “The construction of socialism is a creative process, and that has nothing to do with dogmatic schemes or an uncritical stance.”…
L’argomento più ripetuto: “guarda come stanno bene i poveri di Cuba! Hanno persino gli ospedali”…
… The strongest argument the liberation theologians make is that socialist nations, even though their economies may stagnate, claim to supply basic necessities to all the poor. They “frequently point to Cuba as evidence…
Prosperano rispetto ad Haiti. E forse in parte anche rispetto a Puerto Rico, due sistemi difficilmente definibili come CD. Anche i poveri dell’URSS, comunque, prosperavano finché le risorse sono bastate.
***
I Vescovi sudamericani hanno uno strano modo di fotografare lo sviluppo, eccone un esempio…
… Consider the assertion of Archbishop Dom Helder Camara of Brazil before the World Council of Churches in 1970: “It is a sad fact that 80 percent of the world’s resources are at the disposal of 20 percent of the world’s inhabitants.”…
Il 20% della popolazione che possiede l’80% delle ricchezze.
Chi pronuncia la sentenza non ha nemmeno bisogno di precisare che siamo di fronte ad un’ingiustizia. Va da sé.
Eppure, basta aggiungere qualche particolare per complicare il quadro. Per esempio, il petrolio appartiene per lo più ai paesi “poveri”, come mai allora sono poveri?…
… Most of the world’s oil, for example, appears to be in the hands of nations like Venezuela, Mexico, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Libya, and Iran…
Il fatto è che tutte queste risorse sono state scoperte e valorizzate da un’esigua minoranza della popolazione che risiede ed opera in quel 20-10% ricco…
…Archbishop Camara might have observed in fairness: “It is a marvelous fact that 80 percent—maybe even 90 percent—of the world’s resources have been discovered and put to use during the past century by one of the smaller cultures on the planet…
La domanda allora è: “come mai il 20% della popolazione mondiale inventa e produce l’80% delle ricchezze mondiali?”.
Suona un po’ meglio così?
Ma perché il Brasile non inventa nulla di rilevante?…
… Nothing prevented Brazilians from inventing the combustion engine, the radio, the airplane, penicillin, and other technologies which give resources their utility…
In fondo si è partiti tutti alla pari. Potremmo anche individuare un anno preciso di partenza alla pari: il 1850…
… As late as 1850, the difference between the per capita income of Latin America and that of North America was not great… Why after 1850, then, did the journeys of North America and Latin America dramatically diverge?…
Cultura e valori, come già detto, fanno la differenza. In America Latina lo spiritualismo, l’autorità, il carisma, lo status, il sentimento aristocratico, l’eroismo la fanno da padroni…
… Latin Americans do not value the same moral qualities North Americans do. The two cultures see the world quite differently. Latin Americans seem to feel inferior to North Americans in practical matters, but superior in spiritual ones. In Latin American experience, powerful personages control almost everything… The “Catholic” aristocratic ethic of Latin America places more emphasis on luck, heroism, status, and figura than the relatively “Protestant” ethic of North America, which values diligent work, steadfast regularity, and the responsible seizure of opportunity…
Un misto di aristocrazia premoderna e marxismo modernista hanno svalutato la persona qualunque (o sei eroe o sei massa) e la possibilità di trasformare la propria condizione con le proprie sole forze.
In fondo anche gli USA erano “dipendenti” dall’Europa nella prima fase della loro storia…
… “The United States broke out of its dependency on what was then the world’s greatest power, while Latin America, colonized at the same time, still fails to do so.”…
***
Ma come si puo’ passare dal marxismo al CD? Il miglior modo di vederlo è seguire il percorso di una persona, ci concentriamo sulla parabola di Reinhold Niebuhr (N.)…
… Reinhold Niebuhr became a Marxist early in his intellectual life, but soon he became critical of Marxism and, later, of democratic socialism. Although in the early 1930s he predicted the imminent collapse of capitalism and energetically spread the conviction that capitalism ought to collapse, he later discovered virtues in it he had not seen before…
Una parabola simile a quella di molti neo-conservatori…
… Niebuhr’s career, in this sense, prefigured that of the “neo-conservatives” three decades later…
La prima fase fu socialista…
… In 1931, Niebuhr was predicting in The Christian Century that “the growth of socialistic political philosophy will be the most significant development in our political life in the next decades.”… Niebuhr in those days insisted upon being called a Marxist, not merely a religious socialist…
N prediceva a chiare lettere la morte del capitalismo…
… In March 1933, Niebuhr wrote “on the assumption that capitalism is dying and with the conviction that it ought to die.”…
Secondo N il materialismo marxista era emendabile senza inconvenienti…
… Niebuhr did not regard the historical materialism of orthodox Marxism as basic to a socialist politics. He began slowly but surely to distinguish Christian socialism from Marxism….
La seconda fase è comprensibile se isoliamo cio’ che cerca in realtà il cristiano nel socialismo: cerca la comunità…
… Socialism has been from the beginning a protest against radical individualism and a search for lost community…
Se non la trova ed è onesto, cambia idea.
L’ascesa democratica di Hitler in Germania fu un trauma per N.: come poteva la democrazia aver partorito qualcosa del genere?…
… the accession of Hitler to power through democratic methods deeply disturbed him. He recognized that democracy and capitalism had grown up together, and that democracy transcended class interests….
Eppure era stato possibile. La vera democrazia, evidentemente, doveva essere qualcosa d’altro.
In N stava calando una voglia di realismo…
… Niebuhr was now focusing more and more on the distance between the “City of God” and any historical “City of Man” (he had been reading much Augustine)…
Perché negli USA un Hitler non sarebbe stato possibile?…
… Niebuhr had a new experience to contemplate. Democracy, which failed in Weimar Germany, worked in the United States…
Forse per il loro pragmatismo?…
… Niebuhr was to appeal increasingly to the lessons of experience in the late 1940s and 1950s…
Dalla militanza socialista N passò ad una posizione di equidistanza tra socialismo e CD…
… Niebuhr reflected on the joint condemnations of capitalism and communism produced by the World Council of Churches meeting in Amsterdam in 1948…
Il marxismo veniva finalmente condannato…
… By 1952, Niebuhr was still clearer about the lessons of history concerning “Marxist dogma,” even elements which had once attracted him. “Its theory of revolution is incompatible with democratic responsibility; its theory of class conflict does not fit the multiple-class structure of modern industrial societies and is incompatible with the principle of ‘class collaboration’ upon which democratic politics depends; above all, its utopianism interferes with an interest in proximate, rather than ultimate goals, and that is the point which distinguishes a sane political movement from one that is corrupted by false religious visions.”…
Gli ultimi anni vedono un approdo di N a forme di CD? Ancora dubbio ma plausibile…
… Scholars are agreed that Niebuhr broke decisively with Marx and later with the Socialist Party. There is room for some disagreement about how far he broke from socialism and how highly he came to regard the virtues of a reformed capitalism…
N aveva equivocato sulla tradizione americana che prima vedeva come un misto di gretto individualismo e prosaico realismo…
… Central to Niebuhr’s vulnerability to Marxism was his vision of the American tradition into which he had been born. For many years, he understood this tradition in a quite shallow way. He saw it as no more than a too simple religious individualism, wed to a merely political realism…
Ora era disposto a ravvedersi: la politica puo’ far danni e le preoccupazioni dei Padri Costituenti per limitare il potere dei governi in carica erano più che giustificate…
… Unlike the idealists, Madison “knew the need for strong government.” Unlike Thomas Hobbes and the Marxists, “he feared the dangers of strong government” and insisted upon the separation of powers to prevent tyranny…
C’è il parallelo con il filosofo francese Maritain…
… Earlier we briefly noted that a contemporary of Niebuhr’s, the French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, went through a similar change in judgment about capitalism and, like Niebuhr, struggled for a phrase to describe it….
Il filosofo si chiedeva: come chiamare questo nostro sistema occidentale che alla prova dei fatti ha retto meglio ai colpi della storia?…
… How shall we describe this system—imperfect, but always improving, and always capable of further improvement—where men move forward together, working together, building together, producing always more and more, and sharing together the rewards of their increased production?45 The author requested suggestions and received over fifteen thousand replies. Never, said the editor, “have I touched so raw a nerve.” Among the suggestions: “the new capitalism,” “democratic capitalism,” “economic democracy,” “industrial democracy,” “distributism,” “mutualism,” and “productivism.”…
***
Come sintetizzare allora il tragitto di N dal marxismo al CD? Proposta: un rinsavimento guidato dalla passione per i fatti…
… Thus Reinhold Niebuhr, like Jacques Maritain, was obliged by experience to unlearn the ideology through which he had long looked at America, especially at its economic system. Neither thinker dwelt much upon the capitalist component of democratic capitalism…
La Chiesa dovrebbe fare lo stesso, appassionarsi ai fatti: se davvero è interessata alla società cerchi allora di approfondire la realtà, non basta una critica impressionistica del tutto priva di competenze e sganciata da un onesto confronto tra i sistemi alternativi in campo.
***
Veniamo finalmente alla domanda chiave: come potremmo impostare una teologia cristiana per il capitalismo?
Mai rinunciare all’ideale: il capitalismo funziona se è cultura, e la cultura produce ideali…
… The ideals a system is designed to serve, especially if they are transcendent ideals, stimulate each new generation to advance the work of its forebears… To know its ideals is to be restless under the status quo and to wish to do better in the future…
Ma noi siamo mille volte avvantaggiati in questa intrapresa intellettuale: il capitalismo è fiorito nei paesi cristiani, la cosa non è affatto casuale, significa che una base culturale già esiste…
… It is no accident that democratic capitalism arose first in Jewish-Christian lands (or that it is imitable only in analogous cultures). Apart from certain specific views of human life and human hope, neither a democratic polity nor a market economy makes sense…
Ma vediamo ora se la teologia canonica offre qualcosa che possiamo valorizzare ai nostri fini. Considereremo sei dottrine.
Partiamo dalla dottrina della Trinità…
… 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…
Il Dio cristiano è dunque pluralismo nell’unità. Anche la società capitalista assume una simile forma: individualismo nel rispetto di regole del gioco comuni. Differenziazione nell’armonia.
Alcuni critici temono che il pluralismo si trasformi in individualismo, quindi in atomismo che produce alienazione...
... 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...
Ma i fatti non sembrano avvalorare questo pessimismo...
... 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...Under democratic capitalism, each individual participates in many vital communities.
Poi c'è la dottrina dell'incarnazione.
Un Dio incarnato è un Dio che accetta e si sottopone ai vincoli della realtà umana...
... God did not overpower history but respected its constraints...
Il vincolo principale è quello della scarsità delle risorse, il pensiero umano che affronta questo vincolo nel modo più rigoroso è il pensiero economico…
Un Dio incarnato ci richiama al realismo contro l'utopia misticheggiante...
... 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...
C'è poi la dottrina della competizione.
I testi sacri ci rappresentano storie in cui il protagonista è chiamato a competere e vincere. C'è qualcosa da ottenere, un'impresa in cui riuscire, un mondo da conquistare, un nemico da sconfiggere. Le storie giudaico cristiane sono improntate al dinamismo, all'azione e al successo...
... 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...
Nelle storie bibliche si perde o si guadagna, si avanza o si retrocede. L'utilitarismo ha sempre un senso...
... “What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?” (Mk. 8:36)...
Un banco di prova, un esame da superare, una selezione attraverso cui passare...
... “Many are called, few are chosen” (Mt. 20:16)...
Interessante, poi, l'etimo di "competere"...
... to compete—com + petere, “to seek together although against each other”...
Cercare insieme confrontandosi dialetticamente.
Inutile dire che il CD è a suo agio in questo paradigma per cui la competizione è la più alta forma di cooperazione.
La neutralità della moneta apre a tutte le competizioni...
... 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...
C'è poi la dottrina del peccato originale.
È una vaccinazione contro le trappole dell'utopia e della perfezione. Un riparo dalle facile illusioni e un richiamo al realismo dell’imperfezione...
... The force of the word “original” may, however, need exposition. Its effect is to deflate human pretensions of unambiguous virtue... to steel the gullible mind against such illusions...
Le società di mercato sembrano peccaminose, in realtà si limitano a non nascondere il peccato, a non vergognarsi dell’imperfezione, a ricordarcela sempre. In questo sono un monito costante al peccato originale...
... 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...
C'è poi la dottrina dei regni separati.
Dio e Cesare, per esempio...
... 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)...
Ma anche Gerusalemme celeste e Gerusalemme terrena.
Una religione predisposta alla separazione dei regni è meglio attrezzata ad accogliere in sé il pluralismo, elemento imprescindibile del CD...
... the importance of structural pluralism to democratic capitalism... the political system of democratic capitalism cannot, in principle, be a Christian system. Clearly, it cannot be a confessional system...
Non esisterà un'economia cristiana, e questo è solo un bene...
... 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...
C'è poi la dottrina dell'amore (o della Carità, o della Misericordia).
È la dottrina centrale del cristianesimo...
... 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...
Ma basta citare alcuni passaggi per accorgersi come l’amore cristiano abbia più a che fare con la legge che con il sentimento...
... 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...
L'amore è innanzitutto un principio organizzativo che governa la realtà più che un sentimento personale...
... The distinguishing feature of Jewish and Christian conceptions of love is that love is realistic. It is the very energy of reality itself... It is love that makes things “to be,”...
Dobbiamo cercare il bene concreto dell'altro, non esibire nei suoi confronti un sentimentalismo illusorio...
... the lover must will the good of the other, not simply illusions about that good...
Il legame amoroso ci impone un comportamento razionale, non un trasporto cieco...
L' amore implica stabilità, realismo e giudizio razionale...
... 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....
L'amore è amore sponsale, principio organizzativo della famiglia che è cellula di base della società ordinata…
... 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...
L'amore è accettazione dei difetti altrui e trasformazione di quei difetti in virtù...
... 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...
Un’economia ben organizzata produce valore e arricchisce tutti facendo il bene di ciascuno: desiderare un simile esito è la forma più alta di misericordia.
***
Come concludere?
Il Dio dei cristiani ci lascia liberi di peccare, ci responsabilizza e ci mette alla prova: possiamo fallire o avere successo. Sarebbe bene che la società umana si informasse a questi principi...
... Almighty God did not make creation coercive, but designed it as an arena of liberty..
Il CD è forse il sistema che più c'è andato vicino...
... 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...
