Pope Benedict's economic prophecy - also echoes of Burke

The Acton Institute's Powerblog has a blog on a Prophecy the then Cardinal Ratzinger made in 1985 about a meltdown in the world's financial system. The warning (I think it's more of a warning) came in a lecture “Market economy and ethics,” given during a symposium. The relevant passage which has been picked up by a number of websites is the following:

It is becoming an increasingly obvious fact of economic history that the development of economic systems which concentrate on the common good depends on a determinate ethical system, which in turn can be born and sustained only by strong religious convictions. Conversely, it has also become obvious that the decline of such discipline can actually cause the laws of the market to collapse. An economic policy that is ordered not only to the good of the group — indeed, not only to the common good of a determinate state — but to the common good of the family of man demands a maximum of ethical discipline and thus a maximum of religious strength.

I recommend the reader follow the relevant links for the detail. However, I think Cardinal Ratzinger was merely repeating warnings that are to be found in the seminal social letters and encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII and repeated by succeeding Popes right up to this very day. In a recent comment I claimed that the necessary presupposition of an objective moral framework to all human endeavour was the key to understanding Edmund Burke's conservatism. He also claimed importantly in this connectin that man was a religious animal before the political animal Aristotle spoke about.

We know, and what is better we feel inwardly, that religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and comfort... We know, and it is our pride to know, that man is by his constitution a religious animal; that atheism is against, not only our reason but our instincts; and that it cannot prevail long. But if in a moment of riot, and in a drunken delirium from the hot spirit drawn out of the alembick of hell, which in [revolutionary] France is now furiously boiling, we should uncover our nakedness by throwing off that Christian religion which has hitherto been our boast and comfort, and one great source of civilisation amongst us, and among many other nations, we are apprehensive (being well aware that the mind will not endure a void) that some uncouth, pernicious, and degrading superstition, might take the place of it. (Reflections, Penguin Edition pp. 188/190)

Cardinal Ratzinger had the advantage of having the constant teaching of the Church to fall back on. But I wonder whether Burke was aware of how prescient he might have been. Wicca, paganism, the Goddess and the myriad corruptions of these are not the only uncouth pernicious, degrading superstitions that have filled the void left by the destruction of Christian civilisation. Surely the idea that lending great amounts of money to people who could not repay them, to send them bankrupt and destitute when what little money they had ran out, should take its place among the more pernicious of the ideas filling that void.

comments: gerardwilson@dodo.com.au