Catholic and anti-capitalist

Listening to talking heads on the TV worry about the financial rescue package, I heard some rhetoric that sacralized the Capitalist system. It was as if God was on the side of the free-market. Beginning with the words of Jesus about selling all your possessions and giving the proceeds to the poor (Mt. 19:21), continuing with the Apostolic Church that held all things in common (Acts 2:44-45), blossoming with the vow of common life in medieval monasteries, and coming of age with the papal encyclicals -- blind defense of Capitalism is not in Catholicism's DNA.

I would not say that a political prescription for today's financial troubles is to be found in any particular verse of scripture. But the spirit of Catholicism is to prefer people over profits. It stands in contrast to what Max Weber saw as the Protestant economic ethic which - he insisted - favored Capitalism. Surely, Protestantism and Catholicism do not fit into the tight boxes designed for them by Weber, but there is a strain of Catholicism that is aggressively anti-Capitalist, most notably, the Catholic Worker Movement.

I see elements of this anti-Capitalist Catholic tendency in the life and works of St. Francis of Assisi Forget the plaster statue Franciscan in the garden or the parade of pets being blessed on October 4th: these don't do justice to the radical evangelical calling of Francis.

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