Catholic Social Ethics:The Free Market as an Idol

In June of 2014, Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga, a “prince” of the Roman Catholic Church, of the free-market system as “a new idol” that increases inequalities of wealth and excludes the poor.[1] Pope Francis had already claimed that personal charity is not sufficient as a remedy—that solidarity with the poor necessitates, in the Cardinal’s words, “dealing with the structural causes of poverty and injustice.”[2] As theorized by Thomas Piketty, that structure includes a tendency under typical circumstances for the rate of return on capital to exceed the growth rate in incomes (and GNP). Faith in the market’s invisible hand and people’s charitable giving do not suffice to counter this tilt. Indeed, Catholic social ethics would have it that faith in perfect competition as an ideal is tantamount to idolatry that operates at the expense particularly of the down-trodden and poor.

We might postulate more generally that idolatry is a faith that operates at the expense of compassion, or is impotent to amass any. If a faith that transcends the limits of human conception and perception sensitizes a person to existence itself, and thus to the plight of others who suffer, then a faith fixed on a phenomenon in the world we have created could be expected to come up short with respect to intensifying compassion.

It is only fair to ask, therefore, whether the insufficiency of the free market and charity risk turning government into a savior?  That is to say, might such a faith in government turn out to be yet another form of idolatry? If so, would not the promised compassion be illusionary in the end? Even in a theocracy, government is not transcendent; rather, it is quite of the earthly kingdom even if presumed to be informed from on high.

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[1] David Gibson, “Cartinal Maradiaga Slams Free Market Libertarianism: ‘This Economy Kills’,” The Huffington Post, June 4, 2014.

[2] Ibid.

A Flock of Leaders: Leadership as Influence

Leadership is influence. This is the definition that the pastor of an evangelical Christian mega-church enunciated in a sermon that took up nearly the entire service on the Sunday morning of my visit. Parents, teachers, students, and artists—all and many others—the cashiers at Walmart—are leaders, according to the pastor. “You need to get over the hurdle,” he charged, “of thinking that leadership only applies to kings and people on stages.” As influence, leadership applies to virtually anyone—all of us. Populism was the real message. “A kingdom is actually any place of influence,” he added. Everyone is a king in his or her own kingdom by virtue of simply having influence.

From: “Leadership Is Influence”

“Right Use” of a Business in Church: Incorporating Corporate Social Responsibility

The ends–justifying-the-means rationale is a tricky business, justifying historically a myriad of offensive practices including torture. On the other hand, “good use” has been deemed a legitimate rationale for acquiring wealth under Christian auspices—the obstacle of the proverbial camel squeezing through the eye of the needle being assuaged by good intentions. Generally speaking, the “right use” rationale gained currency through the centuries of Christianity, leading to the Prosperity Gospel , which maintains that right belief rather than right use is all a believer needs to justify  acquiring and amassing wealth without being thereby excluded from the Kingdom of God. That Gospel, by the way, comes out of the Hebrew Bible, or “Old Testament.”  In this essay, I analyze the “good use” rationale in the context of incorporating businesses inside a church—a trend well-underway in the evangelical  Christian mega-churches as of 2014. Can the rationale survive the baleful implications of the proverbial camel Biblical passage? Further, what of Jesus’s over-turning of the sellers’s tables in the Temple?

Particularly vulnerable to the business v. Jesus dichotomy, many mega-churches own and manage (or franchise) coffee shops, pouring the profits into the general operating budget. Although increasing fellowship is often cited as the end served by the means here, the “right use” is so broad (including the use of the profits) that the ends-justifying-the-means rationale may be tenuous. That is to say, the actual motive in setting up and maintaining the business could very easily become gain itself, which has consistently counted as greed in the history of Christian thought.

Would it be ethical in either business or religious terms for a church coffee shop to expand its hours and use its cost advantage to undercut Starbucks? Would it make a difference how the profits are being used? (Image Source: frtim.wordpress.com)

Less vulnerable is the strategy of opening a business that is dedicated to a particular religious purpose, such as missions. Less vulnerable still, some churches have tied a non-religious social responsible use to a particular religious use. An “input/output” distinction is useful here. Organizations such as Zoe Internatioal, FashionABLE, Sak Saum, and Fight For Them Jewelry provide businesses with products made by people vulnerable to or rehabilitating from the human sex trade. At least one, Sak Saum, fuses its social responsibility mission with ministry by following a model of “self-sustaining ministry.” As for the mega-churches that create businesses that sell the wares from these networks, the corporate social responsibility aim goes back to the suppliers, who get a cut of the revenue. The distinctly religious use lies with the use of the profits. For example, a church might use its profits from the business to fund missions work. In this way, corporate social responsibility and Christianity can both be in the mix without necessarily sacrificing the integrity of either vantage point.

In conclusion, I have laid out a spectrum of religio-business models to suggest that the “right use” justification is not monolithic, and can thus have more or less sway in assuaging any theological discomfort from having businesses literally within a church—even just steps away from a sanctuary. To be sure, the justification can easily become a slippery slope, particularly as the “right use” gets increasingly generalized or vague. Also, if the end being served is itself a sort of gain, even if in terms of souls or membership, greed may run through the means-end continuum itself, thereby compromising the entire “good use” rationale. It is perhaps human, all too human, to get caught up in our enterprises and miss the whisper passing by the mountain. Even the fellowship in a coffee shop carries with it the opportunity cost in terms of missed worship in the sanctuary across the hall. In short, the “good use” justification is treacherous, given the human proclivity to love gain and that which it brings, whether spiritual or material.

Discipleship of Women: Jesus's Wife

A small fragment of papyrus with Coptic (Egyptian) writing referring to Jesus Christ and his wife, Mary, dates authentically back to at least the sixth to ninth centuries, and perhaps as early as the fourth, Harvard University announced after two years of study and scientific testing. Although by no means evidence or proof that Jesus was married and recognized his wife as one of his disciples, the text can give us moderns a glimpse of the diversity of Christian thought even in the early Middle Age (i.e., between Augustine and Aquinas). The sheer variety discovered by now of the various "schools" of historical Christian thought (e.g., The Gospel of Thomas, The Book of Q, etc.) may seem odd to the extent that a "one size fits all" status quo has been set as the default for "Christian." Accordingly, the more we discover of an antiquated perspective in the history of Christianity, the more we discover about the religion in our own day, and even our world itself.

(Image Source: The Huffington Post)

As it survives, the fragment is a bit of a puzzle. In quotes in the first line is the statement, “My mother gave to me li[fe.”  The next line, “the disciples said to Jesus, “ presumably includes the next line’s content, “Mary is worthy of it.“ Worthy of what? Lest we automatically assume the Mary here is Jesus’s mother, the reference could also be to Mary Magdalene.

Firstly, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene contains the line,  “Jesus kissed her on her . . .”). Second, accidentally discovered in Jerusalem in 1980, a tomb contained ossuaries (small coffins for bones) having inscriptions including “Jesus, son of Joseph,” two Marys, James, Joseph, James, Matthew, and “Judah, son of Jesus.”[1] In spite of James Cameron’s documentary detailing the scientific studies of the scant surviving DNA matter, the world seemed not to notice. Third, the next two lines in the fragment have Jesus saying “to them” (i.e., the disciples), “My wife” and “she will be able to be my disciple.”[2] Presumably Jesus is saying his wife is able to be one of his disciples, and his mother was worthy of it too.

As with many of the theological shifts through the ages of Christian thought, the fragment here may reflect the Church in the context (i.e., time and place) in which the text was written. The place of women in the Coptic Church centuries after Christ may have needed some support out of the mouth of Jesus himself—vicariously, that is.

Similarly, our reading of the cryptic Coptic words cannot but be colored by our context in which women have been clawing their way back into clerical positions. The force of the Vatican’s initial reaction to the fragment—that it is a forgery—is itself an indication our times, and specifically how differently the fragment plays today than in the context of the author.

In short, the shifting sands of historical Christian thought, including its various uses of Jesus as a mouthpiece, should not be confused with historical evidence concerning those uses. Faith seeking understanding morphs into something else entirely once it seeks to capture empirical history for its own.

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[1] Simcha Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino, “The Jesus Family Tomb: The Evidence Behind the Discovery No One Wanted to Find” (New York: Harper Collins, 2007).

[2] Jaweed Kaleem, “’Gospel of Jesus’ Wife’ Papyrus Is Ancient, Not Fake, Scientists and Scholars Say,” The Huffington Post, April 10, 2014.

Pro-Second-Vatican-Council Clergy Distrust Traditionalist Vatican Administrations: Translating Ecclesiastical Partisanship

A survey of Roman Catholic priests in 2013 conducted at Saint John’s University School of Theology Seminary suggests that priests did not like the new English translation of the Missal by a two to one margin (59% to 39%). Eighty percent of the priests who responded thought the language is “awkward and distracting.” Yet still more damning to the Vatican hierarchy are the findings that 55 percent of the priests were not confident that their views on the translation would be taken seriously. Nearly half of the priests indicated disapproval of the Holy See’s role in bringing about the new translation. Put another way, less than two in five priests approved of the Vatican’s leadership on the new Missal under Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI.  As dire as this news of distrust and liturgical disagreement may seem, the survey comes with a significant drawback that exaggerates the opposition. The devil is in the details.

The online survey attracted responses from 1,536 priests. This total represents a response rate of 42.5 percent. Although such a rate is typical of the “empirical research” studies conducted at business schools, the results from such a low rate cannot be generalized to apply to all of the Church’s priests. We cannot say that nearly 60% of Roman Catholic priests opposed the new translation, and that about half of all of the priests did not like the Vatican’s role in the process and did not trust their clerical superiors to take the priests’ concerns seriously. We cannot assume that the 42.5 percent who were motivated to respond online are just like the 56.5 percent who chose not to submit a reply. In other words, their respective reasons may differ.

Generally speaking, people who are unhappy with something may be more motivated to say something about it. Within the Catholic Church, priests critical of the new translation may tend to favor the Second Vatican Council, which allowed for less ecclesiastical distance between the clergy and the laity; traditionalist priests would be less inclined ideologically to voice even anonymous criticism of their superiors. Such priests would tend to favor the new translation’s more “literal” capturing of the original Latin, and the greater clergy-laity distance behind some of the changes in wording. For example, “with your spirit” is from the interpretation that only the priest, rather than the congregation, shares in Christ’s sacrifice in the Mass. The priest says, “Peace be with you.” Instead of the previous “And also with you,” the laity reply, “And with your spirit” because the priest’s spirit participates in Christ’s sacrifice in the liturgy. In short, the priest is no longer a “you” alongside you and you and you, but is qualitatively different—back up there where he was prior to the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s.

What is the highest point in the Catholic Mass? Who is central in it? To what extent does the language support and maintain the pivotal moment and person? (Image Source: AP)

Therefore, we would be on firmer ground interpreting the survey results as pertaining primarily to the loyal opposition to the restorative traditionalist movements of John Paul II and Benedict XVI rather than to the traditionalist priests. I suppose the most notable finding is that the loyal opposition may not be so loyal after all, considering the mistrust underlying the relatively superficial linguistic differences. Put another way, we can conclude that at least some of the more moderate priests do not trust the Holy See to be impartial at least when it comes to taking into account their opinions. If the new translation is really a Trojan Horse carrying traditionalism back into the Mass,  of course distrust would result among the pro-Vatican II contingent of the clergy.

It is in the nature of ideology to willow down to a purity of “true believers.” It is also in the nature of ideology to make use of subterfuges, or lies, in doing so. Hence distrust breeds particularly well in such a climate.

In conclusion, the news for the Vatican is both better and worse than a simple reading of the survey results indicates. The “devil is in the details,” in that the lack of faith in the Vatican by some of its own priests suggests that ideology has been alive and well under the rubric of liturgy. What we cannot say is that an overwhelming of priests did not like the new translation in 2013 or even that over a majority of all priests do not feel respected by those clerics in the Vatican hierarchy. Particularly among kindred souls as religious are wont to be, at least ideally, distrust is a silent killer that can be expected to gradually eat away the foundation to the ecclesiastical edifice that has endured for centuries. 

Pruning and Weeding in the Garden of Eden: Religion and the Big Bang

Peeling layers off an onion is a proverbial metaphor for religious, philosophical, and psychological matters alike. This is not to say that these matters are synonymous or even reduce to the same basis. As concerns the religious or theological domain, the metaphor of levels to be peeled away to get at a distinctive essence may suggest that superficial uses of terms like religion and god may refer to phenomena that are actually within other domains and thus not at all of the dimension claimed. That is to say, people may be inadvertently sloppy as a matter of general habit with regard to what counts as religious or theological in nature. 

In short, too much extraneous content may have inadvertently gotten in (no doubt with the help of plenty over-reaching hands); interlarding flora and fauna from other lands presumed by now to be as native-born have eclipsed the theological dimension to the extent that it is barely recognizable.

If peeling off the outer layers of religion can prompt people to question their basic assumptions regarding the phenomenon of religion, I suspect that many of us may be surprised to discover just how much our ancestors have allowed “the burning bush” to grow over into foreign lands, and thus how much pruning is necessary to distinguish the theological dimension as unique to itself.

In his Natural History of Religion, David Hume suggests that the homo sapiens brain has great difficulty holding onto the notion of divine simplicity—such as in the divine as pure, undifferentiated spirit—and thus tends to render the divine more and more in human terms over time. Hence in Hinduism, the various deities have come to be depicted as stone icons bearing the likeness of humans (combined even with body parts of other animals, such as is the case with Ganash, the elephant-headed deity).

I submit that the human brain also has the tendency to take it for granted that the referent of an abstract word (i.e., linguistic symbol) is shared rather than distinctive to a particular mind. In asking other people, “Do you believe in God,” for example, we typically take it for granted that we have the same thing in mind with respect to that which “God” refers. Problematically, this erroneous assumption permits the gradual encroachment of matters extraneous to (i.e., outside of) the religious domain coming even into the default of what we typically assume as counting as religious in nature.

As just one example, people have confused or conflated the theological and metaphysical domains, even reducing the former to the latter. All too easily perhaps, we characterize God in terms of reality, a metaphysical concept. God as the source or condition of all that exists (i.e., Creation) as well as existence itself (i.e., reality) functions here as a metaphysical condition. If that which god refers is metaphysical, then theology is essentially a metaphysical theory; religion reduces to philosophy (metaphysics or at least existentialism).

To be sure, cosmological claims such as that God created the heavens and the Earth or the cosmos, permeate extant religions even functioning as a foundational article of faith. God created quarks and thus atoms, not to mention space and time. Immanuel Kant, a major philosophy of the eighteenth century, suggests in his Critique of Pure Reason that the human mind structures such basic contours of what we perceive of the world—such appearances known to us as space and time being distinct from things in themselves, or reality. Theologians (as well as many philosophers, such as Hegel) claim that their domain includes and in fact is based in the latter—the Real. Especially in a materialistic age, the reality claims in “God as the Creator” include the domain of physics (and chemistry) as virtually synonymous with that of metaphysics (i.e., existence and reality).

This model (from NASA) presumes a beginning, which dovetails with the storyline in the Biblical book of Genesis. Does it make sense to add time and even God into a physical process? 

Hence, God is popularly said to be the “first cause” of the Big Bang, the beginning of the universe. Accordingly, reality or existence prior to the primordial blast would presumably invalidate theism—the belief that God (i.e., not only as the Creator) exists. The conception of God is conditional on what is known in physics. Should the universe as we know it have come through rather than out of the Big Bang when all matter and energy were presumably at one point in space (before time), the physics would by cyclical rather than linear (i.e., a beginning, middle and end). Creation or even Aristotle’s “first cause” cease to make any sense in terms of the universe.

In the early 1970s, Steven Hawkins theorized that quantum gravitational effects produce a repulsive force such that black holes eventually “evaporate” or explode outward rather than reach infinite density in a point. Physicists have concluded that the universe may not have begun with the Big Bang. Rather than starting from a point (i.e., singularity), the explosion could have followed a previous contracting phase going to a maximal compact state, which then triggered the explosion. In line with Nietzsche’s notion of “eternal recurrences,” the universe may “bounce back” following each contracting phase, again and again.[1]

Lest it be concluded that science would once again be pitted against religion should the alternative theory get empirical support, the anticipated tension can be transcended. I submit that the either/or dichotomy is false, as it is premised on the assumption that religion includes physics (and metaphysics).[2] To create energy (and thus mass, as E=mc²) is not the same as to be the source or condition of reality; physics can thus be distinguished from metaphysics. Furthermore, the theological meaning of “God as Creator” can be distinguished theologically from scientific and metaphysical theory and knowledge; otherwise, the theological claim would not have its own distinct basis.

What is that basis? What is the content of religious faith in God as the Creator? How is creating in theological terms distinct from making (i.e, faire, machen)? I contend that the distinctly theological dimension has by now become nearly unrecognizable, or hidden, precisely because we and our forebears have unwittingly painted religion with so many colors borrowed from other paintings. Perhaps even more astoundingly, the human brain seems to “short-circuit” when it comes to presuming that it knows (and in fact cannot be wrong) what it knows concerning what counts as religious truth. This cognitive-neurological defense-mechanism keeps us from discovering how far off the map we have “sailed.” If my theory is accurate, the path back to “good gardening” lies in pruning back the otherwise fecund plant by disentangling it from the branches of others and asking what the plant is as distinctive and whole unto itself.

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[1] Katia Moskvitch, “Black Hole ‘Information’ Paradox May Have Been Resolved,” Huffington Post, March 14, 2014.

[2] Peeling back yet another layer, the assumption itself premised at least in part on the historically-held assumption that religion must include everything or otherwise be invalid. This assumption is similar to the other historical assumption that morality must come out of religion to have any validity and force. These premises invite the theological dimension to “jump fences” as though with impunity. 

Big Money in a Big Church: Thieves Hit Osteen’s Megachurch

Joel Osteen’s “megachurch,” also known as Lakewood Church, adheres to the Prosperity Gospel, which maintains that God rewards true believers with material wealth in addition to heavenly salvation. Implications from this theological perspective put the congregation and the leadership in a sticky position following the theft of $600,000 from the church. In the following essay, I intend to apply Christian principles to Christianity. How well Christianity makes out may give us some indication of the religion’s future, for a house divided cannot stand—at least for long after the inertia has run out.

The Prosperity Gospel is grounded in the Jewish Scriptures, wherein God repeatedly promises wealth to those of the chosen people who keep faith rather than lapse in maintaining the covenant. Yahweh being the “Possessor of heaven and earth,” the world is God’s property.[1] Human possessions are therefore gifts from God. Proverb 10 promises, “The blessing of the LORD brings wealth, without painful toil for it.”[2] Rather than becoming the absolute owner of the gifted property, the Hebrew is meant to act as God’s steward.[3] That is, God retains the basic or foundational ownership right in His property. Moreover, the property relations embody a relation between Israel and God in which the Israelites owe obedience and service as stewards in exchange for a right to Jehovah’s blessings, which include riches.[4] 

Although the notion of stewardship took root in historical Christian thought, the Prosperity Gospel sprung up in the late twentieth century in the theological approach that privileges the Biblical criterion of “literal meaning” as first advocated in Moody’s 1904 Fundamentals of the Christian Faith. One of the fundamentals is a belief in Jesus Christ. The Prosperity Gospel makes this belief the basis of God’s material rewards. Because the Christian with true belief is “saved” whereas a Jew (as well as Israel collectively) can break the covenant, the conditionality of the wealth once bestowed to those having true belief is muted if not applicable. If my interpretation is correct, then the conditionality in the Prosperity Gospel applies only until the person is “saved”; thereafter, the promise of wealth is unhinged at least in part from the notion of responsibility applied to use.

Joel Osteen's megachurch during a weekend service. A substantial amount of money is doubtless collected even just from one such service. 

This rationale may explain Osteen’s reaction on March 10, 2014 to the theft of $600,000 on the previous day from that weekend’s collections. According to a statement, church administrators were “heartbroken to learn . . . that funds were stolen” and relieved that the funds had been fully insured and thus would be replaced.[5] Tellingly, the administrators added that they were working nonetheless to get back the stolen funds. This orientation involves more than a quite understandable desire for justice—albeit public legal justice rather than the sort of justice that Augustine “Christianized” from Plato and Leibniz, the co-inventor of calculus, developed: love as universal benevolence. Whereas the dominant justice in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice is in line with Shylock’s banking scales being restored to balance (e.g., an eye for an eye, or a pound of flesh for late repayment of a loan), justice that has love as charity due to everyone (i.e., neighbor-love as justly owed) is in line with Jesus’s new commandment to love one another unconditionally.[vi]

I submit that taking up the Prosperity Gospel points a Christian to the Old Testament notion of justice as well; the promise being extended to earthly wealth implies that those people who are motivated to quality would also be oriented to getting the wealth back rather than losing even more. Such people would tend to concur with the predilection of the administrators at Lakewood Church to get the funds back even though insurance covers the loss.

Every human perspective is limited, given how we are “hard wired.” So a focus on getting stolen money back and seeing that the culprits pay both literally and in suffering the pain of punishment comes not without an opportunity cost (i.e., the benefits of alternative perspectives that are given up for lack of sight in their directions). In the case of the Prosperity Gospel and the related inclination to view justice as its public legal variety, Christians can slight or even violate Jesus’s dicta in Luke 6:28-30 (NIV) without being aware of the hypocrisy.  Let’s unpack the verse as per the Lakewood case.

The preceding verse has Jesus saying, “bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” As a theft mistreats the owner(s) of the stolen goods—at the very least in not respecting the property rights—Jesus can be read here as proclaiming even the thieves of church funds as blessed. From such a basis the justice of loving the culprits (i.e., they being owed love nonetheless) can readily be grasped. Indeed, Jesus sees to it that the love is operational as benevolence even to one’s enemies (including those who steal from one’s property). First, Jesus gives the general principle: “whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also.” Anyone who has had their residence broken into would doubtless agree that discovering the theft can feel like a slap on the face. Once while studying at Yale, I returned from martial-arts (self-defense) training at the gym to find my apartment ransacked. I felt like someone had slapped me on my face. To be sure, the irony of returning from a self-defense class mitigated the sting somewhat.

As though tailor-made for Lakewood’s administrators and ministers, Jesus makes his imperative concrete. Whoever “takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt from him either.” If stealing qualifies as taking away, then the officials at Lakewood Church should have put out a statement offering still more money to the thieves. Lest by some convoluted logic an administrator agree to extend the church’s charity program to the thieves even as he or she tries to get the stolen funds back, Jesus provides no such relieve. “Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back.” While the church officials’ announced intent to get the funds back is strategically in line with keeping insurance premiums down (car owners are doubtless very familiar with this game), it flies in the face of Jesus’s demand not to demand back that which someone has taken away.

Moreover, while the intent is in line with public legal justice, Jesus’s notion of justice as “Give to everyone who asks of you,” or universal benevolence, is quite other. In the seventeenth century, Leibniz labeled the latter theory of justice as caritas naturalis seu benevolentia universalis. Natural love is sublimated from garden-variety lust (eros) to Plato’s love of the eternal moral verities “Christianized” by Augustine as God as the Highest Good, and yet unlike Plato’s intellectual love the human love directed heavenly is expressed as love of one’s neighbor (anyone). Achieving this sort of justice is one of the primary costs of adopting the Prosperity Gospel and (relatedly) Shylock’s notion of public legal justice as akin to demanding a pound of flesh.

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1. Charles R. Smith, The Bible Doctrine of Wealth and Work. London (1924): Epworth Press, p. 23; Genesis 14:19,22.

2. Prov. 10:22.

3. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, p. 25.

4. Ibid., pp. 26, 55.

5. KHOU.com, “Osteen’s Lakewood Church Suffers Theft of Over $600,000 Shocking Texas Megachurch,” The Huffington Post, March 11, 2014.

6. John 13:34.