Personality and Gain (II)

Extract

Granted that Capitalism arose under Catholicism and not, as Weber and even Marx believed, only with the loss of unified temporal power by Rome and the rise of the Protestant Reformation, individualism and the spirit of free inquiry; yet, as Fanfani explains, Catholicism and capitalism are unalterably opposed, two utterly different views of life and ethics, and any study of their interrelations must take note of that. A distinction must be made between what actually happened and how it should have happened; the moral question with its implication of the whole of Catholic doctrine permeates any factual, dispassionate analysis as such. He distinguishes between religious ethics and the actual apparatus of the Church. “The relations between capitalism and the Catholic Church as an organization must not be confused with the relations between capitalism and the Catholic religion”; “it should be plain to all how mistaken it is, in considering the relations between capitalism and Catholicism, deliberately to pause at this or that fact, this or that measure, this or that action, for which, whatever its results, responsibility lies not with Catholicism as a doctrine, but with some individual Catholic, be he Pope or sacristan.” An arraignment of capitalism on such grounds is almost literally an ideal one; it moves with an exclusively moral sphere, and it never allows the actual recording of history to be confused with constructive suggestiveness.