money

Capitalism Unfolding

Capitalism Unfolding on December 18, 2010

Selfishness cannot make a society. Now money represents essentially its owner’s claim upon the services of the rest of his society. If then capitalism be defined, in anything more than just economic terms, as a way of organizing society whereby every citizen is to be left free to make as much capital, i.e. money, as he can and will, then capitalism is riddled with contradiction. It is trying to make a society requiring selflessness out of encouraging everybody to be selfish.

Thus capitalism can only survive for as long as members of a capitalist society still have pre-capitalist values, such as common sense, moderation in the pursuit of money, and respect for the common good. But capitalism as defined above does nothing to promote any such pre-capitalist values. On the contrary, it works against them, as selfishness works against selflessness. Therefore capitalism is a parasite, living off a social body whose pre-capitalist values it works to undermine.

This internal contradiction of a society built upon the pursuit of money is reaching its devastating conclusion in the present state of world finance and the world economy. Since the end of World War II especially, the peoples of the world have more and more sought money to provide the material comforts they now prefer to the spiritual comforts that formerly gave purpose to their lives. Admiring and seeking money, they have been happy to let the money-men take power over their societies. Admired and sought after, the money-men have taken to themselves more and more money and power. After all, what intrinsic brakes do money or power have to limit their own further acquisition? None. The bankers turn into veritable gangsters.

Hence, for instance, the invention 10 or 15 years ago of “derivatives,” financial instruments which make a fortune in fees for the banksters who purvey them, but which act upon the delicate mechanisms of world finance like weapons of mass destruction, because they easily fabricate an unreal world of colossal and unpayable debt. In this destabilized and fraudulent world of unpayable debt, a semblance of order is maintained by one government after another fabricating out of thin air vast quantities of “money” to “pay” the debt, but this process can only end up in an inflation which empties of any usefulness the currency involved. Thus all the world’s paper and digital money – for years it has had no other – is now doomed.

But money is to a society what lubricating oil is to an engine. Without oil, an engine seizes up and is killed dead. Without money in a society, exchange becomes much more difficult, and commerce can be slowed to a standstill. If for any such reason the food-trucks (or lorries) could not run, and food ran short, especially in the big cities, what could a politician do to head off the food riots, and to stop the peasants from coming after him with pitchforks? Start a war!

World War III may not be far off. Lord, have mercy!

Kyrie eleison.

Rampant Reality

Rampant Reality on September 4, 2010

“But, your Excellency, how can you possibly declare (EC 163) that the Lord God is the one true solution for all social problems of a big modern city, such as your friend presented them to you in his own city three weeks ago? What does God have to do with politics or social problems? I always thought He was only concerned with things like religion and spirituality!”

Ah, my dear friend, who is God? Not only did He Himself create the soul of each one of us and the matter out of which our parents put together our bodies, but also He goes on creating them for every moment that they continue and will continue to exist. He is thus closer to each of us human beings than we are to ourselves. So the Church teaches that any offence against our neighbor is first and foremost an offence against God, because He is more deeply and closely within us than we are in ourselves. So whoever offends neighbor, offends more deeply God, and whoever never offends God will not offend his neighbor. If then in the parish and school of the Society of St Pius X (EC 163) parishioners and children learn to put God first and His Ten Commandments, are they not learning to solve all big city problems, between neighbor and neighbor, at their root?

Let us recall the social problems of my friend’s big city. In the outlying suburbs mostly white people are living beyond their means in falsely luxurious mansions. They wish to appear rich, and dream of being rich. Are they not worshipping materialism and Mammon, i.e. money? What is taught on the contrary in the parish? “You cannot worship God and Mammon. It is one or the other” (Mt.VI, 24). In the inner suburbs, mostly non-white people to a large extent neglect their housing, to the despair of city planners, no doubt. But is it not a similar form of materialism to measure the good life or the goodness of souls by the maintenance of one’s housing? Cleanliness may be next to godliness, as the saying goes, but what do the parishioners learn?—”Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His justice, and all these things will be added unto you” (Mt.VI, 33). In other words, seek godliness first, and the cleanliness will follow.

Finally in the inner city the city’s industrial life-blood is ebbing away. Why? Is it not capitalism itself that, in pursuit of greater profits by the subordination of industry to finance, has out-sourced American industry? Is it not the putting of money before men that is causing the ever worsening unemployment, the de-populating of the city-centres and the transfer of all power to the money-men who are using that power to transform faster and faster the once proud United States into just one humiliated part of their global police-state?

How could it happen? By the whites turning away from God, resigning (as my friend implied) from their God-given mission to lead the world to Him, and by their worshipping Mammon instead as the supreme reality. Long may the little parish and school of the Society of St. Pius X, outside the city, make the supremacy of God, of Our Lord Jesus Christ, rampant!

Kyrie eleison.

Rampant Unreality

Rampant Unreality on August 28, 2010

On a private visit two weeks ago to the USA, my first since 2008, I was able to enter and leave the country with no personal problems, but on a two-hour tour which a friend gave me of a major American city, devastated by the recent economic downturn, I observed some daunting social problems:—

As we drove towards the city past a handsome housing estate in the country, he said, “You see all these expensive-looking houses? They are in fact poorly built, cookie-cutter houses, way over-priced, bought with money out of nowhere from the Clinton era (1992–2000), by people living in a dream, from paycheck to paycheck, in a false paradise of high credit, materialism and excessive spending. If they lose their jobs, as many are doing, they will be lucky to get half their money back on their houses. The men have no real skill or trade. Theirs is a world of slick tongue nonsense . . .

“They are mostly white people who have fled from the inner city suburbs where we are now arriving. Look around you at all the houses boarded up, abandoned, dilapidated, with huge gaps in between where the housing has been destroyed to give the illusion of prosperity. But the lost jobs will not come back, so there is no real basis for a return to prosperity. The neat houses you do see have been repaired or re-built with Government money borrowed by the broke city in accordance with unreal housing projects, because the neat houses will not usually be cared for, but will soon be dilapidated again. There is a kind of Government aid which can do more harm than good to the people it is supposed to help, by trapping them in their dependence on it . . .

“Now we are coming into the downtown where you see tall handsome buildings, but also few people circulating. The buildings go back to the 1920’s when this city was a great industrial centre, but after World War II the USA began to lose its industrial pre-eminence. Around the Reagan years (1980–1988) began, as I see it, a false stimulus by the credit card being made available to the common man. In the 1990’s a non-white mayor was elected here who did his serious best to bring business back to the city, and some of these handsome buildings are due to him, but he was voted out by his own people because he was not like one of them . . .

“The economy is hanging on a thread, yet most people think everything will be fine in a year’s time. They think it is lovely if the Government just prints or digitalizes more and more money. Five per cent of the people, or less, understand just how grave the situation is, and less than one per cent see religion as playing any part in their country’s downfall. People look only for band-aids, not for deep or real solutions. The whites have allowed themselves to be given a huge guilt complex, and they have caved in without admitting it. There is a huge problem that everybody senses and knows, but they are too afraid to talk about it . . .”

Yet within 50 miles of this city thrives an SSPX parish and school, unknown or disdained, yet embodying the one true solution: God.

Kyrie eleison.

Embattled Parents

Embattled Parents on May 8, 2010

Sister’s words from last week’s “Eleison Comments” remain in my mind: “The world has a tight grip on our girls.” Over a mere three years “the change of their mentality is noticeable. We struggle to maintain principles and morality.” Now the world is hardly going to ease off its pressure on the girls, on the contrary. Then either our Catholic Faith has ceased to be “our victory over the world” (I Jn.V,4), or Sister’s words may be a red light flashing to warn us all that our Faith needs to be activated, or Catholic Tradition may need to be sifted again?

For between home and school, if school is responsible for, say, two-sevenths of a child’s formation, home is responsible for at least five-sevenths. That is why, as was suggested here last week, it is a grave error for parents to think that if they have entrusted their child to a good school, their duty is done. The main responsibility for children’s formation has always belonged in the home. Sister would certainly not shuck off onto the home what is her own responsibility, but on the other hand her main hope, after the mercy of God, must be good homes.

Now nobody reasonable can today not have compassion on parents. For instance, father is liable to be run ragged by commuting, by unsatisfying work, by an anti-catholic work-place, while mother is liable to be exhausted by the series of children God can send if she and her husband are to obey the laws of Catholic marriage, by schooling them at home if outside schools are too corrupt, by work outside the home as well as inside if an incorrupt school outside is expensive, and by people’s scorn if she stays at home. In any such worst case scenario, God expects of none of us to do the impossible. But he does expect us to carry our Cross, and to do the possible.

Fathers, are you acting as the manly – not tyrannical! – head of the family? Do you put family before money, or money before family? Are you giving your girls the example of loving and supporting their mother? Do you listen to her? Are you encouraging her to dress or behave for your own pleasure in such a way as can only give to your daughters bad example? They will do much more what she does than what she says. Do you take time with your girls? Do you give them that wise attention and care which they so much need from their father? Mothers, only one question: do you give to your girls the example of respecting and obeying their father (even if he may not always deserve it), or do you use your tongue to make him small in front of them? Do both of you give to them an example of respect for the priest?

One last question for fathers and mothers: have you ever listened to those Catholic parents of children around the time of Vatican II who were asleep at the switch of their children’s formation, woke up too late and have now nothing but tears to shed for their children living, and being prepared to die, outside the Faith? Throw out that TV set! Fellow-priests and Sisters, let us not be afraid of making ourselves unpopular! And let us all beware of our Catholic Tradition becoming so cosy that for our own good the Lord God must let us do a re-run of Vatican II!

Kyrie eleison.

Truth, Farewell

Truth, Farewell on April 3, 2010

Another voice of truth risks falling silent in the United States. It is not, at least overtly, a voice of Catholic truth, but are not the great problems for truth today not problems specific to Catholics, but problems so basic that they are common to all men? Therefore when a columnist and writer of the stature of Paul Craig Roberts, who has outstanding Establishment credentials and who was an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, announces that, apparently out of discouragement, he is laying aside his pen, it is a sad day for all of us.

His farewell article of about ten days ago deals precisely with the universal loss of truth. Its opening section deserves to be quoted at length: “There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword . . .when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal or financial interest. Today Americans are ruled by propaganda. They have little regard for truth, little access to it, and little ability to recognize it” (my underlining). “Truth is an unwelcome entity. It is disturbing. It is off-limits. Those who speak it run the risk of being branded “anti-American,” “anti-semite” or “conspiracy theorist.” Truth is an inconvenience for government . . . and for ideologues.”

He goes on, “Today many whose goal once was the discovery of truth are now paid handsomely to hide it.” Examples from many domains prove that “wherever one looks, truth has fallen to money. Wherever money is insufficient to bury the truth, ignorance, propaganda and short memories finish the job.” Further examples confirm that “Intelligence and integrity have been purchased by money . . . Americans, or most of them, have proved to be putty in the hands of the police state.” They have been brainwashed by the mainstream media which “do not serve the truth. They serve the government and the interest groups that empower the government.”

Fascinatingly, Roberts argues that “America’s fate was sealed when the public and the anti-war movement bought the government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory. The government’s account of 9/11 is contradicted by much evidence. Nevertheless, that defining event of our time, which has launched the USA on interminable wars of aggression and a domestic police state, is a taboo topic for investigation in the media.It is pointless to complain of war and a police state when one accepts the premise on which they are based” (my underlining again). I would only add the religious dimension: how can souls grasp the one true religion of God when they accept the premises on which their whole godless environment is based? In the early 2000’s many Catholics in the USA did not want to hear sermons emphasizing the fraud of 9/11, but how can souls that are unconcerned to get to the truth, get anywhere near to the true God? How can souls losing their taste for reality keep any taste for the supreme realities of the soul and the after-life?

Roberts concludes sadly, “As the pen is censored and its might extinguished, I am signing off.” No, dear Dr. Roberts. The pen is still, despite all appearances, mightier than the sword, only not if it is dropped. Keep writing, however few be the souls that will still read you for the sake of the truth, because such souls, like the Truth, “are mighty and will prevail.”

Kyrie eleison.

Mane, Thecel . . .

Mane, Thecel . . . on February 13, 2010

Should a Catholic bishop leave to one side matters of economics on the grounds that he should keep to matters of religion? By no means! What a narrow view of religion one must take in order not to see that economics, or the art of managing the material goods necessary for life, is entirely governed by the view one takes of life, and the view one takes of life depends on religion. For how can religion (or its lack) be adequately understood except as the total view of life by which a man binds himself (or refuses to be bound) to the God who gave and gives him his life?

If multitudes of men today think that economics have nothing to do with God, it is only because beforehand they think that he is either non-existent or insignificant. And supposing that there is an after-life, think they, then Hell is either non-existent (“We all go to Heaven”) or unimportant (“At least all my friends will be there,” they joke). Upon which presuppositions follow the shift from the economics of yesterday, economics of thrift, to those of today, spendthrift economics.

Yesterday, do not spend more than you earn. Save, and do not borrow, to invest. Do not solve debt with more debt. Today, it is patriotic to spend. Everybody will be prosperous if you spend regardless of what you earn. Do not save, because idle money benefits nobody. By all means borrow to make profitable investments. And if your debts turn sour, borrow more to get out of them.

These eat-drink-and-be-merry economics were intellectualised in particular by the highly influential British economist, John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946), who once famously said, “In the end we all die.” By the 1970’s President Nixon (1913–1994) was saying, “We are all Keynesians now.” And since the 1970’s the Keynesian build-up has been continuous all the way to the 2000’s orgy of lending, borrowing and spending, made possible only by the people’s having given up on the old common sense of not spending more than you earn, and of shunning debt – “Owe no man anything but to love one another,” says the Word of God (Rom. XIII, 8), and “The borrower is servant to him that lendeth” (Prov. XXII, 7).

Right now the world is enslaving itself to the money-men, the orgy is collapsing, and the collapse is by no means over. Unemployment is far higher than the politicians can afford to admit, yet still they garner votes by promising jobs and free lunches for the people. The politicians have encouraged these unreal expectations by which they rise to power but on which they will not be able to deliver. The people are about to rise up, are rising up, in anger. The politicians will have to start foreign wars to take the people’s mind off domestic troubles. War is around the corner, to be followed, if God permits, by the usurers’ World Government. All because the people thought that God had nothing to do with life, and life nothing to do with God.

But see Daniel V, 5–6 and 24–28! The Lord God has our number (“Mane”), we have been weighed in his balance and found wanting (“Thecel”), our fun-land is over (“Phares”). It remains for us to take our medicine.

Kyrie eleison.