Christmas Sermon FAIL
This year is a particularly nice year for the church leaders to pontificate about. A world spun into chaos by the reckless actions of the those near the top of global capitalism:
At midnight mass at Westminster Cathedral, Murphy-O’Connor called for a “moral purpose” to the market economy.
“Christianity neither condemns nor canonises the market economy – it may be an essential element in the conduct of human affairs,” he said.
A market system has moral hazards, but ‘moral purpose’? What could that even mean. It’s an utterly vague statement that sounds nice, but means nothing.
“But we have to remember that it is a system governed by people, not some blind force like gravity. Those who operate the market have an obligation to act in ways that promote the common good, not just in ways that promote the interests of certain groups. The market economy will only work justly if it has an underlying moral purpose.”
Adam Smith would certainly disagree that it isn’t a blind force. Has this guy not heard of the invisible hand? How could people in a market system possibly promote a ‘common good’ – the idea is vague, and the interactions so complex that it would impossible to know if your actions would promote said good or not. The biggest problem of all would be that to promote some common good, you might put yourself at a disadvantage, and an adversary would just reap the benefits. See here
This all seems like utter fence sitting on the part of the church. ‘Maybe markets work, but some bad stuff has just happened, so maybe it’s because people weren’t being moral, so if people just be moral then we can all be happy.’ But it’s absolutely incorrect. No, markets aren’t the only option, but if they are used, then one must act as a rational agent and consider only one’s self-interest. That’s the only way that a market economy will work. Of course, the church has an interest not to promote any alternatives to the market – socialism has never generally been a good bedfellow with religion. Take for instance this quote from Lenin:
The proletariat of today takes the side of socialism, which enlists science in the battle against the fog of religion, and frees the workers from their belief in life after death by welding them together to fight in the present for a better life on earth.
It’s not unusual for the chruch to be wrong about things. Their very conception of the nature of reality being the gravest error. However, they need to stick to the theology and avoid the economics in future. They never have misgivings about telling scientists to avoid theology.
The current crisis is actually a massive opportunity for the church to regain its lost position. If the UK is spun into depression and despair, then as a cognitive defense, people will once again turn to the church to tell them the next life is going to be better than this.
