Christianity vs. Capitalism

Spiritual Sunday

How does one respond to this headline, “Home Depot founder worries Pope Francis neither loves nor understands rich Americans”?

Jesus, we might suppose, would answer with the story of the rich man and Lazarus, but I’m imagining a Robert Nemerov response. I’ll share his poem in a moment but here’s the story, which includes a veiled threat to withhold charity:

In an interview on CNBC on Monday, Home Depot founder and devout Catholic Ken Langone said that the Pope’s statements about capitalism have left many potential “capitalist benefactors” wary of donating to the Church or its fundraising projects.

According to Langone, an anonymous, “potential seven-figure donor” for the Church’s restoration of St. Patrick’s Cathedral is concerned that the Pope’s criticism of capitalism are “exclusionary,” especially his statements about the “culture of prosperity” leading to the wealthy being “incapable of feeling compassion for the poor.”

Langone isn’t alone. As Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Dish reports, both the right wing American Enterprise Institute and Newt Gingrich have been trying to argue that Pope Francsis’ recent criticial comments on capitalism apply only to his native Argentina, not to the United States–even though I suspect that the pope would not approve of (as AEI and Gingrich do) the GOP’s desire to cut food stamps, end extended unemployment insurance, and deny poor Americans health insurance. Here’s Sullivan on the head of the AEI:

Arthur Brooks … said he agrees that the pope’s beliefs are likely informed by his Argentine heritage. “In places like Argentina, what they call free enterprise is a combination of socialism and crony capitalism,” he said. Brooks, also a practicing Catholic who has read the pope’s exhortation in its original Spanish, said that “taken as a whole, the exhortation is good and right and beautiful. But it’s limited in its understanding of economics from the American context.” He noted that Francis “is not an economist and not an American.”

I think of a recent New Yorker cartoon of one wealthy man saying to another, “Either we’re going to need bigger needles or smaller camels.”

Sullivan provides graphs which indicate that, with regard to income inequality and social mobility, America and Argentina are virtually the same country. He also quotes a passage from the pope’s speech which seems applicable to any number of wealthy countries:

The current financial crisis can make us overlook the fact that it originated in a profound human crisis: the denial of the primacy of the human person! We have created new idols. The worship of the ancient golden calf (cf. Ex 32:1-35) has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose. The worldwide crisis affecting finance and the economy lays bare their imbalances and, above all, their lack of real concern for human beings; man is reduced to one of his needs alone: consumption. While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few.

Anyway, here’s Nemerov’s poem, which satirizes ham-handed attempts to celebrate material wealth at the same time that one trumpets Christ’s message. (I’ve posted on the poem previously here.) Nemerov wrote it in response to the following pronouncement by President Eisenhower’s pastor:

Boom!

By Howard Nemerov

SEES BOOM IN RELIGION, TOO
 Atlantic City, June 23, 1957 (AP) –President Eisenhower’s pastor said tonight that Americans are living in a period of “unprecedented religious activity” caused partially by paid vacations, the eight-hour day and modern conveniences.
“ These fruits of material progress,” said the Rev. Edward L. R. Elson of the National Presbyterian Church, Washington, “have provided the leisure, the energy, and the means for a level of human and spiritual values never before reached.”

Here at the Vespasian-Carlton, it’s just one
religious activity after another: the sky
is constantly being crossed by cruciform
airplanes, in which nobody disbelieves
for a second, and the tide, the tide
of spiritual progress and prosperity
miraculously keeps rising, to a level
never before attained. The churches are full,
the beaches are full, and the filling-stations
are full, God’s great ocean is full
of paid vacationers praying an eight-hour day
to the human spiritual values, the fruits,
the leisure, the energy, and the means, Lord,
the means for the level, the unprecedented level,
and the modern conveniences, which also are full.
Never before, O Lord, have the prayers and praises
from belfry and phonebooth, from ballpark and barbecue
the sacrifices, so endlessly ascended.

It was not thus when Job in Palestine
sat in the dust and cried, cried bitterly;
When Damien kissed the lepers on their wounds
it was not thus; it was not thus
when Francis worked a fourteen-hour day
strictly for the birds; when Dante took
a week’s vacation without pay and it rained
part of the time, O Lord, it was not thus.

But now the gears mesh and the tires burn
and the ice chatters in the shaker and the priest
in the pulpit, and Thy Name, O Lord,
is kept before the public, while the fruits
ripen and religion booms and the level rises
and every modern convenience runneth over,
that it may never be with us as it hath been
with Athens and Karnak and Nagasaki,
nor Thy sun for one instant refrain from shining
on the rainbow Buick by the breezeway
or the Chris Craft with the uplift life raft;
that we may continue to be the just folks we are,
plain people with ordinary superliners and
disposable diaperliners, people of the stop’n’shop
‘n’pray as you go, of hotel, motel, boatel,
the humble pilgrims of no deposit no return
and please adjust thy clothing, who will give to Thee,
if Thee will keep us going, our annual
Miss Universe, for Thy Name’s Sake, Amen.

I add that a spiritual leader once told me that, while church attendance might have boomed in the 1950s, sometimes it was a spirituality that was “a mile wide and an inch deep”–church more as country club than deep spiritual exploration.” Nemerov certainly conveys that atmosphere here.