Orthodox Economics, Part 1

'One of the great difficulties of all-knowing modernity (including postmodernism and the other reactionary '-isms' into which it tends to fragment itself) is its blindness to its own blindnesses.'
-John Montag, SJ ('Revelation - The false legacy of Suarez')

How do 'economics' and 'Christianity' work together? Where do the two meet, if at all? How do the two communicate with each other?

I won't retrace the history here, although the narrative painting is important. The Eucharist was denied Himself, and so (in the turn of time) the newly birthed secular concluded, 'What do you, the Church, have to offer anymore?' and established an incarnation to replace the Incarnation (which had been debunked). Thankfully, the times have changed across the board; this age feels the absence of the Incarnation, and so there is the possibility of rediscovering the Presence, since in the first place it really hasn't left. In our peculiar social situation - what is being called the 'post-Christian West' - now more than ever it's important for Catholic Christians to embody the kind of truly Christian, truly theological worldview that narrates every facet of life; the days have come and gone when Christians can simply take cues from secular narratives. Catholic literally refers to that which is wholistic - complete, universal - and this is the kind of theology we need reclaiming all areas of discussion.

In what I've observed of our culture's overly defencive political conversations, a statement like 'I'm against our manifestation of capitalism' inevitably translates itself into something like 'I'm a socialist' or 'I love communism.' And we immediately find ourselves dancing the same predictable steps toward some little triumph or another; or else we begin having some emasculated discussion that emulsifies the different systemmes into a 'no one knows' cream. Capitalism versus socialism/communism - this is how I've always seen the dilemma phrased, with one side or the other being 'the safest/most correct/best systemme' or else being shrugged off together in a relativistic manner.

What I would like to suggest, first and foremost, is that we put the long-sanctioned horse before the long-omnipotent cart . . . and then (with the horse and cart in a healthy and loving relationship) work hard from there onward. Capitalism is not in itself a complete portrait of reality; nor is socialism, nor is communism. And most of us seem to understand this, begrudgingly, when we note the abuses of our consumerist/materialistic systemme. The blunder Christians have made in our various conversations is to accept the criteria we have been handed by modernity's secular conviction: that the secular is the 'truly human' that describes central human reality - a reality deeper than the 'extra, ornamental fluff' of the sacred 'realm' (private religious experience). Thus it is that our discussions of economics never truly touch our discussions of orthodox Christianity, and we timidly juxtapose capitalism with other secular financial systemmes. What is absolutely never done - it amounts to secular blasphemy - is for our current consumerist/materialist systemme to be measured by (and birthed out of) theological concerns. The two realms - the secular and the sacred - must remain dual aspects, at the least, for the secular myth to continue.

A disclaimer: I do understand that there isn't one economic systemme that is 'the Christian' economic systemme; that sort of talk plays into the superficiality of secular economics by attempting to reduce shades of beauty into a monochromatic science. Instead of allowing many harmonious, Incarnational realities - an Ireland and a Greece - to coexist in Incarnational unity, all is crushed into an abstract/disembodied test tube. However, I would say that, historically, we have made the exact mistake in the opposite direction by telling Catholic theology to take its toys home; if the Catholic Faith truly does believe in a Saviour who embraced, embodied, and was (and represented, and enacted) the perfection of the human race, it is essentially heresy for us to make any claims - economic or otherwise - that do not begin with that unfolding, theological Revelation as a starting place.

-rick