While I just love listening to a Wealthy Man try an scare this Pope with the threat of ending large donations to the Catholic Church I really am more intrigued with all the possibilities this opens up. Let me be very clear, I am not talking about the relationship between Pope Francis and Catholic Billionaires. I’m much more interested in starting a set of dialogues over the fundamental philosophy of capitalism and Christianity.
To start off with the apparent amoral position on all economic decisions, as expressed in the statement “It’s just Business” and the classic Christian position that all decision made by man must be moral.
Another is the relationship between capitalism and Christianity and Usury and/or greed and/or wealth.
All of these questions go to the root of the socioeconomic philosophy known as capitalism.
So to start this off let us first agree that capitalism is not synonymous with ‘free market’. That either one can exists with out the other. I submit for your consideration that ‘Capitalism’ denotes a socioeconomic system and ‘free market’ denotes an economic system and socioeconomic is not economic.