At both levels, then, spiritual and structural, Francis is given to what Tocqueville called the characteristic vice of the democratic historian: identifying general causes and slighting particular ones.
Happily, Popes come and Popes go, but the Church remains. As Hilaire Belloc observed, "The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine — but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight."
Doesn't this contradict what you've said about a post-Christian era? (Though I think Belloc may be on to something, and I'm not even a Christian, much less a Catholic.)
ReplyDeleteI don't think so. The Church is no longer at the center of society.
ReplyDeleteDespite the (perhaps extreme) rhetorical flourishes, much in what he says, don't you think? He does not have to give particular examples of financial ruin to support his claim that the financialisation of the economy advantages jobs that shift, rather than create, value.
ReplyDelete