Saturday, October 20, 2012

One Teacher's Perspective: Soul-Friendly Capitalism

One Teacher's Perspective: Soul-Friendly Capitalism:


Soul-Friendly Capitalism

This past week, an old friend and one of my former professors celebrated his 50th Jubilee as a Franciscan priest. Much of my recent critique on Paul Ryan's economic philosophy derives from Fr. Joe Zimmerman's compassionate reasoning.  Zimmerman agreed to let me repost his fine essay on soul-friendly capitalism, which is also published in Zimmerman's blog, Ivy Rosary.
 
Soul is story. My soul is my story, with its sorrows and its joys. Soul-less capitalism has no concern for the stories of individual human beings.
   
The problem of soul-less capitalism is not only greed. Its greatest problem is idolatry. Soul-less capitalism says that an abstraction, a number on a bottom line, is