Culture a la carte
[Bruce Frohnen  02/28 05:13 PM]

Of course Rod is right, without God all things are permitted, so why not take what we can get? As to the journalist's point on Catholics, this point also is a good one. We live in an a la carte culture. With religion as with everything else we feel we have the right to pick and choose "what works for us" — which generally means what makes us comfortable with our lazy, self-indulgent selves. Sadly, Catholics for decades have been masters at religious consumerism, taking a bit of the Catechism here, a bit there, and not much of the rest. And this goes for the right as well as the left.

John Paul II came in for a great deal of criticism from Novak and others for daring to point out that capitalism can be a dehumanizing trap, just like socialism. Like any other ideology — that is, false reality with which we try to force people to act in accordance — capitalism, when taken as an end rather than a means (economic freedom) that is necessary for the real end of a good life, leads us to forget important parts of our real selves as we pursue false goods. This is why so many traditional conservatives feel the need to combat the false dichotomy of capitalism/socialism. But no matter how often we do, every kind of restraint we talk about on the cult of efficiency is presented as a government program to take away people's freedom. We're talking about active neighborhood groups, involved families, churches that take part in public life, towns that actually mean something and act like it. That ain't socialism. And it isn't socialistic to point out that someone who claims to be religious yet treats other people in a rotten, selfish manner, be they that person's family, employees, or strangers, is failing to live up to the standards he claims for his own.