'Prosperity Gospel' - False Promises, False Teaching For The Culture Of Life
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Summary
Dr. Thomas Stork is the author of The Prosperity Gospel: How Greed and Bad Philosophy Distorted Christ's Teachings. In this interview, Dr. Stork discusses where the prosperity gospel came from and where it is today.
Transcript
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If religion can mean whatever you want it to mean, a lot of people are going to say,
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well, gee, for me, religion is going to be how to be healthy and wealthy.
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Hello, my friends. Have you ever wondered about what's called the prosperity gospel?
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You've heard it a lot. You've heard it a lot, especially in the United States. It's very
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popular. There's certain preachers, pastors with mega churches full of this kind of prosperity
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gospel teaching and feeling and whatnot. What does it mean? What's behind it? Where did it come from?
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Also, there's another question. Often we're told that, you know, Christians, really, it's a communist
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kind of a belief. That's what Pope Francis was saying some time ago. And there seems to be some
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backing for that because people say, oh, but remember, if you read Acts 5, you'll see right
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away that they were supposed to sell all their property, hold it in common. In fact, when they
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didn't, Annas and Sapphira, they sold their property and held some back and they were killed at the feet
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of the apostles. What's all that about? Are we supposed to be communists as Christians?
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We'll have those questions answered today in our interview with Thomas Stork, the author of the
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The Prosperity Gospel, How Greed and Bad Philosophy Distorted Christ's Teachings. This is the John
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fulfill all of your silver and gold needs in this perilous time. May God bless you.
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Praise God. Let's begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross.
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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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Dr. Strock, if you can perhaps start with telling us a little bit about yourself and about how you got
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into this issue of the prosperity gospel. Well, I'm a convert to the Catholic faith, and I came
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into the church and, well, actually, I'm a convert to Christianity, even, because I wasn't really raised
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as a Christian. And I became a Christian when I was in high school, and I was in Episcopalian for about
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10 years, and I came into the church in 1978, early in 78. And I've been interested in Catholic social
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teaching for many, many years, even before I was a Catholic. I read that well-known book by Richard
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Taney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, which was about the medieval economic order and how it
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declined after Protestantism arose. And that I, later on, I discovered the papal
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socialism and I saw a very coherent worldview, which was neither that of communism, which we'll talk
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about in a minute, I think, nor that of the current modern West. And I also began to see Catholicism as
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a culture, not simply as a set of beliefs that we held in private, but as a way of life, which was
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meant to characterize not just an individual or a family, but a whole culture, a whole civilization.
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And so I've been writing about this in one form or another for many years. And this, Tan asked me to
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write something on the prosperity gospel, and I said, well, okay, but it's not going to be so much
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about the prosperity gospel as where the prosperity gospel came from, why it found such fertile soil in
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the United States, and the philosophical and religious ideas that fueled it and continue to
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fuel it. Beautiful. Okay. So it is, it is what is filling many, many churches. It is got super popular
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pastors who have gained for themselves, not only large following, but large pocketbooks,
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uh, by basically preaching this gospel. And tell us what, how did this start? Where did it come from?
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Well, there've been, there've been a couple of different, um, roots, roots, a couple of different
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causes that have been particularly, um, uh, prevalent in the United States for this. One of
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them is the, the early New England, uh, Protestants, the Puritans, the pilgrims, uh, they definitely saw
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their religion as having an overarching cultural meaning. It wasn't simply a private thing, but
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surprisingly, the, the New England Protestants, congregationalists, Calvinists, they became
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secularized pretty fast. So by 1800 approximately, for example, many of the formerly Calvinist churches
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in New England were becoming Unitarians. And there was actually a big controversy in the, uh,
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congregational churches of New England about that time for the next 20 years, say, about, well,
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will we become a Unitarian or will we remain Calvinist or what will we do? But, uh, and many of them
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became Calvinist. Ralph Waldo Emerson, for example, what started out as a congregationalist minister and he
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became, he even rejected Unitarianism later. It's too, it's too strict. But anyway, um, so the, um,
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uh, after the Puritans lost this sense of that their religion had any kind of cultural meaning,
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religion was a private thing. In other words, religion, you had your religion, I had my religion,
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it was a private thing. The public square was supposed to be neutral. And you can find this in the,
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in many of the founding documents of the, of the country, like Jefferson's Virginia Statue
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for Religious Liberty, which says everyone's entitled to his opinion, but the law, the secular
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law is what has to be obeyed. So religion became reduced to simply your opinion or my opinion or his
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opinion. And it was, it had no meaning on a, on the level of culture. And then the Protestantism that
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came to the United States, especially in the Northern and the Middle colonies, was the most
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radical kind of Protestantism. It was the kind that rejected any, any remnant, any affinity with
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Catholicism. For example, the Puritans, why did they dislike the Church of England, the Protestant
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Church of England? Because it was too Catholic, even though it was the worst Protestant church and it
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started out persecuting Catholics, uh, ferociously. They had, they brought, the Anglicans still had bishops,
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they had fancy cathedrals, they had vestments. No, no, no, we don't want any of that. We want to just
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get back to the simple gospel as they saw. So there was no Catholic context. If you're in Europe,
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even if you're a secularist or Protestant, all around you are reminders that, hey, once there was
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a Catholic social order, we might see a ruined monastery, a cathedral, uh, the coronation of the
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King of England for a reason, like King Charles, uh, all these Catholic elements that were left over
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from the dead, even if they mean nothing nowadays, they're a reminder that at one time there was
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another order, there was another way of looking at those things. But we have nothing like that in the
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United States. It was a matter of starting over again, and we could start over again in any way
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we wanted. And that was, that's one of the keys to where the, uh, seedbed of the prosperity gospel
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originated. This, this idea that we can start over again, we can do whatever we want. And that,
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to couple with the, um, privatization of religion and the privatization of purpose in general,
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are the two biggest factors, I think, in, uh, providing a background for the prosperity gospel.
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What do you mean by privatization of religion and privatization of culture?
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Well, as I said before, you have your religion and religion is simply your opinion. It has, um, in Europe,
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there was a sense, Newman talks about this, for example, he talks about Italy in the, uh, even in
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the early 19th century, how there was a sense that the Catholic faith was true, even among people who
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didn't live up to it very well. It was all they knew. It was a, it was a cultural thing and, and
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cultural, not necessarily in a bad sense, but in a good sense. We talk about cultural Catholics nowadays,
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and there's really two senses of being a cultural Catholic. One of them bad, one of them good.
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Uh, a cultural Catholic is simply, well, my parents were Italian, so I'm going to be in it.
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I guess I'm a Catholic. That's not very good. That's not very adequate. But someone who realizes that
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being a Catholic is more than simply holding to the faith and praying, but it has a meaning
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even beyond the family. And it should, it should have a meaning even beyond the family in the sense of,
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of affecting the whole society. That is a cultural Catholic in a good sense. So in Europe, there was a
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sense, uh, Catholics had a sense of cultural Catholicism that it was supposed to shape all
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society. In the United States, partly because of the proliferation of sex, there were so many different
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kinds of Protestants and there were some Catholics and Jews and just a whole bunch of people, uh, religion
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became solely a matter of opinion. And it was not supposed to affect how you lived outside your family.
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You could go to wherever you wanted to go to church on Sunday or the temple or whatever. But when we met
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as a culture, when we met in the civilization, we were supposed to leave all that aside. That was not
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a part of our life. That was, that was simply something that maybe existed in the family or the
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How did this then translate into prosperity gospel, at least the, the version of prosperity gospel we
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see right now and basically name it, claim it and, and get your fortune. And if you're not
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Well, a lot of people are afflicted by all kinds of afflictions, health, bad health, uh, bad economics,
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bad, bad, bad income. And so if religion can mean whatever you want it to mean, a lot of people are
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going to say, well, gee, for me, religion is going to be how to get, how to be healthy and wealthy.
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And, um, now there's nothing wrong, especially with health. I mean, we have the Catholic Church
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of all kinds of lords and other shrines where people go to pray for health. But the difference
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is that, and I quote Cardinal Newman in my book about how, uh, yeah, God, God has a purpose for our
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lives as the prosperity gospel people would say, but God might want my life to be a life of suffering.
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He might want me to be in perplexity and doubt and confusion. And we have to trust God
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no matter what kind of state we're in, whether we're in poverty, whether we're in ill health,
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or whatever it might be, whether we're having terrible family problems, God is still in charge
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and we have to trust him. Now the prosperity gospel will say, no, no, that's wrong. If we really, if we
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really, um, believe, and especially if you send me some money, uh, God will help you. He will take care of
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your economic problems. He will take care of your health problems. He will take care of your family
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problems, uh, your relationship problems, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So, uh, so, but if you
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privatize your relationship, a lot of people are going to use it for whatever is most pressing in
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their lives, which is going to be often financial or relational or familial or something like that.
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Instead of, instead of realizing that we submit to God, even when that's kind of difficult to do at times,
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but God is in charge. We have to trust him. It's God becomes someone who does our, does our bidding.
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And, uh, that's what the purpose of religion is after all, according to this idea, whatever I want it to be.
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So God is kind of like my, uh, well, servant in a way almost, instead of us being servants of God,
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it almost becomes the other way around. As long as we do a certain thing, and it often involves
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giving money to the prosperity gospel preachers, then we will get what we want.
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Indeed. If you take that to, I guess, what's the extreme other side, it's also argued. Um,
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when, uh, people talk about the Acts 5 story of Ananias and Sapphira, they give their money to the
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church. A lot of people take that as, well, we're supposed to be. Communism is the way to go.
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Um, and, uh, you don't own your property and you will be happy. That's, that's the World Economic
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Forum program right now. That sounds good. Shouldn't it? Because didn't Ananias and Sapphira sell their
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property? They actually kept them back from themselves. And for that reason, they dropped dead.
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Explain that for us, if you will, please. Uh, what, what's wrong with that thinking?
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Should I give a background? Will all the listeners understand the story? Or should I explain it?
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No, go for it. In the early, in the early church in Jerusalem, it's not clear that this was done
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anywhere else, but in Jerusalem, all the believers shared their, their, uh, goods in common. And there
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was a, there was a married couple, Ananias and Sapphira, who sold some land that they had. And then they
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brought the money to St. Peter and, uh, and they told him they, they kept some of the money back.
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And they told him, this is the whole, this is the whole money we got. This is all we got.
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And St. Peter said, no, you didn't. You're cheating. You're lying to God. And they were struck dead.
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Now, but what a lot of people don't notice is that in this story, St. Peter says, look,
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you didn't have to do this. This was not, uh, obligatory to you. You could have kept all the
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money if you wanted, but it was the custom at the time of the church in Jerusalem to do this.
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It wasn't obligatory and it wasn't in any way, denial of, of property. Now communism,
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of course, can mean a lot of different things. The kind of Marxist communism that arose in 19th century
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and took over the Soviet Union in 1917 was a particularly, it was one form of communism.
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And it was characterized especially by atheism, which was the really, the worst aspects of it
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was atheism, of course. But Catholic social teaching is set for, for example, in the papal
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social encyclicals provides what's sometimes called a third way. I don't, I'm not really fond of that term,
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but it does provide a, um, an outline for a social order that's certainly different from
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both Marxist communism, but also different from the kind of social order that we've created.
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It, for example, it puts economic activity in this place as providing the goods and services that we need
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to live a human life, a full human life, not simply a means of enrichment. Whatever I can sell,
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whatever I sell, uh, whatever I can convince people to buy, that's great. That's all I need.
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Uh, there's no, there's no, uh, sense of in our, in our culture and our economic, in our economy of,
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does this contribute to the common good? If I can sell it well and good, that's all that matters.
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And that's not the economic program set forth in the papal social encyclicals.
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I mean, it's quite complex. It would take a whole show by itself to talk about the papal doctrines, but,
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but it's not, it's different certainly from communism and socialism and different from what we have now also.
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And if you were to give an example of that middle way playing out, um, could you do that for us?
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Yeah. Uh, I can give, I can give a couple of examples. Um, the, even in Ram Levarn, which was
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the first modern social encyclopedia of Leo the 13th, he talks about wages, for example. And he says,
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well, uh, sure, uh, wages can be, it's good for people, for the, uh, employers and the workers to
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come to an agreement about wages. But he says there's something more important, more basic than any
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agreement you reach, which is that the working man has to have a sufficient, uh, income to support
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himself and his family. That is an imperative that, that is more important than any agreement
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that is reached. And as he says, if the working man is deprived of that, he's a victim of frost,
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I'm sorry, of fraud and injustice. Uh, he's quite clear. And then, uh, Pius XI and the other,
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and the other, what I would call the greatest social encyclopedia we've ever written,
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quite a decimal auto in 1931 by Pope Pius XI. He sets forth a whole, uh, social order
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where the people, for example, people who produce the same product will cooperate in looking out for
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their health and wellbeing of their industry, but not simply in terms of, are we making it of money?
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In terms of, are we contributing to the common good? And just like the medieval guilds, for example,
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there's their responsibility was not simply to make sure that everyone involved in the production
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of a particular product, say bakers, uh, received enough money, but to say, did the public get a
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good product at a fair price? And the whole economic order was subordinated to the idea of justice.
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That was the overriding idea. Justice. Is everyone get, is everyone who is involved in the economic
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process, including the consumer, are they getting a fair deal? And that is the, that is the criterion
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that is overriding in the medieval thinking. And it's not, uh, it tends to be absent. We tend
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either to ignore it or somehow think it's going to automatically arise if we have competition. And
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competition does not produce that. In fact, Pius XI in that same cyclical, condemns the idea that, um,
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free competition is going to produce a social order that's desirable.
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Wow. That, that goes against a lot of political philosophies. What about the, what, what then do you
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make of the invisible hand theory that will guide us into?
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Let me, let me, uh, let me read this, if I may, from what does Juan? It says, um, just as the
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unity of human society cannot be built upon class conflict, so the proper ordering of economic
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affairs cannot be left to the free play of rugged competition. From this source, as from a polluted
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spring, have preceded all the errors of the individualistic school. This school, forgetful or
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ignorant of the social and moral aspects of the economic activities, regarded these as completely
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free and immune from any intervention by public authority. For they would have in the marketplace
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in an unregulated competition, a principle of self-direction more sense, more suitable for guiding
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them than any created intellect which might intervene. And as it goes on, free competition,
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however, although justified and quite useful within certain limits, cannot be an adequate controlling
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principle in economic affairs. This has been abundantly proved by the consequences that have followed
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from the free brain given to these dangerous individualistic ideas. And he goes on, this section
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88 in Quadris and Plano. So the, the invisible hand is simply, uh, well, I guess it's, in short,
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it's simply false. It ignores all kinds of things. Uh, it ignores the, uh, tremendous role of institutions and the
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legal system. For example, let's take, let's take corporations as, as we understand it today. Uh,
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a lot of people don't realize that the modern idea of a corporation as a limited liability company only
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arose in the mid 19th century. And it arose not by some kind of a natural process, it arose by a manipulation
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of the legal system. So that in the early 19th century, for example, 1830 or so, uh, corporations were very heavily
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regulated by the state. You might have a corporation say that would build a bridge across the river
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or run a steamboat across the river. And the corporation would be given this one thing that
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they could do. They might have a monopoly on it for a certain number of years, say 20 years. And at the
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end of that 20 years, they might be renewed or they might not be renewed. But after the civil war,
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corporations began, uh, uh, kind of a power grab that's continued to our day where they got more
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and more rights of natural persons with none of the, uh, none or a few of the, uh, liabilities and
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duties of natural persons. So you can, you, you can, your liability is limited. You can't take the board.
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You can't ordinarily take the board of directors and put them in prison or the CEO and put them in prison,
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but they still have many of the rights of individual natural persons. So that's, that's
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kind of an example of how the legal system, how important that is in, um, uh, economic outcomes.
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It's not there. There are some natural economic laws, but they're not as many and they're not as
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powerful and they rarely operate without some kind of a legal and cultural context.
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Tell us, I know it's a huge subject, could be its own show or perhaps its own series,
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but just briefly about banking and the concept of usury from the scriptures and the Christian
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understanding of that. Uh, usury means according to, uh, in the whole, the 1500 year tradition of
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discussions in the church and as summed up in a 1745, a cyclical of the amenity to 14th,
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usury means charging any interest simply because of a loan contract. Now there might be other reasons
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for charging interest. For example, if I loan you money and because I don't have the money,
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I, um, I'm going to have not be able to pay my taxes and have a tax penalty. It's perfectly
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legitimate for me to charge you some interest to make up for that tax penalty. Or if I loan you money
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and I, um, I'm going to miss out on an opportunity, an investment opportunity. Similarly, I can, I can
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ask for something more from you or require something more from you to make up for that, uh, missed
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opportunity that I have. And, uh, if I, if I think you're a shady character and I might not repay me,
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I can ask for a premium on the, uh, on the loan, which I should pay back at the end of assuming that you
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pay up on time and so on. So, uh, it doesn't mean that there can be no interest charged. It means
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that there can be no interest charge because it's simply because it's a loan. Uh, and
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this, of course, nowadays we have interest, usury is, is, uh, fundamental to our economic system. It
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works. It's present all the time. And you even have, even have a stranger phenomenon in banking,
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of banks creating money. Uh, I don't, a lot of people are not really familiar with how that works,
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but suppose you, you deposit a thousand dollars in a bank and then you withdraw, uh, some, uh, uh,
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say $800. Now the bank has still, no, let's say, you know, let's say you deposit a thousand dollars
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at a bank. Okay. Now the bank has a thousand dollars to do with, to deal with. You have a thousand
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dollars to your credit. Now the bank, what's the bank going to do with that money? They're going to
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loan it out to somebody. They're going to loan out say $800 or somebody. Now this person to whom
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they loaned $800 has $800. Now you still have your original thousand dollars, but this guy has
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$800. Where did that come from? The bank created it out of thin air and he, he deposits his $800
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in another bank and they loan out $600 of that. And now there's a new $600. So there's the original
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a thousand, there's this other guy's $800 and there's a third guy's $600. And this can go on
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for a while. So banks create this money out of thin air and then they presume to charge interest on it,
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uh, money that they created. It's a, it's quite a scam actually.
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Amazing. Lots and lots to learn. Where can people learn more about this? Where can they get your book?
00:24:11.960
Uh, they can get the book from TN books. Uh, they, uh, TN books website is, is, uh, easy to get to,
00:24:20.520
and they'll find it advertised there. And, uh, I have a, I have a page on Amazon that I didn't create
00:24:27.400
it. Amazon with all my books listed where you can find, um, uh, my other books also, as well as this one.
00:24:35.720
Very good. Any final words for us, Dr. Sturk? Well, I would like to urge Catholics. This is
00:24:43.480
one of the things I talk about in the book, how, um, Catholics have lost the sense that the most
00:24:49.400
important thing is to be a Catholic. That's more important than any political identification we have,
00:24:55.320
even in a national identification, we have the most important thing is to be a Catholic. And
00:24:59.800
if we are Catholics first, foremost, first and foremost, then we will try to mold our thinking
00:25:06.760
so that it reflects the teaching of the church. Even when the teaching of the church
00:25:10.280
is kind of unusual, when it's flies in the face of, of conventional wisdom, we have to investigate
00:25:16.440
this. We have to say, well, what is the teaching of the church? And the traditional teaching of the
00:25:19.960
church is a powerful and coherent way of living a life. Uh, and it has a, a tremendous history behind
00:25:28.760
it going back to the apostles time. And we really, as Catholics, this is what we should
00:25:33.800
primarily be seeking to do, mold our lives as a Catholic, according to the whole traditional
00:25:39.240
teaching of the church that's been around and has been tested and discussed. And, uh, uh, is a
00:25:46.840
powerful, powerful way of living our life in the, even in the modern world.
00:25:52.600
Is there a cultural example of that in the world today that you think hits closest, like one community
00:26:01.880
Well, that's hard to say. I, I can't, I would be hesitant to come up with them. And there are
00:26:07.960
groups that are, there are groups that are partially trying to approach this and so far, and that's good
00:26:14.120
in so far as it goes. I don't know that there are a lot of groups that have grasped the whole thing.
00:26:19.720
You know, there are groups that they say they want to restore traditional devotions.
00:26:23.640
That's excellent as a scenic one. But unless we restore the societal dimension of Catholicism as well,
00:26:31.640
then we're going to be missing out on a tremendous, uh, um,
00:26:38.360
an important part of important part of what it means to be Catholic. And one of the ways we can,
00:26:42.600
we can mold our thinking about this is, you know, then there was a tremendous
00:26:47.640
intellectual revival and Catholic thought from about the beginning, middle of the 19th century,
00:26:51.880
until, uh, up until the Vatican council. And we had tremendous writers like Bellock,
00:26:58.680
GK Chesterton, Ronald Knox, Christopher Dawson, uh, and many, many, many others important writers
00:27:06.040
who had really important things to say and who addressed specifically the problems of the modern
00:27:11.640
world because their world wasn't that different from the world we're being in now. It was modernity.
00:27:16.200
And so if we read these authors, we can get some sense of, yeah, these, these are the ways that we
00:27:21.640
can be a Catholic now. These are the, this is the whole gospel, not just part of the gospel, but the
00:27:26.520
whole gospel. And it includes the social order. It includes family. It includes our individual,
00:27:32.040
spiritual life as well, obviously. Beautiful. Last question for you. Could you give us sort of a
00:27:38.520
description of a distributist society? Well, yeah, distributist society would, would encourage,
00:27:47.000
and there are lots of ways you can do this. I won't go into the, to the technical legal
00:27:50.680
possibilities because there's more than one, but it would encourage, uh, the ending of this
00:27:56.840
separation between ownership and work would encourage small businesses where the proprietor
00:28:01.880
actually worked in the business and he might have employees, sure, but he worked alongside these
00:28:07.160
employees. They weren't simply people that he, he hired and he went off on his vacation to Florida
00:28:12.120
all the time. And then for larger businesses that by their very nature, aren't really susceptible
00:28:18.440
being small businesses, it would encourage employee ownership and, um, uh, ownership by the employees
00:28:24.840
themselves. And there are actually quite a few, uh, companies in the United States that, uh, are
00:28:29.560
employee owned and we tend not to see them. One of the, uh, the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain that was
00:28:35.080
started by a priest in the 1950s are often cited as an example of, um, uh, of a very successful
00:28:42.680
distributist kind of business in the modern world. It's one of the most important manufacturers in
00:28:47.160
Europe, but it's employee owned. Hmm. Wow. That is great.
00:28:52.840
Dr. Stork, thank you so much for being with us. God bless you.
00:28:59.320
And, uh, be sure to check out Dr. Stork's book at 10 publishers. God bless you and God bless all of you.
00:29:07.400
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