The Irish Republic, Portugal, Spain, probably Italy. "And Greek Orthodox are sort of Catholics, innit?" (Don't tell them that, will you...) "No Protestant work ethic, that's the trouble."
Really? Catholics are half of Germans and two thirds of native German-speakers. Catholics were more than half of West Germans during the post-War miracle. Catholics are half of the Dutch and half of the Swiss. Catholics did a very high proportion of the hard graft during the industrial heydays of the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Australia.
If I were of a less charitable cast of mind, then I might suggest that the Protestant work ethic consisted of getting Catholics to do the work and then taking the credit for it yourselves.
But no, what cannot be denied is that Catholicism affirms and expounds the integration of economic means and higher moral ends in a way which is all too often lacking in Protestantism. Not always. But all too often. And nothing in Protestantism has the sheer comprehensiveness and coherence of Catholic Teaching on this as on so much else.
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Good points. Not to mention all the Catholics that worked plantations and mines in Latin America. But in any event, I am not even sure the current Western concept of "the work ethic" is a wholly good thing anyway.
ReplyDeleteLeisure time is not only necessary for culture to arise, it is necessary for individual and societal sanity. Americans work long hours but they also have poor family relations, lots of mental and physical health problems, etc.
Catholic Europe used to have all sorts of holidays, and they were proper holidays too, not just holidays for "busy professionals" while the lower-paid workers still have to toil, which is what we have now.
The Industrial Revolution changed all this. The older system of self-directed work that came with a sense that work served higher ends was replaced with a dreary work ethic designed to discipline the now landless peasants and get them used to life in the satanic mills.