Work Your Brain

An old chestnut is being revived as the Eurozone is said to be breaking up along the lines of the thrifty, industrious Protestants in the North and the spendthrift, indolent Catholics in the South.

There is a Protestant work ethic. But there is at least as much a Catholic one, forming and defining half of the Germans, more than half of the West Germans during their post-War economic miracle, half of the Swiss, half of the Dutch, and great tracts  of the working classes of the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand during those countries’ industrial heydays.

The richest German Land is profoundly Catholic Bavaria, the seat of the Jacobite claimants to the Thrones of the Three Kingdoms, and the homeland both of the present Pope and of BMW, Siemens, Audi, Allianz, Puma and Adidas, to name but a few.

Bavaria is proportionately the second most Catholic Land, beaten only by Saarland with its coal mines, steel works, car plants and ceramics factories. Austria is highly prosperous and efficient, and she is Catholic to the core. In terms of GDP, the richest member-state of the European Union is Luxembourg, which is more than 90 per cent Catholic.

To cite only Britain among many possible examples, who do people think actually did much of the work in the West of Scotland, the North of England, the Midlands or (if, perhaps, less so) South Wales?

And what do they think that the inhabitants of Northern Italy are? Protestants?