The Catholic Work Ethic

It was never going to get into the Spectator so soon after my letter about GCSEs and O-levels:

Rod Liddle writes of the Protestant work ethic as the basis of any monetary union that he might ever support, yet he would wish such a union to include the Flemings and the Milanese. There may very well be 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.