Bound to go over well in the US

Cardinal Marx urges Europe to move ‘beyond capitalism’ | CatholicHerald.co.uk

Cardinal Reinhard Marx has called for a “social market economy” in the wake of the fiscal crisis that has gripped much of Europe over the past year.

In a talk delivered at Georgetown University in Washington, Cardinal Marx, the Archbishop of Munich and Freising, said the economy needed to move “beyond capitalism” in order to be more fair.

He added that he was not calling for the abolition of capitalism, saying that capitalism was “an element” in the social market economy he has in mind. But Cardinal Marx suggested that it was the practice of “financial capitalism” in the era since the tearing down of the Iron Curtain that had brought Europe to its crisis point today....


Berkley Centre director Thomas Banchoff noted that some in the United States interpret the Catholic social teaching principle of subsidiarity – which holds that decisions or actions should not be made on a higher level when a lower level of competence would suffice – as meaning “keep the government out of it”.

Cardinal Marx replied: “The state is not a bad thing, as Aristotle told his disciples”, nor is the state “unfriendly”. Without the state, he said, “man does not come to the fullest possible life”, adding: “You cannot navigate the common good only with the assistance of families. It is not possible.”

The cardinal travelled from Washington to Chicago, where he was to lead a May 31-June 1 symposium called “Toward a Moral Economy”.