I spent some time clearing up in the Chiesa Anglicana in Genova yesterday, amongst the old pamphlets and books which have accumulated over years I came across a torn old pamphlet, without its cover, on closer examination it turned out to be edited by William Temple and published by Penguin in 1943.
Flicking through it the word 'economics' caught my eye:
The author of this particular essay, Malcolm Spencer, is discussing what the Churches have to say about Wealth and Poverty. He quotes a Papal Encyclical and a report of a conference held in Oxford.
The Papal Encyclical and the Oxford Conference Report draw attention to the 'magnitude of social injustice which has marked the industrial life of the West for generations, and which still persists.'
Spencer quotes the Encyclicals as they speak of, 'misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working classes who are 'surrendered' to the greed of unchecked competition'.
But the report from the World Conference of Churches held in Oxford in 1937 is much sharper:
(i) The ordering of economic life has tended to enhance acquisitiveness and to set up a false standard of economic and social success.
(ii) Indefensible inequalities of opportunity in regard to education, leisure and health continue to prevail; and the existence of economic classes presents an obstacle to human fellowship which cannot be tolerated by Christian conscience.
(iii) Centres of economic power have been formed which are not responsible to any organ of the community and which in practice constitute something of a tyranny over the lives of masses of men and woment.
(iv) The only forms of employment open to many men and women, or the fact that none is open at all, prevent them from finding a sense of Christian vocation in their daily life.
Spencer concludes: the present economic system .... necessarily produces intolerable degrees of poverty and intolerable conditions of unemployment and insecurity on the one hand and, on the other hand, to pile up totals of wealth and power which are a standing menace to the peace and stability of human society
Seven years after the Oxford Conference the World was at War.
Flicking through it the word 'economics' caught my eye:
The author of this particular essay, Malcolm Spencer, is discussing what the Churches have to say about Wealth and Poverty. He quotes a Papal Encyclical and a report of a conference held in Oxford.
The Papal Encyclical and the Oxford Conference Report draw attention to the 'magnitude of social injustice which has marked the industrial life of the West for generations, and which still persists.'
Spencer quotes the Encyclicals as they speak of, 'misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working classes who are 'surrendered' to the greed of unchecked competition'.
But the report from the World Conference of Churches held in Oxford in 1937 is much sharper:
(i) The ordering of economic life has tended to enhance acquisitiveness and to set up a false standard of economic and social success.
(ii) Indefensible inequalities of opportunity in regard to education, leisure and health continue to prevail; and the existence of economic classes presents an obstacle to human fellowship which cannot be tolerated by Christian conscience.
(iii) Centres of economic power have been formed which are not responsible to any organ of the community and which in practice constitute something of a tyranny over the lives of masses of men and woment.
(iv) The only forms of employment open to many men and women, or the fact that none is open at all, prevent them from finding a sense of Christian vocation in their daily life.
Spencer concludes: the present economic system .... necessarily produces intolerable degrees of poverty and intolerable conditions of unemployment and insecurity on the one hand and, on the other hand, to pile up totals of wealth and power which are a standing menace to the peace and stability of human society
Seven years after the Oxford Conference the World was at War.
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