In Banks We Trust

In his recent Postsynodal Apostolic Exhortation Sacramento de La Caridad: Sacramentum Caritatis, Our Holy Father and Supreme Pontiff Pope Benedict XVI exhorts us who receive Holy Communion that the Eucharist compels us to alter the unjust economic structures whic leave a very few superwealthy and the vast and overwhelming majority of humanity barely surviving, often withering in refugee camps, including Palestine, Africa and those millions displaced by our own invasion and long occupation of Iraq. Our Holy Father calls this an injustice which calls to the human conscience. Let us therefore review the history of Catholic texts regarding just economic systems. We might of course begin with Scriptural references cited by Our Holy Father, including the Letter of Saint James, the Acts of the Apostles and the radical statements of Jesus in the Sermons on the Mount and on the Plains. We may also review the past centuries of papal declarations, beginning with RERUM NOVARUM: ON THE CONDITION OF THE WORKING CLASSES. and proceeding through the subsequent encyclicals which support and expand that revolutionary document. In particular we may also revisit the Encyclical Letter of the Holiness Pope Paul VI on the Development of Peoples -. And of course we find it instructive to revisit that great CAtholic historian and courageous Journalist Penny Lernoux, in particular in this regard her later work In Banks We Trust. Herein we may find well researched and clearly presented the scandal of economics and corruption, a condition whch has only worsened since that time some twenty years ago. Nevertheless we herein discover and experience a framework for thinking about the issues involved in a new light, in a new way, in a new paradigm more in keeping with our Holy Father's recent exhortation regarding our compulsion to alter unjust economic structures. Herein may we dare to think afresh and grow in consciousness about the systems in which we are mired, and through such growing conscienciazation may we gain the power to transform them to a social system which serves the needs of all the peoples and all of God's creation, as Our Holy Father exhorts. Herein may we find the wisdom and courage to live out the moral theology to which we are compelled as communicants in the Holy Eucharist. And, as Our Holy Father Saint BEnedict wrote, may we all come together unto Eternal LIfe.