Top US Catholic bishop: Global economic crisis caused in part by people abandoning ethics

Posted by Kendall Harmon

The top Roman Catholic bishop in the United States said Wednesday the global economic crisis was caused in part by people abandoning personal ethics, and he's calling for increased morality in business.

Cardinal Francis George, archbishop of Chicago and president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the pursuit of fast profits undermined the financial markets' ability to regulate themselves.

"An economy that substitutes efficiency for morality will end up both inefficient and immoral," George said in a speech Tuesday, the first night of the three-day annual convention of the Knights of Columbus, one of the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organizations.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

2 Comments
Posted August 7, 2009 at 11:48 am [Printer Friendly] [Print w/ comments]



1. New Reformation Advocate wrote:

I greatly admire Cardinal Francis George, and wish TEC had someone like him.  I also was a fervent admirer of his predecessor, Cardinal Joseph Bernardine, and thought he had no equal in TEC.  Of course, TEC has a much, much smaller pool of talent to draw from, but as far as I’m concerned, the last two Catholic archbishops of Chicago have been giants, who have towered over the last several TEC PB’s as if the latter were pygmies.  And spiritually they were (and are).

“An economy that substitutes efficiency for morality will end up both inefficient and immoral.”  How true!  What a great and profound line.  We all saw it happen all too clearly and disastrously in the Communist world of the Soviet Union and its eastern European colonies, and now we have witnessed it happening in the capitalist world of the US and the free market countries too.

David Handy+

August 7, 1:44 pm | [comment link]
2. sophy0075 wrote:

In the modern West, where “truth” is relative, and in the eye of the beholder, the term “ethics” becomes meaningless.

August 7, 10:52 pm | [comment link]
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