CST in 140 Characters or Less: Óscar Romero on Capitalism

CST in 140 Characters or Less: Óscar Romero on Capitalism January 3, 2016

Óscar Romero (pastel) by J. Puig Reixach (2013). Photo credit: J. Puig Reixach via Wikipedia.org / (CC BY-SA 3.0)

“There is an ‘atheism’ that is closer at hand and more dangerous to our church.
It is the atheism of capitalism.”*

+Blessed Óscar Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador (1917 – 1980), 111 characters [Tweet this]

Tweet: There's an atheism that's closer at hand and more dangerous to our church: the atheism of capitalism. - Oscar Romero
The full quote, from The Violence of Love, reads: “It is therefore absurd to say that the church has become Marxist. Since Marxist materialism destroys the church’s transcendent meaning, a Marxist church would be not only self-destructive, but senseless. There is an “atheism” that is closer at hand and more dangerous to our church. It is the atheism of capitalism, in which material possessions are set up as idols and take God’s place.”

Until next time,

Keith Michael Estrada

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-See More short posts on our Catholic Social Teaching (CST) in 140 Characters or Less Index Page-

*CST in 140 Characters or Less is an attempt to provide short pieces from within our Catholic tradition to an audience subject to the tendencies of consumerism and immediate gratification. When possible, and please remind me if I forget, I will include a fuller portion of the quote above for additional context, and may add a line or two of comment. Certainly, we can learn much from short statements, but we must see things from within the whole of our faith tradition. This reminds me of what Henri de Lubac wrote in The Discovery of God, concerning Saint Augustine’s dilige et quod vis fac, that this exhortation is proper and may be embraced without error “if you love enough to act, in every circumstance, according to the dictates of love.” De Lubac continues, “One might also say ‘love and believe what you will’ – if you know how to extract all the light from love, whose source is not in you.” Therefore, start with and share small pieces, but learn the whole.

For every CST in 140 Characters or Less post, I’ll have a Tweet button available for you to click if you want to share a Tweetable version of the post’s quote. Give it a try!


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