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re: a fascinating tension between Christian values and a free market that holds profit-making as the highest goal
A distinction must be made between Catholic Christian values and those of the Protestants who preached to our forefathers the very "free market" profit-making goals criticized by the Pope.
An excerpt from Farewell America, by James Hepburn (a pseudonym):
-Americans are the sons of Calvin. John Calvin preached that the pursuit of wealth and the preservation of property is a Christian duty. He taught that the temptations of the flesh demand a discipline as strict as that of the military profession. "He created an ideal type of man theretofore unknown to both religion and society, who was neither a humanist nor an ascetic, but a businessman living in the fear of God."
Two centuries later, this new type of man came under the influence of John Wesley. "We exhort all Christians to amass as much wealth as they can, and to preserve as much as they can; in other words, to enrich themselves." For President Madison, "The American political system was founded on the natural inequality of men." Correlatively, the moral philosophy of the United States is based on success.
At the end of the Eighteenth Century a Frenchman, the Chevalier de Beaujour, wrote on his return from North America, "The American loses no opportunity to acquire wealth. Gain is the subject of all his conversations, and the motive for all his actions. Thus, there is perhaps no civilized nation in the world where there is less generosity in the sentiments, less elevation of soul and of mind, less of those pleasant and glittering illusions that constitute the charm or the consolation of life. Here, everything is weighed, calculated and sacrificed to self-interest."
Another Frenchman, the Baron de Montlezun, added, "In this country, more than any other, esteem is based on wealth. Talent is trampled underfoot. How much is this man worth? they ask. Not much? He is despised. One hundred thousand crowns? The knees flex, the incense burns, and the once-bankrupt merchant is revered like a god."
http://www.jfk-online.com/farewell00.html
