Catholicism Term Analysis

Business leaders and owners of capital, as well as the skilled higher strata of the labor force, and especially the higher technical or commercially trained staff of modern enterprises tend to be predominantly Protestant.

“The Catholic…is more calm; his acquisitive drive is lower, he places more value on a life which is as secure as possible, even if this should be on a smaller income, than on a perilous, exciting life, which could bring honor and riches.”

A way of thinking like that of Benjamin Franklin was applauded by an entire nation. But in ancient medieval times it would have been denounced as an expression of the most filthy avarice and of an absolutely contemptible attitude.

The monastic style of life is now not only completely worthless as a means of justification before God (that much is self-evident), [Luther] also sees it as a manifestation unloving egoism and an abdication from secular duties. In contrast, labor in a secular calling appears as the outward expression of Christian charity.

This doctrine [of predestination], with all the pathos of its inhumanity, had one principal consequence for the mood of a generation which yielded to its magnificent logic: it engendered, for each individual, a feeling of tremendous inner loneliness.

The consequence of this systematization of the ethical conduct of life, which was enforced by Calvinism (unlike Lutheranism), is the permeation of the whole of existence by Christianity.

This ascetic style of life, however, as we have seen, meant a rational shaping of one’s whole existence in obedience to God’s will. And this asceticism was no longer [merely good], but could be expected of everyone wanting to be sure of salvation. This rationalization of the conduct of life in the world with a view to the beyond is the idea of calling characteristic of ascetic Protestantism.

Now [asceticism] would enter the market place of life, slamming the doors on the monastery behind it, and set about permeating precisely this secular everyday life with its methodical approach, turning it toward a rational life in the world, but neither of this world nor for it.

To want to be poor, it was often argued, was the same as wanting to be ill; it was to be condemned as seeking justification [salvation] by works, detrimental to the glory of God. Most of all, begging by one who is capable of work is not only sinful sloth, but is also […] contrary to charity.