Economics and Faith

[Montie_Claunch]

I had meet up with an old Anti-Catholic Protestant that I had know some time back before I decieded to become Catholic and we started talking about why I had left. I said that it was because I was becomeing Catholic and that started a bit of a debate.
He stated that you could tell that Catholicism on a whole doesn’t go with Christs teaching and as a result they do not prosper as seen in Central and South America and the Catholic Countries where they are backwards, corupt and all on drugs as appossed to the Dominanlty Protestant U.S., Britian, Germany and other Protestant countries who are succesful, thus showing who God sides with.
What should I say and what would be the best approach in dealing with this subject? Any books or websites I could look at? Thanks and God bless.

 

[clmowry]

Montie Claunch:

He stated that you could tell that Catholicism on a whole doesn’t go with Christs teaching and as a result they do not prosper as seen in Central and South America and the Catholic Countries where they are backwards, corupt and all on drugs as appossed to the Dominanlty Protestant U.S., Britian, Germany and other Protestant countries who are succesful, thus showing who God sides with.
What should I say and what would be the best approach in dealing with this subject? Any books or websites I could look at? Thanks and God bless.

So I guess God loved the Catholic Church for the hundreds of years that “Catholic” Empires ruled the globe.

By the same standards God must have really hated Peter and Paul who died impoverished and in prison.

 

[steveandersen]

Well, considering that those parts of the USA that are most closely identified with the evangelical Bible belt are also the poorest portions of the nation while the prosperous NE and California both have large catholic populations I would think that your friend doesn’t know what he is talking about.

As for the nations he mentions as being “Protestant”, IIRC the Anglicans don’t consider themselves protestants and large portions of Germany are Catholic.

And what does your friend say about the rich and cultivated land of France? Or the recent economic miracle of Ireland, the Celtic Tiger?

Of course to really throw your friend for a loop ask him the compare growth rates of those “Protestant “ countries with say the economic success of the various non-Christian East Asian nations

Besides, you don’t pick your faith for its economic rate of return

 

[Sherlock]

steveandersen:

Besides, you don’t pick your faith for its economic rate of return

Yeah, that’s a very, very odd measuring stick to use. “The prosperous shall inherit the earth” was not one of the Beatitudes.