WWJD...about capitalism? asks Michael Moore
Michael Moore Asks the Question: What Would Jesus Do...About Capitalism?
By: Paul Raushenbush writing in his BeliefNet blog
Roman Catholic Priests are the surprising voices of clarity and conviction in Michael Moore's new film Capitalism: A Love Story. The Priests in this documentary, one of whom married Mr. Moore and his wife, aren't ambivalent - they characterize capitalism as evil. This must be jarring for most moviegoers who have not had the pleasure of interacting with radical priests who, unfortunately, seem to be something of a dying breed these days. Most of us are used to the recent steady stream of religious voices praising our free market system as part of God's plan for prosperity. In Moore's opinion we have been hypnotized to believe that capitalism and Christianity must go hand in hand. In one of the funnier segments of the film, Moore adapts one of the early Jesus movies by dubbing over foundational teachings of Jesus such as "You cannot worship God and wealth" (Luke 16:13); "Blessed are the poor and woe to the rich"(Luke 6); Let the oppressed go free (Luke 4), and changing them to pithy endorsements of such stock capitalist principles such as the profit motive. One immediate classic is the scene of Jesus refusing to heal the sick man because of what this new improved capitalist Jesus describes as his "pre-existing condition."
More about Moore and Catholicism,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/movies/20head.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1
As much as Mr. Moore sometimes plays a comic-book version of class warrior — Left-Thing vs. the Republic of Fear! — his politics are not grounded in class as much as in Roman Catholicism. Growing up in Michigan, he attended parochial school and intended to go into the seminary, inspired by the priests and nuns who, at least until Pope John Paul II, inherited a long tradition of social justice and activism in the American church. “The nuns always made a point to take us to the Jewish temple for Passover seders,” he said. “They wanted to make it clear that the Jews had nothing to do with putting Jesus up on the cross.” Along with a moral imperative, Catholicism also gave a method. Mr. Moore idolized the Berrigan brothers, the radical priests who introduced street theater into their activism, for example, mixing their own napalm to burn government draft records. Their actions were a form of political spectacle that, conceptually, is Marxist — workers seizing means of production and all that — and it influenced some of Mr. Moore’s best-remembered stunts.
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October 10, 2009 10:23 PM