"I buy, therefore I am," sums up the problem so succinctly. Thanks for that message. How can we change that mentality? It is pervasive in our society: if we can just get people to buy more, we will all live happily ever after...

Merz and Packard are two very brave guys ( two of a number). Therefore, the institutional church will lather them up with pious platitudes. Then it will eat them alive.

You don’t need to be religious to understand -and embrace- the idea that "Whatsoever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." But the 1%, in their blind greed and schemes, have forgotten and closed their eyes to this, and to what the word "society" should really mean. Because of Occupy Wall Street, we are finally talking less about CUTS and more about BLEEDING. Instead of demanding m-o-r-e budget cuts -to be borne by the middle class and poor- we are FINALLY focusing on the shameful bleeding that the poor and middle class has endured for all too long. Instead of talking about even m-o-r-e cuts in the taxes of millionaires....we are now talking about fairness and justice - about an economy and a political system that is increasingly run for the rich, and by the rich. Instead of talking about LESS government, we are talking about a government that WORKS FOR ALL OF US, not just a favored few. Thank you OWS, for reminding us that people -ordinary working people- really DO matter, and for helping open our eyes to what’s really going on in this country. Trinity Church should look deep into its collective soul, do the right thing, and help OWS. I would bet my life, that if He were here physically with us today...as He was 2000 years ago, He would be among the FIRST to climb those fences, and occupy Trinity’s Duarte Square. Of this I am certain.

Sounds like Bishop Packard has closed off discussion. With his final comment he allows as how he ans OWS are well enough practiced to know what they are doing.

From the Bishop's report though it seems like he and Mr. Packard have a grace-ripe moment to open a conversation with the NYPD. His street cred as Bishop for the Armed Forces gives him a natural bridge into the "blue universe" and a chance to reduce the tendency towards increasing use of hurt by the police.

But I also have to say I would not have participated in such a pointless action in the first place, and that little the OWS folks have yet done has convinced me they have any strategy that gathers people to the message.

My suspicion is that the strident anti-capitalist message will not gain traction in the broad public. There are no other viable large scale economic models that are better or that even exist in practice. Socialism or Comunism are failed systems.

Bishop Packard's own retirement income is tightly tied to capitalism, as mine will be when I retire. Our 403 b programs are, well, invested in capitalism, and we are victims of the predations inflicted on the markets by scoundrels. So while I am interested in finding ways to build economies in which justice is achieved, I have no inherent war with non land based capital, and no interest in centralized planning of any sort. I am a syndicalist at heart, with the "job-doers" owning the means of production.

All the more reason, Michael, for the Church Pension Fund to divest from the big banks asap.

I do not disagree, Juan, indeed the CPF has enough cash to perhaps shape investment practices even as they demonstrate prudent fiscal responsibility. With them also holding lay investments this is even more true.

But let's be sure of what messages we want to endorse, send, or bestow glowing theological assessment upon. Capitalism freed people from caste, guild, and land based wealth to strive equally in the market. And what was true of work was true of ideas too with freedom of speech and press. Neither Communism, Socialism, communitarianism nor other utopian ideas have demonstrated a greater capacity for free exchange and free decision in what to buy or own.

So unfocused anti-capitalism, with a hope for some emergent "new" will not convince. And rather than being a faultering paradigm, capitalism is now spreading freedoms to billions of new people, busy setting aside communism and caste. Much of our own economic decline is because we have not been resilient enough in a broadened global village market, not because capitalism is inherently evil.

This next presidential campaign will be about economic resiliency. And it will focus around the basic rights of working people to organize and participate in formation of contracts and protection from unsafe working conditions. The radical conservatives want our policy to emulate China's so we can exploit labor, including children and plunder the environment.

I don't think the OWS movement is anti-capitalism per se. THey are against unbridled greed being elevated as the only goal of capitalism, which appears to be the problem today.

American capitalism used to be about generating capital by making things-- widgets, cars, computers--and employing people to do it. It's possible to do that with respect, and sufficient profit for all to benefit. Rising tides raise all boats.

Now, the wealthiest are those who contribute nothing but push money around, with obscene incomes and no sense of social responsibility. Hence occupy WALL STREET as opposed to MAIN STREET.

LIke the word "Christian" now associated with the right wing fundies who hate gays, the word "Capitalist" is associated with insanely wealthy market manipulators (who continue to profit in this depression). SEems those words need to be reclaimed by counterexamples.

Susan Forsburg

I have no issue with capitalism per se (certainly most reading this blog benefit from the same). My issue is that we are in the process of gutting already existing social programs in the name of fiscal responsibility so that we can finance a tax cut that benefitted tose who least needed it. Sort of a reverse Robin Hood--taking from the poor to give to the rich.

As a priest with full-time employment, good (though expensive) health insurance, and an anticipated pension that largely depends on investments in corporations, I can hardly claim victim status. However, as I see college costs skyrocketing, the social safety net disintegrating, and city budgets streached so thin that police can only respond to violent crimes, my conclusion is that we can't afford to keep tax rates for the 1% at their historic lows. It isn't class warfare to suggest that giving a huge tax cut to someone who makes $250,000+ a year, while it might be nice, is no longer financially sustainable. To sustain it by cutting basic services makes zero sense to me.

I do not think that the OWS movement is anti-capitalism. To say it is I believe shows a bias against the biblical imperative to not just help, but to also, and most importantly, reform the capitalist system so that it is just. The OWS movement has started a dialogue about just that. This is why, as Brook Packard previously stated, it is important that OWS have a place to occupy that is visible in order not to die.

Here is wiki on OWS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street