Jewish-Catholic commission agrees: economic crisis reflects moral crisis
March 30, 2012
A joint Catholic-Jewish commission has released a statement on the current financial crisis, concluded that “at its roots lies a crisis of moral values.”
A bilateral commission, co-sponsored by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and Vatican’s commission for relations with Jews, met in Rome this week to discuss the economic crisis. Their concluding statement lamented that “the value of truth reflected in honesty and transparency was sorely lacking in economic activity.”
Catholics and Jews share the belief that "the purpose of an economic order is to serve the well being of society, affirming the human dignity of all people, each created in the divine image,” the statement read. The commission agreed that the moral health of a society can be measured by the way it treats those who are in need. Turning to the international economic order, the commission affirmed “the universal destination of the goods of the earth,” and called upon wealthy nations to consider the forgiveness of debts to the developing world.
Fundamentally, the commission stressed, “the crisis has revealed the profound lack of an ethical component in economic thinking.”
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