“The self-described socialist Jewish senator and the leader of the Catholic Church make for odd bedfellows in many ways,” reads CNN’s story about Senator Bernie Sanders’ brief meeting with Pope Francis. Pointing to issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, these two leaders greatly differ, yet pointing to the “morality of our economic life,” Sanders finds a consensus with the pope.
Sanders’ speech to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences correlated the loss of “moral constraints” to the lack of economic justice. So, whose code of morality should Americans be following, and can politics effectively extract morality from religion without the latter’s influence?
Morals attune themselves to economic life in forms such as donations, tax exemptions, savings, and insurance. Looking closer at these examples, one finds that they act as economic incentives to uphold the capitalistic common good of society--free enterprise. Free enterprise serves as the lowest common denominator one might also call the “morality” of capitalism. Such way of living finds affirmation from The Federalist Papers, and other original texts pertaining to America’s Constitution and political power. As French political historian, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote after visiting America, America’s power comes from its “principle of self-interests"; that is, the concept that Americans will give up a little of their wealth in order to preserve the stability of the rest of their wealth. To Tocqueville, this principle united and empowered citizens who likely held different beliefs on other matters. Economic incentives to uphold the common good proved to be the most agreeable system to 1800s America, as it still appears to be so today.
As a country which separates church from state, America positions itself in a ceaseless validation of all non-threatening belief systems and religious practices without adopting any one as the national religion. It is fair to argue that Christianity is America’s underlying religion, as it was the religion of the Founders. Yet America finds within it a diversity spanning well-passed any overarching label. With such perspective in place, one arrives at a point of tension: each American has his own personal morality which may be religious in nature, while also having to contribute to an economic morality.
What Sanders’ speech might imply is that America should reverse this “economic incentives to uphold the common good” approach. Instead, his system might ask for moral incentives to uphold the economic good. Such a shift challenges established ideas of human nature and motivation while also needing its own code of morality. If the common denominator becomes morality — not just any morality, but one which must be strong enough to bind diverse populations to economic obligations — then it would have to be created. America would have to moralize its morals.
