Only if there are new human beings will there be a new world, a renewed and better world.
When the Pope said these words at Vespers on Sunday, perhaps he had Bernie Madoff in mind.
Today, Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison for defrauding his investors of nearly $65 billion over the course of 20 years. His corruption and crimes ruined the livelihoods of thousands of businesspeople, charity workers, and families that trusted his sterling reputation to protect everything that they had worked to earn.
Unfortunately, Madoff is not the only man to have betrayed his financial responsibilities to others. The last few years saw financial scandals at Enron and WorldCom shake the public’s trust in corporations. Just two weeks ago, Texas billionaire R. Allen Stanford was arrested by the FBI on charges that he used a bank in Antigua to mask his $8 billion fraud, stealing from his investors.
When Pope Leo XIII published his encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891, he wrote that “A small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than slavery itself.” The global economy has come a long way since then, with the rise of laws designed to fight white-collar crime, the expansion of opportunities for Third World entrepreneurship with the removal of tariffs, and the creation of enough wealth to eliminate most of the horrific working conditions of the Victorian Era.
One thing that we cannot progress out of is sin. The same sins that led some businesspeople to exploit the human person for their own economic gain, the same sins that led industrialists to lobby the government to protect their privilege against competition, still exist today. Greed is real in every age and under every political system.
So too is guilt. Madoff himself seems to realize the terrible impact that his crimes have had. At his sentencing, he asked the jury: “How do you excuse betraying thousands of investors who entrusted me with their life savings? How do you excuse deceiving 200 employees who spent most of their working life with me? How do you excuse lying to a brother and two sons who spent their entire lives helping to build a successful business? How do you excuse lying to a wife who stood by you for 50 years?”
There is no way to excuse these crimes. As the Pope noted on Sunday, the only way to truly bring about a better world is through interior conversion and taking full responsibility for the consequences of one’s actions. No system of laws and no amount of external regulation can fully force people to live up to their responsibilities.
As Judge Danny Chin put it, “Mr. Madoff’s crimes were extraordinarily evil.” Evil obeys no laws. It is a corruption of the heart. Falsehood will lie its way out of every law. No matter how strong we make our regulations on the activities of financial managers and corporate executives, there is only one way to guarantee that the truth will hold sway.
As Pope Benedict put it, “Love is the test of truth. Ever more we must be measured by this criterion, that truth becomes love and that love makes us truthful.” Only through a commitment to the morality of love can we break the power of sin in our human hearts.
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Category: Business and Society
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Bernie Madoff, Caritas in Veritate, catholic social teaching, liberty, morality, pope benedict xvi, R. Allen Stanford, responsibility, sin, white-collar crime
There is no doubt that there are some business leaders who have sinned. Yet, being a small business owner, I will tell you that I have lost a lot more to dishonest employees than I ever lost to dishonest businessmen. What amazes me is that Madoff was able to defraud so many of so much without being elected to public office, I’ve lost more because of corrupt government than to either corrupt businessmen or employees.
I concur with the Holy Father that a culture-wide conversion is necessary. Western governments have grown increasingly Socialist, inspite of all the failed examples of the last century. Here in America we have what has been termed the Party of Death holding the Executive and Legislative branches of government. These are elected offices.
Even our Catholic Universities bow before the socialist leaders. As Archbishop Chaput has pointed out, too, we need men like St. Thomas More. The days of Catholics fitting in with the wider society need review. Perhaps, returning to abstinance on Fridays, or other public display of belief would be a help to Catholics who find it hard to define themselves.
PATRICK POWERS
June 29, 2009
4:19 pm
Bernie Madoff is a good man, so what he ripped a few people off, it’s all part of the business world.
Isaac Tellmore
June 29, 2009
6:58 pm
150 years, 65 billions, over 20 years… I feel like I finally got inside the Futurama.
Tom Kostromin
June 30, 2009
3:24 am
The IRS also made off with mad loot from taxes on the socalled profits, will they give it bad? No
The SEC allowed madoff to run amok for 20 years any changes there? No
If anyone wants to put blame, then the government first madoff second.
SamSmith
June 30, 2009
4:03 am
Theft and fraud are sins. That they are also crimes matters as far as the government is concerned, but all of us from Federal Reserve chairmen to entrepreneurs to employees need to realize that there is a moral code necessary for the flourishing of business. Mr. Madoff broke this moral code, as have other headline-grabbers, but it is true that there is no monopoly on financial sins among money managers or executives. Employees can be just as guilty, to be sure.
We have to stop treating these occurrences like they are just another part of the business world. The business world serves human needs, and it is unfair to both business and the many, many good people who use it for the good of humanity to brush off the theft of livelihoods as just another day on Wall Street. Markets and business need to happen with an eye to decency and trust, not greed unchecked by concern for morality, honesty, and the well-being of others.
The government’s failure to enforce the law effectively against Mr. Madoff is part of the problem, to be sure, and there are plenty of voices talking about that failure. But to absolve Mr. Madoff on the grounds that he didn’t get caught quickly enough is hardly an adequate response.
Matt
June 30, 2009
6:57 am
There was a lot of very pooror before the Victorian era and child labor goes back to the middle ages and anicent world. So, the Victoria era led to capital formation that eventually help Europe and the US escape the pre-industirical poverty.
Cynthia Curran
June 30, 2009
9:59 pm