Our greed causes catastrophic damage

Below is the Thinking Anew column in today's Irish Times.
 
The anti-capitalist protestors camped outside the Central Bank in Dublin’s Dame Street, those who have caused the resignation of the Dean of St Paul’s in London and the demonstrators at the New York Stock Exchange might find it difficult to understand tomorrow’s Gospel. They are not alone.
 
St Matthew recalls how a master before travelling abroad gives talents to his servants. A talent was then a unit of currency. The servant to whom he gives just one talent buries it in the ground and when the master returns he gives him back his talent. The other two invested their wealth and made a profit with it. The master was annoyed with the man who played safe and made no profit on the original capital.
 
Every time I read this parable I feel sorry for the man who is castigated by his master for not making a profit. Is it not the case that people who are poorer and less sure of themselves   when it comes to investing money go for the safe option? Indeed, in these times of such economic uncertainty, anecdotal stories of large numbers of elderly people keeping their money under the mattress abound.
 
So, surely it’s understandable why the man who got just one talent buried it and had it safe and sound for the rainy day.
 
The story of tomorrow’s parable forces us to stop for a moment and to think how we squander our talents. It’s an opportunity for us to ask pertinent questions about how so much talent -  in the wider sense  - remains unfulfilled.
 
Of course there are the exceptions and people who come from the most deprived backgrounds compose great music, write exhilarating literature and build magnificent bridges. But they are the great exceptions, and the majority of people who are born in poverty and destitution have little chance of breaking the cycle and achieving their God-given potential.
 
Last week the world celebrated the birth of the seven billionth inhabitant. Of the seven billion people on the planet one billion are starving and another 2.8 billion are living on less than two dollars a day.
 
It would be difficult to believe how any of these people will ever realise their potential. Indeed, it will take the greatest brains and the best good will of the developed world to put a stop to the cancer of death and starvation.
 
And parallel with those horrifying statistics is the fact that we in the western world waste so much. A recent study shows that every household in Ireland wastes €1,000 annually on food.
 
Tomorrow’s Gospel gives us a great opportunity to think about all the talent that is lost in the world because of greed and our bad management of resources.
 
Come to think about it, the anti-capitalist demonstrators might well find tomorrow’s Gospel a type of manifesto that is not too far removed from what they are saying.
 
How can any of us sleep easily in our beds in the knowledge that there is such poverty and waste running side by side?
 
Is it not strange to think that the world markets can experience “bull run” and slumps on what might actually be a rumour or trend? And those same markets seem oblivious to the knowledge that one in seven on our planet has not enough to eat.
 
In tomorrow’s Gospel the master is annoyed with the servant who buried his talents. What would he think of a world in which a billion people never get close to even one talent?
 
A parable sets us thinking; it forces us to ask questions, especially questions that don’t sit easy with the status quo. Jesus, the man of the parables, keeps on assuring us that each one of us is made in the image and likeness of God. Surely, if we take the Gospels anyway seriously it has to be clear to us that there are no elites, there are no privileges in the kingdom of God – we are all special – no exceptions. And in order for us to reach our fulfilment, we all have to play our part in helping make God’s face shine in the world.
 
For all seven billion of us.
 
Michael Commane OP