The Beatitudes and capitalism don’t mix

This week’s Independent News & Media Irish regionals newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

James O’Brien presents a programme on UK’s LBC radio station every weekday from 10 am to midday. 

He has links with Ireland and born a Catholic, which he often mentions on his radio programme. He was educated at the Benedictine-run Ampleforth  College, in other words he comes from privilege.

After school he studied Economics and Philosophy. O’Brien has a background in journalism, has worked for a number of UK newspapers and has presented BBC 2’s Newsnight. I’ve been listening to him on Mondays now for a number of weeks. He is critical of the governing class in the UK and strongly objects to a society that cannot pay its nurses a decent wage, which at the same time has no issues with a small number of individuals being paid obscene sums of money.

Listening to him these days I’m reminded of former archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, who was murdered celebrating Mass in 1980. 

Romero had an interesting take on last Sunday’s Gospel, which was St Matthew’s account of the Beatitudes. He said: ‘Even when they call us mad, when they call us subversives and communists and all the epithets they put on us, we know we only preach the subversive witness of the Beatitudes, which have turned everything upside down.’ 

The Beatitudes are what we would call today the mission statement of Christianity. Jesus supports the poor, the gentle, ‘happy the peacemakers: they shall be called children of God’.

Listening to O’Brien and reading what Romero had to say about the Beatitudes I can’t help thinking that there is something profoundly wrong with how we are managing the world’s resources. In January aid agency Oxfam published a report outlining how the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer.

In the last two years the richest one per cent have acquired almost twice as much wealth as the remaining 99 per cent of the world’s population. 800 million people in the world have not enough to eat. 

In Ireland the richest one per cent have 27 per cent of wealth. 1,435 Irish people own over €46.6  million each. This number has more than doubled in 10 years. Surely it is an indictment of our imbalanced economic system that a few can accumulate such wealth while thousands struggle to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. Does it make sense that a CEO of an Irish company should be paid €9.3 million in one year? Elon Musk’s net worth works out at €140.85 billion, Jeff Bezos has €110.84 bn  and Mark Zuckerberg has amassed €46.41 billion. 

I can hear people say they have earned that money and are entitled to it. I can hear others say that many of them do great good with their wealth. All fine and dandy but what about the 800 million who have not enough to eat, is that their fault? Houston we have a problem and we need to do something about it.

Take the current war in Ukraine, the real winner is the armaments’ industry. Have we ever allowed the Beatitudes to turn ‘everything upside down’?