It is Just Money And Should only be at the Service of Man
 Yves and Anne Marie Jacques |
The monetary system of today puts money above the human person. This is an inversion of money’s proper role. At present, everything revolves around money: Wall Street, the politicians, our governments,… Most people spend a good part of their days just planning around money. But money is just money, a symbol which, unfortunately today, controls the world. As Catholics, our faith should move us, and it should become our duty, to promote a just ordering of society, that puts the dignity of the human person first — what is just money, will then become a JUST money — at the service of man. Pope Francis tells us in his encyclical, Joy of the Gospel,
“Consequently, no one can demand that religion should be relegated to the inner sanctum of personal life, without influence on societal and national life, without concern for the soundness of civil institutions, without a right to offer an opinion on events affecting society. Who would claim to lock up in a church and silence the message of Saint Francis of Assisi or Blessed Teresa of Calcutta? They themselves would have found this unacceptable. An authentic faith – which is never comfortable or completely personal – always involves a deep desire to change the world, to transmit values, to leave this earth somehow better than we found it. We love this magnificent planet on which God has put us, and we love the human family, which dwells here, with all its tragedies and struggles, its hopes and aspirations, its strengths and weaknesses. The earth is our common home and all of us are brothers and sisters. If indeed ‘the just ordering of society and of the state is a central responsibility of politics’, the Church ‘cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice’. All Christians, their pastors included, are called to show concern for the building of a better world. This is essential, for the Church’s social thought is primarily positive: it offers proposals, it works for change and in this sense it constantly points to the hope born of the loving heart of Jesus Christ. At the same time, it unites ‘its own commitment to that made in the social field by other Churches and Ecclesial Communities, whether at the level of doctrinal reflection or at the practical level.’”
One of the primary objectives in the work of “Michael” is to help people to come to recognize the proper function of money and to see it in a different perspective from that which we have become accustomed to today. In other words, to view money for what it truly is: a system of measurement representing the real things that exist—a mere ticket/permit for facilitating the exchange of goods and enabling us to buy things. In todays digital world these tickets are often only electronic entries of numbers in the banker’s computers.
One simple way to illustrate this would be to look at our transportation system. Consider a train ticket. The train ticket is the permit, or permission, for you to ride on the train. The railway companies take every precaution to ensure that there are always enough tickets/permits available, so as to fill the train to capacity. There should always be a sufficient amount of tickets to fulfill the needs of the passengers. Therefore, the true value is not the ticket, it is the actual transportation, the ride on the train. This is the true objective. If there is someone who needs to board the train, and if there is a seat available, there also needs to be a ticket available to represent that need.
 Grand Central Station New-York |
The same should be said of the financial system. Major Clifford H. Douglas, founder of the Social Credit there is someone who needs to board the train, and if there is a seat available, there also needs to be a ticket available to represent that need.
The same should be said of the financial system. Major Clifford H. Douglas, founder of the Social Credit movement, explains,
“The financial system is nothing but a ticket system. The ticket system must be made to reflect the actual truth of the productive system and not attempt to control it.
Money should never be a means to rule our lives. It should only be there as the means to serve man in his daily necessities. Money is a “symbol,” a “token,” which should represent real (true) wealth, which should be for the common good. Louis Even states this so eloquently,
“There are a lot of good things in the world, but when the claim on these things is absent from the peoples’ hands, when people do not have money, what is the purpose of the display of all this wealth?
This does not mean that money itself is wealth. Money is not an earthly good capable of satisfying temporal needs.
You cannot keep yourself alive by eating money. To get dressed, you cannot sew dollar notes together to make a dress or a pair of stockings. You cannot rest by lying down on money. You cannot cure an illness by putting money on the source of the illness. You cannot educate yourself by crowning your head with money.
No, money is not real wealth. Real wealth is the useful things, which satisfy human needs. Bread, meat, fish, cotton, wood, coal, a car on a good road, the doctor’s visit for a sick person, the teacher’s knowledge — this is real wealth.
But in our modern world, each individual does not produce all the things he needs. People must buy from one another. Money is the symbol or token that one gets in return for something sold; it is the symbol that must be presented to get something offered by another.”
In his apostolic letter, The Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis states,
“…we calmly accept its dominion over ourselves and our societies. The current financial crisis can make us overlook the fact that it originated in a profound human crisis: the denial of the primacy of the human person! We have created new idols. The worship of the ancient golden calf (Ex 32:1-35) has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose. The worldwide crisis affecting finance and the economy lays bare their imbalances and, above all, their lack of real concern for human beings; man is reduced to one of his needs alone: consumption.”
The banks are a monopoly which, “makes illegitimate claims to the ownership of the symbols and will only create and issue them on those terms which are most favorable to its own interests.” Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical letter, Quadragesimo Anno, states,
“In the first place, then, it is patent that in our days not alone is wealth accumulated, but immense power and despotic economic domination is concentrated in the hands of a few, and that those few are frequently not the owners, but only the trustees and directors of invested funds, who administer them at their good pleasure.
“This power becomes particularly irresistible when exercised by those who, because they hold and control money, are able also to govern credit and determine its allotment, for that reason supplying, so to speak, the lifeblood to the entire economic body, and grasping, as it were, in their hands the very soul of production, so that no one dare breathe against their will.”
We cannot say enough, to expose this despotic system, however, our goal should never be to fight international bankers but rather, to expose the deceit and to reveal the truth about the injustices of the present banking system. At the same time, it is our sincere prayer that these financiers too may change. That they will convert and apply their expertise to promoting an honest money system, where money will be created for society and put at the service of man, in accordance with the Catholic Social Teaching.
Christ is our Hope. The real “battle” is a spiritual one. One in which we should be uniting ourselves with our great and holy patron, Saint Michael the Archangel, in overcoming and vanquishing “that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan.”(Rev. 20:2). We need God! “No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one, and love the other: or he will sustain the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Mt 6:24). As Pope Benedict XVI declared at the conclusion of his encyclical letter, Charity in Truth,
“Without God man neither knows which way to go, nor even understands who he is. In the face of the enormous problems surrounding the development of peoples, which almost make us yield to discouragement, we find solace in the sayings of our Lord Jesus Christ, who teaches us: “Apart from me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5) and then encourages us: “I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Mt 28:20). As we contemplate the vast amount of work to be done, we are sustained by our faith that God is present alongside those who come together in his name to work for justice… Awareness of God’s undying love sustains us in our laborious and stimulating work for justice and the development of peoples, amid successes and failures, in the ceaseless pursuit of a just ordering of human affairs. God’s love calls us to move beyond the limited and the ephemeral, it gives us the courage to continue seeking and working for the benefit of all, even if this cannot be achieved immediately and if what we are able to achieve, alongside political authorities and those working in the field of economics, is always less than we might wish. God gives us the strength to fight and to suffer for love of the common good, because he is our All, our greatest hope.”
