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Free issue of MICHAEL
www.michaeljournal.orgWhat is a monster ? Here is
the definition given by the Web-
ster’s Dictionary: “An animal,
plant, or thing that departs from
the customary course of nature.”
Or else: “A person of unnatural
or extreme ugliness, deformity,
wickedness, or cruelty.”
We may call our monetary
system, our system of money, a
monster. It is not in conformity
with the facts; it does not behave
like a money system. It is unnatur-
al in its results, nothing less, than
a monster of cruelty. These are serious accusations.
Monstrosity, barbarism
Here are three families. Family A is devoid of
everything. It has never more than the strict neces-
sities of life, and these are often long in coming. Par-
ents and children suffer. The little ones vegetate, but
the parents do all they can and, confronted with the
situation, they are the first to deprive themselves.
Family B possesses a little more. Not in luxury,
but a certain level of comfort. Children, like the par-
ents, enjoy an honest living.
Family C draws from a large inherited built fund,
which provides it an air-conditioned house, nutrition,
varied to choice, modern furniture, spare-time activ-
ities, and tourist holidays. All of the family members
take advantage of it, each one following his likings,
which he moreover endeavors to guide by reason.
The three families are in very different situa-
tions. But we have nothing to reproach to the head
of family A, nor to the head of family B, nor to the
head of family C. In each one, the goods, scarce or
abundant, are accessible to all of the family mem-
bers, in the proportion to which the circumstances
allow.
But let’s return to family C. Let’s say that the
parents put their revenue under lock and key, and
that they leave their children in tattered garments,
reduced to malnutrition, sick and without medical
care, ignorant and deprived of the right to get in-
struction, except maybe for a privileged one in the
family who, himself, will have a hundred times more
than he is able to make use of.
In such a case, people will say that these parents
are barbarous, that they let their children unjustifi-
ably suffer. Their behavior is monstrous !
Now, we have a country, Canada, where work-
ers and machines can bring into the world all that is
needed in order that all the Can-
adians live in comfort. A regula-
tion is made, by virtue of which,
in order to draw on the wealth of
Canada, a Canadian must have a
permission that is called money.
Nothing bad, in itself, in this
regulation which allows to establish
a certain order in the distribution.
Besides, if money is at the
level of production, seeing that
the distribution is at the level of
money, it happens that we live ac-
cording to the possibilities of pro-
duction, and it is in conformity with the facts.
But if, instead of using the regulation to estab-
lish order in the distribution, a few individuals are
allowed to limit the quantity of permissions to their
liking, to decrease the permissions when things are
abundant. It is no longer a regulation, but a disorder.
It is to subject the multitude to the will of some dic-
tators.
These money dictators are acting in such a way
when the wheat remains in the granaries when the
families lack bread, that products of all kinds ac-
cumulate, that the production has to stop, when
there are urgent needs everywhere. These dictators
are literally barbarians, their behavior a monstrosity,
and the governments’ tolerance, a cowardice or a
complicity.
It is not lawful !
One can say what he wants in favor or in de-
fense of the money system; it does not function for
the common good. It punishes the multitude, even
though it suits some individuals.
Money is no longer in conformity with the facts.
It does not act according to the end for which it has
been invented. It does not distribute the production. It
evades a function that it nevertheless reserved to itself.
“Those who control money and credit have be-
come the masters of our lives,” said Pope Pius XI. In
regulating the level of money and credit, they regu-
late our level of life, and they regulate it very much
below the possibilities of the country.
Therefore it is not necessary to leave Canada in
order to find acts of barbarism – odious barbarisrn,
even though it enjoys the governments’ protection.
Whatever may be the power of the barbarians
and their accomplices, let’s have the courage, even
if they hold the sword in hand, to shout to them, like
John the Baptist: “It is not lawful ! ” (Mk 6:18: For
What is a monster?