Page 55 - Reflexions of African Bishops and Priests

solidarity. This helps us to understand that all systems should be at
the service of man. In consequence, neither capitalism nor commun-
ism can pretend to incarnate the social teaching of the Church. In
either one or the other, there is a list of grievances attached to their
perversion and limits.
Communism is anti-Christian, intrinsically perverted, a destruct-
or of private property, of family and religion. Capitalism does not
condemn the system of production (meaning free enterprise and
private property) as much but is defective as a system of distribu-
tion; it has been made stale by the financial system. It submits to the
dictatorship of money. Its great vice is the creation of debt-money.
Through accumulated interest it approves the finality and attains its
objective: to impose its will. We then agree with St. John Chrysos-
tom that “nothing is more shameful or as cruel as usury.”
Once again, in this context, cancelling or writing off the debt
shows an imperious and moral necessity. There is only the reim-
bursement of the capital that is just. It is what is overcharged that
is immoral. Here appears with crystalline clarity, the pertinence of
the objective of Social Credit: that society, through an organism of
national accounting, is the only one who creates money for the na-
tion. That it stops to borrow from the banks in order to permit the
economy to attain its objective, to be at the service of man, of the
whole man and his essential needs.
The present contradiction between the overabundance of both
production and poverty in the world is unacceptable. It calls us with
greater urgency to the reformation of the financial system that So-
cial Credit teaches, that the primacy of the human person will be
rigorously respected and that the goal of the economy is that the
products meet the needs of the human person. The call of John Paul
II at the 6th Conference of the United Nations on Commerce and
Development in Geneva in 1975 is pertinent: “A structural reform
of the world financial system is without a doubt one of the most
urgent and necessary initiatives.”
We also see in that in respect of the principle of subsidiarity that
it denounces all centralization in its most extreme expression and
that the world government rejects the inherent competence of nat-
ural and intermediary societies in favor of one State.
The principle of solidarity translates, in the social domain, the
duty of love that encompasses each person towards the other. This
is why Benedict XVI spoke about the globalization of love.
The conclusion of the study of the Commission of the nine theo-
logians mandated in 1939 by the bishops of the province of Quebec
in Canada, on Social Credit of the Church, clearly understood that
this philosophy is in tune with the social doctrine of the Church. It
is a technique to attain and guarantee to each person in society, an
earthly joy, a foretaste of the eternal joy with God. It is the mission
of the Church in society, in the name of God, for the salvation of all
men.
On April 5th, 2011, all of the archbishops, bishops, priests and
laity who participated in the seminar also participated in the Eucha-
ristic celebration in the parish church in Rougemont; the closing was
presided over by Most Rev. Francois Lapierre, bishop of St. Hya-
cinthe. At the end of the Mass, the bishops had an exchange with
their colleague from St. Hyacinthe in the House of St. Michael and
shared a meal with the pastor of Rougemont, Fr. Gerald Ouellette.

Fr. Felicien MWANAMA G.
Reporter of the seminar

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