Between God and mammon?” “

Who should we choose between “God and mammon”? The French Church is now tackling a question that is almost taboo for Christians, but also for society in general: money. The question will be discussed during the 78th Social Week of French Catholics in Paris from 14 to 16 November. The speakers include Robert Rochefort , director general of CREDOC (a research centre for the study and observation of living conditions) and vice-president of the Social Weeks of France. We interviewed him. Western man and money: a relation that isn’t simple… “Our relation with money is often ambiguous. The French, for example, are reluctant to disclose how much they earn, they feel embarrassed about that. It’s the same in the USA, but there people, if they earn a great deal, are proud to show, even flaunt it, whereas in France they are somewhat ashamed. But something has changed over the last two or three decades. First, there’s a positive improvement, in the sense that the mere accumulation of money, capitalization, is no longer regarded as a virtue. In 19th century France, avarice, the hoarding of money, was fairly common. That’s no longer the case today: money is made to circulate. The downside is that money is increasingly being pressed into the service of individual self-realization. It’s no longer automatic to consider money as a means of sharing. In theory, people want a society in which wealth is shared, but this is considered utopian. There is, however, a difference between practising Catholics (according to whom sharing is important) and society as a whole, according to which sharing is utopian, something which people no longer believe in much”. Must Christians choose between poverty and richness? “If one is poor, one must recognise it and try to enrich oneself if possible. But the question of faith cannot be answered if no meaning is found in the reality of this world. When the Gospel says it will be difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, it refers to something that concerns not present-day society but the kingdom of heaven. Our society is extremely paradoxical and contradictory about the use and possession of money. Non-Christians too ask that not everything be reduced to money; they know that wealth does not lead to happiness”. May our awareness of the imbalance between the northern and southern hemispheres lead to a change in our consumerist lifestyles? “For the time being what is rather holding back a change in mentality in France is the feeling that trade relations with the countries of the southern hemisphere and the rest of the world are subject to corruption and inefficiency; this gives rise to great disenchantment about aid to the south, which is shown to be ineffective. This may be an easy way of shuffling off our responsibility, by saying that the institutions are not doing their job properly. But such an attitude is wrong: something has got to change in our lifestyles”. So what do you hope from this meeting? “I would like us to be able to say: we can only make good use of money if we have an ethical outlook, also in relation to the meaning we want to give to our own life. Otherwise a responsible and reasonable use of money will become ever more difficult. I would also like us to recognise that, basically, our relationship with money shall always be ambiguous, and it is just in the ambiguity of this relationship that our freedom comes into play. In other words, we have free choices to make every day. Apart from monks and those who have chosen poverty as a lifestyle – and perhaps it is precisely for this reason that they have a prophetic role to play in our society – the question of money is posed to us every day. As Christians, we are invited to follow the paths of conversion every day”.