A top Vatican official said Tuesday that the world's financial crisis is the result of the search for short-term profits as a goal in itself — and an example of what happens when basic rights and the common good are ignored.Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's No. 2 official, delivered a major speech on religion in a globalized world, following Pope Benedict XVI's call for religion to be given more room in society.
Bertone, the Vatican's secretary of state, said that in a globalized era "politics and the market are not everything."
They are, he said, a means but not an end. And he said that when God is ignored, the ability to respect basic rights and recognize the common good fades away.
Addressing a meeting attended by Italian political and financial leaders, the cardinal assailed the search for short-term profit, which, "virtually identified as a good in itself, ends up wiping out the profit."
Bertone recalled Benedict's recent trip to France, where the issue of religion in a country with a historic separation of church and state is a delicate topic.
"Christianity promotes values that should not be labeled as 'Catholic' and therefore one-sided, acceptable only to those who share the same faith," Bertone said.
He said there were certain nonnegotiable values, such as the promotion of life from conception to natural death, the protection of the family based on marriage between a man and a woman and the education of children.
"Human nature doesn't change with parliamentary majorities," Bertone said, "and not even with the passing of time, with the changing of latitude or longitude."
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(Source: YN)