In the Guardian, Austin Ivereigh brings to our attention the abiding influence of Catholic teaching on Michael Moore’s radical and provocative activist film-making:
The clip has become a hit on YouTube. In a discussion about Michael Moore‘s new documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story, Sean Hannity, a stupendously rightwing host on Fox News, invites the leftwing documentary-maker to classify himself as an “unapologetic socialist”.
“Christian”, Moore corrects him.
Taken aback, Hannity protests that he is too.
“I believe in what Jesus said”, says Moore.
“So do I”, Hannity quickly replies.
Moore then narrows it down. “You’re a Catholic?”
“I’m a Catholic”, agrees Hannity.
And yes, they both go to Mass each Sunday—which is no great surprise, this being America, and both men of Irish extraction. But when Moore asks Hannity to identify last week’s gospel, Hannity is clearly shaken, and mumbles about having arrived at church late.
The gospel, it turns out, was about it being harder for a rich man to enter heaven than a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.
In his new film Moore is firing some deadly shells into the heart of rightwing America by contesting the assumption that God is on the side of capitalism. In his broadside against free-market dogma and corporate greed, he harnesses two Catholic priests and a retired auxiliary bishop in his crusade, which focuses on the role of General Motors’ management in the decline of his hometown of Flint, Michigan. The ironically named Capitalism: A Love Story chronicles the effects of economic dysfunction on vulnerable individuals and their families – what happens when profit is put before people, and individuals are treated as commodities.
Moore the anti-capitalist enragé gets his indignation, it turns out, not from an alienated youth buried in Gramsci, but from the nuns who taught him at school. And where did they get it? From Catholic teaching, of course—specifically the great social encyclicals of the popes from the late 19th century onwards, which are as bitter in their criticism of unbridled markets as they are in denouncing the response to it of state socialism.
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