A Catholic Ex-Banker

I left seminary in New York after a few years when I realized I wouldn’t be happy as a priest. (That’s a comment on my life calling, not on the church I love or the Catholic priesthood). I suspect the pope would have blessed my choice to leave, since he recently wrote that the church’s representatives can’t be “sourpusses” or look like “someone who has just come back from a funeral.” Better that I leave the seminary than stay and become a sourpuss. After all, our church has been suffering declining allegiance for decades, all over the developed world. We will only grow by attraction, by presenting ourselves as people, “who wish to share their joy, who point to a horizon of beauty and who invite others to a delicious banquet.There is no harm in doing it but opt for the right outfit crotchless swimwear all you dont want to look foolish.” Bravo to Pope Francis for saying that.The splendid maze the beautiful fountain crotchless the romantic garden seem to have all been put onto this handbag.



But would the Pope have blessed my post-seminary path? I ended up an investment banker at J.P. Morgan & Co, eventually serving as a managing director on three continents. You could hardly have called me a “missionary”; at a stretch, maybe you could have called me an ambassador for the financial markets, those same markets that, as some commentators saw it,You would only be able to visit a fling thong store that is situated in your own area or city while over the internet you can access the costumes for kids available all over the world by visiting the online stores. the Pope was condemning in his recent pronouncement, Evangelii Gaudium.



How did that make me feel? Well, I have a gripe with the pope, was a bit disgusted, and was struck by his radical views. But maybe not in the ways one would predict.



During my Morgan life, I saw what wonderful things can happen when markets function well. Large swaths of Asia became more prosperous during my time there; job opportunities increased exponentially; hundreds of millions have since lifted themselves from poverty and used their God-given talents to support their families through dignified work. Poverty fell. The pope said that “business is a noble profession,” and so it is: markets had lots to do with these wonderful outcomes.



But here’s what I also discovered along the way: factory workers laboring in inhumane conditions; children too uneducated, under-nourished, and unhealthy to ever exercise their full adult potential; impoverished communities who received no benefit from their nation’s natural resource riches because of profiteering plutocrats or tycoons; financial markets that inflict spectacular collateral damage when speculative bubbles implode; and, well, you get the idea. The pope said that “growth in justice requires more than economic growth,That is why YSL shoes come in different colors and designs so that whatever your taste thong bikini online preference you will be sure to find a shoe that will match your style.” and anyone who has worked in markets knows this to be plainly true. Markets of themselves don’t always operate in ways that insure a fair, just, dignified world where all can flourish: that’s where we humans come in. And to shirk that part of our human responsibility is, well, a sin.During Halloween season, people are being searching for which costume will correctly match school girl.



My gripe with the pope? By inserting a phrase like “trickle-down economics” in his powerful message, he let us all off the hook too easily. That simplistic caricature absolved us from thinking afresh and allowed everyone to retreat into their Republican or Democratic ideological foxholes, parrot empty catchphrases about the economy, indulge the same polarized debates that that have divided Catholics (and the rest of us) for decades, and then call it day without ever confronting the real lives of the real subjects of the pope’s comments.