It is not often that the global economy’s military-industrial
complex is tied to youth unemployment and, moreover, to the idolatry of money. Yet
this is precisely the thread woven by the spiritual leader of the Roman
Catholic Church. While the pope’s comments risk a certain overreach from the
theological to the terrain of international political economy, which proffers
its own body of knowledge, it can also be said that having a transcendent
referent as one’s focus enables a person to make subtle taken-for-granted
assumptions in our economic, social, and political systems transparent. In
articulating an economic (and related political) center and giving it a
distinctly theological interpretation stemming from the Biblical passage, “For
where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,” the Roman pope provides the world with a way to do political economy from a
distinctly religious vantage-point.
