c. 2008 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Every year it’s the same. The final frenzy of gifts and guests moves to a crescendo, fades, then rebuilds with one last blast of noisemakers and confetti. And there it is: a bright spanking new year.

This year it’s the same but different. You know, it’s the economy thing.

We’re wishing everybody peace and happiness, but the nagging economy thing has us all scared to death. We’re terrified somehow those black and white newsreels of Depression breadlines will turn to Technicolor. We fear they won’t be old movies colorized by Ted Turner, but shots of contemporary America, and they’ll be real.

That’s what we fear. We’re afraid of having to line worn out shoes with newspaper to protect against the snow and ice. We’re afraid of eating rice with tomato sauce every night for weeks. We’re afraid of grinding, desperate poverty.

Yes, we’re scared to death.

Someone told me once, the devil’s only weapon is fear.

I believe that. I think God’s job is to worry, and our job is to believe that God made us just the way we are to do what we’re supposed to do. So, no matter butcher or baker or candlestick maker, we’ve each and all got a place in this world, and in this economy that we fear.

We can’t belittle the troubles one bit. There are many, many people right now on the ropes, from Palm Beach millionaires who lost a bundle in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme to regular folks whose livelihood depended on the burst balloon of Wall Street. There are the union auto workers in Detroit whose contracts and bad management have combined to kill their industry. There are small-business people and simple workers who were living hand-to-mouth already anyway.

We’re all in it, one way or another, but I’m not sure we really understand the injustices of real poverty. Comparisons are odious, but half the world lives on less than $2.50 a day. That’s more than three billion people. Yes, you say, you can do that in Burundi or East Timor or someplace else you can neither spell nor find.

True, but think about injustice. The United Nations says the wealthiest 20 percent of us, which includes just about everyone in the United States, consume over three-quarters of the world’s production and resources. We are still consuming wealth at an amazing speed and we are not alone.

There’s something out of whack. There has to be a way of reconciling flat screen TVs with distended bellies, of sports utility vehicles with women walking barefoot, of information overload with abject ignorance.

We fear for our money, and rightly so, but the hidden underbelly of the world’s economy is much more frightening. Pope Paul VI said a generation ago: “If you want peace, work for justice.” I think that’s good advice. In the long run, we’ll be measured not by how much cash we stuffed in the mattress or the hedge fund, but by what we managed to share with one another. The economy is a mess, no doubt about it, but I think what we really need to fear is the illusion that money is the same as peace, and happiness.

(Phyllis Zagano is senior research associate-in-residence at Hofstra University and author of several books in Catholic Studies.)

DSB/DEA END ZAGANO

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