Good Works & what Weber actually wrote

[Terrance Flaherty]

As wrong-headed as my post may have been, MalignD did not address what I
wrote at all, but only provided an analysis, no a summation of "works"
and "the calling" that is one of the standard critiques of Weber's text.
I never mentioned Calvin or Luther, but used, as Weber does, the term
Protestantism generally, and I noted that I was generalizing and thus
conflating the terms to address what was what I suspected and still do,
a rhetorical question constructed to conceal a more open and hostile
anti-Catholicism that has been permitted here on this list, even
sanctioned and sanctified by quotations from GR torn out of context. Of
course 95% of what MalignD wrote is true. We can go to the text. Do wish
we could find an electronic text of Weber (in English). I don't feel
like typing up what he actually says about Catholics, although waht I
wrote in my origianl post is not wrong.  

In any event, I'm sorry for having done it. It was a stupid post really
and I let myself get angry because the NY Times (and I note this Sunday
the same thing) has run the War in Israel and the Catholic priests on
the front page for a month. And the war is getting worse by the day, as
is the coverage by the times and the Catholics are being bashed about on
Saturday Night Live, in Hollywood, on the front pages, and even at mass
by madmen with guns. So what else is new in America. 

http://gypsy.cad.gatech.edu/support/sandra/paper.html


Most of the other criticisms of Weber rest on his assertion that modern
capitalism could not have flourished in Europe without an ethic or
spirit which had its roots in ascetic Protestantism. These criticisms
themselves fall into two major categories: (1) that capitalism was a
growing force before the Reformation and that it would have thrived as
well under Catholicism as under Protestantism and (2) that the driving
force behind capitalism was not ascetism but rationality. 

H. M. Robertson, a historian at the University of Cape Town, asserted in
"A Criticism of Max Weber and His School" that the Roman Catholic Church
and the Protestant Churches stressed the same precepts in the 16th and
17th centuries. He states that Weber's assertion that the concept of the
"calling" was novel to Luther and Protestantism was not established in
Weber's writings. Robertson supports his thesis by quoting Aquinas:
"There seems to be no essential difference between the doctrine of the
Catholics and the Puritans on this point [the calling]. St. Thomas
Aquinas' teaching on distributive justice was that:       This . . .
division of men in different occupations occurs in the first place
through divine providence, which distributes the condition of men in
such a way . . . and also in the second place from natural causes, as a
result of which it happens that there are different aptitudes for
different occupations amongst different men." Robertson continues in
support of his thesis: "The Jansenists . . .
reminded their flocks that the Christian life was 'a serious life, a
life of toil and not of diversion, play or pleasure' so that one ought
never to forget that it 'should be filled with some useful and sober
occupation suitable for one's state of existence.' The Jesuits stressed
almost the same beliefs. In France the Church went out of its way to
welcome the honest bourgeois on the ground that he was the only type of
man who followed God's commands and lived in a 'calling'."