Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday chided governments for allowing global banks to run roughshod over the poor.
His holiness bemoaned a lack of "ethical interaction of conscience and intelligence" among world leaders. He complained about "renewed episodes of irresponsible speculation." He lamented that governments failed "to react with adequate decisions on financial governance."
The Pope's remarks come in context with the near financial collapse of Greece, other European countries scrambling up a trillion-dollar rescue fund, and ongoing resentment of a debt-bloated nation that won't live within its means.
"Without a tendency toward common good, consumerism, waste, poverty and imbalance end up prevailing," the Pope said.
So those are the Pope's moral demands. But where is his moral authority? His own organization, after all, has a scandal management approach that involves lawyers, denials and multimillion-dollar settlements, just like any international bank.
"There is a bit of hypocrisy and gall in the Pope giving lessons in morality right now," said James O'Toole, a business ethics professor at the University of Denver and co-author of "Good Business: Exercising Effective and Ethical Leadership."
"Maybe the Pope was trying to divert attention away from his other problems," said William Sannwald, a management and business ethics professor at San Diego State University.
"But it's probably something the Roman Catholic Church has always talked about...The Catholic Church has always been on the side of labor, in contrast to the Protestant Church, so attacking the banks seems fairly consistent...And you do read the stories about Christ chasing out the money lenders ..."
In Philadelphia, the Center for Christian Business Ethics Today and the Westminister Theological Seminary are planning a business ethics conference on June 11-12. But don't expect a holy rebuke of the global banking system.
Phil Clements, managing director of the center, is a former executive and global board member of accounting and consulting giant PwC. His group boasts involvement from Lou Giuliano, a senior adviser to the Carlyle Group; Barry Asmus, senior economist at the National Center for Policy Analysis; and Ron Ferner, a retired executive of the Campbell Soup Co. (CPB).
"The Pope deserves compliments on raising the question," Clements said. "But did he raise the right question? And did he raise it the right way?
"The preference for the poor that the Pope expressed sometimes gets in the way of what's really going on," Clements explained. "How did Greece get all of this debt? It was not an accident...They were irresponsible.
"They ought not be rioting in the streets, burning down their houses and stopping work," Clements said. "They ought to be getting back to work and making enough money to pay the bills.
"It's not fair to kick somebody when they are down," Clements added, "but it's also not fair for the guy who is down to blame the person that's standing...A lot of what the Pope said is blaming someone standing."
In a similar financial debate, critics of the subprime lending debacle typically target the lenders. But what about all those deadbeat home buyers? What would have happened had they all paid their mortgages as agreed, Clements asks.
"All over the world, there are truly ethical people," he said. "They don't lie, cheat or steal, and they don't take the opportunity to exploit just because they can. Part of the problem in using language of preference for the poor is we're not seeing the people who do good business and are a blessing to the poor."
Sometimes it is just too easy to judge. You may think you are an ethical person, but then you've never had the opportunity to pay yourself $100 million for ransacking a bank or a bankrupting a corporation.
Some say regulation is the answer to human greed. Clements would rather address the human heart.
"Man everywhere is in a fallen state and needs fundamental help," he said. "That's where the Christian hope of a savior is essential...People of faith are truly, truly more ethical."
Clements even correlates the decline of business ethics to the decline of Christianity:
"Today, we live in a post-Christian world. Christendom, spread across the world from 50 to the end of the 1970s. And now we've abandoned it .. so don't be surprised. .. We as a people are going to find more strife."
It's a notion that makes O'Toole, the business ethics professor, bristle.
"There is no correlation that we can find between people being religious and behaving in an ethical fashion," he said. "We really have to separate those two questions."
There are, after all, plenty of ethical atheists and plenty of criminally minded Christians.
And I'm not even sure there's a correlation between ethical behavior and people who study business ethics in college, either.
All I know is that discussions about business ethics are rare during economic booms. Nobody from the Pope on down seems to care much about the subject until long after the money is gone.
"I picked a great time to be a business ethics professor," O'Toole concedes. "These are boom years."
Al's Emporium, written by Dow Jones Newswires columnist Al Lewis, offers commentary and analysis on a wide range of business subjects through an unconventional perspective. He can be reached at 212-416-2617 or by email at al.lewis@dowjones.com, or on his blog at tellittoal.com.
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