>What is your opinion of the charges against Catholicism that those Catholic >dummies were inferior and didn/t/couldm't invent capitalism because they >didn't possess the Protestant ethic? Wasn't that bigotry, racism, >prejudice? this question misses the point, a point that people on pen-l (including yours truly) have made several times. If one believes in the Weberian "Protestantism caused capitalism" theory (which I do not), the Catholics could be _praised_ for NOT having created capitalism. After all, capitalism has destroyed the community, the extended family, the reverence of everyday life and the Almighty, and the respect for authority that the Catholics have strived to preserve over the centuries. So the Catholics might be seen as _superior_. I'm not a Catholic, but some of those things (clearly not all of them) are valuable. (BTW, I am an excommunicated Unitarian [;-)]and a hard-core agnostic.) I don't understand your urge to arbitrarily mix normative and positive concerns. Though obviously the two can't be separated absolutely (since one's values inform one's research and vice-versa), your apparent effort to defend the non-European world against the charge of being "dummies" for not foisting capitalism on the world seems silly. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/JDevine.html
