Sean Angoco ENG 300 – Sneed Formal Assignment 4 Final Draft: 08/07/14 Assignment 4 Capitalism: A Love Story by Michael Moore is a comedic at times documentary exploring the subject of capitalism in the United States. Michael Moore, an avid political activist, is best know for his comedic documentaries. Moore's films are famous, or infamous, for entreating a subject to a comedic style of analysis and interpretation. In Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore conducts a thorough analysis of capitalism and it's effect on Americans. Moore openly opposes capitalism and even states, “capitalism is an evil, and you can not regulate evil.” What exactly does Moore mean by evil? According to The Oxford Dictionary evil is defined as such, “(Of a force or spirit) …show more content…
In fact, according to Father Peter Dougherty capitalism is “radically evil.” Father Dougherty is not the only Catholic to support this argument. Catholics in this film prescriptively condemn capitalism as a sin. Throughout the film we are inundated with pious dogma which claims a moral authority over Americans and their finances. Does the Catholic Church practice what they preach? Capitalism: A Love Story is inaccurate in it's portrayal of the Catholic Church's relationship to capitalism. The Catholic Church demonstrates an ambiguous and capricious attitude towards capitalism at best. Capitalism: A Love Story opens to scenes from Life In Ancient Rome. The narration condemns Roman economic and social practices calling them the “seeds of decay”. Corollaries are made between modern America and the Roman Empire which imply that we will follow in suit, including Romes eventual ruination. What we are not told beyond the reasons given is that Sean Angoco 1 Emperor Constantine I in 313 lessened sanctions against Christianity which supported the early growth of the Catholic Church. In 330 Constantine then split Rome into halves. The …show more content…
Moore started with a presumption and found the perfect cluster of data to support this conclusion that capitalism is evil. The clergy in this film are that cluster of data. Capitalism: A Love Story sets out with confirmation bias and weakly connects the dots in a way that while favourable enough to the Catholic Church to be considered a unique Catholic achievement in film; is a misrepresentation of the Catholic Church in relation to capitalism. It seems so far that Sean Angoco 3 capitalism is something the church supports. To be clear, the clergy in Moore's film make some excellent points from the divine command theory perspective. Jesus succinctly seems to support that the poor are in fact blessed and the rich not so much. If three guys from Michigan were telling me this that would be one thing. This is however, another; three guys with official positions within the Catholic Church are telling us what the Catholic Church has to say about capitalism. Christopher Hitchens, noted author of God Is Not Great, was an outspoken anti-theist who quarrelled religious moral hegemony with wit, humour, and clarity. In his book Hitch 22 Hitchens recalls his first image of Catholicism while in Malta as such “plump shepherds,