Max Weber's thesis in his book “The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism” is that the Protestant world is economically more successful than the Catholic world due to the influence of the Protestant religion in each of its individuals: love for work, honesty, savings and a permitted attachment to material possessions. Which is something that Catholicism only half preached on Sundays but did not control or promote in the daily life of the people.
Based on his own statistical studies in Germany in the early 20th century, Weber begins by noting that the Protestants are involved in the ownership of capital more than Catholics. The first cause of this difference is that the Protestant Reformation gave a more strict church-religious domination
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This suggests that the causes are specific from religious aspects rather than historical and political eventualities.
The preference for humanism at the expense of science could be explained by a greater "unworldliness" by the Catholicism that has educated the faithful in a spirit of indifference to worldly material goods. Protestants see this as laziness; Catholics on the other hand see Protestants as materialistic. Weber implied that the Catholics are conformist and prefer to be safe, while Protestants dare with danger and excitement.
Furthermore, Weber emphasizes that the most characteristic attitudes of modern capitalism were promoted originally by the work ethic preached by ascetic Protestantism. With this designation Weber refers to the various denominations and sects that declared themselves heirs to a greater or lesser extent, of the principles of Calvin first Huguenots, and Puritans, and later Pietism and Methodist, among other groups. The importance of this common heritage lies in the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, that is, the idea that God has already chosen his owns before everything, and that nothing can be done for those who are eternally