The new corruption meter [how does religion affect a nation's level of corruption?]

livemint.com ^ | Jan 14 2011 | Aakar Patel

[Alex Murphy]

The map is a representation of the 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index, an annual list drawn up by Transparency International.

[snip]

The remarkable fact is the clean line dividing Protestant nations and Catholic ones. The Protestants are all on top of the list.

[snip]

Catholic nations across the world tend to be more corrupt than Protestant nations.

[snip]

Every other Catholic nation is more corrupt than its Protestant neighbour. How can we explain this difference between two streams of Christianity?

[snip]

The sociologist Max Weber (died 1920) noticed the difference in prosperity levels between Protestant states (the US, UK and Germany) and Catholic ones (Argentina, Italy, Spain) of the same race. He concluded that the difference came from something he called the Protestant ethic. Protestants carried Christ’s message of doing good work to doing work well. Applied to capitalism, this message became doing honest, hard work.

[snip]

The other stream of Christianity resembling the Catholic faith is the Orthodox Church with its mystical elements. And its nations follow the same pattern as Catholics.

[snip]

Corruption is of two types. The first is transactional, where a bending or breaking of the rule is agreed upon and paid for. This is the common form of corruption. All nations are susceptible to it, because it hinges on the morality of individuals.

The second form of corruption is that where the act of corruption unfolds not from greed but opportunity.

This is the lower form, and more venal.

Here the transaction is forced, and the payer is unwilling and often on the right side of the law. Yet he must bribe because he is vulnerable. It could be to build a house, release a consignment from customs, collect a relative’s corpse from the morgue or collect an income-tax refund.

[Cronos]

What is funny is 7, Netherlands (Protestant), whereas According to the CIA World Factbook,[3] as of 2002 the religious makeup of the Netherlands was 31% Roman Catholic, 13% Dutch Reformed, 7% Calvinist, 5.5% Muslim, 2.5% other and 41% none.

hence the Netherlands is technically more Catholic rather than Protestant

And in Canada according to the CIA fact book Roman Catholic 42.6%, Protestant 23.3% (including United Church 9.5%, Anglican 6.8%, Baptist 2.4%, Lutheran 2%), other Christian 4.4%, so Canada and the Netherlands are both more Catholic than Protestant

Next, Switzerland and from the CIA fact book again Roman Catholic 41.8%, Protestant 35.3%, Muslim 4.3%, Orthodox 1.8%, other Christian -- Catholic, 42%, and Protestant 36%....

Finally, as Katya pointed out, in Germany the most prosperous states are Bavaria and Swabia, both either majority Catholic or largely Catholic, while the poorest part is Eastern Germany which is mostly Protestant.

As you can see in E.Germany's case and others, the branch of Christianity is more coincidental than otherwise.

If one pushes back the envelope to just before the industrial revolution, say 1770, we see that the Catholic countries from Spain, Portugal, France, Austria-Hungary, Bavaria, Poland-lithuania etc are the wealthier.

But then something happens that not only affects the Catholic south and Central Europe but also parts of north Europe like the Netherlands (they never re-captured their glory days of the 1600s) and bypasses the UK which enters it's golden era.

What is it? In my opinion it was revolutionary France and those ideas combined with raising the nation ABOVE God that hit continental Europe.

I see a direct line between the french Revolution and the October 1917 revolution right down to the EU

[Cronos]

"none of it matters if cultural rot is still the result. " --> correct. And in my opinion that rot ties in to the cable of evil that we all have in our houses and to which those who are connected are all now increasingly slaves to (Catholic, Protestant, Moslem, Hindu, all now worship the glowing screen).

I take one case -- HOMOSEXUALITY and the serial "Friends". Don't get me wrong, I like the show, but I can see both in myself and in conservative friends (Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox) how it has subtly affected our stances by showing a gay couple as "ok", "normal". And this was not as extreme as Will&Grace, but you get my meaning on how this show "Friends" affected us. I believe that it also affected societies "sleeping around" and let's live together before marriage ideas, but I have no observations of that as that didn't affect my friends or me:)

[Salvation]

That link isn’t working for me.

[Cronos]

Alex -- your statements that you see the Church as allies of conservative are not shown in the posts you post. A Catholic in chatanooga gets drunk and you find that and post it, a Catholic in Coimbatore kicks a stone and it hits a cow, and you find it and post it.

This persistent playing on small faults of individuals serves only secularists, athiests and Islamists. you may believe it helps the PCA/OPC but it does not

Furthermore, even if you compare the PCA/OPC combine versus Catholicism in numbers: PCA/OPC together = 300,000, Catholics IN THE USA alone, 60 million odd, that's about 200 times the number of PCA/OPC, so 200 times more likely for a few to make a mistake. Furthermore, the tight press control of the PCA/OPC is impossible in The Church of 1 billion. So your posts from a tiny org are hardly "balanced" in any way.

You may not like it, but the Catholic Church is viewed as the hall-mark of Christianity in the non-Christian world. When a non-Catholic pastor of 12 in the US threatens to burn the bible in the US, Catholic Churchs in Pakistan, India, Nigeria, Iraq are attacked. The PCA doesn't exist outside the US and the Catholic Church does -- spreading the gospel in Asia, Americas and Africa and now Europe again. And your statements that you want some kind of solidarity, I'm sorry, ring hollow

[Cronos]

I don’t deny that you may very well believe what you say, but honestly, your thread posting history gives a different impression. It’s one thing to disagree with us on doctrine, but to keep posting every little fault made by every Catholic in some obscure town is quite a different thing and gives the impression which is quite opposite to your statements, unfortunately.

[Natural Law]

I find it very interesting that the most corrupt nations on the planet; the predominantly Protest countries of sub Saharan Africa and the Islamic nations are not mentioned in the summarized list.

Even more interesting was the deletion of my initial post #2 pointing this out.

[littlemermaid]

Australia is actually a majority Catholic country, given vast Irish and Italian immigration.

[Alex Murphy]

Australia is actually a majority Catholic country, given vast Irish and Italian immigration

Welcome to Free Republic! What led you to post on this exactly-three-year-old thread today?

littlemermaid
Since Jan 14, 2014