Uh Oh, The Moral World Just Got More Complicated

Last updated on: April 29, 2016 at 12:19 pm by D. G. Hart

Uh Oh, The Moral World Just Got More Complicated 2016-04-29T12:19:02-04:00 D. G. Hart

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First comes word that Brazilians love the Confederate Flag:

If you guessed Santa Barbara D’Oeste, Brazil, you hit it on the nose. One of the more odd Civil-War-related articles I’ve seen in a while was carried by USA Today over the weekend. (You can read it here.) The article, titled “Why These Brazilians Love the Confederate Flag,” was timed to coincide with an annual festival in this south Brazilian city sponsored by the Fraternidade Descendencia Americana.

The F.D.A. is an organization of descendants of southern Confederates who emigrated to Brazil at the close of the Civil War. The “Confederados,” as they are known locally, gather each spring to celebrate their Confederate heritage. They dress up like rebel soldiers and southern belles, consume large quantities of fried chicken and watermelon, and proudly exhibit Confederate flags–lots of them.

The thrust of the article–written, for reasons that I can’t explain, by a British-born sports writer–is to stress that the Confederate battle flag means something very different in Brazil than it does in the United States. Here the flag has long been divisive, hailed by defenders as a reminder of a proud heritage, descried by critics as a symbol of hate.

This is not the case in Santa Barbara D’Oueste, apparently. Everyone interviewed–from the president of the Fraternidade Descendencia Americana to a local historian to nine-year-old Bruno Lucke–agree that the flag carries no racist connotations whatever. “To me,” little Bruno says, “the flag is a symbol of love.”

Should this news be the basis for some sort of U.S. sanction of the South American nation?

Next is an understanding of Roman Catholic social teaching that suggest stays in purgatory may be lengthening:

In terms of Catholic social teaching, some of the most profound insights in this area are found in Caritas in veritate, Pope Benedict XVI’s social encyclical from 2009. One of the main themes of this encyclical is that “every economic decision has a moral consequence.” Accordingly, Pope Benedict calls for a “profoundly new way of understanding business enterprise”. He argues that when corporations see themselves as responsible only to their shareholders, the common good is not served. Instead, businesses are called upon to acknowledge a broader responsibility to a wider array of stakeholders—including workers, suppliers, consumers, the natural environment, and society at large.

If every single purchase, ATM withdrawal, stock investment, tax payment has moral significance, how could we ever turn over our retirement investments to Vanguard or TIAA-CREF? Heck, who will stand on that great day?

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