Wealth not the problem

Regarding your editorial "Old sins revisited" (NCR, March 21), on Rome's newfound sins: Give me a break. Third-World poverty is not caused by my prosperity. It is caused by psychotic ruling despots who thwart progress by banning the rule of law and property rights, who impede the free market, and who foster corruption. As for the "sin" of having too much money--what hogwash. Let's say I get lucky, like Bill Gates maybe, and start a successful software company. When do I stop amassing wealth in order to ward off sin: After my first billion or my 50th? And how do I stop without sabotaging my company, leaving it prey to competition and putting innocent employees out of work?

Our No. 2 man in the Vatican's Apostolic Penitentiary, Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti, the official who declared these new sins, needs a course in economics. He may then learn that the money rich people make is not stashed away under mattresses. Nor is it all squandered on harlotry and high living, but reinvested in ways that create jobs. And jobs are what poor people want, not handouts. The archbishop may also learn that free enterprise has done more for humankind than 2,000 years of misguided--and always shifting--Catholic social doctrine.

TERRY HALLER

Oxford, Miss.

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