Every economic decision has an impact on ethics: Card. Bertone

November 03, 2012: Behind every economic action there is an aspect of ethics, because the economy is a human sphere. Ethics is not an addition but economic action is intrinsic to the economy properly understood, said Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican Secretary of State on Saturday evening. He was addressing a meeting on ‘ethics, economy and society’ in the Province of Cuneo, Italy.
He said that the economic experts of Christian inspiration can easily show that every economic decision has an impact on ethics, and therefore is the result of personal responsibility.
The crisis that the world suffer from today is not only economic but ethical. This crisis stems from an ethics which is not human friendly, which can be called nihilistic and individualist ethics, the Cardinal explained.
The difficulties of genuine dialogue between ethics and economics in our society today are largely due to the abandonment of the principle of fraternity.
Quoting Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Bertone said that the foundation of human rights, “are rooted in the natural law inscribed on human hearts and present in different cultures and civilizations. Removing human rights from this context would mean restricting their range and yielding to a relativistic conception."
About the ethical challenge in Europe, Cardinal Bertone said that as Europeans, we must strive to reproduce in each generation the basic ethics that founded Europe as the home of human rights, dignity and inviolability of the person. Unless Europe rediscovers the link between being and doing, and consequently the link between ethics and politics, as well as the positive contribution of religion to its growth, we will be missing the tools to address the questions posed by the present time.