According to the Archbishop of Westminster, the economic downturn could be the very thing that brings us to our senses, the The Times (London) reports. “It’s the end of a certain kind of selfish capitalism,” Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor said. “This particular recession is a moment – a kairos – when we have to reflect as a country on what are the things that nourish the values, the virtues, we want to have … Capitalism needs to be underpinned with regulation and a moral purpose.”

The reports adds that he will stand down soon as the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Britain, which he has been for nine years, but before he goes he wants to make one final plea to Britons to change their ways. He told The Times that he had advised Gordon Brown to complement his National Economic Council with a moral one, to “rediscover the things that make for a healthy society”.

He said: “One feels very sorry for those losing their jobs but in times of recession people have to rely on friends and neighbours and families and things that really matter to them. That may be a good thing. I think people did lose their way a bit. It has been difficult to bring up children with the kind of values we want. Let’s face it, we now have a ‘me, me’ society, a more consumerist society, a utilitarian society, and our values and virtues have become diminished.

“Some of it has got to do with having too much. If your worth just depends on your wealth, that is not healthy. Your worth should depend on who you are.”

So the free market and capitalism caused the moral decay of Western societies? OK. My reading of history is somewhat different, I am afraid. What ideology was created at the very moment the moral decay of society started? Let me think… somewhere at the end of the 19th century and causing even more havoc and destruction in the 20th… Hmm….

Was that capitalism or what’s that word again, socialism?

Right, moral values were destroyed when socialism, or its less radical but not less destructive little brother laborism, had tremendous impact. This is because not the ideology of freedom but socialism focuses completely on the material world. You can’t get more materialistic than socialism (well, communism tops socialism, but they’re brothers as well); socialism focuses solely on the material world. It aimed solely at creating similar living conditions for all people. Socialism rejects an afterlife, it rejects moral values, tradition, and everything else that serves as the foundation of a moral and just society.

The cardinal could use a history lesson or two; perhaps that’ll make him understand that not freedom but socialism caused his church to lose its relevance.