Stealing Customer Money on a Grand Scale
Imagine stealing your customers' money on a massive scale and getting caught. Wouldn't you think that either you'd be arrested and/or forced to make restitution?
When Jon Corzine headed a futures brokerage named MF Global, over $1 billion in client money "disappeared." Of course, money like this doesn't just disappear. Someone took it. Corzine was head of the company when this happened. You might think he'd be held accountable in some significant way. So far that hasn't happened. In public testimony, he just said he didn't know what happened. And he walks around a free man.
The money is still "missing."
Now comes a story of a second futures brokerage firm, Perigrine, also known as PFGBest. $220 million in customer money is missing. The head of the firm tried to commit suicide as soon as this came to light. It certainly does appear that there's a connection, but the evidence hasn't come in yet.
None of the customer money in either case has been restored to the customers. Worse, some of the customers at PFGBest were former customers of MF Global. I don't know whether any of them lost money twice, but that's certainly plausible.
We Catholics know that stealing is wrong. But I think there's more here than stealing going on. I think we're looking at a world that is reaping what it has sowed for decades: a rejection of truth in favor of "relativism." Our Holy Father, Benedict XVI, has spoken eloquently about this, even giving it a name: the Dictatorship of Relativism. If you haven't read or heard his comments, or weren't sure exactly what he means, or what the practical implications of a Dictatorship of Relativism might be, I think we've got two good examples here.
The MF Global collapse - and now the PFGBest situation - shows us how far we've progressed in our journey away from Truth. We're a society that embraces "relatvism" - which denies the existence of objective truth. Basically, relativism says that what's "true for me" may not be "true for you." It also denies the objectivity of good and evil: what I consider a morally good or bad action may differ from what you consider a morally good or bad action - and there's no way to decide who's right and who's wrong. The only thing that matters is what I (or you) think or feel about something.
When Jon Corzine headed a futures brokerage named MF Global, over $1 billion in client money "disappeared." Of course, money like this doesn't just disappear. Someone took it. Corzine was head of the company when this happened. You might think he'd be held accountable in some significant way. So far that hasn't happened. In public testimony, he just said he didn't know what happened. And he walks around a free man.
The money is still "missing."
Now comes a story of a second futures brokerage firm, Perigrine, also known as PFGBest. $220 million in customer money is missing. The head of the firm tried to commit suicide as soon as this came to light. It certainly does appear that there's a connection, but the evidence hasn't come in yet.
None of the customer money in either case has been restored to the customers. Worse, some of the customers at PFGBest were former customers of MF Global. I don't know whether any of them lost money twice, but that's certainly plausible.
We Catholics know that stealing is wrong. But I think there's more here than stealing going on. I think we're looking at a world that is reaping what it has sowed for decades: a rejection of truth in favor of "relativism." Our Holy Father, Benedict XVI, has spoken eloquently about this, even giving it a name: the Dictatorship of Relativism. If you haven't read or heard his comments, or weren't sure exactly what he means, or what the practical implications of a Dictatorship of Relativism might be, I think we've got two good examples here.
The MF Global collapse - and now the PFGBest situation - shows us how far we've progressed in our journey away from Truth. We're a society that embraces "relatvism" - which denies the existence of objective truth. Basically, relativism says that what's "true for me" may not be "true for you." It also denies the objectivity of good and evil: what I consider a morally good or bad action may differ from what you consider a morally good or bad action - and there's no way to decide who's right and who's wrong. The only thing that matters is what I (or you) think or feel about something.
People can disagree on whether something is true or not true; we can disagree about whether something is good or evil. But once we deny that there's any objective Truth, or objective Good and Bad - bad as in "evil" - we're in trouble.
Never mind the financial services industry, the fact is relativism has so taken over our entire society that you hardly find any reference to true and false, or good and evil, in any meaningful way. You may get a reference to whether a statistic or some other fact is true or false, but that's about it.
We Catholics stand together (I hope) against the Dictatorship of Relativism. If you haven't understood how important this is, now is the time to focus your attention and realize that we are truly the last hope in a world gone wrong.
We're the last hope because we understand that there is right and there is wrong. We are not misled by the relativists and their attempt to confuse people on this issue. And we're not "tolerant" of such relativist arguments.
We bring our understanding of the Truth with us each day to work, in the midst of this Dictatorship of Relativism. And by our thoughts, words, and actions, we give an example of how the workplace - indeed the whole world - ought to function.
If being the last hope for the world seems daunting, don't worry about it. Just pray that you do God's Will each day. If you come up short, tell Our Lord you're sorry, and start over again.
We can't be overwhelmed by the size and number of examples that demonstrate that the Dictatorship of Relativism currently rules the decisions of so many people in our society. As the last hope of the world, we can't afford to be overwhelmed.
It reminds me of the words to the old hymn: "Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war."
That's why we're called the Church Militant, right?
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