During Moon Griffon’s Monday radio program (11 Dec. 2023), he recounted what he’s seen on recent trips to Texas and Tennessee.  He sounded downright captivated by the large numbers of ‘young professionals’ and ‘construction cranes’ he saw; he proclaimed over and over again that economic development is the ‘engine’ of a State’s ‘train’.  Someone listening would come away with the idea that nothing is more important to a community of people than her economy.

Is that the case?  Some simple thought experiments will tell us.

Suppose Louisiana’s GDP were growing at 5% per year, but that this led to a massive influx of rude, know-it-all, Left-leaning Yankees from Boston, Mass., and Portland, Oregon, etc.  Would we be content with such a situation?

Suppose Louisiana’s GDP were growing at 10% per year, but that this led to a massive influx of people even more culturally different than Yankees, such as Indonesians, Turks, and Somalis.  Would we be content with such a situation?

Suppose Louisiana’s GDP were growing at an astounding 20% per year, but that all this material abundance caused most of the population to reject the Christian Faith.  Would we be content with such a situation?

Obviously, some things are more valuable than the economy.  Louisiana could learn some indispensable lessons from Europe in this regard.  Because of extremely low birth rates, European countries have opened their borders wide to attract cheap Asian and African labor to prop up their economies (and there are more sinister motives, too); the results have been devastating:

Mass migration over the past two decades has changed the character of Western European societies. Last year net immigration to the UK reached a record 745,000. In the once-isolated and homogenous Republic of Ireland, one in five of today’s residents was born abroad. These sorts of seismic demographic changes inevitably raise concerns about how our countries and communities are being changed, and why. They threaten to alter the meaning of citizenship, of our stake in society. . . . To live in a multi-cultural society, however, under divisive rules and self-loathing laws imposed from the top down, feels more like a denial of the national culture and established values that held people together. The woke EU elites are not merely oblivious to these popular concerns. They have actively sought to weaponise mass migration as a political and cultural ‘wedge,’ to weaken Europe’s traditional national and community loyalties.

A talented writer/analyst Perrin Lovett reminds us, ‘The three pillars of Western Civilization are Christianity, the Greco-Roman legacy, and the heritage(s) of the European nations.’  Let us beware.

Holy men down through the centuries have also warned about the negative effects of desiring money, comfort, etc.  A recent saint, St. Theophan the Recluse (+1894), warns us,

Woe to those who are rich, who are full, who laugh, and who are praised. But good shall come to those who endure every wrongful accusation, beating, robbery, or compulsory difficulty. This is com­pletely opposite to what people usu­ally think and feel! The thoughts of God are as far from human thoughts as heaven is from the earth. How else could it be? We are in exile; and it is not remarkable for those in exile to be offended and in­sulted. We are under a penance; the penance consists of deprivations and labors. We are sick; and most useful for the sick are bitter medi­cines. The Savior Himself all of His life did not have a place to lay His head, and He finished his life on the cross — why should his followers have a better lot? The Spirit of Christ is the spirit of preparedness to suffer and bear good-naturedly all that is sorrowful. Comfort, arro­gance, splendor, and ease are all foreign to its searching and tastes. Its path lies in the fruitless, dreary desert. The model is the forty-year wandering of the Israelites in the desert. Who follows this path? Ev­eryone who sees Canaan beyond the desert, boiling over with milk and honey. During his wandering he too receives manna, however not from the earth, but from heav­en; not bodily, but spiritually. All the glory is within.

A much older saint, St. John Chrysostom (+407), who remains nevertheless one of the greatest preachers of the Church, adds to that his own warnings about aspirations for wealth in his commentary on St. Paul’s First Letter to Timothy:

It is a plague that so seizes all, some more, some less, but all in a degree. Like a fire catching a wood, that desolates and destroys all around, this passion has laid waste the world. Kings, magistrates, private persons, the poor, women, men, children, are all alike affected by it. As if a gross darkness had overspread the earth, no one is in his sober senses.

Like St. Theophan, St. John also counsels us on how to overcome the desire for material abundance:

What then is to be done? How shall we extinguish this flame? For though it has risen up to heaven itself, it is to be extinguished. We have only to be willing, and we shall be able to master the conflagration. For as by our will it has got head, so it may be brought under by our will. Did not our own choice cause it, and will not the same choice avail to extinguish it? Only let us be willing. But how shall that willingness be engendered? If we consider the vanity and the unprofitableness of wealth, that it cannot depart hence with us, that even here it forsakes us, and that whilst it remains behind, it inflicts upon us wounds that depart along with us. If we see that there are riches There, compared to which the wealth of this world is more despicable than dung. If we consider that it is attended with numberless dangers, with pleasure that is temporary, pleasure mingled with sorrow. If we contemplate aright the true riches of eternal life, we shall be able to despise worldly wealth. If we remember that it profits nothing either to glory, or health, or any other thing; but on the contrary drowns men in destruction and perdition. If thou consider that here thou art rich, and hast many under thee, but that when thou departest hence, thou wilt go naked and solitary. If we often represent these things to ourselves, and listen to them from others, there will perhaps be a return to a sound mind, and a deliverance from this dreadful punishment.

With those warnings as guard rails, we may then safely recognize that wealth is not evil in and of itself; it can be used for good ends, though we often misuse it.  St. John says about this,

For it is possible to use wealth in well doing, and even through means of it to inherit the kingdom. But now what was given us for the relief of the poor, to make amends for our past sins, to win a good report, and to please God, this we employ against the poor and wretched, or rather against our own souls, and to the high displeasure of God.

As of now, it seems likely that the subject of economic development will take up a fair amount of time and energy in the 2024 session of the Louisiana Legislature.  With all this in mind, we hope their efforts will be channeled in certain beneficial directions:

• Promote policies which incentivize outsiders to assimilate into Louisiana culture rather than adulterate it with unsuccessful and deleterious outside influences;
• Encourage native Louisiana citizens to stay and to have babies by offering married parents with 3 or more children economic rewards – lower taxes, debt cancellation, grants to buy a home or a vehicle, etc.  Hungary is way ahead of us with regards to these kinds of family-strengthening policies; and
• Focus economic development efforts on rural areas so Louisianans won’t be confined to a handful of megacities.  There are deep metaphysical truths dwelling in those primordial stories of God placing the first man and woman before their Fall in a Garden, while Cain the murderer and his offspring went off and founded the first cities.  People flourish better when they live near the land; we ought to allow as many Louisianans as possible to do so.  This is the Southerner’s birthright, after all, his way of life for more than four centuries now.  (For more on Eden and the South, we recommend the native Louisiana poet David Middleton’s latest book of poems, Outside the Gates of Eden.)

All of these measures together would help ensure the survival and strengthening of Louisiana’s native cultures, something that should be uppermost in our considerations.  But there is still the matter of how to use any increase in wealth that may accrue after reforms are implemented.  Prof. Alexander Riley provides a helpful example from our mother country of France:

On what grounds, then, do we consider such lives [of modern people—W.G.] more fulfilled and human than those of the peasants depicted in Jean-François Millet’s painting The Angelus, who humbly pray in their potato fields the prayer that marks the conclusion of the workday?  Yes, the Millet is just a painting, but Ladurie and other evidence suggests to us that it was inspired by people who really existed.

Those people of the past lived without all the technological advances we have, and yet they still built Notre-Dame and invented plainchant and designed and constructed vessels that made it all the way around the world driven by nothing but the power of the wind. Yes, we’ve been to the Moon. I do not think, however, I am the only person who finds Notre Dame and plainchant more moving inventions than a video of astronauts bouncing around on the Moon’s surface.

The upshot here is that, after legitimate needs are met, we need to use our wealth to glorify God, not pamper ourselves.  As things stand today, Louisianans are far wealthier than medieval Frenchmen, and yet what magnificent works have we built for the glory of God and the salvation of men?  We build giant sports arenas and shopping malls, but no grand churches or other Christian arts that will inspire future generations to believe in God or to worship and adore Him.  We ought to change that as soon as possible.

The future course of Louisiana will be decided to a great degree in 2024.  Will we be better or worse afterwards?  Every one of us will play a role in the eventual outcome, for which we will be responsible to Christ and to our neighbor and to past and future generations of Louisianans.  May God help us, then, through the prayers of Louisiana’s patron St. Martin of Tours, to make the right choices that all would be for the better.