ABSTRACT
Many moralists speak of love as the one fundamental and universal moral principle, the golden rule honored in all traditions. The Love that moves the sun and all the stars is ours to give to others. God wished to show what he is made of, to let us look behind the veil at the Love that moves the sun and all the stars, and to draw us into acts of caritas. In all realism, the institutions of this world must presuppose mercy and forgiveness, not the expectation of perfect love. For the poor, capitalism has no rival in offering the opportunity to move out of poverty in a very short time. The empirical test is to examine which economic system is present in every successful democracy in the world. The sociologist Peter Berger, against his own earlier predilections, has shown in The Capitalist Revolution that among all existing nations capitalism is a necessary condition for democracy.
