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Richard Wagner on 'the degrading power of money over the image of God'

Monday, 3 Feb 2014

richard Wagner on Staff and Scrip, Dr John Dunn First posted on Sunday, 24 March 2013 at 21:45

Many aspects of this website are about the decline of the rule of the sacred and the rise of the rule of money.

It was the fateful historical collapse that the Church Councils of the Middle Ages attempted and failed to arrest. It was the avarice that crept out of the pores of society to corrupt the Catholic Church and the monster Luther saw on the horizon, about to engulf society in the years of the profane ahead.

The hope of a return to the sacred lived on in hearts that burned intensely with a hatred of the corrupting power of money.

One such was Richard Wagner - and here he is writing about 'the degrading power of money over the image of God'.

John Dunn. 

Here is what Wagner wrote in the Fatherland Union Paper
And when all who draw breath in our dear German land are united into one great free people, when class prejudices shall have ceased to exist, then do you suppose we have reached our goal? Oh, no; we are just equipped for the beginning. Then will it be our duty to investigate boldly . . . the cause of misery of our present social status, and determine whether man . . . can have been destined by God to be the servile slave of inert base metal. We must decide whether money shall exert such degrading power over the image of God — man — as to render him the despicable slave of the passions of usury and avarice. The war against this existing evil will cause neither tears nor blood.
Inthe coming contest we shall find that society will be maintained by the physical activity of individuals,and we shall destroy the nebulous notion that money possesses any inherent power. And heaven will help us .. . dispel the false halo with which the unthinking mind invests this demon money. Then shall we root out the miseries engendered and nourished by public and secret usury, deceptive paper money and fraudulent speculations. This will tend to promote the emancipation of the human race . . .







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