The true antidote to corruption

Katie van Schaijik | Nov 29, 2019

This morning I came across an editorial about Mexican drug cartels. It includes a line from a book called “Mañana Forever” by former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda: 

Instead of the lateral social bonds so crucial to the success of the United States, in Mexico bonds are formed upward and downward, creating a patronage society that fosters corruption and invests power in the elite.

Regular readers will get why it jumped out at me. It's the master/slave dynamic. The solution is obviously to establish and foster "lateral bonds"—social structures and institutions that shelter and fortify human and personal life against Power.

This is exactly what I'm calling for and trying to articulate in the Church. We are suffering from an overplus of hierarchy and patronage coupled with a lack of "lateral" substance and force.

If we want to renew the Church, we have to concentrate on developing those.