Why Nations Fail is a popular title of a book and study in the field of economic growth and development literature. It goes that good institutions like the courts, schools, universities, etc are essential to strong democracies and a well-functioning state that can resist the constant minority elite attack on institutions. The authors study throughout history why institutions collapsed, like the Roman Empire, or why resource-rich countries in South America and Africa are so prone to elitist groups corrupting and looting the state. Strong democracies are associated with strong institutions. When weakness infiltrates the institution, it slowly decays and rots, eventually collapsing a once strong institution.
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| Midday Mass at Notre Dame of Paris Cathedral, 4 May 2026 |
South Africa is known as a young democracy but with a well-formulated constitution. In recent years our democracy has been tested and continues to endure attacks on the state, with much emphasis from a small minority elite group that is trying to take hold of the very fabric of the good institutions necessary to maintain a well-functioning state. If you corrupt the police, state security and military you take out the first line of defence. Next follows corrupting the courts; then you open the way to loot the Treasury and Central Bank, and then a full-scale heist of the country's money straight into the hands of the power-hungry elite. South Africa has shown weakness in some areas, collapsing the public offices intended to maintain peace and security, but in other cases the democracy's strong institutions have held firm and successfully resisted. The point is that institutions can fail when ill-intentioned people are given the opportunity to take hold of them.
Now think of the Catholic Church established by Our Lord about 2,000 years ago. If we for a moment think of it as an institution (less than ideal but useful to make a point), why has it not failed? What makes it different from non-denominational churches that pop up but soon run into petty issues, and then the community and congregation hop to the next pop-up? Could the Catholic Church standing the test of time be a sign that it is the true Church? It doesn't mean it's free from problems; where people are involved, there will always be problems because you and I are sinners, but the Church in her wisdom deals with problems.
In the previous blog, I mentioned I travelled to Paris for a work trip. The most amazing part of the trip was that it is abundant in churches, meaning finding a parish to go to Mass is not mission impossible. In fact, on a weekday, some parishes offer 3-4 celebrations of the Mass a day. I could attend Mass following the same structure and rite as I do in South Africa in the middle of Paris, but the only difference it was in French. Most importantly, I received Our Lord in the Eucharist in the same way as any other Catholic in the world.
The universality of the Catholic Church is what makes it even more mysterious that despite all the differences in culture, language, country and diversity, the Church remains united as one body under Christ, with the Pope as her shepherd on earth. History is littered with examples of how the emperors hungry for power slowly crippled the Roman Empire. If we study the Ottomans, the Chinese dynasty, the Kingdom of Congo, etc same story, different people but the same diagnosis. So, what if the Pope was just some man-made-up title? Surely the Catholic Church should have crumbled a long time ago like other empires? Surely, the corruption of man should have sent it tumbling?
So what makes the Church different? It was founded on a foundation laid down by Our Lord himself. "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it." (Matthew 16:18). As I mentioned already, but I want to reiterate, the Church is not exempt from the rot of evil. Sin is everywhere; we inherit it at our birth, and you will have cases where good-intentioned people, even people like priests, fall prey to the evil one or temptation, but to confuse the sin of one man as a basis of the entire Church not being under God's mantle and protection is to confuse having a headache with a terminal illness that will bring about your immediate death. Our Lord never said that the Church would be free from the attacks of evil but rather that the gates of hell would never prevail over it.
The Pope is the custodian of the Church on earth, and like a good shepherd, he needs to be on the lookout for the dangers of wolves dressed in sheep's clothing who lurk in the shadows waiting to devour the flock one-by-one. We are all sinners, and all make mistakes, but the Church is the home that restores us because the Holy Spirit has passed through every generation from the time of Pentecost to our present Pope Leo XIV in an unbroken line.
We now see in a very visible way how the Holy Spirit continues to lead and direct the Church through divine inspiration. The Pope has published his first encyclical, a letter he writes, like many of his former predecessors, on the issues of our time. In the forthcoming blogs, I will focus on elements of the encyclical, but for this blog, Chapter 1 has some gems that can help answer why the Church is built on a foundation laid by the hands of God Himself. You may ask why I should listen to the Pope as a Christian, and I will say it's a good question but will throw it back to you. Why do you read Peter's letters in the New Testament or the Acts of the Apostles? Those were written after Jesus rose from the dead; it was not Our Lord's exact words, yet we believe them. If Our Lord gave the Church to Peter and to keep it alive to all those who take the keys on and forward from Peter, then that is why we listen to the Pope, because it is the same Spirit alive and kicking from generation to generation that keeps the tradition of wisdom alive.
The Church has the Social Doctrine laid out to not replace how politics or institutions ought to run but provides us a guide to direct and aid our discernment as ordinary people in the middle of the world. Pope Leo explains that the social doctrine helps promote and ensure that we place the dignity of the person, vitality of communities and the common good at the forefront of all we do. As a banker, teacher, government official or business owner, do I put the person second, neglect the vulnerable or make choices out of self-interest? These are the questions that we all face no matter our profession. We make decisions that impact people, and the key point the Pope reminds us is that we need to sometimes stop and discern if we are making decisions with a Christian conscience.
If we are one body scattered like seed across the different nations of the world but called to be apostles in the middle of the world, this call from the Pope is a reminder that the Church is not made up of the religious only. The Church has a special place for the religious, but the Church is actually made up of a majority of people who are just like you and me. People working in the world but united by one baptism. So when the world starts turning upside down, trying to allow evil to creep in and turn humanity off course, it is the call of every Christian, of you and me, the domestic church, to make the right choices and decisions. Decisions as small as how I treat the day's problems with a Christian heart, because we have the power to transform and inject the call for the common good into the very fabric of society.
"Therefore, when the dignity of our brothers and sisters is violated, when politics fails to address the tragedies of humanity, when the economy turns against the person or science oversteps the limits of its competence, the Church — together with other Christian denominations and believers of other religions — must make her voice heard, not in order to dominate, but to promote communion. Understood in this way, Social Doctrine becomes a theology of communion in history, a history in which the Word made flesh continues to be present through dialogue, memory and prophecy." (Magnifica humanitas, Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical).
I recall a story I read in a fascinating book titled The Blood of Martyrs; the story of Emperor Julian captures something of the spiritual sickness that had weakened Rome from within. Add to that it was the ambition of Romans to persecute and condemn Christians over several centuries. Julian wanted to restore Rome’s ancient military glory together with its pagan gods, and he marched against Persia dreaming of fame, conquest and greatness like Alexander the Great. Before the campaign, he tried to corrupt the Christian soldiers in his army by tricking them into offering incense to the pagan gods as they received their pay, but when they realised what had happened, they threw the tainted money back and refused to sell their faith.
Julian then pressed on into Persia with ambition and pride, listening to flatterers instead of wise counsel. His army was accompanied by a fleet on the Persian rivers, but in a reckless attempt to show that there would be no retreat, he ordered the ships to be burned. This left the Romans trapped deep in Persian territory, with no easy way back, little food and water, and surrounded by enemies who burned the fields and blocked their path. In the end, the army that had marched out chasing glory fell into the mercy of the Persians, worn down by hunger, pride and poor judgment. Rome, once a great empire, was continually tempted by greed, fame, fortune and false gods, while the courage of the Christian soldiers revealed where true victory was to be found.
What this story shows us is that despite the thousands of Christian martyrs who spilt their blood at the expense of Romans, in the end that blood was the foundation of the Christian ethos, the Christian heart that you and I carry by virtue of our baptism. Pope Leo XIII (shepherd of the Church from 1878-1903), more than a hundred years ago, spoke words still relevant today, and our current Pope Leo reminds us of these words from his former predecessor's encyclical Rerum novarum that there is no authentic evangelisation that does not also impact the structures of human society. Today, the Roman Empire is only the bedrock of a pagan past that paved the way for the growth and home of the Catholic Church. A city once filled with the stench of brutal murder of innocent Christians is now the place of pilgrims who come together under the umbrella of the universal Church.
Our current Pope Leo, in his encyclical, is jogging our memory of things once past. The industrial revolution brought technology and innovation, but it also brought about new challenges that could and would have displaced families and workers. Today, we don't have the sewing machine set to take a woman sewing by hand in a factory out of work; we have powerful machines being pushed to match the advanced reasoning of human beings. This technology is powerful; it is like the electric chainsaw that replaced lumberjacks' hand-held axes. It is the autopilot mode of a plane that the Wright brothers dreamed was impossible when they tried to simply take to the sky in the first plane.
We use this technology every day. I digress, but this technology makes learning more efficient. This marks the 50th blog since I started blogging in December 2020 and I have added a new page to the blog for the Summa Made Simple, a podcast hosted by a good friend, Fidel Namisi, who takes the dense Summa Theologica and brings it alive in a weekly episode. Now the podcast is real, but AI technology transcribes the words of the speaker. The episodes are really good, but listening is not enough to fully understand, so I prompted GPT to further summarise the episode transcription, accompanying Summa Article and ensure I have a short study note that extracts all the meat to help me remember the core facts of the article. The machine does this in seconds, and without this help I would easily allow the podcast to enter one ear and out the other. So the learning curve with AI is flattened through simplifying tough language or concepts into a level that the ordinary guy on the street can understand. I will summarise all the study notes, but check out episode 1 to see the efficiency gains this technology can bring us.
I gave a simple example; this technology can do far more impressive stuff. The point is we have a real super tool on our hands that will bring about new innovation and advancements. Now, Pope Leo's encyclical is not saying to us to avoid using AI. All Pope Leo is reminding us is that with great power comes great responsibility, and we must not lose the human aspect. We are dealing with machines with no soul. What will always make us superior is that we are people created in God's image and likeness. This technology, like all machines, was built by humans, but the humans who own it and use it need to remain in touch with the power we have over the machine, which is that we are unique, unrepeatable and indispensable, created by Love Himself for the honour and glory of Love. No machine can replicate us or make moral choices and decisions, and that is where the danger creeps in if the rich and famous get their hands on technology for the wrong reasons or firms start allowing the machines to act as the all-knowing. These machines can become what we see in the movies where machines dominate man. We were given dominion over creation in the beginning, and AI is just something created by man. We never let the hammer, car or plane take over the power of us, the user of the tool; instead, we used it to advance. The movie Tron is a pretty cool visualisation of how this can happen. Now, with AI, it should be no different; it should help us work better and smarter but not take out of our heart the motive of charity.
This encyclical points to Pope Benedict XVI's encouragement to place charity at the centre of all we do, "... development, justice, institutions and the market are not neutral realities, but spaces where charity in truth must find historical expression. This teaching is especially relevant today in light of growing inequalities, pressures in the financial markets, the environmental crisis and a lack of trust in politics. It stands as an invitation to evaluate every model of development on its ability to be inclusive and sustainable, to rebuild the relationship between economics and politics on the common good, and to acknowledge the critical and generative role of charity in public life."
So yes, the strand of economic literature argues that good institutions matter and points to this being the reason why some nations fail. It's the secular argument, and it gets at something, but where it lacks is that a good institution is hinged on something that can't be fully measured. To have the common good at the centre of where economics and politics intersect requires a heart of charity. Fr Mike Schmitz, in a recent homily reflection on the Hallow App, reflected on the 250th anniversary of the United States democracy. He recalled the famous words of Benjamin Franklin, "Gentlemen, I have lived a long time and am convinced that God governs in the affairs of men. If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? I move that prayer imploring the assistance of Heaven be held every morning before we proceed to business."
Maybe this is a reminder for all of us to turn our hearts to Our Lord to bring peace in this world of chaos. A children's book on King Solomon closes with the words, "Solomon ruled Israel for forty years. He left a country rich, strong and at peace." (Great Bible Stories, King Solomon). Nations may fail without God, but Mother Church will never, because she was established by God and remains under His rule!
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