THE NEW WORLD OF THE GOTHIC FOX
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capitalism and modernity."
On the other hand, the encyclical maintains that in a post–
Communist world, where democracy tends to prevail as the principal
model of political governance and market economy as the principal
model of economic activity, the actualization of Catholic social
thought, as an integral part of the Christian message, can render an ines–
timable contribution to the modern world. [t can help to prevent the
economy from absolutization, to avert the regression to a "primitive,"
"radical" or "savage" form of capitalism , to overcome "the phenomena
of marginalization and exploitation, especially in the Third World, as
well as the phenomenon of human alienation, especially in the more ad–
vanced countries," to keep alive the singular value of the individual and
of human conviviality often suffocated between the two poles of the
State and the market,
to
render modern culture open to self-transcen–
dence, disposed to maintain the moral conditions of authentic "human
ecology," of international peace and of fraternal respect for the human
potentialities of the poor.
Despite these cross-purposes, both share the view of the decisiveness
of culture. But their concept of the relationship between culture and
human activity is quite different. Veliz states that "human thought, hu–
man culture, human consciousness, all are founded on the bedrock of
human activity."
Cerlfesimlls Arll1us
considers that "all human activity
takes place within a culture and has a reciprocal relationship to it." [n
other words, whereas Veliz considers culture as grounded in fact and
artifact and practically inseparable from them, the encyclical considers
culture more as a value and project in interrelationship with human
activity, thereby transcending fact and artifact.
This helps us understand that for Veliz artifacts carry with them the
cultural marks of their genesis and do not really have much transcultural
mobility or even transcultural modifiability. "Genesis cannot shape arti–
fact permanently," he writes, "but it does bequeath qualities that are, by
necessity, intrinsic to subsequent modifications." For him modernity,
with the economy as its "prevalent circumstance," must be accepted
lock, stock and barrel, with its "made in England" tag. Thus he even
explains the unprecedented growth of evangelical Protestantism in Latin
America as part and parcel of the adoption of the "culture of industrial
capitalism." He disregards the possibility that one of the causes of this
phenomenon may be the anxious search for the experience of intimate
community, of strict, simple moral guideliness and of intense other–
worldly religiosity, which smaller evangelical groups can provide in a
context where more impersonal associative bonds, more complex discre-
