Someone on Facebook asked,

I've had some run-ins of late with the so-called "prosperity gospel" of protestants. This is the disgusting belief that one's riches are blessings from God... and that those who are not rich are not blessed by God. Does anyone have any idea what ridiculous, scripture-based rationalization they use to support this garbage?

To which I responded:

It originates from Calvinism, with its heretical notion of Predestination (some are created for heaven; others are created for Hell) and the only way to know which group you are in -- or any person -- is to see if God is "blessing you" with material wealth. The Puritans were essentially a branch of this, and they helped found America -- or at least the White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant part of it. But surprisingly, this thinking is deep within the American psyche, even today! Just look at a dirty, smelly homeless man, and ask yourself "is he going to heaven?" A tiny voice says "no". People still associate poverty with crime/evil, even though the two have no connection whatsoever.

Poor people can still have morality. Many saints were poor. Being poor doesn't make you a criminal any more than being white or having blond hair. Choosing to commit crime is a product of one's upbringing, religion, morality, and most important: FREE WILL. There are poor people who would never steal, and rich people who steal all the time!

In my old hometown, the rich white kids on the "good side of the river" where the ones who drove around town bashing mailboxes, stealing car stereos, committing vandalism, etc. even more so than those on the "bad side of the river". It had nothing to do with yearly income.

Oliver - I had a failed business several years ago that failed in part because my "partner" believed this stuff.
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Matthew - If Calvinism were rational -- or even Scriptural -- I wouldn't be a member of this group because I'd join Calvinism. But I'm not Calvinist for a reason. Like all protestant sects, they don't have a leg to stand on.
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Mark - Read "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" by Max Weber. A great book that goes through the ideas of Luther and Calvin and contrasts them with Catholicism.
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Matthew - 1 Corinthians 9:27
But I chastise my body, and bring it into subjection: lest perhaps, when I have preached to others, I myself should become a castaway.
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Matthew -  1 Corinthians 4:4
For I am not conscious to myself of any thing, yet am I not hereby justified; but he that judgeth me, is the Lord.
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Oliver - But we all know that protestants love to point out memorized King James passages. Which passage in the King James bible says, "And the Lord spake unto the masses saying, 'if thou art destitute, thou shalt burn in the farthest reaches of Hell because thou art repugnant and smelly.'"?
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Matthew - As you can see, Predestination is not Scriptural. Also: Luke 16:22
And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham' s bosom. And the rich man also died: and he was buried in hell.

An excellent response, Matthew.

Calvinism is also the mother of Capitalism itself, which is why American conservatism has such an insidious effect on Catholics. Neocaths (like Michael Novak, Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, and Acton Institute founder Fr. John Sirico, who just happens to have been a Sodomite Activist* before his putative "conversion") who defend and uphold the godless, usurious capitalist system which our nation holds far dearer than Almighty God Himself, have been de-Catholicized / Calvinized in a very fundamental way, at the very level of the Sensus Catholicus. It's a form of idolatry, not only the more obvious kind (worship of Mammon), but also a subtler kind, which attacks the proper Catholic view of Divine Providence, and man's duty to behave morally in all matters - including economics - and replaces these with fideistic belief in the "Invisible Hand;" the idol of the Libertarians and Laissez-Faire cultists who believe that the fewer fetters are placed on fallen, sinful man in his pursuit of lucre, the more this mysterious Newtonian "force" will magically exert itself on society and make men good and happy.

*This connection is especially fitting when viewed in the context of Dante's Inferno, wherein Sodomites and Usurers are placed in the very same circle of Hell for their similar perversions against nature - the former for taking what is by nature fertile and making it sterile, and the latter for taking what is by nature sterile and making it fertile.