Clan Murphy/Idylls Press has a personal and immediate interest in the current “mortgage crisis”: we’re trying to sell our lovely old 1915 Craftsman house so we can complete our relocation to Ashland, OR. (Dan is already down there–Ashland is 200 miles south of our present home in Salem–and the double-rent/weekend commute is getting s-p-e-n-d-y. Salem’s real estate market, though “softened”, as the RE folks like to say, is at least not in the ditch it is in other parts of the country, and for this we are grateful; but the mortgage lending crisis has definitely cast a shadow over potential sales, and we’re among those in the country wondering where in the heck George Bailey has got himself off to.

In case you’re one of the few in the country who have never seen It’s a Wonderful Life (in my view, the best American Christmas movie ever made), it’s about an ambitious young man with Wanderlust (George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart) whose deep sense of decency and personal/familial/social responsibility keeps him tied to a job he loathes: managing his late father’s Bailey Building & Loan. The main purpose of this “cheap, penny-ante building and loan”, as George himself puts it, is to provide affordable loans to working class families who would otherwise be forced to pay exhorbitant rents to “the richest man in town,” Mr. Potter—hink “Ebenezer Scrooge” without the Dickensian sense of humor.

Facing at last the mother-of-all-professional and personal crises, George, thinking himself a complete failure, is tempted to end it all. But George doesn’t quite realize the host of friends he has made along the way, and the prayers of these good people have earned him a wonderful gift: the chance, by way of a seemingly inept Guardian Angel named Clarence, to see what life in Bedford Falls—now “Pottersville”—would be like if he had never been born. It ain’t a pretty picture.

From a Catholic perspective, one of the great things about this movie is its admirable display of Catholic Social Teaching in action. Here’s what George himself says to Mr. Potter in the critical Building & Loan board meeting that ends George’s dreams of travel and adventure forever:

You’re right when you say my father was no businessman. I know that. Why he ever started this cheap, penny-ante Building and Loan, I’ll never know. But neither you nor anyone else can say anything against his character, because his whole life was - why, in the twenty-five years since he and Uncle Billy started this thing, he never once thought of himself. Isn’t that right, Uncle Billy? He didn’t save enough money to send Harry to school, let alone me. But he did help a few people get out of your slums, Mr. Potter, and what’s wrong with that? Why - here, you’re all businessmen here. Doesn’t it make them better citizens? Doesn’t it make them better customers? You - you said - what’d you say a minute ago? They had to wait and save their money before they even ought to think of a decent home. Wait? Wait for what? Until their children grow up and leave them? Until they’re so old and broken down that they… Do you know how long it takes a working man to save five thousand dollars? Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you’re talking about… they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath? Anyway, my father didn’t think so. People were human beings to him. But to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they’re cattle. Well, in my book he died a much richer man than you’ll ever be…

G.K. Chesterton couldn’t have said it better.

Stephen Marglin, a Harvard economist, has a nice little op-ed piece on this subject in the Boston Globe, entitled “Where have you gone, George Bailey?” Read it here.

Tags: catholic social teaching, Clan Murphy, George Bailey, housing, idylls press, It's a Wonderful Life, mortgage crisis