Category: Catholic Social Thought

My latest article from The Angelus, “Restoring the Integrity of Catholic Social Teaching,” is available online in front of the magazine’s paywall. Here’s a sample:

Catholic Social Teaching (CST), though rooted in centuries of reflection supplied by some of the Church’s greatest theologians, is often thought to have begun in 1891 with Pope Leo XIII’s ground-breaking encyclical Rerum Novarum. While there is a loud ring of truth to this, traditional Catholics should be well aware that the Church’s modern social magisterium began to emerge following the violent rise of liberalism in France in 1789 and the revolutionary upheavals which rocked Europe throughout the 1800s. With the early decades of the 20th century delivering further global unrest through two cataclysmic wars, a worldwide economic depression, and the rise of racialist fascism and atheistic communism, the holders of St. Peter’s Chair issued further encyclicals reminding the world that neither socialism nor unfettered capitalism were just economic options, and that all political authority comes from God.

Click the link above to read the rest, and do consider subscribing.

Thomas Storck has been keeping up a lively debate with Ryan Shinkel over at Ethika Politika, one which helpfully demarcates the border between authentic Catholic Social Teaching (CST) and liberalism. Storck’s most recent entry, “Markets, Liberalism, and G.K. Chesterton,” throws a bucket of cold water on the idea—often touted by Catholics intoxicated with economic liberalism—that individual good will and private initiative are sufficient for checking capitalism. Storck asks:

Why should economic activity be handed over to Satan while the health of society is guarded merely by good will and private initiative? We must indeed erect buffers against human greed; this is done not simply by private institutions and good morals, but by the way in which we structure and regulate economic life.

Go read the entire article. Read it twice.

David Mills continues to write thoughtfully on “the shift” in in contemporary Catholic thinking on capitalism and economics. His latest, “The New Catholic Economics,” is well worth reading, and not just because he gives mention to my modest efforts to both clarify Catholic Social Teaching (CST) and critique various attempts by socialist and libertarian ideologues to hijack that teaching. Although I had some minor quibbles with Mills’s earlier piece on this topic (see here), I wholeheartedly endorse his belief that the anti-capitalist turn is a real, though disaggregated and diverse, phenomenon. Still, it’s important to not forget that there still numerous Catholic/semi-Catholic institutes, publications, and forums dedicated to aligning CST with economic liberalism of various stripes. We are not out of the free-market woods yet.

It’s not my business to defend neoliberal/libertarian approaches to law and economics; there are whole institutions dedicated to that enterprise. I believe, however, that it is incumbent upon those who wish to promote Catholic Social Teaching (CST) to properly understand those approaches if they are to be taken seriously. That’s easier said than done.

David Mills, former editor of First Things and current editor of Ethika Politika, has a post up at Aleteia entitled “Free-Market Catholics Are Losing Their Faith (In Capitalism).” Here is, I believe, his central point:

[I]f I read the signs aright, many politically conservative Christians, Catholics and Evangelicals both, are now shifting in their attitude to the state, to a new assertion not just of the limits and dangers of the market but of the need for a welfare and regulatory government. They haven’t become old-fashioned socialists or even social democrats. They still believe in a capitalist economy, but want to restrict, temper, and even direct it in a way much more “liberal” than their movement has allowed since the 1970s.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote some remarks on Daniel Saudek’s debut piece at Ethika Politika (EP), “Faith, Reason, and the Two Camps.” Two days ago, another EP contributor, Ryan Shinkel, wrote a response to Saudek entitled “Two Catholic Camps Worth Debating.” I don’t want to get into the details of Saudek’s piece right now. Suffice to say, I am deeply skeptical about his overarching claim that neoliberal/libertarian Catholics and so-called “illiberal” or “radical” Catholics are “all in the same Catholic boat.” Yes, we are part of the same Church, but that does not mean that all of the “camps” within her walls are equally faithful in representing and promoting the Church’s social magisterium.