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Pope Francis and American Economics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2015

Mary Hirschfeld
Mary Hirschfeld*
Affiliation:
Villanova University
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Abstract

Reaction among conservatives to Pope Francis' Evangelii Gaudium has most often been negative. Ross Douthat, however, in his 2013 New York Times op-ed, has offered a more nuanced critique. Our four Roundtable authors respond to Douthat's implied invitation to a discussion by responding from the viewpoint of Catholic social thought.

Keywords

Pope FrancisRoss Douthatconservatismcapitalismeconomics
Type
Theological Roundtable
Information
Horizons , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , June 2015 , pp. 140 - 149
Copyright
Copyright © College Theology Society 2015 

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References

30 See above, note 5.

31 See David Cloutier's introduction to the Roundtable, above.

32 Pope John XXIII, Encyclical, Mater et Magistra, May 15, 1961, http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-xxiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_j-xxiii_enc_15051961_mater.html, §§65, 74; Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes [GS]), December 7, 1965, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html, §59; Pope Paul VI, Encyclical Populorum Progressio, March 27, 1967, http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_26031967_populorum.html, §§14, 20; Paul VI, Apostolic Letter Octogesima Adveniens, May 14, 1971, http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/apost_letters/documents/hf_p-vi_apl_19710514_octogesima-adveniens.html, §§31, 52; Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, December 30, 1987, http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_30121987_sollicitudo-rei-socialis.html, §§1, 17, 27–34, 38, 41, 46; John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, §§29, 43; John Paul II, Encyclical Evangelium Vitae, March 25, 1995, http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae.html, §81; Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, §§4, 11, 23, 34, 48, 51, 55, 62, 67, 74, 77.

33 John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, §36.

34 The Catholic vision of the human person is obviously more expansive than is the modern view rooted in classic liberalism. In particular, society does not arise as a result of a contract between atomistic individuals, but rather is necessary not just for the survival of the individual but also for her fulfillment. As Aristotle puts it in his Politics (1.2), humans are political or rational animals. For starters, we depend on language in order to reason, and language is only possible in community. More deeply, a full human life is a quest to find the good and the true and the beautiful, all of which requires others, since we can find these goods only through inquiry and conversation. For a nice development of this insight, see McCabe, Herbert, OP, The Good Life: Ethics and the Pursuit of Happiness (London: Continuum, 2005)Google Scholar. This view of the human person as inherently social should not be confused with views that elevate society above the individual. To say that the fulfillment of the individual has a social component is not to say the needs of the person should be subordinated to the needs of the collective.

35 One could argue that markets carry with them the intrinsic good of freedom, or that the state carries with it the intrinsic good of collective action. But insofar as we are the sorts of beings who should exercise agency both as individuals and as members of a community, it is not clear why one should prefer either the state or the market. Indeed, the Catholic view of the human person would seem most fittingly served by a view that provides a role for both individual and communal exercises of agency.

36 Haidt, Jonathan, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Pantheon Books, 2012)Google Scholar.

37 Banerjee, Abhijit V. and Duflo, Esther, Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty (New York: PublicAffairs, 2011)Google Scholar.

38 Smith, Adam, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759; Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000), 70–72Google Scholar.

39 The astonishing sales enjoyed by Piketty, Thomas, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Goldhammer, Arthur (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, bear witness to the current sense of urgency about the question of economic inequality.

40 Robert D. Putnam, “Crumbling American Dreams,” New York Times, August 3, 2013, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/03/crumbling-american-dreams/.

41 Zingales, Luigi, A Capitalism for the People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity (New York: Basic Books, 2012)Google Scholar.

42 Becker, Gary, “Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach,” Journal of Political Economy 76, no. 2 (March/April 1968): 169–217CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 Carter, John R. and Irons, Michael D., “Are Economists Different, and If So Why?,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 5, no. 2 (Spring 1991): 171–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In his discussion of this problem, Zingales (A Capitalism for the People, 175) observes that one of his students in the business school at the University of Chicago admitted that many of his fellow students were “remarkably amoral,” because of their reception of Becker's work as more prescriptive than descriptive.

44 Frank, Thomas, What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004)Google Scholar.

45 See McCloskey, Deirdre, The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 22–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for an argument that economic progress does indeed facilitate progress in the virtues. Her argument relies on a conception of the virtues that undervalues the sort of character building that is part of the ancient under-standing of virtue.