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Economics and Human Desire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Andrew Lascaris OP
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When, at the end of January, the Vatican Justice and Peace Commission advised debtor countries of the Third World that they were not always morally obliged to repay their international creditors, the announcement did not set off even a tiny ripple in the world’s money markets. But when Reagan blunders yet again or Thatcher slips back in the opinion polls the major stock markets react nervously. The Church is somehow excluded; it does not play any role in the making of economic decisions, though, today, these so deeply influence our personal lives. And Vatican II’s Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes accepts at least one of the basic presuppositions of modern economics as a good one: progress ought to be made—albeit it ought to be made within the moral order and oriented to serve mankind. We can read subsections 64 and 65 as a criticism of the modern economic and social process, but at the same time they seem to approve fundamentally of what they criticise.

What the preachers, theologians and synods of 400 years ago had to say about economic practices seems to have had relevance. This is not to say that people did what they were told, but, even when they neglected Church warnings and prohibitions, at least they knew that they did so. Today economics is thought to be a science, a field reserved for experts only, an autonomous process clearly separated from the contents of the Christian tradition.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 68 , Issue 803 , March 1987 , pp. 115 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Politeia 1258 a39—b2.

2 See my article ‘The Likely Prince of Peace: Rene Girard's hypothesis’, New Blackfriars 66 (December 1985) 517–524CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Girard's works are slowly being translated into English. Recently his book The Scapegoat was published (London, 1986)Google Scholar. The translation of his book Des choses cachies depuis de la fondation du monde is forthcoming.

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