Catholic Social Teaching and Economic Law
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Thomas E. Woods
Since Pope Leo XIII wrote Rerum Novarum (1891), the Catholic Church, while opposing socialism, has adopted a skeptical and suspicious posture with regard to the free market. The popes have supported labor unions, the idea of a "just wage," and a variety of other interventions. Yet the economic recommendations of the Church have consistently proven counterproductive, and have apparently been devised without recourse to economic law. Papal economic teaching is filled with unstated assumptions (for example, that using the state to coerce employers into raising wages or increasing benefits) which, if false, throw into question the moral analysis based on them.Depuis que le Pape Léon XIII a écrit Rerum Novarum (1891) l’église catholique, bien qu’opposée au socialisme, a adopté une attitude sceptique et suspicieuse à l’égard du libre marché. Les papes successifs ont soutenu les syndicats, l’idée de « juste salaire », et une variété d’autres interventions. Jusqu’à présent les recommandations économiques de l’Eglise ont constamment été contreproductives et ont été promulguées sans égard vis-à-vis des lois économiques. L’enseignement économique des Papes est rempli d’hypothèses non formulées (comme celle d’utiliser l’Etat pour forcer les employeurs à augmenter les salaires ou les bénéfices) qui, si elles sont fausses, mettent en question l’analyse morale qu’elles sous-tendent.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Introduction
- American Classical Liberalism and Religion: Religion, Reason and Economic Science
- End of a Myth: Max Weber, Capitalism, and the Medieval Order
- Liberty-Progress-Individualism. On the relationship between Christianity and Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century
- Luigi Taparelli's Natural Law Approach to Social Economics
- Austrian Economics and the Social Doctrine of the Church: A Reflection Based on the Economic Writings of Mateo Liberatore and Oswald von Nell-Breuning
- Henry George, Private Property and The American Origins of Rerum Novarum
- On the Political Economy of the Subsidiarity Principle
- Alfred Müller-Armack-Economic Policy Maker and Sociologist of Religion
- Islam, Democracy and Civil Society
- Catholic Social Teaching and Economic Law
- Catholic Social Teaching and Unionism
- Catholicism, Calvinism, and the Comparative Developement of Economic Doctrine
- An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought Vol. I and Vol. II
- Recent Publications
