http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=29652 Catholic World News October 14, 2016 Pope Francis questions genetically-modified crops, urges action to combat climate change Pope Francis contrasted the “wisdom of rural communities” with “the logic of consumerism and production at any cost, a logic that, cloaked in good justifications, such as the increasing population, is in reality aimed solely at the increase of profit….. a model of production that is entirely to the advantage of a limited group and a tiny portion of the world population. Let us remember that it is a model which, despite all its science, allows around eight hundred million people to continue to go hungry.”
In reality: “The first examples of capitalism appeared in the great Catholic monasteries”, about the ninth century. (John Gilchrist, The Church and Economic Activity in the Middle Ages, St Martin’s Press 1969, I; cf. The Victory of Reason, Rodney Stark, Random House, 2005, p xii, 55-58).
St John Paul II affirmed categorically his support for the market economy: ‘If by "capitalism" is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a "business economy", "market economy" or simply "free economy".’ [Centesimus Annus #42, 1991].
The world’s next great leap forward Towards the end of poverty Nearly 1 billion people have been taken out of extreme poverty in 20 years. The world should aim to do the same again Jun 1st 2013 “Much of world poverty has in fact been reduced or alleviated, as a recent essay in The Economist has shown. Christians often seem not to know that this change has happened or why it happened.”
“….the world has lately been making extraordinary progress in lifting people out of extreme poverty. Between 1990 and 2010, their number fell by half as a share of the total population in developing countries, from 43% to 21%—a reduction of almost 1 billion people.” http://tinyurl.com/ldjt6go
The fact is that Catholic philosophy and theology, based on reason and faith, enabled and nurtured the birth of free enterprise.
: St John Paul II affirmed categorically his : support for the market economy: : ‘If by "capitalism" is meant an : economic system which recognizes the : fundamental and positive role of business, : the market, private property and the : resulting responsibility for the means of : production, as well as free human creativity : in the economic sector, then the answer is : certainly in the affirmative, even though it : would perhaps be more appropriate to speak : of a "business economy", : "market economy" or simply : "free economy".’ [ Centesimus : Annus #42, 1991].
Centesimus Annus # 42, un-cherry-picked:
42. Returning now to the initial question: can it perhaps be said that, after the failure of Communism, capitalism is the victorious social system, and that capitalism should be the goal of the countries now making efforts to rebuild their economy and society? Is this the model which ought to be proposed to the countries of the Third World which are searching for the path to true economic and civil progress?
The answer is obviously complex. If by "capitalism" is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a "business economy", "market economy" or simply "free economy". But if by "capitalism" is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality, and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious, then the reply is certainly negative.
The Marxist solution has failed, but the realities of marginalization and exploitation remain in the world, especially the Third World, as does the reality of human alienation, especially in the more advanced countries. Against these phenomena the Church strongly raises her voice. Vast multitudes are still living in conditions of great material and moral poverty. The collapse of the Communist system in so many countries certainly removes an obstacle to facing these problems in an appropriate and realistic way, but it is not enough to bring about their solution. Indeed, there is a risk that a radical capitalistic ideology could spread which refuses even to consider these problems, in the a priori belief that any attempt to solve them is doomed to failure, and which blindly entrusts their solution to the free development of market forces.
Spot the difference
For a view on capitalism at the service of human freedom, see D L Schindler's "Ordering Love, Liberal Societies and the Memory of God."
Excerpts:
The liberal free market with its inner logic of commodification fosters an incapacity to pay attention — to God, to other persons, and indeed to the things of nature: fosters an incapacity truly to rest in anything for its own sake. The logic of the market reinforces an incapacity for interior stillness, or again dissipates the patient relations necessary for giving depth of meaning to the concrete time and space and place in which alone our humanity really exists: to what is here and now. But if we are not able to give meaning to this time and this place, we will lack the capacity for meaningful memory of who we are, and hence for a meaningful future.
To repeat what I’ve said elsewhere, the most basic problem of liberal society may be rightly described as a massive Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The liberal market economy is a significant, though scarcely the exclusive, agent of this disorder, which, again, is both a sign and an expression of liberalism’s relentless logic of instrumentalism. (It is this logic, for example, that informs at its root our distinctly liberal-technological form of “compassion,” which inclines us toward manufacturing babies to the design desired by parents, or for the purpose of killing them to harvest their genetic parts for easing the pain and suffering of others.)
But there remains a final and overarching question: What alternative can be proposed?
. . . .
What is crucial is that we recuperate the habits of patient consciousness and freedom proper to our being as creatures, as from and for God and others. Two examples will help illustrate what this implies.
First, we can try to recuperate a sense of our reality as children: of God, of our parents and the generations of parents before them, of the entire creaturely world that has preceded us and remains the anterior condition of our own being. To be a child is to be from-others, for-others. We teach children to say “please” and “thank you.” But, properly understood, this is not a matter merely of manners but of teaching them the truth of their being, which lies in the child’s reality as a gift calling forth gratitude. Recuperation of childlikeness in this sense is the first step in realizing that the relations that give us our deepest meaning are not those first contracted by us but given to us, in the very constitution of our being.
Second, we can try to live freedom in its truest sense as ordered from its inmost depths to saying forever, to vocation. God’s act of creation bears the structure of a covenant: he promises unfailing fidelity to his creation, inviting unfailing fidelity to God in return on the part of creatures. This implies saying forever, which normally takes the form of a vow, either in consecrated virginity or in marriage.
Saying forever enables an entry of the whole of our being into each of our actions and productions, a patient drawing of eternity into each moment and each place of our existence, affording each moment and place a literally infinite depth and fullness of meaning.
Realization of the alternative vision of economic life implied by my argument, in sum, does not require that we move from the city or from urban professions to, say, farming (though survival of local, family-owned farms is an urgent matter for the health of civilization). The point, rather, is that each of us is already involved in economic activity in some way: in the professions, as homemakers, as laborers and business executives; all of us in various ways as owners, producers, purchasers, and consumers of things. We all can begin living more profoundly our reality as from-and for God and others, pondering how, from inside our economic activity in all of these ever-present concrete ways, we can deepen this freedom as ordered to saying forever, in a way that draws eternity into every moment and place of our life and gives grateful and generous form to each of our activities. It is in this way alone, which is only apparently “small,” that we can truly transform economic freedom, private ownership of property, earning a profit, and realizing wealth as these are conceived and practiced in the dominant liberal market economy.
Re: The Great Value of Free Enterprise
Posted by PDH on October 17, 2016, 6:33 am, in reply to "Categorically?!!"
The fact is that Catholic philosophy and theology, based on reason and faith, enabled the birth of free enterprise. From the great monastic estates in the ninth century, immense increases in agricultural productivity grew from “such significant innovations as the switch to horses, the heavy moldboard plow, and the three-field system” away from subsistence agriculture to specialised crops and products, sold at a profit to initiate a cash economy. “As their incomes continued to mount, this led many monasteries to become banks, lending to the nobility.” [The Victory of Reason, Rodney Stark, Random House, 2005, p 58].
In The Spirit of Enterprise, George Gilder…critiques Adam Smith’s ‘concept of the economy as a great invisibly guided “machine” in which capitalists are tools of the “market”.
Fr Percy, as a diocesan priest in Canberra-Goulburn, emphasises: “In rejecting the notion that the entrepreneur is simply an instrument of the market, Gilder expounds for us what Kirzner means by alertness. The entrepreneur is protagonist, a man who creates and sustains markets by developing business opportunities. All of this is far removed from the ‘unintentional’ and ‘unknowing’ entrepreneur Smith portrays. Rather the entrepreneur’s activity is intelligent and focused.” [Refer Entrepreneurship in the Catholic Tradition, Fr Anthony G Percy, Connor Court Publishing, 2011, p 21].
Apart from the developing demographic winter with below replacement birth-rates virtually worldwide, the sensible solution to poverty is Christianity which “holds that the poor qua poor have as good a chance of reaching beatitude as the rich qua rich, probably a better one. Unless this end is understood, no amount of discussion of wealth and poverty in this world will make much difference. But when the question of the poor does arise, as it should, the main question should not be identification with it, but what really alleviates their condition.” [Fr James A Schall, S.J.] See: http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/2503/do_christians_love_poverty.aspx
The teaching of Pope Benedict XVI confirms the relevant truth: “Society does not have to protect itself from the market, as if the development of the latter were ipso facto to entail the death of authentically human relations…Therefore it is not the instrument that must be called to account, but individuals, their moral conscience and their personal and social responsibility.” (Caritas et Veritate, Benedict XVI, 2009, #36).