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Cardinal Bertone and Metropolitan Kirill on Social Doctrine

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone

Paola Fantini has expanded her blog post on Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone's new work on Catholic social doctrine into a book review for the forthcoming Religion & Liberty quarterly published by the Acton Institute. She has also translated the prologue to the book by Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Kirill. These articles are the first to translate anything from Cardinal Bertone's “The Ethics of the Common Good in Catholic Social Doctrine” (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2008) into English. The Italian title is "L'etica del Bene Comune nella Dottrina Sociale della Chiesa."

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Cardinal Bertone and Metropolitan Kirill on Social Doctrine
October 13, 2008

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From the Journal of Markets & Morality

Contractarion Analysis, Ethics, and Emerging Economies by Timothy P. Roth

The transition from socialist to market economics is typically informed by outcomes-based social welfare theory (SWT). Institutionless, intentionally value-free SWT is ill-suited to this enterprise. The only evaluative standard to which it gives rise–efficiency–is indeterminate, and the theory is not accommodative of other dimensions of moral evaluation. By contrast, the contractarian enterprise focuses on the role and importance of formal and informal institutions, including ethical norms. Given that individuals should be treated as moral equivalents, the project assigns lexical priority to rights and regards justice as impartiality. This explicitly normative, institutional approach permits analysis of potential conflicts between informal norms and prospective, formal rules of the games. Moreover, it underscores the instrumental and intrinsic value of rights in the transition process. Finally, the emphasis on impartiality–embodied in the generality principle–facilitates analysis of constitutional constraints on behavior that is inimical to the transition process.