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Natural Law and Economics
If we accept the fact that economics is a human discipline designed, in its original sense, to provide for the acquisition and management of household goods, we can perhaps admit that economics is not a wholly “autonomous” discipline that has no relation to other considerations about human life. The fact that economies are nation- and world-wide, themselves highly mathematicized, does not change the principle behind this observation.
Justice and Charity in Wages
Pope John Paul II’s encyclical, Centesimus Annus, is a marvelous defense of capitalism and attack on socialism in its feudal, totalitarian, and welfare state forms. One is particularly impressed by Pope John Paul’s argument that the burdens that the welfare state places on the poor are immoral. Accordingly, this teaching does more than simply return the Catholic church to the position originally expressed by Pope Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum, whose one-hundredth anniversary it celebrates.The Manners of the Market
Sometime after watching that remarkable video clip of the Los Angeles police beating Rodney King, I found myself thinking of another run-in between the police and a wrong-doer. This other case involved a drunken, abusive trespasser onto the grounds of a private club having a party. The lout repeatedly pushed through the surrounding hedge and tried to approach the building to crash the party; two security guards repeatedly intercepted him and escorted him out the gate.Angels or Apes: The Spirituality of Commerce
All human activities can be located somewhere along a spectrum that is anchored at one end by spirituality, and at the other by physicality. Praying is near the spiritual end; reading and writing, composing music and making tools are its neighbors. As the source of both great sensual pleasure and also of all new life, sex might be somewhere near mid-spectrum, while eating and all other bodily functions belong over toward the physical end. Where do commercial transactions fit?Concerning the Education of Clergymen
In the course of my travels the length and breadth of this land, often I am struck with the innocence of both Protestant and Catholic clergy in matters political and economic. For innocence, read–if you will–ignorance. The seminaries teach next to nothing in these disciplines, and candidates for Holy Orders–with some honorable exceptions–seem to have acquired but scanty information about the civil social order before they begin to proceed to a school of theology.Christianity and Liberty
An atheist is rarely asked to write an essay on “religion’s positive role in society,” but it is fitting that this request came from the Acton Institute. Lord Acton (1834-1902) was a Catholic, a classical liberal, and a great historian who devoted his life to the history of liberty.Power Corrupts
- When a person gains power over other persons–political power to force other persons to do his bidding when they do not believe it right to do so–it seems inevitable that a moral weakness
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The Wedding of Three Philosophical Traditions Toward a Refined Philosophy of Economics
The recent encyclical, Centesimus Annus, serves as a blueprint for a possible renaissance in economic thought. The encyclical blends philosophical traditions providing a new methodological approach for philosophy of economics. Using Centesimus Annus as a model, I set out to investigate new philosophical approaches to political economy. I investigated the inherent connections between ethics and economics through a presentation and augmentation of the value theory and ethics of the Austrian Economist, Ludwig von Mises.Multinational Corporations in the Third World: Predators or Allies in Economic Development?
- Multinational corporations (MNCs) engage in very useful and morally defensible activities in Third World countries for which they frequently have received little credit. Significant among
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Recovering the Moral Foundations of Economics
During the summer of 1980, I met weekly for breakfast, prayer, and study with a minister friend of mine. A warm-hearted, intelligent man, Bob Hager kept challenging me to broaden my interest from the biblical studies, theology, and apologetics that were my great loves to include social concerns. One week, he told me of a book he’d read recently – Ronald J. Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. “Cal,” Bob said, “you’ve simply got to read this book. It’ll change your life.“Gary Cooper, Humane Existence, and Deep Ecology
During 1990 my nation, Australia, was graced by the visits of two North American thinkers anxious to help us get our national house in order. The thinkers in question - Drs. Paul Ehrlich and David Suzuki - loom large among the stars in the radical environmentalist sky. Whilst in Australia they were asked by a television journalist anxious for a ten-second “spot” to state in twenty-five words or less the basic conviction they most would like to communicate to their “down-under” audience. Their answer was simple.Environmentalism: The Newest Paganism?
In June 1991, the Presbyterian Church approved a historic statement of faith that made environmental concerns part of the official canon of the church. The 80-line prayer enumerated pollution of the planet as a sin against God, saying people “exploit neighbor and nature, and threaten death to the planet entrusted to our care.”