POPE FRANCIS AND HIS CALL FOR A NEW ECONOMIC MODEL: THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL CRITERION (original) (raw)
Related papers
Introduction: Towards an Economic Anthropology of Catholicism, in the Age of Pope Francis
Journal of Global Catholicism, 2024
He received an M.A. from the University of Lisbon and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. During 2017-18, Dr. Weeks was an affiliated researcher at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. His research has been published in the journals Deleuze and Guattari Studies, Dialectical Anthropology, Review of Radical Political Economics, among others.
2016
Economics claims to be an independent empirical social science but empirical evidence of the last century challenges this claim. By contrast Caritas in Veritate contains a set of linkages that demonstrate that economics is related to morals, anthropology and theology. Economics is practiced in a cultural setting with a moral dimension related to the human person, which is ultimately grounded in the nature of God. Pope Benedict has focused on love and gift as human qualities reflecting the Divine nature. The anthropology that proceeds from this is a development of Pope John Paul II’s emphasis on human dignity and freedom. It suggests moral principles that can guide culture, social institutions and hence economic action. Pope Benedict uses his reflections on the social order to comment on the problems of development for less developed peoples, but his analysis also completes one theme of the social encyclicals. Whereas Pope Leo XIII concentrated on economic and political fundamentals ...
Connecting Economics to Theology
Solidarity: The Journal of Catholic Social …, 2011
Economics claims to be an independent empirical social science but empirical evidence of the last century challenges this claim. By contrast Caritas in Veritate contains a set of linkages that demonstrate that economics is related to morals, anthropology and theology. Economics is practiced in a cultural setting with a moral dimension related to the human person, which is ultimately grounded in the nature of God. Pope Benedict has focused on love and gift as human qualities reflecting the Divine nature. The anthropology that proceeds from this is a development of Pope John Paul II's emphasis on human dignity and freedom. It suggests moral principles that can guide culture, social institutions and hence economic action. Pope Benedict uses his reflections on the social order to comment on the problems of development for less developed peoples, but his analysis also completes one theme of the social encyclicals. Whereas Pope Leo XIII concentrated on economic and political fundamentals such as property and political organization, subsequent contributions turned attention more towards the human actor in relationship to God. Pope John Paul II made this explicit by turning attention to anthropology. Pope Benedict has connected these and completed the vision initiated by his immediate predecessor. He has described more completely the grounding of anthropology on the family, culture and ultimately the Most Blessed Trinity. The encyclical can be read as an invitation to a broader methodology for economics, one that is better conformed to actual market actors and that has the capacity to overcome some of the contentious aspects of the current discipline. The groundwork has been established by thinkers including Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas and some of its elements are evident in the economic organisation of many non-modern cultures.
Conflicts and Contrasts: Economics and Catholic Social Teaching
In 1986, the Catholic bishops in the United States issued a pastoral letter call Economic Justice for All. It was criticized by professionals and economists as containing no valid economic thinking and ignored by many in the business community as not understanding the realities of the work place. Why? The Roman Catholic Church, since 1891, has weighed in on economic activity, economic affairs, and economic policy. Sometimes it is the Pope, other times the Bishops, and occasionally theologians speak to economic issues. Why is it their thinking generates controversy? Professional economists deride such statements as being without rigorous economics. Leaders in the business community, many of them Catholic themselves, assail such moral guidance as being out of touch with the realities of the marketplace. What is the Catholic layperson to make of this conflict between the Magisterium and respected economists and business leaders? Is the Church, their moral guide, stepping outside its area by trying to discuss economic activity? Is the Church as out of touch as academic economists and Wall Street leaders claim? Economics and Catholic Social Teaching: Understanding the Conflict and Contrasts explains why academic, orthodox economists and the Church so frequently differ. Unlike many similar books, this does not argue that orthodox economic theory is wrong and Catholic Social Teaching is correct, or vice-versa; it develops an understanding of the perspective from which each develops, a perspective that creates a difference in how goals are justified by each.
The relation between economics and theology in Caritas in Veritate
Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics
Caritas in Veritate is the latest in the series of papal 'social encyclicals' beginning with Rerum Novarum (1891). Like its immediate predecessor Centesimus Annus (1991), it presents a body of economic doctrine favourable to the market economy that is superimposed on an underlying body of older doctrine that is deeply hostile to it. This article investigates the possibility that this incoherence results from a corresponding incoherence in the theological framework of the recent encyclicals. The doctrine of the encyclicals is then contrasted with an eighteenth-century, Anglo-Scotch tradition of thought that showed the compatibility with Catholic moral theology of a privately owned, competitive economy driven by self-love. This tradition is the intellectual origin of modern economics, yet it has not been available to the Church of Rome because of an historical accident. The article concludes by speculating upon the reasons for this.
The Church Engaged in Economy—Is It Necessary?
Philosophy and Canon Law, 2017
In the light of the statements of the Magisterium, the presence of the Catholic Church in the world of economy seems obvious and necessary. However, this article focuses on the need to define (1) the type of economy referred to in the Church documents, (2) the type of the presence of the Church in economy as defined in these documents and (3) the kind of necessity mentioned in the abovementioned records. It is in these three dimensions that the author depicts the outline of the attitude presented by the Church with regard to the basic economic issues (interventionism, social market economics, subsidiarity and solidarity in economics, the logic of unselfishness and gift). The conclusion of the text is that the ultimate reason for the presence of Catholic Church in economy is its social mission aimed at creating a society of relations, where the fundamental principle is social friendship (amicitia socialis).
Roman Catholic Social Thought and Economic Theory: An Agenda for the Future
Review of Social Economy, 1991
... New York: Praeger Pub. Co., 1978. Schotter, Andrew. Free Market Ecor~orriics: A Critical Approisnl. New York: St. Martin's Press. 1985. Sen, Amanya K. 011 Ethics arrci Ecorlorr~jcs. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984. Titmuss, Richard M. The Gift r?elntiortship. ...