CATHOLIC SOCIAL TARIFFS?

Now in trade relations between the developing and the highly developed economies there is a great disparity in their overall situation and in their freedom of action. In order that international trade be human and moral, social justice requires that it restore to the participants a certain equality of opportunity. To be sure, this equality will not be attained at once, but we must begin to work toward it now by injecting a certain amount of equality into discussions and price talks. (Populorum Progressio, 61)

MUSINGS ON CULTURAL CHRISTIANITY

In Fall of 2018, I remember attending a talk at Georgetown, given as part of a conference put on by the Thomistic Institute. One of the talks given concerned the Holy Father Emeritus’ resignation and what that meant for the Church writ large. Quite distinctly, I remember hearing the compelling argument that just as Pope Benedict XVI had served the Church via his Petrine ministry, perhaps his turn to a more cloistered and contemplative life too was a model for the Church to weather what was to come. The Church, undergoing battery from the recently released grand jury report in Pennsylvania and suffering more generally, could learn from his decision to turn inwards, from the desire to focus on the internal life, from a reliance on prayer when we feel at our weakest. Interestingly enough, the academic who gave that thoughtful talk was none other than Chad Pecknold.

SOME RELATIVELY UNSOLICITED THOUGHTS ON AMERICAN COMPASS

To restore an economic consensus that emphasizes the importance of family, community, and industry to the nation’s liberty and prosperity- Our Mission, American Compass

American Compass is one of those think tanks that has excited a number of my friends. In particular, for those of my friends who have become market-skeptic but remain on the right, this think tank holds a certain promise. It holds the promise, one might argue, of providing a reasonable excuse of making the tough choices that don’t align with the market consensus. While I agree that Oren Cass and company have good intuitions, I remain skeptical of their long term future and efficacy, and I’ve attempted to collect some of these thoughts here via a few case studies

THOUGHTS ON ACADEMIA AND GRIFTING

I’m going to tell a story, and you can decide if it in any way sounds familiar to you. There is a group of people living in a society without nobility, so this society decides that they’re going to focus a lot on formal credentials. These specific people are part of a cultural minority, and they know this. As a result of this, they realize that they lack any real chance of being the majority in the most elite universities that grant the most prestigious credentials. So what do they do? Well, perhaps they lionize the few of their number who manage to make it in to these universities; perhaps they form their own countercultural institutions; or perhaps they paint the prestigious institutions as somehow being evil or out of touch. Maybe, just maybe, they do all three, because this group has internalized a desperate craving for the credentials and the recognition that comes with it and the insecurity it reveals.

PRIMER ON CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING IN ECONOMICS: ABSTRACT MATTERS

The proper exercise of personal freedom requires specific conditions of an economic, social, juridic, political and cultural order that “are too often disregarded or violated. Such situations of blindness and injustice injure the moral life and involve the strong as well as the weak in the temptation to sin against charity. By deviating from the moral law man violates his own freedom, becomes imprisoned within himself, disrupts neighbourly fellowship and rebels against divine truth." (Compendium §137)

PRIMER ON CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING IN ECONOMICS: PRINCIPLES

The Church’s social doctrine is not a “third way” between liberal capitalism and Marxist collectivism, nor even a possible alternative to other solutions less radically opposed to one another: rather, it constitutes a category of its own. Nor is it an ideology, but rather the accurate formulation of the results of a careful reflection on the complex realities of human existence, in society and in the international order, in the light of faith and of the Church’s tradition. Its main aim is to interpret these realities, determining their conformity with or divergence from the lines of the Gospel teaching on man and his vocation, a vocation which is at once earthly and transcendent; its aim is thus to guide Christian behavior. It therefore belongs to the field, not of ideology, but of theology and particularly of moral theology. (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis § 41)

TEXTBOOK REVIEWS

I’ve often thought about doing a reivew of textbooks as I’ve come across them, and looking back on the first year, I think that now is an opportune time to actually think about the books I’ve read for my classes or research. This is an ongoing list, purely opinionated, and entirely meant as a catharsis of all the content that is covered in a PhD program, especially in the required first year sequence.

A REVIEW OF 'CAN A CATHOLIC BE A SOCIALIST?'

In many respects, democratic socialism was and is close to Catholic social doctrine, and has in any case made a remarkable contribution to the formation of a social consciousness. - Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

As a criticism of Catholic Socialism, Horn and Pakulak (H&P) offer a thoroughly mediocre rebuttal. As a defense of capitalism as an economic system, H&P offer an underwhelming picture. On the other hand, as an exemplar of current Republican polemics, H&P give it to us, par excellence, with several chapters feeling as if they could have been lifted straight from a Glenn Beck book from when he still had a program on Fox News.