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Thomas Storck, who writes from Greenbelt, Maryland, is the author of The Catholic Milieu and Foundations of a Catholic Political Order.

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Is Thomas Woods a Dissenter? A Further Reply, Pt. 2

by Thomas Storck

January 20th, 2010 • Related • Filed Under

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Dr. Woods’ article, “Catholic Social Teaching and the Market Economy Revisited: A Reply to Thomas Storck,” is, I must admit, superficially attractive. It appears to crush opposition under a weight of impressive learning. But, I would suggest, when his assertions are examined, Woods’ citation of authorities, like his argument in general, fails. I begin with one example because it gives me the opportunity to note another feature of Dr. Woods’ piece, his frequent misrepresentation of what I actually say. Let’s look at what Woods says about the German historical school, a school of 19-century German economists who stood in opposition to many of the teachings of economists in the tradition of Adam Smith. Dr. Woods writes, “And if the scarcely mourned German Historical School is declared the winner, as Storck seems to wish, are adherents of all other schools thenceforth outside Catholic communion?” But did I say that the German Historical School is the “winner”? Hardly. In fact I said that “something like the original American Institutionalism, or the German historical school, or economic sociology, seems to be required if we are to examine the actual workings of economies in the manner that the popes have done.” And later I add, “Although I am not arguing that any of these alternative economic schools is by itself necessarily sufficient to ground a complete economic analysis, taken together they suggest an approach which Catholic social philosophers and economists should find fruitful, and which gives a wide field for further development.” But Woods seizes upon my supposed selection of the German historical school and this allows him to speak with an authoritative voice on the differences among adherents of the German historical school, their relations to Austrian economics and so forth. But none of this, I would suggest, is very relevant, since I was painting with broad strokes here, and merely pointing to those schools of economists whose methodology differs from that of the mainstream neoclassical school and Woods’ own Austrian school.

Now my paper was mainly an attack on mainstream economics, and I quote the recently deceased Paul Samuelson more than once as the expositor of its views. I mention the Austrian school only two or three times and simply as sharing in the generally deductive approach to economic analysis that neoclassical economists take. My approach is that of Anton Lowenberg, who, writing in the Cato Journal, said “I use the term ‘neoclassical’ here very broadly; it includes all theories that are based on the economizing behavior of individual value-maximizing agents.” By a deductive approach I mean an approach which sets up a model of how an economy works based on a limited examination of actual economic behavior or a cursory examination of human nature and which excludes certain important factors, such as culture or the relative power of different groups in the economy, and thereafter simply deduces how economies are supposed to function based on that model. Admittedly the Austrian school eschews the attempts of the neoclassical school to use mathematics to make itself seem more scientific, but most observers consider the Austrians to fall under the head of what I call deductive economics and to be closest to the mainstream of all the alternative schools. Austrians, however, do not seem to like this characterization, and this may explain the tone of Woods’ piece, still more of his strange rant against me, which he delivered last spring at the Mises Institute.

Woods begins his reply by saying that Catholic “supporters and opponents of the market economy often talk past each other. The difficulty they encounter derives from a confusion over the very nature of economics. The phenomena that economics touches upon, which include money, banking, exchange, prices, wages, monopoly theory, and many other topics, are themselves replete with moral significance. But the positive, scientific statements about these phenomena that constitute the discipline of economics are necessarily value neutral.” This of course is true, but largely beside the point. For the chief point of my paper was that in the course of their pronouncements about economic morality, the popes necessarily make certain observations about economic phenomena, especially about the behavior of economic actors. And it would be hard to imagine them doing otherwise. Thus one of the points of contention is exactly over these “scientific statements.” Deductive economics claims that economies behave in certain ways and as a result they make certain statements which they suppose to be scientific, while other schools deny this. The main point of my paper was that the economic analysis which the popes employ in the course of their moral teaching seems to agree more with the latter schools than with the mainstream and Austrian approaches. So when Woods writes, “Describing the workings of fractional-reserve banking is a positive task, not a normative one. Discussing whether such a system is desirable is a normative task, and qualitatively separate from explaining the mechanics of that system,” this is true, but only if we are in agreement about how to describe a particular economic phenomenon. There would probably be little disagreement about his example here, about how fractional-reserve banking operates. But this is hardly true of all economic behavior or phenomena.

Woods then brings up another irrelevant example. He writes: “Frank Knight conceived of capital as a homogeneous unit whose individual processes occurred synchronously. . . . F.A. Hayek . . . conceives of capital as a series of time-consuming stages of higher and lower order. . . . Nothing in the Deposit of Faith even comes close to deciding this and countless other important economic questions one way or the other.” Fine, but again entirely irrelevant. Certainly there are points of economics on which no pope would dream of pronouncing—but does it follow that popes can never pronounce on any point of economic phenomena?

After this, Woods makes a statement that goes to the heart of the fundamental question of what competence does the Church have in the area of economics. “It is of course not ‘dissent’ merely to observe that the cause-and-effect relationships that constitute the theoretical edifice of economics are not a matter of faith and morals. They simply do not fall within the range of subjects on which a Catholic prelate is endowed with special insight or authority. Catholic laity cannot head up petition drives against them. They are facts of life. Facts cannot be protested, defied, or lectured to; they can only be learned and acted upon.” Again Woods is both irrelevant and begs the question. By definition the popes cannot pronounce outside the area of their competence, nor can they assert something contrary to fact. I do not dispute that. But what are the limits of their competence, and who gets to decide? Thomas Woods? Orthodox Catholics have protested about attempts to erect a so-called parallel magisterium, e.g., a magisterium of theologians to sit in judgment on the magisterium of pope and bishops. But here we have a magisterium of economists, competent it seems to pronounce in an area of moral teaching that the popes claim as a legitimate arena for their own teaching. Woods does not like the fact that I have found what he calls “an obscure paper of mine” in which he wrote: “The primary difficulty with much of what has fallen under the heading of Catholic social teaching since Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum (1891) is that it assumes without argument that the force of human will suffices to resolve economic questions, and that reason and the conclusions of economic law can be safely neglected, even scorned.” But is this not the entire argument in a nutshell? Who gets to decide about the apparently ironclad “conclusions of economic law”? Or for that matter, of the conclusions of psychology or of philosophy?

Comments

There Are 96 Responses So Far. »

1 Comment by John Seiler on 20 January 2010:

It might be helpful if Mr. Storck provided: 1. A list of authoritative statements from the magisterium on economics (not just mere opinions of the popes on the matters of the day). 2. Woods’ departure from them.

It also might be helpful to point out the difference, if any, between a “dissident” and a “heretic.”

And for better or worse, recent popes have been very hesitant to proclaim someone a heretic. Even Kueng and Curran, although barred from teaching at Catholic schools, never were declared heretics, excommunicated, and defrocked. The late Schillebeeckx was investigated, but never even condemned, and continued to teach at the Catholic University of Nijmegen. Yet their errors were, and are, clear.
2 Comment by Gilbert Jacobi on 20 January 2010:

I remember stumbling upon the nub of this very argument with my economics lecturer over thirty years ago. I had been trying to express some feeling I had, that there just had to be “more to it” than his formulae and laws, which he had been insisting made up the entire content of the discipline, when I blurted out something like “But what about the moral aspect? Isn’t there a moral question involved when you talk about making a living, wealth, etc.?” He and his female teaching assistant smiled at the naive undergrad and just let the question hang there. But it seems that my instinct did not err. Ironclad conclusions of economic law indeed.
3 Comment by R. Cort Kirkwood on 21 January 2010:

@ Mr. Seiler (#1)

There probably isn’t much difference between being a dissident and heretic, although the latter, from what I understand, involves a formal declaration by church authorities.

Heresy is the denial of a teaching of the Catholic faith. So, in fact, is dissent on a settled matter, for the simple reason that the conscience must not only be a teacher but also a student, and therefore must conform itself to the teaching authority of the Church. If you dissent, you disagree or deny a teaching.

This does not mean, of course, that everyone who does not accept a teaching is a formal heretic.

Here is what the New Advent Encyclopedia says:

“The believer accepts the whole deposit as proposed by the Church; the heretic accepts only such parts of it as commend themselves to his own approval. The heretical tenets may be ignorance of the true creed, erroneous judgment, imperfect apprehension and comprehension of dogmas: in none of these does the will play an appreciable part, wherefore one of the necessary conditions of sinfulness–free choice–is wanting and such heresy is merely objective, or material. On the other hand the will may freely incline the intellect to adhere to tenets declared false by the Divine teaching authority of the Church. The impelling motives are many: intellectual pride or exaggerated reliance on one’s own insight; the illusions of religious zeal; the allurements of political or ecclesiastical power; the ties of material interests and personal status; and perhaps others more dishonourable. Heresy thus willed is imputable to the subject and carries with it a varying degree of guilt; it is called formal, because to the material error it adds the informative element of “freely willed”.

“Pertinacity, that is, obstinate adhesion to a particular tenet is required to make heresy formal. For as long as one remains willing to submit to the Church’s decision he remains a Catholic Christian at heart and his wrong beliefs are only transient errors and fleeting opinions.”

By this definition, Curran and Kung could easily be declared formal heretics.

Note that heresy is not the same as apostasy, although I suspect that the former often leads to the latter, just as indifferentism frequently leads to atheism.

Perhaps Scott Richert might explain it better.
4 Comment by robert on 21 January 2010:

Gilbert writes: “But what about the moral aspect? Isn’t there a moral question involved when you talk about making a living, wealth, etc. He and his female teaching assistant smiled at the naive undergrad and just let the question hang there.”

You are in good company and a brave soul Mr.Jacobi. I remember asking an excellent poetry teacher what Emily Dickinson meant when she described “mirth as the mail of anguish.” Mail in this case as the medieval armor made of metal links. He was an honest man and said he would need to think about that question and how to answer it after smoking some cigars with his friends that evening at their monthly poker game. Thank God for laughter,friends and good questions such as “what’s love got to do with it.”
5 Comment by Michael Kenny on 21 January 2010:

Viewed from outside the US, the weakness with Dr Woods’ position is that he has a position at all! In the Catholic Church, lay people do not contradict the Pope or the hierarchy! That is the Protestant view of Christianity and by choosing such a course of conduct, Dr Woods puts himself outside the Church. Equally, one could criticise Mr Storck for engaging Dr Woods in a debate on the substantive issue of economics, which tacitly acknowledges that Dr Woods has the right to conduct such a debate from within the Church. The issue is not economics. The issue is who exercises the Church’s magesterium: the Pope or Dr Woods. That’s hardly a difficult question to answer.

The problem is, I think, that a small number of American Catholics, of essentially conservative political views (which in themselves, are perfectly compatible with the Church’s teaching) mistakenly came to believe, in John Paul II’s time, that the Church had embraced the package of ideologies that might be called “Americanism”, including the extreme form of capitalism Dr Woods propounds. Pope Benedict’s reminders of traditional Catholic teaching, including his condemnation of “unbridled capitalism” when he was in Mexico, will have come as a rude awakening. Dr Woods finds himself out on a limb, but instead of coming back into the fold, he is trying to drag the Church out on to the limb with him. In a world sick and fed up of being led and said by Americans, that will not find much sympathy with the 95% of the world’s Catholic who are not American.
6 Comment by robert on 21 January 2010:

So much of this economic debate involves the preference or choice between independence vs.standard of living. The Amish farmer for instance can say to the local Wal-Mart, “I won’t buy your milk because compared to the milk I produce, yours tastes like slop.” he can say this because he is not dependent on them for milk. Likewise,he can depend upon his neighbors to help build a hen house as they can depend upon him to help repair storm damage to their own . But when his wife needs emergency medical care, he must declare bankruptcy after the service is provided unless the local hospital or doctor allows them another avenue. Most of humanity does not own two or three cars and pay monthly insurance on them, or spend their children’s inheritance on diesel fuel and travel trailers, or sporting events,dish television, fast food joints, one or two trips a year traveling abroad, etc.. Yet, these things while increasing and/or decreasing ones “standard of living” also effect their independence. The Church has always defended the ability of families to obtain the necessities of life without foregoing their unique independence or working against the very nature of men and women or the sacrament of matrimony. A couple of books I have enjoyed and recommend for the younger readers on this question are Hilaire Belloc’s, Economics for Helen, The Restoration of Property and The Servile State; Wendell Berry’s essay, Solving for Pattern, The Southern Agrarian’s Collection, I’ll Take My Stand, and Brent Bozell Sr. in The Best of Triumph.It is also helpful in these discussions to remember when the Church speaks in these social encyclicals, she is speaking to South America as well as North America, the West as well as the East, and it only seems like she is speaking directly to us because of our vanity and the truth in the principles (not plans) she is elucidating.
7 Comment by Gilbert Jacobi on 21 January 2010:

Robert,
Thanks much for the kind words. Full disclosure: there was a bit of self-serving in my complaint to the lecturer, in that it was the metrics that were giving me the most trouble in his course. Nonetheless, I’ve never forgotten the feeling of cold alienation emanating from that class.
BTW, I did get around to reading The Servile State, through your link. Thanks again. Now THAT is the way of studying economics I’d groped for back then.
8 Comment by Dennis Larkin on 21 January 2010:

Bravo, Mr. Storck.

I read somewhere that Mr. Woods is a convert. If so, he brings along with him some of that old anti-papist baggage of the Reformed churches. He really has a chip on his shoulder about the Pope.

You put your finger on it. In a dispute between two parties, who gets to draw the line of demarcation? Voegelin mentioned this in describing the modern state’s determination to encroach on human lives, and to encroach on the Church. The answer is, the Holy Father gets to draw the line of demarcation, including what he will within his purview. He gets to do this in part by virtue of the demonstrated wisdom and survivability of the Faith.
9 Comment by John Seiler on 21 January 2010:

Mr. Kirkwood, @3. Thank you for the definition for “heresy.” The problem I’m getting at is that “dissident” may be a secular term that is applied to church matters, perhaps incorrectly. In Wikipedia — often a dubious source, but for that reason in this case useful for illustrating common usage — we find that at the First Vatican Council, papal infallibility was defined, “bishops Aloisio Riccio and Edward Fitzgerald dissenting.” The New Advent/ Catholic Encyclopedia, which you cited, writes more technically, they “voted non placet.” I found that Fitzgerald, bishop of Little Rock, then supported the definition, and presumably Riccio did as well.

My point is that people, perhaps with good reason, are using “dissident” because they want to shy away from using the word “heretic,” which ratchets up the rhetoric a couple of notches.

Perhaps this is all part of what Newman called “the development of doctrine,” in which the Church — unlike any other body in world history — is able to winnow out the truth with infallible precision. A good example is the Church’s recent teachings on in vitro fertilization, stem cell research, and other bioethical matters, which are spot on.

Perhaps economics does not lend itself to such precision; or perhaps precision awaits further clarifications. In any case, I think that debate on many of these matters still should be encouraged. A good idea would be for some American bishops to sponsor debates on economics, inviting the conflicting parties to a civil discussion, with the debates televised on the Internet and papers submitted for everyone to read and comment upon at a Web site.
10 Comment by R. Cort Kirkwood on 21 January 2010:

@ Mr. Seiler (#9)

Right. How about this: All heretics are dissidents, but not all dissidents are heretics.

You are probably right; dissident is a secular term, and the media uses it to portray dissidents as modern Galileos fighting against an archaic church. Even today, using the term heretic would be a negative description, I would think. But perhaps I am wrong.

Dissent, after all, can merely mean expressing an opinion on a belief that, while widely believed, is unsettled. Dissent can be legitimate.

Heresy, on the hand, goes way behond dissent. Heresy involves believing or promulgating a false teaching on a settled matter to mislead people.

At least that is how I understand it.
11 Comment by John Marino on 21 January 2010:

I have just reread Dr. Woods answer to Thomas Storck. There is nothing in Dr. Wood’s answer that in any way disputes basic Catholic teaching. The people of the world are far better fed, clothed, and housed because of free market capitalism. How can that be a bad thing? I love Hillaire Belloc and believe in subsidiarity. That doen’t mean I want to back to an age of guilds and serfs who produced everything they used. Belloc and some of you have this fanciful idea about guilds and order of society. He and you forgot that the guildmaster ruled many apprentices for years and restricted trade which cost the general community advancement. I used to employ hundreds of people at good wages. It is the duty of the church to encourage us that we treat those under us fairly. The means on how we do that are up to us.
12 Comment by Robert on 21 January 2010:

Is there any way that we can get Tom Woods over here to recant, qualify, explain or defend his position? I once met him about ten years ago when he was giving a economics talk at some small little Latin Mass Chapel out here in the country, and thought his manners were sufficient, his demeanor pleasant, and his economic understanding very modern and “post Christian.” But heck, imagine trying to study at Harvard while reading papal encyclicals, the church Latin of St Thomas Aquinas or even,Sertillanges or Garigou-Lagrange? There was no occassion after the talk to offer dissent or even polite disagreement so we just exchanged a cordial introduction and went on about our way.
13 Comment by Robert on 21 January 2010:

John,
Don’t start this condescending stuff: “Belloc and some of you have this fanciful idea about guilds and order of society.” Please just state what you mean and let us confront the error, but I grow weary of these worn cliches about the “Romantic” and “cute” Mr. Belloc who drank too much, footnoted too little and all the other tired lies repeated from the last generation of fearful, lunatics.
14 Comment by John Marino on 21 January 2010:

Look I haven’t got time to get into it but will say that I just went to a local chain store that is run by several branches of an Italian family. They have slightly higher prices but good quality. They have to compete on a level where people will use their store. The business I was in was all competition. I know and love the idea of a pastoral existence like the Amish have. Nobody is being stopped from following such a dream. That doesn’t mean that my practical business experiece doesn’t recognize the benefit of competition and free markets. Hillaire Belloc and GK Chesterton were fine writers but didn’t have a lot knowledge about how to run a modern business. There are just a huge number of government regulations and other legal rules that even in their day day a business did not have to face. I hope to get back to this subject later.
15 Comment by JD Salyer on 21 January 2010:

#11

Mr. Marino,

I think the “Can one be a good Catholic and also a libertarian?” debate is only tangential to the fundamental point of contention between Storck v. Woods.

I think the fundamental point of contention is the question of where lies the limit of the Pope’s authority.

That is, the issue is not to what extent free markets and laissez-faire actually fit into the Catholic vision, but whether a Catholic intellectual can say, “Ignore these papal encyclicals, because on this matter the popes who promulgated the encyclicals, though good-intentioned, didn’t know what they were talking about.”

Somebody can correct me if I’ve misunderstood, oversimplified, etc.
16 Comment by Robert on 21 January 2010:

John,
Thanks for the response and I quite agree with you about “Hillaire Belloc and GK Chesterton were fine writers but didn’t have a lot knowledge about how to run a modern business.” A.N. Wilson was astute when he said a few years ago, “that the only folks living outside London today who could live the life that Belloc attempted to defend was international bankers and stockbrokers.” Again, the issue is not Amish country or Chicago Lakeside Drive. The issue is independence and/or standard of livingand how much of one is sacrificed in achieving the other.
17 Comment by John Marino on 21 January 2010:

Dear Mr. Sayler:
From what I remember of what Dr. Woods wrote about the most recent encyclical. He didn’t question the Popes authority on faith and morals. He questioned his competence in economics. After reading it myself I agree with him. He didn’t question the Popes right to preach on charity and duty to share with the poor. I love this Pope as a theologian and administrator of the Church. He just hasn’t had the time in his life to study economic theory. I just think he had bad economic advisors helping with it. I think the Church has always allowed wide discussion on how to better the lot of mankind and Dr. Woods is following in that grand tradition.
18 Comment by T. Chan on 21 January 2010:

Mr. Marino

” It is the duty of the church to encourage us that we treat those under us fairly. ”

You say fairly, not charitably — for most “fair” is interchangeable with “just.” Is it not within the competence of civil government to determine what is just and what is not?
19 Comment by John Marino on 21 January 2010:

Mr. Chan:
Fair and charitable would be a more Christian approach. I think you need to do both. Fair means you give a man what he is worth. Charitable means you carry someone who is sick for awhile or give someone who has been a good an employee a break if he makes a mistake. I think a Christian doesn’t need the government to figure out the right thing to do.
20 Comment by T. Chan on 22 January 2010:

Mr. Marino:
A Christian may be able to rely on the Church for guidance, but what of a non-Christian?

“Fair means you give a man what he is worth.”

I don’t know if this formulation represents the exchange of goods in the marketplace, but Austrians are separated from Catholics on whether value/worth/price should be left up to the “market” to determine, or whether the government has a role to play in making this determination.
21 Comment by Thomas Storck on 22 January 2010:

Mr. Marino (#17 above) wrote, “I think the Church has always allowed wide discussion on how to better the lot of mankind and Dr. Woods is following in that grand tradition.” If Dr. Woods denies, as he does, the validity of certain papal teachings, how is that denial within the limits of the “wide discussion” which you say is allowed to Catholics? Please read the papal encyclicals, and see if you can find any place where one is allowed to object to the teaching on the just wage or many other points. And even more basically, please find the encyclical passages which allow a Catholic to deny to the popes their right to teach in this area.

As to the question of dissenter vs. heretic, it’s obviously not in my competence, or that of any layman, to proclaim Woods a heretic. But he denies what numerous popes have considered legitimate for them to teach about. In the past several decades we have spoken of dissent and dissenters. Those terms don’t have official definitions, as far as I know, but their meaning should be obvious and I suspect Mr. Seiler would have no difficulty with the term if we were speaking of someone denying the right of the popes to teach on contraception, say. Most people, including myself, use the term in an ordinary and usually understood manner, and I fail to see why that would be a difficulty for anyone.
22 Comment by R. Cort Kirkwood on 22 January 2010:

@ Mr. Salyer (# 11)

“Can one be a good Catholic and also a libertarian?”

To be a good libertarian, you have to be a bad Catholic. To be a good Catholic, you have to be a bad libertarian.

The answer to the question: No.
23 Comment by John Marino on 22 January 2010:

Mr. Storck. I think the enclyclicals are meant for serious thought,discussion and guidence. Not every word or theory is written in stone with no chance of argument. Different Popes have different views on matters of their age. These economic arguments are not ex cathedra pronouncements of the Pope. Dr. Woods isn’t attacking the Popes right to call for just wages and fair and honest treatment of all people. He is just giving discussion to an Encilyical which was poorly thought out and written. There are plenty of people at this webbsite who disagree with the latest Popes statements on the UN, the enviroment, foreign aid, immigration, and other matters. These disagreements on policy do not make them bad Catholics. This isn’t questioning the basic doctrine of the Church. The Church in it’s long history has always allowed discussion of important matters like this. Dr. Woods is just keeping with this tradition. The Pope is not dictator, but a leader trying to do his best for God.
24 Comment by John Marino on 22 January 2010:

Mr. Chan: Austrians think the market should determine prices and wages. As a former business man I agree with it. Without market rationalizing prices and wages how are they supposed to be determined, by government dictat? The question if you can be a Catholic and Libertarian is specious. A Libertrian Catholic would have to be honest in his dealings with customers and pay his employees wages that are fair. Like all moral quetions there is some room for disagreement. My idea what is fair may be different from my employee. In a free society he has the to right to quit and go elsewhere. In this country he can organize a union. In my experiece unions get in the way of what could be a more harmonious relationship between employee and employer. Both sides think of the other as the enemy. Both sides want to take advantage of the other. If a Catholic treats his employees fairly there should be no need for a union.
25 Comment by Gilbert Jacobi on 22 January 2010:

Mr. Marino,
Yes, you have a point in that the material needs of many people today are better met than in pre-capitalist times. That does not address, however, the millions who were thrown into poverty or wretched proletarian subsistence by industrialization and the rise of capital, to say nothing of the spiritual and emotional damage done when men lost their place on the land or in the guild. I can speak personally about how it feels to have had to let go of my grandfather’s land. To say that “nobody is being stopped from following such a dream”, whether it’s to live the pastoral existence of the Amish, or, in my case, to live as a small wood-products producer off our ancestral land, is to ignore the very market forces you are obviously so familiar with. I am fanatically anti-communist/socialist – on my way to my grave I’ll still be looking for Reds under my deathbed – but even I admit there’s something amoral and wrong about capitalism. (Yes, I know we don’t have much pure capitalism these days, but you get my drift.)

Furthermore, my experience as an apprentice mechanic (the trade I worked in until I decided to go back to school) leads me to think that I would have fared better under the old guilds. Being ruled and provided for by an experienced smith, joiner, wheelwright, etc., for a few years while craftsmanship and wisdom, or at least some semblance of judgement in the affairs of the world, has a chance to develop, seems to me much better, on the whole, for young men than being shoved out the door of a trade school after six months with a “diploma” and left to shift for oneself.

If a lucky few find employment in an oasis of decent wages and humane treatment such as your firm was, innumerable others are treated to the tender mercies of bosses who want only speed and slavish adherence to the most cost-efficient (for them) methods of work, methods which sneer at craftsmanship as nothing more than a roadblock to maximizing profits.

To respond to Dr. Woods’ complaint that …. “Catholic social teaching since Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum (1891) …. assumes without argument that the force of human will suffices to resolve economic questions, ….” I would ask, to the extent our will fails us in this regard, is this not an indication of how far we have fallen away from attempting to conform that will to the will of Our Lord? If we abandon our will to “market forces” operating under “economic law”, are we not preparing to be dominated by the will of the Devil?
26 Comment by Boyd on 22 January 2010:

I have found this discussion quite interesting. Mr. Storck’s theological underpinnings are solidly orthodox, and his discussion of the magisterium on this question, equally so. The Church, as the Body of Christ, has the full competence to teach through the Chair of St. Peter on a variety of matters that touch on man’s salvation, both directly and indirectly. That authority is not just in the form of solemn ex cathedra pronouncements or on clearly distinguishable and infallible matters of faith and morals, but more generally and normatively via encyclicals of the Sovereign Pontiffs on a variety of subjects when certain conditions of infallibility are met.

As Vatican I teachers authoritatively, when pontiffs direct their teaching to all the faithful, on a matter of faith and morals, consistently over time, with accompanying language that binds in conscience, the teaching would qualify as “infallible.” Father Choupin’s excellent standard study, VALEURS DES DECISIONS DOCTRINALES DE SAINT-SIEGE (1907), endorsed strongly by St. Pius X, includes examples such as the Church’s condemnation of religious indifferentism (cf. Bl. Pius IX, “Quanta cura”), the insistence on state confessionality (cf. Leo XII and many other popes), and the Assumption of the BVM as examples (of course, the Assumption was proclaimed ex cathedra by Pius XII).

Understood here, let it be said, “faith and morals” must not be considered narrowly, but would include subjects that also indirectly affect the faith and morals of a people. Basic economic principles, the popes have consistently taught, are, in many cases, equally moral principles; and in fact, moral principles cannot be divorced from economics. The language of Leo XIII, Pius XI, St. Pius X, Pius XII, et al, is very clear. While the popes do NOT lay down a specifc economic system–do not lay out all the specific details of a system, they do insist that certain elements must be included in ANY system that is legitimate. Thus, the principles of subsidiarity and the just wage are eminently MORAL principles that are also fundamental in any correct understanding of economics.

Additionally, economics for the popes and the Church is not and cannot be an “autonomous science,” as if nothing else but the profit motive or whatever, dictated its operation.

Rather than reading von Mises or Hayek, modern day “conservatives” would do well to read Professor Heinrich Pesch, S.J (his momental LEHRBUCH…., which I think is now translated), Wilhelm Roepke, Amintore Fanfani, and several of the volumes reprinted by IHS Press on economic matters and true human liberty.

Thank you, Mr. Storck.

-Dr. Boyd D. Cathey
27 Comment by John Marino on 22 January 2010:

Mr. Jacobi:
With all due respect; I don’t believe the old guild system was very fair or just in comparison to todays methods of training trademen. There were often long years of meager wages and benefits for the apprentices. He was a virtual slave to the Master tradesman. It still depended on the indivigual master to be a Christian on how he treated his underlings. Many masters didn’t want the competition of the graduated apprentices and held them back as long as possible.

Today the vast majority of constuction tradesmen are taught on the job by nonunion bosses. I was involved with union apprentice programs for years. Many unions have a historical aversion to hiring people of the wrong racial or ethnic backgroud. They also don’t want too many apprentices, because of competition to their existing journeymen. I trained a lot of union apprentices over the years and also hired a lot of tradesmen who learned their jobs, on the job, in non union situations. There wasn’t much difference, in my opinion. It just doesn’t take that long to train people for these jobs like they claim in normal apprentice programs.

For example, a friend of mine’s son is in a plumbers apprentice program. He was a probably a good plumber after 1 year but his boss has him chained to a 5 year program. Therefore he works for years at lower wages. Is that just? I will quote an old mason contractor friend of mine on training bricklayers, “two days to learn how to lay concrete block, and 2 weeks to learn how to lay brick.” The European system of long years of apprenticeship and master craftmen just isn’t fair or just in my opinion. My grandfather’s both were trained in Europe under this system to learn jobs, that we teach here in a much shorter time.
28 Comment by Robert on 22 January 2010:

Greatpost Gilbert Jacobi !!!! Not only are you thinking like a man but you are behaving like one as well. One of my old professors once gave a beautiful talk about St. Benedict to a group of graduate students and aspiring scholars only to be corrected and harrassed at the very end by conjecture and possible innovative interpretations of the saint’s early life that were totally contrary to the traditional understanding of his life as given to us through the ages. I believe the man was suggesting to my old professor that the reference to St. Benedict “having been supplied bread by an old crow” was really a reference to some Italian banker who was bankrolling the whole effort — and “nothing more.” My professor responded by saying, ” Well to hell with all of this, if that is what you really think!!!” As I mentioned the other day, Keep up the good work.
29 Comment by R. Cort Kirkwood on 22 January 2010:

@ Mr. Marino (#26)

Mr. Marino writes of how little training it take to learn plumbing or lay bricks. I doubt he is correct.

Yes, it may take only two weeks to learn brick laying; but how long will it take to become a master at it?

I’ve been writing for more than 25 years. When I first began writing editorials at The Washington Times, it didn’t take long to get the general hang of it. But I was much better at it four years later than I was after four months.

An old editor friend of mine and I were once talking about column writing. Once, when a friend asked him how long it took him to write what the friend thought was a particularly good column, the columnist replied thusly:

“25 Years.”

I submit, Mr. Marino, that a bricklayer would say the same thing.

Having been a mason tender myself, I can say your friend is either exaggerating or you misunderstood him. Bricklaying involves more than laying bricks. You must read plans and blueprints, know how to mix mud, what kind of mud to mix, when to lay the bricks, etc., etc. You must know tricks of the trade that only years of experience can teach you.

If you really believe what you’re saying, I recommend the following:

Let a 19-year-old bricklayer with two weeks experience build your next house with no supervsion.

Better yet, let a cardiovascular surgery intern with two weeks experience perform your bypass surgery, again, with no supervision.

After all, how long can it take to learn how to crack a chest and reroute coronary arteries?
30 Comment by Robert on 22 January 2010:

Mr. Marino,
I would go even further and say that the very reason we opened the Southern border was that a true republican could teach a man who does not even speak their language, in three weeks or less, how to lay brick or do finish carpentry work that would be satisfactory for most Americans — and a heck of a lot cheaper!!! The Reign of Quantity is an excellent read if one can still find a copy.
31 Comment by John Marino on 22 January 2010:

Robert:
Most bricklayers trained on the job come from the ranks of mason tenders. It is a job I did for quite awhile myself. They aren’t people right off the street. The same can be said of other job taught trademen. They usually come from the laborers that handle material on the job. I guess I could have been clearer on that. It doesn’t take long to learn how to read prints especially if you study it awhile. Of course experience makes a man a better mechanic, but you learn as you work on the job with older mechanics.

In regards to Mexicans who learn on the job. I had one who learned his trade long before he came to work for me. He had a sixth grade education in Mexico, but could read prints and lay out jobs. He was of the best men I ever had and was with me 15 years. I also broke in his 2 sons as tradesmen. The Mexicans I have seen around constuction are usually hard workers and many are family men. I can’t see what denigrating them accomplishes.

50 million Americans were aborted in the last 40 years and have been replaced by 50 million immigrants. Until recently they were vitally need in the economy. There wern’t a lot of Americans who wanted to do the backbreaking work that some of these people did. In this country everyone wants to be a college graduate sitting on his behind in a fat executive job. There has to be someone to do the grunt work.
32 Comment by T. Chan on 22 January 2010:

Mr. Martino:

“Austrians think the market should determine prices and wages. As a former business man I agree with it. Without market rationalizing prices and wages how are they supposed to be determined, by government dictat?”

Ultimate authority for the care of the common good rests with the government, and the question of wages and prices is not of interest only to the parties involved in a transaction, since they affect the common good. To put it in another way, economic transactions are ultimately for the sake of the good life of the community, and not vice versa.
33 Comment by T. Chan on 22 January 2010:

Mr. Storck, will you be dealing with the question of property rights in a subsequent post?
34 Comment by Robert on 22 January 2010:

John,
I don’t think I denigrated Mexican immigrants, rather attempted to illustrate the difference between a craftsman and a worker,or a citizen and an employee or laborer.Your point about “50 million Americans were aborted in the last 40 years and have been replaced by 50 million immigrants,” is respected although the numbers are much greater. I think the worst aspect of abortion is it prevents the living from the opportunity to learn the redeeming qualities in sacrificing ones own desires for the love of another by substituting death and violent selfishness in its place — which is at least one reason there is no longer a desire for honest or humble work among our own citizens. I appreciate your determination in this cvirtual conversation and certainly have benefited from your remarks in understanding my own position.
35 Comment by Gilbert Jacobi on 22 January 2010:

Mr. Marino,

Yes, there was a slower pace of wage growth under the guilds; but my point was that material gains are not the only nor necessarily the most important part of one’s livelihood. During those long years of low pay and being at the beck and call of the master craftsman, the apprentice was also being given room and board, and had to be in by a certain hour; so the youngster was largely protected from the ups and downs of the economy and from the temptations that beset a youth with some money in his pocket cut loose from adult supervision. No doubt some of those old journeymen were harsh, but do you think that was typical, or the exception? And sure, being under such close control chafes when one is sixteen or twenty, but I wonder how many former apprentices held a grudge when they looked back, as opposed to being grateful for having been given a solid footing to make their way in the world, and an assured place in it? I’d be interested in hearing what your grandfathers had to say about their training, but even in their time, the guilds were long gone.

On a lighter note: when I read your line “It doesn’t take long to learn how to read prints especially if you study it awhile”, I immediately thought of Casey Stengel’s line, that went something like “Baseball’s a simple game. But then you have your finer points.”
36 Comment by Martin Kelly on 23 January 2010:

Mr. Marino’s comment on regulation is tedious.

Nobody starts a business with a gun at their head. If you don’t like being regulated, find something else to do. Regulation is to business what accountability is to people – if you won’t behave yourself, you will have standards of behaviour imposed upon you. The conservative fetish for deregulation has interesting consequences – the law and order conservative demands that flesh and blood human beings lose their liberty for years, often for the pettiest crimes, while also endorsing the idea that corporations, notional entities that can’t be said to exist in any corporeal sense but only through the operation of quite absurd legal fictions, should be free to what they want, to whom they want, however they want, and wherever and whenever they want. This preference for the non-existent in favour of the man in front of you is not a viewpoint, but a psychosis.
37 Comment by R J Stove on 23 January 2010:

At #21, Dr. Storck writes:

“Please read the papal encyclicals, and see if you can find any place where one is allowed to object to the teaching on the just wage or many other points. And even more basically, please find the encyclical passages which allow a Catholic to deny to the popes their right to teach in this area.”

As far as I’m aware, no Catholic writer in the English language – none at all – objected to Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno before Bill Buckley’s emergence. If any reader of Chronicles can think of a single such writer, I’d be interested to know that writer’s name. But when one reads F. J. Sheed’s Communism and Man (published 1938, i.e. during the Spanish war), there is not the smallest suggestion there that the Church’s economic teachings are any less binding on the Catholic faithful than are the Church’s specifically sexual teachings. I really would like to know how Dr. Woods attempts to square this circle, because after trying to read him on the topic, I am none the wiser.
38 Comment by John Marino on 23 January 2010:

Mr. Stove:
I object to the economics in Quadrigisimo Anno. Pius The Eleventh was too into the economics of people Dr. Salazar and others like him. I think the basic point of these Papal letters is to emphasize the basic teaching of Christianity on economics. These can be put forth in a few statements.

Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors property. Greed and Avarice are capitol sins. Share with the poor all that you have and follow me. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of needle as it is for for a rich man to gain paradise. The Popes give examples in these letters of how a Catholics could treat their fellow man, but they are not written in stone. I do love De Rerum Novarum which I think was the best letter any Pope has written on how employers and employees could follow Christian lives.
39 Comment by John Marino on 23 January 2010:

Mr. Jacobi:
Judging by my own experiece in life and from what I have read, I think a lot of masters abused their apprentices. These masters remembered their own harsh apprenticeships and dished it out as bad or worse. A true Christian would not do that of course but how many true Christians do we meet who have a lot of money and power? Don’t forget these guilds set prices and restained trade. That could not have been good or just for the non guild memember. The guilds had their place but I don’t see them returning anytime soon. They often did high quality work. Today with modern methods we do high quality work, pay good wages, and give much better working conditions to workers.

Materialism is the problem today. People want so much material wealth and physical pleasures that they are never satisfied. The high tax rates as well make people work harder to get all these worldly goods. The rat race is man made. You can live a simple life in this world and I highly recommend it. However many will see you as an oddball in this greedy modern existence.
40 Comment by John Marino on 23 January 2010:

Mr. Kelly: My comment on regulation in modern business is just a fact of life. When My grandfather started in business in 1908, he didn’t to much have much to get started. He got the job. Did the job. He got paid in cash. He paid his men in cash. There were no income taxes and virtually no paperwork. In fifty years in business my father and grandfather had 2 file cabinets of records. When I closed the business down a few years back, I threw out 10 20 yard rubbish containers of old parperwork and still have some more stored.

No matter what business you start today you are overwhelmed with paperwork and regulation. Much or most of it is sensless and horrendously wasteful of money and time. If we want to have a simpler lifestyle somebody has to attack the problem of the leviathon that is the modern state.
41 Comment by Thomas Storck on 23 January 2010:

Mr. Marino wrote:
“I object to the economics in Quadrigisimo Anno. Pius The Eleventh was too into the economics of people Dr. Salazar and others like him. I think the basic point of these Papal letters is to emphasize the basic teaching of Christianity on economics. These can be put forth in a few statements.”

Mr. Marino, are you a Catholic? What is the difference between your saying, “I object to the economics in Quadrigisimo [sic] Anno” and someone else saying, “I object to the teaching on contraception in Humanae Vitae”?

You think the basic point of papal social teaching can be condensed into a few statements. Apparently the popes are of a different opinion. Please explain why anyone should pay any regard to your opinion on this matter versus that of the popes?

Mr. Chan, before I realized these comments on part 2 were still ongoing, I replied to your question about property rights briefly after part 3. See my original CSSR article where there is a short section on how culture conditions property rights according to Pius XI.
42 Comment by John Marino on 23 January 2010:

Mr. Storck: The difference is that sexual ethics are quite clearly in the province of faith and morals. Whether I agree with several different Popes uses of economics to make a point is another matter. Pius the 11th, a very holy man, had opinions on economics that were of his age and experience. So did Leo the 13th of his age, John Paul the 2nd in his writings, and now Benedict in his. There are conflicts between them and all these Popes had advisors with different opinions.

All these Papal letters are talking about how we as Christians can better follow the gospel. I can disagree with the methods they recommend but not the final goal. Should I be excommunicated because I don’t like the bishops call for universal healthcare, If they can get the proper language on abortion? Should I be thrown out of polite Catholic society because I think the Popes recent writings on the UN and global warming are wrong and silly? The Pope’s call in these Encylicals is for Christians to treat their fellow man with respect and charity. How we do that is a daily problem we all face.
43 Comment by Michael Ezzo on 23 January 2010:

Why would Dr. Woods complain that Catholic social teaching assumes that the force of human will suffices to resolve economic questions”?

Isn’t the free market precisely about leaving everything up to the free will of people, to buy and sell, according to their own free FORCE OF HUMAN WILL, without ANY regulation (including the teaching of popes, it seems)? That is the libertartian creed : freedom of “choice,” right? Please explain where I am misunderstanding. Thank you.
44 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 23 January 2010:

Mr Marino, several of those you have been debating are regular dissenters of Papal Encyclicals; Mr Chan is an apostate sedavacantist ‘catholic’ who believes all Papal authority ended in 1958. Mr Kirkwood writes for a Traditionalist Catholic newspaper – The Remnant – while loyal to the Holy Father has no problem critiquing Encyclicals. You’ll notice not many of them are citing Encyclicals after Pius XII; critiquing any post Vatican II pope is ok, you see, but all statements before that were infallible.
45 Comment by R J Stove on 23 January 2010:

Mr. Marino writes:

“I object to the economics in Quadrigisimo [sic] Anno. Pius The Eleventh was too into the economics of people ["like"? - there seems to be a word missing here - RJS] Dr. Salazar and others like him.”

Oh dear. Let us leave aside the fact that encyclicals are perhaps best discussed by those who can spell their titles, rather than by those who cannot. Let us further leave aside such Valley Girl phraseology on Mr. Marino’s part as “too into”. I would merely point out that in 1931 Salazar had not even become Portugal’s Prime Minister. (He was, admittedly, very powerful in the country’s government before that date.)

So the correlation between Pius XI and Salazarism was, if anything, operating in the other direction: from the pope to the P.M., rather than the other way around. I am sure that my own ignorance on the topic is fairly spectacular, though having written the preface to the soon-to-be-republished book The Portugal of Salazar – by the late English journalist Michael Derrick – I might possibly be less ignorant than some.

I await, with interest, a clear yes-or-no reply to Dr. Storck’s entirely civil and lucid question: “Mr. Marino, are you a Catholic?”
46 Comment by T. Chan on 23 January 2010:

#44 Mr. Maxwell:
“Mr Marino, several of those you have been debating are regular dissenters of Papal Encyclicals; Mr Chan is an apostate sedavacantist ‘catholic’ who believes all Papal authority ended in 1958.”

You’re either mistaken or you have me confused with someone else, because I don’t think you can support this claim.
47 Comment by T. Chan on 23 January 2010:

Oh, even if the above allegation is true, it’d be beside the point, since the question is whether the authority of the Magisterium extends to economics or not.
48 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 23 January 2010:

I wholeheartedly apologize Mr Chan. I confused you with poster ‘J Meng’ who was a regular sedevacantist poster for some time. And yes, perhaps it would be beside the point; I only bring it up because some here do exactly what they are accusing Dr Woods and Mr. Marino of doing, albeit on different topics.
49 Comment by Gilbert Jacobi on 24 January 2010:

Mr. Ezzo,

Perhaps because he doesn’t want the burden of the moral responsibility that teaching implies? Perhaps professional jealousy? If human will can alter the outcomes of economic activity in ways that economists can’t predict, because we behaved less selfishly or less rationally than his model tells him we ought to, that would be embarrassing, wouldn’t it?

As I understand it, Dr. Woods is complaining that Catholic social teaching wants to substitute human will for the “laws” of economics, or more precisely, to assert that human will can operate independently of these laws. I have not read Woods’ whole paper, but it sounds to me that he wants, if not to absolve man from moral responsibility in the economic realm, at least to refute the idea that by enforcing certain moral principles we may have a substantial degree of control over the outcomes of economic activity. In other words, he seems to want to blame harmful outcomes mostly on immutable market forces, and he sees the popes as naively (inconveniently?) asserting the power of mere good intentions. And, as I rejoined in my post above, I think the fault lies not in the naivete of good intentions, but rather that we don’t try hard enough to conform our intentions to Christ’s.

I don’t see where you have any disagreement with Woods, actually. What do you mean by the “it seems” in your line about the teaching of popes? I can’t tell if you are ambivalent, or being ironic.

Do you see any place for moral principles in economic transactions?
50 Comment by T. Chan on 24 January 2010:

Mr. Maxwell — apology accepted. It seems to me that there is a difference between denying a teaching about the authority of the Magisterium and denying that there is someone occupying the papal office.
51 Comment by Michael Ezzo on 24 January 2010:

Thanks for your elucidation, Mr. Jacobi. Please don’t misunderstand : I was being absolutely facetious by that “it seems” statement. It does not reflect my belief. I try to follow all papal teaching, even if it means changing a previously held viewpoint. So it looks as if I do not share Dr. Woods’ position.

I just read parts of Mr. Storck’s brilliant essay from five years ago (referenced in his introductory essay), and it cleared up a lot, particularly the quote of Lumen Gentium, wherein the pope clearly states that Catholics are to assent to all papal teaching even if not ex cathedra. That pretty much ends the argument for
me, regarding who has the sound position in this debate. I recommend others to read it too if possible.

I don’t believe any economic law exists independent of
the actual choices that real men make in real economic situations. And I see what you mean when you say that men might be tempted to just blame harmful outcomes on immutable market forces.
That seems rather un-Christian to me. Probably to you too.

So, it appears that I do see a place for moral principles in economic transactions, if I understand what you mean. Thank you for
your patience and helpful wisdom.
52 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 24 January 2010:

Mr. Maxwell, I’m not following your logic. Mr. Kirkwood writes for the Remnant, so therefore . . . so therefore what? Mr. Kirkwood has also written for LewRockwell.com—should we therefore be attacking Mr. Kirkwood as a hypocrite, since, by your logic, he must support the very people he is criticizing?

Mr. Woods used to write for the Remnant, too. What does that tell us?
53 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 24 January 2010:

Mr Richert, my point was is that several of the posters here dissent regularly about various statements from the Catholic Church, so to me it seems hypocritical to be practically accusing Woods of being a heretic for the same reason. To be fair Mr. Kirkwood writes often more about history for the Remnant (of which I am a regular reader).

I want to stress though, that I dont agree with Woods on all of his points either; but I do agree with him that there are certain laws of economics that dont become less true because various Popes or certain Catholic Bishop Conferences wish them to be. And yes, Mr Richert I remember Woods writing for the Remnant, where he regularly dissented – along with the Remnant staff – about then Cardinal Ratzinger’s various give ins to the Church progressives who are destroying Her, and among other areas.
54 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 24 January 2010:

Mr. Maxwell, your answer hasn’t made your previous statement any more clear. You write “several of the posters here dissent regularly about various statements from the Catholic Church, so to me it seems hypocritical to be practically accusing Woods of being a heretic for the same reason,” but you still haven’t identified such a poster and the dissent he has published. You accused Mr. Chan of positions held by someone else, and you have now twice mentioned Mr. Kirkwood without once pointing to a single instance of what you regard as his dissent.

In fact, in this latest comment, the only person you have actually identified as a dissenter is Mr. Woods—which makes it awfully odd that you are accusing others (without providing any evidence) of being dissenters, and calling them hypocrites for doing what you have just done.
55 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 24 January 2010:

In case my point still isn’t clear, Mr. Maxwell, why don’t we simply stick to those things which various people—Mr. Woods, Mr. Storck, Mr. Kirkwood, and any others you’d like—have actually written, and stop muddying the argument through attempts at guilt by association?

Otherwise, the next thing you know, someone will accuse all of us at Chronicles of being dissenters because Chronicles has published both Mr. Woods and Mr. Kirkwood. And then I suppose Mr. Storck would be implicated as well, because we have published him. It’s enough to make my head spin.
56 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 24 January 2010:

You’re right Mr Richert, I admit my argument was a weak one. I should have my memory checked; Mr Chan does not equal ‘J Meng’ – and Mr Kirkwood as I said mainly writes about history for The Remnant and I was unable to find any real dissent on his part. I withdraw what I said about both posters and I apologize again.

But setting aside the repliers here for a moment, my point still stands that there are few of us who dont dissent on at least a few points with the Catholic Church. You yourself have been very vocal about the Church promoting amnesty, for example. At what point in your mind, does dissent go too far? Am I out of line for saying I disagree quite strongly not only with the Church on its promotion of Herself in the US as an ‘immigrant church’ but with other topics such as capital punishment, the Novus Ordo and universal health care (not to mention economics)?
57 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 24 January 2010:

Thank you, Mr. Maxwell.

As to your other point, you write, “there are few of us who dont dissent on at least a few points with the Catholic Church.” I don’t, in fact, know that to be true of the Catholic commenters (not to mention the writers) here. To speak only of myself, I try always to understand not only the official teaching of the Church but to take seriously any discussion by popes of the issues of the day. If I am a dissenter, even on “a few points,” it is unintentional dissent, because I cannot think of any question on which I have intentionally written a single word in dissent.

You write that I “have been very vocal about the Church promoting amnesty, for example.” I’m wondering where I might find such writings of mine, because I have clearly forgotten producing them. I have written about the Church and immigration, but nothing that I recall writing could be characterized as you have characterized my views.

At what point does dissent from the teachings of the Church go too far? In my mind, when it becomes dissent. As others have discussed, that may well be something short of heresy or of any offense that would incur de jure or de facto excommunication.

The problem in this particular case is not (as many of Mr. Woods defenders, including, I think, yourself, would have it) that Mr. Woods disagrees with particular policy proposals and solutions. The problem is that Mr. Woods has stated, in so many words, that the Church has no competence to teach in the area of economics, while a series of popes have claimed otherwise.

Those of us who take seriously the teaching authority of the Church must take seriously the Church’s claims about the limits of that authority. Mr. Woods does not.
58 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 24 January 2010:

On my last comment, about taking seriously the Church’s claims about the limits of Her teaching authority, I’m reminded of an exchange from earlier in this comment thread. Mr. Stove wrote:

As far as I’m aware, no Catholic writer in the English language – none at all – objected to Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno before Bill Buckley’s emergence. If any reader of Chronicles can think of a single such writer, I’d be interested to know that writer’s name.

And Mr. Marino replied:

I object to the economics in Quadrigisimo [sic] Anno.

Setting aside Mr. Marino’s non sequitur—Mr. Stove didn’t say that he knows no one who objects to Quadragesimo anno—the exchange is still enlightening. Like Mr. Stove, I can think of “no Catholic writer in the English language” who “objected to Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno before Bill Buckley’s emergence.”

Yet today, there are plenty of American Catholics (including, presumably, Mr. Marino, though I note that he has yet to answer Mr. Storck’s direct question) who object not only to Rerum novarum and Quadragesimo anno but indeed, as one prominent libertarian who is Catholic (my phrasing is intentional) told me regarding himself six years ago, to the entire tradition of Catholic social teaching.

The question, obviously, is why? But that why has many different levels. What happened historically in the United States that brought about this change? Why hasn’t it happened in Europe, not even in England (at least to the extent it has happened here)?

The why I’m most interested in, though, is why Catholics in the United States today simply assume—one might say, as a matter of faith—that economic morality somehow lies outside of “faith and morals.”

I realize now that, growing up, that was my understanding as well. But this is the heart of Mr. Stove’s point: That wasn’t always the understanding of Catholic writers in the English language. There was, as Mr. Stove writes of F.J. Sheed, “not the smallest suggestion there that the Church’s economic teachings are any less binding on the Catholic faithful than are the Church’s specifically sexual teachings.”

Yet at some point, for “conservative” Catholics in the United States, that changed. It became a proof of Catholic orthodoxy to point out that Catholics could not dissent from Humanae vitae, but proof of one’s “conservatism” to declare one’s open dissent from Catholic social teaching.

But on what basis is this justified? Where in Catholic tradition do we find warrant for removing economic morality from the realm of the Church’s teaching on morals?
59 Comment by John Marino on 24 January 2010:

Mr. Stove:
Shame on you. Are we down to stessing a couple of spelling and typing mistakes as proof of your argument? I type by looking at the keys because I never learned any other way. I also was never the best speller. I have to edit everything I write and make a few mistakes. That doesn’t make your argument any better.

You sound like my old sociology teacher in high school Sister Mary Agnes SSND in 1960-61. God rest her soul. She used the Papel letters of Leo and Pius the 11th as the main focus of her course. She was quite adamant that the only place in the world where the social doctrine of the church was being applied properly was in Salazar’s Portugal. Now Salazar had some good points. He was for sound money and gold. He had strict balanced budgets and kept the country under orderly rule. He also was for a colonial empire that was keeping his country in poverty and which led to the downfall of his regime, after his death, and the installation of a communist- socialist state.

His rule was marked by an elite cabral of the rich and the army. The poor were not well provided for. There also wasn’t a lot of opportunity for advancement and many were forced to emmigrate. He ruled far too long for any good he did. He also had no real plan for sucession. Most of what he did ended in ruins. How can we see anything for our future in such history?

I object to nothing in these letters or any other Papel statements about our responsiblity to the poor and those under our economic control. That also stands for those of the bisops, and my parish priest. These responsibilities go back to the Gospel itself. I have the right to object to political or economic remedies put forth by fallible priests from the Pope on down. If I think that they are wrong and may do more harm than good. In fact, I think it is my duty to do so in a respectful and charitable way.

The Catholic Church which gave the world the University, the scientific method, and such great scholars as Paul, Augutine, Aquinas, and Catherine of Sienna, can stand a little intellectual argument about economics and how to properly respond to our Gospel call on charity to the poor.

The Catholic Church over 2000 years has survived many thousands of civil governments and many, many,economic models. The Church goes on the best it can under all circumstances. There will never be a perfect civil government or economic model here on earth. All we can do is to try do right every day ourselves.
60 Comment by Martin Kelly on 25 January 2010:

Mr. Richert,

Re Comment 58 – I am not an American, so my qualifications for commenting upon American history are limited; but could the conflation between Catholicism and what might be described as the reactionary and very primitive form of economic liberalism espoused by John Marino, apparently stuck somewhere in time before 1931, be a testament to the success of anti-Soviet Communist teaching – albeit an inverted one?

Presumably both the Catholic Church in the USA and the American State railed against Soviet Communism after 1945. In this struggle, perhaps the necessity of defeating Soviet Communism became, for some, more important than leading orthodox and devout lives – after all, the State and the Church are saying the same things, so that message must be the really important one. However, and unlike the Church, the State never had any real beef with Communism per se – indeed it was quite willing to court it as and when required, as shown in 1972. The Soviet version was, however, a direct challenge to the State’s influence in parts of the world deemed important.

The overly close identification of State with Church, allied to the overtly anti-Catholic direction in which public culture was turned from, say, 1965 onwards (and one which Catholics willingly fostered by letting their children watch television and buy music), perhaps led many Catholics to identify more with the State than the Church. The Church was still preaching ‘Love your neighbour as you do yourself’ – from 1980 onwards, the State was preaching, ‘And you love your neighbour by eliminating regulation and helping the rich make more money so that your neighbour’s lot can be improved through the operation of trickledown’. Presumably, this may have caused something of a localised collapse in confidence amongst the hierarchy, leading them to actively embrace or merely suffer that which they should have all have immediately condemned with one voice; one thinks of liturgical dance and shudders. It also left some Catholics without any kind of defence mechanism against State diktat, no prism through which the State’s demands could be viewed.

It was the breaking down of this firewall that has ultimately led to the abomination of Catholics endorsing torture because the State and its cheerleaders say it’s necessary for security – a concept to which the early Church seemed to pay no heed. In the economic sphere, 1980’s era neoliberalism has been shown to be one of the most reactionary doctrines ever devised by Man. Wherever it has been applied, common public goods have been turned into private hands for a pittance, workers’ rights have been severely restricted, and the gap between rich and poor has widened significantly. One would hope that Mr. Marino and those who cheerlead for deregulation reflect upon whether these developments are compatible with Christianity. Personally, I doubt it.

Regarding the reading of encyclicals, ‘Caritas in Veritate’ is an extremely challenging document; its enunciation of the importance of migrants’ rights is a direct challenge to Catholics who believe in the restriction of immigration. This causes this writer to do some soul searching – for no matter how much one might be attracted to immigration restrictionism for cultural and economic reasons (in my case, writing for VDare), orthodoxy and the promise of eternal life are more important than anything else.
61 Comment by R J Stove on 25 January 2010:

Further to Scott Richert’s remarks, perhaps a brief allusion to secular political history is in order.

In Australia during my 1960s and 1970s childhood – scarcely among the most theocratic of cultures – it was taken for granted by everyone, whether Catholic or Protestant or Jew or atheist (we had extremely few Buddhists or Muslims in our midst), that (a) Catholics believed specific teachings about the economy, and (b) these teachings were different from what the WASP mainstream (whether Right or Left) believed. I say this as one who grew up in a household not only atheist but quite militantly atheist.

In fact it was precisely because of both (a) and (b), especially (b), that the Catholic position was so bitterly unpopular in the Australian secularist establishment at the time. This position was derided by its opponents as consisting of “three acres and a cow”.

The late Clyde Cameron – a Left-wing Australian cabinet minister of formidable talent and invective during the 1970s – publicly warned that if Catholics got powerful enough to act on Chesterbellocian notions, the whole Australian population would be made to “eat grass.” (He later relented.) Nonetheless, neither Cameron nor anyone else in Australian public life ever supposed that Catholic economic teaching wasn’t de fide.

Promoting the notion that Rerum Novarum and other economics encyclicals were purely optional was, as far as I can determine, an imaginative leap confined to upholders of Americanist heresy in its various forms (and Dr. Woods’s attitudes on economics surely constitute nothing more, or less, than merely one branch among others of Americanism). Of course Dr. Woods has his Australian Catholic soul-mates now. But my point is, he had no such soul-mates then. His current antipodean imitators are simply importing his doctrines.
62 Comment by Thomas Storck on 25 January 2010:

Gentlemen all,

It appears to me that, if I can assume good will on the part of those who raise objections to papal social teaching, some of their difficulty comes from the great number of papal/episcopal statements, and that these people lack any means for sorting out the level of authority in these various utterances. Some people, when challenged about Quadragesimo Anno, immediately begin to talk about bishops’ statements or papal statements about global warming, etc. This is only to muddy the waters. Let me attempt a clarification, although I already said some of this in one of my comments after part I of this series.

An encyclical is a formal statement of a pope. Thus it carries with it a presumption of some authority. However, we can often see that there are different levels of authority in the same document just by looking at the wording of statements. But when something is stated as the teaching of the Church, and especially when it is repeated by numerous popes, I think it is more than rash (in the theological sense) to dispute it. It’s also important to note that in their economic teaching the popes speak directly only to the moral aspects of economics (as Pius XI makes clear). But as I argued at length in my original article (in the CSSR), it’s impossible to make any statements about the morality of economic matters without occasionally at least touching on how economies actually work. And that the popes have done, although their specific competence does not reach technical matters. (See my reply to Wood’s reply for more on this – I think it’s in part 3.)

Other statements by popes, speeches, audiences, etc., clearly carry less weight. On global warming for example, the popes have no competence in meteorology, physics, earth science, etc. as such.
So we must understand that their moral teaching, which does have weight, assumes the fact of global warming and man’s contribution to it. So essentially it seems to me, those of you who dispute global warming must agree that IF global warming were occurring, then the papal moral statements about it would carry authority. If you don’t think there is global warming or that man’s contribution to it is nil or small, then I suppose you can regard the papal statements as simply good morals but misapplied to the factual situation. (BTW, I fail to see why so many take as an article of their (conservative) faith that global warming is a myth. It appears to me that some global warming is obviously occurring and that almost certainly we are contributing to it. But this is merely an obiter dictum – let’s not get involved in arguing this point here please.) And I hope everyone can see that it’s really necessary, despite what Thomas Woods says, for popes to make comments about actual economic facts, even if the thrust of their teaching is moral. Consider the parallel case: Can the popes denounce a persecution of the Church that is occurring somewhere? What is the government involved denies it is persecuting? Does the pope have specific competence in reporting the news? Clearly no, but it would be pretty silly if the popes always had to preface their statements with a disclaimer such as, “Well if in fact such and such a government is killing Catholics…,” or “Well, if in fact capitalists are exploiting workers…” We have to live in the real world here and not invent some ivory tower for the popes to dwell in, making comments that have no relevance for the life of the faithful.

But for those who make sweeping references to encyclicals, papal addresses, speeches, etc. and throw up their hands in dismay, and
conclude that because not all of this carries doctrinal weight, then none of it does – this is a failure to think. It seems to me that those who want to speak about these issues, even in the informal method of responses, have a responsibility to learn something about the subject and about the correct methodology for understanding it. I would be a fool were I to speak about a subject on which I knew little or nothing and simply point to the variety of phenomena and exclaim, “Look at all that! How can anyone make sense of it. I can’t and therefore no one else can either!”

There is enough nonsense spoken today, and everyone who speaks or writes has a duty, it seems to me, to try to help in the discovery of truth and clarification of issues, not to simply repeat slogans.
63 Comment by John Marino on 25 January 2010:

I wrote a long answer to Mr. Stove last night that took me over and hour to do. When I submitted it the whole thing was blocked. I get the point. Only the choir gets to sing in this church.
64 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 25 January 2010:

Mr. Marino, please pause for a moment and think about what you have just written. This comment made it through; the other did not. Do you honestly think that there is someone sitting here, monitoring every comment and preventing one—but only one!—of your many comments from appearing?

Of course not. The system that we use (WordPress) is largely automated. Comments are automatically thrown into moderation for certain reasons (I am not going to list them all here, because that would help spammers figure out how to prevent their comments from being placed into moderation); and other comments are caught by our spam filter.

Your response to Mr. Stove was caught by the latter. I’m not sure why, but I have found it there and approved it.

Again, some patience and charity might be called for here. “Only the choir gets to sing in this church”—and yet your comments, with the exception of one, have all appeared, and that one was caught apparently by a fluke.
65 Comment by John Marino on 25 January 2010:

I did not expect the comment to make it through Scott. I was just testing the system. You can see how frustrated I was by putting all that work in and it not getting through. Believe me I just thought my comments had been blocked by your computers. I am off to see a sick elderly aunt so I can’t put anymore time in now. I used to spar with you in a very friendly way over at Taki’s a while back. Thanks for the response.
66 Comment by jack bailey on 25 January 2010:

After reading the article and the posts, I have difficulty agreeing with either Mr. Woods or Mr. Storck. Mr. Marino keeps the ball rolling throughout the discussion and it is very helpful in examining both sides. As far as Mr. Storck, I have trouble with the whole notion of deductive economics in explaining preferences. SOmehow it is supposed to support his argument, but I don’t think that the concept of deductive economics can be used correctly to describe any school of thought as its main characteristic. In addition, methodology alone plays a very minor part when discussing different schools of thought.
As far as Mr. Woods, even if the pronouncement he criticizes can be interpreted as anticapitalist (and assuming that this is why he has a problem with it), why take it out of context as if it is being used as a rallying cry against capitalism and in favor of socialism? Perhaps there is more behind all this that I am not aware of and there is an attempt to marginalize Mr. Woods, but isn’t this really much ado about nothing? The Pope has a moral authority that he has, he has a duty to guide and any of his pronouncements should be welcomed as such. At the same time if this Pope believes in global warming and has problems with capitalism, it does not mean that the next Pope will see things differently. In closing, the question Whether the science of global warming or economics is honest is a separate but equally interesting issue which is not being discussed here.
67 Comment by Thomas Storck on 25 January 2010:

Mr. Bailey,

I appreciate your attempt to sum up this dispute, but I’m not sure I would agree with you. For example, I think Pope Benedict’s name has hardly been mentioned in all this discussion, so I don’t understand your reference to the “next Pope” We’re talking about teaching repeated since Leo XIII in 1891, if not before. This teaching is not socialist, nor need it even be understood as anti-capitalist (Please see the definition of capitalism from Pius XI and my discussion of that in my comment #45 under part 1.) It is definitely against the abuses of capitalism, and it recognizes that the free market is not an adequate way of regulating an economy. My CSSR article was mainly dedicated to showing that papal moral teaching on the economy presupposed a type of economic analysis that differs from what I call deductive economics, the kind of economics that says, `Well, such and such can never happen because the market doesn’t work that way’ or something like that. In other words, instead of looking at economic facts this kind of economic analysis tends to look to its theories and interpret facts in their light.

Secondly, I touched on the question, and Dr. Woods discussed this at more length, of the authoritative nature of papal teaching on economic morality. This has been pretty thoroughly thrashed out above, as I’m sure you’ve read. If, as you admit, papal teaching has moral authority as coming from the Vicar of Christ, then I don’t understand why some such as Mr. Marino or Dr. Woods object to that teaching when it touches upon economic morality.
68 Comment by jack bailey on 25 January 2010:

Thank you for your kind answer. I was attempting to make a minor point that in the future a Pope may come with a view that evolves in a different way. In any case, the Pope should be heeded without a doubt. But that is where the problems arise. If the free market is not adequate to regulate the economy, then who is? Furthermore for those who are supposed to regualate it, how much regulation is enough? I am not sure that Mr. Marino or Mr Woods object to the papal teachings as much as they are worried about the answers to these two questions above.
69 Comment by Martin Kelly on 26 January 2010:

‘If the free market is not adequate to regulate the economy, then who is?’

In a democracy, I would have thought the people were sovereign, in the sense that they are the final authority on everything in the civil sphere. Their right to govern themselves supercedes any economic right.

‘Furthermore for those who are supposed to regulate it, how much regulation is enough?’

Enough as is required. As has been seen over the past two years, the need for regulation is often seen only at the same time as the consequences of non-regulation become apparent. The price of freedom being eternal vigilance and all that, the need for regulation outweighs the preference for non-regulation.
70 Comment by Gilbert Jacobi on 26 January 2010:

Michael Ezzo,
Though you gave a shock, putting my name and wisdom in the same sentence, I thank you for the kind words.
71 Comment by Gilbert Jacobi on 26 January 2010:

Martin Kelly@69 writes:

“In a democracy, I would have thought the people were sovereign, in the sense that they are the final authority on everything in the civil sphere.”

If it were that easy, this article wouldn’t have been necessary, and in fact, Chronicles Magazine probably wouldn’t exist.

When you put together the power of the transnational financial and business interests and the power of America’s inept, corrupt, cowardly political duopoly, “the people” are reduced to the status of children. Like children, their only weapon is the tantrum. Tantrums get attention and palliatives; once the children have been soothed and had their attention redirected, the power balance, though momentarily disturbed, remains unchanged. As Clyde Wilson says, “The bankers will always get their cut”, and as the economy worsens and money becomes harder to extract from its remaining producers, and the people’s tantrums become more troublesome, finance and government become ever more ruthless in their methods.

As for the answer “Enough as is required” to the question of “how much regulation is enough?”: even determining, to say nothing of implementing, this optimum level would require everybody to behave in a Christian manner, with no other interest but the common good in mind. Just in saying that it becomes obvious that all we can expect, barring a catastrophic event, is more lurching from crisis to crisis.
72 Comment by Thomas Storck on 26 January 2010:

Since the sin of Adam, nothing human works perfectly. As we know all too well, even within the Church of Christ there are horrible abuses. So it’s impossible to set up a merely human government, whether for political or economic matters, that will work perfectly. So yes, under the medieval guilds for example, there were abuses and injustices, no question about that. Capitalism, however, perceives greed and inordinate production and consumption as mainsprings of its working, and thus requires extraordinary regulation and supervision. That’s why capitalism, even when it isn’t per se unjust, is unstable, and why distributism is superior to capitalism.

But if we are to have regulation, then regulation by whom? I’ve been urging readers here to read Quadragesimo Anno, which contains the most extended treatment of these questions from a pope. But as I’ve said, the best kind of regulation would be done by intermediate groups, akin to the guilds. Would these be perfect? Of course not, but show me any authority, even within families, that always works perfectly. The question is not whether something will work perfectly, but whether something is well designed to promote the common good and has a fair chance of doing so most of the time.

There is a tremendous literature on the Catholic approach to economics much of it written in the 1930s, 40s, plus the papal encyclicals. I urge everyone to read this material.
73 Comment by Martin Kelly on 26 January 2010:

Mr. Jacobi,

Perhaps I’m too much of an idealist – but I disagree. The picture you paint seems to be a common one among paleoconservatives; yet one must always have hope. A lot of people seem to assume that the world of ‘1984′ is just around the corner, but we could be just be starting to ride a giant Kondratiev Long Wave which will see a regrowth of interest in religious belief and rejection of the materialism which is the root cause of financial involvement in the political sphere. We aren’t done yet.
74 Comment by John Marino on 27 January 2010:

Mr. Storck: Mr. Richert in a post yesterday reminded me of the virtue of charity. I think what got me involved in this whole fight was the title of this essay. It threw a stink bomb in the whole converation. You used the word dissenter against Dr. Woods when, in my opinion, you were losing an argument. I think you could have been more temperate in your language and put forth a postive defense of your position. Heaven knows I am no saint in the matter of temperate response. For much of my life my motto was ” I would rather kick them in the teeth than kiss their behind.” I am still an old barroom brawling construction man.

Let us remember that Dr. Woods is a practicing Catholic who has written a couple of popular history books that are very lauditory of the Catholic position on issues. I believe Mr. Rockwell his associate is also a practicing Catholic, as are many of the people who work at this webbsite. The main theorists of Austrian economics are Ludwig Von Mises, and Fredrich Hayek. The popularizer in this country of their ideas was Dr Murray Rothbard. Hayek was a fallen away Catholic who I believe returned to the church at the end. Dr. Rothbard and Dr. Von Mises were agnostic Jews. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t have some respect fot the Church. Von Mises and Hayek looked back at the Catholic Austrian Empire that they grew up in with some fondness. They liked it’s open markets with free trade within a large area and the intellectual vigor of Austria at that time. Dr. Rothbard, an economic historian, found what he believed to be the origins of free market economics in the writings and theories of Spanish scholastics of the 13th and 14th centuries. He also had a great respect fot the Church as an institution that advanced human freedom and knowledge.

Mr. Belloc and Chesterton were fine historians and writers. They saw the problems of there era with a unique vision. These great defenders of the Catholic position, thought that a return to a more Catholic solution on economics. would be of some help to the modern world. They were both formally untrained, [ but were well read on the subject], in economic theory and practice. They both dispised Communism and Socialism. Von Mises, Rothbard, and Hayek all felt the same way about Communism and Socialism.

All of these men had one thing in common they never ran much of an enterprise that supported a lot of people. They were mainly writers, researchers, and theorists. I have run an enterprise, for a fair number of years, which employed hundreds of people at one time and thousands over many years. I had union contracts with eight or nine trade unions at one time. When you include geographical jurisdictions it was up to about 30 different contracts that I had to manage. I did about eight hundred contracts with dozens of govenment agencies local, state, and federal.

The main point of all this is I have a healthy respect for the Austrian aproach to economic reality. I think it would do the most to materially adavance the world’s peoples. I think it’s emphasis on free markets, free will, free contracts, peaceful free trade, free exchange of labor, and free exchange of ideas, most meets the universal mission of the Church. All this must be tempered by he Gospel for a Catholic to accept. In the Church I grew up in we were taught that we are responsible for our own actions and we are responsible to for brothers welfare as well. The rich, as I well know from my own experiece, have a problem with the sins of greed and avarice and those under them may have problems with the sin of envy and covetedness. We as fallible humans have to work on these problems every day.

The main weakness with the Austrians are, I believe, their failure to be more dutiful in expressing the need for charity and just treatment of workers. The main problem of old fashioned Catholic social thought is that it is still stuck in the thirties and forties. The New Deal, Corporate State, and Christian Democracy have been tried and have not been successful as economic models for the long haul. I understand the problems and displacements of mass immigration, worker displacemeet, losses of industries, unemployment, loss of foreign markets and sympathize with them.

I place myself in both camps. Dr. Woods has feet in both camps as well. My final thought is this Belloc, Chesterton, Von Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard were all people who were unafraid to debate and defend their ideas in a hostile enviroment with both vigor and civility. The 2 leading spokesmen of both sides Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan do the same. There is so much that we agree on can’t we have a more civil discussion. I notice both sides have got the hair on the back of their necks standing up. Can’t we follow Dr. Paul and Mr. Buchanan and have a more civil discussion.
75 Comment by Michael Ezzo on 27 January 2010:

(70) My pleasure, Mr. Jacobi. I’m the dunce in the corner with the conehead hat on, as few of the topics discussed here (especially economics) are my field of experience. But I have learned a lot, so it is about time for me to show some gratitude to those who clear up things I cannot possibly figure out for myself.
76 Comment by Thomas Storck on 27 January 2010:

Mr. Marino,

I suppose that no one that a right to claim that his statements are models of charity, and I won’t either. But I fail to see the problem with my calling Dr. Woods a dissenter. If you look back at my original pieces from 2004 I provide what seem to me sufficient documentation for that charge. Likewise, I hardly think I pulled the word out of my hat because I was losing the argument. I don’t think I was losing it. And have you viewed or listened to Dr. Woods’ little speech against me that he gave last spring, the one that ends, “Down with Thomas Storck!”? You might want to view it before you begin to throw around charges of intemperance against one side only.

As for your substantive statements on the dispute, I won’t repeat my arguments again, as I’m sure you’ve already read them and rejected them.
77 Comment by John Marino on 27 January 2010:

Mr. Storck: I said both sides need to review their commitment to charity and have a more fruitful and Christian way of discussing things. Peace and love to you. I think we are all commited to the Gospels but have different visions of the best way to achieve their message.
78 Comment by R. Cort Kirkwood on 27 January 2010:

@ Mr. Marino: (#74)

The core of Austrian libertarianism, Mr. Marino, is the concept of “self-ownership.” That is the font from which all of its theory emanates. Indeed, it is the font of all libertarianism.

I pointed out in another thread on this matter that one cannot be a good libertarian and good Catholic. They are mutually exclusive.

The theory of self-ownership and “free markets” is such that at least one of the prominent “practicing Catholics” affiliated with Rockwell-Mises believes that gay adoption is acceptable and that mother’s have “property rights” over their children: that is, the right to sell them (using the word “adoption” to whitewash the sale, of course).

I’ve tangled with these folks before, and they are intolerant and staunchly opposed of any sort of authority because of their craziness on idea of “self-ownership.” Over the years, I learned from these “practicing Catholics” that it is morally acceptable, for instance, to cut off your own arm because you “own yourself,” and presumably, that it is perfectly acceptable to pay a doctor to mutilate you because, again, “own yourself” and we all believe in “free markets” anyway, even “free markets” in mutilation.

You observed that Chesterton, Belloc, et all were all theorists, while men such as yourself operated in the real world. That is true. But so are the libertarian eggheads.

Now that American manufactuing has been destroyed by “free trade,” what would the libertarian tell the Americans who are out of work? Just one thing: “We have low prices! Our shoes are cheaper!”

The assumption there is that low prices are everything. Are they?

What do they tell the small hardware store wiped out by Wal Mart? “The hammers are cheaper!” Yes, indeed. That doesn’t help the man and woman who made their own way in the world but now work for Wal Mart because Wal Mart wiped out their little store.

Belloc, by the way, discusses this very problem in one of this books that I cannot recall. Yes, “big-box stores” have been crushing small businessmen for some time.

Chesterton asked something important about modern capitalism: What kind of society do we have when a man spends more time taking of another’s man’s property than his own? Answer? Wage slavery.

It’s all well and good for the theorists at Mises Institute to prattle on about how great “the market” is. They live on donations from others. They do not meet a payroll dependent upon a sale or two. Their kids’ college education do not depend upon the success or failure of a small, local restaurant that could be wiped out by the enrance of Outback Steakhouse, Chili’s, Applebees, and Lonestar Steakhouse in their “market.”
79 Comment by Tom Piatak on 27 January 2010:

I agree with John Marino on the importance of practical experience, and applaud his role in running a business and meeting a payroll for years. But Cort Kirkwood’s observation is correct: the libertarian theorists by and large lack such practical experience, and many of them work or have worked for the government, making their praise of the “market” from which they have insulated themselves especially hard to take.
80 Comment by jack bailey on 27 January 2010:

Some Austrians ended up finding exotic labels for themselves like anarcholibertarians etc. Putting some of the more nutty beliefs aside, their theoretical work in economics is sound for the most part like the analysis of the Great Depression, the Fed, business cycle etc. and we should welcome them as an alternative for various fraudulent economic schools that determine economic policy right now. I am learning from discussion that the Austrians are flawed from the point of view of a Catholic economist. However against the Marxist driven deficit spending policies of the Obvama administration there is hardly a better method of rebuttal than the Austrian concept of wealth illusion or Fed inspired bubbles.
81 Comment by T. Chan on 27 January 2010:

Mr. Storck, in your CSSR article you write, “There is no one form of property rights which can be called more natural than other forms.” It seems then law (or custom) define property rights, rather then the other way around. Distrbutists have often been accused of being “redistributionists.” While the redistribution of common goods such as land and other natural resources by the government may not be prudent in a particular society, is it accurate to say that there is nothing within distributism, or Catholic Social Teaching for that matter, to hold that such a method of redistribution is intrinsically unjust? That is to say, when such common goods are concerned, distributive justice may take priority over commutative justice (which governs property rights, as it they are exercised between individuals)?

Also, what do you make of the claim made by Fr. Ernest Fortin and others that Leo XIII was too influenced by modern conceptions of property rights in his encyclicals?
82 Comment by John Marino on 27 January 2010:

To Mr. Piatak and Mr. Kirkwood:

I believe you may be misunderstanding of my position. I clearly stated that all the people I listed had little practical experience. That includes Belloc, Chesterton, Von Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard. The difference between the Austrians and Chesterbelloc is that they were highly skilled economists who worked at their trade for many long years. They used their skills and observations to get their ideas down on paper. Chesterton and Belloc were fine sincere men but were dilatants in economics without the skills to adequatly explore their ideas.

I saw everyday in my work the great value of free markets and competition. I was a union contractor in industry that was protected from real competition by my union status and a law called the Davis Bacon Act, which set wages for construction workers on government jobs. None the less there was tremendous price competition because of competitive bidding. The more contractors that bid the job the lower the price for the government. The more subcontractors bid to me the lower my final price would be. That is the beauty of the competitive system and free markets. Why would we want to pay more for a product if we can get it for less? Don’t our families deserve to not have their resourses wasted? Doesn’t this leave us with more money for charity and other worthy causes? Why should we subsidize inefficiancy and high prices? I use family run businesses all the time but these people have learned how to keep up with the times and compete on some level. It may be service not price. It may just be the personality of the merchant and his willingness to offer exotic products and services.

In regards to the unions I dealt with. These unions did me a favor by restricting my competition. Their political pull still was able to keep most non union contractors away from public work. The non union contractors have learned how to get around this however by just paying the rates in the government wage book. This still gives them a big advantage because they don’t have to follow the union work rules and put up with the interference of union stewards and business agents. The vast majority of construction work in this country is done by non union contractors. This keeps prices lower on almost all construction. Non union workers are usually well paid and recieve a living wage if there is enough work to go around. How can it benfit the average man if he has to pay a large premium for his home just to support a lot of featherbedding constuction work rules? At one time painters refused to use rollers and spray guns, for example. There are many other instances I could cite. How do such luddite practices benefit anyone?

Mr. Piatak and I went around this at Taki’s in regards to the auto business. I felt that the main problem with the American auto business was it’s lack of internal competition for decades and it’s willingness to cave into union demands because it didn’t really matter. They just would soak the customer. George Romney as head of American Motors in the 1960’s had the right idea. Break up both GM and the UAW. Restricting a union to one company would make for a more harmonious less confrontational union system in my opinion. I believe big bloated concerns should be allowed to fail. If GM for example had been put into bankruptcy it would have been reorganized and sold by now. The union contracts would be gone but the workers would remain in a new concern. The money wasted by the government could have been used to pay off the workers pensions. Auto Workers in the South are non union, make living wages, and still have viable companies. The reason the foreigners have taken over the American market was because we did not have enough internal competition.

Now back to the main point. How should a Catholic view all this? I belive the Austrian School best explains the way the world really works. It is the best way for the most people of the world. It depends on free will, free right of contract, free markets, a freer and more efficient movement of labor etc. I stated before that it is the best model for the universal mission of the Church. We as Catholics must harness these ideas in a way that respondes to the calling of Christ in repect to wealth and the poor. We must call on the rich to voluntarily share their bounty and to be fair in their business practices and not to cheat their customers. To the poor we must exhort them to work hard and honestly and lead decent moral lives. I think the free market gives the most oppurtunity for advancment. I also want to specify that that what has been going on in this country is not real free market capitalism. It is a bunch of political and economic gangsters who wouldn’t know a free market if they saw it. Austrians are just a small group just like paleoconservatives.

I think it would be better if we tried to forge our swords into plowshares. Nobody has all the right answers here. Two small groups Paleoconservatives and Austrian Free Market people believe in many mutual things in regards to foreign policy and subsidiarity. I ask as Christians can’t we just have more civil discussion of our mutual problems. the problems of mass immigration, unemployement. monatary policy, Christian business practice, the role of the government in our lives and many other vital issues all need vigorus and civil debate.
83 Comment by Michael Ezzo on 27 January 2010:

Actually this is about as civil as I think it can get, given the potential conflict of the issue. We have had only one bomb-throwing gate-crasher, who quickly tucked tail and escaped. The fact that we haven’t been shut down by the moderator is a good sign, and I’m glad to see, as well, that so far nobody has shouted hyperbolic slogans. Truly, this has been a model of civility considering what passes for discussion on the internet (or anywhere) these days.
84 Comment by Gilbert Jacobi on 27 January 2010:

Thomas Storck@72,

I think my pessimism springs from a more practical, less idealistic source than having been disappointed in the search for perfection, though I’ll admit to having spent some time on that in my youth. My characterization of our plight at #71 above comes from my belief that those with evil, or purely materialistic, intent (perhaps a distinction without a meaning) have the upper hand, and are getting more sophisticated and brazen all the time in achieving their ends. The recent CIA bomber, who tricked two intelligence agencies, had nothing on these financial and corporate criminals. They can co-opt or destroy any movement that threatens to crimp their style, before a new regulatory scheme can even be brought to voters’ attention. Or find loopholes if the new regs do make it into law.

I’ll read those encyclicals, though, and perhaps some of Persch’s Lehrbuch. Perhaps I should know better by now, but I’m not ready to give up all hope just yet.
85 Comment by Gilbert Jacobi on 27 January 2010:

Martin Kelly@73

I agree, one must always have hope; at least, until things get hopeless.

FYI: Rothbard thought the Kondratieff cycle “a myth and a chimera”.
86 Comment by R. Cort Kirkwood on 27 January 2010:

@ Mr. Marino (#82)

I think we are all being civil, as far as I can tell, and I cannot say that Austrian economics is never right. But Karl Marx was sometimes correct, as well. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

The point some of us want to emphasize concerns determining society’s highest priorities.

Example:

As I understand them, the Austrians say a just wage is whatever the market determines it to be, and whatever a man freely agrees upon with an employer, even if the wage clearly cannot support that man and his family.

Freedom to arrive at that wage, unfettered by any regulation at all, is the highest priority, and if an employwer can get away with paying an employee $4 an hour and he is willing to accept it, so be it. That is summum bonum for Austrians.

Catholic social teaching, as I understand it, objects. It says that is not the case, as I myself explained before, quoting Rev. Francis Fernandez: Workers “have an inalienable natural right to sufficient means for the support of themselves and their families, which takes precedence over the right of free contract.”

Of course, there are those who will ask what does “sufficient means” mean. I answer like the Supreme Court justice who said he could not define pornography, but knew he it when he saw it. In New York, it is a different figure than in Macon, Ga. But there is certainly a wage in each place below which a man cannot comfortably support family.

This does not necessarily mandate a federal minimum wage law; but it might mandate state and local wage laws, apropos of the principle of subsidiarty. It could mandate state and local laws requiring employers to negotiate reasonably with guilds or unions formed to protect workers.

I think it’s about time for the free market types on the right to stop denying that employers cannot exploit workers in an ideal world. Of course they can. And they do.

Anyway, Austrian economics, as Mr. Storck observes, has no charism of infallibilty. The magisterium of the Church does.
87 Comment by oil can harry on 27 January 2010:

To Mr Kirkwood (#78):

I have nothing but sympathy for the owners of small businesses and mom-and-pop stores who have to close down because their customers dumped them for chain stores like WalMart, Taco Bell, etc.

But what’s the solution? Using legislation to limit competition?
88 Comment by Martin Kelly on 28 January 2010:

Mr. Marino@82,

You get to the root of the matter when you write ‘The vast majority of construction work in this country is done by non union contractors. This keeps prices lower on almost all construction. Non union workers are usually well paid and recieve a living wage if there is enough work to go around. How can it benfit the average man if he has to pay a large premium for his home just to support a lot of featherbedding constuction work rules? At one time painters refused to use rollers and spray guns, for example. There are many other instances I could cite. How do such luddite practices benefit anyone?’

One could also ask how anyone benefits from that ‘benign neglect’ of immigration policy which has seen a vast increase in the volume of unskilled immigration, some of which may have found its way on to building sites, or by the financial manipulations which resulted in the property boom of the past decade. It is against that backdrop that Austrian theory must be viewed. All theories advocating free trade must be viewed not as being pro-consumer, but anti-labour. In his wonderful wee book ‘Victorian Cities’, Professor Lord Asa Briggs recorded how the Anti Corn Law League went so far as to silence one of its Manchester members who said quite bluntly that the reason free trade was should be pursued was that it would drive wages down to the continental level. What does silencing people who clearly want more freedom than their fellows can bear have to do with free markets? Nothing. What does it have to do with trying to steal from people? Everything.

There is no such thing as free trade, and there never has been. There cannot be; as the Anglo-Spanish historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto succintly put it in his book ‘Civilisations’, ‘man is not an economic animal’ – if he were, the Mayans would not have devoted years to hauling stones through the jungle to erect temples for no conceivable economic purpose. In my view, and hopefully clinging to the shreds of a sometimes timelocked, sometimes deadlocked sense Christian charity while saying so, to think that any one school of economic thinking has all the answers is a mistake. The reason for this is that economics is not a science, but a religion.

As enunciated by Adam Smith, economics proceeds on the assumption that human beings always act in their own self-interest. This is a direct affront to the Gospels, a direct denial of Our Lord’s teaching and a direct challenge to the magisterium of the Catholic Church; one which, in my view, has never been adequately challenged. It proceeds from one man’s interpretation of the nature of human relationships and motives; and it has been divinely ordained, indeed is revealed truth, that this analysis is wrong; indeed, may be a paving stone on the road to perdition. All Catholic commentary on economics should, in my view, proceed from the assumption that Smith was a teacher of false doctrines. It was something of a pity to see that the English translation of ‘Caritas in Veritate’ uses that hateful expression ‘human resources’, as if human beings were just another tool, like a chainsaw or a jackhammer – yet such language is the natural consequence of Smith’s teaching, for if you’re only in it for yourself then why bother thinking that your fellow should be treated with any dignity?

Its one saving grace is that, like all other false doctrines, economics is prone to sectarianism and factionalism. Let us hope it chews itself up sooner rather than later.
89 Comment by John Marino on 28 January 2010:

Mr. Kelly: In economics like in any other subject there must be wide dicusssion and thought. Adam Smith had a lot of wisdom to give us. We have to sift and winnow, as Christians, to see which most respondes to our gospel responsibilities. God gave us free will and a brain to think with. Don’t be afraid to use these great gifts. In the end we have to each do our best for our families and our fellow man. That responsibility is best done by a properly formed concience. The trouble today is that most people don’t get a proper formation.
90 Comment by John Marino on 28 January 2010:

Mr. Kirkwood: I think you properly discribe Austrian wage theory. A wage freely arrived at between employer and employee. Then you add what about if a man can’t live on that wage? If a man can’t feed himself on such a job why would he take it? You will say he can’t get another job. This is the only one availible. I would say is it my duty to pay more for a job than it is worth? What is a living wage?

The employer has a duty to his family and employees to keep an business on a sound financial footing. If he over pays his help that will put the business at jeopardy. Many mom and pop businesses can only pay the minimum wage, if even that. Many owners of such enterprizes work long hard hours at not very high wages themselves. A living wage does not include money for a car, tv, computer, cable tv, phone, rich food, booze, drugs ciggarets, etc. Why should I over pay my help to provide these luxuries? If someone wants all this stuff he has to work for it. That is the way the world should work anyhow. In this country with massive government programs many of the poor have these luxuries without honest labor.

In order for an employer to have a successful long term business, he needs good employees. He can’t keep them if he doesn’t pay them well. They will go down the street to his competitor. The Christian employer should go as far as he can to give his employees good wages and safe working conditions. I always tried to do that. In depression times, like this, both business and labor are suffering. It is hard to meet your moral commitments if the business can’t stand the expense.
91 Comment by Thomas Storck on 28 January 2010:

This is a reply to Mr. Chan’s comment #81.

You asked, citing what I said about property, “While the redistribution of common goods such as land and other natural resources by the government may not be prudent in a particular society, is it accurate to say that there is nothing within distributism, or Catholic Social Teaching for that matter, to hold that such a method of redistribution is intrinsically unjust? That is to say, when such common goods are concerned, distributive justice may take priority over commutative justice (which governs property rights, as it they are exercised between individuals)?”

There is a discussion of this in Msgr. John A. Ryan’s Distributive Justice. He holds that there is nothing intrinsically unjust in the state setting a limit to the amount of property (including cash) a person can possess, provided that it is set at a reasonably high level. In the Middle Ages some of the guilds set limits on how much property or money a member could hold, the surplus being turned over to the guild treasury. Before anyone of you attacks me for being a socialist, please remember that Msgr. Ryan’s book was written in the 1940s and had an imprimatur from Cardinal Spellman, and the guilds who acted in this fashion obviously were not influenced by socialism which did not yet exist. As Mr. Chan hinted, it is probably not wise to institute such a policy very often, but I don’t think it is unjust. Off the top of my head, I can’t remember if either Chesterton or Belloc ever discussed this point directly.

The medieval open field village was an excellent example of cooperative property in action and gives a good example of how property rights can be variously exercised. There was an interesting article in the late 90s in the Yale Law Journal entitled “Property in Land,” which had a section on the medieval English open field.

It’s funny, I expect many who’ve posted here to violently disagree with this. Fifty and more years ago Catholic were united in defending the teaching of the Church and the glories of medieval Catholic civilization. If you look at Fulton Sheen’s book on communism, written in the late 1940s, he makes the statement that the Church is as critical of capitalism as the communists are! Now, at least here in the U.S., so many of them who claim orthodoxy have capitulated to various ideologies that are ultimately anti-Catholic, including the kinds of economics that can’t stomach Catholic social teaching.

Then Mr. Chan asked, “Also, what do you make of the claim made by Fr. Ernest Fortin and others that Leo XIII was too influenced by modern conceptions of property rights in his encyclicals?”

Yes, I’m familiar with that claim. If Leo was to any extent influenced by Locke, then he was corrected by the later popes. Remember that I said much earlier in this discussion that we have to look for continuity and repetition in papal social teaching. It is for the most part statements and teachings that we can find repeated by successive popes that have the most authority. If we can’t trust the Holy Spirit to prevent the Church from teaching error, then we’re not really Catholics. This doesn’t mean, of course, that any casual or even semi-casual statement by a pope partakes of much authority. The matter is more nuanced than that, and I’ve already touched on it more than once in this discussion.
92 Comment by T. Chan on 28 January 2010:

Thank you Mr. Storck! I will have to locate a copy of Msgr. Ryan’s book.
93 Comment by Ken Zaretzke on 28 January 2010:

@90. Valid points, Mr. Marino. But we should distinguish between a proprietary capitalist system, which is the only kind Adam Smith knew, and corporate (or “managerial”) capitalism, which is potentially–and in historical fact, actually–predatory and manipulative with respect to workers, for the simple reason that it has the sytematic and institutional means to be that way. Human nature ensures that corporate capitalism will, if given the chance, take advantage of relatively powerless workers. The living-wage idea could not have arisen (as far as I understand it) in a pre-industrial society. It is in that kind of society that corporate capitalism is a sort of unsavory culmination.
94 Comment by Ken Zaretzke on 28 January 2010:

To amend an old saw: The problem with proprietary capitalism is capitalists; the problem with corporate capitalism is capitalism.
95 Comment by jack bailey on 28 January 2010:

#86. An employer can pay a certain wage only if he can receive a certain price. He has no control of the wage or the product price himself, that is why he has to pay in wages what he pays and no more and no less. In cases were it is tried otherwise (oligopolies) we have the GM type of situation, it works for a while and then we go broke. This is the problem with any theorist that attempts to tinker with who gets what and wonders if it wouldn’t be better if we could pay more and if we could charge more and give more for taxes or charity etc . When everyone makes a hefty sum of money, it is always by some accident because the equillibrium was disturbed to begin with. The rest of the time everybody just gets by. I believe this is why Mr. Woods is having so much trouble with all this.
96 Comment by John Marino on 28 January 2010:

Mr Zaretke: Most jobs in the private sector are in smaller enterprises. Many corporate jobs pay very well. I don’t think that there is a better system than free market capitalism for meeting the material needs of mankind, for all it’s flaws. I think the main problem with modern society is the the way government has taken over most of our lives. This makes business people grovel, and bribe to get an advantage. Thus the worst elements of business get the upper hand.

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