Is Benedict really a libertarian?

Posted on | July 14, 2009 | 5 Comments

It’s been a week since Pope Benedict released Caritas in Veritate. Subsequent to George Weigel’s now infamous claim that the encyclical was essentially written by two different sources, one influenced by culture-of-life conservatives and one by Justice and Peace progressives, several other conservatives have come around to analyze Benedict’s arguments. What surprised me, especially after Weigel’s accusation of papal schizophrenia, was how many of the capitalist readers of the encyclical believed it to reinforce free market orthodoxy.

Robert Sirico at the Acton Institute quotes Benedict’s reference to Paul VI that the Church “does not claim ‘to interfere in any way in the politics of States,’” and implies that any needed reform will be “voluntary.” Sirico brushes aside Benedict’s “frequent calls” for distributive justice, and even claims that Caritas falls within the same tradition as F.A. Hayek.

In a Christianity Today piece, Francis Beckwith is slightly more balanced, but still maintains that “Benedict does not endorse any specific policies on economic matters.”

Michael Brendan Dougherty (whose work I respect) argues that Caritas takes the side of libertarians over and against Catholic distributists.

My best explanation of all this is that the libertarians and capitalists have interpreted Benedict’s call to work within the existing system, and not turn reactionary, as a de facto validation of the current system. (There is also a less charitable explanation.) But on any close reading of the text, I cannot find any substantial support for this view. Benedict is explicit about his presupposition that our current system is broken (paragraph 40). He says repeatedly that a “new way” is needed. As Sirico points out, Benedict did not call for an economic or political coup, à la Innocent III. However, I don’t see how he moves on from that premise to conclude that the Church is precluded from offering actual economic counsel to the world community.

Benedict argues that the Church’s witness is not limited to narrowly defined “charity work” (11). Her calling is eminently public, and her calls for charitable justice extend into the global marketplace. Only a witness speaking from a foundation of truth can be a guarantor of freedom. Any claims to freedom must be ordered properly toward love and truth. Further, freedom itself is only free, according to Benedict, if it is moral. The capitalist “conviction that the economy must be autonomous, that it must be shielded from ‘influences’ of a moral character, has led man to abuse the economic process in a thoroughly destructive way.” This viewpoint has “led to economic, social and political systems that trample upon personal and social freedom.” Segregating charity from the marketplace leads inevitably to social injustice and lack of true freedom (34).

Counter to the statements of Beckwith, Sirico, et al., Benedict does in fact make policy suggestions, including:

  • limiting the scale of business;
  • restoring proprietary influence to employees;
  • regulation exploitive foreign investments;
  • restricting short-term speculative investments;
  • reducing energy consumption globally;
  • preventing the hoarding of water and energy resources;
  • calling for a general “world-wide diffusion of forms of prosperity”;
  • supporting a governing body for global exchanges based on subsidiarity.

It’s possible to critique Benedict’s economic suggestions (or the broad nature of some of them), but I find it impossible to ignore their very existence in the encyclical.

None of this is an attempt to lay exclusive claim to Caritas on behalf of Third Way economics. However, I think we need to engage honestly with Benedict’s very fundamental critiques of our current economic system. Benedict did not merely recommend that we add morality on top of our current system; he called for an essential re-imagining of the system itself, through patient and legal means. If Christians are to pursue justice in the marketplace, we need to remain open to the possibility that the status quo requires re-evaluation. We are not revolutionaries, but we are faithful citizens with ulterior allegiances. That should have a real effect.

* * *

UPDATE (7/15): Ross Douthat’s NYT piece is one of the better popular summaries of Caritas in Veritate that I’ve read.

Comments

5 Responses to “Is Benedict really a libertarian?”

  1. John Hundscheid
    July 14th, 2009 @ 12:36 pm

    What’s peculiar about Weigel’s claim is that Catholic social teaching has traditionally been culture-of-life conservative and Justice and Peace progressive. The Pope has little novel here to offer, but is simply building off Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno (and of course JP II’s enyclcials commemorating them). There’s also the Catholic tradition of Distributism, which seems to me to be exactly what Caritas in Veritate falls in to.

    It seems as if the proponents of capitalism only want to hear one side of what the Pope has to say. They then latch on to that side and declare that the Pope agrees with them.

    Great summary of the work, by the way.

  2. Brad E.
    July 14th, 2009 @ 5:29 pm

    I second John: Excellent summary, concise recap of responses, and needed corrective of too many one-sided hearings. This was incredibly helpful.

  3. Brad L.
    July 15th, 2009 @ 6:16 am

    Sounds excellent–just the kind of thing I was hoping to see in the encyclical. I’m rather ashamed you read it and reviewed it before I’ve even glanced at it though…and I’m supposed to be the Catholiphile! Oh well, I suppose I can plead packing and traveling.

  4. First Thoughts — A First Things Blog
    July 15th, 2009 @ 11:27 pm

    [...] Institute, as well as Francis Beckwith (Christianity Today), Davey Henreckson of TheoPolitical asks “Is Benedict really a libertarian?”: [O]n any close reading of the text, I cannot find any substantial support for this view. Benedict [...]

  5. Mark Sampson
    January 22nd, 2010 @ 11:53 am

    Thanks for a great blog – keep it going.
    John Paul II’s encyclical ‘Centesimus annus’ also met with a similar response. Some labeled it a celebration of capitalism whilst others read it as being severely critical of the consequences of a capitalist economy. It is not surprising that Benedict’s encyclical has met with a similar response! I think you are largely correct in your interpretation of the encyclical. Benedict’s criticisms are subtle and carefully worded. I found his call for the ‘principle of gratuitousness’ to be added to the current market economy to be particularly helpful. What some critics seem to ignore is that the notion of ‘gift’ that Benedict appropriates fundamentally calls into question the anthropological and ethical claims of capitalism. As such, the addition of the notion of ‘gift’ to capitalism would utterly transform it.
    I have written a little more on this on the blog at http://www.capitalismproject.org

    Cheers.

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Theopolitical is the weblog of Davey Henreckson, a graduate student in theology at the University of Notre Dame. Topics of conversation are political and historical theology, with semi-frequent forays into literature, economics, localism, and the divine American sport -- baseball.

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