Catholic Economics for the 21st Century
Distributism often has poor economic reasoning behind it, but it also posits important points about the role of economies in a just society.
How Much Good Can You Really Do With Money?
In the world of modern finance and even international development, when “climate” or “the environment” becomes someone’s motive, it is easy to instrumentalize human beings.
Invest Your Funds Upon This Rock?
A new Vatican document proposes to give guidance for Catholic investors based on Catholic social teaching, but often falls into regurgitating liberal talking points on redistribution and environmental awareness.
Why Crisis Magazine?
Crisis Magazine began in 1982 as a response to the crisis of faith in the Catholic Church and soon broadened it’s purview to include the crisis to faith in the public square. While signs of hope have been observed in recent decades thanks to the effective and inspired leadership of Blessed John Paul II and … Read more
Some Economic Applications of Evangelii Gaudium
I am a Catholic and it is the very intellectual foundations of the Catholic Church that drew me back to my faith. I grew up admiring Pope John Paul II’s battle against communism—a battle that we now know he played an integral part in. Pope Francis’s background is very different from his two most recent … Read more
Distinguishing the Wealthy from the Worldly
Our Lord never despised the rich. Throughout his life, he moved among different classes of people with authority and ease. He converses with poor fishermen, but also with the scholars in the temple. He heals blind beggars, but also responds to the request of a centurion with a household full of servants. He was born … Read more
The Virtuous Rich
If anyone out there should happen to have a small fortune to dispose of, I would urge them to consider entrusting it to the Lu family. As philosophers, my husband and I can debate almost anything, but on this we have always agreed: we would make excellent rich people. As of yet, the theory is … Read more
Faith and the Employer
The diocese of Lansing, where I currently attend mass, is a pretty good one, as such things go in the contemporary United States. Our parish has a very good priest and I’m confident we won’t soon be joining in on the practice I’ve seen in the archdiocese of Detroit of worshiping in the round, complete … Read more
“Talibans of Austerity”
A sentence in the French newspaper Le Monde recently caught my eye: Il y aura toujours des talibans de l’austérité, there will always be the Talibans of austerity. It was uttered by the economist Jean Pisani-Ferry in an interview in the newspaper about the crisis in the Euro zone, and it made me think at … Read more
Eat the Rich Now, Starve Later
There is one group that is not protected from hate-speech: the rich. For the rich it is permissible, and in some circles de rigueur, to speak disparagingly or hatefully. This, I imagine, is because it is widely supposed that if you hate the rich you must love the poor, and love of the poor, at … Read more
Obama’s Assault on Entrepreneurship: An Economic Roadmap to Nowhere
A proper examination of President Obama’s assertions about entrepreneurs requires a close consideration of the underlying moral claims they contain. But first it should be conceded to the President that much of the infrastructure that facilitates business is created by the state. Indeed, he is correct to say that the state plays a role in … Read more
The Economy of Communion in Africa
Africa is a continent of great spiritual and cultural wealth, but also of great material poverty. The way forward for African economies is not aid and development assistance, but prudent business management that enables African workers to attain higher levels of productivity for their efforts. But what model of business management is appropriate for the … Read more
Help Us Keep It Going
$5,000. That’s all we need to raise each month to sustain and fully operate Crisis magazine. Jaws drop when I speak of how much Crisis accomplishes with so little. While our own self-imposed austerity measures allow us to run Crisis on a fraction of the budget of previous years’, as a non-profit publication operating without subscription … Read more
The Great Lie: Pope Benedict XVI On Socialism
One doesn’t usually expect a thorough-going reconstruction of the history of socialism in the late 19th century from the pope, but Benedict XVI delivered to us a wonderful–and oh-so-needed–reminder of what socialism was (and is), and why it went wrong. One can’t but marvel at his intellectual power: He has discerned the essential problem that … Read more
Corporate Personhood and 14th Amendment Rights
This article originally appeared on Ethika Politika One of the demands made by the Occupy Wall Street movement has been the ending of the legal fiction of personhood for business corporations. This desire on the part of the Occupy movement is healthy, but the issue is actually more complicated than might at first appear. For corporate … Read more
Investment and the Common Good
It is now twenty years since the publication of Centesimus Annus, yet only halting steps have been made towards an adequate reception of it. In his concluding remarks to that great encyclical, the Holy Father warned that the Church’s social teaching was no mere theory, “but above all else a basis and a motivation for … Read more
Subsidy or Subsidiarity
Individualism and community are the opposite halves of the American character. For every myth of the self-made man, there is the image of the closely knit New England small town. For every lone cowboy on the frontier, there are the social, political, and cultural groups that Americans have formed since the beginning of the Republic. … Read more
The Age of the Laity…or the Latte?
So what will it be? A grande Latte… or Western Civilization? A scone with that… or the meat of doctrine? An extra shot of espresso… or the survival of families? A Moccachino… or the Mystical Body of Christ? Today, the price is the same. Tomorrow the terms change. Tomorrow there may be silence, apart from the … Read more
Beating the Competition
Business leaders are blaming the education system for the loss of jobs offshore. But aren’t they forgetting that other institution that turns out good workers?
The Love that Moves the Sun
In one of the two greatest lines of world poetry, Dante bows gently toward “The Love that moves the sun and all the stars.” Many moralists speak of love as the one fundamental and universal moral principle, the golden rule honored in all traditions. But what do we mean by love? In English we … Read more