Thursday, June 24, 2004
What is the Status of Economics vis-a-vis Faith and Morals?
Thomas Woods, “On the Actual Progress of Peoples”
Catholic social teaching -- apparently -- has maintained that the office of the pope includes the power to issue exhortations (if that's the word) on specific policy questions drawing on the knowledge of the social sciences, and in particular, of economics. Thomas Woods returns to a recurring theme of his to argue that in doing so, the Church does as much as to proclaim authority over secular and specialized disciplines. Problems of guilt may arise in consequence among those Catholics who, on the one hand, profess faith in the dogmas of the Church, but, on the other hand, on account of knowledge they may have gained from their studies of such independent fields of knowledge as economics, believe that certain technical solutions preferred by the Church -- as made manifest in the encyclicals of the popes -- are at best ineffective. This problem, among others: The basic point is one of principle.
Woods makes use of an analogy to the science of automobile mechanics. Surely, all would agree that it is absurd for the Pope to proclaim an understanding of the best way to overhaul an engine. Why is it different with economics?
Woods:
“My position, therefore, in no way involves the claim that the sciences per se, including economics, are exempt from moral evaluation. They are, however, exempt from technical critiques on the part of the Church, since churchmen may speak only as individuals on such questions and not for the Church as a whole.”
Or:
"What was wrong with Catholic social thought in the nineteenth century," writes Fordham University’s Fr. James Sadowsky, "was not so much its ethics as its lack of understanding of how the free market can work. The concern for the worker was entirely legitimate, but concern can accomplish little unless we know the causes and the cures for the disease."
Clear enough and convincing enough, I say. If the Pope should be understood to possess (by the gifts of the Holy Spirit) authority on questions of faith and morals, that is that. But not more than that.
Link
Catholic social teaching -- apparently -- has maintained that the office of the pope includes the power to issue exhortations (if that's the word) on specific policy questions drawing on the knowledge of the social sciences, and in particular, of economics. Thomas Woods returns to a recurring theme of his to argue that in doing so, the Church does as much as to proclaim authority over secular and specialized disciplines. Problems of guilt may arise in consequence among those Catholics who, on the one hand, profess faith in the dogmas of the Church, but, on the other hand, on account of knowledge they may have gained from their studies of such independent fields of knowledge as economics, believe that certain technical solutions preferred by the Church -- as made manifest in the encyclicals of the popes -- are at best ineffective. This problem, among others: The basic point is one of principle.
Woods makes use of an analogy to the science of automobile mechanics. Surely, all would agree that it is absurd for the Pope to proclaim an understanding of the best way to overhaul an engine. Why is it different with economics?
Woods:
“My position, therefore, in no way involves the claim that the sciences per se, including economics, are exempt from moral evaluation. They are, however, exempt from technical critiques on the part of the Church, since churchmen may speak only as individuals on such questions and not for the Church as a whole.”
Or:
"What was wrong with Catholic social thought in the nineteenth century," writes Fordham University’s Fr. James Sadowsky, "was not so much its ethics as its lack of understanding of how the free market can work. The concern for the worker was entirely legitimate, but concern can accomplish little unless we know the causes and the cures for the disease."
Clear enough and convincing enough, I say. If the Pope should be understood to possess (by the gifts of the Holy Spirit) authority on questions of faith and morals, that is that. But not more than that.
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