Pope Francis and the Caring Society edited by Robert Whaples, Independent Institute, 256pp, £18
Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si’, concludes with a prayer containing these lines: “O God of the poor, help us to rescue the abandoned and forgotten of this earth, so precious in your eyes.” How can we best conduct this rescue mission? Which method of managing the world’s resources offers the best chance of success?
Pope Francis and the Caring Society is a conscious response to the Holy Father’s appeal for dialogue on this subject. Entering into this dialogue are several contributors who are sceptical about the ideas underpinning the Pope’s hostility towards capitalism. They lean towards the apparently paradoxical conclusion that the cause of rescuing the poorest is served by mobilising the forces of self-interest, and not by squeezing the rich. As Jacob Rees-Mogg, recently quoted in these pages, might have it, “it is the capitalists who love the poor, not the socialists, who condemn them to poverty”.
Rest assured, however: Pope Francis and the Caring Society is not simply one side in a fruitless stand-off between opposing viewpoints. The commitment to dialogue is real. The editor, Professor Robert Whaples, is a Lay Dominican, as is his wife. Their daughter is Sister Mary Josefa at the Monastery of our Lady of the Rosary. This is hardly the profile of a capitalist attack dog. In his introduction, Whaples even-handedly sets out the arguments typically advanced both for and against free markets, while allowing the Pope’s stirring, stinging critiques to ring out in all of their power and salience and moral appeal. Robert Murphy provides a similarly nuanced conclusion, rich in economic insights. (Look out for the rhino horn example.)
The Francis-sceptics are respectful in pressing their case and willing to acknowledge those occasions when he hits the nail on the head. Instead, they take issue with an over-reliance on hyperbole as a means of making his point (Francis has lambasted “unbridled capitalism” without ever troubling to say where he thinks this operates). More significant, however, are the serious omissions from Francis’s thinking. The most glaring, pointed out in more than one essay here, concerns an evidentially verifiable fact: the huge reductions in extreme poverty seen across the globe in the wake of the spread of free markets. Indeed, Pope Francis seems to suggest that trends are heading in the opposite direction.
Whatever the imprecisions, the spirit of many critiques of capitalism, including the Pope’s, is valid. No one is denying that the rescue mission remains a long way from completion. The continuing problems of development, contributors to this book would argue, should be addressed by less crony capitalism; respect for the rule of law; strengthening of property rights; access to markets for the poor; and a proper balance between market, culture and the state. Pope Francis might sign up to much of this, but not until he is convinced that forces he judges to be rampant – consumerism, greed, the entrenchment of privilege, the dehumanising effects of technology, the transformation of our common home into “an immense pile of filth” and indifference to the poor – have been tamed.
He sees little sign of this happening, however. Hence the frustration that rises like smoke from the pages of both Laudato Si’ and Evangelium Gaudium. While Catholic social teaching has generally upheld a sometimes heavily qualified respect for markets, Francis seems to be filled with something more like barely qualified disgust. Progress always comes on the backs of mistreated, underpaid workers. Those moving from scarcity to abundance move towards the new dangers of being cut off from God, their consciences and the poor. However, several contributors scent danger in the Pope’s proscriptions too: the spectres of statist coercion, inefficiency and corruption; the demise of true charity; and, ultimately more poverty, not less.
Pope Francis and the Caring Society contains plenty of vigorous support alongside the critiques. Allen Carson springs to the defence of “The Family Economics of Pope Francis”, reminding us, in the process, of just how much of a staunch traditionalist Francis is when it comes to the respective roles of women and men; and also of his advocacy for living simply as the means of meeting the Malthusian challenge, bringing human numbers into a balance with existing goods.
This is a splendid, thought-provoking collection, therefore. Most of the contributors are Americans, but Professor Philip Booth of St Mary’s University in Twickenham chips in with a fascinating essay on the importance of property rights to conservation – the “missing theme” of Laudato Si’. It would be tremendous if Pope Francis and the Caring Society did indeed become the catalyst for, and subject of, further dialogue. Let’s make it happen.
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