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Thursday, June 21, 2018

What Does the Church Say about Capitalism? | Ascension

What Does the Church Say about Capitalism? | Ascension: In a previous post, I treated the Church’s critique of communism, both at the moral and spiritual level, as well as on economic grounds in terms of what is most befitting to human dignity and human freedom. While the Church certainly favors a market economy (i.e., capitalism) and recognizes the right to private property and even profit as an indicator of business health, it does so with certain qualifications. A place to start is St. John Paul II’s Centesimus Annus where he clearly provides the Church’s nuanced approval of capitalism: “If by ‘capitalism’ is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative …. But if by ‘capitalism’ is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework in its totality, and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious, then the reply is certainly negative” (Centesimus Annus, 42). In this post, we want to unpa

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