Pope Francis, his predecessors, and the market.

AuthorYuengert, Andrew M.
PositionReport

Just as the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say 'thou shalt not' to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills" (Francis 2013, 53). "Once more, we need to reject a magical conception of the market, which would suggest that problems can be solved simply by an increase in the profits of companies or individuals" (Francis 2015, 190). You do not have to look hard to find passages like these two in the latest pope's written exhortations. He expresses a conviction that markets are instruments of an inequality that "kills" and that those who defend markets have an unreasonable, "magical conception" of markets' power to solve social problems. It certainly seems that Pope Francis, compared to his predecessors, is a harsher critic of markets and is friendlier to statists and socialists who would suppress markets in the name of some state-defined common good.

It is difficult, however, to separate his opinions from how those opinions are reported by a left-leaning press eager to recruit and promote a hoped-for ally to progressive causes. To be sure, Pope Francis's large personality, his pastoral experience among the poorest of the poor, and his Argentine roots shine through in his writings. He is less cautious in his language and less careful in his distinctions. He speaks passionately in simple and direct phrases.

Despite his open and unguarded style, however, Pope Francis is still a pope, writing from within a centuries-old social tradition. Even in the area of ecology, he can cite "Green Pope" Benedict XVI (Stone 2008) and John Paul II, from whom he gets the term ecological conversion (John Paul II 2001). The most natural interpretation of Francis's contributions to the Catholic Church's teaching and analysis is through what Benedict XVI (2005) called the hermeneutics of continuity (or reform), not the hermeneutics of rupture. To do Francis full justice, we must place his economic analysis in the context of his predecessors, whose documents he generously quotes and in whose footsteps he conscientiously treads.

Sam Gregg (2015) has respectfully but forcefully criticized Pope Francis's economic worldview. My primary purpose in this article is not to critique the pope's economics but to highlight the continuities and discontinuities of his economic opinions with those of his predecessors. Modern Catholic social teaching covers a vast range of topics stretching back 125 years. I cannot hope to keep the comparison of Francis with his predecessors manageable except by sharply limiting the range of the comparison. At this point in his papacy, Francis has almost entirely confined his economic analysis to global poverty and the ecological crisis. Although ecological questions have become increasingly important in Catholic thought, concerns about poverty in the developing world have a richer pedigree and provide a richer backdrop for a comparison.

The poverty of the developing world took center stage with the encyclical Mater et magistra (John XXIII 1961) and the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes, developed at the Second Vatican Council (1965), in which Paul VI gave it his full attention. I begin with Paul VI's analysis and trace papal teaching on development through John Paul II and Benedict XVI to Francis. As a basis of comparison, from the writings of each of these popes I formulate answers to the following questions:

  1. What are the causes of the deep poverty in the developing world?

  2. What is true development, and where do material goods fit in?

  3. What role should markets play in development?

  4. How should markets be regulated so that they can promote full human development?

When Francis is read in light of his predecessors' analysis and concerns, his own survey of the economic terrain can be seen to follow in paths they laid. Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI developed an account of development in which markets can serve as an outlet for creative human agency in promoting the efficient provision of goods. Markets cannot, however, be left to function without the constraints of a healthy culture and a government able to place markets at the service of the common good. All three popes warned that markets should not be allowed to function autonomously, and, if unchecked, markets might undermine both culture and politics. Where his predecessors warned of the danger that markets might overrun culture and political control, Francis asserts that they have in fact done so. As a result, he pays less attention to the role of markets in a healthy social order and more attention to their bad effects in an unhealthy social order.

The Predecessors

Paul VI and the New Developing Nations

Pope Paul VI wrote two documents commonly listed in the canon of Catholic social teaching: Populorum progressio (1967) and Octogesima adveniens (1971). In the post-World War II era, the "social question" expanded worldwide to include relations between wealthy Western countries and the extremely poor countries of the Third World, many of which were newly independent (John XXIII 1961). Paul VI called for a coordinated effort to help impoverished nations, which would require contributions from the wealthy nations (1967, 13, 44, 49).

The Causes of Poverty. Paul VI suggested a range of causes for the "flagrant inequalities ... in the economic, cultural, and political development of the nations" (1967, 2). He blamed primarily the lack of economic and political institutions capable of supporting economic growth and integration into the world economy (8). He was reluctant to blame the colonial era for all of the problems of the developing world; there were real abuses but also some institutional benefits (7). He did not mention corruption directly, although one might interpret his call for better institutions as an oblique reference to it. He placed greater blame on fluctuations of prices in commodities and agricultural export markets (57-58). The pope also expressed a growing concern about "new economic powers emerging," multinational corporations. These new entities were difficult to regulate by national governments; they were "not subject to control from the point of view of the common good" (1971, 44). Their unregulated power was leading to a "new and abusive form of economic domination on the social, cultural, and even political level" (44).

True Development and the Economy's Role in It. Paul VI was careful to distinguish mere economic growth, as important as it is to human well-being, from what he called "a full-bodied humanism" (1967, 42) capable of satisfying spiritual as well as material needs. He expressed concern that economic prosperity is a "two-edged sword: ... necessary if man is to grow as a human being; yet it can also enslave him, if he comes to regard it as the supreme good and cannot look beyond it" (19). Along with economic growth should come "social progress"; developing nations should seek to "reduce inequities, eliminate discrimination, free men from the bonds of servitude, and thus give them the capacity, in the sphere of temporal realities, to improve their lot, to further their moral growth and to develop their spiritual endowments" (34). Paul VI highlighted the crucial role of both equality and participation in social progress (1971, 22).

Markets and Development. Paul VI enunciated an already-established principle in Catholic social teaching: that market exchange (including free trade) can be just and beneficial when it is between equally situated agents but results in unjust and unequal outcomes when the parties to exchange are unequal in power: "The principle of free trade ... can work when both parties are about equal economically; in such cases it stimulates progress and rewards effort.... But the case is quite different when the nations involved are far from equal. Market prices that are freely agreed upon can turn out to be most unfair" (1967, 58). This judgment--that market exchange can lead to injustice when one of the parties is more vulnerable than the other--leads to a respect for markets tempered by an insistence that they cannot be free of government regulation and that the poor need support beyond access to markets. This qualified respect for markets is closely related to Catholic teaching on private property. Just as markets should not be fully autonomous of government, private property is not a principle of personal autonomy but a practical tool by which access to the goods of the earth (and the creative initiative those goods make possible) can be guaranteed to all (Paul VI 1967, 22-24).

Because the church rejects the autonomy of markets, along with any right to private property free from social obligation, it also firmly rejects the ideology of liberalism, which...

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