“Tested in Every Way justifies—in every way—the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin’s conviction that Catholics can find firm and common ground if only they will listen to each other. Christopher Ruddy’s harmonizing of a wide range of voices, themes, and concerns about the Catholic priesthood is exemplary in its depth and bracing in its clarity. Anyone who fears for the future of the church and its priests will find in these pages much to think about, much to celebrate—and much to do.”
The Acton Institute’s Samuel Gregg promotes free markets as a means for genuine human development
May 20 is the feast of St. Bernardine of Siena, a 15th-century Franciscan priest. The fact that he cared for the sick, especially those suffering from the plague, doesn’t come as a surprising course of action from a Franciscan, nor does the fact that he preached against luxury and immodest clothing. However, many people are unaware that St. Bernardine endorsed free markets.
The humble Franciscan knew the importance of personal initiative, identifying four gifts that the successful entrepreneur would make use of: efficiency, responsibility, diligence and risk-taking.
Despite his rejection of excess, St. Bernardine supported the right to private property, one of the topics addressed in his book On Contracts and Usury.
None of this comes as a surprise to Samuel Gregg, director of research at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. He has been teaching about the morality of free markets for years. Australian-born, Gregg earned a doctorate in moral philosophy and political economy from the University of Oxford in 1998. He has since spoken around the world and has written numerous books, the most recent being Tea Party Catholic: The Catholic Case for Limited Government, a Free Economy, and Human Flourishing.
Gregg, who currently lives in Ann Arbor, Mich., with his wife and daughter, recently took time to share economic insights with Register correspondent Trent Beattie.
How did you first become interested in economics?
I become interested in economics in an indirect manner. My initial entryway into the topic was natural-law theory. Through reading St. Thomas Aquinas and some of the later scholastic thinkers, it became very clear that, for hundreds of years, much natural-law thinking concerned matters that we would regard as “economic” today: questions such as the nature and ends of money, the justice of economic exchange, how prices are determined, the role of the state in the economy, etc.
One reason for this is that capitalism first developed in the medieval world — which was, after all, a Catholic world. The other reason is that, in thinking through such questions, scholastic writers had to get to know the world of commerce, money, business and trade in ways that few Christian thinkers had previously done. And what you find in these thinkers are very clear anticipations of many, if not most, of the key insights that were contained in Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.
This in turn made me wonder if it would be possible to re-integrate the discipline of economics into Catholic thought — not to produce a “Catholic economics,” since there is no such thing, just as there is no “Catholic physics” — but, rather, so that the insights of economics could inform Catholic moral and social reflection, while economics could become reacquainted with the full truth about man that we find in natural law and Divine Revelation.
How did you get started with the Acton Institute?
It became obvious to me in the mid-1990s that Acton was truly unique, inasmuch as it was trying to re-create that conversation between economics and the Christian faith, and that one of the mediums through which it was doing so was natural-law thinking.
That is extremely difficult work, because many Catholics and other Christians are intensely suspicious of economics, seeing it as simply applied utilitarianism, while many economists operate upon highly secular assumptions about the world — assumptions that run quite counter to the Christian vision of the person — and which aren’t always that friendly to convinced religious believers.
Yet both the Church and the world of economics certainly need each other. The Church needs to take seriously the insights of economics, especially when it comes to addressing poverty, while economics as a discipline needs people to remind it of all the moral and spiritual realities that don’t fit well into the models employed by most mainstream economists. So when I was offered a chance to work at Acton, I was very happy to accept it.
You recently got back from Rome, where Acton conducted a conference and where you were able to attend the canonizations of Popes John XXIII and John Paul II. What were those experiences like?
It’s hard to describe them in a few words. Obviously, there was a wonderful sense of giving thanks for the lives of sanctity led by these two recent popes. Then there was the very real experience of being reminded of the universality of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ and the People of God.
In terms of the conference held by Acton, it focused on the theme of the relationship between economic freedom and religious liberty. Among the speakers, we had Cardinal [Joseph] Zen of Hong Kong — a man who lives in the midst of a city built on economic freedom but who also is very conscious of the suffering of the Church in China. A number of people remarked to me after the event that it was one of the best conferences in Rome that they had attended for a long time. When I asked why, the answer was the same: The conference pushed people to think about the indivisible character of freedom in ways that simply aren’t common today in our age of hyper-specialization.
St. Bernardine of Siena was a Franciscan priest who extensively defended the business entrepreneur. Do you find that most Catholics are unaware of his teachings on the free market?
Most Catholics are unaware of the broad Catholic intellectual and institutional contributions to the development of market economies in general, especially during their early phases in the Middle Ages. Too often, we buy into the “Dark Ages” mythology about this period. So the fact that St. Bernardine of Siena — and many other Franciscans — were among the first to grasp the importance of the entrepreneur as a key catalyst for economic growth, or that they made clear and important distinctions between money-as-sterile and money-as-capital, get missed alongside all the other things that happened in the so-called “Dark Ages.”
I also think that many people have an imaginary understanding of St. Francis and the Franciscan orders that followed in his wake. They weren’t all poor mendicants. Lots of them were very intellectually serious men who lived, worked and often taught in urban centers, and thus experienced what some scholars have called the Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages. They didn’t try to resist it. Rather, they sought to understand it so that they could guide the faithful in the “how” of living a Christian life in the midst of this new world.
Who are some of the other saints who have explained how free markets are conducive to virtue?
There is an excellent book by the Australian priest and theologian Father Anthony G. Percy called Entrepreneurship in the Catholic Tradition. He details the fact that many of the Church Fathers had high praise for merchants and underscored the importance of commerce, both in terms of the material wealth it produced and also the opportunities for all-round human flourishing that become available through business activity.
Those Church Fathers include St. Augustine, St. John Cassian, St. Leo the Great and St. John of Damascus. Aquinas also had good things to say about merchants and the potential to cultivate particular virtues in business. Now, keep in mind, they also warned of the very real temptations that exist in a market place and commerce more generally. But to say they were somehow “anti-commerce” is simply untrue.
What are some of the biggest economic misconceptions you’ve found that Catholics have?
To my mind, the misconceptions of Catholics are no different from those of most other people.
One of them is the notion that wealth is a fixed amount. This is called the “zero-sum game” fallacy. It implies that one person can only become wealthy by other people becoming poor. Entrepreneurship and the right institutions in place (especially the rule of law) are the factors that nullify that myth.
Another misconception is how the economic value of something is determined. It’s not through the labor that creates an object or service. Rather, it’s through the subjective value that is attached to the good or service by hundreds of thousands of people in a market place. The price of a book I write is not determined by how many hours I spent working on it, but by what people are willing to pay for it. And what they are willing to pay for it is determined by how much they want it compared to all the other books, services and goods they want.
Then there is the notion that free trade can only benefit the wealthy or wealthy countries. Again, if you look at the stories of how nations escape poverty, it’s not through subsidies, protectionism and closed markets. Rather, it’s through entering what St. John Paul the Great called the circles of exchange and embracing institutions such as rule of law.
The whole question regarding economic misconceptions is a fascinating one — so much so that we even have a course at Acton’s summer university program on that topic. We address and correct common economic fallacies, and this is something that many people — Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, evangelical and Jewish — find extremely helpful.
You mentioned the annual Acton University event coming up in June. What are your expectations for this year’s installment?
We will have more than 1,000 people in attendance from dozens of countries throughout the world — among them clergy, seminary professors, seminarians, business leaders, economists, theologians, philosophers — in fact, anyone who wants to apply for the event and is accepted.
They will be participating in dozens of courses in theology, philosophy, economics and history — conducted by faculty members from all over the world and in a way that allows for one-on-one discussions.
I suppose that, at least for me, it’s the genuinely international flavor of the event that is most striking, but also the intellectual seriousness of the program. By that, I don’t mean that it is inaccessible to anyone except specialists. Rather, I mean that it’s not what I call a “fluff event,” in which the emphasis is on style and talking points rather than substance and serious engagement with ideas. The material and ideas are certainly presented in an accessible way — but we don’t dumb things down. And, judging from the feedback we get, that is precisely what people want from such a program.
Letters to Women deserved this reprint. In these letters, readers find a different side of Ignatius of Loyola and indeed, a different attitude toward women then is commonly attributed to the founder the Jesuits famous or infamous for not accepting the efforts of women, some represented in this volume, to found a sister order for women. Here one finds the one woman who was admitted to the Society of Jesus by Ignatius himself, Juana, regent of the Spanish Kingdoms and daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. Because of her sovereign position, she could not be refused. Under her Jesuit pseudonym of Mateo Sanchez, Juana made the vows of a Jesuit scholastic that bound her to the Society but gave the Society the right to dissolve them at any time. Ignatius therefore found himself as her Jesuit superior and at the same time, as a Spaniard, he was her subject. Juana remained a princess and a Jesuit until her death in 1573.
The letters to women comprise a relatively small number (139) among Ignatius’s voluminous correspondence (6,813 + 956 letters addressed to Ignatius). They were neglected until Hugo Rahner understood their importance for understanding something about the spiritual direction of women in the sixteenth century and gathered them in to this volume. Rahner provided a helpful introduction to the letters that he arranged hierarchically: I) Royal Ladies, 2) Noble women, 3) Benefactresses, 4) Spiritual daughters, 5) Mothers of Jesuits, 6) Friends. Rahner writes “he [Ignatius] wished to help those souls in whom he found the capacity for the love of God, for the inner life, for works of charity. This capacity he found more in women than in men.” (p. 6) It would seem, nevertheless, that at least part of Ignatius’s motivation for leaving Spain to study at the University of Paris was to escape the requests of women for his direction. Since he didn’t know French, the ladies of France would leave him alone but the male Spanish students and professors would provide recruits for his “great work.” (p.13)
In his letters of spiritual direction to women, Ignatius gives the same guidance as to men; this phenomenon is not rare. One can find the same ambivalence toward women in general and respect toward particular women in other saints and noted spiritual guides such as St. Augustine of Hippo and of St. Francis of Assisi among others. Cultural prejudice may dictate behavior, but the intelligence and spiritual development of women commanded reverence for God’s work with souls, as Ignatius would put it. On the other hand, when advising a woman trapped in an abusive marriage, Ignatius conforms to the usual advice of suffer and obey. Joanna of Aragon maintained her independence and refused to return to Ascanio Colonna even though Ignatius sent her a letter containing twenty six reasons why normally, and ought to be in the power of her husband…” (p,141)
Ignatius doesn’t talk of women, especially their bodies, as more sinful than men’s. Rather he speaks generally of how the instrument of the body can be turned to good or evil by good or bad will and might try to trick them or even accuse them falsely as occurred when a woman who had gone to confession to a Jesuit then accused him of fathering her child. Only the discovery of the real father resolved the issue.
More collections of letters to women from men would help to establish what seems to be the case, that culturally transmitted stereotypes of women prevail until men of integrity deal with women of equal integrity who display the same hopes, dreams, determinations, and endowment of mind and will that men expect from other men.
A collection of essays written by scholars who are attempting to catalogue and elucidate something called “secular” spirituality, this volume presents spirituality in general as “an attribute of the way one experiences the world and lives one’s life” that may or may not be validated by religious varieties of spirituality. The authors examine this tradition in terms of its sources in ancient Greece and Rome, in Asian and Near Eastern traditions, as well as in the European Enlightenment, British Romanticism and in the American Pragmatist School of Philosophy. Under such headings as New Age Spirituality, Holistic Health Practices, Psychotherapies, Twelve-Step Programs, Feminist Spirituality, Gay Spirituality, The Struggle for Social Justice, etc., the authors give us invaluable insight into the spiritual qualities of many very secular movements. In addition, they inquire into scientific spirituality as well as cultural spirituality, the latter being found in the arts, sports and game playing. The book names as spiritual that which most would dismiss as merely political, therapeutic, scientific or entertaining. That these secular arenas contain implicitly spiritual dimensions affirming the interconnectedness of life is a welcome acknowledgement.