This week, Stuart Reid's turn-to column on the back page of the Catholic Herald includes memories of Rupert Murdoch when he was Anakin Skywalker.
The paper also features Piers Shepherd's review of Christopher Ferrara's The Church and the Libertarian, a searing critique of those in the Traditional Catholic camp who are away with Austrian economics, and not least of the very strong anti-Christianity of Ludwig von Mises.
And there is an article by Edward Leigh MP which reminds us of the teaching Pope Leo XIII that it is a natural right for the father of a family to be paid enough to support his dependents.
Do get hold of a copy.
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It's much better than it used to be. Any idea why?
ReplyDelete"Anoymous", the above wouldn't be yet another anti-Damian Thompson comment by any chance?
ReplyDeleteIf it is, then these weird little feuds are why I don't live in London. Keep them to yourselves. This post is about, for example, the Catholic theological critique of Austrian economics. Have you anything to say on that, Dan?
ReplyDeleteThe Austrian School is extremely pro-abortion. The absolute right to hold private property and dispose of it however you like is set alongside the abolute right to do whatever you like with your body, defined as including the unborn child.
ReplyDeleteTraditional Catholics who support Austrian economics ignore this and do not seem to have come to terms with the promulgation of the Catechism. Your point that that was in act of the entire Episcopal College, and thus infallible, needs to be much more widely known.
Austrian economics only has one notable British promoter, a prolific and very popular Telegraph blogger who is probably a Catholic, seeing as he is an Irish-Peruvian.
With the amount of attention paid to the Latin Mass and the Ordinariate, you would have thought that room could be found for a Catholic critique of that pro-abortion violation of infallibly promulgated Social Teaching.
Or will that have to wait for the same change that has so improved the Catholic Herald?
If and when it happens, it looks as if you should write it.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, the Catholic attraction to Austrian Economics and libertarianism in general is a reaction to center-left parties becoming more socially liberal over the last 40 years.
ReplyDeleteIn the minds of libertarian Catholics, state intervention means teaching public school students about homosexuality and other such things.
What these folks fail to realize is that the State is doing these things precisely because it is NOT doing the things it used to do, like properly regulating finance, running public utilities, protecting workers and consumers from unscrupulous businesses, etc.
The mainstream Left has become more socially liberal as it has become more economically neoliberal.
As for their right-wing allies, what have socially conservative Christians gained from the center-right parties, besides the championing of economic policies that actually make family life worse?
You can’t support an extreme conception of the free market (as the Austrians certainly do) and then complain about a free market in abortion services, pornography, and easy divorce.
And, to be fair, von Mises, Rothbard and their most faithful disciples did not and do not complain about it. They are all for it.
ReplyDeleteThe supposed fusion of neoliberal economics, social conservatism and foreign policy hawkishness was always odd, to say the least. The supposed fusion of Austrian economics, Catholic traditionalism and Southern secessionism is in a class of its own.