Well, the Church opposed Communism for one thing, and Pope John Paul II had a significant hand in its demise, as did the Church in Poland generally. Eastern Europe, at least, is no longer under its sway, and some of the holdouts might eventually change.
The Church has also opposed just as vigorously a laissez-faire Capitalist economic system which is what we have now. Pope Pius XI and Pope Paul VI condemened it as an “UNBRIDLED LIBERALISM” and that 'IT COULD NEVER BE CONDEMENED ENOUGH."
*“He who has the goods of this world and sees his brother in need and closes his heart to him, how does the love of God abide in him?” (21) Everyone knows that the Fathers of the Church laid down the duty of the rich toward the poor in no uncertain terms. As St. Ambrose put it: “You are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back what is his. You have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of everyone. The earth belongs to everyone, not to the rich.” (22) These words indicate that the right to private property is not absolute and unconditional.
No one may appropriate surplus goods solely for his own private use when others lack the bare necessities of life. In short, “as the Fathers of the Church and other eminent theologians tell us, the right of private property may never be exercised to the detriment of the common good.” When “private gain and basic community needs conflict with one another,” it is for the public authorities “to seek a solution to these questions, with the active involvement of individual citizens and social groups.” (23)
- However, certain concepts have somehow arisen out of these new conditions and insinuated themselves into the fabric of human society. These concepts present profit as the chief spur to economic progress, free competition as the guiding norm of economics, and private ownership of the means of production as an absolute right, having no limits nor concomitant social obligations.
This unbridled liberalism paves the way for a particular type of tyranny, rightly condemned by Our predecessor Pius XI, for it results in the “international imperialism of money.”(26Such improper manipulations of economic forces can never be condemned enough; let it be said once again that economics is supposed to be in the service of man. (27)
But if it is true that a type of capitalism, as it is commonly called, has given rise to hardships, unjust practices, and fratricidal conflicts that persist to this day, it would be a mistake to attribute these evils to the rise of industrialization itself, for they really derive from the pernicious economic concepts that grew up along with it. We must in all fairness acknowledge the vital role played by labor systemization and industrial organization in the task of development.*
Bishop Fulton Sheen had this to say:
The Christian solution is to get behind neither Capital nor Labor exclusively; but to be behind Capital when Marxian Socialism would destroy private property, and to be behind Labor when Monopolistic Capitalism would claim the priority of profits over the right to a just wage.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church has this to say:
*2424 A theory that makes profit the exclusive norm and ultimate end of economic activity is morally unacceptable. The disordered desire for money cannot but produce perverse effects. It is one of the causes of the many conflicts which disturb the social order.204
A system that “subordinates the basic rights of individuals and of groups to the collective organization of production” is contrary to human dignity.205 Every practice that reduces persons to nothing more than a means of profit enslaves man, leads to idolizing money, and contributes to the spread of atheism. "You cannot serve God and mammon."206
2425 The Church has rejected the totalitarian and atheistic ideologies associated in modem times with “communism” or “socialism.” **She has likewise refused to accept, in the practice of “capitalism,” individualism and the absolute primacy of the law of the marketplace over human labor.***207 Regulating the economy solely by centralized planning perverts the basis of social bonds; regulating it solely by the law of the marketplace fails social justice, for "there are many human needs which cannot be satisfied by the market."208 Reasonable regulation of the marketplace and economic initiatives, in keeping with a just hierarchy of values and a view to the common good, is to be commended.
Moreover right wing conservatism misrepresents what socialism really is, socialism is an economic system in which the means of production are publicly or commonly owned and controlled cooperatively; What the right wing conservatives have subsituted for true socialism is a welfare state which is NOT neccassarily condemened by the Church. It is certainly true that an overly-centralized welfare state could harm human dignity and violate subsidiarity. But not even the Netherlands, the best example of a welfare state crosses this thresshold. There are plenty examples of welfare states throughout Europe and other parts of the world which are fully supported by the Church, one that twins both solidarity and subsidiarity, is Germany, with a model supported strongly by Cardinal Marx of Munich. Basically, the welfare system funded by the state, but managed by subsidiary mediating institutions in a fully autonomous manner. And this system spends far more on social spending than the United States, and has far lower poverty and inequality, as well as universal healthcare .
When Catholic clergy exchange right wing conservatism for the social justice teachings of the Church then they have adopted a Calvinist system of economics long ago condemned as a heresy.
In the Service of Christ and His Church,
David
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