What is a Catholic to think of Ayn Rand?

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EphelDuath said:
Are Catholics to condemn Objectivism for its focus on self-accomplishment before anything else, or are parts of Randian philosophy compatible with Catholicism?
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Well, her ideas of economics are somewhat compatible with the Church’s teaching (free-market liberalism). Ayn Rand is really a terrible philosopher though. Moreover, almost everything she says is contrary to Church teaching.
 
awatkins69 said:
Well, her ideas of economics are somewhat compatible with the Church’s teaching (free-market liberalism). Ayn Rand is really a terrible philosopher though. Moreover, almost everything she says is contrary to Church teaching.
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I agree with your first sentence except that I would say “free-market classical liberalism.” Immanuel Kant is a terrible philosopher, Rand, by comparison is somewhat idiosyncratic. I would not agree that everything she says is contrary to Church teaching because much of what she says, except for points I recently noted (atheism and abortion) I read as restatements or new locutions of a lot of traditional, level-headed philosophy. Compare her to a lot of the whack-jobs in Congress, and she comes off pretty sane and level headed I think - philosophically. But it’s a big subject and she was not an admirer of religion having escaped from the homeland of the most pernicious religion in history - Communism (or, as someone said back in the 1930’s, “You know, just Democrats in a hurry.”).
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edwest2 said:
The following article paints a good picture of what Randian philosophy has done.

christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/september/2.36.html

God bless,
Ed
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Ed, the above article is a hatchet job at best. It attempts to discredit Ayn Rand by linking her philosophy to Alan Greenspan and the current state of the US economy. And while Greenspan was indeed an early follower of Rand, his later career was the anthithesis of what Rand stood for. Rand abhored government influence of the private sector, and would have been aghast at the role of the Federal Reserve. As far as being an objective (no pun intended) critique of her philosophy, the article you linked is meritless.
 
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