Catholic Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism

346 Pages·1993·5.712 MB·English

by  Michael Novak

$24.95
CATHCLIC ETHIC
THE
SPIRITCAP ITALISM
ANDTHE OF
"
Any vision of capitalism's future prospects
must take into account the powerful cultural
influence Catholicism has exercised through­
out the world. The Church had for genera­
tions been reluctant to come to terms with
capitalism, but, as Michael Novak argues in
this important book, a hundred-year-long
debate within the Church has yielded a richer
and more humane vision of capitalism than
that described in Max Weber's classic The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
Novak notes that the influential Catholic
intellectuals who, early in this century, saw
through Weber's eyes an economic system
1narked by ruthless individualism and cold
calculation had misread the reality. For, as
history has shown, the lived experience of
capitalism has depended to a far greater ex­
tent than they had realized on a culture char­
acterized by opportunity, cooperative effort,
social initiative, creativity, and invention.
Drawing on the major works of modern
Papal thought, Novak demonstrates how the
Catholic tradition has come to reflect this
richer interpretation of capitalist culture. In
1891, Pope Leo XIII condemned socialism as a
futile system, but also severely criticized ex­
isting market systems. In 1991, John Paul II
surprised many by conditionally proposing
"a business economy, a market economy, or
simply free economy" as a model for Eastern
Europe and the Third World. Novak notes
that as early as 1963, this future Pope had sig­
naled his commitment to liberty. Later, as
Archbishop of Krakow, he stressed the "cre­
ative subjectivity" of workers, made by God
in His image as co-creators. Now, as Pope, he
calls for economic institutions worthy of a
creative people, and for political and cultural
reforms attuned to a new "human ecology"
of family and work.
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THE
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In many ways, the Catholic man of the middle classes
was like his Protestant opposite number. He too be­
lieved in being frugal, respectful, clean, time-saving,
prudent. Yet, the self-made man of Catholic France
was in fact relatively free of the fearful anxieties which
Weber has ascribed to the Protestant Saint of the six­
teenth and seventeenth centuries. He had little taste
for agonizing self-reexamination, living on the bound­
aries in unending quest of the assurance of election.
BENJAMIN NELSON
"Of many Saints we read that they were very rich.
They climbed up on this tower, on this mountain, and
they were nearer to God. The more they had, and
climbed up on it, the higher they were and the nearer
to heaven, grateful to God for it and thanking him for
it and loving him the more for it" [Blessed Giordano
da Rivalto, 1304]. In this idea, that the evil lies not in
possession of wealth but in making it the end of life,
all the scholastics are agreed, from St. Thomas to St.
Antonino of Florence, and Cardinal Gaetano. Their
teaching was reasserted in the Encyclicals of Leo XIII
and Pius XI.
AMINTORE FANFANI
CONTENTS
PREFACE
Xlll
INTRODUCMTOIROEN :TT HHAPENR OTESETTAHNITC 1
MaxW ebeLri'msi ts 2
ThHeu maSnp irit 9
Toward a ECtahtihco lic 11
A Preview 13
PARTO NE.W HICHS YSTELME?O X IITIO P IUXSI
(1891-1931) 15
1. Catholics Against Capitalism 17
FanfaIntia'lsy 19
MeaPne,t Steyl,fi asnhMd,a t erialistic 22
WealItsah MeNanosta, nE nd 29
ThCea thSopliiSrcli otwA lwya kens 33
2. Socialism, Nol Capitalism? Maybe: Leo XIII 36
WhyD iSdo cialism Fail? 38
,,
zx
Contents
X
Workers, Yes! Capitalism? Maybe 49
Toward the Future 60
3. Social Justice Redefined: Pius XI 62
Rescuing a Virtue 63
Conceptual Fog 67
A Brief Historical Overview 69
...� Way Out 77
The Civil Society: Five Further Steps 80
From 1931 to 1991 86
PART TWO. A NEW BIRTH OF FREEDOM:
JOHN PAUL II (1978- ) 89
4. The Second Liberty 91
Two Concepts of Liberty 93
Order in the Ancien Regime 99
A Great Year, 1989 101
The Anticapitalist Bias of Intellectuals 104
Reconciling Economics and Religion 106
Convergence on Choice 109
Dynamic Order 111
In the Direction of Mind 111
The Three Spheres of Liberty 112
One Root, Two Liberties 113
5. Capitalism Rightly Understood 114
Background Reflections 115
Outline of Centesimus Annus 119
A Christian Social Anthropology 120
Capitalism, Yes 125
The Limits of Capitalism 132
Toward a More Civil Debate 136
Contents
XI
PART THREE. NEXT? POVERTY, RACE, ETHNICITY,
AND OTHER PERPLEXITIES OF THE 21st CENTURY 145
6. War on Poverty: "Created Goods Should Abound" 147
The Universal Destination and the Way 147
Reconstructing the World Order 152
International Poverty 155
Domestic Poverty 157
Social Invention 167
7. Ethnicity, Race, and Social justice 169
International Perspectives 171
The "Civil Society" Project 176
8. Against the Adversary Culture 195
Against Nihilism 195
Culture and Character 203
American Founding Principles, Current Practice 206
The Pope's Challenge to the U.S. 210
Protecting the Moral Ecology 215
The Institutional Task 218
EPILOGUTEH:E C REATIPVEER SON 221
Seven Moral Themes 221
The Right Stuff 222
Latin America 230
The New Virtues Required 232
The Heart of the Matter: Creativity 235
NOTES 238
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 319
INDEX 323
PREFACE
THE JAPANESE HAVE PROVED CONCLUSIVELY that in order to em­
body the spirit of capitalism, human beings do not have to be
Protestant. A good thing, too, since many of us who are Jewish,
Catholic, or secular chafe under having to describe what moves
us as a «Protestant" ethic.
Moreover, the newest frontiers of capitalism today lie in two
great regions of the globe-Eastern Europe and Latin America­
whose cultures are Catholic (including Russian Orthodox) rather
than Protestant. This book was conceived and written for, and in
solidarity with, the peoples of those regions, among whom in
recent years I have been privileged to spend much time. As a
Roman Catholic, I share keenly in their current spiritual struggles
and their worldly hopes-which are so crucial to the shape of the
twenty-first century. But I have also written for those in America
who are trying to make a fresh start on the problems the United
States now faces, such as those of race, ethnicity, and the urban
«underclass."
During the past 15 years more than a dozen Catholic nations,
from the Philippines through Latin American and Poland, have
become democracies. Samuel Huntington of Harvard has de­
scribed this «third wave" of democratization as «the Catholic
wave." These nations, and others like them, are now struggling
to build dynamic economies. It is these same countries, I argue,
.,,
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