Mais referências

Via LRCBlog

1. Edward A. Keller, C.S.C. (1903–1989)

“The encyclicals do not condemn our economic system of free enterprise, but instead give a strong moral foundation for such a system.”

"With these words, written in 1947, Father Edward Keller voiced an opinion at odds with the way many American Catholic social thinkers viewed the relationship between the social teaching of the Church and the market economy. Keller, while not given much attention by historians, Catholics, or free market advocates, was in fact one of the most articulate and forceful Catholic defenders of the market system in the twentieth century.

Keller was born in Cincinnati on June 27, 1903. After joining the religious order of the Holy Cross (the congregation that founded and administers the University of Notre Dame), he went to the University of Minnesota to study economics. As was often the case in the early twentieth century, the needs of Catholic schools and colleges for teachers outstripped the resources of the religious orders that ran them, and Keller was sent to teach at Notre Dame before finishing his dissertation.(...)"


2. The Late-Scholastic and Austrian Link to Modern Catholic Economic ThoughtRev. Robert A. Sirico, President Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty

The reliance of the modern Catholic view of economics on Late-Scholastic thought has been more pronounced than ever. Both place enterprise, human initiative, the price system, exchange, private property, the division of labor, and the liberty of contract at the center of economic life. Unlike more positivist schools of economic thought, the modern Catholic approach never loses sight of the centrality of the acting person; the subjective will, and all that this implies, is the driving force behind economic life. That appreciation of the acting person is combined with a skepticism toward unnecessary uses of governmental power. We see in the Church’s social teaching, especially as expressed by Pope John Paul II, a blending of personalism with a proper understanding of economic reality.
(...)
Finally, we can then more clearly understand the meaning of these ideas’ reappearance in modern Catholic economics. My intention is to sketch a picture of an intellectual tradition tracing from scholasticism (and its influences in Christian and ancient traditions), to the economic thought of the Late Scholastics, to the recovery of this tradition in late-nineteenth-century Vienna (in the writings of Carl Menger and Franz Brentano), and finally to its reintegration into modern Catholic social teaching under the guidance of Karol Wojtyla’s papacy. In particular, I want to pay special attention to the proto-personalist aspects present within the work of the Late Scholastics. This proto-personalism also provides a theoretical bridge with the work of the later Austrian School.

The goal of scholasticism, in the tradition forged by Saint Thomas Aquinas, was to develop a body of logic and philosophic thought built on a Catholic understanding of the world, including an emphasis on natural law. This body of thought sought to address a wide number of scientific and social problems. This ambitious project provided an opportunity for Scholastic theorists to explore areas now classified as economic, including property, trade, money, interest, prices, and wealth creation. The Scholastics agreed, in line with Catholic social teaching, generally, that the way to understand economics was by reflecting on the preferences, purposes, outlook, and intentions of economic actors themselves and observing how they impress themselves on a physical world of limited resources. (...)"