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18 Principles for an Economic Ethic Today The fundamental question raised in this volume is simply stated: What are the implications of the history of Christian views of economic life for our economic life today? We have now completed the historical survey that began with ancient Israel and concluded with the work of Pope Benedict XVI. In this chapter, we will review eight basic convictions and thirteen essential elements for an economic ethic today that arise from that tradition. It is an unfortunate fact of contemporary life that Christians on left and right politically have frequently proposed particular economic implications of Christian belief, making very selective use of this tradition. That is, too many Christians today—including many scholars—have prior ideological commitments about the optimal shape of economic life that lead them to be selective in their use of the tradition, citing those portions that support their point of view but ignoring those that do not. For example, the primary Christian perspective on the political left today is frequently described as “liberationist,” a reference to liberation theology and related schools of thought. From the liberationist perspective, most people in the poor nations of the world and many within the wealthy nations have been exploited by a capitalist system driven by greedy self-interest and a willingness to use people in the pursuit of maximum profit. These Christian voices point to the strong defense of the poor in the Christian tradition and its insistence on the meeting of human needs. Similarly, they appropriately stress the obligations of property owners to share their surplus with the needy. Catholic voices among them stress papal support for labor unions, and papal criticisms of “liberalism” and its overly individualistic view of the world. However, these same liberationist voices tend to ignore those parts of the tradition that find a moral justification for business and markets and they too often ignore the many positive evaluations of markets and individual initiative in recent papal teaching. On the political right, an even greater distortion occurs. Economically conservative Catholics, usually referred to as “neoconservatives” in the United 329 States, stress those portions of the tradition that defend the ownership of private property, and they cite the many positive things said by recent popes in praising markets and in recognizing the benefit to the poor nations of the world provided by access to international markets. Yet neoconservatives largely ignore arguments in the tradition that run counter to their own views. Thus there is almost no discussion of the justice obligations of the owners of private property to share their surplus with the needy and no mention of the just wage or the critique of capitalism and individualism that all the modern popes have included along with their appreciation for the good things that markets can do. One helpful way to engage these debates over the structure of the economy and the role of morality within it is to consider the framework of the moral ecology of markets described in Chapter 12. There, we saw that all perspectives on the morality of markets, across the political spectrum, provide an answer to the same basic questions about economic life. Those four questions concern the definition of markets by law, the provision of essential goods and services, the morality of individuals and groups, and a vibrant civil society. Thus our question about what the tradition of Christian thinking about economic life should mean for us today can be reinterpreted to ask how that tradition would answer these four questions. More precisely, what would be the range of acceptable answers along the political spectrum that the Christian tradition could approve of? This approach recognizes that there is room for some disagreement on practical solutions but that the tradition dismisses some possible answers as unacceptable. In the remainder of this chapter, we will consider two clusters of ideas that will be helpful in answering our basic question. The first is a list of eight basic convictions, and the second will identify thirteen elements fundamental to the relation of faith and economic life. The following two chapters will make these insights more concrete. To understand “what the tradition means today,” it will be helpful to recall the question that began Chapter 2: How does a living tradition mean? We have seen the answer to this question of “how” embodied in the religious reflection on economic life from the Hebrew Scriptures to the statements of Pope Benedict XVI today. Leaders in each era employed the wisdom...

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