DOES being a Roman Catholic require you to be a social democrat? Certainly it looks from Anthony Annett’s impressive account of Catholic social teaching (CST) in the area of economics as though the papacy has been occupied since the Industrial Revolution largely by proponents of various versions of that political orientation. It certainly appears to be the lens through which Annett himself reads the array of papal documents which he so thoroughly examines. His account displays the way in which the RC Church has navigated and influenced the developing global economic systems.

The result of his endeavours is a book with far more authority and experience behind it than could be summarised with a simple political label such as “social democracy”. Former economist at the IMF, theologian, and political philosopher, Annett offers to those for whom the social and economic implications of the Catholic faith are a much needed alternative to the dominant liberal economics of our time. He has provided a thorough conspectus of all the relevant papal documents that bear on economic questions in a way that makes the book a valuable resource, whether or not the reader accepts the positions that he and successive popes have taken.

It is significant that Annett is writing as an American RC, at a time when American Catholics are, to put it mildly, politically polarised. His enthusiasm for Pope Francis’s forays into the economic sphere is not, as he will be well aware, shared by all the faithful in the United States, and Annett seeks to display for those readers in particular that Pope Francis’s thought is an authentic expression of a long tradition, rooted not just in the thinking of his recent predecessors, but traceable all the way back to the Hebrew prophets, to the Early Church, to Christ himself, and, on the Hellenistic side, to Aristotle. The two chapters that trace the ancient roots and modern expressions of that tradition are, therefore, key to his argument.

There follows his dissection of the dominant economic thinking of our time, making it very clear, as his third chapter, is entitled “Who’s Right and Who’s Wrong?”, and in the next chapter how the “wrong” economic paradigm has practical outcomes that are variously “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”. His criticisms lead on into four chapters that show the positive contribution of CST, respectively, to a better division of power and reward for labour and capital, to identifying and tackling the scourge of rising inequality, to caring for our shared planet, and to an adequate response to globalisation.

There is much here that amplifies and supports out of CST the currents of criticism of the dominant capitalism under which the US and UK, among other nations, live, identified by thinkers such as Michael Sandel and Thomas Piketty, whom he cites. The keywords of CST, such as solidarity and subsidiarity, appear frequently as the call that Pope Francis, like many of his predecessors, addresses to economic policymakers.

There are stylistic irritants: the titles of valuable chapters on the biblical and Aristotelian roots of CST and papal documents — respectively “The Old Stuff” and “The New Stuff” — cheapen them. More importantly, the title of the book, Cathonomics, is not just ugly: it suggests that there is a “Catholic economics” rather than (more appropriately) that CST has a vital contribution to make to economic policymaking. That is a pity, as is the claim made by the subtitle, How Catholic tradition can create a more just economy; neither this book, nor any other, will be able to substantiate that.

What readers will find here, however, is that, whatever their politics, CST contains the creative resources that the RC Church has brought to economic thinking and political action.
 

The Rt Revd Dr Peter Selby is an Honorary Visiting Professor in Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College, London. He is a former Bishop of Worcester, Bishop to HM Prisons, and President of the National Council for Independent Monitoring Boards.

Cathonomics: How Catholic tradition can create a more just economy
Anthony M. Annett
Georgetown University Press £18.50
(978-1-64712-472-4)
Church Times Bookshop £16.65