St Mary’s University – Dean of Faculty – Education, Humanities and Social Sciences. Professor of Finance, Public Policy and Ethics.
As well as Dean of the Faculty of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences at St Mary’s University, Philip helps to develop curricula and teaches in fields such as political economy, business ethics and Catholic social teaching. He also works for the Institute of Economic Affairs as Senior Academic Fellow. Click here to view Philip’s full profile
The Radio 4 programme, the Moral Maze, explores various controversial moral and philosophical issues each week with a panel who question a diverse group of “witnesses”. As it was the last show before the summer holidays, the 30th July episode explored idleness – or, strictly speaking, leisure.
Read more >>
The band “The Strawbs”, perhaps most famous for “Now, I’m a Union Man”, was formed at St. Mary’s before it was a university (they were originally called “The Strawberry Hill Boys”). The lyrics of that song, don’t really accord with Catholic social teaching on unions (“I say what I think, that the company stinks”…”With a hell of a shout, it’s ‘Out brothers, out!’ And the rise of the factory’s fall”…“And I always get my way If I strike for higher pay”…), but it is a good song and forms an interesting preface to an article on Catholic social teaching and trade unions.
Read more >>
October 4th was the feast of St Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of ecologists and animals. The day brought to an end the season the Catholic Church describes as “The Season of Creation”. The Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales also chose that day to launch a considerably revised, new edition of its teaching document on the environment – The Call of Creation.
Read more >>
It can be argued that there should be a natural empathy amongst Catholics for globalisation. The Catholic Church desires to take the faith to the ends of the earth. Given this, why should commercial and cultural relationships not extend across borders too? Furthermore, it could be asked whether the hostility to foreigners or instinct for self-preservation (even if misguided) which often accompanies protectionism is a healthy way to conduct political, civil and economic relationships. Pope Francis, for example, has exhorted President Trump to build “bridges rather than walls”, referring to the former US president’s desire to reduce migration from Mexico using physical constraints.
Read more >>
The term “social justice” leads to a lot of sabre rattling in Catholic social teaching circles. Greater attention to its meaning, including to some of the ambiguities about its meaning, might be helpful in promoting more fruitful discussion. Debates are often clouded by bringing F. A. Hayek’s disdain for the whole idea of social justice into the discussion. Supporters of a free economy, in the spirit of Hayek’s work, are therefore pitted against supporters of social justice in Catholic social thought. Constructive dialogue is impeded.
Read more >>
Catholic social teaching has a lot to say about the basic systems of law that should underlie a flourishing business economy. In recent years, Catholic social teaching has also commented on regulation. Although a distinction between law and regulation is not made explicitly in Catholic social teaching, such a distinction is helpful. It would help clear up confusion between the role of government in regulating economic life (where prudential judgement might be applied both in relation to who regulates and how much) and the role of government in providing the basic framework of governance.
Read more >>
St. Mary’s University is launching a new degree programme. It is coming to the end of its validation process and will be formally “on the books” from February. Students will be able to join the programme from September 2022, but they can apply now. For the next month, we are currently advertising it “subject to validation” as the regulations require. The programme is probably unique in the UK. It will be called: “MA in Social Justice and Public Service”.
Read more >>
A quick google search will reveal that Pope Francis warns us almost every year about the commercialisation of Christmas. This year, for example, he was quoted as saying: “The Christmas tree and Nativity crèche should evoke the joy and the peace of God’s love and not the selfish indulgence of consumerism and indifference”. Of course, this message is not unique to Pope Francis: almost every Christian minister warns of this danger.
Read more >>
Economics involves the study of purposeful human action. When economists write about “methodological individualism” as being at the basis of their subject, some Christians have a tendency to think that this is problematic: after all, we are called to live in society. However, methodological individualism simply means that it is only the individual that can act purposefully. We should not think of the economy as an abstraction. Economic decisions, outcomes and even complex social structures ultimately arise from the decisions of individuals. If there is dire poverty, oppression and corruption in a country, this does not happen without sinful actions by individuals in the economic sphere. Even if structures of sin exist, whereby the culture is so warped that we find it almost impossible to resist the temptation to sin ourselves (for example, if we simply cannot run our small business without paying a bribe), as St. John Paul II reminded us, such structures of sin always derive from the actions of individuals. That is true even if those actions were historical and interact with the actions of many others.
Read more >>
Governments at the recent COP26 conference agreed to accelerate efforts to phase out “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies. The qualifier is a little worrying, but it is not clear what it means so I will ignore it for the purposes of this article.
Read more >>