Pope Francis has raised, in several of his talks and encyclicals, the problem of corruption. It is surprising how rarely this has featured explicitly in Catholic social teaching more generally because it is a major driver of poverty, injustice and miserable living conditions.
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This is the second of two posts on how Catholic economists see their work. The posts are published in celebration of World Catholic Education Day on May 26, 2022, and within the context of the Global Compact on Education called for by Pope Francis. Quentin Wodon is a Lead Economist at the World Bank and a Distinguished Research Affiliate with the College of Business at Loyola University New Orleans.
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Part I of this post looks at the background to this subject. It is the first of two posts on how Catholic economists see their work. The posts are published in celebration of World Catholic Education Day on May 26, 2022, and within the context of the Global Compact on Education called for by Pope Francis.
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The invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation has posed great challenges to Christian teaching about the waging of war and the insights of Catholic Social teaching, issues such as the immorality of an aggressive war, international relations and the welcoming of refugees. However these is one issue which is not met by a straightforward moral response: self-defence.
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There are some who worry that prison is like “a holiday camp” these days, although maybe this sentiment will be less prevalent given what so many have been through during the pandemic.
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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.
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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.
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The series of events run by the Benedict XVI Centre, Together for the Common Good, Caritas Social Action Network and the Centre for Social Justice is coming to an end with an in-person event on November 16th.
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‘To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it’. These words from G.K. Chesterton’s A Short History of England are a salutary reminder to those who claim certain rights. And now, not for the first time, a new right has been proposed: the right to die. Over the last few years a number of bills advocating for a change in the law to allow for assisted dying or a right to die have been brought before Parliament. All have so far failed. Yet, the assisted suicide campaign continues.
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Sometimes – it looks as if we are gradually emerging from the pandemic, leaving the worst behind us. But then there are probably times when even over the past few months most of us have felt hugely disorientated, lying awake wondering where will we be in six months, a year, ten years from now?
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