In a series of articles, The Australian newspaper has strongly criticised the new encyclical Laudato Si: On care for our common home by Pope Francis as being wrong about climate change and ignorant about economics. Editor-at-large, Paul Kelly, on 24 June charged that the Pope’s language was ‘almost hysterical. Profound intellectual ignorance is dressed up as honouring God’.
‘Page after page reveals Francis and his advisers as environmental populists and economic ideologues of a quasi-Marxist bent.’ He wrote that the Pope has ‘delegitimised as immoral’ pro-market economic forces. ‘Francis is blind to the liberating power of markets and technology’.
The Weekend Australian’s long editorial of 27-28 June reiterated these views and dismissed the Pope’s warnings of catastrophic climate change.
These are very serious allegations and, if true, would be very damaging for the Pope. Let me take up the Pope’s alleged attack on free-market principles and his critique of neoliberalism and inequality.
Pope Francis is not opposed to the free market in principle, but insists that it be well regulated to ensure social justice for all involved. He strongly supports socially responsible forms of capitalism which enhance social equity and cohesion. He has repeatedly appealed for investors and business people to help eradicate global hunger and severe poverty, lift living standards and opportunity, and restrain excessive consumption to secure a more equitable and sustainable future.
It is not socially responsible forms of capitalism that are the target of the Pope’s criticism, but the neoliberal versions of economics that have dominated conservative circles. This critique is not new in Catholic social thinking.
John Paul II in his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus called for markets to be adequately regulated to ensure just outcomes for everyone involved. He warned that after the collapse of communism ‘a radical capitalist ideology could spread’, blindly entrusting societies to unregulated free-market forces. He rejected ‘neoliberal’ capitalism, saying in 1993 that the Church had ‘always distanced itself from capitalist ideology, holding it responsible for grave social injustices’.
In 1998 John Paul again attacked ‘a certain capitalist neoliberalism that subordinates the human person to blind market forces’, placing ‘intolerable burdens’ on poorer countries. Later, Benedict XVI warned against growing inequality and ‘ruinous exploitation of the planet.’
Neoliberal thinkers, on the other hand, have tried to reduce regulation and constraints on business as much as possible, in the belief that markets will almost automatically produce the best outcomes. Yet as many economists attest, failures in neoliberal economics