The ideas of Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich von Hayek have their place, but there is a spiritually richer tradition of economics to explore.
The German theologian (1811-1877) and bishop of Mainz argued for the intervention of the Church to remove economic evils in the name of faith, morals and charity. The Catholic Church’s concept of property, he said, had nothing in common with the prevalent view which regards man as the absolute lord of that which he owns.
The German Jesuit (1854-1926) is arguably the most important Catholic economic thinker of the past few centuries. His rejection of ‘values-free economics’ and illumination of the key concepts of personalism, solidarity and subsidiarity have profoundly influenced recent social encyclicals, particularly those of John Paul II.
The Irish Dominican (1868-1943) was described as a 13th century monk living in the 20th century. Along with more than 30 books of an explicitly religious nature, he promoted a vision of social justice inspired by St Thomas Aquinas and Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, becoming a guiding light of the distributist movement in England.
The American journalist, social activist and Catholic convert (1897-1980) co-founded with Peter Maurin the Catholic Worker movement, combining direct aid for the poor and homeless with non-violent activism. She defied stereotypes, being described as an anarchist and the first hippie, but was most accurately a distributist.
Born in Spain’s Basque region, the priest (1915-1976) revolutionised the economically depressed town of Mondragon after Spain’s civil war by inspiring a co-operative worker movement that has grown into an interlocking network of more than 250 worker-owned companies providing employment to more than 80,000 people.
Ernst Friedrich Schumacher
The German-born economist (1911-1977) was increasingly influenced by Catholic ideas from the 1950s. His 1973 book Small Is Beautiful: a study of economics as if people mattered, which argued for human-scale, decentralised and appropriate technologies, is regarded as one of the 100 most influential books since World War II.