That's not comprehensive, but it's better than nothing!
Anyway, what I emphasized about QA was that Pope Pius XI was writing in 1931, when the capitalist world was in crisis, tens of millions in the "developed world" were not just poor but destitute, and the options facing collapsing societies seemed to narrow down to either Fascism (Mussolini and his admirers in many nations) and Communism (exemplified not just by the Soviet Union, but such leaders as Mexican Plutarco Elias Calles.) In this terrible milieu, Pius dared to declare private property to be essential for the development and freedom of the individual. He said that those who deny private property deny personal freedom and development. He also said private property has a social function --- it can unite and build, or divide and destroy --- and it loses its morality when it leads to the ruin of millions of vulnerable people.
He did not endorse Socialism.
Here's a couple of direct quotes from QA:
117 "Whether considered as a doctrine, or an historical fact, or a movement, Socialism, if it remains truly Socialism, even after it has yielded to truth and justice on the points which we have mentioned, cannot be reconciled with the teachings of the Catholic Church because its concept of society itself is utterly foreign to Christian truth."
118 "Socialism, on the other hand, wholly ignoring and indifferent to this sublime end of both man and society, affirms that human association has been instituted for the sake of material advantage alone."
So he warned against both the rapaciousness of "the Wolves of Wall Street" and the false solution of socialism.
He did not address the technicalities of economics (we haven't had a pope yet who was trained in economics)but in the broad strokes of morality as we know it from the Prophets of Israel, the Fathers of the Church, and Natural Law.
In the course of his research for "Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile" (Harper Collins), Joseph Pearch traveled to Moscow to interview the writer. The excerpt below is from that interview:Solzhenitsyn: "In different places over the years I have had to prove that socialism, which to many western thinkers is a sort of kingdom of justice, was in fact full of coercion, of bureaucratic greed and corruption and avarice, and consistent within itself that socialism cannot be implemented without the aid of coercion. Communist propaganda would sometimes include statements such as 'we include almost all the commandments of the Gospel in our ideology.' The difference is that the Gospel asks all this to be achieved through love, through self-limitation, but socialism only uses coercion." Solzhenitsyn
In America, the current President, at a National Prayer Breakfast, attempted to tie his policy of forced "sharing," to Jesus's appeal for voluntary individual charity, seeming to appropriate the words of Jesus for his Administration's "redistributionist" policies.
Coercive "taking" power, when wielded against the citizenry by either the government alone (taxing), or in combination with another power (unions or special interests), is destructive of individual liberty and prosperity.
Thomas Jefferson, that former President the Left loves to quote when they try to exclude references to "God" from the public square, wrote extensively about the superiority of the philosophy of Jesus, but we never hear about that from the Left.
The same Jefferson who penned our Declaration of Independence wrote that Jesus "preached philanthropy and universal charity and benevolence," that "a system of morals is presented to us [by Jesus], which, if filled up in the style and spirit of the rich fragments he left us, would be the most perfect and sublime that has ever been taught by man."
He wrote, "His moral doctrines...were more pure and perfect than those of the most correct of the philosophers...and they went far beyond both in inculcating universal philanthropy, not only to kindred and friends, to neighbors and countrymen, but to all mankind, gathering all into one family, under the bonds of love, charity, peace, common wants, and common aids" which, Jefferson said, "will evince the peculiar superiority of the system of Jesus over all others."
Comparing the Hebrew code which, according to Jefferson, "laid hold of actions only," "He [Jesus] pushed his scrutinies into the heart of man; erected his tribunal in the region of his thoughts, and purified the waters at the fountain head."
That Jefferson cut out the statements which could be directly attributable to Jesus, pasted them into a little book which he kept by his bed and read from them daily, attests to the fact that his political philosphy may have been influenced by what he considered to be the superiority of the "philosophy" of Jesus.
His devotion to liberty and to the ideas essential to liberty were based on simple principles, some of which, undoubtedly, came from his understanding of the basic law underlying all valid human law: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." As Jefferson stated it, "No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him."
Jefferson seemed to understand that the philosophy capsulated in those ideas has the power to make people in a society more benevolent, more loving, more caring, and more willing to take care of each other voluntarily.
Well, if I considered the Pope to be merely a holy person, and having no particular claim to infallibility, I could easier dismiss his grasp for an alternative to communism during the 1930s as simply an error. Many good people make mistakes. So, faced with the choice of fascism versus communism, the Pope went with fascism. Then, the alliance of the fascists and communists under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact must have been quite scary to those who thought the choice was fascism or communism. As who would have given the Democratic countries of the world a chance? And, then there was all that untidiness of genocide and aggressive war perpetrated by the fascists. Not that the Pope endorses those things. He wanted the good kind of fascism.
The Catholics, yes, have been having a hard time these past couple hundred years. During the 19th century, it was the twin evils of liberalism and socialism. Between these two evils, the Catholics choose monarchy. (We, in the U.S., chose liberalism.) Then, during early part of the 20th century, it was choosing between fascism and communism, between which they choose fascism (and we chose to be the arsenal of democracy).
During the late part of the 20th century, it seemed as though the Catholics passed through Democracy (without concern for Constitutional safeguards, since if we presume that people have good intentions we can dismiss the law of unintended consequences) to Liberal, Democratic Capitalism. Then, it was back to Democracy. And, then came a recession (due to the rapaciousness of Wall Street, so we are told, because we know the government could not have been guaranteeing zero-down, no paperwork mortgages) and, well, some people are unable to remain faithful through the hard times. So, now the Catholics seem to be back to defining their position as in-between liberalism and socialism.
There have always been liberals in the Catholic Church. Erasmus and Lord Acton come immediately to mind. During Vatican II, the American Catholic Michael Novak was quite influential. And, of course, John Paul II, John Paul the Great. I think Cardinal Dolan put it well when he said that of the current and past two Popes, we see three honored traditions with the Catholic Church: Aquinas (JPII), Augustine (BXVI) and St. Francis of Assisi. But, if were all to follow St. Francis in his way, we would soon die for lack of bread. Not that it would be a bad thing, were we all to die, starving to death, while loving each other. But, then where would the government get all the stuff that Pope Francis says are supposed to be everybody’s right?