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“I appreciate what you say about personal responsibility, but this document explicitly calls for state involvement, and uses the word redistribution repeatedly. I’ll give the authors the benefit of the doubt about what they are calling for, but I think their language choice is questionable (redistribution) and falls into the hands of those who advocate socialism”

Been a while since you’ve read On Wealth and Poverty, hasn’t it. Its a great little book by one of our guys. You may want to re-read it and compare it to what the Pope has written, remembering that +John Chrysostomos had never heard of socialism, but had an intimate familiarity with The Faith.

Been a while since you’ve read On Wealth and Poverty, hasn’t it. You may want to re-read it and compare it to what the Pope has written, remembering that +John Chrysostomos had never heard of socialism, but had an intimate familiarity with The Faith.

Kolkotronis -- Your comment really surprises me. "Wealth and Poverty" never advocates greater government involvement, nor a "social justice" model of commerce (this encyclical does). It explores the parable of Lazarus and the rich man asking how individuals should handle wealth for salvation.

I find nothing consistent between Chrysostomos advocating individuals donating to the poor(individual piety freely given), and this encyclical veering into discussing a state that forcibly takes wealth and "redistributes" it to others-- not for necessary public services but for "social justice" and "market justice".

Much in this encyclical is an ordinary and unsurprising natural growth from previous christian thought. It's not all bad. But perhaps the document veers from its core competency when they get to talking about government redistribution so much.

35. “But the social doctrine of the Church has unceasingly highlighted the importance of distributive justice and social justice for the market economy...”

Unfortunately people who talk a lot about "distributive justice" and "social justice" today look to coercive socialist government models that involve crushing levels of taxation and punitive means to enforce their own vision of piety. While Chrysostomos advocated that individuals donate to the poor, he never suggested that centurians should force merchants to give money to less successful merchants, or subsidize buyers with less money.

36.”Therefore, it must be borne in mind that grave imbalances are produced when economic action, conceived merely as an engine for wealth creation, is detached from political action, conceived as a means for pursuing justice through redistribution.”

Here the encyclical decries government inaction, and calls for greater government market intervention to create "justice" with "redistribution". Lost are the real world lessons that corruption, injustice and oppression often coincide with greater government involvement.

Some examples of governments that pursued justice through greater intervention in the market include Cambodia, North Korea, Stalin's USSR, etc... These are extreme examples but there are many more examples of greater government intervention leading to more suffering and a less Christian outcome. Maybe the encyclical should have tread more carefully in bemoaning government inaction in the market.

37.”Economic life undoubtedly requires contracts, in order to regulate relations of exchange between goods of equivalent value. But it also needs just laws and forms of redistribution governed by politics...”

Why does it need redistribution? Maybe they have wandered well beyond a natural extrapolation of Christian teaching, don't you think? Certainly it not anything consistent with what Chrysostomos. If the scope of what they are talking about is caring for the most needy and impoverished, they should say so, instead of broadly advocating "redistribution".

I really like the section where they say that individuals should reflect on their behavior at every level of commerce. Our actions affect lots of people. It's when the document veers from individual piety to collective that they wander afield. When the document starts explicitly advocating greater government involvement and "market justice" they are on dangerous ground.