Opposing the Austrian Heresy

The Angelus ^ | January 2005 | Christopher A. Ferrara

[gbcdoj]

Christopher A. Ferrara

I am privileged to introduce Dr. Peter Chojnowski's article "Corporation Christendom: The True School of Salamanca," which deftly exposes how the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, Sts. Bernadine of Siena and Antonino of Florence, and the late Spanish Scholastics on just prices and wages has been misrepresented by proponents of the so-called Austrian School of economics.

Dr. Chojnowski's article is an important first step in mounting a traditional Catholic response to the swelling ambitions of the Austrian school, whose two major divines, the deceased liberal Jewish thinkers Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard, wrote the foundational works of the Austrian movement: the massive tome Human Action (1949) by Mises, and the equally massive Man, Economy and State (1962) by Rothbard. These two books comprise the Old and New "Testament" of what amounts today to a cult of radical social and economic laissez faire, which, sad to say, claims a growing number of Catholic adherents.

[gbcdoj]

Pope Leo here describes with marvelous concision the only concept of social liberty to which Catholics can adhere. Nor should we entertain the argument by certain Catholic Austrians that the Church's concept of social liberty is out of the question today, and that we must settle for an expedient compromise with "the facts." Speaking of precisely this sort of liberal Catholic, Pius XI declared: ... There is a species of moral, legal, and social modernism which We condemn, no less decidedly than We condemn theological modernism.

Interesting article by Ferrara. I think that, although he avoids out-and-out saying it, this is his reply to Thomas Woods' new book on Catholic Social Teaching. Has anyone here read that, by any chance?

[Claud]

I've just finished Woods' book and that's what I thought too when I read the title to this article. On the other hand, the two collaborated on "The Great Facade", so I dunno what's going on there. But I know Tom personally, and he's an independent thinker who's not afraid to buck certain intellectual trends in traditionalism. He made an argument once that the American Revolution was inherently conservative, which upset those who condemn it as inherently Masonic. :)

If there is a "debate" here it is going over my head though--economic theory doesn't really interest me, though I did enjoy Woods' recent treatment of it.