This from a former Evangelical.
Wow. We're blessed to have him join our ranks.
“the ideologies of a Ludwig Von Mises”
Zow. Is there any considered, educated, well supported, even brilliant worldview that someone won’t denigrate as an “ideology?” And to separate him from Karl “Rosemary’s Baby” Marx with only an “or a,” as if they were comparable, much less equal...
No, no, I won’t countenance it. This is merely the knee-jerk self-righteousness of the man who thinks himself a “moderate” and assumes the moral superiority of his own position.
Moral superiority increases as a linear function of an idea’s distance to the right of “moderation.”
“In Christian theology, you can gain the whole world and lose your own soul (Luke 9:25). To paraphrase St. Paul, that’s a stumbling block to the Austrians”
I would really like to see an example of that. Although von Mises himself was an agnostic, it was not religion that is a stumbling block to the Austrians, but the pre-emptive surrender of so much of religion to socialism. See http://mises.org/story/1736.
Except insofar as socialism has infested religion, there is no conflict between the Austrian school of economics and the Catholic faith, once the latter is filtered of the socialist influence.
And speaking of the socialist influence, the Catholic Church cedes the war of words to Satan in its adoption of the Marxist term, “Social Justice.”
Rather than promoting equality of economic outcomes among unequal people, the Church should return to promoting charity, agape, and mercy.
The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.
Shakespeare had it right: mercy is above the sceptered sway of justice, and earthly power imitates God’s when mercy seasons justice.
This social justice kick the Church went on in the 1960s is a grave, ghastly mistake. If you listen closely, you can hear Satan shrieking with laughter.