Andrew Cuomo protects Catholics only.
Teaching Capitalism to Catholics
Why I’m joining Charles Koch and others in funding a program to teach about free markets.
The dean of the Catholic University of America’s School of Business
and Economics recently approached me with an idea: A research and
educational program focused on the compatibility of capitalism and
Catholicism. On Thursday the university announced a $3 million grant to
fund this vision.
It makes perfect sense that CUA would want to teach this topic to business leaders. Free markets have liberated more people from poverty than any other force in history. But they must also be buttressed by moral principles, such as those taught in the Catholic Church.
The notion of such compatibility is troubling for some. In 2013, the Charles Koch Foundation pledged grants at CUA’s request for similar studies exploring principled entrepreneurship, which prompted condemnation from a number of Catholic “social justice” groups. Catholic “activists” sent the university a letter alleging that free-market positions “are in direct conflict with traditional Catholic values.”
ENLARGE
Catholic University president
John Garvey
and Business School
Dean Andrew Abela
responded in these pages
by arguing that returning the grant would “stifle debate by pretending
that genuinely controversial positions are official church teaching.”
Happily, the Charles Koch Foundation is among the supporters of this new
program, along with business leaders such as
Frank Hanna,
Sean Fieler
and
Michael Millette.
Lest more controversy swirl, it is important to point out that the principles behind this initiative and the principled entrepreneurship program are consistent with Catholic teaching. Consider the seminal text on Catholicism and economics, Pope Leo XIII ’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, which discusses at length the “rights and duties of capital and labor.”
The encyclical, along with the resulting body of literature from successive popes, lays out the qualities that must be present in a just economic system. Among other things, the list includes the protection of private property and human freedom, a concern for the common good, and, most important, a deep respect for human dignity and a “preferential option” for the poor.
Capitalism meets these criteria better than any other economic system. It is also the single most effective means of alleviating poverty. In the past 20 years alone, it has lifted more than a billion people out of extreme poverty, according to the Economist. It is also single-handedly responsible for creating a global two-billion-person middle class over the past 300 years.
But free markets only work within a moral culture. When business is unmoored from a concern for the common good, capitalism can slide into cronyism and corruption—exactly what Pope Francis has critiqued in recent months. It is such perversions of a free-market economy that do not fit Catholic teaching.
These issues should be addressed in part through the education of future business leaders. Cronyism and corporate welfare are rampant across the world. Even in the U.S., they are increasingly evident in the interaction between business and politics. Business leaders now regularly and proudly collude with politicians and bureaucrats, boosting their companies’ bottom lines at the expense of economic growth. There are subsidies that benefit the rich at the expense of the poor, handouts, mandates, favorable regulations and so on.
Such collusion leads to the corruption and collectivism that are anathema to Catholic social teaching. It assumes that government intervention is the answer to social and economic problems, misunderstanding the Catholic principles of solidarity and subsidiarity. And it subordinates the individual to the state, perverting or ignoring the Catholic understanding of the common good, human dignity and personal freedom.
Societies and economies that operate in this fashion inevitably harm the poor, even as they claim to do the opposite. For this reason, Pope St. John Paul II, following other popes, explicitly condemned such economies in his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus. He argued that Rerum Novarum’s claim that “the working man himself would be among the first to suffer” had been borne out by the collectivist societies of the 20th century. He also commended “an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, [and] private property.”
The university should be lauded for teaching this topic. CUA—as the only pontifical university of the Catholic Church in America and the university that teaches a large number of our country’s bishops, priests and religious—can now help communicate it to the rest of American Catholicism.
Mr. Busch is the founder and CEO of the Pacific Hospitality Group in Irvine, Calif. He serves on the board of the Catholic University of America.
Stop scratching on holidays
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
It makes perfect sense that CUA would want to teach this topic to business leaders. Free markets have liberated more people from poverty than any other force in history. But they must also be buttressed by moral principles, such as those taught in the Catholic Church.
The notion of such compatibility is troubling for some. In 2013, the Charles Koch Foundation pledged grants at CUA’s request for similar studies exploring principled entrepreneurship, which prompted condemnation from a number of Catholic “social justice” groups. Catholic “activists” sent the university a letter alleging that free-market positions “are in direct conflict with traditional Catholic values.”
ENLARGE
The Catholic University of America campus
Photo:
Getty Images
Lest more controversy swirl, it is important to point out that the principles behind this initiative and the principled entrepreneurship program are consistent with Catholic teaching. Consider the seminal text on Catholicism and economics, Pope Leo XIII ’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, which discusses at length the “rights and duties of capital and labor.”
The encyclical, along with the resulting body of literature from successive popes, lays out the qualities that must be present in a just economic system. Among other things, the list includes the protection of private property and human freedom, a concern for the common good, and, most important, a deep respect for human dignity and a “preferential option” for the poor.
Capitalism meets these criteria better than any other economic system. It is also the single most effective means of alleviating poverty. In the past 20 years alone, it has lifted more than a billion people out of extreme poverty, according to the Economist. It is also single-handedly responsible for creating a global two-billion-person middle class over the past 300 years.
But free markets only work within a moral culture. When business is unmoored from a concern for the common good, capitalism can slide into cronyism and corruption—exactly what Pope Francis has critiqued in recent months. It is such perversions of a free-market economy that do not fit Catholic teaching.
These issues should be addressed in part through the education of future business leaders. Cronyism and corporate welfare are rampant across the world. Even in the U.S., they are increasingly evident in the interaction between business and politics. Business leaders now regularly and proudly collude with politicians and bureaucrats, boosting their companies’ bottom lines at the expense of economic growth. There are subsidies that benefit the rich at the expense of the poor, handouts, mandates, favorable regulations and so on.
Such collusion leads to the corruption and collectivism that are anathema to Catholic social teaching. It assumes that government intervention is the answer to social and economic problems, misunderstanding the Catholic principles of solidarity and subsidiarity. And it subordinates the individual to the state, perverting or ignoring the Catholic understanding of the common good, human dignity and personal freedom.
Societies and economies that operate in this fashion inevitably harm the poor, even as they claim to do the opposite. For this reason, Pope St. John Paul II, following other popes, explicitly condemned such economies in his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus. He argued that Rerum Novarum’s claim that “the working man himself would be among the first to suffer” had been borne out by the collectivist societies of the 20th century. He also commended “an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, [and] private property.”
The university should be lauded for teaching this topic. CUA—as the only pontifical university of the Catholic Church in America and the university that teaches a large number of our country’s bishops, priests and religious—can now help communicate it to the rest of American Catholicism.
Mr. Busch is the founder and CEO of the Pacific Hospitality Group in Irvine, Calif. He serves on the board of the Catholic University of America.
HI-
Thanks for
the help. The item’s below. I’d be happy to mail you a copy,
if you give me a mailing address.
Claude Solnik
(631) 913-4244
Long
Island Business News
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LI Confidential > Stop
scratching on holidays
Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
