“Wild Speculation is a Sin”

That’s what Archbishop Marx of Munich said to the Spiegel last month when he sat down to talk about the financial crisis, the future of capitalism, and Marxism. The whole interview is worth a read, but here are a few passages, roughly translated by yours truly:

We have to ask the simple question: What [best] serves the human person? Is the human person the focus? How can he find work, how can he find education? All of these are things that are to be controlled not just by market factors . . . .

Property is—according to St. Thomas Aquinas—an essential foundation of freedom. One who has nothing, one who has only his labor, is exploited. That is the philosophical reason why we say this about Marxism and its hostility to property: It leads in a direction, where the person becomes unfree . . . .

Catholic social teaching, the social encyclicals of the popes, propose clear baselines for political decisions and economic commerce. A system that sees the return on investments as the only purpose for the economy is a false incentive . . . .