Defending the Free Market:
The Moral Case for a Free Economy
by Fr. Robert Sirico - published by Regnery Publishing, 2012
A Book Review by Father John McCloskey
Father Robert Sirico could not have written a timelier book than his latest, Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy.
Father Sirico is a co-founder of the Acton Institute, a research institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan, devoted to the study of free-market economics and religion. He is perhaps best known internationally for his moral-based argument that the free market economy is the economic model most compatible with the teachings of the Catholic Church and sacred Scripture.
Why do I say his book is timely? Because we are mired in the worst economic downturn since the 1930s, one that is all the worse for being global and that shows indications of worsening in the years ahead. All of this follows by a mere couple of decades the almost total collapse of Marxism throughout the world, with the fall of the Soviet Empire and its dependents.
As it turns out, many of the countries that were most responsible for the death of the Soviet Union (including the United States) have given themselves over to consumerism (in spite of warnings by Blessed John Paul II) and turned to neo-Keynesian economic policies that only produce widespread unemployment and (in increasing cases) the possible bankruptcy of entire countries. These formerly prosperous but currently struggling nations reached their current state by abandoning a market economy that was free, government spending that was frugal, budgets that were balanced and taxation that was low. In short, they discouraged what John Paul II referred to as a "circle of productivity" that, like "a rising tide," helped raise all boats. His encyclical Centesimo Anno presented convincing economic social teaching upon which Pope Benedict XVI has built his own social encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth).
Father Sirico has written a delightful book that is in part autobiography. Readers will be surprised and perhaps startled by his itinerary from Brooklyn to California (where he became a student radical), to his return to the faith, ordination to the priesthood, and equally complete reversal in his economic views as he absorbed the teachings of the Church, free-market economists such as Mises, Hayek and Friedman, and simple common sense.
This book draws deeply on Scripture and the social teaching of the Church, beginning with Rerum Novarum near the end of the 19th century and proceeding to recent teaching by Pope Benedict. The book abounds in anecdotes and observations that bolster Father Sirico's argument that the free market is the economic system that is most just, best at achieving prosperity and, in many cases, a means of growth in holiness. After all, according to Genesis, God created us to work and presumably to work freely for the good of all mankind and to God's glory with freedom.
Father Sirico quotes Alexis de Tocqueville — perhaps the greatest observer of the unique character of America — who observed, "Freedom is, in truth, a sacred thing; there is only one thing else that better deserves the name," and that is virtue. And then he asks, "What is virtue if not the free choice of what is good?"
Both Father Sirico's masterful endeavors at the Acton Institute and this book contribute needed guidance to help our country reclaim its status as "exceptional and virtuous."
