By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS Staff Writer A retired economist says capitalism not only has Catholic roots, but Catholicism is its only hope for survival. According to a report in the Western Catholic Reporter, Richard Bastien, a retired economist who spent 31 years advising the department of finance, told a recent Theology on Tap gathering that capitalism is “a cultural byproduct of a specifically Christian civilization.” Even though capitalism has long been seen as having Protestant roots, Bastien says that economic historians have actually traced the roots of capitalism to Catholic monasteries in Italian and German city states in the Middle Ages. In the first half of the 15th century, St. Bernardino of Siena’s On Contracts and Usury was the first work dealing solely with economics, he said. It justified private property, and dealt with the ethics of trade and the determination of value and price. It also described the entrepreneur has having God-endowed gifts of efficiency, responsibility, hard work and risk-taking. Bernardino also argued for the legitimization of profit, he said. Bastien went on to say that while the Church has expressed “ambiguity” toward capitalism in the last 140 years, various encyclicals have “unequivocally condemned socialism, even in its softer forms,” he said.  Other encyclicals support private property as “essential to human freedom,” defend the right to unionize and promote subsidiarity which is the principle that “nothing should be done by large and complex organizations that can be done as well by smaller and simpler ones.” Papal criticism of capitalism has been aimed more at the evils of liberalism or individualism rather than at capitalism, Bastien said.  He referred to Pope John Paul II’s 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus, as a “major breakthrough” in Catholic social doctrine and as a “manifesto for ordered liberty.” This encyclical condemns socialism “for its denial of human freedom” that the pope said is “rooted in atheism” and leads to social decline, he explained. “Centesimus Annus then argues in support of a regime that affirms human freedom without ignoring human weakness,” he said. It advocates a regulated form of capitalism not unlike that in Canada or the United States. John Paul II proposes that capitalism be rooted, not in greed, but in an objective moral law. “We can have an ethical economy without sacrificing efficiency on the altar of statism, provided economic agents are guided by a moral compass,” Bastien said. The Catholic Church today stands almost alone in defending the notion of “an objective moral law binding conscience,” he said. “That’s why capitalism needs Catholicism more than ever.” © All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly/Women of Grace. http://www.womenofgrace.com