Lux Lucet

For a long time now I’ve followed Lewrockwell.com.  It’s a libertarian blog touting Austrian economics and anarcho-libertarian politics.  Now while I don’t count myself a libertarian – libertarianism does not take its ethics, politics or economics from Scripture, the requirement for a Scripturalist – and cannot endorse the anarchism advocated by the site, I do appreciate its stand for individual liberty and against big government.

That being said, I’ve always found it odd that a website dedicated to “anarcho-capitalism” as they like to call it would attempt to defend the principles of anarchy and capitalism by using the philosophy of the Roman Catholic Church-State, for Romanist dogma supports neither.  First, Romanist political theory is certainly not friendly toward libertarian anarchy, or for that matter even sober, Biblical constitutional government.  Rather, Rome’s political doctrine of subsidiarity – “according to which, ‘a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help co-ordinate itsactivities with the rest of society, always with a view to the common good’ ” – is hierarchical and interventionist in the extreme.  

And while its political theory tends toward fascism, Rome’s economic thought is just as oppressive.  In its 1994 Catechism, Rome rails against capitalism by stating,

She [Rome] has likewise refused to accept, in the practice of “capitalism,” individualism and the absolute primacy of the marketplace over human labor…regulating it [the economy] solely by the law of the marketplace fails social justice, for ‘there are many human needs which cannot be satisfied by the market.’ Reasonable regulation of the marketplace and economic initiatives, in keeping with a just hierarchy of values and a view to the common good, is to be commended.   – Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2425.   

Rome, ignoring Christ’s teaching about private property”is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things?,” posits “reasonable regulation of the marketplace” – reasonable in whose eyes? – as a preferable alternative to the Biblical economic model of laissez-faire capitalism.

Yet for all this, there are many articles on Lewrockwell.com that attempt to cast Romanism in the role of defender of liberty and Protestantism as its foe.  For example, libertarian stalwart Murray Rothbard, citing Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn’s book Liberty or Equality, approvingly sums up Kuehnelt-Leddihn’s argument in an article posted on the website by stating that the book’s,

main gist…is the thesis that Catholicism makes for a libertarian spirit (albeit “anti-democratic”) while Protestantism makes for socialism, totalitarianism, and a collectivist spirit.

Yes of course, we all know how collectivist those Calvinist colonialists were.  Writing in a book review, Rothbard slanders the English Reformation as “The Cultural Revolution in 16th Century England,” and advances the idea that the English Reformers were nothing but a bunch of Protestant bullies who beat up helpless and saintly monks, bishops and cardinals, stripped their altars and stole their lunch money. 

Roman Catholic Thomas Woods regularly advances the idea that Romanism and capitalism are compatible systems and has even written a book on the subject titled The Church and the Market. 

Now I can have some sympathy for a freedom-minded Roman Catholic scholar who constantly must struggle with the cognitive dissonance arising from the clash of his capitalist principles and the social teaching of the Roman Catholic Church-State.  His is not a fate to be envied. But my sympathy is limited.  For such a man is double minded, refusing to see the screaming contradiction between capitalism and the oppressive economic dogma of Rome.  As James tells us, let not such a man expect that he will receive anything of the Lord.  He is unstable in all his ways.