The issue of the “living wage” inevitably crops up from time to time and has done so again recently. The notion can be traced back to at least St Thomas Aquinas and has long featured in Catholic moral teaching. The Anglican Archbishop of York recently called for a ‘living wage’ to be paid to all government workers. In a recent newspaper article, he said, “what workers...

Recent statements by Pope Francis have stirred up criticism and discussion of the attitudes of the Catholic church to poverty. In modern times, economic justice was first addressed in the Social Teaching documents Rerum Novarum, issued by Pope Leo XIII in 1891, Quadragesimo Anno of 1931, and subsequently. The trouble is the subject was addressed inadequately. To make matters worse, like most things...

Evangelii Gaudium, the Pope’s first major publication, is an “exhortation” rather than an encyclical, so it does not carry the same weight. Which is just as well. The economic analysis is sloppy. It contains nothing of interest and offers no direction. Even Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum is better, for all its shortcomings. Why didn’t the Pope go back to the previous body...

I came across this in a blog recently. It is curious that the author should have chosen this passage from the 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, because it is precisely here that the document was in error, and it has set the tone of Catholic Social Teaching ever since.

New popes always bring a new direction to the Catholic church. It is over 120 years since the first of the Social Teaching encyclicals, Rerum Novarum, was issued by Pope Leo XIII in 1891. This was interpreted as, amongst other things, an assertion of the rights of both workers and property owners, and, importantly from our perspective, a condemnation of land value taxation. The latter led to the...

(1808-1892) was the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster from 1865 until his death, and was created Cardinal in 1875. He is best known outside church circles for his intervention and mediation in the 1888 dockers’ strike. Now here is a mystery.

Scotland’s most senior Roman Catholic, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, has accused the prime minister of acting immorally by favouring the rich ahead of ordinary citizens affected by the recession.The Cardinal also denounced David Cameron’s opposition to a “Robin Hood tax” on financial institutions. I do not have a problem with the first sentence. But when a Catholic bishop...

Does the bible tell us that when Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden, they went to their local Jobcentre and signed on to get their Jobseeker’s Allowance? Of course not, because they had free access to the surface of the earth and its natural resources. Nobody owned it. Job creationism is not consonant with scripture.

Leviticus 25 And the LORD spake unto Moses in mount Sinai, saying, continues…

The moral, ethical argument: whether there was a formal Creation or not, whether there was a Divine Creator or not, it is indisputable that the Earth was not made by Man. From this it follows that