Pope Leo XIV and St. Augustine’s contributions to finances

The election of Pope Leo XIV, a member of Augustine’s class, has renewed interest in St. Augustine’s teachings (354-430). The Order of St. Augustine (OSA), though not officially founded until 1244, drew its inspiration to the rules for the monastic life set by the Saint. Augustine’s numerous works cover mostly theology, philosophy, biblical explanation, apologetic and pastoral issues. In some of his writings, however, we can find principles useful for businesses and finances.

A recent well -researched article from Matthew He occupied what I have also heard from various Augustine: the Pope is “a man who is full of dirty in Augustine’s theology and spirituality.” After Saint Augustine, he understands that “the Church does not try to create heaven here on earth, instead, he tries to pull the earth into heaven.” With this attention, what were the views of St. Augustine about earthly politics?

The state

Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) was noted in the history of economic analysis: “The complete author of De Civite Dei and The Bonds– Whatever a lot of Obiter Dicta reveal analytical habits of mind- [never]

went to financial problems. “However, he faced” the “political problems of the Christian state”.

Augustine’s view of the state is deeply rooted in his theology, especially as described in his enormous work The city of God (De civitete dei), where he describes two cities, the city of God and the Earth City. The first includes those who live according to God’s will and love God above all. It is eternal and is governed by divine justice. Members of the second living according to self-love and seek secular power. This “city” is time and is characterized by pride, conflicts and disorder.

Augustine’s concerns about this earthly city inform his views on the political economy. Dino Bigongiari sums up Augustine’s view of the state so: “[The immoral] They are those whose needs have called on the political state. The state is essential because people, with all their greed, with all their desires, will soon exterminate themselves. “The state helps maintain relative peace and order in a fallen world, but Augustine never saw it as a means of salvation.

Some short but key excerpts in Augustine face private property, business profits, financial value and relationship between law and justice. To continue, I will briefly process these ideas.

Private property

It makes no sense to talk about private ownership in the “city of God”, but here on earth, we see evils such as conflicts, war and injustice. Private property (as Thomas Aquinas later argued) does not eliminate these evils, but helps to alleviate them. Augustine urged the detachment of material goods, but did not support the abolition of private property.

Private ownership, he argued, was not divinely ordained, but a human construct – created and regulated by man and the principles of civil society for practical purposes. “It’s from the human right,” he wrote, “that we say that this estate is mine.” God has given the earth to all, but human laws make private property useful and tolerable. After the initial sin, this best agreement with the fallen nature of mankind. Augustine wrote, for example, unlike a heretical sect called “Apostle”: “People who style” Apostle “are the ones who have claimed this title for themselves because they refused to admit their married peoples or owners.”De haresibus 40).

The closely linked to private property is the reality of business and profit. The business, Augustine wrote: “It’s like food, a morally indifferent act, which may be good or bad depending on the extremities and circumstances.” Pedro de Aragón, a 16th -century Augustin theologian, exposes: “It’s not a job, but the businessmen who can do evil.” Augustine stressed that true poverty is in the heart.

The theory of value

There is one chapter in The city of God entitled “The discrimination between the created things and their different classification from the utility and logic scales”. Augustine’s reflections here had a huge influence on later economic thought. In the divine series and in the series of nature, “living things are ranked over lifeless objects, those who have the power of reproduction or even desire to rise, are superior to those who lack this push, among the living things, the sensible ranking above the non -perpetrators. The main identification of value. On this other scale we will put some inanimate things over a few feelings … for example, would no one prefer to have food in his home and not in fleas? “

The delayed school concept of Just Price was also influenced by the theory of Augustine’s value, which states that the value we place in the goods depends on the utility that comes from them. Since our needs and desires are subjective, utility is also subjective. According to Schumpeter, Aquinas was based on Augustine once again when he claims: “The fair price of things is not stable with mathematical precision, but depends on a kind of assessment, so that a slight addition or removal does not seem to destroy equality of justice.” Augustine himself acknowledged that it is common to try to buy low and sell high, but emphasized that justice is the moral course we need to take in any transaction. For example, he speaks favorably about a man who paid the fair price for a book even when the seller offered it at a lower price.

Justice and law

Augustine has developed the idea that unfair laws are not true laws: a law, in order to be such, must fulfill certain requirements. As we know, few things are more important for an economic system that leads to integrated human development than the institutions of justice and the rule of law. “No righteousness,” Augustine wrote, “there is no space, no province, no city, no hamlet, no home, no family, not even a group of robbers and motorways that can last.”

In the book IV of The city of God We read: “If justice is removed, then, what are the kingdoms, but the great robberies? For what are the robberies themselves, but the little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men, ruled by the power of a prince the occupation, the possession of cities and the submission of the peoples, assumes the name of a kingdom, because reality is now obvious that it has been proven, not by removing the throat, but by the addition of impunity. He replied with bold pride: “What you mean by seizure the whole earth.

A Augustine’s saying was, “What doesn’t seem just is not a law” (With free will I.5). To be simply, a law must come from the law of nature in accordance with the rules of reason and utility in man. Right law must also be possible in the context of the country’s customs. It must be formulated by the one who rules the community, but cannot go beyond his power as a legislator. The issues must burden the burden of the law in accordance with proportional equality.

Conclusion: The Church and the Finance

We must not exaggerate the Pope’s influence on today’s political debates. For example, despite Pope Francis’ most interventionist views, his compatriots in Argentina elected Javier Milei, whose free market views were the most radical in the country’s history. During the electoral campaign, one of Milei’s advisers even supported the Vatican fracture relationships. And that was despite the fact that more than 60% of the Argentine population is universal, compared to about 20% in the United States. This can give some signs of the influence we could expect from Pope Leo’s views. The social doctrine of the Catholic Church, in which Leo Xiv is very well experienced, finds that the solutions of specific economic policy are not a matter of doctrine but preventive decisions. The battle to choose the best policies is a work of the earthly city. But it is a great help to have the highest recognized moral absence of someone who recognizes the autonomy of economic science and at the same time provides moral direction and clarity.

Josh Gregor, jgregor@acton.org contributed to this track