FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
26 NOVEMBER 2014
Catholic Social Teaching could counteract “cataclysmic” economic policy
Catholic Social Teaching could help transform a “dysfunctional” economic system in the UK, which is currently “pockmarked by inequality”, it was argued at the Theos Annual Lecture 2014 on Monday this week.
The lecture was held on the eve of Pope Francis’s highly significant visit to the European Parliament in Strasbourg where he warned that as a result of the 2008 economic crisis men and women risk being “reduced to mere cogs in the machine that treats them as items of consumption to be exploited”.
The speech in which the Pope also warned that democracies could crumble under the pressure of multinational interests has been interpreted as the nearest to a political speech that the leader of the Catholic Church can make.
The role of Catholic teaching in addressing the economic crisis had been addressed a day earlier in the Theos 2014 Annual Lecture, where Will Hutton, Chair of the Big Innovation Centre, Observer columnist and principal of Hertford College, Oxford, argued that urgent action was needed to counteract the “cataclysmic” effect of three decades of unfettered neoliberalism. He was joined by senior figures from the Labour and Conservative parties in front of an audience of 200 politicians, journalists, faith leaders, and policy makers.
Mr. Hutton said that he had chanced upon Catholic Social Teaching – the subject of a recent Theos report by Moral Maze contributor Clifford Longley – five years ago, and that he repeatedly found that it articulated precisely the same conclusions about work and the economy that he had spent his professional life advocating.
“There is a very strong position taken by the Catholic Church on the interrelationship between the state and the market,” said Mr. Hutton. “I would argue that in the last 30 years we have made a cataclysmic mistake in not allowing justice and equity to be expressed sufficiently in public policy…Inequalities pockmark our society. Those at the bottom feel valueless.”
It is estimated that up to $30 trillion was lost from the world economy in the run up to the 2008 crash. The Pope’s speech yesterday is not the first time that he has engaged in a debate over the fallout of the economic crisis. In a controversial document last year, the Pope strongly criticized the “crude and naïve trust” in those wielding economic power. He is not the only religious leader to enter the fray.
During his lecture, Mr. Hutton called for a reform of the Companies Act in order to enforce social usefulness obligations for businesses. Such companies, he said, should not be in thrall to short–term profits for shareholders but should be institutions that recognized that workers, alongside directors and shareholders, were co–creators of wealth.
He argued that a recent papal encyclical emphasized the value and dignity of work: “It is a way to exert their creativity and act and transform the world….This streams through [the encyclical] – and, to coin a phrase, Amen to that.”
He also called for society to see taxation as a good thing, not an avoidable evil: “Taxation is the most moral expression of one’s membership of a community or society,” he said. “It is a down payment on our institutions.”
Responding to Mr. Hutton’s lecture, the Labour MP Jon Cruddas said that there had been a “crisis” in social democracy across the Western world and there was a need to engage with “new thinking”. Conservative MP David Willetts said that in a diverse society “appealing to specific religious–based arguments was very difficult indeed.”
Nick Spencer, Research Director of Theos commented:
“The discussion between Will Hutton, Jon Cruddas and David Willetts powerfully reinforced the impression we have at Theos that the debate about religion in public life has moved on from the crude polemics of new atheism – essentially is religion too wicked to be allowed out in public – to much deeper and more interesting questions.
“We heard from Will Hutton about the immense contribution that Catholic Social Teaching has to make to economic thought, but also from David Willetts about how the task of making public arguments from a Christian position is problematic in a plural society like our own. These are precisely the opportunities and challenges that Theos was set up to work on.”
ENDS
Notes
1. Video and audio of the Theos Annual Lecture 2014 can be found here.
2. Will Hutton is the seventh person to deliver the Annual Theos lecture on religion and contemporary society following Marilynne Robinson, the Pulitzer–prize winning novelist; former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams; Lord Dannatt, former chief of the General Staff; Mark Thompson, Director–General of the BBC; Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks; and Baron Blair of Boughton, former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. Will Hutton is the principal of Hertford College, Oxford and chair of the Big Innovation Centre
3. The Theos annual lecture was held at Stationers’ Hall, London on Monday 24th November. It was attended by 200 politicians, policy makers, faith leaders and journalists.
4. Theos is a religion and society think tank which offers research and commentary on issues of faith and belief. It was launched in November 2006 with the support of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and the former Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy–O’Connor.
Contact details
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For further information about Theos, visit www.theosthinktank.co.uk
