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By Rev. Robert Sirico. 2012. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc. Pp. 213. $27.95 hardcover.
Most business economists understand and rationally defend the economics of capitalism because it works. That is, it creates economic prosperity, which leads to higher living standards, lower death rates, and an array of material benefits.
However, business economists are often less comfortable addressing the moral aspects of free markets; not Father Robert Sirico, who is a Catholic priest rather than an economist. In his new book, Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy , like an economist, Sirico promotes and defends both capitalism and free markets on practical grounds. However, what makes this book unique is that he adds a moral dimension in a way that most economists do not.
Sirico--President of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, an organization he founded in 1990 focusing on Judeo-Christian values and free market principles--is in many ways an unlikely defender of capitalism.
For several years he abandoned most of the values he learned as a Catholic boy growing up in Brooklyn. "Like so many people around me, I thought that breaking taboos was an emancipating experience, a necessary step on the path to self-discovery." Eventually, he came to work closely with Jane Fonda and her husband, Tom Hayden, even campaigning for Hayden in 1976. "It's not an exaggeration to say that I had the feeling that I was deep inside the revolution."
But things began to change when Sirico decided to "pontificate" to a new neighbor about the need to redistribute wealth....