This paper describes current theoretical developments in labor economics that are likely to change how we understand the compensation of employees in a wage economy. The new theory of dynamic monopsony theorizes that imperfect labor markets where employees do not get paid their full marginal revenue product are the norm, rather than the exception. Recent empirical work published in a highly ranked, peer-reviewed labor-economics journal provided empirical support for the model. I discuss the implications of these developments in labor economics on the justice of wages within the framework provided by Catholic Social Teaching.

Since Ex Corde Ecclesiae, Catholic colleges and universities have made a conscientious effort to better embed a declaration of religious identity and its defining values and guiding principles into their institutional mission and vision statements. So too has a new wave of Catholic colleges and universities whose leadership has accused Catholic higher education of compromising faith to conform to an increasingly secular world. A content analysis of the mission and vision statements from a nationwide sample of these institutions was performed and key linguistic components found to constitute a well conceived, viable and easily diffused institutional vision were isolated. Findings reveal significant stylistic differences across religious institution types in terms of vision, clarity, complexity, pragmatics, optimism, and their use of language to unify the campus community. How mission and vision statements can better serve as guiding, governing and promotional documents is discussed.

Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France is an anti-Enlightenment tract. His treatment therein of the British constitution (and constitutionalism in general) is set in critical opposition to the Enlightenment philosophical principles that animated the French Revolution. However, he often employs the very terms of Enlightenment political theory in framing his criticisms of Enlightenment principles. The solution to this interpretive problem is that Burke purposefully employed Enlightenment terminology in the Reflections precisely to signal his specific intention to criticize the key Enlightenment notion of political consent and to transform the Enlightenment theory of social compact into a theory of constitutionalism, understood as the generational transmission of prescriptive political institutions. Proof comes through a reading of the Reflections limited by the parameters of the problem of interpretation, which in turn indicates some general aspects of a Burkean theory of the political and social order.

This article is one of SCSS President Stephen M. Krason’s “Neither Left nor Right but Catholic” online columns. It looks at the “Occupy Wall Street” protests, and aims primarily at drawing a comparison between them and the protests of the 1960s. It also assesses them in light of Catholic social teaching.

This essay explores the impact of the ancient principle of the freedom of the Church—identified by the Second Vatican Council as “the fundamental principle” governing “the relations between the Church and governments and the whole civil order”—on both Western civilization and the development of modern Catholic social thought. Arguing that this principle requires the articulation and institutionalization of a new understanding of society and government, it contends this principle revolutionized the structure of Western political life and helped lay the groundwork for Western liberty. At the same time, it maintains that the development in contemporary Catholic social teaching that crystallizes in Dignitatis Humanae must be seen in the context of the ongoing effort of Catholic thought to understand the nature and role of the state towards which the idea of the freedom of the Church points.

To be consistent with John Paul II’s assertion of the primacy of the subjective dimension of work—of “being” versus “having”—it is necessary to reject profit maximization as the primary objective of the firm. In its place, the author proposes instead that the firm’s foremost objective is the maximization of personalist capital. Properly understood, profits are a necessary condition for the firm’s survival but not its primary goal. The concept of personalist capital in effect incorporates the subjective dimension of work into microeconomic theory without dismissing the objective dimension entirely.

Democracy in America never mentions the Declaration of Independence. Is this perhaps a sign of hostility to the Declaration’s natural-rights teaching or to abstract principles? Or is it no more significant than The Federalist’s silence on this matter? Both are books of political science, not political philosophy; yet, when appropriate, Tocqueville addresses first principles, and endorses a natural-rights doctrine similar to Locke’s. He wrote primarily for the French, addressing issues he thought decisive for them, especially reconciling the ultra-royalists and the French Catholic Church to the new democratic order. This guided the aspects of American democracy he wanted to emphasize. Thus Jesus Christ’s coming to earth was a political turning point in human history because he “made it understood that all members of the human species are naturally alike and equal.” Given aristocratic dominance in ancient society, without that event the principle of equality might never have been discovered.

Questions about Pope Pius XII’s leadership during World War II continue to color Catholic-Jewish relations. While many scholars have engaged in research on the topic, a growing number argue that no conclusions can be reached until all relevant Vatican archives have been opened and reviewed. This paper argues that currently open Vatican archives, supplemented with eyewitness accounts and documents from other sources, provide a consistent portrait of the wartime pope as a champion of the victims, opponent of the villains, and inspiration to the rescuers. As such, even without opening additional archives, the documentary record supports the Holy See’s determination that Pius XII led a life of “heroic virtue.”

Two works of speculative fiction present visions of a dystopian future in which human life and human dignity are attacked in the name of pleasure and the greater good. These works, Huxley’s Brave New World and Percy’s The Thanatos Syndrome, not only anticipate several key aspects of the prophetic message of Evangelium Vitae, but they help to make concrete and to illustrate the dangers that John Paul II was warning the world about in his 1995 encyclical.

This article is one of SCSS President Stephen M. Krason’s “Neither Left nor Right, but Catholic” online columns. It briefly addresses, in light of Catholic social teaching, the immigration question that has been a major public issue in the U.S.

Based on a paper presented, and the feedback received, at the 19th Annual Conference of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists held at Franciscan University, in Steubenville, Ohio, October 29th, 2011, this short article proposes to initiate what could be an important research project intended to study the relationship between Catholicism and, respectively, the Tea Party movement and American civilization. Given the generally accepted understanding that American civilization is in the midst of a deep crisis, such a study hopes to provide, among other important analyses, both a Catholic critique of the present crisis and a Catholic critique of the Tea Party movement and the latter’s proposed solutions to the contemporary dysfunctional transformation of the American democratic republic.

The contributions to this symposium raise several issues that extend beyond an examination of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. For example, is the conventional distinction between ancient and modern in political philosophy too simplistic? Is religion necessary to preserve democracy, and if so, what kind of religion must it be? Theological and sociological sources both suggest that the fate of democracy in the modern world is inextricably, not merely accidentally, connected with the fate of Christianity.

This essay explores the relationship between Ex Corde Ecclesiae and its application in the United States on the one hand and the practice and teaching of the social sciences on the other. The paper reflects on ways the bishops and laity can advance the social sciences, which provide the current-day lingua franca of public discourse, and expresses the need to invoke social scientific research in the public square.

This article was one of SCSS President Stephen M. Krason’s online “Neither Left nor Right, but Catholic” columns. It appeared on April 1, 2012. There is a link to Krason’s monthly column at the SCSS website (www.catholicsocialscientists.org). Since August 2012, his column also appears at Crisismagazine.com. This article considers new, serious threats to free speech in the contemporary Western world.

The following is a slightly revised version of the address delivered by His Eminence Edward Cardinal Egan during the Twentieth-Anniversary Conference of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists in New York, October 2012. Drawing on his experience as Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Egan offers five rules for the Church’s episcopal leadership: focus on what is essential; don’t be distracted from basic duties; make self-assessments based on documented facts; foster good relationships with priests, lay advisors, and non-Catholics; and pray for the people of the diocese.

The following is the text of an address delivered by Professor George at the twentieth anniversary conference of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists in New York, October 2012. George identifies the intellectual roots of recent threats to conscience rights—especially for people of faith—in the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology’s 2008 report that, he argues, makes ideological claims rather than using scientific evidence to support the denial of conscience rights to medical professionals in the areas of birth control and abortion. (This essay will be included in a forthcoming collection of George’s work to be published by ISI Books.)

Stephen Krason’s study of the American political experiment is a valuable exercise in traditional political science. His analysis leads a reasonable observer to ask whether the republic established by the Founders is still operative, or whether it has evolved into something quite different from the democratic republic of 1787. The creation of an administrative state in modern America, which has taken form especially in the past half-century, has moved the political system toward new modes of governing and domination by a new class of political elites. The article concludes by asking whether the American democratic republic is a lost cause.

In 2008, on behalf of the marriage- and family centers of the Austrian dioceses of Salzburg and Feldkirch, a survey concerning the performance of natural regulation of conception and its potential influence on family life and spousal relations was conducted by the Institute for Natural Regulation of Conception (INER), Vöcklabruck, Austria among its own members, a group of declared users and/or teachers of the method. Questionnaires were mailed to 1131 members in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy. The return rate was 43.5%. The results support earlier publications indicating that natural familiy planning (NFP) is associated with positive spousal relationships and family stability. NFP, here specifically the sympto-thermal method of J. Rötzer, improves communication and mutual respect between the spouses and is associated with a low divorce rate (3%). Periodic continence is regarded as beneficial by a majority of respondents. Since the method is free of any undesirable side effects and associated with a favourable Pearl Index, it should become more widely known.

This paper discusses ideas on how to incorporate Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services into a Catholic college nursing curriculum. Questions addressed include: What does the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops say is the purpose of the Ethical and Religious Directives? Is the profession of nursing a particularly difficult one in which to incorporate Catholic teachings? Can we share with our students a code of nursing ethics that supports the Ethical and Religious Directives? Promoting faculty and students’ learning about Catholic teachings may be a step to changing what Blessed John Paul II called the culture of death into one of life.