Young people cannot afford homes. They cannot afford families. The economy is producing conditions that are neither pro-family nor pro-life. Frank Wright turns to Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum to ask a fundamental question: what is our economy for?
Catholic social teaching rejects both unrestrained capitalism and socialist state worship. It teaches a reciprocal balance of rights and duties between labor, capital, the family, and the state. The economy is not an end in itself, it is ordered toward human flourishing, the dignity of the worker, and the common good.
Frank argues that modern economic systems have forgotten this. They treat people as disposable units rather than as persons created in the image of God. The result is an economy that produces wealth for some while destroying the conditions for family life for many.
Rerum Novarum offers a practical alternative: an economic order directed toward families, human dignity, and the common good. The question is whether Catholics will recover this teaching, and demand an economy that serves life, not death. The Church has the blueprint. The question is whether the faithful will follow it.
