John D. Mueller

This is the fourth essay in a week-long symposium on the pope’s recent encyclical. Despite belonging to an organization that recently celebrated its founder’s two thousandth birthday, some American Catholics exhibit the attention span of fruit flies when their faith impinges on their politics. Recent responses to Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Vertitate (“Charity in Truth”) closely parallel those that greeted the last economic encyclicals: John Paul II’s Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (“The Church’s Social Concern”) and Centesimus Annus (“On the Hundredth Anniversary” of Leo XIII’ Rerum Novarum)… Continue Reading »