In the category of silver linings to the current global economic crisis: Some see renewed interest in how application of the Church's social teaching might have helped us avoid this mess, and might prevent future such messes.
"There's room for [this conversation] now in a way that there couldn't have been even six weeks ago," Daniel Finn, professor of economics and theology at St. John's University, Collegeville, Minn., and co-director of the True Wealth Project at the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies, told U.S. Catholic in early November.
Finn said Catholic concepts like the common good and solidarity with the poor should affect the way any market is run. And while wealth creation depends on markets and individual initiative, "not every deal needs to be allowed."
In the meantime, we're still waiting for the release of Pope Benedict XVI's third encyclical, which is expected to be on issues of social justice, and address the current economic crisis. The document was supposed to be out earlier this fall, but now the best guess is that it will be out in the spring.
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