The solution to the ongoing economic troubles is to adopt a worldview
that combines both economic and moral truths, Father Robert Sirico said
as he presented his new book.
Father Robert Sirico, co-founder of the Acton Institute think tank,
introduced his book titled "Defending the Free Market: the Moral Case
for a Free Economy" on Nov. 28 in Rome.
"I wrote the book because I was concerned that there's such a false set
of assumptions of what a market economy is and that it's completely
disconnected from the moral life," he explained.
"I'm also using the book to give a sort of autobiography," said Fr.
Sirico, who wrote the book using parables of his life to ''tell a
moral.'' "I tell of an encounter I had when I was five years old my
neighbor, an old lady."
"She handed me warm, delicious, scrumptious cookies, and I saw she had
tattooed numbers running up her arm. My mom later told me how refugees
had come to the United States for safety," said Fr. Sirico.
"The whole seed of human dignity was then implanted in my mind and it's been a preoccupation from that day to this."
Fr. Sirico, originally from Brooklyn, said that his approach to
economics is anthropological and combines economic truths with moral
ones.
When it comes to the current economic crisis, Fr. Sirico faults regulations that were based only on good intentions.
"The intentions were that people would have access to credit to buy
homes, but the problem is that good intentions aren't always the sound
basis for sound economics," he said.
He noted that "it's going to be difficult for young Italians to reach
adulthood with their dignity intact for quite a while, because they
presume that the State will provide for them, cradle to grave."
"Also they don't have much access to work, which incentivizes them to
stay at home, which delays them from getting married and having
children," he said. "You then have fewer and fewer Italians supporting
the elderly and this becomes a vicious cycle."
Fr. Sirico believes that Italians need to rethink how they and their government handle the economy.
The priest, who disagrees with the notion that the way for a business
to succeed is to take advantage of others, said the solution is to apply
subsidiarity, which means that needs are best met at a local level.
"We need to stop presuming that the government is the provider and find
creative and innovative ways which can serve people and which will
build a virtuous cycle instead of a vicious cycle," said Fr. Sirico.
"You get clients by offering them a better service and product quality,
which is unique to them and meets their needs," he stated. "It's
service that people need to prioritize, not taking advantage."
Looking to the future, Fr. Sirico thinks there are “bumpy years ahead of us.”
"The root of all our political and civic thinking in the U.S. and in
Europe is that the government has the dominant role in our lives," he
argued.
Instead of this model, he thinks that the role of government needs to
shrink and the ''civic voluntary dimension of society'' needs to
increase.
"Unless we correct ideas, nothing else is going to work because politics isn't the solution to this problem," he said.