The economy has become an embodiment of all sorts of perplexing modern quandaries. Anxiety at various political, economic, corporate, and religious levels is visibly increasing. Reports from the recent World Economic Forum in Davos suggest that the most powerful capitalists are now just as pessimistic about the economy as everybody else despite their nervously upbeat message about the upcoming “Fourth Industrial Revolution” through which they are hoping to save the world economy from collapsing. Pope Francis sees this as a “profound and epochal change” and he has challenged the world leaders “to ensure that the coming ‘fourth industrial revolution’, the result of robotics and scientific and technological innovations, does not lead to the destruction of the human person – to be replaced by a soulless machine – or to the transformation of our planet into an empty garden for the enjoyment of a chosen few.” [1]
The pope’s words reminded me of the 1921 play RUR or Rossum’s Universal Robots by the Czech writer Karel Čapek. It was through this play that the word ‘robot’ was introduced to the world, and the pope’s appeal strongly resonates with the play’s uncanny prophetic message. Alluding to the Czech word ‘rozum’ (brain, reason, or intellect) and to science and technology run amok, which is the play’s main theme, RUR challenged the unrestrained scientific development which culminated in the hi-tech carnage of WWII, indubitably proving Čapek’s point that a technology-based economy can indeed kill on a massive scale.
Hinting at the conflict of evolution vs. religion, the play also eerily prefigures the ethical conundrums of modern genetic engineering and other morally suspect technologies the new revolution will bring. ‘Robota’ in Czech means work, ‘rabota’ in various Slavic languages also means hard work or servitude, from the old Slavic root ‘rab’ meaning serf or slave. In Čapek’s play the word ‘robot’ also raises an important dehumanizing and exploitive social dimension of the oppressive industrial servitude which has been felt by the working men since the First Industrial Revolution. [2]
This Economy Kills is a provocative title two Italian journalists gave to their book subtitled Pope Francis on Capitalism and Social Justice. [3] Referring to the Darwinian economy of “exclusion and inequality”, the phrase is taken from the 2013 encyclical Evangelii Gaudium by Pope Francis — “Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless.” The book is a brief overview of the Magisterial interpretation of the Catholic social teaching which dates back to the time of St. John Chrysostom, but it mainly tries to defend popes Francis and Benedict from the unjust attacks by conservative American Christians, a number of whom have recently criticized pope Francis and labeled him a Catholic communist, pauperist, socialist, Marxist, Leninist and statist.
The recent encyclical Laudato Si, which a Canadian journalist contemptuously compared to the Unabomber Manifesto, has further added to the increasingly bitter controversy. It is a Niagara-like torrent of poetry, heart-rending complaints and valid accusations, but, unfortunately, without explicit insights for a constructive intellectual solution. The “most abandoned and maltreated of our poor,” our “Sister, Mother Earth,” of whose elements we, the “dust”, are made up, is being abused, laid waste and poisoned by our aggression and greed. Indeed, we have managed to poison and despoil the Garden of Eden, and the Earth is now more like our step-mother, poisoning our bodies and minds. Blinded by all the wonders it has delivered we tend to uncritically revere “technoscience”, but we must be aware, writes pope Francis, that in totalitarian regimes technology was “employed to kill millions of people, to say nothing of the increasingly deadly arsenal of weapons available for modern warfare. In whose hands does all this power lie, or will it eventually end up? ”
Sadly, the once admirable American system of liberty which gave rise to the most prosperous nations in history, is on the verge of collapse, with many concerned Americans, and Canadians, scratching their heads over what went wrong. Let’s hope and pray that the systems designed by the Founding Fathers of both the United States and Canada can be successfully restored and improved to the satisfaction of popes and the Catholic social teaching.
Political economy is the highest and the most intricate intellectual discipline, yet economy is also the most essential human activity in which every human being must engage or perish. This is what Pope Francis alluded to when he sternly referred to the “starched over-educated Christians who speak of theological matters” while the poor continue to suffer and die in slums. There must be something very rotten at the core of this controversy if well-meaning people of the highest intellectual calibre cannot understand each other and resort to name-calling and paralyzing mislabeling.
In this sketchy article, which cannot adequately address all these complex issues and intricacies, I will try to outline the most important points and hint at a possible way out of the intellectual impasse. I certainly do not consider myself an over-educated stiff, and I do believe in genuine Christian charity. But I am suspect of grand-scale philanthropy and the pseudo-scientific statist global controls aimed at indiscriminate taxation. If my life and experiences have taught me anything, it would be a sincere desire for all people of good will to come to a civil understanding of what really represents truth, knowledge, and genuine insights. Also, it pains me to see the same mistakes, makeshift band-aid solutions and futile knee-jerk reactions being blindly perpetuated, rather than seeking true ideas and applying real knowledge, because only through such intelligent effort can mankind elevate itself from the dog-eat-dog morass we loosely call today the free-market economy of capitalism. After two centuries of papal warnings it has become obvious to any clear-thinking person that this unsustainable system of production and life needs a serious overhaul and a new ideal.
Economy was never a solid science and any hopes of finding reliable predictive criteria have vanished. Rather it has become clear that due to the complexity of the morass no single individual can come up with a brilliant solution or innovation which would instantly remedy all the ills and problems. One of the main points of disconnect is the contemporary historical paradigm of political economy which usually starts with the birth of capitalism, especially as it is related to modern free-market economy and democracy. I do not wish to restate the well known history, but I would like to point out that a coherent and easily understandable historical and cultural context is badly needed.
Being born and educated in the former communist Czechoslovakia, (my first exposure to philosophy, politics and economy was through the systematic marxist-leninist education from junior-high all the way to university), and living the second half of my life under capitalism in North America, I can confidently say that I have at least had an intimate first-hand experience of both systems. The visit of St. John Paul II to Edmonton in 1984, especially his now legendary sermon on the poor South judging the rich North, was an eye-opener. Even more eye-opening and disappointing was my subsequent participation at a few local Catholic social justice meetings.
Growing up in the much troubled heart of Europe, where the roots of various cultures reach to the prehistoric times, since my early childhood I became fascinated by history. I believe that it is from this most essential perspective the current problems should be re-analyzed and approached. Renowned Canadian historian Margaret McMillan pointed out that “History is something we all do,… We use history to understand ourselves, and we ought to use it to understand others.” Religion was once a crucial part of European and Western culture, “setting moral standards and transmitting values”, and it is through this lens of our analytical microscopes we should view all that is happening at the quasi-chaotic level of the historical and economic Brownian motion.
“Capitalism” is a relatively new word with various confusing definitions. While Adam Smith and Ricardo used it instinctively, its quasi-scientific connotation was introduced by Karl Marx and it was gradually adopted in the science of economics meaning the sale of one’s labor for monetary compensation or wage. This is also where the modern definitions essentially differ — for example the understanding of North American pro-capitalist conservatives like Austrian-American economist Friedrich A. Hayek, various American conservatives and “neocons”, from outspoken Rush Limbaugh, pensive Glenn Beck, the various commentators featured on the Fox TV, philanthropists like the rich Koch brothers, or the influential Catholic “theocon” Michael Novak, whose idea of “democratic capitalism” is at the centre of the controversy due to Novak’s elaborate claim that the American version introduced in his book The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (1982), which is presumably genuinely Catholic, is the highest possible expression of Christian society. Neither Pope Benedict nor Francis have bought it, they are increasingly suspicious of the unproven “trickle-down” economics, despite Mr. Novak’s repeated claims that “democratic capitalism” was accepted by St. John Paul II.
Amidst the plethora of confusing views and theories I had a momentous intellectual eye-opening through my discovery of the works of G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. Not unlike C. S. Lewis, and many others, I was also thrilled after I devoured three little books, Orthodoxy, The Dumb Ox, and The Everlasting Man, my mother bought for me shortly after we came to Canada. My parents learned about Chesterton in Czechoslovakia where he was referred to as the “philosopher wearing casual pants”, (an idiom expressing erudition via common sense), but due to the lack of translations their knowledge was sketchy. However, whatever they read or heard was enough to pique their curiosity and intellectual instinct, concluding that if a solution to all the troubles of modern mankind is ever found, Chesterton’s ideas will play an integral part. I became a real Chesterton fanatic after we met Father Ian Boyd, the founder of the International Chesterton Institute and The Chesterton Review.
The amazing erudition of Hilaire Belloc, especially the deep historical knowledge which so impressed Chesterton, is still the most profound grasp of history, paralleled only by the sociology of Christopher Dawson. It was this deep insight into the various aspects of history, especially the history of economy and the Catholic Church, that allowed Belloc to form a profound opinion on many subjects. Belloc was “the man who has made the greatest fight for good things of all the men of my time,” wrote Chesterton.
Together the Chesterbelloc, as they were known, became the most prolific intellectual force and their ideas are still the strongest breath of sanity today. The system of life and economy they proposed was based on the widest possible distribution of property, which can best guarantee economic stability, reasonable liberty and fair independence from either the capitalist, socialist or statist domination of life and family, all of which make life increasingly regimented and unbearable. Incidentally, this is a very similar system Thomas Jefferson advocated.
All sorts of social evils arose, leading to WWI and WWII, and the scholars and economists were seeking a solution based on the materialistic scientific dichotomy in economics, a solution either based on capitalism or on its false opposite socialism, which is a fictitious alternative. WWII brought its own challenges and the strong state intervention, which always limits liberty, was necessary to direct the economic production towards the successful defeat of fascism. Unfortunately, the British economy did not return to its previous more free state, Eastern Europe was duped and sacrificed in order to conduct the ultimate social experiment, with North America becoming the last bastion and hope for a truly free and productive economy.
The Road to Serfdom (1944) by F. A. Hayek opened the eyes of many to the dangers of statism and socialism, but Hayek missed or dismissed Belloc’s crucial insight that not only collectivism or socialism can lead to The Servile State (1912). Socialism must ultimately mean collectivism or communism. Belloc correctly described socialism as an imaginary state of society which can never be achieved and which can never last, and numerous socialist/collectivist experiments around the world have proven his thesis! Plato’s crazy communist dream, still popular with starched over-educated academia, is only a pipe dream. No insightful individual today can consider socialism in its dominant role of total state control a viable system of life and economic production; at best, socialism is only a temporary knee-jerk reaction to the excesses and evils of capitalism, or a totalitarian war measure when the whole society must be regimented in order to survive. Looking back at the history of socialism and communism, and its failure everywhere, including Czechoslovakia, and the subsequent troubling developments in Europe and America, one must at least acknowledge that Belloc’s “Servile State” thesis, and the Chesterbelloc solution, is worthy of serious investigation. Besides, there is nothing else to consider any more.
Chesterbelloc’s “Distributism”, sometimes called the Third Way, is not a compromise between capitalism and socialism. It is a system that is beyond this confusing dichotomy, and, as the history of the last century has proved, only such thinking ‘outside the box’ can address the plethora of seemingly unsolvable problems and paradoxes. Chesterton stressed the proper use of labels, a very wise philosophical requirement, because only then it becomes clear what we mean by words. For example, “capitalism” is a much abused and misunderstood word, but a capitalist system of production and life would become much clearer if we called it Proletarianism or Wageism – “The point is not that some people have capital, but that most people only have wages because they do not have capital.”, wrote Chesterton.
Unlike a farmer, a modern urban computer programmer owns no real capital in the classical economic sense. (He might own a soon to be obsolete computer and software.) He owns only his “human capital,” or his strength, energy, time, ability, soon to be obsolete professional knowledge, and health. These are very different economic entities, their value is subjective and they cannot be compared to capital in the classical sense. Besides, one’s human capital, or the loss of it, affects a variety of complex social and psychological phenomena, impacting his family and community, his education, healthcare, marriage and progeny, and none of these can be calculated or integrated using ordinary math or economic formulas.
Not unlike the programmers in the popular cartoon series Dilbert, such an increasing mass of hi-tech proletariat will work in a modern Kafkaesque corporation in a beehive environment, alongside other proletarians, from clerks, managers, to directors, all of whom also work or compete for a decreasing wage. Being emotional humans and imperfect workers, there was always a tendency to replace them with machines and robots who will never unionize, strike or demand higher wages or social benefits. And while the Dilbertian employees have had steady employment, albeit with decreasing social benefits and wages, the latest trends in the emerging freelance ‘gig’ or short contract economy, with sneaky techniques like deliberate understaffing, “zero-hours” contracts which underrate the task and don’t specify hours, or contracts which demand more and more for less and less, will give a new self-destructive meaning to Schumpeter’s “creative destruction.” How the classical capital and banks are involved in this system of production is a different thing altogether, and it makes the whole morass even more complex to comprehend. Given the global free-trade profit-driven nature of modern enterprise, and the mysterious workings of international finance, it is no surprise that most of the “funny” things ridiculed in the Dilbert cartoons are becoming a sad RUR reality, despite the neocons’ and theocons’ upbeat descriptions and high hopes. [4]
The proof is in the pudding. Most of the production and manufacturing has already been moved away to the cheaper Third World where corporations can more freely and cheaply break the environmental laws, or rules of decency, even install suicide nets. Meanwhile the jobless proletarians requiring welfare keep increasing in the rich North bankrupting the local governments and, ultimately, the North’s ability to send aid to the Southern “poor”. Lower paid immigration and foreign workers are increasingly necessary to keep this “democratic capitalism” going, depriving locals of more job/wage opportunities, eventually causing resentment, confusion, depression and increasing drug addiction. Useless burdensome humans are now valued less than reliable and effective robots.
The scandalous loss of hi-tech jobs described in a new book Sold Out: How High-Tech Billionaires & Bipartisan Beltway Crapweasels Are Screwing America’s Best & Brightest Workers (Malkin & Miano, 2015) is only a logical outcome resulting in the collusion of Hudge and Gudge, (Big Business and Big Government), satirically described in Chesterton’s What’s Wrong with the World (1910). This is another proof of Chesterbelloc’s prediction that the complexification of life and production will necessarily muddle the economic, sociological and moral aspects, resulting not only in the loss of comprehension, (the system will become increasingly chaotic and confusing), but ultimately, will be directed by the power and greed of crapweasels, its evolution proceeding towards the immoral and oppressive.
Distributism was at first enthusiastically embraced, especially by deep-thinking Catholics, perhaps even by popes, who understood the dilemmas and contradictions of capitalism and socialism, and who desired a normal stable happy life with minimum excesses or increasingly burdensome runaway “progress” and “innovation”, very much like Pope Francis is calling for today. However, the Great Depression strengthened the arguments of socialists and Marxists. Eventually the rising fascism and the threat of WWII totally turned the tables and after Chesterton’s death in 1936 there was no intellectual opposition left to the nightmare Karel Čapek described as a “runaway train coming down the wrong track.”
The post WWII prosperity boom made the Distributist ideas look ridiculous, and they were dismissed as naïve or not scientific enough for the erudite elites who still thought economics was solid science, or by those who were still naively hoping that Marxism would prove to be a viable scientific option. Others opposed Distributism as a “Catholic” idea unsuitable for a utilitarian Protestant-based system of morality and production, but, as Belloc explained, there is more to the “wealth and happiness” argument that ought to be considered before unreservedly adopting the “wealth brings happiness” adage.
The materialistic pseudo-scientific nature of modern economics is another bogeyman that needs to be exorcised in academia and in corporate boardrooms. Socialists, Marxists, Fabian progressives and capitalists of the last two centuries have all been misapplying utilitarianism and biological Darwinism, which in economics and sociology is rightly criticized as unscientific Social Darwinism.
Applying Bentham’s calculus of “psychological hedonism”, J. S. Mill elevated the common sense notion of wealth creation via his “psycho-logic” of improved Epicurean utilitarianism. The “common herd” who saw Epicurus’ noble idea “as a doctrine worthy only of swine” supposedly fell into a “shallow mistake”, because “beast’s pleasures do not satisfy a human being’s conception of happiness. … It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.” Mill’s psychologizing paradoxically concluded that poverty and disease can be eliminated by “good physical and moral education, and proper control of noxious influences, while progress of science holds out promise for still more direct conquests.”
These conquests acquired quasi-scientific evolutionary character when Herbert Spencer improved Mill’s Epicurean utilitarianism by applying Darwinian “survival of the fittest” doctrine. There was no God, only the great Unknowable, and Evolution became a principle of increasing complexity, resulting in the emergence of intelligence and in evolutionary ethics based on Comte’s altruism. Other pseudo-scientific materialistic psychologies have been suggested and implemented, behavioristic, emotiononomics, and other freakonomics. Engineered freudonomic propaganda of Edward Bernays, which controls and directs the “democratic” herd instinct, has become a sinister tool employed to control politics, business and economy.
Likewise, various atheistic and materialistic quasi-mathematical philosophical theories have been proposed to explain how the economy presumably works, and these are mostly related to various misinterpretations of mathematical probability and randomness, or game theories based on sheer luck — “order out of chaos” presumably arises from such mysterious complexity or chaos, via stochastic processes, or emergent probabilities which Mr. Novak adopted from the Darwinian concept of the Canadian Jesuit Bernard Lonergan. Any attempt to calculate such probabilities is futile. Clearly, left to itself, the microscopic dust, a huge portion of which behaves in immoral, greedy and swinish ways, will not produce any order worthy of praise.
Belloc’s assessment of economy, his grand conclusion, is that complex societies break down due to the over-complexification by “imaginaries”, by which he meant various hidden and unintelligible factors presumably being of real or high value, like esoteric derivatives, quasi-knowledge, empty values or services, say overpriced art, or sale of dubious mental productions like advertising. In complex societies various hidden forms of usury (interest on unproductive loans) become intricately intertwined, and unfortunately, there is nothing one can do to correct such a system until it is sufficiently simplified, comprehended and made moral again.
Despite its wonders, technology has added further complications and imaginaries, resulting in hi-tech bubbles, various dependencies on technology, or unneeded “innovation” which is eventually imposed on society. Without truly productive jobs we are increasingly forced to service each other with valueless services or frivolous contraptions. Innovation is often just a substitute for efficiency/profit, disregarding its real value or social function. Various hi-tech gadgets, electronic banking, online investing, faceless impersonal socializing and clueless tweeting, are now becoming mandatory, with unpredictable economic and social effects as people will increasingly live in foolish sci-fi fantasy or other stupid virtual realities.
Is there a way out of the impasse? Does “democratic capitalism” have a future? And if it does, what needs to be done to improve its ideal to make it truly Christian?
Regardless of what word we choose for the system that will eventually emerge, it is always necessary to first have a good realistic idea or a desirable ideal of what kind of happy sustainable life we and the rest of mankind would like to lead. Next, looking back historically at the process, (but not reading the history backwards!), we should try to recapitulate what really happened, and learn from the mistakes that were made in the past. For rapid production of wealth there does not seem to be an alternative to a free-market democratic capitalism, but the rapidity and the innovative aspects could be checked and subjected to sanity, decency and morality.
Capital is necessary for the creation of wealth, but we should not confuse it with human capital, and we should realize that capitalism is not a system or a model invented by anybody, but rather it is the end product of a long complicated historical process originating with the Crusades and the secular and scientific aspects of Renaissance. The process was further influenced during the Reformation which gave it a materialist drive necessary for the rapid growth of technology, wealth and centralized power. It was the rapidity of the process that resulted in most of the problems. Finally, acquiring a modern quasi-scientific evolutionary disguise, it is obvious that capitalism without sound morals, one which works via sheer greed/profit, tends to evolve into the depressing collusion of big business and big government resulting not in freedom, but in virtual slavery.
Reflecting his Irish and French heritage, Belloc insisted that the Distributive society was not only the most Christian system, but once its merits were properly explained others might find it just as satisfactory for a normal happy life. The medieval “peasant” spirit of Distributism is misunderstood and criticized as impractical. None of us want to go back to serfdom, but many would enjoy the spirit of Merry England of Chaucer or the spirit of the abundant medieval Bohemia under the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, even as it was described in Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale. The other option would be an improved ideal of “democratic capitalism” and a crucial question remains whether the two systems, or the “spirits”, could be satisfactorily merged. Indeed, in his analytical 1987 Introduction to Chesterton’s Outline of Sanity, Mr. Novak curiously asks — “Isn’t Distributism a variant of democratic capitalism?” [5]
Michael Novak proudly boasts about his Slovak heritage and he understandably decries the peasant serfdom of his Slovak ancestors. However, for the sake of precision and efficiency he is perhaps willing to accept the mentality of a Prussian industrialist burgher, satirized and mocked by Čapek, which Belloc and Chesterton would also never embrace. Novak is also critical of “the great Solzhenitsyn” who likewise found capitalism wanting. Nevertheless, Mr. Novak admits having a nostalgia for the medieval Slovak village and its community which his pious grandfather brought with him to America like so many other poor Slovaks and Czechs who emigrated and who could never adapt to the American spirit of capitalism they encountered, some perishing in American mines, others dreaming about returning like Čapek’s Hordubal.
It is this same “medieval” arcadian peasant and shepherd spirit, which Chesterton and Belloc praised, that defines the essence of the Slovak nationhood, and if it ever disappears in Slovakia it will be the end of the Slovak nation! The great Slovak writer Timrava wrote passionately about it, the Czech painter Jan Hála dedicated his life to capturing it in his beautiful paintings, and Karel Čapek enjoyed and deeply admired it during his travels in the poorest parts of rural Slovakia. The same spirit is found in many agrarian societies throughout history, and since the birth of Christ in a stable among the farm animals and sheep, it became a universal Christian spirit underlying all truly Christian societies! It is the same spirit that still survives among the peasantry in contemporary Alberta, which is predominantly Ukrainian, with the remnants of other “peasant” minorities, Hungarian, Polish, and French Canadian.
President T. G. Masaryk, the Father of Czechoslovakia, was well acquainted with industrial Great Britain and America. (Like Belloc, Masaryk also married an American). But when Masaryk was trying to orient the newly formed Czechoslovakia and give it a genuine Slavic soul, he turned towards France, and Russia, and rejected the sophisticated wisdom of German Protestantism and Austrian Catholicism, mainly because they were badly polluted with the evil spirit of expansive capitalist Prussia which had defeated Austria, Bohemia, Hungary and France, leading to WWI and WWII. The great Slovak-American scholar Jaroslav Pelikan, who professed personal loyalty to the Eastern “orthodox” tradition, admitted that Masaryk’s Spirit of Russia (1919) was his earliest and deepest influence. So what is this spirit Masaryk was so strongly yearning for that he sent Czechoslovak Legions to fight the communist Red Army in Siberia?
“The pilgrims, the Orthodox, the peasantry— they all carried me back in memory to childhood, when my primitive faith was undisturbed. Such were my own beliefs and such were my own actions when I went on pilgrimage in boyhood; such are still the beliefs and actions of the children and the wives of our Slovak peasants when they visit the shrine of the miracle-working virgin on Mt. Hostein (Hostýn); such were the beliefs and such was the teaching of my own mother. But this childhood has passed away for ever, simply because childhood must yield place to maturity. … Russia has preserved the childhood of Europe; in the overwhelming mass of its peasant population it represents Christian medievalism and, in particular, Byzantine medievalism. … I am acquainted with a fair proportion of the civilised and uncivilised world, and I have no hesitation in saying that Russia was and is the most interesting country known to me.” [6]
Since the earliest days of Slavic Christianity, which originated in Slovakia and Great Moravia, Slavs everywhere have been of the same spirit. [7] The same yearning survived in Czechoslovakia despite the pre-WWII “democratic capitalism,” which, overwhelmed by modernism and Americanism, shunned the child-like religious faith and kept evolving contrary to both national spirits. However, let us hope and pray that even demonic communism couldn’t crush the peasant spirit of Slavs, who always sincerely prayed “give us this day our daily bread,” and asked for no more. An excellent example is Antonín Dvořák’s oratorio Saint Ludmila, Op. 71, with its magnificent ancient Slavonic hymn “Hospodine Pomiluj Ny!” or “God Have Mercy on Us!”, where those simple unsophisticated children of God are praying “Grant us all, Lord God, abundance, plentitude and peace in our land!”
Peter Hála was born and educated in former Czechoslovakia. In 1980 his family managed to escape the communist regime and came to Canada. He works at the University of Alberta in the area of automation and control systems. His interests and hobbies include history, philosophy, literature, translation, music and various outdoor pursuits. –
References:
[1] Pope Francis’ letter to Klaus Schwab, Executive President of the World Economic Forum, signed 30-December-2016, released and delivered on 20-January-2016.
[2] Hála, Peter. Fantasy at Large — A True History. Science, Fiction and Moral Imagination in the Works of Karel Čapek. Catholic Insight Journal. Jan. 2015, Vol. 23 No. 3, pages ii-ix.
[3] Tornielli, Andrea and Galeazzi, Giacomo. This Economy Kills. Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, 2015. (Papa Francesco: Questa Economia Uccide, Edizioni Piemme Spa, Milano, 2015.)
[4] Novak, Michael. The Future of Democratic Capitalism. First Things, June/July 2015, p. 33-37.
[5] Chesterton, G. K. Collected Works, Vol. V: Family, Society, Politics; The Outline of Sanity. Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1989, p. 25
[6] Masaryk, T. G. The Spirit of Russia, Volume One. George Allen & Unwin Ltd., London; p. 5
[7] Hála, Peter. Sailing to Byzantium, The life and mission of Saints Cyril and Methodius. Part I: Catholic Insight Nov. 2013, Vol. 21 No. 10, p. 18-23; Part II: Catholic Insight Dec. 2013, Vol. 22 No. 10, p. 17-22.
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