The catholic church has an economically liberal bias

[linate]

The catholic church has an economically liberal bias

 

I know many conservative Catholics will cite pope's who say socialism is bad and leave it at that as if that nullified these quotes. If a person wants to easily reconcile them, its to say socialism is bad but a basic social safety and social contract is a necessity.

 

Catholic Social Teaching Quotations

Populorum Progressio (§23)

"Private property does not constitute for anyone an absolute or unconditioned right. No one is justified in keeping for his exclusive use what he does not need, when others lack necessities."

Populorum Progressio (§23), quoting St. Ambrose

"You are not making a gift of your possessions to the poor person. You are handing over to him what is his. For what has been given in common for the use of all, you have arrogated to yourself. The world is given to all, and not only to the rich."

Populorum Progressio (§22)

"Now if the earth truly was created to provide man with the necessities of life and the tools for his own progress, it follows that every man has the right to glean what he needs from the earth. The recent Council reiterated this truth. All other rights, whatever they may be, including the rights of property and free trade, are to be subordinated to this principle. They should in no way hinder it; in fact, they should actively facilitate its implementation. Redirecting these rights back to their original purpose must be regarded as an important and urgent social duty."

Populorum Progressio (§84)

"Government officials, it is your concern to mobilize your peoples to form a more effective world solidarity, and above all to make them accept the necessary taxes on their luxuries and their wasteful expenditures, in order to bring about development and to save the peace."

Populorum Progressio (§33)

"Individual initiative alone and the interplay of competition will not ensure satisfactory development. We cannot proceed to increase the wealth and power of the rich while we entrench the needy in their poverty and add to the woes of the oppressed. Organized programs are necessary for directing, stimulating, coordinating, supplying and integrating the work of individuals and intermediary organizations. It is for the public authorities to establish and lay down the desired goals, the plans to be followed, and the methods to be used in fulfilling them; and it is also their task to stimulate the efforts of those involved in this common activity."

Laborem Exercens (§14)

"It has always understood this right within the broader context of the right common to all to use the goods of the whole of creation: the right to private property is subordinated to the right to common use, to the fact that goods are meant for everyone."

Rerum Novarum (§45)

"Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice."

Populorum Progressio (§59)

"What was true of the just wage for the individual is also true of international contracts: an economy of exchange can no longer be based solely on the law of free competition, a law which, in its turn, too often creates an economic dictatorship. Freedom of trade is fair only if it is subject to the demands of social justice."

Rerum Novarum (§44)

"To labor is to exert oneself for the sake of procuring what is necessary for the various purposes of life, and chief of all for self-preservation. Hence, a man's labor necessarily bears two notes or characters. First, it is personal, inasmuch as the force which acts is bound up with the personality and is the exclusive property of him who acts, and, further, was given to him for his advantage. Secondly, man's labor is necessary; for without the result of labor a man cannot live, and self-preservation is a law of nature, which it is wrong to disobey.

Now, were we to consider labor merely in so far as it is personal, doubtless it would be within the workman's right to accept any rate of wages whatsoever; for in the same way as he is free to work or not, so is he free to accept a small wage or even none at all. But our conclusion must be very different if, together with the personal element in a man's work, we consider the fact that work is also necessary for him to live: these two aspects of his work are separable in thought, but not in reality.

The preservation of life is the bounden duty of one and all, and to be wanting therein is a crime. It necessarily follows that each one has a natural right to procure what is required in order to live, and the poor can procure that in no other way than by what they can earn through their work."

Laborem Exercens (§14)

"Property is acquired first of all through work in order that it may serve work. This concerns in a special way ownership of the means of production. Isolating these means as a separate property in order to set it up in the form of 'capital' in opposition to 'labour'—and even to practise exploitation of labour—is contrary to the very nature of these means and their possession. They cannot be possessed against labour; they cannot even be possessed for possession's sake, because the only legitimate title to their possession—whether in the form of private ownership or in the form of public or collective ownership—is that they should serve labour, and thus, by serving labour, that they should make possible the achievement of the first principle of this order, namely, the universal destination of goods and the right to common use of them.

From this point of view, therefore, in consideration of human labour and of common access to the goods meant for man, one cannot exclude the socialization, in suitable conditions, of certain means of production."

Octogesima Adveniens (§23)

"Legislation is necessary, but it is not sufficient for setting up true relationships of justice and equality. If, beyond legal rules, there is really no deeper feeling of respect for and service to others, then even equality before the law can serve as an alibi for flagrant discrimination, continued exploitation and actual contempt. Without a renewed education in solidarity, an over-emphasis on equality can give rise to an individualism in which each one claims his own rights without wishing to be answerable for the common good."

Populorum Progressio (§58)

"In other words, the rule of free trade, taken by itself, is no longer able to govern international relations. Its advantages are certainly evident when the parties involved are not affected by any excessive inequalities of economic power: it is an incentive to progress and a reward for effort. That is why industrially developed countries see in it a law of justice. But the situation is no longer the same when economic conditions differ too widely from country to country: prices which are freely set in the market can produce unfair results."

Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (§32)

"Given these conditions, it is obvious that individual countries cannot rightly seek their own interests and develop themselves in isolation from the rest, for the prosperity and development of one country follows partly in the train of the prosperity and progress of all the rest and partly produces that prosperity and progress."

Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (§39)

"Interdependence must be transformed into solidarity, grounded on the principle that the goods of creation are meant for all. Avoiding every type of imperialism, the stronger nations must feel responsible for the other nations, based on the equality of all peoples and with respect for the differences."

 

[veritasluxmea]

To be fair tho, Catholic tradition has always leaned into the personal conversion and free choice from the heart, not mandating it by a governing authority. For example: 

On 6/20/2026 at 6:53 PM, linate said:

Octogesima Adveniens (§23)

"Legislation is necessary, but it is not sufficient for setting up true relationships of justice and equality. If, beyond legal rules, there is really no deeper feeling of respect for and service to others, then even equality before the law can serve as an alibi for flagrant discrimination, continued exploitation and actual contempt. Without a renewed education in solidarity, an over-emphasis on equality can give rise to an individualism in which each one claims his own rights without wishing to be answerable for the common good."

So the common good flows from the individual's immersion and education in the life of Christ. 

Living a holy life leads one towards solidarity but the point of the Gospel isn't solidarity. It's the personal conversion and holiness of the individuals Christ died for, you and me. A big mistake of looking to the church for economic ideas is that it tends to put a by-product of the Gospel as the goal, and achieves neither the by-product of economic solidarity or the goal of the Gospel. 

[little2add]

On 6/20/2026 at 9:53 PM, linate said:

socialism is bad

A communist/socialism society entails the absence of private property and social classes, and ultimately money and the state. 

socialism it's just another word for: communism,  

it has been estimated of deaths caused by communist governments in the 20th century range widely, with figures typically between 65 million and 110 million, depending on the definitions and methodologies used by scholars.

Stéphane Courtois’s introduction to The Black Book of Communism presents an approximate total around 94–100 million victims and asserts that Leninist and Marxist–Leninist regimes were responsible for roughly 100 million deaths.  

Popular graphics and secondary summaries often repeat "around 100 million" or "94 million" as a headline number for deaths attributed to communist states such as the USSR, Maoist China, Cambodia, North Korea and Eastern European regimes.

Capitalist societies such as United States created, and are responsible for the middle class.  

Be careful what you wish for

[rachael]

On 7/19/2026 at 9:20 PM, little2add said:

socialism it's just another word for: communism,  

No, it is not. 

Communism: Philosophy based on the equitable distribution of wealth among a nation’s citizens and common ownership of all property. In particular, it calls for the control of the means of production, such as manufacturing and agriculture, by the working class, or the proletariat. Its ultimate goal is to achieve a classless society.

Socialism: Socialism encompasses a broader spectrum of political beliefs but shares communism’s emphasis on an equitable distribution of wealth among citizens, as well as public ownership of the means of production, though not necessarily all of them. Socialist programs and policies can exist alongside capitalism in a society (i.e. libraries, free public education, Medicare for all), which is less likely in a communist system. Socialists may or may not see a communist system as their end goal.

Is Communism a Form of Socialism?

While related, socialism and communism are different. Socialism, for instance, seeks to bring equality to the means of production to the working class. Communism takes this a step further and revolutionizes both aspects of production and consumption. In that respect, communism can be viewed as a more extreme version of socialism.

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/100214/what-difference-between-communism-and-socialism.asp