Sometimes we are met with a rationale for some event or action and, after some brief reflection, we may then think, "Yes, that makes an infinite amount of sense."
An example may be when a friend describes the way that his house has been oriented so that it can take advantage of the prevailing regional breeze. So it was when I learned an interesting fact regarding Catholic apologist and publisher Frank Sheed (and his wife, Maisie Ward).
Catholic World Report described Sheed this way:
Although Frank Sheed (1897-1981) authored over twenty books—including Theology and Sanity, A Map of Life, Society and Sanity, Knowing God, and To Know Christ Jesus—and
founded, with his wife Maisie Ward, the Sheed & Ward imprint, he is
not nearly as well known as G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis. Many,
however, think Sheed is the equal of Chesterton and Lewis as a Christian
apologist, deserving of more attention as not only a defender of the
Faith, but as an evangelist, catechist, and communicator.
It may have been fifteen years ago that I was first introduced to Sheed's writing by a priest that I know. The book he suggested was excellent. Sheed's writing was clear, articulate and persuasive. I read another two books of his over the years and grew to be more impressed by his Catholic apologetics and I also learned that the Sheed & Ward publishing firm was thought of as the Tiffany of the Catholic world until Sheed's death in 1981.
Yet it wasn't any of his writings that most stunned me about what Sheed accomplished in his life, but it was something that he published that would seem, initially, to most observers to have no direct Catholic connection at all.
Perhaps five or six years ago I was reading a book on Austrian economics at Mises.org and I noticed something unusual, the book had been published by Sheed and Ward.
No, I thought, this can't be the same Sheed and Ward, the Catholic publishing firm. It, of course, was.
Why, I wondered, had Sheed published a book concerned with Austrian economics? In fact, it wasn't just one book, a search at Mises.org reveals numerous publications by Sheed and Ward of Austrian economists. Sheed and Ward may have even been the dominant publishing house of Austrian economics in the 1970s.
What was it that caused him to publish such works?
I haven't come across any quotes from Sheed about his decision to publish those volumes, so everything from here on out will simply be my conjecture. Quite simply, I believe that Sheed pushed into the publishing of Austrian economics because it has, at its very core, a belief that following natural law is the imperative for all individuals, for all of mankind. Failure to heed this law will, inevitably, result in catastrophe. This belief in the centrality of natural law is also core to Catholicism and all of Christianity.
This Austrian/Catholic centrality of natural law, of course, is very different than the view maintained by the Keynesian/Monetarist oriented portion of the economics profession. Their focus on GDP, regulating money growth as a way to maximize GDP, state intervention to achieve an end are all decidedly anti-natural law. For them, the ends justify the means. This type of world has no room for the rights of the individual.
Here is how Sheed viewed the importance of the individual:
Never think that the way of man is prosaic. We are a mixture of matter
and spirit, and … the only beings who die and do not stay dead: it seems
an odd way to our goal that as the last stage on the way to it all of
us, saint and sinner, should fall apart. We are the only beings with an
everlasting destiny who have not reached their final state. By
comparison there is something cozy and settled about angels, good and
bad. Men are the only beings whose destiny is uncertain. There is an
effect of this in our consciousness, if we choose to analyze it. There
is a two-way drag in all of us, and nothing could be more actual and
less academic than this curious fact. How actual it is we can see if we
compare our knowledge that the planet we live on is not anchored in
space. This ought to be, one would think, the first thing we should be
aware of, yet it was only a few centuries ago that scientists arrived at
it; and most of us still have to take the word of scientists for it. No
one of us has ever felt the whizz of the world through space and the
counter-drag of whatever power it is that keeps us upon the earth’s
surface. But we do feel the almost continuous drag in ourselves
downwards towards nothingness and the all too occasional upward thrust.
Man is the cockpit of a battle. We are the only creatures who can choose
side and side in this battle. We are the only beings left who can
either choose or refuse God. All the excitement of our universe is
centered in [us].
Compare this to a quote from Austrian (and atheist) Murray Rothbard:
I am
convinced that it is no accident that freedom, limited government, natural
rights, and the market economy only really developed in Western civilization. I
am convinced that the reason is the attitudes developed by the Christian Church
in general, and the Roman Catholic Church in particular. Christianity, with its
unique focus on (a) the individual as created in the image of God, and (b) in
the central mystery of the Incarnation, God created his Son as a fully human
person- (this) means that each individual and his salvation is of central
divine concern….
Thus,
even though I am not a believer, I hail Christianity, and especially
Catholicism, as the underpinning of liberty.
The Austrian/Catholic understands that man's purpose is to use his free will to follow natural law. If government makes a decision about the desirability of some outcome, maximizing GDP as an example, other rights must be sacrificed by force to reach this end. The individual's right to choose must be sacrificed.
This is morally wrong. The Keynesians and Monetarists believe that it is fine to utilize a central bank to print money from thin air and forcibly steal from some to give to others. To the Catholic/Austrian, this isn't any different than knocking over a liquor store even if you intend to give the money to the poor. You can't violate natural law, not even to achieve a good outcome. To the Austrian/Catholic, the ends do not justify the means.
For Sheed, the individual is locked in a battle with evil. This evil is an attempt to get us to abandon the following of natural law. When Rothbard talks about Catholicism as the underpinning of liberty, he is recognizing that choice is critically important to the nature of man. Rothbard referred to man as a learning creature. He must make choices and accept consequences in order to learn and grow. The limiting of those choices by government decree to him was decidedly anti-human.
In the same way, Christianity recognizes that the soul needs to grow. It needs to learn to express love for one's neighbor, the ultimate commandment. The only way that this is possible is by the utilization of one's free will to follow natural law. Love involves choice and freedom.
The Catholic apologist recognizes that the Creator could have made us as automatons (per C.S. Lewis), always doing the right thing. He did not do this, because without the ability to choose, no love is possible. In my mind, there is no way that Catholicism can support any other economic theory than Austrian economics. The two seem to be beautifully intertwined.
So, on that day several years ago when I discovered that Frank Sheed had pushed into the publishing of Austrian economics in the years before his death, I very quickly realized, "Yes, that makes an infinite amount of sense."
Disclaimer: Nothing on this site should be construed as investment advice. It is all merely the opinion of the author.
