Groping Toward a Catholic von Mises
I like to find connections in different areas of knowledge. If I discovered a connection between Flannery O'Connor's practice of fiction and Augustine's criticism of Pelagianism, complete with concrete examples, I'd be delighted. Fifteen years ago, I vaguely discerned similarities between Merton, Kerouac, Salinger, and other disparate twentieth-century writers, and started to put together a book. The book never materialized, but one of my most-popular articles ("Three American Sophomores") came out of it.
I've recently begun to discern connections between Francis Fernandez' In Conversation with God and libertarian eco-politics in the tradition of von Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard. I'm a long way from putting it altogether, but the structure that's beginning to emerge: Fernandez emphasizes the importance of earning money, not in the pursuit of greed, but in fulfillment of your role on earth as a father and participant in society. Your vocation is your friend. It makes you a better person because it makes you the person God meant you to be. If you fulfill your vocation well, you make money. Money is a byproduct only, but it is a legitimate byproduct, which you then use to support your family and give to charity.
Enter Mises libertarianism: Man should be left free to pursue economic gain. Such freedom let's man pursue the pantheon of goods that earthly living offers, including the after-life, if a man so chooses. Any intrusion by the government impinges on that freedom. The intrusion might be miniscule and, by itself, unimportant, but impinge it does. As government intrusion grows, man's economic freedom starts to shrink.
Mises and company point out that economic constraints lead to other constraints. I believe Fernandez would emphasize that, as man's economic freedom starts to shrink, his freedom to pursue his vocation shrinks, and with it shrinks his freedom to pursue what God wants him to be.
That, anyway, is the image that's beginning to emerge in my head. I don't think anyone could accuse Fernandez of unorthodoxy (he's an Escriva-ite), so it might be a sane approach to embracing a Catholic form of libertarianism. Catholicism, at least in its popular forms, seems too friendly toward the State. I would think it's a natural enemy of the State, but I fear it doesn't want to be too vocal in its criticism of modern democracies (which have done more to expand the State than any monarchy ever did) because it was (rightfully) slow to embrace the whole concept of democracy in the first place.
