The new outlook caused the Church great uneasiness, and it has not yet adjusted itself to even the externals of the modern epoch. ....but the professed Christian still shudders inwardly at the workings of a civilization which his faith cannot grasp. The Church strongly resented modernity and the modern spirit. What wonder, then, that it allied itself with those whom resentment had driven to wish for the break-up of this wonderful new world, and feverishly explored its well-stocked arsenal for the means to denounce the earthly struggle for work and wealth.
von Mises blows it. Two words: Rerum Novarum. To claim that the Church did not know how to respond to the Industrial Revolution is absurd. Now during the 19th Century, Catholic countries were caught in a seeming paradox. They respected and defended private property, but this new system of production had problems and abuses. How to respond? Into this confusion the shining light of Rerum Novarum was published. It is a Capitalist Manifesto utterly condemning socialism and stressing the importance of private property and limited government. However, it also stresses the need for Catholics to respect workers, and proposes collective bargaining as the means to settle disputes. It was, in one word, a masterpiece.
The problems in the Church are not that it hasn't responded -- it clearly has. The problem is that it won't enforce its teachings.
1. Usury: Utterly condemned by the Church, but is that enforced? I believe that the Vatican even issues a credit card. I hope this is not true, but it causes me to shudder. Do you think that if the Church enforced usury restrictions, the housing bubble would have occurred? Could the Federal Reserve even exist if usury were outlawed? This is a Catholic failure. Our doctrine is correct, but we don't enforce it.
2. Labor Unions: Collective bargaining is the proposed solution to settle disputes in the capitalist system. Pope Leo put down some very general guidelines for the unions, but it was St. Pius X who clarified them in 1912 with Singulari Quadam. Now read S.Q., and ask yourself if there is any union in the USA that a Catholic can belong to. Again, a failure to enforce. If in the 1920s, when the Jewish Labor Bund and socialists invaded the American Labor movement, the Catholic bishops had condemned it and commanded Catholics to form their own unions, then today we would have vibrant Catholic unions that actually helped their members. Instead the unions in the USA are a group of socialists, abortionists, homosexual promoters (teachers unions), and whiners. A huge loss.
3. Liberation theology: A complete heresy that goes against the condemnations of R.N. and Q.A. It should be suppressed and its followers excommunicated. Greatly helped along by the horrible Dorothy Day. Instead they got a slap on the wrist by JPII, and continue to this day spouting their socialist tripe. And so the Church is viewed as the enemy to the property owner, the business owner, and the entrepreneur, when nothing can be further from the truth.
4. Subsidiarity: Power is supposed to be pushed down to the lowest levels, and divided up. This is based on the belief of Original Sin, and that the Earthly City is the city of the devil (both doctrines greatly diminished after Vat. II). It tracks closely the system God set up when he set up the government of Israel headed by mere Judges to settle disputes. Most Catholics have probably never heard of the term. Failure.
So the Church does have problems that need to be corrected. However the doctrine is there. It just needs to be taught and enforced.
