Common Sense About the Common Good

Pope Leo XIII wrote of the "harvest of misery" that socialism brings. Pius XI said that it's impossible to be a good Catholic and a good socialist. John Paul II spent his papacy combating socialism's dehumanizing statism.

Yet somehow this long-discredited economic philosophy is making a comeback, not only on college campuses and political talk shows, but among sincere Catholics. Some think it could be the answer to greed and globalism. Others even argue that it's the best way to obey Christ's command to help the poor.

Let's give socialism a fresh chance, they say. A democratic socialism this time, friendly to religion and ordered to the common good like the Church says the economy should be.

In Can a Catholic Be a Socialist?, Trent Horn and Catherine R. Pakaluk refute this tempting but false notion. Drawing on Scripture, history, Catholic social teaching, and basic economic reality, they show beyond a doubt that Catholicism and socialism are utterly incompatible.