True Wealth of Nations

The detailed demands of a modern economy and the transcendental concerns of people of faith can no longer be regarded as separate realities. Economic development presents both economic and ethical challenges that must be addressed. On the one hand, Christianity has historically stressed the obligation of the prosperous to assist the poor. On the other, modern economics has come to understand the critical relevance of wealth creation to the economic well-being of the poor. Clearly, economists and theologians need to converse creatively.

Economics as a discipline is accustomed to considering wealth as the normal goal of economic processes, and theologians have to understand how these processes work. From a religious perspective, however, this is too narrow. Prosperity - the "true wealth" of our project's title - is a better term than wealth as traditionally defined, as it includes more of what people seek from their economic activity. One way of defining this new and richer meaning of prosperity is as the very reverse of how Thomas Hobbes described "life in an unregulated state of nature" - as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Prosperity is the opposite of all of those, not just the second of them. It includes participation in community, sufficiency of wealth, pleasure and happiness, civilization, and culture, and longevity including good health. Wealth creation as economists use the term is essential, but only a part of what we mean by prosperity.

To focus attention on these issues, the project will attend to the proposition that the operation of economic processes in accordance with Catholic social thought would lead to true prosperity for all. Thus the project sets out to investigate issues of both causality and morality.

The True Wealth research project is directed by Paul Caron, retired head of JP Morgan banks in Belgium and Switzerland, and Daniel Finn, professor of economics and theology at St. John's University, Collegeville, Minnesota.

For the complete report, click below:
True Wealth of Nations
True Wealth of Nations, Appendix A
True Wealth of Nations, Appendix B
True Wealth of Nations, Appendix C