Why “Cathonomics” Is Neither Catholic nor Economic, by John Horvat II

By John Horvat II, Crisis Magazine, April 11, 2022

John Horvat II is vice president of the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property and the author of Return to Order.

The title of the book Cathonomics: How Catholic Tradition Can Create a More Just Economy is intriguing, since it highlights that the Church has much to offer in the line of economics. The author tries to merge two fields that generally do not mix, although they should.

However, it is one thing to mix the two subjects; another to fuse clashing perspectives. 

Thus the book reads like its dramatic title. It is a forced merging of old and new, religious and ecological, St. Thomas Aquinas and Pope Francis. In the name of “tradition,” a Cathonomic hybrid emerges that is a spectacular clash of contraries, which ends up being neither one element nor the other. …