The Acton Institute and George Weigel are two of Catholic America’s most prominent proponents of market-based economics.
But they have quite different views of Pope Benedict XVI’s new social encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth).
The Acton Institute offers a strongly positive assessment, available here in a section of its website that it has devoted to the new papal document.
In contrast, Weigel yesterday published an analysis at National Review Online in which he was sharply critical of portions of the encyclical that appear to favor economic redistribution over free-market economics.
Weigel concludes that Caritas in Veritate is an unsatisfactory hybrid of these negative elements, which he attributes to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and of positive components of the encyclical that Weigel attributes to the sole authorship of Pope Benedict XVI. According to Weigel, “The net result is, with respect, an encyclical that resembles a duck-billed platypus.”