The Catholic Economic Thought:

Origin, development and decline

Abstract

In this article we seek to make a compendium of the main ideas that guided the so-called Catholic Economic Thought, from its emergence, result of scholastic reflection, to its fragmentation, linked to the circumstances imposed by the Second World War. Catholic reflection on the functioning of the economy constitutes a little explored chapter by the field of the History of Ideas and, specifically, by the History of Economic Thought. The first systematic contributions, in this sense, are made by the scholastics, from Thomas Aquinas to the intellectuals of the Salamanca School, seeking, in general, to position catholic morality in the face of the economic transformations generated by the Commercial and Urban Renaissance, between the centuries XI and XIII. The sequence of historical events, such as the great navigations, the emergence of new trade routes, the colonization of America, and the consolidation of mercantile capitalism demanded that the Catholic Church continue to think about the problems arising from these new economic dynamics. According to the need, the intellectual elites of catholicism took turns in the search for the “christianization” of the economy, sometimes more intensely, sometimes with long intervals of silence, until it was structured in more palpable forms between the centuries XIX and XX.