Opinion

Is something being lost to economics with the rejection of religion?

Rite & Reason: Gospel values differ from economic values. In Luke’s Gospel it is said that anyone with two tunics should give one away

Sunday trading was regarded as the triumph over commerce over religion. Photograph: Ellius Grace/The New York Times
Dr Finola Kennedy
Sun Sept 29 2024 - 00:30

Just 30 years ago, Sunday trading began, allowing supermarkets and other large retail outlets, such as Arnotts, Brown Thomas and Marks & Spencer in Dublin, to open on Sundays. At the time, the change was regarded as a convenient blessing for many, while others regarded it as the triumph of economics over religion.

Today, online shopping allows shopping every day. Perhaps it’s an unusual question at a time when religion is in decline in Ireland, but it may be worth asking. Does religion have anything to contribute to economics? If so, is something being lost to economics with the rejection of religion?

In the Irish context, religion refers chiefly, but not exclusively, to Catholicism. The Wealth of Nations, written by Adam Smith, the founding father of economics and a Scottish Presbyterian, contains many references to religion, including the following harsh judgment that clergy are driven by economic self-interest: “In the church of Rome, the industry and zeal of the inferior [junior] clergy are kept more alive by the powerful motive of self-interest, than perhaps in any established protestant church.” Smith points out that the parochial clergy derive a good deal of their income from the people.

Economics, the dismal science, has been to the forefront of Irish life for decades. Much of our material progress and related self-esteem has been measured by growth in GNP. There is probably less emphasis on how the GNP is shared. Gospel values differ from economic values: in Luke’s Gospel it is said that anyone with two tunics should give one away. Care and service of neighbour is central to the Gospel.

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Far from dismal, the Gospel emphasises hope. Apart from the Gospel, there are some valuable insights that come from other religious writing. A few years ago, Pope Francis spoke of the need to protect our “common home” in the encyclical, Laudato Sì. More than 130 years earlier, in his encyclical Rerum Novarum, (Revolutionary Change), Pope Leo XIII urged the need to improve the conditions of the working class and spoke of the necessity of the just wage.

I have yet to discover writings by Irish economists on any connection between religion and economics – for good or otherwise

The pope spoke of the “enormous fortunes of the few and the poverty of the masses”. If not true of Ireland today, it was in the past and is surely true globally.

The Gospel could not be stronger regarding the child. For a man guilty of “scandalising” the child, “it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck and that he be drowned in the depth of the sea”.

Whatever the gospel message, power seems to be at the heart of the problems of the church. Power was the dark heart of abuse. The abusers were in control, whether they were priests, Brothers, teachers or family members. But sexual vulnerability may reflect economic vulnerability. A preventative step against future abuse would be a fairer income distribution. Last year the CSO found that, by household composition, the risk of poverty was highest in single-adult households (27 per cent) and households of one adult with children (about 20 per cent). Children and single adults were a majority of the abused.

Sexual abuse by clergy turned many away from the church, but among others, there may also have been a grievance that the church was rich when many were poor. The extent to which lavish church buildings dominated the landscape, often partly built with the pennies of the poor, at a time when the poor lived in Spartan conditions, gives pause for thought.

There don’t seem to be many Catholics among the top economic intellectuals in Ireland or elsewhere. In the 20th century, three acclaimed economists, all Nobel Prize winners, Gary Becker, Milton Friedman and Paul Samuelson, were Jewish.

I have yet to discover writings by Irish economists on any connection between religion and economics – for good or otherwise. Yet this is not the case in Europe. Eric Roll’s classic History of Economic Thought begins with a chapter on the Old Testament. Max Weber took as a theme The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, while RH Tawney wrote Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. By contrast, Marx dismissed religion as the opium of the people.

In view of all the conflict and cruelty in the world, often inspired by economic motives, has “Love your neighbour” been totally discarded, if ever truly practised?

Dr Finola Kennedy is an economist and author of Cottage to Creche: Family Change in Ireland (2001), Frank Duff: A Life Story (2011) and Local Matters: Parish, Local Government and Community in Ireland (2022)