The new issue of Markets & Morality (vol. 7, number 1, which is not yet up on the Acton site) features a wonderful piece by Anthony G. Percy (a diocesan priest in Australia) on the unknown economic writings of Pope Pius XII, which have him celebrating commercial initiative, defending finance capital, affirming the right of private ownership, warning about the dangerous of public assistance, and explaining the role of profit and entrepreneurship in social progress. This quotation caught my eye, from Pius XII’s 1950 address to “representatives of the Chambers of Commerce from all over the world”:
“It is not without impressive signficiance that mythology gave wings to Mercury [the pagan god of commerce]. Should we not see in that the symbol of the liberty that commerce needs to go and come across the borders of its own country?”
(The issue also contains the first-ever English translation of Commentary on the Resolution of Money by Martin de Azpilcueta (Doctor Navarrus) from 1556.)
