Timing is Everything: Historical Contingency as a Factor in the Impact of Catholic Social Teaching Upon Managerial Practices

Abstract

John Paul II’s prescriptions for humanizing the world economy are not likely to have the impact of Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum because the reception accorded reform proposals depends on opportunity and circumstances as well as the ethical soundness and the logic of the principles advanced. Because of historical circumstances, Thomas More’s critique of the emerging agricultural capitalism of his time was ignored while Catholic Social Teaching inspired by Ketteler’s work, endorsed and publicized by Leo, strongly impacted the industrializing world of a century ago. Whereas More defended a church seen as an impediment to economic progress by leading-edge Protestant entrepreneurs, Catholic Social Teaching was propagated at a time when Catholicism was enmeshed in the spread of industrialization. In our current world economy, increasingly dominated by non-Catholic regions of the East and a resurgent liberalism in the West, John Paul’s recommendations currently seem more likely to meet the fate of More’s critique than of Leo’s. Implications for stakeholder theory are also discussed.