Abstract

This was one of SCSS President Stephen M. Krason’s “Neither Left nor Right, but Catholic” columns that appear monthly in Crisis and The Wanderer. In it, he summarizes his conclusions about the conformity of current American conservatism with Catholic social teaching—as put forth in the papal social encyclicals—on the subject of economics and social welfare policy from his 2017 book, Catholicism and American Political Ideologies. His analysis is based on the 2012 Republican party platform, which was held to be a particularly conservative document—and thus a good measure of current conservative thinking on public policy questions. He concludes that American conservative thinking about economics and social welfare policy conforms reasonably well—certainly not perfectly—with Catholic social teaching.