Martin SCHLAG. The Business Francis Means: Understanding the Pope’s Message on the Economy. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2017. Pp. 196. $24.95 pb. ISBN 978-0-8132-2973-7. Reviewed by Paul MISNER, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI 53201

Martin Schlag wrote this book at the request of the publisher of other of his works, with a particular target audience in mind:  American Catholics who are cool or dismissive of the pronouncements of Pope Francis on the economy.  It might seem as if Francis was departing from the approach of his immediate predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, in his talk about poverty, as if to blame it all on capitalism and business. 

Writing as a self-described conservative, the author sympathizes with the mindset of these readers, and sets out to win them over to an appreciation of this pope’s “message on the economy.”  The resulting booklet deserves attention from any reader (not just those put off by this new Latin American pope) who is concerned with the challenges of Christian life vis-a-vis contemporary economics and politics.  Though not a member of the target audience for which the book was written, I can only chime in with the sentence Mary Hirschfeld wrote for a blurb on the back cover:  “For those seeking to understand how to order their economic pursuits to a faithful and holy life, The Business Francis Means is indispensable.”

Proceeding carefully and in a readable fashion, Schlag examines some contexts that are necessary to take into consideration.  He manages to draw together centuries of Catholic reflection on economics in his brief opening chapters.  We also find much here on the “spiritual and cultural context” of the life experience of Jorge-Mario Bergoglio in Argentina (Austen Ivereigh’s 2014 biography of Francis undergirds his presentation here).  Francis never claims to be an academically trained theological writer, nor an economist.  In his guidance role in church leadership, though, the pope habitually draws upon what he calls the “theology of the people.” This is a brand of theology that can be fixed fairly well in the Latin American theological scene and distinguished from “liberation theology” (see Index, esp. 67-71; 114-16).  Quotations from his encyclicals Evangelii Gaudium (2013) and Laudato Si’: On Care for our Common Home occur so often in the course of Schlag’s presentation that the reader becomes quite familiar with the pope’s style and message.  By the time the reader reaches p. 104 (a 2017 talk in a “pastoral visit” to Genoa), he or she is accustomed to Francis’s approach and terminology, e.g.:  “When the economy is made up of good entrepreneurs, businesses are friends of the people and also of the poor.  When it falls into the hands of the speculators, all is ruined.”

Against this background, in his third chapter (pp. 98-148), Schlag lays out and interprets what Pope Francis has said and written about business, money, a free market, entrepreneurship, and the wealth/poverty gap.  The moral guidelines for market activity that the pope emphasizes are spelled out in seven more specific topics with a focus on justice and charity (127-48).  Explaining the topic of “the idolatry of money,” e.g., Schlag delves into “consumerism” (as distinguished from reasonable “consumption”) and even its connection with public debt (131): “The amount of public debt Western nations have accumulated is one of the major sources of rent-seeking. The rich who have capital enough to buy bonds receive interest from the taxes paid by the whole population.”

The concluding chapter (156-69) offers a deeper, more theological consideration, a meditation really, on personal relations — as revealed in the mystery of the divine Trinity, and reflected in Christian life.  From biblical sources through religious and economic traditions to the construal of Catholic social teaching in the utterances of Pope Francis, this is an unusually informative and helpful read.