David Paul Deavel has a fine review of Rev. Robert Sirico’s Defending the Free Market over at National Review Online.

Deavel notes:

What makes Sirico’s defense of a free economy all the stronger is his consistent acknowledgment that a functioning free market neither immanentizes the eschaton, making heaven on earth, nor makes a society virtuous or whole. Freedom of economic (and other) action is not the goal of society — acting virtuously in freedom is. And the intellectual and spiritual resources for virtuous action do not inhere in markets themselves. In his chapter on why state-sponsored health care is not really passionate answer, he writes against “the seduction that the power of economic freedom can in itself generate a system of health care marked by honesty and love.” Economic freedom must be panied by other kinds of freedom, particularly religious, and by people thinking about their duties toward the sick, the dying, and the poor. Homo economicus may be a useful abstraction for certain economics problems, but the human capital of love, loyalty, and sacrifice is the kind of capital required for a successful capitalism.

Read the entire review at National Review Online.