On Monday, January 28, the Rev. Robert Sirico participated in a debate, hosted by the Aquinas Institute for Catholic Thought, on the role of government in helping the poor. Fr. Sirico debated Michael Sean Winters, a writer with the National Catholic Reporter, on the campus of the University of Colorado in Boulder.

The priest said during the debate that with the “overarching ethical orientation” a capitalist economy needs, it can provide for the needs of the poor. No solution, he said, will “get around the necessity of morally transforming society.”

He maintained that the free market is “morally neutral” and that the human actors in the market must bring good morals to it.

Winters argued that the free market system is not morally-neutral. Both men were dismissive of the theory of distributism, which upholds the right to private property but seeks to maximize the number of owners of that property.

While he believes distributism “is one of the legitimate approaches to an economy,” Fr. Sirico also thinks there are problems with it, calling it more of a “moral, aesthetic critique of forms of crass capitalism” than “an economic system.”

And Winters expressed having “a hard time seeing how we get from here, to any of the distributivist proposals I’m familiar with.”

Acton hopes to have a video of the debate posted on the PowerBlog early next week. For now, read “Catholic Thinkers Debate Government’s Role in Helping Poor” at the Catholic News Agency.