Introduction

The introduction poses the book’s central theological concern to contrast mercy as described in Catholic theology with the sacrifices of persons and creation made to the global economy under neoliberalism. An initial definition of neoliberalism as a politicized mutation of capitalism, a statement of the book’s critical method, and outlines of each chapter are given. The introduction ends with a meditation upon the golden calf, a potent metaphor for neoliberalism, which Pope Francis calls an “idolatry of money.”

The Politics of Mercy against Neoliberal Sacrifice

This chapter responds to the neoliberal crises described in chapter 3 in light of the theology of mercy developed in chapter 4. First, theological ideas provide theoretical-critical leverage over against the neoliberal vision for the world: the doctrine of creation, imago dei, the freedom of Christ, and the hospitality of Christ. Second, a principle from CST or secular discourse (if the Catholic church has not developed an adequate response) offers a long-term goal for civilization: universal destination of goods and abolitionism. Finally, corporal works of mercy respond to neoliberal sacrifices: against environmental destruction, visiting the sick; slum proliferation, feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, and clothing the naked; mass incarceration, ransoming the captive; and mass deportation, welcoming the stranger. These works must be made political not only as direct action, but also as an interlocking strategy over the short-term, middle-term, and long-term for social transformation.

Conclusion

The conclusion summarizes the foregoing argument, relates the method of critique to the reality of crisis, and appeals for further reflection and action on the last work of mercy, burying the dead, since neoliberalism in its corruption of individual lives, social structures, and life on this planet faces Catholics with a test of their resurrection faith—whether they will decide to live it or to denounce it by aiding and abetting neoliberalism’s way of death. The book closes with the hope that Catholics will take antineoliberal and antiracist stances, will live out holistic mercy, and will foster abundant life.

Sacrifice, Race, and Indifference

This chapter describes four social crises either generated or exacerbated by the neoliberal revolution: environmental destruction, slum proliferation, mass incarceration, and mass deportation. Damage wrought to the planet has become supercharged under neoliberalism’s encasement of the global economy against demands that could be made in favor of the health of the globe. The neoliberal era has also witnessed the mass movement of people into urban slums, where slumdwellers are sacrificable to the needs of an increasingly urban world economy, and given neoliberal programs of cutting social welfare, they cannot make viable demands on the urban economy, either. Racial neoliberalism strategically deploys discourses and practices like colorblindness, securitization, and privatization to exploit and profit from the punishment of communities of color. Mass incarceration and mass deportation are prime examples. Neoliberalism generates a culture of indifference to the sacrifices it makes, and Pope Francis’s theological idea of corruption deepens analysis of this.

Neoliberal Capitalism

This chapter’s verdict on neoliberalism both corroborates the papal diagnosis and makes it more damning. Neoliberalism, both in the principles of its major theorists and in the facts of its execution, is devotion to the global economy as an inscrutable deity, which must be protected by legal and political institutions. The neoliberal project was first conceived in the 1930s, out of a desire by theorists and businesspeople to stave off the threat to global capitalism posed by the demos, the mass of the world’s population. It was first broadly enacted in the 1970s as a strategy of class warfare. Gradually neoliberalism became common sense, a standard for judging what reality is, via a transformation of human self-understanding as human capital. As such, neoliberalism came to constitute a comprehensive ethos of sacrifice, including even everyday life itself, that now stands in fundamental conflict with the Catholic ethos of mercy.

Catholic Social Thought against Economism

During the last three papacies, Catholic social teaching (CST) has become particularly sensitized to the danger of capitalist economism, a tendency to reduce the whole of life to economic matters. A concern with economism enters with John Paul’s first social encyclical, continues when Benedict XVI links the error of economism to his criticisms of economic utopianism, and matures when Pope Francis criticizes the contemporary dominant manifestation of economism, which he calls by various names, including “unfettered capitalism,” “the faceless economy,” “the economy that kills,” and “neoliberalism.” The chapter ends by discussing how neoliberalism has been made to seem friendly to Catholics by neoconservatives who distort CST by ignoring the continuity between the three most recent popes regarding opposition to economism.

A Theology of Mercy

This chapter constructs an antineoliberal systematic theology. It contests the bedrock neoliberal commitment to impersonal reality (represented by the market) by laying out a Trinitarian theology focusing on the distinctive characters of the three persons of the Trinity. Each Trinitarian person exhibits that reality is at its core mercy. Next it resists the neoliberal anthropology of human capital by describing what we call a neighbor anthropology and an innkeeper ecclesiology, that is, a theological anthropology and ecclesiology conceptualized out of Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. Finally, against the neoliberal ethos of mercilessness and culture of indifference we direct the works of mercy, presented traditionally as charity, and reimagined as structural and political: a politics of mercy.