You might remember him as President Trump’s Director of Communications who was sacked after 11 days in the White House. But “The Mooch” has owned his mistakes and reinvented his business in the spirit of a true entrepreneur, and, as it happens, a practising Catholic. I spoke to him about finance, his new ventures, his faith, and - something we Catholics sometimes tend to ignore - the future.
Finance is not the first thing that comes to mind when we think of Catholic social teaching, but the Church has long made pronouncements on the limits of what markets and marketeers ought to be allowed to do. Moreover, Catholic directives have had to adapt as economic reality shifts. In the Middle Ages, interest collection was condemned as usury, but the Church has since clarified that the sin lies in extortion, not the practice itself. The Church sets boundaries based on principles which are meant to aid the good of society, focusing our hearts and minds on values beyond the merely material. In this vein, Pope Leo XIII promulgated the encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891, endorsing the right of workers to form unions, while rejecting both socialism and unrestricted capitalism. Coming after the Industrial Revolution, the Pope thought it necessary to respond to a new economic reality. Today, some say we find ourselves amidst a new revolution, which in turn requires a reassessment. One of these avant-gardists is Anthony Scaramucci.
