Catholic Social Economics in ASE Journals: An 80-Year Review

In December of 1942 in the first article published in the Review of Social Economy (Volume 1, Issue 1, page 1), Rt. Rev. Msgr. John A. Ryan put forth ‘Two Objectives for Catholic Economists’. These objectives started with ‘to make the ethical aspect of the economic doctrine as prominent as possible’ and continued with ‘to study and recommend reforms in our economic institutions’. More than 80 years later, have decades of economic and political changes altered the agenda? This paper represents a first entry toward answering this question by critically reviewing the history of qualitative and quantitative contributions by economists concerned with Catholicism in the two flagship journals of the Association for Social Economics. The paper is based on systematic literature review using algorithmic search parameters and generative AI to understand contributions in these journals relative to Msgr. Ryan’s original objectives.