Over the past decade, various Vatican offices have produced several documents addressing the vexed topic of finance and banking. Given the turmoil and scandals characterizing the world’s financial sectors over the past two decades, such interventions are to be expected, even welcomed. But while these texts often set out useful principles for approaching this topic, they’ve tended to reflect a selective and, at times, questionable grasp of the subject-matter. This pattern is, alas, replicated in the Church’s latest official statement about the financial sector, this time jointly issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) and the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.

Entitled “Oeconomicae et pecuniariae quaestiones [Economic and Monetary Questions]: Considerations for an ethical discernment on certain aspects of the current economic-financial system,” this text is divided into four parts. The first, second, and fourth sections contain what I think is a sound set of criteria for analyzing the morality of finance and financial markets. These are the parts in which the CDF’s imprint upon this document is very obvious.