Although recent attempts to state the coherence or integrating idea within Catholic Social Thought have contributed much to our understanding of the tradition, the attempts have been based on improper methodological presuppositions. For this reason the authors offering these theories have been unable to justify their selection and emphasis on certain documents; they have not fully considered the challenge to their theories by development in the integrating idea taken as most essential; and they have not been methodologically clear about the role which their own vision plays in the historical retrieval. Recognition of such problems in historical analysis, and the path toward dealing with them today in an historically conscious way, is found in the work of Ernst Troeltsch.

In his recent works Michael Novak offers an affirmation of “democratic capitalism” based on a Christian personalist perspective. Novak's scholarship has received increasing attention since the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, and particularly since the recent encyclical Centesimus Annus. In that encyclical John Paul II offered a qualified affirmation of market economies. This article addresses an important question: to what extent can a Christian personalist social theory be used to offer an affirmation of a market economy, and how might it offer vision and constructive critique? I initiate a creative dialogue between the personalism of Emmanuel Mounier and Michael Novak's presentation of democratic capitalism. I argue that Novak has shed important light on the positive moral aspects of a market system, but I identify and emphasize the important remaining areas for moral concern.