Catholic perspectives on poverty and misery: from ninetheenth century French Catholic social economists to the contribution of moralists

The first generation of Catholic social economists, which also included some moral philosophers, achieved a coherent view of economic problems according to natural law and to the gospel of the Catholic Church. They studied the causes of the increasingly unequal distribution of income in the processes of industrialisation and identified the need for regulating institutions to limit the misery of the working class. They considered charity and personal relationships as the main remedy to the problem of misery, but they became progressively open to state intervention to assure an organic regulation of the bodies responsible for organising redistribution.