Martin Rhonheimer


Martin Rhonheimer is a Swiss political philosophy professor and priest of the Catholic personal prelature Opus Dei. he is teaching professor at the Opus Dei-affiliated Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome.

Life

Rhonheimer was born 1950 in Zurich, Switzerland into a Swiss Jewish family. He studied philosophy, history, political science and theology in Zurich and Rome.
In 1974, he joined the personal prelature Opus Dei as a numerary member.
In 1983, he was ordained a priest.
he teaches at the Opus Dei-affiliated Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome. His main interests are in political philosophy, ethics, the history of liberalism.

Opinions

Rhonheimer's regular editorials have been published by the German FAZ and Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

Separation of church and state

In 2014, Rhonheimer wrote that a foundational element of Christianity was the separation of church and politics, which could be understood as synonymous to separation of church and state.

Economy

In 2017, Rhonheimer criticized Pope Francis' view that "this economy kills". He supports neoliberal views of entrepreneurship, for which free market capitalism is "necessary". He says that "seeking profits is good per se and in a free and lawfully ordered market system it creates wellbeing for everyone". He criticizes Catholic social teachings because there were "no exact formulations in the New Testament" and they "had always been a product of their time".

Books

Rhonheimer has published a dozen books on topics concerning the philosophy of moral action, virtue, natural law, Aquinas, Aristotle, the ethics of sexuality and bioethics.
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