Michael Novak’s Spirit of Democratic Capitalism versus the spirit of Catholicism. Critical evaluation.

The article relates to the book by Michael Novak The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism. This article has already been published by me in Polish in 2016 (“Annales”, 2016, vol. 19, no. 3). However, due to the great interest in it from English-speaking countries, I decided to publish it in English in a slightly extended version compared to the previous one. The most intriguing thing about the book is the word combination of ‘spirit’ and ‘democratic capitalism’. We obviously do not intend in the following article to conduct lexicological analysis of the blend of words embedded in the title of the book under consideration. The article refreshes the cultural text written by Novak and analyses it in six new aspects, which have not yet been explored sufficiently in the literature. On one hand, the article analysis the notion of the ‘spirit’, which is discussed by Novak in his work. On the other hand, however, by utilizing the comparative method in the text (scientific synthesis method), it aims to discover if there really exists any compatibility between the ‘spirit of democratic capitalism’ and the ‘spirit of Catholicism’, or if there is a gap between them. The original comparison between the ‘spirit of capitalism’ and the ‘spirit of Catholicism’ included in the text, does not only stand out from other Novak’s commentators, but it can also prove useful for undertaking the discussion with the subject under consideration.