Martin Rhonheimer (born 1950 in Zurich, Switzerland) is a Swiss political philosophy professor and priest of the Catholic personal prelature Opus Dei. As of July 2017[update] he is teaching professor at the Opus Dei-affiliated Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome.
Rhonheimer was born 1950 in Zurich, Switzerland into a Swiss Jewish family.[1] 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.[citation needed] In 1983, he was ordained a priest.[citation needed]
As of July 2017[update] 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.
Rhonheimer's regular editorials have been published by the German FAZ[2][3] and Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
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.[4]
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".[2] ["In the meantime, we have gotten a welfare-state church-system, because the church has become so integrated into the structures of the redistributive tax and welfare state that it is no longer free to question a system that, for example, blatantly contradicts the principle of subsidiarity and provides economically false incentives."]
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.
