Speaking as an economist, there is plenty of scope for incoroporating the Catholic church’s perspective on things. The most obvious is to invoke market failures. For example, environmental pollution. The reason why pollution occurs is that the social cost (which has an economic aspect to it as well) is not borne by polluters because of a market failure.

Most of the so-called nouveau sins can be viewed in a similar way.

Excessive wealth I rather suspect is just an attempt to rephrase the old “thou shalt not worship Mamon.” As has been pointed out by just about every blogger to the right of Karl Marx what exactly is “excessive” is open to debate. And if you use that wealth to provide an ongoing stream of support for others (a la Bill Gates) is that still excessive?

Morally debatable experiments and violations of fundamental human rights are perhaps the least economics-related promulgations. These seem to be both based on normative/moral issues – something economics is not intended to address.

I wouldn’t want to be a Catholic economist. On the one hand you are trained to question why things are so whilst on the other you are told because it is God’s will. Good hunting ground for therapists, I reckon.