(FORTUNE Magazine) – The late news from Madrid is that the new Catholic catechism, a papal document of around 700 pages thus far available only in French and Spanish -- the English-language version is several months away -- is outselling Madonna's Sex. In candor, your servant is not quite sure whom to root for in this literary competition. He naturally declines to take Madonna seriously but has the exact same reaction to the Church whenever it gets around to pronouncing on economics. Unfortunately, the latest text does this quite a lot. Catechisme de l'Eglise Catholique represents a major effort to restate the tenets of faith and redefine sinfulness in a world that has changed somewhat since the last such broad-gauged effort, the Council of Trent (1545-63). The bad economics is concentrated in the greatly expanded elaboration of the Seventh Commandment (''Thou shalt not steal''). Gripped by a communitarian ethic, the church continues to focus on the motives of economic players rather than the outcomes of economic behavior and remains oblivious of Adam Smith's great insight: that individuals pursuing their own self-interest end up enriching the whole community. So it bemoans the profit motive, sees speculation as preying on the ignorance and distress of others, worries that markets do not always meet human needs, and wants them regulated ''according to a just hierarchy of values,'' presumably known to every member of the Federal Trade Commission. It demands that everyone receive a ''just salary,'' neither too high nor too low, whether the guy is hitting .190 or .330. It rejects as a ''sin against the dignity of persons'' the concept that workers shall be viewed by their employers as essentially ''a source of profit.'' Words of wisdom for IBM, eh? Several passages sound like a Tom Harkin assault on the greed of the Reaganite Eighties. Excessive consumption is denounced in several different contexts. Singled out particularly are people who spend heavily on animal pets while humans are starving. ''It is shameful to spend on ((animals)) such sums as ought by priority to soothe the misery of men.'' Given that starvation is never caused by a dearth of food on the planet, why is it shameful? Madonna is at least less illogical.