Pope Urges Forming New World Economic Order to Work for the ‘Common
Good’
Published: July 7, 2009
He criticized the current economic
system, “where the pernicious effects of sin are evident,” and urged
financiers in particular to “rediscover the genuinely ethical foundation
of their activity.” He also
called for “greater social responsibility” on the part of business.
“Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper
means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks
destroying wealth and creating poverty,” Benedict wrote in his
new encyclical, which the
Vatican released on Tuesday. More than
two years in the making, “Caritas in Veritate,” or “Charity in Truth,”
is Benedict’s third encyclical since he became pope in 2005. Filled with
terms like “globalization,” “market economy,” “outsourcing,” “labor
unions” and “alternative energy,” it is not surprising that the Italian
media reported that the Vatican was having difficulty translating the
144-page document into Latin.
Reportedly delayed to take into consideration the financial crisis, it
was released by the Vatican on the eve of the
Group of 8 industrialized
nations summit meeting, which opens in Italy on Wednesday, and before
Benedict is expected to receive
President Obama at the Vatican
on Friday. “It’s not
an encyclical done for the crisis,” Cardinal Renato Martino, the
president of the In the
encyclical, Benedict wrote that “financiers must rediscover the
genuinely ethical foundation of their activity, so as not to abuse the
sophisticated instruments which can serve to betray the interests of
savers.” In many
ways, the document is a puzzling cross between an anti-globalization
tract and a government white paper, another signal that the “There
are paragraphs that sound like
Ayn Rand, next to paragraphs
that sound like ‘The Grapes of Wrath.’ That’s quite intentional,”
Vincent J. Miller, a theologian at the
University of Dayton, a Catholic
institution in Ohio, said by telephone. “He’ll
wax poetically about the virtuous capitalist, but then he’ll give you
this very clear analysis of the ways in which global capital and the
shareholder system cause managers to focus on short-term good at the
expense of the community, of workers, of the environment.” Indeed,
sometimes Benedict sounds like an old-school European socialist,
lamenting the decline of the social welfare state and praising the
“importance” of labor unions to protect workers. Without stable work, he
noted, people lose hope and tend not to get married and have children. But he
also wrote, “The so-called outsourcing of production can weaken the
company’s sense of responsibility towards the stakeholders — namely the
workers, the suppliers, the consumers, the natural environment and
broader society — in favor of the shareholders.” And he argued that it
was “erroneous to hold that the market economy has an inbuilt need for a
quota of poverty and underdevelopment in order to function at its best.” Benedict
also called for a reform of the
United Nations so there could be
a unified “global political body” that allowed the less powerful of the
earth to have a voice, and he called on rich nations to help less
fortunate ones. “In the
search for solutions to the current economic crisis, development aid for
poor countries must be considered a valid means of creating wealth for
all,” he wrote. John
Sniegocki, a professor of Christian ethics at “One of
the things he’s saying is that the global economy is escaping the power
of individual states to regulate it,” Mr. Sniegocki said. He said the
encyclical also contained elements “very critical” of how the
International Monetary Fund and
the
World Bank “have required cuts
in social spending in the third world.”
Michael Novak, a philosopher and
theologian at the
American Enterprise Institute in “I like
limited government. I would much prefer to have many limited governments
than one overriding authority,” Mr. Novak said by telephone. Benedict,
arguably the most environmentally conscious pope in history, wrote, “One
of the greatest challenges facing the economy is to achieve the most
efficient use — not abuse — of natural resources, based on a realization
that the notion of ‘efficiency’ is not value-free.” |