From CNS with link to full text of the document here:
VATICAN CITY — A Vatican document called for the gradual creation of a “world political authority” with broad powers to regulate financial markets and rein in the “inequalities and distortions of capitalist development.” The document said the current global financial crisis has revealed “selfishness, collective greed and the hoarding of goods on a great scale.” A supranational authority, it said, is needed to place the common good at the center of international economic activity.
The 41-page text was titled, “Toward Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority.” Prepared by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, it was released Oct. 24 in several languages, including a provisional translation in English. The document cited the teachings of popes over the last 40 years on the need for a universal public authority that would transcend national interests. The current economic crisis, which has seen growing inequality between the rich and poor of the world, underlines the necessity to take concrete steps toward creating such an authority, it said.
One major step, it said, should be reform of the international monetary system in a way that involves developing countries. The document foresaw creation of a “central world bank” that would regulate the flow of monetary exchanges.
The document also proposed:
– Taxation measures on financial transactions. Revenues could contribute to the creation of a “world reserve fund” to support the economies of countries his by crisis, it said.
– Forms of recapitalization of banks with public funds that make support conditional on “virtuous” behavior aimed at developing the real economy.
– More effective management of financial “shadow markets” that are largely uncontrolled today.
Such moves would be designed to make the global economy more responsive to the needs of the person, and less “subordinated to the interests of countries that effectively enjoy a position of economic and financial advantage,” it said.
In making the case for a global authority, the document said the continued model of nationalistic self-interest seemed “anachronistic and surreal” in the age of globalization.
“We should not be afraid to propose new ideas, even if they might destabilize pre-existing balances of power that prevail over the weakest,” it said.
The “new world dynamics,” it said, call for a “gradual, balanced transfer of a part of each nation’s powers to a world authority and to regional authorities.”
“In a world on its way to rapid globalization, the reference to a world authority becomes the only horizon compatible with the new realities of our time and the needs of humankind,” it said. Helping to usher in this new society is a duty for everyone, especially for Christians, it said. --CNS
Let’s Occupy a Vital Earth (L.O.V.E.)
Let’s Occupy a Vital Earth! Try it on. See if it fits and whether you’d be comfortable in adopting it when the Occupation of Wall Street and the protest at a thousand other locations worldwide comes to end.
And end it will, with nothing to commemorate it save historians remembering in their books the greatest mass demonstration since Abraham protested the Tower of Babel.
And just like Babel, this rising up will fall into ashes, unless we harness the spirit from this “cry in the wilderness“ and put it into action. An action that is both “for” and “against” the economic system we work in, if we’re lucky enough to have a decent job to work.
How can we do this? — Simply by creating a group of conscientious citizens to recommend improving the economic lot of mankind. Form a committee from a variety of backgrounds whose principal task would be to monitor human affairs from a perspective of ethics and morality. Join religious, political and scientific people together with bankers, artists, lawyers and environmentalists. Recruit poets, academics and writers and set their task to devise a system of commerce that encourages profits but inhibits the destructive competitiveness that places the pursuit of money above all other desires, above all other values.
The wealthiest and most powerful nations understand you cannot neglect basic human values. The Ninety-Nine Percenters are reminding them they need to change. They should accept a universal responsibility for the common good and the social contract they have with not only the less fortunate, but those of us with some economic security who know deep inside what the One Percent is doing must end.
Once recommendations are made, the Committee would send its ideas to splinter groups of like-minded persons in each city, state and country whose citizens could benefit from implementations. Publicize the names of banks, savings and loans and institutions that begin to comply with the voluntary suggestions. Let those with capital decide where to put their investments to perhaps take in less profit, but give much more back to those that helped us with our gains.
L.O.V.E. — that and good old fashioned compassion will help in the pursuit of happiness, while relieving suffering for others. Try it. It may grow on you.
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[Synchronicity must have been at work when I published this post at the same time the Vatican was voicing its call for major economic change. - mjc, aka contoveros]
I would love it if the IMF produced a document informing people how to get in touch with God...
Well you warned me. I was better prepared for the worst that I hoped would be avoided.
Fortunately this statement is not an encyclical from the pope as some people expected. Hopefully few will ever hear of the "Papal Council for Peasce and Justice"or of its proposals.
This looks like Rahm Emanual opportunism. Rahm Emanual says: "Never let a crisis go to waste." You don't have to actually help lessen the crisis. You just take advantage of the crisis to promote your own favorite proposals. The economy was in deep recession so Rahm spends all his time promoting Universal Health Care which provided no help for the depressed economy.
Here the statement leaps from a world financial problems into expanding world governement without explaining any details They actually propose Post Office type bureaucraciy to control and regulate world finances and more world government without explaining the technical merits of this proposal. Most High School students have more sophisticated ideas about the limitations of government and government organizations. Isn't this the very problem today with the European Union which is unable to deal with the massive European soverign debt problems?
But as you pointed out, since when do people trained in theology and religion have any expertise in world economics and world governace? They are inventing untested utopian schemes of world economics and world government. This is way more than European socialism. These are extreme ideas without proof of merit. Shame on the church for going public with such technically shabby proposals.
I think it is way too strong to say that celibates cannot know anything about sexuality or Gender.I have known many great Priests who have not had a whiff of prudishness about them who understood by heart the drama od sexuality.There are those who are "chaste" for the Lord and those who are "chaste" for the Church.The former are a great minority but worth their weight in gold.
Regardless, none of them know anything about economics.
It is not an issue of whether a celibate can have knownledge of marriage, marital acts and conjugal love. Many priests and bishops have knowledge of this subject. The issue is the degree of knownledge and the certainty that the Church's theory on marriage and sexuality is the Divine Truth. It is the moral absolute that must be accepted as the truth, without remainder, regardles if this teaching is in contradiction with the praxis and reason of most married couples. These teachings are grounded in assumptions and presuppositions that fall to persuade ther reasoned and faithful Catholic. Consider as an example, the assertion by JP II, that if married couples do not practice periodic continence as the only licit means for birth regulation, marial acts will become solely acts of lustfull pleasure and devoid of marital love.
I wrote my story about L O V E (see No 2 entry above) after reading a book by the Dalai Lama and his concern for the economic impoverishments worldwide in 1999. I seem to recall Pope John II speak on the subject also, and it had nothing to do with Republican or Democratic talking points.
Let's face it. We have a moral obligation to each other, whether or not we want to admit the downtrodden are truly our brothers and sisters. It was the poor and some of the outcasts that the great religious leaders of history sought to uplift not only in spirit but in a corporeal sharing of the common good. (Remember the loafs and fishes? He didn't try to determine where to cut costs elsewhere in order to feed those listening to the Sermon on the Mound.)
Form a committee as suggested by the Vatican to study and then report its findings to the world. Implement its recomendations and see whether compassionate minded people would take their money out of one bank (say for instance, Bank of America) and place it in one that might pay lower interests on savings, but provide more to those who are in need. That would include those who do not make enough money in the United States to even pay federal income tax and those who are fortunate enough to earn more who want altruism to be a guiding principle. I find I "need" to give to others in order to receive so much more in return.
Lots of unhappiness with a broad global authority - at least by the American righ twho have real problems with the UN.
Little substantive critique of the moral issues broached here but lots of "what do they know?" oversimplified fob offs.
I think it's a theological document on economics and starting off with "it's a political document ...outside the expertise" is a facile way of not broaching the issues and approaches raised there.
Whether you like global authority or not, I think you need to confront the major other recommendationst herein.
Paul Volckers have any relevant experience, or for that matter any understanding of
the low esteem enjoyed by such super-national organizations as the UN and the EU.
The world will ignore this document of course, but it makes me sad that as the Church declines and priests are becoming a disappearing species there are people in the Vatican who spend their time on such silly exercises.
The Church does not have technical solutions to offer[10] and does not claim “to interfere in any way in the politics of States.”[11] She does, however, have a mission of truth to accomplish, in every time and circumstance, for a society that is attuned to man, to his dignity, to his vocation. Without truth, it is easy to fall into an empiricist and sceptical view of life, incapable of rising to the level of praxis because of a lack of interest in grasping the values — sometimes even the meanings — with which to judge and direct it. Fidelity to man requires fidelity to the truth, which alone is the guarantee of freedom (cf. Jn 8:32) and of the possibility of integral human development. For this reason the Church searches for truth, proclaims it tirelessly and recognizes it wherever it is manifested. This mission of truth is something that the Church can never renounce. Her social doctrine is a particular dimension of this proclamation: it is a service to the truth which sets us free. Open to the truth, from whichever branch of knowledge it comes, the Church's social doctrine receives it, assembles into a unity the fragments in which it is often found, and mediates it within the constantly changing life-patterns of the society of peoples and nations[12].
It's too bad that the first reaction by some is to squirm when they read Church documents on the economy and proclaim that they are not binding (and that they are not the work of experts).
Read, think, discuss, read again. Don't be so quick to play canon lawyer. As Joe Kash points out, the full document is not even available.
Maybe New York City and Chicago should sell their public buildings and public museums so that they can feed the poor also?
'The prices for some cathedral furnishings have also caused consternation. $5 million was budgeted for the altar, the main bronze doors cost $3 million, $2 million was budgeted for the wooden ambo (lectern) and $1 million for the tabernacle. $1 million was budgeted for the cathedra (bishop's chair), $250,000 for the presider's chair, $250,000 for each deacon's chair, and $150,000 for each visiting bishops' chair, while pews cost an average of $50,000 each. The cantor's stand cost $100,000 while each bronze chandelier/speaker cost $150,000.'
Should some of the art be sold? Yes, I think so, to other museums. Most of the art owned by the Vatican isn't on display and wouldn't even really be missed. I think there's a belief that all the art is Christian and devotional and must be kept as some kind of Christian patrimony, but a lot of the art at the Vatican museums isn't Christian, but Greek, Roman, Etruscan, Asian, etc. Jesus said sell your possessions and give the money to the poor - he didn't say build huge cathderals or fund art museums :)
A bit off topic, but since you brought it up - Not only did the LA cathedral cost a literal large fortune, the diocese announced right after its opening that it was laying off 60 of its staff and closing or cutting a number of ministries due to budget deficits (purely coincidental, of course - nothing to do with the cost of the Cathedral).
There had long been a desire on the part of some for a new cathedral to replace the original one. Earthquake damage to the old cathedral provided an excuse - the cost of building new would be less than fixing the old (allegedly) and bringing it up to earthquake codes. But nobody was a bit surprised when the Cathedral ended up costing a great deal more than the way-off-estimate used to justify selling St. Vibiana's, the beautiful, old historic Cathedral.
Los Angeles Times, Sept. 19, 2002: The cuts will eliminate at least 60 jobs in the archdiocese's headquarters in the Mid-Wilshire district. ....
The cuts will cause some programs to be eliminated while others-including such popular outreach programs as marriage encounter retreats-have been ordered to heavily cut the number of workers. ...The Department of Religious Education has also been told to cut back.
The archdiocese confirmed that eight headquarters programs are being shut down: the Office of Ministry With Persons With Disabilities; the Detention Ministry, which works with those in jail; Campus Ministry; Ecumenical and Inter-Religious Affairs; Ethnic Groups Ministry; Ministry With Lesbian and Gay Catholics; the Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Women; and the Office of Respect Life, which runs counseling services for women who have had abortions and advocacy programs that oppose abortion and euthanasia.
"There can be no doubt ...that it is entirely appropriate for the Church...to call attention to economic and social problems, to remind persons of good will of the content and foundations of Christian humanism, to challenge governments and persons alike to act in ways that are consistent with morality and truth about the human person, and to share well-considered judgments or suggestions rega????rding sound policy."
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