Others have called attention to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace's "Note on Financial Reform." (The Note is available here.) The responses to and readings of the Note have been, I think, what one would have predicted: Some are crowing that "the Vatican" has endorsed the demands and aims of the "Occupy Wall Street" participants, others are insisting that the Note is misguided Euro-talk and, in any event, carries little authority. And so it goes.
There can be no doubt, I think, that it is entirely appropriate for the Church (or, in this case, for particular offices in Vatican City) 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 the truth about the human person, and to share well-considered judgments or suggestions regarding sound policy. It also seems clear -- with respect to this business about "supranational authorities" -- that the post-Westphalian set-up is not an article of faith (even if a commitment to the rule of law and the requirement that secular authority democratic have legitimacy should be).
That said, and at the risk of being accused by some friends in the left-of-center sectors of the Catholic blogosphere of "ranting" or being a "neo-con", I'll confess that I think (a) many are (perhaps strategically and tactically) mis- and over-reading the Note in order to overstate the consonance between its vision and the current policies of the Democratic Party in the United States and its special-interest constituencies; (b) many are making the mistake that was widely made with respect to the Pope's Caritas, i.e., imagining that the Church proposes a list of "economic policy proposals" that can be conveniently lifted, to the extent they strike the lifter as attractive, without any attached moral anthropology (which might, in turn, come with some unwelcome implications for, say, religious liberty, the family, education, etc.); and (c) it is a mistake to think that the Note, with its focus on world-wide financial markets, somehow baptizes our and other governments' current overspending, or the self-interested (dare we say "greedy"?) and damaging positions being staked out by, e.g., public-employee unions.
A final thought: When a document like the Note is released, it is often "played," like a good card, in policy and other debates by people who do not, in fact, believe that the Church has the teaching authority it claims. (Maureen Dowd, for example, does this kind of thing a lot.) Such "playing" of writings by Church leaders and teachers is, to me, irritating. I do believe, after all, that even (what strike me as) the somewhat wooly-headed proposals and diagnoses that are sometimes offered on various subjects by Catholic bishops, councils, conferences, etc., demand and deserve my respectful engagement, even when not my embrace or submission. But, I do not think these proposals and diagnoses should be invoked or deployed as authoritative by people who deny that the Church has anything worth listening to -- let alone submitted to -- when it comes to, say, the obligation of a political community to extend the law's equal protection against private violence to the disabled and the unborn.
UPDATE: As usual, John Allen has an interesting take:
Focusing on how much papal muscle the note can flex, however, risks ignoring what is at least an equally revealing question: Whatever you make of it, does the note seem to reflect important currents in Catholic social and political thought anywhere in the world?
The answer is yes, and it happens to be where two-thirds of the Catholics on the planet today live: the southern hemisphere, also known as the developing world. . . .
Many MOJ readers will be familiar with the work of Notre Dame's Center for Ethics & Culture, and with the wonderful Fall Conferences that the Center's founding director, David Solomon, has hosted for the past decade. I am pleased to pass on the news that Dean John McGreevy has announced the appointment of my friend and colleague, Carter Snead, to succeed Prof. Solomon. Congratulations to Carter, and all good wishes to the Center for continued success, growth, and scholarly contributions!
Over at First Things, the Archbishop of Los Angeles, Jose Gomez, has a nice essay up on the importance of religious liberty, our "first freedom." He concludes with this:
In our history, religious freedom has always included the rights of churches and religious institutions to establish hospitals, schools, charities, media outlets, and other agencies—and to staff these ministries and run them, free from government intrusion.
And religious freedom has always included the churches’ rights to engage in the public square to help shape our nation’s moral and social fabric. We see this throughout our history—from the abolitionist movement, to the civil rights movement, to the pro-life movement.
America’s founders understood that our democracy depends on Americans being moral and virtuous. They knew the best guarantee for this is a civil society in which individuals and religious institutions were free to live, act, and vote according to their values and principles. We need to help our leaders today rediscover the wisdom of America’s founding. And we need to help believers once more understand the vital importance of this “first freedom.” At stake are not just our liberties but also the future character of our democracy.
Monday, October 24, 2011
This is a powerfully expressed statement by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace on the current financial maladies facing the world and the need for top-down reform. All of the recommendations warrant sustained thought, and most are well beyond my capacity to assess.
One thing that I did not remember is the call of Pope John XXIII in Pacem in Terris for a "true world political authority" to emerge to serve the common good of humanity. This vision is taken up by the Council, which talks about the need for "a supranational Authority" to take charge of these matters in light of what is seen as a movement toward greater globalization. The Council's recommendations are cautious in this respect, but they are striking nevertheless. It also seemed to me, especially after reading Mark Movsesian's post here, that thoughts about a truly transnational, global authority reflect a perhaps distinctively Catholic way to envision the problem of human authority, to be contrasted with the more Protestant view of state sovereignty described and championed by Vattel and others. These perennial differences never really are resolved.
UPDATE: Sorry, I see Rob is a step ahead of me below.
