March 4, 2009- In his first detailed public statement concerning the global monetary crisis, Pope Benedict XVI may be revealing the define of his forthcoming -- and highly anticipated -- social encyclical.
Besides just a few normal statements warning against greed and urging solidarity, made in differing contexts, Pope Benedict (versus different Vatican officials) had not stated a lot about the encyclical or the disaster. However in a February 26 question-and-reply session with monks of the Diocese of Rome, Pope Benedict XVI defined the difficulties in addressing the crisis with credibility.
He gave a prolonged response (Italian text here) to a query from a priest who complained about the poverty and uncertainty affecting his suburban parish and who concluded that "we should have the courage to denounce an financial and financial system unjust to its roots." The priest gave the Pope a possibility to denounce free-market economics in his own words.
Benedict didn't chunk. Echoing one among his few writings on the Church and the financial system as Joseph Ratzinger, he warned in opposition to low-cost, easy moralism without technical -- on this case, financial -- understanding. In many ways his answer was a more theological model of Pope John Paul II's statement in the 1991 social encyclical Centesimus Annus that what really ails the free society is not the economic system as such, but the cultural-ethical framework that absolutizes economics. By implicitly admitting he has no technical economic competence, Benedict also reveals his remarkable mental honesty and integrity.
Rather than denounce an financial system that encourages individuals to follow their self-interest, the Pope denounces realities with more of a previous and deeper results - original sin, human greed and idolatry. He doesn't equate revenue with greed, in all probability realizing that waging spiritual warfare in opposition to income would imply shedding the curiosity, consideration and maybe possible salvation of all who know anything about business and economics. And possibly most importantly, reasonably than inform us that we'd like a "new" system of manufacturing and consuming, shopping for and selling, the Holy Father takes a more sober, life like strategy by reminding us that there isn't a simply system with out just folks, and that sin is a everlasting fact of life that we must study to combat slowly, persistently and above all spiritually.
Rumors of a social encyclical have been circulating Rome for two years or so, normally citing the necessity to have a good time the 40th anniversary of Pope Paul VI's social encyclical Populorum Progressio [On the Growth of Peoples]. That anniversary has long since passed, so the event for a social encyclical would now be -- or perceived to be -- the global monetary and financial disaster.
In addition to the expected encyclical, certainly there's far more the Pope can and should say concerning the disaster. But I actually don't expect him to comply with the lead of Barack Obama, Gordon Brown, et al. in making the case for more authorities spending and bailouts, as if politicians and regulators are resistant to authentic sin and greed, which would merely remind us of yet one more Gospel parable - that of the blind leading the blind and falling right into a pit.
Kishore Jayabalan is the director of the Acton Institute's Rome workplace. He translated the next statement from the Italian.
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