My co-blogger Christopher Blosser has done his usual yeoman work in pulling together reactions from around the Catholic blogosphere to “TOWARDS REFORMING THE INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL AND MONETARY SYSTEMS IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBAL PUBLIC AUTHORITY” from the pontifical counsel on justice and peace. One of my favorite blog authors Father Z, who I have designated Master of the Fisk, has some memorable comments on it:
I have a few things to digest yet, and it takes me a while, since this isn’t exactly my bailiwick. However, I can say this: thanks be to God this “white paper” doesn’t form part of the Holy Father’s Ordinary Magisterium.
Every once in a while the Holy See’s smaller offices, Pontifical Councils and so forth, have to put out a paper to justify their budgets and remind everyone that they take up valuable space. These documents, which do not form part of the Holy Father’s Magisterium, can deal with critical issues like how to be a safe driver. The dicasteries keep busy by hosting seminars on how to play sport and so forth.
Some of my favorite points in the new “white paper” include the suggestion that there should be global monetary management and a “central world bank” to regulate it and that the United Nations should be involved. National banks have, after all, done such a good job that we should now make the effort transnational! And is this the same UN that had nations such as Saudi Arabia and, till recently, Libya on the their human rights commission? Wasn’t there a UN financial corruption investigation still going on? Is this the same UN that is pushing contraception pretty much in every poor country on earth? Was that a different UN?
Another high point in the new “white paper”: “These measures ought to be conceived of as some of the first steps in view of a public Authority with universal jurisdiction; as a first stage in a longer effort by the global community to steer its institutions towards achieving the common good.”
Uh huh.
Go here to read the brilliant rest.
So, this is part of what Benedict XVI says in Caritas in Veritate:
To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority, as my predecessor Blessed John XXIII indicated some years ago.
What is so different between this and the “white paper” derided by Fr. Z and others? I understand that the white paper specifies the kind of political authority beyond that proffered in CIV, but does this make Benedict’s proposal any less daft on Fr. Z’s reading? Note that to say that not everything in a social encyclical is binding is not to say that you are free to consider it stupid, worthless, and unworthy of consideration. So what’s the difference between the proposal of this document–with which I don’t agree, by the way–and CIV?
“The Church does not have technical solutions to offer[10] and does not claim “to interfere in any way in the politics of States.” is perhaps the most pertinent quote in this area from Caritas in Veritate WJ.
In regard to the call for a world authority, the Pope hedged it in with certain requirements that I doubt will ever be achieved:
“Such an authority would need to be regulated by law, to observe consistently the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity, to seek to establish the common good[147], and to make a commitment to securing authentic integral human development inspired by the values of charity in truth. Furthermore, such an authority would need to be universally recognized and to be vested with the effective power to ensure security for all, regard for justice, and respect for rights[148]. Obviously it would have to have the authority to ensure compliance with its decisions from all parties, and also with the coordinated measures adopted in various international forums. Without this, despite the great progress accomplished in various sectors, international law would risk being conditioned by the balance of power among the strongest nations. The integral development of peoples and international cooperation require the establishment of a greater degree of international ordering, marked by subsidiarity, for the management of globalization[149]. They also require the construction of a social order that at last conforms to the moral order, to the interconnection between moral and social spheres, and to the link between politics and the economic and civil spheres, as envisaged by the Charter of the United Nations. ”
I think the Pope here was writing of something ideal, since I honestly do not see anyway these requirements could ever be met in the world we inhabit. On the other hand I could imagine too easily grifter politicians setting up a transnational monetary authority of some sort, and attempting to fund it from taxes on financial transactions. The World Bank and the World Monetary Fund have been baby steps in that direction.