Papal encyclical: People over profit
Pope Benedict's new encyclical, Caritas en verite, scores a win for appearing just as the G8 are meeting in Italy and just before the pope meets with President Obama, the leader of the nation that precipitated the current economic crisis. (Finally, the papal communications office gets one right!) The pope's message: The church has been right all along--the pursuit of profit as an end in itself is inimical and destructive to the common good.
Benedict makes his point by reviewing the 40-odd-year-old social encyclical of Pope Paul VI, Populorum progressio, which had at its heart the idea that the goal of economic activity is the integral development of the human person--physical, moral, spiritual. Benedict updates that insight, arguing more or less that technology and markets alone cannot direct the economic order to this end. The economy, in other words, needs regulation, and Benedict opts for international structures with binding authority. In the end, B16 opts more for the European model of heavily regulated "social capitalism" over the Anglo-Saxon laissez-faire approach that has just recently tanked the world economy.
Right on, Holy Father. Prepare for an onslaught from the economic right telling you to stick to sexual ethics!
Indeed, we already have George Weigel's ridiculously self-serving interpretation: a tale of two encyclicals, complete with intrigue; luckily we also have a parody of Weigel's red versus gold reading of B16 at Vox Nova. Enjoy!
Comments (3)
Laissez Faire
By Tom Leith (not verified) on Wednesday, July 8, 2009Laissez Faire is an ideal held out by some, and (thankfully) isn't practiced here in the USA as these idealists fain point out. Communism has never been really practiced either. The trouble with both approaches is they make the same mistake: they either permit or cause the concentration of wealth into the hands of a few. What we have not yet figured out a practical way to do is respect private (personal primarily, not corporate) property and distribute (not "re-distribute") wealth such that the purpose of an economy ("provide for the material needs of everyone") can be achieved. But people live and die in the short run, not the long run, so "pragmatic solutions" are implemented along with all their injustices and distortions, which quickly attract their own constituiencies and get themselves embedded in laws. So here we are...
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Government Regulation Tanked the Economny
By Jerry on Wednesday, July 8, 2009I agree with "Caritas en
By Anonymous (not verified) on Wednesday, July 8, 2009I agree with "Caritas en verite" in principle. Heck, I agree with Karl Marx in principle.
But this is no time for moralizing or theorizing. We need an economic model that actually works, and the Pope isn't offering one. Turning the economy over to "international structures with binding authority" has been tried before, and the result was rampant corruption on an unimaginable scale that resulted in billions of people being condemned to a life of poverty. And the supposedly superior "European model" has proven itself to be just as dysfunctional, if not more so, than the "Anglo-Saxon laissez-faire approach". In fact, Europe's extreme right-wing has recently been winning elections with their immigrant-bashing agenda. Are you sure that this is the model you want for America?
It's comforting to believe the world's problems can be solved by something as simple as nice people with good intentions. But it's wrong. There are no easy answers. Back to the drawing board!
