WCR This Week

Michael Casey

Thinking in catholic terms about a global economy ought to be natural. Catholic means global, universal, transcending boundaries. But a Catholic proposal for regulating the global economy has stirred a battle between left and right within the Church.

The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace's "note" – issued in advance of the G20 meeting that opened Nov. 3 in Cannes, France – proposed a gradual evolution toward global governance of finance and trade.

On the right the proposal has been dismissed as "rubbish, rubbish, rubbish" by American conservative George Weigel of Washington's Ethics and Public Policy Centre. Weigel dismisses the pontifical council as "a rather small office in the Roman Curia" without much standing in relation to the teaching office of the Church.

The ideas found in Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority are simply "an uncritical internationalism of a distinctly Euro-secular provenance," as far as Weigel is concerned.

On the other side, Vincent Miller, a University of Dayton professor of Catholic theology and culture, greets the Vatican document as timely, pertinent and reasonable.

"It challenges the reduction of human existence to a narrow economic logic as our current global order has done," he wrote in a commentary for the left-leaning American publication the National Catholic Reporter. Where the Vatican challenged the materialism of Marxism during the Cold War, it now questions the materialism of capitalism and market ideologies, said Miller.

VOICE OF THE POOR

But the real point of the document might not be an eternal battle between big government and free markets in the developed world, says Michael Casey, director of the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace.

The pontifical council is speaking for people in Asia, Africa and Latin America who are part of the global economy on terms dictated from the financial capitals of the world, he said.

"It's the poor in the developing world who bear the heaviest burden in all this turmoil afflicting the world economy," Casey said. "So there has always been a great deal of interest in having a more equitable system in place."

The pontifical council's note will form part of Development and Peace's ongoing re-examination of its mission in light of Pope Benedict's encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth).

"There is a legitimate voice of the Church, and Catholics, on economics that stems from the necessary role human beings and the common good should have as the ultimate goal of financial and economic systems," wrote Aldo Caliari, founder of Rethinking Bretton Woods, in an email to The Catholic Register.

Rethinking Bretton Woods is a project of the Jesuit-founded Centre of Concern.

The pontifical council is trying to address a problem many pro-market, neo-liberal thinkers prefer to ignore, said Caliari. "In a period of the greatest trade and capital mobility, the rate of poverty reduction has slowed down compared to a period of less liberalization."

McMaster University professor of economics John Smithin doesn't believe a globalized economy requires global governance, or that the poor are well served by systems that take control out of the hands of their own governments.

George Weigel

"If you're in the Vatican and you step out into the streets of Rome, surely you can see the consequences of international governance – the Eurozone," he said.

Smithin prescribes a four-stage solution for bringing countries out of poverty.

POVERTY STRATEGY

First, a stable, legitimate government that can issue its own money and regulate its banks. Second, monetary policies that allow for a floating exchange rate and interest rates only slightly above the rate of inflation.

Third, the right to private property, "not so that you can possess things, but so that if you do work, you keep the benefits of your work." And finally, regulated, fair markets."If you don't want capitalism, you're going to have to come up with some other explanation for how human needs will be met," he said.

Philosophy trips up the Church when it thinks about economics, Smithin said.

"Aristotle did not think making money was a good thing, and that's gone into the Church through Aquinas," he said. "They still have that view. But that's not going to help the poor."

The pontifical council's booklet argues that some forms of economics have become rigid ideologies rather than scientific examinations of how things work.

"One devastating effect of these ideologies, especially in the last decades of the past century and the first years of the current one, has been the outbreak of the crisis in which the world is still immersed," says the note.