Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace on a "world political authority"

Full text (unofficial translation)

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Rod Dreher | Richard Spencer | Samuel Gregg | George Weigel | Fr. Thomas J. Reese, S.J. | Peter Daniel Haworth | Jeffrey Tucker | Laura Wood

Dreher expresses particular concern that this document will "FREAK the evangelicals out" (his friend's words) because of the proximity of "world political authority" to the "one world government" of the Antichrist. Did they freak out over Populorum Progressio?

Spencer says that the document "offers an intelligent recounting of recent economic history" but thinks that its prescription amounts to "the creation of a massive new usurious bank with 'universal jurisdiction'" that would end up acting very much like the U.S. Fed.

Gregg points out that this document is nothing new: "the notion that an increasingly integrated world economy requires some type of authority able to make decisions about what the Church calls 'the universal common good' has long been a staple of Catholic social teaching." He then focuses on its failure to take into account problems created by fiat money, government bailouts, public debt and deficits, and central banks like the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank. "For a church with a long tradition of thinking seriously about finance centuries before anyone had ever heard of John Maynard Keynes or Friedrich Hayek, we can surely do better." In my opinion, the "long traditions" of sharia finance are better placed politically to affect the global economy. The word "usury" can only be heard in the West in an "otherized" accent.

As is his wont, Weigel discusses the authoritative "weight" of the document:

The document is a “Note” from a rather small office in the Roman Curia. The document’s specific recommendations do not necessarily reflect the settled views of the senior authorities of the Holy See; indeed, Fr. Federico Lombardi, the press spokesman for the Vatican, was noticeably circumspect in his comments on the document and its weight. As indeed he ought to have been. The document doesn’t speak for the Pope, it doesn’t speak for “the Vatican,” and it doesn’t speak for the Catholic Church.

Haworth wonders "whether this call for international authority can even pass a basic prudence-test." Mark Movsesian's question -- "Is sovereignty Protestant?" -- may be of interest to Front Porch Republic readers (via Mirror of Justice).

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The "global vision of man and of the human race" contemplated in this document is rooted in what Benedict XVI in Caritas in Veritate (cf. section 18) calls "the truth of development." Its first section cites Paul VI's similar language: "the defense of life and the promotion of people’s cultural and moral development are the essential conditions for the promotion of authentic development." Accordingly, what Benedict calls a "true world political authority" "would need to be regulated by law, to observe consistently the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity, to seek to establish the common good, and to make a commitment to securing authentic integral human development inspired by the values of charity in truth" (CiV 67).

Dreher addresses this point in a comment: "[the] document goes on to talk about how all this needs to take place within the context of 'spiritual' values. Well, who decides what 'spiritual' values should guide this development? By whose authority will the Authority manage the globe?" That is the issue. Who believes that the conditions for the possibility of such an authority properly understood will ever exist? According to the document itself, "a long road still needs to be travelled before arriving at the creation of a public Authority with universal jurisdiction." But any journey that begins with the "United Nations as its reference," even if the point of reference is only bureaucratic, must contend with the values of the United Nations. Could the UN ever accept the account of development offered in Caritas in Veritate?

God is the guarantor of man's true development, inasmuch as, having created him in his image, he also establishes the transcendent dignity of men and women and feeds their innate yearning to “be more”. Man is not a lost atom in a random universe: he is God's creature, whom God chose to endow with an immortal soul and whom he has always loved. If man were merely the fruit of either chance or necessity, or if he had to lower his aspirations to the limited horizon of the world in which he lives, if all reality were merely history and culture, and man did not possess a nature destined to transcend itself in a supernatural life, then one could speak of growth, or evolution, but not development. When the State promotes, teaches, or actually imposes forms of practical atheism, it deprives its citizens of the moral and spiritual strength that is indispensable for attaining integral human development and it impedes them from moving forward with renewed dynamism as they strive to offer a more generous human response to divine love. (29)

I emphasize this aspect of development because the Fr. Thomas Reeses of the world neglect it when they describe Benedict (and the Vatican bureaucracy) as "to the Left of Nancy Pelosi."

Update: More from Dreher and several links and quotes from Insight Scoop. Via Dreher, this paragraph  from the document is sort of horrifying even with caveats about development:

So conditions exist for definitively going beyond a ‘Westphalian’ international order in which the States feel the need for cooperation but do not seize the opportunity to integrate their respective sovereignties for the common good of peoples. It is the task of today’s generation to recognize and consciously to accept these new world dynamics for the achievement of a universal common good. Of course, this transformation will be made at the cost of a gradual, balanced transfer of a part of each nation’s powers to a world Authority and to regional Authorities, but this is necessary at a time when the dynamism of human society and the economy and the progress of technology are transcending borders, which are in fact already very eroded in a globalized world.

This, the American Catholic bishops' views on immigration, Chaput's discussions of "the next America," and Robert George's belief that America is a "proposition nation" . . . it's a difficult time to be a certain kind of American Catholic conservative. A Buchananite or a Kirkian, for example.

And here is Bonald's view of the document. He is one of the few emphasizing the quality of "elite" that these documents presuppose:

The virtuocratic world authority can only come into existence when there is an elite ready to man it. This elite is supposed to be forged by the elites of each civilization who in dialogue realize that they share a common understanding of the good life. Now, I know that Pope Benedict has been spending some time talking to Muslims, but I’d hardly say the process has gone so far that we form a unified force. If the only elite in existence is the liberal elite, then there’s simply no doubt that they will control any government one designs, and they will rule it according to their principles. The one-world rule thing should have been kept under wraps a little longer.