Comments on The Whirlpool's Rim: Athens and Jerusalem and the "Southern Wave"

And here is Bonald arguing that authoritarian Catholics shouldn't be worried because "the authority of the Church is categorically superior to that of the state" and that "nuclear arguments" (double meaning: the blast and the small societal units) objecting to this proposed instantiation of the idea of a global authority rooted in Catholic moral anthropology are only practically important.

Very good discussion at Lawrence Auster's
2011-10-27T00:41:07.854-07:00
Very good discussion at Lawrence Auster's View From the Right.

Dreher questions the "intellectual honesty" of the right-wing use of the term "cafeteria Catholic." As the discussion progresses, it appears he acknowledges the basic distinction between typical left-wing and right-wing dissent but still thinks it is unseemly for conservative Catholics to use the term when they're willing to chop up encyclicals a la Weigel. That's all PR though. Liberals are generally proud of the gravity of their dissent when they think about it at all. The bite of the term is supposed to come from the idea that they are fickle rather than grave.

Anyway, there are a couple interesting comments from James Matthew Wilson (Front Porch Republic) in the same section: "Paul VI’s Populorum makes a subtle but clear point that the Church appreciates the great benefits of a dynamic global economy and wishes merely to turn it toward more unambiguously just ends. Whereas I think any financial institution larger than a small retail bank is suspect at best, and would like to see us adjust to and accept the modesty a world of small institutions and small polities would require. But on this point, I’m apparently well outside the mainstream; perhaps Benedict, therefore, is the less utopian (or rather, Arcadian) thinker."

That's an interesting point about the possibly changing meaning of "utopian." How else could the pope possibly respond to an actually existing "dynamic global economy" except by suggesting that it be "unambiguously just." The traditionalist can feel free to hope that some sort of creative destruction will restore the "little platoons." But the Vatican has to be everywhere. Of course, that doesn't justify the demand that every parishioner in every parish has to think about this stuff.

Ronald Colombo discusses the PCJP's view of the "common good" at Conglomerate Blog: "In any event, what if the link between the liberty to pursue private self interest, and the common good, has been severed? What side would most come down on? What if economic freedom (to the extent it has been enjoyed in the West) does not best serve the common good?"

These are important questions but when the limits of the "common good" are nothing short of global they become different questions from the ones that traditionalist conservatives have been asking all along.

Was John Paul II correct (from a political and economic perspective) when he wrote: "Globalization, a priori, is neither good nor bad. It will be what people make of it. No system is an end in itself, and it is necessary to insist that globalization, like any other system, must be at the service of the human person; it must serve solidarity and the common good" (Address of the Holy Father to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences)?

Message of Pope Benedict XVI for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees 2012: "Christian communities are to pay special attention to migrant workers and their families by accompanying them with prayer, solidarity and Christian charity, by enhancing what is reciprocally enriching, as well as by fostering new political, economic and social planning that promotes respect for the dignity of every human person, the safeguarding of the family, access to dignified housing, to work and to welfare."

2011-10-26T11:13:09.565-07:00
Jim Kalb in October 2010: "I went to a wedding recently in a rather beautiful Episcopalian church in an old Pennsylvania town. Instead of the Stations of the Cross on the wall, they had the stations of the UN Millennium Development Goals—gender equality, fighting HIV, global partnership, and the rest."