Concerning the Upcoming Encyclical

John Thavis, the Vatican reporter for the Catholic News Service of the US bishops conference, has just written an interesting column about how the media reacts to the Pope.

At the end of the column, he has this to say about the Pope’s thinking on the global economy:

“The Pope has repeatedly said the solution to the current global economic crisis will require lifestyle changes and ‘strategic choices that are sometimes not easy to accept.’ Given his previous remarks, some expect the encyclical to challenge not only the obvious excesses and abuses of modern capitalism, but its philosophical underpinnings as well.” (Find the whole story here: http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0902813.htm)

I was told [Friday] that one of the Pope’s advisors on the upcoming encyclical is Father Mario Toso , a professor of Social Philosophy at the Pontifical Salesian University, and from 2003 to 2007 the Rector Magnificus of the university. This role has not been officially confirmed, but it makes sense: Toso is one of the leading social philosophers in Italy, and he is a Salesian, a member of the order of Don Bosco… and the Salesians are now in the ascendant in Rome, with the leading Salesian in the Curia being the highest official after the Pope, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Secretary of State.

Father Toso has studied the political personalism of Jacques Maritain and Emmanuel Mounier, and researched the democratic populism of the great Italian priest, Fr. Luigi Sturzo.

Toso is among the few Catholic thinkers who in his studies has reflected on the nature of the welfare state. He has proposed a new social consensus based on the common search for the genuine good of mankind. As a Consultor of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, he has taken part in studies on non-violence and problems of land distribution.

In his book Verso Quale Societa? (Toward What Kind of Society?), published in 2000) he raises the question: “Has the social doctrine of the Church baptized capitalism?” (p. 319).

“The collapse of the collectivist states seems to have left an open field to a single economic system, the capitalist system, that seems to have no limits, extended throughout the planet. But connected to global capitalism, we are seeing a corresponding development, an ethical-cultural lifestyle that believes in the utopia of an exploitation without limits,” he writes.

Toso then cites… George Soros, the Hungarian-born American Jewish financier and speculator who made much of his fortune by speculating against the British pound.

Toso writes that Soros, despite being a leading practitioner and supporter of capitalism, has warned against dangerous excesses.

“Capitalism needs democracy as a counter-weight,” Soros writes, in the passage cited by Toso. “Because in and of itself, the capitalist system has no tendency toward equilibrium. The owners of capital, left to themselves, seek to increase their profits to the maximum: left to themselves, they would continue to accumulate capital, and the situation would become unbalanced.”

Then Toso writes: “The position of the Popes has never been one of demonizing capitalism. But they have always condemned its excesses.”

Toso then writes that Church under John Paul II (1978-2005), reacting to concerns expressed by economists like Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992) and Michael Novak about Pope Paul VI’s reservations regarding capitalism in his encyclical Popolorum Progressio (1967), “returned to this subject” in the encyclical Centesimus Annus (1991).

Then, summarizing, he says that the Church recognized, and recognizes, in her social teaching, the value of private property, personal initiative, and the free market, but nevertheless does not “baptize” the currently existing and dominant system of economic liberalism.

Interestingly, while researching Toso’s thinking, I also came across a little book by Cardinal Bertone, entitled L’Etica del Bene Comune nella Dottrina Sociale della Chiesa (“The Ethic of the Common Good in the Social Doctrine of the Church”) published in 2008 by the Vatican Press.

I was rather surprised to see that this little work is published in a bi-lingual format, in Italian and… in Russian!

And, that the introduction to the work is written by… then-Metropolitan Kirill, who is now the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Here is a sentence from Kirill’s introduction to Bertone’s work on the Church’s social teaching, which will be promulgated authoritatively in a few days in the Pope’s new encyclical: “Speaking of the Orthodox concept of the common good, it must be noted that it is not only a matter of material well-being, not only a matter of the peace and harmony of earthly life, but above all, and first of all, of the aspiration of man and of human society for eternal life, which is the highest good for every Christian.”

I will try to explore these matters further in an upcoming email, and in the next issue of the magazine.

For now, it is enough to say that this upcoming papal encyclical may express a vision of economic and social justice, in the perspective of the human person and his eternal dignity, which can respond to the great needs and longings of both Christians and non-Christians in our troubled time.

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Dr. Robert Moynihan is an American and veteran Vatican journalist with knowledge of five languages. He is founder and editor-in-chief of Inside the Vatican magazine.

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