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Pope Benedict XVI’s new encyclical is leftist (?) commentary on global recession
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The economy seems to be on everyone’s mind. Even the Pope’s. Pope Benedict XVI released a new encyclical entitled “Charity in Truth” Tuesday, July 7, 2009, and it is a 144-page document linking the wrecked economy to a lack of financial ethics and a lack of a strong global governing body. The Pope, once called ultraconservative, has some analysts believing he is now waxing socialist.
When he was elected Pope in 2005, after the death of Pope John Paul II, fears quickly circulated of an ultraconservative dictatorship that could split the Catholic Church into two bitterly divided factions. After all, this one man, seemed such a stubborn, inflexible authoritarian. Before he became Pope, he had denounced rock music as a “vehicle of anti-religion,” professed distaste for European “multiculturalism,” ordered the stripping of American Rev. Charles Curran the right to teach for encouraging dissent, and struck down efforts to change sexist language in the Bible. He has also been perfectly happy with the church’s hard-line view on priestly celibacy, contraception and the ban on female priests.
So, the last person expected to bring leftist values to the debate over the global economic crisis was this man. And yet, with the issuance of his third encyclical, he critiques the global economic hierarchy, as one that profits a few at the expense of many. And he calls on all of us, especially those of us living in wealthier countries, to reexamine our egotistical consumption and refrain from being driven primarily by desire to increase profit and wealth at the expense of others.
"The causes of underdevelopment are not primarily of the material order," Benedict writes, but "in the lack of brotherhood among individuals and peoples."
"Amid the dense prose there are indications that he is to the left of almost every politician in America," said the Rev. Thomas J. Reese, senior fellow at Georgetown University's Woodstock Theological Center. "What politician would casually refer to `redistribution of wealth' or talk of international governing bodies to regulate the economy?"
But maybe we should hesitate before reading this document as an indication that the supreme head of the Catholic Church is veering left.
"This is not an anti-capitalist encyclical," affirmed Stefano Zamagni, an economics professor from the University of Bologna and a consultant to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. But it does "condemn capitalism when it becomes totalitarian," Zamagni went on to say.
And others point out that the Pope is actually writing against, not for, the establishment of one, large global governing body. As John-Henry Westen points out, the Pope criticizes the UN and a New World Order just as he has done before:
Later in the encyclical (57) he speaks of the opposite concept to one- world government -subsidiarity (the principle of Catholic social teaching which states that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority) - as being essential. "In order not to produce a dangerous universal power of a tyrannical nature, the governance of globalization must be marked by subsidiarity," says the Pope.
And before anyone goes claiming that Pope Benedict XVI is a lefty hero, let’s not forget that this Pope is still the same guy who told us that "at the base of this New World Order" is the ideology of "women's empowerment." Hrmph.
As many analysts and Catholic theologians have pointed out, the encyclical is not intended to be a political treatise; rather, it is a letter on morality. But considering the new encyclical came out just one day before the big G8 Summit of world leaders, which is focusing on the global recession and economic slowdown, the timing is important. Even if the Pope didn’t mean to make a grand political statement and no matter where he fits on the political spectrum, it is surely refreshing that issues like increasing poor people’s involvement in governing structures, holding polluters responsible for environmental harm, and restructuring capitalism so there’s less exploitation of third world countries are now being seen as moral issues.
So, maybe the Pope isn’t left or right of anything. Maybe there’s a gray area in political philosophy that isn’t ruled by black-and-white, left-and-right thinking. A gray area of thought where folks like the Pope and Che Guevara, Ayn Rand and Ani DiFranco, Sally Kern and George Tiller, and Woody Guthrie and Toby Keith could all just get along. Just maybe.
To read the entire text of “Charity in Truth” go here.
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