text:
For too long government-run systems have dominated American primary and secondary education. As innovations of the past two decades such as charter schools and vouchers prove, parents, children, and society benefit when government promotes rather than stifles educational reform based on choice and competition. Add to the mounting evidence another success story: St. Martin de Porres school in Philadelphia. This inner city school is finding new life through the cooperation of three not-always-cooperative entities: church, community, and government.
Read the rest of the commentary.
For too long government-run systems have dominated American primary and secondary education. As innovations of the past two decades such as charter schools and vouchers prove, parents, children, and society benefit when government promotes rather than stifles educational reform based on choice and competition. Add to the mounting evidence another success story: St. Martin de Porres school in Philadelphia. This inner city school is finding new life through the cooperation of three not-always-cooperative entities: church, community, and government.
In the Wall Street Journal, Acton Institute President and Co-Founder Rev. Robert A. Sirico looks at the recent "note" on economics released this week by the Vatican. The document, titled "Toward Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of a Global Public Authority," was published with an eye toward the upcoming G-20 meeting in Cannes, France, on Nov. 3-4. This 18-page document has, Rev. Sirico observes, "been celebrated by advocates of bigger government the world over."
But what's missing from the popular analysis is that the Vatican document "embraces a sound economic theory concerning the cause of the world financial crisis: the breakdown of the postwar Bretton Woods monetary system and the unleashing of fiat currencies and central-bank printing presses."
Rev. Sirico:
We went from a hard-money regime, in which there were restrictions on the power of central banks and financial institutions to create money and credit, to one where money became purely paper. There were no restrictions remaining on the power of governments to finance unlimited debt. Banks could create credit seemingly without limit. Central banks became the real power in the world economy.
None of this was true under a gold standard. That system limits the expansion of credit by an indelible physical fact. There was a limit, a check, a rule that went beyond the whim of financial masters and politicians. The Vatican seems to understand this.
But discerning the disease and finding the cure are very different undertakings, and here the document falls short. It imagines a new world central bank and political authority that will rule without "any partial vision or particular good" but rather seek "the common good." Its decisions should "be made in the interest of all, not only to the advantage of some groups, whether they are formed by private lobbies or national governments."
Somehow, with an intelligence never before discovered in government bureaucracies, these proposed global authorities would create "socio-economic, political and legal conditions essential for the existence of markets that are efficient and efficacious."
Read "The Vatican's Monetary Wisdom" on the website of the Wall Street Journal (may require registration).
Acton's director of research, Samuel Gregg, blogs about Cardinal Pell's speech on global warming over at The Corner. He summarizes the remarks and then provides their ecclesiastical context, defending both the cardinal and the Pope from the radical left and from charges of submission to intellectual fashion.
[Pells] key points are simply that (1) the scientific debate is not over, (2) the climate movement has always seemed more driven by ideology than evidence, and (3) this isn't a basis for implementing extremely costly policies.
The context of Cardinal Pell's remarks is the growing concern among Church leaders about the radical green movement, whose positions are not confined to environmentalism.
It's no secret that when it comes to those moral questions that are truly non-negotiable for Catholics (e.g., abortion, euthanasia), Greens invariably take the most permissive positions. Their hostility to robust religious-liberty protections is a matter of record. Moreover, anyone who delves into "deep Green" literature soon discovers frankly humanophobic ideas. Such are the concerns of some Catholic bishops that, before elections were held in the Australian state of New South Wales in March this year, Pell and most of the state's Catholic bishops issued an unprecedented pre-election statement warning their flocks against the more troubling, less publically mentioned parts of the Greens' party platform.
And what of Cardinal Pell's friendship with Pope Benedict, who has been called the "green pope?" The mainstream media may try as hard as it likes, but
Benedict himself has wondered on many occasions (including during his recent Bundestag speech) about the disconnect between many peoples' contemporary angst about the environment and their seeming indifference to what Benedict calls the "human ecology" of the natural law, which provides the only truly rational basis for human freedom, dignity, and civilization.
Leaving aside efforts to establish nonexistent tensions between cardinal and pope, the usual suspects — secular and religious — will surely excoriate Pell for this lecture. But in an age where far too many Christian thinkers are way too submissive to transitory intellectual fashions that make them acceptable at fashionable cocktail parties but also partakers in profound intellectual incoherence, it's refreshing to know not everyone is so intimidated.
Today, George Cardinal Pell delivered a lecture at the invitation of the Global Warming Policy Foundation titled "Eppur' si muove, or 'yet it moves:' One Christian Perspective on Climate Change." He insisted that a scientific consensus is a lazy basis for the making of policy, and that before states impose drastic environmental regulations, an analysis of their demonstrable costs and benefits must be undertaken.
Galileo is supposed to have muttered the lecture's title after recanting his heliocentrism in the face of a "scientific consensus." Cardinal Pell spent a large portion of his lecture demonstrating the historical existence of a Medieval warm period which in the last ten years the green movement has tried to explain away, since it's rather inconvenient to find that pre-industrial man lived in a hotter climate when you want to assert that carbon emissions must be causing current global warming. "And yet, it was warm," the Cardinal is saying.
Cardinal Pell began with the Tower of Babel, and quoted Leon Kass's description of that project as "the all-too-human, prideful attempt at self-creation." Before making any sort of climate policy, the Cardinal warned,
we should ask whether our attempts at global climate control are within human capacity, (that is, the projected human imperium); or on the other hand, are likely to be as misdirected and ineffective as the construction of the famous tower in the temple of Marduk, Babylon's chief god.
Where is the borderline separating us from what is beyond human power? Where does scientific striving become uneconomic, immoral or ineffectual and so lapse into hubris?
Even more dangerous than ineffectual scientific striving is ineffectual unscientific striving, which what we have when policy is made based not on scientific finding, but on scientific consensus. Of this consensus, Cardinal Pell says it "is a category error, scientifically and philosophically. In fact it is also a cop-out, a way of avoiding the basic issues." He goes on:
What is important and what needs to be examined by lay people as well as scientists is the evidence and argumentation which are adduced to back any consensus. The basic issue is not whether the science is settled but whether the evidence and explanations are adequate in that paradigm.
The complacent appeal to scientific consensus is simply one more appeal to authority, quite inappropriate in science or philosophy.
Thomas Aquinas pointed this out long ago explaining that "the argument from authority based on human reason" is the weakest form of argument, always liable to logical refutation. [Summa I, 1, 8 ad 2]
Then the Cardinal goes into his lengthy defense of the Medieval warm period, which you may read for yourself in the full text of his speech.
After poking a hole in the green lobby's weather balloon, Cardinal Pell makes his appeal to lawmakers and bureaucrats.
A final point to be noted in this struggle to convince public opinion is that the language used by AGW proponents veers towards that of primitive religious controversy. Believers are contrasted with deniers, doubters and sceptics, although I must confess no one has dubbed me a climate change heretic.
The rewards for proper environmental behaviour are uncertain, unlike the grim scenarios for the future as a result of human irresponsibility which have a dash of the apocalyptic about them, even of the horsemen of the Apocalypse. The immense financial costs true-believers would impose on economies can be compared with the sacrifices offered traditionally in religion, and the sale of carbon credits with the pre-Reformation practice of selling indulgences. Some of those campaigning to save the planet are not merely zealous but zealots. To the religionless and spiritually rootless, mythology — whether comforting or discomforting — can be magnetically, even pathologically, attractive.
For this reason (among others) I support the recommendation of Bjorn Lomborg and Bob Carter [in The Australian] that, rather than spending money on meeting the Kyoto Protocol which would have produced an indiscernible effect on temperature rise, money should be used to raise living standards and reduce vulnerability to catastrophes and climate change (in whatever direction), so helping people to cope better with future challenges.
It is folly, the Cardinal says, to rush into climate regulation efforts of little proveable benefit when their cost will be extreme. The city of Athens spent half its GDP building the Parthenon, and after eleven years of work had a fantastically beautiful temple to show for its expense. Al Gore hasn't yet called for a 50 percent green tax, but when he does, will a two degree drop in summer temperatures be worth it?
The text of the speech was released at 3:15 ET and will soon be on the Archdiocese of Syndey's website. We'll link it here when it's up.
In my commentary this week, I used Louisiana as one of the backdrops to shine the light on government greed. I first became fascinated with the political scene in the Pelican State when I moved down to the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
I stayed up late one night in 1996 watching C-Span2 while Woody Jenkins, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, appeared to have his election stolen. I was hooked from that point on.
Former Louisiana governor Earl Long once remarked, "When I die I want to be buried in Louisiana so I can stay active in politics." Former Congressman Billy Tauzin said of his state: "One half of Louisiana is under water and the other half is under indictment." Former governor Edwin Edwards, who is mentioned in the commentary, has a fascinating book profiling his antics and political corruption in The Last Hayride.
Louisiana has undergone a remarkable transformation and it is covered superbly by Jim Geraghty at National Review in "The Storm Calmer." The transformation provides wisdom for the nation today. My commentary is printed below.
Government Greed Needs an 'Occupation' Too
When it comes to political crookedness and graft, Louisiana is infamous. The New York Times just profiled Edwin Edwards, whose reputation earned him the nickname "Fast Eddie." The former governor of the Pelican State recently released after a 10-year prison sentence for racketeering naturally wants back in the political ring. A resident displayed the love many still have for the former lawmaker, telling the Times, "We all knew he was going to steal, but he told us he was going to do it."
Edwards serves as one of the most flagrant examples of government greed, enriching countless cronies along with himself. But he is not alone. The Occupy Wall Street movement focuses on "corporate greed," but the public sector variety, though it draws less media attention, is equally reprehensible.
Eminent domain abuse, bloated public pensions, deficit spending—which simply generate calls for future tax increases—and a tax code that discourages saving and investing, are just a few examples of government greed. The 19th century British preacher and evangelist Charles Spurgeon once remarked, "You say, 'If I had a little more, I should be very satisfied.' You make a mistake. If you are not content with what you have, you would not be satisfied if it were doubled."
His audience was the individual. But Spurgeon's warning applies to a government demanding more wealth that should remain private and more of the public trust. Government excess and the way in which it mercilessly suctions revenue away from Main Street are alarming indeed. According to The World Bank's annual Doing Business report, the United States no longer ranks as a top 10 country for starting a business; Rwanda is higher on the list. Half a century ago, business rapidly mobilized to help launch the greatest army of liberation in world history; now the nation's private sector faces an uncertain future.
Today the Occupy Wall Street movement and its echo chamber in the media denounce corporate America. But a smaller headline in Bloomberg News about Washington edging out San Jose, Calif., as the wealthiest U.S. metropolitan area raised eyebrows, too. The total compensation package for a federal employee in the beltway now exceeds $126,000. There are many hard working and patriotic federal employees, but as the federal government payroll increasingly coincides with a diminishing private sector, government employees are rapidly moving closer to the 1 percent.
More disturbing perhaps is a quote from the president of the D.C. Chamber of Commerce who declared, "Wall Street has moved to K Street." The mammoth increase in federal laws and regulation has generated an upsurge in the number of lobbyists and lawyers to manage the federal government's far-reaching bureaucratic tentacles.
Greed of all sorts should be denounced. Unique to neither business nor government, its perennial presence illuminates the unchanged heart of humankind. For that reason the Founders understood that the power of government must be limited and virtue magnified. During the benediction at the Acton Institute's Annual Dinner last week, Rev. Ren Broekhuizen offered this rightly famous quote from Abraham Kuyper: "There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: 'Mine!'" He implored the assembled to mount their own righteous "occupation" of Wall Street, the government, business, and all of society.
Just last week, the 84-year-old former governor Edwin Edwards joked with well wishers and basked in the limelight at a parade during the International Rice Festival in Crowley, La. That same day Gov. Bobby Jindal coasted to reelection against a crowded field with nearly 66 percent of the vote. Jindal's approval in part stems from sweeping reforms to antiquated laws that bred government greed and corruption. After Katrina and the BP oil spill, it was all the more apparent to Louisianans that the old way of doing things was toxic. Greed and corruption intensify suffering in a time of crisis.
As America faces its current economic crisis, Louisiana's experience is instructive. Solutions can be found not in centralized power and burdensome regulation, which facilitate and reward government greed, but in framing sensible laws and reinvigorating a culture of virtue in business and government alike.
Kishore Jayabalan, director of Istituto Acton in Rome, is quoted extensively in a story about the Vatican's note on economic centralization written by Edward Pentin, a reporter for the National Catholic Register. If you wonder why the Acton Institute is around — why we feel the need to connect your good intentions with sound economics — well, Kishore explains:
Kishore Jayabalan… welcomed the Vatican's attempt to deal with the economic crisis, but he said their conclusions were based on "political and economic ignorance rather than experience."
But the note, written by the Pontifical Council for Peace and Justice, lacks more than sound economics; it lacks theological depth. It speaks throughout of the common good, but without a moral framework, that common good can have little ethical consequence. The kind of economic reform the note calls for could only be motivated by a conception of the common good rooted in a full, Christian understanding of human nature. Jayabalan again: "[the note] doesn't speak of God or the natural law and so neglects this substantial notion of the common good,"
There is comparatively little talk even of greed and idolatry in the note — those vices seem get more attention at Occupy Wall Street drum circles than at the PCPJ. We'll talk about them though:
Jayabalan, a former official at the Pontifical Council, said greed and idolatry are permanently recurring temptations that require "constructive ways" to combat them. And yet "quite surprisingly for an office of the Roman Curia and from a Catholic perspective, the note does not tell us much about the spiritual battle that must take place."
Rather than draft this note, Jayabalan said the Vatican should have drawn on the "economic wisdom of the division of labor" which would have told them "to stick to what it knows and does best."
Last summer, Acton's PovertyCure team traveled to Ghana to meet with its economists and entrepreneurs — the men and women who are helping the country develop. It just so happens that they also met briefly with Peter Cardinal Turkson, president of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Peace and Justice and co-author of the note released yesterday that has stirred up a global controversy.
Cardinal Turkson, a native of Ghana, calls for the establishment of a central world bank in his note to the G-20, published in anticipation of next month's summit in Cannes. Drawing from the first world's obligation in solidarity to the developing world, he says:
Specific attention should be paid to the reform of the international monetary system and, in particular, the commitment to create some form of global monetary management, something that is already implicit in the Statues of the International Monetary Fund. It is obvious that to some extent this is equivalent to putting the existing exchange systems up for discussion in order to find effective means of coordination and supervision. This process must also involve the emerging and developing countries in defining the stages of a gradual adaptation of the existing instruments.
On that trip to Ghana, PovertyCure sat down for an interview with entrepreneur Herman Chinery-Hesse, a Ghanaian software developer who writes programs that can handle frequent power outages and primitive technology. ("Everybody builds Rolls Royces, but we're in Africa; we build Land Rovers," he explains.) His experience with a heavily nationalized economy that is dependent on foreign aid has taught him much:
I have never heard of a country that developed on aid. If you have heard of one, let me know! I know about countries that developed on trade, and innovation, and business. I don't know of any country that got so much aid that it suddenly became a first world country. I have never heard of such a country.
Chinery-Hesse has plenty of experience with engines of economic progress created by well-meaning Western nations:
You cannot imagine how petty the political parties could get [in Ghana]… and they can do this because they are not depending on tax revenue. They are more interested in a smile on the World Bank country director's face than the success of my business.
A truly human program of development must take into account the fallen nature of developing countries' rulers — they're human too, after all. The World Bank is disruptive enough as it is: ask Herman Chinery-Hesse whether Ghana would improve if we merged it into a behemoth financial overlord.
Frank Schaeffer: Bachmann, Palin, Perry Use Religion Like Snake Oil Salesmen (2011)
Remaining Orthodox in a Secular World : A Sermon by Frank Schaeffer (2002)
Mark Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), has a story on FrontPageMag.com about Frank Schaeffer's call for the Occupy Wall Street protesters to go after evangelical Christians. Schaeffer is the son of evangelical theologian Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984). Tooley:
A blogger for The Huffington Post, young Schaeffer is now faulting religious conservatives for facilitating Wall Street greed. He's imploring the Wall Street Occupiers to "protest the root source of America's tilt to the far unregulated corporate right." For Schaeffer, the next logical step is to demonstrate "outside mega churches, Evangelical publishing houses, [and] religious organizations that lead the 'moral' crusades against women and gays and all the rest."
The article, titled "Wall Street Occupiers Urged to Target Churches," also describes Schaeffer attacking Roman Catholics as "likewise 'fundamentalists' who have 'delegitimized the US Government and thus undercut its ability to tax, spend and regulate.' So Catholic bishops, like evangelical mega churches, have also tricked their followers into voting against their 'own class and self-interest.'" See the top video in this post for a sample of Schaeffer spleen.
In August, New York Times reporter Mark Oppenheimer interviewed Schaeffer about his new book Sex, Mom and God and said that that the author's "break with conservatism, and with evangelicalism, came in the late 1980s." But, as Oppenheimer described it in "Son of Evangelical Royalty Turns His Back, and Tells the Tale," Schaeffer:
… had long been skeptical of many of his bedfellows. He found the television pastor Pat Robertson and some of his colleagues to be 'idiots,' he told me last week, when we met for coffee in western Massachusetts. Looking back, Mr. Schaeffer says that once he became disillusioned he 'faked it the whole way.'
Schaeffer might be telling the truth, but remember he's a self-confessed faker. One thing's for sure — Oppenheimer didn't do his homework.
The second, grainy video at the top of this post, shot in a Greek Orthodox church about six months after the World Trade Center terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, shows Schaeffer in his post-evangelical, pre-HuffPo culture wars mode — more than a decade after his purported "break" from the right. You hear him warning those in the pews about the threat from "the Islamic horde that now pours toward our frontiers" and hear him berating Protestants and Catholics for their soft "feminized" Christianity that won't stand up to secularism, hedonism and a whole catalog of evils that might have been formulated by, say, Pat Robertson. Schaeffer wants a Christianity that isn't wishy-washy, therapeutic and "sentimental" but has a "my way or the highway" ethic — a lot like the U.S. Marine Corps. In fact, he has found the alternative to America's flabby faith: the Orthodox Church.
A tireless book promoter (see also the first five minutes of this longer video), Schaeffer spent a good part of the 1990s and beyond attacking Western Christianity for its many failures and novelties over and against the "pure and clean and perfect" Orthodox Church, into which he was received as a convert. The launching pad for much of this vitriol was his 1995 book, Dancing Alone: The Quest for Orthodox Faith in the Age of False Religions, which combined Orthodox triumphalism and cold-hearted sectarian vituperation and took it to new heights.
My Greek Orthodox parish was instrumental in bringing Schaeffer to Grand Rapids, Mich., in 1995 for a speaking engagement at a local high school that drew more than 1,000 people. The crowd included many curious Protestants who wanted to hear the son of the famous evangelical theologian explain why he had left the fold and converted to Orthodoxy. While in town, Schaeffer was interviewed on Calvin Forum, a public affairs program on the Calvin College educational TV channel. Indeed, the Reformed minister who interviewed him later was received into the Orthodox Church. Listen to Kevin Allen of Ancient Faith Radio interview former moderator of Calvin Forum, Robert Meyering, about the role Schaeffer played in his journey East.
What is Orthodoxy? According to Schaeffer, "it is the church that has maintained the worship, the sacrament, the truth, in its only pure form that can be found in the world today." Problem is, in his current incarnation as scourge of the Religious Right, Schaeffer doesn't say much about the Orthodox Church and his many years of (faking it again?) traveling the country as a Neo-Byzantine circuit rider. You see no evidence on his personal web page of any of those rants against the Catholic and Protestant enemies of Orthodoxy, nor access to a digital version of his tabloid Christian Activist newspaper that was frequently the vehicle for these attacks.
In Dancing Alone, Schaeffer decried the "Protestant debacle [embodied in the ecumenical movement] which has resulted in the disintegration of Western civilization, the acceptance of abortion on demand, the ordination of women, homosexuals and lesbians, the apostasy and heresy inherent in 'liberal' Protestant theology." This was years after he "broke" with the conservatives and Religious Right? Here's the contents page for the book on Regina Orthodox Press, the publishing house Schaeffer founded and which continues to sell titles like From Baptist to Byzantium and The Virtue of War.
Schaeffer's Orthodox history might be inconvenient to him today because based on the Church's teachings — sanctity of life, sexuality, marriage, a hyper-patriarchal priesthood — it looks a lot like the dimwitted "Taliban" Christians and "fundamentalists" that Schaeffer spends so much time denouncing of late. Then again, you can hardly go around advertising the fact that you spent years proselytizing on behalf of traditional morality if, today, you want to maximize your page views on HuffPo and get MSNBC producers to call you back.
IRD covered a speech Schaeffer recently gave in which he cited the Orthodox tradition's reverence for "holy mysteries" as grounds for rejecting "the frozen being of belief." But the mysteries of the faith in Orthodox teaching (indeed, the Christian faith rests on profound mysteries) do not provide a basis for a faith that changes, as he puts it, "like the weather." He should go back and re-read his history of the Ecumenical Councils if he thinks that "anything goes" is how the Church does theology.
Years ago, it was obvious to some Orthodox Christians that Schaeffer had anger management issues. In a 1995 review of Dancing Alone, the scholar and essayist Vigen Gurioan said the book "oozes with the same moralism, instrumentalism and pragmatism that have contributed to the secularization and loss of catholic Christian consciousness that he condemns."
Schaeffer, Guroian wrote, is at heart an individualist who has taken it upon himself to single handedly interpret the Truth and right all wrongs:
Schaeffer seems to have become Orthodox because the rest of America has gone wrong, and Orthodoxy is the best religious remedy for cultural crisis and moral malaise. At work here is not the catholic mind of the church but the romantic self that takes upon itself the task of reconstructing and arbitrating theological truth. Schaeffer intones "Holy Tradition" repeatedly when he passes judgment on the falsehood in others and claims truth for his own statements ("Holy Tradition says…"). But at center stage as arbiter and mediator of this so-called Holy Tradition is the "I."
Schaeffer is still arbitrating the truth, but now from the left. Fair enough. That's his choice. Although, inciting mobs to attack churches and publishing houses does sound a tad intolerant.
But the New York Times claim that the years of "faking it" among Christian traditionalists ended in the late 1980s, doesn't hold water. Actually, his right wing, sectarian hate speech phase extended deep into the 1990s and 2000s, albeit masquerading in the rich brocades of Orthodox triumphalism. You wonder: Because Frank Schaeffer is such a good faker, could he still be faking it today? Is he a double agent in the culture wars, secretly going among the liberals at HuffPo and MSNBC until the time is ripe to once again expose the evildoers with new books and fresh tirades? We'll have to stay tuned.
Samuel Gregg is quoted in today's New York Times story about the Vatican note calling for a central world bank — he gives the final word on the document. The "politically liberal Catholics" quoted before him reveal that they have missed a crucial distinction in the document produced by the Pontifical Council for Peace and Justice. Gregg, of course has picked up on that distinction; he wrote yesterday:
Putting aside doctrinal questions, this text also makes claims of a more strictly economic nature…. The text makes a legitimate point about the effects of a disjunction between the financial sector and the rest of the economy.
Unfortunately, many of its authors' ideas reflect an uncritical assimilation of the views of many of the very same individuals and institutions that helped generate the world's most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression.
The academics and activists who see in the document a way forward to socialism have missed the split between the note's diagnosis of the world economy, and its proposed economic reforms. I cannot resist quoting G.K. Chesterton: "The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right."
To say that "the time has come to conceive of institutions with universal competence," as PCPJ President Cardinal Turkson did yesterday, is all well and good, but the possibility of such institutions running effectively is another matter.
Indeed, Kishore Jayabalan, the director of Istituto Acton and a former staffer at the Council, asked the National Catholic Reporter, "What makes the [Council] think that 'global' leaders will succeed where so many national ones have failed? It is a shame this document is based more on sentimental political hopes for world government than on actual experience and expertise of financial markets."
This morning the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace issued a bold statement advising how to bring order to the global financial crisis. I was in attendance at the much anticipated press conference that was organized to debrief reporters on the statement's content.
The statement came in the form of a "Nota" ("Note" in Vatican terms): Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority.
The President and Secretary of the Council, together with a University of Rome economics professor summarized the points and context of the Note. They were met with tough questions from 60 feisty Vatican-beat journalists representing international newspaper, television and radio outlets.
To say the least, the Council's Note was controversial and not something you normally see released from a Vatican Council. Normally, concerning specific economic policy and governance, Vatican authorities speak much more boldly on moral and theological matters and much less so on practical prescriptions.
Before getting started with the debriefing, there were a few waivers and clarifications to make about the Note's official extent of authority and relevance.
Both the council's President, Cardinal Peter Turkson, and Vatican Press Secretary, Fr. Federico Lombardi, made it very clear that the statement was "not in any way the opinion of the pope", but solely that of the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace and those that composed it.
One of the journalists present asked if the Holy Father himself had read the document, to which the Council's Secretary, Bishop Mario Toso, said the document had only been reviewed by the Secretariat of State and was released to stimulate the practical and moral thinking of world economic leaders attending the G-20 summit this November 3-4 in Cannes, France and to "invite a process of discernment among all peoples of the world" as Cardinal Turkson later added.
Most of the heated questions at the Vatican press conference concentrated on the potential utopian vision of a single world government authority a la United Nations and IMF to promote financial and monetary security as well as greater equality among the rich and poor in teetering markets and destitute nations. Professor Leonardo Becchetti told journalists from the panel that "the world has changed…a globalized economy now calls for a global government".
Bishop Toso was quick to point out that the statement's opinions on a global financial authority took inspiration from Pope Benedict's 2009 encylcical letter, Caritas in Veritate, where he said the Holy Father underscored that some form of world authority was necessary to bring order to the global economic chaos in full force. Therefore, as the Council's officials argued, some legitimacy to their argument for a world economic authority stemmed from the Church's official social teachings.
The reference to Caritas in Veritate had today's journalists on edge with further demanding questions about the natural tendencies and historical proofs that corruption, self-interests and sin almost always destroy the good intentions and original human ideals of large-scale governance and any political authority wielding massive power.
Here are some extended clips from the first and third parts of the Council's statement, where the issues of economic development, inequality and global financial authority are addressed.
The English translation is still in a process of final revision and should be released soon along with expert articulation and commentary from the Acton staff. Stay tuned for more!
1. Economic Development and Inequalities
The grave economic and financial crisis which the world is going through today springs from multiple causes. Opinions on the number and significance of these causes vary widely. Some commentators emphasize first and foremost certain errors inherent in the economic and financial policies; others stress the structural weaknesses of political, economic and financial institutions; still others say that the causes are ethical breakdowns occurring at all levels of a world economy that is increasingly dominated by utilitarianism and materialism. At every stage of the crisis, one might discover particular technical errors intertwined with certain ethical orientations.
In material goods markets, natural factors and productive capacity as well as labour in all of its many forms set quantitative limits by determining relationships of costs and prices which, under certain conditions, permit an efficient allocation of available resources.
In monetary and financial markets, however, the dynamics are quite different. In recent decades, it was the banks that extended credit, which generated money, which in turn sought a further expansion of credit. In this way, the economic system was driven towards an inflationary spiral that inevitably encountered a limit in the risk that credit institutions could accept. They faced the ultimate danger of bankruptcy, with negative consequences for the entire economic and financial system
After World War II, national economies made progress, albeit with enormous sacrifices for millions, indeed billions of people who, as producers and entrepreneurs on the one hand and as savers and consumers on the other, had put their confidence in a regular and progressive expansion of money supply and investment in line with opportunities for real growth of the economy.
Since the 1990s, we have seen that money and credit instruments worldwide have grown more rapidly than revenue, even adjusting for current prices. From this came the formation of pockets of excessive liquidity and speculative bubbles which later turned into a series of solvency and confidence crises that have spread and followed one another over the years…
A liberalist approach, unsympathetic towards public intervention in the markets, chose to allow an important international financial institution to fall into bankruptcy, on the assumption that this would contain the crisis and its effects. Unfortunately, this spawned a widespread lack of confidence and a sudden change in attitudes. Various public interventions of enormous scope (more than 20% of gross national product) were urgently requested in order to stem the negative effects that could have overwhelmed the entire international financial system.
The consequences for the real economy, what with grave difficulties in some sectors – first of all, construction – and wide distribution of unfavourable forecasts, have generated a negative trend in production and international trade with very serious repercussions for employment as well as other effects that have probably not yet had their full impact. The costs are extremely onerous for millions in the developed countries, but also and above all for billions in the developing ones…
Global economic well-being, traditionally measured by national income and also by levels of capacities, grew during the second half of the twentieth century, to an extent and with a speed never experienced in the history of humankind…
First and foremost, an economic liberalism that spurns rules and controls. Economic liberalism is a theoretical system of thought, a form of "economic apriorism" that purports to derive laws for how markets function from theory, these being laws of capitalistic development, while exaggerating certain aspects of markets. An economic system of thought that sets down a priori the laws of market functioning and economic development, without measuring them against reality, runs the risk of becoming an instrument subordinated to the interests of the countries that effectively enjoy a position of economic and financial advantage.
Regulations and controls, imperfect though they may be, already often exist at the national and regional levels; whereas on the international level, it is hard to apply and consolidate such controls and rules.
The inequalities and distortions of capitalist development are often an expression not only of economic liberalism but also of utilitarian thinking: that is, theoretical and practical approaches according to which what is useful for the individual leads to the good of the community. This saying has a core of truth, but it cannot be ignored that individual utility – even where it is legitimate – does not always favour the common good. In many cases a spirit of solidarity is called for that transcends personal utility for the good of the community….
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.
In his social encyclical, Benedict XVI precisely identified the roots of a crisis that is not only economic and financial but above all moral in nature. In fact, as the Pontiff notes, to function correctly the economy needs ethics; and not just of any kind but one that is people-centred. He goes on to denounce the role played by utilitarianism and individualism and the responsibilities of those who have adopted and promoted them as the parameters for the optimal behaviour of all economic and political agents who operate and interact in the social context. But Benedict XVI also identifies and denounces a new ideology, that of "technocracy".
3. An Authority over Globalization
On the way to building a more fraternal and just human family and, even before that, a new humanism open to transcendence, Blessed John XXIII's teaching seems especially timely. In the prophetic Encyclical Pacem in Terris of 1963, he observed that the world was heading towards ever greater unification. He then acknowledged the fact that a correspondence was lacking in the human community between the political organization "on a world level and the objective needs of the universal common good". He also expressed the hope that one day "a true world political authority" would be created.
In view of the unification of the world engendered by the complex phenomenon of globalization, and of the importance of guaranteeing, in addition to other collective goods, the good of a free, stable world economic and financial system at the service of the real economy, today the teaching of Pacem in Terris appears to be even more vital and worthy of urgent implementation.
In the same spirit of Pacem in Terris, Benedict XVI himself expressed the need to create a world political authority. This seems obvious if we consider the fact that the agenda of questions to be dealt with globally is becoming ever longer. Think, for example, of peace and security; disarmament and arms control; promotion and protection of fundamental human rights; management of the economy and development policies; management of the migratory flows and food security, and protection of the environment. In all these areas, the growing interdependence between States and regions of the world becomes more and more obvious as well as the need for answers that are not just sectorial and isolated, but systematic and integrated, rich in solidarity and subsidiarity and geared to the universal common good.
As the Pope reminds us, if this road is not followed, "despite the great progress accomplished in various sectors, international law would risk being conditioned by the balance of power among the strongest nations."
The purpose of the public authority, as John XXIII recalled in Pacem in Terris, is first and foremost to serve the common good. Therefore, it should be endowed with structures and adequate, effective mechanisms equal to its mission and the expectations placed in it. This is especially true in a globalized world which makes individuals and peoples increasingly interconnected and interdependent, but which also reveals the existence of monetary and financial markets of a predominantly speculative sort that are harmful for the real economy, especially of the weaker countries.
This is a complex and delicate process. A supranational Authority of this kind should have a realistic structure and be set up gradually. It should be favourable to the existence of efficient and effective monetary and financial systems; that is, free and stable markets overseen by a suitable legal framework, well-functioning in support of sustainable development and social progress of all, and inspired by the values of charity and truth. It is a matter of an Authority with a global reach that cannot be imposed by force, coercion or violence, but should be the outcome of a free and shared agreement and a reflection of the permanent and historic needs of the world common good. It ought to arise from a process of progressive maturation of consciences and freedoms as well as the awareness of growing responsibilities. Consequently, reciprocal trust, autonomy and participation cannot be overlooked as if they were superfluous elements. The consent should involve an ever greater number of countries that adhere with conviction, through a sincere dialogue that values the minority opinions rather than marginalizing them. So the world Authority should consistently involve all peoples in a collaboration in which they are called to contribute, bringing to it the heritage of their virtues and their civilizations.
The establishment of a world political Authority should be preceded by a preliminary phase of consultation from which a legitimated institution will emerge that is in a position to be an effective guide and, at the same time, can allow each country to express and pursue its own particular good. The exercise of this Authority at the service of the good of each and every one will necessarily be super partes (impartial): that is, above any partial vision or particular good, in view of achieving the common good. Its decisions should not be the result of the more developed countries' excessive power over the weaker countries. Instead, they should be made in the interest of all, not only to the advantage of some groups, whether they are formed by private lobbies or national governments.
A supranational Institution, the expression of a "community of nations", will not last long, however, if the countries' diversities from the standpoint of cultures, material and immaterial resources and historic and geographic conditions, are not recognized and fully respected. The lack of a convinced consensus, nourished by an unceasing moral communion on the part of the world community, would also reduce the effectiveness of such an Authority.
What is valid on the national level is also valid on the global level. A person is not made to serve authority unconditionally. Rather, it is the task of authority to be at the service of the person, consistent with the pre-eminent value of human dignity. Likewise, governments should not serve the world Authority unconditionally. Instead, it is the world Authority that should put itself at the service of the various member countries, according to the principle of subsidiarity. Among the ways it should do this is by creating the socio-economic, political and legal conditions essential for the existence of markets that are efficient and efficacious because they are not over-protected by paternalistic national policies and not weakened by systematic deficits in public finances and of the gross national products – indeed, such policies and deficits actually hamper the markets themselves in operating in a world context as open and competitive institutions.
In the tradition of the Church's Magisterium which Benedict XVI has vigorously embraced, the principle of subsidiarity should regulate relations between the State and local communities and between public and private institutions, not excluding the monetary and financial institutions. So, on a higher level, it ought to govern the relations between a possible future global public Authority and regional and national institutions. This principle guarantees both democratic legitimacy and the efficacy of the decisions of those called to make them. It allows respect for the freedom of people, individually and in communities, and at the same time, allows them to take responsibility for the objectives and duties that pertain to them.
According to the logic of subsidiarity, the higher Authority offers its subsidium, that is, its aid, only when individual, social or financial actors are intrinsically deficient in capacity, or cannot manage by themselves to do what is required of them. Thanks to the principle of solidarity, a lasting and fruitful relation is built up between global civil society and a world public Authority as States, intermediate bodies, various institutions – including economic and financial ones – and citizens make their decisions with a view to the global common good, which transcends national goods.
As we read in Caritas in Veritate, "The governance of globalization must be marked by subsidiarity, articulated into several layers and involving different levels that can work together." Only in this way can the danger of a central Authority's bureaucratic isolation be avoided, which would otherwise risk being delegitimized by an excessive distance from the realities on which it is based and easily fall prey to paternalistic, technocratic or hegemonic temptations.
However, a long road still needs to be travelled before arriving at the creation of a public Authority with universal jurisdiction. It would seem logical for the reform process to proceed with the United Nations as its reference because of the worldwide scope of its responsibilities, its ability to bring together the nations of the world, and the diversity of its tasks and those of its specialized Agencies. The fruit of such reforms ought to be a greater ability to adopt policies and choices that are binding because they are aimed at achieving the common good on the local, regional and world levels. Among the policies, those regarding global social justice seem most urgent: financial and monetary policies that will not damage the weakest countries; and policies aimed at achieving free and stable markets and a fair distribution of world wealth, which may also derive from unprecedented forms of global fiscal solidarity, which will be dealt with later.
On the way to creating a world political Authority, questions of governance (that is, a system of merely horizontal coordination without an authority super partes cannot be separated from those of a shared government (that is, a system which in addition to horizontal coordination establishes an authority super partes) which is functional and proportionate to the gradual development of a global political society. The establishment of a global political Authority cannot be achieved without an already functioning multilateralism, not only on a diplomatic level, but also and above all in relation to programs for sustainable development and peace. It is not possible to arrive at global Government without giving political expression to pre-existing forms of interdependence and cooperation.


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Perry Bellegarde says he has no choice but to encourage other First Nations people to vote, but he won't cast a ballot himself
Should he seek political asylum, he could become one of the most damaging defectors in the history of the People's Republic
Xi Jinping has concentrated power on himself more than any recent Chinese leader, but when a stock market nosedives, all the central planning in the world won't stop it.
Zhou Yongkang has been sentenced to life in prison, making him the highest-level official convicted in President Xi Jinping's signature campaign against corruption
China is already the world's second ranked military, and the West needs to talk to the Chinese generals and admirals.
Beijing has just initiated its biggest cut in bank reserve requirements since 2008, a move that underscores just how worried it is about its economy. But it's also a stark wake-up call for its Asian neighbours.
Western values are a "ticket to hell," a newspaper published by China's Communist Party said in a recent editorial
Liu Han, famed for his love of casinos, cigars and luxury cars, was executed in one of the most dramatic episodes in President Xi Jinping's war on corruption
Public opinion is killing the old-fashioned dictatorship. New-age autocrats must rely on media strategies that increasingly resemble those of Western politicians.
Across Asia, the lowest crude prices since 2009 are an almost unmitigated boon. In China and India they offer big rewards if the risks are taken.


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Looking at the brain at rest
While looking at the brain in its basal state when the activity was "at rest" before attempting to memorize a list of items or after a memory had been stored Dr. Slutsky's team could actually "see" where synapses differ at different dendritic branches in the neuronal network. Those branches of neurons close to a cell body displayed a larger number of weak synapses, while the most distant branches were composed of a smaller number of strong synapses.
"Why the difference?" they asked. GABA was the answer. Higher concentrations of GABA near a synapse induced a stronger activation of its receptors, weakening basal synapse strength. As a result, GABA makes this synapse more liable to the formation of new memories, the researchers propose.
Dr. Slutsky, who previously discovered a basal-state regulator molecule, says that the research may also have implications for treating diseases of the mind. "We found that amyloid-beta, a well-known hallmark of Alzheimer's disease, regulates basal synapse strength in an opposite way to GABA," she notes, suggesting that an increase in the basal activity of synapses may initiate memory decline in Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative disorders.
Experiments in the study were done using neuronal cultures and brain slices of rats subjected to molecular biology, optical imaging and electrophysiological techniques. The study also constituted a technical achievement, since it used advanced imaging techniques such as fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) spectroscopy that looked at protein-to-protein interactions in the brain at the 10 nanometer scale. In the past, such fine resolution was impossible ― brain scientists could only invest
|Contact: George Hunka
American Friends of Tel Aviv University


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Born: May 05,1956
Zodiac: Taurus
Biography: Gulshan kumar (5 may 1956 - 12 august 1997) was the founder of the t-series music label, and an indian bollywood movie producer. t series is now run by his son bhushan kumar. his daughter tulsi kumar is a playback singer.See full bio Read on Wikipedia
Gulshan Kumar : Filmography
- Dil Hai Ke Manta Nahin 1991
- Aashiqui 1990