Benedict's New Encyclical
What is particularly interesting in this brief news piece from the Cutting Edge News about the new Encyclical ( tentatively entitled Caritas in Veritate (Charity/Love in the Truth) is the public acknowledgement of the team helping the Pope write it:
In his encyclical, the cardinal said, “[Pope Benedict] does not want to repeat obvious truths of Catholic social teaching," but will apply Church teachings to contemporary problems. “I am thinking of globalization and other problems, like the food crisis and climate change," Cardinal Bertone said.
Il Giornale's Andrea Tornielli reported last week that the committee working with the Pope on the encyclical includes the Pope's recently-named successor as archbishop of Munich and Freising, Reinhard Marx, a specialist in Catholic social teaching; the top two officials of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Cardinal Renato Martino and Bishop Giampaolo Crepaldi; and Stefano Zamagni, a lay Italian economist.
It makes perfect sense and is very much in keeping with the Church's understanding of the laity that the Pope should call upon the competence of lay experts when considering the application of Catholic social teaching in such areas. We know that there were significant lay contributions to the drafts of some Second Vatican Council documents, for instance. But I've not seen this sort of collaboration acknowledged in advance so clearly before.
posted by Sherry W @ 9:32 AM
8 Comments
8 Comments:
Very hopeful news!
Not easy to find stuff in English quoting an Italian layman, but here's his area of expertise in a nutshell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginalism#cite_ref-screpanti_25-0
(a big nut to crack, admittedly, but note that Austan Goolsbee -- of Barack Obama fame -- thinks it's so important that 'if politicians had to pass an exam before they were allowed to serve in public office, what question would you add to the test?' replies
"Do you understand marginal cost?"
cited from chronicle.uchicago.edu/070215/opine.shtml
So we ought to be familiar with it, indeed "marginal cost" may pave the way to the "practice" that Alisdair MacIntyre says America needs to find its moral footing again
http://www.iep.utm.edu/p/p-macint.htm
-- pray with me that it may be so! For the sake of the pro-life vote, how many babies were saved in the last seven years for the "marginal cost" of our votes for two seats on the Supreme Court?
None.
Was the price worth it?
You decide!
And for clarification here's an animation from Canada on the modern practice of money as debt:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279&hl=en&CFID=161233&CFTOKEN=5080a25a729e7585-24062F61-FF70-A07E-9CE8F916A29166B7
Another sign that Pope Benedict's papacy continues to astonish and inspire!
Zamagni had some interesting pieces in L'Osservatore not recently ... let me try and dig them up.
Hmm. L'Osservatore isn't easy to search.
This will no doubt be a very important encyclical. However there is a very real danger that the 'spin' placed on it by certain groups of libertarian minded Catholics could destroy the great challenge that the Church has continued to lay down in the area of social teaching in the time since Rerum Novarum. That is that humanity and life must not be reduced to a single dimension of utility (the metaphyiscal principle of today).
We can only pray that this encyclical may not be ignored.
As for lay involvement, I think it is fairly common knowledge that there was significant lay involvement in Veritatis Splendor in the form of moral theologicans like Grisez and Finnis.
Fr. Anthony may be interested in the thread over at Amy's "Charlotte was Both"
http://amywelborn.wordpress.com/2008/06/02/wielding-that-weapon/
Libertarians are more closely allied with Grisez and Finnis that he may realize, and the Church's social teaching may yet be "saved" not destroyed by marginalism! Fr. Bernard W. Dempsey who authored "Interest and Usury" back in 1943 studied under Shumpeter as did Zamagni.
Utility (using things) is not evil, utilitarianism (using persons as if they were things) is, the one is universally catholic, the other protestantly selfish.
Libertarians like Ron Paul have much more in common with traditional ethics than we "moderns" realize, and he's no "libertine liberal"
Beware of confusing the two: that's calumny!
For those who don't have the inclination to read the 30+ comments on that thread, here's a snippet worth reposting here:
"For an Aristotleian-Thomist view (and co-incidentally a Theology of the Body phenomological ‘Acting Person’ view of our dear JPII of blessed memory) read O’Boyle in Acton Institute’s latest Journal of Markets and Morality (subscription necessary) also online as pdf at the Mayo Research Institute | Requiem for Homo economicus |"
here
http://www.mayoresearch.org/files/REQUIEM.pdf
Sorry to be a blog-hog (ie leaving serial comments in reply to self) but here's another valid perspective on social agency that evokes the distrubutism favored of ChesterBelloc et al (from methodist-to-orthodox convert Dallas Morning News editorialist) Rod Dreher's CrunchyCon blog:
"Our industrial economy wouldn't be possible without massive state intervention that effectively subsidizes vast enterprises. For example, Wal-Mart wouldn't exist without the interstate highway system, paid for by taxpayers, who end up thereby undermining localism"
at
http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2008/06/relocalizing-aesthetics-and-pe.html
"
Sears did pretty well before interstate highways.
I am not convinced that one retailer or another is completely dependent upon "massive state intervention", rather they are in general harmed by state intervention of any kind.
JBP
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