Caritas
in Veritate
Benedict XVI's Call For Global
Government
A Guest Document
by Lee Penn
Originally published on June 3rd, 2012
With surprisingly little notice or controversy, Benedict XVI has called
for creation of a powerful world government that could redistribute
wealth and energy, regulate the world economy and environment, and uphold Catholic teachings on
the family, human life, and sexuality. Benedict wishes to use radical
means for a “conservative” end, and is calling for a regime that could
work only as a global tyranny.
DETAILS
For those with eyes to see and ears to hear, Benedict XVI has
authoritatively stated his desire for creation of a powerful world
government. In his June 2009 encyclical Caritas in Veritate, Benedict urged
the establishment of a “true world political authority” with “real
teeth”, wielding sufficient power to govern economics, food, energy,
armaments, environmental protection, and migration for the whole world.
The entire encyclical – not
just one paragraph – points in this direction.
Caritas in Veritate is an
integral part of Benedict’s teaching, and is consistent with what he
has often said and written since his April 2005 installation. This
encyclical has been widely accepted by the Church hierarchy and lay
organizations worldwide, and by most Catholic commentators, liberals
and conservatives alike. (This is quite unlike the widespread, public
Catholic rebellion that greeted Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae, which reaffirmed the
Church’s ban on artificial contraception.) The few critics of
Benedict’s encyclical are generally dismissed as National Catholic Reporter’s John
Allen did in April 2012: as “paranoid anti-globalist blogs” who are
“scanning the horizon for black helicopters bearing the papal coat of
arms”. (1)
In his encyclical, Benedict said, “In the face of the unrelenting
growth of global interdependence, there is a strongly felt need, even
in the midst of a global recession, for a reform of the United Nations Organization, and
likewise of economic institutions
and international finance, so that the concept of the family of
nations can acquire real teeth.”(§ 67) (2) This new “political,
juridical and economic order”
would “increase and give direction to
international cooperation for the development of all peoples in
solidarity. To manage the global economy ... to bring about integral
and
timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the
protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this,
there is urgent need of a true world political authority.”."(§ 67)
This new regime would also be responsible for “implementing the
principle of the responsibility to
protect”. (§ 67) “Responsibility to
protect” is an emerging concept that allows outside powers to impose
economic sanctions or to use military intervention to protect human
rights in targeted “rogue” countries. When Benedict assigned his
proposed “world political authority” the task of “implementing the
principle of the responsibility to protect”, he was giving it a job
that would require leverage over world trade and international finance,
and an army under its control.
This new authority would “need to be universally recognized” and would
“be vested with the effective power” to carry out its vast mandate.
Benedict said, “Such an authority would need to be regulated by law, to
observe consistently the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity, to
seek to establish the common good, and to make a commitment to securing authentic
integral human development inspired by the values of charity in truth.
Furthermore, such an authority would need to be universally recognized
and to be vested with the effective power to ensure security for all,
regard for justice, and respect for rights. Obviously it would have to
have the authority to ensure compliance with its decisions from all
parties, and also with the coordinated measures adopted in various
international forums. ... The integral development of peoples and
international cooperation require the establishment of a greater degree
of international ordering, marked by subsidiarity, for the management
of globalization. They also require the construction of a social order
that at last conforms to the moral order, to the interconnection
between moral and social spheres.”(§ 67)
Benedict urged the use of “political authority” for “the
process of constructing a new order of economic productivity, socially
responsible and human in scale”. (§ 41) He viewed
the “the State of law” as
guaranteed by two pillars: “a system of public order and effective
imprisonment that respects human rights”. (§ 41)
Note well: an effective prison system
is integral to Benedict’s
view of the rule of law by legitimate authority – presumably, including
a new “world political authority” (§ 67). With
this new world order would come the need to propagandize the people.
Benedict has this in view, since he stated that a key role of the mass
media is “engineering changes in attitude towards reality and the human
person” for their audience. (§ 73)
Benedict saw the post-2007 world economic crisis as presenting the
world with “choices that cannot be postponed concerning nothing less
than the destiny of man”. (§ 21) The “current
crisis” thus required radical changes, “new efforts of holistic
understanding and a new humanistic
synthesis. ... The crisis thus becomes an opportunity for discernment, in which
to shape a new vision for the future.”(§ 21)
He also said that “Since the development of persons and peoples is at
stake, this discernment will have to take account of the need for
emancipation and inclusivity, in the context of a truly universal human
community.” (§ 55) No Jacobin from the French
Revolution could have stated his dream more clearly.
Benedict said that “blind opposition” to globalization would be a
“mistaken and prejudiced attitude”. (§ 42)
Instead, we should be “its protagonists, acting in the light of reason,
guided by charity and truth. ... The processes of globalization,
suitably
understood and directed, open up the unprecedented possibility of
large-scale redistribution of wealth on a world-wide scale. ... In this
way it will be possible to experience and to steer the globalization of humanity in
relational terms, in terms of communion and the sharing of goods.”
(§ 42) In particular, there should be “a worldwide
redistribution of energy resources, so that countries lacking those
resources can have access to them”. (§ 49) What
body of wise and holy planners does Benedict have in mind, people who
could succeed with economic redistribution where the Communists failed?
In the fall of 2011, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace
(PCJP) issued a call for global financial reform and the gradual
creation of a “world political Authority”. (3) This document was
explicitly based on Caritas in
Veritate. Prominent Catholic defenders of unregulated capitalism
spoke against the Council’s document. However, it remains on-line at
the Vatican web site, and Cardinal Peter Turkson remains in place as
head of the PCJP. Indeed, Turkson is now mentioned by at least one
well-connected journalist as one of the candidates to watch at the next
Conclave. (4)
A global authority with the power that Benedict recommends would
necessarily be despotic, regardless of the decentralization or
“subsidiarity” (§ 47, 57, 58, 60, 67) that might
be built into the new regime. (The documents that govern the
bureaucratic, centralizing, power-hungry European Union also invoke
subsidiarity, (5)
with little real effect.)
Benedict imagined that the “world political authority” he sought would
be directed by those who exercise “the values of charity in truth” (§
67) while “adhering to the values of Christianity” (§
4). These virtuous rulers would create a new “social order that
at last conforms to the moral order” (§ 67), a
“civilization of love” (§ 33). The encyclical
reiterated the Vatican’s condemnation of abortion, contraception,
sterilization, euthanasia, same-sex unions, atheism, “religious
indifferentism”, religious syncretism, “slavery to drugs”, and “humanism which excludes God” (§
28, 29, 43, 44, 55, 75, 76, 78). These traditional positions
did much to limit the possibility of conservative opposition to the
encyclical.
In Benedict’s view, Christian leadership, after “broadening the scope of reason and making
it capable of knowing and directing these powerful new forces”(§
33), will be able to govern and direct globalization – a
political and economic force that has thus far proven able to evade
restraints from nations and from today’s international organizations.
Having called a tiger – the “world political authority” – into being,
Benedict proposed, in effect, that he (or those who share his values)
should somehow ride it and direct its course. It is as if the Vatican
wishes to enact the symbolic ride depicted in Revelation 17:3-18 – but with the
Church Administration retaining control of the beast.
IN
CONCLUSION
Caritas in Veritate should be
seen as what it is: a theological and political earthquake. The Roman
Catholic Church now wishes to use radical means (a “true world
political authority”) for its own (supposedly conservative, religious)
ends. Ordinary prudence – even without reference to the dire symbolism
of Revelation 17 – should have
warned the Vatican against such folly. Europeans have already tried
using radical means to support conservative goals; the results of that
20th century experiment (in Italy, Portugal, Germany, Spain, Vichy
France, and other Fascist regimes) are written in letters of blood and
fire.
Seeking a world government that is governed and limited by natural law
and Christian tradition is akin to seeking dry water or square circles.
Lord Acton, a Catholic historian in 19th Century England, gave a
warning that the Vatican ought to have heeded: “Power tends to corrupt
and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad
men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more
when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by
authority.” (6)
Humanly speaking, no power could be more absolute than that of “world
ruler”, and this is the post which Benedict has proposed to create.
NOTES
(1) John Allen, “A
Vatican document to make Socrates proud”, National Catholic Reporter, April
13, 2012, Source
at ncronline.org
(2) Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, June 29, 2009,
Source
at vatican.va , para. 67. Other citations of this encyclical are
given in the main text, with their paragraph number – for example,
(§ 41).
(3) Pontifical Council for
Justice and Peace, “Towards Reforming the International Financial and
Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority”, October
24, 2011, Source
at vatican.va
(4) John Allen, “A poll average
from Rome on the next pope”, National
Catholic Reporter, May 10, 2012, Source
at ncronline.org
(5) Europa, Summaries of EU
legislation – Glossary, “Subsidiarity”, Source
at europa.eu
(6) John Acton,
“Acton-Creighton Correspondence”, April 5, 1887, in Lord Acton, Essays on Freedom and Power, ed.
Gertrude Himmelfarb, Meridian Books, 1957, pp. 335-336.
Document Published on June 3rd,
2012 - The Feast of the Most Holy Trinity
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