My thoughts about it are here and here.

Here’s the best of what I’ve read from others on the topic.

Mark Brumley, Editor of Ignatius Press:

If the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace is trying to make the Catholic Church sound as if she’s living in a fantasy world or trying to portray Catholic social teaching as completely irrelevant to real world problems, I’d say, “Mission accomplished.” If, on the other hand, the council wants people seriously to think about the problems of globalization, it’s going to have to demonstrate a much better grasp of political and economic practicalities, as well as the limits and dangers of international solutions.

Phil Lawler at Catholic Culture:

When people reach the conclusion that the Vatican is talking nonsense, they do not ordinarily distinguish between the sound fundamental principles of Church teaching and the questionable economic analysis that follows. Nor do they make fine distinctions on the different levels of Church teaching authority. They conclude simply that the Vatican talks nonsense. So by reaching beyond their field of expertise, Vatican officials undermine their own teaching authority.

John Allen, Vatican expert:

Focusing on how much papal muscle the note can flex, however, risks ignoring what is at least an equally revealing question: Whatever you make of it, does the note seem to reflect important currents in Catholic social and political thought anywhere in the world?

The answer is yes, and it happens to be where two-thirds of the Catholics on the planet today live: the southern hemisphere, also known as the developing world.

This intriguing thread via Fr. Z at WDPTRS about one of the men who may have contributed to the document’s drafting:

I have some Italian friends who are very well-informed about the topics addressed in the “white paper”.  One of them, a sometime contributor here and a mainstay of the Catholic Online Form, the great Fabrizio, offered some observations on Prof. Becchetti [who was present at the PCJP press conference]:

… “[He's] A socialist economist, a left-wing “Catholic” who’s extremely active with the Democrat Party (formerly known as Partito Comunista Italiano [...]

Among other things this guy formed a lobby to request the EU to levy crazy taxes on financial transactions which will destroy whatever is left of available capitals, especially for small businesses and small investors, with a trickle-down effect that will further damage an economy brought to collapse by socialist greed for power, money and control.

So basically a Vatican dicastery helped a socialist ideologue to advance his agenda with the imprimatur of the Holy See (obviously he is the ghost writer of the part on financial transactions).

Rick Garnett at Mirror of Justice:

I think (a) many are (perhaps strategically and tactically) mis- and over-reading the Note in order to overstate the consonance between its vision and the current policies of the Democratic Party in the United States and its special-interest constituencies; (b) many are making the mistake that was widely made with respect to the Pope’s Caritas, i.e., imagining that the Church proposes a list of “economic policy proposals” that can be conveniently lifted, to the extent they strike the lifter as attractive, without any attached moral anthropology (which might, in turn, come with some unwelcome implications for, say, religious liberty, the family, education, etc.); and (c) it is a mistake to think that the Note, with its focus on world-wide financial markets, somehow baptizes our and other governments’ current overspending, or the self-interested (dare we say “greedy”?) and damaging positions being staked out by, e.g., public-employee unions.

Jimmy Akin of Catholic Answers:

I raised my eyebrows at the claim that a “major” document would be released by the PCJP. As a Council, it occupies a place (and not the first place) on the fourth tier of dicasteries, and it’s not the kind of department that is used to issue “major” documents in terms of the overall sweep of things at the Vatican. A given document may be major compared to documents the Justice and Peace council normally issues, but under ordinary circumstances they won’t be major compared to documents issued, say, by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, or the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments—or the pope himself.

Sean Dailey at Crisis Magazine:

And despite all the talk about easy credit, lending, and international trade, the Note makes no mention of ruinous deficit spending by governments. There is not a single mention of the crippling, mounting debt that governments, particularly Western governments, continue to run up. On the contrary, “Towards Reforming” suggests “taxation measures on financial transactions” and, euphemistically, “forms of recapitalization of banks with public funds.” In other words, more taxes, and more spending, including bank bailouts. How has that worked so far?

Richard Viguerie at NewsMax:

Unfortunately, by choosing the discredited United Nations as the vehicle to implement its call for a more just world economy, the Vatican statement demonstrated a distressing lack of connection with what has really gone on at the United Nations.

Gone would be the constitutional protections of freedom, life, and property that Americans now enjoy. In their place would be rules set by a new world governing body run by countries like Iran, Cuba, China, and Saudi Arabia.

If the United Nations Commission on Human Rights is any indication, implementing the Vatican statement would achieve exactly the opposite of the desired result.

What do you think?

And, as a bonus, for those of you who read this far, a CNN segment asking the question “would Jesus occupy wallstreet?”. Notice, in particular, the claims that are made about the Vatican and the pope:

Ph/t: Creative Minority Report.

The UNFPA sends money from American taxpayers to the United Nations population control agency that supports China’s brutal one child policy, for instance, as well as a whole host of international efforts aimed at destroying natural fertility and bodily integrity. The UNFPA is often directly at-odds with the Catholic Church, lobbying on opposite sides of issues, for instance in the Philippines. UNFPA funding also goes to U.S.-based propaganda groups, such as Reproductive Health Care Reality Check.

In other words, American taxpayers are funding an organization that supports inhuman practices such as China’s one-child policy, that directly opposes the Catholic Church’s moral voice internationally, and that sponsors third-party groups to disseminate falsehoods about human sexuality, abortion, and contraception (Steven Moser, president of the Population Research Institute, has an excellent book on the subject of international “population control” groups like the UNFPA, and the incredible tragedy they have caused).

Bottom line: we know all the reasons why the UNFPA should be defunded completely. We know many of the things they are doing are worthy of censure. What scares me is wondering how many things they’re doing we don’t know about. All the more reason, I say, to defund them completely.

Recently, the GOP, pro-life controlled House approved cutting the $40 million funding of the UNFPA, and then the Democrat, pro-abortion controlled Senate promptly restored the funding.

As active pro-lifers, we need to get into the habit of encouraging our representatives in Congress to not only defund Planned Parenthood, but to defund groups like the UNFPA that pose a domestic and global threat to creating a culture of life.

Please contact your Representatives in the House and Congress and demand that they defund the UNFPA. If you have the CatholicVote App on Android or iPhone, it will automatically put you in touch with your reps.

You can also take action through CatholicVote’s action page dedicated to ending taxpayer funding of the UN Population Fund here.

Finally, this seems like a good place to embed the latest video in PRI’s Overpopulation Is A Myth series, because this pervasive myth is one of the ideological driving forces behind the UNFPA:

Especially since Hamas, which was elected to rule the Gaza Strip, wasted no time decrying Abbas’ action since he didn’t call for the destruction of Israel.

Now, Hamas didn’t put it that bluntly—that would be completely impolitic (as opposed to mostly), and the Palestinians, especially their late leader Yasser Arafat, have a history of saying one thing in English so as to assuage Western fears, while saying something very different to their own people. No, they rejected his action because he accepted the 1967 borders (or the pre-1967 borders, depending which paragraph you read from the news articles, but they’re so close it doesn’t seem to matter for the point). The decried that the 1967 borders would leave 80% of Palestinian lands within Israel.

Now the West Bank and Gaza Strip, i.e., the lands that would make up the Palestinian state, have a combined land area of roughly 6,000 square kilometers, while the state of Israel has 22,072 square kilometers. 6,000 is about 20% of 30,000, which, if you’re just being polemical, roughly means that Hamas sees all Israeli territory as legitimately Palestinian. (6,000 is 20% of 30,000; while 22,072 + 6,000 = 28,072, which make 80% a rough estimate for Hamas purposes.)

Israel and the "1967 borders." Abbas wants the West Bank and Gaza Strip, while Hamas will settle for nothing less than everything. They're simple and easy like that.

This isn’t a surprise, of course, Hamas has been dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state since its founding, but to be so blunt just as Abbas is making the most impressive, direct, bold request for formal international recognition really shows that they’re less interested in compromise on Israel’s right to exist than Obama is on economic liberty.

But even Abbas’ request was really ill-timed. Sure, Obama is the POTUS, but his party just lost a special Congressional election (NY-09) that revealed significant fissures in his support among Jews, and even Obama wouldn’t be so bold as to leave Israel hang out to dry in so provocative a manner… It’s too… blunt and decisive, I think are the terms. Sure, Obama called for Israel to return to the 1967 borders back a few months ago, but he didn’t really *mean* it as a matter of policy, just as a matter of pandering (if only to himself). And I’m sure he didn’t appreciate being put on the spot so definitively, having to make it clear that the U.S. will use our veto on the Security Council to block the formal request for recognition. That was very gauche of them, really.

No, the only way forward for Palestinian statehood is through peaceful negotiations with Israel, the actual sovereign government of the lands in question. And perhaps a first step could be halting the random rocket launches over the wall. Just a thought.

You know the line: the earth is heating up, humans are to blame, the ice caps will melt in about five minutes, etc. The Very Smart People who tell us these things and then advocate for all sorts of new, expensive, insufficient means of producing electricity that ostensibly will slow the warming of the earth (and in which, oddly enough, they sometimes have a financial stake) have developed Very Complicated Computer Programs that ostensibly show exactly what will happen.

Except that reality is turning out to be very different from the models. From an article in Forbes:

In short, the central premise of alarmist global warming theory is that carbon dioxide emissions should be directly and indirectly trapping a certain amount of heat in the earth’s atmosphere and preventing it from escaping into space. Real-world measurements, however, show far less heat is being trapped in the earth’s atmosphere than the alarmist computer models predict, and far more heat is escaping into space than the alarmist computer models predict.

When objective NASA satellite data, reported in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, show a “huge discrepancy” between alarmist climate models and real-world facts, climate scientists, the media and our elected officials would be wise to take notice. Whether or not they do so will tell us a great deal about how honest the purveyors of global warming alarmism truly are.

Amazing: the earth and its natural systems are far more complex than even our pointiest-of-pointy-headed people imagine.

Now, there are plenty of good reasons to constantly seek more efficient and cleaner means of producing energy and propelling vehicles, chief among them are responsible stewardship of the earth’s resources and limiting the pollutants that cause health problems.  But that even has its prudential give and take—e.g., health benefits have an exponential rather than linear drop-off as technologies improve, eventually dwindling to a miniscule improvement at a massive new cost; and affordability must be considered lest oil, gas, and electricity become too expensive and an undue burden on the poor. But now that the scientific facts have shown the scientific theories to be false can we back off the doomsday talk?

Because I like the rainforests right where they are.

• At the age of 83, Dr. Jack Kevorkian died of natural causes at a Detroit-area hospital today. Over 130 persons killed themselves with the help of the man named Dr. Death. Kevorkian long attacked the Catholic Church for her teaching against assisted-suicide and euthanasia. Even though he advocated for an evil practice in the false sense of “compassion” and “dignity,” the Lord told us to pray for our enemies, including those who prey on victims. So let us pray for his soul.
• Catholics who would like to who should learn more about assisted suicide, euthanasia, and also pallative care (the practice of aggressively managing and controlling pain), please read these Frequently Asked Questions complied by the Patients Rights Council, formerly known as the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide. Catholics and all people who uphold the dignity of the human person should have at least a basic understanding of these issues. Physician-assisted suicide is sadly legal in Oregon and Washington and possibly Montana after a state Supreme Court ruling there.
• The Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, better known as C-FAM, is sounding the alarm about the World Health Organization‘s decision to approve the drug misoprostol. One pro-life doctor said, like morphine, the drug could be used for good or for evil. C-FAM noted: “By authorizing the use of a single drug, the World Health Organization has simultaneously raised hopes for saving thousands of mothers’ lives and raised fears that the drug will also be used to kill perhaps millions of unborn children. Misoprostol is used to help stop bleeding during delivery, the main cause of maternal deaths, but it can also be used to induce at-home abortions, which are very dangerous, particularly in rural areas that lack primary or emergency medical care.”