Fr. Thomas Reese, S.J.

There was lots of reaction to the news reports of “The Vatican” supposedly endorsing the creation of a world centralized bank. CatholicLane.com has an article by Robert Moynihan of Inside the Vatican in which he implores people to actually read the text of the document. http://cvote.to/6I George Weigel says it’s “rubbish” to compare the Vatican to Occupy Wall Street. http://cvote.to/6J But Thomas Peters says that’s exactly what Fr. Reese was implying. http://cvote.to/6L Bill Donohue notes that the terms “supranational Authority” and “supranational Institution” are neologisms that did not appear in the latest Papal encyclical. http://cvote.to/6M Tom Hoopes says this Pontifical Council’s report also recognized Pope Benedict’s emphasis on subsidiarity. http://cvote.to/6N Samuel Gregg wonders why a global central bank wouldn’t have the same problems that a European central bank has. http://cvote.to/6K

Rick Perry is planning a re-boot of his floundering campaign with the unveiling of his flat tax plan on income. The plan sets the income tax at 20% and keeps both the mortgage deduction and the charitable deductions. It increases the standard deduction for individuals and each dependents at $12,500. That would mean a family of four would pay no income tax on their first $50,000. Every dollar above that would be taxed at 20%. The corporate tax would also fall to 20%. Perry pitched the plan in the Wall Street Journal. http://cvote.to/6O

And yet, just as he is focusing on re-booting his campaign, Rick Perry chats up the “birther” talk. Reporter John Harwood said: “In [a] CNBC interview, Perry tells me why he kept Obama birther issue alive: ‘It’s a good issue to keep alive. It’s fun to poke at him.’” http://cvote.to/6W Uh, maybe that’s a joke suited for the White House Correspondents Dinner but not the campaign trail. Perry better not take the birther issue seriously or his campaign is toast.

Quote of the Day

“We are now enemies of the State … We all know what the power of the state can do to its enemies.” – Ed Mechmann, at the Archdiocese of New York’s blog, commenting on Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s calling opponents of same-sex “marriage” as anti-American. http://cvote.to/6Q

Notes:

I promised you the interview with Sen. George LeMieux yesterday. But the news cycle yesterday involving the Vatican prevented that. So, Lord willing, I’ll post it this afternoon.

Christine Schilling will soon be blogging here at CatholicVote.org. Christine is a mother of ten and is married to Rep. Bobby Schilling, R-IL. Stay tuned!

Other articles of interest:

Yuck: A Canadian music station launched a “Win a Baby” contest, offering to pay $35,000 in fertility treatments to a winning couple. http://cvote.to/6R

Pope Benedict XVI proclaims three saints, saying their lives demonstrated that true faith is charity in action. http://cvote.to/6S

Media watchdog Brent Bozell says ABC should report on the widespread anti-Semitism found at Occupy Wall Street protests. http://cvote.to/6T

In New Hampshire, the House Judiciary Committee is set to vote on a bill restoring marriage as a union of one man and one woman. http://cvote.to/6V

Render unto Caesar ...

Elsewhere here, Thomas Peters has one explanation of the Drudge Report headline, under a picture of the Pope, suggesting that the Vatican is ordering up a new world bank.

I got a frightened e-mail from a friend who is a recent convert calling the article  “the most disturbing thing I have read in a long time.”

As I told him, first of all, as with any Drudge scream-line, we need to clarify what the news is. The news here? A Pontifical Council study document quoted and expanded on a suggestion from a 1963 encyclical.

Second of all, we can’ evaluate it. What the Pontifical Council (not the Pope) is suggesting here is not only not crazy, it isn’t even novel: A financial oversight instrument along the lines their new “Note on Financial Reform” discusses will have to be made sooner or later. And when it is made, it won’t be new; it will be a reform of the several previous international financial oversight attempts.

Understand that the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace is not a Congregation of the curia. It is a curial support organization tasked with making “action-oriented studies” of current issues. In the wake of the Greek crisis, the Euro crisis and the waning of America and rise of China in the financial world, it wouldn’t be doing its job if it wasn’t discussing the need for international financial oversight.

But, as the Council’s document puts it: “a long road still needs to be traveled before arriving at the creation of a public Authority with universal jurisdiction.”

To reassure my convert friend that the Church is not trying to take over the world, I shared with him this quote from Pope Benedict XVI’s Deus Caritas Est on what role the Church sees herself having in politics:

“The Church cannot and must not take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society possible. She cannot and must not replace the State. Yet at the same time she cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice. She has to play her part through rational argument and she has to reawaken the spiritual energy without which justice, which always demands sacrifice, cannot prevail and prosper. A just society must be the achievement of politics, not of the Church. Yet the promotion of justice through efforts to bring about openness of mind and will to the demands of the common good is something which concerns the Church deeply.”

In other words, the Church knows her place: She doesn’t start worldwide governing systems. But she also knows that she is in a unique position to see the worldwide ramifications of social justice questions.

But if the Church isn’t making a powerplay, isn’t the Church being naïve? Does she really think a world governing structure will be anything but a bureaucratic bully that sucks sovereignty away from people?

That’s the whole point of the document.

Not only does the Church understand the danger of worldwide governing structures, but Pope Benedict XVI’s most recent encyclical, Caritas in Veritate can be seen as an extended examination of the inherent tension between “solidary” and “subsidiarity.”

“Solidarity is first and foremost a sense of responsibility on the part of everyone with regard to everyone,” he writes (No. 38).

He describes the principle of subsidiarity by referencing the Catechism, which says: “a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to co-ordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good” (CCC 1883).

In other words, the Catholic principle of subsidiarity says “we owe it to others not to interfere” while solidarity says “we owe it to others to help.”

The Pope sees the need for both, and understands the Church’s social teaching as a reconciliation of the two. “The principle of subsidiarity must remain closely linked to the principle of solidarity and vice versa, since the former without the latter gives way to social privatism, while the latter without the former gives way to paternalist social assistance that is demeaning to those in need,” he says (No. 58).

Caritas in Veritate describes what the Church sees as an alarming trend: The independence of a very powerful financial system as a global force without any oversight that matches its scope.

If hearing the words “world governing structure” makes you afraid of a global power influencing communities who are powerless before it, then you share exactly the fear the Vatican has about the market.

The new document from the Council of Justice and Peace vigorously decries the unfairness of the system that make poor people suffer the consequences of financial speculators’ mistakes. But the document is also very conscious of the Boss’s emphasis on subsidiarity:

“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,” says the Council’s document.

I, for one, am glad that the Church’s message of solidarity tempered by subsidiarity is one of the leading voices in the ongoing debate about the global response to the international markets.