The Economist surveys recent commentary by religious leaders on economics and the environment, focusing on Pope Benedict XVI’s recent encyclical Caritas in Veritate<\/a><\/em>. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I gets a nod for his upcoming symposium on the Mississippi.<\/p>\n

The Economist does a passable job of summing up these issues as viewed through the lens of faith, but does recoil a bit at more “purist” sentiments, such as when the pope invokes life issues.<\/p>\n

A good line here: Globalization, technology and growth are in themselves neither positive or negative; they are whatever humanity makes of them.<\/em> And to make them good and for the glory of God and his Creation, we need more “purist” notions like the Christian virtues.<\/p>\n

Text follows:<\/p>\n

New sins, new virtues<\/strong>
\nJul 9th 2009 | ISTANBUL AND ROME <\/p>\n

As the world heats up and economic dislocation ravages the poor, religious leaders offer up their diagnoses and prescriptions<\/p>\n

Globalization, technology and growth are in themselves neither positive or negative; they are whatever humanity makes of them. Summed up like that, the central message of a keenly awaited papal pronouncement on the social and economic woes of the world may sound like a statement of the obvious.<\/p>\n

But despite some lapses into trendy jargon, Caritas in Veritate<\/em> (Charity in Truth), a 144-page encyclical issued by Pope Benedict XVI on July 7th, is certainly not a banal or trivial document. It will delight some people, enrage others and occupy a prominent place among religious leaders\u2019 competing attempts to explain and address the problems of an overheated, overcrowded planet.<\/p>\n

From Anglicans like Richard Chartres, the bishop of London, to the Dalai Lama, lots of prominent religious figures have been feeling the need to broaden their message. They are moving away from the old stress on individual failings (stealing, lying, cheating) and talking more about the fate of humanity as a whole.<\/p>\n

But Pope Benedict, for all his concern with cosmic issues, is certainly not watering down his insistence on old-fashioned religious virtues, including caution and sobriety. On many big public questions, he proposes a middle course between faith in scientific progress and nostalgia for a simpler past. People cannot expect to avoid the extremes, Benedict rather provocatively adds, when they are looking at the world through purely secular spectacles. \u201cWhen nature, including the human being, is viewed as the result of mere chance or evolutionary determinism, our sense of responsibility wanes,\u201d he argues.<\/p>\n

Displaying a better-than-usual sense of public relations, the Holy See released the document on the eve of a world leaders\u2019 summit in L\u2019Aquila, east of Rome. And like many other big pronouncements from moral leaders, it will be seen as staking out ground ahead of the Copenhagen conference on climate change in December.<\/p>\n

Encyclicals are the heaviest ammunition in the papacy\u2019s intellectual arsenal. This one was delayed for more than two years as the Vatican\u2019s thinkers struggled to keep abreast of developments in the world economy. But the original purpose has remained intact: to offer a Catholic response to a global marketplace that in Benedict\u2019s elegant turn of phrase, \u201cmakes us neighbours but does not make us brothers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The document accepts the legitimacy of markets or profits, as long as they are not idolized, or elevated far above the human beings who are affected by economic decisions. But Benedict\u2019s proposal for discerning the difference between healthy markets and pathological ones is uncompromising and offers no sops to the secular. An economy, he suggests, is working well when it allows individuals and societies to fulfil themselves in every way\u2014something that in his view can happen only when God is involved.<\/p>\n

The encyclical grafts this ideal of development in the service of God and man onto an insistence on Catholic morality in ethics. As Austen Ivereigh, a British Catholic writer, puts it, \u201cthe message is that you can\u2019t believe in social justice if you also believe in abortion and euthanasia.\u201d Giving short shrift to non-believers, the pope also argues that without \u201ctruth\u201d in the Christian sense, \u201cthere is no social conscience and responsibility, and social action ends up serving private interests and the logic of power.\u201d This purist approach may risk narrowing the scope for the sort of tactical co-operation between believers and secularists that is emerging on many fronts, from the fight against malaria to weaning the world off hydrocarbons.<\/p>\n

Still, some non-Catholics may agree (and some Catholics may disagree) with one of the pope\u2019s more concrete proposals: an overhaul of global institutions\u2014or in plainer language an expanded role for the United Nations or some other authority. The aim of this new structure would be \u201cthe management of globalisation\u201d. Vatican aides said this was not a proposal for world government\u2014but it did sound a bit like that. Such a body would need to be universally recognised, subject to international law and \u201cvested with the effective power to ensure security for all, regard for justice and respect for rights.\u201d Its areas of competence would include managing the global economy, disarmament, food security, the environment and migration. This may alarm those who see global bureaucracies\u2019 sloth, pride, envy, greed and gluttony (to name only a few deadly vices) as exemplars of human failing. But the Vatican\u2019s longing for a stronger UN goes back to 2003, when it was shocked by the world body\u2019s inability to stop the Iraq war.<\/p>\n

Do as you would be done by<\/strong><\/p>\n

In any case, Benedict finds the roots of the economic crisis in wickedness. The global recession, he argues, is merely the latest effect of a tendency to confuse happiness and salvation with prosperity. But economic activity \u201ccannot solve all social problems through the simple application of commercial logic\u201d. And the market should not be a place \u201cwhere the strong subdue the weak\u201d.
\nThroughout the document, leftish ideas about economics nestle alongside the austere moral reasoning that is a hallmark of the German-born pontiff. A conservative American Catholic, George Weigel, has claimed that only certain parts of it\u2014the bits he liked\u2014were written by Benedict; in other sections he detects the influence of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, one of the more radical sections of the Vatican bureaucracy.<\/p>\n

In the case of other religious leaders, the message is simpler. The Dalai Lama, for example, has drawn attention to a potential disaster which looms in his home region of Tibet: the melting of glaciers which serve as \u201cAsia\u2019s water tower\u201d by feeding the rivers on which billions of people depend. London\u2019s Bishop Chartres has spearheaded efforts to make England\u2019s established church much greener in its thinking and in its own behaviour. A plan called \u201cShrinking the Footprint\u201d is intended to slash the carbon emissions of Anglican buildings, from cathedrals to vicarages to church halls.<\/p>\n

And in Istanbul this week, dozens of prominent Islamic scholars delved into their tradition for answers to environmental problems. Originating in a land where water is very scarce, the Muslim faith has much to say about the need to use resources in a just and cautious way.<\/p>\n

Still, the idea of restraining carbon emissions is not an easy sell in countries that have grown rich from selling hydrocarbons and have enough cash to import water and food. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a Qatar-based Islamic scholar and spiritual guide to the global Muslim Brotherhood, got a rave reception at the Istanbul meeting\u2014but his speech focused more on matters of human hygiene than on the treatment of the natural world.<\/p>\n

Another participant, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, is by comparison a trailblazer. Ali Gomaa has agreed to make the institution he heads\u2014an office that issues fatwas, or rulings on ethical questions\u2014carbon-neutral and is searching for carbon offsets in Egypt, a concept which few locals as yet understand. Islam\u2019s ecological message is much more readily grasped in the endangered forests of Indonesia and Malaysia. In Indonesia, for example, there are 17,000 madrassas\u2014and a local NGO, the Conservation and Religion Initiative, reports good progress in persuading teachers in those schools to preach and practise good stewardship. As a follow-up to the Istanbul gathering, Muslims and adherents of many other faiths will meet in Britain in November and present plans for greener management of their resources. <\/p>\n

While Muslim greybeards deliberated, two leading figures in the eastern Christian world\u2014the Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew I, and the newly enthroned Patriarch Kyrill of Moscow\u2014held a joint service nearby that signalled a warming in their relations and a common commitment to cool and generally improve the world. Patriarch Bartholomew, who is planning to host an eco-symposium in New Orleans in October, called for an investigation of the \u201cdeeper spiritual and moral causes\u201d of the planet\u2019s woes. Residing as he does near a narrow strait plied by giant tankers which bring oil from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, the Istanbul-based \u201cgreen patriarch\u201d was far ahead of the Vatican in calling pollution a sin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Economist surveys recent commentary by religious leaders on economics and the environment, focusing on Pope Benedict XVI’s recent encyclical Caritas in Veritate. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I gets a nod for his upcoming symposium on the Mississippi. The Economist does a passable job of summing up these issues as viewed through the lens of faith, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1784],"tags":[6,45,847,296,466,48,143,827],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2971"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2971"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3761,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2971\/revisions\/3761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}