It is impossible to sum up in a few lines the many themes treated in Benedict XVI's encyclical letter Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), which in effect raised a notable interest in many circles. We will skip, of course, over the religious, or, to be more precise, confessional dimension of the Pope's document, and will focus instead on its more genuinely political, social and economic aspects.
A word must be said, however, to situate this encyclical letter in the corpus of the Church's social doctrine, a concern actually present in many of its pages. Although stating several times that this text wants to place itself within a tradition that dates back to at least the Rerum novarum, Benedict XVI singles out the Populorum progressio, to which an entire chapter and many citations are devoted, as a turning point. In fact, Paul VI “clearly understood that the social question had become worldwide and he grasped the interconnection between the impetus towards the unification of humanity and the Christian ideal of a single family of peoples in solidarity and fraternity” (para. 13). For that reason, “the Populorum Progressio deserves to be considered as the Rerum Novarum of the present age, shedding light upon humanity's journey towards unity”. (para. 8). So, to sum up what the Pontiff is only hinting at: Leo XIII provided a first answer to the social question during the industrial revolution, which at that time was affecting only western Europe and the United States; Paul VI underlined that at that moment, after the attainments of the Welfare State in what Hobsbawm defined the golden age of the western world, the real scandal had become the ever growing gulf between the “peoples in hunger” and the “peoples with abundance”; Benedict XVI intends to bring up to date the Church's social thought in the globalization era, marked by “a picture of development that has many overlapping layers” that make “the demarcation line between rich and poor countries no longer as clear as it was at the time of Populorum Progressio” (para. 22).
Two additional preliminary observations are required. The text shows an in depth knowledge of today's culture and, in particular, it makes use of many reflections of the German philosophy of the 1900s. Although, besides the canonical St. Augustine and St. Thomas, the only mentioned philosopher is Heraclitus of Ephesus, one makes no big effort to recognize a series of concepts taken from Max Weber (the disenchantment of the world), Martin Heidegger (the absolutism of technology), Hans Jonas (the principle of responsibility), Juergen Habermas (the divorce of ethics and politics). In addition, one cannot but observe how the restated conviction, written down in the first pages, that “the Church has no technical solutions to offer and does not claim to interfere in any way in the politics of States” (para. 9), is later on contradicted by a series of concrete proposals, sometimes even in detail, on the institutional, political, social and economic plane.
Those proposals are correctly introduced by an articulate analysis “of the malfunctions and dramatic problems, highlighted even further by the current crisis: …the technical forces in play, the global interrelations, the damaging effects on the real economy of badly managed and largely speculative financial dealings, large-scale migration of peoples, often provoked by some particular circumstance and then given insufficient attention, the unregulated exploitation of the earth's resources” (para. 21). Although it is recognized that globalization “has lifted billions of people out of misery – recently it has given many countries the possibility of becoming effective players in international politics” (para. 21), the Pope denounces that “a complete re-examination of development was needed” (par. 23) after the collapse of the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe and the end of the so-called opposing blocs. Instead, the economic activity has been separated from the political and, even more so, from the moral one. “It must be remembered – Benedict XVI adds with accents that remind us of Alexander Hamilton and Luigi Einaudi – that the market does not exist in the pure state” and that the economic sphere “must be structured and governed in an ethical manner” (para. 36).
The consequences of the one and only thought which, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, has driven and oriented the globalization process are also analyzed with great attention. At the economic level, “lowering the level of protection accorded to the rights of workers, or abandoning mechanisms of wealth redistribution in order to increase the country's international competitiveness, hinder the achievement of lasting development”. Thus, “tendencies towards a short-term economy – sometimes very short-term” (par. 32) prevail, an economy that takes no care of human costs or the Planet's ecological well-being. Further on it is better explained that the emergence of new, ever bigger enterprises, ever less connected to “a stable director who feels responsible in the long term, not just the short term, for the life and the results of his company (…) can weaken the company's sense of responsibility towards the stakeholders – namely the workers, the suppliers, the consumers, the natural environment and broader society – in favor of the shareholders, who are not tied to a specific geographical area and who therefore enjoy extraordinary mobility” (par. 40). At the political level, “the State finds itself having to address the limitations to its sovereignty imposed by the new context of international trade and finance, which is characterized by increasing mobility both of financial capital and means of production, material and immaterial” (par. 24). The erosion of the power of States has brought about the crisis of the protection and welfare systems, forced to “downsize social security systems as the price to be paid for seeking greater competitive advantage in the global market, with consequent grave danger for the rights of workers, for fundamental human rights and for the solidarity associated with the traditional forms of the social State” (para. 25). The Pope, of course, is very careful not to use the categories of historical materialism, but the contradiction between an ever more globalized economy and politics, still confined in states' boundaries, is clearly delineated. When Paul VI wrote the Populorum progressio, “economic activity and the political process were both largely conducted within the same geographical area, and could therefore feed off one another” (para. 24), whereas today the two spheres tend to diverge more and more, making it so that economic globalization “actually undermines the foundations of democracy” (par. 41). To say it in terms of an alternative more familiar to federalists: either we will succeed in democratizing globalization, or globalization will end up wiping democracy out.
The most innovative part of the Encyclical is for sure, however, in the proposals contained in the last chapters. In fact, “the significant new elements in the picture of the development of peoples today in many cases demand new solutions” (para. 32). It is a matter – Ratzinger argues a little later – of “broadening the scope of reason and making it capable of knowing and directing these powerful new forces” (para. 33). Not by chance these words are underlined in italics, because, as Paul VI had already realized, “among the causes of underdevelopment there is a lack of wisdom and reflection, a lack of thinking capable of formulating a guiding synthesis” (para. 31). And the present Pontiff does not surely shy away from such “an altogether new and creative challenge, one that is certainly vast and complex” (para. 33).
I do not think that I am giving a distorted interpretation if I say that in the propositional part of the Encyclical the issue of a world government has an absolute centrality, in the conviction that there is a “shortage of social resources, the most important of which are institutional” (para. 27). In the text, care is taken to suitably remind that already John XXIII in his Pacem in terris, and the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council in its Gaudium et spes had raised that need. Compared to those precedents, the Caritas in veritate contains two important novelties. First of all, it underlines that a world government, beside being necessary, is indeed urgent: “ To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; 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” (para. 67). The most important novelty, which contradicts, as we said above, the promise not to provide “technical solutions”, lies, however, in a series of precise advices accompanying the proposal: “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. Without this, despite the great progress accomplished in various sectors, international law would risk being conditioned by the balance of power among the strongest nations” (para. 67).
We know that the only institutional model capable of realizing those objectives is the federal one. Well, in the text there is nowhere any explicit reference to federalism, but Joseph Ratzinger, for many years a citizen of the German Federal Republic, proves to know very well the federalist theory of the State when he writes: “In order not to produce a dangerous universal power of a tyrannical nature, the governance of globalization must be marked by subsidiarity, articulated into several layers and involving different levels that can work together. Globalization certainly requires authority, insofar as it poses the problem of a global common good that needs to be pursued. This authority, however, must be organized in a subsidiary and stratified way, if it is not to infringe upon freedom and if it is to yield effective results in practice” (para. 57). Then, having in mind, perhaps, the distortions the principle of subsidiarity has been subjected to in recent times, he adds: “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” (para. 58).
Thanks also to the impulse of environmentalist and ecologist movements, the federalists in the last decades, along with their traditional attention to institutional aspects, have carried out a series of reflections on the new development model, that have made federalism a political doctrine able to give a not-only-institutional answer to the serious problems of today's world. It must be said that in the Encyclical this dimension is also present: “It is likewise incumbent upon the competent authorities to make every effort to ensure that the economic and social costs of using up shared environmental resources are recognized with transparency and fully borne by those who incur them, not by other peoples or future generations” (para. 50). “This invites contemporary society – it is recommended more precisely a little later – to a serious review of its life-style, which, in many parts of the world, is prone to hedonism and consumerism, regardless of their harmful consequences” (para. 51). We cannot dwell here on the many suggestions put forward to give substance to those new life-styles, inspired by “more moderation”: reforms to give dignity to labor, development of workers unions and cooperatives, micro-finance, social responsibility of savers and consumers, a new model of international tourism, to mention just a few. We will limit ourselves to mentioning the strong censure against an economic development that “is exposed as a destructive sham if it relies on the “wonders” of finance in order to sustain unnatural and consumerist growth” (para. 68).
Our analysis of the Caritas in veritate would not be complete if we do not point out two serious limits. First, one remains really puzzled noting how the Pope limits himself to calling for “a reform of the United Nations Organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance” (para. 67) adding no additional suggestions. One has almost the impression that the hoped-for World Political Authority shall replace the United Nations rather than originate from its radical reform, as the WFM recommends instead. Even worse is the fact that no mention is made of the European Union and the other regional organizations which, following precisely the EU example, have been formed in all continents and should constitute the bastions of the new world order and the new UN architecture.
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