c. 2007 Religion News Service
VATICAN CITY _ With his conservative pronouncements on issues of sexuality, liturgy and interfaith dialogue, Pope Benedict XVI has frustrated many Roman Catholics in the church’s progressive wing.
But Benedict’s views on economics, as expounded in an expected papal document, should be a lot more to liberals’ liking.
Benedict’s encyclical _ anticipated in the next several months, along with one on the theological virtue of “hope” _ promises to be a provocative contribution to the debate on globalization and its social consequences.
Though he adamantly rejects attempts to associate Catholic teaching with Marxism, the pope has signaled he supports intervention to temper market forces and redress economic inequality.
“The crises of hunger and the environment testify, with increasing evidence, that the logic of profit, if it prevails, increases inequality between rich and poor and a ruinous exploitation of the planet,” the pope said in September.
He also contrasted the “logic of profit” with a “logic of sharing and solidarity,” which he said can lead to “fair and sustainable development.”
In 2000, Benedict bemoaned the “distortion of relationships between the First and the Third World,” which he denounced as violating the “principle of the universal distribution of goods.” He added that “legal structures have to be found” to remedy the situation.
“Benedict sees the growth of inequality as something that needs to be brought into check,” said the Rev. Drew Christiansen, editor-in-chief of the Jesuit magazine America.
The pope’s emphasis on equality, Christiansen said, reflects the influence of a school of Catholic social thought known as “distributivism,” which calls for placing the means of production in the greatest possible number of hands.
“Catholic social teaching has always maintained that the fair distribution of goods takes priority” over profit, Benedict said in September.
How this teaching might translate into policy is far from obvious, however.
The political implications of Catholic belief in equality have long been the subject of heated debate, in which Benedict himself has taken a prominent part.
As the church’s top doctrinal official during the 1980s and 1990s, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger repeatedly condemned liberation theology, a movement that sought to fuse Catholic social doctrine with the teachings of Karl Marx. Yet Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict in 2005, was hardly a booster of capitalism.
His best-selling book earlier this year, “Jesus of Nazareth,” refers to the “cruelties of a capitalism that degrades man to the level of merchandise.”
At a meeting of Latin American bishops in Brazil last May, the pope criticized both capitalism and Marxism as systems that offer the false promise of a “communal morality.” In September, the pope declared that “capitalism is not to be considered the only valid model of economic organization.”
Which raises the question of what other economic model the pope would find acceptable.
Ratzinger may have given a clue when he wrote in 2004 that, “in many respects, democratic socialism was and is close to Catholic social doctrine and has in any case made a remarkable contribution to the formation of a social consciousness.”
On the other hand, the pope, who grew up in Nazi Germany, has warned of the danger of excessive government power. “We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything,” Benedict wrote in his first papal encyclical, “Deus Caritas Est,” in 2005.
“It may be that Pope Ratzinger thinks the market needs direction, and it certainly does,” said the Rev. Robert A. Sirico, president of the Grand Rapids, Mich.-based Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. “But this need not mean `regulation’ in the statist meaning of the term.”
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Benedict’s forthcoming encyclical, which press reports have suggested will focus on the topic of globalization, may provide some clarity on the pope’s thinking. Depending on its timing, a papal call for more “sharing and solidarity” might even become an issue in the U.S. presidential election.
According to Christiansen, the greatest beneficiary in that case would be former Sen. John Edwards, whose campaign has emphasized the theme of growing economic inequality. “It would certainly give greater credibility to his position, at least among liberal Catholics,” Christiansen said.
But anyone expecting a radical or “structural” critique of the prevailing economic order is likely to be disappointed, says Michael L. Budde, a political scientist at Chicago’s DePaul University.
Budde said Benedict may call for increased regulation to protect the environment and for other purposes. But a papal tradition of seeking consensus in social doctrine makes it unlikely the pope will depart from Pope John Paul II’s justification of capitalism in his 1991 encyclical “Centesimus Annus.”
“Papal documents on economic justice,” Budde said, “typically seem to have something for everyone.”
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Editors: Pope Ratzinger in 19th graf is CQ
