Pope Benedict XVI explores the challenges of integral human development today in Caritas in Veritate. He uses the occasion of the 40th year since Paul VI issued his encyclical Populorum Progressio (On the Progress of Peoples) to recall its richness and reinforces its relevance to present world challenges.

After exploring the connection between charity and truth, he turns to the message of Populorum Progressio, stressing that its principles have continuing force and validity to help in social analysis.

He then helps us look at the present challenges facing integral human development. He points to the moral dimension of the economy that is so often overlooked. Integral development must draw together into unity and harmonise the economic, social, political and human dimensions of life. Solidarity and shared humanity are basic building blocks of a sustainable development. We are urged to find the proper balance of rights and duties, including our duties towards the environment. Cooperation, not unbridled competition is needed. Technology can be a positive or a negative force. The encyclical concludes with a call to Christian action.

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Love – caritas – is an extraordinary force which leads people to opt for courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace. It is a force that has its origin in God, Eternal Love and Absolute Truth. (1)

 There you have it! Love is at the heart of Catholic social teaching on justice and society. Our origin in God’s love and our unity as one human family guide both our ‘micro’ relationships with friends, family and small groups, as well as our ‘macro’ relationships in the social, economic and political spheres (1 -2).

Charity received and given is what gives rise to the Church’s social teaching, which is caritas in veritate in re sociali: the proclamation of the truth of Christ’s love in society. This doctrine is a service to charity, but its locus is truth. Development, social well-being, the search for a satisfactory solution to the grave socio-economic problems besetting humanity, all need this truth (5).

 Justice is the primary way of charity or, in Paul VI’s words, “the minimum measure” of it, an integral part of the love “in deed and in truth” Charity demands justice by recognizing and respecting the rights of others. And it also “transcends justice and completes it in the logic of giving and forgiving” Benedict calls us to realize that peace and development are promoted not by relationships of rights and duties alone, but even more fundamentally by “relationships of gratuitousness, mercy and communion”. (6)

Paul VI : key insights that still shape human development today:

• Authentic human development concerns the whole of the person in every single dimension.
• Integral human development is primarily a vocation to act responsibly and in solidarity. It must be based on a vision that is bigger than the individual person. It needs God.
• It is not about merely technical aspects of human life, but about the meaning of our life journey in company with our fellow humans to promote the good of every person who is of unconditional value.
• Two extremes of idealizing technical progress, or a utopian wish to return to humanity’s original natural state, work against progress by separating the moral foundations of progress and our responsibility in this area.
• Integral human development presupposes the responsible freedom of the individual and of peoples: no structure can guarantee this development without human responsibility.
• Underdevelopment is caused by a lack of solidarity and the will to change, not bychance or historical necessity.
• Privilege or positions of power have no place in promoting development.
• True economic development produces real growth, benefits everyone and is genuinely sustainable.
• Paul VI’s vision of development saw people freed from all that limited life – hunger, deprivation, diseases, illiteracy. This requires active involvement in the international economic process, to build educated, equal societies, with democratic processes to enable peace and freedom. (11- 21)

Current challenges or blocks to integral development

• The present crises are increasingly interconnected and require a new integrated way of understanding.
• Uncontrolled speculative financial dealings have damaging effects on the real economy.
• Globalization’s impact on large scale movements of people is not taken seriously enough.
• Unregulated exploitation of the earth’s resources
• An emerging call of the new poor in rich countries where some enjoy ‘superabundance’
• The world’s wealth is growing in absolute terms, but inequalities are on the increase. Jobless growth is unsustainable.
• Corrupt activity by the economic and political classes in both rich and poor countries.
• Large multinational companies sometimes fail to respect the human rights of workers.
• International aid often fails because of irresponsible actions by both donors and beneficiaries.
• Rich countries jealously protect intellectual property, often at the cost of other countries, especially in the area of pharmaceuticals and health care
• There are some cultural practices that still hinder human rights and development .
• The current crisis calls for a profound cultural renewal, to re-plan our journey, to set ourselves new rules and to discover new forms of commitment. (21-22)

In light of the above, Benedict urges us to shift from short term thinking to a “profound and far-sighted revision of the current model of development…Human costs always include economic costs, and economic dysfunctions always involve human costs” (32). The perilous state of the earth’s health as well as the cultural and moral crisis of the moment demand it prompt action with a long-term vision. Forty years ago Paul VI recognized the growing interdependence within the human community. The full force of its impact was still in the future. The ways in which globalization locks the world together must be reckoned with if we are to find an appropriate development model for today (33). Globalisation can assist development, but it can also destroy true progress. The greed and immoral behavior of the few in the world of high finance has been able to bring the world to the edge of ruin. The social, moral, economic and political dimensions of life have been cut off one from another. Isolation is one of the deepest forms of poverty. Our challenge is to reconnect the separated parts and so humanize and harmonize globalization. This is the heart of caritas in veritate (33).

*Kevin Dance, CP is the Director of Passionists International.

For our part the U.S. administration will argue for four things:

• A robust global stimulus package that will commit all countries to financially shield the world economy from a dragged out global recession.
• Expanded regulations of financial institutions and other rules regarding the flow of capital
• A robust readjustment of the International Monetary Fund  to aid it in its mission of helping the developing world. This would triple the financial resources to the fund and offer emerging powers a stronger participation with the IMF.
• A concrete pledge against protectionism.

Certainly I will not argue the issues of global economic policies here. The onus will be on the people siting at the table in London to do this monumental task of redesigning the future of capitalism. There has already been a call to have a “group of experts” exist which can assess the efforts that may come out of this talk and I for one believe this is very appropriate since in many ways these national economies are walking through terra incognita and whatever comes out of these talks ought to be continuously evaluated and tweaked in order to adjust for unforeseen development.

My contribution with this post  is to do two things. First I would like to raise the moral position from our Catholic social tradition regarding the unsustainable global economy. Catholic social teaching has warned us against the unregulated free market time and time again as an instrument that is incapable of serving the global human community. This is because its narrow focus on quick short term profitability and the limited measurement of GDP produces an unsustainable system that does not assess long term repercussions.

But it is unfortunate that on these new conditions of society a system has been constructed which considers profit as the key motive for economic progress, competition as the supreme law of economics, and private ownership of the means of production as an absolute right that has no limits and carries no corresponding social obligation. This unchecked liberalism leads to dictatorship rightly denounced by Pius XI as producing “the international imperialism of money”. One cannot condemn such abuses too strongly by solemnly recalling once again that the economy is at the service of man. – Populorum Progression #26 (Pope Paul VI, 1967)

When the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops offered the document “Economic Justice for All” they offered an economic vision for collaborative capitalism that at the time (1986) could have help steer the American economy in a more sustainable global direction.

Completing the unfinished business of the American experiment will call for new forms of cooperation and partnership among those whose daily work is the source of the prosperity and justice of the nation. The United States prides itself on both its competitive sense of initiative and its spirit of teamwork. Today a greater spirit of partnership and teamwork is needed; competition alone will not do the job. It has too many negative consequences for family life, the economically vulnerable, and the environment. Only a renewed commitment by all to the common good can deal creatively with the realities of international interdependence and economic dislocations in the domestic economy. The virtues of good citizenship require a lively sense of participation in the commonwealth and of having obligations as well as rights within it. The nation’s economic health depends on strengthening these virtues among all its people, and on the development of institutional arrangements supportive of these virtues. #296

This vision unfortunately went undeveloped and today we are now living with the crisis that this moral vision tried to avoid.

The second purpose for this post is to offer the general public resources and a forum that could help move the community ahead in assessing and, at some level, to participate in a constructive exchange regarding this economic crisis. This is not to time to offer punitive legislation to punish those we feel are culpable for this situation. There is certainly enough blame to spread around. This is also not the time to produce unnecessary fear and promote isolationism. The solution, whatever it may be, exist with the global economy. To argue against some unqualified fear of either socialism or fascism and to prop up a retrenchment into isolated nationalism will destabilize of global society in such a way that we would be led down the same path that economic isolationist policies led to prior to World War II.

I offer the following resources for your consideration:

• The Carnegie Endowment for Peace is a good think tank monitoring the G-20 here is a link to that site.
• The Brookings Institute offers a recommendation for global policy coordination. Here is a link to that site.
• The Financial Times offers an interesting dialogue on the future of capitalism. I offer this link below for further study and engagement of this critical issue of our times. In depth coverage of The Future of Capitalism from the Financial Times.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVIewK9n6qw