Pope Paul’s World Fund
All attention will shortly be focused on Pope Benedict’s new social encyclical, which is supposed to be based on Pope Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio, issued in 1967. Today, then, I would like to focus on one of the ideas laid out by Pope Paul in his far-reaching document, an idea that seems to have been lost in the midst of time, and yet is more relevant today than ever before. It is the idea to set up a world fund whereby world leaders would “set aside part of their military expenditures for a world fund to relieve the needs of impoverished peoples”. Cut military expenditure, promote development.
This has a number of advantages. It embraces the multilateral approach, an approach to global solidarity that has always been reflected in papal thinking. As Pope Paul put it, “only a concerted effort on the part of all nations, embodied in and carried out by this world fund, will stop these senseless rivalries and promote fruitful, friendly dialogue between nations.” And given the poverty in the world, given the unjust distribution of resources, given the lack of basic rights such as education and health care “we cannot tolerate public and private expenditures of a wasteful nature; we cannot but condemn lavish displays of wealth by nations or individuals; we cannot approve a debilitating arms race”.
Today, in the United States, not only is military expenditure at an all time high, but this is a noted point of pride. A decade after Populorum Progressio, Ronald Reagan came on the scene with a policy of dramatically ratcheting up military spending, and letting social spending pay the price. In other words, the very opposite of Pope Paul’s vision. And this has become a consensus position in the United States — nobody dares challenge the military hegemony. Very few Catholics address this issue, and instead are caught up in the witchcraft of “natural security”.
Today, amidst the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and as deficits expand, military expenditure accounts for almost a quarter of the federal budget. Let me raise the banner of Pope Paul and call for this money instead to be used to fund health care, support families, and alleviate poverty within the shores of the United States, and to promote development worldwide. For, as Pope John Paul wrote in Centesimus Annus, another name for peace is development, and this is a collective responsibility, involving ”a concerted worldwide effort to promote development, an effort which also involves sacrificing the positions of income and of power enjoyed by the more developed economies.” A first step would be a diversion of military spending.
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” Wasteful”…”lavish”…Imagine what the Met in NY would pay the Vatican for this military…yes military… chariot:
http://www.vaticanstate.va/EN/Monuments/The_Vatican_Museums/Chariot_Room.htm
MM…your heart is in the right place. Whether your mind is on this issue as to budgets etc…is for others to debate but…
His… Pope Paul VI’s… language is too ad hominem to get results. It just causes enmity. You can’t decry the lavishness and wastefulness of others and say that you won’t tolerate it…when your Vatican has a Chariot Room, a Gregorian Profane Museum, an Egyptian and Etruscan Museum, a Gallery of Tapistries, an inground pool at Castel Gandalfo which itself is priceless real estate and is the one week summer residence of the Pope…a pool put there by John Paul II, lavish Gardens at Castel Gandalfo, a Gallery of Tapestries, a gallery of maps, gold plated Louis the XIV desks with gold inkwells plainly visible on TV when a camera is showing part of the Vatican…etc.etc
You MM yourself could use that language and national leaders would accept it from you. Popes should not warn others of their lavishness until they get rid of some of their lavishness. All leaders know it; none will say it because e.g. Catholics are 25% of the US voters and 25% of US customers to businesses.
How many maids and chefs does the Pope and Cardinals at the Vatican have while most elderly people the world over saute their own food and wash their own clothes and dust their own furniture til they die.
It’s silly to talk about the Vatican’s wealth—most of which belongs to the world, as an artistic heritage, and couldn’t easily be sold to anybody at its actual value anyway.
On the other hand, it begins to look like the Pope’s social encyclical is going to gratify immensely those of us who believe that some sort of “social democracy” involving economic as well as political justice is implicit in the Gospels:
Skepticism toward capitalism and the market will permeate the encyclical. Absolute faith in the market is seen by Benedict as a form of idolatry. The need for government regulation of the economy is a given.
The Common Good and impact on the poor are the yardsticks by which the economy should be measured.
The pope will also have very negative things to say about war. As he has said before, “Violence, of whatever sort, cannot be a way of resolving conflicts. It mortgages the future severely and does not respect either persons or peoples.” Like John Paul, he opposed both wars in Iraq. He also wants to see swords turned into plowshares. “[L]ess than half of the immense sums spent worldwide on armaments would be more than sufficient to liberate the immense masses of the poor from destitution. This challenges humanity’s conscience.”
He will also have very positive things to say about the United Nations and multilateralism even if it means limits on national sovereignty.
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/georgetown/2009/06/what_to_look_for_in_the_new_social_encyclical.html
Digby
I like the quick dismissive preamble and it will work on someone I suppose. But Vatican antique artistic luxuries could be sold not to people (as you depicted…”anybody”) but to institutions like the Metropolitan Museum in NY easily and the money given to the poor which was not my point…which point was that Popes cannot rail against wastefulness and lavishness in other nations as long as lavish things are present under their jurisdiction. Christ did not say…”thou art Peter and upon this rock, I will establish a museum for chariots and one for maps and one for modern art and one for Etruscan art.”
A mother Teresa could rail against wastefulness and lavishness since when a Pope gave her an expensive car, she sold it fast and used the money for the poor. I’m simply saying that few highly public people qualify to rail against others about lavishness since most highly public people are connected in some way to lavishness themselves…really or iconically. Mother Teresa was not connected to lavishness either way….so cpoming from her, such railing would work. Benedict had Lidia Bastinich of Felidia as a chef while in America….Mother Teresa did not.
Bill, I’d like to know what is done with the money that is collected as entrance fees to the very well-patronized Vatican museums in the city of Rome. Obviously a certain percentage of the “take” has to go into care, restoration and up-keep of buildings, but I’d be willing to bet that more is donated to charity by those institutions than by the Louvre or the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
And, also, as somebody who really can’t live without a certain amount of museum-going and art “consumption,” I prefer to see as many masterpieces as I can as close to their original provenance as possible.
I do agree with you that Benedict XVI does seem to have a rather vulgar (and German bourgeois) propensity to luxuriate in fancy vehicles and chic attire that his predecessors seem to have scorned.
It would seem that one of the obvious questions here would be: Is lack of international funding one of the primary causes of poverty in the world at this point?
If so, then this would seem a reasonable proposal. If not, and especially if one of the main causes of poverty is political repression and unstability in undeveloped nations, that might seem to indicate a need for far greater involvement in peace keeping activities — which would actually mean expansion rather than reduction of military spending. (Though clearly, expansion in different forms than is often seen.)
A third possibility is that there is rather less that the developed world can do to bring the undeveloped world out of poverty by force of good will than we would often like to imagine.
Digby
Peace. Benedict despite his grand piano and maybe Prada/maybe personal cobbler shoes and Serengeti sunglasses and bullet proof BMW (mostly donated)…is a great improvement over some Renaissance Popes like Alexander VI but it does mean that the Bill Gates’s of the world who are already giving a lot on their own terms…will likely be uninterested if he too waxes judgemental during his encyclical on such matters. Peace. I’ll leave you alone.
MM,
How in your view does Paul VI’s world fund idea differ from something like the World Bank or the IMF?
I’m all for cutting back the military budget. However, America is in a somewhat special situation in that a lot of our military expenditures allow other countries to keep their military expenditures lower than they otherwise would be. So it’s not clear to me that a reduction in U.S. military spending would lead to a reduction in total military spending worldwide.