A Timely Catholic Message – the Call for a World Political Authority
From a recent speech by Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace:
“Basically, it [Caritas in Veritate] argues for the urgent need for a true world political authority over many – indeed, I would say all – of the important topics that we have been talking about. Its simple premise is that human activities which have global consequences should not be left to chance or hidden forces, but should be humanely governed, ethically governed, and indeed spiritually governed. It serves as a master check-list because it reasons at the most general possible level, the most universal level… Here are the 9 tasks of the genuine and urgently needed world political authority:
1. to manage the global economy;
2. to revive economies hit by the crisis;
3. to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis;
4. to avoid the greater imbalances that would result if the present crisis did deteriorate;
5. to bring about integral and timely disarmament;
6. to bring about food security;
7. to bring about peace;
8. to guarantee the protection of the environment;
9. to regulate migration”.
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” a true world political authority ”
What enforcement power would this authority have over nations or individuals who do not do his/her/its will?
Acton Institute pops an artery…..
Ah God! Best be sure this is Catholicism being reprented by this body! (It isn’t the religion in Caritas in Veritate.)
This call will be raised more and more often.
I’m afraid I see it causing way more problems than it would solve.
Utopianism will always have its devotees – and they will always be disappointed. The nine items on the list(where applicable) are not being particularly done by our own elephantine government for American citizens. Imagine the scale of waste, fraud, not to mention the crushing authoritarianism that would be required for such an undertaking on a global scale. How could this not lead, ultimately, to a totalitarian dystopia in which no lover of truly human life would want to inhabit. Where are the new Huxleys and Orwells now that we need them?
Why is this any more utopian than the glorification of liberal democracy and the nation state? I would say this is an implication of the principle of subsidiarity. It simply says that just as there are competencies that belong at levels below the nation state, there are competencies that belong at the level above the nation state.
Amen, MM.
Sam
I agree: Amen.
Democracy is endorsed by Catholic Social teaching. Also if anything, democracy is most clearly non-utopian. That is there is a presumption of the evils of men and their ability to create tyranny unless checked and balanced. Certainly the democracies of the West would be less authoritarian than many other govts. in the world. Would also likely meet the needs of their individual societies better than a world govt. would.
Amen to Virgil and Melody.
And perhaps this is a place for legitimate dissent. :)
A one-world government? Gasp! Don’t say that around the end-timers!
Anti-Catholic Protestants have been saying for years that the Catholic Church is in favor of a one-world totalitarian government. These types of statements from the hierarchy just confirm these prejudices.
The dominant American Protestant culture sees the theology of Christianity blending perfectly with the theology of nation. The Catholic Church is a bit more countercultural. It has never been fully comfortable with the nation state. It existed before the nation state, and will continue to exist when the fad of the nation state passes away.
Dear MM,
You seem to feel that the Catholic Church was some sort of bystander to these historical developments. Since it created the culture for much of the West for most of its history, it is hard to see it then or now as countercultural. In the past, when it felt overwhelmed by political forces, documents suddenly appeared that bolstered its political position. The Donation of Constantine is not a very informative story at this point, and definitely belongs in the unpleasant beating-a-dead-horse realm. But it does indicate some sort of broad strategy. I hope to not offend you personally by saying that the very idea of such a world government is more interesting as a modern-day equivalent of the Donation of Constantine than as an idea with any political potential.
That would cause high blood pressure in at least half the population in this country.
A single world government would be nothing but tyrannical. This is deep foolishness.
And the world has always had nations. The “nation-state” you speak of is nothing new. Political authority has always been organized according to local regional and cultural boundaries.
On the contrary: the nation-state as it exists today is a modern invention; some historians date it to the 30 years war and the peace of Westphalia. It is something very different than saying that authority is “organized according to local regional and cultural boundaries.”
and the difference is….
well, i suppose you can make some distinctions.
Zach: from the wikipedia entry on nation-states:
Nation-states have their own characteristics, differing from those of the pre-national states. For a start, they have a different attitude to their territory, compared to the dynastic monarchies: it is semi-sacred, and non-transferable. No nation would swap territory with other states simply, for example, because the king’s daughter got married. They have a different type of border, in principle defined only by the area of settlement of the national group, although many nation states also sought natural borders (rivers, mountain ranges).
The most noticeable characteristic is the degree to which nation-states use the state as an instrument of national unity, in economic, social and cultural life.
David, you are absolutely correct, and, if Zack needs some corroborating evidence of this, he should study for a bit the contrasting ways in which feudal entities conducted wars, as opposed to what “nation-states” have done. “Just War” theories, for example, were constructed during periods when leaders of opposing armies behaved chivalrously, like gentlemen, and this behaviour can be contrasted with how French Revolutionary and American Civil War commanders behaved. The demonization of the enemy, which is a salient feature of modern military conflict, was not a common characteristic of feudal societies, but can you imagine modern warfare without it?
Zach needs to get past the Enlightenment preconceptions. The modern nation state looks nothing like the premodern governing structures. Isn’t that well established by now?
I’m sorry, but am I the only person who thinks that “world political authority” is not the same thing as “one world government”?
Brett,
Your question reminds me of my rather famous teacher in the seminary, Sr. Mary Emil Penet, also known as smemil. She was one of the first theorizers in the Catholic ambit about this one One World Government biz in the Catholic realm, and our textbook was a little number called Towards A New World Order. It was filled with Papal Encyclicals and vaguely socialist logic. When I recall all this, I hope I will be forgiven the big uncharity of thinking, that as to Catholic theorizing on politics it is the biggest pile of nonsense that has ever come down the pike.
What would authority look like without some form of governing organization?
Phillip,
After more that two thousand years of Catholicism, one thing you could say, which everyone on all sides, I dare say, would agree with is this: It is a very rich tradition. A person could be a devout Catholic and spend his/her life deeply plumbing that tradition for insights that make life rich, and, yes, save you from yourself. But I would assert that Catholicism can no longer be, in a political sense, what it was in the past. It cannot be quasi-political or even bluntly political. To have great suasion with one’s adherents is already a great power in the world. And to put it colloquially, I think they should stick with that. Put it this way, there are so many Catholics in the world that if you just changed the lives of those people, you are ALREADY changing the world. Isn’t that enough??? But, nooooo, ambitious types want to revive this and that political framework and campaign for this and that. Thus they get it spectacularly wrong and become sort sort of punchline for a joke. I do not conceive of the Catholic Church as a joke, even though I am its critic now. Far from it. I am enamored of its rich aesthetic tradition. And though I question massively the outcomes and methods of its theologies, I respect them. And there are ways in which that tradition produces, it seems, just the right environment for spectacular achievements in long-vexed human religious questions. I think Meier’s A Marginal Jew couldn’t be a better example of that. Meier has solved, it seems to me, long vexed questions that kicked up a lot of needless dust in Western Civilization. (How lucky do I feel that I interacted with that fellow academically at one time!!) So, I ask, isn’t all this enough??
But again for those craving the mammon of fame and glamour apparently not. How else will the world interpret this telling contradiction. Robert Mugabe, criminal, murderer of women and children, torturer, chaos-maker, and epic narcissist is allowed communion at the Vatican no less! The most resistance he faces is a few tsks-tsks from Raymond Arroyo on EWTN. Meanwhile, accomplished statesmen and women in this country who are Catholic, and who have lead mostly exemplary lives, and served their country nobly, are barraged again and again by their own Bishops for holding political positions they don’t agree with. What does this giant imbalance say to any reasonable person??? Simply this: the Catholic Church is not cut- out for politics. And they do a manifestly bad job of it in every way. The healthful direction for them is to stay out of it.
Mr. Fuchs, what about a political gambit for Catholic hierarchs that would propose exactly what you seem to suggest: massive non-participation in a broken, evil system. In other words, not a “one-world government,” but world-wide refusal to cooperate with what governments do: wage wars; pay for wars with funds STOLEN from taxpayers; payment for “services” that are part of the “culture of death”; participation by callow youths in immoral “wars of choice”; and voting in so-called “elections” that do not provide choices that legitimate according to Christian values.
What would you say, in other words, to ecclesiastics who proposed a massive “sit-down strike” against what modern governments do?
digbydolben,
You have just written the best and most important idea I have seen on this whole blog. One of the reasons that democratic republics are the “worst of all forms of governments, except for all the others” is that they are easily overtaken by clever oligarchies. What else are we living in today, yuck! The ONLY way to counter than would be with using the right to associate to get some leverage. I wish, I wish, I wish that the Catholic Church would get off its political campaigns and just get down to real participatory democracy based on some the good things that have come along with all that Papal bulls. You mentioned some. Imagine for instance if in 2003 if Catholics in this country had come out en masse against the Iraq war in consonance with the articulated views of the Pope at the time. The Catholic community would be seen as heroic. But no, they are too interested in being close to the power if they can be, and so somehow space was made for the George Weigel position, and the man was even made a Papal Knight!! The highest honor they can give. And if you want to militate against abortion by personal expression, then have at it. Everything about the Catholic position now means to say that it is “murder”. So stop beating around the bush in public. I personally think it is an extreme and untenable position to take. But if that is what is believed, say it in public and deal with the consequences. Just stay out of political machination, which is never simply forthright and cannot be. Use grass roots freedoms, and the numerousness of the community. You will have to give up something too. But what in the world is a Church for if it is not in the world but not of it???
digby,
Another thought occurred to me on this topic. Let me preface it strongly by saying that I do not believe in conspiracies, simply because the world is made by events, which no one can control. But certain things can be harnessed as very convenient politically, and this fact is not lost on clever oligarchs. So, as to the Iraq war, have you considered this: How convenient for the oligarchs determined to prosecute that ridiculous war that the religious community that is the most numerous, and that — hello!!!– has the most elaborately developed just war theory, just happened to be taken up with a vast scandal in the very coincidental same year (2002) when the run-up for the war started. And further that this scandal was everywhere portrayed in the press outlets, owned by said oligarchs, in a manner given to fanaticism. Instead of focussing on the aspect that could be handled crisply, namely the systemic mismanagement by particular Bishops, a fanatical bogey-man was created for the whole Catholic priesthood. Now, I have a lot of criticisms personally about the whole sex issue with the Church. But I hate fanaticism, and it simply strained all credulity that suddenly a whole clergy was portrayed in this way. It precluded every getting to the bottom about what IS strange about the Roman clergy. Even if I had not been in the seminary, I think I would have sniffed-out that the press portrayal was a ruse of sorts. Not a ruse in the sense of there being no systemic problem. But a ruse, as in a pernicious entertainment ruse (panem and circenses) to create a villain. Having been in the seminary, I knew even more closely that the vast majority of priests are so different from any such thing as night is from day. They may be weird, some of them, but weird in the garden variety way that the eccentric man down the street is, but in their own inimitable Catholic way.
So instead of milions of Catholics protesting the stupid war with Papal encyclicals in hand, and clever theologians trouncing the very notion of that war-mongering with impressive ancient sources, we got instead tawdry tales day after day on TV about Father Demento from Peoria, and with it came the paranoia that only TV can bring of simplifying complex matters into fanatical tropes. Don’t get me wrong, I think there is still a danger in the Church for children. But NOT (!!) because I think the average priest is a danger, for I know very well they are not. The systemic problems allow the few truly dangerous some latitude.
But the historical fact will be, I think, that this whole scandal served a entirely other purpose related, amazingly, to an adventure thousands of miles away. The truth is stranger than fiction.
This entry is quite dated, so you probably won’t see this, Peter Paul, but I want to remind you and Vox Nova readers of something: the first meeting that Dubya-idiot had with John Paul II after the “liberation” of Iraq was fraught with concerns that the old boy would say something in the American President’s presence about the “injustice” of America’s “war of choice.” Just to emit a parting shot across the papacy’s bow, to make sure that the American god-king-emperor wouldn’t be embarrassed in the presence of the Supreme Pontiff of half the Christian world, the Presidential clown was given a text to read deploring the “tragedies” afflicting religious institutions “all over the world,” and it was hoped that that would be enough to shut the holy old boy up. Instead, the old man launched into a complex, theologically esoteric defence of Catholic “just war” theology right in the presence of Dubya-idiot and his wife. In America the headlines read “Pope Agrees With Bush on Abortion,” but the looks on the faces of the Bushes in the photo-op told an entirely different story. And, of course, in the EUROPEAN press the truth was told about that extremely strained meeting.
An idea that sounds nice. But it is still a government. With all the good and bad attributes of a government. We know that sometimes governments go bad, totalitarian, corrupt, arbitrary, etc. What guarantee would we have that this would not happen. If it did happen there would not be any outside pressure for reform. How would reform be accomplished? World Wide Civil War I perhaps?
There are too many issues for the Cardinal to address in a short speech. Any lengthy discussion needs to be up front with an acknowledgement the very serious problems involved. I assume the Cardinal thinks a World Political Authority should run on Catholic Social Principles, I doubt that few here would disagree. Only a fifth of the world population is Catholic, parts are violently ant-catholic, in some case because they detest Catholic Social teaching. At best Catholic Social Priciples will only be a minorty influce on policy. While a World Political Authority may meet the Cardinals hopes, don’t bet more than the two dollars you would put on your weekly lottery ticket.
Brett,
no, I agree that there is a big difference, but seeing one I believe requires taking subsidiarity seriously in this context.
Why do you hate freedom?
Because freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose!
Tell that to the Christians in Egypt who can’t worship as they want, or get blown up for it!
What’s comical is the pretense that anyone has the faintest idea how to accomplish most of the goals (e.g., 1 through 4, 7), or that a world authority would be anything other than an opportunity for rent-seeking on a scale never seen before.
Not true. People have some very good ideas about how to tackle the leading problems today – an under-regulated finanial sector, the perils of too-big-to-fail, the scourge of high unemployment, dizzying capital flows to emerging markets etc. The reason they get no traction is because solutions must be global not national, and politicians in modern nation states cannot take decisions that further the global common good over domestic interests. Plus, in the largest economy of all, the political system has been hijacked by economic snake-oil salesmen, who can get away with it partly because they are so insulated from the rest of the world.
So rent-seeking and regulatory capture would be magically prevented in this utopian world authority . . . wait, how again?
And yes, people do have ideas about how to “manage the global economy” and the like, but it’s the sheerest hubris to suppose that such ideas could ever be implemented successfully just as their adherents intend. That simply isn’t how public policy works, even on the domestic stage.
Remember the old quip about legislating and sausage-making. It’s facile and naive to think that a world authority would be immune to logrolling and rent-seeking, rather than MORE susceptible to it, merely because the world authority would be established by people who are really sincere in their desire to dominate the world (for its own good, you see).
Here, MM, I have to substantially agree with you. We know how to fix all sorts of things. Start with de-empireizing the United States. Stop encouraging jobs to shipped abroad. But please notice, MM, these are all things one nation can do, and we are not doing. I voted for Obama, and will vote for him again. But after watching him for a few years I am convinced, practically and philosophically, that even the most powerful people in the world have a lot less power than we would like to think.
I have been waiting to see if someone would say the most obvious thing about this post, chomping at the bit. That is, that all the desiderata the author MM proffers for a political authority come directly from the ethos of the liberal nation state itself. This is even more ironic because MM sees the liberal nation state’s status as apparently quite evanescent, and the Church’s views as more stable. Honest intellectual historians understand that the Church’s view, especially on politics, have never been stable.
If I may go from macro to micro concerns for a moment, I am and have been interested to see if anyone can give even one historical confirmation of a trend that the Catholic Church now says it entirely endorses. Namely, that of respect for limits of state power. To my knowledge there is not one example in the past when the Church took the lead, or even gladly went a long with a curtailment of state power when it affected the exertion of that power for its religious interests. Even after the establishment of such limits in many countries in the West, the Church fought tooth and nail against the assertions of those limits in countries where they were not an accomplished fact. Their assent had to be forced in every case.
And even in liberal democracies like the United States, where these things were utterly established by law, the Church from the very start fought to thwart the implications of that system as it touched their own concerns. The Trustee scandal in the early American Church is a much too little understood and explored facet of early American Catholic Church politics. To wit, because of the very ethos of the country, the Catholic Church in American was early- on governed in its parish system by Trustee councils for parishes, not unlike Vestries in Protestant Churches. These Trustee councils naturally saw to it that the relatively best candidate available for the pastor got the job. This was an utter reflection of the liberal democratic ethos at work to good effect in their parishes, and they did just fine with it for quite a while. But the Church was determined to get rid of it. This often meant favoring explicitly candidates who were vastly less desirable for the job ONLY because he was the Bishops appointee. Of course the Trustee councils answered that they did not want drunks and reprobates manning their parishes. But American Bishops used excommunication to force the Trustee councils into compliance. In other words, they were willing to — in the Catholic context — condemn a hard-working Trustee to hell for the grave “crime” of not wanting a drunk or reprobate in the parish as pastor. This example serves, I think, in extremis to show the position of the Church historically on the matters addressed above.
I look forward to the day, and I am willing to do what I can to help it along, when the Catholic Church will accept itself for what it is. One of the evocatively contradicted religious traditions and cultures that make up our world, and make it colorful. There is so much that can be done in that framework. But as to it being more than that, something that should have an over-arching influence in the world, well, that seems utterly chimerical given the cumulative evidence of its history,
I disagree with your assertion that the call for a world political authority comes from the ethos of the liberal nation state. I see it as both postnationalist and premodern – an attempt to get beyond the poison of nationalism that has so dominant for the last few centuries, and to return to a kind of loose supra-national structure that sits on top of a vibrant web of loyalties at subsidiary levels (think Roman Empire or even Holy Roman Empire). The closest modern approximation is the European Union, which was essentially dreamed up by a bunch of very idealistic (some would say utopian) Catholics.
MM,
But ask yourself: where did the very idea that these things are amenable to change or adjustment come from. From a raft of assumptions for which the nation-state is an imperfect representative — that’s where.
If the authority were the Church, or subject to the Church, I could go for it. Otherwise I wouldn’t trust it.
You mean the same Church that tried running secular affairs in the past and made such a mess of it? (Think about Pope Gregory XVI refusing to allow railroads to be built in the Papal States.) Haven’t we learned our lesson yet: “My kingdom is not of this world.”
“Haven’t we learned our lesson yet: “My kingdom is not of this world.” ”
David, I think you have thereby expressed the most succinct refutation of this proposed “world political authority”.
Interviewer: “How many people work in the Vatican, your Holiness?”
Bl. John XXIII: “About half.”
If this is patterned on the United Nations, God help us all. The UN just appointed North Korea to chair its Conference on Disarmament.
http://blog.mysanantonio.com/the-arena/2011/07/north-korea-chairs-u-n-disarmament-panel-seriously/
DCU writes, “You mean the same Church that tried running secular affairs in the past and made such a mess of it? (Think about Pope Gregory XVI refusing to allow railroads to be built in the Papal States.) Haven’t we learned our lesson yet: “My kingdom is not of this world.””
If the Church tried “running secular affairs” and made a mess of it, I doubt it was a much worse mess than many a secular power has made. I mean, at least divorce and abortion were illegal. If they screwed up with regard to the railroads, that seems a relatively minor glitch compared with the modern abortion holocaust.
In any event, I didn’t really have in mind the Church dictating secular policy, only that whatever policies were to be implemented must pass the Church’s muster in terms of their morality. Obviously this will never happen, at least in our lifetimes.
But for that matter I doubt that a secular world authority will happen either. What it would mean in practice is countries ceding money, arms and authority to another government over which they have no control. Highly unlikely to occur worldwide.
In terms of subsidiarity, it just occurs to me that it would be violated. If the “world authority” or whatever you call it, became corrupt and dictatorial, and yet had enforcement power over all countries of the world, what other power would be left to fight it? Take the history of the U.S. as an example: Originally each state was relatively very autonomous compared to now. Once the Civil War was fought, it became clear that the federal government had political as well as monetary and military power over every state.
Now, no state has the option of seceding should the federal government become corrupt or dictatorial, since no state has any military power to speak of. If each state had retained autonomy and its own militia, and one state did become corrupt or dictatorial, other states could join together to assist the people of the corrupt state to overthrow the corrupt government. But by the same token, no single state would likely become powerful enough to be dictatorial over all the states. As it is, however, all the states are at the mercy of the federal government, and should it go bad would be helpless to do much about it.
Now at least in that case, there might be other friendly governments that might be willing and able to intervene — say, the nations of the European Union — and restore democracy. But if instead of the federal government we were talking about a world government, there would be no such outside body capable of offering assistance, since it would be in control of the whole enchilada.
Agellius,
You seem to be one of those Catholics who has gone out his way not to read much Church history. For if you had you could never say this with a straight face, EVEN in light of your strong feelings on abortion and divorce:
“If the Church tried “running secular affairs” and made a mess of it, I doubt it was a much worse mess than many a secular power has made.”
During most periods, and perhaps arguably all, the Papal States were the mostly poorly and corruptly managed governmental entity on the Continent. Crime was rampant, poverty absolutely worse than any place else, and presumably because of that fact more poor women seeking to terminate their pregnancies by surreptitious means. Are you not aware that at some periods (hello– the 14th Century) it was so bad that even the Papacy couldn’t stand their own mess, and moved out. About the only thing you could say in their favor in terms of secular control is that at some periods they treated the Jewish people better than in any other part of Europe. But then at other periods they were horrible, and virtually cancelled that fine behavior out. So, in sum, as to secular affairs, the Church’s record is FAR WORSE than most secular powers historically.
Fine. In some particular times and places, the Church did a worse job running secular affairs than secular governments. But I don’t buy that there is anything inherent in the Church that makes it incapable of running secular affairs as well as secular governments.
But be that as it may, I have already said that I did not have in mind that the Church should dictate secular policy, but only that secular policies should have to pass the Church’s muster in terms of their morality.
Agellius,
If you mean that there are in the Catholic Church there are people who are smart enough, and have enough leadership savvy to do a better job than at least some people in the “secular” world, then OK. I take that as a true but trivial point for anyone who knows that a lot of people involved with the Church are no dummies. But the more basic point is being avoided. I know you likely feel that the Church has an important deposit of faith. But, again, for sake of argument, even if that were true, that says nothing about the moral tendencies of the institution. If you had a project in real life, wouldn’t you seek out a going concern with a good track record??? Can anyone with an ounce of honesty say the Roman Catholic Church has a good record?? Again, I stipulate that that this says nothing intrinsically about the faith per se. And nothing about its good works. (Though to some like me it says a lot.) But on the practical question of their congruence with good secular order, they come up spectacularly wanting.
Lastly, the “particular times and places” you mention seems an odd way for a devout person to describe the entire history of the Papacy in its governmental aspect. All roads lead to Rome…
The new Jerusalem will end up being the old Babylon… Has anyone read anything about the history of Christiandom? “Those who are ignorant of history….”
Peter:
Well, since you’re apparently not a Catholic believer, we don’t have the common ground I thought we did. In which case I won’t argue the point, since it would require laying a lot of groundwork. I will just say that (1) teaching and doing are two different things; and (2) I think the Church has a spectacular track record of judging and teaching morality truly and correctly. To say that it does not, I would certainly consider a statement “intrinsically about the faith per se”.
Abp Silvano Tomasi’s performance at the UN shows what kind of world government the Vatican craves. Gays and lesbians would have to watch out!