Tuesday, April 19, 2016

"Pope’s Morning Homily: Christians Who Have Hardened Hearts Are Orphans" ZENIT of Roswell, Georgia 30076, United States for Tuesday, 19 April 2016 - DAILY DISPATCH

"Pope’s Morning Homily: Christians Who Have Hardened Hearts Are Orphans" ZENIT of Roswell, Georgia 30076, United States for Tuesday, 19 April 2016 - DAILY DISPATCH
 
Pope Francis says a Christian who doesn’t allow himself to be led by the Father is an orphan.
The Holy Father stressed this during his daily morning Mass this morning at Casa Santa Marta, reported Vatican Radio.
The Pope drew inspiration from today’s biblical passage which recounted of the Scribes and Pharisees who repeatedly asked Jesus each time he performed a miracle, preached in the temple or pointed the way to the Father: ‘How long are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.’
Continuing to ask this question, the Pope underscored, “springs from a heart that is closed and blind to the faith.”
Little Prayer
The Pope urged those gathered in his chapel to realize we have a Father who can lead us to Jesus.
“The humble prayer we can say,” Francis encouraged, “is: ‘Father, lead me to Jesus, help me to know Jesus’ and the Father will send the Spirit to open our hearts and lead us to Him.”
What It Means to Be Part of His Flock
“Being part of God’s flock is a grace which requires an open heart,” the Pope said.
Jesus says in the reading, ‘My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand,” the Pope quoted.
Pope Francis then asked: ‘Have these sheep studied how to follow Jesus and then believed?’ the Pope asked. “No, he said, citing the words from St John’s Gospel, “My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all”. It is the Father who gives the sheep to the shepherd. It is the Father who draws our hearts to Jesus.
Drama of Hardened Hearts
The hardness of the Scribes and Pharisees’ hearts, the Pope said, “is a drama which continues all the way to Calvary.” the Pope said, noting various examples of those who witnessed Jesus’ miracles, but refused to believe. And this, the Pope explained, has its consequences, “because they are orphans who have denied their Father.”
“These doctors of the law,” he highlighted, “had closed hearts, they thought they were their own masters but in fact they were orphans because they had no relationship with the Father. They talked about their fathers, Abraham and the patriarchs, but these were distant figures and in their hearts they were orphans because they would not let themselves be drawn to the Father.”
Pope Francis concluded by saying Jesus invites us to be His disciples but to be so, we must let ourselves be drawn by the Father towards Him.
“If someone thinks that to greet someone is to meddle in politics, I suggest he find a psychiatrist,” Pope Francis says.
The Holy Father jokingly made this statement during the press conference on his papal flight returning from the Greek Island of Lesbos Saturday, when asked by a journalist about his having met with US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in Casa Santa Marta that morning.
“This morning, when I was leaving, Senator Sanders was there, who had come to the congress of the Centesimus Annus Foundation. He knew that I was leaving at that time, and he had the politeness to greet me. I greeted him, shook his hand, his wife’s, and that of a couple that was with him, who were lodging at Santa Marta, because all the members taking part, except the two presidents (Correa and Morales), who I believe were lodging in their embassies, were all staying at Santa Marta.
“And when I came down, he introduced himself, he greeted me; we shook hands and nothing more. This is politeness; it is called politeness and not meddling in politics,” clarified the Pope.
“And if someone thinks that to greet someone is to meddle in politics, I suggest he find a psychiatrist! (laughing)”
Before leaving this morning for Lesbos, Pope Francis met Bernie Sanders, candidate of the Democratic Party in the primaries for the US presidential election who arrived Friday afternoon in the Vatican to take part in the International Conference on the 25th anniversary of John Paul II’s encyclical Centesimus Annus. Organized by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences , the conference was also attended by the Presidents of Bolivia and Ecuador, Evo Morales and Rafael Correa.
Pope Francis did not take part in the meeting, communicating in a message his regret at not being able to attend the event, given his preparations for today’s trip to the Island of Lesbos. “I realized yesterday that it would be complicated today given my trip to Lesbos, said the Pontiff in a text read by Monsignor Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo.
Present at the meeting in Casa Santa Marta, several sources report, were Sander’s wife, the Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy, Monsignor Sorondo, and US economist Jeffrey Sachs.
Confirmation of the meeting was given by Sanders himself who, meeting with the US press before embarking for New York, said, “It was a real honor” to meet the Pope, calling him “one of the extraordinary figures not only of the today’s world, but of modern world history.”
Moreover, the Senator from Vermont said he expressed to the Pope his appreciation for “the incredible role he is having in the planet in addressing topics such as the necessity of an economy based on morality, not greed.”
LITURGY Q & A: On Transubstantiation by Fr. Edward McNamara
Answered by Legionary of Christ Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy and dean of theology at the Regina Apostolorum university.
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Q: I have a question about transubstantiation. I’m trying to understand more fully our Church’s teaching that after the consecration the substance of the bread and wine cease to exist, but the accidents remain. If I understand it correctly, after the consecration the substance of the host becomes Jesus, but the accidents of bread (the taste/feel/smell) remain? I would have thought that the gluten in the host is a substance of the bread, but since it remains present after the consecration, does that mean it’s an accident of the bread? Similarly, I would have thought that the alcohol in the wine is a substance, but since it remains present after the consecration, it must be an accident of the wine? — C.M., Beaverton, Ontario
A: Our reader is not the first to struggle with the concepts of substance and accident, especially as referred to the Eucharist. Many other Christians, including the occasional bishop and theologian, have difficulties in grasping the concepts.
This difficulty stems in part because the concepts seem to derive from Aristotelian metaphysics. Those of us who have been formed in Thomistic Aristotelian philosophy know that this rigorous search for understanding the truth of being can be a taxing affair.
And yet, in spite of the similarity of terms, it is necessary to affirm that, in referring to the Eucharist, the Church does not use the terms substance and accident in their philosophical contexts but in the common and ordinary sense in which they were first used many centuries ago. The dogma of transubstantiation does not embrace any philosophical theory in particular.
The earliest uses of the term “substance” in referring to the Eucharist precede by several centuries the introduction of Aristotelian thought into theology in the 13th century. The earliest use of the term is from the fifth or sixth centuries. The words transubstantiate and transubstantiation are found in the 11th and 12th centuries in theological debate. Among the earliest use of these terms in the magisterium was the profession of faith regarding the Real Presence imposed by the Pope in 1078 on a theologian called Berengarius who held erroneous beliefs:
“I believe in my heart and openly profess that the bread and wine placed upon the altar are, by the mystery of the sacred prayer and the words of the Redeemer, substantially changed into the true and life-giving flesh and blood of Jesus Christ our Lord, and that after the consecration, there is present the true body of Christ which was born of the Virgin and offered up for the salvation of the world, hung on the cross and now sits at the right hand of the Father, and that there is present the true blood of Christ which flowed from his side. They are present not only by means of a sign and of the efficacy of the Sacrament, but also in the very reality and truth of their nature and substance.”
Here the fundamental doctrine regarding the Eucharistic change is clearly articulated, although later theological developments would make the language more precise. The important point with regard to our question on substance is that the word is not taken in the technical Aristotelian sense but refers simply to the reality of the bread and wine being no longer present and being wholly substituted by the reality of Christ in his entirety.
The use of the word “accident” was introduced later by Scholastic theologians. One of the first uses of the term accident in the magisterium was during the Council of Constance. Among many other issues, this Council condemned in 1415 the doctrine of John Wyclif. Of the 45 condemned theses, the Eucharistic propositions were:
“1. The material substance of bread, and similarly the material substance of wine, remain in the sacrament of the altar.
“2. The accidents of bread do not remain without their subject in the said sacrament.
“3. Christ is not identically and really present in the said sacrament in his own bodily persona.”
The Council used the word “accidents” basically because Wyclif, in line with the Scholastic theology of the time, commonly used this term. It did not constitute an official adoption by the Church of Aristotelian philosophy. This does not mean that the term accident cannot be legitimately used in Eucharistic theology. Rather, it means that it is not used in the technical sense of Aristotelian metaphysics.
Indeed, the Council of Trent (1545-1563) did not use the word accident but “species” (appearances) when referring to the Eucharistic change. Substance is the basic reality of bread as opposed to the appearances. Trent’s doctrine is presented in the Catechism of the Catholic Church in No. 1376:
“The Council of Trent summarizes the Catholic faith by declaring: ‘Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, and this holy Council now declares again, that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation.'”
Therefore, Trent defines that the bread and wine ceases to be bread and wine although what we directly perceive, the appearances, remain the same so that there is no perceptible change.
When speaking of the, species (appearances), or accidents, the Church does not refer just to what is visible but to all that could in any way be experienced as external aspects of bread and wine such as touch, taste, size and smell. It also embraces the effects that bread and wine have on the body. Thus a priest who happens to use too much altar wine early in the morning is likely to feel a bit lightheaded, and the celiac could become ill by receiving the host.
In addressing our reader’s question we can say that we have seen that it is unnecessary to enter into a long discussion regarding what constitutes the substance and what the accidents of bread and wine, as these are philosophical questions. However, because the Church affirms that everything that goes into making bread and wine what they are is changed into the Body and Blood of Christ, therefore, at least from the point of view of Eucharistic theology, the alcohol content of wine and the gluten in bread form part of the appearances or accidents.
This is a distinct, albeit related, question from that of what constitutes valid matter for the sacrament. We have discussed this topic on several occasions with respect to low gluten hosts and the qualities for altar wine and mustum (for example, on September 14 and 28, 2004; June 7, 2005; June 13 and 27, 2006; January 27, 2009).
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Readers may send questions to zenit.liturgy@gmail.com. Please put the word “Liturgy” in the subject field. The text should include your initials, your city and your state, province or country. Father McNamara can only answer a small selection of the great number of questions that arrive.
Today marks the 11-year anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI’s election as Pope, and the German retired Pontiff has reached out to thank those who have given him 89th birthday wishes on Saturday.
“Giving thanks for the good wishes sent on the occasion of his personal anniversary, the Pontiff Emeritus Benedict XVI returns every good wish and, in this Jubilee Year, accompanies all with his prayer and his blessing. Vatican City, April 19, 2016.”
This message was entrusted to the Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation, as the Pope Emeritus’ thanksgiving for the very numerous expressions of good wishes he received.
In addition to the good wishes that arrived from all over the world, beginning from his Successor, Pope Francis, the Pope Emeritus was able to celebrate his birthday with a concert in the Assunta Hall of the Leo XIII Palazzina, given Benedict’s great love of classical music.
The Philharmonic Orchestra of Franciacorta played three of the string quartets that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart dedicated to his friend Franz Joseph Haydn. The Pope Emeritus’ older brother, Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, who was 92 on January 15, also attended the event.
Last year, the Pope Emeritus quietly celebrated his birthday at Mater Ecclesiae monastery at the Vatican, where he lives a life of prayer and reflection following his resignation from the papacy.
During the flight from Rome to the Greek island of Lesbos Saturday morning, Pope Francis told journalists, “I would like to remind you that today is Pope Benedict XVI’s 89th birthday. A prayer for him!” On the same day, the Holy Father also sent his predecessor birthday wishes via a telegram.
Below is a ZENIT translation of Pope Francis’ video-message sent to recall the 35th Anniversary of the founding of the Astalli Center for Refugees, which constitutes the main activity in Italy of the Jesuits International Refugee Service (JRS).
The message was made public this morning, on the occasion of the presentation of the Center’s Annual Report at Torre Argentina in Rome:
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Dearest refugees, dear volunteers, workers and friends of the Astalli Center, observed in this Year of Mercy, are the 35 years of the Jesuits’ Refugee Service in Italy, an activity that was first of all a walking together, as one people. And this is good and just!
It must be continued with courage: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (cf. Matthew 25:35).
I was a stranger … Each one of you refugees, who knock on our doors, has the face of God, is flesh of Christ. Your experience of grief and hope reminds us that we are all strangers and pilgrims on this earth, received by someone with generosity and without any merit. He who like you has fled from his land because of oppression, of war, of a nature disfigured by pollution and desertification or by the unjust distribution of the planet’s resources, is a brother with whom to share bread, home and life.
Too often we have not received you! Forgive the closure and indifference of our societies, which fear the change of life and of mentality that your presence requires. Treated as a weight, a problem, a cost, you are, instead, a gift. You are the testimony of how our clement and merciful God is able to transform the evil and injustice of which you suffer in a good for all. Because each one of you can be a bridge that unites distant peoples, which makes possible an encounter between different cultures and religions, a way to discover our common humanity.
…and you welcomed me. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. Yes, the Astalli Center is a concrete and daily example of this welcome, born of the prophetic vision of Father Pedro Arrupe. It was his swansong in a center of refugees in Asia. Thanks to all of you, women and men, laity and Religious, workers and volunteers, because you show in events that if we walk together the way is less fearful.
I encourage you to continue. Thirty-five years are only the beginning of an endeavour that is ever more necessary, the only way for a reconciled coexistence. Be always witnesses of the beauty of an encounter. Help our society to hear the voice of refugees.
Continue to walk with courage by their side, accompany them and let yourselves also be led by them: the refugees know the ways that lead to peace because they know the acrid odour of war.[Original text: Italian] [Translation by ZENIT]
It was natural in the interview, on the return flight from Lesbos, that journalists’ questions were catalyzed on the culminating news of the whole trip: the 12 refugees that Francis decided to bring with him on the plane to receive them in the Vatican. Several questions were focused on the topic during the 25 minutes of conversation that the Pontiff, as usual, granted some 50 journalists, who accompanied him during the visit.
Refugees to Rome: “They had their papers in order. They are children of God. The Vatican’s Costs”
First of all, the Pope clarified that the criteria with which the three Syrian families (all Muslims) were chosen, were not determined by religious factors. “I didn’t choose between Christians and Muslims,” he explained. “These three families had their papers in order, their documents in order and it could be done. There were, for instance, two Christian families in the first list that didn’t have their papers in order.” ‘It’s not a privilege – added Bergoglio – all 12 are children of God. The “privilege” is to be children of God.”
At the “technical” level, continued the Pope, “everything was done in order”: Vatican City State, the Italian Government and the Greek Government – all inspected everything , saw everything and gave their consent. They are being received by the Vatican: it will be up to the Vatican, with the collaboration of Sant’Egidio Community, to find a place of work for them, if there is one, and their maintenance.” The costs for the support of the refugees, therefore, are the Vatican’s and the 12 refugees, among which six are minors, are added to the two Syrian families already received in the parish of Saint Anne and of Saint Peter.
Bernie Sanders: “If someone thinks that to greet someone is to meddle in politics, I suggest he find a psychiatrist”
Another clarification Pope Francis wished to make was his meeting that morning with the candidate in the Democratic primaries for the US Presidential election, Bernie Sanders. “This morning, when I was leaving, Senator Sanders was there, who had come to the congress of the Centesimus Annus Foundation. He knew that I was leaving at that time, and he had the politeness to greet me. I greeted him, shook his hand, his wife’s, and that of a couple that was with him, who were lodging at Saint Martha’s, because all the members taking part, except the two presidents (Correa and Morales), who I believe were lodging in their embassies, all were staying at Saint Martha’s. And when I came down, he introduced himself, he greeted me; we shook hands and nothing more. This is politeness; it is called politeness and not meddling in politics,” clarified the Pope. “And if someone thinks that to greet someone is to meddle in politics, I suggest he find a psychiatrist!”
Trip to Lesbos: “No political speculation”
Francis then reflected on the nature of his trip to Lesbos, explaining that he did not want to express a criticism by it to the recent agreement between the European Union and Turkey. “There is no political speculation, because I didn’t know well these agreements between Turkey and Greece; I saw it in the newspapers and I can’t say anything,” he stressed, describing his trip as “a humanitarian trip, born of the “inspiration” of one of his collaborators. “I accepted immediately, because I saw that it was the Spirit speaking.”
Europe: “Ghettos exist today. There must be education to integration”
The Pope then spoke of “integration,” recalling a word “that in our present-day culture seems to have been forgotten after the War: ghettos exist today!” Therefore, he requested Europe “to take up this capacity today, which it always had, of integration, .” “Some of the terrorists that committed terrorist acts – some – were sons and grandsons of persons born in the country, in Europe. And what happened? There was no policy of integration,” he said and reminded that having received nomad populations in the past “enriched the culture” of the Old Continent.
To close borders doesn’t solve anything”
According to the Pontiff, there is need of “teaching and education to integration.” At the same time, it is necessary to exercise “great responsibility in the [refugees’] reception.” “I understand governments, also peoples, who have a certain fear,” he admitted; however, it is necessary to understand how to “integrate these people to the North.” Also because “to build walls is not a solution. We saw one fall last century. It doesn’t solve anything. We must build bridges. But bridges are built intelligently; they are made with dialogue and integration.” To close borders doesn’t solve anything because, in the long run, that closure harms the people themselves,” asserted Pope Francis. Therefore, Europe must “urgently engage on policies of hospitality and integration, of growth, of work, of reform of the economy.” All of these are the bridges needed today.
“The children suffer. Today, at the camp, one could weep …”
It is necessary to give hope to people as those found today in the Moria refugee camp. The Pope confessed he was overwhelmed when witnessing certain scenes: “One could weep,” he said, showing journalists some drawings given to him by children through which they expressed their desires. “What do the children want?” They want peace, because they suffer.” They suffer for having experienced tragedies such as seeing their contemporaries drown: “The children have this in their heart! They have this in their memory ….”
Francis showed them [the journalists] a drawing in particular of a weeping sun: “But if the sun is able to weep, so we should weep; a tear will do us good,” he said.
It would be salutary for the manufacturers of arms to go among the refugees”
Pope Francis would send to that camp, which brings together so many human tragedies, the manufacturers of arms. : “It would be salutary for them.” Asked about the causes of the migrations’ emergency, he lamented the wars and the hunger, both the “effect of the exploitation of the land.” Explaining, instead, the concept of “austerity,” he clarified that it has several meanings: economically it means a chapter of a program, politically something else, and spiritually yet something else. When I speak of austerity, I speak of austerity in contrast with waste. I heard it said at a meeting that with the waste of food all hunger could be placated — and we, in our home, how much waste there is without meaning to do so. So, “let us pause here and live somewhat austerely.
Amoris Laetitia: “The media are not aware of the real problems”
Two questions were not lacking during the interview on Amoris Laetitia, the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation published on April 8. The conversation turned obviously to the discordant opinions about access to the Sacraments by divorced and remarried persons, between those who hold that everything has changed and those that affirm that nothing has changed. Recommending that they read the presentation of Cardinal Shönborn, “a great theologian,” who knows well the Doctrine of the Faith,” Francis quoted Benedict XVI when, speaking of Vatican Council II, he affirmed that two Councils existed: that which was held in Saint Peter’s Basilica and the other that was held by the media.”
Remarried divorced persons: “I don’t remember any note”
The same fate happened to the two Synods. “When I convoked the first Synod – he said – the great preoccupation of the majority of the media was: will they be able to give Communion to the divorced that have remarried? And, as I’m not a saint, this annoyed me a bit, and it also made me somewhat sad.” “The media that says this doesn’t realize that this isn’t the important problem,” added the Pontiff. They don’t realize that “the family, basis of society, is in crisis throughout the world,” that “young people don’t want to marry,” that that there is a drop in the birth rate in Europe, which makes one “weep,” that work is lacking to the point that parents are constrained to have two jobs and have their children grow up on their own. No, what the media is aware of is a note on the divorced that have remarried – a note that the Pope doesn’t even remember: “I don’t remember that note,” he said, “but surely if a thing of that nature is in a note it’s because it was said in Evangelii Gaudium. It surely must be. I don’t remember the number, but it surely must be there.”
The earthquake which struck the coast of Ecuador Saturday night has so far claimed at least 272 lives and injured some 2,068, reported Fides Monday.
According to the Secretariat of the Civil Protection of the Government of Ecuador, the earthquake, magnitude 7.8 on the Richter scale, was the strongest since 1979. It also declared the Pacific coast an emergency zone, namely the six provinces of Esmeraldas, Los Ríos, Manabí, Santa Elena, Guayas and Santo Domingo.
“In the face of the earthquake,” a statement the nation’s bishops sent to the agency noted, “the Bishops of Ecuador want to offer a word of faith in the Lord to the Ecuadorian people.”
“Our thoughts,” the bishops said, “go especially to our brothers and sisters in the provinces of Manabi and Esmeraldas, who seem so far to be the most affected, and we invite everyone to participate in the national collection for the victims, in order to help them in their most urgent needs.”
The first report of Caritas-Ecuador indicates it has received 4,068 requests for help from 23 provinces in the country, including calls even from Ipiales and Pasto, two cities of Colombia.
Among those killed in the tragedy were an Irish religious sister who spent 15 years in Ecuador and five postulants of the “Siervas del Hogar de la Madre” Sisters community in Playa Prieta.
The relief efforts, the agency learned, managed to reach the spot only 24 hours after the earthquake. Among those whose bodies were found were missionary Sister Clare Crocket (Irish, who spent 15 years in Ecuador) and 5 postulants: Jazmina, María Augusta, Maira, Valeria and Catalina.
Thanks to rescue efforts, three other sisters of the community are alive. They were wounded and now are hospitalized: Sister Estela Morales (Spanish), Sister Merly (Ecuadorian), Sister Thérèse Ryan (Irish), and two Ecuadorian postulants: Guadalupe y Mercedes.
According to social networks in the area, the Siervas del Hogar de la Madre run a school on the Coast which the earthquake completely destroyed.
Bernie Sanders, candidate of the Democratic Party in the primaries for the US presidential election, arrived Friday afternoon in the Vatican to take part in the International Conference on the 25th anniversary of John Paul II’s encyclical Centesimus Annus. The senator gave the following discourse, made available to us by conference organizer, the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.
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‘The Urgency of a Moral Economy: Reflections on the 25th Anniversary of Centesimus Annus’
By Senator Bernie Sanders
April 15, 2016
I am honored to be with you today and was pleased to receive your invitation to speak to this conference of The Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Today we celebrate the encyclical Centesimus Annus and reflect on its meaning for our world a quarter-century after it was presented by Pope John Paul II. With the fall of Communism, Pope John Paul II gave a clarion call for human freedom in its truest sense: freedom that defends the dignity of every person and that is always oriented towards the common good.
The Church’s social teachings, stretching back to the first modern encyclical about the industrial economy, Rerum Novarum in 1891, to Centesimus Annus, to Pope Francis’s inspiring encyclical Laudato Si’ this past year, have grappled with the challenges of the market economy. There are few places in modern thought that rival the depth and insight of the Church’s moral teachings on the market economy.
Over a century ago, Pope Leo XIII highlighted economic issues and challenges in Rerum Novarum that continue to haunt us today, such as what he called “the enormous wealth of a few as opposed to the poverty of the many.”
And let us be clear. That situation is worse today. In the year 2016, the top one percent of the people on this planet own more wealth than the bottom 99 percent, while the wealthiest 60 people – 60 people – own more than the bottom half – 3 1/2 billion people. At a time when so few have so much, and so many have so little, we must reject the foundations of this contemporary economy as immoral and unsustainable.
The words of Centesimus Annus likewise resonate with us today. One striking example:
Furthermore, society and the State must ensure wage levels adequate for the maintenance of the worker and his family, including a certain amount for savings. This requires a continuous effort to improve workers’ training and capability so that their work will be more skilled and productive, as well as careful controls and adequate legislative measures to block shameful forms of exploitation, especially to the disadvantage of the most vulnerable workers, of immigrants and of those on the margins of society. The role of trade unions in negotiating minimum salaries and working conditions is decisive in this area. (Para15)
The essential wisdom of Centesimus Annus is this: A market economy is beneficial for productivity and economic freedom. But if we let the quest for profits dominate society; if workers become disposable cogs of the financial system; if vast inequalities of power and wealth lead to marginalization of the poor and the powerless; then the common good is squandered and the market economy fails us. Pope John Paul II puts it this way: profit that is the result of “illicit exploitation, speculation, or the breaking of solidarity among working people . . . has not justification, and represents an abuse in the sight of God and man.” (Para43).
We are now twenty-five years after the fall of Communist rule in Eastern Europe. Yet we have to acknowledge that Pope John Paul’s warnings about the excesses of untrammeled finance were deeply prescient. Twenty-five years after Centesimus Annus, speculation, illicit financial flows, environmental destruction, and the weakening of the rights of workers is far more severe than it was a quarter century ago. Financial excesses, indeed widespread financial criminality on Wall Street, played a direct role in causing the world’s worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
We need a political analysis as well as a moral and anthropological analysis to understand what has happened since 1991. We can say that with unregulated globalization, a world market economy built on speculative finance burst through the legal, political, and moral constraints that had once served to protect the common good. In my country, home of the world’s largest financial markets, globalization was used as a pretext to deregulate the banks, ending decades of legal protections for working people and small businesses. Politicians joined hands with the leading bankers to allow the banks to become “too big to fail.” The result: eight years ago the American economy and much of the world was plunged into the worst economic decline since the 1930s. Working people lost their jobs, their homes and their savings, while the government bailed out the banks.
Inexplicably, the United States political system doubled down on this reckless financial deregulation, when the U.S. Supreme Court in a series of deeply misguided decisions, unleashed an unprecedented flow of money into American politics. These decisions culminated in the infamous Citizen United case, which opened the financial spigots for huge campaign donations by billionaires and large corporations to turn the U.S. political system to their narrow and greedy advantage. It has established a system in which billionaires can buy elections. Rather than an economy aimed at the common good, we have been left with an economy operated for the top 1 percent, who get richer and richer as the working class, the young and the poor fall further and further behind. And the billionaires and banks have reaped the returns of their campaign investments, in the form of special tax privileges, imbalanced trade agreements that favor investors over workers, and that even give multinational companies extra-judicial power over governments that are trying to regulate them.
But as both Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis have warned us and the world, the consequences have been even direr than the disastrous effects of financial bubbles and falling living standards of working-class families. Our very soul as a nation has suffered as the public lost faith in political and social institutions. As Pope Francis has stated: “Man is not in charge today, money is in charge, money rules.” And the Pope has also stated: “We have created new idols. The worship of the golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly humane goal.”
And further: “While the income of a minority is increasing exponentially, that of the majority is crumbling. This imbalance results from ideologies which uphold the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation, and thus deny the right of control to States, which are themselves charged with providing for the common good.”
Pope Francis has called on the world to say: “No to a financial system that rules rather than serves” in Evangeli Gaudium. And he called upon financial executives and political leaders to pursue financial reform that is informed by ethical considerations. He stated plainly and powerfully that the role of wealth and resources in a moral economy must be that of servant, not master.
The widening gaps between the rich and poor, the desperation of the marginalized, the power of corporations over politics, is not a phenomenon of the United States alone. The excesses of the unregulated global economy have caused even more damage in the developing countries. They suffer not only from the boom-bust cycles on Wall Street, but from a world economy that puts profits over pollution, oil companies over climate safety, and arms trade over peace. And as an increasing share of new wealth and income goes to a small fraction of those at the top, fixing this gross inequality has become a central challenge. The issue of wealth and income inequality is the great economic issue of our time, the great political issue of our time, and the great moral issue of our time. It is an issue that we must confront in my nation and across the world.
Pope Francis has given the most powerful name to the predicament of modern society: the Globalization of Indifference. “Almost without being aware of it,” he noted, “we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own.” We have seen on Wall Street that financial fraud became not only the norm but in many ways the new business model. Top bankers have shown no shame for their bad behavior and have made no apologies to the public. The billions and billions of dollars of fines they have paid for financial fraud are just another cost of doing business, another short cut to unjust profits.
Some might feel that it is hopeless to fight the economic juggernaut, that once the market economy escaped the boundaries of morality it would be impossible to bring the economy back under the dictates of morality and the common good. I am told time and time again by the rich and powerful, and the mainstream media that represent them, that we should be “practical,” that we should accept the status quo; that a truly moral economy is beyond our reach. Yet Pope Francis himself is surely the world’s greatest demonstration against such a surrender to despair and cynicism. He has opened the eyes of the world once again to the claims of mercy, justice and the possibilities of a better world. He is inspiring the world to find a new global consensus for our common home.
I see that hope and sense of possibility every day among America’s young people. Our youth are no longer satisfied with corrupt and broken politics and an economy of stark inequality and injustice. They are not satisfied with the destruction of our environment by a fossil fuel industry whose greed has put short term profits ahead of climate change and the future of our planet. They want to live in harmony with nature, not destroy it. They are calling out for a return to fairness; for an economy that defends the common good by ensuring that every person, rich or poor, has access to quality health care, nutrition and education.
As Pope Francis made powerfully clear last year in Laudato Si’, we have the technology and know-how to solve our problems – from poverty to climate change to health care to protection of biodiversity. We also have the vast wealth to do so, especially if the rich pay their way in fair taxes rather than hiding their funds in the world’s tax and secrecy havens- as the Panama Papers have shown.
The challenges facing our planet are not mainly technological or even financial, because as a world we are rich enough to increase our investments in skills, infrastructure, and technological know-how to meet our needs and to protect the planet. Our challenge is mostly a moral one, to redirect our efforts and vision to the common good. Centesimus Annus, which we celebrate and reflect on today, and Laudato Si’, are powerful, eloquent and hopeful messages of this possibility. It is up to us to learn from them, and to move boldly toward the common good in our time.
[Original Text: English]
[Courtesy of Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences]
 
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