More commentary on ...

... the now semi-famous note issued Monday by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace:

• From Phil Lawler on CatholicCulture.org:

There are some political realities that the Vatican might eventually recognize, too. Say:

• that the UN, the World Bank, the European Union, and other international organizations are not friends of the Catholic Church, and probably never will be;
• that any international agency empowered to regulate financial markets will—following a pattern that is now well established—be exploited by social engineers to promote contraception, legal abortion, and legal recognition of same-sex marriage;
• that liberal politicians will gladly accept and exploit the Vatican’s statements on economic affairs, while continuing to work assiduously to promote the culture of death;

Oh, yes, and most important of all:

• When an obscure Vatican agency issues a statement that contains 50% solid Catholic social teaching, and 50% flaky leftist theory, the world’s media will ignore the distinctively Catholic content—what the Church should say, what the world should learn—and concentrate exclusively on the leftist theory. So for the great mass of ordinary readers, who will never read the full document, but only scan the headlines, the important message will be lost. What will register, instead, is that the Vatican has not learned its lessons about economic affairs and political realities.

When people reach the conclusion that the Vatican is talking nonsense, they do not ordinarily distinguish between the sound fundamental principles of Church teaching and the questionable economic analysis that follows. Nor do they make fine distinctions on the different levels of Church teaching authority. They conclude simply that the Vatican talks nonsense. So by reaching beyond their field of expertise, Vatican officials undermine their own teaching authority.

• From Thomas E. Woods on NPR.org:

The present malaise does not call for another layer of supervision, as the Pontifical Council appears to think. It calls for a serious moral and economic re-evaluation of institutions, among them central banking (and fiat money), that we have long taken for granted.

The last thing we need is a larger, more centralized version of what we have now. Our problem isn't greedy people or bad personnel; every society and every period of world history have had those. The problem is the system itself.

What we need is a genuinely free economy, one not subject to the cronyism and manipulation at the heart of the present system, and one that's free of the central bank.

We've been assured that the central bank has found a shortcut to prosperity by managing the economy with its highly touted macro tools and by second-guessing the interest rates to which the free interactions of individuals give rise. The result has been bubble after bubble and — contrary to popular belief — far more banking, currency crises and overall instability than was ever seen in the oft-misunderstood era that preceded the age of central banking.

The Vatican document reflects a vague sense of what is wrong, but any solution that involves reposing our confidence in still another layer of time-serving drones supervising a largely unchanged system is no real solution at all.

• From Nicholas G. Hahn III, on RealClearReligion.org:

And so, a question that must be asked is: does Rome want a king? The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace has, in effect, suggested the creation of a near god-like emporer to rule the world's financial and monetary systems.

This king would be entrusted with "universal jurisdiction" over the world's economy. It would, because the International Monetary Fund has supposedly "lost an essential element for stabilizing world finance," facilitate the creation of a "central world bank" responsible for "global monetary management."

The king would have authority to tax transactions made by firms like Goldman Sachs. Revenues from such taxation would be deposited into a "world reserve fund," a fantasy collection basket of sorts, aimed at supporting economies most affected by financial crises.

And if that wasn't enough, the king would also be directed to bailout banks ("recapitalization with public funds") subject to wildly ambiguous "virtuous behaviors." As if the guarantee of a bailout would somehow ensure a stable market.

Ultimately, the king calls on States to look beyond Hobbes' "state of nature" which would trap people "in a never-ending struggle with one another." Evidently, this new global authority is the "only horizon compatible with the new realities of our time and the needs of humankind."

• From Sean P. Dailey at CrisisMagazine.com:

While “Towards Reforming” blames the financial crisis on too-easy credit and too much lending, it makes no mention of usury, and the omission may be linked to the embarrassing practices of the Vatican bank.

And despite all the talk about easy credit, lending, and international trade, the Note makes no mention of ruinous deficit spending by governments. There is not a single mention of the crippling, mounting debt that governments, particularly Western governments, continue to run up. On the contrary, “Towards Reforming” suggests “taxation measures on financial transactions” and, euphemistically, “forms of recapitalization of banks with public funds.” In other words, more taxes, and more spending, including bank bailouts. How has that worked so far? And how does it serve justice to shield financial executives from the consequences of bad decisions?

Furthermore, and even more inexcusably, “Towards Reforming” omits any mention of how banks in the United States were encouraged by federal law to sell home mortgages to people who could not afford them. If the Pontifical Council cares about justice, how can it fail to excoriate Congress for shackling the poor to the usurer’s chain, all in the name of a “right” to become a homeowner? The Catechism of the Catholic Church identifies shelter as an “essential need,” and private property ownership is a sacred right. But no man should be oppressed by usury, so that he is unable to acquire productive property and is forced to live beyond his means, going into debt beyond his ability to pay.

Thomas Peters of CatholicVote.org has a list of even more commentary.

Comments

[beng]

It seems that many Americans are still Protestant at heart.

The fear of a single authority who has controlled over all is sort of blasphemous to many Americans.

Protestantism also disdain authority and centralization. They prefer division and liberalism in making their won rules.

[beng]

That would be "own" instead of "won."

[Honor L]

Excellent comments by all, though I confess I hae not read the document. It must be noted that larger institutions almost always mean greater opportunities for fraud, waste, and abuse. One need only look at the UN, or closer to home, the Department of Education, or Medicare--or just about any other federal agency. Local control generally produces greater oversight, more genuine concern, and more effective use. We do not need Big Brother.

[Robert Miller]

"And so, a question that must be asked is: does Rome want a king? The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace has, in effect, suggested the creation of a near god-like emperor to rule the world's financial and monetary systems."
Well, duh, of course that's what the Vatican wants. That's what the world has been needing more and more since the collapse of Christendom and its HRE. That's what the two Vatican Councils, at bottom, were trying to come to terms with (what to do if we no longer have an Emperor [Caesar] to call for a Council?).
We live in an age in which we have no Caesar to to whom to render. And we have no Caesar who has the competence and legitimacy to decide standards of material value.
"Whose image and inscription are these?" Faces of long-dead bewigged and bearded men, and Masonic drivel about the "Eye" at the top of the pyramid. I'm sorry, but I don't think the Lord would be telling us to render unto any of these or to the faceless bureaucrats whose signatures adorn the currency.
No, what the world economy and polity need is a legitimate heir of Caesar. Our predicament is complicated by the fact that the post-Reformation direction of politics and culture is "Caesarocide", Regicide, anti-Christ. But that takes nothing away from the intense need of the world for legitimate universal government.
Indeed, it is most likely, in my opinion, that some eventual convergence of the world's need for legitimate universal governance and the anti-Christ temper of the times will introduce the anti-Kingdom. But that doesn't let us off the hook. Our secular project must be to reconstruct the regime of Caesar, and to attempt to imbue global governance with the attributes of "Caesarism", to which Our Lord Himself rendered tribute.
Franco's experiment in Spain provides many suggestive avenues with potential. (See also the experiments of Salazar in Portugal, DeValera in Eire and DuPlessis in Quebec).
What simply will not do is the hysterical US Whig Catholic reaction we have seen in the last few days. (Even the goldbug nuts are coming out of the woodwork.) This Right-wing outpouring of Americanist casuistry and sophistry is profoundly embarrassing to the Church in the US, especially at a time when the free exercise of its faith is under unprecedented attack by the US regime. This is no time for an Americanist los von Rom.
Sorry, my friends (and you do much wonderful work), but I think you are wrong on this one -- and especially wrong in the manner in which you are dissenting.

[Carl E. Olson]

Robert: I'm familiar with the basic argument and, believe it or not, I'm not entirely opposed, in theory, to it--especially when framed in a theological manner, free of practical naiveity. It has been articulated in a very intriguing and thoughtful form by Dr. Douglas Farrow in his essay, "Charity and Unity" (First Things, Oct. 2009), a longer version of which appears in the Fall 2010 volume of Nova et Vetera ("Baking Bricks for Babel?"; Vol. 8, No. 4). Farrow writes, for example:

Globalization, Benedict insists, is something more than the inevitable consequence of technology. In fact, it tells us something about the way humanity is made. Globalization, in other words, is a consequence of divine design. It is no mere accident of history affording “unusual opportunities for greater prosperity,” as John Paul II said. History, as Paul VI suggests, is the site of development, and development is the function of the human vocation, at once personal and corporate, to an end that lies beyond history. On the way to that end, something like globalization was bound to happen. Humanity has been called together by God in Christ, and it will come together.

The speed with which globalization has happened, however, raises the question of how it is functioning today. This may be part of the path shown us by God, or it may be the place where we diverge from that path—opting for some lesser end and perverting human history.

Think of Benedict’s work as a three-step process. In his first encyclical, he said the Church is the community of love that mirrors God’s own being. In his second, he noted the hope of salvation that the Church announces to the world. Now, in his third encyclical, Benedict announces that, what the Church is, human society is meant to become. He takes the catholicity of the Church as a sign of promise for the wholeness of humanity, and he offers, along with his encouragement, an admonishment and a warning: This way forward, not that.

And, specifically, in regards to a global form of economic/political authority, Farrow writes:

On the one hand, Benedict warns us against the alienation that results “when too much trust is placed in merely human projects, ideologies, and false utopias.” He is well aware that “a humanism which excludes God is an inhuman humanism,” and he is conscious of the risk that globalization will produce “a dangerous universal power of a tyrannical nature.”

On the other hand, he refuses to draw back from the notion of world government. That would involve a denial of the vocation to development and to unity, which would itself be faithless and godless. “The idea of a world without development indicates a lack of trust in man and in God.” “Precisely because God gives a resounding ‘yes’ to man, man cannot fail to open himself to the divine vocation to pursue his own development.” The Christian especially must take this to heart, reckoning with the power of “charity in truth” to convert and transform the city of man, fitting it for God’s salvific purposes: “In an increasingly globalized society, the common good and the effort to obtain it cannot fail to assume the dimensions of the whole human family, that is to say, the community of peoples and nations, in such a way as to shape the earthly city in unity and peace, rendering it to some degree an anticipation and a prefiguration of the undivided city of God.”

We must not read too much into the words “cannot fail.” Benedict makes no attempt to say how or when history will reach its goal. He does not tell us whether he believes that global governance of the kind he is calling for will actually materialize in the present age. He tells us only that we cannot rightly refuse to aim at it.

And yet, taking even that milder claim on its face, we are forced to ask what has become of St. Augustine’s doctrine of the two cities. Benedict certainly deploys the Augustinian distinction between the earthly city and the heavenly city, meaning the temporal form of human community that we generate with God’s help and the eternal form that only God can generate. But he does not deploy to good effect the equally vital distinction between the Church and the world. At points he seems even to treat the city of man and the city of God as hypothetical alternatives between which we must choose in deciding our collective future, rather than as coexisting communities between which individuals must decide: “The development of peoples depends, above all, on a recognition that the human race is a single family working together in true communion, not simply a group of subjects who happen to live side by side.”

Only if we read Caritas in Veritate as a call to conversion can we avoid the misimpression that Benedict has confused the Church and the world, in some more or less Hegelian way, by supposing that history must sooner or later produce their synthesis. He does not make the mistake—a mistake Augustine himself had to correct—of thinking that history must move the world ever closer into the heart of the Church. Rather, he thinks that the Church must move ever closer into the heart of the world. It must extend to the city of man, as Christ extended to Israel, an urgent invitation to embrace both the means and the ends of the city of God. Mankind has entered the rapids of globalization, and its destiny draws near.

Resistance to the idea of world government need not deny what recent popes have said. It can even admit the relative antiquity of the idea of global governance and its naturalness to Christianity—which, after all, inherited the whole Greco-Roman world as a vast site on which to spread its Jewish patrimony of monotheism and messianism. But the idea is fraught with peril and it is tainted these days by latent utopianism.

Yes, tainted and latent, indeed. The funny thing is that Farrow, in my estimation, does a far, far better job of articulating this than does the PCJP, in part because the latter really does come off as naive and clueless regarding things such as debt, taxation, regulations, the United Nations, etc. It's also worth noting that Farrow's language is very much Balthasarian in places, especially as relating to the Church and the "heart of the world" (that phrase, of course, being the title of one of von Balthasar's books).

This is a matter in which Catholics are free to debate, your claim about "dissenting" notwithstanding. You overreach in such language, especially since the "dissent" is aimed squarely at points of economic and political implementation offered in a "note" by a body without any doctrinal authority. Humanae Vitae this ain't! But considering the sort of strong reactions that have been flying around regarding this document, I can understand the emphatic nature of your opinion, which is appreciated, even if not appropriated.

[Robert Miller]

Carl:

Let me begin by apologizing for using the epithet "dissenting". No, that was over the top.
Second, let me thank you for your thoughtful response to the substance of what I had to say.
"Globalization, Benedict insists, is something more than the inevitable consequence of technology. In fact, it tells us something about the way humanity is made. Globalization, in other words, is a consequence of divine design. It is no mere accident of history affording “unusual opportunities for greater prosperity,” as John Paul II said. History, as Paul VI suggests, is the site of development, and development is the function of the human vocation, at once personal and corporate, to an end that lies beyond history. On the way to that end, something like globalization was bound to happen. Humanity has been called together by God in Christ, and it will come together."
This opening of the citation you have excerpted from Farrow pretty well sums up the whole thing. The world requires governance. And it will not do without either bad governors or good governors. What we cannot delude ourselves with is the notion that an antinomian "market" will answer the demands of the common good. Neither can we neglect the mandate our faith urges to create a secular order in which we recognize a Caesar (and remember, Our Lord's Caesar was a real human being, who had achieved world mastery and who had a legitimate right to transmit his imperium to heirs) we are able in good conscience to render what is his.
We Catholics can never forget to remember where we are in history. This is not 100 or 1000, this is 2011.
Let's try to figure out how we all can coalesce around Pope Benedict's vision in Caritas in Veritate.

[Nancy D.]

It is important to note that a document that calls for the establishment of a global financial authority and believes it is logical for the reform process to proceed through The United Nations as it's reference, clearly fails to recognize that since it is true that Peace requires Justice and that Justice requires respect for the inherent dignity of every human individual created in God's Image from The Beginning, equal in dignity while being complementary as male and female, a public Authority with universal jurisdiction that does not respect the inherent dignity of the human person to begin with, could end up standing for Anarchy, which is certainly not what Pope Benedict was referring to when he wrote Caritas in Veritate.

[Mark Brumley]

We Catholics can never forget to remember where we are in history. This is not 100 or 1000, this is 2011.

But not 2311.

[Mark Brumley]

As should be clear from anyone who paid a modicum of attention to the opening paragraphs of my article, I'm not opposed to world govt, in principle. But talking about it as if this is a viable solution to our current problems is, in my opinion, highly imprudent, if not dangerous. Many of those most interested in world govt don't share our fundamental commitments to limited govt, human rights, subsidiarity, etc. If we have reason to fear the rise of the Servile State in the USA, and we do, we would have far more reason to be concerned about it in a world political and economic order. If all the nations of the world or most of them were well-functioning democracies, with all that goes into making a people capable of effective self-government, then I think it would be fruitful to discuss world federation. If that were even on the horizon, it would be worth an energetic effort in the direction of world govt.

But, as I say in my article, we are far away from that state of affairs. Should church leaders be on the ground floor of such conversations about world govt? Yes, so long as they don't wind up unwittingly contributing to the establishment of a world state that makes things worse. I'm not an End of the World prophecy preacher kind of guy, but I do think our enthusiasm for establishing a global political and economic order, with its inevitable concentration of power, should be tempered by a serious reflection on the idea of Antichrist.

Good ideas in theory often wind up very bad ideas in practice, because their proponents do not adequately consider the circumstances in which ideas are implemented. Unintended consequences emerge. People wind up less noble than was supposed or corrupted by power.

Many people saw support for the plight of the poor behind the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. And of course people were right to desire a solution to Russia's problems that safeguarded the rights of the poor and established genuine representative govt. But the cure they got in Leninist and Stalinist Communism was far worse than the disease.

We can also think of the American and French Revolutions. The American Founders, though not without their flaws, were careful about establishing their political order in promotion of the Rights of Man. Their good sense in erecting a limited political order lies in stark contrast to the bad example of the French Revolution, ostensibly also undertaken to advance the Rights of Man but which brought about a reign of terror and bloodshed.

No doub there is a right way to think about the idea of world govt. There is, no doubt, even a right way to pursue it, recognizing the long-term nature of the project and how fraught with dangers it is. But there are certainly ways not to do so. I think the PCJP document is an example of what not to do.

I think everyone here would agree that we would be grossly naive to think that simply because we further the discussion of world govt in terms of consent of the governed, human rights, subsidiarity, and so on, that political statists and international economic interests, in positions politically to exploit discussions of political globalization, believe in all of those things just as well and would ensure movement toward a global political and economic order that would respect those things.

When those internationalists and others who are behind the push for world govt give us reason to believe they respect limited govt and human rights, as the Church understands these things, and when we see real signs that the world's authoritarian regimes are respecting their people and seriously striving to bring them to a place where they can govern their own affairs and will respect the rights of others, then I'll turn my philosophical commitment to world govt into concrete steps to help realize it. Meanwhile, I'll hum this:

In the midst of the war he offered us peace,
He came like a lover from out of the east
With the face of an angel and the heart of a beast,
His intentions were six sixty six.

He walked up to the temple with gold in his hand,
And he bought off the priests and propositioned the land,
And the world was his harlot and lay in the sand,
While the band played six sixty six.

We served at his table and slept on the floor,
But he starved us and beat us and nailed us to the door.
Well, I'm ready to die, I can't take any more,
And I'm sick of his lies and his tricks.

He told us he loved us, that was a lie,
There was blood in his pockets and death in his eyes.
Well my number is up, and I'm ready to die,
If the band will play six
If the band will play six sixty
If the band will play six sixty six.

[Robert Miller]

No, Mark, but we cannot operate in 2011 to advance integral human development as if we have an intrahistorical goal that may be reached only in a measure of time that seems reasonable to us on the basis of our historical experience. Our motivation is charity, not "stewardship". For charity, justice is not enough -- not soon enough, not full enough, not free enough.
The Vatican simply is telling the world what the demands of the present state of human development are. There is no point in forming political action in notions that there is a magical "golden age" to which we can return (whether it be that of Ronald Reagan/John Paul II, or of the "Founding Fathers", or for that matter, of thirteenth century Europe. As Guardini noted in The End of the Modern World, the men of the thirteenth century would have judged our world "paltry" in comparison with theirs. And they most certainly would have been right. Their project, looking 300 years out from their perspective, was to have all in readiness for the Apocalypse. Is ours really anything else?

[Nancy D.]

"When The Son of Man returns will He find Faith on Earth?"

[Mark Brumley]

Robert, you write:

No, Mark, but we cannot operate in 2011 to advance integral human development as if we have an intrahistorical goal that may be reached only in a measure of time that seems reasonable to us on the basis of our historical experience.

I'm not absolutely sure I know what that means. But if it means what I think it means I would say that we have to operate in 2011 to advance integral human development on the basis of a goal in history that can be reached only in a measure of time that seems reasonable based on our experience. That is, if we want to be prudent, reasonable people. That doesn't mean we don't take risks; it means we take prudent, reasonable ones.

Our motivation is charity, not "stewardship". For charity, justice is not enough -- not soon enough, not full enough, not free enough.

I'm not sure about the introduction of the term "stewardship" here. And I suppose there is a way to construe charity and stewardship as at odds or at least sufficiently distinct as to feel the need to phrase things as you do, Robert. Be that as it may, I don't have any problem saying that my motivation as a Christian in being a good steward of the resources God has entrusted to me is informed by charity. Since I am not certain about what your point is in contrasting charity and stewardship, I am not sure whether I am saying something compatible with your view or not.

As for justice not being enough for charity, well, I can agree or disagree, depending what you mean in this context. My point about caution in working toward world government would include the concern that, whether one is motivated by charity or justice, one may unwittingly wind up creating a situation where neither charity nor justice is served. I am very much aware of the conflict between expediency and justice (or charity). I am not so risk averse that I don't incline in the direction of risking some injustice in the hope of achieving justice. But, as in the criteria for a just war, there must be some reasonable hope of success. Right now, the hope for success in achieving a just world govt, or even a world govt in which justice is more readily available than the current state of affairs, seems to me not very reasonable. That is not a reason to shut up about world gov't, but a reason to talk carefully about it, to clarify all that would need to be in place for us reasonably (and charitably) to pursue it.

The Vatican simply is telling the world what the demands of the present state of human development are.

I disagree. The PCJP document--which in my view contains much helpful material--does more than tell us what the demands of the present state of human development are; it presents highly contestable analyses of the origin of our problems and it suggests that our problems can be solved by world govt. It makes this suggestion without adequate discussion of all that would have to take place for world govt to be just and for it actually to solve our present problems, and without a serious assessment of the risks of undertaking world govt. And it does all of the above without sufficient care that the document not be misunderstood.

There is no point in forming political action in notions that there is a magical "golden age" to which we can return (whether it be that of Ronald Reagan/John Paul II, or of the "Founding Fathers", or for that matter, of thirteenth century Europe.

No disagreement here.

As Guardini noted in The End of the Modern World, the men of the thirteenth century would have judged our world "paltry" in comparison with theirs. And they most certainly would have been right. Their project, looking 300 years out from their perspective, was to have all in readiness for the Apocalypse. Is ours really anything else?

I'm not sure I would judge our world "paltry" compared to that of the 13th century. It depends on the criteria by which we're judging and what the "worlds" we are comparing consist in. As for whether our project ought to be anything other than having everything in readiness for the Apocalpse, I suppose I could agree that that should be our project. The trouble is, that can mean so many different things.

[Robert Miller]

Carl and Mark:

After this week’s controversies over the PCPJ’s “Note”, I went back to Caritas in Veritate, and it certainly seems that the “Note” is not inconsistent with the encyclical’s teaching. In fact, the identification of a pressing need for international structures of governance over the global economy is central to the encyclical’s analysis of the contemporary scene.

Now all three of us know that the Pope is no fool. He sees acutely the very same things we see. Yet he points us in the direction of universal, global governance – and asks us to take practical immediate steps to bring it about. What’s your take on why?

I think he is saying that, objectively, liberalism and nationalism are finished, and that the world and its economy are at the mercy of global “anonymous societies” (industrial, financial, media and entertainment, criminal, etc.) over which the world political community needs to get control. Now he doesn’t say this in so many words, but I think the corollary is that these objective conditions are the very same conditions for the appearance of Anti-Christ. He doesn’t want Catholics to forfeit the playing field just because the present international structures look a lot more like mock-ups of the Kingdom of A-C than a return of the HRE. And he especially does not want Catholics to take cover in liberalism and nationalism, refusing to acknowledge that the issue of world governance will not go away, given the presence of its objective pre-conditions. I think his vision is very close to Guardini’s, except that Guardini (understandably, given his time and place)depicted a post-modern world that had more the feel of the Gulag.

[Nancy D.]

At some point you begin to realize there are some who are high up in the hierarchy of The Catholic Church who are deliberately trying to manipulate the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI.

[Mark Brumley]

Robert, I think, with some qualification, we read Caritas in Veritate the same way on the issue of a "world political order"(to use Maritain's term). So ... I'm not sure what that means.

As you will note from my CWR piece, I think world government is the ideal. And I think it is something that could possibly be achieved ... in centuries, with an awful lot of work, suffering, and grief. I think the conditions for achieving it as worth discussing but they are not something we should expect to bring about in our lifetimes. It seems fantastical to talk about world government as if it could solve our present problems, and as if it does not bring with it severe risks and dangers.

The PCJP does mention all sorts of things that would serve as qualifications, as I mentioned--freedom, subsidiarity, etc. My problem is, those qualifications don't seem really to temper the document's enthusiasm and the qualifications still don't present the enormous problems establishing a world political and world economy order would involve. For that reason, and for some others I didn't go into in my original CWR piece, I find Catholic ecclesiastical statements concerning world government generally unhelpful, if not actually harmful. There is a kind of evenhandedness these documents adopt today toward various nations and their political/economic orders that is unhelpful. In this regard they remind me of what Avery Dulles said about one of the drafts of the U.S. Bishops' pastoral letter on war and peace's treatment of the Western and Eastern blocs--it's so evenhanded it's underhanded.

We can't really discuss a world political order as something we could achieve in the foreseeable future when one fifth of the world's population lives under the authoritarian regime of the People's Republic of China. And another fifth or two fifths of the world's population live under other authoritarian regimes. Even Russia, despite the collapse of Communism in 1989, is not a full-blown democratic state. Even in the most optimistic political scenario, we would seem to be a century away from the rudiments of a common global culture and it is by no means evident that that common global culture will be conducive to democratic institutions and human liberty.

I'm all for discussions about the conditions necessary to move toward world government. Plenty of people who want to be nicey-nice won't like what needs to be said in such a discussion--states such as Iran, Syria, North Korea, and even Saudi Arabia are inimical to world peace. There is a real axis of evil, when it comes to opposition to political freedom and democratic government. Many so-called democracies are shams. Islam will require a radical revision (set aside whether such a revision moves Islam closer to "true" Islam or further from it) on an international scale. Socialist economic systems will need to be abolished, etc. Communist states will have to go and their peoples will need to learn how to govern their own affairs in a free society. We can't tax and spend ourselves out of our problems in free societies. And while government has to be able to help those who can't help themselves or can't effectively be helped in other ways, we have to do that without continuing to foster the entitlement culture we have. A natural law ethic will have to be recovered in the genuine democratic states, so that we can tell the difference between marriage and the various forms of immoral cohabitation, or between an unborn human being and a clump of cells. And of course in places such as the U.S. citizens will need to be educated sufficiently so their participation in political society doesn't do as much harm as good.

So let's talk. We'll see how many people are interested in talking, once everything that needs saying has been said. That is, if people can pry themselves away from TV, mindless internet pursuits, and other forms of amusement and entertainment long enough to talk.

[Robert Miller]

I would make (and my guess is, Pope Benedict would, too) a distinction between saying that a "world political order" is "ideal" and saying that some form of it is now required by objective political and economic conditions.
I don't think there is any kind of ideal temporal order. Nor do I think it is the urgent duty of Christians to try to create one. In fact, it may be a more urgent duty for Christians to try to prevent the rise of any pretenders to the title.
Thus, for example, while the Holy Roman Empire developed organically as a thousand year "world government", with loads of subsidiarity and little solidarity, the ideological secular attempt at its "ideal" recreation, with no subsidiarity and monstrous solidarity, the "thousand-year" Third Reich, was a catastrophe.
My point is that I think the Popes have discerned, at least from the time of Pope Paul VI, that the objective global economic, social and cultural conditions require the reassertion of the political at the global level. They propose not an "ideal" response to this new requirement (for that, again given the contemporary objective conditions, could only be the kingdom of Anti-Christ), but instead a practical collaboration with and among the existing national and international bodies -- again, however, a collaboration that is grounded in recognition of the objective need for effective global political governance.

[Mark Brumley]

Hmm. We're probably further apart than I supposed, Robert. For I do see world govt as an ideal--properly understood. It's the practicalities of it that I see to be immensely problematic. So immensely problematic that I don't think we should talk about it without all sorts of qualifications and caveats, and without recognizing its achievement would be distant from our time.

As I said in my article, if autonmous individual persons need government consistently to achieve their common ends, then autonomous individual nations need government consistently to achieve their common ends. That, in my book, makes world govt the ideal. In this I agree with Mortimer Adler, Jacques Maritain, and Yves Simon.

But because human beings often do bad things and choose things that appear good to them but that really are not, they often don't do what they should or do what they shouldn't. That makes the ideal difficult to realize. The Augustinian caveat, it seems to me, is crucial here.

So I would say that there is an ideal temporal order. The trouble is, fallen human beings can't, practically speaking, realize the ideal, at least not fully.

World govt that is my ideal could never be the Kingdom of Antichrist. But it may well be that men aiming to achieve the ideal wind up achieving instead the Kingdom of Antichrist. Quite apart from all the practical issues with achieving world govt, there is that major concern. And while evil world govt may wind up less evil than the full-blown Kingdom of Antichrist, less evil is evil enough for me to be very wary.

[Robert Miller]

Mark:

During the twentieth century, we saw the emergence of "world-government" movements and ideologies that might well be called "precursors of Anti-Christ".
Followers of these movements really believed that an ideal world government can be achieved in time. Just because we believe their visions of the "ideal" weren't ideal doesn't allow us to dismiss the fact that they were responding, albeit in perverse, "reactionary" and nihilist fashion, to objective realities that had emerged from the nineteenth century triumph of liberalism and nationalism. The perverted idealism has passed, but the realities requiring governance have not -- in fact, their demands have become more acute and immediate. In a convoluted sort of way, the necessary human struggle with the "precursors" enabled Catholics to collaborate with liberals and nationalists in creating a kind of mid-century "world governance" that was encompassed under the terms "United Nations", "Bretton Woods", "NATO" and, yes, "Cold War" and "balance of terror". This certainly was not ideal world governance, but (with a huge assist from Pope John Paul II) it did succeed in outlasting the precursors.
But, with the demise of the last of the precursors, this unnatural alliance of Catholics with liberals and nationalists lost its reason for being. Liberalism and nationalism already were moribund before the alliance. Now, they're dead -- except as vague legacy of impulses that move postmodern antinomians in their weaker moments. Only the Catholic Church remains to remind the world of its need for effective secular governance immediately and in the future.
As long as sinful men must manage the business, there never will be an "ideal" form of world government. The "Augustinian caveat" is indeed "crucial" here.

[Nancy D.]

At this point in Time the United Nations does not recognize that from The Beginning, every human individual has been created in The Image of God, equal in dignity while being complementary as male and female so the question is why would The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace suggest that the United Nations should be the model that is used for a public Authority with universal jurisdiction when they know that such an Authority could end up standing for Anarchy?