Catholic Business

Courage to Adhere to the Faith of the Church

Pope Benedict, in his homily during the first vespers of the Solemnity for the closing of the Pauline year, on Monday, may have been giving a preview of the main themes of his forthcoming encyclical, according to NCR journalist John L. Allen, Jr. 

In essence: no renewal of the world without personal, spiritual renewal. 

The Pope's homily is here and Allen's article, with several extracts from the homily, and much editorializing, is here.

Response to Fr. Reese by Michael Novak

The encyclical was signed, but is not released yet, and the debate continues: Michael Novak responds to Fr. Reese's article.

What exactly is in Benedict XVI’s new encyclical on the economy and labor issues is not yet known. Catholic leftists and progressives, though, are already trembling with excitement. Three glaring errors have already appeared in these heavily panting anticipations.

...

In brief, nearly all the leftish critiques of American and other forms of capitalism are empirically false. They do not fit the actual facts. But these three—greed, unregulated markets, and the idea that capitalism makes the poor of the world worse off—are especially tiresome, and very far from reality.

[Full post here]

 

Latest on the encyclical

The Corriere della Sera had an update on the encyclical this morning, with several extracts (in Italian only).  John Allen has a few of the extracts translated in his blog post.

June 28 update: The Catholic News Agency writes about the Corriere article here.

Benedict to the left of Obama?

Here we go - let's start politicizing the new encyclical. Fr. Thomas Reese SJ, writes in the Washington Post website that "... Benedict will show himself to be to the left of most Americans including President Obama."

If your world view is so narrow as to see everything through the myopic and distorting lens of the Left/Right dichotomy that we have inherited from the French Revolution, then you will never grasp the insights offered by Catholic Social Teaching. 

More on the new encyclical

Dr. Robert Moynihan, in his latest Inside the Vatican Newsflash, has more details on Pope Benedict's forthcoming encyclical:

The Pope's new encyclical is only a few days away now. I have been continuing to read the Church's social teaching from the past century, and the writings of those who have contributed advice to this encyclical. I will be able to write a more complete report soon.

 

But what is clear is that the encyclical will speak in categories that go beyond the usual economic discussion. The letter will not focus just on earnings and profits and lossses, but on the meaning of work, on the goal of producing goods, on the ends of human life. There will be a discussion of anthropology -- what is a man? What is a human person? And how does the nature of man affect our understanding of his economic activity, its justice and injustice, its usefulness and its wastefulness?

 

One of the key concepts which will be discussed is that the goal of society is to create relationships worthy of human beings, of human persons created in the image of God, and that this includes something more even than the concept of justice. There is more than justice in the concept of the free gift, and yet the free gift, inside a family, or between two friends, or even between strangers, is an economic transaction which transcends the calculation of most economics textbooks.

 

The idea of the economy for man, and not man for the economy, will be among the ideas in this upcoming encyclical, as will the idea of the gift which creates the common good, which creates a society where people are treated as persons with transcendent dignity, and not as consumers, or clients, to be satiated.

Forthcoming papal encyclical

Dr. Robert Moynihan, editor of Inside the Vatican, is writing a series of "newsflashes" in anticipation of Pope Benedict's social encyclical, due out on or around June 29th., in an "attempt to sketch ... a context within which the encyclical may be read."

The first piece is about the Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice conference I wrote about in my last post:

http://www.insidethevatican.com/newsflash/2009/newsflash-jun-16-09.htm

The second (scroll down to "Concerning the upcoming encyclical") is about the work of Fr. Mario Toso, who apparently advised the Holy Father on this encyclical:

http://www.insidethevatican.com/newsflash/2009/newsflash-jun-19-09.htm

Meeting with the Pope and Presentation on Consumerism

Last week I was in Rome for an outstanding conference.  It was organized by the group Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice, and held at the Pontifical Gregorian University.  The highlight of the conference was Saturday morning, where we heard mass at the replica of the Lourdes Grotto in the Vatican, and then met with Pope Benedict XVI.

Here is a brief video of our meeting with the Pope.

The text of the Pope's comments is available here.  An article about the conference is here. 

And here is a picture of me, meeting with the Pope.

The topic of my presentation at the conference was "Superdevelopment," or consumerism.  A copy of my paper is here. The PowerPoint file I used for this Ballroom style presentation was very large, so instead of uploading that file I have instead uploaded videos of my slides and speech onto Youtube (it's in three parts)

 

sss

Presentation to Summer Institute of Catholic Social Thought

Along with Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute, and Prof. Keckeissen of Univ. Francisco Marroquin, Guatemala, I was part of the Business & Economics session of the Summer Institute of Catholic Social Thought, organized at the Catholic University of America by Fr. Paul Sullins.  An article about the week is here, and my notes for my presentation are here.