Vatican City, May 17, 2018 / 12:20 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Two Vatican offices called Thursday for the development of new forms of economy and finance with regulations directed to the common good and respect for human dignity.
“It is especially necessary to provide an ethical reflection on certain aspects of financial transactions which, when operating without the necessary anthropological and moral foundations, have not only produced manifest abuses and injustice, but also demonstrated a capacity to create systemic and worldwide economic crisis,” read Oeconomicae et pecuniariae quaestiones, (Economic and financial issues), a document of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development presented May 17.
The document, signed Jan. 6, presents considerations for an ethical discernment of economics and finances, and argues that profit should not be an end in itself, but must be pursued with the goal of achieving greater solidarity and a more equitable distribution of wealth.
It presents fundamental considerations, such as the need for ethics for the economy to function correctly, and treats at length of specific ethical issues in financial and economic markets.
It was presented during a press conference by Archbishop Luis Ladaria, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Cardinal Peter Turkson, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.
Sitting alongside the prefects were professors Leonardo Becchetti from Rome’s Tor Vergata University and Lorenzo Caprio, from the Catholic University of Milan.
Archbishop Ladaria said the aim of the document is to provide a correct anthropological vision for the current market, since “the common good has disappeared” from many areas of economics and finance.
According to Becchetti, the document also identifies a major problem in the global economy: “we have a growing global wealth, which is a good thing, but we have a huge problem of distribution.”
“Regulation is key” to bringing more balance, he said, citing the need to be attentive to a growing dependence on technology while also ensuring people have work. The main problem, he said, “is fiscal,” and he stressed the need to give attention to areas with fewer resources.
The document frequently cites Pope Francis and Benedict XVI, but also includes citations from Pius XI, the Second Vatican Council, and the subsequent magisterium.
Oeconomicae et pecuniariae quaestiones cites the growing influence of financial markets, saying there is a need for “appropriate regulation of the dynamics of the markets and, on the other hand, a clear ethical foundation that assures a well-being realized through the quality of human relationships; rather than merely economic mechanisms, which by themselves cannot attain it.”
The recent global financial crisis, the text read, is an invitation to “develop a new economy, more attentive to ethical principles, and a new regulation of financial activities that would neutralize predatory and speculative tendencies and acknowledge the value of the actual economy. ”
What is at stake is the well-being of men and women throughout the planet who risk being excluded and marginalized from true well-being, while a small minority, “indifferent to the condition of the majority, exploits and reserves for itself substantial resources and wealth.”
The document said the time has come to begin recovering “what is authentically human,” and to expand minds and hearts to they recognize what is both true and good, “without which no social, political and economic system could avoid bankruptcy, failure, and, in the long term, collapse.”
Competent and responsible authorities, the text read, have the duty “to develop new forms of economy and of finance, with rules and regulations directed towards the enlargement of the common good and respect for human dignity along the lines indicated by the social teachings of the Church.”
The text flagged erroneous and misguided approaches to the economic and financial markets such as consumerism, materialism, and an over-emphasis on profit, citing them as mentalities which endanger the common good and increase inequalities throughout the world.
“Our contemporary age has shown itself to have a limited vision of the human person, as the person is understood individualistically and predominantly as a consumer, whose profit consists above all in the optimization of his or her monetary income. The human person, however, actually possesses a uniquely relational nature and has a sense for the perennial search for gains and well-being that may be more comprehensive, and not reducible either to a logic of consumption or to the economic aspects of life.”
“No profit is in fact legitimate when it falls short of the objective of the integral promotion of the human person, the universal destination of goods, and the preferential option for the poor,” the text said, stressing that a legitimate economic system “thrives not merely through the quantitative development of exchange but rather by its capacity to promote the development of the entire person and of every person.”
On this basis, the document urged that universities and business schools provide as a foundation an education by which students will “understand economics and finance in the light of a vision of the totality of the human person”, avoiding “a reductionism that sees only some dimensions of the person.”
Well-being has to be measured by more than just Gross Domestic Product but must also take into account safety and security and “the quality of human relationships and of work. Profit should be pursued but not ‘at any cost’, nor as a totalizing objective for economic action.”
Profit and solidarity “are no longer antagonists,” the document said. However, “where egoism and vested interests prevail, it is difficult for the human person to to grasp the fruitful interchange between profit and gift, as sin tends to tarnish and rupture this relationship.”
“It is impossible to ignore the fact that the financial industry, because of its pervasiveness … is a place where selfishness and the abuse of power have an enormous potential to harm the community.”
The documented lamented that “Capital annuity can trap and supplant the income from work, which is often confined to the margins of the principal interests of the economic system. Consequently, work itself, together with its dignity, is increasingly at risk of losing its value as a ‘good’ for the human person and becoming merely a means of exchange within asymmetrical social relations.”
It pointed out an inversion between means and ends, in which work has become an instrument, and money an end.
Oeconomicae et pecuniariae quaestiones said that credit has an “irreplaceable social function,” but that “applying excessively high interest rates, really beyond the range of the borrowers of funds, represents a transaction not only ethically illegitimate, but also harmful to the health of the economic system. As always, such practices, along with usurious activities, have been recognized by human conscience as iniquitous and by the economic system as contrary to its good functioning.”
Instead, financial activities are called to serve the real economy, “to create value with morally licit means, and to favour a dispersion of capital for the purpose of producing a principled circulation of wealth.”
“What is morally unacceptable is not simply to profit, but rather to avail oneself of an inequality for one’s own advantage, in order to create enormous profits that are damaging to others; or to exploit one’s dominant position in order to profit by unjustly disadvantaging others, or to make oneself rich through harming and disrupting the collective common good.”
The text then highlights the need for greater communion, collaboration, and solidarity in the market, and offers suggestions for ways in which these can be implemented.
In a healthy market “it is easier to respect and promote the dignity of the human person and the common good,” the Vatican offices wrote.
The experience of recent decades has demonstrated the need for both ethics and regulation, the document states.
With an increased globalization of financial markets, the system “requires a stable, clear and effective coordination among various national regulatory authorities,” allowing them to share binding decisions when necessary, especially when it comes to threats against the common good.
“Where massive deregulation is practiced, the evident result is a regulatory and institutional vacuum that creates space not only for moral risk and embezzlement, but also for the rise of the irrational exuberance of the markets, followed first by speculative bubbles, and then by sudden, destructive collapse, and systemic crises,” Oeconomicae et pecuniariae quaestiones states.
The text condemned the tendency of business managers to establish policies which aim “not at increasing the economic health of the companies that they serve, but at the mere profits of the shareholders, damaging therefore the legitimate interests of those who are bearing all of the work and service benefiting the same company, as well as the consumers and the various local communities (stakeholders).”
The document suggested that ethical committees be established in banks to support the administration, and to help cushion them from the impact of losses.
The text then pointed to financial instruments such as derivatives and credit default swaps, which going unchecked, can lead to “unacceptable” consequences from an ethical point of view, essentially gambling with a person’s future.
Use of offshore accounts as tax havens was also condemned, though it was noted that tax systems throughout the world are not always equal, which can damage weaker parties in favor of wealthier ones.
Despite the fact that more nations are cracking down on offshore accounts, penalties have not been enforced and norms have either not been applied or they have not proved effective due to the political powers pulling the strings.
All of these problems are “not only the work of an entity that operates out of our control,” but are “in the sphere of our responsibilities.”
Oeconomicae et pecuniariae quaestiones states that it is “therefore quite evident how important a critical and responsible exercise of consumption and savings actually is.”
As an example, the text said shopping is a daily task by which we can choose to avoid purchasing products produced by chains which violate “the most elementary human rights,” such as sweat-shops.
“Through the gesture, apparently banal, of consumption, we actually express an ethics and are called to take a stand in front of what is good or bad for the actual human person.”
Likewise, persons are called to direct their savings to “those enterprises that operate with clear criteria inspired by an ethics respectful of the entire human person, and of every particular person, within the horizon of social responsibility.”
“Each one is called to cultivate procedures of producing wealth that may be consistent with our relational nature and tend towards an integral development of the human person.”
The document concludes with a call to hope in light of the challenges of the economy, saying, “every one of us can do so much, especially if one does not remain alone.”
“Today as never before we are all called, as sentinels, to watch over genuine life and to make ourselves catalysts of a new social behavior, shaping our actions to the search for the common good, and establishing it on the sound principles of solidarity and subsidiarity.”
[…]
Point A. Benedict XVI was opposed by the homosexual cult organization of Danneels-Martini, self-called the Sanct Gallen Mafia, because he deposed and defrocked some 400 sex abusing priests, and dozens of Bishops for sex abuse snd or coverup; 80% or more of the cases we know were homosexual predators of teen boys.
B. When the sex abuse coverup Cardinals we’re fanning the flames when B16 abdicated, the coverup Cardinals obviously hatched a buzz-subversion-phrase not-so-curiously repeated in pulpits by homosexual promoting priests (as I heard in Spring Lake NJ), and obviously repeated by such from pulpits in some parishes in Maryland (when I heard Catholics there use the very same phrase). The exact words were this: He can’t handle the sex abuse crisis.
C. In 2010 the Catholic world learned that Cardinal Danneels was forced to retire in disgrace after being exposed in the Belgian Press (De Staandard and other papers) in Aug 2010 for denying justice to the Vanguelwhe family, who were reporting that their own uncle Bishop Roger Vanguelwhe had taped his little nephew, their brother. Danneels tried to intervene to protect his friend Bishop Vanguelwhe, and suspecting Danneels of betrayal, the Vanguelwhe family tape recorded his intervention against them, where (get this) he specifically refused the family’s request to report their uncle Bishop Vanguelwhe to Pope Benedict, preposterously telling the family that it was not possible for him (the primate of Belgium) to get in contact with B16.
D. When the same homosexual Sanct Gallen mafiosi Danneels published his biography, he bragged about getting Cardinal Bergoglio elected to the papacy, and reminded audiences that he and his mafiosi tried to do the same in 2005, but failed on the first try.
E. And while Bergoglio was Archbishop of Buenos Aries and President of the Argentine Bishops Conference, he directed a multi-million dollar defense and victim smear campaign defending the notorious sex predator Rev. Julio Grassi, which is reported by more candid Catholic sources, including Damian Thompson of the Spectator (UK). Bergoglio even dared to try to intervene and influence judges on the Argentine Supreme Court, who repulsed him and sentenced Grassi to 15 years in prison. This may explain why The Pontiff Bergoglio/Francis prefers not to return to Argentina, even though he managed to visit Chile when he was trying to protect Bishop Barros in the Osorno sex abuse case.
F. And when in 2013, after diligent years subverting B16, Danneels and his like-minded fiendish-sex abusers and coverup artists, including McCarrick and Mahoney of the US, managed to get Cardinal Bergoglio, the great Argentinian sex abuse coverup artist, elected as Pontiff, who was the man standing on the balcony with the new Pontiff Francis? You guessed it: sex abuse coverup Cardinal Danneels, resurrected by the Pontiff Francis, and rewarded for his electioneering by being placed on the guiding committee for “The Family Synod.” (That’s what “The Family” is really all about in the Buenos Aries Pontificate.)
And so now we hear from CNA reiterating this German Catholic Church establishments little smear attempt against B16, all narrative, and no facts, while at the same time not-so-curiously for nine long years having managed never to write an article about the Argentine Julio Grassi sex predator case, the biggest sex abuse case in Argentine history, involving then Cardinal Bergoglio defending Grassi.
Pardon me if, given the known behavior of the sitting Pontiff and his Cardinal electors and friends, that I perceive this whole article to be nothing other than a carefully calibrated way of the Church’s McCarrick-Danneels establishment damning B16 with faint praise, in order to pave the way for the German-Katholik-Sex-Revolution-Synod, while the Pontiff Francis grins, and pretends he is against it.
(I will be post links to articles and podcasts by Damian Thompson etc.)
I would suggest stepping back a bit and considering the impression these continual rants are making of you and how they reflect on your integrity and character. The common theme of your many posts is some issue related to McCarrick and the church’s response to clergy abuse, whether or not the posted article speaks to those topics.
It’s pretty clear that there is some unresolved personal issue going on here. If that is the case, it is not appropriate to use this forum as an outlet for your personal axe grinding. Personal issues should be addressed with professionals in the context of therapy, not in a comments section on a website.
What is the basis for the diagnosis of as clear “unresolved personal issue”? By what credential are we to judge an “appropriate…use [of] this forum as an outlet for …personal axe grinding”?
Could we not lay the same claim to many comments by many posters? Chris and you both usually have viewpoints from which others may profit.
The article IS about clerical sex abuse and Benedict’s handling of same. Chris’ comment relates to the OP. Germany’s secular report on clerical abuse was released this past week. The secular authorities implicated Benedict in mismanagement and cover-up of legitimate claims of abuse against clergy under his oversight. The comment is relevant, timely, of general interest, and fact-based.
Thank you Meiron, I appreciate what you wrote, mainly because I sense that candor and truth-telling are completely out of fashion in our “contemporary” Church.
I relay these horrible truths (which are very ugly) because I love Christ’s Church, and I am fighting, with ehat little means are in my power, for truthfulness and justice in our Church, and at this moment in history, I believe the Church is largely controlled by those Bishops and Cardinals who are Saduccees: they have no supernatural faith, they have contempt for the truth, contempt for law, and contempt for justice.
Here, here. I am in total agreement with you. Chris in Maryland (where I also happen to reside) brings up many valid points about the historical “sweeping under the rug” of the sexual abuse scandal and how many of those now in positions of power are at the root of that scandal. We have long since passed the point of “polite discussion” concerning this and several other related issue. In our secular “Heinz 57” gender society, those of us who believe God created man and woman, and nothing more, had better wake up and see that there is a dedicated war being waged against us, and the “enemy” is “inside the wire”. If you are still in “negotiation mode”, you are losing. The time to fight has arrived.
As a coda, wrt to the title, I might suggest an alternative:
“Who is Cardinal Filoni?”
Apparently, he is a card-carrying member of the Secretariat of State. Given the Secretariat of State’s history of covering up sex abuse cases, to the point where Cardinal Ratzinger finally persuaded Pope JP2 to take sex abuse investigations away from the Secretariat of State (under the then-corrupt head Cardinal Sodano, accused in print by Editor of First Things Jody Bottum), it is not serious for The Church faithful to be served a “defense” of B16 by a member of the organization that helped resurrect McCarrick (despite knowing that he had been confronted and discreetly ordered to cease his “activities” by B16, because of the allegations of abusing seminarians), and having McCarrick help the Secretariat of State complete its long-desired treacherous Secret China Accord, completed by the likewise corrupt Secretary of State Parolin.
I think Benedict was too discrete in dealing with McCarrick.
I agree with that.
An investigation should have been opened.
But frankly, given the adulation heaped on McCarrick before he was exposed by James Grein, I doubt that most Bishops or Cardinals or in fact laity would have supported B16 in putting McCarrick under investigation.
What are you, Chris – a sedevacantist or a sedeprivationist?
No, and no.
While I am neither, I do agree with Jesus that some people are on their way to the abyss, and I agree with Dante that some of them will be Popes, and I have the distinct impression that the sitting Pontiff, and many of his Cardinal electors and assorted sycophants in our contemporary Church, may be joining company with Alexander VI.
Papa Ben is a hero of the Faith. Any attack on him can only originate in someone’s envy or resentment or jealousy, perhaps from anti-German stereotypes, or from – I dare say it – Satan.
Agree.
Damian Thompson on Pontiff Francis corruption in 2018.
Damian Thompson in Sep 2018, on the repulsive sex coverup artist Danneels, and the legacy-media covering for the Pontiff Francis:
https://www.complicitclergy.com/2018/09/01/how-the-media-are-covering-up-for-pope-francis/
And we had the fanatical pro-fornication and pro-abort Cardinal Martini come and go in the modern history of the Church and his scandal hardly caused a stir of embarrassment let alone condemnation. If you’re a prelate with seniority, you apparently get a free pass even by the “good” prelates.
I’m a nobody and I am grateful to have this important and verified information made available. Thank You and God Bless You.
Thank you Bill…from one nobody to another.
The problem with BXVI was his unhealthy almost singular focus on doctrinal matters over pastoral concerns. This horrific imbalance resulted in deeper damage to the Church. A number of comments above mention the case of Ted McCarrick. Long known by Ratzinger to be a homosexual predator, Uncle Ted was never punished by Papa Ben. However, Ratzinger was quick to remove doctrinally challenged bishops, like for example, William Morris of Toowoomba, Australia.
To sum up. The sorry state of the Church is such, even our faithful and holy prelates do not have many they can trust to assist them in all matters necessary to carry out pastoral and doctrinal matters. JPII, for example, is often faulted for those he elevated to the episcopate when he essentially rubber stamped those, whom he did not know, that were presented to him.
Yes, what you say is very true. Remember Benedict saying that his authority stopped at his office door? His resignation in light of having few to trust is reasonable. Continually confronted by betrayals, immoralities, and brazen acts of disobedience (e.g., McCarrick’s exemplar), subjectively he must have mourned the objective fact of his inability to function. Our giving him the benefit of the doubt allows his resignation within
Benedict understanding of God’s Divine Will, and justifiably acting upon that understanding.
In this regard, BXVI’s resignation is forgivable. God does allow good to follow confusing and sorrowful events (e.g., Crucifixion followed by Resurrection). The faithful now have no excuse to deny or overlook sins of the fathers; such sins have been over-exposed to light, and we can no longer easily explain them away. Remember Benedict’s saying the boat was seriously listing and his saying that the church would become a remnant? We cannot deny that we’ve all been witness to that.
“never punished,” I mean, “not defrocked….”
I would argue that Benedict’s emphasis on sound doctrine and theology was not a “horrific imbalance” at all. It was a necessary and long-overdue course correction. A God-honoring life is built from the ground up, and its foundation is rooted in sound doctrine. Good theology produces God-honoring behavior, and theological distortions and ambiguities create the spiritual swamp that is the current state of affairs in the church. The fact that many “leaders” have drifted away from basic and essential Catholic teaching is the real horror here.
From Filoni we read: “In those years, the issue of pedophilia emerged with virulence in the Church. It was not known in the terms with which it has since gradually emerged. But it was always clear to me that Benedict XVI was willing to face it with determination.”
This assertion is thoroughly documented in Peter Seewald’s second volume: “Benedict XVI: A Life—Professor and Prefect to Pope and Pope Emeritus 1966-The Present”, 2021.
After setting the record straight, Seewald then supplies the media-suppressed Big Picture (pp. 226-228…):
-Abusing priests are 0.2 to 1.7 percent of total clerics, while the ratio is 2.0 to 3.0 for Protestant clergy (Philip Jenkins, and Evangelical press agency Christian Ministry Resources, 20020;
-In Germany in the past 15 years, out of 29,058 abusers, 30 had been employed by the Catholic Church (0.1 percent compared to 99.9 percent other, Lower Saxony Criminological Research Institute);
-Of 62,000 paedophile cases in the U.S. in 2008, 18 were priests (0.03 percent, U.S. Government report);
-UNICEF reports that in the early twenty-first century, 220 million children are forced into sex each year;
-Hundreds of thousands of non-celibate (!) men download child porn every year;
-In the U.S. 12,250 children have been sexually abused in the Boy Scouts of America [and yet, efforts to exclude homosexual leaders were repulsed by the courts];
-In the U.S. armed forces in the 2010s about 100,000 men and 13,000 women soldiers were victims of sexual attacks (U.S. ministry of defense [sic]; in Europe, six out of ten women were victims of sexism (according to the Brussels Foundation for European Progressive Studies);
-In Nov. 2017 a ‘sex pest list’ naming 40 Tory MPs was leaked, including secretaries of state and ministers. In the same month, in Sweden, “in answer to a phone call, on a single day 1,100 people reported sexual attacks in the country’s entertainment industry;”
-In Austria, 99.7 percent of all abusers are not church people (court-appointed expert Reinhard Haller).
And, to fix this historic, cultural and civilizational collapse, victimization and crime pandemic, we can be sure that, within the targeted Church, the poster-child Fr. James Martin will ensure that his tribe will be available at the synods in the United States, for example, to leave their mark on the synodal flip charts.
This, while the “facilitator” bishops sit on their hands as instructed in the Vademecum, possibly assuming naively that the later synodal “synthesis” reports (local, continental, and Vatican under the tutelage of Cardinal Hollerich) will set things straight, so to speak.
Now Peter I can better appreciate President of the Catholic League Bill Donohue’s frequent complaint that media focus on the Church is comparatively out of proportion.