Pacem in Terris -
Peace on Earth
Pope Benedict XVI and global political authority - http://www.news.va/en/news/full-text-note-on-financial-reform-from-the-pontif
Vatican Raps “Idolatry of the Market” - http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2011/10/24/vatican-calls-for-global-authority-on-economy-raps-idolatry-of-the-market/ (In addition to humankind's "sinful nature," contemporary moral corruption is disproportionately predicated on Capitalism's promotion of The Seven Deadly Sins. The Military-Industrial Complex is existentially reliant upon Wrath while Capitalism's other tentacles depend on Envy, Avarice, Gluttony and Lust. The inability of conservative Christians to see this truth derives from their refusal to grapple with systemic immorality, insisting instead that all morality is personal and, by extension, that salvation plays out only within an individual's soul. See "Algorithms and The Anti-Christ" - http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/08/ted-talk-algorithms-and-anti-christ.html)
Encyclical issued by Pope John XXIII, April 11,
1963
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_xxiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_j-xxiii_enc_11041963_pacem_en.html
Notable quotations
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_xxiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_j-xxiii_enc_11041963_pacem_en.html
Notable quotations
The common good is
chiefly guaranteed when personal rights and duties are maintained. The chief
concern of civil authorities must therefore be to ensure that these rights
are acknowledged, respected, coordinated with other rights, defended and promoted,
so that in this way each one may more easily carry out his duties.
For "to safeguard the inviolable rights of the human person, and to
facilitate the fulfillment of his duties, should be the chief duty of
every public authority."
This means that, if
any government does not acknowledge the rights of the human person or violates
them, it not only fails in its duty, but its orders completely lack
juridical force.
This statement of St.
Augustine seems to be very apt in this regard: "What are kingdoms without
justice but large bands of robbers."
Beginning our discussion
of the rights of man, we see that every person has the right to life, to bodily
integrity, and to the means which are suitable for the proper development
of life; these are primarily food, clothing, shelter, rest, medical care, and
finally the necessary social services. Therefore a human being also
has the right to security in cases of sickness, inability to work, widowhood,
old age, unemployment, or in any other case in which one is deprived of
the means of subsistence through no fault of one's own.
Any human society, if it
is to be well-ordered and productive, must lay down as a foundation this
principle, namely, that every human being is a person; that is, human
nature is endowed with intelligence and free will. Indeed, precisely because
one is a person one has rights and obligations flowing directly and
simultaneously from one's very nature. And as these rights and obligations are
universal and inviolable, so they cannot in any way be surrendered.
It is also demanded by
the common good that civil authorities should make earnest efforts to bring
about a situation in which individual citizens can easily exercise their
rights and fulfill their duties as well. For experience has taught us
that, unless these authorities take suitable action with regard to
economic, political and cultural matters, inequalities between the citizens
tend to become more and more widespread, especially in the modern world,
and as a result human rights are rendered totally ineffective and the
fulfillment of duties is compromised.
In our own day,
however, mutual relationships between States have undergone a far reaching
change. On the one hand, the universal common good gives rise to problems of
the utmost gravity, complexity and urgency—especially as regards the
preservation of the security and peace of the whole world. On the other hand,
the rulers of individual nations, being all on an equal footing, largely fail
in their efforts to achieve this, however much they multiply their meetings and
their endeavors to discover more fitting instruments of justice. And this is no
reflection on their sincerity and enterprise. It is merely that their authority
is not sufficiently influential. We are thus driven to the conclusion that
the shape and structure of political life in the modern world, and the
influence exercised by public authority in all the nations of the world are
unequal to the task of promoting the common good of all peoples... One of
the fundamental duties of civil authorities, therefore, is to coordinate social
relations in such fashion that the exercise of one person's rights does
not threaten others in the exercise of their own rights nor hinder them in the
fulfillment of their duties.
There is a social duty
essentially inherent in the right of private property.
The natural rights with
which We have been dealing are, however, inseparably connected, in the very
person who is their subject, with just as many respective duties; and
rights as well as duties find their source, their sustenance and their
inviolability in the natural law which grants or enjoins
them.... Once this is admitted, it also follows that in human society to
one man's right there corresponds a duty in all other persons: the duty, namely,
of acknowledging and respecting the right in question. For every fundamental
human right draws its indestructible moral force from the natural law,
which in granting it imposes a corresponding obligation. Those, therefore,
who claim their own rights, yet altogether forget or neglect to carry out
their respective duties, are people who build with one hand and destroy with
the other.
Since men are social by
nature they are meant to live with others and to work for one another's
welfare. A well-ordered human society requires that men recognize and
observe their mutual rights and duties. It also demands that each contribute
generously to the establishment of a civic order in which rights and
duties are more sincerely and effectively acknowledged and fulfilled. It
is not enough, for example, to acknowledge and respect every man's right to the
means of subsistence if we do not strive to the best of our ability for a
sufficient supply of what is necessary for his sustenance.
It is in keeping with
their dignity as persons that human being should take an active part in
government.
If we turn our attention
to the economic sphere it is clear that man has a right by the natural law not
only to an opportunity to work, but also to go about his work without
coercion.
Indeed since the
whole reason for the existence of civil authorities is the realization of the
common good, it is clearly necessary that, in pursuing this
objective, they should respect its essential elements, and at the same time
conform their laws to the circumstances of the day. (Alan: Consider the
overlooked Preamble to the U.S. Constitution: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect
Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common
defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty
to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for
the United States of America." I doubt there is a "conservative"
in America who acknowledges that the Constitution's "mission
statement" posits the fundament of "promoting the general Welfare.")
Today the universal
common good presents us with problems which are world-wide in their dimensions;
problems, therefore, which cannot be solved except by a public authority with
power, organization and means co-extensive with these problems, and with a world-wide
sphere of activity. Consequently the moral order itself demands the
establishment of some such general form of public authority.
The dignity of the human
person involves the right to take an active part in public affairs and to
contribute one's part to the common good of the citizens. For, as Our
Predecessor of happy memory, Pius XII, pointed out: "The human individual,
far from being an object and, as it were, a merely passive element in the
social order, is in fact, must be and must continue to be, its subject, its
foundation and its end."
Furthermore--and this
must be specially emphasized--the worker has a right to a wage determined
according to criteria of justice, and sufficient, therefore, in proportion
to the available resources, to give workers and their families a standard of
living in keeping with the dignity of the human person.
Since women are becoming
ever more conscious of their human dignity, they will not tolerate being
treated as mere material instruments, but demand rights befitting a human
person both in domestic and in pubic life.
It is clearly laid down
that the paramount task assigned to government officials is that of
recognizing, respecting, reconciling, protecting and promoting the rights
and duties of citizens.
Once again we exhort our
people to take an active part in public life, and to contribute towards the
attainment of the common good of the entire human family as well as to
that of their own country. They should endeavor, therefore, in the light of the
Faith and with the strength of love, to ensure that the various
institutions--whether economic, social, cultural or political in purpose --
should be such as not to create obstacles, but rather to facilitate or
render less arduous people's "perfectioning" of themselves both in
the natural order as well as in the supernatural.
The government should
make similarly effective efforts to see that those who are able to work can
find employment in keeping with their aptitudes, and that each worker
receives a wage in keeping with the laws of justice and equity. It should
be equally the concern of civil authorities to ensure that workers be
allowed their proper responsibility in the work undertaken in industrial
organization, and to facilitate the establishment of intermediate groups
which will make social life richer and more effective.
"Pacem in Terris" (in its
entirety) is available at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_xxiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_j-xxiii_enc_11041963_pacem_en.html
***
Pope Benedict XVI and global political authority - http://www.news.va/en/news/full-text-note-on-financial-reform-from-the-pontif
Vatican Raps “Idolatry of the Market” - http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2011/10/24/vatican-calls-for-global-authority-on-economy-raps-idolatry-of-the-market/ (In addition to humankind's "sinful nature," contemporary moral corruption is disproportionately predicated on Capitalism's promotion of The Seven Deadly Sins. The Military-Industrial Complex is existentially reliant upon Wrath while Capitalism's other tentacles depend on Envy, Avarice, Gluttony and Lust. The inability of conservative Christians to see this truth derives from their refusal to grapple with systemic immorality, insisting instead that all morality is personal and, by extension, that salvation plays out only within an individual's soul. See "Algorithms and The Anti-Christ" -
"Rick Santorum's New Cause: Opposing the Disabled"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/11/santorums-new-cause-opposing-disabled.html
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/11/santorums-new-cause-opposing-disabled.html
Conservative Christians cling to
"absolutes" - often as absurd as Santorum's new "cause" -
in order to justify their ignorance of the world's complexity and the moral
onus imposed by complexity itself. The most egregious form of self-imposed
ignorance is Global Warming Denial but deliberate ignorance of complexity is
the common theme of Christian traditionalists. Within "Christian
Traditionalism" the core mandate is to cling to Impossibly Pure
Principles so that there will be no need for social and political
compromise, which are, after all, "the work of Satan Himself."
And so, they are intransigently persuaded that radical individualism (within
the confines of their self-designated "churches") comprises the
entire substance of "doing God's Will."
***
"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice. The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization. We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal. Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good. The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.”
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander by Thomas Merton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Merton
"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice. The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization. We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal. Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good. The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.”
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander by Thomas Merton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Merton
***
More Merton Quotations
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/12/thomas-merton-quotations.html
More Merton Quotations
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/12/thomas-merton-quotations.html
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