The papal encyclical and economic justice

I posted a tiny video a couple of days ago.  The Pope's social justice encyclical: "Charity and truth are the essence of Christian revelation" 

Here's a good analysis that is not too long. Prints out at five and a half pages.

OSV | Our Sunday Visitor July 19, 2009 | Pontiff espouses economic justice in "Caritas in Veritate"

The document appeared July 7 on the eve of a gathering of the Group of Eight — a forum for leaders of wealthy industrialized countries — and three days before a post-G8 meeting between the pope and U.S. President Barack Obama. In a message to the world leaders gathered in L'Aquila, Italy, Pope Benedict urged that in responding to the global economic crisis they "listen to the voice of Africa and the countries least developed economically."

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Personalistic view

A fundamental principle of social doctrine — perhaps the most basic of all — is that economic activity is for the person, not vice versa. In this sense the Church's teaching is a direct repudiation of the economic liberalism of the early 19th century and also of the centralized state-run economies of the Soviet Union and other communist countries in the century that followed.

The key concept of this personalistic view, recurring throughout Caritas in Veritate and other documents of the magisterium, is integral development — the development of the person in respect to the full panoply of human goods.

"Precisely because God gives a resounding 'yes' to man," Pope Benedict writes, "man cannot fail to open himself to the divine vocation to pursue his own development. The truth of development consists in its completeness: if it does not involve the whole man and every man, it is not true development."

One of the encyclical's most striking features is its linking of "life ethics" and "social ethics," an idea whose origin the pope traces to Pope Paul's 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae ("Of Human Life") condemning contraception and to Pope John Paul's 1995 Evangelium Vitae ("The Gospel of Life") opposing abortion and other direct attacks on life. The point could be relevant to healing increasingly visible rifts between pro-life Catholics and so-called social justice Catholics.

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The story is far more complicated viewed from a global perspective. "The risk for our time," says Caritas in Veritate, "is that the de facto interdependence of people is not matched by ethical interaction of consciences and minds that would give rise to truly human development." Basically, the encyclical maintains, charity is the answer.