Pope Addresses Economic Crisis with Academy for Social Sciences
(30 Apr 10 – RV) On Friday Pope Benedict XVI received members of the Pontifical Academy
for Social Sciences, ahead of their Plenary Assembly, here at the Vatican. Chaired by former
US ambassador to the Holy See and current Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard,
Mary Ann Glendon, the Academy will be meeting for it’s 16th session next week to analyse
the global economic crisis in light of Church teaching. Below the full text of
Pope Benedict XVI ’s address:
Dear Members of the Academy, I am pleased
to greet you at the beginning of your Sixteenth Plenary Session, which is devoted
to an analysis of the global economic crisis in the light of the ethical principles
enshrined in the Church’s social doctrine. I thank your President, Professor Mary
Ann Glendon, for her gracious words of greeting and I offer you my prayerful good
wishes for the fruitfulness of your deliberations. The worldwide financial breakdown
has, as we know, demonstrated the fragility of the present economic system and the
institutions linked to it. It has also shown the error of the assumption that the
market is capable of regulating itself, apart from public intervention and the support
of internalized moral standards. This assumption is based on an impoverished notion
of economic life as a sort of self-calibrating mechanism driven by self-interest and
profit-seeking. As such, it overlooks the essentially ethical nature of economics
as an activity of and for human beings. Rather than a spiral of production and consumption
in view of narrowly-defined human needs, economic life should properly be seen as
an exercise of human responsibility, intrinsically oriented towards the promotion
of the dignity of the person, the pursuit of the common good and the integral development
– political, cultural and spiritual – of individuals, families and societies. An
appreciation of this fuller human dimension calls, in turn, for precisely the kind
of cross-disciplinary research and reflection which the present session of the Academy
has now undertaken. In my Encyclical Caritas in Veritate, I observed that “the
current crisis obliges us to re-plan our journey, to set ourselves new rules and to
discover new forms of commitment” (No. 21). Re-planning the journey, of course, also
means looking to comprehensive and objective standards against which to judge the
structures, institutions and concrete decisions which guide and direct economic life.
The Church, based on her faith in God the Creator, affirms the existence of a universal
natural law which is the ultimate source of these criteria (cf. ibid., 59). Yet she
is likewise convinced that the principles of this ethical order, inscribed in creation
itself, are accessible to human reason and, as such, must be adopted as the basis
for practical choices. As part of the great heritage of human wisdom, the natural
moral law, which the Church has appropriated, purified and developed in the light
of Christian revelation, serves as a beacon guiding the efforts of individuals and
communities to pursue good and to avoid evil, while directing their commitment to
building an authentically just and humane society. Among the indispensable principles
shaping such an integral ethical approach to economic life must be the promotion of
the common good, grounded in respect for the dignity of the human person and acknowledged
as the primary goal of production and trade systems, political institutions and social
welfare. In our day, concern for the common good has taken on a more markedly global
dimension. It has also become increasingly evident that the common good embraces
responsibility towards future generations; intergenerational solidarity must henceforth
be recognized as a basic ethical criterion for judging any social system. These realities
point to the urgency of strengthening the governance procedures of the global economy,
albeit with due respect for the principle of subsidiarity. In the end, however, all
economic decisions and policies must be directed towards “charity in truth”, inasmuch
as truth preserves and channels the liberating power of charity amid ever-contingent
human events and structures. For “without truth, without trust and love for what
is true, there is no social conscience and responsibility, and social action ends
up serving private interests and the logic of power, resulting in social fragmentation”
(Caritas in Veritate, 5). With these considerations, dear friends, I once more
express my confidence that this Plenary Session will contribute to a more profound
discernment of the serious social and economic challenges facing our world, and help
point the way forward to meet those challenges in a spirit of wisdom, justice and
authentic humanity. I assure you once more of my prayers for your important work,
and upon you and your loved ones I cordially invoke God’s blessings of joy and peace.