The plenary assembly of the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences begins this week
at the Vatican. This year, it is dedicated to the fiftieth anniversary of Blessed
Pope John XXIII’s landmark encyclical Pacem in terris. Stefano Leszczynski
spoke to President of the Academy, Dr. Mary Ann Glendon: Listen:
Q:
You will begin your plenary session which is dedicated to the 50th anniversary of
the Encyclical Letter Pacem in terris. The document is still very important
and current today, just as it was 50 years ago…
A: I think the topic of Pacem
in terris will always be topical this is the second of three conferences that
we are devoting to Pacem in terris in preparation for the 50 anniversary which
comes up next year. The first conference last year, was devoted to something that
was quite new at the time of Pacem in terris; the idea that the Church would
give its approval to the modern human rights project and in terms that very closely
tracked the universal declaration of human rights. So last years topic was universal
human rights and this year we are moving more into questions of what the Pope referred
to in Assisi this year of trying to understand what is the state of play with respect
to peace on earth at this moment in the world.
Q: What are the main problems
which represent a threat to stability on earth
A: I think we would say that
the main problems begin with human nature itself. As the Pope has often said peace
is something that has to be built and won in every generation. So in this conference
we are bringing together people from the financial world like Mario Draghi from the
European Central Bank, who will be talking about the serious problems in the economic
order. We will be bringing in a great many people theoreticians and practical politicians
who will be talking about conflict around the world, civil conflict and international
threats. I think that at the end of this conference what we hope for is to have an
idea about what are the promising signs that these people can disclose for us. What
can they tells us about new agents and new ideas and particularly of interest to us,
what could be the role of religion in the quest for that tranquillity of order which
is peace.
Q: One of the main problems that we have assisted in these last years
in the financial and political fields is the collapse of global morality. How can
Pacem in terris help leaders find a new interpretation of morality to be applied
in their specific fields.
A: One of the interesting things about Pacem in
terris when you read 50 years later is that it has very little to say about the
great questions of war and peace. So one has to ask something about what to these
silences that are present in Pacem in terris mean? And it seems to me that
just before Vatican II John XXIII was telling us some things that now we understand
better than we understood then. One of them is that the task belongs chiefly to what
he referred to ‘all men of goodwill’ and we now would say chiefly to the laity, as
far as the Church is concerned, and notice that he is already telling us that the
Church is not going to give specific programs and policies the Church is rather telling
us to take a few very general principals and bring them to life in whatever part of
the world and whatever part of society we find ourselves. So I think the message
of Pacem in terris turns out to be not a new theory of Catholic international
relations at all or a new theory of international morality but rather telling all
men and women of goodwill all over the earth to search within themselves and within
their own traditions to find the resources for building peace.
Q: And following
this path is it possible to get to a global governance or is it just an ideal which
is not something we can realise in the real world?
A: I think the great contribution
of Catholic social thought on that point is that which we refer to as subsidiarity
that there are certain things best done closest to the people affected by the decisions.
So one has to be rather careful in speaking about global governance to keep in mind
that we need to develop international approaches or transnational approaches to those
kinds of problems that can’t be handled at a lower level of responsibility. There
is nothing in Catholic social thought that espouses a world government.
Q:
A question about freedom of religion, you touched on this theme in the 16th
plenary session, what are the main threats to the freedom of religion today and do
you think that at the moment in the United States one of the countries most protective
of fundamental freedoms and human rights, do you think that in these countries that
there is a threat to religious freedom?
A: Yes the threats are different, last
year in our plenary session on human rights we spent a great deal of time looking
at excellent social science surveys on the state of religious freedom around the world.
One of the things that emerged from that was that 70% of all people around the world
live under moderate to severe restrictions on religion now a great deal of that takes
place in countries with very large populations like China and India. So you could
say that in some parts of the world the threats to religious freedom are outright
often violent direct persecution, in other parts of the world are more subtle and
have to do with a gradual marginalisation, in many Western countries, of a religious
voices from public debate and to some extent some beginnings of real discrimination.