Pacem in terris: Always topical

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 16^th 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.