It is grievous, but there's nothing "good" about it. The pope's encyclical reads like a press release from the U.N. via Karl Marx.
Furthermore, just about everything ends up as politics, one way or another. Certainly this document is riddled with so many political aspects that any moral directives are overshadowed.
Moreover, Pope Benedict didn't advocate any of the above things you impute to him.
With thanks to Alex Murphy for his fine reading skills, here are some of the encyclical's quotes, found in Alex' THREAD POSTED HERE (refer to comments 1,9,26; the following is comment #9)...
67. In the face of the unrelenting growth of global interdependence, there is a strongly felt need, even in the midst of a global recession, for a reform of the United Nations Organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth. One also senses the urgent need to find innovative ways of implementing the principle of the responsibility to protect[146] and of giving poorer nations an effective voice in shared decision-making. This seems necessary in order to arrive at a political, juridical and economic order which can increase and give direction to international cooperation for the development of all peoples in solidarity (sounds pretty political to me). To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority, as my predecessor Blessed John XXIII indicated some years ago. Such an authority would need to be regulated by law, to observe consistently the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity, to seek to establish the common good[147], and to make a commitment to securing authentic integral human development inspired by the values of charity in truth. Furthermore, such an authority would need to be universally recognized and to be vested with the effective power to ensure security for all, regard for justice, and respect for rights[148]. Obviously it would have to have the authority to ensure compliance with its decisions from all parties, and also with the coordinated measures adopted in various international forums. Without this, despite the great progress accomplished in various sectors, international law would risk being conditioned by the balance of power among the strongest nations. The integral development of peoples and international cooperation require the establishment of a greater degree of international ordering, marked by subsidiarity, for the management of globalization[149]. They also require the construction of a social order that at last conforms to the moral order, to the interconnection between moral and social spheres, and to the link between politics and the economic and civil spheres, as envisaged by the Charter of the United Nations.
Or Alex' post #3 here on another thread...
In fact, this document sounds more political every time I read it. I can understand liberals cheering the pope's call for one world government and its enforcement "with teeth." But how conservatives, even conservative Roman Catholics, can call this tripe anything but a blue print for the demise of our republic, is beyond me.
Got it. But who introduced such "political" considerations into the piece in the first place — Pope Benedict, or you?
Some observations:
(1) He is saying that the UN as presently constituted absolutely "s*cks." It is a sewer of corruption and violates its own Charter of Human Rights on a systematic, constant basis.
(2) The "with real teeth" terms is probably a most unfortunate translation into English from an original either in German or Italian. We do not know what language Caritas in Veritate was originally composed. But it is well known that Pope Benedict is fluent in German, Italian, and Latin. What is curious is the English translation bears an American idiomatic expression that does not show up in the Italian, German, or Latin texts.
At this point, I just want to say: Somebody please shoot the translator. (And if he's a Jesuit, maybe you ought to consider hanging him first, just to be sure. Just kidding.) In any case, concepts as a rule do not have "teeth." So even the American idiom seems out of place.
(3) Pope Benedict knows that there is a political dimension to human existence wherever human beings live. But he is very clear in saying that the political dimension has absolutely no authority or rational pretense to being either fundamental in human affairs, or "omnicompetent" in dealing with acutely real human problems. Indeed, a main bearing of the piece is to show the limits of not only politics, but of all earthly governments and other purely secular organizations which have lost sense of what constitutes the common public good — which under God's Law boils down to "loving in truth."
(4) Somehow you didn't highlight this:
The integral development of peoples and international cooperation require the establishment of a greater degree of international ordering, marked by subsidiarity, for the management of globalization. They also require the construction of a social order that at last conforms to the moral order, to the interconnection between moral and social spheres, and to the link between politics and the economic and civil spheres....To me, this was the central point of the entire passage. The Pope speaks of "solidarity" — but it is a solidarity functionally expressed by means of subsidiarity. Subsidiarity is a doctrine holding that, in all of human affairs, decisions ought to be delegated to the "least" level of individual competence capable of handling the specific details, in the measure of his individual capabilities and experience, of what is finally a common enterprise. This is the very idea that gives legitimate "voice" to the expressions of the "common man" — whom Pope Benedict goes on to explain is the single most valuable "capital resource" on the face of the planet. We cannot speak of rational, sustained "global development" at all without reference to the individual human person.
By the way, the Pope is not "endorsing" globalization. He simply acknowledges it as a fait accompli, as already an established fact of reality. The genie is already out of the bottle. Now we have to figure out what to do about it.
If you insist on reading Caritas in Veritate as a "political document," you are missing the author's intent in writing altogether.
Or so it seems to me. JMHO FWIW
The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church called the evangelical notion that individuals can be right with God a "great Western heresy" that is behind many problems facing the church and the wider society
The Old Testament's main theme is that one (one individual spiritual soul, or spiritual Israel, but not a national secular soul, African, or otherwise,) has to become right with God, and paradoxically, no man has any righteousness within himself, righteousness can come only from God. A righteous man is one that is one with God.
The theme of the New Testament is that it is Christ's saving righteousness that covers believers.
This pyschobabble contradicts biblical teaching and wants all men to be equal in evil, not right with the Lord.
Psalm 37:37
Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace.
37:38 But the transgressors shall be destroyed together: the end of the wicked shall be cut off.
37:39 But the salvation of the righteous is of the LORD: he is their strength in the time of trouble.
37:40 And the LORD shall help them, and deliver them: he shall deliver them from the wicked, and save them, because they trust in him.