The Vatican Said What? [Document calling for 'Central World Bank' has no binding authority]

The important piece of news out of Rome today is that the Vatican has allegedly called for a "central world bank" in reponse to the continuing speculation and instability in the world financial system.

I say "allegedly" because the text in which this call appears is not by Pope Benedict, but by a Vatican office, the Council for Justice and Peace. Such an office can issue papers which do not bear the Pope's "seal of approval" in the same way that a papal encyclical would.

We are dealing here, then, with something on the order of a "position paper," not a text containing authoritative magisterial teaching.

It is a serious document, worth weighing with real attention — and this is why I include the complete text below — but not a document with binding doctrinal authority.

Nevertheless, after the Vatican released the document at a press conference this morning, the internet was abuzz with reports like the following one from Reuters, suggesting that this document's call for some controls over global financial speculation links the Vatican ideologically to the US protest movement "Occupy Wall Street" (!!!).

Text By: Reuters

The Vatican called on Monday for the establishment of a "global public authority" and a "central world bank" to rule over financial institutions that have become outdated and often ineffective in dealing fairly with crises.

A major document from the Vatican's Justice and Peace department should be music to the ears of the "Occupy Wall Street" (OWS) demonstrators and similar movements around the world who have protested against the economic downturn.

The 18-page document, "Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of a Global Public Authority," was at times very specific, calling, for example, for taxation measures on financial transactions. (...)

It called for the establishment of "a supranational authority" with worldwide scope and "universal jurisdiction" to guide economic policies and decisions.

Such an authority should start with the United Nations as its reference point but later become independent and be endowed with the power to see to it that developed countries were not allowed to wield "excessive power over the weaker countries." (...)

It said the International Monetary Fund (IMF) no longer had the power or ability to stabilize world finance by regulating overall money supply and it was no longer able to watch "over the amount of credit risk taken on by the system."

The world needed a "minimum shared body of rules to manage the global financial market" and "some form of global monetary management."

"In fact, one can see an emerging requirement for a body that will carry out the functions of a kind of 'central world bank' that regulates the flow and system of monetary exchanges similar to the national central banks," it said.

Likewise, in an article in USA Today, entitled "Vatican meets OWS: 'The economy needs ethics'", reporter Cathy Lynn Grossman cites Jesuit Father Thomas Reese, senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center, Georgetown University, as saying that the Vatican view is "closer to views of the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement than anyone in the U.S. Congress."

Grossman added: "Reese says it's not only to the left of President Obama, it's 'to the left of Nancy Pelosi.'"

And she repeats the point, writing a second time that "on economic issues, the Pope is to the left of Obama. He is even to the left of liberal Democrats like Nancy Pelosi."

The feisty president of the Catholic League, Bill Donhue, then leaped into the fray, saying the "early chatter" has exaggerated what the document is actually saying.

The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace issued a document today titled, "Toward Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority." Commenting on it is Catholic League president Bill Donohue:

There has been much hyperventilation from some quarters over the release of this document. All of it is unwarranted.

To begin with, the text is not an encyclical, nor is it the work of Pope Benedict XVI. Much of what it says is consistent with long-standing Catholic social teaching: the quest for the common good should guide social and economic policy. It properly calls for "abandoning all forms of petty selfishness and embracing the logic of the global common good."

Much of the early chatter focuses on the document's call for a global authority to render economic justice. It says, "Benedict XVI himself expressed the need to create a world political authority." The reference is to the pope's encyclical, Caritas in Veritate.

The term "world political authority" appears once in the encyclical, the context of which is a plea for "international cooperation" in the pursuit of a more just "political, juridical and economic order." In the very next sentence, the Holy Father stresses that such an authority must "observe consistently the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity."

The document released today also emphasizes the need to follow the Catholic principle of subsidiarity. This means that solutions to social and economic problems should begin at the most local level, not at the national, much less the international, level. Indeed, the pope explicitly said in his 2009 encyclical that "subsidiarity is the most effective antidote against any form of all-encompassing welfare state."

Today's statement uses terms like "supranational Authority" and "supranational Institution." These neologisms are purely the creation of the authors, Cardinal Peter Turkson and Mario Toso. They are not found in the pope's encyclical. No matter, those who are comparing this text to the demands of the "Occupy Wall Street" crowd should first detail what exactly it is the urban campers want.

E-mail: cl@catholicleague.org

I then received an email which expressed outrage about the Vatican's new document, as follows:

I am a practicing Catholic convert, baptized Holy Saturday 2003. I am a Jewish convert. My degrees are in mathematics and statistics but I have a great interest in economics.

I subscribe to the Austrian theory of economics. Many Austrians believe that central banking is at the root of the current financial crisis. The US Federal Reserve is not even a government agency; it is a cartel of privately owned international banking interests that disguises itself as a governmental body. (...)

Centralized banking is not a cure; it is the very disease itself. It was the root cause of the dot com bubble, then the housing bubble. The Federal Reserve is essentially a private piggy bank for Wall Street.

And I wake up to find the Vatican is calling for a WORLD CENTRAL BANK!

Look, the Holy Father is infallible on spiritual matters. But he needs to stay out of central banking. The Vatican is clueless on this matter.

The #1 impoverishment vehicle of the people is the Federal Reserve and other central banks. They are perpetrating the largest transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top in world history. (...)

Central banks need to be taken down, not built up further. We need less central banking, not more.

If Satan is operating anywhere in this world with impunity, central banking is the place where you'll find him. It is sucking the financial life blood from the people to prop up bankers and the global elite, and turning a blind eye to every kind of fraud imaginable. It is the #1 place where the money changers of the world gather.

And the Vatican wants MORE of it!

Unbelievable, absolutely unbelievable.

Regards,

I then placed several calls to see what some of my contacts might have to say about this document.

I concluded that there is one positive thing and one negative thing that can safely be said.

The positive thing: this document, in keeping with all of the Church's social teaching, wishes to defend honesty, transparency, truthfulness and justice in financial dealings over against dishonesty, opacity false representations and injustice.

In this, the document is to be praised, and praised highly. We need honesty and truth-telling in a global economy that is seemingly careening toward a train wreck which will inevitably hurt the poor and weak most of all.

The negative thing: the global economy, and especially the global derivatives market, is big, enormous, in fact, so big, so opaque, so complex, that literally no one knows what the situation really is, or what measures to take to undo the financial detonator that seems ready soon to go off.

In this sense, the Vatican office's policy recommendations are inevitably insufficient.

No one knows what to do about this looming financial train wreck, not even the Vatican.

That said, there is no doubt that the virtues of honesty, truthfulness and fair-dealing must be at the center of any possible global solution, and we all will be well-served if thoughtful, honest, good and competent men and women can be placed in a position where they can help unravel this time-bomb before it detonates, or salvage what is left of our economy after it detonates.

And this is the essential, laudable meaning of the Vatican's suggestions in this document.

Explanations, clarifications, distinctions etc., are lost on most, for various reasons.

Agreed! The damage is done. Most Catholics will not suffer the time to wade through the BS found in these types of documents and will take them at face value: The headline!

"I say "allegedly" because the text in which this call appears is not by Pope Benedict, but by a Vatican office, the Council for Justice and Peace. Such an office can issue papers which do not bear the Pope's "seal of approval" in the same way that a papal encyclical would. We are dealing here, then, with something on the order of a "position paper," not a text containing authoritative magisterial teaching. "

What a bunch of straw man agruments. None of the media reports I saw on this ever said that this was "issued by Pope Benedict" nor that it was a "papal encyclical". They said the Vatican issued a documents calling for a world bank which is exactly what happened. Further, I have not heard that the Pope or anyone else in the Vatican hierarchy have disavowed this paper which was issued by an office under their control.

But the statement was made from a Vatican office, by a commission appointed by the Pope, view an official form of communication.

For most of the Catholics out there, it will be viewed as authoritative. You are right Doc in saying it isn't binding, but how many will realize that? How many will use this as a means to justify socialist actions?

The Vatican has a real PR problem if these are just a couple of rouge agents.

View it this way. What would your response be if the Southern Baptists or LCMS had released such a statement?

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