L’Osservatore Romano of 8 July has a few articles pertaining to the new encyclical.
Here is one of them. Some folks helped to ferret out the corresponding English.
These bullet points were offered to help a reading of the encyclical.
Call them… call them…. "encycli-bites".
- It is not a case of two typologies of social doctrine, one pre-conciliar and one post-conciliar, differing from one another: on the contrary, there is a single teaching, consistent and at the same time ever new. (12)
- The Church forcefully maintains this link between life ethics and social ethics,... (15).
- Only when it is free can development be integrally human; only in a climate of responsible freedom can it grow in a satisfactory manner. (17)
- Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty. (21)
- “The scandal of glaring inequalities” continues. Corruption and illegality are unfortunately evident in the conduct of the economic and political class in rich countries, both old and new, as well as in poor ones. Among those who sometimes fail to respect the human rights of workers are large multinational companies as well as local producers. (22)
- The global market has stimulated first and foremost, on the part of rich countries, a search for areas in which to outsource production at low cost with a view to reducing the prices of many goods, increasing purchasing power and thus accelerating the rate of development in terms of greater availability of consumer goods for the domestic market. (25)
- Through the combination of social and economic change, trade union organizations experience greater difficulty in carrying out their task of representing the interests of workers… (25)
- Being out of work or dependent on public or private assistance for a prolonged period undermines the freedom and creativity of the person and his family and social relationships, causing great psychological and spiritual suffering. (25)
- The primary capital to be safeguarded and valued is man, the human person in his or her integrity. (25)
- The problem of food insecurity needs to be addressed within a long-term perspective, eliminating the structural causes that give rise to it and promoting the agricultural development of poorer countries. (27)
- It is necessary to cultivate a public conscience that considers food and the access to water as a universal right of all humans, without distinction or discrimination. (27) (Cf. Benedict , Message for the 2007 World Food Day: (2007), 933-935.)
- One of the most striking aspects of development in the present day is the important question of respect for life, which cannot in any way be detached from questions concerning the development of peoples. (28)
- In economically developed countries, legislation contrary to life is very widespread, and it has already shaped moral attitudes and praxis, contributing to the spread of an anti-birth mentality; frequent attempts are made to export this mentality to other States as if it were a form of cultural progress. (28)
- Further grounds for concern are laws permitting euthanasia as well as pressure from lobby groups, nationally and internationally, in favour of its juridical recognition. (28)
- Charity does not exclude knowledge, but rather requires, promotes, and animates it from within. Knowledge is never purely the work of the intellect. (30)
- Moral evaluation and scientific research must go hand in hand, and charity must animate them in a harmonious interdisciplinary whole, marked by unity and distinction. (31)
- Human costs always include economic costs, and economic dysfunctions always involve human costs. (32)
- Lowering the level of protection accorded to the rights of workers, or abandoning mechanisms of wealth redistribution in order to increase the country’s international competitiveness, hinder the achievement of lasting development. (32)
- In the list of areas where the pernicious effects of sin are evident, the economy has been included for some time now. (34)
- Without internal forms of solidarity and mutual trust, the market cannot completely fulfil its proper economic function. And today it is this trust which has ceased to exist, and the loss of trust is a grave loss. (35)
- The poor are not to be considered a “burden”[91], but a resource, even from the purely economic point of view. (35) (John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus, 28: loc. cit., 827-828.)
- Economic activity cannot solve all social problems through the simple application of commercial logic. This needs to be directed towards the pursuit of the common good, for which the political community in particular must also take responsibility. (36)
- In commercial relationships the principle of gratuitousness and the logic of gift as an expression of fraternity can and must find their place within normal economic activity. (36)
- Every economic decision has a moral consequence. (37)
- Alongside profit-oriented private enterprise and the various types of public enterprise, there must be room for commercial entities based on mutualist principles and pursuing social ends to take root and express themselves. It is from their reciprocal encounter in the marketplace that one may expect hybrid forms of commercial behavior to emerge, and hence an attentiveness to ways of civilizing the economy. (38)
- In order to defeat underdevelopment, action is required not only on improving exchange-based transactions and implanting public welfare structures, but above all on gradually increasing openness, in a world context, to forms of economic activity marked by quotas of gratuitousness and communion. (39)
- Business management cannot concern itself only with the interests of the proprietors, but must also assume responsibility for all the other stakeholders who contribute to the life of the business: the workers, the clients, the suppliers of various elements of production, the community of reference. (40)
- Yet it is not right to export these things merely for the sake of obtaining advantageous conditions, or worse, for purposes of exploitation, without making a real contribution to local society by helping to bring about a robust productive and social system, an essential factor for stable development. (40)
- The broader conception of business activity favors cross-fertilization between different types of business activity, with shifting of competences from the “non-profit” world to the “profit” world and vice versa, from the public world to that of civil society, from advanced economies to developing countries. (41)
- To consider population increase as the primary cause of underdevelopment is mistaken, even from an economic point of view. (44)
- The economy needs ethics in order to function correctly — not any ethics whatsoever, but an ethics which is people-centered. (45)
- “Ethical financing” is being developed, especially through micro-credit and, more generally, micro-finance. These processes are praiseworthy and deserve much support. (45)
- In recent decades a broad intermediate area has emerged between the two types of enterprise. It is made up of traditional companies which nonetheless subscribe to social aid agreements in support of underdeveloped countries, charitable foundations associated with individual companies, groups of companies oriented towards social welfare, and the diversified world of the so-called “civil economy” and the “economy of communion.” (46)
- Today the subject of development is also closely related to the duties arising from our relationship to the natural environment. The environment is God’s gift to everyone, and in our use of it we have a responsibility towards the poor, towards future generations and towards humanity as a whole. (48)
- The international community has an urgent duty to find institutional means of regulating the exploitation of non-renewable resources, involving poor countries in the process. (49)
- The technologically advanced societies can and must lower their domestic energy consumption. (49)
- In order not to produce a dangerous universal power of a tyrannical nature, the governance of globalization must be marked by subsidiarity, articulated into several layers and involving different levels that can work together. (57)
- Cooperation for development must not be concerned exclusively with the economic dimension: it offers a wonderful opportunity for encounter between cultures and peoples. (59)
- Greater solidarity at the international level is seen especially in the ongoing promotion — even in the midst of economic crisis — of greater access to education. (61)
- Every migrant is a human person who, as such, possesses fundamental, inalienable rights that must be respected by everyone and in every circumstance. (62) (Cf. Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, Instruction Erga Migrantes Caritas Christi (3 May 2004): AAS 96 (2004), 762-822.)
- No consideration of the problems associated with development could fail to highlight the direct link between poverty and unemployment. In many cases, poverty results from a violation of the dignity of human work. (63)
- The global context in which work takes place also demands that national labour unions, which tend to limit themselves to defending the interests of their registered members, should turn their attention to those outside their membership, and in particular to workers in developing countries where social rights are often violated. (64)
- Hence the consumer has a specific social responsibility, which goes hand-in- hand with the social responsibility of the enterprise. (66)
- 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. (67)
- A particularly crucial battleground in today’s cultural struggle between the supremacy of technology and human moral responsibility is the field of bioethics, where the very possibility of integral human development is radically called into question. (74)
- Following his lead, we need to affirm today that the social question has become a radically anthropological question, in the sense that it concerns not just how life is conceived but also how it is manipulated, as bio-technology places it increasingly under man’s control. (75)
- There cannot be holistic development and universal common good unless people’s spiritual and moral welfare is taken into account, considered in their totality as body and soul. (76)