A really reformed UN would be a great good.
I don’t expect to see a really reformed UN any time soon.
If I were the pope, I wouldn’t put much hope in seeing a really reformed UN.
But then, I’m not the pope. He’s the expert on hope. (Not hope and change—the Church develops but does not change.)
So it all depends on whether one accents the “really reformed” or the “UN” part.
You accent the “UN” part. I agree, the present UN is evil.
But the pope did not write about the present UN. He wrote about a reformed UN.
If there ever were a truly reformed UN along the lines outlined by Pope Benedict (which would mean that the Truly Reformed UN would respect subsidiarity), it would indeed be a good thing.
That’s a big IF.
But you ignored the IF. I didn’t.
So your critique of me is totally off target.
As I was careful to say in my first post, _Caritas in Veritate_ suggests the NEED for a reformed UN AND economic institutions AND international finance.
>>> If I were the pope, I wouldn’t put much hope in seeing a really reformed UN.
But then, I’m not the pope. He’s the expert on hope. (Not hope and change—the Church develops but does not change.) <<<
Ah, so in your view Pope BXVI is the expert on “fruitless hopes.” That’s a pretty insulting thing to suggest.
>>> But the pope did not write about the present UN. He wrote about a reformed UN. <<<
No, he wrote about the NEED for a reformed UN AND economic institutions AND international finance. Reformed enough to do the Herculean (and toothy!) labors that need to be done to realize the ideal of a family of nations.
>>> If there ever were a truly reformed UN along the lines outlined by Pope Benedict (which would mean that the Truly Reformed UN would respect subsidiarity), it would indeed be a good thing. <<<
Personally, I don’t see what is being called for as “needful” by CiV as being anything more than a gussied-up version of a world empire. Let’s look at the final two sentences of Section 67:
“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, as envisaged by the Charter of the United Nations.”
Aside from noting the presence of the “subsidiarity” pixie-dust (is the word UN-ese for “speedbump”?), why bother to comment further? I find the last sentence to be especially troubling. Might have saved some ink by just writing “It’s high time we immanentize the eschaton.” This isn’t what I would call a good thing, although I admit my view is open to argument.
>>> That’s a big IF.
But you ignored the IF. I didn’t.
So your critique of me is totally off target. <<<
Sorry, I didn’t see any “IF” when Pope BXVI wrote that the reformed UN _et al_ were NEEDED. He didn’t write IF they were needed. Once again, IF what you say about the irredeemable nature of the UN IS true, it can only be true if we assume that the Pope is a peddler of false hopes — which is a pretty nasty slander, and one which I do not believe.
IF the defenders of CiV respond by being captious, then perhaps Pope BXVI needs better defenders.