Caritas in Veritate – A Synopsis

I doubt many of us had the time and energy to read the last encyclica of Pope Benedict XVI, called Caritas in Veritate.

My World Vision colleague Tadeusz Mich has put together a synopsis of the recommendations offered in this papal document. Here it is, for those who are in need of this “shortcut”.

1. Resisting a “downsizing” of social security systems;
2. Support for labor unions and the rights of workers in a global economy marked by mobility of labor;
3. Combating hunger “by investing in rural infrastructures, irrigation systems, transport, organization of markets, and in the development and dissemination of agricultural technology”;
4. Enshrining access to steady employment for all as a core economic objective;
5. Protecting the earth’s “state of ecological health”;
6. Seeing “openness to life,” meaning resistance to measures such as abortion and birth control, as not only morally obligatory but a key to long-term economic development;
7. Ensuring that the targets of international aid programs are involved in their design and implementation, and trimming the bureaucracy sometimes associated with those
programs;
8. Lowering domestic energy consumption in developed nations, investing in renewable forms of energy, and adopting new more sustainable lifestyles;
9. Curbing an “excessive zeal for protecting knowledge” among affluent nations, “through an unduly rigid assertion of the right to intellectual property, especially in the field of health care”;
10. Opening up global markets to the products of developing nations, especially in agriculture;
11. Commitment among developed nations to devote a larger share of their gross domestic product to development aid;
12. Greater investment in education;
13. More generous immigration policies, recognizing the economic contributions of migrants, both to their host countries and to their countries of origin by sending money home; 14. Support for micro-finance, consumer cooperatives, and socially responsible forms of business;
15. Reform of the United Nations and international institutions of economics and finance, in order to promote “a true world political authority … with real teeth,” though on informed by the principle of subsidiarity – meaning respect for the liberty of individuals, families, and civil society;
16.Opposition to abuses of biotechnology such as a new eugenics.

Underlying his specific positions, Benedict argues for a view of the human person founded on faith in God and open to spiritual meaning, as opposed to “an empiricist and sceptical view of life.” “Without the perspective of eternal life, human progress in this world is denied breathing-space,” the pope writes. Authentic development “requires a transcendent vision of the person, it needs God.”
In that context, Benedict insists on a strong public role for religion, against what Italian Cardinal Renato Martino, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, called “a militant secularism.”

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You may find HERE an official synthesis of this encyclica.