Vatican Calls for Global Economic Authority and Condemns " Idolatry of the Market"

I will be the first to admit that I rarely agree with anything emanating from the bitter old queens in dresses at the Vatican who all too often turn Christ's Gospel message upside down in their quest for power, control, and most importantly money. But I guess once in a while even such people get something right. Hence the Vatican's condemnation of the cult of free market controls which often morphs into a struggle of the survival of the fittest (or most greedy) with the vast majority suffering in poverty and varying levels of neglect as the amoral and greedy waltz away with most of the profits and resources. The interesting thing to watch will be to see how this new Vatican announcement plays with the Christian Right adherents of the prosperity Gospel and the Tea Party crowd who would throw most citizens to the wolves as they hoard money and possessions for themselves. Candidly, nothing would please me more than to see a rift develop between conservative Catholics and the greedy hate merchants of the Christian Right and GOP. Reuters looks at this in some ways surprising development. Here are some highlights:

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of a “global public authority” and a “central world bank” to rule over financial institutions that have become outdated and often ineffective in dealing fairly with crises. The document from the Vatican’s Justice and Peace department should please the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrators and similar movements around the world who have protested against the economic downturn.

“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. “The economic and financial crisis which the world is going through calls everyone, individuals and peoples, to examine in depth the principles and the cultural and moral values at the basis of social coexistence,” it said.

It condemned what it called “the idolatry of the market” as well as a “neo-liberal thinking” that it said looked exclusively at technical solutions to economic problems. “In fact, the crisis has revealed behaviours like selfishness, collective greed and hoarding of goods on a great scale,” it said, adding that world economics needed an “ethic of solidarity” among rich and poor nations.

“If no solutions are found to the various forms of injustice, the negative effects that will follow on the social, political and economic level will be destined to create a climate of growing hostility and even violence, and ultimately undermine the very foundations of democratic institutions, even the ones considered most solid,” it said.

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

Asked at a news conference if the document could become a manifesto for the movement of the “indignant ones”, who have criticised global economic policies, Cardinal Peter Turkson, head of the Vatican’s Justice and Peace department, said: “The people on Wall Street need to sit down and go through a process of discernment and see whether their role managing the finances of the world is actually serving the interests of humanity and the common good. “We are calling for all these bodies and organisations to sit down and do a little bit of re-thinking.”

Misplaced Priorities - The Gospel of Wealth

I often do not agree with David Brooks' columns in the New York Times. Today, however, he has one that is very much on target in terms of looking at one of the examples of the extreme sickness of Christianity in America: the concept that if one is religious, then one ought to be raking in the money. Locally in Virginia, one need only think of Pat Robertson as an example of unbridled greed dressed up as the reward of piety. Related to the concept is the phenomenon of churches spending immense amounts on buildings and plush facilities at the expense of feeding the hungry, giving shelter to the homeless and being the good neighbor described in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Too many congregations of every denomination act more like the Pharisees roundly condemned by Christ rather than following Christ's message. Having attend the local equivalent of the mega-churches - where services are more like a contemporary rock concert than what I as a former Catholic and now Lutheran consider to be church - described by Brooks I can identify with the lament: self-satisfied individuals riding to church from their mcmansions in bloated, gas guzzling SUV's and similar gas hogs. Here are highlights from Brooks' op-ed piece:
*
In the coming years of slow growth, people are bound to establish new norms and seek noneconomic ways to find meaning. One of the interesting figures in this recalibration effort is David Platt.
*
Platt earned two master’s degrees and a doctorate from the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. At age 26, he was hired to lead a 4,300-person suburban church in Birmingham, Ala., and became known as the youngest megachurch leader in America.
*
Platt grew uneasy with the role he had fallen into and wrote about it in a recent book called “Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From the American Dream.” It encapsulates many of the themes that have been floating around 20-something evangelical circles the past several years.
*
Platt’s first target is the megachurch itself. Americans have built themselves multimillion-dollar worship palaces, he argues. These have become like corporations, competing for market share by offering social centers, child-care programs, first-class entertainment and comfortable, consumer Christianity.
*
Jesus, Platt notes, made it hard on his followers. He created a minichurch, not a mega one. Today, however, building budgets dwarf charitable budgets, and Jesus is portrayed as a genial suburban dude. “When we gather in our church building to sing and lift up our hands in worship, we may not actually be worshipping the Jesus of the Bible. Instead, we may be worshipping ourselves.”
*
But the Gospel rejects the focus on self: “God actually delights in exalting our inability.” The American dream emphasizes upward mobility, but “success in the kingdom of God involves moving down, not up.” Platt calls on readers to cap their lifestyle. Live as if you made $50,000 a year, he suggests, and give everything else away.
*
[T]he country is clearly redefining what sort of lifestyle is socially and morally acceptable and what is not. People like Platt are central to that process. The United States once had a Gospel of Wealth: a code of restraint shaped by everybody from Jonathan Edwards to Benjamin Franklin to Andrew Carnegie. The code was designed to help the nation cope with its own affluence. It eroded, and over the next few years, it will be redefined.
*
One can hope that Brooks is correct. Being a cynic, however, I doubt that folks like Maggie Gallagher, James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Joel Osteen and other professional Christians/leeches will get on board. They still see religion - or at least feigned religious belief - as the road to self enrichment. WWJD?

In "Prosperity" Finland and Scandinavia Out Rank USA

It is interesting that the Christianist crowd in the USA seems to always like to deride the countries in Scandinavia for being "ungodly" and too gay friendly, yet a new study that looks at the prosperity of nations ranks all those same ungodly countries above the USA in terms of prosperity. It would seem that these countries are doing something right that perhaps we in the USA ought to mimic instead of deride. But then, the far right Christians in the USA cannot see the forest for the trees due to their religious based bigotry. They prefer ignorance, backwardness, and intolerance above all else. In calculating the rankings, in addition to per capita income, the study also looked at safety and security, personal freedom, and absence of government surveillance. And the best of all nations? Finland followed by Switzerland and then most of the rest of Scandinavia. Canada and Australia also out ranked the USA. What is telling is that ALL of the countries ranked above the USA provide citizens with better health care, governance and personal liberty. Here are some highlights from Yahoo News/Reuters (I encourage readers to go to Legatum Prosperity Index to compare their home country with others):
*
For those who value their freedom of expression as much as health, wealth, and prosperity, then Finland is the place to be, with an index ranking the Nordic nation the best in the world. The 2009 Legatum Prosperity Index, published on Tuesday and compiled by the Legatum Institute, an independent policy, advocacy and advisory organization, ranked 104 countries which are home to 90 percent of the world's population. The index is based on a definition of prosperity that combines economic growth with the level of personal freedoms and democracy in a country as well as measures of happiness and quality of life.
*
With the exception of Switzerland, which came in at number 2, Nordic countries dominated the top 5 slots, with Sweden in third place followed by Denmark and Norway. The top 10 were all also Western nations, with Australia (6th place) and Canada (7th place) both beating the United States, ranked 9th. Britain came in at number 12.
*
The index combines objective data and subjective responses to surveys. More details can be found on http://www.prosperity.com.

*

While the USA still ranks 9th, the results are nevertheless not the best of news for the "America, love it or leave it" crowd that refuses to accept the fact that there are areas where this nation needs to improve markedly.

Study: 'Gay-friendly' cities enjoy more economic prosperity

The Raw Story has a new story (http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Study_Gayfriendly_cities_enjoy_more_economic_0623.html) on a new Florida funded study that shows that the more "gay friendly" a city, the more prosperous it is. I guess this explains why large areas of Virginia are not that prosperous. It's one reason why HRBOR was formed: to help move Hampton Roads into a more accepting and prosperous mode. Here's portions of the story:

Richard Florida, a professor from George Mason University and author of the book The Rise of the Creative Class argued that the more "gay-friendly" a city is, the more economically prosperous it will be.

In his March 2007 paper "There Goes the Neighborhood," Florida uses something he calls the "Bohemian-Gay Index" to demonstrate that "artistic, bohemian, and gay populations" have a "substantial effects on housing values across all permutations of the model and across all region sizes." He also found that more open and "gay-friendly" areas generally support higher income levels.

Florida said he thinks it is the open mindedness of these cities that has allowed economically successful communities to emerge, rather than prior economic success attracting open minded people.

Someone needs to get this message through to the Virginia General Assembly!!! Based on this study, the legislators are doing the exact opposite of what will make the state more prosperous.