Reordering the world

...Hi t I'm looking for an enlightened businessman...

...2) there are whole groups of people without the resources to enter the market...

...The tension in his treatment of the state expresses the pope's conviction that the state should be involved "directly and indirectly" in fostering economic activity and in defending "the weakest" participants in the economic sectors, but it also reflects his detemun" ation to keep the power of the state limited by law and free of totalitarian pretensions...

...Looking at it selfishly, it has been good for the Orthodox...

...in 1991 John Paul II has given us Centesimus annus as we debate the need for a "new world order...

...The effects of nineteenth-century political, intellectual, and economic life and the stances of his two predecessors (Gregory XVI and Pins IX) had effectively pushed the church to the margins of public life...

...But it is significant, and a bad sign, that the very use of biblical language--the language that made it possible for the WCC to form in the first place, the one thing that used to unite us--now divides some of us from one another...

...He sees the need for a "juridical framework" within which the market will function, a setting of law and policy that will contain the market and address the human needs it leaves unattended...

...Such a reading is defensible if Centesimus annus is read in the context of John Paul's other major social teachings, Laborem exercens (1981) and Solicitudo rei socialis (1987), as well as his 1979 address to the United Nations...

...The setting for Centesimus annus could hardly be more different...

...It is important for many other members (quite a few of them are more sympathetic to the Orthodox position than to the free-wheeling extremes that oppose it) that the Orthodox remain...

...When Leo XIII wrote Rerum novarum, his primary concern was to respond to the suffering of workers in the industrializing world, but he also designed the encyclical to complement his larger effort to restore the church's voice and role to a central place in the public life of the world...

...It isn't...

...An Orthodox delegate told me that a woman came up to him at the end of the assembly, very upset that at the closing ceremony God was referred to as "Father...

...Even referring to God as "Father" and baptizing in the traditional trinitarian way is rejected by some Protestants (there are churches where baptisms are performed with words like "parent" and "child" substituted for "Father" and "Son"), because these are seen as culturally limited metaphors...

...and (3) there are goods that "cannot and must not be bought and sold...

...The analysis of its role is two-dimensional...

...The state: A theory of the role of the state in society runs through Centesimus...

...But how one interprets Christ and the Holy Spirit and their relationship to the Father is an open-ended question, because no one can claim to have a finally appropriate view of God...

...John Paul's answer is that the market must be placed in the broader context of state and society...

...Hence, the long-term value of the encyclical is the contribution it makes to the social teaching inaugurated by Leo...

...She feels the need to learn more about us, and that's good...

...A major accomplishment of the Leonine papacy was the way in which he began 14 June 1991:393 the process--intellectually, socially, and politically--of a creative dialogue between church and world...

...lllis critique is p!lzzlirlg, however, because the range of activities that Catholic teaching, including this encyclical, require the state to perform, particularly in defense of the poor, is usually identical with the role "the welfare state" has fulfilled in many industrial democracies...

...Throughout the world today, the role of faith and religious life is intricately tied to major political, economic, and social developments...

...He has articulated his view of a world less controlled by the superpowers, his conception of a united Europe--separated from the "logic of the blocs"--and his conviction / that the peoples and nations of the developing world deserve a different status than the one accorded them by the cold war...

...When the pope devotes a chapter of the encyclical to "The Year 1989," it constitutes a rare insight by a participant in the ending of the cold war...

...The clinical assessment takes the market reality seriously and acknowledges values in it that John Paul's predecessors may have assumed but did not assert...

...One way to read this new encyclical is as the pope's contribution to the "new order" debate...

...The danger here--apart from what seems to me to be an absolutely inadequate ecclesiology--is that the church does little more than reflect, in a vaguely religious way, the concerns and passions of whatever cultural assumptions dominate its members...

...The use offorce: A basic theme of this papacy has been to foster nonviolent methods of social change and to raise the moral barriers against the use of force between states...

...what has become part of the church's practice is the result of the community's discerement, a discernment in which the Holy Spirit is present...

...But what will be the juridical framework at the international level of the economy...

...He refers to the critique he consistently made during the war, and he uses his commentary on "1989" to argue for the possibility of achieving major social objectives--even in the face of state power --without resort to force...

...It would not be surprising if critics of these functions try to use this language to limit the state's role in the future...

...The other ecclesiology is centered on the belief that the Holy Spirit guides the vision of the church, seen as the Body of Christ, the presence of Christ in the world...

...This dialectic is found in previous social encyclicals that espoused an activist state, but one constrained by the principle of subsidiarity...

...Centesimus is more detailed on both dimensions...

...The second level of the analysis places the empirical fact of the market within a moral framework, and describes three moral limits: (1) many human needs are not met by the workings of the market...

...There is in Centesimus a carefully contained but authentic statement of support in principle for the market economy...

...A significant portion of Centesimus is devoted to a rereading of the teachings of Leo, Pius XI, and Pins XII...

...they are presently trying to work out a complete restoration of communion between their churches...

...At the same time, she told him that her contact with the Orthodox made her understand that she must make an effort to learn more about the Orthodox position...

...an entire chapter is devoted to the role of state and culture...

...At the same time, it is important to realize that we are at a crucial moment in the relationships among churches...

...It is considered a betrayal of a God-given heritage to reject that language for reasons which are essentially political...

...The decentralized nature of international politics has always made the establishment of such a framework very difficult...

...The market mechanism is not only a choice that countries can make, it is almost certainly the framework within which the international economy will function...

...The market economy poses a double challenge: how to take advantage of what it does well and how to supplement its acknowledged limits...

...this would never happen, she said, at the church she attends in Manhattan...

...Recently, representatives of the Oriental Orthodox (that is, the nonChalcedonian churches of Armenia, Syria, and Malabar, and the Coptic churches of Egypt and Ethiopia) and the Eastern Orthodox churches concluded that they now have no theological differences which stand as barriers to communion...

...The language used traditionally by the church is considered appropriate--it would not have been received into the tradition if it were not...

...Now that those fundamental changes have taken place, Centesimus annus celebrates the change and moves to an analysis of what the moral order requires within and among states...

...The real question about intercommunion under these circumstances is not whether it can be done, or should be, but what it means...

...More specifically, the place of the Catholic church in this wider horizon of religion and politics is dramatically different from the situation that Leo confronted...

...The market economy: In the century of social teaching no document has come close to the specificity of analysis offered in Centesimus about the role of the "free market" in the economy...

...394: Commonweal...

...This would probably not have happened if it were not for the WCC...

...Centesimus is guaranteed a heating in the academies, the embassies, the factories, andfavellas of the world because John Paul is seen as one of the catalysts of the transformed world scene...

...WORLD WATCH ]. Bryan Hehir REORDERING THE WORLD ]OHN PAUL II'S 'CENTESIMUS ANNUS' n 1891 Leo XIII shaped his encyclical, Rerum novarum, on the theme of "new things...

...A detailed assessment of how Centesimusfits into the wider philosophy of John Paul II on war is an article in itself, but one surely comes away from the Gulf debate and this encyclical with a sense that the moral barriers against the use of force are now drawn more tightly by this pope...

...The differences are profound, and they have led a lot of Orthodox to think of the ecumenical movement as a waste of time...

...Long before the change that has occurred in world politics, the pope had argued that the old order was morally unacceptable and had been developing his conception of reform for the international order...

...The brief critique of "the welfare state" is new in papal teaching and it is useful...

...Where he is moving on this question is not yet clear but surely bears careful watching...

...Where there is no real Communion, a celebration of the Lord's supper becomes merely symbolic--which may not be a problem for someone from the Reformed tradition, but definitely would be for someone Orthodox or Roman Catholic...

...The developing edge of the teaching in Centesimus is exemplified, but not exhausted, by three themes: the role of the market, the teaching on the state, and the evaluation of the use of force...

...It stresses the way in which the state---even in pursuit of desirable social objectives--can become an oppressive bureaucracy, and it emphasizes the role of voluntary associations in delivering social services...

...The participant is, however, primarily a pastor and teacher...

...Looked at as part of the larger ecumenical picture, it would be a betrayal of Christian charity if the Orthodox churches abandoned the WCC because of these frustrations...

...At one level the pope offers a clinical commentary on the empirical assets of the market mechanism ("the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs") and of the capitalist style of economic organization ("which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property, and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as for human creativity in the economic sector...

...At one level the qualified endorsement of the market mechanism is analogous to Pins XII's statements about democracy in the 1940s...

...The Gulf War has made the pope even more determined to pursue this course...

...It was really the good news and the bad news," he said...

...Meetings of the WCC have brought them together from all parts of the world, and the meetings have borne fruit...

...The driving currents of change in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, or Latin America cannot be explained without an understanding of the personal and social role of faith...