The fires and floods in the Northern Hemisphere have emphasised the threat of climate change to people's lives throughout the world.

They foreshadow the future.

Less dramatically the gradual unrolling of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has also revealed its threat to the livelihood of many white collar workers and its potential for blurring the distinction between reality and illusion.

It is one of many developments in technology with the potential to reshape human life. Experience tells us that any negative effects will fall most heavily on people on the edges of society.

For that reason those concerned with building a more just society will need to reflect more deeply and broadly on social justice.

The Catholic Church, among many other institutions, has a long tradition of such reflection, having responded initially to the world shaped by the French and the Industrial Revolutions.

The latter and the laissez faire economic assumptions that accompanied it disempowered and alienated workers and disrupted their personal and religious relationships.

Like others, Catholic thinkers worked to advocate for just economic and political relationships between workers, employers and governments asking how they ought to be shaped if they are to contribute to decent human living.

Climate change: a new threat to human flourishing

The reach of reflection on social justice then expanded to meet new situations and ideologies.

Increasingly devastating wars, economic depression, the rise of totalitarian regimes, the challenge of preserving peace, decolonisation, population growth, inequality and neo-liberal economic assumptions have all involved complex changes in social and economic relationships.

They have demanded constant reflection to ensure that people who are most disadvantaged are protected and supported.

Under Pope Francis, the scope of Catholic reflection on Social Justice has expanded beyond the focus on the economy, migration and war to include the environment.

It responded to the threat of climate change.

The development recognizes that human beings can flourish only if our personal and institutional relationships to the environment of which we are part are respectful.

For this reason any commitment to social justice through policies and programmes needs to take into account the effects of climatic change on people who are disadvantaged.

This expansion of social justice to include the environment has prompted the adoption of the term Integral Justice.

The threat of climate change, however, is of a different order than the previous challenges to human flourishing.

Threatening human relationships and future generations

In the first place, if it is unchecked it will threaten the delicate network of relationships that constitute our human environment, and as a result will threaten human life as we know it.

It is a crisis that extends beyond the shape of relationships between human beings to affect their very possibility.

It is therefore integral to reflection on the justice of all those relationships. As with other sets of social relationships people living on the margins will be the canaries in the mine.

Second, the decisions and social structures which we now implement or neglect to make in response to climate change will inevitably and irrevocably shape the lives of our descendants.

If we put our profit and comfort above reducing emissions our children and grandchildren will pay the price.

Thinking about social justice and the relationships between social groups then needs to think about the effect of what we do on future generations and especially on the marginalised. Social justice must also be intergenerational.

The urgency of the challenge of climate change may seem to be far higher than that posed by the initial development of Artificial Intelligence. Appearances, however, are illusory.

Public concern about AI has so far focused on its economic effect on employment in industry, planning, in creative work and in publications.

It may also affect human flourishing, however, through its effect on planning and implementing ideas, on physical presence to others in work and in recreation, and on the privatisation of truth.

When it is joined to the project of a metaverse in which brains are adapted to computers in a virtual world of the user's choice, the pressures on people who are marginalized will be incalculable.

Society's disadvantaged will be increasingly vulnerable

AI is only one of many technologies with the potential to affect human flourishing. Advances in genetic and nano technology also have the potential to alter human lives according to our choice.

We can imagine the power of genetic engineering to prevent hereditary illnesses, to create designer babies, to create human beings and hybrids in a laboratory and to introduce genetic modifications into human beings with incalculable results.

All these developments, and the profit that stands to be made by the large companies which fund them, pose important questions about what it means for us to be social beings accountable to one another.

Communal reflection and regulation of these developments, which have potential for good as well as for harm, are threatened both by massive inequality that enables those who develop the technologies to do so for further profit and also by a popular culture that privileges individual choice over the common good.

In such a world, people who are disadvantaged will be increasingly vulnerable to deprivation of agency, of sociality and to be seen as objects to be dealt with by new technologies.

For this reason, reflection on social justice must include in its remit the effects of new technologies on persons and their economic, political and environmental relationships. Read more

• Andrew Hamilton SJ is writer at Jesuit Social Services in Melbourne (Australia) and consulting editor of Eureka Street.
• First published at Eureka Street. Republished with author's permission.

The pope, speaking after the traditional Sunday blessing, said that "without work, families and society cannot go forward. Let us pray for this, because this will be a problem in the post-pandemic period, the poverty and the lack of jobs."

"It requires lots of solidarity and lots of creativity to resolve this problem." Read more

And that will test a region united by a trading bloc but divided by religion, ethnicity, and forms of government.

Potentially, the dangers are many. Indonesia experienced this harsh reality when it was beset by anti-Chinese riots in the aftermath of the 1997/98 Asian financial crisis.

More than 1,000 people died, 168 cases of rape were reported, and long-serving dictator Suharto was ousted.

Severe inflation, food shortages, and widespread unemployment were the harbingers of protests across the region as the contagion spread.

This is a danger the 10-members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) are acutely conscious of.

Today, economies are in much better shape than they were at the turn of the century, but growth is slowing, interest rates are rising, markets are volatile, and fears of a global recession later this year, or early next, are being stoked by the trade war between China and the United States.

Supply chains

Billions of dollars in tariffs imposed on Chinese goods by U.S. President Donald Trump is exacerbating the Chinese mainland's economic slowdown with growth in GDP expected to slow to about 6 percent this year.

That might sound reasonable compared with GDP expectations of between 1-3 percent in Western countries, but in China, as a developing country with 400 million poor people — where double-digit growth year after year was long the norm — it's a worrying figure.

This marks the weakest outlook for China in 30 years and that will directly hurt the more advanced economies in ASEAN — Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand — which are integral to Chinese supply lines as component manufacturers in areas such as electronics, white goods, and vehicle production.

Moody's noted recently that these countries are increasingly focused on social welfare and more inclusive growth conducive to social cohesion. However, their responses have sharply differed.

Singapore, where the economy has deteriorated faster than expected, is foreshadowing higher taxes to pay for aged care and to maintain living standards.

For the same reasons, Malaysia has abandoned its goods and services tax.

With an election slated for March 24, Moody's also noted that Thailand faces "high political risks" after four years of military rule. During the Asian financial crisis, Bangkok escaped the type of nasty riots that arose elsewhere in the region, largely because of a previous history of spreading wealth.

However, under the leadership of General Prayut Chan-o-cha, Thailand is now the world's least-fair country in terms of wealth distribution, ahead of Russia, Turkey and India. According to Credit Suisse's annual Global Growth Report in 2018, the top 1 percent of Thais control 66.9 percent of the wealth, while the poorest 10 percent have zero.

Chinese dependents

Fearing a debt trap, Malaysia has already put the brakes on further Chinese investment.

However, Brunei, amid dwindling oil reserves, and Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar, are Chinese dependents with an insatiable appetite for mainland investment, aid, and loans.

Their main strength is their geographical position. Beijing needs those countries for its Belt and Road Initiative, giving it access to seaports, highways and pipelines for trade, as well as for diplomatic support and military projection.

Importantly, China doesn't quibble over human rights like Western nations, which are in the advanced stages of imposing sanctions and removing trade preferences from Cambodia and Myanmar, forcing investors and donors into the wings.

If China scales back its offshore spending as growth rates fall, these four countries could be hurt badly. And grassroots anti-Beijing resentment is a rising reality within ASEAN, further complicating traditional prejudices and animosities.

The government in Brunei's capital, Bandar Seri Begawan, has played its Islamic credentials to seek more investment from Saudi Arabia.

But Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos — where poverty rates remain stubbornly high and violent protests are not uncommon — have limited choices if their economies hit the skids.

Why this matters

Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines are also bracing for an economic downturn as ASEAN anticipates growth rates of less than 5 percent. But their economies are less exposed to China, and they have brighter export prospects in the U.S. and Europe.

Another cushion is the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), which was launched two years ago to embrace a population of about 620 million.

Eight professions are tapped to head a free trade regime: doctors, nurses, dentists, engineers, architects, surveyors, tourism industry workers, and accountants.

The E.U. provided ASEAN with an economic role model, but the AEC lacks a central bank, its own currency, and free trade has been hobbled by heavy restrictions on the mobility of labor because of Southeast Asia's long-standing cultural divides.

The biggest issue confronting ASEAN is its lack of unity, with each country set-apart by its ethnic, religious and political make-up.

Variously, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and atheism are layered with monarchy, democracy, military rule, and communism.

Atheist Vietnam has arrested people because of their spiritual beliefs, while Islam-dominated Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei have seen non-believers imprisoned.

Buddhist Thailand and Myanmar, as well as the Christian-dominated Philippines, contend with long-running Muslim insurgencies.

Khmer antipathy towards anything Vietnamese is near xenophobic, matching a Thai version for the Burmese. Meanwhile despite what the AEC says, a Cambodian nurse cannot get a job in Thailand.

As Michael Smiddy of Emerging Markets Consulting recently noted, the free movement of people — to bolster industry and spur economic growth — remains the "least palatable" among regional leaders.

A repeat of the Asian financial crisis is unlikely, but as economies falter, jobs dry up.

Protest movements and opposition politicians find ready-made audiences when there's not enough to go around, and governments obfuscate on their responsibilities by playing to nationalism fueled by religious bigotry.

In such circumstances, calm heads are needed to prevent social upheaval.

• Luke Hunt is a senior opinion writer for ucanews.com. Follow him on Twitter @lukeanthonyhunt
• Image: Asia Life

The publication "Oeconomicae et pecuniariae quaestiones: Considerations for ethical discernment about some aspects of the current financial-economic system," is said to be an effort to give more theological weight to Pope Francis' criticisms that "this economy kills."

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development co-authored the document. Read more

In meeting the workers of the Ilva steel factory May 27, Pope Francis had asked for the questions in advance, so that he might better prepare his answers.

He touched on a range of topics, especially emphasizing that employment is not only a means of income, but an essential means of contributing to the common good.

He also spoke against competition in the workplace, criticizing "meritocracy" as a way of thinking that blames the poor as "undeserving."

Yet it was his comments on entrepreneurs and speculators that were most notable, in terms of understanding his broader economic thinking.

One of the questioners asked for a "word of support" for entrepreneurs. In reply, the Holy Father drew a distinction between "entrepreneurs" and "speculators," praising the "typical virtues" of the former.

"Creativity, love for one's own business, passion and pride for one's own work done with the hands and the intelligence and that of his workers," the Holy Father began, is important.

"There is no good economy without a good entrepreneur, without the ability to create work. In his words, one can feel the esteem he has for the city, for its economy, for the quality of the people, his workers and for the environment, the sea."

Pope Francis then drew a strong contrast with speculators:

"One of the illnesses of the economy is the progressive transformation of entrepreneurs into speculators. Entrepreneurs must never be confused with speculators; they are two different types.

"The speculator is a figure similar to what Jesus in the Gospel calls [a] ‘mercenary,' in opposition to the Good Shepherd. They see companies and workers only as means to profit: They use companies and workers to make profit; they do not love them.

"They don't consider laying off, shutting down and relocating the company a problem, because speculators use and exploit — eat people and means for their own profit.

"When good entrepreneurs inhabit the economy, then businesses are friendly to the people. When the economy is in the hands of speculators, everything is ruined. It becomes a faceless, abstract economy." Continue reading

Sources

• National Catholic Register article by Father Raymond J. De Souza, editor in chief of Convivium magazine.
• Image: Archdiocese of Baltimore

Pell is the Vatican Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy.

He says the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (ASPA) "overstepped its authority" by instructing other Vatican offices to submit financial information to Price Waterhouse Cooper.

"There is no ongoing audit" by the outside accountants, he has reminded officials.

The Vatican's own auditor general, Libero Milone, has primary responsibility for all audits, he told them.

He and Milone have written to each of the Vatican offices telling them "with deep regret" that they should not comply with the APSA directive.

APSA and Pell have been at odds for some time because of Pell's plans to reform all the Vatican's financial affairs.

Last year APSA persuaded Pope Francis to issue a motu proprio (an edict issued by the Pope personally) returning control of Vatican financial assets from the Secretariat for the Economy (ie Pell) back to APSA.

The Vatican also cancelled a Price Waterhouse Cooper audit Pell ordered last year.

Source

• National Catholic Register
• Catholic Culture
• Image: News.com.au

The monthly production of hosts in the South American nation has fallen from 80,000 to 30,000 recently, the Catholic News Agency reported.

Giovanni Luisio Mass, prior of the Order of Poor Knights of Christ of the Temple of Jerusalem, told local media the drop has affected every parish in three Venezuelan states.

He added that only 1500 hosts can be sent to the parishes in the north of the country.

This is because there is no longer enough flour to make the 8000 hosts these parishes have always needed.

Several parishes, along with the local communities, have started their own searches for the flour needed for the hosts.

Shortages in Venezuela include food, toilet paper, medicines, auto parts, chocolate, oil, and clothes irons.

According to the Central Bank of Venezuela, food prices went up 92 per cent last year.

According to the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo, since 2003 the Venezuelan government has imposed price controls on 165 products, including cooking oil, soap, milk, flour, cereals, toilet paper , cleaning products, detergent, diapers, toothpaste and sugar.

The local currency has plummeted in value.

As a result, price-controlled commodities are affordable, but disappear from shelves in no time, often to be resold on the black market at market rates.

And the goods that are not price-controlled are unaffordable because of the devalued currency.

The government has instituted measures such as distributing tickets for supermarkets and placing digital fingerprint readers in stores to prevent people from exceeding the allotted amount of products they can buy.

Sources

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: Triumph Dining

Speaking at the World Meeting of Popular Movements in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, on July 9, the Pope sounded a warning.

"Time, my brothers and sisters, seems to be running out; we are not yet tearing one another apart, but we are tearing apart our common home," the earth, he said.

"Perhaps the most important" task facing the world today, the Pope said, "is to defend Mother Earth.

"Our common home is being pillaged, laid waste and harmed with impunity. Cowardice in defending it is a grave sin."

"Today, the scientific community realises what the poor have long told us: Harm, perhaps irreversible harm, is being done to the ecosystem," Pope Francis said.

"The earth, entire peoples and individual persons are being brutally punished" by the effects of pollution, exploitation and climate change.

"And behind all this pain, death and destruction there is the stench of what Basil of Caesarea called 'the dung of the devil' - an unfettered pursuit of money," the Pope said.

When money becomes a person's god, he said, greed becomes the chief motivator of what people do, permit or support.

In the end, he said, "it ruins society, it condemns and enslaves men and women, it destroys human fraternity, it sets people against one another and, as we clearly see, it even puts at risk our common home".

In his speech, Pope Francis said the Catholic Church does not have a programme or "recipe" for solving the problems of injustice and poverty in the world.

He said the problems with the current system are obvious and the Gospel contains principles that can help.

Other "great tasks" which the Pope proposed were putting the economy at the service of people and uniting peoples on the path to peace and justice.

Sources

• The Tablet
• Vatican Radio
• Image: Voanews

Cardinal Pietro Parolin sent a message to a conference on "The New Climate Economy" in Rome.

"When the future of the planet is at stake, there are no political frontiers, barriers or walls behind which we can hide to protect ourselves from the effects of environmental and social degradation," the cardinal wrote.

"There is no room for the globalisation of indifference, the economy of exclusion or the throwaway culture so often denounced by Pope Francis," he added.

However, Cardinal Parolin acknowledged that the path ahead would not be easy.

". . . .[T]his ethical and moral responsibility calls into question the resetting of the development model, requiring a major political and economic commitment."

Continue reading

In a new set of legislative norms approved by the Pope, the Secretariat for the Economy, headed by Cardinal Pell, has been given sweeping powers.

Francis appears to have largely put aside recommendations from the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts which would have curbed some of Cardinal Pell's authority.

The norms specify that Cardinal Pell is to have the power to issue executive decrees to all Vatican departments about their guidelines and procedures.

This is "aimed at effective planning, budget forecasting and management of human, financial and material resources entrusted to the departments of the Roman Curia".

Cardinal Pell's office will be able to mandate financial standards for Vatican departments, as well as having power to monitor and review the implementation of such standards.

The norms specify that the secretariat is to create one centralised budget for the entire Vatican and a consolidated balance sheet to show earnings and expenditures of each curial office.

The norms do, however, make a distinction in the secretariat's power over the Vatican City State and the Holy See, the Vatican's diplomatic entity.

While the laws state clearly that the secretariat "controls the annual budget and the final budget of the State of Vatican City", they state that the office "prepares" the budget for the Holy See.

The Pope also wrote that the secretariat is to help in processing Vatican salaries, creating hiring and firing practices for employees, proposing professional training courses, and managing personal data of Vatican staff.

Cardinal Pell is also empowered to ask a new auditor-general to make specific reviews of any Vatican office.

The new auditor-general, yet to be appointed, will have near-complete authority to investigate irregularities in accounting - extending even to unannounced on-site investigations of Vatican offices.

Whistleblowers are protected under the norms, which have been approved on a trial basis for an unspecified period of time.

The only apparent concession to Cardinal Pell's critics is that the secretariat will not administer Vatican real estate.

The Council for the Economy oversees the work of the secretariat.

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• Crux
• Catholic Herald
• Image: Sydney Morning Herald

It was 25 years ago this month that communism ceased to be a threat to the west and to the free market.

When sledgehammers started to dismantle the Berlin Wall in November 1989, an experiment with the command economy begun in St Petersburg more than 70 years before was in effect over, even before the Soviet Union fell apart.

The immediate cause for the collapse of communism was that Moscow could not keep pace with Washington in the arms race of the 1980s.

Higher defence spending put pressure on an ossifying Soviet economy.

Consumer goods were scarce. Living standards suffered.

But the problems went deeper.

The Soviet Union came to grief because of a lack of trust.

The economy delivered only for a small, privileged elite who had access to imported western goods.

What started with the best of intentions in 1917 ended tarnished by corruption.

The Soviet Union was eaten away from within.

As it turned out, the end of the cold war was not unbridled good news for the citizens of the west.

For a large part of the postwar era, the Soviet Union was seen as a real threat and even in the 1980s there was little inkling that it would disappear so quickly.

A powerful country with a rival ideology and a strong military acted as a restraint on the west.

The fear that workers could "go red" meant they had to be kept happy.

The proceeds of growth were shared. Welfare benefits were generous. Investment in public infrastructure was high. Continue reading

Sources

• The Guardian
• Image: ieaTV

In an interview with Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia last week, the Pope was asked if he still had a room reserved in a retirement home in Buenos Aires.

Pope Francis said "yes", explaining that it is a "retirement house for elderly priests".

He said that he had been making retirement plans before the 2013 conclave.

"I was leaving the archdiocese . . . and had already submitted my resignation to Benedict XVI when I turned 75," the Pope said in the interview.

"I chose a room and said ‘I want to come to live here'. I will work as a priest, helping the parishes. This is what was going to be my future before being Pope."

In the interview, Francis, 77, said Pope Benedict XVI had created an "institution" of emeritus popes.

"Well, as we live longer, we arrive to an age where we cannot go on with things," Pope Francis continued.

"I will do the same as him, asking the Lord to enlighten me when the time comes and that he tell me what I have to do, and he will tell me for sure."

This was the second time in two weeks that Francis had discussed the possibility of retirement

In the wide-ranging Spanish interview, Pope Francis also spoke of his anguish at images of malnourished children, when the world generates enough food to feed them.

He hit out at an economic system that rejects the young and discards the elderly, while making a god out of money.

Pope Francis also said opening Vatican archives from the Nazi era would reveal a great deal.

He defended wartime Pope Pius XII's record in helping Jews.

"I don't want to say that Pius XII did not make any mistakes - I myself make many - but one needs to see his role in the context of the time."

Pope Francis expressed his annoyance at the focus on the role of Pius XII and the Church, when Allied powers did not bomb railway lines leading to death camps.

Sources

• Catholic News Agency (interview text in English)
• National Catholic Register
• Haaretz
• Catholic Herald
• Image: The Blaze

Your first home has never been more out of reach, if you want to live in one of the main centres - not that we have much of a choice, because high rates of unemployment and thousands of dollars of student debt mean we go where the jobs are.

Even then, we're faced with increasing costs of living and slow wage growth.

In short, our prospects are bleak, and especially so in comparison to the rosy route enjoyed by members of our parents' generation. And economist Bernard Hickey can't figure out why we're not more angry about it.

We face a political contest between the people who have to pay the bill, and the people who receive the benefits, and that is building into a clash of the generations

He calls us the "baby bust" generation: burdened by debt, held apart from home ownership, the losers of sweeping changes imposed by Roger Douglas' Labour government in the mid-1980s.

The baby boomers, meanwhile, continue to benefit from the free education and cheap property they had access to as young people.

Hickey predicts this gap between the older and younger generations will get bigger in the coming decades, before eventually coming to a head when the last of the boomers retire, and their children are left to foot the bill for their healthcare and superannuation.

"Ten, 20 years from now, the younger generation will realise they face a future of not … being as wealthy as their parents'," he says.

"We face a political contest between the people who have to pay the bill, and the people who receive the benefits, and that is building into a clash of the generations." Continue reading.

Source: The Wireless

Image: Stuff

Cardinal George Pell said this will mean that the new Vatican department will be able to access the best people from around the world.

In late February, Pope Francis announced the secretariat which will have authority over all the financial and administrative activities of the Holy See.

Cardinal Pell said the Italian-dominated Roman Curia and his Anglo-Saxon appointment marked "two different ways of thinking".

"It will be a change for some people who bring a different level of understanding and patterns of thought," he told The Boston Globe.

"There will probably have to be formation courses to explain what's needed."

He added with a smile that English is still seen as "the language of the enemy" in the Vatican, evoking memories of King Henry VIII and the rise of Protestantism.

He explained that making English one of the department's working languages was part of an effort to recruit internationally to fill critical roles.

"Not only will the controlling board be international, but so will the staff," he said.

Cardinal Pell said he hoped to implement rational accounting measures, turning the Vatican from an "embarrassment" into a model of good practice.

"There's never been anything like this in the Vatican that's explicitly designed to foster a system of checks and balances," he added.

He insisted that he has the backing of Pope Francis and other cardinals, and that with a governing council and staff it won't be just "one isolated colonial barging around".

He added that he believed the abolition of the scandal-hit Vatican bank was now unlikely.

Sources

• The Tablet
• The Boston Globe
• Image: Daily Telegraph (Australia)

In an apostolic exhortation titled "Evangelii Gaudium," or "The Joy of the Gospel," Pope Francis has set an agenda to return the Catholic Church to the humility Christ showed in his devotion to the poor.

The pontiff decried an "idolatry of money" in secular culture and warned that it would lead to "a new tyranny." But he reserved a large part of his critique for what he sees as an excessively top-down Catholic Church hierarchy, calling for more local governance and greater inclusiveness — including "broader opportunities for a more incisive female presence in the Church."

The 50,000-word statement is the latest sign that Francis intends to push the church in a new direction. On some issues — such as income inequality and poverty — he is echoing concerns long pursued by his predecessors. On others, such as the management of the church, he is embarking on a new path marked by less central authority.

Sources

The Washington Post
WND
Express
Image: AP/Express

Addressing about 20,000 people, the pontiff said that his parents had "lost everything" after they emigrated from Italy and that he understood the suffering that came from joblessness.

"Where there is no work, there is no dignity," he said, in ad-libbed remarks after listening to three locals, including an unemployed worker who spoke of how joblessness "weakens the spirit."

But the problem went far beyond the Italian island, said the pope, who has called for wholesale reform of the financial system.

Pope Francis put aside his prepared text and improvised for nearly 20 minutes.

"I find suffering here ... It weakens you and robs you of hope," he said, "Excuse me if I use strong words, but where there is no work there is no dignity."

The crowd of tens of thousands of people, in a square near the city port, chanted "work, work, work" at the gathering.

"This is not just a problem of Sardinia; it is not just a problem of Italy or of some countries in Europe," he said. "It is the consequence of a global choice, an economic system which leads to this tragedy; an economic system which has at its centre an idol called money."

Urging people not to give up hope even in the harsh economic climate, the pontiff also called on the people to fight back against the "throwaway culture" he said was a by-product of a global economic system that cared only about profit. It was, he said, a culture that saw the most vulnerable society become marginalised.

Sources

The Guardian

The Telegraph

The London Free Press

Image: EPA/The Guardian

Religion News Service reported that the study of almost 190,000 people from 11 religiously diverse cultures is raising eyebrows among some of England's religious leaders for suggesting Judaism and Christianity have anti-wealth norms.

Written by academics at University of Southampton in England and the Humboldt University of Berlin, the study found that religious people in religious cultures reported better psychological adjustment when their income was low.

The study cites the Bible to show how Judaism and Christianity turn upside down the belief that the highest possible income leads to the highest possible happiness and psychological adjustment.

It quotes biblical examples such as Jesus' teaching, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," from Matthew 5:3.

The academics conducted their interviews in 11 countries, Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands and Turkey.

"What the great faiths condemn is the irresponsible use of wealth, not wealth itself," said Michael Nazir-Ali, the former bishop of Rochester in the Church of England. "The worship of money is the root of all evil and not money on its own."

Source

Religion News Service

Image: Photos.com/Thinkstoc/Religion and Politics

SPIEGEL: Mr. Laqueur, you experienced Europe and the Europeans in the best and the worst of times. Historical hot spots and the stations of your personal biography were closely and sometimes dramatically intertwined. Which conclusions have you reached today, at the advanced age of 92?

Laqueur: I became a historian of the postwar era in Europe, but the Europe I knew no longer exists. My book "Out of the Ruins of Europe," published in 1970, ended with an optimistic assessment of the future. Later, in 2008, "The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent" was published. I returned to the subject in my latest book, "After the Fall: The End of the European Dream and the Decline of a Continent." The sequence of titles probably says it all.

SPIEGEL: The last two, at any rate, sound as if the demise of the Western world were imminent.

Laqueur: Europe will not be buried by ashes, like Pompeii or Herculaneum, but Europe is in decline. It's certainly horrifying to consider its helplessness in the face of the approaching storms. After being the center of world politics for so long, the old continent now runs the risk of becoming a pawn.

SPIEGEL: Fortunately, the European Union refrained from pursuing any imperial ambitions. Nevertheless, it remains an impressive entity, both politically and economically, despite the financial and debt crisis.

Laqueur: Europe will likely remain influential in the future as an economic power and trading partner. But the continent still isn't standing on its own feet politically and militarily today. This wouldn't be that important if power politics didn't play a role and conflicts were resolved peacefully by the United Nations or the International Court of Justice. But the conflicts have not decreased. Their inherent fanaticism and passions continue to burn, as we can now see, once again, in Syria and in Egypt. Under these circumstances, is it realistic to call for European independence in global politics? Continue reading

Sources

• Spiegel Online
• Frontpage Mag

The commission's president, Maltese economist Dr Joseph Zahra, is already an auditor of the Vatican's budget management office.

The other members come from France, Spain, Germany, Italy and Singapore. The sole female is Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui, a public relations and communications executive for Ernst & Young in Italy.

Pope Francis said the aim is "the simplification and rationalisation of the existing bodies and more careful planning of the economic activities of all the Vatican Administrations".

This is to include avoiding misuse of economic resources, improving transparency in purchasing goods and services, refining the administration of goods and real estate, and working with "greater prudence" in the financial sphere.

Cardinal Wilfred F. Napier of Durban, a member of the Council of Cardinals for the Study of the Organisational and Economic Problems of the Holy See, said the Pope told the cardinals he wanted a study group to come up with ways the Vatican could better manage "what, why and how" monetary resources are being used by the different offices and entities.

The South African cardinal told Catholic News Service the biggest problem is the lack of a "unified finance controller and policy" in the Vatican.

He said some offices work together and some are independent when it comes to budgeting and oversight. The patchwork approach means "no one knows what's going on" in the big picture.

Coming from an Anglo-Saxon culture, he said he is used to a budgeting approach that involves the allocation of a set amount of resources along with a review of how the resources were used and why.

However, he found the method of accounting being used at the Vatican seemed to involve simply calculating annual profits and losses, and comparing those figures to past years.

"For us it's a bit strange. It doesn't seem normal," Cardinal Napier said, but until now no one at the Vatican seemed to understand why he and other cardinals found that odd.

Sources:

L'Osservatore Romano

Vatican Information Service

Catholic News Service

Image: Di-ve

"I've probably learned more about economics working in factories than I did from my Ph.D. program," says Clark. Working on an assembly line in a motor oil canning factory for $2.35 an hour, he saw how racial and ethnic minorities are treated differently in the workplace. A job at a wire striping factory helped to illustrate Adam Smith's theory on the division of labor. And earning $9.10 an hour to wash pots at a nursing home helped Clark appreciate the power of unions.

In the real world Clark found that ideologies proposed by economists fail to hold up. "This is really the big problem with my profession," he says. "We look at markets as if they're like the ones we teach in textbooks and they're all the same. But they're not. Every market has to be established with a set of rules."

Too often, Clark argues, those rules favor the rich at the expense of the poor. But applying Catholic social teaching to real world economics may just offer a solution that benefits everyone. Hopefully his students are taking good notes.

What do most economists get wrong about the economy?

They have this one theory, which they don't know well enough to know that it doesn't hold together, and they just keep on applying it. It's all based on this idea that the market will always lead you toward full employment if you get out of the way. But there's no evidence of this working. Continue reading

Sources

• U.S.Catholic
• Image: The Telegraph