The recent note on the financial crisis from the Vatican’s Council on Justice and Peace offers us yet another chance to reflect on the Church’s longstanding social teaching. It is the kind of document that is meant to advance a conversation rather than settle questions, and it will no doubt take some time to absorb. But early reactions already are pouring in.
George Weigel offers a measured response:
That the specific recommendations of the document reflect what will seem to many an uncritical internationalism of a distinctly Euro-secular provenance is an interesting matter that will doubtless be discussed, vigorously, within the Catholic family for some time to come.
Tom Hoopes applauds the council’s broad approach:
I, for one, am glad that the Church’s message of solidarity tempered by subsidiarity is one of the leading voices in the ongoing debate about the global response to the international markets.
Samuel Gregg finds its economic analysis wanting:
For a church with a long tradition of thinking seriously about finance centuries before anyone had ever heard of John Maynard Keynes or Friedrich Hayek, we can surely do better.
Bill Donohue corrects its early misinterpreters:
To begin with, the text is not an encyclical, nor is it the work of Pope Benedict XVI. Much of what it says is consistent with long-standing Catholic social teaching: the quest for the common good should guide social and economic policy.
Rod Dreher says it will scare non-Catholics:
This is sinister utopianism, full stop.
Michael Brendan Dougherty eggs on the conspiracy theorists:
A statement that the world government should be empowered to deal with the most minute and far-reaching aspects of human life.
Update: More reax here.
