|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Solidarity and Freedom: The Vision of Sollicitudo Rei Socialis
| Article
# : |
14285 |
|
|
Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
|
| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1988 |
5,327 Words |
| Author
: |
John W. Cooper
John W. Cooper, senior research fellow in religion and society
studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington,
D.C., is the author of The Theology of Freedom (Mercer
University Press, 1985). |
In the very first sentence of his most recent encyclical, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, Pope John Paul II notes that "the social concern of the Church" is "directed towards an authentic development of man and society which would respect and promote all the dimensions of the human person." The reader discovers later in the text that these dimensions of the human person fall into three broad categories: politics, economics, and culture. He discovers, too, that the key to progress in all three areas is a balance of social solidarity and individual freedom.
Thus, the pontiff utterly refutes three of the most common assumptions of the modern era: (1) that development, especially Third World development, is a purely economic phenomenon; (2) that economic progress must precede political and cultural freedom; and (3) that the modern world is, in B.F. Skinner's phrase, "beyond freedom and dignity" and that modern man is left merely to choose between competing systems of control.
In one of many remarkable passages, John Paul II writes: "In this concern for the poor, one must not overlook that special form of poverty which consists in being deprived of fundamental human rights, in particular the right to religious freedom and also the right to freedom of economic initiative.
Experts in international development do not often link religious liberty and freedom of economic initiative (or, as we would say, "entrepreneurship"). In fact much of the canonical development literature does not even deal with human rights per se. The pope knows better. Perhaps, because of his Polish background, he knows that bread comes through freedom, not before it.
Development is a political, economic, and cultural phenomenon or it is nothing at all. Purely economic efforts, conventional wisdom notwithstanding, are not enough. Government-to-government transfers of wealth from the "North" to the "South" do not necessarily lead to any real development for the poor of the world. From the early 1950s to the mid-1980s, the net wealth transferred from the West to the Third World was $2 trillion (constant 1988 dollars). This amount is equal to the market value of the entire U.S. farm sector plus all the industrials on the New York Stock Exchange. If development were a matter of economics alone, these transfers would have resulted in more real development in the Third World. The truth is that much of this enormous wealth transfer has been squandered, although some of it has aided genuine development or at least has prevented starvation and abject poverty. That
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
