In 2011 a ‘note’ by the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace incurred the ire of quite a few people on this forum as I recall, for uttering statements such as the following. The principal author, Cardinal Turkson, was essentially scapegoated by these individuals for daring to write the following with Pope Benedict XVI’s blessing:
vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/justpeace/documents/rc_pc_justpeace_doc_20111024_nota_en.html
**PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE
TOWARDS REFORMING
THE INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL AND MONETARY SYSTEMS
IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBAL PUBLIC AUTHORITY**
Modern States became structured wholes over time and reinforced sovereignty within their own territory. But social, cultural and political conditions have gradually changed. Their interdependence has grown – so it has become natural to think of an international community that is integrated and increasingly ruled by a shared system – but a worse form of nationalism has lingered on, according to which the State feels it can achieve the good of its own citizens in a self-sufficient way.
Today all of this seems anachronistic and surreal, and all nations, great or small, together with their governments, are called to go beyond the “state of nature” which would keep States in a never-ending struggle with one another. Globalization, despite some of its negative aspects, is unifying peoples more and prompting them to move towards a new “rule of law” on the supranational level, supported by more intense and fruitful modes of collaboration. With dynamics similar to those that put an end in the past to the “anarchical” struggle between rival clans and kingdoms with regard to the creation of national states, today humanity needs to be committed to the transition from a situation of archaic struggles between national entities, to a new model of a more cohesive, polyarchic international society that respects every people’s identity within the multifaceted riches of a single humanity…
The time has come to conceive of institutions with universal competence, now that vital goods shared by the entire human family are at stake, goods which individual States cannot promote and protect by themselves.
The conditions exist for going definitively beyond a ‘Westphalian’ international order in which States feel the need for cooperation but do not seize the opportunity to integrate their respective sovereignties for the common good of peoples.
It is the task of today’s generation to recognize and consciously to accept these new world dynamics for the achievement of a universal common good. Of course, this transformation will be made at the cost of a gradual, balanced transfer of a part of each nation’s powers to a world Authority and to regional Authorities, but this is necessary at a time when the dynamism of human society and the economy and the progress of technology are transcending borders.
The birth of a new society and the building of new institutions with a universal vocation and competence are a prerogative and a duty for everyone, without distinction. What is at stake is the common good of humanity and the future itself.
Some Catholics seem to honestly think that this is a “modern” idea in the Catholic Church, indeed an infiltration by “loony liberals” possessed with utopian fantasies, some manifestation of the ‘spirit of Vatican II’ that has no basis in the Church’s tradition. This could not be further removed from the truth.
They also fail to realize that the European Union, for instance, the world’s only true and thus far working example of a supranational regional authority, was originally created by Catholic politicians under the aegis of Pope Pius XII and would not exist except for our Church’s social doctrine - indeed without Thomistic scholasticism - hence why the foundational principles of the Union are “solidarity, subsidiarity and unity”.
I quoted in my previous post from a monumental work of Catholic philosophy from the 19th century, which not only received the Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur but was published in 1876 with a brief from Blessed Pope Pius XI.
It doesn’t seem to matter how many authoritative documents I reference. If I wrote a comprehensive thesis on it, which I may feel called to do one day, these people alt would refuse to believe me because their brains have become so utterly influenced by our Evangelical Protestant brethren into having a morbid phobia of global governance in any form.
If people study the relevant documents bereft of preconceived bias, it will become clear to them that the Catholic Church does believe in the need for “global political authority” as countless encyclicals have called for.
It shouldn’t matter that this is unpalatable to modern day folks, so inured as they are to the Westphalian international order of sovereign nation-states that developed out of the Thirty Years War in the 17th century (incidentally, a war that the so-called “Catholic” side effectively lost to the Protestant, nationalist powers) and became solidified by the spread of the French Revolution. It shouldn’t matter because it is what the Church teaches in this domain and so, just like we shouldn’t be afraid to stand up to societal norms favouring gay marriage or abortion policies, we shouldn’t be afraid to oppose extreme nationalism and militant Westphalian approaches to state sovereignty either.
The current global system can be improved if people start following the principles enunciated by our Church in her social doctrine…but first, Catholics actually have to get on board with it and move beyond the prejudices bred into us by our surrounding societies and separated brethren from other denominations IMHO.
Id just mention, that it could happen in subtle forms.