Vatican calls for Central World Bank

[AngelRose81]

We don’t need to hand the evangelicals an issue like this especially when the statement from the Vatican is so sadly naive and unworkable. Someone needs to get the Vatican under control so they preach the gospel instead of some sad promotion of a world wide central bank “with teeth”. And quite frankly the evangelical argument begins to hold water if we actually behave as if we favor a one world government.

You’re exactly right, and I also think that Catholics tend to forget that Vatican City, which being the center of the Roman Catholic Church, must also be political. The world expects the Pope and other Vatican officials to speak on political things, because as their own entity (Vatican City), they must. I honestly think this will be the last straw for many who were already struggling with the Church anyway.

 

[zaffiroborant]

On my way home I turned on Irvin Baxter’s End Time ministry program to see what they were saying about this. As expected he was trumpeting the Vatican’s role in seeking a One World Government by establishing a world wide central banking authority which would control our ability to buy and sell as well as have the authority to tax us. The evangelicals are going to use this document to prove the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon – and quite frankly calling for a central economic authority “with teeth” as the document does plays right into the evangelical narrative. The Vatican ought to be about preaching the gospel and converting souls to Christ – once that has happened people will naturally seek social justice without demanding any kind of government action to accomplish it.

Somehow I doubt the CC could do anything that met with Mister Baxter’s and his ilks approval. He has said some pretty awful things about the Church before this and would continue to do so even without this from the Vatican.

 

[BartBurk]

Somehow I doubt the CC could do anything that met with Mister Baxter’s and his ilks approval. He has said some pretty awful things about the Church before this and would continue to do so even without this from the Vatican.

I’m beginning to believe I need a break from religion at this point.

 

[zaffiroborant]

I’m beginning to believe I need a break from religion at this point.

Why

 

[BartBurk]

Why

I’ve been through Mormonism and been through Catholicism … sometimes I think that churches don’t serve the cause of Christ very well. Too much about politics and power.

 

[Telstar]

It was a lengthy text and so I did a search for the word ‘usury’ on the page to see what this “Note on financial reform from the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace” says about the evil of usury.

And the result of the search is that the word ‘usury’ does not appear even once in the entire text.

I cannot say that I am too surprised because if indeed the Vatican were to have taken a stance against the practice of usury as Jesus Christ (pbuh) did 2000 years ago when he threw out the money-changers from the Temple, then they would have persistently warned against the evil of usury in the world’s financial system years ago.

And so then, this most deafening silence on the part of the Vatican in pointing out and warning against the great evil of usury can only be taken as them accepting and condoning the continued practice of usury in the world of finance.

(above in red) When Jesus threw the money changers out of the Temple, it was because they were defiling the Temple of God by turning it into a commercial mall in order for the priests to make money off the Temple worshipers. It was supposed to be a Holy place to pray and worship God, not the ‘almighty dollar’. It had absolutely nothing to do with ‘usury’. Jesus couldn’t care less about money, "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and render unto God that which is God’s.". He came to earth to save souls from sin, not to help people save more of their cash or to quibble about their economics.

 

[zaffiroborant]

I’ve been through Mormonism and been through Catholicism … sometimes I think that churches don’t serve the cause of Christ very well. Too much about politics and power.

In what way is anyone looking for power in that document?

 

[BartBurk]

In what way is anyone looking for power in that document?

Your point is valid, but the upshot of this document would be support of those who would impose ultimate power over our lives through supranational economic controls. The call for an international tax on bank transactions is particularly troubling.

 

[Ridgerunner]

This strikes me as the kind of thing ONLY a “Justice and Peace” department would come up with. Not so bad in theory if highly talented saints were running it. Terrible in likely practice since the “world community” is far, far more corrupt than is the banking system in the U.S. Who would they nominate to run it? Vladimir Putin? Nicholas Sarkozy? Kim Jong-il? Ayatollah Kameni?

Best that this be bound in a huge volume and stored in the Vatican archives somewhere.

 

[KathleenGee]

You have to understand the frame work…and that means people have to read the whole document with its real intent.

The Church does not indorse a particular form of government or economics. Pope John Paul II was rather negative towards the West at the beginning of his pontificate. But as he was exposed more to it, he concluded that the best economic system was a free market that was guided by strong social morality.

In this document, it is simply proposing ideas. The Church remains in its duty to bring Christ to others…and Christ has overcome all. The Church subsequently defines the presence in Christ in all things for the days we live in.

President Woodrow Wilson already thought along the same line as those individual ecclesiastics who wrote up the document. He worked to bring about NATO, as well as allowed our economy to transfer from the appropriation Congress is set up to do, over to an international banking system.

And so…a world council --NATO, and the world bank system is already in place and it doesn’t work. We already have a one world entity of governing…NATO brought down Kadafi in Libya…and now they want more sex through polygamy and no usury…that is it. Freedom??? More human rights? Doesn’t sound like it, and that was what our American public was questioning…What kind of government and people was our president accommodating?

So in a one world government or bank…they are accountable to no one but their way of looking at things…

Furthermore, it is directed by entities that in some ways are anti-Christian. I am even reading that it was American east coast richest entities that brought the one child policy to China!..got to read up more on that one…Or that during the Bush administration, concentration camps are being set up throughout the USA…strange, strange.

We have a divided government…those that want to retain our own self-determination as a nation, and those who are transnational, globalists…The transnational corporations know no restraints either from our country or NATO.

BurtBark…I would read Pope John Paul’s ‘Centissimus Annus’…that states the State is to serve the individual, not the individual exist to serve the State. But alot of people in the world…the ones that have power and money…think so.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I love it when people blame the Bush economy and the Regan war on the middle class on Obama. In case you haven’t noticed, our economy was a train wreck in October of 2008. It takes a while to clean up a train wreck. Bush took a healthy economy in 2000 and drove it into the gutter long before he watched it go up in flames in 2008, without taking ANY measures to correct it BTW. Just watched. Took the Hoover approach. That worked well in '29 - if you were Andrew Mellon. BTW - this is one of the areas where your Pope has it right. I wish he would make more statements like this one. He’s right on target, The 'every man for himself" economy being practiced in the US and pushed by conservatives is an abomination to any religion. I call it like I see it. I don’t follow the Pope, but he seems to make a lot of sense to me on a lot of issues. This is one of them.

Your friend
Sufjon

Well, let me quibble with this just a bit. When Bush left office, unemployment was at 7%. Obama said he could prevent it from going to 8% if he just had a lot of money to throw around. He got it, and did that, and it did nothing. Meanwhile, every small business person in the country became afraid of his radicalism and refused to hire or invest. No surprise there. “Every man for himself” is a two-edged sword, and Obama has caused 'every man" to go into “self-protective mode”.

And Hoover, as well as Roosevelt tried Obama-like remedies and they didn’t work for either of them. But they sure did scare the thunder out of people who might have otherwise hired or invested.

I’m reminded of a comment Arthur Laffer made when asked whether biblical creationism (that 6,000 year variety) ought to be taught in public schools. He responded “Why not? They teach Keyensianism there, don’t they?”

One may justly criticize Bush for not mobilizing public opinion in favor of clamping down on FNMA and FHLMC. He wanted to do it, but Barney Frank, Chuck Schumer, Chris Dodd stood in the way. In my opinion, Bush could have done more, but didn’t. On the other hand, TARP 1b is the one program that actually did help. When banks got to where they wouldn’t even honor fed funds, and it was obvious there were going to have to be healthy banks to soak up the failing ones, TARP 1b helped bolster the net worths of healthy banks so they could do that. That is the ONLY program that the government will profit on. Much maligned Bernanke also aided in guaranteeing fed funds. So, a true banking meltdown was avoided through those two things, and both predated Obama.

 

[losh14]

My evangelical conspiracy theorist friends are going to run with this one:

No kidding. I see ideas like this and it makes me cringe, like “okay, how AM I going to defend this one.” Well, it’ll be interesting to see how far Chick Tracts spin it.

What do my non-Catholic friends think of this announcement? Is it the establishment of the so-called Whore of Babylon worldwide?

Only if your friends don’t know their own mythology. The “Whore of Babylon”, according to Hislop (who applied the Scripture facetiously towards the Catholic Church) is so because of its perpetuation of the worship of Nimrod and Tammuz. None of that happening here.

Also, ask your friends to distinguish Christ’s call to baptize all the nations with establishment of a One World Church. How can we automatically say that a worldwide Church is that of the Antichrist?

Reality is, there’s only one line in the announcement regarding the “Central World Bank.” The bulk of the piece is calling for ethical business, especially banking, that addresses problems of development and does not take advantage of consumers.

I wrote more here than I originally intended, so here are the three sections:
A) How to understand the announcement
B) Explaining the Church’s interest in saying such a thing
C) The errors in reasoning here - yep, as an economist and a Catholic I’m quite qualified to criticize this Office, and I’m going to do so.

 

[losh14]

A) Clarification:

1. This isn’t an announcement by the Pope. It’s one of the offices in the Vatican that spouts its mouth every so often. If you ask the Pope if he wants to found a central world bank, he’d tell you no.
2. **No one in the Church is calling for the Church to establish such a Global Central Institution. In post-WWII days when the World Bank and IMF were founded, the Church was in favor of this because it meant that rich countries would take action directly to help poor countries. I wouldn’t be surprised if evangelicals would have had a field day with it back then but the Church had zero role in organizing or working with the IMF other than being an aide recipient along with a hundred other organizations. The Church won’t be heading up this institution, if it would be created.
3. The application of theology to actual politic is hard here. Even where Christians of all stripes can agree that the wealthy should give to the poor as a personal calling, the second you mention “redistribution of wealth” American ears prickle because it sounds like socialism. The difference is one of voluntary redistribution versus mandatory. It doesn’t help that the announcment is by a Jesuit, and they’re pretty fearless in my experience. I love them, man, but they can come across as the hippies of Catholicism.

 

[losh14]

B) Why did the Church make this announcement?
What is the Church’s interest here if it’s not world domination?

1. The application of personal moral charity to the institutional level. No one on earth should be surprised that the Vatican asks for generosity in helping the poor.
2. Asking for inclusion. The majority of Catholics are outside of the U.S. and quite poor. They have zero financial access but they are affected by financial speculation, especially as pertains to natural resources. Decisions in financial markets ultimately impact positively (economic development in sustainable fashion) and negatively (exploitation of national resources in unsustainable fashion), as well as the ebbs and flows of international trade.
3. Decrying greed. Again, no one should be surprised by this. Shame on any Christian anywhere who thinks Jesus wants you to pursue wealth for the sake of wealth. This is a hang-up for many Americans, even though those of us in the middle class (who are very wealthy relative to the rest of world even if we’re just getting by here) are less the targets of this announcment than the mega-wealthy who don’t use their wealth to improve the lots of others.

 

[losh14]

Finally, the errors in the announcement:

1. I’ve no qualms with the grievances being pointed out, but rather with the suggested solutions. There are two responsibilities to wealth: one is personal, the other is communal (government). Personal wealth should be used to care for one’s family and to help the less fortunate. Government wealth should be used judiciously to provide for common goods and protect the populace.
2. Error #1: Central World Bank. Not a good idea. If we accept that central banks are prudent to have, they should be established at the national level, not world level, in order to allow each nation to control its own money supply and set monetary policy to assist with the balance of trade. One of the criticisms of a central EU bank was that it tied the hands of monetary policy, but also would allow nations with poor fiscal governance to borrow off the reputation of nations with good fiscal governance. This is very much what happened with Greece, who borrowed and spent itself into disaster.
3. Error #2: Removing Bank governance from national auspices. While I understand the rationale is to remove the ability of larger economies to beggar smaller economies though trade manipulation, aggregating national banks won’t accomplish this. The IMF has often been accused of being only another vehicle for wealthy nations to beggar poorer ones, and there’s really no oversight to the IMF. If it is a nation, rather than an extra-national entity, that is misbehaving, other nations can at least take concrete action together to punish the offender, for example through trade restrictions or boycotts.
4. Error #3: Blaming the market mechanism. This is the same mechanism that enables development to take place in the first place. In its absence - or even if it exists but is tightly controlled - distortions, inefficiency and waste follow, which can be deadly in precarious economies.
5. Error #4: Blaming financial markets altogether. The markets are the playgrounds, the agents at cause here merely used them. Greed doesn’t need a market, and in fact prefers not to have one because money can speak more loudly where the forces of supply and demand are kept artificially in check.

 

[losh14]

What this announcement does show is an absolute lack of faith on part of this Commission in national governments to reign in greed. It also shows frustration with existing extra-national bodies in alleviating poverty.

The real solution is a change in human nature to conform under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to live in imitation of Jesus Christ. This is something we must pray for continually, that God will send His Spirit to renew the face of the earth and the heart of mankind.

From a political perspective (ie, what we can tangibly do here), centralized, extra-national solutions rarely work. They may steer resources together and guide coordination, but they cannot act effectively as overseers, which is what they’re being called for here.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to spy on more Protestants so I can enter their names into the Vatican Supercomputer

 

[losh14]

Somehow I doubt the CC could do anything that met with Mister Baxter’s and his ilks approval. He has said some pretty awful things about the Church before this and would continue to do so even without this from the Vatican.

If the Pope tomorrow announced “Faith alone is needed for salvation! Luther was right! Calvin was right!” I think Baxter would decry “Look out for wolves in sheep’s clothing! This is just a ploy!”

I don’t have time for fundamentalists or for fundamentalism. I have time to read the documents, see what is being said, and decide from there. To take a piece that largely calls for morality, decries greed, and contort it to “this is one-world authority to tax and regulate purchasing!” is emblematic of fundamentalism, the taking of events, squeezing and distorting them to fit a preconceived script of how things ought to be.

 

[losh14]

I’m beginning to believe I need a break from religion at this point.

I could certainly use a break from the media. Though if you went to any Catholic church this Sunday, you wouldn’t hear a peep of “let’s establish a central bank!” It’s just not a core doctrine, nor a core of this announcement. You may hear a homily against greed.

 

[losh14]

Your point is valid, but the upshot of this document would be support of those who would impose ultimate power over our lives through supranational economic controls. The call for an international tax on bank transactions is particularly troubling.

Your point is well-taken. I think the intent is to break the connection between lobbyist and banker (even stronger in the EU than in the US), but we can’t legislate greed out of existence. It’s also contemporary - while the US press is happy to report the Vatican’s calling for One World Government, it’s ignoring that the EU has already suggested such a tax. This document’s backing that movement, and unwisely so.

Such a tax is also self-defeating - more expensive to give access to the financial system that so many are outside of. I think it’s suggested partly because it’s a convenient target - a tax on anything bank related sounds like you’re making the Bank pay (in reality, it’d get passed down to consumers, but that’s besides the point).

But it’s not the first time such a tax has been suggested. Iowa Senator Tom Harkin is introducing such a tax in legislation, and unions and protestors are calling for the same, echoing arguments from radical anti-capitalism magazine Adbusters. Barney Frank actually suggested one in October 2009.

What we may end up seeing, once all the dust settles from financial “reform”, is a banking system in which the wealthy have access, and where the lower classes mostly use cash and prepaid cards for EFT transactions. Wal-Mart would actually emerge as a financial leader, since they’re one of the largest and lowest-cost suppliers of prepaid reloadable cash cards in the U.S. One trend not yet hit on by the mainstream press is that Americans who lose access to inexpensive credit (and hence credit and debit cards) are increasingly relying upon EFT cards. This trend is already common in third-world nations where credit markets are underdeveloped as a means of participating outside their local communities.

 

[hamba2han]

(above in red) When Jesus threw the money changers out of the Temple, it was because they were defiling the Temple of God by turning it into a commercial mall in order for the priests to make money off the Temple worshipers. It was supposed to be a Holy place to pray and worship God, not the ‘almighty dollar’. It had absolutely nothing to do with ‘usury’. Jesus couldn’t care less about money, "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and render unto God that which is God’s.". He came to earth to save souls from sin, not to help people save more of their cash or to quibble about their economics.

How exactly did the money-changers defile the Temple… were they wearing filthy and smelly clothes??.. were they selling smut??

Nay, they were doing what money-changers do best i.e. engage in usury.

And how does the Bible view usury?

" If you lend money to any of My people who are poor among you, you shall not be like a moneylender to him; you shall not charge him interest.
"If you ever take your neighbor’s garment as a pledge, you shall return it to him before the sun goes down.
"For that is his only covering, it is his garment for his skin. What will he sleep in? And it will be that when he cries to Me, I will hear, for I am gracious. … (Exodus 22:25-27)​

’ If one of your brethren becomes poor, and falls into poverty among you, then you shall help him, like a stranger or a sojourner, that he may live with you.
'Take no usury or interest from him; but fear your God, that your brother may live with you.
'You shall not lend him your money for usury, nor lend him your food at a profit. … (Leviticus 25:35-37)​

"In you they take bribes to shed blood; you take usury and increase; you have made profit from your neighbors by extortion, and have forgotten Me," says the Lord GOD. … (Ezekiel 22:12)

And how did Jesus (pbuh) view divine laws?

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. … (Matthew 5:17-18)

And so, make no mistake about it, the reason why Jesus went ballistic and threw the money-changers out of the Temple is because they were promoting and engaging in the extremely grave sin of usury.

Now, if only the Pope and the Vatican would follow the teachings of Jesus Christ (pbuh) and declare war on usury, it would surely go a very long way indeed towards solving the world’s financial crisis.