More commentary on ...

... the now semi-famous note issued Monday by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace:

• From Phil Lawler on CatholicCulture.org:

There are some political realities that the Vatican might eventually recognize, too. Say:

that the UN, the World Bank, the European Union, and other international organizations are not friends of the Catholic Church, and probably never will be;
that any international agency empowered to regulate financial markets will—following a pattern that is now well established—be exploited by social engineers to promote contraception, legal abortion, and legal recognition of same-sex marriage;
that liberal politicians will gladly accept and exploit the Vatican's statements on economic affairs, while continuing to work assiduously to promote the culture of death;

Oh, yes, and most important of all:

When an obscure Vatican agency issues a statement that contains 50% solid Catholic social teaching, and 50% flaky leftist theory, the world's media will ignore the distinctively Catholic content—what the Church should say, what the world should learn—and concentrate exclusively on the leftist theory. So for the great mass of ordinary readers, who will never read the full document, but only scan the headlines, the important message will be lost. What will register, instead, is that the Vatican has not learned its lessons about economic affairs and political realities.

When people reach the conclusion that the Vatican is talking nonsense, they do not ordinarily distinguish between the sound fundamental principles of Church teaching and the questionable economic analysis that follows. Nor do they make fine distinctions on the different levels of Church teaching authority. They conclude simply that the Vatican talks nonsense. So by reaching beyond their field of expertise, Vatican officials undermine their own teaching authority.

• From Thomas E. Woods on NPR.org:

The present malaise does not call for another layer of supervision, as the Pontifical Council appears to think. It calls for a serious moral and economic re-evaluation of institutions, among them central banking (and fiat money), that we have long taken for granted.

The last thing we need is a larger, more centralized version of what we have now. Our problem isn't greedy people or bad personnel; every society and every period of world history have had those. The problem is the system itself.

What we need is a genuinely free economy, one not subject to the cronyism and manipulation at the heart of the present system, and one that's free of the central bank.

We've been assured that the central bank has found a shortcut to prosperity by managing the economy with its highly touted macro tools and by second-guessing the interest rates to which the free interactions of individuals give rise. The result has been bubble after bubble and — contrary to popular belief — far more banking, currency crises and overall instability than was ever seen in the oft-misunderstood era that preceded the age of central banking.

The Vatican document reflects a vague sense of what is wrong, but any solution that involves reposing our confidence in still another layer of time-serving drones supervising a largely unchanged system is no real solution at all.

• From Nicholas G. Hahn III, on RealClearReligion.org:

And so, a question that must be asked is: does Rome want a king? The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace has, in effect, suggested the creation of a near god-like emporer to rule the world's financial and monetary systems.

This king would be entrusted with "universal jurisdiction" over the world's economy. It would, because the International Monetary Fund has supposedly "lost an essential element for stabilizing world finance," facilitate the creation of a "central world bank" responsible for "global monetary management."

The king would have authority to tax transactions made by firms like Goldman Sachs. Revenues from such taxation would be deposited into a "world reserve fund," a fantasy collection basket of sorts, aimed at supporting economies most affected by financial crises.

And if that wasn't enough, the king would also be directed to bailout banks ("recapitalization with public funds") subject to wildly ambiguous "virtuous behaviors." As if the guarantee of a bailout would somehow ensure a stable market.

Ultimately, the king calls on States to look beyond Hobbes' "state of nature" which would trap people "in a never-ending struggle with one another." Evidently, this new global authority is the "only horizon compatible with the new realities of our time and the needs of humankind."

• From Sean P. Dailey at CrisisMagazine.com:

While "Towards Reforming" blames the financial crisis on too-easy credit and too much lending, it makes no mention of usury, and the omission may be linked to the embarrassing practices of the Vatican bank.

And despite all the talk about easy credit, lending, and international trade, the Note makes no mention of ruinous deficit spending by governments. There is not a single mention of the crippling, mounting debt that governments, particularly Western governments, continue to run up. On the contrary, "Towards Reforming" suggests "taxation measures on financial transactions" and, euphemistically, "forms of recapitalization of banks with public funds." In other words, more taxes, and more spending, including bank bailouts. How has that worked so far? And how does it serve justice to shield financial executives from the consequences of bad decisions?

Furthermore, and even more inexcusably, "Towards Reforming" omits any mention of how banks in the United States were encouraged by federal law to sell home mortgages to people who could not afford them. If the Pontifical Council cares about justice, how can it fail to excoriate Congress for shackling the poor to the usurer's chain, all in the name of a "right" to become a homeowner? The Catechism of the Catholic Church identifies shelter as an "essential need," and private property ownership is a sacred right. But no man should be oppressed by usury, so that he is unable to acquire productive property and is forced to live beyond his means, going into debt beyond his ability to pay.

Thomas Peters of CatholicVote.org has a list of even more commentary.