PopeWatch: FRATELLI TUTTI Summarized and Translated from the Original BOMFOG-Part IV

Go here to read Part I, here to read Part II, and here to read part III.

151.Pope wants education to teach people to love their neighbor.

152.Pope would like the spirit of neighborhood in communities in some cities to apply to neighborhoods of nations.  (The Pope obviously is missing that neighborhoods in cities often sort like with like and are often suspicious of outsiders.)

153.Pope thinks that regional groups of nations could negotiate better terms of trade than nations going on their own seeking one on one agreements.   (Take that Brexit and Trump!)

154.We need a better type of politics to bring about the world the Pope would like.  (Notice the assumption of the Pope that his vision of a better world isn’t the problem but that the politics should change around the globe to fit his vision.)

Chapter Five:  A Better Kind of Politics

155.Attacks populism and liberalism.  (In this Pope’s world Leftism is apparently always benign and Islamic states are invisible.  He really is quite provincial in his truncated outlook on the complex globe.)

156.Pope really hates populism.

157.Pope distinguishes populism from people.  (The Pope seems to have a hard time conceding that what he wants might be broadly unpopular in the world of politics.)

158.People as a mythic category.  (Whenever the Pope deals with realities he finds disagreeable he tends to engage in verbal hand waving to get past what he dislikes.)

159.Pope tends to view Popular Leaders as being demagogues.  Well, a Peronist should find this familiar.

160.Pope engages in verbal hand waving to claim that populist groups do not represent the people.

161.Popular leaders look for short term advantage.  (A trait they share with 99 percent of almost all politicians.)

162.Since production systems may change, political systems must keep working to structure society in such a way that everyone has a chance to contribute his or her own talents and efforts. For “there is no poverty worse than that which takes away work and the dignity of work”.  (Thus sayeth the man who likely has never created a job in his life, unless some Vatican financial misadventures have done so for grifters.)

163.Neither the notion of “people” nor that of “neighbour” can be considered purely abstract or romantic, in such a way that social organization, science and civic institutions can be rejected or treated with contempt.

164.Paragraph ties together charity with welfare state.

165.This demonstrates the need for a greater spirit of fraternity, but also a more efficient worldwide organization to help resolve the problems plaguing the abandoned who are suffering and dying in poor countries. It also shows that there is no one solution, no single acceptable methodology, no economic recipe that can be applied indiscriminately to all. Even the most rigorous scientific studies can propose different courses of action.  (Pope Francis tends to be vague, but in this section of the Encyclical he is vaguer than usual.)

1. Otherwise, political propaganda, the media and the shapers of public opinion will continue to promote an individualistic and uncritical culture subservient to unregulated economic interests and societal institutions at the service of those who already enjoy too much power.  (The Pope will safeguard us from sinister Libertarians, ever eager to leave us alone, and from free markets.)

167.Criticizes liberalism, the Pope is speaking of 19th century free market liberalism, for thinking that an unregulated world would solve all problems.  (The Pope ever battles the strawmen he creates.)

168.The marketplace, by itself, cannot resolve every problem, however much we are asked to believe this dogma of neoliberal faith. Whatever the challenge, this impoverished and repetitive school of thought always offers the same recipes. Neoliberalism simply reproduces itself by resorting to the magic theories of “spillover” or “trickle” – without using the name – as the only solution to societal problems. There is little appreciation of the fact that the alleged “spillover” does not resolve the inequality that gives rise to new forms of violence threatening the fabric of society.  (A good summary of the thinking that turned a prosperous Argentina at the beginning of the last century into the perpetually teetering on the verge of bankruptcy unstable mess it is now.)

169.What is needed is a model of social, political and economic participation “that can include popular movements and invigorate local, national and international governing structures with that torrent of moral energy that springs from including the excluded in the building of a common destiny”, while also ensuring that “these experiences of solidarity which grow up from below, from the subsoil of the planet – can come together, be more coordinated, keep on meeting one another”. (Rather reminiscent of the Falange and their call for national syndicates of employers and employed.  Falangism has always played a role, sometimes stormy, in Peronism.)

170.Financial crisis of 2007-2008 did not lead to reforms but more of the same.  (Hard to argue with the Pope on that, although his solutions would be pure poison to any economy.)

1. I would also insist that “to give to each his own – to cite the classic definition of justice – means that no human individual or group can consider itself absolute, entitled to bypass the dignity and the rights of other individuals or their social groupings.

172.Better living through world government.

173.In this regard, I would also note the need for a reform of “the United Nations Organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth”  (Real teeth is revealing in a Freudian manner.  The Pope speaks much about love but he appears to be quite clear as to who he hates.)

174.Pope has undeserved faith in the fiction of International Law.

175.The Pope loves non governmental organizations.

176.Hooray for politics.

177.Politics must control economics. (Accompanied by the planting of money trees no doubt.)

178.Calls for statecraft which looks for the common good long term.

179.An economy that is an integral part of a political, social, cultural and popular programme directed to the common good could pave the way for “different possibilities which do not involve stifling human creativity and its ideals of progress, but rather directing that energy along new channels”.

180.Once more, I appeal for a renewed appreciation of politics as “a lofty vocation and one of the highest forms of charity, inasmuch as it seeks the common good”  (The Pope understands actual politics as well as he does actual economics.)

181.Charity is good.

182. Good politics will seek ways of building communities at every level of social life, in order to recalibrate and reorient globalization and thus avoid its disruptive effects.

183.Charity, with its impulse to universality, is capable of building a new world.

184.Charity’s openness to truth thus protects it from “a fideism that deprives it of its human and universal breadth”.

185.Concrete efforts must be made to bring about whatever they and their nations need for the sake of their development.

186.While one person can help another by providing something to eat, the politician creates a job for that other person, and thus practices a lofty form of charity that ennobles his or her political activity.  (Politicians creating jobs.  Pure Peronism.)

187.This charity, which is the spiritual heart of politics, is always a preferential love shown to those in greatest need; it undergirds everything we do on their behalf.

188.Politicians are doers, builders with ambitious goals, possessed of a broad, realistic and pragmatic gaze that looks beyond their own borders. Their biggest concern should not be about a drop in the polls, but about finding effective solutions to “the phenomenon of social and economic exclusion, with its baneful consequences: human trafficking, the marketing of human organs and tissues, the sexual exploitation of boys and girls, slave labour, including prostitution, the drug and weapons trade, terrorism and international organized crime. Such is the magnitude of these situations, and their toll in innocent lives, that we must avoid every temptation to fall into a declarationist nominalism that would assuage our consciences.  (Caesars as secular saviors.)

189.Eliminating global hunger as an essential goal.

190.It may seem naïve and utopian, yet we cannot renounce this lofty aim.  (Good summation by the Pope of the entire Encyclical.)

191.Pope Francis goes after “fundamentalists” again.

192.Spread an international culture of tolerance.

1. Yet it must never be forgotten that “loving the most insignificant of human beings as a brother, as if there were no one else in the world but him, cannot be considered a waste of time”.

194.Politics too must make room for a tender love of others. 

195.None of our acts of love will be lost.

196.Good politics combines love with hope and with confidence in the reserves of goodness present in human hearts. 

197.Viewed in this way, politics is something more noble than posturing, marketing and media spin. These sow nothing but division, conflict and a bleak cynicism incapable of mobilizing people to pursue a common goal. (Cicero:  ‘For he (Cato) gives his opinion as if he were in Plato’s Republic, not in Romulus’ cesspool.’)

Chapter Six-Dialogue and Friendship in Society.

198.Pope loves dialogue.

199.Yet “between selfish indifference and violent protest there is always another possible option: that of dialogue. Dialogue between generations; dialogue among our people, for we are that people; readiness to give and receive, while remaining open to the truth. 

200. Dialogue is often confused with something quite different: the feverish exchange of opinions on social networks, frequently based on media information that is not always reliable. These exchanges are merely parallel monologues.  (The Pope is not wrong about on line conversations often being parallel monologues.)

We will finish tomorrow.