Pope offers an economics for our times

As President Obama and Pope Benedict prepared to meet today at the Vatican, they had something new to discuss: Charity in Truth, the pope's just-released encyclical on economic life.

While theological reflections usually don't make for light summer reading, Benedict offers a timely and compelling case for understanding the economy as a defining moral issue. He affirms the importance of economic development for all but also offers bold words about the scandalous inequalities separating rich and poor; he offers a well-founded skepticism of unfettered markets, and he sounds like a union organizer when addressing the rights of workers. For Americans battered by Wall Street abuses and growing unemployment, this profound call for a restructuring of our economic life will resonate far beyond the Vatican.

The pope makes clear that the Catholic Church (a kind of worldwide corporation, with a billion members) does not have "technical solutions" to offer. Instead, he sets out broad principles for economic life and markets that would serve the common good and human dignity. Above all, he shines a spotlight on the perils of rampant consumerism and greed and on the devastation our economic system causes for so many around the world.

Benedict is not condemning the market economy. He recognizes the importance of markets when they are properly limited by culture and law. Primary among his reasons is that "each person is the principal agent of his own success or failure" and that markets help people accomplish their aims.

At the same time, Benedict has the wisdom to know what free-market fundamentalists have too long denied: Unregulated markets help many but hurt many more among the poor of the world. He criticizes governments that too often limit the negotiating capacity of unions, and he challenges a profit-only mentality that drives so many corporations. Benedict does more than wag his finger at the social sin of greed. He also points with hope to a type of business enterprise that is a hybrid of profitmaking firms and traditional nonprofit organizations. These economic organizations earn a profit, but they are also designed to invest in a larger cause. These include companies, such as our local Bremer Bank, whose earnings go to charitable foundations; so-called fair trade vendors whose profits provide support for Third World farmers and artisans, and a host of other profitmaking companies that serve social ends, not simply the bottom line.

Recognizing the great benefits and challenges generated by globalization, the pope acknowledges the loss of sovereignty that nations have experienced with the rise of globalization. He recommends "a true world political authority" in order to allow markets both to thrive and to serve humanity. This is a controversial idea and may not sit well with many nations, but the pope's perspective is truly global. His emphasis on solidarity with the poor of developing nations resonates at a time when tens of thousands of children die every day because of poverty or preventable disease while we in wealthy nations consume far more than our share of the world's resources.

Benedict's eloquent appeal for integral human development, which addresses the needs of poor nations and our own personal growth as human beings, requires both individual moral action and communal efforts to improve institutional structures that shape society. This truly countercultural critique offers hope for a more humane life for each of us. Now that's something worth talking about as the pope and the president meet.

Daniel Finn is a professor of economics and moral theology at St. John's University in Collegeville, Minn. He is also president of the Society of Christian Ethics, and is a past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and the Association for Social Economics. His most recent book is "The Moral Ecology of Markets: a Framework for Assessing Justice in Economic Life."