Make globalization user-friendly is Catholic
plea
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
NCR Staff Genoa, Italy
The rap on Catholic anti-globalization rhetoric has long been that
it is strong on diagnosis, weak on cure. Church leaders can denounce poverty,
war and disease with passion, but are often vague on what to do about it.
Such complaints may cut less ice after an early-July meeting in
Genoa, where more than 60 Catholic lay groups and missionary orders offered a
detailed blueprint for economic and political reform to the leaders of the G-8
group, the worlds eight most developed nations.
The G-8 met in this northern Italian port city July 20-22.
Some 3,000 Catholics, a solid majority under age 35, braved tight
security in anticipation of the G-8 summit July 7 to listen to speeches,
participate in working groups on themes such as debt and international
conflicts, groove to pop bands from the Third World, and take part in a
nighttime march.
Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi of Genoa, often mentioned as a
frontrunner to become the next pope, was the events keynote speaker. He
called on the worlds great powers to pursue policies in which man
does not exist for globalization, but globalization for
man.
One African child sick with AIDS, Tettamanzi said to
thunderous applause, counts more than the entire universe.
Among the proposals in the Catholic manifesto handed
over to an official of the Italian government in Genoa for eventual
presentation to the G-8:
- Rules for international trade that allow impoverished nations
to offer goods at predictable prices and without barriers;
- An end to banking secrecy laws that conceal money laundering,
especially illegal transfers of currency out of impoverished nations;
- Adoption of the Tobin Tax (a tax of 0.25 percent on the $2
trillion a day exchanged on global currency markets, designed to discourage
speculation and to create funds for international development);
- Cancellation of debt accumulated up to June 1999; assurance
that debt payments will be required only after health, education and other
basic needs are met; and a process of arbitration to identify in terms of
justice the real debt levels of impoverished nations;
- Effective norms to protect labor;
- Stronger environmental safeguards, including adoption of the
Kyoto Accords on global warming;
- National and international laws to guarantee a plurality of
voices in the media;
- Augmented public funding for medical research, especially for
producing drugs to combat diseases that afflict the poor;
- Efforts to halt the global arms trade, including full
disclosure about the flow of weapons, and a halt to public support for
manufacturers and distributors.
In a point aimed at the United States, the document calls for
abandonment of the Bush administrations Star Wars-style space shield,
suggesting that the money be devoted to resolving the causes of conflict, above
all poverty.
The complete text is available on the NCR Web site under
documents.
Signatories included Catholic Action, Pax Christi, the St. Vincent
de Paul Society, Caritas, the Community of SantEgidio, and a youth wing
of the Focolare movement, as well as religious orders such as the Comboni
Fathers, the Saverians, the Missionaries of Africa and the Salesians.
Speakers at the Genoa assembly urged an ethic of
responsibility. Participants were asked to adopt lifestyles consistent
with church language about social justice, including reasonable patterns of
consumption. A video pointed out that one American or European consumes as much
in food, goods and services in a year as 43 Rwandans.
Another frequent refrain was the need for international
institutions capable of governing globalization.
To you gentlemen of the G-8 we send a message, said
Luigi Bobba, head of a Catholic pro-labor movement. You will not be able
to dream tranquil dreams as long as you are incapable of overcoming the gap
between the birth of a new global consciousness and the absence of global
institutions.
While the focus in Genoa was on remedies, prophetic cries were not
lacking. Filomeno Lopes of Guinea-Bissau said the struggle should not be
against globalization itself, but against merciless capitalism that operates on
an implicit theology of extra mercatum nulla salus -- outside the
market there is no salvation.
Ecuadors Monica Espinoza described how in her country only 2
people in 10 have a stable job. The median salary is $1.86 a day, while the
most impoverished scrape by on an average of 11 cents. Debt payments command 45
percent of the countrys financial resources, leaving 4 percent for public
health and 10 percent for education.
In that context, she said, desperation is widespread. Espinoza
told a story of three Ecuadorians who tried to go illegally to the United
States, paying for passage on a boat that instead ended up in Croatia. For the
12-day journey, each of the three was given four lemons, two bottles of water,
four apples and a can of tuna. Two died; the third is still hoping to
immigrate.
Youth at the Genoa meeting called themselves sentinels of
the morning, lifting the phrase from Pope John Paul IIs address at
last summers World Youth Day in Rome. On that occasion, the pope called
on young people to resist a world in which other human beings die of
hunger, are illiterate and lack work.
Despite the effort to wrap the event in papal approval, the
Catholic manifesto drew criticism from church conservatives.
Leaders of the right-wing Communion and Liberation movement
derided it as a flirtation with the people of Seattle, reminiscent
of the way some progressive Catholics allied themselves with revolutionaries in
the 1960s.
A six-page open letter from 30 conservative Catholic intellectuals
blasted the manifesto as an example of subordination to ideologies and
slogans of political groups and movements that have nothing to do with our
faith.
The signatories of the manifesto are longwinded in talking
about the most varied subjects, but nowhere consider it necessary to mention
that Jesus Christ is mans only savior, and this proclamation is their
fundamental duty, the letter said.
Leftists, meanwhile, objected to the decision to hold a separate
Catholic event rather than joining in the broad secular protests,
bringing together youth, labor and environmental groups, that will take place
during the summit itself.
Leaders of the Genoa Social Forum, the secular group organizing
demonstrations for the G-8 summit, said they shared the content of the
manifesto but objected to the way Catholic activists projected an air of
superiority.
Catholic organizers told NCR they met separately to avoid
being mixed in with the street violence anticipated during the summit.
Many Catholic groups and missionary orders will be present in
Genoa during the G-8 summit, taking part in a protest of prayer and fasting
(see related story on this page).
Tettamanzis presence at the event was taken as an implicit
blessing. He praised the tendency among young people to volunteerism, but urged
them to be politically engaged as well. Being volunteers is good but
its not enough, he said, again to loud applause.
Tettamanzi has just published a new book, Globalization: A
Challenge, with the Italian house Piemme.
At least one other prominent Catholic seemed pleased with the
results: John Paul II applauded the assemblys work during his July 8
Angelus address.
The ironies of protesting globalization in a world already
globalized were thick in Genoa. Speakers who decried cultural homogenization
using fiery Italian rhetoric drew lusty cheers, but the crowd was also
obviously delighted by slick videos with a soundtrack of English-language pop
stars such as U2 and Bruce Springsteen. Complaints about a growing
information gap dividing rich and poor, meanwhile, were fed in real
time over the Internet in both audio and text formats.
The e-mail address for John L. Allen Jr. is
jallen@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, July 27,
2001
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