by Craig Isherwood,
National Secretary,
Citizens Electoral Council
Dear friends and fellow citizens,
Into the profound spiritual and economic crisis
now gripping the world, Pope Francis has intervened
with his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii
Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel). Whilst
it is addressed to the leaders and lay faithful of
the Catholic Church, his impassioned call for
a "new evangelisation" should inspire all men
and women of good will, especially those in
ecumenical agreement with Christianity, who
know to be true, that which the Pope emphasises
afresh: that every human being is "God's
handiwork, his creation", for "God created that
person in his image, and he or she reflects something
of God's glory." (274)1
I and the Citizens Electoral Council share
the Pope's insistence that because all men and
women are created imago Dei ("in the image
of God"), every one of us is morally obliged to
act to secure the Common Good.
Pope Francis is an immensely loving pastor,
and therefore a very tough one. He insists,
"It is no longer possible to claim that religion
should be restricted to the private sphere and
that it exists only to prepare souls for heaven",
but, rather, "There is a need to draw practical
conclusions". ("The Church's Teaching on Social
Questions", 182) This new evangelisation,
he states repeatedly, must be understood in its
actual context, that of the present existential
global economic crisis whose reality Catholics
may ignore only at peril of both body and soul.
At the outset of Chapter Two, "Amid the Crisis
of Communal Commitment", Pope Francis
warns that "certain present realities, unless effectively
dealt with, are capable of setting off
processes of dehumanisation which would then
be hard to reverse." (51)
Among these "present realities" are the fact
that billions of human beings suffer near or actual
starvation; that governments continue to
bail out the "Too Big To Fail" (TBTF) banks
with trillions of dollars even as they draft legislation
(as in Australia) to allow these same
banks to seize individual deposits ("bail-in");
that unemployment is skyrocketing throughout
much of the world, even in "advanced sector"
countries such as the United States, those in the
European Union, and Australia, with youth unemployment
reaching as high as 60 per cent,
as in Spain; that old diseases have become increasingly
antibiotic-resistant, and new ones are
emerging; that Western popular culture is rooted
in hedonism, violence and an utter disregard
for the Common Good, and even for human life
itself; and that innumerable regional wars and
conflicts could suddenly escalate into a global
thermonuclear war, as many world leaders have
warned in recent weeks. ...
Click here to continue reading (PDF, 3 MB).
Sections:
- The "Free Market": Murder, Inc
- The Satanic Cult of the "Free Market": The Case of Australia
- Friedrich von Hayek: Satan's Little Helper
- The "Left" and "Right" Wings of British Liberalism
- Keynes: A Devil in Drag
- Founding the Free Market: Bernard Mandeville of the Hell-Fire Clubs
- Christianity, Nation-States, and the Common Good
- The "American System" in Australia
- Securing the Common Good: Glass-Steagall and National Banking.
Click here to download the same document in a letter format complete with explanatory notes and references.
