Notes on Father Bill Ryan’s talk to members at the OPM

Father Bill Ryan
Caritas in Veritate


What does it mean to be fully human? This is the essential question. Challenging all ordinary agendas, where business, politics, economies are separate forms of life. Charity and love – these have deep spiritual meaning. Charity here is love, not limited to what we give to the poor.
Benedict sees pop pro as his inspiration. Getting integral himan debelopment as the basis for his message.

POPULORUM PROGRESSIO
is the inspirational message for Caritas in Veritate.

How can people reach their full human potential. The risk of our time is social considerations are not part of human and economic development. Private interests and powers are being served instead of the needs of humans. Development must be linked to an ethical framework.

Justice is inseparable from love. Charity and truth as witnessed by Jesus are the primary driving forces leading people to act in justice and faith, All persons have a vocation to pursue integral human development for themselves and others.
First, a vision of faith – love is at work in the development of the human being. It is the driving force for human development. Love is enlightened by faith and reason – love is proven by action.
Self-giving in essential in sustaining a civilization . We are made to give. Here the logic of gifting replaces the logic of the market. It is contrary to putting a price on everything. The root cause of our current crisis is the inability to give and to give freely as an expression of friendship.
Benedict writes about the need for market regulation to regulate the economy (with teeth). Free market system is marked by grave failures and needs to be retooled at the international level. We are faced with the failure of profit system when economic goals are set without consideration for the needs of people. Corporations must have the welfare of the community at its heart. Human capital is the most important of all capital. Economies should not function while accepting a certain level of underdevelopment and unemployment.

Scandals of the widening gap between the rich and the poor. Huge profits are being made through speculation rather than actual production – Benedict deplores this.
Everything that harms human society harms the environment. Ecology cannot be taken as an independent variable. Social costs must be figured into the costs of production. We must also consider how the use of resources increases the gaps that exist in the world. How are the poor of the world going to have adequate sources of energy especially when it is becoming more expensive and rare?

Pro-life – pro integral human development. The only way to promote human culture is to promote the culture where every human is important.

God is the dynamic power of love that can transform all these relations. We can’t do just charity without social justice – we need both, we can’t do one without the other.

Caritas in Veritate – powerful warning, dangers of technology when unhinged from an understanding of the common good. We are charged to take up anew social justice, to put the health of the people ahead of profit, to avoid poverty and the indignity of unemployment.
The view now is that our economies are on track, but if the real causes of the financial crisis have not been addressed where are we? Have we addressed the inequalities and injustice of the current model. The long-term costs still face us. Personal debts, unemployment, collapse in countries like Greece, Iceland – few people have figured out why this is happening. New economies are not likely to embrace our broken system.

Little said in Caritas in Veritate of the long-standing changes that still need to be made; the transformations of hearts, minds and structures. Neo-liberalism will fail. What will replace it is a future challenge. This is more a statement of the threats that exists and a call for a new humanism. Others (like Development and Peace) are called to be more specific on what that means.
Love calls us to develop a new system with solidarity its most important feature. We must love each other or we will die.
Caritas in Veritate could be a powerful instrument for Church renewal in our times. Harness for good the energies of love – humanity will for the second time discover fire!