The Eight Great Worries of the World

I apol­o­gize for the rather longish post but it’s really worth the read. A cou­ple of weeks ago, Bene­dict XVI lead World Youth Day 2008 in Syd­ney, Aus­tralia. This is not from Bene­dict but from his pre­de­ces­sor, John Paul II, who came to the philip­pines sev­eral times to visit this “only Chris­t­ian coun­try in Asia”. I read this many years ago, but I think the late Pope’s mes­sage is still very rel­e­vant until now. He was dead-on in his assessment.

In 2002, Pope John Paul II gave a speech to UN ambas­sadors. Reflect­ing on the world scene, with all its hopes and hor­rors, John Paul’s mes­sage is that nations and lead­ers must face eight great chal­lenges if a more-just world is to be achieved.

Here are the 8 Great Chal­lenges of the World:

1) Pro­tec­tion of human life “in all cir­cum­stances”

Accord­ing to John Paul II, the first chal­lenge fac­ing the world is “the defense of the sacred­ness of human life in all cir­cum­stances, espe­cially in rela­tion to the chal­lenges posed by genetic manipulation.”

His empha­sis on “all cir­cum­stances” is a good reminder to all Catholics. Some pro-life groups were anti-abortion, but won­dered if they should strug­gle with the same effort against the death penalty. Some of them even favored cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment out­right. Oth­ers who opposed it didn’t push the issue, sens­ing that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment enjoyed wide pub­lic support.

In a mass in Jan. 27, 1999, John Paul II made him­self clear on the issue. “The new evan­ge­liza­tion calls for fol­low­ers of Christ who are uncon­di­tion­ally pro-life: who will pro­claim, cel­e­brate and serve the Gospel of life in every situation.”

“A sign of hope is the increas­ing recog­ni­tion that the dig­nity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of some­one who has done great evil,” he added. “Mod­ern soci­ety has the means of pro­tect­ing itself, with­out defin­i­tively deny­ing crim­i­nals the chance to reform. I renew the appeal I made most recently at Christ­mas for a con­sen­sus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary.”

The Holy Father went even fur­ther. The pre­vi­ous day, at a St. Louis air­port, in the pres­ence of Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton, he explained: “To choose life involves reject­ing every form of vio­lence: the vio­lence of poverty and hunger, which oppresses so many human beings; the vio­lence of armed con­flict, which does not resolve but only increases divi­sions and ten­sions; the vio­lence of par­tic­u­larly abhor­rent weapons, such as antiper­son­nel mines; the vio­lence of drug traf­fick­ing; the vio­lence of racism; and the vio­lence of mind­less dam­age to the nat­ural environment.”

John Paul II believes it would be a great error to reduce the “cul­ture of life” to the defense of the rights of the unborn. Rather, it has to extend to the whole of life, from con­cep­tion until its nat­ural end, in order to be credible.

2) Pro­mo­tion of the fam­ily

The sec­ond chal­lenge is “the pro­mo­tion of the fam­ily, the basic unit of society.”

In the face of a glob­al­ized soci­ety that at times reduces peo­ple to the level of mere sta­tis­tics, the fam­ily is the first place where “purely func­tional rela­tion­ships” are over­come. In the fam­ily, the man, woman and child are not con­sumers but per­sons with first and last names.

In an address to the Roman Rota, the Pope warned about “the per­va­sive cul­ture of indi­vid­u­al­ism, which tends to limit and restrict mar­riage and the fam­ily to the pri­vate sphere.”

3) Elim­i­na­tion of poverty

The third chal­lenge for John Paul II is “the elim­i­na­tion of poverty, through efforts to pro­mote devel­op­ment, the reduc­tion of debt, and the open­ing up of inter­na­tional trade.”

Poverty “today must be defined not sim­ply in terms of a lack of eco­nomic means, but more in terms of an inabil­ity to real­ize fully that God-given human poten­tial, with which each per­son, man or woman, is endowed. Fight­ing poverty, which has now been rec­og­nized as an essen­tial over­ar­ch­ing dimen­sion of all devel­op­men­tal pol­icy, must there­fore be about enabling peo­ple to real­ize their God-given potential.”

Fac­ing this chal­lenge, the Pope makes two spe­cific requests. First, he calls for debt reduc­tion for devel­op­ing coun­tries. Stud­ies by the World Bank and Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund show that heavy debt reduces the pub­lic money avail­able for edu­ca­tion and health.

The Pope’s sec­ond request is for the open­ing up of inter­na­tional trade, since a country’s access to world mar­kets has direct bear­ing on the eco­nomic well-being of its citizens.

4) Human rights

As the fourth chal­lenge, the Holy Father to “respect for human rights in all sit­u­a­tions, with espe­cial con­cern for the most vul­ner­a­ble: chil­dren, women and refugees.”

5) Dis­ar­ma­ment

A fifth pri­or­ity is “dis­ar­ma­ment, the reduc­tion of arms sales to poor coun­tries, and the con­sol­i­da­tion of peace after the end of conflicts.”

John Paul II com­mit­ted him­self per­son­ally, espe­cially in 1999, to encour­ag­ing the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity to adopt the Ottawa Con­ven­tion against the pro­duc­tion, stor­age and com­merce of anti-personnel mines — “cold and blind instru­ments planned, con­structed and used to wound or kill one or more per­sons,” the Vat­i­can told a sum­mit held in Nicaragua.

Light weapons also con­cern the Pope. He has asked for com­mit­ment to strug­gle against this death trade.

6) Med­i­cine for all

The sixth chal­lenge is “the fight against the major dis­eases, and access by the poor to basic care and med­i­cines.” In a let­ter writ­ten to a con­fer­ence on ethics, sci­ence and med­i­cine, the Pon­tiff said that some devel­op­ing coun­tries lack access to basic med­i­cines because their economies are not finan­cially attrac­tive to the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal industry.

Arch­bishop Diar­muid Mar­tin, the Vat­i­can rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the UN (as per­ma­nent observer), pointed out that, “It is not pos­si­ble eth­i­cally to jus­tify a ratio­nale of fix­ing the high­est pos­si­ble prices in order to attract investors and to main­tain and strengthen research, while leav­ing aside con­sid­er­a­tion of fun­da­men­tal social factors.”

In this con­nec­tion, the Church pro­poses that a full “and effi­cient uni­ver­sal access to basic med­i­cines will most likely require the enact­ment of an inno­v­a­tive dif­fer­en­tial pric­ing sys­tem, which can still pre­serve the incen­tive for future research and development.”

“Lux­ury and non-essential phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prod­ucts, for exam­ple, cos­met­ics, could well share a part of the bur­den of research and devel­op­ment of essen­tial med­i­cines,” the arch­bishop suggested.

7) Con­ser­va­tion of the envi­ron­ment

The sev­enth chal­lenge is “the pro­tec­tion of the envi­ron­ment and the pre­ven­tion of nat­ural dis­as­ters.” John Paul II called for an “eco­log­i­cal con­ver­sion.” And this was sec­onded by Bene­dict XVI in the last World Youth Day.

“Man, espe­cially in our time, has with­out hes­i­ta­tion dev­as­tated wooded plains and val­leys, pol­luted waters, dis­fig­ured the earth’s habi­tat, made the air unbreath­able, dis­turbed the hydro­ge­o­log­i­cal and atmos­pheric sys­tems, turned lux­u­ri­ant areas into deserts, and under­taken forms of unre­stricted indus­tri­al­iza­tion, degrad­ing that ‘flowerbed’ — to use an image from Dante Alighieri — which is the earth, our dwelling place,” the late Pope said.

Peo­ple, he insisted, must “encour­age and sup­port the ‘eco­log­i­cal con­ver­sion’ which in recent decades has made human­ity more sen­si­tive to the cat­a­stro­phe to which it has been heading.”

“At stake, then, is not only a ‘phys­i­cal’ ecol­ogy that is con­cerned to safe­guard the habi­tat of the var­i­ous liv­ing beings, but also a ‘human’ ecol­ogy which makes the exis­tence of crea­tures more dig­ni­fied, by pro­tect­ing the fun­da­men­tal good of life in all its man­i­fes­ta­tions, and by prepar­ing for future gen­er­a­tions an envi­ron­ment more in con­for­mity with the Creator’s plan,” he stressed.

8. Appli­ca­tion of law

The eight and last chal­lenge is “the rig­or­ous appli­ca­tion of inter­na­tional law and conventions.”

Though the Catholic Church has crit­i­cized the Malthu­sian or rel­a­tivist poli­cies of cer­tain U.N. agen­cies, it is at the same time one of the most com­mit­ted allies of this insti­tu­tion. The Church sees the United Nations as a forum for pro­mot­ing dia­logue between nations and devel­op­ment, and for safe­guard­ing inter­na­tional law.

“Of course,” the Pope told the ambas­sadors when he ended his list of chal­lenges, “many other demands could also be men­tioned.” He added: “But if these pri­or­i­ties became the cen­tral con­cerns of polit­i­cal lead­ers; if peo­ple of good will made them part of their daily endeav­ors; if reli­gious believ­ers included them in their teach­ing, the world would be a rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent place.”