Monday, October 24, 2011

Vatican Cardinal Turkson Backs Protests



from Bloomberg......


Oct. 24 (Bloomberg) -- A senior Vatican official said the Occupy Wall Street protests were justified, as the Holy See called for overhauling global financial rules and establishing an international market regulator.
"Do people at a certain time have a right to say: 'Do business differently, look at the way you are doing business because this is not leading to our welfare, to our good?'" Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson told reporters at the Vatican today. "Can people demand this of the people of Wall Street? I think people can and should be able to."
The comments by the Ghanaian-born cardinal came as the Vatican office he heads, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, called for changes in the way financial markets are run and regulated. The appeal is the latest by the Vatican following a 2009 encyclical by Pope Benedict XVI calling for a new financial order.
The council laid out its proposals in a document released today in Vatican City that included a call for taxing financial transactions. Economic injustices including "the hoarding of goods on a great scale" may create "a climate of growing hostility and even violence, and ultimately undermine the very foundations of democratic institutions, even those considered most solid," according to the text.
The Vatican called for a global authority with "universal jurisdiction" over financial policy, including a "central world bank" with functions similar to those of national ones. Such sweeping changes would have to be "gradual," according to the document.
"Everybody knows about globalization, everybody feels its impact," Turkson said. "But single individual countries don't have the competence to deal with it."
--Editors: Alan Crawford, Dan LiefgreenRead more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/10/24/bloomberg_articlesLTKT561A1I4H.DTL#ixzz1bkRGq6wi....

Compare Cardinal Turkson's idea of expanding one world government with the definition of "subsidiarity" found in Wikipedia--of all places! 


Subsidiarity is an organizing principle that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. Political decisions should be taken at a local level if possible, rather than by a central authority. [1] The Oxford English Dictionary defines subsidiarity as the idea that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate or local level.
The word subsidiarity is derived from the Latin word subsidiarius and has its origins in Catholic social teaching.......

Subsidiarity--that governments should be as localized and as small as possible-- is part of the Church's social teaching.  Cardinal Turkson's idea contradicts it.  not only does he contradict "subsidiarity", he contradicts himself.  He seems to be saying...."the solution to the problems of globalization is more globalization!"

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