People Power

The present wave of revolt across the Middle East -- Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, etc. -- seems to show the power of a rising generation that will no longer stand for rule by dictatorship. The degree to which Islamic belief plays a part in fuelling this revolt is open to question. Nor is it clear what will emerge to replace the regimes and ruling families that are falling. Western newspapers assume the call is for "democracy", but what does that mean, exactly, and what might it mean in a confessional Muslim state? The word itself literally means "people power". But how are the people to exercise their power,

Recovery of the Guilds

Is it possible that the guilds, those great symbols of medieval culture and enterprise, might be restored to life in our own time? The guilds were an association of freemen, of craftsmen working together to sustain each other, and through apprenticeship and training, to ensure the quality of what they produced. In the UK, the 2010 election installed a government committed to the rebuilding of the “Big Society” and reviving localism. A revival of the guilds would be a keystone in the political process of rebuilding mediatory agencies along with church and school. It is up to us who believe in the necessity of as many members of our society as possible being the economic masters of their fate to create a demand for the recovery of the guilds in our time.

So argues Russell Sparkes, in a "Tract for Our Time" just published in the Articles section of Second Spring Economy. Russell is one of the UK's leading authorities on the practical interface of ethics and economics. He is a Senior Fund Manager for the British Methodist Church working in the field of ethical investment, and Secretary on the Ethics of Investment for the same organization.

Population bomb defused?

For the first time in human history, more people live in cities than outside them. The world’s population has been rising steadily, from 3 billion in 1960 to nearly 7 billion now, and in forty years more it may reach 9 billion.

The numbers sound huge, but Paul Ehrlich’s alarmist prediction in his 1966 book The Population Bomb that in the 1970s hundreds of millions would starve to death has been proved false. Advances in agriculture (the “green revolution”) enabled the world to double its grain supply to compensate for increasing demand. Continued expansion of our population may similarly be offset by further advances in technology. This should not lead us to ignore the possible impact of such a huge increase of numbers on social, political and economic systems, as well as the environment. But Catholics, who are frequently confronted with arguments in favour of contraception based on the “population bomb” thesis, can take some heart from a recent study by National Geographic that emphasizes how hard it is to predict the effects of the population explosion. The real issue, it turns out, is not numbers (which in any case are due to level out by the end of the century) but the use of resources. A person in the developed world uses 32 times as many resources as someone elsewhere, and emits 200 times as much carbon dioxide.

What are the implications? You can have bigger numbers, but people have to stay poor. Or the consumption of the wealthy has to be reduced. Eliminate poverty, and educate third-world women, and population growth will cease. But eliminate poverty, and everyone will be consuming more resources. There is another way, one that allows bigger numbers while combatting poverty, and it goes by the name of “sustainable development”. That is where Catholic social teaching really comes into its own, based on an appreciation of the natural laws written into the created world. This is where we need to devote more research, to find ways to promote development without destroying the earth around us. For more on this, see the earlier post commenting on Caritas in Veritate. See also the book by Fred Pearce, Peoplequake.

Theology of the corporation

This term in Oxford, our colleague and adviser Michael Black will be giving a series of important lectures at Blackfriars. The corporation is a dominant institution of modern society. Our economic, political and cultural life is almost inconceivable without the corporation as the legal, commercial and financial foundation for human association. And it is an institution that affects us all intimately as participants, partners, observers, and victims. Yet it is an institution that is frequently misunderstood in terms of both its history and its function in society. What ‘good’ does the corporation actually provide? Are there defensible reasons for the evolution corporate law and the conventions of corporate life? What does it mean to be ethical as part of the corporate way of being? These lectures will explore the history, practices, and prospects of the corporation from a theological perspective. Theology, it will be shown, is not something extrinsic to the corporation, yet another point of view among many from which to analyse the corporate character. Rather, theology is a basic constituent of the social relation which we call corporate – in its design, in its legal expression, and in its particular logic the corporation is a product of theological categories of thought. Theology therefore is able to help uncover the hidden form and potential of corporate life, and to suggest fresh approaches to its membership, management, regulation and evaluation. Students of law, economics, and business as well as theology may find the material relevant to their courses of study and are welcome to attend.

Slow down for Christmas

Magnificat Dec. 2010

As Christmas approaches, time seems to rush by faster and faster. There is not enough time to do all that needs to be done. Many people find it the most frantic time of year. Yet a holyday was originally supposed to be a time of leisure, a period of contemplation. This loss of leisure is a symptom of modernity. Not that people in previous ages never got in a rush, but it seems pretty clear that the effect of modern communications, personal mobility and consumerism is to multiply the things we can do do and the places we can go, not to mention the people we can talk to. Our life span may have increased, but not our time (and not just because a large number of our extra years are spent in front of the television). There is a rebellion against this in the form of the Slow Food Movement, the Slow Cities and even the Slow Book Movement. The idea of these movements, now spreading around the world, is to slow us down and encourage us to focus on the quality and appreciation of life. For a believer, setting some time aside for prayer and meditation each day, no matter how busy we are, is always beneficial. The monthly Magnificat is designed to help with this. Distributed in the UK by The Catholic Herald, it contains prayers and readings for each day of the Church year, with spiritual reading from great writers and mystics. That's one way to prepare for Christmas, which is all about God's coming into a world that was almost too busy to find a place for Him.

LOCALISM
The Localism Bill laid before the British Parliament on 13 December is intended by the Coalition Government to help build the Big Society by putting an end to the hoarding of power within central government and top-down control of communities, and allowing local people the freedom to run their lives and neighbourhoods in their own way. The Bill contains a radical package of reforms that will devolve greater power and freedoms to councils and neighbourhoods, establish powerful new rights for communities, revolutionise the planning system, and give communities control over housing decisions. The legislation will transform relationships between central government, local government, communities and individuals. It comes right after a series of massive cuts to public spending necessitated by the recent economic crisis. For the Government summary of the legislation see here. No doubt there will be opportunities for Distributists and others to assess the reforms and their implications in the coming months.