New World Order and Church (2nd part)

This reflection is a follow-up to the previous blog entry. (See below.)

     Evidence that governments around the world are attempting to reduce their commitment to social services is certainly not hard to find. As a major example, witness what is happening in Washington these days under the pretext of managing the public debt of the United States. Similar operations are underway in the European Union. (Witness the example of Greece.) In other times these were Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) imposed by the International Monetary Fund.  The difference today is moot. And I insist that they are largely pretexts. The fact is that governments do not want to have to deal with this side of governing. They would much prefer that private interests or “civil society” organizations be responsible. Thus we find moves toward privately run prisons, “charter schools,” and all sorts of aid programs funded by groups like United Appeal.
     Now, where do we find the Church in all this, especially the Roman Catholic Church? At the Vatican there is a small organism with considerable influence called Cor unum. It is established to deal with assisting those in need. It would like very much to bring all Catholic aid and cooperation organizations under its umbrella. One of these is Caritas Internationalis.

This is the second largest international aid organization in the world, much larger than the Red Cross or any NGO like Oxfam or Care. Only the United Nations can mobilize more resources in an emergency than Caritas. Most countries in the world have a national Caritas organization under the direction of the bishops. There is a central coordinating body with an international secretariat and a Cardinal as president. Recently the Vatican intervened in Caritas to prevent the secretary general, a highly competant woman from Australia, from being re-elected at the international assembly. In recent years Caritas had begun to encourage the incorporation of elements of “international cooperation” into their aid programs. This meant not just handing out aid but helping people organize to meet their needs. This is not well viewed by Cor unum since it has a “political” flavour. So out with her!

     Meanwhile there is another set of Catholic organizations that are all about international cooperation. There is also an international body (CIDSE) but it is mostly to coordinate research and intervention on a consensus basis. Neither CIDSE nor the member organizations are part of Cordaid. More recently the pressure has been stepped up to get the whole body under Cor unum. This would give the Vatican much more control over them.

     Canada is an interesting case because its international cooperation organization (Development and Peace). It was founded as a lay movement with independence to carry out its mandate. It joined the Caritas network several years ago. Since then the Canadian bishops have been pressing Development and Peace to give more attention to international aid (intervention in emergencies rather than on-going assistance to local organizations who help people learn to deal with their problems themselves). Recently the bishops have established a permanent committee of bishops to “dialogue” with Development and Peace about the way to carry out its mandate. 

     My impression, and it is no more than that, is that there is a generalized effort to get both international aid and international cooperation much more directly under the control of the Vatican and then begin to set norms. (It should be remembered that in many countries, Caritas deals with local issues on a permanent basis and often carries a major role in “social services” in the countries where it operations. (Development and Peace is an anomaly in this case because it provides no social services to its own people.) The direction would seem to be, if I read the situation correctly, that these organizations would limit their interventions to providing “assistance” to those in need. That means, for the most part, fundamental but limited services like handing out food supplies, teaching women basic skills like sewing and cooking, etc.  Once Cor unum has all these organizations in hand (and it is important again to mention that  we would be talking very, large sums of money), they would then be in a position to be a major broker for social services in many countries of the world (including the USA).

      All of this does not leave me in the least pessimistic. These structures do not represent the vastly larger reality of Church and society. Moreover, in that larger scene there is so much good happening that, at times, it is simply overwhelming. For more on this, please consult the texts prepared by the Quebec Group on Contextual Theology:

Who Will Help us Cross the Desert?     New World Coming     Hope and Mobilization  

(To see the original versions (in French), please consult the site of the Groupe de théologiecontextuelle québécoise.)