All attention will shortly be focused on Pope Benedict’s new social encyclical, which is supposed to be based on Pope Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio, issued in 1967. Today, then, I would like to focus on one of the ideas laid out by Pope Paul in his far-reaching document, an idea that seems to have been lost in the midst of time, and yet is more relevant today than ever before. It is the idea to set up a world fund whereby world leaders would “set aside part of their military expenditures for a world fund to relieve the needs of impoverished peoples”. Cut military expenditure, promote development.
This has a number of advantages. It embraces the multilateral approach, an approach to global solidarity that has always been reflected in papal thinking. As Pope Paul put it, “only a concerted effort on the part of all nations, embodied in and carried out by this world fund, will stop these senseless rivalries and promote fruitful, friendly dialogue between nations.” And given the poverty in the world, given the unjust distribution of resources, given the lack of basic rights such as education and health care “we cannot tolerate public and private expenditures of a wasteful nature; we cannot but condemn lavish displays of wealth by nations or individuals; we cannot approve a debilitating arms race”.
Today, in the United States, not only is military expenditure at an all time high, but this is a noted point of pride. A decade after Populorum Progressio, Ronald Reagan came on the scene with a policy of dramatically ratcheting up military spending, and letting social spending pay the price. In other words, the very opposite of Pope Paul’s vision. And this has become a consensus position in the United States — nobody dares challenge the military hegemony. Very few Catholics address this issue, and instead are caught up in the witchcraft of “natural security”.
Today, amidst the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and as deficits expand, military expenditure accounts for almost a quarter of the federal budget. Let me raise the banner of Pope Paul and call for this money instead to be used to fund health care, support families, and alleviate poverty within the shores of the United States, and to promote development worldwide. For, as Pope John Paul wrote in Centesimus Annus, another name for peace is development, and this is a collective responsibility, involving “a concerted worldwide effort to promote development, an effort which also involves sacrificing the positions of income and of power enjoyed by the more developed economies.” A first step would be a diversion of military spending.
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