statism, the principle or policy of concentrating extensive economic, political, and related controls in the state at the cost of individual liberty,
and: capitalism, an economic system based on private ownership of capital, capital being any form of wealth (including natural resources and wealth held in common, such as the planet itself.)
By enlightening us on the principal of subsidiarity, Benedict, perhaps unintentionally gives his blessing to today's burgeoning movements for grassroots cultural socialism. A community socialism opposed to the formal top down organized state socialism that was born a century and a half ago in reaction to the iniquities of its parent 'isms', private capitalism and state capitalism. Shall a new 'ism' be coined, 'culturism', communityism, localism, humanityism? "Isms' always foment argument in their defining. Perhaps the Papacy's principle of subsidiarity is simple and clear enough to become useful.
In the new Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela the Chavez administration has for years now been enfranchising thousands of the nations poorest communities, asking its own local councils what work they themselves would like to do to better their lives. If approved, the government supplies the tools and expertise where needed, and the members of the communities perform the labor for the project they have chosen. The community could decide to build a water line, a school, a road, a small enterprise or factory, a clinic, a school, a bridge, etc., its their plan that becomes their accomplishment, their subsequent enjoyment and pride. The Cuban doctors that have come in exchange for Venezuelan oil teach students medicine as well as treat patients. See Monthly Review Report from Caracas
In islands of enlightenment in the industrialized nations and semi-industrialized nations there are manifestations of a newly discovered confidence in the viability, reliability, nobility and happiness of localities self-implementing what can now be called, thanks to the Pope's UN message, the principle of subsidiarity. Argentinean workers having had success re-opening shut down and abandoned factories in solidarity, with great ingenuity, feel self-confident and pride in their shared achievements free of supervisors. In Italy self-run cooperative industries have grown and contributed greatly to that nations prosperity. And in many nations employee owned factories and enterprises have made their communities self-sufficient to the point of issuing and using script as local currency to retain financial control of common assets.
Readers interested in a more complete picture and in depth treatment of grassroots-up radical democracy replacing top-down absentee control of their lives, non-participatory economics, fraudulent banking and pseudo-democratic government, might like to look at:
We thank the Pontiff for having spoken out for justice, albeit softly, for the respectability and attention our repeating his words will gain. These wise soft spoken dissident pronouncements from such an august international personality, revered by millions the world over, must be taken up and shouted up the blind and criminally insane power elite and their paid collaborating jingoistic defenders in commercial media print and telecast.
But honest and informed dissident voices are not heard in conglomerate owned media, media, which Pope John Paul cited as undemocratic - the same media, however, that covered every moment of His Holiness's week-long visit during both day time and prime time hours.
Shall we not bring Pope Benedict's UN speech to the attention of our clergy, so hypocritically silent about the present wars on the third world unmentioned by Pope Benedict?
We would have hoped, and still hope for this Pope, in his wisdom, to instruct his legions of bishops, monsignors, priests, nuns, and lay brothers to join or lead the growing activist peace movement, which fights for coverage and the media reforms spelled out by John Paul II in a society absolutely uninterested in the huge death toll of innocent foreigners from U.S. wars in their very own beloved countries.
We can well appreciate that His Holiness spoke carefully, so not to directly criticize his host's foreign policy while a guest in the U.S. - Popes have rarely done so even speaking from Vatican City.
But here in America, Catholics and non-Catholics, Christians and non-Christians alike, holiday every year in honor of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who one year before his assassination broke his silence at Riverside Church in New York crying out,
"Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering."
"Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on
hatred rather than love."
I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I'm speaking against the war.
Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this One? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?
"For the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent."-"My country is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today"
"Silence is treason!" "Everyone can find his own way to protest, but everyone must protest!"
Rev. King condemned the Vietnam war of occupation and U.S. criminality in the use of its military and covert CIA for a murderous foreign policy in support of predatory international overseas investment and trade in a loud voice!
Yet forty years later, we live in a country whose media hails as heroes, all who were fooled into participating enthusiastically in that immoral and genocidal war Rev. King Jr. dared to speak out against.
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