A-Infos (en) Italy, FDCA, Cantiere #36 - A Reflection on the Progressivism of Pope Francis - Giulio Angeli (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The publication of the following contribution follows the election of 
the American Augustinian Robert Francis Prevost as the 267th pontiff of 
the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church, taking the name Leo XIV. He 
succeeds the recently deceased Argentine Jesuit Jorge Mario Bergoglio, 
who, under the name "Pope Francis," authored the 2015 encyclical 
"Laudato Si'." Immediately after its publication, the encyclical aroused 
great interest for its contents, which were defined with frankly 
excessive emphasis as progressive, and it attracted widespread 
enthusiastic support, especially from the left in its myriad political 
and trade union configurations, from the most moderate to the most 
radical. At the time, in reality, there was no in-depth debate on the 
Encyclical as a fundamental reference of Pope Francis' pontificate: 
instead, it was greeted with that redemptive and propagandistic charge 
that current apologists arbitrarily attribute to the actions of the late 
pontiff, limiting themselves, yesterday as today, to considering 
statements on which they are unable to reflect, precisely because they 
are overwhelmed by their own exuberant and decontextualized 
self-referentialism.

Thus it was that even on the occasion of the death of the pontiff, all 
politicians rushed to celebrate his intentions which, even if they did 
not proceed beyond the declarations, albeit significant considering the 
source from which they came, ended up being adapted, despite themselves, 
also for opposing purposes and strategies pursued by the ruling groups 
within the Catholic Church, in reference to the policies of the centers 
of power that dominate the world.

In this context of crisis, it should not be surprising that Pope 
Francis's apologists have found themselves and continue to find 
themselves "on the left", where the widespread superficiality of those 
who elevate the late pontiff to the icon of widespread progressivism 
emerges with demoralizing clarity that often takes on the tone of 
arrogance, ignoring what Gramsci had affirmed in relation to the 
internal components of the Catholic Church at the time of Pius XI and 
the need to rebalance the fight against modernism, which had unbalanced 
Catholicism too far to the right, to center it in the Jesuits "that is, 
to give it a flexible political form, without doctrinal rigidities, 
great freedom of maneuver..." (Antonio Gramsci ("I Quaderni del 
Carcere", Notebook 20 (XXV), 1934-35", 4 "Integral Catholics, Jesuits, 
Modernists").

We believe, then, that in such a context, a critical reflection on the 
encyclical "Laudato Si'" can contribute to our understanding of both the 
legacy left by the previous pontificate and the future strategies of the 
pontificate of Leo XIV.

We express ourselves in these terms, aware that the Church is humanity's 
oldest "party ." It does its job, and generally succeeds in doing so by 
combining its own contradictions, sometimes jarring, into resulting 
systems of ideas, choices, and behaviors. These, including through the 
control and use of progressivism, have historically allowed Catholic 
conservatism to continually reemerge from "behind the throne." These 
tendencies in Vatican politics have been embraced and widely applied 
within the Christian Democratic sphere, albeit with additional balancing 
acts that have sometimes reduced their effectiveness. This occurred 
throughout the history of the Italian Socialist Party, perhaps with the 
further opportunistic caricature that characterized the Craxi era, to 
the point of extending even to the events of Italian national communism, 
albeit with innumerable rigidities and intolerances, which however would 
not have prevented the liquidation of the PCI in order to undertake the 
process that would have led to the birth of the current "Democratic 
Party" , a concrete and modest legacy of the "Historic Compromise" of 
Berlinguer memory.

We are also aware that the above reflections cannot be exhaustive 
regarding the current phase characterizing the Catholic Church, and for 
more in-depth considerations we refer to the contribution by comrade 
Gianni Cimbalo: "Re Leone XIV," present in this issue no. 36 of "il 
CANTIERE," which leads us to a final consideration.

It has been claimed from many quarters that the encyclical "Rerum 
Novarum", published in 1891 by Leo XIII, with whom the current pontiff 
also formally places himself in continuity, opened the social question 
in the Catholic Church: never before has the conditional tense seemed so 
necessary, precisely because the encyclical in question appears to be 
extremely conservative. In this regard, there were also those, naturally 
on the left, who felt it was appropriate to display irony by stating 
that the encyclical should not be considered "The Communist Manifesto," 
which, written by Marx and Engels in 1848-a full 43 years 
earlier-asserts clear and discriminating concepts, prefiguring a society 
that the encyclical fiercely opposes and condemns. Driven as it is by a 
vibrant anti-socialist and restorationist urge, this is the true purpose 
of Rerum Novarum, which is resolved in the dogma that also characterizes 
Catholic progressivism in posing "the world as the problem and 
Catholicism as the solution." So, on the one hand, it is permissible to 
believe whatever one wants, but on the other, it is not legitimate to 
act by mocking others so that they will believe it too.

Reflections on the Encyclical "Laudato si'"

History expresses those who are called to interpret it, and the 
phenomenon of Pope Francis was born and developed precisely as a 
consequence of the need for urgent renewal on the part of the Catholic 
Church.

Contexts: encyclicals and advisors

Of course, encyclicals aren't written by the pope alone, but by various 
advisors, and with regard to the encyclical "Laudato si' ," one of these 
is Jeffrey Sachs, a longtime Vatican regular. Sachs currently directs 
"the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York, and in the 
1980s and 1990s, he stood out for the 'shock therapy' he applied to 
several Latin American and Eastern European countries to facilitate a 
rapid transition to a free market economy, regardless of the social 
repercussions." (L'Espresso 01/06/2015)

Jeffrey Sachs is an American economist with a neo-Keynesian background 
but in strong opposition to the neoliberalism advocated by the "Chicago 
school" which, through its founder, the economist Milton Friedman, was 
the inspiration for neoliberal policies: starting precisely from the 
"experiment" conducted in Chile under General Pinochet, who came to 
power with the bloody coup d'état of 1973, ordered by the US to 
overthrow the government of the socialist Salvador Allende.

The Chilean " experiment" of 1975 consisted of a process of unbridled 
privatization and liberalization of the country's economy, a process 
conducted with great energy and simultaneity against a working class 
beaten and oppressed by a ferocious dictatorship. The "experiment" 
became a model, and Friedman became the inspiration for the neoliberal 
policies subsequently implemented, with appropriate adaptations, in 
England (Margaret Thatcher's term 1979-1987) and the United States 
(Ronald Reagan's term 1980-1989).

Ten years later, in 1985, we see Jeffrey Sachs, in his early thirties, 
as a consultant to the Bolivian government (under Pax Estensorro), 
attempting to "combine political liberalization and democracy with 
economic liberalization... Thanks to Sachs     - the evangelist of 
democratic capitalism - as the New York Times called him - "shock 
therapy" had finally shaken off the stench of dictatorships and death 
camps that had lingered since Friedman had made his trip to Santiago 
(Chile) ten years earlier... Bolivia had adopted a Pinochetian-style 
"shock therapy" without a Pinochet and, no less, under a center-left 
government (under Victor Paz Estensorro) ... the things that Pinochet 
did with the bayonet, Paz did within a democratic system..." (Naomy 
Klein: "Shock economy" - Rizzoli editore Milano 2007 - see in particular 
chap. 7 pag. 164)

With Sachs, neoliberalism adapts to a "democratic" framework to be 
practiced more widely. Indeed, we will see Sachs dishing out "Bolivian 
therapies" in Poland as an advisor to the Solidarity government in 1988, 
supported by the Catholic Church, which was already playing a decisive 
role in the collapse of the USSR.

But Sachs was also a supporter of Boris Yeltsin, whose mandate 
(1991-1999) oversaw the transition from the dissolution of the USSR to 
the Russian Federation, a transition also characterized by " Bolivian 
therapies" as well as bloody repression, in the exclusive interest of 
the oligarchs of the former Soviet regime. It is precisely as a result 
of the Russian catastrophe and the role played by the IMF and the US 
government, unwilling to provide economic aid, that Sachs appears to 
have gradually toned down his essentially neoliberal positions, at least 
in their practical implementation.

In this regard, it is interesting to note the conciliatory positions 
Sachs has taken on the Greek crisis, seeking a balance between the needs 
of the Greek government and the German solution that would allow the 
reemergence of neo-Keynesian mediation aimed at not penalizing Greece in 
order to protect the role of the IMF (recently favorable to debt 
restructuring) and US foreign policy (Greece's continued membership of 
the euro to avoid weakening NATO's role).      (See: J. Sachs: "My 
Solution for Greece," Il Sole 24 Ore, August 11, 2015.)

The Encyclical "Laudato si'" and the Catholic Church

The reason why the Encyclical "Laudato Si'" sought such collaboration 
likely lies in the fact that Sachs appears to share the view that 
poverty is the consequence of the exclusion of the poor from production, 
and not the capitalist exploitation of manual and intellectual labor. 
This view already appears in the Encyclical " Centesimus Annus," written 
by Pope John Paul II in 1991, and which, again, saw Sachs as one of its 
advisors. In any case, this desired " inclusion in production " would be 
the direct responsibility of the lower classes and not of the capitalist 
economy as a whole, as Keynes advocated, envisioning, at most, aid from 
the IMF, which, indeed, Sachs always urged.

Furthermore, at this stage, the Catholic Church is characterized by 
profound contradictions that complicate every path, requiring mediation, 
often through the use of skilled and accredited advisors capable of 
ensuring some continuity with the past. This is done to slow down and 
counterbalance certain attempts at innovation, or, more precisely, 
outright revisionism, to prevent them from proceeding autonomously and 
becoming uncontrollable over time.

Regardless of subjective intentions, the Encyclical therefore 
constitutes an attempt from within the Catholic Church to recover and 
enhance its credibility and political role of dialogue and mediation 
with the great powers, which have been deeply undermined by a certain 
complacency over past victories, a series of grave scandals, and the 
inadequacy of the previous pontificate. The Roman Catholic Apostolic 
Church is, historically, the largest, oldest, and most organized 
political party in human history, and if at this stage a Pope like 
Francis has emerged, it is because its hierarchy realizes that 
innovation is essential, but it also imposes a price that must be 
paid-but in moderation, however. It is a question of determining how 
much and for how long these prices must continue to be paid. Above all, 
it is a question of ensuring that the innovation is moderate in its 
practical implementation and that, therefore, it is enunciated above all 
as a reason for propaganda, precisely to guarantee the Catholic 
hierarchy ample room for maneuver and mediation in the future on the 
basis of a renewed credibility, which will enhance its currently 
declining political role.

Not all of the Catholic Church sides with the current Pope, and indeed, 
part of it calls for some control, if not even a significant downsizing. 
If this is the goal, Sachs's presence is a guarantee, because for our 
economist, the framework of his programs may be neo-Keynesian, but his 
solutions are certainly neoliberal and capable of controlling annoying 
revisionist tensions.

Thus, Pope Francis does not represent the entire Catholic Church, but 
rather a segment of it, the one most concerned and sensitive to the 
dramatic reality of the consequences of capitalism, which are measured 
in terms of inequality and underdevelopment, environmental devastation, 
war, and the domination of financial capital at the expense of commodity 
production itself, which, as Marx had already predicted, is becoming a 
cumbersome reality for financial capital. As always, the direction is 
not single but contradictory, and serious problems arise regarding the 
control and mediation of phenomena and the people who interpret them.

Needs for continuity

From this point of view, the encyclical "Laudato si'" replicates and 
develops the statements already present in " Centesimus Annus", seeking 
to reorganize and update into an organic whole the scattered pieces of 
that dispersed coherence, manifested over time by the Catholic 
hierarchies: it cites John XXIII (who actively worked to bring about the 
collapse of the center-left in the 1960s) and his encyclical "Pacem in 
Terris"; it cites Paul VI (who was characterized by his conservatism); 
it cites John Paul II (who was one of the main directors of the collapse 
of the Soviet Union); it cites Benedict XVI (who led a brief 
traditionalist pontificate); it does not cite, however, John Paul I, who 
began his very brief pontificate by trying to reduce the power of the 
IOR and who did not have time to express much. At the same time, 
concessions are made, albeit indirectly, to "Liberation Theology ," 
through extensive references to the Episcopal Assemblies of Latin 
America, which over time have watered down its social content, 
transforming it into innocuous, yet effective, pronouncements. (Pope 
Francis: "Laudato si'" Encyclical on the care of the common good - Ed. 
S. Paolo - Libreria Editrice Vaticana - Vatican City 2015 - p. 55, note 
no. 24).

Reading the Encyclical, one gets the impression of being faced with a 
magnificent, tested, effective, and above all authoritative machine 
against injustice, which is precisely what is lacking in the world 
today. The Pope's attempt to demonstrate that the Church has always 
supported this denunciation, albeit intermittently and, it is said, 
sometimes with unjustified weakness, gives the Catholic Church a great 
primacy of originality and qualifies it as a fundamental point of 
reference for the redemption of the world's least privileged.

The encyclical does not represent a decisive return to the original 
message of the Gospel and the origins of Christianity, but rather to the 
more evocative and less demanding experience of St. Francis, on the 
basis of which it attempts to organically redesign a Church that over 
the centuries has, objectively, gone in another direction, albeit with 
some significant exceptions.

Moreover, the vibrant denunciations of inequality as a consequence of 
the role of multinationals, international finance, the capitalist logic 
of profit, and, in general, the capitalist system of production in its 
imperialist phase, and thus also of rearmament, war, and its countless 
horrors, have always been the heritage of narrow revolutionary groups. 
Although they supported these positions with scientific analyses that 
the Encyclical carefully avoids, and certainly not due to the 
incompetence of its drafters, these groups have never had the capacity 
to engage in broad class dialogue and have remained largely confined to 
minority views, if not even ridiculed as residual.

From this point of view, the Encyclical stirs the stagnant waters of 
the Catholic Church and of a conformist, subservient, complicit, or 
impotent left, arousing innumerable enthusiasms and cross-sectional 
consensus in every political and social strata.

The Catholic Church and Christianity

The Encyclical addresses "humanity," an attempt to engage all of 
Christianity in a vision of unity through renewal. Hence the repeated 
openness to Judaism, the Orthodox Church, and Protestantism.

Consequently, neither Islam nor the great Eastern religions are 
addressed, as they are objectively competing, since the goal is 
precisely to reunite Christianity, aligning it with a progressive 
perspective, in order to define a renewed Christian point of reference 
on a global scale. The "Islamic question" will come later.

The intent is acute and comes at a time of profound crisis: state and 
market are experiencing their inevitable failure without any 
internationalist perspective emerging; the major social democracies are 
more or less direct and conscious accomplices of imperialism, as was the 
case on the eve of World War I; the major trade unions are paralyzed by 
their subservience to the imperialist policies of their respective 
countries and governments, while the revolutionary elements are 
widespread but confused and impotent, as the Greek affair has most 
recently eloquently demonstrated.

The Catholic Church is therefore preparing to redefine its guiding role 
in the world by re-proposing the ancient and unbreakable dogma valid for 
all ages of humanity: reality as the problem, the Catholic Church (in 
this case we could also say "Christianity"), as the solution.

The harsh nature of the crisis and the changing external and internal 
contexts thus offer the Catholic Church the opportunity to position 
itself as the principal spokesperson for the world's poor, thirsting for 
redemption. The authoritativeness of this source conceals a certain 
superficiality in assigning responsibility for the tragedies that are 
overwhelming the less well-off social classes around the world, causing 
poverty, war, death, and a loss of hope for a better future.

The wretched of the world

 This awareness is clearly evident in the Encyclical and is based 
primarily on continental Latin American Catholicism, profoundly 
influenced by the social Christianity that culminated in "Liberation 
Theology" and in countless deep-rooted grassroots pastoral experiences 
that, in recent decades, have profoundly affected the Catholic Church in 
numerous countries such as Brazil, Nicaragua, Argentina, and El 
Salvador. Today, in fact, the beatification of Father Oscar Romero, 
assassinated in El Salvador on March 24, 1980 by the military, appears 
as a necessary act, an attempt to remove the stubborn desire to hinder 
his entire pastoral experience with the poor, against landowners, and 
against the bloody repression by death squads supported by the El 
Salvador government and the CIA. This repression was also supported by 
entire sectors of the high-ranking continental Catholic hierarchies and 
by the substantial indifference to Romero met with from both Paul VI and 
John Paul II.

This occurs in a situation in which "liberation theology" seems to have 
exhausted its propulsive force among Latin American believers and the 
world's poor, and progressive Catholic hierarchies are preparing to 
gather and interpret what remains. Certainly, the encyclical's 
denunciatory dimension is destined to arouse justified hopes among the 
world's poor, along with a widespread desire for redemption, which, 
however, is not what the encyclical proposes.

Between vagueness, concertation and competition

In the end, in fact, after pages and pages where the injustices of the 
world are appropriately listed, the responsibilities for these are 
attributed to phenomena and entities that from an initial identifying 
clarity become gradually elusive, and the clear starting definitions 
(borrowed from "liberation theology ") are sweetened by other extremely 
generic ones, which follow one another without an apparent order which 
however takes over.

Reference is made to the responsibilities of economic powers linked to 
finance, to the principle of profit maximization, to ambiguous local and 
national economic interests, to competition, to multinationals, and to 
consumerism, as concessions to the undeniable reality of established 
facts. But then one moves on to references easily digestible to most, 
such as individualism, human power, the unregulated market, and 
indefinite progress. References are made to "some" and "particular 
interests ," to the point of coining frankly cryptic concepts such as 
"modern anthropocentrism" and "the technical-economic paradigm" to avoid 
citing the words "capitalism and imperialism"     in an objective 
reference to their respective historical phenomena. This deliberate 
vagueness thus prevails over the more real and concrete starting 
concepts, thus making the Encyclical adaptable to the broadest possible 
context. As evidence of the extreme heterogeneity and vagueness of 
internal references within the Catholic Church (it is frankly difficult 
to connect some of the contents of the 2007 General Conference of the 
Latin American and Caribbean Episcopate - para. 38, page 55, note no. 26 
- with the statements, for example, of John Paul II - para. 5, page 29, 
note no. 4 - ), we come to propose a change in lifestyle (para. 206, 
page 181), which harks back to the austerity of Berlinguerian memory (" 
On the Policy of Austerity and Rigour" - E. Berlinguer: speech at the 
Conference of Intellectuals - 1977) in a feeble perspective of 
concertation that hopes for a poorly defined "World Authority" in order 
to "prevent the most serious problems that end up affecting everyone". ( 
Par. 175, pp. 158 - 159, note, 129), now completely overcome by the same 
capitalist and social dynamics, as they have also been taking shape in 
Europe since 1970.

Furthermore, the intensification of imperialist conflict with the 
emergence of new powers in the world market, the progressive affirmation 
of neoliberalism and the unequal distribution of social wealth, the 
spread of wars, hunger, and underdevelopment as a consequence of unequal 
development, environmental devastation, the unending wave of 
privatizations, the widespread attack on wages, work, and the living 
conditions of the lower classes, the destruction of the welfare state 
and the increasingly violent attack on the very concept of trade unions, 
the elimination of social protections with the progressive paralysis 
within the context of an ever-increasing increase in " mass poverty " 
even in mature capitalist countries-all this constitutes both practical 
and theoretical proof of the rejection of any concerted approach. The 
Encyclical concludes with the sixth chapter, which is necessarily 
educational in nature, aimed at changing lifestyles through education. 
The Church is therefore engaged in an intense campaign to "educate about 
the alliance between humanity and the environment" (Chap. II, pp. 183 - 
192) which results in a dilution of the initial evaluations.

Leaving aside the traditional and pathetic references to the defense of 
life from its conception and the underestimation of the immigration 
phenomenon, evidently taken for granted in the colorful parade of 
contemporary horrors, what we believe is indicative is the lack of a 
detailed identification of the danger of a future direct imperialist 
war, not fragmented into regional conflicts which, however, are not 
considered in their specific gravity, evidently also included in the 
detailed list of the world's horrors.

The Encyclical's ending is vacuous and fragile, and the alternative is 
lacking despite the beginning, whose vehemence creates expectations that 
are then disappointed in a sort of voluntarism delegated to the 
established power of the Church and its ability to engage with the 
dominant powers, which it is difficult to understand why they should 
pursue interests other than imperialist ones, given that the balance of 
power is pulling favorably in that direction.

The Encyclical "Laudato si'" remains, at best, a list of good 
intentions, inevitably destined, at most, to requalify in a social sense 
the political role of the otherwise declining Roman Catholic Apostolic 
Church which, with its renewed prominence, evidently tends to take the 
job away from "the left" , in its historical reformist and even radical 
configurations, both from social movements and from electoral cartels 
with progressive intentions (Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain).

Conclusions

Many comrades, evidently disappointed by a defeated, subservient, and 
impotent left, greeted the Encyclical with growing enthusiasm, the fruit 
of the understandable frustration of calls for redemption. This 
reflected a flawed attitude that had developed within the national 
socialist and communist tradition, according to which, for proposals to 
be credible, they must be uttered by authoritative sources. Togliatti, 
too, spoke of revolution and socialism, but it was not the same 
revolution and socialism as many of those who had defined it by 
sacrificing their own freedom and, in many cases, with their own blood, 
fighting fascism and Stalinism.

Compared to the Encyclical, therefore, we are not faced with a 
difference in language but rather a real difference in purpose that we 
intend to emphasize, because the abolition of the "exploitation of man 
by man" implies the inevitable overcoming of class-divided society and 
therefore of the capitalist system of production and the horrors that 
derive from it. But this is not the purpose of the Encyclical "Laudato 
si'," nor of the Catholic Church, nor of Pope Francis, but rather our 
libertarian and internationalist communist perspective.

The Encyclical is a fact that must not be underestimated, or worse 
still, "snubbed." Beyond any overestimation, it is destined to stir 
things up and establish dialogue with even deep social strata that are 
difficult to access, not only by revolutionary minority groups but also 
by widespread mass action. If, from this perspective, the active 
direction is the Catholic Church, this signals, rather, a crisis in 
revolutionary theory and practice. It is this critical consideration 
that anarchists must reflect on, to emerge from their narrow and 
isolated contexts and finally return to engage with the real movement in 
order to abolish "the present state of affairs."

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