On June 29, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI is expected to sign his third encyclical, Caritas in Veritate ("Charity in Truth"). Not much is known about the content of the encyclical, except that it will be a social encyclical in the tradition of Leo XIII's Rerum novarum, Pius XI's Quadragesimo anno, and John Paul II's Centesimus annus. And even less is known about the economic views of Pope Benedict XVI, which will undoubtedly play a central role in the text of the encyclical.
When Pope John Paul II released Centesimus annus in 1991 on the 100th anniversary of Leo XIII's Rerum novarum, it was widely regarded as an acknowledgment that capitalism had triumphed over socialism. The Berlin Wall had fallen two years before; Eastern European nations that had spent most of the 20th century under communist rule were beginning to embrace a free-market economy.
Centesimus annus reflected those developments, and yet those who actually read the text before commenting on it recognized that Pope John Paul II expressed reservations about the "triumph" of capitalism. He went to great lengths to point out—as Leo XIII and Pius XI had before him—that capitalism and socialism shared a common pedigree. The materialism of the modern world led to a reductionism that regarded man as made for the economy, rather than seeing the economy as made for man.
If socialists believed that the inexorable march of history would result in the triumph of their ideology, capitalists were no less certain that "economic law" would doom socialism and lead to a glorious future under capitalism.
Eighteen years later, that future does not look quite so bright. Some will argue that the economic collapse of 2008 was brought on by Western countries adopting some of the discredited policies of socialism; others will point to the housing and stock-market bubbles fueled by greed and made possible through the removal of Depression-era government regulations.
Yet both fail to see that the problem is much more basic, as John Paul II (and Leo XIII and Pius XI before him) saw. In a world that values consumption above our duties to God and our fellow man, no economic system will ever in itself make up for our moral failings.
That, I believe, will be the theme that Pope Benedict XVI will pick up in Caritas in Veritate and carry forward. Those who believed (wrongly) that Centesimus annus "baptized capitalism" will be disappointed—but so, I think, will be those who believe that the answer to our current economic crisis is the revival of socialism.
Instead, Pope Benedict will follow the course charted by his eminent predecessors as successor to Saint Peter, explaining why "economic law" cannot be allowed to trump Christian charity. The result will be a message that the modern world needs to hear; yet it will also be one that few, sadly, are likely to heed.