The Pope, the Supply Chain and Christmas Boxers

For most of my political life I’ve been around people who claim to be socially moderate but fiscally conservative. Or socially conservative but fiscally moderate. I’ve always found these sorts of labels amusing. They don’t really describe anything concrete, they just mean what the person or politician or professor wants them to mean. These labels are designed to put you at ease about the politics of that individual. This week we get a chance to see one public figure take an unabashed stance. Pope Benedict sweeps away all our comfortable Americanisms in his new encyclical, Caritas in veritate (Charity in Truth), in which he makes it clear that we cannot separate our social political stances from our fiscal political stances. Consider this paragraph: "Charity demands justice: recognition and respect for the legitimate rights of individuals and peoples," he says. "Justice must be applied to every phase of economic activity, because this is always concerned with man and his needs," he writes. "Locating resources, financing, production, consumption and all the other phases in the economic cycle inevitably have moral implications. Thus every economic decision has a moral consequence." [my emphasis] In America we have gotten very comfortable with the idea that the market decides value, whether it be the value of a shirt or the value of a meal or the value of a man’s labor. We have lengthened the supply chains to the point where the harsh realities at the far edges cannot possibly have anything to do with us. None of this is to denigrate the idea of profit. Nothing is more dignifying to the human creative spirit than the pursuit of and gain or profit. But as Benedict says, "Profit is useful if it serves as a means towards an end . . . once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty." Today there is vast, intransigent poverty gripping over half the planet. This poverty is certainly caused by the corruption, abuse and sin that people poor out on each other and themselves around the globe. But if anyone has the power to change this fact it would be the rich – us. Only we can choose to use less. Shine a light on corrupt practices and stand up to tyrants. Or refuse to deal with those who press labor from the poor for a substandard wage. The other day I heard the story of a guy named Kelsey Timmerman who decided to go to Bangladesh to meet the people who made his fancy Christmas boxer shorts. When he went home with them he was stunned to see how they lived. He said he always figured they would make less than Americans but would make a fair wage for their country. In fact these people barely made enough to stay alive and crawl back to work the next day. I’m scared to death that I might find myself standing before the Lord of Heaven and Earth one day explaining how Adam Smith’s invisible hand and the market means it really wasn’t my fault that I lived off of the abuse of so many for so long. I wonder if Americans would have any interest in a party that: -Believes in hard work for just rewards, -Seeks to foster environments where economies can flourish, but -Also is conscious of the need to protect the weak and create just economic results around the world and here in America . No I don’t . . . I just don’t know of a party willing to take that stance. __ The quotes of Benedict’s work were taken from the Washington Post article where you can learn more about Charity in Truth. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/07/AR2009070700656.html You can learn more about Kelsey Timmerman’s work and writings at: http://whereamiwearing.com/ A good first step to learning more about how people live at the other end of the supply chain would be to listen to the World Vision Report at this website: http://www.worldvisionreport.org/