Originally published on the CGS blog on January 20, 2016.
The following is the introduction to an updated paper by Dr. Maja Brauer and Mr. Andreas Bummel with the German-based Committee for a Democratic UN (KDUN). The full paper is available on KDUN’s website here.
On June 18, 2015, Pope Francis published his second encyclical titled Laudato Si (Praise be to you). On behalf of Christianity, the Pope urged responsibility in dealing with humanity’s “common home,” the earth.
The statement elaborates in detail on critical economic, social, and ecological grievances in the world. In view of these, the Pope calls on all human beings–Christians as well as followers of other religions and disbelievers–to “bring the whole human family together to seek a sustainable and integral development.” This is supposed to lead to a more humane world society that ensures a dignified existence not only of all alive today, but also of future generations, as well as of “Sister Earth” itself.
In addition to discussing ethical norms and possible political measures, the Pope also addresses the underlying conditions of the global political system. Referencing his predecessor Benedict XVI, he calls for the creation of a “true political world authority” that is able to cope with global challenges. To explain this more fully, Francis quotes a passage from Benedict XVI’s 2009 encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth):
To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority, as my predecessor Blessed John XXIII indicated some years ago.
Since the Second World War, this perspective of political unification was continuously endorsed and developed in the tradition of papal teaching. It is more than merely a conclusion that the globalized and interdependent hazards of the technological age require common world institutions that ensure peace and implement supra-nationally coordinated actions and strategies.
Rather, this aspiration is deeply rooted in the societal model of Catholic social doctrine itself, which is cosmopolitan in principle. In a systematic context, it can be used to derive the decisive normative guidelines on which a future political world order would have to be based on from the perspective of the Catholic Church.
In the full version of the paper, a closer look at this notion of world political order will show that its general outline is identical with the model of a world federation based on the rule of law and subsidiarity that has long been advocated by the world federalist movement.
In this context we will also look into the question of how the goal of democratic global structures–and the possible creation of a world parliament in particular–would have to be judged from the perspective of papal teaching.
