Replies

Unfortunately this is true. I despise the uber liberal National Catholic Reporter, but they have an analysis that is frighteningly plausible: Vatican note on economy the first ripple of a southern wave

...Focusing on how much papal muscle the note can flex, however, risks ignoring what is at least an equally revealing question: Whatever you make of it, does the note seem to reflect important currents in Catholic social and political thought anywhere in the world?
The answer is yes, and it happens to be where two-thirds of the Catholics on the planet today live: the southern hemisphere, also known as the developing world.
It's fitting that the Vatican official responsible for the document is an African, Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, because it articulates key elements of what almost might be called a "southern consensus." One way of sizing up the note's significance, therefore, is as an indication that the demographic transition long under way in Catholicism, with the center of gravity shifting from north to south, is being felt in Rome.
There are almost 750 million Catholics scattered across Africa, Asia and Latin America, and generalizations about such a vast pool of people are always hazardous. Nonetheless, on matters of sexual morality and the "culture wars," Catholics in the south generally strike Europeans and Americans as remarkably conservative -- opposed to gay marriage, anti-abortion, devoted to the traditional family. When the conversation shifts to economic policy and geopolitics, however, Catholic opinion in the developing world often comes off in the West as strikingly progressive.
To be specific, Southern bishops, priests, religious and laity often are:

Skeptical of free-market capitalism and unregulated globalization;
Wary about the global influence of the United States;
Pro-United Nations and pro-global governance;
In favor of a robust role for the state in the economy.

A few examples flesh out that picture.
In a 2002 issue of Theological Studies, the late Dean Brackley and Thomas Schubeck outlined a "Latin consensus" on the economy, expressed not just by avant-garde theologians in Latin America but in official church documents. They described it this way: "The market is a useful, even necessary means for stimulating production and allocating resources. However, in the 'new economy,' overreliance on the market has aggravated social inequality, further concentrated wealth and income, and left millions mired in misery."
Catholic leaders in other parts of the global south hold similar views. For instance, in a 127-page report issued in 2004, the Catholic bishops of Asia declared that "neoliberal economic globalization" destroys Asian families and is the primary cause of poverty on the continent.
In June 2005, a group of Catholic bishops from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Sudan, Uganda, Zambia, Somalia and Djibouti declared, "We are particularly horrified by the ravages of unbridled capitalism, which has taken away and stifled local ownership of economic initiatives and is leading to a dangerous gap between the rich few and the poor majority."
Now consider the language of the Vatican note, which breathes much the same air: "What has driven the world in such a problematic direction for its economy and also for peace? First and foremost, an economic liberalism that spurns rules and controls ... an economic system of thought that sets down a priori the laws of market functioning and economic development, without measuring them against reality, runs the risk of becoming an instrument subordinated to the interests of the countries that effectively enjoy a position of economic and financial advantage."
One can certainly debate the merits of those perceptions, or the policy moves that might flow from them. Yet to dismiss all this as nothing more than the rogue perceptions of an isolated Vatican department ignores the demographic and cultural realities of the church in the 21st century.
This is not the dying echo of warmed-over European socialism. For better or worse, it's the first ripple of a southern wave.