Happy Anniversary to “Populorum Progressio”

One of our most popular CRS Fair Trade resources is the document connecting Fair Trade to Catholic Social Teaching. The parallels between the criteria for Fair Trade actions, such as participatory decision making, and treasured church principles such as subsidiarity, are instructive and inspiring for folks interested in economic justice. Truth is, though, that I rarely read the actual document that form the body of “Catholic Social Thought” which give rise to the actual guiding principles of CRS. That all changed this week as I participated in a Celebration of the 40th Anniversary of Populorum Progressio, or for those of us who don’t speak Latin, “The Development of Peoples.”

Maureen McCullough, director of the CRS Northeast regional office, and I were honored to be with the staff of the Edmundite Center for Faith and Culture and contribute to panel discussions considering how “Development of Peoples” is or isn’t relevant to achieving the Millennium Development Goals set by the world community. To prepare for my session on Fair Trade as a model of sustainable development, I had to read the actual encyclical. Now before you start yawning, let me share some quotes that stood out for me, and how those relate to the CRS Fair Trade program.

One of the most popular phrases from the document is “…development is the new name for peace…” and beyond that catchy slogan is a helpful description of why this is so. But what caught my attention were the teachings about conventional and fair trade. Consider, “As a result of technical progress the value of manufactured goods is rapidly increasing and they can always find an adequate market. On the other hand, raw materials produced by under-developed countries are subject to wide and sudden fluctuations in price, a state of affairs far removed from the progressively increasing value of industrial products. As a result, nations whose industrialization is limited are faced with serious difficulties when they have to rely on their exports to balance their economy and to carry out their plans for development. The poor nations remain ever poor while the rich ones become still richer.” [57] If one substitutes “knowledge-based services” for “manufactured goods,” the state of affairs for our global economy doesn’t seem 40 years old.

It may be disheartening to think that situations described 40 years ago remain the same, if not worse, today. But I took faith in Pope Paul’s own reference to time-tested values. He recalls the teaching of Leo XIII from the mid 1800s that “an economy of exchange can no longer be based solely on the law of free competition, a law which…too often creates economic dictatorship.” Pope Paul closes that section with the statement “Freedom of trade is fair only if it is subject to the demands of social justice” a conclusion that has benefited from generations of thinking, praying, and acting on core values of trade conducted according to moral principles which allow “all peoples to become artisans of their destiny.”

By my reckoning the Fair Trade movement started in the late 1940s, thanks to the insights and dedication of a Mennonite volunteer. Over the years the Fair Trade movement has expanded and evolved. Being true to principles of justice and solidarity has allowed the movement to draw on the wisdom and experience of thinkers and believers like Pope Paul VI, that is, leaders who believed in the role each of us plays in achieving the development of peoples. The pope ends his teaching with this summons, which sounds very timely to me:

“All of you who have heard the appeal of suffering peoples, all of you who are working to answer their cries, you are the apostles of development which is good and genuine, which is not wealth that is self-centered and sought for its own sake, but rather an economy which is put at the service of [humans], the bread which is daily distributed to all, as a source of [brother and sisterhood] and a sign of Providence.”

May this quote of several decades ago motivate you to move forward in your solidarity work of Fair Trade! The deadline for accomplishing the MDG is just 8 years away!

This entry was posted on Friday, October 19th, 2007 and is filed under Events, Fair Trade, Resources . You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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