Estructura De Un Ensayo

The impact of Globalization in Catholicism

In this atmosphere of intense transformations, the religions acquire new forms to influence in the reality, resolve individual and group crisis, and to help rebuild trust and solidarity necessary for coexistence. Religion has a central role to play in “humanizing” globalization, but in order to play this role it most become self-critical regarding its past use of religious violence. Christianity is still a central force in society; also in these cases its original role as the sole factor in determining order moral and spiritual matters has suffered great losses.

Because of this international religious and political presence, Catholicism and the institutional Catholic Church face continuous challenges of both a spiritual and social nature around the globe. These vary in a number of ways, within time constraints, cultural contexts, economic needs, social changes, medical/scientific/technological advances, and the movements of political wills and ideologies. There are essentially seven critical tenets of Catholic theological beliefs that are at the basis of all Catholic social thought and political policies:

1. All policies must be based on a respect for human dignity.

2. All people are connected to each other and therefore solidarity must exist between citizens and migrants, the rich and poor, the marginalized and the embraced in society.

3. Economic policy must consider how wealth is distributed in order to enhance the dignity of the person and the community.

4. Ethical governance must be based on a moral vision that is kept in the forefront of all decision making.

5. Social justice and human rights are critical ways to advance human dignity and should be supported globally.

6. Economic and social justice must always include an option for the poor.

7. There must be respect for families, parishes, neighborhoods, and cultures.

The Catholic Church has a record of calling for a more humane and ethical form of international economic development in the modern world, what it calls a third way. Looking at globalization from a political perspective, the church supports authority that respects all levels of local and state governance and calls on governments to collaborate with one another. All of these economic, political, and social downsides to globalization, in the church’s view have revealed personal and state behaviors ultimately characterized by selfishness, collective greed, and the hoarding of goods on a great scale.

The church is pragmatic about globalization, if not optimistic. It maintains that globalization of itself is neither good nor bad but will become what people make of it. The effects of globalization upon culture thus pose a special challenge to a Church that seeks to spread Christianity through "inculturation." Globalization, coming in the wake of industrialization and urbanization, tends to accelerate the decline of the mediating structures of civil society (families, parishes, neighborhoods) where the virtues that might serve to humanize globalization are instilled, reinforced, and transmitted from one generation to the next.

The culture-destroying aspects of these changes have alarmed even secular observers like Friedman who see them as potentially undermining the benefits of globalization itself, especially in developing countries: "You cannot build an emerging society if you are simultaneously destroying the cultural foundations that cement your society and give it the self-confidence and cohesion to interact properly with the world. Without a sustainable culture there is no sustainable community and without a sustainable community there is no sustainable globalization." While noting the problem, Friedman has absolutely nothing to say about how to counter those effects.

Pope Benedict XVI said in one of his great

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