New wealth comes with a responsibility to distribute it

In a message for New Year's Day, Pope John Paul II characterises the new era which we are now entering as "the bearer of great hopes and disturbing questions". He asks: "Will everyone be able to take advantage of the global market? Can we have globalisation in solidarity, globalisation without marginalisation?"

Solidarity, he declares, is without frontiers; poorer nations to have the right to access to a fair and just share in the benefits of the global market. The same principle applies to the poorer sectors in our own economy here at home. The 1997 UN Development Report declares: "Extreme poverty could be banished from the globe by early next century," if the political will to do so were there.

The respect which Ireland enjoys at the United Nations and in the European Union gives us the potential for nurturing that political will.

But Ireland's moral influence at international level would gain in credibility if there were increased evidence of moral-political commitment to the elimination of poverty and injustice here at home. Poverty creates what Justine McCarthy has called "wastelands of human dignity". These are found particularly in areas of urban blight but also in areas of rural decay. There are many boats which have not been lifted by any rising economic tide.

Pope John Paul has asked that, for the great Jubilee of the Millennium, we make a covenant with the poor. At the risk of a horrible mixed metaphor we can say that the Celtic Tiger needs a human face and a human heart. Ireland's material prosperity needs what Bergson called a "supplement of soul".

January 21st, 1999, just one year from now, marks the 80th anniversary of the first session of the first Dail Eireann. That session unanimously adopted the "Democratic Programme" which, therefore, is among the foundational documents of the independent Irish State. The document undoubtedly owed much to the influence of James Connolly, but it is not the preserve of any political party. It is the common patrimony of all political parties in this State. We have long had a slogan in Irish politics referring to "the unfinished business of 1916". This has usually been understood as referring to Northern Ireland. I suggest that there is much "unfinished business" awaiting all political parties in relation to the issues of social justice raised in the Democratic Programme.

The Programme is a substantial document. Let me quote just a few paragraphs:

"We affirm that all right to private property must be subordinate to public right and welfare . . .

"In return for willing service we, in the name of the Republic, declare the right of every citizen to an adequate share of the produce of the nation's labour . . .

"It shall be the first duty of the Government of the Republic to make provision for the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of children, to secure that no child shall suffer hunger or cold from lack of food or clothing, or shelter, but that all shall be provided with the means and facilities requisite for their education and training as citizens."

With that Democratic Programme we can link James Connolly's ringing words: "Ireland, as distinct from her people, is nothing to me: and the man who is bubbling with love and enthusiasm for `Ireland' and can yet pass unmoved through our streets and witness all the wrong and the suffering, the shame and degradation, brought upon the people of Ireland - aye, brought by Irish men upon Irish men and women - without burning to end it, is, in my opinion a fraud and a liar in his heart, no matter how he loves that combination of chemical elements he is pleased to call `Ireland' ".

It might seem strange for me to be quoting these words. But that Democratic Programme and those words of James Connolly are fully in line with the teaching of the Gospels. They are echoed in Catholic social teaching, and are closely paralleled in the words of Pope John Paul II.

In a 1991 encyclical marking the centenary of Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum and elsewhere, the present Pope has denounced the "radical capitalist ideology" which refuses even to acknowledge the existence of marginalisation and exploitation and human alienation which persist even in the more advanced countries. He declares that private property is under a "social mortgage" and says that "ownership justifies itself in the creation. . . of opportunities for work and human growth for all".

He condemns the "specific structures of sin" which ignore the moral obligations attached to property and wealth and traces these sinful structures to the "very personal sins" of those who "cause, support or exploit" social evils by what they do or what they culpably fail to do. He declares that in face of these evils, "a greater responsibility rests on those who have more and can do more".

In his message for January 1st this year, the Pope declares: "We can no longer tolerate a world in which there live side by side the immensely rich and the miserably poor, the have-nots deprived even of essentials and people who thoughtlessly waste what others so desperately need . . . Those living in poverty can wait no longer, they need help now".

In response to the inequities and injustices which historically obtained in relation to minorities in Northern Ireland, and particularly in respect of the nationalist minority, the Northern Ireland Office introduced a guideline called Policy Appraisal and Fair Treatment (PAFT). Each policy initiative or legislative proposal has to be tested by the criterion of fair treatment.

Similar policy guidelines are needed for any society aspiring to be just. They are needed here. They serve as valuable guidelines for the evaluation of policies. Budgets, for example, should be evaluated primarily by the criterion of whether or not they perpetuate or aggravate existing social inequalities.

Budgets should be evaluated, not simply in terms of how many better-paid people they set free from the tax net, but rather in terms of how many lowpaid or unemployed people they help to set free from the poverty net.

It should be said that it is little I know about the complexities of economics and of politics. A phrase is sometimes used of church people enunciating moral principles: "Get real, join the real world". Economics and politics, we are told, have their own exigencies, market forces have their own realities - and these are the real world.

On the contrary, I suggest that moral principles are the real world, and the people we most admire are those who put moral principle before profit and conscience above career.

Economics and politics can be and must be redeemed from their own self-destructive excesses and abuses by men and women of steadfast moral principle. Politicians will win respect for themselves and for their profession by the integrity of their personal dealings and by their commitment to social justice. This in practice means their concern for the poorer and weaker sectors whom politics has sometimes seemed to ignore and whom economic prosperity has left behind.

The Democratic Programme, which was one of the pillars of this State, demands no less of all the governments which 1916 made possible. The Gospel of Jesus Christ demands no less of all Christians. It is by this standard that the Lord will judge us all: "As long as you did not do this to the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did not do it to me".