“Neo-liberal finance commits economic terrorism.” Bishop Mario Toso, Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace - and neighbour to the Vatican Secretary of State, Tarcisio Bertone - spared no words at the meeting in Rome organized by FIBA-CISL on the topic “Toward reform of the financial system. The contribution of the Church. CISL’s proposals.”
Among Catholic thinkers, Fr. Toso is particularly dedicated to reflecting on the phenomenon of the wealthy State, its complex societal reform, and placing it in a more general philosophical, historical, ethical, and cultural context.
Overcoming visions that are merely sociological, historicist, and procedurist, in dialogue with neo-contractualist, neo-communitarian, and dialogic theories, he has re-proposed for the contemporary and democratic social State (animated by multiculturalism) the practicability of a new and necessary social consensus, based on the common search for the authentic human good, experienced by the various spiritual families, each in their own way.
For the Vatican Vice Minister of Welfare, the current financial-economic crisis is not “cyclical” but systemic, and “shows the fallacies of mutilated anthropologies, ethics, and ideologies that are neo-contractual, neo-utilitarian, and merely dialogic, offering legitimation of finance and a neoliberal economy.”
At the meeting held by the “White Syndicate,” the bishop demonstrated that neo-liberal finance seems to have gone down a blind alley.
It appears irremediably diseased and, in more than one case, implements a kind of “international economic terrorism.”
Dominated by an international oligarchy, failing to universally fulfil its natural duty, which should be to support businesses, work, and families, but like a new and implacable Leviathan, it moves through the world in search of ever more companies and weak or gullible people to devour.
To get out of the crisis, Mgr. Toso suggests the strengthening of all the positive aspects existent within the current deregulated global capitalist system, incarnated in a healthy market economy.
To concretize such a scenario, however, we would need to “reset capitalism so that it better fulfils its fundamental virtue of being the engine that creates and disseminates real wealth, making it accessible to all.”
The Salesian priest, born in Mogliano Veneto (TV) in 1950, graduated in philosophy at the Sacred Heart Catholic University of Milan (1978) with a thesis on the Thomist thought of Étienne Gilson, the famous French historian and philosopher.
Giuseppe Lazzati, former rector of Catholic Action and parliamentarian, was the rector, and also teaching there were the renowned Gustavo Bontadini, Sofia Vanni Rovighi, Adriano Bausola, Efrem Bettoni, and Giovanni Reale.
Toso subsequently earned the ecclesiastical title of Licentiate in Philosophy (Salesian Pontifical University) and in Theology (Lateran Pontifical University).
He was Rector of the Salesian Pontifical University of Rome for six years (2003-2009). He had previously been Deacon of the Faculty of Philosophy (1994-2000) at the same university and Director of the Institute of Social and Political Sciences, a position to which he was re-elected just after he completed his term as Rector on 30 June 2009.
Along with Vittorio Possenti, Attilio Danese, Roberto Gatti, and others, he helped - especially in the Italian Pontifical Universities – promote an original deepening and actualizing of the political personalism of Jacques Maritain and Emmanuel Mounier. HeÉtienne Gilson, studied both in terms of realistic philosophical method and in its manifestation in the social field. He also placed himself in the democratic populist school of Fr. Louis Sturzo, and the Christian humanism of Cardinal Pietro Pavan, great inspirer and forerunner of the pontifical social teachings of the second half of the last century.
With his thoughts on the secular and nondenominational State, he anticipated John Paul II’s speech to the Italian Parliament, and the doctrinal Note on some questions regarding the participation of Catholics in political life, issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (cf. L’Osservatore Romano, Wednesday, 12 February 2003, p. 9). made use of the theoretical contribution of medievalist
As a scholar and specialist of the CEI (Italian Conference of Bishops), he participated with the National Office for Social Problems and Work and the related Episcopal Commission when they drew up the documents “Evangelize Society” (1992) and “Economic Democracy, Development and the Common Good” (1994), as well as some supplements on the relationship between ethics and finance.
Also in this period his courageous experience in training schools for social and political engagement arose, grew, and was reflected upon. He was a member of the ‘“National Observatory,” of the groups “Civil Society-Third Sector,” “Fair Trade Economy,” and “Ethics and Finance.”
As a consultant to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, he actively participated in moments of reflection on non-violence and issues of land distribution.
Along with other experts, he gave his crucial and important contribution to the writing of various drafts relating to the plan for an updated summary of the Social Doctrine of the Church, merged into the Compendium of Social Doctrine of the Church (Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Vatican City, 2004).