Elizabeth Stoker — Liberals are overlooking a major political ally: Yes, there’s a religious left!

It's one thing to attack the religious right -- but another to condemn the religious. A vital warning for liberals.

Salon
Liberals are overlooking a major political ally: Yes, there’s a religious left!

Elizabeth Stoker

Kathleen Maclay — Buddhist economics: oxymoron or idea whose time has come?

As part of the course, students have been engaged in conversation with Tibetan Buddhist priest Anam Thubten Rinpoche, who explained Buddhism’s “Eightfold Path” that is based on right livelihood — or a way of making a living that does no harm to others, interdependence and connectedness, and inner contentment. True Buddhist economics, he told the students, recognizes everyone’s interconnectedness.

Rinpoche stressed living a life based on inner values and inner wealth and taking care of those who are suffering or in need. “Wealth is not only your material acquisition,” said Rinpoche, suggesting rejection of modern society’s “grand delusion” in favor of a middle path based on faith, generosity, integrity, wisdom, conscience and contemplation.

UC Berkeley New Center
Buddhist economics: oxymoron or idea whose time has come?
Kathleen Maclay

See also E. F. Schumacher's article, Buddhist Economics, and book, Small Is Beautiful that introduced Buddhist economists to the West.

Pope pushes wealth redistribution

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Noting a "rising sense of frustration" at the worldwide economic recession, Pope Benedict XVI said that a more just and peaceful world requires "adequate mechanisms for the redistribution of wealth."

The pope's words appeared in his message for the World Day of Peace 2012, released on Friday (Dec. 16) at the Vatican.The message laments that "some currents of modern culture, built upon rationalist and individualist economic principles, have cut off the concept of justice from its transcendent roots, detaching it from charity and solidarity."

Authentic education, Benedict writes, teaches the proper use of freedom with "respect for oneself and others, including those whose way of being and living differs greatly from one's own."Peace-making requires education not only in the values of compassion and solidarity, but in the importance of wealth redistribution, the "promotion of growth, cooperation for development and conflict resolution," Benedict writes.

The pope also calls on political leaders to "ensure that no one is ever denied access to education."

The message was presented on Friday by officials of the Vatican's Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace. The same body published a controversial document in October blaming the world's economic and financial crisis on an "economic liberalism that spurns rules and controls," and calling for global regulation of the financial industry and the international money supply.

Read it at The Huffington Post
Pope Benedict Peace Message Calls For Wealth Redistribution

By Francis X. Rocca - Religion News Service

I wonder what Joe the Plumber will have to say about this. No mystery what the Randites will think of it.