The reading from the Book of Malachi this Sunday confronts Israel’s religious leaders with this challenge: “Has not the one God created us? Why then do we break faith with one another, violating the covenant of our fathers?” The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (PCJP) has created a stir this week with a strongly worded document critical of the world’s financial leaders, writing that the current global crisis “has revealed behaviors like selfishness, collective greed, and the hoarding of goods on a great scale.”

The PCJP's "Note on Financial Reform" calls for the formation of a global political authority that would, among other things, possess broad powers to regulate financial markets. The reality of globalization, said the document, necessitates a “gradual, balanced transfer of a part of each nation’s powers to a world authority and to regional authorities.

"The economic and financial crisis which the world is going through calls everyone, individuals and peoples, to examine in depth the principles and the cultural and moral values at the basis of social coexistence," the document said.

"If no solutions are found to the various forms of injustice, the negative effects that will follow on the social, political, and economic level will be destined to create a climate of growing hostility and even violence, and ultimately undermine the very foundations of democratic institutions, even the ones considered most solid," warned the document.

Conservative commentators objected to mass media coverage that linked “the Vatican” with Occupy Wall Street protesters, pointing out that the document was a “Note” from a curial office, nothing near the level of a papal encyclical. In introducing the document, the two senior officials of the PCJP made a similar point. Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the council, said that the statement was intended to “make a contribution which might be useful to the deliberations of the [upcoming] G-20 meeting.” Bishop Mario Toso, S.D.B., the secretary of the council, said the document was intended to “suggest possible paths to follow.”

Sources: Articles by Amy Sullivan for TIME, Philip Pullella for Reuters, George Weigel
and Samuel Gregg for the National Review, and Charles Lewis the for National Post