Friday, May 18, 2012

The Geithner Doctrine

By no means am I an economic or financial expert, so if my simplified understanding of the following is overly simplified, then so be it. My point here is to take the current Administration's economic strategies and policies and apply them to the current Catholic university scandals.

During our recent economic crises the banking, housing, automotive and airline industries were all struck severely. And because of the direct impact these particular industries have on the larger population, their poor judgments, bad investments, and corrupt practices have had long term consequences for the average citizen. So under the Obama Administration, the (what I'm calling) Geithner Doctrine was established. This is basically the government going into a particular company of a given industry and essentially taking direct control of the operational and financial decisions of that corporation, at least for a short period of time until "things have been corrected or cleaned up." Case in point, General Motors. How did the government do this? Well essentially, they didn't give the company really any choice. They said to the corporation, if you want to have any chance of continuing, then you must allow us to mandate how you operate, especially financially. Again please don't think GM really had a choice in the matter. Trying to be fair to the Geithner Doctrine, there was no complete control over every aspect of the corporation; just primarily over how the corporation used its money. For example with General Motors, the Government didn't tell GM how to design or make a care, but how to change the way they do business, particularly in how they spend their funds, including profits.

So let's apply the Geithner Doctrine to the current Catholic university scandals. Case in point, Georgetown University has made poor "operational" decisions by including content courses that directly contradict Church teaching. As a Catholic university, it has the duty and obligation to uphold and promote the truth of Church teachings. By offering a course in which certain content is promoted as something "good," but in truth is contrary to Church teaching, they have created a scandal. This is analogous to a business operating with unsound financial policies. Furthermore Georgetown has made "poor investments" by advocating or promoting individuals (e.g. Kathleen Sebelius) who represent certain policies that are counter productive to or in direct violation of the mission of the Church. And as a Catholic university, Georgetown has an obligation to its "shareholders" to invest in "stock" that is aligned with the values of its "investors." So in an analogous way, Georgetown is the Catholic General Motors.

Now what's the solution to the Georgetown scandal? How for example should Pope Benedict XVI respond? If the Pope was to respond like the President, he would implement the "Geithner Doctrine." This essentially would be the Church taking direct control of Georgetown in order to "bail it out" of spiritual and theological trouble. However that would violate a core social justice principle of the Church called subsidiarity. In fact the Church would reject such heretical teachings like the Geithner Doctrine because it violates the duty of the institution from essentially reforming itself, if the institution was to remain "viable." For example Georgetown could choose to go "bankrupt" and "insolvent" in terms of its Catholic identity. The Church does not wish for this to happen, and ought to make every effort possible to help Georgetown reform itself. But for the Church to seize control over any Catholic university would go against her own teachings. So what is the Church to do with institutions making destructive Catholic investments?  Well one thing is for sure, not to implement the Geithner Doctrine.