Category: News

Last week, I was in Rome for a brief audience with Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday morning and a meeting the next day with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state.

The audience with the Pope was to brief him on the covenants of the Prophet Muhammad, given more than 1,300 years ago to respect and protect Christians and Jews.

Informed by the astute guidance of Cardinal Silvano Tomasi, the Caux Round Table has provided good offices for six years now to an interreligious study of those covenants and to consideration of how they now provide our global community with a precedent for respectful and peaceful relations among the Abrahamic faiths in the Middle East and across the world.  Our study has led to the publication of four books and two most important academic articles by our Muslim colleagues.

We had met with the late Pope Francis, who had strongly endorsed our study, to inform him of our findings and conclusions and we had kept him closely informed of what we were learning from the study of ancient texts and histories.  Last week’s meeting with the Pope was our first opportunity to tell the new Pontiff about the Prophet’s covenants and their implications for our time.

Pope Leo was surprised to learn of the covenants.  I was quite impressed at how so very quickly he took into account 1) the implications of the fact that the Prophet Muhammad had given such favorable consideration to Christians and Jews and 2) the relevance of that precedent for interreligious relations – and the end of violent conflict – in our world today.

I closed our brief exchange by informing the Pope of the plans of our colleagues in Lebanon to work with leaders of the different religious communities to revive the practice of the Prophet Muhammad to give covenants, one faith to another, of respect and protection of the other in order to firmly establish peaceful and fruitful cross-community relationships for the years to come.  He smiled at me and nodded his head a bit as he thought about that prospect.

Here are a few photos of our meeting with Pope Leo from the Vatican Photo Service:

The next day, Cardinal Tomasi and I met with Cardinal Parolin to report on our exchange with the Pope and brief him on the proposed revival of covenanting in Lebanon:

The Cardinal was most pleased at the prospect and said that a ceremony at the Vatican to celebrate such covenant agreement would be most appropriate.

So, now our focus on the covenants of the Prophet Muhammad turns from study to action, action informed by study and piety and most necessarily, motivated by the most noble sentiments privileging peace on earth and reflecting good will to all humanity.

On March 9, 1776, a book written by Adam Smith was published.  Its title was An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.  Smith’s observations on how human societies can become self-sustaining in wealth creation – a phenomenon new to the human experience – have produced more wealth for more people than any other human social-cultural orientation.

What humanity has done with that wealth raises many questions of ethics and justice.

But more than just wealth creation, Smith’s capitalism gave rise to modern society – mass everything –  sewers and flush toilets, running hot water, longer lifespans, literacy, compound growth in scientific knowledge and productivity per person, better food, less disease, middle classes upholding constitutional democracies and the rule of law, airplanes (and tanks and bombs), computers, cell phones, Talor Swift and Blackpink providing entertainment for global audiences, etc. etc. etc.

To celebrate the 250^th anniversary of the publication of Wealth of Nations, the Caux Round Table is releasing, next month, a book on Adam Smith’s thinking.

Most importantly, the book, published by De Gruyter Brill, opens a new vision of Smith’s achievement by integrating, with his observations on wealth creation, his equally insightful observations on our moral nature – his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, a magisterial treatise overlooked by economists, policy makers and most academics for those same 250 years – a gross error in judgment.

Here is the cover:

The chapters include:

Chapter 1: The Challenge for Leaders in an Uncertain World: The Only Way Out is the Way In (by Karel J. Noordzy)

Chapter 2: Starting a Conversation with Adam Smith (by John Little)

Chapter 3: Towards a Renewed European Capitalism (by Jan Peter Balkenende and Govert Buijs)

Chapter 4: From the Pin-Factory to the Concert Hall (by Herman Mulder)

Chapter 5: What Would Adam Smith say About Resolving Today’s Higher Education Crisis in America? (by Orn Bodvarsson)

Chapter 6: Capitalism 2.0: Sustainable Economics, Ethical Challenges for Government, Business, and Civic Leaders (by Michael LaBrosse)

Chapter 7: An Inquiry into the Causes of Poverty (by Michael Hartoonian)

Chapter 8: How Adam Smith Foreshadowed Modern Social Capital Theory (by Stephen Jordan)

Chapter 9: Capitalism at Scale (by Thomas Fisher)

Chapter 10: Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations: A Discursive Convergence Towards Moral Capitalism (by José Luis Fernández-Fernández)

Chapter 11: Adam Smith – Fundamentalist or Optimist: Self-interest, Sympathy and a Smithian Middle Way (by Patrick O’Sullivan)

Chapter 12: Between Adam Smith’s Self-Love and the Impartial Spectator: Ādamiyyah as a Moral Bridge in Human Conscience (by Recep Şentürk, Fatma Nur Aysan, Ahmet Faruk Aysan and Seda Özalkan)

Chapter 13: Adam Smith, the Moral Criteria of “Self-interest” and the Universal Ethics of the Noahide Laws (by Shimon Cowen)

Chapter 14: Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and Pope Francis’ Encyclical Laudato si’: Economics, Religion, Morality, Ethics, or… What? (by Louis DeThomasis)

Chapter 15: The Buddha and Adam Smith: A Dialogue Across Time on Wealth, Happiness and Sustainability (by Venerable Anil Sakya and Stephen B. Young)

They are authored by Caux Round Table fellows and other supporters of ours.

Additional information about the book is included in January Pegasus, which will be available early next week.

You may pre-order it here and can be found on Amazon here.

Please purchase a copy and help celebrate some great thinking on moral capitalism.