World After Communism: Pope’s Vision : Encyclical: He calls for economic and social justice. He leaves room for capitalism with a moral core.

Pope John Paul II on Thursday spelled out his vision of a post-Communist world of economic and social justice, leaving room for capitalism--with a moral core--but no place for “consumer societies.”

His views were presented in his ninth encyclical, the Roman Catholic Church’s first major pronouncement of social doctrine since the fall of East Bloc Communist governments.

“Western countries . . . run the risk of seeing this collapse as a one-sided victory of their own economic system and thereby failing to make necessary corrections in that system,” John Paul said.

The views should be especially applied in Eastern Europe, which is “experiencing a serious lack of direction in the work of rebuilding,” said the Polish-born pontiff.

Labor and church-linked groups in the United States and Europe hailed the document for its emphasis on social justice and workers’ rights. Conservative groups also rejoiced in what they called the Vatican’s most forthright endorsement of the free market in a century.

John Paul acknowledged capitalism’s successes but denounced the system for sometimes achieving them at the expense of the poor and of morality.

The pontiff asked rhetorically if capitalism should be the goal of Eastern Europe as well as a model for Third World countries that are “searching for the path to true economic and civil progress.”

“The answer is obviously complex,” the Pope wrote, saying that capitalism could only be acceptable if it has an ethical and religious core.

“It is unacceptable to say” that capitalism is now “the only model of economic organization,” he said. “It is necessary to break down the barriers and monopolies which leave so many countries on the margins of development, and to provide all individuals and nations with the basic conditions which will enable them to share in development.”

Among his suggestions: ease or “even cancel” foreign debt owed by developing countries.

In the encyclical, the Pope condemned what he called the “consumer society,” which tries to prove it “can achieve a greater satisfaction of material human needs than communism, while equally excluding spiritual values.”

In reality, he said, such a society “agrees with Marxism, in the sense that it totally reduces man to the sphere of economics and the satisfaction of material needs.”

Vatican officials said the Pope didn’t have any particular countries in mind.

French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, when asked at a news conference if the Pope’s criticism might apply to the United States, replied: “It would be the worst distortion to present this document as an anti-American document. . . . Luxury societies, wasteful societies are found everywhere.”

Without naming them, the Pope praised some countries that after World War II sought to “preserve free-market mechanisms” while providing “an abundance of work opportunities, a solid system of social security . . . to deliver work from the mere condition of a commodity and to guarantee its dignity.”

He seemed to be referring to systems put in place in Italy and West Germany after the war.

But he criticized “welfare” states, saying they rob society of “human energies.”

“It is necessary for peoples in the process of reforming their systems to give democracy an authentic and solid foundation through the explicit recognition” of human rights, he said, singling out the “right of the child to develop in the mother’s womb.” The church forbids abortion.