We’ve been talking here about that Vatican document calling for a global “Authority” with political and economic power to manage the world economy for the greater good of all, and what it might mean. The estimable Vatican reporter John L. Allen points to something not widely discussed: that this document reflects the rapidly shifting base of Roman Catholicism from the “West” to the Global South. Excerpt:

One way of sizing up the note’s significance, therefore, is as an indication that the demographic transition long under way in Catholicism, with the center of gravity shifting from north to south, is being felt in Rome. … [T]o dismiss all this as nothing more than the rogue perceptions of an isolated Vatican department ignores the demographic and cultural realities of the church in the 21st century.

This is not the dying echo of warmed-over European socialism. For better or worse, it’s the first ripple of a southern wave.