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WHO WILL INVESTIGATE THE U.N., - VATICAN CONNECTION?
By Cliff Kincaid
July 14, 2009
NewsWithViews.com
The Boston Globe won a 2003 Pulitzer Prize for covering the Catholic
Church’s decades-long cover-up of priests who sexually abused children.
There is a Pulitzer Prize waiting for the reporter who can figure out
why the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church, considered by Catholics
the personal representative of Jesus Christ, has emerged as an advocate
of one of the most corrupt and non-Christian organizations on the face
of the earth—the United Nations.
The U.N. has been rocked by scandals involving U.N. “peacekeepers”
who sexually abuse women and children, the failure to protect
populations in danger of genocide, and financial corruption. It is an
anti-American institution founded by a Soviet spy that is currently
headed by a Communist Catholic Priest, U.N. General Assembly President
Miguel D’Escoto, who recently gave a speech at a U.N. financial
conference on the need to protect “Mother Earth.”
So when the leader of 1.2 billion Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI,
endorsed a “World Political Authority” in his encyclical Caritas in
Veritate, it was big news that could only be understood in the context
of the growing power and influence of the U.N. The timing was also
significant. The Papal statement was issued just before a meeting of the
G-8 nations, including the U.S., Russia and China, and before the Pope’s
meeting with President Barack Obama.
Self-deception
Conservatives who should know better have tried to play down the
nature of the Pope’s dangerous proposal. In a July 10 Wall Street
Journal article, American Roman Catholic Priest Robert A. Sirico of the
conservative Acton Institute ignored the controversial “World Political
Authority” passage and wrote that “People seeking a blueprint for the
political restructuring of the world economy won’t find it here.”
In fact, the Pope stated that the goals of this World Political
Authority should be “To manage the global economy; to revive economies
hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and
the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and
timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection
of the environment and to regulate migration...” This is a fairly
detailed blueprint that sounds precisely like some of the functions of
the U.N.
The Pope went on, “In the face of the unrelenting growth of global
interdependence, there is a strongly felt need, even in the midst of a
global recession, for a reform of the United Nations Organization, and
likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the
concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth.”
So the “reform” of the U.N. is designed to strengthen it. Hence, the
U.N. is clearly destined, from the Vatican point of view, to become the
World Political Authority.
On the July 10 edition of “The World Over” program on global Catholic
television network EWTN, Sirico said that he was confident that the Pope
was “not calling for a central government bureaucracy.” But the host,
Raymond Arroyo, was unclear how a World Political Authority was
compatible with the Pope’s commitment in the same encyclical to “subsidiarity,”
a form of local control. “They seem to be in conflict,” Arroyo said. In
fact, as the Pope himself warned, the World Political Authority could
become “tyrannical” in nature.
The Precedent
The exact quote from the Papal statement, a major teaching document
of the Roman Catholic Church, was that “there is urgent need of a true
world political authority, as my predecessor Blessed John XXIII
indicated some years ago.” Pope John XXIII declared in his April 11,
1963, encyclical, Pacem in Terris, “Today the universal common good
presents us with problems which are world-wide in their dimensions;
problems, therefore, which cannot be solved except by a public authority
with power, organization and means co-extensive with these problems, and
with a world-wide sphere of activity. Consequently the moral order
itself demands the establishment of some such general form of public
authority. But this general authority equipped with world-wide power and
adequate means for achieving the universal common good cannot be imposed
by force. It must be set up with the consent of all nations. If its work
is to be effective, it must operate with fairness, absolute
impartiality, and with dedication to the common good of all peoples.”
He added that “It is therefore our earnest wish that the United
Nations Organization may be able progressively to adapt its structure
and methods of operation to the magnitude and nobility of its tasks.”
If the Pope had endorsed just a “World Authority,” some Christians
might have considered it a reference to the return of Christ to earth.
But the use of the term “political” puts the Pope squarely on the side
of those promoting a world government of some kind. And his references
to the U.N. clear up any possible doubt as to his intention.
John Zmirak, the writer-in-residence at Thomas More College, a
Catholic Institution in New Hampshire, recognizes the obvious danger. He
writes that the World Political Authority could become a global
“super-state” and persecute the Catholic Church. He explains, “I know
that the pope suffered deeply, and personally, from the sick excesses of
nationalism. Perhaps if I’d been drafted into the Hitler Youth, and seen
my nation ruined and dishonored by a cancerous tribal cult like National
Socialism, I might also daydream about a universal benevolent State. But
there’s only one thing worse than a national bureaucratic tyranny—and
that’s an international one. A reading of Orwell’s 1984 might have
reminded Benedict that centralization rarely leads to liberty. And a
world-state administered by the kind of people who currently get
involved in supranational organizations like the EU and the UN would
make its first order of business the liquidation of the Church—which
wouldn’t even have a Liechtenstein where it could hide.”
George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington’s Ethics and
Public Policy Center, is alarmed as well but blames the World Political
Authority reference on the Vatican agency known as the Pontifical
Council on Justice and Peace. He writes that “It is one of the enduring
mysteries of the Catholic Church why the Roman Curia places such faith
in this fantasy of a ‘world public authority,’ given the Holy See’s
experience in battling for life, religious freedom, and elementary
decency at the United Nations. But that is how they think at Justice and
Peace, where evidence, experience, and the canons of Christian realism
sometimes seem of little account.”
But what is behind this “mystery,” as Weigel calls it?
Who’s in Charge?
Despite the implication that the Pope is being manipulated, this is a
Papal document signed by the Pope and he has to take responsibility for
articulating a vision of a World Political Authority that operates
through or with the sanction of the United Nations. Yet, this is a
non-Christian institution where officials gather in an official
“Meditation Room” in the U.N. building to achieve what they call cosmic
consciousness.
The U.N.’s brand of religion can also be seen in the fact that a few
blocks from the U.N. is the Quest Book Shop, where U.N. officials also
gather to meditate. The bookstore’s website advertises gift items that
include “a large selection of Tarot decks, one of the best selections of
incense in the New York City, candles, semi-precious gemstones, mala
beads, greeting cards, statues, essential oils, Tibetan singing bowls,
pendulums, bells, Yoga mats and bags, meditation cushions, feng shui
crystals, runestones, and more.”
The U.N. Environmental Program once promoted the idea of an
“Environmental Sabbath,” encouraging children to hold hands around a
tree and meditate. In his own encyclical, the Pope seems to warn of this
kind of activity, saying that “it is contrary to authentic development
to view nature as something more important than the human person” and
that “This position leads to attitudes of neo-paganism or a new
pantheism...” He nevertheless also calls for “a worldwide redistribution
of energy resources” and says that “The technologically advanced
societies can and must lower their domestic energy consumption, either
through an evolution in manufacturing methods or through greater
ecological sensitivity among their citizens.”
The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace may in fact be
responsible for the environmental messages in the encyclical. It held a
“Climate Change and Development Study Seminar” in Vatican City on April
27, 2007, based on the assumption that there is man-made global warming.
One of its authorities for this assumption was, of course, the U.N.
The Pontifical Council on Justice and Peace, whose official duty is
to promote justice and peace in the world in accordance with the Gospel
and the social teaching of the Church, produced a 2000 document, The
Social Agenda, which included several statements favorable to the U.N.
and other global causes. Under the heading of “Transnational and
International Organizations,” it declared that:
• “It is therefore our ardent desire that the United Nations
Organization in its structure and in its means may become ever more
equal to the magnitude and nobility of its tasks, and may the time come
as quickly as possible when every human being will find therein an
effective safeguard for the rights which derive directly from his
dignity as a person, and which are therefore universal, inviolable, and
inalienable rights.
• “International collaboration on a worldwide scale requires
institutions that will prepare, coordinate and direct it, until finally
there is established an order of justice which is universally
recognized.
• “…We called for the establishment of a great World Fund, to be made up
of part of the money spent on arms, to relieve the most destitute of
this world… Only worldwide collaboration, of which a common fund would
be both means and symbol, will succeed in overcoming vain rivalries and
in establishing a fruitful and peaceful exchange between peoples.”
Whatever role this Vatican agency may have played in the encyclical,
Pope Benedict himself made a speech in front of the United Nations in
April 2008 that made it absolutely clear that he believes in the U.N.
mission. Our April 20, 2008 column, Pope Genuflects Before the United
Nations, went into detail about this.
Jesus and the U.N.
Pope Benedict even associated Jesus Christ with the work of the U.N.,
saying that the “search for the right way to order human affairs” is
“motivated by the hope drawn from the saving work of Jesus Christ” and
“That is why the Church is happy to be associated with the activity of
this distinguished organization, charged with the responsibility of
promoting peace and good will throughout the earth.”
In fact, this “distinguished organization” has been dubbed “the House
that Hiss built” because of the role that Soviet spy and State
Department official Alger Hiss played in founding the organization.
What’s more, the Pope explicitly endorsed the Responsibility to
Protect, known by the acronym R2P, a doctrine endorsed by the U.N. in
2005 and designed to help the world body assume the powers of a world
government. The World Federalist Movement, which has promoted world
government, global taxes and a United Nations Army, has cultivated
international acceptance of the concept.
In the most explicit part of the speech explaining and accepting the
R2P concept, the Pope said that “Every State has the primary duty to
protect its own population from grave and sustained violations of human
rights, as well as from the consequences of humanitarian crises, whether
natural or man-made. If States are unable to guarantee such protection,
the international community must intervene with the juridical means
provided in the United Nations Charter and in other international
instruments. The action of the international community and its
institutions, provided that it respects the principles undergirding the
international order, should never be interpreted as an unwarranted
imposition or a limitation of sovereignty.”
Ironically, the development of the R2P principle has been attributed
to former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who, as director of
peacekeeping at the world body, failed to authorize U.N. troops on the
ground in Rwanda to stop genocide there.
A Danish documentary, “And the U.N. Came,” blames U.N. troops for
creating the AIDS crisis in Cambodia, after the “peacekeepers” were
supposed to bring political stability to the country. The film documents
how U.N. soldiers spread the disease by having sex with local citizens,
children, and prostitutes. Asked about the conduct of U.N. soldiers, one
U.N. official is shown saying, “Boys will be boys.”
The Pope’s failure to mention any of these scandals in his address to
the U.N. or his encyclical is itself scandalous. It is a matter worth
pursuing by the media, especially the conservative and Catholic media.
© 2009 Cliff Kincaid - All Rights Reserved |
