Pope at UN

I have taken no interest in the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the United States. And I don’t think the pope of the Catholic Church even belongs at the United Nations. The UN represents the opposite of everything the Catholic Church stands for—or at least everything the Church used to stand for. Amazing as it is to remember, for decades the Church refused even to recognize the modern state of Italy, because it was based on egalitarian, secular, non-Christian principles. Yet now the pope is speaking at the UN, the epitome of secular left-liberalism. And the jargon he speaks is virtually indistinguishable from that spoken by any UN bureaucrat, with endless, depressing invocations of human dignity … human rights … the human person … human rights … the dignity of every man, woman, and child … the indivisibility of human rights … the international community … blah blah blah blah blah. He must have used the word “rights” 70 times in the 25 minute speech. He says human rights have an objective meaning, and should not be relativized. Ok, so he’s a right-liberal, talking to a left-liberal organization. So what’s new?

The pope of the Catholic Church should not be speaking the liberal language of rights. He should be conveying the message of the Catholic Church and Jesus Christ, in venues suitable for that message. If that means not going to the White House, home of multiculturalism, where Muslim dinners and celebrations are held every year, so be it. (Rush Limbaugh got excited that the pope was speaking about Christianity at the White House, forgetting that every year Muslims speak about Allah at the White House—it wasn’t Christianity that was being celebrated at the White House this week, Rush, it was multiculturalism.) And if that means not going to the UN, home of transnational progressivism, so be it. The goal of the ideology that animates the UN is a single humanity under the rule of a bureaucratic global government that derives unaccountable power from its mandate of protecting everyone’s rights. This system has already largely taken form in Europe, where the European Union has seized unaccountable bureaucratic power based on protecting individual rights, i.e., on eliminating discrimination, in the process destroying national sovereignty, accountable government, true liberty, and the ability of European peoples to preserve their cultures or even to maintain the nominally Christian identity of their countries. The EU and the UN are instruments of the same internationalist leftist movement aimed at wiping out all inequality and discrimination on the globe, which in practice means wiping out the nations of the Christian West. And Benedict, instead of standing apart from these organizations, embraces them.

Yes, he is not as liberal as his predecessor. But he’s a liberal.

Of course, the entire media keeps talking about what a stern, right-wing fellow he is, and how he has to prove to us that he’s not.

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In the context of the priest homosexual scandals, Benedict has said that the Church must be more particular about the men it admits to the priesthood, seeking only “sound” individuals, and that he was willing to see the Church become smaller and more devout, rather than more numerous and more corrupt. I agree strongly with the principle. But by the same token, if the Church stopped ingratiating itself with the leftist powers of this world and stood for its true vocation as the representative of Jesus Christ, it would probably become smaller, at least for the time being. But it would be a far better Church than it is now.

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Saturday morning, on television, I had on the mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, being presided over by the pope. When it got to the liturgy of the word and a nun began doing a Bible reading in Spanish, I turned off the TV. This is an English speaking country. When the Catholic Church has its services performed partly in Spanish, it is saying that America is or should become a Spanish speaking country.

Another thing. The confession, recited in unison, did not not just speak of confessing to God, but of confessing to “my brothers and sisters,” a phrase used repeatedly. What’s that about? We don’t address other people in the liturgy, let alone confess our sins to other people. We confess to God. The constant business about “my brothers and sisters” heard in the liturgy and homilies of today’s American Catholic Church has a heavy, depressive, collectivist quality, like the jargon of a Communist state.

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Adela Gereth writes:

Thank you for an entry that expresses my own disgust and objections to the Pope’s pandering. I lost all respect for him when he apologized for quoting Manuel II’s critical remarks regarding Islam. That was the thin end of the wedge, no doubt.

I, too, have taken little interest in his visit here. By visiting the White House, the UN, etc. he shows he is mistaken in the nature of Christian humility and willing to forego the dignity and majesty of the Church and for what? To become the People’s Pope? He’d probably say in his own defence that “Somebody has to go out there and love people”!

He’s sacrificing theology for ideology and the Deity for humanity. It’s almost as if he’s throwing Holy Mother Church under the bus.

LA replies

Well, he does speak about Jesus Christ everywhere he goes. I just think he’s going to places where he shouldn’t go, places where that message inevitably becomes corrupted by the nature of the place and by the language that he must use to be welcome there.

Ortelio writes:

You shouldn’t think confessing to fellow worshippers as well as to God is a trendy new thing. It’s in the pre-Reformation Mass just like Paul VI’s, and in the missal of the old pre-Reformation English Catholic rites—of Salisbury, Hereford and Bangor—as well as in the Roman rite that was used all over the West.

LA replies:

I didn’t know that, since I know mainly the traditional Anglican service and I had never heard it, as far as I remember, in the Catholic services I’ve attended.

In these pre-Reformation services, were the fellow worshippers referred to as “my brothers and sisters”?

George R. writes:

You are dead-on right about the Pope at the U.N.. What Rush Limbaugh and the rest are unable to understand is that these liberal prelates, including the pope, are pro-American when it comes to religion, i.e., freedom of religion, but when it comes to politics they are against the idea of national sovereignty and consequently are anti-American. This is exactly opposite from the traditional teaching of the Church which was universalist with regard to religion (all should be Catholic), but was particularist with regard to politics (civil authorities are diverse, and sovereign in the temporal sphere). These new liberal prelates, on the other hand, are particularists when it comes to religion and universalists when it comes to politics.

What’s sad is that scarcely any Catholics, even among the most conservative ones, will not be at least somewhat seduced by these antics. Only the most paranoid and wild-eyed counter-revolutionary kooks, like yours, truly, will not be moved.

LA replies:

“These new liberal prelates, on the other hand, are particularists when it comes to religion and universalists when it comes to politics.”

That’s a great insight.

George, we shall not, we shall not be moved.

Ortelio writes:

In the pre-Reformation English rites, the Roman form of confession at Mass was “vobis fratres” meaning “to you, brothers” or, equally, “to you, brothers and sisters.” In the other English rites it was just “vobis”—“to you.” You will perhaps admire the English reticence and economy, or cool.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 19, 2008 09:00 AM | Send