"Rather Than Get All Searching About It ..."

I must agree with another commenter at The American Catholic who dubbed the following comment by my friend Darwin Catholic as the "money quote of the week":

... I’m all the more annoyed in that I bothered to read the thing ["Towards Reforming the International Financial & Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority"] and admit where I clearly didn’t see eye to eye with it. I suppose, if nothing else, it’s a good lesson that if something seems too silly or trivial to be “Church teaching” rather than getting all searching about it, one should assume that it in fact is.

(emphasis added)

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: "The Earth Is Full"

How long before China's chief cheerleader in the West, the New York Times' Thomas Friedman, calls for a U.N.-mandated 1-child policy for the entire world?

... “In China’s thousands of years of civilization, the conflict between humankind and nature has never been as serious as it is today,” China’s environment minister, Zhou Shengxian, said recently. “The depletion, deterioration and exhaustion of resources and the worsening ecological environment have become bottlenecks and grave impediments to the nation’s economic and social development.” What China’s minister is telling us, says Gilding, is that “the Earth is full. We are now using so many resources and putting out so much waste into the Earth that we have reached some kind of limit, given current technologies. The economy is going to have to get smaller in terms of physical impact.”

We will not change systems, though, without a crisis. But don’t worry, we’re getting there.

We’re currently caught in two loops: One is that more population growth and more global warming together are pushing up food prices; rising food prices cause political instability in the Middle East, which leads to higher oil prices, which leads to higher food prices, which leads to more instability. At the same time, improved productivity means fewer people are needed in every factory to produce more stuff. So if we want to have more jobs, we need more factories. More factories making more stuff make more global warming, and that is where the two loops meet...

[More]

Heck, for all I know, given Friedman's crush on all things ChiCom, he's probably already suggested a U.N.-mandated 1-child policy.


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Hypocritical Malthusian Nonsense: Father of 5, Ted Turner, Wants U.N. to Institute World-Wide 1-Child Policy

Man vs. Nature: the Inhuman Agenda Behind the Fight Against “Climate Change”

What the One-Child Policy Has Wrought

Baby-Hating Malthusian Nonsense Goes Mainstream at Copenhagen

China Begins to "Figure it Out" on Demographics

Obama Culture of Death Update™: President's "Science Czar" Supports Forced Population Control Measures [UPDATED]

UK Government Official Says Having More Than 2 Children "Irresponsible"; Catholics Respond

Rich Leonardi on the "Obnoxiousness" of the Concept of "Carbon Footprints"

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: "Save the Planet — Have Fewer Kids"

Deacon Fournier Reviews Population Controllers

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: Babies a Drag on the Economy, Report Says

Darwin Catholic: "Want Sustainable? Try a Family"

Malthusian Nonsense in the Extreme: "When Should You Die?"

Population Control Movement is "Number One Violator of Human Rights," Author Claims

USAToday Columnist: Religion is Killing the Planet

The Pitter-Patter of Carbon Footprints ...

Cardinal Pell Criticizes Australian Medical Ass'n for Publishing Letter Advocating Carbon Tax on Children

Professor Solves Global Warming: Let’s Tax Reproduction

Global Alarming Update: Focus on So-Called "Carbon Footprint" Anti-Family

Malthusian Nonsense from "Global Warming" Alarmists

Cardinal Pell on Global Warming Alarmists: "Scaremongers" and "Zealots"

Hypocritical Malthusian Nonsense: Father of 5, Ted Turner, Wants U.N. to Institute World-Wide 1-Child Policy

The former Mr. Jane Fonda, Ted Turner — father of five — thinks there's too many of thee, but obviously not enough of he:

Climate change and population control can make for a politically explosive mix, as media mogul Ted Turner demonstrated Sunday when he urged world leaders to institute a global one-child policy to save the Earth’s environment.

[...]

Mr. Turner – a long-time advocate of population control – said the environmental stress on the Earth requires radical solutions, suggesting countries should follow China’s lead in instituting a one-child policy to reduce global population over time. He added that fertility rights could be sold so that poor people could profit from their decision not to reproduce.

“If we’re going to be here [as a species] 5,000 years from now, we’re not going to do it with seven billion people,” Mr. Turner said.

Former Irish president Mary Robinson warned that radical prescriptions for population control would backfire, ensuring that the subject will remain off the agenda of international climate talks.

“If we do it the wrong way, we can divide the world,” Ms. Robinson said. “A lot of people in the climate world could communicate this very badly.”

China boasts that its controversial one-child policy has helped limit emissions growth in that rapidly industrializing country. At the Copenhagen climate summit last year, national planning official Zhao Baige said Chinese population policy has resulted in 400 million fewer births since 1979, with a population that now stands at 1.3 billion. The lower birth rate converts to a reduction of 1.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year, Ms. Zhao said.

But critics contend it has not only interfered with reproductive choice, but contributed to high levels of female infanticide and abortions.

[More]

My Comments:
"Former Irish president Mary Robinson warned that radical prescriptions for population control would backfire, ensuring that the subject will remain off the agenda of international climate talks."

I believe that's the first time I've ever found myself agreeing with something Mary Robinson said.


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Man vs. Nature: the Inhuman Agenda Behind the Fight Against “Climate Change”

What the One-Child Policy Has Wrought

Baby-Hating Malthusian Nonsense Goes Mainstream at Copenhagen

China Begins to "Figure it Out" on Demographics

Obama Culture of Death Update™: President's "Science Czar" Supports Forced Population Control Measures [UPDATED]

UK Government Official Says Having More Than 2 Children "Irresponsible"; Catholics Respond

Rich Leonardi on the "Obnoxiousness" of the Concept of "Carbon Footprints"

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: "Save the Planet — Have Fewer Kids"

Deacon Fournier Reviews Population Controllers

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: Babies a Drag on the Economy, Report Says

Darwin Catholic: "Want Sustainable? Try a Family"

Malthusian Nonsense in the Extreme: "When Should You Die?"

Population Control Movement is "Number One Violator of Human Rights," Author Claims

USAToday Columnist: Religion is Killing the Planet

The Pitter-Patter of Carbon Footprints ...

Cardinal Pell Criticizes Australian Medical Ass'n for Publishing Letter Advocating Carbon Tax on Children

Professor Solves Global Warming: Let’s Tax Reproduction

Global Alarming Update: Focus on So-Called "Carbon Footprint" Anti-Family

Malthusian Nonsense from "Global Warming" Alarmists

Cardinal Pell on Global Warming Alarmists: "Scaremongers" and "Zealots"

Baby-Hating Malthusian Nonsense Goes Mainstream at Copenhagen

Matthew Archbold reports:

China's at the forefront of saving the planet. And they're doing it one baby at a time. That is, killing one baby at a time, according to Max Schulz from the Washington Examiner:

Want to save the planet from global warming? Forget about getting rid of coal plants or the internal combustion engine. Get rid of the humans. They're the true problem.

That insidious message gained new currency with the United Nations Copenhagen climate change circus this month. While the conference likely will be remembered for participants' failure to reach a binding emissions reduction agreement, its legacy may be that it brought mainstream respectability to the fringe left-wing notion that mankind is a scourge on the planet.

In so doing, it has breathed new life into population control proposals that had seemed discredited since the population bomb alarmists warned about in the 1960s and '70s failed to detonate...

[...]

Can you imagine being present at a conference where they're boasting about 400 million forced abortions and not storming out or at least slamming the door. But no, our President and the elite of the world sat on their hands or worse...even approved. 400 million?! That's not environmentalism, that's a holocaust.

[More]

My Commnents:
Just a few days ago, we commemorated the Feast of the Holy Innocents. But, in retrospect, Herod had nothing on these environazis.

For the President, It REALLY IS All About Him

Mona Charen writes on the galling level of hubris on display in President Obama's U.N. speech:

President Obama’s speech to the U.N. has been called naïve and even “post-American.” It was something else as well: the most extravagant excursion into self-worship we have yet seen in an American leader.

[...]

... Obama announced that we no longer “have the luxury of indulging our differences to the exclusion of the work that we must do together. I have carried this message from London to Ankara, from Port of Spain to Moscow, from Accra to Cairo, and it is what I will speak about today.” Note the personal pronoun. But what message has this evangelist carried to all these world capitals? That hope and change have been vouchsafed to the fallen world in the person of Barack Obama?

During last year’s campaign, Michelle Obama and her defenders insisted that her phrase “For the first time in my adult life I’m proud of my country” (for supporting her husband) was unfairly wrenched from its context. Maybe, though she said it more than once. But President Obama’s indictment of the U.S. before the U.N. suggests identical sentiments. “I took office at a time when many around the world had come to view America with skepticism and distrust,” the president said. And mostly, it seems, those views were justified. America had acted “unilaterally, without regard for the interests of others.” Addressing himself directly to America’s critics, the president began with, “For those who question the character and cause of my nation . . .” He could have mentioned the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift, the billions spent on fighting AIDS in Africa, tsunami relief, the Green Revolution, and defeating Nazism and Communism, just for starters. But that’s not what the president had in mind. “I ask you to look at the concrete actions we have taken in just nine months. On my first day in office, I prohibited without exception or equivocation the use of torture by the United States of America. I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed.” The audience, composed in part of regimes that pluck out the eyeballs of political enemies and hack off the hands of suspected thieves, applauded vigorously...

(emphasis added)

Forget About the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, and the Council on Foreign Relations ...

... meet "The Elders".

And right there near the top of the page under "Latest Initiatives":

The Elders call for an end to the use of religious and traditional practices to justify and entrench discrimination against women and girls.

And just what might those "religious and traditional practices" entail? "The Elders" link to this opinion piece to provide an answer:

I am also familiar with vivid descriptions in the same scriptures in which women are revered as pre-eminent leaders. During the years of the early Christian church women served as deacons, priests, bishops, apostles, teachers and prophets. It wasn't until the fourth century that dominant Christian leaders, all men, twisted and distorted holy scriptures to perpetuate their ascendant positions within the religious hierarchy.

(Jimmy Carter, crummy president and an even crummier theologian - not to mention anti-Catholic bigot)

A good analysis of this group of illuminati and their efforts to stamp out "discrimination" by autocratic men in church hierarchies can be found here:

... Religion has little role in this enterprise. In fact, the elders see it as a primary oppressor of women and a source of many of mankind's problems.

This is particularly evident in the discussion of one of the main issues listed on the website, "equality of women and girls." The page addressing the issue specifically targets religion as a source of discrimination. Jimmy Carter, writing in his role as an elder, elaborated on this recently when he quit the Southern Baptist Convention because of their position against ordaining women as deacons and pastors. In a commentary article in The Age, an Australian Newspaper, he made it clear that religions that will not ordain women are antiquated and discriminatory. "The carefully selected verses found in the Holy Scriptures to justify the superiority of men," Carter wrote, "owe more to time and place - and the determination of male leaders to hold onto their influence - than eternal truths." This was clearly a swipe at all faiths, including the Catholic Church, that do not ordain women. It is the same language adopted by feminist groups advocating women priests.

Carter also used not so coded language to attack the Church for its opposition to abortion. "The belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives." While the Elders' website carries nothing about abortion, the language that fills U.N. documents about women "controlling their bodies" and women's reproductive rights should concern anyone about the ultimate goals of this group, especially since many are well known for their abortion advocacy. Jimmy Carter, Mary Robinson, Kofi Annon, Desmond Tutu, and Nelson Mandela all have extreme pro-abortion backgrounds.

In fact, the Elders looks like one more group of elitist ideologues who believe that human effort can bring about Utopia. Their cumulutive record of pro-abortion and pro-population control politics makes it questionable whether they really have the interests of individual people at heart. As Screwtape, C.S. Lewis' senior devil, always advised his nephew Wormwood, keep man's attention on humanity as a whole and he'll overlook the hungry man next door.

I must say that, when it comes to secret societies of the wealthy and powerful elites bent on one-world government, I prefer The Pentavirate:


(Hat tip: Notes on the Culture Wars)

Obama Culture of Death Update™: Administration Now on Record That Promoting "Reproductive Health" Equals Promoting Abortion Abroad

The Cathoholic reports:

... Today, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton essentially confirmed what pro-lifers have argued for years [that inclusion of "reproductive rights" and "reproductive health" into broader international documents was code for creating an international "right" to abortion]. In an appearance before the House Foreign Affairs Commttee, she primarily responded to questions related to U.S. foreign policy regarding Iran. However, an exchange with two pro-life congressmen elicited a revealing response from the new Secretary of State.

***
"Clinton was at her most emotional in batting down questions from Reps. Chris Smith, R-N.J., and Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., about the Obama administration's support for international family planning services. Smith and Fortenberry are among Capitol Hill's staunchest abortion opponents.

"Smith asked if the administration was seeking "in any way to weaken or overturn pro-life laws and policies in African and Latin American countries." Fortenberry asked: "Is forcing U.S. taxpayers to fund abortion in keeping with the highest values of the United States of America?"

"We have a very fundamental disagreement," Clinton told Smith, describing how she had seen women suffering in Africa, Latin America and Asia because of inadequate family planning and health care.

"It is my strongly held view that you are entitled to advocate, and everyone who agrees with you should be free to do so, anywhere in the world and so are we," Clinton said. "We happen to think that family planning is an important part of women's health and reproductive health includes access to abortion that I believe should be safe, legal and rare."

Now it's on the record: "reproductive health includes access to abortion."

***
[Rep. Smith later responded:] "They’ve been stealthy about promoting abortion, ..and emphasize other issues on which people can agree. Now this reveals unambiguously that the U.S. definition of reproductive health includes abortion."

[More]

(emphasis and bracketed material added)


This Obama Culture of Death Update™ has been brought to you by Prof. Douglas Kmiec, Eric McFadden, all the fine folks at Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good / Catholics United / Catholic Democrats, and countless other Catholics for whom "Hope" and "Change" trumped LIFE.







UPDATE
(Hat tip: Cranky Conservative)



You go, Rep. Fortenberry! Hillary, just go ...


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Obama Culture of Death Update™: President Lifts Ban on Federal ESCR Funding

Obama Culture of Death Update™: Obama Nominee for Deputy Sec. of State Says Taxpayers Constitutionally Obligated to Fund Abortion

Moral Accountability . com

Obama Culture of Death Update™: Abortion Necessary to "Ensure Our Daughters Have the Same Rights and Opportunities As Our Sons"

Obama Culture of Death Update™: "White House Web Site Becomes Pro-Abortion After Obama Takeover"

Obama Culture of Death Update™: Among President Obama's First Official Acts is Promoting Abortion Abroad [UPDATED]

United Nations Population Fund Leader Says Family Breakdown is a Triumph for Human Rights

From LifeSiteNews:

MEXICO CITY, February 3, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A leader in the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has declared that the breakdown of traditional families, far from being a “crisis,” is actually a triumph for human rights.

Speaking at a colloquium held last month at Colegio Mexico in Mexico City, UNFPA representative Arie Hoekman denounced the idea that high rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births represent a social crisis, claiming that they represent instead the triumph of “human rights” against “patriarchy.”

"In the eyes of conservative forces, these changes mean that the family is in crisis," he said. "In crisis? More than a crisis, we are in the presence of a weakening of the patriarchal structure, as a result of the disappearance of the economic base that sustains it and because of the rise of new values centered in the recognition of fundamental human rights."

"Day after day, Mexico experiences a process of this diversity and there are those who understand it as a crisis, because they only recognize one type of family," one of the speakers on the panel also told the audience.

The comments followed close on the heels of the World Meeting of Families, which was held in Mexico City in January, and which strongly reaffirmed the importance of the traditional family and its indispensible role in transmitting values to the next generation. It was opened by Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who observed that high rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births were contributing to the rise of violence and crime in Mexico.

Leonardo Casco, a member of the Pontifical Council for the Family and a citizen of Honduras, told LifeSiteNews that he wasn't surprised that the UNFPA was denying the crisis in the family.

"They definitely have to deny that there is a crisis in the family, because they have created the crisis," he said.

Calling the UNFPA "bureaucrats at the service of death," Casco observed that "after 45 years of birth control, the pill, disrespect for marriage for the family, for children, etc, this is the result. Because of that we have violence, war, lack of respect of women, children."

Through their promotion and distribution of contraceptives the UNFPA has become "a birth control agency at the service of the most powerful countries" said Casco. "They have destroyed the family, values, this is undeniable, it's what everyone says ... but they always have to deny it."

Regarding Hoekman’s comments about “human rights,” Casco responded that UNFPA bureaucrats “have invented a series of new 'human rights',” that did not exist when the concept was defined in 1948, “with which they wish to justify all of their actions.”

The UNFPA recently celebrated the restoration of US support after seven years, during which they were denied funding by the Bush administration. UNFPA has cooperated with and even helped to subsidize China's One Child Policy, which persecutes and performs forced abortions on women who have more than one child.

In addition to its support for forced abortions, the UNFPA has helped to administer forced sterilizations in South America and is involved in the distribution and promotion of contraceptives and sterilization worldwide, with a focus on poorer countries.

(emphasis added)

Obama Administration to Export Culture of Death

In addition to Catholic concerns over the new administration's policies here at home regarding FOCA and ESCR, it appears that President-elect Obama's team is set to do the greatest amount of damage to life issues on the international stage:

... Obama is also expected to reverse the ban on taxpayer funding for overseas aid promoting or offering abortion (the "Mexico City Policy"). President Reagan instituted this policy in 1984. It was repealed by President Clinton in 1993, but reinstituted in 2001 by President Bush. It will probably be re-repealed by President Obama very quickly.

President Bush's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is also about to undergo a radical change. Bush launched PEPFAR in 2003 to combat global HIV/AIDS. It was the largest commitment by any nation to combat a single disease in human history, with up to $48 billion authorized for the effort. Under PEPFAR health workers are trained to emphasize abstinence and marital fidelity as the most effective ways to combat the spread of AIDS. Unfortunately, that is about to change.

Discussing these issues, Susan F. Wood, the co-chair of Obama's advisory committee for women's health issues, said: "We have been going in the wrong direction and we need to turn it around and be promoting prevention and family-planning services." The Obama team's approach will emphasize condoms, abortion, and the morning-after pill. Referencing Obama's campaign slogan, Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition said, "I don't think many dreamed that this 'change' would mean taking taxpayer dollars to fund abortion around the world." He called the projected policy overhaul of PEPFAR "tragic, a betrayal of social justice and human rights."

Even at the United Nations, things will change. Time after time, in agreement after agreement, advocates attempt to insert abortion rights language into international treaties. Representatives of the Holy See spend a great deal of time combating these efforts. During the Clinton administration, the Holy See was often at odds with the United States over these issues. Once the Bush administration was in place, the Holy See and the United States were on the same side. Unfortunately, that is about to change again.

As Time magazine has reported, "the election of a pro-choice, pro-diplomacy Democratic president is changing the Vatican's game plan vis-à-vis Washington on several levels. Bush was viewed in Rome as a rare ally in the West for his opposition to such issues as abortion, gay marriage and stem-cell research." Obama will not be an ally. The United States will now support abortion rights in international treaties, and the Holy See will continue its heroic efforts on behalf of the most vulnerable humans.

This is a lesson about presidential power for now and the future. We all know that the president gets to nominate Supreme Court justices. Too often, the electorate is told that this is the only real impact that the president can have on life issues. (That was the argument set forth by Republican, abortion-rights candidate Rudolph Giuliani in an effort to attract -- or at least not frighten off -- pro-life voters.) In reality, however, the president sets the agenda and affects life issues in numerous ways that we are only just now coming to see clearly.

[More]

(emphasis added)

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: "Save the Planet — Have Fewer Kids"

From The Chicago Tribune:

LONDON — There are plenty of ways to cut your carbon footprint, whether it's driving less or buying an energy-efficient refrigerator. But the British Medical Journal, in an editorial last month, urged a more controversial one: having fewer children.

With 60 million people already living in one of the most densely populated countries in the world, the journal said, British couples should aim to have no more than two children as part of their contribution to worldwide efforts to reduce carbon emissions, stem climate change and ease demands on the world's resources.

Limiting family size is "the simplest and biggest contribution anyone can make to leaving a habitable planet for our grandchildren," the editorial's authors said.

Family planning as a means to reduce climate change has been little talked about in international climate forums, largely because it is so politically sensitive. [ED.: Please. It's talked about quite regularly among many population control zealots and global climate change alarmists, including many NGOs affiliated with the United Nations. See the links below.] China's leaders, however, regularly argue that their country should get emission reduction credits because of their one-child policy, and many environmentalists—and even a growing number of religious and ethics scholars—say the biblical command to "be fruitful and multiply" needs to be balanced against Scripture calling for stewardship of the Earth.

[More]

My Comments:
Yes, we should all be just like Communist China.


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Deacon Fournier Reviews Population Controllers

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: Babies a Drag on the Economy, Report Says

Darwin Catholic: "Want Sustainable? Try a Family"

Malthusian Nonsense in the Extreme: "When Should You Die?"

Population Control Movement is "Number One Violator of Human Rights," Author Claims

USAToday Columnist: Religion is Killing the Planet

The Pitter-Patter of Carbon Footprints ...

Cardinal Pell Criticizes Australian Medical Ass'n for Publishing Letter Advocating Carbon Tax on Children

Professor Solves Global Warming: Let’s Tax Reproduction

Global Alarming Update: Focus on So-Called "Carbon Footprint" Anti-Family

Malthusian Nonsense from "Global Warming" Alarmists

Cardinal Pell on Global Warming Alarmists: "Scaremongers" and "Zealots"

Deacon Fournier Reviews Population Controllers

At Catholic Online, Deacon Keith Fournier reviews the book Population Controllers: Real Costs, Illusory Benefits by Steven W. Mosher, President of the Population Research Institute:

... Sadly, the great organizational perpetrator of this anti-life, anti-person, anti-family and anti-growth pogrom is the United Nations and some of its most willing allies are within our own Nation. Mosher traces the philosophical, historical and ideological roots of anti-natalism in Chapter 2, a compelling expose of the population control movement entitled “The Malthusian Delusion and the Origins of Population Control”. There he also unmasks its deep roots in the American soil.

***
The book is not a quick, nor an easy read. It shouldn’t be. It discusses a deadly serious matter, a real matter of life and death. Not only the life or death of children in the womb who are being routinely killed and prevented from joining us as a result of the lies of the “Population Controllers” but potentially the coming demise of entire Nations and cultures.

“Population Controllers: Real Costs, Illusory Benefits” should be in every library of every concerned family, every school, every College or University and every office of every elected representative in this and every nation which values life. With his attention to detail and meticulous research, Dr. Steven W. Mosher has provided us with a Book of great significance.

Almost a “one stop shop”, it puts at our disposal all of the facts and figures we need to unmask the lie that is “Population Control”. However, he has done more; he has begun to propose the alternative way by articulating policy proposals which should be considered by the current candidates for the Presidency of the United States. I would love to see what Senators McCain and Obama had to say concerning the claims and the facts contained in this powerhouse of a book.

Buy this book. Read it and re-read it, again and again. Go back to it. Quote it, use it for a source book in your own pro-life work. Buy it for others. Then act on it.

[Read the whole thing]

Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Malthusian Nonsense Alert: Babies a Drag on the Economy, Report Says

Darwin Catholic: "Want Sustainable? Try a Family"

Malthusian Nonsense in the Extreme: "When Should You Die?"

Population Control Movement is "Number One Violator of Human Rights," Author Claims

USAToday Columnist: Religion is Killing the Planet

The Pitter-Patter of Carbon Footprints ...

Cardinal Pell Criticizes Australian Medical Ass'n for Publishing Letter Advocating Carbon Tax on Children

Professor Solves Global Warming: Let’s Tax Reproduction

Global Alarming Update: Focus on So-Called "Carbon Footprint" Anti-Family

Malthusian Nonsense from "Global Warming" Alarmists

Cardinal Pell on Global Warming Alarmists: "Scaremongers" and "Zealots"

Benedict to UN: Speaking on the Order of Things

(Ray Stubblebine/Reuters)
Tim Drake's Pope2008 blog reports on the Holy Father's speech to the United Nations General Assembly:

Speaking first in French, and then English, Pope Benedict XVI stressed the topic of "ordering" in his U.N. Address this morning. He began by talking about the U.N.'s international ordering, and then moved into the order of Creation.

"The United Nations embodies the aspiration for a 'greater degree of international ordering' (John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialist, 43), inspired and governed by the principle of subsidiarity, and therefore capable of harmonizing the day-to-day unfolding of the lives of people."

Later, he addressed another order.

"Here our thoughts turn also to the way the results of scientific research and technological advances have sometimes been applied. Notwithstanding the enormous benefits that humanity can gain, some instances of this represent a clear violation of the order of creation, to the point where not only is the sacred character of life contradicted, but the human person and the family are robbed of their natural identity."

He spoke of the importance of the family and the human dignity of every person.

***
And he spoke of the need to safeguard the rights based on natural law found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

[More]

UPDATE
The Times of London reaches big time with this headline:

"Pope makes veiled attack on US over Iraq"

Were they watching the same speech I was? If there was some sort of "veiled attack" in his speech, the Holy Father did a real good job of hiding it.

In fact, EWTN contributor, former Boston Mayor, and former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, Raymond Flynn, called Iraq "the 2-ton elephant in the room that the Holy Father didn't address".

National Review Interviews Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon

From National Review Online:

As Pope Benedict XVI arrived in the United States Tuesday, U.S. ambassador to the Holy See Mary Ann Glendon took a few questions from National Review Online editor Kathryn Lopez. Among many other accomplishments, Glendon is author of A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Kathryn Jean Lopez: What should Americans be listening for when the pope speaks in Washington and New York?

Mary Ann Glendon: How about listening for words that can change one’s life? I’m guessing that’s what the pope is hoping for — that we’ll be moved to live up to what is highest and best in ourselves and in our country’s traditions. I would suggest, though, that in addition to listening we should be prepared to read and ponder his messages. It is characteristic of Pope Benedict to give so much to think about that you need time to process it all.


Lopez: Is Benedict’s vision of human rights different than the one that, say, Amnesty International or the U.N.’s human-rights body?

Glendon: The pope has spelled out his vision of human rights pretty clearly: They will be precarious unless they can be grounded in acceptance of universal moral principles that are inscribed in human nature. Not every desire or agenda item of this or that interest group is a human right. If a right is fundamental, it is not an item on a menu from which one can pick and choose. Human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent, but there can be different ways of bringing them to life — a “legitimate pluralism in forms of freedom.”


Lopez: As an academic, how can you shed light on the pope’s emphasis this trip on Catholic education?

Glendon: I’m guessing the pope will encourage Catholic educators to re-appropriate and live up to their long and distinguished intellectual tradition, to insist on excellence in scholarship and teaching, and to provide the best educated laity in history with a faith formation that is at least up to the level of their secular education.


Lopez: What’s up with the Vatican being a carbon-neutral state? Is Pope Benedict a Greenie?

Glendon: The pope’s environmentalism is grounded in the ideas of respect for creation and stewardship. It is best understood in the context of the context of “human ecology,” a notion that appears in Centesimus Annus and that embraces our endangered social environments (family, mediating structures of civil society) as well as natural environments.


Lopez: As far as the Vatican is concerned, how bad off is the Catholic Church in America?

Glendon: From the European vantage point, the U.S. Catholic Church is in good shape. By large majorities, U.S. Catholics say they like being Catholic and like the pope. A remarkable proportion attend Mass regularly. As for the constantly repeated observation that many do not conform to Church teaching in all respects, Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr no doubt spoke for many when he wrote that even a bad Catholic doesn’t necessarily want the pope to lower the bar to the point where almost anything goes.


Lopez: If you could issue one plea to American journalists who are covering the papal visit, what would it be?

Glendon: Take the time to read carefully at least one of Pope Benedict’s important writings — his dialogue with Marcello Pera in Without Roots would be a good place to start.

Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Washington's Woman at the Vatican

Pope Encourages Americans to Defend Life, Traditional Marriage and Family

Harvard Professor is Bush's Pick as Vatican Ambassador

President Bush Poised to Appoint Mary Ann Glendon as U.S. Ambassador to Vatican

Benedict to the UN: In Defense of Natural Law

Russell Shaw writes at InsideCatholic:

December 10, 1948: Keep your eye on that date. It's likely to have an important symbolic role in Pope Benedict XVI's upcoming visit to the United Nations and the United States.

***
On December 10, 1948, the UN General Assembly -- meeting in Paris -- voted 48 for, 0 against, and 8 abstaining to adopt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The abstainers, for those who may have forgotten, were the states of the Soviet bloc, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa.

Nearing its 60th anniversary, the human rights declaration is Benedict's Exhibit A in making his case for universal moral standards as the necessary basis of world peace and justice. When circumstances permit, he links that idea to his project for the revival of natural law.

The pope seems likely again to make his argument for what he calls "common moral law" in the major address he will deliver April 18 to the UN General Assembly in New York. But it will also come as no surprise if he brings up the subject at other stops during his April 15-20 visit to Washington and New York.

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Benedict made it a point to link the idea of common moral law to the United States, declaring it to be "enshrined in its founding documents." He urged that it remain a central principle guiding U.S. policy in today's world.

This, however, is not an easy sell at a time when natural law has widely fallen out of favor in academia -- not only secular academia, but often Catholic academia as well -- with various versions of positivism and utilitarianism replacing it. This circumstance provided the background for Benedict's famous warning against the "dictatorship of relativism" when he spoke to the cardinals on the eve of his election as pope three years ago. Since then, it has continued to inform much that he's said and done.

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C-Fam’s 10 Years Boost Pope's U.N. Welcome

From the April 6-12 issue of National Catholic Register:

NEW YORK — When Pope Benedict XVI speaks at the United Nations this month, one Catholic group will take particular satisfaction in the fact that he will come with a special status among nations rather than as an outsider.

The Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-Fam) was at the forefront of an effort to keep the Holy See’s permanent observer status at the United Nations against a push by pro-abortion groups, led by the so-called Catholics for a Free Choice, to remove the Vatican from official standing at the international body.

The effort to oust the Holy See was an indication of the Vatican’s effectiveness in defending human rights and the family, and in rallying other nations against a drive to add abortion as a basic human right in U.N. documents, said Austin Ruse, president of C-Fam.

“The Holy See is the oldest continuous government in the world and maintains diplomatic relations with most of the nations in the world,” Ruse said recently. “To say that it does not deserve status in the United Nations because it stands for peace and justice and the smallest and most defenseless human beings is an absurdly narrow viewpoint that was rightly rejected.”

The highly charged battle, beginning in 1999, also raised the profile of the fledgling C-Fam and won the organization thousands of new supporters worldwide.

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[Ruse] added, ironically, “I thank Frances Kissling [then head of Catholics for a Free Choice] for C-Fam’s large list of donors.”

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My Comments:
An interesting read on a pro-life NGO keeping an eye on the United Nation's population control efforts.

George Weigel: Pope Unlikely to Denounce "Great Satan Bush"

(Hat tip: Feddie at Southern Appeal)

George Weigel writes at National Review Online:

... In “Not Eye to Eye: Wholly Different Angles on the World,” a front-page “Outlook” piece on March 30, Winters claimed that, during his forthcoming visit to the United States, Pope Benedict XVI will “show how much his worldview differs from President Bush’s when he denounces the continuing U.S. occupation of Iraq before the U.N. General Assembly — a denunciation that’s expected to be especially harsh after the recent martyrdom of a Chaldean Catholic archbishop killed by insurgents in Mosul.” In that one sentence, Winters managed to commit several of the capital sins of Vaticanology: He confused the views of low-ranking bureaucrats with the thinking of senior Vatican officials, the pope’s own thinking, and the official position of the Holy See; he assumed that the pope comes into international forums like the U.N. as a policy proponent rather than as a voice of moral reason; and, perhaps worst of all, he somehow imagined that Benedict XVI would cheapen the sacrifice of the slain Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho by using the Chaldean prelate’s death as a way to score a political point.

In my own conversations with senior Vatican officials over the past 18 months, I have been struck by the fact that the debates of 2002-2003 are over. That there was serious disagreement between the U.S. government and the Holy See prior to the invasion of Iraq is, and was, obvious. Today, however, the page has been turned, and despite what Winters’s Vatican leakers may be telling him, the people who make the decisions tell me, as they have told the Bush administration, that a precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would be a disaster for both Iraq and the entire Middle East.

Pope Benedict will likely urge President Bush to demand that the Iraqi government be more assertive in defending the Christian minority population of Iraq; but that means more and stronger American involvement in the evolving politics of Iraq, not the end of an “occupation.” As for a papal “denunciation” at the U.N., Winters and his friends among Catholic Democrats are likely to be disappointed; Benedict XVI is far too shrewd to give fall campaign sound-bites to Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton (either of whose victory in November would cause nightmares for the Holy See at the U.N. and other international agencies).

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Americans interested in hearing what the pope actually has to say about the United States and its role in the world, and about the deeper issues of world politics, should pay particularly close attention to Benedict’s remarks at the White House welcoming ceremony on April 16 and his address to the U.N. General Assembly on April 18. Far from playing Jeremiah against the Great Satan Bush, Benedict XVI is going to teach the world a lesson about moral reason as the “grammar” by which the world can have a conversation about the world’s future. There are truths built into the world and into us, he will remind Americans and the U.N.; thinking together about those truths is one way to change noise into conversation and incomprehension into dialogue. I hope Mr. Winters, his sources, and the editors at “Outlook” are listening.

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(emphasis added)

My Comments:
Of course, this has been written by one of the neocon minions of the "Great Satan Bush", who advocated on behalf of the Iraq War from the get-go, so take it for what it's worth. /sarcasm

I wouldn't be surprised if we hear from Pope Benedict lamenting the initial decision to go into Iraq. And I suspect he'll mention torture at some point. But the Pope doesn't seem likely to launch into a full-scale denunciation along the lines the Washingon Post columnist is indicating.

Nevertheless, I have a feeling that, regardless of the Holy Father's actual words, whatever he says will be reported as a "denunciation" by those interested in scoring political points.

The Pope and the U.N.

Douglas A. Sylva writes at First Things:

The pope has John Allen worried. In a column published in the New York Times, Allen, senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, frets that Pope Benedict will offend during his upcoming address to the United Nations General Assembly. After all, “this cerebral pope has a track record of blurring . . . compelling arguments during his biggest turns on stage.” He makes “cosmetic missteps that distract attention from his message” and exhibits a “worrying insensitivity to how unfamiliar audiences are likely to hear what he says.”

But Allen should relax. As he is undoubtedly aware, this pope, like all the popes that have reigned during the age of the United Nations, has recognized great potential in the institution. If Benedict says anything that may prove difficult to hear on that April day, it will not be because he is insensitive to his listeners but because the Church knows and appreciates the founding values of the U.N. and seeks to hold the U.N. to those values. In this effort, Pope Benedict will show the way forward to a more vigorous organization, by calling for a restored commitment to the United Nations’ own avowed principles.

The Vatican’s long-standing hope in the institution is tied to its catholic perspective. A worldwide institution, properly constituted and properly administered, could propel the earth toward an ever closer approximation of the universal common good, the rewards of peace and justice that would emanate from worldwide respect for human rights as manifestations of natural law.

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(emphasis added)

Former UN Population Czar Reveals Ties with "Catholics" for a Free Choice

From Catholic World News:

New York, Sep. 3, 2007 (LifesiteNews.com/CWN) - Nafis Sadik, the former head of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), has revealed her longstanding alliance with "Catholics for a Free Choice" (CFFC), the LiteSiteNews service reports.

During her 14 years at the helm of UNFPA, Sadik always denied the organization's abortion advocacy even in the face of overwhelming evidence. She did not directly name her pro-life enemies nor did she reveal her allies in the battle to establish a global "right" to abortion.

All that changed after her accolade-filled departure from UNFPA shortly after which she joined the Board of Directors for the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy (CRLP)-- the legal arm of the pro-abortion movement in the U.S.

With her distance from UNFPA separated by more years, Sadik has felt more comfortable in revealing her enemies and allies - the Catholic Church (specifically under John Paul II) and CFFC respectively.

In an article for the Spring 2007 edition of the CFFC magazine Conscience, Sadik writes about her alliance with Frances Kissling the foundress of the pro-abortion activist group CFFC. "I was very happy to find in Frances Kissling an ally who not only shared my passion for sexual and reproductive health and rights but had a passion of her own, for her church and its mission," wrote Sadik.

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Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Sandro Magister on Efforts to Eject the Holy See from the United Nations

Religious Education by Parents is "Child Abuse"

Vatican Will Not Sign UN Treaty on Disabled Rights

U.N. is an Instrument of Peace, Vatican Nuncio Says at Prayer Service

US Protests Exclusion of Pro-Life Groups at UN Conference

New Book Exposes Vatican Battle With UN, EU, On Life Issues

Sandro Magister on Efforts to Eject the Holy See from the United Nations

Sandro Magister writes in Chiesa:

... The idea of expelling the Holy See from the concert of nations is not new. Since 1995, “Catholics for a Free Choice” has tried to do this through petitions signed by various countries. The American group is led by a former religious sister, Frances Kissling, but it’s Catholic in name only – more than that, it’s been officially excommunicated by the bishops of the United States. The campaign was called “See Change,” and it was aimed at expelling the Holy See from the United Nations.

The reasons advanced in support of expulsion were the same ones that “The Economist” has now brought back to light: the Catholic Church is the only religion in the world that sits at the UN as a permanent observer, with “privileges” similar to those of sovereign nations; it thus represents an anomaly that moreover foments disagreement; if the Church strives to bring peace to Burundi, that’s unobjectionable, but when it opposes abortion and euthanasia, no, it is not right that in order to support its own interests it should make use of an international juridical status that doesn’t truly belong to it.

It is no accident that the campaign for the expulsion of the Holy See from the UN heated up after the international conference in Cairo in 1994, on population, and the following conference in Beijing, on women. At both conferences, the Vatican delegation played an effective role of opposition to the pro-abortion policies promoted by the UN itself, and by the major Western powers.

Apart from life and the family, another issue on which the Holy See becomes a “sign of contradiction” – as archbishop Mamberti recalled – is religious freedom.

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It follows that the campaign to eject the Holy See from the UN is not motivated by what the Holy See is, but by what it does.

Religious Education by Parents is "Child Abuse"

From LifeSiteNews.com:

NEW YORK, June 18, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Religious education is a form of child abuse and violates the rights of children, contends a thesis to be considered by secular humanists at the Center for Inquiry's congress in Beijing this October.

The Center for Inquiry, an organisation recently awarded special consultative status as an NGO at the United Nations (UN) will consider the proposals of Innaiah Narisetti, the chairman of the Center for Inquiry's India chapter, that portend the next stage in the assault on the rights of parents to educate their children.

Nasiretti called the influence of religion a "severe shortcoming in the global campaign to protect children" and a contributor to child abuse saying, "In one form or another, all religions violate the rights of children."

"Such abuse begins with the involuntary involvement of children in religious practices from the time they are born," says Narisetti. "All religions, through ritual, preaching, and religious texts, seek to bring children into day-to-day religious practice."

"This gives holy books and scriptures, as well as those who teach them, an early grip on the developing minds of young people, leaving an indelible impression on them," said Narisetti, calling Sunday schools, madrassas, or Jewish or Hindu temples, centers of indoctrination for children.

Nasiretti's proposal would reject the long-recognized inherent rights of parents to educate and provide for their children's religious instruction in favor of regulating children's exposure to religious influence by world governments abiding by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

"The time has come to debate the participation of children in religious institutions," continues Narisetti. "While some might see it as a matter better left to parents, the negative influence of religion and its subsequent contribution to child abuse from religious beliefs and practices requires us to ask whether organized religion is an institution that needs limits set on how early it should have access to children."

The UN forum proposed by Narisetti would debate the "pros and cons" of religion on children and determine whether religion contributes to global child abuse.

"The UN must then take a clear stand on the issue of the forced involvement of children in religious practices; it must speak up for the rights of children and not the automatic right of parents and societies to pass on religious beliefs, and it must reexamine whether an organization like the Vatican should belong to the UN," stated Narisetti.

"Until this happens, millions of children worldwide will continue to be abused in the name of religion, and the efforts made by the UN will continue to address the symptoms but not the disease."

(emphasis added)

My Comments:
Proving, once again, Regular Guy Paul's adage that liberalism leads to religious persecution.