21 April 2008
Red Flags
Posted by Joy Bischoff under: Constitution in Peril .
After hesitating for two days, I have decided to blog this article. I do not want to attack the Pope but I do want to state that I wish he would not engage so strongly in the political arena. We have strong feelings about our national sovereignty and do not want to see a one world order take away that sovereignty. The things in this article and other statements that I have read make me believe that the Pope is squarely in the court of the Internationalists. To me, this is outside of the stewardship that a religious leader should have. Obviously there are different feelings on the connection of Church and State in Europe and their history supports that so it is an honest disagreement.
The Catholic Church is a very powerful religion and does many wonderful things. I am sad that we differ on the validity of “binding international rules”. His words have raised major red flags for me:
Pope says unilateral acts undermine U.N.
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Countries that act unilaterally on the world stage undermine the authority of the United Nations and weaken the broad consensus needed to confront global problems, Pope Benedict said on Friday.
In a major speech to the U.N. General Assembly, the pope also said the international community sometimes had the duty to intervene when a country could not protect its own people from “grave and sustained violations of human rights.”…
Speaking in French and English from the Assembly’s green marble podium, he gave a wide-ranging address on issues such as globalization, human rights and the environment.
The international community must be “capable of responding to the demands of the human family through binding international rules,” said the 81-year-old pope, who spoke after meeting privately with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
He said the notion of multilateral consensus was “in crisis because it is still subordinated to the decisions of a few, whereas the world’s problems call for interventions in the form of collective action by the international community.”
While Benedict did not mention any country, this appeared to refer to the United States, which led the 2003 invasion of Iraq despite a Security Council refusal to approve it.
7 Comments so far...
Jesse Says:
21 April 2008 at 12:35 am.
Winds of change are blowing those red flags pretty hard. Sorry, it’s late and I grow philosophical when I’m tired.
Concerned American Says:
21 April 2008 at 12:54 am.
I think I smell a rat. If we don’t watch out he’ll hit us with a real zinger.
Yup, I’m tired too Jesse.
Angela Rogin Says:
21 April 2008 at 10:04 am.
SGS wrote about clergy in Europe being part of the state so apparently there is a big difference in how involved clergy should be in politics depending if yo are in the EU or the US. It is a little disturbing to me. I wonder how American Catholics feel about it?
jobob911 Says:
21 April 2008 at 10:26 am.
The word Catholic means universal, so maybe they just actually think in a more international way then we do.
SGS Says:
21 April 2008 at 11:46 am.
Angela, most of the European countries have state religions, and those are funded with taxpayers’ money (so the clergy of those particular religions — Church of England in UK, Catholic in France, etc, are on state payrolls). But this is not to say all religions are funded by the government. Vatican definitely is not in that category, as it is a city-state by itself, being independent from all countries. It is recognized formally by UN as a country (and yes, it’s a country within Rome!). Anyway, Pope definitely cannot be considered as state employee, unless you consider the spritual leader of a recognized state as government :).
But yes, Pope Benedict is definitely out of his area of expertise when he claims to know how countries should be run. He should focus on influencing his members on being a better people, and the result will flow from there, even within the governments. They still are struggling on whether the pro-abortion politicans should be allowed to participate in communison! You either are worthy by following the teachings of your own church, or you are not. What is so hard about that? The Pope should get his church into shape before he attempts to get the rest of the world in shape!
Pickles Says:
21 April 2008 at 11:57 am.
Oh yeah. Pull the beam out of his own eye instead of trying for the mote.
All the quotes that were bolded are just wrong. He has a lot of influence and it seems like he is basically telling all those millions of Catholics that they should support the UN over our own country and constitution. Wrong!
E.E. Says:
21 April 2008 at 2:47 pm.
These kinds of attitudes use to be kept secret but the secret it out. Now people have to decide whether they want a one world government where the UN Charter’s laws govern us and come before the Constitution, or whether they don’t trust this group that has no representation among the people and freedoms are trampled on.
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