By John-Henry Westen
OTTAWA, April 1, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In an extensively researched article, 'Globalization and the New World Order,' which has been reproduced widely during the past week, the well-known Canadian author, Michael D. O'Brien, discusses recent developments in globalization and what they may portend for the future. (To read the complete article see: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009_docs/GlobalizationFinal.pdf)
O'Brien warns that the globalization we are currently experiencing has the unprecedented potential for bringing about a one-world government, with the subsequent dangers to individual and national freedoms. O'Brien cites the devastating effect of the E.U. and the U.N. on the "moral and psychological geography of man," notably through their anti-family and anti-population policies.
He notes that the original post-war founders of the European Economic Community, from which the E.U. evolved, envisioned a federalism of independent states informed by Christian ethics. Says O'Brien: "This concept was gradually and deliberately mutated by secular humanists into its present openly anti-Christian policies and the creation of a continental super-state. The process has proven so effective in shifting self-determining nations into submission to larger governing bodies that it cannot help but be emulated on a still larger scale."
Citing John Paul II's encyclical Centessimus Annus and the writings of Benedict XVI, O'Brien points out that no truly human system of government can exist unless it places itself "at the service of human freedom in its totality." This cannot be bypassed, O'Brien argues, "without immense negative consequences in terms of human misery and destruction of human life. This concept must be a non-negotiable part of the foundation of any authentically human system of economics and government."
To read the complete article see: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009_docs/GlobalizationFinal.pdf
The following excerpts from the article are especially to be noted:
QUOTE: "Those who undertake the building of an ideal planetary society will find that it is a great deal less easy to accomplish than they anticipated. That will be their moment of testing. In the best-case scenario, they might come to admit that genuine diversity and a broad spectrum of independent sovereignties is, after all, a healthier system of governing the people of the world-imperfect as always, but the best means of maintaining freedom. Or, driven by a pride that approaches the level of satanic, they may push onward, imposing the new order regardless of the opposition, dismissing whatever valid arguments the resistance may put forward. And if the resistance is strong, a very big stick will be needed. There will be imprisonment for those who resist (or even dissent from) the perceived 'common good.' The new rulers will justify the loss of freedoms by promoting everywhere the illusion that the successful realization of the dream is the highest good, worth any sacrifice. ('It is better that one man should die than the entire nation be destroyed,' said Caiaphas).
Translated into modern terms: 'It is better that nations should die, and some of their peoples die, than our window of opportunity for global control be lost.' Formed by and living by the deformed ethic of 'the end justifies the means', they will consider themselves to be the true visionaries, the saviours of the world. In a phrase, this is secular messianism. (see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 676)
QUOTE: "It is in the nature of secular messianists to believe that if mankind will not cooperate, then mankind must be forced to cooperate- for its own good, of course. They recognize that the leap from an era of nation-states to an era of one world government will not be achieved without conscious effort and a good deal of chance. They would be blind not to see the grave problems in the present world as opportunities, as necessary creative disintegration, as the catalyst in the transforming experiment. In such a situation, management by crisis overrides authentic exercise of human freedom and responsibility. But this alone will not achieve their goals. They must also capture the popular imagination with a new global ethic, one that sweeps aside the protests of those who adhere to traditional morality, consigning us to 'the garbage heap of history,' and establishing a dangerously self-righteous moralism in its place (for example, environmentalism as eco-spirituality, or the negation of gender as 'liberation')."
QUOTE: "The history of oppressive governments is the history of politicians attempting to save the world on their own terms, cut off from the guiding principles of moral absolutes. ….If we seek to understand our times with any proximate coherence, we should understand this: Every system of totalitarian rule, including and between the poles of brutal tyranny and soft-spoken control, have this in common: 1) the rejection of binding moral absolutes established by a transcendent Being; and thus: 2) the minimizing of the absolute value of human life, and 3) the elevation of the State (malignant and seemingly benign alike) as the final arbiter of good and evil.
QUOTE: "The truth is that all systems that seek to rule the Family of Man with either total or selective contempt for some portion of that family, in the end will destroy the family itself. Such systems are inherently anti-human, and thus they are also anti-Christ. It is a simple fact that all the worst manifestations of the spirit of Antichrist in history have been immediately preceded by apostasy from the Christian faith. We are now living in the midst of the greatest apostasy from the Christian faith in the history of the Church. This apostasy has been made possible not only by the external pressures brought to bear on believers by the spirit of the world, by the sins and errors of unbelievers. It has occurred largely because of the internal betrayal of the Faith by false teachers who have arisen among us, those who gradually seized our institutions in the particular churches (university faculties and other levels of education, some seminaries, diocesan organs of formation in faith, catechetical programs, and so forth) and turned them to their own purposes, which were far from the mind of Christ and far from the heart of the Church."
OTTAWA, April 1, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In an extensively researched article, 'Globalization and the New World Order,' which has been reproduced widely during the past week, the well-known Canadian author, Michael D. O'Brien, discusses recent developments in globalization and what they may portend for the future. (To read the complete article see: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009_docs/GlobalizationFinal.pdf)
O'Brien warns that the globalization we are currently experiencing has the unprecedented potential for bringing about a one-world government, with the subsequent dangers to individual and national freedoms. O'Brien cites the devastating effect of the E.U. and the U.N. on the "moral and psychological geography of man," notably through their anti-family and anti-population policies.
He notes that the original post-war founders of the European Economic Community, from which the E.U. evolved, envisioned a federalism of independent states informed by Christian ethics. Says O'Brien: "This concept was gradually and deliberately mutated by secular humanists into its present openly anti-Christian policies and the creation of a continental super-state. The process has proven so effective in shifting self-determining nations into submission to larger governing bodies that it cannot help but be emulated on a still larger scale."
Citing John Paul II's encyclical Centessimus Annus and the writings of Benedict XVI, O'Brien points out that no truly human system of government can exist unless it places itself "at the service of human freedom in its totality." This cannot be bypassed, O'Brien argues, "without immense negative consequences in terms of human misery and destruction of human life. This concept must be a non-negotiable part of the foundation of any authentically human system of economics and government."
To read the complete article see: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009_docs/GlobalizationFinal.pdf
The following excerpts from the article are especially to be noted:
QUOTE: "Those who undertake the building of an ideal planetary society will find that it is a great deal less easy to accomplish than they anticipated. That will be their moment of testing. In the best-case scenario, they might come to admit that genuine diversity and a broad spectrum of independent sovereignties is, after all, a healthier system of governing the people of the world-imperfect as always, but the best means of maintaining freedom. Or, driven by a pride that approaches the level of satanic, they may push onward, imposing the new order regardless of the opposition, dismissing whatever valid arguments the resistance may put forward. And if the resistance is strong, a very big stick will be needed. There will be imprisonment for those who resist (or even dissent from) the perceived 'common good.' The new rulers will justify the loss of freedoms by promoting everywhere the illusion that the successful realization of the dream is the highest good, worth any sacrifice. ('It is better that one man should die than the entire nation be destroyed,' said Caiaphas).
Translated into modern terms: 'It is better that nations should die, and some of their peoples die, than our window of opportunity for global control be lost.' Formed by and living by the deformed ethic of 'the end justifies the means', they will consider themselves to be the true visionaries, the saviours of the world. In a phrase, this is secular messianism. (see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 676)
QUOTE: "It is in the nature of secular messianists to believe that if mankind will not cooperate, then mankind must be forced to cooperate- for its own good, of course. They recognize that the leap from an era of nation-states to an era of one world government will not be achieved without conscious effort and a good deal of chance. They would be blind not to see the grave problems in the present world as opportunities, as necessary creative disintegration, as the catalyst in the transforming experiment. In such a situation, management by crisis overrides authentic exercise of human freedom and responsibility. But this alone will not achieve their goals. They must also capture the popular imagination with a new global ethic, one that sweeps aside the protests of those who adhere to traditional morality, consigning us to 'the garbage heap of history,' and establishing a dangerously self-righteous moralism in its place (for example, environmentalism as eco-spirituality, or the negation of gender as 'liberation')."
QUOTE: "The history of oppressive governments is the history of politicians attempting to save the world on their own terms, cut off from the guiding principles of moral absolutes. ….If we seek to understand our times with any proximate coherence, we should understand this: Every system of totalitarian rule, including and between the poles of brutal tyranny and soft-spoken control, have this in common: 1) the rejection of binding moral absolutes established by a transcendent Being; and thus: 2) the minimizing of the absolute value of human life, and 3) the elevation of the State (malignant and seemingly benign alike) as the final arbiter of good and evil.
QUOTE: "The truth is that all systems that seek to rule the Family of Man with either total or selective contempt for some portion of that family, in the end will destroy the family itself. Such systems are inherently anti-human, and thus they are also anti-Christ. It is a simple fact that all the worst manifestations of the spirit of Antichrist in history have been immediately preceded by apostasy from the Christian faith. We are now living in the midst of the greatest apostasy from the Christian faith in the history of the Church. This apostasy has been made possible not only by the external pressures brought to bear on believers by the spirit of the world, by the sins and errors of unbelievers. It has occurred largely because of the internal betrayal of the Faith by false teachers who have arisen among us, those who gradually seized our institutions in the particular churches (university faculties and other levels of education, some seminaries, diocesan organs of formation in faith, catechetical programs, and so forth) and turned them to their own purposes, which were far from the mind of Christ and far from the heart of the Church."
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