Tuesday, July 02, 2013

The Origins of Vatican Power in America



The pope and his hierarchy claim that papal or Vatican power originates from God. However, there are more earthly explanations for the origins of their power.

Editor’s note: Given this November’s US presidential election and the Catholic Church’s immense stake in the outcome, we are publishing a series of excerpts from N4CM Chairman Dr Stephen D Mumford’s book, “American Democracy and the Vatican”. In the following chapter Dr Mumford reveals the origins of Vatican power in America, as relevant and revealing today as it was when the book was first published in 1984.


Chapter 4 is here. Chapter 5 is here.Chapter 8 is here. Chapter 10 is here.





Chapter 7: The Origins of Vatican Power in America: A Guide for Population and National Security Specialists

...


National Divisiveness and the Vatican

Few non-Catholic Americans understand the relationship between American Catholics and their Vatican, yet this relationship has enor­mous implications for loyal Catholics working in the population or national security fields or any other area in which the best interests of the Vatican do not invariably parallel those of the United States. This relationship is one that generates divisiveness:

Unfortunately, the Catholic people of the United States are not citizens but subjects in their own religious commonwealth. The secular as well as the religious policies of their Church are made in Rome by an organization that is alien in spirit and control. The American Catholic people themselves have no representatives of their own choosing either in their own local hierarchy or in the Roman high command; and they are compelled by the very nature of their Church’s authoritarian structure to accept nonreligious as well as religious policies that have been imposed upon them from abroad.[54]

From the Catholic Almanac:

The Catholic citizen is in conscience bound to respect and obey the duly constituted authority provided faith and morals are thereby not endangered. Under no circumstances may the Church be subjugated by the State. Whatever their form may be, states are not conceded the right to force the observance of immoral or irreligious laws upon a people.[55]

Since “morals” can define any human activity, the Vatican, accord­ingly, is the supreme ruler of the United States. As Pope Leo XIII said in his encyclical on the “Chief Duties of Christian Citizens,” setting the stage for anarchy at the pope’s command:

If the laws of the state are manifestly at variance with the divine law, containing enactments hurtful to the Church or conveying injunctions adverse to the duty imposed by religion, or if they violate in the person of the Supreme Pontiff the authority of Jesus Christ, then truly, to resist becomes a positive duty, to obey, a crime.[56]

The Vatican has even been divisive within the American Catho­lic Church:

Rome has always been careful not to elevate any bishopric in the United States to a position of primacy. For a time the bishops of Baltimore enjoyed a kind of primacy of honor, but even this has now disappeared. Leo XIII, instead of creating an American primate whose viewpoint and background might be fundamental­ly American, created an Apostolic Delegacy at Washington, and each succeeding Pope has sent his own representative to occupy the spacious building in Washington which, in effect, is the general Roman headquarters of American Catholicism. Since the Pope’s appointee is always an Italian, whose line of promotion runs toward Rome instead of the United States, there is little danger that he will become infected with the “heresy” of Ameri­canism.[57]
There is no doubt that the parochial school, whatever may be its virtues, is the most important divisive instrument in the life of American children. It keeps Catholic children separated from the main body of American childhood during the most impression­able years of life and develops in them a denominational narrow-mindedness.[58]
Even when both schools emphasize patriotism and community spirit, the fact that they exist as separate establishments tends to divide the community emotionally and culturally.[59]
Catholic parents must send their children to Catholic schools when they are available under moral law.[60] In other words, it is “immoral” to send Catholic children to public schools if Catholic schools are avail­able.

Catholic schools teach intolerance and oppose national solidarity when the Vatican is threatened. Abortion is an example. We need only to look to the north to observe the logical conclusion of this
arrangement:

The major lesson for the United States in the Canadian experi­ence is quite clear. A nation that compromises with the Catholic hierarchy on the control and support of common schools is doomed to be either a clerical state or a house divided. In Canada the Roman Church has built a state within a state because the British government permitted public revenue to be used for a school system that conditioned Catholic children to be Catholics first and Canadians second. Many Canadians believe that it is too late now to rescue the province of Quebec.[61]

The general rule against marriage with Protestants, Jews, and those of schismatic persuasion has served to be most divisive, since loyal Catholics tend to shun Catholics who have married outside the Church. If this rule could be strictly enforced, and the Vatican wishes it could be, it would split the American community clearly down the middle by religious bigotry.

The intolerance toward other American religions taught from childhood will ensure a continuation of divisiveness:

The Homiletic and Pastoral Review of February 1947, in answering a question for priests as to whether it is right to use the word “faith” to describe other religious groups, said: “For, if there is anything in Catholic teaching, it is the doctrine that the Son of God established only one religion and imposed on all men the obligation of embracing it; consequently no other religion has a real objective right to exist and to function, and no individual has an objective right to embrace any non-Catholic religion.”[62]

The hierarchy’s use of ethnic power bloc politics has been a major source of power in the United States for a century. Traditionally the Church used the Irish, Polish, German, and Italian Americans for this purpose. More recently, the Church has used Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Vietnamese, and Haitians. In the near future, since one-ninth of the population of El Salvador has illegally immi­grated to the United States, many of them will similarly serve the Vatican.

The Catholic Church draws upon these power blocs to manipulate both domestic and foreign policy in ways that are discussed in chapter ten. Millions of voters, wishing to maintain some cultural identity, find that their bishops “feel compelled” to speak out “on behalf of” their ethnic minority group. This is especially true where a large pro­portion of the group does not speak English. The Church then uses these power blocks to achieve its own political ambitions.

Conflict and disunity are bred by cultural and linguistic differ­ences. Bilingual education fosters these in the extreme. It is no accident that the Church has been the only significant proponent of bilingual education in the United States. Almost all recipients of bilingual education are Roman Catholic. Having created this separate cultural group, it would be the “duty” of the bishops to speak “for them.”

There is a persistent pattern of acts that create divisiveness at the international level (in the United Nations and its agencies), at nation­al, state, and local government levels, and in voluntary organizations. Through the use of the abortion issue, more than any other, the Catholic hierarchy has divided the country and has made enormous political gains, including helping to elect a president who represents the Church on all issues the hierarchy considers important (see, chapter ten).

In no other area of human activity is the Church’s use of the “divide and conquer” technique more apparent than in the population growth control field. In the remaining chapters, specific examples of their use of this technique will be provided.




P.S.

Despite the author of this article's pro-abortion views (prominently displayed here), I chose to post this chapter of his book because of the abundance of information about the Roman Catholic Church's modus operandi;  I thought it would help inform those that are ignorant of its methods.   

Arsenio.

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