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Thursday, March 10, 2016
Sanders Exposes Himself on National TV
Cliff Kincaid — March 10, 2016
Democratic presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders has finally been exposed as the hard-core communist he is. It happened at the debate in Miami on Wednesday night, hosted by Univision and The Washington Post, and broadcast on CNN. On Thursday, CNN trumpeted the news from the debate that Sanders had refused to disavow his previous support for the Castro dictatorship in Cuba. Instead, he had reverted to anti-American nonsense while smearing a Democratic president named John F. Kennedy in the process.
As we have been saying for months, “democratic socialism” is just another name for communism.
Until that point, Sanders had been riding a wave of support from foolish Democrats who thought socialism was somehow different than communism, and that Sanders didn’t favor a dictatorship of any kind. He had spoken of socialism in places like Denmark. He was seen as the friendly face of “democratic socialism” with a powerful message of taking it to the so-called “one percent.”
But on Wednesday night, the real Bernie Sanders came through loud and clear.
Hard-core Marxists had been rallying around the Sanders campaign for months. Alan Maass, the editor of SocialistWorker.org, had said,“…the Bernie Sanders campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination has done more than anything else to bring the discussion of socialism into the mainstream.” Maass was ecstatic that “the opinion polls tell us that more and more people are identifying with socialism, or at least preferring socialism over capitalism…”
It was true. A poll of 1,000 likely Democratic voters by the American Action Forum (AAF) found that 57 percent answered “positive” to the question, “Do you think socialism has a positive or negative impact on society?”
This was happening because news organizations had not explained how socialism makes people poor and dependent on government—and murders those who get in the way of the Marxist planners. Hence, in the Fox News Democratic presidential town hall on Monday night, even moderator Bret Baier highlighted how Sanders is considered “honest and trustworthy” in opinion polls. This followed Sanders’ claims that he would control the national debt by giving people free health care and college.
During that town hall, when asked how he would get his proposals enacted into law, Sanders said, “I was the chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. Working with people like John McCain, Jeff Miller over in the House—he was chairman in the House Republican. We put together the most comprehensive veterans’ health care bill in the modern history of America, okay?”
A new health care bill was needed because the socialist VA health care system failed veterans. We have pointed out that Sanders’ pitiful performance as chairman of the Senate Veterans Committee came under serious scrutiny by CNN and other media for defending the VA bureaucrats, putting their interests above the veterans they are supposed to serve.
It’s true that Sanders, who had become chairman of the Senate Veterans Committee in 2013, had worked with Republicans to craft a bill designed to fix the problems. But after playing down the serious nature of the scandal, Sanders was forced to recognize, under pressure from Republicans, that the government-run VA health care system could only be saved by giving patients a private health care option.
We had previously reported how Fox News groveled to Sanders to get him to appear on the town hall. It took several more weeks to get Hillary Clinton to agree to appear. While Baier asked Mrs. Clinton some tough questions, the appeasement of Sanders continued. Baier failed to ask about such topics as Sanders’ membership in a communist Israeli kibbutz called Shaar Haamakim that was dedicated to mass murderer Joseph Stalin, and whose members celebrated May Day with red flags.
But during Wednesday night’s debate in Miami, the issue of Sanders’ support for communist totalitarian regimes was brought up. It will prove to be a major turning point in the campaign. Univision anchor María Elena Salinas said to Sanders: “In 1985, you praised the Sandinista government and you said that Daniel Ortega was an impressive guy. This is what you said about Fidel Castro. Let’s listen:”
Sanders: You may recall way back in, when was it, 1961, they invaded Cuba, and everybody was totally convinced that Castro was the worst guy in the world. All the Cuban people were going to rise up in rebellion against Fidel Castro. They forgot that he educated their kids, gave them health care, totally transformed their society.
The “they” Sanders was referring to was the anti-communist U.S. presidency of Democrat John F. Kennedy, who was determined to overthrow Castro. The evidence shows that Kennedy was killed by a Soviet-Cuban conspiracy involving Marxist “Fair Play for Cuba” member Lee Harvey Oswald. A Palestinian Marxist Killed JFK’s brother Robert.
Sanders, the independent-turned-Democrat, had shown callous indifference to the anti-communism that used to dominate the national Democratic Party. He seems oblivious to the evidence that Castro was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.
Salinas asked, “In South Florida there are still open wounds among some exiles regarding socialism and communism. So please explain what is the difference between the socialism that you profess and the socialism in Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela.” Socialism is so successful in Venezuela that the currency is worth less than toilet paper, which is in short supply.
When Sanders failed to answer the question, Salinas shot back: “Senator, in retrospect, have you ever regretted the characterizations that you made of Daniel Ortega and Fidel Castro that way?”
This exchange then took place:
Sanders: I’m sorry. Please say that…
Salinas: In retrospect, have you ever regretted the characterizations of Daniel Ortega and Fidel Castro that you made in 1985?
Sanders: The key issue here was whether the United States should go around overthrowing small Latin American countries. I think that that was a mistake…
Salinas: You didn’t answer the question.
Sanders: …both in Nicaragua and Cuba. Look, let’s look at the facts here. Cuba is, of course, an authoritarian undemocratic country, and I hope very much as soon as possible it becomes a democratic country. But on the other hand… it would be wrong not to state that in Cuba they have made some good advances in health care. They are sending doctors all over the world. They have made some progress in education.
Except for the rather vague and misleading reference to Cuba being “an authoritarian undemocratic country,” it was noteworthy that Sanders had not one word of criticism for the Castro dictatorship.
Sanders talks a lot about non-intervention. In fact, however, Sanders supported NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, an illegal and unconstitutional war waged by President Clinton.
On the matter of Cuba, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was prepared, coming back during the debate to say, “I just want to add one thing to the question you were asking Senator Sanders. I think in that same interview, he praised what he called the revolution of values in Cuba and talked about how people were working for the common good, not for themselves. I just couldn’t disagree more. You know, if the values are that you oppress people, you disappear people, you imprison people or even kill people for expressing their opinions, for expressing freedom of speech, that is not the kind of revolution of values that I ever want to see anywhere.”
An anti-communist Hillary had suddenly emerged on the scene. We all know it’s about getting votes in Florida, but it was a decisive moment nonetheless.
The day after the debate, the Hillary Clinton campaign let loose, noting that Sanders “has a troubling history of admiration for the Castros.” The headline over the item on the Clinton-for-president website blared, “Bernie Sanders just refused to disavow his past support for Fidel Castro.” Among other things, Sanders had called Cuba “a model of what a society could be.”
Referring to the poll on Democratic Party support for socialism cited earlier, an editorial in Investor’s Business Daily asked, “How could average Americans of a supposedly mainstream political party throw their lot in with a creed that’s responsible for more human misery and poverty in the world than any other? It boggles the mind. Socialism, and its evil twin, communism, murdered well over 100 million people during the last century, a scale of slaughter unmatched in human history.”
The answer is that some people, like Sanders, deliberately try to separate socialism from communism, despite the fact that the father of both is Karl Marx. Analyst Trevor Loudon notes that so-called “democratic socialism,” as preached by Sanders, is simply a euphemism for socialism. “Socialism is the last stop on the road to Communism,” he notes. The Marxist dialectic is said to produce the final stage of communism through struggle or conflict.
Some people get confused because they think that Communist China has abandoned both socialism and communism in favor of capitalism. Those who doubt that China is still communist should take a look at the recent Wall Street Journal article entitled, “China’s Xi Jinping Puts Loyalty to the Test at Congress.” It’s all about enforcing loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party. The communists are using capitalism to strengthen communism. They consider it another phase the country has to go through to achieve the highest stage of communism.
One of Ronald Reagan’s favorite jokes was about two Russians walking down the street, and one asks, “Comrade, have we reached the highest state of Communism?” The other replies, “Oh, no, I think things are going to get a lot worse.”
This is the brutal and bloody record of socialism and communism.
Yet our media let Sanders run around the country talking about socialism being “democratic.”
Our media have tried to get around this question by framing the issue as one of “income inequality.” It’s just another term for Marxist class warfare.
Now we know that when Sanders talks about imposing socialism on the American people, he’s talking about a dictatorship. Thanks to Univision and anchor María Elena Salinas for bringing out the facts in this case.
Source
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Tuesday, August 05, 2014
Intellectual Dishonesty and Roman Catholic Apologetics
John W. Robbins
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This essay is taken from Dr. Robbins’ latest book, Ecclesiastical Megalomania: The Economic and Political Thought of the Roman Catholic Church (Trinity, 1999). Dr. Robbins earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy and Political Theory from The Johns Hopkins University.
Despite the Roman Catholic Church’s strident and sustained crusade against political freedom and capitalism that has now lasted for more than a century, a small but influential group of American Roman Catholic economists has begun to argue that the Roman Catholic Church now favors capitalism. Not only does the Roman Church-State favor capitalism now, according to these apologists for Rome, it has always favored capitalism, we are told.1 The opposite impression-the impression that the Roman Church-State was anti-capitalist-was allegedly created by progressive leftists’’ who engaged in a selective reading’’2 of the papal encyclicals. Among these revisionist Roman Catholic apologists are Robert Sirico, a Paulist priest who is also the president of the Acton Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan; and Michael Novak, a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D. C.3
Sirico argued, for example, that John Paul II’s encyclical issued in commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of Rerum Novarum in 1991, Centesimus Annus, represents a dramatic development in the encyclical tradition in favor of the free economy.’’ More than any other church document,’’ Sirico wrote, this latest one celebrates the creativity of entrepreneurs and the virtues required for productivity.’’ Sirico asserted, The pope affirms both the practical and moral legitimacy of profit, entrepreneurship, appropriate self-interest, productivity, and a stable currency.’’ Furthermore, Centesimus Annus is not only a repudiation of the entire collectivist agenda, root and branch,....but [also] the warmest embrace of the free economy since the Scholastics.’’ Centesimus Annus evidences the greatest depth of economic understanding and the most deliberate (and least critical) embrace of the system of free exchange on the part of the Catholic teaching authority in 100 years, and possibly since the Middle Ages.....’’ [T]his encyclical constitutes the epitaph for liberation and collectivist movements in terms of any official ecclesiastical legitimacy.’’ It is an uncompromising rejection of collectivism in its Marxist, Communist, socialist, and even welfare-statist manifestations.
Now these are certainly dramatic claims for Centesimus Annus. One would expect such sweeping claims indicating dramatic and almost revolutionary developments in Roman Catholic social thought to be supported by many quotations from the encyclical itself. Unfortunately, Sirico quoted only one complete sentence and one sentence fragment from the encyclical, a document of approximately 28,000 words. The sole complete sentence reads as follows:
By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility the social assistance state leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are more dominated by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending.
The partial sentence Sirico quoted is a solitary reference to some of the virtues that compose the work ethic: diligence, industriousness, prudence in taking reasonable risks, reliability and fidelity in interpersonal relationships, as well as courage in carrying out decisions which are difficult and painful but necessary, both for the overall working of a business and in meeting possible setbacks. Any reader of Sirico’s essay who actually reads the 1991 papal encyclical will be disappointed, for virtually all of the claims that Sirico made are not supported by the statements of the encyclical itself.
Of course, some of Sirico’s claims may be true. For example, when Sirico wrote that Centesimus Annus evidences the greatest depth of economic understanding....on the part of Catholic teaching authority in 100 years,’’ he may very well have been correct. Our survey of the teaching of official Roman Church-State social thought as expressed in the papal encyclicals and conciliar constitutions turned up little or no evidence of economic understanding. Instead, the Roman Church-State has shrilly denounced the market, self-interest, and capitalism on ethical grounds, and made sustained demands for government intervention to protect the common good’’ and promote social justice.’’ Sirico’s statement turns on a comparison between Centesimus Annus and previous encyclicals, so if the latest papal encyclical is less candid and forthright about, or less strident in, its criticism of capitalism, it might appear in a somewhat favorable light. And if the pope praises some of the economic virtues,’’ even though the praise is almost 500 years after Luther and Calvin, perhaps it is a sign of hope for economically conservative Roman Catholics like Mr. Sirico, who seem to be embarrassed by a Church-State that has been one of the world’s longest and strongest proponents of anti-capitalist ideas.
Sirico claimed that more than any other church document this latest one [Centesimus Annus] celebrates the creativity of entrepreneurs and the virtue required for productivity.’’ This writer has not read all church documents, and neither, one supposes, has Mr. Sirico. In his essay Sirico discussed only one previous church document, Rerum Novarum, and furnished us with a creative misreading of that encyclical as well.4 But despite his best efforts, Rerum Novarum is so obviously an anti-capitalist document that Sirico is finally embarrassed by it. His desire to find something of economic value in the papal encyclicals seems to betray him into making statements that he cannot support. The many official Roman Church documents that this writer has read express the Roman Church-State’s long-standing hatred for capitalism on moral grounds, a hatred that has now been clearly expressed by the Magisterium for over a century. P. T. Bauer accurately called these papal encyclicals incompetent,’’ immoral,’’ and envy exalted.5
The Meaning of Rerum Novarum and Centesimus Annus
If Sirico’s reading of Centesimus Annus is so misleading, what exactly did John Paul II say in the encyclical? Since Centesimus Annus was issued in commemoration of Rerum Novarum, the pope began by praising Rerum Novarum as an immortal document,’’ and continued: the vital energies rising from that root have not been spent with the passing of the years, but rather have increased even more.’’ Continuing his praise for Rerum Novarum for several paragraphs, John Paul II asserted that the validity of this teaching has already been pointed out in two Encyclicals published during my Pontificate: Laborem Exercens....and Sollicitudo Rei Socialis.....’’ John Paul II proposed a re-reading’’ of Rerum Novarum to discover anew the richness of the fundamental principles which it formulated.....’’ What are those fundamental principles? John Paul II, echoing Leo XIII a century before him, began with a quasi-Marxist analysis of capitalism. Please keep in mind that the quotations that follow are from the encyclical that Sirico and Novak have described as the most pro-capitalist document the Roman Church-State has ever written:
4.2 In the sphere of economics....new structures for the production of consumer goods had progressively taken shape [during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries]. A new form of property had appeared-capital; and a new form of labor-labor for wages, characterized by high rates of production which lacked due regard for sex, age or family situation, and were determined solely by efficiency, with a view to increasing profits.
4.3 In this way labor became a commodity to be freely bought and sold on the market, its price determined by the law of supply and demand, without taking into account the bare minimum required for the support of the individual and his family. Moreover, the worker was not even sure of being able to sell his own commodity,’’ continually threatened as he was by unemployment, which, in the absence of any kind of social security, meant the specter of death by starvation.
4.4 The result of this transformation was a society divided into two classes, separated by a deep chasm’’ [Rerum Novarum, 132]..... Thus the prevailing political theory of the time [the nineteenth century] sought to promote total economic freedom by appropriate laws, or, conversely, by a deliberate lack of any intervention.....
5.2 The Pope [Leo XIII] and the [Roman] Church....were confronted....by a society which was torn by a conflict all the more harsh and inhumane because it knew no rule or regulation. It was the conflict between capital and labor.....
5.3 In the face of a conflict which set man against man, almost as if they were wolves,’’ a conflict between the extremes of mere physical survival on the one side and opulence on the other, the Pope [Leo XIII] did not hesitate to intervene by virtue of his apostolic office....
5.4 In this way, Pope Leo XIII, in the footsteps of his Predecessors, created a lasting paradigm for the Church.....
6.1 With the intention of shedding light on the conflict which had arisen between capital and labor, Pope Leo XIII affirmed the fundamental rights of workers..... it may truly be said that it is only by the labor of the working-men that States grow rich.’’
6.2 Another important principle is undoubtedly that of the right to private property.....’’ The Pope is well aware that private property is not an absolute value, nor does he fail to proclaim the necessary complementary principles, such as the universal destination of the earth’s goods.
8.1 The Pope [Leo XIII] immediately adds another right which the worker has as a person. This is the right to a just wage,’’ which cannot be left to the free consent of the parties.....’’ This concept of relations between employers and employees, purely pragmatic and inspired by a thoroughgoing individualism, is severely censured in the Encyclical.....
8.2 A workingman’s wages should be sufficient to enable him to support himself, his wife and his children. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accepts harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice.’’
8.3 Would that these words, written at a time when what has been called unbridled capitalism’’ was pressing forward, should not have to be repeated today with the same severity.....
This re-reading of Rerum Novarum by John Paul II preserved the Marxist flavor of the encyclical-an unsophisticated labor theory of value, the economic class structure of society, and the class struggle-and endorsed it. Leo XIII in 1891 and John Paul II in 1991 adopted a quasi-Marxist view of capitalism. Both John Paul II and Leo XIII also endorsed the fundamental principle of the universal destination of goods,’’ which holds that need makes all goods, both natural and manufactured, common, and that those who own goods must surrender them to those in need, or their goods will be rightfully taken from them by either the needy or by the public authorities.6 To say of Rerum Novarum, as Sirico did, that it provides one of the most finely honed defenses of the free market and private property order in the annals of Catholic, indeed Christian, social thought....’’7 is preposterous.
Later in Centesimus Annus, John Paul II endorsed the slogan of liberation theology: the preferential option for the poor,’’ and wrote, more ominously, that The Pope does not, of course, intend to condemn every possible form of social conflict..... The [1981] Encyclical Laborem Exercens, moreover, clearly recognized the positive role of conflict when it takes the form of a ‘struggle for social justice.....’ ‘’ These statements make Sirico’s claim that Centesimus Annus constitutes the epitaph for liberation and collectivist movements in terms of any official ecclesiastical legitimacy false. Centesimus Annus includes a hardly veiled endorsement of liberation theology, and John Paul II endorsed liberation theology several times in other documents, as we have already seen. Liberation theology has continued to receive endorsement from the Roman Magisterium during the past twenty years, that is, during the reign of John Paul II.
Section 15 of Centesimus Annus endorsed all sorts of government intervention, and concluded with this paragraph:
The Encyclical [Rerum Novarum] and the related social teaching of the Church had far reaching influence in the years bridging the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This influence is evident in the numerous reforms which were introduced in the areas of social security, pensions, health insurance and compensation in the case of accidents, within the framework of greater respect for the rights of workers.
What was that far-reaching influence of Rerum Novarum to which John Paul II referred? In Europe Rerum Novarum granted the moral authority and the political support of the Roman Church-State and Roman Catholic voters to the rising tide of statism in all its forms except atheistic Communism: socialism, fascism8, and Nazism. In the United States, it fueled the rise of the labor union movement9, the Progressive movement, and interventionism. Aaron I. Abell, Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame, sketched the influence of Rerum Novarum in the United States.10
In 1917 the hierarchy of the Roman Church-State in the United States formed the National Catholic War Council, the predecessor of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. In 1919 the Council’s Administrative Committee issued a plan for social reconstruction, written by John Augustus Ryan, a Jesuit. The plan, following the proposals of Ryan’s 1908 book, A Living Wage, advocated social insurance against unemployment, sickness, invalidity, and old age; a federal child labor law; legal enforcement of labor’s right to organize; public housing for the working classes; graduated taxes on inheritances, incomes, and excess profits; stringent regulation of public utility rates; government competition with monopolies; worker participation in business management, and so forth. When Franklin Roosevelt was elected President in 1932, he asked Monsignor Ryan to join his administration, which Ryan did.
Fifty-four years ago Abell pointed out that A social view of property....served as the entering wedge for much contemporary and future American Catholic participation in social reform.11 Sirico asserted, contrary to the evidence, that this interpretation of Rerum Novarum has over-emphasized the social view of property. This reflects a bias [in the interpreters] against individualism and self-interest.....’’12 But, as we have seen, the bias against individualism and self-interest is the bias of the Roman Church-State, demonstrated through many quotations from papal encyclicals. Sirico’s alleged conspiracy of leftwing interpreters who have twisted the pope’s finely honed defense of private property’’ and capitalism into an endorsement of interventionism and social reform is a fantasy. It would be difficult to over-emphasize the bias of the Roman Church-State against private property, self-interest, and capitalism.
Furthermore, that bias continues to be expressed by the Roman Church-State, even in the very encyclical that Sirico told us is an endorsement of capitalism. After admitting that the modern business economy has positive aspects,13 the pope wrote:
Many other people, while not completely marginalized, live in situations in which the struggle for a bare minimum is uppermost. These are situations in which the rules of the earliest period of capitalism still flourish in conditions of ruthlessness’’ in no way inferior to the darkest moments of the first phase of industrialization..... The human inadequacies of capitalism and the resulting domination of things over people are far from disappearing.
Furthermore, John Paul II wrote,
It is right to speak of a struggle against an economic system, if the latter is understood as a method of upholding the absolute predominance of capital, the possession of the means of production and of the land..... In the struggle against such a system, what is being proposed as an alternative is not the socialist system, which in fact turns out to be State capitalism, but rather a society of free work..... Such a society is not directed against the market, but demands that the market be appropriately controlled by the forces of society and the State.....
Furthermore,
....it is unacceptable to say that the defeat of so-called Real Socialism leaves capitalism as the only model of economic organization. ....if by capitalism is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality....then the reply [to the question, Is capitalism the model for the Third World?] is certainly negative.
Building on the interventions that are already in place, the Roman Church-State wants more:
It is the task of the State to provide for the defense and preservation of common goods such as the natural and human environments, which cannot be safeguarded simply by market forces. Just as in the time of primitive capitalism the State had the duty of defending the basic rights of workers, so now, with the new capitalism, the State and all of society have the duty of defending those collective goods.....
Contrary to what Sirico alleged, there seem to be only two sentences in the entire encyclical that might appear to lend any support to the market economy. One, as we have seen, is a mild criticism of bureaucratic ways of thinking and spending, which Sirico quoted. The other sentence, which Sirico did not quote, endorsed the modern business economy only on grounds of efficiency, not morality, as Sirico claimed, and the pope immediately qualified it:
It would appear that, on the level of individual nations and of international relations, the free market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs. But this is true only for those needs which are solvent’’ insofar as they are endowed with purchasing power, and for those resources which are marketable’’ insofar as they are capable of obtaining a satisfactory price. But there are many human needs which find no place on the market. It is a strict duty of justice and truth not to allow fundamental human needs to remain unsatisfied and not to allow those burdened by such needs to perish.
Sirico provided neither quotations-nor even any citations-to support his sweeping assertion that the encyclical gave a moral endorsement of profit, self-interest, and a stable currency. This writer has found no such statements in the encyclical either. Therefore, I am forced to conclude that Sirico’s assertion of a moral endorsement of capitalism by the Roman Church-State in Centesimus Annus is false. Perhaps Sirico was confused by John Paul II’s reference to certain character traits as virtues,’’ namely industriousness, diligence, prudence, courage, and reliability, but endorsement of these character traits does not constitute an endorsement of profit, self-interest, and a stable currency, let alone capitalism. John Paul II tentatively (It would appear’’) praised only the efficiency of the free market, and he did so only after the Communist systems of Europe had collapsed. But even that tentative praise was immediately weakened and qualified, and the paragraph concluded with the pope asserting, on moral grounds, the duty of the State not to allow fundamental human needs to remain unsatisfied,’’ as they would in a free market, even a market already regulated by government. This one tentative sentence about the efficiency of the market was buried in the middle of a document that repeatedly condemned real (early unbridled, and primitive) capitalism and repeatedly re-affirmed the Roman Church-State’s commitment to her fundamental social principles of the universal destination of goods, the primacy of need, and government regulation and control of the economy.
One can sympathize with a Roman Catholic who is embarrassed by the fact that his allegedly infallible Church has preached collectivism and condemned capitalism on moral grounds for more than a century. One can even understand such a Roman Catholic’s desire to reinterpret any phrase from the pen of his infallible leader that might be made to favor capitalism and freedom. But neither our sympathy nor his embarrassment is an excuse for misrepresenting Centesimus Annus as a moral endorsement of capitalism. Sirico’s claim that Centesimus Annus is a repudiation of the entire collectivist agenda, root and branch’’ has no support in the text itself.14
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This essay is taken from Dr. Robbins’ latest book, Ecclesiastical Megalomania: The Economic and Political Thought of the Roman Catholic Church (Trinity, 1999). Dr. Robbins earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy and Political Theory from The Johns Hopkins University.
Despite the Roman Catholic Church’s strident and sustained crusade against political freedom and capitalism that has now lasted for more than a century, a small but influential group of American Roman Catholic economists has begun to argue that the Roman Catholic Church now favors capitalism. Not only does the Roman Church-State favor capitalism now, according to these apologists for Rome, it has always favored capitalism, we are told.1 The opposite impression-the impression that the Roman Church-State was anti-capitalist-was allegedly created by progressive leftists’’ who engaged in a selective reading’’2 of the papal encyclicals. Among these revisionist Roman Catholic apologists are Robert Sirico, a Paulist priest who is also the president of the Acton Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan; and Michael Novak, a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D. C.3
Sirico argued, for example, that John Paul II’s encyclical issued in commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of Rerum Novarum in 1991, Centesimus Annus, represents a dramatic development in the encyclical tradition in favor of the free economy.’’ More than any other church document,’’ Sirico wrote, this latest one celebrates the creativity of entrepreneurs and the virtues required for productivity.’’ Sirico asserted, The pope affirms both the practical and moral legitimacy of profit, entrepreneurship, appropriate self-interest, productivity, and a stable currency.’’ Furthermore, Centesimus Annus is not only a repudiation of the entire collectivist agenda, root and branch,....but [also] the warmest embrace of the free economy since the Scholastics.’’ Centesimus Annus evidences the greatest depth of economic understanding and the most deliberate (and least critical) embrace of the system of free exchange on the part of the Catholic teaching authority in 100 years, and possibly since the Middle Ages.....’’ [T]his encyclical constitutes the epitaph for liberation and collectivist movements in terms of any official ecclesiastical legitimacy.’’ It is an uncompromising rejection of collectivism in its Marxist, Communist, socialist, and even welfare-statist manifestations.
Now these are certainly dramatic claims for Centesimus Annus. One would expect such sweeping claims indicating dramatic and almost revolutionary developments in Roman Catholic social thought to be supported by many quotations from the encyclical itself. Unfortunately, Sirico quoted only one complete sentence and one sentence fragment from the encyclical, a document of approximately 28,000 words. The sole complete sentence reads as follows:
By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility the social assistance state leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are more dominated by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending.
The partial sentence Sirico quoted is a solitary reference to some of the virtues that compose the work ethic: diligence, industriousness, prudence in taking reasonable risks, reliability and fidelity in interpersonal relationships, as well as courage in carrying out decisions which are difficult and painful but necessary, both for the overall working of a business and in meeting possible setbacks. Any reader of Sirico’s essay who actually reads the 1991 papal encyclical will be disappointed, for virtually all of the claims that Sirico made are not supported by the statements of the encyclical itself.
Of course, some of Sirico’s claims may be true. For example, when Sirico wrote that Centesimus Annus evidences the greatest depth of economic understanding....on the part of Catholic teaching authority in 100 years,’’ he may very well have been correct. Our survey of the teaching of official Roman Church-State social thought as expressed in the papal encyclicals and conciliar constitutions turned up little or no evidence of economic understanding. Instead, the Roman Church-State has shrilly denounced the market, self-interest, and capitalism on ethical grounds, and made sustained demands for government intervention to protect the common good’’ and promote social justice.’’ Sirico’s statement turns on a comparison between Centesimus Annus and previous encyclicals, so if the latest papal encyclical is less candid and forthright about, or less strident in, its criticism of capitalism, it might appear in a somewhat favorable light. And if the pope praises some of the economic virtues,’’ even though the praise is almost 500 years after Luther and Calvin, perhaps it is a sign of hope for economically conservative Roman Catholics like Mr. Sirico, who seem to be embarrassed by a Church-State that has been one of the world’s longest and strongest proponents of anti-capitalist ideas.
Sirico claimed that more than any other church document this latest one [Centesimus Annus] celebrates the creativity of entrepreneurs and the virtue required for productivity.’’ This writer has not read all church documents, and neither, one supposes, has Mr. Sirico. In his essay Sirico discussed only one previous church document, Rerum Novarum, and furnished us with a creative misreading of that encyclical as well.4 But despite his best efforts, Rerum Novarum is so obviously an anti-capitalist document that Sirico is finally embarrassed by it. His desire to find something of economic value in the papal encyclicals seems to betray him into making statements that he cannot support. The many official Roman Church documents that this writer has read express the Roman Church-State’s long-standing hatred for capitalism on moral grounds, a hatred that has now been clearly expressed by the Magisterium for over a century. P. T. Bauer accurately called these papal encyclicals incompetent,’’ immoral,’’ and envy exalted.5
The Meaning of Rerum Novarum and Centesimus Annus
If Sirico’s reading of Centesimus Annus is so misleading, what exactly did John Paul II say in the encyclical? Since Centesimus Annus was issued in commemoration of Rerum Novarum, the pope began by praising Rerum Novarum as an immortal document,’’ and continued: the vital energies rising from that root have not been spent with the passing of the years, but rather have increased even more.’’ Continuing his praise for Rerum Novarum for several paragraphs, John Paul II asserted that the validity of this teaching has already been pointed out in two Encyclicals published during my Pontificate: Laborem Exercens....and Sollicitudo Rei Socialis.....’’ John Paul II proposed a re-reading’’ of Rerum Novarum to discover anew the richness of the fundamental principles which it formulated.....’’ What are those fundamental principles? John Paul II, echoing Leo XIII a century before him, began with a quasi-Marxist analysis of capitalism. Please keep in mind that the quotations that follow are from the encyclical that Sirico and Novak have described as the most pro-capitalist document the Roman Church-State has ever written:
4.2 In the sphere of economics....new structures for the production of consumer goods had progressively taken shape [during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries]. A new form of property had appeared-capital; and a new form of labor-labor for wages, characterized by high rates of production which lacked due regard for sex, age or family situation, and were determined solely by efficiency, with a view to increasing profits.
4.3 In this way labor became a commodity to be freely bought and sold on the market, its price determined by the law of supply and demand, without taking into account the bare minimum required for the support of the individual and his family. Moreover, the worker was not even sure of being able to sell his own commodity,’’ continually threatened as he was by unemployment, which, in the absence of any kind of social security, meant the specter of death by starvation.
4.4 The result of this transformation was a society divided into two classes, separated by a deep chasm’’ [Rerum Novarum, 132]..... Thus the prevailing political theory of the time [the nineteenth century] sought to promote total economic freedom by appropriate laws, or, conversely, by a deliberate lack of any intervention.....
5.2 The Pope [Leo XIII] and the [Roman] Church....were confronted....by a society which was torn by a conflict all the more harsh and inhumane because it knew no rule or regulation. It was the conflict between capital and labor.....
5.3 In the face of a conflict which set man against man, almost as if they were wolves,’’ a conflict between the extremes of mere physical survival on the one side and opulence on the other, the Pope [Leo XIII] did not hesitate to intervene by virtue of his apostolic office....
5.4 In this way, Pope Leo XIII, in the footsteps of his Predecessors, created a lasting paradigm for the Church.....
6.1 With the intention of shedding light on the conflict which had arisen between capital and labor, Pope Leo XIII affirmed the fundamental rights of workers..... it may truly be said that it is only by the labor of the working-men that States grow rich.’’
6.2 Another important principle is undoubtedly that of the right to private property.....’’ The Pope is well aware that private property is not an absolute value, nor does he fail to proclaim the necessary complementary principles, such as the universal destination of the earth’s goods.
8.1 The Pope [Leo XIII] immediately adds another right which the worker has as a person. This is the right to a just wage,’’ which cannot be left to the free consent of the parties.....’’ This concept of relations between employers and employees, purely pragmatic and inspired by a thoroughgoing individualism, is severely censured in the Encyclical.....
8.2 A workingman’s wages should be sufficient to enable him to support himself, his wife and his children. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accepts harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice.’’
8.3 Would that these words, written at a time when what has been called unbridled capitalism’’ was pressing forward, should not have to be repeated today with the same severity.....
This re-reading of Rerum Novarum by John Paul II preserved the Marxist flavor of the encyclical-an unsophisticated labor theory of value, the economic class structure of society, and the class struggle-and endorsed it. Leo XIII in 1891 and John Paul II in 1991 adopted a quasi-Marxist view of capitalism. Both John Paul II and Leo XIII also endorsed the fundamental principle of the universal destination of goods,’’ which holds that need makes all goods, both natural and manufactured, common, and that those who own goods must surrender them to those in need, or their goods will be rightfully taken from them by either the needy or by the public authorities.6 To say of Rerum Novarum, as Sirico did, that it provides one of the most finely honed defenses of the free market and private property order in the annals of Catholic, indeed Christian, social thought....’’7 is preposterous.
Later in Centesimus Annus, John Paul II endorsed the slogan of liberation theology: the preferential option for the poor,’’ and wrote, more ominously, that The Pope does not, of course, intend to condemn every possible form of social conflict..... The [1981] Encyclical Laborem Exercens, moreover, clearly recognized the positive role of conflict when it takes the form of a ‘struggle for social justice.....’ ‘’ These statements make Sirico’s claim that Centesimus Annus constitutes the epitaph for liberation and collectivist movements in terms of any official ecclesiastical legitimacy false. Centesimus Annus includes a hardly veiled endorsement of liberation theology, and John Paul II endorsed liberation theology several times in other documents, as we have already seen. Liberation theology has continued to receive endorsement from the Roman Magisterium during the past twenty years, that is, during the reign of John Paul II.
Section 15 of Centesimus Annus endorsed all sorts of government intervention, and concluded with this paragraph:
The Encyclical [Rerum Novarum] and the related social teaching of the Church had far reaching influence in the years bridging the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This influence is evident in the numerous reforms which were introduced in the areas of social security, pensions, health insurance and compensation in the case of accidents, within the framework of greater respect for the rights of workers.
What was that far-reaching influence of Rerum Novarum to which John Paul II referred? In Europe Rerum Novarum granted the moral authority and the political support of the Roman Church-State and Roman Catholic voters to the rising tide of statism in all its forms except atheistic Communism: socialism, fascism8, and Nazism. In the United States, it fueled the rise of the labor union movement9, the Progressive movement, and interventionism. Aaron I. Abell, Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame, sketched the influence of Rerum Novarum in the United States.10
In 1917 the hierarchy of the Roman Church-State in the United States formed the National Catholic War Council, the predecessor of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. In 1919 the Council’s Administrative Committee issued a plan for social reconstruction, written by John Augustus Ryan, a Jesuit. The plan, following the proposals of Ryan’s 1908 book, A Living Wage, advocated social insurance against unemployment, sickness, invalidity, and old age; a federal child labor law; legal enforcement of labor’s right to organize; public housing for the working classes; graduated taxes on inheritances, incomes, and excess profits; stringent regulation of public utility rates; government competition with monopolies; worker participation in business management, and so forth. When Franklin Roosevelt was elected President in 1932, he asked Monsignor Ryan to join his administration, which Ryan did.
Fifty-four years ago Abell pointed out that A social view of property....served as the entering wedge for much contemporary and future American Catholic participation in social reform.11 Sirico asserted, contrary to the evidence, that this interpretation of Rerum Novarum has over-emphasized the social view of property. This reflects a bias [in the interpreters] against individualism and self-interest.....’’12 But, as we have seen, the bias against individualism and self-interest is the bias of the Roman Church-State, demonstrated through many quotations from papal encyclicals. Sirico’s alleged conspiracy of leftwing interpreters who have twisted the pope’s finely honed defense of private property’’ and capitalism into an endorsement of interventionism and social reform is a fantasy. It would be difficult to over-emphasize the bias of the Roman Church-State against private property, self-interest, and capitalism.
Furthermore, that bias continues to be expressed by the Roman Church-State, even in the very encyclical that Sirico told us is an endorsement of capitalism. After admitting that the modern business economy has positive aspects,13 the pope wrote:
Many other people, while not completely marginalized, live in situations in which the struggle for a bare minimum is uppermost. These are situations in which the rules of the earliest period of capitalism still flourish in conditions of ruthlessness’’ in no way inferior to the darkest moments of the first phase of industrialization..... The human inadequacies of capitalism and the resulting domination of things over people are far from disappearing.
Furthermore, John Paul II wrote,
It is right to speak of a struggle against an economic system, if the latter is understood as a method of upholding the absolute predominance of capital, the possession of the means of production and of the land..... In the struggle against such a system, what is being proposed as an alternative is not the socialist system, which in fact turns out to be State capitalism, but rather a society of free work..... Such a society is not directed against the market, but demands that the market be appropriately controlled by the forces of society and the State.....
Furthermore,
....it is unacceptable to say that the defeat of so-called Real Socialism leaves capitalism as the only model of economic organization. ....if by capitalism is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality....then the reply [to the question, Is capitalism the model for the Third World?] is certainly negative.
Building on the interventions that are already in place, the Roman Church-State wants more:
It is the task of the State to provide for the defense and preservation of common goods such as the natural and human environments, which cannot be safeguarded simply by market forces. Just as in the time of primitive capitalism the State had the duty of defending the basic rights of workers, so now, with the new capitalism, the State and all of society have the duty of defending those collective goods.....
Contrary to what Sirico alleged, there seem to be only two sentences in the entire encyclical that might appear to lend any support to the market economy. One, as we have seen, is a mild criticism of bureaucratic ways of thinking and spending, which Sirico quoted. The other sentence, which Sirico did not quote, endorsed the modern business economy only on grounds of efficiency, not morality, as Sirico claimed, and the pope immediately qualified it:
It would appear that, on the level of individual nations and of international relations, the free market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs. But this is true only for those needs which are solvent’’ insofar as they are endowed with purchasing power, and for those resources which are marketable’’ insofar as they are capable of obtaining a satisfactory price. But there are many human needs which find no place on the market. It is a strict duty of justice and truth not to allow fundamental human needs to remain unsatisfied and not to allow those burdened by such needs to perish.
Sirico provided neither quotations-nor even any citations-to support his sweeping assertion that the encyclical gave a moral endorsement of profit, self-interest, and a stable currency. This writer has found no such statements in the encyclical either. Therefore, I am forced to conclude that Sirico’s assertion of a moral endorsement of capitalism by the Roman Church-State in Centesimus Annus is false. Perhaps Sirico was confused by John Paul II’s reference to certain character traits as virtues,’’ namely industriousness, diligence, prudence, courage, and reliability, but endorsement of these character traits does not constitute an endorsement of profit, self-interest, and a stable currency, let alone capitalism. John Paul II tentatively (It would appear’’) praised only the efficiency of the free market, and he did so only after the Communist systems of Europe had collapsed. But even that tentative praise was immediately weakened and qualified, and the paragraph concluded with the pope asserting, on moral grounds, the duty of the State not to allow fundamental human needs to remain unsatisfied,’’ as they would in a free market, even a market already regulated by government. This one tentative sentence about the efficiency of the market was buried in the middle of a document that repeatedly condemned real (early unbridled, and primitive) capitalism and repeatedly re-affirmed the Roman Church-State’s commitment to her fundamental social principles of the universal destination of goods, the primacy of need, and government regulation and control of the economy.
One can sympathize with a Roman Catholic who is embarrassed by the fact that his allegedly infallible Church has preached collectivism and condemned capitalism on moral grounds for more than a century. One can even understand such a Roman Catholic’s desire to reinterpret any phrase from the pen of his infallible leader that might be made to favor capitalism and freedom. But neither our sympathy nor his embarrassment is an excuse for misrepresenting Centesimus Annus as a moral endorsement of capitalism. Sirico’s claim that Centesimus Annus is a repudiation of the entire collectivist agenda, root and branch’’ has no support in the text itself.14
- Michael Novak explained that ìone key point of this inquiry [his book] has been to show that the Catholic tradition also carries within it a powerful ethic of capitalism-indeed a fuller and deeper ethic than was available to the first Puritansî (The Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, New York: The Free Press, 1993, 232). On the other hand, Novak also wrote that ìMost assuredly, Centesimus Annus is no libertarian document-and precisely that, to many of us, is its beauty..... I want to stress that Centesimus Annus gives encouragement to social democrats and others of the moderate left....î (138).
- Sirico, ìCatholicism’s Developing Social Teaching,’’ The Freeman, December 1991, 467. Sirico himself seemed to be of two minds on this question, for he also referred to the ìleft-wing trendî in Catholic social tradition (471).
- Novak’s book was written ìIn homage to Pope John Paul II,î and, as one might expect from such a dedication, it is largely Roman Catholic propaganda.
- Sirico noted that his interpretation of Rerum Novarum is ìnot a prevalent one today. It [Sirico’s interpretation] comes from a view of the world as expressed by classical liberals.’’ Unfortunately for Sirico’s interpretation, Leo XIII did not share the classical liberal view of the world, and Rerum Novarum itself rails against classical liberalism. To claim, therefore, as Sirico did, that Rerum Novarum lends itself to such an analysis is to misrepresent the encyclical (Sirico, ìCatholicism’s Developing Social Teaching,’’ 466).
- Peter T. (Lord) Bauer, ìEcclesiastical Economics Is Envy Exalted,î This World, Winter-Spring, 1982, 56-69.
- ìWhile the Pope proclaimed the right to private ownership, he affirmed with equal clarity that the ‘use’ of goods, while marked by freedom, is subordinated to their original common destination as created goods’’ (John Paul II, Centesimus Annus [1991], 30.2).
- Sirico, ìCatholicism’s Developing Social Teaching,’’ 474.
- The Roman Catholic scholar Karl Otmar von Aretin noted that ìThe papacy’s denial of the modern world, and in particular of democracy which guaranteed the freedom of the individual, favoured the emergence of fascist regimes in the 1920sî (The Papacy and the Modern World, Roland Hill, translator. New York: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1970, 8).
- Sirico admitted that ìRerum Novarum became the springboard for the burgeoning labor movement in America and Europe’’ and that ìTo the [social] reformer’s [sic] mind, Leo’s encyclical gave them the support and recognition they needed to carry out their program’’ (Sirico, ìCatholicism’s Developing Social Teaching,’’ 467).
- Abell, ìThe Reception of Leo XIII’s Labor Encyclical in America, 1891-1919,’’ The Review of Politics, October 1945. Abell’s American Catholicism and Social Action: A Search for Social Justice, 1865-1950, is a detailed account of the social and political activities of both Roman Catholic laymen and officials in the United States.
- Abell, ìThe Reception of Leo XIII’s Labor Encyclical in America, 1891-1919,’’ The Review of Politics, October 1945, 471.
- Sirico, ìCatholicism’s Developing Social Teaching,’’ 467.
- No doubt the ìpositive aspects’’ of the modern economy, though not listed by the pope, include the many government interventions in business and the economy long advocated by the Vatican. Such intervention seems to be the reason John Paul II distinguished between ìearly,î ìunbridled,î and ìprimitiveî capitalism, and the ìmodern business economy.î
- Nineteenth century Roman Catholic historian Lord Acton’s comments about the Roman Catholic apologists of his day are timeless. He wrote a letter to Dollinger explaining that his reading of history had convinced him that a common vice is ìto defend one’s cause by unfair or illicit means.î Acton had studied, with ìinfinite credulity and trustî the most eminent Roman Catholic writers of his day. But he found that what they told him was ìon many decisive questions, false.î Acton came ìvery slowly and reluctantly indeed to the conclusion that they were dishonest.î A special reason for their dishonesty was ìthe desire to keep up the credit of authority in the [Roman] Church.î The Roman Catholic scholars ignored moral standards in their study of history, because ìit is impossible honestly to apply a moral standard to history without discrediting the [Roman] Church in her collective action.î In order that ìmen might believe the Pope, it was resolved to make them believe that vice is virtue and falsehood truth.î This defect was not due to ignorance or incompetence. Acton found it in ìthe ablest, in the most learned, in the most plausible and imposing menî he knew. These men ìwho were outwardly defenders of religion,î were actually ìadvocates of deceit and murder.î The ìgreat point was that these men justified things to which in the past the papacy stood committed. They wished men to think that those things had not happened, or that they were good. They preached falsehood and murderî (quoted in Hugh MacDougall, The Acton-Newman Relations, New York: Fordham University Press, 1962, 141-142).
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Monday, January 27, 2014
Wednesday, December 04, 2013
Obama Praises Pope’s Call For Greater Income Equality
A couple months after saying he’s “hugely impressed” by Pope Francis, Obama gives the pontiff a shout-out in an economic address. posted on December 4, 2013 at 12:34pm EST
Evan McMorris-Santoro BuzzFeed Staff
Dylan Martinez / Reuters
WASHINGTON — President Obama really seems to like the new pope.
At a speech focused on economic equality hosted by the progressive think tank Center for American Progress Wednesday, Obama noted the pope’s recent remarks on the topic that have rankled some prominent conservatives.
“Some of you may have seen this last week. The pope spoke about this at eloquent length. ‘How can it be,’ he wrote, ‘that it’s not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure but it is when the stock market loses two points?’” Obama said. “This increasing inequality is most pronounced in our country, and it challenges the very essence of who we are as a people.”
The pope’s speech last week took on capitalist economics, condemning “trickle-down economics” and the “idolatry of money.”
The remarks led some conservatives to take on the leader of the Catholic Church. Rush Limbaugh said Pope Francis was preaching “pure Marxism.” Other conservatives, like Sarah Palin, have warned the pope sounds like a “liberal,” and Palin also said reports of his statements have “taken me aback.”
Wednesday was not the first time Obama has praised the pontiff. In October, Obama said he was “hugely impressed” with Pope Francis.
“He seems somebody who lives out the teachings of Christ,” Obama told CNBC. “Incredible humility, incredible sense of empathy to the least of these, to the poor.”
(Go to link below to see video)
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Rush Limbaugh: Pope is preaching 'pure Marxism'
December 2nd, 2013
11:29 AM ET
Rush Limbaugh: Pope is preaching 'pure Marxism'
By Daniel Burke, CNN Belief Blog Co-Editor
(CNN) – Pope Francis: Successor to St. Peter ... the people's pontiff ... Marxist?
That's what conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh suggests, calling the Pope's latest document "pure Marxism."
Limbaugh blasted the pontiff on Wednesday, a day after Francis released "Evangelii Gaudium" (The Joy of the Gospel), a 50,000-word statement that calls for church reform and castigates elements of modern capitalism.
Limbaugh's segment, now online and entitled "It's Sad How Wrong Pope Francis Is (Unless It's a Deliberate Mistranslation By Leftists)," takes direct aim at the pope's economic views, calling them "dramatically, embarrassingly, puzzlingly wrong."
The Vatican issued the English translation of "Evangelii," which is known officially as an apostolic exhortation and unofficially as a pep talk to the worlds 1.5 billion Catholics.
Francis – the first pope ever to hail from Latin America, where he worked on behalf of the poor in his native Argentina – warned in "Evangelii" that the "idolatry of money" would lead to a "new tyranny."
The Pope also blasted "trickle-down economics," saying the theory "expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power."
READ MORE: Pope Francis: No more business as usual
The Pope's critique of capitalism thrilled many liberal Catholics, who have long called on church leaders to spend more time and energy on protecting the poor from economic inequalities.
But Limbaugh, whose program is estimated to reach 15 million listeners, called the Pope's comments "sad" and "unbelievable."
"It's sad because this pope makes it very clear he doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to capitalism and socialism and so forth."
In fact, Argentina was a battlefield between leftist socialists and right-wing security forces during much of Francis' early career in the country, where he was a Jesuit priest and later archbishop of Buenos Aires.
Limbaugh, who is not Catholic, said he admires the faith "profoundly." He admired Pope Francis as well, "up until this," Limbaugh said.
The talk show host also said that he has made numerous visits to the Vatican, which he said "wouldn't exist without tons of money."
"But regardless, what this is, somebody has either written this for him or gotten to him," Limbaugh added. "This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the Pope."
Limbaugh took particular issue with the Pope's criticism of the "culture of prosperity," which the pontiff called a "mere spectacle" for the many people who can't afford to participate.
"This is almost a statement about who should control financial markets," Limbaugh said. "He says that the global economy needs government control."
"I'm not Catholic, but I know enough to know that this would have been unthinkable for a pope to believe or say just a few years ago," Limbaugh continued.
In fact, Francis' predecessor, Benedict XVI, now pope emeritus, could be just as strong a critic of capitalism.
In 2009, Benedict, in an official church document called an encyclical, said there was an urgent need for "a political, juridical and economic order" that would "manage the global economy."
As Limbaugh notes, Benedict's predecessor, the late Pope John Paul II, was a noted foe of communism, after living under its oppressions in his native Poland. But even John Paul thought that unregulated capitalism could have negative consequences.
In "Evangelii," Francis called for more of a spiritual and ethical revolution than a regulatory one.
"I encourage financial experts and political leaders to ponder the words of one of the sages of antiquity: `Not to share one’s wealth with the poor is to steal from them and to take away their livelihood. It is not our own goods which we hold, but theirs,'" said Francis, quoting the fifth-century St. John Chrysostom.
Liberal Catholics defended Pope Francis on Monday, calling on Limbaugh to apologize and retract his remarks.
"To call the Holy Father a proponent 'pure Marxism' is both mean-spirited and naive," said Christopher Hale of the Washington-based Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. "Francis's critique of unrestrained capitalism is in line with the Church's social teaching."
Limbaugh is not the only conservative commentator to take issue with the Pope's views on capitalism.
READ MORE: Sarah Palin 'taken aback' by Pope Francis's 'liberal' statements
“I go to church to save my soul," said Fox News' Stuart Varney, who is an Episcopalian. "It’s got nothing to do with my vote. Pope Francis has linked the two. He has offered direct criticism of a specific political system. He has characterized negatively that system. I think he wants to influence my politics.”
It doesn't sound like the criticism is slowing Francis down, however. He's started sending a Vatican contingent, including the Papal Swiss Guards, into Rome to deliver food and charity.
Daniel Burke - CNN Belief Blog Co-Editor
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Wednesday, October 23, 2013
"Vietnam, Why Did We Go?” by Avro Manhattan
The Religious Beginnings of an Unholy War
The Shocking Story of the Catholic "Church's" Role in Starting the Vietnam War
By Avro Manhattan
Avro Manhattan (1914-1990).
Avro Manhattan was the world's foremost authority on Roman Catholicism in politics. A resident of London, during World War II he operated a radio station called "Radio Freedom" broadcasting to occupied Europe.
He was the author of over 20 books including the best-seller The Vatican in World Politics, twice Book-of-the-Month and going through 57 editions. He was a Great Briton who risked his life daily to expose some of the darkest secrets of the Papacy. His books were #1 on the Forbidden Index for the past 50 years!!
More About the Author:
With an immense collection of facts, photos, names and dates, Manhattan proves that the Vietnam War began as a religious conflict. He shows how America was manipulated into supporting Catholic oppression in Vietnam supposedly to fight communism.
Manhattan explains:
How religious pamphlets and radio broadcasts convinced one million Catholics to leave North Vietnam and live under Catholic rule in the South, overwhelming the Buddhists.
How brutal persecution of Vietnamese Buddhists led to rioting and suicides by fire in the streets.
Why the reports of what was really happening, written by American military and civil advisers, failed to reach the U.S. President.
Why the project backfired, and as U.S. soldiers continued to die, the Vatican made a secret deal with Ho Chi Minh.
Contents
Publisher's Foreword
Preface
Chapter 1
Preliminaries.
World War II, the Provisional Partition of Vietnam, and the Beginning of the Vietnamese Conflict.
Defeat of France and Japan - Vietnamese freedom-fighters declare the independence of Vietnam - A French Vietnamese puppet Prime Minister - Vietnamese Catholic Bishops appeal to the Vatican - The U.S. sends two warships to Saigon - Eisenhower helps the French in Vietnam - The Geneva Agreement - The l7th Parallel as "a provisional demarcation line" between North and South Vietnam - The Catholic lobby in the U.S. prevents a free election in Vietnam - Fear of a communist electoral take-over - President Eisenhower's candid comment.
Chapter 2
The Vatican-American Grand Alliance
Reasons Which Prompted the U.S. to Commit Herself to the War in Vietnam.
U.S. global policy following World War II - "Belligerent peace between the U.S. and Soviet Russia - Russian territorial expansionism after World War II - The U.S., Korea and the Cold War - The Vatican fear of world communism - The launching of political Catholicism against left-wing Europe - Religious mobilization against Marxism.
Chapter 3
Fatimaization of the West
Religious and Ideological Preliminaries to the Vietnamese War.
The "Cold War" as a step to the "Hot War" - The U.S. and the Vatican make ready for "THE DAY" - The conditioning of Catholics for the oncoming "Hot War" - The message of the Virgin of Fatima - The conversion of Soviet Russia to the Catholic Church - The political implications of the cult of Fatima - The pope and the Virgin encourage Catholic volunteers for the Russian front.
Chapter 4
The Pope's Blessing for a Preventive War
The Secretary of the U.S. Navy, Secret Chamberlain of the Pope, Prepares for World War III.
The crown which weighs 1,200 grams of gold - Our Lady appears 15 times to a nun in the Philippines - The American Jesuit and the miraculous rose petals - The American Secretary of Defense jumps from a window on the l6th floor - Cardinal Spellman, Senator McCarthy and the American Secretary of the Navy - The Boston speech and the call for an American "preventive atomic war."
Chapter 5
The Miraculous Zig-Zagging Sun
Pope Pius XII Uses Religious Emotionalism as an Incitement to War.
The Virgin Mary visits the pope at the Vatican - Pius XII sees the sun "zig-zag" - The prodigy and its political meaning - One million pilgrims want the conversion of Russia - The first U.S. ambassador designate at the Vatican attends atomic exercises in Nevada - The U.S. ambassador to Moscow prepares for the invasion of Russia - Description of the forthcoming invasion of Soviet Russia by "Colliers " - Making ready for the war of liberation The "Osservatore Romano" authenticates a miracle -The divine message to the Vicar of Christ.
Chapter 6
The Pope's "Preventive War" Miscarries.
U.S. Admirals, Generals and Diplomats Troop to the Vatican, President Truman's Despairing Comments.
Papal warning of the "barbaric invasion" - The American leader of the "Free Russia Committee" - Dulles appeals for "an atomic striking force" - Eisenhower and 12 War Ministers - 100 Divisions on the "ready" - Saturation bombing experts see the pope - Russian agents steal "the cipher books" of the Vatican - Vatican diplomats and their secret spying via religion - The CIA - 100 million dollars to train spies and terrorists - Uniforms with regulation shoulder flashes marked USSR, instead of USA - Anybody here who can speak Russian? - The pope promises the liberation of' Soviet Russia - Mystical conditioning of Catholicism for the outbreak of an atomic conflict - President Truman's despairing comment.
Chapter 7
The Men Behind the Vietnamese War.
Politicians, Generals, and Prelates and their Selection of the "Savior of Vietnam."
The U.S. and 400,000 tons of war material - The fateful compromise of the 17th Parallel - Joint Vatican-U.S. Asian strategy - Catholic anti-communist crusade, McCarthy and Dulles - A cardinal as a linchpin between Washington and Rome - J.F. Kennedy and the Catholic lobby - U.S. preparation for intervention in Vietnam - The U.S. signs the fatal Vietnam agreement with France - The U.S. takes over military duties in South Vietnam - Foster-child of the Washington-Vatican sponsorship of South Vietnam - A would-be Catholic monk for an American grey eminence - Diem's messiah-like complex - Diem becomes the premier of South Vietnam.
Chapter 8
The Virgin Mary Goes South.
The Catholic Imponderable in the Escalation of the Vietnamese
War.
Diem begins to create a Catholic administration - Diem refuses to hold elections as commanded by the Geneva Agreement - Diem's refusal is supported by the U.S. and the Vatican - The plan for the mass dislocation from the North - The Catholics of North Vietnam, a state within a state - The communist leader of North Vietnam appoints a Catholic bishop to his government - Catholics want preferential treatment - Scheme for mass exodus of Northern Catholics toward South Vietnam - "Why has the Virgin Mary left the North?" - Catholic mass evacuation from North Vietnam - Results of the Catholic-CIA -Diem propaganda campaign - Catholic priests as Diem's agents - A personal message to Eisenhower - The Seventh Fleet is sent to help Diem - Flight for Freedom with the American Navy - The pope's representatives meet the first refugees - Humbug fanfare from Washington - The greatest phony refugee campaign promoted by the CIA and the Vatican.
Chapter 9
The Pius-Spellman-Dulles Secret Scheme.
The U.S. Taxpayer Finances the Creation of a "Catholic Dictatorship" in South Vietnam.
The preparation for a massive Catholic community in South Vietnam - The setting up of a model Catholic state - The U.S. Catholic lobby begins to milk the U.S. taxpayer to help Diem - 40 million dollars to resettle the Catholics from North Vietnam - State officials and Catholic priests - U.S. aid, "to Catholics only" - Mobile Catholic unit to defend Christendom - A rural Catholic militia - Rapid Catholicization of South Vietnam - Catholics to the top - Become a Catholic for a quick promotion - Mishandling of U.S. aid to Vietnam - Buddhists persuaded to become Catholics - A top U.S. general becomes a Catholic - Discrimination against non-Catholics - The strengthening of Catholics from the communist North.
Chapter 10
The Promotion of Catholic Totalitarianism.
"Individuals Considered Dangerous May Be Confined to a Concentration Camp."
Discrimination against non-Catholic religions - Bribes, threats, agents and bitterness - Battles, riots and arrest of members of "hostile" religions - Further consolidation of the Catholic presence - Diem is given "dictatorial" power - Executive orders for concentration camps - American advisors support the new measures - Buddhists arrested without warrants - Interrogation, deportation, and torture of Buddhists - "Open" detention camps - Massacre and mass elimination of Buddhists - Buddhists become Catholic to save their lives.
Chapter 11
Consolidation of Terrorism
Anti-Protestant Legislation - Detention, Arrests, Tortures and Executions.
Catholic totalitarianism for a model Catholic state - Diem and the pope's teaching - The Church should NOT be separated from the state - Refusal of license to preach - A Catholic state cannot tolerate Protestant dissidents - Blue print for the elimination of Protestantism - Catholic education for a Catholic state - South Vietnam built upon the social doctrines of ten popes - "It is an error to believe the Catholic Church has not the power of using force" - The cult of personalism - Diem's American "civil advisors" send gloomy reports to Washington - Altars and shrines for President Diem - Catholic "commando squads" of South Vietnam trained at Michigan University - Identification cards for dissident Catholics - Arrests and executions of Buddhist rebels - 24,000 wounded and 80,000 executed - 200, 000 Buddhists demonstrate in Saigon - Diem decides to eliminate the religion of the majority.
Chapter 12
A CIA Spy Plane Cancels a Summit Meeting
The Cardinal Spellman War Replaces the "Preventive War" Planned by the Dulles Brothers and Pope Pius XII.
The two partners and their global objectives - Soviet Russia invades Hungary - Impending outbreak of World War III - The true foreign policy makers of the U.S. - The CIA promotion of American foreign policies - Collapse of the American-Russian summit meeting - The CIA and the spy plane - On the brink of atomic warfare "three times" - The U.S. threatens to use atomic weapons - The Church prays for "the liberation" - The "third" secret of the Virgin of Fatima - The Pope faints with "horror" - He calls for a war "of effective self-defense" - Communist expansion in Europe and Southeast Asia.
Chapter 13
The Vatican Attempts to Prevent Peace
Pope John XXIII Rejects Geneva Agreement While a U.S. Catholic President Goes for "Unlimited Commitment."
The Viet-Minh upsets the Catholic Church - The Geneva Agreement is anathema for the Vatican - Why the Vatican encouraged the U.S. to intervene in Vietnam - Why Diem refused to hold a 'free" election - Why North Vietnam wanted the "free" election" - What an American senator has to say about it - The cardinal who flew in American military aircraft - American troops the "soldiers of Christ" - Vietnam is consecrated to the Virgin Mary - The Pope creates an archdiocese in communist Vietnam - Pope John XXIII - ecumenism-versus-realism - The Vietnamese Catholic Mafia and the three brothers - Kennedy escalates the war - "Unlimited"commitment in Vietnam.
Chapter 14
Religious Persecutions and Suicides by Fire
World Opinion Forces U.S. to "Deplore Repressive Actions" of Diem.
The Catholic minority and the Buddhists - The sectarian volcano bursts out into the open - The Vatican flag in a Buddhist city - Celebration for Buddha's birthday forbidden - The giant gong of Xa Loi Pagoda - The Buddhists burn a Catholic village - The monk's message - Suicides by fire - Mass demonstration against Diem - Orders to close all pagodas - Buddhists killed by the Diem police - Buddhist students arrested and tortured - Refuge in the American embassy - The Americans are shocked at Diem's ruthlessness - The U.S. "deplores repressive actions" - The Catholic-CIA-Diem lobby minimize the Buddhist agitations.
Chapter15
End of the Catholic Dictatorship
Assassinations of Two Catholic Presidents.
Why the American embassy was against Diem's appointment - A disastrous choice - Kennedy's double dilemma - Diem's religious political priorities - Catholic dictatorships of Croatia and Vietnam compared - Diem and Pavelich's main objectives - Diem's religious operations endanger the U.S. war efforts in Vietnam - Buddhist deserters leave the Vietnamese army - Steps to avoid the disintegration of the army - American subsidies to Vietnam are suspended - CIA chief recalled - A free hand for a "Coup" against Diem - Diem and his brother are shot to death - President Kennedy is killed - Ten additional years of Vietnamese war - The final price, 58,000 young American lives.
Chapter 16
Catholic Expansionism in Southeast Asia in the 19th Century
Historical Background of the U.S. War of Vietnam.
Catholic elites with a Buddhist background - The brothers Diem, inheritors of ancient Catholic exclusiveness - Stepping stones to the Catholic conquest of Indo-China - The Emperor Thieu Tri and the revolt of 1843 - French gunboats and Catholic emissaries - The 1862 "Friendship" imposed upon Vietnam - Friars, nuns, and their civil and military protectors - Massive Catholic conversions to the "true church" - The Catholicization of French Vietnam during the last century.
Chapter 17
Early History of Catholic Power in Siam and China
Characteristic Precedents of Repression.
The French East India Company and the missionaries - The conversion to Catholicism of a Siamese king - Catholic discrimination against Buddhists - Ghastly deeds of a Catholic Mafia in Siam - Catholic and Frenchmen expelled and executed - End of the Vatican bid for the control of Siam - Siam forbids all Catholics for a century and a half - The Empress of China who became a Catholic - Empress Helena sends a mission to the pope - The Empress and the Jesuits plan to make China Catholic - Rebellion of the Mandarins - The end of a dream for a Catholic China.
Chapter 18
History of Catholic Aggressiveness in Japan
Conversions, Rebellions, Political Unrest and Civil War
Catholic missionaries welcomed to Japan in the 16th century - Japanese rulers, protectors of the Catholic Church - The Catholic Church begins to meddle in Japanese politics - Japanese Catholics fight the authorities - Civil unrest and civil war promoted by the Church - Catholic sieges and battles - Catholic persecutions in Kyoto and Osaka - Battles between the Jesuits, Franciscans and the Japanese Catholics - The Spanish captain and the Japanese ruler of Hideyoshi - Imperial ban against all Catholics - The Catholics of Japan take up arms against the Japanese government - The Jesuits lead an army of 30,000 Japanese Catholics against the Japanese rulers - The murder by the Catholics of the Governor of Shimbara - Bloody battles between Catholics and Buddhists - The Dutch help the Japanese to fight the Catholics - The Edict: All Christians forbidden to enter Japan for 250 years.
Chapter 19
Creation of a Dangerous Alliance
Retrospective Assessment of the Preliminaries of the U.S.-Vietnamese War.
The formula that worked in the past and which still works in the present - The "Cold War," the U.S. and the Vatican - U.S.-Vatican dual fear of a common enemy - Pope Pius XII, the Dulles brothers and Cardinal Spellman - Power of the Catholic lobby in the U.S. - The secret ambassador of the State Department and the pope - Messages by word of mouth only - The trio which helped the U.S. into the war in Vietnam.
Chapter 20
The Two Catholic Presidents and a Revolutionary Pope
The Collapse of the U.S.-Vatican Grand Strategy in Vietnam.
A cardinal, two brothers and Eisenhower - The prophecies of St. Malachy - The expectations of the first "American Pope" - Rift between two Catholic presidents - Politics before religion for Kennedy - Kennedy's dilemma - The election of a revolutionary pope and the shock at the State Department - The crash of the U.S.-Vatican anti-communist crusade - Pope John XXIII scolds President Diem - The Buddhist delegation goes to the Vatican - President Diem begins to endanger the U.S. war operations in Vietnam - Second thoughts in Washington - The step by step slide towards the Vietnamese precipice - President Kennedy and his desperate ambassadors - The final decision - The end of Diem and his brother.
Chapter 21
Secret Deal Between the Pope and the Communists of North Vietnam.
The Vatican Prepares for a United Marxist Vietnam.
The pope and Ho Chi Minh - Relenting of Vatican hostility toward North Vietnam - Pope John XXIII consecrates a united Vietnam to the Virgin Mary - Disapproval of the pope's dedication - Reaction of Cardinal Spellman and the Catholic lobby of the U.S. - The Vatican takes the first steps for the abandonment of the U.S. in Vietnam - Catholic mass exodus of emigrants from the North - Political implications - Ho Chi Minh outfoxes the pope.
Chapter 22
The Final Disaster
Disintegration of the Vietnam-U.S. Partnership in Vietnam.
Calamitous significance of the Pope John-Ho Chi Minh secret agreement - Their use of religion to attain political objectives The Virgin Mary to the help of a united Marxist Vietnam - The pattern of religious political exploitation - U.S. military escalation and the pope's "wind of change" - Secret cooperation between the Vatican and Vietnamese Marxism - The Catholic Church withdraws from the war in Vietnam - Adverse effects of the Vatican Moscow alliance on the war in Vietnam - The end of an American nightmare.
Source
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or
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Tuesday, November 06, 2012
JESUIT CHIEF DEFENDS LIBERATION THEOLOGY AND SOCIAL ACTIVISM
By KENNETH A. BRIGGS (The New York Times); Foreign Desk
October 28, 1984, Sunday
Late City Final Edition, Section 1, Page 1, Column 4, 882 words
[ DISPLAYING ABSTRACT ]
The head of the Jesuit order says he strongly supports Latin American theologians and church workers who seek to promote social justice. And he says the teachings known as the theology of liberation must be ''recognized as possible and necessary.'' The Vatican recently criticized some elements of liberation theology as relying too heavily on Marxist analysis, but it affirmed the church's fight against oppression in Central and South America. The Rev. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, chosen as Superior General of the Jesuits a year ago, said in an interview in New York last week that the order would continue to aid efforts for social justice in Latin America.
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Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Muslim, Christian, or Marxist?
By Cliff Kincaid August 24, 2010
...what the Obama presidential campaign says about Obama’s religious affiliation is not something to be taken at face value.When questions came up during the campaign about Barack Obama’s religious affiliation, his aides flatly asserted that he was a “practicing Christian” and was “baptized” in the Trinity United Church of Christ. However, some of the same questions have come up again in the wake of opinion polls finding people confused about Obama’s religious identity. Our media cannot understand the confusion.
For most in the media, it is cut-and-dried: Obama is a Christian. People who don’t believe it are dumb or misled.
But calling yourself something is not the same thing as proving it is the case. This claim deserves to be scrutinized, even when it involves a sensitive and personal matter such as religious belief.
Unfortunately for Obama and his backers, the same Obama campaign apparatus which claimed that he is a baptized Christian asserted that the mysterious “Frank” in Obama’s book, Dreams from My Father, was just a black civil rights activist. It turned out that “Frank” was Frank Marshall Davis, a Communist Party member under surveillance by the FBI who served as a mentor for a young Obama in Hawaii. The 600-page FBI file on Davis even suggests he was an espionage agent on behalf of the Soviet Union.
Dupes, a forthcoming book by Professor Paul Kengor, promises to take another close look at Obama’s Frank Marshall Davis connection.
So what the Obama presidential campaign says about Obama’s religious affiliation is not something to be taken at face value. They have a vested interest in making Obama look more acceptable to the American people.
As President, he has gone to church only a few times, which undermines the claim that he is a practicing Christian. People see him playing golf on Sunday; they don’t see him going to church.
In fact, however, being a Christian is not just a function of attending church services. Rather, it is related to being baptized. Did this critical development occur in Obama’s life?
In this context, it is important to take a look at what Obama’s own books, Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope, say about the President’s religion, or lack thereof.
He acknowledges in Dreams that his grandfather was a Muslim (page 104) and that he spent two years in a Muslim school in Indonesia studying the Koran (page 154). In The Audacity of Hope, he says (page 204) that “my father had been raised a Muslim” but that by the time he met his mother, his father was a “confirmed atheist.”
His stepfather was not particularly religious and his mother professed “secularism,” Obama wrote (pages 204-205), but as a child he went to a “predominantly Muslim school,” after being first sent to a Catholic school. His mother, he said, was concerned about him learning math, not religion.
Obama’s reference to being baptized is found in his second book, The Audacity of Hope, published in 2006, not in Dreams, published in 1995. Obama wrote on page 208, “I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ one day and be baptized.”
Traditionally, Christianity teaches that baptism is a sacrament involving the use of water to signify acceptance of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Since Obama was not born and baptized a Christian, in order to become a Christian he had to enter into the sacrament of baptism some time later in life.
In this regard, Obama does not indicate anywhere in his books that he came into contact with what Christians regard as the “living water.” Instead, he says that, in his baptism, he made “a choice,” knelt beneath a cross, and “felt God’s spirit beckoning.” He said, “I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.”
This sounds like a powerful religious experience but it is not what Christians regard as baptism.
In Dreams from My Father, Obama discusses his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, noting that he had been “dabbling with liquor, Islam, and black nationalism in the sixties” but that “the call of faith had apparently remained” and that he went on to study religion, including “the black liberation theologians.” For his part, Obama visited Wright to discuss membership in the Trinity United Church of Christ as an extension of his community organizing activities and the hope that he could get “involvement” in this effort from churches like Wright’s.
As Obama contacted the churches and their ministers, he reveals that they thought he was a Muslim (page 279) or, he jokes, an Irishman, “O’Bama.”
Obama talks about hearing a Wright sermon, “The Audacity of Hope,” which inspired the title of his second book. However, there is no mention of any baptism in this—his first—book. The reference to being baptized came in the second book, as Obama was preparing to launch his presidential campaign. The timing is significant.
These are the facts as Obama himself reported them. So how have the media handled them? Needless to say, there has been no serious investigation into whether the claims are true and what they mean.
“Obama’s religious biography is unconventional and politically problematic,” Newsweek’s Lisa Miller reported. “Born to a Christian-turned-secular mother and a Muslim-turned-atheist African father, Obama grew up living all across the world with plenty of spiritual influences, but without any particular religion. He is now a Christian, having been baptized in the early 1990s at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.”
The phrase, “having been baptized,” is apparently based on Obama’s claim about being baptized. Our major media haven’t questioned the claim.
Miller went on to say, “His baptism presents its own problems. The senior pastor at Trinity at the time of Obama’s baptism was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., the preacher who was seen damning America on cable TV…”
Notice the formulation, “at the time of Obama’s baptism.” She carefully does not say that Wright performed the baptism. In fact, there’s no evidence it was a baptism in the traditional sense that it was performed by Wright or anybody else. It looks like Obama walked down the aisle and made a profession of faith. That is not a Christian baptism.
The Canada Free Press published a very interesting article in February by Madeline Brooks, who asked, “Where is the baptism certificate? We do not see one because there was no baptism. That central part of Christianity was not required at Obama’s former church, the Trinity United Church of Christ, during the years Obama attended…”
She cites the research of a pastor, Usama Dakdok, who had called Obama’s church to ask about membership:
“Do I have to be baptized to join the church?” asked Pastor Dakdok. “No, you don’t,” was the answer. “You can be a member without being baptized.”
“And what exactly is required to become a member?” The answer: “You attend two Sunday school classes in a row about membership, and then you walk the aisle.”
Walk down the aisle? That sounds exactly what Obama described in his book. This is how one becomes a member. But it is not a baptism into Christianity.
“I called the Trinity United Church of Christ and they confirmed that baptism is merely optional for members,” Brooks added.
Pastor Dakdok reports that he also asked a spokesperson for Trinity, the membership director:
“If I am a Muslim man, and I believe in the prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, but I also believe in the prophet Jesus, do I have to give up my Islamic faith to join your church?”
The answer was, “Absolutely not! We have so many members of our church who are Muslims.”
Dakdok asked the Trinity spokesperson, “Is that how Senator Barack Obama became a member?” The membership director of the church refused to answer.
Madeline Brooks calls this “Muslim Christianity,” which she says is theologically impossible.
In fact, the contradictions don’t end there. Obama’s pastor for 20 years, Jeremiah Wright, could be described as a “Marxist Christian,” which is also theoretically impossible, since Marxism is materialistic and atheistic. Yet, as we revealed last November, Wright gave a speech in which he praised Marxism and faulted the media for claiming that communism and Christianity were somehow opposed to one another.
So the question regarding Obama is not just whether he is a Muslim but a Marxist, based not only on his attendance at Jeremiah Wright’s unusual church but the influence exercised over him during his growing-up years by Communist Frank Marshall Davis.
Dakdok, who was brought up in Egypt, a Muslim country, is adamant that Obama is a Muslim, based on the fact that his birth father was a Muslim and that there is no evidence that Obama ever specifically rejected Islam. Christian radio host Brannon Howse interviewed Dakdok, at the urging of conservative columnist David Limbaugh, brother of the national talk show host, Rush Limbaugh. Dakdok was also interviewed recently on Stacy Harp’s Christian radio show. He speaks around the country in front of Christian audiences.
While Obama may have been a Muslim by birth, that doesn’t mean that he accepts the Muslim faith or philosophy. Instead, Islam may be seen as just another religion/ideology that can be used for his own political purposes.
The case for Obama being a Marxist is far more convincing. He was exposed to Marxist ideology in church under Wright, as well as from Frank Marshall Davis.
The American people now seem to get it, even though the truth about Obama’s relationship with Davis has never been thoroughly explored by the major media. A poll from the Democracy Corps, a Democratic Party firm, found that 55 percent said that Obama could accurately be described as a socialist.
This is far more than the number of people who see him as a Muslim.
If and when the media start examining the Frank Marshall Davis connection, the “socialist” label could take on more sinister connotations.
This is why, of course, they will avoid it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of the AIM Report and can be reached at cliff.kincaid@aim.org
Source: http://www.aim.org/aim-column/muslim-christian-or-marxist/
.
...what the Obama presidential campaign says about Obama’s religious affiliation is not something to be taken at face value.When questions came up during the campaign about Barack Obama’s religious affiliation, his aides flatly asserted that he was a “practicing Christian” and was “baptized” in the Trinity United Church of Christ. However, some of the same questions have come up again in the wake of opinion polls finding people confused about Obama’s religious identity. Our media cannot understand the confusion.
For most in the media, it is cut-and-dried: Obama is a Christian. People who don’t believe it are dumb or misled.
But calling yourself something is not the same thing as proving it is the case. This claim deserves to be scrutinized, even when it involves a sensitive and personal matter such as religious belief.
Unfortunately for Obama and his backers, the same Obama campaign apparatus which claimed that he is a baptized Christian asserted that the mysterious “Frank” in Obama’s book, Dreams from My Father, was just a black civil rights activist. It turned out that “Frank” was Frank Marshall Davis, a Communist Party member under surveillance by the FBI who served as a mentor for a young Obama in Hawaii. The 600-page FBI file on Davis even suggests he was an espionage agent on behalf of the Soviet Union.
Dupes, a forthcoming book by Professor Paul Kengor, promises to take another close look at Obama’s Frank Marshall Davis connection.
So what the Obama presidential campaign says about Obama’s religious affiliation is not something to be taken at face value. They have a vested interest in making Obama look more acceptable to the American people.
As President, he has gone to church only a few times, which undermines the claim that he is a practicing Christian. People see him playing golf on Sunday; they don’t see him going to church.
In fact, however, being a Christian is not just a function of attending church services. Rather, it is related to being baptized. Did this critical development occur in Obama’s life?
In this context, it is important to take a look at what Obama’s own books, Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope, say about the President’s religion, or lack thereof.
He acknowledges in Dreams that his grandfather was a Muslim (page 104) and that he spent two years in a Muslim school in Indonesia studying the Koran (page 154). In The Audacity of Hope, he says (page 204) that “my father had been raised a Muslim” but that by the time he met his mother, his father was a “confirmed atheist.”
His stepfather was not particularly religious and his mother professed “secularism,” Obama wrote (pages 204-205), but as a child he went to a “predominantly Muslim school,” after being first sent to a Catholic school. His mother, he said, was concerned about him learning math, not religion.
Obama’s reference to being baptized is found in his second book, The Audacity of Hope, published in 2006, not in Dreams, published in 1995. Obama wrote on page 208, “I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ one day and be baptized.”
Traditionally, Christianity teaches that baptism is a sacrament involving the use of water to signify acceptance of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Since Obama was not born and baptized a Christian, in order to become a Christian he had to enter into the sacrament of baptism some time later in life.
In this regard, Obama does not indicate anywhere in his books that he came into contact with what Christians regard as the “living water.” Instead, he says that, in his baptism, he made “a choice,” knelt beneath a cross, and “felt God’s spirit beckoning.” He said, “I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.”
This sounds like a powerful religious experience but it is not what Christians regard as baptism.
In Dreams from My Father, Obama discusses his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, noting that he had been “dabbling with liquor, Islam, and black nationalism in the sixties” but that “the call of faith had apparently remained” and that he went on to study religion, including “the black liberation theologians.” For his part, Obama visited Wright to discuss membership in the Trinity United Church of Christ as an extension of his community organizing activities and the hope that he could get “involvement” in this effort from churches like Wright’s.
As Obama contacted the churches and their ministers, he reveals that they thought he was a Muslim (page 279) or, he jokes, an Irishman, “O’Bama.”
Obama talks about hearing a Wright sermon, “The Audacity of Hope,” which inspired the title of his second book. However, there is no mention of any baptism in this—his first—book. The reference to being baptized came in the second book, as Obama was preparing to launch his presidential campaign. The timing is significant.
These are the facts as Obama himself reported them. So how have the media handled them? Needless to say, there has been no serious investigation into whether the claims are true and what they mean.
“Obama’s religious biography is unconventional and politically problematic,” Newsweek’s Lisa Miller reported. “Born to a Christian-turned-secular mother and a Muslim-turned-atheist African father, Obama grew up living all across the world with plenty of spiritual influences, but without any particular religion. He is now a Christian, having been baptized in the early 1990s at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.”
The phrase, “having been baptized,” is apparently based on Obama’s claim about being baptized. Our major media haven’t questioned the claim.
Miller went on to say, “His baptism presents its own problems. The senior pastor at Trinity at the time of Obama’s baptism was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., the preacher who was seen damning America on cable TV…”
Notice the formulation, “at the time of Obama’s baptism.” She carefully does not say that Wright performed the baptism. In fact, there’s no evidence it was a baptism in the traditional sense that it was performed by Wright or anybody else. It looks like Obama walked down the aisle and made a profession of faith. That is not a Christian baptism.
The Canada Free Press published a very interesting article in February by Madeline Brooks, who asked, “Where is the baptism certificate? We do not see one because there was no baptism. That central part of Christianity was not required at Obama’s former church, the Trinity United Church of Christ, during the years Obama attended…”
She cites the research of a pastor, Usama Dakdok, who had called Obama’s church to ask about membership:
“Do I have to be baptized to join the church?” asked Pastor Dakdok. “No, you don’t,” was the answer. “You can be a member without being baptized.”
“And what exactly is required to become a member?” The answer: “You attend two Sunday school classes in a row about membership, and then you walk the aisle.”
Walk down the aisle? That sounds exactly what Obama described in his book. This is how one becomes a member. But it is not a baptism into Christianity.
“I called the Trinity United Church of Christ and they confirmed that baptism is merely optional for members,” Brooks added.
Pastor Dakdok reports that he also asked a spokesperson for Trinity, the membership director:
“If I am a Muslim man, and I believe in the prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, but I also believe in the prophet Jesus, do I have to give up my Islamic faith to join your church?”
The answer was, “Absolutely not! We have so many members of our church who are Muslims.”
Dakdok asked the Trinity spokesperson, “Is that how Senator Barack Obama became a member?” The membership director of the church refused to answer.
Madeline Brooks calls this “Muslim Christianity,” which she says is theologically impossible.
In fact, the contradictions don’t end there. Obama’s pastor for 20 years, Jeremiah Wright, could be described as a “Marxist Christian,” which is also theoretically impossible, since Marxism is materialistic and atheistic. Yet, as we revealed last November, Wright gave a speech in which he praised Marxism and faulted the media for claiming that communism and Christianity were somehow opposed to one another.
So the question regarding Obama is not just whether he is a Muslim but a Marxist, based not only on his attendance at Jeremiah Wright’s unusual church but the influence exercised over him during his growing-up years by Communist Frank Marshall Davis.
Dakdok, who was brought up in Egypt, a Muslim country, is adamant that Obama is a Muslim, based on the fact that his birth father was a Muslim and that there is no evidence that Obama ever specifically rejected Islam. Christian radio host Brannon Howse interviewed Dakdok, at the urging of conservative columnist David Limbaugh, brother of the national talk show host, Rush Limbaugh. Dakdok was also interviewed recently on Stacy Harp’s Christian radio show. He speaks around the country in front of Christian audiences.
While Obama may have been a Muslim by birth, that doesn’t mean that he accepts the Muslim faith or philosophy. Instead, Islam may be seen as just another religion/ideology that can be used for his own political purposes.
The case for Obama being a Marxist is far more convincing. He was exposed to Marxist ideology in church under Wright, as well as from Frank Marshall Davis.
The American people now seem to get it, even though the truth about Obama’s relationship with Davis has never been thoroughly explored by the major media. A poll from the Democracy Corps, a Democratic Party firm, found that 55 percent said that Obama could accurately be described as a socialist.
This is far more than the number of people who see him as a Muslim.
If and when the media start examining the Frank Marshall Davis connection, the “socialist” label could take on more sinister connotations.
This is why, of course, they will avoid it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of the AIM Report and can be reached at cliff.kincaid@aim.org
Source: http://www.aim.org/aim-column/muslim-christian-or-marxist/
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