ROME, May 2, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Francis made a strong new push for globalism on Thursday, calling for a supranational, legally constituted body to enforce United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and implement “climate change” policies.
Speaking to members of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, the Pope said: “When a supranational common good is clearly identified, there is need for a special legally constituted authority capable of facilitating its implementation.”
“Think of the great contemporary challenges of climate change, new slavery and peace,” he told members of the Pontifical Academy, who are meeting this week at the Vatican for a plenary session themed: “Nation, State, Nation-State.”
Featured speakers at the May 1-3 plenary include German Cardinal Walter Kasper, who spoke on: “Peace Stemming from Justice. Theological Reflections Between Men, Communities and Nations”; Archbishop Roland Minnerath of Dijon, France, who delivered the opening talk on day two, themed: “Nation, State, Nation-State and the Doctrine of the Catholic Church”; and German climatologist and founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, who addressed the Pontifical Academy on “The State of the World.”
In his address to the academy, the Pope said that while “the principle of subsidiarity” requires that “individual nations must be given the power to operate as far as they can reach,” nonetheless “groups of neighboring nations — as is already the case — can strengthen their cooperation by attributing the exercise of certain functions and services to intergovernmental institutions that manage their common interests.”
The thrust of the Pope’s remarks, however, focused on growing trends toward nationalism which he said threatens migrants, the “universal common good” and the power of the United Nations and other transnational bodies to implement the Sustainable Development Goal agenda.
The Church “has always exhorted men to love their own people and homeland,” he said. “At the same time,” he added, “the Church has warned persons, peoples and governments about deviations from this attachment when it is about excluding and hating others, when it becomes conflictual nationalism that builds walls, indeed even racism or anti-Semitism.”
“The Church observes with concern the re-emergence, almost everywhere in the world, of aggressive currents towards foreigners, especially immigrants, as well as that growing nationalism which neglects the common good,” Pope Francis continued.
“There is a risk of compromising already established forms of international cooperation, undermining the aims of international organizations as a space for dialogue and meeting for all countries on a level of mutual respect, and hindering the achievement of the sustainable development goals unanimously approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 25 September 2015,” he told members of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.
SDGs: eliminating poverty or children?
Many are concerned that some of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), while billed as aimed at eliminating poverty, are really about eliminating children. “Reproductive health services” for example, which are referred to in the SDGs, are often a euphemism frequently employed to mean abortion in UN debates.
As Steven Mosher, Population Research Institute, explains:
Developing nations who adopt the SDGs will be pressured to legalize abortion, even though the word abortion never appears in the document. They will be told, falsely, that there is an “international consensus” that reproductive rights includes a right to abortion. They will be instructed that laws protecting the unborn violate this consensus and must be replaced with new laws permitting abortion on demand. And they will be threatened with the withholding of international aid unless they comply.
Pope Francis did give some recognition to concerns about “ideological colonization” of socially and morally conservative countries in the developing world in his remarks:
Multilateral bodies were created in the hope of being able to replace the logic of revenge, domination, oppression and conflict with that of dialogue, mediation, compromise, harmony and the awareness of belonging to the same humanity in the common home. Of course, these bodies must ensure that States are effectively represented, with equal rights and duties, in order to avoid the growing hegemony of powers and interest groups that impose their own visions and ideas, as well as new forms of ideological colonization, often disregarding the identity, customs and traditions, dignity and sensitivity of the peoples concerned. The emergence of such tendencies is weakening the multilateral system, with the result of a lack of credibility in international politics and a progressive marginalization of the most vulnerable members of the family of nations.
Pope Benedict XVI, affirming his predecessor John XIII, also called in Caritas et Veritate for a “true world political authority” to “manage the global economy,” “guarantee the protection of the environment,” “regulate migration,” and “bring about integral and timely disarmament” and work for the “common good.”
In the same encyclical, however, Benedict XVI denounced “practices of demographic control, on the part of governments that often promote contraception and even go so far as to impose abortion.” He also openly condemned ecomonic bodies for their lending policies which tie aid to “family planning,” writing: “There is reason to suspect that development aid is sometimes linked to specific health-care policies which de facto involve the imposition of strong birth control measures.”
‘Supranational common good’
LifeSite spoke with Dr. Alan Fimister, an internationally renowned authority on Catholic social teaching and Robert Schuman, the founder of the European Union.
Dr. Fimister explained that, according to traditional Catholic social teaching, the temporal community or “State” is created by man’s natural needs and search for perfection in this world, and is the community that contains within itself everything required to attain that temporal perfection and security.
But if it can no longer do so, then the logical result would be the creation of a larger unity, he said. “Obviously national states are held together by history and culture and not just economics and military necessity, so such amalgamations can be very delicate and sensitive, giving rise to potentially explosive tensions.”
Fimister went on to say that the most obvious way in which the imperfection or inadequacy of a temporal community is manifested is defeat in war, such as the nations of Europe experienced between 1939 and 1945 “with the obvious exception of Britain,” he added.
“On the other hand,” he continued, “the heavenly destiny given to man on the Cross is the cause of the universal assembly or Catholic Church, so that new needs and priorities of the natural order are only accidentally supranational, whereas the common good of the Church is essentially supranational and universal.”
“In other words, the Gospel is for every tribe and tongue and people and nation (Rev 7:9). But the material needs of South America or Europe or the Far East will differ from each other quite naturally.”
Fimister said the danger is that an accidentally supranational body created to deal with temporal problems which transcend the resources of traditional nation-states will correspond to no common political culture or language, no “demos.”
“Without the ‘demos’ there is only the ‘kratos’ — or power answerable to no one and serving its own private good as an oligarchic bureaucracy, a sort of FIFA (International Federation of Football) on steroids,” he argued.
Fimister expressed sympathy with some of Pope Francis’s aims but raised a note of caution:
Pope Francis is commending and defending the kind of regionalized supranational entities exemplified by the EU which was indeed established under Catholic inspiration in the nineteen fifties. Robert Schuman the founder of the EU wanted to create a “generalized democracy in the Christian sense of the word” and warned that an anti-Christian democracy would end in “tyranny or anarchy.” Schuman thought the only force capable of truly transcending national egotism was supernatural charity. Without this, these institutions would become monsters of “supranational egotism” worse than the nation states that preceded them because not even rooted in nature there would arise “a new supranational Leviathan superimposing itself upon the little national monsters.”
Fimister added that secularizing eugenicists like the International Planned Parenthood Federation “greatly favor a supranational bureaucracy” because it “allows them to advance their agenda without doing so under the scrutiny of national political culture with shared language and history, which is far more likely to expose and scrutinize their objectives than a distant bureaucracy that is answerable to no one in particular.”
In his address to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, Pope Francis appeals to the authority of St. Thomas Aquinas in his conception of the national state and its role. However, his predecessor Pius XI, in the 1920s — unimpressed with the League of Nations — the predecessor of the United Nations, pointed out that only the Gospel has the resources necessary to unite the nations of the world.
In his 1923 encyclical on St. Thomas Aquinas, Studiorum ducem n. 20, Pius XI wrote:
[St. Thomas Aquinas] also composed a substantial moral theology, capable of directing all human acts in accordance with the supernatural last end of man. And as he is, as We have said, the perfect theologian, so he gives infallible rules and precepts of life not only for individuals, but also for civil and domestic society which is the object also of moral science, both economic and politic. Hence those superb chapters in the second part of the Summa Theologica on paternal or domestic government, the lawful power of the State or the nation, natural and international law, peace and war, justice and property, laws and the obedience they command, the duty of helping individual citizens in their need and co-operating with all to secure the prosperity of the State, both in the natural and the supernatural order. If these precepts were religiously and inviolably observed in private life and public affairs, and in the duties of mutual obligation between nations, nothing else would be required to secure mankind that “peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ” which the world so ardently longs for. It is therefore to be wished that the teachings of Aquinas, more particularly his exposition of international law and the laws governing the mutual relations of peoples, became more and more studied, for it contains the foundations of a genuine “League of Nations.”
The issues raised by Pope Francis’s remarks to Pontifical Academy of Sciences reflect the controversy that has raged throughout his pontificate as to whether he is substituting secular rationalistic goals for the supernatural ideals of the Church.
Here below is a LifeSite translation of Pope Francis’s address to members of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, which was delivered in Italian.
***
Dear brothers and sisters,
I welcome you and thank your President, Prof. Stefano Zamagni, for his kind words and for accepting to preside over the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Also this year you have chosen to discuss an issue of permanent relevance. Unfortunately, we have before our eyes situations in which some nation-states implement their relations in a spirit more of opposition than of cooperation. Moreover, it must be noted that the borders of States do not always coincide with the demarcations of homogeneous populations and that many tensions come from an excessive claim to sovereignty by States, often precisely in areas where they are no longer able to act effectively to protect the common good.
In both the Encyclical Laudato si’ and in the Address to the Members of the Diplomatic Corps this year, I drew attention to the global challenges facing humanity, such as integral development, peace, care of our common home, climate change, poverty, war, migration, human trafficking, organ trafficking, the protection of the common good, and new forms of slavery.
St. Thomas has a beautiful notion of what a people is: “The Seine river is not ‘this particular river’ because of ‘this flowing water,’ but because of ‘this source’ and ‘this bed,’ and hence is always called the same river, although there may be other water flowing down it; likewise a people is the same, not because of a sameness of soul or of men, but because of the same dwelling place, or rather because of the same laws and the same manner of living, as Aristotle says in book III of the Politica” (On spiritual creatures, a. 9, ad 10).
The Church has always exhorted men to love their own people and homeland, and to respect the treasure of various cultural expressions, customs and traditions and right ways of living rooted in peoples. At the same time, the Church has warned persons, peoples and governments about deviations from this attachment when it is about excluding and hating others, when it becomes conflictual nationalism that builds walls, indeed even racism or anti-Semitism. The Church observes with concern the re-emergence, almost everywhere in the world, of aggressive currents towards foreigners, especially immigrants, as well as that growing nationalism which neglects the common good. There is a risk of compromising already established forms of international cooperation, undermining the aims of international organizations as a space for dialogue and meeting for all countries on a level of mutual respect, and hindering the achievement of the sustainable development goals unanimously approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 25 September 2015.
It is a common doctrine that the State is at the service of the person and of the natural groupings of people such as the family, the cultural group, the nation as an expression of the will and profound customs of a people, the common good and peace. All too often, however, States are subservient to the interests of a dominant group, mostly for reasons of economic profit, which oppresses, among others, the ethnic, linguistic or religious minorities who are in their territory.
From this perspective, for example, the way in which a nation welcomes migrants reveals its vision of human dignity and its relationship with humanity. Every human person is a member of humanity and has the same dignity. When a person or a family is forced to leave their own land, they must be welcomed with humanity. I have said many times that our obligations to migrants are articulated in four verbs: to welcome, to protect, to promote and to integrate. The migrant is not a threat to the culture, customs and values of the host nation. He too has a duty, to integrate into the nation who receives him. To integrate does not mean to assimilate, but to share the kind of life of his new homeland, even though he himself as a person the bearer of his own biographical story. In this way, the migrant can present himself and be recognized as an opportunity to enrich the people who integrate him. It is the task of public authority to protect migrants and to regulate migratory flows with the virtue of prudence, as well as to promote reception so that local populations are formed and encouraged to participate consciously in the integration process of the migrants being received.
The issue of migration, which is a permanent feature of human history, also enlivens reflection on the nature of the Nation-State. All nations are the result of the integration of successive waves of people or groups of migrants and tend to be images of the diversity of humanity while being united by common values, cultural resources and healthy customs. A state that arouses the nationalistic feelings of its own people against other nations or groups of people would fail in its mission. We know from history where such deviations lead.
The Nation-State cannot be considered as an absolute, as an island in relation to its surroundings. In the current situation of globalization not only of economy but also of technological and cultural exchanges, the Nation-State is no longer able to procure by itself the common good for its population. The common good has become global and nations must associate for their own benefit. When a supranational common good is clearly identified, there is need for a special legally constituted authority capable of facilitating its implementation. Think of the great contemporary challenges of climate change, new slavery and peace.
While, according to the principle of subsidiarity, individual nations must be given the power to operate as far as they can reach, on the other hand, groups of neighboring nations — as is already the case — can strengthen their cooperation by attributing the exercise of certain functions and services to intergovernmental institutions that manage their common interests.It is to be hoped that, for example, we will not lose in Europe the awareness of the benefits brought by this path of rapprochement and harmony between peoples undertaken after the Second World War. In Latin America, on the other hand, Simón Bolivar urged the leaders of his time to forge the dream of a Great Homeland that knows how to welcome, respect, embrace and develop the riches of every people.
This cooperative vision among nations can move history by relaunching multilateralism, which is opposed both to new nationalistic pressures and to hegemonic politics.
Humanity would thus avoid the threat of recourse to armed conflicts every time a dispute arises between Nation-States, as well as evading the danger of economic and ideological colonization of superpowers, avoiding the tyranny of the strongest over the weakest, paying attention to the global dimension without losing sight of the local, national and regional dimensions. Faced with the plan of globalization imagined as “spherical,” which levels differences and suffocates localization, it is easy for both nationalism and hegemonic imperialism to re-emerge. In order for globalization to be of benefit to all, one must think of implementing a “multifaceted” form of globalization, supporting a healthy struggle for mutual recognition between the collective identity of each people and nation and globalization itself, according to the principle that the whole comes before the parts, so as to arrive at a general state of peace and harmony.
Multilateral bodies were created in the hope of being able to replace the logic of revenge, domination, oppression and conflict with that of dialogue, mediation, compromise, harmony and the awareness of belonging to the same humanity in the common home. Of course, these bodies must ensure that States are effectively represented, with equal rights and duties, in order to avoid the growing hegemony of powers and interest groups that impose their own visions and ideas, as well as new forms of ideological colonization, often disregarding the identity, customs and traditions, dignity and sensitivity of the peoples concerned. The emergence of such tendencies is weakening the multilateral system, with the result of a lack of credibility in international politics and a progressive marginalization of the most vulnerable members of the family of nations.
I encourage you to persevere in your search for processes to overcome what divides nations and to propose new paths of cooperation, especially with regard to the new challenges of climate change and new slavery, as well as the excellent social good that is peace. Unfortunately, today the season of multilateral nuclear disarmament seems outdated and no longer stirs the political conscience of nations which possess atomic weapons. On the contrary, a new season of disturbing nuclear confrontation seems to be opening, because it cancels the progress of the recent past and multiplies the risk of war, also due to the possible malfunctioning of very advanced technologies that are always subject to natural and human imponderables. If, now, offensive and defensive nuclear weapons are placed not only on earth but also in space, the so-called new technological frontier will have raised and not lowered the danger of a nuclear holocaust.
The State is therefore called upon to assume greater responsibility. While maintaining the characteristics of independence and sovereignty and continuing to pursue the good of its people, today its task is to participate in the construction of the common good of humanity, a necessary and essential element for world equilibrium. This universal common good, in turn, must acquire greater legal value at international level. I am certainly not thinking of a universalism or a generic internationalism that overlooks the identity of individual peoples: this, in fact, must always be valued as a unique and indispensable contribution to the greatest harmonious design.
Dear friends, as inhabitants of our time, Christians and academics of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, I ask you to collaborate with me in spreading this awareness of renewed international solidarity in the respect for human dignity, the common good, respect for the planet and the supreme good of peace.
I bless all of you, I bless your work and your initiatives. I accompany you with my prayer, and you too, please, do not forget to pray for me. Thank you!
Translation by Diane Montagna of LifeSiteNews.
This article was updated at 11:45am on Friday, April 3, 2019.
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