From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sat Dec 16 2000 - 13:44:04 MST
The folling is a message from the American Atheist mailing list that I
believe will be of interest to many here.
- samantha
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POPE SCHMOOZES WITH FASCIST SYMPATHIZER, DENOUNCES EVILS
OF "ATHEISM, SECULARISM, INDIVIDUALISM"
As thousands of demonstrators poured into the streets of Rome in
protest, the Vatican confirmed that Pope John Paul II will go ahead
with plans to meet tomorrow with Austrian far-right political leader
Joeg
Haider.
Haider arrived this afternoon in Rome, and was promptly escorted to a
private hotel near the Vatican under heavy police security. His visit
with the pontiff, slated for Saturday morning, comes as tension rises
between Italy and Austria over statements made by Haider critical of
Italian policies on immigration.
Haider, who has said that he admired many of the policies of Nazi
dictator Adolph Hitler, is former leader of Austria's far-right
Freedom Party which is now a junior partner in that nation's coalition
government. Earlier this week, he denounced Italian President Carlo
Azeglio Ciampi for his liberal attitudes on permitting the free flow
of immigrants throughout the region.
"As an Austrian politician, I have my position on immigration," he
told journalists during a walking tour near the Vatican. "President
Ciampi is allowed to have a different one. It's not my problem."
The Vatican has been under fierce criticism ever since news broke
several months ago that Haider was to be part of an official
delegation from Carinthia which is presenting the Holy See with this
year's traditional Christmas tree for St. Peter's Square. The
protests have resulted in a cordon of security guards around the
80-foot-high conifer.
Holocaust survivors, Jewish organizations, World War II partisans, and
diverse political groups are charging that the Vatican meeting
legitimizes a man frequently compared to Hitler. Thousands of
demonstrators marched through Rome last night, and then assembled on
the Capitoline Hill for a moment of silence in protest against racism.
Italian Labor Minister Cesare Salvi greeted the gathering, and was
joined by Center-right opposition leader Silvio Berlusconi, who
distanced his party from Haider's ideas.
The Holy See's decision to follow through on the meeting between the
pontiff and Mr. Haider has been a lightening rod for critics who see
the Vatican as unwilling to distance itself from odious sympathizers,
and take responsibility for its past wrongs. Earlier this month, for
instance, the Vatican asked U.S. authorities to intervene and dismiss
a lawsuit naming it as a party in aiding Nazi expatriates at the end
of World War II, and hiding gold and other valuables expropriated from
victims of the clerical fascist Ustashi Catholic government in the
former
Yugoslavia.
Coincident with the flap over Haider's visit to the Vatican, the Pope
received Croatia's new ambassador to the Holy See, Franjo Zenko, and
denounced the various dictatorships the country had suffered for most
of the 20th century. The papal platitudes, though, ignored the fact
that the Vatican aided the Ustashi regime, and supported Croatian
strongman Franjo Tudman who presided over the country from 1991 until
his death last December. John Paul II has also taken criticism for
his beatification of the late Archbishop Stepanic, who represented the
Vatican's interest in Croatia during the time of the Ustashi regime.
Common Cause With Haider: Pope Denounces Evils Of
"Atheism, Secularism, Individualism"
Haider's reception at the Vatican coincides with another precisely
timed development, namely the early release of an official statement
criticism globalism and the Western emphasis on individual rights.
Although originally scheduled for publication on January 1, 2001, the
Vatican Press Office released copies of "Dialogue Between Cultures for
a Civilization of Love and Peace," which marks the New Year's
celebration of World Peace Day. An Associated Press release noted
that the statement was being "sent to world leaders two weeks early."
It is a typical John Paul oration, scolding the world's nations for
emphasizing values at odds with the Vatican agenda. The statement
includes much of the language used by political observers to describe
the emergence of a post-cold war world characterized by more
diaphanous national boundaries, global trade and communications,
emphasis on consumerism, and a growing stress on individual rights and
choices in the cultural and economic marketplace.
The harshest language is reserved for notions which the Vatican has
found increasingly more dangerous and pervasive -- secularism, Atheism
and individualism. In a hit at Western affluence, the statement
declares:
"The radicalization of identity which makes cultures resistant to any
beneficial influence from outside is worrying enough; but no less
perilous is the slavish conformity of cultures, or at least key
aspects of them, to cultural models derived from the Western world
view. Detached from their Christian origins, these models are often
inspired by an approach to life marked by secularism and practical
atheism and by patterns of radical individualism. This is a
phenomenon of vast proportions, sustained by powerful media campaigns
and design to propagate lifestyles, social and economic programs, and
in the last analysis, a comprehensive world-view which erodes from
within other estimable cultures and civilizations."
Western materialism and cultural paradigms were described as "enticing
and alluring because of their remarkable scientific and technical
case," but Christians were admonished that "there is growing evidence
of their deepening human, spiritual and moral impoverishment."
"The culture which produces such models is marked by the fatal attempt
to secure the good of humanity by eliminating God, the Supreme
Good..."
The emerging global "culture industry" is excoriated as well, and this
latest statement is not the first the Vatican has made expressing its
displeasure with the ability of movies, music and other entertainment
forms to erode religious cultures and mock sectarian beliefs. "These
products include and transmit implicit value-systems and can therefore
lead to a kind of dispossession and loss of cultural identity in those
who receive them."
Hijacking Issues
The Roman Catholic Church has emerged as a major player (if not the
leader) on the international scene in a loosely knit movement of
sectarian and social groups, and nation states linked by a cluster of
concerns having to do with modernity and globalism. These issues can
cover the gamut from environmental concerns to issues like migration,
economic development, and problems which often emerge in the
dislocations of social change. At a recent United Nations forum on
family planning and population, for instance, the Vatican joined with
several Asian and Latin American countries heavily influenced by
Catholicism, and Islamic states in attempting to torpedo resolutions
supporting birth control and demographic restraint. The "Dialogue
Between Cultures" points to similar Vatican concerns over "the value
of life," and the Holy See's war on abortion rights for women,
liberated sexuality and issues like euthanasia and biogenetic
technologies.
The pontiff speaks of a "tragic spiral of death which includes murder,
suicide, abortion, euthanasia, as well as practices of mutilation,
physical and psychological torture, forms of unjust coercion,
arbitrary imprisonment, unnecessary recourse to the death penalty,
deportations, slavery, prostitution, trafficking in women and
children."
The linkage of these practices betrays a distinct Vatican agenda. The
pontiff continues:
"To this list we must add irresponsible practices of genetic
engineering such as cloning and use of human embryos for research,
which are justified by an illegitimate appeal to freedom, to cultural
progress, to the advancement of mankind."
Those who disagree are not part of the "civilization based on love and
peace" supposedly advocated by the Holy See.
So far, there has been little coverage of the document in the American
or European press. The themes are not new ones, though, and are even
hauntingly familiar, especially when examining the agenda of the
National Conference of Catholic Bishops. In 1997, for instance,
AANEWS observed the common ideological themes in the rhetoric of Rev.
Sun Myung Moon, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, and Catholic
prelates. Indeed, at a gathering of hundreds of bishops from North
and Latin America held in Rome in 1997, we noted the words of Rev.
Donald Wuerl of Pittsburgh who told his fellow clerics that "Heavy
emphasis on the individual and his or her rights has greatly eroded
the concept of the common good and its ability to call people to
something beyond themselves..."
The Bishops went on to denounce the fact that "In our democracy,
divergent political viewpoints are more often resolved by the facile
reliance on the rule of the majority than by a genuine discernment of
what is best for the common good." One bishop described abortion and
physician-assisted suicide as "unspeakable crimes" which are "embraced
in the name of individual rights and democracy."
Haider and the pope may disagree on many issues; but they also have
common cause in their mutual distrust of globalism, "too much freedom"
and the lack of subordination of the individual to a higher calling,
be it authoritian politics or doctrinaire religion. The Vatican also
realizes that Haider may have a future in the European political
scene. Rarely does the Holy See ignore an opportunity to "dialogue"
with powerful political leaders.
In the meantime, the Vatican's latest statement on Atheism, secularism
and individualism underscores its political agenda throughout the
world, and in the United States. With a new president about to be
sworn in, the Holy See may well consider George W. Bush -- like
Mr.Haider -- a political asset and ideological ally.
For further information:
http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/vat11.htm
("Vatican asks court, U.S. Government to dismiss lawsuit over Nazi
gold,"
11/28/00)
http://www.americanatheist.org/pope99.calvi.html
(The mysterious death of Roberto Calvi and ties to the Vatican bank,
Nazi-era
intrigue, more)
http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/vat10.htm
("House votes 416-1 to retain special Vatican status at U.N.," 7/12/00)
http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/vatican9.htm
("As conference opens, Vatican accused of subverting progress for
women's
rights," 6/5/00)
http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/vatican8.htm
("Bush chases 'Catholic vote," affirms support for special Vatican
status at
United
Nations," 5/29/00)
http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/vat7b.htm
("The Vatican as political state, religious sect," 3/17/00)
http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/vatican5.htm
("Gone with the wind blowing lid off Vatican corruption?" 8/118/99)
http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/bishop2.htm
("Fearing Freedom -- Pope, Bishops, Rev. Moon blast America,
Secularism,
Individualism," 11/30/97)
ANEWS is a free service from American Atheists, a nationwide movement
founded by Madalyn Murray O'Hair for the advancement of Atheism, and
the total, absolute separation of government and religion.
You may forward, post or quote from this dispatch, provided that
appropriate credit is given to AANEWS and American Atheists. Please
do not post complete editions of this newsletter indiscriminately to
newsgroups, boards or other outlets. Edited by Conrad Goeringer,
cg@atheists.org. Internet Representative for American Atheists is
Margie Wait, irep@atheists.org.
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