This way to UN Heaven.

This way to UN Heaven for the believer

The Eponymous Flower has the inside story on the latest Sanchez Sorondo UN Global Warming atrocity in Rome.

(Rome) on the 21st and 22nd of July, mayors from around the world meet at the Vatican to discuss the global climate and modern slavery. What sounds so politically correct, should be through and through. Initiator of the Mayor Meeting is the Argentine, Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, Curial Archbishop, the chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences . He was the organizer behind the eco-Encyclical Laudato Si who besides creating the contacts next to the dead letter, especially at the United Nations and the “high politics”.

I must be ignorant but I fail to grasp this ‘modern slavery’ issue.  People throw out the words, ‘slavery’ or ‘human trafficking,’ and no further explanation is really given.  Statistics cite hundreds of thousands of slaves and usually associate them with that other fungible word, ‘refugees.’

Are we talking about Saudi housekeepers, illegal aliens, prostitutes, or the women of ISIS?  If so, then why don’t they just use the specific reference so we can know whom they’re talking about?  Are there slaves in the USA? If so then where are they?  Do they go to school? Do they work?  Are they in chains and at gunpoint or enslaved by drugs and harsh words?  Is it their poverty that keeps them where they are, because I would move that into Pope Francis’s poverty column then.

Are the two thousand people parked outside the telemarketing mill downtown slaves. If not, then what are they?

I wonder if generally, except for criminal gangs and many women in the Muslim world, these ‘slaves’ just don’t exist.  Sure, there are people on the very low end of life who are poor or immigrant and generally under the control of others all over the world.  But even if there were an actual worldwide slave problem it would have nothing to do with a catastrophically warming planet.  On the other hand if the slave problem was for the most part invented, then in that case they would have everything in common.

It seems to be very important these days at the UN, and now in the halls of what was once the Catholic Church, that there be non-stop conferencing and binding agreements made to solve problems that don’t really exist.  If the central issue being fixed isn’t real, then you can hurl useless ineffective ‘solutions’ at it all day and get away with it.  It’s the perfect excuse for government work.

In the new one-world UN faux-Christendom there’s no more need for the Veterans Administration or the Departments of Transportation and Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, because those entities rely upon something real.  Now, with replacement-Pope Francis and Abp. Sanchez Sorondo’s help, you can rule the world by pretending to solve problems that are completely fictional.

He organized ahead of the encyclical, the concept of an international workshop of “climate change and sustainable development” in the Vatican. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will give the opening speech. The keynote speaker will be his right hand, the UNSDNS Director Jeffrey Sachs (UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network). Thus, not only will the representatives who believe in  manmade global warming will gather in the Vatican, but also the neo-Malthusians.  Not only that, but climate skeptics were systematically removed from the registration list. The Vatican has been (see the promoters of a guided, one-sided meeting in accordance with the UN World Warming thesis  Climate skeptics Excluded From  Vatican Meeting – Other Opinions Undesirable ).

60 Mayors from Around the World Meeting in the Vatican – are “Exclusively” of the Left

The end of May  Sanchez Sorondo gave an inglorious interview in which he meant to identify the causes for the global children’s killings by abortion and climate change (see Abortion and Climate Change: In the Vatican someone was persuaded of great nonsense ). The Curial Archbishop has since been an architect of the approach of the Catholic Church to the UN agenda. It’s an initiative  that he can develop only with the necessary backing from the highest level.

Sanchez Sorondo’s next step will be to bring 60 mayors from around the world to the Vatican  next week. The cross-section is impressive, and the political positioning of the mayors rather “colorful”. Coming will be  the leftist Catholic Mayor of Rome, Ignazio Marino; the communist mayor of Milan, Giuliano Pisapia; the left-liberal mayor of Naples, Luigi De Magistris; the left-wing mayor of Madrid, Manuela Carmena (from the beginning of her judicial career a member of the Communist Party of Spain, then without a party, the 2015 top candidate of an electoral alliance between the Socialists and the radical left movement,  Podemos); the feminist, Socialist Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris.

Not only are true scientists excluded from presenting to the Academy of Sciences but only Democrats, or in Europe communists, were invited to this mayors conference.  There are absolutely no faithful Christians in any of these Vatican meetings because, despite the fact Pope Francis says he knows many who are good people, there is no such thing as a righteous communist and if you’re going to bind the world to treaties based completely upon lies, you can’t expect much help from people of character.

The next time Pope Francis rails against ‘ideology’ we must remember, not only that he is of course a notorious ideologue himself, but that his henchman Abp. Sanchez Sorondo can’t even find the least bit of truth or credibility in something that isn’t leftist:

The United Nations is not the devil, but the opposite,” said Sanchez Sorondo to a journalist’s question, whether it was not strange that the Vatican was harboring a UN event. “The symposium is not organized by the UN, but by the Pontifical Academies and the UN,” said the Archbishop. He meant the two academies, whose chancellor he is. Already Paul VI. has visited the United Nations in New York goes the justification of the Pope’s confidant. “In September, Pope Francis will visit them. I do not see where there should be a problem. In the United Nations to recognize the devil, is position typical of   the right, that is not the position of the Holy See. The united left gathered in the Vatican  would all be  happy with this statement.

Oh sure, right-wingers think the UN is bad.  That in and of itself is enough to silence a critique for the archbishop, the White House, and the editors of the New York Times.  This phony priest would pay the same compliment to every tenet of the Faith if he had to.

On the question of other journalists, whether the “exclusive presence of mayors of the left of   center is not a sign of partiality,” Sanchez Sorondo answered mockingly: “The invitation is open to everyone, if you bring us another mayor, we are grateful. We have no reservations.”  The one-sided color preference of the loaded mayor guest list suggests the opposite. It should rather have been a selective contact  including invitation.

Complain to Sorondo once, you get insulted.  Complain twice, you get a lie.  This is FrancisChurch.

 

 

 

 

The Catholic Church's New Governing Board

The Catholic Church’s New Governing Board

At the National Post Fr. Raymond J. d’ Souza tracks the evolution and power of worldwide global warming apostle and now Vatican guide, UN’s Jeffrey Sachs.

Jeffrey Sachs, it is true, is just one man. But the UN’s chief development man is near-ubiquitous, laying out the future of the global economy. If you want to know what the conferenciers of global summitry discuss, read Sachs.

Here in Poland, his name is most associated with the “shock therapy” of early 1990s. After the defeat of communism and return to democratic politics, Poland had to decide how to dismantle the state-controlled economic policies that had kept Poland poor for four decades. Sachs was the principal international advisor advocating a rapid removal of price regulations and state subsidies. There would be sharp short term pain for, it was hoped, economic freedom, stability and growth in a short few years.

Poland opted for shock therapy and within three years the economy was growing, hyperinflation had been killed and the Polish entrepreneurial class, everywhere evident today, had emerged. Compared to more sluggish transitions elsewhere in the former Soviet empire, Polish shock therapy was judged a success.

The Sachs of the 1990s, flitting hither and yon to advocate rapid adoption of free-market policies was considered a man of the right. Yet for 20 years now he has been flitting ever-farther afield in the service of poverty alleviation and sustainable development. Special advisor to the UN for the millennium development goals, he is now leading the UN charge toward a global climate change treaty. In terms of impact on global policy priorities, there are as few as influential as Jeffrey Sachs.

“Leading the UN charge toward a global climate change treaty.”

On balance, his poverty work has been rooted in confidence that human capital — unleashing the creative productivity of the poor through education, access to capital and economic freedom — is the foundation for economic growth. That’s to his credit, even if he also keeps faith with the global poverty and aid industry that has long believed that the quickest way to reduce poverty is to get rid of poor people, whether by contraception and sterilization campaigns, eugenics, expanded abortion licences and, in the case of China, systematic human rights violations in enforcing the one-child policy.

Sachs bears watching, and I assign his work in my own economics course, for he is always leading the trends. In the Nineties it was post-communist transition. In the Aughts it was poverty. Now it is global warming and sustainable development. Last week, he was in Quito for the “International Conference on Sustainable Development.” I first thought he might be on hand to greet Pope Francis, but it turned out he left Quito before the pope arrived. Sachs does not need to ambush the Holy Father abroad. Francis invited him to the Vatican in April to headline the Church’s own seminar on climate change.

Nevertheless, Sachs was in tiny Ecuador while Francis was also there.  Now he’s back in the Vatican next week.

It’s getting hard to keep up with all the speeches, seminars and summits. While the “International Conference on Sustainable Development” in Ecuador was wrapping up, there was a contemporaneous “World Summit on Climate and Territories” in Lyon, both of which preceded last week’s “Climate Summit of the Americas” in Toronto. All of which is gearing up for the climate change summit in Paris this December.

“Kathleen Wynne has this week been hosting a climate summit with California’s governor Jerry Brown and Al Gore, both high cardinals in the zealous Church of Global Warming (Mr. Gore used to be Pope of that church, but the real Pope is now its Pope too), bringing a wonderful touch of pure Americana into Ontario politics,” wrote Rex Murphy on Saturday in our pages.

The Pope is now the Pope of Global Warming.  No more need for Al.

But it is not just America, nor just Ontario. It is almost everywhere, like Sachs himself. China recently moved toward a climate alliance with the United States, and the G7 declared that in about a hundred years they would no longer use fossil fuels. Indeed, one of the few places where climate enthusiasm is muted is the former Soviet empire; memories here of state-directed economic goals are relatively fresh and not favourable.

Though continuously associated with lawless communism, Putin’s Russia is one of the few places in the modern world that seems to reject it today.  They embrace Christianity without trying to crush or neuter it.

Father has the trends down.  As Sachs moved from Right to Left so did the world around him.

Sachs’ views prevailed in Poland 25 years ago. With the next round of the UN “sustainable development goals” — the updating of the millennium development goals — and the Paris summit, Sachs is prevailing the world over.

I rather doubt that Pope Francis would think it a step up to go from being the successor of St. Peter to the successor of Al Gore, but much of the world sure thinks it fabulous. After all, St. Peter never got the Nobel Peace Prize. And today while few of the global policy elite read the epistles of Peter, many fervently follow the gospel of Sachs.

Seeing Jeffrey Sachs so active and embraced in the Vatican today, one gets the sense that there is a plan afoot that has nothing to do with the Church’s mission or the papal office, yet demands the full compliance and surrender of both.

An opportunity for Catholic students to dialogue about truth

An opportunity for Catholic students to dialogue about truth

Dominic Lynch at Lifezette.com phoned new Chicago FrancisBishop Blase Cupich for an interview.  Since we have so many new martyrs, saints, and venerables in FrancisChurch who seem to elude requirements for demonstrating heroic virtue, saintly character, or miracles, I think we might be looking here at some future Patron Saint of Excuses.

In a phone conversation, Cupich shared thoughts about Catholic identity on campuses, what he would contribute to this fall’s gathering at the Vatican on the family, and whether he is a Chicago Cubs or Chicago White Sox fan.

How can Catholic universities in America regain sight of their institutional identities?

It’s very important to keep in mind that there’s always a tension in making sure that the Catholic ethos and inspiration that gave rise to the university continues to be handed on from one generation to another. At the same time, it’s also important to realize that universities are laboratories where people do grow. They need the space to make sure that they incrementally understand the faith. Sometimes that means it’s not all at once — there has to be a certain pedagogy to it.

In FrancisChurch every Catholic is a scientist and every target is a ‘laboratory.’  Freedom to sin is ‘space’ and sinning is ‘growing.’  Spiraling into a pit of vice is ‘incrementally understanding the faith’ according to some ‘pedagogy!’

We also know that a good number of students in our Catholic universities are not Catholic. For instance, various theology classes can’t turn into catechetical institutes. There has to be some awareness of teaching people how to think theologically. That tension is always going to be there in an institution of higher learning.

Teaching theology without catechesis?  Thinking ‘theologically’ without learning theology?  Embrace the ‘tension’ of cognitive dissonance, says Cupich.  In other words, be absurd.  It’s just higher learning, see.

But it sure sounds lower.

Loyola University Chicago recently hosted transgender activist Laverne Cox. How should a Catholic university navigate thorny concerns like that?

I don’t know the context of the person coming there, so I can’t really comment on that particular issue. I do know there are issues of concern to students, and if you can use a controlled environment by which there can be honest and open dialogue so people do come to an awareness of what the truth is, that’s of value. It’s always of value for people to take different steps towards the truth — even in terms of a point-counterpoint. That’s a legitimate way for a university to educate people, in general.

I don’t know too much about that event but clinically speaking, if the environment is controlled by some creepy professor, then you can have a Petri dish of dialogue.

I thought speakers came to teach not learn.  Giving voice to the depraved and perverted allows the guest speaker a chance to learn the truth from who – the odd student foolish or unfortunate enough to be taking the class, but who’s bold, righteous, and honest enough to speak out and receive a C or an F for his tepid critique?

The truth moves one way in a situation like that – out the door.

In FrancisChurch slippery bishops and gay spectacles get mountains of funding while Catholic truth can only pay, protest, and fail.

From here Abp. Cupich skips right over the Synod without saying anything frightening, then moves toward the family in general.  We have to do better accompanying them as they pass on the faith!

When the Synod on the Family convenes again this fall, Communion for the divorced and remarried is an issue to be discussed. Where do you align on that issue?

I don’t think that’s a big issue. The real issue today for families and marriage within the church is: How can the family continue to be the place where the Gospel is passed on? That seems to be where the real crisis is. Some are concerned about a decline in Mass attendance, and that is troublesome. However, I believe we’ve lost a sense in the church that the family is where the Gospel is communicated.

We have to help our families see that if the faith is going to continue, it’s going to have to be handed on within the context of the family. As for the other issues of who can go to Communion and all the rest of it, those are not unimportant, but they’re not the central issues. The Synod should not concern itself with those kinds of technical questions.

If you were to make a specific contribution to the Synod, what would it be?

I’ve been a priest now for 40 years and I think that marriage preparation is too focused on the relationship between the couple. We don’t do a very good job in the church of helping people who get married to see the role they have in bringing children into the world and passing on the faith. We don’t accompany them there.

Pope Francis has repeatedly asked us to “accompany” people. We have to put together marriage preparation programs that factor into the equation of how we are asking them to create a family, a place where the faith is passed on. We don’t talk about that at all to married couples.

How important is that kind of training for Catholics at an early age?

Well, that kind of catechesis is going to be effective not only if it is done well in the classroom, but also if it is supported at home. Too many people believe that they don’t have responsibility for passing on the faith. They think that they can take a child to religious education, go off and pick up the laundry and come back and pick-up a Catholic. We’re not serving families well by not challenging parents to take on the catechesis with us. It starts with building a whole new generation of married couples who see the importance of their part in passing on the faith.

What are your plans to stem the tide of Catholics leaving the church?

It’s not just the Catholic church that is losing regular church attendance. It’s the case for all of the mainstream, mainline religions. The real issue here is there is a redefinition of the human person that the culture wants to promote: that the human person lives in isolation, who is autonomous, who is the author of their own life, and who wants to be left alone. That’s opposed to the church’s understanding that the human person is relational, who lives in community with others and whose life is defined in terms of their relationship with others.

That is scary to some people because communities make expectations of us. We live in a culture today that has a very strong market-driven understanding of human life that wants to divide us. It’s easier to sell products to individuals rather than to communities.

We need to start with this question: How do you see your life? Is it lived in isolation or do you see the value of relationships where we make demands on each other in faith?

Except for the blame he puts on ‘the evil market,’ none of this sounds too bad to me.  That’s the problem.

Well there is that bit about too much autonomy and people thinking they are the authors of their own lives.  That does sound a touch invasive. I guess it’s possible FrancisBishop Cupich might want to author my life a little, and grab what remains of my freedom for the sake of my family’s faith.  Is their faith yet another excuse?

Didn’t he just tell us that transgender college speeches were dialogue and that sinning was space for incremental growth?  Why should I trade my freedom and family so Archbishop Cupich can pass on some of that FrancisFaith?

I am the author of the life God gave me, and I don’t hate my autonomy – especially now that FrancisChurch seems to want it so badly.