Posted on 03/03/2003 2:46:58 AM PST by HAL9000
The pope wants to go in front of UNO if its message with Bush does not stop the war
Jean Paul II will ask to address personally to the Security Council of the United Nations if its message with the American president George W Bush does not convince it to give up a war against Iraq, learned Monday the AFP from diplomatic source vaticane.L' possibility of a direct address of the pope in the United Nations was evoked during the maintenance of the pope with the secretary-general of UNO, Kofi Annan, there are two weeks in the Vatican, one added of the same source.Le cardinal Pio Laghi left Rome Monday morning for Washington carrying a message of peace as it must give to the American president. The cardinal, old apostolic nuncio (ambassador) in Washington and friend of the Bush family, hopes to be received mercredi.Une delegation of American religious leaders forwarded last week to Jean Paul II a letter wishing that the head of the catholic Church go to ONU."Il is allocated only to the pope himself to make such a decision ", commented on Sunday on a chain of television the archbishop Renato Martino, old observant of the Holy See at the United Nations and current president of the pontifical Council for justice and the peace, which had been charged to transmit to the missive.Si the pope, had tired and old of almost 82 years, had he could benefit from it to go to request in Ground Zero, affirms one diplomatic source vaticane.Ce gesture would be very appreciated by all the Americans, adds one. He had been considered last August at the time of the voyage of the pope in Canada for the world Days of Jeunesse.Dans diplomatic circles of the Holy See, one estimates that the parallel actions and concommitantes of the pope on the two protagonists of the crisis, Iraq and the United States, represent a significant chance so that a war is evité.Le Iraqi president Saddam Hussein should take account of the risk to be relatively insulated in the Arab world if he made the deaf person ear with a call to order of the Arab League, even observes one of the same source.De, underlines one, president Bush, of methodist confession, should not receive from one who asked nearly a billion and half of Christians of the whole world to fast for peace Wednesday. This fast is also preached by the World Council of Churches of Geneva where Protestant Eglises and orthodoxes.En sit reiterating Sunday its call to all the Christians, the pope confirmed his determination with all to try for the paix."Sans to go in front of the difficulties, it is necessary to look for and traverse all the possible ways to avoid the war, which always brings with it serious mournings and consequences for everyone ", he launched to the thousands of brought together pilgrims Saint-Pierre place under the eye of the cameras of télévision.Le cardinal Laghi will make any possible sound to convince president Bush that a unilateral attack except UNO against Iraq is a "crime against peace", Foreign Minister of the pope, Mgr Jean Louis Tauran.
But I am compelled to point out that there may be a higher purpose in this, IMHO, "wrong" decision of the Vatican.
The terrorists, both Osama, the Iranian clerics, and Iraq's none-too-religious Hussein... all want the arab world to see this as a Holy War.
That's because they have no hope of energizing Muslims any other way, except perhaps with the Palestinian issue- which is why we see both bin Laden and saddam hussein and Imad Mugniyah all too willing to stir up the palestinians. They need some other issue to raise the rabble and get them to topple the authorities in these various Arab nations where they would like to see the current regimes overthrown. the issue remaining to them is Jihad, or Holy War, and they need to get the mobs out there to see not just the Israelis as a threat, but also Christianity.
Bin Laden has tried desperately to get Arabs to see America as a crusader nation, and he is having a hard time of it because many arabs know this country and want to come here because we don't have "religious police" and the Imams' fatwas have no power here. So bin Laden has to overcome the apathy or even the positive viewpoints people have about America in order to make the average Muslim feel as if he personally could become a target of "Crusaders" out to destroy their Ummah.
But how can he spin it to the Muslim world that Christians are waging a Holy War on them instead of the other way around, if the single largest Christian entity they know opposes America's policy? How can bin Laden claim that the crusaders are joining the zionists against Islam if America is in defiance of the Roman Catholic Church, a large chunk of christianity? And the average Muslim doesn't know the World Council of Churches is a joke and not reprisentative of all Christians, either, so if they see those jokers tsk-tsking us, it only undermines Osama bin Laden's message since it looks like America is in defiance of "the Church."
It may or may not be intentional, but that's the effect of the Pope's position. The Pope won't stop us from completing the Gulf War, since it must come to pass and it is right that it come to pass; but wittingly or unwittingly he is helping to deny bin Laden his Holy War by making us look like the loose cannon.
And by denying bin Laden this propaganda victory, he may be denying him new recruits and so, this war may be far less costly and a good deal shorter than if it turned into a full fledged religious war and drew in people who otherwise wouldn't feel threatened enough to fight us.
They did not control Hitler. They did not protect altar boys. This is a worldly function that the Vatican cannot perform.
It's the Pope's job is to tell everyone to let their enemies slap them on the cheek and take their clothes and smile, but it isn't the American way.
After you give all your money to the poor and become a missionary for Christ, you can take the moral high ground.
Until then, I reserve my right to be cynical about organizatons that call on US to give away our treasure while holding onto theirs and call on US to let megalomaniac dictators bomb and nuke us without trying to prevent it.
While I appreciate this Pope's fight against an oppressive socialist regime in his own native country, I am disappointed and dismayed by his appeasement of a more remote, but just as oppressive socialist regime.
I disagree with the notion that the Pope should be granted immunity from due criticism just because he was an anti-Communist. The enemy of my enemy is not automatically my friend. If we applied that logic, we would have to honor Hitler as a warrior against Communism--AND, at the same time, we would have to honor Stalin as a warrior against the Third Reich!
That said, I don't think we should look upon this Pope as a bad man--rather, we should understand that he is a well-meaning old gentleman who is, unfortunately, rather out of touch with reality, thanks mostly to the leftist European media. The U.S. administration should try to enlighten him and get him on our side.
The problem is that it also has an unfortunate side effect--to discredit the Catholic Church in the eyes of many people!
You can stick all that hot air where the sun don't shine, Patriciaruth.
The FACTS are that Pope John Paul II was a tireless warrior in the fight against Communism, so much so that the KGB engineered a hit on him. A very strong argument could be made that without his effort that virus would still be going strong. What's your track record for freedom, that you feel qualified to criticise a man like him? You made a cheap shot, you were called on it, and now instead of showing some character and apologising you're trying to bluster your way out of it.
Oh. You...disagree with that notion, do you?
Well, let me put another notion to you: that someone like you, hiding behind a keyboard and anonymously passing cruel judgement on John Paul II's lifetime of service to God and to Freedom, is nothing more than a gutless pissant.
I for one am very comfortable with that notion.
I think your analysis is quite astute. As an Orthodox Christian, I have had reason to mistrust some initiatives undertaken by JPII over the years (such as his recent visit to the huge mosque in Damascus Syria which used to be an Orthodox church 1400 years ago, I believe). But any attempt to reduce murderous "reprisals" by Muslims against Christians in the Middle East and Indonesia after a war starts can only be good.
Since most such Christians historically since 610 AD have been "Eastern" Christians (in the Orthodox Church, the extinct Nestorian Church, the Assyrian Church, etc. who used to number in the hundreds of millions where now there are but a handful), it only makes sense to make it clear that a secularized Western nation bombing a secularized Middel Eastern country is not a religious war as such.
I think that the primary reason that the British Empire made such a mess of things in the Middle East (militarily defending the Ottoman Empire's Muslim tyranny against the Orthodox Christians, such as in 1855-56 and 1878, for example) is precisely because there has never yet been a Protestant nation annihilated by the Muslim armies. They can feel safe behind the buffer. There will never be a "religious war" as the Muslims believe is already happening, until the day that a nuclear bomb or other horror takes out a Western European city.
And I said a certain number of Hail Mary's to convert Russia, too; but I'm still glad President Reagan believed in peace through strength.
Hate me because I won't genuflect. But I'm calling this as I'm seeing this. But if you'll start a thread on President Carter, I'll happily say much worse things about him.
It definitely was not my intention to "pass cruel judgment" on the Pope. Please point out in what way I did it, because I would like to avoid it doing in the future.
Thanks, KC.
What IS it, with our side of politics, that so many can never give fair credit to the heroes of freedom? Does it somehow ameliorate their insignificance, to snipe at their betters? It's not just the Pope: it's on nearly every day, here: Rush, Drudge, Hannity, Buchanan, even JR... why can't we save our shots, for the Left?
I don't think this is going to reduce them, but simply make the Islamics feel more powerful. Islamics have only been stopped, historically, when the Church has stood up against them, not when it has made concessions to them. Saddam is a secularist only loosely speaking; the man who built a mosque out of used rocket shells and had a copy of the Koran written in his own blood is obviously trying to show where his allegiances lie.
In a similar vein, Pius XII tried maintaining a low profile to avoid attracting the attention of Hitler to the Church. This didn't work, because Hitler hated the Church anyway and attacked any individual or organization within it that he suspected might not kowtow to him. It was known that he planned a full-fledged assault on Christians after he got the Jews out of the way.
The only thing Pius XII did was soil his own name and that of the Church, and subject Christians to many more months of fear and reprisals because he did not encourage them to stand up and reject Hitler en masse. They were not supported by the Vatican, not because it was anti-Semitic, but because it was cowardly.
You can't compromise with evil. Throwing that dog a bone just makes it hungrier.
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