Posted on 05/01/2003 12:23:02 PM PDT by Forgiven_Sinner
In his encyclical on The Nature of True Liberty (Libertas Praestantissimum), Leo XIII makes the remarkable claim that liberalism is diabolic in its origins. "But many there are who follow in the footsteps of Lucifer, and adopt as their own his rebellious cry, I will not serve; and consequently substitute for true liberty what is sheer and most foolish license. Such, for instance, are the men belonging to that widely spread and powerful organization, who, usurping the name of liberty, style themselves liberals" (Libertas Praestantissimum, n.14). Although the Holy Fathers comparison may seem hyperbolic, nonetheless the principles of liberalism mirror the Devils original revolt.
While many political opinions and projects are lumped together under the name of liberalism, we should remind ourselves of its most fundamental basis. As Leo XIII explains, liberalism begins with the rejection of both natural and divine law; the "followers of liberalism deny the existence of any divine authority to which obedience is due, and proclaim that every man is the law to himself; from which arises that ethical system which they style independent morality" (LP, n.15). Morality comes neither from God nor human nature.
For the liberal, morality is created by the free choice of society. Whether one studies Hobbes or Rousseau, one finds no law higher than the human law. In the words of Pope Leo, "just as every mans individual reason is his only rule of life, so the collective reason of the community should be the supreme guide in the management of all public affairs" (ibid.). This divorce of the moral law from politics affects our understanding of democracy up to the present day, as Pope John Paul notes in Evangelium Vitae (n. 70).
This rejection of Gods rule through the moral law is the sin of Lucifer. As St. Thomas explains, the Devil rejected the law of God for a disordered form of freedom: "The end of the Devil is the aversion of the rational creature from God; hence from the beginning he has endeavored to lead man from obeying the divine precept. But aversion from God has the nature of an end, inasmuch as it is sought for under the appearance of liberty, according to Jer. 2:20: Of old time thou hast broken my yoke, thou hast burst my bands, and thou saidst, I will not serve" (IIIa, Q.8, art.7).
This rebellion was imitated by our first parents, when they decided to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of God and Evil, and "be like God." While sharing in the divine image and likeness is part of our perfection, St. Thomas teaches that man desired this divine likeness in a disordered way by eating of the forbidden fruit: "The first man sinned chiefly by coveting Gods likeness as regards knowledge of good and evil, according to the serpents instigation, namely that by his own natural power he might decide what was good, and what was evil for him to do" (IIaIIae, Q.163, a.2). Here is the liberal principle in its first expression: Man alone should decide good and evil apart from God.
While many understand liberalism as a freedom for certain political equality and civil rights, more fundamentally liberalism is a freedom from the moral law and the teaching authority of the Church. One cannot speak of "Catholic liberals" without contradiction, or at the very least, equivocation. Liberalism, like socialism and Communism, has been condemned by Pope after Pope in the social encyclicals. If we are tempted to minimize the evils of this error, we would do well to remind ourselves that Pope Leo XIII presents Lucifer to us as the original liberal.
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(Dr. Arthur M. Hippler is the director of the Office of Justice and Peace in the Diocese of La Crosse, Wis.)
Good point, but I think we can refine their position further as:
"Democrats alone should govern and decide good and evil apart from God."
For they are clearly not willing to accept a Republican administration's assessment of what is good. Heck, they aren't even willing to accept an Iraqi's assessment of Saddam as evil when his downfall causes dancing in the street.
Chapter 5:18
¶ Behold that which I have seen: it is good and comely for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labor that he taketh under the sun all the days of his life, which God giveth him: for it is his portion.
19 Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labor; this is the gift of God.
20 For he shall not much remember the days of his life; because God answereth him in the joy of his heart.
Rebellion is pandemic in our society; everywhere, people cry out for freedom from Church, State, parents, teachers, or anything else that denies them the satiation of the senses or the deification of the Self. The worship of the goddess Liberty has become our national cult; piety towards our Creator and loyalty towards our ancestors (i.e. traditionalism) have been cast aside by our culture. Confronted with the majesty of God and His Law, we turn instead to the worship of the golden calf of that makes us happy -- our own selves. But there is no happiness there. There is no freedom there. There is only us, enslaved to our nerve endings for all eternity.
The freedom promised by this world is an illusion. Every man who "liberates" himselves from the Yoke of God only chains himself to the millstone of his own desires. The way of Self, as both Our Lord and the Buddha pointed out, is the most abject slavery of all. Only by dying to Self -- by renouncing the illusion of individual liberty and submitting our wills to God -- can we hope to live. In a very real sense, the only way to be free is to become a slave of Christ. "He that loses his life for My sake shall find it."
Only by acknowledging Jesus Christ as our LORD -- not our buddy or our peer but as our absolute Master -- can we ever be free. Christianity is a religion of humilty, not pride; of submission, not of independence. Only by throwing away our pride, by humbling ourselves before God and the authorities he institutes here on Earth (even when it hurts!), and by dedicating ourselves to obedience, order, and our duty can we ever cast of the shackles of unquenchable desire and truly be free.
"Where the Spirit of the LORD is, there is liberty."
Rebutting Rockefeller
http://thenewamerican.com/tna/2002/11-04-2002/vo18no22_rockefeller.htm
http://getusout.org/earthworship/index.htm
http://getusout.org/un/articles/rockford_ark.htm
http://thenewamerican.com/tna/2002/12-16-2002/vo18no25_ark.htm
The European Union's Stealth Attack on Religion
http://thenewamerican.com/tna/2000/07-31-2000/insider/vo16no16_eu.htm
http://thenewamerican.com/focus/religion/index.htm____________________________________________________
By, Atrayu The Spiritual Foundation of the United Nations The Lucis Trust The Lucis Trust is the Publishing House which prints and disseminates United Nations material. It is a devastating indictment of the New Age and Pagan nature of the UN. Lucis Trust was established in 1922 as Lucifer Trust by Alice Bailey as the publishing company to disseminate the books of Bailey and Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society. The title page of Alice Bailey's book, 'Initiation, Human and Solar' was originally printed in 1922, and clearly shows the publishing house as 'Lucifer Publishing CoIn 1923. Bailey changed the name to Lucis Trust, because Lucifer Trust revealed the true nature of the New Age Movement too clearly. (Constance Cumbey, The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow, p. 49). A quick trip to any New Age bookstore will reveal that many of the hard-core New Age books are published by Lucis Trust. At one time, the Lucis Trust office in New York was located at 866 United Nations Plaza and is a member of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations under a slick program called "World Goodwill". In an Alice Bailey book called "Education for a New Age"; she suggests that in the new age "World Citizenship should be the goal of the enlightened, with a world federation and a world brain." In other words - a One World Government New World Order. Luci's Trust is sponsored by among others Robert McNamara, former minister of Defence in the USA, president of the World Bank, member of the Rockefeller Foundation, and Thomas Watson (IBM, former ambassador in Moscow). Luci's Trust sponsors among others the following organizations: UN, Greenpeace Int., Greenpeace USA, Amnesty Int. and UNICEF. The United Nations has long been one of the foremost world harbingers for the "New Spirituality" and the gathering "New World Order" based on ancient occult and freemasonic principles. Seven years after the birth of the UN, a book was published by the theosophist and founder of the Lucis Trust, Alice Bailey, claiming that "Evidence of the growth of the human intellect along the needed receptive lines [for the preparation of the New Age] can be seen in the "planning" of various nations and in the efforts of the United Nations to formulate a world plan... From the very start of this unfoldment, three occult factors have governed the development of all these plans". [Alice B. Bailey, Discipleship in the New Age (Lucis Press, 1955), Vol. II, p.35.] Although she did not spell out clearly the identity of these 'three occult factors', she did reveal to her students that "Within the United Nations is the germ and seed of a great international and meditating, reflective group - a group of thinking and informed men and women in whose hands lies the destiny of humanity. This is largely under the control of many fourth ray disciples, if you could but realise it, and their point of meditative focus is the intuitional or Buddhic plane - the plane upon which all hierarchical activity is today to be found'. [Ibid. p.220.] To this end, the Lucis Trust, under the leadership of Foster and Alice Bailey, started a group called 'World Goodwill' - an official non-governmental organization within the United Nations. The stated aim of this group is "to cooperate in the world of preparation for the reappearance of the Christ" [One Earth, the magazine of the Findhorn Foundation, October/November 1986, Vol. 6, Issue 6, p.24.] But the esoteric work inside the UN does not stop with such recognized occult groupings. Much of the impetus for this process was initiated through the officership of two Secretary-Generals of the UN, Dag Hammarskjöld (held office: 1953-1961) and U Thant (held office: 1961-1971) who succeeded him, and one Assistant Secretary-general, Dr. Robert Muller. In a book written to celebrate the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin (and edited by Robert Muller), it is revealed "Dag Hammarskjöld, the rational Nordic economist, had ended up as a mystic. He too held at the end of his life that spirituality was the ultimate key to our earthly fate in time and space". [Robert Muller (ed.), The Desire to be Human: A Global Reconnaissance of Human Perspectives in an Age of Transformation (Miranana, 1983), p.304.] Sri Chinmoy, the New Age guru, meditation leader at the UN, wrote: "the United Nations is the chosen instrument of God; to be a chosen instrument means to be a divine messenger carrying the banner of God's inner vision and outer manifestation." William Jasper, author of "A New World Religion" describes the religion of the UN: "...a weird and diabolical convergence of New Age mysticism, pantheism, aboriginal animism atheism, communism, socialism, Luciferian occultism, apostate Christianity, Islam, Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism". You can find out much more about them and how they're involved with the work of the United Nations by following their link "World Goodwill" at the top of their home page. This Website is sponsored by the United Nations and the whole NWO philosophy is there. The page which explains the work of the Aquarian Age Community, as they call themselves, has this proud quote at the header of their page at http://www.aquaac.org/about/about.html Such a grandeur is ahead!Amongst the many 'enlightening' pages in this website, you can easily find 'fascinating' articles entitled: "The New World Order and the Work of the UN" http://www.aquaac.org/un/nwo.html "The World Spiritual Teacher, the Esoteric Community and the United Nations" http://www.aquaac.org/meetings/rttop.html Preparing the Way for the Reappearance of the World Spiritual Teacher, the Work of the United Nations and the World-Wide Esoteric Community http://www.aquaac.org/meetings/RT2001.html and many more articles. This is not Christian theology but New Age paganism. You can also read the NWO quotes I posted, further down this page. Here's another by Curtis Dall, FD Roosevelt's son in law as quoted in his book, My Exploited Father in Law: "For a long time I felt that FDR had developed many thoughts and ideas that were his own to benefit this country, the United States. But, he didn't. Most of his thoughts, his political ammunition, as it were, were carefully manufactured for him in advanced by the Council on Foreign Relations One World Money group... Brilliantly, with great gusto, like a fine piece of artillery, he exploded that prepared "ammunition" in the middle of an unsuspecting target, the American people, and thus paid off and returned his internationalist political support. |
Under the U.N. Gavel
By Sen. Larry E. Craig, R-ID
At its founding, the mission of the United Nations, as stated in its charter, was "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war." It made no claim to supersede the sovereignty of its member states. Article 2 says that the United Nations "is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members," and it may not "intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state."
Since then, the United Nations has turned the principle of national sovereignty on its head. Through a host of conventions, treaties and conferences, it has intruded into regulation of resources and the economy (for example, treaties on "biological diversity," marine resources and climate change) and family life (hyping phoney liberalism while masculinity is scorned and western manhood is amputated - causing untold grief to the family unit) (conventions on parent-child relations and women in society). It has demanded that countries institute racial quotas and laws against hate crimes and speech (while the U.N. itself can jail someone for 30 years without trial). Recently the United Nations tried to undermine Americans' constitutional right to keep and bear arms (with proposed restrictions on the international sale of small arms).
Fortunately, many of these have been dead on arrival in the U.S. Senate, successive presidents have refused to endorse others, and in any case the United Nations had little power of enforcement. But in 1998, one mechanism of global government (there it is in the Washington Post folks) came to life with the so-called "Rome Statute" establishing a permanent International Criminal Court (and abolishing the Magna Carta in Britain). Once this treaty is ratified by 60 countries, the United Nations will wield judicial power over every individual human being -- even over citizens of countries that haven't joined the court.
While the court's stated mission is dealing with war crimes and crimes against humanity (what about their own crimes against humanity when they committed widespread genocide in the Balkans and East Timor? Dare I say they are hypocrites?) -- which, because there is no appeal from its decisions, only the court will have the right to define -- its mandate could be broadened later. Based on existing U.N. tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, which are models for the International Criminal Court, defendants will have none of the due process rights afforded by the U.S. Constitution, such as trial by jury, confrontation of witnesses or a speedy and public trial (that's a communist court system!).
President Clinton signed the Rome treaty last year, citing U.S. support for existing U.N. war crimes tribunals. Many suppose the court will target only a Slobodan Milosevic or the perpetrators of massacres in Rwanda, or dictators like Iraq's Saddam Hussein. But who knows? To some people, Augusto Pinochet is the man who saved Chile from communism; to others he is a murderer. Who should judge him -- the United Nations or the Chilean people?
In dozens of countries, governments use brutal force against insurgents. Should the United Nations decide whether leaders in Turkey or India should be put in the defendants' dock, and then commit the United States to bring them there? How about Russia's Vladimir Putin, for Chechnya? Or Israel's Ariel Sharon? Can we trust the United Nations with that decision (the more evil these premieres are - the more the U.N. loves them)?
The court's critics rightly cite the danger to U.S. military personnel deployed abroad. Since even one death can be a war crime, a U.S. soldier could be indicted just for doing his duty. But the International Criminal Court also would apply to acts "committed" by any American here at home. The European Union and U.S. domestic opponents consider the death penalty "discriminatory" and "inhumane." Could an American governor face indictment by the court for "crimes against humanity" for signing a death warrant?
Milosevic was delivered to a U.N. court (largely at U.S. insistence) for offences occurring entirely within his own country. Some say the Milosevic precedent doesn't threaten Americans, because the U.S. Constitution protects them. But for Milosevic, we demanded that the Yugoslav Constitution be trashed and the United Nations' authority prevail. Why should the International Criminal Court treat our Constitution any better (they're already destroying the 2nd amendment with their gun grab and the 1st with their phoney 'hate crime' nonsense)?
Instead of trying to "fix" the Rome treaty, the United States must recognize that it is a fundamental threat to American sovereignty. The State Department's participation in the court's preparatory commission is counterproductive. We need to make it clear that we consider the court an illegitimate body, that the United States will never join it and that we will never accept its "jurisdiction" over any U.S. citizen or help to impose it on other countries.
It seems that you are claiming that the individual is the highest authority, then that nature--or perhaps, truth--is the highest authority. Do you mean highest human authority?
Thus, the objectivist doesn't need religion to tell him what's right or wrong, but rather strives for the full development of his mature human brain, with which he can then infallibly inform himself what is right and wrong, without anyone's help, be it religious or secular.
The brain is *infallible* in matters of moral judgement? How? I don't think any of my rational faculties are perfected.
Speaking of rational faculties, must not one learn how to think before one can think well? Since the imperfect cannot make itself more perfect(you can't give what you don't have) the help of others is quite necessary for the formation of one's reason and for reason's continued quest towards perfection.
Here is the liberal principle in its first expression: Man alone should decide good and evil apart from God.
Libertarians also.
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