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November 1979, Volume II, Number 11
Edited by Dr. Mary Buckalew
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The Conciliar Church Speaks: "You [United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization —UNESCO] are a hope for peace in the future of mankind and civilization. This is said in the charter setting up your Organization. You are sent forward, as harbingers of peace, into future history. You make of education, science and culture powerful and wonderful factors for the universal spiritual fusion of peoples. Politics, which you leave to other bodies to promote, especially the United Nations Organization, from which you take inspiration and strength, will succeed, we trust, in establishing a peaceful cohesion, an organic juridical and economic relationship, a balanced and ordered harmony between the Nations; yes, but you work to form a communion, you strive for the brotherhood of the peoples of the earth. You seek to give mankind a common thought; you promote a uniform sociology of culture; you render possible an identical civil language among men . . . you carry out a work of silent but prodigious mobilization of minds, which on the contrary seem by the very progress of civilization to be arming themselves psychologically and technically for a terrible and apocalyptic war, which should never happen, but, alas becomes still possible and horribly easier. For your part you dissipate the nightmare of such a deplorable and unthinkable fate. You make once more serene the horizon of future history; today you restore Peace once more to the world, making it safe for tomorrow. Is there anything at all more deserving among the community of the Peoples?" (Paul VI, Discourse on awarding the John XXIII International Peace Prize to UNESCO, L'Osservatore Romano, 12 December 1974.) |
The Catholic Church Teaches: ''The same applies to the nation of Fraternity which they [the Sillonists] found on the love of common interest or, beyond all philosophies and religions, on the mere notion of humanity, thus embracing with an equal love and tolerance all human beings and their miseries, whether these are intellectual, moral, or physical and temporal. But Catholic doctrine tells us that the primary duty of charity does not lie in the toleration of false ideas, however sincere they may be, nor in theoretical or practical indifference towards the errors and vices in which we see our brethren plunged, but in zeal for their intellectual and moral improvement as well as their material well-being. Catholic doctrine further tells us that love for our neighbor flows from our love for God, Who is Father to all, and goal of the whole human family; and in Jesus Christ whose members we are, to the point that in doing good to others we are doing good to Jesus Christ Himself. Any other kind of love is sheer illusion, sterile and fleeting. If, as We desire with all Our heart, the highest possible peak of well being for society and its members is to be attained through fraternity or, as it is also called, universal solidarity, all minds must be united in the knowledge of Truth, all wills united in morality, and all hearts in the love of God and His Son Jesus Christ. But this union is attainable only by Catholic charity .... . . .there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion; it is a proven truth, a historical fact."
(St. Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, 25 August 1910, °24, °36.)
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" 'The Church is the new People of God destined to bring about his kingdom on earth'.... This overflowing concept of human society, made up of citizens who are all equal, organized by authoritative and hierarchical ministries, at once earthly and heavenly, animated by the Holy Spirit, destined to spread all over the earth . . ., must constitute the object of our ardent and realistic thought, if we wish to overcome in the first place the scepticism with which the profane mentality is usually imbued, and also if we wish to walk in this life as 'children of light' (Eph. 5, 8). The profane mentality, in itself, knows nothing of the true and supreme destiny of mankind, and only catches a glimpse here and there, emanating from natural experience, of the superlative goals to which civilization is progressing: unity, brotherhood, justice, domination over creation, peace." (Paul VI, General Audience 5 September 1973, L'Osservatore Romano,
13 September 1973.) |
"Finally, He [Jesus Christ] did not announce for future society the reign of an ideal happiness from which suffering would be banished; but, by His lessons and by His example, He traced the path of the happiness which is possible on earth and of perfect happiness in heaven: the royal way of the Cross. These are teachings that it would be wrong to apply only to one's personal life in order to win eternal salvation; these are eminently social teachings, and they show in Our Lord Jesus Christ something quite different from an inconsistent and impotent humanitarianism." (St. Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, °42.) |
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". . .we must not strive towards the unrealistic dream of ... a society of the medieval type, stable and disciplined by one religious ideology alone ,,,," (Paul VI, General Audience 21 November 1973, L'Osseruatore Romano,
29 November 1973.) ". . . you [the United Nations] organize brotherly collaboration among peoples. In this way a system of solidarity is set up, so that lofty civilized aims may win the orderly and unanimous support of all the family of peoples for the common good and the good of each individual. This aspect of the United Nations is the most beautiful; it is its most truly human aspect; it is the ideal of which mankind dreams on its pilgrimage through time; it is the world's greatest hope...." (Paul VI, Speech to the United Nations, October 4, 1965.) |
". . . they dream of changing its [human society's] natural and traditional foundations; they dream of a Future City built on different principles, and they dare to proclaim these more fruitful and more beneficial than the principles wupon which the present Christian City rests. No, Venerable Brethren, We must repeat with the utmost energy in these times of social and intellectual anarchy when everyone takes it upon himself to teach as a teacher and law-maker—the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be set up unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is the Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City." (St. Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, °10-°11.) |
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