...another Harvard grad.
Posted on 05/19/2015 7:18:43 AM PDT by Academiadotorg
Top Vatican adviser Jeffrey Sachs says that when Pope Francis visits the United States in September, he will directly challenge the “American idea” of God-given rights embodied in the Declaration of Independence.
Sachs, a special advisor to the United Nations and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, is a media superstar who can always be counted on to pontificate endlessly on such topics as income inequality and global health. This time, writing in a Catholic publication, he may have gone off his rocker, revealing the real global game plan.
The United States, Sachs writes in the Jesuit publication, America, is “a society in thrall” to the idea of unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But the “urgent core of Francis’ message” will be to challenge this “American idea” by “proclaiming that the path to happiness lies not solely or mainly through the defense of rights but through the exercise of virtues, most notably justice and charity.”
In these extraordinary comments, which constitute a frontal assault on the American idea of freedom and national sovereignty, Sachs has made it clear that he hopes to enlist the Vatican in a global campaign to increase the power of global or foreign-dominated organizations and movements.
Sachs takes aim at the phrase, which comes from America’s founding document, the United States Declaration of Independence, that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
These rights sound good, Sachs writes, but they’re not enough to guarantee the outcome the global elites have devised for us. Global government, he suggests, must make us live our lives according to international standards of development.
“In the United States,” Sachs writes, “we learn that the route to happiness lies in the rights of the individual. By throwing off the yoke of King George III, by unleashing the individual pursuit of happiness, early Americans believed they would achieve that happiness. Most important, they believed that they would find happiness as individuals, each endowed by the creator with individual rights.”
While he says there is some “grandeur in this idea,” such rights “are only part of the story, only one facet of our humanity.”
The Sachs view is that global organizations such as the U.N. must dictate the course of nations and individual rights must be sacrificed for the greater good. One aspect of this unfolding plan, as outlined in the Sachs book, The End of Poverty, involves extracting billions of dollars from the American people through global taxes.
“We will need, in the end, to put real resources in support of our hopes,” he wrote. “A global tax on carbon-emitting fossil fuels might be the way to begin. Even a very small tax, less than that which is needed to correct humanity’s climate-deforming overuse of fossil fuels, would finance a greatly enhanced supply of global public goods.” Sachs has estimated the price tag for the U.S. at $845 billion.
In preparation for this direct assault on our rights, the American nation-state, and our founding document, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon told a Catholic Caritas International conference in Rome on May 12 that climate change is “the defining challenge of our time,” and that the solution lies in recognizing that “ humankind is part of nature, not separate or above.”
The pope’s expected encyclical on climate change is supposed to help mobilize the governments of the world in this crusade.
But a prestigious group of scholars, churchmen, scientists, economists and policy experts has issued a detailed rebuttal, entitled, “An Open Letter to Pope Francis on Climate Change,” pointing out that the Bible tells man to have dominion over the earth.
“Good climate policy must recognize human exceptionalism, the God-given call for human persons to ‘have dominion’ in the natural world (Genesis 1:28), and the need to protect the poor from harm, including actions that hinder their ascent out of poverty,” the letter to Pope Francis states.
Released by a group called the Cornwall Alliance, the letter urges the Vatican to consider the evidence that climate change is largely natural, that the human contribution is comparatively small and not dangerous, and that attempting to mitigate the human contribution by reducing CO2 emissions “would cause more harm than good, especially to the world’s poor.”
The Heartland Institute held a news conference on April 27 at the Hotel Columbus in Rome, to warn the Vatican against embracing the globalist agenda of the climate change movement. The group is hosting the 10th International Conference on Climate Change in Washington, D.C. on June 11-12.
However, it appears as if the Vatican has been captured by the globalist forces associated with Sachs and the United Nations.
Voice of the Family, a group representing pro-life and pro-family Catholic organizations from around the world, has taken issue not only with the Vatican’s involvement with Sachs but with Ban Ki Moon, describing the two as “noted advocates of abortion who operate at the highest levels of the United Nations.” Sachs has been described as “arguably the world’s foremost proponent of population control,” including abortion.
Voice of the Family charges that environmental issues such as climate change have become “an umbrella to cover a wide spectrum of attacks on human life and the family.”
Although Sachs likes to claim he was an adviser to Pope John Paul II, the noted anti-communist and pro-life pontiff, Sachs simply served as a member of a group of economists invited to confer with the Pontifical Council on Justice and Peace in advance of the release of a papal document.
In fact, Pope John Paul II had worked closely with the Reagan administration in opposition to communism and the global population control movement. He once complained that a U.N. conference on population issues was designed to “destroy the family” and was the “snare of the devil.”
Pope Francis, however, seems to have embraced the very movements opposed by John Paul II.
Sachs, who has emerged as a very influential Vatican adviser, recently tweeted that he was “thrilled” to be at the Vatican “discussing moral dimensions of climate change and sustainable development.” The occasion was a Vatican workshop on global warming on April 28, 2015, sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences of the Roman Catholic Church. Sachs was a featured speaker.
The plan going forward involves the launching of what are called “Sustainable Development Goals,” as envisioned by a Sustainable Development Solutions Network run by none other than Jeffrey Sachs.
“The Network has proposed draft Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which contain provisions that are radically antagonistic to the right to life from conception to natural death, to the rights and dignity of the family and to the rights of parents as the primary educators of their children,” states the group Voice of the Family.
In July, a Financing for Development conference will be held, in order to develop various global tax proposals, followed by a conference in Paris in December to complete a new climate change agreement.
Before that December conference, however, Sachs says the pope will call on the world at the United Nations to join the crusade for a New World Order.
Sachs says, “Pope Francis will come to the United States and the United Nations in New York on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the United Nations, and at the moment when the world’s 193 governments are resolved to take a step in solidarity toward a better world. On Sept. 25, Pope Francis will speak to the world leaders—most likely the largest number of assembled heads of state and government in history—as these leaders deliberate to adopt new Sustainable Development Goals for the coming generation. These goals will be a new worldwide commitment to build a world that aims to harmonize the pursuit of economic prosperity with the commitments to social inclusion and environmental sustainability.”
Rather than emphasize the absolute need for safeguarding individual rights in the face of government overreach and power, Sachs writes that the Gospel teachings of humility, love and justice, “like the teachings of Aristotle, Buddha and Confucius,” can take us on a “path to happiness through compassion” and “become our guideposts back to safety.”
Writing elsewhere in the new issue of America, Christiana Z. Peppard, an assistant professor of theology, science and ethics at Fordham University, writes about the “planetary pope,” saying, “What is really at stake in the collective response to the pope’s encyclical is not, ultimately, whether our treasured notions of theology, science, reality or development can accommodate moral imperatives. The real question is whether we are brave enough and willing to try.”
The plan is quite simple: world government through global taxes, with a religious face to bring it about.
Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org
Sounds about right.
Both rational virtues and preservation of natural rights are real goods that are necessary for happiness and should be desired.The virtue of rationality includes derivative virtues of justice, independence, integrity, honesty, productiveness, and pride.Charity is a permissible choice if it is high on one's hierarchy of values, and does not involve sacrifice of one's vital values.Thus, the American idea is rational and does not need to be challenged.
Where are all the Catholics that called Protestants a curse and rot last night on another thread? Why are they not defending their pontiff on this thread, because it doesn’t fit their narrative of an infallible church, “the one true church”, words are not adequate to describe my disdain for this collectivism which is straight out of hell. God gave free choice it is not for man to take.
Pope Francis risks a new schism within the Catholic Church.
Through the 19th Century, the Catholic Church opposed what it called liberalism, meaning the Enlightenment and the subsequent transformation of northern European and of the new United States into democratic capitalist societies; along with opposing what it called socialism, meaning the atheistic socialist philosophies of Karl Marx and his predecessors. It described its position as a middle ground. For most of the 19th Century, the Catholic Church preferred monarchism. Later, the term semi-socialism became current among Catholics in the U.S., paralleled by the Social Gospel among the high church Protestants.
By the mid 20th Century, the Catholics embraced the fascist system then in place in Italy, Spain and Argentina. This was stated in Quadragesimo anno. The last war in which the Catholics took a position was the Spanish Civil War (the King of Spain supported by the fascists versus the socialist and communists). The Catholic Church remained neutral through WWII since it involved the liberals and the communists - the US, Great Britain and the Soviet Union - versus the fascists. However, the fascists included an extreme form of fascism that the Catholics could not support.
Following WWII, it appeared for a time that the Catholics embraced democracy and free markets, provided that there was provision for the poor and unfortunate in society. Think of this as a floor but no ceiling. I think this a fair interpretation of Vatican II. But, the Catholics continued to be unclear as to whether the individual or the poor was preeminent. Pope John XXIII leaned toward to poor, Pope John Paul II leaned toward the flourishing of each person. In truth, this is a valid tension.
Now comes a Marxist Pope who selectively quotes from the Bible and selectively refers to the traditions of the Catholic Church. He sainted John Paul II based on well-documented miracles revealing the will of God, and sainted John XXIII based on nothing but fiat. What, God was not able to make a miracle to reveal his will in the case of John XXIII?
The reason a new schism is significant is because of the works of the Catholic Church in protecting human life from within the womb until natural death, the sanctity of marriage, and the equal right of all children to receive an education reflecting the choices of their parents. To me, this should be the focus of the church; the protection of those who are vulnerable. I am perfectly fine with the vast overwhelming majority of adults being free. They can take care of themselves. And, they will if allowed to suffer or prosper from their decisions. It’s the vulnerable that need our help.
The originalist view that governments are instituted to secure rights under the supervision of the governed is indeed the idea with which all statists are at war; their alternative is that governments are instituted to enforce virtues which are determined by the elites who run them.
These are diametrically opposed notions. It is surprising he has come out so nakedly in the advocacy of his side; apparently the leftists believe their hour has come. Which master will the Bishop of Rome serve?
Obama naturalized as a US citizen in 1983, the year Obama transferred to Columbia University. A naturalized citizen is ineligible to assume the Office of the President of the United States. Nevertheless, the will of the American people cannot be denied. Consequently, Obama assumed the Office of the President even though he is ineligible. An ineligible President voids the US Constitution.
Columbia University is now trying to establish themselves as a leader to re-establish a national governing document. The US Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation. Now, the US Constitution must be replaced after an ineligible Obama assumed the Office of the President of the United States.
Taxes are not ALMS. One is Caesar’s money and the other is God’s money in Christian service to the poor.
The Americans give more money to the poor in the form of alms than any other nation. Our government transfers our wealth to other nations. Only in anti-Christ liberation theology are taxes named alms.
The Pope would be insane to try to end freedom in the US in the name of the UN climate change measures. He’ll be opening a can of whoop ass and will do real harm to the American Catholic church. Even my loyal sisters would hit the roof if the church appeared to be using it’s power to end constitutional freedom in the US.
This sounds more like a commie’s wet dream than the thinking of a real Pope.
the path to happiness . . . ?
Since when does Jesus tell us that pursuing happiness is the priority. The priority is to seek Jesus, and to serve Him, even if that leads to the cross.
“Sustainable” = agenda 21 code word
If he really thinks like this, he’s an anti-Christ liberation theologian. They like to pretend that taxes and alms are the same thing and that individual freedom and responsibility have to be wiped out to make way for centralized power and total authority. He’s be a global communist/fascist if he really thinks like this.
Sadly, the “solution” to the lie of global warming is communist global government and humanity’s enslavement to it.
Absolutely.
Isn’t it funny how no one ever suggests the rest of the world fix themselves by adopting US style gov’t? Everyone expects the U.S. Taxpayer to fix all the worlds problems.
so what you are saying is that salvation can be obtained through good works and the giving of money? if so please give me chapter and verse on that because the last time i checked the bible said that salvation was by faith through grace and not of works lest any man should boast and if one has to work for salvation then it is not a gift is it? salvation can only be obtained by someone accepting what Jesus did on the cross for us and accepting that by faith as the only payment acceptable in GOD’S eyes to make us worthy to enter heaven. all our good works outside of the salvation GOD offers us is seen as filthy rags in HIS sight.
Liberal Academic = not qualified for a real job
...another Harvard grad.
I would be much more happy without hearing about some dude who dresses in robes and his advisor coming to tell me how to live in my country.
Pseudo-intellectual drivel! Nothing is more obvious than what Jefferson was writing about was a natural right to "pursue" happiness. The idea of a "right" or even expectation to achieve individual goals, goes to cloud-borne fancy. The framers and their supporters relied on experience as the basis for their political & social reasoning--not the wish lists that drive Leftist ideologues.
Happiness is the art of not being a curmudgeon, and of doing good for its own sake in the world.
Don’t worry, I am sure it is just a bad translation.
/sarc
Academiadotorg, what have you seen that shows that Hussein Obama was Naturalized in 1983? That would be something to put on prominent display at his Presidential Library in Kenya!
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