The Pope's July Encyclical

In July (2009), I posted an article on Pope Benedict’s Encyclical ‘Charity in Truth’.

Pope Calls for 'World Authority'

Today I received an email from Steve Wohlberg that provides additional details behind this document. Since you now understand who the ‘beasts’ of Revelation 13 really are – the message contained in ‘Charity in Truth’ shouldn’t surprise you.

The Catholic Church and the Global Elite are working together to bring about world government and world religion – just as the Lord tells us they will do. I expect that we’ll see more and more global government rhetoric as the world’s economy continues to decline. As I’ve stated before – the collapse of the world’s economy is not a surprise to the world’s true leaders – nor is it a surprise to the leaders of the Catholic Church.

The world is being deceived on a massive scale.

jg – September 10, 2009
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White Horse E-News - 09-09-2009

The Pope's July Encyclical

Dear friend of White Horse Media,

Today (Sept. 9, 2009) I hope to send you two e-newsletters. This first one contains information you may have already heard. If not, you need to know it, for it is of monumental prophetic significance.

Two months ago, in early July, President Barack Obama went to Italy for the G-8 economic summit. While in Italy, he also had a personal interview with Pope Benedict XVI during which the pope presented Obama with a copy of his latest papal encyclical entitled, Charity in Truth. For those who don't realize it, a papal encyclical is one of the most authoritative documents a pope can produce.

Charity in Truth is a 44-page letter in which Pope Benedict XVI comments on the world's current economic crisis and, from his perspective, what he sees as the solution. From a prophetic standpoint, here are 9 significant highlights found within this encyclical:

1. A Global Government. Pope Benedict is calling for a "true world political authority" to fix the problems that plague planet Earth. (Page 67)

2. Church and State. The pope says this new political authority must make its decisions based on spiritual values. (Chapter 5)

3. The Papacy at the Head. These spiritual values cannot be derived from just any religion, since not "all religions are equal." (Page 55)

4. Religion, Politics and the Economy. The "church" must influence all areas of society because God must have "a place in the public realm, specifically in regard to its cultural, social, economic, and particularly its political dimensions." (Page 56)

5. Power to Enforce Law. This "political authority" must have "real teeth" and "be vested with the effective power" to enforce laws around the world. (Page 67)

6. Control Buying and Selling. Once in place, the new world governing power will institute socialistic policies for government to redistribute wealth. (Chapter 3)

7. Resurgence of Labor Unions. Labor Unions are to be empowered to "play a decisive role" in the new world order. (Page 25) For those who know European history, this is exactly what happened in Poland, leading to the collapse of Soviet Communism.

8. The Church's Goal. Pope Benedict says that his encyclical will help achieve "The goal of the history of the human family," which is to build "the universal city of God." (Page 7)

9. Redefining Religious Liberty. While claiming not "to interfere in any way in the politics of States," the pope redefines "liberty" as happening when the world obeys laws shaped by the Roman Catholic Church's spiritual values. According to the pope, as the church influences states to enforce "truth" upon others, such people are then set "free." "This mission of truth is something that the Church can never renounce." (Page 9)

When Charity in Truth was first released in July 2009, newspapers ran stories on it around the world. Here are just three headlines from Time, USA Today, and New American:

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1909020,00.html

http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/culture/education/1375

http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2009-07-07-pope-encyclical_N.htm

For those who have read my book, End Time Delusions, which clearly documents not only what the Bible teaches, but also what Reformation Protestants understood "about the beast," then you know what's coming. The proverbial handwriting is on the wall. God's Word predicts,

And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death,
and his deadly wound was healed. And all the world wondered
after the beast… and power was given to him over all
peoples, and tongues, and nations (Revelation 13:3, 7).

This prophecy is on the verge of fulfillment right now.

The book End Time Delusions fully documents the decisive role of the papal power in last day events. For those who haven't read it, and who would like to receive a copy, White Horse Media is again make the newly printed hardcover version available for only $15 plus shipping.

You can order by calling 1-800-782-4253

Concerning the "signs" of the approaching end of the age, Jesus Christ plainly said, "Now when these things begin to happen, look up, and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near" (Luke 21:28).

Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus!

Steve Wohlberg
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Pope Calls for “World Political Authority”

New American

http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/culture/education/1375

Written by: Thomas R. Eddlem

Wednesday, 08 July 2009

Pope Benedict XVI called for a “true world political authority” to manage the economy in his new encyclical on social justice. The encyclical, entitled “Charity in Truth,” was released by the Vatican on Tuesday and signed by the pope a day earlier.

Benedict’s encyclical specifically called for “regulation of the financial sector,” and a “worldwide redistribution of energy resources.” Benedict added that “the State’s role seems destined to grow” if his political prescription is followed.

“There is urgent need of a true world political authority,” Benedict wrote in the 30,000-word encyclical, calling for “reform of the United Nations Organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth.”

Benedict described what a powerful world government with teeth would look like: “Such an authority would need to be universally recognized and to be vested with the effective power to ensure security for all.” He added: “Obviously it would have to have the authority to ensure compliance with its decisions from all parties” — that is, nations.

At best, Benedict is proposing a global federation that would improve upon the U.S. Constitution’s checks and balances. “Such an authority would need to be regulated by law, to observe consistently the principles of subsidiarity,” Benedict says.

What’s “subsidiarity”?

It’s a Catholic social principle that says that all events should be handled by the least centralized competent authority. One example of subsidiarity in the U.S. Constitution is the 10th Amendment, which says “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Benedict is calling for a global federalized state using the principle of subsidiarity: “Hence the principle of subsidiarity is particularly well-suited to managing globalization and directing it towards authentic human development. In order not to produce a dangerous universal power of a tyrannical nature, the governance of globalization must be marked by subsidiarity, articulated into several layers and involving different levels that can work together.”

Although he’s correct when he writes “subsidiarity is the most effective antidote against any form of all-encompassing welfare state,” much of the underlying assumptions of the social policies he proposes in the encyclical would mandate a globally-managed welfare state and dump the principle of subsidiarity.

Although he says “the Church does not have technical solutions to offer” in the way of political plans, it’s clear he is calling for the mandatory transfer of wealth from the haves to the have-nots through the brute force of the state. He even offers one suggestion as to how this might be made less objectionable to those whose wealth would be taken:

One possible approach to development aid would be to apply effectively what is known as fiscal subsidiarity, allowing citizens to decide how to allocate a portion of the taxes they pay to the State. Provided it does not degenerate into the promotion of special interests, this can help to stimulate forms of welfare solidarity from below, with obvious benefits in the area of solidarity for development as well.

Of course, letting citizens choose their taxation in the form of government “charity” would necessarily lead to special interests, as aid groups and governments compete for aid. It’s part of the fallen nature of man for such competitions. Benedict states in the encyclical that “attitudes of gratuitousness cannot be established by law,” but then proposes that governments attempt to do just that. The Christian principle of charity is that it is voluntary, or it isn’t charity. Governments, Benedict should know, are more often representative of the fallen side of human nature than are the persons who make up the governed.

And that’s the basic problem with Benedict’s encyclical. It’s based primarily upon the assumption that governments are essentially institutions of good, while free markets are not self-regulating (or even self-sustaining) institutions that produce vice and license. “Profit is useful if it serves as a means towards an end that provides a sense both of how to produce it and how to make good use of it. Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty.” Published in the wake of the current financial scandals, Benedict’s meaning becomes all the more clear. He blames the current global economic crisis on “badly managed and largely speculative financial dealing” among the private sector and says that “the regulation of the financial sector, so as to safeguard weaker parties and discourage scandalous speculation … should be further explored and encouraged.”

But in fact the current economic crisis was government-made, not private speculator-made. The speculators in the markets only reacted to extremely loose credit policies employed by the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, a creature of the state.

Benedict argues that there’s an “urgent need of a true world political authority.” But if the world government is a tyranny, we don’t need it; and if men were good enough to be trusted to run that world government, a world government wouldn’t be necessary. As James Madison noted in The Federalist #51: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”

Benedict says he wants a world government. He shouldn’t. World government should be approached with the same circumspection that one approaches nuclear warfare. Indeed, mere national governments have killed many times more people in peacetime than nuclear weapons have in warfare. A world government powerful enough to “to ensure compliance with its decisions from all parties” is also a world government powerful enough to impose a global tyranny that could result in the murder of countless millions. The history of the world has taught that most people were not allowed to be free by their governments in the past, or even in the present. Most people who have walked this world have done so as slaves to the state. Incautious language about the supposed “urgent need” for a global political authority may convince many Catholics and other Christians to accept whatever world government they can get, and what they’ll likely end up with — if history is any guide — is a brutal tyranny.

Abandonment of Traditional Catholic Social Teaching

Pope Leo XIII’s classic 1891 social encyclical Rerum Novarum cited the scriptures almost exclusively as its authority for Catholic social teaching, along with a few of the patristic writings of church doctors such as Thomas Aquinas and Augustine. Rerum Novarum defended property rights and the commandments not to steal and covet as key to the social order under man’s fallen and sinful state. Benedict’s encyclical ignores those two commandments entirely, and makes no mention of property rights whatsoever. It mentions Rerum Novarum in passing, but ignores both the scriptures as well as Augustine and Aquinas.

Though nearly all the footnotes in Benedict’s encyclical refer to post-Vatican II documents, Benedict points in his encyclical to a coherence of past and recent Catholic teachings: “It is not a case of two typologies of social doctrine, one pre-conciliar and one post-conciliar, differing from one another: on the contrary, there is a single teaching, consistent and at the same time ever new. It is one thing to draw attention to the particular characteristics of one Encyclical or another, of the teaching of one Pope or another, but quite another to lose sight of the coherence of the overall doctrinal corpus.” If nearly all the documents cited by Benedict were post-conciliar (after Vatican II, which took place in the 1960s), how does that reflect coherence with 2000 years of history? If Benedict’s new encyclical represented old teachings of the Catholic Church, the least he could have done was to cite a few examples.

Instead of using time-tested Catholic social justice principles, Benedict employed trendy slogans such as “food security”/“food insecurity” and how the world is “increasingly interconnected” and “interdependent.” So it’s not surprising that the leftist New York Times trumpeted that “Pope Benedict XVI on July 7 called for a 'world political authority' to manage the global economy and for more government regulation of national economies to pull the world out of the current crisis and avoid a repeat.”

Conservative and libertarian Catholics who understand economics can expect to be pilloried as being anti-Catholic if they hold to the economic and political realities of the modern world in the wake of Benedict’s encyclical. But Catholics who disagree with the pope's understanding of social justice do have a defense: the encyclical was not issued “ex cathedra,” and is therefore not binding on Catholics. The Catholic Church teaches that the pope has the power to bind the faithful only when speaking “ex cathedra.” The “ex cathedra” pronouncements are so infrequent that most popes do not make any. An “ex cathedra” pronouncement can happen only when a certain set of formalized criteria are met: 1. the pope claims to be speaking on behalf of the worldwide church from the seat of the Apostle Peter; 2. he specifically states that he is binding the faithful for all time on the doctrine; 3. the doctrine is about faith and morals; and 4. he can’t contradict past church doctrines.

In the case of “Charity in Truth,” Benedict XVI has issued an ordinary encyclical letter, and none of the criteria for “ex cathedra” were satisfied. But the question for the rank-and-file Catholics around the world is this: will this distinction matter, or will they unthinkingly follow the extremely dangerous new social doctrine of the Vatican?