Q&A - January AD 2012

Question: In mid-November the Vatican’s Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, made another one of those economics statements, addressing Caritas Internationalis.^{^[1]} Please comment. What is a “Tobin tax”?

Answer: A “Tobin tax” is a tax collected by each government on every exchange of one currency for another within its borders, and then sent to the World Bank or IMF. Not only is it a tax on the productive members of society, making them less productive, but it serves to feed the United Nations globalist cabal (See last month’s and this month’s Q&A).^{^[2]} Indeed, the bishop seems to be a proponent of the anti-Christian United Nations Agenda 21, an invasive scheme to control virtually every aspect of human life in the name of equality and environmentalism. Although not identifying the “Occupy Wall Street” movement by name he “Pointed to the protest movements taking place in North Africa and the Middle East, Europe and North America, he said: ‘a large number of people around the world believe we are headed in the wrong direction.’”—indeed, a large number of people with nothing better to do than complain about “greed” while blocking city streets, camping, defecating, fornicating, rioting, robbing, and raping in the parks of the nation.^{^[3]}

Sánchez’ call for “for greater care for the environment, the development of sustainable and a more just economic system” further reflects the influence of the UN Agenda. These are buzzwords that mean that: “we need to have fewer people in the world” and “the people we allow to exist must be content to shiver in the dark.” In practice this will be achieved through abortion, contraception, sterilization, and starvation, as well as the rationing of whatever few goods are produced under a socialist global regime.

Modernism is the simply the opposite side of the Marxist coin. According to Sánchez “the Catholic Church could provide the ‘faith horizon’ to get the world back on the right path, and urged Caritas leaders to focus on reason and faith as roots towards a new evangelization.” He seems to have forgotten the “old evangelization”—that the Church’s mission is the salvation of souls, and not the creation and redistribution of global misery.

Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo certainly fits into the class of superiors envisioned by Saint Thomas.

This UN program seeks to control nearly every aspect of human life in every nation, state, county, and municipality of the world, claiming this is necessary to preserve the Earth’s environment. The plan can be read in great detail on the UN’s own website at: www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/res_agenda21_00.shtml .

The plan is filled with euphemisms that sound good to the uninitiated (e.g. “sustainable development.” “protection of the oceans,” “equity,” “rational use and development,” “social justice”); loosely defined terms that can be later manipulated (e.g. “climate change,” “biological diversity,” “freshwater resources”); and contains a “precautionary principle” that says roughly that anything even suspected of causing harm must be treated as though it surely causes harm, until proven otherwise.^{^[6]}

“Sustainable development” sounds great until one realizes that is another way of saying that we must plan on having fewer people on the planet, and that many resources must be placed off limits from human industry. To achieve “sustainable development” the population must be managed with contraception and abortion, and property rights must be closely controlled by government. “Wetlands” projects must exclude humans from vast tracts of land, and the humans made to live in densely populated urban communities where government controls living space, utility availability, and what one does for a living. Curiously, the national borders must be open to one and all. Ultimately, the appeal is made to a Marxist concept of “social justice”:

Already in the United States, we have seen violent intrusion of government into family farming and food production, and seen the collection of rainwater falling on one’s own land criminalized.^{^[8]} A “Wisconsin judge has held that American citizens do not have a ‘fundamental right to produce or consume foods of their choice.’” Cows and pigs are to be taxed, but wolves protected.^{^[9]}

But world government control is not limited to land interests. “Protection of the oceans” not only limits fishing rights, but extends to ocean mineral rights, and even navigation rights. Large bodies of water, coastal waters, and navigable rivers would be controlled by world authorities, as would any source of drinking water.^{^[10]} Dams that interfere with fish life-cycles may be subject to removal.^{^[11]}

An important part of Agenda 21 is the ratification of the UN “Convention on the Rights of the Child,” which requires governments to interfere with parents’ ability to raise their own children: how they are educated, what they eat, with whom they associate, their practice or non‑practice of religion, how they may be disciplined. The government must require prospective parents to obtain a revocable parenting license, provide state-run day care, prosecute parents who violate the convention, and seize the children of violators.^{^[12]} As well, the Agenda imposes socialist indoctrination on school children, without regard to parental or school district concerns. Social engineering has replaced subject matter proficiency in many American schools.^{^[13]}

    Agenda 21 is a U.N. policy document adopted at the U.N.’s Earth Summit in 1992.

    It promotes “sustainable development,” which sounds so friendly, but is about changing the very infrastructure of the nation, away from private ownership and control of property to central planning of the entire economy.

    Sustainable development’s agenda includes gun control, open borders, cap and trade, food control, farming “reform,” refusal to drill American oil, population control, and U.N. global governance.

    It also puts each plant and animal species on an equal footing with the human species. It aims to redistribute the wealth, on a global scale, resulting in equality of poverty.

~ Peggy Smetana, The Pilot , 19 November 2012^{^[}^{^14]}

Agenda 21 seeks the cooperation of local agencies. Ratification of a treaty takes two-thirds of the Senate, but much of the Agenda can be implemented piecemeal. For example, the American people would (hopefully) resist the idea of declaring half the country off limits to human habitation, but county land managers might be convinced to declare valuable properties to be “wetlands” where no productive use is allowed. The American people would (hopefully) resist the idea of ruinous controls on energy, but a county government might warm to the idea of high fuel taxes being required to fight the imaginary demon of “global warming.” “Many town officials are selling us out to global regional development with help from the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI): Local Governments for Sustainability.”^{^[15]}

It should be obvious that Agenda 21 is essentially a global socialist agenda plan for the domination of mankind. The words of Pope Pius XI are appropriate when evaluating any socialist plan:

As if all this were not enough, a UN circular titled “Financing for Development” indicates that

Readers will recall that the topic of “Round Table 1” is essentially similar to the program proposed 24 October 2011 in “The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace on the Global Economy.”^{^[20]} Catholics beware!!! A good Catholic cannot support this any more than Socialism, for that, indeed, is what it is.

Question: Did our Blessed Lady actually die prior to her Assumption, or was she taken up without death because of her Immaculate Conception. (A.H., New York)

Answer: We lack positive information, but it seems that she actually died. The earliest written account of the Assumption, attributed to Melito of Sardis around AD 180 says “Mary arose from the pavement and laid herself upon her bed, and giving thanks to God she gave up the ghost,” which implies real death.^{^[21]}

When Pope Pius XII infallibly defined the dogma of the Assumption in November of 1950, he wrote simply that: “the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.”—which avoided the question of her death.^{^[22]} But, even if it is not a matter of infallible definition, Pope Pius clearly alluded to Mary’s real death elsewhere in the Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus.

The Pope Pius pointed out that Christ died, so even absolute perfection was not enough to avoid the possibility of death. But “She, by an entirely unique privilege, completely overcame sin by her Immaculate Conception, and as a result she was not subject to the law of remaining in the corruption of the grave, and she did not have to wait until the end of time for the redemption of her body” (paragraph 5).

Pope Pius referred to the sacramentary which his predecessor “Adrian I ... sent to the Emperor Charlemagne. These words are found in this volume: ‘Venerable to us, O Lord, is the festivity of this day on which the holy Mother of God suffered temporal death, but still could not be kept down by the bonds of death, who has begotten your Son our Lord incarnate from herself’” (paragraph 17, emphasis supplied).

NOTES:

[1] www.indcatholicnews.com/news.php?viewStoryPrinter=19313

[2] http://www.rosarychurch.net/answers/qa122011.html

[3] http://toddkinsey.com/blog/2011/10/10/tea-party-vs-occupy-wall-street-in-pictures/ http://lewrockwell.com/rep2/police-state-vs-occupy-wall-street.html

[4] Summa Theologiae, IIa IIae, Q. 104, A. 5

[5] http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/

[6] http://www.sehn.org/precaution.html

[7] http://habitat.igc.org/vancouver/vp-d.htm Attributed to Maurice Strong, former UN Secretary General, and “Canada’s version of George Soros.”

[8] http://www.rosarychurch.net/marxism/list.html#Food

[9] http://xstatic99645.tripod.com/naisinfocentral/id31.html

[10] http://www.iisd.org/worldsd/canada/projet/c18.htm

[11] http://www.capitalpress.com/oregon/TH-klamath-extension-w-infobox-112511