Ending Catholicism And Related U.S. Imperialism
By Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer
—
The child abuse cover-up scandal ripping through the Roman Catholic Church is one more part of the overall crisis splitting the foundation of American imperialism itself.
The countless reports coming from many nations of Catholic priests’ sexual molestation of children are rocking the upper echelons of the church. A United Nations judge, Geoffrey Robertson, has stated that he wants Pope Benedict XVI to be tried in the International Criminal Court for the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, claiming the pope is ultimately responsible for this "crime against humanity".
However, this crisis goes deeper than the hierarchical cover-up of child-abuse crimes. It is the reflection of the true nature of the Catholic Church as imperialism’s right hand that has used the cover of Christianity and religion to carry out massive crimes against humanity. These crimes or hidden skeletons of genocide and colonization are now being exposed through U.N. forums and declarations.
The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) is exposing and working to rectify the injustices or crimes of genocide and colonization caused by a series of 15th Century papal bulls/doctrines, collectively called the Doctrine of Discovery.
Steven T. Newcomb, a renowned Indigenous law scholar and the world’s foremost expert on the Doctrine of Discovery, works closely with the UNPFII to expose and rectify the doctrine’s injustices.
Newcomb is also a columnist for Indian Country Today Media Network (ICTMN), the world’s largest Indian news source. ICTMN published a letter of mine about my correspondence and support from Newcomb. A Minnesota legislator introduced a Newcomb supported reconciliation resolution that I (for the most part) wrote with Newcomb’s assistance. The resolution apologizes to indigenous peoples of Minnesota for the horrible injustices caused by the Doctrine of Discovery.
Also, ICTMN recently published an article titled UNPFII Panel Discusses Doctrine of Discovery. The article presents statements about the Doctrine of Discovery, especially including this statement: "These papal-bulls dehumanized non-Christian peoples and sanctioned genocide and land theft…"
While recounting a 1977 journey of an indigenous peoples delegation to the U.N. in Geneva, Chief Oren Lyons said (as stated in the mentioned above article): "We couldn’t understand why we seemed to be excluded from the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We came to find out it was because of a statement by a pope in 1493 who said if they’re not Christians, they have no title to land, only the right of occupancy. Indigenous peoples didn’t know until relatively recently that the Doctrine of Discovery was the source of their struggles."
The article also says: "The Doctrine of Discovery isn’t just a quaint artifact from history; it has been a focal point at the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues for several years, in part because it was embedded into U.S. Indian law, creating a legal framework that has been copied around the world and continues to be used to oppress indigenous peoples."
The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, have said that through this Doctrine of Discovery, the application of the Doctrine of Discovery, the United States has been involved in gross violations of fundamental human rights. ref.. ref.
The U.S. became an imperialist nation because it wanted to expand the world over with its belief in a Roman Catholic Doctrine of Discovery principle …building the Christian Empire "justifies" many injustices, and is a means to acquiring much wealth.
To this present-day most U.S. Christians continue to follow this Doctrine of Discovery principle …and do so, by sanctioning and promoting the greedy U.S. capitalistic, warmongering, imperialist system as a means to (1.) spread the Christian religion throughout the entire world, and (2.) assist the U.S. in acquiring much ill gained wealth, so that the U.S., in unison with this nation’s Christian political ethic, can continue on with its oppressive imperialistic mission and accomplish its corrupt goals.
With sheared consciences, the U.S. Christian political ethic still believes, while being mislead by a Doctrine of Discovery principle, that the corrupt U.S. imperialist system is an appropriate means to spread the Christian religion throughout the entire world. It also believes, while being mislead by this same doctrine, that by way of this corrupt Christian evangelization process, the U.S. can righteously acquire much wealth.
America’s, Doctrine of Discovery influenced, warmongering history is one of conquest and dominion, of brutal empire expansionism and imposition of social order through outright genocidal warfare against U.S. Indigenous peoples, theft of land from Mexico and Spain, invasion of Russia after World War I, followed by a succession of military interventions in Korea, Indochina, Central America, the Balkans, and more recently in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.
Today the ethos of militarism-of conquest, domination, violence, and Empire, which is responsible for a legacy of U.S. War Crimes, permeates the imperialistic American economy, military, political institutions, Christian religious institutions and culture.
Pope Nicholas V issued a papal bull in 1452 that resulted in the theft of Indigenous lands. It also sanctioned slavery and genocide.
According to a World Conference Against Racism document, "The papal bull Romanus Pontifex, issued by Pope Nicholas V to King Alfonso V of Portugal in 1452, declared war against all non-Christians throughout the world, and specifically sanctioned and promoted the conquest, colonization, and exploitation of non-Christian nations and their territories."
The document also states that the acceptance and promotion by nation-states, including the United States of America, of Doctrine of Discovery principles "brought extreme expressions of racism – massacres, forced-march relocations, the ‘Indian wars’, death by starvation and disease." It further states that, "Today, such practices would be called ethnic cleansing and genocide."
In 1452, Pope Nicholas V directed King Alfonso in the papal bull [Romanus Pontifex] to "capture, vanquish, and subdue the saracens, pagans, and other enemies of Christ," to "put them into perpetual slavery," and "to take all their possessions and property."
Thomas Aquinas, a canonized Roman Catholic saint, wrote in Summa Theologica, "Unbelievers deserve not only to be separated from the Church, but also… to be exterminated from the World by death."
The Christian invasion and conquest of the Western hemisphere caused the deaths of upwards of 90 percent of the indigenous population of around 100 million. Father Junipero Serra built 21 missions that extended up the United States’ west coast to San Francisco, California. Serra used the native populations as slaves to maintain the missions, working the people to death. Christopher Columbus and his men also enslaved natives and worked them to death. They also used innocent native people for dog food.
–
–
More than 100,000 Indigenous children were kidnapped and placed in U.S. Christian boarding schools, where they experienced forced assimilation. The trauma caused by these boarding schools has yet to be resolved with the still existing U.S. colonial state occupying Indigenous lands.
Another Roman Catholic Church hierarchical cover-up is associated with a Catholic dogma (an unchangeable doctrine). The dogma that I am referring to contradicts scientific evidence that teaches reasonable people that before modern-day humans ("Adam and Eve") came into existence on earth around 200,000 years ago there were billions of years of evolutionary history wherein corruption and death ruled the world. It was not, as a Catholic dogma states, an "incorruptible, death free, paradise" throughout those billions of years…or anytime prior to "the first human beings’ ‘original sin’". Therefore, the creation can not be "restored to the purity of its origin", and become the "ultimate destination of Christians who die in a state of grace", as a Catholic dogma teaches. More…
St. Symeon wrote: "Neither Eve nor Paradise were yet created, but the whole world had been brought into being by God as one thing, as a kind of paradise, at once incorruptible yet material and perceptible."
St. John of Damascus wrote: "The creation of all things is due to God, but corruption came in afterwards due to our wickedness…For God did not make death, neither does He take delight in the destruction of living things" (Wisdom 1:13). But death is the work rather of man, that is, its origin is in Adam’s transgression."
St. Ignatius Brianchaninov wrote: "Plants were not subjected either to decay or to diseases; both decay and diseases and the weeds themselves, appeared after the alteration of the earth following the fall of man."
St. Basil the Great wrote: "…it is customary for vultures to feed on corpses, but since there were not yet corpses, nor yet their stench, so there was not yet such food for vultures. But all followed the diet of swans and all grazed the meadows…the beasts…were not carnivores…such was the first creation, and such will be the restoration after this."
U.S. Catholic Bishops wrote: "The whole Bible is spanned by the narrative of the first creation (Gn 1:3) and the vision of a restored creation at the end of history" (RV. 21:1-4) The Catechism of the Catholic Church says: "Jesus came to restore creation to the purity of its origins." Modern-day science has proven these Catholic doctrines/teachings to be untrue and deceptive. Therefore, science has also made the Roman Catholic Religion an out-dated religion.
The current Catholic Church crisis that reveals the true nature of the church is a sign of imperialism’s inevitable downfall, for the church played a major role in constructing the foundation of parasitic U.S. capitalist-militaristic imperialism that was built on the forced deportation and distant enslavement of African people and the theft of Indigenous lands. U.S. imperialism will soon come to an end. This will occur when the Roman Catholic Church’s crimes of genocide and colonization are fully exposed and the church is brought to justice.
__________________________________________________________________________
A quote from a related article: "The power to commit horrible crimes against children, and others, and then absolve itself and the rapists and killers it shields within its ranks, has made the Vatican a criminal, rogue body under every international standard of law and morality."
Posted by: Wahkon
Notes: