Welcome to "The
Liberty Insider."
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This is a regular program
that brings up-to-date news,
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views, and discussion on
religious liberty concerns
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in the United States
and around the world.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
editor of Liberty Magazine.
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And my guest on the
program today is Dr. Bert Beach.
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Welcome, Bert.
I'm glad to meet you.
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I've known you long
enough I think to call you Bert.
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The Religious Liberty
world is constantly changing.
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I grew up
reading Liberty Magazine
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which I now edit and
reading comments from pioneers
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of our church like Ellen White.
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She said that "We should
be the head and not the tail."
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And with Religious
Liberty under your leadership
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for many years, you know,
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we were a force to be
reckoned with internationally.
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But as I look at what's
happening in the world now,
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I have to say that
the Roman Catholic Church
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which has an
interesting history,
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reformation was the
case with what went on then,
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they were not for
religious freedom.
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But now they're moving
into a dominant position
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in statements, in activity
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and structure on
religious liberty, aren't they?
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Well, there's no doubt
that the Roman Catholic Church,
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I think, to be honest,
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we'd have to say
that Roman Catholic Church
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is a Johnny come lately
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when it comes to
religious liberty.
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In fact, we had an
interesting meeting
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when I was at the II Vatican
Council as an observer there.
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I attended a press conference
by the US Bishop's Conference
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organized a press conference
every day in the afternoon.
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I was there with Arthur Maxwell,
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the editor of
"Signs of the Times."
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And some of our
viewers may remember
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the Bible story that you were--
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And the Bible story and all that
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and Uncle Arthur's
bedtime stories, you know that.
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So he was a very
interesting character.
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And we went to that,
that press conference.
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It was the day after, I think,
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the II Vatican Council had voted
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the Religious
Liberty Declaration
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which they had-- took 4
years during the council
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finally to get it
through and it was voted.
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And so he made, he got
up I remember at that--
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Well, this was
Dignitatis Humanae, wasn't that?
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Yeah, exactly.
That's the statement.
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And it was 19--
this was if you go 1965,
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at the end of
II Vatican Council.
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And he was there
and he got up and said,
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"We know"--and he
was a kind of a person
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that liked to be
very-- what do you call it--
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interesting and lively
and dramatic and so forth.
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And he said,
"Well, can you tell me"--
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question that he was
asking the bishop's panel.
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"Why it took the
Roman Catholic Church,
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the Roman fundamental
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basic Catholic
Church, infallible Church,"
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he had used that adjective too,
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"apostolic church,
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so long to discover religious
liberty after the Protestants
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in society in general
had found it much earlier?
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And of course, there was a roar
of the laughter in the assembly.
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And, of course,
that was the point.
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It was very difficult for them
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because there
were so many statements
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from the 19th century
by the Popes at that time.
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Well, one of the Popes called
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religious liberty
a pernicious concept.
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And the ravings of a
mad mind and so forth.
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So they were very much
against religious liberty.
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And so now they came in
favor of religious liberty.
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So there was a kind of a change.
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What do you think
caused the change?
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Well, of course, society
in general to begin with.
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I mean, societies--
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as Uncle Arthur
said the constitution,
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other countries
and other churches
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and society in general
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was getting in
favor of religious liberty
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including Italy and so forth.
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So that was the
way things were going.
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And I think also some
people in the Catholic Church
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felt that they were wrong,
that persecution is wrong.
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They had said and, of course,
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this is what they said
at the II Vatican Council.
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They said, "Error
has been has been our--
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it's been our
teaching in the past
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that error has no rights."
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And the other day I
heard Cardinal Dolan,
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that's bishop of New York.
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Yeah. He said that.
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He says there was a time
we held error has no rights.
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Had no rights.
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But at the II Vatican Council,
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the Roman
Catholic Church discovered
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that the human being has rights.
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And that's the way
they got around the issue
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of whether error has rights
and let's leave that alone
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and to say the human
being has rights and no one has
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the right to keep a person
from practicing his religion
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or to force him to
follow another religion.
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Any particular religion.
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So that's very,
pretty good statement.
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So the Catholic
Church went down that road.
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Now you may ask but why
does the Catholic Church now
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take a lead a
little bit in this?
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Well, I think partly
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because the teaching
of the II Vatican Council,
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several papal
declarations over the years
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have been in favor of
going even little bit further
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than the II Vatican Council when
it came to religious liberty.
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And so they
actually-- I think many of them
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actually--they--
that's their belief.
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Then in addition
there was the problem
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that their Catholic
church has been faced
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even in United States with
certain what you might call
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religious liberty
problems for its institutions
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not so much for
Roman Catholic individuals
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but for the institutions
in regards to abortion
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and in regards
to-- what do we call it,
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the prevention
of-- Birth control.
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Birth control and so forth.
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And so they feel that
that's part of their teaching
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and for their
institutions to be forced
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because they
receive government money
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to give birth
control information
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and help and provide abortions,
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they feel that goes against
the teachings of their church.
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And therefore, their
institutions are faced
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to break their beliefs and it
goes against religious liberty.
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On one level, I
could be facetious
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about it and say
that they're wanting
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to revert to the old practice
where they take the state money
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and use the state to
advance their viewpoint.
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They want to
keep taking the money
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but they want the state
to bend to their religious
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viewpoint through
state funded institutions.
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So I'm very troubled by
what's happening with that.
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But back to their
leadership position,
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I don't-- you're right,
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I don't think
it's a framed position.
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I think it's consistent
with Vatican II. Yeah.
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Good statements were
made on religious liberty
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but there's a certain irony
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that--I'm interested
in your comment on it.
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Vatican II was a
refreshing viewpoint
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that came in the
Catholic Church worldwide
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but progressively
there's a rearguard action
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being fought by many
within the Catholic Church
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who don't like Vatican II
and would like to roll it back.
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And sometimes I think
that Benedict himself is not
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a true believer in all
that Vatican II entails.
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And yet at the same time,
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they're forging ahead
with the religious liberty.
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Do we have, of course,
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to worry that as they
become a defective global leader
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in religious liberty and
yet, Vatican II evaporates,
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what form of
religious liberty leadership
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would they really be--
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Well, it's hard
to know. Giving them?
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They--I brought it up on another
religious television program,
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"The American
Religious Townhall,"
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a few weeks ago.
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We have raised
the issue. It is--
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We're supposed to advertise
other programs on this.
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It's fine. Is Rome,
really the appropriate place
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to be the center of a foundation
or a committee, a group
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that is heading
religious liberty for the world?
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And I said is it really
ready to do that because
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that's not the
reputation so far of being
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the great leaders
in religious liberty.
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It is I think favoring religious
liberty at the present time.
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But it's right now it
has this ethical problems--
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It has a lot of
baggage. For its institutions.
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Has a lot of baggage.]
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And I think it's one way
of being able to try to handle
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those institutions
on the American level,
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but then also
having the kind of a world,
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a watchman regarding religious
liberty in Rome itself.
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Yeah. And, you
know, more power to them
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but they've somehow
been able to do this,
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well, navigating the moral
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or immoral shows of the priestly
scandal which in other places,
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in other times, in
other institutions,
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you would've thought,
would've embarrassed them
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out of contention or maybe
even hampered their efforts
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but they are moving ahead.
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And I just think part
of it is a very sad reality
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that worldwide Roman
Catholics have been persecuted
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in very large
numbers at the moment.
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So they gained a
lot of sympathy and,
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you know, we all
sympathize with that.
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In the Middle East, Roman
Catholics are being persecuted,
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I think, quite aggressively
and in South East Asia the same.
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So I think that's some
of their street credentials,
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Vatican II is the
ideology that's intact
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and so we wish them well.
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But it's a
historical anomaly, isn't it?
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That they could
have-- It is in that sense,
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it's--as I said
earlier in the program
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it's a latecomer taking a
lead in religious liberty.
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And, of course, as
far as I'm concerned
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they're very welcome to
promote religious liberty. Yeah.
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Because the
Catholic Church even though
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it has many problems--
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you mentioned
the pedophile problem
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and all that-- it
has many problems.
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It has also still
considerable power.
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If you compare the World
Council of Churches' influence
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to the Roman Catholic Church,
it's--there's no comparison.
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The Roman Catholic Church,
if the Pope says something,
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all newspapers publish it.
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If the general secretary of the
World Council says something,
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many of them will
not publish anything
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and if they do publish it,
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it will be a
little item in the paper--
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My enduring, you know,
I'm a Seventh-day Adventist
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as you and "Great
Controversy" explains
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our historical
understanding pretty well.
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It's a book
that we can recommend
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to our viewers generally.
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That I look to history and
it just seems very odd to me
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that we're seeing
this emerging influence
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because you put your finger
on it with your comment before,
00:11:06.16\00:11:09.41
when the Pope says something,
nations stand up and listen.
00:11:09.44\00:11:13.92
Why is that?
00:11:13.95\00:11:15.32
One of the reasons
is that he functions
00:11:15.35\00:11:16.72
as a world secular
governmental leader.
00:11:16.75\00:11:21.42
And right there,
there is the problem.
00:11:21.45\00:11:26.57
Ideally, we want a separation
between church and state
00:11:26.60\00:11:29.32
and here we have a church
00:11:29.35\00:11:30.72
that functions
as a state directly.
00:11:30.75\00:11:34.22
It sort of, it can
jump one way to the other.
00:11:34.25\00:11:37.67
And, you know, they're not doing
00:11:37.70\00:11:39.07
anything illegal
but structurally,
00:11:39.10\00:11:40.68
it's such a
dissonance within the system.
00:11:40.71\00:11:43.44
Well, it's-- That
even with good intentions,
00:11:43.47\00:11:45.50
I think they will
have trouble being
00:11:45.53\00:11:48.23
a truly honest
broker on religious freedom.
00:11:48.26\00:11:50.41
And let's say this,
the Roman Catholic church
00:11:50.44\00:11:52.68
in the past was
a state, no doubt.
00:11:52.71\00:11:55.86
The Papal States.
00:11:55.89\00:11:57.26
Central part of
Italy was a country--
00:11:57.29\00:12:00.42
The few warrior Popes took
it on themselves to fulfill--
00:12:00.45\00:12:03.74
I know. But there were 4, 5
million people living there.
00:12:03.77\00:12:07.23
It was a state.
00:12:07.26\00:12:08.63
Today, the Vatican area there,
00:12:08.66\00:12:13.83
107, I think, acres given
to the papacy by--Mussolini.
00:12:13.86\00:12:20.84
Mussolini, the
dictator in Italy of fascism
00:12:20.87\00:12:23.64
who wanted of
course to get the support
00:12:23.67\00:12:25.66
of the Catholic
church for his activity,
00:12:25.69\00:12:29.39
some of his programs
in Italy and so forth,
00:12:29.42\00:12:33.39
made that arrangement
and said now this will be
00:12:33.42\00:12:35.70
a extra territorial
area and that can function
00:12:35.73\00:12:38.89
like a state but of course,
it's an artificial state.
00:12:38.92\00:12:41.76
I mean, you know, it has
ambassadors to other country.
00:12:41.79\00:12:44.87
Where do the ambassadors live?
00:12:44.90\00:12:46.56
Well, they have
to live in Italy.
00:12:46.59\00:12:47.96
They can't live
here. I mean, it's--
00:12:47.99\00:12:49.80
I went to the US ambassador
at the Vatican residents
00:12:49.83\00:12:52.55
a few years back and I
noticed it was in Rome,
00:12:52.58\00:12:54.69
not in Vatican City-- Yeah.
00:12:54.72\00:12:57.99
It's an artificial
state and it functions--
00:12:58.02\00:13:01.68
You know, in Australia,
there are many individuals,
00:13:01.71\00:13:05.22
quirky individuals who've
separated from the country.
00:13:05.25\00:13:07.71
When I say many,
several. Dozens of them.
00:13:07.74\00:13:10.26
And I remember this
King Leonard of Hutt,
00:13:10.29\00:13:14.71
property owner
out in the desert,
00:13:14.74\00:13:16.36
he's got few
thousands of acres of property
00:13:16.39\00:13:20.01
and he issues stamps himself.
00:13:20.04\00:13:21.44
Well, King Leonard
of Hutt in Australia
00:13:21.47\00:13:23.51
who nobody has heard of
00:13:23.54\00:13:25.21
has multiple times
the area of Vatican City,
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I mean it's
Liechtenstein or something.
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It's larger, I'm sure--
00:13:31.88\00:13:33.69
Well,
Liechtenstein is a historical--
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That's what I mean but
they're the--But it's moral.
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They're the
little countries of--
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It's somewhat
artificial. It's artificial.
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In its order, so that the
Pope can say, "I'm by myself,
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I'm independent of
any government control."
00:13:47.39\00:13:50.59
That was the approach.
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We better cut and break here.
00:13:52.02\00:13:53.39
The time gets by when we
are heavy into the discussion
00:13:53.42\00:13:56.32
but stay with us,
we'll be right back.
00:13:56.35\00:13:58.30