Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is a program designed
to bring you information
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and thought-provoking insights
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into religious liberty in
the US and around the world.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
Editor of Liberty Magazine.
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And I want to share
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some information on this program
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that I've
collected over the years
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regarding some of
the pronouncements
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coming out of Rome and
the Roman Catholic Church.
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I'm a Seventh-day Adventist,
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and this network
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is from a Seventh-day
Adventist perspective,
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and Seventh-day Adventists,
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of course, are
Protestant Christians,
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and Protestantism has 500 years
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of distinct doctrinal
differences from Rome.
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And we pay a lot of attention
to what comes out of Rome,
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apart from the fact
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that it represents such
a large body of Christians
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and it's so politically active.
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The best way I
can segue way into,
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what I want to talk about
is to tell you about a meeting
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that I attended
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at Catholic University
about four, five years ago.
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It was advertised
for Roman Catholics
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and very kindly when I
contacted the organizer,
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the professor at
the Catholic University
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that was running it, he
agreed that I could attend.
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And when I did attend,
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I noticed that there were
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a number of
Lutherans in particular,
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but it was overwhelmingly
Catholic audience,
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and it was from Roman
Catholic perspectives.
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One of the main reasons
that I wanted to be there
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was to hear Cardinal Dolan,
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the Cardinal from New
York and at that time,
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recently appointed head
of the US Catholic Bishops.
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And few years earlier than that,
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I thought that he might even
be an ideal candidate for pope.
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Others did too,
but he wasn't elected.
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Pope Francis was the
result of that shift.
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But Cardinal Dolan to
me was a rather unique
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and captivating
figure because he was very...
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He is very charismatic,
has the common touch,
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people find him interesting.
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And yet at the same time,
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he's very conservative
doctrinally, hardly a...
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I don't think I would...
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Anyone would call him a liberal.
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But, you know,
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he said to defend
the Catholic Church
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and its
interests as they have been
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enumerated historically.
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So I went along and
with a couple of friends
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we sat at a round table
right underneath the lectern
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where he was speaking to maybe,
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I'd say that were 250
people at least there.
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And he spoke very
well on religious liberty
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as was bannered,
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the whole program
was on religious liberty.
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The emphasis was
particularly on the issues
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they have with the
then Obama administration
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on Catholic charities
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and adoptions
and things like that.
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And so he was
carrying forth on it
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and his points were okay,
I had no great difference,
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but I noticed that he
was doing what I've done,
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and I think other people
speaking publicly do, often do.
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You know, you're
getting it off your chest,
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you're sort of like a computer,
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have a few paragraphs
or sentences buffered up
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and you know what you're saying.
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And behind inside,
behind your eyelids
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in the little
compass of your brain,
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you're thinking
about something else.
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And I could tell
that was going on.
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And so he reached
the end of his thought.
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And he just stopped, and
he looked at his audience,
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sort of scanned them for a while
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without saying anything.
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And then he said this, he said,
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"You know, there was a
time when Roman Catholics
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would not have spoken
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this way about
religious freedom.
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We once held
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that era has no rights."
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Then he sat
down, that was his...
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He just finished the
whole thing and came down
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and actually sat
next to me all happy
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and he's a
fairly approachable guy,
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and we talked for a bit,
and that's another story.
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But after the
break, they had a break
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between that
session and the next,
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then they reassembled.
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And I don't remember the
topics that were on the program,
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but I know
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that there was a
Catholic charities person,
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there was a Catholic theologian,
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and a historian that
was sitting up front,
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and they each had
an assigned topic.
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Before they could begin,
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the crowd started
spontaneously calling out
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"What was the
Cardinal talking about?
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What was he talking about?"
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And so for the
rest of that session,
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they never got to that topic.
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They dialogued
on what the cardinal
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was talking about.
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And here, a predominantly
Roman Catholic audience
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had to be tutored
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in the recent
history of their own church.
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First of all,
they had to be reminded
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as the Cardinal
had done succinctly,
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yes, indeed, that was,
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and has long been the
default doctrinal setting
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of the Roman Catholic Church.
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In its worst phases, it
described the inquisition
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and the persecution
of the medieval era.
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But it had not
been, and to be honest,
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has never been repudiated,
but what they had to be told.
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And it was accurate
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is that there's been
a shift from the '70s,
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I believe is when it happened.
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I mean, the actual date.
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But Vatican II,
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the second great
church council called by Rome,
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you know, with the hubris
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that any council they
call us for all Christians.
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Well, in reality for Catholics
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but still a very
significant council
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that went over several
years called by Pope John,
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as I remember.
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And out of that came a
number of reforms or changes,
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you know, not all good,
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but generally
liberalizing things.
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For example, before Vatican II,
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the mass was in Latin.
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Why?
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I understand that but
why that's such an inflex...
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Had been such an inflexible
whole thing escapes me.
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You know, Latin is not
the language of Galilei.
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Latin was the
language of the Roman empire,
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but it had become orthodoxy
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that you
couldn't depart from that
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but now the
masses and the vernacular
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and, you know,
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I think Catholics
are the better for that,
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the Catholic parishioners.
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But the most significant change
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from the point
of religious liberty
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is that the Cardinal
basically was alluding to
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was a document
called Dignitatis humanae,
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the dignity of man.
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And for the first time,
this document was accepted,
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it was put forward by
an American Jesuit priest,
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Father MacMurray.
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And for the first time,
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they stated what is
the standard position
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of all the beliefs
in a religious liberty.
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They stated that each person
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has the right to
choose their religion,
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to change their religion,
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and to be free from
coercion in any case
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and free to
share their religion.
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Full religious freedom.
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It is at odds
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with many dogmatic statements
around through the ages,
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which have not been
directly repudiated,
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but it is overlaid on
top of the church practice,
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and it is the
operative principle now.
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And, you know,
you need to give honor
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where honor is due.
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That explains why in
many ways, in many countries,
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the Roman Catholic
Church has a new openness.
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It explains even
the simplest thing
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why while in prior
years and centuries,
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the Roman Catholic Church
even discouraged its own members
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from reading the Bible.
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It's much more open now.
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Catholics are
studying the Bible.
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There's a
relative flaring of faith
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within Roman Catholicism.
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We have to acknowledge that.
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But what they
didn't tell the attendees
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at that conference
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who received very nicely
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the news of
Vatican II in this document
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to explain their
interest in religious liberty.
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What they didn't tell them
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was that shortly
after Vatican II,
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a number of the principals
started to have second thoughts
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about Dignitatis
humanae and some other aspects
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of this openness.
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Popes, John Paul
II, and Benedict,
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both of which whom
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had some
involvement in Vatican II.
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Both of them,
regretted some of it,
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and we're trying to
roll the clock back,
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turn the clock back
to prior Vatican II.
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And in lesser ways,
even this present pope,
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you could argue he's
retreating a little on it.
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I remember one
very telling aspect
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of John Paul II's
pontificate in this regard,
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was how he related
to liberation theology.
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You know, liberation
theology was closely allied
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with revolutionary
regime change groups
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all over the world,
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a lot of them in Latin America.
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And again, it was
tied up to the idea
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of the right of the individual
for self-determination.
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And Vatican II
meshed in nicely with that.
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And the Jesuit
order, in particular,
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had led the way
somewhat aggressively.
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And I remember as early on
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in John Paul II's pontificate.
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He went down to Nicaragua,
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where the military hunter
had overthrown a dictatorship,
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Samozas
dictatorship, as I remember,
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supported by the US,
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for many and varied
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and sometimes
real politic reasons,
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the US has supported
dictators in Latin America.
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And so John Paul went down there
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to meet the hunter.
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And I remember
watching on the video
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on the television,
as he got off the plane,
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walked down the stairs
and they've arrayed in a line
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away from him
with the ruling hunter,
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quite a lot of them.
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The first two, the
first one was a Jesuit priest,
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the second one
was a Maryknoll priest
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both involved
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with the
revolutionary order there.
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And as the pope
came towards the group,
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the Jesuit
priest came toward him
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and reached for
the ring to kiss it.
00:11:30.99\00:11:33.32
And the pope
pulled his hand back.
00:11:33.36\00:11:35.72
And 'cause we had no sound
other than the commentators,
00:11:35.76\00:11:38.96
and he wagged his finger at him
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and just
admonished him severely,
00:11:40.73\00:11:44.73
bit of a sign
something was going on.
00:11:44.77\00:11:47.57
Then later in
that, on that same visit,
00:11:47.60\00:11:51.57
and there used to be a
video footage on YouTube,
00:11:51.61\00:11:56.34
but it's vanished now.
00:11:56.38\00:11:57.71
The pope spoke to
an open-air crowd,
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mostly young people,
00:12:01.05\00:12:02.55
and you could
see him on the stage.
00:12:02.58\00:12:04.75
And they started booing
him and throwing things at him.
00:12:04.79\00:12:07.72
And he just totally
lost it, just flipped out,
00:12:07.76\00:12:10.39
screaming and
shaking his fist at them
00:12:10.43\00:12:12.73
and then he stalked off.
00:12:12.76\00:12:14.46
But what was known at that time
00:12:14.50\00:12:16.16
was he came
back from that visit,
00:12:16.20\00:12:19.63
incensed that the
role of the Jesuit order
00:12:19.67\00:12:22.17
in these revolutionary movements
00:12:22.20\00:12:23.64
and he said,
00:12:23.67\00:12:25.01
"From now on,
00:12:25.04\00:12:26.37
we're going to be
on the side of power."
00:12:26.41\00:12:28.71
And he threatened to
dissolve the Jesuit order,
00:12:28.74\00:12:32.41
which he did not in the
end, but he replaced the,
00:12:32.45\00:12:35.08
I think the title
as Father General,
00:12:35.12\00:12:37.29
the one in charge of the Jesuits
00:12:37.32\00:12:40.19
was someone with his views,
00:12:40.22\00:12:42.29
and he made each Jesuit priest
00:12:42.32\00:12:44.73
swear personal fealty to him,
00:12:44.76\00:12:48.63
which brings it back full circle
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to how the Jesuit
order was established.
00:12:50.70\00:12:53.07
And as I said, the
pope determined no more,
00:12:53.10\00:12:56.81
you know, reflex supporting
a revolutionary movement,
00:12:56.84\00:12:59.44
we want to be allied with power.
00:12:59.47\00:13:01.81
And I think it was
much that same time
00:13:01.84\00:13:05.58
that Malachi Martin's book,
00:13:05.61\00:13:08.08
The Keys of This Blood came out
00:13:08.12\00:13:09.45
and revealed what
was an open secret
00:13:09.48\00:13:11.55
that Ronald Reagan
and Pope John Paul II
00:13:11.59\00:13:16.52
were working together
to bring down communism.
00:13:16.56\00:13:19.43
And there was a collaboration
such as never seen before
00:13:19.46\00:13:25.40
and in itself
that was probably...
00:13:25.43\00:13:27.10
Well, not
probably a very good thing.
00:13:27.14\00:13:29.67
But there's a seizing of power
00:13:29.70\00:13:32.44
by Rome as never
before and in doing,
00:13:32.47\00:13:35.01
so they repudiated
both the Jesuit ideal
00:13:35.04\00:13:39.68
and really its
adoption of an attitude
00:13:39.71\00:13:44.05
that came directly
from Dignitatis humanae.
00:13:44.09\00:13:49.16
And in the years
since I've watched
00:13:49.19\00:13:52.19
the different
documents coming out of Rome
00:13:52.23\00:13:54.20
and there's clearly
some cause for worry
00:13:54.23\00:13:57.47
and some also some,
00:13:57.50\00:14:00.30
you know, check
points we can give
00:14:00.34\00:14:01.80
that they're speaking correctly.
00:14:01.84\00:14:03.94
Let's take a break
now, and I'll come back,
00:14:03.97\00:14:05.64
and I'll share you, enumerate
00:14:05.67\00:14:07.44
some of these documents
and even a speech by a pope,
00:14:07.48\00:14:11.31
and see something significant
for religious liberty.
00:14:11.35\00:14:13.68