“We never used that word,” Cardinal Turkson said in reference to government.

“We’re talking about authority, and that can be regional, or it can be a series of authorities within, for example, the banking sector, the insurance sector, all meant to ensure that the common good is not left out.”

On May 13, the pontifical council hosted “Banking on the Common Good, Finance for the Common Good,” a colloquium devoted to discussion of the document’s themes.

Source: http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=17857

It is fairly clearly a typical case of degradation of information. The truth of the matter is that the Vatican Observatory is a member of the Mount Graham International Observatory (MGIO) consortium, together with a number of other institutions from Europe and the USA. The MGIO comprises a large number of stake holders, most of whom have nothing to do with the Vatican Observatory or its telescope.

Jim Bakker and Tom Horn, co-author of Exo-Vaticana

How does this work? It is quite similar to share holders in a company. Supposing you had a six percent share in a company, while Mr XYZ had a four percent share. What could you do if Mr XYZ decided to name his pet hamster “Demon”?

One of the stake holders in the MGIO is a group of European institutes who built an infrared camera and spectroscope, and named it “Lucifer”. So what happened? First, somebody reported that an instrument called “Lucifer” was installed on Mt Graham. Then somebody remarked that Mt Graham also hosts the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope, and that it is somewhat amusing that Mt Graham has both Vatican and Lucifer. Then the information somehow degraded and the slur was born: Vatican astronomers are supposedly friends with Lucifer…

_____________

Where is the misinformation coming from?

Remember Jim Bakker?

“Heritage USA and Bakker were immersed in scandal, which led to the eventual downfall of both. Bakker was discovered to have paid off then church secretary Jessica Hahn to cover up a sexual encounter and was later convicted on federal fraud charges.

“Bakker was released from prison in 1994.

“In addition to his religious message, [Jim] Bakker’s current ministry also focuses on selling products, including vitamins, ‘Bread of Life,’ and Jim’s Favorite Soynut Butter.”

Source: Charlotte Observer. Jim Bakker back in Fort Mill, broadcasts from old PTL studio

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/02/28/3883718/jim-bakker-back-in-fort-mill-broadcasts.html

Source: http://www.vaticanobservatory.org/VO-NEWS/index.php/recent-news/vatican-observatory-main/vatican-observatory/item/153-vatican-lucifer.html

Excerpt: “Pope Francis to canonise 800 Italians slain during historic siege,” by Carol Glatz for the Catholic Herald, April 30, 2013.

Pope Francis is preparing to canonise an estimated 800 Italian laymen killed by Ottoman soldiers in the 15th century. The canonisation service will be on May 12 in St Peter’s Square and it will be the first carried out by the Pontiff since he was elected in early March.

The killing of the martyrs by Ottoman troops, who launched a weeks-long siege of Otranto, a small port town at the most eastern tip of southern Italy, took place in 1480.

Source: http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2013/04/30/pope-francis-to-canonise-800-italians-slain-during-historic-siege/#.UYFtgIbjw_8.email

In a profoundly symbolic gesture (hat tip Tundra Tabloids ^[1]), which epitomizes the Catholic Church’s abject dhimmitude ^[2], high-profile Muslim convert to Christianity Magdi Christiano Allam ^[3], has renounced ^[4] his Catholicism because of what he terms the Church’s weakness toward, and legitimation of, Islam.

Allam, who will remain a Christian, reiterated his belief ^[3] that Islam is inherently violent, to both its own votaries, and non-Muslims, and criticized ^[4] The Church for lacking “the vision and courage to denounce the incompatibility of Islam with our [Western] civilization and fundamental rights of the person.”

When Benedict XVI himself oversaw ^[3] Magdi Allam’s public Easter 2008 conversion from Islam to Christianity, in St. Peter’s Basilica, the intrepid Mr. Allam ^[3] clearly enunciated Islam’s defining bellicose intolerance, while extolling the Pope’s moral courage:

I asked myself how it was possible that those who, like me, sincerely and boldly called for a “moderate Islam,” assuming the responsibility of exposing themselves in the first person in denouncing Islamic extremism and terrorism, ended up being sentenced to death in the name of Islam on the basis of the Quran. I was forced to see that, beyond the contingency of the phenomenon of Islamic extremism and terrorism that has appeared on a global level, the root of evil is inherent in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictive….His Holiness has sent an explicit and revolutionary message to a Church that until now has been too prudent in the conversion of Muslims, abstaining from proselytizing in majority Muslim countries and keeping quiet about the reality of converts in Christian countries. Out of fear. The fear of not being able to protect converts in the face of their being condemned to death for apostasy and fear of reprisals against Christians living in Islamic countries. Well, today Benedict XVI, with his witness, tells us that we must overcome fear and not be afraid to affirm the truth of Jesus even with Muslims.  For my part, I say that it is time to put an end to the abuse and the violence of Muslims who do not respect the freedom of religious choice.

Despite his clear understanding of Islam, and prior actions which indicated a willingness to counter Islamization, Benedict XVI abandoned those efforts, and grudgingly, or not, embraced policies of dhimmitude ^[2]. Benedict XVI never regained the bold moral clarity he demonstrated at Magdi Allam’s public conversion ^[3] to Catholicism, so that The Church, under his stewardship, did not overcome the profound fear expressed in this plaintive 1967 appeal^[5] by Father Michel Hayek (1928-2005), the late Lebanese Maronite scholar of Islam ^[6]:

Why not admit it clearly, so as to break a taboo and a political interdict, which is felt in the flesh and the Christian conscience—that Islam has been the most appalling torment that ever struck the Church. Christian sensibility has remained traumatized until now.

Magdi Cristiano Allam, despite his frustration with The Church’s capitulation to Islam, maintained,

I will continue believe in Jesus I have always loved and proudly identify with Christianity as the civilization that more than others brings man closer to God who chose to become man.

By Andrew Bostom

—
Source: http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2013/03/25/magdi-allam-leaves-catholic-church-over-its-dhimmitude/

Article printed from Andrew Bostom: http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog

URL to article: http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2013/03/25/magdi-allam-leaves-catholic-church-over-its-dhimmitude/

URLs in this post:

• [1] Tundra Tabloids: http://tundratabloids.com/2013/03/magdi-allam-leaving-catholic-church-over-its-soft-stance-on-islam.html
• [2] dhimmitude: http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=20902
• [3] Magdi Christiano Allam: http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2008/03/24/magdi-allam-jihad-terrorism-rooted-in-islam/
• [4] renounced: http://www.corriere.it/politica/13_marzo_25/magdi-cistiano-vado-chiesa_7fdf327c-9528-11e2-84c1-f94cc40dd56b.shtml
• [5] plaintive 1967 appeal : http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2009/09/19/the-threat-to-rifqa-bary-in-its-ultimate-context/
• [6] scholar of Islam: http://www.worldcat.org/title/le-christ-de-lislam/oclc/164686444?referer=brief_results

Having spent most of his life in Buenos Aires, Pope Francis has given proof that he can rise above his environment. As his compatriot Bishop Alberto Bochatey remarked, “he is a man of few words.” I lived half of my life in Buenos Aires. Few things are more difficult there than finding leaders with his humble demeanor and his preference of teaching by example. Most in his native Argentina have been captured by a political and economic environment ruled by a government dominated “social justice” mentality. Hopefully, Pope Francis will also rise above his culture and help recover a different type of social justice, which was nurtured and developed by members of his religious order.

From the moment that the term “social justice” became a mandatory term in the lingo of Argentine politicians, the country went down the hill. This was during the mid-1940s, when Col. Juan Domingo Perón created the “Justicialista” or the “Justice” party. Perón, an admirer of Benito Mussolini, was following his recommendation: in each country where it would be adopted, fascism will need a new name. The Latin word “fasces,” came from one of the symbols used by Romans to refer to justice. Perón made social “justice” a key pillar of his policies.

The term, however, was not created then. Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek was correct in pointing out that the term became widely used after a noted Jesuit, Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio (1793-1862), used it in what was the most important Natural Law treatise during the 19th century in the Latin language world.

Taparelli’s book was translated into Spanish and French, but never into English. Perhaps that explains why Hayek made a mistake by implying that Taparelli used the term in the same corrupted, but popular, interpretation that sees social justice as “taking from the rich and giving to the poor.” As Thomas Patrick Burke has noted in a recent article and book, Taparelli belonged to a rich tradition where social justice has little or nothing to do with redistribution by government. It has more to do with order in society and with the justice that goes beyond courtroom justice.

Even his opposing intellectual giants, like Father Antonio Rosmini Serbati (1797-1855), had similar views on this topic. Rosmini’s daring views were condemned for some time. His cause for beatification was started by John Paul II, and he was the first person beatified by Pope Benedict. Rosmini wrote “The Constitution Under Social Justice.” Published recently by the Acton Institute, it carries an outstanding introduction by the translator Alberto Mingardi. Mingardi, founder of theBruno Leoni Institute, wrote that “Rosmini openly criticized redistributive policies, which limit and seize private property in the name of compulsory benevolence.”

During the period that goes from Aristotle to Adam Smith, there is an abundance of moral philosophers and jurists who have focused on distributive justice. It is almost impossible to find one who equates it with “Peronist social justice.” Wages, profits, and rents were always parts of commutative justice, or contract law. Distributive justice dealt with taxation, rewards, and honors. Even those who had a warm heart for the poor, such as the Jesuit Juan de Mariana (1536-1624), argued that equality before the law required some inequality, as it was just that the most productive should earn more. Mariana was a scholar and his copious writings made him into a one-man think tank. His works were known to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. A small but effective think tank analyzing and promoting free enterprise, now carries his name in Spain, the Instituto Juan de Mariana.

Unfortunately it is not only Hayek, but even current outstanding intellectuals, and even Jesuits, who seldom mention this tradition. The approach to social justice of other noted Jesuit intellectuals who had great influence on Church doctrine are also different from today’s redistributive interpretation. Mateo Liberatore (1810-’92), a great champion of private property, played an important role if the drafting of the first great Social Encyclical, Rerum Novarum (1891), he reminded readers that: “in this topic of rights we must diligently guard against giving too much authority (potestà) to the state.”

Another Jesuit, Oswald Nell-Breuning (1890-1991), who played a role similar to Liberatore in the drafting of Quadragesimo Anno (1931), is sometimes accused of sharing a corporatist view of society. Nevertheless, he wrote that it is against social justice to fix salaries that are above the level that make business viable. When was the last time a reader of this column heard a priest or pastor from the pulpit arguing that high workers’ salaries can go against social justice?

I do not know if Pope Francis has studied or pondered the work of the above and other outstanding Jesuit intellectuals. Jesuits writing in recent decades have also presented economic views which have little to do with a Peronist interpretation of social justice. The recently departed James Sadowksy, SJ, of Fordham University, made important contributions to economics and opened the eyes of many libertarian thinkers to Natural Law. Chief among those influenced was the late Murray Rothbard, a co-founder of the Cato Institute and later of the Mises Institute. The recently retired James V. Schall, SJ, of Georgetown University, has also made major contributions. His, “Religion, Wealth, and Poverty,” published several decades ago by The Fraser Institute in Canada, is a classic among those who are inspired by religion and economic liberties.

Social justice is and will continue to be part of Catholic doctrine. The issue is addressed, among other places, in points 410-414 of the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Society ensures social justice when it respects the dignity and the rights of the person as the proper end of society itself. The role of government and civil society is to provide the “conditions that allow associations and individuals what is their due.” It recognizes that some inequalities are not unjust and “enter into the plan of God, but there are also inequalities that result from sin, and structures and institutions which increase perverse incentives.” According to the doctrine, solidarity is manifested in first place by a just distribution of goods, fair remuneration for work, and a zeal for a more just social order. Solidarity does not rule out opposition to government policies. Karol Wojtyla, before becoming Pope John Paul II, wrote that opposing public education can be an act of solidarity.

Given the popularity of the term, and its dangerous appearance in U.S. economic and academic debates, champions of freedom, intellectual entrepreneurs, and scholars should focus more on social justice. The Philadelphia Society, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, will devote its annual meeting in early April to study this topic. This society has tried to stay above the many divisions in the conservative libertarian movement. It was a place where libertarian economist Milton Friedman, conservative icon Russell Kirk, and in-between “fusionist” Frank Meyer, could share a panel and influence the program. It still is. Followers and new scholars from those same conservative libertarian traditions will be part of the discussions. A good example is Professor John Tomasi, the founding director of Brown University Political Theory Project. Tomasi devoted a chapter of his book “Free Market Fairness” to social justice, with the provocative title: “Social Justicitis.”

The late William H. Hutt, an economist with impeccable free-market credentials, wrote that “however woolly the notion is in the mind of the majority who use it, [social justice] can have meaning when one considers the world as it is … in fact, Hayek himself enunciates, very briefly, what we regard and describe as “the true principle of social justice,” a concept which if it were understood could be universally accepted as such.” Pope Francis has a chance to renew the old tradition of social justice and, in this way, move the focus from redistribution to the building of an orderly framework of society that is effective in lifting the poor. Respecting private property, promoting sound money, combating corruption, weeding out crony capitalism, protectionism, and other causes of unjust inequalities, which especially affect the poor, is a path to a truly liberated and more just society.

by Alejandro Antonio Chafuen

Dr. Alejandro A. (Alex) Chafuen ’84 is president of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation and a member of the board of advisors for The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. (The opinions expressed by the author are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Grove City College, Atlas Economic Research Foundation, or their boards of trustees.)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324077704578362701947035938.html

Argentines celebrated last week when one of their own was chosen as the new pope. But they also suffered a loss of sorts. Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a tireless advocate of the poor and outspoken critic of corruption, will no longer be on

Verbitsky and Kirchner

hand locally to push back against the malfeasance of the government of President Cristina Kirchner.

Argentines not aligned with the regime hope that the arrival of Francis on the world stage at least will draw attention to this issue. Heaven knows the situation is growing dire.

One might have expected a swell of pride from Argentine officialdom when the news broke that the nation has produced a man so highly esteemed around the world. Instead the Kirchner government’s pit bulls in journalism—men such as Horacio Verbitsky, a former member of the guerrilla group known as the Montoneros and now an editor at the pro-government newspaper Pagina 12—immediately began a campaign to smear the new pontiff’s character and reputation at home and in the international news media.

The calumny is not new. Former members of terrorist groups like Mr. Verbitsky, and their modern-day fellow travelers in the Argentine government, have used the same tactics for years to try to destroy their enemies—anyone who doesn’t endorse their brand of authoritarianism. In this case they allege that as the Jesuits’ provincial superior in Argentina in the late 1970s, then-Father Bergoglio had links to the military government.

This is propaganda. Mrs. Kirchner and her friends aren’t yet living in the equivalent of a totalitarian state where there is no free press to counter their lies. That day may come soon. The government is now pressuring merchants, under threat of reprisals, not to buy advertising in newspapers. The only newspapers that aren’t on track to be financially ruined by this intimidation are those that the government controls and finances through official advertising, like Mr. Verbitsky’s Pagina 12. Argentines refer to the paper as “the official gazette” because it so reliably prints the government’s line.

Intellectually honest observers with firsthand knowledge of Argentina under military rule (1976-1983) are telling a much different story than the one pushed by Mr. Verbitsky and his ilk. One of those observers is Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, winner of the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize. Last week he told BBC Mundo that “there were bishops that were complicit with the dictatorship, but Bergoglio, no.” As to the charge that the priest didn’t do enough to free junta prisoners, Mr. Pérez Esquivel said: “I know personally that many bishops who asked the military government for the liberation of prisoners and priests and it was not granted.”

Former Judge Alicia Oliveira, who was herself fired by the military government and forced into hiding to avoid arrest, told the Argentine newspaper Perfil last week that during those dark days she knew Father Bergoglio well and that “he helped many people get out of the country.” In one case, she says there was a young man on the run who happened to look like the Jesuit. “He gave him his identification card and his [clergy attire] so that he could escape.”

Ms. Oliveira also told Perfil that when she was in hiding at the home of the current minister of security, Nilda Garré, the two of them “ate with Bergoglio.” As Ms. Oliveira pointed out, Ms. Garré “therefore knows all that he did.”

Some people cannot forgive Francis for being anti-communist. Photo: Getty Images

Graciela Fernández Meijide, a human-rights activist and former member of the national commission on the disappearance of persons, told the Argentine press last week that ”of all the testimony I received, never did I receive any testimony that Bergoglio was connected to the dictatorship.”

None of this matters to those trying to turn Argentina into the next Venezuela. What embitters them is that Father Bergoglio believed that Marxism (and the related “liberation theology”) was antithetical to Christianity and refused to embrace it in the 1970s. That put him in the way of those inside the Jesuit order at the time who believed in revolution. It also put him at odds with the Montoneros, who were maiming, kidnapping and killing civilians in order to terrorize the population. Many of those criminals are still around and hold fast to their revolutionary dreams.

For them, the new pope remains a meddlesome priest. In the slums where the populist Mrs. Kirchner claims to be a champion of the poor, Francis is truly beloved because he lives the gospel. From the pulpit, with the Kirchners in the pews, he famously complained of self-absorbed politicians. He didn’t name names, but the shoe fit. Nestór Kirchner, the late president and Cristina’s husband, responded by naming him “the head of the opposition.”

As Ms. Fernández Meijide observed last week, “I have the impression that what bothers the current president is that Bergoglio would not get in line, that he denounces the continuation of extreme poverty.” That’s not the regime’s approved narrative.

By MARY ANASTASIA O’GRADY

With the selection of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, the liberals have lost out. He opposes abortion, euthanasia, and homosexuality. A Catholic insider tells me, “Looks like we might have ourselves a relatively conservative new pope. He appears to be opposed to liberation theology and doesn’t approach ‘social justice’ from the political end.” The latter means that while he is an advocate of helping the poor, he doesn’t believe this should be done through state socialist schemes.

Liberal and “progressive” websites are already attacking the first Latin American pope as someone who may have a “dark past” and be linked to the Argentine military during the “dirty war” against the communists. The accusations, which have now been picked up by the Associated Press, show the bitterness of the left, as their hopes were dashed of a “Red Pope.”

Mark Engler, a leftist writer, had promoted another candidate, Brazilian Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, as having “significant progressive bona fides” and noted that he was “a personal friend of former Brazilian president and Worker’s Party leader Lula da Silva.” The Worker’s Party is a Marxist political organization in Brazil and Lula was a personal friend of Fidel Castro as well. Critics say that Hummes “supported communist strikes” and allowed Lula “to make political speeches during his Masses.” In 1990, after the demise of the old Soviet Union, Lula facilitated the holding of a conference in São Paolo, Brazil, bringing together the communist and leftist parties and guerilla movements of the continent, which came to be known as the São Paulo Forum. Lula’s successor, Dilma Rousseff, the current Brazilian President, is a former communist guerrilla leader.

“Hummes would open the door for the revival of social justice ministry in the Catholic Church,” Engler had written. Of course, “social justice” is already a theme of many of the U.S. Catholic Bishops, who have funded liberal projects with parishioners’ money through the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) for decades, enraging conservative Catholics in the process. It was a CCHD project that helped train Barack Obama as a community organizer on the streets of Chicago. These schemes are ways to attain political power and they have paid off well for Obama and his associates but not for the poor people they were supposedly intended to help.

In a 2005 story, “Champion of Workers and the Poor,” The Washington Post noted that Hummes had emerged as “a critic of the U.S.-backed free-market policies that were adopted in much of Latin America.” In other words, he helped pave the way for leaders such as Marxist Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who clutched a crucifix until the day he died. The Post went on, “In May 1998 he [Hummes] became archbishop of Sao Paulo. On his first day in that post, he attacked the spread of global capitalism, saying the privatization of state companies and the lowering of tariffs had contributed to the ‘misery and poverty affecting millions around the world.’”

Hummes headed the archdiocese of São Paulo, Brazil, the country with the largest number of Catholics in the world, until he was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI to a top Vatican post, Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy.

Engler pointed out that while the church “is said to have officially rejected liberation theology,” the complete truth is that the Vatican has “affirmed many of the central doctrines of liberation theology, especially those relating to poverty, inequality, and economic justice.” He added, “Most notably, the ‘preferential option for the poor,’ the once-radical idea that God takes sides and identifies with the oppressed and impoverished, has been mainstreamed as Catholic theological doctrine.”

Engler may have a left-wing bias, but at least he understands the global context and the battle underway for control of the church and the world. He is a monthly columnist for the Oxford, UK-based New Internationalist magazine, a socialist journal that favorably reports on “liberation movements” around the world. He also writes for Catholic Worker, the pro-Marxist journal that published the writings of Dorothy Day, now on the road to becoming a Saint of the Catholic Church. His main affiliation is with Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a project of the far-left Institute for Policy Studies.

Engler’s article, “Will the Next Pope Embrace Liberation Theology?,” had appeared on various liberal and left-wing sites, an indication that they found the struggle for control of the Vatican to be extremely important to their global plans. Bergoglio was not their man.

President Obama certainly grasps the stakes as well. His early career was not only funded by the Catholic Church, he spent 20 years in a church whose pastor, the notorious Jeremiah Wright, preached liberation theology. Though not a Catholic himself, Obama has said that the Catholic Church’s long tradition of social justice had a “profound influence” on him. Clearly, Hummes would have been among his top choices for pope.

Download (PDF, 576KB)

Possible next Pope calls for a “central world bank” that “regulates the flow and system of monetary exchanges, as do the national central banks.”

Download (PDF, 258KB)

One of Turkson’s chief supporters in the U.S. appears to be Stephen Schneck, an associate professor of politics at the Catholic University of America (CUA) and a top official of “Catholics for Obama.” He runs CUA’s Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies and holds conferences featuring left-wing and liberal speakers.

Former AFL-CIO boss John Sweeney, a member of Democratic Socialists of America, told one of Schneck’s conferences that Jesus Christ was pro-union. Another speaker was socialist Harold Meyerson.

When Turkson’s Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace issued a controversial 2011 document, “Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Political Authority,” Schneckcalled it “breathtaking” and a “Catholic way forward” from the present crisis.

A “global political authority” was endorsed by Pope Benedict XVI’s “Charity in Truth” encyclical in 2009.

Schneck, who served on the board of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, a group funded by Soros, is so important a figure in progressive Catholic circles that there is speculation that Obama will appoint him as U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican. A writer noted that Schneck “has worked hand-in-glove with different offices at the USCCB [United States Conference of Catholic Bishops], with Catholic Relief Services, with the Catholic Association of Latino Leaders and the Catholic Coalition for Climate Change, and with other Catholic groups, organizing conferences that call attention to important issues.”

He wrote that “Schneck’s range of political and media contacts, his organizational capabilities, his ability to distinguish a central from a peripheral issue, all are vital to making these conferences a success. He brought Cardinal Peter Turkson to CUA two years ago for a conference on Rerum Novarum.”

Rerum Novarum is a papal encyclical in which, as William Mayer notes, “the Church proclaimed itself competent to speak on economic matters, establishing a justification for governmental control, to a greater or lesser degree, of the marketplace and by extension, players within the economy, including everyday citizens and businesses.”

Rerum Novarum is the basis for many “social justice” theories promoted by leftist and Marxist operatives in the church.

Turkson, who is from Ghana, has taken “social justice” to the global level, arguing for a “global financial authority” to solve the world’s economic problems.

For this reason, left-wing “progressives” backing Obama hope Turkson will be the next pope and use the Vatican in a global campaign against capitalism.

Vatican Radio said the Turkson document, “Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Political Authority,” had “proposed the creation of a global political authority to manage the economy and a new world economic order” with the United Nations “as a point of reference.”

Crisis Magazine, a conservative Catholic publication, said it contained “some downright frightening prescriptions for reshaping the worldwide economy” and could be seen as “a blueprint for a George Soros agenda.”

Turkson spoke at the May 2, 2011, conference organized by Schneck at CUA on the subject of Rerum Novarum. He appeared with Bishop Stephen E. Blaire, chairman of the Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Alexia K. Kelley, deputy director of the Obama White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

He was scheduled to speak at this weekend’s 30th Anniversary conference of the Africa Faith and Justice Network (AFJN) at Notre Dame.

The event, held in collaboration with the far-left Institute for Policy Studies, included workshops and panels on such topics as:

• Examining International Aid to Africa in the Light of Catholic Social Teaching
• Climate Change and Its Impact on the People of Africa
• The expansion of U.S. military activities in Africa

The group says about itself: “AFJN works primarily with the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government to advance our message of social justice, though we are also registered as a UN-DPI [Department of Public Information] organization at the United Nations.”

It counts the Department of Social Development and World Peace, the national public policy agency of the U.S. Catholic Bishops, as one of its “collaborating organizations.”