Fatima Perspectives #1362
According to Pope Francis, under Catholic social doctrine all of humanity is obliged to obey the dictates of “international organizations” created by modern nation-states. As he declared in yet another exercise of the purported Airplane Magisterium (during the flight back to Rome from South Africa):
“I would like to repeat what the Doctrine of the Church says about this: When we acknowledge international organisations and we recognise their capacity to give judgment, on a global scale – for example the international tribunal in The Hague, or the United Nations. If we consider ourselves humanity, when they make statements, our duty is to obey. It is true that not all things that appear just for the whole of humanity will also be so for our pockets, but we must obey international institutions. That is why the United Nations were created. That’s why international courts were created.”
Of course, this is nonsense – both legally and doctrinally.
First of all, the United Nations has no power to command the obedience of nations, much less of the individual citizens of those nations, still less humanity as a whole. The UN is merely a forum for debate and discussion and the adoption of resolutions that can be vetoed by any one of the five members of the UN Security Council: France, China, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Russia. Such resolutions as are adopted do not have the force of law in various nations and the UN has no enforcement capability that would empower it to compel any nation to “obey” its declarations.
Secondly, the purported jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has been hotly contested from its inception. And it is elementary that the ICC “cannot mount successful cases without state cooperation,” which its globalist supporters view as “problematic [because]… potential perpetrators of war crimes know that they can avoid ICC judgment by taking over government and refusing to cooperate.” In particular, the United States has rejected ICC jurisdiction by refusing to adopt as a treaty the Rome Statute of the ICC.
In short, Francis’s opinion that everyone must “obey” the UN and the ICC is patently ridiculous and evinces ignorance of the state of international law.
Aside from the legal nonsense, there is a glaring lacuna in Francis’s pronouncement, coming as it does from the Vicar of Christ. That is, he fails to mention the true source of authority commanding the obedience of both men and nations: Christ the King, Whose authority is mediated to the world through the social action of His Church.
This is the true Catholic doctrine of the Church: the Social Kingship of Christ. Under His Kingship men and nations are obliged to obey the Law of the Gospel, which forbids all of the evils now institutionalized as “rights” throughout the world, including abortion, contraception, sodomy, “gay marriage,” divorce and pornography. To the facile objection that we must render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s, the Catholic answer is that Caesar too must render unto God what is God’s and thus can never violate His law but rather is bound to obey it in every enactment touching on morality and justice.
In his landmark social encyclical Ubi Arcano Dei, Pius XI explained the international implications of the Social Kingship as follows:
“When, therefore, governments and nations follow in all their activities, whether they be national or international, the dictates of conscience grounded in the teachings, precepts, and example of Jesus Christ, and which are binding on each and every individual, then only can we have faith in one another’s word and trust in the peaceful solution of the difficulties and controversies which may grow out of differences in point of view or from clash of interests….
“No merely human institution of today can be as successful in devising a set of international laws which will be in harmony with world conditions as the Middle Ages were in the possession of that true League of Nations, Christianity. It cannot be denied that in the Middle Ages this law was often violated; still it always existed as an ideal, according to which one might judge the acts of nations, and a beacon light calling those who had lost their way back to the safe road…
“There exists an institution able to safeguard the sanctity of the law of nations. This institution is a part of every nation; at the same time it is above all nations. She enjoys, too, the highest authority, the fullness of the teaching power of the Apostles. Such an institution is the Church of Christ. She alone is adapted to do this great work, for she is not only divinely commissioned to lead mankind…”
In sum, it is not the UN or the ICC that humanity must obey, as Francis would have it. It is Christ and His Church, which is “above all nations,” that men must obey if they would establish the reign of true justice in this fallen world – which means that such international organizations as nations might erect to adjudicate disputes are no less obliged to obey Him and His Church in matters pertaining to the moral law and its application to questions of justice in the law of nations. For as Pius XI (quoting Pope Leo XIII) declared in his equally important encyclical Quas Primas (On the Social Kingship of Christ):
“Thus the empire of our Redeemer embraces all men. To use the words of Our immortal predecessor, Pope Leo XIII: ‘His empire includes not only Catholic nations, not only baptized persons who, though of right belonging to the Church, have been led astray by error, or have been cut off from her by schism, but also all those who are outside the Christian faith; so that truly the whole of mankind is subject to the power of Jesus Christ.’”
But that is about the last thing Francis would say. Instead, he declares that the whole of mankind is subject to the power of the UN and the ICC, which indicates the depth of an ecclesial crisis that will finally terminate in the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary — when a Pope who actually preaches the true Catholic doctrine consecrates Russia to Her.
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