URI - The Final Assault Against the Catholic Faith
False Dawn (*): The United Religions Initiative, Globalization and the Quest for a One World Religion
by Lee Penn
A Commentary and Endorsement by The M+G+R Foundation
In the past few years, a new danger to the Catholic Church has risen: the United Religions Initiative (URI).
Founded by the Episcopal Bishop of California, William Swing, it is an attempt to organize all the world's religions into a single global entity. And while it claims to respect the autonomy of its members, many URI leaders portray traditional Christians as intolerant "fundamentalists," and have expressed a desire to prohibit Christian proselytization. Its members include liberal mainstream churches, Neo-Pagans, Theosophists, Witches, New Age groups, Jews, Muslims, Moonies (members of Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church), Hindus, Buddhists - and Catholics.
The Vatican has rightfully manifested its opposition to the URI, but many Catholic bishops, priests and religious orders are ignoring the Vatican's wise warnings. As of 2004, the URI had 238 chapters in 47 countries, and many powerful allies in the UN, the World Economic Forum, the State of the World Forum, and other influential globalist groups. The URI is nothing less that the religious face of political and economic globalization. In False Dawn, author Lee Penn quotes (**) the then Cardinal Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, about the future dangers the Church might face in a secular, globalized world:
A new peril is also growing: the development of what you might call a modern world view that
regards Christianity or the Catholic faith as an intolerant, antiquated affair unreconcilable with
modernity and begins to apply pressure. I believe that this peril is already rather great,
even though it still doesn't seem immediate. But the social pressure on the Church
essentially to conform to today's accepted standards already exists now. ...
Of course, it is not yet persecution; it would be absurd to apply that expression to this case. But there are indeed areas of life - and not a few - in which, once again, it already takes courage to profess oneself a Christian.
Above all there is a growing danger of assimilated forms of Christianity, which society then gladly holds up as humanistic forms of Christianity, as opposed to the alleged fundamentalism of those who don't want to be so streamlined. The danger of a dictatorship of opinion is growing, and anyone who doesn't share the prevailing opinion is excluded, so that even good people no longer dare to stand by such nonconformists. Any future anti-Christian dictatorship would probably be much more subtle than anything we have known until now. It will appear to be friendly to religion, but on the condition that its own models of behavior and thinking not be called into question.
(**) [Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth: Christianity and the Catholic Church at the End of the Millennium - An Interview with Peter Seewald, translated by Adrian Walker, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1997, pp. 152-153]
Of course, it is not yet persecution; it would be absurd to apply that expression to this case. But there are indeed areas of life - and not a few - in which, once again, it already takes courage to profess oneself a Christian.
Above all there is a growing danger of assimilated forms of Christianity, which society then gladly holds up as humanistic forms of Christianity, as opposed to the alleged fundamentalism of those who don't want to be so streamlined. The danger of a dictatorship of opinion is growing, and anyone who doesn't share the prevailing opinion is excluded, so that even good people no longer dare to stand by such nonconformists. Any future anti-Christian dictatorship would probably be much more subtle than anything we have known until now. It will appear to be friendly to religion, but on the condition that its own models of behavior and thinking not be called into question.
(**) [Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth: Christianity and the Catholic Church at the End of the Millennium - An Interview with Peter Seewald, translated by Adrian Walker, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1997, pp. 152-153]
NOTES
(*) False Dawn - 508 pages long and with over 3000 footnotes - is nothing less than a
brilliant, well-researched and convincing support for the above statement by the recently elected
Benedict XVI.
PLEASE NOTE: We do not advertise nor promote commercial items in this Domain,
however, in this case we must make an exception since Mr. Lee Penn's
FALSE DAWN accurately fills in all the details of two of our documents:
THE SPIRITUAL AMBUSH OF A UNIVERSAL RELIGION and
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A NEW WORLD ORDER
Sophia Perennis, 2005; ISBN 15973100X; US: $27.95; UK: £19.95
Order through www.amazon.com or www.amazon.co.uk
[Bookstores: under 5 copies, 20% discount; over 5, 40%; libraries: 20% discount; order through Ingram, Baker & Taylor, Bertram's, Gardner's, or p e r e n n i s @ t a c o n i c . n e t ]
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