By Joseph A. Klein, CFP United Nations Columnist ——Bio and Archives--September 25, 2015
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“The recent agreement reached on the nuclear question in a sensitive region of Asia and the Middle East is proof of the potential of political good will and of law, exercised with sincerity, patience and constancy.”For obvious reasons, the pope avoided this touchy issue in his speech to Congress. The pope was addressing the UN on the same day as the General Assembly was set to adopt by consensus 17 broad “Sustainable Development Goals” (SDGs). These goals, along with 169 subsidiary targets, have as their central objective the eradication of poverty over the next fifteen years. The idea behind the SDGs is that ending poverty must go hand-in-hand with a plan that addresses a range of social and economic needs in a more integrated fashion than previous initiatives. They include inclusive and equitable quality education, ensuring healthy lives, gender equality, productive employment and decent jobs for all, action to combat climate change and its impacts, inclusive economic growth and reduction of economic inequality within and between nations, infrastructure development, affordable and reliable energy for all, sustainable consumption and production patterns, protection of oceans and biodiversity. In other words, we have the UN’s dream list for a more inclusive, egalitarian world in which free market economics give way to a utopian vision of “peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development” funded by massive redistribution of wealth. Pope Francis is all in with this program. But he wants more than just words, declarations and lists of goals, targets and statistical indicators of progress. He wants concrete action that recognizes we are dealing with “real men and women who live, struggle and suffer, and are often forced to live in great poverty, deprived of all rights.” Governments must ensure they have at least the minimum material means to live, which he said are “lodging, labour, and land” as well as education and adequate food and drinking water. The right to labor, the pope explained, means “properly remunerated employment.” To the list of such material needs that must be fulfilled, Pope Francis added that governments must ensure “spiritual freedom, which includes religious freedom.” Pope Francis made a couple of references in his speech that could be interpreted as reflecting more traditional Catholic teachings on social issues. He mentioned the rights of the unborn. And, in an indirect swipe at gay marriage, he pointed to the “moral law written into human nature itself, one which includes the natural difference between man and woman.” However, Pope Francis chose to emphasize in his UN speech, as he has done on other occasions, the progressive side of Catholic teaching. He speaks in broad strokes of the individual dignity of all human beings and our obligations towards each other and the environment, which he claims all religions recognize as moral truths. Here, unfortunately, the pope is engaging in wishful thinking. He wasted an opportunity to use the global platform provided to him at the United Nations to ask all leaders and scholars of the Muslim faith who claim to believe in the universality of human dignity to stand strongly and publicly against the all too pervasive doctrines of Islamic supremacy and jihad. It is getting tiresome to hear the rationalization from President Obama, and even Pope Francis himself, that all religions have their share of extremists and ideologues. No other religious doctrine today is anywhere near as dangerous as Islamic ideology, preached by so many imams around the world and practiced by so many adherents. This Islamic ideology is everything that Pope Francis says he is against. It is exclusionary, destructive and dehumanizing of every individual whom does not subscribe to its “divine” sharia law. Christians and other religious minorities are suffering genocide in the Middle East and parts of Africa directly as a result of Islamic jihad. They cannot afford to worry about the effects of climate change. They are in a daily battle for their lives. Pope Francis should have spoken more directly to them and assured them that they will not be forgotten or lost among the UN’s catalogue of Sustainable Development Goals.
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Joseph A. Klein is the author of Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom.