More on the possible changes in the Vatican from Joseph D'Hippolito in FrontPage, with thanks to EPG:
Nearly two years after conducting a vigorous international campaign against military intervention in Iraq, the Vatican reversed itself.The Telegraph, Britain’s leading conservative newspaper, reported Oct. 10 that Vatican officials now support a multinational military presence led by NATO to restore order and protect Iraq’s nascent democracy.
The article's headline is telling: "Vatican buries the hatchet with Blair and Bush over Iraq." Before the Anglo-American invasion, Pope John Paul II passionately opposed President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who favored military force to make Saddam Hussein comply with the United Nations' demand for disarmament.
But as an anonymous Vatican advistor told the Telegraph, "there is a feeling that there really is no going back."
Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican’s secretary of state, described the reversal more colorfully.
"The child has been born," Sodano told the Italian daily La Stampa on Sept. 22. "It may be illegitimate but it’s here, and it must be reared and educated."
Four days later, an editorial in the newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference, Avvenire, written by Vittorio Parsi, a professor at the Catholic University of Milan and the newspaper’s foreign policy expert, bluntly outlined Vatican policy:
What (the terrorists) want is, in fact, not "Iraq for the Iraqis," but "Iraq for the assassins." Thus all of Iraq will become a colossal common area for fundamentalist terrorism, for the brigands of Ba'ath, and for the most extremist Shiite mullahs. The international community and the West, which objectively holds within this community the greatest share of power, culture, and responsibility, have the duty of blocking the realization of this plan. The Atlantic Alliance, with its attitudes and counterbalances, is the multilateral institution that can assume the onus of protecting the right of the Iraqis to express their political will by voting.
Rome’s stance goes beyond a resigned acceptance of uncomfortable facts or the determination to influence the issue. It reflects a gradual yet increased awareness – and fear – of jihadism’s growing influence.
Yes, read it all.
Afraid this is an emergency and the Vatican has not protected its flock from Muslim wolves who are eager to destroy Italy's culture and replace St Peters with a giant Mosque and Sharia Law...
Rome also appears more willing to advocate a more assertive military presence against jihadist terror, within limits governed by international law. In his La Stampa interview, Sodano hoped that the United Nations would add a new principle to its charter: "the possibility, even the duty of ‘humanitarian intervention’ in extreme situations in which human rights are trampled upon within a country."
Compare that with Article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.
Does Article 28 of the UDHR sanction the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq? Would it sanction invading Sudan? Should not the UN and the human rights community have defended military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq on the basis of defending the spirit and intent of Article 28 - to ensure an international order (i.e. peace and stability)in which the human rights set forth in the UDHR could be enjoyed by all people in all nations?
I supported invading these nations not only on because they were established threats to the security of other nations, but because they trampled on the human rights of their citizens. That the UN did not follow suit is indicative of the moral bankruptcy and infighting that has made that organization an increasingly irrelevant entity - unwilling and incapable of dealing with the conflicts it was designed to resolve. The human rights NGOs I fear are not much better, having submitted to the ideological drift that has undermined their effectiveness and credibility.