VATICAN CITY (ChurchMilitant.com) – The Vatican’s goal of involving secular groups in human development issues is not to provoke conversion or promote Catholicism, but to advance “common humanity”, an important cardinal said categorically.
In a revealing interview with Vaticanist Edward Pentin, Cdl. Peter Appiah Turkson, prefect of the Department for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, confirms that “the Catholic faith as the only authentic means of human salvation” has not been spoken “in any group because we recognize that it is a multifaceted group”.
“The goal is not to provoke everyone’s conversion, to bring anyone to their faith. In fact, it’s just about the point of our common humanity, so to speak, and how we can involve different institutions to promote it,” Turkson insists.
The Ghanaian cardinal, considered as papable (eligible to be pope) by Pentin in his book The next Pope: The main candidates for cardinals, argues that his department bears witness to Christ, presenting the Church’s social teaching and “expressing Christ incarnate”.
The Vatican also collaborates with secular bodies such as the Council for Inclusive Capitalism (CIC) to fulfill the mandate of dialogue with society “with all its problems and issues” expressed in Vatican II in the document Gaudium et Spes, Turkson reasons.
A ‘Reset’ for Christ?
Pentin’s incisive interview, published on Wednesday, repeatedly and pointedly questions the cardinal about the Church’s main mission of “preaching the gospel with Christ at the center” as “central to any plan to promote integral human development”.
The journalist doggedly returns to the question of what the Turkson dicastery is doing to ensure that “the Catholic faith is fully promoted and defended within the initiatives” of the Vatican meetings in Davos, CIC, United Nations and the World Economic Forum (WEF) – a body that promotes the “Great Restoration” agenda.
The goal is not to bring about conversion at the tip of everyone, to bring anyone to faith.
There are many people talking about redefining the future, but the only thing common to everyone is “that they see the current system as defective” – a feature particularly exposed by the pandemic, notes Turkson.
Church Militant obtained a part of the conversation with the cardinal not included in the published interview, where Pentin asks Turkson:
By not talking about Christ and putting him clearly at the center and instead talking generically about God and faith, you think that someone can easily fall in support of a pseudo-religion, what some call “climatic religion” or a pantheistic-environmentalist religion that some say this Great Reset initiative proposes?
Turkson replies:
A Vatican dicastery cannot be promoting pantheism. For example, in our speech on ecology, when we described the land as our common home, it was considered pantheistic. But this is far from being true, because when we refer to Saint Francis of Assisi, who is the inspiration of all this ecological teaching of Pope Francis, Saint Francis invited us to consider that we belong to a universal fraternity because we all have a vocation to praise God together.
“Creation cannot be a deity, because divinity cannot praise God,” notes Turkson, emphasizing that, while “Davos is talking about redefining the future, but without Pope Francis and without his religion, Pope Francis is speaking about redefining the future rooted in Scripture, rooted in the grace of God, [and] rooted in Christ. “
Veiled communism?
The cardinal also rejects the accusation of utopianism raised against Pope Francis and the accusation that the Vatican’s new allies are promoting “communism with a different name”, calling it “Great Reinitialization”.
Fortune magazine interviews Cdl. Turkson in 2016
“I know for some [the pope’s vision is] a little socialist or whatever, but if we go back to the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles and how they lived, or even look at the book of Deuteronomy (chapter 5) and the celebration of the jubilee, which said there would be no poor people in their midst, this has been the biblical view since the beginning, “argues Turkson.
Not to mention Christ … do you think that someone can easily fall into a pseudo-religion, what some call ‘climate religion’?
Turkson does not quote Deuteronomy 15, which states: “Because he will never stop being poor on earth” – text quoted by Jesus in the narrative of a woman who anointed him with very expensive perfume made from pure nard (Mark 14: 7, Matthew 26:11 , John 12: 8).
When Pentin pressures Turkson to respond to criticisms of initiatives “to put too much power in a very small group of people, who are then forcing a certain worldview on others”, Turkson seems to dismiss the charge as a conspiracy theory – the kind of that used to be attributed to the “Illuminati”.
On the question of the abolition of private property discussed as one of the themes of the “Great Restoration”, Turkson makes a vague reference to St. Ambrose and St. John Chrysostom, who say that “the rich have wealth so that they can serve the poor and thus the poor will have a way to appreciate them for their help. “
The cardinal also talks about how the inventions of unique inventors like Edison and Einstein became “common property” and “universal property”.
Rejecting the “leaky” economy, the cardinal calls for “inclusive capitalism”, which he describes as people who have wealth deciding to squeeze harder on the table when a newcomer who has no wealth enters.
“So this is what we should aim for, sitting firmly to make room for other people,” says Turkson.
Davos talks about redefining the future, but without Pope Francis and without his religion.
In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI appointed the cardinal president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (PCJP).
But in 2017, Pope Francis dissolved the PCJP and named Turkson the mayor of the new “super-department” for the Promotion of Integral Human Development.
In 2020, Pope Francis appointed Turkson as coordinator of a task force of five Vatican groups to respond to the socioeconomic consequences of the coronavirus.
— Campaign 31877 —
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