“Mexican Presidential Candidate Calls Mass Migration to US a ‘Human Right’ ” read a recent headline on The Daily Caller website. The piece quotes leading Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (known as AMLO) as saying mass migration to the United States is “human right” for all North Americans.
But our buddy AMLO was just getting warmed up. He continued, “And soon, very soon – after the victory of our movement – we will defend all the migrants in the American continent and all the migrants in the world who, by necessity, have to leave their villages to seek life in the United States, it is a human right that we are going to defend” [combined quotation from The Daily Caller article and Google translation of the original Spanish language report].
These are shocking words, and it may be tempting to chalk up AMLO’s speech as just another example of overheated campaign rhetoric. After all, the Mexican presidential election is coming up on July 1, and doubtless Mexican politicians are tempted, as are politicians everywhere, to demagogue if they think it will help their election chances. Admittedly, there may be some truth to this. But in the opinion of this author, it would be a mistake to simply dismiss AMLO’s speech as sound and fury signifying nothing.
It would be a mistake, because AMLO’s rhetoric is not original with him. For the notion that migrants from one nation have the right to impose themselves and their attendant costs on citizens of another nation is straight out of the playbook of the Roman Catholic Church-State, of which AMLO was, and may still be, a member.
It’s important to point this out. For it is the political activity of the prelates of the Roman Church-State, following Rome’s political and economic philosophy, and their allies in the civil governments of various nations, that is substantially responsible for fomenting the current migrant crises both in Europe and in the United States. Further, Rome’s purpose in fostering the migrant crisis is not, as they claim, to bring about the end of human suffering on the part of the migrants, but rather to advance Rome’s agenda of world government by destabilizing the nations of the West, thus making it easier to fold them into a system of world government with Rome running the show.
In these series of posts, it is my intention to look at what Rome teaches about property rights, in particular, its unbiblical notion of the Universal Destination of Goods. Second, we will look at Rome’s doctrine of migration as set forth in the 1952 apostolic constitution Exsul Familia
(The Émigré Family) and, closer to home, Rome’s 2003 joint statement by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and their counterparts in Mexico, the Conferencia del Episcopado Mexicano, titled Strangers No Longer Together on the Journey of Hope. Finally, we shall look at what the Bible has to say about migration, in particular, the example of Moses as he led Israel on a mass migration through the wilderness. As we shall see, Moses’ stance on private property was much different from the snake oil being promoted by the papal Antichrist and his minions in the Church of Rome.
The Universal Destination of Goods
“That’s not the Bible,” said the supervisor to my friend. Previously, my friend’s boss had asked if she had a copy of the Bible. My friend, being a Protestant, had gladly handed over her copy of the New King James Version only to have her boss return it a few minutes later in frustration.
You see, her boss was a Roman Catholic, and the Roman Catholic Bible is not the same Bible as is used by Protestants. The Protestant Bible has 66 books, whereas the Romanists use a Bible of 73 books plus some fragments.
I relate this incident to highlight the fact that much of what passes for agreement among Protestants and Roman Catholics can be described as verbal agreement. That is, we use many of the same words, “Bible” in this case, and assume that we attach the same meaning to them, when in fact we do not. When Roman Catholics and Protestants say “Bible,” they are not talking about the same book. As the fundamentalists of a hundred years ago used to say about the liberals of the day, “We have the same vocabulary, but a different dictionary.”
This one example of verbal agreement could be multiplied many times over when it comes to Protestants and Roman Catholics. “Private property” is another term of this sort. When Protestants talk about private property, they mean that which one both owns and has the exclusive right of use. When Protestants hear representatives of the Roman Catholic Church talk about private property, they tend to assume the Romanists mean the same thing. But this is not the case.
Rome teaches a doctrine called the Universal Destination of Goods (UDG), which to undiscerning ears can sound something like the Biblical doctrine of private property (Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things?), but is, in fact, far from it.
If you were to ask most Americans, regardless of their religious background, why they both own, and have the right to use, their car, they’d probably answer something like, “I paid for it, it’s mine.” That’s a good and Biblical answer. Probably most people would even say it’s common sense. So it may come as a surprise to them to find out that Rome has a very different take on private property. .
For Rome, the right to own and to use private property ultimately does not rest on the fact that you paid for it, that you have legal title to it, but upon need. If someone needs your property more than you do, he has the right to take it himself, or to vote for politicians who promise to do the taking for him. And that right to take your property, either by himself or by the ballot box, based upon perceived need can be traced to Rome’s unbiblical belief that when God made the world, he gave it to men in common, not individually as the Scriptures teach.
“Outrageous!,” you may say. “Rome doesn’t teach that!” Well, Rome’s doctrine of original communism, or the UDG, is outrageous. I won’t argue that point for a moment. But this is, in fact, Rome’s position on private property. And it is the UDG which is foundational to all Rome’s teaching on immigration, migration and refugee resettlement. Ultimately, it is the UDG that undergirds AMLO’s assertion that migration to the United States is a human right which he, and apparently his government if elected, will defend.
This is the critical point that Protestants must understand: Rome’s teaching about immigration, migration, and refugee resettlement is based upon an unbiblical understanding of private property.
In this author’s opinion, the best explanation of the UDG is by John Robbins in his book Ecclesiastical Megalomania: The Economic and Political Thought of the Roman Catholic Church. This book, among the most important books ever written by a Protestant on the Church of Rome, is a treasure trove of information about the critical subject of Rome and its economic and political ideology, which could be summarized and collectivism and tyranny respectively.
Regarding the subject of the UDG, Robbins wrote,
The Thomistic notion of original communism – the denial that private property is part of the natural law, but that common property is both natural and divine – is foundational to all the Roman Catholic arguments for various forms of collectivism, from medieval feudalism and guild socialism to twentieth century fascism and liberation theology. The popes refer to this original communism as the “universal destination of goods.” Take, for example, John Paul II’s expression of it in his 1987 encyclical On Social Concern:
It is necessary to state once more the characteristic principle of Christian social doctrine: the goods of this world are originally meant for all. The right of private property is valid and necessary, but it does not nullify the value of this principle. Private property, in fact, is under a “social mortgage,” which means that it has an intrinsically social function, based upon and justified precisely by the principle of this universal destination of goods.
This principle – the universal destination of goods – is so important in Catholic social thought that all rights are to be subordinated to it. Paul VI made the point quite clear in his 1967 encyclical On the Progress of Peoples:
…each man has therefore the right to find in the world what is necessary for himself. The recent Council [Vatican II] reminded us of this: “God intended the earth and all that it contains for the use of every human being and people. Thus, as all men follow justice and unite in charity, created goods should abound for them on a reasonable basis.” All other rights whatsoever, including those of property and of free commerce, are to be subordinated to this principle.
Please note the words: “All other rights whatsoever, including those of property and of free commerce, are to be subordinated to this principle.” “All other rights whatsoever,” of course, includes not only the right to private property and the right to free enterprise, but the rights to worship, speak, teach, write, think, and publish freely – indeed, the right to life itself. In Roman Catholic economic thought, there is a hierarchy of principles, and the most important of these principles, to which all others are subordinate, is the principle of the universal destination of goods. This is the economic corollary of the principle of solidarity (Robbins, Ecclesiastical Megalomania, 38, 39).
For Rome, private property is a nice convention and something the Magisterium is willing to tolerate, at least up to a point. But when push comes to shove, need trumps title. And Rome isn’t shy about making this point known.
Take, for example, a recent speech given by San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy at the World Meeting of Popular Movements [somewhat ironically, Pope Francis recently denounced populism as “not the answer” to Europe’s immigration crisis, apparently there’s a good populism and a bad populism] in Modesto, California on February 18, 2017.
Actually, McElroy’s address was more of a rant than a speech. But what he had to say was very instructive for Protestants who have ears to hear what the Antichrist Roman-Church State believes about economics, politics, and immigration, migration and refugee resettlement. As the National Catholic Register reports,
It took all of six minutes for San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy to rouse a crowd of nearly 700 community organizers and social justice “protagonistas” by calling them to become disrupters and rebuilders amid current American politics…
“We must disrupt those who would seek to send troops into our streets to deport the undocumented, to rip mothers and fathers from their families [now you know where all the emotional rhetoric you’ve heard over the past two weeks about how President Trump’s policies have caused child migrants to be ripped from their parents comes from, it’s the propaganda of the Roman Catholic Church-State]…
He [McElroy] urged people to never be afraid to speak the truth, which lay in empirical [n.b. Rome’s Thomistic empiricism is showing through] reality and the “realities and marginalization that confront our nation…
The San Diego bishop said that “the fundamental political question of our age” was whether current U.S. economic structures will receive greater freedom or be directed in a way “to safeguard the dignity of the human person and the common good of our nation” [n.b. The bishop contrasts freedom with the sort of socialist government controls favored by Rome, in truth Rome hates capitalism and liberty and loves collectivist economics and the governmental oppression required to enforce it].
“In that battle, the tradition of Catholic social teaching is unequivocally on the side of strong governmental and societal protections for the powerless, the worker, the homeless, the hungry, those without decent medical care, the unemployed,” McElroy said to rolling applause.
“This stance of the church’s teaching flows from teaching of the Book of Genesis, that creation is the gift of God to all humanity. Thus in the most fundamental way, there is a universal destination for all the material goods that exist in this world. Wealth is a common heritage, not at its core a right of lineage or of acquisition” [emphasis mine].
This is among the clearest statement’s of the UDG this author has seen. And please note, the statement was made in the context of a speech that included the issue of immigration.
As we shall see in future installments of this series, Rome makes it very clear that the UDG lies at the heart of its nation-breaking program of mass immigration, migration and refugee resettlement.
(To be continued…)
Lux Lucet 