GEOPOLITICS OF JOHN PAUL II

Simultaneously with the strengthening of internal Church positions, the Vatican set itself the task of restoring its international political weight and influence, and primarily by strengthening its positions in Eastern Europe. As for both the Vatican and the United States, these States have become the main arena of geopolitical confrontation with the Soviet Union, their strategic interests here completely coincided.

Both forces embodied for each other the corresponding counterbalance to communism: the Vatican-ideological, and Washington-military-political. In 1985, in his article in the journal “Trayelog”, Zbigniew Brzezinski in this regard will point out: “I believe that everything that Pope John Paul II does is of paramount historical importance. It is necessary to put an end to the schism of Europe and return the great and immortal Russia to the bosom of the Christian community and the market economy. ” 14 The same defining role of the Pontiff was highlighted by Gorbachev, who declared in March 1992. in the pages of the Turin newspaper “BA 81atra”: “it can Now be said that everything that has happened in Eastern Europe in recent years would have been impossible without the Pope’s enormous efforts and the role he plays in politics on the world stage. I think the very significant steps we have taken in our country have been important in developing relations with the Vatican. Pope John Paul II will play an enormous political role now that European history has undergone profound changes [15].

The mutual interests of the Vatican and Washington became the basis for the agreement concluded in August 1982 between Reagan and John Paul II on joint actions in Poland in order to destroy the “Communist camp”. The agreement, dubbed the “Holy Alliance”, was published in Time magazine by journalist Carl Bernstein, who received information from the Vatican’s top brass and top officials of the American establishment. According to D. Kalaich, the disclosure of this Pact to “the entire world village” was intended to show all Catholics that the Vatican is on the side of the new world order, and to invite them to follow the Pontiff [16].

In the formation of this Union, Opus Dei played a key role. The order used its ties to the North American clans of the Italian mafia, as well as the close relationship of The Pope’s private Secretary Stanislav Dzivic [17] with the American members of the Trilateral Commission, and most notably with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s former national security aide. It was Zbigniew Brzezinski and Josef Tomko, head of the Vatican’s propaganda Department and then head of the papal counterintelligence Department, who developed the so-called operation Open book, which was to flood Eastern Europe and regions of the Soviet Union such as Ukraine and the Baltic States with anti-Communist literature. This operation was coordinated by the CIA and the Holy Alliance (SA) [18] through priests working in these territories.

After the election of President Ronald Reagan, but before his inauguration, a relationship of strategic importance was established between him and John Paul II. As the researcher E. Lebeck wrote, “in the early years of the Reagan administration, one could observe the emergence of convinced Catholics in the highest positions, which had never happened before in the history of the United States” [19]. Active role in cooperation with the Vatican played the head of the CIA W. Casey and Secretary of state A. Haig, both Catholics and knights of the order of Malta, called the “armed hand” of the Vatican, as well as national security adviser Richard Allen, who later claimed that “relations with the Vatican represented one of the greatest secret alliances in history.”

Zbigniew Brzezinski retained the position of liaison between the White house and the Sacred Alliance, which, as the main coordinator of the actions of Western intelligence services in Eastern Europe, has become in fact a center for secret operations in these countries.

Representatives of the Reagan administration later admitted that the level of awareness and analysis of the situation in Poland “Holy fathers” ahead of American intelligence and diplomats. Reagan’s national security aide William Clark, in particular, argued: “the Vatican’s Information was absolutely superior to ours in quality and speed in almost every respect. At one difficult moment, when the administration was hesitating what action to take, the Pope’s representative in Washington, PIO Lagi, told Vernon Walters, Deputy Director of the CIA [20]: “Listen to the Holy father. In this case, we have two thousand years of experience” [21]. From 1981 to 1988, Walters personally met with the Pontiff seven times.

This cooperation was connected with another important fact. In January 1983, the Vatican adopted a new Catholic code of Canon law, which was no longer valid for 200 years Canon 2335, which forbade Catholics on pain of excommunication from the Church stay in Masonic lodges [22], which meant an end to the fight against Freemasonry and facilitated the maintenance of relations with the mafia prelates circles [23]. In the same year in the month of April, the Pope received members of the Trilateral Commission in full (about 200 people) [24], and in 1984 diplomatic relations were established between the Vatican and Washington. In the United States, at least fifty Opus Dei centers are opened, members of the order appear in the White house, in the middle and upper echelons of the Pentagon, and since then and to the present time the influence of the order here does not cease to expand.

The Vatican played an indispensable role as a mediator in establishing contacts with the Soviet leadership and in the perestroika processes in Ukraine. In 1988, a message from John Paul II was delivered to Gorbachev in Moscow through cardinal Casaroli, followed by a meeting between Gorbachev and the Pope on December 1, 1989, during which they had a 70-minute face-to-face conversation in the Pontiff’s private library. At the end of the conversation, the Soviet delegation left for Malta to meet with J. P. Elder bush.

After this meeting, the activity of Catholics in the Soviet Union begins to intensify. First of all, the activities of the Uniates, which were granted significant benefits to the detriment of the Russian Orthodox Church, are legalized. In Western Ukraine, demonstrations of Uniates against Orthodox Christians, pogroms and seizures of their churches, accompanied by beating and abuse of priests and laity, begin from one center. As a result, three Orthodox dioceses – Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk and Lviv-were defeated in Galicia. In the last of the 1,000 existing parishes, only 40 remained. In 1990 there was a split in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church were formed. Catholic parishes in the Western lands of Ukraine and Belarus are being restored as of September 1, 1939. through private invitations, a powerful cast of missionaries began, local authorities allocate significant budgetary funds for the restoration of churches. If in 1992 there were 92 Catholic parishes, in 1996 – 651. There were 22 monasteries, 193 Sunday schools, two seminaries and the Higher College of St. Thomas at the University of Kiev.

In 1991, the hierarchical structures of the Catholic Church, which had ceased to exist since the late 20s, were also restored in Russia, and Catholics moved to active proselytizing activities

If before the revolution in Russia there were 150 Catholic parishes and 2 dioceses (Mogilev and Tiraspol), now there are more than 200 parishes and 4 dioceses United in the” ecclesiastical province ” of the Roman Catholic Church headed by the Metropolitan. These are dioceses in the North of the European part of Russia with the center in Moscow, in the South of the European part of Russia with the center in Saratov, in Western Siberia with the center in Novosibirsk and in Eastern Siberia with the center in Irkutsk. The Catholic Church began to conduct extensive preaching and missionary work here, refusing to recognize these dioceses as the” canonical territory ” of Orthodoxy. In 1992, the society of Jesuits officially began its activities in Russia, which opened its branches in Novosibirsk, Kaliningrad, St. Petersburg and Moscow.

In June 2001, at the invitation of the then President of Ukraine L. Kuchma, the Pope visited independent Ukraine for the first time with the so-called “state visit”, which took place despite the protests of thousands of Orthodox believers. During it, the Pope not only visited Kiev and Lviv, but also held services in these cities, which clearly went beyond the “state visit” declared by the authorities.

The active participation of the Vatican in the implementation of Washington’s plans was intended to “spiritually” legitimize the change of power in Eastern European countries. As the Serbian researcher Dragos Kalaich wrote, the Pope was prompted to go to this state of General decline of Catholicism in the West and “the bitter consciousness that the last hearths, keeping the flame of the Catholic faith, burn with dignity only in the countries of Eastern Europe, especially in Poland and Croatia.” But at the time “he did not yet suspect that by taking part in the destruction of the Communist tower of Babel, he thereby opened access to materials for the completion of another, much larger tower of Babel, called the “new world order”.

Ecumenical openness

Strengthening the international influence of the Vatican accompanied by widening external openness of Catholicism and active part in the Ecumenical movement, committed with “purification of the historical memory” working on “reconciling” with other religions. If the second Vatican Council only outlined this restructuring of consciousness, then John Paul II brought it to its logical end. The image of the Vatican-conciliator was created during the transition to the final stage of the collapse of the USSR, so that the” theology of morality ” of John Paul II served as an excellent justification for the need to move from confrontation to dialogue between East and West. In his summary report, which the Pontiff presented at the meeting of the European Parliament on October 11, 1988, he said: “the times have come favorable: peace on Earth, cooperation between States, human rights, democracy – all this has entered the mass consciousness.”

The policy of John Paul II was distinguished by deliberate openness: in 1986 he appealed to representatives of the leading religions of the world to organize a “world day of prayer for peace”, choosing for this unique event the city of Assisi, where about 60 delegations of Christian and non-Christian denominations arrived. In order to reconcile, the Pontiff undertook an unprecedented campaign of repentance, which consisted in recognizing the responsibility and guilt of the entire Catholic community in various spheres of its activities during the last ten centuries, the culmination of which was the so – called “examination of conscience”, proclaimed in 1994. The Pope’s self-critical statements were made in relation to Galileo, the schism of the churches, the Inquisition, the Crusades, the responsibility of Catholics for wars, for behavior towards American Indians and Negroes, for integrists, for a split with the East.

One of the important results of the policy of “building bridges” was the rapprochement with the Lutherans

John Paul II became the first Pontiff to visit the Lutheran Church in Rome, where he took part in the Ecumenical “Liturgy of peace”. In 1999, on the eve of the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Christ, Catholics and Lutherans signed a joint Declaration that put an end to theological disputes over whether a Christian is justified by faith alone or by faith and good works. John Paul II became the first Pope to visit on April 13, 1986. the main synagogue of Rome (this was the first visit of its kind in the history of Catholicism), where he met and prayed with the chief Rabbi Dr. Elio Toaf. And in November of the same year, the Pope delivered a speech to the participants of the Second international Judeo-Christian dialogue on “the meaning of salvation and redemption in the Jewish and Christian traditions”, in which he spoke about “mutual acquaintance with the respective heritage in the faith of each of us” and “about our ties… in our understanding of salvation.” In 1993, the Vatican took an important political step by establishing diplomatic relations with Israel, which had previously been recognized only de facto. As important theological conclusions followed from this confession, many scholars have assessed it as having revolutionary significance.

Under John Paul II, a dialogue with Muslims was also initiated, which takes place in both theoretical (doctrinal) and practical spheres. In practical terms, the Church “atonement for the sins of the Crusades and the Reconquista” began to assume the role of the messenger of Islam in Europe, taking the initiative or agreeing to the implementation of projects for the construction of mosques, as it was, for example, in Lyon, Madrid and Rome. But if in this sphere the dialogue can develop without questioning the basic doctrinal positions of both religions, in the sphere of theoretical search for a “new dimension of theology” it takes Catholicism so far that the line between philosophical systems begins to blur. Some sections of classical theology are rebuilt, Scripture is re-read, permitted the reading of the traditions of one culture in the light of other traditions that appear to be “competition” between Christianity and Islam, which should lead to a better understanding of the two traditions.

All this laid a new understanding of apologetics, designed to change the image of the papacy in the eyes of the world community, renewing and fully incorporating it into the modern culture of tolerance and freedom [25].

However, despite the openness of this policy in its Ecumenical activities, the Vatican consistently pursues its clear interest. Although the revision of history also touched the papacy – the Pontiff acknowledged the errors of the Popes in the division of churches, in their statements regarding the rejection of religious freedom and modernism – he never allowed himself to touch the main cause of all deviations in the life of the Western Church – the position of the primacy of the Pope and the dogma of the infallibility of his doctrine ex cathedra. The apparent ambivalence in the behavior of the Vatican-the willingness to make concessions in matters relating to certain provisions of Christian doctrine (the Pope’s idea of “seeds of the Word”, contained, allegedly, in all religions), and the inflexibility in defending the rights of the Roman Pontiff-has become characteristic of the cooperation of the Catholic Church with the world Council of churches. Sending its representatives as “observers” to all Ecumenical assemblies, conferences and participating in joint prayers, the Catholic Church never joined the WCC. Cardinal Willebrans, Chairman of the Department of Christian unity at the Vatican, explained this in a letter to the General Secretary of the WCC on July 4, 1983: “the Roman Catholic Church, to a much greater extent than other churches, considers its structure of universal community and universal mission to be an essential element of its identity… The decision to join the world community of churches could be misinterpreted. from the position of power (authority) in the Roman Catholic Church and the ways of its implementation” [26].

Meanwhile, the main consequence of the Ecumenical “openness” of the Vatican was the further erosion of the religious consciousness of Europeans. With the transition to globalization, which turned the “welfare society” in the “welfare for the chosen”, the usual way of life, established social ties began to break down, and with them began to break and the previous ideas, and the very spiritual structure of the individual, resulting in the erosion of traditional religious values took a threatening character. As cardinal Ratzinger stated before his election as Pope, ” aggressive secularism threatens religious freedom in Europe by marginalizing the faithful. We have abandoned Christian culture in favor of aggressive secularism with intolerant traits… The mention of God is very marginalized. In the political sphere, it seems almost obscene to talk about God, as if it violates the freedom of those who do not believe” [27]. The most significant in this regard was the fact that in the process of drafting the EU Constitution, European officials did not include a reference to the Christian roots of Europe, limiting the provision on the cultural, religious and humanistic heritage of Europe [28].

The weakening of the position of the Catholic Church is expressed in many indicators: this is a decrease in the number of its adherents, and the fall in the number of clergy. Religious values themselves are increasingly eroded, knowledge of the fundamental foundations on which the Christian faith is based is disappearing. As a result, Catholicism in Europe has lost the value of a force that determines the generally accepted norms of behavior and forms a social system of values. As John Paul II himself admitted, ” Jesus Christ seems to have disappeared from European life. European culture gives the impression of a kind of silent apostasy of intellectuals who live as if God did not exist.” In the context of erosion of traditional concepts and values, their uncertainty, loss of understanding of the true norm, Europeans are becoming increasingly susceptible to the influence of alien religious cults, which behave very actively and aggressively. We are talking about both traditional Eastern and new pseudo-Eastern, pseudo-Christian, anti-Christian, neo-pagan teachings, most of which are occult in nature. They are characterized by interpenetration, mixing of traditions, that is, syncretism, which replaces a holistic, coherent worldview.

This means the transition of pluralism to another level, turning it into a “global religious market” or, as they now write, a “supermarket of spiritual goods”, in which free enterprise penetrates into the sphere of salvation, offering everyone a choice of any religious or pseudo-religious idea. Left to himself, the layman as a consumer chooses what he likes, what is suitable, forming his own system of values. And here Christianity faces the strongest competition, because religion in this “market” is valued not from the point of view of the truth advocated by it, but from the point of view of the spiritual and spiritual comfort that it provides. Therefore, to the greatest extent here succeeds occultism, passion which acquires a mass character.

This is the result of the consistent application of the fundamental principle of modern European culture-the principle of freedom of conscience, understood as freedom of choice, the assertion of which was promoted by the Catholic Church itself.

15. There.
16. 2G
17. Calais D. a Pact with the devil. The tragedy of the modern Vatican. URL: http: veruem.narod.ru/Tragedy Vaiticans.html.

18. Some researchers believe that Bishop Zivic, head of the State Secretariat entered into Opus Dei. When he later became Archbishop and cardinal of Cracow, he had overall control of the service ladder in the Vatican (See: Terras Ch. Op. cit. P. 1S).

The Holy Alliance was created in 15bb by order of Pope Pius V, and although the Vatican has never recognized its existence, it is recognized by some researchers as one of the best and most effective security services in the world.

19. Lebec E. the secret history of Vatican diplomacy. Moscow: Ripol Classic, 2004. Pp. 232.

20. Vernon Walters, a knight of the order of Malta, was then Deputy Director of the CIA.

21. Papa Karol’s dolls and puppeteers. URL: http://www.zaistinu.ru/old/Ukraine/church/papadolls.shtml.

22. Rome et Frans-macons. Histoire d’un conflict. Paris: Berg International Éditeurs, 1996. P. 21-22.

23. In October 1983, the Italian magazine Oggi published a scandalous photograph of Pope John Paul II at a Masonic Banquet in an issue that was almost confiscated: He is included with his arms crossed in the “fraternal chain” formed by Masonic guests around the Banquet table (See: Hieromonk Savva (janich). Apostasy. Moscow: Russian idea, 2004).

24. VanHelsing J. Sociétés secrets.

26. L. Quand le pape demande pardon. Paris: Albin Michel, 1997. P. 19-20. Archias. Seraphim (Alexiev), Archim. Sergius (Yazadjiev). Waiting for new “Messianic times” / / Orthodoxy or death. No. 5. P. 18.

27. In Europe, the mention of God is considered marginal / / Week: Orthodox news for the week, 176 issues of the mailing list. URL: www.sedmica.ortodoxy.ru / 176-26-11-04.php.

28. Constitution of the European Union: a Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (with commentary). Moscow: INFRA-M, 2005. Pp. 93-94.

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