Humanity’s Greatness Can Overcome NATO’s New Dark Age
The Pope’s encyclical, Magnifica humanitas, is a most potent weapon against the wars and economic devastation of the present NATO New Dark Age. Together with the Ten Principles for A New Security and Development Architecture of Helga Zepp-LaRouche, and the American 1776 Declaration itself, the three, including Magnifica humanitas, should be the primary documents of discussion and study in the days leading up to the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence. Pope Leo XIV, as he concluded his Apostolic mission to Spain in the Canary Island city of Tenerife, proclaimed:
“From this square, I wish to address a clear message to those who take advantage of people’s desperation, to those who organize death routes, traffic in human beings, withhold documents, exploit workers, threaten women, deceive families and turn the suffering of others into a business. Stop. Repent (cf. Mk 1:15). The tears and blood of these brothers and sisters cry out to God, and their suffering reaches him (cf. Gen 4:10; Ex 3:7–9). The money wrested from the vulnerability of the poor will bring neither peace, nor honor, nor a future (cf. Jer 22:13; Job 5:1–6).”
Pope Leo is not being “impractical” or idealistic here. He is taking the revolutionary approach of invoking the primacy of the Good in human history. Statesman Lyndon LaRouche, at the Schiller Institute conference on “The Year of Augustine” in December of 1985, explained this clearly.
“What is the Good? The Good is the power of mind to recognize a principle of Reason as a lawful ordering of the entire universe. To recognize that a process of development is associated with this, and to recognize that the continuation and acceleration of the takeover of the personality by elaborated Reason, is the Good! The elevation of the moral condition of mankind in correspondence with this principle, and in actions congruent with that principle, is the Good.
“Such was the principle of Solon at Athens. Such was the principle of the Platonic Academy, the concept of the Republic. And such were the principles of the founding of the modern European republic by the writings of Saint Augustine. That is the Good. And the Republic is the only natural condition of mankind. And it was proven by Dante and his followers, that not only natural form of republic is a totally sovereign nation, state, not subject to the IMF, or the World Bank…”
The Canary Island setting of the Pope’s remarks is notable. The Pope’s predecessor Eugene IV had expressed 591 years earlier in the 1435 document “Sicut Dudum: Against The Enslaving of Black Natives From the Canary Islands.”
“We order and command all and each of the faithful of each sex, within the space of fifteen days of the publication of these letters in the place where they live, that they restore to their earlier liberty all and each person of either sex who were once residents of said Canary Islands, and made captives since the time of their capture, and who have been made subject to slavery. These people are to be totally and perpetually free… If this is not done when the fifteen days have passed, (enslavers) incur the sentence of excommunication by the act itself, from which they cannot be absolved, except at the point of death, even by the Holy See, or by any Spanish bishop…unless they have first given freedom to these captive persons and restored their goods. We will that like sentence of excommunication be incurred by one and all who attempt to capture, sell, or subject to slavery, baptized residents of the Canary Islands, or those who are freely seeking Baptism, from which excommunication cannot be absolved except as was stated above. “
Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica humanitas, also makes clear, however, that “neither can we deny or diminish the delay with which both society and the Church came to denounce the scourge of slavery… It was only in the nineteenth century that a formal, absolute and universal condemnation of slavery was clearly articulated, notably under Pope Leo XIII...” Leo XIII was the author of the 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, the encyclical which gave birth to what has been called “the social doctrine of the Church.” Lyndon LaRouche, on the occasion commemorating the 100th anniversary of the release of Rerum Novarum, composed his book “The Science of Christian Economy” from his prison cell, partially in response to Pope John Paul II’s 1991 Encyclical, Centesimus annus. Now, today, resurrection of that LaRouche dialogue, not only with the Catholic Church, but with the nations of the Global South as well as China and Russia, is the “narrow” path, both out of the present NATO New Dark Age.
“From this square, I wish to address a clear message to those who take advantage of people’s desperation, to those who organize death routes, traffic in human beings, withhold documents, exploit workers, threaten women, deceive families and turn the suffering of others into a business. Stop. Repent (cf. Mk 1:15). The tears and blood of these brothers and sisters cry out to God, and their suffering reaches him (cf. Gen 4:10; Ex 3:7–9). The money wrested from the vulnerability of the poor will bring neither peace, nor honor, nor a future (cf. Jer 22:13; Job 5:1–6).”
Pope Leo is not being “impractical” or idealistic here. He is taking the revolutionary approach of invoking the primacy of the Good in human history. Statesman Lyndon LaRouche, at the Schiller Institute conference on “The Year of Augustine” in December of 1985, explained this clearly.
“What is the Good? The Good is the power of mind to recognize a principle of Reason as a lawful ordering of the entire universe. To recognize that a process of development is associated with this, and to recognize that the continuation and acceleration of the takeover of the personality by elaborated Reason, is the Good! The elevation of the moral condition of mankind in correspondence with this principle, and in actions congruent with that principle, is the Good.
“Such was the principle of Solon at Athens. Such was the principle of the Platonic Academy, the concept of the Republic. And such were the principles of the founding of the modern European republic by the writings of Saint Augustine. That is the Good. And the Republic is the only natural condition of mankind. And it was proven by Dante and his followers, that not only natural form of republic is a totally sovereign nation, state, not subject to the IMF, or the World Bank…”
The Canary Island setting of the Pope’s remarks is notable. The Pope’s predecessor Eugene IV had expressed 591 years earlier in the 1435 document “Sicut Dudum: Against The Enslaving of Black Natives From the Canary Islands.”
“We order and command all and each of the faithful of each sex, within the space of fifteen days of the publication of these letters in the place where they live, that they restore to their earlier liberty all and each person of either sex who were once residents of said Canary Islands, and made captives since the time of their capture, and who have been made subject to slavery. These people are to be totally and perpetually free… If this is not done when the fifteen days have passed, (enslavers) incur the sentence of excommunication by the act itself, from which they cannot be absolved, except at the point of death, even by the Holy See, or by any Spanish bishop…unless they have first given freedom to these captive persons and restored their goods. We will that like sentence of excommunication be incurred by one and all who attempt to capture, sell, or subject to slavery, baptized residents of the Canary Islands, or those who are freely seeking Baptism, from which excommunication cannot be absolved except as was stated above. “
Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica humanitas, also makes clear, however, that “neither can we deny or diminish the delay with which both society and the Church came to denounce the scourge of slavery… It was only in the nineteenth century that a formal, absolute and universal condemnation of slavery was clearly articulated, notably under Pope Leo XIII...” Leo XIII was the author of the 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, the encyclical which gave birth to what has been called “the social doctrine of the Church.” Lyndon LaRouche, on the occasion commemorating the 100th anniversary of the release of Rerum Novarum, composed his book “The Science of Christian Economy” from his prison cell, partially in response to Pope John Paul II’s 1991 Encyclical, Centesimus annus. Now, today, resurrection of that LaRouche dialogue, not only with the Catholic Church, but with the nations of the Global South as well as China and Russia, is the “narrow” path, both out of the present NATO New Dark Age.
Speakers: Dennis Speed, Bill Jones, Prof. Cliff Kiracofe