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[Solve et Coagula]

VATICAN INFLUENCE ON THE U.S. PRESIDENCY

Many Americans are victims of the illusion, carefully crafted, that the Catholic bishops have no significant influence on American presidents. No doubt the degree of influence differs from one president to the next. But they all feel and respond to this influence.

The National Catholic Reporter, a major national Catholic weekly newspaper, published a most revealing report in its December 29, 1989 issue. Doug Wead, special assistant to President Bush, was interviewed and quoted as saying: "He [President Bush] has been more sensitive and more accessible to the needs of the Catholic Church than any president I know of in American history." Wead indicated he felt that Bush's relationship with the American Catholic leadership was much closer than Reagan's had been: "We want the Church to feel loved and wanted, and we want them to have input." This relationship was maintained through five U.S. cardinals: Bernard Law, Joseph Bernardin, Edmund Szoka, John O'Connor, and James Hickey.

Within a month after Bush became president, all five of the cardinals had been included in meetings in the Bush family quarters. Both Law and O'Conner spent at least one overnight at the White House as guests of the president. "This has been a Catholic year," said Wead. "This administration has appointed more Catholic cabinet officers than any other in American history."

I think many Americans would be surprised to learn of this cozy relationship. It was never mentioned in the secular press -- and we were left with another illusion.

However, the relationship between the Catholic Church and President Reagan is much more revealing, as described by Carl Bernstein in the cover story of the February 24, 1992 issue of TIME magazine, with the title: "Holy Alliance: How Reagan and the Pope Conspired to Assist Poland's Solidarity Movement and Hasten the Demise of Communism." The agenda of the Church is far more obvious. In Chapter 7, excerpts appear from Bernstein's article regarding the Reagan Administration's adoption of the Vatican's position on birth control and abortion in U.S. foreign aid programs.

"The Catholic Team" as Bernstein described it, wielded enormous power. Bernstein reports, "The key administration players were all devout Roman Catholics -- CIA chief William Casey, Allen, Clark, Haig, Walters, and William Wilson, Reagan's first ambassador to the Vatican. They regarded the U.S. -- Vatican relationship as a holy alliance: the moral force of the pope and the teachings of their church combined with...their notion of American democracy." Protestants in the Reagan Administration were apparently unaware or unconcerned about this far-reaching maneuver. Or they simply felt there was nothing they could do about it.

Bernstein quotes Protestant Robert McFarlane, who served as a deputy to both Clark and Haig and later as National Security Advisor to the President: "I knew that they were meeting with [Vatican ambassador to the U.S.] Pio Laghi, and that Laghi had been to see the President, but Clark would never tell me what the substance of the discussions was." "The Catholic Team" did not include Protestants. If this was truly an American operation with strictly American interests at stake, why weren't Protestant Americans represented too? What was being hidden?

Reagan and the pope undermined and seized control of the Polish government because the Polish government seriously threatened papal security interests in Poland when that country outlawed Solidarity in 1981. Regarding direction of their operation to overthrow the Polish government, Bernstein quotes Laghi: "But I told Vernon [Vernon Walters, American ambassador to the U.N.], `Listen to the Holy Father. We have 2,000 years of experience at this.'"

Laghi seemed to take great pleasure from the fact that the Papacy has had 20 centuries of experience in overthrowing governments. This suggests that the Vatican would stop at nothing to defend its own interests. One must read the lengthy article in TIME to fully appreciate the enormity of what took place, much of it illegal.

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