![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Heretical Americanist Church
May. 7th, 2005 12:20 pmis nothing new:
"Elected directly after the outbreak of World War I, Benedict XV sent a representative to each country to press for peace. On August 1, 1917, he delivered the Plea for Peace, which demanded a cessation of hostilities, a reduction of armaments, a guaranteed freedom of the seas, and international arbitration.
"Interstingly, on August 15, 1917, the Vatican sent a note to James Cardinal Gibbons, leader of the Church in the U.S. The request was that Gibbons and the U.S. Church "exert influence" with President Wison to endorse the papal peace plan to end the war. Cardinal Gibbons never contacted Wilson. (Nor does he seem to have lobbied on behalf of Benedict XV's call for a boycott on any nation that had obligatory military conscription.) On August 27, President Wilson formally rejected the plan.
"But Gibbons and the U.S. Catholic archbishops were not about to reject Wilson's war plans. They had promised the president "truest patriotic fervor and zeal" as well as manpower: "our people, as ever, will rise as one man to serve the nation" and exhorted young men to "be Americans always." Cardinal Gibbons had even written when war was declared that "the duty of a citizen" is "absolute and unreserved obedience to his country's call."
"Such unreserved obedience was not endorsed by Benedict XV, nor is it by Benedict XVI..." -- Michael Griffin, with thanks to (who else?) Lew Rockwell
"Elected directly after the outbreak of World War I, Benedict XV sent a representative to each country to press for peace. On August 1, 1917, he delivered the Plea for Peace, which demanded a cessation of hostilities, a reduction of armaments, a guaranteed freedom of the seas, and international arbitration.
"Interstingly, on August 15, 1917, the Vatican sent a note to James Cardinal Gibbons, leader of the Church in the U.S. The request was that Gibbons and the U.S. Church "exert influence" with President Wison to endorse the papal peace plan to end the war. Cardinal Gibbons never contacted Wilson. (Nor does he seem to have lobbied on behalf of Benedict XV's call for a boycott on any nation that had obligatory military conscription.) On August 27, President Wilson formally rejected the plan.
"But Gibbons and the U.S. Catholic archbishops were not about to reject Wilson's war plans. They had promised the president "truest patriotic fervor and zeal" as well as manpower: "our people, as ever, will rise as one man to serve the nation" and exhorted young men to "be Americans always." Cardinal Gibbons had even written when war was declared that "the duty of a citizen" is "absolute and unreserved obedience to his country's call."
"Such unreserved obedience was not endorsed by Benedict XV, nor is it by Benedict XVI..." -- Michael Griffin, with thanks to (who else?) Lew Rockwell