A recent address by the Vatican's permanent observer at the United Nations, Archbishop Renato Martino, provides an excellent example of why the Vatican, like the United States, should get out of the U.N.

       As reported by Zenit.org on October 17, 2001, Archbishop Martino gave the following suggestions on how to address terrorism in a recent address to the U.N.'s General Assembly: (1) address the problem of "hate"; (2) reduce the "worsening disparities between the rich and the poor;" (4) make handguns illegal; (5) "prohibit antipersonnel mines once and for all"; (6) "reinforce the Biological Weapons Conventionl;" (7) establish "credible international institutions of arms control;" (8) abolish nuclear weapons.

       It is hard to see any difference between Martino's platform and that of the Democratic Party: social welfare schemes, gun control and useless disarmament treaties. Meanwhile, the terrorists will still have guns and bombs. There is nothing here, of course, about faith in Jesus Christ and adherence to His Church as the only means to bring true peace to the world. Vatican diplomats never speak of such things. Nor, in discussing the question of "hate," did Martino make the slightest mention of the hatred animating the abortion holocaust in the West, which is one of the reasons the Muslims regard the West as a decadent infidel empire.

       In Martino's address we see the price that the Vatican and all other nation states pay for membership in the U.N.: moral neutralization. A representative of the highest moral authority on the earth, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, is constrained to speak in the language of secular humanism, appealing for worthless secular solutions to problems which originate in the disorder of the human soul arising from the lack of sanctifying grace.

       Father Gruner's apostolate has justly criticized the Vatican's involvement in the U.N., which is steadily enshrining the reign of anti-Christ otherwise known as the New World Order. Thus, it is surely no coincidence that Archbishop Martino's brother filed a nearly hysterical document condemning Father Gruner in the course of the canonical proceedings which have culminated in the announcement of his groundless "suspension." The document in question (which I have read) contains no evidence or other particulars, of course, but does contain the preposterous declaration that Father Gruner should be "cast forth from the bosom of the sacred priesthood." For what? For nothing. Nothing, that is, except the "offense" of publicly criticizing the Vatican bureaucracy's obstinate and feckless pursuit of human diplomacy at the godless United Nations, rather than the heavenly plan for peace delivered to earth by the Mother of God at Fatima.