Although even conservative Protestants would agree with the teaching of Pius XI in Ubi Arcano Dei that no human league of nations can ever bring peace to the world, the Vatican apparatus continues with its insane promotion of an ever-greater role for the godless, amoral United Nations.

        No less than the official theologian of the Papal household, Cardinal Georges Cottier, has called for a "reform of the United Nations" in keeping with "the evolution of the Church’s social doctrine." (Zenit, December 22, 2003). According to this "evolution" of the Church’s "social doctrine," we must now all support the United Nations. And what competence does Cottier have to declare an evolution of Church teaching that validates the United Nations? None whatever.

        According to Cottier, "reform" of the U.N. would require that "the United Nations organization… rise more and more above the cold status of an administrative institution and to become a moral center where all the nations of the world feel at home and develop a shared awareness of being, as it were, a family of nations."

        How cozy. But has the official theologian of the Papal household not noticed that the U.N. cannot possibly serve as a "moral center" because it rejects Christian morality and is promoting a worldwide regime of abortion and contraception? Has the official theologian of the Papal household failed to note that the U.N.’s legal extension, the newly-empowered International Criminal Court (which "Pope" Sodano, the Vatican Secretary of State, lavishly praises) is a threat to national sovereignty and the rights of Catholics everywhere?

        But perhaps this "reform" of the United Nations means that the U.N. must adhere to Christian moral teaching? Oh no, no, no. Cottier’s call for "reform" of the U.N. means only "a reform which would enable [it] to function effectively for the pursuit of its own stated ends."

        And what does that mean? It means, according to Cottier, that "there is a need for an authority that is above the states" and that the U.N. must therefore have "a stronger authority to intervene, to defend the rights of man, to struggle against poverty, etc." More power to the United Nations! All nations must bow before a U.N. that is above all states!

        And on what basis does Cottier call for this increase in U.N. authority? What else but Vatican II, that all-purpose justification for every disastrous new trend in Vatican policy: "It [support for an international authority "above the states"] is a novelty that matured at the time of Vatican Council II, perhaps even earlier, but it is also a very important aspect of the teaching of this pontificate." Another day, another "novelty" spawned by Vatican II.

        Well, this Catholic, for one, has had his fill of the seemingly endless train of novelties engendered (in some vague, never-explained way) by the Second Vatican Council. I will stick with the good old, non-novel teaching of Pius XI in Ubi Arcano Dei, only 38 years before Vatican II turned the Church upside down: "No merely human institution of today can be as successful in devising a set of international laws which will be in harmony with world conditions as the Middle Ages were in the possession of that true League of Nations, Christianity." Hence, it is not any human organization but only the Catholic Church that can bring true peace to the world by making disciples of all nations. As Pius XI concluded, the Church "cannot but succeed in such a venture where others assuredly will fail." If that was true of the League of Nations of Pius XI’s time, which did indeed fail not long after Ubi Arcano Dei was promulgated, it is all the more true of the League of Nations’ even more godless successor, the U.N.

        But preaching a return to Catholic social order is the farthest thing from the collective mind of today’s Vatican apparatus. That is one reason the Church is in crisis. And that is why, foreseeing this crisis, Our Lady came to Fatima to call for the conversion of Russia and the Triumph of Her Immaculate Heart throughout the world.