21 Marzo 2022 Pubblicato da Marco Tosatti

Marco Tosatti

“They can’t ask us to get behind the cannons,” then-Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano said to me, during John Paul II’s journey to Astana in the second half of September 2001, a few weeks after the attack on the Twin Towers.

And yet, “getting behind the cannons” is exactly what certain voices are asking the Church to do, especially voices in the United States and the voices of those who have filled Ukraine with weapons, money, and very suspicious biological laboratories, along with those mysterious forces that are playing with the idea of a nuclear war, or who spin the Russian invasion of Ukraine as if the latter were Vietnam or Afghanistan.

There are those who complain that the reigning Pontiff has not subjected Vladimir Putin to public execration. Given the carelessness with which the reigning Pontiff called Trump a “non-Christian,” de facto aligning himself with Biden in the middle of the 2020 election campaign, Bergoglio spouting off his opinion about Putin would not have aroused astonishment; but it is evident that the delicacy of the situation has imposed a diplomatic silence even on the intemperate Francis, who is presumably following the advice of the Secretariat of State.

Jason Horowitz, columnist for the New York Times, in his article  “Pope Deplores the War in Ukraine But Not the Aggressor,”quotes David I. Kertzer, an American anthropologist, historian, and professor of the political, demographic, and religious history of Italy: “In many ways, the present situation of the pope recalls the one which faced Pius XII.” Kertzer – whose new book The Pope at War, about Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler, will be published this June – maintains that Pope Pacelli tried to balance internal interests [within the Church] with the public demand that he speak, resisting the great pressure for him to denounce Hitler, using a generic language about the horrors of the war. According to the American historian, “The position that [Bergoglio] is taking, or rather that he is not taking, is not without risks.”

Obviously, this reading of the facts corresponds to the pro-NATO vision, according to which Putin is aiming to expand to the west just as Hitler wanted to expand to the east in order to assure Lebensraum or living space for Germany. This view, however, forgets that the Warsaw Pact was dissolved in 1991, while its counterpart NATO has continued to expand ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall, bringing military bases closer and closer to the borders of Russia. The invasion of Ukraine is Putin’s response to this looming threat, and it is not too rash to think that the provocation of the United States aimed at creating precisely this reaction. On the other hand, the “warlords” and arms manufacturers, who influence the decisions of Congress by means of a colossal amount of lobbying, have always behaved in the same way, causing conflicts on the other side of the globe which have always fell to others to face and fight. What is disconcerting is that the warmongering narrative of the “exportation of democracy” is being made by Catholics.

We are thinking in particular – but not only – of George Weigel, who a few days ago at First Things criticized and sought to discredit Archbishop Viganò’s Declaration – a large and extremely well-documented text – concerning the war, its roots, and its exploitation by those who hold power in the Western media. Ironically, Weigel’s essay actually confirms the analysis of the former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, because it demonstrates the way that the deep state and the deep church are in tune with one another, and the way that both of them depend on the same power. The accusation leveled against the Archbishop – we could even call it more precisely a “refrain” that has recurred both with regard to the pandemic as well as for the Russian-Ukrainian crisis – is always the same: he is a “conspiracy theorist.” This accusation makes the need to furnish proofs of the alleged erroneousness of his statements vanish: the speaker is considered to be a priori delegitimized for the sole reason that he is not one of their own.

But in the end this is no surprise. The war in Iraq provoked hundreds of thousands of deaths, the destruction of the nation, and regional instability, all on the basis of a colossal lie: namely, the presence of chemical weapons of mass destruction desired by Saddam Hussein, “proved” by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell showing a vial of what was presumed to be anthrax during one of his speeches to the United Nations Security Council. In this circumstance as well, George Weigel also wrote an essay at First Things, saying: “One of the less-than-helpful media games that has confused debate on Iraq these past five years is to demand of politicians whether Iraq was a ‘war of necessity’ or a ‘war of choice.’ The fact is that it was both.”

The same thing happened during the war in Libya, a war created out of thin air that devastated a nation that even now is still in the throes of an apparently incurable destabilization, and which caused tens of thousands of deaths. The United States Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) reports: “Hours before the President’s speech, Weigel expressed his thoughts to CNA about the role of the United States in the international intervention. He said that the United States appeared to be waging a legitimate and perhaps just war, but without a clear strategy or strong leadership.” But it is not only Weigel who lends himself to legitimizing the interests of the powerful: he also has modest imitators in Italy (here) and (here) who invoke the same points of reference, creating a unique cocktail in which so-called “traditionalist” intellectuals are strange bedfellows with the deep state, the Democratic party, and neo-conservative politicians and thinkers, who are always warmongers.

After having been able to count on the total collaboration of the reigning Pontiff during the pandemic and the vaccine campaign, they now expect (and who can blame them) that he will also align with their narrative about the Russian-Ukrainian crisis, and they do not hesitate to attack – always without making reasonable arguments or entering into the merit of the case – the lone dissenting voice of Archbishop Viganò, who is an experienced diplomat with a lucid view of global events. And if Bergoglio has not yet personally attacked Putin, this is probably due to pressure from the Secretariat of State and certainly not due to his proverbial verbal intemperance.

Writing in L’Osservatore Romano, Andrea Tornielli has rightly recalled the war that NATO carried out in Serbia, the war in Kosovo, and the war in Iraq, answering those who asked for condemnations: “Pope Wojtyla did not even mention the names of the Western heads of state who, in 2003, wanted to wage war on Iraq on the basis of false reports about weapons of mass destruction. In both cases, he tried to stop the attacks, the ethnic cleansings and the wars, seeking instead to encourage the opening of humanitarian corridors and to ensure that no stone was left unturned in attempting to prevent having recourse to military means. This does not mean and has never meant putting aggressors and aggressees on the same level.”

It is obvious that those who have interests in aggravating crises and making them worsen behave in this way, attempting to “place the Church behind the cannons.” The fact, however, that Catholic intellectuals allow themselves to be drawn into this operation is an element that reveals how long certain tentacles are, and at the same time reveals the loss of authority and credibility on the part of certain much-celebrated maîtres à penser, whose subjection to the orders of their masters is at this point decidedly embarrassing, both for them and those who sponsor them.

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Tag: russia, theocons, ukraine

Categoria: Generale