Lincoln Steed, editor of Liberty magazine, on the significance of Pope Francis’ highly political visit to the United States

<p>Lincoln Steed, editor of Liberty magazine, on the significance of Pope Francis’ highly political visit to the United States</p>

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Church State Council

Alan Reinach

The Pope’s Visit

Our founding fathers not only pledged, but gave their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to obtain our God-given liberty.

Liberty can only thrive if it's alive in the hearts of a freedom-loving people.

I'm Dan Matthews, and I'm pleased to welcome you to Freedom's Ring.

Here's our host and constitutional lawyer and minister, Alan Reinoch.

Well, when I was a teenager, the big hit was a musical called Jesus Christ Superstar.

And fast forward a couple of decades and it seems as though Hollywood has rolled out a sequel called Pope Francis superstar on the cover of Time magazine and everywhere else, his visit to the United States a big hit.

But what are the implications of this, and especially for religious freedom and the separation of church and state?

Here for our conversation, my good friend, editor of Liberty Magazine, Lincoln Steed.

Always a pleasure to be on the program, Alan.

Well, the implications are manifold, and the precedents that are being set every time a pope visits, the last 3 of course have visited, and this last visit was just over the top.

You mentioned Jesus Christ Superstar, what I think of as being there, the last Peter Sellers film, remember he walked on water.

You know that's 1 of my favorite movies and it's like a cult classic but I'm a huge Peter Sellers fan.

Yeah, so you know, Jesus walked on water but I didn't want to make that comparison but you know he is a guy that he's almost assumed a mystical, reverential status even with the non-church.

You know, that's fine if you're a Roman Catholic, you could be very happy because There's nothing wrong with being popular per se, but given the agenda and the claims and the history of the Roman Catholic Church and its proclivity for political involvement, I mean, the guard is down.

This once Protestant country that looked askance at Rome and the influence that it was still peddling in Europe.

It has no resistance to whatever is being fed to it by the Vatican.

You're coming from an historic Protestant perspective.

As a Seventh-day Adventist leader, and we both are Seventh-day Adventists, we stand in very firmly, very consciously, in an historic Protestant tradition.

I would take it more particularly, the United States is very calculatedly administered by a civil government that separated church and state.

The Protestant tradition involves the separation of church and state.

At least here in the United States it does, but it goes back, as several historians have traced, to the early roots of Protestantism that these...

Of course Martin Luther was the first 1, the really rail that gives the Vatican and the Pope in particular.

You know, we know this country is premised on the separation of church and state, but more generally, a civil government that is not entangled with religion.

From the very beginning, this was an overwhelmingly Protestant society, and at times it was even violently so, which was not defensible, but defensibility was just dyed in the wools Protestantism.

And I believe, as Senator Santorum said not too long ago in the US presidential election, that's gone.

And that's very problematic because while different people will have different theological takes on how they relate to religion, with that removed, the United States as a political entity is very likely to be turned and subverted to something problematic.

Using hyperbole, It's not totally dissimilar, what's lying in store for us if we're not careful, to Sharia law and the Islamic Republic.

That's what's being whispered in the ear of the legislators, I'm quite sure.

So you see, if I'm hearing you correctly, you see Pope Francis's visit as emblematic of an historic shift away from the Protestant character of our nation and towards something that would tear down the separation between church and state.

And you and I know, dealing with politicians and political development, when they come out on the balcony and make happy and pissy, there's been a lot going on behind the scenes.

This is not just all window dressing, there's substance behind it.

We know that it's been revealed that this was the Pope's intervention that led directly to the changing relations between U.S.

If you read the news carefully, you know it was his suggestion that tipped Obama into taking action against ISIS.

And I noticed that he was quite vocal and effective upon the US rev things up against Russia and Ukraine and the Ukrainian situation so I mean he's not just a you know, a nice old guy in a white suit or a white dress.

Because this is not a perspective that I see in the popular media.

And anyone that reads the documents, and in particular the encyclical on the environment, will recognize instantly what's going on.

He speaks truisms other than a few flat-earther, peapoddy hardliners.

Most people know there's weather change and things are amiss with the environment.

But what is new, at least the way it's expressed, is joining at the hip an environmental concern and a doctrinal viewpoint of a particular day that has been the standard of Rome from day 1, well not day 1, but you know day 1 of the Protestant Reformation.

They claim that the Church, through its traditions and its magisterium, which is innate spiritual power and authority, that they have confirmed a day that is not biblical.

It's a day that anybody that knows history can trace back to sun worship in Rome.

I think the Pope and the whole Vatican system is really a historical echo of an imperial model that still with us through the ghost of this entity that picked up on Rome itself as a collapse, and then the Empire moved to Constantinople.

But it's developed a theological affinity for Sunday as its talisman.

You and I know from Bible prophecy that we see a danger at the end of time that a power answering this description will require obedience to some sort of a sign of its power, religious power.

I think it's Sunday because it's written into the encyclical.

He draws a parallel between the seventh-day service of the Jews as being a reminder of creation and a confirmation of the custody of the environment and he says we too, in celebrating the new creation of Christ's birth on Sunday, we have this charter and of course it rests not on Moses as he knowingly chuckled as he began his speech looking up the wall of the Capitol.

That comes from the Magisterium of Rome with its claim to sanctify, you know, a day of sun worship.

That's in the encyclical and as I said in a, or wrote in an editorial or an editorial note in Liberty.

That's not generic stuff that we can all be happy and clap about.

That's a directly partisan religious viewpoint that's inserted into a political context.

I can't remember the Latin name, but this is the encyclical that was released just a few months before the visit to Washington, and it was what his speech was based on.

Because I just want to make sure we don't lose our listeners as far as what we're talking about.

Yeah, usually I know there's Latin names on these.

So Pope Francis's political agenda is closely associated with promoting Sunday.

Now, many of our listeners are not going to have a problem with promoting Sunday.

Many of them go to church on Sunday and probably don't think It's all that much of a big deal.

Which day you go to church on, they're happy for us Adventists.

And I don't have a problem myself with the Pope promoting Sunday.

But I have a huge problem when he appears as a political entity, because this was political theatre.

This was not, in spite of the white catholic and all the rest, this was not primarily a religious debate.

And in fact, you remember there was no talk of Jesus or doctrinal or, you know, spirituality, per se, in that talk.

It was a sermon on the mountain from the Pope of the Holy See, as he was introduced, which is a political claim, you know, about his prescriptions for the world, and in particular the US.

You know, chipping away at capitalism, which is worthy of some criticism.

But for him to link to that document, his particular doctrinal viewpoint is very partisan.

And I don't care if he was promoting the Seventh-Day Service, which would be more civically correct, but it would still be wrong to insert that into a political agenda.

The Pope’s Visit

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