Another American Pope Candidate

Embraces the Far-left

By Cliff Kincaid — March 11, 2013

O’Malley Greets Obama at Ted Kennedy Funeral

A top aide to a left-wing American Catholic Cardinal, reportedly in the running for the job
of pope, taught a course called “Matthew, Marx, Luke, and John” at a pro-Marxist think
tank in Washington, D.C. The course included a discussion of “the future of the
Christian alliance with Marxism” and the “theology of the oppressed.”

The aide, Fr. J. Bryan Hehir, is described in the book, Religious Leaders and Faith-
based Politics: Ten Profiles, as “one of the most important and influential voices in U.S.
Catholicism.” A professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University,
Hehir spent 20 years working for the
Catholic Bishops and crafting policy
positions on a wide range of domestic and
foreign policy matters.

Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley of Boston,

who hired Hehir as the Archdiocese of
Boston’s Secretary for Social Services in
2003, has been “generating buzz in Rome
as a possible contender to be the next
pope,” says a recent report from NBC
News. The story quotes an observer as
saying O’Malley “could emerge as the next
pope from a brokered conclave where the
cardinals from the northern and southern
hemispheres square off.” The conclave
begins on Tuesday. A USA Today story
says, “Papal contender: Cardinal Sean
O’Malley.”

If Hehir follows O’Malley to Rome, he could

be in a position to exercise considerable
power from the Vatican over global affairs,
such as by promoting President Obama’s
vision of a world free of U.S. nuclear
weapons. But even if O’Malley doesn’t get
the nod, Hehir could be a force in the
Vatican. He has connections to Cardinal
Peter Turkson, another candidate for the
papacy, and played a role in formulating a
Vatican document calling for creation of a
“central world bank.” One of Hehir’s
Harvard courses is “The Politics and Ethics
of the Use of Force,” reflecting his desire to
be taken seriously as a global affairs
expert.

Hehir led the bishops in writing the 1983

letter, titled, “The Challenge of Peace—God’s Promise and Our Response,” which
called the building of nuclear weapons “a folly which does not provide the security it
promises.” Hehir was a member of a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) task force
which produced a 2009 report on “U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy” saying that while “the
geopolitical conditions that would permit the global elimination of nuclear weapons do
not currently exist,” steps could be taken “to diminish the danger of nuclear proliferation
and nuclear use.”

But Cardinal O’Malley is not without controversy himself. He had to personallyexplain

and defend himself after presiding at the funeral Mass for Senator Edward M. Kennedy,
the liberal Catholic who undermined church teachings on social matters such as
abortion and homosexuality and lived a personal life characterized by debauchery.

The emerging controversy over Hehir is another indication that the U.S. Catholic Church
is one of the most left-wing branches of the Roman Catholic Church in the world today.
Even New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, usually described as a conservative, has
been criticized for campaigning for sainthood for Dorothy Day, a convert to Catholicism
who never renounced her pro-Marxist views.

A controversial figure in the American Catholic Church, Hehir has been the subject of
fawning coverage in the liberal press. But blogs run by conservative Catholics in Boston
have targeted him for years, with the Catholic paper The Wanderer onceurging his
ouster from church affairs because of his “relentless advocacy of left-wing politics.”

It was the “Bryan Hehir Exposed” blog which noted that his left-wing activities included
lecturing for “a Socialist, pro-Communist think-tank back in the 1980’s.”

That think tank, the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), is where Hehir taught his course
on “Matthew, Marx, Luke, and John.” Hehir was then the director of the Office of
International Justice and Peace of the U.S. Catholic Conference.

The IPS came under strong criticism in the 1980s, even from a New York Times
Magazine article “Think Tank of the Left,” for being a mouthpiece for anti-American and
communist regimes from Cuba to North Vietnam. It conducted joint conferences with
Moscow entities considered conduits for Russian KGB propaganda.

At the same time IPS was sponsoring the “Matthew, Marx, Luke, and John” course, it
was featuring a “Liberation Theology Lecture Series” with Gustavo Gutierrez, author
of A Theology of Liberation.

The “Bryan Hehir Exposed” blog was run by a team of conservative Catholics in Boston
known by the pen name “Francis Marion” because they feared retribution if their real
names were known. A new blog, Boston Catholic Insider, has since emerged, written by
“people with close ties to the Archdiocese of Boston who are not identified by name on
the blog so they can avoid possible repercussions and threats to their livelihoods.”
This blog suggests that a “gay network” of clergy exists in Boston and that O’Malley, a
prominent liberal, has allowed the gay agenda to be advanced within the Boston
Archdiocese in parishes and Catholic schools.

It confirms that Hehir has a “history of involvement in Marxist causes” and says that that
he wants to suppress the Catholic Church’s moral views on such issues as abortion in
order to give more prominence to liberal causes.

Hehir’s history of involvement in Marxist causes

includes not only lecturing at the IPS on several
occasions but receiving its 7th Annual Letelier-
Moffitt Memorial Award in Washington D.C. in
1983. It was named for Orlando Letelier, a Marxist
IPS fellow who was assassinated in 1976 in
Washington by the Chilean government’s secret
police. Letelier was exposed as a Cuban agent in
briefcase papers found by law enforcement
authorities after his death.

Hehir was known as a critic of U.S. foreign policy Hehir

in the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan was
preventing a Communist takeover of Central
America and countering the Soviet Union’s nuclear
buildup by deploying U.S. nuclear missiles in
Western Europe. The IPS was then the center of much of the opposition to the Reagan
agenda.

For example, in Nicaragua, where a Marxist regime that included Catholic advocates of
“liberation theology” had seized power, Reagan armed freedom fighters to take back
their country. Hehir and the U.S. Catholic Bishops opposed the use of military force to
stop the Communists in Central America or anywhere else.

Even without an O’Malley appointment as pope, Hehir has exercised considerable

influence in the Vatican and can be expected to do so in the future. He participated in a
symposium hosted by the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace at the
Vatican in October 2010.
This is significant because the Pontifical
Council for Justice and Peace is the
arm of the Vatican run by Cardinal
Peter Turkson, another possible
candidate for pope. In the 2011
document, “Towards reforming the
international financial and monetary
systems in the context of global public
authority,” Turkson endorsed a “central
world bank” that “regulates the flow and
system of monetary exchanges, as do
the national central banks.” It spoke of
“the need for a minimum, shared body
of rules to manage the global financial
market which has grown much more
rapidly than the real economy.”

A “world political authority,” a

euphemism for a world government,
was endorsed in Caritas in Veritate
(“Charity in Truth”), a papal encyclical
issued by Pope Benedict, who was
considered “conservative” by some.
The new global structure is supposed to
“manage the economy,” bring about
“timely disarmament,” and ensure
“food, security and peace,” his
document said.

The Turkson document expanded on this concept, saying, “In a world on its way to rapid
globalization, orientation towards a world Authority becomes the only horizon
compatible with the new realities of our time and the needs of humankind. However, it
should not be forgotten that this development, given wounded human nature, will not
come about without anguish and suffering.”

Hehir and Turkson are scheduled to participate in a major “Catholic peacebuilding”

conference in April to commemorate the 50th anniversary of another paper encyclical,
Pacem in Terris (“Peace on Earth”) and promote a “just world order.” More than a dozen
Catholic universities and agencies are involved in the event.

Pacem in Terris called for world disarmament under the auspices of the United Nations
and other global institutions. It said, “Nuclear weapons must be banned. A general
agreement must be reached on a suitable disarmament program, with an effective
system of mutual control.”

It also declared “Our earnest wish that the United Nations Organization may be able
progressively to adapt its structure and methods of operation to the magnitude and
nobility of its tasks.”

All of this fits in perfectly with the global approach of the Obama Administration. Obama
himself talked of a “world without nuclear weapons,” while his new Secretary of
Defense, Chuck Hagel, was involved in the “Global Zero” approach that would
eventually dismantle the U.S. nuclear deterrent.

Not surprisingly, another speaker at the upcoming “peacebuilding” conference is

Stephen Schneck, the “Catholics for Obama” operative who serves as director of the
Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies at the Catholic University of America.
He had invited Cardinal Turkson and former AFL-CIO boss John Sweeney to one of his
own left-wing conferences at CUA.