Insight on the News
Human Rights and the Pope
● When Pope John Paul II visited several countries in Asia recently, a dominant theme of his speeches was human rights. “One can never justify any violation of the dignity of the human being, or of the basic rights which safeguard this dignity,” he declared in Manila, the Philippines. From this, one might assume that the Church has always been a paragon of support for human rights. However, columnist Gordon Brook-Shepherd wrote in London’s “Sunday Telegraph”:
“The great religions of the world, including the Catholic Church, have given quite a few lessons themselves in inhumanity over the centuries. It was one of John Paul’s distant predecessors, Pope Innocent IV, who, in 1252, authorised the use of torture both to obtain confessions from accused heretics and to persuade them to reveal the names of other heretics . . . The Spanish Inquisition (authorised by another Pope, Sixtus IV, in 1478) was the long and terrible culmination of ‘violating human dignity’ as far as the Catholic Church was concerned.”
Of course, the Roman Catholic Church asserts that its own violations of human rights are a thing of the past. But in some of the countries where Catholicism is the dominant religion, can the Church claim in all honesty that its political influence has not been used even in recent times to hinder the freedom of certain minority religious groups?
‘Sodom and Gomorrah Again’
● Under the label of tolerance and social justice, the city of San Francisco, California, has accepted admitted homosexuals into government and governmental agencies. For example, some 60 members of the police force are said to be homosexual or lesbian. In a report for Canada’s Toronto “Star,” religion editor Tom Harpur observed that “much of the tolerance comes, somewhat surprisingly perhaps, from organized religion—from the major Protestant, Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Jewish churches and synagogues.”
Harpur goes on to commend San Francisco as a city “where the emphasis is on freedom to choose for oneself, on tolerance, a nonjudgmental attitude toward others and the common quest for social justice.” “On the other hand,” he adds, if “morality is a matter of tight rules imposed by the many on the few, if it is based upon labelling others, or on a traditional, anxious fear of those who are different, this is Sodom and Gomorrah all over again.”
As moral depravity continues to grow in acceptance worldwide, we can be sure the Creator soon will act, as he did with Sodom and Gomorrah, to deliver persons like “righteous Lot, who was greatly distressed by the indulgence of the law-defying people in loose conduct.”—2 Pet. 2:6-8.
Who Should Lead the Mormons?
● A recently discovered letter dated January 17, 1844, has raised questions about whom the founder of the Mormon church authorized to lead the group after his death. In the letter, Joseph Smith, Jr., wrote concerning his son, Joseph Smith III: “For he shall be my successor in the Presidency of the High Priesthood and a Seer, and a Revelator and a Prophet unto the church which appointment belongeth to him by blessing and also by right.”
This apparently gives Smith’s authorization for church leadership to the Reorganized branch of the Mormon church, led by descendants of his son and having headquarters in Independence, Missouri. A much larger group is led by “apostolic” successors of Brigham Young, who guided persecuted Mormons to Utah in the 19th century. Though the authenticity of the document is not contested by the Utah church, officials say that it will not change their position on the current system of “apostolic succession.”
Such an embarrassing situation as to leadership could not have developed if those who profess to be the “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” were truly followers of Jesus Christ, rather than of imperfect men. Jesus said: “Your Leader is one, the Christ.”—Matt. 23:10.