Catholic Insight: Pushing the Earth Charter

"Was Mikhael Gorbachev on target when he said, at three separate press conferences at the RIO+5 Conference in Rio de Janeiro, in 1997: "The Ten Commandments are out of date. They will be replaced by the [then] 15 Principles of the Earth Charter."

A search of the Earth Charter website reveals its current status. It now has 16 Principles. The first has some potential: a) Recognize that all beings are interdependent, and every form of life has some value regardless of its worth to human beings. (I wonder if this includes the human fetus.)

Number 12 states: Uphold the right of all, without discrimination, as based on race, colour, sex, sexual orientation..

And here is a new rub. At all major U.N. conferences there have been rabid proponents of inserting into UN documents the right to sexual orientation; governments have rejected this. If the United Nations finally accepts the Earth Charter, it will mean that "sexual orientation" is in through the back door. They will have approved a concept rejected until that point." (Jeanne Ferrari, M.D., from the Catholic Insight article).

In his Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor, Pope John Paul II explains the significance of the Decalogue (the Ten Words, or Commandments) which God gave to Moses and which Mikhael Gorbachev says are "out of date":

"If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments" (Mt 19:17)

"Only God can answer the question about the good, because he is the Good. But God has already given an answer to this question: he did so by creating man and ordering him with wisdom and love to his final end, through the law which is inscribed in his heart (cf. Rom 2:15), the "natural law". The latter "is nothing other than the light of understanding infused in us by God, whereby we understand what must be done and what must be avoided. God gave this light and this law to man at creation". He also did so in the history of Israel, particularly in the "ten words", the commandments of Sinai, whereby he brought into existence the people of the Covenant (cf. Ex 24) and called them to be his "own possession among all peoples", "a holy nation" (Ex 19:5-6), which would radiate his holiness to all peoples (cf. Wis 18:4; Ez 20:41). The gift of the Decalogue was a promise and sign of the New Covenant, in which the law would be written in a new and definitive way upon the human heart (cf. Jer 31:31-34), replacing the law of sin which had disfigured that heart (cf. Jer 17:1). In those days, "a new heart" would be given, for in it would dwell "a new spirit", the Spirit of God (cf. Ez 36:24-28).

Consequently, after making the important clarification: "There is only one who is good", Jesus tells the young man: "If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments" (Mt 19:17). In this way, a close connection is made between eternal life and obedience to God's commandments: God's commandments show man the path of life and they lead to it. From the very lips of Jesus, the new Moses, man is once again given the commandments of the Decalogue. Jesus himself definitively confirms them and proposes them to us as the way and condition of salvation. The commandments are linked to a promise. In the Old Covenant the object of the promise was the possession of a land where the people would be able to live in freedom and in accordance with righteousness (cf. Dt 6:20-25). In the New Covenant the object of the promise is the "Kingdom of Heaven", as Jesus declares at the beginning of the "Sermon on the Mount" — a sermon which contains the fullest and most complete formulation of the New Law (cf. Mt 5-7), clearly linked to the Decalogue entrusted by God to Moses on Mount Sinai. This same reality of the Kingdom is referred to in the expression "eternal life", which is a participation in the very life of God. It is attained in its perfection only after death, but in faith it is even now a light of truth, a source of meaning for life, an inchoate share in the full following of Christ. Indeed, Jesus says to his disciples after speaking to the rich young man: "Every one who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold and inherit eternal life" (Mt 19:29)." (Veritatis Splendor, No. 12).

Mikhael Gorbachev has been promoting the Earth Charter for some time. And he believes (along with many others who are behind the Charter) that the Ten Commandments are "out of date." Why then would Catholic Religious be promoting this document?


Watch this video.