Cardinal - a portrait of a GLOBALIST

Malachi Martin, Windswept House p.75

            [zupełnie przypadkowo Cosimo Cardinal Maestroianni przypomina wielkiego i ukochanego Agostino Cardinal Casaroli,  architekta m.inn. porozumień między PRL i Stolica Apostolską md]

            ...whenever he [...] visited Helsinki, he was reminded of a medieval hymn to the Heavenly Jerusalem. "Celestial City of Jerusalem, blessed vision of peace...."

            The occasion that had inspired such enduring reverence in His Emi­nence's soul had been the signing of the Helsinki Accords by thirty-five nations on August 1, 1975. That had been the birth of what had come to be known as the Helsinki Process, or the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe -the CSCE. It had been a crowning event in Maestroianni's life; an event he had recorded in minute detail in what Cyrus Benthoek had once aptly called his "Helsinki corridor." For grouped in all the spaces around the enormous photographs of Helsinki were others of somewhat more modest proportions that formed an indeli­ble record of the grand historical event, and of memories the Cardinal treasured as among the most meaningful of his productive career.

The Helsinki Accords, entitled officially as the Final Act, had been the result of a long, laborious search that had started in the mid-fifties for a new European structure. To find a new soul, as the Cardinal thought of it, to embrace all the nations and cultures of that landmass stretching from Ireland's Galway on the Atlantic to Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan. The Greeks had given that landmass its name. Europa. The Romans had thought they possessed it all. Caucasians had mainly peopled it and gov­erned it. Several nations and empires had wished to dominate it. But, by the twentieth century, it had split into a patchwork of squabbling states.

            In this great white city of the North, at the signing of the Final Act, the ancient dream of Europa had again been birthed by all the major nations in that great landmass. Cosimo Maestroianni had himself participated in the act of birth. So, to this day, it was always both comforting and inspir­ing-a little like visiting a shrine, perhaps-for the Cardinal to pass through this corridor on the way to his study at the far end of the pent­house.

            He had been an Archbishop back in 1975, serving as head of the Second Section of the Secretariat under Cardinal Secretary Jean Claude de Vin­cennes. Most willingly, he had led the Holy See's delegation to that his­toric conference. The Final Act itself bore his own signature in the name of the Vatican city-state. Who could blame Maestroianni, then, if even on his busiest days he might pause in this corridor; if he might linger for a mo­ment or two over this treasured record of a dream come true? The photo­graphs were sweet confirmation that all nations would be united -or, rather, reunified-into mankind's original oneness.

            How could he not allow his eye to wander over some of the photomon­tages that commemorated special moments during those hectic days at the Helsinki Conference? Maestroianni with Italy's President Giovanni Leone and Foreign Minister Mariano Rumor feeding the pigeons on Helsinki's Esplanade. Maestroianni during his special audience with Finland's Presi­dent Urho Kaleva Kekkonen in the presidential palace. Maestroianni dur­ing his visit with Prime Minister Keijo Liinemaa at the Eduskunta, Fin­land' s Parliament. One group shot in particular was a vivid symbol of unity. There he was, with Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and Foreign Minis­ter Hans-Dietrich Genscher of Germany on one side of him, and President Valery Giscard d'Estaing of France on the other. Fittingly, the four of them were standing on the bridge connecting the mainland with the rocky island of Katajanokka.

            There was a particularly handsome shot of Cyrus Benthoek strolling beside Maestroianni along Mannerheimintie Boulevard. And, if memory served, Benthoek himself had taken the photo of the Archbishop praying alone in the Great Church on Senate Square. So many important memo­ries. Maestroianni smiling with Henry Kissinger and Portugal's President F. da Costa Gomes. His interview with United States President Gerald R. Ford. The Archbishop raising a banquet toast with the Soviet Union's Andrei Gromyko and Polish Communist Party chief Edward Gierek, and conferring with Belgium's Prime Minister Leo Tindemans and Holland's Prime Minister JooP M. den Uyle.

            The photo the Cardinal had placed at the far end of the corridor, just by the door leading to his private study, showed him standing with Cyrus Benthoek in front of Väinö Aaltonen's famous bronze statue of Finland's champion runner, Paavo Nurmi, in the grounds of the Olympic Stadium. In a moment of lighthearted clowning, both men had posed as runners, parroting the forward thrust of arms and legs and torso captured in the Nurmi bronze. Across the bottom of the photo, Benthoek had penned a trenchant inscription: "So that posterity may know we are running in the same race for the same goal. We MUST win!"

            Normally, no matter how brief the time Cardinal Maestroianni allowed himself here, it was enough to refresh him. But not today. He found his mind stubbornly preoccupied with the Slavic Pope and his pious excursion to Sainte-Baume. What a bleak contrast it was for him to think of the Helsinki Accords on the one hand and then to think of how the Pontiff had turned the Secretariat on its head this morning to get some inspira­tional photographs of a Bernini statue for his homily.

            This morning's events, triggered by the Slavic Pope's telephone call from Baume, had fixed the Cardinal's mind once more on the unsuitability of the present Pontiff to lead the Church into the coming New World Order. In fact, the truth was that the Cardinal Secretary treasured the memory of another Pope. The good Pope. What the Church needed was another Pon­tiff who, like the good Pope, possessed not only maturity of mind and diplomatic skill but an uncommon this-world wisdom. Wisdom. That had been the key to everything.

            Like it or not, it was the Slavic Pope Maestroianni had to deal with. At least for the moment. Oh, he understood the mind of this Pope well enough. He had been able at least to anticipate the Pontiff's strategies, and then mitigate their effect within the Church hierarchy as few others might have been able to do. Maestroianni understood above all that this Pontiff was still loaded down with all the old Roman Catholic image s of Christ's divine Kingship; of Marian Queenship; of a fixed triad -HelI, Earth, Heaven -as man's destiny. This Pope still thought of the force behind the forces of history as the hand of Christ as King of the human race as well as Savior of that race from sin and Hell’s punishment for sin.        .

            Cardinal Secretary Maestroianni did not see himself as having aban­doned or betrayed his Roman Catholicism. Rather, he saw that his own original faith, acquired in the now crumbling bastions of the old Church, had been purified and enlightened, because it had been humanized. It had been made real within the concrete circumstances of the twentieth century.

            So much of what he had once simply taken for granted had been over­loaded with elements that merely came from the various cultural periods in the Church's history. Such baggage -Iaden concepts had nothing to do with present reality. Nothing to do with the Process. Now, however, he had come to understand history and the salvation of mankind in a way he knew the Slavic Pope would never grasp. Now he understood that such concepts as still guide d the Slavic Pope should have no influence -not even the slightest manifestation -in the workings and administration of the Church.

            Just suppose Maestroianni had gone to the Helsinki Conference in 1975, for example, and preached to Presidents and Foreign Ministers about St. Mary Magdalene adoring the risen Christ, as the Slavic Pope would do this evening at Sainte-Baume. Why, he would have been carried off in a straitjacket!

            For the true role of the Church, Maestroianni now understood, was as one player in a vaster evolution-a vaster Process-than the Slavic Pope seemed able to encompass. A vast Process, and a very natural one, that recognized the fact that all the woes of the human family were caused in the first place not by some primitive notion called Original Sin, but by poverty and want and ineducation. A Process that would at last clear humanity of those troubles, and so would ultimately harmonize the spirit of man, God and the cosmos. When the Process was fully accomplished in the new political order of mankind, then would the Church be one with the world. For only then would the Church take its proud and rightful place as part of the human heritage. As a stabilizing factor in the New World Order. As a true and bright mirror of the untroubled mind of God.

            The Cardinal still regretted the passing of that good Pope so soon into what he now thought of as "the cold silence of eternity." Still more did His Eminence regret that in this final decade of the twentieth century he had to deal with a backward-minded Pope who had no grasp of the true force behind the forces of history.

            On the other hand, once Maestroianni had himself reached the maxi­mum of his power as Vatican Secretary of State, he had used the entire administrative machinery of the Roman Church's organization to forge its greater alignment with the Process. Nothing went out from the papal desk that did not pass through the Cardinal Secretary's office. His authority was felt throughout all the other papal Ministries of the Vatican. His will was recognized and accepted throughout the National and Regional Con­ferences of Bishops around the world. Indeed, many of his clerical col­leagues had made the same profound transition in their thinking as Maestroianni had.

            That very thought, in fact, roused Maestroianni from his dour thoughts. It would be far more profitable to focus his mind on the second task he had set himself this Saturday-the revision of a paper which Cyrus Benthoek had arranged for the Cardinal to deliver at the forthcoming meeting of the American Bar Association.

            Like the letter he had composed this morning, the subject of the paper awaiting the Cardinal's revisions and refinements was as delicate as it was important: the Ethical Need for Abdication of National Sovereignty.

            As Benthoek had pointed out, only such a truly spiritual man as Maestroianni could deal sensitively but incisively with this touchy subject. Maestroianni settled into the work of revision. Within moments, he was again in his element, pausing from time to time in his labors only to retrieve certain helpful materials from the storehouse of knowledge that surrounded him here.

            He worked with one monograph in particular -"The Rule of Law and the New World Order," it was called-that he had left open at a key quotation some days before. Taken from a statement made earlier in the year by David Rockefeller, the quotation was so apt that Maestroianni had to smile in appreciation as he read it over: "Now that this threat [of Soviet aggression] has been removed other problems have emerged. . . . There is an enormous incentive to work cooperatively. But the forces of nationalism, protectionism and religious conflict are going in the opposite direction. The New World Order has to develop a cooperative world and find a new means of suppressing these divisive forces."

            As he worked the Rockefeller quote into his own text, His Eminence underscored certain words and phrases for emphasis: "nationalism . . . religious conflict . . . a cooperative spirit . . . suppressing these divisive forces. "The very point of the Ethical Need for Abdication of National Sovereignty was contained in those few words. If organized religion and national spirit could be weaned from their divisiveness, then a new and fruitful cooperative spirit was sure to follow. As he knew, there are only a restricted number of people at any given moment of history who fully understand the nature of the Process. Far fewer still-barely a dozen in a given era, perhaps; that was the Cardinal's opinion anyway-were privi­leged to function as master engineers of the Process. Even he had never attained that status, though he did aspire to it still. In his own mind, he had become nothing less than the Apostle of the Process.

o o o o

            Cosimo Maestroianni's devotion to the Process had started when he was a fledgling diplomat. By seeming chance, he came to the notice of two men. One was a senior Vatican diplomat, Archbishop Roncalli. The other was Cyrus Benthoek. Both men had been impressed by Maestroianni's acu­men. They had gone out of their way to help him in his career and in his cultivation of the Process. Both men had shared their power and their wisdom with Maestroianni.

            Roncalli created opportunities for the advancement and enhancement of Maestroianni's ecclesiastical career. First in Paris, then as honored Cardi­nal Patriarch of Venice and finally as Pope, he was able to ensure Maestro­ianni's advantage in a thousand small but operatively efficient ways. The younger man was accorded first place and highest recommendation in any list of Secretariat employees proposed for promotion. He was accorded access to classified information; inclusion in highly confidential discus­sions; timely forewarnings of near-future happenings. Above all, he was accorded discreet guidelines in that precious Vatican asset, romanita.

            Cyrus Benthoek, on the other hand, provided Maestroianni with hands­-on instruction, formulation and exploration of the Process. As a close and trusted friend. Benthoek found endless opportunities to feed the diplo­mat's enduring curiosity concerning the Process.

            As Monsignore Maestroianni rose through the ranks of the Vatican Secretariat, Benthoek continually arranged contacts and visits that pro­vided his avid protégé with ever greater and ever more fruitful access to the thinking of private associations. By means of invitations to conven­tions and introductions to governmental circles beyond the younger man's reach, he gave Maestroianni easy access to kindred spirits -some of them, indeed, master engineers -who were actively engaged in collaboration with the Process. In sum, Benthoek supplied Maestroianni with a vista into a world normally inaccessible to a Vatican diplomat.

            Professionally at home in the Vatican, Maestroianni was within touch­ing distance of the summit of his career as Secretary of State. He became a major influence in the Vatican Chancery. On the liturgical side of things, for example, the Archbishop directed the reform of the old Code of Canon Law, and in doing so he brought the Church's juridical structure into ever greater alignment with his revised thinking about the need to reform the Catholic Church from within, in the light of the coming new order in the life of the nations.

            On the political scene, meanwhile, Archbishop Maestroianni showed himself to be a consummate global diplomat. He carefully supervised all Vatican negotiations with the Soviet Union, and with its Eastern European satellite states. His ultimate go al in those delicate affairs was the signing of a series of protocol arrangements between the Holy See and the "sover­eign democracies" of the "socialist fraternity," as those political entities referred to themselves. Whether in Moscow or Sofia, Bucharest or Bel­grade, Archbishop Cosimo Maestroianni became known as a reconciler of governments; as a bridge builder between government establishments.

            All the while, Cyrus Benthoek continued to cultivate Maestroianni's deeper penetration into the Process. In those higher stages of his education of the Archbishop, Benthoek constantly invoked the memory of Elihu Root as the patron saint of the Process. Elihu Root had made his mark publicly in the early twentieth century as a prominent Wall Street lawyer who had served as Secretary of War for President William McKinley and President Theodore Roosevelt, and later as Roosevelt's Secretary of State. He had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1912, and became the first honorary chairman of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations.

            Elihu Root and like-minded lawyers working in the field of interna­tional finance and relations were convinced that the inherent logic of his­tory-Cyrus Benthoek nearly always got that phrase in-dictated a glob al role for the United States. In fact, Root and the others initiated an Estab­lishment mentality that had been passed down intact through such revered figures -"Wise Men," Benthoek called them pointedly and consistently ­as Henry Stimson, Robert A. Lovett, John J. McCloy and Henry Kissinger. It was on one of his visits to Benthoek in his New York offices that Maestroianni finally received a defining enlightenment about the Process, when he mentioned Root's name as the founder of twentieth-century globalism and the original conceptualizer of the Process.

            "No, my friend. Root was no founder. But where he was unique was in his appraisal of the Process. For that appraisal brought him to the conclu­sion that the ultimate goal of the force of history-the goal of the force behind all the forces-was the goal of a truly one-world economic and financial governing system. Root saw that there is no other basis on which all nations can come together. The organized sharing of the earth and its riches-that is the basis of all good in the world.

            "The Process is the means by which the force does its work. For that reason, the Process is a sacrosanct concept-a code word, if you like-for all of us who are true globalists. That is the understanding Elihu Root left to us. That is the enduring blessing and legacy and responsibility he left to all the 'Wise Men' who have since followed in his footsteps. To all who are dedicated to the same ideal."

            At that very moment, Maestroianni crossed the farther threshold to which Benthoek had been guiding him with such dedication and patience. A smile spread across the Archbishop's face like the first rays of sunlight on a new morning. For suddenly the obvious dawned on him. Suddenly he understood that the Process is not a distant and impersonal thing. Sud­denly he understood -as Benthoek had intended him to understand -that, if the force stands behind the Process, so there are master engineers who stand behind the force. And suddenly he understood that Elihu Root was not an inventor, but an engineer. A master engineer, in fact. One of a group of men who, at any stage in the Process, take up that special role of invention and refinement and guidance and facilitation in the steady, ongoing pattern of the force.

            That, Maestroianni finally realized, was why Benthoek was always talk­ing about those "Wise Men" of his. Those were the master engineers.

            It was a marvelous realization for Cosimo Maestroianni. It made the Process wonderfully human and accessible for him. In fact, as he confessed to Benthoek with heartfelt emotion, it even rang a doctrinal bell for him. And the aim of every one of those master engineers of the Process was always the same: to achieve the inherent destiny of the society of nations as a family! A human family! A new and all-embracing holy family. Was that not the very charity, the caritas, the agape preached by the Apostle Paul?

            "Yes, my colleague!" Benthoek knew exactly what button to push now. "It is doctrinal. It is scriptural even. For we are a family! All the nations are a family. That is our destiny. All are destined to be one again! Who knows, my friend?" Benthoek raised his hands and opened his palms in an upward gesture. "Who knows whether you, in your citadel of the Vatican, might be called upon to function as one of those masters?" Maestroianni saw that gesture as one of supplication, even as a reflection of the classical orans figures in classical Christian iconography, as a liturgical gesture par excellence.

            Maestroianni had not become a master engineer. But it was not for want of yearning. As cleric, as priest, as Archbishop, as career churchman and diplomat, Maestroianni increasingly abandoned all the images and con­cepts of his original faith that came to rankle him so much in the Slavic Pope-all those images of Christ's Kingship and of Marian Queenship and of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ.

            For Archbishop Maestroianni, "the force behind the forces" of history ceased to be the hand of Christ as the Lord of human history. For him as for Benthoek, "the force behind the forces" retired as an image into the mysterious unknown. It became nothing more coherent than the all ­important but unidentifiable X factor in human affairs. All of the Arch­bishop's activity issued from his deepening understanding of the Process; and from his deepening reverence for that mysterious X factor-"the force behind the forces." It all hinged together very well for him. The only logical way of serving the primal "force" was through the Process. The idea was to help the Process along toward the ultimate go al of the force: the cultural, political, social and economic homogenization of all the na­tions of the earth.

            Given that ultimate goal, it stood to reason that one of the prime "cul­tural" takeover targets of the Process had to be the Roman Catholic Church. Or, to be precise about it, the takeover target of the Process had to be the systemic organization of the Roman Catholic Church. What was not acceptable -what had to be cleansed from the structural organiza­tion -was the traditional claim of Roman Catholicism to have absolute authority in the affairs of humankind. For in the main, those claims could not be meshed with the demands of the Process.

            The further fact was that, in its aim to eliminate the Roman Catholic Church's absolute claims of moral authority, the Process had to eliminate the traditional authority of the papacy itself. For the Church makes its absolutist claims and issues its absolutist mandates by means of-and solely in virtue of-the unique and traditional authority residing in the papacy. Inevitably, the Process entails the de-papalizing of the Roman Catholic Church.  

            With that achieved, it would be a relatively straightforward matter for such realists as Maestroianni to cleanse the Church -its global organiza­tional structures, its professional personnel and its nearly one billion ad­herents alike -of an outlook and a method of behavior that currently only erected barriers and stumbling blocks to the harmony of thought and policy required in  the new society of nations.