By Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer

The child abuse cover-up scandal ripping through the Roman Catholic Church is
one more part of the overall crisis splitting the foundation of American
imperialism itself.

The countless reports coming from many nations of Catholic priests' sexual
molestation of children are rocking the upper echelons of the church. A United
Nations judge, Geoffrey Robertson, has stated that he wants Pope Benedict XVI to
be tried in the International Criminal Court for the sexual abuse of children by
Catholic priests, claiming the pope is ultimately responsible for this "crime
against humanity".

However, this crisis goes deeper than the hierarchical cover-up of child-abuse
crimes. It is the reflection of the true nature of the Catholic Church as
imperialism's right hand that has used the cover of Christianity and religion to
carry out massive crimes against humanity. These crimes or hidden skeletons of
genocide and colonization are now being exposed through U.N. forums and
declarations.

The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) is exposing and
working to rectify the injustices or crimes of genocide and colonization caused
by a series of 15th Century papal bulls/doctrines, collectively called the
Doctrine of Discovery.

Steven T. Newcomb, a renowned Indigenous law scholar and the world's foremost
expert on the Doctrine of Discovery, works closely with the UNPFII to expose and
rectify the doctrine's injustices.

Newcomb is also a columnist for Indian Country Today Media Network (ICTMN), the
world's largest Indian news source. ICTMN published a letter of mine about my
correspondence and support from Newcomb. A Minnesota legislator introduced a
Newcomb supported reconciliation resolution that I (for the most part) wrote
with Newcomb's assistance. The resolution apologizes to indigenous peoples of
Minnesota for the horrible injustices caused by the Doctrine of Discovery.

Also, ICTMN recently published an article titled UNPFII Panel Discusses Doctrine
of Discovery. The article presents statements about the Doctrine of Discovery,
especially including this statement: "These papal-bulls dehumanized
non-Christian peoples and sanctioned genocide and land theft..."

While recounting a 1977 journey of an indigenous peoples delegation to the U.N.
in Geneva, Chief Oren Lyons said (as stated in the mentioned above article): "We
couldn't understand why we seemed to be excluded from the 1948 Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. We came to find out it was because of a statement
by a pope in 1493 who said if they're not Christians, they have no title to
land, only the right of occupancy. Indigenous peoples didn't know until
relatively recently that the Doctrine of Discovery was the source of their
struggles."

The article also says: "The Doctrine of Discovery isn't just a quaint artifact
from history; it has been a focal point at the U.N. Permanent Forum on
Indigenous Issues for several years, in part because it was embedded into U.S.
Indian law, creating a legal framework that has been copied around the world and
continues to be used to oppress indigenous peoples."

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, have said that through this Doctrine
of Discovery, the application of the Doctrine of Discovery, the United States
has been involved in gross violations of fundamental human rights.

The U.S. became an imperialist nation because it wanted to expand the world over
with its belief in a Roman Catholic Doctrine of Discovery principle ...building
the Christian Empire "justifies" many injustices, and is a means to acquiring
much wealth.

To this present-day most U.S. Christians continue to follow this Doctrine of
Discovery principle ...and do so, by sanctioning and promoting the greedy U.S.
capitalistic, warmongering, imperialist system as a means to (1.) spread the
Christian religion throughout the entire world, and (2.) assist the U.S. in
acquiring much ill gained wealth, so that the U.S., in unison with this nation's
Christian political ethic, can continue on with its oppressive imperialistic
mission and accomplish its corrupt goals.

With sheared consciences, the U.S. Christian political ethic still believes,
while being mislead by a Doctrine of Discovery principle, that the corrupt U.S.
imperialist system is an appropriate means to spread the Christian religion
throughout the entire world. It also believes, while being mislead by this same
doctrine, that by way of this corrupt Christian evangelization process, the U.S.
can righteously acquire much wealth.

America's, Doctrine of Discovery influenced, warmongering history is one of
conquest and dominion, of brutal empire expansionism and imposition of social
order through outright genocidal warfare against U.S. Indigenous peoples, theft
of land from Mexico and Spain, invasion of Russia after World War I, followed by
a succession of military interventions in Korea, Indochina, Central America, the
Balkans, and more recently in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

Today the ethos of militarism-of conquest, domination, violence, and Empire,
which is responsible for a legacy of U.S. War Crimes, permeates the
imperialistic American economy, military, political institutions, Christian
religious institutions and culture.

Pope Nicholas V issued a papal bull in 1452 that resulted in the theft of
Indigenous lands. It also sanctioned slavery and genocide.

According to a World Conference Against Racism document, "The papal bull Romanus
Pontifex, issued by Pope Nicholas V to King Alfonso V of Portugal in 1452,
declared war against all non-Christians throughout the world, and specifically
sanctioned and promoted the conquest, colonization, and exploitation of
non-Christian nations and their territories."

The document also states that the acceptance and promotion by nation-states,
including the United States of America, of Doctrine of Discovery principles
"brought extreme expressions of racism - massacres, forced-march relocations,
the 'Indian wars', death by starvation and disease." It further states that,
"Today, such practices would be called ethnic cleansing and genocide."

In 1452, Pope Nicholas V directed King Alfonso in the papal bull [Romanus
Pontifex] to "capture, vanquish, and subdue the saracens, pagans, and other
enemies of Christ," to "put them into perpetual slavery," and "to take all their
possessions and property."

Thomas Aquinas, a canonized Roman Catholic saint, wrote in Summa Theologica,
"Unbelievers deserve not only to be separated from the Church, but also... to be
exterminated from the World by death."

The Christian invasion and conquest of the Western hemisphere caused the deaths
of upwards of 90 percent of the indigenous population of around 100 million.
Father Junipero Serra built 21 missions that extended up the United States' west
coast to San Francisco, California. Serra used the native populations as slaves
to maintain the missions, working the people to death. Christopher Columbus and
his men also enslaved natives and worked them to death. They also used innocent
native people for dog food.

More than 100,000 Indigenous children were kidnapped and placed in U.S.
Christian boarding schools, where they experienced forced assimilation. The
trauma caused by these boarding schools has yet to be resolved with the still
existing U.S. colonial state occupying Indigenous lands.

Another Roman Catholic Church hierarchical cover-up is associated with a
Catholic dogma (an unchangeable doctrine). The dogma that I am referring to
contradicts scientific evidence that teaches reasonable people that before
modern-day humans ("Adam and Eve") came into existence on earth around 200,000
years ago there were billions of years of evolutionary history wherein
corruption and death ruled the world. It was not, as a Catholic dogma states, an
"incorruptible, death free, paradise" throughout those billions of years...or
anytime prior to "the first human beings' 'original sin'". Therefore, the
creation can not be "restored to the purity of its origin", and become the
"ultimate destination of Christians who die in a state of grace", as a Catholic
dogma teaches.

St. Symeon wrote: "Neither Eve nor Paradise were yet created, but the whole
world had been brought into being by God as one thing, as a kind of paradise, at
once incorruptible yet material and perceptible."

St. John of Damascus wrote: "The creation of all things is due to God, but
corruption came in afterwards due to our wickedness...For God did not make
death, neither does He take delight in the destruction of living things" (Wisdom
1:13). But death is the work rather of man, that is, its origin is in Adam's
transgression."

St. Ignatius Brianchaninov wrote: "Plants were not subjected either to decay or
to diseases; both decay and diseases and the weeds themselves, appeared after
the alteration of the earth following the fall of man."

St. Basil the Great wrote: "...it is customary for vultures to feed on corpses,
but since there were not yet corpses, nor yet their stench, so there was not yet
such food for vultures. But all followed the diet of swans and all grazed the
meadows...the beasts...were not carnivores...such was the first creation, and
such will be the restoration after this."

U.S. Catholic Bishops wrote: "The whole Bible is spanned by the narrative of the
first creation (Gn 1:3) and the vision of a restored creation at the end of
history" (RV. 21:1-4) The Catechism of the Catholic Church says: "Jesus came to
restore creation to the purity of its origins." Modern-day science has proven
these Catholic doctrines/teachings to be untrue and deceptive. Therefore,
science has also made the Roman Catholic Religion an out-dated religion.

The current Catholic Church crisis that reveals the true nature of the church is
a sign of imperialism's inevitable downfall, for the church played a major role
in constructing the foundation of parasitic U.S. capitalist-militaristic
imperialism that was built on the forced deportation and distant enslavement of
African people and the theft of Indigenous lands. U.S. imperialism will soon
come to an end. This will occur when the Roman Catholic Church's crimes of
genocide and colonization are fully exposed and the church is brought to
justice.

Note: This article along with images and reference links is located at
http://www.towahkon.org/endofimperialism.html.