Kazakhstan: Towards a World Religion? (1)

Before the arrival of the Pope in Astana, capital of Kazakhstan, Giuseppe Nardi on the site katholisches.info on September 12, wondered: “To what extent can the Church accept a globalist agenda?”

And the answer: “Nursultan Nazarbayev [the Kazakh president since 2003, at the origin of this meeting. Ed.] had a large pyramid built especially for the congress. It must be the symbol of the unity of all religions. Does Pope Francis share this underlying unitary thought, which ultimately aspires to a one world religion?” Everything leads one to believe it:

•     Francis was “happy” in October 2021 with the creation of the Pachamama religious park in Argentina;
•     He insistently emphasized the universal brotherhood of all men, such as Freemasonry has made its standard since the 18th century;
•     He supports the construction of a temple common to the Abrahamic religions in Abu Dhabi;
•     He insists on the affirmation that the diversity of religions is a richness willed by God;
•     He declared that “all” are children of God and that even atheists will go to heaven;
•     He taught that when it comes to Mother Earth, religious affiliation is “not important”;
•     And the kick-off for this “pilgrimage of peace” was given via a video of the pope which put the different religions on an equal footing, thus degrading Jesus Christ.

The UN of Religions

In La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana on September 13, Stefano Fontana examines what this Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions is all about:

“It arose in 2003 on the initiative of the then president of Kazakhstan and has as its objectives to seek ‘common human reference points in world and traditional religions’ and to operate a ‘permanent international interreligious institution for the dialogue of religions and the adoption of agreed decisions.’ This is the so-called ‘UN of religions.’”

“The Congress functions through a Secretariat which, as we learn from the official website, implements decisions, prepares materials, drafts documents, agrees on key issues and, above all, coordinates ‘interaction with international structures on issues of Interfaith and Intercivilization Dialogue.’”

“To date, 19 secretariats have functioned. In the current one sit 10 representatives from Islam, 5 from Christianity, of which one is Catholic, 4 representatives from Buddhism, 1 from Taoism, 1 from Shintoism, 1 from Hinduism, 3 from international institutions and 5 representatives from the Republic of Kazakhstan.”

“As can be seen, the composition of the Secretariat does not offer much guarantee of balance; Catholics are almost completely absent from it, and it seems to work mainly for contacts with institutions.”

And to specify: “The Catholic Church had sent cardinals like Jozef Tomko, Roger Etchegaray, or Jean-Louis Tauran to previous congresses, but the Pope had never gone. John Paul II had visited Kazakhstan in 2001, but on a pastoral trip that had no connection with the World Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions.”

“Instead, Francis is going there, more for the Congress than for Kazakhstan. His trip is certainly in line with the encyclical Fratelli tutti [2020], with the Abu Dhabi declaration [2019], and with his conception of interreligious dialogue.”

“But this cannot eliminate—if anything it fuels – the perplexities and the questions about such a major image investment on such a fragile forum as the Congress, and on a project for a UN of religions that is more reminiscent of the projects of Enlightenment internationalism than the intentions of Catholic universalism.”

Kant in Kazakhstan

Stefano Fontana indicates the one who, according to him, is the philosophical guarantee of this type of syncretist meetings: “The most illustrious thinker who provided the basis for a project like the one being pursued in the congresses in Kazakhstan was certainly Immanuel Kant. For this purpose he wrote his two treatises on Perpetual Peace (1795) and Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793).”

“As a good 'Pietist,' Kant reduced religion to reason and faith to morality. The only thing the believer must do is ‘behave well,’ everything else is superstition. And they must do it because it is the only thing they can do.”

“Kantian religion is, therefore, a universal religion, because reason and morality are universal. It is also a religion without dogmas, because its principles are the principles of morality that reason alone is capable of fixing in the conscience.”

Here the Italian academic adds a clarification: “The natural morality that the Congress we are talking about also seeks, is not the natural morality, but it is the current morality, the lowest common denominator of what mankind (and international institutions) today consider good and evil. If it were natural morality, then it would demand the true God as the fulfilment of its demands and not the syncretism of the different gods.”

And to judge what is “a truly moral and religious duty” to ask “oneself serious and radical questions about the Catholic Church’s participation in this new syncretist civic morality, which can only arise from putting the truth or non-truth of religions in brackets and reducing them to the conventional morality of international institutions.”