Is the Pope Catholic...Enough?
By CHRISTOPHER NOXON

he first sign that something unusual was going on up the hill was the appearance of a fleet of brand-new Volkswagen bugs, lined up on a muddy bluff like a row of oversize Easter eggs. It was a local handyman who spotted them while he was out on a walk through this little valley in the mountains northwest of Los Angeles, near Malibu. Neighbors had already been talking about the 16-acre property on the valley's south slope, and soon word spread that a church group called Holy Family had purchased the site with plans to break ground for a 9,300-square-foot Mission-style church complex.

Among the neighbors who wondered about the new arrival was my father, a recently retired documentary filmmaker who joined the local homeowners association when he moved to the area two years ago. This latest project, however, wasn't the usual commercial complex or instant enclave of luxury homes that tended to attract the association's attention. It was a church, that much was clear, but it didn't sound at all like your garden-variety community parish. A representative for the property owner explained that the church was Catholic, but it wasn't affiliated with the Roman Catholic archdiocese. While the church building was relatively large, the congregation was quite small, with about 70 members. And though religious practices and rituals would be familiar to Catholics, there was one big difference: Sunday Mass, it was reported, would be conducted entirely in Latin.

Lest anyone get the impression that this band of spiritual seekers might disperse if the collection baskets were to run dry, a church representative assured the neighbors that the church was supported by an unnamed individual congregant with "tremendous financial viability."

Would that explain the VW bugs? The handyman recalls posing the question at an early community meeting. He was told that the congregant financing the church "had given them as gifts to his nieces and nephews," he says. "I remember thinking, 'That's some generous uncle."'

The person behind the unusually well-endowed chapel turned out to be the actor Mel Gibson, star of "Mad Max," "Lethal Weapon" and "Braveheart." The church is operated by a nonprofit corporation; according to public financial records, Gibson is its director, chief executive officer and sole benefactor, making more than $2.8 million in contributions over the past three years.

The fact that Gibson is building a church in the hills near Los Angeles should come as no huge surprise. Gibson's Catholicism has never been a secret, and in fact gives him a sort of reverse-exoticism in a town where other stars dabble in Buddhism, kabala and Scientology. An avowed family man still on his first marriage, with seven children to show for it, Gibson smokes, raises cattle, publicly shuns plastic surgery and seems wholly unmoved by most of the liberal-left causes favored by industry peers. Recently, however, something beyond the impulse to entertain has been showing up in Gibson's work. Last year he played a former minister who rediscovers religion amid an alien invasion in "Signs" and a reverent Catholic lieutenant colonel in the war drama "We Were Soldiers." In these films, but especially in a new movie, a monumentally risky project called "The Passion," which he co-wrote and is currently directing in and around Rome, Gibson appears increasingly driven to express a theology only hinted at in his previous work. That theology is a strain of Catholicism rooted in the dictates of a 16th-century papal council and nurtured by a splinter group of conspiracy-minded Catholics, mystics, monarchists and disaffected conservatives -- including a seminary dropout and rabble-rousing theologist who also happens to be Mel Gibson's father.

Gibson is the star practitioner of this movement, which is known as Catholic traditionalism. Seeking to maintain the faith as it was understood before the landmark Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965, traditionalists view modern reforms as the work of either foolish liberals or hellbent heretics. They generally operate outside the authority or oversight of the official church, often maintaining their own chapels, schools, seminaries and clerical orders. Central to the movement is the Tridentine Mass, the Latin rite that was codified by the Council of Trent in the 16th century and remained in place until the Second Vatican Council deemed that Mass should be held in the popular language of each country. Latin, however, is just the beginning -- traditionalists refrain from eating meat on Fridays, and traditionalist women wear headdresses in church. The movement seeks to revive an orthodoxy uncorrupted by the theological and social changes of the last 300 years or so.

Michael W. Cuneo, a sociology professor at Fordham University who reported on right-wing Catholic dissent in his 1997 book, "The Smoke of Satan," wrote that traditionalists "would like nothing more than to be transported back to Louis XIV's France or Franco's Spain, where Catholicism enjoyed an unrivaled presidency over cultural life and other religions existed entirely at its beneficence."

While traditionalists agree on the broad outlines of correct religious practice, the movement is hardly united. Its brief history is the story of a movement branching off into ever-smaller submovements. Today there are approximately 600 traditionalist chapels, representing a number of theological streams, including the more Vatican-friendly Society of Saint Pius X, the more strident Society of Saint Pius V, the militantly traditional Mount St. Michael's community and the Apostles of Infinite Love, a monastic community in Quebec led by a onetime Catholic brother who claims to be the incarnation of the one true pope. All told, there are an estimated 100,000 traditionalists in the United States.

Gibson's church may be the most comfortably endowed traditionalist house of worship in the country, but in other respects it is quite typical. Most of the congregation met while attending services held by a traditionalist priest, whose church in the San Gabriel Valley was eventually taken over by the Society of Saint Pius X. A group of congregants, including the Gibson family, left in protest. They gained approval from Los Angeles County to build their own church early last year after agreeing to a set of operating guidelines -- covering such issues as parking, lighting, signage and hours of services -- with the regional planning commission and neighbors (including my father).

When I called the church elder who was Holy Family's representative at the county meetings, he agreed to an interview and accepted my request to attend a service, on the conditions that I not identify him or any member of the congregation beyond Mel Gibson, and that I withhold details that might invite the interest of fans or paparazzi. He also asked that I refrain from speaking to the priest, the congregants or anyone else during my visit. He told me that anyone seen speaking to me "will not be welcome back at our church again."

After all the warnings, I was a little surprised to find Sunday Mass at Holy Family an almost entirely ordinary experience. The service itself was remarkably similar to what I remember from parochial school -- that is, until a homily delivered near the end of the two-hour Mass. The priest read a parable from St. Matthew about a farmer whose fields are raided in the night by an enemy who spreads a noxious weed in his wheat. The evil in the story, the priest said, is "the modern church," whose wickedness will be dealt with on Judgment Day.

"The wiping out of our opposition must wait until harvest time," he concluded. It suddenly became clear why Gibson isn't worshiping with his fellow Catholic Martin Sheen down at Our Lady of Malibu.

Gibson is widely known in traditionalist circles, and he has made no secret of his religious affiliation. "I go to an all-pre-Vatican II Latin Mass," he told USA Today in an interview two years ago. "There was a lot of talk, particularly in the 60's, of 'Wow, we've got to change with the times.' But the Creator instituted something very specific, and we can't just go change it." More recently, the Italian newspaper Il Giornale reported that Gibson made a "scathing attack against the Vatican," calling it a "wolf in sheep's clothing."

While many traditionalists can't abide some of Gibson's career choices -- the onscreen baring of his bottom is a particular source of concern -- most are content to overlook his occasional wild streak. "Gibson should get the tsk-tsk award for lowering his impressive acting talent on occasion," wrote a priest known as Father Moderator on the Internet posting board Traditio. Nonetheless, the priest continued, Gibson "never ceases to project his traditional Catholic faith to the public. Who else in such a prominent position ever does?"

Mel Gibson is also known in traditionalist circles as the most famous son of Hutton Gibson, a well-known author and activist who has railed against the Vatican for more than 30 years. His books on the topic include "Is the Pope Catholic?" and "The Enemy Is Here." (Precisely where is indicated by a map on the dust jacket -- it's a cartoon of Italy, drawn by one of his 49 grandchildren). Gibson père also publishes a quarterly newsletter called "The War Is Now!," which includes all manner of verbal volleys against a pope he calls "Garrulous Karolus, the Koran Kisser."

Now living in suburban Houston, Hutton Gibson invited me for a weekend visit after an initial phone conversation. When I arrived, he was wrapping up an interview with a syndicated radio program. Hutton Gibson is 84 but seemed a good deal younger (which he credited to his abstinence from drinking, daily doses of vitamins and "never going near a doctor"). He is energized by an abiding love of corny jokes and lively debate, and he peppered a commentary on the scandals facing the Catholic Church with jokes about Texans, the Irish and, inevitably, the pope.

He said he speaks to his son frequently and knows all about Mel's chapel in the hills. "Mel wasn't raised in the new church, and he wouldn't go for it anymore than I would," he said. "I've got to say that my whole family is with me -- all 10 of them."

While his rhetoric showed no signs of mellowing, the elder Gibson had plenty of reasons to be satisfied. For one, he is a newlywed. His doting bride, Joye, is a statuesque Oregonian who playfully addressed him as "Mr. G." Surrounded by ceramic knickknacks and photos of his grandchildren, he seemed entirely at ease with himself and the world.

Which made it all the odder when he launched into one of his complex conspiracy theories. On our first night together, he nursed a mug of sassafras tea while leading a four-hour tutorial on so-called sedevacantism, which holds that all the popes going back to John XXIII in the 1950's have been illegitimate -- "anti-popes," he called them. As Hutton explained it, the conservative cardinal Giuseppe Siri was probably passed over for pope in 1958 in favor of a more reform-minded candidate. Hutton said Cardinal Siri was duly elected, but was forced to step aside by conspirators inside and outside the church. These shadowy enemies might have threatened "to atom-bomb the Vatican City," he said. In another conversation, he told me that the Second Vatican Council was "a Masonic plot backed by the Jews."

The intrigue got only murkier and more menacing from there. The next day after church, over a plate of roast beef at a buffet joint off the highway, conversation turned to the events of Sept. 11. Hutton flatly rejected that Al Qaeda hijackers had anything to do with the attacks. "Anybody can put out a passenger list," he said.

So what happened? "They were crashed by remote control," he replied.

He moved on to the Holocaust, dismissing historical accounts that six million Jews were exterminated. "Go and ask an undertaker or the guy who operates the crematorium what it takes to get rid of a dead body," he said. "It takes one liter of petrol and 20 minutes. Now, six million?"

Across the table, Joye suddenly looked up from her plate. She was dressed in a stylish outfit for church, wearing a leather patchwork blazer and a felt beret in place of the traditional headdress. She had kept quiet most of the day, so it was a surprise when she cheerfully piped in. "There weren't even that many Jews in all of Europe," she said.

"Anyway, there were more after the war than before," Hutton added.

The entire catastrophe was manufactured, said Hutton, as part of an arrangement between Hitler and "financiers" to move Jews out of Germany. Hitler "had this deal where he was supposed to make it rough on them so they would all get out and migrate to Israel because they needed people there to fight the Arabs," he said.

Whether any of this has rubbed off on Hutton's son Mel is an open question. A church elder at Holy Family says that while the two share the same foundation of faith, Mel Gibson parts company with his father on many points. "He doesn't go along with a lot of what his dad says," he says. And beyond claiming to have seen the plans for Holy Family and attended services with the congregation, Hutton Gibson has no apparent connection to his son's church in California.

Still, Mel Gibson has shown some of his father's flair for conspiracy scenarios. In a 1995 Playboy interview, he related a sketchy theory that various presidential assassinations and assassination attempts have been acts of retribution for economic reforms that challenged the powers-that-be. "There's something to do with the Federal Reserve that Lincoln did, Kennedy did and Reagan tried," he said. "I can't remember what it was. My dad told me about it. Everyone who did this particular thing that would have fixed the economy got undone. Anyway, I'll end up dead if I keep talking."

Perhaps nothing Gibson has done will serve as a more public announcement of his faith and worldview than the project he's now completing in Rome. "The Passion" is a graphic depiction of the last 12 hours in the life of Jesus Christ, based on biblical accounts and the writings of two mystic nuns. Gibson is returning to the director's chair for the first time since "Braveheart" in 1995, but he will not appear on-screen. There will not, in fact, be any big stars. Nor will there be subtitles, which might prove a challenge for many moviegoers, since the actors will speak only Aramaic and Latin. Gibson has said that he hopes to depict Christ's ordeal using "filmic storytelling" techniques that will make the understanding of dialogue unnecessary.

The idea came to him a decade ago, he announced at a news conference last September, and he is soldiering on now without the backing of a studio or a U.S. distributor. "Obviously, nobody wants to touch something filmed in two dead languages," he said. "They think I'm crazy, and maybe I am. But maybe I'm a genius."

In Hollywood, the astonishment many felt upon hearing about the project has been heightened by reports that his production company is paying the film's estimated $25 million cost itself. Making a movie that has anything at all to do with religion is risky enough -- remember "The Last Temptation of Christ"? But spending your own money to help pay for it?

"It's a very gutsy thing to do -- I certainly wouldn't do it," says the veteran producer Alan Ladd Jr., who chose Gibson to star in and direct "Braveheart." "But he wouldn't do it if he couldn't it pull off, at least in his own mind. He's obviously satisfying some deep personal need in himself."

Only Gibson knows the precise nature of that personal need, and he declined numerous requests for an interview, limiting his public comments to a January appearance on the Fox news program "The O'Reilly Factor," in which he complained about inquiries regarding his faith and suggested that any reporter asking such questions might be part of a plot to undermine his message of salvation. "I think he's been sent," he told Bill O'Reilly. "When you touch this subject, it does have a lot of enemies."

Many traditionalists, meanwhile, hope the graphic approach Gibson is taking -- production stills show the star, James Caviezel, beaten to a pulp and drenched in blood, fresh from a flagellation -- will serve as a big-budget dramatization of key points of traditionalist theology. After waging a quiet war against what they see as the Vatican's overly accommodating theology, traditionalists suddenly find themselves equipped with a most unfamiliar weapon: star power. "I'm delighted he's getting more involved," says Bishop Daniel Dolan, founder of more than 30 Latin Mass churches and one of the most influential traditionalists in the country. "To put the weight of his Hollywood celebrity behind the truth that the whole modern church structure is rotten to the core is excellent. I welcome it."

A friend of the Gibson family has his own ideas about how traditionalist thought is informing "The Passion." Gary Giuffre, a founder of the traditionalist St. Jude Chapel in Texas, says Gibson told him about his plans for "The Passion" on a recent visit. "It will graphically portray the intense suffering of Christ, perhaps as no film has done before." Most important, he says, the film will lay the blame for the death of Christ where it belongs -- which some traditionalists believe means the Jewish authorities who presided over his trial and delivered him to the Romans to be crucified.

In his conversation with Bill O'Reilly (who prefaced the interview by disclosing that Gibson's production company has optioned the rights to O'Reilly's mystery novel), Gibson was asked whether his account might particularly upset Jews. "It may," he said. "It's not meant to. I think it's meant to just tell the truth. I want to be as truthful as possible. But when you look at the reasons why Christ came, why he was crucified -- he died for all mankind and he suffered for all mankind. So that, really, anyone who transgresses has to look at their own part or look at their own culpability."

Christopher Noxon is a writer living in Los Angeles.

The Pentagon's New Map

by Thomas P. M. Barnett, U.S. Naval War College

Thomas Barnett's web page

Since the end of the cold war, the United States has been trying to come up with an operating theory of the world and a military strategy to accompany it. Now there's a leading contender. It involves identifying the problem parts of the world and aggressively shrinking them. Since September 11, 2001, the author, a professor of warfare analysis, has been advising the Office of the Secretary of Defense and giving this briefing continually at the Pentagon and in the intelligence community. Now he gives it to you. Let me tell you why military engagement with Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad is not only necessary and inevitable, but good.

When the United States finally goes to war again in the Persian Gulf, it will not constitute a settling of old scores, or just an enforced disarmament of illegal weapons, or a distraction in the war on terror. Our next war in the Gulf will mark a historical tipping point-the moment when Washington takes real ownership of strategic security in the age of globalization.

That is why the public debate about this war has been so important: It forces Americans to come to terms with I believe is the new security paradigm that shapes this age, namely, Disconnectedness defines danger. Saddam Hussein's outlaw regime is dangerously disconnected from the globalizing world, from its rule sets, its norms, and all the ties that bind countries together in mutually assured dependence.

The problem with most discussion of globalization is that too many experts treat it as a binary outcome: Either it is great and sweeping the planet, or it is horrid and failing humanity everywhere. Neither view really works, because globalization as a historical process is simply too big and too complex for such summary judgments. Instead, this new world must be defined by where globalization has truly taken root and where it has not.

Show me where globalization is thick with network connectivity, financial transactions, liberal media flows, and collective security, and I will show you regions featuring stable governments, rising standards of living, and more deaths by suicide than murder. These parts of the world I call the Functioning Core, or Core. But show me where globalization is thinning or just plain absent, and I will show you regions plagued by politically repressive regimes, widespread poverty and disease, routine mass murder, and-most important-the chronic conflicts that incubate the next generation of global terrorists. These parts of the world I call the Non-Integrating Gap, or Gap.

Globalization's "ozone hole" may have been out of sight and out of mind prior to September 11, 2001, but it has been hard to miss ever since. And measuring the reach of globalization is not an academic exercise to an eighteen-year-old marine sinking tent poles on its far side. So where do we schedule the U.S. military's next round of away games? The pattern that has emerged since the end of the cold war suggests a simple answer: in the Gap.

The reason I support going to war in Iraq is not simply that Saddam is a cutthroat Stalinist willing to kill anyone to stay in power, nor because that regime has clearly supported terrorist networks over the years. The real reason I support a war like this is that the resulting long-term military commitment will finally force America to deal with the entire Gap as a strategic threat environment.

FOR MOST COUNTRIES, accommodating the emerging global rule set of democracy, transparency, and free trade is no mean feat, which is something most Americans find hard to understand. We tend to forget just how hard it has been to keep the United States together all these years, harmonizing our own, competing internal rule sets along the way-through a Civil War, a Great Depression, and the long struggles for racial and sexual equality that continue to this day. As far as most states are concerned, we are quite unrealistic in our expectation that they should adapt themselves quickly to globalization's very American-looking rule set.

But you have to be careful with that Darwinian pessimism, because it is a short jump from apologizing for globalization-as-forced-Americanization to insinuating-along racial or civilization lines-that "those people will simply never be like us." Just ten years ago, most experts were willing to write off poor Russia, declaring Slavs, in effect, genetically unfit for democracy and capitalism. Similar arguments resonated in most China-bashing during the 1990's, and you hear them today in the debates about the feasibility of imposing democracy on a post-Saddam Iraq-a sort of Muslims-are-from-Mars argument. So how do we distinguish between who is really making it in globalization's Core and who remains trapped in the Gap? And how permanent is this dividing line?

Understanding that the line between the Core and Gap is constantly shifting, let me suggest that the direction of change is more critical than the degree. So, yes, Beijing is still ruled by a "Communist party" whose ideological formula is 30 percent Marxist-Leninist and 70 percent Sopranos, but China just signed on to the World Trade Organization, and over the long run, that is far more important in securing the country's permanent Core status. Why? Because it forces China to harmonize its internal rule set with that of globalization-banking, tariffs, copyright protection, environmental standards. Of course, working to adjust your internal rule sets to globalization's evolving rule set offers no guarantee of success. As Argentina and Brazil have recently found out, following the rules (in Argentina's case, sort of following) does not mean you are panic proof, or bubble proof, or even recession proof. Trying to adapt to globalization does not mean bad things will never happen to you. Nor does it mean all your poor will immediately morph into stable middle class. It just means your standard of living gets better over time.

In sum, it is always possible to fall off this bandwagon called globalization. And when you do, bloodshed will follow. If you are lucky, so will American troops.

SO WHAT PARTS OF THE WORLD can be considered functioning right now? North America, much of South America, the European Union, Putin's Russia, Japan and Asia's emerging economies (most notably China and India), Australia and New Zealand, and South Africa, which accounts for roughly four billion out of a global population of six billion.

Whom does that leave in the Gap? It would be easy to say "everyone else," but I want to offer you more proof than that and, by doing so, argue why I think the Gap is a long-term threat to more than just your pocketbook or conscience.

If we map out U.S. military responses since the end of the cold war, (see below), we find an overwhelming concentration of activity in the regions of the world that are excluded from globalization's growing Core-namely the Caribbean Rim, virtually all of Africa, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East and Southwest Asia, and much of Southeast Asia. That is roughly the remaining two billion of the world's population. Most have demographics skewed very young, and most are labeled, "low income" or "low

middle income" by the World Bank (i.e., less than $3,000 annual per capita). If we draw a line around the majority of those military interventions, we have basically mapped the Non-Integrating Gap. Obviously, there are outliers excluded geographically by this simple approach, such as an Israel isolated in the Gap, a North Korea adrift within the Core, or a Philippines straddling the line. But looking at the data, it is hard to deny the essential logic of the picture: If a country is either losing out to globalization or rejecting much of the content flows associated with its advance, there is a far greater chance that the U.S. will end up sending forces at some point. Conversely, if a country is largely functioning within globalization, we tend not to have to send our forces there to restore order to eradicate threats.

Now, that may seem like a tautology-in effect defining any place that has not attracted U.S. military intervention in the last decade or so as "functioning within globalization" (and vice versa). But think about this larger point: Ever since the end of World War II, this country has assumed that the real threats to its security resided in countries of roughly similar size, development, and wealth-in other words, other great powers like ourselves. During the cold war, that other great power was the Soviet Union. When the big Red machine evaporated in the early 1990's, we flirted with concerns about a united Europe, a powerhouse Japan, and-most recently-a rising China.

What was interesting about all those scenarios is the assumption that only an advanced state can truly threaten us. The rest of the world? Those less-developed parts of the world have long been referred to in military plans as the "Lesser Includeds," meaning that if we built a military capable of handling a great power's military threat, it would always be sufficient for any minor scenarios we might have to engage in the less advanced world. That assumption was shattered by September 11. After all, we were not attacked by a nation or even an army but by a group of-in Thomas Friedman's vernacular-Super Empowered Individuals willing to die for their cause. September 11 triggered a system perturbation that continues to reshape our government (the new Department of Homeland Security), our economy (the de facto security tax we all pay), and even our society (Wave to the camera!). Moreover, it launched the global war on terrorism, the prism through which our government now views every bilateral security relationship we have across the world.

In many ways, the September 11 attacks did the U.S. national-security establishment a huge favor by pulling us back from the abstract planning of future high-tech wars against "near peers" into the here-and-now threats to global order. By doing so, the dividing lines between Core and Gap were highlighted, and more important, the nature of the threat environment was thrown into stark relief.

Think about it: Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are pure products of the Gap-in effect, its most violent feedback to the Core. They tell us how we are doing in exporting security to these lawless areas (not very well) and which states they would like to take "off line" from globalization and return to some seventh-century definition of the good life (any Gap state with a sizable Muslim population, especially Saudi Arabia).

If you take this message from Osama and combine it with our military-intervention record of the last decade, a simple security rule set emerges: A country's potential to warrant a U.S. military response is inversely related to its globalization connectivity. There is a good reason why Al Qaeda was based first in Sudan and then later in Afghanistan: These are two of the most disconnected countries in the world. Look at the other places U.S. Special Operations Forces have recently zeroed in on: northwestern Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen. We are talking about the ends of the earth as far as globalization is concerned.

But just as important as "getting them where they live" is stopping the ability of these terrorist networks to access the Core via the "seam states" that lie along the Gap's bloody boundaries. It is along this seam that the Core will seek to suppress bad things coming out of the Gap. Which are some of these classic seam states? Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Morocco, Algeria, Greece, Turkey, Pakistan, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia come readily to mind. But the U.S. will not be the only Core state working this issue. For example, Russia has its own war on terrorism in the Caucasus, China is working its western border with more vigor, and Australia was recently energized (or was it cowed?) by the Bali bombing. IF WE STEP BACK for a minute and consider the broader implications of this new global map, then U.S. national-security strategy would seem to be:

1) Increase the Core's immune system capabilities for responding to September 11-like system perturbations;

2) Work the seam states to firewall the Core from the Gap's worst exports, such as terror, drugs, and pandemics; and, most important,

3) Shrink the Gap. Notice I did not just say Mind the Gap. The knee-jerk reaction of many Americans to September 11 is to say, "Let's get off our dependency on foreign oil, and then we won't have to deal with those people." The most naïve assumption underlying that dream is that reducing what little connectivity the Gap has with the Core will render it less dangerous to us over the long haul. Turning the Middle East into Central Africa will not build a better world for my kids. We cannot simply will those people away.

The Middle East is the perfect place to start. Diplomacy cannot work in a region where the biggest sources of insecurity lie not between states but within them. What is most wrong about the Middle East is the lack of personal freedom and how that translates into dead-end lives for most of the population-especially for the young. Some states like Qatar and Jordan are ripe for perestroika-like leaps into better political futures, thanks to younger leaders who see the inevitability of such change. Iran is likewise waiting for the right Gorbachev to come along-if he has not already. What stands in the path of this change? Fear. Fear of tradition unraveling. Fear of the mullah's disapproval. Fear of being labeled a "bad" or "traitorous" Muslim state. Fear of becoming a target of radical groups and terrorist networks. But most of all, fear of being attacked from all sides for being different-the fear of becoming Israel.

The Middle East has long been a neighborhood of bullies eager to pick on the weak. Israel is still around because it has become-sadly-one of the toughest bullies on the block. The only thing that will change that nasty environment and open the floodgates for change is if some external power steps in and plays Leviathan full-time. Taking down Saddam, the region's bully-in-chief, will force the U.S. into playing that role far more fully than it has over the past several decades, primarily because Iraq is the Yugoslavia of the Middle East-a crossroads of civilizations that has historically required a dictatorship to keep the peace. As baby-sitting jobs go, this one will be a doozy, making our lengthy efforts in postwar Germany and Japan look simple in retrospect.

But it is the right thing to do, and now is the right time to do it, and we are the only country that can. Freedom cannot blossom in the Middle East without security, and security is this country's most influential public-sector export. By that I do not mean arms exports, but basically the attention paid by our military forces to any region's potential for mass violence. We are the only nation on earth capable of exporting security in a sustained fashion, and we have a very good track record of doing it.

Show me a part of the world that is secure in its peace and I will show you a strong or growing ties between local militaries and the U.S. military. Show me regions where major war is inconceivable and I will show you permanent U.S. military bases and long-term security alliances. Show me the strongest investment relationships in the global economy and I will show you two postwar military occupations that remade Europe and Japan following World War II.

This country has successfully exported security to globalization's Old Core (Western Europe, Northeast Asia) for half a century and to its emerging New Core (Developing Asia) for a solid quarter century following our mishandling of Vietnam. But our efforts in the Middle Ease have been inconsistent-in Africa, almost nonexistent. Until we begin the systematic, long-term export of security to the Gap, it will increasingly export its pain to the Core in the form of terrorism and other instabilities.

Naturally, it will take a whole lot more than the U.S. exporting security to shrink the Gap. Africa, for example, will need far more aid than the Core has offered in the past, and the integration of the Gap will ultimately depend more on private investment than anything the Core's public sector can offer. But it all has to begin with security, because free markets and democracy cannot flourish amid chronic conflict.

Making this effort means reshaping our military establishment to mirror-image the challenge that we face. Think about it. Global war is not in the offing, primarily because our huge nuclear stockpile renders such war unthinkable-for anyone. Meanwhile, classic state-on-state wars are becoming fairly rare. So if the United States is in the process of "transforming" its military to meet the threats of tomorrow, what should it end up looking like? In my mind, we fight fire with fire. If we live in a world increasingly populated by Super-Empowered Individuals, we field a military of Super-Empowered-Individuals. This may sound like additional responsibility for an already overburdened military, but that is the wrong way of looking at it, for what we are dealing with here are problems of success-not failure. It is America's continued success in deterring global war and obsolescing state-on-state war that allows us to stick our noses into the far more difficult sub-national conflicts and the dangerous transnational actors they spawn. I know most Americans do not want to hear this, but the real battlegrounds in the global war on terrorism are still over there. If gated communities and rent-a-cops were enough, September 11 never would have happened.

History is full of turning points like that terrible day, but no turning-back-points. We ignore the Gap's existence at our own peril, because it will not go away until we as a nation respond to the challenge of making globalization truly global. Handicapping the Gap

My list of real trouble for the world in the 1990s, today, and tomorrow, starting in our own backyard:

1) HAITI-- Efforts to build a nation in 1990s were disappointing * We have been going into Haiti for about a century, and we will go back when boat people start flowing in during the next crisis-without fail.

2) COLOMBIA -- Country is broken into several lawless chunks, with private armies, rebels, narcos, and legit government all working the place over. * Drugs still flow. * Ties between drug cartels and rebels grew over decade, and now we know of links to international terror, too. * We get involved, keep promising more, and keep getting nowhere. Piecemeal, incremental approach is clearly not working.

3) BRAZIL AND ARGENTINA -- Both on the bubble between the Gap and the Functioning Core. Both played the globalization game to hilt in nineties and both feel abused now. The danger of falling off the wagon and going self-destructively leftist or rightist is very real. * No military threats to speak of, except against their own democracies (the return of the generals). * South American alliance MERCOSUR tries to carve out its own reality while Washington pushes Free Trade of Americas, but we may have to settle for agreements with Chile or for pulling only Chile into bigger NAFTA. Will Brazil and Argentina force themselves to be left out and then resent it? * Amazon a large ungovernable area for Brazil, plus all that environmental damage continues to pile up. Will the world eventually care enough to step in?

4) FORMER YUGOSLAVIA-- For most of the past decade, served as shorthand for Europe's inability to get its act together even in its own backyard. * Will be long-term baby-sitting job for the West.

5) CONGO AND RWANDA/BURUNDI-- Two to three million dead in central Africa from all the fighting across the decade. How much worse can it get before we try to do something, anything? Three million more dead? * Congo is a carrion state-not quite dead or alive, and everyone is feeding off it. * And then there's AIDS.

6) ANGOLA-- Never really has solved its ongoing civil war (1.5 million dead in past quarter century). * Basically at conflict with self since mid-seventies, when Portuguese "empire" fell. * Life expectancy right now is under forty!

7) SOUTH AFRICA-- The only functioning Core country in Africa, but it's on the bubble. Lots of concerns that South Africa is a gateway country for terror networks trying to access Core through back door. * Endemic crime is biggest security threat. * And then there's AIDS.

8) ISRAEL-PALESTINE-- Terror will not abate-there is no next generation in the West Bank that wants anything but more violence. * Wall going up right now will be the Berlin Wall of twenty-first century. Eventually, outside powers will end up providing security to keep the two sides apart (this divorce is going to be very painful). * There is always the chance of somebody (Saddam in desperation?) trying to light up Israel with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and triggering the counterpunch we all fear Israel is capable of.

9) SAUDI ARABIA-- The let-them-eat-cake mentality of royal mafia will eventually trigger violent instability from within. * Paying terrorists protection money to stay away will likewise eventually fail, so danger will come from outside, too. * Huge young population with little prospects for future, and a ruling elite whose main source of income is a declining long-term asset. And yet the oil will matter to enough of the world far enough into the future that the United States will never let this place really tank, no matter what it takes.

10) IRAQ-- Question of when and how, not if. * Then there's the huge rehab job. We will have to build a security regime for the whole region.

11) SOMALIA-- Chronic lack of governance. * Chronic food problems. * Chronic problem of terrorist-network infiltration. * We went in with Marines and Special Forces and left disillusioned-a poor man's Vietnam for the 1990s. Will be hard-pressed not to return.

12) IRAN-- Counterrevolution has already begun: This time the students want to throw the mullahs out. * Iran wants to be friends with U.S., but resurgence of fundamentalists may be the price we pay to invade Iraq. * The mullahs support terror, and their push for WMD is real: Does this make them inevitable target once Iraq and North Korea are settled?

13) AFGHANISTAN-- Lawless, violent place even before the Taliban stepped on stage and started pulling it back toward seventh century (short trip) * Government sold to Al Qaeda for pennies on the dollar. * Big source of narcotics (heroin). * Now U.S. stuck there for long haul, rooting out hardcore terrorists/rebels who've chosen to stay.

14) PAKISTAN-- There is always the real danger of their having the bomb and using it out of weakness in conflict with India (very close call with December 13, 2001, New Delhi bombing). * Out of fear that Pakistan may fall to radical Muslims, we end up backing hard-line military types we don't really trust. * Clearly infested with Al Qaeda. * Was on its way to being declared a rogue state by U.S. until September 11 forced us to cooperate again. Simply put, Pakistan doesn't seem to control much of its own territory.

15) NORTH KOREA-- Marching toward WMD. * Bizarre recent behavior of Pyongyang (admitting kidnappings, breaking promises on nukes, shipping weapons to places we disapprove of and getting caught, signing agreements with Japan that seem to signal new era, talking up new economic zone next to China) suggests it is intent (like some mental patient) on provoking crises. * We live in fear of Kim's G=F6tterd=E4mmerung scenario (he is nuts). * Population deteriorating-how much more can they stand? * After Iraq, may be next.

16) INDONESIA-- Usual fears about breakup and "world's largest Muslim population." * Casualty of Asian economic crisis (really got wiped out). * Hot spot for terror networks, as we have discovered. New/integrating members of Core I worry may be lost in coming year.

17) CHINA-- Running lots of races against itself in terms of reducing the unprofitable state-run enterprises while not triggering too much unemployment, plus dealing with all that growth in energy demand and accompanying pollution, plus coming pension crisis as population ages. * New generation of leaders looks suspiciously like unimaginative technocrats-big question if they are up to task. * If none of those macro pressures trigger internal instability, there is always the fear that the Communist party won't go quietly into the night in terms of allowing more political freedoms and that at some point, economic freedom won't be enough for the masses. Right now the CCP is very corrupt and mostly a parasite on the country, but it still calls the big shots in Beijing. * Army seems to be getting more disassociated from society and reality, focusing ever more myopically on countering U.S. threat to their ability to threaten Taiwan, which remains the one flash point that could matter. * And then there's AIDS.

18) RUSSIA-- Putin has long way to go in his dictatorship of the law; the mafia and robber barons still have too much power. * Chechnya and the near-abroad in general will drag Moscow into violence, but it will be kept within the federation by and large. * U.S. moving into Central Asia is a testy thing-a relationship that can sour if not handled just right. * Russia has so many internal problems (financial weakness, environmental damage, et cetera) and depends too much on energy exports to feel safe (does bringing Iraq back online after invasion kill their golden goose?). * And then there's AIDS.

19) INDIA-- First, there's always the danger of nuking it out with Pakistan. * Short of that, Kashmir pulls them into conflict with Pak, and that involves U.S. now in way it never did before due to war on terror. * India is microcosm of globalization: the high tech, the massive poverty, the islands of development, the tensions between cultures/civilizations/religions/et cetera. It is too big to succeed, and too big to let fail. * Wants to be big responsible military player in region, wants to be strong friend of U.S., and also wants desperately to catch up with China in development (the self-imposed pressure to succeed is enormous). * And then there's AIDS.

A bishop has given a Carmelite nun permission to open a new convent someplace in the midwest. The new convent will be a haven for those sisters who are interested in living their true Carmelite vows, rather than remaining with more liberal communities. A few more nuns are needed to make the community complete.

So - there is hope for those who have become discouraged with the modernizing of their cloisters. They don't need to leave religious life, they can just leave the liberal communities.

If you know someone who fits into the above category, a relative, a friend, please tell them about this. If you fit into the above category, please email us.

Write to us at admin@marysremnant.org and we will put you in touch with the right people. They will have all of the information you need in order to make a decision.

Message from Our Blessed Mother to Jorge Zavala February 19, 2003
joycelang
Feb 26, 2003

Message from Our Blessed Mother to Jorge Zavala

February 19, 2003 St. Bruno's Church, San Bruno, CA

Dear Children,

I reunite myself with you and I thank you for all your efforts in putting into practice my request.

Children, by means of prayer, open your hearts to fasting; ask for this grace.

War is a punishment due to the sins of humanity; therefore, fast in reparation for them (sins), and in this way God will send His Peace.

Very soon you will enter into the Season of Lent, it is a time of great graces.

Dear children, live my messages and I thank all of you who receive them with your heart. Pray to the Holy Spirit and He will remind you of all that I have told you.

I love you, I give you my blessing and may the peace, the peace, the peace of the Lord remain always in your hearts.

Dear World Prayer Team Member,

The World Prayer Center is calling all Christians worldwide to a Worldwide Day of Prayer on Monday, March 3, 2003.

Ted Haggard, President of The World Prayer Team, says his office has been flooded with messages from people all over the world saying that God is impressing upon them to prepare to pray on 03-03-03. "These believers do not know one another, nor are they connected to one another. They do not know that the others are saying the same thing. Clearly, the Holy Spirit is speaking to His church, and He is calling His people to pray," says Haggard.

"As these reports began to come in, we sensed in our hearts that God wants us to promote a huge outpouring of prayer on this special date. Many believe there is significance to this date because of its numerical sequence (03-03-03) which reminds many Christians of the Trinity. Moreover, the Holy Spirit has highlighted Jeremiah 33:3 (again, three 3's) as our call to action, 'Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know,'" says Haggard.

The magnitude of this date is not lost on the non-Christian world as well. The Global Consciousness movement (New Age) has for years been planning a worldwide "Largest ever experiment into global consciousness" to take place on 03-03-03. Their effort is slated to begin at 3:33am (Figi local time), on the 3rd day of the 3rd month of the 3rd millennium. It has gained widespread notoriety in New Age circles.
Should this not be enough to cause Christians to pray, the significance of 03-03-03 becomes even more pressing as America could launch a war with Iraq at about that very hour, against a leader, Saddam Hussein, who has only recently embraced Islam as a way of gaining support from the Islamic world. Such was not the case with the first Gulf War. According to the Islamic calendar, March 3, 2003 is the eve of the Islamic New Year (Islamic year 1424 begins March 4, 2003). It is also the last day of the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, when pilgrims are encouraged to make a sacrifice (The Festival of Sacrifice or Eid al-Adha). The key verse in the Qu' Ran about this festival to take place this year on March 3, 2003 is, "Truly, my prayer and my service of sacrifice, my life or my death, are all of Allah…" This date therefore holds great significance to the Islamic world.

While all of this is beneath the radars of the secular news media, it is clear to many Christian leaders that the world is on the brink of a spiritual battle of monumental proportions. The epicenter of this struggle is the Middle East-a battle is going on for Jerusalem and Babylon (Iraq), biblical centers of spiritual light and darkness.

The World Prayer Team therefore calls on all Christian churches and individuals to set aside at least 3 minutes to pray at 3:33 PM in their time zone on 03/03/03.

PRAYER FOCUS: Pray that the armies of heaven will push back the powers of darkness in the Middle East. Pray that Saddam Hussein will leave the country before war is required to remove him from power. Pray that a spiritual shield will contain hostilities within the Iraqi borders (if war cannot be avoided), such that it doesn't spill over to the entire Islamic world. Pray that weapons of mass destruction, if they are deployed on any side of the battle, will be powerless. Pray that this date, rather than being a focal point of darkness, will be overwhelmed by the Light of God through the worldwide prayers of His people.

PLEASE FORWARD this message to every person you know as soon as possible. 03-03-03 is just a few days away.

THE WORLD PRAYER TEAM

Since January 1st, "The Parish Rosary Program" is averaging about 10 contacts a day. Most are via the Internet, though there has been a number of phone calls.

The State Knights of Columbus Council in Kentucky has adopted "The Parish Rosary Program" and is encouraging all the local Knights of Columbus councils to start "The Parish Rosary Program" in their parishes.  Other councils, including several in Canada, have also started the program. "The Parish Rosary Program" is a perfect project for the Knights of Columbus. However, most councils do not have an e-mail address and therefore most councils do not know anything about "The Parish Rosary Program."  Anything you can do to get the word out to the Knights would be terrific.

I received a wonderful letter from Archbishop John F. Donoghue of Atlanta.  If his diocese adopts "The Parish Rosary Program", it will be the second diocese to adopt it as a "Year of the Rosary Project."

A 1/2 page ad will appear in the next issue of Signs and Wonders magazine. Ads have appeared in The National Catholic Register and Our Sunday Visitor.

By far, the Internet continues to be the best way to let people know about "The Parish Rosary Program." E-mails lists have been great. E-mails have been sent to most, if not all, English speaking countries.
Here is a church bulletin announcement which explains the program:
YEAR OF THE ROSARY PROJECT: THE PARISH ROSARY PROGRAM
In response to John Paul I's request that the Rosary be "emphasized and promoted" many parishes have started "The Parish Rosary Program."  This program which requires very little effort consists of downloading, photocopying, and distributing small tear-away calendars to parishioners for them to tally the number of rosaries prayed every 2 weeks and drop the results in the collection basket. Weekly, year-to-date, and grand totals are published each week in the parish bulletin to remind and encourage everyone to pray the rosary.  Put a smile on Our Blessed Mother's face.  Pray the Rosary. For more information visit http://www.marysremnant.org/News/Archives/www.mattscatholicsite.com or call 269 963-8585

Please circulate this e-mail far and wide.  The idea is to encourage as many people as possible, especially the average Catholic in the pew, to pray the Rosary.

Also all the information on "The Parish Rosary Program" which is on mattscatholicsite, is available to be placed on any other website which would like to have it. Also, any website which wishes can provide a link to mattscatholicsite.

God Bless!
Patrick

Hi all we are going to have a special 48 hour prayer for peace, Our Cenacles will be running as normal but in between we will be conducting Rosaries and Cenacles, If you want to join us in any of the timeslots please email me and register before the day.

We are conducting 48 hours as Australia is 14 hours ahead of the rest of the world so we will have more time to pray for peace.

I will post the timetable in the upcoming newsletter.

All times are NY Times so far we have

6am Cenacle
4pm Cenacle (Special 030303)
6pm Cenacle
7pm Cenacle
8pm Cenacle
9pm Cenacle
10pm Cenacle

for those that have not registered to get into the chat room you need to get a user name and password, this only lasts for 1 month if it is not used it is disarmed.

http://www.mmponline.org/mmp/reg.htm

If you want to join us just for the special 030303 just register saying its only for 030303.

Grace

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