Some Jews have already stated that Argentinian President Javier Milei has publically come out as a Noahide (here). Here, the Argentinian news site Mdzol claims that Milei has a Noahide background. Where there is smoke there is fire.
The mysterious relationship between Javier Milei and religion in the face of a possible trip by the Pope
Javier Milei, a president with little public past and a relationship with religion that raises questions amid trips to "The Rebbe's Tomb" and a possible arrival of the pope in the country in 2024.
Gonzalo BarreraFriday, December 1, 2023 · 07:00 a.m.
The figure of Javier Milei continues to arouse doubts and curiosity. Being an economic technician, he came to public life with a role as a television columnist, quickly leading to political life, reaching a seat as a national deputy for the City of Buenos Aires and now, president-elect of the Nation.
Among so many doubts, his relationship with religion is added. While a few years ago he declared himself a Catholic who knelt "every morning before a Jew," he later declared to the press that he would become the first Jewish president in Argentine history. In this way, he would be the second head of state belonging to another religion.
Carlos Menem, of Muslim origin, was baptized in the Catholic faith only because the candidacy for the Presidency demanded it until the 1994 reform that he himself promoted. A similar situation happened to the French king Henry IV of Bourbon, who is credited with the phrase "Paris is well worth a mass", which he would have coined after winning the War of Religion in France (in the context of the Counter-Reformation), when he was forced to abjure (retract a heresy) as part of the agreement he reached with the Church to end the war and take over as king.
The case of Javier Milei is, a priori, different. Born into a Catholic family, the Argentinean president-elect has shown signs of being facing a process of conversion to Judaism, a process carried out by the hand of his spiritual guide, Rabbi Shimon Axel Wahnish, of the Latin Israelite Civil Association of Buenos Aires, of the Jewish-Moroccan community in Argentina. This collectivity, in fact, is formed within Hasidic Judaism, typical of Jewish Orthodoxy.
Both the cases of Menem and Milei seem to respond to a syncretic movement, far from the political expediency chosen by that distant French king. This phenomenon is much more common than one might imagine and even, in many cases, it is also a tool of Christianity to get closer to certain communities. This consists of a kind of "mixture" of beliefs without betraying dogmas, but which also has a lot of resistance in more conservative sectors of Christianity. At the same time, syncretic faith is very common in our country, with elements of popular or indigenous beliefs that coexist with Christianity in the faith of a single person.
Another faith that appears in Milei's history is Noahism together with Kabbalah, currents of Judaism that appeal not only to the Law of Moses (the Commandments), but also to the Law of Noah (Noahism, from "Noahide" or "Bnei Noach"), "promulgated" after the covenant between God and men recounted in the book of Genesis. This law establishes seven precepts: "Do not worship idols, do not blaspheme, do not commit sins of a sexual nature, do not steal, do not murder, do not eat the flesh of a live animal and establish courts of justice to implement the fulfillment of said laws."
Javier Milei's Faith and Economic Ideology
It is also worth understanding that Javier Milei's position on Judaism goes hand in hand with an ideological position, since liberal doctrine accompanies the precepts of Judaism in many aspects. An example of this is private property, defended in the Law of Moses ("Thou shalt not steal" and "Thou shalt not covet the goods of others. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's"), charity, which Maimonides (medieval rabbi) cataloged at its highest point as getting employment for the needy, the limited State, understanding that the ruler must submit to the law like every individual, or the accumulation of capital seen as a divine blessing, something that can be contrasted with visions of the Social Doctrine of the Church.
In addition, at the height of nineteenth-century liberalism, the Church branded liberalism as heresy, which led to the creation of the encyclical "Rerum novarum" by Pope Leo XIII in 1891. There, in the face of the growth of the movement inspired by thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Lock and Adam Smith, the Supreme Pontiff values capitalism as a valid movement, but one that requires a certain state intervention, proposing a distributist capitalism that allows the avoidance of monopolies and gives rise to the defense of labor rights.
Another document that nourished the Social Doctrine of the Church was the encyclical "Quadragesimo anno" of Pius XI, which added the "principle of solidarity", in the same sense as the charity proposed by Maimonides but with a different approach from welfare: "Since it is not possible to take from individuals and give to the community what they can achieve with their own effort and industry, Neither is it just, constituting a grave injury and disturbance of right order, to take from lesser and inferior communities what they can do and provide, and to give it to a greater and higher society, since every action of society, by its own strength and nature, must render assistance to the members of the social body. but not to destroy and absorb them."
At the same time, the encyclical of Saint John Paul II "Centesimus Annus", on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the publication of "Rerum novarum", revises certain aspects in order to bring them up to date with the times. In it, the pontiff, who was a fundamental piece in the fight against the Warsaw Pact, says that his letter "seeks to highlight the fruitfulness of the principles expressed by Leo XIII, which belong to the doctrinal patrimony of the Church and, therefore, imply the authority of the Magisterium. But pastoral concern has also moved me to propose an analysis of some events in recent history. It is superfluous to emphasize that careful consideration of the course of events, in order to discern the new demands of evangelization, is part of the duty of pastors."
The link between Javier Milei and the Catholic Church
Beyond the religion professed by a head of state, the relationship with the papacy and, consequently, with Vatican City is one of the most important points of diplomacy. So much so that the Holy See has diplomatic missions in countries that are confessional of other faiths, such as Iran, Israel, Thailand or the United Kingdom itself, where Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and Anglicanism are officially professed, respectively.
In this context of diplomatic relations, there was a great controversy around the relationship between Pope Francis and Javier Milei. Such was the preponderance that this issue took, that Sergio Massa himself made it part of his unsuccessful campaign for the presidency, keeping the expectation for a possible visit of the Supreme Pontiff to our country. If so, Francis would make his third papal visit to Argentina – the first of his papacy – after the apostolic trips of John Paul II in 1982 and 1987.
Years ago, Javier Milei himself declared in 2020 to the Argentine press that the Pope was an "imbecile" and the "representation of evil on Earth," something he deepened this year in an interview with Fox News, expressing that Francis "has an affinity for murderous communists."
These statements were not only factors that offended Jorge Bergoglio, but also the Catholic Church, one of the main institutions in the world, with millions of faithful in Argentina. To these sayings, were added the comments of the economist close to Milei, Alberto Benegas Lynch (Jr.) who declared: "Out of consideration and respect for my Catholic religion, I believe that we should imitate what President Roca did and suspend diplomatic relations with the Vatican while the totalitarian spirit prevails there."
In turn, Pope Francis was also very critical of Javier Milei in statements to the press in which he expressed his hope that the libertarian does not end up becoming an "Adolfito", in relation to the German dictator between 1933 and 1945 who carried out the Jewish holocaust in all the territory he conquered during World War II.
Despite this, hours after the triumph in the second round, Javier Milei received a call from Pope Francis to congratulate him, to which the libertarian responded with an invitation to visit the country, a commitment that the Holy Father plans to materialize towards the end of April, a time when the Jewish community will be celebrating Passover. according to information accessed by MDZ from the close environment of the bishop of Rome.
The event will be of great importance for the country, as were the visits of John Paul II in order to pacify during the Falklands War and for World Youth Day in 1987. At the same time, there will be tension around the meeting between Javier Milei and Francis, whom the president-elect promised to receive with all the honors of head of state and religious leader.
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