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WASHINGTON D.C., July 7, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – The American Humanist Association has announced that Dr. Anthony Fauci, who attended Catholic schools growing up and who last year described himself as a Catholic, will be the recipient of their 2021 Humanist of the Year award.
The American Humanist Association (AHA) announced the news in a press release July 1, with the organization’s Executive Director Roy Speckhardt declaring that the Humanists were “honored” to present the award to the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
“We are honored that Dr. Fauci will receive our highest award at the AHA’s 80th Annual Conference,” stated Speckhardt. “His unwavering commitment to accessible, evidence-based information and his robust communication to people about public health issues is commendable and necessary, especially in this critical time.”
The AHA described Fauci as globally “respected for his efforts to address COVID-19,” referencing what they described as “his push for evidence-based solutions and emphasis on the importance of science and reason” which was “a guiding light in difficult times.”
Fauci himself was raised Catholic and attended Catholic schools: Our Lady of Guadeloupe Grammar School in Brooklyn, the Jesuit run Regis High School in Manhattan, and later the College of the Holy Cross, Massachusetts.
Despite referencing his admiration for Catholic education, as well as the Jesuit priests who taught him, Fauci has previously explicitly stated that he views himself as Catholic.
“I am not a regular church-attender. I have evolved into less a Roman Catholic religion person to someone who tries to keep a degree of spirituality about them,” he said. “I look upon myself as a humanist. I have faith in the goodness of mankind,” he said during a 2015 interview.
The NIAID director declared that he was “less enamored of organized religion than I am with the principles of humanity and goodness to mankind and doing the best that you can.” Fauci went so far as to mention there were “lot of things about organized religion that are unfortunate,” but did not elaborate on what they were.
The AHA describes itself as proposing a “nontheistic worldview with ethical values informed by scientific knowledge and driven by a desire to meet the needs of people in the here and now.” Humanism itself is described thus: “a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism or other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good.”
However, such a position was condemned by Pope Leo XIII in his 1884 encyclical Humanum Genus. The Pope described the principles proposed by Freemasons and naturalists, who held that “human nature and human reason ought in all things to be mistress and guide,” the principles proposed by humanism also.
Pope Leo XIII then issued a call to his brother clergy in the fight against the movement of Freemasonry, which espoused the principles of naturalism and humanism, asking the clergy “earnestly to strive for the extirpation of this foul plague, which is creeping through the veins of the body politic.”
The pontiff also urged that Catholics be rigorously taught the Catholic Faith, in order to makes “sound by instruction” the Catholic conscience.
‘Conspiracy theories’ to come under the spotlight during Fauci’s address to the Humanist conference
Dr. Fauci will deliver the closing address at the AHA’s 80th annual conference, which will be held online, July 24 to 25.
Amongst the subjects to be discussed at the conference are talks entitled “Separation of Church and State in 2021,” as well as “Dogmatic Delusions.”
The latter talk will address “the surge in conspiracy theories and other delusions in the United States.” It will ask the question “What properties of the human mind make us so susceptible to these kinds of delusions and how can we strengthen the role of reason?”
Fauci’s appearance at the close of such a conference condemning “conspiracy theories” is of interest, given that leaked emails have revealed that he was aware of the possibility of the lab-leak origins of COVID-19 from as early as January 2020, despite his personal downplaying of such a possibility for months.
Fauci consistently downplayed the possibility that the virus may have been engineered, for more than a year, before finally changing his tune in recent months. Indeed, some have even claimed that scientists who opposed Fauci’s rejection of the lab-leak theory were silenced from speaking out, under threat of losing their careers.
Professor Madhav Das Nalapat, the Director of Geopolitics and International Relations and UNESCO Peace Chair at Manipal University in India, claimed that Fauci’s influence was so pervasive that anyone who attempted to disagree with his denial of the lab leak theory was silenced. “Any scientist who spoke up was strictly warned that ‘Look here, you are going to have your career destroyed’,” he declared.
For the entirety of last year, and even for much of 2021, those proposing the theory that COVID-19 emerged from a lab, or the Wuhan Institute of Virology, were ridiculed, censored online and in the media, and characterized as spreading “false information.” At the time, LifeSiteNews was one of the few media outlets reporting on the possibility of the lab-leak theory, with China expert Steven Mosher writing on the matter, and promptly being censored by Facebook for doing so.
Now with the emergence of the Fauci emails and renewed interest into the lab-leak origins of COVID-19, the view which was labelled as a “conspiracy theory” is becoming a serious subject of investigation for the mainstream media.
Fauci will address the Humanist conference on July 25.