textfiles-politics/pythonCode/personTestingOutput/mccabe10.xml

<xml><p> 30 page printout</p>

<p> Reproducible <ent type='ORG'>Electronic Publishing</ent> can defeat censorship.</p>

<p> This file, its printout, or copies of either
are to be copied and given away, but NOT sold.</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
**** ****</p>

<p>Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius</p>

<p>THE BLACK INTERNATIONAL No. 10</p>

<p> <ent type='ORG'>FASCIST ROMANISM DEFIES</ent> CIVILIZATION</p>

<p> HOW THE POPE KEEPS TO THE <ent type='ORG'>PLOT</ent>
WHILE THE WORLD CURSES IT</p>

<p> by Joseph McCabe</p>

<p> HALDEMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATIONS
GIRARD -- : -- KANSAS</p>

<div> **** ****</div>

<p> CHAPTER
I Guilty or Not Guilty .............. 1</p>

<p> II Will <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> Disown the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> .......... 9</p>

<p> III Restoring the Corpse of <ent type='LOC'>the Middle Ages</ent> ...... 14</p>

<p> IV The <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> in <ent type='NORP'>Democratic</ent> Countries ........... 21</p>

<p> V The <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Defence ............. 26</p>

<div> **** ****</div>

<p> Chapter I</p>

<p> GUILTY OR NOT GUILTY?</p>

<p> We are living in the second most catastrophic period that the
race has suffered in the last 3000 years. It was then, three
millennia ago, slowly emerging from the ruin which the pioneers of
"the noble <ent type='NORP'>Aryan</ent> race" had wrought at their first contact with
civilization, and with the successive rise of the Phoenicians, the
<ent type='NORP'>Persians</ent>, the <ent type='NORP'>Greeks</ent>, and the <ent type='NORP'>Romans</ent> it was marching to the peak of
the ancient world. There were, too, very notable resurrections of
civilization in India and <ent type='GPE'>China</ent>. By the end of the 5th Century they
were all ruined and the race from rim to rim of the known world was
almost back in barbarism. We cannot compare our age with that awful
beginning of the Dark Age, but since then not one of the tragedies
that have cast their shadow upon a large area of the earth
approaches in magnitude of evil and volume of suffering the world-wide degradation of our time. The Black Death, it is true, caused
more deaths and more suffering, but that was one of the calamities
which old legal language ingenuously attributed; to "the Act of
God."</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
1
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<ent type='ORG'>FASCIST ROMANISM DEFIES</ent> CIVILIZATION</p>

<p> Many will look round them in the cities in which they live and
wonder if my statement can possibly be true. Do we see reflected on
the faces and in the lives of the great majority such gloom as this
implies I live in a city which has felt the rain of death as no
great city ever did before -- have lived and worked in it through
all the hellish days and nights, never ever taking shelter -- yet
when I look round or read my daily paper I must smile at my own
statement, true as it is. The other day an auctioneer advertised
$200000 worth of wine and spirits at one sale. I heard a penniless
refugee of a year ago boasting of the costly shows she saw weekly
and the $500 fur-coat she was buying. Lines of folk a hundred yards
long wait to be admitted to see a good picture. Night-clubs and
bottle-clubs flourish, I am told, as never before, and only today,
when I took my daily five-mile walk, women appealed to me to
contribute to the fund to help "the poor <ent type='NORP'>Russians</ent>" . . .</p>

<p> Yet I repeat, and with the history of the world before my
mind's eye, this is the most dreadful age into which the race has
passed since the ruin of the <ent type='NORP'>Greek</ent>-<ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> civilization. How many
people are at war -- and a war of giants -- today? About
850000000 on any count; and if you include India, as part of the
<ent type='GPE'><ent type='NORP'>British</ent> <ent type='GPE'>Empire</ent></ent>, and <ent type='ORG'><ent type='ORG'>the Spanish</ent> <ent type='NORP'>American</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Republic</ent>s</ent> which have at
least declared war, and the countries that are held back from war
only by the lash and gibbet of the conqueror, and the countless
which give all the help they can to the aggressive nations but call
themselves neutral, something like 1400000000 or three-fourths
of the race. You might almost say that the only people who are not
involved in the savagery are the savages.</p>

<p> The sun never looked down upon such a spectacle before.</p>

<p> In the terrible period of reaction and misery, after the fall
of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent>, which I admit to be greater than ours -- greater because
far more than half of the people in the civilized area perished and
the misery went on and deepened during two centuries -- not much
more than 50000000 people were affected. Today, however many may
escape sacrifices and burdens, more than ten times that number
suffer bitterly, tens of millions of them poignantly. But there is
a more important difference, and in a sense it makes our tragedy
the blackest in the historical record.</p>

<p> What happened fifteen centuries ago was that a terrible
drought had fallen upon western <ent type='LOC'>Asia</ent>, and in search of new pastures
mighty hoards of those diabolical horsemen the Huns invaded Europe
and forced the half civilized or wholly uncivilized <ent type='NORP'>Goths</ent>, <ent type='ORG'>Vandals</ent>,
<ent type='ORG'>Franks</ent>, etc. southward upon the <ent type='GPE'><ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> <ent type='GPE'>Empire</ent></ent>. Our modern Huns and
their allies were trained in all the ideals, all the culture, of
the highest civilization. They deliberately stooped to savagery,
and they did this out of sheer greed. There have been glorified
bandits before -- the men we teach our children to admire as great
conquerors -- but this is the first time in history that a large
group of men of great ability have sat down to plot, with the
callous deliberation of master-crooks, the conquest and
exploitation of the greater part of the earth. If anybody doubts
whether that is a correct characterization of the directive group
in <ent type='GPE'>Berlin</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent>, and <ent type='GPE'>Tokyo</ent> I am not inclined to argue about it.</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
2
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<ent type='ORG'>FASCIST ROMANISM DEFIES</ent> CIVILIZATION</p>

<p> The thesis of the ten booklets of which this is the last is
that these super-crooks, whose near-success will one day amaze
historians, had the cooperation and most valuable assistance of the
clergy of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent>, the <ent type='ORG'>Black International</ent>. That, I am
fully conscious, is an appalling charge. To readers who know the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> only from its own literature and who may not have
read the preceding nine books, it will naturally seem a wholly
ridiculous and impossible charge. Even to those who are familiar
with my historical works and have read the mass of evidence in
these booklets will hesitate and wonder if it is not exaggerated.
For let me be distinctly understood. I do not merely mean that a
bunch of bishops here and there, fearing to run counter to the
patriotism of the people or to incur the anger of the rulers,
supported iniquity. I say that the whole <ent type='ORG'>Black International</ent>, from
the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> to priests, is guilty. Naturally <ent type='ORG'><ent type='NORP'>American</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent></ent> bishops
censure the vile conduct of <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent> and <ent type='NORP'>English Catholic</ent> bishops that
of <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>. What matters from the moral angle is that each country
that has committed outrages has had the full support of the
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> hierarchy and clergy of that country, and that the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> or
the Vatican has been throughout in, friendly alliance with the
arch-criminals.</p>

<p> So let us summarize the evidence. The first point to bear in
mind, as I explained, is the cardinal importance of the spread of
<ent type='ORG'>Communism and</ent> Socialism from 1918 onward, especially from 1923 to
1933. It is no use pretending that statesmen, Foreign Offices,
editors, authors, and industrial or commercial leaders were totally
unaware of the plot that <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent> were preparing.
It was, except as regards its final and most monstrous form, openly
stated in widely-read literature in those countries. But these
leaders of public opinion or action were themselves so alarmed at
the spread of <ent type='ORG'>Communism and</ent> Socialism in nearly all countries that,
since <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent> and <ent type='PERSON'>Mussolini</ent> promised to check the spread of the
danger, they very culpably persuaded themselves to ignore the
broader designs of those quaint St. Georges.</p>

<p> In this very important respect the cooperation of the Vatican
with the aims of the <ent type='ORG'>Axis</ent>, by filling the public mind with lies
about <ent type='NORP'>Communists</ent> and recommending Fascism as a state-form, is
notorious; and the reason is just as notorious. <ent type='NORP'>Communism</ent>, starting
from <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent> in its Militant-<ent type='NORP'>Atheist</ent> phase, swept far more folk out
of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> than the Reformation had done. I have
estimated the loss of the <ent type='ORG'><ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent></ent>, mainly to <ent type='ORG'>Communism and</ent>
Socialism, at something more than 70000000 in 15 years and have
based that estimate on published statistics. So, after a few years
of diplomatic coquetry with the <ent type='NORP'>Soviet</ent> authorities, the Vatican
began to libel and assail <ent type='NORP'>Communism</ent>. In the Papal Encyclical of
1931 <ent type='PERSON'>Quadragesimo Anno</ent>, it was described as a vile, degrading, and
criminal influence, and <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> were forbidden even to adhere to
Socialism. The note became steadily more strident until it rose
above that of the bitterest anti-<ent type='NORP'>Communist</ent> political writer. The
foulest and trashiest libels of <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent>n and Spanish <ent type='NORP'>Communists</ent> were
endorsed, and from 1934 onward the Vatican, its voice echoing
throughout the whole <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>, called for the extinction, clearly by
war, of <ent type='NORP'>Communism</ent> in <ent type='GPE'>China</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Mexico</ent>, and <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent>.</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
3
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<ent type='ORG'>FASCIST ROMANISM DEFIES</ent> CIVILIZATION</p>

<p> I am not a <ent type='NORP'>Communist</ent> and will say only that that system of
ideas has as much right to present its case to the public and seek
converts as any other creed or system. But the Vatican knew what it
was doing. Under cover of a zeal against <ent type='ORG'>Communism and</ent> Socialism
<ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent> and <ent type='PERSON'>Mussolini</ent> and all their lesser satellites in other
countries were diverting the eyes of the world from their larger
criminal aims and the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> enlisted his whole <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> in that
strategy. The most effective means of checking those aims of
<ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent>, and <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent> would have been a practical alliance of
<ent type='GPE'>the United</ent> States, <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent>, and <ent type='GPE'>France</ent>, and the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> and his local
black legions did everything in their power to turn the people
against the idea.</p>

<p> Then, whether we consider step by step the march of infamy to
its present culminating point or examine the three bandit-powers
and their relations with the Vatican, we find the closest
cooperation of the <ent type='ORG'>Black International</ent>. The first step was the
annexation of <ent type='GPE'>Manchuria</ent>. For a moment it seemed to warn the
civilized world that its comfortable and respectable standards of
life were challenged by a new force, and there was a wide demand
for prompt and decisive action. But the guilt of Sir <ent type='PERSON'>John Simon</ent> in
frustrating punishment in the sacred name of trade is not greater
than that of the Vatican, which ordered its representatives in
<ent type='GPE'>Manchuria</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent> to enter into friendly relations with the
bandits. These relations deepened until, just when <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent> again
shocked, and ought to have warned, the world by seizing more of
<ent type='GPE'>China</ent> and fully exhibiting the treachery and foulness of its
methods, <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> exchanged ambassadors with <ent type='GPE'>Tokyo</ent> and stamped upon
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> literature everywhere a respect for <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent> and a hatred of
<ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent>. <ent type='ORG'>Matsuoka</ent>, fresh from the concerting of the appalling final
plot in <ent type='GPE'>Berlin</ent>, was received with flowers and gold medals at the
Vatican.</p>

<p> We examined the successive steps in the preparation of the
world for the destruction of freedom, decency, and justice. The one
section of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> that mattered, the <ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent> hierarchy and
clergy, rapturously applauded the rape of <ent type='ORG'>Abyssinia</ent>, on religious
as well as patriotic grounds, and the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>, seeing how neatly
<ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> had persuaded the world to condone his refusal to condemn
that outrage, gave the greatest gift in his power, <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>'s
supreme reward of virtue, the Golden Rose, to the <ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent> "Empress
of <ent type='ORG'>Abyssinia</ent>." The spread of barbarism -- I will show presently how
that is not too strong an expression -- over <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent> was the next
step in the conquest of civilization by installments. Here not only
the close cooperation of <ent type='ORG'>the Spanish</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> but the blessings of
the enterprise by the Vatican and the support of <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> all over
the world are commonplaces of contemporary history. It was the same
in the extension to <ent type='GPE'>Austria</ent>. The <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Dollfuss, after a visit
to <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent>, treacherously destroyed "the Socialist watch-dog." The
head of the <ent type='GPE'>Austria</ent>n <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>, Cardinal Innitzer, welcomed <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent> and
ordered his people to bow down when he marched through the gates
they had opened to him. <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Students prepared the way for the
first invasion of <ent type='GPE'>Czecho</ent>-<ent type='GPE'>Slovakia</ent>, which has had the courage to
expel a Papal <ent type='PERSON'>Nuncio</ent>, and <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Slovak priests actually begged
<ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent> to tear up his solemn promises to <ent type='GPE'>England</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>France</ent> and </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
4
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<ent type='ORG'>FASCIST ROMANISM DEFIES</ent> CIVILIZATION</p>

<p>destroy the splendid little <ent type='NORP'>Republic</ent>. <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> invited <ent type='PERSON'>Mussolini</ent>
to invade <ent type='GPE'>Albania</ent>. <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> betrayed <ent type='GPE'>Belgium</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>France</ent> to his
devouring hordes. <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> rent the unity and sapped the strength
of <ent type='GPE'>Yugo</ent>-<ent type='NORP'>Slavia</ent> for him. . . .</p>

<p> Thus not only did the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> never condemn a single one of the
outrages by which the super-crooks strengthened their position --
every word of Papal censure of <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent> refers to
infringements of the rights of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> or other religious
grievances -- but the local hierarchy applauded every act of
aggression, and even the hierarchy of the invaded country rallied
to the aggressor. There was only one exception. We saw substantial
reason to believe that the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> knew in advance of the plot against
<ent type='GPE'>Poland</ent>, as he knew of the intention to invade <ent type='GPE'>Belgium</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>France</ent>.
Whether he was asked to persuade the <ent type='NORP'>Poles</ent> to make no resistance,
since this was an important move toward that extinction of
<ent type='NORP'>Bolshevism</ent> in <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent> which he desired above all, we have as yet no
evidence. But even when the <ent type='NORP'>Polish</ent> clergy, the most profoundly
<ent type='NORP'>Romanist</ent> in the world, sent him word of the infamies perpetrated
upon their people by the <ent type='NORP'>Germans</ent>, he took the sting out of his
censure by coupling the <ent type='NORP'>Germans</ent> and the <ent type='NORP'>Russians</ent> (who had on the
contrary, every reason to be humane and generous) in the guilt for
these barbarous outrage's.</p>

<p> If, on the other hand, we prefer to study the direct relations
of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> with the aggressor-powers we shall find ourselves
impelled to use even stronger language. I have throughout spoken of
them as the Pope's allies, and the spectacle which the world
presents today gives point to the phrase. We boast daily that
almost the entire free civilized world is with us in our war upon
<ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>, and <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent>. No one will call <ent type='GPE'>Sweden</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Switzerland</ent>,
and <ent type='GPE'>Turkey</ent> free; and of the <ent type='NORP'>Latin</ent> <ent type='NORP'>American</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Republic</ent>s only the more
priest-ridden now refuse to speak out. But the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> is not with us.
He is bound by treaty (Concordat) to the three powers which the
free world calls the enemies of the human race. You may object that
<ent type='GPE'>France</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Portugal</ent>, Hungary, <ent type='GPE'>Slovakia</ent>, Eire, and <ent type='GPE'>Rumania</ent> are
not with us. No; they are with the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>. Significant, isn't it?</p>

<p> I have shown in detail in what sense the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> is an ally of
<ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>. The triumph of crime in <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent>, the consolidation
of the power of <ent type='PERSON'>Mussolini</ent>, was not complete until he signed a
treaty with the Vatican and granted <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> a vast sum of money
(about $90000000) and nearly all the privileges it wanted. Until
the present <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> became Secretary of State there was still very
acrid quarrelling. There have been quarrels since -- always about
<ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>'s rights -- but <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> has seen the amazing sight of
<ent type='PERSON'>Mussolini</ent> kneeling for the Pope's blessing and the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> crossing
<ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> (after Italy's treachery in regard to <ent type='GPE'>Yugo</ent>-<ent type='NORP'>Slavia</ent>) to exchange
greetings with the king and queen. What is more, whether you can in
any country in the world relieve the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> of blame for what his
bishops in that country do -- a point we will examine presently --
you certainly cannot in the case of <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent>. Yet the <ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent>
hierarchy has without exception blessed everything that <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent> has
done in the colossal attempt to enslave the world to a brutal
standard of life, from the lying pretexts for the invasion of
<ent type='ORG'>Abyssinia</ent> to that repulsive scene, which I described, of <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent>
entertaining the <ent type='NORP'>Greek</ent> minister's while its troops burst across the
frontier.</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
5
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<ent type='ORG'>FASCIST ROMANISM DEFIES</ent> CIVILIZATION</p>

<p> Worst of all is the case of <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>. Whether or no <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent>
would in time have attained power without the assistance of the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> he did in fact attain it with the help of the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>. In
giving the ample evidence of this I mention with reserve the charge
of <ent type='PERSON'>Fritz Thyssen</ent>, the industrialist who financed the <ent type='NORP'>Nazis</ent>, and a
<ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>, that -- in the words of the title for an article he
wrote in the Arbeiterzeitung -- "Pius XII, when <ent type='PERSON'>Nuncio</ent>, carried
<ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent> to power." My attention has since been called to the fact
that <ent type='ORG'>Cavalcade</ent> (September 28, 1940) gave the gist of the article
and there is no reason to doubt it. It seems that the <ent type='NORP'>Nazis</ent> deluded
<ent type='PERSON'>Pacelli</ent> into thinking that they were going, not only to exterminate
the Socialists and <ent type='NORP'>Communists</ent> who were ruining <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> -- and
what did <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> ever care about the foulness of the means by
which its enemies were exterminated? -- but to set up a "<ent type='NORP'>Christian</ent>
Corporative State" on the <ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent> model, the <ent type='ORG'><ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent></ent> ruling
the west and the Protestant <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> the east. I gave the evidence of
<ent type='PERSON'>Von Papen</ent>, another <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>, and other unimpeachable witnesses that
in fact the Vatican ordered <ent type='NORP'>German</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> to drop their
opposition to the <ent type='NORP'>Nazis</ent>, deserting their <ent type='NORP'>Jewish</ent> and Socialist
allies, and that this encouraged the <ent type='NORP'>Nazis</ent>, who were profoundly
discouraged by their failure in November 1932, to try again and
succeed.</p>

<p> From that time, nine years ago, the <ent type='NORP'>Nazis</ent> have compiled a
record of brutality, treachery, dishonor, and greed that is without
equal in civilized history and have completely debauched their own
country. After the first of these outbreaks of savagery, the
slaughter and pillage of <ent type='NORP'>Jews</ent>, Socialists, pacifists, etc., the
Vatican signed a very friendly Concordat with the <ent type='NORP'>Nazi</ent> government,
and it has clung to this agreement, and repeatedly begged <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent> to
make it more real and intimate, all through the nine years of
barbarity. It had not a word to say about the Blood Purge, though
in this leading <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> were butchered, and it warmly applauded
<ent type='NORP'>German</ent> action, including such infamies as <ent type='GPE'>Almeria</ent> and Guernica, in
<ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent>.</p>

<p> But I need not survey the record of monstrosity. The different
attitude of the Vatican to <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent>, as it peacefully and humanely
built up a great civilization, and <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>, as it waded through
blood and loot and treachery to the attainment of its supreme
greed, damns it for all time. The <ent type='NORP'>Russians</ent> were vile, savage,
infamous, etc. The <ent type='NORP'>Germans</ent> heard only the mild censure, and then
only when they hurt <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>, that they encouraged paganism (from
the religious angle), idolized the state (instead of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>),
and did not carry out their agreement with <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent>.</p>

<p> The <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> apologist whines that the Vatican had to consult
the "spiritual interests" of the followers in <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>. I can hardly
imagine a more pitiful confession that, contrary to what its
<ent type='NORP'>American</ent> apologists say, it cares nothing about human interests.
But we will consider that point adequately anon.</p>

<p> <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent> cared little about the rare and very mild complaints of
the <ent type='ORG'>Papacy</ent>. His spokesmen completely ignored them as a rule. He
could, in any case, always keep Papal pronouncements out of the
<ent type='NORP'>German</ent> press. Even the few <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> papers that survived were under
strict <ent type='NORP'>Nazi</ent> control. The only matter that would draw the attention </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
6
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<ent type='ORG'>FASCIST ROMANISM DEFIES</ent> CIVILIZATION</p>

<p>of the <ent type='NORP'>German</ent> authorities would be if the <ent type='NORP'>German</ent> hierarchy and
clergy interfered with loyalty to <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent> or condemned any of his
acts except his cavalier treatment of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>, which amused or
delighted four-fifths of the nation.</p>

<p> I gave abundant evidence that the <ent type='NORP'>German</ent> bishops did not
merely refrain from criticism on any other than ecclesiastical
matters but they flattered <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent> to his teeth and applauded every
outrage he committed. They fully accepted that bastard monstrosity
born of the megalomania of the neuropathic leader and the greed of
the <ent type='NORP'>German</ent> people, the plan to conquer and exploit at least the
greater part of the earth. Swallowing every insult and snub,
cringing before the exposure of the shame of their virtuous
monasteries, they begged <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent> to permit them to cooperate in the
foulest and most stupid of his outrages, the attack on <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent>, and
in the petition for this purpose which they addressed to <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent>
they repented the exact language used by the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>. From the
language of prelate after prelate, which I have quoted, one would
think that their minds are as brutalized as those of the younger
<ent type='NORP'>Nazi</ent> soldiers. That, of course, is not true. The explanation is
that every consideration of human honor and decency must be
sacrificed to the essential aim of the <ent type='ORG'>Black International</ent>: the
power and wealth of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>.</p>

<p> My readers will, I feel sure, think me justified in claiming
that I have read as much literature -- <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> and non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>,
even <ent type='NORP'>German</ent> until the war cut off the supply -- on this subject as
any other writer in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> or <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent>. Well, I have not yet seen
a line in which any <ent type='NORP'>German</ent> cardinal, archbishop, or bishop had
rebuked Germany's crimes against man and against civilization. The
epithets criminal, beastly, barbarous, and infamous were reserved
for <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent>. What a record for a body of consecrated men during nine
years of bestiality!</p>

<p> I, in an earlier book carried the story of the <ent type='NORP'>German</ent>
hierarchy and the <ent type='NORP'>Nazis</ent> as far as the fall of 1940 and must here
show that no change occurred in the following year. In August 1940,
we saw, an unusually large gathering of the <ent type='NORP'>German</ent> bishop's met at
<ent type='ORG'>Fulda</ent> (the <ent type='GPE'>Washington</ent> of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>) and drew up resolutions which
the Vatican ordered them to keep secret. The <ent type='NORP'>German</ent> press reported
that it got copies of them, and they were fulsome congratulations
to <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent> on his great triumph in the west, to be published when it
was completed by the fall of <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent>. The <ent type='NORP'>British</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> press
(Tablet, September 21) said that "very important and positive
decisions had been reached which will result in a much closer
reapproachment between <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> and the <ent type='PERSON'>Reich</ent>," and it pointed
out that the chief speaker, who closed the conference, Msgr.
<ent type='PERSON'>Garkowsky</ent> was the bishop appointed by <ent type='PERSON'>Goering</ent> to represent
<ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> on the State Council.</p>

<p> But <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent> refused to be bludgeoned into surrender, and the
<ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> forbade publication of these "very important decisions." In
December the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> press. (<ent type='ORG'>Herald</ent>, January 31, 1941) announced
that their bishops were to meet at <ent type='GPE'>Berlin</ent> "for exceptional
purposes," and this announcement was coupled with a warning that
unscrupulous rulers had a way of misusing ecclesiastical
utterances. On March 30 the Vatican radio reported, with approval, </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
7
.
<ent type='ORG'>FASCIST ROMANISM DEFIES</ent> CIVILIZATION</p>

<p>that the Archbishop of <ent type='GPE'>Freiburg</ent> had warned <ent type='NORP'>German</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> in a
pastoral letter that there were anti-religious tendencies on every
hand: that the <ent type='NORP'>Nazis</ent> had set up a National <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> in <ent type='GPE'>Slovakia</ent> and
proposed to do the same in <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>, and that their "pagan
tendencies" had found expression in <ent type='GPE'>Alsace</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Austria</ent>, and Sudeten
<ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>.</p>

<p> On July 8 <ent type='ORG'>the London</ent> Times referred to a letter which the
bishops of <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent> had ordered to be read in all churches. As it
condemned <ent type='NORP'>Nazi</ent> paganism <ent type='NORP'>British</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> claimed that here was the
whole <ent type='NORP'>German</ent> hierarchy united in censuring <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent>. We are quite
aware that <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> more than once scolded the <ent type='NORP'>Nazis</ent> for
infringing its own rights as on other purely religious grounds, but
the Times pointed out that this letter by no means relieved the
guilt of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>. It referred to the attack on <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent> and said
that it was "a struggle of world ideologies, a battle against
inequality, and a fight against the disintegration of <ent type='NORP'>Christianity</ent>,
so that a victory over <ent type='NORP'>Bolshevism</ent> would be equivalent to the
triumph of the teaching of Jesus over that of the infidels." The
full Papal note and support of <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent> restored, you see, now that
he was again pushing victoriously forward. But because there was
some criticism of the <ent type='NORP'>Nazis</ent> in the letter many bishops refused to
sign it, and many priests refused to read it from their pulpits.</p>

<p> As to the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> himself, he left it to those useful
unauthorized organ's to explain his ambiguous attitude. <ent type='ORG'>The Vatican</ent>
correspondent of <ent type='ORG'>the International</ent> News Service said that he
protested vehemently against the treatment of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> in <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>
and added this rich observation, which was certainly compiled in
the Vatican:</p>

<p> "Only the deepest desire to avoid even involuntarily creating
the impression that <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> favors the enemies of <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent> or
permitting a mistaken notion that the Holy See wishes to take
advantage of a delicate war-time situation has restricted the
Pontiff from a more open and vigorous expression of his profound
unhappiness over the situation in <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>."</p>

<p> When <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent> "persecuted religion" there was no need whatever
for restraint; when <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>, after eight years of bestiality,
persecutes <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> one has to remember that a <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> is neutral
and not free to use strong language.</p>

<p> The last cutting I have is from <ent type='ORG'>the London</ent> News-Chronicle
(October 5, 1941). It says that <ent type='ORG'>Ribbentrop</ent> has seen the Papal
<ent type='PERSON'>Nuncio</ent> at <ent type='GPE'>Berlin</ent> and offered "a structural change in the attitude
of the Third <ent type='PERSON'>Reich</ent> to the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>" if the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> will rouse
all <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> against "the Anti-Christ <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent>," and that the <ent type='PERSON'>Nuncio</ent>
loftily refused even to send the offer to <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent>. Perhaps: <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent> was
proving to be made of sterner stuff than the Pope's dear children
in <ent type='GPE'>Belgium</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>France</ent>. But do not too hastily draw upon your fund
of old saws and quote "When the devil was sick" or "Rats desert a
sinking ship." <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent> has still a few Papal cards like <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent> and
<ent type='GPE'>Portugal</ent> and the <ent type='NORP'>French</ent> fleet up his sleeve. Meantime note two
things. First the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> and his hierarchy have supported the <ent type='NORP'>Nazis</ent>
through nine years of success and infamy; second, there is a
remarkable correlation between the variations in the ardor of
support and the ebb and flow of Hitler's fortunes.</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
8
.
<ent type='ORG'>FASCIST ROMANISM DEFIES</ent> CIVILIZATION</p>

<p> Chapter II</p>

<p> WILL <ent type='NORP'>CATHOLICS</ent> DISOWN THE POPE?</p>

<p> I am not one of those who conceive the situation to be that we
are fighting <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent> and <ent type='PERSON'>Mussolini</ent> or even the <ent type='NORP'>Nazi</ent> and the <ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent>
parties. It remains to be seen how far this is true in the case of
<ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent> but in Europe we are fighting a prodigious aggregation or
organization of brain-power. It works behind the <ent type='NORP'>Nazi</ent> front. It
includes the very able military leaders that <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent> can always
produce but is much more than this. War-time jibes at the
intelligence of the <ent type='NORP'>German</ent> nation are always silly. It at all
time's commands the services of a very large body of men of equal
ability and vigor, using every advantage that science can give
them. They -- scientists, engineers, economists, businessmen, etc.
-- are now massed behind an enterprise that promise's incalculable
profit if it succeeds. To defeat it will require a closer
cooperation and more intense application of <ent type='NORP'>British</ent> and <ent type='NORP'>American</ent>
ability than we have yet seen.</p>

<p> But defeated it will be and probably -- if you will not smile
at the act of faith of one who knows nothing of military matters --
within a year, now that we have the mighty aid of <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent>. How will
<ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> face the world then? Will it use its muzzling
influence on the press in every country to prevent the public
perceiving that there is anything to discuss? How many folk know
one tenth of the facts which I have given in these booklets?</p>

<p> That will be the policy which <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> will attempt to
follow but probably it will lay too great a strain in the easy-going spirit of our generation. Your neighbor may not know the
facts I have given but he has his moments of reflection and in one
of these it will occur to him that he has never read a word of
condemnation of all the brutality and treachery of the last five
years from the man whom <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> press upon us as the ideal moral,
if not intellectual, ruler of the world. He may have read lately
how some <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> predict, for 1942, a concerting of plans "for
the defense of our <ent type='NORP'>Christian</ent> civilization" between <ent type='GPE'>Washington</ent>,
<ent type='GPE'>London</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Moscow</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent>! If that does not make people open their
eyes and use their minds we had better drop the illusion that we
are capable of self-government.</p>

<p> In an earlier booklet I quoted the head of the <ent type='NORP'>British</ent>
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> warning his followers to be ready for a formidable
attack on <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>ism when the war is over. How will he and his
like meet it, That "aged and ailing <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>" slogan, which has so
often been used, will be of no avail. In this crisis of the world's
affairs <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> has had one of its youngest, ablest, and
most vigorous <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>s; and his virtual control of the policy of the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> began at the beginning of 1930 and has covered the whole
long period of unrebuked bestiality. Nor would it be of the least
avail to plead that he was misinformed. Being an <ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent> and in the
highest position (for these matters) in <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> for eleven
years, to say nothing of his years of training, he knows <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent> and
Fascism as well as any <ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent> or foreign statesman in the world.
But, we saw, he also knows <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent> and <ent type='NORP'>Nazis</ent>m at least better than
any other non-<ent type='NORP'>German</ent> prelate in <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>. Further he reads and </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
9
.
<ent type='ORG'>FASCIST ROMANISM DEFIES</ent> CIVILIZATION</p>

<p>speaks more languages and has traveled and lived in more countries
than any other <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> of recent modern times. No, stupid as some of
his public utterances (about <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Mexico</ent>, <ent type='NORP'>Communism</ent>,
etc.) seem to be, he has not based his policy upon wrong
information.</p>

<p> <ent type='PERSON'>Seldes</ent> quoted some years ago evidence that in <ent type='NORP'>Romanist</ent> higher
clerical circles in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> there was already some discussion of
the idea of deposing or over-ruling him. At that tune the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
press still remembered what it had said about him during his long
stay in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> in 1936; his love of democracy and the <ent type='NORP'>American</ent>
spirit, his good mixing -- I do not remember whether he drank beer
out of a bottle in a workers' lunchroom like the heroic <ent type='GPE'>Halifax</ent> --
his ideal of freedom, and so on. Probably the prelates knew better.
He loathes democracy. He is an aristocrat by birth, temperament,
and conviction. But he can at any time discover, as <ent type='PERSON'>Leo XIII</ent> did
after quarter of a century of attacks on democracy, that <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>
has nothing to do with whether a state chooses to be <ent type='NORP'>democratic</ent> or
not. It is true that in the first encyclical he compiled for the
late <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> he insisted that the Corporative State, the very essence
of which is servility to the state and <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> authorities, is the
ideal, but he never mentioned democracy.</p>

<p> The discussion as to whether the discredited <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> will make
a scapegoat of the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> is waste of time. Even in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>, where
the apologists put over more mendacious accounts of <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> history
and teaching than in any other country, the deposition or rebuke of
a <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> would shake <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>ism and invite a dangerously critical
interest. The most that is conceivable along that line is that
apologists will affect an attitude of naive astonishment and say
that even non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> ought to know that a Pope's blunders do not
compromise the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> or discredit a single line of its
teaching. There have actually been priests who claimed it as a
proof of the divinity of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> that it survived so many
blunders and sins of its <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>s! But that takes us into a deeper
matter which I postpone.</p>

<p> The chief line foreshadowed in actual <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> literature is
that the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> has been, and ought to be, ideally neutral, since as
head of the universal <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> he must be above national differences
and therefore above international quarrels, whereas the hierarchy
of a particular country has no such obligation. Let me repeat that
these are not booklets about the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> but about the Black
International. At the same time apologists will find it rather
difficult in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> to make any capital out of this Great Neutral
sophistry. They have for half a century been assuring folk that it
was just the opposite; that since the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> is above all national
differences he is the ideal moralist to censure, not only
international crimes but national crimes of such magnitude and so
bound up with patriotism that you could hardly trust the censors
within that country to condemn them or expect an impartial judgment
from the nationals of another country. Further, and far more
gravely, the summary of facts which I gave in the last chapter does
not simply present the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> as failing in his duty from an
excessive regard for neutrality. It shows that he gave very
valuable assistance to the arch-criminals, and often precisely in
the perpetration of their crimes; to <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent> in <ent type='GPE'>China</ent>, to <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent> in
<ent type='GPE'>Austria</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Czecho</ent>-<ent type='GPE'>Slovakia</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>France</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Yugo</ent>-<ent type='NORP'>Slavia</ent>, and <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent>!</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
10
.
<ent type='ORG'>FASCIST ROMANISM DEFIES</ent> CIVILIZATION</p>

<p> The <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> controversalists' idea of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> is that
anything that commands general respect in it is <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> and
anything that is vicious or sordid is not <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>. For our
present purpose, however, <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> may be divided into three
sections. First are the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> and the body of the <ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent> prelates
who run <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> as literally as a bunch of men in <ent type='GPE'>Boston</ent> run the
<ent type='NORP'>Christian</ent> Science movement. The <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> is theoretically an autocrat.
In practice he must act with the <ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent> cardinals and archbishops,
the board of directors, so to say. As such boards do, they find it
expedient to admit a few outsiders but take care they are always in
a minority and settle most affairs between themselves apart from
the formal board-meetings. Nothing irritates <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> in
<ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent> so much as a Protestant practice of calling their <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>
"the <ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent> Mission." But no other description of it is more apt.
The <ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent> clique run <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> in <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> just as
the heads of an international trading enterprise in <ent type='GPE'>New York</ent>
control foreign branches.</p>

<p> The second section consists of the various national
hierarchies (bishops and archbishops), each of which is permitted
to have a few decorative heads with the title of cardinal but no
influence on broad <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> policy and certainly no power to
challenge a <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>, and the ordinary clergy who do the work under
them. The third section consists of the laity, whose main function
is the financial support of the clergy, hierarchy, and the <ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent>
oligarchy. They are held together in submission to the clergy by an
extraordinarily fraudulent literature, which is protected by the
doctrine that they incur the penalty of hell if they read
criticisms of it, a very lavish use of social and recreational
inducements, and the sacerdotal theory or the dogma that the clergy
have received a 'Special "Sacrament" called Holy Orders.</p>

<p> This theory has greatly promoted the comfort that reconciles
the priests to their theoretical celibacy -- "They are called
Fathers, and they often are," said Erasmus -- by drawing a sharp
line, if not a curtain, between clergy and laity. In recent years
however, it has been found expedient to delegate to the laity many
functions which the priest used to discharge outside his <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>.
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Action, this new development, means <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> lay action.
It started originally as a proof that <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> is not so anti-<ent type='NORP'>democratic</ent>, as its critics allege, but the clergy soon found that
the laity could undertake tasks for <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> which they
themselves cannot undertake without suspicion, and that same sort
of militant work greatly promoted their loyalty. In <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent> these
guerrillas of the holy war, as one might call them, played a very
important part in preparing the way for the rebellion. In <ent type='GPE'>France</ent>
they made the strength of the <ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent> movement which weakened the
country and intrigued its way to power in the hour of humiliation
and confusion. In <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent> they intrigue with statesmen
and in popular political organizations, provide speakers for parks
and street-corners, invade journalism and work for <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> on
their papers, and get themselves elected or appointed to offices in
which they can promote the interests of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>. They would be
genuinely outraged if you said that they are dupes of the clergy.</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
11
.
<ent type='ORG'>FASCIST ROMANISM DEFIES</ent> CIVILIZATION</p>

<p> This vast organization enables apologists to meet as far as
words go many of the charges against <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> or to maintain with
an air of bland assurance, that, for instance, it never interferes
in polities. If you appeal to its twenty years opposition to
republicanism in <ent type='GPE'>France</ent>, that was <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> <ent type='PERSON'>Leo XIII</ent> not <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>,
they say. It was the Vatican, not <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>, that intrigued with
<ent type='NORP'>British</ent> statesmen to settle their troubles in <ent type='GPE'>Ireland</ent> (<ent type='PERSON'>Seldes</ent>, The
Vatican, p. 272). On the other hand, when an <ent type='GPE'>Austria</ent>n cardinal
writes "Hell <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent>" or an <ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent> bishop exults in the brigandage
of his country, <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> is not involved. It is just a local
clerical patriot blowing off a little hot air.</p>

<p> In the present demoralization of the world apologists take
advantage of this multiplicity of organs to exonerate <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>
from guilt. Since the body of the clergy in any country are
notoriously under the strict supervision of their bishop's the
common trick is to distinguish the acting of national hierarchy
from that of, <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent>; though, as we saw, there has been some tendency
in view of the blatant alliance with the <ent type='ORG'>Axis</ent> of the present <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>
to say that the hierarchy represent <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> and he does not.
That is easily-answered. Do the apologists mean that the majority
of bishops and archbishops of their <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> would have had the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>
act otherwise? Apply that test and the sophistry disappears. There
is only one point on which they expressed any criticism or reserve
about the Pope's conduct; his refusal to pass judgment on the rape
of <ent type='ORG'>Abyssinia</ent>. But they soon fell into line and supported his
subsequent actions. The whole of the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> press, clergy, and
hierarchies applauded the treaties with <ent type='PERSON'>Mussolini</ent> and <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent>. We
decline to be impressed if the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> prelates of <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent>, for
instance, fell into silence about the <ent type='NORP'>German</ent> treaties when they
declared war on that country. They continued to support the
alliance with the <ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent>s until they were at war with
<ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent>. And the <ent type='NORP'>American</ent> cardinals and prelates maintained their
support generally until the Pope's proud <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent>ese ally dealt
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent> so foul a blow. The hierarchies have a very poor case
against the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>, and the two elements together supremely represent
<ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>.</p>

<p> A more familiar trick, which has even been used in the Pope's
paper the <ent type='PERSON'><ent type='PERSON'>Osservatore</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent>o</ent>, is to plead that aberrations on the
part of the hierarchy of a particular country do not compromise the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>. Next we have, in the first place, the right to presume that
a course of conduct pursued by the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> priests of any country
during several years has the full approval of the <ent type='ORG'>Papacy</ent>. If the
conduct is likely to arouse disgust or criticism in other countries
we do not look for the publication of Papal letters or other
messages supporting it, unless, as in the case of <ent type='ORG'>the Spanish</ent>
rebellion, only a minority of radical folk condemn the policy. But
we need no evidence. <ent type='ORG'>The Vatican</ent> has its international bureau
(congregations) in <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> and its <ent type='PERSON'>Nuncio</ent>s (ambassadors) in every
capital to keep it fully informed. No one would, in fact, for a
moment suggest that the <ent type='ORG'>Papacy</ent> is not fully aware of the language
in which <ent type='NORP'>German</ent> and <ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent> bishops have thoroughly approved the
successive steps taken by the <ent type='NORP'>Nazis</ent> and <ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent>s in their
diabolical attempts to get world-powers.</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
12
.
<ent type='ORG'>FASCIST ROMANISM DEFIES</ent> CIVILIZATION</p>

<p> It is not we who say that the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> is bound to correct any
such moral aberrations. It is the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> apologist who says it.
It is his boast that there is a unique moral authority in his
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> which makes it far more valuable to civilization than other
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>es, and he means that it has rigorously controlled agencies
in every land and surveys the world with a moral sense that cannot
be adulterated by national interests. The <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>England</ent>, he
says, is bound to have a <ent type='NORP'>British</ent> outlook; the Protestant Episcopal
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>the United</ent> States an <ent type='NORP'>American</ent> outlook; the Lutheran
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> a <ent type='NORP'>German</ent> outlook. But the head or central station of the
<ent type='ORG'><ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent></ent> sees no national boundaries and is serenely
independent of national prejudices in its judgments. And since it
is the local clergy in each country who interpret <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
doctrine, on both faith and morals, to the people, one of the chief
functions of the Vatican is to see that they apply it in all its
purity. The miserable subterfuge that the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> is merely
overlooking a little patriotic weakness in the <ent type='NORP'>German</ent> or the
<ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent> hierarchy when it blesses crime on a monstrous scale and
criminals immeasurably more guilty than the murderers or rapers of
individuals is an abandonment of all claim to moral authority in
<ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent>.</p>

<p> We may go further and say that corruption in the national
hierarchies is even more discreditable to <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> than
corruption at the Vatican. I need not linger in explaining that. It
is from their priests, who are rigorously controlled by the
bishops, that <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> have to expect sound moral judgment on
collective as well as individual problems. Not one <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> in
hundreds even reads the Encyclicals which the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>s issue about
once a decade, and most of those who do require the guidance of a
priest or a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> writer on the meaning of these lengthy and
<ent type='PERSON'>jejune</ent> documents in which a few grains of medieval "wisdom" or
amateurish statements on modern problems are diluted in gallons of
<ent type='NORP'>Latin</ent> verbiage. It is very little different with the addresses,
etc., of the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> which appear more frequently in the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
weekly. In actual life it is from the religious instruction of
early years, continued in the priests' sermons, that the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
forms his judgment.</p>

<p> And this "<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> point of view," which the apologists rate
so highly that <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> demand's special consideration of it from
the legislators at <ent type='GPE'>Washington</ent>, has no more unity, no more real
catholicity (universality), than that of any other creed. On the
greatest social-moral issues, the really vital issues, of our time
-- the amount of freedom and tolerance to grant, the suppression of
greed and violence, the desirability of peace -- you get practical
unanimity in the Protestant Episcopal <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> or <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> of
<ent type='GPE'>England</ent>, the <ent type='ORG'>Baptist</ent> or the Methodist <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>, whether its members
live in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>, Europe, <ent type='LOC'>Asia</ent>, or <ent type='LOC'>Africa</ent>. But in <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent>
you have a monstrous moral discord. The <ent type='NORP'>German</ent>, <ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent>, or
<ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent>ese <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> is taught by his priests to support
enthusiastically just what the <ent type='NORP'>American</ent> or <ent type='NORP'>British</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
denounce's as diabolical. The ideal given by his priests to the
<ent type='NORP'>Spaniard</ent> or the <ent type='NORP'>Brazilian</ent>, even the <ent type='NORP'>French</ent> or the <ent type='GPE'>Austria</ent>n, today
would, if those countries were Protestant, draw the bitterest
invective or the most self-satisfied irony from the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
apologist. Which, he would ask, is your Protestant morality, and </p>

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<p>what judgment does it pass on five years of revolting outrage from
the bombing of Guernica or the rape of <ent type='ORG'>Abyssinia</ent> to the treachery
of <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent>? But all these monstrously conflicting voices on the
gravest issues are <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> not Protestant or atheistic. In other
words that world-wide expansion in which the apologist takes such
pride is one of the greatest moral weaknesses of his <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>, and
the claim that it has a supreme, cosmopolitan oracle who keep the
teaching pure and harmonious is a brazen misstatement.</p>

<p> Indeed, it is not only a matter of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>, in its most
representative organ's saying one thing in <ent type='GPE'>Vichy</ent> and another in
<ent type='GPE'>London</ent>, one thing in <ent type='GPE'>Washington</ent> and another in <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Berlin</ent>, or
<ent type='GPE'>Tokyo</ent>. In the same land, within the limits of the same patriotic
influences, the voice wavers and changes like that of the Vicar of
<ent type='ORG'>Bray</ent>; and this applies forcibly to the Vatican itself. But this
will be seen more clearly after the next two chapters have been
read. Here let me finish with this question of which element of the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> really represents it and whether that element can be
repudiated by the others.</p>

<p> It is the same <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> in every element, and the fact
that it speaks a radically different moral language in its separate
elements only proves again that the main aim of the Black
International is pursued without scruple. To the lower clergy as
the <ent type='ORG'>Black International</ent> we must not only add the monks, nuns, and
teaching brothers but every paid worker; every <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> teacher,
journalist, organizer, secretary, and lay propagandist. The whole
of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Action, from the <ent type='ORG'>Knights</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Columbus</ent>, to the <ent type='ORG'>Falangists</ent>
of Franco's black army, should be counted in it. <ent type='PERSON'>Petain</ent> and
<ent type='ORG'>Weygand</ent>, <ent type='PERSON'>Leopold</ent> and <ent type='ORG'>Laval</ent>, are part of it. Below all their discord
they follow a consistent purpose, the aggrandizement of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>,
which means the protection or increase of the power and wealth of
the <ent type='ORG'>Black International</ent>. From above one maxim seeps down to the
lowest and most hoodwinked stratum of workers. It is called "the
good of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>," and this is unctuously explained to be the
good of the world in the highest sense. What we outsiders, who
outnumber <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> by six to one in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> and nearly thirty to
one in <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent>, reply to this excuse for "<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Action" we shall
see in the final chapter.</p>

<p> Chapter III</p>

<p> RESTORING THE CORPSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES</p>

<p> How did the Vatican hope to profit by its alliance with the
<ent type='ORG'>Axis</ent> powers? Even those who might hesitate to agree that the Black
International always seeks its own aggrandizement in its policy
will not question that it did so in supporting <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent> <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>, and
<ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent>. They offered the Vatican certain advantages. If any <ent type='NORP'>American</ent>
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> were to plead that the Vatican supported them simply
because it approved of their "ideology" he would have to admit that
from the start the Vatican condemned democracy and was opposed to
liberty as it is understood in <ent type='NORP'>democratic</ent> lands. The first alliance
was with <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent>, and no dictator was louder or more scornful in his
denunciation of democracy, freedom, and liberalism than <ent type='PERSON'>Mussolini</ent>.
Fascism, he said, "marched to victory over the rotting corpse of </p>

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<p>freedom." And the second most outstanding principle of his ideology
was his glorification of war and his claim that peace corrupts a
nation. He had very many admirers in other lands, it is true, but
they expressly condemned these principles of his and professed his
real merit in their eyes was, of course, his persecution of
Socialism and <ent type='NORP'>Communism</ent> -- only to admire his efficiency; and with
this supposed virtue of Fascism the Vatican had nothing whatever to
do. This applies fully to <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent> also, for Hitler's essential
appeal to the nation was to substitute <ent type='NORP'>Nazis</ent>m for democracy and to
expand <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent> by wars of conquest. <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent> was equally anti-<ent type='NORP'>democratic</ent> and even more bent upon wars of aggression.</p>

<p> I need not repeat the evidence that the Vatican was fully
aware of this. <ent type='NORP'>Nazis</ent>m developed under the very nose of the present
<ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> when he was <ent type='PERSON'>Nuncio</ent> for eleven years in <ent type='GPE'>Munich</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Berlin</ent>. As
he has lived in <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent>, in the highest official capacity of the
Vatican since the end of 1929 he is equally aware of every facet of
Fascism. Whatever defects you may attribute to the Vatican's
intelligence-service you cannot doubt its full acquaintance with
the aims of the <ent type='ORG'>Axis</ent> powers. What, then, attracted it to and kept
it bound up to this day with these bloody-minded anachronistic
forces?</p>

<p> In the first place, of course, their promise to destroy
Socialism and <ent type='NORP'>Communism</ent> which were, as I amply proved, ravaging the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> even more rapidly than modern middle-class culture was. And
in this the Vatican shrewdly calculated that it would have the
sympathy and support of those elements of the democracies, wealth
and the ruling class, which alone matter to it. They are much too
refined and humane to sanction the principle of bloody persecution
or violent suppression, but this did not oblige them to shed tears
when the <ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent> powers applied the principle to Socialism and
promised to extend it to that pestilential swamp, <ent type='NORP'>Soviet</ent> <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent>.
That is the chief reason why <ent type='NORP'>British</ent> and <ent type='NORP'>American</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> found
nothing wrong in the Vatican's alliance with super-crooks until the
scoundrels double-crossed them and turned upon themselves.</p>

<p> <ent type='ORG'>The Vatican</ent> had always courted the applause of these classes
and of the ruling class everywhere by condemning Socialism. Even in
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent>, where medieval <ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent> principles are dressed in
dungarees, so to say, <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>'s condemnation of Socialism was
sustained. You may remember Msgr. Ryan fulsomely assuring <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>
that Socialism was so clearly immoral that if <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> ordered <ent type='NORP'>American</ent>
<ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> to submit to a Socialist government they would
conscientiously refuse. A very golden sentiment! But if <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>
never interferes in politics what is the basis of this heroic
attitude? It is, the apologists say -- and the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> lays down in
condemning Socialism in the Encyclical <ent type='PERSON'>Quadragesimo Anno</ent> -- that
private ownership is a moral right and the refusal of it is
therefore against the moral law. I could write a pleasant page on
the topic. What is the range of this moral principle? Every in
<ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent> folk own a good many things personally, while even in
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent> very large numbers of men and women who are far from
immoral consider that the private ownership of, for instance,
monition industries is very seriously wrong. But we will not linger
by the way. The <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> fabricated the moral principle of
private ownership so as to prove to governments and wealthy folk
that its influence over 200000000 people could be very useful to
them.
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<p> In our age of confusion it is difficult to trace contemporary
developments but as far as I can discover this was at first the
chief feature that led the Vatican into alliance with <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent>,
<ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>, and <ent type='ORG'>the Spanish</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Falangists</ent>. Its connection with <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent> is
different, since it had in that country no large body of <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent>
which was being disrupted by <ent type='NORP'>Communism</ent>. But there is one secret
about its bargain with <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent>. If it would use its influence to keep
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent> amiable and oblivious of the need of warlike
preparation until <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent> was ready to strike it would be rewarded
with most-favored-nation (or sect) treatment for its missions in
<ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent> and all territory conquered by it. It took the promise as a
hint at a monopoly of the <ent type='NORP'>Christian</ent> missions, and it richly
deserves the anxiety which the most recent laws on foreign
religions cause it. <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent> meant, of course, to suppress
<ent type='NORP'>Christianity</ent> completely in Eastern <ent type='LOC'>Asia</ent> and <ent type='LOC'>the Pacific Islands</ent>
once its conquest was accomplished.</p>

<p> In the case of <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent> at first the Vatican contemplated only
the suppression of Socialism and <ent type='NORP'>Communism</ent>, to which it was loosing
millions of its subjects, and an assurance that its own
institutions would be respected. The <ent type='NORP'>Nazis</ent>, probably with a good
laugh over a bottle of wine behind the muncio's back, solemnly
promised to respect <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> schools, seminaries, charitable
institutions, newspapers, and associations; all of which they have
ruined. All that one need say about that is that for once the
Vatican surprises us. <ent type='PERSON'>Pacelli</ent>, who saw the early development of the
<ent type='NORP'>Nazi</ent> party at <ent type='GPE'>Munich</ent> and the later development in <ent type='GPE'>Berlin</ent>, certainly
knew the character of its leaders. What surprises us is the low
degree of intelligence which it betrayed in trusting their
promises.</p>

<p> In the case of <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent> the promise made to <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> was far
larger and has been much better kept; which is no proof of virtue
but reflects the fact that the Vatican now rules the majority of
the nation -- not one-sixth of it, as in <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent> -- and could make
serious trouble. <ent type='ORG'>The Vatican</ent> knew that the <ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent>s would find it
very difficult ever to take back the political independence granted
to it and the greater part of the $90000000 that went with this.
But I explained that the Concordat gave <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> even greater
advantages, since <ent type='PERSON'>Mussolini</ent> needed the Pope's help far more than
<ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent> did. It gave the clergy a great increase of income, a
religious control of the schools, and the incorporation in the
civil law of very important clauses of the Canon Law. The <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>
received a very high price and has been scrupulously honest in
doing what it contracted to do; the <ent type='ORG'>Papacy</ent> was not to say a word
against any of the brutalities perpetrated by <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent> and was to
allow the bishops and clergy to tell the people that they were
glorious victories both for the state and <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>.</p>

<p> The Papal ambition or plan to profit by the conquests of the
greedy and callous adventurers grew with the growth of their
programs. Hitler's program in 1932 did not read beyond the <ent type='GPE'>Ukraine</ent>
in the east and <ent type='GPE'>Alsace</ent>-<ent type='PERSON'>Lorraine</ent> in the west. Mussolini's program
was still confined to the recovery by war of <ent type='ORG'>Savoy</ent>, Corsica,
Dalmatia, <ent type='GPE'>Malta</ent>, and <ent type='GPE'>Tunisia</ent>. As we saw, the amazing supineness and
obtuseness of the western democracies encouraged the growth of
these programs until <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent> were to share the Old World </p>

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<p>with <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent> and make a shot at <ent type='EVENT'>the New World</ent>. They still found the
Pope's soporific influence in <ent type='GPE'>France</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent>, and <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> very
useful and they encouraged him to cultivate imperialistic dreams of
his own. In the wake of these noble conquests of the world he was
going to bring under the Vatican larger stretches of the earth than
any other <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> has dreamed of since the 16th Century.</p>

<p> This great <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> League of Nations was to have three
sections. One was the <ent type='NORP'>Iberian</ent> section, bringing into at least a
cultured and spiritual unity <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Portugal</ent>, and all the <ent type='NORP'>Latin</ent>-<ent type='NORP'>American</ent> countries. The idea is known in <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent> and much discussed
as "<ent type='NORP'>Hispanidad</ent>." Literally it means "Spanishness" or <ent type='ORG'>the Spanish</ent>
spirit. Spanish <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>ism is such a beautiful and lofty thing --
don't laugh just yet -- that it must smooth out <ent type='NORP'>Portuguese</ent>
idiosyncrasies, when <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent> has annexed <ent type='GPE'>Portugal</ent> to <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent>, and must
embrace all <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> from Ciudad Juarez to <ent type='GPE'>Tierra del Fuego</ent>. In
October (1941) the <ent type='NORP'>Spaniard</ent>s established a Council of <ent type='ORG'>the Spanish</ent>-Speaking World, and the <ent type='ORG'>Falangist</ent> papers quite seriously gave
President <ent type='PERSON'>Roosevelt</ent> a warning to keep his hands off <ent type='LOC'>South</ent> and
Central <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>. The <ent type='GPE'>London</ent> press reported them in November saying
that "Roosevelt's tutorship is unsolicited" and that "<ent type='NORP'>Spaniard</ent>s are
the only ones entitled to look after Spanish <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>." <ent type='PERSON'>Franco</ent> has
found it necessary to give in public a comical assurance that he
has no secular designs on territory in <ent type='LOC'>South</ent> <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>; that Spain's
"hegemony" will be purely cultural and religious.</p>

<p> I do not know how far <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> prevent these insolent
pleasantries from appearing in the <ent type='NORP'>American</ent> press, but the Vatican
and <ent type='ORG'>the Spanish</ent> hierarchy and government are portentously serious
about the idea, and <ent type='PERSON'>Franco</ent> is stupid enough, in spite of his modest
words to think that when <ent type='NORP'>German</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Fifth Columnists</ent> have destroyed the
existing governments in <ent type='NORP'>Latin</ent> <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent> will allow <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent> to
annex them. The idea is directly inspired by the language which the
<ent type='ORG'>Papacy</ent> addressed to the <ent type='NORP'>Spaniard</ent>s during and after the <ent type='ORG'>Rebellion</ent>.
On April 16, 1939, <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> Pius XII broadcast a message -- reproduced
by his biographer <ent type='PERSON'>Rankin</ent> in The <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> Speaks, (1941, p. 145) -- in
the course of which he Said:</p>

<p> "The nation chosen by God as the principal instrument for the
evangelization of <ent type='EVENT'>the New World</ent> and as the impregnable bulwark of
the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> faith has given the loftiest proof to the champions of
the materialistic atheism of our age that above everything stand
the eternal values of religion and the spirit."</p>

<p> Perhaps it is necessary to explain that he means the glorious
victory of <ent type='PERSON'>Franco</ent> over what he would call the rebels. I am not in
these books underrating the ability of <ent type='PERSON'>Pacelli</ent> but such language
betrays a mental squint that makes him totally <ent type='ORG'>Unfit</ent> to guide large
bodies of men. He completely ignores the fact that it was <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>
and <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent> who for their own purposes took up a handful of Spanish
rebels and <ent type='NORP'>Moorish</ent> mercenaries and conquered <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent> for <ent type='PERSON'>Franco</ent>, and
he quite solemnly represents the bravery of Franco's Spanish troops
as a lesson for the <ent type='NORP'>Russians</ent> who, without a single foreign soldier,
have beaten the greatest military power of all time fighting on a
single front!</p>

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<p> The whole idea is, in fact, so fatuous and based upon such a,
mass of lies and legends that it would not be worth discussing
except as an illustration of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> culture and mentality. <ent type='PERSON'>Franco</ent>
himself told his followers after the victory that they were going
to restore the glories of the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent> of the <ent type='NORP'>Conquistadors</ent>,
of Ferdinand and <ent type='PERSON'>Isabella</ent> and all the other grand Castiliai
monarchs. That is, in fact, the main idea of <ent type='NORP'>Hispanidad</ent>; and it
rests upon as gross a fabric of historical untruth as you will find
anywhere.</p>

<p> We acknowledge the valor in fighting of the medieval Spanish
<ent type='ORG'>Knights</ent> -- except, significantly, that great <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> hero
Ferdinand, who never fought for a thing if he could get it by lying
and treachery -- but with that virtue they shared all the vices of
the knights of the so-called age of chivalry. They were densely
ignorant, licentious, brutal, and dishonorable. They conquered the
<ent type='LOC'>Moors</ent> taking one province at a time during three centuries, only
with the very considerable assistance of knights and soldiers --
hundreds of thousands of them -- from other lands, and loot was the
guiding star of them all. As to the Castellan dynasty which the
final conquest put on the throne of <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent> half its members were
selfish, sensual, and stupid, and the other half blind with
fanaticism; and it would be difficult to say which type did the
more harm to <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent>. It is at all events a notorious historical fact
that they ruined <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent> in little over a century. It had inherited
the brilliant civilization of the <ent type='NORP'>Arabs</ent>, to which it added the gold
of <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>, but in two centuries its population fell from
30000000 to about 7000000 and it was despised as the poorest
and most ignorant country in Europe. Of the Bourbon dynasty of
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> monarchs in the 19th Century it is enough to say that they
were the most selfish and licentious in Europe, and every member of
the dynasty was expelled from <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent> by the people except Alfonso
XII, who died prematurely of consumption brought on by his
excesses.</p>

<p> This beautiful <ent type='NORP'>Hispanidad</ent> slew more unarmed <ent type='NORP'>democrats</ent> to
protect its own corruption and <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>, in the 19th Century than
any other country in Europe except <ent type='GPE'>Naples</ent>, and with a ferocity that
<ent type='GPE'>Naples</ent> did not surpass. This "nation chosen by God" presents today
the most sordid spectacle in the world, apart from countries
overrun by the <ent type='ORG'>Axis</ent> troops (the Pope's allies), of injustice and
brutal intolerance. In a previous booklet I gave the report of a
<ent type='NORP'>French</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> girl on the brutality with which men and women
"suspected of <ent type='NORP'>Communism</ent>" -- which means anybody but a loyal Spanish
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> -- are treated in the jails, <ent type='NORP'>British</ent> and <ent type='NORP'>American</ent>
Protestants also are vilely treated. The <ent type='NORP'>American</ent> Protestant
Defense League has issued a bulletin on the subject. It says that
30 Protestant ministers have been expelled and will probably be
executed if they return; that two-thirds of the workers of the
Spanish Gospel Mission have been either executed, exiled, or
imprisoned; that four-fifths of the Protestant churches and schools
have been closed; and that no <ent type='NORP'>Spaniard</ent> who does not attend mass can
get employment.</p>

<p> That is real <ent type='NORP'>Hispanidad</ent>, as it is understood by <ent type='PERSON'>Franco</ent> and the
Vatican; the noble Spanish Spirit which the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> papers, and
too many others, treat so respectfully. It is just a system for
protecting wealth and <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> by every brutal and unscrupulous </p>

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<p>means. The latest neutral observers who have contrived to visit
<ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent> and survive consistently report that the poverty and misery
of the mass of the people are horrible, but the hotels and
restaurants for the rich in <ent type='GPE'>Madrid</ent> are as gay and well-supplied as
ever. These "noble" <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> landowners, these highly polished
"gentlemen of <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent>," have always regarded the workers as beasts of
burden. They have less contempt for a beggar than for a worker. And
this is the high <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> culture that they are, they think, going
to spread over <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> from El Paso to <ent type='GPE'>Patagonia</ent>!</p>

<p> I am not taking this dream of <ent type='PERSON'>Franco</ent> and the Vatican seriously
but showing the utter stupidity and falseness of things which they
take seriously. The plan does, as little credit to the intelligence
as it does to the moral sentiments of the Vatican. It confirms
every charge which I have made in these booklets, and the idea of
invading <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> with such a culture, which <ent type='PERSON'>Franco</ent> Certainly hopes
to follow up with political control under a restored Spanish
monarchy, may help the <ent type='NORP'>American</ent> public to demand an end of the
representation of <ent type='GPE'>the United</ent> States or its President at the
Vatican.</p>

<p> This idea of a Spanish Union from the <ent type='GPE'>Philippines</ent> to <ent type='GPE'>Barcelona</ent>
has grown out of an earlier idea of a bloc or League of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
powers. When <ent type='GPE'>France</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Belgium</ent> were "liberated" from their non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> governments by the <ent type='NORP'>Germans</ent> the Vatican saw at once the
possibility of uniting them to <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Portugal</ent>, and <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent> as a
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> bloc. The <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>, we saw, sent a feeble letter of Sympathy
to <ent type='PERSON'>Leopold</ent> -- the man who had betrayed it -- on the invasion of
<ent type='GPE'>Belgium</ent> "against its wish," and the <ent type='PERSON'>Osservatore</ent> said something
about a <ent type='NORP'>German</ent> "ruthless war of extermination." This "unauthorized"
utterance annoyed the <ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent>s at the time, but the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> was silent
about the far worse invasion of <ent type='GPE'>France</ent> and his relations with
<ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent> were not severed. There was, in fact, ample evidence, as we
saw, that the passing of <ent type='GPE'>France</ent> and the <ent type='NORP'>French</ent> <ent type='GPE'>Empire</ent> under the
priest-ridden <ent type='PERSON'>Petain</ent> was very welcome to the Vatican and, as is an
axiom in <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> theology, "if you approve an end you approve the
means to it"; which is only to be distinguished by a microscope
from "The end justifies the means." To <ent type='GPE'>France</ent>, once more <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>,
<ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent>, and <ent type='GPE'>Portugal</ent> would be added and <ent type='GPE'>Poland</ent>, in so far as
<ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent> permitted a restoration, Hungary, <ent type='GPE'>Slovakia</ent>, and the
detached <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> provinces of <ent type='GPE'>Yugo</ent>-<ent type='NORP'>Slavia</ent>; a bloc of countries
with a total population of about 150000000, all living under the
drastically intolerant <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> law.</p>

<p> Doubtless the Vatican clings to the illusion, though it pales
before the reality of events. <ent type='PERSON'>Petain</ent> soon found that the <ent type='NORP'>French</ent>
people compelled him to withdraw some of the measures which the
clergy had got him to pass. Possibly the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>, who must have known
that <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent> is pledged in his book to bring <ent type='GPE'>France</ent> down in the
dust, had an uneasy feeling that when <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent> no longer needed to
make a show of moderation in his dealings with <ent type='GPE'>France</ent> there would
not be much of it left. <ent type='GPE'>Alsace</ent>-<ent type='PERSON'>Lorraine</ent>, the most <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> part,
would certainly go. <ent type='ORG'>Savoy</ent>, with <ent type='GPE'>Nice</ent> and <ent type='ORG'>Monte Carlo</ent> if not a
larger stretch of the <ent type='NORP'>French</ent> coast, would go to <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent>; and it is
credibly reported that the <ent type='NORP'>Nazis</ent> have a plan to annex the
industrial north of the country to a <ent type='NORP'>German</ent>-controlled <ent type='GPE'>Belgium</ent>. </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
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<p><ent type='GPE'>Poland</ent>, always terribly poor, would be but the ghost of a beggar
before <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent> relinquishes it, if he ever did. lt was even possible
that <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent> and its new province's would pass under the control of
<ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>.</p>

<p> Hence this enfeebled and uncertain plan of a European bloc,
which might check <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent> even if he were victorious, had to be
strengthened by <ent type='NORP'>Hispanidad</ent> and an extension of Vatican control over
the east. I dealt with the latter at some length in an earlier
book. Doubtless the <ent type='NORP'>Germans</ent>, who handed out promises as glibly as
the fraudulent money (printed in <ent type='GPE'>Holland</ent>) which they use in <ent type='GPE'>France</ent>,
promised the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> that when they had conquered all the countries in
which the <ent type='NORP'>Greek</ent> or other Oriental <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> predominated they
would replace this with the <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent>. That would mean a very large
extension of the Vatican's influence eastward to match <ent type='ORG'>the Spanish</ent>
extension westward.</p>

<p> It is unnecessary to say that all this depended essentially
upon the use of force. No <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> is more skeptical about the
efficacy of prayer or argument in these mass conversions than a
<ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> prelate. But the good <ent type='NORP'>Germans</ent> would keep their promises; and
they would indeed find the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> and his agents far more useful in
keeping oriental peoples submissive than the national hierarchies
and clergy whom they were to displace. Not counting <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent> and its
180000000 people this displacement of the <ent type='NORP'>Greek</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> would give
<ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> 50000000 new member's.</p>

<p> Moreover, the Vatican was promised a very rich prize in the
religious control of <ent type='GPE'>Palestine</ent>. A very impartial <ent type='NORP'>British</ent> daily, the
Manchester Guardian, published the details of the compact with the
Vatican. <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent> was to have the secular rule of <ent type='GPE'>Palestine</ent> and the
Vatican a religion monopoly, the entire <ent type='NORP'>Jewish</ent> population being
transferred to a reconquered <ent type='ORG'>Abyssinia</ent>. It has been suggested that
<ent type='GPE'>Syria</ent> would then be, as far as secular rule is concerned, ceded to
<ent type='GPE'>Turkey</ent> on condition that it maintain its neutrality in the war. If
it seems incredible that the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> should enter into a compact with
<ent type='GPE'>Turkey</ent> -- it is really far less strange than its alliance with
<ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent> -- I may recall that there have recently been singularly
amiable exchanges between <ent type='NORP'>Moslem</ent> (or atheist-ruled) <ent type='GPE'>Turkey</ent> and
Papal <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent>. The <ent type='ORG'>Herald</ent>-Tribune (June 15) published the news, from
its <ent type='GPE'>Istanbul</ent> correspondent, that the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> had just sent as a gift
to the <ent type='NORP'>Turkish</ent> Prime Minister a copy of a map of the vast Ottoman
<ent type='GPE'>Empire</ent> of the 16th Century made by a famous <ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent> geographer of
that time. What did the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> expect in return? His gold medals and
golden roses are given always for services rendered or favors to
come.</p>

<p> Let me, finally, recall that I am not stating what advantages
the <ent type='ORG'>Papacy</ent> would derive from a victory of the <ent type='ORG'>Axis</ent> but what
advantages were promised to it or that it thought it would derive.
The first and greatest profit, the destruction of Socialism and
<ent type='NORP'>Communism</ent>, was certain. The democracies were not of the least use
to <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> in removing that deadly menace. They were too soft to use
violence or were misguided enough to trust argument and persuasion.
The <ent type='ORG'>Axis</ent> powers in their own interest would make a drastic end of
<ent type='ORG'>Communism and</ent> Socialism, and they were quite willing to go on to
suppress <ent type='NORP'>Freemasonry</ent> and every critical movement that <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> hated. </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
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<p>On the second point, the extension of its power in addition to the
recovery by force of its apostates, the Vatican gambled. The <ent type='ORG'>Axis</ent>
powers might keep their promises. <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> might be able to restore the
corpse of <ent type='LOC'>the Middle Ages</ent> in the 20th Century.</p>

<p> Chapter IV</p>

<p> THE CHURCH IN <ent type='NORP'>DEMOCRATIC</ent> COUNTRIES</p>

<p> I am not going to waste time in discussing the sheer folly of
trusting the word of men who for years have made lying a normal
part of their procedure, and I leave it to the reader to apply his
own epithets to a gamble of this sort; a gamble, in effect, that
stakes the lives of millions, the liberty of tens of millions, and
the elementary well-being of hundreds of millions against a
possible profit to the <ent type='ORG'>Black International</ent>. I have not much space
left to consider two points of some importance; how the Vatican
contrived to keep <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> in the <ent type='NORP'>democratic</ent> countries loyal and
Submissive while it thus allied itself with their deadly enemies,
and what <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> apologists have to say in defense of its action.</p>

<p> In so far as the first question refers to <ent type='GPE'>France</ent>, which we
must count one of the leading democracies until its collapse, we
have seen the answer. <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> rendered very important services to the
<ent type='NORP'>French</ent> government, such as checking the chronic rebelliousness in
<ent type='GPE'>Alsace</ent>-<ent type='PERSON'>Lorraine</ent> and condemning some of the leader's of the
Royalist-<ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent> movement. We may easily grant that no <ent type='NORP'>French</ent>man
could be expected to foresee, the disgraceful part that <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent>,
like <ent type='PERSON'>Petain</ent> and <ent type='ORG'>Laval</ent> would play in a time of crisis. <ent type='NORP'>French</ent>
statesmen in making concessions to <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> and discouraging the
very powerful and very vocal anti-clerical movement that had
flourished before 1914 thought that they were securing the unity of
their country in case it was ever threatened by <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>. There was,
of course, far too much trust in the Maginot line and the <ent type='NORP'>Belgians</ent>,
but we cannot blame the <ent type='NORP'>French</ent> for not being aware of their
appalling danger from <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Fifth Columnists</ent>. It is clear that
even patriotic <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> did not foresee this. Amongst the refugees
from the <ent type='GPE'>Vichy</ent> rule, for instance, is <ent type='PERSON'>Jacques Maritain</ent>, the leading
and very orthodox <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> writer of modern <ent type='GPE'>France</ent>. We must
remember, too, that a number of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Royalist-<ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent> writers
attacked the <ent type='ORG'>Papacy</ent> very warmly, and this helped to throw dust in
the eyes of <ent type='NORP'>democrats</ent>. <ent type='PERSON'>Paul Courcoural</ent>'s work, La fin de la
querelle (1929) is a bitter attack on the Vatican, and he quotes
several other <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> critics. One of the points made by these
critics was that the Vatican, and he quotes several other <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
critics. One of the points made by these <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> critics was that
the Vatican displayed grave in incompetence in allowing itself to
be duped by governments.</p>

<p> In Great <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent> the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> defense would be that if the
press generally and the leading statesmen not only failed to point
out any danger in Fascism and <ent type='NORP'>Nazis</ent>m but habitually paid
compliments, until <ent type='GPE'>Munich</ent>, to those movements and their leaders one
cannot blame <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> for failing to see anything wrong in the
Vatican's alliance with them. Up to a point we must admit the
defense, at least as far as the general body of <ent type='NORP'>British</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
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<ent type='ORG'>FASCIST ROMANISM DEFIES</ent> CIVILIZATION</p>

<p>are concerned. But we are not here concerned with the general body
of <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> in any country. We are studying the action of the
<ent type='ORG'>Black International</ent> which rendered such service to the <ent type='ORG'>Axis</ent> powers
and helped to bring such appalling evil upon the race. As to the
hierarchy and the clergy in <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> -- for this
consideration applies to both countries -- I have quoted passage
after passage which Shows that they fully shared the principle, or
lack of principle, on the strength of which the <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> obligarchy
and the bishops of <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent> supported iniquity. Whatever
the laity knew or did not know -- and we may at least say that
educated men and women amongst them are unintelligible to us if
they imagine that a <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> which forbids them to read critics is
likely to tell them the truths which the critic's do -- the higher
clergy at least knew perfectly well that the Vatican entered upon
most cordial relations with <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent> after the rape of <ent type='GPE'>China</ent>, that it
signed a Concordat with the <ent type='NORP'>Nazis</ent> while their hands were red with
innocent blood, that it saw the <ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent> hierarchy under its eyes
applauding one <ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent> outrage after another, and so on.</p>

<p> On an earlier page I quoted the saying of Cardinal Hinsley
that <ent type='PERSON'>Mussolini</ent> certainly had grave faults but he must be supported
lest graver evils happen. He plainly meant that the Vatican must
continue in alliance with the <ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent> party -- must, through the
<ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent> bishops and priests continue to keep the people loyal to
<ent type='PERSON'>Mussolini</ent> and approve all his actions (except infringements of the
Concordat) -- because if <ent type='PERSON'>Mussolini</ent> fell Socialism might seize power
in <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent>. That is just the sentiment that has inspired the policy
of the <ent type='ORG'>Black International</ent> through ten years of increasing
demoralization. "The good of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>," the protection of its
power and wealth, is above all other considerations.</p>

<p> It was the same in regard to <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>. The horrible outrages on
<ent type='NORP'>Jews</ent>, <ent type='NORP'>Communists</ent>, Socialists, etc., were still being discussed with
loathing throughout the world in the summer of 1933 when <ent type='PERSON'>Pacelli</ent>
signed his Concordat with the <ent type='NORP'>Nazis</ent>. That agreement stifled
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> criticism of the moral character of <ent type='NORP'>Nazis</ent>m and was
welcomed with obsequious language, as a new triumph of the Vatican,
a new <ent type='NORP'>German</ent> pilgrimage to <ent type='PERSON'>Canossa</ent>, in the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> press of
<ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>. Next year was the Blood Purge, the murder
without the pretence of a trial of distinguished <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> who were
lumped together with pimps and pansies, and the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> press was
remarkably restrained. In short, until <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent> forced war upon
<ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent> itself, or clearly showed after <ent type='GPE'>Munich</ent> that it would
probably do so, the <ent type='NORP'>British</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> hierarchy and the press they
controlled had little criticism of <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent> except in regard to its
"persecution of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>." To close <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> schools and
institutions when a monstrous epidemic of vice had been detected in
the priests and brother's who controlled them invited the gravest
censure; to dissolve <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> associations or fraternities and
sororities after solemnly promising to respect them was an outrage.
But that the <ent type='NORP'>German</ent> bishops, under orders from the Vatican, should
forbid <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> to help to keep out of power a party, with
malodorous leaders, which was pledged to destroy the <ent type='NORP'>democratic</ent>
constitution, to let loose a flood of criminals and sadists upon
the <ent type='NORP'>Jews</ent> and <ent type='NORP'>Communists</ent>, to educate the nation deliberately for
war, seems to have been a matter almost of indifference to the
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> press of <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>.</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
22
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<p> A well-known <ent type='NORP'>British</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> propagandist, Christopher
Hollis, wrote in the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Herald</ent> (November 15, 1940):</p>

<p> "In <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> it is very easy, for instance, to publish accounts
of the persecution of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> in <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent> in the non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
press, but it is almost impossible to get <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> publishers of
papers to print anything of the kind."</p>

<p> You will smile at the hit at the <ent type='ORG'><ent type='NORP'>American</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent></ent> press. By
that time <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent> was not merely at war with <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent> but had
suffered murderous raids which had stirred whatever was left of
free conscience in the world. So the <ent type='NORP'>British</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> papers were
quite willing to tell how the <ent type='NORP'>Nazis</ent> persecuted the innocent <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>.
In point of fact numbers of <ent type='NORP'>American</ent> papers also had complained of
such persecution. Cardinal Mundelein never failed to get a hearing
for his maledictions of the <ent type='NORP'>Nazis</ent>. What excites our disgust is not
that many <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> papers refused to censure <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent> even when it
persecuted religion but that none of them, until their countries
were at war with that country, attacked it for the immeasurably
worse things of which it was guilty or warned the race, of which
they professed to be the surest guide, what <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent>, and
<ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent> were preparing for it. <ent type='ORG'>Press</ent>, clergy, hierarchy, and Vatican
all worked together, and on a common principle: the good of the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>.</p>

<p> The situation in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> was in some respects worse than in
<ent type='GPE'>England</ent>, even when we have made allowance for the very large number
of <ent type='NORP'>Germans</ent>, <ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent>s, and <ent type='NORP'>Irish</ent> in the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> body. The bishops
and the educated Catholic's knew their Vatican quite well. It had
airily and publicly censured them in 1899 for claiming that
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> principles could be reconciled with modern thought. The
quarrel which followed within the sacred enclosure gave the
parochially-minded <ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent>s a new idea of the importance of <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>
and, as the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Teeling says "from that day to this no <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>
has spoken out." He adds an explanation which, if it came from my
pen, would be called wantonly provocative and malicious. This
strict <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>, in good order at <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent>, says:</p>

<p> "The reason would seem to have been that <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> has provided
an ever-increasing supply of funds and an ever-increasing supply of
missionaries" (The <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> in Politics, p. 150).</p>

<p> So for the last thirty years <ent type='NORP'>American</ent> apologists have been
permitted to present <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> teaching to the public in a form that
would have made the old <ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent> cardinals gasp with horror. Not
only is <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> tolerant of other religions (when it is
in a minority) but it is the very author and originator of the idea
of religious toleration, which was born in <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> <ent type='GPE'>Maryland</ent>; which
is, as I showed in the Appeal to Reason Library, a lie in every
syllable. Not only was its teaching consistent with <ent type='NORP'>American</ent> ideas
of liberty and democracy but the great <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> theologians of the
Middle Ages really inspired what we call these modern ideas. I am
not sure if I have not read works by <ent type='NORP'>American</ent> priests in which it
is "proved" that Adam's, <ent type='ORG'>Jefferson</ent>, and <ent type='GPE'>Washington</ent> -- they do draw
the line at <ent type='PERSON'>Paine</ent> because they think he was an <ent type='NORP'>Atheist</ent> -- derived
their sentiments from <ent type='PERSON'>Aquinas</ent> and the Jesuit Suarez! I have made
merry with all this elsewhere.</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
23
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<p> This sort of thing continued during the years when the Vatican
maintained intimate relations with the <ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent>s and <ent type='NORP'>Nazis</ent> and
imposed a <ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent> form on every <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> state it could influence.
No one seems to have seen the joke when <ent type='PERSON'>Seldes</ent>, in his learned work
on the Vatican, boasted: "There is no guillotine, no elected
<ent type='ORG'>Chamber</ent>, in the state of <ent type='GPE'>Vatican City</ent>." No one questioned <ent type='PERSON'>Pacelli</ent>,
when he visited <ent type='GPE'>the United</ent> States in 1936, about the sequel to his
visit to <ent type='LOC'>South</ent> <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> in 1934, when democracy was murdered in
nearly every republic and the leaders of the men who advocated it
were tortured in jail. No one asked why the beautiful <ent type='NORP'>democratic</ent>
principles of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> were trampled under foot in <ent type='GPE'>Quebec</ent>, which
is far more <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> than <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent> or <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent>.</p>

<p> The summit of the irony is reached when, <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent>
having entered upon a truculent and utterly unscrupulous war for
the destruction of liberty and democracy everywhere, the <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent>
of <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> were the least disposed of all the citizens to help to
cheek them. It became a stereotyped phrase of the press that the
<ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> were "the core of the isolationists." What you probably
called a splendid struggle for the preservation of democracy,
freedom, and every element of decency in our civilization most of
the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> bishops, priests, and papers swept aside as a stupid
squabble of these Europeans about their respective idealogies. The
powerful Jesuit organ <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> attacked President <ent type='PERSON'>Roosevelt</ent> and
demanded that no munitions for <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent> should be made in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>.
The <ent type='NORP'>British</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Herald</ent> repeatedly published such messages as
this from <ent type='GPE'>Washington</ent>:</p>

<p> "The main obstacle to pro-<ent type='NORP'>British</ent> sentiment, and one which has
been giving the greatest concern to the authorities at <ent type='GPE'>Washington</ent>,
has been the attitude of <ent type='NORP'>American</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent>" (November 15, 1940),
and January 3, March 14, etc., 1941).</p>

<p> In the following summer (<ent type='PERSON'>Reynolds</ent> News, June 29, 1941), the
very impartial H.N. Brallsford, who was then in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>, reported
it as strong as ever. In the <ent type='NORP'>British</ent> press Cardinal Dougherty,
Cardinal O'Connell -- were they unable to shed their <ent type='NORP'>Irish</ent>
bitterness even in a grave crisis of civilization? -- and other
leading prelates were said to be urging that <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent> should be left
to its fate.</p>

<p> My <ent type='NORP'>American</ent> readers will know more about all this than I do,
but, while we were aware that many <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent>, even some bishops, in
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent> were so disgusted at this callous belittlement of a mighty
struggle for civilization, the spectacle of the great majority
urging a denial of help to <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent> while the most acute observers
in <ent type='GPE'>Washington</ent> doubted if it could survive alone and the cause of
civilization over half the world would go down with it, was too
much even for the <ent type='NORP'>British</ent> brand of the <ent type='ORG'>Black International</ent>. It
relaxed its censorship of the press and for once let a fact which
was gravely discreditable to <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> go through.</p>

<p> That this attitude was inspired by the Vatican became quite
clear when <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent> was drawn into the war. The <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> opposition
to helping <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent> was intensified. <ent type='PERSON'>William Broun</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Washington</ent>
correspondent of <ent type='PERSON'>Reynolds</ent> News, the only quite honest and
independent <ent type='LOC'>Sunday</ent> paper in <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent> (though, like all the others,
subject to <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> influence), cabled (October 12) this news and
added:
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
24
.
<ent type='ORG'>FASCIST ROMANISM DEFIES</ent> CIVILIZATION</p>

<p> "In fact, those who wanted the triumph of reaction and Fascism
in <ent type='EVENT'>the Civil War</ent> in <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent> now want to see Fascism triumph in
<ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent>. That is to be expected."</p>

<p> In other words, we have, as I said, one consistent and
inexorable policy underlying all the superficial variations of
clerical action in various countries; the good of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>. Many
very gravely doubt whether <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent>, standing alone and making
blunder after blunder under its <ent type='NORP'>Conservative</ent> leaders, could
possibly have held its ground if <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent> had fallen and <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent>
intervened. All the sophistry with which the <ent type='NORP'>Irish</ent> prelates of
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Australia</ent> and the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> naval and military leaders
of <ent type='GPE'>France</ent> decked their sheer hatred and jealousy of <ent type='GPE'>England</ent> cannot
conceal what would have been the consequences to Europe, <ent type='LOC'>Asia</ent>, the
northern half of <ent type='LOC'>Africa</ent>, and possibly of <ent type='LOC'>South</ent> <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>, of such an
event.</p>

<p> Yet the one development that promised to save <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent> and
civilization, the challenge of <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent>, not only gave new strength
to <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> isolationism in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> but actually caused <ent type='NORP'>British</ent>
<ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> to waver and fumble for new formulae to reconcile their
<ent type='NORP'>Papalism</ent> and their patriotism. They had laid down in advance that
there must be no alliance with the hated <ent type='NORP'>Bolsheviks</ent>. On May 31,
1940, when the question of an approach to <ent type='PERSON'>Stalin</ent> was being
discussed, the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Herald</ent> had said, flamboyantly:</p>

<p> "Far better to go down with our honor intact than clutch at a
filthy straw."</p>

<p> To such depths of stupidity and indifference to human welfare
had the Vatican's ten year crusade against <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent> dragged the
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> world. One of the very few <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> members of <ent type='ORG'>the House</ent>
of Commons spoke in public of <ent type='NORP'>Nazis</ent>m and <ent type='NORP'>Bolshevism</ent> as two evils
and added: "We are not fighting the one which is the worst." In the
first months of the <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent>n war <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> were a sorry spectacle.
In <ent type='GPE'>England</ent>, where they had to have some regard for public feeling,
they soon found the stupid formula that they would support the
government in sending all possible help to <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent> but it must be
understood that they were not allying themselves with <ent type='NORP'>Communism</ent> or
Atheism! In <ent type='GPE'>Canada</ent> Catholic's organized a strike in one of the
vitally important monition-enterprises. In Eire the chief <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
weekly, the <ent type='ORG'>Standard</ent>, said:</p>

<p> "Those who do not want a <ent type='NORP'>German</ent> victory must now reflect on
the social and religious implications of a Russo-<ent type='NORP'>British</ent> victory."</p>

<p> In <ent type='GPE'>New Zealand</ent> the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> organ (Zealandia, July 3, 1941)
fierily attacked <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>ill's promise to help <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent> -- help <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent>
to relieve England's grave peril remember! -- and said that it
betrayed "a mentality which it is hoped does not indicate the
opinion of the majority within the <ent type='GPE'>Empire</ent>" and that "to aid <ent type='NORP'>Soviet</ent>
<ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent> even against our common foe is to invite the curse of God
upon ourselves." Could fanaticism further go? Or could you have a
more flagrant illustration of its deadliness to man's welfare?</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
25
.
<ent type='ORG'>FASCIST ROMANISM DEFIES</ent> CIVILIZATION</p>

<p> A week ago I might have been tempted to close this chapter
with an hilarious paragraph on how the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>, after winding up his
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> followers during ten years to a hatred of <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent> which has
made them opposed or very feebly Sustain the policy of their
<ent type='NORP'>democratic</ent> governments in a time of crisis, seems to be deserting
them. I quoted the words attributed to the <ent type='NORP'>American</ent> envoy, who had
an hour's private talk with Pius XII before he left <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent>; the
statement that the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> recognized in private that while <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>
was thoroughly corrupt, <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent> was merely good with the wrong sort
of goodness. We had had quite a string of messages (unauthorized)
from places where Mr. <ent type='PERSON'>Myron</ent> C. <ent type='PERSON'>Taylor</ent>, on his leisurely way home
had chats with Spanish and <ent type='NORP'>Portuguese</ent> authorities and with <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
officials from Eire and <ent type='GPE'>Vichy</ent>. One day we learned that the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> was
about to bless democracy; the next day that he had refused Mr.
Roosevelt's request that he should do so. Meantime <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent> has flung
all its forces and its unscrupulous cunning on the side of the
<ent type='ORG'>Axis</ent>, and the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> is again the Great Neutral.</p>

<p> Indeed his very latest pronouncement is, in spite of all its
diplomatic twists, pro-<ent type='ORG'>Axis</ent>. I am writing this on Christmas Eve,
and I am interrupted by the arrival of the evening paper. It runs
the heading, to please <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent>, "The <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> attacks oppression."
And the very first line of his Christmas message speaks of "the New
Order" as an established or certain-to-be-established fact, while
the last line rejoices in "the admirable spectacle of valor in the
defense of the <ent type='NORP'>Latin</ent> soil." Will any priest suggest that <ent type='GPE'>Britons</ent>,
<ent type='NORP'>American</ent>s, <ent type='NORP'>Dutch</ent>, or <ent type='NORP'>Russians</ent> are defending <ent type='NORP'>Latin</ent> soil somewhere?
Or that it is they who claim to establish a New Order? The rest of
the message is the usual panegyric of liberty (as practiced in
<ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent> or <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent>) and justice. <ent type='PERSON'>Mussolini</ent> would certainly say his
withers are unwrung. <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent> will probably use his copy for shaving-paper. Such is the position of the austere, serene, inflexible,
single-toned oracle of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> in the gravest crisis
that has fallen upon the world for fourteen centuries.</p>

<p> Chapter V</p>

<p> THE CATHOLIC DEFENSE</p>

<p> I am, alas, unable to threaten my readers with eternal torment
if they read the other side, so I always anticipate it, especially
as it usually provides a lot of good clean fun. This is one of the
times when it does. Naturally the defense is not yet fully
formulated. There might be no need for one. General <ent type='PERSON'>Leonard Wood</ent>
once told me, as we drank beer together in the <ent type='ORG'>Harvard Club</ent>, that
during <ent type='EVENT'>the Civil War</ent> an adjutant rushed up to General <ent type='PERSON'>Grant</ent>, who
was sitting on a fence chewing a straw, and almost breathlessly
told <ent type='PERSON'>Grant</ent> that some necessary transport had not arrived. "Well,"
said <ent type='PERSON'>Grant</ent>, calmly, "if we win we won't need it, and if we lose --
well, I guess we won't need it."</p>

<p> The first and feeblest defense is that the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> is not and
never was, an ally of the <ent type='ORG'>Axis</ent> powers. Bunk. <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent> was one of the
first of the three to approach <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent>, after the rape of <ent type='GPE'>Manchuria</ent>,
and there is not the least ambiguity about its position. There was
no need whatever to make a request at <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> for a controller of </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
26
.
<ent type='ORG'>FASCIST ROMANISM DEFIES</ent> CIVILIZATION</p>

<p><ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> missions in <ent type='GPE'>Manchuria</ent>. That is a matter of routine.
<ent type='GPE'>France</ent>, already rotten with <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> intrigue, advised the Japs (I
showed) to get into friendly and increasingly intimate relations
with the Vatican so that it could use its <ent type='ORG'>Black International</ent> to
damp in every country the anger and suspicion the Japs had
incurred. The influence of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> agents and the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> press
is the main cause why <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent> could steal province after province of
<ent type='GPE'>China</ent> and heap up forces for its pernicious designs without rousing
the world.</p>

<p> <ent type='PERSON'>Mussolini</ent> had already approached the Vatican and signed the
famous Treaty and Concordat (1929). Again there is not the least
ambiguity. Mussolini's position was very insecure, and his
royalist, military, and capitalist backers insisted that he should
come to terms with the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>, who could secure for him the absolute
obedience of half the country in addition to his <ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent> quarter.
The <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>, who drove a hard bargain, got mighty advantages for the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>, but <ent type='PERSON'>Mussolini</ent> got from him an absolute security of his
position as a dictator and the enthusiastic support of the <ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent>
hierarchy and the virtual acquiescence of the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> himself in all
his crimes. He could afford to let the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> save his face with
<ent type='NORP'>American</ent> and <ent type='NORP'>British</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> by keeping silence. All that he
wanted was the unity and enthusiasm of the nation. The bishops saw
that he got them.</p>

<p> <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent> approached the Vatican through <ent type='PERSON'>Von Papen</ent> (and probably
<ent type='ORG'>Thyssen</ent>) in 1932. It came with a blatant program of aggression in
its hands, and it dipped these hands deep in blood before it signed
the Concordat. By that Concordat the Vatican got promise that the
<ent type='NORP'>Nazis</ent>, who were out to destroy all freedom but their own, would
grant remarkable liberties to the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> body. What did the
Vatican promise in return? Nothing? Don't make us laugh in so
serious a time. It promised that <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> would "keep out of
politics"; which meant, as in <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent>, that the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> would never pass
any moral judgment on Hitler's program, methods, and crimes, and
that the <ent type='ORG'>Black International</ent> in <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent> would fully support them.
We have seen the promise fulfilled. <ent type='NORP'>Peevish</ent> complaints about non-observance of the Concordat do not count especially when they are
accompanied by assurances that there is not the least intention of
weakening Hitler's authority in the minds of <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent>.</p>

<p> This alliance of the <ent type='ORG'>Papacy</ent> with the arch-criminals during ten
years, and still more the intimate alliance with them of the
Vatican-controlled hierarchy of each country, rendered them a most
valuable service in diverting attention from their corrupt
characters and criminal aims. How could they be even suspicious
characters when the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> and the Holy <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> gave them this
guarantee of respectability? This service was doubled by the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>
reserving all his moral invectives for <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent> and concentrating
suspicion upon it. And this provides the answer to the second
defense of the <ent type='ORG'>Black International</ent>; that it is concerned with
interests of men which are so vital that any "temporal" -- call
them human -- evils that may ensue from its policy of promoting
those interests above all cannot be taken into account.</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
27
.
<ent type='ORG'>FASCIST ROMANISM DEFIES</ent> CIVILIZATION</p>

<p> These controversies are apt to become fights with words, like
men belaboring each other with inflated bladders containing dry
peas. Let us be realistic. Three out of four of us regard these
"spiritual interests" and "eternal salvations" as no more real than
astrological predictions. In fact, if you set aside -- not because
we look down on them but because they do not matter in this
connection -- the tens of million's of churchgoers, colored folk
and others, who know no more than they do, the great majority of us
do not care one little damn about their heavens and hells, and if
any body of officials like the <ent type='ORG'>Black International</ent> is prepared to
endanger our peace and security, our prosperity and liberty, to say
nothing of tens of millions of lives and billions of dollars of
wealth that the world sadly needs, in the name of these ancient
illusions the sooner they are excluded from public life the better.
<ent type='PERSON'>Cotton Mather</ent> was a philanthropist in comparison with them. They
may hug and polish their little souls as much as they like in their
darkened chapels. No one proposes to interfere with them. But it is
time that the men and women of a modern community understood the
situation clearly, and that the millions of vague individuals who
live on the fringe of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> or feel its social influence, who
call themselves <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> but smile at the heaven-and-hell
business, stood out boldly for life and freedom. They now see the
price they pay for supporting the <ent type='ORG'>Black International</ent>.</p>

<p> All quite sincere <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent>, which means little more than half
of the nominal body, from the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> to your <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> neighbor would
make this other-world appeal their main defense. Less than 100
years ago their fathers made it a ground for the persecution, where
they had the power, of even Protestants. There was no salivation
outside <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent>. It is amazing to read the daring
language in which their apologists today concede that there may be.
Not, of course, if one is a <ent type='NORP'>Communist</ent> and <ent type='NORP'>Atheist</ent>. That is why any
kind of violent suppression of <ent type='NORP'>Communism</ent> is in the real Interest of
the race! It is true that the teaching of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> here happily
harmonizes with the sentiments of the privileged class, but that .
. .</p>

<p> Let me shift to another line of thought which is less apt to
induce biliousness. It is not in virtue of these moth-eaten dogmas
that the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> and the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> clergy got the ear's of statesmen
and such prestige in the press that they are able to exert so
disastrous an influence. The cry is that "religion" is one of the
chief foundations of the life of an orderly community. With that
crudeness of thought that characterizes nearly all politicians on
all subjects but polities they profess to believe that <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>es
are the source of whatever respect we have for justice, social
decency, and neighborly behavior. And amongst these <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>es the
<ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> has with its authoritative head and its international
organization, a unique position. It can render mighty social and
civic service, and we must, we are told, not be surprised if in its
zeal to render those services it at times blunders, or is tricked
by crooked statesmen, or overlooks dangers that do not properly
belong to its sphere.</p>

<p> I trust you admire bow I can talk like a Jesuit or a literary
nun. I learned the craft fifty years ago. Seriously, this third
line of defense, though the most likely to be presented when the
need for apology becomes urgent, is the worst bunk of all. For this</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
28
.
<ent type='ORG'>FASCIST ROMANISM DEFIES</ent> CIVILIZATION</p>

<p>simple reason, I have just filled ten little books with proof that
<ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> instead of inspiring a love of justice and peace
during the last ten years has, for its own corporate purposes,
dulled the world's sense of justice and seriously helped to divert
its attention from the threat to its peace. This is not rhetoric.
The attitude of <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent>, as reflected in their press and the
utterances of their bishops, the whole world over has been that
since their Holy <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> and Holy Father could not possibly ally
themselves with iniquity, the <ent type='ORG'>Axis</ent> powers could not be as corrupt
as some represented, and those aggressive programs to which a few
of us have tried to draw attention for the last five or six years
must be just adolescent dreams which they have outgrown.</p>

<p> What in the name of common-sense is the use of proving to us
that <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> and its <ent type='ORG'>Papacy</ent> could render most valuable
service to the state and to what it calls our life here and now
when in the gravest crisis of our lives, if not the gravest in
history, it does not say one single word of approval of the forces
that are trying to save civilization but consistently gives most
important assistance to the forces that would, if they prevailed,
destroy civilization in the sense in which all decent and sensible
men have come to understand it?</p>

<p> Let us be as realistic as you like and leave rhetoric to
priests, politicians, and editorial writers. In what way could the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> serve the race in a social-moral respect? Only by
sternly and explicitly denouncing, not crime in the abstract but
the men who commit it and warning the race that they are dangerous.
And what is the actual record which we have surveyed? During ten
years of open preparation for the most ghastly of crimes, ten
year's of steadily increasing perpetration of crime, the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> has
done nothing whatever but bless the abstract virtues of peace and
justice, knowing perfectly well that the arch-criminals professed
to aim at giving the world perpetual peace -- when they have all
the guns -- and appeal every day to the "justice" of their cause
and the "legitimate aspirations" of their people. Of the seven
leading nations on whom the peace of the world and the maintenance
of such justice as our social and political order embodies mainly
depended -- <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>France</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent>, and
<ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent> -- the last three alone betrayed, indeed openly paraded, an
intention to disturb the peace of the world, to destroy such
political justice as we have won, and to trample upon such
restraining decencies as we have been able to incorporate in
international law. I have shown that the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> never said one single
word of condemnation of those three powers; that he, on the
contrary, entered into and maintained the most friendly relations
with them, thus helping to divert the suspicions of the world from
them; that even when the struggle began all his references to peace
and justice (including this latest Christmas message) were so
framed that they confused the criminals and the police together in
whatever censure they implied; and that the only explicit and
violent attacks he made were upon the one power, <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent>, that had
the greatest interest in peace and could do most to save
civilization.</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
29
.
<ent type='ORG'>FASCIST ROMANISM DEFIES</ent> CIVILIZATION</p>

<p> Further, in what way could a Pope's message have the effect
which is so fulsomely attributed to it? Only when his local agents
in any country, the hierarchy and clergy, consistently and
explicitly applied it to the leaders or ruling class of that
country. Well, they were, we saw, certainly consistent -- in
blessing the crimes and the criminals. If that sounds rhetorical
quote me one single instance of a <ent type='NORP'>German</ent> bishop censuring the foul-minded <ent type='NORP'>Nazis</ent> or an <ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent> prelate censuring the <ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent>s on any
ground other than their refusal to pay <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> the full price
they had contracted to pay <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> for its support. Naturally
one swallow would not make a summer. It happens that after this
elaborate survey of the whole period I do not know a single
instance. But I have given a hundred proofs, including collective
letters of the whole episcopate, that the <ent type='NORP'>German</ent> and <ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent>
hierarchies, individually, and officially, applauded every
"conquest" of their bloody-minded rulers and never warned their
people that their leaders were bringing an historic shame upon
them, Add the conduct of the hierarchy and clergy in <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent>, in
Hungary, in <ent type='GPE'>Vichy</ent> <ent type='GPE'>France</ent>, in <ent type='GPE'>Slovakia</ent>, in <ent type='LOC'>South</ent> <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> and you
have the real picture of what the <ent type='ORG'>Black International</ent> has done for
the world.</p>

<p> But, says the apologist finally, and tearfully, <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>
would have been persecuted and rendered helpless if it had not
acted thus. If I were a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> I should be inclined to say: Would
to God that it had been persecuted and rendered helpless! The world
might not be in so desperate a plight. And what about this vast
library of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> literature in which we read how it is so
inflexible in its moral principles that in all ages its priests go
to the stake rather than compromise; that it thrives on and is
purified by persecution, and so on?</p>

<p> Enough of this trashy verbiage of apologists. We men and women
of the modern age want only to know the facts and we need no priest
and no <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> to tell us what to think about them. You will probably
think three things. Firstly, that this scandalous cowering under
the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> threat which prevents the press and our literary
oracles from telling the truth about what is happening calls for
serious consideration. Secondly, the respect which our politicians
and statesmen pay to <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> and its "venerable Pontiff"
is scandalously opposed to the interests of the nation and the
race. Thirdly, that the apologists of the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> in
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent> are particularly and scandalously untruthful. It is an
economic corporation seeking to protect its wealth and power at any
cost to the race. The 200000000 <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> are just its feeding-ground. It has now sold civilization for thirty pieces of silver,
and what will happen to it when we have prevented the devil from
reaping the fruit of the bargain must surprise no man.</p>

<div> **** ****</div>

<p> Reproducible <ent type='ORG'>Electronic Publishing</ent> can defeat censorship.</p>

<div> **** ****</div>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
30
</p></xml>