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<xml><p> 27 page printout
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Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.</p>
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<p> This file, its printout, or copies of either
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are to be copied and given away, but NOT sold.</p>
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<p> Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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**** ****
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Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius</p>
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<p>THE BLACK INTERNATIONAL No. 2</p>
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<p> HOW THE POPE OF PEACE TRADED IN BLOOD</p>
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<p> THE RED POPE
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by Joseph McCabe</p>
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<p> HALDEMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATIONS
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GIRARD -- : -- KANSAS
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**** ****</p>
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<p> Chapter I</p>
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<p> THE RED RECORD OF THE HOLY FATHERS</p>
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<p> The color chosen by the Popes is White. Their flag, it is
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true, White and Gold, to remind us that they are Kings and need a
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royal revenue of a billion a year, but that is, they say, necessary
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to a ruler of the world. Their personal color-theme is white, a
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flowing white cassock and a white-silk skull-cap: symbols of their
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purity life and purpose and their never-ceasing efforts to keep the
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world in peace and tranquillity. The vast economic organization
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over which they preside, the Black International, takes its name
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from the black-garbed clergy. For more than a hundred years after
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America had embodied the elementary rights, of man in a
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Constitution the priests called the claim of those rights in other
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countries Liberalism and waged a bitter, blood-soaked fight against
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it. This was the historic battle of the Blacks and the Whites
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(Liberals).</p>
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<p> Toward the end of the nineteenth century a new color, Red,
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appeared in the arena. Whites and Blacks shuddered and got together
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to oppress it. Red meant blood, violence, war. As I explained in
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the last book, our folk are now educated in so false a version of
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history, because truth is offensive to our Catholic fellow-
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citizens, that few know the irony of this. Particularly in America
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men and women were persuaded to greet the new banner with hatred,
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rage, and disgust. These newcomers who preached violence, cruelty,
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and war were outside the pale of our Christian civilization. Shoot
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the dogs down, as Luther said about the rebel-peasants of his time.
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Let me here just outline the historical evidence that the real
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Reds, in this sense, are, and always have been, the Popes and their
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bishops.</p>
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<p> We have read hundreds of times the prophecy of the famous
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British essayist, Lord Macaulay that when in some remote age a
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traveller comes from New Zealand to see the ruins of London the
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Papacy will still flourish. These literary men! Not only does it
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seem unlikely that New Zealand will ever support 5000000 people
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but the idea that an institution which has lasted 1800 years will
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last another few millennia, or even a century, is childish. In </p>
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<p> Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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1
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.
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THE RED POPE</p>
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<p>Macaulay's time the world was beginning to perceive that
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institutions which appeared thousands of years ago probably had
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their roots in ignorance. There were then twenty Kings in Europe.
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A century later there were ten, and most of them looked nervously
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upon a hostile world. In another ten years they will probably be
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reduced to one.</p>
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<p> The Papacy is far more vulnerable than monarchy. As the
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supreme head of the western half of Christianity it was established
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about the middle of fifth century. It is quite literally what
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Hobbes called it, "the ghost of the Roman Empire sitting upon the
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grave thereof." As long as that Empire maintain civilization every
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branch of the Church, east and west, scorned the Pope's
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pretensions. But in a world of blind men the one-eyed man is king,
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and Rome ruled the ruins. The Popes were masters of a that was so
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debased that during the next seven centuries all Europe did not
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produce one book that any but a bookworm now reads or raise one
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building that any but an antiquarian would cross the street to
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examine.</p>
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<p> The brilliant civilization which the Arabs meantime created in
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Spain and Sicily at last awakened Europe from its hog-like
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slumbers, and for the next eight centuries the power of the Popes
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was based upon violence and bloodshed. A distinguished German
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historian has estimated that their victims numbered more than
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1000000 in 500 years. Certainly they numbered some millions.
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Until the American and French Revolutions these were frankly called
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Heretics. Then the world, under the lead of America, decided that
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it was a crime to put men to death for religion, so they were
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called Liberals, and the Church got half a million of them
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liquidated. By the twentieth century civilization generally had
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become Liberal so they were called Reds or Bolsheviks. Very few
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people are taught in school -- except in those disreputable
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Communist Schools -- that it is simply an historical truth that
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their flag is "red with martyrs' blood."</p>
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<p> Is it credible that the Holy Fathers, clad in the symbols of
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peace and purity, were guilty of these things? I recently published
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in England a History of the Popes (1939) in which I could pay more
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attention to the characters of the Popes than in my larger True
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Story of the Roman Catholic Church (1930). Let me say shamelessly,
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that I read the original authorities in Greek, Latin, Italian,
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Spanish, German and French, and no Catholic has ever attempted to
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answer any of my historical work. And I say, coldly, that these
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Holy Fathers shed more blood in defense of their wealth and power
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than all the other historic religions put together and that the
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record of their vices is the worst in the whole history of
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religion.</p>
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<p> There have been about 260 of these Vicars of Christ, as they
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call themselves. It is difficult to tell the exact number because
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in certain periods there were two or three truculently fighting for
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the holy title. In the tenth century there were 30 in 100 years --
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there have been only six in the last 100 years -- and it is
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impossible to be sure how many were murdered by rivals. Let us say
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that there have been 260. We know nothing about the character of
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the great majority of these during the first thousand years of the </p>
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<p> Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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2
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THE RED POPE</p>
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<p>Christian Era. Catholic literature gives the title of martyr to
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nearly every Pope to the year 310, though their most learned
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historian, Duchesne, admits that only two were martyred. It gives
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the title of Saint to all but one of them to the fifth century,
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whereas we have definite information about only three of them, and
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one of these (St. Victor) was at least shady, the second (St.
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Callistus) was definitely a crook, and the third (St. Damasus) was
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a forger, and an employer of murderous mobs and was charged under
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the civil law with adultery. In short, of the 150 or so Popes about
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whose characters we can be fairly sure at least 30 were sexually
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loose men (six or seven of them sodomists) and about a dozen
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murderers. Scores besides these were men of vile temper and great
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cruelty; and most of them were guilty of simony, nepotism, and
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protecting corruption.</p>
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<p> So put out of your mind the conventional gush about "venerable
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heads of the great Church," and remember that even the best Popes
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were terrible shedders of blood. The holiest of them all, Innocent
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III, was responsible for about 500000 victims in 18 years (1198-
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1216). The question here is whether this is ancient stuff that
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throws no light or has no bearing on the conduct of the Papacy in
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modern times. That is what Catholics say and most people believe;
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but you will not understand the situation today unless you realize
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that the "Red Record" which is the title of this chapter, mainly
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refers to the record of the Popes from the fall of Napoleon (1814)
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to our own time.</p>
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<p> I said in the last booklet that during this period about
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500000 men, women, and children were done to death by the Church
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and the feudal monarchs in alliance. With that disgusting meanness
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to which the difficulties of their case drives them, Catholic
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writers represent, and try to compel other writers and works of
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reference to represent, these martyrs as a sort of early type of
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Reds, or dangerous agitators against the social order as well as
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religion. On the contrary they were as a rule less radical than
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Washington and Jefferson. Republicanism was rare amongst them, and
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the had no idea of persecuting the Church or, even in most cases,
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of disestablishing it. They were just men and women who wanted
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kings to govern them constitutionally and the Church to suppress
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the horrible Inquisition and its vile dungeons. For this Kings and
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Popes fell upon them, through the armies, police, and fanatical
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mobs, with incredible savagery.</p>
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<p> Do not listen to the excuse that it was still the Middle Ages.
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Napoleon had made an end of that horror. Some now put Napoleon on
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a level with our modern dictators, but with all his faults he was
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a clean fighter, only in one case accused of murder (the Duc
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d'Enghien), and he did magnificent work for Europe. He was a
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skeptic, of course, as Lord Rosebery shows in The Last Phase
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(1900), but he showered wealth and favor upon the Church -- on the
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usual terms: the priests must keep the old Republicans quiet for
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him. Yet after his fall the bishops joined with the royalists in a
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White Terror which was more brutal than the Red Terror.</p>
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<p> Catholics represent Pope Pius VII as a "martyr" under
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Napoleon. They do not tell how under this Pius VII, when Napoleon
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was beaten, tens of thousands of Liberals were martyred and under
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his three successors hundreds of thousands. Well, what were these </p>
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<p> Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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3
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THE RED POPE</p>
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<p>Holy Fathers, of modern times, like, and what were they protecting?
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If you want a serious and unchallengeable answer look up that
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highly respectable and most weighty authority the Cambridge Modern
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History (Vol. X). You will find that Leo XII, who succeeded Pious
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-- the Carbolic Encyclopedia admires his "intelligence and masterly
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energy" -- was a converted rake and a doddering old fool who was
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"hated by all, princes and beggars" (as the famous historian L. von
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Ranke who knew him, said) and his death was hailed by the Romans
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"with indecent joy" (the Prussian ambassador at Rome said). While
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he shot birds in the Vatican garden his troops, with a sanguinary
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cardinal in command, shot down his rebels, and many thousands of
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them suffered a living death in jails of a repulsive character.</p>
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<p> At his death the cardinals, after invoking the light of the
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Holy Spirit, elected, to meet the grave problems of the new Europe
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a man in the last stage of senile decay, drooling at the mouth as
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they wheeled him round the Vatican garden in his baby-carriage. The
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carnage of rebels went on. He soon died, and the fierce contest of
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cardinals for the holy office was renewed. The ablest candidate
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Albani, but he was so notorious a rogue that they thought the
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heretics of England and Prussia might make ribald remarks if they
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elected him Vicar of Christ, so they made him Secretary of State
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(and real ruler of the Church) and elected a monk Gregory XVI.</p>
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<p> Gregory was according to all Italian historians vulgar,
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sensual, and frivolous. As one of the more distinguished of them
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says, he "absorbed himself in ignoble interests while the country
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groaned under misrule." It was widely believed in Rome that he was
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intimate with the wife of his valet, and he was notorious for his
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love of strong wine and candy. His horrible jails were crammed with
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rebels -- 6000 at one time -- and the best blood of Italy was
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poured out or driven abroad. His ignorance was weird. He refused to
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admit even gas and railways into the Papal States, as if that meant
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that the devil got his foot in the door.</p>
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<p> After fifteen years of this the cardinals elected what
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Catholics call a Liberal Pope, Pius IX. But when he found that
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Liberals wanted real freedom and a share in reforming his corrupt
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kingdom he fled in disguise and called upon the Catholic powers to
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kill his rebels for him. Then the jails were crammed again. In
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Civita Veechia, which had once been enlivened by the orgies of
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medieval Holy Fathers, rebels with a life-sentence were chained to
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the wall and not released even for relieving themselves. So the
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brutality continued until the Italians bought off the Pope's French
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protectors and took over, with an overwhelming vote of the
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inhabitants, the Papal Kingdom.</p>
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<p> What was this kingdom (the Papal States) which they had shed
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so much blood to protect? There is no dispute amongst non-Catholic
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historians, and some Catholic historian's agree, that it was "the
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most corrupt, backward, vicious, and inept in Europe." The British
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ambassador publicly declared it "the opprobrium of Europe." The
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leading monarchs of Europe in 1832 publicly warned the Papacy --
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which is now pressed upon us as the most profound and serene oracle
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on political morality -- that unless it cleaned up its Augaean
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stable they would clean it themselves. Rome was described by a
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devout French priest as "the most hideous sewer that was ever
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opened up to the eye of man;" and this is approvingly quoted by a </p>
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<p> Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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4
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THE RED POPE</p>
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<p>Catholic historian in the Cambridge Modern History (X, 164) in
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which all this is admitted. The real ruler or Secretary of State,
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Cardinal Antonelli, who had been born in a peasant's hut, died
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worth $20000000, and left a bastard daughter, the Countess
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Lambertini clamoring for it.</p>
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<p> South Italy, the Kingdom of Naples, was virtually an extension
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of the Pope's Kingdom in respect of Papal influence; and it
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rivalled the Papal States in corruption and viciousness. Its
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monarchs, the Pope's beloved sons, were veritable Neros. From 1790
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to 1860 they slaughtered, sometimes with revolting barbarity, about
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200000 "Liberals." And since the Kings of Spain and Portugal were
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just as servile to the Popes we are entitled to bring their
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misdeeds also under the heading of the "moral influence" of the
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Popes. Their "Butcher's bill" in 50 years was between 50000 and
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100000. The savagery was so indiscriminate that no one can get
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nearer to the truth.</p>
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<p> Well, well, the Catholic says, this is still ancient history
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-- less than a century ago -- and with the glorious pontificate of
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Leo XIII a new era was inaugurated; the era of those beautiful
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encyclicals on socio-political matters which are quoted in every
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Catholic apology that is put before the American public. For an
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understanding of the present situation it is very important to
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realize that there was no change of policy whatever at the Vatican.
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That is why I have given this very slight outline of the bloody
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history of the past, which is fully described in my earlier works.
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The policy of violence was merely suspended until it could once
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more be applied.</p>
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<p> Leo XIII could not, if he wanted, maintain the vile practices
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of his predecessors. Italy and France witnessed a rapid growth of
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skepticism in high quarters after 1870 and would not tolerate Papal
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interference or advice. Poland was under Russia, which treated the
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Pope as an Italian monkey. Austria, brought down by its defeats was
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becoming very Liberal. The horrors of the dead Papal Kingdom and of
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Naples were told by hundreds of writers and orators in Europe and
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America. Moreover, the, Vatican had begun to see remarkable
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possibilities of wealth in "converting", America and Great Britain,
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and the Catholics in those countries had as yet not the least
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influence on the press and education and could not have concealed
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atrocities as they now do. So the wolf put on sheep's clothing for
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a few years.</p>
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<p> Then the menace of the Reds began and gave them their
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opportunity. There was still only one country in which the "right
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to kill", which (we saw in the last book) was solemnly reaffirmed
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by Leo XIII, could be made the basis of policy. Spain was
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geographically isolated and few people abroad took much notice of
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it. In fact, in the last decade of the century the ruling and
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wealthy classes everywhere were beginning to sniff at this Red
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menace and would not inquire too closely. So in Spain the
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hierarchy, which was more intimately connected with Rome than that
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of any other country, began to cooperate with the corrupt state on
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the old lines. From 1895 to 1909, when Ferrer was murdered and I
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roused so much public attention that the policy had again to be
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suspended, hundreds of rebels were shot and thousands tortured in
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jail.</p>
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<p> Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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5
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THE RED POPE</p>
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<p> They were not "anarchists." I became an intimate friend of one
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of them, Professor Tarrida del Marmol, who fled to London and was
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under sentence of death in Spain. He was a fine scholar and a
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spanish gentleman of the best type, a man of aristocratic family.
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loathed violence and was an anarchist only in the Tolstoian sense.
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His great crime was that he was a rebel against the Church. In the
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vile dungeons of Montjuich, where he was imprisoned, he saw what
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was done. Men were fed for days on salt fish and dry bread and
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refused water. Cords were tied tightly on their genitals. It was
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afterwards proved that most of the "anarchist plots" were police
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plots, and the Church was fully implicated. This want on under Leo
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XIII and Pius X, and it brings the Red Record of the Popes down to
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our own time. It continued in the only country in the world in
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which it could be continued.</p>
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<p> Chapter II</p>
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<p> WHO IS THIS PIUS XII?</p>
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<p> The present Pope Pius XII, is hailed throughout the Catholic
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world as the Pope of Peace. Cardinal Hinsley explains in his
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introduction to The Pope Speaks (1940) that the beautiful motto of
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his ancient and aristocratic family is (translated): "Peace is the
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Fruit of Justice." Yes; Mussolini has said that hundreds of times,
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with the accent on the word justice. Hitler merely wants justice
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and then he will give what is left of us peace. I am going to show
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that Pius XII above any other Pope of modern times, even Pius IX,
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is entitled to be called the Red Pore, the Pope of War.</p>
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<p> One of the flatterers of "the venerable Church" has called him
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"the Greatest Neutral." He never has been neutral. For at least
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five years he has openly called for war on Bolshevism in Mexico,
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Spain, China, and Russia. Does anyone suppose that he was thinking
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of ancient Jericho and merely wanted the priests to blow their
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trumpets? He was summoning Italy, Germany, Japan, and the United
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States to war. Leaving out the United States, which was unwilling
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to draw the chestnuts out of the fire for the Pope and Wall Street,
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in this slogan which Pacelli, as Secretary of State, sent echoing
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through the Catholic world he was shrieking for just that war on
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Spain, China, and Russia which we have seen.</p>
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<p> I am sometimes asked what Catholic apologists reply to these
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very serious historical and actual charges which I make. They never
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reply. They forbid their people to read me, which is much easier.
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But do not Catholics regard that maneuver with suspicion? Listen.
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The Catholic Truth Society of Ireland published a cheap booklet by
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the Jesuit priest D.A. Lord with the title I Can Read Anything. It
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meets the natural wish of many Catholics to read both sides, and it
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takes the usual line that the books they are forbidden to read are
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filthy and mendacious but dangerously clever. Catholic young men
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and women are asked to be too sensible to "pit their minds" against
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"the trained, clever, brilliant minds" of the Church's critics. And
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lest the Catholic should ask if the Church and its 350000000
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followers does not include a few equally brilliant writers to reply
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the priest goes on (p. 22)</p>
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<p> Bank of Wisdom
|
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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6
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.
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THE RED POPE</p>
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<p> And when they [the anti-Church writer's] are utterly
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unscrupulous, as let's say, Joseph McCabe is, and will twist
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any little bit of history to make a case, and pile yarn on
|
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yarn to construct a proof, and use fable for fact and
|
|
supposition for solid argument, what chance has the average
|
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reader against them?</p>
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<p> The English Catholic Truth Society dare not publish this -- as
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my friend Haldeman-Julitis shares the Jesuits' opposition with me
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I gather that the book is of American origin -- because the British
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libel courts are the straightest in the world. In an Irish court I
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would get as much justice as a Jew in Berlin, So when folk in
|
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England write to ask for the Catholic reply to me the officials
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|
send them an address in Dublin where they can get this cowardly
|
|
little rag. Inquirers have reported this to me.</p>
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<p> If anybody is unaware, which hardly seems likely, that the
|
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present Pope has for the last five or six years used all his
|
|
influence to get Italy, Germany, and Japan to make war,
|
|
respectively, on Spain, Russia, and China, which would mean a
|
|
world-war, he will have ample evidence later. First let us see how
|
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this Red Pope became what he is.</p>
|
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<p> Eugenic Pacelli comes of what is commonly called an ancient an
|
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Italian noble family which had lost its wealth but not its piety.
|
|
His father was a Papal lawyer and, as is usual in such cases, one
|
|
son was destined for the clerical career; especially as in the last
|
|
century government or military service was closed to good Catholics
|
|
in Italy, the Papacy still branding the government or the royal
|
|
family "robbers." More than four-fifths of the inhabitants of the
|
|
Papal States had voted to be transferred from Papal rule to that of
|
|
the Kings of Italy but that meant nothing to the "democratic" Leo
|
|
XIII. He was "the prisoner of the Vatican", eliciting golden
|
|
sympathy from America, and the Italian statesmen were robbers. So
|
|
careers for Catholic youths of noble birth and little money were
|
|
few in Italy.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> I do not suggest that Pius XII does not believe his theology,
|
|
as probably half the clergy do not in one degree or other. No one
|
|
is likely to know except himself what he believes. Priests hardly
|
|
ever tell each other. Zeal is no criterion, however. The Catholic
|
|
priesthood and hierarchy are an immense economic corporation
|
|
centered in Rome just as Christian Science is, in its official
|
|
framework, a business with headquarters in Boston. Naturally its
|
|
members are zealous; and the more responsibility they have (which
|
|
is won by the extent of their zeal) the more zealous they are. The
|
|
Catholic who imagines its Pope and his cardinals regarding money as
|
|
a mundane affair with which they have to soil their white fingers
|
|
occasionally should hear two or three priests talking about them
|
|
when they get to the second bottle.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Here is some interesting information about the higher clergy
|
|
of Rome which came to me a few years ago from a priest through one
|
|
intermediary, a friend of high character. When Rome obliged English
|
|
Catholics a few years ago by making a Saint of witty old Thomas
|
|
More it sent them, to their stupefaction, a bill for $65000
|
|
(costs) and of $20000 for a little present to the Pope! This
|
|
present was a gold chalice which, as the price of gold rose, would </p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Bank of Wisdom
|
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|
7
|
|
.
|
|
THE RED POPE</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>be just a lump of pure gold worth about $50000. The ceremonies at
|
|
Rome were a close monopoly of the Italians -- at least under
|
|
pressure they let one English priest hold a candle and charged him
|
|
$50 -- and every cardinal had his fixed price.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> But understand that I suggest nothing whatever about the
|
|
Pope's belief or unbelief. He has a job of work, and this was his
|
|
apprenticeship for it. In college he discovered an ability for
|
|
learning languages and a special zeal for learning Canon Law, so he
|
|
was drafted into the Secretariat of State very soon after he became
|
|
priest, and there he would find himself on the fringe of the
|
|
mysteries of Vatican diplomacy. He also, being of noble birth,
|
|
joined and became a professor in The Academy of Ecclesiastics of
|
|
Noble Birth of course, the less said about that the better in
|
|
America, where one has to protect the legend that all his life --
|
|
when the great ones of the earth kissed his ring during his tours
|
|
of the world, when he occupied a gorgeous suite in the Vatican as
|
|
Secretary of State, and even now that he sits on the golden throne
|
|
-- his one ardent desire was that he could become a humble parish
|
|
priest amongst the poor. He is an aristocrat to his finger-tips. He
|
|
loathes democracy. He doubles Leo XIII (in his crooked diplomacy)
|
|
and Innocent III (who virtually founded the Inquisition).</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Pacelli made such progress in the department that at the
|
|
comparatively early age of 41 he was sent out on a very important
|
|
mission. Pope Benedict XV, who had notoriously intrigued with the
|
|
Germans and the Austrians against the Italians, during the war
|
|
recollected that he was a Pope of Peace when, in 1917, it became
|
|
doubtful if the Germans would win. He then wanted to have the
|
|
world-prestige of bringing it to a close, and he sent Pacelli as
|
|
Nuncio (ambassador) with plans of peace to Germany. Pacelli was
|
|
announced as Nuncio to Bavaria, but within a week he was in Berlin
|
|
seeing the Chancellor. He even saw the Kaiser, who told him to take
|
|
his plans home because he was sure to win the war. Why doesn't the
|
|
Pope rather, he said, detach Italy from the Allies and link it with
|
|
Austria, as they are both Catholic countries? Because, said
|
|
Pacelli, there is a very strong patriotic movement in Italy in
|
|
favor of continuing the war led by a fiery young journalist named
|
|
Benito Mussolini. The Pope's biographers say that the Kaiser told
|
|
Pacelli to take no notice of "that scum" but to go ahead and detach
|
|
Italy from England. It is a neat little picture.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> The gaunt, grim, swarthy young Nuncio next year saw the fall
|
|
of the Kaiser and the riots in Munich. He met the "mob" with simple
|
|
heroism, of course -- in Catholic literature -- but the important
|
|
point is that this was the beginning of his knowledge and hatred of
|
|
the Reds. He remained in Munich until 1925, so he saw, with what
|
|
feelings he has not told us, the rise of a similar "scum" in
|
|
Bavaria and the comic-opera "March on Berlin," when Hitler made the
|
|
record run of his life -- backwards. In 1925 he was sent as Nuncio
|
|
to Berlin, and as this was the beginning of the best period in
|
|
recent German history, the five years of peace and comparative
|
|
prosperity under a Liberal-Socialist coalition, Pacelli must know
|
|
better than any man in Italy that the excuse which was later made
|
|
for Hitler in the world-press, the flattery under shelter of which
|
|
the Nazis created their formidable power, the plea that they had
|
|
saved Germany from chaos and distress, is a lie.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Bank of Wisdom
|
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|
8
|
|
.
|
|
THE RED POPE</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> As part of the evidence, if evidence is required, that Pius
|
|
XII has only one aim in all his policy -- not the peace of the
|
|
world but the power of the Church -- the twelve years he spent in
|
|
Germany are important. He acquired a thorough knowledge of German,
|
|
thought he speaks it (and French) with, a marked accent, and as far
|
|
as German affairs are concerned he has never been at the mercy of
|
|
bigoted And muddle-headed Vatican officials. He saw the years of
|
|
confusion after the War end in a working compromise and a new
|
|
Germany rising cheerfully from the ruins. Lamentable as the feud of
|
|
Communists and Socialists was, it was a domestic squabble and did
|
|
not seriously disturb the national economy after 1924; and the
|
|
Catholic Church had more freedom and prestige than ever. Pacelli
|
|
knows as little about economics as he does about history and
|
|
science, but at least he was intelligent enough to see, during his
|
|
four years in Berlin, that under a predominantly Socialist rule
|
|
Germany was making all the progress that could be expected with so
|
|
crippling a debt, and it was not internal confusion but its share
|
|
in the world-slumps and the cessation of fat loans from America and
|
|
Britain from the end of 1929 that led to the comparative distress
|
|
of 1930-32 of which the Nazis took advantage. We shall see that
|
|
Pacelli at one time (1934) in a fit of temper wrote the sharpest
|
|
condemnation of Hitler that ever came from a clerical pen, He
|
|
always loathed Hitler as a plebeian upstart and an apostate from
|
|
the Church, even when he was compelling the German bishops to bow
|
|
humbly before him and beg to be allowed to have a share in his
|
|
dirty work. But Hitler promised to make an end of Socialism, and
|
|
that-not (outside of Russia) Communism or Bolshevism -- is the Big
|
|
Bad Wolf in the eyes of the Vatican. Socialism has not only a
|
|
constant anti-Papal tradition, which will surprise nobody who knows
|
|
the facts I summarized in the last chapter, but to oblige its
|
|
wealthy supporters the Vatican has been compelled for half a
|
|
century to condemn it as immoral on the ground that private
|
|
ownership is a right based upon natural moral law.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> It was, however, not until Pacelli had left Germany that the
|
|
Nazis showed any prospect of ever attaining power, and he regarded
|
|
them as a vulgar and disorderly rabble led by a bunch of unsavory
|
|
apostates and "pansies." Three years later he would, as Secretary
|
|
of State, compel the proud German hierarchy, against their very
|
|
decided will, to greet Hitler as the Savior of Germany and the
|
|
White Hope of the Church, Let us remember, when we get to that
|
|
point in the next booklet, that Pacelli did not act from ignorance.
|
|
He was less innocent than Chamberlain. If he had any ability at all
|
|
-- and he has considerable ability -- he knew Germany thoroughly.
|
|
Will Catholics call it a wicked suspicion if we assume that this
|
|
observer of events, who lived eight years in Munich and four in
|
|
Berlin, had read Mein Kampf? He knew the program: the glorification
|
|
of the German race, the domination of Europe, the annexation of the
|
|
Ukraine, the massacre of the Jews, the annihilation of France -- in
|
|
a word, war on a stupendous scale. Catholics do not obtrude today
|
|
his intimate knowledge of Germany.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> He was recalled to Rome in the summer of 1929 while Germany
|
|
was still cheerfully recovering and the Catholics cooperated
|
|
amiably with the Socialists and Liberals. Pacelli had been head of
|
|
the diplomatic corps at Berlin. The French ambassador had the real
|
|
right to that position and the Papal ambassador no right. But the </p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Bank of Wisdom
|
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|
9
|
|
.
|
|
THE RED POPE</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>Germans hated the French too much to let the honor fall to them. It
|
|
is another point to bear in mind about this pre-hitler Germany,
|
|
which Pacelli helped to ruin, that it genially tolerated a Papal
|
|
Nuncio at the head of the diplomatic corps and a Catholic
|
|
Chancellor in the Wilhelmsstragse. German Catholics had never
|
|
before seen such things.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Pacelli's patron, the Secretary of State Cardinal Gasparri,
|
|
was now 80 years old and unfit for office. He seems to have marked
|
|
out Pacelli as his successor, and he brought him back to the
|
|
Vatican for a few months of final training. Even Catholic
|
|
literature is a little confused here. Pacelli became Secretary of
|
|
State, which is the highest position in the Church after that of
|
|
the Pope, in February, 1930. In 1931 a gossip-paragraph appeared in
|
|
the Italian press to the effect that it was expected in Rome that
|
|
the new Secretary of State was about to be dismissed and old
|
|
Gasparri reinstated. Clearly the old men were conspiring against
|
|
Pacelli, but the same Catholic writers who say that it was because
|
|
he was too lenient to Mussolini had already said that Gasparri had
|
|
always been in favor of alliance with that brutal adventurer. We
|
|
will return to the point in a moment, but it will be useful first
|
|
to run a cursory eye over the ten years' activity of Pacelli as
|
|
Secretary of State.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> He took up residence in the gorgeous suite of rooms, with
|
|
heavy gilt furniture and magnificent decorations, in the Vatican
|
|
Palace. Just at the time when the Pope and Mussolini, who had in
|
|
the previous year signed the infamous compact by which (in effect)
|
|
the Papacy undertook to condone all Mussolini's crimes in return
|
|
for $90000000 and a royal independence, had begun to quarrel
|
|
fiercely, as crooks are apt to do, over the bargain. Pacelli
|
|
smoothed out the quarrel, got the Duce to bend his knees in St.
|
|
Peter's, and got the Pope to have a cordial chat with him. So
|
|
Mussolini was safely launched on his bloody career.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> In the same year, 1931, Japan seized Manchuria and began to
|
|
debauch the Chinese. While all the world looked on with disgust at
|
|
the brigandage Pacelli accepted the overtures of Japan and the more
|
|
Japan advanced and became a menace to half the world, the
|
|
deeper Pacelli made the Vatican's alliance with the callous and
|
|
unscrupulous bandits. In 1932 Hitler made his supreme bid for power
|
|
and failed, and Pacelli then ordered the German hierarchy to
|
|
withdraw their opposition to him so that he secured power and enter
|
|
upon his career of blood.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> In 1934 Pacelli went to South America to preside at a
|
|
Eucharistic Congress and saw the heads of each "Republic and their
|
|
bishops; and by a remarkable coincidence, if you can think it that,
|
|
Fascism began to sweep the country, rebels against the Church went
|
|
to jail in tens of thousands, and the Germans and Italians in South
|
|
America entered upon their audacious plans. In the same year the
|
|
Christian Socialists of Austria, after their leaders visited the
|
|
Pope, treacherously crushed Socialism and prepared the way for
|
|
Hitler. In the same year Mussolini began the slaughter of Abyssinia
|
|
and the whole Italian Church made whoopee, and at the end the Pope
|
|
gave the Queen of Italy as Empress of Abyssinia Golden Rose, which
|
|
is the highest mark of Papal approval.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Bank of Wisdom
|
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|
10
|
|
.
|
|
THE RED POPE</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> In 1936 General Franco visited the Vatican, and his revolt,
|
|
which had the most open and solemn blessing of the Papacy, was the
|
|
first serious step of the Axis bregands in their projected
|
|
campaign. In 1938 Hitler annexed Austria with the full support of
|
|
the Austrian Church, which is one of the most docile to the Vatican
|
|
in the world. In the same year the Sudeten Catholics at one end of
|
|
Czecho-Slovakia and the Slovak Catholics at the other betrayed
|
|
their country and put Hitler in a position to defy the rest of
|
|
Europe and prepare for his insane attempt to dominate the world.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> A remarkable ten-year record for the Pope of Peace, the
|
|
Greatest Neutral, the Friend of Democracy, and the Black
|
|
International which carried out his instructions! That record we
|
|
have to examine in detail, proving it by public acts and published
|
|
utterances, and then to consider the Pope's first two years of
|
|
pontifical activity. But, as we go into detail, do not lose sight
|
|
of the fact that Pacelli-Pius's ruling idea throughout is "the
|
|
extinction of Bolshevism" by the peaceful bombs and bayonets of the
|
|
Germans, Italians, Japanese; to which, in furtherance of the work
|
|
of peace, he now wants to add the bombs and bayonets of Vichy
|
|
France, Franco Spain, Salazar Portugal, and Horthy Hungary.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Chapter III</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> HIS GLORIOUS ALLY MUSSOLINI</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> It was on March 12, 1939, that Eugenio reached the summit of
|
|
ambition and was crowned in St. Peter's. Next day a man who lived
|
|
on the frontier of Italy and France sent to the most respected
|
|
newspaper in Great Britain, the Manchester Guardian, a letter which
|
|
it -- and probably it alone of the British or American press -- had
|
|
the courage to publish. The writer reminded people that March 12th
|
|
was also the last day for Jews to remain in Italy. He described
|
|
from personal observation the appalling sufferings of the 70000
|
|
Jews who, robbed of their goods, were racing for frontiers which to
|
|
a large extent were sealed against them. He saw old men, women, and
|
|
children panting up the Alpine slopes to France and says that the
|
|
carabineri and frontier-troops had "orders to facilitate their
|
|
migration if necessary with the help of a bayonet." He saw elderly
|
|
folks "collapse on the way up the vast acres of the Italian slope";
|
|
little children "stagger, their feet bleeding, into the frontier
|
|
villages"; women try to throw themselves under the traffic when the
|
|
French at last put up the barriers; babies abandoned or lost by the
|
|
wayside.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> This had gone on for a week and it was continuing in a last
|
|
frantic rush of the robbed Jews while the bells of St. Peter's and
|
|
all the churches in Italy rang out joyously over the sunny land.
|
|
What did the Pope of Peace do? The writer of the letter says that
|
|
the Italian carabinieri and soldiers were so moved that they forgot
|
|
their instructions about the bayonet and carried children tenderly
|
|
to the frontier. What did the Pope do? Nothing: except receive the
|
|
splendid congratulations of Mussolini and his ministers. Catholic
|
|
biographers boast that during the week which followed his
|
|
coronation Pacelli-Pius, sinking under the burden of work, slept
|
|
only three hours every night. Very heroic, but a little puzzling,
|
|
because as Secretary of State he had been doing just that work for </p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Bank of Wisdom
|
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|
11
|
|
.
|
|
THE RED POPE</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>ten years. Why the arrears? But what did he do for the Jews, for
|
|
crushed and bleeding democrats of Italy, for the heart-broken and
|
|
suffering Czechs? Nothing, just nothing.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> The Italian problem had, as I said, been the first to engage
|
|
Pacelli when he became Secretary of State. I have told elsewhere
|
|
(Little Blue Book No. 1501 and ABC Library No. 2) the story of the
|
|
rise of Fascism and its early relation to the Church, In 1917
|
|
Mussolini and his cut-throats were, as the Kaiser had said, "scum."
|
|
They were atheists, republicans, and gangsters until 1921. Then, to
|
|
the surprise of many, Mussolini asked Cardinal Ratti for permission
|
|
for the Black Shirts to make a solemn procession to the tomb of the
|
|
Unknown Warrior in Milan Cathedral and the cardinal gladly accepted
|
|
and gave them a place of honor," says the Catholic Teeling (p.
|
|
106). Next year was the march on Rome (with Mussolini 100 miles
|
|
away), and the Duce pompously declared St. Peter's and all church
|
|
property under his special protection and ordered a thanksgiving
|
|
service with the King in attendance, At one of the principle
|
|
churches of Rome for the salvation of Italy. From Scum to Savior of
|
|
his Country in two years!</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> There is no secret about it. It is one of the most painful
|
|
features of the American literature of the subject that the
|
|
respected head of a great university, Nicholas Murray Butler, dupe
|
|
of American Catholics, lent his pen (Looking Forward) in that
|
|
glorification of Mussolini which was as useful as a smoke-screen to
|
|
the Fascists while they prepared for war, Professor Salvemini
|
|
(Under the Axe of Fascism, 1936) has given Dr. Butler a
|
|
chastisement such as few scholars ever give each other for his
|
|
gullibility in accepting Catholic lies about the "confusion and
|
|
ruin" caused by the Communists from which Mussolini saved Italy.
|
|
The author Selde's shows that Mussolini later confessed that he
|
|
invented the Communist boogie to help the loan he had floated in
|
|
America. The danger was Socialism which was conquering Italy, and
|
|
so politicians, royalists, generals, and industrialists put
|
|
Mussolini in the saddle, after fumigating him of his atheism and
|
|
republicanism.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> But in spite of this powerful support of throne, army, and
|
|
capital the seat in the saddle remained very insecure for seven
|
|
years. Mussolini had not dared to extinguish the democracy for
|
|
which italians had fought so nobly from 1790 to 1870. Liberals and
|
|
Socialists were powerfully organized and, as in Spain, commanded
|
|
the majority of the votes in the cities, where the most intelligent
|
|
and the best-informed of the Italians lived. When, in 1924,
|
|
Mussolini was believed to have had the most respected leader of the
|
|
Socialists, Matteotti, removed by murder -- his public utterances
|
|
on the murder were so gross and callous that his guilt seemed clear
|
|
-- so many turned against him that at the elections of 1926 his
|
|
power was ominously shaken. He needed just one element to turn the
|
|
scale in his favor.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> The peasants and a certain number of the urban workers were
|
|
organized in a powerful Catholic Democratic movement. The Pope had,
|
|
as in Germany and Austria, allowed this bastard Socialism to grow
|
|
up under their eyes as one way to cheek the loss of so many
|
|
millions to the Socialists and Communists. These Catholic democrats</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Bank of Wisdom
|
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|
12
|
|
.
|
|
THE RED POPE</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>fought the Fascists as truculently as the Communists did and while
|
|
they equally detested the Socialists and Liberals and would not
|
|
cooperate with them, they at least represented further millions in
|
|
opposition to Mussolini.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> As Pacelli was in Germany during these years we do not suppose
|
|
that he had much to do with Vatican policy in Italy and will
|
|
dismiss events with a brief notice. Both sides, Blackshirts and
|
|
Black International, saw that they must sooner or later enter into
|
|
alliance against Socialism, and Mussolini's backers, the throne,
|
|
army, and capital, insisted on it. Mussolini on his side sacrificed
|
|
his convictions and restrained his anti-Papal followers with all
|
|
the ease of an adventurer. He, as I said, ordered a superb
|
|
thanksgiving service in church for his accession to power and
|
|
presented a very valuable, old library to the Vatican. He then
|
|
complained to the Vatican about ending the conduct of the Catholic
|
|
democrats under the priest Sturzo. The priest disappeared because
|
|
of obscure Fascist threats of reprisals against the Church. Seldes
|
|
says (The Vatican, p. 331) and the party was weakened. But the
|
|
opposition went on and Mussolini made little progress. The Vatican
|
|
knew the strength of its hand and wanted a price that Mussolini
|
|
feared his followers would never agree to pay.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Seldes says that the revelation of the Pope's prestige in
|
|
America the Chicago Eucharistic Congress in 1926 at length stirred
|
|
Mussolini to bold action. It was more probably the menace of
|
|
Italian elections. Secret negotiations began at that time but the
|
|
Pope's terms were so exorbitant that they dragged out for two
|
|
years. In 1926 Farinacei, Mussolini's bulldog and leader of the
|
|
anti-clerical Old Guard of the Fascists, publicly declared that the
|
|
alliance was necessary. Mussolini, he said -- Seldes gives his
|
|
words -- was ready to deal with the Pope "in return for the moral
|
|
support of the Vatican for his policy." What the policy was" every
|
|
child knew -- the final extinction of liberty in Italy and, as a
|
|
minimum, the recovery of Savoy and Corsica from France, Malta from
|
|
England, Dalmatia from Yugo-Slavia -- and, instead of talking about
|
|
peaceful recovery by negotiation Mussolini was thundering about his
|
|
millions of bayonets whenever he opened his elegant mouth.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> In 1928 the Maltese got up a kind of revolt against Britain.
|
|
There was a trial of strength between the civil and the clerical
|
|
authorities, and the Premier, Lord Strickland, though a Catholic,
|
|
bitterly resented the interference of the clergy in the elections.
|
|
It was proved that they even used the confessional to intimidate
|
|
voters. Mussolini watched with great interest, and, when the
|
|
British Government in the end began its historic policy of
|
|
appeasement and Strickland was sacrificed, the Duce had a new proof
|
|
of the utility of the Church. A high Anglican official in Malta at
|
|
the time informed me, privately, that the Governor of the island,
|
|
who let, down Strickland, was "grossly deceived by the Papal
|
|
Delegate, Msgr. Pascal Robinson"; and he added "more mischief-
|
|
making in Dublin." The Black International won first blood for
|
|
Mussolini.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> So Fascists had to swallow the condition's, and in 1929 the
|
|
Blackshirts and the Blackmailer signed their compact. The Pope got
|
|
nearly $100000000, the independence and sovereignty of the
|
|
Vatican City, the control of all Italian education except in the </p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Bank of Wisdom
|
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|
13
|
|
.
|
|
THE RED POPE</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>universities, and the enforcement of the Canon Law, the
|
|
establishment of the Church and endowment of the priests. The Duce
|
|
got a hand for the complete destruction of democracy in Italy and
|
|
the silence of the Pope while he murdered democrats and get out on
|
|
his glorious campaign to make Empire by selecting weak countries
|
|
for aggression.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> This was the year of Pacelli's return to Rome, but his
|
|
biographers are not lavish with detail at this point and do not
|
|
enable us to say definitely -- and I refuse to go on suspicions --
|
|
what, if any, share he had in this sordid business. I have to
|
|
recall it, as briefly as possible, because it was the first great
|
|
triumph of the Black International in our time, and it was one of
|
|
the most important steps in the advance of the brigands toward the
|
|
realization of their, plot. It finally established the power of
|
|
Mussolini. It caused Catholic papers and writers (and sympathizers
|
|
like Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler) to take the lead in that praise of
|
|
Fascism in italy -- had not the Pope blessed it? -- which was of
|
|
the greatest importance to the brigands in preparing their
|
|
armaments. And it gave Mussolini's imitator in Germany the idea
|
|
that after all it would pay to come to terms, hypocritically, with
|
|
the Black International.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> But, whatever share Pacelli may have had in drafting the
|
|
treaty of alliance with Mussolini, he had a full share in securing
|
|
that the alliance was not wrecked. The Fascist Party was still so
|
|
bitterly anti-Papal that Mussolini had, in soothing his followers,
|
|
to use language which the Pope angrily described (in the
|
|
Osservatore, May 30) as "heretical, and worse than heretical."
|
|
Blackshirts in Rome and the country insulted the priests and the
|
|
Church. The Pope spoke publicly of the possibility that he would
|
|
repudiate the Treaty, and in that case, he said, "Vatican City
|
|
itself would fall together with the state that is dependent on
|
|
Vatican City for its being" (same letter in the Osservatore). The
|
|
Catholic world and the world-press were alarmed. If Mussolini fell,
|
|
they said, Socialism would capture Italy. As Cardinal Hinsley, head
|
|
of the Church in Britain, said at a later date, Fascism was "in
|
|
many respects unjust" but it "Prevented worse injustice -- if it
|
|
goes under, God's cause goes with it." (Catholic Times, October
|
|
18th, 1935). God's cause is, in the mouth of a cardinal, the power
|
|
of the Church: and the end justifies the means.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Pacelli to the rescue. Old Gasparri, who was stirring the Pope
|
|
to resist, was pushed aside, and the Saint George -- who wanted to
|
|
save the world -- the world of wealth and privilege -- from the
|
|
Dragon, Socialism donned his shining armor. Friction continued, of
|
|
course. Most of the leading Blackshirts hated the Pope, and the
|
|
Pope and his new Secretary of State heartily hated them. But the
|
|
alliance was indispensable. Mussolini now roared like any sucking
|
|
dove about the beauty of religion. "I wish to see religion
|
|
everywhere in the country," he said; "let us teach the children
|
|
their catechism" (Manchester Guardian, June 19, 1931). He, as I
|
|
said, publicly prayed in St. Peter's. Cardinal Gasparri at the
|
|
Eucharistic Congress of 1932 hailed him as "the man who first saw
|
|
clearly in the present world chaos" the man who is "getting the </p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Bank of Wisdom
|
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|
14
|
|
.
|
|
THE RED POPE</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>State to work in accordance with the moral law of God" (Catholic
|
|
Herald, September 16 1932). The, friction was reduced and the world
|
|
was officially assured that the last Census had proved that 99
|
|
percent of the, Italians were Catholics.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> It was an insincere alliance. The organization of lay dupes
|
|
known as Catholic Action now gave Mussolini trouble. He demanded
|
|
that the Pope check it, and something seems to have been done, but
|
|
secretly Pacelli got the pope to write glowing praise of the
|
|
international Catholic Action and knowing that in spite of the
|
|
sacred independence of the Vatican City Mussolini's spies watched
|
|
it closely he sent the document by two priests to Paris for
|
|
publication. The old trickery of Vatican diplomacy was cultivated.
|
|
When, as in the case of the annexation of Austria, local prelates,
|
|
who would not dare to stir a finger against Papal policy, acted in
|
|
support of the Axis, the Vatican Radio would announce to the world
|
|
that the Pope disapproved. When this angered Axis supporters they
|
|
were assured that the radio message was unauthorized and sent out
|
|
without consulting the Vatican. Sometimes the Papal newspaper, the
|
|
Osservatore, was used and, to please both sides, was then declared
|
|
unauthorized. Neither the Radio nor the Osservatore would dare to
|
|
send out or print an unauthorized message on an important point.
|
|
Foreign correspondents in Rome received telephone messages from the
|
|
Vatican which were later declared unauthorized. Ambiguous
|
|
utterances, as in the case of Abyssinia, were put into the mouth of
|
|
the Pope, and Axis Catholics were encouraged to read them one way
|
|
and democratic Catholics to read them in the opposite way. And
|
|
every Easter and Christmas the beautiful message of Peace rolled
|
|
out, while between those festivals the Catholic world was inspired
|
|
everywhere to demand war on Spain, Russia, China, and Mexico.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> There was another aspect of the alliance. While Cardinal
|
|
Gasparri assured the Catholic world that Mussolini was "getting the
|
|
state to work in accordance with the moral law of God" and Cardinal
|
|
Hinsley was warning it that "God's cause" would be lost in Italy if
|
|
Mussolini fell, it was open to anybody to ascertain what social
|
|
improvement, if any, the Duce had actually accomplished. Reference
|
|
books like the Statesman's Year Book which were in every good
|
|
library gave year by year the official Italian returns of crime,
|
|
education, production, trade, debt, etc.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> It is astonishing today to reflect how very few people thought
|
|
of testing in this simple and positive way what truth there was in
|
|
almost universal press admiration of the efficiency and national
|
|
service of Fascism. It must, at least, seem astonishing to any man
|
|
who does not accept my suggestion that Mussolini's work in crushing
|
|
a great Socialist movement was so appreciated in the world-press
|
|
that it would not inquire whether his boast of efficiency was true
|
|
or not. It reproduced everything that its correspondents in Italy,
|
|
generally, Catholics, cared to send it about finer rail-services
|
|
(on some lines), new buildings, great farms on reclaimed land, and
|
|
so on, and it refused to see in works of reference, which were at
|
|
every editor's elbow that production was decaying and the internal
|
|
debt (chiefly due to forced loans) was increasing at so formidable
|
|
a rate that bankruptcy loomed ahead -- unless Mussolini brought
|
|
off, and brought off successfully, the aggressive war he promised
|
|
his people, and founded an Italian Empire by murdering and looting
|
|
other peoples.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Bank of Wisdom
|
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|
15
|
|
.
|
|
THE RED POPE</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> On the religious side it was worse. The only definite test
|
|
weather a nation is or is not getting more in accord with "the
|
|
moral law of God" is to examine its criminal statistics. In the
|
|
Papal States, before the Kingdom of Italy had been established,
|
|
there had been no statistics of any sort, but not a single
|
|
authority questions the statement of contemporary Italian statesmen
|
|
and foreign visitors that crime and corruption were appalling.
|
|
Italy then, from 1870 onward, had a very fair success in reducing
|
|
crime, though the success was not nearly so great as in less-
|
|
Catholic countries. But from the time of the accession to power of
|
|
Mussolini crime increased amazingly. Convictions rose from about
|
|
500000 a year in the period which Dr. Nicholas Murrak Butler
|
|
describes so darkly, the Socialist-Communist-Liberal period (before
|
|
1923), to 800000 a year in the period of Mussolini's remarkable
|
|
efficiency.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> It makes it rather worse that this was due to some extent to
|
|
the poverty and distress he had brought upon both the workers and
|
|
the middle class while the Church, as I said, got an enormous
|
|
accession of wealth. Other causes were the impoverishment and
|
|
prostitution of education and the preparation of the people for the
|
|
wanton bloodshed of aggressive war. It was at the very time when
|
|
Pacelli, the future Pope of Peace, was bringing the Pope and the
|
|
Duce to have a cordial meeting in the Vatican that Mussolini was
|
|
writing the most official statement of the nature of Fascism for
|
|
the new Encyclopedia Italiana (article, "Fascism")</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> When Fascism looks to the future, the general development
|
|
of humanity, apart from considerations of present polities, it
|
|
rejects the idea that perpetual peace is either possible or
|
|
desirable. It repudiates Pacifism, which means a renunciation
|
|
of struggle, a refusal to make sacrifices, War alone raises
|
|
the energy of man to the highest pitch and impresses a seal of
|
|
nobility upon the nations which have the manliness to
|
|
undertake it. All other trials of strength are substitutes
|
|
which never prove a man's worth by confronting him with the
|
|
alternative of life and death.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> That was taught to every child in every school in Italy.
|
|
Didn't the Vatican know it? Are we supposed to find documentary
|
|
proof that the Vatican knew what was going on in every part of
|
|
Italy?</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Pacelli had come from Germany where he had seen Socialism as
|
|
a mighty power already in control of more than one-third of the
|
|
country, dreaded by the Catholic hierarchy because, though the
|
|
Social Democrats now worked with the Catholics, they drew millions
|
|
from the Church, dreaded by imperialists, militarists,
|
|
industrialists, and landowners. He came to Italy where he saw how
|
|
just such a powerful Socialist organization had been completely
|
|
destroyed as it was from 1928 onward by just such a coalition of
|
|
royalists, industrialists, militarists, and landowners taking up a
|
|
brutal spearhead resembling the German Nazism and consolidating its
|
|
position by an alliance with the Church just as in the good old
|
|
days of the early nineteenth, century. His grand idea, war on
|
|
Socialism, gradually took shape. How in its interest he kept the
|
|
Pope silent and the Italian Church wildly patriotic when Mussolini
|
|
began his imperial brigandage in Abyssinia we shall see later.
|
|
Other problems meantime confronted him and the Black International.
|
|
Bank of Wisdom
|
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|
16
|
|
.
|
|
THE RED POPE</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Chapter IV</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> HIS DEAR YELLOW BROTHER IN BUDDHA</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> the year 1899 the democratic Pope Leo XIII had made the ears
|
|
of American Catholic's burn. Their apologists and prelates had
|
|
begun to put before the public that conception of the Church of
|
|
Rome as the devoted ally of democracy and freedom with which we
|
|
have grown very familiar in recent years. Leo smote them hip and
|
|
thigh. That was "Americanism" not sound Catholicism. The arch-
|
|
bishops writhed but were silent. Leo was not very far from death,
|
|
and "from that time to this no Pope has spoken out." So says the
|
|
Catholic Teeling, and he adds: "The reason would seem to have been
|
|
that America has provided an ever-increasing supply of funds and an
|
|
ever increasing supply of missionaries." (The Pope in Polities, p.
|
|
150). Certainly a golden reason; though why, on Catholic
|
|
principles, a particular version of Catholicism not backed by gold
|
|
Should be so humiliatingly denounced and then tolerated when it was
|
|
gold is not clear. If I assigned that reason for the Vatican's
|
|
change of policy in regard to American Catholic propaganda I would
|
|
be angrily accused of wicked suspicions and suggestions where I
|
|
could not give positive evidence.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> But the Vatican only changed its tactics not its policy. Pius
|
|
XI, says Teeling, was particularly zealous to bring the oriental
|
|
Churches into his fold -- "so that the growth of democratic
|
|
Catholicism in the New World be counter-balanced." At the Vatican,
|
|
he says (p. 3), "Western influence is not considered very good for
|
|
the Church." That we shall see, is one reason why, Mussolini was
|
|
encouraged in the rape of Abyssinia and his design of becoming
|
|
Emperor of the East, why the Vatican flirted for years with Russia,
|
|
and why it approved the savage aggression against Yugo-Slavia and
|
|
Greece. To sustain this policy the Secretary of State had to do
|
|
some very neat tight-rope balancing. For British opinion, in spite
|
|
of all the "Lords" and aristocrats the Jesuits have captured, he
|
|
seems not to have cared much. If for once I cared to indulge in a
|
|
conjecture I should say that he detests England. Whether that is
|
|
connected with his chilly experiences when he was sent to represent
|
|
the Papacy at the coronation of George V or whether he sees through
|
|
the Catholic pretense that they are "converting England" I don't
|
|
know, but Teeling, who made a number of visits to Rome, says that
|
|
after Pacelli became secretary of State English Catholics found a
|
|
reception at the Vatican and could with difficulty get an audience
|
|
with the Pope. They were told to see Pacelli, and they discovered
|
|
that they were "not popular," though doubtless they left the
|
|
customary purse with Pacelli.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> But American Catholicism was a very different matter. It
|
|
claimed 20000000 members and said that it would have the majority
|
|
in America by the end of the century. Its wealth is already in the
|
|
billions of dollars; its annual income $800000000. Imagine
|
|
Pacelli's eyes rolling as he turned these sum's into Italian lire!
|
|
In 1936 he visited America, Did he encourage the efforts as
|
|
described by Seldes, of American Catholics, in cooperation with
|
|
Mexican refugee priests, to get an alliance with Wall Street in
|
|
order to secure the liquidation of Bolshevism in Mexico? Had he any
|
|
meetings with the Italian and German plotters in America? Did he </p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Bank of Wisdom
|
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|
17
|
|
.
|
|
THE RED POPE</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>harden that feeling against Russia which Germany counted as one of
|
|
its favorable conditions? But we must not be suspicious. There is
|
|
no Proof. We know one thing that he did do. Instead of rebuking the
|
|
American propagandists who represented the Church as spontaneously
|
|
democratic and a lover of freedom and peace he went out of his way
|
|
everywhere to leave the impression that he cordially admired the
|
|
American spirit of freedom and democracy. He certainly did not
|
|
mention that the Vatican policy was to augment the oriental
|
|
elements in the Church so as to counter-balance "western influence"
|
|
which was "not considered very good for the Church, in the mild
|
|
language of a Catholic writer. And he certainly did not call the
|
|
attention of Americans to the fact that the Vatican had entered
|
|
into a close alliance with Japan.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> This alliance with Japan ran the usual course in Catholic
|
|
literature. At first it was indignantly denied. Where was the
|
|
proof? When the Osservatore itself proudly announced on May 5,
|
|
1935, that the Pope was to send an ambassador to Tokyo and that
|
|
Tokyo was to appoint a representative at the Pope's court in
|
|
Vatican City a new note was struck. It was the Pope's duty to enter
|
|
into negotiation with any government to protect the spiritual
|
|
interests of Catholics under that government. Had not even England
|
|
sent a representative to the Pope's court? Yes: but "poor rich
|
|
powerful England" as Ambassador Dodd called it, was up to its eyes
|
|
in a policy of appeasement, while in 1936 Japan had started on its
|
|
full career of aggression and of the massacre, debauching, and
|
|
exploiting of hundreds of millions of weaker folk. That is some
|
|
difference. And when, in the spring of 1941, Pacelli-Plus had a
|
|
most cordial interview with that other Man of Peace Matsuoka, the
|
|
most brazen liar in a world of fluent liars, in the Vatican and,
|
|
just when Japan was plotting to take advantage of the heavy burden
|
|
of America and Britain to defy them by worse aggression and more
|
|
insolent outrages than ever, the Pope smilingly presented him with
|
|
a gold medal . . .</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> The story of the Japanese share in the world-crime is now
|
|
fairly well known -- see ABC Library No. 6 -- and cannot be
|
|
repeated here. All the world has seen its steady aggression for ten
|
|
years, and all the world ought to have known from the start that
|
|
Japan meant to conquer the whole eastern half of Asia and all
|
|
islands in the Pacific. That the truth of this depends upon the
|
|
disputed authenticity of some memoir by Baron Tanaka in the year
|
|
1927 is nonsense. I have described, largely from American
|
|
journalists and authors (like Upton Close's Challenge. 1933), the
|
|
very open growth of the plot since the later years of the last
|
|
century. America was in fact so well aware of it that it alone of
|
|
the democracies began years ago to take defensive naval measures,
|
|
but there was, under the usual trade-interests, a lamentable lack
|
|
of warning in the Press an almost general failure to see that
|
|
Japan's were part of a world-plot and in this case a very
|
|
mischievous appeasement-policy in religious periodicals on account
|
|
of Japan's threats to the Christian missions.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> To state events very briefly up to the time when the Japanese
|
|
criminals, the American and European encouragement of modernization
|
|
in Japan (while it paid better not to encourage it in China), the
|
|
disbanding of the old Samurai swashbucklers (which sent vicious </p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Bank of Wisdom
|
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|
18
|
|
.
|
|
THE RED POPE</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>elements into the army, politics, and journalism), and the
|
|
successful wars of Japan on easy victims like China (1895) and
|
|
Tsarist Russia (1904) gave the yellow men inflated ideas of their
|
|
ability and importance. The Black Dragon Society, which wanted the
|
|
conquest of north-eastern Asia, was founded in 1901 and inspired
|
|
aggressive fanaticism in naval and military circles. Advantage was
|
|
taken of the European War of 1914-18 to get a strangle-hold on
|
|
China but a terrible earthquake and the quick recovery of the
|
|
Allies checked the ambition, though propaganda continued. By 1931
|
|
there were patriotic societies enthusiastically preaching it and
|
|
running to two or three million members. General Hayashi, who had
|
|
led the invasion of Manchuria in defiance of the civil government,
|
|
said in a speech to foreign correspondents; at the close of the
|
|
campaign:</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Japan's desire for expansion on the Eastern Asiatic
|
|
Continent manifested in her Manchurian police has been her
|
|
unalterable policy since her foundation.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> The development of the gangrene differed little from the
|
|
development in Europe. In Japan the army and navy were the nucleus
|
|
and source of infection. The score of rich families which mainly
|
|
represented capitalism were easily persuaded to see that it was the
|
|
destiny of the Yamato race to extend its culture to (or exploit)
|
|
China. The Emperor hardly needed persuading that soldiers know
|
|
best. The politicians and the heads of the Buddhist and Shinto
|
|
religions were bought. For the quite open share of these religions
|
|
and their sudden enrichment by the imperialist brigands see the
|
|
speeches at the Chicago International Conference on Religion in
|
|
1934 (edited by A.E. Haydon, Moderit World-Trends in Religion).</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> The occupation of Manchuria in 1931 was the first step in the
|
|
realization of what would prove to be a plot of Germany and Japan
|
|
to control and exploit the world: a crime which in future history
|
|
dwarf every other crime that was ever committed or attempted. The
|
|
world now pays a ghastly price for the obscene squabbling of trade-
|
|
interests which prevented the destruction of the plot at this early
|
|
stage by an economic ostracism of Japan, but few people still seem
|
|
to understand that the Black International at once moved to the
|
|
support of the aggressor.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> This is no matter of "suspicion." It was done quietly and in
|
|
such a form that it could, if the world's attention was drawn to
|
|
it, be represented as an inevitable exercise of the Vatican's
|
|
religious functions. It was first disclosed, as far as I can trace,
|
|
in an article by a French priest in the Catholic Review des Deux
|
|
Mondes in 1935 (January 15). The negotiations which were then going
|
|
on at the Vatican for mutual ambassadors with Japan made it clear
|
|
that some years of cordial cooperation had preceded; and in any
|
|
case the French had played as sordid a part in the matter as the
|
|
Black International and they were disposed to boast about it.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> The facts are now so well known that Catholic writers like
|
|
Teeling discuss them freely. It appears that the Vatican had
|
|
approached Japan, seeking favored-nation treatment, in 1922, but
|
|
the Buddhist authorities, already brought (or bought) to the
|
|
convention that the Yellow Race would sweep all White influence out</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Bank of Wisdom
|
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|
19
|
|
.
|
|
THE RED POPE</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>of eastern Asia, successfully resisted the application. Buddhist
|
|
monks might take that view but Japanese statesmen knew that the
|
|
White Race was not to be turned down too openly until the plot was
|
|
far advanced. It was to be duped by smooth assurances that it would
|
|
have its share in a regenerated China and its enormously increased
|
|
capacity for consumption. It was particularly necessary to do this
|
|
after the first rape of China, so the Vatican got its opportunity.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> The French clerical writer says:</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> "A short time after it had given birth to the new state
|
|
of Manchukuo the Japanese government advised its ward to turn
|
|
to the Holy See with a request that it should be officially
|
|
recognized; an event of some importance seeing that the Powers
|
|
refused to recognize it and Japan had left the League of
|
|
Nations. These Japanese-Manchukuoan overtures did not secure
|
|
formal recognition but, as the Catholic missions in Manchukuo
|
|
supported them the Vatican appointed a French Vicar Apostolic
|
|
to negotiate with the government of Manchuktio about religious
|
|
affairs." (p. 297).</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> He further explains that it was the French missionaries in
|
|
Japan who persuaded the Japanese government to approach the
|
|
Vatican. France was at the time, for reasons which will be given
|
|
later, working very amiably with the Vatican, and French
|
|
missionaries would not be ignorant of the golden rule that trade
|
|
and the evangelization of the heathen go together. The Vatican was
|
|
to get a monopoly of missionary work in Japan and China, which it
|
|
fully expected to be taken over by Japan (Teeling), and France
|
|
would be rewarded with trade.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> It was a nice problem for Pacelli, the new Secretary of State,
|
|
and he solved it in his characteristic manner. Formally to
|
|
recognize the annexation of Manchuria just when merely secular
|
|
governments all over the world were condemning it as an outrage and
|
|
a danger to the peace was out of the question. Even the American
|
|
apologist would hardly be able to explain away that. So the Papal
|
|
organ announced quietly, as a matter of routine, that a Vicar
|
|
Apostolic had been set up in Manchukuo at the request of its
|
|
government. That was for the Japs a sufficiently clear recognition
|
|
of that government by the Vatican as a sovereign power. Does any
|
|
man suppose that the Japanese statesmen and military leaders nearly
|
|
all of whom are skeptics, cared the toss of a coin about the
|
|
spiritual interests or the immortal souls of the Manchurian
|
|
peasants? Or that the Vatican supposed they did? The brutalized
|
|
condition to which the Japs soon reduced the natives is answer
|
|
enough.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> The Chinese in Shanghai sent me copies of bitter complaints of
|
|
the Protestant missionaries in China about the way in which the
|
|
Japs were persecuting them in favor of Catholic missionaries, but
|
|
a more important feature of the matter is that from that time the
|
|
Pope damped down in the whole Catholic world all criticism of his
|
|
dear Yellow Brother in Buddha. By 1934, the clerical writer in
|
|
Revue des Deux Mondes said, the cordial relations of the two had
|
|
gone so far that "no Japanese prince or mission now passes through
|
|
Rome without paying its homage to the Sovereign Pontiff." And to </p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Bank of Wisdom
|
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|
20
|
|
.
|
|
THE RED POPE</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>Mussolini, of course, who was now in prayerful communication with
|
|
the Vatican. Again, does anyone suppose that Japanese diplomats and
|
|
princes called upon the Pope to thank him for caring for the
|
|
immortal souls, in which they did not believe, of Manchurian
|
|
peasants?</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> But the alliance was brought into full light in 1935 when the
|
|
Obsservatore announced the proposal of an exchange of ambassadors.
|
|
There seems to have been some hard bargaining, but in 1936 a Roman
|
|
Catholic prelate appeared, incongruously enough, at the Mikado's
|
|
court and a yellow man in the Vatican City. By this time the
|
|
Japanese pretense of merely wishing to civilize Manchuria was a
|
|
mockery. It had now advanced far into China, having taken Jehol in
|
|
1933 and broken through the Great Wall in 1935. The mask was
|
|
cynically thrown aside just when the diplomatic relations with the
|
|
Vatican were put on the most respectable footing. By the customary
|
|
Axis method of brazen lying excuses for further aggression upon the
|
|
weak Chinese were invented, the "incident" was conducted with
|
|
appalling outrages, and a trail of misery and demoralization spread
|
|
in the wake of the Japanese armies. Japan was now as deadly a
|
|
menace to civilization as Germany and Italy, and the bland lies
|
|
with which it met every inquiry were nauseating.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> During these years very little was said in the world-press
|
|
about this beautiful friendship of the supreme head of the Church
|
|
of Rome and the supreme head of the degenerate Shinto and Buddhist
|
|
religions. Catholics had won their claim and censorship of the
|
|
press on the edifying principle that it was not right to print
|
|
anything that was "offensive to Catholics"; and to obtrude this
|
|
cordial alliance of the Vatican with the Japanese government, which
|
|
had by this time incurred the loathing of every decent man and
|
|
would be decidedly offensive to Catholics. Yet the cordiality
|
|
continued through all the years of mendacity, hypocrisy, outrage,
|
|
and increasing menace to the world.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> On December 26 Matsuoka, who was particularly used for some
|
|
years to dupe Americans because he was a Christian, said in the
|
|
Japanese Diet, dropping the mask of lust now that Japan could take
|
|
advantage of the war in Europe, that there would be peace only if
|
|
America agreed that Japan should "dominate the mainland and occupy
|
|
a preferential position in Indo-China and the Dutch Indies," and to
|
|
"dominate the Western Pacific"; not for its own profit, of course,
|
|
but for "the good of humanity." In March, 1941, this slimiest of
|
|
the yellow reptile-group went to Moscow and signed a cynical pact
|
|
with Russia. We will not call that hypocrisy because Stalin was
|
|
certainly not duped, but that was not for lack of intention on
|
|
Matsuoka's part. He went on to Berlin and Rome to discuss with the
|
|
other gangsters the real plan for the summer, the sudden attack on
|
|
Russia and the question of Japanese intervention, and he had also
|
|
a long cordial talk with the Pope, who presented him with a gold
|
|
medal. All this can be verified in Keesing's admirable day-to-day
|
|
survey of the world-press. Are we asked to believe that with the
|
|
Pope Matsuoka discussed only the spiritual interests of the Chinese
|
|
who were under the loving care of the Japanese army of occupation?</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Bank of Wisdom
|
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|
21
|
|
.
|
|
THE RED POPE</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> What exactly the situation is today it is impossible to
|
|
ascertain. Japan will, of course, soon or later double cross the
|
|
Vatican, as those super-crooks always do. Has it already done so?
|
|
The latest news is that the Japanese are organizing a National
|
|
Spiritual Mobilization Campaign in which three recognized
|
|
religions, Shinto, Buddhism, and Christianity are to cooperate. But
|
|
the Christian Church is to be purely Japanese. It must receive no
|
|
funds from abroad -- which opens up a nice prospect for the
|
|
American Protestant missions -- admit no foreign influence, and
|
|
make minute reports of all its services and activities; and the
|
|
worship of the Son of Heaven must be included in the cult
|
|
everywhere. Has Pacelli-Pius swallowed that pill?</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> In the eighteenth century Rome made it, one of its chief
|
|
counts in its indictment of the Jesuits that, in order to win more
|
|
converts than other missionaries, they had mixed heathen rites with
|
|
Christian. Pacelli has done just that. An Anglican prelate who was
|
|
present at the large International Conference on religion in India
|
|
in 1938 wrote me that the representatives of the Protestant
|
|
Churches learned with a shock that "the Papacy, after much
|
|
wavering, has finally given permission to Japanese Papists to
|
|
indulge in Emperor worship." Presumably they do not tell their
|
|
Japanese converts how early Christians died rather than worship the
|
|
Roman Emperor.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> It should prove, when the details are known, a picturesque
|
|
development, but to most of us trifle in comparison with the
|
|
Vatican's moral apostasy and betrayal of civilization. For an
|
|
exhibition of greed, hypocrisy, and condonation of crime its
|
|
alliance with Japan would be hard to beat. During these ten years
|
|
when Pacelli was vilifying Russia, which was building up in peace
|
|
and with a sense of international honor what most people now call
|
|
great civilization, he was cultivating friendly relations with and
|
|
giving aid and encouragement to one of the real blackguard-nations.
|
|
It is futile to protest that we must look at the Situation from the
|
|
Papal angle. The most respectable light in which you can put it is
|
|
that a Churchman would be bound to consider that a prospect of
|
|
bringing into the Roman sphere of influence, which is so much more
|
|
morally effective than any other, all the missionary work in
|
|
eastern Asia, outweighs all other considerations. So much the worse
|
|
for the Churchman's creed or policy. It puts the increase of the
|
|
power of the Church above all decency of international intercourse,
|
|
above the appalling sufferings of hundreds of millions of Chinese
|
|
and their right to a national life of their own, above the ghastly
|
|
and very imminent chances of a world-war. it means that the Black
|
|
International tramples on those social, moral, and humanitarian
|
|
principles which are said by its apologists in America to be just
|
|
what the Church holds most sacred.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Chapter V</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> HE ORGANIZES THE PLOT IN SOUTH AMERICA</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Pacelli-Pius was rightly selected for the Papacy as the ablest
|
|
cardinal in the Church of Rome. That does not imply genius. Half of
|
|
these cardinals would not successfully run a large grocery store.
|
|
Pacelli has considerable ability. He is also the most widely-</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Bank of Wisdom
|
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|
22
|
|
.
|
|
THE RED POPE</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>informed cardinal on the world-situation. His immediate
|
|
predecessors were of the type that asks: What are Keats? Even Leo
|
|
XIII was amazingly duped by his Vatican 'specialists' about the
|
|
state of affairs in England -- they persuaded him that if he
|
|
recognized the validity of Anglican "orders" the whole Church of
|
|
England would join up under the Papal banner -- in France, and
|
|
elsewhere. Pacelli has travelled more than any. Besides spending
|
|
twelve years in Germany he has made three visits to England,
|
|
travelled all over North and South America, and visited France,
|
|
Hungary, and other countries.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Upon which boast of his biographers we may make two comments.
|
|
First that in very few of his acts can any apologist make the
|
|
excuse of ignorance or misinformation, the common Catholic excuse
|
|
for Papal misconduct. Matsuoka might deceive some people with his
|
|
bland assurances that his country sought "not the good of the good
|
|
of Japan but the good of humanity" and (in the spring of 1941) that
|
|
it had "not the slightest idea of taking advantage of the
|
|
misfortunes of France," but he no more deceived Pius XII than he
|
|
deceived Stalin. The Pope knew well that Japan was pledged to a
|
|
course, in its selfish interest, which would lead inexorably to war
|
|
math America and Great Britain. So it was in every other part of
|
|
his policy.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> The second comment is that, instead of flowers springing up
|
|
wherever Pacelli trod, as is told of holy men in earlier ages, the
|
|
path might generally be traced by blood and misery. The violence
|
|
had occurred in Italy before he returned to it, but he took care
|
|
that it was not relaxed. He compels the Church in Germany to help
|
|
to power the most dangerous psychopath in Europe. He goes to South
|
|
America, and his visit is followed by the triumph of Fascist
|
|
violence everywhere. He goes to the United States, and there is a
|
|
fresh demand for the extinction of Bolshevism in Mexico and Russia.
|
|
He goes to Paris in 1937 and France prepares to betray Czecho-
|
|
Slovakia and, when the time comes, to betray itself. He goes to
|
|
Hungary in 1938 and it is ready to see Austria and Czecho-Slovakia
|
|
enslaved and to march itself against Russia and help in every way
|
|
the destroyers of civilization.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> The visit to South America was in 1934, when the usual excuse
|
|
for Papal intrigue was given: he must preside at the Eucharistic
|
|
Congress at Buenos Aires. Twenty years, even thirty years ago, the
|
|
priests of Buenos Aires would not have dared to hold such a
|
|
function. When it was proposed to hold one in London Protestants
|
|
appealed to me to cooperate in getting Catholics forbidden to have
|
|
a procession of their Eucharist in one street. I said that I would
|
|
rather encourage them to do so -- and take care that the crowd
|
|
understood what it meant. The doctrine is so monstrous and
|
|
incredible that the journalists who every year write with profound
|
|
respect about the holding of the Eucharistic Congress cannot have
|
|
the least idea what it means.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> You see a priest carrying a star-shaped golden vessel in the
|
|
center of which, enclosed in glass, is the white disk of a wafer of
|
|
wheaten flour. To the Catholic it was a thin wafer until the priest
|
|
breathed his magic wards over it, but there is no longer any flour
|
|
there. The substance of the cake has been annihilated: only the </p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Bank of Wisdom
|
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|
23
|
|
.
|
|
THE RED POPE</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>accidents (the color, shape, feel, etc.) remain. As I have hid to
|
|
swallow it -- the wafer, I mean, as well is the doctrine --
|
|
thousands of times I can assure that the "accidents" are very much
|
|
like those of a dry cracker. It sticks to the pilate, etc. And on
|
|
the strength of this prehistoric theory of substance and accidents,
|
|
begot by the genius Aquinas out of Aristotle, the Church today
|
|
sternly insists that the wafer has been annihilated, and the living
|
|
divine-human person of Jesus has taken its place -- quite literally
|
|
-- that if you broke it into a hundred crumbs the living and entire
|
|
body of Jesus would be present in each, and that this is true of
|
|
each one of the millions of wafers (Eucharists) which are stored in
|
|
little safes on the altars of all the Catholic Churches in the
|
|
world. Pfew!</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> I say that in the earlier part of this century priests in
|
|
Buenos Aries or Rio or Lima would not have made a parade of that
|
|
belief in the streets The historic conflict of the Blacks and
|
|
Whites in Latin America had ended in an incomplete but considerable
|
|
victory for the Liberals. The middle-class was substantially
|
|
skeptical. In 1906 the Freethinkers of South America held a
|
|
Congress in Buenos Aires. The delegates crowded the Teatro
|
|
Argentino. Argentinians of high position (Vice-Admiral Howard, Soto
|
|
and Alvarez of the Council of War, etc.) supported them. The
|
|
Presidents of Guatemala and Uruguay sent telegrams of
|
|
congratulations in the name of their republics. The Women's
|
|
Committee, of 50 members, included some the most brilliant writers
|
|
in South America. The leading papers treated the Congress with
|
|
respect . . .</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> And in 1934 the public men of Argentina were falling Over each
|
|
other to kiss Pacelli's ring. What had happened? The Reds, of
|
|
course. Socialism spread through South America with extraordinary
|
|
rapidity after the last war, and the news of the revolution in
|
|
Spain in 1932 gave a powerful impetus to the movement. So impartial
|
|
an observer as the famous woman traveller Rosita Forbes said in
|
|
1933 after a prolonged visit that "it is possible that the
|
|
organization and method's of Soviet Russia may be destined to
|
|
provide the machinery necessary to liberate the South American
|
|
Republics" (Eight Republics in search of a Future, p. 7.) In Peru,
|
|
she found that "the educated youth of Peru is in the hands of
|
|
Moscow." A minister who introduced an anti-Communist law in the
|
|
Chilean Congress was compelled to resign, and the government
|
|
refused to recognize degrees granted by Catholic universities. An
|
|
American merchant who had lived 25 years in Chile reported that
|
|
"Communism of the intellectual type" was very widespread. The
|
|
Alianza Popular Revolutionaria Americana (Apra) swept the
|
|
continent, and its leader would have become President of Peru but
|
|
for Black corruption of the vilest kind. The Rev. Dr. McKay, a
|
|
Protestant missionary in the Argentine, said that the Trade Unions
|
|
turned out any worker who supported the Church, that the workers
|
|
now commonly called a man they wanted to vituperate "you poor
|
|
Christ" (equivalent to the American "son of a lady-dog"), and that
|
|
one of their leaders said publicly that the sound of the word God
|
|
made him spew. I was editing the Militant Atheist in 1933 and gave
|
|
plenty of details of this sort.</p>
|
|
|
|
<div> </div>
|
|
|
|
<p> Bank of Wisdom
|
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|
24
|
|
.
|
|
THE RED POPE</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Pacelli to the rescue. Returning to the subject in the 'Appeal
|
|
to Reason' Library (No. 3) in 1935 I gave the symptoms of spreading
|
|
reaction and asked: "Will the struggle end as in Italy, Spain, and
|
|
Poland, in a coalition of all political parties with the Church
|
|
again Labor?" At the time Pacelli was still an obscure emissary of
|
|
the Vatican whose position as Secretary of State was according to
|
|
the Italian Press, not very secure. How bitterly we pay for not
|
|
watching the Black International more closely! In South America, as
|
|
in America and Britain and Italy and Germany, there were Socialist
|
|
leaders who said that the fight against the Church was over -- some
|
|
wanted friendly alliance with it -- and all attention must be
|
|
concentrated on the politico-economic struggle. And in the whole of
|
|
South America as in Italy, Germany, France, Austria, Spain, Czecho-
|
|
Slovakia, etc., within a year or two Socialism was bloodily trodden
|
|
underfoot and the Church was triumphant.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> The change did not begin in 1934. The Blacks were already
|
|
organizing and intriguing everywhere, and futile revolts
|
|
strengthened their hands. But after 1934 the clerical-capitalist
|
|
revolution proceeded at a great pace. I have not a shred of proof
|
|
to offer that, Pacelli counted in the organization of this. Just
|
|
naughty suspicion, and you may please yourself whether you accept
|
|
it. I do not say that Pacelli intrigued to bring closer together
|
|
the heads of the Church and the heads of the army and state who in
|
|
every part of South America were shuddering before the Red Menace.
|
|
The only facts we know are that the situation was completely
|
|
transformed after 1934; that within a few years six of the ten
|
|
Republics of South America including Brazil and Peru, were
|
|
truculently Fascist, and even Argentina (where the priests have no
|
|
millions of Indians to stir up) and Chile were semi-Fascist; that
|
|
most of the Liberals had in fact lined up with the Church; and that
|
|
this coalition was first revealed on a large scale when Pacelli,
|
|
the arch-intriguer and hater of Socialism in every form had gone
|
|
from capital to capital and soldiers and statesmen knelt for his
|
|
blessing. You may want to go father than I do and believe that
|
|
Pacelli not only promoted the entire cordial of Liberal statesmen
|
|
and their traditional enemies, but encouraged also the leaders of
|
|
the millions of Italians and Germans, who, as the duped statesmen
|
|
have now found, were already secretly weaving their great plot.
|
|
Please yourself.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> The upshot was that not only was "the menace of Bolshevism"
|
|
destroyed in South America but the Church got between ten and
|
|
twenty million apostates bullied into silence and their leaders
|
|
flung into jail. Figures are farcical in Latin America. In Mexico
|
|
a high official warned me privately that their published statement
|
|
that their population consisted of 4000000 Indians and 12000000
|
|
Mexicans might be turned the other way round. A careful recent
|
|
estimate is that there are 90000000 Indian's in South and Central
|
|
America. Few people seem to realize that these provide about one-
|
|
third of the total number of the Pope's real subjects. As in
|
|
Mexico, the majority of them would turn against the priests as soon
|
|
as they got encouragement to do so from their government. The
|
|
situation was closely parallel to that of Russia. Within another
|
|
ten years the great bulk of the 90000000 would be lost to the
|
|
Vatican. Are we asked to think that Pacelli scrupulously avoided </p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Bank of Wisdom
|
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|
25
|
|
.
|
|
THE RED POPE</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>political maneuvers that promised to avert that tragedy? Remember
|
|
the Irish revolutionaries confiding their plot to the Pope;
|
|
remember Dollfus's, Franco, Henlein, and others.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> But we are concerned with actualities. The cream of the
|
|
Indians, of the millions of workers of such mixed blood that it is
|
|
time we dropped these racial distinctions, are the industrial
|
|
workers. The majority, we saw, had abandoned Rome, Add the
|
|
university youths and a large number of their professors and other
|
|
middle-class men and Liberals of the old school, and it will be
|
|
seen that Rome had to envisage an actual secession of between ten
|
|
and twenty millions. They are now back in the fold -- on paper.
|
|
They are bullied into silence and their most active representatives
|
|
are in jail. By the end of 1935 there were 10000 political
|
|
prisoners in jail in Brazil alone. Yes, says the Catholic, the scum
|
|
who had recently organized a rebellion. So it was reported in
|
|
America. But the very impartial British 'Annual Register' (1935)
|
|
which gives the above figure adds: "Among these were university
|
|
professors and many other distinguished Brazilians belonging to the
|
|
best society" (p. 312). They were victims of the Black
|
|
International.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> And by one of those blunders into which the brutally and
|
|
callousness of the agents of these Fascist governments are always
|
|
betraying them we learned that this Church-Wealth coalition is not
|
|
only using force but, as it has always done, using it savagely. The
|
|
Brazilian police arrested as spies two ladies of the British
|
|
aristocracy, Lady Hastings and Lady Cameron, who were visiting Rio.
|
|
Viscount Hastings wrote a letter to the London press (News-
|
|
Chronicle, July 14, 1936) on what they saw. It contained such
|
|
things as:</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> In the prison they saw men and women who had been so
|
|
badly beaten that they could only move with the greatest
|
|
difficulty; a man's wife had been beaten insensible in front
|
|
of him to make him confess; the hands of another man had been
|
|
mutilated by having iron spikes driven underneath the nails
|
|
... The day before my wife and sister were arrested, the
|
|
American boy Victor Baron was found dead in prison after
|
|
'questioning' . . .</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> Immutable Rome! So it was in France in the thirteenth century,
|
|
all over south Europe in the nineteenth, in Spain forty years ago,
|
|
and is now in many countries. If a mere working man, or even a
|
|
professor, had reported these things, moat people would say "Red
|
|
lies." There is obviously some use in Aristocrats.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> In Mexico the struggle with the Church and the attempt of
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Catholics in America to get intervention, which would certainly
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mean war and annexation, had begun long before Pacelli became
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Secretary of State. I am tracing the action of the Black
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International not of Pacelli alone but I have written this earlier
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history so fully elsewhere that I will not return to it. I need
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repeat only about the acute conflict of 1926 that I was then in
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Mexico and saw with what remarkable indifference the people
|
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accepted what was mendaciously called the persecution of the
|
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Church, and read articles by Mexican Catholic journalists in the </p>
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|
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<p> Bank of Wisdom
|
|
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|
26
|
|
.
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|
THE RED POPE</p>
|
|
|
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<p>leading Havana paper a little later expressing deep disgust with
|
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the lies (executions of priests etc.) sent by the priests to the
|
|
Knights of Columbus, who zealously enlarged them and circulated
|
|
them in Wall Street. If you want a Catholic (or at all events pro-
|
|
Catholic) witness to this close alliance for years of American
|
|
Catholics. and Wall Street read George Seldes' 'The Vatican' (1934,
|
|
pp. 278-86). There was, of course, an outcry and the American
|
|
Catholic bishops published a letter denying that they were working
|
|
for armed intervention." They merely felt it their duty to "sound
|
|
a warning to Christian civilization that its foundations are being
|
|
attacked and undermined." God, they said would find a way to,
|
|
destroy the evil. By priests blowing trumpets, I suppose. A thinner
|
|
pretense of pacifism it would be hard to find. It has a Japanese
|
|
ring.</p>
|
|
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<p> Pacelli did not go to Mexico, but the brilliant Church-Fascist
|
|
success that followed his visit to South America had echoes in the
|
|
north. In 1935 F.V. Williams, Al Smith's publicity agent, had a
|
|
revolting article in 'Liberty' (Aug. 24) calling for intervention.
|
|
A Mexican Catholic annihilated his statements in the 'Forum;' in
|
|
fact, they had been answered in advance by various visitors to
|
|
Mexico (World-Telegram, June 8, 1935, etc.) The Catholic Teeling
|
|
also admits that Catholics intrigued at Washington to get
|
|
intervention and that Msgr. Burke served as intermediary.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p> It is, at all events, true that from 1936 Pacelli included
|
|
Mexico in the list of countries in which he invited the great
|
|
powers to "extinguish" Bolshevism. It was so clearly a war-program
|
|
that I have never read even a Catholic attempt to give his words,
|
|
the slogan he sent through the whole Catholic world, any other
|
|
meaning. An innocent young nun or a Lord Halifax might suggest that
|
|
he "extinguish it by prayer." Is that what he meant when he sent
|
|
Cardinal Faulhaber, as we shall see, to beg Hitler to allow the
|
|
Church to cooperate with him in the good work? It was a war
|
|
program; a call to, as it has proved, the bloodiest war in history.
|
|
So who are the real Reds?</p>
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|
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<div> **** ****</div>
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|
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<p> Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.</p>
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<p> The Bank of Wisdom is a collection of the most thoughtful,
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scholarly and factual books. These computer books are reprints of
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religion. all these subjects, and more, will be made available to
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the public in electronic form, easily copied and distributed, so
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<p> The Free Market-Place of Ideas.</p>
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<p> **** ****
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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27
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</p></xml> |