By the same author: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AGAINST THE TWENTIETH CENTURY THE DOLLAR AND THE VATICAN LATIN AMERICA AND THE VATICAN RELIGION IN RUSSIA SPAIN AND THE VATICAN THE VATICAN AND THE U. S. A. THE VATICAN IN ASIA VATICAN IMPERIALISM IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY CATHOLIC POWER TODAY Copyright Copyright © 1967 by Avro Manhattan Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 67-15886 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from Lyle Stuart except by a newspaper or magazine reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review. Queries regarding rights and permissions should be addressed to Lyle Stuart 239 Park Avenue South New York, N. Y. 10003. Published by Lyle Stuart Inc. Typography by Toper Manufactured in the United States of America To contemporary man and his search for dignity, truth, and a genuinely peaceful truly united world of tomorrow Contents 1 The Catholic Grand Master Plan of Conquest 2 The Catholic Church — a Conquering Army on the March 3 The Global Catholic Octopus 4 Sundry Patterns of Catholic Power in London, Canberra, and Washington 5 The Pattern of Catholic Power in Catholic Countries 6 Patterns of Catholic Power in the Italian Peninsula 7 The Pattern of Catholic Power in Protestant Countries 8 Pattern of Catholic Power in Great Britain and Australia 9 The Pattern of Catholic Promotiom of a Catholic America 10 Pattern of the Master Church of the U. S. A. 11 Pattern of the Emerging Catholic Totalitarianism in the U. S. A. 12 The Progress of Fear in the U.S.A. 13 The Pattern of Catholic Power on a Super-Catholic Island: Malta 14 The Pattern of Catholic Power in a Non-Christian Country: South Vietnam 15 The Pattern of Catholic Power in a Super-Catholic Dictatorship: The Independent Catholic State of Croatia 16 Like the Fingerprints of God... 1 The Catholic Grand Master Plan of Conquest One day, sometime in the eighteenth century, the attention of a certain Frenchman, Francois Marie de Arouet, was directed to a case which first shook a town, then France, and finally Europe: the murder of Jean Calais, a Protestant merchant of Toulouse. The Catholic Church had accused Calais of hanging one of his sons to prevent his becoming a Catholic, “as it was the common practice amongst Protestants. ” Calais was arrested, and the civil magistrates ecclesiastical orders—condemned the old man to the rack, to be broken alive upon the wheel and then to be burned to ashes. This decree was executed on March 9, 1762. F. M. de Arouet dedicated the best part of three years to proving Calas’s complete innocence, which he did. Simultaneously he swore to wage relentless war against a church which was capable of such murderous intolerance. Having coined a slogan, Ecrasez l’infame, he used it in all his books, articles, letters. His one-man campaign eventually contributed, perhaps more than any other, to the overthrow of Catholic encroachment upon civil authority in France, and, indeed, in most of Europe in the decades to come. Francois Marie de Arouet’s other name: Voltaire. One day, also in the same century, a certain Roger Williams, while passing through Springfield Green in the North American colonies, saw a youth of fourteen being burned at the stake by the civil magistrates, under orders of the Church of England. Roger Williams swore to fight to the utmost the Protestant church which had enjoined civil authority to enforce her religious tyranny. Voltaire in Europe and Roger Williams in America, by openly revolting against Catholic and Protestant intolerance, had personified the will of the old and new worlds to get rid of all ecclesiastical encroachment upon civil authority. Two hundred years later, almost to the day, the Catholic Church’s Fathers, more than two thousand five hundred of them—Abbots, Bishops, Archbishops, Cardinals, Primates, Patriarchs, and the Pope himself— congregated at the Second Vatican Council where they advocated reunion, unity, and even “religious liberty. ” Shortly before, the Ecclesiastical Head of the Church of England—preceded by Queen Elizabeth II—had visited the Vatican (the first time an Archbishop of Canterbury had done so since 1395) followed by Calvinist, Lutheran, and other Protestant leaders. Catholics, who up to only a few decades earlier had branded all Protestants and Orthodox “apostates, schismatics and heretics, ” now addressed them as “our dear separated brethren”; while the Protestants now called the former “Romanists, Papists and idolatrous image-worshippers” “our beloved brothers in Christ. ” The most active champion of organized Christianity had radically changed, it was said. The Catholic Church at last had turned into a vigorous advocate of the basic tenets of freedom of conscience, of thought, of speech, and of the right of the individual to believe, to think, and to say whatever he liked. It was truly a portent worthy of a cry, for were not these the same churches which, only eight generations before, had tortured and burned at the stake an innocent old gentleman in France and a tender fourteen-year-old youth in North America? Indeed they were. Had they, then, transformed themselves so radically as to be practically no longer the same institutions? Indeed they had not. The spirit which had animated them one thousand or barely two hundred years earlier was still within them, as alive, as potent, and as aggressive as ever. The Protestant Reformation, when still a monolith, was as ruthlessly terroristic as its Alma Mater, the Catholic Church, which went on happily burning Protestants until 1781. Most of the original inhabitants of the North American colonies were religious refugees, terrorized by the Churches of Scotland and of England, which never hesitated to persecute, imprison, or hang whenever they had a chance. Witness Peter Annet, English writer (died 1769), imprisoned for attacking the authenticity of the Pentateuch; or Thomas Ait-kenhead, an Edinburgh student, who, having referred to the Old Testament as “Ezia’s Fables, ” was hanged for blasphemy in 1696 at the age of eighteen years. In Europe, torture was still enforced by all the Tribunals of the Holy Inquisition until the last century, the Pope having been forced to abolish it as recently as 1816. 1 It was only when established Protestantism fragmented itself into a thou-sand-and-one conflicting denominations that (its intolerance having weakened) its power was greatly reduced. Since then, the bulk of its members have not only accepted but advocated contemporary liberties. Witness the flourishing multifaceted Protestantism of the United States and its evangelical movements. Because of this, most of the Protestant denominations hailing freedom may be accepted as a genuine contributory factor to the basic democratic principles of modern man. Their acceptance of the Vatican’s call to unity, however, is a different matter, since it jeopardizes, not so much their present, but their future existence. Their eagerness to unite is nothing more nor less than the most concrete demonstration of their monumental ignorance of the true aims of the Catholic Church or of a deliberate attempt on their part (following some incurable attack of ecclesiastical amnesia) at collective self-extinction. They have acted with the same lack of prudence as those rabbits, squirrels, and mice of the field who, having suddenly heard the lion roar “Brethren, let’s unite! ” promptly persuaded themselves that the new recruit had miraculously developed a taste for grass. For the astonishing facts are that the Catholic Church—unlike disintegrating established Protestantism—is expanding in size, prestige, and power. Above all, she is more than ever resolved to fulfill her magnitu-dinous ambition for the subjugation of anyone outside herself. The pursuit of such an ambition is being carried out, not in secret, but in the open. Five hundred and fifty million beings, cemented by one single faith, organized by one single super-efficient machinery, and led by one single leader, are on the march. The Catholic Church’s numerical strength, intercontinental administration, global diplomatic network, political dominance, and intangible pressure are all being blatantly used to that end. Whence comes such an inflexible Catholic determination to conquer? It comes from her unshakable belief that she has been divinely commissioned to destroy error. And, since truth can be found only within herself, Protestantism, Orthodoxy, and other Christian and non-Christian religions can find salvation only within her. For reunion in her parlance signifies only one thing: the return to the fold of all those who are separated from her. That is not all. The societies where such separated religions have flourished must follow suit; since truth must prevail, not only in the religious but in the moral, ethical, sociological, political, and economic fields—contemporary society being the sum of them all. Which implies that the Catholic Church must see that truth (her truth) prevails simultaneously within and outside herself. As this has always been, still is, and will always be, her most basic tenet, it follows that she is bound to pursue a policy directed at the ultimate fulfillment of such an aim. But as society is in a continuous flux, the Catholic Church, while immutable in her basic tenets, cannot remain so in her policies; hence her adoption of a strategy characterized by flexibility of approach, ruthless discarding of antiquated methods, and swift implementation of new ones in harmony with the mood of the novel times. This has been one of her most fundamental principles throughout her long history. Thus, after her total para-mountcy in the Middle Ages had induced in her a chronic spiritual lassitude, which ignited the Reformation, she fought back with the counter-Reformation, following the pattern described above. She counter-attacked, not only with the formidable dogmatic and physical coercion of the past, but with an entirely new weapon: a vigorous army of spiritual storm troopers, the Jesuits and cognate Orders, created for the specific purpose of undermining and capturing the theological, cultural, and intellectual citadels of the newly born Protestant Europe. 2 But although the new strategy, characterized by colorful diplomatic intrigues and attempted assassinations (e. g., Elizabeth of England), the summoning of maritime might (e. g., the Spanish Armada), reinforced by a relentless intellectual war upon the novel mores of Europe, succeeded in containing the rising Protestant tide, it failed to stop the advance of the new mood, the generator of the two greatest cataclysms of the eighteenth century: in the New World, the North American Revolution, with its heretical principle of separation of Church and State; in the Old, the French Revolution. The ancient Catholic fabric disintegrated into shreds: in the Western Hemisphere, with the loss of the Spanish Empire of Central and South America; in Europe with the crashing of the ancient clerico-dynastic Establishment. Since then, having reassembled her forces, the Catholic Church has cleverly modified her basic grand strategy, the better to confront the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with the successful adoption of three interdependent principles, summarized as follows: 1. Supporting any military, economic, or political force interested in the retention of the status quo, so as to crush her contemporary paramount religious or ideological opponent. 2. Mobilizing all her religious, diplomatic, and political might to counter- attack against such opponent, in the event of failure to crush it. 3. Forming an alliance with it, characterized by her joining it and, in special circumstances, leading it or even jumping ahead of it, should it hallmark the age with the application of its tenets—the aims of her seeming surrender being to slow down, capture, and paralyze the enemy, in order, by insuring ultimate control from within, to stop its advance and insure her own final advancement. The nineteenth century gave some brilliant demonstrations of the successful application of such strategies. During its first decade the Catholic Church inspired, blessed, and supported the dynastic, military, and political right- wing forces of Europe to destroy the dangerous ideology of Liberalism; then, upon the collapse of the right-wing forces, she attacked the Liberal heresy with all the religious, diplomatic, and political weapons of her armory. Liberalism and all that it stood for were anathemized. The Syllabus of Modern Errors, issued in 1864 by Pope Pius IX, solemnly condemned freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom of the press, democracy, and the like. Catholics were forbidden to sympathize with, join, or support any political party or government advocating or inspired by such anti- Christian Liberal monstrosities under pain of sin, excommunication, and damnation. When her military and political allies finally tumbled altogether3 and the very Papal States, including Rome, were wrenched from the Holy See, 4 the Pope tried to give Liberalism a last mortal blow. The First Vatican Council was summoned. 5 A dogma, meant to strike at the very essence of the Liberal ideology, with its advocacy of reason, free inquiry, and liberty was proclaimed. The Catholic Church put herself above all human reason, and declared her head infallible. Notwithstanding that, Liberalism was soon to transform the whole of Europe into a political reality which nothing could stop or, even less, destroy. Having realized this, the Catholic Church then made a sudden somersault: She set in motion the third stage of her grand master plan, and joined the irresistible Liberal tide. The super-reactionary Pius IX, writer of the Syllabus of Modern Errors, the inspirer of Infallibility, and the excommunicator of the Liberal revolution and all it stood for, was succeeded by a new Pope: Leo XIII. Leo not only came to terms with the triumphant ideology: He supported it within the Church herself. Indeed, he jumped ahead of it by making the Catholic Church the spearhead of embryonic Socialism. And soon the Catholic and non-Catholic masses were given a magnificent social Magna Carta: Leo’s epoch-making encyclical, Rerum Novarum. 6 The world applauded. The Catholic Church had become the inspirer of all progressive forces. Long live the Catholic Church, the latest and greatest grand champion of human liberty! Result? Within a few decades the Catholic Church was heading a super- conservative Europe, that same Europe which, formed by reactionary Principalities, Kingdoms and Empires, was eventually to plunge mankind into World War I. 7 Following its collapse as a result of the first global conflict, the Catholic Church found herself face-to-face with an even more dangerous ideology than the one she had fought in the previous century: Bolshevism. Once more, her master strategy was set in motion. The first phase, like that of the second decade of the preceding century, was characterized by her inspiring and supporting all secular reactionary forces who were as afraid of the Red scourge as she was herself. Instead of the dynasties, landed classes, and super-conservatism characteristic of the nineteenth century, she now supported capitalism, super-nationalism, and their direct offspring, Fascism —the characteristic reactionary forces of the early twentieth century. 8 These reactionary forces, after having successfully destroyed Bolshevism at home, ignited World War II and launched their military might against Soviet Russia, but Bolshevism emerged from the holocaust ideologically and territorially stronger than before. The Catholic Church promptly joined a new, vigorous, anti-Red crusader, the United States of America. Thereupon while American atomic citadels were being erected around Soviet Russia, the Church accelerated a parallel encirclement via the methodical coordination of all the religious, political, and ideological weapons at her disposal. The second phase of her grand strategy was thus set in motion. The result was that, while the United States embarked upon a colossal rearmament program, prompted and imitated by Soviet Russia, the Catholic Church joined the new anti-Red crusade, armed with a resurrected and beligerent political Catholicism. Within a few years, Christian Democracy (as the latter was renamed) became the paramount political force of Europe, which it soon dominated with undisputed authority. 9 But if the Catholic Church had successfully prevented Communism from seizing power, she had not (as with Liberalism in the previous century) managed to destroy its ideology. Witness Italy, which, although dominated by successive Catholic governments, harbored the largest Communist Party in the West outside Russia. 10 Christian Democracy, which had prevented Communism from capturing political power, had failed to uproot it from the heart of the masses. The Vatican, therefore, came openly to the fore. Catholics who supported Communism were excommunicated. Millions were forced to vote as the