| Devotion to Our Lady |
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Part 1
THE HOLY SACRIFICE OF THE MASS COMES FIRST
Before speaking about the coming of Catholics to the shores of America, let us see where in America Our Lord Himself came―by means of His Real Presence in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Holy Eucharist.
THE HOLY SACRIFICE OF THE MASS COMES FIRST
Before speaking about the coming of Catholics to the shores of America, let us see where in America Our Lord Himself came―by means of His Real Presence in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Holy Eucharist.
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When and where was the first Mass offered in America? No one living today knows the answer to this intriguing question. But we can summarize what we do know about the first Masses in various parts of the New World.
Some legendary accounts of the life of St. Brendan, who was a priest, say he set off in a small boat on a journey to the Isle of the Blessed, sometime around A.D. 512, along with 14 monks and priests. After they landed on Saint Brendan’s Island—wherever that was—he celebrated Mass. There are people who say that elements of the legends of the journey demonstrate that the Irish did have some knowledge of the northeast Atlantic coast of America, so if St. Brendan or some other Irish seafaring priest did arrive there, he would certainly have offered Mass, as he is said to have done in nearly every other place he visited (including, as the legend goes, on the top of a whale in mid-ocean). Remains of a Norse settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows, on the island of Newfoundland, were discovered and excavated in the 1960s. The settlement dates from around A.D. 1000. It was probably not the only settlement the Norse set up in the region, and it was likely that it served as a sort of permanent outpost for shipping lumber and furs to Greenland and perhaps further east. The size and number of buildings suggest that as many as 150 people lived there. Icelandic bishop Eric Gnupsson, who had been based in Greenland since 1112, “went to seek Vinland” in 1121—presumably to minister to some of his far-flung Catholic flock—but nothing more was reported of him. If he succeeded, he surely offered the first Mass in the New World, perhaps at L’Anse aux Meadows or at another Norse settlement. With the approval of the Norwegian king, a bishop for Greenland was set up and the see was established in the settlement of Garðar. The first bishop, Arnaldur (Gnupsson’s immediate successor in Greenland), arrived there in 1126 and began construction of a cathedral, devoted to St. Nicholas, the same year. The last bishop served until 1378. Archaeologists have excavated the ruins of the cathedral, a cross-shaped church built of sandstone. The map below will be your guide to some of the locations mentioned in the remainder of the article. |
First Mass in all of the Americas (North, South & Central): The Second Voyage of Christopher Columbus
The first American Mass for which a record exists took place during the second voyage of Christopher Columbus (the name Christopher means "Christ-Carrier"), on the feast of the Epiphany, January 6th, 1494, at a temporary shelter that would serve as a church at La Isabela, 30 miles west of what is now Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic. Five priests accompanied the expedition: Benedictine Father Buil, Jeronymite Father Ramone Pane, and three Franciscan missionary priests. Fr. Buil celebrated the Mass. The settlers built a church on the site, the foundation of which has been excavated (another church building is now at La Isabela). The original settlement was abandoned by 1498 and its settlers moved to the newly established Santo Domingo on the south side of the island.
Possible First Mass in North America: The Second Voyage of John Cabot
There is some solid, but as yet inconclusive evidence, that in that same year of 1498 the first Mass may have been celebrated on the North American continent (apart from the Norse settlements). The second voyage of John Cabot is believed to have reached a harbor in Newfoundland and included a group of reformed Augustinian friars led Fr. Giovanni Antonio de Carbonariis, who established a religious community there, building a church (which they may have named San Giovanni a Carbonara, after a church in Naples) and, of course, offering Mass. The site was at the present-day town of Carbonear on Newfoundland.
First Mass in South America
The first Mass recorded on continental South America occurred when Portuguese nobleman Pedro Álvares Cabral’s expedition reached the coast of Brazil and, at Porto Seguro, Franciscan Fr. Henriques Soares de Coimbra offered Mass and erected a cross on April 26th, 1500, naming the place Vera Cruz, and claiming it for the King of Portugal. Earlier Spanish expeditions along the continental coast appear to have been occupied with charting and mapping, and with stopping to trade with natives for gold, pearls, and lumber.
First Mass in Puerto Rico
In March 1509, Juan Ponce de León, with a group of colonists, including priests, landed in Puerto Rico at “Caparra” (now Pueblo Viejo in Guaynabo) and established a settlement there (the ruins remain and are a U.S. National Historic Landmark). That group’s first Mass would have been the first Mass we can say was offered on what is now U.S. territory.
On the west coast of South America, Vasco Núñez de Balboa’s expedition reached the Pacific Ocean at the shore of the Bay of San Miguel on September 29th, 1513, the feast of St. Michael the Archangel, at the sight of which the expedition’s chaplain Fr. Adrés de Vera chanted the Te Deum.
Dominican priest Fr. Vicente de Valverde and secular priest Juan de Sosa accompanied Pizarro’s expedition to Peru in 1533 and offered Mass along the way. Pizarro’s earlier expeditions, from 1527-1531, may also have had priests accompanying them.
A priest named Gonzalez accompanied the expedition of Juan de Grijalva in 1518 that landed briefly at Yucatan and further along the coast of Mexico, as described by Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who did not, however, record that Mass was offered there. Indeed, the priest appears in the narrative only to have assisted in helping the expedition locate and collect gold images of native deities that were then carried away.
First Mass in Mexico
On Easter Sunday, in April 1519, Fr. Bartolomé de Olmedo, the chaplain of Hernan Cortés’s expedition to Mexico, offered a high Mass in commemoration of the landing of the expedition two days prior at the site of the settlement they founded, the town of Vera Cruz.
Uncertainty about Florida in 1522
In early 1522, Ponce de León attempted, from Puerto Rico, to establish a settlement near Charlotte Harbor, on the west coast of Florida. But he was unable to do so, owing to the hostility of natives, who attacked and drove away the Spaniards, fatally wounding Ponce in the battle. The disaster occurred almost immediately upon their landing, but the brief account of the expedition by Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, in his Historia general y natural de las Indias suggests that some days elapsed between their landing and the attack, during which time the priests accompanying the expedition tried to preach to the natives and come to terms with them, but to no avail. If the priests were indeed onshore for a few days, as Oviedo suggests, before being driven away, they may well have offered Mass there, at Charlotte Harbor, which would have been the first Mass offered on what would become the continental U.S. But if they did so, it was not noted in the spotty records that remain of the expedition.
Uncertaintiy about North Carolina in 1526
In June 1526, two Dominican priests, Antonio Montesino and Anthony de Cervantes, accompanied several hundred colonists under the leadership of Lucas Vasques de Ayllón from San Domingo and attempted a settlement upon the Atlantic coast of the mainland north of Florida. They first made land at Cape Fear (near present-day Wilmington, North Carolina) but chose to sail on, looking for a more salubrious spot, which they found and established the small settlement of San Miguel de Guandape (or Gualdape), North Carolina, where, during the summer and fall of 1526, they certainly did offer Mass. After the death of Ayllón in October, the colony abandoned the country and returned to San Domingo. But the problem is locating where the settlement was. The original Spanish sources are conflicting about which direction the expedition took after it decided not to land at Cape Fear. One of the sources says that the settlers sailed north and located the settlement in precisely the same spot in Virginia that the English would later establish Jamestown. However, another source has them going south, which would locate Miguel de Guandape settlement perhaps around Georgetown, South Carolina, or even Sapelo Island, Georgia.
Uncertainty about Florida in 1522
Panfilo de Navaez (including Alvar Nuñez Caveza De Vaca) put ashore at present day Stump Pass near Englewood on the Gulf Coast of Florida on Good Friday, April 10th, 1528, and the landing party was resting at an evacuated Indian village there on Easter Sunday, where Franciscan priest Juan Suarez would possibly have celebrated Mass.
First Mass in Penscola Florida in 1559
In 1559, Don Tristan de Luna y Arellano commanded an expedition of 1500 soldiers and settlers, including Dominican priests, from Vera Cruz to the northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico, intending to establish a settlement there. He landed a portion of the expedition onshore, including the priests, and they offered Mass there on August 15. The place has long been thought to have been at present-day Pensacola, but close reading of the expedition’s papers has lately made it likely that the first landing—and therefore the August 15th Mass—was at present-day Pascagoula, Mississippi (within a couple of days, the entire expedition moved east to relocate, perhaps to Mobile Bay or to Pensacola Bay). A month later, even before most of the supplies had been unloaded, a hurricane hit and destroyed most of the ships and their cargo. The colonists struggled precariously through the winter, but abandoned the site and sailed away the following spring.
Certainty about Florida in 1565 on Our Lady's Birthday
On August 28th, 1565, the feast day of St. Augustine, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés put an expedition ashore on the northern Atlantic coast of Florida and established St. Augustine there, and Fr. Francisco López de Mendoza Grajales celebrated Mass on September 8th, Our Lady’s birthday, at a site that was lost for a while but was rediscovered a few decades ago and is probably within what is now (and had been at the time of its rediscovery) the Ponce de León Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park. The first Mission Nombre de Dios was built by Franciscans at that site in 1587, and this has lately been reconstructed, after a fashion, as part of the tourist park, although the Mission Nombre de Dios itself has been rebuilt more than once and relocated four blocks away since the first settlement.
First Mass in California in 1602
On the West Coast of what is now the continental United States, Carmelite friar Fr. Antonio de la Ascension, accompanying explorer Sebastian Vizcaíno, whose ships struggled up the coast of Baja California offered the first Mass in present-day California on November 12th, 1602 at a site at Point Loma in present-day San Diego, and continued up the coast to a site at Monterey Bay, where he celebrated another Mass on December 16th.
First Mass in Nova Scotia in 1604
Joshua Flesche, a secular priest, accompanied the French settlers who established Port-Royal in present-day Nova Scotia in 1604. He must have celebrated Mass soon after they arrived, for he was not at all inhibited from a rather expansive demonstration of his Catholicism, despite the fact that many among the settlers were Calvinists. The Jesuits who followed him to Port-Royal criticized him for rounding up local Mi’kmaq natives and baptizing them without catechizing them beforehand or afterwards. In May, 1613, the month of Our Lady, French Jesuits, including Frs. Pierre Biard and Edmond Masse, established the first French mission in America at what is now Fernald Point near the entrance to Somes Sound on Mount Desert Island, Maine. They waded ashore, named the place Saint Sauveur, offered Mass there, and set about planting crops and building a fort. In July, an English force from Virginia arrived by ship, killed three of the priests, wounded three more, took the rest of the settlers prisoner, cut down the cross the French Catholics had planted there and burned the buildings they had erected. Some of Fernald Point is now a part of Acadia National Park.
First Mass in Maryland in 1634
On November 22nd, 1633, Leonard Calvert, his brother George, and 150 other settlers, including three Jesuits—Andrew White, John Alcome, and Thomas Gervais—sailed from the Isle of Wight across the Atlantic to Maryland, under the proprietorship of Lord Baltimore. Their two ships, the Ark and the Dove, landed on an island in the lower Potomac River on the feast of Annunciation, March 25th, 1634. They named the island Saint Clement’s Island for Pope Saint Clement I, patron of mariners. On the day they landed, Fr. White offered Mass there, after which they raised and planted a wooden cross while reciting the Litany of the Holy Cross. Saint Clement’s Island is now a Maryland State Park and is accessible in the summer by tour boat. The settlers spent about three weeks there before negotiating the purchase of land at what is now St. Mary’s, farther down the Potomac near where it empties into the Chesapeake Bay.
The first American Mass for which a record exists took place during the second voyage of Christopher Columbus (the name Christopher means "Christ-Carrier"), on the feast of the Epiphany, January 6th, 1494, at a temporary shelter that would serve as a church at La Isabela, 30 miles west of what is now Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic. Five priests accompanied the expedition: Benedictine Father Buil, Jeronymite Father Ramone Pane, and three Franciscan missionary priests. Fr. Buil celebrated the Mass. The settlers built a church on the site, the foundation of which has been excavated (another church building is now at La Isabela). The original settlement was abandoned by 1498 and its settlers moved to the newly established Santo Domingo on the south side of the island.
Possible First Mass in North America: The Second Voyage of John Cabot
There is some solid, but as yet inconclusive evidence, that in that same year of 1498 the first Mass may have been celebrated on the North American continent (apart from the Norse settlements). The second voyage of John Cabot is believed to have reached a harbor in Newfoundland and included a group of reformed Augustinian friars led Fr. Giovanni Antonio de Carbonariis, who established a religious community there, building a church (which they may have named San Giovanni a Carbonara, after a church in Naples) and, of course, offering Mass. The site was at the present-day town of Carbonear on Newfoundland.
First Mass in South America
The first Mass recorded on continental South America occurred when Portuguese nobleman Pedro Álvares Cabral’s expedition reached the coast of Brazil and, at Porto Seguro, Franciscan Fr. Henriques Soares de Coimbra offered Mass and erected a cross on April 26th, 1500, naming the place Vera Cruz, and claiming it for the King of Portugal. Earlier Spanish expeditions along the continental coast appear to have been occupied with charting and mapping, and with stopping to trade with natives for gold, pearls, and lumber.
First Mass in Puerto Rico
In March 1509, Juan Ponce de León, with a group of colonists, including priests, landed in Puerto Rico at “Caparra” (now Pueblo Viejo in Guaynabo) and established a settlement there (the ruins remain and are a U.S. National Historic Landmark). That group’s first Mass would have been the first Mass we can say was offered on what is now U.S. territory.
On the west coast of South America, Vasco Núñez de Balboa’s expedition reached the Pacific Ocean at the shore of the Bay of San Miguel on September 29th, 1513, the feast of St. Michael the Archangel, at the sight of which the expedition’s chaplain Fr. Adrés de Vera chanted the Te Deum.
Dominican priest Fr. Vicente de Valverde and secular priest Juan de Sosa accompanied Pizarro’s expedition to Peru in 1533 and offered Mass along the way. Pizarro’s earlier expeditions, from 1527-1531, may also have had priests accompanying them.
A priest named Gonzalez accompanied the expedition of Juan de Grijalva in 1518 that landed briefly at Yucatan and further along the coast of Mexico, as described by Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who did not, however, record that Mass was offered there. Indeed, the priest appears in the narrative only to have assisted in helping the expedition locate and collect gold images of native deities that were then carried away.
First Mass in Mexico
On Easter Sunday, in April 1519, Fr. Bartolomé de Olmedo, the chaplain of Hernan Cortés’s expedition to Mexico, offered a high Mass in commemoration of the landing of the expedition two days prior at the site of the settlement they founded, the town of Vera Cruz.
Uncertainty about Florida in 1522
In early 1522, Ponce de León attempted, from Puerto Rico, to establish a settlement near Charlotte Harbor, on the west coast of Florida. But he was unable to do so, owing to the hostility of natives, who attacked and drove away the Spaniards, fatally wounding Ponce in the battle. The disaster occurred almost immediately upon their landing, but the brief account of the expedition by Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, in his Historia general y natural de las Indias suggests that some days elapsed between their landing and the attack, during which time the priests accompanying the expedition tried to preach to the natives and come to terms with them, but to no avail. If the priests were indeed onshore for a few days, as Oviedo suggests, before being driven away, they may well have offered Mass there, at Charlotte Harbor, which would have been the first Mass offered on what would become the continental U.S. But if they did so, it was not noted in the spotty records that remain of the expedition.
Uncertaintiy about North Carolina in 1526
In June 1526, two Dominican priests, Antonio Montesino and Anthony de Cervantes, accompanied several hundred colonists under the leadership of Lucas Vasques de Ayllón from San Domingo and attempted a settlement upon the Atlantic coast of the mainland north of Florida. They first made land at Cape Fear (near present-day Wilmington, North Carolina) but chose to sail on, looking for a more salubrious spot, which they found and established the small settlement of San Miguel de Guandape (or Gualdape), North Carolina, where, during the summer and fall of 1526, they certainly did offer Mass. After the death of Ayllón in October, the colony abandoned the country and returned to San Domingo. But the problem is locating where the settlement was. The original Spanish sources are conflicting about which direction the expedition took after it decided not to land at Cape Fear. One of the sources says that the settlers sailed north and located the settlement in precisely the same spot in Virginia that the English would later establish Jamestown. However, another source has them going south, which would locate Miguel de Guandape settlement perhaps around Georgetown, South Carolina, or even Sapelo Island, Georgia.
Uncertainty about Florida in 1522
Panfilo de Navaez (including Alvar Nuñez Caveza De Vaca) put ashore at present day Stump Pass near Englewood on the Gulf Coast of Florida on Good Friday, April 10th, 1528, and the landing party was resting at an evacuated Indian village there on Easter Sunday, where Franciscan priest Juan Suarez would possibly have celebrated Mass.
First Mass in Penscola Florida in 1559
In 1559, Don Tristan de Luna y Arellano commanded an expedition of 1500 soldiers and settlers, including Dominican priests, from Vera Cruz to the northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico, intending to establish a settlement there. He landed a portion of the expedition onshore, including the priests, and they offered Mass there on August 15. The place has long been thought to have been at present-day Pensacola, but close reading of the expedition’s papers has lately made it likely that the first landing—and therefore the August 15th Mass—was at present-day Pascagoula, Mississippi (within a couple of days, the entire expedition moved east to relocate, perhaps to Mobile Bay or to Pensacola Bay). A month later, even before most of the supplies had been unloaded, a hurricane hit and destroyed most of the ships and their cargo. The colonists struggled precariously through the winter, but abandoned the site and sailed away the following spring.
Certainty about Florida in 1565 on Our Lady's Birthday
On August 28th, 1565, the feast day of St. Augustine, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés put an expedition ashore on the northern Atlantic coast of Florida and established St. Augustine there, and Fr. Francisco López de Mendoza Grajales celebrated Mass on September 8th, Our Lady’s birthday, at a site that was lost for a while but was rediscovered a few decades ago and is probably within what is now (and had been at the time of its rediscovery) the Ponce de León Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park. The first Mission Nombre de Dios was built by Franciscans at that site in 1587, and this has lately been reconstructed, after a fashion, as part of the tourist park, although the Mission Nombre de Dios itself has been rebuilt more than once and relocated four blocks away since the first settlement.
First Mass in California in 1602
On the West Coast of what is now the continental United States, Carmelite friar Fr. Antonio de la Ascension, accompanying explorer Sebastian Vizcaíno, whose ships struggled up the coast of Baja California offered the first Mass in present-day California on November 12th, 1602 at a site at Point Loma in present-day San Diego, and continued up the coast to a site at Monterey Bay, where he celebrated another Mass on December 16th.
First Mass in Nova Scotia in 1604
Joshua Flesche, a secular priest, accompanied the French settlers who established Port-Royal in present-day Nova Scotia in 1604. He must have celebrated Mass soon after they arrived, for he was not at all inhibited from a rather expansive demonstration of his Catholicism, despite the fact that many among the settlers were Calvinists. The Jesuits who followed him to Port-Royal criticized him for rounding up local Mi’kmaq natives and baptizing them without catechizing them beforehand or afterwards. In May, 1613, the month of Our Lady, French Jesuits, including Frs. Pierre Biard and Edmond Masse, established the first French mission in America at what is now Fernald Point near the entrance to Somes Sound on Mount Desert Island, Maine. They waded ashore, named the place Saint Sauveur, offered Mass there, and set about planting crops and building a fort. In July, an English force from Virginia arrived by ship, killed three of the priests, wounded three more, took the rest of the settlers prisoner, cut down the cross the French Catholics had planted there and burned the buildings they had erected. Some of Fernald Point is now a part of Acadia National Park.
First Mass in Maryland in 1634
On November 22nd, 1633, Leonard Calvert, his brother George, and 150 other settlers, including three Jesuits—Andrew White, John Alcome, and Thomas Gervais—sailed from the Isle of Wight across the Atlantic to Maryland, under the proprietorship of Lord Baltimore. Their two ships, the Ark and the Dove, landed on an island in the lower Potomac River on the feast of Annunciation, March 25th, 1634. They named the island Saint Clement’s Island for Pope Saint Clement I, patron of mariners. On the day they landed, Fr. White offered Mass there, after which they raised and planted a wooden cross while reciting the Litany of the Holy Cross. Saint Clement’s Island is now a Maryland State Park and is accessible in the summer by tour boat. The settlers spent about three weeks there before negotiating the purchase of land at what is now St. Mary’s, farther down the Potomac near where it empties into the Chesapeake Bay.
Part 2
LOOKING AT THE BIG PICTURE FIRST
LOOKING AT THE BIG PICTURE FIRST
A Paragraph Says It All
Catholicism arrived in the colonial era, but most of the Spanish and French influences had faded by 1800. The Catholic Church grew through immigration, especially from Europe (Germany and Ireland at first, and in 1890-1914 from Italy, Poland and Eastern Europe.) In the nineteenth century the Church set up an elaborate infrastructure, based on diocese run by bishops appointed by the pope. Each diocese set up a network of parishes, schools, colleges, hospitals, orphanages and other charitable institutions. Many priests arrived from France and Ireland, but by 1900 Catholic seminaries were producing a sufficient supply of priests. Many young women became nuns, typically working as teachers and nurses. The Catholic population was primarily working-class until after World War II when it increasingly moved into white-collar status and left the inner city for the suburbs. After 1960, the number of priests and nuns fell rapidly and new vocations were few. The Catholic population was sustained by a large influx from Mexico and other Latin American nations.
Focusing-In on the Big Picture
Let us now look at things in a little more detail, but still within the boundaries of a “big picture” view. The more detailed parts can wait till later.
Catholicism first came to the territories now forming the United States of America, just before the 1517 Protestant Reformation in Europe, with the Spanish conquistadors and settlers arriving in present-day Florida in 1513 and then gradually branch out into the southwest.
First Mass, Hurricane Destruction, then Departure
On August 15th, 1559―the feast of the Assumption of Our Lady into Heaven, the woman clothed with the sun, with the moon at her feet, and crowned by twelve stars—the very first Holy Sacrifice of the Mass (though other areas also claim to have had the first Mass: see article 1), in what is nowadays called the United States of America, was offered in the area of Penscola, Florida. Spanish colonists led by Don Tristán de Luna y Arellano, accompanied by five Dominican priests and a lay brother, arrived at Pensacola. Devastated by a hurricane, the settlement was abandoned two years later. Thus no permanent settlement was founded—but that was soon to change.
First Colony
Soon after, the Spanish were to return and become the first Europeans to establish major settlements on the mainland of North America. In 1565, a royal Spanish grant was issued to colonize Florida with the condition that twelve religious and four Jesuits be maintained. This first colony was founded at St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565, and is the oldest Catholic city in the United States of America. Thus, the earliest Christians―in the territory which would eventually become the United States―were Roman Catholics.
Having secured Spanish supremacy by defeating the French and planting a permanent colony at St. Augustine in 1565, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés tried to evangelize the Indians. He had been accompanied by four priests. Nombre de Dios (mission) is at the spot of the first Thanksgiving Mass celebrated on the grounds.
Fr. Martin Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales became first parish priest of St. Augustine, the first established parish in the United States. Pending the arrival of regular missionaries, Menéndez appointed soldiers he deemed qualified to give religious instructions to the Indians. The Jesuits were the first to arrive. Three were sent by St. Francis Borgia in 1566 and ten in 1568. The few who survived the martyrdom of their brethren were recalled in 1572. In 1577, the Franciscans arrived. In 1597, a young chief, smarting from a reprimand, instigated a general massacre of the missionaries.
Catholicism arrived in the colonial era, but most of the Spanish and French influences had faded by 1800. The Catholic Church grew through immigration, especially from Europe (Germany and Ireland at first, and in 1890-1914 from Italy, Poland and Eastern Europe.) In the nineteenth century the Church set up an elaborate infrastructure, based on diocese run by bishops appointed by the pope. Each diocese set up a network of parishes, schools, colleges, hospitals, orphanages and other charitable institutions. Many priests arrived from France and Ireland, but by 1900 Catholic seminaries were producing a sufficient supply of priests. Many young women became nuns, typically working as teachers and nurses. The Catholic population was primarily working-class until after World War II when it increasingly moved into white-collar status and left the inner city for the suburbs. After 1960, the number of priests and nuns fell rapidly and new vocations were few. The Catholic population was sustained by a large influx from Mexico and other Latin American nations.
Focusing-In on the Big Picture
Let us now look at things in a little more detail, but still within the boundaries of a “big picture” view. The more detailed parts can wait till later.
Catholicism first came to the territories now forming the United States of America, just before the 1517 Protestant Reformation in Europe, with the Spanish conquistadors and settlers arriving in present-day Florida in 1513 and then gradually branch out into the southwest.
First Mass, Hurricane Destruction, then Departure
On August 15th, 1559―the feast of the Assumption of Our Lady into Heaven, the woman clothed with the sun, with the moon at her feet, and crowned by twelve stars—the very first Holy Sacrifice of the Mass (though other areas also claim to have had the first Mass: see article 1), in what is nowadays called the United States of America, was offered in the area of Penscola, Florida. Spanish colonists led by Don Tristán de Luna y Arellano, accompanied by five Dominican priests and a lay brother, arrived at Pensacola. Devastated by a hurricane, the settlement was abandoned two years later. Thus no permanent settlement was founded—but that was soon to change.
First Colony
Soon after, the Spanish were to return and become the first Europeans to establish major settlements on the mainland of North America. In 1565, a royal Spanish grant was issued to colonize Florida with the condition that twelve religious and four Jesuits be maintained. This first colony was founded at St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565, and is the oldest Catholic city in the United States of America. Thus, the earliest Christians―in the territory which would eventually become the United States―were Roman Catholics.
Having secured Spanish supremacy by defeating the French and planting a permanent colony at St. Augustine in 1565, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés tried to evangelize the Indians. He had been accompanied by four priests. Nombre de Dios (mission) is at the spot of the first Thanksgiving Mass celebrated on the grounds.
Fr. Martin Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales became first parish priest of St. Augustine, the first established parish in the United States. Pending the arrival of regular missionaries, Menéndez appointed soldiers he deemed qualified to give religious instructions to the Indians. The Jesuits were the first to arrive. Three were sent by St. Francis Borgia in 1566 and ten in 1568. The few who survived the martyrdom of their brethren were recalled in 1572. In 1577, the Franciscans arrived. In 1597, a young chief, smarting from a reprimand, instigated a general massacre of the missionaries.
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In St. Augustine, Florida, a plaque at the base of the world’s tallest cross, which is 208 feet high, says that it “marks the approximate site where in 1565 the [Catholic] cross of Christianity was first permanently planted in what is now the United States.” That’s right―Jesus arrived in America here first, over a half-century before the Pilgrims even touched their toes to Plymouth Rock.
“The Great Cross” (as it is popularly called) was erected in 1966 to mark the 400th anniversary of that momentous day. It’s built of 70 tons of stainless steel plates, packed with concrete in its lower third to prevent toppling by hurricanes. It’s part of the Shrine of Our Lady of La Leche, and its height was designed so that everyone near St. Augustine could see it, and be reminded “of the religious beginning of our nation,” according to the plaque. One problem with The Great Cross is that it’s built on a point of land jutting into Matanzas Bay. This makes its greatness difficult to appreciate from the parking lot, where it looks like just another steeple topper in the distance. It was the first of America’s giant crosses, and it’s still loftier than all that have followed it. But it’s spindly thin, while more recent heaven-scratching crosses have been built beefy, and right next to freeways, so that passers-by can easily be admired. The Great Cross is illuminated by powerful spotlights at night, eliminating the need for a blinking red light on top, a secular law that has reportedly kept all subsequent tall crosses, mindful of their dignity, under 200 feet. |
Part 3
MULTINATIONAL CATHOLICISM COMES TO AMERICA
MULTINATIONAL CATHOLICISM COMES TO AMERICA
Spanish Catholicism Branches Out
The Spanish spread the Catholic Faith through Spanish Florida by way of its mission system; these missions extended into Georgia and the Carolinas. As early as 1634 Jesuits were established in the Maryland colony, and after 1681 Catholics were tolerated in Pennsylvania. It was in these states (first Maryland and then in PA) that the first Catholic churches were established. Eventually, Spain established missions in what are now Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Junípero Serra (died 1784) founded a series of missions in California which became important economic, political, and religious institutions. Overland routes were established from New Mexico that resulted in the colonization of San Francisco in 1776 and Los Angeles in 1781.
French Catholicism Comes to America
In the French territories, Catholicism was ushered in with the establishment of colonies and forts in Detroit, St. Louis, Mobile, Biloxi, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans. In the late 17th century, French expeditions, which included sovereign, religious and commercial aims, established a foothold on the Mississippi River and Gulf Coast. With its first settlements, France lay claim to a vast region of North America and set out to establish a commercial empire and French nation stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada. The French colony of Louisiana originally claimed all the land on both sides of the Mississippi River and the lands that drained into it. The following present day states were part of the then vast tract of Louisiana: Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
British Catholicism Comes to America
Catholicism was introduced to the English colonies with the founding of the Province of Maryland by Jesuit settlers from England in 1634. Maryland was one of the few regions among the English colonies in North America that was predominantly Catholic, in large part due to the English Catholics fleeing from persecution in the now Protestant England. In England, the 1646 defeat of the Royalists (generally Catholics) in the English Civil War led to stringent laws against Catholic education and the extradition of known Jesuits from the colony, including Andrew White, and the destruction of their school at Calverton Manor. During the greater part of the Maryland colonial period, Jesuits continued to conduct Catholic schools in secret.
Maryland was a rare example of religious toleration in a fairly intolerant age, particularly amongst other English colonies which frequently exhibited a quite militant Protestantism. The Maryland Toleration Act, issued in 1649, was one of the first laws that explicitly defined tolerance of varieties of religion (as long as it was Christian). It has been considered a precursor to the First Amendment.
Although the Stuart kings of England did not hate the Roman Catholic Church, their subjects did, causing Catholics to be harassed and persecuted in England throughout the 17th century. Driven by the “duty of finding a refuge for his Roman Catholic brethren,” George Calvert obtained a Maryland charter from Charles I, in 1632, for the territory between Pennsylvania and Virginia. In 1634, two ships, the Ark and the Dove, brought the first settlers to Maryland. Aboard were approximately two hundred people.
Roman Catholic fortunes fluctuated in Maryland during the rest of the 17th century, as they became an increasingly smaller minority of the population. After the Glorious Revolution of 1689 in England, penal laws deprived Roman Catholics of the right to vote, hold office, educate their children or worship publicly. Until the American Revolution, Roman Catholics in Maryland were dissenters in their own country, but keeping loyal to their convictions.
British Protestantism Comes to America
Many of the British North American colonies that eventually formed the United States of America were settled in the 17th century by men and women, who, in the face of European religious persecution, refused to compromise passionately held religious convictions (largely stemming from the Protestant Reformation which began c. 1517) and fled Europe. The territory that would become the Thirteen Colonies in 1776, was largely populated by Protestants―due to Protestant settlers seeking religious freedom from the Church of England (which was established 1534). These settlers were primarily Puritans from East Anglia, especially just before the English Civil War (1641–1651); there were also some Anglicans and Catholics coming from England, but these were far fewer in number. Because of the predominance of Protestants among those coming from England, the English colonies became almost entirely Protestant by the time of the American Revolution.
Two chief groups were the “Pilgrims” and the “Puritans”. One group, which later became known as the “Pilgrims”, settled the Plymouth Colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620, seeking refuge from conflicts in England which led up to the English Civil War. The “Puritans”, a much larger group than the “Pilgrims”, established the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629 with 400 settlers. Puritans were English Protestants who wished to reform and purify the Church of England in the New World of what they considered to be unacceptable residues or traces of Roman Catholicism. Within two years, an additional 2,000 settlers arrived. Beginning in 1630, as many as 20,000 Puritans emigrated to America from England to gain the liberty to worship as they chose. Most settled in New England, but some went as far as the West Indies.
Religious Tolerance Sows Seeds of Ultimate Religious Collapse
Roger Williams, who preached religious tolerance, separation of church and state, and a complete break with the Church of England, was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony and founded Rhode Island Colony, which became a haven for other religious refugees from the Puritan community. Some migrants who came to Colonial America were in search of the freedom to practice forms of Christianity which were prohibited and persecuted in Europe. Since there was no state religion, in fact there was not yet a state, and since Protestantism had no central authority, religious practice in the colonies became diverse.
Delaware was originally settled by Lutherans of New Sweden. When the Dutch of New Netherland conquered the colony, the Swedes and Finns were allowed to retain their religious institutions. Similarly, when the English subsequently took over the Dutch colonial holdings, the religious autonomy of the Dutch, Swedes, and Finns persisted, creating a culture of increased religious tolerance.
The Religious Society of Friends formed in England in 1652 around leader George Fox. Quakers were severely persecuted in England for daring to deviate so far from Anglicanism. This reign of terror impelled Friends to seek refuge in New Jersey in the 1670s, formally part of New Netherland, where they soon became well entrenched. In 1681, when Quaker leader William Penn parlayed a debt owed by Charles II to his father into a charter for the Province of Pennsylvania, many more Quakers were prepared to grasp the opportunity to live in a land where they might worship freely. By 1685, as many as 8,000 Quakers had come to Pennsylvania and Delaware. Although the Quakers may have resembled the Puritans in some religious beliefs and practices, they differed with them over the necessity of compelling religious uniformity in society.
Pennsylvania Germans are inaccurately known as Pennsylvania Dutch from a misunderstanding of “Pennsylvania Deutsch”, the group's German language name. The first group of Germans to settle in Pennsylvania arrived in Philadelphia in 1683 from Krefeld, Germany, and included Mennonites and possibly some Dutch Quakers.
The efforts of the founding fathers to find a proper role for their support of religion—and the degree to which religion can be supported by public officials without being inconsistent with the revolutionary imperative of freedom of religion for all citizens—is a question that is still debated in the country today.
The Spanish spread the Catholic Faith through Spanish Florida by way of its mission system; these missions extended into Georgia and the Carolinas. As early as 1634 Jesuits were established in the Maryland colony, and after 1681 Catholics were tolerated in Pennsylvania. It was in these states (first Maryland and then in PA) that the first Catholic churches were established. Eventually, Spain established missions in what are now Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Junípero Serra (died 1784) founded a series of missions in California which became important economic, political, and religious institutions. Overland routes were established from New Mexico that resulted in the colonization of San Francisco in 1776 and Los Angeles in 1781.
French Catholicism Comes to America
In the French territories, Catholicism was ushered in with the establishment of colonies and forts in Detroit, St. Louis, Mobile, Biloxi, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans. In the late 17th century, French expeditions, which included sovereign, religious and commercial aims, established a foothold on the Mississippi River and Gulf Coast. With its first settlements, France lay claim to a vast region of North America and set out to establish a commercial empire and French nation stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada. The French colony of Louisiana originally claimed all the land on both sides of the Mississippi River and the lands that drained into it. The following present day states were part of the then vast tract of Louisiana: Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
British Catholicism Comes to America
Catholicism was introduced to the English colonies with the founding of the Province of Maryland by Jesuit settlers from England in 1634. Maryland was one of the few regions among the English colonies in North America that was predominantly Catholic, in large part due to the English Catholics fleeing from persecution in the now Protestant England. In England, the 1646 defeat of the Royalists (generally Catholics) in the English Civil War led to stringent laws against Catholic education and the extradition of known Jesuits from the colony, including Andrew White, and the destruction of their school at Calverton Manor. During the greater part of the Maryland colonial period, Jesuits continued to conduct Catholic schools in secret.
Maryland was a rare example of religious toleration in a fairly intolerant age, particularly amongst other English colonies which frequently exhibited a quite militant Protestantism. The Maryland Toleration Act, issued in 1649, was one of the first laws that explicitly defined tolerance of varieties of religion (as long as it was Christian). It has been considered a precursor to the First Amendment.
Although the Stuart kings of England did not hate the Roman Catholic Church, their subjects did, causing Catholics to be harassed and persecuted in England throughout the 17th century. Driven by the “duty of finding a refuge for his Roman Catholic brethren,” George Calvert obtained a Maryland charter from Charles I, in 1632, for the territory between Pennsylvania and Virginia. In 1634, two ships, the Ark and the Dove, brought the first settlers to Maryland. Aboard were approximately two hundred people.
Roman Catholic fortunes fluctuated in Maryland during the rest of the 17th century, as they became an increasingly smaller minority of the population. After the Glorious Revolution of 1689 in England, penal laws deprived Roman Catholics of the right to vote, hold office, educate their children or worship publicly. Until the American Revolution, Roman Catholics in Maryland were dissenters in their own country, but keeping loyal to their convictions.
British Protestantism Comes to America
Many of the British North American colonies that eventually formed the United States of America were settled in the 17th century by men and women, who, in the face of European religious persecution, refused to compromise passionately held religious convictions (largely stemming from the Protestant Reformation which began c. 1517) and fled Europe. The territory that would become the Thirteen Colonies in 1776, was largely populated by Protestants―due to Protestant settlers seeking religious freedom from the Church of England (which was established 1534). These settlers were primarily Puritans from East Anglia, especially just before the English Civil War (1641–1651); there were also some Anglicans and Catholics coming from England, but these were far fewer in number. Because of the predominance of Protestants among those coming from England, the English colonies became almost entirely Protestant by the time of the American Revolution.
Two chief groups were the “Pilgrims” and the “Puritans”. One group, which later became known as the “Pilgrims”, settled the Plymouth Colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620, seeking refuge from conflicts in England which led up to the English Civil War. The “Puritans”, a much larger group than the “Pilgrims”, established the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629 with 400 settlers. Puritans were English Protestants who wished to reform and purify the Church of England in the New World of what they considered to be unacceptable residues or traces of Roman Catholicism. Within two years, an additional 2,000 settlers arrived. Beginning in 1630, as many as 20,000 Puritans emigrated to America from England to gain the liberty to worship as they chose. Most settled in New England, but some went as far as the West Indies.
Religious Tolerance Sows Seeds of Ultimate Religious Collapse
Roger Williams, who preached religious tolerance, separation of church and state, and a complete break with the Church of England, was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony and founded Rhode Island Colony, which became a haven for other religious refugees from the Puritan community. Some migrants who came to Colonial America were in search of the freedom to practice forms of Christianity which were prohibited and persecuted in Europe. Since there was no state religion, in fact there was not yet a state, and since Protestantism had no central authority, religious practice in the colonies became diverse.
Delaware was originally settled by Lutherans of New Sweden. When the Dutch of New Netherland conquered the colony, the Swedes and Finns were allowed to retain their religious institutions. Similarly, when the English subsequently took over the Dutch colonial holdings, the religious autonomy of the Dutch, Swedes, and Finns persisted, creating a culture of increased religious tolerance.
The Religious Society of Friends formed in England in 1652 around leader George Fox. Quakers were severely persecuted in England for daring to deviate so far from Anglicanism. This reign of terror impelled Friends to seek refuge in New Jersey in the 1670s, formally part of New Netherland, where they soon became well entrenched. In 1681, when Quaker leader William Penn parlayed a debt owed by Charles II to his father into a charter for the Province of Pennsylvania, many more Quakers were prepared to grasp the opportunity to live in a land where they might worship freely. By 1685, as many as 8,000 Quakers had come to Pennsylvania and Delaware. Although the Quakers may have resembled the Puritans in some religious beliefs and practices, they differed with them over the necessity of compelling religious uniformity in society.
Pennsylvania Germans are inaccurately known as Pennsylvania Dutch from a misunderstanding of “Pennsylvania Deutsch”, the group's German language name. The first group of Germans to settle in Pennsylvania arrived in Philadelphia in 1683 from Krefeld, Germany, and included Mennonites and possibly some Dutch Quakers.
The efforts of the founding fathers to find a proper role for their support of religion—and the degree to which religion can be supported by public officials without being inconsistent with the revolutionary imperative of freedom of religion for all citizens—is a question that is still debated in the country today.
Part 4
CATHOLICISM AND THE THIRTEEN COLONIES
CATHOLICISM AND THE THIRTEEN COLONIES
Catholic Church in the Thirteen Colonies
The situation of the Catholic Church in the Thirteen Colonies was characterized by an extensive religious persecution originating from Protestant sects, which would barely allow religious toleration to Catholics living on American territory.
Origins of anti-Catholicism
American Anti-Catholicism has its origins in the Reformation. British colonists, who were predominantly Protestant, opposed not only the Roman Catholic Church but also the Church of England, which they believed perpetuated some Catholic doctrine and practices, and for that reason deemed it to be insufficiently Reformed. Protestants discontented with the Church of England formed the earliest religious settlements in North America. Monsignor John Tracy Ellis wrote that a “universal anti-Catholic bias was brought to Jamestown in 1607 and vigorously cultivated in all the thirteen colonies from Massachusetts to Georgia.”
Some colonies supported an established church, which received tax support from the colonial legislature.
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES
Virginia
Eighty-one years before the coming of the English to Jamestown in 1607, a settlement was made in Virginia by Spaniards from San Domingo, under the leadership of Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón. Accompanied by the Dominican Fathers Antonio de Montesinos and Antonio de Cervantes with Brother Peter de Estrada, the expedition set sail in three vessels from Puerto de la Plata, in June 1526. The severity of the winter, the rebellion of the settlers, and the hostility of the natives caused the abandonment of the settlement in the spring of 1527.
In 1624 Virginia was made a crown colony. Because of the establishment of the English Church, hostility was shown to adherents of other beliefs and to Catholics in particular. Lord Baltimore attempted in vain to plant a Catholic colony in Virginia (1629–30). Stringent legislation was enacted against Catholics.
In 1641 a decree declared that adherents of the pope were to be fined 1,000 pounds of tobacco if they attempted to hold office. The following year all priests were given five days within which to leave the colony. In 1661 all persons were obliged to attend the established Protestant religious services or pay a fine of £20 (that would be $6,000 today). The governor issued orders to magistrates, sheriffs, constables, and people to be diligent in the apprehension and bringing to justice of all Catholic priests. The records of Norfolk County (1687) show Fathers Edmonds and Raymond arrested. In 1699 Catholics were deprived of their right of voting, and later a fine of 500 pounds of tobacco was imposed upon violators of the law. They were declared incompetent as witnesses in 1705, and in 1753 such incompetency was made to cover all cases.
Massachusetts
Massachusetts was first settled by English religious dissenters. Quakers, Jews, and Roman Catholics were not permitted in the colony. Catholics avoided Massachusetts during the colonial period after laws passed in 1647 and 1700 forbade Catholic priests to reside in the colony under pain of imprisonment and execution. Because many of the British colonists, such as the Puritans and Congregationalists, were fleeing religious persecution by the Church of England, much of early American religious culture exhibited the anti-Catholic bias of these Protestant denominations.
Near the close of the reign of Charles I (died 1649), the forced emigration of the Irish brought many to Massachusetts. However, their number is hard to estimate because the law obliged all Irishmen in certain towns of Ireland to take English surnames—the names of some small town, of a color, of a particular trade or office, or of a certain art or craft.
New Hampshire
Abenaki natives, converted by Jesuit missionaries from Quebec, were the first Catholics of New Hampshire. Originally settled by Anglicans, in 1641 New Hampshire came under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts.
Few Catholics appear among the early settlers, as they were banned by the charter of the Plymouth Council, which excluded from New England all who had not taken the Oath of Supremacy. The Oath of Supremacy required any person taking public or church office in England to swear allegiance to the monarch as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Failure to do so was to be treated as treasonable. Catholics were denied the right of freemen under the Royal Commission of 1679, which required the Oath of Supremacy, and this was endorsed by the General Assembly held at Portsmouth the following year; and in 1696 a test oath was imposed on the people under pain of fine or imprisonment. The proscription of Catholics continued under the state constitution even after the adoption of the federal constitution.
Maryland
Catholicism was introduced to the English colonies in 1634 with the founding of the Province of Maryland by Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, based on a charter granted to his father George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore. The first settlers were accompanied by two Jesuit missionaries travelling as gentlemen adventurers.
However, the 1646 defeat of the Royalists in the English Civil War, led to stringent laws, against Catholic education and the extradition of known Jesuits from the colony, including Andrew White, and the destruction of their school at Calverton Manor. During the greater part of the Maryland colonial period, Jesuits continued to conduct Catholic schools clandestinely.
After Virginia established Anglicanism as mandatory in the colony, many Puritans migrated from Virginia to Maryland. The government gave them land for a settlement called Providence (now called Annapolis). In 1650, the Puritans revolted against the proprietary government and set up a new government that outlawed both Catholicism and Anglicanism. In March 1655, the 2nd Lord Baltimore sent an army under Governor William Stone to put down this revolt. Near Annapolis, his Roman Catholic army was decisively defeated by a Puritan army in what was to be known as the “Battle of the Severn”. The Puritan revolt lasted until 1658, when the Calvert family regained control and re-enacted the Toleration Act.
Connecticut
The first English settlement was established on the Connecticut River at Windsor by traders from the Plymouth Colony in 1633. In the same year the Dutch from New Amsterdam had sailed up the river and erected a trading house and fort where the city of Hartford now stands, a few miles below Windsor. The Dutch soon after withdrew, leaving the English to establish the first permanent settlements within the boundaries of Connecticut. In 1664 the New Haven Colony, then comprising the various settlements along the coast, was forced to unite with those in the Connecticut valley, thus forming one commonwealth thereafter known as Connecticut. The vast majority of the population remained distinctively English of Puritan origin. Congregationalism was the established religion supported by public taxation.
Rhode Island
The earliest settlers in Rhode Island were led by Roger Williams and other refugees from Massachusetts. In 1739 there were thirty-three churches in the colony; twelve Baptist, ten Quaker, six Congregational or Presbyterian, and five Episcopalian. It is said that in 1680 there was not one Catholic in the colony, and for a long period their number must have been small.
Delaware
The area of Delaware was first settled by Swedish colonists under the leadership of Peter Minuit, former governor of New Amsterdam. In 1655 the Swedish settlements surrendered to the Dutch, who in 1664 surrendered to the English. From its earliest settlement, at no time did religious intolerance ever appear in the government of the Swedish colony which grew into the State of Delaware.
Prior to 1772 no definite records are obtainable regarding any regularly established Catholic church in the present State of Delaware. The Catholics in the State prior to the latter part of the eighteenth century were very few in number. In 1730 Cornelius Hallahan, an Irish Catholic settled in Mill Creek Hundred in New Castle Country on an estate called by him Cuba Rock, near the present location of Mount Cuba, Delaware. The first Catholic services in the State were probably held at his house. The Apoquiniminck Mission, in the lower part of New Castle Country, was established before 1750 by Jesuits from St. Xavier’s Mission in Cecil County, Maryland.
In a 1748 report from the Episcopal Mission at Dover (Kent Country) to the clergymen of the Pennsylvania province, it is stated that the “Quakers and Roman Catholics were long accustomed to bury their dead at their own plantations.” Again in 1751 a like report from the Dover Mission states: “There are about five or six families of Papists, who are attended once a month from Maryland with a priest.” In January 1772, Father Matthew Sittensperger, a Jesuit known under the name of Manners, purchased a farm in Mill Creek Hundred which was known as Coffee Run, and here a log chapel called St. Mary’s and a residence were erected. Father Sittensperger was succeeded by the Rev. Stephen Faure who, with other Frenchmen, was driven from St. Domingo by slave uprisings and settled at Wilmington.
In 1785 Delaware was one of the four states (the others being Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia) where Catholics were not virtually under civil disabilities.
North Carolina
In 1663 Charles II, of Catholic sympathies, granted to Sir George Carteret and seven others a stretch of land on the Atlantic coast, lying between Virginia and Florida. The grantees were created “absolute lords proprietors” of the province of Carolina, with full powers to make and execute such laws as they deemed proper. In 1674 the population was about four thousand. After 1729 Carolina became a royal province, the king having purchased from the proprietors seven-eighths of their domain. Under the lords proprietors, there was much religious discrimination and even persecution; but there was little under the Crown except as to holding office. The disqualification for office involved in denying the truth of the Protestant religion remained in the Constitution until the Convention of 1835.
New York
The Dutch Colony of the seventeenth century was officially intolerantly Protestant but was in practice tolerant and fair to people of other faiths who dwelt within New Netherland. When the English took the province from the Dutch in 1664, they granted full religious toleration to the other forms of Protestantism, and preserved the property rights of the Dutch Reformed Church, while recognizing its discipline. The General Assembly of the province held in 1682 under the famous Governor Thomas Dongan, an Irish Catholic nobleman, adopted the Charter of Liberties, which proclaimed religious liberty to all Christians, although this charter did not receive formal royal sanction. In 1688 the Stuart Revolution in England reversed this policy of liberality, and the Province of New York immediately followed the example of the mother-country in intolerance and legal persecution of the Catholic Church and its adherents.
In 1697, although the Anglican Church was never formally established in the Province of New York, Trinity Church was founded in the City of New York by royal charter and received many civil privileges and munificent grants of land. The Dutch Reformed Churches continued, however, to enjoy their property and the protection of their rights undisturbed by the new Anglican foundation, the inhabitants of Dutch blood being then largely in the ascendant. This condition continued many years, for when the Revolution occurred in 1776 the majority of the inhabitants of the Province of New York were not of English descent.
The political conditions at home, and also the long contest between England and France for the control of North America, resulted in the enactment by the provincial legislature from time to time of proscriptive laws against the Catholics. Catholic priests and teachers were ordered to keep away from the province or, if they by any chance came there, to depart at once. Severe penalties were provided for disobedience to these laws extending to long imprisonment or even death. In the disturbances and panic of the Slave Insurrection of 1741 schoolmaster John Ury was tried and executed under these statutes for the crime of being a “Popish priest” and teaching his religion.
New Jersey
New Jersey was founded as a proprietary colony by grant to Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, who attracted settlers not only from England but from Scotland, New England, and particularly from Long Island and Connecticut. These planters were largely Calvinists from Presbyterian and Congregational communities, and occupied mainly land in Newark, Elizabeth, and upon the north shore of Monmouth County. The Calvinists brought with them into East Jersey their distinctive views upon religious and civil matters. East Jersey resembled New England in civil government; West Jersey resembled Virginia.
The comparative liberality of the proprietary rule of Berkeley and Carteret, especially in religious matters, attracted some Catholic settlers to New Jersey. As early as 1672 Fathers Harvey and Gage visited both Woodbridge and Elizabethtown (then the capital of New Jersey) for the purpose of ministering to the Catholics in those places. Robert Vanquellen, a native of Caen, France, and a Catholic, lived at Woodbridge, and was surveyor general of that section of New Jersey in 1669 and 1670. Catholics were, however, regarded with some suspicion, and considerable bigotry at times manifested itself. A Catholic by the name of William Douglass, when elected a representative from Bergen County, was excluded from the General Assembly of 1668 because of his religious convictions. In 1691 the New York Assembly passed the first anti-Catholic enactment, which was followed by laws strongly opposed to Catholics and their beliefs both in New York and New Jersey. Lord Cornbury, when appointed governor in 1701, was instructed by Queen Anne to permit liberty of conscience to all persons except “papists”.
South Carolina
In 1670 the foundation of South Carolina was laid in a settlement on the Ashley River and a governor was appointed. In 1673 Charleston was fixed as the permanent site for the settlement, a number of Dutch immigrants from New York having arrived the year before. The colony was further augmented by Presbyterian Scotch-Irish in 1683, but the most important addition was the coming of the French Huguenots upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, who settled on the Cooper River, and were later admitted to the political rights of the colony. In 1697 religious liberty was accorded to all “except Papists”. An attempt was made in 1704 to exclude Dissenters from the Assembly, but the law was annulled by Queen Anne. The Crown assumed control in 1721.
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania was established in 1681 by a grant of 40,000 square miles to William Penn for services rendered to the crown by his father, Admiral Penn. Penn, a devout member of the Society of friends, was impelled by desire to provide a safe home for persecuted Quakers. Penn was far in advance of his time in his views of the capacity of mankind for democratic government, and equally so in his broad-minded toleration of differences of religious belief. The first Constitution of Pennsylvania adopted by the freeholders established religious liberty, but was not accepted by the Privy Council. The Frame of Government of 1701 guaranteed liberty of conscience to all who confessed and acknowledged “one Almighty God”, and made eligible for office all who believed in “Jesus Christ the Savior of the World.”
During the time of Lieutenant Governor Gordon a Catholic chapel was erected, which was thought to be contrary to the laws of Parliament, but it was not suppressed pending a decision of the British Government upon the question whether immunity granted by the Pennsylvania law did not protect Catholics. When, during the French War, hostility to France led to an attack upon the Catholics of Philadelphia by a mob after Braddock’s defeat, the Quakers protected them.
Georgia
James Oglethorpe, who had followed up a brilliant military career as aide-de-camp to Prince Eugene by a still more brilliant parliamentary career, had conceived the plan of settling a colony in the New World with worthy, though unfortunate and economically unproductive, inmates of the wretched English prisons. According to the colony’s by-laws, freedom of worship was to be granted to all prospective colonists “except papists”.[20] In royal colonies such as Georgia, citizens were expected to belong to the Anglican Church.
The situation of the Catholic Church in the Thirteen Colonies was characterized by an extensive religious persecution originating from Protestant sects, which would barely allow religious toleration to Catholics living on American territory.
Origins of anti-Catholicism
American Anti-Catholicism has its origins in the Reformation. British colonists, who were predominantly Protestant, opposed not only the Roman Catholic Church but also the Church of England, which they believed perpetuated some Catholic doctrine and practices, and for that reason deemed it to be insufficiently Reformed. Protestants discontented with the Church of England formed the earliest religious settlements in North America. Monsignor John Tracy Ellis wrote that a “universal anti-Catholic bias was brought to Jamestown in 1607 and vigorously cultivated in all the thirteen colonies from Massachusetts to Georgia.”
Some colonies supported an established church, which received tax support from the colonial legislature.
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES
Virginia
Eighty-one years before the coming of the English to Jamestown in 1607, a settlement was made in Virginia by Spaniards from San Domingo, under the leadership of Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón. Accompanied by the Dominican Fathers Antonio de Montesinos and Antonio de Cervantes with Brother Peter de Estrada, the expedition set sail in three vessels from Puerto de la Plata, in June 1526. The severity of the winter, the rebellion of the settlers, and the hostility of the natives caused the abandonment of the settlement in the spring of 1527.
In 1624 Virginia was made a crown colony. Because of the establishment of the English Church, hostility was shown to adherents of other beliefs and to Catholics in particular. Lord Baltimore attempted in vain to plant a Catholic colony in Virginia (1629–30). Stringent legislation was enacted against Catholics.
In 1641 a decree declared that adherents of the pope were to be fined 1,000 pounds of tobacco if they attempted to hold office. The following year all priests were given five days within which to leave the colony. In 1661 all persons were obliged to attend the established Protestant religious services or pay a fine of £20 (that would be $6,000 today). The governor issued orders to magistrates, sheriffs, constables, and people to be diligent in the apprehension and bringing to justice of all Catholic priests. The records of Norfolk County (1687) show Fathers Edmonds and Raymond arrested. In 1699 Catholics were deprived of their right of voting, and later a fine of 500 pounds of tobacco was imposed upon violators of the law. They were declared incompetent as witnesses in 1705, and in 1753 such incompetency was made to cover all cases.
Massachusetts
Massachusetts was first settled by English religious dissenters. Quakers, Jews, and Roman Catholics were not permitted in the colony. Catholics avoided Massachusetts during the colonial period after laws passed in 1647 and 1700 forbade Catholic priests to reside in the colony under pain of imprisonment and execution. Because many of the British colonists, such as the Puritans and Congregationalists, were fleeing religious persecution by the Church of England, much of early American religious culture exhibited the anti-Catholic bias of these Protestant denominations.
Near the close of the reign of Charles I (died 1649), the forced emigration of the Irish brought many to Massachusetts. However, their number is hard to estimate because the law obliged all Irishmen in certain towns of Ireland to take English surnames—the names of some small town, of a color, of a particular trade or office, or of a certain art or craft.
New Hampshire
Abenaki natives, converted by Jesuit missionaries from Quebec, were the first Catholics of New Hampshire. Originally settled by Anglicans, in 1641 New Hampshire came under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts.
Few Catholics appear among the early settlers, as they were banned by the charter of the Plymouth Council, which excluded from New England all who had not taken the Oath of Supremacy. The Oath of Supremacy required any person taking public or church office in England to swear allegiance to the monarch as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Failure to do so was to be treated as treasonable. Catholics were denied the right of freemen under the Royal Commission of 1679, which required the Oath of Supremacy, and this was endorsed by the General Assembly held at Portsmouth the following year; and in 1696 a test oath was imposed on the people under pain of fine or imprisonment. The proscription of Catholics continued under the state constitution even after the adoption of the federal constitution.
Maryland
Catholicism was introduced to the English colonies in 1634 with the founding of the Province of Maryland by Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, based on a charter granted to his father George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore. The first settlers were accompanied by two Jesuit missionaries travelling as gentlemen adventurers.
However, the 1646 defeat of the Royalists in the English Civil War, led to stringent laws, against Catholic education and the extradition of known Jesuits from the colony, including Andrew White, and the destruction of their school at Calverton Manor. During the greater part of the Maryland colonial period, Jesuits continued to conduct Catholic schools clandestinely.
After Virginia established Anglicanism as mandatory in the colony, many Puritans migrated from Virginia to Maryland. The government gave them land for a settlement called Providence (now called Annapolis). In 1650, the Puritans revolted against the proprietary government and set up a new government that outlawed both Catholicism and Anglicanism. In March 1655, the 2nd Lord Baltimore sent an army under Governor William Stone to put down this revolt. Near Annapolis, his Roman Catholic army was decisively defeated by a Puritan army in what was to be known as the “Battle of the Severn”. The Puritan revolt lasted until 1658, when the Calvert family regained control and re-enacted the Toleration Act.
Connecticut
The first English settlement was established on the Connecticut River at Windsor by traders from the Plymouth Colony in 1633. In the same year the Dutch from New Amsterdam had sailed up the river and erected a trading house and fort where the city of Hartford now stands, a few miles below Windsor. The Dutch soon after withdrew, leaving the English to establish the first permanent settlements within the boundaries of Connecticut. In 1664 the New Haven Colony, then comprising the various settlements along the coast, was forced to unite with those in the Connecticut valley, thus forming one commonwealth thereafter known as Connecticut. The vast majority of the population remained distinctively English of Puritan origin. Congregationalism was the established religion supported by public taxation.
Rhode Island
The earliest settlers in Rhode Island were led by Roger Williams and other refugees from Massachusetts. In 1739 there were thirty-three churches in the colony; twelve Baptist, ten Quaker, six Congregational or Presbyterian, and five Episcopalian. It is said that in 1680 there was not one Catholic in the colony, and for a long period their number must have been small.
Delaware
The area of Delaware was first settled by Swedish colonists under the leadership of Peter Minuit, former governor of New Amsterdam. In 1655 the Swedish settlements surrendered to the Dutch, who in 1664 surrendered to the English. From its earliest settlement, at no time did religious intolerance ever appear in the government of the Swedish colony which grew into the State of Delaware.
Prior to 1772 no definite records are obtainable regarding any regularly established Catholic church in the present State of Delaware. The Catholics in the State prior to the latter part of the eighteenth century were very few in number. In 1730 Cornelius Hallahan, an Irish Catholic settled in Mill Creek Hundred in New Castle Country on an estate called by him Cuba Rock, near the present location of Mount Cuba, Delaware. The first Catholic services in the State were probably held at his house. The Apoquiniminck Mission, in the lower part of New Castle Country, was established before 1750 by Jesuits from St. Xavier’s Mission in Cecil County, Maryland.
In a 1748 report from the Episcopal Mission at Dover (Kent Country) to the clergymen of the Pennsylvania province, it is stated that the “Quakers and Roman Catholics were long accustomed to bury their dead at their own plantations.” Again in 1751 a like report from the Dover Mission states: “There are about five or six families of Papists, who are attended once a month from Maryland with a priest.” In January 1772, Father Matthew Sittensperger, a Jesuit known under the name of Manners, purchased a farm in Mill Creek Hundred which was known as Coffee Run, and here a log chapel called St. Mary’s and a residence were erected. Father Sittensperger was succeeded by the Rev. Stephen Faure who, with other Frenchmen, was driven from St. Domingo by slave uprisings and settled at Wilmington.
In 1785 Delaware was one of the four states (the others being Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia) where Catholics were not virtually under civil disabilities.
North Carolina
In 1663 Charles II, of Catholic sympathies, granted to Sir George Carteret and seven others a stretch of land on the Atlantic coast, lying between Virginia and Florida. The grantees were created “absolute lords proprietors” of the province of Carolina, with full powers to make and execute such laws as they deemed proper. In 1674 the population was about four thousand. After 1729 Carolina became a royal province, the king having purchased from the proprietors seven-eighths of their domain. Under the lords proprietors, there was much religious discrimination and even persecution; but there was little under the Crown except as to holding office. The disqualification for office involved in denying the truth of the Protestant religion remained in the Constitution until the Convention of 1835.
New York
The Dutch Colony of the seventeenth century was officially intolerantly Protestant but was in practice tolerant and fair to people of other faiths who dwelt within New Netherland. When the English took the province from the Dutch in 1664, they granted full religious toleration to the other forms of Protestantism, and preserved the property rights of the Dutch Reformed Church, while recognizing its discipline. The General Assembly of the province held in 1682 under the famous Governor Thomas Dongan, an Irish Catholic nobleman, adopted the Charter of Liberties, which proclaimed religious liberty to all Christians, although this charter did not receive formal royal sanction. In 1688 the Stuart Revolution in England reversed this policy of liberality, and the Province of New York immediately followed the example of the mother-country in intolerance and legal persecution of the Catholic Church and its adherents.
In 1697, although the Anglican Church was never formally established in the Province of New York, Trinity Church was founded in the City of New York by royal charter and received many civil privileges and munificent grants of land. The Dutch Reformed Churches continued, however, to enjoy their property and the protection of their rights undisturbed by the new Anglican foundation, the inhabitants of Dutch blood being then largely in the ascendant. This condition continued many years, for when the Revolution occurred in 1776 the majority of the inhabitants of the Province of New York were not of English descent.
The political conditions at home, and also the long contest between England and France for the control of North America, resulted in the enactment by the provincial legislature from time to time of proscriptive laws against the Catholics. Catholic priests and teachers were ordered to keep away from the province or, if they by any chance came there, to depart at once. Severe penalties were provided for disobedience to these laws extending to long imprisonment or even death. In the disturbances and panic of the Slave Insurrection of 1741 schoolmaster John Ury was tried and executed under these statutes for the crime of being a “Popish priest” and teaching his religion.
New Jersey
New Jersey was founded as a proprietary colony by grant to Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, who attracted settlers not only from England but from Scotland, New England, and particularly from Long Island and Connecticut. These planters were largely Calvinists from Presbyterian and Congregational communities, and occupied mainly land in Newark, Elizabeth, and upon the north shore of Monmouth County. The Calvinists brought with them into East Jersey their distinctive views upon religious and civil matters. East Jersey resembled New England in civil government; West Jersey resembled Virginia.
The comparative liberality of the proprietary rule of Berkeley and Carteret, especially in religious matters, attracted some Catholic settlers to New Jersey. As early as 1672 Fathers Harvey and Gage visited both Woodbridge and Elizabethtown (then the capital of New Jersey) for the purpose of ministering to the Catholics in those places. Robert Vanquellen, a native of Caen, France, and a Catholic, lived at Woodbridge, and was surveyor general of that section of New Jersey in 1669 and 1670. Catholics were, however, regarded with some suspicion, and considerable bigotry at times manifested itself. A Catholic by the name of William Douglass, when elected a representative from Bergen County, was excluded from the General Assembly of 1668 because of his religious convictions. In 1691 the New York Assembly passed the first anti-Catholic enactment, which was followed by laws strongly opposed to Catholics and their beliefs both in New York and New Jersey. Lord Cornbury, when appointed governor in 1701, was instructed by Queen Anne to permit liberty of conscience to all persons except “papists”.
South Carolina
In 1670 the foundation of South Carolina was laid in a settlement on the Ashley River and a governor was appointed. In 1673 Charleston was fixed as the permanent site for the settlement, a number of Dutch immigrants from New York having arrived the year before. The colony was further augmented by Presbyterian Scotch-Irish in 1683, but the most important addition was the coming of the French Huguenots upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, who settled on the Cooper River, and were later admitted to the political rights of the colony. In 1697 religious liberty was accorded to all “except Papists”. An attempt was made in 1704 to exclude Dissenters from the Assembly, but the law was annulled by Queen Anne. The Crown assumed control in 1721.
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania was established in 1681 by a grant of 40,000 square miles to William Penn for services rendered to the crown by his father, Admiral Penn. Penn, a devout member of the Society of friends, was impelled by desire to provide a safe home for persecuted Quakers. Penn was far in advance of his time in his views of the capacity of mankind for democratic government, and equally so in his broad-minded toleration of differences of religious belief. The first Constitution of Pennsylvania adopted by the freeholders established religious liberty, but was not accepted by the Privy Council. The Frame of Government of 1701 guaranteed liberty of conscience to all who confessed and acknowledged “one Almighty God”, and made eligible for office all who believed in “Jesus Christ the Savior of the World.”
During the time of Lieutenant Governor Gordon a Catholic chapel was erected, which was thought to be contrary to the laws of Parliament, but it was not suppressed pending a decision of the British Government upon the question whether immunity granted by the Pennsylvania law did not protect Catholics. When, during the French War, hostility to France led to an attack upon the Catholics of Philadelphia by a mob after Braddock’s defeat, the Quakers protected them.
Georgia
James Oglethorpe, who had followed up a brilliant military career as aide-de-camp to Prince Eugene by a still more brilliant parliamentary career, had conceived the plan of settling a colony in the New World with worthy, though unfortunate and economically unproductive, inmates of the wretched English prisons. According to the colony’s by-laws, freedom of worship was to be granted to all prospective colonists “except papists”.[20] In royal colonies such as Georgia, citizens were expected to belong to the Anglican Church.
Part 5
WHEN AMERICA USED TO BE CATHOLIC
WHEN AMERICA USED TO BE CATHOLIC
There was a time when America was Catholic. That is to say, there was no Christian presence in the vast territory of North America, which is now the United States, except the Catholic one. Even as late as the beginning of the 19th century three-quarters of the territory―all the land west of the Mississippi―remained Catholic. Let us briefly recall the Catholic America which it initially was—before Protestantism watered it down and morphed it into Americanism, or an American flavor of Catholicism.
The event which today marks in the minds of most Americans the beginning of their history was the landing in 1620 of the so-called Pilgrim Fathers at a place they named Plymouth on the coast of what is now Massachusetts. However, nearly a century before that, in 1528, a Spanish Franciscan priest, Fr. Juan Juarez, was designated Bishop of Florida.
That was only 15 years after Florida was discovered by Juan Ponce de Leon on Easter Sunday, 1513, and no more than 36 years after Christopher Columbus, sailing under the flag of Catholic Spain, made his first voyage to the New World and planted the cross on its shores. In Spanish, Easter Sunday was known as Pascua Florida, Flowery Easter, which is how the land discovered and named by Ponce de Leon is still called Florida.
Bishop Juarez died in his diocese the year of his appointment. If he was killed by Indians, as were many in his party (we do not know how, or exactly when, he died), he would be the first American martyr. However, of the 116 American martyrs whose names over the years have been submitted to Rome for canonization, the title of American proto-martyr is bestowed on Fr. Juan de Padilla, another Franciscan. A chaplain attached to the 1541-42 expedition of Francisco Vazquez de Coronado deep into the American heartland, Fr. de Padilla was slain by Indians at a spot in today’s Kansas which is practically the geographical center of the continental U.S.
Three more martyrs: Fr. Luis Cancer, Fr. Diego Tolosa and Hermano Fuentes, all Dominicans. They were murdered by Indians soon after going ashore on the Feast of the Ascension, 1549, near Tampa Bay. The bay had been discovered 10 years before, in 1539, by Hernando de Soto, and was named by him Espiritu Santo, Holy Spirit, because the discovery took place on Pentecost. From Florida, de Soto would go on to explore lands we now know as Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas. At one point his path nearly crossed that of Coronado.
The Spanish explorations of Florida would lead to the founding, on September 8th, 1565, of the first city in what is now the U.S. This was St. Augustine, named that by its founder, Admiral Pedro Menendez de Aviles, because he sighted the peninsula on which it stands of the feast day of the great saint.
Accompanying the admiral were 12 Franciscan priests and four Jesuits. They would be followed by an army of missionaries who set out to evangelize Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, and later the Carolinas and Virginia, as well as Florida, from their base in St. Augustine.
To speak of an army of missionaries is not to exaggerate. In all, from the end of the 15th century until 1822, Spain sent to America 16,000 missionaries who were members of religious orders. Also active as missionaries were countless diocesan priests and religious who were born in Spanish territories in the Western Hemisphere.
If their work of evangelization was initially blessed, it soon enough suffered, because of the incursion of Protestants. The first on the scene were Huguenots, to whom it was rarely sufficient to merely destroy the property of the Catholic settlements they attacked and overran. It was common for them to put to the sword the Catholic missionaries and native converts who fell into their hands.
It was the same story with the English, after they began settling coastal areas north of Florida. For instance, in 1704, the English governor of South Carolina, Moore, led a military expedition against Apalachee Mission in Florida. Capturing three Franciscan priests, he executed them along with 800 Catholic Indians. He also forced into slavery another 1,400 Indians who were living at Apalachee.
Nearly a century before then and far to the northwest, in today’s New Mexico, Pedro de Peralta in 1609 founded a city which he named Royal City of the Holy Faith of St. Francis, and which soon became known simply as Holy Faith, Santa Fe. Peralta built on one side of the town’s central plaza, in the manner typical of Spanish capitals, a Governor’s Palace, a long one-story edifice of adobe and log beams. Serving well into this century as the residence of New Mexico’s governors, it still stands.
More important to the work of planting the Faith within American shores, and once again typical of Spanish settlements, 11 churches or missions had been built in and around Santa Fe by 1617, and in 1625 there were 43 Churches serving 34,000 Catholic Indians.
The existence, in the early 17th century, of a thriving center like Santa Fe, needs to be known, not simply because it predates the arrival, at Plymouth in 1620, of the Pilgrims and their first encounter with some Indians. There is also a widespread notion today that as regards America, west of the Mississippi, the whole territory that was Spanish and French and therefore Catholic as late as 1800, was a wilderness untouched by civilization until English-speaking Protestants settled in it during the 19th century. The existence of a Catholic center like Santa Fe shows the notion to be false.
If the Huguenots and English Protestants impeded the work of evangelization by the Spanish missionaries, it also has to be admitted that these heroes of the Faith were not always as successful in bringing the Faith and its civilizing influence to the native population, as they were at Santa Fe.
There was much about Christianity and Christian living that many Indians at first found unacceptable. Thus, five Franciscans were martyred in Georgia in 1597 for trying to introduce monogamy among local Indians.
At Mission Santa Elena, in South Carolina, the Jesuit Fr. Juan Rogel found that eight months of religious instruction led to nothing, when a council of Indian chiefs objected to renouncing the devil before Baptism. Many Indians worshipped the spirit of evil. It was to him they offered human sacrifice.
In all, from Juan de Padilla in Kansas in 1542, to Antonio Diaz de Leon in 1834 in Texas, 80 Spanish missionary priests and brothers were martyred in America. Most of them were Franciscans, Jesuits and Dominicans. Twenty-one Franciscans died at one time in New Mexico in 1680. Eight Jesuits were killed at one time in Virginia in 1570 at a site near the Rappahannock River which would be within commuting distance of today’s Washington, D.C.
The French arrived in what is now the United States later than the Spanish, but they, too, helped make most of the country what it first was: Catholic. Numberless existing place names testify to it, and none more gloriously than the “Gateway to the West,” St. Louis, named for France’s great King Louis IX, crusader, friend and patron of St. Thomas Aquinas, and a saint canonized in 1297 by Pope Boniface VIII after the Church examined 65 miracles attesting to his sanctity. King St. Louis of France once declared: “A Christian should argue with a blasphemer only by running his sword through his bowels as far as it will go!” As for Pope Boniface VIII, who later canonized him, he declared in his Papal Bull Unam Sanctam in 1302: “We declare, say, define and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.”
The city named St. Louis, in honor of the French King, St. Louis, was founded fairly late, but still before there was a United States of America. St. Louis was founded in 1764. By then, French explorers and missionaries had been active in and around today’s U.S. for more than two centuries―the first being the Italian-born mariner Giovanni Verrazano. In the service of France’s King Francois I, he became, in 1524, the first European to enter New York Harbor. During that voyage he explored most of the East Coast from the Carolinas to Newfoundland.
The list of French, who brought the Faith and European Catholic civilization to these shores, is long. It includes Marquette, Cartier, Champlain, LaSalle (who opened Illinois to French settlement), the brothers Lemoyne (one of whom founded New Orleans in 1718), and others. None matter more than the eight canonized by the Catholic Church, in 1930, as the “Martyrs of North America”. They are Saints René Goupil, Jean Lalande, Isaac Jogues, Antony Daniel, Jean de Brebeuf, Gabriel Lalemant, Charles Cornier and Noel Chabanel, listed here according to the chronology of their martyrdom from 1642 to 1649.
We need to understand what it was that motivated these men and their Spanish brothers in the Faith. Why were these men willing to die as they did? In all cases they died a horrible death. In reference to the canonized North American Martyrs, Coulson’s biographical dictionary, The Saints, tells us that Fr. Charles Garnier, who had been born into a considerable wealthy family in Paris, “would walk thirty or forty miles in the summer heat, over enemy country, just to baptize a dying Indian.” “Just” to baptize him!
Coulson goes on to say that Fr. Garnier, in his missionary travels, “tasted the four worst aspects of Indian life: cold, heat, smoke and dogs. Of these he found smoke by far the worst. It filled the hut in which men, women and dogs slept together around the fire, and prolonged exposure to it usually brought blindness in the end, a fact which caused Fr. LeJeune [Garniers’ superior] to remark: ‘Unhappy infidels who spend their lives in smoke, and their eternity in flames.’”
Taking Fr. LeJeune’s words on their face, the canonized North American Martyrs (like their uncanonized but heroic Spanish brethren) were ready to undergo all they did in order to save as many Indians as they could from eternal fire. They paid dearly for their charity. How dearly? Here is some of the account we have of the martyrdom of Fr. Jean de Brebeuf. It is provided by another Jesuit missionary, Fr. Christophe Regnant. We shall begin by summarizing him, and then go to direct quotation.
Taken captive by Iroquois, Fr. de Brebeuf was stripped naked and tied to a post. He was beaten with clubs. His fingernails were then torn out. In a mockery of Baptism, a cauldron of boiling water was poured over him, There followed a string of hatchets heated by fire to red-hot and which was strung around his neck. Next, a belt of pitch was tied around his waist and set afire. The Indians then cut out his tongue. After that they began to flay him, which is to say cut and strip the skin off his body.
They still were not done. Says Fr. Regnant: “Those butchers, seeing that the good father began to grow weak, made him sit down on the ground, and one of them, taking a knife, cut off the skin covering his skull. Another one, seeing that the good father would soon die, made an opening in the upper part of his chest, and tore out his heart, which he roasted and ate. Others came to drink his blood, still warm, which they drank with both hands.”
Centuries later, in 1991, a feature film entitled Blackrobe would be made about the early encounters of French missionaries with American Indians. Not nearly as politically correct as another film of the day, Dances With Wolves―besides the savagery shown the missionaries, it realistically depicted Indian cruelty to other Indians―the movie did poorly at the box office. Besides its political incorrectness, the chief reason for the picture’s poor acceptance was doubtless accurately fingered by the New York Times’ senior religion writer, Peter Steinfels, in a review of the film. A contemporary audience, Steinfels said, simply could not understand the missionaries’ willingness to sacrifice themselves. The missionaries looked misguided or positively idiotic to such an audience. It was not necessary for Steinfels to say that this modern-day reaction was because the audience would consist mainly of unbelievers, or at least of persons who do not believe as did the North American Martyrs―and all other Catholics once upon a time, it should be added.
How many “Western men” today can be regarded as even equal to the North American Martyrs and the countless other missionaries who took seriously Christ’s last commandment to His followers, to make disciples of all the nations? The missionaries would include, first of all, the very Apostles who heard the commandment directly and set out to convert the lands of the Roman Empire, but also those who sought to make America Catholic beginning virtually as soon as Catholics discovered her. If these missionaries are today incomprehensible to “Western men,” as Blackrobe was to its modern-day audience, then this incomprehension is rooted in modern-day unbelief. “Western men,” which is to speak of men who used to be Christian or are merely superficial Christians, do not believe in the same things as did the North American Martyrs, or they do not believe in anything at all. Remaining Catholics among the “Western men” are apt to be of the “cafeteria”-type. They pick and choose which of the Church’s teachings they will believe, and then feel “free” to decide whether or not they will live according to them. They may do so, they contend, because every man enjoys “freedom of conscience.” Every American knows that.
It was precisely such modern-day incomprehension and unbelief which could already be seen in the leaders of the Catholic Church in the U.S. a half-century ago. Already back then, for several centuries, the American Catholic Church leaders had long been schooled and trained in getting along with other false religions in America—namely Protestants. The heresy of Americanism with its view of liberal democracy as a model for the Church would spread far beyond the frontiers of America to influence the life of the Universal Church. The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) would, in a sense, be Americanism’s triumph with its newly declared false ecumenism, which has grown from a small plant into a massive tree by 2017. Fr. John de Brebeuf had sacrificed himself in the conviction that the Catholic Church is the one and only Church. Yet today, any church will do to get souls to Heaven—as long the churches do not step on others toes during their false ecumenical dance. America had learned that dance around three hundred years before.
The event which today marks in the minds of most Americans the beginning of their history was the landing in 1620 of the so-called Pilgrim Fathers at a place they named Plymouth on the coast of what is now Massachusetts. However, nearly a century before that, in 1528, a Spanish Franciscan priest, Fr. Juan Juarez, was designated Bishop of Florida.
That was only 15 years after Florida was discovered by Juan Ponce de Leon on Easter Sunday, 1513, and no more than 36 years after Christopher Columbus, sailing under the flag of Catholic Spain, made his first voyage to the New World and planted the cross on its shores. In Spanish, Easter Sunday was known as Pascua Florida, Flowery Easter, which is how the land discovered and named by Ponce de Leon is still called Florida.
Bishop Juarez died in his diocese the year of his appointment. If he was killed by Indians, as were many in his party (we do not know how, or exactly when, he died), he would be the first American martyr. However, of the 116 American martyrs whose names over the years have been submitted to Rome for canonization, the title of American proto-martyr is bestowed on Fr. Juan de Padilla, another Franciscan. A chaplain attached to the 1541-42 expedition of Francisco Vazquez de Coronado deep into the American heartland, Fr. de Padilla was slain by Indians at a spot in today’s Kansas which is practically the geographical center of the continental U.S.
Three more martyrs: Fr. Luis Cancer, Fr. Diego Tolosa and Hermano Fuentes, all Dominicans. They were murdered by Indians soon after going ashore on the Feast of the Ascension, 1549, near Tampa Bay. The bay had been discovered 10 years before, in 1539, by Hernando de Soto, and was named by him Espiritu Santo, Holy Spirit, because the discovery took place on Pentecost. From Florida, de Soto would go on to explore lands we now know as Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas. At one point his path nearly crossed that of Coronado.
The Spanish explorations of Florida would lead to the founding, on September 8th, 1565, of the first city in what is now the U.S. This was St. Augustine, named that by its founder, Admiral Pedro Menendez de Aviles, because he sighted the peninsula on which it stands of the feast day of the great saint.
Accompanying the admiral were 12 Franciscan priests and four Jesuits. They would be followed by an army of missionaries who set out to evangelize Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, and later the Carolinas and Virginia, as well as Florida, from their base in St. Augustine.
To speak of an army of missionaries is not to exaggerate. In all, from the end of the 15th century until 1822, Spain sent to America 16,000 missionaries who were members of religious orders. Also active as missionaries were countless diocesan priests and religious who were born in Spanish territories in the Western Hemisphere.
If their work of evangelization was initially blessed, it soon enough suffered, because of the incursion of Protestants. The first on the scene were Huguenots, to whom it was rarely sufficient to merely destroy the property of the Catholic settlements they attacked and overran. It was common for them to put to the sword the Catholic missionaries and native converts who fell into their hands.
It was the same story with the English, after they began settling coastal areas north of Florida. For instance, in 1704, the English governor of South Carolina, Moore, led a military expedition against Apalachee Mission in Florida. Capturing three Franciscan priests, he executed them along with 800 Catholic Indians. He also forced into slavery another 1,400 Indians who were living at Apalachee.
Nearly a century before then and far to the northwest, in today’s New Mexico, Pedro de Peralta in 1609 founded a city which he named Royal City of the Holy Faith of St. Francis, and which soon became known simply as Holy Faith, Santa Fe. Peralta built on one side of the town’s central plaza, in the manner typical of Spanish capitals, a Governor’s Palace, a long one-story edifice of adobe and log beams. Serving well into this century as the residence of New Mexico’s governors, it still stands.
More important to the work of planting the Faith within American shores, and once again typical of Spanish settlements, 11 churches or missions had been built in and around Santa Fe by 1617, and in 1625 there were 43 Churches serving 34,000 Catholic Indians.
The existence, in the early 17th century, of a thriving center like Santa Fe, needs to be known, not simply because it predates the arrival, at Plymouth in 1620, of the Pilgrims and their first encounter with some Indians. There is also a widespread notion today that as regards America, west of the Mississippi, the whole territory that was Spanish and French and therefore Catholic as late as 1800, was a wilderness untouched by civilization until English-speaking Protestants settled in it during the 19th century. The existence of a Catholic center like Santa Fe shows the notion to be false.
If the Huguenots and English Protestants impeded the work of evangelization by the Spanish missionaries, it also has to be admitted that these heroes of the Faith were not always as successful in bringing the Faith and its civilizing influence to the native population, as they were at Santa Fe.
There was much about Christianity and Christian living that many Indians at first found unacceptable. Thus, five Franciscans were martyred in Georgia in 1597 for trying to introduce monogamy among local Indians.
At Mission Santa Elena, in South Carolina, the Jesuit Fr. Juan Rogel found that eight months of religious instruction led to nothing, when a council of Indian chiefs objected to renouncing the devil before Baptism. Many Indians worshipped the spirit of evil. It was to him they offered human sacrifice.
In all, from Juan de Padilla in Kansas in 1542, to Antonio Diaz de Leon in 1834 in Texas, 80 Spanish missionary priests and brothers were martyred in America. Most of them were Franciscans, Jesuits and Dominicans. Twenty-one Franciscans died at one time in New Mexico in 1680. Eight Jesuits were killed at one time in Virginia in 1570 at a site near the Rappahannock River which would be within commuting distance of today’s Washington, D.C.
The French arrived in what is now the United States later than the Spanish, but they, too, helped make most of the country what it first was: Catholic. Numberless existing place names testify to it, and none more gloriously than the “Gateway to the West,” St. Louis, named for France’s great King Louis IX, crusader, friend and patron of St. Thomas Aquinas, and a saint canonized in 1297 by Pope Boniface VIII after the Church examined 65 miracles attesting to his sanctity. King St. Louis of France once declared: “A Christian should argue with a blasphemer only by running his sword through his bowels as far as it will go!” As for Pope Boniface VIII, who later canonized him, he declared in his Papal Bull Unam Sanctam in 1302: “We declare, say, define and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.”
The city named St. Louis, in honor of the French King, St. Louis, was founded fairly late, but still before there was a United States of America. St. Louis was founded in 1764. By then, French explorers and missionaries had been active in and around today’s U.S. for more than two centuries―the first being the Italian-born mariner Giovanni Verrazano. In the service of France’s King Francois I, he became, in 1524, the first European to enter New York Harbor. During that voyage he explored most of the East Coast from the Carolinas to Newfoundland.
The list of French, who brought the Faith and European Catholic civilization to these shores, is long. It includes Marquette, Cartier, Champlain, LaSalle (who opened Illinois to French settlement), the brothers Lemoyne (one of whom founded New Orleans in 1718), and others. None matter more than the eight canonized by the Catholic Church, in 1930, as the “Martyrs of North America”. They are Saints René Goupil, Jean Lalande, Isaac Jogues, Antony Daniel, Jean de Brebeuf, Gabriel Lalemant, Charles Cornier and Noel Chabanel, listed here according to the chronology of their martyrdom from 1642 to 1649.
We need to understand what it was that motivated these men and their Spanish brothers in the Faith. Why were these men willing to die as they did? In all cases they died a horrible death. In reference to the canonized North American Martyrs, Coulson’s biographical dictionary, The Saints, tells us that Fr. Charles Garnier, who had been born into a considerable wealthy family in Paris, “would walk thirty or forty miles in the summer heat, over enemy country, just to baptize a dying Indian.” “Just” to baptize him!
Coulson goes on to say that Fr. Garnier, in his missionary travels, “tasted the four worst aspects of Indian life: cold, heat, smoke and dogs. Of these he found smoke by far the worst. It filled the hut in which men, women and dogs slept together around the fire, and prolonged exposure to it usually brought blindness in the end, a fact which caused Fr. LeJeune [Garniers’ superior] to remark: ‘Unhappy infidels who spend their lives in smoke, and their eternity in flames.’”
Taking Fr. LeJeune’s words on their face, the canonized North American Martyrs (like their uncanonized but heroic Spanish brethren) were ready to undergo all they did in order to save as many Indians as they could from eternal fire. They paid dearly for their charity. How dearly? Here is some of the account we have of the martyrdom of Fr. Jean de Brebeuf. It is provided by another Jesuit missionary, Fr. Christophe Regnant. We shall begin by summarizing him, and then go to direct quotation.
Taken captive by Iroquois, Fr. de Brebeuf was stripped naked and tied to a post. He was beaten with clubs. His fingernails were then torn out. In a mockery of Baptism, a cauldron of boiling water was poured over him, There followed a string of hatchets heated by fire to red-hot and which was strung around his neck. Next, a belt of pitch was tied around his waist and set afire. The Indians then cut out his tongue. After that they began to flay him, which is to say cut and strip the skin off his body.
They still were not done. Says Fr. Regnant: “Those butchers, seeing that the good father began to grow weak, made him sit down on the ground, and one of them, taking a knife, cut off the skin covering his skull. Another one, seeing that the good father would soon die, made an opening in the upper part of his chest, and tore out his heart, which he roasted and ate. Others came to drink his blood, still warm, which they drank with both hands.”
Centuries later, in 1991, a feature film entitled Blackrobe would be made about the early encounters of French missionaries with American Indians. Not nearly as politically correct as another film of the day, Dances With Wolves―besides the savagery shown the missionaries, it realistically depicted Indian cruelty to other Indians―the movie did poorly at the box office. Besides its political incorrectness, the chief reason for the picture’s poor acceptance was doubtless accurately fingered by the New York Times’ senior religion writer, Peter Steinfels, in a review of the film. A contemporary audience, Steinfels said, simply could not understand the missionaries’ willingness to sacrifice themselves. The missionaries looked misguided or positively idiotic to such an audience. It was not necessary for Steinfels to say that this modern-day reaction was because the audience would consist mainly of unbelievers, or at least of persons who do not believe as did the North American Martyrs―and all other Catholics once upon a time, it should be added.
How many “Western men” today can be regarded as even equal to the North American Martyrs and the countless other missionaries who took seriously Christ’s last commandment to His followers, to make disciples of all the nations? The missionaries would include, first of all, the very Apostles who heard the commandment directly and set out to convert the lands of the Roman Empire, but also those who sought to make America Catholic beginning virtually as soon as Catholics discovered her. If these missionaries are today incomprehensible to “Western men,” as Blackrobe was to its modern-day audience, then this incomprehension is rooted in modern-day unbelief. “Western men,” which is to speak of men who used to be Christian or are merely superficial Christians, do not believe in the same things as did the North American Martyrs, or they do not believe in anything at all. Remaining Catholics among the “Western men” are apt to be of the “cafeteria”-type. They pick and choose which of the Church’s teachings they will believe, and then feel “free” to decide whether or not they will live according to them. They may do so, they contend, because every man enjoys “freedom of conscience.” Every American knows that.
It was precisely such modern-day incomprehension and unbelief which could already be seen in the leaders of the Catholic Church in the U.S. a half-century ago. Already back then, for several centuries, the American Catholic Church leaders had long been schooled and trained in getting along with other false religions in America—namely Protestants. The heresy of Americanism with its view of liberal democracy as a model for the Church would spread far beyond the frontiers of America to influence the life of the Universal Church. The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) would, in a sense, be Americanism’s triumph with its newly declared false ecumenism, which has grown from a small plant into a massive tree by 2017. Fr. John de Brebeuf had sacrificed himself in the conviction that the Catholic Church is the one and only Church. Yet today, any church will do to get souls to Heaven—as long the churches do not step on others toes during their false ecumenical dance. America had learned that dance around three hundred years before.
Part 6
ANTI-CATHOLICISM IN AMERICA
ANTI-CATHOLICISM IN AMERICA
Long Memories
The first Protestant colonists to settle in America brought with them a long history of animosity toward Catholics, stemming from the Protestant Reformation. Both Catholics and Protestants had suffered terribly during the European religious wars that occurred in the wake of the Reformation, with countless numbers imprisoned, tortured, and killed.But the British Protestants who settled in America particularly remembered the violence inflicted by “Bloody Mary” (Queen Mary I, 1516–1558), who burned hundreds of Protestants at the stake—while happily forgetting the many hundreds of Catholics who were martyred under the anti-Catholic rulers of England.
English hatred for the Roman Church
The civilization and culture which laid the foundations of the American colonies was English and Protestant. England’s continuing 16th and 17th-century religious revolution is therefore central to an understanding of religious aspects of American colonization. Early explorers were sent out toward the end of the 15th century by a Catholic king, Henry VII, but actual settlement was delayed, and only in 1607, under James I, were permanent roots put down at Jamestown, Virginia. By then, the separation of the so-called Anglican church from Rome was an accomplished fact.
Rapid anti-Catholicism in England had been flamed by works like John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs illustrating some of the nearly 300 Protestants who were burned between 1555 and 1558 under Queen Mary I. The tradition was intensified by tales of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot, when a group of Catholics would have supposedly planned to blow up King James but for the scheme’s opportune discovery and failure.
International politics were involved too. France and Spain were England’s enemies, and they were Catholic. In 1570 Pope St. Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth I and declared her subjects released from their allegiance, which fanned English propaganda that Catholic subjects harbored sentiments of treason.
In the 16th century, the English began their long, violent and cruel attempt to subdue the Catholics of Ireland. The English were able “to resolve” any problem of conscience by convincing themselves that the Gaelic Irish Catholic Papists were an unreasonable and boorish people. Maintaining their false belief they were dealing with a culturally inferior people, the English Protestants imagined themselves absolved from all normal ethical restraints. This attitude persisted with their settlers in the American colonies.
To these factors should be added the role of the Puritan sect. Its relationship with Catholics in colonial America represented the apotheosis of Protestant prejudice against Catholicism. Even though the so-called Anglican church had replaced the Church of Rome, for many Puritans that Elizabethan church still remained too tainted with Romish practices and beliefs. For various reasons, those Puritans left their homeland to found new colonies in North America. A major Puritan exodus to New England began in 1630, and within a decade close to 20,000 men and women had migrated to settlements in Massachusetts and Connecticut. They were principal contributors to a virulent hatred of Catholicism in the American colonies.
The Penal Age: 1645-1763
Evidence of this anti-Catholic attitude can be found in laws passed by colonial legislatures, sermons preached by colonial ministers, and various books and pamphlets published in the colonies or imported from England. For example, even though no Catholic was known to have lived in Massachusetts Bay in the first 20 years or more of the colony’s life, this did not deter the Puritan government from enacting an anti-priest law in May of 1647, which threatened with death “all and every Jesuit, seminary priest, missionary or other spiritual or ecclesiastical person made or ordained by any authority, power or jurisdiction, derived, challenged or pretended, from the Pope or See of Rome.”
When Georgia, the thirteenth colony, was brought into being in 1732 by a charter granted by King George II, its guarantee of religious freedom followed the fixed pattern: full religious freedom was promised to all future settlers of the colony “except papists,” that is Catholics.
Even Rhode Island, famous for its supposed policy of religious toleration, inserted an anti-Catholic statute imposing civil restrictions on Catholics in the colony’s first published code of laws in 1719. Not until 1783 was the act revoked.
To have an idea of how this prejudice against Roman Catholics was impressed even among the young, consider these “John Rogers Verses” from the New England Primer: “Abhor that arrant whore of Rome and all her blasphemies; Drink not of her cursed cup; Obey not her decrees.” This age of penal restriction against Catholics in the colonies lasted until after the American Revolution.
The Myth of American Religious Freedom
It is a myth that America was from its very beginning a country that championed freedom of religion. In fact, in the colonial period, a virulent anti-Catholicism reigned and the general hounding and harrying of Catholics was supported by legislation limiting their rights and freedom. Liberal American Catholic historians, whose works provided the foundation for Catholic school history books, only briefly acknowledge and downplay a period of repression and persecution of Catholics. They have glossed over, with an unrealistic interpretation, painting a false picture that freedom of religion was unequivocally established and the bitter, deeply-entrenched anti-Catholicism miraculously dissolved in the new atmosphere of tolerance and liberty for all. This in fact did not happen.
The Protestant attitude was one of: Nuns held against their will in dungeons. Ordinary people forbidden to read the Bible. Priests plotting to destroy the nation’s public school system. An army of illiterate immigrants scheming to bring the United States under the pope’s control.
Such were the rumors that led to discrimination and violence against the Catholic Church in early America. Most Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were Protestant, and they treated Protestantism as the unofficial religion of the republic.
Some were so hostile to the growing numbers of Catholic immigrants in their midst that they resorted to violence. In 1834 an angry mob burned down a convent in Charlestown, Massachusetts, because of a false rumor that a nun was imprisoned there, and in 1844 a riot broke out in Philadelphia because of fears that Catholics wanted to prevent Bible reading in the public schools.
The Philadelphia riots lasted for three days, with two Catholic churches burned to the ground, more than 100 people injured, and 20 people killed. It was one of the worst episodes of religious violence in the nation’s history.
Since anti-Catholic sentiment has declined dramatically in recent decades, many Americans have forgotten that Catholics once struggled to practice their faith freely. But their history reminds us of the fragility of religious freedom in the United States. Even though the Constitution guarantees the “free exercise” of religion, the nation has often failed to live up to its pluralistic (or two-faced) ideals.
Someone recalling a lesson from his Catholic history classes might pose the objection: But what about the exceptions to this rule, that is, the three colonial states of Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania, where tolerance for Catholics existed in the colonial period? Once again, this impression comes from a very optimistic and liberal writing of History rather than the concrete reality.
A Long History of Anti-Catholicism
Although Catholicism was an influential factor in the French settlements of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys and later in the Spanish regions of Florida, the Southwest and California, Catholics were a decided minority in the original 13 English colonies. As we see in the first general report on the state of Catholicism by John Carroll in 1785, Catholics were a mere handful. He conservatively estimated the Catholic population in those colonies to be 25,000. Of this figure, 15,800 resided in Maryland, about 7,000 in Pennsylvania, and another 1,500 in New York. Considering that the population in the first federal census of 1790 totaled 3,939,000, the Catholic presence was less than one percent, certainly not a significant force in the original 13 British colonies.
The history of the Catholic Church in America, however, has much deeper and less triumphant roots. Most American Catholics are aware that the spirit of New England’s North American settlements was hostile to Catholicism. But few are aware of the vigor and persistence with which that spirit was cultivated throughout the entire colonial period. Few Catholics realize that in all but three of the 13 original colonies, Catholics were the subject of penal measures of one kind or another during the colonial period. In most cases, the Catholic Church had been proscribed at an early date, as in Virginia where the act of 1642, outlawing Catholics and their priests, set the tone for the remainder of the colonial period.
Most of the original 13 colonies passed laws limiting the rights of Catholics. Ironically, even Maryland (literally “Mary’s Land”), founded by Lord Baltimore as a haven for Catholics, ended-up persecuting them. Protestants outnumbered Catholics, and as they gained control over the government, they passed laws forbidding Catholics to vote, hold public office, and worship publicly.
In the decade before the American Revolution, most inhabitants of the English colonies would have agreed with Samuel Adams when he said (in 1768): “I did verily believe, as I do still, that much more is to be dreaded from the growth of popery in America, than from the Stamp Act, or any other acts destructive of civil rights.”
Catholicism in Maryland
Even in the supposedly tolerant Maryland, the tables had turned against Catholics by the 1700s. By this time the penal code against Catholics included test oaths administered to keep Catholics out of office, legislation that barred Catholics from entering certain professions (such as Law), and measures had been enacted to make them incapable of inheriting or purchasing land. By 1718 the ballot had been denied to Catholics in Maryland, following the example of the other colonies, and parents could even be fined for sending children abroad to be educated as Catholics.
After only a few scanty pages dedicated to Catholic persecution and Lord Baltimore’s Catholic colony in Maryland, Catholic history books have tended to begin Catholic history in the United States with that critical year for both the nation and Catholicism ― 1789. The years prior to that year are usually stuffed out of sight in the closet of unwanted historical fact. For the year 1789 marked both the formation of the new government under the Constitution and the establishment of an organizational structure for the American Catholic Church. The former event came with the inauguration of George Washington in April, the latter with the papal appointment of His Excellency John Carroll as the first Bishop of Baltimore in November.
Catholics gained greater acceptance during the Revolutionary War because most fervently supported the patriot cause. Charles Carroll, a wealthy Catholic planter from Maryland, signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. His cousin John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop in America, wanted “to preserve inviolate forever, in our new empire, the great principle of religious freedom.”
The “Maryland Experiment” began when Charles I issued a generous charter to a prominent Catholic convert from Anglicanism, Lord Cecil Calvert, for the American colony of Maryland. In the new colony, religious tolerance for all so-called Christians was preserved by Calvert until 1654. In that year, Puritans from Virginia succeeded in overthrowing Calvert’s rule, although Calvert regained control four years later. The last major political uprising took place in 1689, when the “Glorious Revolution” of the Protestants William and Mary ignited a new anti-Catholic revolt in Maryland, and the rule of the next Lord Baltimore, Charles Calvert, was overthrown.
Therefore, in 1692 Maryland’s famous Religious Toleration Act officially ended, and the Maryland Assembly established the so-called Church of England as the official State religion supported by tax levies. Restrictions were imposed on Catholics for public worship, and priests could be prosecuted for saying Mass. Although Catholics generally maintained their social status, they were denied the right to vote or otherwise participate in the government of the colony their ancestors had founded. This barebones history is the real story of the famous religious liberty of colonial Maryland.
The Religious Toleration Law of 1649 establishing toleration for all religions in early Maryland has generally been interpreted as resulting from the fact that Cecil Calvert was a Roman Catholic. Catholic American histories commonly presented the foundation of Maryland as motivated by Calvert’s burning desire to establish a haven for persecuted English Catholics. On the other side are Protestant interpretations that present Calvert as a bold opportunist driven by the basest pecuniary motives.
More recent works have provided a much more coherent analysis of the psychology behind the religious toleration that Calvert granted. That is, Calvert was only following a long-standing trend of English Catholics, who tended to ask only for freedom to worship privately as they pleased and to be as inoffensive to Protestants as possible.
A directive of the first Lord Proprietor in 1633 stipulated, for example, that Catholics should “suffer no scandal nor offence” to be given any of the Protestants, that they practice all acts of the Roman Catholic Religion as privately as possible, and that they remain silent during public discourses about Religion. In fact, in the early years of the Maryland colony the only prosecutions for religious offenses involved Catholics who had interfered with Protestants concerning their religion.
As a pragmatic realist, Calvert understood that he had to be tolerant about religion in order for his colony, which was never Catholic in its majority, to be successful. It was this conciliatory and compromising attitude the Calverts transplanted to colonial Maryland in the New World. Further, the Calverts put into practice that separation of Church and State about which other English Catholics had only theorized.
Catholicism in New York
Neither the Dutch nor English were pleased when the Duke of York converted to Roman Catholicism in 1672. His appointment of Irish-born Catholic Colonel Thomas Dongan as governor of the colony of New York was followed by the passage of a charter of liberties and privileges for Catholics. But the two-edged sword of Dutch/ English prejudice against the “Romanists” would soon re-emerge from the scabbard in which it had briefly rested.
After the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688, the virulently anti-Catholic Jacob Leisler spread rumors of “papist” plots and false stories of an impending French and Indian attack upon the English colonies, in which the New York colonial Catholics were said to be aligned with their French co-religionists. Leisler assumed the title of commander-in-chief, and by the end of the year he had overthrown Dongan and taken over the post of lieutenant governor of the colony as well. His government issued orders for the arrest of all reputed “papists,” abolished the franchise for Catholics, and suspended all Catholic office-holders. The government after 1688 was so hostile to Catholics, noted Catholic historian John Ellis, “that it is doubtful if any remained in New York.”
That very fact made all the more incongruous the severity of measures that continued to be taken against Catholics, which included the draconian law of 1700 prescribing perpetual imprisonment of Jesuits and “popish” messengers. This strong anti-Catholic prejudice persisted even into the federal period. When New York framed its constitution in 1777, it allowed toleration for all religions, but Catholics were denied full citizenship. This law was not repealed until 1806.
The myth of religious toleration of Catholics in New York relies concretely, therefore, on that brief 16-year period from 1672 to 1688 when a Catholic was governor of the colony.
Catholicism in Pennsylvania
Due to the broad tolerance that informed William Penn’s Quaker settlements, the story of Catholics in Pennsylvania is the most positive of any of the original 13 colonies. William Penn’s stance on religious toleration provided a measured freedom to Catholics in Pennsylvania. The 1701 framework of government, under which Pennsylvania would be governed until the Revolution, included a declaration of liberty of conscience to all who believed in God. Yet a contradiction between Penn’s advocacy of liberty of conscience and his growing concern about the growth of one religion ― Roman Catholicism ― eventually bore sad fruit.
To replace the liberal statutes that provided almost unrestricted liberty of conscience and toleration for those who believed in Christ, officials were required to fulfill the religious qualifications stated in the 1689 Toleration Act, which allowed Dissenters their own places of worship, teachers and preachers, subject to acceptance of certain oaths of allegiance. The act did not apply to Catholics, who were considered potentially dangerous since they were loyal to the Pope, a foreign power. Catholics were thereby effectively barred from public office.
Despite the more restrictive government imposed by Penn after 1700, Catholics were attracted to Pennsylvania, especially after the penal age began in neighboring Maryland. Nonetheless, the Catholic immigrants to Pennsylvania were relatively few in number compared to the Protestants emigrating from the German Palatinate and Northern Ireland. A census taken in 1757 placed the total number of Catholics in Pennsylvania at 1,365. In a colony estimated to have between 200,000 and 300,000 inhabitants, the opposition against the few Catholics living among the Pennsylvania colonists is testimony to an historic prejudice, to say the least.
Even in face of incessant rumors and several crises (e.g. the so-called “popish plot’� of 1756), no extreme measures were taken and no laws were enacted against Catholics. A good measure of the prosperity of the Church in 1763 could be attributed to the Jesuit farms located at St. Paul’s Mission in Goshehoppen (500 acres) and Saint Francis Regis Mission at Conewago (120 acres), which contributed substantially to the support of the missionary undertakings of the Church. The history of the Jesuits has been called that of the nascent Catholic Church in the colonies, since no other organized body of Catholic clergy, secular or regular, appeared on the ground till more than a decade after the Revolution.
A New Kind Of Immigrant
Catholics in revolutionary America tended to be wealthy, English speaking, and more focused on private devotions than on public displays of their faith. Thus the Protestant majority mostly tolerated them. But when, in the nineteenth century, Catholic immigrants began pouring in from Ireland, Germany, Italy, Poland, Mexico, and Lithuania, Americans became increasingly anxious about their influence on the republic.
In 1789, U.S. Catholics numbered only around 30,000; but by 1826, 250,000 had arrived, and by 1850, Catholic ranks had swelled to more than a million. These new immigrants tended to be poor and uneducated. With the exception of German Catholics, who settled on farms in the Midwest, they clustered by nationality in northeastern cities. Living in squalid tenements and employed in low-paying jobs, they were often caricatured as “infidels” and drunks responsible for the nation’s growing crime rate.
Irish Catholics were especially reviled. Influenced by centuries of British hostility toward the Irish, cartoonists often depicted them as dark-skinned savages, racially inferior to whites. These Catholic immigrants were also more militant about defending their Faith than earlier generations of compromised American Catholics had been. Influenced by the Catholic revival in Europe, they held large parish mission meetings in urban neighborhoods, publicized reports of Marian apparitions around the world (especially at Lourdes in 1858), and claimed publicly that “sacramentals” like medals, statues, pictures, and holy water could be means of God’s grace. They also insisted that miraculous healings were possible, a claim that many Protestants at the time found superstitious.
“Awful Disclosures”
However, as the Catholic population in America increased during the nineteenth century, so did hostility against them. One of the bestselling books before the Civil War (surpassed only by the Bible and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin) was a scathing attack on the Catholic Church, The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (1836).
Monk claimed to have been a nun in Canada, where she had supposedly been forced into sexual slavery by the mother superior, who instructed her that the pope himself had ordered sisters to prostitute themselves to the priests. Monk’s narrative included lurid scenes of nuns being brutally beaten or imprisoned in an underground dungeon, priests scurrying through underground tunnels on their way to sexual assignations, and infants being strangled at birth. Monk claimed that hundreds of dead infants had been thrown into a pit of lime in the convent’s basement.
Reporters soon discovered that Monk’s tale was fictitious, fabricated by several Protestant ministers who later quarreled over the profits in court. But the book sold widely because it echoed Protestant stereotypes about Catholics.
Monk claimed that she was not allowed to read the Bible for herself or to trust her own conscience. Taught to believe that she had “no judgment of my own,” she was determined “to obey the priests in all things,” even if that meant tolerating rape and murder. She was made out to be living proof that Catholicism threatened American democracy. If Catholics were more loyal to the pope than to the American republic, how would they ever become good citizens? This would be the beginning of becoming American first, and Catholic second. The State would take precedence over the Church, politics would come before religion, the natural before the supernatural, the material before the spiritual.
During the early 1850s, nativists organized the American Party, better known as the “Know Nothing” Party because of its codes of secrecy, which lobbied to delay citizenship rights for immigrants and prevent them from voting. In 1854 it succeeded in electing five senators and forty-three representatives to Congress, and only the Civil War halted its ascent to political prominence.
The first Protestant colonists to settle in America brought with them a long history of animosity toward Catholics, stemming from the Protestant Reformation. Both Catholics and Protestants had suffered terribly during the European religious wars that occurred in the wake of the Reformation, with countless numbers imprisoned, tortured, and killed.But the British Protestants who settled in America particularly remembered the violence inflicted by “Bloody Mary” (Queen Mary I, 1516–1558), who burned hundreds of Protestants at the stake—while happily forgetting the many hundreds of Catholics who were martyred under the anti-Catholic rulers of England.
English hatred for the Roman Church
The civilization and culture which laid the foundations of the American colonies was English and Protestant. England’s continuing 16th and 17th-century religious revolution is therefore central to an understanding of religious aspects of American colonization. Early explorers were sent out toward the end of the 15th century by a Catholic king, Henry VII, but actual settlement was delayed, and only in 1607, under James I, were permanent roots put down at Jamestown, Virginia. By then, the separation of the so-called Anglican church from Rome was an accomplished fact.
Rapid anti-Catholicism in England had been flamed by works like John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs illustrating some of the nearly 300 Protestants who were burned between 1555 and 1558 under Queen Mary I. The tradition was intensified by tales of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot, when a group of Catholics would have supposedly planned to blow up King James but for the scheme’s opportune discovery and failure.
International politics were involved too. France and Spain were England’s enemies, and they were Catholic. In 1570 Pope St. Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth I and declared her subjects released from their allegiance, which fanned English propaganda that Catholic subjects harbored sentiments of treason.
In the 16th century, the English began their long, violent and cruel attempt to subdue the Catholics of Ireland. The English were able “to resolve” any problem of conscience by convincing themselves that the Gaelic Irish Catholic Papists were an unreasonable and boorish people. Maintaining their false belief they were dealing with a culturally inferior people, the English Protestants imagined themselves absolved from all normal ethical restraints. This attitude persisted with their settlers in the American colonies.
To these factors should be added the role of the Puritan sect. Its relationship with Catholics in colonial America represented the apotheosis of Protestant prejudice against Catholicism. Even though the so-called Anglican church had replaced the Church of Rome, for many Puritans that Elizabethan church still remained too tainted with Romish practices and beliefs. For various reasons, those Puritans left their homeland to found new colonies in North America. A major Puritan exodus to New England began in 1630, and within a decade close to 20,000 men and women had migrated to settlements in Massachusetts and Connecticut. They were principal contributors to a virulent hatred of Catholicism in the American colonies.
The Penal Age: 1645-1763
Evidence of this anti-Catholic attitude can be found in laws passed by colonial legislatures, sermons preached by colonial ministers, and various books and pamphlets published in the colonies or imported from England. For example, even though no Catholic was known to have lived in Massachusetts Bay in the first 20 years or more of the colony’s life, this did not deter the Puritan government from enacting an anti-priest law in May of 1647, which threatened with death “all and every Jesuit, seminary priest, missionary or other spiritual or ecclesiastical person made or ordained by any authority, power or jurisdiction, derived, challenged or pretended, from the Pope or See of Rome.”
When Georgia, the thirteenth colony, was brought into being in 1732 by a charter granted by King George II, its guarantee of religious freedom followed the fixed pattern: full religious freedom was promised to all future settlers of the colony “except papists,” that is Catholics.
Even Rhode Island, famous for its supposed policy of religious toleration, inserted an anti-Catholic statute imposing civil restrictions on Catholics in the colony’s first published code of laws in 1719. Not until 1783 was the act revoked.
To have an idea of how this prejudice against Roman Catholics was impressed even among the young, consider these “John Rogers Verses” from the New England Primer: “Abhor that arrant whore of Rome and all her blasphemies; Drink not of her cursed cup; Obey not her decrees.” This age of penal restriction against Catholics in the colonies lasted until after the American Revolution.
The Myth of American Religious Freedom
It is a myth that America was from its very beginning a country that championed freedom of religion. In fact, in the colonial period, a virulent anti-Catholicism reigned and the general hounding and harrying of Catholics was supported by legislation limiting their rights and freedom. Liberal American Catholic historians, whose works provided the foundation for Catholic school history books, only briefly acknowledge and downplay a period of repression and persecution of Catholics. They have glossed over, with an unrealistic interpretation, painting a false picture that freedom of religion was unequivocally established and the bitter, deeply-entrenched anti-Catholicism miraculously dissolved in the new atmosphere of tolerance and liberty for all. This in fact did not happen.
The Protestant attitude was one of: Nuns held against their will in dungeons. Ordinary people forbidden to read the Bible. Priests plotting to destroy the nation’s public school system. An army of illiterate immigrants scheming to bring the United States under the pope’s control.
Such were the rumors that led to discrimination and violence against the Catholic Church in early America. Most Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were Protestant, and they treated Protestantism as the unofficial religion of the republic.
Some were so hostile to the growing numbers of Catholic immigrants in their midst that they resorted to violence. In 1834 an angry mob burned down a convent in Charlestown, Massachusetts, because of a false rumor that a nun was imprisoned there, and in 1844 a riot broke out in Philadelphia because of fears that Catholics wanted to prevent Bible reading in the public schools.
The Philadelphia riots lasted for three days, with two Catholic churches burned to the ground, more than 100 people injured, and 20 people killed. It was one of the worst episodes of religious violence in the nation’s history.
Since anti-Catholic sentiment has declined dramatically in recent decades, many Americans have forgotten that Catholics once struggled to practice their faith freely. But their history reminds us of the fragility of religious freedom in the United States. Even though the Constitution guarantees the “free exercise” of religion, the nation has often failed to live up to its pluralistic (or two-faced) ideals.
Someone recalling a lesson from his Catholic history classes might pose the objection: But what about the exceptions to this rule, that is, the three colonial states of Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania, where tolerance for Catholics existed in the colonial period? Once again, this impression comes from a very optimistic and liberal writing of History rather than the concrete reality.
A Long History of Anti-Catholicism
Although Catholicism was an influential factor in the French settlements of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys and later in the Spanish regions of Florida, the Southwest and California, Catholics were a decided minority in the original 13 English colonies. As we see in the first general report on the state of Catholicism by John Carroll in 1785, Catholics were a mere handful. He conservatively estimated the Catholic population in those colonies to be 25,000. Of this figure, 15,800 resided in Maryland, about 7,000 in Pennsylvania, and another 1,500 in New York. Considering that the population in the first federal census of 1790 totaled 3,939,000, the Catholic presence was less than one percent, certainly not a significant force in the original 13 British colonies.
The history of the Catholic Church in America, however, has much deeper and less triumphant roots. Most American Catholics are aware that the spirit of New England’s North American settlements was hostile to Catholicism. But few are aware of the vigor and persistence with which that spirit was cultivated throughout the entire colonial period. Few Catholics realize that in all but three of the 13 original colonies, Catholics were the subject of penal measures of one kind or another during the colonial period. In most cases, the Catholic Church had been proscribed at an early date, as in Virginia where the act of 1642, outlawing Catholics and their priests, set the tone for the remainder of the colonial period.
Most of the original 13 colonies passed laws limiting the rights of Catholics. Ironically, even Maryland (literally “Mary’s Land”), founded by Lord Baltimore as a haven for Catholics, ended-up persecuting them. Protestants outnumbered Catholics, and as they gained control over the government, they passed laws forbidding Catholics to vote, hold public office, and worship publicly.
In the decade before the American Revolution, most inhabitants of the English colonies would have agreed with Samuel Adams when he said (in 1768): “I did verily believe, as I do still, that much more is to be dreaded from the growth of popery in America, than from the Stamp Act, or any other acts destructive of civil rights.”
Catholicism in Maryland
Even in the supposedly tolerant Maryland, the tables had turned against Catholics by the 1700s. By this time the penal code against Catholics included test oaths administered to keep Catholics out of office, legislation that barred Catholics from entering certain professions (such as Law), and measures had been enacted to make them incapable of inheriting or purchasing land. By 1718 the ballot had been denied to Catholics in Maryland, following the example of the other colonies, and parents could even be fined for sending children abroad to be educated as Catholics.
After only a few scanty pages dedicated to Catholic persecution and Lord Baltimore’s Catholic colony in Maryland, Catholic history books have tended to begin Catholic history in the United States with that critical year for both the nation and Catholicism ― 1789. The years prior to that year are usually stuffed out of sight in the closet of unwanted historical fact. For the year 1789 marked both the formation of the new government under the Constitution and the establishment of an organizational structure for the American Catholic Church. The former event came with the inauguration of George Washington in April, the latter with the papal appointment of His Excellency John Carroll as the first Bishop of Baltimore in November.
Catholics gained greater acceptance during the Revolutionary War because most fervently supported the patriot cause. Charles Carroll, a wealthy Catholic planter from Maryland, signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. His cousin John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop in America, wanted “to preserve inviolate forever, in our new empire, the great principle of religious freedom.”
The “Maryland Experiment” began when Charles I issued a generous charter to a prominent Catholic convert from Anglicanism, Lord Cecil Calvert, for the American colony of Maryland. In the new colony, religious tolerance for all so-called Christians was preserved by Calvert until 1654. In that year, Puritans from Virginia succeeded in overthrowing Calvert’s rule, although Calvert regained control four years later. The last major political uprising took place in 1689, when the “Glorious Revolution” of the Protestants William and Mary ignited a new anti-Catholic revolt in Maryland, and the rule of the next Lord Baltimore, Charles Calvert, was overthrown.
Therefore, in 1692 Maryland’s famous Religious Toleration Act officially ended, and the Maryland Assembly established the so-called Church of England as the official State religion supported by tax levies. Restrictions were imposed on Catholics for public worship, and priests could be prosecuted for saying Mass. Although Catholics generally maintained their social status, they were denied the right to vote or otherwise participate in the government of the colony their ancestors had founded. This barebones history is the real story of the famous religious liberty of colonial Maryland.
The Religious Toleration Law of 1649 establishing toleration for all religions in early Maryland has generally been interpreted as resulting from the fact that Cecil Calvert was a Roman Catholic. Catholic American histories commonly presented the foundation of Maryland as motivated by Calvert’s burning desire to establish a haven for persecuted English Catholics. On the other side are Protestant interpretations that present Calvert as a bold opportunist driven by the basest pecuniary motives.
More recent works have provided a much more coherent analysis of the psychology behind the religious toleration that Calvert granted. That is, Calvert was only following a long-standing trend of English Catholics, who tended to ask only for freedom to worship privately as they pleased and to be as inoffensive to Protestants as possible.
A directive of the first Lord Proprietor in 1633 stipulated, for example, that Catholics should “suffer no scandal nor offence” to be given any of the Protestants, that they practice all acts of the Roman Catholic Religion as privately as possible, and that they remain silent during public discourses about Religion. In fact, in the early years of the Maryland colony the only prosecutions for religious offenses involved Catholics who had interfered with Protestants concerning their religion.
As a pragmatic realist, Calvert understood that he had to be tolerant about religion in order for his colony, which was never Catholic in its majority, to be successful. It was this conciliatory and compromising attitude the Calverts transplanted to colonial Maryland in the New World. Further, the Calverts put into practice that separation of Church and State about which other English Catholics had only theorized.
Catholicism in New York
Neither the Dutch nor English were pleased when the Duke of York converted to Roman Catholicism in 1672. His appointment of Irish-born Catholic Colonel Thomas Dongan as governor of the colony of New York was followed by the passage of a charter of liberties and privileges for Catholics. But the two-edged sword of Dutch/ English prejudice against the “Romanists” would soon re-emerge from the scabbard in which it had briefly rested.
After the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688, the virulently anti-Catholic Jacob Leisler spread rumors of “papist” plots and false stories of an impending French and Indian attack upon the English colonies, in which the New York colonial Catholics were said to be aligned with their French co-religionists. Leisler assumed the title of commander-in-chief, and by the end of the year he had overthrown Dongan and taken over the post of lieutenant governor of the colony as well. His government issued orders for the arrest of all reputed “papists,” abolished the franchise for Catholics, and suspended all Catholic office-holders. The government after 1688 was so hostile to Catholics, noted Catholic historian John Ellis, “that it is doubtful if any remained in New York.”
That very fact made all the more incongruous the severity of measures that continued to be taken against Catholics, which included the draconian law of 1700 prescribing perpetual imprisonment of Jesuits and “popish” messengers. This strong anti-Catholic prejudice persisted even into the federal period. When New York framed its constitution in 1777, it allowed toleration for all religions, but Catholics were denied full citizenship. This law was not repealed until 1806.
The myth of religious toleration of Catholics in New York relies concretely, therefore, on that brief 16-year period from 1672 to 1688 when a Catholic was governor of the colony.
Catholicism in Pennsylvania
Due to the broad tolerance that informed William Penn’s Quaker settlements, the story of Catholics in Pennsylvania is the most positive of any of the original 13 colonies. William Penn’s stance on religious toleration provided a measured freedom to Catholics in Pennsylvania. The 1701 framework of government, under which Pennsylvania would be governed until the Revolution, included a declaration of liberty of conscience to all who believed in God. Yet a contradiction between Penn’s advocacy of liberty of conscience and his growing concern about the growth of one religion ― Roman Catholicism ― eventually bore sad fruit.
To replace the liberal statutes that provided almost unrestricted liberty of conscience and toleration for those who believed in Christ, officials were required to fulfill the religious qualifications stated in the 1689 Toleration Act, which allowed Dissenters their own places of worship, teachers and preachers, subject to acceptance of certain oaths of allegiance. The act did not apply to Catholics, who were considered potentially dangerous since they were loyal to the Pope, a foreign power. Catholics were thereby effectively barred from public office.
Despite the more restrictive government imposed by Penn after 1700, Catholics were attracted to Pennsylvania, especially after the penal age began in neighboring Maryland. Nonetheless, the Catholic immigrants to Pennsylvania were relatively few in number compared to the Protestants emigrating from the German Palatinate and Northern Ireland. A census taken in 1757 placed the total number of Catholics in Pennsylvania at 1,365. In a colony estimated to have between 200,000 and 300,000 inhabitants, the opposition against the few Catholics living among the Pennsylvania colonists is testimony to an historic prejudice, to say the least.
Even in face of incessant rumors and several crises (e.g. the so-called “popish plot’� of 1756), no extreme measures were taken and no laws were enacted against Catholics. A good measure of the prosperity of the Church in 1763 could be attributed to the Jesuit farms located at St. Paul’s Mission in Goshehoppen (500 acres) and Saint Francis Regis Mission at Conewago (120 acres), which contributed substantially to the support of the missionary undertakings of the Church. The history of the Jesuits has been called that of the nascent Catholic Church in the colonies, since no other organized body of Catholic clergy, secular or regular, appeared on the ground till more than a decade after the Revolution.
A New Kind Of Immigrant
Catholics in revolutionary America tended to be wealthy, English speaking, and more focused on private devotions than on public displays of their faith. Thus the Protestant majority mostly tolerated them. But when, in the nineteenth century, Catholic immigrants began pouring in from Ireland, Germany, Italy, Poland, Mexico, and Lithuania, Americans became increasingly anxious about their influence on the republic.
In 1789, U.S. Catholics numbered only around 30,000; but by 1826, 250,000 had arrived, and by 1850, Catholic ranks had swelled to more than a million. These new immigrants tended to be poor and uneducated. With the exception of German Catholics, who settled on farms in the Midwest, they clustered by nationality in northeastern cities. Living in squalid tenements and employed in low-paying jobs, they were often caricatured as “infidels” and drunks responsible for the nation’s growing crime rate.
Irish Catholics were especially reviled. Influenced by centuries of British hostility toward the Irish, cartoonists often depicted them as dark-skinned savages, racially inferior to whites. These Catholic immigrants were also more militant about defending their Faith than earlier generations of compromised American Catholics had been. Influenced by the Catholic revival in Europe, they held large parish mission meetings in urban neighborhoods, publicized reports of Marian apparitions around the world (especially at Lourdes in 1858), and claimed publicly that “sacramentals” like medals, statues, pictures, and holy water could be means of God’s grace. They also insisted that miraculous healings were possible, a claim that many Protestants at the time found superstitious.
“Awful Disclosures”
However, as the Catholic population in America increased during the nineteenth century, so did hostility against them. One of the bestselling books before the Civil War (surpassed only by the Bible and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin) was a scathing attack on the Catholic Church, The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (1836).
Monk claimed to have been a nun in Canada, where she had supposedly been forced into sexual slavery by the mother superior, who instructed her that the pope himself had ordered sisters to prostitute themselves to the priests. Monk’s narrative included lurid scenes of nuns being brutally beaten or imprisoned in an underground dungeon, priests scurrying through underground tunnels on their way to sexual assignations, and infants being strangled at birth. Monk claimed that hundreds of dead infants had been thrown into a pit of lime in the convent’s basement.
Reporters soon discovered that Monk’s tale was fictitious, fabricated by several Protestant ministers who later quarreled over the profits in court. But the book sold widely because it echoed Protestant stereotypes about Catholics.
Monk claimed that she was not allowed to read the Bible for herself or to trust her own conscience. Taught to believe that she had “no judgment of my own,” she was determined “to obey the priests in all things,” even if that meant tolerating rape and murder. She was made out to be living proof that Catholicism threatened American democracy. If Catholics were more loyal to the pope than to the American republic, how would they ever become good citizens? This would be the beginning of becoming American first, and Catholic second. The State would take precedence over the Church, politics would come before religion, the natural before the supernatural, the material before the spiritual.
During the early 1850s, nativists organized the American Party, better known as the “Know Nothing” Party because of its codes of secrecy, which lobbied to delay citizenship rights for immigrants and prevent them from voting. In 1854 it succeeded in electing five senators and forty-three representatives to Congress, and only the Civil War halted its ascent to political prominence.
PART 7
ANTI-CATHOLICISM EVOLVES INTO MODERN-DAY ANTI-CATHOLICISM
ANTI-CATHOLICISM EVOLVES INTO MODERN-DAY ANTI-CATHOLICISM
Relaxation of Anti-Catholicism in the Revolutionary Era
The phase of strong, blatant persecution of Catholicism—mentioned in the previous article (Part 6)―came to a close during the revolutionary era (1763-1820). For various reasons―the outbreak of hostilities and the winning of independence―forced Protestant Americans to at least officially temper their hostility toward Catholicism. With the relaxation of penal measures against them, Catholics breathed a great sigh of relief―which is a normal and legitimate reaction.
However, instead of maintaining a Catholic behavior consistent with the purity of their Holy Faith, many Catholics adopted a practical way of life that effectively ignored or downplayed the points of Catholic doctrine and Catholic practices which Protestantism attacked. They also closed their eyes to the evil of the Protestant heresy and its mentality. Such an attitude is explained by the natural desire to achieve social and economic success; it is, nevertheless, a shameless attitude with regard to the glory of God and the doctrine that the Catholic Church is the only true religion.
The words of Our Lord spring to mind in this regard: “Everyone, therefore, that shall confess Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father Who is in Heaven. But he that shall deny Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father Who is in Heaven. Do not think that I came to send peace upon Earth! I came not to send peace, but the sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man’s enemies shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me, is not worthy of Me. And he that taketh not up his cross, and followeth Me, is not worthy of Me. He that findeth his life, shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for Me, shall find it” (Matthew 10:32-39).
As this Liberal Catholic attitude continued and intensified, it generated a kind of fellowship or camaraderie that gradually developed between Catholics with Protestants. And so, an early brand of an experimental false Ecumenism was increasingly established, where the doctrinal oppositions or differences between the two religions were more and more placed out of the way in the ‘closet’ and the emotional satisfaction of being accepted as Catholics in a predominantly Protestant society was preferred and overestimated.
These psychological factors help to explain the first phase of the establishment among our Catholics ancestors of that heresy which Pope Leo XIII called Americanism.
Psychological Effect of Persecution on American Catholics
It is important for Catholics to know this in order to understand how this persecution affected the mentality of Catholics in America in its early history and generated a Liberal way of behavior characterized by two different phases of accommodation to Protestantism:
First, both before and especially after the American Revolution, a general spirit of tolerance to a Protestant culture and way of life was made by some Catholics in order to be accepted in society. Such accommodation, I would contend, has continued into our days.
Second, to enter the realm of politics and avoid suspicions of being monarchists or “papists,” colonial American Catholics were prepared to accept the revolutionary idea of the separation of Church and State as a great good not only for America, but for Catholic Europe as well. Both civil and religious authorities in America openly proclaimed the need to abandon supposedly archaic and “medieval positions” in face of new conditions and democratic politics.
For these reasons, around a hundred years after the American Revolution, Pope Leo XIII addressed his famous letter Testem benevolentiae (January 22nd, 1889) to Cardinal Gibbons in America, accusing and condemning the general affability and comfort with Protestantism and the adoption of naturalistic principles by Catholics in the United States. He gave this censurable attitude the title of “Americanism”. Americanism, therefore, is essentially a precursory religious experience of false Ecumenism “made in America”, while, at the same time, its sibling, “Modernism”, was growing in Europe with similar tendencies and ideas.
The partial presentation of colonial American history by so many authors, which hides or underplays these things, helps to maintain that erroneous ecumenical spirit. Hopefully, by studying and seeing the historic hatred that Protestantism had for Catholicism can serve to help to correct and eliminate this Americanist attitude and behavior ― which is, a Liberal or Modernist attitude and behavior ― from Catholics of America and the world.
Church And State And Pope
In face of the European revolutions, which increasingly diminished the political power of the Catholic Church, Pope Pius IX responded by expanding and strengthening its spiritual authority. In 1864 he issued the Syllabus of Errors, which condemned Liberal ideas about the sovereignty of the individual and the free exercise of religion. It was an “error,” argued the pope, to believe that “every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.” A group of “Americanists” within the Church strongly supported the separation of Church and State, but were correctly reprimanded for their views. However, the rot had already set in, the bug was planted, the germ had invaded.
A Catholic Subculture
Alarmed by all this, Protestants hoped that the public school system would inculcate Catholic children with American values. But because they defined “American” as Protestant, they supported curricula that most Catholics found offensive. Catholic children were required to read not only the King James Version of the Bible (instead of their own Douay-Rheims version, based on the Latin Vulgate), but anti-Catholic stories in textbooks as well. In response, Catholic leaders strongly discouraged parents from sending their children to public schools. In 1884 the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore urged every church to build its own parochial school. Catholics argued that they should be able to direct their tax money to these schools (an issue still hotly debated today) but were met with strident opposition.
By building their own schools, orphanages, and hospitals, Catholics tried to nurture a distinctively Catholic worldview. Suspicious of Liberalism and individualism, the Church argued that individual freedom always had to be subordinate to God’s commandments. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1910, “Liberalism” was a dangerous ideology that led to “the abolition of the Divine right and of every kind of authority derived from God; the relegation of religion from the public life into the private domain of one’s individual conscience; [and] the absolute ignoring of Christianity and the Church as public, legal, and social institutions.”
“The Anti-Christ Has Won”
Despite the similarity of these opinions to some Protestant critiques, Protestants in this era continued to accuse Catholics of being subversive and “un-American.” The Ku Klux Klan, reorganized in 1915, gained 2,000,000 members by 1924 by attacking Catholics and Jews, as well as African Americans, as enemies of the nation.
When Al Smith, a Catholic, became the Democratic presidential candidate in 1928, the Klan sent out a flyer warning people that the “anti-Christ” had won. According to widespread rumors, the pope planned to move into the White House if Smith was elected. (Not surprisingly, Herbert Hoover easily defeated him.) In 1949 Paul Blanshard published a virulent attack on the Catholic Church, American Freedom and Catholic Power, which sold more than 100,000 copies and warned that the Roman hierarchy was plotting to impose “its social policies upon our schools, hospitals, government and family organization.”
Compromised Catholicism Carries Into The American Mainstream
Yet Blanshard’s anti-Catholic book was already out of date by the 1950s. As growing numbers of Catholics attended college and moved into the middle class, the Catholics seemed more interested in assimilating into the Liberal culture than criticizing it and the Protestant Liberal culture was no longer seemed as foreign or threatening, but likeable and acceptable―Catholic Liberalism, aided and abetted by Protestant Liberalism, had taken a stranglehold on true Catholicism. The more Liberal Catholicism became, the more acceptable or tolerable it became to Protestants. This is easily understood, for Catholic Liberalism in America, was the Catholic suicide for American Catholics. In the 1930s, Fr. Fulton Sheen began a weekly NBC Sunday night radio broadcast, The Catholic Hour. By the 1950s, the broadcast had a weekly listening audience of four million people. With the advent of television in the 1950s, Archbishop Fulton Sheen hosted a popular television program, Life Is Worth Living, which mixed spiritual advice with dire warnings of the Soviet threat. Life and Time magazine ran feature stories on Bishop Sheen (he had been made a bishop in 1951). The number of stations carrying Life Is Worth Living jumped from three to fifteen in less than two months. As many as 10,000,000 Americans watched his show each week. Yet Bishop Sheen was a typical product of Liberal Catholic America—part Conservative, part Liberal, and he became more Liberal after the Second Vatican Council, which could be loosely termed as the “the perfect dance partner for American Catholicism.”
Liberalism is a Sin
We have that very telling passage from the book first written around that time, in 1886 and republished in the 1890s--Liberalism is a Sin—which mentions the Liberalism prevalent in America at that time:
“As we are addressing ourselves to those who live amidst the peculiar circumstances of our American life, and as the spiritual and moral conditions which obtain in this country make up the moral and spiritual atmosphere in which we have our being, it is in the relation of our surroundings to ourselves as well as of ourselves to our surroundings that we shall find the answer to our question. Let us then consider these surroundings in a general way for the moment.
“First, as to some patent facts: The population of this country is at present something over 63 million (1890 census). Of these ten millions are Catholics, and according to their claim, 20 million Protestants, leaving a population of 33 millions or more who do not profess any form of Christianity at all. Amongst the twenty million Protestants every shade and variety of belief in the Christian dispensation finds easy lodgment, from the belief in the Incarnation and Consubstantiation to the rejection of the Divinity of Christ altogether in the vacuous creed of Unitarianism. In this scale of heresy the adjustments of creeds are loose and easy …
“Outside of these various bodies of loosely professed Christians, stands a still larger mass of our population who are either absolutely indifferent to Christianity as a creed or positively reject it. In practice the distinction is of little moment whether they hold themselves merely indifferent or positively hostile. In other words we have here to reckon with a body, to all practical purposes, infidel. This mass comprises over half of our population, holding itself aloof from Christianity, and in some instances virulently antagonizing it. In distinctly religious opposition to this mass of infidelity and to Protestantism, Catholics find themselves sharply and radically opposed. Heresy and infidelity are irreconcilable with Catholicity. “Who is not with Me is against Me!” are the words of Our Lord Himself, for denial of Catholic truth is the common element of both heresy and infidelity. The difference between them is merely a matter of degree. One denies less, the other denies more. Protestantism, with its sliding scale of creeds, is simply an inclined slope descending into the abyss of positive unbelief. It is always virtual infidelity, its final outcome open infidelity―as the thirty-three millions of unbelievers in this country stand witness.
“We live in the midst of this religious anarchy. Fifty-three millions of our population is anti-Catholic (1890 census). From this mass, heretical and infidel, exhales an atmosphere filled with germs poisonous and fatal to Catholic life, if permitted to take root in the Catholic heart. The mere force of gravitation―which the larger mass ever exercises upon the smaller―is a power which the most energetic vigor alone can resist. A deadly inertia, under this dangerous influence, is apt to creep over the souls of the incautious and is only to be overcome by the liveliest exercise of Catholic Faith. To live amidst an heretical and infidel population without weakening requires a strong religious health. And to this danger we are daily exposed, continually coming into contact in a thousand ways, in almost every relation of life, with anti-Catholic thought and customs. But outside of this spiritual inertia―a danger mpre passive than active in its influence―our non-Catholic surroundings beget a still greater menace.
“It is natural that Protestantism and infidelity (“infidelity” here meaning “a lack of faith” and not adultery) should find public expression. What our sixty million non-Catholic population (1890 census) thinks in these matters, naturally seeks and finds open expression. They have their media of expression and their literature, where we find their current opinions publicly stated. Their views upon religion, morality, politics, the constitution of society, are perpetually marshaled before us. In the pulpit and the press they are reiterated day after day. In magazine and newspaper they constantly speak from every line. Our literature is permeated and saturated with non-Catholic dogmatism. On all sides do we find this opposing spirit. We cannot escape from it. It enfolds and embraces us. Its breath is perpetually in our faces. It enters in by eye and ear. It wraps us in its offensive garments from birth to death. It now soothes and flatters; now hates and curses, now threatens and now praises. But it is most dangerous when it comes to us under the form of “Liberality.” It is especially powerful for seduction in this guise. For it is as Liberalism that Protestantism and Infidelity make their most devastating inroads upon the domain of the Faith. Out of these un-Catholic and anti-Catholic conditions, thus predominating amongst us, springs this monster of our times, Liberalism.” (Fr. Salvani, Liberalism is a Sin, chapter 1).
It is this Liberalism that has infected the Catholics of America—and the world too—to the point that they no longer see the disease of Liberalism for they have lost sight of true Catholicism. They are, for the most part, like the man who is born blind—he thinks he is normal, for he has never had the gift of sight. The modern day Liberal does not see himself or herself as being ‘blind’ or ‘crippled’ or ‘deformed’—because they were born into a Liberal family, attended a Liberal parish and Liberal school, worked in a Liberal environment, socialized in a Liberal milieu and watched, read and listened to a Liberal media. All of that Liberalism is a ‘normal’ way of life for today’s Liberal American Catholic.
Liberal Catholic President
Though we shall now focus on the Catholic John F. Kennedy, what is true of him, is also true of most Catholics in America today. John F. Kennedy’s election to the presidency in 1960 was the most visible sign of Liberal assimilation of weak Catholicism into a strong Anti-Catholic and Liberal political atmosphere. In his presidential acceptance speech, after having been elected, the Catholic Kennedy said:
“I do not regard the title of Liberal as an honorary degree; I regard it as a license to preach the gospel of Liberalism across this country … What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label, “Liberal”? If by “Liberal” they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of “Liberal.” But, if by a “Liberal,” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people - their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties - someone who believes that we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal,” then I'm proud to say that I'm a “Liberal.” [Applause]. But first, I would like to say what I understand the word, “Liberal,” to mean and explain in the process why I consider myself to be a “Liberal,” and what it means in the presidential election of 1960 … This is my political credo:
[President Kennedy then went on, like any other politician in the modern world where God and His Church are kept separate and outside of man and politics, explaining his political credo devoid of any mention of God—neither a Catholic nor Protestant God].
“I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, and the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, this faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the Liberal faith, for Liberalism is not so much a party creed, or a set of fixed platform promises, as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of Justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves. [Applause.]
“I believe for these reasons, that Liberalism is our best and our only hope in the world today. [Applause.] For the Liberal society is a free society, and it is at the same time and for that reason a strong society. Its strength is drawn from the will of free people committed to great ends and peacefully striving to meet them. Only Liberalism can repair our national power, restore our national purpose, and liberate our national energies. And the only basic issue in the 1960 presidential campaign is whether our Government will fall in a conservative rut and die there, or whether we will move ahead in the Liberal spirit of daring, of breaking new ground … [Applause.]
“Our Liberalism has its roots in our diverse origins. Most of us are descended from that segment of the American population which was once called an immigrant minority. Today, along with our children and grandchildren, we do not feel minor. We feel proud of our origins and we are not second to any group in our sense of national purpose. For many years New York represented the new frontier to all those who came from the ends of the Earth to find new opportunity and new freedom … These men and women, a living cross section of American history, indeed, a cross section of the entire world's history of pain and hope, made of this city and only a new world of opportunity, but a new world of the spirit as well … But in 1960, the cause of Liberalism cannot content itself with carrying on the fight for human justice and economic Liberalism here at home. For here and around the world the fear of war hangs over us every morning and every night … This is an important election ― in many ways as important as any in this century ― and I think that the Democratic Party and the Liberal Party here in New York, and those who believe in progress all over the United States, should be associated with us in this great effort … I say it is the great opportunity that we will have in our time to move our people and this country and the people of the free world beyond the new frontiers of the 1960's. Thank you.”
Kennedy Boldly Compromises His Catholic Faith
On the feast of the Holy Name of Mary, September 12th, 1960—just before the November presidential election, the then presidential candidate, the Catholic John F. Kennedy, gave a major speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, a group of Protestant ministers, on the issue of his religion. At the time, many Protestants questioned whether Kennedy's Roman Catholic Faith would allow him to make important national decisions as president while remaining independent of the Catholic Church. Kennedy addressed those concerns before a skeptical audience of Protestant clergy. The following is a series of excerpts from the transcript of Kennedy's speech:
“… the so-called religious issue is necessarily and properly the chief topic here tonight … Because I am a Catholic―and no Catholic has ever been elected president―the real issues in this campaign have been. So it is apparently necessary for me to state, once again, not what kind of Church I believe in — for that should be important only to me — but what kind of America I believe in. [Here he admits to adhering to a separation of Church and State, an attitude condemned by the Church]. I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president―should he be Catholic―how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.
“I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all … Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end; where all men and all churches are treated as equal; where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice; where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind; and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood. That is the kind of America in which I believe.
“And it represents the kind of presidency in which I believe — a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group, nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair … I ask you tonight to judge me on the basis of my record of 14 years in Congress, on my declared stands against an ambassador to the Vatican, against unconstitutional aid to parochial schools, and against any boycott of the public schools (which I have attended myself)— instead of judging me on the basis of these pamphlets and publications we all have seen that carefully select quotations out of context from the statements of Catholic church leaders, usually in other countries, frequently in other centuries, and always omitting, of course, the statement of the American Bishops in 1948, which strongly endorsed Church-State separation, and which more nearly reflects the views of almost every American Catholic.
“I am wholly opposed to the state being used by any religious group, Catholic or Protestant, to compel, prohibit, or persecute the free exercise of any other religion … I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my Church on public matters, and the Church does not speak for me. Whatever issue may come before me as president — on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject — I will make my decision in accordance with these views, in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates. And no power, or threat of punishment, could cause me to decide otherwise … If I should win the election, then I shall devote every effort of mind and spirit to fulfilling the oath of the presidency — practically identical, I might add, to the oath I have taken for 14 years in the Congress. For without reservation, I can "solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, so help me God.”
Although some Catholics objected to Kennedy’s claim that his beliefs would have no impact on his role as president, they shared his conviction that Catholicism and democracy (Liberalism) are compatible. Kennedy’s political view of separation of Church and State was not the Catholic Church’s teaching on Church and State—though the Church would betray its own teaching after the Second Vatican Council shortly after Kennedy’s 1960 election. Americanist Catholics were immensely ‘proud’ to see the nation’s first Catholic president swearing to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States”―failing to see Kennedy’s Catholic compromise in selling-out on Catholic Church teaching and “sending it down the Swanee River.”
The Catholic Kennedy Boldly States His Liberal Beliefs
In his presidential acceptance speech, after having been elected, the Catholic Kennedy said:
“I do not regard the title of Liberal as an honorary degree; I regard it as a license to preach the gospel of Liberalism across this country … What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label, “Liberal”? If by “Liberal” they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of “Liberal.” But, if by a “Liberal,” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people - their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties - someone who believes that we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal,” then I'm proud to say that I'm a “Liberal.” [Applause]. But first, I would like to say what I understand the word, “Liberal,” to mean and explain in the process why I consider myself to be a “Liberal,” and what it means in the presidential election of 1960 … This is my political credo:
[President Kennedy then went on, like any other politician in the modern world where God and His Church are kept separate and outside of man and politics, explaining his political credo devoid of any mention of God—neither a Catholic nor Protestant God].
“I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, and the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, this faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the Liberal faith, for Liberalism is not so much a party creed, or a set of fixed platform promises, as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of Justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves. [Applause.]
“I believe for these reasons, that Liberalism is our best and our only hope in the world today. [Applause.] For the Liberal society is a free society, and it is at the same time and for that reason a strong society. Its strength is drawn from the will of free people committed to great ends and peacefully striving to meet them. Only Liberalism can repair our national power, restore our national purpose, and liberate our national energies. And the only basic issue in the 1960 presidential campaign is whether our Government will fall in a conservative rut and die there, or whether we will move ahead in the Liberal spirit of daring, of breaking new ground … [Applause.]
“Our Liberalism has its roots in our diverse origins. Most of us are descended from that segment of the American population which was once called an immigrant minority. Today, along with our children and grandchildren, we do not feel minor. We feel proud of our origins and we are not second to any group in our sense of national purpose. For many years New York represented the new frontier to all those who came from the ends of the Earth to find new opportunity and new freedom … These men and women, a living cross section of American history, indeed, a cross section of the entire world's history of pain and hope, made of this city and only a new world of opportunity, but a new world of the spirit as well … But in 1960, the cause of Liberalism cannot content itself with carrying on the fight for human justice and economic Liberalism here at home. For here and around the world the fear of war hangs over us every morning and every night … This is an important election ― in many ways as important as any in this century ― and I think that the Democratic Party and the Liberal Party here in New York, and those who believe in progress all over the United States, should be associated with us in this great effort … I say it is the great opportunity that we will have in our time to move our people and this country and the people of the free world beyond the new frontiers of the 1960's. Thank you.”
On The ‘Same Side’―But is that God’s Side or the Devil’s Side?
Only a few years after Kennedy’s election, Pope John XXIII convened the fatal Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), a meeting of the world’s Catholic bishops that proclaimed a new Liberal and Modernist spirit of openness to modern culture. In a set of documents addressing liturgy, scripture, ecumenism, and the role of the Church in the modern world, the council emphasized that Church teachings could develop over time. As Archbishop Sheen said of Pope Joh XXIII on one of his TV shows: “… he was the one to call the Council. So he opened the doors of the Church—brought the Church out into the world! Brought the world into himself! … This is the one who made men love one another …Who did more for our beloved humanity in this day than this man? Who? He opened the Council! Brought the world into it! Protestants, Orthodox, Buddhists, Hindus, Communists! Everyone was welcome!” Archbishop Sheen admired Pope John XXIII and the Pope admired America and would implement Americanism in the Church. The Pope already was a committed Modernist, who had already been investigated in his younger days by Pope St. Pius X and declared to be “suspect of heresy” due to his use of modernist textbooks in the seminary where he taught. Pope John XXIII (then simply Father Giuseppe Roncalli) lied under oath that he had not even read the modernist books he was accused of using.
One of those Vatican II documents, Dignitatis Humanae (1965), reversed centuries of a correct Catholic opposition to religious freedom, by insisting that all individuals had the right to practice their Faith without coercion. Another fatal failure of the Council was its desire to open the doors of the Catholic Church to the world and its culture—seeking a false ‘marriage’ or union with the world and its culture, in the hope that it would rejuvenate the Church and bring along a new springtime. Today we see the terrible and fatal fruits of that stupid Liberal and Modernist false optimism of the Council. This ludicrous attempt totally rejects and ignores the warnings of Our Lord and Holy Scripture.
Our Lord tells us that we cannot serve two masters: “No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one, and love the other: or he will sustain the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24). “And Jesus said to them [the Jews and Pharisees]: ‘You are from beneath, I am from above. You are of this world, I am not of this world” (John 8:23). Speaking to God of His followers, Jesus said: “I have given them Thy word, and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world; as I also am not of the world” (John 17:14). “I pray for them: I pray not for the world!” (John 17:9). Then, addressing His followers, He says: “If the world hate you, know ye, that it hath hated Me before you” (John 15:18). “If you had been of the world, the world would love its own―but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you” (John 15:19).
“You shall hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that ye be not troubled. For these things must come to pass … For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom … Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall put you to death: and you shall be hated by all nations for My Name’s sake … And then shall many be scandalized: and shall betray one another: and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise [Protestantism among them], and shall seduce many … But he that shall persevere to the end, he shall be saved” (Matthew 24:6-13). “But beware of men. For they will deliver you up in councils, and they will scourge you … And you shall be brought before governors, and before kings for My sake … And you shall be hated by all men for My Name’s sake … And when they shall persecute you in this city, flee into another … But he that shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved” (Matthew 10:17-23).
The Apostles understood this and lived it, practiced it and preached it: “Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). “Know you not that the friendship of this world is the enemy of God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of this world, becometh an enemy of God” (James 4:4).
“There will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies … Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. These teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories … They have left the straight-way and wandered off to follow the way of wickedness … These people are springs without water and mists driven by a storm … They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity—for people are slaves to whatever has mastered them. If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and are overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them” (2 Peter 2:1-21).
Rather than fighting the world perseveringly to the end, American Catholicism, under the severe pressure of persecution, increasingly made peace with its persecutors. Rather than avoid them, it mingled with them—ignoring the words of Holy Scripture: “Know also this, that, in the last days, shall come dangerous times. Men shall be lovers of themselves, covetous, haughty, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, wicked, without affection, without peace, slanderers, incontinent, unmerciful, without kindness, traitors, stubborn, puffed up, and lovers of pleasures more than of God: having an appearance indeed of godliness, but denying the power thereof. Now these avoid!” (2 Timothy 3:1-5).
With the Second Vatican Council, the Church had stepped onto the same slippery slope upon which American Catholicism had been living and slipping and sliding for over 200 years. The American Catholic experience was one of compromise with the enemies of the Church and was essentially one of freedom of religions for the religious minorities have struggled to practice their faiths freely in the United States, while retaining an underhand Anti-Catholic spirit. John F. Kennedy’s Liberal vision of a more perfect nation—a nation where people of faith “will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood” is an attitude condemned by the uncontaminated Church of old. The “American ideal of brotherhood” is not the traditional Church view of brotherhood—or what “brotherhood” are we really speaking about?
The phase of strong, blatant persecution of Catholicism—mentioned in the previous article (Part 6)―came to a close during the revolutionary era (1763-1820). For various reasons―the outbreak of hostilities and the winning of independence―forced Protestant Americans to at least officially temper their hostility toward Catholicism. With the relaxation of penal measures against them, Catholics breathed a great sigh of relief―which is a normal and legitimate reaction.
However, instead of maintaining a Catholic behavior consistent with the purity of their Holy Faith, many Catholics adopted a practical way of life that effectively ignored or downplayed the points of Catholic doctrine and Catholic practices which Protestantism attacked. They also closed their eyes to the evil of the Protestant heresy and its mentality. Such an attitude is explained by the natural desire to achieve social and economic success; it is, nevertheless, a shameless attitude with regard to the glory of God and the doctrine that the Catholic Church is the only true religion.
The words of Our Lord spring to mind in this regard: “Everyone, therefore, that shall confess Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father Who is in Heaven. But he that shall deny Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father Who is in Heaven. Do not think that I came to send peace upon Earth! I came not to send peace, but the sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man’s enemies shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me, is not worthy of Me. And he that taketh not up his cross, and followeth Me, is not worthy of Me. He that findeth his life, shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for Me, shall find it” (Matthew 10:32-39).
As this Liberal Catholic attitude continued and intensified, it generated a kind of fellowship or camaraderie that gradually developed between Catholics with Protestants. And so, an early brand of an experimental false Ecumenism was increasingly established, where the doctrinal oppositions or differences between the two religions were more and more placed out of the way in the ‘closet’ and the emotional satisfaction of being accepted as Catholics in a predominantly Protestant society was preferred and overestimated.
These psychological factors help to explain the first phase of the establishment among our Catholics ancestors of that heresy which Pope Leo XIII called Americanism.
Psychological Effect of Persecution on American Catholics
It is important for Catholics to know this in order to understand how this persecution affected the mentality of Catholics in America in its early history and generated a Liberal way of behavior characterized by two different phases of accommodation to Protestantism:
First, both before and especially after the American Revolution, a general spirit of tolerance to a Protestant culture and way of life was made by some Catholics in order to be accepted in society. Such accommodation, I would contend, has continued into our days.
Second, to enter the realm of politics and avoid suspicions of being monarchists or “papists,” colonial American Catholics were prepared to accept the revolutionary idea of the separation of Church and State as a great good not only for America, but for Catholic Europe as well. Both civil and religious authorities in America openly proclaimed the need to abandon supposedly archaic and “medieval positions” in face of new conditions and democratic politics.
For these reasons, around a hundred years after the American Revolution, Pope Leo XIII addressed his famous letter Testem benevolentiae (January 22nd, 1889) to Cardinal Gibbons in America, accusing and condemning the general affability and comfort with Protestantism and the adoption of naturalistic principles by Catholics in the United States. He gave this censurable attitude the title of “Americanism”. Americanism, therefore, is essentially a precursory religious experience of false Ecumenism “made in America”, while, at the same time, its sibling, “Modernism”, was growing in Europe with similar tendencies and ideas.
The partial presentation of colonial American history by so many authors, which hides or underplays these things, helps to maintain that erroneous ecumenical spirit. Hopefully, by studying and seeing the historic hatred that Protestantism had for Catholicism can serve to help to correct and eliminate this Americanist attitude and behavior ― which is, a Liberal or Modernist attitude and behavior ― from Catholics of America and the world.
Church And State And Pope
In face of the European revolutions, which increasingly diminished the political power of the Catholic Church, Pope Pius IX responded by expanding and strengthening its spiritual authority. In 1864 he issued the Syllabus of Errors, which condemned Liberal ideas about the sovereignty of the individual and the free exercise of religion. It was an “error,” argued the pope, to believe that “every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.” A group of “Americanists” within the Church strongly supported the separation of Church and State, but were correctly reprimanded for their views. However, the rot had already set in, the bug was planted, the germ had invaded.
A Catholic Subculture
Alarmed by all this, Protestants hoped that the public school system would inculcate Catholic children with American values. But because they defined “American” as Protestant, they supported curricula that most Catholics found offensive. Catholic children were required to read not only the King James Version of the Bible (instead of their own Douay-Rheims version, based on the Latin Vulgate), but anti-Catholic stories in textbooks as well. In response, Catholic leaders strongly discouraged parents from sending their children to public schools. In 1884 the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore urged every church to build its own parochial school. Catholics argued that they should be able to direct their tax money to these schools (an issue still hotly debated today) but were met with strident opposition.
By building their own schools, orphanages, and hospitals, Catholics tried to nurture a distinctively Catholic worldview. Suspicious of Liberalism and individualism, the Church argued that individual freedom always had to be subordinate to God’s commandments. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1910, “Liberalism” was a dangerous ideology that led to “the abolition of the Divine right and of every kind of authority derived from God; the relegation of religion from the public life into the private domain of one’s individual conscience; [and] the absolute ignoring of Christianity and the Church as public, legal, and social institutions.”
“The Anti-Christ Has Won”
Despite the similarity of these opinions to some Protestant critiques, Protestants in this era continued to accuse Catholics of being subversive and “un-American.” The Ku Klux Klan, reorganized in 1915, gained 2,000,000 members by 1924 by attacking Catholics and Jews, as well as African Americans, as enemies of the nation.
When Al Smith, a Catholic, became the Democratic presidential candidate in 1928, the Klan sent out a flyer warning people that the “anti-Christ” had won. According to widespread rumors, the pope planned to move into the White House if Smith was elected. (Not surprisingly, Herbert Hoover easily defeated him.) In 1949 Paul Blanshard published a virulent attack on the Catholic Church, American Freedom and Catholic Power, which sold more than 100,000 copies and warned that the Roman hierarchy was plotting to impose “its social policies upon our schools, hospitals, government and family organization.”
Compromised Catholicism Carries Into The American Mainstream
Yet Blanshard’s anti-Catholic book was already out of date by the 1950s. As growing numbers of Catholics attended college and moved into the middle class, the Catholics seemed more interested in assimilating into the Liberal culture than criticizing it and the Protestant Liberal culture was no longer seemed as foreign or threatening, but likeable and acceptable―Catholic Liberalism, aided and abetted by Protestant Liberalism, had taken a stranglehold on true Catholicism. The more Liberal Catholicism became, the more acceptable or tolerable it became to Protestants. This is easily understood, for Catholic Liberalism in America, was the Catholic suicide for American Catholics. In the 1930s, Fr. Fulton Sheen began a weekly NBC Sunday night radio broadcast, The Catholic Hour. By the 1950s, the broadcast had a weekly listening audience of four million people. With the advent of television in the 1950s, Archbishop Fulton Sheen hosted a popular television program, Life Is Worth Living, which mixed spiritual advice with dire warnings of the Soviet threat. Life and Time magazine ran feature stories on Bishop Sheen (he had been made a bishop in 1951). The number of stations carrying Life Is Worth Living jumped from three to fifteen in less than two months. As many as 10,000,000 Americans watched his show each week. Yet Bishop Sheen was a typical product of Liberal Catholic America—part Conservative, part Liberal, and he became more Liberal after the Second Vatican Council, which could be loosely termed as the “the perfect dance partner for American Catholicism.”
Liberalism is a Sin
We have that very telling passage from the book first written around that time, in 1886 and republished in the 1890s--Liberalism is a Sin—which mentions the Liberalism prevalent in America at that time:
“As we are addressing ourselves to those who live amidst the peculiar circumstances of our American life, and as the spiritual and moral conditions which obtain in this country make up the moral and spiritual atmosphere in which we have our being, it is in the relation of our surroundings to ourselves as well as of ourselves to our surroundings that we shall find the answer to our question. Let us then consider these surroundings in a general way for the moment.
“First, as to some patent facts: The population of this country is at present something over 63 million (1890 census). Of these ten millions are Catholics, and according to their claim, 20 million Protestants, leaving a population of 33 millions or more who do not profess any form of Christianity at all. Amongst the twenty million Protestants every shade and variety of belief in the Christian dispensation finds easy lodgment, from the belief in the Incarnation and Consubstantiation to the rejection of the Divinity of Christ altogether in the vacuous creed of Unitarianism. In this scale of heresy the adjustments of creeds are loose and easy …
“Outside of these various bodies of loosely professed Christians, stands a still larger mass of our population who are either absolutely indifferent to Christianity as a creed or positively reject it. In practice the distinction is of little moment whether they hold themselves merely indifferent or positively hostile. In other words we have here to reckon with a body, to all practical purposes, infidel. This mass comprises over half of our population, holding itself aloof from Christianity, and in some instances virulently antagonizing it. In distinctly religious opposition to this mass of infidelity and to Protestantism, Catholics find themselves sharply and radically opposed. Heresy and infidelity are irreconcilable with Catholicity. “Who is not with Me is against Me!” are the words of Our Lord Himself, for denial of Catholic truth is the common element of both heresy and infidelity. The difference between them is merely a matter of degree. One denies less, the other denies more. Protestantism, with its sliding scale of creeds, is simply an inclined slope descending into the abyss of positive unbelief. It is always virtual infidelity, its final outcome open infidelity―as the thirty-three millions of unbelievers in this country stand witness.
“We live in the midst of this religious anarchy. Fifty-three millions of our population is anti-Catholic (1890 census). From this mass, heretical and infidel, exhales an atmosphere filled with germs poisonous and fatal to Catholic life, if permitted to take root in the Catholic heart. The mere force of gravitation―which the larger mass ever exercises upon the smaller―is a power which the most energetic vigor alone can resist. A deadly inertia, under this dangerous influence, is apt to creep over the souls of the incautious and is only to be overcome by the liveliest exercise of Catholic Faith. To live amidst an heretical and infidel population without weakening requires a strong religious health. And to this danger we are daily exposed, continually coming into contact in a thousand ways, in almost every relation of life, with anti-Catholic thought and customs. But outside of this spiritual inertia―a danger mpre passive than active in its influence―our non-Catholic surroundings beget a still greater menace.
“It is natural that Protestantism and infidelity (“infidelity” here meaning “a lack of faith” and not adultery) should find public expression. What our sixty million non-Catholic population (1890 census) thinks in these matters, naturally seeks and finds open expression. They have their media of expression and their literature, where we find their current opinions publicly stated. Their views upon religion, morality, politics, the constitution of society, are perpetually marshaled before us. In the pulpit and the press they are reiterated day after day. In magazine and newspaper they constantly speak from every line. Our literature is permeated and saturated with non-Catholic dogmatism. On all sides do we find this opposing spirit. We cannot escape from it. It enfolds and embraces us. Its breath is perpetually in our faces. It enters in by eye and ear. It wraps us in its offensive garments from birth to death. It now soothes and flatters; now hates and curses, now threatens and now praises. But it is most dangerous when it comes to us under the form of “Liberality.” It is especially powerful for seduction in this guise. For it is as Liberalism that Protestantism and Infidelity make their most devastating inroads upon the domain of the Faith. Out of these un-Catholic and anti-Catholic conditions, thus predominating amongst us, springs this monster of our times, Liberalism.” (Fr. Salvani, Liberalism is a Sin, chapter 1).
It is this Liberalism that has infected the Catholics of America—and the world too—to the point that they no longer see the disease of Liberalism for they have lost sight of true Catholicism. They are, for the most part, like the man who is born blind—he thinks he is normal, for he has never had the gift of sight. The modern day Liberal does not see himself or herself as being ‘blind’ or ‘crippled’ or ‘deformed’—because they were born into a Liberal family, attended a Liberal parish and Liberal school, worked in a Liberal environment, socialized in a Liberal milieu and watched, read and listened to a Liberal media. All of that Liberalism is a ‘normal’ way of life for today’s Liberal American Catholic.
Liberal Catholic President
Though we shall now focus on the Catholic John F. Kennedy, what is true of him, is also true of most Catholics in America today. John F. Kennedy’s election to the presidency in 1960 was the most visible sign of Liberal assimilation of weak Catholicism into a strong Anti-Catholic and Liberal political atmosphere. In his presidential acceptance speech, after having been elected, the Catholic Kennedy said:
“I do not regard the title of Liberal as an honorary degree; I regard it as a license to preach the gospel of Liberalism across this country … What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label, “Liberal”? If by “Liberal” they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of “Liberal.” But, if by a “Liberal,” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people - their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties - someone who believes that we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal,” then I'm proud to say that I'm a “Liberal.” [Applause]. But first, I would like to say what I understand the word, “Liberal,” to mean and explain in the process why I consider myself to be a “Liberal,” and what it means in the presidential election of 1960 … This is my political credo:
[President Kennedy then went on, like any other politician in the modern world where God and His Church are kept separate and outside of man and politics, explaining his political credo devoid of any mention of God—neither a Catholic nor Protestant God].
“I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, and the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, this faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the Liberal faith, for Liberalism is not so much a party creed, or a set of fixed platform promises, as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of Justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves. [Applause.]
“I believe for these reasons, that Liberalism is our best and our only hope in the world today. [Applause.] For the Liberal society is a free society, and it is at the same time and for that reason a strong society. Its strength is drawn from the will of free people committed to great ends and peacefully striving to meet them. Only Liberalism can repair our national power, restore our national purpose, and liberate our national energies. And the only basic issue in the 1960 presidential campaign is whether our Government will fall in a conservative rut and die there, or whether we will move ahead in the Liberal spirit of daring, of breaking new ground … [Applause.]
“Our Liberalism has its roots in our diverse origins. Most of us are descended from that segment of the American population which was once called an immigrant minority. Today, along with our children and grandchildren, we do not feel minor. We feel proud of our origins and we are not second to any group in our sense of national purpose. For many years New York represented the new frontier to all those who came from the ends of the Earth to find new opportunity and new freedom … These men and women, a living cross section of American history, indeed, a cross section of the entire world's history of pain and hope, made of this city and only a new world of opportunity, but a new world of the spirit as well … But in 1960, the cause of Liberalism cannot content itself with carrying on the fight for human justice and economic Liberalism here at home. For here and around the world the fear of war hangs over us every morning and every night … This is an important election ― in many ways as important as any in this century ― and I think that the Democratic Party and the Liberal Party here in New York, and those who believe in progress all over the United States, should be associated with us in this great effort … I say it is the great opportunity that we will have in our time to move our people and this country and the people of the free world beyond the new frontiers of the 1960's. Thank you.”
Kennedy Boldly Compromises His Catholic Faith
On the feast of the Holy Name of Mary, September 12th, 1960—just before the November presidential election, the then presidential candidate, the Catholic John F. Kennedy, gave a major speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, a group of Protestant ministers, on the issue of his religion. At the time, many Protestants questioned whether Kennedy's Roman Catholic Faith would allow him to make important national decisions as president while remaining independent of the Catholic Church. Kennedy addressed those concerns before a skeptical audience of Protestant clergy. The following is a series of excerpts from the transcript of Kennedy's speech:
“… the so-called religious issue is necessarily and properly the chief topic here tonight … Because I am a Catholic―and no Catholic has ever been elected president―the real issues in this campaign have been. So it is apparently necessary for me to state, once again, not what kind of Church I believe in — for that should be important only to me — but what kind of America I believe in. [Here he admits to adhering to a separation of Church and State, an attitude condemned by the Church]. I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president―should he be Catholic―how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.
“I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all … Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end; where all men and all churches are treated as equal; where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice; where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind; and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood. That is the kind of America in which I believe.
“And it represents the kind of presidency in which I believe — a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group, nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair … I ask you tonight to judge me on the basis of my record of 14 years in Congress, on my declared stands against an ambassador to the Vatican, against unconstitutional aid to parochial schools, and against any boycott of the public schools (which I have attended myself)— instead of judging me on the basis of these pamphlets and publications we all have seen that carefully select quotations out of context from the statements of Catholic church leaders, usually in other countries, frequently in other centuries, and always omitting, of course, the statement of the American Bishops in 1948, which strongly endorsed Church-State separation, and which more nearly reflects the views of almost every American Catholic.
“I am wholly opposed to the state being used by any religious group, Catholic or Protestant, to compel, prohibit, or persecute the free exercise of any other religion … I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my Church on public matters, and the Church does not speak for me. Whatever issue may come before me as president — on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject — I will make my decision in accordance with these views, in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates. And no power, or threat of punishment, could cause me to decide otherwise … If I should win the election, then I shall devote every effort of mind and spirit to fulfilling the oath of the presidency — practically identical, I might add, to the oath I have taken for 14 years in the Congress. For without reservation, I can "solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, so help me God.”
Although some Catholics objected to Kennedy’s claim that his beliefs would have no impact on his role as president, they shared his conviction that Catholicism and democracy (Liberalism) are compatible. Kennedy’s political view of separation of Church and State was not the Catholic Church’s teaching on Church and State—though the Church would betray its own teaching after the Second Vatican Council shortly after Kennedy’s 1960 election. Americanist Catholics were immensely ‘proud’ to see the nation’s first Catholic president swearing to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States”―failing to see Kennedy’s Catholic compromise in selling-out on Catholic Church teaching and “sending it down the Swanee River.”
The Catholic Kennedy Boldly States His Liberal Beliefs
In his presidential acceptance speech, after having been elected, the Catholic Kennedy said:
“I do not regard the title of Liberal as an honorary degree; I regard it as a license to preach the gospel of Liberalism across this country … What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label, “Liberal”? If by “Liberal” they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of “Liberal.” But, if by a “Liberal,” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people - their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties - someone who believes that we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal,” then I'm proud to say that I'm a “Liberal.” [Applause]. But first, I would like to say what I understand the word, “Liberal,” to mean and explain in the process why I consider myself to be a “Liberal,” and what it means in the presidential election of 1960 … This is my political credo:
[President Kennedy then went on, like any other politician in the modern world where God and His Church are kept separate and outside of man and politics, explaining his political credo devoid of any mention of God—neither a Catholic nor Protestant God].
“I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, and the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, this faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the Liberal faith, for Liberalism is not so much a party creed, or a set of fixed platform promises, as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of Justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves. [Applause.]
“I believe for these reasons, that Liberalism is our best and our only hope in the world today. [Applause.] For the Liberal society is a free society, and it is at the same time and for that reason a strong society. Its strength is drawn from the will of free people committed to great ends and peacefully striving to meet them. Only Liberalism can repair our national power, restore our national purpose, and liberate our national energies. And the only basic issue in the 1960 presidential campaign is whether our Government will fall in a conservative rut and die there, or whether we will move ahead in the Liberal spirit of daring, of breaking new ground … [Applause.]
“Our Liberalism has its roots in our diverse origins. Most of us are descended from that segment of the American population which was once called an immigrant minority. Today, along with our children and grandchildren, we do not feel minor. We feel proud of our origins and we are not second to any group in our sense of national purpose. For many years New York represented the new frontier to all those who came from the ends of the Earth to find new opportunity and new freedom … These men and women, a living cross section of American history, indeed, a cross section of the entire world's history of pain and hope, made of this city and only a new world of opportunity, but a new world of the spirit as well … But in 1960, the cause of Liberalism cannot content itself with carrying on the fight for human justice and economic Liberalism here at home. For here and around the world the fear of war hangs over us every morning and every night … This is an important election ― in many ways as important as any in this century ― and I think that the Democratic Party and the Liberal Party here in New York, and those who believe in progress all over the United States, should be associated with us in this great effort … I say it is the great opportunity that we will have in our time to move our people and this country and the people of the free world beyond the new frontiers of the 1960's. Thank you.”
On The ‘Same Side’―But is that God’s Side or the Devil’s Side?
Only a few years after Kennedy’s election, Pope John XXIII convened the fatal Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), a meeting of the world’s Catholic bishops that proclaimed a new Liberal and Modernist spirit of openness to modern culture. In a set of documents addressing liturgy, scripture, ecumenism, and the role of the Church in the modern world, the council emphasized that Church teachings could develop over time. As Archbishop Sheen said of Pope Joh XXIII on one of his TV shows: “… he was the one to call the Council. So he opened the doors of the Church—brought the Church out into the world! Brought the world into himself! … This is the one who made men love one another …Who did more for our beloved humanity in this day than this man? Who? He opened the Council! Brought the world into it! Protestants, Orthodox, Buddhists, Hindus, Communists! Everyone was welcome!” Archbishop Sheen admired Pope John XXIII and the Pope admired America and would implement Americanism in the Church. The Pope already was a committed Modernist, who had already been investigated in his younger days by Pope St. Pius X and declared to be “suspect of heresy” due to his use of modernist textbooks in the seminary where he taught. Pope John XXIII (then simply Father Giuseppe Roncalli) lied under oath that he had not even read the modernist books he was accused of using.
One of those Vatican II documents, Dignitatis Humanae (1965), reversed centuries of a correct Catholic opposition to religious freedom, by insisting that all individuals had the right to practice their Faith without coercion. Another fatal failure of the Council was its desire to open the doors of the Catholic Church to the world and its culture—seeking a false ‘marriage’ or union with the world and its culture, in the hope that it would rejuvenate the Church and bring along a new springtime. Today we see the terrible and fatal fruits of that stupid Liberal and Modernist false optimism of the Council. This ludicrous attempt totally rejects and ignores the warnings of Our Lord and Holy Scripture.
Our Lord tells us that we cannot serve two masters: “No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one, and love the other: or he will sustain the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24). “And Jesus said to them [the Jews and Pharisees]: ‘You are from beneath, I am from above. You are of this world, I am not of this world” (John 8:23). Speaking to God of His followers, Jesus said: “I have given them Thy word, and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world; as I also am not of the world” (John 17:14). “I pray for them: I pray not for the world!” (John 17:9). Then, addressing His followers, He says: “If the world hate you, know ye, that it hath hated Me before you” (John 15:18). “If you had been of the world, the world would love its own―but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you” (John 15:19).
“You shall hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that ye be not troubled. For these things must come to pass … For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom … Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall put you to death: and you shall be hated by all nations for My Name’s sake … And then shall many be scandalized: and shall betray one another: and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise [Protestantism among them], and shall seduce many … But he that shall persevere to the end, he shall be saved” (Matthew 24:6-13). “But beware of men. For they will deliver you up in councils, and they will scourge you … And you shall be brought before governors, and before kings for My sake … And you shall be hated by all men for My Name’s sake … And when they shall persecute you in this city, flee into another … But he that shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved” (Matthew 10:17-23).
The Apostles understood this and lived it, practiced it and preached it: “Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). “Know you not that the friendship of this world is the enemy of God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of this world, becometh an enemy of God” (James 4:4).
“There will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies … Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. These teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories … They have left the straight-way and wandered off to follow the way of wickedness … These people are springs without water and mists driven by a storm … They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity—for people are slaves to whatever has mastered them. If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and are overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them” (2 Peter 2:1-21).
Rather than fighting the world perseveringly to the end, American Catholicism, under the severe pressure of persecution, increasingly made peace with its persecutors. Rather than avoid them, it mingled with them—ignoring the words of Holy Scripture: “Know also this, that, in the last days, shall come dangerous times. Men shall be lovers of themselves, covetous, haughty, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, wicked, without affection, without peace, slanderers, incontinent, unmerciful, without kindness, traitors, stubborn, puffed up, and lovers of pleasures more than of God: having an appearance indeed of godliness, but denying the power thereof. Now these avoid!” (2 Timothy 3:1-5).
With the Second Vatican Council, the Church had stepped onto the same slippery slope upon which American Catholicism had been living and slipping and sliding for over 200 years. The American Catholic experience was one of compromise with the enemies of the Church and was essentially one of freedom of religions for the religious minorities have struggled to practice their faiths freely in the United States, while retaining an underhand Anti-Catholic spirit. John F. Kennedy’s Liberal vision of a more perfect nation—a nation where people of faith “will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood” is an attitude condemned by the uncontaminated Church of old. The “American ideal of brotherhood” is not the traditional Church view of brotherhood—or what “brotherhood” are we really speaking about?
PART 8
FROM HARSH PERSECUTION TO SOFT SEDUCTION
Over the centuries, little by little, the persecution of Catholics has gradually and perhaps almost imperceptibly changed from a harsh approach to a soft approach—from violence to seduction, from being “in your face” to “getting under your skin”, from creating fear and terror to creating a false sense of security, from being hated to being liked, from playing ‘hard cop’ to playing ‘soft cop’, from being seen as an enemy to being seen as a friend.
This form of approach destroys more American Catholic souls (or Catholic souls anywhere in the world) far more easily than the direct threatening, fearful, violent, discriminatory persecution of old. It is a masterstroke of the devil. It is a tactic of “Don’t try force them to give up the Faith, work towards making them gradually give up the Faith on their own accord! Let them do the work on themselves, we will just supply the materials!” This kind of approach has seen the disastrous downfall of Catholicism in America and throughout the world.
Talking of playing ‘hard cop’ and ‘soft cop’—here are few words from a police officer, Dylan Kurtz, who is a veteran law enforcement officer and author of Beating the Police Interrogation. In an article entitled: “Dominance and Submission: How the Police Use Psychological Manipulation to Interrogate” he points out a variety of things that dovetail with the modern methods of wearing-down Catholicism by a more subtle form of persecution. The article is long—even after being edited for irrelevant material—but bear with it. In the next article, the theories that surface from these revelations will be applied to the wearing-down and weakening of Catholic resolve when under the pressure of a Liberal, Protestant and non-Catholic world. It makes for fascinating reading, even though it does not directly bear upon the history of Catholicism in America. If nothing else, you might well find yourself in a similar situation, being interrogated for the ‘crime’ of being Catholic and thus being guilty of a ‘hate crime’ against anyone and everyone who is not Catholic, simply because you want to hold on to the teachings, beliefs, moral code and religious practices that God expects you to have and to do! Those days do not seem to be too far away! From here on to the end of this article, the words of the above mentioned police officer are solely used.
Sophisticated Techniques
In our society it is common to treat the police as less than intelligent. We laugh at the antics of law enforcement officers when we read of their mishaps in the news media and figure this to be their normative behavior. The only people we think to be stupider than the cops are the criminals they deal with. After all, if a cop can catch you, you must be pretty dumb, or careless, at least! Most of us also tend to believe that if we wanted to commit a crime, we would get away with it scot free. After all, many crimes go unsolved each year, so our chances are pretty good that we could commit a crime and escape punishment. But if the police suspected you had committed a crime, would you talk to them? And moreover, would you confess, even though there was no way you could be arrested or convicted of the crime, unless you did confess? “Of course not,” you would say. “Why, I’d have to be a complete idiot in order to do something of that nature!” Unfortunately for you, you are wrong. If confronted by police who use sophisticated interrogation techniques, you probably would confess. In fact, you would probably be very happy to do so. Psychological manipulations can do that to you.
Polygraphs, Truth Serums, Sweet Words and Threats
Law enforcement is a sophisticated business … One of the basic problems the police have always had is how to get criminals to confess to the crimes they have committed ... Eliciting confessions from unwilling suspects in the old days used primitive methods. Torture was an approved of practice in many locations, until the Supreme Court intervened ... After that, torturing suspects was strictly a no-no. So the police had to find new and interesting ways to make people confess. Polygraphs (lie detectors) were new on the scene, and police quickly became enchanted with the idea that they could tell if someone was lying through the use of machines. “Truth serums” and hypnosis had been tried and found lacking. While polygraphs could (and still do) adequately predict when a suspect is being deceptive, the courts view the machines with skepticism. To this day, even failing a polygraph test means virtually nothing in court. In fact, most states do not allow polygraph results to be admitted into evidence.
Reid Would Read Body Language
But the polygraph brought forth something else the police could use. Polygraphists, or polygraph operators, began noticing that people who were deceptive during their interrogations also exhibited certain behavioral signs. The polygraphists theorized that these same behavioral signs could be noticed in interrogations where a polygraph was not used, and set out to see if this was true. One noted polygraphist, John E. Reid, eventually developed an entire system of interrogation based upon asking suspects questions and watching their reactions. Reid could not just identify those who were deceptive in their answers, but his system also elicited information from those suspects that was eventually used against them to obtain confessions. Today, Reid’s system is taught to most modern law enforcement agencies and any private sector company willing to pay the price. Reid is gone now, but his system of interrogation lives on.
Today’s methods of interrogation are a fascinating study of the principles of human nature. Through the years, interrogation techniques such as the Reid have become highly refined and are now used by notables such as the United States Secret Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Its effectiveness is undisputed, and has aided in the resolution of hundreds of thousands of criminal cases. The “Reid Method” and its imitators use advanced psychological techniques in their systems, techniques that appear simple on the surface, but which have been likened to “brainwashing” by criminal defense attorneys.
Good Cop & Bad Cop—Soft Cop & Hard Cop
“When the police wanted to question you about a crime in the past, the path the questioning took only went a couple of ways. The police would accuse you of committing the crime, read you your rights, and then try to convince you to confess by telling you all the bad things that could happen to you if you didn’t tell the truth. The most sophisticated technique brought into play would be the time-honored “Good Cop-Bad Cop ploy”. However, the more experienced criminals rapidly caught onto these simple tricks of the trade. Most would not confess after experiencing police interrogation, or being told about it. Today’s methods are extremely different in both format and application. An interrogator trained in psychological manipulation first talks with the subject a while and attempts to develop rapport prior to initiating any questioning. The interrogator may feign interest in some of the suspect’s hobbies or in the suspect’s lifestyle. By acting in such a manner, the interrogator leads the suspect to believe that he and the interrogator are similar in many ways.
The Buddy-Buddy Approach
The first principle involved here is that humans generally tend to like people who are most similar to them in interests and beliefs. Accordingly, this type of interrogator may profess to have Neo-Nazi beliefs if talking with a Skinhead, or to enjoy bass fishing if interrogating a sport fishing enthusiast. Some interrogators go so far as to wear the same brand clothing as the suspect, if that can be determined in advance. The second principle involved is that once the suspect begins talking about any topic, it is harder for the suspect to stop talking about other topics―including crimes he may have committed. The final principle used at this stage is a combination of the first two. Suspects who like their interrogators and feel compelled to talk, because they are already within the throes of conversation find it much harder to lie. [Similarly, Catholics who get to like non-Catholics, find it hard to live like true Catholics and will adapt to the non-Catholic. The persecutors will seek to establish many common links to glue the Catholics to Non-Catholics and their culture].
Pretended Friendship Only A Cover For Studying
The next stage of the operation involves getting a “baseline” of the suspect’s normal behavior when asked non-stressful questions. These questions appear to be innocuous on the surface, but are not. The interrogator watches the subject’s facial expressions and body language prior to, during and after the suspect answers the question. This is called “Kinesic Interviewing” and it gives the interrogator a very good idea of how the suspect acts when he answers questions truthfully. But the technique is even more refined than simply observing mere body movements. The interrogator may even ask questions that will tell him important information about how the suspect’s brain works while thinking, or recalling data. This technique is called “Neurolinguistic Interviewing” and involves asking a suspect two types of questions. One set of questions requires the suspect to remember data, and the other requires the suspect to use his cognitive processes. The interrogator then watches the suspect’s body language to determine what type of changes take place when the suspect thinks of information, as opposed to remembering it.
This is of particular importance in knowing whether a suspect is remembering information, such as a truthful alibi, or merely creating such facts in his mind.
Pointless Questions That Are Not Pointless
The easiest way to demonstrate this technique is to ask a person, who is unaware of what you are doing, several questions that would involve these thought processes. You should then watch your subject’s eyes as the subject either thinks or remembers. When a person thinks of an answer, his eyes will usually move to a certain spot, such as to the left, or straight up. This will vary according to the individual. A good way to elicit this type of response is asking mathematical problems, such as 6x6-3+6=? Since math requires almost pure thought and little memory, a neurolinguistic response to such a question is a good indicator of how a person responds to thinking questions. Next ask a memory-type question, such as what the subject had for dinner the night before. Questions that require the subject to reach further back into his memory are best, as you will get a truer response.
Now compare the responses to both the “thinking’ and the “memory” questions. You will probably discover that the subject’s eyes went to different locations when each question was asked. It is not uncommon to see a person look to the right to remember something, but look to the left to think. This is thought to be because the brain stores information in a separate area than where the thinking apparatus is located. The eyes are merely an external indicator of how the brain is accessing its information.
The interrogator would later use both thinking and memory-based questions in order to determine if a suspect is being truthful in this manner. The interrogator has a baseline of the subject’s behavior, and would ask a question that should involve the suspect in delving into his memory. But if it is apparent that the suspect is using his cognitive processes to “think” of an answer, this would indicate the suspect is not being truthful. This is only one of the tools the trained interrogator has at his disposal.
Body Language X-Ray
The interrogator would now move into the next phase of questioning. These questions are more pointed, and would cause a person stress to a large degree―if actually guilty of committing the crime. These questions serve several purposes:
(1) They allow the interrogator to see if the suspect is deceptive or cooperative.
(2) They tell the interrogator whether the investigation would be focused upon this suspect or not.
(3) If the suspect’s answers indicate a guilty knowledge of the crime, they also give the interrogator tools to elicit a confession from the subject.
The theory behind these two questions is twofold. First, innocent people tend to answer questions differently than guilty suspects. Secondly, a guilty suspect will show deceptive body language when asked these questions. However, an innocent person usually will not. An example of the first principle is a question like this:
“Joe, you think that (the victim) caused this to happen in any way? Like if she made someone really angry and the guy couldn’t help himself?”
An innocent person would obviously reject such a premise. However, experience has shown the police that the people who commit crimes will seize upon any excuse to mitigate the reason they committed a crime. Blaming the victim for the crime is a good way of transferring the guilt away from the suspect. If a suspect answers that the victim is to blame, he is scored as being deceptive. An example of the second principle is the person who starts showing deceptive body language while answering questions such as this:
“Joe, do you think this crime really happened, or do you think something else is going on?” If “Joe” begins licking his lips, fidgeting around, or starts to use “grooming” gestures (brushing his hair, adjusting his clothes, etc.) he would be considered to be acting deceptively. This is especially true if these are not “Joe’s” normal body language when answering questions. And obviously, if the police are asking questions, the crime happened, but suspects often state they believe the crime under investigation didn’t occur.
Another question that would be evaluated by the interrogator is: “Joe, do you think whoever did this deserves a second chance?” While an honest person would reject this, a guilty suspect would not. He would probably show deceptive body language and say something like, “Everyone deserves a second chance.”
By combining principles number one and number two, interrogators are able to judge a suspect’s honesty accurately. Principle number three merely requires that the interrogator look at the answers given by the suspect and see if there is a recurring theme to them. For example, if the subject shows a propensity to blame his crime on someone else, or states that the crime was probably a mistake, these themes will be used later on. The suspect has shown that he is susceptible to such themes. If the suspect scores out as being honest, the questioning is usually over with, and the person is no longer considered a suspect. But if he scores out as being deceptive, the interrogation will continue. Now the interrogation will take a new tone.
Turning The Screws―Cranking-Up The Pressure
The interrogator will read the “Miranda Warnings” if required [a right to silence warning given by police in the United States to criminal suspects in police custody], then excuse himself and leave the room for about five minutes. While out of the room, the interrogator will put the suspect’s name on a folder and place meaningless documents in it. In our society, we equate file folders with important facts. In this case, it will serve to imply that the investigator has a lot of evidence against the suspect. The interrogator will review the themes he wants to use and then re-enter the interrogation room. The interrogator will now use a “Confrontational Statement”, and accuse the suspect of committing the crime. When doing so, the interrogator will modify his body language to show dominance and confidence to the suspect. The interrogator enters the room and stands with his arms about twelve inches apart, holding the file folder so that the suspect can see his name upon it. The interrogator will assume a wide stance, with his legs placed about shoulder width apart. The arms/hands will show the suspect that the interrogator is being honest, and the legs show dominance, or control of the interrogation. The interrogator will then state:
“Joe, our investigation clearly shows you did do this thing, and I’d like to talk to you about it. Will you talk to me?”
If the suspect agrees to talk at this point, he has waived the right to remain silent and to counsel. Not only that, but some suspects become so demoralized that they actually faint when given the “Confrontational Statement”. Most do not even bother to deny they are guilty at this point. The interrogator then moves into “Theme Development”, the stage that defense attorneys claim is brainwashing.
In theme development, the interrogator selects a theme such as blaming the victim for the crime and repeats it over and over. “Theme Development” may go on literally for hours, with the interrogator droning on and on about the reasons he “believes” the suspect committed the crime. The interrogator will speak in a soft, soothing voice, and will move closer to the suspect as rapport is further established. Here is a typical example of “Theme Development”:
“Joe, you appear to be a good guy, so let me say this―If I didn’t think you had a weak moment when you did this, I wouldn’t talk to you. Joe, this was just a mistake on your part. You didn’t intend to do this, but you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and your anger got the best of you. It’s nothing more than that. Joe,, we’ve all had our weak moments―we all have. Joe, the important thing is that you learn your lesson from this and go on....”
If “Joe” appears to be listening to the interrogator, the interrogator will know he is on the right track. He has found a theme that Joe likes, or an “acceptable” reason Joe believes will save his face. If Joe does not appear to accept this theme, the interrogator will move into another one until he finds an acceptable theme.
During “Theme Development”, only the interrogator is allowed to speak. The suspect is not allowed to speak, or is discouraged from doing so. This is because if the subject is allowed to make too many denials, he will grow psychologically stronger and be much harder to get a confession from.
This is how it’s done. If “Joe” starts to talk or show signs that he wishes to speak, the interrogator will say something like, “Joe, it’s important that you listen to me right now. I’ll let you talk later, but right now, you have to listen to me.” This technique also stops many suspects from invoking their constitutional rights. The interrogation will then go back into “Theme Development”. If Joe succeeds in making an objection, it will be used against him psychologically. Suppose “Joe” is suspected of killing his wife with a gun. “Joe” may say something like this: “Listen, I couldn’t have done it. I don’t even own a gun!” Rather than argue the merits of “Joe’s” objection, the interrogator will sidestep the issue and turn it against Joe by saying something like this:
“Joe, I’m glad you told me that, because it tells me something about you. Joe, this tells me that this was a crime of the moment, that you didn’t plan it out. Joe, a man who plans out a crime like this would go out and buy a gun weeks before he did it. But you didn’t do that, Joe. I’m not concerned about the gun, only that I can prove you aren’t the evil guy some would want to portray you as. Joe, I believe you didn’t plan this out and I’m glad you told me so....”
Working Towards The Surrender
The interrogator has not gained a new theme to use against “Joe” and give him further reason to confess. The interrogator will continue to evaluate “Joe’s” body language. Once “Joe” shows that he is losing confidence, the interrogator will start to move into the next stage. The lack of confidence will be shown in “Joe’s” head bowing and in “Joe” leaning forward in defeat. Suspects will often place their heads in their hands, with their elbows placed on their legs. This is called the “Surrender Position”.
If “Joe” shows signs of surrender, the interrogator will use a technique called the “Alternative Question”. The “Alternative Question” gives “Joe” a choice between two reasons for committing the crime. One reason is “socially unacceptable,” and should be rejected by Joe. But the other choice incorporates the theme “Joe” liked best in it. Here is an example:
“Joe, did you kill your wife because you lost control when you found out she was unfaithful to you, or did you do it because you wanted the insurance money? Joe, I think it’s because you lost control. That’s it, isn’t it, Joe? You lost control, like any man would have. That’s it, isn’t it, Joe? It’s only one or the other. You lost control, didn’t you, Joe?”
The investigator will have moved extremely close to “Joe” at this point, and will likely be touching him on the arm or shoulder―making it harder for “Joe” to lie. The closer “Joe” allows the interrogator, the more likely he will confess. At this point, “Joe” will either agree to the more acceptable reason, or reject the “Alternative Question”. If he rejects it, the interrogator merely goes back into “Theme Development” and begins wearing “Joe” down again. If “Joe” accepts the “Alternative Question”, the interrogator will immediately ask “Joe” for some detail about the crime. Once this is obtained, the interrogator will leave the room briefly and return with a second interrogator.
The Hard-Cop and Soft-Cop Combination for a Final Surrender
The first interrogator will introduce the second interrogator to “Joe” and state to the second interrogator these words: “This is Joe. He wanted you to know that the reason he did this is because he found out his wife was cheating on him, and he lost control. He didn’t plan for it to happen.”
The second interrogator will ask one question only: “Is that the truth, Joe?”
After “Joe” says that he didn’t plan the act and that it was a mistake, the second interrogator will depart. Why? It’s simple. By bringing a second interrogator into the process, “Joe’s” apprehension and psychological pressure are increased. It is hard for “Joe” to confess to just one person, much less two. But he will defend his new-found theme of the crime being a mistake. After the second interrogator departs, it is suddenly much easier for “Joe” to talk to his “friend,” the first interrogator. The first interrogator will then obtain a full confession from “Joe” with ease. “Joe” will be happy to cooperate now, as confessing will provide release from the psychological pressure that the interrogator as provided during the interrogation. Once “Joe” confesses, the interrogator will thank him for doing so and assure him that he has done the right thing.
Even the Strongest Collapse Under the Pressure
This method of interrogation has proven enormously successful. It is not unusual for suspects to be interrogated by interrogators using this method several times over the years, and still confess each time. This includes even the most hardened felons imaginable. Even police officers, trained in these techniques, have been successfully interrogated with it. However, the psychological forces brought into play by this method have been attacked by civil libertarians. The defense attorneys involved, often claim that interrogators are using “Nazi brainwashing techniques” in order to coerce their clients into confessing. Opponents of these techniques point out that the soft, soothing voice the interrogator uses in applying the technique can be hypnotic. Also, the fact that the suspect isn’t allowed to speak―other than to confess―is viewed as especially alarming. Other factors cited are the invasion of personal body space by the interrogator and the touching of the suspect to build rapport. Some judges have agreed with the critics of these methods, though not many.
As you can see, the interrogator who utilizes these methods has a highly structured plan going into the interrogation. These techniques can be taught to virtually anyone. Even ordinary police officers are taught to use them in everyday police work. This is especially alarming to critics of modern-day interrogation techniques, who know that a confession is the hardest evidence to beat in court. Are these techniques inherently coercive? Perhaps they are, but they have also proven to be highly effective against the criminal population. It is unlikely that they will be outlawed. Nor will they be modified to please a small segment of the legal profession, made up almost entirely of defense attorneys. You should not be concerned about the coerciveness of these techniques. You should be worried that they will be used against you one day, though. [here ends the article by the police officer].
Dylan Kurtz is a veteran law enforcement officer and author of Beating the Police Interrogation.
This kind of approach is exactly what is being used by the modern Liberal and Modernist world to undermine, gradually weaken and destroy the Faith and morals of Catholics who want to adhere to the never-changing truths and moral codes of the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, both clergy and laity are riddled with people who are doing the work of the Church’s enemies for them! The Catholic Church is now being destroyed from the outside and also the inside. That is the state and plight of Catholicism in America (and the world) today. More on that in the next article.
This form of approach destroys more American Catholic souls (or Catholic souls anywhere in the world) far more easily than the direct threatening, fearful, violent, discriminatory persecution of old. It is a masterstroke of the devil. It is a tactic of “Don’t try force them to give up the Faith, work towards making them gradually give up the Faith on their own accord! Let them do the work on themselves, we will just supply the materials!” This kind of approach has seen the disastrous downfall of Catholicism in America and throughout the world.
Talking of playing ‘hard cop’ and ‘soft cop’—here are few words from a police officer, Dylan Kurtz, who is a veteran law enforcement officer and author of Beating the Police Interrogation. In an article entitled: “Dominance and Submission: How the Police Use Psychological Manipulation to Interrogate” he points out a variety of things that dovetail with the modern methods of wearing-down Catholicism by a more subtle form of persecution. The article is long—even after being edited for irrelevant material—but bear with it. In the next article, the theories that surface from these revelations will be applied to the wearing-down and weakening of Catholic resolve when under the pressure of a Liberal, Protestant and non-Catholic world. It makes for fascinating reading, even though it does not directly bear upon the history of Catholicism in America. If nothing else, you might well find yourself in a similar situation, being interrogated for the ‘crime’ of being Catholic and thus being guilty of a ‘hate crime’ against anyone and everyone who is not Catholic, simply because you want to hold on to the teachings, beliefs, moral code and religious practices that God expects you to have and to do! Those days do not seem to be too far away! From here on to the end of this article, the words of the above mentioned police officer are solely used.
Sophisticated Techniques
In our society it is common to treat the police as less than intelligent. We laugh at the antics of law enforcement officers when we read of their mishaps in the news media and figure this to be their normative behavior. The only people we think to be stupider than the cops are the criminals they deal with. After all, if a cop can catch you, you must be pretty dumb, or careless, at least! Most of us also tend to believe that if we wanted to commit a crime, we would get away with it scot free. After all, many crimes go unsolved each year, so our chances are pretty good that we could commit a crime and escape punishment. But if the police suspected you had committed a crime, would you talk to them? And moreover, would you confess, even though there was no way you could be arrested or convicted of the crime, unless you did confess? “Of course not,” you would say. “Why, I’d have to be a complete idiot in order to do something of that nature!” Unfortunately for you, you are wrong. If confronted by police who use sophisticated interrogation techniques, you probably would confess. In fact, you would probably be very happy to do so. Psychological manipulations can do that to you.
Polygraphs, Truth Serums, Sweet Words and Threats
Law enforcement is a sophisticated business … One of the basic problems the police have always had is how to get criminals to confess to the crimes they have committed ... Eliciting confessions from unwilling suspects in the old days used primitive methods. Torture was an approved of practice in many locations, until the Supreme Court intervened ... After that, torturing suspects was strictly a no-no. So the police had to find new and interesting ways to make people confess. Polygraphs (lie detectors) were new on the scene, and police quickly became enchanted with the idea that they could tell if someone was lying through the use of machines. “Truth serums” and hypnosis had been tried and found lacking. While polygraphs could (and still do) adequately predict when a suspect is being deceptive, the courts view the machines with skepticism. To this day, even failing a polygraph test means virtually nothing in court. In fact, most states do not allow polygraph results to be admitted into evidence.
Reid Would Read Body Language
But the polygraph brought forth something else the police could use. Polygraphists, or polygraph operators, began noticing that people who were deceptive during their interrogations also exhibited certain behavioral signs. The polygraphists theorized that these same behavioral signs could be noticed in interrogations where a polygraph was not used, and set out to see if this was true. One noted polygraphist, John E. Reid, eventually developed an entire system of interrogation based upon asking suspects questions and watching their reactions. Reid could not just identify those who were deceptive in their answers, but his system also elicited information from those suspects that was eventually used against them to obtain confessions. Today, Reid’s system is taught to most modern law enforcement agencies and any private sector company willing to pay the price. Reid is gone now, but his system of interrogation lives on.
Today’s methods of interrogation are a fascinating study of the principles of human nature. Through the years, interrogation techniques such as the Reid have become highly refined and are now used by notables such as the United States Secret Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Its effectiveness is undisputed, and has aided in the resolution of hundreds of thousands of criminal cases. The “Reid Method” and its imitators use advanced psychological techniques in their systems, techniques that appear simple on the surface, but which have been likened to “brainwashing” by criminal defense attorneys.
Good Cop & Bad Cop—Soft Cop & Hard Cop
“When the police wanted to question you about a crime in the past, the path the questioning took only went a couple of ways. The police would accuse you of committing the crime, read you your rights, and then try to convince you to confess by telling you all the bad things that could happen to you if you didn’t tell the truth. The most sophisticated technique brought into play would be the time-honored “Good Cop-Bad Cop ploy”. However, the more experienced criminals rapidly caught onto these simple tricks of the trade. Most would not confess after experiencing police interrogation, or being told about it. Today’s methods are extremely different in both format and application. An interrogator trained in psychological manipulation first talks with the subject a while and attempts to develop rapport prior to initiating any questioning. The interrogator may feign interest in some of the suspect’s hobbies or in the suspect’s lifestyle. By acting in such a manner, the interrogator leads the suspect to believe that he and the interrogator are similar in many ways.
The Buddy-Buddy Approach
The first principle involved here is that humans generally tend to like people who are most similar to them in interests and beliefs. Accordingly, this type of interrogator may profess to have Neo-Nazi beliefs if talking with a Skinhead, or to enjoy bass fishing if interrogating a sport fishing enthusiast. Some interrogators go so far as to wear the same brand clothing as the suspect, if that can be determined in advance. The second principle involved is that once the suspect begins talking about any topic, it is harder for the suspect to stop talking about other topics―including crimes he may have committed. The final principle used at this stage is a combination of the first two. Suspects who like their interrogators and feel compelled to talk, because they are already within the throes of conversation find it much harder to lie. [Similarly, Catholics who get to like non-Catholics, find it hard to live like true Catholics and will adapt to the non-Catholic. The persecutors will seek to establish many common links to glue the Catholics to Non-Catholics and their culture].
Pretended Friendship Only A Cover For Studying
The next stage of the operation involves getting a “baseline” of the suspect’s normal behavior when asked non-stressful questions. These questions appear to be innocuous on the surface, but are not. The interrogator watches the subject’s facial expressions and body language prior to, during and after the suspect answers the question. This is called “Kinesic Interviewing” and it gives the interrogator a very good idea of how the suspect acts when he answers questions truthfully. But the technique is even more refined than simply observing mere body movements. The interrogator may even ask questions that will tell him important information about how the suspect’s brain works while thinking, or recalling data. This technique is called “Neurolinguistic Interviewing” and involves asking a suspect two types of questions. One set of questions requires the suspect to remember data, and the other requires the suspect to use his cognitive processes. The interrogator then watches the suspect’s body language to determine what type of changes take place when the suspect thinks of information, as opposed to remembering it.
This is of particular importance in knowing whether a suspect is remembering information, such as a truthful alibi, or merely creating such facts in his mind.
Pointless Questions That Are Not Pointless
The easiest way to demonstrate this technique is to ask a person, who is unaware of what you are doing, several questions that would involve these thought processes. You should then watch your subject’s eyes as the subject either thinks or remembers. When a person thinks of an answer, his eyes will usually move to a certain spot, such as to the left, or straight up. This will vary according to the individual. A good way to elicit this type of response is asking mathematical problems, such as 6x6-3+6=? Since math requires almost pure thought and little memory, a neurolinguistic response to such a question is a good indicator of how a person responds to thinking questions. Next ask a memory-type question, such as what the subject had for dinner the night before. Questions that require the subject to reach further back into his memory are best, as you will get a truer response.
Now compare the responses to both the “thinking’ and the “memory” questions. You will probably discover that the subject’s eyes went to different locations when each question was asked. It is not uncommon to see a person look to the right to remember something, but look to the left to think. This is thought to be because the brain stores information in a separate area than where the thinking apparatus is located. The eyes are merely an external indicator of how the brain is accessing its information.
The interrogator would later use both thinking and memory-based questions in order to determine if a suspect is being truthful in this manner. The interrogator has a baseline of the subject’s behavior, and would ask a question that should involve the suspect in delving into his memory. But if it is apparent that the suspect is using his cognitive processes to “think” of an answer, this would indicate the suspect is not being truthful. This is only one of the tools the trained interrogator has at his disposal.
Body Language X-Ray
The interrogator would now move into the next phase of questioning. These questions are more pointed, and would cause a person stress to a large degree―if actually guilty of committing the crime. These questions serve several purposes:
(1) They allow the interrogator to see if the suspect is deceptive or cooperative.
(2) They tell the interrogator whether the investigation would be focused upon this suspect or not.
(3) If the suspect’s answers indicate a guilty knowledge of the crime, they also give the interrogator tools to elicit a confession from the subject.
The theory behind these two questions is twofold. First, innocent people tend to answer questions differently than guilty suspects. Secondly, a guilty suspect will show deceptive body language when asked these questions. However, an innocent person usually will not. An example of the first principle is a question like this:
“Joe, you think that (the victim) caused this to happen in any way? Like if she made someone really angry and the guy couldn’t help himself?”
An innocent person would obviously reject such a premise. However, experience has shown the police that the people who commit crimes will seize upon any excuse to mitigate the reason they committed a crime. Blaming the victim for the crime is a good way of transferring the guilt away from the suspect. If a suspect answers that the victim is to blame, he is scored as being deceptive. An example of the second principle is the person who starts showing deceptive body language while answering questions such as this:
“Joe, do you think this crime really happened, or do you think something else is going on?” If “Joe” begins licking his lips, fidgeting around, or starts to use “grooming” gestures (brushing his hair, adjusting his clothes, etc.) he would be considered to be acting deceptively. This is especially true if these are not “Joe’s” normal body language when answering questions. And obviously, if the police are asking questions, the crime happened, but suspects often state they believe the crime under investigation didn’t occur.
Another question that would be evaluated by the interrogator is: “Joe, do you think whoever did this deserves a second chance?” While an honest person would reject this, a guilty suspect would not. He would probably show deceptive body language and say something like, “Everyone deserves a second chance.”
By combining principles number one and number two, interrogators are able to judge a suspect’s honesty accurately. Principle number three merely requires that the interrogator look at the answers given by the suspect and see if there is a recurring theme to them. For example, if the subject shows a propensity to blame his crime on someone else, or states that the crime was probably a mistake, these themes will be used later on. The suspect has shown that he is susceptible to such themes. If the suspect scores out as being honest, the questioning is usually over with, and the person is no longer considered a suspect. But if he scores out as being deceptive, the interrogation will continue. Now the interrogation will take a new tone.
Turning The Screws―Cranking-Up The Pressure
The interrogator will read the “Miranda Warnings” if required [a right to silence warning given by police in the United States to criminal suspects in police custody], then excuse himself and leave the room for about five minutes. While out of the room, the interrogator will put the suspect’s name on a folder and place meaningless documents in it. In our society, we equate file folders with important facts. In this case, it will serve to imply that the investigator has a lot of evidence against the suspect. The interrogator will review the themes he wants to use and then re-enter the interrogation room. The interrogator will now use a “Confrontational Statement”, and accuse the suspect of committing the crime. When doing so, the interrogator will modify his body language to show dominance and confidence to the suspect. The interrogator enters the room and stands with his arms about twelve inches apart, holding the file folder so that the suspect can see his name upon it. The interrogator will assume a wide stance, with his legs placed about shoulder width apart. The arms/hands will show the suspect that the interrogator is being honest, and the legs show dominance, or control of the interrogation. The interrogator will then state:
“Joe, our investigation clearly shows you did do this thing, and I’d like to talk to you about it. Will you talk to me?”
If the suspect agrees to talk at this point, he has waived the right to remain silent and to counsel. Not only that, but some suspects become so demoralized that they actually faint when given the “Confrontational Statement”. Most do not even bother to deny they are guilty at this point. The interrogator then moves into “Theme Development”, the stage that defense attorneys claim is brainwashing.
In theme development, the interrogator selects a theme such as blaming the victim for the crime and repeats it over and over. “Theme Development” may go on literally for hours, with the interrogator droning on and on about the reasons he “believes” the suspect committed the crime. The interrogator will speak in a soft, soothing voice, and will move closer to the suspect as rapport is further established. Here is a typical example of “Theme Development”:
“Joe, you appear to be a good guy, so let me say this―If I didn’t think you had a weak moment when you did this, I wouldn’t talk to you. Joe, this was just a mistake on your part. You didn’t intend to do this, but you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and your anger got the best of you. It’s nothing more than that. Joe,, we’ve all had our weak moments―we all have. Joe, the important thing is that you learn your lesson from this and go on....”
If “Joe” appears to be listening to the interrogator, the interrogator will know he is on the right track. He has found a theme that Joe likes, or an “acceptable” reason Joe believes will save his face. If Joe does not appear to accept this theme, the interrogator will move into another one until he finds an acceptable theme.
During “Theme Development”, only the interrogator is allowed to speak. The suspect is not allowed to speak, or is discouraged from doing so. This is because if the subject is allowed to make too many denials, he will grow psychologically stronger and be much harder to get a confession from.
This is how it’s done. If “Joe” starts to talk or show signs that he wishes to speak, the interrogator will say something like, “Joe, it’s important that you listen to me right now. I’ll let you talk later, but right now, you have to listen to me.” This technique also stops many suspects from invoking their constitutional rights. The interrogation will then go back into “Theme Development”. If Joe succeeds in making an objection, it will be used against him psychologically. Suppose “Joe” is suspected of killing his wife with a gun. “Joe” may say something like this: “Listen, I couldn’t have done it. I don’t even own a gun!” Rather than argue the merits of “Joe’s” objection, the interrogator will sidestep the issue and turn it against Joe by saying something like this:
“Joe, I’m glad you told me that, because it tells me something about you. Joe, this tells me that this was a crime of the moment, that you didn’t plan it out. Joe, a man who plans out a crime like this would go out and buy a gun weeks before he did it. But you didn’t do that, Joe. I’m not concerned about the gun, only that I can prove you aren’t the evil guy some would want to portray you as. Joe, I believe you didn’t plan this out and I’m glad you told me so....”
Working Towards The Surrender
The interrogator has not gained a new theme to use against “Joe” and give him further reason to confess. The interrogator will continue to evaluate “Joe’s” body language. Once “Joe” shows that he is losing confidence, the interrogator will start to move into the next stage. The lack of confidence will be shown in “Joe’s” head bowing and in “Joe” leaning forward in defeat. Suspects will often place their heads in their hands, with their elbows placed on their legs. This is called the “Surrender Position”.
If “Joe” shows signs of surrender, the interrogator will use a technique called the “Alternative Question”. The “Alternative Question” gives “Joe” a choice between two reasons for committing the crime. One reason is “socially unacceptable,” and should be rejected by Joe. But the other choice incorporates the theme “Joe” liked best in it. Here is an example:
“Joe, did you kill your wife because you lost control when you found out she was unfaithful to you, or did you do it because you wanted the insurance money? Joe, I think it’s because you lost control. That’s it, isn’t it, Joe? You lost control, like any man would have. That’s it, isn’t it, Joe? It’s only one or the other. You lost control, didn’t you, Joe?”
The investigator will have moved extremely close to “Joe” at this point, and will likely be touching him on the arm or shoulder―making it harder for “Joe” to lie. The closer “Joe” allows the interrogator, the more likely he will confess. At this point, “Joe” will either agree to the more acceptable reason, or reject the “Alternative Question”. If he rejects it, the interrogator merely goes back into “Theme Development” and begins wearing “Joe” down again. If “Joe” accepts the “Alternative Question”, the interrogator will immediately ask “Joe” for some detail about the crime. Once this is obtained, the interrogator will leave the room briefly and return with a second interrogator.
The Hard-Cop and Soft-Cop Combination for a Final Surrender
The first interrogator will introduce the second interrogator to “Joe” and state to the second interrogator these words: “This is Joe. He wanted you to know that the reason he did this is because he found out his wife was cheating on him, and he lost control. He didn’t plan for it to happen.”
The second interrogator will ask one question only: “Is that the truth, Joe?”
After “Joe” says that he didn’t plan the act and that it was a mistake, the second interrogator will depart. Why? It’s simple. By bringing a second interrogator into the process, “Joe’s” apprehension and psychological pressure are increased. It is hard for “Joe” to confess to just one person, much less two. But he will defend his new-found theme of the crime being a mistake. After the second interrogator departs, it is suddenly much easier for “Joe” to talk to his “friend,” the first interrogator. The first interrogator will then obtain a full confession from “Joe” with ease. “Joe” will be happy to cooperate now, as confessing will provide release from the psychological pressure that the interrogator as provided during the interrogation. Once “Joe” confesses, the interrogator will thank him for doing so and assure him that he has done the right thing.
Even the Strongest Collapse Under the Pressure
This method of interrogation has proven enormously successful. It is not unusual for suspects to be interrogated by interrogators using this method several times over the years, and still confess each time. This includes even the most hardened felons imaginable. Even police officers, trained in these techniques, have been successfully interrogated with it. However, the psychological forces brought into play by this method have been attacked by civil libertarians. The defense attorneys involved, often claim that interrogators are using “Nazi brainwashing techniques” in order to coerce their clients into confessing. Opponents of these techniques point out that the soft, soothing voice the interrogator uses in applying the technique can be hypnotic. Also, the fact that the suspect isn’t allowed to speak―other than to confess―is viewed as especially alarming. Other factors cited are the invasion of personal body space by the interrogator and the touching of the suspect to build rapport. Some judges have agreed with the critics of these methods, though not many.
As you can see, the interrogator who utilizes these methods has a highly structured plan going into the interrogation. These techniques can be taught to virtually anyone. Even ordinary police officers are taught to use them in everyday police work. This is especially alarming to critics of modern-day interrogation techniques, who know that a confession is the hardest evidence to beat in court. Are these techniques inherently coercive? Perhaps they are, but they have also proven to be highly effective against the criminal population. It is unlikely that they will be outlawed. Nor will they be modified to please a small segment of the legal profession, made up almost entirely of defense attorneys. You should not be concerned about the coerciveness of these techniques. You should be worried that they will be used against you one day, though. [here ends the article by the police officer].
Dylan Kurtz is a veteran law enforcement officer and author of Beating the Police Interrogation.
This kind of approach is exactly what is being used by the modern Liberal and Modernist world to undermine, gradually weaken and destroy the Faith and morals of Catholics who want to adhere to the never-changing truths and moral codes of the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, both clergy and laity are riddled with people who are doing the work of the Church’s enemies for them! The Catholic Church is now being destroyed from the outside and also the inside. That is the state and plight of Catholicism in America (and the world) today. More on that in the next article.
PART 9
SOFTLY, SOFTLY THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC IS SEDUCED
This article is currently being written. Sections will be posted as they are completed. Please check back later.
What Have We Learned?
What have we gleaned and learned by way of principles from the previous article on interrogation techniques? Are there any parallels that can be drawn with regard to the plight and state of American Catholicism? Let us firstly pick out a few key phrases or concepts and then apply to the gradual buckling and crumbling of American Catholicism in the face of its constant "interrogation" by the modern American Protestant and pagan world.
From the above quoted words of the veteran law enforcement officer, Dylan Kurtz, we can see the principles that guide the constant subtle and deceitful onslaught against a true Catholicism. The enemies of the Faith know that they cannot make all Catholics apostatize, but they know that leaving the Faith is much like the obtaining the final confession of guilt from a suspect under interrogation. You have to build up to that. It is process of many steps and everything begins with the first step and continues, gradually, one step at a time.
► "If the police suspected you had committed a crime, would you talk to them? And moreover, would you confess, even though there was no way you could be arrested or convicted of the crime, unless you did confess? “Of course not,” you would say. “Why, I’d have to be a complete idiot in order to do something of that nature!” Unfortunately for you, you are wrong. If confronted by police who use sophisticated interrogation techniques, you probably would confess. In fact, you would probably be very happy to do so. Psychological manipulations can do that to you." The same can apply to confessing Christ before men or not confessing Christ before men. Sophisticated arguments or "interrogation" techniques (psychological bludgeoning and false reasoning) can very easily influence Catholics―who have a weak knowledge of the Faith (most Catholics today) and a weak love and zeal for the Faith (most Catholics today)―into doubting certain aspects of the Faith or Catholic history, or being unable to defend the Catholic viewpoint, or feel guilty about certain Catholic teachings and practices.
► "Today’s methods of interrogation are a fascinating study of the principles of human nature. Through the years, interrogation techniques such as the Reid have become highly refined and are now used by notables such as the United States Secret Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Its effectiveness is undisputed, and has aided in the resolution of hundreds of thousands of criminal cases. The “Reid Method” and its imitators use advanced psychological techniques in their systems, techniques that appear simple on the surface, but which have been likened to “brainwashing” by criminal defense attorneys." The Protestant and pagan world has refined its techniques at "chipping-away" at the Catholic Faith and pouring "guilt feelings" into the cracks that they create. Guilt over the past and guilt over the present. If a Catholic is not acquainted with some basic knowledge of the Bible, Apologetics, History, etc., then they are "easy meat" for the attacks. The enemies STUDY how to attack, but most Catholics FAIL TO STUDY how to defend and uphold the Faith. They prefer their fun, comfort and entertainment instead. Thus they are easily brainwashed by the false arguments of those who subtly and insidiously attack the Faith and the Church.
► "An interrogator trained in psychological manipulation first talks with the subject a while and attempts to develop rapport prior to initiating any questioning. The interrogator may feign interest in some of the suspect’s hobbies or in the suspect’s lifestyle. By acting in such a manner, the interrogator leads the suspect to believe that he and the interrogator are similar in many ways." We all know that we tend to do what our friends do―hence the tactic of winning over somebody in any way that will work: showing charity, consoling them, helping them financially or materially, socializing with them, etc. It is the world's colorful bait on the end of the hook.
► "The first principle involved here is that humans generally tend to like people who are most similar to them in interests and beliefs. Accordingly, this type of interrogator may profess to have Neo-Nazi beliefs if talking with a Skinhead, or to enjoy bass fishing if interrogating a sport fishing enthusiast. Some interrogators go so far as to wear the same brand clothing as the suspect, if that can be determined in advance. The second principle involved is that once the suspect begins talking about any topic, it is harder for the suspect to stop talking about other topics―including crimes he may have committed. Talking can be like a fire―all you have to do is to enkindle that fire by finding the right "spark" that will set it alight.
► "The next stage of the operation involves getting a “baseline” of the suspect’s normal behavior when asked non-stressful questions. These questions appear to be innocuous on the surface, but are not. The interrogator watches the subject’s facial expressions and body language prior to, during and after the suspect answers the question. The technique is even more refined than simply observing mere body movements. The interrogator may even ask questions that will tell him important information about how the suspect’s brain works while thinking, or recalling data."
► "The interrogator will read the “Miranda Warnings” if required [a right to silence warning given by police in the United States to criminal suspects in police custody], then excuse himself and leave the room for about five minutes. While out of the room, the interrogator will put the suspect’s name on a folder and place meaningless documents in it. In our society, we equate file folders with important facts. In this case, it will serve to imply that the investigator has a lot of evidence against the suspect. The interrogator will review the themes he wants to use and then re-enter the interrogation room. The interrogator will now use a “Confrontational Statement”, and accuse the suspect of committing the crime. When doing so, the interrogator will modify his body language to show dominance and confidence to the suspect. The interrogator enters the room and stands with his arms about twelve inches apart, holding the file folder so that the suspect can see his name upon it. The interrogator will assume a wide stance, with his legs placed about shoulder width apart. The arms/hands will show the suspect that the interrogator is being honest, and the legs show dominance, or control of the interrogation.
► "The interrogator will continue to evaluate “Joe’s” body language. Once “Joe” shows that he is losing confidence, the interrogator will start to move into the next stage. The lack of confidence will be shown in “Joe’s” head bowing and in “Joe” leaning forward in defeat. Suspects will often place their heads in their hands, with their elbows placed on their legs. This is called the “Surrender Position”. If “Joe” shows signs of surrender, the interrogator will use a technique called the “Alternative Question”. The “Alternative Question” gives “Joe” a choice between two reasons for committing the crime. One reason is “socially unacceptable,” and should be rejected by Joe. But the other choice incorporates the theme “Joe” liked best in it.
► "The investigator will have moved extremely close to “Joe” at this point, and will likely be touching him on the arm or shoulder―making it harder for “Joe” to lie. The closer “Joe” allows the interrogator, the more likely he will confess. At this point, “Joe” will either agree to the more acceptable reason, or reject the “Alternative Question”. If he rejects it, the interrogator merely goes back into “Theme Development” and begins wearing “Joe” down again. If “Joe” accepts the “Alternative Question”, the interrogator will immediately ask “Joe” for some detail about the crime. Once this is obtained, the interrogator will leave the room briefly and return with a second interrogator. The first interrogator will introduce the second interrogator to “Joe” and state to the second interrogator these words: “This is Joe. He wanted you to know that the reason he did this is because he found out his wife was cheating on him, and he lost control. He didn’t plan for it to happen.” The second interrogator will ask one question only: “Is that the truth, Joe?” After “Joe” says that he didn’t plan the act and that it was a mistake, the second interrogator will depart. Why? It’s simple. By bringing a second interrogator into the process, “Joe’s” apprehension and psychological pressure are increased. It is hard for “Joe” to confess to just one person, much less two. But he will defend his new-found theme of the crime being a mistake. After the second interrogator departs, it is suddenly much easier for “Joe” to talk to his “friend,” the first interrogator. The first interrogator will then obtain a full confession from “Joe” with ease. “Joe” will be happy to cooperate now, as confessing will provide release from the psychological pressure that the interrogator as provided during the interrogation. Once “Joe” confesses, the interrogator will thank him for doing so and assure him that he has done the right thing.
► "This method of interrogation has proven enormously successful. It is not unusual for suspects to be interrogated by interrogators using this method several times over the years, and still confess each time. This includes even the most hardened felons imaginable. Even police officers, trained in these techniques, have been successfully interrogated with it. However, the psychological forces brought into play by this method have been attacked by civil libertarians. The defense attorneys involved, often claim that interrogators are using “Nazi brainwashing techniques” in order to coerce their clients into confessing. Opponents of these techniques point out that the soft, soothing voice the interrogator uses in applying the technique can be hypnotic. Also, the fact that the suspect isn’t allowed to speak―other than to confess―is viewed as especially alarming. Other factors cited are the invasion of personal body space by the interrogator and the touching of the suspect to build rapport. Some judges have agreed with the critics of these methods, though not many.
As you can see, the interrogator who utilizes these methods has a highly structured plan going into the interrogation. These techniques can be taught to virtually anyone. Even ordinary police officers are taught to use them in everyday police work. This is especially alarming to critics of modern-day interrogation techniques, who know that a confession is the hardest evidence to beat in court. Are these techniques inherently coercive? Perhaps they are, but they have also proven to be highly effective against the criminal population.
So there we have it! This translates very easily and readily into what is happening to Catholics when faced by the world today. Let us now go further and apply it to the various steps by which a Catholic's Faith is questioned, weakened, doubted and finally denied.
Substitute the police interrogator with the modern American pagan, American Communist, American Socialist or American Protestant, and substitute the suspect with the Catholic individual, or Catholic family, or Catholic Church as a whole. Behind the former is the devil, behind the latter is God. This is, in essence, what Sister Lucia speaks about in what she calls "the devil's final battle." But before we look at Lucia's words, let us first look at what Our Lady says of this battle.
What have we gleaned and learned by way of principles from the previous article on interrogation techniques? Are there any parallels that can be drawn with regard to the plight and state of American Catholicism? Let us firstly pick out a few key phrases or concepts and then apply to the gradual buckling and crumbling of American Catholicism in the face of its constant "interrogation" by the modern American Protestant and pagan world.
From the above quoted words of the veteran law enforcement officer, Dylan Kurtz, we can see the principles that guide the constant subtle and deceitful onslaught against a true Catholicism. The enemies of the Faith know that they cannot make all Catholics apostatize, but they know that leaving the Faith is much like the obtaining the final confession of guilt from a suspect under interrogation. You have to build up to that. It is process of many steps and everything begins with the first step and continues, gradually, one step at a time.
► "If the police suspected you had committed a crime, would you talk to them? And moreover, would you confess, even though there was no way you could be arrested or convicted of the crime, unless you did confess? “Of course not,” you would say. “Why, I’d have to be a complete idiot in order to do something of that nature!” Unfortunately for you, you are wrong. If confronted by police who use sophisticated interrogation techniques, you probably would confess. In fact, you would probably be very happy to do so. Psychological manipulations can do that to you." The same can apply to confessing Christ before men or not confessing Christ before men. Sophisticated arguments or "interrogation" techniques (psychological bludgeoning and false reasoning) can very easily influence Catholics―who have a weak knowledge of the Faith (most Catholics today) and a weak love and zeal for the Faith (most Catholics today)―into doubting certain aspects of the Faith or Catholic history, or being unable to defend the Catholic viewpoint, or feel guilty about certain Catholic teachings and practices.
► "Today’s methods of interrogation are a fascinating study of the principles of human nature. Through the years, interrogation techniques such as the Reid have become highly refined and are now used by notables such as the United States Secret Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Its effectiveness is undisputed, and has aided in the resolution of hundreds of thousands of criminal cases. The “Reid Method” and its imitators use advanced psychological techniques in their systems, techniques that appear simple on the surface, but which have been likened to “brainwashing” by criminal defense attorneys." The Protestant and pagan world has refined its techniques at "chipping-away" at the Catholic Faith and pouring "guilt feelings" into the cracks that they create. Guilt over the past and guilt over the present. If a Catholic is not acquainted with some basic knowledge of the Bible, Apologetics, History, etc., then they are "easy meat" for the attacks. The enemies STUDY how to attack, but most Catholics FAIL TO STUDY how to defend and uphold the Faith. They prefer their fun, comfort and entertainment instead. Thus they are easily brainwashed by the false arguments of those who subtly and insidiously attack the Faith and the Church.
► "An interrogator trained in psychological manipulation first talks with the subject a while and attempts to develop rapport prior to initiating any questioning. The interrogator may feign interest in some of the suspect’s hobbies or in the suspect’s lifestyle. By acting in such a manner, the interrogator leads the suspect to believe that he and the interrogator are similar in many ways." We all know that we tend to do what our friends do―hence the tactic of winning over somebody in any way that will work: showing charity, consoling them, helping them financially or materially, socializing with them, etc. It is the world's colorful bait on the end of the hook.
► "The first principle involved here is that humans generally tend to like people who are most similar to them in interests and beliefs. Accordingly, this type of interrogator may profess to have Neo-Nazi beliefs if talking with a Skinhead, or to enjoy bass fishing if interrogating a sport fishing enthusiast. Some interrogators go so far as to wear the same brand clothing as the suspect, if that can be determined in advance. The second principle involved is that once the suspect begins talking about any topic, it is harder for the suspect to stop talking about other topics―including crimes he may have committed. Talking can be like a fire―all you have to do is to enkindle that fire by finding the right "spark" that will set it alight.
► "The next stage of the operation involves getting a “baseline” of the suspect’s normal behavior when asked non-stressful questions. These questions appear to be innocuous on the surface, but are not. The interrogator watches the subject’s facial expressions and body language prior to, during and after the suspect answers the question. The technique is even more refined than simply observing mere body movements. The interrogator may even ask questions that will tell him important information about how the suspect’s brain works while thinking, or recalling data."
► "The interrogator will read the “Miranda Warnings” if required [a right to silence warning given by police in the United States to criminal suspects in police custody], then excuse himself and leave the room for about five minutes. While out of the room, the interrogator will put the suspect’s name on a folder and place meaningless documents in it. In our society, we equate file folders with important facts. In this case, it will serve to imply that the investigator has a lot of evidence against the suspect. The interrogator will review the themes he wants to use and then re-enter the interrogation room. The interrogator will now use a “Confrontational Statement”, and accuse the suspect of committing the crime. When doing so, the interrogator will modify his body language to show dominance and confidence to the suspect. The interrogator enters the room and stands with his arms about twelve inches apart, holding the file folder so that the suspect can see his name upon it. The interrogator will assume a wide stance, with his legs placed about shoulder width apart. The arms/hands will show the suspect that the interrogator is being honest, and the legs show dominance, or control of the interrogation.
► "The interrogator will continue to evaluate “Joe’s” body language. Once “Joe” shows that he is losing confidence, the interrogator will start to move into the next stage. The lack of confidence will be shown in “Joe’s” head bowing and in “Joe” leaning forward in defeat. Suspects will often place their heads in their hands, with their elbows placed on their legs. This is called the “Surrender Position”. If “Joe” shows signs of surrender, the interrogator will use a technique called the “Alternative Question”. The “Alternative Question” gives “Joe” a choice between two reasons for committing the crime. One reason is “socially unacceptable,” and should be rejected by Joe. But the other choice incorporates the theme “Joe” liked best in it.
► "The investigator will have moved extremely close to “Joe” at this point, and will likely be touching him on the arm or shoulder―making it harder for “Joe” to lie. The closer “Joe” allows the interrogator, the more likely he will confess. At this point, “Joe” will either agree to the more acceptable reason, or reject the “Alternative Question”. If he rejects it, the interrogator merely goes back into “Theme Development” and begins wearing “Joe” down again. If “Joe” accepts the “Alternative Question”, the interrogator will immediately ask “Joe” for some detail about the crime. Once this is obtained, the interrogator will leave the room briefly and return with a second interrogator. The first interrogator will introduce the second interrogator to “Joe” and state to the second interrogator these words: “This is Joe. He wanted you to know that the reason he did this is because he found out his wife was cheating on him, and he lost control. He didn’t plan for it to happen.” The second interrogator will ask one question only: “Is that the truth, Joe?” After “Joe” says that he didn’t plan the act and that it was a mistake, the second interrogator will depart. Why? It’s simple. By bringing a second interrogator into the process, “Joe’s” apprehension and psychological pressure are increased. It is hard for “Joe” to confess to just one person, much less two. But he will defend his new-found theme of the crime being a mistake. After the second interrogator departs, it is suddenly much easier for “Joe” to talk to his “friend,” the first interrogator. The first interrogator will then obtain a full confession from “Joe” with ease. “Joe” will be happy to cooperate now, as confessing will provide release from the psychological pressure that the interrogator as provided during the interrogation. Once “Joe” confesses, the interrogator will thank him for doing so and assure him that he has done the right thing.
► "This method of interrogation has proven enormously successful. It is not unusual for suspects to be interrogated by interrogators using this method several times over the years, and still confess each time. This includes even the most hardened felons imaginable. Even police officers, trained in these techniques, have been successfully interrogated with it. However, the psychological forces brought into play by this method have been attacked by civil libertarians. The defense attorneys involved, often claim that interrogators are using “Nazi brainwashing techniques” in order to coerce their clients into confessing. Opponents of these techniques point out that the soft, soothing voice the interrogator uses in applying the technique can be hypnotic. Also, the fact that the suspect isn’t allowed to speak―other than to confess―is viewed as especially alarming. Other factors cited are the invasion of personal body space by the interrogator and the touching of the suspect to build rapport. Some judges have agreed with the critics of these methods, though not many.
As you can see, the interrogator who utilizes these methods has a highly structured plan going into the interrogation. These techniques can be taught to virtually anyone. Even ordinary police officers are taught to use them in everyday police work. This is especially alarming to critics of modern-day interrogation techniques, who know that a confession is the hardest evidence to beat in court. Are these techniques inherently coercive? Perhaps they are, but they have also proven to be highly effective against the criminal population.
So there we have it! This translates very easily and readily into what is happening to Catholics when faced by the world today. Let us now go further and apply it to the various steps by which a Catholic's Faith is questioned, weakened, doubted and finally denied.
Substitute the police interrogator with the modern American pagan, American Communist, American Socialist or American Protestant, and substitute the suspect with the Catholic individual, or Catholic family, or Catholic Church as a whole. Behind the former is the devil, behind the latter is God. This is, in essence, what Sister Lucia speaks about in what she calls "the devil's final battle." But before we look at Lucia's words, let us first look at what Our Lady says of this battle.
PART 10
AS AMERICA BECOMES COMMUNIST, CATHOLIC FACES ITS INTERROGATION
The Reid System of Interrogation
The Reid technique is the basis of the widely used “Criminal Interrogation and Confessions” manual we already mentioned. It lays out nine steps or issues guiding interrogation. Many of these steps overlap, and there is no such thing as a “typical” interrogation; but the Reid technique provides a blueprint of how a successful interrogation might unfold.
(1) Confrontation
(2) Theme development
(3) Stopping denials of guilt
(4) Overcoming objections
(5) Getting the suspect’s attention
(6) Handling the Suspect’s Passive Mood
(7) Presenting an Alternative Question or Choice
(8) Having the Suspect Orally Relate Various Details of the Offense
(9) Converting an Oral Confession to a Written Confession
Let us now adapt the above nine stages to how Catholicism is “suspected”, “interrogated” and made to feel “guilty” by the techniques used by the modern pagan, Communist, Socialist and Protestant world.
(1) Confrontation
It is at this point that the accusation against the person is made. The accusation may be true or it made be false―it does not matter to the one who is accusing. It is simply the opening shot that is fired in order to gauge and measure the reaction and response of the one being accused. However, here we are not so much concerned about a suspect being interrogated, but a Catholic being segregated, negated and castigated with the view of making the Catholic’s Faith disturbed, discredited, disliked, destabilized, dismantled, disarmed, discouraged and disbelieving.
Just as the old police interrogation methods of aggression, beatings and torture gave way to more subtle and indirect methods of analysis of body language, psychological maneuvering, and strong suggestive interrogation, likewise has the attack on Catholicism followed the same broad lines. Rather than try destroying Catholicism with an “in your face” aggressive attack, the preferred way is to get the Catholic to destroy his own Faith.
Communism and Islam have been ‘set-up’ to be the stooges to do the dirty work of destroying Christianity and its Faith and Morals in the world. Conspiracy theory? No, more like a conspiracy fact. Yet this article on the history of American Catholicism is not the place to go into that. At a later date this can be treated and examined. Our Lady has unequivocally said that Russia (Communism) will spread its errors throughout the world. Sister Lucia confirmed that America would also fall to Communism (or more strictly speaking, to Socialism―for a Communist society is stateless, classless and is governed directly by the people. This however has never been practiced by any country).
Some American candidates are presenting themselves as “social reformers,” which may as well be a euphemism for Communists or Socialists. If you turn your eyes to South America, you find a continent that is rapidly becoming “red” or Communist or Socialist ― among the adherents are Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, in Central America, Nicaragua, Cuba. In other words, the vast majority of South America is Communist or Socialist (we will split hairs over the difference between the two in the articles on “The Errors of Russia” (click here).
Sister Lucia of Fatima in 1946 said that the whole world would become Communist. Fr. Manuel Rocha, the interpreter selected for the Catholic Professor of History, Dr. William Thomas Walsh, an American, who wrote perhaps the most popular book on Fatima, said that one of the questions Dr. Walsh asked him to translate for Sister Lucia, during a three hour interview on the afternoon of July 15th, 1946, while she was still Sister Maria das Dores, a Dorothean Sister at Vilar near Porto, Portugal, was this:
“In your opinion, will every country, without exception, be overcome by Communism?” She answered: “Yes!”
Fr. Rocha said that Professor Walsh wanted to be positive about the answer and, therefore, repeated the question adding: “And does that mean the United States of America too?” Sister Lucia answered: “Yes!”
Unbelievable in 1946, not so far-fetched today is it?
Infiltration of the Catholic Church in America Admitted by Dr. Bella Dodd
Dr. Bella Visono Dodd (1904– 1969) was a member of the Communist Party of America in the 1930’s and 1940’s, who later became a vocal anti-Communist. After her defection from the Communist Party in 1949, she testified that one of her jobs, as a Communist agent, was to encourage young radical Communists to enter Roman Catholic Seminaries. In her public affidavit, among other things, Dr. Bella V. Dodd stated:
“In the late 1920’s and 1930’s, directives were sent from Moscow to all Communist Party organizations. In order to destroy the Catholic Church from within, party members were to be planted in seminaries and within diocesan organizations... I, myself, put some 1,200 men in Catholic seminaries … In the 1930s we put 1,100 men into the priesthood, in order to destroy the Church from within. The idea was for these men to be ordained, and then climb the ladder of influence and authority as Monsignors and Bishops”
A dozen years before the Second Vatican Council, she stated that: “Right now they are in the highest places in the Church” — where they were working to bring about change in order to weaken the Church’s effectiveness against Communism. She also said that these changes would be so drastic that “you will not recognize the Catholic Church”--which is true, for if you are old enough to remember the pre-Vatican II Catholic Church, then you have to admit that things have been changed drastically. A large part of the fault has to be placed at the lack of a truly practiced Faith on the part of the good priests and the good faithful. Our Lady’s statement at La Salette, that “People will think of nothing but amusement” … and the priests with “their love of money, their love of honors and pleasures” came to be true, as this attitude sapped any and all spiritual strength from the fun loving laity and ambitious clergy.
Weakened in this way, it was easy for the Communists (and all those other enemies of the Church who were and are fueled by the Communists—in finance and armament) to breach the walls of the Church—especially after their masterpiece conquests during Vatican II, when all the infiltrators “won the day” and carried away so many captive and ignorant souls!
Is the USA Becoming the “Communist States of America”?
Both the country of America and the Catholic Church in America is being confronted by values that are opposed to those of God. Both the country and the church are too weak to resist the tsunami of psychological onslaught of this alien ideology. Fattened by years of fun; intoxicated by entertainment; craving money; intellectually bankrupt and morally compromised―both country and state lie paralyzed in hospital beds with no weapons in their hands and minds, other than the remote-control for the TV.
A CNS News article, from March 31st, 2014, was entitled: “We Have Become the Communist States of America.” Here is what the article had to say [only the chief and simplest points will be quoted, for the full article, click here]:
A preferred ploy of left-wing change agents is to ridicule critics when they point out the undeniable parallels between the goals of today’s “progressive” movement, to include the Democratic Party in general, and the goals of the early, and very much still alive, Communist movement.
If, for instance, one mentions the historical fact that nearly every adult who, at any time, was in any position of influence over a young, soon-to-be-radicalized Barry Soetoro was an avowed Communist, to include his own parents, then one is immediately mocked and dismissed as a neo-McCarthyite hack pining for the bygone days of the “Red Scare”. This is an evasive, ad hominem strategy employed by those who are caught, for lack of a better word, red-handed. To all this I say, if the jackboot fits, wear it. If it quacks like a commie and goose-steps like a commie, then a commie it is.
The “progressive” rush toward cultural Marxism. Cultural Marxism seeks, within society, to supplant traditional values, norms and customs with postmodern moral relativism. Cultural Marxists endeavor to scrub America of her Judeo-Christian, constitutional-republican founding principles, and take, instead, a secular-statist Sharpie pen to our beloved U.S. Constitution.
Historian and U.S. military affairs expert, William S. Lind, describes cultural Marxism as “a branch of western Marxism, different from the Marxism-Leninism of the old Soviet Union. It is commonly known as ‘multiculturalism’ or, less formally, ‘Political Correctness’. From its beginning, the promoters of cultural Marxism have known they could be more effective if they concealed the Marxist nature of their work, hence the use of terms such as ‘multiculturalism.’”
Pastor, attorney and Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate, Scott Lively, drills down a bit deeper: “Cultural Marxism is a variation of the Marxist strategy to build a utopian socialist order on the ashes of Christian civilization, but through subversion of the moral culture, especially the elimination of the natural family, rather than solely through destruction of capitalism.”
True though this may be, the ideological seeds of contemporary cultural Marxism, nonetheless, sprout from deep within the dead soil of historical Communism. It is not economic redistributionism alone through which “progressives” seek to both “fundamentally transform America” and otherwise conquer the world, but, rather, and perhaps primarily, it is also through victory over the tagged “social issues” (i.e., the sanctity of marriage, natural human sexuality and morality, ending the abortion holocaust, religious liberty, the Second Amendment and the like). This is neither speculative nor hyperbolic. Both the historical record and the U.S. Congressional Record bear out this sinister reality. “Surrender on the ‘social issues’!” demand the GOP’s cultural Marxist-enabling kamikazes.
In 1963, U.S. Rep. A.S. Herlong Jr., D-Fla., read into the Congressional Record a list of “Current Communist Goals”―as enumerated by a former FBI Special Agent, Dr. William Cleon Skousen, in his book, The Naked Communist, penned in 1958. I encourage you to read the whole list, but for now let’s focus on those goals that most closely align with the seditious agenda of America’s “progressive” movement. It’s actually most of them. Though Herlong was a Democrat, the list reads like today’s Democratic Party Platform.
(1) Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist [or, today, Islamic] affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
(2) Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist [or Islamic] domination.
(3) Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
(4) Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces.
(5) Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
(6) Do away with all loyalty oaths.
(7) Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
(8) Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
(9) Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
(10) Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policy-making positions.
(11) Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
(12) Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. (An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”)
(13) Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
(14) Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
(15) Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”
(16) Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principal of “separation of church and state.”
(17) Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
(18) Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
(19) Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.”
(20) Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture - education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
(21) Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
(22) Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
(23) Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].
(24) Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
(25) Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
(26) Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use “united force” to solve economic, political or social problems.
(27) Internationalize the Panama Canal.
(28) Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
If achieving these specific Communist goals was the final “progressive” step toward the larger goal of securing Communist governance in America, then, tragically, “progressives” have realized that larger goal. Look around. We are no longer the United States of America. We have become The Communist States of America. Which means, for those who love liberty, revolution is once again at hand. [end of CNS article]
Catholicism and Communism
Catholicism would be the death of Communism, but Catholicism has become too anemic and too weak to do anything about Communism. This is exactly what Our Lady predicted: “The true Faith to the Lord having been forgotten … People will think of nothing but amusement … for disorder and the love of carnal pleasures will be spread all over the Earth … Moreover, in these unhappy times, there will be unbridled luxury which, acting thus to snare the rest into sin, will conquer innumerable frivolous souls who will be lost” (Our Lady of Good Success and La Salette).
Communism has always sought to soften and remove the backbone of Western civilization. We read among the above goals, certain ones that are geared to make Western Christianity spiritually blind. This is achieved by controlling the “fodder that is fed” to Westerners. The above goals mention the following:
● Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
● Discredit American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression.
● Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
● Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
● Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as ‘normal, natural, healthy.’
● Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion.
● Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a “religious crutch.”
● Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of separation of church and state.
● Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
Catholic America Has Been Blinded
Catholic America, today, can learn a lot from the Pharisees of yesterday, as related in chapter nine of St. John’s Gospel, who were lost in profound spiritual blindness. Their minds were utterly darkened and they knew not the light of grace, nor even the light of reason ― since, reason alone would have at least kept them silent in the presence of the Lord.
Though the one man had been blind from birth, his blindness was only physical. He suffered from blindness of the eyes. The Pharisees of old and American Catholics today, on the other hand, did not receive their blindness at birth; but, instead, gave themselves over to blindness through their obstinacy. Their blindness was spiritual and intellectual. They suffered from blindness of the mind.
If the intellectual blindness which the Pharisees suffered was not contracted at birth, but rather was gained through a later perversion of the light of reason; what lead to this blindness? Where does this blindness of the mind come from? If only we can discover what actions led the Pharisees into this spiritual blindness, we will be more able to remain ever in the light.
Spiritual Blindness is a Lack of Spiritual Understanding
In order to understand what blindness of mind is, we must know the virtue to which it is contrary. In fact, spiritual blindness is contrary, not simply to a virtue, but to a gift of the Holy Spirit, namely the gift of understanding.
Understanding is that gift by which we are able to penetrate the revealed mysteries and come to an intimate knowledge of the supernatural truths of the Faith. Understanding is a supernatural light in the intellect which allows man to grasp the very essence of revealed truths. This gift (like all the gifts) is bestowed on man by God and is a principle within man by which the Holy Spirit moves us to supernatural actions. As with the other gifts, understanding is in all who are in the state of grace; it is necessary for salvation.
Blindness of Mind is Contrary to Understanding
Blindness of mind is the vice opposed to the gift of understanding. More broadly, we may say that it is opposed to the theological virtue of Faith ― since, understanding corresponds to Faith. However, spiritual blindness is specifically opposed to the gift of understanding; since, this blindness denotes the privation of spiritual light and even the hindering of the light of reason.
Blindness of mind (this profound spiritual blindness) indicates not merely a certain weakness of the mind in relation to the consideration of spiritual things, but implies the complete lack of knowledge of supernatural realities. In this way, blindness of mind is more than a mere dulling of the intellect, but goes further to make a man dislike or even hate and utterly reject spiritual truths. The one who is spiritual blind, cannot in any way begin to understand, apprehend, or penetrate the inner nature of spiritual realities; but, instead, turns away completely from supernatural truth.
On account of blindness of mind, the spiritual light of grace in a man’s soul is lost and the light in him becomes darkness. How great will that darkness be! St. John speaks of this darkness, or spiritual blindness, in the opening lines of his Gospel: “In Him [Jesus] was life, and the life was the Light of men. And the Light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it … That was the true Light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not” (John 1:4-11). The very same could be said of Catholic America today! It does not receive, nor does it really want, the Light of Christ. It is happy with the light that it receives from the world, and so their souls are in a spiritual darkness, as they romp and roll about in the false light of worldliness—as Our Lady said: “Some let themselves be dazzled by the false glamor of honors and human greatness … As true Faith has faded and false light brightens the people” (Our Lady of Good Success and La Salette).
What Sins Lead to Blindness of Mind?
Certainly, by any mortal sin, the gift of understanding is lost ― since, when a man loses Charity, he loses also all the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless ― though there are many mortal sins which cause the loss of understanding and, therefore, lead to spiritual blindness ― there is one sin which is directly opposed to understanding and leads immediately to blindness of mind. It is from this sin that we may most accurately say blindness of mind proceeds.
St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that the sins which directly cause spiritual blindness are all mortal sins pertaining to lust. In this matter, the Angelic Doctor follows Pope St. Gregory the Great. But what is it about sins of the flesh, and lust in particular, which causes spiritual blindness?
The mind comes to understand truth through an abstraction from sensible phantasms or images. Thus, the more a man’s mind is freed from those phantasms, the more thoroughly will it be able to consider intelligible realities. On the other hand, the more a man’s intellect is fixed on the sensible realities, the less he will be able to understand the essence of things ― since the essence is invisible and immaterial.
St. Thomas Aquinas continues: “Now it is evident that pleasure fixes a man’s attention on that which he takes pleasure in. Now carnal vices, namely gluttony and lust, are concerned with pleasures of touch in matters of food and sex; and these are the most impetuous of all pleasures of the body. For this reason these vices cause man’s attention to be firmly fixed on corporeal things, so that in consequence man’s operation in regard to the intelligible things is weakened; more, however, by lust than by gluttony, forasmuch as sexual pleasures are more vehement than those of the table. Wherefore lust gives rise to blindness of mind, which excludes almost entirely the knowledge of spiritual things.” (Summa Theologica, II-II, q.15, art.3).
Thus, it is precisely sexual sin which leads to this spiritual blindness ― for lust directs all our attention to the things of Earth and makes us blind to the things of Heaven. Many Catholics today, immersed in this modern immodest world, are struggling with some sort of sexual temptation, addiction or perversion, some sort of lust ― this impurity has made them utterly blind to the supernatural realities that were taking place before their eyes.
The following words of Holy Scripture are very applicable to the modern American Catholic—or even most modern Catholics throughout the world: “For the heart of this people is grown gross, and with their ears have they heard heavily, and their eyes they have shut; lest perhaps they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them!” (Acts Of Apostles 28:27).
Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange has this to say on spiritual blindness:
“Because the humanity of Christ is thus radically consecrated to God, it is separated from the spirit of the world and is given to the world to save it and deliver it from its spirit of blindness, concupiscence, and pride. Christ’s very elevation separates Him from the spirit of the world, from all that is evil or less good ... Gluttony and sensuality also produce other vices and may lead to blindness of spirit, to hardness of heart, and to attachment to the present life. Gluttony engenders improper jokes, buffoonery, impurity, foolish conversation, stupidity. Lust engenders spiritual blindness, poor judgment, impetuosity (of decision), Inconstancy, love of self and attachment to the present life.
“Holy Scripture often speaks of this spiritual blindness. Christ was saddened and angered by the spiritual blindness of the Pharisees (Mark 3:5) and finally said to them: ‘Woe to you blind guides ... You tithe mint and anise and cumin, and have left the weightier things of the law: judgment and mercy and Faith ... Blind guides, who strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel.’ (Matthew 23:16, 23 ff.).
“In St. John's Gospel (John 12:40) we read that this blindness is a punishment of God, who withdraws light from such as do not wish to receive it (Romans 11:8).
“There are sinners who, by reason of repeated sins, no longer recognize the signified will of God manifested in a striking manner; they no longer understand that the evils which befall them are punishments of God, and they do not turn to Him. By natural laws alone, they explain these misfortunes as things that afflict a number of people at the moment. They see in them only the result of certain economic factors, such as the development of machinery and overproduction
which results from it. They no longer take into account that these disorders have above all a moral cause and come from the fact that many men place their last end where it is not; not in God who would unite us, but in material goods which divide us, because they cannot belong simultaneously and integrally to a number.
“Spiritual blindness leads the sinner to prefer in everything goods that are temporal rather than eternal goods. It prevents him from hearing the voice of God, which the Church recalls in the liturgy for Advent and for Lent: “Be converted to Me with all your heart ... Turn to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, patient and rich in mercy, and ready to repent of the evil” (Joel 2:12 ff.).
“Spiritual blindness is a punishment of God which takes away the divine light because of repeated sins. But there is also a sin by which we voluntarily turn away from the consideration of divine truth by preferring to it the knowledge of that which satisfies our concupiscence of our pride (St. Thomas, IIa IIae, q. 15, art. 1).
“We may say of this sin what St. Thomas says of spiritual folly (stultitia) , that it is opposed to the precepts of the contemplation of truth (St. Thomas, IIa IIae, q.46, a.2 ad 3um: “Folly is opposed to the precepts, which are given by the contemplation of truth”). It hinders us from seeing the proximity of death and the judgment (Imitation of Christ, Book 1, chapter 23). It takes all penetration away from us and leaves us in a state of spiritual dullness, which is like the loss of all higher intelligence (St. Thomas, IIa IIae, q. 15, art.3). Then we no longer see the grandeur of the supreme precept of the love of God and of our neighbor, or the value of our Savior's blood shed for us, or the infinite value of the Mass, which substantially perpetuates on the altar the sacrifice of the cross.
“Such a condition is a chastisement, and no heed is paid to it. As St. Augustine says: ‘“If, when a thief stole money, he lost an eye, everybody would say that it was a punishment of God! You have lost the eye of your mind and you think that God has not punished you!’ (Commentary on Psalm 47).
“It is surprising at times to find among Christians men who have great literary, artistic, or scientific culture, but who have merely a rudimentary and superficial knowledge of the truths of religion, a knowledge mingled with many prejudices and errors. It is a surprising disproportion, which makes them, as it were, spiritual dwarfs.
“Some others, better instructed in matters of Faith, the history of the Church, and its laws, have a tendency that is, so to speak, anti-contemplative, permitting them to see the life of the Church only from without, as if they were looking at the exterior of the windows of a cathedral, instead of seeing them from within under the soft light which should illumine them.
“This dullness of mind especially hinders the hearing of the great preaching of God, who speaks in His own way through great contemporary events. At the present time, there are in the world two radically contradictory universal tendencies, over and above the nationalism of different groups nl0re or less opposed to one another.
“On the one hand, we find the universalism of the reign of Christ who wishes to draw the souls of men of all nations to God, supreme Truth and Life; on the other hand, we see false universalism, which is called communism, which draws souls in an inverse sense toward materialism, sensuality, and pride, in such a manner that the parable of the prodigal son is verified not only for individuals, but for whole nations, such as Russia." (Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, The Three Agaes of the Interior Life).
The Reid technique is the basis of the widely used “Criminal Interrogation and Confessions” manual we already mentioned. It lays out nine steps or issues guiding interrogation. Many of these steps overlap, and there is no such thing as a “typical” interrogation; but the Reid technique provides a blueprint of how a successful interrogation might unfold.
(1) Confrontation
(2) Theme development
(3) Stopping denials of guilt
(4) Overcoming objections
(5) Getting the suspect’s attention
(6) Handling the Suspect’s Passive Mood
(7) Presenting an Alternative Question or Choice
(8) Having the Suspect Orally Relate Various Details of the Offense
(9) Converting an Oral Confession to a Written Confession
Let us now adapt the above nine stages to how Catholicism is “suspected”, “interrogated” and made to feel “guilty” by the techniques used by the modern pagan, Communist, Socialist and Protestant world.
(1) Confrontation
It is at this point that the accusation against the person is made. The accusation may be true or it made be false―it does not matter to the one who is accusing. It is simply the opening shot that is fired in order to gauge and measure the reaction and response of the one being accused. However, here we are not so much concerned about a suspect being interrogated, but a Catholic being segregated, negated and castigated with the view of making the Catholic’s Faith disturbed, discredited, disliked, destabilized, dismantled, disarmed, discouraged and disbelieving.
Just as the old police interrogation methods of aggression, beatings and torture gave way to more subtle and indirect methods of analysis of body language, psychological maneuvering, and strong suggestive interrogation, likewise has the attack on Catholicism followed the same broad lines. Rather than try destroying Catholicism with an “in your face” aggressive attack, the preferred way is to get the Catholic to destroy his own Faith.
Communism and Islam have been ‘set-up’ to be the stooges to do the dirty work of destroying Christianity and its Faith and Morals in the world. Conspiracy theory? No, more like a conspiracy fact. Yet this article on the history of American Catholicism is not the place to go into that. At a later date this can be treated and examined. Our Lady has unequivocally said that Russia (Communism) will spread its errors throughout the world. Sister Lucia confirmed that America would also fall to Communism (or more strictly speaking, to Socialism―for a Communist society is stateless, classless and is governed directly by the people. This however has never been practiced by any country).
Some American candidates are presenting themselves as “social reformers,” which may as well be a euphemism for Communists or Socialists. If you turn your eyes to South America, you find a continent that is rapidly becoming “red” or Communist or Socialist ― among the adherents are Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, in Central America, Nicaragua, Cuba. In other words, the vast majority of South America is Communist or Socialist (we will split hairs over the difference between the two in the articles on “The Errors of Russia” (click here).
Sister Lucia of Fatima in 1946 said that the whole world would become Communist. Fr. Manuel Rocha, the interpreter selected for the Catholic Professor of History, Dr. William Thomas Walsh, an American, who wrote perhaps the most popular book on Fatima, said that one of the questions Dr. Walsh asked him to translate for Sister Lucia, during a three hour interview on the afternoon of July 15th, 1946, while she was still Sister Maria das Dores, a Dorothean Sister at Vilar near Porto, Portugal, was this:
“In your opinion, will every country, without exception, be overcome by Communism?” She answered: “Yes!”
Fr. Rocha said that Professor Walsh wanted to be positive about the answer and, therefore, repeated the question adding: “And does that mean the United States of America too?” Sister Lucia answered: “Yes!”
Unbelievable in 1946, not so far-fetched today is it?
Infiltration of the Catholic Church in America Admitted by Dr. Bella Dodd
Dr. Bella Visono Dodd (1904– 1969) was a member of the Communist Party of America in the 1930’s and 1940’s, who later became a vocal anti-Communist. After her defection from the Communist Party in 1949, she testified that one of her jobs, as a Communist agent, was to encourage young radical Communists to enter Roman Catholic Seminaries. In her public affidavit, among other things, Dr. Bella V. Dodd stated:
“In the late 1920’s and 1930’s, directives were sent from Moscow to all Communist Party organizations. In order to destroy the Catholic Church from within, party members were to be planted in seminaries and within diocesan organizations... I, myself, put some 1,200 men in Catholic seminaries … In the 1930s we put 1,100 men into the priesthood, in order to destroy the Church from within. The idea was for these men to be ordained, and then climb the ladder of influence and authority as Monsignors and Bishops”
A dozen years before the Second Vatican Council, she stated that: “Right now they are in the highest places in the Church” — where they were working to bring about change in order to weaken the Church’s effectiveness against Communism. She also said that these changes would be so drastic that “you will not recognize the Catholic Church”--which is true, for if you are old enough to remember the pre-Vatican II Catholic Church, then you have to admit that things have been changed drastically. A large part of the fault has to be placed at the lack of a truly practiced Faith on the part of the good priests and the good faithful. Our Lady’s statement at La Salette, that “People will think of nothing but amusement” … and the priests with “their love of money, their love of honors and pleasures” came to be true, as this attitude sapped any and all spiritual strength from the fun loving laity and ambitious clergy.
Weakened in this way, it was easy for the Communists (and all those other enemies of the Church who were and are fueled by the Communists—in finance and armament) to breach the walls of the Church—especially after their masterpiece conquests during Vatican II, when all the infiltrators “won the day” and carried away so many captive and ignorant souls!
Is the USA Becoming the “Communist States of America”?
Both the country of America and the Catholic Church in America is being confronted by values that are opposed to those of God. Both the country and the church are too weak to resist the tsunami of psychological onslaught of this alien ideology. Fattened by years of fun; intoxicated by entertainment; craving money; intellectually bankrupt and morally compromised―both country and state lie paralyzed in hospital beds with no weapons in their hands and minds, other than the remote-control for the TV.
A CNS News article, from March 31st, 2014, was entitled: “We Have Become the Communist States of America.” Here is what the article had to say [only the chief and simplest points will be quoted, for the full article, click here]:
A preferred ploy of left-wing change agents is to ridicule critics when they point out the undeniable parallels between the goals of today’s “progressive” movement, to include the Democratic Party in general, and the goals of the early, and very much still alive, Communist movement.
If, for instance, one mentions the historical fact that nearly every adult who, at any time, was in any position of influence over a young, soon-to-be-radicalized Barry Soetoro was an avowed Communist, to include his own parents, then one is immediately mocked and dismissed as a neo-McCarthyite hack pining for the bygone days of the “Red Scare”. This is an evasive, ad hominem strategy employed by those who are caught, for lack of a better word, red-handed. To all this I say, if the jackboot fits, wear it. If it quacks like a commie and goose-steps like a commie, then a commie it is.
The “progressive” rush toward cultural Marxism. Cultural Marxism seeks, within society, to supplant traditional values, norms and customs with postmodern moral relativism. Cultural Marxists endeavor to scrub America of her Judeo-Christian, constitutional-republican founding principles, and take, instead, a secular-statist Sharpie pen to our beloved U.S. Constitution.
Historian and U.S. military affairs expert, William S. Lind, describes cultural Marxism as “a branch of western Marxism, different from the Marxism-Leninism of the old Soviet Union. It is commonly known as ‘multiculturalism’ or, less formally, ‘Political Correctness’. From its beginning, the promoters of cultural Marxism have known they could be more effective if they concealed the Marxist nature of their work, hence the use of terms such as ‘multiculturalism.’”
Pastor, attorney and Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate, Scott Lively, drills down a bit deeper: “Cultural Marxism is a variation of the Marxist strategy to build a utopian socialist order on the ashes of Christian civilization, but through subversion of the moral culture, especially the elimination of the natural family, rather than solely through destruction of capitalism.”
True though this may be, the ideological seeds of contemporary cultural Marxism, nonetheless, sprout from deep within the dead soil of historical Communism. It is not economic redistributionism alone through which “progressives” seek to both “fundamentally transform America” and otherwise conquer the world, but, rather, and perhaps primarily, it is also through victory over the tagged “social issues” (i.e., the sanctity of marriage, natural human sexuality and morality, ending the abortion holocaust, religious liberty, the Second Amendment and the like). This is neither speculative nor hyperbolic. Both the historical record and the U.S. Congressional Record bear out this sinister reality. “Surrender on the ‘social issues’!” demand the GOP’s cultural Marxist-enabling kamikazes.
In 1963, U.S. Rep. A.S. Herlong Jr., D-Fla., read into the Congressional Record a list of “Current Communist Goals”―as enumerated by a former FBI Special Agent, Dr. William Cleon Skousen, in his book, The Naked Communist, penned in 1958. I encourage you to read the whole list, but for now let’s focus on those goals that most closely align with the seditious agenda of America’s “progressive” movement. It’s actually most of them. Though Herlong was a Democrat, the list reads like today’s Democratic Party Platform.
(1) Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist [or, today, Islamic] affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
(2) Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist [or Islamic] domination.
(3) Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
(4) Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces.
(5) Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
(6) Do away with all loyalty oaths.
(7) Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
(8) Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
(9) Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
(10) Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policy-making positions.
(11) Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
(12) Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. (An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”)
(13) Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
(14) Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
(15) Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”
(16) Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principal of “separation of church and state.”
(17) Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
(18) Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
(19) Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.”
(20) Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture - education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
(21) Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
(22) Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
(23) Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].
(24) Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
(25) Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
(26) Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use “united force” to solve economic, political or social problems.
(27) Internationalize the Panama Canal.
(28) Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
If achieving these specific Communist goals was the final “progressive” step toward the larger goal of securing Communist governance in America, then, tragically, “progressives” have realized that larger goal. Look around. We are no longer the United States of America. We have become The Communist States of America. Which means, for those who love liberty, revolution is once again at hand. [end of CNS article]
Catholicism and Communism
Catholicism would be the death of Communism, but Catholicism has become too anemic and too weak to do anything about Communism. This is exactly what Our Lady predicted: “The true Faith to the Lord having been forgotten … People will think of nothing but amusement … for disorder and the love of carnal pleasures will be spread all over the Earth … Moreover, in these unhappy times, there will be unbridled luxury which, acting thus to snare the rest into sin, will conquer innumerable frivolous souls who will be lost” (Our Lady of Good Success and La Salette).
Communism has always sought to soften and remove the backbone of Western civilization. We read among the above goals, certain ones that are geared to make Western Christianity spiritually blind. This is achieved by controlling the “fodder that is fed” to Westerners. The above goals mention the following:
● Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
● Discredit American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression.
● Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
● Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
● Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as ‘normal, natural, healthy.’
● Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion.
● Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a “religious crutch.”
● Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of separation of church and state.
● Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
Catholic America Has Been Blinded
Catholic America, today, can learn a lot from the Pharisees of yesterday, as related in chapter nine of St. John’s Gospel, who were lost in profound spiritual blindness. Their minds were utterly darkened and they knew not the light of grace, nor even the light of reason ― since, reason alone would have at least kept them silent in the presence of the Lord.
Though the one man had been blind from birth, his blindness was only physical. He suffered from blindness of the eyes. The Pharisees of old and American Catholics today, on the other hand, did not receive their blindness at birth; but, instead, gave themselves over to blindness through their obstinacy. Their blindness was spiritual and intellectual. They suffered from blindness of the mind.
If the intellectual blindness which the Pharisees suffered was not contracted at birth, but rather was gained through a later perversion of the light of reason; what lead to this blindness? Where does this blindness of the mind come from? If only we can discover what actions led the Pharisees into this spiritual blindness, we will be more able to remain ever in the light.
Spiritual Blindness is a Lack of Spiritual Understanding
In order to understand what blindness of mind is, we must know the virtue to which it is contrary. In fact, spiritual blindness is contrary, not simply to a virtue, but to a gift of the Holy Spirit, namely the gift of understanding.
Understanding is that gift by which we are able to penetrate the revealed mysteries and come to an intimate knowledge of the supernatural truths of the Faith. Understanding is a supernatural light in the intellect which allows man to grasp the very essence of revealed truths. This gift (like all the gifts) is bestowed on man by God and is a principle within man by which the Holy Spirit moves us to supernatural actions. As with the other gifts, understanding is in all who are in the state of grace; it is necessary for salvation.
Blindness of Mind is Contrary to Understanding
Blindness of mind is the vice opposed to the gift of understanding. More broadly, we may say that it is opposed to the theological virtue of Faith ― since, understanding corresponds to Faith. However, spiritual blindness is specifically opposed to the gift of understanding; since, this blindness denotes the privation of spiritual light and even the hindering of the light of reason.
Blindness of mind (this profound spiritual blindness) indicates not merely a certain weakness of the mind in relation to the consideration of spiritual things, but implies the complete lack of knowledge of supernatural realities. In this way, blindness of mind is more than a mere dulling of the intellect, but goes further to make a man dislike or even hate and utterly reject spiritual truths. The one who is spiritual blind, cannot in any way begin to understand, apprehend, or penetrate the inner nature of spiritual realities; but, instead, turns away completely from supernatural truth.
On account of blindness of mind, the spiritual light of grace in a man’s soul is lost and the light in him becomes darkness. How great will that darkness be! St. John speaks of this darkness, or spiritual blindness, in the opening lines of his Gospel: “In Him [Jesus] was life, and the life was the Light of men. And the Light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it … That was the true Light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not” (John 1:4-11). The very same could be said of Catholic America today! It does not receive, nor does it really want, the Light of Christ. It is happy with the light that it receives from the world, and so their souls are in a spiritual darkness, as they romp and roll about in the false light of worldliness—as Our Lady said: “Some let themselves be dazzled by the false glamor of honors and human greatness … As true Faith has faded and false light brightens the people” (Our Lady of Good Success and La Salette).
What Sins Lead to Blindness of Mind?
Certainly, by any mortal sin, the gift of understanding is lost ― since, when a man loses Charity, he loses also all the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless ― though there are many mortal sins which cause the loss of understanding and, therefore, lead to spiritual blindness ― there is one sin which is directly opposed to understanding and leads immediately to blindness of mind. It is from this sin that we may most accurately say blindness of mind proceeds.
St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that the sins which directly cause spiritual blindness are all mortal sins pertaining to lust. In this matter, the Angelic Doctor follows Pope St. Gregory the Great. But what is it about sins of the flesh, and lust in particular, which causes spiritual blindness?
The mind comes to understand truth through an abstraction from sensible phantasms or images. Thus, the more a man’s mind is freed from those phantasms, the more thoroughly will it be able to consider intelligible realities. On the other hand, the more a man’s intellect is fixed on the sensible realities, the less he will be able to understand the essence of things ― since the essence is invisible and immaterial.
St. Thomas Aquinas continues: “Now it is evident that pleasure fixes a man’s attention on that which he takes pleasure in. Now carnal vices, namely gluttony and lust, are concerned with pleasures of touch in matters of food and sex; and these are the most impetuous of all pleasures of the body. For this reason these vices cause man’s attention to be firmly fixed on corporeal things, so that in consequence man’s operation in regard to the intelligible things is weakened; more, however, by lust than by gluttony, forasmuch as sexual pleasures are more vehement than those of the table. Wherefore lust gives rise to blindness of mind, which excludes almost entirely the knowledge of spiritual things.” (Summa Theologica, II-II, q.15, art.3).
Thus, it is precisely sexual sin which leads to this spiritual blindness ― for lust directs all our attention to the things of Earth and makes us blind to the things of Heaven. Many Catholics today, immersed in this modern immodest world, are struggling with some sort of sexual temptation, addiction or perversion, some sort of lust ― this impurity has made them utterly blind to the supernatural realities that were taking place before their eyes.
The following words of Holy Scripture are very applicable to the modern American Catholic—or even most modern Catholics throughout the world: “For the heart of this people is grown gross, and with their ears have they heard heavily, and their eyes they have shut; lest perhaps they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them!” (Acts Of Apostles 28:27).
Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange has this to say on spiritual blindness:
“Because the humanity of Christ is thus radically consecrated to God, it is separated from the spirit of the world and is given to the world to save it and deliver it from its spirit of blindness, concupiscence, and pride. Christ’s very elevation separates Him from the spirit of the world, from all that is evil or less good ... Gluttony and sensuality also produce other vices and may lead to blindness of spirit, to hardness of heart, and to attachment to the present life. Gluttony engenders improper jokes, buffoonery, impurity, foolish conversation, stupidity. Lust engenders spiritual blindness, poor judgment, impetuosity (of decision), Inconstancy, love of self and attachment to the present life.
“Holy Scripture often speaks of this spiritual blindness. Christ was saddened and angered by the spiritual blindness of the Pharisees (Mark 3:5) and finally said to them: ‘Woe to you blind guides ... You tithe mint and anise and cumin, and have left the weightier things of the law: judgment and mercy and Faith ... Blind guides, who strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel.’ (Matthew 23:16, 23 ff.).
“In St. John's Gospel (John 12:40) we read that this blindness is a punishment of God, who withdraws light from such as do not wish to receive it (Romans 11:8).
“There are sinners who, by reason of repeated sins, no longer recognize the signified will of God manifested in a striking manner; they no longer understand that the evils which befall them are punishments of God, and they do not turn to Him. By natural laws alone, they explain these misfortunes as things that afflict a number of people at the moment. They see in them only the result of certain economic factors, such as the development of machinery and overproduction
which results from it. They no longer take into account that these disorders have above all a moral cause and come from the fact that many men place their last end where it is not; not in God who would unite us, but in material goods which divide us, because they cannot belong simultaneously and integrally to a number.
“Spiritual blindness leads the sinner to prefer in everything goods that are temporal rather than eternal goods. It prevents him from hearing the voice of God, which the Church recalls in the liturgy for Advent and for Lent: “Be converted to Me with all your heart ... Turn to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, patient and rich in mercy, and ready to repent of the evil” (Joel 2:12 ff.).
“Spiritual blindness is a punishment of God which takes away the divine light because of repeated sins. But there is also a sin by which we voluntarily turn away from the consideration of divine truth by preferring to it the knowledge of that which satisfies our concupiscence of our pride (St. Thomas, IIa IIae, q. 15, art. 1).
“We may say of this sin what St. Thomas says of spiritual folly (stultitia) , that it is opposed to the precepts of the contemplation of truth (St. Thomas, IIa IIae, q.46, a.2 ad 3um: “Folly is opposed to the precepts, which are given by the contemplation of truth”). It hinders us from seeing the proximity of death and the judgment (Imitation of Christ, Book 1, chapter 23). It takes all penetration away from us and leaves us in a state of spiritual dullness, which is like the loss of all higher intelligence (St. Thomas, IIa IIae, q. 15, art.3). Then we no longer see the grandeur of the supreme precept of the love of God and of our neighbor, or the value of our Savior's blood shed for us, or the infinite value of the Mass, which substantially perpetuates on the altar the sacrifice of the cross.
“Such a condition is a chastisement, and no heed is paid to it. As St. Augustine says: ‘“If, when a thief stole money, he lost an eye, everybody would say that it was a punishment of God! You have lost the eye of your mind and you think that God has not punished you!’ (Commentary on Psalm 47).
“It is surprising at times to find among Christians men who have great literary, artistic, or scientific culture, but who have merely a rudimentary and superficial knowledge of the truths of religion, a knowledge mingled with many prejudices and errors. It is a surprising disproportion, which makes them, as it were, spiritual dwarfs.
“Some others, better instructed in matters of Faith, the history of the Church, and its laws, have a tendency that is, so to speak, anti-contemplative, permitting them to see the life of the Church only from without, as if they were looking at the exterior of the windows of a cathedral, instead of seeing them from within under the soft light which should illumine them.
“This dullness of mind especially hinders the hearing of the great preaching of God, who speaks in His own way through great contemporary events. At the present time, there are in the world two radically contradictory universal tendencies, over and above the nationalism of different groups nl0re or less opposed to one another.
“On the one hand, we find the universalism of the reign of Christ who wishes to draw the souls of men of all nations to God, supreme Truth and Life; on the other hand, we see false universalism, which is called communism, which draws souls in an inverse sense toward materialism, sensuality, and pride, in such a manner that the parable of the prodigal son is verified not only for individuals, but for whole nations, such as Russia." (Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, The Three Agaes of the Interior Life).
PART 11
CATHOLIC AMERICA FALLS FROM GRACE
Numbers of Catholics
The number of Catholics has grown during America’s history, at first slowly in the early 19th century, through some immigration and through the acquisition of territories (formerly possessions of France, Spain, and Mexico) with predominately Catholic populations. In the mid-19th century, a rapid influx of immigrants from Europe (Irish, German, Polish and Italian) made Catholicism the largest religion in the United States.
Since the 1960s, the percentage of Americans who are Catholic has stayed roughly the same, at around 25%, due in large part to increases in the Hispanic, especially Mexican American, population over the same period which balanced losses of self-identifying Catholics among other groups.
The northeastern quadrant of the US (i.e., New England, Mid-Atlantic, East North Central, and West North Central) has seen a decline in the number of parishes since 1970, but parish numbers are up in the other five regions (i.e., South Atlantic, East South Central, West South Central, Pacific, and Mountain regions). Catholics in the US are about 6% of the church’s total worldwide 1.2 billion membership.
Dramatic Drop in Numbers of Catholics
The big news in recent years, from a 2015 Pew Forum poll on Americans and religion, was the dramatic drop in the number of Americans calling themselves “Christian” and its potential impact on the Christian Right and future religion itself in the U.S.
But there’s another number lurking in the poll that may prove just as consequential. For years, two truisms dominated coverage of the US Catholic Church: about one quarter (25%) of the population is Catholic and each year at Easter, Catholics entering the Church offset those leaving it. But new data suggests a new story. A report released by the Pew Forum finds that there are 3 million fewer people calling themselves Catholic today than in 2007, which was the last time Pew Forum conducted their extensive poll. As a result, the share of the U.S. population that identifies as Catholic dropped from approximately 24 percent to 21 percent―about one-fifth―of the total population.
Why is this such big news? Because despite unpopular popes and still-simmering pedophilia scandals, the percentage of Catholics in the U.S. has remained remarkably steady for decades. The relative stability of the Catholic population allowed many on the Catholic right to dismiss calls for reform in the Church and gave the Catholic bishops political clout when it came to opposing things like no-cost contraception in the Affordable Care Act in the name of “Catholics.”
But now it appears that the Catholic Church is in a demographic free-fall, as it sheds adherents faster than any faith other than the mainline Protestant denominations, which have been in decline for decades. Nearly one-third of all American adults were raised Catholic, but a stunning 41 percent—four in ten of those who marched to the altar in their little white First Communion dresses and suits—no longer identify with Catholicism.
And perhaps more troubling for the Church, for every one Catholic convert, more than six Catholics leave the Church. Taken a step further, Catholicism loses more members than it gains, at a higher rate than any other denomination, with nearly 13 percent of all Americans describing themselves as “former Catholics.”
Why is the Catholic Church suddenly crashing? The reality is that the Catholic Church has been shedding adherents for a long time. But it was gaining new parishioners just as fast, thanks to the dramatic increase in Hispanic migration to the U.S. The influx of Hispanics, who are overwhelming Catholic, helped make up for the departing white, native-born parishioners and masked their continued defection from the church. As a result, one-third of Catholics in the pews today are Hispanic.
Catholics Do Not Attend Mass Regularly
Yet that meager figure of 21% of the US population being Catholic, is further reduced by the fact that very few Catholics practice their Faith regularly by attending Sunday Mass each week—thus objectively placing themselves at enmity with God by being in mortal sin.
The “most damaging change in Catholic life is the precipitous decline in Mass attendance. It’s the sign of a church collapsing,” says Catholic University sociologist William D’Antonio, co-author of statistical studies of American Catholics.
A 1958 Gallup poll reported that 75 percent of US Catholics went to Sunday Mass in 1958. A 1994 University of Notre Dame study found that the Catholic weekly attendance rate at Mass was 26.6 percent. A more recent study by Fordham University professor James Lothian concluded that 65 percent of Catholics went to Sunday Mass in 1965, while the rate dropped to 25 percent in 2000.
Another source shows similar, though slightly different figures.
The percentage of Catholics attending Mass every week is steadily declining.
1958—75%
1965—68%
1987—44%
1993—41%
1999—37%
2005—33%
2012—25%
Source: USA Today
The number of lapsed Catholics is harder to quantify. Like many Americans who view their Faith as a cultural flourish, not an active commitment, they rarely go to church. Their Catholic identity gives a language and lilt to their prayers but makes little claim on their time, talents, or income.
Catholic Priest Collapse and Church Closures
From 1990 to 2003, the number of active diocesan and religious-order priests fell 22%, and the number of parishes in 176 dioceses and archdioceses dropped to 18,441. That’s a loss of 547 parishes.
The Archdiocese of Boston, epicenter of the crisis, sold chancery property to cover $85 million in settlements last year; and this year will close 67 churches and recast 16 others as new parishes or worship sites without a full-time priest.
Archbishop Sean O’Malley has said the crisis and the reconfiguration plan are in no way related. He cites demographic shifts, the priest shortage and aging, and crumbling buildings too costly to keep up.
Fargo, N.D., which spent $821,000 on the abuse crisis, closed 23 parishes; but it’s because the diocese is short more than 50 priests for its 158 parishes, some with fewer than a dozen families attending Mass.
They know how this feels in Milwaukee. That archdiocese shuttered about one in five parishes from 1995 to 2003. In 1968, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee had 265 parishes, 693 diocesan priests, 513 religious order priests, 3,818 religious Sisters, and 623 seminarians. By 2020, the archdiocesan pastoral plan estimates that the Archdiocese of Milwaukee will have only 105 to 124 full-time active priests (down from 693) assigned to only 100 parishes 9down from 265), of which 72 will be clustered parishes and 28 will be stand-alone parishes. The implications of these numbers are clear.
From 1990 to 2003, Pittsburgh closed 30% of its parishes; Grand Island, NB, 29%; and Altoona-Johnstown, PA, 27%. In the same period, Springfield, MA., lost 44% of active priests; Dubuque, 41%; and Rochester, NY, 40%. The national total of priests was 9,264 less, down to 33,028.
Archdioceses, the 31 traditional Catholic centers where about 40% of U.S. Catholics live, are hit hard. All but one, Miami, saw a double-digit percentage decline in the number of priests. More than half of archdioceses lost parishes in the past 14 years.
By 2020, in the whole USA, it is predicted that there will be less than 25,000 priests [a drop of 32,000 from the 1965 total number of 57,000+ priests] — and less than 15,000 will be under the age of 70. Right now there are more priests age 80 to 84 than there are aged 30 to 34.
Attendance & Practicing Catholics
In 2011, an estimated 26 million American Catholics were “fallen-away”, that is, not practicing their Faith. Church leaders commonly refer to them as the second largest religious denomination in the United States.
Although Catholic Mass attendance did decline in recent decades from a peak in the 1950s, there has been no decline in Mass attendance percentages nationally in the last decade. Just under one in four Catholics attends Mass every week. About a third of Catholics attend in any given week and more than two-thirds attend Mass at Christmas, Easter, and on Ash Wednesday. More than four in ten self-identified Catholics attend Mass at least once a month.
The number of Catholics has grown during America’s history, at first slowly in the early 19th century, through some immigration and through the acquisition of territories (formerly possessions of France, Spain, and Mexico) with predominately Catholic populations. In the mid-19th century, a rapid influx of immigrants from Europe (Irish, German, Polish and Italian) made Catholicism the largest religion in the United States.
Since the 1960s, the percentage of Americans who are Catholic has stayed roughly the same, at around 25%, due in large part to increases in the Hispanic, especially Mexican American, population over the same period which balanced losses of self-identifying Catholics among other groups.
The northeastern quadrant of the US (i.e., New England, Mid-Atlantic, East North Central, and West North Central) has seen a decline in the number of parishes since 1970, but parish numbers are up in the other five regions (i.e., South Atlantic, East South Central, West South Central, Pacific, and Mountain regions). Catholics in the US are about 6% of the church’s total worldwide 1.2 billion membership.
Dramatic Drop in Numbers of Catholics
The big news in recent years, from a 2015 Pew Forum poll on Americans and religion, was the dramatic drop in the number of Americans calling themselves “Christian” and its potential impact on the Christian Right and future religion itself in the U.S.
But there’s another number lurking in the poll that may prove just as consequential. For years, two truisms dominated coverage of the US Catholic Church: about one quarter (25%) of the population is Catholic and each year at Easter, Catholics entering the Church offset those leaving it. But new data suggests a new story. A report released by the Pew Forum finds that there are 3 million fewer people calling themselves Catholic today than in 2007, which was the last time Pew Forum conducted their extensive poll. As a result, the share of the U.S. population that identifies as Catholic dropped from approximately 24 percent to 21 percent―about one-fifth―of the total population.
Why is this such big news? Because despite unpopular popes and still-simmering pedophilia scandals, the percentage of Catholics in the U.S. has remained remarkably steady for decades. The relative stability of the Catholic population allowed many on the Catholic right to dismiss calls for reform in the Church and gave the Catholic bishops political clout when it came to opposing things like no-cost contraception in the Affordable Care Act in the name of “Catholics.”
But now it appears that the Catholic Church is in a demographic free-fall, as it sheds adherents faster than any faith other than the mainline Protestant denominations, which have been in decline for decades. Nearly one-third of all American adults were raised Catholic, but a stunning 41 percent—four in ten of those who marched to the altar in their little white First Communion dresses and suits—no longer identify with Catholicism.
And perhaps more troubling for the Church, for every one Catholic convert, more than six Catholics leave the Church. Taken a step further, Catholicism loses more members than it gains, at a higher rate than any other denomination, with nearly 13 percent of all Americans describing themselves as “former Catholics.”
Why is the Catholic Church suddenly crashing? The reality is that the Catholic Church has been shedding adherents for a long time. But it was gaining new parishioners just as fast, thanks to the dramatic increase in Hispanic migration to the U.S. The influx of Hispanics, who are overwhelming Catholic, helped make up for the departing white, native-born parishioners and masked their continued defection from the church. As a result, one-third of Catholics in the pews today are Hispanic.
Catholics Do Not Attend Mass Regularly
Yet that meager figure of 21% of the US population being Catholic, is further reduced by the fact that very few Catholics practice their Faith regularly by attending Sunday Mass each week—thus objectively placing themselves at enmity with God by being in mortal sin.
The “most damaging change in Catholic life is the precipitous decline in Mass attendance. It’s the sign of a church collapsing,” says Catholic University sociologist William D’Antonio, co-author of statistical studies of American Catholics.
A 1958 Gallup poll reported that 75 percent of US Catholics went to Sunday Mass in 1958. A 1994 University of Notre Dame study found that the Catholic weekly attendance rate at Mass was 26.6 percent. A more recent study by Fordham University professor James Lothian concluded that 65 percent of Catholics went to Sunday Mass in 1965, while the rate dropped to 25 percent in 2000.
Another source shows similar, though slightly different figures.
The percentage of Catholics attending Mass every week is steadily declining.
1958—75%
1965—68%
1987—44%
1993—41%
1999—37%
2005—33%
2012—25%
Source: USA Today
The number of lapsed Catholics is harder to quantify. Like many Americans who view their Faith as a cultural flourish, not an active commitment, they rarely go to church. Their Catholic identity gives a language and lilt to their prayers but makes little claim on their time, talents, or income.
Catholic Priest Collapse and Church Closures
From 1990 to 2003, the number of active diocesan and religious-order priests fell 22%, and the number of parishes in 176 dioceses and archdioceses dropped to 18,441. That’s a loss of 547 parishes.
The Archdiocese of Boston, epicenter of the crisis, sold chancery property to cover $85 million in settlements last year; and this year will close 67 churches and recast 16 others as new parishes or worship sites without a full-time priest.
Archbishop Sean O’Malley has said the crisis and the reconfiguration plan are in no way related. He cites demographic shifts, the priest shortage and aging, and crumbling buildings too costly to keep up.
Fargo, N.D., which spent $821,000 on the abuse crisis, closed 23 parishes; but it’s because the diocese is short more than 50 priests for its 158 parishes, some with fewer than a dozen families attending Mass.
They know how this feels in Milwaukee. That archdiocese shuttered about one in five parishes from 1995 to 2003. In 1968, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee had 265 parishes, 693 diocesan priests, 513 religious order priests, 3,818 religious Sisters, and 623 seminarians. By 2020, the archdiocesan pastoral plan estimates that the Archdiocese of Milwaukee will have only 105 to 124 full-time active priests (down from 693) assigned to only 100 parishes 9down from 265), of which 72 will be clustered parishes and 28 will be stand-alone parishes. The implications of these numbers are clear.
From 1990 to 2003, Pittsburgh closed 30% of its parishes; Grand Island, NB, 29%; and Altoona-Johnstown, PA, 27%. In the same period, Springfield, MA., lost 44% of active priests; Dubuque, 41%; and Rochester, NY, 40%. The national total of priests was 9,264 less, down to 33,028.
Archdioceses, the 31 traditional Catholic centers where about 40% of U.S. Catholics live, are hit hard. All but one, Miami, saw a double-digit percentage decline in the number of priests. More than half of archdioceses lost parishes in the past 14 years.
By 2020, in the whole USA, it is predicted that there will be less than 25,000 priests [a drop of 32,000 from the 1965 total number of 57,000+ priests] — and less than 15,000 will be under the age of 70. Right now there are more priests age 80 to 84 than there are aged 30 to 34.
Attendance & Practicing Catholics
In 2011, an estimated 26 million American Catholics were “fallen-away”, that is, not practicing their Faith. Church leaders commonly refer to them as the second largest religious denomination in the United States.
Although Catholic Mass attendance did decline in recent decades from a peak in the 1950s, there has been no decline in Mass attendance percentages nationally in the last decade. Just under one in four Catholics attends Mass every week. About a third of Catholics attend in any given week and more than two-thirds attend Mass at Christmas, Easter, and on Ash Wednesday. More than four in ten self-identified Catholics attend Mass at least once a month.
Constant Decline, No Real Recovery
In 1955, adult Catholics of all ages attended church at similar rates, with between 73% and 77% saying, when surveyed, that they attended in the past week. By the mid-1960s, weekly attendance of young Catholics (those 21 to 29 years of age) started to wane, falling to 56%, while attendance among other age groups dropped only slightly, to around 70%. By the mid-1970s, only 35% of Catholics in their 20s said they had attended in the past week, but attendance was also starting to fall among those in their 30s, 40s, and 50s.
The Dwindling, Dying Number Of Priests
The situation in the USA is that the “Catholic Church is that there is a dwindling supply of priests, which results in an increasing number of lay people under the care of each priest. In the American Catholic Church, the total number of priests has declined as follows:
In 1955, adult Catholics of all ages attended church at similar rates, with between 73% and 77% saying, when surveyed, that they attended in the past week. By the mid-1960s, weekly attendance of young Catholics (those 21 to 29 years of age) started to wane, falling to 56%, while attendance among other age groups dropped only slightly, to around 70%. By the mid-1970s, only 35% of Catholics in their 20s said they had attended in the past week, but attendance was also starting to fall among those in their 30s, 40s, and 50s.
The Dwindling, Dying Number Of Priests
The situation in the USA is that the “Catholic Church is that there is a dwindling supply of priests, which results in an increasing number of lay people under the care of each priest. In the American Catholic Church, the total number of priests has declined as follows:
58,632 in 1965; down to 49,054 in 1995; and then a further drop to 39,600 by 2013 (a loss of 16,000 priests between 1965 and 2013—almost 50 years—while numbers of Catholic laity are climbing—even though very few are practicing the Faith).
More People, Less Priests
With the Catholic population increasing steadily and the number of priests declining, the number of laypeople per priest has climbed from 767 lay people to each priest in 1965; to 875 lay people to each priest in 1981; to 1,113:1 in 1991 and 1,429:1 in 2001 (around a 100% increase).
Parishes Without Priests Increasing
The declining number of priests in parish ministry is producing a marked increase in the number of 'priestless' parishes. In 1960, only about 3% of Catholic parishes had no resident pastor. By 2000 that figure was up to 13%, and by the summer of 2003 it had risen to 16%".
Between 1965 and 2010, the number of USA parishes without a priest climbed from 549 to 3,342.
Religious Sisters in Dramatic Decline
● 1840: There were 900 religious sisters in 15 communities in 1840,
● 1900: There were 50,000 sisters in 170 religious orders in 1900
● 1930: 135,000 in 300 different orders by 1930.
● 1965: 180,000
● 2010: 56,000
More People, Less Priests
With the Catholic population increasing steadily and the number of priests declining, the number of laypeople per priest has climbed from 767 lay people to each priest in 1965; to 875 lay people to each priest in 1981; to 1,113:1 in 1991 and 1,429:1 in 2001 (around a 100% increase).
Parishes Without Priests Increasing
The declining number of priests in parish ministry is producing a marked increase in the number of 'priestless' parishes. In 1960, only about 3% of Catholic parishes had no resident pastor. By 2000 that figure was up to 13%, and by the summer of 2003 it had risen to 16%".
Between 1965 and 2010, the number of USA parishes without a priest climbed from 549 to 3,342.
Religious Sisters in Dramatic Decline
● 1840: There were 900 religious sisters in 15 communities in 1840,
● 1900: There were 50,000 sisters in 170 religious orders in 1900
● 1930: 135,000 in 300 different orders by 1930.
● 1965: 180,000
● 2010: 56,000
BELIEFS
The Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist
Jesus Christ is really present in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. This is a dogma of the Catholic Church, a belief which binds under pain of mortal sin. In 2001 63% believed in the Real Presence; in 2018 only 57% believed in the Real Presence. Many held the belief the Bread and wine are symbols of Jesus, but Jesus is not really present. This was the opinion of 37% in 2001; and this had incresed to 43% by 2008.
Rejection Of Church Teaching Against Contraception
The Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist
Jesus Christ is really present in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. This is a dogma of the Catholic Church, a belief which binds under pain of mortal sin. In 2001 63% believed in the Real Presence; in 2018 only 57% believed in the Real Presence. Many held the belief the Bread and wine are symbols of Jesus, but Jesus is not really present. This was the opinion of 37% in 2001; and this had incresed to 43% by 2008.
Rejection Of Church Teaching Against Contraception
Prayer Life
● Only 4% of Catholics pray the Rosary every day in 2008 (there were no earlier figures obtainable).
● Those who prayed the Rosary more than once a week were 5% in 2001 (that is 5 Catholics out of every hundred); 2% by 2008 (then only 2 Catholics out of every hundred);
● Those who prayed the Rosary once a week, every week, were four out of every hundred (4%) in 2001; but only two out of every hundred (2%) by 2008;
● Those praying the Rosary almost every week, were two out of every hundred (2%) in 2001; and actually rose to thre out of every hundred (3%) by 2008;
● Those who prayed the Rosary only once or twice a month, were ten out of every hundred (10%) in 2001; and dropped down to five out of every hundred (5%) by 2008;
● Those praying only a few times a year, were twenty-three out of every hundred (23%) in 2001; dropping to twenty out of every hundred (20%) by 2008;
● Those praying it less than once a year, were ten out of every hundred (10%) in 2001; and rose to sixteen out of every hundred (16%) by 2008;
● While those who never pray the Rosary, were almost one-in-two (46%) in 2001; and sadly increased slightly to 48% by 2008.
We hardly need to remind ourselves of Our Lady’s words at Fatima, words that REPEATED AT EVERY SINGLE APPARITION, “Pray the Rosary DAILY!”
The Rosary is the answer! The Rosary in the medicine! The Rosary is the key! The Rosary is the weapon! Yet the Catholic world has no answer, having thrown-away the medicine, the key and the weapon!
The percentage of American Catholics who consider themselves “strong” members of the Roman Catholic Church has never been lower than it was in 2012, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of new data from the General Social Survey (GSS). About a quarter (27%) of American Catholics called themselves “strong” Catholics last year, down more than 15 points since the mid-1980s and among the lowest levels seen in the 38 years since strength of religious identity was first measured in the GSS, a long-running national survey carried out by the independent research organization NORC at the University of Chicago.
The decline among American Catholics is even starker when they are compared with Protestants, whose strength of religious identification has been rising in recent years. About half (54%) of American Protestants – double the American Catholic share (27%) – described their particular religious identity as strong last year, among the highest levels since the GSS began asking the question in 1974.
Over the past four decades, self-reported church attendance has declined among “strong” Catholics as well as among Catholics overall. The share of all American Catholics who say they attend Mass at least once a week has dropped from 47% in 1974 to 24% in 2012; among “strong” Catholics, it has fallen more than 30 points, from 85% in 1974 to 53% last year.
No Longer Holding Catholic Beliefs in Faith and Morals
76% of American Catholics agree that you can be a good Catholic without going to church every Sunday. 72% of American Catholics aged 18-29 state that homosexuality should be accepted—and those aged over 30 are closely behind at 55%. On the subject of abortion, 45% of American Catholics aged 18-29 think abortion should be acceptable in most cases—which is almost identical to the 44% of American Catholics aged over 30 who think the same. Catholics aged 18-29 are more permissive than their elders are today in their views about pornography, with only 1 out of 5 saying that pornography should be illegal.
● Only 4% of Catholics pray the Rosary every day in 2008 (there were no earlier figures obtainable).
● Those who prayed the Rosary more than once a week were 5% in 2001 (that is 5 Catholics out of every hundred); 2% by 2008 (then only 2 Catholics out of every hundred);
● Those who prayed the Rosary once a week, every week, were four out of every hundred (4%) in 2001; but only two out of every hundred (2%) by 2008;
● Those praying the Rosary almost every week, were two out of every hundred (2%) in 2001; and actually rose to thre out of every hundred (3%) by 2008;
● Those who prayed the Rosary only once or twice a month, were ten out of every hundred (10%) in 2001; and dropped down to five out of every hundred (5%) by 2008;
● Those praying only a few times a year, were twenty-three out of every hundred (23%) in 2001; dropping to twenty out of every hundred (20%) by 2008;
● Those praying it less than once a year, were ten out of every hundred (10%) in 2001; and rose to sixteen out of every hundred (16%) by 2008;
● While those who never pray the Rosary, were almost one-in-two (46%) in 2001; and sadly increased slightly to 48% by 2008.
We hardly need to remind ourselves of Our Lady’s words at Fatima, words that REPEATED AT EVERY SINGLE APPARITION, “Pray the Rosary DAILY!”
The Rosary is the answer! The Rosary in the medicine! The Rosary is the key! The Rosary is the weapon! Yet the Catholic world has no answer, having thrown-away the medicine, the key and the weapon!
The percentage of American Catholics who consider themselves “strong” members of the Roman Catholic Church has never been lower than it was in 2012, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of new data from the General Social Survey (GSS). About a quarter (27%) of American Catholics called themselves “strong” Catholics last year, down more than 15 points since the mid-1980s and among the lowest levels seen in the 38 years since strength of religious identity was first measured in the GSS, a long-running national survey carried out by the independent research organization NORC at the University of Chicago.
The decline among American Catholics is even starker when they are compared with Protestants, whose strength of religious identification has been rising in recent years. About half (54%) of American Protestants – double the American Catholic share (27%) – described their particular religious identity as strong last year, among the highest levels since the GSS began asking the question in 1974.
Over the past four decades, self-reported church attendance has declined among “strong” Catholics as well as among Catholics overall. The share of all American Catholics who say they attend Mass at least once a week has dropped from 47% in 1974 to 24% in 2012; among “strong” Catholics, it has fallen more than 30 points, from 85% in 1974 to 53% last year.
No Longer Holding Catholic Beliefs in Faith and Morals
76% of American Catholics agree that you can be a good Catholic without going to church every Sunday. 72% of American Catholics aged 18-29 state that homosexuality should be accepted—and those aged over 30 are closely behind at 55%. On the subject of abortion, 45% of American Catholics aged 18-29 think abortion should be acceptable in most cases—which is almost identical to the 44% of American Catholics aged over 30 who think the same. Catholics aged 18-29 are more permissive than their elders are today in their views about pornography, with only 1 out of 5 saying that pornography should be illegal.
PART 12
CATHOLIC AMERICA LOSES ITS YOUTH
The Situation Among Younger Catholics
Americans ages 18 to 29 are considerably less religious than older Americans. Fewer young adults belong to any particular Faith than older people do today. They also are less likely to be affiliated than their parents’ and grandparents’ generations were when they were young. Fully one-in-four members of the Millennial generation – so called because they were born after 1980 and began to come of age around the year 2000 – are unaffiliated with any particular Faith. Indeed, Millennials are significantly more unaffiliated than members of Generation X (born 1965-80) were at a comparable point in their life cycle (20% in the late 1990s) and twice as unaffiliated as Baby Boomers (born 1946-64) were as young adults (13% in the late 1970s). Young adults also attend religious services less often than older Americans today. And compared with their elders today, fewer young people say that religion is very important in their lives.
Young adults pray less often than their elders do today. Belief in God is lower among young adults than among older adults. In their social and political views, young adults are clearly more accepting than older Americans of homosexuality, more inclined to see evolution as the best explanation of human life and less prone to see Hollywood as threatening their moral values. Compared with their elders today, young people are much less likely to affiliate with any religious tradition or to identify themselves as part of a Christian denomination.
Fully one-in-four adults under age 30 (25%) are unaffiliated, describing their religion as “atheist,” “agnostic” or “nothing in particular.” The large proportion of young adults who are unaffiliated with a religion is a result, in part, of the decision by many young people to leave the religion of their upbringing without becoming involved with a new Faith. In total, nearly one-in-five adults under age 30 (18%) say they were raised in a religion but are now unaffiliated with any particular Faith. 1 in 5 American Catholics (aged 18-29) have left the Faith. Very few of those who remain in the Faith actually practice their Faith on a regular basis and in the manner required by Church Law.
Research shows that over 4 out 5 young American Catholics, who say they are still Catholic, DO NOT PRACTICE their Faith—they do not (or rarely) go to Mass (15% attendance rate), and do not go to Confession. In Australia, around 1 in 20 Catholics, aged 20-19, go to Mass regularly (5% attendance rate).
Young Catholics Drop Out of Church already by the 1970's
Beyond the divergent attendance trends of Protestants and Catholics, the historical data reveal distinct generational patterns in church attendance within each Christian Faith.
► In 1955, adult Catholics of all ages attended church at similar rates, with between 73% and 77% saying they attended in the past week.
► By the mid-1960’s, weekly attendance of young Catholics (those 21 to 29 years of age) started to wane, falling to 56%, while attendance among other age groups dropped only slightly, to around 70%.
► By the mid-1970’s, only 35% of Catholics in their 20s said they had attended in the past week, but attendance was also starting to fall among those in their 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s.
► Attendance for most of the groups continued to fall from the 1970s to the 1990s. However, over the past decade it has generally stabilized, particularly among Catholics in their 20's and 30's.
► Across this entire period, attendance among Catholics aged 60 and older has dropped from 73% to 58%.
Another survey showed that at least three-quarters of people raised American Catholic say they attended Mass at least once a week as children, including those who later left the Catholic Church. But those who have become unaffiliated exhibit a sharp decline in Mass attendance through their lifetime: 74% attended regularly as children, 44% did so as teens and only 2% do so as adults.
Reasons?
The increasingly declining and low attendance at regular Sunday Mass has been of considerable concern to the Catholic Church in the United States for some time. Theologians and other observers have variously offered the cultural upheaval of the 1960’s, changes to the church brought about in the 1960’s by the Second Vatican Council, and national publicity in 2002 over sexual abuse lawsuits against Catholic priests as possible contributors to the trend.
The seduction of Catholics by worldliness has been going-on for well over a hundred years, the priest sexual abuse scandal only gives a better and stronger excuse for doing what one is already inclined to do—namely, prefer what the world teaches and offers to what the Church teaches and offers.
Whatever the causes, it is clear that American Catholics’ once-nearly uniform overall obedience to the Church’s requirement of regular weekly Sunday Mass attendance has faded, and Catholics are now no different from Protestants in their likelihood to attend church. This has occurred among Catholics of all age categories, but is most pronounced among those under 60.
Protestants Are Doing Better Than Today’s Catholics
Within the larger shifts taking place in teen Faith, there are some intriguing differences between American Catholic and American Protestant young people. In comparison to young Protestants, Catholic teenagers are more likely to show diminished religious activity.
However, even when compared to past behavior among self-identified Catholic teens, today’s young Catholics exhibit diminished religious engagement. The current data show that Catholic teens are less likely to attend Sunday religious instruction, small groups, and to donate to the Church than were Catholic teenagers 12 years ago.
Among 13- to 17-year-old Protestants, there are actually signs of increased religious activity: they are more likely to pray, go to worship services, read the Bible and attend youth group meetings than were Protestant-affiliated teens a dozen years ago.
Is there little wonder that Our Lady comes to earth asking for prayers and penances for the conversion of sinners, since, as she tells, so many souls go to Hell because there is nobody to intercede for them, to pay the price for graces that might convert them—and it seems that the number of those poor souls is on the increase year by year—especially among the younger generations! Yet, as Our Lady complains, there are so few who pay attention to her requests!
Americans ages 18 to 29 are considerably less religious than older Americans. Fewer young adults belong to any particular Faith than older people do today. They also are less likely to be affiliated than their parents’ and grandparents’ generations were when they were young. Fully one-in-four members of the Millennial generation – so called because they were born after 1980 and began to come of age around the year 2000 – are unaffiliated with any particular Faith. Indeed, Millennials are significantly more unaffiliated than members of Generation X (born 1965-80) were at a comparable point in their life cycle (20% in the late 1990s) and twice as unaffiliated as Baby Boomers (born 1946-64) were as young adults (13% in the late 1970s). Young adults also attend religious services less often than older Americans today. And compared with their elders today, fewer young people say that religion is very important in their lives.
Young adults pray less often than their elders do today. Belief in God is lower among young adults than among older adults. In their social and political views, young adults are clearly more accepting than older Americans of homosexuality, more inclined to see evolution as the best explanation of human life and less prone to see Hollywood as threatening their moral values. Compared with their elders today, young people are much less likely to affiliate with any religious tradition or to identify themselves as part of a Christian denomination.
Fully one-in-four adults under age 30 (25%) are unaffiliated, describing their religion as “atheist,” “agnostic” or “nothing in particular.” The large proportion of young adults who are unaffiliated with a religion is a result, in part, of the decision by many young people to leave the religion of their upbringing without becoming involved with a new Faith. In total, nearly one-in-five adults under age 30 (18%) say they were raised in a religion but are now unaffiliated with any particular Faith. 1 in 5 American Catholics (aged 18-29) have left the Faith. Very few of those who remain in the Faith actually practice their Faith on a regular basis and in the manner required by Church Law.
Research shows that over 4 out 5 young American Catholics, who say they are still Catholic, DO NOT PRACTICE their Faith—they do not (or rarely) go to Mass (15% attendance rate), and do not go to Confession. In Australia, around 1 in 20 Catholics, aged 20-19, go to Mass regularly (5% attendance rate).
Young Catholics Drop Out of Church already by the 1970's
Beyond the divergent attendance trends of Protestants and Catholics, the historical data reveal distinct generational patterns in church attendance within each Christian Faith.
► In 1955, adult Catholics of all ages attended church at similar rates, with between 73% and 77% saying they attended in the past week.
► By the mid-1960’s, weekly attendance of young Catholics (those 21 to 29 years of age) started to wane, falling to 56%, while attendance among other age groups dropped only slightly, to around 70%.
► By the mid-1970’s, only 35% of Catholics in their 20s said they had attended in the past week, but attendance was also starting to fall among those in their 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s.
► Attendance for most of the groups continued to fall from the 1970s to the 1990s. However, over the past decade it has generally stabilized, particularly among Catholics in their 20's and 30's.
► Across this entire period, attendance among Catholics aged 60 and older has dropped from 73% to 58%.
Another survey showed that at least three-quarters of people raised American Catholic say they attended Mass at least once a week as children, including those who later left the Catholic Church. But those who have become unaffiliated exhibit a sharp decline in Mass attendance through their lifetime: 74% attended regularly as children, 44% did so as teens and only 2% do so as adults.
Reasons?
The increasingly declining and low attendance at regular Sunday Mass has been of considerable concern to the Catholic Church in the United States for some time. Theologians and other observers have variously offered the cultural upheaval of the 1960’s, changes to the church brought about in the 1960’s by the Second Vatican Council, and national publicity in 2002 over sexual abuse lawsuits against Catholic priests as possible contributors to the trend.
The seduction of Catholics by worldliness has been going-on for well over a hundred years, the priest sexual abuse scandal only gives a better and stronger excuse for doing what one is already inclined to do—namely, prefer what the world teaches and offers to what the Church teaches and offers.
Whatever the causes, it is clear that American Catholics’ once-nearly uniform overall obedience to the Church’s requirement of regular weekly Sunday Mass attendance has faded, and Catholics are now no different from Protestants in their likelihood to attend church. This has occurred among Catholics of all age categories, but is most pronounced among those under 60.
Protestants Are Doing Better Than Today’s Catholics
Within the larger shifts taking place in teen Faith, there are some intriguing differences between American Catholic and American Protestant young people. In comparison to young Protestants, Catholic teenagers are more likely to show diminished religious activity.
However, even when compared to past behavior among self-identified Catholic teens, today’s young Catholics exhibit diminished religious engagement. The current data show that Catholic teens are less likely to attend Sunday religious instruction, small groups, and to donate to the Church than were Catholic teenagers 12 years ago.
Among 13- to 17-year-old Protestants, there are actually signs of increased religious activity: they are more likely to pray, go to worship services, read the Bible and attend youth group meetings than were Protestant-affiliated teens a dozen years ago.
Is there little wonder that Our Lady comes to earth asking for prayers and penances for the conversion of sinners, since, as she tells, so many souls go to Hell because there is nobody to intercede for them, to pay the price for graces that might convert them—and it seems that the number of those poor souls is on the increase year by year—especially among the younger generations! Yet, as Our Lady complains, there are so few who pay attention to her requests!
PART 13
THE MODERN PROTESTANT SEDUCTION OF CATHOLICS
A former "Spiritual Seducer"
In researching these articles on the state of the Faith today, I came across an interesting article by a former Protestant who had converted to the Catholic Faith. He confesses to the following: “I was a Protestant for twenty years before I became a Catholic. I led many people out of the Catholic Church. My formula for getting Catholics to leave the Church usually consisted of three steps.”
Step 1: Get Catholics to have a conversion experience in a Protestant setting.
Step 2: Give their conversion a Protestant interpretation.
Step 3: Accuse the Catholic Church of denying salvation by grace.
Talk and Walk
We all know of the many variations of the phrase “Talk the talk, and walk the walk!” Someone may talk a good talk, but if he is not walking-the-walk, then the message has a weakness to it. For example, the parent who says: “Do as I say! Don’t do as I do!” will obviously not have the same impact as the parent who ‘says and does’. Our Lord in speaking of the religious teachers, the Pharisees, says: “All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do: but according to their works do ye not; for they say, and do not” (Matthew 23:3).
By their fruits...
We know of the Scriptural saying: “By their fruits you shall know them” (Matthew 7:16), well, similarly “by their cars you shall know them!” If the car salesman is singing to me the praises of Ford cars, but I find out he has been personally purchasing and driving Chevrolet cars all his life, then his message and praise about Ford cars will leave me somewhat perplexed, undecided and suspicious!
Words and actions are like the two rails of a railway line—they should run parallel to each other! Once those two rails start to separate from each other and draw wider apart, the train, that they are supposed to carry and guide to its destination, will be derailed.
Faith influences Actions
In matters of the Faith, those two rails and Faith and Morals (beliefs and actions). Just as our ideas have consequences, and influence our actions—so too does the Faith influence our actions, whether they be our moral actions, or our actions of worship. The age-old Latin phrase used to say “Lex credendi, lex orandi”—which is simple terms means “The Law of Faith is reflected by the Rules of Worship.” What we believe makes us worship in a certain manner, and our manner of worship reflects what we believe. If I believe in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the most Holy Eucharist and Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, then I will worship that Real Presence with a respectful and sincere genuflection whenever I enter His presence. If I do not believe in the Real Presence, then I will feel silly genuflecting to a Host that I merely regard to be a piece of bread that only symbolizes Christ, but is not Christ.
Our Lord complains of this kind of duplicity or superficiality when He says: “This people honoureth Me with their lips: but their heart is far from Me” (Matthew 15:8).
Causes for Collapsing Churches
That the Catholic Church (and most Protestant churches too, for that matter) are experiencing a profound and worrisome crisis over the last 60 or so years, is indisputable—there can be no argument over that—the only argument can be over the finer points or details of how big a crisis it is. Surveys and their statistics vary, but not by very much. The general overall picture shows a severe and ever-increasing problem.
There are wide-ranging arguments over the cause and potential solutions to these severe problems—with each church or denomination trying this or that solution from an incredible variety of suggested remedies. Some resort to gimmicks, modern technologies, modern fads and amusements. Others try injecting more enthusiasm and more “feel-good” into their pastoral approaches, but ultimately, the Faith comes down to the Faith! A spiritual disease will not be solved by non-spiritual or natural remedies! Our Lady said this much at Fatima: “There are so many souls that go to Hell because there is no one to pray and offer sacrifices for them”—which are spiritual or supernatural remedies.
Hitting the Nail on the Head
Among the many hours of reading in researching material for these articles, a comment by a Catholic priest, on one particular blog, though simplistic, seemed to “hit the nail on the head.” This is what he said:
“I'm a priest, 62 years old. Perhaps this is too simplistic, but I believe that poor catechesis for 40 years is the reason people leave. Homilies were always mediocre; churches were always huge and relatively understaffed; and there were some who drifted away. But the folks had the Faith. At a time when secularization is growing rapidly, at a time when folks have been poorly catechized in this secularized environment—of course, people are leaving!” (Fr. Christopher).
Lack of Faith
This takes us back to our former “Spiritual Seducer” who said that he spent 20 years enticing Catholics out of the Faith. The reason for his success was the ignorance of the Catholics he seduced. As he himself says: “In my experience as a Protestant, all the Catholics who had a conversion in a Protestant setting lacked a firm grasp of their Catholic Faith.” This backs-up the words of “Fr. Catechetical Christopher” who said: “At a time when secularization is growing rapidly, at a time when folks have been poorly catechized in this secularized environment—of course, people are leaving!”
12-Step or 3-Step Program?
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) have a Twelve-Step Program for converting alcoholics, but the above “Spiritual Seducer” only needed a “Three-Step-Program” for converting Catholics to Protestantism—so dumbed-down and weak they were (and still are!).
Just as “knowledge is power”, likewise ignorance is not bliss, but “ignorance is weakness” or “ignorance is powerlessness”—a powerlessness to overcome the world and its seductions. For Holy Scripture tells us: “This is the victory which overcometh the world, our Faith” (1 John 5:4). But our Faith is about KNOWLEDGE AND KNOWING “Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth” (1 John 5:5)—and that knowledge must be translated into BELIEF.
A Little Faith can go a Long Way—as Far as Hell!
Knowing is not always entertaining and fun—the acquisition of knowledge is often a boring and tedious process, but the lack of that knowledge can lead to disastrous results. A surgeon with incomplete knowledge of the human anatomy will sooner or later lose lives instead of saving lives. A priest with an incomplete or poor knowledge of the Faith will lose souls instead of saving them. A Catholic with incomplete or poor knowledge of his Faith will sooner or later fall prey to the seductions of the world and the devil, and will lose his soul—which Our Lady of Fatima says is happening on a large scale. Yet she only echoes her Divine Son, who said: “Wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat!”(Matthew 7:13).
Testimony of the Seducer
This is why our former “Mr. Spiritual Seducer” can say of his Protestant days of seduction:
“Most Fundamentalist, Evangelical, and charismatic Protestant churches have dynamic youth programs, vibrant Wednesday and Sunday evening services, and friendly small-group bible studies. In addition, they host special crusades, seminars and concerts. At the invitation of a Protestant friend, a Catholic may begin attending one or more of these events while still going to Sunday Mass at his local parish.”
Protestants, but not Catholics, go for the Jugular!
“Most Protestant services proclaim a simple gospel: repent from sin and follow Christ in Faith. They stress the importance of a personal relationship with Jesus and the reward of eternal life. Most of the Catholics who attend these services are not accustomed to hearing such direct challenges to abandon sin and follow Christ. As a result, many Catholics experience a genuine conversion.”
conversions. Catholic leaders need to multiply the opportunities for their people to have such conversions in Catholic settings. The reason is simple. About five out of ten people adopt the beliefs of the denomination where they have their conversion. This percentage is even higher for those who had profound conversions or charismatic experiences that were provided by Protestants. (Believe me, I know; I was a graduate of an Assembly of God college and a youth minister in two charismatic churches.)
“The Scripture of choice was of course John 3:3, the "born-again" verse: "Jesus declared, 'I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.'”
Touch and Go!
“I used the ‘touch and go’ Scripture technique, similar to that used by pilots training for landings and take-offs. We would briefly touch down on John 3:3, to show that being born again was necessary for eternal life. Then I would describe conversion in terms of being ‘born again.’ We would then make a hasty take-off before reading John 3:5, which stresses the necessity of being ‘born of water and spirit.’ I never mentioned [to the Catholics I was targeting] that for 20 centuries the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, echoing the unanimous teaching of the Church Fathers, understood this passage as referring to the Sacrament of Baptism! And I certainly never brought up Titus 3:5 ("He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit") as a parallel reference to John 3:5.”
Catholics Do Not Know Their Faith
“In my experience as a Protestant, all the Catholics who had a conversion in a Protestant setting lacked a firm grasp of their Catholic Faith. In twenty years of Protestant ministry, I never met a Catholic who knew that John 3:3-8 describes the Sacrament of Baptism. It wasn't hard to convince them to disregard the Sacraments along with the Church that emphasized the Sacraments.”
Clueless and Gullible
“Proverbs says: ‘He who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him’ (18:17). Catholics without a Scriptural foundation for their Catholic beliefs never hear ‘the rest of the story.’ My ‘selective’ use of Scripture, made the Protestant perspective seem so absolutely sure. Over time, this one-sided approach to Scripture caused Catholics to reject their Catholic Faith.
“I used Ephesians 2:8-9 to convince Catholics that it was imperative for them to leave the Church: ‘For it is by grace you have been saved, through Faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast.’
“First I would say, ‘The Bible says that salvation is by grace and not by works. Right?’ Their answer was always yes. Then I would say, ‘The Catholic Church teaches that salvation is by works. Right?’ (I never met a Catholic who did not say yes. Every Catholic I met during my twenty years of ministry confirmed my misconception that Catholicism taught salvation is by works, instead of grace.) Finally, I would declare, ‘The Catholic Church is leading people to Hell by denying salvation is by grace. You'd better join a church that teaches the true way to Heaven.’
“Because I would also do a ‘touch and go’ in Ephesians, I rarely quoted verse 10 which says, ‘For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.’ Listen carefully to stadium evangelists, televangelists, and radio preachers. Nine times out of ten they will quote Ephesians 2:8-9 with great emphasis and never mention verse 10.
“We are not slaves futilely trying to earn salvation by doing ‘works of the law’ (Ephesians 2: 8-9). Yet as sons of God we are inspired and energized by the Holy Spirit to do ‘good works’ as we cooperate with our heavenly Father in extending the Kingdom of God (Ephesians 2:10). Catholicism believes and teaches the full message of Ephesians 2:8-10, without equivocating or abbreviating the truth.
“For twenty centuries the Catholic Church has faithfully taught that salvation is by grace. Peter the first pope said, ‘We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved’ (Acts 15:11).”
Let it Sink-In
The two quotes that we have already presented need to be repeated till they sink in:
“In my experience as a Protestant, all the Catholics who had a conversion in a Protestant setting lacked a firm grasp of their Catholic Faith.”
“At a time when secularization is growing rapidly, at a time when folks have been poorly catechized in this secularized environment—of course, people are leaving!”
Ignorant and Unarmed
The former "Spiritual Seducer" concludes:
"I have no objection to Catholics participating in Protestant-oriented events and worthwhile ecumenical activities, provided that:
► they have a firm grasp of their Catholic Faith.
► they know their Faith well enough to articulate it to a non-Catholic, using Scripture and the Church Fathers.
► they have the maturity to realize that the most profound presence of Christ isn't necessarily found in the midst of loud noise and high emotion (Protestant Charismatic gatherings), but in quiet moments like Eucharistic adoration (see 3 Kings 19: 11-12).
[true ecumenism is bringing souls to the one true Catholic Faith and not merely having 'feel-good' gatherings with Protestants]
“;And he said to him: Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord: and behold the Lord passeth, and a great and strong wind before the Lord over throwing the mountains, and breaking the rocks in pieces: the Lord is not in the wind, and after the wind an earthquake: the Lord is not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire: the Lord is not in the fire, and after the fire a whistling of a gentle air.’ (3 Kings 19: 11-12).
“Unfortunately, the majority of Catholic men born after World War II don't meet the above conditions. For them, attending Protestant functions may be opening a door that will lead them right out of the Catholic Church."
Words of Warning
It is not games, fun, jokes, energy, entertainment, 'feel-good' or any of the other cheap imitations that the Church borrows from the world in order to vainly stem the flow of souls out of the Church, that will bring about a reverse of fortunes. The spiritual disease requires a spiritual remedy. Heaven has many times indicated the remedy, but the world--and even the Church--has not listened.
As Our Lady said at La Salette in 1846:
"Lucifer, together with a large number of demons, will be unloosed from Hell; they will put an end to Faith little by little, even in those dedicated to God. They will blind them in such a way, that, unless they are blessed with a special grace, these people will take on the spirit of these angels of Hell; several religious institutions will lose all Faith and will lose many souls."
As Sr. Lucia (one of the seers at Fatima) said to Fr. Fuentes in 1957:
"Father, we should not wait for an appeal to the world to come from Rome on the part of the Holy Father, to do penance. Nor should we wait for the call from our bishops in our dioceses, nor from the religious congregations. No! Our Lord has already, very often, used these means and the world has not paid attention. That is why now it is necessary for each one of us to begin to reform himself spiritually. Each person must not only save his own soul, but also the souls that God has placed on our path."
In researching these articles on the state of the Faith today, I came across an interesting article by a former Protestant who had converted to the Catholic Faith. He confesses to the following: “I was a Protestant for twenty years before I became a Catholic. I led many people out of the Catholic Church. My formula for getting Catholics to leave the Church usually consisted of three steps.”
Step 1: Get Catholics to have a conversion experience in a Protestant setting.
Step 2: Give their conversion a Protestant interpretation.
Step 3: Accuse the Catholic Church of denying salvation by grace.
Talk and Walk
We all know of the many variations of the phrase “Talk the talk, and walk the walk!” Someone may talk a good talk, but if he is not walking-the-walk, then the message has a weakness to it. For example, the parent who says: “Do as I say! Don’t do as I do!” will obviously not have the same impact as the parent who ‘says and does’. Our Lord in speaking of the religious teachers, the Pharisees, says: “All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do: but according to their works do ye not; for they say, and do not” (Matthew 23:3).
By their fruits...
We know of the Scriptural saying: “By their fruits you shall know them” (Matthew 7:16), well, similarly “by their cars you shall know them!” If the car salesman is singing to me the praises of Ford cars, but I find out he has been personally purchasing and driving Chevrolet cars all his life, then his message and praise about Ford cars will leave me somewhat perplexed, undecided and suspicious!
Words and actions are like the two rails of a railway line—they should run parallel to each other! Once those two rails start to separate from each other and draw wider apart, the train, that they are supposed to carry and guide to its destination, will be derailed.
Faith influences Actions
In matters of the Faith, those two rails and Faith and Morals (beliefs and actions). Just as our ideas have consequences, and influence our actions—so too does the Faith influence our actions, whether they be our moral actions, or our actions of worship. The age-old Latin phrase used to say “Lex credendi, lex orandi”—which is simple terms means “The Law of Faith is reflected by the Rules of Worship.” What we believe makes us worship in a certain manner, and our manner of worship reflects what we believe. If I believe in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the most Holy Eucharist and Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, then I will worship that Real Presence with a respectful and sincere genuflection whenever I enter His presence. If I do not believe in the Real Presence, then I will feel silly genuflecting to a Host that I merely regard to be a piece of bread that only symbolizes Christ, but is not Christ.
Our Lord complains of this kind of duplicity or superficiality when He says: “This people honoureth Me with their lips: but their heart is far from Me” (Matthew 15:8).
Causes for Collapsing Churches
That the Catholic Church (and most Protestant churches too, for that matter) are experiencing a profound and worrisome crisis over the last 60 or so years, is indisputable—there can be no argument over that—the only argument can be over the finer points or details of how big a crisis it is. Surveys and their statistics vary, but not by very much. The general overall picture shows a severe and ever-increasing problem.
There are wide-ranging arguments over the cause and potential solutions to these severe problems—with each church or denomination trying this or that solution from an incredible variety of suggested remedies. Some resort to gimmicks, modern technologies, modern fads and amusements. Others try injecting more enthusiasm and more “feel-good” into their pastoral approaches, but ultimately, the Faith comes down to the Faith! A spiritual disease will not be solved by non-spiritual or natural remedies! Our Lady said this much at Fatima: “There are so many souls that go to Hell because there is no one to pray and offer sacrifices for them”—which are spiritual or supernatural remedies.
Hitting the Nail on the Head
Among the many hours of reading in researching material for these articles, a comment by a Catholic priest, on one particular blog, though simplistic, seemed to “hit the nail on the head.” This is what he said:
“I'm a priest, 62 years old. Perhaps this is too simplistic, but I believe that poor catechesis for 40 years is the reason people leave. Homilies were always mediocre; churches were always huge and relatively understaffed; and there were some who drifted away. But the folks had the Faith. At a time when secularization is growing rapidly, at a time when folks have been poorly catechized in this secularized environment—of course, people are leaving!” (Fr. Christopher).
Lack of Faith
This takes us back to our former “Spiritual Seducer” who said that he spent 20 years enticing Catholics out of the Faith. The reason for his success was the ignorance of the Catholics he seduced. As he himself says: “In my experience as a Protestant, all the Catholics who had a conversion in a Protestant setting lacked a firm grasp of their Catholic Faith.” This backs-up the words of “Fr. Catechetical Christopher” who said: “At a time when secularization is growing rapidly, at a time when folks have been poorly catechized in this secularized environment—of course, people are leaving!”
12-Step or 3-Step Program?
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) have a Twelve-Step Program for converting alcoholics, but the above “Spiritual Seducer” only needed a “Three-Step-Program” for converting Catholics to Protestantism—so dumbed-down and weak they were (and still are!).
Just as “knowledge is power”, likewise ignorance is not bliss, but “ignorance is weakness” or “ignorance is powerlessness”—a powerlessness to overcome the world and its seductions. For Holy Scripture tells us: “This is the victory which overcometh the world, our Faith” (1 John 5:4). But our Faith is about KNOWLEDGE AND KNOWING “Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth” (1 John 5:5)—and that knowledge must be translated into BELIEF.
A Little Faith can go a Long Way—as Far as Hell!
Knowing is not always entertaining and fun—the acquisition of knowledge is often a boring and tedious process, but the lack of that knowledge can lead to disastrous results. A surgeon with incomplete knowledge of the human anatomy will sooner or later lose lives instead of saving lives. A priest with an incomplete or poor knowledge of the Faith will lose souls instead of saving them. A Catholic with incomplete or poor knowledge of his Faith will sooner or later fall prey to the seductions of the world and the devil, and will lose his soul—which Our Lady of Fatima says is happening on a large scale. Yet she only echoes her Divine Son, who said: “Wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat!”(Matthew 7:13).
Testimony of the Seducer
This is why our former “Mr. Spiritual Seducer” can say of his Protestant days of seduction:
“Most Fundamentalist, Evangelical, and charismatic Protestant churches have dynamic youth programs, vibrant Wednesday and Sunday evening services, and friendly small-group bible studies. In addition, they host special crusades, seminars and concerts. At the invitation of a Protestant friend, a Catholic may begin attending one or more of these events while still going to Sunday Mass at his local parish.”
Protestants, but not Catholics, go for the Jugular!
“Most Protestant services proclaim a simple gospel: repent from sin and follow Christ in Faith. They stress the importance of a personal relationship with Jesus and the reward of eternal life. Most of the Catholics who attend these services are not accustomed to hearing such direct challenges to abandon sin and follow Christ. As a result, many Catholics experience a genuine conversion.”
conversions. Catholic leaders need to multiply the opportunities for their people to have such conversions in Catholic settings. The reason is simple. About five out of ten people adopt the beliefs of the denomination where they have their conversion. This percentage is even higher for those who had profound conversions or charismatic experiences that were provided by Protestants. (Believe me, I know; I was a graduate of an Assembly of God college and a youth minister in two charismatic churches.)
“The Scripture of choice was of course John 3:3, the "born-again" verse: "Jesus declared, 'I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.'”
Touch and Go!
“I used the ‘touch and go’ Scripture technique, similar to that used by pilots training for landings and take-offs. We would briefly touch down on John 3:3, to show that being born again was necessary for eternal life. Then I would describe conversion in terms of being ‘born again.’ We would then make a hasty take-off before reading John 3:5, which stresses the necessity of being ‘born of water and spirit.’ I never mentioned [to the Catholics I was targeting] that for 20 centuries the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, echoing the unanimous teaching of the Church Fathers, understood this passage as referring to the Sacrament of Baptism! And I certainly never brought up Titus 3:5 ("He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit") as a parallel reference to John 3:5.”
Catholics Do Not Know Their Faith
“In my experience as a Protestant, all the Catholics who had a conversion in a Protestant setting lacked a firm grasp of their Catholic Faith. In twenty years of Protestant ministry, I never met a Catholic who knew that John 3:3-8 describes the Sacrament of Baptism. It wasn't hard to convince them to disregard the Sacraments along with the Church that emphasized the Sacraments.”
Clueless and Gullible
“Proverbs says: ‘He who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him’ (18:17). Catholics without a Scriptural foundation for their Catholic beliefs never hear ‘the rest of the story.’ My ‘selective’ use of Scripture, made the Protestant perspective seem so absolutely sure. Over time, this one-sided approach to Scripture caused Catholics to reject their Catholic Faith.
“I used Ephesians 2:8-9 to convince Catholics that it was imperative for them to leave the Church: ‘For it is by grace you have been saved, through Faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast.’
“First I would say, ‘The Bible says that salvation is by grace and not by works. Right?’ Their answer was always yes. Then I would say, ‘The Catholic Church teaches that salvation is by works. Right?’ (I never met a Catholic who did not say yes. Every Catholic I met during my twenty years of ministry confirmed my misconception that Catholicism taught salvation is by works, instead of grace.) Finally, I would declare, ‘The Catholic Church is leading people to Hell by denying salvation is by grace. You'd better join a church that teaches the true way to Heaven.’
“Because I would also do a ‘touch and go’ in Ephesians, I rarely quoted verse 10 which says, ‘For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.’ Listen carefully to stadium evangelists, televangelists, and radio preachers. Nine times out of ten they will quote Ephesians 2:8-9 with great emphasis and never mention verse 10.
“We are not slaves futilely trying to earn salvation by doing ‘works of the law’ (Ephesians 2: 8-9). Yet as sons of God we are inspired and energized by the Holy Spirit to do ‘good works’ as we cooperate with our heavenly Father in extending the Kingdom of God (Ephesians 2:10). Catholicism believes and teaches the full message of Ephesians 2:8-10, without equivocating or abbreviating the truth.
“For twenty centuries the Catholic Church has faithfully taught that salvation is by grace. Peter the first pope said, ‘We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved’ (Acts 15:11).”
Let it Sink-In
The two quotes that we have already presented need to be repeated till they sink in:
“In my experience as a Protestant, all the Catholics who had a conversion in a Protestant setting lacked a firm grasp of their Catholic Faith.”
“At a time when secularization is growing rapidly, at a time when folks have been poorly catechized in this secularized environment—of course, people are leaving!”
Ignorant and Unarmed
The former "Spiritual Seducer" concludes:
"I have no objection to Catholics participating in Protestant-oriented events and worthwhile ecumenical activities, provided that:
► they have a firm grasp of their Catholic Faith.
► they know their Faith well enough to articulate it to a non-Catholic, using Scripture and the Church Fathers.
► they have the maturity to realize that the most profound presence of Christ isn't necessarily found in the midst of loud noise and high emotion (Protestant Charismatic gatherings), but in quiet moments like Eucharistic adoration (see 3 Kings 19: 11-12).
[true ecumenism is bringing souls to the one true Catholic Faith and not merely having 'feel-good' gatherings with Protestants]
“;And he said to him: Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord: and behold the Lord passeth, and a great and strong wind before the Lord over throwing the mountains, and breaking the rocks in pieces: the Lord is not in the wind, and after the wind an earthquake: the Lord is not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire: the Lord is not in the fire, and after the fire a whistling of a gentle air.’ (3 Kings 19: 11-12).
“Unfortunately, the majority of Catholic men born after World War II don't meet the above conditions. For them, attending Protestant functions may be opening a door that will lead them right out of the Catholic Church."
Words of Warning
It is not games, fun, jokes, energy, entertainment, 'feel-good' or any of the other cheap imitations that the Church borrows from the world in order to vainly stem the flow of souls out of the Church, that will bring about a reverse of fortunes. The spiritual disease requires a spiritual remedy. Heaven has many times indicated the remedy, but the world--and even the Church--has not listened.
As Our Lady said at La Salette in 1846:
"Lucifer, together with a large number of demons, will be unloosed from Hell; they will put an end to Faith little by little, even in those dedicated to God. They will blind them in such a way, that, unless they are blessed with a special grace, these people will take on the spirit of these angels of Hell; several religious institutions will lose all Faith and will lose many souls."
As Sr. Lucia (one of the seers at Fatima) said to Fr. Fuentes in 1957:
"Father, we should not wait for an appeal to the world to come from Rome on the part of the Holy Father, to do penance. Nor should we wait for the call from our bishops in our dioceses, nor from the religious congregations. No! Our Lord has already, very often, used these means and the world has not paid attention. That is why now it is necessary for each one of us to begin to reform himself spiritually. Each person must not only save his own soul, but also the souls that God has placed on our path."
PART 14
THE GRAVE & FATAL IGNORANCE OF MODERN-DAY AMERICAN CATHOLICS
To Know or Not to Know? That is the Question!
Just over a hundred years ago, in his encyclical on Christian Doctrine--Acerbo Nimis—of April 5th 1905, Pope St. Pius X wrote of the terrible and pitiful ignorance of Catholics. He bemoans their preference for the things of this world rather than the things divine. Our Lord had warned: “Lay not up to yourselves treasures on Earth … But lay up to yourselves treasures in Heaven … For where thy treasure is, there is thy heart also … No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one, and love the other: or he will sustain the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon [worldly interest]. Therefore I say to you, be not solicitous for your life, what you shall eat, nor for your body, what you shall put on. Is not the life more than the meat: and the body more than the clothing? … Be not solicitous therefore, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘With what shall we be clothed?’ For after all these things do the heathens seek. For your Father knoweth that you have need of all these things. Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and His justice, and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:19-33).
Knowledge Comes Before Love and Service
We were not primarily made for earthly things, but for things divine. As our catechisms tell us: “God made me to know Him, love Him and serve Him in this life, so that I may be happy with Him forever in the next!” We are not to live as though the Kingdom of God was an eternal earthly kingdom. Our Lord said: “My Kingdom is not of this world. If My Kingdom were of this world, My servants would certainly strive that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now My Kingdom is not from hence” (John 18:36). Our Lord’s disciples understood this and clearly warned us against being enamored with this world: “They are of the world: therefore of the world they speak, and the world heareth them” (1 John 4:5) … “We have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit that is of God” (1 Corinthians 2:12) … “Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15) ... “For all that is in the world, is the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life, which is not of the Father, but is of the world” (1 John 2:16) … “Know you not that the friendship of this world is the enemy of God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of this world, becometh an enemy of God!” (James 4:4).
Serving Two Masters?
This antipathy between the followers of God and the followers of the world will continue until the end of time—this will never change. What can change is the side that we find ourselves on. Are we primarily busy with the things of God or the things of this world? “No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one, and love the other: or he will sustain the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon!” Yet to serve God, we must first know God and know about the things of God, and know what kind of service God wants. Nor will we serve God for very long if we do not love Him—yet you cannot love what you do not know, and most people know God very little, which is why He is little loved and little served.
Incredible Ignorance of Catholics
Pope St. Pius X, in his encyclical Acerbo Nimis (On Christian Doctrine), writes: “We are forced to agree with those who hold that the chief cause of the present indifference and, as it were, infirmity of soul, and the serious evils that result from it, is to be found above all in ignorance of things divine … It is a common complaint, unfortunately too well founded, that there are large numbers of Christians in our own time who are entirely ignorant of those truths necessary for salvation. And when we mention Christians, We refer not only to the masses, or to those in the lower walks of life, but We refer to those especially who do not lack culture or talents, and, indeed, are possessed of abundant knowledge regarding things of the world, but live rashly and imprudently with regard to religion. It is hard to find words to describe how profound is the darkness in which they are engulfed and, what is most deplorable of all, how tranquilly they repose there. They rarely give thought to God, or to the teachings of the Faith. Grace, the greatest of the helps for attaining eternal things, the Holy Sacrifice and the Sacraments by which we obtain grace, are entirely unknown to them. They have no conception of the malice and baseness of sin; hence they show no anxiety to avoid sin, or to renounce it. And so they arrive at life's end in such a condition … And so Our Predecessor, Benedict XIV, had just cause to write: ‘We declare that a great number of those, who are condemned to eternal punishment, suffer that everlasting calamity because of ignorance of those mysteries of Faith which must be known and believed, in order to be numbered among the elect.’
“There is, then, no reason for wonder that the corruption of morals and depravity of life is already so great, and ever increasingly greater, not only among uncivilized peoples, but even in those very nations that are called Christian ... A man who walks with open eyes may, indeed, turn aside from the right path, but a blind man is in much more imminent danger of wandering away. Furthermore, there is always some hope for a reform of perverse conduct, so long as the light of Faith is not entirely extinguished; but if lack of Faith is added to depraved morality, because of ignorance, the evil hardly ever admits of remedy, and the road to ruin lies open. How many and how grave are the consequences of ignorance in matters of religion! And on the other hand, how necessary and how beneficial is religious instruction! … It follows, too, that if Faith languishes in our days, if among large numbers it has almost vanished, the reason is that the duty of catechetical teaching is either fulfilled very superficially, or altogether neglected.”
“We again insist on the need to reach the ever-increasing numbers of those who know nothing at all of religion, or who possess, at most, only such knowledge of God and Christian truths as befits idolaters. How many there are, alas, not only among the young, but among adults and those advanced in years, who know nothing of the chief mysteries of Faith … In consequence of this ignorance, they do not consider it a crime to excite and nourish hatred against their neighbor, to enter into most unjust contracts, to do business in dishonest fashion, to hold the funds of others at an exorbitant interest rate, and to commit other iniquities no less reprehensible. They are, moreover, ignorant of the law of Christ, which, not only condemns immoral actions, but also forbids deliberate immoral thoughts and desires. Even when, for some reason or other, they avoid sensual pleasures, they nevertheless entertain evil thoughts without the least scruple, thereby multiplying their sins above the number of the hairs of the head. These persons are found, not merely among the poorer classes of the people, or in sparsely settled districts, but also among those in the higher walks of life, even, indeed, among those puffed up with learning, who, relying upon a vain erudition, feel free to ridicule religion and to mock whatever they do not know.”
Well What Do You Know?
Ask yourself a few simple questions to see what you really know about the Faith. These questions are not college-level or adult-level questions, but simple First Holy Communion level (7 year old) or Confirmation level (11 year old) questions. They are not questions that ask you to prove that the Catholic Faith is the one true Faith, or questions asking you to prove the existence of God, or the existence of Divine Revelation, or the divine authorship of the Bible, or the immortality of the soul; or the divinity of Christ, etc. They are not questions that ask you prove the falsity of other religions, or explain the causes of the Protestant Reformation, or the teaching of justification, etc. No, these are simply questions that a seven-year-old or an eleven-year-old should be able to answer. In the near future, a full list of questions will be compiled (with answers)—in a series of articles that will grade them according to progressing difficulty—to enable you to see how much or how little you really do know. For now, here are just some sample questions based at the very lowest level—which does not even consider engaging in debate with Catholics and non-Catholics—just the “bare bones” of the Faith, the most simple and fundamental foundation. Let’s start off with some confidence boosting “can’t possibly get it wrong” questions and go from there!
(1) Who made you?
(2) Why were you created? For what purpose?
(3) Who or What is God?
(4) What is a spirit?
(5) What powers does a spirit have?
(6) What is sin?
(7) What is Original Sin?
(8) What is Actual Sin?
(9) How many kinds of Actual Sin are there?
(10) How did Jesus Christ satisfy for sin?
(11) How does Jesus help all men to gain Heaven?
(12) What kept the gates of Heaven closed?
(13) How does the Catholic Church help us to gain Heaven?
(14) What is a Sacrament?
(15) What does grace do to the soul?
(16) What did Baptism do for you?
(17) What will Confirmation do for you?
(18) How many Sacraments are there? Name them.
(19) What is the Sacrament of Penance?
(20) What must you do to receive the Sacrament of Penance worthily?
(21) What is Holy Mass?
(22) What is the Holy Eucharist?
(23) What must you do to receive Holy Communion?
(24) How many holy days of obligation are there in the USA? Name them.
(25) Name all the Ten Commandments.
There you go! A piece of cake—real easy! If you think you answered them all correctly (answer sheet tomorrow), then you have the mind of a seven-year-old! Just as a side note, several adult Catholics (all of whom are good Conservative Catholics) were recently asked to name all the Ten Commandments. Only 3 out of 6 were able to give all ten. Several years ago, around 30 Conservative Catholics on a spiritual retreat were also asked to list all Ten Commandments, less than half were able to do so!
The One Thing Necessary Has Become Unnecessary
Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, in The Three Ages of the Interior Life, echoes this papal sentiment and lament. He writes:
“The interior life thus conceived is something far more profound and more necessary in us than intellectual life or the cultivation of the sciences, than artistic or literary life, than social or political life. Unfortunately, some great scholars, mathematicians, physicists, and astronomers have no interior life, so to speak, but devote themselves to the study of their science as if God did not exist. Their life appears to be in certain respects the search for the true and the good in a more or less definite and restricted domain, but it is so tainted with self-love and intellectual pride that we may legitimately question whether it will bear fruit for eternity. Many artists, literary men, and statesmen never rise above this level of purely human activity which is, in short, quite exterior. Do the depths of their souls live by God? It would seem not.
“The interior life, or the life of the soul with God, well deserves to be called the one thing necessary, since by it we tend to our last end and assure our salvation. There are those who seem to think that it is sufficient to be saved and that it is not necessary to be a saint. It is clearly not necessary to be a saint who performs miracles and whose sanctity is officially recognized by the Church. To be saved, we must take the way of salvation, which is identical with that of sanctity. There will be only saints in Heaven. No one enters Heaven unless he has that sanctity which consists in perfect purity of soul. Every sin though it should be venial, must be effaced, and the punishment due to sin must be borne or remitted, in order that a soul may enjoy forever the vision of God. Should a soul enter Heaven before the total remission of its sins, it could not remain there and it would cast itself into Purgatory to be purified.
To be a saint, neither intellectual culture, nor great exterior activity is a required; it suffices that we live profoundly by God. This truth is evident in the saints of the early Church. They all had a deep understanding of these words of our Savior: “For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?” (Matthew 16:6). If people sacrifice so many things to save the life of the body, which must ultimately die, what should we not sacrifice to save the life of our soul, which is to last forever? Ought not man to love his soul more than his body? Our Lord adds: “One thing is necessary,” He tells us (Luke 10:41): To save our soul, one thing alone is necessary: to hear the word of God and to live by it. Therein lies the best part, which will not be taken away from a faithful soul even though it should lose everything else.”
“To wish to get along without God, not only to nothingness, but also to physical and moral wretchedness that is worse than nothingness. Likewise, great problems grow exasperatingly serious, and man must finally perceive that all these problems ultimately lead to the fundamental religious problem―in other words, he will finally have to declare himself entirely for God or against Him. This is in its essence the problem of the interior life. Christ Himself says: “He that is not with Me is against Me” (Matthew 12:30).
“The great modern scientific and social tendencies, in the midst of the conflicts that arise among them and in spite of the opposition of those who represent them, converge in this way, whether one wills it or not, toward the fundamental question of the intimate relations of man with God. This point is reached after many deviations. When man will no longer fulfill his great religious duties toward God, he makes a religion for himself―since he absolutely cannot get along without religion. To replace the superior ideal which he has abandoned, man may, for example, place his religion in science, or in the cult of social justice, or in some human ideal, which finally he considers in a religious manner and even in a mystical manner. Thus he turns away from supreme reality, and there arises a vast number of problems that will be solved only if he returns to intimate relations of the soul with God …
“The religious problem of the relations of man with God is at the basis of every great problem. We must declare ourselves for or against Him; indifference is no longer possible, as our times show in a striking manner. The present world-wide economic crisis demonstrates what men can do when they seek to get along without God. Without God, the seriousness of life gets out of focus. If religion is no longer a grave matter, but just something to smile at, then the serious element in life must be sought elsewhere—[away from and outside of God]. Some place it, or pretend to place it, in science or in social activity; they devote the selves religiously to the search for scientific truth, or to the establishment of justice between classes or peoples. After a while they are forced to perceive that they have ended in fearful disorder and that the relations between individuals and nations become more and more difficult, if not impossible.”
The Papal Blueprint That Has Been Trashed Today
The Pope then proceeds to list a whole series of things that are geared to try and remedy this pitiful ignorance in matters of the Faith. He says that “the following regulations and strictly command that they be observed and carried out in all dioceses of the world.” The “regulations” he imposed were as follows:
(1) On every Sunday and holy day, with no exception, throughout the year, all parish priests and in general all those having the care of souls, shall instruct the boys and girls, for the space of an hour from the text of the Catechism on those things they must believe and do in order to attain salvation.
(2) At certain times throughout the year, they shall prepare boys and girls to receive properly the Sacraments of Penance and Confirmation, by a continued instruction over a period of days.
(3) With a very special zeal, on every day in Lent and, if necessary, on the days following Easter, they shall instruct with the use of apt illustrations and exhortations the youth of both sexes to receive their first Communion in a holy manner.
(4) In each and every parish the society known as the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine is to be canonically established. Through this Confraternity, the pastors, especially in places where there is a scarcity of priests, will have lay helpers in the teaching of the Catechism.
(5) In the larger cities, and especially where universities, colleges and secondary schools are located, let classes in religion be organized to instruct in the truths of faith and in the practice of Christian life the youths who attend the public schools from which all religious teaching is banned.
(6) Since it is a fact that, in these days, ADULTS need instruction no less than the young, all pastors and those having the care of souls shall explain the Catechism to the people. This shall be carried out on all holy days of obligation (which is what a Sunday is), at such time as is most convenient for the people, but not during the same hour when the children are instructed, and THIS INSTRUCTION MUST BE IN ADDITION to the usual homily on the Gospel which is delivered at the parochial Mass on Sundays and holy days. The catechetical instruction shall be based on the Catechism of the Council of Trent; and the matter is to be divided in such a way that in the space of four or five years, treatment will be given to the Apostles' Creed, the Sacraments, the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer and the Precepts of the Church. Thus, this is not a short-term series of instructions, but an on-going series—year in and year out.
Ignorance is Costing (Has Cost) American Catholics Their Faith
As the famous adage says: “You cannot love what you do now know!” and St. Thérèse of Lisieux adds: “Jesus is so little loved because He is so little known!” Little do American Catholics know (and also Catholics of the world) that their ignorance of their Faith and their lack of interest in religion and spirituality, is whittling-away at what little of the Faith remains in their minds and hearts. They, for the most part, refuse or ignore Our Lord’s injunction: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God” (Matthew 6:33) by seeking first the comforts, pleasures, entertainments and goods of this world. They refuse or ignore, for the most part, Our Lord’s reminder of the Old Testaments commandment: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind, and with thy whole strength. This is the first commandment.” (Mark 12:30), and, instead of that, they love the world that they are not supposed to love: “Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15) … “Know you not that the friendship of this world is the enemy of God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of this world, becometh an enemy of God” (James 4:4). Try saying that to the modern-Catholic today and you will laughed-to-scorn! “Woe to you that call evil good, and good evil: that put darkness for light, and light for darkness: that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter” (Isaias 5:20).
Just over a hundred years ago, in his encyclical on Christian Doctrine--Acerbo Nimis—of April 5th 1905, Pope St. Pius X wrote of the terrible and pitiful ignorance of Catholics. He bemoans their preference for the things of this world rather than the things divine. Our Lord had warned: “Lay not up to yourselves treasures on Earth … But lay up to yourselves treasures in Heaven … For where thy treasure is, there is thy heart also … No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one, and love the other: or he will sustain the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon [worldly interest]. Therefore I say to you, be not solicitous for your life, what you shall eat, nor for your body, what you shall put on. Is not the life more than the meat: and the body more than the clothing? … Be not solicitous therefore, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘With what shall we be clothed?’ For after all these things do the heathens seek. For your Father knoweth that you have need of all these things. Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and His justice, and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:19-33).
Knowledge Comes Before Love and Service
We were not primarily made for earthly things, but for things divine. As our catechisms tell us: “God made me to know Him, love Him and serve Him in this life, so that I may be happy with Him forever in the next!” We are not to live as though the Kingdom of God was an eternal earthly kingdom. Our Lord said: “My Kingdom is not of this world. If My Kingdom were of this world, My servants would certainly strive that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now My Kingdom is not from hence” (John 18:36). Our Lord’s disciples understood this and clearly warned us against being enamored with this world: “They are of the world: therefore of the world they speak, and the world heareth them” (1 John 4:5) … “We have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit that is of God” (1 Corinthians 2:12) … “Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15) ... “For all that is in the world, is the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life, which is not of the Father, but is of the world” (1 John 2:16) … “Know you not that the friendship of this world is the enemy of God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of this world, becometh an enemy of God!” (James 4:4).
Serving Two Masters?
This antipathy between the followers of God and the followers of the world will continue until the end of time—this will never change. What can change is the side that we find ourselves on. Are we primarily busy with the things of God or the things of this world? “No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one, and love the other: or he will sustain the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon!” Yet to serve God, we must first know God and know about the things of God, and know what kind of service God wants. Nor will we serve God for very long if we do not love Him—yet you cannot love what you do not know, and most people know God very little, which is why He is little loved and little served.
Incredible Ignorance of Catholics
Pope St. Pius X, in his encyclical Acerbo Nimis (On Christian Doctrine), writes: “We are forced to agree with those who hold that the chief cause of the present indifference and, as it were, infirmity of soul, and the serious evils that result from it, is to be found above all in ignorance of things divine … It is a common complaint, unfortunately too well founded, that there are large numbers of Christians in our own time who are entirely ignorant of those truths necessary for salvation. And when we mention Christians, We refer not only to the masses, or to those in the lower walks of life, but We refer to those especially who do not lack culture or talents, and, indeed, are possessed of abundant knowledge regarding things of the world, but live rashly and imprudently with regard to religion. It is hard to find words to describe how profound is the darkness in which they are engulfed and, what is most deplorable of all, how tranquilly they repose there. They rarely give thought to God, or to the teachings of the Faith. Grace, the greatest of the helps for attaining eternal things, the Holy Sacrifice and the Sacraments by which we obtain grace, are entirely unknown to them. They have no conception of the malice and baseness of sin; hence they show no anxiety to avoid sin, or to renounce it. And so they arrive at life's end in such a condition … And so Our Predecessor, Benedict XIV, had just cause to write: ‘We declare that a great number of those, who are condemned to eternal punishment, suffer that everlasting calamity because of ignorance of those mysteries of Faith which must be known and believed, in order to be numbered among the elect.’
“There is, then, no reason for wonder that the corruption of morals and depravity of life is already so great, and ever increasingly greater, not only among uncivilized peoples, but even in those very nations that are called Christian ... A man who walks with open eyes may, indeed, turn aside from the right path, but a blind man is in much more imminent danger of wandering away. Furthermore, there is always some hope for a reform of perverse conduct, so long as the light of Faith is not entirely extinguished; but if lack of Faith is added to depraved morality, because of ignorance, the evil hardly ever admits of remedy, and the road to ruin lies open. How many and how grave are the consequences of ignorance in matters of religion! And on the other hand, how necessary and how beneficial is religious instruction! … It follows, too, that if Faith languishes in our days, if among large numbers it has almost vanished, the reason is that the duty of catechetical teaching is either fulfilled very superficially, or altogether neglected.”
“We again insist on the need to reach the ever-increasing numbers of those who know nothing at all of religion, or who possess, at most, only such knowledge of God and Christian truths as befits idolaters. How many there are, alas, not only among the young, but among adults and those advanced in years, who know nothing of the chief mysteries of Faith … In consequence of this ignorance, they do not consider it a crime to excite and nourish hatred against their neighbor, to enter into most unjust contracts, to do business in dishonest fashion, to hold the funds of others at an exorbitant interest rate, and to commit other iniquities no less reprehensible. They are, moreover, ignorant of the law of Christ, which, not only condemns immoral actions, but also forbids deliberate immoral thoughts and desires. Even when, for some reason or other, they avoid sensual pleasures, they nevertheless entertain evil thoughts without the least scruple, thereby multiplying their sins above the number of the hairs of the head. These persons are found, not merely among the poorer classes of the people, or in sparsely settled districts, but also among those in the higher walks of life, even, indeed, among those puffed up with learning, who, relying upon a vain erudition, feel free to ridicule religion and to mock whatever they do not know.”
Well What Do You Know?
Ask yourself a few simple questions to see what you really know about the Faith. These questions are not college-level or adult-level questions, but simple First Holy Communion level (7 year old) or Confirmation level (11 year old) questions. They are not questions that ask you to prove that the Catholic Faith is the one true Faith, or questions asking you to prove the existence of God, or the existence of Divine Revelation, or the divine authorship of the Bible, or the immortality of the soul; or the divinity of Christ, etc. They are not questions that ask you prove the falsity of other religions, or explain the causes of the Protestant Reformation, or the teaching of justification, etc. No, these are simply questions that a seven-year-old or an eleven-year-old should be able to answer. In the near future, a full list of questions will be compiled (with answers)—in a series of articles that will grade them according to progressing difficulty—to enable you to see how much or how little you really do know. For now, here are just some sample questions based at the very lowest level—which does not even consider engaging in debate with Catholics and non-Catholics—just the “bare bones” of the Faith, the most simple and fundamental foundation. Let’s start off with some confidence boosting “can’t possibly get it wrong” questions and go from there!
(1) Who made you?
(2) Why were you created? For what purpose?
(3) Who or What is God?
(4) What is a spirit?
(5) What powers does a spirit have?
(6) What is sin?
(7) What is Original Sin?
(8) What is Actual Sin?
(9) How many kinds of Actual Sin are there?
(10) How did Jesus Christ satisfy for sin?
(11) How does Jesus help all men to gain Heaven?
(12) What kept the gates of Heaven closed?
(13) How does the Catholic Church help us to gain Heaven?
(14) What is a Sacrament?
(15) What does grace do to the soul?
(16) What did Baptism do for you?
(17) What will Confirmation do for you?
(18) How many Sacraments are there? Name them.
(19) What is the Sacrament of Penance?
(20) What must you do to receive the Sacrament of Penance worthily?
(21) What is Holy Mass?
(22) What is the Holy Eucharist?
(23) What must you do to receive Holy Communion?
(24) How many holy days of obligation are there in the USA? Name them.
(25) Name all the Ten Commandments.
There you go! A piece of cake—real easy! If you think you answered them all correctly (answer sheet tomorrow), then you have the mind of a seven-year-old! Just as a side note, several adult Catholics (all of whom are good Conservative Catholics) were recently asked to name all the Ten Commandments. Only 3 out of 6 were able to give all ten. Several years ago, around 30 Conservative Catholics on a spiritual retreat were also asked to list all Ten Commandments, less than half were able to do so!
The One Thing Necessary Has Become Unnecessary
Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, in The Three Ages of the Interior Life, echoes this papal sentiment and lament. He writes:
“The interior life thus conceived is something far more profound and more necessary in us than intellectual life or the cultivation of the sciences, than artistic or literary life, than social or political life. Unfortunately, some great scholars, mathematicians, physicists, and astronomers have no interior life, so to speak, but devote themselves to the study of their science as if God did not exist. Their life appears to be in certain respects the search for the true and the good in a more or less definite and restricted domain, but it is so tainted with self-love and intellectual pride that we may legitimately question whether it will bear fruit for eternity. Many artists, literary men, and statesmen never rise above this level of purely human activity which is, in short, quite exterior. Do the depths of their souls live by God? It would seem not.
“The interior life, or the life of the soul with God, well deserves to be called the one thing necessary, since by it we tend to our last end and assure our salvation. There are those who seem to think that it is sufficient to be saved and that it is not necessary to be a saint. It is clearly not necessary to be a saint who performs miracles and whose sanctity is officially recognized by the Church. To be saved, we must take the way of salvation, which is identical with that of sanctity. There will be only saints in Heaven. No one enters Heaven unless he has that sanctity which consists in perfect purity of soul. Every sin though it should be venial, must be effaced, and the punishment due to sin must be borne or remitted, in order that a soul may enjoy forever the vision of God. Should a soul enter Heaven before the total remission of its sins, it could not remain there and it would cast itself into Purgatory to be purified.
To be a saint, neither intellectual culture, nor great exterior activity is a required; it suffices that we live profoundly by God. This truth is evident in the saints of the early Church. They all had a deep understanding of these words of our Savior: “For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?” (Matthew 16:6). If people sacrifice so many things to save the life of the body, which must ultimately die, what should we not sacrifice to save the life of our soul, which is to last forever? Ought not man to love his soul more than his body? Our Lord adds: “One thing is necessary,” He tells us (Luke 10:41): To save our soul, one thing alone is necessary: to hear the word of God and to live by it. Therein lies the best part, which will not be taken away from a faithful soul even though it should lose everything else.”
“To wish to get along without God, not only to nothingness, but also to physical and moral wretchedness that is worse than nothingness. Likewise, great problems grow exasperatingly serious, and man must finally perceive that all these problems ultimately lead to the fundamental religious problem―in other words, he will finally have to declare himself entirely for God or against Him. This is in its essence the problem of the interior life. Christ Himself says: “He that is not with Me is against Me” (Matthew 12:30).
“The great modern scientific and social tendencies, in the midst of the conflicts that arise among them and in spite of the opposition of those who represent them, converge in this way, whether one wills it or not, toward the fundamental question of the intimate relations of man with God. This point is reached after many deviations. When man will no longer fulfill his great religious duties toward God, he makes a religion for himself―since he absolutely cannot get along without religion. To replace the superior ideal which he has abandoned, man may, for example, place his religion in science, or in the cult of social justice, or in some human ideal, which finally he considers in a religious manner and even in a mystical manner. Thus he turns away from supreme reality, and there arises a vast number of problems that will be solved only if he returns to intimate relations of the soul with God …
“The religious problem of the relations of man with God is at the basis of every great problem. We must declare ourselves for or against Him; indifference is no longer possible, as our times show in a striking manner. The present world-wide economic crisis demonstrates what men can do when they seek to get along without God. Without God, the seriousness of life gets out of focus. If religion is no longer a grave matter, but just something to smile at, then the serious element in life must be sought elsewhere—[away from and outside of God]. Some place it, or pretend to place it, in science or in social activity; they devote the selves religiously to the search for scientific truth, or to the establishment of justice between classes or peoples. After a while they are forced to perceive that they have ended in fearful disorder and that the relations between individuals and nations become more and more difficult, if not impossible.”
The Papal Blueprint That Has Been Trashed Today
The Pope then proceeds to list a whole series of things that are geared to try and remedy this pitiful ignorance in matters of the Faith. He says that “the following regulations and strictly command that they be observed and carried out in all dioceses of the world.” The “regulations” he imposed were as follows:
(1) On every Sunday and holy day, with no exception, throughout the year, all parish priests and in general all those having the care of souls, shall instruct the boys and girls, for the space of an hour from the text of the Catechism on those things they must believe and do in order to attain salvation.
(2) At certain times throughout the year, they shall prepare boys and girls to receive properly the Sacraments of Penance and Confirmation, by a continued instruction over a period of days.
(3) With a very special zeal, on every day in Lent and, if necessary, on the days following Easter, they shall instruct with the use of apt illustrations and exhortations the youth of both sexes to receive their first Communion in a holy manner.
(4) In each and every parish the society known as the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine is to be canonically established. Through this Confraternity, the pastors, especially in places where there is a scarcity of priests, will have lay helpers in the teaching of the Catechism.
(5) In the larger cities, and especially where universities, colleges and secondary schools are located, let classes in religion be organized to instruct in the truths of faith and in the practice of Christian life the youths who attend the public schools from which all religious teaching is banned.
(6) Since it is a fact that, in these days, ADULTS need instruction no less than the young, all pastors and those having the care of souls shall explain the Catechism to the people. This shall be carried out on all holy days of obligation (which is what a Sunday is), at such time as is most convenient for the people, but not during the same hour when the children are instructed, and THIS INSTRUCTION MUST BE IN ADDITION to the usual homily on the Gospel which is delivered at the parochial Mass on Sundays and holy days. The catechetical instruction shall be based on the Catechism of the Council of Trent; and the matter is to be divided in such a way that in the space of four or five years, treatment will be given to the Apostles' Creed, the Sacraments, the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer and the Precepts of the Church. Thus, this is not a short-term series of instructions, but an on-going series—year in and year out.
Ignorance is Costing (Has Cost) American Catholics Their Faith
As the famous adage says: “You cannot love what you do now know!” and St. Thérèse of Lisieux adds: “Jesus is so little loved because He is so little known!” Little do American Catholics know (and also Catholics of the world) that their ignorance of their Faith and their lack of interest in religion and spirituality, is whittling-away at what little of the Faith remains in their minds and hearts. They, for the most part, refuse or ignore Our Lord’s injunction: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God” (Matthew 6:33) by seeking first the comforts, pleasures, entertainments and goods of this world. They refuse or ignore, for the most part, Our Lord’s reminder of the Old Testaments commandment: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind, and with thy whole strength. This is the first commandment.” (Mark 12:30), and, instead of that, they love the world that they are not supposed to love: “Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15) … “Know you not that the friendship of this world is the enemy of God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of this world, becometh an enemy of God” (James 4:4). Try saying that to the modern-Catholic today and you will laughed-to-scorn! “Woe to you that call evil good, and good evil: that put darkness for light, and light for darkness: that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter” (Isaias 5:20).
PART 15
FROM NUMB TO DUMB TO DEAD DUMB TO DEAD!
Ignorant or Ignoramus?
Ignorance is a lack of knowledge. The word ignorant is an adjective describing a person in the state of being unaware, and is often, incorrectly, used to describe individuals who deliberately ignore or disregard important information or facts. For someone who is willfully ignorant, the word that is commonly used in the United States is “Ignoramus.”
Ignorance can handicap or even paralyze learning, especially if the ignorant person believes that he or she is not ignorant. A person, who falsely believes he or she is knowledgeable, will not seek out clarification for his or her beliefs, but rather will blissfully and complacently rely on his or her ignorant position. He or she may also reject valid, but contrary information, neither realizing its importance nor really understanding it.
Three Chief Kinds of Work
There is no person, who has reached and gone beyond the aged of reason (aged 7 and above), who is totally ignorant. Everyone knows something. The act of knowing and acquiring knowledge means work—intellectual work. St. Thomas Aquinas, in speaking of work, divides work into three categories—(1) physical work, (2) intellectual work, and (3) spiritual work. Each of these categories of work can range from easy to hard. Some physical work is easy, some is hard. Some intellectual work is easy, some is hard. Some spiritual work is easy, some is hard.
The Hardest Work of All
Yet, when comparing the three categories to each other, St. Thomas says that the easiest of all work is physical work. He they says that intellectual work is generally harder than physical work, because of its abstract nature, which requires more painful laboring for the mind. Yet, according to St. Thomas, the hardest of the three categories is spiritual work. Which may partially explain why most souls are lost and damned, because they chose not to do the spiritual work—which is also pointed-out by Our Lord in His parable of the Sheep and the Goats, whereby the Goats are damned for NOT DOING something: “Amen I say to you, as long as you DID IT NOT to one of these least of My brethren, neither did you do it to Me. And these shall go into everlasting punishment: but the just, into life everlasting” (Matthew 25:45-46).
This NOT DOING of things applies to both mind and heart, or thoughts and actions, or thinking and doing. In a broad sense, ignorance comes from negligence by the mind. Actions are usually a consequence of our ideas or thoughts. We put into action the things we think about. What we think about usually designates the areas in which we will act upon. Our actions indicate or betray our thoughts. “They are of the world: therefore of the world they speak. We are of God. He that knoweth God, heareth us” (1 John 4:5-6). Our Lord adds: “A good man, out of the good treasure of his heart, brings forth that which is good. And an evil man, out of the evil treasure [in his heart], bringeth forth that which is evil. For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh” (Luke 6:45).
Thought-Less in Matters of Faith
Therefore, our words and deeds are nothing else but our thoughts put into action—we even have the sayings: “Think before you speak!” and “Think before you act!” If we have an empty head, we will have little or no words to say, and little or no actions to show. You are what you think, and if you think little or think nothing, then you become a little nothing. Most modern-day Catholics have become “little nothings”—meaning that they have become so ‘thought-less’ (or dumb) in matters of the Faith, that they are now a ‘pushover’ for the enemies of the Church. They no longer need to be destroyed—they have destroyed themselves. They think little of the Faith and consequently they do little for the Faith and their Faith becomes more and more little—as Jesus lamented: “The Son of man, when He cometh, shall He find, think you Faith on Earth?” (Luke 18:8).
As Holy Scripture says: “Faith, if it have not works, is dead in itself. But some man will say: ‘Thou hast Faith, and I have works!’ Show me thy Faith without works; and I will show thee, by works, my Faith. Thou believest that there is one God. Thou dost well: the devils also believe and tremble! But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead? Do you see that by works a man is justified; and not by Faith only? For even as the body without the spirit is dead; so also faith without works is dead!” (James 2:17-26).
There are several kinds of ignorant people, some of the chief kinds are:
(1) There are those who are ignorant and who know they are ignorant, but they are just too lazy or too afraid of the hard work required to remove that ignorance.
(2) There are those who are ignorant but are also arrogant. They know they know little, but they vainly try to apply to their ignorance and little knowledge, the axiom of “a little goes a long way”—and so they are content to navigate life with little knowledge, thinking it will get them a long way, using “two-bit” phrases or superficial clichés to “wing” their way through conversations and debates.
(3) There are those who are ignorant and are ignorant of the fact that they are ignorant. In other words, they are too dumb to know they are dumb. They mistake their ignorance for knowledge. They make their vice into a virtue. They ridicule or dismiss anything that is too deep for them.
(4) There are those who pretend ignorance, but who are not really ignorant. These may include those who want to avoid extra work or responsibility which would be placed on their shoulders if others were aware of their knowledge; or they may be those who have an agenda or plot, which requires the disguise of ignorance while they astutely carry out their agendas or plots.
Are We in “The Age of Martyrs” or “The Age of Apostasy”?
History—if it is objectively true history and not revisionist history or pseudo-history—will paint a very poor picture of the Catholicism of our age (the last 100 years or so, since Fatima 1917). While some call it “The Age of Martyrs”, claiming that more persons have been put to death for the Faith in the last century (20th) than even the early Christian centuries—it will also be known as “The Age of Apostasy” with more numbers falling-away from the Faith than in any other previous century in history.
That apostasy will be, in large part, due to the indifference and ignorance of Catholics—whether it be in America or elsewhere. However, behind that “effect” mass apostasy lie the “causes” of apostasy—for every effect has a cause—and the chief causes have already been foretold by Our Lord and Our Lady.
Let us begin with Our Lord’s words to Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres (of Our Lady of Good Success fame). One day in 1582, as she was praying before the altar, she saw the Tabernacle open and Christ Himself emerged, suffering as He had at Golgotha. The Blessed Virgin, at His feet, was shedding tears. Mother Mariana asked her, “My Lady, am I to blame for this sadness?” “No,” she replied, “it is not you, but the criminal world.” Then as Our Lord began His Agony, she heard the voice of the Eternal Father saying, “This punishment will be for the 20th century.” She saw three swords hanging over the head of Christ. On each was written, “I shall punish heresy, blasphemy and impurity.” With this, she was given to understand all that would take place in our present era. Our Lord added: “My priests and My religious will fall into a fatal indifference. Their coldness will extinguish the fire of divine love…” and indifference in priests leads to indifference in teaching the truths of the Faith, which leads to indifference and ignorance in the faithful—who become less and less faithful.
Our Lady of Good Success would add: “The first significance is that at the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century, various heresies will be propagated. As these heresies spread and dominate, the precious light of Faith will be extinguished in souls by the almost total corruption of morals. The small number of souls who, hidden, will preserve the treasure of the Faith and practice virtue, will suffer a cruel, unspeakable and prolonged martyrdom … In order to free men from bondage to these heresies, there will be need of great strength of will, constancy, valor and confidence in God … O, if men only understood how to appreciate the time given to them and would take advantage of each moment of their lives, how different the world would be! And a considerable number of souls would not fall to their eternal perdition! But this contempt is the fundamental cause for their downfall! … The secular Clergy will leave much to be desired, because priests will become careless in their sacred duties. Lacking the divine compass, they will stray from the road traced by God for the priestly ministry, and they will become attached to wealth and riches, which they will unduly strive to obtain. How the Church will suffer during this dark night!”
Our Lady of La Salette adds: “The priests, ministers of my Son, the priests, by their wicked lives, by their irreverence and their impiety in the celebration of the Holy Mysteries, by their love of money, their love of honors and pleasures, the priests have become cesspools of impurity. Yes, the priests are asking for vengeance, and vengeance is hanging over their heads. Woe to the priests and to those dedicated to God who, by their unfaithfulness and their wicked lives, are crucifying my Son again! … The chiefs, the leaders of the people of God, have neglected prayer and penance, and the devil has bedimmed their intelligence. They have become wandering stars which the old devil will drag along with his tail to make them perish … Lucifer, together with a large number of demons, will be unloosed from Hell; they will put an end to Faith, little by little, even in those dedicated to God. They will blind them in such a way, that, unless they are blessed with a special grace, these people will take on the spirit of these angels of Hell. Several religious institutions will lose all Faith and will lose many souls … The spirits of darkness will spread everywhere a universal slackening of all that concerns the service of God … All the civil governments will have one and the same plan, which will be to abolish and do away with every religious principle, to make way for materialism, atheism, spiritualism and vice of all kinds … The true Faith to the Lord having been forgotten … People will think of nothing but amusement. The wicked will give themselves over to all kinds of sin.”
All of the above is the perfect seedbed for heresy and apostasy. The word “heresy” is defined as “belief or opinion contrary to orthodox religious (especially Christian) doctrine.” The word “apostasy” is defined as “an act of refusing to continue to follow, obey, or recognize a religious faith.” It is clear that today Catholics are increasingly departing from orthodox or traditional Catholic teaching and are refusing to follow and obey the long-standing teachings and practices of the Catholic Church. You have be incredibly ignorant and dumb not to see that! Which is why Our Lord asks the rhetorical question: “The Son of man, when He cometh, shall He find, think you, Faith on Earth?” (Luke 18:8). Will He find Faith in America?
Heresy and Apostasy Are The Children of Indifference and Ignorance
Both heresy and apostasy are intimately linked to indifference and ignorance.Heresy and Apostasy Are The Children of Indifference and Ignorance
Both heresy and apostasy are intimately linked to indifference and ignorance. These two collaborators and instigators of heresy and apostasy are, in turn, the children of Pride, which Holy Scripture says is the root of all sin: “His heart is departed from him that made him: for pride is the beginning of all sin: he that holdeth it, shall be filled with maledictions, and it shall ruin him in the end” (Ecclesiasticus 10:15).
The hidden source of heresy is always the pride of the human mind, which does not want to submit to the teaching of the Church, but places one’s own mind, one’s own understanding, above that of the Church. Heresiarchs were people who were self-assured, stubborn, and ready to resist even the obvious truth, going against divinely revealed truth, Sacred Trade, the Councils of the Church and the teachings of the Holy Fathers of the Church.
Heresy is a misconception and departure from some dogmatic teaching of the Faith; it is a distortion of the true teaching of Christ. The danger of heretical teachings lies in the fact that the error is so cleverly veiled, argued, and mixed with true words that the inexperienced person—who is akin to the ignorant persons―will find it difficult to determine what is right and what is wrong. The bottom line is that we should take pains to study and know our Faith—which is what St. Peter implies when he writes: “… being ready always to satisfy everyone that asketh you a reason of that hope which is in you” (1 Peter 3:15). While St. Paul implies that we should know our Faith well, when he writes: “Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a Gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema” (Galatians 1:8).
Living in Non-Catholic Viral Atmosphere
Protestants carry with them and read the same Holy Scriptures as we do, but they do not recognize all the Church’s Mysteries, nor the Church’s supreme authority, nor the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist, nor the need for Confession, nor the sacrificial priesthood, nor the Virgin Mary’s virgin birth, etc., etc. Moreover, to prove their heretical teachings, heretics make use of Holy Scripture, reason, and scientific evidence to a very skillful degree. They even have their own universities and learned degrees. And to what has their false sophistry led them? In our times Protestant confessions have priests and even bishops who are married and priests and bishops who can be women, sodomites. They allow same-sex couples to marry in their churches. They accept remarriage after divorce. They accept contraception and abortion in many cases. They do not forbid homosexuality and many other sexual sins and perversions. Yet they call themselves “Christians.”
It is this Protestant attitude that has invaded the Catholic Church because of (1) our unwillingness to have as little as possible to do with Protestants, (2) our lack of depth in knowledge of the Church’s teachings, (3) our lack of a deep spiritual life, the consequences of which are a shortage of grace and a weakness of will, and (4) a fatal human respect that readily embraces a false ecumenism and embraces the worldliness that surround us, which is mainly Protestant or pagan in origin and style.
Statistics for 2016 have been simplified and reduced to an easily imaginable scale showing the following numbers:
If there were only 100 people in the USA, then…
48 would be Protestant
23 would be unaffiliated to any religion
21 would be Catholic
2 would be Jewish
2 would be Mormon
1 would be Muslim
1 would be Hindu
1 would be Buddhist
1 would be of some other faith
Thus, in the USA, Catholics would be outnumbered by 4 to 1, being fractionally over 20% of the total population.
Catholics Prone to ‘Diseases’
That masterpiece of a book, Liberalism is a Sin, touches upon this problem in its opening chapter:
“Physical science tells us that floating through the atmosphere are innumerable disease germs seeking a suitable nidus in which to settle and propagate and that we are constantly breathing these germs into the lungs. If the system be depleted or weakened, the dangerous microbe takes up its abode with us, and propagating its own kind with astonishing rapidity, undermines and ravages our health. The only safeguard against the encroachments of this insidious enemy, which we cannot escape, is a vigorous and healthy body with adequate powers of resistance to repel the invader.
“It is equally true that we are subject to like infectious attacks in the spiritual order. Swarming in the atmosphere of our spiritual lives are innumerable deadly germs, ever ready to fasten upon the depleted and weakened soul and, propagating its leprous contagion through every faculty, destroy the spiritual life. Against the menace of this ever-threatening danger, whose advances we cannot avoid in our present circumstances, only the ever-healthy soul alone can be prepared. To escape the contagion, the power of resistance must be equal to the emergencies of the attack, and that power will be in proportion to our spiritual health. To be prepared is to be armed, but to be prepared is not sufficient; we must possess the interior strength to throw off the germ. There must be no condition in the soul to make a suitable nidus for an enemy so insidious and so efficacious as to need only the slightest point of contact whence to spread its deadly contagion.
“It is not only through the avenues of disordered passions that this spiritual disease may gain an entrance; it may make its inroad through the intellect, and this under a disguise often calculated to deceive the unwary and incautious. The Trojans admitted the enemy into their walls under the impression that they were actually securing a valuable acquisition to their safety, and today their fatal experience has come down to us in the proverb—“Beware of the Greeks when they bring gifts.” Intellectual torpidity, inexperience, ignorance, indifference, and complaisance, or even virtues, such as, benevolence, generosity, and pity may be the unsuspected way open to the foe, and lo, we are surprised to find him in possession of the citadel!
“As we are addressing ourselves to those who live amidst the peculiar circumstances of our American life, and as the spiritual and moral conditions which obtain in this country make up the moral and spiritual atmosphere in which we have our being, it is in the relation of our surroundings to ourselves as well as of ourselves to our surroundings that we shall find the answer to our question. Let us then consider these surroundings in a general way for the moment.
First, as to some patent facts: The population of this country is at present something over 323 million. [2016 census]. Of these, 70 million are Catholics, and according to their claim, 150 million are Protestants, leaving a population of 100 million or more who do not profess any form of Christianity at all. Amongst the 150 million Protestants, every shade and variety of belief in the Christian dispensation find easy lodgment. In this scale of heresy, the adjustments of creeds are loose and easy. Lack of any decisive authority renders any exact standard of belief impossible. A Protestant may freely range from one end of the scale to the other and still be considered orthodox according to Protestant estimates. A loose indefinite belief in Christ suffices to place the Protestant within the compass of his own standard of orthodoxy. Any specific expression of dogma, or of particular truths, bound up in the acceptance of Christianity, is not required.
“Outside of these various bodies of loosely professed Christians stands a large mass of our population who are either absolutely indifferent to Christianity as a creed or positively reject it. In other words, we have here to reckon with a body, to all practical purposes, that is infidel. This mass comprises over 30 percent of our population, holding itself aloof from Christianity, and in some instances virulently antagonistic to it. In distinct religious opposition to this mass of infidelity and Protestantism there is a frightening percentage that shows that the vast majority of Catholics today, either do not practice their Faith at all or who are ignorant of its teachings (especially with regard to morality), or who, in practice, simply disregard those teachings—bringing the total of practical non-believing and infidel people to probably just over 90 percent―if we can presume there to be today approximately 25 million believing, practicing Catholics. Thus, Catholics find themselves sharply and radically opposed. Heresy and infidelity are irreconcilable with Catholicity. “He that is not with me is against Me” (Matthew 12:30) are the words of Our Lord Himself, for denial of Catholic truth is the radical and common element of both heresy and infidelity. The difference between them is merely a matter of degree. One denies less, the other more. Protestantism, with its sliding scale of creeds, is simply an inclined plane into the abyss of positive unbelief. It is always virtual infidelity, its final outcome open infidelity, as the 100 million unbelievers in this country stand witness.
“We live in the midst of this religious anarchy. Some 250 million of our population of 323 million can, in one sense or other, be considered anti-Catholic. From this mass—heretical and infidel—exhales an atmosphere filled with germs poisonous and fatal to Catholic life, if permitted to take root in the Catholic heart. The mere force of gravitation, which the larger mass ever exercises upon the smaller, is a power which the most energetic vigor alone can resist. Under this dangerous influence, a deadly inertia is apt to creep over the souls of the incautious and is only to be overcome by the liveliest exercise of Catholic Faith. To live without enervation amidst an heretical and infidel population requires a robust religious constitution. And to this danger we are daily exposed, ever coming into contact in a thousand ways, in almost every relation of life, with anti-Catholic thought and customs. But outside of this spiritual inertia, our non-Catholic surroundings—a danger rather passive than active in its influence—beget a still greater menace.
“It is natural that Protestantism and infidelity should find public expression. What our 250 million non-Catholic population thinks in these matters, naturally seeks and finds open expression. They have their organs and their literature where we find their current opinions publicly uttered. Their views upon religion, morality, politics, the constitution of society are perpetually marshaled before us. In the pulpit and in the press they are reiterated day after day. In magazine and newspaper they constantly speak from every line. Our literature is permeated and saturated with non-Catholic dogmatism. On all sides do we find this opposing spirit. We cannot escape from it. It enfolds and embraces us. Its breath is perpetually in our faces. It enters in by eye and ear. From birth to death, it enslaves us in its offensive garments. It now soothes and flatters, now hates and curses, now threatens, now praises. But it is most dangerous when it comes to us under the form of “liberality.” It is especially powerful for seduction in this guise. And it is under this aspect that we wish to consider it. For it is as Liberalism that Protestantism and Infidelity make their most devastating inroads upon the domain of the Faith. Out of these non-Catholic and anti-Catholic conditions thus predominating amongst us springs this monster of our times, Liberalism!” (Liberalism is a Sin, Chapter 1).
The Stats of Today Will Be The History of Tomorrow!
We are in the process of “making history”—but not in a noble or praiseworthy manner. Today, almost half of U.S. Catholics are over 50 years old. At the same time, young people raised in the Catholic Faith, who could replace the aging generation, are falling away from the Catholic Church in adulthood. Only 20% of Catholics (two out of ten) attend Sunday Mass regularly. We find that less than 10% of baptized Catholics in this country both regularly attend Mass on Sundays and go to Confession at least once a year. In other words, less than 1 in 10 baptized Catholics actually follow the two most measurable precepts of the Church, which all Catholics are obliged to follow.
Mark Gray, Senior Research Associate at Georgetown Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) says: “Millennials are being turned off by the political tone of religion. And they are a more ‘digital’ generation, so they are less likely to join ‘brick and mortar’ institutions like churches. They are coming of age in a different period of history where church membership isn’t necessarily a necessity.” Disenchanted by religion in general, millennials are increasingly choosing to not identify with any religion at all.
A report released in 2015 by the Pew Research Forum found that the total number of Catholics in the United States dropped by 3 million since 2007, now comprising about 20%―or one in five—of the total U.S. population. Furthermore, and perhaps more troubling for the Catholic Church in America, is the fact that for every one Catholic convert, more than six Catholics leave the Church. Taken a step further, American Catholicism loses more members than it gains, at a higher rate than any other denomination, with nearly 13% of all Americans describing themselves as “former Catholics.”
A Pew Research Study states that of those who left the Church, most of them stated that they “gradually drifted away from the Church” and that their “spiritual needs were not being met.” A more recent, smaller survey conducted by the Catholic Diocese of Springfield, in Illinois, reveals that the majority left because their “spiritual needs [were] not met” and they “lost interest” in being Catholic.
Research shows that most people do not see any compelling reason to live as Catholics. This is true both for those who left the Church and for most who continue to self-identify as Catholic. For if one thought it was worthwhile to live as a Catholic, he would attend Mass faithfully, go to Confession regularly, study and learn his Faith, and strive to live by its teachings, even the hard ones. Yet so few Catholics are doing this. Today, on every issue, American Catholics are more liberal than the Church’s teachings.
The Univision poll found that 54% of U.S. Catholics supported same-sex marriage. 59% supported admitting women to the priesthood. 60% thought Catholics who had divorced and remarried outside the church should be eligible to receive Communion. 61% thought priests should be allowed to marry. 76% thought abortion should be permitted at least in some circumstances. 79% supported contraception.
Until recently, baptism rates were stable, practically parallel to birth rates. But for the last decade, infant baptism rates have fallen below the affiliation rate. If fewer people are being baptized into the Faith, and many of those who are baptized later leave the Church, that doesn’t bode well for the Church’s U.S. flock.
According to the Pew Research Center’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study, among the 32% of Americans adults who say they were raised Catholic, almost half of them no longer identify themselves as Catholic anymore. However, Gray points out that historically, it’s not unusual for young people who leave the Faith to come back later in life. Of those who abandon Catholicism in their teens and 20s, a handful return in their 30s and 40s, when they will register with their local parish and baptize their children. Gray estimates that these “reverts” comprise about 10% of the Catholic population in the U.S.
Truly a very poor state of affairs! You could even say catastrophic! To make matters worse, nobody really cares or is troubled by all this! We have truly entered the period of what Catholic prophecy calls "The Minor Apostasy"—which may be "minor" in name, but far from being "minor" in its eternal consequences.
Approved Catholic mystics (the Venerables, Blesseds and Saints, and approved apparitions) throw considerable light on this order, by prophesying a “Minor Apostasy” and tribulation toward the end of the world, after which will occur the “Triumph of the Immaculate”, the “Reign of Christ the King” and the reunion of all Christians, as they return to the Catholic Faith. Only later will the entire world fall away from Christ (during “The Great Apostasy”) and the personal Antichrist arise and the “Tribulation of the End” occur.
The Great Apostasy which takes place during the reign of the Antichrist cannot take place until after “The Minor Apostasy” and the restoration of the Church that follows it. This “Minor Apostasy” is the most spiritually dangerous period in human history outside “The Great Apostasy” itself. Throughout the course of his pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI frequently seemed to indicate that he believes that there is sufficient evidence to suggest that we are living during this “Minor Apostasy” mentioned in prophecy, which takes place immediately before the restoration of the Church.
Ignorance is a lack of knowledge. The word ignorant is an adjective describing a person in the state of being unaware, and is often, incorrectly, used to describe individuals who deliberately ignore or disregard important information or facts. For someone who is willfully ignorant, the word that is commonly used in the United States is “Ignoramus.”
Ignorance can handicap or even paralyze learning, especially if the ignorant person believes that he or she is not ignorant. A person, who falsely believes he or she is knowledgeable, will not seek out clarification for his or her beliefs, but rather will blissfully and complacently rely on his or her ignorant position. He or she may also reject valid, but contrary information, neither realizing its importance nor really understanding it.
Three Chief Kinds of Work
There is no person, who has reached and gone beyond the aged of reason (aged 7 and above), who is totally ignorant. Everyone knows something. The act of knowing and acquiring knowledge means work—intellectual work. St. Thomas Aquinas, in speaking of work, divides work into three categories—(1) physical work, (2) intellectual work, and (3) spiritual work. Each of these categories of work can range from easy to hard. Some physical work is easy, some is hard. Some intellectual work is easy, some is hard. Some spiritual work is easy, some is hard.
The Hardest Work of All
Yet, when comparing the three categories to each other, St. Thomas says that the easiest of all work is physical work. He they says that intellectual work is generally harder than physical work, because of its abstract nature, which requires more painful laboring for the mind. Yet, according to St. Thomas, the hardest of the three categories is spiritual work. Which may partially explain why most souls are lost and damned, because they chose not to do the spiritual work—which is also pointed-out by Our Lord in His parable of the Sheep and the Goats, whereby the Goats are damned for NOT DOING something: “Amen I say to you, as long as you DID IT NOT to one of these least of My brethren, neither did you do it to Me. And these shall go into everlasting punishment: but the just, into life everlasting” (Matthew 25:45-46).
This NOT DOING of things applies to both mind and heart, or thoughts and actions, or thinking and doing. In a broad sense, ignorance comes from negligence by the mind. Actions are usually a consequence of our ideas or thoughts. We put into action the things we think about. What we think about usually designates the areas in which we will act upon. Our actions indicate or betray our thoughts. “They are of the world: therefore of the world they speak. We are of God. He that knoweth God, heareth us” (1 John 4:5-6). Our Lord adds: “A good man, out of the good treasure of his heart, brings forth that which is good. And an evil man, out of the evil treasure [in his heart], bringeth forth that which is evil. For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh” (Luke 6:45).
Thought-Less in Matters of Faith
Therefore, our words and deeds are nothing else but our thoughts put into action—we even have the sayings: “Think before you speak!” and “Think before you act!” If we have an empty head, we will have little or no words to say, and little or no actions to show. You are what you think, and if you think little or think nothing, then you become a little nothing. Most modern-day Catholics have become “little nothings”—meaning that they have become so ‘thought-less’ (or dumb) in matters of the Faith, that they are now a ‘pushover’ for the enemies of the Church. They no longer need to be destroyed—they have destroyed themselves. They think little of the Faith and consequently they do little for the Faith and their Faith becomes more and more little—as Jesus lamented: “The Son of man, when He cometh, shall He find, think you Faith on Earth?” (Luke 18:8).
As Holy Scripture says: “Faith, if it have not works, is dead in itself. But some man will say: ‘Thou hast Faith, and I have works!’ Show me thy Faith without works; and I will show thee, by works, my Faith. Thou believest that there is one God. Thou dost well: the devils also believe and tremble! But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead? Do you see that by works a man is justified; and not by Faith only? For even as the body without the spirit is dead; so also faith without works is dead!” (James 2:17-26).
There are several kinds of ignorant people, some of the chief kinds are:
(1) There are those who are ignorant and who know they are ignorant, but they are just too lazy or too afraid of the hard work required to remove that ignorance.
(2) There are those who are ignorant but are also arrogant. They know they know little, but they vainly try to apply to their ignorance and little knowledge, the axiom of “a little goes a long way”—and so they are content to navigate life with little knowledge, thinking it will get them a long way, using “two-bit” phrases or superficial clichés to “wing” their way through conversations and debates.
(3) There are those who are ignorant and are ignorant of the fact that they are ignorant. In other words, they are too dumb to know they are dumb. They mistake their ignorance for knowledge. They make their vice into a virtue. They ridicule or dismiss anything that is too deep for them.
(4) There are those who pretend ignorance, but who are not really ignorant. These may include those who want to avoid extra work or responsibility which would be placed on their shoulders if others were aware of their knowledge; or they may be those who have an agenda or plot, which requires the disguise of ignorance while they astutely carry out their agendas or plots.
Are We in “The Age of Martyrs” or “The Age of Apostasy”?
History—if it is objectively true history and not revisionist history or pseudo-history—will paint a very poor picture of the Catholicism of our age (the last 100 years or so, since Fatima 1917). While some call it “The Age of Martyrs”, claiming that more persons have been put to death for the Faith in the last century (20th) than even the early Christian centuries—it will also be known as “The Age of Apostasy” with more numbers falling-away from the Faith than in any other previous century in history.
That apostasy will be, in large part, due to the indifference and ignorance of Catholics—whether it be in America or elsewhere. However, behind that “effect” mass apostasy lie the “causes” of apostasy—for every effect has a cause—and the chief causes have already been foretold by Our Lord and Our Lady.
Let us begin with Our Lord’s words to Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres (of Our Lady of Good Success fame). One day in 1582, as she was praying before the altar, she saw the Tabernacle open and Christ Himself emerged, suffering as He had at Golgotha. The Blessed Virgin, at His feet, was shedding tears. Mother Mariana asked her, “My Lady, am I to blame for this sadness?” “No,” she replied, “it is not you, but the criminal world.” Then as Our Lord began His Agony, she heard the voice of the Eternal Father saying, “This punishment will be for the 20th century.” She saw three swords hanging over the head of Christ. On each was written, “I shall punish heresy, blasphemy and impurity.” With this, she was given to understand all that would take place in our present era. Our Lord added: “My priests and My religious will fall into a fatal indifference. Their coldness will extinguish the fire of divine love…” and indifference in priests leads to indifference in teaching the truths of the Faith, which leads to indifference and ignorance in the faithful—who become less and less faithful.
Our Lady of Good Success would add: “The first significance is that at the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century, various heresies will be propagated. As these heresies spread and dominate, the precious light of Faith will be extinguished in souls by the almost total corruption of morals. The small number of souls who, hidden, will preserve the treasure of the Faith and practice virtue, will suffer a cruel, unspeakable and prolonged martyrdom … In order to free men from bondage to these heresies, there will be need of great strength of will, constancy, valor and confidence in God … O, if men only understood how to appreciate the time given to them and would take advantage of each moment of their lives, how different the world would be! And a considerable number of souls would not fall to their eternal perdition! But this contempt is the fundamental cause for their downfall! … The secular Clergy will leave much to be desired, because priests will become careless in their sacred duties. Lacking the divine compass, they will stray from the road traced by God for the priestly ministry, and they will become attached to wealth and riches, which they will unduly strive to obtain. How the Church will suffer during this dark night!”
Our Lady of La Salette adds: “The priests, ministers of my Son, the priests, by their wicked lives, by their irreverence and their impiety in the celebration of the Holy Mysteries, by their love of money, their love of honors and pleasures, the priests have become cesspools of impurity. Yes, the priests are asking for vengeance, and vengeance is hanging over their heads. Woe to the priests and to those dedicated to God who, by their unfaithfulness and their wicked lives, are crucifying my Son again! … The chiefs, the leaders of the people of God, have neglected prayer and penance, and the devil has bedimmed their intelligence. They have become wandering stars which the old devil will drag along with his tail to make them perish … Lucifer, together with a large number of demons, will be unloosed from Hell; they will put an end to Faith, little by little, even in those dedicated to God. They will blind them in such a way, that, unless they are blessed with a special grace, these people will take on the spirit of these angels of Hell. Several religious institutions will lose all Faith and will lose many souls … The spirits of darkness will spread everywhere a universal slackening of all that concerns the service of God … All the civil governments will have one and the same plan, which will be to abolish and do away with every religious principle, to make way for materialism, atheism, spiritualism and vice of all kinds … The true Faith to the Lord having been forgotten … People will think of nothing but amusement. The wicked will give themselves over to all kinds of sin.”
All of the above is the perfect seedbed for heresy and apostasy. The word “heresy” is defined as “belief or opinion contrary to orthodox religious (especially Christian) doctrine.” The word “apostasy” is defined as “an act of refusing to continue to follow, obey, or recognize a religious faith.” It is clear that today Catholics are increasingly departing from orthodox or traditional Catholic teaching and are refusing to follow and obey the long-standing teachings and practices of the Catholic Church. You have be incredibly ignorant and dumb not to see that! Which is why Our Lord asks the rhetorical question: “The Son of man, when He cometh, shall He find, think you, Faith on Earth?” (Luke 18:8). Will He find Faith in America?
Heresy and Apostasy Are The Children of Indifference and Ignorance
Both heresy and apostasy are intimately linked to indifference and ignorance.Heresy and Apostasy Are The Children of Indifference and Ignorance
Both heresy and apostasy are intimately linked to indifference and ignorance. These two collaborators and instigators of heresy and apostasy are, in turn, the children of Pride, which Holy Scripture says is the root of all sin: “His heart is departed from him that made him: for pride is the beginning of all sin: he that holdeth it, shall be filled with maledictions, and it shall ruin him in the end” (Ecclesiasticus 10:15).
The hidden source of heresy is always the pride of the human mind, which does not want to submit to the teaching of the Church, but places one’s own mind, one’s own understanding, above that of the Church. Heresiarchs were people who were self-assured, stubborn, and ready to resist even the obvious truth, going against divinely revealed truth, Sacred Trade, the Councils of the Church and the teachings of the Holy Fathers of the Church.
Heresy is a misconception and departure from some dogmatic teaching of the Faith; it is a distortion of the true teaching of Christ. The danger of heretical teachings lies in the fact that the error is so cleverly veiled, argued, and mixed with true words that the inexperienced person—who is akin to the ignorant persons―will find it difficult to determine what is right and what is wrong. The bottom line is that we should take pains to study and know our Faith—which is what St. Peter implies when he writes: “… being ready always to satisfy everyone that asketh you a reason of that hope which is in you” (1 Peter 3:15). While St. Paul implies that we should know our Faith well, when he writes: “Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a Gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema” (Galatians 1:8).
Living in Non-Catholic Viral Atmosphere
Protestants carry with them and read the same Holy Scriptures as we do, but they do not recognize all the Church’s Mysteries, nor the Church’s supreme authority, nor the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist, nor the need for Confession, nor the sacrificial priesthood, nor the Virgin Mary’s virgin birth, etc., etc. Moreover, to prove their heretical teachings, heretics make use of Holy Scripture, reason, and scientific evidence to a very skillful degree. They even have their own universities and learned degrees. And to what has their false sophistry led them? In our times Protestant confessions have priests and even bishops who are married and priests and bishops who can be women, sodomites. They allow same-sex couples to marry in their churches. They accept remarriage after divorce. They accept contraception and abortion in many cases. They do not forbid homosexuality and many other sexual sins and perversions. Yet they call themselves “Christians.”
It is this Protestant attitude that has invaded the Catholic Church because of (1) our unwillingness to have as little as possible to do with Protestants, (2) our lack of depth in knowledge of the Church’s teachings, (3) our lack of a deep spiritual life, the consequences of which are a shortage of grace and a weakness of will, and (4) a fatal human respect that readily embraces a false ecumenism and embraces the worldliness that surround us, which is mainly Protestant or pagan in origin and style.
Statistics for 2016 have been simplified and reduced to an easily imaginable scale showing the following numbers:
If there were only 100 people in the USA, then…
48 would be Protestant
23 would be unaffiliated to any religion
21 would be Catholic
2 would be Jewish
2 would be Mormon
1 would be Muslim
1 would be Hindu
1 would be Buddhist
1 would be of some other faith
Thus, in the USA, Catholics would be outnumbered by 4 to 1, being fractionally over 20% of the total population.
Catholics Prone to ‘Diseases’
That masterpiece of a book, Liberalism is a Sin, touches upon this problem in its opening chapter:
“Physical science tells us that floating through the atmosphere are innumerable disease germs seeking a suitable nidus in which to settle and propagate and that we are constantly breathing these germs into the lungs. If the system be depleted or weakened, the dangerous microbe takes up its abode with us, and propagating its own kind with astonishing rapidity, undermines and ravages our health. The only safeguard against the encroachments of this insidious enemy, which we cannot escape, is a vigorous and healthy body with adequate powers of resistance to repel the invader.
“It is equally true that we are subject to like infectious attacks in the spiritual order. Swarming in the atmosphere of our spiritual lives are innumerable deadly germs, ever ready to fasten upon the depleted and weakened soul and, propagating its leprous contagion through every faculty, destroy the spiritual life. Against the menace of this ever-threatening danger, whose advances we cannot avoid in our present circumstances, only the ever-healthy soul alone can be prepared. To escape the contagion, the power of resistance must be equal to the emergencies of the attack, and that power will be in proportion to our spiritual health. To be prepared is to be armed, but to be prepared is not sufficient; we must possess the interior strength to throw off the germ. There must be no condition in the soul to make a suitable nidus for an enemy so insidious and so efficacious as to need only the slightest point of contact whence to spread its deadly contagion.
“It is not only through the avenues of disordered passions that this spiritual disease may gain an entrance; it may make its inroad through the intellect, and this under a disguise often calculated to deceive the unwary and incautious. The Trojans admitted the enemy into their walls under the impression that they were actually securing a valuable acquisition to their safety, and today their fatal experience has come down to us in the proverb—“Beware of the Greeks when they bring gifts.” Intellectual torpidity, inexperience, ignorance, indifference, and complaisance, or even virtues, such as, benevolence, generosity, and pity may be the unsuspected way open to the foe, and lo, we are surprised to find him in possession of the citadel!
“As we are addressing ourselves to those who live amidst the peculiar circumstances of our American life, and as the spiritual and moral conditions which obtain in this country make up the moral and spiritual atmosphere in which we have our being, it is in the relation of our surroundings to ourselves as well as of ourselves to our surroundings that we shall find the answer to our question. Let us then consider these surroundings in a general way for the moment.
First, as to some patent facts: The population of this country is at present something over 323 million. [2016 census]. Of these, 70 million are Catholics, and according to their claim, 150 million are Protestants, leaving a population of 100 million or more who do not profess any form of Christianity at all. Amongst the 150 million Protestants, every shade and variety of belief in the Christian dispensation find easy lodgment. In this scale of heresy, the adjustments of creeds are loose and easy. Lack of any decisive authority renders any exact standard of belief impossible. A Protestant may freely range from one end of the scale to the other and still be considered orthodox according to Protestant estimates. A loose indefinite belief in Christ suffices to place the Protestant within the compass of his own standard of orthodoxy. Any specific expression of dogma, or of particular truths, bound up in the acceptance of Christianity, is not required.
“Outside of these various bodies of loosely professed Christians stands a large mass of our population who are either absolutely indifferent to Christianity as a creed or positively reject it. In other words, we have here to reckon with a body, to all practical purposes, that is infidel. This mass comprises over 30 percent of our population, holding itself aloof from Christianity, and in some instances virulently antagonistic to it. In distinct religious opposition to this mass of infidelity and Protestantism there is a frightening percentage that shows that the vast majority of Catholics today, either do not practice their Faith at all or who are ignorant of its teachings (especially with regard to morality), or who, in practice, simply disregard those teachings—bringing the total of practical non-believing and infidel people to probably just over 90 percent―if we can presume there to be today approximately 25 million believing, practicing Catholics. Thus, Catholics find themselves sharply and radically opposed. Heresy and infidelity are irreconcilable with Catholicity. “He that is not with me is against Me” (Matthew 12:30) are the words of Our Lord Himself, for denial of Catholic truth is the radical and common element of both heresy and infidelity. The difference between them is merely a matter of degree. One denies less, the other more. Protestantism, with its sliding scale of creeds, is simply an inclined plane into the abyss of positive unbelief. It is always virtual infidelity, its final outcome open infidelity, as the 100 million unbelievers in this country stand witness.
“We live in the midst of this religious anarchy. Some 250 million of our population of 323 million can, in one sense or other, be considered anti-Catholic. From this mass—heretical and infidel—exhales an atmosphere filled with germs poisonous and fatal to Catholic life, if permitted to take root in the Catholic heart. The mere force of gravitation, which the larger mass ever exercises upon the smaller, is a power which the most energetic vigor alone can resist. Under this dangerous influence, a deadly inertia is apt to creep over the souls of the incautious and is only to be overcome by the liveliest exercise of Catholic Faith. To live without enervation amidst an heretical and infidel population requires a robust religious constitution. And to this danger we are daily exposed, ever coming into contact in a thousand ways, in almost every relation of life, with anti-Catholic thought and customs. But outside of this spiritual inertia, our non-Catholic surroundings—a danger rather passive than active in its influence—beget a still greater menace.
“It is natural that Protestantism and infidelity should find public expression. What our 250 million non-Catholic population thinks in these matters, naturally seeks and finds open expression. They have their organs and their literature where we find their current opinions publicly uttered. Their views upon religion, morality, politics, the constitution of society are perpetually marshaled before us. In the pulpit and in the press they are reiterated day after day. In magazine and newspaper they constantly speak from every line. Our literature is permeated and saturated with non-Catholic dogmatism. On all sides do we find this opposing spirit. We cannot escape from it. It enfolds and embraces us. Its breath is perpetually in our faces. It enters in by eye and ear. From birth to death, it enslaves us in its offensive garments. It now soothes and flatters, now hates and curses, now threatens, now praises. But it is most dangerous when it comes to us under the form of “liberality.” It is especially powerful for seduction in this guise. And it is under this aspect that we wish to consider it. For it is as Liberalism that Protestantism and Infidelity make their most devastating inroads upon the domain of the Faith. Out of these non-Catholic and anti-Catholic conditions thus predominating amongst us springs this monster of our times, Liberalism!” (Liberalism is a Sin, Chapter 1).
The Stats of Today Will Be The History of Tomorrow!
We are in the process of “making history”—but not in a noble or praiseworthy manner. Today, almost half of U.S. Catholics are over 50 years old. At the same time, young people raised in the Catholic Faith, who could replace the aging generation, are falling away from the Catholic Church in adulthood. Only 20% of Catholics (two out of ten) attend Sunday Mass regularly. We find that less than 10% of baptized Catholics in this country both regularly attend Mass on Sundays and go to Confession at least once a year. In other words, less than 1 in 10 baptized Catholics actually follow the two most measurable precepts of the Church, which all Catholics are obliged to follow.
Mark Gray, Senior Research Associate at Georgetown Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) says: “Millennials are being turned off by the political tone of religion. And they are a more ‘digital’ generation, so they are less likely to join ‘brick and mortar’ institutions like churches. They are coming of age in a different period of history where church membership isn’t necessarily a necessity.” Disenchanted by religion in general, millennials are increasingly choosing to not identify with any religion at all.
A report released in 2015 by the Pew Research Forum found that the total number of Catholics in the United States dropped by 3 million since 2007, now comprising about 20%―or one in five—of the total U.S. population. Furthermore, and perhaps more troubling for the Catholic Church in America, is the fact that for every one Catholic convert, more than six Catholics leave the Church. Taken a step further, American Catholicism loses more members than it gains, at a higher rate than any other denomination, with nearly 13% of all Americans describing themselves as “former Catholics.”
A Pew Research Study states that of those who left the Church, most of them stated that they “gradually drifted away from the Church” and that their “spiritual needs were not being met.” A more recent, smaller survey conducted by the Catholic Diocese of Springfield, in Illinois, reveals that the majority left because their “spiritual needs [were] not met” and they “lost interest” in being Catholic.
Research shows that most people do not see any compelling reason to live as Catholics. This is true both for those who left the Church and for most who continue to self-identify as Catholic. For if one thought it was worthwhile to live as a Catholic, he would attend Mass faithfully, go to Confession regularly, study and learn his Faith, and strive to live by its teachings, even the hard ones. Yet so few Catholics are doing this. Today, on every issue, American Catholics are more liberal than the Church’s teachings.
The Univision poll found that 54% of U.S. Catholics supported same-sex marriage. 59% supported admitting women to the priesthood. 60% thought Catholics who had divorced and remarried outside the church should be eligible to receive Communion. 61% thought priests should be allowed to marry. 76% thought abortion should be permitted at least in some circumstances. 79% supported contraception.
Until recently, baptism rates were stable, practically parallel to birth rates. But for the last decade, infant baptism rates have fallen below the affiliation rate. If fewer people are being baptized into the Faith, and many of those who are baptized later leave the Church, that doesn’t bode well for the Church’s U.S. flock.
According to the Pew Research Center’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study, among the 32% of Americans adults who say they were raised Catholic, almost half of them no longer identify themselves as Catholic anymore. However, Gray points out that historically, it’s not unusual for young people who leave the Faith to come back later in life. Of those who abandon Catholicism in their teens and 20s, a handful return in their 30s and 40s, when they will register with their local parish and baptize their children. Gray estimates that these “reverts” comprise about 10% of the Catholic population in the U.S.
Truly a very poor state of affairs! You could even say catastrophic! To make matters worse, nobody really cares or is troubled by all this! We have truly entered the period of what Catholic prophecy calls "The Minor Apostasy"—which may be "minor" in name, but far from being "minor" in its eternal consequences.
Approved Catholic mystics (the Venerables, Blesseds and Saints, and approved apparitions) throw considerable light on this order, by prophesying a “Minor Apostasy” and tribulation toward the end of the world, after which will occur the “Triumph of the Immaculate”, the “Reign of Christ the King” and the reunion of all Christians, as they return to the Catholic Faith. Only later will the entire world fall away from Christ (during “The Great Apostasy”) and the personal Antichrist arise and the “Tribulation of the End” occur.
The Great Apostasy which takes place during the reign of the Antichrist cannot take place until after “The Minor Apostasy” and the restoration of the Church that follows it. This “Minor Apostasy” is the most spiritually dangerous period in human history outside “The Great Apostasy” itself. Throughout the course of his pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI frequently seemed to indicate that he believes that there is sufficient evidence to suggest that we are living during this “Minor Apostasy” mentioned in prophecy, which takes place immediately before the restoration of the Church.
PART 16
CAN YOU SEPARATE CHURCH AND STATE?
CAN YOU SEPARATE GOD FROM HUMAN HISTORY?
This article is currently being written. Sections will be posted as they are completed. Please check back later.
You Cannot Divide History from God and the Faith
Some of you may wonder what the heck has spirituality got to do with the history of Catholicism in America! Such a question betrays a frame of mind that compartmentalizes everything and treats of everything separately. It is such a frame of mind that has created the false principle of “Separation of Church and State”. There can be no separation of Church and State—as the Church has always taught—just as there can be no separation of God from the world, and, likewise, there can be no separation of Divine Providence from each and every aspect of human history—for as Jesus Himself said: “Without Me, you can do nothing” (John 15:5) and “Behold the birds of the air, for they neither sow, nor do they reap, nor gather into barns: and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not you of much more value than they? … And if the grass of the field, which is today, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, God doth so clothe: how much more you, O ye of little Faith?” (Matthew 6:26-30).
God’s Intervention in History
The Old Testament is filled with many examples of God’s intervention in history. Some of the chief historical events are: (1) The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha; (2) The Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt; (3) The destruction of the pursuing Egyptian Army in the Red Sea; (4) The collapse of the walls of the city of Jericho; (5) The conquests by the Israelites of those nations who were inhabiting their “Promised Land”; (6) The many battles the Israelites had with their surrounding enemies; (7) The election of Israel’s first king, Saul; (8) The choice of Israel’s second king, David; (9) The prophecy that God would divide the Kingdom of Israel due to idolatry and having forsaken God; (10) The Babylonian Captivities; and many, many more instances.
One such incident of God’s intervention in history is seen the Israelite war with the Assyrians: “And it came to pass that night, that an angel of the Lord came, and slew in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and eighty-five thousand. And when he arose early in the morning, he saw all the bodies of the dead” (4 King 19:35).
The Machabees, who made history by their resistance to corruption and change within the Jewish religion, said before going into battle: “As it shall be the will of God in Heaven so be it done” (1 Machabees 3:60) and Judas Machabeus, before battle, spoke to his army of this intervention of God in history: “Judas said to the men that were with him: ‘Fear ye not their multitude, neither be ye afraid of their assault! Remember in what manner our fathers were saved in the Red Sea, when Pharao pursued them with a great army! And now let us cry to Heaven [in other words be spiritual and pray] and the Lord will have mercy on us, and will remember the covenant of our fathers, and will destroy this army before our face this day!” (1 Machabees 4:8-10). “Machabeus ever trusted with all hope that God would help them. And he exhorted his people not to fear the coming of the nations, but to remember the help they had before received from heaven, and now to hope for victory from the Almighty” (2 Machabees 15:7-8).
God also took part in the Machabean battles by sending angels from Heaven to help them and protect their general, Judas Machabeus: “Antiochus prepared for a second journey into Egypt [and would conquer Jerusalem on his way there]. And it came to pass that through the whole city of Jerusalem for the space of forty days there were seen horsemen running in the air, in gilded raiment, and armed with spears, like bands of soldiers. And horses set in order by ranks, running one against another, with the shakings of shields, and a multitude of men in helmets, with drawn swords, and casting of darts, and glittering of golden armour, and of harnesses of all sorts” (2 Machabees 5:1-4).
Five Angels of the Lord joined Judas Machabaeus in battle against the pagan Greeks: “When they were in the heat of the engagement there appeared to the enemies from heaven five men upon horses, comely with golden bridles, conducting the Jews: Two of whom took [Judas] Machabeus between them, and covered him on every side with their arms, and kept him safe: but cast darts and fireballs against the enemy, so that they fell down, being both confounded with blindness, and filled with trouble. And there were slain twenty thousand five hundred, and six hundred horsemen” (2 Machabees 10:29-31).
Our Lord also confirms God’s intervention in history, in words spoken to St. Peter and Pontius Pilate. To Peter, when he draws his sword and is ready to fight-it-out to rescue Our Lord from arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, Our Lord says those words that echo the historical intervention of the angels to help the Machabees: “Put up again thy sword into its place! For all that take the sword shall perish with the sword! Thinkest thou that I cannot ask my Father, and he will give me presently more than twelve legions of angels? How then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that so it must be done?” (Matthew 26:52-54).
After His arrest, Our Lord tells Pontius Pilate that he only governor of Judea because God made him so to be—”Thou shouldst not have any power against Me, unless it were given thee from above!” (John 19:11).
Our Lord also predicted the historical intervention in punishing the Jews for their rejection and crucifixion of Him, which would be in the form of the Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent to thee, how often would I have gathered thy children as the bird doth her brood under her wings, and thou wouldest not? Behold your house shall be left to you desolate … For the days shall come upon thee, and thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and straiten thee on every side, and beat thee flat to the ground, and thy children who are in thee―and they shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone, because thou hast not known the time of thy visitation!”(Luke 13:34-35; 19:43-44).
God’s Intervention in Modern History (After the Time of Christ)
This intervention of God in history is not something limited to the Old Testament! The New Testament and all the succeeding centuries, even to our day, are filled with clear instances of God’s intervention in history. Scholars may scoff, but the Bible contains scores of prophecies that long ago predicted the rise and fall of certain nations, and it provides a framework for understanding the course of events in our modern world. Historical records show how prophecies have been fulfilled—on schedule and in detail—over the last few centuries. When we honestly examine the big picture of world history, Bible prophecies demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is working out His purpose by bringing to pass the events He foretold in Scripture several thousand years ago.
Christopher Henry Dawson (1889-1970) was a British independent scholar, who wrote many books on cultural history and Christendom. Dawson has been called “the greatest English-speaking Catholic historian of the twentieth century”, writes in one of his books, The Foundation of Christendom, that “The history of Christianity is the history of a divine intervention in history, and we cannot study it apart from the history of culture in the widest sense of the word. For the word of God was first revealed to the people of Israel and became embodied in a law and a society. Secondly, the word of God became Incarnate in a particular person at a particular moment of history, and thirdly, this process of human redemption was carried on in the life of the Church which was the new Israel―the universal community which was the bearer of divine revelation and the organ by which man participated in the new life of the Incarnate Word. Thus Christianity has entered into the stream of human history and the process of human culture. It has changed human life and there is nothing in human thought and action which has not been subjected to its influence. Now there are those who reject this mingling of religion and history, or Christianity and culture, since they believe that religion is concerned with God rather than man, and with the absolute and eternal, rather than the historical and the transitory … But this is not Christianity. It is a religion of Revelation, Incarnation and Communion; a religion which unites the human and the divine and sees in history the manifestation of the divine purpose towards the human race” (Christopher Dawson, The Formation of Christendom).
We see God intervene in the life of the pagan Roman emperor, Constantine the Great, was a pagan monotheist, a devotee of the sun god Sol Invictus, meaning “the unconquered sun”. At that time Constantine was is a dispute with his brother -in-law, Maxentius, over who was to be the Emperor of Rome. Before entering into a battle with Mxentius at the Milvian Bridge, Constantine and his army saw a cross of light appear high in the sky above the sun, with words in Greek that are generally translated into Latin as “In hoc signo vinces” ― meaning, “With this sign conquer.” That night Constantine had a dream in which Christ told him he should use the Sign of the Cross against his enemies. He was so impressed with this vision, that he had the Christian symbol marked on the shields of his soldiers. The result was that at the Milvian Bridge battle, on October 28th, 312, he came away with an overwhelming victory, which he attributed it to the god of the Christians. That is not the end of the story concerning Constantine and the Cross―for Constantine’s mother, Helena later converted to Christianity late in life―as did Constantine―and, shortly before her death, she was providentially allowed to discover in Jerusalem around 327 AD, the true Cross of Christ, on which He had been crucified. She was later canonized and is known as St. Helena (or St. Helen).
Some of you may wonder what the heck has spirituality got to do with the history of Catholicism in America! Such a question betrays a frame of mind that compartmentalizes everything and treats of everything separately. It is such a frame of mind that has created the false principle of “Separation of Church and State”. There can be no separation of Church and State—as the Church has always taught—just as there can be no separation of God from the world, and, likewise, there can be no separation of Divine Providence from each and every aspect of human history—for as Jesus Himself said: “Without Me, you can do nothing” (John 15:5) and “Behold the birds of the air, for they neither sow, nor do they reap, nor gather into barns: and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not you of much more value than they? … And if the grass of the field, which is today, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, God doth so clothe: how much more you, O ye of little Faith?” (Matthew 6:26-30).
God’s Intervention in History
The Old Testament is filled with many examples of God’s intervention in history. Some of the chief historical events are: (1) The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha; (2) The Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt; (3) The destruction of the pursuing Egyptian Army in the Red Sea; (4) The collapse of the walls of the city of Jericho; (5) The conquests by the Israelites of those nations who were inhabiting their “Promised Land”; (6) The many battles the Israelites had with their surrounding enemies; (7) The election of Israel’s first king, Saul; (8) The choice of Israel’s second king, David; (9) The prophecy that God would divide the Kingdom of Israel due to idolatry and having forsaken God; (10) The Babylonian Captivities; and many, many more instances.
One such incident of God’s intervention in history is seen the Israelite war with the Assyrians: “And it came to pass that night, that an angel of the Lord came, and slew in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and eighty-five thousand. And when he arose early in the morning, he saw all the bodies of the dead” (4 King 19:35).
The Machabees, who made history by their resistance to corruption and change within the Jewish religion, said before going into battle: “As it shall be the will of God in Heaven so be it done” (1 Machabees 3:60) and Judas Machabeus, before battle, spoke to his army of this intervention of God in history: “Judas said to the men that were with him: ‘Fear ye not their multitude, neither be ye afraid of their assault! Remember in what manner our fathers were saved in the Red Sea, when Pharao pursued them with a great army! And now let us cry to Heaven [in other words be spiritual and pray] and the Lord will have mercy on us, and will remember the covenant of our fathers, and will destroy this army before our face this day!” (1 Machabees 4:8-10). “Machabeus ever trusted with all hope that God would help them. And he exhorted his people not to fear the coming of the nations, but to remember the help they had before received from heaven, and now to hope for victory from the Almighty” (2 Machabees 15:7-8).
God also took part in the Machabean battles by sending angels from Heaven to help them and protect their general, Judas Machabeus: “Antiochus prepared for a second journey into Egypt [and would conquer Jerusalem on his way there]. And it came to pass that through the whole city of Jerusalem for the space of forty days there were seen horsemen running in the air, in gilded raiment, and armed with spears, like bands of soldiers. And horses set in order by ranks, running one against another, with the shakings of shields, and a multitude of men in helmets, with drawn swords, and casting of darts, and glittering of golden armour, and of harnesses of all sorts” (2 Machabees 5:1-4).
Five Angels of the Lord joined Judas Machabaeus in battle against the pagan Greeks: “When they were in the heat of the engagement there appeared to the enemies from heaven five men upon horses, comely with golden bridles, conducting the Jews: Two of whom took [Judas] Machabeus between them, and covered him on every side with their arms, and kept him safe: but cast darts and fireballs against the enemy, so that they fell down, being both confounded with blindness, and filled with trouble. And there were slain twenty thousand five hundred, and six hundred horsemen” (2 Machabees 10:29-31).
Our Lord also confirms God’s intervention in history, in words spoken to St. Peter and Pontius Pilate. To Peter, when he draws his sword and is ready to fight-it-out to rescue Our Lord from arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, Our Lord says those words that echo the historical intervention of the angels to help the Machabees: “Put up again thy sword into its place! For all that take the sword shall perish with the sword! Thinkest thou that I cannot ask my Father, and he will give me presently more than twelve legions of angels? How then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that so it must be done?” (Matthew 26:52-54).
After His arrest, Our Lord tells Pontius Pilate that he only governor of Judea because God made him so to be—”Thou shouldst not have any power against Me, unless it were given thee from above!” (John 19:11).
Our Lord also predicted the historical intervention in punishing the Jews for their rejection and crucifixion of Him, which would be in the form of the Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent to thee, how often would I have gathered thy children as the bird doth her brood under her wings, and thou wouldest not? Behold your house shall be left to you desolate … For the days shall come upon thee, and thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and straiten thee on every side, and beat thee flat to the ground, and thy children who are in thee―and they shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone, because thou hast not known the time of thy visitation!”(Luke 13:34-35; 19:43-44).
God’s Intervention in Modern History (After the Time of Christ)
This intervention of God in history is not something limited to the Old Testament! The New Testament and all the succeeding centuries, even to our day, are filled with clear instances of God’s intervention in history. Scholars may scoff, but the Bible contains scores of prophecies that long ago predicted the rise and fall of certain nations, and it provides a framework for understanding the course of events in our modern world. Historical records show how prophecies have been fulfilled—on schedule and in detail—over the last few centuries. When we honestly examine the big picture of world history, Bible prophecies demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is working out His purpose by bringing to pass the events He foretold in Scripture several thousand years ago.
Christopher Henry Dawson (1889-1970) was a British independent scholar, who wrote many books on cultural history and Christendom. Dawson has been called “the greatest English-speaking Catholic historian of the twentieth century”, writes in one of his books, The Foundation of Christendom, that “The history of Christianity is the history of a divine intervention in history, and we cannot study it apart from the history of culture in the widest sense of the word. For the word of God was first revealed to the people of Israel and became embodied in a law and a society. Secondly, the word of God became Incarnate in a particular person at a particular moment of history, and thirdly, this process of human redemption was carried on in the life of the Church which was the new Israel―the universal community which was the bearer of divine revelation and the organ by which man participated in the new life of the Incarnate Word. Thus Christianity has entered into the stream of human history and the process of human culture. It has changed human life and there is nothing in human thought and action which has not been subjected to its influence. Now there are those who reject this mingling of religion and history, or Christianity and culture, since they believe that religion is concerned with God rather than man, and with the absolute and eternal, rather than the historical and the transitory … But this is not Christianity. It is a religion of Revelation, Incarnation and Communion; a religion which unites the human and the divine and sees in history the manifestation of the divine purpose towards the human race” (Christopher Dawson, The Formation of Christendom).
We see God intervene in the life of the pagan Roman emperor, Constantine the Great, was a pagan monotheist, a devotee of the sun god Sol Invictus, meaning “the unconquered sun”. At that time Constantine was is a dispute with his brother -in-law, Maxentius, over who was to be the Emperor of Rome. Before entering into a battle with Mxentius at the Milvian Bridge, Constantine and his army saw a cross of light appear high in the sky above the sun, with words in Greek that are generally translated into Latin as “In hoc signo vinces” ― meaning, “With this sign conquer.” That night Constantine had a dream in which Christ told him he should use the Sign of the Cross against his enemies. He was so impressed with this vision, that he had the Christian symbol marked on the shields of his soldiers. The result was that at the Milvian Bridge battle, on October 28th, 312, he came away with an overwhelming victory, which he attributed it to the god of the Christians. That is not the end of the story concerning Constantine and the Cross―for Constantine’s mother, Helena later converted to Christianity late in life―as did Constantine―and, shortly before her death, she was providentially allowed to discover in Jerusalem around 327 AD, the true Cross of Christ, on which He had been crucified. She was later canonized and is known as St. Helena (or St. Helen).