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4 Spiritual Totalitarianism of the Vatican

When dealing with the Congregation of the Holy Office we said that the Catholic Church has not changed in spirit its claim to “uphold only the truth, ” which created the Inquisition. Times have changed, and with them the methods of the Catholic Church. Yet the spirit with which it is to-day impregnated has remained unchanged throughout the centuries, and although it has been rendered powerless by modern society, it is still what it was in the past. The Index, which is still made to function in our present age is the best proof of this.

The task of Propaganda Fide is to spread the Catholic faith from the viewpoint that, as the Catholic religion is the only true religion, all other religions are wrong and should disappear. That the greater portion of mankind, consisting of Protestants, Moslems, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, and pagans, cannot be saved except by embracing Catholicism. Hence it ensues that the field of Propaganda Fide in literally the whole world, its role being to convert all mankind to Catholicism.

The totalitarian State reasons in exactly the same way. Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and Soviet Russia each set up an all-embracing Ministry of Propaganda whose task in the political field, and in dealing with national, racial, or merely ideological matters, was precisely that aimed at in the religious field by the Catholic Church.

Both the Catholic Church and the totalitarian States assumed the right to prevent, according to their judgment, the acceptance of ideas by their people. They also assumed the right forcibly to convert as many people as possible to their own particular brand religion or ideology.

The close resemblance between the dictatorships of the twentieth century and the Catholic Church is not mere coincidence. Both are animated by the same spirit, moved by the same aims, and each in its own sphere aspires to the same goals. It was natural, therefore, that the spiritual Totalitarianism of Fascism and Nazism, even if at times, owing to their very nature and aims, they were bound to clash.

Through the Index and Propaganda Fide the Catholic Church can exert tremendous influence in the religious field throughout the world, and thus affect ethical, cultural, social, and often political issues. Let us, therefore, examine these departments, even if briefly.

What is the Index?

It is a list of books which Catholics must not read. That sounds very simple. But can the enormous consequences of such words escape any thinking person?

The Irish priest, Dr. Timothy Hurley, says: “All books adverse to the Catholic Church are forbidden to be read by Roman Catholics, under pain of mortal sin or even excommunication.”

Pope Pius IV declared it a mortal sin to read a condemned book.

The Laws of the Index are binding for all Catholics, with the sole exception of cardinals, bishops, and other dignitaries whose rank is not below that of bishop.

The Canon Laws leave no doubt in the minds of Catholics as to what kind of books they should not read. There are eleven categories:

1. All books which propound or defend heresy or schism, or which of set purpose attack religion or morality, or endeavor to destroy the foundation of religion or morality.

2. Books which impugn or ridicule Catholic dogma or Catholic worship, the Hierarchy, the clerical or religious state, or which tend to undermine ecclesiastical discipline, or which defend errors rejected by the Apostolic See.

3. Books which declare dueling, suicide, and divorce lawful, or which represent Freemasonry and similar organizations as useful and not dangerous to the Church and to civil society.

4. Books which teach or recommend superstition, fortune-telling, sorcery, spiritism, or other like practices (e. g. Christian Science).

5. Books which professedly treat of, narrate, or teach lewdness and obscenity.

6. Editions of the liturgical books of the Church which do not agree in all details with the authentic editions.

7. Books and booklets which publish new apparitions, revelations, visions, prophecies, miracles, etc, concerning which the canonical regulations have not been observed.

8. All editions of the Bible or parts of it, as well as all Biblical commentaries in any language, which do not show the approbation of the bishop or some higher ecclesiastical authority.

9. Translations which retain the objectional character of the forbidden original.

10. Pictures of Our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, the angels and saints and other servants of God, which deviate from the customs and the direction of the Church.

11. The term “books” includes also newspapers and periodicals which come under the foregoing classes; not, indeed, if they publish one or the other article contrary to faith and morals, but if their chief tendency and purpose is to impugn Catholic doctrine or defend un-Catholic teachings and practices. It is easily seen from this list that the Vatican does not leave the Catholics a very great field in which he can read a book with safety.

The procedure of indexing books is simple. It is often begun by some bishop who wishes a particular book to be banished from his diocese. Sometimes the complaint goes direct to the Supreme Sacred Congregation; sometimes the Congregation itself takes the initiative. The Congregation charges one of its readers with the task of reading the work carefully and noting the “wrong” passages. The book is then sent to other readers, who give their views on it. The votes of the consultors (as the readers are called) are made known to the cardinals, who in turn discuss the book and finally pronounce the sentence. The cardinals usually number from seven to ten, whereas consultors number about thirty.

There are four possible verdicts:

Damnetur (condemned);

Dimittatur (dismissed);

Donec Corrigatur (prohibited until corrected);

Res Dilata (case postponed).

Authors or publishers are not informed before publication, with the exception of Catholic authors, who are given a chance either to withdraw the book from circulation or to make public submission to the sentence of the Holy Office. An author is not permitted to defend his book.

Once a book has been condemned, its name is published in the official part of the Osservatore Romano, the Vatican paper, then in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, and finally reprinted by religious organs throughout the world.

What books under examination is never known, as the secrets of the Holy Office are rigidly guarded. Employees, consultors, and even cardinals or members of the Supreme Sacred Congregations, must never disclose the subjects discussed at the meetings.

Once a book has been prohibited, no Catholic, under penalty of mortal sin, namely of risking eternal damnation, can read or touch the book. For instance, if a prohibited publication is bound with others, the whole volume is automatically forbidden. Even Bibles published by Bible Societies are forbidden. Witness the Rev. Dr. Timothy Hurley: “All translations made in vernacular languages by non-Catholics, and especially those made by Bible Societies, are strictly forbidden.”

To make sure that all Catholics comply with the strict laws of the Index, the Catholic Church never tires of impressing upon the Faithful, through its Press and the clergy, that they must obey the rules of the Church, and it appoints a Church dignitary (who is usually a Jesuit) in almost all Catholic countries and countries where there are large Catholic minorities to direct the reading of the Faithful. It appoints an Executive of the Index in various Catholic countries, such as the Abbe Bethleem in France.

Through these Executives, and through the Hierarchy and the Catholic Press, the Catholic Church prevents the publication of some books, tries to suppress others, and, above all, organizes Catholics to boycott the books and ruin their sales. And this applies not only to books, but also to papers. Catholic clubs, organizations, and individuals become agents in this campaign of boycotting with a zealous perniciousness that would not be believed if it did not happen so often.

This goes on wherever there are Catholics. And, in the eyes of any good Catholic, it is not only right, but the duty of the Catholic Church. Why? We quote the French Executive of the Index, the Abbe Bethleem:

“The Catholic [he declares], in virtue of the powers which it has from its divine founder, has the right and the duty to condemn error and wickedness wherever it finds them; it has also by natural consequences the right to condemn books opposed to the Faith or to Christian morals or which without being wicked are dangerous from this double point of view. There are first of all those books prohibited under penalty of excommunication reserved to the Pope…”

After explaining why the Church has condemned the works of Renan, Zola, etc, the Abbe’ asserts (an assertion fully endorsed by the Catholic Church itself) that “the Congregation of the Index can only condemn a nominal number of condemnable books; for the others, it condemns them by virtue of a general law.”

The Index is divided into three parts. The first section consists of heresiarchs, all of whose books―past, present, and future―are condemned; the second section is composed of writers tending to heresy, magic, immorality, etc.; the third, writers whose doctrines are unwholesome. A few of the names in the first category are: Luther, Melanchthon, Rabelais, Eramus. In the second: Merlin’s Book of Obscure Visions, the Fables of Tolgier the Dane and Arthur of Britain, the Legend of King Arthur, etc. The 1930 edition of the Index contains between 7,000 and 8,000 names. To give some idea of the seriousness of this prohibition, we mention only a few of the names listed, so that the reader may draw his own conclusions of how harmful or how beneficial the Index has been throughout the ages to the enlightenment of mankind. An anonymous author once wrote: “Satire pretends that all the best books may be found by consulting the Roman Index.”

Dante’s De Monarchia (permitted only last century by Leo XIII).
All the works of Leibnitz.
Grotius’ De Jure Belliac Pacis.
The Book of Common Prayer.
Religio Medici, by Thomas Browne.
An American Tragedy, Jurgen, and Mile. de Maupin.
All the works of Gabriel D’Annunzio.
Defoe.
Sterne’s Sentimental Journey.
Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Descartes.
Auguste Comte, his Cours De Philosphie Positive.
All the works of Dumas, Pater and Filius.
Gustave Flaubert and Anatole France.
Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Heine and Kant.
La Fontaine, by Lamartine.
Andrew Lang, his Myth, Ritual, and Religion.
John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding And the Reasonableness of Christianity as Delivered in the Scriptures.
John Stuart Mill’s Principles of Political Economy and On Liberty.
All the works of Maurice Maeterlinck.
Pascal.
Thirty-eight of Volataire’s works.
Paine’s The Rights of Man.

Rousseau’s Social Contract, Lettres Ecrites de la Montagne, Julie, ou la Nouvelle Heloise, etc.
Renan, including his Vie de Jesus. George Sand, Henry Stendahl, Eugene Sue, Thomas White, Emile Zola, Spinoza, Swedenborg, Bernard de Mandeville, Taine, Malebranche, Bergson, Lord Acton, Bossuet, Bacon, Hobbes, Samuel Richardson, Doellinger, Addison, Goldsmith, Victor Hugo, etc.

At one time there was a movement to put the Encyclopedia Britannica on the Index. It is noteworthy for English and American readers that up to the present there are more than 5,000 books in English which are either entirely condemned or forbidden until corrected.

The German Index authority, Hilgers, defending the Index states:

“With the misuse of the printing press for the distribution of pernicious writing, the regulations of the Catholic Church for the protection of the Faithful enters of necessity upon a new period. It is certainly the case that the evil influence of a badly conducted printing press constitutes to-day the greatest danger to society. The new flood is drawn from three main sources. Theism and unbelief arise from the regions of natural science, of philosophy, and of Protestant theology. Theism is the assured result of what is called “scientific liberty.” Anarchism and nihilism, religious as well as political, may be described as the second source from which pours out a countless stream of Socialistic writings. In substance this is nothing other than a popularized philosophy of liberalism.”

Hilgers goes on to say that the third source is “unwholesome romances, ” and ends significantly:

“If the community is to be protected from demoralization, the political authorities must unite with the ecclesiastical in securing for such utterances some wise and safe control.”

Did not the Nazis repeat almost the same argument when they began to burn books all over Germany, after the accession to power of Hitler? And in Franco’s Spain, were not such precepts for many years carried out to the letter?

Surely one can say that the Vatican to-day cannot pretend to uphold its claim to the right of banishing books? But the Vatican has not repudiated its peculiar claims. On the contrary, the following words were spoken in 1930 by a famous Secretary of State, Cardinal Merry del Val:

“The evil press is more perilous than the sword. St. Paul set the example for censorship: he caused evil books to be burned (Acts xix, 19). St. Peter’s successors (e. g. the Popes) have always followed the example; nor could they have done otherwise, for their Church, infallible mistress and sure guide of the Faithful, is bound in conscience to keep the press pure…”

And here are even more significant words: “Those who wish to feed the Holy Scriptures to people without any safeguards are also upholders of free thinking, than which there is nothing more absurd or harmful… Only those infected by that moral pestilence known as liberalism can see in a check placed on unlawful power and profligacy a wound inflicted on freedom.”

The Catholic Church’s contention in defending the Index is that it makes a weapon with which to defend truth. But truth might have more than one meaning. Not so to Catholics:

“Truth is one and absolute; the Catholic Church and she only has all the truth of religion. All religions whatsoever have varying amounts of truth in them, but the Catholic Church alone has all (Catholic Encyclopedia).

That such a claim should sound absurd to any fair-minded individual is evident. It would be unacceptable even if it were restricted to the religious sphere. But it is not; for the Catholic Church, indirectly and often directly, tries to impose its assertions on fields other than the religious. We give one famous and typical instance, the case of Galileo.

For years the scientific theory that the earth moved upon its axis and around the sun had stirred the world. The most powerful and bitter opponent to this discovery was the Catholic Church. It intimated that there was no truth whatsoever in such an assertion, and finally, in March 1616, the Congregation of the Index, under direct and personal instruction of the Pope himself, decreed the doctrine of the double motion of the earth upon its axis and about the sun false and contrary to the Scriptures.

Notwithstanding this condemnation, Galileo published his Dialogo in 1632. The following year it was Indexed with a condemnation.

Galileo had to recant his doctrine on his knees, saying that the doctrine of the motion of the earth was false. The Catholic Church, however, was not content with this. It promulgated a solemn formula of condemnation of all books―already written and yet to be written in the centuries to come―that propagated similar scientific doctrines. These are the actual words:

“Libri omnes docentes mobilitatem terrae et immobilitatem solis (All books forbidden which maintain that the earth moves and the sun does not).

Thus, literally for centuries, all the scientific works dealing with this subject and all books on astronomy by such scientific giants as Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo―to mention only a few―were entirely forbidden, under pain of damnation for all eternity in the next world and of fine and imprisonment in this. It was only as late as 1822 that the Catholic Church permitted Catholics to read books on astronomy, the motion of the earth, etc.

We have dealt at some length on the spirit which inspired the Index and have taken Galileo’s case as an instance, not in order to disparage the Catholic Church, but to show its particular claims, interpretations, and interventions in religious and other fields which so closely affect mankind in its striving towards spiritual and physical progress. The Catholic Church has not yet discarded that spirit and its extraordinary claims. On the contrary, it upholds them more than ever. Its persistent condemnation of divorce, contraceptives, co-education, and the social systems with which man is experimenting― first Secularism, then Liberalism and Modernism and now democracy, Socialism, Communism―shows that it does not intend to adapt itself to the times. As it is continuously intervening in fields other than the religious, it should not blame those who do not share its views for criticizing and trying to fight its claims. Modern society has the right to assert its own claims, regardless of the religious authority of the Catholic Church or of any other Church.

Will the Catholic Church one day regret the reactionary spirit it has shown towards the moral, social, political, and economic ideas and systems with which mankind tries to build a happier world? Will future generations, looking back to our times and seeing the Catholic Church’s fanatical hostility to modern society and Socialism, accuse it as we now, looking back to the times of Galileo, are able to accuse it? Only the Catholic Church could tell.

In contrast to the reactionary and―one may rightly use the word―tyrannical spirit which moves the Index and the Holy Office, another characteristic aspect of Catholicism deserves attention. We refer to the indefatigable activities which keep the Catholic Church in order, which erect walls against any spirit other than its own, which spread far and wide in its own aim of converting to its faith the whole human race.

This work is carried out by another Congregation, which has its headquarters in the Vatican. It is the oldest, most powerful and most colossal Ministry of Information or Propaganda Bureau in existence, in comparison with which all other propaganda organizations―including those of the various totalitarian countries―seems child’s play,. This Congregation is called Propaganda Fide (for the propagation of the Faith), and besides being one of the most important Congregations of the Catholic Church, it is also an important department of the Vatican State, which uses it to keep in touch with the most remote parts of the world.

The Congregation is ruled by a cardinal, whose power is so great that he is popularly called “the Red Pope.” It was established in 1622 by Gregory XV, with the set and open purpose of converting the whole world to Catholicism. Its activities are not confined to countries professing non- Christian religions, but are spread to Protestant, heretic, and schismatic lands―for example, the Balkan States.

It has divided the whole world into numerous “spiritual provinces, ” in which it directs its activities. It has jurisdiction over hundreds of them organized into districts, prefectures, and vicariates. The Congregation controls hundreds of colleges, seminaries, and similar organizations throughout the world. In Rome alone there are several, the chief being the Urban College for training missionaries of all races, which is attached to the Propaganda Fide. Until not long ago (1908) Great Britain, the Netherlands, Canada, the United States of America, and other Protestant countries came under its jurisdiction. Now, however, such countries have their own national hierarchies, which depend directly on the Pope.

Attached to this Congregation is the Association for the Propagation of the Faith, which is a world-wide society of the Faithful to further the evangelization of the world by united prayer and the collection of alms for distribution to the missions. Its headquarters are in Rome, and it is under the direction of the Congregation De Propaganda Fide. The motto of the Propaganda Fide and of the whole Catholic Church is that “no land is fully Christian. Catholics must dream and plan and act in terms of the entire globe.” To carry out this plan it has a vast organization of colleges of all nationalities in Christian lands, be they Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox, and in pagan countries where it builds up a formidable machinery of institutions of all kinds to convert non-Christians to Catholicism.

The Vatican has never been more determined to reach its world-wide goal than it is today. It began the work to that end long ago, it is true, but in modern times it has renewed its efforts and reorganized its machinery to spread Catholicism in the Western as well as the other parts of the world. In Rome alone the following principal national colleges are under the direct control of the Vatican, which will give some idea of the vastness of its activities:

SEMINARIES FOR TRAINING CLERGY OF VARIOUS COUNTRIES

(WITH YEAR OF THEIR FOUNDATION)

Besides others created in recent years for training Chinese, Arabs, Indians, Negroes, and so on.

In 1917 the Eastern Churches were removed from its jurisdiction.

The Vatican devotes its particular attention to the various orthodox or schismatic countries, hoping to be able to unite them on en bloc in Rome. For this purpose it created, in 1917, a special department at the Vatican, as we have already seen, detached from Propaganda Fide. It has now become two departmental units, but their aim is the same.

It is the Catholic Church’s policy to foster national and racial rites, and it has therefore created many institutions for that purpose. In Rome alone there are many institutions for that purpose. In Rome alone there are the following seminaries, whose task is to prepare Roman Catholic clergy in the various Oriental rites:

In addition to these there are the special colleges of numerous religious Orders.

But while striving to maintain and further Catholicism in Catholic and non- Christian lands, its great task is to bring pagan lands under its authority. For centuries it has established missions all over the world. Its missionaries were at first nearby all Europeans, but later included Americans, and its policy now is to train native clergy. In this direction it has made impressive strides, especially during the last twenty years, and has already created a native hierarchy in several non-Christian countries. In 1925 its first colored bishop, namely Monsignor Roche of India, was consecrated in a solemn religious ceremony in Rome, followed, in 1927, by the first seven Chinese bishops and subsequently by Japanese and other races.

In more than one country it has become powerful very quickly. In Madagascar, for instance, it has enrolled over 650,000 members, which means that already it has authority over one-sixth of the native population. In China, in the one year of 1930, it converted to Catholicism more than 50,000 Chinese.

The total figure of Catholic converts all over the world is more than 500,000 a year.

About 1930, the Propaganda Fide directed over 11,000 preachers in missions, 3,000 of whom were native-born; 15,000 friars, 600 of whom were native-born; and 30,000 nuns, of whom 11,000 were native-born. At this period these missionary enterprises were backed by more than 30,000,000 dollars. Since then this figure has been greatly increased. (In the same period the Protestant missionaries were backed by over 60,000,000 dollars.) The Americas, headed by the United States of America, give the largest sum of money. In comparison with their European colleagues the American missionaries are more popular with the native populations and thus make more converts. They have specialized in the Far East, especially China. There has therefore been a tendency lately for the Catholic Church to favor American missionary enterprises instead of the Belgian, French, and German.

Catholic missionary activities have been steadily on the increase, and by 1945 they covered 400 seminaries (with a total of 16,000 native students preparing for the priesthood), 22,000 priests, 9,000 brothers, 53,000 sisters, 98,000 native catechists, 33,000 native baptizers, 76,000 schools (with a total of 5,000,000 pupils), 150,000 children in 2,000 missionary orphanages, 77,000 churches and chapels, 1,000 hospitals (with 75,000 beds), 3,000 dispensaries annually attending to 30,000,000 people, and hundreds of leprosaria and institutes for the aged.

Despite the war, the Sacred Congregation, through the establishment of new areas, had raised number of ecclesiastical jurisdictions dependent upon it to 560. Seventeen jurisdictions of the Latin Rite are dependent upon the Sacred Congregation for the Oriental Church.

In missionary lands alone the Catholic Church in 1945 had more than 25,000,000 native Catholics under the authority of Rome. To like these scattered millions and, above all, to keep them in close touch with the Vatican, the Propaganda Fide controls literally thousands of small and large newspapers, magazines, leaflets, etc. in hundreds of languages. To supply them with news a special News Agency has been created, whose task is to gather and diffuse news of missionary work throughout the world. It is called the “Fides” Agency.

In 1925 the Pope organized the great Missionary Exhibition ever held in Rome. It became a permanent feature of the Vatican and was given tremendous publicity.

In February 1926 Pope Pius XI, in the Encyclical Rerum Ecclesiae, traced the lines that must be followed, set out the vast world still to be conquered―for the Catholic Church, as we have already said, wants nothing less than the whole planet. It is a scheme which it is determined to realize and for which it accepts no compromise, having no regard either for other religions or for other Christian denominations. To illustrate this attitude with a slight but typical example it is sufficient to mention the occasion when the British Government asked the various denominations doing missionary work in Africa to confine their activities to certain separate areas, in order to avoid friction. While the Protestant denominations agreed, only the Catholic Church refused, saying it could not accept no part of Africa, however large, her purpose being to convert the whole Continent to Catholicism.

Such is the spirit which even in the twentieth century moves the Catholic missions throughout the world. The Catholic Church is out to conquer, not only countries or even continents, but the whole planet.