CHAPTER X. NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND CATHOLIC ACTION

CATHOLIC ACTION—the crusade for Jesuit-Catholic Reform— has the following characteristics:

1. Its direction, as laid down in Pope Pius XI’s Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, is explicitly entrusted to the Society of Jesus.

2. Its aims are: the extermination of the hated liberal spirit of the 19th century; the formation of a world crusade against socialism and communism; the success of the counter-Reformation.

3. The means to obtain these ends are: the annihilation of the old Catholic political parties, which became impregnated with the “democratic ideology, and the purging of the secular clergy, the religious orders and the laity in so far as they persist in holding to non-Jesuit opinions in matters of ecclesiastical policy.

4. The most suitable political regime to assure the success of this crusade for Catholic reconstruction is the hierarchical, authoritarian form of the Fascist state or of Nazi Socialism.

The secular clergy of the Catholic Church in Germany and other European countries have always secretly fostered a democratic tradition, and for many years considered it their principal task to live in peace with Protestantism and the liberal institutions of the modern world. For this reason they constituted the chief obstacle in the way of the Catholic Reconstruction Movement initiated by the late Pope Pius XL They were not friendly to the idea of the corporate state, to the plan of the new crusade, nor to the Vatican’s aim to set up complete papal absolutism. Unlike the Irish-dominated clergy in America, the Catholic clergy of France and of Germany and other European countries have never fully identified the pope himself with the seat of power in Rome. They acquiesced in taking their religion from Rome but not their politics, nor in accepting the Vatican’s direction of extra-spiritual matters in their respective countries.

In modern times, the European Catholic clergy veered increasingly to the idea that it was advisable to encourage Christian tolerance and friendly relations with all religious sects, even with those who belonged to no Church. Many were persuaded that the day would come when all the Christian Churches could be united on a basis of a universal Evangelical reform within the Catholic-Church. This liberal reform would be aimed at the overthrow of the “jurisdictional” papacy, with its unscriptural, political Roman Curia and its claims to ecclesiastical absolutism; it would be a reform against papal imperialism, against Jesuit-fascist discipline and overlordship. It would aim to set up an “Evangelical” Papacy which, freed of political ambitions, would act as a center of Evangelical unity for all Churches of Christendom. This would indeed be true Catholic reform—a second Reformation, the setting up of Evangelical Catholicism. It would mean the purging of medieval accretions of doctrine and liturgy and. of course, the complete banishment again of the Jesuits from the Church and the world, as was accomplished by Pope Clement XIV in 1773.

All such aims and plans for a liberal, Evangelical reform, however, fell within the explicit condemnations of religious tolerance and the liberal, democratic idea by Jesuit-controlled popes during the past 150 years. The late General of the Jesuits, Wernz, in his treatise on Canon Law,1 says:

“As concerns the relations of the Catholic Church with other religious associations, there is no doubt that all religious associations of unbelievers and all the Christian sects are regarded by the Catholic Church as entirely illegitimate and devoid of all right of existence. These organizations are formally rebels against the Church. As a consequence, he is in grave error who believes that the different religious sects, such as, for example, the Anglicans, the Lutherans, the Orthodox Catholics, constitute legitimate parts of a universal Church of Christ, and that they are in some way collateral branches of the Catholic Church, or sister Churches.”

Against this hope for true Catholic, reform that would have brought about a tolerant, Evangelical Catholic Christian Church, the Jesuits swept the field for an absolutely totalitarian set-up in Catholicism to go hand-in-hand with the Nazi-Fascist regime in the secular order. On their side they had Hitler himself who, as far as condemnation of religious tolerance is concerned, has always shown himself to be a better Catholic than the ordinary European priest and many bishops. In Mein Kampf he upholds and approves of the dogmatic intolerance of the Vatican party in the Catholic Church; like the Jesuits he regards religious tolerance as an effective instrument for the establishment and support of the liberal aims of the Jews and Freemasons;2 his chief cause of complaint against the clergy of the Center Party in Germany was that they had allowed themselves to become convinced of the idea of tolerance, and that they had made alliances with these deadly enemies of the Christian religion; he holds that his principal task is the combatting of this deplorable situation from which religion has suffered so much.3 He also condemns Protestantism for persisting in its tolerant attitude towards Judaism; he adds, however, that

“the believing Protestant who belongs to National Socialism could exist side by side with the fervent Catholic without his religious convictions being in any way affected thereby”.4

This yielding of Catholics to the liberal tendencies of religious tolerance was regarded by the Jesuits as the “Protestantizing” of Catholicism; to correct this they deemed that drastic, punitive measures were imperative. The late Jesuit Cardinal Billot expresses true Jesuit contempt for this yielding of the secular clergy to liberalizing tendencies, and also advocates the severity that should be meted out to them, when he speaks of

“the poor little parish priests who fill the greater part of our religious magazines and periodicals with their speeches, seeking thereby to create a new apologetic to take the place of the miracles which the 20th century no longer understands. There are but two replies to make to this: the first is the whip . . .” 5

This is in perfect keeping with Mussolini’s symbol of the fasces or bundle of rods, such as he and his Nazi partner have so ruthlessly employed to scourge Europe of every vestige of liberty and tolerance. Thus, Hitler’s program of Catholic “repression” is but the carrying out of the Jesuit punitive measures, and a part of the plan for Catholic reform against those members of the Catholic clergy in all countries who have opposed Jesuit hegemony over Catholic affairs.6 Catholic Action, like Nazi-Fascism, ostensibly started out as a crusade against Godless communism which, the Jesuits say, is but the radical application of the Protestant principle of the separation of Church and State. They hold that communism is the extreme of Protestantism predicted by the Jesuits since their founding by Ignatius Loyola to fight the Reformation of Martin Luther, and is the result of the wrong principle that the internal life of the individual is the only place where he should be allowed to seek satisfaction for his religious needs. The Jesuits therefore launched their new offensive principally against Soviet Russia, the first country since the Wars of Religion that seriously threatened to undermine their work of counter-Reformation. They have found it more menacing to their aims than Protestant England was in the 16th and 17th centuries. By completely separating the State from the influence of all forms of religion, the communists have tried to make religion a purely private matter and by this means to effect the complete liberation of the individual and the conduct of civil affairs from all ecclesiastical influences. Because of this, the Jesuits identify Protestantism and democracy with socialism and communism and seek to destroy them together with all movements to the left of Fascism and Nazism.

1 Cf. his Jus Decretalium. Vol. 1. p. 13.
2 German edition, p. 345.
3 Ib,, p. 294.
4 Ib., p. 632.
5 Die erste ist die Peitsche . . .” in Hugo Koch’s Katholizismus und Jesuitismus. p. 53.
6 The German bishops, the Catholic Popular Association and the Center Party opposed the re-entry of the Jesuits into Germany in 1910. Because of this the Jesuits regarded the German bishops as “recalcitrants”; cf. Hoensbroech, The Jesuit Order, p. 248.

Catholic Action, similar to Nazi-Fascism, will not be content with any half-hearted reform in Catholicism. Just as a brutal war campaign against democratic nations has been deemed necessary in Nazi-Fascist policy, so a brutal cleansing within the church, even at the risk of some loss to Catholicism as a whole, is a necessary part of the Jesuit program of Catholic Reconstruction. Gonzague de Reynold, one of the most ardent zealots of the movement, whom we have already quoted in these pages, frankly admits that the wiping out of these Protestant tendencies (liberalism and socialism) constitutes the first problem of religion, namely, of Roman Catholicism, and that the new “Christian regime” which will come about as a result of this desired Catholic Reconstruction of the social order, will have to be Fascist, since, as he says, “Fascism has been the only successful attempt to create a new regime.”7 The Italian socialist, L. Segni,8 confirms this when he states that

“Fascism is an epiphenomenon in keeping with the evolution of the Catholic Church as directed by the tactics of the Jesuits.”

7 Cf. L’Europe Tragique, p. 93.
8 In his book, L’Esprit du Fascisme, p. 15 et seq.

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