CHAPTER VI. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE CORPORATIVE STATE

A FEW YEARS AGO, Americans considered it incredible that the Catholic Church could be officially in favor of the Fascist corporative state; much less that it could have been in any way responsible for the origin and spread of Corporatism. They refused to believe that the vaunted encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, of Pope Pius XI, was an endorsement of the Nazi-Fascist objective to discredit and destroy the structure of the liberal democratic state, and to set up, in its stead, authoritarian, hierarchical regimes. Yet, this encyclical embodied the whole aim of the Catholic Church for half a century before the rise of Fascism, namely, the total reconstruction of the then existing social order on Catholic- Fascist lines. The real title of this encyclical is: “On the Reconstruction of the Social Order,” and its plan is actually the ecclesiastical counterpart of the Fascist military onslaught against liberalism and democracy.

Americans heard Father Coughlin preach this for eight years, but merely shrugged their shoulders and took it for granted that his rantings were those of a crackpot and had nothing to do with the true aims and activities of the Catholic Church. It can now be seen that this plan of the Vatican, though camouflaged in terms to quiet the fears of Americans, was being carried forward officially by the Catholic Church in the United States as vigorously as in European countries.

In our first issue of The Converted Catholic Magazine,1 attention was directed to the plan as published under the auspices of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, and signed by 131 Catholic prelates and noted laymen. It advocated a change in the United States’ Constitution to permit the enactment of the recommendations of Pope Pius XI into American law. It praised the NRA (National Recovery Administration, an agency created by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 after congress passed the National Industrial Recovery Act), which is now admitted as having been patterned on Fascist
Corporative lines,2 and which was abolished by unanimous opinion of the U. S. Supreme Court as destructive of American democracy. In spite of this, however, this plan of the Catholic Church says: “Had the NRA been permitted to continue, it could readily have developed into the kind of industrial order recommended by the Holy Father.”

1 Jan., 1940. p. 6.
2 Cf. John T. Flynn, in the N. Y. World-Telegram, July 12, 1940, where he states that, by the NRA, President Roosevelt, unwittingly, “attempted to introduce this feature of Fascism into our country”.
3 Feb. 8, 1940. The N.C.W.C. called it “the most important utterance made by the Catholic hierarchy since the bishops’ program of reconstruction of 1919”.
4 Cf. Richmond Times Dispatch, Feb. 9, 1940.

So cautiously had this plan been advanced in the United States, that it was not until the Roman Catholic hierarchy, in 1940, issued its pronouncement on “The Church and the Social Order”3 that the press could safely headline the news that “The Catholic Hierarchy Advocates Corporative System for the U. S.”4 Strange to say, there was then no public outcry. And even now, when patriotic Americans are turning the searchlight of suspicion on every sign of political and economic subversion, the greatest Trojan Horse of them all continues to tower unmolested in the very shadow of their searchlights. In newspaper offices, this Trojan Horse of Jesuit Catholicism is still regarded as the feared and untouchable “sacred cow.”

The misconception that the corporative system is purely an economic matter, has blinded the American press and public to the real aim behind Catholicism’s advocacy of it. Corporatism is indeed the economic ingredient of Fascism. But it is also the essential element of Fascism, since the corporatives make a parliament or congress unnecessary. For these corporatives are the means through which the “Leader” exercises his dictatorial will. It was precisely because the Supreme Court judged that, by the NRA, Congress had abdicated its powers and was thus paving the way for Fascism, that it took vigorous action against it. The entire ideology of Fascism and Nazism—in social, economic, educational, religious and military’ matters—is contained in the corporative system. Corporatism is Fascism.

The Roman Catholic bishops, though cautiously, have spoken nonetheless as plainly in favor of Nazi-Fascist ideology as the Catholic hierarchies of Italy, Spain and Germany. Like Hitler and Coughlin, they start from a standpoint of “positive Christianity,” and call for “a comprehensive program for restoring Christ to His true and proper place in human society,” for “a reform of morals and a profound renewal of the Christian spirit which must precede the social reconstruction.” Implicit in this is the customary anti- Semitic and Fascist condemnation of the “Masonic-Judaic plutodemocracies” as resting upon an immoral, un-Christian foundation.

It was in this same way that the Roman Catholic bishops of Italy, Spain and Germany supported the rise of Fascism and Nazism in their respective countries. In their pastoral letter from Fulda on August 30, 1936, the Catholic hierarchy of Germany solemnly declared to their people:

“There is no need to speak at length of the task which our people and our country are called upon to undertake. May our Fuehrer, with the help of God, succeed in this extraordinary difficult work . . . What we desire is that belief in God, as taught by Christianity, will not be overcome, but that it be universally recognized that this faith constitutes the only sure foundation upon which can be built the powerful and victorious bulwark destined to hold back the forces of Bolshevism…”

All doubts as to the whole-hearted support of Hitler’s program from the beginning by the Catholic hierarchy in Germany are cleared up by a perusal of the discourses and writings of Bishop Aloysius Hudal, Rector of the Collegio Teutonico in Rome and one of the closet consultors of the Holy See on German and Austrian affairs. In his book, The Fundamentals of National Socialism, he repeats the contents of many of his allocutions to the German colony in Rome. The following is a sample:

“Let us see, for example, how interesting are some of the objectives of the National Socialist program: popular unity as opposed to everything that can disrupt; language as the nation’s spiritual bond; consciousness of Germany’s historical destiny; the sentiment of race consciousness; the attempt to solve the Jewish question; assurance of pure German breeding; destruction of parties; culture of the family, and the ideal of the large family considered as a matter of honor and national pride; the militarization of the nation . . . ; a new system of instruction and education; the corporative idea; the aristocratic principle of government by a Leader. . . . Above all, the German people are indebted to this spiritual movement for the slow destruction of the idealogy of the Rights of Man, upon which the edifice of Weimar was founded, as well as for destruction of faith in formal juridical constitutions, of the dialectics of parliamentary procedures . . . and of democracy”.

In order to prove the identity of interests between Catholicism and Nazi Socialism, Bishop Hudal5 quotes from the Catholic German historian, Joseph Lortz of Minister, who, in his work, History of the Churches,6 shows that Catholicism and Nazi-Socialism agree on the following points:

“1. Both are mortal enemies of Bolshevism, Liberalism, and Relativism, that is to say, of the three deadly maladies from which our age is suffering, and which fiercely attack the work of the Church. The essential ideas of Nazi Socialism, together with the principle of liberty bound to authority, correspond exactly to the ideas that Popes Gregory and Pius IX endeavored to impose upon the 19th century, in face of a world which called itself progressive, and which received their teachings with sarcastic smiles. To this is added their common fight against Freemasonry.

“2. Their common fight against the Godless movement; against public immorality; against the stupid doctrine of equality, which is destructive of life; their fight for a rational and fertile structure of human society as desired by God, and for the corporative structure of the state as proposed by Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI (Quadragesima Anno); their common fight against a mode of life that is unnatural and deprived of all healthy traditions as encountered in great modern cities and workmen’s localities.

“3. By its principle of authority and government by a Leader, a principle upon which all national life rests, National Socialism combines the German and the Catholic attitude towards human life.

“4. Most important of all: National Socialism is a confession of faith; opposing, as it does, unbelief and destructive doubt it has convinced all classes of society that the outlook of the believer is not, as liberalism has taught, an attitude of inferiority, but one that carries man towards the total accomplishment of his destiny. And although the Catholic Church should never identify itself with any movement, it cannot afford to mists the opportunity of gratefully accepting the help of this powerful ally in the fight which she is carrying on against atheistic rationalism.”

This Catholic historian calls attention to the fact which American observers have failed to note, that Nazi-Fascism is but the outcome of events in which the Catholic Church has played a decisive role for centuries. He says that National Socialism is the “fulfilment of destiny,” and goes on to say:

5 Op cit p. 236 et seq.
6 p. 291 et seq.

“It was born originally out of the most profound tendencies of the epoch, of which it is the crowning act. Undoubtedly, we now have the right to speak of an essential transformation, of the birth of a veritable new era, the accomplishments of which will remain, A new epoch has opened which will serve religion and the Church, and which will be extraordinarily well armed to carry on the fight against atheism.”7

This, and much more, is quoted by Bishop Hudal to prove the fundamental identity of the aims and purposes of Catholicism and Nazi-Socialism. The Catholic bishops in the United States cannot afford to be as frank in supporting Nazi-Fascist ideology in this country. They cannot but admit, however, that their fellow-bishops in Nazi-Fascist countries have been correct in their analysis of the benefits which this anti-liberal and anti-democratic ideology will bring to the organization of Roman Catholicism.

7 Franz von Papen, a papal Knight and Hitler’s most successful henchman, declared in Der Volkischer Beobachter of January 14, 1934: “The Third Reich is the first power which not only recognizes, but which puts into practice the high principles of the Papacy.”

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