|
|
|
 |
||
| A Journal of Catholic News and Views |  |
22 Mar 2004 |
A Champion of the Americanist Spirit
by Thomas A. Droleskey
 |
Although there are some traditional Catholics who downplay the importance of the heresy of Americanism as one of the manifestations of the Modernist spirit that has been responsible for the building of the "great facade" that has devastated the Church in the past forty years, I will go to my grave trying to help people to accept the simple fact that the false foundations of the United States of America are inimical to the good of the Catholic Faith. I believe that the antithetical nature of the American founding to the Social Reign of Christ the King is self-evident, and that all that we are witnessing culturally at present in this country is nothing other than the inherent degeneracy of false ideas.
Some American bishops have attempted over the course of this nation's history to contend that the American founding is perfectly compatible with the Faith, especially when one considers the fact that Catholics were able to worship freely here at a time when there was still active persecution of Catholics in England and Ireland. An uncritical acceptance of the entirety of the American constitutional framework, which rejects the primacy of the Social Reign of Christ the King as it was exercised by Holy Mother Church in the Middle Ages, includes an acceptance of religious pluralism as an almost unchangeable aspect of the modern State. A blithe acceptance of religious pluralism, enshrined as it is in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, leads ultimately to the triumph of religious indifferentism, which itself leads to atheism as the de facto bottom line for social peace. American prelates were thus not concerned about converting the nation to the Social Reign of Christ the King.
Although many thousands upon thousands of individual converts were won to the Faith in the nineteenth century, many Catholics, despite the efforts of some courageous bishops and the episcopal councils held in Baltimore in the nineteenth century, did not see it as their duty to even plant the seeds for the Catholicization of the nation. To do so would be to violate the very principles of religious pluralism institutionalized in the Constitution. Many Catholics were content to compete in the "marketplace of ideas" with other faiths, something that caused the great Orestes Brownson himself, who had been sanguine about the compatibility of the founding to the Faith in the middle phase of career, to conclude near the end of his life that Catholics faced the danger of being coopted by a culture that was fundamentally hostile to the Deposit of Faith that Our Lord has entrusted to the true Church.
Pope Leo XIII saw this danger with special clarity. He noted the following in his Apostolical Letter to James Cardinal Gibbons, the long-time Americanist Archbishop of Baltimore, Maryland, Testem Benevolentiae, issued on January 22, 1899:
"But in the manner of which we are now speaking, Beloved Son, the project involves a greater danger and is more hostile to Catholic doctrine and discipline, inasmuch as the followers of these novelties judge that a certain liberty ought to be introduced into the Church, so that, limiting the exercise and vigilance of its powers, each one of the faithful may act more freely in pursuance of his own natural abilities. They affirm, namely, that this is called for in order to imitate that liberty which, though quite recently introduced, is now the law and the foundation of almost every civil community. On that point, We have spoken very much at length in the Letter written to al the bishops about the constitutions of States; where We have also shown the difference between the Church, which is of divine right, and all other associations which subsist by the free will of men."
Pope Leo XIII understood that Catholics in the United States were in a far more dangerous situation than had faced their predecessors in the past. The Roman Emperors and their factotums attacked the Church head on. Luther and Calvin just frankly rejected Catholicism. King Henry VIII and his daughter Queen Elizabeth I attacked the Church violently, as did the French Revolutionaries. The Church in the United States, Pope Leo understood, was being eaten away in an indirect, insidious manner by the cultural milieu in which she found herself. For the first time in the history of the Church, the Holy Father saw so prophetically, Catholics had found themselves in a hostile cultural environment which they did not seek to convert but were in the process of being converted by. He knew that Catholics in the United States would want over the course of time to have the Church adopt the schema of "liberty" and "egalitarianism" that was part and parcel of American civil life. It was impossible to retard the influence of these false ideas into the Church as long as Catholics, starting with most of their bishops and priests, that they did not have the obligation to plant the seeds for the conversion of the nation.
Furthermore, Pope Leo XIII knew that the rush of partisan politics was diverting the attention of Catholics from the business of Catholicizing their nation. As I have noted on many occasions, Catholic immigrants and their successors developed a slavish attachment to the Democratic Party at a time when the Republican Party was in the hands of Freemasons and other assorted nativist anti-Catholics. Believing that it was important to achieve material and economic success through the political process, Catholics plunged headlong into the clubhouses of the Democratic Party, which is why so many Catholics are reflexively Democratic today. This slavish attachment to the Democratic Party entrapped many members of the hierarchy as well, causing them to take all leave of the sensus fidei in order to demonstrate unswerving fidelity to the Democratic Party and its policies.
This unswerving fealty to the Democratic Party blinded many American bishops during the course of this nation's history. No matter Woodrow Wilson's diffidence in the wake of the slaughter of Catholics in the second decade of the Twentieth Century by the Masons who controlled Mexico, James Cardinal Gibbons genuflected when Wilson desired to seek the support of the American bishops for this country's entrance in the Great War, World War I, in 1917. Gibbons acquiesced before a thorough-going Catholic-hater, Wilson, who had such contempt for Gibbons' priesthood and his ranking as a Prince of the Church that he called him "Mister Gibbons." Gibbons agreed to create an entire bureaucratic apparatus, the National Catholic War Council, to support the war effort. The original NCWC underwent a name change a few years after the war, becoming the National Catholic Welfare Conference, which was re-named the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in 1966. It is interesting that the American bishops' apparatus has been wedded to the policies of leftist, anti-Catholic Democrats from its inception.
This slavish attachment on the part of the American hierarchy to the Democratic Party was such that many bishops embraced Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal with unbounded enthusiasm. Father Charles Coughlin, who was at first supportive of Roosevelt, came to realize that the New Deal was violating the natural law principles of subsidiarity that had been enunciated by Pope Pius XI in his 1931 encyclical letter, Quadregesimo Anno. He used his very popular radio program as a forum to denounce Roosevelt and those who supported him, not afraid to name names and to list those groups who had much to profit from the policies of the New Deal. The bishops silenced him, ostensibly on the totally spurious grounds of anti-Semitism. The fact that he had dared to criticize the bishops' political god, Roosevelt, was no small factor in his being silenced. Roosevelt hated dissent, going so far as to use the Internal Revenue Service to haunt his enemies, including former Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, whom the IRS, at Roosevelt's instigation, haunted to his grave. It is certainly within the realm of possibility that Roosevelt picked up the telephone and demanded of Patrick Cardinal Hayes, Archbishop of New York, or Michael Cardinal Curley, the Archbishop of Baltimore, the silencing of Coughlin. Then again, it's possible the bishops did this all on their own, eager to serve as acolytes for the thirty-third degree Mason named Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The American bishops also supported Roosevelt when he proposed to give direct aid to Joseph Stalin and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics following Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. Some American Catholics were alarmed that the late Pope Pius XI's prohibition of direct aid to any Communist regime, contained in his encyclical letter Divini Redemptoris (issued on the Feast of Saint Joseph, March 19, 1937), was being ignored by the American administration. Not to fear, however. Several bishops including the Bishop of Saint Augustine, Florida, gave Roosevelt the cover he needed with American Catholics, saying that Divini Redemptoris did not apply to the government of the United States of America. Indeed, the whole thrust of Americanism, which involves the uncritical acceptance of the American ethos as perfectly compatible with the Faith, is premised upon the belief that the very words of the Divine Redeemer himself to the Apostles as He ascended to the Father's right hand in glory do not apply to the Church in the United States of America, a view that Pope Leo XIII dealt with implicitly in Testem Benevolentiae:
"Far be it, then, for any one to diminish or for any reason whatever to pass over anything of this divinely delivered doctrine; whosoever would do so, would rather wish to alienate Catholics from the Church than to bring over to the Church those who dissent from it. Let them return; indeed, nothing is nearer to Our heart; let all those who are wandering far from the sheepfold of Christ return; but let it not be by any other road than that which Christ has pointed out."
One of the chief goals of many American Catholics, including more than a handful of bishops and priests, who had plunged headlong in the rush of partisan politics was the election of a Catholic as President of the United States of America. That would prove that Catholics had finally "arrived" and had achieved their full status as citizens, an attitude that was and remains demonstrative of a massive inferiority complex and a desire to win the human respect of others in this passing world.
The first Catholic candidate to have won the Democratic Presidential nomination, although not without a great deal of opposition from the Freemasons and Protestant bigots in the Democratic Party, especially those hailing from the South and the Midwest, was New York Governor Alfred E. Smith, in 1928. A little known fact is that Smith, who went to Mass every Sunday and was known to be a fairly serious Catholic in his devotional life, took almost the exact, Americani
st line about the separation of Church and State that would be popularized by then Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy thirty-two years later, in 1960. Smith lost in a landslide to Secretary of Commerce Herbert Clark Hoover, prompting anti-Catholic bigots to say that he had sent a one word cablegram to Pope Pius XI: "Unpack." You see, Protestants and Freemasons had a far clearer understanding of what a Catholic statesman should be about, that is, the Catholicizing of the country, than did those Catholics who actually got involved in politics and ran for high office, including the Presidency. The subordination of our national life to the Social Reign of Christ the King through the true Church was the furthest thing from the minds of men such as Alfred E. Smith. It was also very far from the minds of most of the American bishops. Indeed, a Protestant apologist who engaged Smith in 1928 in an exchange of correspondence about Immortale Dei and Quas Primas had a far better and more Catholic understanding of the Church's social teaching about the nature of the State and the Social Reign of Christ the King than did Smith. The Protestant apologist was using the Church's social teaching against Smith; however, he had a very precise and accurate understanding of it, knowing that a Catholic who professed to take the teaching of his Church seriously had to be about the business of converting his nation to Catholicism and the Social Reign of Christ the King.
Enter Richard Cardinal Cushing, who succeeded William Cardinal O'Connell as Archbishop of Boston in 1944, being elevated to the College of Cardinals in 1958. Cushing was a shill for the family of Joseph Patrick and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. Catholicism and support for the Democratic Party were one and the same thing to him. He was as imbued with the Americanist spirit as John Carroll or James Gibbons. He wanted to see a son of Joe Kennedy's elected to the Presidency of the United States of America, with all efforts focused on John Fitzgerald Kennedy following the death of the eldest Kennedy son, Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., in World War II.
Cushing lived to see the election of John F. Kennedy to the presidency, albeit in a close and very tainted election. (Paul Johnson provides a very good summary of the fraudulent nature of the 1960 election in his A History of the American People.) Cushing was supportive of Kennedy's views on the separation of Church and State, views that could have been given by the Grand Master of a Masonic lodge. He was supportive of Father John Courtney Murray's We Hold These Truths manifesto, which was published around the time of Kennedy's election partly as a means to make it appear to be virtuous to contend that everything about the American founding was compatible with the Faith. Cushing was also supportive of the adoption of Dignitatis Humanae in 1965 in the closing days of the Second Vatican Council. In other words, Richard Cardinal Cushing wanted to conform the Faith to the American experience, not convert the country to the Faith. Indeed, the Novus Ordo is really an enshrinement of many of the false principles of modernity, including Americanism.
Thus, it was with great interest that I read a report late last year from the Catholic World News, written by "Diogenes" (who is probably a former editor of the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Boston, the Boston Pilot), concerning Cardinal Cushing's expressed desire in 1965 not to "impose" his opinion about contraception on the Massachusetts state legislature when a bill, which had been introduced by one Michael Dukakis, to legalize contraception was being debated. Here is part of the Catholic World News report:
"Early in the summer of 1965, the Massachusetts legislature took up a proposal to repeal the state's Birth Control law, which barred the use of contraceptives. . . . In a state where Catholics constituted a voting majority, and dominated the legislature, the prospects for repeal appeared remote. Then on June 22, Cardinal Cushing appeared on a local radio program, 'An Afternoon with Haywood Vincent,' and effectively scuttled the opposition. Cardinal Cushing announced: 'My position in this matter is that birth control in accordance with artificial means is immoral, and not permissible. But this is Catholic teaching. I am also convinced that I should not impose my position upon those of other faiths'. Warming to the subject, the cardinal told his radio audience that 'I could not in conscience approve the legislation' that had been proposed. However, he quickly added, 'I will make no effort to impose my opinion upon others.' So there it was: the 'personally opposed' argument, in fully developed form, enunciated by a Prince of the Church nearly 40 years ago! Notice how the unvarying teaching of the Catholic Church, which condemned artificial contraception as an offense against natural law, is reduced here to a matter of the cardinal's personal belief. And notice how he makes no effort to persuade legislators with the force of his arguments; any such effort is condemned in advance as a bid to 'impose' his opinion. Cardinal Cushing conceded that in the past, Catholic leaders had opposed any effort to alter the Birth Control law. 'But my thinking has changed on that matter,' he reported, 'for the simple reason that I do not see where I have an obligation to impose my religious beliefs on people who just do not accept the same faith as I do'. . . . Before the end of his fateful radio broadcast, Cardinal Cushing gave his advice to the Catholic members of the Massachusetts legislature: 'If your constituents want this legislation, vote for it. You represent them. You don't represent the Catholic Church.' Dozens of Catholic legislators did vote for the bill, and the Birth Control law was abolished. Perhaps more important in the long run, the 'personally opposed' politician had his rationale."
If that is not proof positive of the direct, harmful influence of the Americanist spirit upon the life of the Church in the United States of American, then I am at a loss as to what will convince otherwise sound traditional Catholics that such a harmful influence has existed from the beginning and will continue to wreak havoc in this country as long as the Social Reign of Christ the King is not proclaimed as an absolute imperative for the right ordering of men and their societies. Cushing laid the groundwork that would be employed by Senators Edward Moore Kennedy and Joseph Biden in the immediate aftermath of Roe v. Wade. Cushing's "can't impose my opinion" on others line was further refined and developed by then U.S. Representative Hugh L. Carey when he ran for Governor of New York in 1974. And it was Carey who convinced a forty-two year old attorney from Brooklyn—a man who had stated in his failed campaign to win the Democratic Party nomination for lieutenant governor that year that he would have voted against the law that permitted baby-killing in the first trimester in New York in 1970—to adopt the "personally opposed to abortion but can't impose my morality" line when he ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for Mayor of the City of New York in 1977. That man was Mario Matthew Cuomo, who actually did say in a televised debate in Albany, New York, in August of 1974 that he would have voted against the 1970 law permitting baby-killing in New York if he had been a member of the state legislature then. (Interestingly, Carey repented of his pro-abortion views in 1990; Cuomo has yet to do so.) Cushing's legacy can be seen today in the person of Massachusetts Senator, John F. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States this year.
There is so much more that could be written about this very important piece of history that Diogenes has uncovered. For the sake of space, however, it is important to reiterate points I have made over and over again in the past decade or so: a nation that is founded on the lies of Protestantism and Freemasonry is going to prove harmful to the right ordering of men and their societies as long as Catholics, starting with bishops and priests, do not recognize the imperative to place themselves and their country under the Social Reign of Christ the King and Mary our Queen. We must always keep in mind two key passages of Pope Leo XIII in Immortale Dei, which contain words that are either true or untrue of their very nature:
1) "To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from the business of life, from the power of making laws, from the training of youth, from domestic society, is a grave and fatal error."
Is this statement true? Is this statement universally and eternally true? If it is, then it applies to the United States of America and its whole governmental system, explaining why Pope Leo XIII was so worried about the influence of the Americanist ethos upon all Catholics, including bishops and priests. A country that excludes the true Church from its organic documents is doomed to disorder and chaos. Doomed.
2) "To hold, therefore, that there is no difference in matters of religion between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, most clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and practice. And this is the same thing as atheism, however it may differ from it in name. Men who really believe in the existence of God must, in order to be consistent with themselves and to avoid absurd conclusions, understand that differing modes of divine worship involving dissimilarity and conflict even on most important points cannot all be equally probable, equally good, and equally acceptable to God."
Is this statement true? Is this statement universally and eternally true? If it is, then it applies quite specifically to the false and terminal nature of the founding of this nation. Has not religious indifferentism—or the Masonic variant thereof that contends that anything to do with "God" is a matter of personal opinion and best left to private discussion while we find some common ground as brothers to build social order and international peace—been at the very root of the problems of modernity? Is not a specific and categorical rejection of the absolute necessity of belief in the Incarnation and Our Lord's Redemptive Act on the wood of the Cross, to say nothing of the entirety of the Deposit of Faith He has entrusted solely to the Catholic Church, fatal to any and all civil societies?
It is sad to see so many Catholics in the twenty-first century making the same mistake as Catholics made in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: identifying the Faith as completely compatible with the founding of this nation and/or more than adequately expressed by a particular political party and its officials, in this case the Republican Party and President George W. Bush. George W. Bush, who may one day become a Catholic, is no more informed about or interested in the patrimony of Catholic social teaching than Alfred Smith or John Kennedy. Alas, that is the subject of yet another commentary at another time.
Suffice it for our present purposes to re-state the simple truth that the Incarnation matters. The Redemption matters. The Deposit of Faith Our Lord entrusted to the true Church matters. Sanctifying grace matters in the souls of individual believers. Its absence from large numbers of souls of citizens in a pluralistic country consigns that country to all manner of decadence and violence, both physical and spiritual. It is only Our Lady, the Patroness of this country under the title of her Immaculate Conception and the Patroness of the Americans under her title as Our Lady of Guadalupe, who can save us from the false belief that it is possible to organize ourselves individually and collectively without publicly acknowledging her Son as our King and herself as our loving Queen.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.
For more of Dr. Droleskey's commenataries, please visit www.christorchaos.com . New articles are posted two or three times per week.
St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle...