The
Return to the "Good Old Days of Tradition"
Yet Some European Politicians Are
Boldly Talking About it!
Brethren - Tradition IS NOT
Fascism!
PURPOSE
The purpose of this document is to warn about the deadly error of
equating "Tradition" with "The Good Old Days" (of Hitler and
Mussolini), and to show that the unsuspecting Faithful, as well as
average citizens, are falling into that trap.
BACKGROUND
Last July 4th, 2006, a very significant even took place in the European
Parliament when all pan-European political parties, except the
Popular Party, condemned Spain's General Franco and his dictatorship
during a plenary debate.
Maciej Marian Giertych, a Polish non-attached MEP from the League
of Polish Families, a ruling coalition party in Poland, praised the
Spanish right-wing powers and in particular general Francisco Franco
for stopping the spread of communism to western Europe in the first
half of the 20th century.
"The presence of such personalities as Franco, Salazar or DeValera in
European politics guaranteed Europe's perseverance of traditional
values. We lack such men of action these days", said the Polish
deputy.
"Let's not forget that Nazism in Germany and fascism in Italy were also
spiced up by socialist and atheist taste", Mr. Giertych added.
His speech was followed by a furious outcry from the German socialist
leader Martin Schultz.
"What we have just heard is Mr. Franco's ghost. It was a fascist speech
and such a statement has no place in the European Parliament", said Mr.
Schultz. (1)
INTRODUCTION by The M+G+R
Foundation
We shared the news of that very disturbing event in the European
Parliament with some of our readers while adding a few pertinent
commentaries to the effect such as:
Franco was a (subservient) ally of
Hitler
During the Spanish Civil War Nazi Germany "practiced" its air force
fire power in Guernica, Spain — a stronghold of the opposition to
Franco.
Opus Dei was a strong supporter of the fanatically Catholic Franco
Regime until Franco had to stop the Imperial Aspirations of Escrivá.
But now, Opus Dei's Giertych invokes the "socialist and atheist"
spicing of Germany and Italy under Hitler and Mussolini. Coherence?
What coherence? "Lie, lie and lie some more until people surrender and
believe your lies." We are seeing (and hearing!) this right now —every
night— on the Spanish TV news.
One of the
recipients of our mailing sent to us some research data about this
issue. We, in turn, requested Mr. Lee Penn (2),
author of False
Dawn (3)
and Opus
Dei and The DaVinci Code (4),
an expert in this area, to
correct, edit and enhance what we received so that we could share it
with others. The final result of his efforts follows: the fine work of
said group so that we could share it with our readership and others. It
follows:
INTRODUCTION
Conservative Catholic families are searching for tradition and
orthodoxy. Many land in the SSPX, Society of St. Pius, the Tenth
Chapels, Opus Dei, or Tradition, Family, and Property (TFP) among
others. While there is much reverence and piety on display, there is a
darker side to the traditional and conservative movements.
Unfortunately, some of these groups have become known for some
un-American and non-Catholic ideologies.
With the internet and numerous conferences, seminars and pilgrimages
around the world, Catholic ultra-Traditionalists —numbering as many as
100,000 in the United States alone— form a global network that is
infested with religious anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, Old School
fascists, white nationalists, faith-based Third Positionists and
anti-democratic clerics.
For greater details see Note (5)
to read an article by Mike Reynolds, "Faith-based fascists
bridging the waters."
BACKGROUND and DETAILS
Anti-Semitism
and Racism
Here's what Richard Williamson, a bishop of the Society of St. Pius X
(SSPX) wrote last November in response to the Muslim riots in France:
At the risk of being called a
racist, a Nazi, an anti-Semite and Heaven knows what else, let me try
to talk a bit of Catholic uncommon sense concerning the troubles that
have broken out in the last few weeks in several cities in France...
The will of God for men on earth is that Catholic save Jew, that the
man free look after the bondsman and that the man be head of the woman.
So when the white men give up on saving Jews, looking after other races
and leading their womenfolk, it is altogether normal for them to be
punished respectively by the domination of Jewish finance, by the
refusal to follow of the non-white races and by rampant feminism... In
chronological order, before Christ, nobody in their senses would have
dreamt of denying the inequality of different races, classes and sexes.
For greater details see Note (6)
to read Williamson's essay, "Denial of Christ Creates Chaos".
The SSPX affinity for fascism has led its followers to harbor fugitive
a Nazi war criminal — as mainstream churchmen had also done.
Paul Touvier the convicted Nazi was discovered hiding in an SSPX
monastery in Nice, France. It was revealed that until his arrest, he
received a monthly stipend from the Secours Catholique, a French
Catholic charity.
A writer for an SSPX magazine in Canada offered this excuse for the
movement's aid to the fugitive:
"Despite the fact that most newspapers made a link between Mr. Touvier
and the Society, there was in fact no connection. It is true he was
taken prisoner at our priory, but he was merely let in by the prior as
an act of charity to a homeless man. Since Archbishop Lefebvre's father
died at the hands of the Nazis in a prison camp, that should be
evidence enough that the Society does not and has not ever condoned the
practices of the Nazis.
On the other side of the question, I for one am tired of this Jewish
conspiracy to wipe every living former Nazi off the face of the earth.
Why don't they just leave them to die in peace? It's been about 45
years since World War II and still they hunt them down, as if they were
guilty of ongoing crimes for all those years."
To read the article, see Note (7).
For more details on this particular issue review:
(a) This 1992 International
Herald Tribune article: Archbishop's
Panel Finds Churchmen Hid War Criminal : French Clergy Aided Fugitive.
(8)
(b) An Answers.com article about Touvier — see Note (9).
(c) A French-language on-line encyclopedia which ties the
Chevaliers de Notre Dame, a French integrist group, to Touvier at Ordre
des chevaliers de Notre-Dame — Wikipédia (10); and
(d) The Order's own web page Ordre
des
Chevaliers de Notre Dame (11).
A Dominican writer confirms the ties of Lefebvre and the SSPX to the
extreme right:
Congar
has shown Lefebvre's links with Action Française. (Prominent among his
supporters and founders have been members of Europe's old families who
feel betrayed by a democratizing Church. Lefebvre had offered as models
of the Catholic Church and state Franco's Spain, Salazar's Portugal,
Galtieri's Argentina and Pinochet's Chile. The last hiding place of
Paul Touvier, who was quite recently arrested (circa 1990) and
committed to trial for crimes against humanity, was a Lefebvrist
monastery at Nice.
For greater details see Note (12)
to read the
article by Anthony Fisher, OP.
The Institute for Historical Review (IHR) —whose stock in trade is
Holocaust denial— praised SSPX bishop Williamson in its 1989
newsletter. It claimed that that after he spoke at an IHR conference in
Quebec in the late 1980s, Williamson was harassed by the Canadian
authorities and...
"Jewish groups, abetted by
'interfaith groups' and the local Catholic hierarchy (Bishop Williamson
[Sic] movement is considered schismatic by the current Catholic
hierarchy), [who] not merely denounced the bishop but set the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police on his trail, since the interfaith posse deemed
the bishop to have violated Canada's 'hate laws' which have already
been applied against James Keegstra and others to good effect."
For greater details see Note (13)
to read
a June 1995 article from Fidelity Magazine, "No Ordinary Bishop".
Opus Dei appears to foster —or tolerate— racism, as well. A college
student reported what he saw when he visited an Opus Dei house on
campus:
"The group was made up of upper
middle class to affluent students who were generally conservative in
their politics. What we found sinister (especially since I am Oriental)
was that the group included not a single minority student. Several of
the group's student leaders were closet white-supremacists (several of
us managed to get a good look at their book shelves and were quite
shocked to find books with titles like "The White Man's Way" and other
racist literature right next to The Way)."
For greater details see Note (14)
to read the student's account.
Distributism (15)
Other Catholic rightist movements are resurrecting
Catholic-tinged corporatist and authoritarian ideologies from the
pre-World War II era.
Searchlight magazine reported in 2004:
"We intend to pick up where the
Distributist, the Solidarist, the Corporatist Catholics of all nations
left off before the war, and, God willing, to deliver to the world once
again the hope of a peaceful and fruitful existence, free from both the
excessive power of the state and the ruthless injustice of an untamed
market."
So stated the Catholic IHS Press on its website launch two years ago.
The man behind this enterprise and these words is John Sharpe, a
graduate of the United States Naval Academy, former submarine officer
and media spokesman for the Atlantic Fleet. He is also a radical
Catholic Third Position polemicist with ideological and business ties
to Roberto Fiore's International Third Position/Forza Nuova network. ...
Sharpe's parents, John, Sr. and Judith, founded in 1998 their own
Traditional Catholic effort: "In the Spirit of Chartres" Committee,
which sponsors two annual events in Phoenix: (a) a "Spirit of Chartres"
Pilgrimage, modeled on the annual SSPX event in France; and (b) a
Catholic Restoration Conference.
These conferences have featured the most extreme of the Traditional
Catholic movement: John Vennari, Christopher Ferrara, Gerry Matatics,
Marian Horvat, Atila Guimarães, Fr. Paul Kramer and, of course, John
Sharpe, Jr.
These individuals comprise a core team of conspiracy-mongering
proselytizers on a speaking circuit backed by: (a) SSPX adherents; (b)
the St. Benedict's Center in New Hampshire; (c) the US headquarters for
the followers of the late Fr. Francis Feeney, a notorious anti-Semite;
and (d) the multimillion-dollar media outreach of Fr. Nicholas Gruner,
a renegade Canadian priest who runs The Fatima Network.
All sell an array of anti-Semitic, Judeo-Masonic Marxist conspiracy
books plus the standard Distributist fare of Chesterton and Belloc.
Extremists Vennari, Ferrara, Horvat, the race-baiting E. Michael
Jones and anti-Semitic conspiracist Robert Sungenis are also frequent
contributors to the London Traditionalist Catholic monthly, Christian
Order, founded by the late Fr. Paul Crane in 1960, a self described
"militant antidote to the secular 'live and let live' attitude which
has brought the Church low".
For greater details see Note (16)
to read the rest of the Searchlight story.
The following speaker's list confirms the just mentioned network
of mutual support among Catholic far right activists:
John Vennari is regularly speaking at
the "St. Joseph's Forum", a kind of traveling conference group
advertised by 'Catholic Family News' of which he is editor and owned by
Fr. Nicholas Gruner. Do note that the list of speakers includes Fr.
Gruner and John Sharpe.
For greater details see Note (17)
to see the list of speakers for the March 2006 "St. Joseph's Forum."
Elitism
Tradition, Family, and Property (TFP) is another extreme right Catholic
group that is active worldwide. A critic of TFP's collaboration with
the pre 1990 apartheid regime in South Africa says:
"It is in this light that the
"tradition" to which TFP pays homage should be viewed... Above all, it
is opposed to any form of egalitarianism or democracy. It is a
'tradition' which is threatened not only by critiques to the
inequitable distribution of wealth, but also by movements within the
present day Church which seek to adapt evangelical work to the modern
world."
For greater details see Note (18)
to read a 1988 critique of TFP by researchers from the University of
Natal, Durban, South Africa.
Fascism
A critic of Opus Dei says that the founder of Opus Dei was sympathetic
to fascism — including the Third Reich:
"Given all the Fascist ideology in
"The Way'', it will not come as a surprise to you to hear that he even
had sympathy for Hitler: Wladimir Felzmann, an ex-Opus Dei member tells
about a talk with Escriva: after he (Escriva) insisted that with
Hitler's help the Franco Government has saved Christianity from
Communism he added: "Hitler against the Jews, Hitler against the Slavs,
this means Hitler against communism''
For greater details see Note (19)
to read "The Unofficial Opus Dei FAQ".
The founders of IHS Press, a new Catholic publisher that reprints
the works of G. K. Chesterton are —according to other Catholics—
tied to far right organizations. An article by Christopher Blosser,
reprinted on the Spero News forum, alleges:
In September 2001, John Sharpe
and Derek Holland founded IHS
Press, its stated mission "to bring back into print the classics of
last century on the Social Teachings of the Catholic Church". The
founders have been interviewed
by by Zenit News (20), and have been commended by the New
Oxford for
their publication of out-of-print books. In addition to its
promotion of traditional Catholic works, IHS Press has, through its
"Sheffield Hallam University Press" imprint, published several
books on economic socialism (21), including study of the controversial
publisher Alfred Richard
Orange (22) and Gary Taylor's Socialism and
Christianity: The
Politics of the Church Socialist League — a study of late 19th,
early 20th century Christian socialism in England which challenges the
notion that "socialism is anti-Christian". ...
In December 2005, journalist Matthew Anger launched a blog called
Fringe Watch (23),
its
primary aim "a study on the Third
Positionist neo-fascist infiltration (24) of
conservative/traditional
Catholic circles". Anger recorded his investigations on his blog into
such controversial figures as Bishop
Williamson (SSPX) (25),
Fr.
Leonard Feeney (1897-1978) (26), and IHS Press
founders Sharpe and
Holland. ...
Sharpe's IHS Press co-founder is Derek Holland, who appears to be
presently going by the name of Deric O'Huallachain. Holland is a former
International Third Position (ITP) leader with a sympathy for
anti-American Arab governments, having traveled to Libya in 1988 in a
field trip...
[A Wikipedia entry reports that... ] Holland has received considerable
treatment in works on European extremist nationalism, including Fascism:
A History by Roger Eatwell (1997) and Black Sun: Aryan Cults,
Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity by Nicholas
Goodrick-Clarke (2002). Holland's writings on the Political Soldier are
also featured in Fascism: A Reader published by Oxford
University Press (1995).
[SSPX bishop] Richard Williamson also has a history of extremist views
that mirror those of Sharpe and Derek Holland. While it appears that
the publishers' description of Williamson, Chojnowski and McCann could
be construed as a willful attempt to conceal their controversial
membership in the SSPX, we should also note that, according to Matt
Anger, "whether one agrees with the SSPX or not, it is clear that
Bishop Williamson has been an extremist and divisive force in Catholic
tradition", and that many within the SSPX remain severely critical of
Richard Williamson's relationship with Sharpe, Holland, and their
involvement in neo-fascism.
For greater detail see Note (27)
to read Blosser's entire article about the founders of IHS
Press. Also, see Note (28)
to read Blosser's findings about the neo-fascist politics of SSPX
bishop Richard Williamson.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, while a façade of holiness may last momentarily,
further investigation should always be undertaken when dealing with
non-mainstream Catholic organizations. A label of "Traditional or
Conservative Catholic" is no guarantee of a community that
holds true values, beliefs, and practices. Politics have been
intertwined with the Faith as taught by Christ as far back as
Constantine. Sadly, few of this generation understand this. Worse yet,
many have been victims of revisionist history both within and outside
of the church. Few understand what fascism means — and it is even being
touted by those who desire a "Catholic" monarchy. These days due
diligence is necessary before joining any group especially those making
claims for the state and final disposition of your soul.
EPILOGUE
Is Catholic social teaching leading to
revolution?
Could the quest for Catholic order and the restoration of "Christendom"
lead to —or justify— a revolution against the present international
order of political and economic liberalism? Such might be the
implication of Catholic Social Ethics, a recently publicized
series of lectures supposedly written in 1953-1954 by Karol
Wojtyla, almost 25 years before he became Pope John Paul II. As the
National Catholic Reporter (NCR) summarized the document:
[From unpublished work by John Paul II
we read that:] "In line with patristic traditions and the
centuries-old practice of monastic life, the church itself acknowledges
the ideal of communism. But it believes, given the current state of
human nature, that the general implementation of this ideal —while
protecting the human person's complete freedom— faces insurmountable
difficulties."
This does not, however, invalidate the use of struggle to change the
social and economic order, he writes. Since human beings are endowed
with free will, they are able to "choose spiritual goodness". Yet
violent upheavals can be ethically justified as a means of resisting
unjust rulers, and as "the supreme penalty for concrete guilt and
crimes in the sphere of socioeconomic life".
Catholicism cannot "agree with materialism" or the "primacy of
economics", Wojtyla writes. But it recognizes that "various facts and
historical processes" are economically determined. "In a well organized
society, orientated to the common good, class conflicts are solved
peacefully through reforms. But states that base their order on
individualistic liberalism are not such societies. So when an exploited
class fails to receive in a peaceful way the share of the common good
to which it has a right, it has to follow a different path."
"Class struggle should gain
strength in proportion to the resistance it faces from economically
privileged classes, so the systemic social situation will mature under
this pressure to the appropriate forms and transitions", Wojtyla
continues.
"Guided by a just evaluation of historical events, the church
should view the cause of revolution with an awareness of the ethical
evil in factors of the economic and social regime, and in the political
system, that generates the need for a radical reaction. It can be
accepted that the majority of people who took part in revolutions —even
bloody ones— were acting on the basis of internal convictions,
and thus in accordance with conscience."
For greater detail see Note (29)
to read the National Catholic Reporter article.
EDITOR'S REMARKS on EPILOGUE
This above analysis could be used as a Catholic basis for
anti-capitalist uprisings. Such risings could be communist — or they
could be fascist, given fascists' hatred of individualism, political
liberalism, and unrestricted capitalism.
The Opus Dei priest Fr. John McCloskey provided a view of why a
Catholic-inspired revolution might occur, in his futuristic look back
from 2030:
In retrospect, the great battles
over the last 30 years over the fundamental issues of the sanctity of
marriage, the rights of parents, and the sacredness of human life have
been of enormous help in renewing the Church and to some extent,
society. We finally received as a gift from God what had been missing
from our ecclesial experience these 250 years in North America — a
strong persecution that was a true purification for our "sick society".
The tens of thousands of martyrs and confessors for the Faith in North
America were indeed the "seed of the Church" as they were in pre-Edict
of Milan Christianity. The final short and relatively bloodless
conflict produced our Regional States of North America. The outcome was
by no means an ideal solution but it does allow Christians to live in
states that recognize the natural law and divine Revelation, the right
of free practice of religion, and laws on marriage, family, and life
that reflect the primacy of our Faith. With time and the reality of the
ever-decreasing population of the states that worship at the altar of
"the culture of death", perhaps we will be able to reunite and fulfill
the Founding Fathers of the old United States dream to be "a shining
city on a hill".
Read McCloskey's entire story at this site: 2030:
Looking Backwards (30).
And note that as McCloskey explained to the
Boston Globe in 2003, he thinks that violence may be inevitable to put
America back on the right track. As the Globe's writer Charles Pierce
reported:
[McCloskey] is talking about a futuristic essay he wrote that
rosily describes the aftermath of a "relatively bloodless" civil war
that resulted in a Catholic Church purified of all dissent and the
religious dismemberment of the United States of America.
"There's two questions there", says the Rev. C. John McCloskey 3d,
smiling. He's something of a ringer for Howard Dean —a comparison he
resists, also with a smile— a little more slender than the
presidential candidate, perhaps, but no less fervent. "One is, Do I
think it would be better that way? No. Do I think it's possible?
Do
I think it's possible for someone who believes in the sanctity of
marriage, the sanctity of life, the sanctity of family, over a period
of time to choose to survive with people who think it's OK to kill
women and children or for —quote— homosexual couples to exist and
be recognized?
"No, I don't think that's possible", he says. "I don't know how it's
going to work itself out, but I know it's not possible, and my hope and
prayer is that it does not end in violence. But, unfortunately, in the
past, these types of things have tended to end this way.
"If American Catholics feel that's troubling, let them. I don't feel
it's troubling at all."
Such is the polite face of Catholic neo-fascism in the 21st
century.
May God have Mercy on His Elect — we pray!
NOTES
(1) A News
Report of Event
(2) A biographical sketch of Mr.
Lee Penn
(3) False Dawn - by Lee Penn
(4) Opus
Dei and The DaVinci Code
(5) Article
by Mike Reynolds, "Faith-based
fascists bridging the waters"
(6) Williamson's
essay, "Denial of Christ Creates
Chaos"
(7) The
Angelus - News Briefs (Arrest in Priory Reopens Debate on Catholic Aid
to Nazis)
(8) 1992
International Herald Tribune article: Archbishop's
Panel Finds Churchmen Hid War Criminal : French Clergy Aided Fugitive
(9) Answers.com article
about Touvier
(10) Ordre
des chevaliers de Notre-Dame - Wikipédia
(11) Ordre des
Chevaliers de Notre Dame
(12) Article by Anthony Fisher, OP
(13) June 1995 article from
Fidelity Magazine, "No Ordinary
Bishop"
(14) The student's
account
(15) Distributism: According to
distributism, the ownership of the means of production should be spread
as widely as possible among the populace, rather than being centralized
under the control of a few state bureaucrats (some forms of socialism)
or a minority of resource-commanding individuals (capitalism). A
summary of distributism is found in Chesterton's statement: "Too much
capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists"
("The Uses of Diversity", 1921).
(16) The
Searchlight story
(17) List of speakers
for the March 2006 "St. Joseph's Forum"
(18) 1988 critique
of TFP by researchers from the University of Natal, Durban, South Africa
(19) The Unofficial
Opus Dei FAQ
(27) Blosser's
article about the founders of IHS Press
(28) Blosser's
findings about the neo-fascist politics of SSPX bishop Richard
Williamson
(29) The
National Catholic Reporter article
(30) 2030:
Looking Backwards
Published on July 22, 2006-
Feast of Mary, Mother of Mercy - European Union
© Copyright 2006 - 2022 by The M+G+R Foundation.
All rights reserved. However, you may
freely reproduce and distribute this document as long as: (1)
Appropriate credit is given as to its source; (2) No changes are made
in the text without prior written consent; and (3) No charge is made
for it.
Related
Documents
The M+G+R Foundation
Please Note: If the above dated image does not appear
on this document, it means that you are not viewing the original
document from our servers. Should you have reason to doubt the
authenticity of the document, we recommend that you access our server
again and click on the "Refresh" or "Reload" button of your Browser to
view the original document.