THE CROOKED PATH TO ASSISI (No. 88)
This being a Letter touching on some things that have happened since 1962, and which most Catholics could not, even thirty years ago, have imagined to be possible; for instance, that a great movement would arise to change the Catholic religion to one of search and dialogue in the rubble of humanism, which is practical atheism. What has been quite as surprising, is that there has been little or no resistance to this thing among Catholics generally, but only various promises of rescue from it by self-styled Traditionalists without authority. How to at least partially understand this has seemed to me a matter to look into, which I've done.
The first thing which comes to light is that at a certain time, in the "latter days", evil forces will advance, so that, as foretold by Christ himself, very little faith will remain near the End. There are no plainer words in the Gospel. To know this, to know that whatever happens is within the plan of Divine Providence for our salvation, is for our comfort.
In Letter 44, Advent, 1980 I quote from an 1884 Catholic encyclopedia, as follows:
"Advent, Season of. The period, of between three and four weeks from Advent Sunday (which is always the Sunday nearest to the feast of St. Andrew) to Christmas eve, is named by the Church the season of Advent. During it she desires that her children should practice fasting, works of penance, meditation, and prayer, in order to prepare themselves for celebrating worthily the coming adventum of the Son of God in the flesh, to promote His spiritual advent within their own souls, and to school themselves to look forward with hope and joy to His second advent, when he shall come again to judge mankind."
I would caution here about the "penance" part of the above admonition; that it should be taken to mean only that which the Church prescribed in a better time. Anything beyond that might be too much for those disturbed by the deprivation of the religious consolations they formerly enjoyed. It is the last thought in that sentence which I have tried to emphasize in these Letters. I know the idea of "joy" in our present circumstances, when the Johns and the Pauls have made a mockery of the Catholic religion, seems a bit too much for most of us, and quite impossible for many. Yet it was that note of joy in expectation of Christ's return which, so I have read, prevailed until the late Middle Ages or thereabout. Theologically it is the correct note, but it is drowned out not only by the cares and riches or poverty of the modern world but by noisy Vatican Two 'Renewal', and by a cacophony of fake Seers.
"Listen to me", said Satan to Eve, "I will release you from the humdrum." Whether the first sin of man was pride or not, it seems to me that what at first prompted Even was Satan's offer of something new and exciting. Adam and Eve had a life in perfect harmony with God and nature, yet even here was a germ of discontent. No man can be perfectly happy on this earth, and for that reason should look forward in glad expectation to the End. But there are those "woes" the Gospel speaks of; and death and the approach of it may entail much suffering. Yet death will come for each of us and the best preparation for it that I know (for those of us not quite up to "joy") is the habit of resignation to all that God sends. To this kind of Catholic argument is opposed the various promises of reversal or rescue, and of Remnant churches.
False mysticism -- what a wide range of possibilities it lets loose. It begins with Vatican Two "inspiration", is carried on by the New Order bishops and lower clergy, and by such devilish devices as Cursillo, an emotional, mindless thing which soon appears openly in the parish new liturgy. A person cannot attend these 'Masses' and remain unaffected in his Catholic sense by them. I have several times quoted the French priest-theologian who said this: "A minute examination of the New Rite discloses numerous verbal tricks, mental reservations, intentional omissions, etc. -- tricks that are part of the equipment of experts; not at all theological experts but those psychological experts who excel in group psychology and public relations." The Spirit of Trickery is still with us, but takes a turn to the Right as expediency directs; as when John Paul declares an "indult" on the "old Mass"; this by the man who worships with African witch doctors. Which brings us to Assisi, of all places!
The Crooked Path to Assisi
Geographically, Assisi is not far from Rome, about forty miles north. But the route taken by the Pauls and Johns -- to revolutionary hot spots in the Middle East, South America, Mexico, and elsewhere, to help regional agitators; to Africa and Haiti and New Guinea to worship with leading diabolists of Voodoo cults; to New York to bow down before the atheistic U.N.O., and to emit hair-raising growls in Madison Square Garden; and counting all the other twists and turns of the Johns and Pauls, the route taken to Assisi was a long one. Do I recall the title of a book, The Trail of the Serpent? Yes or no, it will do. And indeed, so a report at hand says, John Paul had a Togo snake worshipper at his Assisi prayer "summit". "United in a quest for peace, Pope John Paul II and leaders of eleven non-Christian religions, from African animists to Japanese Shintoists, fasted and prayed together today." So one report tells it. What next? Why, full circle to Rome, the big top. This show, like other 'ecumenical' gatherings leading to it, has its mind-conditioning purpose. It may take thirty years to make us all insane, but, so they think, and are quite right in thinking so, it can be done.
If a writer of books thirty years ago had offered a novel based on the Assisi theme to a publisher of any kind, he would have been turned down flat. To fanciful by far. Yet today news of this kind of thing is read by Catholics all over the world, some of whom may shake their heads, others will say "How nice". The pope is the pope.
Witch doctors, Moslems, Sikhs, Jains, Bahais, as well as Protestant and other non-Roman Catholic religions; and the unthinking mob. Why does God permit this mockery? Why did Christ allow a rabble of Roman soldiers and Temple guards to put on Him a shabby purple robe, a crown of thorns, and spit on Him? Of course He could have gone to Calvary without these indignities. And His Church could have been brought to a nice, neat end; a triumphant end, as many think must happen. The Jews thought to be exalted at the time of the First Advent. They weren't. The ultimate triumph belongs to Christ and the whole Church, not only to those faithful Christians who will be living in the last few years.
In a Catholic dictionary at hand, the Church Triumphant is defined as the souls in Heaven. In which place time is no longer.
One news report speaks of a "sour note" sounded at the Assisi prayer meeting. How sad. Don't we all love Religion these days? This sour note was attributed to Lefebvre followers. But then it couldn't have been very sour. A Lefebvre cartoon from Connecticut shows a smiling bishop holding up a hand -- ecumenism is not nice, is the message. But it is nice; not least nice is smiling Marcel. But his is a different kind of loyal followers than those of Karol Wojtyla. They expect a slightly different tune from their man. How hard Brother JP makes it for Marcel, what with these more outlandish affairs of his.
Give John Paul credit. He makes no pretense about what he is up to. He goes his way openly, step by step, to exhibit the "previously unknown church" of Redemptor Hominis. John Paul, one might say, is an honest crook. And he loves all religions. All are equally welcome.
All but the Traditionalists? None are more welcome on the scene than the Traditionalists. He needs this absurd, futile crown comprised of schismatics old and new, this menagerie of underworld ecclesiastics, of Econe priests (?) without any pretense of authority; the pietistic crowd who wail to heaven for rescue, who search all over for a Trad priest they can approve. John Paul needs this crowd as a foil. "So, you are one of them." They are almost as useful to the Revolution as the pious Vatican Two conservatives.
I do not become disturbed by these things. They were in the mind of God from the beginning. The cat was out of the bag when they brought forth their new liturgy. Let those who will, moan and groan about "what they are doing to us". The angry ones, the great sisterhood of an unquiet devotionalism, those whose religion is the latest word from the latest Seer; let them all stew, as they will without help from me. I wish for them a peaceful Christmas season. But I can do nothing for them, but only to say: There is no Santa Claus. We are all going to have to stick it out, come what may.
So much for Assisi, October 1986.
Publications and Their Customers
They are on the increase as things get crazier. There are thousands of Catholics and others grasping at any straw of political or religious promise. But few for the hardrock religious reality.
Death is taking its toll, and those who were young at the time of Vatican Two had no experience of the Church, such as we older people can be thankful for. And I know now that Catholic instruction was already sick in the schools before the Council. The number of readers is a question of market, so to speak, and financial backing and push in the mainstream of lunacy. What dreary stuff one finds in the racks of vestibules of our once Catholic churches; hardly less so in that press I have called 'moderate', which is Vatican Two conservative. This is the strangest thing to come out of the revolutionary Council, confirmed at the 1985 Synod in Rome. Dozens of little Trad printings find their way here, most of them pietistic and doctrinally vague or erroneous in part. And there is the political stuff, which is a waste. We are urged to Uphold the Constitution, be for or against nuclear plants. Get involved, run here, run there, support Joe Blow. And there are the Trad 'monasteries' whose inmates we know not. They manage to sound good in their nice brochures, in appeals to religious nostalgia.
John Paul conservatism is surely the spiritual and intellectual bamboozle of all time. Here is a sample of it in action. From the April 1986 Reader's Digest, "The Lonely Struggle of a Nicaraguan Priest", an excerpt: "Carrying chains and machetes, the Sandinista mob attacks the one-story, corrugated-roof of El Calvario Church in Managua with rocks and paving stones. 'You have fifteen minutes to get out,' their leader shouts. 'If you don't, we're coming in after you' . . . This incident occurred last May. It was the sixth time since 1982 that the Sandinistas' turbas divinas (divine mobs) had come for Mondragon, a stocky, bespectacled, 49-year-old priest. The Marxist leaders of Nicaragua accuse him, and nearly 300 priests loyal to John Paul II, of caring only for the rich, of being a contra, a counter-revolutionary." (My emphasis.)
What are these priests thinking about? John Paul has been on good terms with Marxist leaders in Poland and since. When the Sandinistas took over he had words of approval to a delegation of three or four of them to the Vatican. And what of the religious, the liturgical revolution? The clergy went along with that, many of them filled, I think, with the Socialist doctrine the Vatican Two reformers managed to falsely identify as genuine concern for the poor. I have said that this fourth pope of the Revolution has been quite open about what he has been doing. But many Catholics today let their emotions lead them into seeing only what they want to see.
Our emotions and our worldliness, even that worldliness by which a man sees himself as champion of the poor, can lead off from true religion which seeks first the Kingdom of God. On the other hand there are certainly many real Communist infiltrators among the South American clergy. Consider these lines from The Vatican Moscow Alliance by veteran Vatican reporter, Avro Manhattan: "During 1976, and again in 1977, Cardinal Koenig, prompted by Pope Paul and his 'shadow Kremlin of Rome', began discreet negotiations with the Communist authorities of Poland with the precise objective of bringing Polish Catholic priests into Austria. The move had to be justified on the ground that there was a 'scarcity of Austrian priests'.
"The remarkable feature of this extraordinary export, however, was that those priests who were transferred from Poland to Austria, all had one striking think in common: they all had been trained in leftist seminaries, where they had assimilated the ideological 'truth' of Communism. The Communist Commissars in Poland had made sure that this was the case, prior to allowing them to emigrate . . . The unique creature -- a Catholic-Marxist priest, simultaneously testifying for Christ and Lenin. Something to marvel at, truly."
May we not expect that the Polish seminaries will have produced a future Polish Cardinal become pope? Such a move would follow as night follows day. More from The Vatican Moscow Alliance, page 207: "The export programme became even more telling when it was revealed by an unusually candid and vocal Commissar that it had been permitted by Russia because -- oh, Divine Providence! -- the seminaries, all Communist-controlled, in Communist Poland, 'were full to overflowing'."
I had heard this kind of story from one of the pious followers of the Seers -- that God had providentially filled the Polish seminaries through Communist persecution. Elsewhere in his book author Avro Manhattan tells of big exports of Polish priests to South America.
What has all this to do with post-Vatican Two publications? Not much, except to take notice of how the secular press suddenly became so interested in the affairs of the Church beginning with Vatican Two. Catholicism in ten easy lessons. John Paul the smiling pope who is on everyone's side. Big Brother Conservative, a force for political and economic stability in the world, they hope. What else is religion for, anyway?
Here are two loyal followers of Big Brother Conservative. Dom Helder is the notorious red bishop of Brazil; Mother Teresa the female gad-about of the Revolution whose main work is birth prevention. She succeeded in India where Planned Parenthood and Peace Corps failed even to persuade. For which she received a $200,000 Nobel peace prize. Always the Revolution proceeds in the name of Peace. "When they shall say 'peace and security'. . ."
Two Films on Activists for Poor
We can thank the Archdiocesan Communications Center for films on two inspirational figures: Dom Helder Camara, Archbishop of Recife, Brazil, and Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
Dom Helder, an activist against hunger and oppression, is the subject of "Excuse Me, America." This film illustrates the connection between economic and political oppression, between hunger and totalitarianism. Filmed in the poor sections of Brazil, San Francisco, and Philadelphia, "Excuse Me, America" shows Dom Helder conducting mass, talking to the poor, meeting with Mother Teresa, and serving communion to Cesar Chavez, head of the United Farmworker's Union. The 50-minute film rents for $50 and sells for $675.
A curious bit of photography from a Fatima magazine, April 1986, shows John Paul and Mother Teresa descending steps. The old crone is one step ahead, holding John Paul's hand, supporting the allegedly athletic, vigorous pope. It is all part of the phony equality of the Revolution which requires female seeming influence, or at least a certain amount of public exposures as such. And has it occurred to the New Order conservative nuns who seem to admire her so greatly, that this star actress of the Revolution is not wearing the old habit of the Catholic Sisterhood, but simply the native dress of the women of India?
I don't mean to bore you with tedious details about the steady advance of evil, things we already know about. About all that one can be tiresome without half trying. But for sane, faithful Catholics there is no good news these days. John Paul does not even slip on a banana peel. I haven't seen any photographs lately of JP2 kissing airport blacktop or concrete, and he seems to have put away his crooked cross for a time; but these are only little signs of the new conservatism, the new face of the Revolution. We have watched the diocesan paper here, and National Catholic Register for accounts of the Assisi doings, but have seen none. I suppose that was part of the news which doesn't fit with a certain kind of readers. The October show at Assisi seems to have been one of those affairs, like the 1985 Synod at Rome, about which the secular press gave most information.
Letters and Notices
We seldom print letters. For one reason, printing costs money, and I usually have enough of news and doctrine to fill the amount of space I've decided on; although in my hurried way I often leave blank space. I don't think we ought to publish letters of praise, some of which we do receive, believe it or not. Of notices we publish only one, for a liturgical calendar each year. We have on hand a thick file of abusive letters, many of them from Lefebvre followers years ago. Some of the abusive letters make for good reading. I recall one especially, from a lady in California. She took exception to what I was writing about Paul VI in the early days of the 'new mass'. I could visualize her as she stamped her feet, spitting fire. I thought she might fly up here and beat me over the head with her umbrella. We have received many others of that kind. An interesting this is that nearly all letters from England and Australia are written by men; most of those from within the USA by women. We like to receive letters and are grateful for news clips and other pertinent enclosures. I know I have been neglectful many times in the past, when I should have and wanted to send comments and a note of thanks. But I weary of pen and paper and typewriter. My poor wife tries to make up for my deficiencies; and to tell the truth, she does most of the hard work of filling orders, acknowledging contributions, filing, and much of our proof reading. Hand me this, get me that, since I lost a leg. It has surprised me how many little, routine things become difficult when a leg is gone. What I have been more or less leading up to by this personal note is this: Nearly all letters received here from our regular readers inquire about my health and express sympathy. I want to speak my gratitude for these kind expressions of concern. I'm still semi-invalid, but up most of each day in a wheelchair, and go out several times a week, wind and weather permitting. Thank heaven (or even Detroit) for the automatic transmission which enables a person with a good right leg to drive a car. One can drive just as fast with one leg as with two. But what if I get a flat tire? I haven't come to that yet. Perhaps Big Brother will abolish flats, along with poverty. Anyway I am grateful for your expressions of concern; and we pray for all a peaceful Christmas Season.
