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Wednesday, December 31, 2008
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Tuesday, December 23, 2008
GLORY TO GOD IN THE MANGER
Reprinted from: The PointDecember, 1953
Edited Under Fr. Leonard Feeney M.I.C.M.
Nineteen hundred and fifty-three years ago, we were confronted with something new. We had never seen its like before: nor have we since. Angels deserted their heavens to shout and sing about it. Shepherds abandoned their sheep on the hillside because of it. Kings left their kingdoms behind to journey in search of it. For, nineteen hundred and fifty-three years ago, God became man, and was born in Bethlehem of a Blessed Virginal Mother.
Since the coming of God-made-man was something unprecedented in our midst, we could never have predicted what its consequences would be. Certainly, we could never have reasoned to the fact that it would mean bloodshed — that seventy-two holy and innocent babies would immediately be put to death as a result of such a birth. And certainly, we had no idea that if God were to be born into His own world, that world would demand the shedding of even His Blood, thirty or so years later.
Because we were totally inexperienced in the matter of an Emmanuel, a God-with-us, we had no way of telling, left to ourselves, that the memory of Bethlehem would go on more securely than ever, after the disgrace of Calvary. Nor, indeed, could we have guessed that by a perpetuation of this very Calvary, in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, God was arranging to abide with us as our Emmanuel, in the consecrated hands of His Catholic priests.
Fittingly, the Holy Sacrifice that is offered on the twenty-fifth of December, during which God comes to our altars on the anniversary of His coming to Bethlehem, has long been regarded as especially “Christ’s Mass” — which has abbreviatedly come to be Christmas.
The Christmas we are about to celebrate will be the nineteen hundred and fifty-third. And although its survival is ultimately secure, its challenging truth will suffer countless attacks.
Here in Boston (a town reputed to be well-disposed toward such considerations as birth and Divinity), Christmas will come as a foreign extravagance to our primeval Puritans, whose grandelders could recall how the December twenty-fifths of their childhood were dismissed as “popish feasts.”
From the more recent denominations of Boston Protestantism, Christmas will get a varied reception. The followers of Mrs. Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy, for example, who believe there is no such thing as death, will be quietly disturbed — realizing that if they allow Jesus to be truly born at Christmas, He will grow up to be a serious threat to their theology when He truly dies on Good Friday.
And we can count on local manifestations of the older, more artful rebukes to Christmas: those of the Masons and of the Jews.
Still — however much it will be scoffed at as the Birthday of God-incarnate from the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, this year’s Christmas will not be a failure. It will be a nineteen hundred and fifty-third commemoration of a Happy Birthday for Jesus.
For at “Christ’s Mass” this December twenty-fifth, Jesus, welcomed anew at the words of Consecration, will be wrapped in the swaddling clothes of bread-appearances, and laid in that most precious of mangers, a Catholic child’s Holy Communion heart.
The Buyers and Sellers at Christmas
Reprinted from: The PointDecember, 1954
Edited Under Fr. Leonard Feeney M.I.C.M.
The Jews would like to get rid of Christmas. But so far they have not succeeded. For reasons of Faith (the Catholics), or motives of sentiment (the Protestants), certain Americans have refused to shrug the day off. And so, the Jews have been obliged to fall hack on that well-tried principle of theirs, “When you can’t beat a movement, join it.”
Today, in America, the Jews have become Christmas boosters. But their acceptance of the day, like their acceptance of any non-Jewish thing, is for the purpose of making it over to their own image and likeness. Accordingly, the Jews are trying to establish a Judaized Christmas. They want a Christmas stripped of all commemoration of the Birth of our Saviour, and reduced to a purely secular festival.
To ensure that no Christian meaning of Christmas will be perpetuated through civic recognition of it, the Jews protest loudly against such practices as community-sponsored Christmas carols. They demand that no Nativity plays be presented in public schools. “Christological expressions” (the Jews’ phrase for dismissing any reference to their rejected Messias) must be banned from the holiday messages of public officials. “We want all this Christmas propaganda stopped!” shrilled the New York Jewish newspaper, The Day. “Public schools must be kept clear of Christmas carols and other Christmas influence. The educational system of New York City — and other cities with large Jewish populations — please take notice!”
But common though this kind of agitation has been, it is not the main Jewish attack on Christmas. The Jews well realize that in making these direct, naked demands there is always the risk that some day they will arouse Christian wrath. Consequently, they rely chiefly on a less obvious weapon, but one which is far more deadly. The Jews are saturating the American atmosphere with their infidel slant on Christmas.
By magazine articles, department store displays, newspaper advertisements, by radio and television and moving picture entertainments, by the popular songs which they write and publish, and by a thousand other subtle and insidious means, the Jews are conveying the impression that Christmas is nothing more than a happy holiday — a time for tinsel and mistletoe and big red ribbons; a time for hilarity and handouts, stimulated by bottled spirits.
Furthermore, by their perfect coordination of press, entertainment, and commerce, the Jews are creating the illusion that their version of Christmas is universally accepted — that “everybody but everybody” agrees that this is the way the feast should be celebrated.
In the event the modicum of Christian observance still clinging to Christmas in America should grow, or become dangerous, the Jews have a final weapon. This weapon they have already begun to use. It is an appeal to the “Americanism” of the stubborn Christians. In the name of democracy, they (who are congenitally incapable of any loyalty other than to Judaism) ask that Christmas be taken from the realm of sectarianism and made a day for all Americans, regardless of race, color, or creed. They argue that the day has too much national importance to commemorate merely the Birth of Jesus. They say it should stand for some program of their own Jewish devising, some large and deliberately un-Christian concept, such as “Brotherhood.”
One postscript: Touring the country this December will be a moving picture entitled White Christmas. It was written by three Jews named Krasna, Panama, and Frank. Its music was composed by a Jew named Balin, who calls himself Berlin. It stars a Jew named Kaminsky, who calls himself Kaye. It is this year’s main single effort to divert Christians from the true significance of Christmas. And the Jews expect it to be especially successful; for, to co-star in the movie, they have procured the services of an aging crooner, the one-time darling of American Catholicism. In exchange for his endorsement and abetting of their anti-Christmas purposes, the Jews may toss this pitiful Catholic a little conscience salve. Perhaps they will allow him to sing Adeste Fideles or “Silent Night” in the movie. The Jews know they can well afford to make such a concession, since any Christian sentiment expressed in the song will be quite blotted out in the welter of Jewish vulgarity.
THE ENEMIES OF CHRIST AT CHRISTMAS
Reprinted from: The PointDecember, 1956
Edited Under Fr. Leonard Feeney M.I.C.M.
This Christmas men are looking to the Holy Land, and they are listening — not for the strains of “Glory to God in the Highest,” but for the sounds of war upon earth. And we might say: It is just. God long ago crashed the Temple of Jerusalem to the ground, and cursed its people, the Jews, to be forever homeless and wandering. If the world has defied this Divine judgment and supported a Jewish return to Palestine, then let the world bear the consequences of God’s righteous anger.
But this leaves a greater part unsaid. For the Holy Land is infinitely more than a geographical locality which God has forbidden to the Jews. It is, for all time, the precious countryside where God became the Child of a Virginal Mother, and where God as Man walked and taught and died for us. It is, indeed, God’s Land.
If, therefore, we are anxious this Christmas, our concern is this: The leaders of our nation have proposed that Christian boys be ready to shed their blood in order to make the Jews secure within the borders of the Holy Land. But should this happen, should Christian lives be spent to keep God’s Land in the hands of His crucifiers, the price of such betrayal will not be confined to the deserts of the East. We will be paying, in kind, on bloody Main Street, U. S. A.
* * * * *
THE ENEMIES OF CHRIST AT CHRISTMAS
Soon, the Jews of America will be trying once more to jostle Christmas from its place as the nation’s chief interest in late December. As elbow for this endeavor, the Jews will rely again on their festival of Chanukah — once a minor holiday but recently seized on because of its timely Yuletide occurrence and now celebrated with all the blare and bluster the Jews can produce.
Though originally set up in 165 B. C., the observance of Chanukah (Hebrew for “Dedication”) has long since lost its holy, Old Testament meaning. Thus, when Jewish leaders decided a few years back to revive and exalt the holiday, they found it expedient also to invest it with a fresh and acceptable significance. They have, accordingly, made it an annual practice to hire the principal halls in the principal cities of the country for the staging of special Chanukah pageants. These loudly-trumpeted extravaganzas (“Inspiring — Breathtaking — Spectacular”) oppose the Birth of the true Messias by dramatizing, with the solemnity of religious ritual, the birth of their own messianic empire: the Jewish state of Israel.
It is, of course, true that the Jews would have been eager to exploit any one of their festivals that was opportune in order to affront the beauty and singularity of Christmas. Yet Chanukah is especially suited for such a use — because it was on that day that Our Lord revealed Himself to the Jews as the Messias, and, for doing so, was almost stoned. The story is told in the Holy Gospel of Saint John (Chap. 10, v. 22-39):
“And the Dedication was in Jerusalem: and it was winter. And Jesus walked in the temple, in Salomon’s porch. The Jews therefore compassed him round about, and said to him, How long doest thou hold our soul in suspense? If thou be Christ, tell us openly. Jesus answered them, I speak to you: and you believe not, the works that I do in the name of my Father, they give testimony of me, but you do not believe, because you are not of my sheep. My sheep hear my voice: and I know them, and they follow me. And I give them life everlasting: and they shall not perish for ever, and no man shall pluck them out of my hand. My father, that which he hath given me, is greater than all: and no man can pluck them out of the hand of my father. I and the Father are one. The Jews took up stones, to stone him. Jesus answered them, Many good works I have showed you from my father, for which of those works do you stone me? The Jews answered him, For a good work we stone thee not, but for blasphemy, and because thou being a man, makest thyself God. Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, that I said, you are God’s? If he called them God’s, to whom the word of God was made, and the scripture can not be broken: whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world, say you, That thou blasphemest, because I said I am the son of God? If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, and if you will not believe me, believe the works: that you may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in the Father. They sought therefore to apprehend him: and he went forth out of their hands.”
Because it is reckoned by the Jewish calendar, the day on which Chanukah falls may vary from year to year by as much as a month. This year it is due to fall on its earliest possible date. But Jews have never been ones to let liturgical niceties stand in the way of more vital considerations, and so, the Jews of Boston (the only segment of whose plans we have heard) are making an adroit adjustment in their schedule. Their annual Chanukah pageant at the Boston Garden will be held this year, not when the calendar says Chanukah should occur, but some three weeks later, on December the twenty-third — just a stone’s throw from Christmas.
* * * * *
The pride of Jewish rural life is the “kibbutz,” a sort of collective farm settlement, of which there are presently some 250 well-populated examples in the state of Israel. A recent volume to swell the praises of these communes is Harvard University Press’ Kibbutz, Venture in Utopia. The following two extracts from this book provide a raw, startling picture of the Jews who today inhabit the Land of Christ’s Birth:
“In its attempt to create a better world, the kibbutz has found that it faces considerable opposition, and it has come to view this opposition with an intense hatred. Indeed, it is not unfair to say the kibbutz hates almost everybody, since it views almost everybody as an opponent. Outside of Israel, all the ‘bourgeois’ countries are hated, and only the Soviet Union and ‘People’s Democracies’ are ‘loved.’
“As for marriage, they believed — and still believe — that a union between a man and woman was their own affair, to be entered into on the basis of love and to be broken at the termination of love; neither the union nor the separation were to require the permission or the sanction of the community. Today, for example, if a couple wishes to marry, the partners merely ask for a joint room; if they wish a divorce, they return to separate rooms.”
* * * * *
Each year when the Church commemorates the arrival of the Magi at Bethlehem, on the Feast of the Epiphany, our priests are required to read, as an integral part of their Breviary prayers, the following homily by Pope Saint Gregory the Great:
“All things which He had made, bore witness that their Maker was come ... And yet, up to this very hour, the hearts of the unbelieving Jews will not acknowledge that He, to Whom all nature gave testimony, is their God. Being more hardened than the rocks, the Jews refuse to be rent by repentance.”
This is but one instance of what the Jews would term the “anti-Semitism” of the Church’s Advent and Christmas Season liturgy. With the possible exception of Holy Week in Lent, there is no period in the whole liturgical year which more emphasizes the bridgeless chasm separating Christian faith and Jewish infidelity.
From Advent through the Epiphany Octave, the texts of the Mass and the Divine Office resound repeatedly with that theme which is at once the fulfilled expectation of the Jews of the Old Law, and the indictment of the deicide Jews of today:
“Behold, O Israel, your king ... Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, for the day of the Lord is nigh ... It is the birth of the Christ, O Jerusalem ... The Savior of the world will be our King ... He shall sit upon the throne of David His father.”
These are the tidings of great joy which plague the Jews as sorely this December as they did more than nineteen hundred years ago. And among these tidings there is, for the Jews, no more hateful information than the exultant shouts that the Baby of Bethlehem is the true Son of David, inheriting a royal title from His foster father, Saint Joseph, and royal blood from His Spotless Mother, the Virgin Mary. It was precisely to attack this central truth of Christmas that the rabbis of the early Christian centuries concocted that unprintably-filthy version of the Birth of Christ which is now found in the Jews’ “holy” book, the Talmud. We have determined never to reprint, in direct quotation, these blasphemous assaults against the purity of the Mother of God. But that they were invented by the rabbis, for the express purpose of challenging Our Lord’s title to the Throne of David, is abundantly admitted by Jewish authorities. The Jewish Encyclopedia, for example, blithely states, in its article on “Jesus,” that, “For polemical purposes it was necessary for the Jews to insist on the illegitimacy of Jesus as against the Davidic descent claimed by the Christian Church.”
At no point in the Christmas liturgy, however, does the Church’s consciousness of Jewish perfidy becloud her joy at the Birth of the Messias. In this spirit, therefore, we anticipate the coming gladness, and leave our readers with that jubilant exhortation from the Third Mass of Christmas:
“Come ye Gentiles and adore the Lord, for this day a great light hath descended upon the earth!”
THE PROTECTION OF CHRISTMAS
Reprinted from: The PointDecember, 1958
Edited Under Fr. Leonard Feeney M.I.C.M.
In her liturgical generosity, our Holy Mother the Church gives us three distinct Masses every December twenty-fifth. They are known as the Midnight Mass, the Mass at Dawn, and the Mass of Christmas Day. During the second Mass, the Mass at Dawn, the Church presents us with the memory of a noble widow of Rome named Anastasia, the only saint who gets a “feast day” commemoration on Jesus’ Birthday.
Saint Anastasia was martyred by burning on December twenty-fifth in the year 304. Among all the Christmas Day occurrences of nineteen hundred years, the Church has chosen to remember, in conjunction with Our Lord’s Birth, only this one event: the suffering and death of a Christian martyr whose crime before men was to insist that the Holy Infant of Bethlehem is the One, True God.
This Christmas, there are many gods being proposed to the Catholics of America. They are gods with names like Tolerance and Brotherhood, and to fail to worship them has become, in effect, a crime before men. Invoking Saint Anastasia, The Point prays this Christmas for those who will be guilty of the crime, and who will insist, publicly and persistently, that the Christ Child of Christmas is the only True God, and that His Virgin Mother is that same Mother of God who, when our last Christmas is finally behind us, will stand unique and singular as the one Gate of Heaven.
THE PROTECTION OF CHRISTMAS
Thy light is come, Jerusalem, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee, and the Gentiles shall walk in thy light. Alleluia.
In the troubled season of Christmas, 1958, as the last strongholds of our civilization falter before the Jewish siege, let all who are about to despair consider the above words. They are of an antiphon in the Christmastime liturgy of the Catholic Church, and they offer a needed reminder. Though we must not forget that the Jews have rejected the Incarnate God, we must also remember — with thanksgiving and the chanting of alleluias — that God has likewise cast off the Jews, and established His new and eternal covenant with us Gentiles.
“A Child is born to us, a Son is given to us,” is the jubilant shout of Catholics at Christmas. To the Jews, it is a taunt, notifying them that however much they might bedevil the Church with their anti-Christian onslaughts, her ultimate triumph over them is assured. The gates of Hell shall not prevail against her.
The potency of this promise that Our Lord made to Saint Peter has been realized afresh during the past weeks, with the election of Saint Peter’s 262nd successor. And it is especially fitting that, as a consequence, the attention of the Catholic world at Christmastime will be directed toward Rome. For, ever since the seventh century, the relics of the Crib in which our infant Savior lay have been in the Eternal City, at the Basilica of Saint Mary Major; there, each December 25, the Pope himself celebrates the Midnight Mass.
But besides being the “new Bethlehem,” Rome claims our Yuletide interest on another score. That note of exultation sounding through the Christmas liturgy, insisting we should rejoice even in these beleaguered days, has a resounding echo in the history of the Bishops of Rome. Through all the centuries, they have been the authors of a wise and effective resistance to the menace of the Jews — a resistance that has safeguarded Christendom in the past, and offers the best hope for rekindling it in the future.
* * * * *
The Catholic Church’s Jewish policy was deliberately arrived at. Centuries of contact with Jews at every level, both in and out of the Faith, taught the successors of Saint Peter some salutary lessons. The much-publicized ghetto at Rome, which the Popes maintained for centuries, was not the eccentric whim of a few conservative Holy Fathers. It represented papal teaching and papal practice that extended back through the ages of Faith to Peter himself, who made it clear in his first Epistle that the Jews were finished as God’s people, and who thus wrote to the new Christians of Asia Minor that they were now “a chosen generation and a purchased people ... who in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God.”
A compilation of papal decrees dealing with the Jews would clearly show that the Church’s legislative interest in them is twofold. First, the Jews must be constantly and enforcibly segregated from the Christian faithful, and second, they must at all times be prevented from infecting the world with their hateful and infidel doctrines. These were the two principles behind the Church’s approval of ghettos, her ban on the Talmud, her prohibitions against marriage with the Jews, her demand that Jews in Christian places be distinguished by a badge or other identifying dress, her warnings against Jews in public offices, etc.
With the final loss of papal territories in 1870, there ceased to be any Jews under the direct temporal rule of the popes. Yet, public questions involving the Jewish problem often brought the ancient Church principles into play. Thus, it is not surprising to find that the pope who was most outspoken on modern public issues, Pope Leo XIII, receives the following notice in the Jewish Encyclopedia: “He encouraged anti-Semitism by bestowing distinctions on leading anti-Semitic politicians and authors, as Lueger and Drumont; he refused to interfere in behalf of Captain Dreyfus, or to issue a statement against the blood accusation. In an official document he denounced Jews, Freemasons, and anarchists as the enemies of the Church.”
* * * * *
Rome’s traditional outlook on the Jews is currently reflected in its dealings with the Jewish State in Palestine. Amid a frenzied campaign of high pressure and propaganda, designed to persuade the world that Jewish usurpation of the Holy Land is the nicest thing that could have happened to the place, the Vatican has been notably unmoved. And it has been so despite the fact that vast numbers of conspicuous Catholics (Americans leading the pack) have not only swallowed but are publicly regurgitating the pro-Zionist line.
The Church’s mind has been made up on the matter since the days when Theodore Herzl, “the father of Zionism,” decided to call on Saint Pius X. Herzl hoped to get a papal blessing on his scheme for setting up a Jewish homeland. But the Holy Father told him flatly, “We are unable to favor this movement ... The Jews have not recognized Our Lord; therefore, we cannot recognize the Jewish people.”
And despite continual coaxings by Jewish leaders and their friends, the Vatican has refused to this day to give official recognition to the Jewish State in Palestine.
There have, however, been papal emissaries in the Holy Land during the last decade. They have gone, not to promote cordial relations between Rome and Tel Aviv, but simply to care for the interests of the Church and her children. They have gone to see how Catholics are harassed and discriminated against by the Jewish government. They have gone to see the wreckage and desecration of Catholic shrines and institutions by the Jewish army. And they have announced plainly to a heedless world what they have seen.
One of the earliest of these Vatican observers was Archbishop Arthur Hughes, who summarized his findings with the charge that there is a “deliberate Jewish effort to decimate the Arabs and to destroy Christianity in Palestine.”
One of the most recent observers is Monsignor Raymond Etteldorf, of the Vatican’s Sacred Congregation for the Oriental Church. In his book, The Catholic Church in the Middle East, which has just been published, he reports that Catholics living in the Jewish State are being gradually forced out. They find it difficult to get employment, even harder to set up their own businesses. Most important, the number of priests has been so drastically reduced through impositions of the Jewish government that almost half the parishes are now untended.
* * * * *
It is a troubled time, this season of Christmas, 1958. Our Lord’s Holy Land is in the keeping of His crucifiers. And that outrage is not the extent, but only the epitome, of the evil we are facing.
When Our Lady appeared to the children of Fatima, she told them that the people of all nations would have to suffer great afflictions if they did not turn to her. “But in the end,” she told the children, “My Immaculate Heart will triumph.”
Eventually, after whatever terrors and desolations may be in store for us, the world will listen, thankfully, to the message of the Catholic Faith — that Faith which looks for its ultimate protection to the Bishop of Rome, and finds its most joyful celebration in the festival of Christmas.
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Monday, November 17, 2008
Should Hate be Outlawed?
Reprinted from: The PointEdited under Fr. Leonard Feeney M.I.C.M.
January, 1959
Most Americans, hearing this question, would answer promptly, “Yes, by all means, hate should be outlawed!” Their eagerness to reply can be accounted for all too easily. During the last decade and a half, they have been pounded with a propaganda barrage calculated to leave them in a state of dazed affability toward the whole world. Those advertising techniques that are normally used to encourage Americans to be choosy in matters of soap and toothpaste are now being enlisted to persuade them that there is no such thing as a superior product in matters of culture and creed. On billboards, on bus and subway posters, in newspapers and magazines, through radio and television broadcasts, Americans are being assured and reassured, both subtly and boldly, that “Bigotry is fascism ... Only Brotherhood can save our nation ... We must be tolerant of all!”
The long-range effects of this campaign are even now evident. It is producing the “spineless citizen”: the man who has no cultural sensibilities; who is incapable of indignation; whose sole mental activity is merely an extension of what he reads in the newspaper or sees on the television screen; who faces moral disaster in his neighborhood, political disaster in his country, and an impending world catastrophe with a blank and smiling countenance. He has only understanding for the enemies of his country. He has nothing but kind sentiments for those who would destroy his home and family. He has an earnest sympathy for anyone who would obliterate his faith. He is universally tolerant. He is totally unprejudiced. If he has any principles, he keeps them well concealed, lest in advocating them he should seem to indicate that contrary principles might be inferior. He is, to the extent of his abilities, exactly like the next citizen, who, he trusts, is trying to be exactly like him: a faceless, characterless putty-man.
* * * * *
Along with everyone else, American Catholics have been hammered with the slogans of the “anti-hate” campaign. Additionally, they remember the stories of how prejudice against Catholics oftentimes made America a very uncomfortable place for their immigrant Catholic grandparents. And so, they too, if asked, would declare unhesitatingly that hate should be outlawed.
What American Catholics do not stop to reflect on is that the Catholic Faith, by its very nature, fosters indignation, intolerant positions, and strong utterance. The Church is set up to continue the divine ministry of Jesus Christ, Who avowed that He had come on Earth, “Not to send peace, but the sword ... to cast fire on the Earth, and what will I but that it be kindled.”
In accepting their vocation to be “other Christs,” Catholics are faced with the countless examples of Gospel astringency. They are reminded that the same Jesus Who said, “Learn of me, for I am meek and humble of heart,” likewise said, “I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man’s enemies shall be they of his own house-hold.” Nor can they forget that the same Jesus, Who submitted Himself to the Jewish mob in the garden of Gethsemani, had previously overturned the tables of the buyers and sellers and driven them from the temple with a whip.
In accepting their position as contemporary members of the Church, American Catholics must take as their heritage the outlooks, attitudes, and purposes of their older brothers and sisters in the Faith — those Catholics who have gone before them and have preserved the Church to our own day. For the Catholic Church is One. The Church that called on its sons to take up the Cross and the sword and drive the infidel from the Holy Land, the Church that isolated the Jews of Christendom with rigid laws and ghetto walls, the Church that has repeatedly condemned the doctrines of those who disagree with her, is the same Catholic Church that claims the loyalty of 35,000,000 twentieth-century Americans.
Along with the Mass, the Sacraments, and all the spiritual treasures that are a Catholic’s baptismal birthright, these American Catholics must also assume the rest of their legacy. As members of the Church Militant — raised by the Sacrament of Confirmation to be Soldiers of Jesus Christ — they are heirs of a tradition that has been marked through the centuries by sustained and unashamed militancy.
* * * * *
Examples of the clash between traditional Catholic observance and the current “anti-hate” campaign could be multiplied indefinitely. Every chapter in every age of the Church’s history will provide them, because the ultimate issue involved is an abiding one, a doctrinal one. It is the Catholic Church’s uncompromising claim to be the One True Church established by God. It is this conviction of Catholics throughout the centuries that leaves our greatest heroes and saints and the very constitution of the Church itself open to the charges of bigotry and intolerance.
The Catholic Church does not believe that all religions are on a common plane. It does not subscribe to the popular notion that, “We’re all headed for the same place, you in your way and we in ours.” The Catholic Church believes that Christianity is the world’s only chance for salvation, and it further insists that true Christians are found only within its fold, under the Supreme Shepherd, the Vicar of Christ, Our Holy Father at Rome.
Inevitably, this belief, when translated into practical action, makes for some intolerant arrangements: Catholics are admonished not to marry heretics and Jews; they may not attend a non-Catholic religious service; Catholic children must be sent to the Church’s schools. The motive behind these bigoted practices is the preservation of the Faith — not as an antique curiosity, but as a vital necessity. And not as a necessity for a chosen few, but as a necessity for all men, everywhere.
It is this terrible urgency about the Faith that explains both the Church’s rigidity in matters of doctrine an her encompassing love in matters of apostolate. For the note of absolute necessity that attaches to Catholic Truth, and makes the Church so intolerant and unbending, is, at the same time, the push and the drive behind every apostle. It is precisely because they are intolerant enough to believe that all men need the Catholic Faith in order to be saved, that the Church’s missionaries, from the time of Saint Paul, have given the world its most heroic example of zealous, consuming, constant, sweating, bleeding, dying but undying, love.
It is this love, this apostolic fervor, that the “anti-hate” program means to eliminate. For the ultimate outcome of the propaganda barrage that is now incessantly pounding the nation will be not only a spineless American citizen, but a spineless American Catholicism — a Catholicism that will be afraid to assert its own singularity and importance, a Catholicism that will try to become more like its neighbor religions, doing nothing to annoy, nothing to criticize, nothing that would in any way cause it to be accused of intolerance, bigotry, or hate.
* * * * *
Certainly no one will suppose that the promoters of the “anti-hate” campaign are just a bunch of well-meaning meddlers who launched the thing in all innocence and who would be dismayed to hear that it might discomfit the Catholic Church. The truth of the matter is much to the contrary. Just as the fast-talking soap commercials play on the gullibility of American housewives to make money for the big soap manufacturers, so the anti-hate slogans are selling Americans a bill of goods that will make rich profits for the Catholic Church’s enterprising enemies.
This deliberate and calculated program is a lineal descendant of that eighteenth-century campaign that clamored for “liberty, equality, and fraternity,” and ended up by wrecking Catholic France. It is akin to all those freethinking, freely-named, anti-Catholic ventures that have been plaguing the Church since the time of the Protestant Revolt — Humanism, Jacobinism, Freemasonry, Liberalism, Secularism, Communism, etc. For however much these movements may differ from one another in the means they advocate, they are all working for the same ultimate end. They are intent on building the City of Man — to the inevitable detriment of the City of God. They are enraged against the Church because of her calm insistence that the one thing that really matters is eternal salvation, and that she is the one divinely-commissioned ark of salvation. They are determined to show that the Church is not that important: if not by destroying her violently, then by reducing her to the level of the sects.
It was this latter expedient that appealed to Jean Jacques Rousseau, herald of the French Revolution and avowed evangelist of the Brotherhood crowd. Rousseau maintained (in The Social Contract, Book IV) that the worship of God should be allowed to continue, provided it did not become an end in itself. Theology must not usurp the superior place of politics; the interests of religion must be subordinate to those of the state. Accordingly, he felt the civil power should decide what articles of belief citizens might hold. And among these articles, Rousseau urged just one prohibition: anyone daring to say, “There is no salvation outside the Church,” should be banished.
All the followers of Rousseau, in their various guises — as well as his like-minded antecedents — are the Courtiers of the Prince of this World. But there is one group among them that is particularly of the household of Satan. They are the children of Satan, as Our Lord Himself calls them, the Jews. They, pre-eminently, are fired by the earthly, anti-Christian animus; and they have taken an active part, during twenty centuries, in all its manifestations. (This alone can explain the Church’s unique attitude toward the Jews: her traditional determination that this one people must be kept in check.)
As surely and securely as the Jews have been behind Freemasonry, or Secularism, or Communism, they are behind the “anti-hate” drive. Not that this movement represents the fruition of Talmudic doctrine. The Jews are advocating tolerance only for its destructive value — destructive, that is, of the Catholic Church. On their part, they still keep alive their racial rancors and antipathies. Their Talmud, for example, still teaches that Christ was a brazen impostor, and gives an unprintably blasphemous account of his parentage and birth. And as the Christmas season just past should have taught us, the Jews, for all their Brotherhood talk, have not in the least abandoned their resolute program to make all acknowledgments of Christmas disappear from the public and social life of the nation.
The secret of the Jews’ success is, of course, that they can practice such private hate while promoting public “love,” and not be accused of inconsistency. For, as always, they are running the show mainly from behind the scenes. They get their message across by means of co-operative Gentiles. And there are probably more such Gentiles now available — both the willing kind and the kind willing to be duped — than ever before in history. As a further good fortune, the Jewish directors of America’s entertainment industry can now guarantee that one Brotherhood spokesman, well-placed (e.g., behind a microphone or before a television camera), is able to influence Americans by the millions.
And the Jews’ campaign is succeeding. We have every reason to be alarmed at its success. American Catholics, even those not actively taking part in the tolerance talk, are now kept in line by the omnipresent threat of being accused of hate, bigotry, and intolerance.
* * * * *
In the face of a new year that will be the biggest one yet for the Brotherhood promoters, The Point pleads with American Catholics to realign themselves with the militant traditions of their grandfathers. No threat of “bigotry,” no accusation of “intolerance” should temper our zeal or silence our message. We must preserve our commission to “Go forth and teach all nations...;” to “Reprove, entreat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine.”
Unworthy as we are, we American Catholics must protect for ourselves the duty of naming God’s enemies and the privilege of carrying God’s revealed Truth to the people of our country, who, we pray, will hear it, with generosity and gratitude, and who will repeat that intolerant Profession of Faith which the Church requires of all new converts: “ ... At the same time, I condemn and reprove all that the Church has condemned and reproved. This same Catholic Faith, outside of which nobody can be saved, which I now freely profess and to which I truly adhere, the same I promise and swear to maintain and profess, with the help of God, entire, inviolate and with firm constancy until the last breath of life; and I shall strive as far as possible that this same Faith shall be held, taught and publicly professed by all those who depend on me, and by those of whom I shall have charge.”
(from the Rituale Romanum, published in 1947 with the Imprimatur of the Cardinal Archbishop of New York.)
A Militant Example
A recent Vatican news release has stated that Saint Lawrence of Brindisi may soon be declared a Doctor of the universal Church. Should he receive that title, the Italian Franciscan, who died in 1619, would thus become the thirtieth saint whom the Church has especially singled out as a teacher of the Faith to all Catholics everywhere.
Born at Brindisi in 1559, Saint Lawrence early demonstrated the singular gifts that would make him a brilliant preacher. As a Capuchin friar, with a personal commission from Pope Clement VIII, the saint delivered vigorous sermons in the principal Italian ghettos, thus incurring a bitter resentment among the Jews that has persisted to this day.
For our age of cowering Catholics, Lawrence of Brindisi supplies a reproving example. Not only did he work tirelessly to challenge the perfidy of the Jews, but he brought back to the Faith many who had gone over to the Protestant Revolt, and, most spectacular of all, he led an army against the Turks. It was in Hungary, in the year 1601, that Saint Lawrence, armed with nothing more than his cowl and his Crucifix, led a Christian army, outnumbered four to one, to an astounding victory over the infidels.
What is Racism?
Everyone talks about ‘racism’ but no one ever defines it. AR’s assistant editor has given it a try.By Thomas Jackson
There is surely no nation in the world that holds “racism” in greater horror than does the United States. Compared to other kinds of offenses, it is thought to be somehow more reprehensible. The press and public have become so used to tales of murder, rape, robbery, and arson, that any but the most spectacular crimes are shrugged off as part of the inevitable texture of American life. “Racism” is never shrugged off.
For example, when a white Georgetown Law School student reports that black students are less well qualified than white students, it sets off a booming, national controversy about “racism.” If the student had merely murdered someone he would have attracted far less attention and criticism.
Racism is, indeed, the national obsession. Universities are on full alert for it, newspapers and politicians denounce it, churches preach against it, America is said to be racked with it, but just what is racism?
Dictionaries are not much help in understanding what is meant by the word. They usually define it as the belief that one’s own ethnic stock is superior to others, or as the belief that culture and behavior are rooted in race. When Americans speak of racism they mean a great deal more than this.
Nevertheless, the dictionary definition of racism is a clue to understanding what Americans do mean. A peculiarly American meaning derives from the current dogma that all ethnic stocks are equal. Despite clear evidence to the contrary, all races have been declared to be equally talented and hard-working, and anyone who questions the dogma is thought to be not merely wrong but evil.
The dogma has logical consequences that are profoundly important. If blacks, for example, are equal to whites in every way, what accounts for their poverty, criminality, and dissipation? Since any theory of racial differences has been outlawed, the only possible explanation for black failure is white racism. And since blacks are markedly poor, crime-prone, and dissipated, America must be racked with a pervasive and horrible racism. Nothing else could be keeping them — the undisputed equals of whites — in such an abject state.
All public discourse on race today is locked into this rigid logic. Any explanation for black failure that does not depend on white wickedness threatens to veer off into the forbidden territory of racial differences. Thus, even if today’s whites can find in their hearts no desire to oppress blacks, yesterday’s whites must have oppressed them. If whites do not consciously oppress blacks, they must oppress them unconsciously. If no obviously racist individuals can be identified, then institutions must be racist. Or, since blacks are failing so terribly in America, there simply must be millions of white people we do not know about, who are working day and night to keep blacks in misery. The dogma of racial equality leaves no room for an explanation of black failure that is not, in some fashion, an indictment of white people.
The logical consequences of this are clear. Since we are required to believe that the only explanation for non-white failure is white racism, every time a non-white is poor, commits a crime, goes on welfare, or takes drugs, white society stands accused of yet another act of racism. All failure or misbehavior by non-whites is standing proof that white society is riddled with hatred and bigotry. For precisely so long as non-whites fail to succeed in life at exactly the same level as whites, whites will be, by definition, thwarting and oppressing them.
This obligatory pattern of thinking leads to strange conclusions. First of all, racism is a sin that is thought to be committed almost exclusively by white people. Indeed, a black congressman from Chicago, Gus Savage, and Coleman Young, the black mayor of Detroit, have argued that only white people can be racist. Likewise, in 1987, the affirmative action officer of the State Insurance Fund of New York issued a company pamphlet in which she explained that all whites are racist and that only whites can be racist. How else could the plight of blacks be explained without flirting with the possibility of racial inequality?
Although some blacks and liberal whites concede that non-whites can, perhaps, be racist, they invariably add that non-whites have been forced into it as self-defense because of centuries of white oppression. What appears to be non-white racism is so understandable and forgivable that it hardly deserves the name. Thus, whether or not an act is called racism depends on the race of the racist. What would surely be called racism when done by whites is thought to be normal when done by anyone else. The reverse is also true.
Examples of this sort of double standard are so common, it is almost tedious to list them: When a white man kills a black man and uses the word “nigger” while doing so, there is an enormous media uproar and the nation beats its collective breast; when members of the black Yahweh cult carry out ritual murders of random whites, the media are silent (see AR of March 1991). College campuses forbid pejorative statements about non-whites as “racist,” but ignore scurrilous attacks on whites.
At election time, if 60 percent of the white voters vote for a white candidate, and 95 percent of the black voters vote for the black opponent, it is whites who are accused of racial bias. There are 107 “historically black” colleges, whose fundamental blackness must be preserved in the name of diversity, but all historically white colleges must be forcibly integrated in the name of … the same thing. To resist would be racist.
“Black pride” is said to be a wonderful and worthy thing, but anything that could be construed as an expression of white pride is a form of hatred. It is perfectly natural for third-world immigrants to expect school instruction and driver’s tests in their own languages, whereas for native Americans to ask them to learn English is racist.
Blatant anti-white prejudice, in the form of affirmative action, is now the law of the land. Anything remotely like affirmative action, if practiced in favor of whites, would be attacked as despicable favoritism.
All across the country, black, Hispanic, and Asian clubs and caucuses are thought to be fine expressions of ethnic solidarity, but any club or association expressly for whites is by definition racist. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) campaigns openly for black advantage but is a respected “civil rights” organization. The National Association for the Advancement of White People (NAAWP) campaigns merely for equal treatment of all races, but is said to be viciously racist.
At a few college campuses, students opposed to affirmative action have set up student unions for whites, analogous to those for blacks, Hispanics, etc., and have been roundly condemned as racists. Recently, when the white students at Lowell High School in San Francisco found themselves to be a minority, they asked for a racially exclusive club like the ones that non-whites have. They were turned down in horror. Indeed, in America today, any club not specifically formed to be a white enclave but whose members simply happen all to be white is branded as racist.
Today, one of the favorite slogans that define the asymmetric quality of American racism is “celebration of diversity.” It has begun to dawn on a few people that “diversity” is always achieved at the expense of whites (and sometimes men), and never the other way around. No one proposes that Howard University be made more diverse by admitting whites, Hispanics, or Asians. No one ever suggests that National Hispanic University in San Jose (CA) would benefit from the diversity of having non-Hispanics on campus. No one suggests that the Black Congressional Caucus or the executive ranks of the NAACP or the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund suffer from a lack of diversity. Somehow, it is perfectly legitimate for them to celebrate homogeneity. And yet any all-white group — a company, a town, a school, a club, a neighborhood — is thought to suffer from a crippling lack of diversity that must be remedied as quickly as possible. Only when whites have been reduced to a minority has “diversity” been achieved.
Let us put it bluntly: To “celebrate” or “embrace” diversity, as we are so often asked to do, is no different from deploring an excess of whites. In fact, the entire nation is thought to suffer from an excess of whites. Our current immigration policies are structured so that approximately 90 percent of our annual 800,000 legal immigrants are non-white. The several million illegal immigrants that enter the country every year are virtually all non-white. It would be racist not to be grateful for this laudable contribution to “diversity.”
It is, of course, only white nations that are called upon to practice this kind of “diversity.” It is almost comical to imagine a nation of any other race countenancing blatant dispossession of this kind.
What if the United States were pouring its poorest, least educated citizens across the border into Mexico? Could anyone be fooled into thinking that Mexico was being “culturally enriched?” What if the state of Chihuahua were losing its majority population to poor whites who demanded that schools be taught in English, who insisted on celebrating the Fourth of July, who demanded the right to vote even if they weren’t citizens, who clamored for “affirmative action” in jobs and schooling?
Would Mexico — or any other non-white nation — tolerate this kind of cultural and demographic depredation? Of course not. Yet white Americans are supposed to look upon the flood of Hispanics and Asians entering their country as a priceless cultural gift. They are supposed to “celebrate” their own loss of influence, their own dwindling numbers, their own dispossession, for to do otherwise would be hopelessly racist.
There is another curious asymmetry about American racism. When non-whites advance their own racial purposes, no one ever accuses them of “hating” any other group. Blacks can join “civil rights” groups and Hispanics can be activists without fear of being branded as bigots and hate mongers. They can agitate openly for racial preferences that can come only at the expense of whites. They can demand preferential treatment of all kinds without anyone ever suggesting that they are “anti-white.”
Whites, on the other hand, need only express their opposition to affirmative action to be called haters. They need only object to racial policies that are clearly prejudicial to themselves to be called racists. Should they actually go so far as to say that they prefer the company of their own kind, that they wish to be left alone to enjoy the fruits of their European heritage, they are irredeemably wicked and hateful.
Here, then is the final, baffling inconsistency about American race relations. All non-whites are allowed to prefer the company of their own kind, to think of themselves as groups with interests distinct from those of the whole, and to work openly for group advantage. None of this is thought to be racist. At the same time, whites must also champion the racial interests of non-whites. They must sacrifice their own future on the altar of “diversity” and cooperate in their own dispossession. They are to encourage, even to subsidize, the displacement of a European people and culture by alien peoples and cultures. To put it in the simplest possible terms, white people are cheerfully to slaughter their own society, to commit racial and cultural suicide. To refuse to do so would be racism.
Of course, the entire non-white enterprise in the United States is perfectly natural and healthy. Nothing could be more natural than to love one’s people and to hope that it should flourish. Filipinos and El Salvadorans are doubtless astonished to discover that simply by setting foot in the United States they are entitled to affirmative-action preferences over native-born whites, but can they be blamed for accepting them? Is it surprising that they should want their languages, their cultures, their brothers and sisters to take possession and put their mark indelibly on the land? If the once-great people of a once-great nation is bent upon self-destruction and is prepared to hand over land and power to whomever shows up and asks for it, why should Mexicans and Cambodians complain?
No, it is the white enterprise in the United States that is unnatural, unhealthy, and without historical precedent. Whites have let themselves be convinced that it is racist merely to object to dispossession, much less to work for their own interests. Never in the history of the world has a dominant people thrown open the gates to strangers, and poured out its wealth to aliens. Never before has a people been fooled into thinking that there was virtue or nobility in surrendering its heritage, and giving away to others its place in history.
Of all the races in America, only whites have been tricked into thinking that a preference for one’s own kind is racism. Only whites are ever told that a love for their own people is somehow “hatred” of others. All healthy people prefer the company of their own kind, and it has nothing to do with hatred. All men love their families more than they love their neighbors, but this does not mean they hate their neighbors. Whites who love their racial family need bear no ill will towards non-whites. They wish only to be left alone to participate in the unfolding of their racial and cultural destinies.
What whites in America are being asked to do is therefore utterly unnatural. They are being asked to devote themselves to the interests of other races and to ignore the interests of their own. This is like asking a man to forsake his own children and love the children of his neighbors, since to do otherwise would be “racist.”
What, then, is “racism?” It is considerably more than any dictionary is likely to say. It is any opposition by whites to official policies of racial preference for non-whites. It is any preference by whites for their own people and culture. It is any resistance by whites to the idea of becoming a minority people. It is any unwillingness to be pushed aside. It is, in short, any of the normal aspirations of peoplehood that have defined nations since the beginning of history — but only so long as the aspirations are those of whites. AR
Reprinted from American Renaissance, Vol. 10, No. 5, July 1991.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on Resistance and Freedom
"Since you aren’t guilty, how can they arrest you? It’s a mistake! ...Why, then should you run away? And how can you resist right then? After all, you’ll only make your situation worse; you’ll make it more difficult for them to sort out the mistake. ...
At what exact point, then, should one resist? When one’s belt is taken away? When one is ordered to face into a corner? When one crosses the threshold of one’s home? . . .
And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests ... people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!
We didn’t love freedom enough."
“The Gulag Archipelago” volume 1
NEVER SURRENDER YOUR FIREARMS!
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