It
started in the Garden of Eden. France was transformed by
it. Russia has not recovered from it. Nation upon nation
continues to succumb to its false allurements. Popes have
proclaimed against it. George Orwell wrote about it. The
Beatles sang about it. Our Lady warned about it. Today,
masses of men yearn for it on a worldwide scale. What is
it? It is the rebellion of man against God. It is what we
call ‘revolution’. Its modern form is called Communism.
That it is a revolution aimed at the usurpation of the authority
of God in the temporal sphere has been acknowledged by Pope
Pius XI in his encyclical on Atheistic Communism:
... “the struggle between good and evil remained in the
world as a sad legacy of the original fall. Nor has the
ancient tempter ever ceased to deceive mankind with false
promises. It is on this account that one convulsion following
upon another has marked the passage of the centuries, down
to the revolution of our own days. This modern revolution,
it may be said, has actually broken out or threatens everywhere,
and it exceeds in amplitude and violence anything yet experienced
in the preceding persecutions launched against the Church
... This all too imminent danger … is … atheistic
communism, which aims at upsetting the social order
and at undermining the very foundations of Christian civilization.”1
Our Lady, on July 13, 1917, at Fatima, relayed a
message to, first, the Church hierarchy, and second, to
the faithful, through three innocents:
“I
come to ask the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate
Heart ... If they listen to my requests, Russia will be
converted and there will be peace. If not, she
(Russia) will scatter her errors through the world,
provoking wars and persecutions of the Church.”2
In reference to the errors that Russia would scatter throughout
the world, we must determine that our Lady was referring
to Communism. The main error that Russia has had to offer
the world, since 1917, has been atheistic Communism, and
we can see there are wars and persecutions almost everywhere.
This means the consecration of Russia to Her Immaculate
Heart remains undone in accordance with the manner requested
by our Lady.
What
follows in this article will be an attempt to develop the
thesis that Communism remains an active force for change
on a world scale and, in fact, has continued to spread throughout
the world even after the dramatic fall of the Berlin Wall.
Further, it will profile the ideological fallacies surrounding
Communism as well as discuss its means of advancement through
the infiltration of our educational systems, legal systems
and the Catholic Church, from examples that have been gleaned
from an array of publications. First, however, we will begin
with a description of a Catholic state, the anti-thesis
of an atheistic world state.
1.0-WHAT
IS A CATHOLIC STATE?
A Catholic
state is one that understands and operates in accordance
with the principle of man’s existence. The simple answer
to a primary catechism question unlocks the mystery of what
constitutes the principle of man’s existence: “Why did
God make you? God made me to know Him, to love Him and
to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him for
ever in Heaven.”3
Thus, the importance of a true Catholic state that endeavors
to propagate a knowledge of God, to foster a love of God
and to encourage service to be rendered to God in the temporal
sphere by its citizens in order that they may gain the necessary
graces to grow spiritually in this world and, thereby, to
obtain everlasting life with God in the next world. Father
Denis Fahey described the true responsibility of the State,
as follows: “The State must look after roads and railways,
treaties regarding imports and exports and such like. That
however, is not its whole domain. Its
principle care must be to combat with all its might everything
that tends to lower the moral dignity of man, everything
that is an obstacle to his reaching eternal happiness…”4
In
addition, as the State must be ordered to the eternal end
of man, its rulers must, in turn, bear personal responsibility
for the way they used their power with regard to the eternal
end of man. Father Fahey elaborates on this point, as follows:
“Our
Lord reserves to Himself the right of pronouncing final
judgment on the Last Day on the civil administration of
all earthly rulers as well as on their
attitude to the supernatural order.”5
2.0-WHAT
IS COMMUNISM?
2.1-A
Would-be “Paradise” on Earth, and an Atheistic one at that!
Communism
promises a Paradise on Earth through the ‘Dictatorship of
the Proletariat’. It is to say an ideal world, where everybody
would be free, equal, and brotherly. A world where there
would not anymore be social stratifications, neither rich
nor poor people. It would be a world where everybody would
have access to education, health care, and to the wealth
produced by the collective effort; a world free from the
tyranny of religion and social elites. We will see further
on what this dream becomes in the communist countries… Let
us now try to find a definition of Communism… Cardinal Cushing,
former Archbishop of Boston will give it to us: “Literally
it means the common ownership of all material goods: No
private, individual ownership of wealth, property or productive
goods. It is based on a world view called ‘dialectical materialism’,
which seeks to interpret the world as coming into being
without God and to prove that He does not exist.”6
A human-scale
answer to define the essence of Communism is endless, and
filled with the misery of those forced to live within its
ideological and territorial confines. The only daughter
of Josef Stalin, Svetlana, for instance, lived a materially
comfortable life in that land rife with vast deprivation
and stark horrors, Soviet Russia. It is telling that the
daughter of a prominent communist should be described as
outwardly fortunate, inwardly tormented.7
Svetlana’s father ruthlessly reigned for 29 years as a Communist
dictator in Russia; tens of millions of individuals perished
during his reign. Despite the material comforts inherited
by the daughter of a former Communist dictator, Soviet Russia
became for Svetlana a land that she could not tolerate.
This disaffection with the deceit rampant in her homeland
leads to her defection, in 1967, to the United States of
America, where she publicly denounced Soviet Russia, as
follows:
“There
is no liberty there. The elections
are just a mockery. Only one candidate is put up for each
office. You people can’t imagine what Russia is really like.
When you go as a tourist or as a government guest, the real
life is not shown to you. You only see what they want you
to see.”8
In
the workers’ paradise, there is no liberty? Then,
what is the point of Communism, if not to liberate the masses
from the shackles of authority? In reality, it means the
liberation from truth, the truth of God. The ultimate objective
of Communism is to ensnare as many souls as possible in
a hateful doctrine riddled with mockeries and lies for the
purpose of usurping the authority of God in the temporal
sphere. The true leaders of Communism, a coterie of Internationalists,
are not atheists themselves. In fact, they believe in God,
but they hate Him and His Church. Pope Pius XI alludes to
the existence of such a group in his encyclical on Atheistic
Communism, wherein His Holiness spoke of a conspiracy
of silence that has worked to suppress exposure of Communist
atrocities:
“This
silence . . . is favored by various occult forces
which for a long time have been working for the overthrow
of the Christian Social Order.”9
It
is interesting to note, at this point, some references to
the belief system of Karl Marx, the father of Communism,
relayed by Deirdre Manifold, in her book, “Karl Marx:
A Prophet of Our Times:
. . . light on this subject may be got from a letter written
to Karl by his son on March 31, 1854. It begins with the
startling words: ‘My dear devil.’ Who has ever known of
a son addressing his father like this? Yet that is how a
Satanist writes to his beloved one. Also significant is
a letter addressed by his wife to Karl in August 1844: ‘Your
last pastoral letter, high priest and bishop of souls, has
again given quiet and peace to your poor sheep.’ . . . his
wife refers to him as high priest and bishop. Of what religion?
The only European religion which has high priests is the
Satanist one.”10
Karl
Marx and Frederick Engels, authors of the Manifesto of the
Communist Party, the document that launched Communism, confirmed
the position of Communism in relation to religion as it
is to be held by the sad masses of
men who adhere to this ideological fury, in their
manifesto, as such:
“.
. . Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes
all religion, and all morality . . .”11
In
1986, Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist
Party’s Central Committee, sanctioned the atheistic character
of Communism at the closing of the meeting of the 27th
Party Congress, wherein he is recorded as having stated
the following:
“The
inner sources of Soviet patriotism are in the social system,
in our humanistic ideology . . . Our education will
be all the more productive, the more vigorously the ideals,
principles and values of the new society are asserted .
. . in the entire sphere of ideological, political, labor,
moral, and atheistic education.”12
The
irreligious nature of Communism was related by Father Vladimir
Kozina, in his booklet, Communism As I Know It. Father Kozina
quoted the statement of a Communist as recorded in a Slovenian
daily, Ljudska Pravica, published on February 16,
1952:
“We
Communists have our own doctrine, which opposes faith, opposes
every religion. The normal relation between Marxism and
Religion is battle. In this war, our
purpose is the DEATH OF RELIGION.”13
2.2-Communism Persecutes the Church
Our
Lady foretold of the persecutions of the Church.
The Black Book of Communism provided a number of examples
of these persecutions, one such read as follows:
“In
May 1948, with the arrest of ninety-two priests, it was
the turn of the Roman Catholic Church, which had 1,250,000
followers in Romania, to undergo repression. The government
closed all the Catholic schools and nationalized the religious
charities and medical centers. In June 1949 several Roman
Catholic bishops were arrested, and the following month
all monastic orders were banned. Repressions culminated
in September 1951 with a large trial in Bucharest in which
several bishops and eminent lay figures were convicted of
‘espionage’.”14
Father
Kozina brought to our attention in his booklet, Communism
As I Know It, a comparative reference on the extent of Communist
persecutions, under a single Communist dictator, of the
faithful:
“During
the five-year Communist revolution in Yugoslavia, Tito killed
as many Christians as all the Roman persecutors together
in 200 years.”15
The
infernal fury that Communists unleashed during the Spanish
civil war is telling in its targets as noted in the book,
Catholic Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War: 1936 – 1939:
“The
chief target of the revolutionaries was not wealthy capitalists
nor even persons known or thought to be associated with
the military rising, but the Catholic Church . . . In all,
6,549 priests and 283 nuns were martyred, many in the most
classic circumstances of martyrdom, when they were offered
life if they renounced their faith and death if they upheld
it.”16
While
the infernal fury of Communism hurls its insults at our
Lady and Her Son, the vengeance of God begins to unfold
His eternal justice in the temporal sphere as this example
from the Spanish civil war demonstrates:
“The
hermitages were turned into schools, and the vicarage into
a Marxist centre. The Holy Sacrament was profaned, but no
one knows what happened to it. At their orgies, they sacrilegiously
drank wine out of the holy vessels. A large marble statue
of Christ had it mouth destroyed by hammer blows and the
legs knocked off. During the profanation of the hermitage
of Jesús Nazareno, there occurred two frightening events
that shook the entire population. One of the profaners said
to Our Sorrowing Lady: ‘Aren’t you going to weep for
your Son now?’ A few days later, abandoned by all and
riddled with worms, he was found dead by the roadside. Another
perpetrator of sacrilege who proclaimed and carried out
acts of infamy to an image of Jesús Nazareno, died at the
front, machine-gunned in his private parts.”17
Those
in the western media who have been confounded by an international
political establishment that appears to give the imprimatur
to authoritarian government, would be less confounded
if they were to read and believe the words of our Lady given
at La Salette, in 1846: “All the civil governments will
have one and the same plan,
which will be to abolish and do away with every religious
principle, to make way for materialism, atheism, spiritualism
and vice of all kinds.”18
REFERENCES:
1.
Encyclical Letter of Pope Pius XI on Atheistic Communism,
St. Paul Editions, March 1937, pp 3-4
2.
William Thomas Walsh, Our Lady
of Fátima, Image Books, 1954, pp. 81-82
3.
Baltimore
Catechism No. 1: Prepared and Enjoined by Order of
The Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, Tan Books and Publishers,
Inc., 1977, p. 5
4.
Denis Fahey, D.D., The Social
Rights of Our Divine Lord Jesus Christ The King, Christian
Book Club of America, first published 1932, reprinted 1990,
p. 116
5.
Denis Fahey, D.D., The Kingship
of Christ According to the Principles of St. Thomas Aquinas,
Christian Book Club of America, first published 1931, reprinted
1990, pp. 26-27
6.
Richard Cardinal Cushing, Question
and Answers on Communism,
3rd Edition, St. Paul Editions, 1961, p. 11
7.
Svetlana Alliluyeva, twenty letters
to a Friend,
Harper & Row, 1967, 1st edition, dust-jacket
8.
Marvin H. Zim, Her Journey of No Return, Life,
March 24, 1967, p. 66
9.
Encyclical
of Pope Pius XI on Atheistic Communism,
Divini Redemptoris, March 19, 1937, St. Paul Editions, p.
14
10.
Deirdre Manifold, Karl Marx: A
Prophet of Our Times, G.S.G. & Associates,
1989, pp 40 – 41
11.
K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto
of the Communist Party,
Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1973, p. 73
12.
Mikhail Gorbachev, Political Report
of the CPSU Central Committee to the 27th Party
Congress, Novosti Press Agency Publishing House,
Moscow, 1986, p. 111
13.
Father
Vladimir Kozina, Communism As
I Know It, C & W Press, 5th Edition,
1985, p. 4
14.
Stéphane Courtois et al, The Black
Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression,
President and Fellows of Harvard College, 1999, p. 413
15.
Father Vladimir Kozina, Communism
As I Know It, C & W Press, 5th
Edition, 1985, p. 28
16.
Fray Justo Perez de Urbel, Catholic
Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War: 1936 – 1939,
Angelus Press, 1993, quote taken from inside of back cover
– commentary of Dr. Warren H. Carroll
17.
Fray Justo Perez de Urbel, Catholic
Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War: 1936 – 1939,
Angelus Press, 1993, pp. 190 – 191
18.
Apparition of the Blessed Virgin
on the Mountain at La Salette the 19th September,
1846, Gregorian Press, Most Holy Family Monastery,
p. 14
