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CHRIST IS LOSING

HIS WORLD

by

Lon Francis

PUBLISHED IN U.S.A.

March 6, 1944
BY

OUR SUNDAY VISITOR PRESS
HUNTINGTON, INDIANA



Nihil Obstat:

REV. T. E. DILLON

Censor Librorum

Imprimatur:

*I< JOHN FRANCIS NOLL, D.D.

Bishop of Fort Wayne



TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title Page

Introduction 5

Paganism Once More Prevails - 7

Who Are Fighting Christ and Why? 17

Why Modem Tactics Are Effective 46

How to Interest Our Fellow Countrymen 50

Can the World Be Regained for Christ? 72

How to Out-Do Christ’s Enemies 79

Brief Answers to Common Objections 91





INTRODUCTION

Dear Reader:

Once a year the President of the United States

prepares an address to be delivered before Congress

on the ‘‘State of the Union/' in -which he quotes

facts and figures relating to the present, and in

which he makes recommendations for the improve-

ment of both the social and economic condition of

the nation as such, and of the citizenry which com-

prises it.

In this little book we present a bird's eye view

of the religioiis, moral and spiritual “State of our

Nation" and of the citizenry, and propose measures

to effect the much needed reform for which every

Christian-minded American is longing.

We identify, we believe with considerable ac-

curacy, the many agencies which, according to a

cooperative understanding, are waging a drive

against Christianity in general, and against the

Catholic Church, the uncompromising defender of

the moral law, in particular. God and orderly gov-

ernment have the identical enemies, and people

should know who they are and how to meet their

challenge.

After elucidating this fact we point out what

is the clear duty of God's children and of His pro-.

fessed soldiers in the army of Christ. They are

expected to combat the forces of evil not singly,

but collectively, not with political, but moral weap-

ons
;
not behind the banner of hatred, but of charity

—inspired by loyalty to Christ, the King, and de-
votion to the best interests of their fellowmen and

of the common country.



Most evils emanate from our large cities, and

it is particularly in these that the Catholic body

is numerically strong. Its members, most of whom

have majored in the subjects of religion and the

moral law, are certainly better qualified to take

leadership in these fields than those of any other

group—and they offend far more grievously than all
others ivhen they follow the pagan way.

Will you kindly read this entire booklet

carefully, in order to acquaint yourself with the

symptoms of the disease gnawing at the heart

of Christianity, with its causes, and with the rem-

edies capable of arresting it—assuring that they
will be vigorously applied by the Catholic laity and

the millions of other people of “good will’ ready

to support them? Onward, Christian soldiers, to

recover the world for Christ.

LON FRANCIS



PAGANISM ONCE MORE PREVAILS

The Pagan vs. Christian School of Thought

There are only two schools of thought in Europe

and the Americas—the Christian and the pagan.
Since they are mutually exclusive both cannot be

right.

The pagan school of thought has long been

dominant in the press, in the secular universities,

and now in the common schools. It Is dominant

in social conduct, and even the homes. It has invaded

most of the churches, causing them to set aside their

‘"Confessions of Faith,’’ and in many instances,

officially to endorse practices belonging to the

category of things which the Apostle declared should

not even be named among Christians.

The pagan school of thought is responsible for

the frightful wars of this century, for the totali-

tarian states, for the rejection of God Himself, and

the persecution of religion, for the brazen attacks

on morals, for the flood of printed filth, for the

shocking delinquency among tender youths, for the

repudiation of the very idea of any moral law based

either on nature or revelation.

The pagan school of thought is now exerting

its influence, beyond the power of words to de-

scribe, to control the world of the future. Those

who oppose it from the pulpit or in the press are

called “reactionaries” or “Fascists.”

Ancient And Modern Paganism

What St. Paul wrote about the pagan Romans

before Christianity was brought to them would

seem to have been written to describe the world



8 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

at the present time. After noting that “the wrath

of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungod-

liness of those men who, in wickedness, hold back

the truth of God,’^ St. Paul declares:

Therefore, God has given them up in the
lustful desires of their heart to uncleanness,

so that they dishonor their own bodies among
themselves—^they who exchange the truth of
God for a lie, and worshipped and served the

creature rather than the Creator . . .

For the cause of God has given them up to

shameful lusts
;
for their women have exchanged

the natural use for that which is against na-

ture . . . And as they have resolved against
possessing the knowledge of God, God has

given them up to a reprobate sense, so that

they do what is not fitting; being filled with all

iniquity, malice, immorality, avarice, wicked-

ness; being full of envy, murder, contention,

deceit, malignity; being whisperers, detractors,

hateful of God, irreverent, proud, haughty,

plotters of evil
;
disobedient to parents, foolish,

dissolute, without affection, without fidelity,

without mercy. (Rom. I. 24-31).

The world thus excoriated by St. Paul had not

rejected Christ, since its people had not yet known

Him. How much more guilty, therefore, must

the modern world be, whose people are heirs of the

revelation brought into the world by Christ, who

know well that His law condemns all the vices

enumerated by Paul, and enjoins the opposite vir-

tues, which make for a happy state of society?

Speaking on this subject Pope Leo XIII wrote

in his Encyclical Christ Our Redeemer:

Never to have known Jesus Christ in any

way is the greatest of misfortunes, but it in-
volves no perversity or ingratitude. But hav-



PAGANISM ONCE MORE PREVAILS 9

ing known Him, to reject or forget Him, is so

'great a crime as to be scarcely credible.

The Future

Anti-Christ rules now, and all signs point to an

extension and intensification of his rule on the

morrow. While our nation and Britain are wa-

ging this costly war to get rid of pagan Caesars,

dictators, and tyrants, they seem powerless to pre-

vent other pagan-minded men from naming their

successors.

But, you may ask, is not Christ more powerful

than His enemies? Yes, but He acts through His

friends. Were not the uttermost parts of the earth

given to Him as a possession (Ps. II, 8) ? Yes, but

rulers and people have withdrawn from Him. Did

He not declare that He had overcome the world

(John XVI, 33)? Yes, but His conquest would re-

main permanent only through the militant prac-

tice of His faith: “This is the victory which over-

cometh the world, our faith’' (I JohnV, 5). How

about His promise to be with His Church until the

end of the world (Matt. XXVIII, 20) ? That promise

to be with His Church is being and will be kept;

but it does not imply that He will keep the Church

strong and vigorous in every country despite the

indifference of its members in face of the fanatical

opposition of its enemies.

Before the death of the last Apostle, at a time

when Christ’s Church counted few members, a great

pagan imperial power waged war against it. It

turned into a merciless and long war, but the Church

conquered, beca^use the zeal and earnestness of

Christians merited the support of the almighty pow-

er of God.



10 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

Today the Church does not lack numbers, but

her members lack loyalty to their Leader. They are

nominal Christian '‘soldiers’’ with no fight in them.

Outnumbering all Christ’s enemies in both Europe

and America, they are weaker than they, because

they are unorganized, unwilling to serve, complacent

during persecution, since, they say, Christ is well

able to still the storm, to cure the ills of society if

He will. But His cures are conditioned on coopera-

tion and repentance
—

“go, sin no more.” His peace

is conditioned on “good will.” He has provided

abundantly the means for the Church’s triumph, but

they must be used by its members.

Those who believe in God and His Providence,

in the Christian religion and in the faith, hope and

charity which it inspires, in the dignity of man

which it defends, in the reciprocal justice which it

preaches, in the, decencies which it promotes, should

step forth and defend them at least as vigorously as

enemies of the Christian order attack them.

The lay army of the Church Militant is not only

not fighting aggressively against the enemies of

Christ, its divine Leader, but is even too indolent to

defend His causes against their attacks. Unwitting-

ly most soldiers of Christ subscribe to the Socialist

and Communist theory that “religion is a private

matter,” despite the fact that it is only through the

laity that the Church can “preach the gospel to every

creature.” If they were organized and functioned

half as well as, and possessed one-tenth of the zeal of

the Communist, the Jehovah Witness, the Mormon

they, because of their numbers, would be able to in-

terest in the cause of Christ millions of their fellow-

countrymen.



PAGANISM ONCE MORE PREVAILS 11

When the voice of anti-Christ speaks it is re-

ceived with acclaim by his followers and henchmen,

and like those who mocked Christ under the cross,

they shout with glee ''Himself He cannot save/’

Churchill and Roosevelt, who seem sincere in

the belief that their subjects are in this war to crush

the destructive pagan spirit, and to make all the

world safe for the four freedoms, have discovered

that one of their partner allies is not tractable, and

is even in position to frustrate their designs if they

antagonize him while the war is on. The clergy are

severely censored when they even hint that this

might be true, while lay editors and some columnists

say that it is true.

George E. Sokolsky, writing in his syndicated

column on February 19, 1944, referred to the renun-

ciation by England and the United States of the

declared principle for which war was declared on

Germany. The smaller nations were to be relieved

of fear of future aggression by the more powerful

ones. But now.

The Finns have no choice in their destiny.

... we now officially advise Finland to submit
to Russia. . . We cannot afford to quarrel with
Soviet Russia. . . and so it will soon be with

Latvia, Esthonia, Lithuania, and Poland. . . .

an enlarged Russian Empire is coming into ex-

istence out of a war which started for the ter-
ritorial integrity of Poland. . . There are other

small countries in Europe who are losing their
independence.

Sokolsky then asks

:

WTiat happened to the United States and

our diplomacy? This country has been in two

wars really for the principle which Woodrow



12 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

Wilson described as ''self-determination'' . . .

but empire is expanding in this war. What will

all this mean to our future?

Why is it that the Socialists, Communists and

other anti-Christian forces are permitted to organ-

ize now in the enemy invaded countries of Europe

after we have been assured repeatedly from both

London and Washington that not until after th^ war

will anyone (and we presume this to mean any or-

ganization) be allowed to take over political leader-

ship
;
that the people of each nation could decide for

themselves better what they wanted after the ter-

mination of the war?

Why must Congress be warned against Henry

Bruening, former Chancellor of Germany, and in

recent years a professor at Harvard? We hold no
brief for him, and do not know whether he would

care to take over the government of Germany, but it

would seem that if he had to leave his country be-

cause he was anti-Nazi, that after living in England

several years and over here even longer, he should

know better probably than any other German what

the American concept of democracy is.

For the same reason we might ask why our

political leaders are warned against Archduke Otto,

who detests Communism, and who also lived in Eng-

land and in the United States for many years, where

he learned to admire our form of government. If

our leaders are interested in having a true democ-

racy in Austria, why would not the well-educated

Archduke be the right man? As in the case of

Bruening and the Germans, we do not pretend to

know whether the Austria-Hungary people want

him. We are only noting that the ones who are op-



PAGANISM ONCE MORE PREVAILS 13

posed to these two men are those who want Com-

munist states in Austria-Hungary and Germany.

Governor Henry F. Schricker, of Indiana,

speaking in Fort Wayne, Ind., on February 20, 1944,

emphasized the need of religion in governments,

and of it having representatives at the Peace Table

at the end of the war if we would prevent pagan

injustices from being imposed on mankind. He said:

I believe that there could have been no De-

claration of Independence and no Constitution

if the affairs of that day had been entrusted to

men who did not believe in God.

The Governor told the audience that he receives

many letters from people who are worried that we

shall not have “a just and lasting peace.” ‘‘They

say,” he observed.

We want some reward out of all this sacri-
fice. We want justice among men. But we shall
not have it unless we take our religion and our
faith in God to the Peace Table. The peace can-

not be settled on an entirely material basis. Our

security is not in the laws of men, but in the

spiritual strength of our people. . . God has

made us neighbors. Let justice make us friends.

If those who support the anti-Christian forces

of the world were consistent they would uphold

Hitler as they do Stalin; Nazism as they uphold

Communism, because the idea that the State is the

source of all human rights, subscribed to by both

Hitler and Stalin, emanates from anti-Christian

sources.

At the turn of the twentieth century, which

means fourteen years before the first World War

was launched, eighteen years before Communism

was adopted as a political economy, thirty-three



14
' CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

years before Hitler came into power, M. Emile

Combes, the anti-Christian head of the French Re-

public, declared:

There are, there can be, no rights except

the right of the State; and there is and there

can be no other authority than the authority of

the Republic.

It was his Prime Minister, Viviani, who boasted

that he would ‘‘blot out the stars of Heaven.” With

the repudiation of God and of Heaven there could be

no source of human rights than man and earth.

If Hitler is wrong, then Stalin is wrong also; if

both are wrong, then why should any but the irre-

ligious defend their anti-Christian philosophy?

If religion is the antidote to State absolutism

why do so many editors, professors and writers

attack it?

If George Washington was right when he de-

clared that there can be neither public nor private

morality “apart from religious principles,” then

those who fight religion must not be much concerned

whether the citizenry of our nation be moral or

immoral.

Nearly every university professor who attacks

faith also advocates “self-expression,” or the follow-

ing of sexual urges, by both the unmarried and mar-

ried. In fact their great hero, Sigismund Freud,

taught that the married have no right* to expect

fidelity from their spouses.

In February, 1944, the Anglican Bishop of

Chelmsford, the Right Rev. Henry Wilson, wrote in

his Diocesan Chronicle:

Morals in the sexual sense are getting

worse and worse. . . One of the most sickening

features in the divorce lists is the large proper-



PAGANISM ONCE MORE PREVAILS 15

tion of titled people whose names disgrace the

miserable catalogue. We might have expected a
decent example of these people, but we get the

reverse. . . The root trouble is the widespread

abandonment of the Christian religion.

There is such satanic perversity in any organ-

ized effort to indoctrinate a whole people with athe-

ism and everything that flows from it, that that

effort must be inspired by what St. Paul calls 'The

spirit of wickedness in high places.” If nothing

else proved the existence of a personal devil, or a

personal anti-Christ, the drive against religion and

morality would be proof sufficient.

What is going to make the world a more decent

place in which to live after the war? Will the press

of the world suddenly become religious and moral?

Will the magazines denounce lust and advocate

"cleanness of heart”? Will the movies teach the

100,000,000, who attend them every week, the les-

sons of justice, charity and forgiveness? Will the

"best-sellers” support religion and morality? Will

religious instruction be introduced into the school

curricula everywhere ? Will home life be bettered by

"full employment”? Will marriage begin to have

greater stability? Will our boys return from the

various battlefronts strengthened in religious faith,

and committed whole-heartedly to the better ob-

servance of the moral law?

We are reminded that "unless the Lord builds

the house they labor in vain who build it.”

In his first Encyclical, October 20, 1939, Pope

Pius XII diagnosed the cause of the world’s ills

in these words:

The deep and ultimate root of present day

evils is the rejection of the universal norm of



16 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

morality, from which results a practical denial

of Christ, of divinity, and of the teachings of

Christ. Hence there is derived a saddening

return of paganism to the distress of consciences

and of States.

The editor of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, on

July 11, 1923, when all the world was still dizzy

from the effects of the first World War, made a

plea for the inculcation in the citizenry, even by

the Federal Government, of the principles of Chris-

tianity, which were being attacked, in a world-wide

way, by the Communist Third Internationale, and

by all sorts of irreligious and immoral forces which

were in sympathy with it.

One one side or the other, or on both, it

was violation of Christian principles that caused

the war in every case, and it is therefore con-

ceivable that the application of these principles

to the causes beforehand would have averted

the war ...

The only way that Christianity can be tried
in this matter is by the application to interna-

tional relations of those principles of conduct

which are found in the teachings of Jesus

Christ and of which He is the supreme ex-
ponent; and there is no way to apply them
except by the establishment of international

standards of comity and right, and of inter-

national rules of procedure in case of dispute,

through international agreements to that end.

Put the principles of Christ into international

law and intercourse and then, and not till then,

will Christianity be effective for peace.



WHO ARE FIGHTING CHRIST AND WHY?

I—Organizations
You are well aware that your Church is being

most unjustly attacked in this country, but do you

know the precise reasons why the attacks are so fre-

quent just now, when Catholics are doing more than

their share to win this war for the United Nations?

If you can sense the reasons why, do you know

what combination of forces is leading the attack?

Both questions are answered in this book by

one who is certain of his position (1) because the

enemies of God and of His Church have been the

special object of his study for thirty-five years; and

(2) because his evidence is gathered from official

publications of the Church’s opponents.

Archbishop Spellman, of New York, writing in

The American Magazine (February, 1944) desig-

nated anti-Catholicism—and to some extent anti-
Semitism—a “disease,” of whose existence most peo-
ple know only by its symptoms. After Catholics

will have had the disease diagnosed for them, and

will let the world know that they are acquainted

with the organizations spreading it, will prove to

Protestants that Christianity itself is its target, and

with them will unitedly combat it, they will render

incalculable service both to God and the State.

Back in 1912, when Socialism had its greatest

strength, the editor of a Chicago paper observed

:

It is rather surprising that the Protestant

churchmen of this country have been so slow to
see that Socialism is the enemy of Christianity
—so slow in defense of their faith.”—Inter-
Ocean (Chicago), August 12, 1912.



18 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

The Reasons Why Just Now

Chief among the reasons why there is a wide-

spread concerted effort to smear the Catholic Church

at this time is the fear that the Pope will have too

much influence after the war, which would prevent

the designs of Communism and of anti-clericalism

from being realized. Hence the Pope must be de-

nounced as a “Fascist, and the Catholic Hierarchy

as “political,” even if there be not a shred of evi-

dence to support the charge. Communism, like So-

cialism, and Freemasonry thirty years ago, sees in

the Catholic Church its one obstacle and enemy.

During The Last War

Here it may be appropriate to observe that dur-

ing the first World War, when Communism, as we

now know it, was non-existent, great fears were

expressed in the Masonic press that the Pope might

have considerable influence in the Post War Peace,

and even have representation in the League of Na-

tions.

The October, 1924, number of the New Age

contained this observation:

Let it not be forgotten that the majority of

the nations represented in the League of Nations

are nominally Roman Catholic, and the secre-
tary of the League, Sir Eric Drummond, al-

though an Englishman, is an ardent Roman
Catholic. Readily it will be seen that the Vati-

can is reaching out for the control of this in-

stitution ....

The Vatican is also reaching out for control

in the newly created republics of Central Eur-

ope, and these nations are becoming restive un-

der the gradual encroachment of papal influ-

ence.



WHO ARE FIGHTING CHRIST AND WHY? 19

Count de Sainte-Aulaire, who was the French

Ambassador to Spain, and later to England, in his

Geneva versus Peace (Sheed and Ward), writes on

page 62

:

M. Leon de Poncins published a full review

of the Congress of Freemasons of the allied and

neutral countries, held in Paris on June 28, 29

and 30, 1917. This document established that

two years before the Treaty of Versailles Free-

masonry was beginning to place its founda-

tions in position, was adopting a scheme for the

League of Nations in thirteen articles and com-

municated it to all governments of allied and

neutral countries. Every essential point in this

project is reproduced in the Covenant.

On page 9 of the above mentioned work, Sainte-

Aulaire writes:

The secrets which have reference to the

destinies of nations, before they speedily become

open secrets, are the property of international

bankers. Masonic Lodges, socialists and radical

causes, in a word, of all those occult powers

which control or exploit the world through the

nominal powers of the world.

Bishop Gawlina, who, during this War, spent

many months in London, told the writer that the

same forces are now at work quietly but effectively,

reenforced by the agents of Moscow.

Three Times In Two Weeks

On February 1, 1944, Isvestia, the ofRcial organ

of the Russian Government, accused the Vatican of

being Fascist, and on February 8, the Red Star, the

Russian Army newspaper, in a dispatch sent out

over the world, charged that Vatican influence would

prevent the establishment of Democracy in the

countries of Europe. What was implied is that the



20 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

Vatican was the only influence in the world which

might prevent the establishment of Communism in

the various countries of Europe. On February 12,

Pravda accused the Polish Government in exile of

working with the Germans—^this for the purpose of
prejudicing the.v/hole world against Polish demands

for an independent nation.

The publishers of Stalin’s newspapers seem to

read most sedulously excerpts from anti-Catholic

publications over here—for they quote from them

—

but they greatly exaggerate the importance which

should be attached to them.

The attacks on the Vatican and on the Pope,

issued from Russian newspapers under the control

of the government, followed immediately in the wake

of the report of the Foreign Policy Association, parts

of which appeared in the Catholic press and were

quoted as clearing the Church of the Fascist label.

But there were many observations made in that re-

port which were not true, and this was to be ex-

pected because the Foreign Policy Association has

been pro-Communist over the years. It, more than

any other influence, prevailed on the United States

Government to recognize Soviet Russia, and was

named in the Congressianl Exposure of Radicals as

one of the organizations which cooperated with the

Communists.

Russia most inconsistently accuses the Pope of

having established friendly relations with Mussolini,

since it was the very first country to establish such

relations, and this long before the Lateran Treaty.

One Time Power Of Socialism

Let the writer point out the tactics of Socialism

during the years 1910 to 1914, and you will better



WHO ARE FIGHTING CHRIST AND WHY? 21

understand the composition of the “'united front”

arrayed against the Church today.

During those years the Socialist organizations

reached a membership of 2,000,000 in the United

States, and published many national papers and

magazines such as The Appeal to Reason, The New

York Call, The Worker, The American Socialist, The

Emancipator, The Melting Pot, The National Labor

Tribune, The Peoples' Press, Social Revolution, The

Weekly People. The most widely circulated among

these was The Appeal To Reason, published at Gir-

ard, Kansas.

Socialism then, as Communism now, preached

the doctrine of Karl Marx, of Bebel, of Liebknecht,

of Lafargue, of Blatchford, of Spargo—all anti-
Christian to the core.

The publishers of The Appeal To Reason soon

discovered that, because Catholics were so numerous

in the ranks of labor, it was unwise for it to attack

their Church in every issue. They, therefore, found-

ed another paper at Aurora, Missouri, named The

Menace, which would take over the anti-Catholic

campaign, leaving to The Appeal the field of econ-

omics.

That the Socialist membership was more anti-

Catholic than pro-Socialist soon became clear be-

cause the circulation of The Appeal declined rapidly

while that of The Menace grew quickly and enorm-

ously.

The reader might be disposed to ask what has

become of all the Socialists, if there were 2,000,000

of them from 1910 to 1941? Most of them who are

still alive are now Communists, or they are mem-



22 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

bers of one or more of many groups known as

"‘fellow travelers.’^

Earl Browder, General Secretary of the Com-

munist Party, gives this explanation

:

The program of the Socialist Party and the

program of the Communist Party have a com-

mon origin in the doctrine written by Karl
Marx and Fredrich Engels in 1847-1848, known
as The Communist Manifesto. There is no dif-

ference, so far as the program is concerned,

in the final aim. The differences between the

Socialist and Communist Parties are gradually

being eliminated, and one unified Socialist or

Communist movement is emerging

Communism's Methods Similar

We would have you recognize the great similar-
ity between the methods employed by the Socialists

and those employed by the Communists of today.

(a) Socialism achieved its greatest success by

boring into the Labor Unions which were, however,

not so strong at that time. Communists or their sym-

pathizers have penetrated Labor Unions with such

success that many of them hold important offices in

“locals’^ of all kinds. They have become such effi-

cient organizers, and have so carefully kept religion

in the background, that they have not been suspected

by the large Catholic element, believed to constitute

at least one-half of all labor. Catholics are

most numerous in the cities where the large indus-

tries are located.

(b) To offset Protestant suspicion of their

aims and to elicit Protestant support, the Socialists

founded in Washington, D. C., a paper which they

named The Protestant Magazine, published by Gil-

bert 0. Nations. Of course, it was not a Protestant



WHO ARE FIGHTING CHRIST AND WHY? 23

magazine, but a Socialist and anti-Catholic periodi-

cal. Communists, or their fellow-travelers have done

the same thing. They succeeded in having launched

in New York City a monthly magazine, named The

Protestant, which has no interest in Protestantism,

but only in Communism and anti-Catholicism. Its

editor has a long pro-Communist, anti-Catholic rec-

ord, and, while befriending the Jews today, has de-

nounced that section of them which is cooperating

with Christians in the promotion of good will

—

even if it be chiefly for their benefit.

(c) Socialism sought to promote its cause by

engaging the services of nearly 200 men and women

to speak in Protestant churches and public halls in

denunciation of Catholicism, and in favor of Social-

ism. These usually were heralded as “ex-priests,''

“ex-nuns," or “converted Catholics." But because

the true character of many of these bogus pa-

triots, with prison records, was traced and publicized

by Our Sunday Visitor, great injury was actually

done to the Socialist cause.

Having learned a lesson from that mistake

Communists sought rather to promote their program

with the help of many “front" organizations bearing

patriotic names, the better to ward off suspicion of

their real purposes. Some of these “front" organiza-

tions were The League For Peace and Democracy

;

The American Civil Liberties Union; The Interna-

tional Labor Defense; The American Federation of

Teachers; The American Youth Congress; The Am-

erican Friends of Spanish Democracy ; League of

Struggle For Negro Rights.

Communists have also been able to secure a



24 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

very firm foothold in the League of American Writ-

ers, The American Neivspaper Guild, The Writers*

Project, The United American Artist Union, all of

which publicity forces have been exhibiting an ex-

traordinary sympathy towards the Communist cause

and thereby advancing it immensely.

Other tactics, which Socialists never thought of,

are now being employed by Communists. They are,

according to a very definite plan, striving to array

Jews and Negroes against Catholics, and are having

considerable success, despite the fact that no other

voice has denounced racism so vehemently as that

of the Catholic Church. In New York City, where

a Communist paper and two Socialist magazines

have long held forth, two dailies, catering chiefly to

Jewish support, have recently become regular ve-

hicles of anti-Catholic poison.

But what has given the Communist movement

its greatest boost is the excellent record made by

Soviet Russia in its fight against the Axis Powers.

A host of newspapers, radio commentators, motion
pictures, governmental officials, have deceived the

American people into believing that any attack made

on Communism is an endorsement of Fascism. Few

there are who are not now obsessed by the strange

notion that Fascism and Communism represent op-

posite poles, two extremes, when, as a matter of fact,

they are identical in all essentials. Both are totali-

tarian
;
both repudiate the dignity of the human per-

son and deny fundamental human rights; both are

anti-Christian.

How radical and drastic has been the world’s

change of mind ! In December, 1924, Robert Under-

wood Johnson, former Ambassador to Italy, in a



WHO ARE FIGHTING CHRIST AND WHY? 25

signed editorial written for the Buffalo Evening

News expressed surprise that all nations did not

join France, Belgium, Japan and the United States

in ‘'quarantining Bolshevist Russia/' He compli-

mented Pope Pius XI on his first Encyclical against

the Soviets, but thought that it should have been

written earlier.

Observing that “conservative forces were never

more needed" in that day of social reconstruction, he

said that chief among these forces was the Roman

Catholic Church. He observed:

One need not relinquish one's differences

with “Rome" to admit that in all that concerns
order and the sanctity of the home and of pro-
perty it is standing like a cliff of granite against

the sething waves of Communism.

He then quoted Matthew Arnold, who opposed

the disestablishment of the English Church, not be-

cause he accepted the thirty-nine articles of faith,

but because he considered it a colossal institution for

doing good.

About the same time Captain Francis McCul-

lagh was writing articles on Russia for the New

York Herald Tribune, in one of which he called

Communism “a phenominal iniquity." Churchill has

condemned it in even harsher terms.

Therefore, those who entertain no fears for

Communism because the Party membership is not

formidable, are greatly deluding themselves. Its

chief promoters regard it as better if people are not

members of the Party provided they become fellow-

travelers by having all their prejudices against

Communism dispelled. With Russia's newly won



26 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

prestige, and with the “go-sign’' given to her by

many world leaders, there is a very definite danger

of Communism’s almost universal triumph. This is

the real reason why Moscow has instructed Earl

Browder to use present Party members to bore into

the Democratic and Republican Parties and to vote

for the most “liberal” candidates irrespective of

party. This is why the Young Communist League

has become the American Youth for Democracy, to

embrace all youths.

Those who would like to see Soviets established

in all the Balkan countries, and also in Finland, Po-

land, Hungary, Austria, Italy and France—as Stalin
does—evidently 'do not want the Pope to stand in
their way. This explains the attacks on the Pope

emanating from Russia and from every pro-Com-

munist paper, magazine and organization at pres-

ent when the time is near for the establishment of

new political regimes throughout Europe.

What the American people do not seem to know,

and what they are disinclined to believe, is that every

anti-Catholic and every pro-Communist movement

is supported by individuals and organizations, who

openly repudiate the moral law, and even the very

existence of God. The American Association for the

Advancement of Atheism, with headquarters on

Park Avenue, New York City; the Freethought

Press Association, the secret printers and distribu-

tors of pamphlets designed to destroy the morals

of youth, the publishers of several scores of filthy

magazines, the teaching of “Positivist” professors

at all large secular universities, who repudiate God

and revelation, are helping to prepare the way for

atheistic Communism.



WHO ARE FIGHTING CHRIST AND WHY? 27

The American Jewish Congress

We do not wish to leave an anti-Semitic thought

with the reader, but our list of anti-Christian ac-

tivities so prevalent today would not be complete

if we failed to mention the American Jewish Con-

gress.

The American Jewish Congress, headed by

Rabbi Stephen Wise, of New York City, has built

up a nation-wide network of espionage agents to

ferret out individuals and organizations suspected

of being anti-Semitic. Their findings are printed in

a fortnightly confidential publication intended only

for the inner circle, but made available to friendly

-government officials, sympathetic radio commenta-

tors and newspaper editors. It assists in promoting

the sale of the smear book. Under Cover.

In the January 7, 1944, number of this Con-

gress Weekly, the question was asked '‘Where is

anti-Semitism spawned ?’" It then answered its ques-

tion by saying : “In a denomination other than

Protestant.’'

In that same issue the Weekly quoted, with

approbation, the charge that “anti-Semitism, as

we know it in the western world, is an element

which has been for two thousand years part and

parcel of the Christian tradition.” Then the editor

remarked: “It can only be dealt with as such”

—

which means nothing else than that Christianity

• must be destroyed because it fosters and promotes

anti-Semitism.

The American Jeivish Congress also solicits non-

Jewish support to prevent week-day religious in-

struction for children of the public schools. In many

places, after ministerial associations and Catholic



28 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

clergymen had secured the consent of local School

Boards for religious instruction under “released

time,” the permission was revoked at the instance

of affiliates of The American Jeiuish Congress. The

Jews’ contention is that Christian instruction by its

very nature produces anti-Semitism.

The same organization publishes a Congress

Weekly, which, in some issues, has assailed the

Catholic Church most unjustly, thus giving stimu-

lation to the very intolerance which the Congress

aims at suppressing.

This American Jeivish Congress is not to be

identified with The American Jewish Committee,

headed by Judge Joseph M. Proskauer, who prefers

to allay anti-Semitism by having Jews and non-Jews

sign a four-point pledge to refrain from lending any

support to any anti-religious or racial group. This

gentleman is even criticized by the Congress, which

prefers to continue to attack the Catholic Church

and her prelates, so long as religious books of in-

struction carry Scripture texts unfriendly to the

Jews even of Christ’s time.

Joseph M. Proskauer, President of the Ameri-

can Jewish Committee, speaking before the Jewish

Federations in Pittsburgh, in February, 1944,

warned against the “false friends” of the Jewish

people who seek to profit from intolerance. He

charged that Kenneth Leslie, editor of The Prot-

estant was anti-Catholic rather than pro-Jewish, and

was seeking to harm the Catholic Church rather

than to help the Jewish people.

Other Organizations

Sufficient importance is not given to those or-

ganizations which function in the name of religion,



WHO ARE FIGHTING CHRIST AND WHY? 29

but which are designed to break up what is known

as "‘organized Christianity/’

There are, for instance, the Jehovah Witnesses,

everyone an apostle ready to die for his strange

faith. Professedly Christian, these men and wom-

en carry their literature, all of it bitterly anti-

Catholic, and, in effect, equally anti-Protestant, from

door to door. They claim that about 40,000 work-

ers distribute this literature. If each of the 40,000

visited twenty-five homes within a day it would

mean that 1,000,000 homes would be covered by

pamphlets and leaflets in which organized Chris-

tianity and organized government are attacked.

They are, therefore, the best advance agents for

Communism.

Then, out of a town fittingly named “Moscow,”

Idaho, nearly everyone in the nation receives cir-

culars from Dr. Frank B. Robinson, in which he

advocates direct communication with God as his

religion which, he claims, is “the largest religion

in the world operated exclusively by mail.” He calls

this religion “Psychiana,” which must have many

victims or its author could not afford to advertise

as extensively as he does.

Impress on the majority of the American peo-

ple, one-half of whom already are outside the

churches, that organized religion is wrong, and,

after a time, they will care little whether organized

religion is persecuted or not.

Even Stalin would offer no objection to direct

communication of Russia’s citizenry with God, if

the visible Church had no following.



30 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

2—^The Press
P.M. of New York City

The owner of the P.M. is Marshall Field III, a

multi-millionaire. Field’s mother was a Catholic. At

the time of his birth, in Chicago, the papers carried

the word that Marshall Field III was probably the

wealthiest baby in the world. He was sent to Eng-

land in his early youth to be privately tutored. He

is now out of the Catholic Church not altogether

by choice, but because his marriage is wrong.

According to Westbrook Pegler, (January -20,

1944) the P.M. has employed a “cell of reporters,

writers and editors who are either Communists or

so much like Communists that they could easily

pass for comrades.” Its editor. Max Lerner, foreign-

born, was once editor of the Nation.

Pegler confesses that he does not know what

Mr. Field’s motives are, but believes that he is

doing more harm to the Jewish cause than good by

finding so many instances of anti-Semitism to

criticize day after day, and that he is promoting

intolerance by his frequent attacks on the Cath-

olic Church, members of her Hierarchy, and priests

who denounce Communism or criticize Soviet Rus-

sia.

Pegler, in his column February 18, 1944, re-

ferred to the P.M. as follows

:

“It is without question the nastiest, unfair-

est publication ever offered for general cir-

culation in my time in the newspaper business,
which runs from the summer of 1910 to the
date of these presents.

Mr. Field is also the publisher of the Chicago

Sun, which, however, is only mildly “red.”



WHO ARE FIGHTING CHRIST AND WHY? 31

Frank Smothers, columnist for both papers, is

very unfriendly to the Catholic Church. He be-

lieves that the Pope should play ball with Stalin.

The New York Post

The Post is another New York daily whose

leanings are anti-Catholic and even anti-Christian.

Since it has published articles by the same men who

contribute to The Protestant, which is pro-Com-

munist and anti-Christian, it is fair to conclude

that the editor of The Post has the same bias.

Only recently the Post ran serially a book by

Pierre Van Paassen, which attacked Catholics and

Protestants alike. Thereupon, it began to run

serially a book by Lewis Browne, which is very

offensive to Christian readers.

On January 16, 1944, the Post organized a

Bureau to hear complaints about intolerance of

every type in New York City. Of course, it does
not expect either the Catholic or the Protestant

group to record many instances.

Intolerant outbursts against Catholics are

frequent in the city of New York, where Com-
munist papers are circulated in both English and

foreign languages; where, week after week, the

New Republic and The Nation, with their Socialist
and anti-Catholic doctrine, are published, and where

The Protestant and several other organs hold forth,

which have no raison d'entre except to promote ill-

will and to make money for themselves.

There are many newspapers in the United
States most unfriendly to the Catholic Church, but

they are not so consistently and brazenly offensive

as those mentioned above, published in New York
City, where the Jewish population is large, where

Communists are so active, and near-Communists



32 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WOLRD

in the American Labor Party and in other organiza-

tions relish attacks on the Church.

The Protestant

Frederick Woltman exposed Kenneth Leslie,

editor of The Protestant in a series of three articles

in the New York World Telegram on February 7,
8 and 9, 1944. After noting that The Protestant is,

in no sense, a church publication, Woltman said

that while it professedly fights anti-Semitism, it

is violently anti-Catholic and militantly pro-Com-

munist. He points out that prominent men and

women, including Harold L. Ickes, Newbold Morris,

Pearl Buck, Fannie Hurst, many Protestant Bishops,

union heads, and college presidents, lend their

names as “sponsors” of the publication. It assails

the American Jewish Committee (not the American

Jewish Congress which supports The Protestant

with all its v/eight) for seeking the cooperation of

Christians in promotion of a good-will effort, even

though that Committee is backed by President

Roosevelt, Wendell Willkie, Governor Dewey,
. A1

Smith, Jeremiah T. Mahoney, Philip Murray, Dr.

John A. Lapp and other well known men.

Leslie has organized one Committee to “Elim-

inate anti-Semitic Statements in School Text-

books,” and another to “Combat anti-Semitism.”

These Committees have run full-page advertisements

in many city newspapers, designed to make it

appear that Protestant clergymen alone are friend-

ly to the Jews and that Catholic clergymen are

not. Active on these Committees are Pierre van

Paassen, well known for his anti-Christian position,

Johannes Steel, radio commentator, and Joseph

Brainin.



WHO ARE FIGHTING CHRIST AND WHY? 33

The Protestant has written about the ‘'Hitler-

Vatican Schenanigans” ; called Archbishop Spell-

man ‘'the Dainty Servant of Vatican Intrigue/’ and

Monsignor Sheen, “a Dangerous Subtle Fascist.”

Van Paassen, writing in that magazine, blamed the

slowness of the conquest of Hitler and Italy to the

“secret council chambers of Madrid, Vatican City,

the Washington State Department, and the Arch-

iepiscopal Palace on Madison Avenue, New York.”

Writing in the Daily Worker (November 7,

1943), Leslie said: “If there is a heart of justice in

the universe, it is beating now in the Red Army.

I believe in that heart. I call it God.”

A frequent contributor to The Protestant is
Gaetano Salvemini, of Harvard, who, together

with La Piana, an ex-priest, wrote a work en-

titled *'What To Do With Italy” in which the Holy

Father is blamed for both Fascism and Nazism.

“Leslie’s technique,” wrote Rev. John Clarence

Petrie, a Protestant clergyman of Houston, Texas,

recently, “is to advance Communism without de-

liberately, in so many words, calling his magazine

Communist . . . His attacks on the Catholic Church

are particularly vitriolic for the very reason that

it is the only religious body in the world that con-

demns Communism as un-Christian . . . Communists

are using the American Protestant churches to-

day.”

The Converted Catholic

In connection with Christ’s Mission a monthly

magazine, the Converted Catholic Magazine, is now

published, and seems to be thriving because it is

procuring financial help for its placement among the

soldiers in the United States Army.



34 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

This magazine was founded by James A. O’Con-

nor, suspended from the priesthood in the Arch-

diocese of Chicago many years ago. Today the

magazine carries the subhead ‘‘Edited by former

Catholic priests,” and then five of them are listed

as editors and contributors.

This magazine feeds people Vv^ith the same false-

hoods as does The Protestant. It represents the

Catholic Church as anti-Semitic, as Fascist, intol-

erant, and her people as “priest-ridden.”

The unsuspecting reader naturally assumes that

the former priests should know the Catholic Church

and that, when they propagate the identical charges

broadcast by other unfriendly papers and periodi-

cals, the charges may be true.

When the Izvestia attacked the Vatican as

Fascist early in February, 1944, the daily papers

reported that it had copied the charge from The

Converted Catholic Magazine.

Life And Time

These two weekly magazines of very wide

circulation {Life claims nearly 3,000,000) exhibit

a far greater prejudice than sympathy towards re-

ligion, and a much greater friendliness for Soviet

Russia than for any other nation. In editing the

news, the publishers quite frequently display their

dislike for the Catholic Church. In a feature edi-

torial Feb. 14, 1944, Life endorsed the Izvestia's

criticism of Vatican war policy, and charges the

Catholic clergy with using their spiritual influence

for political ends.

Life devoted a whole edition to Soviet Russia

and it contained nothing but gloriflcation. A few
weeks later it had a feature article on Spain, which



WHO ARE FIGHTING CHRIST AND WHY? 35

contained not a single favorable paragraph. In other

feature articles Catholic Quebec and Puerto Rico

were treated with depreciation and ridicule.

Many Catholics, who have taken the trouble to

write to the editors of these two periodicals, have

sent to the writer the replies they received—and
they are all the same. The correspondent is told

that they are not anti-Catholic ; that they have

many Catholic friends; and employ a number of

Catholics. They justify their criticism of the Cath-

olic Church by saying that Life has also carried

pictures of Catholic events and services.

“Why is Time so constantly sniping at the

Catholic Church in violation of all responsible jour-

nalistic practice,” asks the editor of the Catholic

News (February 26, 1944) ? The editor was re-

ferring to a recent offensive anonymous letter cred-

ited to a chaplain, critical of the Catholic chap-

lains in our armed services. This letter was well

answered by a member of the Military Ordinariate

staff, but only for those who read the Catholic paper.

Here is a sample letter written by the editor of

Time to complaintants

:

Yes, one of the points in the Atlantic Char-

ter is Freedom of Religion for all the peoples
of the world. But this doesn’t mean that we
are fighting only for Christianity; it m.eans

that we are fighting to let the Indians be Mos-
lems and Hindus, help the Jews fight for Juda-

ism, the Near-Easterners for Mohammedan-
ism and the Chinese for Buddhism as well
as for the Western World to have Christianity.

And it doesn’t mean that we should be mis-
sionaries, attempting to spread the Christian

Gospel throughout the earth. But Freedom of
Religion does mean that each and every person



36 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

will be able to worship in the manner he sees
fit, be it Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Yogi,

Mormon, Christion Science or Holy Roller.

Christianity has been a powerful spiritual

force for two thousand years but it has also

been the cloak for some scandalously corrupt

practices. The philosophical assumptions of

Democracy and Christianity are identical in rec-

ognizing the dignity of man and the worth of
each human being, but historically Christianity
and Democracy have not always gone hand in

hand. The Pagans in Ancient Greece did quite

a neat job of setting up one type of Democracy

and since then, strains of Platonic thought have

recurred throughout the development of Chris-

tianity and Western political thought.

There is also danger in identifying Cathol-

icism completely with Christianity. Christian-

ity has taken other forms besides Catholicism,

although until the beginning of the 16th Cen-

tury, Catholicism was the main house of

Christianity. Our own democratic country was

settled by those escaping the persecutions of

religion, both Catholic and Protestant.

From Russian actions toward Poland, it
will be difficult to assure you that the United

States and England will have control of all

Europe after the war is over. Russia has done

most of our fighting and may decide to do a
great deal of the policing. And as for the
United States and Great Britain ‘‘cracking

down on them’’ if Russia does stay in Europe,

we’d better think twice. They control one-

sixth of the earth’s surface and the possibility

is not remote that they could beat us. I’d rather

stay at peace with the Russians, thanks.

England isn’t going to have much to crack

down with, much as she would like to, per-

haps.

We’ll all just have to keep on doing the

best job we can.



WHO ARE FIGHTING CHRIST AND WHY? 87

Henry R. Luce, born of American parents in

the Province of Shantung, China, in 1898, was

a Rhodes student at Oxford. He founded Time

magazine in 1923; began the publishing of For-

tunCy a monthly, in 1930; and Life, the picture

magazine, in 1936.

Russel Davenport, now an editor of Life and

Fortune, is charged by the National Republic with

having aided financially the author of Under Cover

to conduct his investigations. Davenport has been

president of “Citizens for Victory” with which ex-

minister Leon M. Birkhead, founder of “Friends of

Democracy,” (Communistic) is associated. This

gentleman officiated at the “companionate mar-

riage” of the daughter of Haldeman-Julius, the

publisher of the Little Blue Books—mostly anti-
Christian, anti-moral and atheistic. Birkhead, who

was in turn a Methodist, a Unitarian, and agnostic,

wrote some of these books. His organization is also

active in the promotion of the distribution of

Under Cover,

The editor of the Foreign Policy Bulletin, which

recently published a report on the Vatican and then

immediately followed it by another on Russia, is

Vera Micheles Dean, born in St. Petersburg, Russia,

who, in different works, has displayed a very bitter

attitude towards Christianity.

The Press And Birth Control

Dr. J. H. J. Upham, head of the Planned Par-

enthood Federation of America, Inc., is the former

President of the American Medical Association. He

denies to the Catholic Church the right—since
he says she alone of all religions is opposed to his

movement—^to interfere with legislation designed



88 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

to make information on birth control available to

everybody.

Magazines, enjoying the largest circulation,
'

range in this order:

(1) Life; (2) McCalls; (3) Ladies' Home Jour-

nal; (4) Look; (5). True Confessions; (6) True

Story; (7) Woman's Home Companion; (8) Satur-

day Evening's Post; (9) Colliers; (10) Good House-

keeping. Exceeding all of these in circulation is

Readers Digest (about 8,000,000). All of these have

carried articles endorsing Birth Control and

Planned Parenthood with the help of contraceptive

devices. In fact there are very few newspapers or

periodicals, outside Catholic and Lutheran, which

do not defend it.

The December, 1943, number of the Journal of

the A.M.A. presented a list of birth control devices

as the '‘new and non-ofhcial remedies’" accepted by

the Association’s Council on Chemistry and Phar-

macy.

If Gallup Polls are reliable, 83% of all women

in the country endorse Planned Parenthood, by

whatever means, including, so George Gallup says,

68% of all Catholic v>^omen. This is likely not true.

There is often a “catch” in the manner in which

questions are posed.

Despite the existence of Federal and State laws

against the advertising and sale of contraceptives

they are sold openly everywhere. In dozens of

places in every city they may be procured by self-

service through vending machines. The War De-

partment itself supplies contraceptive devices in

large quantity to the Army Camps to be delivered

to the boys on or without request. In fact posters



WHO ARE FIGHTING CHRIST AND WHY? 39

are pasted in many places in the Camps reminding

the boys that these things are available.

With public sentiment so favorable to this

immoral practice, it will become increasingly more

difficult to keep our people wedded to the Church’s

stern interpretation of the law of God. Conversions

to the Catholic faith will also be impeded, es-

pecially if young people entertain the notion, as most

of them do, that it is the Catholic Church, and not

God Almighty and the lav/ of nature, which forbid

the use of devices designed to prevent conception.

Is There A Natural Moral Law?

There are very few non-Catholic scholars today,

who subscribe to the teaching that there is any moral

law imbeded in nature. In a recent number of

Life the editor quoted from Charles Beard’s The

Republic, as expressing his own belief, the observa-

tions: “a natural right is an asserted moral right,

claimed by anybody who chooses to assert or claim.

If enough people joined in upholding the assertion

or claim, then the right has force and becomes a

right respected by government and society.” This

is tantamount, of course, to saying that there is no

natural moral law, and that rights are determined

by majority vote.

Such is the teaching, according to a profes-

sor at Johns Hopkins, of practically every profes-

sor of the Social Sciences in all secular universities.

It makes clear wffiat will be the battleground of the

Church’s fight in the future, namely, the field of

morals more than of doctrine. In fact, the same

professors teach that no one has a right to teach

religious doctrine, because it is all guess-work if



40 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

there has been no divine revelation—and there has
been none, they say.

Magazines Destructive of Morality,

The pornographic magazines had increased in

number and circulation to such an extent during

the depression period that it was necessary, in

the year 1938 for the Bishops of the United States

to organize a movement to combat them. The

Episcopal Committee heading the National Or-

ganization for Decent Literature, found more than

two hundred, with sufficient circulation to reach

every family in the nation, which specialized in

featuring illicit love and marital infidelity, to the

great injury of faith and moral sense of the

readers. Scores of them were t oo filthy to

entitle the publishers to the second class mail priv-

ilege, even under the most liberal law of the United

States Post Office Department. Cartoons and illustra-

tions contained in these were directly intended to

excite lewd thoughts and to make light of lewd be-

havior. Many of them carried advertisements de-

signed to arouse the curiosity of youth, and to lead

him to purchase nude pictures, immoral comic strips,

and articles which they would not dare to purchase

in any store.

While it was easy to form a local branch of the

National Organization for Decent Literature and to

enlist the support of non-Catholics in it, a con-

siderable part of the press of the United States

criticized the organization for infringing on the

right of a ‘Tree press.” During the past few years

the Post Master General has withdrawn the second

class mail privilege from about sixty such publica-

tions, and has been denounced for it by the editors



WHO ARE FIGHTING CHRIST AND WHY? 41

of many newspapers, magazines, newspaper col-

umnists and radio commentators.

The people of the nation need to be awakened

to the idea that the destruction of morals, the

checking of the juvenile delinquency problem de-

serve far more consideration, as practical matters,

than the technical liberty to further promote these

evils.

Fully one hundred magazines published in the

United States had been denied entrance into Can-

ada, and even into England and Australia.

A publisher has no more right, in prinicple, to
spread poison for the mind and heart than the pro-

ducer of canned foods has to fill the containers

with matter injurious to the body.

Columnists

Many newspaper columnists have more readers

than have the editorial observations of the largest

papers in the country, and it is likely that their

views, nearly all individual, and somewhat biased by

their political, social and religious viewpoints, in-

fluence readers more than do those of the editors. .

The daily column of one of these appears in more

than 800 city papers, and that of another in more

than 600, which means that they probably reach

half the people of the United States. There are

2,200 daily newspapers, but many of them exist in

towns of small population.

Some of these same men are radio commenta-

tors, and when they are ultra-liberal in relation to

matters relating to faith and morals, when they ex-

hibit a great friendliness towards the Soviet Union,

and denounce every unfriendly person as a Fascist,

they contribute much towards the molding of public



42 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

opinion along unhealthy lines. You need hardly be

informed that too many of them are scandal-mon-

gers.

We prefer not to mention by name those who
offend most frequently, but believe that our readers

should know that Dr. George W. Crane has been

writing “copy’" very anti-Catholic in tone in recent

months. Within one week recently, this gentleman

filled his column several times with anti-Catholic

observations. On one day he carried “copy,” which

placed the Church in South America in a very un-

favorable light, and wrote as though all of South

America was a political unit under the complete con-

trol of an antiquated Church. Two days later he

commented on a letter received from a mother who

wrote. “Our priest has been chiding me for not send-

ing Jacqueline to Sunday School, but I cannot swal-

low a lot of the old-fashioned doctrines of the

Church. . . I do not like the fact that my Church
has opposed education of the masses, as in Mexico,

South America, Spain and Russia. And why should

I who am strictly of Irish descent have an Italian

Pope try to dictate my religious opinions or arbitrar-
ily set forth rules for my conduct.”

The advice given by Dr. Crane was “always

criticize your Church officials when you feel they

deserve it, for this keeps them from growing men-

tally and spiritually fat. . . If Loyola and Luther

and other leaders hadn’t challenged the complacent

thinking of the older leaders of the Catholic Church

in the sixteenth century, impartial historians say the

Church might have died of spiritual obesity.”

Walter Winchell, who claims that he has a host

of Catholic friends, and who frequently takes occa-



WHO ARE FIGHTING CHRIST AND WHY? 43

sion to deny that he is a Communist, is accused by

The National Republic of having, in September,

1932, participated in a symposium conducted by the

New Masses, a Communist publication, on the theme,

‘'How I Came to Communism.” By frequently re-

commending the purchase of Under Cover, he was

probably responsible, more than any other, for its

vast sale.

Books

Never before were so many books written, cal-

culated, and often designed, to weaken the Christian

faith. The ones which do the most harm are no

longer those written by atheists and rationalists

which made direct attacks on faith, but rather the

many novels—and often best sellers—which sneer
at religious practices and indirectly approve of

misconduct while they entertain the reader.

Then there are those like The Nazarene, which

presents Christ attractively enough as man, but robs

Him of His divine character; and The Apostle,

written by the same author, which presents St.

Paul to the world as not merely the zealous prop-

agator, but as the founder of the Christian re-

ligion, as a zealot who is not to be taken seriously,

because he had “visions” and was an epileptic; the

Ten Commandments prepared by ten different novel-

ists. Thomas Mann, who writes on the First Com-

mandment, rejects the very idea that God had de-

livered them to Moses or that He had communicated

with Moses at all.

The author of The Nazarene and The Apostle

has announced that he will bring suit against the

Jewish Daily Forward because it charges him with

having accepted the Christian concept of the Holy



44 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

Trinity. He says he wants exposed before the

whole world the “bloody frame-up’’ against a Jew

“who devoted all his life to the Jewish cause”—The
Jewish Advocate, February 17, 1944.

Joseph Lewis is president both of an Atheistic

organization and of the Eugenics Publishing Com-

pany, and sends out to the home address of millions

of people circulars advertising books calculated to

destroy both faith and morals. A multitude of our
own people, and even more the 70,000,000 Ameri-

cans, who never had either religious or moral train-

ing, are mentally wounded in heart and soul by

such pagan immoral books.

The Very Rev. R. Campbell, of Hindmarsh,

Australia, said recently in a public address

:

All through our long human history men
and women have indulged in sin and vice; but
our fathers did call vice, vice, and did not justi-

fy it. Today it is made attractive, given “nice”
names and flaunted in public by the printed

v^^ord and on the screen. Your novelist of today

does not call people guilty of adultery “adul-

terers.”

The real danger is they are made attractive

and their conduct normal. The modern novelist

manages to make them interesting and nice

people, not secret and sordid sinners, by any

means. For “lust” he writes “romance.”

In novels today sin brings happiness.

There is, of course, no sense of sin at all. The

charming lady who is unfaithful to her hus-
band, and yields to her paramour, would be as

surprised as her author to be called a harlot.

The debauchee is a hero, and his conquests are

devastatingly interesting. The average reader

is charmed by them both—and this is the col-
ossal fraud of bad literature and bad pictures.



WH.0 ARE FIGHTING CHRIST AND WHY? 45

that they present that sort of thing as normal

life, as the thing to be expected and to be done.

Frederick Collins, writing in Liberty, Novem-

ber 27, 1937, declared that the wide circulation of

demoralizing literature “is part of the Communist

program to weaken any attack which might be di-

rected against it by organized religion.”

Religion cannot be destroyed in any more cer-

tain way than by stunting the moral sense of its

adherents, and by the glorification of what they had

been taught to be morally wrong. Stalin began the

destruction of religion in Russia by the open advo-

cacy of promiscuity and abortion. Hitler began by an

attempt to create a distrust for the clerg;;/, accusing

them of immorality. The chief grievance entertain-

ed against religion by most irreligious professors,

and by such writers as Bertrand Russell, H. G.

Wells, Douglas Reed and Sigismund Freud arises

from its moral doctrine.

“Christianity has rarely been attacked except

in the name of imm_orality and of the abject doc-

trines of materialism—by blackguards, in so many
words. This is a fact, and I am prepared to prove

it.”—Ernest Renan, the infidel.



WHY MODERN TACTICS ARE EFFECTIVE

Those who entertain no fears for the Chris-

tian Church because she successfully withstood the

might of the Roman Empire in her infancy and be^

cause during the Middle Ages Christian States were

able to check the several attempts of Mohammedan

invasion, fail to take into account how vastly dif-

ferent are (1) the modern mentality and (2) the

advantage enemies of religion take of that mentah

ity. The divine Church will not, of course, be utterly

destroyed, but her membership can be greatly re-

duced and her freedom and influence almost totally

destroyed.

(1) What is that modern mentality?

It is not only extremely worldly and wholly .

pagan, but quite indifferent tov/ards organized reli-

gion. In fact it is actually fearful of a strong

Church, and is rebellious towards the Christian

code of morality.

Interest in religion in the commonly called Pro-

testant countries is very weak. In the United States

less than half the population has any interest in

religion, and two-thirds of professed Christians at-

tend church most infrequently.

Outside the Catholic, Lutheran, Adventist

bodies, there has not only been a decline in church

membership, but a rejection of the very fundamental

Christian tenets by a multitude of ministers, such

as Christ’s divinity. Original Sin, the Inspiration of

the Scriptures, and even a rejection, in large part

of the moral law. Most Protestant churchmen ap-

prove of divorce, birth control through contracep-



WHY MODERN TACTICS ARE EFFECTIVE 47

tive devices, and seemingly rate minor faults as

worse than sexual misconduct among the unmarried.

The established Church of England nov/ counts

only 2,000,000 members (World Almanac, 1944)

and 35,000,000 out of a total population of 44,000,000

are not even nominal members of any religious body.

Communism was forced on 170,000,000 Rus-

sians by 150,000 party members, because the Rus-

sian Orthodox Church was only superficially alive.

In the 1930 elections in Germany, 14,000,000

voted for the Communist and Socialist candidates

for the Reichstag. Since that time, the irreligious

ideology of National Socialism has captivated the

bulk of the population.

Austria was under a Socialist regime for many

years, and during the single year 1929, nearly 30,000

Catholics apostatized formally (Cardinal Laurenti)

in order to procure employment.

The Czechs have no interest in religion. The

Balkan countries, where Communism has been il-

legal, are now under its influence, and will be pow-

erless to protect themselves.

In South America the Church has had very little

influence over the masses. Socialist and Communist

forces have exploited our own social justice doctrine

and impressed on the Indians of the northern coun-

tries, and on the proletariat of the southern Repub-

lics, that the Church has shown no interest in their

national welfare. It is easy, therefore, to stir the

common people into revolt against both the Church

and the State. There are excellent Catholic schools

in most South American countries, but they are pat-

ronized only by the children of parents who can



48 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

afford to pay the tuition. The State schools are far

inferior.

(2) How do enemies take advantage of that

mentality ?

Opposition to the international Church has been

well planned by anti-Christian organizations, which

aim at becoming international themselves. The Latin

countries in Europe—Catholic for centuries—have
had to struggle unsuccessfully against politically

backed anti-Christian forces so long that a multitude

has lost interest in their faith.

(a) Professors at most secular universities

in every country have, for many years, taught that

there is no certainty at all that God—even if His
existence be admitted—made a revelation to man.
If He did not, no religion has anything more than its

opinion to offer, none can claim an exclusive right

to speak with authority, and, therefore, organized

religion has not a foot to stand on.

Mortimer Adler, of the University of Chicago,

and Walter Lippmann, the widely read newspaper

columnist, have frequently called attention to this

break by professors with the long Christian tradi-

tion.

(b) Socialist and anti-clerical education in the

"schools of France, Belgium, Italy, Portugal, Mexico,

over a period of years, introduced by enemies of

the Church for the one purpose of destroying faith,

is chiefly responsible for the decline of faith in those

nations. The wonder is that the people have as

much faith as they have.

(c) The introduction of Nazism in Germany

and of Communism in Russia as substitutes for re-



WHY MODERN TACTICS ARE EFFECTIVE 49

ligion, by the State itself, the closing of churches

and seminaries, together with the deliberate poison-

ing of the wells of knowledge in text book and by

official propaganda, could have no other effect than

to create a national anti-Christian state of mind in

the people.

(d) In South America (outside Brazil) the

indoctrination of the people, both by the agents of

irreligion and by Protestant missionaries, with the

teaching that the mother country, Spain, has become

a backward nation because it is Catholic, and that

England, Germany, and the United States became

powerful because of their Protestantism, has had

its effect.

(e) In the United States, the exclusion of re-

ligious instruction from the public schools over a

period of one hundred years has produced a religious

apathy among our citizenry, which renders them

quite indifferent to attacks on faith in general, and

on the Catholic Church in particular, which they re-

gard as a “foreign” institution. Unacquainted with

either Protestantism or Catholicism, millions of the

non-Catholic intelligentsia have, through their secret

order affiliations, been taught to fear, suspect and

oppose the Catholic Church.

Protestant churchmen, jealous of the Catholic

Church and her claims, are easily persuaded to en-

courage movements even fundamentally anti-Chris-

tian if they are represented to be anti-Catholic only.



HOW TO INTEREST OUR FELLOW
COUNTRYMEN

The population of our nation contains 65,000,-

000 non-Church members; 35,000,000 adherents of

Protestantism; 5,000,000 Jews, and 25,000,000 Cath-

olics.

(a) The 65,000,000 non-Church Members

It is erroneous to assume that all the non-

Catholics of the United States are to be approached

with religion’s appeal in an identical manner. Ac-

cording to the latest release of religious statistics,

fully one-half of all the people in the United States,

which means 65,000,000 out of the 100,000,000 non-

Catholics have no religious affiliation whatsoever.

The Bible means nothing to them, nor does the

authority of the Catholic Church. In fact, never

having learned the ABC’s of religion, they are in

no position to talk about it intelligently. They have

been, for the most part, ‘‘indifferentists.” If they

believe, as they do, that '‘one religion is as good as

another,” they logically conclude that all religions

are human, and that, therefore, none of them is

necessary.

We must make our approach to them with the
thesis, “The Catholic Church is essentially different

from all others”; that it is not merely an organiza-

tion of men and women for the pursuit of religious

objectives like the many denominations, but that

it is a divine organism, a living body guided and

animated throughout nineteen centuries by the God

to Whom it owes its origin.
The average person has placed all religions



HOW TO INTEREST OUR FELLOW COUNTRYMEN 51

in the same category, because he judges by “ex-

ternals, ’’ and externally they are pretty much the

same. They all have religious edifices which look

pretty much alike
;
clerg^^men who also resemble one

another outwardly; they all use the Bible, etc. This

average person needs, therefore, to be informed

at the outset that it is the divine, the supernatural

in the one Church, having had 1900 years of life,

which differentiates it essentially from all others.

(h) Members of Protestant Churches

35,000,000 among the 100,000,000 non-Catholics

are divided among more than 200 different religious

denominations, all of, them offshoots of three or

four - original Protestant sects, which came into

being by severance from the Mother Church, to

which all Christians belonged from Apostolic times.

All Protestant churches in the United States

claim that their faith is built on the Bible. The

logical approach to them, therefore, is to make

clear that the Bible is our book, that its acceptance

as an infallible authority actually requires one to

accept the infallibility of the Catholic Church, which

1500 years ago gave the world that book and of-

ficially stamped it as containing the inspired word

of God. There is absolutely no other way of prov-

ing the authority of the Bible except by the in-

fallibility of the Catholic Church.

Few Protestants are ever told that they re-
ceived the Bible from Catholics. They were rather

told repeatedly that the Catholic Church did all in

her pov/er to conceal the Bible from the people.

Correct these wrong impressions, and you will have

half converted any sincere inquirer among Protes-

tants,



52 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

The last generation of non-Catholics was de-

scended from those who had membership in the

Protestant churches and who had been reared in

an anti-Catholic way. They provided a very large

market for anti-Catholic papers and magazines, and

for books which were filled with bitter attacks on

the Catholic Church and nasty accusations against

her clergy and religious. But their children, with

whom we have to deal, are, for the most part,

not prejudiced. They have not become deeply in-

terested either in anti-Catholicism or in Protestant-

ism; few of them have ever read an anti-Catholic

book, and if they did it is likely that they would

wish to ascertain what the Church herself had to

say about the accusations. They are simply illiterate

from the religious viewpoint, not having attended

Sunday School, and not having received any re-

ligious knowledge in the public schools. The first

choice of a multitude of them would be the Catholic

Church if they were to affiliate with any. Every

Army and Navy chaplain will verify this state-

ment, as would also most Protestant chaplains who

served these boys in Camps and on the battlefront.

(c)—The Jeivs
Among the 100,000,000 non-Catholics there are

now about 5,000,000 Jews, who dislike Christianity

too much to become interested. They antecedently

set it aside and follow the advice of their leaders not

to become interested. Comparatively few among the

5,000,000 are even interested in the Mosiac religion

which, they say, with its animal sacrifices and

liturgy, is unsuited to modern times.

The rank and file of the Jews, however, do not

offend any more than the average Gentile who is



HOW TO INTEREST OUR FELLOW COUNTRYMEN 53

BISHOP^S

DIOCESE OF

Fort Way'i

£l)ear

I am sending you a pamphlet, written iind

to prepare by the body of Bishops in Washington

The Bishops feel that, in these days, when

paganda that Communism is Democracy, and that

when enemies hostile to the Church are active to

Table, a strong body of Catholic men in every di

proper that the Bishops or priests should be for

directed, could do it for them.

I am also enclosing herewith a sheet on w
who are prominent in industry, in business, in ]

From this diocesan list of names I should like to

Catholic Men, who would be tied into a Diocesan

The nonAi'at'liolic chaTitab'ly warned

against those who, behind the mask of patriotism.



52 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

The last generation of non-Catholics was de-

scended from those who had membership in the

Protestant churches and who had been reared in

an anti-Catholic way. They provided a very large

market for anti-Catholic papers and magazines, and

for books which were filled with bitter attacks on

the Catholic Church and nasty accusations against

her clergy and religious. But their children, with

whom we have to deal, are, for the most part,

not prejudiced. They have not become deeply in-

terested either in anti-Catholicism or in Protestant-

ism; few of them have ever read an anti-Catholic

book, and if they did it is likely that they would

wish to ascertain what the Church herself had to

say about the accusations. They are simply illiterate

from the religious viewpoint, not having attended

Sunday School, and not having received any re-

ligious knowledge in the public schools. The first

choice of a multitude of them would be the Catholic

Church if they were to affiliate with any. Every

Army and Navy chaplain will verify this state-

ment, as would also most Protestant chaplains who

served these boys in Camps and on the battlefront.

(c)—The Jeivs
Among the 100,000,000 non-Catholics there are

now about 5,000,000 Jews, who dislike Christianity

too much to become interested. They antecedently

set it aside and follow the advice of their leaders not

to become interested. Comparatively few among the

5,000,000 are even interested in the Mosiac religion

which, they say, with its animal sacrifices and

liturgy, is unsuited to modern times.

The rank and file of the Jews, however, do not

offend any more than the average Gentile who is



BISHOP'S HOUSE

DIOCESE OF FORT WAYNE

Fort Wayne, Indiana

£l)ear ej'at/ier:

The Bishops feel that, in these days, when the secular press has lent itself so much to the pro-
paganda that Communism is Democracy, and that anyone who opposes Communism is Fascist, and
when enemies hostile to the Church are active to prevent the Pope having representation at the Peace
Table, a strong body of Catholic men in every diocese is needed to combat these forces It is not
proper that the Bishops or priests should be forced to do it, when an organized body of men, properly
directed, could do it for them.

I am also enclosing herewith a sheet on which you will record names of men in your parish
who are prominent in industry, in business, in law, in medicine, or “prominent” as earnest Catholics.
From this diocesan list of names I should like to form, where they do not exist. Deanery Councils of
Catholic Men, who would be tied into a Diocesan Council, and then affiliated with the National Council
It would probably be more important to have inter-parish Deanery Organizations of men at this time
than purely parochial organizations. Let the N.C.C.W. remain parochial as well as Deanery.

I hope that you will peruse the pamphlet carefully, because it shows not only who the enemies
of the Church are, now cooperating as a “united front,” but ivhat their motives are. Officers of Cath-
olic organizations should have that information.

Read particularly carefully the chapters "Can the World Be Regained for Christ and the next
chapter which tells how Catholics should proceed.

While writing to you I should note that lam quite willing that the Collection for War Relief,
to be taken up on Sunday, March 19, be a “second” collection, although this is not permitted in any
diocese I know of. But because it is a “second” collection, do not merely announce it, but ask your
people to make a little Lenten sacrifice to help Catholic refugees and others throughout the world
who are actually destitute.

•

March 19, the Bishop would have every pastor call all his people to a
special Holy Hour, after having received Holy Communion in the morning, that Almighty God may
save the city of Rome from bombing, and that, following the war, the wishes of the majority of the
people in every land, rather than those of an organized minority, may be respected.

If Stalin has his way most of Europe will go Communist, while if the majority of the people
m ae occupied and defeated countries could have their way, the Catholic Church would probably
begin to flourish more than it has for centuries.

The very best way to make the Catholic laity more religious and spiritual
IS to have them work for the Church among others.

minded individually

V,- V.

^ recently send to you dealing with Catholic Action points out the “cell” way under
which Catholic Action can be best promoted. We cannot do “business as usual” when so much is at
stake, when our people, who are, for the most part, only Sunday Catholics, are under pagan influ-

(OVER)



52 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

: HOUSE

FORT WAYNE

le, Indiana

er the pen name Lon Francis, which I was directed

last November.

the secular press has lent itself so much to the pro-

anyone who opposes Communism is Fascist, and

prevent the Pope having representation at the Peace

ocese is needed to combat these forces. It is not

ced to do it, when an organized body of men, properly

hich you will record names of men in your parish

aw, in medicine, or “prominent” as earnest Catholics,

form, where they do not exist, Deanery Councils of

Council, and then affiliated with the National Council.

ajoni mnn^ aV
The rank and file of the Jews, however, do not

offend any more than the average Gentile who is



HOW TO INTEREST OUR FELLOW COUNTRYMEN 63

unaffiliated with a religious organization, against

belief in God. Hebrew publications urge Jews,

living in the cities, to make friends with Unitarians

who, like them, reject the divinity of Christ.

We Must Work Outside Our Own Zone

We live too much within our own zone, when
we could do so much good in the bigger zone, con-

taining 105,000,000. Practically all the ills with

which our nation is at present beset originate in

that big zone and overflow into the Catholic zone.

There is practically no effort on the part of

the 25,000,000 to be of help to the 105,000,000 re-

ligiously, morally, or socially. They have every-

thing that is needed to change the heart of the

nation, but they not only keep the same all to them-

selves, but even discard their higher ideals in favor

of the lower ones brought into their environment.

(1) What Protestants Should Know

Anyone who is acquainted with the confidential

literature circulated among the “trusted ones” by

those organizations which are now promoting move-

ments against the Catholic religion, knows that

their real target is Christianity itself. The writer

has much of this literature and can, therefore, talk

from conviction.

Enemies of Christianity and of all religion

are careful to lead Protestants to believe that

their one grievance is the Catholic Church in order

that the sympathy, and even the cooperation of

Protestants may be enlisted in their satanic cam-

paign.

The non-Catholic should be charitably warned

against those who, behind the mask of patriotism.



ences the other six daj's of the week. They must “lead” in their places of work, in their neighborhood,

among their associates, rather than “follow.”

N. B.: The debts of parishes were decreased during 1943 in the amount of $673,038.64, or

$2,000.00 a day. South Bend Deanery did best by decreasing parish debts by $263,931.51; next came

Hammond, with a reduction of $155,794.72
;
next Fort Wayne, with a reduction of $132,412.00 ; then

Gary, with $83,582.44. The Deaneries of Muncie, Lafayette, Logansport have not much indebtedness

to pay off. The sum total of indebtedness of these three deaneries is, in round numbers, $100,000.00.

The present indebtedness of parishes in the diocese is $2,274,116.32, considerably more than

half of which is in Lake County alone.

At the beginning of the depression the parish indebtedness amounted to about $7,000,000.00,

and the rate of interest was twice as high as it is today.

Have the organizations you form follow the directions I give in this pamphlet on “watching

the press.”

With best wishes, I am.

Yours sincerely in Christ,



HOW TO INTEREST OUR FELLOW COUNTRYMEN 63

unaflfiliated with a religious organization, against

belief in God. Hebrew publications urge Jews,

living in the cities, to make friends with Unitarians

who, like them, reject the divinity of Christ.

We Must Work Outside Our Own Zone

We live too much within our own zone, when

we could do so much good in the bigger zone, con-

taining 105,000,000. Practically all the ills with

which our nation is at present beset originate in

that big zone and overflow into the Catholic zone.

There is practically no effort on the part of

the 25,000,000 to be of help to the 105,000,000 re-

ligiously, morally, or socially. They have every-

thing that is needed to change the heart of the

nation, but they not only keep the same all to them-

selves, but even discard their higher ideals in favor

of the lower ones brought into their environment.

(1) What Protestants Should Know

Anyone who is acquainted with the confidential

literature circulated among the “trusted ones” by

those organizations which are now promoting move-

ments against the Catholic religion, knows that

their real target is Christianity itself. The writer

has much of this literature and can, therefore, talk

from conviction.

Enemies of Christianity and of all religion

are careful to lead Protestants to believe that

their one grievance is the Catholic Church in order

that the sympathy, and even the cooperation of

Protestants may be enlisted in their satanic cam-

paign.

The non-Catholic should be charitably warned

against those who, behind the mask of patriotism.



54 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

seek to destroy the soul of our nation
;
against those

who create a situation of intolerance, in order that,

by having an opportunity to denounce it, they may

be hailed as apostles of tolerance.

Ask them if they ever heard of Catholics or-

ganizing against Protestants or Jews, or of or-

ganizing politically, under their Church even in

cities where they comprise from forty to fifty per

cent of the entire population.

All organized campaigns against the Catholic

Church—whether conducted openly or clandestine-
ly—as well as the many publicists who back them,
either knowingly or innocently, are equally op-

possed to the Christian code of morality, the re-

pudiation or even relaxation of which is bound

to be disastrous to society.

Every Protestant organization is supported

and benefited whenever the Catholic Church speaks

officially on Christian marriage, the Christian home,

the Christian school; or on the subject of Com-

munism, Socialism, Racism, ' because the Church’s

official word is broadcast throughout the world,

is carried in thousands of secular newspapers, and

assists in keeping religious ideals before the peo-

ple.

When Christian-minded non-Catholics, there-

fore, give encouragement to those organized groups

which attack the Catholic religion, they are con-

tributing to the destruction of Protestantism, which

will surely die first.

In what way is the Catholic Church a men-

ace to any nation? As to her teaching, is there any-

thing which Protestants regard as fundamental for

salvation that she does not teach? As to morality,





^XIFE OF CHRIST” SET—Picture No. 4

THE BAPTISM OF JESUS.
Math. 3: 13-17.

When Jesns was thirty years old, He bid good-
by to His mother and friends at Nazareth of Q-al-
ilee, and went to the river Jordan in Judea, where
He was baptized by John. When Jesus came out
of the water, “the heavens were opened to Him:
and He saw the Spirit of God descending as a
dove and coming upon Him. And behold a voice
from heaven, saying: This is my beloved Son, in
whom I am well pleased.” The baptism of Jesus
marks the beginning of the three years of Christ’s
public life, for which the first thirty years of
His life were a preparation.

Memory Verse: “This is my beloved Son, in whom
I am well pleased.”—Math. 3: 17.
READ THE BIBLE STORY of “Gabriel’s Message
to Zachary”

—
“The Visitatioru”—“The Binrth of John

the Baptist”—His preaching, baptizing and death—“Christ’s Fast” and “Temptation by the Devd.”
CAN YOU TELL how this picture iMwstrates the
Catechism lessons treating of: The Most Holy Triru-

ity. Father, Son and Holy Ghost—Forgiveness of
sin—Penance—Self-denial—Jesus Our Model—Hu-
mility of Jesus—Willingness to Do God’s WUI—Bap-
tism—Sacramentals ?
NIHIL OBSTAT: Amos E. Giusti, J.C.D., Censor Llbrorum.
IMPRIMATUR: t James A. Griffin, D.D.
NOV. 2 4, 1932. Bishop of Springfield in Illinois.
EDITED BY Rev. George M. Nell.
PRODUCED BY CO-OP PARISH ACTIVITIES SERVICE,

EFFINGHAM. ILL.



HOW TO INTEREST OUR FELLOW COUNTRYMEN 55

is she not the most insistent of all religious organiza-

tions on the observance of the entire moral law?

Religion In Education

Among religious-minded people of all faiths

there is a growing demand for the instruction of

youth in religious and moral principles. It should

be quite evident, therefore, to the non-Catholic, that

any attack on the Catholic school system, is an

attack on religious instruction. For more than

one hundred years enemies of Christianity have

made the Christian school the chief target of their

attack, especially in Europe. Understand that they

are not always wont to attack religious schools di-

rectly, but to demand the complete secularization

of education, which oMtomatically would put the

religious school out of existence.

The real animus of enemies of the Catholic

Church in France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Mexico,

became manifest when, along with purely secular

education, there was introduced into the schools

of the nation anti-God and anti-religious instruc-

tion, The rights of citizenship and even the right

to live as religious in the country of their birth,

were denied to the teachers in religious schools

precisely because they taught the children knowledge

of God as well as of country, of duties to God as

well as to the State.

The most efficient schools, even from the stand-

point of purely secular knowledge, in every country

in which they were suppressed, were the religious

schools. Parents who wanted to have their children

to receive the best kind of education imparted in

their nation, sent their children to these schools,



66 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

whether the parents were practicing Catholics or

not. ^

If, in some of these countries, illiteracy was

high, it was the fault of the State and not of the

Church, because the Church schools were crowded,

while those of the State were often nearly empty.

This is true even today after enemies of the Church,

forty years ago, boasted that they would not only

make education generally compulsory, but more

thorough.

Church And State

The many oracles of today, who represent that

the Catholic Church is not sufficiently democratic,

that she would be too much inclined to conservatism,

and possibly even to Fascism, either do not know

whereof they speak, or intend deliberately to de-

ceive. The Catholic Church is not committed to

any kind of government, and has always enjoyed

greater liberty and success under a Democracy.

The “bogey’' of “Temporal Power” and of

“Union of Church and State” is being resurrected

anew in order to make people wonder whether it

would be wise to permit the Catholic Church to

have too much influence after the war.

Temporal Power does not mean at all what the

average non-Catholic has been taught to believe

that it means. It means nothing more than inde-

pendence for the government of the Church, such

as even the President of the United States needs,

and that is why there is a “District of Columbia,”

which is a part of no State.

The Church would never dream of a union

between Church and State in countries where the



HOW TO INTEREST OUR FELLOW COUNTRYMEN 57

vast majority of the people are not enrolled in her

membership. Why do people never think of union

of Church and State in Protestant countries, where

it is much closer than it is in any Catholic coun-

try? In England the Church and State have had

the identical head for several centuries. That is not

true anywhere in the Catholic world except in Vati-

can City, which harbors fewer than one thousand

people. In Germany, the Kaiser was head of both

the Church and the State. In Norway and Sweden

and Denmark—all Protestant countries, there has
been union of Church and State.

Enemies of the Church not only oppose union of

Church and State in Catholic countries—while not

objecting to the same in Protestant countries—
but agitate for the complete control of the Church

by the State so that she will be unable to carry on

her spiritual work. In fact, they want persecution

of the Church—and at heart they mean Christianity
itself—in order that religion in the nation might
perish.

Why should not every Protestant church mem-

ber be interested in seeing his country strong in

religious belief and morally clean?

The average person is so little acquainted with

history that he does not even know that all

his forebears, over a period of one thousand years,

were Catholics. The editor of the London Tablet

recently observed: “All Europeans are either Cath-

olics or post-Catholics, people whose ancestors broke

away in one way or another as Protestants or as

Freethinkers, without losing everything in the out-

look they formally abandoned,”—and most Ameri-
cans are descendants of Europeans.



58 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

The Europeans, of whatever country, were one

time closely knit together by the bond of a common

religion. After that bond was broken, gradual

trends to extreme nationalism became noticeable, re-

sulting in selfish isolationism and in antipathies

towards neighboring nations, fomenting suspicions,

hatreds, aggressiveness on the part of the larger

nations and fears on the part of the smaller. These

differences, intensified by present day totalitarian

states, and by the World War, for which they are

responsible, cannot be corrected by force, by treaties,

or by anything else whatsoever than the common

observance of religion’s fundamental law of mu-

tual charity.

Socialism and Communism, and the irreligious

forces over the world cooperating with them do not

want the restoration of the reign of Christ, to

Europe or America
;
in fact, they labor with intense

fanaticism to prevent it. The international Church

must be supplanted by its antithesis, international

Marxism.

The determination of the Communists to win,

their persecuting spirit, in which they have involved

leading Jews, never appeared so manifest as when

they, in February, 1944, demanded the discharge

of a New York policeman by Mayor LaGuardia on

a charge of anti-Semitism, after he had been twice

acquitted. The hatred, which they enkindled in so

many breasts, reminding one of the mob frenzy

which leads to lynching, culminated in a bigotry

meeting held in Brooklyn on the same day, and

attracted large delegations of dozens of organiza-

tions, who were asked to sponsor the citizens’ trial

of the policeman, think of it, in the name of ‘Toler-

ance.”



HOW TO INTEREST OUR FELLOW COUNTRYMEN 59

Cooperation With Reds

- We are not so certain that Protestants know

that some of their Bishops have been chief sup-

porters of the magazine exposed elsewhere in this

booklet

—

The Protestant—despite its ultra red
character.

On February 7, 1944, Bishop Francis J. Mc-

Connell who, a few years ago, was very prominent

in left wing activities, and who was Chairman of

the North American Committee To Aid Spanish

Democracy, called a meeting of Methodist ministers

in New York to hear Kenneth Leslie denounce the

Catholic Church. Bishop Cannon, Jr., who was

present, also addressed this meeting.

Many Protestant ministers are being misled

by those who take advantage of their anti-Catholic

prejudices. They are told that the invitation of

the Pope “to all men of good will” to join Catholics

in combating the forces of evil, is for the one pur-

pose of strengthening the power of the Catholic

Church for the preservation of her hold on the

masses.

The more orthodox Protestants deplore the

“leftist” influence in the churches. Many organiza-

tions have withdrawn from the Federal Council

of the Churches of Christ in America precisely be-

cause some prominent members on its Executive

Board have become too “liberal” notably towards

matters of doctrine and morals, but also towards

movements socially radical.

Although Catholics have probably been as much

averse to war as Protestants, the Catholic Hierarchy

and clergy never gave encouragement to the forma-

tion of “pacifist” organizations, and never cooper-



60 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

ated with such organizations working hand in hand

with Socialists and Communists.

But “The Federal Council of the Churches of

Christ in America,” claiming to speak for 22,000,000

affiliated Protestants, has had representation in

many un-American movements, and some members

of its Executive Board have worked in closest co-

operation with organizations which were under

Communist domination.

Speaking of the Federal Council, the Reverend

William Ward Ayer, pastor of the Calvary Baptist

Church, New York City (New York Times, March

22, 1937) said: “The Federal Council more often

speaks for the Communistic shibboleth than the gos-

pel one, . . It has the backing of the extreme Soc-

ialist groups throughout the land.”

Sworn testimony before the Dies Committee

contains these words: “Apparently, in lieu of pri-

marily promoting Christianity among its several

members it more represents a huge political machine

and appears to intermeddle with radical politics. Its

directorate indicates that it interlocks with many

of the most extreme radical organizations.”

Nine Protestant denominations have organized

under the name “The American Council of Christian

Churches,” in opposition to the Federal Council of

Churches. At a Chicago meeting, November, 1943,

its leaders accused the Federal Council of being

ruled by principles of modernism, pacifism, inter-

nationalism and Marxism. In fact, it accuses the

Federal Council with “erasing historic Christianity”

and with “quietly attempting the complete domina-

tion of American Protestantism.”

Van Paassen, Salvemini, and even real and



HOW TO INTEREST OUR FELLOW COUNTRYMEN 61

bogus ex-priests are invited to speak before Protest-

ant organizations, although they lack even a spark of

Christian faith—and this at a time when all people
are called on to promote tolerance and good will.

Poisoned History

The attention of Protestants and Jews and of

all non-Catholics, should be called to the fact, sup-

ported by the most reliable historians, that history,

especially as it was written by English and Ger-

man writers shortly after the Reformation in their

respective countries, and as told by others who

copied from these, has been not only unfair, but

most libelous of the Catholic Church. We have
space here only to quote a few

:

In the Life and Letters of Dean Stanley, Vol.

I, page 151, Stanley is quoted as having said:

I am convinced that Protestantism in gen-
eral treats Catholics with shameful ignorance

and unfairness.

Dr. Schaff in his Polit, Eccl. Con. U. S. p. 230

writes

:

The Roman Catholic Church is bemired
from day to day with all possible calumnies.

Dr. Nightingale in his Religion of All Nations,

says:

In scarcely a single instances has a case

concerning them (Catholics) been fairly stated;

the channels of history, not grossly corrupted.

Dr. Littledale, In Innovations, p. 16., observes:

Two mendacious partisans, the infamous
Foxe and the not much more respectable Burnet,
have so overlaid all the history of the Reforma-

tion with falsehood, that it has been well nigh

impossible for readers to get at the facts.



62 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

Dr. Johnson in His Religious Life, etc. p. 149,

writes

:

In the present day there is much vituper-
ation of Roman Catholic belief.

Hyndman in his ''Historical Basis of Socialism

in England,” p, 15 notes:

Protestant divines fail to discover anything

but luxury debauchery and hypocrisy in the

Catholic Church of the fifteenth century. It is

high time that, without any prejudice in favor

of that Church, the nonsense which has been

foisted on to the public by men interested in
suppressing the facts should be exposed. It

is not true that the Church of our ancestors

was the organized fraud which it suits fanatics

to represent it.

Sir Francis Palgrave in his History of Norman-

dy and England, Vol. 1, p. 47, writes:

Abstracting from all the influences which

we have sustained in common with the rest
of the civilized 'commonwealth, our British dis-

paragement of the Middle Ages has been ex-

ceedingly enhanced by our grizzled ecclesiastical

or church historians of the sixteenth and seven-

teenth centuries; men who, instead of vindicat-
ing the Reformation by the advocacy of rev-

erence for holy things, obedience, love, charity,

sought to establish righteousness through ven-

geance, and in all things rendering evil for evil.

“Hate your enemies’" is with them the Law and
the Prophets. These “standard works” accepted

and received as Canonical Books have tainted

the nobility of our national mind.

Dr. Cecil Roth, of London, speaking before

the Zionist Forum at the Hotel Statler, Buffalo, on

February 25, 1937, said:

Some Jews have the feeling that the papacy
has a policy of persecuting Jews. But you must

remember that English history is definitely



HOW TO INTEREST OUR FELLOW COUNTRYMEN 63

anti-Catholic and your views of Catholicism

may have been colored by English history. We
Jews, who have suffered so much from preju-

dice, should rid our minds of prejudice and

learn the facts. The truth is that the Popes

and the Catholic Church from the earliest days

of the Church were never responsible for phys-

ical persecution of Jews and only Rome, among

the capitals of the world, is free from having

been a place of Jewish tragedy. For this we

Jews must have gratitude.

We hold letters from six distinguished teachers

of history at non-Catholic universities, who be-

came converts to the Catholic Church by deep,

impartial historical research work.

(2) What Jeivs Should Know

They should know that during the past five

years, when their religion and their race have

been attacked and persecuted under Nazism, the

only world defender they have had, and that with

frequent reiteration, is the Catholic Church, speak-

ing officially. Since they abhor Hitlerism from

the depths of their souls, they cannot consistently

sanction the attacks of Hitler on Christianity any

more than on Judaism. They should know that

nearly every organization ever formed in this coun-‘

try to attack Catholics also included the Jews. Both

groups have been the common enemy of intolerant,

bigoted and ignorant people.

The unfriendly attitude of organized Jewry to

both Catholicism and Protestantism is due to the

notion entertained by it that Christian instruction

is calculated to promote anti-Semitism. It must

be shown that this impression is erroneous; that

all Christians feel indebted to Israel, both as a

religion and as a race, for their own religion;



64 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

and that the Christian love of the cross is directed

to the infinite love of Christ, of which it is a symbol,

and not against the instruments of His crucifixion,

no matter who they may have been. No Catholic

has ever received an anti-Semitic training.

The Catholic Church lives almost as much in

the Old Testament as it does in the New, and the

Ten Commandments, on whose observance Christian

sanctity depends, were promulgated to the world,

as binding on all people for all time, by the great

Hebrew leader, Moses.

If the religion of both Protestants and Jews

is to be respected in the future, it will be due chief-

ly to the religious and moral strength and influence

of the Catholic Church. Enemies of all religion

know this. Without saying so, they really identify

Christianity and organized religion with Catholi-

cism. If they try to make the Protestant and the

Jew to believe otherwise, it is in order to elicit

their support for their drive against the Catholic

Church. Evidence, in great abundance, is available

to prove this contention.

Frederick Woltman, writing in the New York

World Telegram, in February, 1944, made clear to

the Jews of New York City how egregiously they

have been deceived by the anti-Christian Gentile,

who undertakes to espouse their cause.

We refer to Kenneth Leslie, who is less in-
terested in the welfare of the Jews than he is in

the establishment of Communism in this country.

To deceive Protestants as well as Jews he has named

his Communist periodical The Protestant. The con-

tributors to this organ of hate are men who, in

other writings, have shown themselves to be as anti-



HOW TO INTEREST OUR FELLOW COUNTRYMEN 65

Protestant as they are anti-Catholic. They are as

anti-Christian as Stalin himself.

Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson,

speaking in New York, early in February, 1944, said

that a sinister development which he has noted for

the first time in his life is an awareness of “organ-

ized groups, which primarily are interested in harm-

ing someone else rather than in benefiting them-

selves.'’

He also noted that “those who have been look-

ing hopefully to the left will move farther to the left,

and possibly extremely and lawlessly."

Nothing is more true. The one who leans left-

ward needs no encouragement to go farther left-

ward. What he has needed, probably over the years,

was a prop to prevent him from going too far to

the left.

The most reliable historians present the Catho-

lic Church as the truest friend of the Jews through-

out the Christian era. It is not they, but partisan

historians who exaggerate the Spanish Inquisition,

and falsely charge that Jews were forced to receive

Baptism and embrace the Catholic faith during the

Middle Ages.

Just as there has been organized action against

both Jews and Christians in our time, so drastic

measures were taken against both Jews and Catho-

lics by the “reformers" in Germany and England. In

fact, the history of the Jews and Catholics has been

quite similar, and they have had the identical per-

secutors—the pagan Roman Emperors, the state
controlled religions of later times, and the Ku Klux

Klan and similar organizations in our day.



66 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

Surely no religionist—Catholic, Protestant or
Jew—may hope to expect the blessing of Heaven on
any national economy planned by enemies of re-

ligion. Peace has never rested on an irreligious

foundation, because such a foundation is filled with

cracks of hatred and intolerance, and is a breeding

place of termites of national decay and destruc-

tion.

(S) What Masoyis Should Know

Three-fourths of all Freemasons in the world

live in the United States, but less than one-half mil-

lion of the more than 3,000,000 belong to the Scot-

tish Rite, and of these comparatively few belong

to the higher degrees, which means that at least nine

out of ten Freemasons are no more familiar than is

the non-Mason with the secret activities of the inner

circle. The Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, is

governed by the Supreme Grand Commander and

thirty-three Sovereign Grand Inspectors General,

who are all Masons of the 33°. There are honorary

33° Masons numbering some over 2,000, selected

from among the 32° Masons who had rendered long

outstanding service to the cause.

The De Molay, or Junior wing of Freemasonry,

claims a membership of 1,500,000, and the Eastern

Star, or Women’s auxiliary, counts about 1,000,000

persons.

The New Age, in the July, 1928 number,

answers the question “What makes one a Mason?”

as follows:

A Master Mason is as full-fledged and as
much a Mason as one who has taken all the
degrees. Masonry is contained in the Symbolic

Degrees.



HOW TO INTEREST OUR FELLOW COUNTRYMEN 67

He is a Master Mason when he has taken three

degrees. The majority of the Masons do not go be-

yond that, and they are not initiated into anti-Catho-

licism. The average Mason, therefore, can honestly

say that his Order is not inimical to the Catholic

Church unless he be the reader of Masonic journals

all of which contain within any given year, a con-

siderable number of articles or statements which ex-

hibit a marked anti-Catholic spirit.

There are only three degrees in the Blue Lodges.

The Scottish Rite receives only those who will have

already received the first three degrees in the Blue

Lodges, or the York Rite, which has thirteen degrees.

Its degrees run from the fourth to the thirty-second.

It has a thirty-third which is reserved for a definite'

small hand-picked number selected from the thirty-

second degree. Those who, locally, cooperate with

the inner circle at headquarters will see to it that

no brother will be advanced high in the ranks unless

he gives promise to become a cooperating member.

Albert Pike, once Supreme Grand Master of

the Scottish Rite 33° and later the author of a book

on the History of Freemasonry and on Morals and

Dogma, which is frequently quoted in The New Age,

observes in the latter work, page 819,

The Blue Degrees are but the outer court

or portico of the temple. Part of the symbols

are displayed there to the initiate, but he is in-

tentionally misled by false interpretations. It

is not intended that he shall understand them;

but it is intended that he shall imagine that he

understands them. Their true explanation is

reserved for the Princes and Adepts of Ma-

sonry ... It is well enough for the mass of
those called Masons, to imagine that all is con-

tained in the Blue Degrees; and whosoever at-



68 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

tempts to undeceive them will labor in vain, and

without any true reward violate his obligations

as an Adept.

The Mason is thoroughly initiated into the anti-

Catholic mind of the order in the 30th degree, known

as the Knight Kadosh. There he learns the lesson

that the royal crown of kings and the tiara of the

Pope stand in the way of people's freedom, political

and religious. There he is taught that he must back

those forces in every nation which fight for political

“liberty" of the French Revolution type, and for that

liberty of popular education which is completely

dissociated from religion. There it is impressed on

him that the State must not only be separated from

the Church, but must persecute, and, if possible de-

stroy her. If the program of the Scottish Rite

were made known today to all Masons there would

be a wholesale exodus from its ranks.

The Southern Jurisdiction is a ‘misnomer,' be-

cause it actually is the Mother Supreme Council of

the World for all Scottish Rite Freemasonry. It es-

tablished the Grand Lodges in nearly every country

of Europe, of the Middle East, of Africa, Mexico,

Central and South America. Then it is the only

section of Scottish Rite Freemasonry which has

“friendly relations" with the Grand Orient and with

the Symbolic Lodges in Latin countries.

From the editors of its “official" magazine. The

New Age; from Allocutions of its Supreme Grand

Commanders; from articles contributed to the col-

ums of The New Age by 32° and 33° members; from

writers in France, Italy, Spain and Belgium, who

quote from Masonic organs and high officials in their

respective countries, we would be able to prove that



HOW TO INTEREST OUR FELLOW COUNTRYMEN 69

the Grand Orient in Latin countries, and the Scot-

tish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction U. S. A., (the

Mother Supreme Council of the World) have been

responsible for the setting up of most anti-Christian

governments in Europe, Mexico, Central and South

America.

Scottish Rite Freemasonry of the Southern

Jurisdiction has thrown the full weight of its influ-

ence to the enactment of a Federal Education Bill,

has over the years, lent its support to other groups

flghting the Catholic School System; sponsored the

Bills in Oregon, California and Michigan designed

to make attendance at the public school on the part

of all children of the nation compulsory
;
started the

Ku Klux Klan paper in Washington called The Fel-

lowship Forum; and during the Civil War in Spain

every member of its Supreme Council signed a

plea for support of the American Friends of Spanish

Democracy,

Its opposition to Secretary of War Baker^s se-

lection of the Knights of Columbus to represent the

Catholics in welfare work for the dough-boys during

the last war was the chief reason why organiza-

tions, representing the Catholics, Protestants and

Jews respectively, were not permitted to conduct re-

ligious work in the Camps or over-seas in the present

war.

Under the auspices of the Southern Jurisdiction

a semi-monthly Bulletin^ to the number of 22,000

copies, is sent to clergymen, lecturers and educators.

This has been done now for twenty years, and since

each Bulletin is pronouncedly anti-Catholic in tone,

one may justly conclude that is is a powerful prej-

udice former.



70 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

The same Jurisdiction also issues the Scottish

Rite Neivs Burea^i, a weekly clip sheet sent to news-

papers and Masonic magazines. According to the

New Age, August, 1926, -‘it has a circulation of 3,800

and contains items of Masonic interest.’' This num-

ber is sufficient to supply the editor of every secular

paper in the United States with a copy. The Chris-

tian Science Monitor has, for years, run a column

containing “Items of Interest to Masons.”

(Jf) What The Negro Should Knotv

The Catholic Church has spoken officially on the

racial question as it relates both to the Jews and

Negroes. Therefore there is only one justifiable

attitude. With non-Catholics, sentiment, pro and

con, is altogether personal. If there is a “color”

line the Catholic Church is certainly not responsible

for it. That line was drawn chiefly in the south-

ern states which, with the exception of Louisiana,

is less than two per cent Catholic, and it is from

them that most anti-Catholic movements, such as

the Ku Klux Klan, originated.

But, for their own purpose. Communists have

cultivated the Negro, promising him an equal status

with the white in all respects under a Soviet Amer-

ica. The real purpose of Communism, of course,

is to use the Negro and to turn him against his

truest friend, the Catholic Church.

Writing in the Interracial Review (November,

1943), Frank R. Crosswaith, a Negro labor leader,

a graduate of the Rand School of Social Service,

and, at present. New York State Chairman of the

American Labor Party, wrote

:

As the apostles of confusion and chaos it is
among Negroes that Communists have literally



HOW TO INTEREST OUR FELLOW COUNTRYMEN 71

worked overtime. But to the eternal credit

of the Negro, Communists have made their

smallest progress in relation to the time, the

effort, and the resources expended ... In every

instance the Communists seek, not so much to
help the Negro, but rather to utilize the plight

of the Negro as a means of advancing the

cause of Communism . . .
In our day the Communists can well be

called the modern Carpet-Baggers and like their

predecessors will probably leave a record equal-

ly as provoking and as effective in preventing

better understanding between Negro and white

Americans.

So long as Communists continue their present

tactics, Mr.* Crosswaith concludes

:

They will remain the outstanding force of

obstruction and confusion they have thus far

been in the American Labor movement, and will

continue to hamper the progress of the Negro

toward ultimate equality and justice.

Under Communist leadership Negroes have

been organized in communities where they are

strong, employing lawyers to espouse their cause,

and to ferret out instances of discrimination. They

have particularly rebuked Catholic boarding schools

for not receiving colored students and Catholic hos-

pitals for segregating the Colored from the Whites.

While it is very true that many Catholics have

caught the spirit of the environment in which they

live and have, with others, opposed housing proj-

ects for the Colored where they had the tendency

to create a depreciation in property values, they

have not opposed the Negro as Catholics.



CAN THE WORLD BE REGAINED FOR
CHRIST?

Evidently Christ could regain it for Himself

almost of a sudden by some miraculous interfer-

ence, accompanied by an irresistible flow of grace

into pagan hearts, especially those of civil rulers.

But you can hardly expect Him to do that, because

His ordinary way is to spread His Kingdom on earth

through His followers, through His large army of

Christian soldiers in Europe and in North, Central

and South America. If they became in reality what

they are by profession; if they were cemented to-

gether, as all who are of the ''household of faith’'

should be; if they became individually loyal, and

corporately vocal and apostolic, under their divinely

appointed teachers, the "gates of hell could not pre-

vail against them.”

In his recent Encyclical on the Mystical Body,

Pope Pius XII pointed out that such should be the

active union of Bishops, priests, religious and laity.

If, in so many countries, an enemy minority

was able to enslave Christ’s Church, it was because

"cockle was sown” throughout the nation by "the

enemy,” while the majority was asleep.

If, for centuries, the kings and emperors of the

world believed themselves obligated to rule in the

name of God, from Whom they received their power
and authority, then kings and emperors and presi-

dents can be persuaded by the majority to do that

today. If the constitutions of states in the past were

built on the laws of God, the majority can see to

it that they will be built that way again.



CAN THE WORLD BE REGAINED FOR CHRIST? 73

Referring to countries in which Christians

constitute only a mino7nty, John Ruskin wrote:

The world, unquestioned by others or by

itself, mingles with and overwhelms the small

body of Christians, legislates for them, moral-

izes for them, reasons for them, and though

it itself is, of course, greatly and beneficiently

influenced by the association, and held in check

by its pretence of Christianity, yet undermines

in nearly the same degree the sincerity and

practical power of Christianity itself.

John Ruskin says further:

Anything which makes religion the second

object, makes religion no object. God will put

up with a great many things in the human
heart, but there is one thing He will not put
up with in it—a second place. He who offers
God a second place, offers Him no place.

In his Encyclical Christ Our Redeemer, Pope

Lfeo XIII wrote, some fifty years ago:

The security of the State demands that

we should be brought back to Him, from Whom
we ought never to have departed; to Him Who
is the Way, the Truth and the Life, not as in-
dividuals merely, but as human society through
all its extent. Christ our Lord must be re-

instated as the Ruler of human society. It be-
longs to Him, as do all its members. All the

elements of the commonwealth
;
legal commands

and prohibitions, popular institutions, schools,

marriage, home-life, the work-shop, and the

palace, all must be made to come to that foun-
tain and imbibe the life that comes from Him.

No one should fail to see that on this largely
depends the civilization of nations.

Gilbert Chesterton wrote, some years ago, “if

we are right in our duty to God, everything else in

the world will be right too”; and William Ernest

Hocking, of Harvard, reminded scientists in Febru-



74 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

ary, 1942, that '‘science itself was originally the off-

spring of Christendom.” He quoted the words of

Francis Bacon, “in order to master nature, we must

first obey her,” and continued : “The unity on which

democracy rests is not man, the scientific fact; it is

something beyond man; it is God.”

There is no place in the world for the “liberal”

or compromising Catholic, who, because he is not

ivith Christ, is against Him. There is place, in these

days, when a world-wide spiritual and moral battle

must be won, only for those who, clothed with the

“armor of God” are ready to fight and “ward off the

darts of the enemies.”

It is time for Christians everywhere to impress

on all others a fact to which every reflecting person

will subscribe, namely, that the world cannot be

saved by politicians, economists, university profes-

sors, by the irreligious and godless, under whatever

name they may be organized. They have attempted

it too often in the past and failed abjectly. Politic-

ians, statesmen, governments, bankers, industrial-

ists, after innumerable conferences, national and in-

ternational, were unable even to find a “way out”

of the recent depression. They think politically and

materially, while all the evils of the world have

emanated from a disregard for the religious and

moral order. They should acknowledge their incom-

petency and appeal to those who represent religion

and the moral order to point out the way that will

work. That way is based on the promise of Christ,

“seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His justice

and all other things will be added unto you.^’

If Christ could enjoin on twelve men the task

of converting the entire world, the 20,000,000 Cath-



CAN THE WORLD BE REGAINED FOR CHRIST? 75

olics would cortainly be able, if inspired by the

same zeal and were backed by the same divine as-

sistance, to dispose for conversion most of the

convertible among the 100,000,000. They will not,

of course, even begin to do this merely for having

been told to do it. They must be organized, prefer-

ably only in small groups, or cells and conduct the

work systematically, and according to a well de-

fined program.

Organized Effort Needed

When asked why they do not raise their voices

against the persecution of Catholics as well as of

Jews, Jewish leaders are wont to say that the

Catholic Church is strong enough to defend itself.

Even though this answer may not be quite sat-

isfactory, it certainly tells what is true in practically

all countries where the Church has been persecuted,

except in Russia.

But there has existed nowhere a national or-

ganization of strength, under ecclesiastical direc-

tion, to take up the Church’s defense. The enemy

groups, on the other hand, were not only united

among themselves, but were wont to merge their

separate strength into a common front. Meeting

secretly and planning carefully, taking advantage

of the division of the mass of the people among

many political parties, they struck unitedly with

the support of a strong press, and seized the govern-

ment either by force or by the solid vote of their

several constituencies.

In our own country Catholics not only vastly

outnumber any other religious group, but in the

larger cities, constitute from one-third to one-half

of the entire population. Their religious leaders



76 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

do not want them to be organized politically or,

like their enemies, to conduct a campaign of hate.

But they have a right to expect that they will, for

the sake of Christ and of their non-Catholic brethren

themselves, represent their Church creditably, and

to see to it that it will receive fair and just treat-

ment in the press. Day after day propaganda from

enemy sources, from both home and abroad, creeps

into the daily papers. It is usually exposed in the

weekly Catholic press, but that is of no benefit to

the 100,000,000 non-Catholics (and 10,000,000 Cath-

olics) who are unreached by the Catholic paper.

Practically all the people in all the cities north

of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi could be

reached if each Catholic would interest himself (her-

self) through prayer, personal contacts and pam-

phlet literature, in only tivo or three non-Catholics,

In these cities where the bulk of the nation's popu-

lation lives, where Catholics are prominent in busi-

ness, in the professions, and in labor, there is cer-

tainly no excuse for non-Catholics to continue har-

boring prejudices against them or their Church.

The advantages, arising from a strong Cath-

olic urban citizenry, are, however, more than off-

set by the greater moral evils which obtain in

large cities. It is there where taverns and night

clubs abound, where home life is disrupted, where

lewd literature is displayed on a thousand racks,

where juvenile delinquency is rampant, and where

one out of every three young persons is a divorcee.

Catholics, whose consciences have been formed ac-

cording to the moral law, who have access, through

their Church, to supernatural helps, should not only

not fall victims to their environment, but should

collectively strive to change it for the better. AD



CAN THE WORLD BE REGAINED FOR CHRIST? 77

though, the ratio of divorces to marriages, taking

the country as a whole, is one to six, it is one to

three in cities of 100,000 or more where the majority

of Catholics live. (0. E. Baker, Government Agri-

cultural Statistician.) In rural districts, the ratio

is only one divorce to every eleven marriages.

Youth Enthusiasm Essential

Vincent Rochford, of England, in his The Young

Christian Worker, asks whether Christianity or

paganism will win the allegiance of youths after this

war, and he answers the question by saying: “It

will be that philosophy which presents the greatest

appeal to improperly guided youths''—and they are
in the majority.

He observes that we shall accomplish most with

youths if we require much of them, since they re-

spond to high ideals and to a cause which makes

the greatest demands on their strength.

Youth must be aroused to an enthusiasm for

the better cause—^the cause of Christ—and to a
determination to outdo Christ's enemies.

Since social life is completely divorced from re-

ligion, they must do all in their power, in their own

circle, to narrow that gap.

In organizing youths we should bear in mind

that Pope Pius XI favored the Jocist idea, according

to which the individual would confine his campaign

for Christ to his own milieu. Each class of people

has its own problems, its own mentality, and one

who knows those problems and that mentality is the

one to work with that group.

We must inspire Catholic youths to adopt as
their slogan : “Onward towards a Christian nation,"



78 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

and then to follow the enemy principle ‘‘the worker

is conscious and organized”

Who was it that broke the dictatorships of the

Caesars, who, in the first three centuries of the

Christian era, ruled the territory now covered by

Palestine, Greece, Italy, Spain, France, England,

Germany, Austria—territory embracing then a
population equal to the present population of the

United States?

It was the power of God operating through His

loyal and devoted crusaders. If that power is not

functioning visibly today, it is because crusaders

are lacking. Not only was the dissolution of the

Roman Empire accomplished, its millions of slaves

liberated, but the vices which prevailed under its

rule were overcome, God helping, by a comparative-

ly small spiritual army of Christ.

Who brought order out of chaos after hordes

of barbarians from the east invaded and devastated

Europe? Who civilized these barbarians, Chris-

tianized them, and protected them and their pos-

terity against tyrants and dictators; if not the

Church of Christ through apostlic men and women?

One may not be a Catholic individualist, be-

cause he is part of a body of Catholics. Each one

must give to, as well as receive from, other mem-

bers of that body. This evidently implies col-

lective action.

It is precisely because Catholics have been in-

dividualists, because they have felt no obligation to

spread their Churches principles, that society has

drifted far away from Christ, and that pagan prac-

tices have become so widespread, de-Christianizing

the social body. The body of Christians alone can

“restore all things in Christ.^’



HOW TO OUT-DO CHRISTS ENEMIES

(1) A Tie-up Of Organizations

Our first recommendation is that organizations

of Catholic men subordinate their fraternal, social

and recreational character to service for their

Church. There are thousands of branches of the

Holy Name Society, of the Knights of Columbus,

of the Foresters, each living pretty much for itself

alone, when they should have a diocesan bond of

union and, through it, a national bond of union.

District, diocesan or state representatives of each

should meet at least once a year not only with their

own, but have affiliation with the National Council

of Catholic Men, the organization functioning im-

mediately under the auspices of the Catholic Hier-

archy, and meet with its Supreme Board and with

delegates from every diocese. It would help to

unify the Catholic manhood of our nation, to in-

filtrate into it the mind of Christ, and place at the

,
disposal of the Church the strength of millions

for resistance to the pagan influences at work in

society, and for a defense of Christianity against

the smaller, but well-organized forces of her enemies.

What we ask of organizations of Catholic men

holds equally good for organizations of Catholic

women. Without losing their identity these organiza-

tions should have some kind of a diocesan tie-up and

then should also be affiliated with the National Coun-

cil of Catholic Women, whose staff in the Bishops’

building in W’ashington will be able to render them a

great deal of assistance by direction, by supplying

Study Club material and programs, designed to

help every woman culturally and spiritually, and



80 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD
t

to instill into members of local organizations zeal

for the spread of the Church’s sound moral doc-

trine so sorely needed today by the women of our

country.

Great responsibility rests on mothers today.

During His passion our Divine Savior stopped to

deliver only one brief sermon, and that was when

He exhorted the good women, who condoled with

Him so sympathetically, to ^Veep rather for them-

selves and their children.” Their children, out of

the home most of the day, are subject to the dele-

terious influences of a pagan world. If their in-

nocence is lost, parents will be held responsible

before God.

Catholic mothers must have the mind of the

Church in relation to the duties of their state in life,

and, with all other Catholic mothers, take a united

stand against those who are propagating vices which

were unheard of even in the heyday of paganism.

Catholic youth organizations function nearly

everywhere along parochial, district and diocesan

lines, but they too should have more than a technical

• bond of union with the National Youth Council.

The inducement offered to most-youths is an athletic

program under Catholic auspices which, of course, _

would not need any national direction. But their

athletic program, for which there is a place, will

not prepare them for leadership in the world of

tomorrow, in which Catholic youths almost alone

could qualify for leadership in matters relating to

the religious, moral and spiritual life.

Only those can give to others who themselves

have something to give; and since nine-tenths of

the youths of the nation are unfamiliar even with

the ABC’s of religion and with dictates of the moral



HOW TO OUT-DO CHRIST’S ENEMIES 81

law; since they have no contacts with supernatural

assistance derived from the Sacraments, their lives

cannot become truly spiritual. Since in social life

they will not have the mental and moral equipment

with which to resist the prevalent pagan standards,

they will only follow them, aggravating the very

evils which must be cured.

It is precisely because Catholic youths of the

last generation were not trained along the lines of

an apostolate that they, as adults today, are doing

nothing to show these non-Catholic fellow-country-

men the better way of life.

Certainly every member in every local organi-

zation of Catholic youths would be willing to fight

the flood of immoral literature which circulates so

freely in the town. They would certainly be able

to get many of their non-Catholic acquaintances to

join them in this assault against youth’s character,

solely for the financial profit to the publishers and

sellers.

In this connection H. G. Fay, Chairman of the

Clean Reading Committee of the Greater New York

Federation of Churches (Protestant), observed:

A dark future looms directly before the
American people filling all minds with anxious

forebodings. To forestall national disaster a

thorough house cleaning must come. No young
man is handed a moral character on a silver
plate. Youth must discover his real friends.

Girlhood can no longer be pictured as the spoil

of greed or the victim of passion. On the great
highway of the moral life, no longer shall ex-

ploiters throw dust in the eyes of youth at the

crossroads, or doublecross him at the dangerous

curves.

The writer recently authorized a priest in



82 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

charge of CYO work in a city of 40,000 population

(where there was only one church, whose members

did not exceed five per cent of the city's people) to

permit non-Catholic youths of good character to

patronize the CYO facilities, provided they would

comply with the regulations of the organization.

This priest also offered his Center to public high

school students who, after a victory game, were

bent on celebrating.

The effect has been far beyond the writer's

dreams. The entire high school graduating class

three years ago voted that this young Catholic priest

deliver their Commencement Address. The gr^.d-

uating class of 1944 has made the same request of

the city public school authorities.

The youth of Europe, according to Anne O'Hare

McCormick (New York Times, October 27, 1943) do

not know what they want, but having lived through

an era of suffering, sorrow, destruction, fighting,

they will follow any leadership which promises some-

thing better—and the only organized leadership they
witness today is anti-democratic and anti-religious.

In the United States the same situation is more or

less true.

Where there is near chaos, and especially dur-

ing the time of war, the m.ore trustworthy, father-

land-loving statesmen remain unaggressive, but

the subversive-minded see in the near chaos their

most favorable opportunity to seize the government,

and that is now happening in many countries. The

governments in exile in England have been under

the pressure of such groups and of their sympa-

thizers.

The writer realizes only too well that most

Catholic youths have disappointed their pastors by



HOW TO OUT-DO CHRIST’S ENEMIES 83

showing no eagerness to engage in cultural and

spiritual pursuits. But this is because the method

of organization was wrong. The Popes have be-

lieved in the small ‘'cell” manner of promoting an

apostolate, whether among men or women or youths.

While they expected all the men, women and youths

of a parish to respond to a pulpit call to organize,

they suggested that the pastor select a few from

each group to promote a lay apostolate after being

properly trained for it. They then expected that

the rest, edified and attracted -by their zeal, would

want to emulate their example, to form other cells,

each operating in its own milieu, which, for some,

would be their own neighborhood and social com-

panions; for others their associates in the same

work; for others, fellow-lawyers; fellow business

men, fellow physicians, fellow clerks, etc.

(2) The Removal Of Prejudice

The word “prejudice” means “prejudgment”—

a

judgment passed before all the evidence, both for

and against, is weighed.

Most people are influenced by prejudices;

hence they are slow to accept evidence if it proves

that they, or their parents, or their teachers, or

their nation, have been on the wrong side. But

the real seeker after truth will not permit his

reason and judgment to be influenced by antecedent

likes or dislikes. He wants the truth at all costs.

A whole race, or a whole national group, or
secessionists from the Mother Christian Church,

usually adhere to their traditions, no matter how

convincing may be the evidence against them, evi-

dence which they are unwilling to examine im-

partially.



84 CHRIST is LOSING HIS WORLD

Prejudice is to the mind what blindness is to

the eye—but the former can be cured. Thousands
it is true—but what are they among the tens of
millions—who were long under its influence were
courageous enough to flght it even if, in their search

for the truth, they never gave up hoping that their

original state of mind was right. However, all of

them will testify that what they found was well

worth the sacriflces entailed.

Deep-seated prejudice usually leads those who

are obsessed by it to attack and persecute the or-

ganization which claims to possess irrefutable evi-

dence for the correctness of its position, and against

the persecutor.

In the Acts of the Apostles, we read in Chapter

VI of the conversion of Stephen, and of the action

taken against him and the doctrine he preached

by prejudiced people of his race and former religion.

In Chapter VII we read of the defense which St.

Stephen made of his position before the Jewish

council. Their reaction, and what it led to, is told

in verses 54-59 of Chapter VII. In Chapter VIII

we observe that Saul was among those who par-

ticipated in the execution of Stephen by stoning,

and that he too led *'a great persecution against the

Church.^^

If Saul finally followed the example set by

Stephen, it was only because he could not help

himself. Christ had personally intervened, sent

him physical blindness, moved his heart by the

power of grace, and instructed him what to do.

During the nineteen centuries since Christ’s

time whole nations have been converted to the

faith embraced by Stephen and Paul; and through

the centuries learned men and women, not reared



HOW TO OUT-DO CHRIST’S ENEMIES 85

in that faith, have become converts by the force

of the evidence in Christianity’s favor. But Jews,

who were scattered among the nations of Europe,

Asia and Africa, where some form of Christianity

dominated, have, as a group, preferred not to fol-

low Stephen and Saul ''and the whole multitude,”

even though their lot would have been immensely

happier had they become a part of the prevailing

Christian order.

Editors and book-writers deal with religion

and morals as they do with politics; they treat it

in line with their own preferences or prejudices, or

in line with what they believe the majority of their

readers would endorse. Just as the editor of a

Republican, a Democratic, a Communist paper in

the same city, will appraise a statement of the

President, or a Congressional vote each in accor-

dance with his fixed political viewpoint, so will a

statement by the Pope or action of the Catholic

Hierarchy be appraised according to the different

frames of mind of editors.

They do not regard religious truth as some-

thing fixed. Those who do not believe in divine

revelation and a divinely commissioned interpreta-

tion of the same, can only have different "opinions”

concerning what is truth and what is moral. The

determination of which conflicting opinions are

likely the soundest is made by a majority vote

through Gallup Polls.

(3) Watch The Press

A small group of every men’s, women’s and
youth organization should keep an eye on the

local press and on national publications. The local

editor realizes that he has no right to expect pa-



86 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

tronage from people whose faith or moral prin-

ciples he attacks. He is quite naturally under the

influence of his own political, religious or irre-

ligious views, and is inclined to follow rather than

to oppose the current of thought on moral matters,

which runs through the community precisely be-

cause some individuals or representatives or or-

ganizations are vocal about them.

But if he received only one or two letters from

members of every parish Catholic Action cell in

protest every time he writes the wrong thing, and

in praise every time he is on the side of religion

and decency, he would soon set aside his own views

in favor of satisfied patrons.

What if the editor of a national publication,

who defends and, at least indirectly, backs the

activities of enemies of both country and religion,

received only one letter from someone representing

every parish in the United States, accusing him of

blasting at the foundation of society and religion,

or of misrepresentation or of trying deliberately to

deceive his readers? Many an editor would pay no

attention to a letter of protest coming from a Cath-

olic if he were merely charged with bigotry, be-

cause from his own viewpoint the Catholic would

be the bigot. But when his honesty and sincerity

are questioned; when there is reason to accuse

him of deliberate deception of the people who pur-

chase his m.agazine rather to be informed, he

would soon desist from misrepresenting the Church

if it were only out of sheer shame.

The same action against a sponsor of a radio

program or against the producer of motion pictures

which offend against decency, from one person in



HOW TO OUT-DO CHRIST’S ENEMIES 87

every parish in the United States would effect the

desired cure.

(Ji^) Send a Pamphlet

We must not regard any misinformation

over the radio or slanderous charge appearing in the

secular press as answered if the answer appears only

in the Catholic paper. Even if every Catholic in the

nation read the answer in the Catholic press, the

100,000,000 non-Catholics would still remain de-

ceived. These should be reached about once a month

by the systematic sending of a pamphlet, which in-

structs and explains. If to each Catholic family

were assigned four non-Catholic homes, every one

of the 100,000,000 would be covered.

No American likes to be charged with unfair-

ness; but one is unfair who will judge the Catholic

Church without even giving her an opportunity

to present her case. When, therefore, you send

literature to your non-Catholic friends or acquaint-

ances it should be preceded by a letter in which

you will appeal to his or her “fairness” to read

what the Catholic Church has to say for herself.

Explain that you send the literature in the spirit

of friendship and because it will make for a better

understanding.

If this appears to be a huge job, it must be re-

membered that enemies of the Church do not shirk

big jobs if their ends can be promoted by under-

taking them. Before the war Communists rented

Madison Square Garden, New York, about once a
month at $4,000.00 a night, and filled it to capacity

without any publicity. A Catholic meeting, held in
the same hall, designed to set people right on the



88 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

Spanish War, was announced in all the churches of

New York and Brooklyn, and advertised in both the

Catholic and secular papers—but there remained
plenty of vacant seats. What is the explanation?

What was everybody's business was nobody's busi-

ness. To each Communist was assigned a city block

and he was expected to "‘compel to come in" every

Party member and sympathizer in that block. Di-

rect, full coverage personal contacts are needed.

Emulation of the zeal of the Communist and of Jeho-

vah Witnesses would be healthy for Catholic indiv-

iduals themselves, would put the indifferent Catho-

lic to shame, would result in numerous conversions,

and would supply that which every parish organiza-

tion claims it needs—something definite to do.
(5) A Catholic Book Shop

In all cities of the nation there should be

a Catholic “Book Shop" preferably in a rented store

down town, where books and pamphlets dealing with

doctrine and morals, and social subjects, will be on

display and sold, and where orders for any good

book or novel will be received. After a few months

the Book Shop will be self-sustaining, as experience

has so well proved. In this shop should be a Reading

Room, which could also be used for round-table dis-

cussions and lectures to small groups, to which

members of parish cells should bring uninstructed

Catholics and non-Catholic friends. Encouragement

of parishioners by pastors to patronize the Book

Shop will start our people to read Catholic books

and pamphlets. This Shop could also conduct a lend-

ing library. The coming together of Catholics from

all the city parishes at a down-town Book Shop,

each interested in learning more and doing more



HOW TO OUT-DO CHRIST’S ENEMIES 89

about his or her faith, will have a spiritually stimu-

lating effect.

Other Suggestions

(a) While engaged in an apostolate you should

frequently attend daily Mass, offer it in reparation

for mankind's apostasy from God, and plead with

Christ, in His infinitely powerful prayer, for light

and guidance both for yourself and for those in

whose spiritual welfare you are interested. Every

Catholic should, during every Mass, ask for gui-

dance for those who are governing our own and

other nations.

(b) Your own family will be sanctified, the

faith of all its members strengthened and the bless-

ing of God will accompany their apostolic efforts,

if you will start the practice of the Family Rosary

in your home. The Rosary is a prayer of power

because it is officially endorsed by the Church, and

has been recommended by Popes for seven hundred

years. Through it we interest in our own and our

friend's behalf the cooperation of Christ's sinless

and all-powerful mother, the Queen of Angels, the

Help of Christians, the Refuge of Sinners. Her

Rosary has won victories over Christianity's en-

emies in the past.

(c) One of the reasons why Catholics fear

to discuss religion with their non-Catholic friends

is that even in Catholic high schools and colleges

they were not made sufficiently acquainted with the

'‘objections" which people are wont to raise against

Catholic doctrine and practices. The objections and

the proper answers should be furnished to students

on the high school and college level because im-

mediately upon graduation they mingle with people.



90 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

who know far more about charges made against

the Catholic Church then they know about the

Church itself. It is rather the Catholic who should

ask questions and propound objections, and put

the non-Catholic on the defensive—because he will
be unable to answer most questions asked of him

The Catholic who will be able to defend the

thesis “All Religions Are Not Equally Good” will

have the fundamental answer for 70,000,000 Am-

ericans, who do believe that “One Religion Is As

Good As Another.”

The Catholic who knows how the Bible, which

is used in all Protestant churches, came into being

and on whose authority, will be able to do more

than hold his own in discussions with the 30,000,-

000 Americans who hold membership in the Protest-

ant churches. The Bible is not a logical authority

in Protestant hands, because while accepting it on

the Catholic Church's word alone, they repudiate

her infallible authority.

The Catholic who is able to explain the doctrine

of the Infallibility of the Church should be able to

defend his own impregnable position.



BRIEF ANSWERS TO COMMON
OBJECTIONS

Let us briefly state here a few of the very

common objections made against the Catholic

Church, and the easy answer:

(a) The Catholic Church exhibits herself as

mtolerant and narrow by claiming that her re-

ligion alone is right.

The Church only claims what Christ and His

Apostles claimed so emphatically: “I shall build

My Church” (Matthew XVI, 18) ; “One Lord, one

faith, one baptism” (Eph. IV, 5) ; St. Paul said

that it is God's will that “all men should come to

the knowledge of the truth” (I Tim. II 4).

Even two religions whose teachings are contra-

dictory cannot both be right. Religious truth as

mathematical truth, must be intolerant of its con-

tradictory. Even Mortimer Adler, a Jew, speak-

ing to a body of professors, sociologists, and scien-

tists in New York, in 1940, said: “Truth must be
one and universal; therefore, there can be only one

true religion.”

(b) The Catholic Churches requirements are

too strict.

Isn’t that a compliment? Would you think

more of her if she relaxed the demands of her

Founder?

(c) The Catholic Church is opposed to divorce.

Isn’t that in her favor? Don’t you believe in

the stability of the home and in enduring love?

Actually it is God Himself Who forbids remarriage
during the lifetime of one’s first legitimate wife or

husband.



92 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

(d) The Catholic Church believes in union of

Church and State.

Where? In the United States or England? No,

she does not. She believes in it only where the

majority of people of a country are Catholics. Don't

you believe in a rule by the majority, when mi-

nority rights are properly respected?

(e) The Catholic Church shows herself to he

intolerant by opposition to the public school.

If the Catholic Church opposed the public

schools it would not be teaching the same curriculum.

The parochial school antedates the public school.

When the latter system was inaugurated and the

teaching of religion was excluded from its curri-

culum, the Catholic Church simply continued to

operate her own schools in order that the know-

ledge of God and of the human soul and of man's

destiny might be taught, as such knowledge had

always previously been taught in all schools.

(f) The Catholic Church shows herself to be

intolerant by denouncing secret fraternal societies.

The Church has banned only a few of them,

and not because they are secret or fraternal, but

because they demand oaths of their members and

because they often become substitutes for religion

by having a chaplain, a ritual, burial service, etc.

Christ's religion brooks no rivals for ‘‘he who is

not with Me is against Me."

(g) The Catholic Church shows herself intol-

erant by condemning marriages between her own

people and those who profess a different faith.

You could level that charge against every other



BRIEF ANSWERS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 93

religion. No Protestant clergyman wants the peo-

ple of his sect to marry those belonging to another

sect.

In the Old Law God forbade Jews to marry

non-Jews. St. Paul makes it clear that marriages

between Christians and non-Christians are only

to be tolerated (I Cor. VII 12-16).

‘‘A house should not be divided against itself'

in matters religious more than in any other mat-

ter. There should be harmony and unity and hus-

band and wife and children should be able to wor-

ship God “with one mind and one heart."

(h) Have not the Popes been pro-Fascist?

The Fascist newspapers of Italy have claimed

that they were anti-Fascist. The only ones who

charge Popes Pius XI and XII with pro-Fascist

leanings are the ones who are angry at them for not

being pro-Communist. In special Encyclical Let-

ters Pope Pius XI condemned both Nazism and

Fascism and had numerous tilts with Mussolini be-

cause of some of his Fascist measures.

On August 16, 1942, the editor of Time, who is

anything but friendly to the Catholic Church, wrote

:

No matter what critics say, it is scarcely
deniable that the Church Apostolic, through the

Encyclicals and other Papal pronouncements,

has been fighting against totalitarianism more
knowingly, devoutly, and authoritatively, and

for a longer time, than any other organized

power.

(i) Did not Pope Pius write a Concordat with

Hitler?

Yes, but Concordats are seldom written with

friendly powers. They are usually written with



94 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

enemy powers in order that at least some of the

rights of the Church may be respected by a dicta-

tor, an anti-Catholic or an anti-Christian ruler.

Concordats do not imply friendly cooperation, but

rather the opposite.

(j) Did not Pope Pius bless the Ethiopian War

and congratulate Mussolini over his victory?

The Pope did neither. Three days after that

war was declared he denounced it as an "‘unjust’"

war, and quoted a verse of the 67th Psalm against

Mussolini, which reads: “Scatter the nations who

desire war.” On the day that war ended the Pope,

addressing a large meeting of representatives of

the press, merely stated that that meeting coin-

cided with the “joy of a good people”, i. e., with

the joy of the Italian people that the war was at

an end.

(k) Did not a corrupt Christian world need a

Reformation at the time of Luther?

Not by Luther, or any agency outside the

Church. Luther and Calvin both admitted, before

their deaths, that things had gone from bad to

worse after they started the Reformation. The

world was not one-half so corrupt then as it is

today, when Protestantism admits its powerlessness

to do anything about it. At the present time the

Catholic Church is the only institution openly and

persistently defending the moral law. The prin-

ciple of private judgment^ a “Reformation” prin-

ciple, which allows everyone to determine his own

faith and morals, is responsible for the corrupt

state of society in so-called Christian countries to-

day.



BRIEF ANSWERS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 95

(l) What kind of a government does the Cath-

olic Church prefer?

Evidently a friendly government, of whatever

type.

Cardinal Van Roey, of Belgium, said on Nov-

ember 24, 1941:

In itself it is a matter of indifference to

the Church whether she exists under a monar-

chy or a republic, under a democratic or an

autarchial regime. If these regimes safeguard

and maintain the liberties of the Church—^that
is to say, if they allow her to work with all her

power and with all the means which she pos-

sesses by natural right for the good of souls

—

then she adapts herself. Otherwise, no, she

does not adapt herself.

(m) Hoiv do you account for some learned

men being agnostics and atheists?

Atheism and agnosticism do not proceed from

.the mind, but from the heart and will. David says

:

‘The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.”

The atheist or agnostic may be likened to the

man who silences the radio when it carries a pro-

gram which he prefers not to hear.

Hilaire Belloc makes this observation:

Reason can prove that God exists, and

that, in case He should deign to speak to man.
He can and ought to be believed, in view of His
knowledge and veracity. Moreover, reason,

using history, can show that God has really

spoken and can indicate where His revelation

is truly to be found. Reason, in a word, can

prove that a man can and ought to believe, and
that if it is reasonable to believe a well-inform-

ed and veracious man, it is vastly more reason-

able to believe the Infinite Witness on account of

His knowledge and veracity.



96 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

(n) Why does not the Catholic Church give

Holy Communion under both forms?

Not because she is opposed to it, but because

it is unnecessary. Catholics belonging to the Orien-

tal Rite receive Holy Communion under both forms,

but since He Who is received in Holy Communion

is the resurrected Christ, Who ascended into Heaven

with His body, blood, soul and divinity—in other
words, the living Christ, ''Who can die no more”

—

when His precious Body is received in the form

of bread, He is received whole and entire with both

body and blood.

At the Mass the priest receives under both

forms because in the Mass the death of Christ, Who

lost all His blood during the passion, is renewed.

At the Last Supper, when Christ Himself of-

fered the first Mass, He directed the Apostles

—

and not others—^to do the precise thing He had
done. He had consecrated both forms and gave

Communion to His Apostles under both forms.

Therefore, they were to do that same thing at the

Mass. No directions were given to the laity and,

as stated, since it is the living, glorified, spiritualized

body of Christ which is received in Holy Commun-

ion, His blood must be received along with His

body when Communion is distributed in the form

of bread.

(o) Are not some doctrines of the Catholic

Church rejected by Protestants because they have

been only recently defined?

Yes, but if two of these were defined only

during the past century—^the doctrine of the Im-
maculate Conception, in 1854, and the doctrine of

the Infallibility of the Pope, in 1870—it was be-



BRIEF ANSWERS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 97

cause it was not necessary to define them previously.

The entire Catholic world believed them. It was

only following the French Revolution, when in-

fidelity attacked religion in general, and strove to

shake the devotion of Catholics to the Blessed Vir-

gin and their faith in the authority of the Church,

that the two doctrines mentioned above were

assailed. It was then necessary for the Church to

speak out, but she was not teaching new doctrines.

(p) Just what is meant hy the Immaculate

Conception?

By it is meant that the soul of the mother of

Jesus, foreordained from all eternity as an instru-

ment for the realization of the Incarnation, and

promised in the Book of Genesis as ^‘the woman,

who would crush the serpent’s head,” was pre-

served, at the time of its creation, from the stain

of Original Sin inherited by the generality of peo-

ple from Adam.

Most converts to the Catholic faith find this

doctrine most easy to accept because of the congruity

or fitness of things. God would certainly create a

‘‘perfect” Mother for His divine Son; He would

not have her, from whom He took the human nature

in which He v/as to redeem the world from sin,

to have been herself under sin. It was merely a

matter of applying the merits of Christ’s Redemp-

tion to her soul at the time of its creation, as they

are applied to the rest of mankind through the

Sacrament of Baptism.

When the Archangel Gabriel was sent as a

messenger from Heaven by God Himself to apprise

her that she was His selection for the Mother of

His Son, the Archangel greeted her as “full of



98 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

grace/’ as '‘blessed among women.” She was “bless-

ed among all women” even before she gave her

consent to the Archangel. But she would not have

been “blessed among all women”' if she were not

different from other woman from the viewpoint of

grace and sin.

(q) If the Pope is human hoiv can the Church

teach that he cannot err?

Infallibility does not mean that the Pope can-

not err or make mistakes as a human being, because

he can. Having free will he can violate God’s laws

the same as you or I can. Therefore Infallibility

does not mean that the Pope cannot sin. It means

that when he speaks on matters of faith and morals

for the whole of Christendom in the name of the

Church for which he is the spokesman, he is pro-

tected from teaching error—not for his own sake,
but for the sake of the hundreds of millions, who

would be taught error by the very Church which

Christ claimed He Himself and His Holy Spirit

would protect from error and keep in truth.

(r) The Church, then, could not have fallen

into error and have made necessary the Reforma-

tion of the sixteenth century?

That is right. The “Reformers” not only were

not commissioned by Heaven to reform anything,

but all of them, before they died, admitted that they

had not reformed morals and, because they them-

selves were in disagreement, one denouncing the

other for his teaching, it is evident that they only

confused the world with regard to doctrine.

Picture the moral condition of the world in

the early sixteenth century as black as you may

like, it was not half so bad as it is today, when



BRIEF ANSTVTERS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 99

fundamental moral demands, never violated prior

to the sixteenth century, are rampant. Protestant-

ism, now divided among six hundred or more sects,

is not a unit, has no official voice to represent it,

and, therefore, the world does not hearken to

it. Protestantism would probably long since

have vanished from the world if it were not

for the Catholic Church. It profits whenever

the Catholic Church speaks officially in defense of

the fundamentals of Christianity. Then since it is

a religion of “protest,” if the Catholic religion

ceased to be, the object of its protest would also

cease to be. .

(s) Has not Protestantism made more of the

Bible than the Catholic Church?

No, it certainly has not. Protestantism would

have had no Bible to publish and distribute if the

Catholic Church had not, amid indescribable dif-

ficulties, preserved the Bible for modern times. Re-

jecting the infallible authority of the Catholic

Church, Protestants are most inconsistent in ac-

cepting the Bible at all as the inspired word of God.

Not one of them could prove the inspiration and the

reliability of the Bible except on the word of the

Catholic Church, which had it all to herself for

fifteen centuries. Having been its sole possessor,

the Catholic Church could have altered it or added

to it, or have done anything else she wanted with

it, and no Protestant of today would be the wiser,

because the original writings of the New Testament

are no longer in existence and, therefore, there

would be no possibility of comparing modern ver-

sions with them even to determine their accuracy.

The Bible is a Catholic Book, while most people



100 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

seem to think that it is a Protestant book. It is

true that prior to the invention of the printing-press

not so many people had Bibles as have them today,

because every copy of the Bible was a manuscript

copy. If you wanted a Bible it would have been

necessary for you to copy it by hand from one that

belonged to another. We wonder how many peo-
ple in the world today would have the Bible if they

had to produce their own by copying it from Genesis

to Revelations by hand, and, as agents of the Cath-

olic Church did through long centuries, on vellum

or parchment, because paper was not invented until

the thirteenth century.

Throughout the centuries Catholic services have

been full of the Bible, sermons preached to the

people were replete with its texts; portions of it

were always read to the people every Sunday; the

official prayers of the Church, which are the Mass

and the priest’s Brievary, cover practically the en-

tire Bible every year.

Whenever a Protestant minister or Protestant

periodical urges the people to read the Bible, he

pays a tribute, unwittingly, to the infallible author-

ity of the Catholic Church, which stamped it as

*‘the word of God.”

(t) Why is it that the Catholic Church is the

chief opponent of artificial Birth Control?

Because she is still the chief exponent and de-

fender of God’s unchangeable moral law. When the

primary purpose of marriage is deliberately and

artificially frustrated the crime of ^‘destroying the

seed,” called a “detestable thing” in Genesis,

XXXVIII, 9-10, is committed. Read St. Paul’s ref-

erence to it in Rom. I, 24-27 ; also his condemnation



BRIEF ANSWERS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 101

of all lustful practices in I Thess. IV, 3-5. Marriage

becomes degraded when it is used for mutual mas-

turbation.

(u) Where, in the Bible, do we read of Purga-

tory 1

Where, in the Bible, do you find the words “Holy

Trinity,’" “Incarnation,” or even the word “Bible”

itself? The Bible imylies another place of punish-

ment besides hell in the many passages which de-

clare, in effect, that “man will be punished ac-

cording to his works.” This would not be true if

little sins were punished in the same way, and as

eternally, as great crimes, of which one died un-

repentant. You surely will agree that millions, at

the time of their death, are too good for Hell, but

not good enough for imm.ediate entrance into Heav-

en. God’s people in the Old Law were taught to

yray for the dead that they might be more speedily

cleansed from their sins. But “prayer for the dead”

implies belief in a place in the other world where

souls can be helped by prayer. Those in Heaven need

no prayers
;
those in Hell cannot be helped by pray-

er.

(v) Why cannot a soul be saved ivithout Bap-

tism ?

Because Christ .so decreed in these solemn

words : “Amen, Amen, I say to thee, unless a man be

born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot

enter into the Kingdom of God” (John III, 5). The

word translated “man” reads in the Greek and Latin

versions “anyone.”

The explanation is not difficult when you take

into account that man is born into this world in the

human order, but is destined to a divine order. To



102 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

his soul, therefore, must be added divine or super-

natural life. This life must be conferred by some

divine ordinance or Sacrament, and Christ insti-

tuted Baptism for that purpose.

Original sin, in which every human being is

born, is removed by Baptism, and sanctifying grace,

which is the supernatural, divine life of the soul,

is infused. Of course, even after one is baptized

one can lose that divine life by grievous sin, where-

upon it can be restored by another Sacrament, name-

ly, the Sacrament of Penance.

(w) Why must one subscribe to an ecclesiastical

Creed

?

Because Christ made it very clear that be-

sides Baptism “belief” is necessary.

In what must one believe? In the entire set of

doctrine taught by the Church of Christ. Most of

this doctrine is contained in the Apostles’ and the

Nicene Creeds—^the ofRcial statements of things to
be believed. Every organization has its creed, in

which are declared the things for which the or-

ganizatian stands and to which members must sub-

scribe.

The “Salute to the Flag,” which is taught every

child in the land, contains the profession of faith in

the American Creed.

Nothing is more absurd than the commonly

heard statement, “I do not believe in creeds or

dogmas.” The word dogma simply means a religious .

truth, and a creed contains a summary of religious

truths. If you believe in God, in the divinity of

Christ, in the inspiration of the Bible, you believe

in dogmas.



BRIEF ANSWERS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 103

(x) Why are all Catholic services conducted in

Latin?

They are not. Latin is used in liturgical ser-

vices, such as the Mass, Benediction, the blessings

of institutions and of articles, in the so-called west-

ern countries. In the Near East and the eastern

part of Europe, they are also conducted in other

languages, such as Greek, Slovak, Roumanian, Syri-

an, etc. It is not unnatural that such services should

be conducted in a “foreign’' language, since they

are directed not to the people, but to God. These

languages were once the vernacular, and were re-

tained by the Church down to this day for many

reasons which lack of space prevents us from outlin-

ing. But could anything express better the same-

ness of the Church in every country, its universality,

than the use of the same language ?

In prayers said directly with the people the

languages of the people, in whatever country, is

used. On the prayerbook pages appear side by side

both the Latin and English, so that the people may

follow the Mass, for instance, the same as if it

were said in English. Most of the Mass is said in

such a low tone of voice that the people would not

understand the words of the priest, no matter in

what language it were offered.

(y) What would the Pope demand if he were

represented at the Peace Table?

He would be quite satisfied if the basis for the

establishment of new governments, in whatever

countries, were a recognition of the profound truths

stressed in our own Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident;
that all men are created equal; that they are



104 CHRIST IS LOSING HIS WORLD

endowed by their Creator with certain inalien-

able rights; that among these are life, liberty

and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure

these rights, governments are instituted among

men, deriving their just powers from the con-

sent of the governed.

(z) Is Convent life natural?

What could be more natural than for one not

only to repay Christ’s unbounded love by personal

consecration to Him, but to teach in school, or to

serve the sick as a nurse, under religious auspices?

Members of the teaching and nursing profes-

sions are held in the highest regard by all people,

yet they are engaged in purely secular pursuits and

their motive is a “livelihood.” Those who devote

their lives to the teaching of children in the knowl-

edge and love of God as a labor of love, or who see

in the sick, whom they nurse, the suffering Christ,

and serve without personal remuneration, should,

we think, be esteemed even much higher.

If the chief business of every person on earth

is to sanctify and save his soul, the wonder is that

hundreds of thousands more people do not draw

apart from the sinful world and make the love and

service of God a life’s profession.

Today people in the world worry over future

social security. The Nun has no such worries, be-

cause she is absolutely certain that she will be

taken care of in sickness and old age, that upon re-

tirement she will have a peaceful existence, be no

burden to relatives, and be enabled to make prep-

aration for a beautiful death.