Leo XIII warned against moderninst heresy and wrote the St. Michael prayer. Was it prophetic or paranoid?

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Swinging at Windmills:A Close Look at Catholic Conspiracy Theories, By Sandra Miesel

Question: Who's afraid of Jews in the boardroom? Freemasons in the basement? Reds under the bed? Black helicopters in the sky? Answer: A surprising number of otherwise sensible people. Even under the new shadow of terrorism, old fears live on, breeding bogeys that knot together in a vipers' tangle of menace.

Regrettably, Catholics do their share of worrying about the Judeo-Masonic-Communist conspiracy and/or the imminent arrival of the Antichrist to rule over the New World Order. Their anxieties are often fueled by anti-Semitic screeds, polemical histories, eccentric economics, and even heavenly messages. Fear-mongering is standard fare in the pages of radical traditionalist publications such as The Remnant, Catholic Family News, and The Fatima Crusader. The principal Catholic publisher of such conspiracy theories is Omni/Christian Book Club of Palmdale, California. Books and tapes of this sort are routinely featured in the mail-order catalogs of Catholic Treasures of Monrovia, California, and Our Lady's Book Service of Constable, New York, but they may also find their way into local religious bookstores.

To be sure, conspiracy junkies are a tiny subculture in the midst of 63 million American Catholics. (The Remnant's circulation is about 7,000.) But the wily ones are learning to use the Internet, and what they lack in numbers, they more than make up for in fervor.

The Protocols of Paranoia

Anti-Semitism is the fundamental fear, the longest hatred. Historian Leonard Dinnerstein defines it as "hostile expressions toward or negative behavior against individuals or groups because of their Jewish faith or heritage." Although antagonism toward Jews predated the Christian era, it fed-and in some places still feeds-on Christian attitudes of contempt toward the "Christ-killers." But what's of particular interest here is modern anti-Semitism and the hardening of conspiracy theories in the 19th and 20th centuries.

France was a major catalyst. Some French Catholics couldn't forgive Jews for getting full citizenship-an unprecedented privilege in Europe-from the anti-Catholic Revolutionary government in 1790. Jews compounded their sin by prospering.

Accused of having too much money and power, although they constituted only 0.02 percent of the population, 19th-century French Jews were caught between feuding White Monarchists and Red Republicans. Reactionary Catholics identified Jews with the hated forces of modernity and secularization, Freemasonry and socialism. Even the early promotion of Lourdes became a vehicle for ugly anti-Semitic propaganda.

In the 1890s, the decade of the Dreyfus Affair, czarist Russian secret agents adapted a French satire on Napoleon III into the infamous Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Made public in 1902, this document purports to be notes from a meeting of leaders in the 2,000-year Jewish conspiracy to rule the world. The protocols provided the foundation for many of the worst anti-Semitic theories in the 20th century, influencing even Hitler.

Within a decade (1912), Msgr. Ernest Jouin of France had founded the International Revue of Secret Societies for conspiracy connoisseurs. Its outrage appealed to Irish Holy Ghost Rev. Denis Fahey, whose imagination had been captured by Jesuit priest Mathieu Deschamps's Secret Societies and Society. (The Roman Jesuit publication Civiltà Cattolica had been a font of anti-Semitism in the previous generation; it had even suggested that all Jews be stripped of citizenship.)

Father Fahey (1883-1954) undertook a one-man crusade against what he called Jewish naturalism, which was supposedly the guiding philosophy of the Jewish nation since it rejected Our Lord. The theory goes like this: Since spurning the Bible for the Talmud and the Kabala, Jews no longer believe in God. Century after century, they systematically attack the kingship and high priesthood of Christ in a relentless drive to enthrone their race as collective messiahs over the rest of mankind.

Father Fahey offers no evidence of a universal Jewish antitheism or exaltation of Talmud over Torah. (Opposing "Talmudic Jews" to biblical Jews is like contrasting "Canonical Catholics" with Gospel Catholics.) No matter. On his premise of Jewish naturalism, Father Fahey erected ominous theories embellished with questionable facts from fascistic writers such as Nesta Webster, A.N. Field, and Leon de Poncins (all radical traditionalist favorites). His repetitive books-all with imprimaturs-include The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World (1935) and The Kingship of Christ and Organized Naturalism (1943), expanded as The Kingship of Christ and the Conversion of the Jewish Nation (1953).

Even Hilaire Belloc, whose distasteful book The Jews (1937) describes Jews as unassimilable aliens, scoffed at Father Fahey's Jewish conspiracy theories: "The thing is nonsense on the face of it." Father Fahey retorted that Belloc just didn't understand naturalism. (Father Fahey's nose for Jewish naturalism was so sensitive he could detect it in the silent film classics Ben-Hur and King of Kings.)

Although fond of counting Jewish noses in Hollywood, the Politburo, and the United Nations, as well as sniffing out people with Jewish blood, Father Fahey denied that he was an anti-Semite because he honored pre-Christian Jews. Nevertheless, he enjoyed quoting papal policy statements against Jews, coyly refused to reject the long-debunked Protocols, praised the anti-Semitic activities of Henry Ford, and denied the death toll from the Holocaust.

Father Fahey, dead for five decades, may seem an obscure figure to belabor, but his influence is still very much alive on the Catholic right. He has a larger current audience than the more famous Irish-American figure he inspired-Rev. Charles Coughlin. (Omni/Christian Book Club, a publisher of the Protocols, offers 14 titles by Father Fahey versus two by Father Coughlin.)

According to Leonard Dinnerstein, Father Coughlin "developed the largest following of any demagogue in American history." Starting in 1933, Father Coughlin's honey-tongued tirades against bankers, Communists, Roosevelt, and other enemies focused ever more sharply on Jews until he was actually recycling Nazi propaganda to his 3.5 million radio listeners, his one million weekly newspaper subscribers, and the legions in his political party, the Christian Front. He shared Father Fahey's false belief that Jews provided the manpower and money power for the Bolshevik Revolution. Rome and the U.S. postmaster general finally silenced Coughlin in 1942.

Anti-Semitism ebbed among Catholics and other Americans after World War II. Only extremists still fear cabals of Jewish financiers or question Jews' rights in society.

The Church in America has worked hard to achieve these goals, but progress hasn't been uniform throughout the world. In 1962, a singularly vicious specimen of Catholic anti-Semitism was published just before Vatican II, reportedly by a team of twelve clerics-probably Latin Americans and one said to be a bishop-under the pen name "Maurice Pinay." They were attempting to forestall any concessions to the Jews, such as would occur in the council's declaration on non-Christian religions, Nostra Aetate, which "deplores all hatreds, persecutions, displays of antisemitism leveled at any time or from any source against the Jews."

"The Plot Against the Church" spews venom like a geyser of hot sewage. For them, "the damned Jews" are literally a "Synagogue of Satan" and their ubiquitous iniquity is responsible for every evil that has befallen the Church-persecutions, heresies, barbarian invasions, the Reformation, revolutions-from Roman times to the present. Moreover these adepts of black magic and Satanism are the "wirepullers" behind Freemasonry and communism, ever conspiring to destroy the Church and rule the world.

Father Fahey, Father Coughlin, and their forebears are among "Pinay's" sources, and like them, "Pinay" denies being anti-Semitic. Nevertheless, "The Plot Against the Church" proposes that Jews be expelled or enslaved, despoiled of their property, segregated, and forced to wear visible marks-all in accordance with ancient Church canons and papal bulls. "Pinay" especially wants to root out Catholics of Jewish descent who are a secret fifth column subverting the Church.

With this sort of vileness in the recent past, is it any wonder that some Roman clerics whisper that powerful Jews are behind America's priest scandals? Or that the Anti-Defamation League detects "hardcore anti-Semitic beliefs" in 44 percent of our foreign-born Hispanics? Fear of Jewish plots will not entirely die.

It's the Freemasons-Again!

An important thread in the all-encompassing cloak of Jewish conspiracy is Freemasonry. The "Judeo-Masonic plot" remains a shibboleth among radical traditionalists because they are unshakably certain that Jews founded the Craft and use it to undermine Christianity. Some authors who push this theory include: Deschamps, Jouin, Fahey, Webster, de Poncins, Chilean cardinal Jose Maria Caro y Rodriguez, and Irish-Australian monsignor George Dillon, who expected that the Masonic Antichrist "will find the Jews the most inveterate haters of Christianity, the deepest plotters, and the fittest to establish his reign."

These vigilants note that the central Masonic myth is the rebuilding of Solomon's Temple, point to cabalistic symbolism and Hebrew terminology in their rituals, and pronounce the enterprise Jewish. They never consider that the Old Testament-oriented Protestants who founded Masonry could have used Hebraic references, and they seem to know very little about the mystic fads that incubated the minds of early modern Europe. (The original Rosicrucians and similar crazes have been richly analyzed by Frances Yates.) Finally, the purveyors of this theory fail to ask what-aside from conspiring-Masons got from the Craft. Using actual lodge records, Margaret Jacob's Living the Enlightenment shows that the appeal lay in civic sociability outside the limits of class and station.

Contemporary historians trace Masonry to lodges of "operative" stonemasons in late 16th-century Scotland that were taken over by men interested in the symbolic possibilities of architecture. Such "speculative" masons active in England by the 1640s formed the Grand Lodge in London in 1717. The Craft reached Europe by 1721 and America by 1730 before attracting its first papal condemnation in 1738. Eight more denunciations would follow because of Masonry's anti-supernaturalism, indifference to religion, and objectionable oaths. Catholics are still forbidden to join, although canon law doesn't mention Freemasons by name.

In 1776, what Jacob calls "a radicalized mutation of the Masonic gene" brought forth the Illuminati, founded by canon law professor Adam Weishaupt. (Febrile minds imagine Jews having had a hand in the matter.) These mystic masterminds of Masonry were closed down by the Bavarian police in 1785 but are still imagined to lurk in the corridors of power.

Being generally liberal in politics, Masons often participated in revolutions.

The Masonic affiliations of Washington, Franklin, and other founding fathers mean that, for some traditionalist Catholics, the United States has no right to exist. Or so says The Remnant's top writer, Solange Hertz, author of The Star-Spangled Heresy: Americanism and an implacable foe of the Judeo-Masonic peril. (For good measure, Hertz has denounced Mother Teresa as a New Ager.)

Other critics, such as Ted Flynn in Hope of the Wicked, ferret out Masonic symbolism in our national emblems because Masons were involved in the designs. He reads the American Eagle as a Masonic phoenix and the Statue of Liberty as a Masonic goddess. Flynn's source, Ralph Epperson, tries to make former President Ronald Reagan's inauguration facing the Washington Monument into Masonic sun worship.

Because the Masons claim the number 13, it must be theirs-everywhere. But units of 13 in our Great Seal refer to nothing more ominous than the 13 original colonies, which existed for 44 years before the Revolution-rather a long wait to match a Masonic timetable. The alarming All-Seeing Eye also happens to be an old sign of the Holy Trinity, found in Baroque churches. (One breathlessly awaits revelations about the AOL logo.)

But it was the French, not the American, Revolution that stamped the Masons and their Illuminati masters as experts in rebellion, according to theories separately propounded by ex-Jesuit Augustin de Barruel (1741-1820) and Scotsman John Robison (1797-1798) and still popular in paranoid circles. Contemporary histories prefer to see people with radical sympathies becoming Masons rather than Masons becoming radicals.

Masons were, of course, active in the Latin-American revolts against Spain, the revolutions of 1848, and the reunification of Italy. They did immense harm to the Church in the Mexico Revolution and the Spanish Civil War. But to blame them for uniting the German Empire and for overthrowing the Manchus is just piling on.

Continental "Grand Orient" Masons were the instigators in these conflicts. Nearly all the world's Brethren, however, belonged to Anglo-Saxon lodges. They had no need to attack the Establishment because they were the Establishment, especially in Great Britain, where royals were their traditional protectors and the Craft was called "the Tory Party in aprons."

As for America, Behind the Lodge Door by Paul Fisher looks at the sorry record of American Masons in outbreaks of nativism, the Ku Klux Klan, and church-state relations. But Fisher, who does not link Masonry with the Jews, far exceeds his evidence to connect them with ancient cults, Illuminati plots, and the assassination of President Kennedy. William Wahlen's Christianity and American Freemasonry is a far more sensible Catholic book on the subject.

Anglo-Saxon Masonry is fading away, no longer attracting many men to its "Light," no longer conferring advantages in business or politics. Neither U.S. Supreme Court justices nor archbishops of Canterbury are Masons these days. Relations between Church and Craft are more polite than formerly. But some Grand Orient brethren still managed to do dramatic harm in 1981 by scamming the Vatican's bank out of millions and by conspiring against the Italian government in the P-2 Lodge scandal.

Although none of the thousand men enrolled in P-2 was a Catholic cleric, the notion that the Church, particularly the Italian Church, is packed with secret Masons lives on. Why, it was plotted out more than 150 years ago in The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita and similar documents outlining well-laid plans to pervert the Church and elect a Masonic pope. This fantasy was promoted by Malachi Martin (who claimed there were Satanists in on it, too) and preached by ex-Dominican John O'Connor (who thinks only one or two cardinals are really Catholic).

Ecclesiastical Masonry is a favorite radical traditionalist explanation for Vatican II and the changes it made. Paul VI's top officials were rumored to have been Masons, and a Mason is supposed to have mutilated the Mass. Their dastardly plan calls for the next pope to be the Antichrist or his servant.

And drawing on Revelations 13, locutionist Rev. Stefano Gobbi has recorded apocalyptic messages about "the black beast," Satan-worshipping lay Masonry, and "the beast like a lamb," traitorous ecclesiastical Masonry. These were to set up a false church and a false Christ by 1998. Apparently, the End Times have since been rescheduled.

Communist Financiers

But it wasn't enough for Jews to have one secret hand operating as Freemasonry; they needed a second hand operating publicly as Communism-or so the vigilants say. Because Karl Marx was a rabbi's son, Communism was a Jewish invention. No matter that Marx denounced all faiths including his own; race trumps religion for anti-Semites. They pore over long lists of early Bolshevik officials matched with putative Jewish birth names and tote up the ranks of Jewish-American financiers who are said to have bankrolled the Russian Revolution. Father Fahey found this so engrossing, he even devoted a book to it, The Rulers of Russia.

Such "facts," however, are unknown to historians who work from original sources. It was imperial German gold, not money from Jewish-American financiers, that bankrolled the Bolsheviks. Possibly originating as White Russian propaganda, these tales were picked up by Fascists.

Missing are discussions of why secular Jews might have hated the czars. The conspiracy theorists don't say much about the centuries of pogroms and cruel laws, the creation of the Protocols released locally in 1902, and Europe's last trial of a Jew for ritual murder in 1913. Neither do we hear of purges thinning the ranks of Communist Jews or strident Soviet anti-Zionism between the World Wars or repressions that led a million Jews to emigrate to Israel in the 1980s.

But where the Soviet Union is concerned, the past is never forgotten; it's not even past. Radical traditionalists are convinced that recent changes are all illusions, that the old USSR is just as Red as ever. The Fatima Crusader claims that Russia would convert to Catholicism in a day if only the pope would wave his magic crosier and consecrate it-accept no substitutes-to the Immaculate Heart.

Such views are fed by Alexander Golitsyn's New Lies for Old, a small-fry KGB defector's decipherment of the Soviets' 50-year-old master plan for conquest. Golitsyn's failure to foresee the fall of the Iron Curtain hasn't shaken his supporters' confidence. The revision of his 1984 text is read as eagerly as the original.

Further evidence of faith in Communist trickiness is the persistent popularity of Anti-Apostle 1025 by Marie Carre, originally published in France in 1972. This purports to be a memoir by the 1025th Red to penetrate Catholic seminaries, but it is manifestly a feeble example of radical traditionalist propaganda that even fails to factor in the Russian purges.

The main character is a Polish orphan-the careful reader will note he's a Jew-recruited by a Soviet spymaster between the World Wars to penetrate and subvert the Catholic Church. This is supposed to explain post-Vatican II changes, although Communist control never altered dogma or worship behind the Iron Curtain.

The fable may have been inspired by a remark attributed to a Catholic convert from Communism, Bella Dodd, in the 1950s. Dodd implausibly claimed to have sent a thousand young men into American seminaries, but she also insisted that the Communist Party of the U.S.A. secretly took its orders from American capitalists.

Other conspiratorial threads come together in the writings of Josyp Terelya, a Ukrainian Catholic Gulag survivor and visionary. Although it's painful to criticize someone who's suffered so much for the Faith, his 1995 book, In the Kingdom of the Spirit, is filled with groundless claims.

Terelya sees Satanists and Masons everywhere: Marx and Engels were Masons who met at a black Mass; high-ranking Reds have always been Masons; a leading curia cardinal is a Mason; Lenin was both an anti-Christ and a hermaphrodite; Yeltsin is a demon. Five million Americans are virgin-raping Satanists, and Russian Communist armies are flooding across American states. The final Antichrist, whose name is Valentine Lavrova, is already on earth and will work through the United Nations, a Zionist creation. (Terelya is anti-Zionist, not anti-Semitic.) Meanwhile, Satan is coding us "through isotopes in the left hand" as Armageddon nears. Catholics who disagree with him are themselves secret Satanists.

Terelya represents an apparitionist strain now infecting alarmist Catholic literature. Protestant vigilants like Ralph Epperson, Gary Kah, and Dennis Cuddy make similar use of the Bible to back their speculations. Both approaches yield a turbulent mix of politics and eschatology.

Catholic conspiracy theorists ransack old prophecies and repackage old devotions to fit modern conditions. They have Our Lady of Good Success improbably denouncing Freemasons and the world republic-in 1610. It is safe to assume that earlier messages have been tampered with when they refer to the 20th century: No one counted by centuries before 1550.

Much attention is being given these days to the visionary Anne Katharine Emmerich (d. 1824), who foresaw a Masonic-led "false Church," and to the secrets of La Salette (1846) for predicting that "Rome will lose the faith and become the seat of Anti-Christ." American locutionist John Leary is currently getting politics-laden messages from Jesus warning against smart cards and "the chip in the hand."

These trends fuse in the career of Ted Flynn, founder of MaxKol Communications. His Thunder of Justice (1993, written with his wife, Maureen) is a melange of messages and prophecies that failed to materialize by the year 2000. His Hope of the Wicked (2000) attempts a unified field theory of conspiracies.

Hope of the Wicked's bibliography replaces Catholic classics of paranoia with newer Protestant and conservative works, mostly from Evangelical presses or self-published. (Among such recent sources are Ralph Epperson, Gary Kah, and Richard Wurmbrand.) Yet we see the same obsessive search for coherence, the same copious but largely worthless documentation, the same faulty logic as earlier materials.

Overt anti-Semitism drops out, although Flynn likes to spotlight Jewish villains and makes the Rothschilds the root of all evil-they even fomented the American Civil War for gain. (His favorite villain, former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, is a Catholic.) Flynn's new scenario runs from Illuminati to Masons to Yale's Order of Skull and Bones (why is it never the Harvard Fly Club?) to One-Worlders to an alphabet soup of enemies far and near (the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the National Security Agency) supported by New Agers who also derive from Masonry through Theosophy-the whole cross-linked by the mostly Jewish international bankers who secretly own our Federal Reserve System. Their goal is to transform the UN into a global New World Order prepped for Luciferic mischief.

Flynn's mad gallop from one menace to another is no more impressive in total than his section that blames the Rothschilds for the Civil War. But like other merchants of paranoia, he evokes the Hidden Enemy memorably sketched by historian Richard Hofstader, "a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman: sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, and luxury-loving."

The Universal Foe is here, there, and everywhere. Or so the fear mongers say.

Sandra Miesel, a medievalist and Catholic journalist, writes from Indianapolis. (c) Crisis Magazine, Sandra Miesel, 2003. All Rights Reserved

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Response by Alice von Hildebrand

A Final Swing

Sandra Miesel does a fine job debunking the fantastic and often absurd conspiratorial inventions that have proliferated in some circles ("Swinging at Windmills: A Close Look at Catholic Conspiracy Theories," December 2002). Many of them have been refuted and proven to be totally baseless. But I have a quarrel with some of the arguments that she offered.

In a few paragraphs in her article, Miesel overshoots her mark and weakens her conclusions. She challenges the authenticity of a book published by a French woman, Marie Carre She was a nurse who received a call to take care of a man mortally wounded in a car accident. The dying man had no identification and no passport. All she found was a manuscript that she decided to publish in 1972 under the title AA-1025: The Memoirs of an Anti-Apostle. It relates the story of a young man who, upon discovering that his adoptive parents had "lied" to him, decided to escape to Russia. Animated by a deadly hatred of the Catholics who had raised him, he decided to dedicate his life to the victory of atheism. Trained by the Communists, he was ordered to go back to Poland and play the repentant sinner, enter a seminary as an anti-apostle, and then spend his life working toward the destruction of the Roman Catholic Church.

Miesel writes: "This is supposed to explain the post-Vatican II changes, although Communist control never altered dogma of worship beyond the Iron Curtain."

This is a non sequitur. AA-1025 was working in the West, not in Eastern Europe; moreover, the Communist regime did not need to change dogmas: Atheism was supreme. A careful reading of the book shows that AA-1025 was much too clever to launch a direct attack on dogmas. His plans were much more subtle, much more "professional," to spread doubt, to weaken faith, to undermine tradition, and to ridicule old-fashioned practices that alienate "modern man" for failing to address themselves to his needs.

The next paragraph is still more astonishing: Miesel refers to the book as "a fable." There I part ways with the author. As much as I agree with her that the validity of AA-1025 has not been proven, this fact does not disprove the book's truth. Miesel makes the mistake that hundreds of my students have made: If God's existence is not satisfactorily proven to their taste, they draw the conclusion that it has been disproved. Even if all proofs of His existence were weak and unconvincing, this fact would thereby in no way be disproved. I grant Miesel that one can raise many questions concerning the authenticity of this document. I have raised them myself. But once again, this does not prove without a shadow of a doubt that it is not valid.

AA-1025 may be a literary invention of Marie Carre, but one must admit that she hits the bull's eye from the first page to the last. Some people have extraordinary talents to foresee the future. Carre certainly had an extraordinary perception of how best to harm the Church. How surprising indeed that all her inventions have become reality in the post-conciliar Church.

More serious is the brief reference that Miesel makes to Bella Dodd. It is clear from the content of her article that Miesel never met Dodd personally. I knew her and can call her a friend. After dedicating 21 years of her life to the Enemy, she was so shattered when her eyes opened that she wanted to devote the years left to her to penance and to join the most severe penitential order. She turned for advice and help to Bishop Fulton Sheen. She opened her heart to him, went to confession, and put herself under his guidance. He became her spiritual director and gave her the order to remain in the world and open the eyes of Americans to the deadly poison of Communism, its atheism, its hatred of God and the Church. She lectured extensively. It was at one of her talks that my husband and I made her acquaintance. We immediately perceived that she was an exceptional person: her intelligence, her sincerity, her humility, and her desire to make good for the harm that she had done.

Dodd visited us in New Rochelle, New York. I recall that one day my husband-who had become increasingly worried about what was dubbed "the spirit of Vatican II"-said to her, "Bella, at times I wonder whether the Church has not been infiltrated." I can solemnly testify that she answered, "Dear professor, you fear it; I know it. When I was a fanatic Communist, I was in close contact with four cardinals in the Vatican working for us. They are still very active today." My husband jumped in his seat and said, "My nephew is German ambassador at the Holy See. Who are they?" Bella Dodd refused to answer: Bishop Sheen had not allowed her to reveal their names.

As long as Bella Dodd lived, she remained in close contact with Bishop Sheen. He knew what she was revealing in her numerous lectures and never tried to curb her or to challenge what she was saying, but he did not allow her to reveal names. The Roman Catholic Church rightly fears scandals.

In a talk that Dodd gave in Orange, California, she told a packed auditorium that in the 1920s Stalin ordered his subordinates to try to infilt­rate Catholic seminaries. Dodd was ap­pointed to faithfully follow this directive, and given her extraordinary charism to persuade people, she claimed publicly that she alone was responsible for the infiltration of hundreds of Judases in Catholic seminaries: "Young men who had neither faith nor morals" was the way she put it. It seems legitimate at this point to wonder whether some of the horrendous sexual scandals that have rocked the Church in the United States are not to be traced back to Bella Dodd's efficiency.

With a sleight of hand, Miesel dismisses the whole thing as being "implausible." End of discussion.

Having taught in a fortress of secularism for some 37 years and as a cradle Catholic, I have learned a few things along the way. It is a well-known fact that teachers learn much from their students, and mine have opened my mind to quite a few facts. One thing that they convinced me of is that most fundamental errors are highly plausible and that many a truth are implausible. All Catholic dogma shocks human reason, since original sin is always tempted by rationalism. Religious, metaphysical, and ethical truths can only be accepted when reason is on its knees in a position of humility.

I have heard Europeans accuse Americans of being "naive." Maybe several paragraphs of Miesel's article are a case in point. Many of my students have convinced me that atheism, materialism, evolutionism, relativism, subjectivism, and sexism are highly plausible. How can God exist, be all-powerful and all good, and yet permit the tortures of innocent children?

On the other hand, infiltration is highly plausible. One of the tasks of the KBG, the FBI, and the CIA is to recruit double agents. There is not a single organization that does not aim at in­filtration. If they don't, they will inevitably be defeated. Stalin (like every devil) was immensely clever. Being an ex-seminarian, he knew the power that faith exercises upon man's soul; he also knew best the means of weakening and destroying it. He would have been very stupid indeed had he not tried to infiltrate the Vatican.

This very thought, of course, is repugnant to Catholics. Many of them have no fear that an intimate of the Enemy might be within and would undermine the authority of Peter. Almost instinctively they will reject as "fable" and "inventions of scandal mongers" any claim that some cardinal, bishop, or priest might be working for the Enemy.

I am not a prophet. I am far from claiming that we are at the end of time. I do not know. But one thing is certain: Confusion reigns all over. Does it imply that the Holy Catholic Church is no longer without blemish? Far from it: The Holy Catholic Church is indeed holy, and will ever be, but God's greatness and power are best shown in the fact that, in spite of the treason of some of His children, He will conquer, because, as St. Augustine wrote, His power is best shown by the fact that evil can be used for the triumph of the good.

Alice von Hildebrand

New Rochelle, New York

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Sandra Miesel responds to AvH letter:

Dr. von Hildebrand raises three issues: Is AA-1025 the actual memoir of a Communist agent sent into the Catholic priesthood? Did such infiltration happen in America, as convert Bella Dodd claimed? Is infiltration responsible for the Church's disarray since Vatican II?

In 1994, I wrote an article denouncing AA-1025. Having just reread it to write this rebuttal, I again draw on my training in history and experience writing and editing fiction to brand the book a fabrication, a piece of propaganda. No one ever wrote a memoir the way this book is written. Important events could not have occurred as described. The protagonist couldn't have crossed the sealed Polish-Russian border in 1931. He couldn't have been reporting to the same intelligence handler throughout the Russian purges (which are never mentioned) and World War II (during the 1,000-day siege of Leningrad). His account of meeting the spy "chief" contains not a word of hard description, somehow failing to notice that the unnamed Yezhov was a dwarf. Moreover, the protagonist never uses a word of Marxist jargon.

It hardly took much prophetic skill to "predict" the vernacular Mass in 1972 when AA-1025 was written. As for "hitting the bull's eye from the first page to the last," do we have ordained fathers and mothers celebrating Mass on the family table before dinner every night? Are the naves of our churches filled with communion tables for groups of twelve? Have we abolished infant baptism, marriage ceremonies, private confession, vestments, altar cloths, candles, the Sign of the Cross, the Sunday Mass obligation, the term "Catholic"? Are believers in union with the pope ever likely to do so? As I said, AA-1025 is a fable seething with hatred of ecumenism. I don't understand why someone of Dr. von Hildebrand's sta­ture would give it a second glance.

As for Bella Dodd's story of sending more than a thousand men into American seminaries, that would have re­quired chatting up approximately one youth per week and corrupting them so permanently that they stuck with the Party after ordination. It's conve­­nient that she was forbidden to name names-not even private communications to Rome? Were those four cardinals collaborating in religion or politics? Clerics make useful idiots.

The Soviets (like the present Red Chinese) had no interest in altering Christian beliefs-theology was irrelevant. A compliant Church loyal to the regime and its "peace" initiatives was quite enough. AA-1025 notwithstanding, the Verona documents, intercepted Soviet intelligence, speak of military spying and influence on many sectors of American society but not the Catholic Church or any other religion.

I got my Catholic education before Vatican II and am bitter about what happened afterwards. Infiltrators- real or otherwise-are unnecessary to explain our problems of the past 40 years, much less the priest scandals. History is a messy record of myriad choices, not the plan of Secret Masters.

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Leo XIII warned the world of Marxism and Modernism during his pontificate at the end of the Nineteenth Century.

The St. Michael Center for the Blessed Virgin Mary writes:

"It is impossible to understand why the Leo's prayer to St. Michael came to be omitted after all Low Masses on Sunday, especially now when we need the protection of this angelic warrior more than at an other time in history. We wish the Church authorities would reinstate the great prayer to St. Michael, and perhaps that would happen if we respectfully petitioned of bishops. In the meantime, we can all say the prayer privately in our homes, chapels and churches. We need this prince of the heavenly host in the present struggle."

"Pope Leo XIII, realizing by Divine enlightenment the present and future struggles of the Church against the powers of hell, felt convinced that through the intervention of St. Michael, hell would be conquered, and the Church restored to peace and liberty. He therefore composed a prayer in honor of the warrior archangel, and ordered it to be recited daily after Los Mass in all the churches throughout the Christian world.:

"This is how this prayer came to be written: It is said that one day having celebrated the Holy Sacrifice, the aged Pontiff Leo XIII was in conference with the Cardinals. Suddenly he sank to the floor in a deep swoon. Physicians who hastened to his side feared that he had already expired, for they could find no trace of his pulse. However, after a short interval the Holy Father rallied, and opening his eyes exclaimed with great emotion: "Oh what a horrible picture I was permitted to see!" He had been shown in spirit the tremendous activities of the evil spirits and their ravings against the Church. But in the midst of this vision of horror he had also beheld consoling visions of the glorious Archangel Michael, who had appeared and cast Satan and his legions back into the abyss of hell. Soon afterward he composed the well-known prayer."

"We know that the gates of hell shall never prevail against the Church, for Our Lord has promised to be with her till the end of time, but we must do our part in defending her cause. God might cast the angels down to hell by a single act of His will, but He chose rather to send against them His armies of loyal spirits, under the leadership of the great St. Michael. So too, in the present critical times, He could confound the enemies of the Church by merely willing to do so. But He wills, rather, that we should cooperate in her defense, under the leadership of the great captain of the heavenly hosts."

Pope John Paul II said the following regarding Leo and the SM prayer St. Peter's Square, Sunday, April 24 1994. "May prayer strengthen us for the spiritual battle we are told about in the Letter to the Ephesians: "Draw strength from the Lord and from His mighty power" (Ephesians 6:10). The Book of Revelation refers to this same battle, recalling before our eyes the image of St. Michael the Archangel (Revelation 12:7). Pope Leo XIII certainly had a very vivid recollection of this scene when, at the end of the last century, he introduced a special prayer to St. Michael throughout the Church. Although this prayer is no longer recited at the end of Mass, I ask everyone not to forget it and to recite it to obtain help in the battle against forces of darkness and against the spirit of this world."

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The Oath Against Modernism written by Pius X but discontinued by Paul VI in 1962 during a time when Modernism was poised to take over the church. Why? Pope Saint Pius X issued this mandatory oath on September 1, 1910. It was mandated to be sworn to by all clergy, pastors, confessors, preachers, religious superiors, and professors in philosophical-theological seminaries.

OATH AGAINST MODERNISM

I firmly embrace and accept each and every definition that has been set forth and declared by the unerring teaching authority of the Church, especially those principal truths which are directly opposed to the errors of this day.

And first of all, I profess that God, the origin and end of all things, can be known with certainty by the natural light of reason from the created world (see Rom. 1:90), that is, from the visible works of creation, as a cause from its effects, and that, therefore, his existence can also be demonstrated:

Secondly, I accept and acknowledge the external proofs of revelation, that is, divine acts and especially miracles and prophecies as the surest signs of the divine origin of the Christian religion and I hold that these same proofs are well adapted to the understanding of all eras and all men, even of this time.

Thirdly, I believe with equally firm faith that the Church, the guardian and teacher of the revealed word, was personally instituted by the real and historical Christ when he lived among us, and that the Church was built upon Peter, the prince of the apostolic hierarchy, and his successors for the duration of time.

Fourthly, I sincerely hold that the doctrine of faith was handed down to us from the apostles through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and always in the same purport. Therefore, I entirely reject the heretical misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously. I also condemn every error according to which, in place of the divine deposit which has been given to the spouse of Christ to be carefully guarded by her, there is put a philosophical figment or product of a human conscience that has gradually been developed by human effort and will continue to develop indefinitely.

Fifthly, I hold with certainty and sincerely confess that faith is not a blind sentiment of religion welling up from the depths of the subconscious under the impulse of the heart and the motion of a will trained to morality; but faith is a genuine assent of the intellect to truth received by hearing from an external source. By this assent, because of the authority of the supremely truthful God, we believe to be true that which has been revealed and attested to by a personal God, our Creator and Lord.

Furthermore, with due reverence, I submit and adhere with my whole heart to the condemnations, declarations, and all the prescripts contained in the encyclical Pascendi and in the decree Lamentabili, especially those concerning what is known as the history of dogmas. I also reject the error of those who say that the faith held by the Church can contradict history, and that Catholic dogmas, in the sense in which they are now understood, are irreconcilable with a more realistic view of the origins of the Christian religion. I also condemn and reject the opinion of those who say that a well-educated Christian assumes a dual personality-that of a believer and at the same time of a historian, as if it were permissible for a historian to hold things that contradict the faith of the believer, or to establish premises which, provided there be no direct denial of dogmas, would lead to the conclusion that dogmas are either false or doubtful. Likewise, I reject that method of judging and interpreting Sacred Scripture which, departing from the tradition of the Church, the analogy of faith, and the norms of the Apostolic See, embraces the misrepresentations of the rationalists and with no prudence or restraint adopts textual criticism as the one and supreme norm.

Furthermore, I reject the opinion of those who hold that a professor lecturing or writing on a historico-theological subject should first put aside any preconceived opinion about the supernatural origin of Catholic tradition or about the divine promise of help to preserve all revealed truth forever; and that they should then interpret the writings of each of the Fathers solely by scientific principles, excluding all sacred authority, and with the same liberty of judgment that is common in the investigation of all ordinary historical documents.

Finally, I declare that I am completely opposed to the error of the modernists who hold that there is nothing divine in sacred tradition; or what is far worse, say that there is, but in a pantheistic sense, with the result that there would remain nothing but this plain simple fact-one to be put on a par with the ordinary facts of history-the fact, namely, that a group of men by their own labor, skill, and talent have continued through subsequent ages a school begun by Christ and his apostles. I firmly hold, then, and shall hold to my dying breath the belief of the Fathers in the charism of truth, which certainly is, was, and always will be in the succession of the episcopacy from the apostles. The purpose of this is, then, not that dogma may be tailored according to what seems better and more suited to the culture of each age; rather, that the absolute and immutable truth preached by the apostles from the beginning may never be believed to be different, may never be understood in any other way.

I promise that I shall keep all these articles faithfully, entirely, and sincerely, and guard them inviolate, in no way deviating from them in teaching or in any way in word or in writing. Thus I promise, this I swear, so help me God.

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