October, 1957
When Francois Marie Arouet, writing in the mid-1700s, called for the establishment of a social order based on Universal Brotherhood, he was less concerned with building a new thing than destroying an old one. For Francois Marie Arouet — called by the pen-name, Voltaire — was possessed by a consuming hatred. “Écrasons l’infâme!” — “Let us crush the infamous thing!” — was the motto blazoned on all his writings. And the “infamous thing” that Voltaire meant to crush was the Catholic Church.
It is only in the light of this ruling passion that Voltaire’s espousing of “Brotherhood” becomes clear. It was not his intention merely to affirm the uncontested natural truth that all men, being descendants of Adam, belong to one human family. He was determined to transform this matter-of-fact assertion into a supernatural principle, to make it the cornerstone of a new and Godless religion. Thus, he hurled his dogma as a challenge against the Church, opposing it to the central Catholic teaching that there is a vital, transcendent brotherhood of all the faithful through the Mystical Body of Christ.
Yet, Voltaire and his fellow-Freemasons, though evangelists of the Brotherhood cult, were not to be its chief apostles. That role would be taken by a people to appear unleashed upon the Christian scene as one dread consequence of the Mason-mastered French Revolution of 1789. Within 150 years from the time they were set free of the Church’s restrictions, this people — the Jews — were to become the virtual lords of all avenues of public communication. Through these routes, they would spread the gospel of Brotherhood to every creature, and bring Masonic aspirations to a most abundant fulfillment.
So nearly have the Jews established Brotherhood as the State Religion of the U. S., that it is almost unheard of that a public ceremony should be held without some recognition being paid to it. This custom is the more readily complied with since no intellectual burden whatsoever is put upon the speaker. Belief in Brotherhood can be easily and best expressed by means of pre-fabricated phrases (“our common beliefs,” “working together,” “regardless of race, color, or creed,” etc.) which may be attached to any part of any speech with uniformly pleasing effect.
The Brotherhood cult’s lack of defined theology must not, however, be taken for a weakness. In affairs of destruction, it is not the means employed, but the final result, that counts; and so far, the results produced by these seemingly inane cliches are exactly what the Masons and Jews have hoped to achieve. The Catholic Church in the U. S. is being turned into a subsidiary of the super-religion, Brotherhood. The public utterances of Catholics are becoming indistinguishable from those of non-Catholic Americans; instead of the dogmas of their Faith, they proclaim the platitudes of the Judaeo-Masonic cult. They are becoming mortally infected with the heresy of Indifferentism: the belief that one religion is as good as another; that it doesn’t matter what doctrines you hold so long as you lead a “good life.” This heresy has been warned against by Pope after Pope, beginning with the much-persecuted Pius VII (1800-1823), who, as the first to come after the French Revolution, was the first to see fully what Voltaire and his colleagues had wrought. “By the fact that freedom of all forms of worship is proclaimed,” Pius VII wrote, “truth is confused with error, and the Holy and Immaculate Spouse of Christ, outside of which there is no salvation, is placed on the same level as heretical sects and even as Jewish perfidy.”
It was precisely on the charge of fostering Indifferentism that the Vatican, in 1955, ordered all English Catholics to get out of the Council of Christians and Jews, headquarters of the Brotherhood movement in England. The organization, said the Holy See, was “preaching a doctrine unacceptable to Catholics: that all religions are equal.”
Since then, the English Council’s American cousin, the National Conference of Christians and Jews, has been talking fast in an effort to save its own skin. It has not, however, been able to explain away the simple, stark coincidence that whenever Brotherhood is accepted, Indifferentism grows. Nor can any amount of pointing the other way distract the Church from noticing the statements the National Conference makes when it is not trying to placate her. Despite its protestations, for example, that Brotherhood is not a religion, the Conference By-laws call for “the establishment of a social order in which the religious ideals of brotherhood ... shall become the standards of human relationships.” And in its national bill-board advertising, the Conference offers as the slogan of its “non-religious” program: “Brotherhood — Believe it! Live it! Support it!” As for assurances that the movement does not intend “modifying the distinctive beliefs of any of its members” — in 1949 there was held, in Switzerland, a World Brotherhood congress, sponsored by the International Conference of Christians and Jews (which includes the American group). The American Jewish Yearbook (Vol. 50) reports the outcome as follows: “The conference unanimously agreed on the necessity for a permanent organization and on a proposal to revise Christian religious teaching, particularly the story of the Crucifixion, in such a manner as to reduce the danger of implanting anti-semitism in the minds of the young.”
It was in consciousness of such revelations of Brotherhood’s real intent that the late Father Edward Brophy, of Long Island City, N. Y., published his booklet, “The Brotherhood Religion.” Wrote Father Brophy, “As conceived by its authors and applied by its leaders, Brotherhood is condemned by Catholic Theology, by Canon Law and by Popes Pius VII, Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius XI, and Pius XII ... Hence, none but ignorant and disloyal Catholics yield to the proposals of Brotherhood, notwithstanding the seductive forms in which they may be presented. Catholics are bound in conscience to abstain from Brotherhood activities. They are not permitted to remain silent. They are obliged to protest against Brotherhood’s vain pretensions to brush aside Christianism. They are required to oppose its harmful incursions upon Christianity and Christian civilization. They must repress its blasphemies against Christ and His Religion.”
Paradoxically, while the official Church stands in battle against the Brotherhood of Judaeo-Masonry, brotherhood, of quite another sort, remains a central Christian value.
The brotherhood of the Catholic Church is a well-defined family arrangement. And it gains its new members by the usual family route: they are born into it — through the regenerative power of Baptism. Once baptized, they become, as the Baltimore Catechism puts it, sons of God and heirs to the kingdom of Heaven. And the intensity of this common sonship rises to fulfillment when Baptism is followed by the Divine incorporation of the Eucharist. It is then that Catholics, in addition to being sons of God the Father, become children of Mary — joined in Holy Communion to the Flesh and Blood of Jesus, the fruit of Mary’s womb.
This is the source and sustenance of the supernatural brotherhood which for nineteen hundred years has faced the enmity of the Jews. For Catholic brotherhood presupposes that truth which the great Martyr-Bishop of Carthage, Saint Cyprian, set forth in his treatise on the Our Father: “We who are Christians say, ‘Our Father,’ in reproach of the Jews because He is no longer their Father — since they have abandoned Him — and has become ours. A sinful people cannot enjoy sonship. Only those who have received remission of sins are given the name of son and promised eternity by the Lord.”
And this divinely established relationship is the same brotherhood which Saint Cyprian, and hosts of others after him, referred to with such astringency when they said: “He cannot have God for his Father who has not the Church for his Mother.”
Armies of Catholic apostles have spread this message to every race and region. They have left us Catholic brothers among the Eskimos of Alaska, the tribesmen of Australia, the Indians of Central America. They have left us, in a far richer legacy than our own country has yet given, twenty-six canonized saints from the islands of Japan.
One of the most celebrated of our Catholic apostles was that tireless priest from Catalonia, Father Peter Claver, S. J. For his work among the Negro slaves, the Church granted him the title of Saint, and keeps his memory alive with an annual feast-day commemoration on the ninth of September. It was Saint Peter Claver’s contention that the basic “problem” with the colored races is the same as the problem with other peoples. Born in original sin, they are headed for an assured Hell, unless someone reaches them with the salutary news of Our Lord and His Church.
That Saint Peter Claver’s spiritual successors, the Catholic leaders of America’s South, have long since fallen from his ideal of true brotherhood for the Negroes stands out more clearly this fall than ever. With headlong zeal, spokesmen for the Catholic South have endorsed the meddling integration program of the Brotherhood-Week Jews. They have left the clear impression that the Negro’s deficiency is not that he is deprived of the Faith and the sacraments, but that he has no non-Negro sitting beside him when he goes to a Godless public school.
In retrospect, the number of Jews who have availed themselves of this generosity of the Church has been small, indeed. And of this small number, the unashamed majority have been converts seeking some personal advantage; or worse, seeking the positive disadvantage and ultimate destruction of the Church. It was such wholesale perfidy of Jewish Catholics that introduced into the familiar reference of Christian nations the saying, “Blood is thicker than water” — which originally meant, “Jewish blood is much stronger in a Jew than the waters of Baptism.” This saying has countless historical applications. Perhaps the most significant is the one which we touched on a few issues ago, when we spoke about the plague of Marrano (secret-Jew) Catholics in Spain, and the extreme means (the Inquisition) which was necessary to keep their influence from spreading. Encouragingly, the very brotherhood — Christian brotherhood — which the Spanish Jews sought to corrupt provided the strong and unified action which, in 1492, expelled them from the country.
This same Spanish integrity of Faith explains the single European victory over Communism which Spain won in the 1930s. And this Spanish devotion to the true Catholic brotherhood accounts for the nobility of that profession of Faith made by the head of Spain’s government before the Eucharistic Congress at Barcelona in 1952. General Franco’s address to the assembled clergy and faithful belongs to that tradition of brotherhood which once won Europe from the barbarians, won the Holy Land from the infidels, and has kept the Faith alive down to our own beleaguered time.
He said: “With the humility fitting in a good Christian, I proclaim the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Faith of the Spanish nation and its love for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and for Pope Pius XII. By loving God, Spaniards love peace, and they unite their prayers for peace to those of the Holy Father and of Catholics everywhere at this time. The history of our nation is inseparably linked with the history of the Catholic Church. Its glories are our glories; its enemies are our enemies.”
The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, high above the Mediterranean in northern Palestine, is the spiritual home and principal shrine of the Carmelite Order. One night, in the midsummer of this year, bands of Jewish soldiers broke into the Sanctuary grounds, hacked their way through the gardens and vineyards, then dashed merrily off again. When the Carmelite Fathers protested this latest Jewish destruction of Catholic property, they were assured by Jerusalem officials that the incident was an oversight and would not be repeated. A few nights later, Jewish units again invaded and further damaged the shrine. Concluding that “a lack of respect bordering on contempt” was motivating the Jews, the Carmelites posted a conspicuous notice at the entrance to the shrine, informing the faithful of what had happened, and announcing that, for fear of further Jewish outrages, the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Mount Carmel would be temporarily closed.