THE Church Gazette is the organ of the National Church League. In its issue for March-April (1942) an important and informative article appears, entitled “Are We Blind?” It begins by telling that Mr. W. F. Ogilvie, Director of the B.B.C. (a Presbyterian from Northern Ireland) had ceased to occupy that post, and that Sir Cecil Graves had been appointed along with Mr. Foote as joint-directors of the B.B.C. “It was stated,” the article says, “that Sir Cecil Graves would be responsible for directing the policy of the B.B.C. in future.” “Sir Cecil Graves is now a Roman Catholic although he has not always been one.” “We understand,” says the article, “that Mr. Brendan Bracken, the Minister of Information, is a Roman Catholic.” We reprint the latter part of this article so that our readers may see for themselves what remarkable power and influence Romanists are exercising in our professedly Protestant Empire, as well as in other parts of the world. The latter portion of the article is as follows:—”The Roman Catholic position is very simple and has been emphasised by Romanists time and again, and is contained for us in The Papal Encyclical of June, 11th, 1905, which demands ‘the public recognition of the authority of the (Roman) Church in all matters relating in any way to conscience, the subordination of all State laws to the divine law of the gospel, and the harmony of the two powers, civil and ecclesiastical.’ If this means anything, it means that Sir Cecil Graves’ first loyalty as a Roman Catholic is to the Pope and not to the King. Pope Gregory XVI. said on August 15th., 1832:—’If the Holy Church so requires, let us sacrifice our own opinions, our knowledge, our intelligence, the splendid dreams of our imagination, and the most sublime attainments of the human understanding.’ That being so, a Roman Catholic in public life may be merely the mouthpiece of his church. For years, when Roman Catholicism has been criticised our easy-going appeasers in England have ridiculed the idea of the Roman Church being in any way antagonistic to the Empire. Surely this War must have opened their eyes to the danger if they are not blind, just as Japan’s attack on America opened the eyes of the Isolationists there. For what are the facts? Many could be given, but space prevents more than a few. Southern Ireland is predominantly Roman Catholic and is the only part of the British Empire which did not respond when the Mother Country was assailed. Northern Ireland was keen to have conscription, but the opposition from the Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland prevented this being done. In Canada, it is
notorious that it is Roman Catholic Quebec which has been, and is, fighting and opposing conscription in that country (see The Times’ leading article, 2nd February, 1942), while in 1939, Ontario voted 78-0 in favour of support to Britain if the crisis led to war, nine French Roman Catholic Societies of Quebec sent a joint telegram to Premier King saying:— ‘The entire population of Quebec (i.e., the French R.C. population) absolutely opposed to Canada’s participation in foreign War.’ In the Ontario legislature a French Roman Catholic demanded that editors of publications criticising the Roman Catholic Church and the Pope should be interned for their efforts to upset Canadian unity. An R.C. Member of Parliament in the Canadian House of Commons demanded that Dr. Shields, a Baptist minister of Toronto, should be silenced officially for exposing the baneful influence of the Quebec Hierarchy. Houde, Mayor of Montreal, urged non-registration of Quebec citizens and was interned.
The Roman Catholics in Australia united to prevent conscription for overseas forces, and are now crying out that England has not defended them better. Vichy France, Roman Catholic to a man, has been treacherous in her dealings with England. The critical position in which we find ourselves to-day in the East is due largely to the Vichy Roman Catholic Government. Let us remember that the Vichy regime has the Papal blessing. In the U.S.A. the leaders of Isolationism and fermentors of strife and strikes in order to hamper American efforts to help England, were frankly Roman Catholic. The trade unionists in Australia realized this, as a statement in The Australian Church Record of October last quotes a statement by a trade unionist that ‘We fight not only Capitalism but the Roman Catholic Actionists in the Trade Union Movement. . . the unionists are beginning to wake up to the very unfair ‘squeezing-out’ methods of the Roman Church. . . For long she has tried to win her way by ‘perversion’—but her numbers do not increase; now she has definitely determined to win through by working her way through her lay people into strategic positions, and gradually ousting non-Romans. More and more our Public Services, including our railway departments, are being brought under Roman control. . . in our public schools, designated “God-less” by the priests of the Roman persuasion, the percentage of Roman teachers is said to be growing out of all proportion to the number of Roman children taught in Government schools’.
It is amazing how Roman Catholics ‘accidentally’ find themselves in positions of trust and secrecy. The Editor of The Radio Times a few years ago was a Roman Catholic, and we have heard of no change being made. It is common knowledge that R.C.’s largely dominate the Foreign Office. It is rumoured that the Prime Minister’s Private Secretary, and certainly Mr. Roosevelt’s Private Secretary, are both Roman Catholic. Strange coincidences, which probably only Rome can explain. Our tolerant English people are no doubt saying, ‘But what matter if this is so, we are fighting for liberty and freedom and the principles of righteousness.’ The answer is simple, ‘In Abyssinia as soon as the Romanist Italian forces got control, every Protestant missionary was driven out and not allowed to re-enter that land. Freedom thus being destroyed.’ Roman Catholic General Franco with the aid of the Italian and German Legionaries won the Spanish Civil War, and as a result 300 Protestant places of worship
in Spain are now reduced to ten. Nearly all Protestant “Sunday” schools are closed, and the Ministry of Education writes.—’We must be absolutely intolerant to ideas and views that are contrary to the Roman Catholic Church.’ Freedom indeed! Bibles of the Bible Society have been confiscated. The President of the Madrid Y.M.C.A. was sentenced to thirty years imprisonment for his religious convictions. A shipment of 110,000 Bibles and Gospels sent by the British and Foreign Bible Society to Spain were confiscated and converted into cellulose. In Canada, in the Province of Quebec, Bibles and Religious Tracts may not be distributed.
It may not be generally known that the Roman Church even to-day is very sympathetic to Japan. As late as April, 1941, after all the Japanese atrocities in China the Pope was able to say to the Japanese Foreign Minister:—’I have sent my Apostolic Blessing to your dear, far off country.’ The Pope “blessed” Matsuoka, said he was a great statesman and pinned a medal on him. We could write much more. Hitler himself, originator of all present-day troubles is a baptised Romanist, so is Goebbels, so is Goering, so is Mussolini, so is Petain, so is Von Papen, so is Darlan, so is Laval, so is General Weygand. Last, but not least, so is the notorious Haw Haw, the renegade Englishman educated by the Jesuits in the Jesuit College, Dublin. Remarkable coincidences! In the light of the above, are we unreasonable in demanding that Sir Cecil Graves and all other Roman Catholics in positions of authority in the B.B.C. shall go, failing which Englishmen will refuse to pay another single licence towards the work of that mighty organisation. When we realize that our brothers and sons and husbands and fathers have lost their lives and are hazarding their lives needlessly, because of Roman Catholic refusal to grant us the use of the Irish ports, because of Roman Catholic betrayal of Indo-China, and because of the obvious connivance of official Romanism with all the horrors of to-day, we may well ask, ‘Are we blind or just mad?'”—Gospel Magazine (May-June, 1942).