By the Rev. T. CHRISTIE INNES, New York.
FROM the United States I bring this message from Dr. Lehmann: “Please convey to the Annual Meeting of the Protestant Truth Society of England, the sincere good wishes of the Board of Trustees of Christ’s Mission and the staff of “The Converted Catholic Magazine.” We are fully aware that the centre of gravity of Roman Catholic activities is now shifting to our western hemisphere. I am happy to say that we at Christ’s Mission are preparing to meet this new development and are already fairly well equipped to meet it. I am also happy to report a growing awareness on the part of the ministers of all Protestant denominations of the seriousness of the problem facing us. All here join me in earnest prayers to the Lord for the success of your deliberations, and His help in all our needs.”
*An address by the Rev. T. Christie Innes at the May Meeting of the Protestant Truth Society on May 14th, 1946. Permission has been granted from the Churchman’s Magazine to reprint this article which is now printed as a booklet by the Protestant Truth Society, 184 Fleet Street, London, E.C.4; price 4d.
I am glad to hear that message from this important organisation on whose board I serve in New York City. I would like to read one little note from a pamphlet that Dr. Lehmann issues. Incidentally he is a Doctor of Divinity of Rome, as is Dr. J. J. Murphy, his great colleague, now both strong Protestants.
“During the last five years Dr. Lehmann has contacted more than one hundred priests who have left the Roman Church. Since the vast majority of those who do resign prefer to forget their disillusionment by losing themselves in the workaday crowds, the exact number who leave the priesthood cannot be definitely determined. However, from all the facts at hand the mission estimates conservatively that at least 75 quit annually in the United States.”—Converting Catholics, by Leslie Flynn, p. 4.
I think that it is a matter of great importance that most of those in this Mission are actually converted Roman Catholic priests.
Let me tell you a story from Germany first. Great publishers of Berlin were the Ullstein Bros. Herr Ullstein tells us this story himself in his own words: he said that during the period Hitler was beginning his speeches—those of you who have read Mein Kampf will know that during the early years of Hitler’s campaigning the Press was taking no notice—Hitler was driving his roots down in to the soil of German life, and amongst those who took no notice was Herr Ullstein, the Senior Director of the House in Berlin who published two million books on an average every year. And they thought there was no trouble in Hitler, that he was just a charlatan and that he would soon pass. One day, however, a trooper came into Herr Ullstein’s office, and when he was about to say, “Take a seat, Sir,” this man from Hitler’s bodyguard spoke first and said, “Get up!” He had never been ordered in this way before and half unconsciously rose to his feet, and then when he was trying to ask him what this was about, the Nazi said, “This way,” and presently, as in a flash, Ullstein discovered he was under arrest. His great publishing house was taken over by Hitler; his fortune was confiscated, but he was allowed 3,000 Marks, a sum that was really insignificant for a man who had been very wealthy. He found out presently that the only thing open to him really was to make for the frontier. He was told if he would go to a certain place he would get his papers. The clerk, just as if it were nothing at all, said, “There is a small sum to pay,” and when asked what the amount was, he was told, “Just 3,000 Marks”—exactly the amount of his fortune! So he paid it and left Germany, and this is what he said, “How foolish we were! We could have stopped this dirty business; we could have entered into the fight on the very forefront, but we did nothing; now it is too late, the enemy has taken over.”
I tell you I think that it is very possible that for the future of our beloved country and national life of the world, perhaps Protestant indifference may, in the long run, be a worse enemy even than Roman Catholic aggression. And, of course, the most obvious reason is that, if we were a living, spiritual Church, if we were praying, believing Christians, Rome would have no chance.
I do not think I need say more at the moment about our Protestant indifference. I am afraid we are all very much aware of it; let us pray much and work much that Protestants may be awakened before the opportunity has finally gone to retrieve the situation. Revival will never come to this country until England is a net of Prayer Meetings. You and I cannot save England; this Society cannot—it may be a great instrument in God’s hands, I believe it is, but God alone can intervene effectively. I almost thought of reminding you that the only lesson we get from history is that we learn nothing from history! Really, all the lessons we need are before us written in blood, and look how much we forget! “We know but we forget so rapidly,” and not until the fires are lit, not until blood is spilt again do we waken up and then say, like Ullstein, “How foolish we were! We let this thing develop, and now it is too late.”
One day, Thomas Carlyle was in London in a gathering of intellectuals, and they were all saying that “mere theories do not count!” Carlyle had something rugged about him, and after a while he could stand it no longer and he rose and said: “There was a man in France, called Rousseau; he wrote a book called The Social Contract, and it was pure theory. Gentlemen, the nobles of France thought that being mere theory it did not matter, but their skins went to bind the second edition!” Pure theory. I tell you it matters a great deal what theory you believe about God.
I take you back to the 16th century for a moment. Let me remind you that “we live to-day in the shadow of a Florentine, the man who above all others taught the world to think in terms of cold political power. . . . Since his death his book has been one of the half dozen books that have done most to shape Western thought. Machiavelli wrote a grammar of power, not only for the 16th century, but for the ages that have followed.” Remember that, please, when talking about The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli, which was published in 1513. Professor Fichte, of Berlin, translated it into German. He analysed Machiavelli in his Address to the German People, and Fichte became “the first of the goose-stepping intellectuals!” He was followed in the Chair of Philosophy—this business of theories which did not count—by Hegel, and Hegel followed Machiavelli in the cult of the State. The Prussian State was to him the highest achievement of man, and thus the two most important and influential writers on politics in the early 19th century Germany were inspired by Machiavelli to support the idea of the Absolute State. Next came Treitschke—he was called the “political Jesuit,” who was followed by Nietzsche, the most extreme of state idolaters. Presently we find this strange little demonic person—Adolf Hitler—drinking it all in, the man doomed to devastate the world. It was a long development that affected Germany; brought Germany to ruin, but it brought more than Germany to ruin—it nearly ruined us entirely. It will be a long time before we recover, and you and I cannot go on thinking ideas, and dogmas do not matter. Machiavelli’s Prince was the handbook that shaped Hitler, that brought on this war. Lord Acton, himself a Roman Catholic and a Professor, says “the authentic interpreter of Machiavelli is the whole of later history,” and the Encyclopædia Britannica says, “Machiavelli founded the science of politics for the modern world.”
Marshal Adams says it is a system of Statecraft, to which all considerations of right and wrong are irrelevant. It is the complete textbook for tyrants—one man rule with the lid off. Machiavelli was the forerunner of Fascism. Mussolini has acknowledged his debt to The Prince—the teaching of Machiavelli has become part of the very fibre of his mind. “The State is God, and Machiavelli His Prophet.” And moreover, Max Lerner says that Machiavelli “came into his own in the 18th Century.” Herr Rauschning says, “Hitler ranked Machiavelli with Wagner as an influence shaping his thoughts. Hitler kept a copy of The Prince by his bedside.”
The Cambridge Modern History says, “For Machiavelli. Expediency should be the only motive, and force the sole method.” That is what Machiavelli and The Prince stand for.
And then finally this: (this is the Cambridge Modern History, vol. iii., page 767), “Except the Church, of which it is a part, there is no political institution which so well repays consideration by the historical student as the Society of Jesus . . . It enshrined the principle of Machiavelli.” And Hitler says specifically both in Mein Kampf and My New Order, that he learned many of the things that he practised from the Jesuits.
Who was this Machiavelli? Well, he was an Italian, and a Roman Catholic. Where did he get the idea of The Prince? Here it is. (I quote from Ency. Brit. again, 11th ed., vol. 17, p. 234.) Machiavelli conceived the strongest admiration for Cesare Borgia’s combination of audacity with diplomatic prudence, for his adroit use of cruelty and fraud, and for his self-reliance, avoidance of half-measures, etc. In his letters and in The Prince, Machiavelli thought Borgia ‘worthy of all commendation and of scrupulous imitation.’ In other words, Machiavelli conceived this idea of the Prince using power without ethics—this thing that developed to the terrible, crushing catastrophe of the second World War, ultimately from a Roman Catholic Prince, Cesare Borgia (1476-1507), who was the illegitimate son of Pope Alexander V. This man was a Cardinal of Valencia; he led a profligate life at the Vatican, notorious for his violence, his ferocity and treachery. He was made Duke of Romagna by the Pope. Again I am quoting the Encyclopædia Britannica and the Cambridge Modern History, “His cruelty, his utter want of scruple, made him a terror to Italy.” And this man, beginning by his illegitimacy, and going on through these desperate depths of thought and action, this man became the model of the ruler who rules by power without ethics, and gave Hitler his idea!
Some talk about all these troubles springing from the Reformation, but The Prince was written in 1513, years before Luther’s challenge to the Papacy!
Once, when I spoke in Canada during the war, I said: “Canada is being menaced by political totalitarianism from without, directed from Berlin. We are so conscious of that, so afraid of it, we realise that if this totalitarianism wins our freedom goes, that we have mobilised from coast to coast.”
“Canada is equally menaced, however, perhaps more menaced in the long run, by an ecclesiastical totalitarianism from within—directed from Rome! If either form of totalitarianism wins, freedom will perish.” This straightforward, solemn statement of undeniable fact was met with immediate wholesale Roman Catholic abuse. And this abuse was expressed on my telephone by anonymous insulting calls, and in the Catholic press. Is abuse ever an answer? Does denial alter facts? Rome throughout her terrible history—without change—has been “authoritarian.” I ask you, if Rome does not stand for ecclesiastical and political totalitarianism? What about Cardinal Pacelli, now the Pope, who was in Berlin at the time the Vatican Pact was being made with Hitler? What about the Lateran Treaty, which had already been made with Mussolini? They were both totalitarian politicians. In their book, What to do with Italy, Profs. Salvemini and Paviana, of Harvard University, trace, with all documents, the process by which the Vatican rescued the Fascist regime from financial bankruptcy. When Fascism would have died a natural death, the Pope deliberately saved it.
The Pope is more responsible for totalitarianism’s ravages than any other living soul. But you know the facts. Mussolini, first of the modern great totalitarian leaders, was a Roman Catholic, and was to the end, and has never been excommunicated. And, when Pope Pius XI. was asked why it was he made a pact with Mussolini who was so outrageous from the beginning to the end, who was a terror, who was a veritable modern Cesare Borgia—that ecclesiastical politician actually said: “to save souls I would even make a pact with the devil” and that “Mussolini was a man sent to us by Providence.”
I do not think you and I realise the implications of these things. Imagine, if the Pope says Mussolini was a man sent by Providence, what a position the Vatican is in when Mussolini is hanged by his heels and shot several times over by women who lost several sons, and spat upon and thrown out in the most ignominious fashion.
These are dreadful things to talk about, but and I live in a dreadful world. Not only was Mussolini a Roman Catholic by profession and never thrown out of the Roman Catholic Church, but so was Hitler, and Hitler was never excommunicated. When was he excommunicated? He was never denounced by the Vatican until after he was dead! Oh! If you want to make a list of Catholics who led totalitarianism almost everybody here could name someone, but among the really “big shots”—Mussolini, Hitler, Petain, Franco! Imagine; I do not understand, honestly, how the Pope has the audacity to face the modern world and still claim to be the Vicar of Jesus Christ! We know it is a record of history that he blessed the rape of Ethiopia, and that Mussolini’s own son talked about the beautiful way in which, when a bomb was dropped by Pope-blessed planes on defenceless tribesmen, “it looked like a beautiful tulip opening up”! So it was with the armies of Japan. The Pope specifically blessed the armies of Japan. The Pope has, in every instance, come down during the war, on the side of totalitarianism, and if totalitarianism had won, then the Pope would have been the great world leader. Because totalitarianism did not win, you know what happened. As usual, the Vatican—which always lays some eggs in two baskets—slid over to democracy in word, and the Pope has the colossal duplicity to claim, the other week in a world broadcast, that the Roman Catholic Church is not authoritarian at all. So all Allied leaders are gulled, and in a pathetic procession call on the Pope in turn.
We know very well in Canada, Latin America, Spain, and Italy and Southern Ireland, we know what the Pope and the Vatican are, and we know that when ecclesiastical totalitarianism is allowed sway, human freedom is gone. I could go into great detail, except for the fact the time has gone, about the manner in which the Roman Church has gained ascendancy with the present U.S. Administration. Let me give you one illustration of this totalitarianism, this utter disregard for God and Right, which is being practised at the present time. I take the “Vatican Embassy Fraud” as an illustration. Let me point out to you that President Roosevelt, in return for the Catholic vote for him as President, made promises to the Pope. To-day in Washington the Catholic Hierarchy is the largest of any “political lobby” in the national capital. President Roosevelt appointed what was called his own personal representative to the Vatican and then, when he had died and things developed a little further, and they got more courage, President Truman unfortunately called Myron Taylor “a representative of the President.” So Roosevelt’s personal representative, because of war and so on, now is the representative of the President of the U.S.A.
The President now says he appointed Taylor because of the difficulty of the times and his need for advice, and he re-appoints Taylor with the full rank of Ambassador!—deliberately flouting the opinion of the American public as well as American Constitutional law. As one Chicago paper writes:—”The illicit intrigue between our state department and the Vatican has reached a degree of scandal that ought to bring swift and overwhelming rebuke from all intelligent and patriotic Americans, whether they are Protestants, Roman Catholics or neither. This does not seem to be a time for polite and conciliatory language. The whole business has been, from the start, an insult to Protestants, an embarrassment to sensitive and fair-minded Catholics, and an affront to all citizens who have any regard for the fundamental American principle of avoiding the entanglement of our government with ecclesiastical politics and refusing to play favourites among the churches. The establishment of diplomatic relations with the Vatican began in chicanery and deceit. It has grown worse as it has continued.”
The free laws of the United States require that the President “shall nominate and, with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors and other public Ministers and Consuls,” and yet this appointment has never been ratified by anybody except the President. The illegality of this action and the radical unfairness to all other religious faiths is obvious. Since Mr. Taylor’s appointment the annual cost to the American Government for his travel expenses, allowances and staff, has been nearly 12,000 dollars, because, while Count Taylor—for the Pope made him a Count in the highest order of the Vatican—at first paid his own expenses, when this thing was allowed to go on something has happened surreptitiously. This is what happened: Senator George reports that for the 12 months approximately ending now, 40,000 dollars of public money has been spent “in connection with the Mission of Myron C. Taylor, personal representative of the President to the Vatican.”
Now, an 1867 Act of Congress says this: “No money hereby or otherwise appropriated shall be paid for the support of an American legation at Rome (the Vatican) from and after the 30th June, 1867,” yet the President has the courage, shall we call it, to say to the American people, “I have felt it necessary to have somebody there because of these distressing times,” even if it is illegal and improper. The State Department officially replied when it was asked about it recently, “The Vatican is a temporal state of which the Pope is the reigning sovereign, and relations with it do not signify recognition of a religion but of an independent state whose ruler happens also to be a religious leader.” Why, some of us have said all along that the Papacy is a more temporal power than a spiritual one, and here is the State Department saying it—that the ruler happens to be a religious leader, that they are sending this man because he is sovereign of an independent sovereign state, and that is one of our main reasons to fear the underhand and double standard of morality that Rome goes in for, because it is not the Church that we are opposing, it is the political system established on a political basis and beginning increasingly to obtain that political power which leads to destruction of freedom wherever it is allowed to have sufficient sway.
And therefore this evening I am not only on the side of those who speak against the Roman system, corrupt and perverted as it is from the point of view of Biblical Christianity, but you and I have reason to fear, and we ought to fear, the political state which is totalitarian, which is the biggest world corporation in existence, for it is strong supra-nationally, it speaks with one voice, and although the Pope has not secured a place in the Peace Conferences, directly, every leader on all sides has been consulting him personally before any action has been taken.
I trust that from this meeting we shall go out convinced that ‘unless God save us we are lost, and I trust that God may pour into our hearts such measure of spiritual conviction and bring us to our knees with such sincerity that we shall become stronger Christians to profess our faith and practise our faith to the pulling down of all strongholds of iniquity. Look at them—Italy, Spain, Southern Ireland, Quebec, Latin America!
If you ever live any of those countries, you see the demoralisation, blackness, darkness, retrogression—everything except real democracy, everything except real progress and peace and order, everything except Christianity. May God save Britain and the United States.