* November, 1953, Converted Catholic Magazine article, issued in pamphlet form. We take the liberty of reprinting it here. References to the atom bomb and also to Senator McCarthy are significant.—Editor.
JARRED by the threat of subversive Vatican investigation, Brigadier General Herbert C. Holdridge decided to act.
“Though I am a retired officer of the United States Army, I am still an American citizen and sworn to defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies,” he states in the following letter to the Honourable H. H. Velde, Chairman, Un-American Committee, Washington, D.C. (March 22, 1953):—
The churches of the United States are now threatened with investigation by your Committee, allegedly to expose any Communist activities. Such a proposal is, of course, subversive of the very liberties guaranteed under the Bill of Rights of the Constitution which your Committee undertakes to defend. It extends the threat of reprisal for independent thought and action into the field of religious expression. Accordingly, it is the business of every patriotic citizen to oppose vigorously any such action.
Here is Open Subversion.
Now that the issue has been raised, however, the moment is propitious for the initiation of action against an organisation which constitutes an immediate and dire threat against our Republic. I refer to the Vatican, which functions under the control of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy. I take no issue with the Catholic Religion as such. I do take sharp issue with this sinister, political organisation which maintains its subversive agents in every nation of the world. I present the following charges against the Vatican for investigation by your Committee.
(1) Pope Pius IX, in his Syllabus of Errors, condemned every freedom listed in our Bill of Rights. This stand still constitutes the official Vatican view. Every Catholic who supports it becomes a public enemy. No Catholic in public office—conscious of the fact or not—who supports the stand of the Vatican on this issue can be loyal to his oath to defend the Constitution and at the same time be loyal to the Vatican.
Rome Forever Interferes.
(2) The Vatican has a centuries-old record of interference in the internal affairs of other political states. It has caused more blood to flow in its political wars, hypocritically launched in the name of Jesus Christ, than was true even of Islam which openly spread religion by the sword. Its cruelty towards its own adherents is displayed in the tortures of the “Inquisition.” In our day we have the historic examples of its backing of Franco in Spain, who imported Arabs from Africa to kill Catholics in Spain; of its backing of Mussolini in his rape of Ethiopia; and of Hitler in his attempted rape of the world. It insists that it is a secular state, but when called to account for its political acts of violence it has taken refuge behind the smokescreen of “religious persecution,” thus playing both ends against the middle.
(3) It is motivated by its age-old ambition to establish a religious dictatorship and has never ceased in its efforts to dominate the minds and spirits of its adherents. Because of the fear of its ruthlessness our Founding Fathers left their homes in Europe to establish religious freedom in America. They wrote the principles of religious freedom into our Charters of Liberty.
Rome’s Smokescreen “Holy War.”
(4) These undeviating policies of the Vatican are of urgent significance. It has now launched a “holy war” against Communism, hypocritically in the name of the Prince of Peace, but practically as an extension of its century-old conflict for world power with the Greek Catholic Church. Whatever justification the United States may have in pursuing the course of international violence, the support of the Vatican to this end is not induced by love of our democratic institutions.
In its campaign it has used every technique of the Communists. Traditionally it has had no soldiery of its own but has called upon secular states to fight its wars of aggrandisement. Generally these have been Catholic countries. To-day it has shifted its centre of activity to the United States. It now propagandises non-Catholic Americans to produce its weapons of war, finance its war and fight its war. Although this foreign, secular state owns fabulous billions of dollars of American resources, these are tax-exempt under the fiction that it constitutes a “religious” organisation.
It does not contribute one cent in taxes to advance its own purposes. We thus witness the amazing spectacle of American taxpayers paying taxes to finance the subversion of their own institutions.
Control by Religious Terrorism.
(5) Because of its potential threat of excommunication no American Catholic would dare challenge its dictates. Thus it is able to infiltrate its representatives into key positions of government, education, national economy, and into our armed forces. Father Edmund J. Walsh, of the Society of Jesuits, has, for a generation, been engaged in indoctrinating the minds of our foreign service personnel in the philosophies of the Vatican at Georgetown University. This priest, in his recent book, Total Power,† urges the prior use of the atom bomb by the United States against Russia, thus inciting to world violence.
It is for this reason that officials in high position are caught in conflicts of loyalties. If they follow the Vatican “party line,” they can justify its acts on the basis of morality, and if troubled by conscience, can always be assured of absolution. In the final showdown their religious indoctrination must prevail. If any challenge this statement, let them publicly repudiate the “Syllabus of Errors.”
It is for this reason that the presence of Senator McCarthy on your Committee becomes a positive threat against the freedoms established in our Bill of Rights, which he has publicly belittled.
(6) In its parochial schools it is teaching religious intolerance at the expense of non-Catholic American taxpayers in violation of the Constitution of the United States.
(7) Admitting the threat of Communism, an equal or greater threat is that of Fascism. The blood of millions was spilled during World War II to check Fascism. The Vatican, which constitutes one of the evil triumvirate of Fascism—”Big Money,” the military, and the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, almost succeeded, in our day, in destroying the very foundations of human freedom. They worked as a team in Spain, Italy, and Germany. They have now transferred their activities to the United States and plan to use non-Catholic G.I.s as their military spearhead in their drive for world domination.
A Call to Moral Courage.
Mr. Chairman, our Founding Fathers had the physical and moral courage to face this century-old issue of Church verses State, and won a notable victory for their posterity. In our day we have an equal obligation, and at the same time serve the best interests of Catholics, doing for them what they are not able to do for themselves. It was a Catholic, Martin Luther, who, single-handed, challenged the might of the Vatican to force it to clean its own house. It was French Catholics, backed by devout parish priests, who overthrew the Catholic Hierarchy and the French Nobility in the French Revolution. It was Bolivar, a Catholic, who fought the domination of Spain backed by the Vatican, to establish freedom in South America. Democracy belongs to all people, Catholics included.
It is in this spirit that I call upon you, as you charge forward to ferret out what you believe to be the dangers of Communism, to turn your attention in the direction of ferreting out the dangers of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy. Do not ignore this darkening cloud of perversion of our institutions by an organisation which has openly declared its hatred of our American democracy.
† Total Empire.