Consolation, December 6, 1944
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Contents
'Franco the Superstitious
Blaming God for It
“Fathers” O’Flanagan and Rodes
Fernsworth’s Courageous Statement
Clearly a “Church” War
“Why the Bishops Back Franco”
The Pope’s Peace Plan
Noah’s Cheerful Endurance as a Herald of
Righteousness
Glance at His Ancestors
Consider the Conditions ’
Special Blessings Always Follow Trials
The Bishop Forgot His Manners -
Liguori on Morals
The Devil’s “New World Order”
Arizona for Health
Resistance to Truth Is Breaking Down
Too- Mu ch-Pap er-and-Ink Carty
Raymond Street Jail
The High Point of the Ceremony
Prayers That Back-fired
Feeding the Lord’s'Sheep in Italy
A Newly-interested Family in Massachusetts 26
Presenting “This Gospel of the Kingdom”
Extemporaneous Speech and Impromptu
Speech Not the Same
Aetius the “Atheist”
Jehovah’s witnesses Cases
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In Brief
The Big Kansas Icebox
♦ The world’s biggest icebox will be at Atchison, Kans. It will have a capacity of 12,000,000 cubic feet, will hold 60,000 to 70,000 tons of perishable food at a fixed temperature of between 30 and 32 degrees, and is expected to save the government $3,400,000 a year, and in itself to equal about 10 percent of the entire public cooler space of the United States. This huge refrigerating unit is being installed in a limestone mine, which is of such shape and capacity and has such a large degree of natural insulation that it requires only a relatively small amount of refrigerating machinery to make it suitable as a place for government storage of eggs, lard, and other things that require constant low temperatures.
•
The Monkeys’ Disgrace
Three monkeys sat in a cocoanut tree Discussing things as they’re said to be. Said one to the other, “Now listen, you two; There’s a certain rumor that can’t be true: That man descended from our noble race. The very idea is a disgrace.
No monkey ever deserted his wife, Starved her babies and ruined her life; And you’ve never known a mother monk To leave herbabies with others to bunk, Or pass them on from one to another, Till they scarcely know who is their mother.
And .another thing you’ll never see:
A monk build a fence ’round a cocoanut tree And let the cocoanuts go to waste, Forbidding all other monks to taste.
Why, if I put a fence around a tree, Starvation will force you to steal from me.
Here’s another thing a monk won’t do: Go out at night and get on a stew, Or use a gun or club or knife ■ To take some other monkey’s life. Yes, man descended, the ornery cuss; But, brother, he didn’t descend from us.
' —Anonymous
CONSOLATION
“And in His name shall the nations hope.”—Matthew 12:21, yl.iS. F.
Volume XXV! Brooklyn, N. ¥., Wednesday, December 6, 1944 . Number 958
Franco the Superstitious
IT IS more than two years since, on a spring day in Lisbon, Portugal, there was “the fanfare of military trumpets” and “down an avenue spread with rose petals, guarded by a military contingent, was borne the statue of Our Lady of Fatima” while on the sidewalks thousands of people cried in Portuguese, “Our Lady of Peace, give us Peace.” You know that Mary did not get the prayers, or else was not interested, or else did not know Portuguese, or else answered No. But Franco would never have noticed anything about the results. He is too superstitious. Had he been there, he would have been taken in, as was the entire crowd. The whole thing was un-scriptural, and it was foolish. (The pope himself admitted, to Cardinal Schuster, of Milan, in February, 1944, that he was at that time powerless to take any efficacious steps in favor of peace, and so admits that the prayers to the Portuguese Mary went to the Devil.)
Franco is a superstitious Catholic, and he would have accepted as gospel truth the statement of the “Right Reverend” Silvestre Sancho, of the University of Santo Tomas, in Manila, that the bloody fratricidal war which he successfully waged against his fellow Catholics in Spain was indeed “a fight to the death between the Eucharist, which is the living Jesus, and Atheism, disguised under the cloak of Communism”. Yet nothing could have been a bigger falsehood. The Spanish Catholic Republicans were merely defending the Spanish Catholic Republic against a traitor.
Franco himself stated that it was the
Catholic religion “that has inspired our genius”. If he has the genius of a good street-sweeper he has never shown it. When he betrayed his country, he “prayed to a Madonna that the ship convoy launched against the Loyalists should get safely from Tangier to Spain”. The traitors got across all right, but, as there are no feminine evil spirits, these prayers went to one of the male devils friendly to Franco, and procured the desired results.
The Pope Wcw in a Hurry
The pope was in a hurry to show Franco that he was with him in all he did. Over a year and a half before Franco’s treason had succeeded, the pope gave him diplomatic standing. Six months later the “Reverend Father” James M. Gillis, C.S.P., editor of The Catholic World, went into raptures over him. First came a column of flattering praise, and then the real point that, “Like Cardinal O’Connell and Cardinal Hayes and the Holy Father, I find it difficult that ho can have ordered indiscriminate bombing of densely populated cities”; but he did, and then the pope (April 18, 1938) wired Franco, “We send from the bottom of our heart a message propitious of divine favor and the apostolic benediction.”
The pope’s world conspiracy against the Spanish Republic, published in a book in Burgos, Spain, was disclosed in a two-column story from Paris published in the New York Times of August 7, 1938. From that story it is clear that 900 cardinals, archbishops and bishops joined to back Franco in his treason. The foreword to that 50,000-word document or book was written by Cardinal Pacelli (the present pope), and the object of it was to line up the whole world against the Spanish Catholic Republic and for Franco the Traitor. It succeeded. The next spring, April 1, 1939, Franco had won and the pope sent him his congratulations and his “apostolic blessing”. This was bad for Franco, because the pope’s blessings usually go crosswise.
Two weeks later, April 16, 1939, the new pope, Pius XII (Pacelli) speaking in Spanish, extended congratulations for the victory, in a broadcast to Spain. In it he called Franco the “illustrious chief of your state”, and mentioned his “noble and Christian sentiments” which are even to this day still hidden from all men.
Blaming God for It
It was not long after these hypocrisies before World War II was on. It would not do to blame Franco for this, and his comrades Hitler and Mussolini, so the pope put the blame on God, in his broadcast on October 31, 1942. That seems to be the idea back of his statement (in Portuguese) that the war was the result of the world’s own iniquities. If he had come right out and blamed Franco, it would almost surely have pointed the finger of suspicion at himself.
In the year 1942 Archbishop Spellman went out on an errand spending money for the United States government He visited the pope, and said that gentleman “thinks, works, prays and literally dies for peace”. That being the case, why didn’t he do some of that when he was prodding the entire Roman Catholic Hierarchy, the world over, to get behind Franco in his rebellion against the legitimate government of Spain? This Throbbing with sorrow’ stuff should be consistent. A little throbbing before robbing a henrpost is better than a whole lot. of throbbing afterward.
There are many Americans who really know what happened. Harold Glenn Cuthrell, writing in the Raleigh News and Observer, remarked:
In a series of current articles appearing in Collier's entitled “Action This Day”,’ Archbishop Francis J. Spellman writes of his audience and conversation with Franco, the dictator and tyrant of Spain. It appears that the archbishop is deeply impressed with this despot and murderer of thousands of Spaniards. And we will not forget that Franco ordered out of Spain all Protestants, and all Freemasons were either murdered or compelled to flee Spain for refuge in friendly countries. We have not forgotten the brutalities and crimes of this wicked man who idolized and admired the arch criminal Hitler •and the bombastic Mussolini, And we remember that Hitler and Mussolini supported Franco in his war of extermination against the Spanish Loyalists and all who believed in freedom and democracy.
But listen to Archbishop Spellman writing of Franco:
“My impressions of him are in accordance with his reputation as a very sincere, serious and intelligent man. . . . During the entire audience he talked in Spanish and I talked in Italian. . . . We understood each other perfectly. . . . Whatever criticism has been made of General Franco (and it has been considerable), I cannot doubt that he is a man loyal to his God, devoted to his country’s welfare, and definitely willing to sacrifice himself in any capacity and to any extent for Spain.”
How can a mart be loyal to his God and his country’s welfare when he murders his people for believing in freedom and decency, and by his crimes brings poverty, starvation, degradation and desolation to his country?
It isn’t so long since a wireless went out from Rome that Monsignor Enrique Pla y Deniel, primate of Spain, would be made a cardinal shortly, being “highly regarded in influential Vatican circles because of his democratic views”. The inference that any clerical in touch with Franco the Butcher could have democratic views is so silly that it is a wonder the reporter had the nerve to send it even as propaganda.
“Fathers” O’Flanagan and Rodes
Some honest Catholic priests visited America, in the effort to help the downtrodden Spanish Catholic Republicans. One of these, “Reverend Father” Michael O’Flanagan, of Ireland, brought 500 people to their feet in an ovation in Detroit, when he had the courage to say that the .official Catholic Church had held collections in Ireland to buy medical supplies for Franco, “on the grounds that he was lighting for Christianity and against the destruction of the churches” but that “this same official church . . . denied admission to the church of the bodies of those who had fallen in the struggle for Irish freedom”. lie was to have spoken at Milwaukee two days later, but the liberty-haters worked the telephone overtime and by the time he got there the hall in which he was to have spoken was refused, and he was being blackguarded all over the country, by the Hierarchy. At Scranton he said:
The war in Spain is between the privileged classes and the rank and file. ... In Spain the church has never come out of the Middle Ages. The bishops were selected by counsels between the government and the pope. When Alfonso fled six years ago people began to think for themselves, and then a liberal government resulted, of which the Communists were less than 5 percent of the parliament. . . . Then the old pampered Royalist Army became irked and, instigated by Mussolini and encouraged by Hitler, rebelled against civil government. . . . And they went across to Africa and brought a crowd of Mohammedan men from Africa to comt in and assist.
At the time of the American Revolution in 1776 there was only one part of this continent that had a highly organized Catholic church, and that was the province of Quebec, and in 1776 the only Catholic bishop on this continent excommunicated all his subjects that joined the army under George Washington....
Really it is a fact that as far as Franco has any support left at all in Spain, he has
got it amongst the backward hillbillies of the mountains, and he is fighting against the enlightened people of the great cities of Spain. And he is trying to establish in Spain a government like that which Mussolini has established in Italy or that which Hitler has established in Germany. And then Germany and Italy hope, with the help of Spain, to be able to dominate Europe. And after a while perhaps they hope that with the assistance of the Fascists of France, because there are Fascists in every country, there are even Fascist influences growing up here in the United States of America, and with the help of Spain and Germany and Italy they are hoping perhaps to dominate the world. The prospect is that the whole of western Europe will be carried over into this Fascist dictatorial type of government, a type of government that makes war the centra! instrument of their policy, and who, if they are allowed to proceed, will ultimately become dominant all over the world. *
That was in May, 1937. Czechoslovakia was dismembered March 15, 1939, and the very thing that “Father” O’Flanagan had foreseen had become an accomplished fact. The fight for world control was on. •
Lawrence Fernsworth, a noble and honest Catholic, in a two-column story in the New York Times, dated Barcelona, Spain, September 22, 1938 (six months before Franco’s victory), reported a “Father” Rodes as testifying that “the Republican government acts with discretion and tolerance, and as far as I know persecutes no one -for his ideas”.
Spain’s Consul in Manila
One wonders how many Americans that lost loved ones at Bataan are aware that Franco’s consul at Manila, Jose del Castano, helped to bring about their death. VThen the time came to betray Manila, Del Castano had 10,000 well-trained assistants. Allan Chase, in his book Falange, explains: (
Wild rumors spread like hurricanes through the city, rumors the character of which had already become familiar in all lands invaded by the Nazis in Europe: MacArthur had fled to Washington. Quezon had gone over to the Japs. The entire American air force had been destroyed. The American Army had received orders to shoot all Catholics and imprison all Filipinos. . . . These rumors were not being spread by obscure Japanese spies; they originated directly from Civilian Emergency Headquarters. ... At three o’clock on the afternoon of January 2, 1942, the Japanese marched into Manila, their military tasks having been lightened a thousandfold by the effective Fifth Column job within the city itself.
The Japanese were in on this entire Roman Catholic conspiracy. This was well known to both Philippine and American officials. After the betrayal had succeeded the Japanese officials graciously sent a formal decoration to Pilar _Primo de Rivera, sister of the founder of the Falange (the Roman Catholic organization that pulled off the job).
It is a matter of regret that Jose del Castano entered upon his work in Manila with the blessing of the United States department of state. The Japanese regarded him as having rendered them “priceless undercover aid”, and Franco, to prove even to the state department that he has no brains, sent the new quisling administration at Manila (Jose P, Laurel, head) his congratulations on their “mutual understanding”.
Franco, the Sunday bullfight manager and blesser, may be sexually honest (no information on this) but if he had any brains he would know that the same religious crooks that are so notoriously rotten in his own country are more so in the Philippines. There, when Uncle Sam took over the country, the natives hated and distrusted the priests because of the widespread “Derecho de Pernada” by virtue of which the priest who performed the marriage ceremony claimed as a right to have the bride for the first night himself. Senate Document No. 190, 56th Congress, 2nd Session; Presidential Message, of William 'McKinley, February 25, 1901; Report of Col. C. C. Hood, military governor, April 25, 1900; also Judge (later president) William H. Taft, who cited Roman Catholic Major W. H, Johnston, district inspectorgeneral, and two Roman Catholic chaplains, McKinnon and Fitzgerald, as agreeing substantially.
Ruined by Prosperity
In the sixteenth century the “Church” in Spain was flooded with the wealth of. the Aztecs and Incas and the archbishop of Toledo alone had an income of $1,200,000 a year. The Moors, the artisans of the country, were expelled, and in the seventeenth century the population dropped from 30,000,000 to less than 7,000,000. The morals became atrocious. Then came the Inquisition, the murder department of the “Church”. The ecclesiastics became richer and richer, and the'common people sank into ever deeper ignorance, poverty and superstition, for two solid centuries.
At the beginning of the twentieth century the church was spending $7,500,000 a year for candles and incense, and a Catholic bishop estimated that the monks and nuns alone had two-thirds of the wealth of the country and one-third of the landed property; beggars were everywhere. When the workers went on strike as at Oviedo, in 1934, Franco, the super-murderer, crushed them with such brutality that mankind recoiled in horror. The common people -of Spain, .the intelligent people of Spain, formed a republic, so that all together the country might be well-fed, well-clothed, well-housed, and well-educated. There is nothing Franco and the “Church” dread more than such an idea. So the rich landowners, industrialists, financiers, militarists and religionists put Butcher Franco on the job, knowing that his ruthlessness and brutality could be counted bn. They won. The army was officered 'by men trained in Jesuit schools, and when General von Ludendorff said that the Jesuits and Mussolini would profit most by Franco’s victory, the magazine in which he made the statement was confiscated (in January, 1937).
After the war began, the famous truth-telling George Seldes (now editor of In Fact) remarked that whatever material damage had been done to the church was the work of individuals and mobs, and noted that in all countries where the press is in Fascist hands not a truthful word about Spain ever appeared after the war began. The Jesuits had everything sewed up tight, and concealed the fact that the churches were used by Franco as munitions depots and fortresses.
Fernsworth’s Courageous Statement
Lawrence A. Fernsworth, a Catholic, Spanish correspondent pf the London Times and of the New York Times, is an honest man. In the booklet Catholics Speak for Spain, after explaining that in Spain the church had constituted a heavy drain upon the economic resources of the country and had become topheavy with clergy, he said:
And- how many times have I walked into some cathedral to find a solemn or a pontifical mass being celebrated in all. liturgical pomp with the assistance of the entire cathedra! chapter and in the presence of only three or four of the faithful! The people had their chief contacts with the church for funerals, masses and dispensations. They arrived at the conclusion that the church was a negocio, a business. Some of the clergy lived scandalous lives. Too many of them were accused of attempting to dominate the households with which they had contact, of setting themselves up as bosses in the villages, and of much more. In consequence the clergy came to lose the respeet of great scores of the population; if not, indeed, of a majority of Spanish Catholics. Hundreds of thousands were completely driven away from the church,
The same booklet reminds the reader that the pope blessed a rebellion against a legitimate government, and ■ that priests fired on soldiers of that government from the church towers in Madrid. But there were some truly honest and truly patriotic priests in Madrid at that very time, one of them the “Reverend Father” Leocadio Lobo, who broadcast over the Madrid radio that the Spanish Catholic Republicans were not a mob, not riffraff, not a rabble, but were merely citizens demanding social justice and t^e lessening of the infinite gulfs between those who have all and those who have nothing.
Franco is too big a lunkhead to understand such a reasonable wish, and yet he knows perfectly well that when King Alfonso himself proposed a national election, and offered to abdicate if the election went against him and for a republic, in the city of Madrid itself the majority for the republic was more than twelve to one. That is why the babying of Franco by Britain, France and the United States is so indefensible.
Executions to Music
One sometimes wonders if Franco and the Hierarchy really forget everything, and think the people do also. Who could forget the executions of a fourth of the citizens of Teruel when Franco’s armies seized the place, or that the executions took place in the plaza, with bands playing and crowds applauding and dancing ? That is religion all right, but is it Christianity? Cardinal Goma showed what he is when he said that the only peace that could be made with his fellow Spanish Catholic Republicans must be “that made with arms”. Since he might become a pope at any time, how does that stack up with Pacelli’s constant holler that he is 'ever working for peace and dying for peace’?
Pius XI (for ever dead) and Pius XII (headed for the same everlasting annihilation) both refused an audience when the Basque Catholics (the pick of all Spain) requested a hearing six months before Franco committed his treason. In the conquest of Guipuzcoa Franco’s officers put to death fourteen priests that were trying to be loyal to the Spanish Catholic Republic. Both these popes were back of Franco’s appeal to the Catholic hierarchies of the world to back him in his fight in their behalf. This appeal was published in 36 editions and in 14 languages,
J. M. Martinez, N.D., Miami, Florida, comes from a Catholic family that gave a cardinal to the “Church”, He bears testimony in the Miami Daily News that the churches were used as ammunition centers and machine-gun nests; that the Catholic Church in Spain conspired against the legitimate government; that the working people had suffered under its tyrannies until they felt that they must have a republic, but that when they did have such a government, and sought diplomatic relations with the Vatican, they were rebuked at every turn, but the Japanese and Hitler and his crowd had better luck. He says truthfully and bitingly:
If this war is being fought against Fascism everywhere as our president and other democratic leaders have assured us several times, . then the Catholic boys who are dying in the southwestern Pacific and in North America are fighting the same battle and the same enemies the Loyalists fought. They are fighting Hitler, Mussolini and Franco.
With Machiavellian hypocrisy, the Vatican, after conspiring successfully for the destruction of the Spanish Catholic Republic, then required all Spanish bishops to “swear and promise to respect and make my clergy respect the chief of the Spanish state and the government established according to Spanish laws”. Had they done that early in the year 1936 there would never have been a Spanish Civil War and their hands would have been freed from the stain of a million murdered Spanish Catholics and another million destroyed with even greater cruelty, many of them starved to death.
Clearly a "Church'’ H'ar
All who are interested in what has been taking place in Spain in the last few years should read the article “The Jesuit-Fascist Revolt in Spain”, October 7, 1936, issue of The Golden Age (now Consolation). Therein is the proof that the Spanish Catholic Republic was inspired by ideals so much higher than those of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy that there is no possible comparison. It treated its enemies with manhood, with leniency, with justice, and with honesty. It provided for education, for civil marriages, for lay cemeteries. The author of that article personally heard the secretary of the Roman Catholic bishop in Madrid say of the “Church’s” efforts to besmirch and demean the people’s own government: “We’ve lost all along the front; there’s only one thing left for us to do: bring about clashes in the streets” (so as to give the government a bad name and extract sympathy for the Hierarchy), '
It makes one’s blood run cold to reread that article and see once again what kind of man Franco really is. Imagine the wives and children of prisoners being used to protect his artillery by being concentrated on the flat roofs of the barracks at Cerro Muriano; imagine thirteen youths at Alcubierre lashed together by their elbows, sprayed with gasoline and then set afire; imagine, at Palma del Condado, his soldiers bombing in prison the leaders of the republican parties and workmen’s societies and shooting any who wept at what they saw done to these noble men. And there were other cases of where women and children were tied spread-eagle fashion in the windows and Franco’s Moors and other rebels firing from behind them. All this had the church’s “blessing”.
Early in the war Franco said that his soldiers, the Moslem Moors, were fighting for a victory which “will ‘progress along the lines of a totalitarian state” and that the Spanish people would have no voice in their form of government.
It was his Moorish soldiers that were the first to enter the great city of Barcelona, and as soon as the war was over, and the Asturian miners in the north of Spain went on strike he recalled the Moors to go north once more and fight his battles all over again.
How Franco Got Soldiers and Arms
At Granada—-but let The New Age, a Masonic paper, tell it:
The military forces were marched outside - the city, and assembled, ostensibly for drill or parade. There the officers told them that there had been a change of government in the country, a statement wholly false. Squads of men were then sent into the city, under command of officers who were in the plot, with lists of city officials, judges, and others, including members of the Masonic Fraternity, who were arrested and in many instances executed. Methods such as these were generally used, and enabled the rebels to gain control of a large part of the military forces of the country.
In anticipation of the coming Jesuit war for control of the world, Hitler and Mussolini had great piles of ammunition ready for the fray, and when Chamberlain returned from Munich with only his umbrella left to show for it, they freely armed Franco, that being the “Church’s” wish, and their own wish also, for all three are sons of the same “harlot”. —Revelation, chapter 17.
The Hierarchy got on the job in Ireland, squeezed $500,000 out of the poor Irish people, and sent General Owen O’Buffy with 1,400 Irish lads into Spain to help fight Franco’s battles. These sickened of the job in four months and returned to Ireland. They could see that the Spanish war was between the “Church” and Moors on the one side and the honest Spanish Catholic people on the other, and, to their credit, they backed out and went home.
To cultivate the impression that they were being persecuted or killed, the priests, and nuns in Loyalist territory dressed in the clothing of the common people. When the Loyalist government announced that religious services might be resumed, the pope was sore and announced that any masses said by priests on the Loyalist side were “unauthorized”. As a matter of fact every mass is a blasphemy, and so all of them are unauthorized; but that wasn’t what the pope meant.
“Why the Bishops Back Franco”
You should read the article by that name published in Consolation for December 29, 1937. Therein John McGovern, Roman Catholic member of Parliament for Glasgow, Scotland, told of his 6,000-mile trip in Spain. He had pictures of children mutilated by Franco’s bombers while playing in the streets; of mothers machine-gunned and bombed while waiting for their daily rations.
Said McGovern:
These evil deeds are backed by bishops and priests in Spain, I have indisputable evidence. Here is a photograph of a'gun taken from a Moor, and on the gun is fixed the badge of the Sacred Heart. Here is a bag taken from a Moor. On it are inscribed pictures of the Sacred Host. Could religion be prostituted further? A bishop addresses the Moorish troops near Burgos and, blessing them, says: “You will have a special place in Paradise for your part in this struggle.”
After showing that the “Church” owned almost everything in Spain, and giving a wealth of the most startling information on the subject, this courageous Catholic said of the ecclesiastics:
The “Church” paid the peasants 2 pesetas a day, or 5s. a week in our money. I went to many peasants and often their families had never been able to buy meat. I met a man who had not eaten flesh for five years. I saw the children. The story of their poverty was written, tragic and stark, in their faces and physical bearing. I saw grown men who had a new suit of clothes for their weddings, and fifteen to twenty years after they were wearing the same suit of clothes.
Mr. McGovern quoted Don Angel
Ossorio y Gallardo, one of the most prominent Catholic and Conservative lawyers of Spain, as protesting the “Church” war waged against the Spanish Catholic people, and as using this moving statement: -
A Christian ought not to suffer the name of God to be used to attack a legitimately constituted state,' for if he does so he forgets the command, ‘.Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.’ A Catholic owes respect and obedience to the Church, but to the Church as the immortal depository of the highest, purest, most generous doctrine that the centuries have heard—not to be confused with the ecclesiastical degeneration of jewel-laden bishops who drag God into political conflicts and ask His intervention to defeat the Left in elections, thereby lowering God to the level of a combatant, blaspheming his divinity.
“A Splendid School of War”
General von Reichenau, referring to the vicious and indefensible course of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco in Spain, said that “the Spanish war has been a splendid school of war”. That was early in 1938, and Hitler started the European war March 15, 1939, when he invaded Czechoslovakia. It surely was a great school. The moment Franco seized a town, if the people did not publicly and immediately acknowledge him as their conqueror, they were forthwith executed or imprisoned. It is a funny thing that Spellman doesn’t know anything about these well-known facts to which he was a contributing factor. Does he think bluffs have an eternal effect?
To be sure, the moment Franco won the war he began to toady to the big religionists. He even .gave them free postage. And the 11 hierarchy, insolent and cruel before, became immediately even more cruel than it was before.
The story ends with an address by Edmond L. Taylor, president of the Anglo-American Press Association, given in Paris, at the American Club, before the city capitulated to the Germans. You might like to read it:
I am not a Socialist, I am not a liberal, I do not know exactly what I am, but 1 do know that I am neither indignant nor surprised when 1 am referred to as a fascist. And it also happens that I am a Catholic, not very faithful, but Catholic just the same. There is no personal antipathy between me and the rebels.
Nevertheless I think that the soldiers of Franco are nothing but wild beasts.
These people act like ferocious animals and at the same time appeal to the whole world, posing as champions of western civilization. What I detest,-what all journalists detest, are tendentious speeches, hypocrisy and lying propaganda.
The Spanish fascists play but a small role in the actual battles, but they voluntarily carry on police work and executions behind the lines. At Talavera for a long time they had a woman executioner, the wife of one of their own number. She had no official position; they simply authorized her to execute prisoners, as a favor to her because she liked to do it.
The Spanish Foreign Legionnaires and the Moors are different. They are professionals. But they too have their own pet notions. I have never been able to understand why they took the trouble to tie the hands of seven republicans whom they captured near Toledo, and to tie them together with one rope before shooting them. I saw the same thing on the outskirts of Toledo—24 bodies, this time tied together with one rope. One of the bodies was headless; I suppose that a Moor did that.
At Toledo I saw, behind the Alcazar, in a hole caused by a mine, fifty republican corpses.
The official explanation was that these corpses, brought from the field of battle, had been placed there for. sanitary reasons. I noticed that all these bodies were placed face down.
This is difficult to explain, unless you can suggest that these were prisoners whom they made stand on the edge of the mine-hole right under the walls of the Alcazar so that the heroic defenders could enjoy the spec taele and shoot them down, in the back, peacefully, one by one. .
And yet Franco is not through with Spanish democracy. Agitation for a Spanish republican government-in-exile is being heard. A dispatch from Tunisia revealed that Spanish republican troops were then fighting with the Allies. They had previously fought in the Spanish Civil War, and, when defeated by Franco’s Moors, Nazis and Fascists, made their way to North Africa. French authorities interned them, but they were released when Eisenhower took over. Now they are wearing British uniforms, fighting alongside the British, American and French forces. And Franco waits, with his fingers crossed.
The Pope’s Peace Plan (From a Catholic’s viewpoint)
«catholic Veterans Support
Pope’s Peace Plan,” was a headline in the New York Times, July 1944. Why “Catholic” veterans? Why not American veterans, and, above all, why not be Americans and give due support and loyalty to the president as leader and also to our country, never mind the pope or any other foreign king, prince, or potentate? Americans, and that means everybody from Roman Catholics, Protestants and Jews to atheists, owe allegiance to the United States and the Constitution, which forbids any form of state religion. I, as one of the Roman Catholic faith, object to the contamination of my religious faith with politics, either by the pope or by the laity. No other church meddles in politics in such a flagrant way as does the Roman Catholic church. It is unAmerican and, above all, it is in opposition to Christian ideology. To make religion a matter of politics is blasphemous hypocrisy as well as heresy, regardless of the pope’s so-called “infallibility”, which is a myth. '
By their mention of “Catholic” veterans they further implicate that church in an effort to thwart justice and punishment of those sadistic paranoiacs who created this war. If “Protestant” veterans took part in a movement upholding the full penalties of unconditional surrender and total defeat of the axis, these “Catholic” veterans and the clergy would accuse Protestants of meddling.
Just what is this “Catholic veterans” movement? Is it another Coughlinite move, Christian Front, America First, and that lot who use that slogan to hide their own deceit, to cover the subversive activities in which they engage? Why do these “Catholic veterans” place the pope ahead of the president of the United States in this matter? Who is the pope these people set up as a man-god, infallible and appointed by some mystical power to rule over the nations of ■ the woild and who holds the keys of the kingdom of heaven? He is the political head of the political state of Vatican City, regardless of its small size, who was appointed in true fascist political fashion by a packed court, Italian-controlled, who see to it that only an Italian shall rule as pope.
The pope seeks a “reasonable peace”, no victors, no vanquished, a negotiated peace where those to whom he and his predecessor gave full support, Mussolini and Hitler (in exchange for a mess of pottage, restored temporal power) will be let dowm easily. Like the man who bet on the wrong horse, he now sees it losing, wants all the bets called off and declared “no race”. That wmuld suit Hitler, but not the United Nations, nor those Catholics in Poland and Czechoslovakia whose homes were destroyed and their families wiped out by those whom the pope had sent his blessings.
Why didn’t the pope do something about the peace then? Why should he when those he supported were winning? Why didn’t he do something about it when Italian as well as German bombs were dropping on those sacred edifices in England? (Canterbury, St. Margaret’s, Coventry, Westminster Abbey, and others) They were as sacred as any of those in Rome, including the Vatican, and were ancient when St. Peter’s and the Vatican were in swaddling clothes, having been built centuries before either of those structures was erected. It is the pope who is unreasonable; his peace plan belated; his sympathies one-sided. Out of common decency and gratitude, he should be all out on the side of the United Nations for the only reasonable peace terms that could be offered, the unconditional surrender and total (not partial) defeat of the Axis. These terms are more than generous. What terms would Hitler have imposed if he had won? We know, and the pope would have nothing to say about it, for he too would be under the domination of Hitler. And we know where we in this country would now be if Britain had sold out as Petain did with France. With those Coughlin-ites, Christian Fronters, ‘‘Catholic Veterans,” isolationists, anti-1 end-leasers, who still aid and abet Hitler by their activities knowingly or not, Hitler would not need invade this country. His stooges would save him that expense and trouble.
Why did President Roosevelt risk his life to visit Hawaii? Was it for a pleasant sea voyage for his health? Why did he reiterate unconditional surrender and total defeat of the Axis? Why did Mr. Churchill risk his life to visit France and Italy? Was that also a week-end trip to the Riviera for pleasure? Who is more qualified to know what the terms should be, Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin and those fighting this sadistic enemy, or the pope? He now seeks negotiated peace to thwart the only justified terms possible. He is opposed to those efforts, and these “Catholic Veterans” follow the leadership of the pope rather than the president This attitude further implicates the pope and the church with the desire to obtain a negotiated peace, which Hitler would accept any time, now that he sees defeat. We could Jiave obtained that kind of peace long ago, if we dared to lie down to Hitler. The only language those sadistic madmen understand is their own. But we have not dropped to their beastly level. The Mosaic law would be fully justified in dealing with them. And the pope continues to do. business with them. But there are some Catholics who dare express their disgust at such political blunderings and diplomacy. The pope is not above criticism for the political con-.niving he and his predecessor have indulged in, all for the political aggrandizement of the Vatican state, not for the spiritual things or the cause of Christ.
The attitude of the pope toward our great ally, the Soviet Union, is disgusting. While he supports Nazism and Fascism and seeks to destroy the Soviet Union, he should know the Soviet Union is not Roman Catholic and it is none of his business what form of government that or any other country operates under. But he does meddle in politics there, in a manner he would not dare to in Britain, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and other countries.
If Stalin were to ban the Roman Catholic church from the Soviet Union for its subversive activities, he would be fully justified. But the pope would make a deal any time if it suited his purpose and would accept Communism, Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as readily as he accepted Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Petain, Fascism and Nazism. To make any kind of deal in exchange for the political aggrandizement of the Vatican state is the same as making a pact with the Devil, if it suited the pope’s purpose. It would be unethical, but what do politicians care about ethics? Furthermore, what can we expect from those who espoused and made these deals with Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Hirohito, and that lot?,Yet Ratti accepted Mussolini, and by so doing placed this Fascist yoke around his neck. It holds the church in its grip, and until the present pope casts off that yoke he associates with the enemies of God and .man.
consolation
We owe no loyalty to the pope or any other foreign potentate. Americans do owe allegiance to their country and their constitution, which recognizes no state church or religion. That is as it should be. No canon law of any church takes precedence. Let “Catholic Veterans” remember that. They owe that loyalty to the president and those who seek to make the sadistic and paranoiac Nazis pay for the damage they have done. Any negotiated peace with the enemies of God and man would be a mockery of justice and this much- abused “Christian charity” of which the pope speaks. “Forgive them, for they know not what they do” does not apply to these murderers. They do know what they do. Their creed that it is more glorious to die for their cause than it is to live, that kindness and mercy are signs of weakness, that they are the only ones fit to rule the world, shows they know. The Mosaic law would surely punish such a beastly enemy. But we have not reached the stage of the mad beasts tfe are at war against. Yet this is the new order of popes Pius XI and XII and to which they gave their support. Can that be denied? Can the pope say he did not know whom he was dealing with when he sent his blessings upon Mussolini, Hitler, and Franco? Can he say blessing Franco as the 'Savior of Christianity’ was inspired of God? It was a blasphemous epithet, coming from the political lead of a political state whom we Catholics are taught to adore as the Vicar of Christ. More blasphemy!
It is about time Catholics understood the difference between Christianity and the political corruption of this church by its political hierarchy. Roman Catholicism is not Christianity any more than the Democratic party is democracy. Yet this church claims to be the only true faith founded by our Lord and claims the sole right to call itself Christian. AU others are called spurious imitations. It would be just too bad for all those outside the pale of Rome if that were true.
The Osservatore Romano recently said, “The Catholic Church is alien to Communism.” But it is not alien to Fascism and Nazism. We know that. Again, “Catholics oppose Communism.” Well, does not the Catholic church oppose Protestantism and all those Catholic faiths which are not under the 'domination of the pope ? It opposes everything that does not bear the stamp of approval of the pope. It opposes Protestant missionaries from those countries where it rules like the gangster over jurisdiction which it claims full right to control, but demands the right to invade all other territory. It pleads for tolerance but is scant when it comes to showing it toward others.
As for these “Catholic Veterans”, it is too bad one of those flying bombs ■ could not have been dropped on that convention to give them a mild dose of what the people of Britain get every hour, day and night. What if they had had their families wiped out and their homes destroyed, like those Catholics in Poland and Czechoslovakia? That would probably change their opinion and their support of the pope’s peace plan.
These “Catholic Veterans” must remember these victims of the sadistic Nazi maniacs are entitled to justice. Never mind the pope and those whom he favors. Such a negotiated peace would be adding insult to injury. Mussolini and Hitler, have been appeased too much, and any further appeasement would prove that we are weak (in the head). The only way to treat them is by their own methods. When one destroys a plague one exterminates all the bacteria, not part of them.
But the pope wants Fascism and Nazism to be allowed to live. He still hangs on to the yoke which was placed around his neck and which holds him in its grip and will strangle him as it did others. Yet he supports this beast that was spawned in the gutters of Rome long before we ever heard of Mussolini, Hitler and this “blessed savior” Franco.
The Roman Catholic Church has been ruled by this fascist dictatorship, and an "infallible” head, for centuries. The pope is Vicar of Christ, appointed by Him. Isn’t that what we Catholic simps are told to believe? Well, the emperor of Japan goes us one better. He is the direct son of the sun god. Some Japs believe that one. The emperor too is an “infallible” one. Fear, superstition and ignorance, the magic powder of relics, miraculous medals, charms, statues, indulgences and dispensations are great methods of aiding priestcraft in keeping the simple-minded in submission.
And wTho are the big leaders in this Fascist-Nazi scheme? Catholics! among them Knights of St. Gregory and other papal-decorated ones. They are headed by Ratti and Pacelli. Hitler, Von Papen, Goebbels, Himmler, and all that lot, are Catholics. Fine pals for Pacelli and a credit to the Roman Catholic Church, eh?
And now the pope seeks to have the Italians freed from paying any indemnities; that they be taken in as partners, in with the United Nations. That would leave them exempt from the consequences of their own acts. That would • be fine and also very generous and would please the pope. Of course, if we must ?unish Hitler and his lot “please let poor taly alone”. After all, the pope is an Italian and he wants the Italians spared from penalties they deserve as well as the Germans, Rumanians, Bulgarians and all the Axis group, including Japan. Also those archtraitors, Quisling, Petain, Laval, Franco. In the face of these Judas Iscariot and Benedict Arnold can now rest in peace. In fact, they could be canonized as “saints”. .
If things had been going favorably for Mussolini, these same Italians would still be shouting “Viva il Duce!” as the Germans “Heil Hitler!” And how about the way they inflicted death, destruction and starvation on Greece? "Muss/’ cried for Hitler to save him, otherwise the ‘weak little Greeks’ would have knocked Italy out of the war before we did. Italy’s troops still fight against us; unlike Rumania, which turned the war against Hitler and came to the side of the United Nations in spite of Rumania’s Nazi-inspired war against the Soviet Union. That way the position of Rumania is different from that of Italy, which we had to invade and defeat. Italy must be made to pay for her own acts, as bloody as those of Germany. The records prove that.
When Mr. Churchill visited Rome, did he need any advice from the pope? If that is so, then we can expect more appeasement, which would be as much a sign of weakness as it was to continue the house of Savoy instead of dealing (with the democratic groups in Italy ' whom the pope has always opposed in every country where any attempt has been made to remove the pope and church as a political power. It was for that reason that Pius IX went into exile, the prisoner of the Vatican (like going on a hunger strike). And it was the blessed Mussolini who "freed” Pius XI by hjs Fascist bribe of restored political power. The present pope wears the fascist scapular round his neck, next to his skin, as he asks for a negotiated peace and immunity for Italy; to h...........
with Germany and his Nazi pals. Let them pay if they must. That is the attitude of the pope in plain language, as he sees the horse on which he placed his bets out of the race, and wants the bets called off. The only decent thing the pope can do is to cast off the Fascist yoke even if it costs him that temporal power, the bribe of Mussolini which he received in exchange for his soul, like the bribe of Mephistopheles to Faust. —J.....-.....R----, Rhode Island.
Noah's Cheerful Endurance as a Herald of Righteousness
NOAH is greatly honored in God’s Word. Besides the original story recorded at such length in Genesis chapters 5 to 10 inclusive, the prophet Isaiah is caused to refer to him as one of Jehovah’s dear friends. The flood could have been mentioned as-merely “the flood” but Jehovah saw fit in a single verse to twice refer to that cataclysm aS “the waters of Noah”. In a chapter brimming full of His love for Zion His heavenly organization, the perfect Embodiment of love itself saw well to give Noah a worthy place:
Sing, 0 barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith Jehovah. Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thy habitations; spare not: lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes. For thou shalt spread abroad on the right hand and on the left; and thy seed shall possess the nations, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited.
Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed: neither be thou confounded; for thou shalt not be put to shame: for thou,shalt forget the shame of thy youth; and the reproach of thy widowhood shalt thou remember no more. For thy Maker is thy husband; Jehovah of hosts is his name: and the Holy One of Israel is thy Redeemer; the God of the whole earth shall he be called. For Jehovah hath called thee as a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, even a wife of youth, when she is cast off, saith thy God. For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. In overflowing wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting lovingkindness will 1 have mercy on thee, saith Jehovah thy Redeemer.,
For this is as the waters of Noah unto me; for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah shall no more go over the earth, so have I sworn that I will not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee. For the mountains may depart, and the hills be removed; but my lovingkindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall my covenant of peace be removed, saith Jehovah that hath mercy on thee. —Isaiah 54:1-10, Am. Stan. Ver.
Another Prophet Mentions Him Twice
The prophet Ezekiel also mentions Noah twice, and couples his name with two others whose cheerful and faithful endurance for righteousness have greatly magnified Jehovah’s name. All three of these will be back here shortly, and won’t they be interested if some day they read this paragraph in the American Standard Version:
And the word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, Son of man, when a land sinneth against me by committing a trespass, and I stretch out my hand upon it, and break the staff of the bread thereof, and send famine upon it, and cut off from it man and beast; though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they should deliver but their own souls by their righteousness, saith the Lord Jehovah. If I cause evil beasts to pass through the land, and they ravage it, and it be made desolate, so that no man may pass through because of the beasts; though these three men were in it, as I live, saith the Lord Jehovah, they should deliver neither sons nor daughters; they only should be delivered, but the land should be desolate. Or if I bring a sword upon that land, and say, Sword, go through the land; so that I cut off from it man and beast; though these three men were in it, as I live, saith the Lord Jehovah, they should deliver neither sons nor daughters, but they only should be delivered themselves. Or if I send a pestilence into that land, and pour out my wrath upon it in blood, to cut off from it man and beast; though Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, as I live, saith the Lord Jehovah, they should deliver neither son nor daughter; they should but deliver their own souls by their righteousness.—Ezekiel 14:12-20,* Am, Stan. Ver.
“That” Prophet Mentions Him Twice
The greatest of all prophets, “that” prophet, Christ Jesus, the Son of the Most High God, also mentions him twice:
And as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be also in the days of the Son of man. They were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were given in marriage, till the day that Noah entered the ark, and the deluge came, and destroyed them all.—Luke 17:26, 27, Diaglott.
The one that God chose to use both keys, to open the privileges of the kingdom of heaven first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles, also mentions him twice:
For it is better, if the will of God permit, to suffer for doing good, than for doing evil. Because Christ even once suffered on account of sins—the righteous for the unrighteous,— that he might lead us to God, being indeed put to death in the flesh, but made alive by the spirit; by which also he preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly disobeyed, when the patience of God was waiting in the days of Noah, while an ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were carried safely through the water. And immersion, a representation of this, now saves us.—1 Peter 3; 17-21.
For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but having confined them in Tartarus with chains of thick darkness, delivered them over into custody for judgment; and did not spare the old world, but kept in safety Noah, the eighth, a herald of righteousness, bringing a deluge on a world of impious men. —2 Peter 2:4, 5, Diaglott.
Arid finally the one that meekly said of himself, “I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God,” gives him a worthy place in the chapter in which he names by name some of those that during the preceding four thousand years had won divine approval:
In faith Noah, having been divinely admonished concerning things not then seen, moved with pious fear, built an ark for the preservation of his family; through which he condemned the world, and became an heir of the righteousness according to faith. —Hebrews 11:7, Diaglott.
Glance at His Ancestors
No living person is without interest in the ten common ancestors of all human creatures now upon earth: Adam, Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech and Noah. Three of these, Enoch, Lamech and Noah, seem to have been praiseworthy, and though Methuselah died in the year of the flood, yet the fact that his days were lengthened to 969 years may mean that he made a worthy link between the other three. In any event Enoch was a prophet of Jehovah “and Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him”. (Genesis 5:24) As for Lamech, all the readers of the book “The Truth Shall Make You Free” were greatly blessed with the record at pages 128129 herewith reproduced:
Lameeh’s name meaning “powerful; overthrower; destroyer”, it fitted in with Enoch’s prophecy that the God of all power would overthrow the power of the ungodly and destroy them and would usher in a new world in which obedient men would rest from excessive labor and the oppressions of the wicked. Lamech had lived during the last fifty-six years of the life of his first forefather, Adam. From him Lamech learned direct how, due to Adam’s sin, God had cursed the earth, but had also given promise of the coming of the “seed” that should bruise the head of the Serpent of deception and untruth. That would mean the lifting of the curse. Lamech hoped. “And Lamech lived a hundred eighty and two years, and begat a son: and he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us in our work and in the toil of our hands, which cometh because of the ground which Jehovah hath cursed.” (Genesis 5:28, 29, A. S. V.) Lameeh’s words proved to be a prophecy, and were therefore inspired by the spirit or invisible force of Jehovah God.
In the concordance in the Watchtower edition of the American Standard Version it is explained that the name Noah means rest or consolation, and so, in a way, this magazine bears his name.
Consider the Conditions
The book from which the last quotation was made goes at some length into the conditions that existed during the later years of Lamech’s life. They were horrible in the extreme. In a nutshell they may be described as follows:
And Jehovah saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.—Genesis 6:5, A. S. V.
And God saw the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth.—Genesis 6:12, Am. Stan. Ver.
And the earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.—Genesis 6:11, Am. Stan. Ver.
There was also a laxity of desire to know the truth, to face it, and to live in accordance with it. There was a willing and intentional ignorance of the Creator by the populace; they
knew not until the flood came, and took them all away.—Matthew 24: 39.
Over and above all this, there were in the earth the gigantic Nephilim, the demons, materialized in the flesh, who, to the extent of their ability, must have been persecutors of Lantech and Noah. Then there were the “sons of God”, the lesser angels, who were induced by the Nephilim to marry “the daughters of men”, and who did so, and whose children, Gibborim, fleshly creatures with superior vitality, unauthorized by God, are in the traditions of every ancient people. In short, the whole world was a seething mass of corruption and is summed up in the Scriptures as follows:
And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all that they chose. And Jehovah said, My Spirit shall not strive with man for ever, for that he also is flesh: yet shall his days be a hundred and twenty years. The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them: the same were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.—Genesis 6:1-4, Am. Stan. Ver.
Noah Gets His Assignment
t After the Scriptures set forth these horrid conditions, they state, “But Noah found favor in the eyes of Jehovah,” “Noah was a righteous man, and blameless [margin] in his generations: Noah walked with God.” (Genesis 6: 8, 9, Am. Stan. Ver.) At this time, before the flood, Noah was at least 480 years old, and childless. He may not even have been married. Now notice what he was sub^ sequently asked to do.
In a world in which it had never rained, this man, over five centuries old, was asked to build a seaworthy structure three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high. Man has a natural measuring system in his own body. The ancient cubit was from elbow to finger tip, was not less than one and one-half feet, and so the ark was at least 450 feet long, or longer than the magnificent block-long Memorial Auditorium used at the Buffalo convention.
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