Avro Manhattan - The Vatican in World Politics [full]

THE VATICAN IN WORLD POLITICS by Avro Manhattan, Copyright 1949 by Gaer Associations, Inc.

(First published in England by C. A. Watts & Co., Limited, London)

Forward by Guy Emery Shipler

Preface

1. The Vatican in the Modern World

2. The Vatican State

3. The Vatican Power

4. Spiritual Totalitarianism in the Vatican

5. Religious Orders

6. The Vatican on World Unrest

7. Vatican Policy between the Two World Wars

8. Spain, the Catholic Church and the Civil War

9. Italy, the Vatican and Fascism

10. Germany, the Vatican and Hitler

11. The Vatican and World War II

12. Austria and the Vatican

13. Czechoslovakia and the Vatican

14. Poland and the Vatican

15. Belgium and the Vatican

16. France and the Vatican

17. Russia and the Vatican

18. The Vatican and the United States

19. The Vatican, Latin America, Japan, and China

20. Conclusion

The importance of this book cannot be exaggerated. Properly understood, it offers both a clue and a key to the painfully confused political situation that shrouds the world. No political event or circumstance can be evaluated without the knowledge of the Vatican's part in it. And no significant world political situation exists in which the Vatican does not play an important explicit or implicit part. As Glenn L. Archer, Executive Director of Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State, puts it, "this book comes to grips with the most vital social and political problems of our day. The author presents with singular clarity and without bias the conflicts between the Roman Church and the freedoms of democracy. " This book is valuable also in that it brings to light historical facts hitherto kept secret, many of them published here for the first time. The author coped with great difficulties when he attempted to compress into the confines of a single volume the great mass of material available. For that reason he had to leave out many valuable discussions. And some were omitted because the cases dealt with remained still unresolved. That is the reason no mention is to be found of the case of Archbishop Stepinac of Yugoslavia, and there is only a brief mention of the case of Cardinal Mindszenty of Hungarycases which at the time this book was published were on the schedule of the United Nations for investigation. But sufficient evidence is presented in other cases to enable the reader to evaluate current events and similar situations.

Guy Emery Shipler

June 1949

Within the last few decades, amid the rumblings and the ruins of two World Wars, the United States of America has emerged paramount and dynamic on the stage of global politics.

From across the great land mass of Eurasia, Russiathe bastion of Communism, equally dynamic in its struggle to build up new political structureis challengingly waiting for the tumbling of the old pattern of society, confident that time is on her side.

At the same time, the Catholic Church, seemingly preoccupied only with its religious tasks, is feverishly engaged in a race for the ultimate spiritual conquest of the world.

But whereas the exertions of the U. S. A. and of the U. S. S. R., are followed with growing apprehension, those of the Vatican are seldom scrutinized. Yet not a single event of importance that has contributed to the present chaotic state of affairs has occurred without the Vatican taking an active part in it.

The Catholic population of the world400 millionsis more numerous than that of the United States and Soviet Russia put together. When it is remembered that the concerted activities of this gigantic spiritual mass depend on the lips of a single man, the apathy of non-Catholic American should swiftly turn to keenest attention. His interest, furthermore, should increase when he is made aware that the United States is intimately involved in the attainment of both the immediate and the ultimate goals of the Vatican.

These goals are:

1. The annihilation of Communism and of Soviet Russia.

2. The spiritual conquest of the U. S. A.

3. The ultimate Catholicization of the world.

Do these goals seem fantastic?

Unfortunately they are neither speculation nor wild and idle dreams. They are as indisputable and as inextricably a part of contemporary history as the rise of Hitler, the defeat of Japan, the splitting of the atom, the existence of Communism. Indeed the inescapable alternative by which mankind today is confronted is not whether this will be the American or the Russian Century, but whether this might not after all become the Catholic Century.

Surely, then, the nature, aims and workings of the Catholic Church deserve some scrutiny. The American citizen, perturbed by the past, bewildered by the present and made increasingly anxious about the future, would do well to ponder the exertions of the Vatican in contemporary American and world politics. His destiny as well as the destiny of the United States, and indeed of mankind, has been and will continue to be profoundly affected by the activities of an institution which, although a church, is nonetheless as mighty a political power as the mightiest nation on the planet.

Avro Manhattan

London, 1949

To write about the influence exercised by religion in general, and by Christianity in particular, in the affairs of a century preoccupied with gigantic ethical, social, economic, and political problems, might seem at first a waste of time. For religion, although still deeply rooted in the modern world, is no longer a factor that can seriously compete with the more cogent forces of an economic and social nature by which our contemporary civilization is convulsed.

Religion has lost, and continues to lose, ground everywhere. The individual, as well as society, is far more concerned with weekly wages, the exploitation of raw materials, the financial budget, unemployment, the race towards perfecting the best tools of destruction and untrapping cosmic forces, and thousands of other problems of a practical nature.

Yet to assume as is generally the case, that religion is today relegated into the background whence it cannot to say serious extent influence the course of political events either in the domestic or international spheres, would be to maintain an illusion that does not correspond to actuality.

Especially is this so in the case of one particular brand of Christianitynamely "Catholicism". For Catholicism, notwithstanding its enormous loss in numbers and influence, is more alive and aggressive than ever, and exercises a greater influence on the national and international events which culminated in the First and Second World Wars than at first seems possible.

This is sustained, not by mere theoretical assertions, but by crude reality. Other religions or religious denominations continue to exercise a more or less great influence on modern society, but their ability to shape the course of events cannot in any way be compared with that of the Catholic Church.

This is due to several factors peculiar to the Catholic Church of which the most characteristic are the following:

1. (a) Catholicism's numerical strength, its nominal members, a few years after World War II, approximately 400,000,000.

(b) The fact that the bulk of Catholics live in the leading continentse. g., Europe and the Americas.

(c) The fact that the Catholic Church has Catholics in every corner of the world.

2. The spirit that moves the Catholic Church and which makes it act with the firm conviction that its fundamental mission is to convert the whole of mankind, not to Christianity, but to Catholicism.