The Catacombs - General Commentary

Which Fulton Sheen Did Leo Just Beatify?

Fri, 25 Sep 2026 11:39:49 +0000

Which Fulton Sheen Did Leo Just Beatify?
Sheen defended traditional Catholicism, embraced Vatican II, praised Teilhard, and opposed the SSPX. What does his beatification mean for Tradition?

Chris Jackson via Hiraeth in Exile | September 25, 2026

The Bishop Who Warned Catholics Away From Tradition

On September 21, 1978, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen wrote to a Catholic mother of eight children who was concerned about a friend attending Mass with the Society of St. Pius X. Sheen urged the woman to persuade her friend to leave the Society, warning that continued involvement could lead her family into schism and even heresy.

Then he offered an extraordinary defense of the postconciliar liturgical reform. The changes introduced under Paul VI, Sheen maintained, had merely changed the Mass from Latin into the vernacular.

That was essentially his explanation.

This was nine years after the promulgation of the new Roman Missal, from a bishop who had attended Vatican II and spent decades teaching Catholic theology. The letter, along with a remarkably forceful rebuttal by Dr. EuGene McKenzie of St. Marys, Kansas, appeared in the November 1978 issue of The Angelus. I republished the exchange in Hiraeth in July.

Yesterday, September 24, 2026, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle formally declared Sheen blessed at a ceremony in St. Louis, acting as Leo XIV’s representative. Tens of thousands gathered to honor the man whose extraordinary preaching had once brought Catholic doctrine into millions of American living rooms.

Both episodes belong to Sheen’s life.

The bishop who explained the Holy Sacrifice with such extraordinary eloquence was also the bishop who dismissed traditional Catholics’ objections to the new rite as though somebody had merely switched languages. The television evangelist who fearlessly denounced Communism later celebrated Vatican II as a revolution in the Church’s relationship with the modern world.

Which Sheen is being presented for our admiration? And what might his elevation accomplish for the postconciliar Church under Leo?

The answers require looking beyond the familiar blackboard and cape.

The Fulton Sheen Traditional Catholics Remember

There are good reasons traditional Catholics remain attached to Sheen.

Born in Illinois in 1895 and ordained in 1919, he pursued advanced philosophical and theological studies at Louvain before spending nearly a quarter-century teaching at the Catholic University of America. His national radio ministry began in 1930. By the 1950s, Life Is Worth Living had made him one of the most recognizable religious personalities in the United States, reaching an audience that reportedly approached thirty million.

Watch those broadcasts today and the contrast with contemporary Catholic media is almost painful.

Sheen spoke unapologetically about sin, judgment, the Cross, marriage, chastity, confession, the Blessed Virgin and the supernatural destiny of man. He treated Catholicism as a coherent account of reality. His preaching was intellectually serious without becoming impenetrable, accessible without surrendering doctrinal substance.

His books display much the same confidence. Three to Get Married offers a profoundly sacramental understanding of marriage. The World’s First Love communicates a rich Marian theology. Communism and the Conscience of the West, published in 1948, reflects his longstanding intellectual opposition to Marxist materialism.

His understanding of the Mass was particularly striking. In a preface subsequently recalled by Dr. McKenzie, Sheen connected the altar and Communion rail to the primacy of sacrifice. The Eucharist was never merely a religious gathering with consecrated refreshments. Its sacrificial nature explained the very architecture of Catholic worship.

He also took priestly spirituality seriously. His commitment to a daily Holy Hour was characteristic of an intensely Eucharistic devotional life.

And he was an effective missionary.

For all his celebrity, Sheen understood the importance of conversion and dedicated enormous energy to supporting foreign missions. He directed the American Society for the Propagation of the Faith from 1950 to 1966, raising awareness and resources for Catholics in poorer countries. That concern for the missions would later become central to his participation in Vatican II.

There is considerable substance here. Anyone seeking an explanation for Sheen’s enduring appeal can find it without sentimentalizing the man or pretending that everything he said was correct.

His later enthusiasm for the Council is therefore a serious theological question precisely because his earlier Catholic formation was so substantial.

When John XXIII Opened the Doors

By the Council’s third session in 1964, Sheen had become one of its enthusiastic public interpreters.

In an interview conducted by Benedictine journalist Fr. Placid Jordan, Sheen praised John XXIII for opening a Church he described as having been closed to the world for centuries. He portrayed the Council as a revolutionary redistribution of intellectual and ecclesiastical initiative, celebrated its challenge to entrenched assumptions, and likened the experience to a new Pentecost.

He had no doubt that its momentum would continue after the bishops returned home.

His language was revealing.

Sheen believed the Council had liberated missionary initiative, opened Catholics to non-Western civilizations, strengthened episcopal collegiality and encouraged a Church too accustomed to administering existing institutions to rediscover its missionary vocation.

These were sincerely held convictions, and they reflected genuine concerns. Wealthy dioceses could become complacent. Missionary territories needed resources. Bishops had responsibilities beyond constructing buildings and counting parishioners.

But there is a striking historical irony in Sheen’s account.

Here was a man whose radio broadcasts had reached millions since 1930, whose television programs drew an audience most Catholic evangelists today could scarcely imagine, and whose missionary organization operated across the world.

Yet he was describing the preconciliar Church as though she had spent centuries behind locked doors.

His own career disproved the caricature.

Pius XI had hardly been indifferent to worldwide evangelization. Pius XII had repeatedly addressed the Church’s missionary obligations. Catholic missionaries were establishing churches, schools, hospitals and charitable institutions throughout the developing world long before John XXIII announced an aggiornamento.

There was legitimate room to reform ecclesiastical administration. But Sheen’s enthusiasm risked treating changes in pastoral method as though they represented an unprecedented discovery of the Church’s mission.

For traditional Catholics, that distinction remains central. The Church may improve how she communicates the deposit of faith. She cannot discover, after nineteen centuries, that her previous understanding of her relationship with the world was fundamentally mistaken.

The Optimism Survives the First Signs of Disaster

By January 1970, Sheen had considerably more evidence with which to evaluate the Council’s implementation.

He appeared on William F. Buckley Jr.’s Firing Line shortly after leaving the Diocese of Rochester. Buckley pressed him about the turmoil in Catholicism, declining religious practice and the apparent unwillingness of ecclesiastical authorities to discipline public dissent.

Sheen defended the Council as the means by which the Church had begun relating herself more effectively to the modern world. When Buckley raised the decline in Mass attendance, Sheen suggested that the Council’s effects would require considerable time to mature.

That exchange captures the difficulty with Sheen’s conciliar optimism.

By 1970, the liturgical upheaval was no longer a prospective reform described in carefully drafted conciliar documents. The Roman rite had been extensively rewritten. Catholic institutions were experiencing widespread confusion. Priests and religious were leaving their vocations. Traditional practices were disappearing.

Sheen continued to believe that the new ecclesiastical orientation would eventually produce renewal.

It is possible for a pastor to remain hopeful amid serious difficulties. Indeed, despair would have been a far greater spiritual failure.

But hope is no substitute for an accurate diagnosis.

At what point should a bishop ask whether the anticipated renewal is failing because the reform itself contains fundamental defects?

At what point does defending the Council become an impediment to examining its consequences?

Sheen’s confidence in the reform deserves particular scrutiny because his theological instincts on so many other matters remained recognizably traditional.

The Ecumenical Bishop of Rochester

Sheen’s three years as Bishop of Rochester, from 1966 to 1969, offer a revealing glimpse of how his conciliar enthusiasm translated into pastoral practice.

He took a personal interest in proposals for cooperation between St. Bernard’s Catholic Seminary and neighboring Protestant theological institutions, including Colgate Rochester and the Episcopal Bexley Hall. Plans explored shared educational facilities and broader collaboration while preserving the institutions’ distinct identities. The proposed relocation did not materialize during his tenure; negotiations stalled and St. Bernard’s did not move to the shared campus until 1981.

Sheen also participated prominently in interreligious encounters. In February 1967 he addressed an interfaith gathering at a Rochester synagogue. A year later, he received a brotherhood award during Sabbath services at Mount Neboh Synagogue in New York and addressed the congregation from its pulpit. Contemporary Jewish press coverage emphasized the significance of that encounter for Catholic-Jewish relations.

The traditional objection to these developments requires precision.

Speaking to Jewish or Protestant audiences is hardly, by itself, a betrayal of Catholic doctrine. Sheen’s entire broadcasting career depended upon communicating with non-Catholics, frequently with remarkable success.

The question concerns the theological assumptions governing such encounters.

Pius XI’s 1928 encyclical Mortalium Animos insisted that genuine Christian unity could never be achieved by treating incompatible confessions as equally legitimate expressions of Christ’s Church. Catholic charity and the desire for conversion had to remain inseparable from the Church’s claim to possess the fullness of revealed truth.

Vatican II introduced a substantially different public vocabulary concerning religious dialogue and the relationship between Catholics and non-Catholics. Sheen welcomed that change.

His critics must demonstrate where his particular conduct compromised Catholic doctrine rather than simply noting that he participated in an interreligious event. His defenders, however, cannot pretend that the ecclesiology behind these innovations presents no difficulty when measured against the earlier magisterium.

Sheen embodied that unresolved tension.

The Teilhard Problem

One episode in Sheen’s intellectual career presents an even sharper challenge.

In his 1967 book Footprints in a Darkened Forest, Sheen predicted that, once disputes surrounding Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s terminology had subsided, the Jesuit might be regarded alongside St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Ávila as a major spiritual genius of the twentieth century.

This was remarkable praise, especially coming from a bishop with Sheen’s theological education.

Five years earlier, the Holy Office had issued a formal warning concerning Teilhard’s writings. It identified serious doctrinal errors and ambiguities, and urged bishops, religious superiors and seminary rectors to protect the faithful, particularly the young, from their dangers. The warning was reaffirmed in 1981.

Sheen’s enthusiastic assessment does not establish that he endorsed every proposition in Teilhard’s evolutionary theology. Nevertheless, comparing a thinker whose writings had attracted such a serious Roman warning to two great Doctors of mystical theology was an extraordinary exercise of episcopal judgment.

The problem reaches beyond one unfortunate literary prediction.

The traditional Catholic understanding of mystical union presupposes clear distinctions between nature and grace, Creator and creature, and the supernatural destiny bestowed upon man through Christ. Teilhard’s speculative system raised precisely the kinds of questions that required doctrinal caution.

Sheen knew that tradition intimately.

His willingness to promote Teilhard so enthusiastically suggests that his openness to postconciliar theological experimentation was much more substantial than a preference for pastoral friendliness or vernacular worship.

[...]

Does Beatification Settle the Theological Questions?

There remains the question of what Catholics should conclude from Sheen’s beatification itself.

The Vatican recognized an extraordinary recovery attributed to his intercession. The reported miracle concerned James Fulton Engstrom, an infant born in 2010 who survived after an extended period without detectable cardiac activity. Its investigation formed part of the cause approved under Francis.

Traditional Catholics should neither dismiss such testimony merely because they disagree with Sheen’s later theological positions nor treat the recognition as a blanket endorsement of everything he wrote.

Beatification permits public veneration under specified conditions. It does not declare every theological opinion of the blessed irreproachable. Sheen’s praise for Teilhard, his understanding of ecumenism, his enthusiasm for Vatican II and his assertions concerning the SSPX remain legitimate subjects of historical and theological examination.

For Catholics who question the authority of the postconciliar hierarchy, the process raises additional ecclesiological questions. Yet even within the ordinary distinction between beatification and canonization, yesterday’s ceremony does not resolve the doctrinal disputes surrounding Sheen’s later career.

Nor should criticism become a judgment upon his eternal destiny.

A bishop may possess extraordinary virtues, help bring souls to Christ and nevertheless make serious theological mistakes. The historical evidence concerning Sheen is sufficiently substantial that neither hagiography nor wholesale denunciation does him justice.

There is also a lesson here for those who remember the preconciliar Church primarily through its most charismatic public figures.

Fulton Sheen was a formidable defender of Catholic morality, an eloquent teacher of the supernatural life and a pioneering evangelist. He was also an enthusiastic participant in the conciliar transformation whose consequences traditional Catholics continue to condemn.

He lived long enough to witness the beginning of the postconciliar crisis, but died before many of its subsequent controversies developed. His optimism cannot simply be dismissed as dishonesty. Neither should it be treated as prophetic merely because he sincerely believed the promised renewal would eventually arrive.

The Blackboard Cannot Answer for the Council

Fulton Sheen’s life refuses to fit neatly into either the traditionalist or postconciliar portrait.

The old broadcasts remain compelling. His theological explanations can still instruct Catholics. His devotion to the Eucharist, missionary generosity and remarkable capacity to communicate the faith deserve serious attention.

But so do the disturbing features of his later career.

His celebration of Vatican II was unambiguous. His praise for Teilhard was extravagant. His defense of the new liturgy in 1978 was factually inadequate, and his warning against the SSPX dismissed concerns that traditional Catholics had compelling reasons to take seriously.

Yesterday’s ceremony cannot erase any of that.

Leo may sincerely regard Sheen as an exemplary evangelist whose television programs helped shape his own childhood faith. Others will use the new blessed’s legacy to vindicate Vatican II and challenge contemporary resistance to the postconciliar hierarchy.

For traditional Catholics, the obligation remains to examine the whole man against the perennial faith rather than allowing either affection or ecclesiastical ceremony to settle questions that require theological answers.

The great irony is that Sheen himself spent decades teaching his audience to think clearly about Catholic doctrine.

We should extend him the courtesy of taking that instruction seriously—even when it leads us to question Fulton Sheen.

Noah's Ark investigation enters new phase with drilling near Ararat

Fri, 25 Sep 2026 11:27:04 +0000

Noah's Ark investigation enters new phase with drilling near Ararat
‘When we are done, university curricula will need to be rewritten, and Darwinism will be dismantled,’ Lauren Witzke declared.

Remains of Noah's Ark with boat shaped rock formation at the spot near Mt. Ararat where it is believed that the ark rested in Dogubeyazit, Turkey
MehmetO/Shutterstock

(LifeSiteNews) — Researchers have begun drilling into a boat-shaped rock and mineral formation in the mountains of eastern Turkey believed by some to be the resting place of Noah’s Ark.

“Good morning from the outer rims of Noah’s ark,” the project’s marketing and fundraising director, Christian activist Lauren Witzke, wrote Tuesday on X while sharing aerial video footage of drilling on the Durupinar Formation site. “Core drilling has begun and the big bang evolutionists are already in damage control mode.”

Witzke works with Noah’s Ark Scans, which has said they are the “only team executing advanced underground scans” of the geological site.

According to the research team, “A preliminary technical report is expected in the coming weeks” that will “rank the strongest anomalies, refine the picture of deeper geology, and pinpoint where targeted core drilling has the best chance of answering the central question — moving the project from remote sensing to physical evidence.”

The group says the purpose of its efforts is to “determine whether the physical evidence can withstand scrutiny” and whether there is a “purely natural geological explanation” for the ark-shaped formation.

Witzke said their endeavor has been approved by the Turkish government and is being overseen by local universities, with “some of the most brilliant minds in the world” participating.

“When we are done, university curricula will need to be rewritten, and Darwinism will be dismantled,” Witzke declared. “This is the place where creation began anew.”

In 1959, a Turkish army captain discovered the large, boat-shaped formation embedded in the ground about 18 miles south of Mount Ararat, a location that lines up with the resting place of Noah’s Ark, according to Sacred Scripture. The book of Genesis states, “The ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.” (Gen 8:4).

Researchers have since pointed out that the length of the formation exactly matches the length of Noah’s Ark as described in Genesis: 300 cubits long, or 515 feet.

Andrew Jones, a researcher at Noah’s Ark Scans, told GB News earlier this year that relatively new radar scans uncovered parallel cavities underneath the formation that are patterned like corridors in a ship.

“What’s interesting is that these voids are lining up below the ground – and they’re not just random,” he said.

These “corridors” lead to a central cavity that Jones calls “the atrium,” according to the New York Post.

In addition, thermal imaging shows a “ship-shaped hull still preserved deep in the soil,” Jones told GB News. “We have a team that is designing a robotic, remote-controlled device that could go down inside the holes and explore the tunnels.”

The research team at Noah’s Ark Scans pointed to what they say is further evidence that the boat-shaped formation indicates the resting place of Noah’s Ark. Soil samples within the ark-shaped formation show there is three times more organic matter and 38% more potassium within the structure than outside it.

“These changes are consistent with rotting wood,” the research team said.

The North American Martyrs and the Myth of the Noble Savage

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:18:04 +0000

The North American Martyrs and the Myth of the Noble Savage

Paul Krause
source

slightly adapted
September 26 is the feast day of St. Isaac Jogues in the pre-55 Calendar (0ct. 19 in the N.O. calendar). He was a Jesuit missionary working and living among the Mohawk Indians in the 1630s and 1640s before being tortured and beheaded on October 18, 1646. Few Catholics, especially Catholics in America, even know of the story of the North American Martyrs. Why?
In an age when we are meant to weep and cry over the tragedy of the Native Americans due to European settlement and Christianization, none are told to weep over the Europeans who were brutally butchered at the hands of the indigenous populations that routinely warred and killed each other prior to the arrival of European settlers. The Mayans were active sodomites, and some of their surviving artwork celebrates sodomite lust and violence. The Aztecs engaged in human sacrifice, cannibalism, and a slavery far worse than the Atlantic slave trade. The mound-building Native Americans in the interior river basins of North America also engaged in ritualistic human and child sacrifice. These were hardly noble and peaceful people before the arrival of Europeans.
The defenders of these horrors argue that the Christian (predominately Catholic) sources overexaggerated the brutality of the natives to justify conquest. This is typical among the Christ-hating intellectual establishment. Dismiss all the evidence that doesn’t conform to your presuppositional ideology. If facts don’t fit the theory, dismiss the facts as fake.
It is important for Catholics to have the memory of the North American martyrs for several reasons.
First is that the story of the Catholic martyrs suffering from the hands of the Native Americans dispel any illusion that the natives were peaceful victims of supposed European aggression. On the contrary, it was often native aggression toward Europeans that sparked the wars between the settlers and Native Americans. Why weep for Native Americans when holy saints were flayed alive and had their skulls crushed by tomahawks? Eradicate that memory and the tragedy of the Native Americans can be weaponized for contemporary political goals.
Second is that the story of the Catholic martyrs shows that America’s founding, her true roots, rest not in the Protestant settlement of New England or the American Constitution but in Christ’s holy work through His Church. The seed of America is bathed in the blood and labor of Christ’s ministers and martyrs and not abstract political documents which make no reference to Christ, His Gospel, or His Church, whatever benefits may have come from those documents.
Equally bound up with the remembrance of St. Isaac Jogues, and the other North American martyrs: St. René Goupil, St. Jean de Lalande, St. Antoine Daniel, St. Jean de Brébeuf, St. Noël Chabanel, St. Charles Garnier, and St. Gabriel Lalemant, is the inspirational faith that they exhibited—especially among the Jesuit missionaries, considering the state of the Jesuit order in North America today. St. Isaac Jogues, for instance, reportedly said upon his missionary odyssey, “I go, but I shall never come back again.”
St. René Goupil, a lay assistant for St. Isaac Jogues, was the first to be tortured and killed, in 1642. He, along with the martyred missionary priest, began to convert the Huron to Christianity, which enhanced Mohawk animosity toward them (because, contrary to the myth of peaceful Native American relations, the Huron and Mohawk hated each other and were bitter enemies; the Mohawks used the Hurons’ conversion as a pretext for war).
When the two missionaries entered Mohawk villages, they were immediately captured without provocation, tortured, and St. René Goupil was butchered by several strikes to the head with a tomahawk. St. Isaac Jogues was ransomed by Dutch traders afterward but was undeterred by native brutality and continued his missionary efforts. What a heroic faith! When he pressed into the wilderness frontier in 1646 to continue his missionary efforts, he was once again tortured. He was then killed alongside St. Jean de Lalande and their bodies were desecrated and thrown into the Mohawk River.
The Native Americans who had converted to Catholicism later captured the killers of the French missionaries. Condemned to death, one of the killers, much like the Good Thief, converted and was baptized and took the name of Isaac Jogues before he, too, went to stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ.
Culture is bound up with memory. The memory of the saints is one of the hallmarks of Catholic culture and keeps the culture Christian. The loss of the memory of the saints leads to the deracination of culture and the poverty of memory. Why are these heroic, martyred saints not remembered or widely known among the North American faithful? The answer is that there is a war on Christianity in the form of neglection and forgetfulness; and this is the subtle killer of Christian culture, the neglect of memory and consciousness that passes on stories from generation to generation.
Moreover, Catholics who venerate the Native Americans who killed such brave ministers of Christ and His Gospel are the unwitting pawns of the new cultural vandalism. The attempt to impose onto the Catholic faithful the memory of Catholic atrocities against the Natives while ignoring the Native killing of Europeans and Catholic missionaries inverts the celebratory heart of Catholics. Rather than celebrate the holy martyrs who died for Christ, Catholics are subtly forced to mourn those who waged a war against Christ and His Church.
But the war against Christianity and Christian memory doesn’t stop with the idolization of the myth of the noble savage. Some go as far as to politicize the issue—as always—and now claim that the decline of the Native Americans caused “climate change.” This ideological propaganda aims at destroying any Christian veneration of the Christianization of the New World because Christianity, which is directly tied to North American settlement, “caused climate change.” If we are to remember Christianization in the New World, it is something to be understood as bad.
The stories of the martyred saints who engaged in the true “errand into the wilderness” remain an inspiration for all God-fearing Catholics on this continent. It is also a window into the realities of Native American society in contrast to the myths we propagate about them. Lastly, the story of the martyred saints in the North American wilderness reveal to us the true roots of American civilization and culture: Christianity, the Catholic Church, and the missionary heart.
The martyred saints courageously crossed boundaries and learned new languages and sat—side by side—with people different than they, people with injured souls in need of the treatment only Christ can offer. The North American martyrs are the real heroes of the faith who embarked on a true errand into the wilderness to try and serve and save souls in desperate need of God. Their efforts to lovingly convert the Native Americans to the Church of Christ ought not be forgotten. They continue to show us the true, and only, path forward in a culture as barren as the seventeenth century and in need of the seeds of life and love.

The Radio Priest Maligned...but Not Forgotten

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 04:03:05 +0000

BEFORE THE COLORS FADE
Father Coughlin: The Radio Priest

The Sunday afternoon broadcasts of Rev. Charles E. Coughlin, once described as the "voice of God,"

were avidly followed by a radio audience of thirty to fifty million Americans during the Thirties.

By Robert S. Gallagher

October 1972

About 1935, anno Domini, the Reverend Charles E. Coughlin, pastor of the Shrine of the Little Flower in Royal Oak, Michigan, was perhaps the most beloved and most hated, the most respected and most feared man in the United States. His Sunday afternoon broadcasts during the thirties were avidly followed by a radio audience of between thirty and fifty million Americans, and his weekly newspaper, Social Justice, published by his massive National Union for Social Justice, claimed a paid circulation of well over a million. Social justice was the message he preached, and when he translated this into specific issues, thousands of Coughlmites marched at his command to the telegraph office to notify their congressmen of their leader’s wishes. His denunciation of plans to have the United States join the World Court in 1935 brought 20,000 telegrams to the Senate—which rejected the plans.
His bishop once described him as “the voice of God,” and indeed, to many Americans his almost hypnotizing voice, during the confusing gloom of the Depression, seemed to proffer confidence, direction, and trust. His closest associates were charmed by his warm graciousness, his courtly manner, his infectious humor, his way with an anecdote; in a classroom, from the primary level to the university, he exhibited the rare gift of an inspired teacher.
Others—and they, too, numbered m the millions—were dismayed at the “spectacle” of a Roman Catholic priest “involved” in politics; they were suspicious of his motives and alarmed by his evident power; they read sinister implications into his utterances; they were stunned and shocked when “the radio priest” ripped off his clerical collar and denounced the President as a “liar"; they considered him, among other things, a vicious demagogue.
Coughlin backed Franklin D. Roosevelt (“It is either Roosevelt or ruin, ” he proclaimed) until he decided that there was nothing new about the New Deal. Convinced that the Roosevelt administration was “soft” on Communism, he launched an abortive third party in 1936, which suffered, along with Roosevelt ‘s other opponents, ignominious defeat. In the years just prior to World War II he became increasingly isolationist and anti-Communist in his pronouncements. He was against military aid to Russia, and he opposed the entry of the United States into the war; his radio audience dwindled, and after Pearl Harbor the unabated hostility of his newspaper toward the war effort led to its
suppression by the U.S. Department of Justice. Coughlin continued as a parish priest until he retired from the Shrine in 1966. Today, at eighty-one, he leads a quiet but active life in the comfortably sprawling, one-story home he designed and built for himself (“My third in two years, ” he proudly explains. “I’m a good builder. If I hadn’t become a priest, I think I would have enjoyed being a carpenter”). It is in Birmingham, a few miles from the Shrine of the Little Flower, where he is listed as pastor emeritus. His daily routine is relaxed but fixed. He washes his car, attends his geraniums, and works at occasional books—theologically oriented volumes that he publishes and distributes through his own mailing list. His private chapel, in which he celebrates the Mass every morning ("Ifind that I say Mass now more fervently, with more devotion"), is situated between his spacious bedroom and a small study, where he displays alabaster busts of popes Leo XIII and Pius XI flanking a silver-framed photograph of his favorite bishop and personal mentor, the late Michael J. Gallagher. He no longer makes many public appearances. He avoids the press and rigorously shuns any more controversial exposure. For the past three decades he has refrained from discussing his own version of his tumultuous public career until recently he consented to talk for the historical record with AMERICAN HERITAGE .

Not many men—certainly few priests in this country—have managed such turbulent careers as yours. Looking back, can you explain this?

I was the world’s greatest oddity as a clergyman—back in 1926, especially. Most Catholics at that time believed that a priest had no business in politics. He shouldn’t mention anything dealing with taxation or pollution or war, you know. That’s a silly notion. After all, Christ excoriated the tax gatherers and cleansed the temple of the money changers who were debasing the currency then.

And you felt that a priest had a right to get involved? A right?

The clergy had a duty to do it, not a right, a duty, even at the expense of life. You see, man is composed of both body and soul, and you have to take care of the total man if you’re going to be a priest. Now today the tendency is to take care of the total body, and to hell with the soul. Before my time, everything was total soul. But I couldn’t, I wouldn’t have done what I did if I hadn’t had the support of my dear friend Michael GaIlagher, the bishop of Detroit. Bishop Gallagher believed as I believed, and Pope Leo XIII believed before him, and especially Pope Pius XI. Pius XI and Michael Gallagher and Joe Schrembs, he was the bishop of Cleveland, they were closest friends.

You felt, then, that you had the backing of the Church? Of the pope himself?

I believed that, even though I can’t prove it today. I probably shouldn’t say it, because if there was one thing I learned during my career, it is that you shouldn’t say what you can’t prove. But I knew, I knew what I was doing. I knew I had the authorization of the Church, because Pius XI said in 1931 that too long we have waited to intervene in these matters of taxation and carelessness over the poor and the aged and the oppressed. He was reaffirming what Leo XIII spelled out in his encyclical Rerum Novarum , issued in 1891, the year I was born: the Christian concept of social justice. I think Pius XI summed up this concept when he stated that it is practically impossible for a man to save his immortal soul when he is unjustly denied the goods of this world. And the first good, the most important asset, is freedom. That gift comes from God. No state can grant it, and any state that tries to deprive men of it does so at the risk of its own life. The rest—and that includes most of the social concerns that Americans are now becoming agitated about -flows naturally from this premise. So you see, everything I did and everything I said was an attempt - and I’d be the first to admit, a highly fallible attempt- to promote and exemplify the ideals of social justice spelled out by these two popes.

This is the context in which you view your work?

Yes. But there is one other thing. I am a man under authority. I believe in it, I have tried to live it, I would gladly die for it. I didn’t start out that way, though. I was born in Hamilton, Ontario. My father was an American. I was the only child, and an only child, when he is a boy, is always spoiled by his mother, so they tell me. When my grandfather came to live with us, he insisted - and he had more money than he needed—that I go to a strict boarding school for my high-school education. And it was strict. The school operated under the Holy Ghost definition of education, which was, if you recall it, teach me goodness first, discipline second, and then a poor third comes knowledge. We had the goodness preached to us and taught to us, and it was very wonderful. But the discipline was something out of this world. One night at dinner my first year, my table was headed by a philosophy senior who had been a semi-pro boxer. I was simply impertinent. He said something to me, and I told him to go to the devil, and he walked around and just yanked me out of my chair and floored me with one punch. That was the rule. And when I got up I had to apologize to the whole table. Frankly, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. In one instant, I learned discipline.

When you finished college you had a vocational choice between politics, sociology, and the priesthood. Is that correct?

In the professorial sense I suppose I did. I was extremely fortunate during my undergraduate years at the University of Toronto to study under several of the most brilliant teachers in the British Empire. One was James Mavor, the famous Scottish professor of political economy, who taught, among others, John Maynard Keynes. As a result I guess you could say I became a Keynesian in economics at an early age. Another was Dr. Daniel Gushing, the priest-philosopher and good friend of the Belgian prelate, Cardinal Mercier, who had helped Leo XIII write Rerum Novarum . I loved Dr. Gushing, and through him I came to love and revere Leo III.

Did these men influence you toward the priesthood?

I would say, probably. The clergy I was interested in were the Basilians, secular priests who lived in a community and were dedicated to teaching, which is what I did for six years after my ordination in 1916. When the pope disbanded these associations we were given the choice of joining a religious congregation or order, or we could remain secular priests. I chose the second option, and on February 26, 1923, I was incardinated into the diocese of Detroit by Bishop Gallagher.

You acquired an early reputation as a pulpit orator. Did this help launch your career as the “radio priest”?

No, that was purely accidental. In 1923 a close friend of mine, Dick Richards, who was the chief distributor of Pontiacs in Michigan, bought the local radio station, WJR. The studio was on the top floor of Detroit’s Book Cadillac [now Sheridan-Cadillac] Hotel, and I remember we used to have to climb an iron ladder to get into it. Well, you know radio was a pretty haphazard operation in those days. You went on the air when you could find somebody to do or say something. And occasionally I’d go over to the station and play the piano a little, or read something from Thomas Moore or Keats or Shelley or Tennyson.

Was this before you became the pastor of the Shrine of the Little Flower?

That’s right. By this time I’d become the assistant secretary to the bishop, that is, his personal secretary. I handled Michael Gallagher’s correspondence, not Bishop GaIlagher’s. Well, in 1925 he gave me the Royal Oak appointment. There was no church or anything, just a common agreement that the growth prospect of this area north of the city looked promising. He suggested I go buy some land. With what? I asked. Oh, he said, I’ll cosign a note at the bank for you. That was the way parishes were established in those days. The bishop had complete confidence in his selectee. So I found a nice site out on Woodward Avenue and bought it. Then I needed about fifty thousand dollars to build a church, and I started looking around, backward instead of forward, as I should have done, and I discovered I had only twenty-eight families, thirteen of which were mixed marriages. It wasn’t too bad when the husband was Catholic, but when the wife was the Catholic I couldn’t expect much money. To make matters worse, soon after we started building I learned that the Ku Klux Klan was about to get a court injunction to stop the construction, something about a flaw in the deed. Well, Michigan had one of those odd laws to the effect that no injunction could be issued once the roof was on. It was the start of a three-day holiday, so I rounded up a good bunch of carpenters, and we worked around the clock, by torchlight at night, and when the court opened Tuesday morning the church was topped off, and the Klan couldn’t do anything about it legally. But the money was running out, and I seemed to be losing ground every Sunday. I didn’t know what to do.

So you went on the radio?

I went to my friends for help. There were four of us who spent a lot of time together. Dick Richards, who owned WJR, Lawrence Fisher, the general manager for many years of General Motors’ Cadillac Division, and Eddie Rickenbacker. They used to call us the Evil Four.

Why?

It was just a nickname. Well, anyway, I was telling them about my troubles one night, and they suggested I try broadcasting. You go on the air, they insisted, and just tell some of the stories you’re always telling us, and you’ll be a big hit and get all the help you need. Well, I couldn’t tell those stories on the air, you know. They weren’t offcolor stories or anything. They were the kind of stories that men tell when they’re together. But they kept insisting that I try broadcasting, and that’s how it started, almost accidentally.

Your first broadcast, a program for children entitled “The Golden Hour,” was on October 5, 1926. The show gradually increased in popularity and was eventually earned over the Columbia Broadcasting System network. Then, on January 12, 1930, you abruptly changed the format and attacked Bolshevism. Why?

I had been doing this in the church prior to that date. I was concerned about the tendency on the part of some Democrats at that time to send aid to Russia. I didn’t want the recognition of Russia until Russia recognized God. A government based on the quicksands of atheism can’t be successful, because atheism saps authority. That was my contention then, and I still think I was right. You know, I don’t know one people in all of history that have suffered as much as the Russians. The Irish, the Poles, the Jews, you name them. No one has ever suffered like the Russians, first under the czars, with the silent acquiescence of their bishops, and then under the Bolsheviks. Let us never forget that between 1917, when the revolution started, and 1923 about twenty-one million Russians were slaughtered, according to the estimates of our own State Department.

Why did CBS force you off the network in April, 1942?

I was stepping on the toes of money, money, money, and I was getting too close. … I’ve had a wonderful course in finance, which isn’t the same as banking. I don’t like talking about it, because the minute you do, you’re anti this and that and the other thing, you know. At any rate, there was a tremendous amount of pressure being put on my friend Bill Paley [chairman of the board of CBS] to get rid of me. He had graciously arranged for me to go on CBS, and I owed him a debt of gratitude, and I couldn’t see why he should be made to suffer because of the controversy around me. So when the network began demanding changes in my scripts, I was glad to get out. Besides, Bill taught me how to organize my own network, which I did.

Your broadcasts were soon being earned over a “network” of twenty-six independent stations from Maine to Colorado, at a cost of fourteen thousand dollars a week. Was this paid for through contributions to the Radio League of the Little Flower?

The Radio League grew out of the letters I received in the early days, and I said, well, these people want to support me, and it costs a lot of money. Hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars eventually. As the program expanded to other stations, they began charging me regular commercial rates, which was right.

Your first direct involvement in domestic politics occurred in October, 1931, when you denounced the Depression policies of the Hoover administration—is that correct?

That’s right, I had come to realize, and I was dismayed by this knowledge, that according to the laws of the United States at that time, the government was empowered to spend thousands of dollars on the pigs in Alabama and Georgia but not one cent for the relief of the people of those states. I tried to tell that to my congregation, and I used to say to them, how terribly unkind the American people are and how unskilled they are in the practical knowledge of running a country. I told them it was unfair to blame Mr. Hoover; after all, I used to say, he’s only the Executive. Let me say this about Mr. Hoover. There never was a finer, more stalwart American gentleman than he was. He was also one of the best-educated Presidents we’ve ever had, with the possible exception of Woodrow Wilson, who had the education but lacked the judgment of Mr. Hoover. Well, President Hoover was probably the most harnessed Executive we’ve ever had, at a time when we needed one with more elasticity in his actions. Later on, years later, when he was living in New York at the Waldorf-Astoria, I went over to tender my heartfelt sympathies and apologies for anything I might have said while he was President, and he said, “Young man, I don’t blame you. I was the symbol of our nation, and the nation needed castigation. As you know now, it wasn’t my fault, but I would have been a cad"—that is the word he used—"if I had said, don’t blame me, blame Congress.” That was quite a heroic statement.

Then, early in 1952, you became an enthusiastic supporter of New York’s Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt for President.

I liked Mr. Roosevelt, and I think he liked me, up to a point. He was the governor, and we had a mutual friend, Jimmy Walker, who was mayor of New York City. Jimmy had a flair for appointing competent people, who loved money, to the management of the city’s affairs. Well, the investigation of the Walker administration by Judge [Samuel] Seabury was becoming embarrassing to Mr. Roosevelt, so one day the governor said to me, “You’re on the air. I wouldn’t mind a little bit of help, to tell the truth.” I reminded him that Jimmy was a friend, and he said, “Hell, he’s friends with everybody. He’s friends with you, he’s friends with the pope, he’s friends with Antichrist.”

Did you consider yourself an active Roosevelt supporter?

I would say that my “impromptu” speech at the 1932 Democratic convention in Chicago swung a lot of votes to his candidacy. In fact, I think I was the last speaker before the nominations began. It was supposed to be extemporaneous and all that. “Hi there, Father. Why don’t you come on up to the microphone and say a few words,” but it was all, you know, carefully staged.

And Governor Roosevelt asked for your help in the Walker case?

He made it clear to me that he had to get rid of James, one way or the other. Seabury had finally submitted the charges against Walker to the governor, and Mr. Roosevelt had announced that he was going to give the mayor a personal hearing, so he invited me to come to Albany and sit in. The governor was concerned about the reaction of Catholic voters to his handling of the Walker case. So I sat in on the Albany hearing. It was a masterful performance by the governor, during which Mayor Walker embarrassed himself right out of office, and after it was over I came out, and Mr. Roosevelt was gesticulating to me, and I was smiling back, and the reporters could see that I was on his side.

And afterward Mayor Walker resigned and left the country. But before the Albany hearing you had said at a Communion breakfast in New York that the charges against Walker were part of a Communist plot to undermine respect for government. Were you shocked when these charges turned out to be true?

I said the accusations were too preposterous to believe. When they turned out to be true, I was shocked to death. I think most Americans were.

President Roosevelt appointed your friend Mayor Frank Murphy, of Detroit, to the governor-generalship of the Philippines. Some people have claimed that the appointment was a direct result of your support, while others, including Mrs. Roosevelt and Postmaster General James A. Parley, have denied it. What did happen?

I saw Mr. Roosevelt after he won the nomination, and he told me that he was very grateful for what I had done. “Padre,” he said—he always called me Padre—"you can have any damned thing you want after this election.” I said that there’s not much I want, I can’t take much; but, I said, I want to tell you a little bit of history that you might not know. I said that South America was supposed to be a Catholic continent. Whether or not they were good or bad Catholics, they did go under the flag of Catholicity. And I told Mr. Roosevelt that it was a curious phenomenon that all the European nations were represented by Catholic ambassadors but not the United States. You know, I told him, that they call us “ yanquis ” down there, even in Mexico; and the word didn’t translate as “Yankee.” It had come to mean, in political slang, high Freemasons. So I said to him, listen, get smart, because the day will come when we’re going to need hemispheric solidarity—I was for that even then—so why don’t you send a Catholic ambassador down there. And he said, “Hell, I never thought of that. It’s a good idea.” And he asked me to get him a list of qualified Catholics. I got a list together, and in December, after he had been elected, I went over to New York to see him. “Padre,” he said, “terrible disappointment. I can’t go through with that.” I asked him why, and he told me that he had promised to make Cordell Hull the new Secretary of State, and Hull had already told certain people that they were going to be ambassadors down there. But, said Mr. Roosevelt, you can have anything else you want. So I said, what about the Philippines, and I suggested Frank Murphy, who had served my first Mass back in 1916 and had a lot on the ball. “You got it,” he said, “he’s it.”

Who introduced you to Roosevelt?

That’s a hard thing to say. I can’t remember the time, from the time he was governor of New York, that I didn’t know him. Later on my good friend Joe Kennedy, the father of the President, had me get very close to Mr. Roosevelt. That was before the President made Joe the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The recurring theme of your broadcasts during this period was monetary reform. You charged that the Depression was a result of trying to maintain an impractical gold standard and insisted that the United States had a choice, as you put it, between revaluation and Christianity or repudiation and Bolshevism. How does your position appear in retrospect?

I wanted silver remonetized, of course, because I knew that there wasn’t enough gold to go around. You see, there just isn’t enough precious metal in the world to make it the basis of real wealth. If you study the history of money, as I have, and it goes back four thousand years before Christ, when all they had was gold and silver, you come to realize how international finance has been monopolized over the centuries by a small group of men who have had the power to manipulate the internal affairs of nations.

You spent a lot of radio time lecturing your audience on currency, didn ‘t you?

When I went to a junior school in Canada, about the equivalent of the eighth grade here, we were taught money. In fact, it was taught along with geography. I remember how the teacher used to give each of us the name of a ship, and we had to take that ship from the port of Montreal all the way to Hong Kong, and we had to learn why the price of the Canadian dollar was different in all the various ports of the world- and why that price fluctuated from day to day. Well, economic geography just isn’t taught in this country, and Americans just don’t know a thing about money, and it’s a hopeless situation trying to teach them anything, because we have the best dollar, so they still think—although it’s off twenty-one cents today in Zurich.

You still keep in touch, don’t you?

I’m sort of a bug on that situation, and I like to keep right abreast ofthat. One of the first things I get, at 4:30 A.M. every day, is the market price of the dollar in Switzerland.

When Al Smith announced that he was “for gold dollars as against baloney dollars,” you accused him, on your broadcast of November 26, 1933, of being a paid stooge of the banking interests. What prompted you to attack the most prominent Catholic politician in the nation?

Mr. Roosevelt.

Would you say that historians have generally underestimated the strength, the closeness of your relationship with F. D. R.?

He wasn’t the greatest President we’ve ever had. I knew it, and so did many of his associates. But I liked the man. People say I hated him, but I never did. I loved the man. When he was away from that darned desk of his and that long cigarette thing and sitting down with some of us or playing cards, there was no more gracious person that ever lived. You know, even then I wouldn’t let anyone else attack Mr. Roosevelt, and I still won’t. Isn’t that funny? He wasn’t a malicious man, either, don’t ever think that. I don’t think there was a bit of malice in the man’s make-up. But I think he was unfortunate in the choice of some of his associates. A lot of them were square pegs, and I told him one time, I’ll bet you wouldn’t invite some of them down here for dinner.

In the middle of your campaign to have silver remonetized—I believe it was in April, 1934—Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau released, ostensibly with the President’s approval, a list of persons and organizations with substantial investments in silver. Prominent on the list, withßve hundred thousand ounces, was your Radio League. Who do you think was really responsible for this action?

I blame Morgenthau.

But surely Roosevelt knew about it?

I wouldn’t say that. Many things happened under the Roosevelt regime that I happen to know he didn’t know, and after they’d happened he’d tell me. Serious things, too. He’s only the President, I used to say, and I make the same statement today about Pope Paul. He’s only the pope. Seriously, heads of organizations are not always to blame for the affairs of their organizations. Now take that silver-list thing. Sure, that hurt me at the time. I didn’t even know about that investment until the list appeared. But when you’re the head of an organization you’ve got to be a man and take responsibility.

Wasn’t that about the time that a prominent congressman threatened to kick you from the Capitol to the White House m your clerical garb “with all the silver in your pockets”?

No, I think that was later—a couple of years later.

When you began your 1934-35 broadcast season in September you asked your listeners to write and tell you if they wanted you to continue criticizing the New Deal. The results of that private poll were never revealed.

Don’t ask me something like that, because I can’t remember. All I remember is that I was getting many millions of letters. I had enough to do keeping up with the approximately two hundred clerks I had handling all this correspondence. Don’t forget, during all of this, my first function was still parish priest. Eventually I had seven assistant priests, as the Shrine grew over the years from the twenty-eight families I started with to the more than 3,500 we had when I retired. Even when the assistants came I was still the pastor, and I knew what my duties were. I kept my parlor hours in the evening, even during the most hectic periods, so that my parishioners could stop by and talk about whatever they wanted to talk about. You know, about 99 per cent of the marital problems that came up could be solved if I could just get one of them to laugh. My parlor hours, that’s the only thing I really miss in retirement.

Well, the listener poll must have been satisfactory, because you went on attacking certain New Deal programs, particularly the contributions of the “Dram Trusters, ” as you called them. Then, on November 11, '934, you announced the formation of the National Union for Social Justice, complete with a sixteen-pomt platform to accomplish the “ever-elusive ideal of social justice” as spelled out m the papal encyclicals. Did you view this organization as a sort of people’s lobby along the lines of the groups now headed by Ralph Nader and John Gardner?

Well, it was sort of an independent lobby. Really, at that time, I think I was a party man; I think that, whether or not I knew it, I was a Democrat, if you want to put it that way, whether or not I’d analyzed the whole meaning of the word democracy and all its implications. At any rate I was persuaded by a lot of gentlemen, important gentlemen around the country, to get up an organization for the purposes of indoctrinating the people with the principles of social justice. That was it. It wasn’t political, although you can’t prove it wasn’t political. If you’re indoctrinating anybody today, you’re in politics.

At various times the National Union claimed as many as five million members. How many paying members did you have?

Nobody actually paid anything. What they did was buy the National Union’s weekly newspaper, Social Justice . At its peak we had over 1,200,000 paid subscribers.

Without going all through the sixteen points would you briefly define the term ” social justice”?

Well, there are two definitions of man. Man is a rational animal. That definition came all the way from Aristotle and Socrates and those people, who were animal ninetenths of the time and rational one-tenth. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. Man is rational social animal, because, first of all, man is only a half a human being; the other half is a woman. No one is a complete totality. Secondly, no man is an island, as John Donne pointed out; no one is a Robinson Crusoe. Whatever each man’s specialty is, he needs someone else to cut his hair, to grow his wheat, to sail his ships. To all, different gifts, see. We need one another. So social justice is a little bit different from personal justice. Social justice is the justice that one human being or one group of human beings should have toward another group of human beings, who make contributions to the well-being of total society, without which society itself would crumble.

The controversy begins when one tries to translate these general ideals into specific programs?

Yes, and how many dollars each gets.

In 1935 you became more and more critical of the Roosevelt administration.

I was very disappointed with the lack of genuine monetary reform, and I said so. And some of the relief programs just weren’t working well, and I said so. And I told Mr. Roosevelt, too. As fine as Mr. Roosevelt was, he was a very poor businessman, one of the worst that ever sat in the White House. His own father, when writing his will, didn’t leave him a nickel; he left the management of the estate in charge of somebody else, you know that, don’t you? Well, I didn’t blame Mr. Roosevelt for a lot of these policies. It was the fault of some of the men around him, but I couldn’t go around being critical of his underlings. The President is the head of the organization and must take the responsibility.

Do you still feel that way?

I was pretty young. It was a young man’s mistake, personalizing those attacks. I wouldn’t stand for anyone attacking any President today. Since this upheaval against authority in the world today, I’m so fearful of these attacks on the President, I don’t want to see his authority eroded.

Because of your huge following and your criticism of the New Deal, there was much speculation in 1935 about you and Senator Huey Long combining to form a third party. Was such a plan in the works?

All that speculation was absolutely false. I never discussed a third party with Long, or much of anything else, for that matter. I didn’t know the senator that well. I met him several times in social situations, you know, with a bunch of senators or something. The only time I ever saw him alone was when he was sick in his Washington hotel, and Mrs. Garner, the wife of the Vice President, asked me to pay him a visit. We drove over in her car, and she waited outside while I went in.

May I ask what was discussed at that meeting?

Why, his health, of course. I was only in there about ten minutes. It was just a social call, and I wouldn’t have gone at all if Mrs. Garner hadn’t asked me to.

Was there one thing in particular, one issue or one incident, that caused you to break with the Roosevelt administration?

There was, but I can’t talk about the specific details because there are some people living that can’t stand this thing. But the fact was that some evidence had come to the attention of my bishop which indicated that certain officials in the Roosevelt administration were helping the Communist cause overseas. Well, Bishop Gallagher called me to his home one day, it was the summer of 1935, and he said, “Now, Charles, you’re through supporting the New Deal and Mr. Roosevelt,” and he showed me this evidence.

Did you take this evidence to the President?

I’m getting to that. You see, prior to this time, I had gotten quite close to Mr. Roosevelt through Joe Kennedy. We used to go down to his family home in Poughkeepsie- we always referred to it as Poughkeepsie, Hyde Park was a sort of dirty word—about every two weeks and visit Mr. Roosevelt. Well, after Michael Gallagher showed me this material I stopped going, and Mr. Roosevelt noticed that I seemed to be avoiding him, so one night, at the beginning of September, 1935, I got a call from Joe Kennedy to the effect that the “Boss” wanted to see me. I knew what it was all about, so I checked with my bishop, and he said it was all right to go.

The “Boss” was Mr. Roosevelt?

Yeah. So at any rate I got on a train and rode all night and finally got to Albany about four in the morning. As I got off the train a newsboy came up, shouting the headline about Huey Long’s death. He had been shot a few days before, but he had just died. I bought a paper, and then Joe drove up in his Rolls Royce—he drove his own car in those days—and we drove back to Mr. Roosevelt’s house. Well, there was nobody awake, of course, so we went up to a little kitchen and made ourselves some breakfast. I guess the President got up about six—he was always an early riser—and he called to us from the top of the stairs. You know, he really walked on his arms. He had the strongest arms and shoulders of any man I ever saw. Well, I ran up the stairs to lend him my shoulder, and I still had the morning newspaper under my arm. He noticed it, and I showed him the headline and said, “Hey, your friend is dead." He got the news of Long's death from 6me.

What was the President’s reaction?

He blanched. He was shocked. You see, he liked Huey Long. Lots of people did. Everybody liked his buffoonery, a special kind of buffoonery he had that caused people to laugh. It made people like him as a person, quite apart from his politics or philosophy.

What happened then?

We went down to the President’s little breakfast nook and talked for a while, and finally he asked why I hadn’t been around much. I sort of hemmed and hawed a bit, so finally he told Joe to “go look at the pigs—he didn’t have any pigs, of course; it was just a little joke he used to make. Joe laughed and went out, and then I showed the President the evidence that Michael Gallagher had received. We talked for six hours that day.

What did the President say about it?

He just kept saying, “It can’t be true” and “I don’t believe it.” I told him that his plan to recognize Russia diplomatically and to extend credit to the Soviets was all right, because it was obvious that no nation could go bankrupt without affecting all the other nations in the world. But this evidence, the evidence I showed him, this was just too much.

Did the President ever look into the matter?

I don’t really know. What I gave him was a copy of a public document, and I told him, when you get back to Washington, you have the ways and means of finding out the truth of the matter. But it was never mentioned again.

Did you part friends?

He wanted Joe and me to stay for dinner, but we had already made plans to drive up to the home of a friend of ours in Great Barrington. On the way up I told Joe most of the story, and when we got there Kennedy asked the butler to bring him some writing paper, and he sat down —I remember he pushed some dishes aside, the table had been set for dinner—and wrote out his resignation as chairman of the SEC.

That was on September 10, 1935?

It was the day after Huey Long died, yes.

And that fall you announced a “hunting season” on Congress, meaning that your National Union for Social Justice was going to become involved in the Congressional primaries the next year.

Yes.

The candidates endorsed by the National Union won twelve of twenty-four contests in Pennsylvania and thirteen of eighteen in Ohio. Did you consider this part of the struggle for social and economic reform that you had hoped would be undertaken by the Roosevelt administration?

That’sright. We tried to get it through the House; that was the aim, but it didn’t work.

On June I0, 1936, you abruptly announced to your listeners the formation of a Union Party ticket headed by Representative William Lemke of North Dakota. “It is not pleasant for me who coined the phrase ‘Roosevelt or ruin'—a phrase based upon promises—to voice such passionate words, “you explained. “But I am constrained to admit that ‘Roosevelt and ruin ' is the order of the day because the moneychangers have not been driven from the temple. ” How do you feel about that campaign today?

It was a horrible mistake. I was persuaded to do that by a lot of nincompoops.

Why do you say that?

That was no way to indoctrinate people.

Did you consult with the other officials of the National Union for Social Justice before you nominated “Liberty Bill” Lemke?

No, no one was consulted. I think it was a meeting with Lemke one day, either in New York or here, and I said, “You’d make a pretty good President yourself. You’ve got the right ideas about finance and the right ideas about farming.” We had, who was this boy, [Secretary of Agriculture Henry] Wallace, I think, pontificating about agriculture and those things at that time, see. I guess he was a theorist. So I said to Lemke, “At least, you’d make a pretty good farmer-President.” But the campaign was a horrible mistake.

For the Union Party effort you joined forces with the California old-age-pension advocate, Dr. Francis Townsend, and Gerald L. K. Smith, who had succeeded the late Huey Long as leader of the Share-Our-Wealth movement.

I was supposed to be an associate of Townsend and Smith. I met Townsend once in my life for about five minutes in Cleveland and Smith for about three minutes before the same rally. I didn’t know anything about him. Same with Townsend. That was the thing then, for these persons to attach themselves to you, and then do something to defame you.

The Cleveland rally you mentioned, that was the Townsendite convention in mid-July at which you dramatically took off your coat and clerical collar and brought the ten thousand people in the audience to their feet by denouncing “Franklin Double-crossing Roosevelt” as a “liar” and “a great betrayer. ” Tour gesture with the collar, was that/or oratorical effect?

It was about 105 degrees in the shade.

Did you regret having called the President a liar?

Yes, yes, yes, yes, and I said so publicly.

Your bishop, Michael Gallagher, was en route at that time to visit Pius XI. The New York Times quoted him, on July 27, to the effect that his trip to Rome had nothing to do with your political activities. What was the purpose of his trip?

To discuss me—favorably. He and Bishop Schrembs went together. But he couldn’t afford to tell state secrets to the reporters like that.

But when Bishop Gallagher returned to this country he told the press that he considered Roosevelt the best candidate.

So did I.

You did? Can I ask you a personal question? Whom did you vote for in 1936?

I couldn’t tell you now. I really can’t remember.

On October 8, 1936, Eugenia Cardinal Pacelli, the Papal Secretary of State and subsequently Pius xn, came to the United States. The purpose of his extended tour was never announced, but his arrival started the press speculating that he was investigating you.

Cardinal Pacelli was no friend of mine, no friend of Michael Gallagher’s. When he came over to discuss me with Mr. Roosevelt he came out to have a meeting of the bishops in Cleveland. So, all the bishops had to appear at this meeting, and Pacelli, well, he wouldn’t talk to either Michael Gallagher or Joe Schrembs. He scorned them. So the bishop came back and he said, “Boy, have I got news for you. You’re finished.” And when Pius xi died in 1939, I was.

Were you worried when you learned that the Papal Secretary of State was, as you put it, “no friend” of yours?

No, I was weary. You can get weary doing this sort of thing. You get tired. You wish you lived in Portugal for about six months. To get away from it.

The 1936 Presidential campaign had more than its share of vituperation. According to my notes, even your friend Joe Kennedy turned against you and called you a disgrace to the cloth.

Joe said that? Oh, no, no, no. Whoever quoted him as saying that just isn’t telling the truth. No, that’s not true. Of course the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] and that group down there, who I think came next door to hating me, they’d say anything to harm me.

I’m sorry, I was wrong. That quote was attributed to John B. Kelly, the Democratic chairman of Philadelphia.

I knew it wasn’t Joe Kennedy. He wouldn’t have said such a thing. Not that we always agreed on everything. Sometimes he’d tell me I was a jackass, but he’d never call me a disgrace.

In the course ojyour career you were called everything from a demagogue to a Fascist to an anti-Semite. How did these accusations affect you?

It never bothered me. I’ve often tried to analyze that psychologically. It hurt for the time being, for the first ten minutes. It’s different when you’re married, you have to take those things into consideration because of your wife and family. When you’re unmarried it doesn’t bother you. I’m talking psychologically. It’s water on a duck’s back, as it were. And because you’re not seeking money, and it doesn’t affect your pocketbook, that’s the second reason. And thirdly, and it’s the major reason, it’s a gross untruth, and any day I wanted to, I could pull the strings from under them.

One of the high-water marks of the Union Party’s 1936 campaign was a rally that drew forty-two thousand people to Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium on August 16, 1936. Just before you collapsed from heat prostration you stated that you would quit the radio if Lemke didn’t receive at least nine million votes.

I wish I had collapsed sooner. It was a rash promise.

Lemke didn’t receive a million voles.

Why, he didn’t even get 900,000. The whole thing was a horrible mistake. I was glad when it was over.

Did the campaign end your relationship with Roosevelt?

Oh, no. I continued to see him until the war started, not as frequently, of course. But you see, I genuinely liked the man, and I think he enjoyed me. His wife didn’t.

Do you want to talk about Eleanor Roosevelt?

No, that’s not fair. She leaned too far to the left to suit me, that’s all.

Despite your campaign promise, you returned to the airwaves in 1937 but things were never the same again, were they?

Not after the death [January 20, 1937] of Bishop GaIlagher, no. I was very close to Michael Gallagher. I loved that man. He was probably one of the great theologians in the country.

You didn’t enjoy the same type of relationship with his succesArchbishop Edward Mooney?

I’ll tell you the story about that, but there is one thing you have to remember: Bishop Mooney was a real gentleman, a good gentleman. Well, years before—Michael Gallagher told me this—years before, Mooney had been the president of the Cleveland Latin School, and Joe Schrembs was the bishop there. Now in those days Michael was a Sinn Feiner, as most of the Irish bishops were, and he was invited down to Cleveland by the local Sinn Fein society to make a speech. And when he got there, his throat hurt so much he couldn’t talk. So he told Bishop Schrembs about his problem, and Schrembs told him not to worry, he’d get someone to read it for him. So Schrembs called in Father Mooney and asked him to deliver the speech, and Mooney refused. He told Schrembs that he didn’t believe in Sinn Fein. “What,” said Schrembs, “you’re an Irishman, and you don’t believe in freedom for Ireland? Then get out of my diocese.” And he suspended Mooney on the spot. Well, Mooney had powerful friends, and he eventually made his way to the American College in Rome, where he was consecrated a bishop. Well, he became archbishop after Michael Gallagher died, and one day he had me downtown to discuss something with me, ‘twasn’t very pleasant. I said, “Bishop, let’s get this thing straight. You are here to be the hatchetman for Pius XH, and I want you to do the job, because I stand back of him, if he told me to jump off this window. Don’t be afraid. I hold no animosity toward you. You’re doing your job, and I stand back of authority.” There were tears in his eyes. He didn’t have much courage, he didn’t have much fortitude, but he was a gentleman.

Mooney wanted you to submit your radio scripts for review, didn ‘t he?

He did it in a clumsy way. He appointed nine young priests who supervised my script on a Wednesday evening prior to the Sunday broadcast. And the nine of them, I don’t know if any of them knew anything about political economy. I told Mooney, I’m not disclaiming their intelligence, but they haven’t had enough experience. I knew it wasn’t going to last.

In the late 1930 ‘s you became increasingly isolationist in your foreign-policy statements on the radio and m your weekly newspaper, Social Justice.

As I said, my generation considered the next world war a foregone conclusion after the Treaty of Versailles. I was most interested in stopping World War n; Mr. Roosevelt wasn’t. He thought that this had to be done. He had been sold a package that Nazism was the most damnable thing on the face of the earth, and therefore, if he joined Communism to fight Nazism, it would be all right to get rid of it. And I was trying to sell the proposition that, now don’t distinguish between the two of them too much. Marxism is the word you’ve got to get in your vocabulary. Nazism is only the left wing, Communism is only the right wing [ sic ] of the same bird of prey. Let them fight it out between themselves, and afterward we’ll all go in for the kill. I still think I was right.

Did you consider yourself an isolationist?

An isolationist? No, I was the same as Mr. Hoover, I was the same as Charles Lindbergh, I was the same as a hundred other prominent Americans I could mention who weren’t being attacked because they weren’t getting publicity. I didn’t want anybody to help Russia or Germany. I wanted them to fight it out themselves. Because I still have hope that Russia will come back to Christianity, will come back to normalcy. But because I came right out and said this, I was accused of being pro-Germany. How could I have been for this pup Hitler? There was never anything worse in the mystical body of Satan than this fellow Hitler.

Others accused you of being an Anglophobe.

No I’m not! Some of my best friends live over in Essex and Sussex in England. I’ve been against some of the English government over there, but if you can’t be against a political party without being anti the whole country, what’s wrong?

But after the war started m 1939, to be against the British government was widely interpreted in this country as being proGerman, wasn’t it?

Well, now, there were some Jews in this country that started this, especially the ACLU people. At that time the Jews were all for aid to Russia, don’t forget, and I wasn’t going for that, so to minimize my effect on that, they said I was anti-Semite. That was always a good ploy. This thing about my being pro-German, I was just as much against the Nazis, because I knew well enough that Nazi was a bad word, Communist was a bad word, Mussolini’s Fascist was a bad word. The right word was Marxist. I’ve always used the generic word, Marxist. We’re getting a form of Marxism in this country here. I don’t know what they’re going to call it. They’re not going to call it ommunism or Nazism, but one day they’ll wake up and coin a name for it here. All the Marxist principles are here now, materialism, materialistic concept of life, and all this sort of stuff. It’s in the works.

What about the charge that you are anti-Semitic?

I’m certainly not against the Jews. After all, Christ, if he’s got any blood in his veins, was a Jew. And he has Mary’s blood in his veins, anyway, we Catholics believe. He was conceived by the Holy Ghost, but he has Mary’s blood in his veins. The Twelve Apostles were Jews, and I would say—it might shock you to hear this—that of all the popes we’ve had, about 30 per cent were Jews, with Jewish blood in their veins. There’s nothing wrong with the Jews, any more than there’s anything wrong with the Irish. I always resented the use of the term anti-Semitic because, after all, the Jews are only a very small portion of the Semite race, the smallest, in fact. So I’m not antiSemitic. I am anti some Jews. Some of the international bankers I attacked were Jews, but I attacked them, not because they were Jews, but because they were international bankers who took good American money that should have been invested in this country and used it to set up the revolution in Russia in 1917. I’m certainly anti- ACLU for all the dirty things they do all the time. They’re never on the right side of the decent Jewish things, even. My Jewish friends are against them. They think they’re the shanty Irish of their race. But the minute I talk about a Jew who happens to be a misdemeanor Jew, therefore I’m anti-Semite. That’s not … I’ve talked about more Irishmen. I’m not anti-Irish.

Would you describe yourself as anti-Zionist?

I’m not anti-Zionist, but I don’t go for them. These ionists aren’t well-liked people anywhere. They’re like the I.R.A. [Irish Republican Army] over in Ireland. They’re not nice things to bring up, but you can’t throw an umbrella over a whole nationality and say that there are no buncos in that nationality.

I asked that because in July, 1938, Social Justice published the now discredited Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was alleged to give details of a centimes-old Jewish conspiracy to control the world.

How I came in touch with these Protocols to begin with, don’t ask me. I must have had two hundred copies of them sent to me from all over the world. I had them in every language. Why? I don’t know. Who told them to send them? I don’t know. I was on the air, and I was a popular character, that’s about all. I got them, and I think I’ve read everything about the Protocols , and I think I’ve studied them as much as any living American my age. First of all, I don’t know the certain truth about them; I don’t think anybody does. I couldn’t prove they’re false, I couldn’t prove they’re genuine.

You said in your introduction to the Protocols in the newspaper that it wasn’t important whether or not they were genuine, only that the zionists should disavow them.

Yes, but as I said, nobody knows the certain truth about them. How old the Protocols are, I can’t get back farther than the sixteenth century, for sure. Who circulated them first, I don’t know. But it’s such a mystery, and there’s such contradictions to it, that the safest thing to do about the Protocols is forget you ever read them, and try to be a Christian for ten minutes, because the Christian attitude toward all these things, even toward Communism, and there’s no doubt who wrote the Manifesto , is this: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

There seems to be some confusion about your exact relationship with Social Justice. Did you actually control the newspaper?

You mean financially? Yes, I did financially.

No, I meant editorial control.

I’m supposed to have, but there were some weeks when I was away. I wasn’t even there to be consulted about what was going in the paper. But it was in my name, and when we were attacked for doing this and doing that and the other thing, because I was the publisher—sure, it’s mine. That’s the only way a man could do. There were many, many things that appeared in Social Justice that I wouldn’t know anything about until maybe two or three weeks afterward.

Some people considered the newspaper a scurrilous publication for doing such things as printing a pink-tinted photograph of Eleanor Roosevelt. Did you know about that before it appeared?

No, no, I didn’t.

On October 21, 1939, the paper demanded the impeachment of Resident Roosevelt. Did you have a hand in this?

I had none. But what’s the use of saying I didn’t have any hand in it? I was the owner of Social Justice . I was the publisher of Social Justice .

Were you ever concerned about the enormous influence you seemed to have over your audience?
How did this power affect you?

I thoroughly believed in what I was doing, and I tried to be honest. I’ve spent my whole life defending the things I believed in. And I’ve always been loyal to my country. I’d die for it. That’s not poetry with me. I’ve never forgotten Cardinal Mercier’s old statement that he who lacks patriotism can never say he loves God. You’ve got to love your country, but love doesn’t mean you have to be full of adulation. You have to love it and try to correct the wrongs.

As your views on the approaching war became more and more controversial some of the radio stations on your network, like WOR in New York, began finding excuses to drop your program. Then, late in 1939 the National Association of Broadcasters adopted a new code that prohibited the sale of air time to “controversial” speakers. You were the primary target of the code. Was this what finally ended your radio career?

They used that instrumentality, too. But what really put me off the air was the committee of young priests that Mooney established to censor my broadcasts. It became an impossibility to carry on. One of the priests told me once that they would take a pencil and just indiscriminately knock a page out. At one point I was writing enough for four hours of air time so they’d have something to take out. So finally it got down to the point where I called up Archbishop Mooney, and I said, “Archbishop, I want you to know, you’ve got down to the point now where I can’t get up and recite the last half of the Hail Mary.” So I said to him, “Come on right out and say so.” And he said, “No, I can’t. They won’t let me say so. They want you to quit.” “Oh,” I said, “they do. That’s the first time you told me. Fine. I’m through.”

By “they” did he mean the review committee?

No, Rome. Pius XII was no friend of mine.

Were there any hard feelings between you and Mooney?

Of course not. He used to come out to the Shrine once and a while, for confirmations or something like that. When he came out he was always gracious, and I always received him graciously, and I always had a bottle of his favorite Bristol Cream, and we always had a drink together. In fact, during his last illness, in the last year and a half of his life, I was one of the few persons who used to go down and see him. He knew that I was, of all things, an obedient priest.

The final act, in a sense, occurred in March, 1942, when U.S. Attorney General Francis Riddle, presumably at the urging of President Roosevelt, asked the Post Office to “suspend or revoke” the second-class mailing privilege of Social Justice and ordered a federal grand jury investigation.

That was a horrible thing. They came up to the Shrine with Army trucks and took all my files away, a million names of the mailing list, all the papers and the letters, wagonload after wagonload, and I’ve never received them back. I guess they junked them in Washington someplace. And they took about twelve of my secretaries down to Washington. I challenged them publicly, “Bring me down and ask me the questions.” And they wouldn’t accept it. Why they had these lip readers in the dining rooms down there, and my secretaries would go to dinner, and they’d tell them the next day in court what they said at dinner. I was supposed to have been on the side of the Nazis, I was supposed to have gone to Germany, I was supposed to have seen Hitler. All nonsense.

Biddle wrote later that the administration was trying to avoid putting a priest on trial for sedition.

Biddle couldn’t have tried me for anything. If Biddle had ever tried me for sedition, he would have been tried for a lot of other things, because I had attorneys stronger and smarter than Biddle. He knew perfectly well that if he had ever tried me, a case would be brought against him personally that would have put him in limbo forever.
That’s no way to fight. Those young girls didn’t know anything about me. Bring me down there, and put the questions to me. I’ll answer any question truthfully. But Biddle was only doing as he was instructed to do, we don’t know by whom.

You don’t think Roosevelt knew about it?

He knew about it to begin with, yes.

My understanding is that Biddle finally sent an emissary, a man named Leo Crowley, to talk to Archbishop Mooney, who then called you on May 1, 1942, and threatened defrockment unless you agreed to be silent for the duration of the war.

No, no, no. There’s no truth in that. Mooney and I were good friends all the way through. And I never heard of Crowley in my life till the whole thing was over. He certainly never saw me. You know, you can’t condemn a man without giving him a hearing, which they never gave me. But they didn’t want to give me a hearing. They just wanted to smear me.

Did you meet the archbishop on May 1?

No. There was no confrontation of any kind.

How did you feel when the public part of your career ended at that time?

I felt relieved.

In retrospect, Father, what do you consider your best accomplishments?

First of all, I was the first man in the clergy to bring social justice to the minds of the public, even to indoctrinate them that such a thing existed. And in doing so, I was the first man of the cloth to let them know that the clergy has a duty, not a right, to do this.

Would you consider yourself to have been in the vanguard of today ‘s activist clergy, and what is your opinion of them?

Well, I’m a priest, and I certainly was an activist. Today’s activists? Some of them are wonderful; some of them I don’t agree with. I certainly can’t go along with the destruction of property. I don’t believe in going to these barbaric excesses. You see, you can’t have disorder to get your point across. There are two things you can’t throw aside when you’re in public life. You must be a gentleman. Once in a while you slip, as I’ve done myself. And always you must be a Christian, and remember that you’re not representing yourself, you’re representing your church.

Is there a specific accomplishment that you take special pride in?

There are dozens of things, some of them probably more important to me than they would be to the public. But what about unionism? Don’t forget that the UAW [United Auto Workers] was started in my kitchen down at the Shrine of the Little Flower. The early leaders of that union used to meet with me for breakfast each Sunday after the nine o’clock Mass, and we’d talk about it. They didn’t have a strong enough organization, and I was trying to teach them to fight politically.

The UAW presents social justice awards every year. Is this your influence?

Oh, sure. I spent many an hour and many thousands of dollars helping get that thing going.

Henry Ford was a friend of yours. How did he react to your efforts to organize the auto workers?

Henry Ford was all for it. He was only afraid that the wrong people would get control. “Get the wrong people, they’ll turn it on me,” he used to say. “Get the right people, they’ll work with me.”

Yet at the end of his life, Henry Ford was identified as an archfoe of organized labor.

Oh, yes. He was “anti-Semite,” he was “antiunion,” he was “a selfish old moneybags.” People didn’t know Henry Ford. There are so many people maligned. When you get to be my age, you look back at so many people who were maligned. It’s so easy to condemn when you don’t know the circumstances. And so many lies get themselves written down as gospel truth. And another thing. When you get to be my age, you don’t really care any more. I mean, what’s the use of contradicting them?

Father, one last question. If you had your life to live over again, is there anything you would do differently?

There is nothing, I would do the same.

Catholic funerals for two Freemasons stopped by Church authorities - Canon 1184 cited

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 18:10:52 +0000

Catholic funerals for two Freemasons stopped by Church authorities

Two planned Catholic funerals for Freemasons were stopped in

Italy after diocesan authorities applied canon law.

ROME (LifeSiteNews) — Two planned Catholic funerals for Freemasons were stopped in Italy after diocesan authorities applied canon law.

On August 7 and 8, two Catholic bishops in Rome and in the Diocese of Ventimiglia-Sanremo stopped planned church funerals for two men publicly identified as Freemasons after their affiliations became known shortly before the ceremonies. In Rome, Cardinal Baldassarre Reina, Vicar General of the Pope for the Diocese of Rome, denied authorization for the funeral Mass of musician Bruno Battisti D’Amario after the Grand Orient of Italy publicly identified him as a prominent member. The following day, Bishop Antonio Suetta of Ventimiglia-Sanremo canceled the scheduled church funeral of Mario Tarducci in Camporosso, citing Canon 1184 of the Code of Canon Law and the precedent of the Roman case.
The Roman case concerned Bruno Battisti D’Amario, an 88-year-old respected classical guitarist and professor who died August 5. He was also closely associated with composer Ennio Morricone and performed guitar for several famous Italian Western film soundtracks. His funeral had been scheduled for August 7 at Santa Maria in Montesanto, commonly known as the “Church of the Artists.” The church was even due to be specially open for the ceremony during the August closure.
The Grand Orient of Italy (GOI) — the national leading Masonic lodge — published a public tribute identifying Battisti D’Amario as a “master brother” and stating that he founded the Roman Giuseppe Leti lodge, composed the GOI’s official anthem, and held senior positions within the organization. The GOI also said he had twice served as president of the regional council of Worshipful Masters in Lazio and as a councilor of the order. The public tribute was later deleted.

Church officials said they did not know about Battisti D’Amario’s Masonic affiliation when the funeral was arranged. Father Fabrizio Maria Gatta initially told La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana that the funeral had been requested by the daughter and that “God’s mercy goes beyond our categories, and it is not for us to run blood tests on someone who has died.”

After the Italian newspaper raised questions and presented the GOI statement identifying the musician as a Mason, he said the information was new to him and that he would alert Bishop Antonio Staglianò, rector of Rome’s Basilica of Santa Maria.
“I have called Cardinal Reina, who is the Vicar General of His Holiness for the Diocese of Rome and my direct superior, and after consulting the legal office of the Diocese of Rome he could do nothing other than deny authorization for the funeral Mass,” Staglianò told La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana. “Nothing prevents the artist from receiving Masses for the repose of his soul after the burial.”
The following day, the same issue arose in Camporosso in the Diocese of Ventimiglia-Sanremo. Bishop Setta learned only after the funeral had already been arranged that Tarducci belonged to a Masonic lodge and served as Worshipful Master. The information came from a local newspaper and public funeral notices.
On August 8, the diocese published an official statement declaring that Suetta discussed the matter with the parish priest and the deceased’s family and sought further instructions that could not be obtained within the limited time available. Faced with the simultaneous case in Rome, the bishop adopted the same indications given there by Cardinal Reina and ordered the planned funeral at St. Mark’s parish church not to take place.

The diocese explicitly cited Canon 1184, which states that ecclesiastical funerals are to be denied to those who, without showing signs of repentance before death, are “notoriously apostate, heretical or schismatic” or are “other manifest sinners” whose funerals would cause public scandal.

Müller’s Marching Orders to Trad Inc.: A Year of Coordinated Silence

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 13:00:08 +0000

While this news from Anthony Stine is based on an anonymous source — which should be treated with some caution until confirmed — the article below nonetheless makes a compelling case that the meeting did in fact take place, judging at least from Michael Matt's own conduct. - The Catacombs

Selling Us Out Over Sagrantino: Müller’s Marching Orders to Trad Inc.
Anthony Stine’s source, TLM Ryan’s public reversal, Taylor Marshall’s deleted warning,
and Michael Matt’s own words expose a year of coordinated silence sold to traditional Catholics as prudence

Chris Jackson via Hiraeth in Exile [Emphasis - The Catacombs] | Jul 22, 2026

On April 27, 2025, Michael Matt looked into the camera and announced what would happen if the conclave produced another Francis.

“We will resist Francis II to his face.”

He spoke with the confidence of a veteran editor who had survived twelve years of Francis and learned the lesson. Matt reminded viewers that he had resisted Francis “honorably,” with “no regrets,” because resistance belonged to the duty of loyal Catholic sons. Days later, after quoting Cardinal Gerhard Müller’s declaration that Catholics owe no obedience to false doctrine, Matt supplied the conclusion himself:

“So there are the marching orders.”

The line now reads like prophecy with a taste for black comedy.

A little more than a year later, Anthony Stine reported that a highly placed source had described an actual meeting in Rome between Cardinal Müller and prominent traditional Catholic media figures. According to Stine, Müller urged them to stop attacking the newly elected Leo XIV—to surrender, soften their coverage, and give the new pope room.

Stine said his source specifically identified Taylor Marshall and unnamed others as having changed course after Müller’s intervention. Stine added that, as far as he knew, no money changed hands. The apparent inducement was the hope that friendly treatment of Leo might bring relief for the traditional Latin Mass.

An anonymous source deserves careful handling. There is no recording of the alleged meeting, no verified guest list, no admission from Müller, and no confession from the media figures said to have attended. Anyone presenting the report as a fully proved fact would outrun the evidence.

Fortunately, the case no longer rests upon that report alone.

Michael Matt recorded himself before, during, and after the conclave. His own broadcasts trace the whole transformation: the promise to resist; the instant search for encouraging rumors; the elevation of papal clothing and temperament over the new pope’s announced program; the insistence that Leo was changing; the ridicule of journalists who continued examining his record; the public discussion of a possible conclave “quid pro quo”; the demand that Catholics “cool it”; and the premature declaration that the revolution had already lost.

These videos turn an anonymous allegation into something far more serious. They reveal that Matt publicly adopted the exact strategy Stine’s source attributed to Müller, whether the strategy arrived through a private meeting, informal conversations in Rome, or Matt’s own eagerness to believe that Vatican access could purchase a reprieve.

The currency appears to have been influence, respectability, access, and hope for liturgical concessions. Cash would almost have made the arrangement less embarrassing.

Before the Conclave: “We Will Resist”

Matt’s pre-conclave position was admirably clear.

Francis had exposed the revolution. A successor continuing Francis’s program would have to be opposed. The laity possessed an active responsibility beyond prayer. Catholic loyalty required resistance when Roman authorities promoted error. Matt said he had done exactly that throughout the Francis years and felt no regret.

His analysis before the conclave also recognized the institutional facts. Francis had created most of the electors. The conclave was intensely political. The Holy Ghost did not mechanically select the pope. External forces, alliances, personalities, and ecclesiastical factions could influence the result. Criticism of a pope therefore could never be dismissed as criticism of the Holy Ghost.

Matt’s April 2025 programs contained none of the timid uncertainty that would appear after Robert Prevost emerged on the loggia. He spoke of a hostile takeover of the Church. He invoked Müller’s warning that a heretical pope would be catastrophic. He promised to resist another Francis “to his face.” He called the faithful to active resistance and closed by treating Müller’s words as “marching orders.”

That standard matters. Matt later portrayed immediate scrutiny of Leo as rash, immature, un-Catholic, strategically stupid, and driven by clicks. Yet before the conclave, he had already laid out the opposite standard: examine the record, identify continuity with the revolution, and resist openly.

The principle changed only after the man wearing the white cassock changed.

Much more in the rest of the article, here: https://bigmodernism.substack.com/p/sell...no-mullers

Statue of Our Lady unharmed after church roof caved in during earthquake

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 12:44:15 +0000

Statue of Our Lady unharmed after church roof caved in during earthquake
‘A large part of the church nave has collapsed. ... The statue of the Virgin remains intact,’ Father Henry Díaz explained.

Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, Immaculate Heart of Mary
Immaculate/Shutterstock

Tue Jul 21, 2026
(LifeSiteNews) — A statue of the Virgin Mary survived a devastating 5.1 magnitude earthquake unscathed in Peru despite the church’s roof, part of its facade, and its viceregal altars collapsing.

Built in the 16th century, Santiago Apóstol Parish church in the Chupaca province underwent heavy damage on the night of July 18.

“A large part of the church nave has collapsed. You can see huge cracks everywhere and roof tiles that have come loose. The high altar collapsed into the rubble. The statue of the Virgin remains intact,” Father Henry Díaz said.

In an interview with Rotafono, Díaz noted that the church’s “tower is leaning and must be demolished” and lamented that this “architectural gem” had been damaged shortly before the region’s celebration of its patron saint, Saint James the Apostle.

The quake left at least 6 people dead, more than 32 injured, and 50 homes destroyed, according to RPP (Radio Programas del Perú).

LGBT event mocking Christianity canceled after Catholics pray Rosary outside

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 13:43:43 +0000

LGBT event mocking Christianity canceled after Catholics pray Rosary outside
An LGBT-themed ‘performance’ in a former Catholic church mocked nuns, exorcism, and the Eucharist –
but now future events are canceled and the group hosting them had its lease terminated.

Jul 20, 2026
SYDNEY (LifeSiteNews) — After hundreds of young Australian Catholics knelt and prayed the Rosary outside of a former Catholic church where a blasphemous LGBT-themed performance mocking Christian themes – including the Eucharist – was taking place, future performances have been canceled and the building’s tenant is being evicted.

“Our concern is the recent material publicly promoted by the venue, including imagery and performances that many Christians experienced as a deliberate mockery and misuse of sacred Christian symbols,” the Prodigal Sons, a Catholic group, said in a statement.

“The publicly accessible material included performers dressed as nuns, exorcism parodies, references to ‘unholy water’ and depictions involving Holy Communion,” the group pointed out.

“It’s over. Our lease terminated, our artists canceled, our venue being cleared out,” the founder of the offensively named “Divine Playhouse” said in a statement sent to Star Observer. The performing group was previously named “Unholy Playhouse.”

The group was given three days to clear out.

Pictures posted on X show young Catholic men and women praying and holding Rosaries directly across the street from the church.

“Australian Catholics gathered from across Sydney to pray in reparation for the blasphemous performances taking place at a venue on Kent Street in Sydney’s central business district,” the prayerful protest sponsors explained on Instagram. Their video post continued:

Quote:More than one thousand faithful united in peaceful prayer, carrying Rosaries and lifting their hearts to God in reparation for the public offence against Jesus Christ.

Their response was not one of anger, but of faith — answering mockery with prayer, hatred with charity, and blasphemy with unwavering devotion.

It was a powerful witness that the Catholic faith will not be silenced. When Christians stand together in truth, prayer, and love for Christ, they become a light that no darkness can overcome.

“I believe taxpayers have every right to ask why public money was allocated to a project that many members of a faith community found deeply offensive,” said Chris Nave, who had launched a petition questioning the use of government funding to support the offensive performances.

“This campaign has never been about hatred or attacking individuals. It has always been about accountability, transparency and ensuring that all faith communities are treated with equal dignity and respect,” Nave told nine.com.au.

“Our fight is not against any individuals. It is against what we believe is a mockery of our faith and is against the use of taxpayer money to support it,” Nave said.

Baseball team forfeits game after most players refuse to wear ‘Pride’ jerseys

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 16:26:34 +0000

Baseball team forfeits game after most players refuse to wear ‘Pride’ jerseys
Fewer than nine players on the 28-man roster were willing to play in the 'Pride' uniforms.

Dan Thornberg/Shutterstock.com

Jun 19, 2026
(LifeSiteNews) — A professional baseball team in Pennsylvania was forced to forfeit its “Pride Night” game on Thursday after the majority of its players refused to wear rainbow “Pride” jerseys.

The York Revolution team threw its players who declined to wear the LGBTQ-themed jerseys under the bus in a searing public statement condemning the brave, principled team members’ actions.

“It is with great disappointment that the York Revolution have issued important changes to our 11th Annual Pride Night on Thursday, June 18th,” began the team’s statement. “Unfortunately, several of our players have refused to wear the scheduled Pride Night jersey.”

“As a result, and out of respect for the Pride Community and the York community as a whole, the York Revolution has decided that the game on Thursday, June 18 will be forfeited and that Pride Night will continue on as the feature element of the evening at WellSpan Park,” continued the team’s statement.

“To be clear; this action by the players is completely inconsistent with our vision as the Most Welcoming Place in York. As a small token of our regret for the last-minute change of plans and support for our LGBTQIA+ representing partners we are making a $10,000 donation to the Rainbow Rose Center to support and further their work in making sure the York community is as inclusive as we strive to make WellSpan Park in York, Pennsylvania.”

According to an NBC News report, “fewer than nine players” on the Revolution’s roster were willing to play in the Pride-themed jerseys.

At an “unprecedented” team meeting, the team manager was “unable to talk players into wearing the rainbow sleeves,” noted the NBC report.

The Atlantic League team had been scheduled to host the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs on its 11th annual “Pride” night.

The move by the York Revolution is part of a recent cascade of professional baseball players refusing to kowtow to LGBTQ-themed Pride events.

Last week, three Christian players for the San Francisco Giants cited verses from Genesis chapter 9 on their team’s specially issued “Pride Night” ball caps. Earlier, one Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher refused to wear his team’s “Pride Night” cap.

Transalpine Redemptorists’ founder to be consecrated by [Sedevacantist] Bishop Pierre Roy

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 09:16:00 +0000

An unfortunate development in which we see a natural conclusion of sedevacantism is to create parallel hierarchies and eventually, elect their own pope!

Transalpine Redemptorists’ founder to be consecrated by Bishop Pierre Roy
Riaan Van Zyl

June 19, 2026

The Congregation of the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer was established by Fr. Michael Mary in 1988 with the blessing of Archbishop Lefebvre.

Bishop Pierre Roy (left), Fr. Michael Mary (right).

In a major development for the traditional Catholic world, [sedevacantist] Bishop Pierre Roy has announced that Father Michael Mary Sim, founder and rector major of the Transalpine Redemptorists, will be consecrated a bishop on July 25, 2026, at the community’s monastery on Papa Stronsay in the Orkney Islands of Scotland.

According to the announcement, Bishops Rodrigo Ribeiro da Silva and Fernando Altamira will serve as co-consecrators. Both hold that the Seat of St. Peter is currently vacant. The ceremony will take place privately within the monastery.

Integrity has reached out to Roy, Mary, and other relevant parties for comment and will publish their responses in due course.

The announcement comes only weeks after the Transalpine Redemptorists, officially the Congregation of the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer, publicly declared that the Holy See is vacant and rejected the legitimacy of the post-conciliar claimants to the papacy in their statement “The Dogma To Steer By.” The community was previously associated with both the Society of St. Pius X and the Conciliar Church. The consecration represents one of the most significant developments yet arising from their dramatic shift in position.

Integrity co-founder Stephen Kokx interviewed Mary in May. Mary told him that the local ordinary, Aberdeen Bishop Hugh Gilbert, OSB, has opened a “penal process” against him.

In his June 18 letter, Roy explained that he had been in close contact with the community since June 2025 and had concluded that the Redemptorists required their own bishop due to their international apostolate. The community presently has houses in Scotland, New Zealand, and the United States, while also serving faithful in Australia, Samoa, and elsewhere.

“Since my confreres are in similar situations to my own, it seemed reasonable and necessary to give the Redemptorists a bishop who could properly care for a flock that already knew the sound of his fatherly voice,” Roy wrote.

His Excellency also addressed what many traditional Catholics will regard as the obvious question: whether a community that spent years under the authority of the post-conciliar hierarchy can be trusted with the episcopacy.

“They could have returned to their old errors, but instead chose to undertake a serious study of the Church’s situation. This study, which I have been able to consult, led them to recognize the current vacancy of the Apostolic See and to embrace the only attitude compatible with the Catholic Faith in the face of conciliar apostasy,” he said.

Roy, who resigned from the SSPX in 2016, continued: “Last year I received their Profession of Faith, which I wished to recite with them, and we have since collaborated until their recent declaration, in which they put an end to all ambiguity by affirming before the entire Church their Faith and their rejection of modern errors along with their perpetrators.”

Who are the Transalpine Redemptorists?

The history of the Transalpine Redemptorists has been anything but ordinary. The community was founded in the late 1980s under the leadership of Father Michael Mary with the blessing of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. For many years it operated within the orbit of the Society of Saint Pius X and established its famous monastery on the remote island of Papa Stronsay.

In 2008, however, the community reconciled with Rome under Benedict XVI. For nearly two decades, they functioned as a “canonically recognized” traditional institute, eventually receiving diocesan approval and expanding internationally.

That arrangement began to unravel in recent years amid conflicts with church authorities and growing theological concerns regarding the post-conciliar hierarchy. In October 2025, public reports emerged that serious tensions had developed between the community and diocesan authorities.

The decisive break came on May 2, 2026, when the Redemptorists released a declaration concluding that they could no longer recognize the post-Vatican II claimants to the papacy. The declaration argued that their 2008 reconciliation had been based on the inherited SSPX position of “recognize and resist,” a position they now regard as untenable.

Bishop Roy echoes this interpretation in his new letter: “By making their ‘reconciliation’ in 2008, the Redemptorists primarily sought to end a situation incompatible with the Catholic Faith: that of recognising a person as the true Supreme Pontiff and yet resisting him in matters of faith, morals, and discipline.”

He further states: “Having had the opportunity to closely observe the nauseating stench of the conciliar hydra until 2024, God provided them with the circumstances to rectify the situation through the persecutions they suffered because of their refusal to compromise the sacred Traditions of the Church.”

Bishop Roy has emerged as one of the more prominent voices within the contemporary sedevacantist movement.

Ordained for the SSPX in 2011, he spent five years in the Society before departing in 2016 over concerns that the SSPX leadership was moving toward greater integration with the post-conciliar hierarchy. He subsequently founded Our Lady of Joy Mission in eastern Canada.

In January 2024, he was consecrated by Bishop Rodrigo Ribeiro da Silva, who was previously associated with Bishop Richard Williamson and the SSPX “Resistance.” Since then, Roy has advocated the position that traditional bishops possess not merely sacramental powers but also extraordinary jurisdiction supplied by Christ during the present crisis in the Church. That conviction is clearly visible in the new announcement.

Roy acknowledges that he cannot personally grant jurisdiction to Fr. Mary but insists that Christ Himself provides what is necessary: “Christ, the invisible head of the Church and source of all jurisdiction, can, and He certainly will in the limits of the present necessities of the Church, in the absence of a true Supreme Pontiff.”

The consecration arrives amid increasing discussion of what some traditional Catholics call an “Imperfect General Council.” The concept, promoted by Roy, the Unam Sanctam initiative, and other sedevacantist thinkers, argues that in an extended papal vacancy the Church possesses extraordinary means to address the crisis and ultimately restore the papacy. The Transalpine Redemptorists themselves called for such an imperfect council in their May declaration.

Roy has likewise spoken publicly about the possibility, telling Kokx in an interview that the Church cannot be permanently deprived of the means necessary for her own preservation.

The consecration of Fr. Mary will inevitably be viewed as strengthening the network of bishops and clergy who believe that extraordinary measures may eventually be required to resolve the present ecclesiastical crisis.

In his letter, Roy insists that traditional Catholics cannot be content merely to preserve the sacraments while modernist bishops occupy the field. “Church history shows that heretical bishops are combated by establishing Catholic bishops, just as impostor popes are combated by a true pope,” he has said.

Whether one agrees with that assessment or not, the significance of the upcoming consecration is undeniable. The founder of one of the most well-known traditional religious communities in the English-speaking world is set to become a bishop. It follows the community’s formal embrace of sedevacantism and places the Transalpine Redemptorists squarely within the camp seeking not simply to resist the post-conciliar revolution, but to provide what they believe are the structures necessary for the restoration of the Church.
As stated above, Integrity has reached out to various parties of interest pertaining to this story. We will publish their responses when we receive them.

Massachusetts town defends St. Michael statue against anti-Catholic ACLU challenge

Thu, 07 May 2026 12:39:19 +0000

Massachusetts town defends St. Michael statue against anti-Catholic ACLU challenge
The ACLU and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court launched hostile attacks against St. Michael and St. Florian statues because they are connected to Catholicism.

Statue of Saint Michael the Archangel
meunierd/Shutterstock

May 6, 2026
(LifeSiteNews [slightly adapted - not all hyperlinks included from original]) — The town of Quincy, Massachusetts, is continuing its battle against the ACLU over proposed statues of St. Florian and St. Michael the Archangel.

The city said that religious imagery is common at public buildings, including a statue of Moses at the state supreme court building. Meanwhile, liberal justices largely focused on complaining that the statues might be identified with Catholicism.

The state Supreme Judicial Court held a hearing today as it considers whether the town should be allowed to put up two statues of the saints outside of its public safety building.

The justices asked the city’s attorney to defend the statues against the much-criticized 1971 Lemon Supreme Court case and its subsequent “test” for determining religious freedom cases. However, that case is no longer the primary religious freedom standard used by the nation’s top court.

A coalition of religious groups, free speech scholars, and first responder unions are calling on the state’s supreme court to allow the statues. Meanwhile, the left-wing ACLU wants to see a permanent ban on the statues. In October, an activist judge blocked the statues, as LifeSiteNews previously reported.

The statues are a symbol of “courage,” Quincy’s attorney Joseph Davis argued today.

The attorney noted that the Supreme Judicial Court itself, along with several others, has statues of Moses as well.

“A number of fire departments” use the “Florian cross,” the attorney said, responding to a hostile judge who asked if other fire departments had the saint statues outside.

Other fire and police departments, including in Los Angeles and New York City, have similar statues outside, the attorney told left-wing Associate Justice Gabrielle Wolohojian.

Just because a statue has a “religious significance” does not mean it cannot have “broader significance,” the attorney argued.

He also pointed out that using the religious names of someone does not mean that they only have “religious significance.”

Associate Justice Serge Georges picked up on the hostile questioning line, complaining that the statues may have a “secular” meaning but also have a religious background.

Fellow justice Scott Kafker also complained that the saints are “Catholic,” ignoring legal briefs that established other religious groups’ interest in the saints. Justice Wolohojian jumped back in to complain about the saints.

“They have a mixed significance,” Davis responded.

Wolohojian continued on with her questioning and suggested that “the citizens of Quincy” might be offended by the “government speech” of the public safety building having the statues.

Davis pointed out other courthouses also have religious statues, with Wolohojian interrupting him to say there are other statues besides Moses at court buildings.

“This is the fire and police building,” Davis argued, pointing out the statues represent firefighters and police officers.

ACLU attorney Jessie Rossman followed Davis and urged the judges to block the city from putting up the statues, arguing that they promote “divisiveness.”

She argued that religious beliefs should be confined to private buildings and not “government buildings.”

However, a judge pushed back and asked why existing statues should not be treated the same way.

The ACLU attorney acknowledged that statues or symbols that had been up for a long time, such as 100 years, could be upheld.

Making a new decision to put up new statues could create “divisiveness,” Rossman claimed, and she said that the image having a “Catholic” background was problematic.

Her argument picked up on the general anti-Catholic hostility expressed by the justices as well.

“These statues are conveying a message that [a] particular religion is being elevated above other religious and non-religious beliefs,” Rossman complained.

Some justices, even those that pushed back on the town, questioned Rossman as to her arguments, including that the statues only have a religious meaning.

Latin Patriarchate condemns ‘barbaric hate crime’ against Catholic nun in Jerusalem

Fri, 01 May 2026 20:23:35 +0000

Latin Patriarchate condemns ‘barbaric hate crime’ against Catholic nun in Jerusalem
The Latin Patriarchate is calling for ‘effective measures of deterrence’ so that violent attacks such as the one on the Catholic nun are prevented.

Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa
Faiz Abu Rmeleh/Getty Images

May 1, 2026
(LifeSiteNews) — The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem has decried an Israeli man’s attack on a religious sister in Jerusalem as “barbaric.”

“This is a repulsive and barbaric hate crime committed against a defenseless nun. It is the duty of the authorities to bring the perpetrator to justice and to ensure that clear and effective measures of deterrence are put in place so that such acts are neither tolerated nor repeated,” Farid Jubran, Public and Governmental Affairs Advisor at the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, told Crux Now.

A 36-year-old man was recently arrested by Israeli police after it was reported that a religious sister was attacked near King David’s tomb in Jerusalem on Tuesday. Newly released video footage shows a man pushing a Catholic religious sister to the ground, briefly walking away and then going back to kick her.

The head of a Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, Archbishop Atallah Hanna, has also reportedly condemned the attack and has called for an international response to stop the increasing hostilities against Christians in the Holy Land.

He said on Facebook that “the attack on a nun in the city of Jerusalem comes amid escalating violations against Christian institutions in the city,” according to Al Jazeera.

“This reflects increasing concerns about the future of the historic Christian presence in the Holy Land,” he added.

According to AP News, a police video shows the attacker was wearing tzitzit, a tasseled undergarment worn by some observant Jewish men, which is meant to serve as a reminder of God’s commandments.

The unprovoked attack was carried out by an Israeli colonizer, according to the al‑Baidar Human Rights Organization.

Last year in Jerusalem alone, 155 to 181 incidents of assault, harassment, and vandalism targeted at Christians were recorded, according to the Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue and the Religious Freedom Data Center (RFDC).

Video of assault here: https://twitter.com/LifeSite/status/2050208460948525339

Trump DOJ charges far-left Southern Poverty Law Center that targets traditional Catholics

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 13:05:40 +0000

Trump DOJ charges far-left Southern Poverty Law Center that targets traditional Catholics
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which was cited in an infamous Biden administration memo targeting Latin Mass Catholics,

faces a federal indictment for bank fraud and other crimes.

Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche speaks alongside FBI Director Kash Patel at a news conference at the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice building on April 21, 2026, in Washington, D.C.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Apr 21, 2026
MONTGOMERY, Alabama (LifeSiteNews [slightly adapted, not all hyperlinks included from original') — The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced an indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), one of the most powerful left-wing activist groups in the U.S., on 11 counts of bank fraud and other crimes.

The infamous nonprofit “secretly funneled more than $3 million in donated funds” to members of the Ku Klux Klan, the National Socialist Party of America, and other extremist organizations as part of investigations into the groups, the DOJ said on Tuesday. The SPLC failed to tell donors that it was using their money “to fund the leaders and organizers of racist groups at the same time that the SPLC was denouncing the same groups on its website,” according to the agency.

The DOJ said that the SPLC “opened bank accounts connected to a series of fictitious entities” to cover up the scheme and “made a series of false statements related to the operation of the accounts.”

“The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said. “Using donor money to allegedly profit off Klansmen cannot go unchecked. This Department of Justice will hold the SPLC and every other fraudulent organization operating with the same deceptive playbook accountable. No entity is above the law.”

“The SPLC allegedly engaged in a massive fraud operation to deceive their donors, enrich themselves, and hide their deceptive operations from the public,” FBI Director Kash Patel said. “They lied to their donors, vowing to dismantle violent extremist groups, and actually turned around and paid the leaders of these very extremist groups – even utilizing the funds to have these groups facilitate the commission of state and federal crimes. That is illegal – and this is an ongoing investigation against all individuals involved.”

Democrats criticized the indictment, with far-left U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal saying that the “Southern Poverty Law Center does incredibly important work” and that she “will continue to stand with them.”

The group is one of the largest public advocacy organizations in America, with an $822 million endowment and a $129 million revenue as of 2024 and financial backing from liberal mega-donors. The SPLC has long faced criticism for lavish salaries, allegations of sexual harassment and mistreatment of staff, and transferring hundreds of millions of dollars to offshore accounts.

Southern Poverty Law Center targets traditional Catholics, other conservatives

Founded in 1971 as a civil rights legal firm, the Southern Poverty Law Center has become known in recent decades for its radical leftist activism and for smearing mainstream conservative, Catholic, and other Christian organizations as “hate groups” for opposing homosexuality and transgenderism.

The SPLC’s “hate map” features prominent pro-family organizations such as Family Research Council, Alliance Defending Freedom, and Liberty Counsel alongside terroristic white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan.

The notorious January 2023 FBI memo targeting “Radical Traditional Catholic ideology” and proposing “threat mitigation” of traditionalist Catholics notably cited the SPLC and its designation of nine Catholic organizations as “hate groups.”

The SPLC lists “anti-LGBTQ+” beliefs as one of the “extremist ideologies” that it tracks, along with “Racist Skinhead,” “Neo-Nazi,” and “Holocaust Denial” movements. The group associates “anti-LGBTQ+ hate” with the ideas that heterosexuality “is the only ‘normal’ sexuality” or that “gender can only be understood as either ‘male’ or ‘female’,” both of which Catholic teaching and the Bible uphold.

The SPLC also tracks “Radical Traditionalist Catholicism,” faulting so-called “radical traditional Catholics” for opposing “liberalizing reforms” after the Second Vatican II that “placed more power in the hands of laypeople” and claiming that “antisemitism is an inextricable part of their theology.”

Other organizations targeted by the SPLC include the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam), the American Family Association, Focus on the Family, the American College of Pediatricians, the Ruth Institute, now-defunct Catholic media outlet Church Militant, and Do No Harm, which opposes underage “gender transitions.” The group absurdly lists pro-parent organizations like Moms for Liberty as extremist “antigovernment groups.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center still denounces Turning Point USA as a “hate group” as well, even after a left-wing assassin murdered its founder, Charlie Kirk, in 2025.

Homosexual activist who tried to massacre Family Research Council cited SPLC

The SPLC’s propaganda has led to violence against conservatives, including a near-massacre in 2012, when homosexual activist Floyd Lee Corkins II entered the headquarters of Family Research Council with a semi-automatic pistol and nearly 100 rounds of ammunition, seeking to “kill as many people as I could” and smear Chick-fil-A sandwiches on their faces.

Corkins, who previously considered bombing FRC’s headquarters, told FRC guard Leo Johnson “I don’t like your politics” and then shot him in the arm, though Johnson managed to disarm him and force him to the ground.

Corkins had identified FRC as a “hate group” through Southern Poverty Law Center’s website and planned to attack other pro-family groups condemned by the SPLC.

“Southern Poverty Law lists anti-gay groups,” he admitted. “I found them online, did a little research, went to the website – stuff like that.”

The LGBT activist said he hoped the shooting would “make a statement against the people who work in that building … and with their stance against gay rights.” Indeed, Corkins “would have almost certainly succeeded in committing a massacre of epic portions” had Johnson not stopped him, prosecutors said.

Corkins was later convicted of terrorism and sentenced to 25 years in prison, but the Southern Poverty Law Center has continued to brand Family Research Council as a “hate group” due to its faith-based rejection of homosexuality and gender ideology.

James Hodgkinson, the leftist who shot then-House Republican Whip Steve Scalise and sought to kill dozens of GOP congressmen at a baseball practice in 2017, had also liked the Southern Poverty Law Center on Facebook.

The SPLC has nevertheless enjoyed a close relationship with the federal government under Democratic administrations. The DOJ invited the SPLC’s co-founder – who was later fired for “inappropriate conduct” – as a speaker, and the FBI listed it as a “resource” during part of the Obama administration. The Biden DOJ listed the SPLC as an “extremism” consultant in 2021.

However, Trump’s FBI severed all ties with the group last fall, saying it had become “a partisan smear machine.”

Numerous Christian conservatives persecuted due to SPLC

Big Tech companies, including Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Amazon, have partnered with the SPLC as well, using it to flag so-called “hate groups” and remove or restrict them on their platforms.

The SPLC’s designation of Alliance Defending Freedom – one of the world’s largest conservative legal organizations – as a “hate group” led to its removal as an AmazonSmile charity in 2018. “We rely on the Southern Poverty Law Center to determine which charities are in certain ineligible categories,” Amazon said at the time.

Southern Poverty Law Center similarly prompted GuideStar to label 46 conservative organizations, including FRC, as “hate groups” and led financial companies like Mastercard, Visa, GoFundMe, Patreon, and Vanco to cut off donations to pro-family organizations and critics of Islam, as LifeSiteNews has reported.

Hyatt Hotels, Eventbrite, and video platform Vimeo have additionally blacklisted groups denounced by the SPLC.

IDF admits photo of Israeli soldier smashing statue of Our Lord is real

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 16:02:14 +0000

IDF admits photo of Israeli soldier smashing statue of Our Lord is real
A photo of an Israeli soldier smashing the head of a statue of the crucified Jesus in Lebanon has gone viral, leading to outrage among Christians.

Bumble Dee/Shutterstock.com

Apr 20, 2026
(LifeSiteNews) — The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have confirmed that a photograph of an IDF soldier smashing the head of a statue of Jesus Christ is authentic and announced an investigation into the matter.

Over the weekend, a photo of an Israeli soldier smashing the head of a statue of the crucified Jesus in Lebanon went viral online and led to outrage among Christians. On Sunday, the IDF confirmed the picture was authentic and said, “Appropriate measures will be taken against those involved in accordance with the findings.”

“Following the completion of an initial examination regarding a photograph published earlier today of an IDF soldier harming a Christian symbol, it was determined that the photograph depicts an IDF soldier operating in southern Lebanon,” the statement by the IDF reads.

“The IDF views the incident with great severity and emphasizes that the soldier’s conduct is wholly inconsistent with the values expected of its troops. The incident is being investigated by the Northern Command and is currently being addressed through the chain of command.”

“Furthermore, the IDF is working to assist the community in restoring the statue to its place. The IDF is operating to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure established by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and has no intention of harming civilian infrastructure, including religious buildings or religious symbols,” the IDF concluded.

According to the Times of Israel, the photo was taken in the Christian village of Debel in southern Lebanon.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar called the smashing of the statue a “shameful action” and offered an apology to every Christian whose feelings were hurt.

On Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also published a statement on the matter, writing on X, “Yesterday, like the overwhelming majority of Israelis, I was stunned and saddened to learn that an IDF soldier damaged a Catholic religious icon in southern Lebanon. I condemn the act in the strongest terms. Military authorities are conducting a criminal probe of the matter and will take appropriately harsh disciplinary action against the offender.”

“While Christians are being slaughtered in Syria and Lebanon by Muslims, the Christian population in Israel thrives unlike elsewhere in the Middle East,” he continued.

“Israel is the only country in the region that the Christian population and standard of living is growing. Israel is the only place in the Middle East that adheres to freedom of worship for all. We express regret for the incident and for any hurt this has caused to believers in Lebanon and around the world,” Netanyahu said.

Israel has increased its military attacks in Lebanon against Hezbollah since the start of the Iran war in late February, including hundreds to thousands of airstrikes. These strikes have killed at least 1,500 people (combatants and civilians), injured thousands more, and displaced over one million people. Many civilians, including Christians, have chosen to stay in their homes despite the risks, for fear of Islamic militants taking over their property once they leave.

Donald Trump deletes AI image of himself as Jesus Christ

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 20:23:48 +0000

Donald Trump deletes AI image of himself as Jesus Christ, claims he was ‘a doctor’
In response to President Trump's self-portrait, Carrie Prejean Boller called on Bishop Barron, Cardinal Dolan, and Archbishop Cordileone to resign from the Religious Liberty Commission.

U.S. President Donald
Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Apr 13, 2026
UPDATE, 1:28 PM EDT: Trump was asked about the post by a reporter. He responded, “I thought it was me as a doctor that had to do with the Red Cross, as a Red Cross worker there, which we support. And only the fake news could come up with that one (Trump as Jesus). … It was supposed to be me as a doctor, making people better.”

UPDATE, 11:50 AM EDT: Trump has deleted the post.

(LifeSiteNews) — U.S. President Donald Trump has posted a portrait of himself as Jesus Christ on his Truth Social account.

The AI-generated image, which appeared on the night of April 12, Divine Mercy Sunday in the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar, shows him in white and red flowing robes, placing his hand on a patient in a hospital bed, apparently to heal him. Radiant light emanates from his palms as a praying woman, a soldier, a nurse, and an elderly bearded man reverently look on. The Statue of Liberty, the Lincoln Memorial and a large American flag loom in the background. Eagles hovering in the sky flank Trump as fighter jets and either angelic or demonic soldiers fly above him.

The image was posted within an hour of Trump’s scathing attack on Pope Leo in another social media post.

RELATED: Trump attacks Pope Leo XIV after Vatican meeting with Obama adviser

The AI image drew widespread criticism and mockery from Catholics and other users across social media. Marjorie Taylor Greene stated on X, “On Orthodox Easter, President Trump attacked the Pope because the Pope is rightly against Trump’s war in Iran and then he posted this picture of himself as if he is replacing Jesus. This comes after last week’s post of his evil tirade on Easter and then threatening to kill an entire civilization. I completely denounce this and I’m praying against it!!!” She added, “It’s more than blasphemy. It’s an Antichrist spirit.”

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