The Final Unholy Alliance
By Russell and Colin Standish
The Papacy at its zenith of power ever allied itself with powerful states which agreed to do its biddings. By a mixture of threats, favors, and the dispensing of privileges, the Papacy adroitly achieved its aims. In the twenty-first century, no European power, not even the European Union, matches the United States in potency and influence. This situation developed in the last half of the twentieth century. It is only natural that the Roman Catholic Church would see it expedient to make every effort to form a liaison with the United States, despite that Protestants outnumber Roman Catholics in that nation.
Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, two and a half years before he was elected Pope Pius XII, sailed for New York on October 8, 1936. There he was met by the young auxiliary bishop of Boston, Francis Joseph Spellman, only thirty-seven years of age. Later Spellman became the powerful Cardinal Archbishop of New York. Already Bishop Spellman had experience as a Vatican bureaucrat. In thirty days, Cardinal Pacelli, then the Vatican secretary of state, traveled 6,500 miles in America, visiting numerous cities and Catholic educational institutions. Most of the nation?s major cities were visited, including Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, St. Louis, St. Paul, San Francisco, and Washington, in addition to New York.
It was during a visit with President Franklin Roosevelt that Pacelli received an assurance that the United States would once more forge diplomatic ties with the Vatican, ties that had been severed in 1867 before the Papal States were disbanded. But the Senate refused to permit Roosevelt's promise to become a reality. The President was forced to content himself with the appointment of Myron Taylor as his personal representative at the Holy See in 1940.
Thus de facto diplomatic recognition was accorded. The United States Senate had severed diplomatic ties after Pope Pius IX issued his Syllabus of Errors which was deeply offensive to Protestants. A future alliance between the United States and the Vatican seemed impossible at that time, but God had spoken, and once more His Word would be fulfilled. So sensitive were Protestants to the Papacy in 1936 that Roosevelt dared not meet Pacelli until after the 1936 Presidential election had secured him a second term in office. How different from the 1996 election sixty years later, when President Bill Clinton saw papal contacts as an enhancement to his prospects of reelection!
Pacelli, at that time, was the highest Vatican prelate ever to visit the United States. So great was the Vatican's confidence in the United States that it had invested heavily in Wall Street, only to see this means greatly reduced in the stock market crash of 1929. However, by 1935 it was again investing in blue-chip stocks in the United States (See J. F. Pollard, "The Vatican and the Wall Street Crash"). Pollard also claimed in his paper that in May 1939, the Vatican sent $7,665,000 worth of gold bars to the United States. This move provided cash for the Papacy during the war years. It was strange indeed that the predominantly Protestant United States was preferred to banks of Zurich, a city which is predominantly Roman Catholic.
It cannot be doubted that Rome, recognizing that the United States would be useful for its purposes, sought to increase its influence in that nation. Already the large number of Irish, Italian, and Hispanic migrants had bolstered the number of adherents to the Roman Catholic faith in the United States, providing Rome with no little influence there.
As early as the end of the nineteenth century, the Vatican had set its sights on the United States. The hundredth anniversary of the establishment of the Catholic hierarchy in the United States was celebrated with pomp and ceremony in the Cathedral of Baltimore on November 10, 1889. Archbishop Ireland gave an address entitled "The Mission of Catholics in America" which contains some statements of significance.
Catholics of the United States are called . . . to make America Catholic. . . .
The conversion of America should ever be present to the minds of Catholics in America as a supreme duty from which God will not hold them exempt. . . .
The value of America to the cause of religion cannot be overestimated. This is a providential nation. . . . In the solution of social and political problems, no less than in the development of industry and commerce, the influence of America will be dominant among nations. There is not a country on the globe that does not borrow from us ideas and aspirations. The spirit of American liberty wafts its spell across seas and oceans, and prepares distant continents for the implanting of American ideas and institutions. This influence will grow with the growth of the nation. . . . The center of human action and influence is rapidly shifting, and at a no distant day America will lead the world. . . .
We cannot but believe that a singular mission is assigned to America, glorious for itself and beneficent to the whole race, the mission of bringing about a new social and political order, based more than any other upon the common brotherhood of man, and more than any other securing to the multitude of the people social happiness and equality of rights. With our hopes are bound up the hopes of the millions of the earth. The Church triumphing in America, Catholic truth will travel on the wings of American influence, and encircle the universe. (John Ireland, The Church and Modern Society, 55-58)
In 1894, The Catholic Standard and Times of November 3 spoke forthrightly, stating,
The United States of America, it can be said without exaggeration, are the chief thought of Leo XIII. . . . A few days ago, on receiving an eminent American, Leo XIII said to him: "But the United States are the future; we think of them incessantly." . . . That is why Leo XIII turns all his soul, full of ideality, to what is improperly called his American policy. It should be called his Catholic universal policy. (Cited by Edwardson, Facts of Faith, 240)
The report of "the third Washington conference" says: "Our purpose is to make America dominantly Catholic."- " The Mission Movement in America," issued from the Catholic University, Washington, D.C. June 1909. (Ibid.)
Dr. Barrett, who was for many years in the Jesuit order, wrote in 1935 a remarkably frank account of the work of Catholic Action, which was established in the twentieth century. He left no doubt concerning its aims in America:
In theory, Catholic Action is the work and service of lay Catholics in the cause of religion, under the guidance of the bishops. In practice it is the Catholic group fighting their way to control America. (Boyd Barrett, Rome Stoops to Conquer, 15)
The effort, the fight, may be drawn out. It may last for five or ten years. Even if it lasts for twenty-what is twenty years in the life of Rome? The fight must be fought to a finish-opposition must be worn down if it cannot be swept away. Rome's immortal destiny hangs on the outcome. That destiny overshadows the land.
Were Rome to fail to dominate American thought and American lives, her civilization, her moral code, all her glorious incredible dogmas would perish from the earth. Should Rome triumph, she will ascend to a higher state than ever she has enjoyed heretofore. Therefore she must win-if it be given her to win what, as she claims, God has promised-what her Prophets have foretold. Then will the vast West be hers wherein to set up anew her earthly kingdom. And in the fight, as she has ever fought when battles were most desperate in the past, Rome will use steel, and gold, and silvery lie. Rome will stoop to conquer. (Ibid., 266?267)
At the time of Cardinal Pacelli's triumphant tour of the United States, the secular newspaper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press of November 4, 1936, commented,
Pope Pius [XI] feels that the United States is the ideal base for Catholicism's great drive. . . . The Catholic Movement, Rome's militant organization numbering millions all over the world, will be marshaled direct from Rome by Monsignor Pizzardo-next to Pacelli the Holy See's shrewdest diplomat and politician-instead of by the local bishops as before. (Cited by Christian Edwardson, Facts of Faith, 241.)
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