Roman Catholic Fascism

Duterte toots his horn

ROMAN CATHOLIC FASCISM

I was born into a Vatican II household. Or perhaps it would be more precise to say I belonged to a family that in the 1960s took readily to the new emphases, the changes in the liturgy, in short the opening of windows, made possible by the historic ecumenical council. Looking back on those transition years, I can remember Masses in Cagayan de Oro or in General Santos City where the priest still faced the altar, rather than the congregation. We were aware of the changes and willingly took part in them; we were certain of our Catholic identity, encouraged by the modernizing faith we professed, and tolerant and respectful of other faiths.

It took me some time to realize that there were other kinds of Catholics—resistant to what Pope John XXIII called, in his opening speech before the Second Vatican Council, the “medicine of mercy,” partial instead to the old prescription of “severity.” Perhaps I oversimplify; I must have met relatives and strangers alike who were “catolico cerrado,” who believed in “sola scriptura,” or who were, as the expression goes, more papist than the Pope. But Catholic fundamentalism was first an academic problem for me, in college and right after it, before it became a personal one.

Now it is decidedly personal. Catholic fundamentalism, like other religious fundamentalisms, is open to fascism and helps enable authoritarianism. And I have some friends and acquaintances who do not see any disconnect between their Catholic faith and their support for the Duterte administration’s bloody war on drugs.

While the context is somewhat different, I am mindful of Russia scholar and ex-evangelical Christopher Stroop’s admonition, against calling Christians who voted for Donald Trump “fake Christians.” Stroop argues that “Trumpist” Christianity is “a cultural system and ideology with an internal coherence and relationship to communal belief and practice,” which “grounds itself in a certain interpretation of the Bible.”

We must treat Catholics who enthusiastically support President Duterte’s bloody war in similar fashion; they are not fake Catholics, but rather believers who respond to antidemocratic, counterparticipatory aspects of the faith.

The psychologist Bob Altemeyer, a leading scholar on authoritarianism, has some sharp words to say about religious fundamentalists. The following extended passage from “The Authoritarians” (freely available online) is from the conclusion of his chapter on “Authoritarian Followers and Religious Fundamentalism.”

Religious fundamentalists “are highly likely to be authoritarian followers. They are highly submissive to established authority, aggressive in the name of that authority, and conventional to the point of insisting everyone should behave as their authorities decide ….”

“But they are also Teflon-coated when it comes to guilt. They are blind to themselves, ethnocentric and prejudiced, and as closed-minded as they are narrow-minded. They can be woefully uninformed about things they oppose, but they prefer ignorance and want to make others become as ignorant as they. They are also surprisingly uninformed about the things they say they believe in, and deep, deep, deep down inside many of them have secret doubts about their core belief. But they are very happy, highly giving, and quite zealous ….”

“Read the two paragraphs above again and consider how much of it would also apply to the people who filled the stadium at the Nuremberg Rallies. I know this comparison will strike some as outrageous, and I’m NOT saying religion turns people into Nazis. But does anybody believe the ardent Nazi followers in Germany, or Mussolini’s faithful in Italy, or Franco’s legions in Spain were a bunch of atheists? Being ‘religious’ does not automatically build a firewall against accepting totalitarianism, and when fundamentalist religions teach authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism, they help create the problem. Can we not see how easily religious fundamentalists would lift a would-be dictator aloft as part of a ‘great movement,’ and give it their all?”

Precisely. Contrary to what I thought growing up, being Catholic does not necessarily enroll one in the movement to resist authoritarianism. Being a different sort of Catholic—judgmental, focused on rules, open to all forms of discipline—can turn one into an authoritarian enabler.

Read more: http://opinion.inquirer.net/104042/the-catholic-as-fascist#ixzz4hCEs0Rx8

Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini reviewing a military parade

John Nery is correct in identifying a type of Roman Catholic fundamentalism that has a strong affinity for political authoritarianism, fascism in particular. It is the type of Roman Catholicism that would condone the murderous quasi-fascism prevailing in the Duterte administration today. It is a brand of Roman Catholicism that Opus Dei and its ilk wear—unknowingly, practically—as a membership badge.

begin There’s the matter of Opus Dei’s repeated dalliance with extreme-right dictatorships and military human-rights violation—a consistent pattern of behavior despite Escrivá’s insistence that Opus Dei “is bound up with no country, no government, no political party, nor with any ideology.” [29]

Opus Dei has been strongly anti-Communist since its founding. That’s reasonable in itself, given the religious persecution and mass murder committed by Marxist regimes. But Opus Dei’s opposition to Marxism has led it to support right-wing dictatorships—governments which have excused their own repression and crimes by the need to defeat Communist subversion.

In Spain, Opus Dei aligned itself with the dictatorial Franco government. In 1937, Escrivá fled the region held by the Republican government (a pro-Soviet regime that killed more than 4,000 priests and nearly 2,400 monks, and nuns). [30] He spent most of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) in Nationalist-held areas, and returned to Madrid with the first detachments of Franco’s forces that took the city in 1939. [31] Escrivá directed a religious retreat for Franco in 1944. [32] The Vatican did not object to this alliance with the regime; in 1953, Pius XII signed an agreement that gave Franco final say over the appointment of bishops in Spain. [33] (This concordat remained in force until Paul VI rejected it in the 1960s.) In 1969, three Opus Dei numeraries and 12 supporters assumed cabinet posts in the Franco government, thus holding 15 of the 18 positions. [34] Raimundo Pannikar, a prominent Opus Dei priest from the mid-1940s till he left in the 1960s, says that the movement “set out to see if they could take charge of the Spanish State—and nearly succeeded.” [35] The movement’s influence in the government decreased after the 1973 assassination of Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco, who had been rumored to be a member. [36] After Franco died, the cult has continued to be influential in Spanish banking, industry, and media.

In October 1967, Escrivá acknowledged that “Opus Dei has a real influence on the life of Spain” with “a noticeable social impact.” [37] But in an interview with Time in April of that same year, he had said, “it is in Spain that we have had the greatest difficulties in making the Work take root. ... The governments of countries where Catholics are a minority have helped the educational and welfare activities founded by Opus Dei members far more generously than the Spanish government.” [38] While Escrivá spoke out of both sides of his mouth about Spain, Opus Dei member Calvo Serer spoke plainly on behalf of Francoism for a Madrid newspaper in 1957: “Freedom of conscience leads to the loss of faith, freedom of expression to demagogy, mental confusion, and pornography, and freedom of association to anarchism and totalitarianism.” [39]

Spain has remained a stronghold for Opus Dei (and similar new Catholic movements) since the end of the dictatorship. As Vatican journalist John Allen reported in 2003, of the 18% of Spanish Catholics who attend Mass at least once a month, more than 40% are affiliated with Opus Dei and similar movements. [40] About 40% of worldwide Opus Dei membership is in Spain. [41]

Note, however, the poor spiritual fruit of Franco’s confessional state (1939-1975) and of Opus Dei in Spain. Less than one Catholic in five attends Mass, the central religious rite for Roman Catholics, even once a month—despite canon law requirements that Catholics attend Mass weekly. By contrast, about 45% of American Catholics and Protestants report that they attend church weekly. [42] Additionally, the Spanish government elected in 2004 has passed a spate of laws contrary to traditional Christian teaching; more is to come. [43]

Regarding the Third Reich, a former associate of Escrivá’s says that the Founder told him, “Hitler couldn’t have been such a bad guy. He couldn’t have killed six million. It couldn’t have been more than four million.” [44] Fr. Felzmann added, “I could just feel that Hitler was one of his heroes, and he couldn’t believe that Hitler had really done that.” [45] Escrivá believed that World War II was a crusade against Marxism, and “members of Opus Dei offered to volunteer for the so-called Blue Division,” to fight the USSR on behalf of Nazi Germany. [46] Such a view of Hitler’s deeds is strange for a devout Catholic, since the first victim of World War II was Catholic Poland, and the Nazis killed equal numbers of Polish Catholics and Polish Jews. [47] Additionally, it was a pact between the Nazis and the Soviets that gave Hitler the green light to invade Poland.

In Chile, Opus Dei members and supporters favored the overthrow of Salvador Allende, a socialist who was democratically elected as head of state in 1970. [48] After the September 11, 1973 coup installed the Pinochet dictatorship, the new regime quickly earned infamy for widespread use of torture. Hernán Cubillos, an Opus Dei supporter and CIA asset, was a foreign minister for the regime. [49] Jaime Guzmán, one of Opus Dei’s “earliest recruits” in Chile, wrote the new Pinochet constitution, and three Opus Dei members in succession headed the national ministry of education. [50]

In Peru, the diocese of Opus Dei Archbishop Cipriani had been the center of a brutal civil war between the Army and the terrorist Maoist group “Shining Path.” Cipriani “consistently defended the armed forces against charges of atrocities, and argued that ‘Most human rights organizations are just covering the tails of political movements, almost all of them Marxist or Maoist.’” [51] Such was his justification for refusing to allow the Catholic bishops’ human rights groups to enter his jurisdiction. [52] In 2003, after peace was restored, the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) paid “tribute to the role of the Churches, ‘irrespective of theological or pastoral positions’ in ‘saving many lives and preventing many other abuses.’” [53] However, “the report made an explicit exception of the diocese of Ayacucho under its then archbishop, Juan Luis Cipriani, who ‘placed obstacles in the way of church organisations working on human rights, and denied the existence of human rights violations.’ Speaking at the Mass for the feast of St. Rose of Lima on 30 August, Cardinal Cipriani said the TRC had not bothered to talk to him, and denounced its report as ‘prejudiced, biased and petty.’” [54]

The dictator of Argentina from 1966 to 1970, General Juan Carlos Onganía, seized power after making a religious retreat sponsored by Opus Dei. [55] (The general became convinced that he was “personally called” [56] to lead his country.) Under Onganía’s regime, death squads and torture were routinely used against opponents. [57]

In Venezuela in April 2002, there was a military coup against the leftist president Hugo Chavez; the insurgents installed a “leading businessman,” Pedro Carmona, as the interim president. [58] Carmona’s allies backed out when he selected all Opus Dei members for his cabinet. As a result, the coup collapsed, and Chavez returned to power. It seems that Carmona, himself an Opus Dei member, never learned the political equivalent of the investing slogan: bulls can make money, bears can make money—but hogs never make money.

George Weigel, the neoconservative author of a massive, adoring biography of John Paul II, says in its defense that “Opus Dei members took part in the first public demonstrations against Franco and played crucial roles in Spain’s transition to democracy” [59] after Franco died. Other defenders of Opus Dei say that “the movement does not direct the political views of its members, only their spiritual outlook and life.” [60] Nevertheless, anyone’s spirituality and worldview will have a decisive effect on their business and political activities.

In 1966, Escrivá said, “I have always defended the freedom of individual consciences. I do not understand violence; I do not consider it a proper way either to persuade or to win over. Error is overcome by prayer, by God’s grace, and by study; never by force; always with charity. From the first moment this is the spirit we have lived.” [61] In view of the foregoing track record, these assurances by the Founder ring hollow. end

Notes

[29] Josemaría Escrivá, Conversations with Josemaría Escrivá, Scepter, 1968, p. 99.

[30] Michael Walsh, Opus Dei, Harper San Francisco, 2004, p. 35.

[31] Michael Walsh, Opus Dei, Harper San Francisco, 2004, pp. 35-37.

[32] Jason Berry and Gerald Renner, Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II, Free Press, 2004, p. 244.

[33] Jason Berry and Gerald Renner, Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II, Free Press, 2004, p. 168.

[34] Jonathan Kwitny, Man of the Century: The Life and Times of Pope John Paul II, Henry Holt and Co., 1997, pp. 304, 704 (note 4 of chapter 1).

[35] Michael Walsh, Opus Dei, Harper San Francisco, 2004, p. 133.

[36] Library of Congress, Country Studies, Spain ­ Religion, http://www.countrystudies.us/spain/44.htm, printed 07/05/05.

[37] Josemaría Escrivá, Conversations with Josemaría Escrivá, Scepter, 1968, p. 38.

[38] Josemaría Escrivá, Conversations with Josemaría Escrivá, Scepter, 1968, p. 63.

[39] Joan Estruch, Saints & Schemers: Opus Dei And Its Paradoxes, Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 190.

[40] John Allen, “The Word From Rome,” “New Movements Changing Spain,” National Catholic Reporter, May 9, 2003, http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/word/word0509.htm, viewed 06/09/04.

[41] Michael Walsh, Opus Dei, Harper San Francisco, 2004, p. 133.

[42] Kenneth C. Jones, Index of Leading Catholic Indicators: The Church Since Vatican II, Oriens Publishing Company, 2003, p. 75.

[43] John Allen, “A New Battle Plan,” National Catholic Reporter, July 1, 2005, http://ncronline.org/NCR_Onl…/archives2/…/070105/070105a.php, printed 06/28/05. Since the election of the Socialist regime in the spring of 2004, the Spanish government has accepted gay marriage and has liberalized laws on divorce, in vitro fertilization, embryonic stem cell research, and euthanasia.

[44] John Follain, City of Secrets: The Startling Truth behind the Vatican Murders, Harper Collins, 2003, p. 106.

[45] John Follain, City of Secrets: The Startling Truth behind the Vatican Murders, Harper Collins, 2003, pp. 106-107.

[46] Joan Estruch, Saints and Schemers: Opus Dei and Its Paradoxes, Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 123.

[47] Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History, Hill and Wang, 2000, p. 416; Burleigh said that in occupied Poland, “on average three thousand Poles died each day during the occupation, half of them Christian Poles, half of them Jews.”

[48] Penny Lernoux, People of God: The Struggle for World Catholicism, Penguin Books, 1989, p. 318.

[49] Penny Lernoux, People of God: The Struggle for World Catholicism, Penguin Books, 1989, p. 318.

[50] Robert Hutchison, Their Kingdom Come: Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei, St. Martin’s Press, 1997, pp. 212, 214.

[51] Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 147.

[52] World Church News, “New cardinals mirror John Paul’s papacy,” The Tablet, January 27, 2001, http://www.thetablet.co.uk/cgi-bin/citw.cgi/past-00005, printed 06/09/04.

[53] World Church News, “The Americas,” The Tablet, September 6, 2003, http://www.thetablet.co.uk/cgi-bin/citw.cgi/past-00144, printed 06/09/04.

[54] World Church News, “The Americas,” The Tablet, September 6, 2003, http://www.thetablet.co.uk/cgi-bin/citw.cgi/past-00144, printed 06/09/04.

[55] Penny Lernoux, Cry of the People, Penguin Books, 1982, p. 305.

[56] Penny Lernoux, Cry of the People, Penguin Books, 1982, p. 160.

[57] Penny Lernoux, Cry of the People, Penguin Books, 1982, p. 338.

[58] Christopher Ruddy, “What Really Happened in Venezuela,” NewsMax.com, April 18, 2002, http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/…/4/17/231158.shtml, printed 09/23/05.

[59] George Weigel, Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II, Harper Collins, 2001, p. 449.

[60] Robert Moynihan, “Josemaría’s Way,” Inside the Vatican, November 2002, p. 24.

[61] Josemaría Escrivá, Conversations with Josemaría Escrivá, Scepter, 1968, p. 73.

http://www.scp-inc.org/publications/journals/J2902/opus2.php [no longer active]

—Lee Penn, “Opus Dei and The Da Vinci Code – Part II,” Journal of the Spiritual Counterfeits Project (SCP) (Spring 2006) 29(4)-30(1)

Saint Josemaria Escriva (1902-1975)

THE SOCIAL VISION OF OPUS DEI

“What is wrong with Opus Dei? Maybe I might even become a member of Opus Dei!”—Imelda Romualdez Marcos

For some years I had wanted to put a piece together about the social vision of Opus Dei but I couldn’t gather the fragments into a coherent exposition. When I came across the information in the above link, I thought it was a good opportunity to say something about the subject.

Opus Dei shares Roman Catholicism’s historical antipathy toward communism and liberalism, and it forms part of Opus Dei’s social vision. Although the Catholic antipathy toward liberalism has moderated somewhat in recent times, Opus Dei abides by the intense antipathy that characterized the period of religious formation of Saint Josemaria Escriva in the second and third decades of the twentieth century, during which the antipathy of the Roman Catholic Church toward liberalism was at least equal to its hatred of communism.

Although Roman Catholicism has been explicitly condemnatory of aggressive ideological fascism, that is, Nazism, it has been far less critical, if at all, about moderate forms of political authoritarianism, which share a family resemblance to fascism. They include regimes such as that of Singapore or the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. We recall that for many generations the political predilection of Catholicism was for the restoration and propagation of the monarchy in Europe. Opus Dei shares Catholicism’s compliant attitude toward moderate political authoritarianism.

The distinctive components of Opus Dei’s social vision derive from defining aspects of its “spirit,” in particular the following.

- Classical ethics, that is, virtue ethics, which is in the main individualistic

- Pursuit of professional prestige, which is understood in terms of professional excellence, and, often, the pursuit as well of the corresponding financial rewards

- Pursuit of considerable financial support for the buildings and other material requirements of the organization

- Pursuit of aggressive growth in membership, which exponentially multiplies the financial needs of the organization

In addition, Opus Dei members are, in the words of Saint Escriva, free to do “anything they want” in professional, particularly political and economic matters.

Although it is indeed true that in contingent secular matters, such as politics or economics, particularly those areas with respect to which the Catholic magisterium has not weighed in, Catholics exercise “freedom of conscience,” a freedom which must be respected, so that in effect, differences of opinion should be respected and allowed to co-exist, it is also true that as a matter of Catholic belief the exercise of this freedom is not absolute and is subject to specific restrictions.

The most specific restrictions obviously pertain to the moral law, e.g. Do not kill, Do not steal, etc.

Another group of significant restrictions derives from Catholicism’s historical antipathy, involving explicit ideological condemnation, toward communism and liberalism. Notably, fascism of the murderous, racist variety represented by Nazism belongs to this cohort of censured ideologies.

The obsession of Opus Dei with its own growth and its own considerable financial needs in effect blinds it to taking on larger roles, whether corporate or individual, in addressing the pressing social issues of the day. The calculus of this ethos on the level of the individual is that if you are obsessively focused on and engaged in the advancement of the organization itself, the many other pressing social concerns of the day will attract very little if any of your already depleted attention and draw very little if any of your energies drained to the point of exhaustion. The overweening priority of the corporate recruiting agenda of Opus Dei significantly limits its participation in progressive social change and as a consequence tends to align the organization with the political and economic right.

Another factor that aligns the organization with the political and economic right is the canonical pursuit of professional prestige, not only on individual but also on corporate levels, which is significantly interpreted in economic terms and in the context of the status quo. The Opus Dei member is incited to pursue professional advancement in the context of the status quo, not to seek to understand the social situation, to address social problems, or to bring about social change.

The anti-communism of the organization also limits or obstructs the capacity of its members to conduct structural analysis, which is viewed with suspicion because it is tainted by its affinity to historical Marxism. Moreover, the individualistic ethics of Opus Dei anesthetizes the consciences of individual members to structural social concerns because the organization psychologically rewards the propagation of this type of ethics and discourages the understanding and application of structural analysis. Under the influence of the de facto Opus Dei constellation of priorities, it is easily possible that a meaningless detail of personal decorum—the “little things” in the Opus Dei vocabulary—would be given far greater importance than personal action to bring about social change of great moment, affecting the lives and welfare of great numbers of citizens. The individualistic tendency in Opus Dei is reinforced because the organization looks with suspicion on and discourages the structural analysis that is vital in applications of social ethics. Individualistic ethics tends to maintain the political and economic elite because it does not call for structural social change, except perhaps in terms of the exercise of individual virtue, that is, probably according to a weak social understanding. Thus anti-communism and individualistic ethics as defining traits of the organization serve to encourage Opus Dei in achieving its corporate agenda on the political and economic right.

“Conscientization,” like so many other ideas originating in leftist ideology, has no currency in Opus Dei. Conscientization entails awakening the social conscience principally by making it aware not simply of social concerns but by promoting the understanding of social problems by structural analysis, which is in part historical analysis. In addition to the effect on the organization of Saint Escriva’s injunction to a type of political and economic indifferentism—you can do “anything you want” in professional matters, words apparently deriving in part from his political naivete—the utter absence of conscientization in Opus Dei, meaning, sensitivity to structural analysis and thereby to growth and development in social conscience, deadens the members to progressive social ethics and propagates the status quo, even in conditions under which it could be characterized as oppressive and unjust. The propagation of the status quo favors the political and economic elite, who, naturally, occupy the right.

Finally, Opus Dei tribalism, reinforced in particular by a theology of kinship that posits “ties of the spirit take precedence over ties of blood”—Saint Escriva’s explicit teaching—means that the spiritual bonds of Opus Dei members supersede in obligation those owed to the immediate and extended family, indeed, to the nation, and possibly to the larger Roman Catholic Church outside Opus Dei.

Opus Dei tribalism potentially undermines democratic structures, particularly when the tribalism is combined with the historical anti-liberalism of Roman Catholicism. The deleterious effect of this tribal—or Mafia-like—ethos might not be so apparent in a strongly established democratic society like the U.S., but in effete democracies, particularly in developing countries and especially in authoritarian states, Opus Dei tribalism when exercised in the secular domain has the potential to undermine democratic structures and thereby propagate oppressive regimes.

Opus Dei, with its success ethos, its social conservatism, its anti-communism, its anti-liberalism, and its tribalism, all riding on the vehicle of Roman Catholic spirituality, discovers an affinity for authoritarian right-wing regimes and in collusion with them finds an environment conducive to advancing its overriding corporate agenda.

In summary, then, the predilection of Opus Dei for the political and economic right is not an accident of spirituality. It is a systemic feature of the organization that originates in defining traits of the Opus Dei spirit deriving from Saint Escriva. Saint Escriva was not, as is often loudly proclaimed, a politically indifferent man. On the contrary, he stamped upon the organization its distinctive social vision.