Book Review : Americanism & the Anti-Christian Conspiracy
This book can be purchased here.
The ever intrepid Don Donoso Cortes once wrote that “Human order consists in the union of man with God, and this union cannot take place in our actual condition and in our actual state of separation, without a gigantic effort to raise ourselves to God” (Catholicism, Liberalism & Socialism).
In many ways the book presently under review, a rare and precious gem of orthodox thinking on Catholicism and the State from Msgr. Henri Delassus, another leading light of the 19th century counterrevolution, lays out before us a major component of the struggle which constitutes a vital part of that “gigantic effort” that is necessary “to raise ourselves to God.”
In his treatise, Americanism & the Anti-Christian Conspiracy, first written in 1899 and only now translated from the original French and made available in English for the first time, Msgr. Delassus has this to say: “The role of Catholics in the world, the role of the clergy alongside the faithful, is to create trends around true ideas, without asking if they are or are not attractive to the multitude. This is what the Apostles did.”
Rewind that last part: Without asking if they are or are not attractive to the multitude! In other words, without asking if these trends centered on true ideas (Catholic principles) are or are not too controversial, too politically incorrect, too “extreme,” or just plain old too “hard sayings” which weak men are disinclined to profess or put into practice.
Such clarion exhortations as these – inspirations by which real men are prompted to assemble on the front lines ready to give their all for a righteous cause – are a rarity in this day and age. They are just as unlikely to be spoken from the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square, as by the mainstream Catholic Press and electronic media, as by any of the bishops (apostles turned apostates) of the “American Catholic Church” (not to be confused with the Roman Catholic Church on American soil!). Both of these outstanding defenders of the Faith – Cortes and Delassus – were referring to the same twofold combat, self conquest and world conquest, centering on the same doctrine, the doctrine of Christ, which requires of each one of us, living today, commitment, fortitude, humility and passion (zeal) heroically applied.
As Msgr. Delassus noted, this is what the Apostles did. It is the same “gigantic effort,” and trend created “around true ideas,” we too are called to faithfully and manfully undertake.
One of the greatest acts of charity and fidelity to Christ the King that a loyal Catholic can perform today is to help eradicate from the minds of men, and from the public life of his nation, the moral, spiritual, intellectual and social pestilence of liberal Catholicism.
The most dangerous mind is that of the liberal Catholic. The most destructive institutions are those built upon liberal principles. It is he, the liberal Catholic, who is so inclined to sabotage and dismantle everything sacred, doctrinal and hierarchical in religion, and everything noble and just in politics. This he accomplishes by means of novelties, equivocations, compromising alliances and endless scheming. The progressive deChristianization of society that we’ve sadly witnessed for the better part of two centuries, and the accelerated Protestantization of Catholicism since the death of Pius XII and onset of that catastrophic period following the Second Vatican Council, has been, to a great degree, his doing, that is, the liberal Catholic; the venal and falsehearted Catholic whose modernist mind and life mission have long been infected with irrational ideas, dangerous delusions and perfidious machinations. For all their pious pretences and pretended altruism, they’ve devoted themselves unsparingly to such insane pursuits as forging a non-dogmatic, anti-magisterial “democratic” Church, coupled with a whole temporal order reorganized without Christian principles, without the influence of the Mystical Body, without Christ Himself reigning as King. Nothing less than a demonically manipulated mind has them convinced that humanity is better off without the Way, the Truth and the Life; He alone who can bring the divine Light upon the nations.
Such is the sheer madness that drives these sons of disobedience forward and underscores their program, which is everywhere the same. Is it any wonder, then, that Pope Pius IX would issue so grave and urgent a warning: “Beware! There are no worse enemies of the Church than liberal Catholics!”
That warning and admonishment, issued amidst the turmoil of the 19th century, holds even truer in the 21st century. It is so because these worst of all enemies, diehard revolutionaries masquerading as beneficent reformers, have of recent realized some of their deadliest objectives. They have lived to see, for example, their false theories and radical innovations spread throughout the world, having precipitated the secularizing spirit of the age even unto the ruin of the Christian family and nation alike; they’ve permeated the Catholic Church herself, effectuating the corruption of the clergy and hierarchy, beginning in the seminary and moving upwards through ecclesiastical ranks; forty years ago they claimed a victory unlike any other when an imposter and apostate Church emerged from the deliberations of Vatican II, expunging much of what had been divinely deposited in the true Church of Christ, the mystical and militant Church of Sacred Tradition, which Church, not to be mistaken for its conciliar imposter, is ever one, holy, Roman, Catholic and apostolic; and they’ve pursued their goals even unto the construction of a New Tower of Babel, the grasping beast of a New World Order that we see rising today, like a terrifying colossus, above the decaying corpse of Catholic Christendom.
Deploring the union and inter-cooperation of Church and State, which had allowed for the greatest blessings, spiritual and social, to pour out upon the nations of Christendom, the liberal Catholic hypocritically and blasphemously champions the union of Catholicism and the Revolution, and this unto the abject misery of peoples everywhere. Of course the liberal is not alone in his perfidy. The neoconservative, too (both inside and outside the Church), is the liberal’s blood brother, his partner in crime; two arms, as it were (the left and the right), of the same religious forgery. Understood in this context, liberal Catholicism and its kindred spirits, having taken on pandemic proportions, have become nothing less in our time than a world disaster. How could it be otherwise? It is treason against Christ, and nothing less.
In confirmation of liberal Catholicism’s unholy acclivity and unchallenged primacy, and the corresponding loss of faith even among the Church hierarchy, we direct your thoughts to one of the most astonishing, scandalous and self-incriminating admissions of these irreligious times. The personage of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger himself unashamedly toed the liberal line in reporting, for all the world to hear and without so much as a sigh of protest or a whimper of outrage,
- That Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors and Saint Pius X’s Pascendi were officially rejected at the Second Vatican Council;
- That the conciliar document, Gaudium et spes, constitutes “a revision of the Syllabus of Pius IX, a kind of countersyllabus;”
- That the view of the world held by these two orthodox Popes represents “an obsolete Church-State relationship;”
- And that, therefore, “there can be no return to the Syllabus.”
These excerpts were taken from the Cardinal’s own book, Principles of Catholic Theology (1982). To this day, 25 years later, the cardinal, now Pope Benedict XVI, has not disclaimed a single one of these opprobrious remarks.
Now, what exactly is this Syllabus of which the former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith speaks so negatively? You know as well as I do, dear reader, that it’s one of the most salient Papal pronouncements officially condemning that long litany of false principles so revered by this modern age. In a word, it is the Church and the Magisterium’s official and absolutely binding condemnation of liberal Catholicism in all of its multifarious expressions of insult and infidelity to God. That so intelligent and highly venerated a theologian as Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI would actually put his name to a book spewing such blatant anti-Magisterial verbiage, is an enigma that sane men will probably never fully comprehend.
Enough about Pope Ratzinger. Of greater interest to us than what the wreckers of our holy Faith have to say, let us turn to what one of the Church’s truest defenders was saying at the time St. Pius X was battling the Sillonists, Modernists and Christian democrats. What does Msgr. Henri Delassus write about liberal Catholicism, which ignited this appallingly perverse anti-Syllabus mindset in the first place? That it is, in fact :
a very great effort … undertaken to destroy the work of Christ in morals, in laws, in the institutions and even in the Church Herself: Catholic liberalism is, in effect, nothing other than the revolutionary spirit which is looking to introduce itself into the Church Herself.
And of the Syllabus he writes:
Of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the true Christian must oppose it with the solemn declaration of the rights of GOD; in other words, they must make their flag the Syllabus of Pius IX, twice ratified by Leo XIII. Each one of the propositions of the Syllabus contradicts a revolutionary principle, a consequence of the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
Msgr. Delassus further correctly calls liberal Catholicism “a counterfeit Catholicism,” which begets “the democratic doctrine,” which begets “Americanism” and “modernism,” and which can lead to modernism’s excesses, namely, “the overthrow of the doctrinal edifice of Catholicism, and actually to atheism or to pantheism.”
These truths have become self-evident in our day. Msgr. Delassus had the incredible foresight to see them in his day – more than a century ago.
In his dynamic little book, Americanism & The Anti-Christian Conspiracy, actually a short compendium of several of his lengthier writings, Msgr. Delassus fearlessly confronts the Church’s enemies with the truth. He amply demonstrates to his readers that the teachings of the popes strongly compel our wholehearted opposition to the principles of the Revolution. With consummate clarity he demonstrates that the democratic state is not the product of Catholic social thought, as its exponents – liberal, conservative and even some traditional Catholics – tirelessly though futilely argue, but was born of the spirit of Judaism, Freemasonry, Protestantism, liberalism, naturalism and even pantheism (as in Caesar worship and the Divinity State, the State as God). In other words, the spirit of revolt against the Divine Plan.
This is the spirit of the age. It is not, as the master liars are telling everyone, wondrously carrying mankind upwards into some kind of utopian era of peace, prosperity and brotherly love. Oh no. The spirit of the age is dragging mankind downwards, into the abyss, as can plainly be discerned inasmuch as it has already spread its hatred, apostasy, despotism and despair to the far corners of the globe, bringing untold and often unprecedented suffering to the human race, not the least of which is the loss of scores of immortal souls and the demise of every single former Catholic country – the very DEATH of Christendom, and of the social Kingship of Christ.
The good monsignor goes on to show us the inherent oneness of mind between modernists, liberal Catholics, Christian democrats and americanists – all of them seeking the same reforms, all of them rooted in the same false principles. And this revelation, alone, makes this book an invaluable one, particularly for Americans.
As I sat down to write a review of Msgr. Delassus’ most excellent book, an interesting online interview caught my attention which I found pertinent to the present discussion. The title of the piece was “The Last Days of American Democracy.” It consisted of the transcript of a telephone interview with one Elliot Cohen, author of a book entitled The Last Days of Democracy.
During the question and answer exchange, Mr. Cohen, an obvious liberal, said some rather remarkable things. To mention just three, he lamented how the United States of America, under the loathsome Mr. Bush, was fast becoming a dictatorship; how our federal government, in consolidating more and more power to itself, was increasingly resembling Nazi Germany; how even a Democrat-controlled Congress is unwilling to upset the status quo in which they themselves have no lesser vested interests than do the Republicans.
So far so good (that is, unless you happen to be a neoconservative).
But the theme of Mr. Cohen’s book, which was the main topic of the interview, is not so good. Simply put, it is that American democracy is plunging to its death ostensibly because authoritarian rule is being imposed on our people and nation.
The use of the word “because” was enough to invalidate his claim. Emphatically untrue, the statement requires correction. In making correction, we shall tie it in with the general run of our review.
That democracy is collapsing all around us, and on every continent, is all too obvious to everyone except those who refuse to see what stares them in the face. It’s just as obvious that authoritarian rule is fast descending upon “the land of the free.” No one in their right mind would dispute either point. Isn’t that amazing, though? Even liberals like Mr. Cohen can see the handwriting on the wall in this regard, whereas the neoconservatives, and all too many traditional Catholics along with them, are in total denial over what amounts to rock-solid reality. They, who are supposed to be the ones morally and ideologically opposed to every encroachment of collectivist Big Government, have no problem with their man in the White House systematically erecting nothing shy of a monstrously oppressive Omnipotent State! The TOTAL State!
To suggest, however, a cause and effect relationship between the rise of tyranny and the fall of democracy here at home, is utterly false and dishonest. Anyone who asserts this does not understand what democracy really is. As a corollary to this, the remedy for our national woes is not, as the author of The Last Days of Democracy would have us believe, to return to the original vision, to fix the system. On the contrary, the system is not merely broken, it was bad from the get-go. Intrinsically unworkable, secular democracy was doomed – not because of anything a megalomaniac president may have done to speed up the process – but doomed from the start. It was not built on a solid base in the first place, but on an utterly unsustainable foundation of sand!
The only moral alternative to democracy (or any other secular polity) is the Christian State, regardless of whatever form it chooses to assume. The chief function of the Christian State, according to Catholic social teaching, is succinctly capsulated for us by Fr. Edward Cahill: “The Christian teaching on the natural duties of the State in regard to religion and morals may be summarized under two main headings: a) Public recognition of God; and b) Safeguarding the religion and morals of the people” (The Framework of a Christian State). In any well ordered state, the first responsibility of the civil authority is the good of the people, and this common good cannot be separated from its religious dimension, for the highest common good is always spiritual, moral and eternal. Put another way, in rendering to Caesar what is rightly Caesar’s it would be a self-defeating violation of all that is just to deny God that which rightly belongs to God. Therefore, in the absence of anything even remotely likened to these fundamental truths in the U.S. Constitution, it hardly needs pointing out that American democracy – or our constitutional republic, if you prefer – was in no way founded on Christian principles. The very essence of modern, secular, liberal democracy is that it undermines the common good by contradicting Catholic truth, prostituting the principles of just rule, and empowering fallen man and the man-made state while stripping the King of Kings of His divine prerogatives and sovereignty – spiritual, social, universal. Religious liberty, pluralism, the supreme sovereignty of the people, the idolatrous exaltation of liberty, the blasphemous separation of Church and State – such cherished Americanist tenets – all of them repeatedly condemned by Holy Mother the Church – are proof enough that our colonial forefathers have institutionalized, as a basis of our national life and ethos, the expulsion of Jesus Christ the King from the throne of His own social Kingship. And it is this dethronement of God that inexorably leads to the very sort of demagoguery and despotic rule that is so prevalent in modern times.
In his masterful treatise, Msgr. Delassus holds nothing back. Of Americanism, he says: “ ‘This is the Protestant principle in the service of total liberalism.’ There is nothing more cold, nothing more fatal. It is through liberalism that society is killing itself …”
On the question of democracy he is even more blunt: “Now, the character that democracy brings to the fore is that of Satan … The soul of this conspiracy is Freemasonry and, over the government and Freemasons, the Talmudic power that, for nineteen centuries, has been working to prepare the way for the temporal messiah whom they await: the Antichrist.”
Now be honest with yourselves: when was the last time you’ve come across a more scathing indictment, issued by so eminent a churchman, against those unclean predator spirits – Judaism and Freemasonry – that have managed to seduce half the world’s population with these false and lethal democratic notions?
Of course it’s true that our legitimate freedoms are eroding and receding in direct proportion to the growth of that bipartisan behemoth of American collectivism, fascism, socialism and totalitarianism under the thin veneer of democracy. But this frightful development, long planned by the darkest forces of the occult, is the consequence of something more fundamental, even if largely overlooked. That something is sin.
Sin doesn’t just distance man from God and set him on the road to damnation, or cast him into private misery and thrust families into domestic turmoil leading to disastrous marriages, broken homes, maladjusted youth and a proliferation of crime; sin plunges whole nations into every disorder and upheaval, not excluding the extremes of amorality and impiety, secularism and social injustice, usury and usurpation, hedonism and cultural decadence, indoctrination in place of education, money manipulation and legalized plunder, depression and unemployment, endless wars and civil unrest, shortages and rationing, anarchy and martial law – every imaginable moral and social evil that ultimately ends in moral depravity, economic collapse, social chaos and the brutal imposition of state tyranny upon the unsuspecting masses.
Unchecked and widespread, sin ravages society as a whole and violently hurls nations into every malady and misery. And democracy – We-the-People/separation-of-Church-and-State democracy – is one of the most conspicuous applications of a people’s sinfulness adulterating the body politic and betraying the welfare of peoples.
If, then, authoritarian rule is breathing down the necks of the American people today, which it clearly is, this is not the cause of democracy’s downfall; rather, it is the irreversible consequence of democracy’s ascendancy. Authoritarian servitude is the inevitable end-result (this side of eternity) of man’s rejection of the Authority of God in favor of “popular” government, so-called. It follows, in turn, just as night follows day, when the rights of man supersede the rights of God, when liberty, security, equality, individualism, material riches, earthly pleasures, paradise here and now, and such, are more valued and sought after than faith, charity, justice, grace, sanctity, the common good, true prosperity, eternal salvation and the like.
The rise of American totalitarianism – with enormous strides taken by practically every president since Abraham Lincoln (whom both Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler expressly admired), and in particular by Wilson, FDR, JFK, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Bush Sr., Clinton and the still-reigning George Bush II – is actually the unavoidable outcome of the apostasy wrought by modern liberalism, of which democracy is but one of several illegitimate offspring.
No less than fascism, socialism and communism, democracy is the doctrine of the Revolution hell-bent on the overthrow of God in the modern world. Of course God cannot be overthrown. His reign is forever and even the powers of hell cannot prevail against His Church. But whole nations can be lost to the true faith, and souls, societies and civilizations can be destroyed and eternally lost. Peoples and empires whose “Law of the Land” conflicts head-on with the Law of Christ, as does our own, cannot and do not long survive. Therefore, every democracy that is rooted in the same revolutionary principles stands on the threshold of oblivion, doomed to failure from its very inception. If you’re still in doubt about this, Msgr. Delassus’ book is sure to convince you. He is somewhat of a prophet, too, in accurately foreseeing how far democracy will lead us to the brink of destruction. It’s as if the good monsignor could see, from the vantage point of faith, far ahead into the 21st century, right through all this militaristic imperialism and war-mongering committed under the blood-drenched hoax of exporting democracy and freedom, and of fighting rather than fueling Islamic terrorism. Ponder these dire predictions, for instance, which, though made more than a century ago, could not be more applicable to America today than if they’d been penned at this very moment in our nation’s history:
“Now, nothing can prevail against the nature of things … General militarism fits admirably in revolutionary socialist and anarchist affairs; modern thrones seated upon excessive militarism must end by collapsing, to the benefit of the Universal Republic, the ideal of international Freemasonry …
“The further that democracy should thus conquer the world, it necessarily and certainly becomes bankrupt and will disappear. But it will disappear in a cataclysm that will have been prepared by the convulsions that it will have unleashed; by the impiety it will have promoted.”
Is this not exactly what we can expect from the criminal politics which constitute our disastrous national policies, and which remain ever the same, administration after administration, decade after decade, no matter which party is in power, no matter how many promises the demagogues make – but never intend to keep – in exchange for securing the votes of the unthinking and willfully blind? Under the treacherous façade of securing, preserving or spreading democracy, at home or abroad, the process of manufacturing multiple simultaneous crises as a means of solidifying absolute power has long been perfected, and as Msgr. Delassus said, the process can only end in a cataclysm.
Unless we deceive ourselves, it ought to be as clear as day that the last stages of this very process – both the deliberate collapse and planned takeover – are already upon us. How much worse must it get before the people start to realize that their world is coming apart?
It is coming apart, once again, because we have dethroned God Himself from our public life, under the deception of promoting freedom and democracy at home and abroad. It is a gigantic scam, and a very deadly one at that. To reject the Reign of Christ is to guarantee the onset of a Reign of Terror, plain and simple. It is coming, the reign of terror, sure as the morrow’s dawn, and there is nothing that will stop it but a return to Christ Jesus, Lord and Redeemer, crucified and risen, Priest and King. That is the only hope we have to save ourselves, our families, our country, our civilization. It is the only hope we need.
In other words, as bleak as the state of affairs in the Church and in the world is at present, the situation is not hopeless. We can avert a conflagration – if only we will to do so.
What exactly can be done? What does Msgr. Delassus, a favored son of St. Pius X, tell us to do?
The thing most needed, he begins, is “not a counterfeit Catholicism, such as that of the current liberal Catholics, the democrats and modernists, but Catholicism such as has radiated for nineteen centuries from the Chair of Peter, such as has provided us the Encyclicals Mirari vos of Gregory XVI, Quanta cura of Pius IX, that about Americanism and that about Christian Democracy by Leo XIII, and finally the Encyclical Pascendi by Pius X … It is not today a matter of seeing which persons are adversaries, but of welcoming every word of the Pope as being the word of God.”
Welcoming every word of the Pope – every directive from the Chair of Peter, every allocution from the Vicars of Christ, every encyclical from the pen of the Supreme Pontiffs that upholds rather than repudiates the doctrine of Jesus Christ – welcoming these as being the word of God … is that not excellent advice? Did I not tell you Fr. Delassus was a leading light in counterrevolutionary Catholicism? You can’t get any more Catholic and counterrevolutionary than that!
Our eminent monsignor further writes: “It is in souls that change must be made in order to preserve us from catastrophe. To wait for a coup d’ etat or for elections, before men are enlightened, is to harbor the most naïve illusions …The danger, the supreme peril has become manifest; all can see that the antichristian conspiracy threatens to engulf all, and that, not in a century, but tomorrow. So, then, all who hold this same view, must be prepared to lend their hands, their best hand, to the Catholic Camp.”
“This Camp,” Delassus concludes, “in order to be effective, in order to present today to the enemy an impregnable rampart, and tomorrow to allow us to retake from him all the territory he has conquered, demands two conditions, the one interior, the other exterior: conformity of thinking and organization.”
Here, Msgr. Delassus gives us practical advice on how we may effectively do our part in the work of restoration and reconstruction – conformity of mind with the Church, one faith, one doctrine, one priesthood and hierarchy, one mission militantly put to action – that of re-Catholicizing the world around us; and this by means of the second condition: organization in defense of the divine rights of God no less than our enemies have organized in opposition to His rights and to His public and universal reign; and this, chiefly through the indispensable implement of Catholic Action, so strongly and consistently favored by a succession of vigilant and orthodox popes.
Finally, quoting St. Pius X, Msgr. Delassus gives us the one stipulation that overrides all other conditions: I highlight it here in bold caps in order to convey its singular and supreme importance: “IT IS WITH YOUR ENTIRE SOUL, BE WELL AWARE, THAT YOUR FAITH MUST BE DEFENDED.”
In closing, let me state the obvious, namely, that this book by Msgr. Delassus is a very powerful weapon against the onslaught of liberal Catholicism, Christian democracy, Americanism, Modernism, Judaism and Freemasonry. In short, it’s a powerful weapon in the hands of the militant Catholic, and therefore should be given the widest possible readership among today’s remnant and their contacts.
Hugh Akins