More on the Communist infiltration of the Catholic Church

In 2003, Toby Westerman wrote an article for International News Analysis (INA) Today — ‘Infiltration of the Catholic Church?’ — which traced Communist activities within it.

Non-Catholics will also be edified by reading the excerpts which follow, emphases mine.

An affidavit recently obtained by INA Today attributes the Catholic Church’s present state of collapse to a calculated attack beginning decades ago, with initial successes appearing in the 1960s.

The affidavit affirms that Communist Party organizer and high Party official, Bella Dodd, made public statements during the decade of the 1960s declaring that the Catholic priesthood was infiltrated by numerous Communist agents, whose mission was “to destroy the Catholic Church from within.”

As Westerman notes, Dodd published a book called School of Darkness, now available online, which will appear in my next few posts so that you can see from the inside exactly how Communists work in American institutions, primarily state schools.

The Communists drummed Dodd out of the Party.  She eventually rediscovered her Catholic faith, which she embraced for the remainder of her life.  She died in 1969.  This is what she testified, much like what Agent AA-1025 wrote:

“In the late 1920’s and 1930’s, directives were sent from Moscow to all Communist Party organizations. In order to destroy the Catholic Church from within, party members were to be planted in seminaries and within diocesan organizations,” Dodd stated according to the affidavit.

“I, myself, put some 1,200 men in Catholic seminaries,” Dodd publicly declared.

Dodd did not include these remarks concerning her activities directed against the Catholic Church in her book, which was first published in 1954, leading some to question whether the remarks were actually made.

However, as we saw yesterday, the Catholic philosopher Alice von Hildebrand corroborated Dodd’s testimony through this affadavit, which Paul and Johnine Leininger provided.

When contacted by INA Today, Mrs. Johnine Leininger stated that there were others who could also verify that Dodd made the statements regarding infiltration into Catholic seminaries.

Dr. von Hildebrand told INA Today that Dodd had earlier refrained from detailing Communist efforts to undermine the Catholic priesthood at the request of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, the individual responsible for bringing Dodd back into the Church.

Why Archbishop Sheen would have requested such a suppression of information is unclear.  However, Vatican II talks were no doubt either underway or about to begin, therefore, he might not have wished to jeopardise his position.  It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if he had encouraged Dodd to make all her knowledge about the Church public earlier.  The Catholic Church might never have seen Vatican II and could have been in a stronger, purer state today.  Who knows?

The process of Communist infiltration into Catholic seminaries, which Dodd described in her public talks, would have been part of a larger plan called “Outstretched Hand.”

Communist Party archives in Moscow confirm the existence of operation “Outstretched Hand,” and define its goals, according to Herbert Romerstein, author of the seminal work on Soviet espionage in the United States before, during, and after WWII, “The Venona Secrets” …

One document in Moscow’s Soviet archives reveals that the Communist Party had infiltrated several influential Catholic organizations, including the Holy Name Society, the largest parish-oriented Catholic men’s group, which is devoted to increasing reverence for the name of God and to good works in the Church and in society in general. A Holy Name Society chapter exists in almost every Catholic parish in the U.S.

The “Party comrade” operated in a key parish which provided “leadership” and shaped “the policies of most of the reactionary and anti-Communist campaigns that are now developing in the Catholic world,” according to the Soviet file.

Romerstein also recounts in The Venona Secrets that the staff of the Catholic anti-Communist publication entitled Wisdom, produced by a priest of the Paulist order, was infiltrated, and unknowingly employed two Communist agents in influential positions.

The Party boasted that one of their agents was “widely known to be a conservative in Irish circles,” and was a staff correspondent for Wisdom. Romerstein identified the Party member and Soviet agent as Jeremiah F. O’Carroll, who, in 1930, was the president of the Irish Emergency Relief organization.

Although O’Carroll was identified as a spy in 1938, he remained listed as a staff correspondent for Wisdom at least until March 1939.

The second Soviet agent who worked for Wisdom remains unknown to this day.

In many ways, the struggle traditionalists have against Modernism in the Church is no different from that which conservatives have politically against leftists (e.g. Democratic Party, Socialist Party).

When it happens in one’s own ranks, however, many understandably greet news with disbelief or rationalisation: ‘He must have a reason for saying that.  Maybe he’s right.’  This reaction is what subversive instigators wish to elicit.  The conservative then starts to doubt what he has been brought up to believe.  Alternatively, he believes the words of a sleeper agent.  In either case, his beliefs become discredited and compromised.

At the end of Westerman’s article, we find out more about how sleeper agents amongst our clergy work:

Leininger described these priests as “sleepers,” a term designating individuals or groups who carry out their espionage function only at a selected time. Before becoming active, the “sleeper” will refrain from any espionage or subversive functions.

Dodd’s infiltrators — those who lost or never actually held the Catholic faith — would have been the mentors of the present generation of Catholic priests and bishops …

Tomorrow: Excerpts from Bella Dodd’s School of Darkness