Atheism, Marxism, Secularism - the Devil's highways.

  'Archangel Saints - Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel, with Joshua'  (F. Botticini 1446-97)

I am not a fan of unsolicited e-mails, however I have recently received two from the 'change.org' website on which I was happy to act, and which I have also passed on to others. For those who are unaware, the 'change.org' website exists to allow ordinary citizens  to set-up petitions on the internet, usually on matters of public interest about which they have real concern, inviting like-minded people to sign the petition, which will eventually be passed on to the appropriate authority with a view to suitable action being taken.

Of my two messages, one related to a 'Petition' to be presented to Edward Timpson MP,  to outlaw the display of pornographic literature in places where it is visible/accessible to children and young people eg. newsagents, shopping stores, bus/railway stations, airports, etc.  The other on a similar theme, was to persuade the owners of the Sun newspaper to cease publishing photos of  women  in various stages of undress or none, in the daily editions of their newspaper.

I support both these Petitions and have duly signed, but more signatures are needed.  The links to the respective Petitions are shown below:-

http://www.change.org/petitions/edward-timpson-mp-make-it-illegal-to-display-porn-around-children?utm_campaign=mailto_link&utm_medium=email&utm_source=share_petition   - petition addressed to Edward Timpson M.P.        

 just click here to share the petition on Facebook. -  petition to David Dinsmore,  Editor of Sun newspaper.

 Congratulations to the organisers of both these Petitions.  Fight the good fight - for evil to succeed it is only necessary that good men do nothing.  'Holy Michael the Archangel, defend us in the day of battle, be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the Devil'

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We have finished with the earthly Tzars, now we shall deal with the heavenly Tzars' - 'Bezbozhnik', January,1923.

(The Bezbozhnik, or 'Atheist', a weekly newspaper of a violently anti-religious character, is published at Moscow by the Bolsheviks)

I have recently been reading a most interesting book, ‘The Bolshevik Persecution of Christianity’ by Captain Francis McCullagh, published by John Murray, London, 1924. McCullagh (born1874  N.Ireland, died 1956 New York) was a British Catholic journalist, who in the early days of the Revolution, had  been imprisoned by the Bolsheviks, but subsequently escaped. He was an experienced war correspondent and a fluent Russian speaker, and early in 1923  he was commissioned by Frank Munsey, editor of the ‘New York Herald’ to travel to Russia  to obtain first -hand information on the relationship between the Bolshevik government and the Christian Churches; and this book is the result.

                         McCullagh deals initially with the take-over and politicisation of the Russian Orthodox Church by the Bolshevik government. He then  follows this with a full account of  the State trial of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Achrida, John Cieplak; Monsignors Maletzky and Budkiewicz; Exarch Fedorov, head of the Uniat Church; eleven  priests and one Catholic layman, all charged with offences against the State, namely refusal to hand-over church valuables- which included the Eucharistic vessels,  from churches and religious houses, to agents of the State;  also teaching  the Catholic faith to children and young people, both in church and in their homes. The result of this obscene travesty of a  trial, which lasted a mere five days from March 21 to March 25 1923, was a finding of guilt for all the accused, with Archbishop Cieplak and Monsignor Budkiewicz sentenced to death, and varying terms of imprisonment for the remaining defendants, ranging from 10 years in solitary confinement, to 3 years; with the one lay defendant sentenced to 6 months imprisonment.

                                     Monsignor Budkiewicz was executed (shot in the head) in a cellar, during the night of 30/31 March, the night of Good Friday/Holy Saturday.  As a result of international outrage and condemnation of the trial, the death sentence on Archbishop Cieplak was commuted to one of 10 years imprisonment in solitary confinement.

                          

Monsignor Budkiewicz

 The author completes his work with an analysis of all the Christian Churches in Russia at that time, concluding that with the destruction and virtual dissolution of the Russian Orthodox Church, which included the murder of 28 Bishops and 1200 priests, the Catholic Church alone possessed the spiritual strength  to withstand and survive prolonged  State persecution. The book is 400 pages long and contains a wealth of information, with a particularly full and detailed account of the Cieplak 'trial'. Reading the account of the trial,  I was particularly struck by the similarities in Bolshevik policies  regarding the relationship of  State and family, to those of our secular government in  the United Kingdom today. It seems incredible, but nevertheless logical, that Marxism would eventually synchronise with atheistic secularism, confirming McCullagh’s view that  Bolshevism and 'Big Business' are ‘natural’ allies.   

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 Extracts from ‘The Bolshevik Persecution of Christianity’ by Francis McCullagh (1923)

 ‘The teaching of religious beliefs in State or private educational establishments and schools to children of tender age and to minors is punishable by forced labour for a period not exceeding one year’ – clause 121 of the new Criminal Code. (p53)

 “If the Soviet government orders me to act against my conscience, I do not obey. As for teaching the catechism, the Catholic Church lays it down that children must be taught their religion, no matter what the law says. Conscience is above the law. No law which is against the conscience can bind”  (Exarch  Federov, head of the Uniat Church in Russia, defendant in the trial of Archbishop Cieplak and others, replying to government prosecutor, the Procurator Krylenko, March 22, 1923)

 “The worst feature of the Bolshevik persecution of Christianity is not the imprisonment and murder of priest  and laymen, but the attack on family life.The new laws on marriage and on the education of children, which a Commission in the Department of Justice is now preparing, are deeply tainted by that most atrocious doctrine of radical Communism – namely, the doctrine that children belong absolutely to the State, and must be handed over to State institutions. ‘Children who have not reached maturity (eighteen years) are regarded as belonging to no religion whatsoever, and the assertion of the parents that the child belongs to any particular Church has absolutely no force.’

 “Moreover, apart from its frontal attack on the Church, the Soviet Government had trespassed on parental authority and on the home to an extent which no Christian prelate should have permitted without a public protest, which would have resounded throughout Europe and America. To show in detail how far such trespass extends would necessitate too long a digression; so that I shall only mention one point – namely the right which the Soviet Government claims, and exercises, of extorting from its citizens information on sexual matters, about which no Government has ever asked for information before.  I do not refer to the practice of debauched medical students and ‘lady’ doctors giving to school children of both sexes erotical lectures illustrated by films; though this practice, known as “the teaching of sex hygiene,” is in my opinion wrong. I refer to the questionnaires on sexual questions which   are sent out by the Commissariat of Public Health. One such questionnaire was sent in the Spring of 1923, to all women and adolescent girls in Moscow, and these were required by law to fill it up. Most of the questions related to self-abuse and to unnatural vices, with which the compilers of the questionnaire had apparently no quarrel”

 “Catholicism is detested by autocratic rulers, which included the Tsars and the Bolsheviks. Writing in 1819, of the hostility of Alexander I  to Rome, Joseph de Maistre says, “There is in the teaching of the Catholic Church, an hauteur, an assurance, an inflexibility which displease temporal rulers, who cannot believe that they are master, or sufficiently master, where there exists a power with which they cannot do as they please.   It never occurs to them that this pride and this independence are the natural and necessary characteristics of truth, so much so that where independence does not exist, truth does not exist ……….Truth is invincible, independent, and inflexible ………..It is said in the Gospels that the peoples who heard the preaching of the Saviour were astonished because He did not speak to them like their doctors, but as one having authority ………..The religion which has not this tone is human.”

 “If some of the great English profiteers who did so well out of the war (Great War) begin to do well out of Soviet Russia, some British politicians who had hitherto inveighed against Lenin and Trotsky may come to regard these gentlemen in a different light; and some British newspapers to which the Red Republic had been like a red rag to a bull may come to consider that Republic as a sensible and right-thinking bull regards good fodder.  Big Business and Bolshevism are natural allies, and they are likely to come together sooner or later, for the oppression of the poor, and of those priests whose place is with the poor, as their Divine Master’s was.”

 “In their rank materialism, in their genuine contempt for such tenets of Christianity as they cannot utilize for political or financial purposes, in their efforts to relieve parents of the care of their children and children of the care of their parents, to interfere in the home, to put asunder those whom God has joined, to exclude religion from the schools, to reduce the workers to a state of servitude, to impose such taxation that the difference between it and nationalization will soon be negligible, and, finally, to erect the State into a sort of divinity, some European governments outside of Russia are entering on the same path as that along which the Government of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic (R.S.F.S.R) has already advanced so far”

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'I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only love.'
(with ack. 'A Faith Seeking Understanding' blog-site)

                                                 Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta