Joseph McCabe

“ And he went on to make a parenthetic remark which must have made learned eyes open wide behind their horn-rimmed spectacles:
"A dead religion is like a dead cat—the stiffer and more rotten it is, the better it is as a missile weapon." ”

“ The main fact is, however, that since the suppression of the Socialists in Vienna in 1934, the whole country was prostrate at the feet of the cardinal. Socialists were whipped into silence and the whole scheme of education, in school and press, imposed absolute docility to the Church.
That there was an understanding between Cardinal Innitzer and Hitler, who made his usual glib promises to respect and protect the Church, nobody denies. When Hitler marched into Vienna on March 13, 1938, all the church-bells in Austria rang, and a Swastika flag waved over the ancient Cathedral. ”

“ So Hitler made a bolder move: one that might provoke, and ought to have provoked, war.
He needed Austria and Czecho-Slovakia, Hungary was in the plot and very loyal to the Vatican; and in any case Pacelli was to visit it in 1938. With the control of Austria, Czecho-Slovakia and Hungary the conquest of the Balkans was assured, the broad road to Turkey and the East was open, and the blockade by the British fleet, on which small-minded British-statesmen relied, was deprived of its sting. The first step was to get Austria and the Danube, and in this the Black International was very useful. ”

“ We are studying the share of the Black International in the world-debasement and tragedy. As far as Pacelli-Plus is concerned it is enough that he persisted in his attempts to conciliate Hitler and never said a word of the mildest censure of Germany's action in Austria. He knew that Mussolini had agreed to it as part of the general plan. But that the Church in Austria enthusiastically supported Hitler is not disputed, and no section of the Church was more docile to the Vatican. ”

“ Then Hitler, impressed by the value of this holy alliance, sought the same spiritual assistance of the Black International and got it.
So the plot, using the international organization of the Roman Church to lull suspicion in other countries, was unified and took on cosmic proportions. Germany, Italy, and Japan were to rule and exploit the earth. The Pope—he thought—would be the universal chaplain, with the plan in reserve, of a League of Catholic power's strong enough to cheek any trickery of Hitler. ”

“ The question of joining Austria to Germany was clearly of this character. Such union would not only strengthen Hitler's position to a very important extent, so that it was a most valuable opportunity for one of those bargains for which the Vatican is always alert, but to put an additional 7,000,000 Catholics under Nazi rule after what had happened to the Church in Germany this was so serious a matter that the suggestion that Innitzer acted on his own initiative may be dismissed as frankly childish. ”

“ To this you must add its help in keeping Hungary, Eire, and Poland Fascist, in recommending Fascism (politely called the corporative state) in a solemn Papal Encyclical (Quadragesimo Anno 1931) to the entire Catholic world, in working on Catholic sentiment in France, Belgium, Britain, Holland, and America, and in sustaining the hatred of Russia. We return later to these points. ”