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An Open Letter to Miloslav Cardinal Vlk
Dr.
John C. Rao, D. Phil. (Oxon.)
Your Eminence:
I am writing this letter to you with respect to your comments
concerning my lecture in Prague on Saturday, September 9th, 2006
. I would rather that this discussion had been a private one, with you
seeking first to clarify my meaning and correct my possible errors on a
one-to-one basis, as would seem to befit a pastor of souls and a fellow
believer. After all, Scripture tells us that problems among the brethren
must initially be approached in precisely this quiet and personal fashion.
Unfortunately, you chose to ignore the charitable path, and
to launch, instead, into a public attack on my reputation, going so far as
to assure the American and Israeli Ambassadors to the Czech Republic that my
supposed intellectual sins were abhorrent to the Roman Catholic Church.
Given this totally unpastoral “preemptive strike”, I have decided that I
have no choice but to make the letter I am writing to you a public one as
well, lest my position in this controversy otherwise never be known. This is
the reason behind my sending copies of this letter to the above-mentioned
ambassadors and publishing its text in The Remnant.
My talk on September 9th for the St. Joseph
Institute and the Katolík Revue was entitled “The New World Order and the
War on Terrorism”. It was, as you correctly understood, a highly critical
lecture. It was critical of American society. It was critical of the
supposedly “free, democratic and peaceful” regime which has emerged from out
of the historical flaws of that society, and which the Bush Administration
now seeks to spread throughout the globe by force. It was critical, most
importantly, of the intolerable lack of respect for other independent
nations and cultures (not to speak of the true well-being of the
United States itself) which the realization of this new, evangelical, global
disorder guarantees.
What is
completely beyond my grasp is how Your Eminence or anyone else listening to
a tape of that lecture could construe from what I said therein that I had
come to Prague to promote an anti-Americanism which gave succor to
“nationalism, “neo-Nazism”; “anti-Semitism”; “Lefebvrism”; or “Islamism”.
Let us examine each of these themes in turn and, in conclusion, Your
Eminence’s general appreciation of me as a promoter of “political
extremism”.
I.
Nationalism?
Absolute astonishment is the only word that I can use to
respond to your criticism of me as a supporter of nationalism, given the
fact that my entire lecture was precisely one, long, unending attack upon…
nationalism!
Modern nationalism, from Giuseppe Mazzini to George Bush,
turns respectable love of country into an unacceptable ideology of
pseudo-religious character. My argument in Prague was that American
nationalism is the contemporary world’s clearest and most dangerous
example of this brand of ideological pseudo-religion; that it is a worldwide
menace both to other countries’ legitimate patriotic aspirations to
independence and cultural integrity as well as to the interests of true
religion.
I explained
in my talk that nationalism in the United States is expressed in a political
philosophy, one which once was referred to as “Americanism”, but which now
is more popularly known globally as “Pluralism”. This illegitimate
nationalist philosophy claims that America and the American system have
created a new, unique and infallible mechanism for guaranteeing freedom and
happiness for all groups and individuals in every society whatsoever and
ensuring their peaceful, democratic cooperation together. Divinization and
unquestioning acceptance of this ideology and pseudo-religion is demanded of
all Americans as proof of loyalty to their nation. It is taught and exalted
through the political ceremonies conducted on all public occasions. One need
only read the speeches given at such moments, by George Bush and others, to
understand the sacral character of these strange liturgies, so hostile to
the spirit of a true American patriotism.
Americanism and Pluralism view the United States and its way
of life as a force in world history with a mission more universal and
redemptive than that of the Incarnation. They see this global mission as one
that is blessed by the God who first led the Puritans to the New World to
build a “City on a Hill” for the edification of all of mankind. But, given
the peculiar historical development of American society, they also
understand this task to be one demanded by the “obvious, common sense laws
of nature” preached by Enlightenment secularists who seduced those who had
lost their supernatural faith in the New World and needed to replace it with
fanatical commitment to a new political ideology.
What this means, therefore, is that each and every nation,
culture and individual is commanded to support all that masquerades as
patriotism in the United States in the name of pleasing both God and Nature.
The only permissible “patriotism” anywhere on this planet is worship of the
nationalist ideology and pseudo-religion of Americanism and Pluralism. Those
who would seriously dare to oppose the global acceptance of such an idol in
the name of their own independence and cultural integrity must be considered
enemies of God and Nature. Further still, in the present environment, they
must considered to be “terrorists”. For who but a “terrorist” would
physically resist the most blessed and infallible gift of God and Reason for
the fulfillment of human happiness that history has ever known?
It is this arrogant Americanist/Pluralist cultural and
spiritual ideology which I criticized in Prague. And yet it is my attack
on that pseudo-religion which you, Your Eminence, seem to believe promoted
an intolerable “nationalism”. How odd that a man, in your eyes, demonstrates
his support for nationalism by opposing unconditional surrender to its most
dreadful current-day manifestation! One really would need the talent of a
Samuel Beckett to portray the twisting of logic required to justify
accepting such a humiliating Catholic submission to a fraudulent ideology
that places itself above the God Incarnate.
II.
Neo-Nazism?
This brings me to the charge of “neo-Nazism”. Nazism, by any
historical measure, is built around two central themes— 1) the conviction
shared by all Fascists of the need to overcome disorder through the Triumph
of the Will of a Leader whose subjects blindly obey him; and 2) Racism.
Presumably, neo-Nazism underlines the same basic principles.
I certainly did bring up the topic of the Triumph of the Will
in my Prague lecture, but for the purpose of attacking two frequent and
complementary Americanist/ Pluralist demands. One of these, popular with
American conservatives, is the call to shape public policy in the United
States not on the basis of any objective standards of ethics and Reason, but
on that of the “Will of the Founding Fathers”. This, I noted, exactly
parallels the classical Fascist appeal to the “Will of the Leader”. The
other argument which I lamented at my lecture was the already mentioned
Enlightenment insistence that political, social and moral issues must be
understood and resolved on the grounds of a “basic common sense” avoiding
the “divisive” and “order disrupting” problems brought on by deeper
theological, philosophical and historical discussions. Such an argument, I
explained, gives a golden opportunity to the criminal mind to prosper. It
permits a new elite of clever and unscrupulous strongmen to replace the old,
already flawed American Puritan and merchant/plantation aristocracy, and to
dominate and manipulate society in the name of “freedom” and “democracy”.
It guarantees such criminals the chance to work their will because it allows
no one the opportunity to define what the true nature of freedom and
democracy is, or to criticize the abuses being perpetrated under their
banner. Woe to the man who tries to think! He will bring down upon himself
the damning accusation of being an enemy of the stability of the American
nation and a promoter of “terrorist” hostility to its absolute and
unquestionable goodness.
And Racism? There are two great mysteries which baffle me
with respect to the possible accusation of Racism in the present context: 1)
How anyone could take racist arguments seriously enough to force me to
respond to them in the first place.
Every knowledgeable Catholic knows that Racism is
anti-Christian, and, being a Catholic, I unhesitatingly reject it as such;
and, 2) How you, Your Eminence, might have found a neo-Nazi racist theme in
a lecture which never dealt with the subject at all; in a talk which
precisely underlined that respect and protection owed to other ethnic groups
and cultures which every real racist finds preposterous.
If anything, Your Eminence, my Prague talk’s condemnation of
the Triumph of the Will would have earned me a prison sentence in Nazi
Germany. Can the Americans and Europeans who have preached the need for
blind obedience to the religion of the New World Order in Prague claim as
much?
III.
Anti-Semitism?
As a Catholic enemy of Racism, I clearly cannot be an
anti-Semite. I do not profess any racial disdain either for the Jews or for
any other Semites. My criticisms in Prague of the evangelical, ideological,
pseudo-religious nationalism propagated by the United States today confirm
the absurdity of the charge of anti-Semitism as well. For in fighting versus
Americanism and Pluralism I was attacking a force that has issued an
ultimatum for world submission to a set of non-negotiable changes
undermining the rights of all peoples and cultures, those of the Jews
included. In fighting this bizarre form of modern nationalism, I was
combating an oppressor which obliges Jews, like everyone else, to bend to
whatever the strongest forces defining “freedom”, “democracy” and the “Will
of the Founding Fathers” in 2006 desire.
Yes, it is
true that my talk was obviously opposed to the Bush Administration’s
policies in the Middle East, and, by extension, to the policies of
governments which actively approve of current American international
adventurism, the government of Israel among them. Surely you are not saying
that anti-Semitism and a refusal unquestioningly to accept and support
American and Israeli foreign policy are one and the same thing? Is blind
obedience to that foreign policy part of Christ’s teaching and the Deposit
of Faith? Where is this assertion to be found in Scripture? Who among the
Church Fathers defended it? Which Pope or Council indicated as much? What
Creed enshrines it? Is this not matter for human Reason as opposed to Faith?
Am I not to use my Reason to judge such a policy? Is this not especially
true in the modern Church, where past failures to allow people to use their
Reason are regularly condemned and loudly lamented by progressive prelates?
Or are Faith, Reason and Truth simply the playthings of truly
neo-Nazi strongmen and their fellow-travelers who have learned to talk the
superficially seductive talk of freedom and democracy louder and more
insistently than their wretched victims? And are such neo-Nazi crimes
against Reason something which the Catholic of 2006 is not allowed to
criticize simply because the powerful men and women perpetrating them are
still alive, very threatening and not as easy to chastise as dead villains
from 1606?
IV.
Lefebvrism?
I am a practicing Roman Catholic who loves the Traditional
Mass. My parish church in New York City, St. Agnes, offers both the
Traditional Mass and the Novus Ordo. I attend the former. Some of my
friends attend the latter. We are fortunate in New York City in having an
Archbishop who allows this co-existence without any problem or stigma to
Traditionalists whatsoever. I am sorry that this is not the case in Prague,
and am keenly aware of the number of prayers offered daily by many faithful
in your beautiful city in the hope of storming heaven on behalf of a more
open, pastoral approach towards the Traditional Mass.
Repeated traditionalist queries to Rome regarding whether it
is permissible to attend a Mass celebrated by a priest of the Society of St.
Pius X—whose members, by the way, consider themselves to be Roman Catholics
and not “Lefebvrists”—have regularly met with positive responses. We have
even been told by the Ecclesia Dei Commission that it is acceptable
to make a “modest donation” when in attendance at a Society chapel.
Moreover, the Roman authorities have had, and continue to wish to have,
discussions with the Society conducted in a very friendly, civilized
fashion. Does this make His Holiness and Cardinal Hoyos “Lefebvrists”?
Should they be suspected of political extremist, nationalist, neo-Nazi and
Islamist sentiments as well? Are Catholics required to report them to the
secular representatives of the United States in Rome for chastisement as
well as in Prague?
V. Islamism?
I do not have a clear sense of what this term means in a
highly divided Islamic world, except to indicate a Moslem who contradicts
the demands of George Bush and his allies.
In my talk, I did indeed note that I felt a certain sympathy
for Moslems who stand up to violent commands that they unwillingly accept a
New World Order which both divinizes the Triumph of the Will of the
strongest and destroys age-old local cultures and local economies in the
process; a New World Order which calls all who oppose it with anything more
than a token “parlor sport” resistance “terrorists” (Moslems today and Roman
Catholics tomorrow?) and insists upon global commitment to a final solution
of their obstinacy.
I then went on to indicate that I thought my sympathy to be a
misplaced one. I labeled it “misplaced” both because I noted that there
are people active in the Moslem world whom anyone would define as
terrorists, and because I see terrible flaws in Islam which, mutatis
mutandis, produce many evils analogous to those engendered by the
pseudo-religion of Americanism and Pluralism. The global evangelism of both
these forces greatly troubles me, but it is that of the New World Order
which, at the moment, is most powerful.
If anything, my sympathy for Moslems is, I believe, of the
sort felt by certain elderly central European acquaintances of mine for the
Russians at the time of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. These
friends told me that they pitied Russia since they understood the horrors of
Nazism and knew the damage that would be done to the Russian people if it
were to be victorious. On the other hand, they admitted that their sympathy
was problematic, as they knew the evils that Stalin had perpetrated on his
own peoples, and were deeply worried about what a Communist victory under
his leadership would entail. You, Your Eminence, as a Czech patriot who is
not an extreme nationalist or an Islamist, surely must know what I mean in
this context. One of the things that regularly impresses a “dogmatist” like
myself is just how complicated history and life are in practice.
VI. Political Extremism? Or Merely the Use of Human
Reason?
Your
Eminence accused me of the general crime of promoting “political extremism”.
Alas! what is meant by “political extremism” in the Americanist and
Pluralist language of the New World Order is very often merely the attempt
to use human reason to understand and resolve major social and moral issues.
Unfortunately, I have no chance in a modest sized letter of protest to
explain in detail just how prohibition of serious thought has always played
a major role in the pseudo-religion of America. This prohibition emerged
from certain complexities of American History which I described at length in
Prague. It was born out of the impossible effort to combine together a
praise for two totally irreconcilable things: a radical freedom and
democracy (which, in a multicultural land, would inevitably destroy the
stability passionately desired by the conservative American Establishment)
and a need to protect peace and order at any price (in a way that would
render the radical freedom and democracy taught by one wing of the
Enlightenment and its secularized American Puritan supporters practically
meaningless). The whole ideological edifice of Americanism and Pluralism,
with all of its fraudulent and criminal consequences, has developed out of
this hopeless attempt to square the circle. Any rigorous theological,
philosophical, psychological, sociological and historical investigation of
such an impossible mish-mash of idealism and self-interest would cause this
house of cards to fall apart in an instant. Hence the attack on human reason
as a “divisive” rather than an “integrative” force. And hence the need to
persecute as “extremists” those who recognize that they have a brain and
desperately wish to use it.
I generally
leave a lecture for traditionalist Catholic
organizations
feeling terribly discouraged. The numbers attending are frequently small and
lead one to wonder whether there is any chance that what has been said will
actually have an impact. Your Eminence has given me hope for the future in
this respect. I now see that our gatherings are monitored; that reports of
what is discussed therein are sent to those strong enough to have their will
regarding what is True, Good and Beautiful serve as the norm for the world
in which we live without having to answer rational objections to their
wishes.
Still, I wish the substance of what Your Eminence reported
had been accurate. It was not. I am convinced that you must not have
listened to the tape of my lecture carefully, and that a second hearing
would clear up this truly unnecessary confusion concerning what was said. I
am enclosing a copy of a pamphlet which I have written on Americanism and
the Collapse of the Church in the United States to help to clarify my
position in your mind still further. Once this unfortunate misunderstanding
has been resolved, I would ask that you issue a public statement undoing the
damage that has been done to my reputation and, by extension, the insult
that has been given to those who are suffering from what truly is a form of
extreme nationalism and neo-Fascism: that propagated by the Might Makes
Right philosophy of the proponents of the New World Order and its caricature
of freedom and democracy.
This apology will prevent my having to take further legal
steps to protect my good name.
Yours in Christ,
John C. Rao (D. Phil., Oxford University)
Associate
Professor of History, St. Johns University, NYC
Chairman, Roman
Forum/Dietrich von Hildebrand Institute
Copies to:
William J.
Cabaniss
Trzist e 15
118 01 Praha
1
Czech
Republic
His
Excellency
Arie Arazi
Badeniho 2
170 06 Praha
7
Czech
Republic |