By Rebecca R. Messall, Esq.

This article is taken from its fuller version in the fall 2004 issue of Human Life Review, available in its entirety at www.humanlifereview.com.

Everyone knows that the infamous Roe v. Wade opinion legalized abortion, but almost no one knows that legal abortion was a strategy by eugenicists, as early as 1939, to “genetically improve” the population by “reducing” it. In writing his opinion, Roe’s author, Justice Harry A. Blackmun, relied directly and indirectly on the work of these British and American eugenicists. Eugenics is easiest to describe as being the Darwin-based theory behind the Nazis’ plans to “breed” a race of human thoroughbreds. After Hitler, eugenic theorists advocated global control over who has babies, and how many. It has been called “population thinking.” America’s richest families promoted eugenicists and their many social initiatives, including Roe.

One of the clearest links between the eugenics movement and U.S. abortion policy is visible in the American Eugenics Society’s (AES) 1956 membership records, which includes a Planned Parenthood co-founder, Margaret Sanger, and at least two presidents, William Vogt and Alan Guttmacher. The AES had an ugly history of multiple ties to prominent Nazis in Germany. AES members assisted Hitler in crafting the 1933 German sterilization laws. Unbelievably, in 1956— after WWII—the AES membership list included Dr. Otmar Frieherr Von Verschuer, who had supervised the ongoing “science” experiments of Dr. Josef Mengele at Auschwitz.

The AES lobbied successfully for involuntary sterilization laws in the United States, which claimed an estimated 63,000 victims. In 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld those laws in Buck v. Bell, which was cited in Roe. Some states have recently extended official regret and/or apology for those laws.

The Catholic Church was, and is, the nemesis of eugenicists. Politicians in both political parties who position themselves against the Catholic Church and in favor of Roe, align themselves with a host of eugenic strategies and fallout—which include human embryo exploitation (nick-named stem cell research), the trafficking in fetal body parts and euthanasia. They also align themselves with the Rockefeller family dynasty, who funded eugenic scientists decades before Hitler put eugenic theories into practice and who supported many of the leaders of the American Eugenics Society.

The Rockefellers’ support for eugenics began early in the twentieth century, and included support for the Eugenics Record Office. In 1913 John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (“Junior”) incorporated a group, which became a major force in supporting birth control clinics and played a pioneering role in the modern field of population studies.

As early as 1922, the Rockefeller Foundation sent money to fund German eugenics. Of Germany’s 20-plus Kaiser Wilhelm Institute science centers, Rockefeller money built or supported three which “made their mark for medical murder” under the Nazis. One institute was for brain research. During part of Hitler’s rule, it employed Hermann J. Muller, a Rockefeller-funded American socialist and geneticist. It later received “brains in batches of 150-250” derived from Holocaust victims. Another center, the Eugenics Institute, listed its 1935 activities as follows: “the training of SS doctors; racial hygiene training; expert testimony for the Reich Ministry of the Interior on cases of dubious heritage; collecting and classifying skulls from Africa; studies in race crossing; and experimental genetic pathology.”

Junior began funding Margaret Sanger in 1924. Surely he knew of her 1922 book, The Pivot of Civilization. In it Sanger railed against New York’s Archbishop, calling his orthodoxy a “menace to civilization.” Yet she admired Sir Francis Galton, the founder of eugenics, whose ideal she called “the rational breeding of human beings.” She said the Neo-Malthusians considered birth control as “the very pivot of civilization.” She said, “Birth control… is really the greatest and most truly eugenic program.”

When Frederick Osborn became president of the AES in 1946, the AES’ journal, Eugenical News, published a state-by-state report on sterilizations. It also reported on the opposition by Catholic hierarchy, religious and laity. In Alabama: “Whenever sterilization bills are introduced the Catholics descend upon the capital in numbers—priests, nuns and laity—and attack the bill as “against the will of God” and “an attack on the American home.” In Colorado, a 1945 bill failed passage due to “vigorous Catholic opposition.” In Pennsylvania: “The Cardinal’s office in Philadelphia immediately sent a letter to every legislator directing him to oppose the bill, and they were visited by the parish priests in their home communities.”

Frederick Osborn was put in charge of the Population Council, a group organized and funded by John D. Rockefeller III. In 1956, Osborn addressed the British eugenics society. Osborn affirmed his belief in “Galton’s dream” and proposed what he called “voluntary unconscious selection” by changing laws, customs and social expectations. To accomplish this voluntary unconscious selection, he advocated an appeal to the idea of “wanted” children.

In 1968, when many people wrongly believed that the eugenics movement had disappeared, Osborn published a book, The Future of Human Heredity: An Introduction to Eugenics in Modern Society. Osborn asserted that “less intelligent women” could be convinced to reduce their births voluntarily, in order to “further both the social and biological improvement of the population.” He utilized a euphemism for racial minorities by urging that contraception be targeted to people “at the lower economic and educational level.” Osborn recommended disguising the reason for making birth control “equally available.” He said: “Measures for improving the hereditary base of intelligence and character are most likely to be attained under a name other than eugenics.”

Writing his Roe opinion five years after Osborn’s book, Blackmun’s first four introductory paragraphs mention nothing about the newly decreed right of privacy in support of abortion, but he does state: “population growth, pollution, poverty, and racial overtones tend to complicate and not to simplify the problem.” Blackmun directly cited the two men closely connected to the British and the American eugenics societies. Glanville Williams is cited twice. Christopher Tietze is cited three times and Lawrence Lader’s book, Abortion, is cited seven times.

The mystery of Blackmun’s curious opening paragraphs in Roe may be solved by Lader’s book, Abortion, which contains panicked rhetoric such as the following:

“The frightening mathematics of population growth overwhelms piecemeal solutions and timidity. No government, particularly of an underdeveloped nation, can solve a population crisis without combining legalized abortion with a permanent, intensive contraception campaign.”

Glanville Williams (1911- 1997) was a Eugenics Society Fellow in England. Before citing Williams in Roe, Blackmun would have seen Williams’ explicit reference to eugenics:

“Contraception and Eugenics: The problem does not only concern the limits of subsistence, though this in itself is one of sufficient magnitude. There is, in addition, the problem of eugenic quality. We now have a large body of evidence that, since industrialization, the upper stratum of society fails to replace itself, while the population as a whole is increased by excess births among the lower and uneducated classes.”

Before Roe, Ireland’s future cardinal, Cahal B. Daly, had exposed Williams’ anti-Catholic rhetoric: “Examples of the technique occur on every alternate page…Christian moral teaching is ‘reactionary,’ ‘old-fashioned,’ ‘unimaginative,’ ‘primitive if not blasphemous,’ ‘restrictive,’ ‘irrational,’ ‘out-moded,’ ‘dogmatic,’ ‘doctrinaire,’ ‘authoritarian.’

“Contrasted with it are ‘enlightened opinion,’ ‘interesting medico-social experimentation,’ ‘progressive statutes,’ ’empirical, imaginative humanitarianism.'”

Blackmun acknowledged the Catholic scientific view that life begins at the moment of conception, but thereafter Blackmun relied on books and articles espousing the science of eugenics. In fact, one book contains a subheading titled, “The New Eugenics,” and cites two men who can be described as maniacal eugenicists who were seemingly paranoid about a deteriorating human heredity. Blackmun cited an article, “The New Biology and the Future of Man”, which speaks for itself:

“Taken together, [artificial gestation, genetic engineering, suspended animation]…they constitute a new phase in human life in which man takes over deliberate control of his own evolution… There is a qualitative change to progress when man learns to create himself…a reworking of values is required…Submission to supernatural power is not adaptive to a world in which man himself controls even his own biological future…What counts is awareness of the unmistakable new fact that in general new biology is handing over to us the wheel with which to steer directly the future evolution of man.”

In March 1973, two months after Roe was handed down, Osborn’s American Eugenics Society changed its name to the Society for the Study of Social Biology. The announcement said: “The change of name of the Society does not coincide with any change of its interests or policies.” The group had already changed the name of its journal in 1968 from Eugenics Quarterly, to Social Biology. Commenting on the new title, Osborn remarked: “The name was changed because it became evident that changes of a eugenic nature would be made for reasons other than eugenics, and that tying a eugenic label on them would more often hinder than help their adoption. Birth control and abortion are turning out to be great eugenic advances of our time. If they had been advanced for eugenic reasons it would have retarded or stopped their acceptance.”

This, then, is the ideological basis of the abortion industry. 

On April 20, 2005, a new organization was established, Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation (JAACD). The president, Don Feder, held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., and was joined by several members of the group’s advisory board. Feder was a Boston Herald writer and syndicated columnist for 19 years. He is the author of A Jewish Conservative Looks At Pagan America and Who’s Afraid Of The Religious Right?

The purpose of JAACD is “to expose and counter discrimination against Christians, as well as anti-Christian bias.” Its advisory board includes “rabbis, commentators, academics, authors, activists, Zionist leaders and an entertainer. Members span the spectrum from Orthodox to secular, but are united in their determination to support our beleaguered brothers and sisters in the Christian community.” Furthermore, “JAACD will work to combat anti-Christian prejudice in Hollywood, the news media, politics, government and the courts.”

The advisory board members are: Mona Charen, syndicated columnist; Natalie B. Choate, attorney; Rabbi David Dalin, professor, Ave Maria University; Barry Farber, talk-show host; Raoul Felder, author; Beth Galinsky, Jewish Action Alliance; Rabbi Joshua Haberman, Foundation for Jewish Studies; Bruce Herschensohn, professor, Pepperdine University; David Horowitz, Center for The Study of Popular Culture; Jeff Jacoby, columnist, Boston Globe; Binyamin Jokolvsky, Jewish World Review; Morton Klein, Zionist Organization of America; Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Toward Tradition; Barbara Ledeen, Jewish-Republican Activist; Rabbi Yeduda Levin, Jews for Morality; Herb London, Hudson Institute; Jackie Mason, entertainer; Michael Medved, talk-show host; Rabbi Jacob Neusner, professor, Bard College; Judith Reisman, author; Rabbi Aryeh Spero, Caucus For America; and Herb Zweibon, Americans For A Safe Israel.

William Donohue is friends with many of these Jewish writers and activists. When he asked some of them what motivated them to establish such an organization, they said they were concerned about the moral drift the nation is experiencing. To be specific, they said that to the extent Christianity is weakened, America becomes less hospitable for Jews.

The article below was printed with permission from GrasstopsUSA, where it first appeared.

by Don Feder

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach wrote an article in the Jerusalem Post (February 10, 2005) charging that some well-known Jewish conservatives are doing incalculable harm to their people by affirming that America is a Christian nation.

In a rather kvetchy column about Jews who defend the public celebration of Christmas and Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of Christ,” the rabbi rhetorically inquires:

“Is it not highly misguided, not to mention erroneous, for Medved and Lapin to openly speak of America as a ‘Christian’ nation, something bound to make Jews feel like they are guests in someone else’s land?” The author here speaks of syndicated talk-show host Michael Medved and Rabbi Daniel Lapin of Toward Tradition.

Does Boteach also believe we shouldn’t speak of America’s Judeo-Christian heritage, because to do so will make Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus “feel like they are guests in someone else’s land”?

Does “one nation, under God,” in the Pledge of Allegiance (and “In God We Trust” on our currency) make atheists and agnostics feel like outsiders? Other than the ACLU, who cares?

Do Israel’s Christian and Muslim minorities feel alienated living in a Jewish state?
Individual comfort-levels aside, is it “erroneous” to say that America is a Christian nation? That depends on what you mean.

If it’s meant to signify a country whose people are overwhelmingly Christian, the characterization is correct. As a percentage, America’s population is more Christian than India’s is Hindu or Israel’s is Jewish.

If by “Christian America,” we mean that those who shaped our national consciousness subscribed to the tenets of Christianity, that too is true. From the earliest settlements on these shores until the last few decades, our leaders saw America as a reflection of a Christian worldview.

The Mayflower Compact (1620), precursor to the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution, proclaimed that the first permanent English-speaking settlement in the Americas was intended for the “advancement of the Christian faith.”

In a message to his troops (1778), George Washington observed: “To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest Glory to laud the more distinguished character of Christian.”

The first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, John Jay, wrote in 1816 that it was in the interests of “our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.”

As late as 1931 (historical revisionism would set in a decade later), the Supreme Court observed in U.S. v. Macintosh, “We are a Christian people.”

Woodrow Wilson told a campaign rally in 1911, “America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scripture.”

In a 1947 letter, President Harry Truman (who was instrumental in the establishment of the state of Israel) assured Pope Pius XII, “This is a Christian nation.”

Even William O. Douglas, that most liberal justice of the liberal Warren Court, was forced to admit that Americans are “a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.” By a religious people, Douglas did not mean Scientologists.

The foregoing is a very broad overview. Until the secular revolution of the 1960s, none of this was considered remarkable.

America has never had a state church. (Thank God.) At the federal level, there has never been a religious requirement for citizenship or test for public office. (Although the first Congress hired a chaplain and appropriated sums of money to support Christian missionaries to the Indian tribes. It was 1860 before a non-Christian clergyman opened a session of Congress.)

Clearly and manifestly, the American ethos is based on the moral code found in the Torah and New Testament.

Without Sinai there would have been no Philadelphia in 1776 and 1787. Absent Protestantism, there would have been no Pilgrims and Puritans. Without the evangelical Great Awakening of the 18th century, no Lexington and Concord and no “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”

America was founded on the moral patrimony of the West—that Bible-based code called the Judeo-Christian ethic. Whether they do so out of malice or ignorance, those who attack the idea of a Christian America are really attacking this.

Finally, we must ask if America is a Christian nation—in the sense that our laws still are shaped by Christianity. Alas, no.

A Christian (or Judeo-Christian) America would not have legalized abortion. It would not be inching toward euthanasia. It would not be on the verge of homosexual marriage. It would not have no-fault divorce, rampant promiscuity, state-sponsored illegitimacy, government-condoned pornography or any of the other myriad delights of a post-Christian culture.

Everything must be something. As Harvard Professor Samuel P. Huntington pointed out in his seminal work, “Clash of Civilizations,” all great civilizations are intimately connected to a religion. Culture is derived from cult.

In his most recent work (Who Are We: The Challenges to America’s National Identity) Huntington writes: “Americans have been extremely religious and overwhelmingly Christian throughout their history.”

Huntington further observes that America’s national identity is based on Anglo-Protestant culture, including “the English language; Christianity; religious commitment; English concepts of the rule of law, the responsibility of rulers, the rights of the individual; and dissenting Protestant values of individualism, the work ethic, and the belief that humans have the ability and the duty to try to create heaven on earth, a ‘city on the hill.'”

Those who believe America can turn its back on our heritage and succeed as a secular civilization are sadly mistaken.

The choice isn’t Christian America or nothing, but Christian America or a neo-pagan, hedonistic, rights-without-responsibilities, anti-family, culture-of-death America.

As an American Jew, I never felt like a “guest in someone else’s land.” America is a product of a process that began when a Mesopotamian named Abram (Abraham) left his land at God’s behest.

That launched the Western world on a journey whose footfalls may still be heard. And here we are, almost 4,000 years later. We may worship the Master of the Universe differently, but I identify body and soul with my countrymen who share the lofty vision of Washington and Adams, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan.

And so, I feel very much at home here.

For more information on the group Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation, contact Don Feder at 508-405-1337 or write to P.O. Box 4751, Framingham, MA 01704.

by Ronald J. Rychlak

During World War II and for years after it ended, Pope Pius XII was heralded as a staunch opponent of the Nazis and a champion of their victims. Then in 1963, as the result of a piece of fiction written by German playwright Rolf Hochhuth, a controversy arose about whether the Pope had been sufficiently outspoken about Nazi atrocities. One of the earliest papal critics of this era was Robert Katz. In his 1967 Death in Romeand in his 1969 Black Sabbath, Katz severely criticized Pope Pius XII for failing to take a firmer stand in opposition to the Nazis.

After the controversy re-erupted in the past few years, with the publication of several new books, authors like John Cornwell and Susan Zuccotti were justifiably criticized for relying on Katz’s work, which pre-dated the extensive release of Vatican documents on this subject.

Now, in The Battle for Rome: The Germans, the Allies, the Partisans, and the Pope (Simon and Schuster: New York 2003) Katz re-asserts his old charges. Not only does he cite his out-dated books for authority, but coming full circle, he relies upon Zuccotti and Cornwell who had relied upon him! In fact, at one point (p. 54), Katz refers to a charge made by “one historian.” Flipping to the endnotes, one finds an abbreviation. Only by further flipping to Katz’s key does the reader learn that Katz’s “historian” is journalist (not historian) John Cornwell and his discredited book, Hitler’s Pope.

One of the reasons why serious scholars have avoided Katz’s earlier books is because of a lawsuit that was filed by Pope Pius XII’s niece, Elena Rossignani. The Italian Supreme Court ruled that: “Robert Katz wished to defame Pius XII, attributing to him actions, decisions and sentiments which no objective fact and no witness authorized him to do.” Katz was fined 400,000 Lire and given a 13-month suspended prison sentence.

In his new book, Katz discounts that lawsuit, noting that because of an amnesty, the litigation was ruled moot. That may be a legal defense, but it does not negate the two separate findings on the merits against Katz, and those findings should be sufficient to warn readers about the legitimacy of (and motivation behind) Katz’s work.

Katz focuses on the period when German troops occupied Rome. The first important Vatican-related event took place in October 1943, when the Nazis rounded up about 1,200 Roman Jews for deportation. Katz concludes that the Allies had advance notice of the planned roundup and that Pope Pius had at least an unsubstantiated warning of it.

Katz reports that a copy of a German telegram revealing the Nazi order for the roundup of Jews was passed on to President Franklin Roosevelt. Only by consulting the notes at the back of the book, however, does one learn that the telegram reached Roosevelt nearly three months after the roundup
Katz’s case against Pope Pius XII, who had offered gold to pay a ransom to the Germans to prevent deportations, is even weaker. (Katz even faults Pius for making this offer, because it may have dissuaded some Jews from going into hiding!)

Katz claims that the German Ambassador to the Holy See, Ernst von Weizsaecker urged the Pope to make “an official protest” on the day that the Jewish people were arrested. In support of this claim, Katz cites a telegram sent by the Consul at the German embassy to the Quirinal [seat of the Italian government] to the Foreign Office in Berlin. This telegram, however, was sent nine days before the roundup and said nothing about any plan urged on the Vatican.

In a conversation that Weizsaecker had with the Vatican Secretary of State on the day of the arrests, the ambassador expressly urged the Pope not to openly protest, since a protest would only make things worse. In fact, thanks in part to Vatican intervention, about 200 prisoners were freed. Moreover, there were no further mass arrests of Roman Jews (thousands of whom—with papal support—went into hiding in Church properties). Obviously, Pius acted with the best interest of the victims in mind.

The second event on which Katz focuses took place on March 23, 1944 after Italian partisans set off a bomb which killed 33 members of the German police. Hitler ordered the immediate execution of ten prisoners for every soldier killed. Within hours, 335 prisoners (most of whom were not Jewish; one was a priest) were led to the catacombs on the outskirts of Rome and shot. The massacre took place in complete secrecy.

Katz argues that the Pope knew of the retaliation in advance but that he did nothing to help. He cites as “proof” a memorandum that was received at the Vatican on March 24, about five hours before the prisoners were killed. That memo, which was published by the Vatican in 1980, said that “it is however foreseen that for every German killed 10 Italians will be executed.”

First of all, this memo probably did not make it all the way to the Pope prior to the executions. More importantly, Pope Pius XII certainly was well aware of the likelihood of brutal Nazi retaliation before he got this memo, which provided no specific details or new information. In fact, historian Owen Chadwick cited the document as proof that Pius XII obviously did not know details of the reprisal.
When the memorandum made its way to him, Pius sent a priest to obtain more information and release of the prisoners. The Gestapo chief of police, however, would not receive the Pope’s messenger. The executions were already underway. That officer (Herbert Kappler) testified during his post-war trial that “Pope Pius XII was not aware of the Nazis’ plans before the massacre.”

Katz’s efforts to defame Pius XII are evident from the very beginning of this book. The text starts with a report from the Roman police chief on the activity of the clergy and Catholic Organizations. It says, “The clergy continues to maintain an attitude of cooperation with the Government.” Since the book is about the era of Nazi occupation, one might think that the Church was in cahoots with the Germans. The date of the report, however, is prior to the Nazi occupation.

Katz suggests that Pius should have approved of rebel efforts to murder Nazis. At the same time, he suggests that the Pope should have participated in a funeral for murdered Nazis. He also criticizes Pius for his efforts to bring about peace. Additionally, Katz seems to think that the Pope should have behaved differently when the victims were Italian Catholics as opposed to Jews. Can you imagine the justifiable criticism if the Pope had done that?

Katz would have the reader believe that Sir Francis D’Arcy Osborne, British Minister to the Holy See from 1936 to 1947, was a critic of Pius. In fact, following the war Osborne wrote that “Pius XII was the most warmly humane, kindly, generous, sympathetic (and, incidentally, saintly) character that it has been my privilege to meet in the course of a long life.” Similarly, Katz wants us to believe that the U.S. representative in the Vatican, Harold Tittman, was a papal critic. Tittman’s son, however, is working on his father’s memoirs, and he reports that the U.S. representative held a very favorable opinion of Pius XII’s policies. Most preposterous of all is the attempt to suggest that Domenico Cardinal Tardini held Pius in low regard. One only need consult Tardini’s loving tribute,Memories of Pius XII, to see the falseness of that charge.

Katz contends that Pius was prejudiced not only against Jews but also against blacks. He cites a British memorandum indicating that after the liberation of Rome, the Pope requested that “colored troops” not be used to garrison the Vatican. This canard stems from a report the Pope received about French Moroccan troops. They were particularly brutal, raping and looting whereever they went. The Pope did not want these specific soldiers stationed in Rome (or anywhere else). He expressed his concerns about these men to British Ambassador Osborne, who broadened the statement in his cable back to London, saying that the Pope did not want “colored troops” stationed at the Vatican.

The Pope’s concern about these specific French Moroccan troops is made clear in a declassified confidential memorandum from the OSS, an article that appeared in the Vatican newspaper, and a message sent from the Vatican to its representative in France. None of these documents make reference to race, just the Pope’s concern over these specific French Moroccan troops. (Although Katz did not know how they played into this story, even he noted the outrageous brutality of these soldiers.)

Katz assails Pope Pius IX as an anti-Semite; incorrectly asserts that Pius XII favored the Germans over the Soviets in World War II; calls Pius XII pompous; mocks the Chief Rabbi of Rome (who praised Pius XII); accepts self-serving testimony from Nazi officers over Jewish and Catholic witnesses; repeats stories that have been shown to be false; gives inaccurate interpretations to papal statements; cites rumors that suggest the Pope was prepared to flee Rome; and takes every cheap shot that he can.

Of those who support Pius XII, Katz writes: “The Pope’s defenders can do no better than cite decades-old research of deflated credibility….” That, of course, is preposterous. All kinds of new evidence has come to light in the past year with the opening of new archives. Every bit of it supports the view that Pius XII and the Vatican leadership were opposed to the Nazis and did what they could to help all victims, Jewish or otherwise.

One final error made by Katz: He reports at the end of the book that Ronald J. Rychlak is a “non-Catholic lawyer and professor at the University of Mississippi School of Law, now Pius’s staunchest supporter.” I am and always have been Catholic.

Ron Rychlak is a Professor of Law and the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Mississippi School of Law. His is the author of Hitler, the War, and the Pope (Our Sunday Visitor, 2000).

By William Doino, Jr.

Eight years ago this month, the New Yorker magazine published a spectacularly long article entitled “The Silence.” Written by the resigned priest James Carroll (now a columnist at the Boston Globe), it argued that the doctrine of papal infallibility and the Church’s insistence “upon the primacy of Jesus as a means to salvation” were both false and had caused untold harm throughout history. In a misunderstanding of papal infallibility remarkable in one who had studied Catholic theology, Carroll contended that the doctrine prevented the Church from acknowledging its own guilt, causing John Paul II to remain “silent” in the face of overwhelming institutional sin. “The doctrine of infallibility,” Carroll concluded, “is like a virus that paralyzes the body of the Church.”

“The Silence,” caused a mini-sensation, becoming a focal point for anti-Catholics everywhere, and a conversation piece among the chattering classes. What made the article notable were not its attacks against the pope, its slashing attacks against papal infallibility, nor even its manifold errors about theology and Church history. What caused the greatest impact was Carroll’s attempt to blame Pope Pius XII—and, to a large extent, the Catholic Church itself—for the Holocaust.

Carroll’s charges were hardly novel. As early as 1943, Soviet propagandists concocted tales about Pius XII’s alleged collaboration with Hitler’s Germany, attempting to drive a wedge between the faithful and the Church. After the war, these Communist myths were picked up by the German playwright Rolf Hochhuth—ironically, a former member of the Hitler Youth—whose play The Deputy (1963) attempted to transfer German guilt to an Italian pope. Hochhuth caricatured Pius XII as a cowardly and avaricious man who could have prevented the Holocaust with a few dramatic words, but—because of his own weak character and financial interests—chose to remain “silent.” Carrol’s New Yorker article resumed Hochhuth’s indictment of Pius XII, and extended it.

Although many people dismissed the New Yorker piece—even Commonweal magazine, often critical of the Vatican, called the essay “factually flawed…logically garbled…theologically incoherent”—Carroll’s attacks against the papacy encouraged anti-papal polemicists, both within and without the Church, to publish their own salvos. Within a few years, a cottage industry of attacks on Pius XII and the Catholic Church emerged: John Cornwell’s Hitler’s Pope (1999); Gary Wills’s Papal Sin (2000); Susan Zuccotti’s Under His Very Windows (2000); Michael Phayer’s The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965 (2000); David Kertzer’s The Popes Against the Jews (2001); Carroll’s own Constantine’s Sword (2001); and Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s A Moral Reckoning (2002).

On the talk-show circuits and in the academic journals, these books—despite their manifold errors—were greeted with an almost rapturous reception. One man, however, remained unconvinced: Rabbi and historian David Dalin. Disturbed and angered by what he considered the hijacking and exploitation of the Holocaust for partisan purposes, Dalin decided to respond. With degrees in both history and theology, and as a long-time participant in the Jewish-Catholic dialogue, he had both the knowledge and the authority to rebut the anti-papal polemicists, and write accurately about the Catholic Church and the Holocaust. The result was a series of essays and reviews, the most important being his first one, “Pius XII and the Jews,” a 5,000-word analysis of the entire controversy in the Weekly Standard of February 26, 2001.

Translated into several languages, Dalin’s article became one of the most widely reprinted essays on Pius XII. What struck so many people about Dalin’s work was not just his point-by-point refutation of Pius’ detractors, but his dramatic conclusion: “Pius XII was, genuinely and profoundly, a Righteous Gentile.”

To be sure, Dalin’s essay did not please everyone, particularly those who had made a small fortune off of the Deputy Myth, or whose ideological disagreements with the Church were energized and sustained by that myth. The attack became all the more ferocious. In an essay published in the journal First Things, Joseph Bottum argued that although Pius’s supporters had demolished the accusations against the wartime pontiff, they had lost the larger war over Pius’s cultural reputation—or at least, not yet won it—because the opponents of Pius XII still wielded the most influence. Bottum’s conclusion, however, may have been a bit premature.

In reality Pius’s supporters were growing in influence, not just in America, but throughout the world. Discussing this matter among ourselves, we decided to put together an anthology which would do what had not yet been done: answer the recent critics of Pius XII all at once, within a single cover, in a comprehensive, measured fashion. The result is The Pius War: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII, edited by Bottum and Dalin, and published by Lexington Books.

The first hundred pages of the book collect the best essays and reviews—selected from literally hundreds of possibilities—of the various attack books which have appeared during the past decade. The criteria for selections were eloquence, force of persuasion, depth of knowledge and, above all, historical accuracy—as the contributions would be worthless unless they could prove their case.

Hence, two distinguished Church historians—Dr. Rainer Decker of Germany, and Fr. John Jay Hughes—respond, respectively, to Cornwell’s Hitler’s Pope, and Michael Phayer’s The Catholic Church and the Holocaust—explaining what really happened during the Nazi roundup of Rome’s Jews (which was at the heart of Hochhuth’s malicious play). Professor Ronald Rychlak, the foremost Pius scholar in America, deconstructs Susan Zuccotti’s claim that Pius XII did “little or nothing” to assist persecuted Jews; Robert Louis Wilken, an eminent historian of Christianity at the University of Virginia, delivers a body blow to James Carroll’s Constantine’s Sword; teacher and publisher Justus George Lawler takes issue with Gary Wills’ scatter-shot attacks and deeply flawed history; papal scholar Russell Hittinger responds to David Kertzer’s The Popes Against the Jews; archival expert John Conway critiques historians who speak darkly about the Vatican’s “secret” wartime archives—while never having studied the voluminous Vatican archives already released in eleven volumes; Michael Novak responds to Daniel Goldhagen’s aspersions against Pius and the Church; and Kevin M. Doyle contributes the unexpected gem of the book, an analysis of the so-called “hidden encyclical,” against anti-Semitism, intended by Pius XI and allegedly suppressed by Pius XII. Doyle shows that, far from remaining “hidden,” the encyclical was transformed and published just six weeks after the beginning of the Second World War under a different name, Summi Pontificatus, condemning racism in all forms. Add to this Dalin’s famous essay, and an introduction and concluding essay by Bottum.

Following these essays is my own contribution: an 80,000-word, 180-page annotated bibliography which attempts to canvass every aspect of this controversy—with a focus on demonstrating how Pius XII, far from remaining “silent,” condemned anti-Semitism, racism, and genocide before, during and after the Holocaust. Constituting some two-thirds of the book, my bibliography has been very generously called “a tour de force of scholarship and highly readable to boot” (National Review, February 14). My purpose was to provide a kind of historical road map, an intellectual compass, for both laymen and scholars alike, who want to know more about this subject—and want to know which authors can be trusted, which cannot—and why.

As important as we believe The Pius War is for recovering historical truth, it does not downplay or whitewash the sins of the “sons and daughters” of the Catholic Church, to quote John Paul II. Many of the essayists speak frankly about anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism, and the bibliography has a long section on Jewish-Catholic relations, covering every aspect of this turbulent relationship, light and dark alike.

Already we can see signs of change. A movie of Hochhuth’s Deputy called “Amen” was released in 2002 only to become an international flop, garnering highly negative reviews. Hochhuth himself was recently caught praising the notorious revisionist historian—and accused Holocaust-denier—David Irving, thereby discrediting himself even further. John Cornwell recently stated that he now finds it “impossible to judge” Pius XII, in light of “the debates and evidence” that followed publication of his now-discredited Hitler’s Pope. Even Susan Zuccotti, writing in the esteemed Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Fall 2004), while still maintaining her excessively skeptical attitude toward Pius XII’s involvement in rescue efforts, acknowledges evidence she previously overlooked, and now believes there is “much room for compromise and reconciliation” between participants in this debate. So, progress has been made, and continues to be made, as new archives are opened, new books are written, new perspectives are formed.

William Doino Jr. is a Catholic author and commentator. A contributing editor to Inside the Vatican, he has been published in such journals as National Review, Modern Age, and Crisis, and is now researching and writing a book on the Vatican’s role during the Second World War.

By Carl E. Olson

Two years ago I was engaged in an e-mail exchange with a Fundamentalist pastor, who wrote:

But as an effort to still save your soul, if indeed my concerns for you are true, may I urge you to reexamine the Mariolatry of the Church you have bought into. I will not badger you with the unscriptural practice of making Mary “the mother of God” or “the Queen of Heaven” which comes from Babylonish paganism not Christianity or Scripture.

It was typical Fundamentalist fare, but the man who penned it was no ordinary Fundamentalist. He was Dr. Tim LaHaye, one of the most influential Christians—Catholic or Protestant—in America over the past thirty years. A founding member of the Moral Majority, LaHaye is best known today as creator/co-author of the mega-sellingLeft Behind books, the most popular works of Christian fiction in history. Since 1995, when the first Left Behind novel appeared, the “end times” series (now twelve volumes strong and with two more coming) has sold some sixty million copies.

Since entering the Catholic Church in 1997, I’ve written over two dozen articles and a major book about the Left Behind theology propagated by LaHaye and many others through books, television, and radio. As a former believer in the “Rapture” and premillennial dispensationalism (the most common form of the Left Behind theology), I know how confusing this topic can be for Catholics. But I was—and still am—surprised by how many Catholics fail to see how biased against Catholicism are the Left Behindnovels and companion volumes produced by LaHaye.

For example, one Catholic fan of the Left Behind books scoffed at my concerns about the novels. “You know,” he said, “they actually have the Pope raptured. So they cannot be anti-Catholic.” I encouraged him to read the books more closely since the passage he referred to, from the second book of the series, Tribulation Force, is actually an example of how the Catholic Faith is attacked in the Left Behind books:

“A lot of Catholics were confused, because while many remained, some had disappeared—including the new pope, who had been installed just a few months before the vanishings. He had stirred up controversy in the church with a new doctrine that seemed to coincide more with the ‘heresy’ of Martin Luther than with the historic orthodoxy they were used to.” (Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, Tribulation Force: The Continuing Drama of Those Left Behind [Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1995], p. 53.)

In other words, the new pope is secretly Raptured despite being Catholic because he embraces the views of Martin Luther and has therefore renounced Catholic teaching. So those Catholics who reject the Catholic Faith can be “saved” and Raptured, with the logical conclusion being that Catholics who are loyal to the Church are not “saved,” are not true Christians, and will not be Raptured.

The leading Catholic character, the American Cardinal Mathews, is a greedy, power-hungry, Biblically-illiterate egomaniac whose devious actions apparently result from his adherence to “normal” Catholic beliefs and practices (Tribulation Force, pp. 271-278). He becomes the new pope and the head of Enigma One World Faith, an evil, one-world religion. Taking the title Pontifex Maximus Peter, he declares war on anyone believing in the Bible. His anger is especially directed towards true Christians from “house churches, small groups that met all over the suburbs and throughout the state,” an obvious reference to Fundamentalist and Evangelical Protestants.

Cameron “Buck” Williams, “a senior staff writer for the prestigious newsmagazine Global Weekly” presses Cardinal Mathews for his explanation of the disappearance of millions from earth and his interpretation of Ephesians 2:8-9:

“‘Now you see,’ the archbishop said, ‘this is precisely my point. People have been taking verses like that out of context for centuries and trying to build doctrine on them.’ ‘But there are other passages just like those,’ Buck said.” (Tribulation Force, p. 54-55.)

Afterwards Buck writes an article in which “he was able to work in the Scripture and the archbishop’s attempt to explain away the doctrine of grace.” In other words, Catholicism is a false religion based on works, not grace, and the Catholics who were Raptured were those who went against official Church teaching.

This reflects LaHaye’s beliefs in sola fide (salvation by “faith alone”) and sola scriptura(no authority except the Bible), two cornerstones of the Protestant Reformation. In Revelation Unveiled, his commentary on the final book of the Bible, LaHaye writes, “Rome’s false religion too often gives a false security that keeps people from seeking salvation by faith. Rome is also dangerous because some of her doctrines are pseudo-Christian. For example, she believes properly about the personal deity of Christ but errs in adding Babylonian mysticism in many forms and salvation by works” (Revelation Unveiled, p. 269). Anyone familiar with the early ecumenical councils will find this amusing, but Fundamentalists unfamiliar with Church history take LaHaye’s depiction of the Catholic Church as Gospel truth.

When a reader complained online that Tribulation Force was anti-Catholic, Left Behind co-author Jerry B. Jenkins vehemently insisted that the books are “not anti-Catholic” and that “almost every person in the book who was left behind was Protestant. Astute readers will understand where we’re coming from. True believers in Christ, regardless of their church ‘brand’ will be raptured” (Amazon.com, August 26, 1999). In June 2003 the Illinois Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement condemning the Left Behind books and related materials as anti-Catholic. LaHaye responded by insisting that “our books are not anti-Catholic. In fact, we have many faithful Catholic readers and friends” (Religion News Service, June 26, 2003).

He added that the series is “not an attack on the Catholic church” and, according to a Chicago Tribune column (June 13, 2003), “said the bishops are ‘reading into these books something that’s not there.’ The books don’t suggest any particular theology, he said, but try to introduce people to a more personal relationship with Jesus.” In an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times (June 6, 2003), LaHaye explains that the character of Cardinal Mathews is simply that: a character. “What [the bishops] don’t seem to realize,” he said, “is that every church has some renegade people in it, and we just picked one out of theirs.”

But in that same column I insist that LaHaye is “a rabid anti-Catholic.” Why? Because LaHaye “is convinced, and he teaches very clearly in his nonfiction books, that the Catholic Church is apostate, it is false, and it is not Christian.” He has established a lengthy and consistent pattern of harshly condemning the Catholic Church, attacking her beliefs, and using inflammatory language and factually baseless statements in the process.

LaHaye resorts to the sort of nativist attacks on Catholicism common in the United States during the 1800s, notably in the writings of Alexander Hislop, a Scottish pastor whose book The Two Babylons the Papal Worship Proved to be the Worship of Nimrod and His Wife (originally written in 1853-1858) attempted to prove that every distinctive Catholic belief and practice is pagan in origin and Satanic in orientation. In Revelation Unveiled LaHaye writes that “the greatest book ever written on [Babylonian religion] is the masterpiece The Two Babylons . . . This book, containing quotations from 275 authors and to my knowledge never refuted, best describes the origin of religion in Babylon and its present-day function.” (p. 266). He summarizes Hislop’s main ideas: Catholicism is idolatrous, Satanic in origin, based on secrecy and fear, and filled with pagan doctrines and practices. He then proclaims that “[a]fter reading the above quotations, you may be inclined to think me anti-Catholic, but that isn’t exactly true; I am anti-false religion” (p. 269).

Yet it’s hard to deny LaHaye’s unreasonable (he never provides citations from actual Catholic documents) and even hysterical animosity towards Catholicism in light of his claims that:

• • • Roman Catholicism, “apostate Protestantism,” Hinduism, and Buddhism will form a system of “pagan ecumenism” and will facilitate the rise of the Antichrist during the Tribulation era (The Beginning of the End, [Tyndale, 1972, 1981],148-51).

    • Hindus can become Catholic without renouncing any of their Hindu beliefs (The Beginning of the End, 151; Revelation Unveiled, p. 275).

    • “All that inhibits the ecumenical movement today are the fundamental, Bible-believing Christians…. They are the group called ‘the Church’ that Christ is coming for … so-called Christ-endom is divided basically into two main groups, the apostates and the fundamentalists” (The Beginning of the End, 151-2).

    • The Catholic Church is an apostate Church that has mixed paganism with Christianity, resulting in the “dark ages” and the existence of “Babylonian mysticism” (Revelation Unveiled, 65-68, 260-277; Are We Living in the End Times? [Tyndale, 1999], 171-176).

    • “The Church of Rome denies the finished work of Christ but believes in a continuing sacrifice that produces such things as sacraments and praying for the dead, burning candles, and so forth. All of these were borrowed from mystery Babylon, the mother of all pagan customs and idolatry, none of which is taught in the New Testament” (Revelation Unveiled, 66-67).

    • Catholics worship Mary, saints, and angels (Are We Living in the End Times?, 173).

    • The Catholic Church, in large part due to Augustine, removed the Bible as the sole source of authority among Christians and “spiritualized” away the truths of Scripture, and kept the Bible from the common people (Are We Living in the End Times?, 174).

    • The Catholic Church killed over forty million people during the “dark ages” when “Babylonian mysticism controlled the church” (Are We Living in the End Times?, 175).

The Left Behind books and their non-fiction companions are filled with poor writing, bad theology, and anti-Catholic bigotry. It’s best to leave them behind and rely on Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium of the Church when studying the end times—or anything else.

Carl E. Olson is the editor of IgnatiusInsight.com. His best-selling books Will Catholics Be “Left Behind”? and The Da Vinci Hoax are available from Ignatius Press (1-800-651-1531). Visit him at www.carl-olsen.com.

By William A. Donohue

A national random sample of adult Americans was taken last spring by the Bliss Institute at the University of Akron. The results have been published as the 2004 Fourth National Survey of Religion and Politics, under the tutelage of John C. Green. Some interesting trends are evident, as well as a few surprises.

Data were collected on ten segments of the population: Evangelical Protestants; Mainline Protestants; Latino Protestants; Black Protestants; Catholics; Latino Catholics; Other Christian; Other Faiths; Jewish; and Unaffiliated.

Within the Evangelical Protestant, Mainline Protestant and Catholic categories, each was further subdivided into “Traditionalist,” “Centrist,” and “Modernist.” These subcategories were determined on the basis of the respondent’s orthodoxy of beliefs and level of religious engagement. For example, Traditionalist Protestants were characterized by holding a high view of the authority of the Bible and regular attendance at religious services. Modernists were the opposite and Centrists were in between.
Within the ranks of the Unaffiliated were three groups: Unaffiliated Believers (those who claim no religious affiliation but nonetheless report a high level of religious belief); Seculars (they have no religious affiliation and report only modest religious beliefs or practices); and Atheists and Agnostics (those without any religious beliefs). While 16 percent of the population falls in the Unaffiliated category, only 3.2 percent are without any religion (5.3 percent are Unaffiliated Believers and 7.5 percent are Secularists).

Generally speaking, the more Traditional a Christian is, the more likely he is to be a Republican; conversely, the more Modernist he is, the more likely he is to be a Democrat. The Unaffiliated are mostly Democrats, as are Jews and Black Protestants. Centrists tilt towards the Republicans.
Three of every four Americans agree that organized religious groups should stand up for their beliefs, but the country is almost equally divided on the question of whether organized religious groups should stay out of politics. The public seems to be saying that it is important for religious groups to speak their mind, but they should be careful about becoming too political.

It is when the discussion turns to specific issues that things become quite revealing. On the issue of school vouchers, only 39 percent are supportive; 16 percent have no opinion; and 45 percent are opposed. Of the ten segments of the population, only among Latinos is there a majority in favor of school choice (51 percent of Latino Protestants and 58 percent of Latino Catholics champion vouchers). Among Catholics, the same portion that supports vouchers—42 percent—opposes them (16 percent have no opinion). Traditional Catholics, of course, are more likely than Centrists and Modernists to support vouchers, though even here the figure is only 52 percent.

Abortion-rights gets its greatest support from Jews and the Unaffiliated (especially Atheists and Agnostics), and its least support from Traditionalists in the Evangelical, Mainline Protestant and Catholic categories. It is striking that Latinos (both Protestant and Catholic) and Black Protestants are far less supportive of abortion than white Catholics and Protestants.

The cultural divide between whites and non-whites is most glaring when it comes to the issue of same-sex marriage, with the latter being the most opposed. Respondents were given three choices: support for traditional marriage; support for civil unions; and support for same-sex marriage. Overall, the figures were 55 percent for traditional marriage, 18 percent for civil unions and 27 percent for same-sex marriage.

It may be surprising to learn that less than half of all Catholics (48 percent) support traditional marriage (22 percent want civil unions and 30 percent want two men to be allowed to marry). The biggest support for same-sex marriage comes from the Unaffiliated and Jews; no group is more supportive than Jews.

This issue shows how great the divide is between Traditionalists, Centrists and Modernists within the Evangelical, Mainline Protestant and Catholic communities. Traditionalist Evangelicals are the most supportive of traditional marriage (89 percent), with Traditionalist Mainline Protestants (72 percent) and Traditionalist Catholics (71 percent) as the next most supportive groups. Among Christians, the Modernists are the most supportive of same-sex marriage, with Modernist Catholics being even more liberal than Modernist Protestants.

The figures on Catholics are astounding, especially when one considers that Unaffiliated Believers are more supportive of traditional marriage than are Catholics as a whole (58 percent to 48 percent, respectively). Those who are classified as “Other Christians” support traditional marriage big time—77 percent. So do Black Protestants (72 percent are in favor). To show how Catholics have been leaning toward gay marriage, consider that while 71 percent of Latino Protestants are in favor of traditional marriage, only 52 percent of Latino Catholics are; 20 percent of the former are in favor of same-sex marriage as compared to 34 percent of the latter.

Questions on foreign policy turn up some interesting tidbits. Those surveyed were asked about the following statement: “The U.S. should mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along as best they can on their own.” Overall, 37 percent agreed, 15 percent had no opinion and 48 percent disagreed.

Of all the categories, Jews disagreed the most with the idea that the U.S. should mind its own business (76 percent). It was not surprising to learn that Jews, who strongly favor a U.S. role securing a safe Israel, would take this position. Nor is it surprising to learn that Evangelical Protestants, who favor a more literalist interpretation of the Bible, would be the most likely group to agree with Jews on this issue.

What about U.S. support for Israel? Should we support Israel over the Palestinians? The American people are split on this issue with 35 percent agreeing, 38 percent disagreeing and 27 percent without an opinion. As with the previous issue, the biggest support for Israel comes from Jews (75 percent agree that we should support Israel over the Palestinians) and Evangelicals (52 percent agree).
Support for the Palestinians over the Jews was evident among Catholics by a margin of 43 percent to 31 percent. But perhaps the biggest news in this area is the support from the Unaffiliated and those who belong to faiths other than Christianity or Judaism: 53 percent of the Unaffiliated and 70 percent of the “Other Faiths” category support the Palestinians.

The “Other Faiths” category represents a small (2.7 percent) but growing segment of the population. It includes Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Unitarians and New Age advocates. Only 22 percent of them think the U.S. should support Israel over the Palestinians. Interestingly, among Atheists and Agnostics, only 15 percent side with Israel. Even among Mainline Protestants there is more support for the Palestinians than Israel (37 percent to 33 percent).

This suggests that support for Israel is tenuous, and nowhere is it weaker than among Liberals (e.g., the Unaffiliated). Evangelical Protestants, the most conservative of the groups, are Israel’s best friends. This is a fascinating alignment given that most Jews are liberals.

Everyone in the poll was asked to identify himself as either Conservative, Moderate or Liberal. Overall, the numbers were 35 percent, 43 percent and 22 percent, respectively. The most Conservative are Evangelicals; the most Liberal are those who belong to “Other Faiths,” Jews and the Unaffiliated (especially Atheists and Agnostics). Latinos who are Protestant are much more likely to be Conservative (37 percent) than are their Catholic brothers and sisters (25 percent).

Perhaps the most interesting finding is among blacks. Seven-in-ten identify themselves as liberal (and only one-in-ten chooses the conservative label), yet on social issues (abortion, stem cell research, gay marriage, etc.) they are among the most conservative in the nation. To make sense of this apparent anomaly, consider the central role that the church plays in African American communities; this is the venue where conservative social values are disseminated. At the same time, however, most blacks are convinced that since the time of FDR, it is the federal government that has given them the most political rights; this explains their tendency to identify themselves as Liberals.

Finally, each respondent was asked whether his view of God was “Personal” (meaning God is a person) or “Impersonal” (meaning God is a spirit or force) or “Unsure.” The overall breakdown was 40 percent, 41 percent and 19 percent, respectively. This is profound given that more than 80 percent of Americans are Christians. While Traditionalist Catholics and Evangelicals and Mainline Protestants hold to a “Personal” view of God, the Centrists and Modernists within all categories do not (the exception being Centrist Evangelicals).

Perhaps the most significant finding was found among Catholics: only 56 percent of Traditionalists, 34 percent of Centrists and 4 percent of Modernists hold a “Personal” view of God. It seems that New Age-type spirituality has been adopted by most Catholics.

There are many conclusions that can be drawn from the data. But one thing is very clear: we are a nation increasingly split between Traditionalists and Modernists, and between the faithful and the faithless. This is at the heart of the culture war, and which way the culture swings—toward increasing religiosity or increasing secularism—will determine what our society will look like in the future.

By William Donohue

“It is no secret that the Bush administration is engaged in the most radical assault on the separation of church and state in American history.” When I first read that sentence, I wondered about the sanity of the author. Upon reflection, I still do.

Susan Jacoby, who penned that line last spring, is not ready for the asylum, but she is ready to find a home in the asylum’s first cousin—the academy. Indeed, there are few colleges or universities that wouldn’t be proud to hire her. And that is because she entertains a radical secular world-view, one in total harmony with the elites on campus.

The most complete exposition of Jacoby’s work is now available in Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. For those who believe in nothing, the book is a virtual bible. For the rest of us, it is a useful glimpse into the mind of those who hate religion.

Jacoby would protest this description. She would say she doesn’t hate religion—it’s just the intersection of religion and politics that scares her. But her animus against religion, per se, is so deep that it exposes her hand. For example, it was Bush’s defense of the “sanctity of marriage” in his State of the Union address last January that led Jacoby to accuse him of promoting “the most radical assault on the separation of church and state in American history.” It is fair to say that there is more than just hypersensitivity at play here.

Jacoby knows this country was founded by Christians, but she tries to spin the truth by asserting that the Founders were more interested in separation of church and state than they were religious liberty. In making her case, she entertains the fiction (one that is by now taken as truth by the nation’s most influential constitutional law professors) that there are two clauses in the First Amendment: a religious liberty clause and, its alleged opposite, an establishment clause.

John Noonan is one constitutional scholar who hasn’t accepted this fiction: “There are no clauses in the constitutional provision. Clauses have a subject and a predicate. This provision has a single subject, a single verb, and two prepositional phrases.” Therefore, no calculated disharmony between religious liberty and the establishment of religion was ever contemplated. There was one purpose: to prohibit government interference with religion.

Robert Ingersoll is Jacoby’s hero. Ingersoll was a 19th century agnostic who pioneered the secular humanist agenda in America. The son of a Presbyterian minister, Ingersoll took great pride in helping to achieve what he called one of the greatest victories of the American freethought movement, namely the “secularization of liberal Protestantism.” That he succeeded is disputed by no one, but that it is a plus for America is another matter altogether.

Jacoby’s book is replete with convenient dualisms: the enlightened vs. the indoctrinated; the liberated vs. the enslaved; the tolerant vs. the intolerant, and so forth. This explains her need to rescue the early feminists and the abolitionists from the ranks of the religious.

Jacoby reluctantly admits that the Grimké sisters, Angelina and Sarah, were “deeply religious” 19th-century champions of women’s rights. But she hastens to add, however, that they were also “anticlerical.” Jacoby says the same about feminist Lucretia Mott and abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. Her point being that it is possible to cast these religiously motivated freedom fighters as secular surrogates. Similarly, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, two of the most powerful women’s voices of the 19th century, are described as Christians with “unconventional” religious views. And the black abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, is seen as a “devout but unorthodox religious believer.”

In other words, much to Jacoby’s chagrin, the early feminists and the abolitionists were Christians, not so-called freethinkers. Indeed, her characterization of them as independent-minded persons also flies in the face of her stereotype of believers as nothing more than dupes.

This is not to say that some famous public figures cannot be claimed by the secularists. For example, there is the black author and activist, W.E.B. Du Bois, who fought Booker T. Washington in his early days and wound up a Communist at the age of 93. Walt Whitman, the poet and sexual degenerate, was a freethinker whose influence continues to this day; e.g., President Bill Clinton gave a copy of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass to Monica Lewinsky. Margaret Sanger, the ex-Catholic turned racial eugenicist and birth control guru, was a freethinker. Roger Baldwin, founder of the ACLU, was also a freethinker; he called himself an “agnostic Unitarian,” a description that would offend neither agnostics nor Unitarians.

It is not surprising that those who live a life in perpetual rebellion often wind up freethinkers. Angry at the human condition, they see oppression everywhere and salvation nowhere. Save for communism. Jacoby knows that many socialists and communists have claimed residence in her freethinking camp, and for this she is not particularly happy. For example, she confesses that “nearly all socialists were atheists or agnostics,” as were the Social Gospel “Christians” of the 1890s, but she takes pains to distinguish between political radicals and committed freethinkers. The former, she maintains, see “religion as merely one pillar of an unjust society,” one that will collapse with the advent of a truly communist society. The latter, though, regards religion as “the foundation of most other social evils.”

Beginning in the period prior to the First World War, Jews became increasingly involved in radical politics and the secularist movement. Led by “Red Emma” Goldman, agnostic and atheistic Jews took up the cause of communism. Many of the same people played a major role in attacking any vestige of the nation’s religious heritage. To this day, the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress and the Anti-Defamation League are among the most fierce opponents of the public expression of religion in the U.S. All three are opposed to the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, though the American Jewish Congress, for purely pragmatic reasons, entered a brief in favor of the Pledge (it did so wholly because it feared a backlash among Christians that might spark the move for a constitutional amendment); the other two Jewish groups entered a brief to remove the words.

Jacoby also cites the role of secular feminists, many of whom are Jewish, in championing the abortion-rights movement. In 1972, in the first edition of Gloria Steinem’s Ms. Magazine, 53 feminists signed a declaration under the headline, WE HAVE HAD ABORTIONS; Steinem was one of the signatories. Today, Jewish newspapers like the Forward are radically in favor of every type of abortion procedure, including partial-birth abortion. Interestingly, one of the Jewish founders of the abortion movement, Dr. Bernard Nathanson, eventually came to his senses and gave up his practice as an abortionist. He has since become an outspoken foe of abortion and has converted to Catholicism (something Jacoby doesn’t mention).

What Jacoby has to say about Catholics is fascinating. She concedes that “in late-nineteenth-century America—for the first time in Western history since the Christianization of the Roman Empire—distrust of the Catholic Church’s intentions was far more widespread than distaste for religious Judaism.” And while she is correct to say that Protestants reacted in horror to the establishment of parochial schools, she fails to say that it was anti-Catholicism that drove Catholics to create their own schools in the first place. What she has a hard time admitting, for understandable reasons, is the role which her beloved freethinkers have played in fostering anti-Catholicism.

In the 1930s, it is fair to say that prominent Catholic public figures were quite vocal in opposing obscene speech. Indeed, the Legion of Decency was very active in monitoring the movie industry. But it is nonetheless striking to read Jacoby speak of “heavily Catholic” places like Pennsylvania, St. Louis, Chicago and New Orleans where obscene fare was challenged. She even goes so far as to say that these are “all cities with Catholic police officials.” One wonders what she would say if a non-Jewish author wrote about “heavily Jewish” places like Hollywood that make the offending movies.

And what are we to make of her claim that the Catholic Church labeled birth control “a communist conspiracy”? Her entire evidence for this extraordinary assertion is the statement of one person, whom she does not identify, who allegedly made such a comment before a congressional committee. Now it may be that some Catholic has testified that the earth is flat. I don’t know. But I know this much—if someone did, Jacoby would blame the Catholic Church.

What is perhaps most disturbing about Jacoby’s treatment of Catholicism is her unwillingness to condemn anti-Catholic authors and organizations. Paul Blanshard, for instance, wrote American Freedom and Catholic Power in the post-war period, a book so laced with anti-Catholicism that the New York Times even refused to review it. This is not the way Jacoby sees it, however, which is why the best she can do is criticize the book for its “shortcomings.” Similarly, she cannot bring herself to condemn Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State (now Americans United for Separation of Church and State), even though the organization’s roots are indisputably anti-Catholic.

It would be easy to simply dismiss Jacoby’s book as an attempt to put a rosy gloss on the history of secularism in the U.S. But it is more than that—it is a window into the way freethinkers see themselves and others. Their window, unfortunately, has been dirtied by ideology and made small by experience. Worst of all, theirs is a window that projects an incredible self-righteousness, one whose only cure lies in listening to the Word of God.

By Rodney Stark

Popular lore, movies, and children’s stories hold that in 1492 Christopher Columbus proved the world is round and in the process defeated years of dogged opposition from the Roman Catholic Church, which insisted that the earth is flat. These tales are rooted in books like A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, an influential reference by Andrew Dickson White, founder and first president of Cornell University. White claimed that even after Columbus’ return “the Church by its highest authority solemnly stumbled and persisted in going astray.”

The trouble is, almost every word of White’s account of the Columbus story is a lie. All educated persons of Columbus’ day, very much including the Roman Catholic prelates, knew the earth was round. The Venerable Bede (c. 673-735) taught that the world was round, as did Bishop Virgilius of Salzburg (c. 720-784), Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), and Thomas Aquinas (c. 1224-74). All four ended up saints. Sphere was the title of the most popular medieval textbook on astronomy, written by the English scholastic John of Sacrobosco (c. 1200-1256). It informed that not only the earth but all heavenly bodies are spherical.

So, why does the fable of the Catholic Church’s ignorance and opposition to the truth persist? Because the claim of an inevitable and bitter warfare between religion and science has, for more than three centuries, been the primary polemical device used in the atheist attack on faith.
The truth is, there is no inherent conflict between religion and science. Indeed, the fundamental reality is that Christian theology was essential for the rise of science—a fact little appreciated outside the ranks of academic specialists.

Recent historical research has debunked the idea of a “Dark Ages” after the “fall” of Rome. In fact, this was an era of profound and rapid technological progress, by the end of which Europe had surpassed the rest of the world. Moreover, the so-called “Scientific Revolution” of the sixteenth century was a result of developments begun by religious scholars starting in the eleventh century.

Even in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the leading scientific figures were overwhelmingly devout Christians who believed it their duty to comprehend God’s handiwork. My studies show that the “Enlightenment” was conceived initially as a propaganda ploy by militant atheists attempting to claim credit for the rise of science. The falsehood that science required the defeat of religion was proclaimed by self-appointed cheerleaders like Voltaire, Diderot, and Gibbon, who themselves played no part in the scientific enterprise—a pattern that continues today. I find that through the centuries (including right up to the present day), professional scientists have remained about as religious as the rest of the population—and far more religious than their academic colleagues in the arts and social sciences.

It is the consensus among contemporary historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science that real science arose only once: in Europe. It is instructive that China, Islam, India, ancient Greece, and Rome all had a highly developed alchemy. But only in Europe did alchemy develop into chemistry. By the same token, many societies developed elaborate systems of astrology, but only in Europe did astrology lead to astronomy. And these transformations took place at a time when folklore has it that a fanatical Christianity was imposing a general ignorance on Europe—the so-called Dark Ages.

The progress achieved during the “Dark Ages” was not merely technological. Medieval Europe excelled in philosophy and science. The term “Scientific Revolution” is in many ways as misleading as “Dark Ages.” Both were coined to discredit the medieval Church. The notion of a “Scientific Revolution” has been used to claim that science suddenly burst forth when a weakened Christianity could no longer prevent it, and as the recovery of classical learning made it possible. Both claims are as false as those concerning Columbus and the flat earth.

First of all, classical learning did not provide an appropriate model for science. Second, the rise of science was already far along by the sixteenth century, having been carefully nurtured by religiously devout scholastics. Granted, the era of scientific discovery that occurred in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was marvelous, the cultural equivalent of the blossoming of a rose. But, just as roses do not spring up overnight, and must undergo a long period of normal growth before they even bud, so too the blossoming of science was the result of centuries of intellectual progress.

From Ockham through Copernicus, the development of the heliocentric model of the solar system was the product of the universities—that most Christian invention. From the start, the medieval Christian university was a place created and run by scholars devoted entirely to knowledge. The autonomy of individual faculty members was carefully guarded. Since all instruction was in Latin, scholars were able to move about without regard for linguistic boundaries, and because their degrees were mutually recognized, they were qualified to join any faculty. It was in these universities that European Christians began to establish science. And it was in these same universities, not later in the salons of philosophes or Renaissance men, that the classics were restored to intellectual importance. The translations from Greek into Latin were accomplished by exceedingly pious Christian scholars.

It was the Christian scholastics, not the Greeks, Romans, Muslims, or Chinese, who built up the field of physiology based on human dissections. Once again, hardly anyone knows the truth about dissection and the medieval Church. Human dissection was not permitted in the classical world (“the dignity of the human body” forbade it), which is why Greco-Roman works on anatomy are so faulty. Aristotle’s studies were limited entirely to animal dissections, as were those of Celsius and Galen. Human dissection also was prohibited in Islam.

With the Christian universities came a new outlook on dissection. The starting assumption was that what is unique to humans is a soul, not a physiology. Dissections of the human body, therefore, have no theological implications.

Science consists of an organized effort to explain natural phenomena. Why did this effort take root in Europe and nowhere else? Because Christianity depicted God as a rational, responsive, dependable, and omnipotent being, and the universe as his personal creation. The natural world was thus understood to have a rational, lawful, stable structure, awaiting (indeed, inviting) human comprehension.

Christians developed science because they believed it could—and should—be done. Alfred North Whitehead, the great philosopher and mathematician, co-author with Bertrand Russell of the landmark Principia Mathematica, credited “medieval theology” for the rise of science. He pointed to the “insistence on the rationality of God,” which produced the belief that “the search into nature could only result in the vindication of the faith.”

Whitehead ended with the remark that the images of God found in other religions, especially in Asia, are too impersonal or too irrational to have sustained science. A God who is capricious or unknowable gives no incentive for humans to dig deeply into his essence. Moreover, most non-Christian religions don’t posit a creation. If the universe is without beginning or purpose, has no Creator, is an inconsistent, unpredictable, and arbitrary mystery, there is little reason to explore it. Under those religious premises, the path to wisdom is through meditation and mystical insights, and there is no occasion to celebrate reason.

In contrast, Tertullian, one of the earliest Christian theologians (c. 160-225), instructed that God has willed that the world he has provided “should be handled and understood by reason.” The weight of opinion in the early and medieval church was that there is a duty to understand, in order to better marvel at God’s handiwork. Saint Augustine (354-430) held that reason was indispensable to faith: “Heaven forbid that God should hate in us that by which he made us superior to the animals! Heaven forbid that we should believe in such a way as not to accept or seek reasons, since we could not even believe if we did not possess rational souls.” Of course, Christian theologians accepted that God’s word must be believed even if the reasons were not apparent. In matters “that we cannot yet grasp by reason—though one day we shall be able to do so—faith must precede reason,” stated Augustine.

Note the optimism that reason will reveal more and more truth as time accumulates. Saint Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274) attempted in his monumental Summa Theologiae to fulfill Augustine’s optimism that some of these “matters of great importance” could be grasped by reason. Though humans lack sufficient intellect to see directly into the essence of things, he argued they may reason their way to knowledge step-by-step, using principles of logic. This is the methodology of science.

The great figures of the heyday of scientific discovery—including Descartes, Galileo, Newton, and Kepler—actively professed their absolute faith in a Creator God, whose work incorporated rational rules awaiting their discovery. Far from being a rejection of religion, the “Scientific Revolution” was led mostly by deeply religious men acting on religious motivations.

To sum up: The rise of science was not an extension of classical learning. It was the natural outgrowth of Christian doctrine: Nature exists because it was created by God. In order to love and honor God, it is necessary to fully appreciate the wonders of his handiwork. Moreover, because God is perfect, his handiwork functions in accord with immutable principles. By the full use of our God-given powers of reason and observation it ought to be possible to discover these principles. These crucial religious ideas were why the rise of science occurred in Christian Europe, not somewhere else.

Rodney Stark is professor of sociology at the University of Washington.  This piece is excerpted from a longer piece, “False Conflict: Christianity Is Not Only Compatible with Science—It Created It,” which appeared in the October-November 2003 issue of The American Enterprise.  Reprinted with the author’s permission.

After President Bush signed a law banning partial-birth abortion last year, Planned Parenthood and the rest of the abortion industry sued to have the law overturned. This past spring, several doctors who have performed such abortions testified before judges in various parts of the nation. The following is an excerpt of their remarks.

The Procedure

April 5, 2004: Excerpts from cross-examination of Dr. Carolyn Westhoff:

Q. And at that point the fetus’ body is below the cervix and the neck is in the cervix with the head still in the uterus, right?
A. Yes.
Q. And it’s at that point that you take a scissors and insert it into the woman and place an incision in the base of the fetus’ skull, right?
A. Yes.
Q. Now the contents of the fetus’ skull, just like the contents of my skull and your skull is liquid, right?
A. That’s right.
Q. And sometimes after you’ve made the incision the fetus’ brain will drain out on its own, right?
A. That’s right.
Q. Other times you must insert a suction tube to drain the skull, right?
A. That’s right.
Q. And then the skull will collapse immediately after its liquid contents have been removed and the head will pass easily through the dilated cervix, right?
A. That’s right.

April 2, 2004: Testimony of Dr. Carolyn Westhoff: 

Q. Do you tell her [the mother] that you are going to then, ultimately, suck the brain out of the skull?
A. In all of our D&E’s the head is collapsed or crushed and the brains are definitely out of the skull but those are—
Q. Do you tell them that?
A. Those are details that would be distressing to my patients and would not—information about that is not directly relevant to their safety.

April 1, 2004: Judge Richard C. Casey and Dr. Timothy Johnson, plaintiff: 

Casey asked Johnson if doctors tell a woman that an abortion procedure they might use includes “sucking the brain out of the skull.”

“I don’t think we would use those terms,” Johnson said. “I think we would probably use a term like ‘decompression of the skull’ or ‘reducing the contents of the skull.'”

The judge responded, “Make it nice and palatable so that they wouldn’t understand what it’s all about?”

“We try to do it in a way that’s not offensive or gruesome or overly graphic for patients,” Johnson said.

The Goal

April 6, 2004: Excerpts from Government’s cross-examination of Dr. Mitchell Creinin:

Q. If the fetus were close to 24 weeks, and you were performing a transvaginal surgical abortion, you would be concerned about delivering the fetus entirely intact because that might result in a live baby that may survive, correct?
A. You said I was performing an abortion, so since the objective of an abortion is to not have a live fetus, then that would be correct.
Q. In your opinion, if you were performing a surgical abortion at 23 or 24 weeks and the cervix was so dilated that the head could pass through without compression, you would do whatever you needed to do in order to make sure that the live baby was not delivered, wouldn’t you?
A. Whatever I needed, meaning whatever surgical procedure I needed to do as part of the procedure? Yes. Then, the answer would be: Yes.
Q. And one step you would take to avoid delivery of a live baby would be to deliver or hold the fetus’ head on the internal side of the cervical os in order to collapse the skull; is that right?
A. Yes, because the objective of my procedure is to perform an abortion.
Q. And that would ensure you did not deliver a live baby?
A. Correct.

How the Baby Reacts

April 5, 2004: Excerpts from direct examination of Dr. Marilynn Fredriksen:

The Court: Do you tell [the woman] whether or not it will hurt the fetus?
Fredriksen: The intent of an [abortion is] that the fetus will die during the process of uterine evacuation.
The Court: Ma’am, I didn’t ask you that. Very simply I asked you whether or not do you tell the mother that one of the ways she may do this is that you will deliver the baby partially and then insert a pair of scissors in the base of the fetus’ skull?
Fredriksen: I have not done that.
The Court: Do you ever tell them that after that is done you are going to suction or suck the brain out of the skull?
Fredriksen: I don’t use suction.
The Court: Then how do you remove the brain from the skull?
Fredriksen: I use my finger to disrupt the central nervous system, thereby the skull collapses and I can easily deliver the remainder of the fetus through the cervix.
The Court: Do you tell them that you are going to collapse a skull?
Fredriksen: No.
The Court: The mother?
Fredriksen: No.
The Court: Do you tell them whether or not that hurts the fetus?
Fredriksen: I have never talked to a fetus about whether or not they experience pain.

April 1, 2004: Judge Richard C. Casey, Dr. Timothy Johnson, plaintiff:

“Does the fetus feel pain?” Judge Richard C. Casey asked Johnson, saying he had been told that studies of a type of abortion usually performed in the second trimester had concluded they do.

Johnson said he did not know, adding he knew of no scientific research on the subject.
The judge then pressed Johnson on whether he ever thought about fetal pain while he performs the abortion procedure that involves dismemberment. Another doctor a day earlier had testified that a fetus sometimes does not immediately die after limbs are pulled off.

“I guess whenever I…” Johnson began before the judge interrupted.
“Simple question, doctor. Does it cross your mind?” Casey pressed.
Johnson said that it did not.

“Never crossed your mind?” the judge asked again.

“No,” Johnson answered.

Proof that the Baby is Alive

March 29, 2004: Testimony of Dr. Maureen Paul:

Q. And when you begin the evacuation, is the fetus ever alive?
A. Yes.
Q. How do you know that?
A. Because I do many of my procedures especially at 16 weeks under an ultrasound guidance, so I will see a heartbeat.
Q. Do you pay attention to that while you are doing the abortion?
A. Not particularly. I just notice sometimes.

April 2, 2004: Testimony of Dr. Cassing Hammond:

Q. And you have observed signs of life in the fetus, didn’t you?
A. That is correct.
Q. You have seen spontaneous respiratory activity, right?
A. Yes.
Q. Heartbeat?
A. Yes
Q. Spontaneous movements?
A. Yes.

The Burial

March 31, 2004: Dr. Amos Grunebaum: 

Grunebaum said doctors used to hide the fetus from women after an abortion before studies in the late 1970s and early 1980s showed that women grieved less after a failed pregnancy if they get to see the fetus.

“It is the same as any baby dying. People want to hold the fetus,” he said, adding that he goes so far as to put a cap on the head of the fetus just as he would for a newborn.

April 5, 2004: Excerpts from cross-examination of Dr. Fredrik Broekhuizen:

Q. Doctor, you testified earlier that sometimes parents want an intact fetus for blessing or burial. Have you ever had the parent express that desire where you had compressed the head of the fetus to complete the delivery?
A. Yes.
Q. Was anything done in those instances, doctor, to improve the appearance of the fetus’ head after decompression?
A. Yes.
Q. What was done?
A. The fetus was—just like a newborn—it was dressed and kind of had a little hat placed on it so only the face was visible.
Q. You have seen the fetus’ leg move before crushing the head, haven’t you?
A. I have seen that before compressing/decompressing the head.

April 2, 2004: Testimony of Dr. Carolyn Westhoff:

A. Because it is the back of the skull that collapsed, since this is not disfiguring, and the face, for instance, is intact. Several of my patients have wished to hold the fetus after the procedure and have expressed gratitude that they were able to do so…. We have arrangements to permit burial of the fetus if the patients want…. Because the hospital also has small coffins present, both for stillbirths or for fetuses after a termination, and in the case of our D&E patients we actually have little hats available so we could in fact cover the back of the head where the incision had been made.