The tensions and conflicts between the Nazis and the Catholic church and 
its institutions, including schools and seminaries, that Georg Ratzinger 
describes in the biography, /My Brother, The Pope/ (Ignatius Press 
2011), especially chapters 4 and 5, conflict with the complicity that 
Mason Gaffney alleges in his post. He might well find some needed 
clarifications from the book.

James Ahiakpor

mason gaffney wrote:
>
> In all the many exchanges about fascism and communism, hardly anyone 
> has mentioned the role of The Vatican. Understandably, no one wants to 
> give or take offense, and stir up questions of “faith”and sanctity, 
> and neither do I, and yet this subject demands it. I think we would 
> underestimate each other to think our fellows, of whatever sects, 
> cannot discuss and analyze this objectively.
>
> If I am even approximately right in defining fascism as the 
> dictatorship of the rentiers, then it was clear to Lenin et al. that 
> the Vatican was on the side of the rentiers. It was and is a major 
> rentier itself. Lenin of course was dealing directly with the Greek 
> Orthodox clerisy, but made a clean sweep of it by proclaiming Atheism 
> all around. The Vatican returned the declaration of war (or may have 
> declared first, I am not sure). This meant that as fascism/Nazism 
> evolved in Europe it naturally allied with The Vatican. They were twin 
> bulwarks against atheism/communism. The story is more complex – true 
> stories always are – but that was the general picture. All the fascist 
> dictators, including Hitler the Austrian, were cradle catholics. 
> Catholic guidance for the times was published in the 1931 Encyclical 
> of Pius XI, /Quadragesimo Anno/, which is silent about the use of 
> Blackshirted strikebreakers and beer-hall /Putschists/ but strong on 
> the sacred rights of property. It was bracketed in time by Mussolini’s 
> Lateran Treaty with The Vatican (1929), and The Concordat with Germany 
> (1933). The latter was negotiated by Vatican Secy of State Eugenio 
> Pacelli. The College of Cardinals soon showed its approval by electing 
> him Pope Pius XII.
>
> The U.S., with its heavy Catholic population, did not join the war 
> against the Axis for a long time. They never let FDR attack Franco’s 
> Falangist clerical fascism in Spain, even after the atrocity at 
> Guernica, even after we joined the war and occupied North Africa. FDR 
> had been elected with strong support by Fr. Charles Coughlin, the 
> pioneer “Radio Priest”, whose mission it was to popularize 
> /Quadragesimo Anno, some /of which found its way into the first New 
> Deal, 1933-37. It is possible we never would have joined W.W. II had 
> not Japan first allied with The Axis and then, with its own agenda and 
> separate religion, attacked Pearl Harbor.
>
> After 1945, the U.S. promptly set about rebuilding the defeated powers 
> as part of entering the Cold War against USSR Communism. The freed-up 
> nations, south of the Baltic, were again led by Catholic leaders and 
> political parties, beneficiaries of The Marshall Plan. Catholic 
> leaders Adenauer, Schumann, and de Gasperi led the move to unite 
> (western) Europe, with strong U.S. support.
>
> I submit that we cannot purport to understand the aims and beliefs of 
> closeted economic theorists unless we deal openly with how they 
> interlocked with these influential Vatican movements and doctrines. 
> You may oppose or support the Vatican, but you cannot ignore it.
>
> Mason Gaffney
>


-- 
James C.W. Ahiakpor, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Economics
California State University, East Bay
Hayward, CA 94542

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