"The days are evil," says St. Paul. We must walk with care, not as unwise but as wise, making the most of our time (Ephesians 5:15,16). Who would have thought that our time would have to be spent in a titanic struggle for control of the Catholic Church?
A recent article in the Houston Chronicle (Richard Vara, Sept. 24, 2005) reports that meetings are being held in many places to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Vatican II document Nostra Aetate. This document, it says, was prepared by order of John XXIII (d. 1963), who established the Pontifical Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity under Cardinal Augustin Bea, who was to spearhead a document from the Vatican Council (II) on Judaism. According to the article, Nostra Aetate stated that God's covenant with the Jews has not been revoked. It condemned anti-Semitism and ordered a review of teaching materials to correct any anti-Jewish ideas. This has led to the development of new teaching materials and the establishment of Jewish-Catholic dialogue and teaching centers nationwide. It also led to the abandonment of Catholic efforts to proselytize (convert) Jews.
Before we say "Amen, so mote it be," we should take a good look at the sinister origin of Nostra Aetate. An article in LOOK Magazine (January 25, 1966, Vol.30, No.2), by Joseph Roddy, entitled "How the Jews Changed Catholic Thinking," reveals the Jewish origin of the document, as well as the insistent efforts of the Jewish Masonic organization B'nai Brith, to assure its passage. They had what they needed - their own men at Vatican II, "For," says Roddy, "in fact, ordained Jews around Rome working on the Jewish declaration included Father (Gregory) Baum, as well as Msgr. John Oesterreicher, on Bea's staff at the Secretariat." "Bea himself," adds Roddy, "according to the Cairo daily Al Gomhuria, was a Jew named Behar." A Jewish reporter once told Bea, says Roddy, "You know, Eminence Jews do not regard Jewish converts as their best friends." Bea answered gravely, "Not our Jews." They could be expected to deliver.
"By then," says Roddy, "there was a fair amount of talk passing between the Vatican Council (II) offices and Jewish groups, and both the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai Brith were heard loud and clear in Rome."
Still more sinister is the matter of Bea's secretary. Roddy does not identify him by name, but invents one for him - Fr. Timothy Fitzharris-O'Boyle. "Fitzharris-O'Boyle" wrote articles using various pseudonyms, as Roddy indicates: "… (he) was Michael Serafian in book length, F.E. Cartus for the magazines, and a translator for the Secretariat of Christian Unity, while keeping up a warm friendship with the AJC."
A little detective work reveals that "Fr. Timothy Fitzharris-O'Boyle" was none other that Fr. Malachi Martin, S.J., to many traditionalists a saint, but to others a Jewish double agent who, says Roddy, "…was good at his job in the Secretariat, valuable to the AJC and is still thought of by many around Rome as a kind of genuine savior in the diaspora. Without him, the Jewish declaration might well have gone under early, for it was Fitzharris-O'Boyle (Martin) who best helped the press harass the Romans wanting to scuttle it."
In his second career as "Catholic traditionalist" Malachi Martin gave out a confusing and contradictory message about "conspiracy, some truth, some nonsense and plenty of half-truths with which to beguile and confuse, but Operation Nostra Aetate, the conspiracy he actually took part in was never revealed" (Michael A. Hoffman II, revisionisthistory.org).
Here we are not talking about some remote political game that does not touch our lives, but about a change in Church teaching and practice that affects us all, including the children in our Catholic schools and universities. In this struggle for the control of the Church the Jews now have the ball, and they are running with it, as we read in the Los Angeles Times (as quoted by Hoffman):
"Commemorative events for the 40th anniversary (of Nostra Aetate) are being held throughout the world, including a public one at 7:30 tonight (Sept. 22, 2005) at the Cathedral of our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles. Among the scheduled speakers are Rabbi Michael A. Signer, a professor of Jewish thought and culture at the University of Notre Dame and director of its Holocaust Project; Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles; and Cardinal William Keeler of Baltimore, a member of the Vatican's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews and moderator for Catholic-Jewish Relations at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops… Other upcoming events include a major interfaith conference starting Sunday in Rome (Sept. 25), sponsored by the Pontifical Gregorian University, Georgetown University and other schools; and symposiums in Houston; St. Paul, Minn.; and other U.S. cities.
"Nancy Coonis, superintendent of secondary schools for the Los Angeles Archdiocese, said teachers in Catholic schools were involved in several programs initiated by the Jewish community, including 'Bearing Witness,' an effort to familiarize Catholic teachers with the Holocaust and the history of anti-Semitism. Another program sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council and the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles sends Catholic teachers to Israel for a week. 'We make a major effort in our Catholic schools to constantly work on the issues of dialogue, inclusiveness and anti-bias,' Coonis said."
Though the true Church loves the Jews and prays for their conversion, what we have here, humanly speaking, is a no-win situation: Catholic institutions of higher learning set up "Holocaust Projects" while Jesus Christ is ignored and insulted, and students lose their faith; the novus ordo establishment surrenders effective control of the conciliar church to the Jews; the Jews, for all their power, are left to perish with this world without benefit of the Gospel. God, however, has the last word:
"For behold the day shall come kindled as a furnace: and all the proud and all that do wickedly shall be stubble. And the day that cometh shall set them on fire, saith the Lord of hosts: it shall not leave them root, nor branch. But unto you that fear My name the Sun of justice shall arise, and health in His wings: and you shall go forth and shall leap like calves of the herd. And you shall tread down the wicked when they shall be ashes under the sole of your feet in the day that I do this, saith the Lord of hosts" (Malachi 4:1-3).
"Behold, He comes with the clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and they also who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth shall wail over Him. Even so. Amen. 'I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end,' says the Lord God, 'Who is and Who was and Who is coming, the Almighty.'" (Apocalypse 1:7,8).
