. . . With Both Hands: Spanish Civil War

Showing posts with label Spanish Civil War. Show all posts

Monday, January 07, 2013

The Last Time American Catholics Refused to Bend To Progressive Doctrine - 1933

American Catholics supported Franco - rather, they would not support the Communists in Spain.

Catholics are told by editorial boards, news-readers, hack politicians, academics and activists to 'get on the right side of history' and abandoned their Church and consciences and embrace the reality that marriage must be redefined to include homosexual couples. History does not have sides to it. Armies may face one another in opposition and each may be considered a side. One faction, or side will win and one will lose a battle and perhaps a war. But history does not take sides; only people take sides.

The 'right side of history' in early decades of the 20th Century depended on where you happened to stomp your feet - some goose-stepped and some fox-trotted.

In 1931,Spain's King Alfonso was forced to abdicate the throne. Thanks to Napoleon,the Industrial Revolution and the European imperial rush to colonize the un-claimed parts of the globe, Spain crashed from the world power that dominated Europe from the 15th -19th Centuries, to the sad remnant armed with Mausers and Maxims against Col. Teddy Roosevelt;s Rough Riders, and Admiral Dewey's fleets.

Spain is a Catholic nation. Some abandoned their faith for the secular creeds of Marxism and anarchy. Some found a balance with their faith and labor because Pope Leo XIII defended the right to organize trade unions. There were still folks who were loyal to the monarchy and they were called Carlists. Some demanded that Spain follow Italy into fascism and the were called Falangists.

In 1932, the Soviet Comintern decided to make Spain International.

In 1933, a coalition of the Center-Left took the majority seats in Cortes:

The Comintern of Soviet Russia in 1932 made infiltration into Spain a priority, thus insuring a strong communist presence. Many workers, dissatisfied with the remorseless face of the liberal capitalism that had grown up under the late monarchy, began to turn in increasingly radical directions. Two separate extremist groups began to forge an alliance. One was the anarchists, those dedicated to the overthrow of any government; the other was the syndicalists, who wanted no government but only a series of disparate workers communes. The anarcho-syndicalists were especially strong in the ethnically separate Basque region and in the autonomous region of Catalonia, around Barcelona. It is important to note that the strength of the anarcho-syndicalists was not primarily among the farming peasantry, but rather took root with the working classes attached to industry in large cities. In the elections of 1933, a center-right coalition was voted in, but this was largely ineffective due to the destabilizing influences of the anarcho-syndicalists and the operations of the new communist party of Spain. New elections were to be held in 1936. These would be decisive in determining the course of Spanish history.

Election to the Cortes, or the parliamentary assembly of Spain, was an exceedingly complex process. It was anything but a direct popular election and many places, especially cities, were assigned a disproportionate number of representatives. This will be shown by the vote totals.

Votes in the Spanish elections of 1933Right (Carlists, Catholic Action, Liberal Monarchists, Falange), 4,570,744 votes, 133 seats
Center 340,073 votes, 77 seats
Popular Front (Communists, Socialists, Catalan Separatists, Left Republicans), 4,346,559 votes, 263 seats

One can see that even though the center-right, which had governed since 1933, received over 500,000 more votes, the Popular Front had a majority of 26 seats over the old coalition. As a salient example of unrepresentative allotment, the center, which polled only 340,000 votes, received half the number of the seats that the right obtained with their 4.5 million votes. Ultimately, it was the socialistic Popular Front that formed a government. As each month passed, the regime acted in an increasingly despotic and radical manner, successively casting off ministers who were not liberal enough. Against this regime the military, the Carlist traditionalists and the political right rebelled. American Catholics went to great lengths to explain the facade of this "democratic" election process to the general public.

Progressive America was not accepting this - American Catholics found themselves on the 'wrong side of history.' American Catholics had become a political force. George Babbitt was confronted by Studs Lonigan. American Catholics ran a coreligionist, NY Governor Al Smith for President in 1928 and lost. However, they formed something of a coalition with mainline Progressive Protestants, who demanded abortion and birth control; over the New Deal and elected FDR. Catholics remained very anti-Communist and somewhat isolationist and Progressives were delighted with Communism and were happily isolationist, until Spain got messy.

Hollywood cast Catholic Spain as the villain - universal and historical. Claude Raines, Basil Rathbone, the Inquisition tortured Errol Flynn, John Garfield and Tyrone Power in movies about pirates, gun runners and rebels with one cause.

Bernard F. Dick is of the opinion that Hollywood's preoccupation with portraying opposition to the fascist forces emerged long before September 1939: "Hollywood began its war on fascism before fascism began its war on democracy." He asserts that the film industry was conscious of political turbulence in Europe since the early 1930s, but veiled "their fascist aggression in allusion and metaphor until...history intervened." He goes on to support this claim with a discussion of the various attempts to produce meaningful films about the Spanish Civil War, a conflict that was never mentioned by name in any of the movies until 1940, and then only to say that it was over. According to Dick's examination of Hollywood wartime production, the OWI wielded enough influence to prevent the expression of firm political convictions in early war films, and the filmmakers were left to follow its advice.

The Republic's Popular Front was dominated by Soviet trained commissars and immediately churches and monasteries were confiscated by the Republic, because the Church needed to pay its 'fair share' and immediately bishops, priests and nuns were executed. Peasants and workers who objected to this savagery were executed.

The trouble in Spain forced American Catholics to break ranks. General Franco led a rebellion against the Communist dominated Republic. Donald Prudlo's fine article for Catholic Culture details the powerful unity of American Catholics in opposition to the Popular Front and the support it maintained for Franco's government. The American Catholic Church remained fiercely and uncompromisingly anti-communist, even among its academics and politicians, unlike today.

Prudlo noted:

In their battle to justify Franco to the American public, Catholic journalists faced an extremely difficult battle. One of the most basic obstacles encountered was the persistent "Black Legend" regarding Spanish history, a view that had taken root in Reformation England and spread from there to all of the English-speaking countries of the west. This legend excoriated Spain as a backwards, religiously dominated gothic land of torture and inquisition. Hilaire Belloc was credited by Catholics as the first historian to plow through the patina of prejudice and hatred to offer a balanced English-language account of Spanish history.²⁰ McGuire was concerned with showing that all of the news correspondents in Spain were infected with this, and as a result were not being impartial. These correspondents presented Franco as standing for the forces of Church, inquisition, privilege and repression, against idealistic socialists, communists, and anarchists trying to shed some light on backward Spain.²¹ The editors of The Sign were constantly warning American Catholics not to trust major media outlets, but rather to get their news from the National Catholic Welfare Council News Service, as mediated through the 300 or so Catholic periodicals in the country.²² America attempted to reshape the terms used to describe the conflict. The editors railed against the tyranny of calling the Rightists "rebels" and the communists "loyalists." The rebels, "not the government forces, are fighting the battle of world democracy," the writers stated.²³ Catholic journalists refused to let Protestant and popular news outlets cast the struggle in terms of democracy vs. totalitarianism.

Today, the struggle is much less tangible and much more hostile; gay marriage is much more than a ceremony and license. Gay Marriage and abortion are secular doctrines that Catholics, if they are to be considered American citizens, must not merely accept but heartily acclaim.

Catholic support for Franco was very unpopular, but the Church and Catholics did not cave. Donald Prudlo's article concludes:

In the end the unpopular position of the Catholic Church in the war resulted in very few negative repercussions. Perhaps if World War II had not followed hard on the heels of the Spanish conflict there would have been more time for a backlash, but as it was the Church was prepared for war. Had Catholics remained in the camp of the old liberal isolationists one can only imagine what a shock the coming of the next war would have brought. As it was, the Church entered the forties and fifties as a unified group with a common identity ready to face the challenges of those decades. It is ironic that the terrible bloodletting of Spain helped to bring forth a strong and tightly knit American Catholic presence. Sometimes great good can come from the most unexpected of directions.

Wonder how we will do?

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

The Coming American Cristiada - Brought to You by Obama 2012

20th Century Government Mandates against Religion:

Father Miguel Pro, SJ. executed by the Mexican secularist government in 1927 -Viva Cristo Rey! Rey!”

'The ignorant serve cruel masters.' The Clouds Aristophanes

"We support the right of women in this country to have access to birth control through their insurance policies, and anybody who stands in the way is going to have to deal with us and our friends," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., flanked by four colleagues. Boxer said she had spoken to Obama adviser David Axelrod, who assured her that the administration would not weaken its position. USA Today 2/9/2012

Anti-clericalism is a historical movement that opposes religious institutional power and influence in public and political life. In its more extreme manifestations, anti-clericalism has led to violent attacks against the clergy, vandalism against religious sites, and the seizure of church property.
Often directed against the Catholic Church and clergy, anti-clericalism goes beyond mere secularism or the French tradition of laïcité, which advocates both the absence of religious interference in government affairs and government interference in religious affairs. The goal of anti-clericalism is often that religion should become a strictly private activity . . .During the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, and in the context of atrocities on both sides, many of the Republican forces were violently anti-clerical anarchists and Communists. The numerous assaults against Catholic institutions, clergy, and supporters during this period have been been termed Spain's Red Terror. These included the sacking and burning of monasteries and churches and killing 283 nuns and more than 6,000 priests, including 13 bishops, 4184 diocesan priests, 2365 members of male religious orders. Among these were 259 Claretians, 226 Franciscans, 204 Piarists, 176 Brothers of Mary, 165 Christian Brothers, 155 Augustinians, 132 Dominicans, and 114 Jesuits. There are accounts of the Catholic faithful being forced to swallow rosary beads, thrown down mine shafts, and priests being forced to dig their own graves before being buried alive. The Catholic Church has canonized several martyrs of the Spanish Civil War and has beatified hundreds more. New World Encyclopedia

My students said this more often than not - "No Way!" They also protested " You're Crazy!" Most often they exclaimed " Are You Serious?!"

These came in response to questions with regard to Master At Arms Claggert's homosexual overtures to the handsome sailor Billy Budd, Herman Melville's novel of same name. As the innocent and beautiful young man shouted so innocently to his shipmates " Farewell Rights of Man!" the irony of discovery is a real push -me- pull -you in the noggin. No Way!!!!!!!!!

Way.

I taught wonderfully diverse, but always solidly important novels, plays, essays and histories to my students: Not only did they read Catcher in the Rye, but also Catch 22; The Sun Also Rises and the U.S.A trilogy; The Scarlet Letter and Genesis.

My students were great critics and often favored John Dos Passos over Ernest Hemingway - " Why is Hemingway so huge and no one reads Dos Passos?"

Well, discipuli, that statement is no longer true. You read Dos Passos.

Interestingly, Dos Passos and Hemingway were friends until the Spanish Civil War 1937. The two writers were very much alike - both born in Illinois, WWI veterans and part of the post-war Parisian crowd of Modern Culture Vultures. They both shared leftist political views, until the Spanish Civil War. A man by the name of Jose Robles, who had taught Spanish and literature in America and translated the works of Dos Passos, Hemingway and Sinclair Lewis into Spanish and share the same socialist/leftist political ideals, was placed against a wall and shot by the Republican ( Communists) authorities for not being 'left enough.'

Hemingway was not too bothered by the murder of his friend Jose Robles, but he was really upset that John Dos Passos equated the murder of his friend to the slaughter and persecution of Catholics by the soviet led Republicans. Hemigway cut Dos Passos dead and like any MSNBC shill taking coin today engaged in charcter assasination of his old friend. Dos Passos wrote honestly. Hemingway was a gargantuan bullshitter worthy of his Nobel Prize. Dos Passos died in 1970. Hemigway painted his ceilling with his brains in 1961.
Way.

Progessives are secularists. Religion is okay as long as it does not make itself public. The American Progressives want this Democratic Republic to become "One Nation" without the prepsitional phrase "Under God." America is getting there.

Our popular culture paints the Spanish Civil War as a romantic, gallant fight against fascism. It was monstrous, brutal and heartless fight against fascism. Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper and John Garfield all played Spanish Civil War Veterans from the Republican side - they never said Red in the Old Black and Whites.

Every one hates fascists, especially neo-fascists. A fascist is merely a very successful socialist.

No America public educated high school students know anything about the massacre of the Escorial Augustinian seminary students or the Cristiada that swept Mexico from 1926 -1929 ten years before the Communists took control of the Spanish Republic.

Facts are troublesome things. Much more difficult is the task of applying what we have learned to our lives.
President Obama is at war with Catholic Church and American religious liberty. No Way!!!!!! Yes, way.

Obama 2012 is the start of the American Cristiada - make no mistake. John Dos Passos began his U.S.A. trilogy with most chapters dedicated to the Revolution in Mexico. An American Wobbly ( IWW) printer goes to fight the working man's fight in the Mexico of Zapata and Pancho Villa. Fainy Mac ends up very disillusioned by the results of his labors:

The Mexican Constitution of 1917 limited the power of the Catholic Church. The constitution required the closing of all elementary schools operated by the Catholic Church. The document also led to the government confiscation of all church owned building and properties. Monastic orders were also outlawed and church services could not be conducted outside of a church. All church activities were to be overseen by the government. Law was also established to take away the voting rights of clergymen. In 1926, the Calles Law was signed making it illegal for clergy to wear their vestments in public. Following the passing of this act, Catholic priests and citizens, with approval from Pope Pius XI, engaged in acts of peaceful protest: boycotting movies and not using public transportation. Some Mexican states are only permitted by law to have a certain number of clergymen living in them. In these states it is not uncommon for the clergy to be pulled out of their homes and burned or shot before a firing squad. The rebellions became more violent. A number of priests holed themselves up in the church, Our Lady of Guadalupe. There is currently a standoff between the priests and the federal soldiers.

The January HHS Contraception Mandate followed the May Hilda Solis's NLRB stripping the Catholic identity from Chicago's St. Xavier University and other schools. Obama will decide what is religious and what is not, what is acceptable to him and what is not. Obama is a later-day composite Yanqui Obergon/Calles*!

Obama 2012 is the blue print for the American Cristiada. It is to be seen how many American Catholics will become Cristeros.

Facts are troubling things.

* Many leaders and members of the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico were highly critical of the 1917 constitution. They especially criticized Article 3, which forbade religious instruction in schools, and Article 130, which adopted an extreme form of separation of church and state, including a series of restrictions on priests and ministers of all religions to hold public office, canvass on behalf of political parties or candidates, or to inherit from persons other than close blood relatives, etc.).[27]

Although Obregón was suspicious of the Catholic Church, he was far less anti-clerical than his successor, Plutarco Elías Calles, whose policies would lead to the Cristero War (1926–29). For example, he sent Pope Pius XI congratulations upon his election in 1922, and in a private message to the pope, emphasized the "complementarity" of the aims of the Catholic Church and the Mexican Revolution.[27]

In spite of Obregón's moderate approach, his presidency saw the beginnings of clashes between Catholics and supporters of the Mexican Revolution. Some bishops campaigned actively against land distribution and against the organization of workers into secular unions. Catholic Action movements were founded in Mexico in the wake of Pius XI's 1922 encyclical Ubi arcano, and supporters of the Young Mexican Catholic Action soon found themselves in violent conflict with CROM members.[28] The most serious diplomatic incident occurred in 1923, when Ernesto Eugenio Filippi, the Apostolic Nuncio to Mexico, conducted an open-air religious service in spite of the fact that it was illegal to hold a religious service outside of a church. The government invoked Article 33 of the constitution and expelled Filippi from Mexico.[29]

http://www.executedtoday.com/2008/11/23/1927-father-miguel-pro-viva-cristo-rey/