Paul VI, an Anti-Pius X

IN 1993, John Paul II decided to introduce the cause for the beatification of his predecessor, Paul VI, whose “ spiritual son ” he claimed to be. Georges de Nantes, our Father, understood that John Paul II’s intention was “ in a way, to canonise himself, and to decanonise Pius X ” (sermon of August 1, 1993.)

Benedict XVI, his successor, got the message, and made sure that John Paul II was canonised. All that is left to do is to ‘ decanonise ’ Pius X. In fact, it suffices to reread the letter ‘ Our Apostolic’ Mandate ’ to realise that these two ‘ saints ’ do not belong to the same religion.

Giovanni Battista was born on September 26, 1897. His parents were Giorgio Montini and Giuditta (Judith) Alghisi. It was at the time of the prelude and general dress rehearsal for the auto-demolition of the Church, through which we are now living, owing to “ this enormous and detestable wickedness, so characteristic of our time – the substitution of man for God. ” (St. Pius X, E Supremi Apostolatus, October 4, 1903).

“ Born under such a sign, the man who in the fullness of his age would know the fullness of Apostasy at the moment when the Church’s choice invested him with the plenitude of the High Priesthood, could only choose between holiness and perdition, the sum of error and the perfection of truth, martyrdom and treason. ” (Georges de Nantes, Paul VI and His Masdu, CCR no.73, April 1976, p. 8).

The Pope’s childhood can be summed up in few words. His health did not permit him to follow a normal course of schooling. He was brought up in the country until the age of eleven. In 1908 he entered the Jesuit Arici College, but he soon had to return home to pursue his studies. In 1916 he entered the Seminary but as an extern. In November 1919 he took the cassock and received the tonsure ; six months later he was ordained priest on May 29, 1920. He was then twenty-two years old. That same year he graduated as a Doctor of Canon Law at Milan. He was a young man of rapid but solitary studies.

PORTRAIT

“ Paul VI is a man of medium height, he is just under l.70 m. He appears of a delicate build and his health is fragile. His oval face, now marked by the cares of time, has kept its sharp profile : a wide forehead, a pale complexion, thick black eyebrows protecting eyes of a changing colour. The eyes are now grey, now blue, sometimes with a dreamy, sometimes with a severe expression. Those who have approached him remark on their extraordinary brilliance, their bewitching quality and their warm radiance. The nose is straight and long, rather prominent in profile with something of an amused or impertinent air. The mouth is well drawn, with a very thin line like upper lip sealed by a thicker lower lip as though closing on a secret. The face is beautiful. It is even more beautiful when animated. When the eyelids rise and the mouth half opens one immediately discerns the whole potential of his being in his face : charm, distinction, finesse, vibrant sensitivity, goodness, profound consideration for others, intense reflection and discretion. When the eyelids are lowered, however, then that look disappears : the lips become silent and fold tightly, all becomes severe and cold on a face from which every warm feeling has been banished by his indomitable will. Whereas before all was alight and aflame now all is shade and ice.

“ This double aspect of the same being is perhaps what qualifies Paul VI as a mysterious enigmatic and ambiguous man. No doubt he is. Already when he was quite young, he would remain silent with his friends and more often than not he had to be urged to join in the games natural to his age. His school fellows laughingly called him ‘ sgobbone ’ – swot. Sensitive and vulnerable he had a tendency to withdraw into his silent dreams and his reading with which he was never done and which suited his rather sickly nature better than the boisterous games in which one is ruthlessly pulled about. Intuitively he had already chosen his field of activity ; on the intellectual level he was unbeatable and always came out on top. His dreamy air and his ethereal aspect made him like an Ariel in the midst of young Calibans : he was thought to be haughty, when he was justly proud ; he was said to be cold when he was really reserved. What more natural that from then on he should hide the impulses of his heart, preferring to pass for a man of ambition, rather than justify himself ! A precocious wisdom bade him keep silence.

“ Thus we see the formation of an amazing self-mastery, a mastery of mind as well as of body – a mastery, moreover, which gave all the appearances of defiance. ” (Madeleine Juffé, Paul VI, Fleurus 1963 p. 13-14, quoted by Georges de Nantes, whose analysis I summarise. The whole CCR no. 76 is must reading !)

THE TURNING POINT OF HIS LIFE

As yet it seems that there was nothing outstanding in the life of this secretive, frail and frequently ill young priest. He devoured books ; he never played, but beneath a mien of apparent indecisiveness there lay concealed an implacable will. Uno uometto di ferro – little man of iron – is what his mother called him. In fact the die had already been cast as follows :

In 1848 the Brescian Catholics had fought against Austria for national independence : “ For the Italian League, Pius IX and the King. ” By the time hostilities were resumed in 1859, however, it had already become clear that the Italian Nationalists wanted to chase the Pope out of Rome and establish an anti-clerical, aggressively sectarian state, entirely in the hands of Freemasonry. It was against such a power as this that the finest patriotic Catholics rose up. Giorgio Montini was one of them. His newspaper became the instrument of this resistance. The future Pius X was also among them. “ Unlike Leo XIII, Pius X had the soul of an Italian patriot. ” (Vaussard p. 232)

One noteworthy fact is that in 1895 Giorgio Montini, like Cardinal Sarto in Venice, had formed an alliance of Catholics and moderates, which was something quite new, in order to combat and exclude Zanardelli, one of the most violent anticlericals, from the Council. “ The result, due for the most part to Montini’s vigorous polemic and organising ability, was surprising, ” relates Longinotti, an old fighting companion. “ Joseph Zanardelli, who had been president for many years was at last excluded from the Council. ” (cf. Lazzarini, Paul VI His Life and Personality, Salvator 1963 p. 29)

“ It was this same fight that made possible the opening and maintenance of the Arici College against the persecutions and rigours of the sectarian administration. It was in this defensive organising spirit that Giorgio Montini founded the two publishing houses, Morcelliana and Scuola. When he founded the Banco San Paolo it was out of a well-intentioned love of the poor, just as the future Pius X did when he was at Venice, in order to lend money to Christians in debt and thus keep them out of the way of Jewish usurers, who would hold them up to ransom.

“ That was all in accordance with the spirit of Pius IX and done under the banner of the Congress Work, founded in 1875 with the aim of uniting Catholics for the defence of the Church’s rights and of the social, religious interests of the country. The movement was doctrinal, structured and under the hierarchy. The future Pius X was, though modestly, one of the greatest animators among the Italian bishops of this movement and Paul VI’s father was one of its most active protagonists. They were fighting for God, for the liberty of the Church and for the poor with all the strength derived from Catholic union and discipline. It was perfect !

“ Then, however, a progressivist, leftist current began to emerge with the foundation in 1895 of the University Circles and the review Vita Nuova by Don Romolo Murri. This was supplemented in 1898 by a further review called La Cultura Soziale in which the Christian democrat doctrine and project of Giuseppe Toniolo was set out for the young people of the former Catholic Works movement. Murri was able to recommend himself by claiming to be in the spirit of Leo XIII, which in his case was no doubt abusive. Nevertheless it was exactly the kind of opening in which that Pope would have been well pleased. Don Murri regarded himself as the Italian Lammenais. Instead of the old fight ‘ for God, for Country and for the Poor ’ led by Catholics under the organisation and direction of the Bishops, Don Murri breathed a revolutionary fervour : ‘ All for the people by the people. ’

“ The result was only to be expected. On May 6 and 9, 1898 when riots broke out in Milan, the Social Catholics went out on the streets together with the anticlerical socialists and were both subject to the same bloody repression at the hands of the authorities. A crisis then ensued at the heart of the Congress Work. The President, Paganizzi, reproved the Catholics for their solidarity with the revolutionaries and obliged them, as a duty, to be among the defenders of order. Others, such as Meda and Grossoli, hesitated. As for Don Murri, his intention was to throw the Church into the revolution. Leo XIII turned this way and that and supported no one. ”

As Patriarch of Venice and later as Pope, St. Pius X firmly enforced the ‘ clerical-moderate ’ alliance in order to defend social order against the partisans of revolution and their chimerical Catholic accomplices. He placed the National Democratic League under an interdict. Then in 1910, he excommunicated its founder, Don Murri who lost the faith and married soon after in 1912. He would not be reconciled to the Church until 1943 by which time the Church was coming round to his way of thinking, when his revenge and his victory was already at hand.

The encyclical Il Fermo Proposito (June 11, 1905) reorganised the Catholic defence which, by the same token, is the defence of established order, and it created the Electoral Union, which was soon to guarantee the victory of Catholics and moderates over anticlericals and socialists.

Giorgio Montini entered into Pius X’s perspective – sincerely so far as can be ascertained. In 1912 he was chosen as President of the Electoral Union of Italian Catholics in view of the election in 1913, which was a great victory for them. Pius X’s policies, which he had innovated together with Giorgio Montini were bearing fruit. Had they been pursued wisely they would have been the salvation of Catholic Italy !

Once St. Pius X had departed from the scene, however, his doctrine was immediately betrayed. “ In 1915, Benedict XV created the national directorate of Catholic Action, which was favourable to the re-entry of Christian Democrats onto the political and religious scene. ” Don Sturzo was elected a member of the ‘ Central Junta ’ and then named as Secretary General of all Catholic Action Movements : “ The re-entry of the Christian Democrats, favoured by Benedict XV and his Secretary of State Cardinal Gasparri, was an indication that the clerical-moderate alliance was about to be broken. In fact, in the course of a conversation, Cardinal Gasparri authorised Don Sturzo to create a great Catholic party with a non-confessional programme and independent of the hierarchy. That was to be the Italian Popular Party which was founded at the end of hostilities in 1919. ” (Thierry Godechot The Italian Christian Democratic Party, p. 25)

That was the very thing St. Pius X hated most of all : religious indifference leading straight to a shameful laicism independent of the hierarchy, which would end in handing Catholics over to a handful of clerical demagogues. From then on it is no longer God’s party but the People’s party, it is Democracy. Yet by a monstrous fraud, which dates from 1919 and has lasted ever since in Italy, it is called Christian Democracy. It would be Christian because the Popular Party intended to conquer and hold on to power through Catholic Action and through the Church, which would have to become one vast electoral organisation at the service of a party, avowed aim of which was to be non-confessional ! Under Pius X it was acceptable, though dangerous, to constrain the faithful to vote for the defenders of God’s Rights and for the Rights of the Church against Masonic oppression, provided it was under the direction and responsibility of the bishops. Under Benedict XV, however, a universal and perpetual form of simony began whereby the Church served as an electoral breeding ground for a party implementing a programme that would abandon God, the Church and the care of the Poor in favour of a chimera of universal Democracy for which the party intended to serve as evangelical soul ! In other words the Letter on the Sillon was mocked and trampled under foot.

As would be expected, all Paul VI’s biographers, historians and adulators, including the ineffable Guitton, pass over the betrayal of Pius X’s formal orders by Benedict XV and Pius XI, a friend of Don Sturzo, in total silence. They were pushed by Cardinal Gasparri, who it seems to me was the most effective of the devil’s executors in the Church at that time after Rampolla. Finally, they were pushed by all the leaders of Catholic Action, which had in fact become Popular Democratic Action, fixed on the conquest of power and the subversion of the Nation.

One of these leaders was Giorgio Montini. It was to Don Sturzo that he owed his election to Parliament in 1919, 1922 and 1924. They were decisive years in the priestly vocation of his son Giovanni Battista ! His father was elected deputy at the time of his taking the soutane. Ordained priest after having been a few short years as an extern at the seminary, he had hardly begun his studies in philosophy and literature in Rome in 1921, when by string-pulling or through his connections – call it what you like –, he was torn from these necessary studies, and thrown straight into a diplomatic career.

“ In this solitary retreat, ” relates his brother, referring to his cell at the Lombard Seminary – two steps away from the Farnese Palace ! –, “ a visitor, Signor Longinotti came to see him. The visitor had been deputy for Brescia since 1907 and was a friend of our father’s. He had been Under-Secretary of State for Labour. He was also a friend of Cardinal Gasparri (ah !) as well as being known to Pius XI (ah !) Through Longinotti, Cardinal Gasparri had my brother put down for the Academy of Nobles, where he assiduously followed the courses of Msgr. Pizzardo, who later (one or two years later !) entered him for the Secretariat of State. I remember that Longinotti had said to Cardinal Gasparri at the time :

“ ‘ Today it is I who must thank your Eminence for facilitating Don Battista’s entry into the Academy of Piazza Minerva, but one day it may be that your Eminence will be thanking me for having given me the chance of making such a present to the Church. ’ ” (quoted by Guitton, Dialogues with Paul VI, Fayard 1967, p. 72)

The proposal is astounding beyond measure ! A Democratic Deputy has his protégé, a young priest of twenty-four, entered as minutante at the Secretariat of State and he proclaims that in doing so he is making a wonderful present to the Church ? The whole family remembers it as a prophecy ? It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that it was not Longinotti who entered the young priest’s cold cell in the Lombard Seminary on that day to distract him from his apprenticeship for the priestly life, which he had just begun, but the Devil himself, come to make a pact with him. ‘ If you enter the service of Christian-Democracy you will be my protégé ; through well placed friends I will see that you make your way and you shall go very, very high I promise you. Even the Secretary of State will one day kiss your feet ! ’

THIRTY YEARS OF THE DOUBLE GAME
(1924-1954)

This visit of Longinotti, the Popular Democrat Deputy took place in the highly charged atmosphere that led to the Fascist congress in Naples, the March on Rome and Mussolini’s ascent to the premiership.

“ Don Giovanni-Battista Montini spent the summer of 1924 in Paris, where he followed the course of the Alliance Française, finishing in first place. He returned to Rome just in time for Pius XI’s famous speech to Catholic Students given on September 9, wherein he formally disapproved of the alliance between Christian Democrats and Socialists. The speech was in effect an order to rally to the New State. ”

At that very time Don Montini found himself given an office at the Secretariat of State together with the chaplaincy of the Federation of Italian Catholic University Students in Rome (F.U.C.I.), an appointment which he received directly from the Pope. He fitted in so well with the Holy Father’s directives that in the following year – he was still only 27 – Pius XI appointed him as national chaplain to F.U.C.I, replacing Msgr. Pini, whose clamorous anti-fascism had become unbearable to Mussolini. Did this mean that the new chaplain felt some inclination for or satisfaction with the New Order ? Certainly not, but Pius XI, a good judge of his own men, knew that this young priest was capable of playing the game – the double game – that he wanted, with suppleness and persistency.

The career of the future Pope at the Secretariat of State is without highlight or blemish. All that is known is that he progressed gradually until he reached the highest position.

Of all the affairs that he handled in those thirty years nothing is known and there is nothing remarkable to be seen.

During all that time as a functionary he never once exercised any parochial ministry, not as a curate, parish priest, catechist nor even as a temporary replacement. He had never had a people or a church under his care. He had been nothing other than the Catholic Action Chaplain to FUCI for nine years from 1924 to 1933.

Like many another Catholic Action Chaplains he exercised this very special form of apostolate consisting entirely of personal initiative and brilliance, private guidance and dialogues, leaving no noteworthy trace. In vain do the biographers attempt to lyricise ; nothing out of the ordinary, nothing lasting took place. He used to take his university students to the Abbey of St. Paul’s Outside the Walls to initiate them into the splendours of the liturgy as celebrated under the Abbot, Dom Schuster, who later became Archbishop of Milan. He naturally took his students to visit the poorer quarters of Primavalle and Porta Metrone ; Vatican functionaries have always visited the poor in some part of Rome.

He would supervise the translation of modern literature into Italian to acquaint the Italians with these works, especially those of the French. He himself translated Maritain’s Three Reformers and Fr. de Grandmaison’s Personal Religion. He wrote an Introduction to the Study of Christ and a Way of Christ for his students, neither of which is particularly outstanding. In 1928 he wrote an essay The University Conscience, very much to the occasion. There were also several articles on day to day events – again nothing outstanding.

What was his spirituality ? To speak frankly, it was more moralistic than mystical, more humanist than biblical, more exhortative than dogmatic. These features of his spirituality appeared during his episcopate at Milan and have remained in his pontifical works.

Where do we find in this career, this apostolate and this spirituality that exceptional merit which will make of GBM, as he was familiarly known to his students, the chosen one in the conclave of 1963 ? The merit is elsewhere and it lies in the hidden struggle that he led, in full conformity with Pius XI’s directives, against Mussolini’s Fascism.

It is still Madeleine Juffé-bouche-d’or who says so (p. 28). Don Montini began the resistance in 1926, the year when Piux XI condemned Action française !

This Resistance was, however, inspired by an ideology and a morality, which it in turn helped to develop to the detriment of all faith and religion.

1o A moral judgement : Mussolini the devil ; Fascism, absolute evil ! 2o A new ideology : Jacques Maritain’s Integral Humanism. The idea was to oppose the ‘ Catholic City, ’ a concept very dear to Pius X with the notion of a ‘ profane type of Christianity, ’ which would be lay and democratic.

He set to work translating Integral Humanism, for which he wrote an enthusiastic introduction. It was to become his politico-religious Credo, from which he never budged.

It was then that he founded together with the future Cardinal Siri the Laureati movement, which was for University Graduates. They were persuaded that the fall of Fascism would mark the dawn of a Golden Age of universal reconciliation.

The future Pope then let it be known that he was an admirer of Blondel, but only in a vague way. From 1950 on, he acted as candidate for the succession of Pius XII, whose immediate collaborator he was, with Tardini.

In October 1954, however, Pius XII read a secret report from the Archbishop of Riga, then detained by the Soviets. It revealed to the Pope that contacts had being made in his name with the persecutors, by a high-ranking personage in the Secretariat of State. The enquiry brought to light a traitor in Bishop Montini’s entourage, the Jesuit Tondi, who admitted that he had passed the names of priests clandestinely sent to the USSR, to the Soviet authorities, who arrested and killed them all.

Moreover, the Pope discovered that all the dispatches relating to the schism of the Chinese bishops had been hidden from him by his Substitute.

He decided there and then to part from his closest and most intimate collaborator. Yet instead of locking him up in an iron cage as some of his predecessors would have done, Pius XII appointed him as Archbishop of Milan, one of the most glorious sees of Christendom, where Cardinal Ratti had spent a short time on his way to the pontificate ! Promoveatur ut amoveatur. At the same time Roncalli was removed to Venice and Urbani to Verona. What promotions these were ! Bishop Montini succeeded Cardinal Schuster on November 1 ; he was consecrated bishop by Cardinal Tisserant, and the Pope, who was confined to his room through illness, sent a tape-recorded message for the occasion. The message was of such praise and goodness that the world interpreted this promotion as implicitly designating the heir to the tiara.

The nomination to the Cardinalate, however, never came and that was a necessary preliminary for pontifical election. Montini was excluded from the next conclave by Pius XII’s inflexible will.

THE CONQUEST OF POWER
(1954-1963)

On January 5, 1955, he made his solemn entry into Milan. It was the first pastoral ministry that he had ever had. He was 57, full of bookish ideas but with no practice and no tradition.

What did Bishop Montini preach at this time ? As always, a pacifist, democratic, liberal Christian humanism where everything is reconciled on the purely vague level of Human Rights.

At last Pius XII died and the Conclave met without the Archbishop of Milan in person, but not without his all-pervading presence. His party laid down the demands and they won. A deal was concluded : Cardinal Roncalli, who was old and who had shared his disgrace, gave his consent. He was to be the pope of the transition, Pastor et Nauta, whose role would be to raise Montini to the Cardinalate, rehabilitate Urbani and others who had been reproved under the previous regime, then die quickly to make way for the choice of the progressivist liberal majority. This is what happened.

Often, when he was at Milan, Cardinal Montini would give a glimpse of what he expected from an Event he felt to be close at hand :

“ Something prophetic moves in the atmosphere of our times. We must be attentive. We must seek to understand the designs of God, the movements of history, the currents of the Spirit and the hour of responsibility. The world, which unwittingly is walking backwards towards Christ, must” hear the voice of the pastors saying : ‘ Turn round and see, Christ is there. ’ ”

That hour had now come.

“ THE LAMB AT THE SERVICE OF THE DRAGON ”

He took the name of Paul. “ Do not seek the significance of this name from among those predecessors who bore the same name in past centuries, rather go back to the early history of the Church until you admire at St. Peter’s side the gigantic figure of Paul of Tarsus, Apostle to the gentiles. The choice of this name indicates a social, ecumenical and apostolic programme, ” explained Cardinal Urbani. A special programme for a special Pope contrasted with all those Popes who had preceded him. As for Suenens, he said : “ This name signifies the opening of the Church to the world ; preaching and dialogue. ”

Once again, however, it is Madeleine Juffé who puts it with such clear-sightedness : “ Saint Paul, one of the giants of the Church, was the first to hold that the pagans could approach baptism without passing through all the observances of the Jews. ” Hence Congar called the Pope, Paul Outside the Walls. Juffé continues : “ Yet we cannot help thinking that more than the figure of St. Paul himself, it is to the place he occupied in the first steps of the Church that the present Pope is now referring. It seems from his writings that he wishes to arouse a regeneration and a rejuvenation of the Church, and in this task the way was wonderfully opened for him by John XXIII. ” (pp. 122-123)

It is true. Since St. Pius X’s death, an invisible hand, a hidden Spirit, progressing in an inexorably logical manner, has been leading the Papacy to this Event, to this modern Epiphany, i.e. the conjunction of an innovating Council and a trendsetting Pope, wherein it breaks with its past, abrogates its laws, overturns its rites and demolishes its frontiers in order to open up to all religions and, together with all peoples, to construct universal brotherhood and peace. It is no longer necessary now to “ pass through the observances of former Judaism ” by which is meant the laws of the Catholic Church. “ Paul II, ” as the Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras called him, is regenerating and rejuvenating Christianity.

So what have we to do ? Believe in man, construct the new world, liberate peoples, bring down tyrannies, develop culture and establish democracy. Paul is the prophet of this new age in which all religions will cease to oppose each other and together will become the Movement of Spiritual Animation for Universal Democracy : the Masdu of Paul VI.

Such is the chimera of the one whom the Church has given herself for Supreme Head. She was thus obliged to follow him, with veneration and complete confidence, but without understanding and without trying to determine whether “ flos florum – flower of flowers, ” this phrase from St. Malachy’s prophecies that applies to Paul VI, indicates the Best of the best or Worst of the worst.

Who is Paul VI ? An exceptionally active being ; a man of skill, vast reading and a ready word ; a man of a swift flowing pen with a mind full of loops, twists and turns and of volte face. He says everything without ever betraying his thought ; he decides on everything without seemingly knowing where he is heading. A “ Man of iron”…

Paul VI is not a pious man. He has never given the slightest appearance of piety except for form. His daily time table for fifty years mentions no more than the amount of time strictly allotted to Mass and Breviary. There is never any mention of the Rosary, of any devotion or of any gesture of personal piety.

He is neither a scholar nor a theologian yet has always been a great devourer of books. “ He reads the Figaro and Le Monde every morning, in the evening he takes a pile of dossiers, reviews and books to his room. Giovanni Battista Montini has always been a voracious reader. Armed with his eternal red and blue pencil he pursues his reading until one in the morning. The next day three piles of papers are to be found by his bedside : those to be thrown away, those classed for immediate attention, and those to be sent to the Vatican archives. Far from relinquishing affairs, ” writes Paul Dreyfus the author of this report in Ouest-France in 1974, “ Paul VI has never followed them more closely. Sedulous, conscientious and meticulous, he wishes to see everything for himself which increases the centralisation of the Church and sometimes leads to unjust accusations of autocracy being levelled at a man who is profoundly democratic by upbringing and conviction. ”

This insatiable appetite for reading, excitement in conversation and his rapid, scrupulous control of affairs lead him to think that everything is moving fast ; that is all evolving and being transformed according to his will. In reality so many jolts have only had the effect of shaking and causing great cracks to appear in the immense vessel that is the Church and little by little she is foundering in anarchy.

Paul VI is not worried. Reading Guitton’s Dialogues one undoubtedly gets to the bottom of a personality, said by many of those near him to be enigmatic, through the admiration and platonic friendship of this author for the Pope. The book shows the Pope talking about himself, admiring himself and giving his admirer matter for further praise. Read Guitton’s description on pages 35-40 “ Your eye lids Holy Father are closed ”… the wind billows out his cape, the Samothracian folds, etc. etc. It is unbearable. The man loves himself and enjoys the feeling of being Father of All… This paternity “ I feel flowing from me in concentric circles, far beyond the visible frontiers of the Church. I feel myself to be the father of the whole human family. ” That is the language of Fenelon and Madame Guyon. He, however, enjoys this “ crushing yet delicious burden ” not needing to see this poor humanity or reach out to rejoice in or suffer with its joys and pains in a real way like a father for his children.

What he loves is to talk with Guitton about poetry, religions and literature as one literary man to another on this lofty plane midway between the stars and the earth, which is lost to view. The decadence and auto demolition of the Church, Gulag Archipelago and mounting barbarism are all far, far away. So we are bound to conclude that G-B. Montini has remained as his little school friends at the Cesare Arici college knew him : a child turned in on himself, interested only in his own person, his success in exams and his ascent : interested only in his ideal world and his interior dream, which is projected in his cold frantic activity as universal Reformer, the consequences of which leave him indifferent.

In order to make the world go well it was quite clear to Paul VI that he had to be Pope, just as de Gaulle was sure that he had to be leader of France. Further, he knew that he would proclaim a great reform and that liberty would thereby be established. He knew that he would have to destroy all opposition and at the same time moderate excessive ardour, in short, keep everything under control. He had succeeded in doing that also. Thus his Reform would bring joy to the Church and peace to the world. This brilliant prospect, however, was being lost in the clouds of the dream and the mist of future happiness, where planes merge and heaven and earth meet.

The doctrines and undertakings to have proceeded from this Utopian genius are recorded in the hundred pages of my Liber Accusationis in Paulum Sextum. The speeches and events to have taken place since the book was written in 1973 only serve to enrich its tenor and reinforce the accusation. Liberal rather than Catholic, he has authorised everything except the Truth, the Law of God and His Justice, which he mocks. Democrat rather than Christian, he pursues his prosecution of Mussolini in Franco. It is like an obsession. He will even flatter the Communist Revolution, believing in universal brotherhood under the aegis of World Government.

Thus far from opening the New Times, I foresee that this Pope has come to close the era of Reform and Revolution by hurling the Church and the world headlong into the worst, the bloodiest chaos and divine chastisement of their history.

Is the Pope a Modernist ? No, it cannot be said that Paul VI is a Modernist, because Modernism is essentially a religious error and Paul VI is not interested in religion but in politics. This assertion may seem surprising. It is patently obvious that he is striving to make men fraternal, that he quotes Christ as an example of noble humanity, and that he places God on the summit of his modern Tower of Babel. In the meanwhile the Cult of Man has taken up all the room and the Cult of God has been stealthily withdrawn from his own heart and from the heart of the Church. Charity has grown cold.

From 1963 to 1968 the dream ran its course freely, then it was joined and has since been followed by anxiety from 1968 to 1975. Expiation will come now in this world or the next – God knows. When the hour sounds, however, St. Pius X will return and through his intercession, his example and his teaching the Church will once more flourish (Georges de Nantes, CCR no. 73, p. 21).