Some more useful comments on the credibility of Bella Dodd and AA-1025:
rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2011/12/just-in-time-for-kerstmis-church-that.html[in the comments]
Catholicus said...
I am extremely skeptical of reports blaming everything that went wrong in the Catholic Church on the "1,100 Communist infiltrators", for the following reasons:
1) The accusation comes from only two sources: Bella Dodd (and some fellow ex-members of the American Communist Party) and the "AA-1025" booklet, which is of dubious authenticity. A certain Stephen Hitchings has written a short review (easily searchable on the Internet) which thoroughly demolishes the credibility of AA-1025. As for Bella Dodd, what is not often remembered nowadays is that she also claimed to have been reporting to 3 Cardinals in the Curia as her bosses in the Communist Party -- and this was in the reigns of Pius XI and Pius XII!
"Revelations" and "apparitions" that corroborate these reports cannot be considered as reliable sources of information either, as the Blessed Virgin Mary is neither a rumor-monger nor a journalist writing on current events.
2) There is no corroboration for the "1,100 Communist-agents-turned priests" accusation from any of the opened secret police archives from beyond the Iron Curtain. It is true that there were infiltrators inside the Church, but these were usually in the form of laymen, priests and seminarians who were recruited (often through terror or bullying) into becoming informants. Not all of them wholeheartedly helped the Communists. There were, indeed, some agents who tried to become priests, but there is no evidence of any orchestrated attempt by the KGB to plant more than a thousand operatives into the seminaries with the intention that they'll take over the hierarchical Church. That was simply beyond their ability.
3) If the Communists really implanted 1,100 (or some other number) of infiltrators into the Church with the intention that they will become powerful monsignori, bishops and cardinals, the real implication is that the Pope and the Roman Curia were also Communist collaborators. Why? Because, without undue favor and pre-selection from the hierarchy, a large number among the "1,100 infiltrators" would certainly not be ordained, and at most, their batch would produce just a few bishops: 4, 5, 6, probably 10, 15, 20 at most. Not enough to push through the entire revolution in the Church after Vatican II.
In short: the scenario would work only if the Popes were Communists or the Roman Curia was already dominated by Communists and we're talking here about the pre-Vatican II Popes and the pre-Conciliar Roman Curia.
4) If the post-Conciliar moral, doctrinal and liturgical abuses were really the products of deliberate Communist influence, then how come that the Catholic and Orthodox Churches INSIDE the Communist bloc -- heavily infiltrated and persecuted as these were -- were largely spared these abuses? Let it be remembered that the Communist-controlled "Patriotic" Chinese Catholics even retained the Traditional Latin Mass until 1992, when the Novus Ordo in Chinese was introduced not by the Communist Party, but by seminary professor and ardent anti-communist Fr. Joseph Zen SDB from Hong Kong. Ad orientem also remained the norm in much of Communist Eastern Europe until the fall of the Berlin Wall. As a general rule, Communist rule -- by impeding free communication between the Churches in East and West -- had the unintended consequence of protecting the Churches in the East from many of the worst ecclesiastical excesses of the 1960's and 1970's.
All in all, the attempts by some bewildered Trads to tack the blame for the post-Vatican chaos on "Communist influence" or even a "grand Masonic conspiracy" bespeaks of an unhealthy desire to find easy answers to what is, in reality, a complicated situation that was largely brought about by problems already burning slowly inside the Catholic Church, and fanned into huge flames by the winds that swept in once John XXIII opened the windows.
17 December, 2011 16:24
Here is the Hitchings review of AA-1025 with some subsequent comments:
www.amazon.com/review/R22NSFTRF1W2JH32 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
Con job, October 12, 2003
By Stephen Hitchings
This review is from: Aa-1025: The Memoirs of a Communist's infiltration in to the Church. (Paperback)
This book is one of two things: either the most incredible revelation of infiltration of the Catholic Church, or a fairly boring piece of fiction.
As I began reading it, I was prepared to believe that it was true. The more I read, however, the more I became convinced that it must be a work of fiction.
The things that convinced me were:
(1) The whole story about how the book came to be in the hands of a poor Catholic nurse stretches credibility, particularly when the nurse intrudes her own words into the narrative.
(2) The anonymous author claims to be a Communist, but speaks almost exclusively using Catholic terminology.
(3) His motivations in writing his "memoirs" are very unconvincing. He says that he is only writing them to get them out of his system and that he intends to destroy them before anyone can read them, but the book looks very much as if it is intended for publication; in particular, the "romance" with a young woman is too much like a stereotyped romantic fiction. The letter from the young woman sounds like something out of a melodrama. (And people do not quote others' letters in full in their memoirs, unless those memoirs are intended for publication.) The whole thing looks nothing like a set of private memoirs.
(4) He claims too much: that is, to have thought up just about every change which has occurred in the Catholic Church in the past 40 years. In other words, everything this man claims to have thought of has either come about or been seriously suggested by people in the Church. If this is true, it would make this anonymous man the most influential Catholic of at least the last 19 centuries.
(5) Despite this enormous influence which he claims, and despite his claim that he is writing the book only for himself, he is awfully vague about how he worked. As a result, the whole thing is extremely unconvincing.
(6) Both the style and content are amazingly similar to what one reads in typical traditionalist attacks on the modern Catholic Church.
(7) As the book goes on, it becomes more and more preoccupied with traditionalist concerns, and almost completely abandons any attempt to tell a story.
In conclusion, this book is a work of fiction. As everything in it denies even the possibility that it could be fiction, it is a con job - one which successfully conned me out of my money, since I bought it. Judging from the other reviews, it seems that many others have also been conned by it.
I am prepared to believe, if given sufficient evidence, that Communists may have deliberately infiltrated the Catholic priesthood; but this book offers no evidence.
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Showing 1-8 of 8 posts in this discussion
Initial post: Mar 20, 2010 6:16:47 AM PDT
Mary R. Mason says:
Quite the opposite. It is entirely probable and possible that the Church was infiltrated by the Communist. Have we not heard of and known of 'double' agents in all forms?
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Posted on May 8, 2010 7:05:20 PM PDT
Rita T. Gallagher says:
This person does not remember what Khruschev said in the 60's about destroying the united states from within take away faith in God, break the laws of God and you have a breakdown of order. Many things are infiltrated whether it be churches or govt. to destroy and break them down. I always say they can't take away my faith that's in my mind. We can't even express our religion by wearing a Cross or a Star of David because they are afraid if offending someone. Now they don't want us to have a National day of Prayer. Well after 9-11 the churches were open for many hours to accommodate the many people wanting to pray how soon we forget. My point! That it is possible for someone to infiltrate to DESTROY.
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Posted on Aug 27, 2010 1:12:07 PM PDT
Brian Connors says:
I've seen this book, once, a long time ago. It's a paranoid fantasy -- I'd be willing to argue that the RCC's current collapse in moral authority is entirely their own doing, and would have come out with or without Vatican II. I have no use for either the Catholic Church or for Marxist communism (I am an ex-Catholic atheist and a socialist, but of the democratic Scandinavian-style variety), but this book was ludicrous when I first saw it twenty years ago, and it's even more ludicrous now.
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In reply to an earlier post on Aug 27, 2010 4:50:54 PM PDT
Stephen Hitchings says:
You are probably right, Mary. There is very good evidence that the Church has been infiltrated by Communists. That is why I was prepared to believe this book when I began reading it. But don't you think a Communist would write like a Communist, especially when writing a secret diary, as this book pretends to be? Everything about this book sounds like a Catholic pretending to be a Communist.
I would like to see a reply to this by Marie Carré, if she really exists.
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In reply to an earlier post on Aug 27, 2010 5:51:17 PM PDT
Mary R. Mason says:
When the gates of Heaven close. Which side will you be on?
I read the book, and it is believeable, when you see how people plan and conive.
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Posted on Aug 27, 2010 6:00:03 PM PDT
Mary R. Mason says:
Stephen, this was written in 1972, BEFORE all the known affects of Vatican II, which have just been revealed in the past several years.
You have to read it, knowing that is was written nearly 40 years ago, before all the things we've now seen personally. I heard of this book nearly 40 years ago. If I look, I may even find an original copy.
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In reply to an earlier post on Aug 28, 2010 2:28:38 AM PDT
Stephen Hitchings says:
Thank you Mary, but I think you missed the point of what I was saying. I do not dispute the actions described in the book, but the language. None of the writing rings true.
I have seen how Communists write, when they are not trying to impress other people, and in my experience they use a lot of foul language, while the language in this book is scrupulously clean and looks designed to avoid giving offence to anyone. And they never say things like "the Sacrament of Holy Orders" or "the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and His Resurrection", and many others which are used in this book - complete with capital letters. This is the language of Catholics, not the enemies of the Church. Yet we are asked to believe that the Communist, anti-Catholic author wrote the book for his own benefit, with the intention of destroying it without letting anyone see it.
I did not remember that the book was originally published in French in 1972. (The English version was published in 1991.) But I don't think that makes much difference. Many of the post-Vatican II problems were evident as early as 1967, when Dietrich von Hildebrand wrote Trojan Horse in the City of God, and they were certainly very clear by 1972, when James Hitchcock wrote The Decline and Fall of Radical Catholicism.
When the gates of Heaven close, I hope and pray that through the mercy of Our Lord Jesus Christ I will be inside. Perhaps I will meet you there, and we can discuss this matter properly.
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Posted on Mar 5, 2011 4:26:18 PM PST
the Shepherds Warrior says:
If you want to know about the communist infiltration into the Church, google, "Bella Dodd, Manning Johnson, communist infiltration into the seminaries." I first heard about Bella Dodd personallly heping young communists and radicals into the seminaries on EWTN. I later read her book, "School of Darkness." You mention Deitrich von Hildebrand in one of your comments. Deitrich and his wife Alice became friends of Bella after she defected from the communist party and returned to the Church under AB Fulton Sheen. I've read AA1025. I believe it could be true, but I don't think anyone of us can say with 100%accuracy this side of heaven that it is definetly true or not true.
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