The Avengers and the Errors of Russia

I just finished watching The Avengers for the umpteenth time, and was struck once again by how Marvel's story people are somehow writing celebrations of the culture of life. Nick Fury refuses a direct order from the shadowy Council that oversees S.H.I.E.L.D because it's an unjust, wrongful order--to nuke Manhattan in a desperate attempt to stop the Chitauri invasion.

It's a classic Cold War move. Mutually Assured Destruction (MADD) rather than accepting defeat. We would rather cast fire upon the earth and perish with our enemies rather than accept subjugation.

And of course, on some level, I understand the instinct. Human beings are certainly capable of such wrath, tempted to it. I have been furious at bullies in my past, furious to the point of not caring what the consequences were so long as I was able to land a punch.

But the Council's choice--the Cold War choice--was born out of the heart of the errors of Russia, out of the error that undergirds most all of the other errors.

Do anything in the name of a good cause.

Do anything in the name of defending freedom, of protecting planet Earth, of winning over the alien invader.

Do anything in the name of goodness, even embracing evil, even becoming evil.

It's an ancient temptation; the first temptation, in fact. Take the forbidden fruit in order to be like God. It looks tasty, and much to be desired for the wisdom it promises. Take that which God has forbidden, and set aside that God which has permitted. Take, and eat, and seize divinity for yourselves!

The thing is that if Adam and Eve had eaten of the tree of life, they would have also gained knowledge of good and evil, for experience is the best of teachers. They would have also gained divinity, for Adam's life had come through the breath, the Spirit of God being breathed into his nostrils, and the Trinity indwelt Adam and Eve through the sanctifying grace animating their souls till original sin. Adam is listed in the genealogy of Christ as the Son of God, and so he would have remained--indeed, even entered into glory--had he remained faithful (see Lk 3:38).

The devil tempted them with what they already had in their grasp, and they fell.

So, too, is it with the temptation today of doing anything in the name of a particular good.

We have faced much evil and suffering these past 400 years, since the apparition of Jesus to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque and the request for the consecration of France to the Sacred Heart. The Church and the world have seen unprecedented slaughters, and acts of terrible inhumanity, fueled by the extraordinary technological achievements of the modern age. Far too many Stark Industries have built far too many weapons of mass destruction. And far too many people have fallen to the lies that undergird our current crises.

"Are you willing to give 110%?"
"Are you willing to do whatever it takes?"

Thank God for the sane and healthy ordinary folk for whom these are simple motivational slogans. Thank God for the many for whom there are lines they will not cross, evil deeds they will not do, compromises they will not make.

Thank God for fairy tales, and the warnings they convey, of stories about deals made with Rumpelstiltskin, or with Ursula the Witch, of the dangers of love potions and the price that crones will ask for their magic. Thank God for stories warning that your first-born child is all too often the price of professional advancement, of power, of wealth, of following the left-hand path to gain the golden calves of this world.

These are the errors of Russia, the errors that spread out from Russia, weaponized and contagious in WWII, prophesied at Fatima in 1917 and again in 1930, when Jesus and Mary lamented that the consecration would be made late.

These are the errors of Russia. Look at Communism, with its complete faith in historical processes grinding their way through human lives to a revolution that would solve everything, that would establish justice in the world through the dictatorship of the proletariat, the slaughter of the "oppressors," and in whose name every evil could be and was justified. Look at Tsarism, in which one man is given autocratic rule of a country, where he and his family turn to spiritualism and ultimately the demonic deceptions of Rasputin--anything in the name of the heir; anything in the name of the Tsar's rule, anything in the name of the Tsar.

Then look at the way war was waged during World War II. Look at the ethos that began with Stalin and Hitler, with any evil done in the name of the leader of the Communist Party and any evil done in the name of the Fuhrer, the volk, the German people. Look at the ethos that spread to the Allies throughout the war--anything in the name of victory, including Japanese internment camps, the firebombing of cities, and ultimately the Manhattan Project's terrible fruits. Look at how that ethos governed the waging of the Cold War--MADD is the doctrine and ruthless the war, and the waging of it. Any manipulation of the facts in the name of Communism or stopping Communism; any weapon to hand; anything in the name of--not even victory, for in the event of a nuclear war, there was no expectation of victory. No--anything in the name of no surrender.

Anything--and so it was spy versus spy; intelligence service versus intelligence service; the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, seized and eaten again and again and again, for we sought salvation in knowledge, in intelligence, in gnosis, in secrets and the Inner Ring, in blunt instruments of government policy (Ian Fleming's description of James Bond) doing anything in the name of Queen and country in order to stop the Soviet agents from doing anything in the name of the Revolution and the Party.

The same errors at the roots, the same bad first premises skewing our worldviews and our understanding for the last several hundred years--all for the lack of a consecration of France, and a late consecration of Russia.

An ideological infection that began in France in the 1600s and spread to the world bore terrible fruit, especially in 1917, in 1929-1945, and has continued to bear fruit ever since then.

The remedies? They exist; they are powerful; they have been used to a certain extent, but we must take them up in our turn and hasten the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart as much as possible. The sooner the Queen of Heaven wins her victory, the better.

For the wise, there are more complicated tools at hand--revising our understanding of history to spotlight and help us fight particular errors.

For all of us, there is devotion to the Immaculate Heart. Possible ways to live this:

• living a good, ordinary Christian life
• receiving the Sacraments regularly
• attending Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation
• performing the works of mercy
• the First Saturdays of reparation
• Marian consecration
• the daily Rosary for peace in the world
• other Marian devotions, such as the Miraculous Medal, the scapulars (especially the Brown, the Green, and the Blue)
• enthroning a statue or another image of Our Lady in your home, especially of her showing her Immaculate Heart
• leading devotions in your parish
• Marian processions
• studying Mariology

A morally good act requires the goodness of the object, of the end, and of the circumstances together. An evil end corrupts the action, even if the object is good in itself (such as praying and fasting "in order to be seen by men").

The object of the choice can by itself vitiate an act in its entirety. There are some concrete acts - such as fornication - that it is always wrong to choose, because choosing them entails a disorder of the will, that is, a moral evil.

It is therefore an error to judge the morality of human acts by considering only the intention that inspires them or the circumstances (environment, social pressure, duress or emergency, etc.) which supply their context. There are acts which, in and of themselves, independently of circumstances and intentions, are always gravely illicit by reason of their object; such as blasphemy and perjury, murder and adultery. One may not do evil so that good may result from it ...

Some rules apply in every case:
- One may never do evil so that good may result from it;
- the Golden Rule: "Whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them."
- charity always proceeds by way of respect for one's neighbor and his conscience: "Thus sinning against your brethren and wounding their conscience . . . you sin against Christ." Therefore "it is right not to . . . do anything that makes your brother stumble." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1755-1756, 1789).

Holocaust, Catholicism, and the Jews

First Things pulls together some significant information.  Excerpts:

...The recent news that Cardinal Elia Dalla Costa has been recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations” by Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial is a welcome, and a much-deserved, honor. Dalla Costa, the archbishop of Florence during World War II, “played a central role in the organization and operation of a widespread rescue network,” said Yad Vashem in its November announcement. He “recruited rescuers from among the clergy, supplied letters to his activists so that they could go to heads of monasteries and convents entreating them to shelter Jews, and sheltered Jews in his own palace...”

Dalla Costa’s honor coincides with the publication of two important new books that explore different dimensions of the Second World War, one distressing, the other inspiring.

The first is Complicity in the Holocaust by Robert P. Ericksen, a bleak portrait of capitulation and collaboration during the Nazi era. It is painful (but necessary) reading, for it reminds us how easily and shockingly prominent individuals, including self-professed Christians, fell sway to the radical evils of racism, anti-Semitism and nationalism. The one significant drawback of Ericksen’s book is its partial and often one-sided examination of the Churches. His evaluation of the Catholic Church, for example, is so dark and sweeping that, at one point, he suggests the Holy See—if not Catholicism in general– was naturally inclined toward fascism.

He also repeats some (now quite outdated) errors about Pius XII. For a corrective to this view, one should read “Fascism and Catholicism,” a brilliant wartime essay (1941) by Dietrich von Hildebrand, the great German Catholic philosopher and early opponent of Hitler, who, tellingly, is missing from Ericksen’s narrative, as is von Hildebrand’s praise of Pope Pius XII.

The second work which helps balance the deficiencies of Ericksen’s otherwise valuable volume is The Catholic Bishops of Europe and the Nazi Persecutions of Catholics and Jews by Vincent Lapomarda, S.J., which recounts the courage and compassion of prominent Catholic prelates who resisted Nazism. Father Lapomarda, who heads the Hiatt Holocaust Collection at Holy Cross college, is the author of a previous acclaimed study, The Jesuits and the Third Reich, which established how many members of the Society of Jesus—who took a special oath of fidelity to the pope—actively opposed Hitler and his crimes.

Against the literature which depicts the wartime Church as almost entirely passive or collaborationist, Lapomarda’s work proves that Catholic resistance to Nazism—even amidst collaboration and betrayal—was extensive, and often heroic. In a country-by-country analysis of Catholic resistance in Nazi-occupied lands, Father Lapomarda compiles the many interventions made by the Catholic hierarchy for persecuted Jews during the wartime era, and makes clear (as he did in The Jesuits and the Third Reich) how these rescue measures had the support of the Vatican. This was recognized at the time, even if it is sometimes forgotten or denied today.

When Jean Cardinal Verdier, the archbishop of Paris and outspoken opponent of Nazism, died in 1940, the New York Times commented: “Cardinal Verdier like Pope Pius XI and Pope Pius XII, was the especial champion of persecuted Jews. Besides extending monetary and material aid to Jewish refugees finding sanctuary in his archdiocese, he also called on all Christians ‘to pray that the evils that the Jews are now suffering shall cease.’ This appeal was made in April, 1933, and was followed by many similar ones.” (New York Times obituary, April 9, 1940.)...

"The Pentagon Now Makes War for the World

An interesting piece by Mark Steyn. Excerpts:

...Clearly, if one nation is responsible for near half the world’s military budget, a lot of others aren’t pulling their weight. The Pentagon outspends the Chinese, British, French, Russian, Japanese, German, Saudi, Indian, Italian, South Korean, Brazilian, Canadian, Australian, Spanish, Turkish, and Israeli militaries combined. So why doesn’t it feel like that?

Well, for exactly that reason: If you outspend every serious rival combined, you’re obviously something other than the soldiery of a conventional nation state. But what exactly?...

“Americanization” is a euphemism for “globalization,” in which the geopolitical sugar daddy is so busy picking up the tab for the global order he loses all sense of national interest. Just as Hollywood now makes films for the world, so the Pentagon now makes war for the world...

An army has to wage war on behalf of something real. For better or worse, “king and country” is real, and so, mostly for worse, are the tribal loyalties of Africa’s blood-drenched civil wars. But it’s hardly surprising that it’s difficult to win wars waged on behalf of something so chimerical as “the international community.” If you’re making war on behalf of an illusory concept, is it even possible to have war aims? What’s ours?...

War is hell, but global “mentoring” is purgatory...

Nation building in Afghanistan is the ne plus ultra of a fool’s errand. But even if one were so disposed, effective “nation building” is done in the national interest of the builder. The British rebuilt India in their own image, with a Westminster parliament, common law, and an English education system. In whose image are we building Afghanistan? Eight months after Petraeus announced his latest folly, the Afghan Local Police initiative, Oxfam reported that the newly formed ALP was a hotbed of torture and pederasty. Almost every Afghan institution is, of course. But for most of human history they’ve managed to practice both enthusiasms without international subvention. The U.S. taxpayer accepts wearily the burden of subsidy for Nevada’s cowboy poets and San Francisco’s mime companies, but, even by those generous standards of cultural preservation, it’s hard to see why he should be facilitating the traditional predilections of Pashtun men with an eye for the “dancing boys of Kandahar.”...

So on we stagger, with Cold War institutions, transnational sensibilities, politically correct solicitousness, fraudulent preening pseudo–nation building, expensive gizmos, little will, and no war aims . . . but real American lives. “These Colors Don’t Run,” says the T-shirt. But, bereft of national purpose, they bleed away to a grey blur on a distant horizon. Sixty-six years after V-J Day, the American way of war needs top-to-toe reinvention...

Conversion, Communism, and Fulton Sheen

Very cool.  Excerpts:

...Communists in the United States (as elsewhere) were expected to put Party above all, including family. Although the Budenzes were model Communists in other ways, they never quite fit the Communist vision of family life. Neither Louis nor Margaret adopted the loose interpretation of marital fidelity espoused by many of their comrades. Margaret was expected to work for the Party outside the home, but she always put the welfare of her children first. When forced to choose between her obligations to her children and the demands of the Party, she chose her children, risking the ire of the Communist leadership. When Louis and Margaret's love came to fruition in their third child, their Communist friends were incredulous. One of the Party's top operatives urged Louis to abort the baby (which would have been illegal at the time). Another child would put too much financial and emotional strain on the couple, he said, and might result in Margaret's "becoming 'bourgeois.'"

The Budenzes spurned this advice, and Margaret delivered their third daughter, Justine, at a Catholic hospital in New York. She wrote "atheist" in the blank for "religion" on the hospital admission form. Margaret recounted that the sister on duty joked that "she would like to send me home with a religion as well as a new baby." Margaret wasn't amused.

Being a former Catholic, one of Louis's assigned tasks was to infiltrate the Catholic Church in the United States so as to soften its anti-Communist stance. Among his targets was the well-known radio personality and eloquent anti-Communist, Msgr. Fulton Sheen. Budenz got nowhere. At a dinner meeting in 1936, Monsignor Sheen refused to engage Louis on the issue of Communism's merits. Instead, the monsignor invited Louis to "kneel down and let me hear your confession." The two parted on less than amicable terms...

The day of their reception into the Church and the blessing of their marriage was hectic. Because of the potentially violent consequences of severing ties with the Communist Party, the Budenzes could not let on to their comrades what they were in the process of doing. Monsignor Sheen announced it to the press on the day they professed Catholicism and publicly renounced Communism. Their residence in suburban New York would become a dangerous and inhospitable place after their conversion became known, so after the ceremony in St. Patrick's Cathedral, they hid in a hotel until they could catch a train out of the state. Their destination was South Bend, where Monsignor Sheen had arranged a teaching position for Louis at the University of Notre Dame...

Read the whole thing for an awesome ending.

Pakistan, Poverty, and Power

A fascinating article by a journalist who once accompanied Charlie Wilson on a trip to Pakistan. Excerpts:

...The ensuing week, which took us to the edge of the border with Afghanistan, left me puzzling over a disturbing question: If the United States was helping the country’s freedom fighters to reestablish the “native Islamic culture”—the exact phrase that a government employee I met on the trip used—why was I detecting so much hostility? Why did U.S. Embassy employees have to work in a fortress, and why did women need a quartet of Marines to escort them when they left the building?

One clue, I later came to believe, was the special dinner I got to attend with Charlie, which the Pakistani president hosted in the lawmaker’s honor. The drive to the affair made me feel the yawning chasm between the First and Third Worlds. Through the car window unfolded scenes from a life untouched by modernity. There were primitive houses made of what appeared to be mud. There were wagons pulled by oxen. There were bright-eyed little girls whom I was tempted to stow in my bag because of the societal segregation awaiting them.

Crossing the threshold into the house where the president was hosting his dinner, however, found us in a different world. My Westerner’s sense of superior fortune swiftly slipped away as the female guests doffed their dull outerwear to reveal dazzling clothes, jewels, and makeup. (Having naively followed all of the State Department’s wardrobe and grooming recommendations to avoid offending local Islamic sensibilities, I was woefully underdressed and underdone.)

Nor was there any way I could enter the conversation, an ultra-worldly affair sprinkled with references to places and people that made it clear I was in a crowd of jet-setters whose neighborhood was the globe. I was, as they say in the sports world, out of my league.


But if I was, how much more were the people just outside the walls of the house where we were dining? Suddenly, the chasm that yawned widest for me was not the one between the First and the Third Worlds but the one between the people at the dinner and the people just outside the door.

Inside was an international elite for whom the local mores seemed not to apply. The well-educated women and the sophisticated men who were conversing with them appeared to be perfectly content with the hypocritical system that allowed them to live privileged existences while their fellow citizens outside the walls were relegated to straitened, outmoded lives. And so did we Americans, their partners at dinner and in foreign policy...

Communist Infiltration of the Catholic Church

The NCRegister reviews a very good book.  Excerpts:

Weigel said he based his conclusions on previously secret cables and memos that have emerged from behind the former Iron Curtain. He came across the information while researching his latest book on the life of Pope John Paul, The End and the Beginning, which looks at the Pope’s final years and evaluates his legacy.

As a point of orientation, he quoted Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, Pope John Paul’s longtime secretary, who once remarked about the Church’s battle with Poland’s communist regime: “You must understand that it was always ‘them’ and ‘us.’” What he meant, Weigel said, was that “the struggle between communism and Catholicism could not be understood as a matter of episodic confrontations. ... It was all war, all the time.”

Certainly that was how communist leaders from Moscow to Budapest saw it, Weigel said. He catalogued efforts by communist regimes to place spies in local Catholic hierarchies and the Vatican, to exploit the Church’s moves toward openness and dialogue, to create ecumenical confusion and to compromise Church leaders by planting false stories...

Weigel said Soviet bloc intelligence services tried to manipulate the debates of the Second Vatican Council for political ends, a process that continued as the Ostpolitik policy of the Vatican developed and prevailed. He said the Hungarian regime used the Vatican’s diplomatic opening to take control of the Catholic Church in the country; most bishops nominated after 1964 were cooperators with internal security and foreign intelligence services, he said.

At the Pontifical Hungarian Institute in Rome, all the rectors and half the students in the late 1960s were trained agents of Hungarian secret intelligence, he said.

Weigel said communist moles were placed successfully at Vatican Radio, at the Vatican newspaper and in pontifical universities. When Pope John Paul II was elected, he took some counterintelligence steps; for one thing, materials dealing with Poland were no longer archived in the Secretariat of State but were kept in the papal apartment, “where there was no chance for mischief-makers to prowl around,” Weigel said.

When Pope John Paul met with leaders such as Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, the Pope decided not to keep a written record of their conversations, so that the notes would not fall into the wrong hands. Instead, Weigel said, the Pope and then-Msgr. Dziwisz would discuss the encounters, and the secretary kept notes in diaries that remained under his control...

There's lots more where that came from.

Gladio According to the NY Times

Before we dive in--I discovered the existence of Gladio through researching Propaganda Due after reading Malachi Martin's Vatican. Vatican was published in the mid-80s. The Gladio scandals appear to have broken in the early 90s. Martin had some interesting sources of information. An overview from the New York Times:

A Western cold-war conspiracy to fight what seemed imminent danger is coming to light in Europe. It is already rocking the Italian Government and will touch many others. There was, it is revealed, an organized underground, provided with hidden arms depots, prepared to launch guerrilla wars and resistance in the event of invasion from the East or overthrow of democratic governments from within.

There were different epic names for the operations -- "Gladio" in Italy (manned by secret gladiators), "Rose in the Wind" in France, "Red Fleece" in Belgium. They were sometimes directed, but generally coordinated, by NATO with participation of the C.I.A. and British secret service.

Former C.I.A. Director William Colby has confirmed some of this in recent interviews with Italian journalists. They also reported that meetings of the clandestine groups were held as recently as a few weeks ago in Brussels, though several governments claim it all ended by the 80's.

The Italian Government has said there were 139 caches of clandestine arms, explosives and communications equipment of which 127 were recovered years ago. They haven't accounted for the rest.

There's some astounding stuff in this article from 1990, when the Gladio scandal broke in Italy:

New "gladiators" are still recruited, and two members of Parliament say they visited a military base on the island of Sardinia where guerrilla training exercises were held last spring. But Admiral Martini told the investigating commission that nearly three-fourths of the 622 members were over the age of 50, or were dead.

Nevertheless, the network continues, and several officials reported that a supervisory committee of European secret services met in Brussels only a month ago. Nourishing conspiracy theories are assertions from key European leaders that they knew nothing about the operation until recently. Joseph Luns, who was NATO secretary general from 1971 to 1984, said he had never heard of it.

The network extended throughout Western Europe, even beyond the NATO countries though it was a NATO operation:

The Prime Minister said last week that Gladio later evolved into a branch of an extensive network, operated within NATO and abetted by a 1956 agreement between the United States and Italian secret services. Over the years, he says, 622 Italians belonged to the operation -- civilians who were trained by intelligence operatives and who had fought in World War II or served in the peacetime forces.

Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece and Luxembourg have all acknowledged that they maintained Gladio-style networks to prepare guerrilla fighters to leap into action in the event of a Warsaw Pact invasion. Many worked under the code name Stay Behind. Greece called its operation Red Sheepskin.

News reports in recent days assert that similar programs have also existed in Britain, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Austria, Turkey and Denmark, and even in neutral countries like Switzerland and Sweden.

The network also had supplies. Caches of arms were planted across Europe. Some caches of arms and supplies were never recovered. The chief of Italian military intelligence, Adm. Fulvio Martini, claimed that Gladio had no connection to any plots or neo-fascist organizations. That claim seems to lack support:

The Grey Wolves group, with which he [Mehmet Ali Agca, attempted assassin of Pope John Paul II] was associated at the time of the shooting, was linked to an underground network known as Gladio.

This was set up with CIA support in a number of European countries during the Cold War to prepare resistance to a possible Soviet invasion.

In both Italy and Turkey, Gladio networks are believed to have been behind numerous bombings and assassinations.

In Italy, the networks have been exposed and dismantled; in Turkey, they are still widely believed to exist as a so-called "deep state", with support from elements of the military.

There are ongoing trials of dozens of people accused of involvement in illegal, deep-state activities.

Agca was certainly helped to escape from prison in 1979 by his guards and some well-known underground right-wing figures. He was given false passports and enough funds to enable him to travel around Europe for several months before the attempted assassination.

The Turkish connection to Gladio is almost present-day news, as shown by this 2008 piece:

One of the most sensational public trials in Turkish history began Monday, as a court started hearing a case against 86 people — among them retired army generals, journalists and a former university rector — charged with assassinations, bomb attacks and trying to topple the government...

Turkey is a democracy with an elected government, but a powerful elite of military officers, judges and senior bureaucrats has helped steer the country since its inception in 1923, carrying out four coups. This trial is the first real attempt in Turkish history to prosecute the leaders of this country’s violent nationalist fringe, who prosecutors say have had links to the elite.

The case has riveted Turkish society because public criticism of the military, a vaunted institution in Turkey, is extremely rare. The military has denied any role in the plots; the officers identified in the indictment are all retired.

Prosecutors say the Ergenekon organization is the Turkish equivalent of the Italian Gladio network, a code name for operatives who infiltrated Italian society after World War II to counter Communism and who were responsible for a series of political assassinations and bombings in the 1970s. Turkey, according to the indictment, has allowed Ergenekon “to turn our country into a mafia and terror haven."

And more.

Russia Redivivus

And this time, they've fixed a classic Marxist mistake in their march to consolidation and control:

The advent of atheist Soviet rule wiped away religion as an obsolete “opiate for the masses,” which had no place in a modernized society. Yet it seems that religion did not fully fall victim to socialist crusades... In post-Soviet Russia, although images of churches converted into bars remain prominent in the memory of the Russian Orthodox Church, a significant majority of the masses find a source of comfort and stability in the institution. The elite, on the other hand, have re-discovered the power of heavenly support for their earthly undertakings... Likewise, the omni-present, omnipotent Putin-Medvedev duo has not neglected its spiritual duties and has built a close and comfortable relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church. President Medvedev’s move to assign Russian Orthodox priests to Russian troop units, as well as his efforts to make religious instruction a part of the public school curriculum, reinforces the tsarist-era notion of the Orthodox Church as an inextricable, indispensable part of Russian life. These actions also make clear that the president has found religion to be a handsome complement to his authority. Such breakdown of the church-state boundary may have alarmed Thomas Jefferson, but would have seemed perfectly fine to the Russian czars. Current Prime Minister Putin has gone further, seeking to bolster the influence of the ROC abroad...

Clever and interesting. On the one hand, kind of creepy, because this will help Russia consolidate power, extend order within its borders, and bolster them in many ways. A strengthened Russia under Putin could be a formidable force for something in days to come--not sure whether for good or evil. On the other hand, here is an expansion of the avenues of grace in a country badly in need of it. Their demographic decline is extreme. Their spiritual emptiness from the Cold War's ravages need healing. The growth of Orthodoxy may help with that. But Putin is unlikely to like the idea of any sort of rapprochement with the Catholic Church, since we are an international entity, foreign in a certain sense to the Russian state. Since they seem to be heading down the nationalist path, ecumenical initiatives would appear counterproductive to their goals. But who knows?

Vietnam's Vitriol

This is a little bit scary:

Viewed as antagonists to communist ideology, Do and his fellow Buddhists are a target of persecution inside, and now outside, Vietnam. Just days after monks at a Buddhist temple in Western Australia denounced Hanoi’s policies of religious repression, Buddhist statutes at the temple were beheaded. The incident occurred in October and November 2009. The first desecration occurred after the temple’s head monk, who is the UBCV’s Australian representative, attended a Buddhist conference in Los Angeles, where they announced their determination to oppose Hanoi’s plan to eliminate them. The second desecration occurred after this same monk sponsored a delegation of UBCV exiles to meet with the Australian government in Parliament House, Canberra. The meeting was organized to advise the government of Hanoi’s religious persecution in preparation for the Australia-Vietnam human rights dialogue to be held in December. Thus, the beheadings were clearly viewed as a warning to the Australian Buddhists. For Hanoi, the ramifications of Buddhists speaking out on human rights abuses is geopolitical, for their authoritarian regime has come under growing international pressure to cease religious persecution.

So the Communist regimes in Asia extend their reach outside their own borders in order to suppress dissent abroad as much as at home. This is not good for anybody. Are there similar cases for Christian clergy abroad?

Operation Gladio

This BBC article on the release of Mehmet Ali Agca, attempted murderer of Pope John Paul II, connects him to a fascinating bit of Cold War history with which I was, up until recently, unfamiliar:

The Grey Wolves group, with which he was associated at the time of the shooting, was linked to an underground network known as Gladio.

This was set up with CIA support in a number of European countries during the Cold War to prepare resistance to a possible Soviet invasion.

In both Italy and Turkey, Gladio networks are believed to have been behind numerous bombings and assassinations.

In Italy, the networks have been exposed and dismantled; in Turkey, they are still widely believed to exist as a so-called "deep state", with support from elements of the military.

There are ongoing trials of dozens of people accused of involvement in illegal, deep-state activities.

Agca was certainly helped to escape from prison in 1979 by his guards and some well-known underground right-wing figures. He was given false passports and enough funds to enable him to travel around Europe for several months before the attempted assassination.

Gladio came to my attention in connection with the Propaganda Due Masonic Lodge scandal in Italy, a massive affair implicating most of the upper levels of Italian public life, and entangling any number of other people in the tendrils of its reach. Anyone interested in one possible account of both these affairs from the perspective of Catholic internal politics should check out this novel--the sort of book Dan Brown dreams of being able to write. I should caution you, though--the author's a liar.