Here is another relevant post:
From an article on the infiltration of Marxists…
Last year an essay, which appears to be an introduction to Robert Chandler’s book Shadow World, outlined how Gramsci’s passive revolution is infiltrating the Catholic Church. Cliff Kincaid, who is President of America’s Survival, Inc., and Chandler outlined the process in ‘How Marxism Has Infiltrated the Catholic Church’. Even though it’s 16 pages long, it’s a gripping read and highly recommended. Kincaid begins by citing a report by James Tyson, who used to work for Accuracy in Media in the US. Tyson saw the Catholic Church working with Marxist Sandinistas in 1979. The US Catholic bishops strongly supported this move. Also, although Pope John Paul II and President Reagan (1980-1988) actively opposed Communism, a former Maryknoll priest, Blase Bonpane, started negotiations between the Church and the Sandinistas. Today, Bonpane speaks of his successes in this regard at lectures around the world. He advocates building an ‘international peace system’, which is also the focus of the University of Notre Dame’s Peace Studies department. Although the Contras, with Reagan’s aid, won the battle, they ultimately lost the war. The Sandinistas control Nicaragua, managing this with the support of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and the Castro-influenced Sao Paulo Forum.
Kincaid also mentions that Tyson alleged that in the 1980s, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) fell under the influence of leftist priests, notably the Revd J Bryan Hehir, known for his lecture series to the Institute for Policy Studies — a left-wing think tank — entitled ‘Matthew, Marx, Luke and John’. The IPS also gave Fr Hehir an award named after a famous Chilean Communist, Orlando Letelier. Today, Fr Hehir is a professor at Harvard University’s John F Kennedy School of Government.
So, we have American Catholic bishops and priests in synch with far-left political movements. But, regular readers will recall that there’s more to the story, namely in the United States itself. Last year, I reported on CCHD donations going to various left-wing community organisations and asked American Catholics not to donate to the annual nationwide collection in November. Some funding even goes to the nefarious ACORN.
Robert Chandler, the author of the aforementioned Shadow World, is a retired US Air Force Colonel and Vietnam War veteran. He has worked as a US Government strategist for many years. He explains how Gramscian thought is at work in the Catholic Church in the United States:
… to overturn the existing order and “Marxize the inner man,” one must create a subversive program of “counter-hegemony” against its supporting culture. The war against the existing culture would leave nothing outside of the struggle, especially Christianity, to negate the established modes of thought and ways of doing things.
Christianity is considered a prime target in preparing the way for a “Marxized America,” since religion, as an independent center of societal values, stands in the way of creating a new culture based on what is deceptively called “social justice” and “change.” Religion, in the Gramsci view, is the foundation for the Western values of individual liberty, private property, and the traditional family, and must be abolished in order for the new communist society to emerge.
Chandler notes that one of Gramsci’s leading proponents is actually a professor of English at the University of Notre Dame. His name is Joseph Butteglieg. Butteglieg has not only translated Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks but is also the co-founder and current president of the International Gramsci Society! He has also addressed Marxist and Communist fora in the United States.
Another Notre Dame faculty member with avowedly left-wing credentials as an activist and advisor to the UN is David Cortright. Cortright is a research fellow at ND’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.
And, speaking of the UN, did you know that the president of their General Assembly in 2008-2009 was one Miguel D’Escoto — like Blase Bonpane, a Maryknoll priest — who was also a former foreign minister of Sandinista Nicaragua? As one might expect, Fr D’Escoto strongly advocates liberation theology.
What does all of this mean for the average American Catholic? Chandler cites an explanation from the late conservative Catholic author, Malachi Martin:
Malachi Martin explained that Gramsci’s quiet, anonymous revolution would do everything in the name of man’s dignity and rights, and in the name of the claims and constraints of Christianity: “Accomplish that, said Gramsci, and you will have established a true and freely adopted hegemony over the civil and political thinking of every formerly Christian country. Do that, he promised, and in essence you will have Marxized the West. The final step — the Marxization of the politics of life itself — will then follow. All classes will be one class. All minds will be proletarian minds. The earthly Paradise will be achieved.”
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It’s a living organism and needs prayer just as much as each individual believer.