Theocratic Aid To Kingdom Publishers

Lesson 81

HIERARCHY'S FIGHT AGAINST YOUNG DEMOCRACY

The Reformation in Germany was above all things a popular movement, that sprang directly from the heart of the nation. Here we have the beginnings of modern democracy, not only with respect to freedom of worship, but also as to political thought and institutions. The attempt to stem the surging Protestant movement and reseat the totalitarian Hierarchy was by force and by the sword, thus precipitating an era covering four centuries of papal striving against growing democracy.

This warfare of the Hierarchy was made possible mainly by the persistent zeal of its newly designed "sword of the church", the Jesuits. Protestantism, however firm its hold on the peoples, had dissipated itself in doctrinal wrangles, while the Jesuits had disciplined the forces of Catholicism into a virile, militant bloc. In 1540 the "Society of Jesus", more commonly known as the Jesuits, was organized by one Ignatius Loyola, a Spanish ordained Catholic priest. The Jesuit order is a militant organization of priests highly trained in craftiness, deceit, intrigue, assassinations, and underground and "fifth column" warfare.

The activities of the Jesuits soon became inimical to the interests and safety of the European states, and many countries expelled the order. Even the Hierarchy herself became a victim of Jesuit thirst for power, necessitating a papal suppression of the order from 1750 to 1814. However, a gradual restoration of this secret order was authorized by the Hierarchy in 1814. By 1935 it had been expanded to the amazing strength of 24,732 highly-trained agents. The head of the Jesuit order is designated the "vicar-general" but more commonly referred to as the "black pope", because of the great power he wields, next to the pope himself. These secret agents were expelled from France in 1870 and from Germany in 1872, but returned after the war (in 1919). From that time they have been busy executing plans for the spreading of Fascism and Nazism throughout Europe and the world. The Jesuits are the spearhead of Catholic Action.

But back to the period immediately following the Reformation. Germany in the sixteenth century was divided by this popular movement, the Protestant parts of the country wishing the democratic right to worship God according to the dictates of their own conscience, and the Catholic parts desiring to continue under the totalitarian rule of the Hierarchy and its "Holy Roman" Empire. In 1617 Ferdinand II became the Catholic emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Educated by the Jesuits and under oath to exter-

minate Protestants from his kingdom, he reopened a campaign of Protestant persecutions. The following year, 1618, saw the beginning of a religious war which was to surge back and forth in destructive fury for thirty years, fomented by the Catholic Church in a vain effort to forestall the birth of what was now developed into democracy, with its belief in freedom of worship. The blood guilt of the Thirty Years' War rests upon the Hierarchy's head.

The fearful tyranny of Ferdinand over those of his dominion, like those of his political school of thought today, the Catholic dictators, drove the people to despair and prolonged the war. The German Protestant forces resisting the Catholic putsch had many allies —Hollanders, French, Swedes, and Danes —and were aided by a British subsidy. Finally for them a victory, and the Peace of Westphalia, was concluded, at Münster, on October 24, 1648. The Roman Catholic Hierarchy never recognized it as a peace, but has warred against it and tried to wipe it out ever since. It is recognized by many as the birth, after thirty years' travail, of present-day democracy. It solidified and added to the gains of the Reformation movement during the sixteenth century. McClintock and Strong's Cyclopaedia says that "an age of great toleration was introduced into Germany. In all religious questions the Protestants secured an equality with the Catholics, and gained equal weight in the diet and high courts of the empire".

On January 3, 1651, Pope Innocent X vigorously protested against the Peace of Westphalia in the papal bull Zelo Domus Dei, wherein he states: "We, on our own initiative, and on our own knowledge and ripe deliberation, and in the fulness of our ecclesiastical power say and declare by this act, that the said articles of either or both of the said Treaties [the one at Osnabrück on August 6, 1648, and the other at Münster in Westphalia, October 24, 1648] . . . shall be perpetually null, vain, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, condemned, reproved, futile, without force and effect;

and that no one is held to observe any detail of them, even though he be bound by an oath."

In the furtherance of the Hierarchy's fight against growing democracy many have been the official utterances condemning freedom and liberty of conscience. As, for example, Pope Pius IX in his Encyclical Letters of August 15, 1854, says: "The absurd and erroneous doctrines, or ravings, in defense of liberty of conscience, are a most pestilential error, a pest of all others, to be dreaded in the state." But the vengeful Hierarchy has done more than talk. Many have been the overt acts against democratic Britain and America. One outstanding example is the Gunpowder plot of November 5, 1603. Here Guy Fawkes, the Jesuit Fathers Garnet and Greenway, and other Catholic conspirators, conspired to destroy King James I (the king who authorized the King James Version of the Bible) and all members of Parliament by blowing up Parliament while in session with the king. Another flagrant example is the Hierarchy's master move to destroy American democracy by the Civil War. Note the following words of Abraham Lincoln shortly before his assassination by a Jesuit agent (Booth and all eight of the convicted conspirators were Roman Catholics):

"This war would never have been possible without the sinister influence of the Jesuits. We owe it to Popery that we now see our land reddened with the blood of her noblest sons ... I pity the priests, the bishops and the monks of Rome in the United States, when the people realize that they are, in great part, responsible for the tears and the blood shed in this war . . . The Protestants of both the North and the South would surely unite to exterminate the priests and the Jesuits, if they could hear what Professor Morse has said to me of the plots made in the very city of Rome to destroy this republic, and if they could learn how the priests, the nuns, and the monks, who daily land on these shores, under the pretext of preaching their religion, instructing the people in their schools, taking care of the sick in the hospitals, are nothing else but the emissaries of

the Pope, of Napoleon [III], and the other despots of Europe, to undermine our institutions, alienate the hearts of our people from our constitution, and our laws, destroy our schools, and prepare a reign of anarchy here as they have done in Ireland, in Mexico, in Spain, and wherever there are any people who want to be free." (Chiniquy, pp. 699-700)

Lincoln was aware of the presence of a Hierarchy "fifth column". Many well-informed people are aware of her like tactics today in opposition to democracy, and a few honest and courageous ones reveal these facts. Pull exposure of this democracy-hating sect is only a matter of time. —Matt. 10:26; Eph. 5:13.