When the Devil comes to Church and Stays

Noting my misadventures of late in the Catholic churches I attend, a friend warns me that “The Devil has come to church.” Although I would rate the pulpit politics, including the most recent one from Development and Peace’s “Help to Cool the Earth” campaign devilish, I never til’ now took my friend’s warning literally. But In fact, the devil has come to church in the name of one Saul Alinsky. Thanks to colleague Canada Free Press (CFP) columnist Jim O’Neill, who sent me a post by Bob Lunsford this morning quoting Fr. Val J. Peter, I got the chilling skinny on how much at home Beelzebub is in church.

Writes Fr. Peter: “As Lawrence J. Engel relates in “The Influence of Saul Alinsky on the Campaign for Human Development” (Theological Studies, December 1998), to which this article owes a large debt, the CHD began in 1969 as American cities were burning down: Newark, Washington, Detroit, Los Angeles. It was the height of the Civil Rights Movement and the anti-Vietnam War protests. Some scholars believed the nation was on the road to anarchy. The patriotism of the young during the Kennedy era was gone, replaced with: “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?” (Fr. Val Peter, Oct. 17, 2011). For four decades the Alinsky-inspired Campaign for Human Development (CHD) escaped close investigation under the fuzzy warm blanket of ‘Social Justice’ that envelops it. Satan Saul arrived on the altar when the impact of the Second Vatican Council made time ripe for the cunning of Alinsky-style Marxism. Imagine this godless wonder getting to teach unsuspecting Catholics of the day how to follow the call of Vatican 11. The sanctimonious sounding CHD became a powerful branch of community organizing: characteristics of which have been well recorded as strident, threatening, and prone to shakedown. “With your (Catholic) money and my ideas, we can go a long way,” was Alinsky’s clarion call.

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This was by no means Saul Alinsky in the abstract. Arguably second only in status to Che Guevara, the world’s ruling Marxist was given $30,000 a year by Cardinal Samuel Stritch for three years to study Chicago’s racially troubled neighborhoods. (Back in those days, no one seemed aware that Chicago’s “racially troubled neighborhoods” was the petri dish result of a deliberate Marxist tactic.) Writes Fr. Peter: “Even Jacques Maritain got caught up in the maelstrom, became his friend, and introduced his ecclesial contacts to him as Alinsky developed the first office of Urban Affairs in Chicago, with a mission to “focus the power of the church on the problems of the city.” “With rising anarchy towards the end of the decade, Alinsky demanded reparations from churches. It was a shakedown routine that worked well. Many mainline denominations caved. The United Methodist Church, for example, paid out $1.8 million. The United Church of Christ, $1.1 million. What were the Catholic bishops going to ante up? The CHD, that’s what.” As the US goes, so does Canada. “Canada’s own vision of U. S. Bishops Campaign for Human Development appears to be just as corrupt.” (Doug Lawrence’s Catholic Weblog). In Canada, Development and Peace, CHD’s Canadian cousin Development and Peace is governed by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB), a gathering of 90 bishops across Canada. Alinsky stridency is alive and kicking its way down church aisles here: Drama intensified Oct. 17 when the CCCB media relations officer asked LifeSite News editor John-Henry Westen to leave the premises shortly after he attended the Morning Prayer and Mass, which was televised on Salt and Light TV in a new collaboration of the CCCB and the digital Catholic network. Read more I agree with Fr. Peters that the good faith or integrity of members of the hierarchy involved with CHD should not be called into question. “I am old enough to have lived through the civil rights movement and the backlash against the Vietnam War, and know how difficult it was for the bishops of that time to steer the American church through those rough waters. Unfortunately, the pastoral needs of today are very different from what they were forty years ago. Rather than change with them, the CHD has mutated into irrelevance.” But are the pastoral needs of today really all that different from what they were forty plus years ago, Father? In the 1960s, anarchists were chanting, “Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?” Today the Occupy Wall Street activists are chanting, “Down with Capitalism”, “Eat the Rich”. The current President of the United States of America works for the Fundamental Transformation of America directly based on the Saul Alinsky Rulebook. Nobody has stepped forward to arrest the Fundamental Transformation of America, or to officially return the Constitution to its rightful, paid-with-blood place in America. Just like no one has stepped forward to chase Satan out of the church. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops should set their congregants free. The best way to do that is to find their courage and utter this loud, collective command: “Begone Satan Saul, begone!”