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THE CATHOLIC NEWS Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England 6 December 1930 (pages 4 & 13)
The new French anti-clericism in its
War on the Church
Reveals how churchmen are slandered.
An atrocious calumny on Abbé Lugan is firmly nailed down.
Abbé A. Lugan—prominent amongst the first and most fearless of the adversaries of the Action Francaise—has just exposed an atrocious calumny, revived and republished for the purpose of discrediting the Vatican and blackening the memory of Cardinal Rampolla. One of the numerous periodicals founded in the French provinces to sustain the struggle of the party and press condemned by Rome in 1926, had the rare audacity to make itself responsible for
Abbé Lugan, however, during a six months sojourn in the U.S.A. devoted himself to investigating the alleged “proof” which the new French anti-clericism advances in support of a seemingly safe libel on the dead. The facts brought to light by this courageous clergyman and communicated with his authority, to the French public, need to be made known in all Catholic countries so that opinion will be everywhere on its guard against foreign publications criticizing Churchmen for pretended reasons of “patriotism” or “religious defence.”
THE TRUE STORY.
Father Lugan has told the story of what he terms “the end of a stupid calumny” in a letter sent from Washington . . .
[ . . . . . . ]
On arriving in America he [Abbé Lugan] ascertained that the name of Cardinal Rampolla had really appeared in the Masonic annual, The Equinox! But this purely preliminary verification proved nothing of course.
[ . . . . . . ]
Abbé Lugan, as a result of a series of researches learned from the National Catholic Bureau of Information, Huntington, Indiana, that the statement of the Equinox concerning Cardinal Rampolla was destitute of the slightest value or credit. Its author, Aleister Crowley (wrote the Secretary of the Bureau, Mr. Robert R. Hull) was “the well-known Chief of the Masonic Adorers of Satan” and founder of the Masonic organization calling itself the Ordo Templi Orientis. Crowley’s publication of the list of leading Masons was not merely mendacious but grotesque. The name of Cardinal Rampolla was at the foot of a list which contained such names as Mosheh (Moses), Vergilius (Virgil), and even Melchisedech! “All this,” wrote Mr. Hull, “is worthy of the same weight as the statement that Adam was the first Freemason.”
A FUGITIVE VOMITED BY FRANCE.
Mr. Hull concludes a letter to Abbé Lugan as follows:—
“You will receive no reply to the inquiry that you have addressed to the Universal Publishing Co. of Detroit, Michigan (publishers of the year-book from which M. Lacointa fished out his “proof”). This firm has disappeared. It was purely ephemeral. Crowley, after organizing his Ordo Templi Orientis, and publishing the special number of The Equinox (Vol. 3, No. 1) was soon
“He had gathered around him several rich Masons of Detroit with their ‘lady friends.’ Free Love was part of the curriculum. But this teaching rapidly provoked all sorts of scandals and domestic difficulties. Recently, as no doubt you know, Crowley was expelled from France, for the very same reasons as those which caused him to be hunted out of Detroit. He had resided in Paris since his expulsion from the States.”
Thus the “proof” that Cardinal Rampolla was “a Freemason” is shown to have been the simple allegation of this Crowley—of an ignoble and immoral organizer of Free Love sects and Devil Worshippers, vomited by France as soon as discovered by the Paris police!
By a coincidence which is, perhaps more than curious (Abbé Lugan notes) in the number of the Bloc Revolutionaire, in which the late Cardinal Rampolla is pilloried as a Freemason of the O.T.O., founded by Crowley, “mention is made of the odious acts and writings of this scoundrel and his expulsion from Sicily and France, etc. But not a word is said of his connection with the Equinox or the O.T.O.”
“Either M. Lacointa ignored the fact that Crowley was the sole witness to the ‘truth’ of the statement about Cardinal Rampolla, or else he knew it and hid it in order not to discredit Crowley’s evidence.” In the first case, continues the Abbé, we leave to the reader the task of judging the critical intellect of this man, and the faith placed by him in the frightful accusation, broadcast with such arrogant ignorance, in a Catholic country, with the view to dishonour a Cardinal. “In the second case, we leave to the public the task of pronouncing on the honesty of the man. We, ourselves, charitably prefer to save his character at the expense of his intelligence and believe that he has absolutely no head. But a conclusion is imposed by all these facts and its application is urgent. It is time to warn unsuspecting Catholics and particularly the 3-4,000 readers of M. Lacointa’s pamphlet, which will certainly be utilized to serve the machinations of Freemasons everywhere.”
This communication to the Le Movement by Gather Lugan—made on the eve of a visit to Mexico, in response to invitations received from the Apostolic Delegate, Mgr. Ruiz y Flores, and the Archbishop of Mexico—is a real service to the Catholics throughout the world. It has spiked the Mason-made gun mounted against the Vatican and the “Satanic Republic,” in the firing-line of the “best Children of the Church.” |