Summary:

1. Conference Update

2. Thank You!

3. Yes! The Church Does Want the Conversion of Russia to Catholicism!

» Reminder: Brother André Marie to Speak in Milwaukee Area: On Sunday, July 1, Brother André Marie will give a talk in the Milwaukee, WI, area. The subject will be “Twenty-First Century Catholicism: Problems and Solutions.” The talk will be at 1:00 in the Erin Town Hall, 1846 State Highway 83 in Hartford. For more information, please see our PDF flyer.

» Local News: Richmond board hit with lawsuit — St. Benedict Center to appeal 17 of 30 conditions on expansion: From the Keene Sentinel, an update on our cause célèbre here in Richmond.

» Watchdog Nation: Israel Shamir, the Russian-Israeli advocate for the “One Man, One Vote, One State” solution in Palestine and Israel, posted this article on his web site. It’s about the Southern Poverty Law Center and kindred organizations, their “shakedown” tactics, and how they threaten the freedoms of Americans as they earn millions of dollars annually. Shamir, himself a Jew, can hardly be called an “anti-Semite” for bashing the ADL, the SPLC, and other “hate crimes” profiteers.

» Waiting for the Shakedown: As we at SBC wait for the SPLC to release their latest smear on us, we present the following for your consideration:

• Political Profiling: what the SPLC does best. Though the article does not mention Mr. Dees’ organization, it describes their underhanded tactics well.

• Southern Poverty Law Center: a Wikipedia article, which has some information on controversies regarding the SPLC. Excerpts: “In 1996 USA Today stated ‘… in a recent report on arsons at black churches in the South, [Dees’] Klanwatch newsletter included five 1990 fires in Kentucky. The article doesn’t mention they were set by a black man.’” The USA Today article cited Stephen Bright, of the Southern Center for Human Rights, saying that Dees “is a fraud who has milked a lot of very wonderful well-intentioned people. If it’s got headlines, Morris is there.”

• Morris Dees’ Defamation: FrontPage Magazine’s Myles Kantor takes the SPLC hucksters to task. Says Kantor: “Keep up the great work, Mr. Dees. Don’t let truth and decency get in your way.”

• Crying Wolf: Hate crimes hoaxes in America: A book on the phenomenon.

Conference Update

We now have our tenth conference speaker: Mr. Lawrence Koralewski. This completes our roster of speakers.

Thank You!

We are humbled and grateful for the tremendous flood of support we received in response to our Pentecost Letter. Many of you have given generously. Please recall that our benefactors are gratefully remembered in our prayers. May Our Lord reward you all abundantly!

Yes! The Church Does Want the Conversion of Russia to Catholicism!

A report on the Interfax-Religion web site has caused a stir in Fatima circles. The headline says it all, or almost all: Vatican has no plans to convert Russia to Catholicism - Cardinal Poupard. According to the article,

“The Vatican does not want to convert Russia to Catholicism, and relations with the Moscow Patriarchate are improving, President of the Pontifical Council for Culture, Cardinal Paul Poupard, told students of the Orthodox St. Tikhon Humanitarian University on Monday. Poupard said the Vatican never wanted to make Russia a Catholic country.”

Note that there are no quotes wrapped around the thoughts attributed to Cardinal Poupard. It is possible that the Russian news agency botched the report totally. Rather than criticize His Eminence for something he may not have said, we will simply and briefly set the record strait, especially regarding the last sentence, which is not only false, but scandalous and transparently revisionist.

The Holy See (“the Vatican”) has always wanted the return of Russia, and the rest of the schismatic East, to Roman unity. First, she has given us official, indulgenced prayers to that end. One of these prayers asks that, “returning freely to the one fold entrusted by the loving Heart of the Risen Christ to Saint Peter and his successors,” our Russian brethren “may at length taste the joy of glorifying the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in the fellowship of the holy Catholic Church.”

Second, there are many popes who have sought the reunion of the Churches of the East with the Rome. See, for instance Orientales Omnes Ecclesias, the Encyclical of His Holiness Pope Pius XII on the three hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the reunion of the Ruthenian Church with the Apostolic See (December 23, 1945). This encyclical praises the Ruthenian bishops, who, amid great persecutions, “did everything possible for the protection and safe-keeping of the flocks entrusted to them, and, more than that, in their dire straits they exerted every effort, by prayer and argument and labor, to bring the whole Russian Church with the tsar Alexis into the unity of the fold.” An earlier example is from Benedict XIV’s Allatae Sunt (July 26, 1755), on the observance of Oriental Rites. See what the following passage from paragraph six of that encyclical does to the statement attributed to Cardinal Poupard: “That man would be utterly ignorant also of the present discipline of the Church who had not discovered that the Roman Pontiffs, undeterred by past fruitless attempts, have always intended to restore the Greeks to union and have always followed and still follow the path We have explained just above. This can be clearly gathered both from their words and from their deeds.” (“Greeks” as used in this encyclical, and other Roman documents, was a reference to Byzantine Christians, including Russians.)

Third, there were two Ecumenical Councils — Lyons II and Florence — which are commonly called “union councils” because they effected the union of the Christians of the East, including Russians, with the Holy See. Lamentably, these reunions were terribly short-lived.

Fourth: Throughout the nineteenth century, there was a concerted effort on the part of Catholics to convert Russia. This is well documented in Gary Potter’s article, The Conversion of Russia. For more on this, see Two Patrons for True Ecumenism and scroll down to the section with the heading “Dom Guéranger on St. Josaphat and the Conversion of Russia.” Abbot Guéranger was expressing an aspiration on the heart of many Catholics in his day.

Fifth, Father Joaquin Maria Alonso, S.T.D., Ph.D., the official Archivist of Fatima, declared that Our Lady’s words at Fatima (“If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted and there will be peace.”) were a reference to Russia’s conversion to the Catholic Church. See the great Fatima scholar’s article here: The True Meaning of the “Conversion” of Russia.

Secularists, liberals, heretics, schismatics, and unbelievers of all stripes act threatened by a Catholic Church which openly speaks of seeking converts. Yet that is exactly what the Catholic Church has always sought to do by her preaching, prayers, and missionary work. Yes, the world will hate us for trying to bring its votaries into the Mystical Body of Christ, but is that not what Our Lord said? “If the world hate you, know ye, that it hath hated me before you…. The servant is not greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you: if they have kept my word, they will keep yours also” (John 15:18, 20).

Let us have the courage of our convictions and not be afraid to seek converts of all men and nations, remembering always the words of St. Peter: “But if also you suffer any thing for justice’ sake, blessed are ye. And be not afraid of their fear, and be not troubled” (I Pet. 3:14).