“Satan’s smoke has made its way into the temple of God through some crack.” — Pope Paul VI, 1972

Popes since the 19th century have condemned socialism and communism. In 1848, Pope Pius the IX said, “You are aware indeed, that the goal of this most iniquitous plot is to drive people to overthrow the entire order of human affairs and to draw them over to the wicked theories of this Socialism and Communism, by confusing them with perverted teachings.” In 1881, Pope Leo XIII said, “…communism, socialism, nihilism, hideous deformities of the civil society of men and almost its ruin.” In 1931, Pope Pius the XI said, “[Socialism] is based nevertheless on a theory of human society peculiar to itself and irreconcilable with true Christianity. Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.” Every pope since has piled on.

Every pope, that is, until 2022 when Pope Francis made the reckless assertion that “If I see the Gospel in a sociological way only, yes, I am a communist, and so too is Jesus.” What changed?

The 20th century witnessed a complex interplay between ideological battles and religious institutions, as communism sought to infiltrate and influence the Catholic Church. This clandestine struggle was characterized by efforts to manipulate doctrine, undermine traditional values, and exploit religious platforms for political gains. This article delves into the tactics and consequences of communist infiltration within the Catholic Church, shedding light on a lesser-known aspect of the Cold War era.

The Ideological Battle

Communist ideology, rooted in atheism and materialism, has always stood at odds with the religious foundations of the Catholic Church. In the early 20th century, various communist parties and agents recognized the influence of the Church and sought to neutralize or co-opt it to advance their revolutionary agenda. This ideological battle unfolded against the backdrop of global political tensions, with both sides vying for supremacy in shaping societies and shaping the hearts and minds of believers.

In a 2018 homily, Fr. Robert Altier said point blank, “There is an intentional and malicious infiltration of the Church for the purpose of destroying Her from within.” He relayed a story of one of his professors in seminary told his class, “Martin Luther had the right idea but he went about it the wrong way. He left the Church. You can’t change the Church from the outside, you can only change it from within so we’re not leaving.”

Tactics of Infiltration

Communist infiltration of the Catholic Church often took subtle forms, exploiting existing divisions and vulnerabilities. Ideologues sought to infiltrate seminaries, universities, and other institutions, promoting dissent and encouraging reinterpretations of doctrine to align with socialist principles. The intention was to weaken the Church’s moral authority and turn it into a platform for promoting Marxist values.

By the late 19th century, communist ideology had found its way into Orthodox seminaries, and was integral in the conversion of the future Soviet Chairman Josef Stalin as W. Cleon Skousen reports in the Naked Communist:

As he learned his way around, Stalin discovered that the seminary was honeycombed with secret societies. Many of them were fostering the atheistic writings of Feuerbach and Bauer and the revolutionary writings of Marx and Engels. Before long Stalin convinced himself that he had a preference for revolution rather than religion and he therefore became vigorously active in the clandestine organizations which existed among the students of the seminary. He continued these activities for nearly three years, but he was finally exposed in May, 1899, and was expelled from the seminary for “lack of religious vocation.”

Later, Bella V. Dodd, an American teacher, lawyer, and former member of the Communist Party of the United States, explained how the communist infiltration effort in Catholic seminaries. In her memoir, “School of Darkness,” she details her experiences as a member of the Communist Party and her observations of the party’s efforts to infiltrate and influence various institutions, including the Catholic Church. According to Dodd, during her time in the Communist Party, she was instructed to encourage young radicals to enter Catholic seminaries and convents with the intention of influencing the Church’s teachings and undermining its traditional values.

“In the 1930s we put eleven hundred men into the priesthood in order to destroy the Church from within.” In her public affidavit she also said: “In the late 1920s and 1930s, directives were sent from Moscow to all Communist Party organizations. In order to destroy the [Roman] Catholic Church from within, party members were to be planted in seminaries and within diocesan organizations… I, myself, put some 1,200 men in Catholic seminaries.”

Twelve years before Vatican II, Dodd predicted, “Right now [in 1953] they are in the highest places in the Church,” and that they will implement changes in the Church that would be so drastic that, “you will not recognize the Catholic Church.” This prophecy has clearly come to horrifying fruition.

Infiltration and the Sex Scandal

One of the aims of the infiltration was to undermine the moral authority of the church by filling it with sexual deviants. Several studies of the sex abuse scandal in the United States show that incidents of abuse coincided with the communist infiltration of the Church, which began in earnest in 1929. The John Jay College of Criminal Justice study on the abuse scandal showed the number of priests later accused of sexual abuse skyrocketed in the 1930s and peaked in the 1960s.

This aligns closely with the communist infiltration and may be a direct result of it. Alice von Hildebrand, widow of the much-revered Dietrich von Hildebrand, explained this in 1965:

Stalin, soon after he came to power, ordered his cronies to invade Catholic seminaries … with young men that had neither faith nor morals. Now … the ideal cases: homosexual. Obviously, you don’t suppose that someone … well, it’s much more complicated, you know, to have an affair with a woman. But if you’re a homosexual, and then it was a tragic mission.

Church Militant reports that disgraced Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was one of those men, lured as a poor young man in New York city in 1950 to train in a European training center for communists, St. Gallen, Switzerland, where he “discovered” his vocation.

This isn’t to say that all homosexuals in the Church were communist or had ill will toward the Church, but communists certainly used homosexuals to undermine Church teaching and to discredit the church through abuse. As part of the Church’s response to the abuse scandal, Pope Benedict XVI issued “Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders,” which provided guidance in rejecting homosexuals from seminaries.

Infiltration and the New Order

The culmination of the communist infiltration of the Catholic Church may have been the hijacking of Vatican II and the institution of the Novus Ordo (New Order) Mass.

History shows that Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, appointed as the secretary of the commission responsible for implementing liturgical reforms following Vatican II, had a singularly pivotal role in undermining the Church through the liturgy. Bugnini played a central role in drafting and revising the texts and rubrics of the Mass as part of the liturgical reform efforts with the ostensible goal to make the liturgy more accessible to the laity and to emphasize active participation by the faithful. What he actually did was deceive Pope Paul VI and the Sacrosanctum Concilium into agreeing to the new Mass in order to, as Peter Kwasniewski put it, “demolish the liturgy of the ages and replace it with a mechanism brilliantly contrived to undermine Catholicism.”

Memoirs by Fr. Louis Bouyer reveal that, during the demolition process of the liturgy, Bugnini would face near unanimous dissent from the Concillium. “In such cases, he didn’t hesitate to say, ‘But the Pope wills it!’ After that, of course, there was no question of discussing the matter any further.” When the pope later asked Bouyer why they approved the radical changes to the Mass, Bouyer said, “Why!? Simply because Bugnini had assured us that you absolutely wished it!” Pope Paul VI replied, “How can this be? He told me himself that you were unanimous!”

The popular accusation is Bugnini was a Freemason and there is evidence of that. But in a 1996 interview, Dom Alcuin Reid asked Cardinal Stickler if he believed that Bugnini was a Freemason and if this was the reason Paul VI later dismissed him. “No,” the cardinal replied, “it was something far worse.” But His Eminence declined to reveal what the “far worse” was. We believe that “far worse” was that he was a communist.

Apart from the loose connection Taylor Marshall made in Infiltration, there is scant evidence of any ties between Stalin or the Kremlin and Bugnini but the liturgy he made is a stripped down, people-centric version that diminishes the reverence for God. In other words, it is exactly what you would expect from a communist ideologue.

Consequences

If the goal of the communists was to harm the Church from within, they did a spectacular job. Since the peak of communist infiltration of the Church, attendance has plummeted as has vocations:

Inside the Church, the infiltration has caused division and an epidemic of unbelief in which anywhere from only 31-63 percent of regular mass-goers believe in the central tenant of the religion—that the true presence of Christ is present in the eucharist with younger people believing less.

Conclusion

The warning of Our Lady of Fatima included a prophecy that if Russia was not consecrated to her Immaculate Heart, there would be continued conflict and war, as well as the spread of Russia’s ideological errors throughout the world. The prophecy has come true in stunning fashion. If we take Russia’s errors to mean communism, it has been thoroughly spread even to the heart of the Church herself and the damage has been unimaginable.