- It is fashionable today[…] to judge, criticize and get rid of everything that doesn’t sound modern, novel, or subversive. […] And the poor Catholic is bewildered hearing so much bitterness from the mouths of little sacristy-communists, hearing in many ways, how everything is outmoded. […].- […]The only effect of their social action in the end, is to break up, throw out , destroy and raze to the ground to make way - for whom? We need only look at who is holding the cord of this devastation. We say and we fear no contradiction - [it is]for the Antichrist. The Antichrist for us, is anyone who stands for a society in opposition to God or even one simply without Him. And whoever aligns with these people, or lends a hand and obeys them, makes way for the Antichrist, even if unwittingly.- When a priest is corrupted, he becomes the worst and the speediest agent for social decay.
- Unfortunately the world has become so pagan that some of its materialistic influence has infiltrated into Catholic consciences.- We are in times when one must resist not only adversaries but also those inside the Church who look outside [ Her] with more sympathy to the other camp and they do more damage inside, as if they had deserted Her already.- Our thoughts are veiled in sadness when we envisage the many souls poisoned or contaminated by the oozing filth of so much obscene literature; in so many the light of faith is obscured by the murky darkness of books written by atheists. In addition, there is much vacillation also in literature, even if not obscene or blasphemous, which plants doubt, uncertainty, confusion and sets minds in new ways which are not those of the Lord.- Nowadays almost everyone knows how to read but hardly anyone knows how to think.- In no other time has dissoluteness and frivolousness spread so much as it has in ours.- Modern society is afflicted by a feverish burning for renovation, which is frightening. It is infested by men who prevail over our sufferings in order to build an empire according to their own designs and the tyranny of their own vices - a den of lewdness and thievery. Never has evil taken on such widespread and apocalyptic characteristics; never have we known so much danger.- The nuclear [bomb] creates a desert less atrocious than the prevailing doctrine of a society without God; we have a “Sahara” of the Spirit in addition to a physical “Sahara”.- During the years of the Nazi violence, I was actually accused of this, I was loathed by everyone; I was one of “those around the Pope” (Manner um den Papst). Those enemies swept through like a monstrous diabolical infestation […]. I know well that the enemies of yesterday have been succeeded by others much more satanic.- Among the few the Holy Father is honoring today (12th January 1953) with the noble dignity of cardinalship, there is one conspicuous absence. And this absence brings to mind the luminous figure of another Cardinal* who has for years been suffering under the chains of the anti-Christian ferocity of the Reds. […] And they are absent because sub hostili dominatione constituiti, because they are in chains by these new, but much fiercer enemies; so fierce that to hear them – they are preparing pandemonium and wherever they go, solitudinem faciunt et pacem appellant, they create a wasteland and call it “peace”! As horrendous and formidable as they are, they do not frighten us […]. These new barbarians will also pass, and perhaps the hour is at hand. […] The Church will not succumb. We do not fear death: we fear only sin.
*Cardinal József Mindszenty
[Translation: Contributor Francesca Romana | Source: Cordialiter blog. | Image: Cardinal Ottaviani celebrates Mass on December 10, 1963, in the Church of Santa Maria di Loreto, Rome - source: Biblioteche di Roma - Cinecittà Luce archives.]
