Progressivist Propaganda, a Discreet Dinosaur – Folha de S. Paulo, March 26, 1969
by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
Imagine a Moloch-like organization that includes major publishers in the leading countries of free Europe and some nations beyond the Iron Curtain. Picture this organization also having major newspapers and magazines in America at its service. Furthermore, this Titan has perfectly organized information centers in 30 countries, and 120 experts from various nations provide it with intellectual guidance. After imagining all of this, doesn’t the reader feel a deep unease at the idea that such an enormous publicity machine might exist?
Well, I must tell you that this dinosaur really exists. It has a very discreet central nucleus that controls the loud trumpets of progressive propaganda across the Catholic world. This loud propaganda, present everywhere and skilled at creating demagogic popularity, sophistry, seduction, and defamation, seems to be the spontaneous and exclusive product of the ideological tendencies of many of today’s thinkers and leaders. Don’t be fooled. This propaganda is entirely artificial in its most powerful and dynamic forms. It stems from a vast anti-Catholic machinery aimed at influencing global Catholic opinion on religious issues. For this purpose, this machinery receives strong support from high-level communists. This major revelation was published with extensive documentation by the reputable English Catholic magazine Approaches and reprinted by other respected European publications such as Permanences in France, Nunc et Semper in Germany, and Roma, in Buenos Aires. I believe concerned readers will want to know some of the information Approaches has shared, so I will present the data below.
Origins
IDO-C explains its origins: during the Second Vatican Council, an information center provided documentation to the Dutch episcopate. Its acronym was DO-C. Later, this center started publishing bulletins in multiple languages and joined the Conciliar Communications Coordination Center for the Press (CCC-C). The merger created the IDO-C (International Center for Information and Documentation on the Conciliar Church). After the Council, it was organized as an international organization based in Rome.
Management
The entity’s president is a Dominican priest, Fr. Van Kets. Its board of directors includes a leader from Mexico’s Christian Family Movement, an American priest from Vatican Radio, and a member of Poland’s “Catholic”-Communist magazine Znack. IDO-C’s English Committee includes the magazine Slant, linked to the “Pax” worldwide movement, and the communist leader J. Dunman, who has often been a candidate for the British Communist Party. Dunman currently runs a communist agrarian magazine and is an active promoter of dialogue between Catholics and communists.
Major publishers
IDO-C has access to the world’s largest Catholic publishers, including the well-known Herder International, Paulist Press, the leading Catholic publisher in the United States, and England’s Burns & Oates.
Communist governments accept this octopus, which has branches in Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia.
Newspapers
IDO-C oversees the religious sections of the Paris newspapers Le Monde and Le Figaro, as well as The New York Times. It also maintains close ties with the Catholic Establishment, an influential American advertising group that controls the Catholic Press Association and several prominent Catholic newspapers, such as the National Catholic Reporter.
Influencing the Church from the Outside
The IDO-C has described itself as “An international organization headquartered in Rome, which extends its branches throughout the world; it is independent of all religions and political institutions” (cf. Circular issued by the United Kingdom’s IDO-C).
Suspiciously, this non-Catholic entity has a purely religious purpose: “Its specific function is to collect and distribute documentation on the theological and structural consequences of the decrees and spirit of Vatican II.”
Among its subscribers are bishops, theology professors, students from Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish seminaries, editors of Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish newspapers, and correspondents from the Catholic sections of major newspapers (cf. Circular cited above).
We insist. This organization claims to be non-Catholic and has substantial resources to influence Catholic opinion on truly religious matters. It has no hesitation in welcoming a communist into its top leadership, nor does its activity raise any concerns in countries ruled by communist governments. How can this be explained?
“Microphone Thieves”
No less distinctive is the “Catholic Establishment.” In The Critic, the organization’s newspaper (Dec. 1966-Jan. 1967), we read these peculiar lines, in which “microphone thieves” stand out.
The ‘Establishment’ sets the topics that Catholics discuss, not only in its newspapers but also in nearly all Catholic newspapers and study groups from the Atlantic to the Pacific. “For example, the discussion about birth control in the U.S. was entirely a production of the Establishment,” the newspaper states.
People associated with the entity “have seized all microphones and are committed to speaking for the Church.”
“The microphone thieves,” the newspaper continues, “are an open but exclusive fraternity of several dozen students, journalists, activists, and editors.”
Someone might ask, “Is this a conspiracy?” “Yes, but a “modern” one. Not a conspiracy by the modern political definition, but in the sense J. C. Murray used: “to breathe together.” In the Establishment, everyone “breathes together.”
Here are some facts for the reader.
This peculiar “Establishment” is connected to the ultra-ecumenical and socialist “Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions.”
So, everything aligns: the boldest propaganda, religious innovations, and open leftism, all promoted in the name of the “conciliar spirit” by a discreet central authority.
Approaches mentions the names of Brazilians in charge of this “service” among us, but we hesitate to publish them.
