- Welcome back everyone to the front line with Joe and Joe. Joe Bessilow and Joe Recinello, you're exactly right, Joe. - We work for the man upstairs as you do. - You're setting me up quite well. You just gave me an alley, you... - The greatest revolutionary act to commit right now is to open your mouth and speak the truth. - Whether you're an academic or you're a regular guy, you have to be fearless. - And once more, dear brothers and sisters, let us go into the breach. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Hello again everyone and welcome back to the front line with Joe and Joe. Joe Bessilow, as always, joined by Joe Recinello and once more, dear brothers and sisters, let us go into the breach on the Veritas Catholic Radio Network, 1350 on your AM dial, 103.9 on your FM dial, spreading the truth of the Catholic faith to the New York City metropolitan area. We're gonna jump right in because we're welcoming back a friend of the show, Kristen Van Yuden, from Sofia. She's been on to talk about books being published by Sofia Press this time she wrote one and this one's right up Joe and my alley, okay? 'Cause the title of the book is "When the Sickle Swings." Kristen, what's the subtitle again? - Stories of Catholics who survived communist oppression. - Right, so if you say you're a Catholic and you're a persecuting in the world, particularly by leftists, gangsters, okay? You're just a complainer. Well, Kristen wrote a book and it's about how these leftist regimes have not just in like sort of a secondary way or a tertiary way persecuted the church. That made their first target, Roman Catholics and the Roman Catholic Church. Joe and I say that all the time. So we're happy to have Kristen here for those of you who are not familiar with Kristen. She serves as an author spokesperson, as I said, at Sofia Institute Press. She received her MA in history from the College of William and Mary and her BA in history and Russian from St. Anselm College. She studies the persecution of Catholics. She studied, I should say, the persecution of Catholics under communist regimes, leading up to obviously writing this book. She's been featured on a wide range of media platforms including coast to coast AM, the Federalist, the Catholic Faith Network. Kristen Van Yude and welcome back to the frontline with Joe and Joe, our friends. - Hi guys, so great to be back. Thanks for having me and can't believe I'm here to promote my own book this time. So we've come full circle. - All right, that's right. When the sickle swings, like I said, I think more people, there's some in the church. I'm not being judgmental that seem to think that church teaching somehow has changed since Rarum Novarum. It has not changed since Rarum Novarum. At least from my reading, maybe you could correct me and we'll get into that a little bit. Let me hand it over to Joe, Kristen. We'll have a great conversation. - All right. - Kristen, we always start with our prayer. Our name in the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and man, remember our most gracious Virgin Mary, never wasn't known that anyone who sought your help or sought your intercession who was left unaided, inspired by this confidence. We find to you a virgin, a virgin's our mother. To you, we come, view, we stand sinful and sorrowful. Oh mother, the word in carnite despised not a petition that's been in your clemency here and answer the same men. Name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and man. Well, Kristen, as Joe said, welcome. Shout out to Kristen. She just got married, love it, good stuff, Kristen. Love to see it. - And quite the year. - Absolutely, absolutely. And also, before we get into the subject of hand, you do know that Joe Pacil may have a stroke during this conversation. - Yeah, yeah. - I just like, as I read the interview again today, preparing, I said to myself, oh my Lord, I may lose my brother-in-law on this one. But, you know what we go- - I know, we'll try to take it easy on you. - I know, I know, I know, I don't wanna live with you, Joe. I know, but I could already tell. - When you see the vein popping out of my head, then you know something going on. - So we'll dive right in. We'll talk 20th century to begin. Obviously, across the globe, the Catholic faith, this is a fact. This is not just two, three Catholics talking about it, been repressed, restricted, outright illegal. That is historic fact. What that said, Kristen, as that was going on in the 20th century, where was the global outrage? Where was the UN? It seems to me that everybody was quiet. They forget that Catholics were killed by, say, the Nazis, the Catholics were killed by the Soviets, that Catholics were persecuted in Asia. No one cares, no one says anything, and it's going on to this day, but let's focus on the 20th century. Where was the global outrage? - That's a good question. Often, when we discuss persecution under communism, especially, there were very few outlets for resistance, or meaningful, organized resistance, especially. So I talk about this in the book, how under the Nazi Empire, for example, there were many resistance groups that cropped up, and oftentimes militant, or at least in newspapers, winning minds. But under communism, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn said to paraphrase him, "At what point could we have resisted "when they came to our house and knocked on the door, "when they took us down the stairs "and put us into the Black Maria, "when they brought us to the Lubianka for questioning." And it's just this totalizing, completely embodies the word totalitarian system, where there were so few cracks in the system, and there was such a large degree of collaboration, or really blackmail of the people, the people on mass had no choice often than to give in, or didn't really know how to resist this. So at least in Eastern Europe, as I write in the book, the main form of resistance now, ultimately, and back then, was to hold on to your soul, because as I seek to illustrate with these stories, communism sought not only to take the material possessions and wealth of the church, but also to actually steal the souls of the Catholics, as I examined in the book and in other faiths, who were under their yoke. So this is an inherently and overtly atheistic system. And one that I believe is on the level of spiritual warfare, it's something that goes beyond just mere economic or political theory, and really has this spiritual element to it. Of the countries that I examined in the book, and these came really from the availability of interviews, because I wanted to focus on individual stories and personal narratives, because I find those the most compelling. So I mainly interview people from Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania. And there are a few stark differences. There are many striking similarities, but with the question of outrage and pushback and resistance, Cuba is one that's very unique in this sense, because there was actually an armed resistance. There were freedom fighters, and I interviewed some of them. The Bay of Pigs invasion is where this cult really culminated. And they were empowered in this way, in part because of the involvement of American intelligence, with the anti-communist resistance movements there, because obviously, if it's geopolitical significance and its proximity to Florida, but also interestingly because of the empowerment of these Catholic action groups. So true Catholic action, not the Catholic action that's kind of been perverted by leftists, but the Catholic action that Pius X told us in his words to restore all things in Christ, to bring Christ into the public sphere, had been quite active in Cuba for a while before the revolution. And so when this regime, when the Castro regime took over, these groups were well-equipped to actually resist in a very real and tangible way that was oftentimes not as available in other countries. So we can go into the various types of resistance that were available, but yes, one of my motivations for writing this was to bring light to a story that I feel is not as well represented in the media. We now hear many Holocaust narratives, for example, and I grew up reading these narratives, and it was just horrified by the horrors of the 20th century. But I heard less and less of the horrors that occurred under communism, especially towards Catholics. And these stories are oftentimes not written down. So the people that I interviewed are all still alive and have not really told their stories before in this way. And so much of this record is just within the collective memory of our time. And if it's not taken down now, then perhaps it will never be and the world will never know these narratives. So you're right, that there has not been enough outrage, I suppose, or awareness, but this book hopefully will be a small step forward in creating a narrative. - The one group of people, and again, we're not crybabies. That's one thing I know about Catholics, okay, is that we don't walk around saying just talk about how persecuted we are, okay? Like every other freaking group out there, everybody's battling to try to get to the top of the list of most persecuted group. We don't do that, but the stone cold fact is that more Catholics and not, I'm not even including non-Catholic Christians. More Catholics have died in 2000 years over that span of time than any other group. That's a stone cold historical fact. And nobody says, you wanna know why you're here and why we're happy you wrote this book? Because we have to say it. They say, hold it, hold it. Historical grievances? Do you really wanna get into historical grievances? Do you wanna have an honest conversation? We have Paul Cengor on a couple of weeks ago talking about the Catholic Church and slavery. Tired of hearing about Catholic Church not being vocal on slavery. Catholic Church was vocal on slavery before anybody else was 300 years before Wilberforce. Again, I only bringing this up, Christmian Union is because we do have to say it. Not in the complaining way. Not in the woe is me kind of way, okay? But the fact is, and even in the world right now, look at all the spots in the world where Catholics are being persecuted. Let's circle back to your book, okay? When the sickle swings, all right? And stories of survivors of communist regimes. I know I'm probably butchering the subtitle, Christmian. I'm sorry. That's available at Sophia Press. I do wanna, before we, I know you mentioned four countries, Romania and Cuba and others, but do me a favor for our audience. Just briefly, spend a couple of minutes and talk about what the Soviets did and what the Bolsheviks did in the Ukraine 'cause that is an outright genocide and nobody ever talks about it. And it's worth talking about if you really wanna dig into this. - Yes, so I assume you're talking about the Ukrainian famine, otherwise known as the Holodomor, which occurred in the 1930s, which is this result of forced collectivization of Ukrainian lands at the ideological helm of the Bolshevik project. So the seizure of farms from property owners, the collectivization and monopolization of the state, and then redistribution according to these state farms or coals that really made no sense. And we're not operational, we're not functional whatsoever. The imposition of five-year plans and basically this delves into a little of the economics of communism and how these systems, while ultimately are ideological and when they're enforced on a market or on an economic system, they oftentimes just don't take and don't work. And interestingly, communism, the original theorists thought it would have to be imposed onto an already heavily industrialized country, such as Germany and something like Russia or Ukraine, which were heavily agrarian and agricultural, were not really prep candidates. So this whole system worked into a complete mess, a recipe for disaster, and basically the entire country was starved to death. This is under this ideological occupation and physical occupation by Soviet soldiers. This is when you would see piles of grain being left to rot and starving people who would go and try to take some bean shot on the spot. And just all of this, just you look at it, it makes absolutely zero sense, but of course it was in service to the ideology of communism. So there were other famines in the 1920s that resulted from collectivization. And of course there is this very, to the whole of the more, there's a certain degree of anti-Ukrainian sentiment as well that comes from the Soviets desire for cultural hegemony as well. - And let's be clear. Ukrainian, it's a Catholic country. Okay, I mean, it was most of the victims of the Halodamore were Catholic. - And this is actually, as you brought up in alluding to your first point, something that was actively covered up by the New York Times. And there's a photographer who they just made a movie about him a couple of years ago, I forget his name, but he is the one who essentially broke the story to the world and this was something that there was a gag order on in the powers that be among the global media. And he was just this crack in the system that allowed global eyes on this tragedy and this genocide. And this, interestingly, I've seen American reactions to this. Unfortunately FDR did not really condemn this in a really satisfying way. And in a completely different context, this, when I studied propaganda that the Soviet Union had at the world's fairs, for example, many people would write in to the fair kind of committee protesting this and referring to the USSR as a sepulcher of dead men's bones, referring to the horrific news that had just come out about the Ukrainian famine and genocide. So this Catholics around the world did react to it with horror, but unfortunately, the geopolitical response was not something that we can be proud of. - Thank you for that, Chris and Manud, and joining us here at the front line with Jo and Joe, her new book, When the Sickle Swings, Joe R. Sinello. - Let's talk a row of priests and bishops. I'll just allude to one that I'm aware of, Walter Chiswick. He was an American Jesuit who was imprisoned for 22 years, 15 years in the Gulags. And then he was out of the Gulags, but they put him in like the equivalent of like, scotch-a-tune, and he basically worked as like a mechanic until basically he was freed. Talk about what has happened to the church or happened to the church, particularly the bishops and the priests who were imprisoned, who were heroic as Chiswick was in serving his people, yet they were clearly in jail and suffered. - Yes, so one of the first tactics of communist regimes is to strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter. So bishops are first and foremost targeted in Czechoslovakia Eastern church actually lost about 75% of its bishops and the Roman and Catholic church, the bishops were also heavily targeted. Priests could be thrown in prison as ideological enemies. And then interestingly, because the Catholic church has this double-pronged identity as obviously a spiritual institution, but also with the political sovereign body of the Vatican and the Pope's power, even in the earthly realm, the charges that you'll see levied against clergy and even laymen are those of Vatican spy or Western agitator or some sort of, Western imperialist fifth column, things like that. And so the communication was completely cut off between these hierarchies and their official hierarchy in Rome. In Czechoslovakia, there were several operations that targeted specifically monks and nuns. So they were called Operation K for the word clusteri, which means monks in Czech. And then Operation R from the word raholemica, which means nuns. And these were pretty horrific human rights abuses that no one talks about where over 2,500, almost 3,000 monks and nuns were rounded up over a series of several evenings throughout the spring of 1949. So pretty soon right away after the regime change and placed into either deportation forced labor in factories and otherwise forbidden from living at their vocation. Their properties, of course, the properties of the church were seized and repurposed for the state's needs, oftentimes, especially in the Soviet Union as prisons. And this, of course, has the intended effect of, on the political side, controlling the activities of the church publicly, but on the more spiritual side of halting apostolic succession. So in the book, I go into, especially how this affected Czechoslovakia because Pius XII, who was the pope in 1949, when this was all happening, sort of saw the writing on the wall and wanted to make provisions for these Catholics living behind the Iron Curtain. So he issued what's known as the Secret Mandates, which were basically this cart launch permission for bishops behind the Iron Curtain, so wherever that may be in the world, to be able to ordain priests and consecrate new bishops without the typical ordinary jurisdiction of going through the hierarchy and waiting for approval and getting the stamp of approval from the Vatican because that simply wasn't possible with the information blackout. So this was a huge help in Czechoslovakia because so many of the clergy were attacked and killed and imprisoned, et cetera. And really kept apostolic succession alive through what has come to be known as the Underground Church or the Ecclesia Cilenti, the Silent Church, which I came to because I interviewed one who worked closely with them. So that's kind of the picture. I can tell a few stories of some individuals too, if you'd like. - Yeah, I know. We'll definitely get into some of those. Kristin Villeneuve is joining us here at the Frontline with Joe and Joe. When the sickle swings that's available at Sophia Press, you know what I'm gonna say. Buy it from the publisher. We'll port our Catholic publishers. But having said that, Kristin, where else can our audience members buy the book? - So it is also on Amazon, but I think it's sold out on Amazon. So yet another reason to come to SophiaInstitute.com. - That's right, that's right. Let me ask you this. And as the conversation goes on, we'll get into some individual stories. But one of the mistakes, now again, I am of the opinion, I read a long time ago. I read the black book of communism. It was a scholarly work. The thesis of the book is that communism is nothing but a criminal enterprise. And then they go on for a very long book to outline the crimes of communist regimes. So I've always thought Mao, Stalin, Castro, they're not the big gangsters. Joe and I grew up in Newark, New Jersey. You know what you call somebody who will kill somebody for their own benefit? A gangster, that's what they are, okay? So they're not ideological. Again, you're talking about persecution in Catholics. So like the gangster, Henry VIII, they're motivated by confiscating church property, okay? So that's one thing. But here's my point in bringing that up, Christa Menudin. But there are true believers, all right? There are true believers amongst the rank and file ordinary Russian, let's say if we were talking about Russians or ordinary Cuban that might actually believe in La Revolucione, you know, this communist idea of a worldly utopia. I'm gonna throw it over to you. I think it was Russell Kirk, I think it was Russell Kirk who said, don't imminatize the escaton. You are not creating heaven on earth. Talk about the mistake of thinking that you can, which is exactly what, again, what the true believing communists actually thinks could happen. And they're just quite frankly wrong. - Yes, exactly. And that is the eternal problem of utopian thinking is that as we know as Catholics, this is not possible here on earth. Heaven is in heaven. It's not going to happen on earth, even though Jesus has come for the first time, we are still a fallen people and we know that we must store up our treasures for the next life. However, this cosmology is completely inverted in the communist ideology. And so they do believe that you can create utopia on earth and all of their purported aims are towards implementing this goal. And it is an important point to make because communism when you take it at face value is a very seductive ideology. It, when you believe that it will fulfill the goals and promises that it has made is something that would be very difficult to resist. And I call it the doctrine of the Antichrist early on in the book and make these comparisons to much of the literature of the Antichrist that I believe we've discussed before on this program of especially Robert Hugh Benson's Lord of the World, where the Antichrist is selling this beautiful world free from any hatred, free from want, free from division full of pleasure and economic success and bounty. And this is exactly what the communist propaganda promised for the future. And of course, the great irony is that this never actually pans out because just like the Tower of Babel, this is a project that's doomed to failure. Ultimately, the central theological mistake is placing the state or really any human institution at the level of God and at the level of the church. And with the wrong orientation, it collapses. And so this, as we've discussed Father Micelli's books, for example, The Gods of Atheism, where he discusses that atheism is not really the absence of worship, but the worship of idols, communism and Nazism and many of these 20th century ideologies provide really this pseudo religion, this stand in where people, and they do actually require a certain degree of buy-in from the general populace to actually remain tenable. And people fall for it, unfortunately, they want to be involved in something larger than themselves and they actually believe in the project or they're doing it for personal gain and petty reasons, which we see a lot of. But the true believers are a very interesting phenomenon because they clearly adopt this ideology almost as a religion. And there's an interesting group of people that I talk about briefly in the book to make this point. And this comes from a book I read called Keeping Faith with the Party that is a deep dive on this group of people. Essentially, some Gulag survivors who had been thrown into the Gulag for trumped up charges after a show trial, something to totally favor, either their neighborhood turned to them in 'cause they didn't like them or they were getting in the way of the party boss, so they were conveniently brought to trial and put into the Gulag. And the entire time they were there, they were racking their brains, trying to figure out what they had done wrong, that they must have committed some sin against the party because their faith in the party was so strong and they doubted their own mind before they would doubt the rulings of the party. And so when they returned from the Gulag, they would spend all of their efforts on gaining restitution to the party and rehabilitation and clearing of their good name. So it's this Stockholm syndrome that takes over and really this cult-like behavior that is evidenced in the cult's of personality of the dictators too, that kind of humans who are not grounded in a solid ideological basis of objective truth and theology will sadly be susceptible to. - Thank you for that, Christian. Joe Ressinello, we have a few minutes before the break. - I just wanna make two comments based upon what you just talked about. You said this, communism doesn't work historically. It is a failed system. Yet, cultural communism exists in America at some very prestigious universities. To this day, there are believers. To this day in a system that does not work, it has failed. Point one, point two, you mentioned Popes who called it out. They saw the writing on the wall and this is what I'd like you to comment on. So many times the Catholic church has been ahead of the curve on these type of dictators. Historically, if you are honest, if you, you know, people pretend like they're smart, you're honest, study it, read what was said. They were ahead of the curve, yet it's ignored. It's ignored. Talk about that for a second because to be honest with you, it's just the truth. So many of the Popes were so far ahead of the atrocities that took place in the world, ignored the atrocities happened. And frankly, I think we're looking at some atrocities now. We'll talk to those on the other side of the break, but briefly, Kristen. - Sure, yes. So the Popes that I really focus on the most heavily in the book are Pius XI and Pius XII, who both wrote very strongly against communism, but really as early as Karl Marx's publications of his writings in the mid 19th century, the Popes immediately condemned communism and Marxism as atheist antithetical to the church dogmas. I have a few quotes here from some encyclicals that really make this point, even before communism had been enshrined in the global state powers. So Da Vinny Redemptorus is an encyclical by Pope Pius XI. And he writes, "The communism of today more emphatically than similar movements in the past conceals itself and a false messianic idea, a pseudo-ideal of justice of equality and fraternity and labor impregnates all its doctrine and activity with a deceptive mysticism, which communicates a zealous and contagious enthusiasm to the multitudes entrapped by delusive promises." So he sees right through all of these false promises and especially this false messianism, which of course ties into the idea of a worldly utopia that communism will be the idea to save us rather than turning to what can actually save us, which is the faith. - Yeah, and that's a thing too. Like people say, well, the Catholic church, it was just opposed to communism because communism, you know, central to communist ideology is systematic atheism. Let's be clear, I'm choosing my words carefully, systematic atheism imposed by the government. Not you're free to choose whatever religion you want. There will be no religion 'cause we are the new religion, all right? And the church has been quick to point that out. But aside from that, you mentioned something, Christian, and we'll get maybe to it on the other side of the break on the level of just on paper, just on paper. The church recognizes the right to private property. Communism does not. From each according to the ability to each according to his need is not just, and I mean just in the proper sense of the word, it's an unjust system to take from somebody who works harder or give it to somebody who does not, let's say, for argument's sake. So I'm only bringing this up, Christian, because it doesn't just have to do with, let's say, the atheism of communism. It also has to do with other things underneath it, like private property, like the right I have to my own wage. And if I work harder, I can make more money. Quick comment on that for about 30 seconds, if you don't mind. - Yeah, that's a good point. Just these very basic human rights that we kind of take as a given from, arising from the church teaching on human dignity that were again inverted by the communist system where rights come from the state rather than from God, where the church on all counts is condemning each of these. And interestingly, Pius XII actually issued an excommunication of communists. And he means communist agents and those who are working for this implementation on earth, not those who had the misfortune to be just born under communism. So there were very strong actions taken against this, not only for obviously the humanistic element of suffering, but also because this is a rotten ideology that even before all of the years of persecution, they could tell would have no good fruits. - Absolutely, one of the things I get, when I see like an actor on TV talking about, "Yeah, bring on socialism." My first response is you first, you first, you write a check out of your $500 million for 90% of that and send it to the United States treasury. And then maybe, maybe, I might give you a little bit of an ear, maybe. Kristin Van Newton is joining us here at the front line with Joe and Joe. Joe Pacillo, Joe Racinello, we're way in the breach, when the sickle swings stories of, what was the stories of Catholic survivors. - How do you describe communist oppression? - Yeah, I know, I'm sorry, Kristin. I butcher that, that is available at Sofia Institute Press. So please buy it there 'cause Amazon sold out. And we're happy, we're happy that you sold out. And even though it's on Amazon, please go buy it from Sofia Press, Kristin Van Newton, is gonna be with us for another segment, so don't go anywhere. - Catholic radio works, and now we have it here in Connecticut and New York. It's been seen around the country that there's no better tool for evangelization. Where there's Catholic radio, the folks who listen deep in their faith, families are strengthened, parishes and communities flourish. So let people know you're listening to Veritas, tell your friends to tune in, and let's make an impact here for Jesus and his church. This is Steve Lee for Veritas Catholic Network. (upbeat music) - Welcome back everyone to the Frontline with Joe and Joe. Joe Pacillo and Joe Racinello, way in the breach with Kristin Van Newton. We're discussing her new book, When the Sickle Swings. Please buy it from the publisher, Sofia Press, support our Catholic publishers. Joe Racinello, where do you wanna go? - Let's talk about heroes, Kristin. People, political prisoners who refuse to submit. We mentioned Chizak on the other side. He served the people of the Soviet Union, bringing them Jesus in the Eucharist. But let's talk about the heroes, there were many. - Mm-hmm, so one story that has not been told yet is of a gentleman I interviewed named Arturo Leon. And he was a political prisoner in Cuba. And he was actually in the military of Cuba right at the time of Castro's revolution. So before Castro was the Batista regime, which was pretty universally disliked, so many people had faith in the revolution that would bring about positive change. Castro actually lied about the nature of his revolution, concealed the fact that he was a communist for a little while after taking over before starting to step in that direction and let his true colors be revealed. And so Arturo's story begins really when he was a child and he used to read readers digest and some other Western publications that his neighbors would get. And through that, he learned not only critical thinking, but also news of communism in Eastern Europe and how horrific it was. So stories like Cardinal Mincente and his fate under the Hungarian regime and other just statistics and obviously anti-Catholic measures that were being taken. So he was already mentally prepared for this. So he remembers seeing right through Castro's lies from the very beginning. He immediately got involved with some of the counter-revolutionary groups and activities. So Cuba, as I mentioned before, was unique in that there was this sort of guerrilla warfare that these resistance groups were able to take against the state. So this really armed militant resistance. And he was eventually arrested for these activities and sentenced to 30 years in prison, which was the longest sentence that one could receive as a political prisoner. Anything beyond that would just merit an execution on the spot. So he ended up serving 17 years of that sentence. An amnesty was negotiated by the Carter administration actually. So after that, he moved to Miami. But he was one of the prisoners known as the Plontados. And this comes from the word for planted or firm. These were the prisoners who refused to submit to re-education or to give in to any of the incentives that were placed upon them in prison to try to induce them to apostatize or to give up or to renounce their beliefs. These prisoners were the ones who were very tough and who would under no circumstances give up. So they, of course, received the worst treatment from the guards. They would have to wear a special yellow uniform to set them apart from the rest. And he remembers hearing through the wall's execution. So he would hear men crying Viva Cristo Rey as they went to their deaths. And his friend, unfortunately, was tortured for refusing to submit. And he just recounted that he considers himself to be not a victim of this regime, even though they did so many terrible things to him, but somebody who stood up and who was part of this resistance movement. He also remembers the secret masses in the prison. So when sometimes there were priests interned and when they were able to find or receive the proper matter for the sacrament, they would actually say mass on Sundays. But even when there were no priests in the circulars, the Catholic prisoners would often get together and recite the prayers of the mass on Sundays. And then when it got to the moment of consecration, they would just make a spiritual communion or bow their heads and then go on. So this closeness to the sacraments, even through these arduous and sometimes almost impossible circumstances, was something that really stood out from history and was really inspiring. And along those lines, one from a separate story, something that came out of the prisons of Cuba that actually also happened in the Spanish Civil War at the hands of the communist soldiers there, I think really illustrates, again, the spiritual warfare element of this system. And that's this little vignette. The guards, of course, many of them were quite sadistic, would sometimes try to get Catholic prisoners to apostatize and to give up the faith by whatever performative action they required. And so pinching the grain of incenses as the Roman murders were asked to do. And they would use these sly words by saying, Oh, you can just go to confession afterwards. If you do this, we'll let you free and you'll be back with your family and that's better for everyone and it's better that you can participate in the life of your church again, what's not to love. And many refused, of course, to trust them essentially or to give up the faith even to a small degree. But sometimes people would cave and it would be after days and days of torture and starvation and they were very much not in the right frame of mind. So only God can judge their souls. But sometimes they would say, okay, fine, I'll make whatever little performance they want and then I can go to confession as soon as I get out of here. It would give up the faith somehow. And then the guards would sadistically just laugh at them and say, great, now you're going to hell too and immediately shoot them on the spot. So just this horrific for a purportedly materialistic atheist regime who doesn't believe in the immortal soul, why would they take such sick pleasure out of destroying a soul in that moment? - Yeah, I've always been struck by that. It's like they're not satisfied to kill you. See, most of the oppressors like a think of a Nero, Nero had no concept of that. He just saw these people are a nuisance. I want to get rid of them, okay? But you see how evil they are and they hate when we use that word because I don't know if they believe in evil. I don't know what communists believe. But it's not enough that you got to shoot the person, not enough, you got to kill them. You got to get them to renounce Jesus Christ. That's the sick and evil part of it. Kristen V. Newton's joining us here at the Frontline with Joe and Joe, her book, When the Sickle Swings, Stories of Catholics Who Survived, Communist Oppression. I, Joe, I'm gonna hand it over to you before the vein pops out of my head 'cause I'm starting to, you know, like a year or all this stuff. No, no, it's seriously because here, I know what I want to ask you, Kristen. 'Cause we don't want to get into too much of the book because we want people to buy the book and go read it for themselves. So that's why I'm throwing all this at you. Why do we allow it? Why, not just as Catholics, but also as Americans, okay? If I was told, there was a professor at my school and I went to Seton Hall University. Oh wait, man, it wasn't Seton Hall, it was somewhere else. But a professor had a poster of Vladimir Lenin on his wall, okay? It's like, okay, so why do we rightly condemn and we, no university would hire who's somebody who was an avowed Nazi? So we'd all have a Nazi. I believe in Nazi ideology. I would say, well, that's a disqualifier. But we allow these people that actually could identify as Marxists, as communists. And nobody says anything about it. They think it's such a wonderful ideology. That's why we're so happy you wrote your book, okay? So that people say, no, no, no, no, no. It's just as evil. Why do we allow it, Kristen? - Yeah, that's a good question. And often we just feel helpless and flabbergasted that why has the world not condemned this ideology that is responsible for millions of deaths and it's continued actions. And a certain degree of this, in my opinion, is actually planned and concentrated. So a book that I would really recommend that is more on the political side is called "American Betrayal" by Diana West, where she essentially outlines communist infiltration into the American government. As early as the FDR administration, his assistant Harry Hopkins, his advisor, was quite cozy with the communists. And we know FDR himself called Joseph Stalin, Uncle Joe, and have this policy of deference towards him, which is really inexplicable unless you think maybe there was some sort of ideological match there. But this really, there's been a concerted effort to kind of whitewash communists. We see in the McCarthy era, Joseph McCarthy was just kind of written off as a buffoon or paranoid and the Vanona cables, which have been released, which are the secret Soviet decryptions, have revealed that actually he was right about a lot of these people who were accused communist spies. And so there is this ideological occupation almost brings into mind the works of Belladotte as well, who I know we've discussed before, who was a communist agent who converted to Catholicism and renounced communism under the influence of Bishop Sheen. She had admitted to placing men in the seminaries who were either true believers in communism or friendly or helpful to the communist project. And that was in the US. So all of this infiltration that was going on in a very direct way in overtly communist countries was sort of going on ideologically targeted towards the church and towards the physical, political establishments in the West too. - You know, I always say on the show that one of the things that we have to do is stop defending and start attacking, like, you know what I mean, ideas, bad ideas. We need to go on the offensive. When I wish, I wish as Catholics in America, we would turn around and say, hold it. And I'm not gonna belabor the point, Kristen, say, hold it. That guy's a professor at Harvard. He's a self-identified communist. And out, throw his resume in the garbage. He's done, move on to the next one. And oh, that's so McCarthy-like. But like you just said, McCarthy was proven to be right. You know, the arguments you like McCarthy 'cause he was pointing out, no, there were, there were communists in the State Department. There were communists in the Army. There were communists in Hollywood. There are still communists in Hollywood. - Go ahead, Kristen, I cut you off. - Yeah, it's also difficult because communism can be sort of split into its elements. So the economic project is obviously less offensive than someone in the true believer of the, or somebody who would defend Stalin in his deportations of ethnic minorities, for example. So the Nazism is something that really is, nobody really supports it for the economic reasons, but communist, supporters of communism kind of have that shield where they can say, oh, well, I condemn the human rights abuses, but the economic policies were fine, but it's kind of refusing to see that there is a connection between these elements that is the problem. - Well, I would think that they're economic, maybe you're looking at their economic policies and their economic ideas, but that's also antithetical to Catholicism, as we said, because Catholic Church recognizes the right to private property and adjust weight and all these things. And so like even on that level to say, well, no, it's unjust. And on top of that, you have to force it on people because who would wanna be a worker in a communist state? I wouldn't wanna be one, and I'm just talking about on paper. Let me not belabor the point, go ahead. - Right, and I mean, yeah, it is seductive too, in that even Marx's works do make some actual real, solid criticism of the capitalist system and do have food for thought in that way, but then translate into this utterly evil ideology in practice when they have ever been implemented. And the absurdity of the communist economic system, so the policy of full employment, for example, meant that not anyone who was of working age at ability could be left unemployed. So they would create these ridiculous jobs. So a clerk to print their seat, one to take their seat from the desk and bring it to the customer and another to sign off on it. And again, this ideologically driven economy that even just taking the religious element out of it, really does not make sense in practice. - No, doesn't make sense at all. So if you're just joining us here at the front line with Jo and Jo Kristen Van Yudens with us, we're discussing her new book, When the Sickle, Swings, Stories of Catholics Who Survives Communist Oppression. Now it is, well, it's sold out on Amazon, thank God, because we want the book to sell, we want more people to read it. And as Jo and I say on the show all the time, to raise our consciousness when it comes to these topics, okay, and educate ourselves, but go buy it at Sofia Institute Press. Jo Restanello. - Let's talk about our lady for a moment, Kristen, and her role in defeating communism. We all know about the Fatima message. She talked about the errors of Russia. But just in general, I think we're at a point in history and we could kind of like, once you kind of give a little commentary on that, we can go into the 21st century. I think we're at a point where the globalism, it's not exactly communism, but it's to be honest with you, one could say it's cultural communism, is out of almost the reach of fixing from the average person. This is how I look at it. I think we have to turn to the supernatural. I turn to our lady to help America. But there was a time even before the now, the here and now where our lady played into this, specifically from the Fatima message. Talk about that and then we could bleed it into the 21st century, where we're seeing trends. Sadly, we haven't learned from history. - So a few specific devotions to our lady come to mind in these movements that I studied, one from Cuba and another from Czechoslovakia. So we'll talk about that one. So Czechoslovakia like Poland is an example of actually successful peaceful protests, bringing down communism in that country. The Czechoslovak overthrow of communism is called the Velvet Revolution, which also translates as gentle revolution of 1989, which means that it was essentially non-violent and was a pretty smooth transition of power. And these really started as Catholic prayer processions. So a gentleman that I interviewed named Franticek McCloshko actually worked closely with the silent church and with the secret bishop, Jan Christol Stromkorez, who later became a cardinal under John Paul II. And they organized a Marian pilgrimage to the Slovak village of Nietzsche the year prior. And this was kind of the first domino to fall in the movement where these Catholic gatherings and pilgrimages would kind of snowball into just generalized freedom protests and people who weren't necessarily strong believing practicing Catholics would join these movements to advocate for the principles, at least, that they were advocating. And this ultimately did have temporal success with the transfer of power and the collapse of communism. And so really this devotion to our lady at the beginning with these great hopes, of course, for what would happen, but ultimately just to honor her right at the beginning. And our Lord through her is what ultimately within the space of just under two years, had this immense effect. And in talking with McCloshko and also, this is a sentiment echoed by many that I interviewed, they ultimately want to get the message across that your first and primary battle is to win your own soul and to get to heaven so that, you know, what is the point of starting the revolution against communism if you still go to hell? And so they had to always keep that in mind that ultimately anything that would happen in the temporal realm on earth in this political sphere was good and yes was an answer to prayer, but ultimately the first frontier is in your own mind and your own soul because we all like to think that we would have resisted, but when you are under the boot of an onslaught of propaganda and coercion and really this mental torture day to day, it can be very difficult to even maintain that control and that freedom of thought. So that is the first thing that you have to just secure your own house before you then go out and organize any of these things. And then the second example would be our Lady of Charity, also known as the Vergen del Cobre of Cuba. And she, this is a devotion that predates communism. So actually it's somewhat of an apparition, but very interesting, the origin. So there were three men who were lost at sea and they see this object coming close to them and they're praying of course this whole time. The object gets closer and it turns out that it's a painting and it's a painting of our Lady. And soon after that, they were rescued. So they credit our Lady with saving their lives and she's become sort of this national patronist of Cuba. So during communism, the National Shrine to her was never touched by Castro, interestingly, to not destroy it or make any sort of moves on it. And then when the Cuban diaspora started coming to the US, they brought, actually smuggled out, one of the images of our Lady. And now it's at this sort of satellite shrine in Miami, which is this huge, beautiful, cultural and religious center of the diaspora. And there was also a temporary shrine to her on the islands where they would train for the Bay of Pigs invasion, actually. So this devotion is very beautiful and poetic. And I read about this in the book, especially because of her relation to rescuing sailors, because as we know, so many people, especially children through the Pedro Pan operation, had to escape Cuba, and many of them actually had to come over the water. And as we know with America, we have the policy where if you can make it out, you gain American citizenship and asylum when you hit the ground. So just to think of her shepherding the people in the same way that she saved these three men from the very origin of the operation, it's just this really beautiful testament to the survival of faith under communism. - Chris and Van Yoon is joining us here with the Frontline with Joe and Joe. When the sickle swings, stories of Catholics who survived communist oppression, so please go out and buy it from Sophia Press, I think sometimes, Chris, and you know, it's true that God put all of us in human history when he did for his reasons. And I say all the time, I think I'm at this point in history because I don't know, you mentioned that you alluded to the idea of sacrificing and resisting like in a real serious way, talk about like with the gun to your head, or worse yet, a gun to your family set, okay? And we've seen that, I don't know that I'd be strong enough to do that. And there's so many of these witnesses that stepped up, whether like you said, whether it was the Nazis, if you think about, you know, Maximilian Colby and obviously your book is out, you know, talking about those who stood up against these communist regimes, I don't know if I'd be able to do it, but let's talk about what we can do. Now, they're not pulling out guns yet in America, but they're trying to cancel you, okay? I wanna just talk about a little bit of the cultural Marxism, I mean, 'cause Gramsci was spot on as far as I'm concerned, okay? He was absolutely right, infiltrate all the institutions. That's how you're gonna corrupt it, including the Roman Catholic Church, probably primarily the Roman Catholic Church. Stalin wasn't happy with that, by the way. I think he had Gramsci exiled. And eventually I think Gramsci repented on his deathbed, at least that's what I read somewhere. Anyway, but he was absolutely right. And all of the cultural institutions, the media universities, government, all of it has been infiltrated by Marxists. And Marx's ideology just applied in a different way, so it doesn't just apply to class, applies to race, applies to gender. Now we don't even know what gender is. Talk about how we as Catholics. Again, nobody's got a gun to our heads yet, but do have to be brave because they can cancel you. They can fire you, they can get you fired, they call the Human Resources Department. Have you terminated 'cause you don't believe in gay marriage where that men can be women and women can be men. I love your ideas. You know where I'm going with all that, Kristen. What are your thoughts? - Yeah, yeah, it's kind of the most popular question that I get about the book. And I think many of these stories, my primary purpose with this book is to record and document these histories. And from a historical perspective also from really the impulse that leads us to venerate the saints is the one that I think for me, at least makes these individual stories resonates so much because they show those day-to-day actions that amount over time to a life well lived for God. So of course, as we know, every Catholic is called to martyrdom. And most of us get away with not being martyred in the real sense, but the white martyrdom as someone I interviewed called it death by a thousand cuts that she endured under communism is what most of us will and are facing in today's landscape. Couple stories come to mind that really speak to this theme and ultimately the advice that arises is that these are daily decisions that have to be made. There might be a dramatic moment of resistance or revolution or what have you, but ultimately these are things that have to be committed to day after day. And then also, as I mentioned earlier, the power of maintaining sovereignty over your own mind. And of course, we don't have sovereignty over our souls. God does, but maintaining that possession of your soul into state of grace and making sure that you preserve your state of grace before any other endeavor. One is of a lady I interviewed named Olga from Czechoslovakia. So she really from a young age was tuned in to how awful communism was and refused to go along. She refused to join the young pioneers, which was the youth organization in the elementary schools. When she got older, she refused to join the young adult group, refused to join the party. And she wore a cross to school. She was a public school teacher. And the principal one day pulled her aside and said, you can't wear that anymore, which is something that could happen here probably in the year 2023. And just this absolute ridiculousness. So she, another thing that comes to mind is you have to be informed about your rights and they will often try to bend the law or pretend it doesn't exist. But she very smartly at that point quoted the Czechoslovakia constitution to him that allowed for freedom of religion. And he kind of had a mask off moment at this point. He was of course a communist party member. And he said, oh, that constitution, that's just a piece of paper. We don't have to abide by that, which is something we hear of course all the time. So this is something where, yeah, she called out his ideology, but also kind of threw it in his face the absolute hypocrisy of what he was saying. Another story that comes to mind is relevant in somewhat of a roundabout way, but I think it speaks to the absolute ideological fidelity to the church and how this has to be something that you insist upon early rather than later because later it will just snowball and get worse. And this is the story of Father Joseph Tufar who was a Slovak priest in the 1940s who was ultimately murdered for the faith. And basically what happened is that in his small town of Chihost, there was what the parishioners to believe to be a eucharistic miracle on Christmas day where when the host was consecrated, the crucifix behind the altar swayed all the way to the left and then all the way to the right and then came to rest in the middle sort of at an angle. And this was a very odd occurrence and people were talking about it, but didn't think too much of it. And then it happened again the next day. At that point, of course, the priest elevated this to the bishop and said we have to investigate this as a potential miracle. And that's also in the communist authorities found out about what happened. They paid Father Tufar a visit and of course accused him of faking the miracle and bullied him and tried to get him to admit to faking it, which of course he would not. Eventually they hauled him into state security and beat him and he eventually succumbed to these injuries unfortunately. But what they wanted him to do was to lie and he didn't know if this was a genuine miracle because it hadn't been investigated or approved by the church yet, but of course he wasn't going to lie and admit to something he hadn't done and he wasn't going to cause scandal to his parishioners and really to the whole Catholic world. And the communists wanted him to play himself in a propaganda film showing how he had faked the miracle. So they rigged up this whole set and they were going to have him standing on the side pulling on a cord when he refused and when they killed him they brought somebody else in an actor to play him and which as an aside, is it again proof that if you don't believe in it, why go to such great lengths to disprove that it's fake in their eyes? And so this is sort of that blurry line between religious persecution and political persecution that we see under communism, which is why it can sometimes be difficult to forward causes for canonization under these regimes. But this in my mind is a clear indication of the type of religious persecution that in some people's mind, they might have gone along with it and thought, oh, this is a minor thing. He's not asking, they're not asking me to deny the faith outright. They just want to disprove this one small miracle. But he refused right then at the beginning and that was enough for them to murder him. But this is the type of attitude I think we need to take is not to give an inch on any of the doctrines of the faith because with one drop of poison, we know that that corrupts the whole thing. - Yeah, I mean, history repeats itself and obviously we know that, okay. And what was it under ancient Rome? - Oh, just a little pinch of incense to the emperor. You could cross your fingers, you don't have to mean it. And how many of those people went to their death 'cause they said, no, whether I mean it or not, I'm not doing that 'cause it causes scandal. And I'm not gonna do that publicly. I'm not gonna pinch incense to the emperor. Fast forward to today, I bring it up all the time. Andrew Garfield, he gets an award at one of the award shows and he says, why don't you just bake a cake talking about Jack Phillips, the Colorado baker? It's the same idea of why don't you just, because the answer's no. - Right. - How's that for an answer? The answer's no, I'm not doing it. I'm not stopping on a picture of Jesus. I told my wife, told my wife, said, babe, if they got a gun to your head, all right, and our son, and they put a picture of Jesus on the floor like the Japanese did, okay. And make me try to be in apostate. I'm not doing it, babe, I'll see you on the other side. I'll see you on the other side, okay. Keep the faith, I'm not, I know, I know in my heart God would give me the strength to do that because I'm not giving into these thugs. I'm not going to let them do that. And I'm not jeopardizing my soul. I'm sorry about the rant. Kristen, we're out of time. Couple final thoughts for our audience, where they can buy the book, title the book, where they can learn more about what you got going on. - Yeah, so one more time, it's called When the Sickle Swings. Here's the cover, subtitle, stories of Catholics who survived communist depression. It's available at SophiaInstitute.com. And I think it would be really a great one for Thanksgiving weekend because it's less than 200 pages and has pictures, so don't be too intimidated. - Awesome. - And you could be that guy at the Thanksgiving table. - Yeah, that's right. You're going to talk about politics anyway. So we might as well have some good facts. - So be prepared, be that guy. - All right, what would you rather talk about? Joe Biden, or would you rather talk about some real history and not what we're living through? Kristen Vignon, as always, thank you for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. And I know we're going to have you back soon. - Thanks a lot. Happy Thanksgiving. - Happy Thanksgiving to you. And thank you all out there for joining us the Veritas Catholic Radio Network, 1350 on your AM dial, 103.9 on your FM dial, spreading the truth of the Catholic faiths in the New York City metropolitan area. Please download the app, share it with your friends. And if you're going to watch this on social media, please hit the share button and help us to spread the word, particularly about an important topic like this. So once again, thank you all. Thanks, Kristen. And remember until the next time that our conversation is your conversation and that conversation is going on everywhere. We'll talk to you soon. (dramatic music)
