Ezra Pound - Church Peril

An excerpt from, “Ezra Pound Speaking – Radio Speeches of World War II” edited by Leonard W. Doob, Greenwood Press, 1978:

I am speaking as promised to the students of Fordham, and professors, and other Catholic universities. 

When I was a young man in America, one heard a good deal of talk about the union of the churches. It was very nice and humanitarian on the surface. And one heard less of a more bizarre proposition, namely, that of Anglo-Israel, all dressed up with the Stone of Scone on which Scotch’s King’s were recrowned, now it is in Westminster Abbey, and about the prophet Isaiah, and the rest of the stage set, “hast given us the gates of thine enemies” and so on. Well, comin’ to Europe I thought nothin’ about either of these movements or drags for the next 30 years and very probably you didn’t either, those of you who are old enough to have heard of the phantasies of the year 1900. But that is not the end of the story. A few weeks ago in London there was a powwow between the Archbishop of Canterbury and a Catholic Archbishop, or Cardinal, and a high Rabbi. And if I were a Catholic, I should want to know more about what that meeting was up to. I should want, quite seriously, to see that conventicle in historic perspective. That perspective is very clearly outlined, or indicated in a book called La Sibille, by Zielinski, a Polish writer who seems to me to be imbued with sincere piety. But who sees Judaism in direct contrast, spiritual, theological contrast, with the Christian faith. 

Many other writers have written on the gift of earlier Mediterranean philosophers to the developments of the Church dogma. Zielinski calls this the MATERIAL influence of Hellenism on Christianity. But he takes what is, to me at least, a new angle of analysis. He speaks of the psychologic preparation for Christianity that was there in the Greek and Roman religions, both the religion of Delphi, that is of the cult of Apollo and in that of Ceres Demeter, Mater Dolorosa, and in less degree in some of the more cults. 

Few of us know that the Mithraic religion identified their saviour with Love. As in the gospels we read: God is love, so in Mithraic worship, or in at least one praise of Mithra, we find the same words: is Love; Mithra is love. 

Zielinski offers a fairly complete list of prototypes, of the essentially Catholic beliefs, I say essentially Catholic because they are quite patently NON- Jewish, and ANTI-Jewish, and they are specifically the features of Catholicism which Protestantism has wiped out. 

I think you should consider these things. The Jews do not honor the Virgin, they do not honor the Mother of God in any form. Neither do the Protestants. Mother Mary gets a look in at Christmas, that is, on the anniversary of our Lord’s birth, on about the same footing as the Sheperds and Magi, just as the Catholic Church notices the Semitic period once a year in the prayer for the perfidious Jews on the anniversary of the crucifixion. 

And Zielinski’s term for Protestantism is “REJEWdiazed religion.” But I am not so much intent on the theology as on the immediate ecclesiastical polity of the enemies of faith. He points out, I think uncontradictably, that the people who got converted to Christianity in the early centuries were, as Zielinski points out, the pagans, and the people who most pertinaciously opposed the new religion of Christianity were the Jews. Various attempts at syncretism preceded the Conversion of Constantine, and the formulation of the Catholic or general church and emperors of other empires had felt the need of a single religion for all their people. The Tarquins were converted to Apollo, there was a fusion of Delphi with the Persians, Ptolemy First wanted a single cult for his subjects, and Seleukos held out against Ptolemy and Lysimacus. In short, there is nothing essentially new in an emperor’s wanting a synthetic and inclusive religion for political ends. 

And remains of these syncretisms persist in great beauty in Christian ritual, and in the Catholic disposition. Isis, Demter Mary, the fans in the Easter Mass at Siena. The Greek church held out against Rome in calling itself orthodox and not the General Church. The Greeks by that time were not a people ruling an empire. Given the Roman empire there was a political need of a general or universal religion for the whole empire, which claimed more or less to be the circle of lands, the whole world. 

As to the seriousness of the Anglican church, Brooks Adams sums that up fairly completely when he remarks with perfect accuracy, the relation of Christ’s blood and body to the bread of the sacrament was changed five times in the course of a life time, by royal decree or act of Parliament. 

The Brits are a theatrical and not a religious people. And the last meeting in London was not wholly religious in nature. The Anglican church is a national church. The Church of Rome was an imperial church at the outset. A Protestant sect is by definition cut off from universality. But today we are faced by a new INTERNATIONAL empire, a new tyranny, that hates and bleeds the whole world. I refer to the empire of international usury, that knows no faith and no frontiers. It is called international finance, and the Jew and the Archbishop in London are at work for that tyranny trying to draft a universal religion in defense of the infamy of the usurers. It is DEMOCRATIC in principles and I think the Catholic representative is ill- advised to put his head into the noose. As a democratic and usurious combine, the Catholic is in a minority of ONE against TWO. He will always be outvoted, and I can not see that this conduces to Catholic welfare. A universal church of the usurers would be very poor substitute for religion. 

An excerpt from, “Pope Francis: ‘Usury humiliates and kills’” By Devin Watkins, Vatican News, February 3, 2018:

Pope Francis denounced usury and financial exploitation in an address to an Italian organization dedicated to its elimination.

Pope Francis denounced usury and financial exploitation in an address to an Italian organization dedicated to its elimination.

“Usury humiliates and kills,” the Pope said. “Usury is a grave sin. It kills life, stomps on human dignity, promotes corruption, and sets up obstacles to the common good.”

He said this type of financial exploitation – which involves lending money at unreasonably high rates of interest – is an ancient evil that must be prevented through education.