"REBELLION TO TYRANTS . . ."

Last Sunday was set aside by American Catholics as a day of "prayer and protest" against the Communists' trial of Cardinal Mindszenty. In Manhattan's St. Patrick's Cathedral, Francis Cardinal Spellman--who received his red hat with Mindszenty at the 1946 consistory--delivered a remarkable sermon:

" 'A new god has come to you, my people. His fiery eyes do not flash through clouds of incense or from altar candles . . . This new god is not a stone statue worn smooth by the kisses of the faithful--he was not born in heaven . . . The new god is born from earth and blood--he strides ahead, and under the thunder of his steps the globe trembles from East to West. This is the red god. The Seine shudders at his impact, and tries to break its banks. Westminster trembles before him like Jericho, and across the green ocean his red shadow falls on the walls of the White House. Hosanna! New god.'

"My dear friends, [these] are words of an Hungarian Communist,* words that echo the thoughts of men depraved and deranged--men who do not know truth, love, justice or faith . . . These lines . . . are taught to the youth of red-enshackled lands . . . where everybody is afraid of everybody else, where even a son fears his father and fathers fear their own blood-sons, as all become serfs and victims of the relentless god of Baal! . . . They are wild words of warning, and, unless we listen well and realize that we must counteract them by concerted, constant prayer and action, then these words but foretell America's and the whole world's doom.

"May 8, 1945--V-E day! On that day I delivered from this pulpit a prayer of thanksgiving for the victory of the hour, begging peace with justice . . . The peace that came was not God's peace; and because in the ensuing postwar years men's hearts have not been won back to God, I must this day--as a protest against the crucifixion of humanity--entreat your prayers for persecuted, tortured, victimized Cardinal Mindszenty . . ."

It Is Full Time . . . "From the very hour he was taken away in the black of night from his home, his flock, his aged mother, Cardinal Mindszenty became the victim of torturings and druggings that put him beyond the reach or realm of human help. It was he himself who said to me, when he was the honored guest here less than two years ago, 'My enemies can take from me no more than my life, and that has already been given to God.'

"No, the physical Cardinal Mindszenty can no longer be saved. It is the spiritual Cardinal Mindszenty in his martyrdom of mind and body that we can fortify by our prayers, that in his soul he may know that in another part of the world other men are holding high God's torch of justice . . . And in our own dear land each free man ... must protect and fight to keep his own integrity of conscience, his own God-given freedoms ... to save America and the rest of the democratic, God-loving world from trickery, torturings, disasters and defeat . . .

"I shall never cease to pray and labor to protect America, and warn and work against Communism and all the evils growing from out its rotted roots, for I believe that 'rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.'

"I [have] witnessed the sufferings of men in a world trapped by fear, famine and madness called Communism ... I avow that unless the whole American people, without further ostrichlike actions and pretenses, unite to stop the Communist floodings of our own land, our sons, for the third and last time, shall be summoned ... to bear arms against those who would desecrate and destroy them. Yea, it is full time that a strong and vigilant America unite in prayer and protest . . ."

If This Be Treason . . . "Therefore, I beg you, my beloved people, let us not confuse prudence with lack of vision ... as we watch nation after nation fall victim to Communism, for prudence is often but an excuse for silence, procrastination and compromise. Even today, as we read newspaper releases from the Communist-controlled press of Budapest . . . about a cardinal priest whom, so little time ago, we took unto our own hearts and homes--millions of Americans refuse to recognize that we ourselves are faced with these same merciless dangers . . . The Communists believe the American public is ... willing to be drugged into believing whatever leaves them their own comforts . . . But are we ... the tools and the fools for which the Communists take us?

"When the cardinal confessed to treason against the government in Hungary, he but professed his loyalty to his country. If this be treason, to deny allegiance to an atheistic Communist government--then thank God Cardinal Mindszenty confessed to treason, as would I, if this free land of America were ever conquered . . ."

* Arpad Toth, a journalist and music critic.

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