A Chink in the Armor: An Appendix to A Crisis of Meaning

As I noted in an earlier post, I cut a lot of material from my first draft of the article published yesterday at OnePeterFive on the role of Sacred Scripture in the rise of Modernism. In the list of papal actions provided in Part II, the last item mentioned was Pope Pius XII's Divino Afflante Spiritu. Here's the part that explains how this document represents a turning point in the battle of the Popes against Modernism:

A Chink in the Armor:

Biblical Inerrancy and Divino Afflante Spiritu

That all 73 books included in the canon of Sacred Scripture are entirely free from error is the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church, having been universally proclaimed since the Age of the Fathers.^[1] Pope Leo XIII restated this teaching, underscoring its infallibility as part of the Universal Magisterium, in his 1893 encyclical Providentissimus Deus as follows:

For all the books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost; and so far is it from being possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true. This is the ancient and unchanging faith of the Church, solemnly defined in the Councils of Florence and of Trent, and finally confirmed and more expressly formulated by the Council of the Vatican.^[2]

Commenting on this and related passages in Providentissimus Deus, Pope Benedict XV noted with grief in his encyclical Spiritus Paraclitus that, despite Leo XIII’s clear and emphatic instruction, attacks against the doctrine of biblical inerrancy were being launched from within the Church itself:

But although these words of Our predecessor leave no room for doubt or dispute, it grieves Us to find that not only men outside, but even children of the Catholic Church – nay, what is a peculiar sorrow to Us, even clerics and professors of sacred learning – who in their own conceit either openly repudiate or at least attack in secret the Church’s teaching on this point. We warmly commend, of course, those who, with the assistance of critical methods, seek to discover new ways of explaining the difficulties in Holy Scripture, whether for their own guidance or to help others. But We remind them that they will only come to miserable grief if they neglect Our predecessor’s injunctions and overstep the limits set by the Fathers. Yet no one can pretend that certain recent writers really adhere to these limitations. For while conceding that inspiration extends to every phrase – and, indeed, to every single word of Scripture – yet, by endeavoring to distinguish between what they style the primary or religious and the secondary or profane element in the Bible, they claim that the effect of inspiration – namely, absolute truth and immunity from error – are to be restricted to that primary or religious element. Their notion is that only what concerns religion is intended and taught by God in Scripture, and that all the rest – things concerning “profane knowledge,” the garments in which Divine truth is presented – God merely permits, and even leaves to the individual author’s greater or less knowledge. Small wonder, then, that in their view a considerable number of things occur in the Bible touching physical science, history and the like, which cannot be reconciled with modern progress in science!^[3]

As the above passage makes clear, Benedict XV was well acquainted with the Modernist plan to weaken the doctrine of biblical inerrancy by the introduction of a distinction between matter pertaining to faith and morals on the one hand and matter pertaining to the historical record and physical science on the other. It was a distinction called for by the Modernists of the late 19th century, such as Charles A. Briggs, A. Leslie Lilley and Alfred Loisy^[4]– the last of whom was excommunicated by Pope St. Pius X (†1914) in 1908. Despite Benedict XV’s explicit rejection of this plan – the point-by-point refutation extends over several lengthy paragraphs^[5] – the distinction upon which it turned nonetheless found explicit mention and, as the Modernists would later interpret it, implicit approval in Pius XII’s Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943):

Hence this special authority – or, as they say, authenticity – of the Vulgate was not affirmed by the Council [of Trent] particularly for critical reasons, but rather because of its legitimate use in the Churches throughout so many centuries; by which use indeed the same is shown, in the sense in which the Church has understood and understands it, to be free from any error whatsoever in matters of faith and morals [emphasis added].^[6]

The limiting effect of the final clause – presumably appended by Augustin Cardinal Bea,^[7] who, together with Jacques-Marie Voste, O.P., was largely responsible for the drafting of the encyclical – is as obvious as it is potentially devastating: if the inerrancy of the Latin Vulgate – i.e., the canonically approved normative edition of Sacred Scripture – is to be described as obtaining “in matters of faith and morals,” the question naturally arises as to whether it is equally free from error in matters not pertaining to faith and morals, e.g. those pertaining to the historical record and the natural world – a notion the very suggestion of which could only represent a tremendous victory for the Modernists.

It is certainly possible to argue that, as the passage in question is dealing with the critical estimation of the Latin Vulgate as one among many editions of Sacred Scripture, the phrase “in matters of faith and morals” does not intend to limit in any way the inerrancy of Holy Writ as regards its substance; rather, it merely intends to acknowledge that the received edition of the Vulgate – like all texts which have been passed down through countless generations – can be improved in regards to its form by careful critical evaluation – for example, through comparison with older or newly discovered manuscripts. This is doubtless the manner in which Pius XII understood and promulgated it, for he goes on to say that the exegete must undertake his interpretation of God’s word “in full accord with the doctrine of the Church, in particular with the traditional teaching regarding the inerrancy of Sacred Scripture, and which will, at the same time, satisfy the indubitable conclusion of profane sciences.”^[8]

Nonetheless, the wording and placement of the phrase could not have been more opportune for the enemies of the traditional teaching on plenary inerrancy. It signaled a way around the dogma which did not require denying it outright. A chink in the armor which had been carefully crafted by every Pope since Gregory XVI to defend the inerrancy of Sacred Scripture had been found, and the Modernists knew exactly how to exploit it during the deliberations of the Second Vatican Council.

The original schema of the planned Dogmatic Constitution treating Divine Revelation, which was drawn up by the Preparatory Theological Commission in 1960 and presented to the Central Preparatory Commission for approval the following year, summarized the authentic magisterial teaching on biblical inerrancy as follows:

Because Divine Inspiration extends to everything, the absolute immunity of all Holy Scripture from error follows directly and necessarily. For we are taught by the ancient and constant faith of the Church that it is utterly forbidden to grant that the sacred author Himself has erred, since Divine Inspiration of itself necessarily excludes and repels any error in any matter, religious or profane, as it is necessary to say that God, the supreme Truth, is never the author of any error whatever.^[9]

Three things are noteworthy in regard to this passage: (1) the perennial doctrine of plenary inerrancy was clearly and emphatically presented as such; (2) the phrase “in any matter, religious or profane,” an allusion to and rejection of the distinction proposed by the Modernists, was included; (3) the last phrase, i.e. “of any error whatever,” is actually drawn from Divino Afflante Spiritu – as indicated in footnote 7 of chapter 2 – but without the caveat “in matters of faith and morals.” It would appear that the members of the Preparatory Theological Commission, headed by the notoriously conservative Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, preferred to treat the dubious phrase as charitably as possible – by ignoring it completely.

When the schema was presented for deliberation by the Council Fathers in 1962, a fierce conflict broke out. Spearheaded by Franz Cardinal König of Vienna, who spoke on behalf of the Germanic contingent, a number of progressive prelates came forward to express their reservations regarding the traditional teaching on biblical inerrancy. Cardinal König himself was so brazen as to flatly assert that Sacred Scripture contains numerous positive errors pertaining to history and natural science, and that the Constitution must, as a result, limit the application of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy to matters of faith and morals alone.^[10] More than 180 Council Fathers – a small but nonetheless significant minority – stood firmly against any caveat being added to the text which could be seen as limiting the scope of the teaching in the way proposed by Cardinal König. When the assembly eventually split into irreconcilable factions over this and similar matters, Pope John XXIII personally intervened by ordering a new schema be drafted under the joint supervision of Cardinal Ottoviani and Cardinal Bea. The document would go through a total of 5 major revisions – the third of which saw the participation of a young Fr. Joseph Ratzinger – before being passed in the Fourth Session by a vote of 2,344 to 6. The final version of the paragraph treating biblical inerrancy reads as follows:

Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of our salvation [emphasis added]. Therefore “all Scripture is divinely inspired and has its use for teaching the truth and refuting error, for reformation of manners and discipline in right living, so that the man who belongs to God may be efficient and equipped for good work of every kind.”^[11]

As the final vote indicates, nearly all of those Council Fathers who initially objected to König’s proposal allowed themselves to be convinced that this phrasing was sufficiently amenable to an orthodox interpretation; the appending of 2 Timothy 3:16-17 to the paragraph apparently allayed all fears that “that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of our salvation” was, in reality, nothing more than a different way of saying “in matters of faith and morals.” As for the more than 2,100 Council Fathers who didn’t object to Cardinal König’s proposal, it seems they were either unconcerned with or even approving of the possibility of the magisterial teaching on biblical inerrancy being effectively eviscerated in favor of a position previously condemned as heretical.^[12]

In any case, the fact that a high-ranking prelate could stand in assembly with his brother bishops and speak out against an infallible teaching of the Magisterium, and have the overwhelming majority either agree with him or, at least, do nothing to contradict him, is a sobering indication of the breadth of the apostasy in the 1960's, and it confirms the suspicion that the dubious phrase contained in Divino Afflante Spiritu – 20 years before the opening of Vatican II – was not simply an example of poor wording, but was rather placed there as a signal to all who held with Modernism that the tide was turning in their favor. The long wait which began with Gregory XVI and Pius IX was nearing its end; soon, they could let fall the masks of obedience and piety and work openly to realize that dream of the Enlighteners which, as Leo Cardinal Suenens would later observe, really amounted to “the French Revolution in the Church:” Vatican II.

---

Footnotes:

[1] St. Gregory of Nazianz: “We who extend the accuracy of the Spirit to every letter and serif will never admit, for it would be impious to do so, that even the smallest matters were recorded in a careless and hasty manner by those who wrote them down.” Orations, 2:105. Cf. St. Clement of Rome, First Letter to the Corinthians, 45:1-3; St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 2:28:2.

[2] Pope Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus, §20. Cf. Council of Trent, Fourth Session (1546), Decree Concerning the Canonical Scriptures; First Vatican Council, Third Session (1870), Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith Dei Filius, §13.

[3] Benedict XV, Spiritus Paraclitus, §§18-19.

[4] Cf. Briggs, Charles A. (1909). “Modernism Mediating the Coming Catholicism,“ in The North American Review, Vol. 189, pp. 879-880; Lilley, A. Leslie (1908). The Programme of Modernism, pp. 15-87; Loisy, Alfred (1912). The Gospel and the Church, pp. 23-52.

[5] Cf. Spiritus Paraclitus. §§17-25.

[6] Pius XII, Divino Afflante Spiritu, §21.

[7] Augustin Bea (1881-1968) was a German Jesuit biblical scholar who served as the first president of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity. He also served as personal confessor to Pope Pius XII. He was the grand architect of modern ecumenism, and the driving force behind Nostra Aetate.

[8] Divino Afflante Spiritu, §46.

[9] Schema Constitutionis Dogmaticae de Fontibus Revelationis (1961), §12. Joseph A. Komonchak (Trans.)

[10] Cf. Grillmeier, Alois Cardinal (1989). "The Divine Inspiration and the Interpretation of Sacred Scripture," in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, Vol. 3, pp. 205-206. Also: Zia, Mark Joseph (2006). „The Inerrancy of Scripture and the Second Vatican Council,“ in Faith & Reason, pp. 175-192.

[11] Second Vatican Council, Fourth Session (1965), Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum, §11.

[12] The clear parallel to the 2014-2015 Synod on the Family should be obvious to all.

A Crisis of Meaning: Sacred Scripture and the Rise of Modernism

I was recently invited by the good folks over at OnePeterFive to write an article on the role of biblical studies in the Modernist crisis. I've written a few shorter pieces on it over the past year (for example, here and here) but never treated the matter in the depth it deserves. Excited by the idea of writing an article on a subject I'm greatly interested in for a publication I highly respect, I gladly accepted the kind and generous offer. Little did I realize, however, that the first draft of an already limited outline would grow to more than 50 pages, with no end in sight. After making some painful editorial decisions, I pruned everything down to 10 pages and submitted the article for review. The first half of the article was published yesterday, the second half today. I invite all my readers to go check it out:

A Crisis of Meaning:

Sacred Scripture and the Rise of Modernism

Part I

Part II

Also, I have a lot of material that ended up getting cut out, but which adds depth to some of the points skimmed over or hinted at in the article, due to concerns over length. Provided there is some interest, I will publish some of that material here on the blog over the new few days.

The Protesting Pope

In the 500 years since its inception, the Protestant revolt has evolved from the erroneous opinions of a single mad monk into a thousand-headed hydra of heresy, with each head snapping at the other almost as frequently as at the Catholic Church itself. Nonetheless, the many heads have remained joined at one common point - a point which Protestant theologians such as Paul Tillich and Dietrich Bonhoeffer desired to see writ large on the flag of modern Protestantism: Ecclesia semper reformanda est, i.e. "The Church is always to be reformed."

Today, speaking to bishops and faithful gathered in Florence, Pope Francis made this profoundly Protestant thesis his own, quoting it verbatim.

As disturbing as that may be, it was not the most unsettling part of Pope Francis' speech. That honor goes to his diatribe against what is becoming a major theme of his pontificate, i.e. the "Pelagianism" he sees as infecting the Church. National Catholic Register's Edward Pentin reports:

Pelagianism, the Pope told faithful gathered in Florence cathedral, "prompts the Church not to be humble, selfless and blessed. And it does so with the appearance of being a good." Such an approach, he added, "brings us confidence in structures, organizations, in perfect planning because it’s abstract." 

But often "it leads us also to take a controlling, hard, regulatory style," he said. "The law gives to the Pelagian security to feel superior, to have a precise orientation. This is its strength, not the light of the breath of the Spirit." 

"In facing evils or the problems of the Church," the Pope went on, "it is useless to look for solutions in conservatism and fundamentalism, in the restoration of practices and outdated forms that aren’t even able to be culturally meaningful."

Of course, we've heard Pope Francis speak on the subject of Pelagianism before. In fact, his barbed quip "self-absorbed promethean neopelagians" - aimed squarely at faithful Catholics of the traditional sort - has become something of a defiant self-appellation among the same. And that Pope Francis frowns upon any effort to restore the time-honored traditions of the Church - including her ancient liturgy - is not exactly news. So, what's so unsettling about this speech?

A combination of context and historical precedent. 

It was none other than Martin Luther himself who leveled the charge of "Pelagianism" against the Catholic Church on the eve of his own revolution. In his monograph entitled Augustine of Hippo and Martin Luther on Original Sin and Justification of the Sinner, Jairzinho Lopes Pereira of the University of Helsinki explains (p. 312):

Complaints against the Pelagian trend of theology of his own time is recurrent in young Luther. One of the most striking is found in Operationes in Psalmos (1519-1521). What is worse, he stressed in this work, is the fact that there was a new form of Pelagianism; the one he was fighting. It was worse than any other because it was not declared. It was Pelagianism disguised as an orthodox doctrine. The Reformer regarded Pelagianism as the most dangerous and pernicious of heresies (Inter omnes autem gladios imiorum maximum et nocentissimum meo iuditio merito pelagianam impietatem censebimus) and the source of all sorts of idolatries (hic error fons est universae idolatriae). Not surprisingly, he identified it with the very human tendency to state human righteousness (iustitia hominis) to the detriment of that of faith (iusitia fidei). 

Augustine, Luther pointed out, fought Pelagians as declared heretics. He himself was fighting the very same heretical trend in men protected by the Church, under the skin of orthodox theologians. So Pelagianism, Luther stressed, is a timeless threat to Christian faith. [...] After Augustine's death the heresy rose; it not only did not find opposition, but also was openly allowed to rule within the Roman Church and universities. Nothing can be more dangerous, yet it remained in the Church, Luther claimed (pelagianos error vere omnium saeculorum error est, saepius opressus quidem, sed nunquam extinctus).

Sound familiar?

As one brave priest noted, the once-rhetorical question, "Is the Pope a Catholic?" no longer provokes laughter. Perhaps it is time to replace it with a more pointed question: "Is the Pope a Protestant?"

Welcome to the War

If you've been paying attention to coverage of the Catholic Church lately, you might have noticed a spike in the appearance of terminology borrowed from the bellicose arts, with words like "conflict," "battle" and even "war" being used to describe the goings-on in and around the Vatican these days. While such talk is pretty standard fare for faithful Catholic publications, it has recently spread beyond the narrow borders of Catholic blogdom and entered the mainstream of polite society: Tess Livingstone of The Australian, Tim Stanley of The Telegraph, Ross Douthat of The New York Times and now Damian Thompson of The Spectator have all come to the same conclusion: we are on the brink of civil war.

Just more media spin? A bit of hyperbole to increase revenue? Some would like you to think so. Cardinal Donald Wuerl recently appeared on World Over Live with Raymond Arroyo in part to assure viewers that there exists "no division on the core teachings of the faith" among the bishops. We are, I suppose, to ignore voices such as that of Polish Archbishop Henryk Hoser, who recently stated that "some bishops [...] do not even accept the official teachings of the Church." And if we don't ignore them - if we reject the "Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows" narrative - and instead view events within the framework of a "politically partisan narrative," then we deserve to be silenced, as Ross Douthat found out after his commentary provoked the ire of a gaggle of progressive Catholic intellectuals and university professors.

That is, if it weren't for the fact that such talk of war is not limited to the authors of newspaper editorials. Just yesterday, Cardinal Maradiaga informed reporters that Pope Francis is "prepared to battle" his own Curia in order to push through his desired reforms. And in this morning's homily, the Pope himself trained his sights yet again upon the "Doctors of the Law" and fired off a characteristically veiled yet effective warning shot:

God has included us all in salvation! All! This is the beginning. We with our weaknesses, with our sins, with our envy, jealousies, we all have this attitude of excluding which - as I said - can end in wars.

While I congratulate Douthat, Thompson and the rest for refusing to go along with the official narrative and calling it like it is, I have to ask: Where the hell have you guys been for the last 50 years?

For the record: civil war is already upon us. Anyone paying attention knows that the walls have been scaled, the gates have been breached, and the enemy has set up camp in our own court. All that's left is the castle keep, surrounded on all sides by men brandishing torches. And now you think we are on the brink of civil war? Tell that to the three generations of Catholics who have been fighting tooth and nail to preserve every scrap of Sacred Tradition they can get their hands on from the corruption of the grand Aggiornamento. Tell that to those who were reduced to tears as sanctuaries were being desecrated, statues removed, altars broken, and communion rails torn out. Tell that to the scores of good men who were turned away from the priesthood because they objected to the rampant homosexualism of the seminaries. Tell that to the faithful who were cast out of the Church for having the gall to demand that she remain loyal to Christ's teachings 30 years ago.

The only thing new about the 2015 Synod was the brazenness with which the heretics and apostates pushed their revolutionary agenda. They're not even trying to prop up a 'Hermeneutic of Continuity' anymore. It's a rupture, a break - in other words, a schism - from Catholic Tradition. They know it, we know it, and it's time you guys start reporting on it.

Welcome to the war. It's about time you showed up.

(For my Spanish readers: Ahora en Español)

On Feminism, Homofascism, and the Errors of Russia: A Video Crash-Course

This post will be short on text, but rich in ideas. I present to you three videos, each one longer and of wider scope than the one preceeding it. It's a kind of intellectual journey into the heart of darkness, but one which will leave you with a much better understanding of what's actually going on in the Church and the world today.

The first is quite short - ca. 4 minutes - and offers a profile of the Minnesota chapter of the subversive "Catholic" group Call to Action. While there is plenty of interesting information to be found online regarding this group - including this blurb on its history - the video offers viewers some insight into how the people involved in the group translate their particular ideology into action. While watching the video, be sure to note how the views espoused by the members of Call to Action are shared by numerous bishops and cardinals currently attending the Synod on the Family, as can be gathered from the statements being issued almost daily from the Holy See Press Office. (A shout out to my #RosicaBlockParty compatriots.)

The second video is somewhat longer - ca. 20 minutes - and provides a brief yet very informative history of the concept of Political Correctness as a tool of social change, how it was introduced into the American educational system, and what it intends to bring about (H/T to Ann Barnhardt for the link). As should become apparent while watching the presentation, Call to Action and similar groups claiming to represent the "oppressed" within the Catholic Church were born from the ideology of the people discussed here.

The third video is considerably longer - ca. 100 minutes - but well worth your time, especially if you watch it to the very end. I discussed this video in some detail back in June of this year, but I consider its content to be so vital in understanding the course of western social politics in the post-Cold War era that I do not hesitate to remind readers of its existence. It contains the testimony of one Yuri Bezmenov, a.k.a. Tomas D. Schuman, an ex-KGB agent who defected to the West in the 1970's, on the topic of socio-political subversion. Mr. Bezmenov's presentation puts the ideology of the Frankfurter School of Marxism, discussed in the previous video, into its larger strategic context, which has as its goal nothing other than the subjugation of the human spirit and the acquisition of totalitarian power.

This, gentle reader, is what Our Lady of Fatima referred to as "the errors of Russia," and they are running rampant in the halls of the Vatican today.

Please share this material with your family, friends and loved ones - particularly with young people attending high school, university or college. It could well save them a life-time of intellectual slavery and an eternity of spiritual suffering.

I leave you with a brief but insightful excerpt from an article written by the recently deceased Solange Hertz (RIP), a true daughter of Holy Mother Church:

How do you get a cat to eat hot pepper? This question, a classic in Marxist training manuals, opens an exercise in revolutionary technique. The answer, to which the student is led by logic and common experience, explains how Communism has been able to take over a third of the world without serious opposition. 

How does one get a cat to eat pepper, a condiment as unpalatable to him as Marxist doctrine is to healthy human nature? The first answer to present itself, says the primer, is obvious: Force open the cat’s jaws and cram the pepper in.

Wrong, the student is told, because the cat’s willing cooperation is lacking. The second answer - to conceal the pepper in a tasty fish - is equally inadequate, because as soon as the cat detects the pepper he simply regurgitates it. 

The correct answer: Sprinkle the pepper all over the cat’s mat. When he lies on it, the pepper will cling to his fur and sting, so that he will soon be licking himself to get it off. This method assures perfect assimilation because (1) the cat is actually ingesting, (2) entirely on his own initiative, (3) and a completely conditioned initiative at that, (4) pepper, which he hates.

How To Subvert A Nation: An Insider Explains

Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov
1939-1993

Below, I present a transcript of the first 10 minutes of a lecture delivered by one Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov, also known as Tomas D. Schuman, a KGB-trained informant who defected to the West in 1970 and brought with him his detailed understanding of the system of socio-political manipulation employed by the U.S.S.R. known as subversion. The lecture was given sometime in the early 1980's in Los Angeles, but it has lost nothing of its actuality. In fact, many of the statements made by Mr. Bezmenov border on the prophetic in light of the sweeping changes currently taking place in western nations - especially in the United States.

I strongly recommend to all my readers that they watch the complete presentation. Twice, in fact, though perhaps not in one sitting. The first time you watch it, ask yourself how the tactics of subversion are being employed to shape politics and culture in both the secular and the religious sphere today. Useful reflections are to be had on, for example, the revelations of Bella Dodd, the Second Vatican Council and its aftermath, the 2015 Synod, and the recent Supreme Court ruling on sodomite "marriage", just to name a few issues of great interest to Catholics. The second time you watch it, ask yourself how we can effectively counteract these measures without breaking the law and without resorting to violence. The social conservatives of the world have been one step behind the ultra-progressives for the last 50 years because they have failed to understand the tactics of subversion, let alone to formulate effective responses. To react with hatred and/or violence, beyond being contrary to the Gospel, actually helps the opposition, as it enables them present themselves as the oppressed victims of unfair discrimination.

If you're feeling particularly plucky, share this information with your homosexual associates, should you have any. As Mr. Bezmenov explains, homosexuals, after being openly promoted during the subversion process, are often among the first victims once the new regime takes power. These are what subverters refer to as "useful idiots". To take a page from Soviet history: While homosexuality was legalized at the start of the Soviet Revolution under Lenin, it was re-criminalized under Stalin with severe penalties, which not infrequently ended in a Siberian gulag.

I don't normally ask my readers to share content, but I'm making an exception here. Please share this video with everyone you know. Start discussions on how to counteract the tactics of subversion peacefully and legally. Call out subverters by name. Do not allow yourself to be distracted by what are strategically superficial issues. Regardless of what you think the 'Errors of Russia' are in detail - Communism, Socialism, Materialism, Evolutionism, Atheism - the method of subversion discussed below is most certainly the delivery system.

***

Subversion is a term - if you look in a dictionary or the criminal code, for that matter - usually explained as a part of an activity to destroy things like religion, a government system, the political or economical system of a country, and usually it's linked to espionage and such romantic things as blowing up bridges, derailing trains, cloak-and-dagger activity in Hollywood style. What I'm going to talk about now has absolutely nothing to do with the cliché of espionage, i.e. the KGB activity of collecting information.

Not subversion. Or is it? Discuss.

The greatest mistake, or misconception, I think, is that, whenever we are talking about the KGB, for some strange reason, starting from Hollywood movie makers to professors of political science and "experts" on Soviet Affairs - Kremlinologists, as they call themselves - they think that the most desirable thing for [Yuri] Andropov and the whole KGB is to steal the blueprint of some supersonic jet, bring it back to the Soviet Union and sell it to the Soviet Military Industrial Complex. This is only partly true.

If we take the whole time, money and manpower that the Soviet Union, and the KGB in particular, spends outside of the borders of the U.S.S.R., we will discover - of course, there are no official statistics, unlike with the CIA or FBI - that espionage as such occupies only 10-15% of the time, money and manpower. 15% of the activity of the KGB. The remaining 85% is always subversion. And unlike in dictionary - Oxford dictionary - English, subversion in Soviet terminology always means a destructive, aggressive activity aimed at destroying the nation, country or geographical area of your enemy. So, there's no romantics in there. Absolutely no blowing up bridges, no microfilm in Coca-Cola cans - nothing of that sort. No James Bond nonsense. Most of this activity is overt, legitimate and easily observable if you take the time and trouble to observe it. But, according to the law and law enforcement systems of the western civilizations, it's not a crime! Exactly because of misconceptions and the manipulation of terms. We think that a subverter is a person who is going to blow up our beautiful bridges. No! A subverter is an exchange student, a diplomat, an actor, an artist, a journalist like myself - as I was 10 years ago.

Now, subversion is an activity which requires two-way traffic. You cannot subvert an enemy which does not want to be subverted. If you know the history of Japan, for example, before the 20th century, Japan was a closed society. The moment a foreign boat came to the shores of Japan, the Imperial Japanese Army came to politely tell them to get lost. And if an American salesman came to the shores of Japan - say, 60 or 70 years ago - and said, "Oh, I have a very beautiful vacuum cleaner for you! And with good financing!" he was told, "Please leave, as we do not need your vacuum cleaner." If he didn't leave, they shot him, to preserve their culture, ideology, traditions and values intact. You were not able to subvert Japan.

You cannot subvert the Soviet Union, because the borders are closed, the media is censored by the government, the population is controlled by the KGB and internal police. With all the beautiful glossy pictures in Time magazine and the magazine America, which is published by the American Embassy in Moscow, you cannot subvert Soviet citizens because the magazine never reaches Soviet citizens; it's collected from the newsstands and thrown into the garbage can.

Subversion can only be successful when the initiator, the actor, the agent of subversion has a responsive target. It's two-way traffic. The United States is a receptive target of subversion. But there is no response similar to that one from the United States to the Soviet Union. It stops halfway somewhere; it never reaches its target.

Sun-Tzu
ca. 534-453 B.C.

The theory of subversion goes all the way back to 2,500 years ago. The first human being who formulated the tactics of subversion was a Chinese philosopher by the name of Sun-Tzu, ca. 500 B.C. He was an adviser to several imperial courts in ancient China. And he said, after long meditation, that, to implement state policy in a war-like manner, it's the most counterproductive, barbaric and inefficient to fight on a battlefield. You know that war is a continuation of state policy, right? So if you want to successfully implement your state policy, and you start fighting, this is the most idiotic way to do it. The highest art of warfare is not to fight at all, but to subvert anything of value in the country of your enemy, until such time that the perception of reality by your enemy is screwed up to such an extent that he does not perceive you as an enemy, and that your system, your civilization and your ambitions look, to your enemy, as an alternative - if not desirable, then, at least, feasible. "Better red than dead." That is the ultimate purpose, the final stage of subversion, after which you can simply take your enemy without a single shot being fired, if the subversion is successful. This is, basically, what subversion is. As you can see, not a single mention of blowing up bridges. Of course, Sun-Tzu didn't know about blowing up bridges; maybe there were not that many bridges at that time.

The basics of subversion are being taught to every student in KGB schools in the U.S.S.R. and to the officers of military academies. I'm not sure if the same author is included in the list of reading for American officers, to say nothing about ordinary students of political science. I had difficulty to find a translation of Sun-Tzu in the library of the University of Toronto and later on here, in Los Angeles. It's a book which is not available to, but rather forced on every student in the U.S.S.R. - every student who is taught to be looking further in his future career with foreigners. [...]

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For the entire presentation, which includes an incredible amount of useful information, such as a detailed explanation of the four classic stages of subversion, please watch the video below:

BONUS

After watching this video, you will never look at an image such as the following, which shows Russian President and former KGB officer Vladimir Putin engaged in a Judo throw, in the same way. Why are these events always so heavily publicized? Why Judo? Mr. Bezmenov explains it all, without even having lived long enough to see it himself, as he was killed in a mysterious car crash in 1993.

A clear signal to everyone who knows what it means.