Adam Holland: The NY Times, John Birch Society and Father Feeney
Last week, the Times ran an article on the John Birch Society which was brief but good. It's especially vital reading for people who hear about the conspiracy theories driving a lot of far-right politics without knowing their historical context. The John Birch Society invented a number of these theories, and they're still going strong in promoting them. By the way, their national convention this year featured a keynote address by a John Birch supporter named Ron Paul, whose presidential campagin got some of these crackpot theories more attention than they've had in years.
Readers of this blog will find the following quote concerning John McManus, president of the John Birch Society, interesting.
from NYTimes.com:Holding Firm Against Plots by Evildoersby Dan Barry
In late 2005 . . . (Arthur) Thompson became chief executive (of the John Birch Society) after staging a coup with the help of John McManus, the society’s most prominent member, its longtime president and an ultraconservative Roman Catholic. This prompted some ousted Birchers to disseminate recorded snippets of Mr. McManus lecturing to Catholic groups that Judaism became a dead and deadly religion after the establishment of the Catholic Church.
Mr. McManus is also heard to say that militant Jews have influenced the Freemasons, who are “Satan’s agents,” “the enemies of Christ Church” — and, in the view of the John Birch Society, part of the Illuminati conspiracy to cause world upheaval.
Mr. Thompson said that he was initially outraged by these comments, but that he now understands they were made in the context of Mr. McManus’s belief in Catholicism as the one true faith. He said the John Birch Society has Jewish and black members and has never tolerated anti-Semitism or racism, notwithstanding its notorious opposition to much of the civil rights movement.
So McManus' Birch Society conspiracy mongering has roots in radical traditionalist Catholic thinking, which promotes the idea that a conspiracy of Jews and Freemasons works covertly to destroy the Catholic church. Read here for an example of this line of thinking -- an example which praises McManus by name.
Better yet, try this website which features the anti-Jewish writings of the notorious bigot Father Leonard Feeney, founder in 1949 of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This group runs facilities known as the St. Benedict Center of Still River, Massachusetts and Richmond, New Hampshire. Before founding his radical order, Feeney made a habit of espousing extreme hatred of Jews from atop a soap box in Boston Common, as well as from church pulpits and in college classrooms. The church condemned these activities. When Feeney responded with even more provocative activism, he was excommunicated. (Read here. More on this below.)
Three weeks ago, John McManus gave the commencement speech at the Feeneyites' Immaculate Heart of Mary School. According to that school's website (read here), McManus has been
" a friend of the Center and Third Order member of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary since the 1970's."