Pray for Pope Francis

On my reading list, when I get through reading at least two other books, are two books by Paul Kengor. The one is The Devil and Karl Marx. But before that, I want to read The Devil and Bella Dodd. Unfortunately, I have lately had such a wealth of books to read I barely do anything else. So, I was happy to find this "book report" on The Devil and Bella Dodd at Crisis Magazine in The Roots of Woke: The Devil and Bella Dodd by Joseph Serwach.

Bella Dodd was a community organizer before the term became "cool."  She was Saul Alinski before he wrote Rules for Radicals and dedicated it to Lucifer.

Where did all this woke stuff come from? The Devil and Bella Dodd shows that today’s progressives follow the same strategy, script, and seeds American communists planted in Catholic seminaries and U.S. universities 86 years ago.

...snip...

The roaring rapids of social media news feeds means few modern Americans recognize Dodd. Still, her name was once universally known (her flip from communist organizer to baptized Catholic speaking to everyone from Congress to small school audiences) made her the ultimate party switcher. The closest we come today is Tulsi Gabbard moving from Democrat presidential candidate to Fox News host.

Dodd (1904-1969) was a sharp attorney and radical warrior, a key “fixer” at the dawn of the American communist movement. She organized efforts to infiltrate and undermine key U.S. institutions before she changed sides and shared her story in the 1950s. Her 1,281-page FBI file, one of the largest ever found during a FOIA request, remains mostly classified 53 years after her death. But the authors have obtained several hundred pages to date while also tracking down people who knew her.

So, what changed Dodd's mind? What, in other words, made her repent, for that is what repent means, to change one's mind? It seems Father Fulton Sheen had something to do with it, although in reality only the Holy Spirit can perform such miracles. Men can only be there to the mop up work. That is not to denigrate Sheen's efforts, but to place the credit where due. The fact is that communism is antithetical to Christianity. Communism is often described as atheistic, but in reality it hates God. It wants to replace God as our savior. Communism partakes of the Original Sin, Lucifer's sin.  It is, as Sheen says, a religion itself.  And that religion is the worship of Lucifer:

For years, she believed she was fighting for a revolution to undermine a corrupt American system. Still, Fr. Fulton Sheen wrote multiple books and took to the radio, calling atheistic communism “a religion to destroy a religion, a politics which is a religion.

” Dodd noticed, “The little sparks of my conscience caught fire. I began to realize and to feel uneasy at the contradictions between what the Communists preached and what they did.”

You can read the rest of the article to find out how Dodd found her way back to God. Pope Francis seems particularly sympathetic to communism. People will say that Francis is socialist, but that is a distinction without a difference.

I have had people, who don't read the Bible and don't attend church, say that Jesus was a socialist. They often cite the story of Jesus's conversation with the rich young man in Luke. Jesus advised the rich young man to sell all he owned and give it to the poor, then come and follow Jesus. This supposedly showed that Jesus was in favor of redistribution of weath. But in fact the point of the story is that while wealth is not sinful in itself, the fact that the rich young man was reluctant is. Jesus demands that God be everything to you. Notice that Jesus did not say that Ceasar should confiscate the rich young man's goods and distribute them to the people who supported him. But of course, that is what advocates for redistribution actually mean.

So, pray for Pope Francis, that he runs into his own Bishop Fulton Sheen.