TFP Newsletter, Pleasantville (NY), Vol. III, No. 18, 1983, pages 1-3

Faced With the Slaughter of the Innocents

An Appeal of the Spanish TFP

Following efforts by the recently elected Socialist government of Spain to "legalize" the barbarous practice of abortion, the Spanish Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property — Covadonga (TFP), has undertaken a vigorous campaign calling upon Spaniards to oppose the measure with prayer, penance and energetic action.

In the April 6 edition of the most impor­tant newspaper in Madrid, ABC, the Spanish TFP published a six-page appeal entitled Faced with the Slaughter of the Innocents — Within the Limits of the Law and Order: Holy Indignation.

Members of the Spanish TFP holding public campaigns on the busy streets of Madrid and other major cities have already distributed over 200,000 copies of the appeal. Here follows a summary of the document. 

The Slaughter of the Innocents, Fra Angelico (XV century), St. Mark’s Museum, Florence, Italy

I. Sadness Over a Confirmed Forecast

Man usually rejoices over the fulfillment of a prediction he makes, not out of a foolish sentiment of self-love, but because a prediction is an exercise of the mind, and so it is normal for him to experience the wholesome joy of its accuracy.

However, this is not the state of mind of the members and volunteers of the Spanish Society for the Defense of Tradition, Fami­ly and Property — Covadonga (TFP), as events confirm the perplexities they had voiced in an Open letter to the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE). There Covadonga-TFP manifested its apprehen­sion at a possible victory of the socialists in the elections (ABC, 10-22-82).

The Open letter emphasized that the Resolutions of the PSOE's Congresses favor the establishment of free love, the censurable "rehabilitation" of homosexuality, and the "legitimizing" of abortion and contraceptives.

Since an approval of those measures would unleash a total offensive against the centuries old Christian principles with which the law protects public morality and the family, the TFP pointed out this aston­ishing fact: While many Catholics were inclined to vote for the PSOE, the Bishops' Conference, which has the divine mission of preserving the nation from that abyss of horrors, implied in a memo of its Standing Commission that it was morally licit for the faithful to vote for the PSOE.

The socialist victory does not portend a lesser danger for Catholic Spain than did the Mohammedan hordes which crossed the strait of Gibraltar in the remote Eighth Century. After a successful crossing, the invaders had only to advance against Visigoth Spain, which was foolishly optimistic, lulled to sleep, and led by men whose mentality and policy can be very well symbolized by the mentality and the treacherous policy of the enigmatic Archbishop Opas.

However, there are states of mind that not even the obvious can straighten out. The Socialist Party won with a considerable share of the Catholic vote.

Thus, the TFP's prediction was confirmed to such an extent that we can now say that we have come to the edge of the abyss. 

II. Looking to the Future

If a reaction with all the required force of impact fails to take place, all that the Socialist Party will have to do is to advance like the Moors of old.

There can be no doubt about it. The attitude of the Cortes, the Government, and even the King himself will depend not only on the scope of this wholesome reaction, but also on its ardor.

Victory depends on this. Anything else would mean accepting Archbishop Opas' policy and rejecting the Christian, heroic spirit of El Cid Campeador, which is so identified with Spain that it would cease to be if that spirit were lost. 

III. Prayer and Penance

The bishops, our shepherds and masters, know the value of Christian preaching better than anyone else. They also know that the fruit of the heroism of our eight centuries of the Reconquest would have not been a complete victory of the Faith had it not been for preaching and its noble sister penance.

They also know that without either one, the indomitable resistance of the Spanish nation against the troops of the despot before whom all of Europe bowed — Napoleon Bonaparte, the sower of the er­rors of the French Revolution — would have been to no avail. The noble and heroic impulse of the Alzamiento (Uprising) that freed Spain from the yoke of Communism, a genuine offspring of the French Revolution, would have been equally futile.

We ask Your Excellencies, the Bishops: Fill the roads of Spain with ardent missionaries who will can upon the people to carry out the great and decisive battles of prayer, penance and action. 

IV. Slaughtering the Innocents and Protecting the Leftists

In our century, that boasts an inflexible and absolute egalitarianism, no act of injustice or justice against leftists fails to provoke a chain reaction of indignant protests from laicist "humanitarians" the world over, even when those leftists are radical in thought and terrorist in deeds.

But how... shocking it is that all this hu­manitarianism seems to hush when it comes to protecting innocent victims surprised by murder in their mother's very womb!

Are we, who as Catholics have the gravest reasons to execrate voluntary abortion going to fall into such an aberration?

Some will object that all these considerations are pertinent only if one assumes that abortion constitutes a crime against human life, a grave transgression of the Fifth Com­mandment, "Thou shalt not kill." But, they may add, such a severe qualification regarding the interruption of the life of a still incompletely formed human being seems exaggerated.

An analysis of this argumentation would have some meaning if this Appeal were addressed not only to the venerable national Episcopate and the Catholic public, but also to those sectors ruled by indifference, secularism or atheism, which are truly in the minority. But this is not the case. It is enough for us to remind the Catholic reader that the Pontifical documents on abortion have always censured it severely.

According to the authoritative teaching of Pius XI, those responsible for abortions perform "deadly operations" (Encyclical Casti Connubii of December 31, 1930). 

V. A State of Mind

As previously mentioned, the socialist victory, a catastrophe under whose weight we are groaning, has been due to the ample contribution of the Catholic vote.

What was the decisive factor that caused those Catholics to vote for Socialism?

A praiseworthy desire to preserve mankind from a new world war has led countless contemporary statesmen to promote, since Yalta, a policy of detente with Russia.

This policy is based on a concept of men and human affairs devoid of the idea of evil. According to the adherents of this policy, it would seem that men (at least those on the left) are conceived without original sin. Therefore, if the leftists are ready to attack, it is primarily because their adversaries in the center and the right did not deal with them properly — each and every demand of the left must be met with "understanding," friendship and confidence, and concessions must be made.

Everyone should carelessly and candidly get along with them in everything, whether it be ballet or industrial production. Above all, no one should ever argue with them. The era of polemics is over; that of dia­logue has dawned.

This mentality explains how in forty years the world was brought to a state of terror of the communist danger through a process successively called the policy of the "extended hand," the "fall of ideological barriers," Ostpolitik, and, finally, détente. This terror is such that world figures who are serious in other respects go so far as to advocate the unilateral disarmament of the West, that is, its shameful capitulation before the Red Moloch!

This state of mind also infected religious circles, leading them to gradually soften the Catholic Church's position against Com­munism. From this sprang the very peculiar policy of the Second Vatican Council, which abstained from every explicit condemnation of Communism, the Church's greatest adversary in our days. For a reason that has been little explained to this day, the secretariat of the Conciliar Commission responsible for the preparation of the draft on the Church in the modern world, failed to submit to the assembly a message by 450 Council Fathers from 86 countries, asking for the condemnation of Communism; and the "Russian Orthodox Church" — a mere ecclesiastical administration at the service of the lords of the Kremlin — was invited to send observers to the Council. It is a rumored that these observers "vetoed" the approval of documents condemning Communism.

The conclusion of all this is obvious: If one side has the will to assert itself, expand and conquer, while the other side only deceives itself, relaxes and yields, the former will necessarily eliminate the latter. 

VI. The Phlegmatic Silence of Antiabortion Demonstrations

In the face of the buffet (no other word is fitting) that the Socialist Party gave the Catholic sectors that voted for it — or that said it was licit to vote for it — certain anti-abortionists have failed to use absolutely every licit means to prevent the slaughter of innocents that is on the verge of beginning in Spain.

True, they are concerned about preventing abortion, but the attention and the zeal of their mentors is mixed with another, unexpected concern: do not slight the socialists. In other words, let us defend the innocent victims from the slaughter, but let us also avoid causing ideological or emotional traumas in those who work for it.

Such a stand would be considered clearly unacceptable if the matter concerned assassins of newborn children. Why, then, think it acceptable regarding the unborn?

There is a great distance between an anti-abortionist stand lacking punch, fire and life — in a word, the true Christian spirit of Spain — and an exaggerated one. Common sense requires that the campaigns needed in the present circumstances strike a balance between these two extremes.

In this Spain where there is freedom for everything and for all, to the point that the drive for abortion, which is inherent in socialist doctrine, was able to attain the degree of influence that it now enjoys, one cannot understand why those against abor­tion should gag themselves and thereby substantially lessen their possibilities of success.

In other words, the antiabortion demonstrations, made up of throngs of Spaniards that would characteristically like to proclaim and sing their convictions and to chivalrously explain their noble disagreement, are instead instructed to parade in chilled and subdued silence.

In short, indignation against a proposal like the abortionist one, within the bounds of law and order, is not just a licit attitude for Catholics, but the result of a real moral imperative, the noble and beautiful fruit of zeal; the same indignation that would be caused by a mass extermination of the newborn. 

VII. An Allegory

Let us imagine ourselves in the time of Herod. The horrendous slaughter of the innocents has begun in order to kill the Infant God. Popular indignation immediately begins to boil, but an influential personage steps in, fearing that such a reaction could not only undermine authority, but also excite tempers and rend the country and leave it with the scar of discord for a long time. He therefore uses his influence to dampen the popular reaction. He succeeds to a great extent, and the killing continues. It is understandable that Herod, who had already begun to hesitate, now feels less restrained and continues his atrocious persecution. It is not difficult to imagine that Herod would give the influential appeaser his credit and sympathy, invite him to feasts and praise him before his compatriots. But it is impossible not to wonder what the candid voices of the innocents victims would have said to God about such an "appeaser." 

VIII. Appeal of the TFP

The TFP, a civic institution of Catholic inspiration whose objective is to defend Christian civilization in the temporal sphere, addresses its Appeal to:

— the illustrious ecclesiastical hierarchy, with the filial veneration due to it;

— the leaders of the antiabortion campaign, with the regard, sympathy and will to give them the cooperation they deserve;

— all Spaniards, so that the tragic experience of the proabortion offensive launched by the Socialist Party may open their eyes to the true nature and goals of socialism.

The TFP, earnestly committed to a petition drive against abortion, summons all its members, volunteers and supporters to support all legitimate manifestations of disagreement with the proposed abortion law.

Madrid, April 1, 1983

[To read the original full text in Spanish click here]