Servant of God Catherine de Heuck Doherty Praised ‘Rules for Radicals’ Author Saul Alinksy as a Good Man and a Friend

During the 2008 U.S. presidential election campaign, one particular name kept coming up when investigating former community organizer and then-presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama. That name was American community organizer and famous radical leftist rabble-rouser Saul Alinksy.

Saul Alinksy had an overinflated opinion about himself. He saw himself as a self-styled American Robin Hood and a self-appointed savior of the poor and the downtrodden. Alinsky continually fantasized about knocking the powerful down from their pedestals. He despised authority. Once he would “liberate” the poor, he was gone with the wind like a traveling carnival, moving on to greener pastures seeking more unfortunates to emancipate and more victims to rob.

To understand how Obama and even Hillary Clinton (who did her senior thesis at Wellesley College on her mentor Saul Alinsky ) think, one must fully understand Alinksy. Obama was trained to be a community organizer in Chicago in the mid- to late 1980s by Alinsky’s disciples.

In his first book Reveille for Radicals, Alinsky admitted that “organizing is a euphemism for revolution.” Community organizers are professional leftist agitators who go into minority or immigrant communities, listen to their concerns, find the thing they are most upset about, and then convince people that they must rise up against a particular person in power to achieve what is called social justice.

Community organizers exploit people and their fears by using their anger to demonize and destroy people in power. He would explain this tactic in his final book, Rules for Radicals.

Alinsky’s most famous quote and rules speak to this:

“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

Racketeers and Extortionists

America is rife with the constant threat of community organizers who bring screaming renta-mobs with them to create a public disturbance with the intent to embarrass the company or individual they are angry with. This is intimidation, extortion, and racketeering disguised as social activism. For peace to return and the mob to go away, the company must write a big check to the leader. Race hustler Jessie Jackson is probably the best example of this, as he has extorted millions of dollars from compliant companies that would rather pay him a bribe than face the constant bad publicity that a mob of paid angry protesters would create.

Alinsky started his adult life as a union organizer. The goal of a union organizer is simple: sign up workers for the union. When you join a union, you benefit from the fruits of collective bargaining in the form of better wages and better working conditions. He figured he could take the same principles he used for unions and transpose them to communities of people—primarily minorities and newly arrived immigrants who were naturally poorer than American-born people already established.

Strangely enough, like his fellow Marxist travelers, Alinksy never traveled to Appalachia to help poor white Americans who have been forgotten and discarded by the elites and the intelligentsia. There was nobody to shake down there and no newspapers and cameras to chronicle his rabblerousing. Of course, he was only interested in helping urban blacks and minorities.

During his lifetime, Saul Alinsky, an agnostic Jew, managed to enlist many top Roman Catholic clergy in the Chicago area to fund his radical leftist ideology. He cleverly disguised his grift as benevolent community organizing efforts. Young progressive Catholic priests such as Jack Egan became enamored with Alinsky as they saw his techniques as a shortcut to get to their social justice earthly promised land. Alinksy even suggested that higher-wage Catholics would put more money in the Sunday collection plates. For Alinsky and priests like Egan, it was a win-win.

The Cult of Equality

If you look for injustice and inequality, you’ll always find it. Since true equality only exists in a purely mathematical sense, the human quest for equality is a fool’s errand. Satan in the Garden of Eden tempted Adam and Eve using the equality fallacy: ye shall be as Gods.

Those who look at the world through the prism of equality will be predisposed to notice the slightest bit of inequality.

Our culture has been brainwashed into believing that inequality is evil. Inequality is simply the unspoken law of the universe manifested, as no two things or two people are the same. A common slogan used by the seekers of equality is the haves and the have-nots. This simplistic phrase reduces mankind to a seeker of material possessions and temporal power. Constantly comparing yourself to others is a violation of God’s command that prohibits envy. Envy is also one of the seven deadly sins.

Alinsky saw himself as the champion of the poor and downtrodden. Inequality was a social ill that needed to be rectified by winning power for them. But he was an impatient meddler. He didn’t want to get power to the people by the normal American route, via writing letters to the editor, voting for politicians, and via the gradual prosperity that lifts all ships and the organic progression of society. No, that was not fast enough for Alinsky because he knew better. Like Karl Marx, he wanted his utopian paradise now, not later.

Interestingly enough, the concept of equality does not exist in the Roman Catholic church. Jesus never preached about equality. He preached the reverse. He who would be first will be last. He who is the least amount will be first.

Jesus never told people to seek power. He said the opposite.

“Jesus called them together and said, ‘You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.'”

Another thing Jesus preached was: “The poor will be with you always.” Worshipping God always comes first, before loving your neighbor, as this supports the first commandment. Good works such as giving alms to the poor are a fruit of the First Commandment. Serving the poor before worshiping God is disordered and idolatry.

While researching the Chicago-based Saul Alinsky and his effect on the Roman Catholic Church and his inordinate influence on the former American president, who was also based in Chicago and incidentally a failed community organizer, I wondered if a Canadian Russian-born Catholic personality named Catherine Doherty, who was named a Servant of God by the Roman Catholic Church, traveled in the same circles, was connected to him?

Who is Catherine Doherty?

Before I unfold more of the story, I need to explain who Doherty was. Born in Russia, her birth name was Ekaterina Fyodorovna Kolyschkine and had the title of baroness. Catherine Doherty was one of the first Catholic celebrities who became very popular after being mentioned by Thomas Merton in his classic conversion story book: The Seven Story Mountain:

“Catherine de Hueck is a person in every way big: and the bigness is not merely physical: it comes from the Holy Ghost dwelling constantly within her, and moving her in all that she does.” – Seven Story Mountain, pp. 342-343

Merton’s stellar recommendation made Catherine Doherty into a putative saint. But how would Merton know that the Holy Ghost dwelled in Doherty? He never really explained it; he just felt it. Thomas Merton later became a peace activist in the 1960s and was adored by the hippy movement.

Both she and Alinsky were big names in the social justice world in America in the 1950s and 1960s. Doherty was friends with other social justice Catholic celebrities like Dorothy Day, Jacques Maritain, and Jean Vanier (now disgraced due to charges of sexual abuse of multiple women).

The Visit with the Baroness

I figured their paths must have crossed somehow since both traveled in the same socialist/Catholic Worker circles, so I put Saul Alinksy and Catherine Doherty into the Google Search engine.

What came up near the end of the search results was a website called FriendshipHouse.org where a man named Albert Schorsch III, claimed to have visited Madonna House in 1978. Nestled by the Madawaska River in the remote hamlet of Combermere, Ontario, Canada, Madonna House is essentially a Roman Catholic Church-approved network of Catholic mendicant communes that live on both the donations of wealthy Catholics and the agricultural labor of their members.

To this day, the Madonna House headquarters has a large area of land and buildings dedicated solely to the processing of donations of items that would come in from all around the world. They have a gift shop where donated items (mostly jewelry) are sold to the public, as well as books by Doherty.

A true commune would be wholly self-sufficient, a fake commune relies on the donations of non-commune members to supplement their way of life. Mendicants are essentially religious beggars.

It was in Comberemere that he had an audience with the 82-year-old Catherine Doherty. While waiting for her in the Madonna House library, he noticed Saul Alinsky’s book Rules for Radicals in the library waiting room. He noticed the book because of a sign that said “Book Reviews By B.”

Here are the original links, quote, and screenshot from the website where the story is related:

http://www.friendshiphouse.org/BNCL3.html

(Note: Friendshiphouse.org domain has expired but the web page is still being preserved at the Wayback Machine)

https://web.archive.org/web/20130123111127/http://www.friendshiphouse.org/BNCL3.html

Albert Schorsch: While waiting to meet Catherine in the Madonna House library in Combermere in 1978, I noticed two books on display, accompanied by “Book Reviews by the ‘B’” (the “B” being Catherine’s long time Friendship House nickname as the Baroness). One book was the Cloud of Unknowing, the other was Rules for Radicals, by Saul Alinsky. Catherine recommended both of them highly, and praised Alinsky as a good man and friend.

Since I was not there, I do not know if Catherine uttered those words or read or owned that book that Mr. Schorsch, who is now deceased, claims she did, but since he’s a fellow traveler and great admirer of Doherty, it seems he would have no reason to lie about it or embellish this account.

Rules for Radicals

Needless to say, I was shocked to read this. Here is a devout, saintly Catholic woman who has since been named a Servant of God by the Roman Catholic Church and put on the road to sainthood, claiming Alinsky was a “good man” and a friend—the very same man who dedicated his book Rules for Radicals to the fallen angel Lucifer, who would later be cursed with the name Satan by God Almighty.

Here’s the chilling introduction to Rules for Radicals:

Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history… the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.

Alinsky was a revolutionary who used the Catholic Church for his own goals.

One tactic Alinsky used to organize Back of the Yards was going to the various Catholic churches in the area and telling their clergy if I don’t organize there, the communists and socialists will. But if I do organize, and the workers win, then that means more money in the collection plates on Sundays for you. The Catholic Church was strongly anti-communist and joined with Alinsky in a partnership.   He now had a powerful, politically connected ally.

Doherty patterned her own life after Alinsky activism. She was afraid that communism was going to take over, so she strived to create a form of Roman Catholic communism that would be attractive to blacks and other immigrant groups—the very same groups that communists use as pawns and proxies to spread their demonic murderous ideology.

Some Questions

While the last century was full of progressive Catholics inebriated in the wine of novelty and the spirit of the age, still, it seemed inconceivable that a future saint like Doherty could call someone who praised Lucifer, dedicated his book to him, and called him “a good man,” but she did nonetheless.

Doherty’s praise of Alinksy raises some serious questions regarding her judgment and her holiness:

Why did Catherine decide to review Rules for Radicals?

How does a review of this book serve the greater glory of God and the Holy Roman Catholic Church?

What happened to that review and what did it say?

What on earth would the foundress of a Roman Catholic lay apostolate be doing with a subversive, Machiavellian book like Rules for Radicals in 1978?

Was Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and Machiavelli’s The Prince also in her library?

Was the 1972 issue of Playboy magazine that featured an interview with Saul Alinsky also in her library?

What possible use would the leader of a lay apostolate have for this book?

What did she plan on learning from this book that would advance her holiness and the holiness of the other members of Madonna House?

What lessons did she expect Madonna House members, her priests, and new members to learn from this book?

What strategies did she share from this book with other Catholics?

My Commentary

The goal of every Roman Catholic is to grow in holiness so they can enter into eternal life in heaven and spend eternity with Jesus. There is nothing in Rules of Radicals that advances and assists with this sacred duty of every Catholic. Unlike Saul Alinsky, Jesus Christ never preached that His followers should seek social and economic power. In fact, this kind of earthly power is what Judas Iscariot lusted after. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ preached the exact opposite: everyone should seek the Kingdom of Heaven before everything else. The Pearl of Great Price is one of Jesus’s most important parables.

As soon as Catherine Doherty read the dedication to Lucifer, she should have immediately destroyed the book. Instead, she continued to read the book and went on to put it on display in her library and recommend it to others. This shows extremely poor judgment. Imagine how many Madonna House members saw that book in her library, internalized her imprimatur, read it, and absorbed its teachings. I believe that the Holy Spirit would never counsel anyone to read and praise a book dedicated to the fallen angel Lucifer.

Satan tempted Jesus for 40 days in the desert and offered Him all of the power and kingdoms of the world if only He would kneel and worship him. The forbidden dark knowledge in Rules for Radicals is the same kind of tantalizing worldly power that Satan offered Jesus and offers all of mankind every day. I believe Doherty and many other Roman Catholics were tempted by the power of this knowledge.

I once read a quote from a pious religious or saint — whose name escapes me at this time — that “one bad book can destroy” a monastery. The devil uses a sea of truth to disguise a drop of poison.

It is my sincere hope that Doherty burned the book and repented of her fascination for the book, Alinsky, and the fact that she endorsed the book to this man.

Catherine Doherty was 82 when Albert Schorsch visited her in Combermere. She was not a wide-eyed, idealistic teenager who would be susceptible to Alinsky’s charms; she was a highly intelligent and supposedly wise Russian woman who had written scores of Catholic books. She knew exactly who her friend Alinsky was, what he was doing, and how he was doing it. So there is no excuse.

Thousands of wholesome Roman Catholic books have been written by saints and holy men and women that Catherine could have reviewed that would have been far more efficacious in promoting the sanctity, holiness, and salvation of Madonna House members. Instead, she inexplicably chose Rules for Radicals.

Since Doherty was from Russia, she brought with her a lot of cultural baggage from Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church, which has been in schism since 1054 A.D. The milieu she was raised in gave her no foundation in the Roman Catholic faith and 1000 years of subsequent Catholic wisdom that martyrs and saints bequeathed to us.

Since the book is all about how to wrestle power from the powerful and give it to the powerless via deception, unethical, and un-Christian tactics, I wonder how Catherine Doherty would feel if one of her members had used the techniques against her and dethroned her as the leader of Madonna House?

How would have Catherine Doherty responded to a true life of poverty with no power, no authority, no fame, no bucolic wooded Canadian retreat, and no more books to write? Jesus said to a privileged soul: “I have many hidden workers in my vineyard”. Catherine was not a hidden person. She welcomed fame and was a Catholic celebrity in the Age of Aquarius.

What is quite troubling is that she “highly recommends” Rules for Radicals according to Albert Shrosch III. By giving her imprimatur to the book, she is in effect endorsing everything within the book—the ideas, the tactics, the techniques, the cloaked Marxist ideology—including the bizarre dedication to the fallen angel Lucifer.

Alinsky was an undeclared Marxist and open revolutionary who admitted to deceiving the clergy of the Catholic Church for his own goals. It just seemed inconceivable that a future saint could call someone who praised Lucifer a good man.

What on earth would the foundress of a Roman Catholic lay apostolate be doing with a subversive, Machiavellian book like Rules for Radicals in 1978?

A Good Man? A List of Alinsky’s Evil Deeds and Beliefs

Alinsky was an unethical and unprincipled man who believed that the ends justify the means. This wicked creed was the immoral foundation for Marxism, which justified the killing of 100 million people in the past century all in the name of achieving the Utopia of equality.

Would a “good man” believe the ends justify the means? 

“To achieve an end it is right to justify almost any means,” Alinsky says. “All life is warfare. You do what you can and clothe it in moral garments.”

Would a “good man” choose hell over Heaven?

“If there is an afterlife I would choose to go to Hell. Hell would be heaven for me. All my life I’ve been with the have-nots. Over here, if you’re a have-not, you’re short of dough. If you’re a have-not in hell, you’re short of virtue. Once I get into hell, I’ll start organizing the have-nots over there. They’re my kind of people.”

Would a “good man” advocate that one must violate his conscience to promote the good of mankind?

“In action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one’s conscience and the good of mankind.” 

Would a “good man” mock monks in monasteries who ceaselessly pray to God for help for others?

Would a “good man” advise people to be agent provocateurs and dress up like KKK members to discredit a political party like Alinksy did?

Would a “good man” give an interview to a pornographic magazine like Playboy?

Would a “good man” leave his second wife, who had multiple sclerosis, for the bed of another woman?

Would an ethical man urge people to dress up like members of the Klu Klux Klan to discredit a politician?

Salinsky and the Fetish of Underdogism

In our world today, many people are fixated on finding inequality everywhere. People look for victims to emancipate so they can signal their virtue to others.

In the sermon on the mount, Jesus said something that has resonated throughout the ages:

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Saul Alinksy was no peacemaker. He promoted and thrived on conflict. Sowing discord and riling up people was his modus operandi. The following quote is a prime example of how odious this man was:

In his book Rules of Radicals, Alinsky invented the political tactic of personal destruction that served as a blueprint for the divided political landscape we are seeing currently in America. The greatest practitioner in modern America of this tactic was Alinsky acolyte President Barack Obama who inherited a peaceful and unified nation only to leave it divided, polarized, and politicized.

Saul Alinksy was not a good man. He used people like puppets for his amusement and to satiate his perverted sense of justice. Along the way, he corrupted and bewitched many Catholics who should have known better. Especially those who were allegedly filled with the Holy Ghost.

Alinsky Seduced a Generation of Roman Catholic Priests

Many Roman Catholic priests were enamored with Saul Alinksy and his techniques as the social justice movement infiltrated the American Catholic world in the 1960s. Let’s not forget this was during the Cold War when the Soviet Union was infiltrating many American organizations including the priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church.

Former communist and Catholic convert Bella Dodd claims she sent a thousand American communist spies into the Catholic seminaries to become priests so they could undermine the Roman Catholic Church from within.

A few years ago, TheRomanCatholicBlog reported the following about the account of a poster on Catholic Answers forums who watched an EWTN program with Fr. Groeshel:

Did anyone see Fr. Groeschel’s show on EWTN last night (1/17)? His guest was a Paulist priest, Fr. Bruce Nielie, who is very much into the social Gospel. At one point he mentioned Jacques Maritain, a very well respected Catholic philosopher, who corresponded at one time with Saul Alinsky, who wrote “Rules for Radicals”, which is basically the Bible for liberals. There is even a book containing the correspondence between these 2 men. I was waiting for the priest to condemn the writings of Saul Alinsky, and was somewhat alarmed when he did not, but seemed to rather praise him. Fr. Groeschel did not say anything.

The last call of the show was a woman who said she was very alarmed by the mention of Saul Alinsky, and wondered if the priest knew that “Rules for Radicals” was dedicated to Satan. The priest said he didn’t know anything about that, but defended Alinsky by saying that he corresponded with Jacques Maritain, so how could he be wrong? To me, that is like saying Judas was one of the apostles, so how could he be wrong?

I talked with a Paulist priest, ordained 40 years ago, who told me that many of his colleagues got caught up in the social gospel and that it really led them away from the True Gospel of Christ, and that at one point he even had to catch himself from being swept up in it. 

The past century was a disaster for both the U.S.A. and the Roman Catholic Church thanks to the infiltration of modernism and communism. The manifestation of this infiltration is probably the tip of the iceberg.

The Ends Do Not Justify the Means

Central to Alinsky’s ideology is that the ends justify the means. This is the rationale that allowed him to justify doing evil things to achieve good. Every devout Catholic knows this and those Catholics who interacted with Alinksy should have been repulsed by his ideology no matter how noble the ends.

For instance, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states in paragraph 1753:

“A good intention (for example, that of helping one’s neighbor) does not make behavior that is intrinsically disordered (such as lying or calumny) good or just. The end does not justify the means.”

Black American civil rights activist MalcomX had a similar philosophy when he coined the term “by any means necessary.” This phrase is used today by ANTIFA, Marxist, and Anarchist groups as a battle cry for securing their utopia.

Conclusion

When you praise someone who praises and empathizes with Lucifer, it is a gigantic red flag. From reading the lives of a few saints and knowing how holy they were and how they unapologetically detested sin, I believe that this association with Alinsky and her comment alone could be a contributing factor in disqualifying her from future sainthood.

Born into the spiritual wilderness of a post-Vatican 2 world, I am a self-taught Catholic. But, I believe I have a duty as a Roman Catholic to share my findings and research on this subject. Albert Shrosh III’s article with his recollections of his meeting with Catherine Doherty, although no longer available online, is a matter of public record. I present to you, the reader, the facts of this incident and links. Make of them what you will. Let God’s holy will be done.

–Wolfshead

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