Question: Mr. LaRouche, first of all, God bless you for this fight. Here's my question. I think that Judeo-Christian civilization has given us a great contribution to this victory. As you say, you can smell victory. This is very important. However, we have also seen a pessimist society: this process which has led to a post-industrial age. My question, what I wonder, is what have really been, let us say, the failures of our Judeo-Christian culture, its axiomatic or ontological shortcomings which allowed for this process to take place, which should never have occurred? If these can be identified, although of course we know perhaps that they have been undermining this principles. On the other hand, I also wonder whether we might not be now at the threshold of arriving at a deeper cultural concept, a higher conception of culture which would give rise to a better civilization, which as the Pope has said, would be a civilization of love. This is a concept which I wonder about, and I would like to know if you have any thoughts on this?

LaRouche: Yes, I have a very definite and specific response to this question. You mentioned the Pope. Now, he's one of my friends, one of my boys. He's a little older than I am. Not much, and he's fighting, and his health has improved lately, which pleases me greatly. We just lost a great friend who died recently of cancer, Cardinal Francis Xavier Van Thuan. He was head of Justitia et Pax. Some people consider him as having been a person who was a candidate for the succession to the papacy.

He was a dear friend and he and I had a special relationship. We knew each other--Helga and I knew him back in the 1980s, when he was still a younger bishop in Justitia et Pax, and despite Monsignor Martin, we had a pretty good relationship. But then, I met him again and he had written a book called On Spiritual Exercises, which I've referred to. This book was the result of the Pope having invited him to present this lecture on spiritual exercises to a convention of bishops in the Vatican, and the Pope had concealed himself during the presentation in the adjoining room with an open door, where the bishops in the audience could not see the Pope. And then the Pope appeared after the lectures to embrace the presentation. Then the book was published.

Now, this book, while the subjects are simple theological, biblical themes, represents my method, my Platonic method. What are called spiritual exercises, in true terms, that is, exercises which actually evoke the sense of the spiritual quality that distinguishes man from the beast, these exercises are purely Platonic. There is no Aristotle in any of them. They are purely Platonic, as all Christianity is purely Platonic, because the spiritual aspect, as identified with Vernadsky, as an example: we have three categories of efficient universal principles in the known universe. The first we call abiotic, non-living processes, as Vernadsky defined that from the standpoint of physical chemistry. You have a second group which are physical effects which are generated only as effects of action by living processes, not non-living ones. They are never generated by non-living processes, only by living processes. This defined what Vernadsky defined as the biosphere, that is, an area which includes non-living processes and living processes, in which the living processes, in the long term, are transforming the non-living universe into a fossil of a living universe.

Then you have a third category, of physical effects which are introduced to the universe only by the mental actions of man, which cannot be copied by any beast. This third category, we call spiritual, or the domain of reason. Thus, we have three categories of universal physical principles. One, the so-called abiotic, the non-living principles. Secondly, the principle of life, which exists among the animals, for example. Thirdly, we have the spiritual concept, which is reason. The spiritual quality of man can be explicitly addressed only by spiritual exercises of the type that conform to Plato's Socratic dialogues. The only method.

Now, when you look at matters in that way, and you look at the  condition of the Catholic Church and the decadence in the Catholic Church, as I do, you find that there are a few priests and missionaries, especially missionaries, or people of missionary disposition, who care about the inside of the minds of the people with whom they are working, to whom their mission assigns them. As opposed to someone who is merely doctrinaire, laying down the line, you know, the party line for the Church. And the party liners tend to be corrupted all too easily, especially with lack of inspiration. So therefore, you have a Church, which as we know in the case of the U.S. Church, is predominantly corrupted. Those priests in the U.S. Catholic Church who are not corrupted--priests and nuns--are a minority. And once you take the slide toward corruption, you tend to go all the way, which is some of the problems we have there.

You have a similar sort of thing in Germany, where you have outright fascism, Satanic fascism, as expressed by leading circles of the Church there. You have the French problem, where there's some question as to whether Napoleon is God or not. Then you have the problems in Italy. In the Italian Church in general, you have a lot of good people in the priesthood and in the congregations. In the Curia, you have some problems, internationally influenced problems.

So, what has happened in the collapse of society, is that the Church has not measured up to its mission. We've had some great Popes from Leo XIII, Benedict, Pius I, Pius II, and of course our friends, including Paul, including John Paul, but the Church as a whole has not been living up to its mission. And if you live inside the United States in particular, you know it very well. You find all these fellows who are Adam Smith followers. Well, Adam Smith theologically is a Bogomil cult, a Cathar cult. Calvin himself was a Bogomil in terms of his theology. And you have priests who are teaching that sort of thing. The problem is that many of these bishops and priests depend upon money. Where does the money come from? It comes from wealthy families, financier families? And the priests and bishops are tuned to this money, which comes from wealthy families, and they are careful to shape their conduct in ways which will not offend these sources of wealth.

We had a friend of ours, Stefan Kozak, who is a U.S. professional diplomat, who died a few years ago. Now, Kozak did an investigation for the Vatican of the problems inside the clergy, and the large-scale homosexuality which was prevalent, was documented. The role of the bishops' negligence in sending priests to universities where they studied William James' varieties of religious experience, or you had this pseudo-Catholic faction at Chicago University around people like Leo Strauss and so forth. The corruption is immense. It's this type of corruption. So you have corruption in the Church, and it's been there for a long time, and you have those who fight against it, like the Pope and like our dear, departed friend, the Cardinal. But the problem is, the quality of leadership has been largely lacking.

Now, this is unfortunately the usual case of mankind. Until mankind rises out of what we see today, the level of popular opinion, mankind will always tend to slide into decadence. And it's only in times of crisis, where fortunately some leadership appears of quality, that mankind is able to crawl out of this kind of decadence and survive. In the long run, I'm optimistic that, as mankind, we shall succeed in curing this problem of epidemic, or endemic decadence, which causes these cyclical behaviors in cultures.

But the problem today, you cannot say that the Church as an average institution is an efficient institution for combatting these kinds of problems. The Church by and large has become increasingly corrupted by precisely these kinds of problems, and it's corrupted largely by one thing: the lack of priests and other leaders who actually embody the method of spiritual exercises that is the Platonic method, the method of Plato's Socratic dialogues, which is epitomized in terms of Biblical New Testament issues by Cardinal Van Thuan. It's the lack of a sufficient number of such priests and others, with that specific quality of commitment to spirituality, and the prevalence of priests who have an inferior understanding of spirituality which melts too easily under the corrupting pressures of the surrounding society, that's the problem.

 So, I'm confident. I have confidence in myself on this question. I embody the principle of spiritual exercises. That's my method, it's what I've always relied upon, at least in all my adolescent to adult life. That method. I know some people in the Church, like the deceased Cardinal, I see the same reflection in the Pope. I see it in some other leading figures in the Church, who represent that same method. So we have a certain kinship, based on having the same method. But I can tell you, when you get outside that, you get some honest good priests who will respond to that, but you also get a lot of members of the clergy who are totally corrupted by the present society, the present culture.

And then you go over to the other side, you look at the Protestant side, and you have a much more serious problem, in general. You have the prevalence of this Moonie cult, which actually had a big control over the Christendom College crowd, among other things. The so-called Christian Coalition was totally corrupted by this stuff. We had a fight against that. So, we have the problem, and the answer to such questions, the question you posed, is extremely important, but you've got to know where the answer lies. The answer lies in those of us who have a devotion to the concept of spiritual exercises which I've identified, and it's upon us--whether we're in the clergy or not--on whom the rescue of civilization depends for our role as leaders.

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