Taylor R. Marshall

Infiltration

The Plot to Destroy
the Church from Within

An imprint of Sophia Institute Press
Manchester, New Hampshire

Copyright © 2019 by Taylor R. Marshall

Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved.

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Biblical references in this book are taken from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1965, 1966 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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ePub ISBN 978-1-622828-470

To my eight children, the next generation
of warriors for Christ and His Church

Contents

Foreword, by Bishop Athanasius Schneider

Acknowledgments

1. The Smoke of God and the Smoke of Satan

2. Alta Vendita: Satan’s Revolution in Tiara and Cope

3. Our Lady of La Salette

4. Attack on the Papal States in 1870

5. Pope Leo XIII Sees Demons Gather on Rome

6. Infiltration of the Church by Secret Societies and Modernism

7. Our Lady of Fatima

8. Conclave of 1922: Pope Pius XI

9. Communist Infiltration of the Priesthood

10. 1939 Papal Conclave: Pius XII

11. Pius XII as the Pope of Fatima

12. Communist Infiltration of the Liturgy

13. Woeful Illness of Pius XII: Three Crypto-Modernists

14. Mysterious Conclave of 1958

15. Pope John XXIII Opens the Third Secret

16. Vatican II — Modernism on Parade

17. Conclave of 1963: Paul VI

18. Crypto-Modernism and Nouvelle Théologie

19. Theological Infiltration of Vatican II

20. Infiltration of the Liturgy

21. Ottaviani Intervention against Pope Paul VI

22. Archbishop Lefebvre and the Traditionalist Resistance

23. Resistance to the Novus Ordo Missae

24. Infiltration of the Vatican Bank under Paul VI

25. Infiltration and the Mysterious Death of John Paul I

26. Infiltration of John Paul II’s Pontificate

27. Sankt Gallen Mafia: Homosexuality, Communism, and Freemasonry

28. Ratzinger versus Bergoglio in the Papal Conclave of 2005

29. Infiltration and the Plot against Benedict XVI

30. Infiltration of the Vatican Bank and the Butler of Pope Benedict XVI

31. Infiltration and the Election of Pope Francis

32. Solving the Current Crisis

33. Spiritual Weapons against Demonic Enemies

Appendices

Who’s Who in This Book

Timeline of Popes in This Book

Vatican Secretaries of State by Papacy and Dates

Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita

Both Versions of the Secret of La Salette

Timeline of Liturgical Changes

Dates of Indults for Communion in Hand

Timeline of the Life of Ex-Cardinal McCarrick

Index

About the Author

Foreword

In Infiltration: The Plot to Destroy the Church from Within, Taylor Marshall touches on a topic that is deliberately ignored today. The issue of a possible infiltration of the Church by forces outside her does not fit into the optimistic picture that Pope John XXIII and particularly the Second Vatican Council unrealistically and uncritically drew of the modern world.

In the last sixty years, there has been a continuously growing hostility toward the Divine Person of Jesus Christ and His claim to be the sole Redeemer and Teacher of humankind. This hostility of the allegedly “nice,” “tolerant,” “optimistic” modern world expresses itself in slogans such as “We don’t want Christ to reign over us”; “We want to be free from any demanding doctrinal truth or moral law”; and “We will never acknowledge a Church that will not unconditionally accept the mindset of the modern world.”

This hostility has reached its peak in our day. Not a few high-ranking members of the Catholic Church’s hierarchy have not only yielded to the relentless demands of the modern world; they are, with or without conviction, actively collaborating in the implementation of its principles in the daily life of the Church in all areas and on all levels.

Many wonder how it could happen that the Church’s doctrine, morals, and liturgy have been disfigured to such a large extent. How is it that there remains very little difference between the predominant spirit in the life of the Church in our days and the mindset of the modern world? The modern world, after all, is inspired by the principles of the French Revolution: the absolute freedom of man from any divine revelation or commandment; the absolute equality that abolishes not only any social or religious hierarchy but even differences between the sexes; and a brotherhood of man so uncritical that it even eliminates any distinction on the basis of religion.

It would be dishonest and irresponsible only to state the facts of the Church’s current internal crisis, and to deal with the symptoms. We must examine the very roots of the crisis, which, to a decisive extent, can be identified (as Taylor Marshall has done in this book) as an infiltration of the Church by the unbelieving world, and especially by Freemasons – an infiltration that, by human standards, could effectively succeed only through a long, methodical process.

As Pope Leo XIII noted when he opened the secret Vatican Archives, in researching and exposing historical facts – even if they are compromising and troubling – the Church has nothing to fear. This book reveals significant historical roots of the current global crisis in the Church and throws light on many otherwise puzzling events of the past.

Because of the lack of sufficient resource materials and since the relevant Vatican Archives are still closed to researchers, some issues considered in this book (such as the circumstances surrounding the death of Pope John Paul I) must remain as hypotheses. Other arguments presented here, however, point to the existence of a kind of ominous red thread which systematically runs through the history of the past century-and-a-half of the Church’s history.

The Church of Christ has always and will always be persecuted; she will always be infiltrated by her enemies. The question is always only about the extent of such an infiltration, and this is determined by the degree of vigilance exercised by those in the Church who are designated as “watchmen,” which is the literal meaning of the word episcopos — that is, bishop. The highest watchman in the Church is the Roman pontiff, the supreme shepherd both of the bishops and of the faithful. The first infiltration in the Church happened with the apostate apostle Judas Iscariot. Since then, there have been in the Church intruders – priests, bishops, and even in very rare cases, popes – whom Our Lord called “wolves in sheep’s clothing.”

It is noble and meritorious to sound the alarm when robbers and other intruders are secretly breaking into the house and poisoning the food of its inhabitants. In the past fifty years, such an alarm has been sounded several times by courageous bishops, priests, and lay faithful. Those in responsible offices in the Church, however, have not paid due attention to those alarms, and so the intruders – wolves in sheep’s clothing – have been able to wreak havoc, undisturbed, in the house of God, the Church.

With devastation and confusion in the Church now in full public view, it is time to expose the historical roots and the perpetrators of this harm. It may help many in the Church to wake up out of their lethargy and to stop acting as if everything is just fine. Taylor Marshall’s book is a significant contribution to the work of raising awareness of this situation and taking preventive actions and countermeasures in the future.

Saint Augustine gave us the following realistic yet consoling description of the truth that the Church will be always persecuted:

Many a time have they fought against me from my youth up (Ps. 128:1). . . . The Church is of ancient birth. . . . At one time, the Church was in Abel only, and he was fought against by his wicked . . . brother Cain (Gen. 4:8). At one time, the Church was in Enoch alone: and he was taken from the unrighteous (Gen. 5:24). At one time, the Church was in the house of Noah alone, and endured all who perished by the flood, and the ark alone swam upon the waves, and escaped to shore (Gen. 6–8). At one time, the Church was in Abraham alone, and we know what he endured from the wicked. The Church was in his brother’s son, Lot, alone, and in his house, in Sodom, and he endured the iniquities and perversities of Sodom until God freed him from among them (Gen. 13–20). The Church also began to exist in the people of Israel. She endured Pharaoh and the Egyptians. . . . We come unto our Lord Jesus Christ: the Gospel was preached in the Psalms. For this reason, lest the Church wonder now, or lest anyone . . . who wishes to be a good member of the Church wonder, let him hear his Mother the Church saying to him, “Marvel not at these things, my son: Many a time have they fought against me from my youth up, but they could not prevail over me. (Enarr. in Ps. 128)

Even the most perfidious plot to destroy the Church from within will not succeed. Hence, our Mother the Church will answer with the voice of her innocent children, of her pure young men and virgins, of her fathers and mothers of families, of her courageous and knightly lay apostles and apologists, of her chaste and zealous priests and bishops, of her religious sisters and especially of her cloistered nuns, the spiritual gems of the Church: “They could not prevail over me!” Christus vincit! Christus regnat! Christus imperat!

+ Athanasius Schneider
Auxiliary Bishop of the
Archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana
April 11, 2019

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my wife, Joy Marshall; my parents; and all my readers, students, listeners, and viewers. I am grateful to His Excellency Athanasius Schneider, O.R.C., for reading the manuscript and for writing the foreword. Also, a special thanks to Charlie McKinney, John Barger, Charles A. Coulombe, and Rev. D. Christensen for reading the manuscript and for their advice.

1

The Smoke of God and the Smoke of Satan

Why did Pope Benedict XVI resign the papacy on 28 February 2013? And why did lightning strike the Vatican that very night? Was it prompted by scandal at the Vatican Bank? Was it a sex scandal tainting the highest cardinals? Was it a doctrinal crisis? All these questions and doubts coalesce when we acknowledge a substantiated and corroborated fact: Satan uniquely entered the Catholic Church at some point over the last century, or even before that. For over a century, the organizers of Freemasonry, Liberalism, and Modernism infiltrated the Catholic Church in order to change her doctrine, her liturgy, and her mission from something supernatural to something secular.

Catholics are increasingly aware of a climate change in the Catholic Church. Some point to the controversial pontificate of Pope Francis. Others highlight the confusion surrounding the surprise resignation of Pope Benedict XVI in 2013. Some are convinced that John Paul II was not who we thought him to be. Most agree that the Second Vatican Council, the Novus Ordo Mass, and the pontificate of Paul VI brought monumental confusion to the Catholic Church. But does the fall of the first domino begin in 1962 with the opening of Second Vatican Council?

I argue that the root of the problem extends back to an agenda put in play more than one hundred years before Vatican II. It is an agenda to replace the supernatural religion of the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ with the natural religion of humanism and globalism. It echoes the primeval choice of Adam and Eve to make themselves divine by grasping at the fruits of nature, rather than kneeling in reception of the supernatural fruit of divine grace. Lucifer also rebelled against God. In his pride, he sought to ascend to the throne of God, not by sharing in the supernatural life of God, but by digging deep into his own nature and reaching for the stars — and thereby falling into the abyss of hell. Supernaturalism — relying on God who is above the natural — is Catholicism. Naturalism — relying on our created nature without the aid of God — is Satanism.

The Catholic Church is in crisis because the enemies of Christ plotted organized efforts to place a pope for Satan on the Roman Chair of Saint Peter. The enemies of Christ from Nero to Napoleon eventually discovered that to attack or murder the pope only creates sympathy and martyrs. It is a failed strategy in every era. So instead, they sought quietly to place one of their own in the papal shoes. It would require decades, even a century, to create the seminaries, the priests, the bishops, the cardinal electors, and then even the pope or popes themselves — but it would be worth the wait. It has been a slow, patient plan to establish a Satanic revolution with the pope as puppet.

If you do not believe that Satan exists, put down this book. Moreover, if you believe that the Catholic Church can be purified merely by updated rules, policies, and canonical procedures, you’ll find little promise in the historical diagnosis and proposed cure found in this book. Saint Paul stated: “For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12). The crisis of the Catholic Church relates to the intrusion of these “rulers of this present darkness,” and she can only be purified by sanctified warfare against the demonic.

In a homily for Holy Mass on the feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul (29 June 1972) and in commemoration of the ninth anniversary of being crowned as Bishop of Rome, Pope Paul VI lamented: “We would say that, through some mysterious crack — no, it’s not mysterious; through some crack, the smoke of Satan has entered the Church of God. There is doubt, uncertainty, problems, unrest, dissatisfaction, confrontation.” This testimony of Paul VI acknowledged not merely that the Catholic Church had experienced secularization but that the smoke of Satan himself had entered the Church through a crack. What is this satanic smoke?

In Sacred Scripture, the word “smoke” is used about fifty times. In almost every case, the word refers to the liturgical worship of Israel’s God through the smoke of incense and the smoke of animal sacrifice as “sweet-smelling sacrifice” (Sir. 38:11). In one case, “smoke” is even used for the exorcism of a demon: “And when the demon smelled the odor he fled to the remotest parts of Egypt, and the angel bound him” (Tob. 8:3). When Isaiah mystically enters the heavenly house of God, he makes particular mention that “the house was filled with smoke” (Isa. 6:4). Lastly, the book of Revelation details the plumes of smoke within the heavenly Holy of Holies: “The smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God” (Rev. 8:4). Scripture, then, universally associates smoke with the worship and presence of God. Why, then, does Pope Paul VI speak of the smoke of Satan?

Although smoke is nearly always a sign of holiness, sacrifice, and worship, in the book of Revelation, we find a handful of exceptions. We repeatedly observe how Satan mimics God, just as the Egyptian magicians copycatted the miracles of Moses. For example, Revelation presents a perverted satanic trinity of the devil, an antichrist king, and a false prophet. In place of a Holy and Virginal Church wedded to Christ, Satan establishes the Whore of Babylon riding the antichrist. In like manner, we observe sacred incense smoke in the eighth chapter of Revelation, and then immediately we read of the demonic smoke of Satan in the ninth chapter:

I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key of the shaft of the bottomless pit; he opened the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft. Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth. (Rev. 9:1–3)

This is the “smoke of Satan” to which Pope Paul VI referred in 1972. Satan is the “star fallen from heaven to earth.” Just as Simon received a new name (Peter) and received the “keys of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 16:19), so also the devil received a new name (Satan) and received a “key of the shaft of the bottomless pit.” Both Peter and Satan received new names and the power of keys. Satan is, therefore, the pope of the damned. That Satan is the papa or father of the damned can be discerned from the warning of Christ to the Pharisees, “You are of your father the devil.”1

The Catholic office of pope goes back to Simon Peter. After Christ asks the apostles, “Who do you say that I am?” Simon answers, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:15–16). Christ then promises to Simon the Davidic office of steward or prime minister by changing his name:

Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. (Matt. 16:17–19)

The successors of Saint Peter are those papas or “popes” who succeed Saint Peter as bishops of the city of Rome. To understand fully how the “smoke of Satan” entered the Catholic Church before 1972 under Pope Paul VI, we must begin with the infestation of the Catholic Church by institutional naturalism and this leads us to the year of Our Lord 1859.

1 “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

2

Alta Vendita: Satan’s Revolution in Tiara and Cope

The Pope, whoever he may be, will never come to the secret societies. It is for the secret societies to come first to the Church, with the aim of winning them both. The work which we have undertaken is not the work of a day, nor of a month, nor of a year. It may last many years, a century perhaps, but in our ranks the soldier dies, and the fight continues.

— Freemasonic Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita

The Frenchman Jacques Crétineau-Joly had a fiery faith and entered the seminary only to discern that he did not have a vocation to the priesthood. He had been a philosophy professor and attempted poetry but found his talent in research and writing. In 1846, Crétineau-Joly published an exhaustive six-volume history of the Jesuits titled The Religious, Political, and Literary History of the Society of Jesus (Histoire religieuse, politique et littéraire de la Compagnie de Jésus). In 1859, with approval and encouragement from Pope Pius IX, he published his most important book The Roman Church in the Face of Revolution (L’Église romaine en face de la Révolution).

The Roman Church in the Face of Revolution was an explosive work that claimed that anti-Catholic secret societies would no longer attack the Church from without but would infiltrate her from within. The plot was detailed in a secret document acquired from the highest lodge in Italy, the Alta Vendita of the Carbonari. The Italian Carbonari, or “charcoal makers,” were a secret society aligned with secret societies in France, Spain, Portugal, and Russia. These Freemasonic lodges shared common goals, such as a hatred for Catholicism and monarchy. The Italian Carbonari held a unique posture of hatred because, for them, the chief Italian monarch also happened to be the Catholic pope. Pope Pius IX had written the encyclical Qui pluribus in 1846 directly against the growing influence of the Carbonari.

Sometime before 1859, the Catholic Church acquired a secret document titled The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita detailing how they will eventually take over the papacy. The Italian Carbonari met in secret in lodges, which they called venditas, or “shops.” The chief lodge or vendita was the “high shop” or alta vendita. This document was thus a guiding document for the “high shop” of the Carbonari. Crétineau-Joly exposed the thesis of the Alta Vendita, and the Irish priest Monsignor George Francis Dillon subsequently took it up.

The Protestant Reformation of 1517 had obliterated European Christendom. As Protestantism splintered and weakened, there was a naturalistic desire for a new world order united around “liberté, égalité, fraternité.” Beginning in 1717, the establishing of this new world order would be accomplished by forming a new organized “religion” through secret societies throughout Europe.

From 1717 forward, the chief enemy of the Catholic Church was Freemasonry. The oldest Freemason fraternities seem to derive from the medieval guilds of stonemasons. During the Reformation, however, these masonic lodges took on the form of subversive secret societies with occult rites and gnostic philosophy.

Occult Freemasonry likely derives from the Rosicrucian or “Rose Cross” rites popularized in Protestant regions of Germany. The founding document of Rosicrucian mysticism is Fama Fraternitatis Rosae Crucis (1614), written by the gnostic alchemist Michael Maier (1568–1622). This document pretends to be written by a certain man named “Father Brother C.R.C.” or “Christian Rosa Crux” who was born in 1378 and allegedly lived 106 years. This pretended founder is typically referred to as Christian Rosenkreuz. He traveled to the East and acquired secret wisdom from Zoroastrianism, Sufism, Kabbalah, and gnostic teachers. Most traditions identify Christian Rosenkreuz as an Albigensian heretic. The core of Rosicrucianism is mystical parables and morality rites or liturgies that teach occult lessons for the enlightened. The central mystery is alchemy, or the belief that one can create gold from lower substances. This is the heresy of naturalism — manipulating nature to produce something above nature — just as Satan attempted to transcend his nature in order to become God.

After the Reformation of 1517 left a vacuum in Europe, Freemasonry organized a new universal “catholic church” instituted to unite man in naturalism, rationalism, and the universal brotherhood. The strategy of Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry is to arrange secret societies to subvert the current (Catholic) order and replace it with an enlightened order in which all religions are approximations of the truth — all religions become allegorical and equal. The Catholic Church is the Vetus Ordo Saeculorum — the Old Order of the World. Freemasonry is the Novus Ordo Saeculorum — the New Order of the World.

Freemasonry is the organized attempt to achieve what Lucifer attempted and what Adam and Eve tried. It is the temptation to alchemy — to transform lead into gold. Lucifer, Adam, and Eve attempted to transform their good natures into divine natures. Similarly, the Freemasons deny the unique Incarnation of Jesus Christ and reject the idea of sin and the need for Christ to die and rise again for human salvation. Consequently, there is no grace, no sacraments, and no Church — human nature alone is sufficient for humanity’s happiness. It is the theological error that nature is neither healed nor perfected by grace. Rather, nature is divine. Creation is divine, and we must seek occult illumination to see the new world order of nature as divine.

Not surprisingly, Freemasonry always thrived where Protestantism took root first. Scotland (Presbyterianism), England (Anglicanism), and Germany (Lutheranism) are the traditional centers of European Freemasonry. Similarly, Protestant America also became infected by Freemasonry, especially in the Protestant Southern United States.

Following Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry worships the “Great Architect of the Universe,” who is both god and the natural universe. Former members of Freemasonry have revealed that the “Great Architect of the Universe” is, in fact, Satan.

Formally organized Freemasonry originated in 1717, two hundred years after the 1517 Reformation. It grew out of the anti-Catholicism, Deism, and rationalism of its time. Reason, not faith, was prized by this epoch, and the Freemasonic lodges proliferated. Organized religion was rejected in favor of the sentiment that all religions are equally grasping for the unknown “Great Architect of the Universe.” This is why the Freemason Benjamin Franklin tithed to all the religions and denominations in his day. This is also why Freemasons enshrine the scriptures of all religions on their altar: the Holy Bible, the Koran, the Vedas, the Zend-Avesta, the Sohar, the Kabbalah, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Upanishads. They are, for the Freemason, all equally true and all equally false. They are, for the Freemason, merely the kindergarten sketches of children picturing God.

Since organized religions are accepted equally, the mode of divine knowledge is reason, not faith, baptism, preaching, Eucharist, liturgy, or priesthood — and certainly not the papacy. Humanity does not need faith — it needs more reason. This is the fallout from Martin Luther’s assertion of religious authority from Scripture alone. This principle made every man the private and final judge of theological doctrine. Private subjective reason sneaked in by this back door left open unwittingly by Luther.

The Catholic Church excommunicated any Catholic who joined Freemasonry, because it is a religion of all religions. Although it is a secret society, it makes no secret about seeking a new world order in which all religions are honored and treated as equally true. In its pursuit of equality, it also desires the equal distribution of human property.

* * *

Now that we have established the historical and philosophical background of Freemasonry, we can return to the Alta Vendita and the new strategy of the nineteenth-century Carbonari. Written pseudonymously by Piccolo Tigre or “Little Tiger,” The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita boldly details precisely how the papacy will be won over to Freemasonic philosophy and beliefs, and its central tenet cannot be repeated too often:

The Pope, whoever he may be, will never come to the secret societies. It is for the secret societies to come first to the Church, with the aim of winning them both. The work which we have undertaken is not the work of a day, nor of a month, nor of a year. It may last many years, a century perhaps, but in our ranks the soldier dies, and the fight continues.2

Here the Alta Vendita grants that their project may take a century. The Little Tiger then goes on to explain how the papacy will be acquired:

Now then, in order to secure to us a Pope according to our own heart, it is necessary to fashion for that Pope a generation worthy of the kingdom of which we dream. Leave on one side old age and middle life, go to the youth, and, if possible, even to children.

The Little Tiger explains how the youth will be seduced over time through the corruption of families, books, poems, colleges, gymnasiums, universities, and seminaries. Next the Catholic clergy will be seduced and corrupted:

The reputation of a good Catholic and good patriot will open the way for our doctrines to pass into the hearts of the young clergy and go even to the depths of convents. In a few years the young clergy will have, by the force of events, invaded all offices. They will govern, administer, and judge. They will form the Council of the Sovereign. They will be called upon to choose the Pontiff who will reign.

Once the corrupted young clergy become cardinals and elect a pope “according to our heart,” many obstacles will remain in the way:

and that Pontiff, like the greater part of his contemporaries, will be necessarily imbued with the Italian and humanitarian principles which we are about to put in circulation. It is a little grain of mustard which we place in the earth, but the sun of Justice will develop it even to be a great power, and you will see one day what a rich harvest that little seed will produce. In the way which we trace for our brethren there are found great obstacles to conquer, difficulties of more than one kind to surmount. They will be overcome by experience and by wisdom.

The Little Tiger next rejoices over the outcome of a Freemasonic naturalistic Pope reigning on the Chair of Saint Peter:

The goal is so beautiful that we must put all sails to the wind in order to attain it. If you want to revolutionize Italy, look for the Pope whose portrait we have just drawn. Do you want to establish the reign of the chosen ones on the throne of the Whore of Babylon? Let the clergy march under your banner, while they naively believe they are marching under the banner of the Apostolic Keys.

Do you want to wipe out the last vestige of the tyrants and oppressors? Cast out your nets like Simon Bar-Jona! Cast them deep into the sacristy, the seminaries, and monasteries, rather than at the bottom of the sea. And if you do not rush things, we promise you a catch more miraculous than this!

The fisherman of fish became a fisherman of men. You, too, will fish some friends and lead them to the feet of the Apostolic See. You will have preached revolution in tiara and cope, preceded under the cross and the banner, a revolution that will need only a little help to set the quarters of the world on fire.

The plan of the Little Tiger doesn’t include pamphlets, guns, bloodshed, or even political elections. It requires a step-by-step infiltration, first of the youth, next of the clergy, and then, as time passes, of those youth and clergy who become cardinals and then the pope.

Pope Gregory XVI originally acquired the Alta Vendita document, which places its composition likely within the years of his pontificate from 1831 to 1846. In 1832 he issued the encyclical Mirari vos on liberalism and religious indifferentism. The document is written against “the insolent and factious men who endeavored to raise the standard of treason.” Pope Gregory XVI writes against what appears to be a French Revolution being fostered from within the Catholic Church. In Mirari vos, he addresses and condemns seven current errors invading the hearts of Catholics:

1. “The abominable conspiracy against clerical celibacy” (no. 11)

2. “Anything contrary to the sanctity and indissolubility of honorable marriage of Christians” (no. 12)

3. “Indifferentism. This perverse opinion is spread on all sides by the fraud of the wicked who claim that it is possible to obtain the eternal salvation of the soul by the profession of any kind of religion, as long as morality is maintained.” (no. 13)

4. “The erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone.” (no. 14)

5. “The freedom to publish any writings whatsoever and disseminate them to the people . . . for we read that the Apostles themselves burned a large number of books” (nos. 15–16)

6. “Attacks on the trust and submission due to princes; the torches of treason are being lit everywhere” (no. 17)

7. “The plans of those who desire vehemently to separate the Church from the State, and to break the mutual concord between temporal authority and the priesthood” (no. 20)

Catholics living in our time may be shocked to observe popes in our day advocating polar opposites of these condemnations laid down in 1832. Current papal and Conciliar documents, and canon law make room for clerical marriage, divorce and remarriage, liberty of conscience over the objective moral law, freedom of the press, political rebellion, and the complete separation of the Church from the State. Between the pontificate of Gregory XVI and our time, the plot of the Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita has taken deep root indeed.

Gregory’s successor Pope Pius IX encouraged Jacques Crétineau-Joly to publish the text of the Alta Vendita in full in 1859. The plot of placing “our doctrines in the hearts of the young clergy and the monasteries” was no doubt on the mind of Pope Pius IX when he issued his Syllabus of Errors in 1864, which explicitly attacked the eighty errors of Freemasonry and the Carbonari, divided into ten sections:

1. Against pantheism, naturalism, and absolute rationalism (propositions 1–7)

2. Against moderate rationalism (propositions 8–14)

3. Against indifferentism and latitudinarianism (propositions 15–18)

4. Against socialism, communism, secret societies, Bible societies, and liberal clerical societies (a general condemnation, unnumbered)

5. Defense of the temporal power in the Papal States, which were overthrown six years later (propositions 19–38)

6. Relationship of civil society to the Church (propositions 39–55)

7. On natural and Christian ethics (propositions 56–64)

8. Defense of Christian marriage (propositions 65–74)

9. Civil power of the sovereign pontiff in the Papal States (propositions 75–76)

10. Against liberalism in every political form (propositions 77–80)

The Freemasons were fighting for the pantheistic deification of human beings — just as Satan had fought for the pantheistic deification of angelic beings. And once again, that preternatural war would come to earth. In just a few short years, the Freemasons would accomplish the overthrow of the political independence of the papacy and Pope Leo XIII would mystically see demons gathering upon Rome.

2 This quote and all quotes from the Alta Vendita can be found in the Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita by Piccolo Tigre. Reproduced in English translation in the lecture by Right Rev. Mgsr. George Dillon, D.D., at Edinburgh in October 1884, about six months after the appearance of Pope Leo XIII’s famous encyclical letter, Humanum genus, on Freemasonry. A few changes were made by Dr. Taylor Marshall to update the language and spelling to modern standards. The full text is found in the back of this book.

3

Our Lady of La Salette

The Successor of Saint Peter was not the only one concerned about the infiltration of the Catholic Church. In 1846, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared in an apparition to two children at La Salette, France. Five years later, Pope Pius IX formally approved the apparition of Our Lady of Salette and its two “secrets.” The two children were Maximin Giraud (age eleven) and Mélanie Calvat (age fourteen), who lived in the eight-hundred-person town of La Salette in Southeastern France. Returning from the mountain where they had been tending the cows of Mélanie’s neighbor, the two children saw a beautiful lady weeping bitterly on Mount Sous-Les-Baisses.

There, the Blessed Virgin sat unceremoniously with her elbows on her knees, weeping into her hands. She wore a high headdress composed of various roses, a silver robe, a gold apron, white shoes, and a golden crucifix hung from a chain around her neck. Roses were also on the ground at her feet. While crying, she spoke to the children in their French dialect of Occitan. The message of Our Lady of La Salette concerned reverence for the Holy Name of God and rest from work on Sunday. She warned them of the impending potato famine that struck Ireland and France in 1846 and 1847. She then revealed a secret to each of the two children, ascended the hill, and disappeared.

The local bishop, Philibert de Bruillard of Grenoble, interviewed the children and found their story worthy of belief. Cardinal Bonald, the archbishop of Lyon, however, remained skeptical. The cardinal insisted that the children reveal each of their secrets. Mélanie agreed to do so only if the text of her secret would be carried directly to the pope. In agreement with this condition, the bishop of Grenoble sent two representatives to Rome carrying the two secrets of Our Lady, which they presented to Pius IX on 18 July 1851.

Maximin Giraud became a seminarian but never reached ordination to the priesthood; he died before turning forty on 1 March 1875. Mélanie Calvat became a nun at the age of twenty (taking the name Sister Mary of the Cross) with the Sisters of Providence and then transferred to the Sisters of Charity.

Mélanie’s words became controversial in the compromise between Napoleon III (nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte) and the bishops of France. She revealed that the Blessed Virgin Mary had warned her of a Freemasonic plot to overturn the Catholic Church in France. Eager to remove this visionary from French politics, the hierarchy allowed her to transfer to an English Carmelite convent in 1855.

For five years in England, she spoke of prophecies and things to come. The local English bishop forbade her from speaking, so she returned to France and joined a convent at Marseille. Her identity was found out, and she shuffled through a few convents before leaving for Naples in 1867. In Naples, she wrote down her secret and a rule for a religious community of men called the Order of the Apostles of the Last Days, and another for women called the Order of the Mother of God. Mélanie met privately with Pope Leo XIII to discuss these orders, but nothing came of them. When she died in Naples, the local people were shocked to learn that the seer of La Salette had been living incognito in their midst.

What is the secret of Our Lady of La Salette that was given to Mélanie? She first wrote down the secret in 1851, and it was sealed and sent to Pope Pius IX — after which it was archived in the Holy Office in Rome. Mélanie wrote it down a second time 1873 and published this second version in 1879 as a booklet bearing the imprimatur of Bishop Salvatore Luigi Zola of the diocese of Lecce, Italy. The title of this booklet is Apparition of the Blessed Virgin on the Mountain of La Salette.

Mélanie’s original 1851 version had been archived, lost, and forgotten since the late 1800s. In 1999, however, it was rediscovered in the archives of the Holy Office and published.3 Only since 1999 have we been able to compare the two versions side by side. The 1851 archived version and the 1879 published version follow the same themes (persecution of the pope, apostasy, the destruction of Paris and Marseille, the birth of the antichrist from a nun, etc.), but the 1879 is much longer and more precise and contains details that are not found the other version.

The Holy Office censured the 1879 version almost immediately after its publication because it predicted the future apostasy of Rome. In 1923, it was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books. Most people today assume that the archived 1851 version is the pure, pristine, and true version, whereas the 1879 published edition was falsified and sensationalized by Mélanie in her adult life. But why would Mélanie corrupt and falsely expand a secret she received from the Blessed Virgin Mary?

Those who reject the 1879 version, with its account of Rome as the seat of the antichrist, claim that Mélanie either lost her mind or that she bore malice toward the Catholic Church, so she created an embellished version of her secret. Yet we read that she died humbly, receiving the sacraments, and professing the Catholic Faith. Those who knew her testified to her sanctity and fidelity. Even Pope Pius X admired her and suggested her beatification after her death.

Mélanie was not insane, and she did not bear false witness about the words of the Mother of God. We can conclude, then, that the 1851 and 1879 versions are both equally true and do not invalidate one another, any more than the differing details in Saint Matthew’s Gospel refute the authenticity and truth of Saint Mark’s Gospel. The 1851 version states that the antichrist will be born of a nun. The 1879 version states the antichrist will be born of a Hebrew nun. Differences such as this do not discredit the more detailed 1879 version. Moreover, we know that the 1851 version was written down twice in 1851, and the first draft was rejected and destroyed. Some tampering did occur in 1851 as well.

We also know that in 1851, when the original version was approved and sealed, the girl Mélanie was suffering intimidation by a cardinal, a bishop, inquisitors, and theologians. The 1851 version, therefore, may not have been the exhaustive version, but simply the gist of Our Lady’s secret to satisfy the cardinal commanding Mélanie. Moreover, the 1879 version has a bracketed section in which Mélanie makes a comment “according to the Vision which I had in the moment that the very Blessed Virgin was speaking of the resurrection of the dead.”4 That Mélanie received a vision as the Virgin spoke is often overlooked. In this author’s opinion, the 1879 version incorporates both the message and the vision, whereas the 1851 contains a truncated version of the message.

I believe that both versions are valid (both versions are included in the appendix of this book), and thus I here reprint the most interesting passages from the 1879 edition. Firstly, Our Lady condemns the evil priests of the Catholic Church:

The priests, ministers of my Son, the priests, by their wicked lives, by their irreverence and their impiety in the celebration of the holy mysteries, by their love of money, their love of honors and pleasures, the priests have become cesspools of impurity. Yes, the priests are asking vengeance, and vengeance is hanging over their heads. Woe to the priests and to those dedicated to God who by their unfaithfulness and their wicked lives are crucifying my Son again! The sins of those dedicated to God cry out to Heaven and call for vengeance, and now vengeance is at their door, for there is no one left to beg mercy and forgiveness for the people. There are no more generous souls, there is no one left worthy of offering a stainless sacrifice to the Eternal for the sake of the world.5

Our Lady of La Salette then praises Pope Pius IX and condemns Napoleon III:

May the Vicar of my Son, Pope Pius IX, never leave Rome again after 1859; may he, however, be steadfast and noble; may he fight with the weapons of faith and love. I will be at his side. May he be on his guard against Napoleon: he is two-faced, and he wishes to make himself Pope as well as Emperor. God will soon draw back from him. He is the mastermind who, always wanting to ascend further, will fall on the sword he wishes to use to force his people to be raised up.6

Our Lady names 1864 as the year in which Satan and his demons will be unleashed from hell; 1864 marks the publication of the Syllabus of Errors, in which Pope Pius IX condemns liberalism, rationalism, and socialism.

In the year 1864, Lucifer together with many demons will be unloosed from hell; they will put an end to faith little by little, even in those dedicated to God. They will blind them in such a way, that, unless they are blessed with a special grace, these people will take on the spirit of these angels of hell; several religious institutions will lose all faith and will lose many souls. . . . All the civil governments will have one and the same plan, which will be to abolish and do away with every religious principle, to make way for materialism, atheism, spiritualism, and vice of all kinds.7

Our Lady then turns to the end of the world and describes the advent of the antichrist upon the earth:

It will be during this time that the Antichrist will be born of a Hebrew nun, a false virgin who will communicate with the old serpent, the master of impurity, his father will be B.8 At birth, he will spew out blasphemy; he will have teeth; in a word, he will be the devil incarnate. He will scream horribly, he will perform wonders, he will feed on nothing but impurity. He will have brothers who, although not devils incarnate like him, will be children of evil. At the age of twelve, they will draw attention upon themselves by the gallant victories they will have won; soon they will each lead armies, aided by the legions of hell.9

The seasons will be altered, the earth will produce nothing but bad fruit, the stars will lose their regular motion, the moon will only reflect a faint reddish glow. Water and fire will give the earth’s globe convulsions and terrible earthquakes, which will swallow up mountains, cities, etc.10

Rome will lose faith and become the seat of the Antichrist.11

Mélanie’s booklet received much resistance in Rome, presumably because it condemned wicked priests so violently and stated, “Rome will lose faith and become the seat of the Antichrist.” In 1880, the Holy Office restricted the book, but it was reprinted repeatedly in France and Italy into the 1900s.12 Yet Pope Pius X seems to have given her his approbation, when, having read the biography of Mélanie, he exclaimed to the bishop of Altamura, “La nostra Santa!” and proposed to open the cause for her beatification. Despite the controversy surrounding her 1879 publication, Mélanie Calvat confirmed the claim of Cardinal Manning, who stated:

The apostasy of the city of Rome . . . and its destruction by the Antichrist may be thought so new to many Catholics, that I think it well to recite the text of theologians of greatest repute. First, Malvenda, who writes expressly on the subject, states as the opinion of Ribera, Gaspar Melus, Viegas, Suarez, Bellarmine, and Bosius, that Rome shall apostatize from the faith, drive away the Vicar of Christ, and return to its ancient paganism.13

The war against the Vicar of Christ and the apostasy of Rome had just begun. And according to Mélanie, it began with satanic rage in 1864.

3 Father Michel Corteville discovered Mélanie’s original written secret of 1851 in the archives of the Holy Office in 1999. The 1851 version conforms in essence to her published 1879 version, but it lacks the phrases “Rome will lose faith and become the seat of the Antichrist,” and “There will be an eclipse of the Church.” In 2000 at the Angelicum, Father Michel Corteville defended his doctoral thesis in theology, entitled Discovery of the Secret of La Salette.

4 Le Secret de Mélanie, p. 29-30.

5 Mélanie Calvat, Apparition of the Blessed Virgin on the Mountain of La Salette (Lecce, Italy: 1879), 2.

6 Ibid., 7

7 Ibid., 11

8 Here “B” is usually assumed to be “bishop.” This means that the antichrist is not the son of Satan but born naturally of an unholy union between a nun and a bishop.

9 Calvat, Apparition, 26.

10 Ibid., 27.

11 Ibid., 28.

12 The Holy Office, under Pope Benedict XV, placed a reprinting of the 1879 version of the secret on the Index of Forbidden Books on 9 May 1923.

13 Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, “The Present Crises of the Holy See Tested by Prophecy,” reprinted in The Pope and the Antichrist (Sainte-Croix du Mont, France: Tradibooks, 2007), 75.

4

Attack on the Papal States in 1870

When this corruption has been abolished, then eradicate those secret societies of factious men who, completely opposed to God and to princes, are wholly dedicated to bringing about the fall of the Church, the destruction of kingdoms, and disorder in the whole world. Having cast off the restraints of true religion, they prepare the way for shameful crimes.

— Pope Pius VIII, Traditi humilitati

Napoleon Bonaparte once taunted a Catholic cardinal by threatening: “Your Eminence, are you not aware that I have the power to destroy the Catholic Church?” To which the cardinal quipped: “Your Majesty, we Catholic clergy have done our best to destroy the Church for the last eighteen hundred years. We have not succeeded, and neither will you.”

From the time of Nero Caesar to the time of Napoleon Bonaparte, the enemies of Christ sought to destroy His Catholic Church by an outward attack of persecution. In every century, these attacks yielded a stronger Church, which confirmed the testimony of Tertullian: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”14

Nero killed Peter and Paul, and the Church in Rome grew. Diocletian implemented the grandest persecution of Christians, and within decades the Roman Empire became majority Christian, even producing the first baptized emperor. It seems to have taken eighteen hundred years for the enemies of the Church to realize that the Catholic Church cannot be destroyed by outward attacks. She must be infiltrated and compromised from within. Persecution by the sword only filled the world with cathedrals and basilicas erected to the honor of the martyrs.

Then, as Judas had betrayed Christ, so the Catholic Church would soon be betrayed by a kiss. The 1800s and 1900s would see the Church attacked by Judas priests from within her own ranks.

* * *

The moral and financial corruption of contemporary Catholicism begins not with the Second Vatican Council, as some Catholics naively insist, but rather with the fall of the Papal States under Pope Pius IX in 1870.

Before we can appreciate the way in which the internal attacks on the Church were launched, we must appreciate the origin and role of the Papal States in protecting the papal office. From the time Constantine moved his capital to Constantinople in A.D. 330, the pope in Rome maintained de facto political autonomy in Rome. The kings of the Franks formally ratified the pope’s political autonomy five hundred years later.

In 751, Pope Zachary crowned Pepin the Short as “King of the Franks” in order to replace the Merovingian king Childeric III. Pope Zachary’s successor, Pope Stephen II, extended the privileges by also granting King Pepin the title “Patrician of the Romans.” King Pepin expressed his gratitude by defeating the Lombards in 754 and transferring their geographical properties to Pope Stephen II and his successors. These new “Papal States” were denoted in Latin as Status Ecclesiasticus, or the “the Church State,” wherein the pope was both spiritual pastor and temporal governor.

In 781, King Pepin’s son Charlemagne confirmed the Papal States as the Duchies of Rome, Ravenna, the Pentapolis, parts of the Duchy of Benevento, Tuscany, Corsica, Lombardy, and a number of Italian cities. The favors and gratitude were mutual when Pope Leo III crowned Charles Magnus, or Charlemagne, as he is commonly known, as Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas in 800. This Frankish-Roman arrangement yielded two important kingdoms. There would be an official Papal State that would protect the popes from political invasion by means of geographic insulation around Rome; and there would be a “Holy Roman Empire” that would serve as an allied security guard to protect the Papal State.

From 754 until 1870, the pope of Rome was both the spiritual pontiff and the temporal ruler of the Papal States. Famously, Pope Boniface VIII carried two swords in procession to signify his authority over both the spiritual realm of the Church and the temporal realm of the Papal States. On 18 November 1302, Pope Boniface VIII issued the papal bull Unam sanctam, in which he claimed that the pope’s twofold authority derives from the “two swords” kept by Saint Peter at the Last Supper:

“I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day, until you three times deny that you know me.” He said to them, “But now, let him who has a purse take it, and likewise a bag. And let him who has no sword sell his mantle and buy one. For I tell you that this scripture must be fulfilled in me, ‘And he was reckoned with transgressors’; for what is written about me has its fulfilment.” And they said, “Look, Lord, here are two swords.” And he said to them, “It is enough.” (Luke 22:34, 36–38).

This became known as the “two swords” theory, and it remained in place until 1798, when troops commanded by Napoleon dissolved the Papal States. The next year, Pope Pius VI died in exile. His successor, Pius VII, was elected in Venice and crowned in a rush with a famous papier-mâché papal tiara. Napoleon allowed Pius VII to return to Rome and restored the Papal States to the pope in 1800 — a fitting millennial anniversary of the pope’s crowning Charlemagne. Napoleon seized the Papal States in 1809, however, and the Congress of Vienna did not return them to the pope until 1814.

From 1814 until 1870, the Papal States were in danger. In 1859, Pope Pius IX ordered that every Low Mass of the Catholic Church end with three Hail Marys, the Salve Regina, a versicle and response, and a collect for the protection of the Church. In February 1849, a Roman Republic was declared, and Pope Pius IX fled Rome. In 1860, Emperor Napoleon III seized much of the Papal States but protected Rome. But with the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, Napoleon III withdrew and left Rome vulnerable. King Victor Emmanuel II offered the pope protection. Pope Pius IX refused. Italy declared war against the pope on 10 September 1870. Papal Rome fell on 20 September 1870 after a few hours’ siege. The Kingdom of Italy offered the pope the use of the Vatican and an annual budget of 3.25 million liras. Italy denied the pope’s sovereignty but granted him the right to send and receive ambassadors. Pope Pius IX resolutely rejected this offer. He refused to recognize the new kingdom and excommunicated King Victor Emmanuel II and the Italian parliament for their sacrilegious usurpation.

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