By DEACON MIKE MANNO, JD
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past few years (or perhaps decades), you should have noticed that the Church has been having some difficulties of late: Flouting of doctrine, lack of catechesis, scandal in the clergy, lack of leadership, and the near surrender of discipline to the world.
Why? You might ask. Is there an organized effort to destroy or diminish the Church and its role on Earth? What say you to this?
A lot of concerned folks in answering these questions jump to the usual suspects: Vatican II, the Novus Ordo Mass, the death (or murder?) of John Paul I, the allegedly suspicious elections of John XXIII, Paul VI, and Pope Francis, among other favorites. But not necessarily so, says the author of a new book: Infiltration: The Plot to Destroy the Church From Within.
In this, his latest book, Dr. Taylor Marshall, a former Episcopal priest who converted to Catholicism in 2006, argues that the problems in the Church are a result of a grand scheme, authored by Satan himself, who was unable to destroy the Church from without, and who has now turned his attention to a full frontal attack from within. Dr. Marshall traces this insidious attack to the root origins of Freemasonry.
Following the Reformation, there was a European vacuum into which secular societies sought to replace Catholic culture with an “enlightened order” which recognized all religions as equal, and worked to establish reason — not faith — as the primary intellectual basis for society.
This led to the rise of secret societies with cult-like rituals that became rivals to the Catholic Church. Realizing that history, and their own efforts were unlikely to topple the Church from the outside, a plan was devised to eat at the heart of the Church from the inside.
In the mid-nineteenth century, according to Marshall, the Church discovered a secret document, The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita, which was published by the Italian Carbonari, a secret society with links to Freemasonry. In it was a blueprint on how to neutralize the Church’s influence by infiltrating it and pacifying society through the indoctrination of enlightened ideals.
Ultimately, the Alta Vendita predicted, the Church would survive with leadership, including a Pope, sympathetic to the goals of the new order of progressive enlightenment. This, of course, would take time, decades, even centuries but the movement was urged to be patient, for in time all would be set right, according to the publication. Key to the success was to aim for conversion of the young, especially those studying in universities and seminaries:
“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.”
Pius X (1903-1914) recognized the threat of open infiltration and labeled it “modernism” which he condemned. His Predecessor, Leo XIII (1878-1903) had condemned secret societies and after a vision where he saw what is now referred to as the “smoke of Satan” engulfing the Church, dictated the Prayer to St. Michael and ordered it recited after every Low Mass.
Marshall also points to warnings by Our Lady of La Salette (1846) who prophesied, according to one of the seers:
“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.”
In this vein he reports on the Communist attempt to place atheists and others into the priesthood to foster the corruption from the inside.
He notes that former Communist USA leader Bella Dodd (See “Hello Bella . . . Conspiracy Anyone?” The Wanderer, September 20, 2018) testified before Congress in the early 1950s that, beginning in the 1930s, she and her cohorts “put eleven hundred men into the priesthood in order to destroy the Church from within, and that right now they are in the highest places in the Church.”
He continues to weave his way through history linking events such as the secret message of Fatima, the loss of the Papal States, the controversy surrounding the conclave of 1958, the opening of Vatican II, liturgical reforms, the Vatican bank scandals, the plot against Benedict XVI, and the homosexual influence of the Sankt Gallen Mafia that maneuvered to elect Jorge Bergoglio, now Francis, as Bishop of Rome.
This may sound like the stuff of the tin-foil hat club, but to follow the links, as Dr. Marshall does, opens up a new perspective on what is happening.
As Bishop Athanasius Schneider, in his foreword to the book, states: “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 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….
“With devastation and confusion in the Church now in full public view, it is time to expose the historical roots and the perpetrators of the 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.”
Dr. Marshall’s thesis is that this is not ultimately a battle against Freemasons, Communists, and modernists; it is a battle against the forces of Hell and the power of the Devil and his legions. And it is a battle that we all must fight.
“Holding to the reverent ‘recognize and resist’ position is not enough. This is the diagnosis, not the medicine. Our vocation is to fight spiritually and rebuild that which has been destroyed. Pope St. Pius X observed: ‘In our time more than ever before, the chief strength of the wicked lies in the cowardice and weakness of good men.’ Good men must throw off cowardice and weakness and stand under the banner of Christ with their hands readied for battle,” he wrote.
The book is published by Crisis Publications, an imprint of Sophia Institute Press. It is a surprisingly easy read and I recommend it to anyone concerned with answering the questions we started with: Has there been an infiltration of the Church? And if so, by whom?
To order the book, contact Sophia Institute at www.sophiainstitute.com or 1-800-888-9344.
You can contact Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress