Infiltration Read online

  1 Insegnamenti di Paolo VI (Città de Vaticano: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1972), vol. X, p. 707.

  2 “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).

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  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.

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  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 pseudonymousl
y 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.3

  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.

  3 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.

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  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 appa
rition 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.