It is enough to recall rationalism and naturalism, those deadly sources of evil whose teachings are everywhere freely distributed. We must then add the many allurements to corruption: the opposition to or open defection from the Church by public officials, the bold obstinacy of secret societies, here and there a curriculum for the education of youth without regard for God.18
Pope Leo XIII would also lament that this “conspiracy” has not remained distant: “By way of conspiracies, corruptions, and violence, it has finally come to dominate Italy and even Rome.”19 In view of this new demonic infestation, Leo XIII in 1886 added to the Low Mass a newly composed prayer to Saint Michael, imploring the archangel to help in battle against the devil. It is the same prayer to Saint Michael that we are familiar with today:
Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.20
The prayers after Low Mass arranged by his predecessor Pope Pius IX were essentially Marian in scope. Why, then, did Pope Leo XIII feel compelled to add this apocalyptic prayer to Saint Michael against “Satan and all the evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls”? In 1931, Monsignor Carl Vogl (1874–1941) related the following legend about the origin of this prayer:
A rather peculiar circumstance induced Pope Leo XIII to compose this powerful prayer. After celebrating Mass one day he was in conference with the Cardinals. Suddenly he sank to the floor. Several doctors were summoned, and one found no sign of a pulse — the very life seemed to have ebbed away from the fragile and aging body. Suddenly he recovered and said, “What a horrible vision I have been shown!” He saw the ages to come, the seductive powers and ravings of the devils against the Church in every land. But Saint Michael appeared in the moment of greatest distress and cast Satan and his cohorts back into the abyss of hell. Such was the occasion that caused Pope Leo XIII to prescribe this prayer for the universal Church.21
Critics point out that Monsignor Vogl’s account in 1931 is forty-five years removed from Leo’s composition of the prayer to Saint Michael and his inclusion of it in Low Masses in 1886. The fact that Pope Leo XIII added a specific prayer to Saint Michael for “our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil” need not require a mystical apparition to the Holy Father.
Nevertheless, a certain Cardinal Giovanni Battista Nasalli Rocca di Corneliano (1872–1952) testified that he had repeatedly received precisely the same story from Pope Leo XIII’s personal secretary Monsignor Rinaldo Angeli (1851–1914):
“Who prowl about the world” has a historical explanation, which has been shared numerous times by the Holy Father’s most faithful secretary, who was very close to him through most of his pontificate, Monsignor Rinaldo Angeli.
Pope Leo XIII truly had a vision of demonic spirits, who were gathering on the Eternal City [Rome]. From that experience — which he shared with the Prelate and certainly with others in confidentiality — comes the prayer which he wanted the whole Church to recite. This was the prayer which he recited (we heard this many times in the Vatican Basilica) with a strong powerful voice, which resonated in an unforgettable way in the universal silence beneath the vaults of the most important temple of Christianity.
Not only that, but he wrote a special exorcism, which is found in the Rituale Romanum with the title Exorcismus in Satanam et angelos apostaticos. The Pontiff recommended to the bishops and priests that these exorcisms be recited often in their dioceses and in their parishes by priests who had received the proper faculties from their ordinaries. However, to set a good example, he recited it himself frequently throughout the day. In fact, another prelate familiar with the Pontiff used to tell us that even on his walks through the Vatican Gardens, he would take a small book — worn from much use — from his pocket and recite his exorcism with fervent piety and deep devotion. The small book is still preserved by a noble family in Rome, whom we know well.22
The account given by the personal secretary of Pope Leo XIII adds the “historical explanation” that the pope saw “a vision of demonic spirits, who were gathering on the Eternal City.” The pope’s secretary notes that Leo XIII not only added the prayer to Saint Michael at the end of Low Mass, but also that he composed a more lengthy exorcism prayer in 1890 to be used by bishops and priests throughout the world. This is the testimony of the pope’s secretary — the man closest to the heart, thoughts, and words of Pope Leo XIII on these matters.
The Alleged Conversation between God and Satan
The demonic apparition to Pope Leo XIII was embellished with apocryphal details shortly after this time. In 1947, Father Domenico Pechenino recounted that Pope Leo XIII was assisting at a second Mass after having celebrated Holy Mass himself. This version claims that the pope gazed at something above the head of the priest celebrant and then rushed away from the chapel to his private study, where he immediately composed the prayer to Saint Michael. Father Pechenino then adds a provocative detail to the story, reporting that Pope Leo XIII saw Satan himself during the Mass:
This is what happened. God had shown Satan to the Vicar of His Divine Son on earth, just like he did with Job. Satan was bragging that he had already devastated the Church on a large scale. In fact, these were tumultuous times for Italy, for many nations in Europe, and a bit around the world. The Freemasons ruled, and government hadn’t become docile instruments. With the audacity of a boaster, Satan put a challenge to God:
“And if you gave me a little more freedom, you could see what I would do for your Church!”
“What would you do?”
“I would destroy it.”
“Oh, that would be something to see. How long would it take?”
“Fifty or sixty years.”
“Have more freedom, and the time you need. Then we’ll see what happens.”23
This account in 1947 is the first known report that Satan and God conversed about the timing of the destruction of the Church, and that God assigned a time period for Satan to attempt his coup. Should we trust this story?
Father Pechenino’s version relates that this Leonine vision happened “a little time after 1890.” This is not altogether accurate, since the prayer to Saint Michael for Low Mass was assigned in 1886 and the longer Saint Michael exorcism was published in 1890. So we know right away that the details by Pechenino are not entirely trustworthy.
Another issue with his “Dialogue with Satan” account is that it seems to be derived from the visions of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774–1824), who, in her Detached Account of the Descent into Hell, states the following:
God Himself had decreed this, and I was likewise told, if I remember correctly, that he will be unchained (freigelassen) for a time fifty or sixty years before the year of Christ 2000. The dates of many other events were pointed out to me which I do not now remember; but a certain number of demons are to be let loose much earlier than Lucifer, in order to tempt men, and to serve as instruments of the divine vengeance.
Emmerich (who predates Pechenino by a century) refers specifically to the unchaining of Satan for “fifty or sixty years.” If, however, Pechenino was ignorant of Emmerich, we have a providential agreement of two separate sources — namely, that Satan will be loosed for the last “fifty or sixty years” of the twentieth century. There are historical and theological problems with the dialogue account of Pechenino. Nevertheless, we shall discover substantiated examples of infiltration within the Catholic Church beginning in the 1940s and 1950s — conforming to Emmerich’s vision of Satan being “unchained” in the final “fifty or sixty years” of the twentieth century. Before we observe the weeds crowding Our Lord’s field, we must first understand how the heretical seeds of Modernism were planted in the Church at the turn of the century.
16 This 1859 prayer for the Church was compose
d of four orations taken from the Missa B. Mariae Virginis, the Missa pro remission peccatorum, the Missa pro pace, and the Missa pro inimicis.
17 Pope Pius IX, Encylical on the Church in the Papal States Nostis et nobiscum (8 December 1849), no. 25, emphasis added.
18 Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical on the Liberty of the Church Quod multum (22 August 1886), no. 3.
19 Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical on Freemasonry Custodi di quella fede (8 December 1892), no. 3.
20 Sáncte Míchael Archángele, defénde nos in proélio, cóntra nequítiam et insídias diáboli ésto præsídium. Ímperet ílli Déus, súpplices deprecámur: tuque, prínceps milítiæ cæléstis, Sátanam aliósque spíritus malígnos, qui ad perditiónem animárum pervagántur in múndo, divína virtúte, in inférnum detrúde. Ámen.
21 Carl Vogl, Weiche Satan! (Alötting: Geiselberger, 1931).
22 Translated by Bryan Gonzalez and found in Pope Leo XIII and the Prayer to St. Michael by Kevin Symonds (Boonville, NY: Preserving Christian Publications, 2018), 27–28.
23 Symonds, Pope Leo XIII, 46.
6
Infiltration of the Church by Secret Societies and Modernism
Everyone should avoid familiarity or friendship with anyone suspected of belonging to Masonry or to affiliated groups. Know them by their fruits and avoid them. Every familiarity should be avoided, not only with those impious libertines who openly promote the character of the sect, but also with those who hide under the mask of universal tolerance, respect for all religions, and the craving to reconcile the maxims of the Gospel with those of the revolution. These men seek to reconcile Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the state without God.
— Pope Leo XIII, Custodi di quella fede
Three years after Pope Leo XIII’s vision of the demons gathering on Rome, a statue of Giordano Bruno of Nola was erected in Rome at the Campo de’ Fiori. Giordano Bruno was a Dominican friar who publicly preached and denied the Catholic doctrines on the Blessed Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, Eucharistic transubstantiation, and the eternity of hell. He also seemed to teach pantheism, reincarnation, and that all religions lead to the divine. Bruno was condemned by the Holy Office and executed in 1600. It was the Freemasons who erected this statue of Bruno in Rome as a sign of their false philosophy and their ambition to gain influence over papal Rome.
Pope Leo XIII spoke against the “erection of the statue to the renowned apostate of Nola” in his 1890 encyclical Dall’alto dell’Apostolico. The pope recognized the erection of the memorial as “carried out by the Freemasons” and as “an insult to the Papacy.” It was a theological symbol of the Freemasonic Alta Vendita: let the Catholic priest be the one who sows the seed of Freemasonic ideals. Bruno was the mascot for their infiltration. The writers of the Alta Vendita wanted eventually to elect a pope in the mold of Giordano Bruno of Nola: pantheistic, naturalistic, relativistic, and universalistic. The Alta Vendita hoped for a pope who would unflinchingly teach that the plurality and diversity of religions are expressions of the wise and divine will of God, who created all human beings. But that would take more than a century to achieve.
Pope Leo XIII died in 1903 after having published eighty-eight encyclicals, including twelve on the Rosary and four against Freemasonry.24 After his Requiem Mass, sixty-two of the sixty-four living cardinals met in Rome to elect the next Successor of Saint Peter. Of the two missing, one was ill and the other was still traveling by ship from Australia. Pope Leo XIII had lived so long that only one of those living cardinals had voted in the previous papal election.
The favored candidate for pope was the Sicilian cardinal Mariano Rampolla. Cardinal Rampolla, like Leo XIII, approved the Third Republic of France and tolerated republicanism. For this reason, Cardinal Rampolla had been a favorite of Leo XIII and his heir apparent. Reports on the first ballots yielded twenty-nine votes for Rampolla, sixteen votes for Girolamo Maria Gotti, and ten votes for Giuseppe Sarto.25 The number of cardinal votes needed for the election of a pope at that time was forty-two. The gridlock between these three candidates would require a compromise.
After three ballots, the Polish Cardinal Jan Puzyna de Kosielsko of Kraków delivered the imperial veto of Emperor Franz Joseph against the election of Cardinal Rampolla. This move officially obstructed Rampolla’s election to the papacy. The imperial veto, or ius exclusivae (right of exclusion), is a privilege afforded the recognized Christian emperor to exclude a cardinal from being elected as pope. This imperial right of exclusion had been used no fewer than ten times since 1644. The privilege extends back to the Eastern Roman emperors. For example, when Pope Pelagius II died of the plague on 7 February 590, the clergy of Rome elected Pope Gregory the Great shortly thereafter. After this papal election, however, there was a delay in his installation in Rome while they waited for the iussio from the emperor in Constantinople. Once the imperial approbation was received, Pope Gregory was installed as bishop of Rome on 3 September 590 — after a papal interregnum of some seven months.
This balance between emperor and pope existed with the Byzantine Christian emperors of the 600s and continued with the Holy Roman emperors in the West. By 1903, the right of papal veto belonged to Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, who exercised it accordingly against Cardinal Rampolla. Outraged by this act of imperial intervention, Cardinal Rampolla denounced it as “an affront to the dignity of the Sacred College.” The cardinals in support of Rampolla flaunted the imperial veto and again gathered twenty-nine votes for Rampolla on the next ballot, but runners-up flipped positions with twenty-one for Sarto and nine for Gotti. The cardinals began to recognize that the fragile papacy, without the Papal States and entering a more secularized century, would require the allegiance of Emperor Franz Joseph. Their votes turned more and more to Cardinal Sarto, who took the lead on the fifth ballot and won the papal election on the seventh ballot with fifty votes, which gained him more than the forty-two votes required. Initially, Sarto declined, but after being pressed by the cardinals, he accepted the election.
Giuseppe Melchiorre Cardinal Sarto (1835–1914) took the papal name Pius X, signaling that his papacy would continue the rigid policies of Pope Pius IX before him. Pope Pius X gave his first Urbi et Orbi papal blessing facing into the interior of Saint Peter’s, with his back to the secularized city of Rome. This act symbolized his opposition to secular Italian rule over Rome and his demand for the return of the Papal States. Six months later, he issued an apostolic constitution forever banning the imperial veto in papal election and placed an automatic excommunication on any monarch seeking to impose a veto on a papal conclave.
A lesser known fact is that Pope Pius X, not Pope John Paul II, is the first ethnically Polish pope — both his parents were Polish immigrants to Italy. He was the second of ten children and grew up very poor. He studied Latin with the parish priest and received clerical tonsure at age fifteen so that he could pursue seminary formation and ordination to the priesthood.
When he was twenty-three years old, Sarto was ordained a priest. At the age of forty-nine he was appointed bishop of Mantua by Pope Leo XIII and consecrated by Cardinal Lucido Parocchi, Bishop Pietro Rota, and Bishop Giovanni Maria Berengo. Sarto received a papal dispensation because he lacked a doctorate. Pope Leo XIII appointed him both cardinal and patriarch of Venice at age fifty-eight in 1893. Ten years later, he would be pope.
Pope Pius X was a man of impeccable doctrine and personal sanctity. After his death and during the process of his canonization, the appointed “devil’s advocate,” who was charged with discovering anything disordered in his life, could present only two known “faults” of Pius X: he smoked one cigarette daily, and his daily Low Mass was sometimes shorter than twenty-five minutes. These were the only arguments against his canonization as a saint.
Pope Pius X is celebrated for promoting frequent Communion among the laity, and for lowering the canonical age of First Communion from age twelve to age seven.26 He loved the sacred liturgy as “participation in the most holy mysterie
s and in the public, official prayer of the church.”27 The pope favored traditional Gregorian chant and warned that “the employment of the piano is forbidden in church, as is also that of noisy or frivolous instruments such as drums, cymbals, bells and the like.”28
His greatest contribution to the Catholic Church was his adamantine resolve against the heresy of Modernism. Catholic theologians of the 1800s had pressed the limits of Catholic orthodoxy by following rationalism and the Protestant critical approach to Sacred Scripture. Pope Leo XIII had written against this as Liberalism, but Pope Pius X identified the movement as “Modernism.”
Pius X recognized that Freemasonry would not square off openly against Catholicism but would undermine her from within with ideas. He at once identified this internal Freemasonic attack as “Modernism,” the naturalism of Freemasonry with a Catholic veneer that justifies itself by appealing to the “evolution of dogma.”
The Modernist heresy seeks to reinterpret biblical history, as well as Catholic philosophy, theology, and liturgy, through the modern prism of rational science and post-Enlightenment philosophy. At first, this might sound admirable. One might ask, “Should not the Catholic Faith acculturate herself to the modern world in order to make the Faith more compelling? Didn’t Paul quote non-Christian philosophers? Didn’t Augustine employ Platonism? Didn’t Thomas Aquinas reconcile Aristotle? Why not try to reconcile Kant, Hegel, or even Nietzsche with Catholicism?” The Apostles, Church Fathers, and Scholastics “plundered the Egyptians” and often employed the writings, thoughts, and analogies of the pagans before them.
Modernism, however, came into existence after the rejection of the Catholic intellectual tradition. Socrates lived before Christ. His philosophical system was not against Christianity per se. It was pre-Christian. The same is true for Platonists, Aristotelians, and most Stoic thinkers.
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