Infiltration

by Taylor Marshall

  75 Michael of the Holy Trinity, The Whole Truth about Fatima, 710.

  76 The original Portuguese version and facsimile version of the four pages is available on the Vatican website, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000626_message-fatima_en.html.

  77 Michael of the Holy Trinity, The Whole Truth about Fatima, 822–823.

  78 Audio recording by Brian Doran, “Malachi Martin: God’s Messenger — In the Words of Those Who Knew Him Best,” 11 August 2000.

  79 Bishop Alberto Cosme do Amaral, public statement made in Vienna, Austria, on 10 September 1984.

  80 Michael of the Holy Trinity, The Whole Truth About Fatima, 687.

  81 Maike Hickson, “Cardinal Oddi on Fatima’s Third Secret, the Second Vatican Council, and Apostasy,” One Peter Five, 28 November 2017.

  82 “Alice von Hildebrand Sheds New Light on Fatima.”

  16

  Vatican II — Modernism on Parade

  Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council on 11 October 1962, saying, “The prophets of doom always talk as though the present in comparison to the past is becoming worse and worse. But I see mankind as entering upon a new order and perceive in this a divine plan.”83 It’s worth noting that there were only three acknowledged contemporary Catholic prophets or seers at the time of Pope John XXIII: the three children of Fatima. Did Pope John have them in mind when he condemned the “prophets of doom”? Regardless, this opening statement displays the agenda of Freemasonry. Prophets of doom are condemned. The world isn’t getting worse; it’s getting better. And John XXIII says he sees “mankind as entering upon a new order.”

  Devout Catholics often defend Vatican II by saying that it was “hijacked,” and that is certainly the case, but the question is when, and by whom. As will become clear, Pope John XXIII, and his favorites, Bugnini, Bea, and Montini, had already set the optimistic new order, or novus ordo, agenda. Bugnini would create the novus ordo liturgy; Bea would create novus ordo ecumenism and primacy of conscience over dogma; and Montini would become the novus ordo pope.

  Vatican II opened with more than two thousand bishops present, along with their periti (experts) and representatives from the Orthodox churches and Protestant communities. Two years had been spent preparing for the Council, in which about a dozen commissions worked to produce preliminary documents. The first act of the Council was to reject schemata, or drafts, from these preparatory sessions. New ones were created by new commissions. Pope John approved.

  Alarmed by the sudden shift in direction, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre met with two Brazilian bishops — Geraldo de Proença Sigaud of Diamantina and José Maurício da Rocha of Bragança Paulista — to form a resistance party of conservatives. Archbishop Lefebvre organized an informal steering committee that eventually became the Coetus Internationalis Patrum (CIP), or “International Group of Fathers,” which was joined by Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer of Campos, Brazil, and the Abbot of Solesmes, Jean Prou, OSB. The CIP grew to incorporate 250 bishops (and up to nine cardinals) from Canada, Chile, China, and Pakistan. Two hundred fifty bishops of the 2,400 bishops participating in Vatican II means that the CIP under Lefebvre had captured more than 10 percent of the Council’s bishops.84 The CIP became the thorn in the side of the Modernist agenda as the Council continued over the next two years.

  Having rejected the original preparations, the Council adjourned on 8 December 1962 so that the new commissions could prepare documents for the next session, in 1963. Pope John XXIII died on 3 June 1963, bringing a definitive cessation in the Second Vatican Council.

  83 From the address of Pope John XXIII on 11 October 1962 at the opening of Vatican Council II, italics added.

  84 John O’Malley S.J., What Happened at Vatican II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), Kindle edition location 455.

  17

  Conclave of 1963: Paul VI

  The crypto-Modernists wanted the Second Vatican Council to proceed. The election of an anti-Council cardinal might end the council or severely change its agenda from John XXIII’s prescription for “mankind as entering upon a new order.” The conclave lasted from 19 to 21 June 1963 and was the largest conclave ever assembled. Papal elections had ranged from twelve to sixty cardinals. This conclave included eighty-two cardinal electors, of which eighty participated. Once again Cardinal Mindszenty was blocked by the Communists of Hungary and could not travel to Rome. And Cardinal Carlos María de la Torre of Quito, Ecuador, at eighty-nine years old, was too old and weak to make the journey to Europe.

  The two leading cardinals going into the conclave were Siri and Montini. Cardinal Siri represented the old guard of Pope Pius XII and had spoken against the proposed reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Cardinal Montini, however, was openly associated with the agenda of John XXIII and an open advocate for the proposed reforms of the Council.

  Pope John XXIII may have served a short pontificate, but he had busied himself stacking the College of Cardinals with his men. Of the eighty voting cardinals, forty-five had been selected by John XXIII (eight were appointed by Pius XI and twenty-seven by Pius XII). Fifty-six percent of the cardinals were appointees of Pope John. It seemed certain that the Second Vatican Council would resume under a cardinal of his choosing. It would be difficult for Cardinal Siri to capture the two-thirds majority over Cardinal Montini.

  On the first day, as is customary, there was no voting. It is reported that the conservative cardinals formed one bloc around Siri to prevent the election of Montini. On the second day, after four ballots, there was still no pope. Allegedly, by the end of these first four ballots, Montini was only four votes short of the two-thirds majority. The next day, after the sixth ballot, white smoke emerged from the Sistine Chapel at 11:22 a.m. Cardinal Ottaviani (who had no doubt voted for Cardinal Siri), announced to the crowd the election of Cardinal Montini, who had taken the name Paul VI. To the disappointment of the crowds (and the world), Pope Paul VI did not give the traditional Urbi et Orbi blessing (to which is attached an indulgence just by hearing it), but instead gave the shorter blessing of a bishop. Pope Paul VI’s first act as pope signified the direction for the rest of his pontificate: aggiornamento, or “updating.”

  18

  Crypto-Modernism and Nouvelle Théologie

  The first task of Pope Paul VI was to ensure that the Second Vatican Council would proceed as previously planned. He reduced the proposed schemata drafts to seventeen and set dates. To the shock of many cardinals, Pope Paul VI explained that he would invite lay Catholics and non-Catholics to participate in the Council. This had never happened previously, unless you count the presence of the emperor Constantine at the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea.

  Pope Paul VI advocated what came to be recognized as the nouvelle théologie, or “new theology.” Beginning in the 1940s, when the vigilant policies of Pope Pius X against Modernism had been relaxed, Catholic theologians began to push the limits of rationalism and naturalism through dissimulation. They paraded their theology with a disdain for Scholasticism and a return (ressourcement) to the Church Fathers. They tended to prefer Origen and the Eastern Church Fathers. At root, theologians espousing the nouvelle théologie showed contempt for the bullet-point precision of Saint Thomas Aquinas.

  The alarm was sounded as early as 1946 by the saintly and eminent Thomistic theologian Father Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., in his article “The New Theology (Nouvelle Théologie): Where Is It Going?”85 Garrigou-Lagrange did not mince words. Theologians promoting the nouvelle théologie were leading to Modernism and unbelief, he said. He wrote that their appeal to ressourcement was dishonest. Bugnini later took a page from their game book and played the same trick. He claimed to resource and restore the ancient Roman Rite but ended up creating something entirely new — the novus ordo.

  The so-called ressourcement or nouvelle theologians would become the prominent theologians of the 1960s under Pope Paul VI. They and their writings would become the intellectual fo
undation of the so-called spirit of Vatican II. They included the following:

  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (French, Jesuit; died in 1955)

  Hans Urs von Balthasar (Swiss, Jesuit)

  Louis Bouyer (French, Oratorian)

  Henri de Lubac (French, Jesuit)

  Jean Daniélou (French, Jesuit)

  Jean Mouroux (French, diocesan)

  Joseph Ratzinger (German)

  Walter Kasper (German)

  Yves Congar (French, Dominican)

  Karl Rahner (German, Jesuit)

  Hans Küng (Swiss)

  Edward Schillebeeckx (Belgian, Dominican)

  Marie-Dominique Chenu (French, Dominican)

  Most of these theologians were suspected of heresy during the Pontificate of Pius XII, especially Congar, Daniélou, de Lubac, Küng, Rahner, and Schillebeeckx.86 These theologians did not simply return to primitive Christianity; they obliterated the traditional Catholic distinction between grace and nature. They sought to make everything grace, and by doing so, they, in fact, reduced everything to the natural, so that the natural longings of every human became the means of salvation. Hence, all human nature itself is “open” to attaining salvation. This means that liturgy should be less supernatural and that other religions are “open” as means of salvation. This theology necessitated a new liturgy, a new ecumenism, and a new form of Catholicism. It was Freemasonic naturalism cloaked with quotations of the Church Fathers. The nouvelle théologie was a frontal attack on Thomas Aquinas and the Thomistic tradition represented by Garrigou-Lagrange.

  Pope Pius XII’s 1950 encyclical Humani generis is a direct criticism of nouvelle théologie and of Henri de Lubac in particular. De Lubac’s influential Surnaturel of 1946 especially comes under attack in Humani generis. In Surnaturel, de Lubac claims that human nature is naturally ordered to supernatural fulfillment in the Beatific Vision and that the Scholastic teaching of pure nature in the human person is false and a corruption of the teaching of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Humani generis contradicts de Lubac and rightly teaches that rational persons (humans and angels) are not per se naturally oriented to supernatural beatitude. Humani generis is a rare case in the twentieth century when a Catholic theologian was refuted and corrected by a pope. It has long been rumored that Garrigou-Lagrange (a friend of Pope Pius XII) was the ghost writer of Humani generis. De Lubac pulled the book and later corrected it and re-released it as Le Mystère du surnaturel.

  After this encyclical in 1950, the battle was drawn between the traditional theologians who favored Thomas Aquinas, Scholasticism, and Pope Pius X (represented by Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange) and the ressourcement theologians (represented by Henri de Lubac).

  Pope Pius XII not only sided with Garrigou-Lagrange in 1950; he also canonized Pope Pius X. This was another blow to the ressourcement camp. Yet, as reported above, Pius XII entered his long, debilitating illness around 1954. From that time, the influences of Bea, Bugnini, and Montini took over. Between 1954 and 1958 the ressourcement camp built their influence to elect John XXIII and then Paul VI.

  85 Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange O.P., “La nouvelle théologie: où va-telle?” Angelicum 23 (1946): 126–145.

  86 Roberto de Mattei, The Second Vatican Council: An Unwritten Story (Fitzwilliam, NH: Loreto Publications, 2012), 188.

  19

  Theological Infiltration of Vatican II

  The engineers of Vatican II were Karl Rahner, Edward Schillebeeckx, Hans Küng, Henri de Lubac, and Yves Congar. All five men were held under suspicion of Modernism under Pius XII. Karl Rahner, S.J. had a greater influence than any other on the theology Vatican II — so much so that one might say that Vatican II is simply Rahnerianism. He led the German progressives at Vatican II and was accompanied by his two brilliant protégés, Father Hans Küng and Father Joseph Ratzinger. The Jesuit was prolific, and by the opening of the Council in 1962, he had written enough articles and books to fill five volumes. Cardinal Ottaviani attempted to convince Pius XII to excommunicate Rahner on three occasions, all to no avail.

  His fortune flipped when John XXIII appointed Rahner as a peritus, or expert, at Vatican II, and he was accompanied by his friend Joseph Ratzinger. Rahner was charged with reframing the doctrine of the Church for modern times, and the result was the Rahnerian document Lumen gentium. Rahner introduced a new ecclesiology in which the Church of Christ is not the Catholic Church but rather “subsists in the Catholic Church.”87 This seems to contradict the teaching of Pope Pius XII in his 1943 encyclical Mystici Corporis that the Mystical Body of Christ and the Catholic Church are one and the same entity.

  For Rahner, there are many “anonymous Christians.” These are people of goodwill who may be professing Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, pagans, or even atheists. By their goodwill and openness to the transcendent, they, too, are saved and are related to the Church. For this reason, the Church only “subsists in” the Catholic Church. Beyond the Catholic Church is the wider “People of God,” who include not just Catholics but all people of goodwill who profess other religions.88 This theology opens the way for John XXIII’s optimistic approach to the world and to the religious ecumenism of Vatican II. Rather than striving to convert all nations and people to Christ in the Catholic Church through baptism, Catholics would now accompany all people in their spiritual journeys. The Catholic Church became a pilgrim church calling not for conversion but for conversation. As Rahner taught, the Catholic Church was the sacramentum mundi — the “sacrament of the world.” Pope Paul VI would pick up with this concept and favor the term “People of God.” It remains a buzzword for theologians and popes even in our day.

  Rahner was a student of the poisonous philosophy of Heidegger, and he saw only the existential present moment as counting. Hence, he reinterpreted all Christian doctrines in this light. Rahner said that Jesus died in history but that His Resurrection did not occur in historical time.89 He saw the Resurrection of Christ as only an existential “vindication” by God. It’s all very slippery, but it touches on how Rahner understands the Incarnation, the Resurrection, the founding of the Church, and Church history. He even posits that Christ is the one who is saved: “We are saved because this man who is one of us has been saved by God, and God has thereby made his salvific will present in the world historically, really and irrevocably.”90 Sadly, this flimsy theology is the backdrop for Vatican II and Lumen gentium.

  Two other Jesuits would serve a key role in the two most controversial documents of the Council: Dignitatis humanae and Nostra aetate. Dignitatis humanae, the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom, reframed Catholic teaching on religious liberty. The document was the brainchild of the German Jesuit Cardinal Bea but was crafted by the American Jesuit John Courtney Murray. It was promulgated at the last minute, on 7 December 1965 — the day before Pope Paul VI officially closed the Second Vatican Council.

  It is still debated whether Dignitatis humanae asserts a divinely granted right to believe a false religion. In Catholic moral theology, no one has a right to perform an evil. No one has a right to break the Ten Commandments, which include “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Hence, the Hindu cannot appeal to a God-given right to worship his many gods. The worship of a false god is an intrinsic evil and never permitted by natural law and the Decalogue. A human person does not possess the “right” to procure an abortion or to worship Satan. Previously, Catholics had sought to grant religious liberty for Catholics and had merely tolerated other religions. But Dignitatis humanae seems to suggest that Catholics should work for the religious liberty of all (false) religions on equal footing with Catholicism.

  Catholic history is full of stories of missionaries, such as Saint Boniface, who destroyed the sacred totem and idols of the pagans. Boniface did not recognize the dignity of German pagans who venerated the sacred oak — rather, he chopped it down with his own hands. After he preached faith and baptism in Christ to the pagans, the newly baptized converts built a church out of its wood. In a simila
r way, Saint Benedict went to Cassino, where country folk still worshipped Apollo at an ancient temple surrounded by a grove. “The man of God coming to that place broke the idol, overthrew the altar, burned the groves, and of the temple of Apollo made a chapel of St. Martin. Where the profane altar had stood, he built a chapel of St. John; and by continual preaching he converted many of the people there about.”91 The ancient saints and missionaries physically destroyed paganism with their own hands and preached Christ with their mouths.

  The second hotly debated text of Vatican II is the Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions, titled Nostra aetate, in which “the Church examines more closely her relationship to non-Christian religions.”92 The document was overseen by Cardinal Bea but drafted by Father Gregory Baum, who would later leave the priesthood and marry a close female friend, Shirley Flynn. Despite his heterosexual marriage, he was openly homosexual, admitting that he had loved another laicized priest in the 1980s. In his later years, he was an advocate for LGBT rights before dying in 2017. Hence, a man who ended as a proponent of gay rights was the mastermind behind this Vatican II document.

  The document directly addresses the state of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and all other non-Christian religions. It contains assertions that have been questioned, such as this: “In Hinduism, men contemplate the divine mystery.”93 How do polytheists contemplate the divine mystery? Do they do so in the same way as Catholic monks or angels in heaven? Regarding Buddhism, the document reads “Buddhism, in its various forms, realizes the radical insufficiency of this changeable world; it teaches a way by which men, in a devout and confident spirit, may be able either to acquire the state of perfect liberation, or attain, by their own efforts or through higher help, supreme illumination.”94 How is it that Buddhism “teaches a way by which men . . . may be able to acquire the state of perfect liberation”? Is that the state of perfection about which Saint Teresa of Avila speaks? Is it truly perfect liberation? And how do Buddhists attain “higher help [for] supreme illumination”? Is this the same illumination that the baptized receive through the sacraments, prayer, and penance?