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Infiltration and the Election of Pope Francis
I saw also the relationship between two Popes. I saw how baleful the consequences of this false church would be. I saw it increase in size; heretics of every kind came into the city of Rome. The local clergy grew lukewarm, and I saw a great darkness. Then the vision seemed to extend on every side. Whole Catholic communities were being oppressed, harassed, confined, and deprived of their freedom. I saw many churches closed, great miseries everywhere, wars and bloodshed. A wild and ignorant mob took violent action. But it did not last long. . . . Once more I saw that the Church of Peter was undermined by a plan evolved by the secret sect [Freemasons], while storms were damaging it. But I saw also that help was coming when distress had reached its peak. I saw again the Blessed Virgin ascend on the Church and spread her mantle”
— Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, Allocution of 13 May 1820
As instructed, the cardinals gathered in the Eternal City for the election of the next pope during a conclave lasting from 12 to 13 March 2013. To the wonderment of the cardinals, a valid pope left the See of Peter vacante, and while still living, called them to elect another. There were 207 cardinals during the sede vacante, with 117 being under the age of eighty and eligible to vote. Only 115 participated because Julius Cardinal Darmaatmadja of Indonesia was prevented by the deterioration of his eyesight and Keith Cardinal O’Brien of Scotland because of his admitted sexual misconduct with priests.
On the first ballot of 12 March, the unsubstantiated and alleged leaders were subsequently reported by La Repubblica as:
Angelo Scola — 35 votes
Bergoglio — 20 votes
Ouellet — 15 votes
Cardinal Scola was seen as a safe conservative to follow in the way of Benedict XVI. After two ballots the following morning, no progress was made, and Cardinal Ouellet allegedly asked for his supporters to transfer their votes to Cardinal Bergoglio in succeeding ballots. Theoretically, this would hold Scola at 35 votes and Bergoglio at 35 votes. That afternoon, on the fourth ballot, Bergoglio had the majority (more than 58 votes) but not yet the 77 votes required to capture a two-thirds majority.
On the fifth and final ballot, the cardinals coalesced around the clear leader. Bergoglio received 90 votes (13 more than necessary). According to Seán Cardinal Brady of Ireland, applause broke out during the tallying of votes when Bergoglio’s count reached the 77 votes.166
At 7:06 p.m. Italian time, white smoke plumed from the Sistine Chapel, and the sounding of the bells indicated that the cardinals had successfully elected a pope. Bergoglio appeared unceremoniously on the balcony of Saint Peter’s as Pope Francis, and in a reversal of roles, he asked the people below to pray for him. Standing next to him was Cardinal Danneels, the man who had admitted to the existence of a “mafia” to elect Bergoglio. Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, also a member of the Sankt Gallen Mafia, told La Stampa and the Independent that, “Four years of Bergoglio would be enough to change things.”167 Subsequently, even Cardinal McCarrick confessed that an “influential Italian gentleman . . . a very brilliant man, very influential man in Rome” visited him at the seminary where McCarrick was staying in Rome and said, “What about Bergoglio? . . . He could do it, you know, reform the church.” And so McCarrick promoted the cause of Bergoglio among the cardinals prior to the election.168
Mission accomplished for the Sankt Gallen Mafia: at last they delivered to the world a “Revolution in Tiara and Cope” as had been prophesied by the Freemasonic document Alta Vendita more than 150 years before. After a slow, patient revolution, they had secured “a Pope according to our heart; it is a task first of all to form for this Pope a generation worthy of the kingdom that we desire.”
The Problematic Teachings of Pope Francis
After Pope Francis was elected on 13 March 2013, things moved rapidly. On 15 June 2013, Pope Francis appointed Monsignor Battista Mario Salvatore Ricca — who allegedly carried on a homosexual affair with the captain of the Swiss Guard — as prelate of the Vatican Bank (IOR). In July 2013, the money laundering case against former Vatican Bank chief Gotti Tedeschi was suddenly dropped. The pontificate of Pope Francis has been documented in detail by others and represents a strong shift toward ecumenism, globalism, immigration, and socialism. His encyclicals and teaching stress environmentalism (Laudato si’), the redistribution of wealth by governments, a relaxation of sexual morality, and a supreme emphasis on following one’s conscience over and above Catholic dogma.
Pope Francis’s Amoris laetitia sparked considerable criticism for stating “No one can be condemned forever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel! Here I am not speaking only of the divorced and remarried, but of everyone, in whatever situation they find themselves.”169 The statement entails that hell is not eternal — a doctrine taught by Giordano Bruno, whose statue had been erected in Rome just a century before. The pope’s Amoris laetitia also opened the way for civilly divorced and remarried Catholics to receive absolution and Holy Communion while remaining sexually active.170 On 19 September 2016, four cardinals, the Italian Carlo Caffarra, the American Raymond Burke, and the Germans Walter Brandmüller and Joachim Meisner, formally sought clarification from the pope regarding what appeared to be heretical teaching. The pope did not respond to their dubia.
Pope Francis has explicitly stated that God wills for some to break the moral law when they cannot reach the ideal.171 Pope Francis also has taught that God divinely and wisely wills the “diversity and plurality of religions” with the same will “by which he created human beings.”172 Pope Francis also endorsed the 2030 Plan of the United Nations regarding environmentalism, reproductive rights, and population control.173 His worldview and the philosophy is essentially that of a nineteenth-century member of the Freemasonic Carbonari.
Saint Pius X would have placed Pope Francis under the ban of Modernism. How can we have two popes in theological contradiction?
166 John Allen Jr., “Path to the Papacy: ‘Not Him, Not Him, Therefore Him,” National Catholic Reporter, 17 March 2013.
167 Paul Vallely, “Pope Francis Puts People First and Dogma Second. Is This Really the New Face of Catholicism?” The Independent. 31 July 2013.
168 Elizabeth Yore, “Was Predator Cardinal McCarrick a Key U.S. Lobbyist for Pope Francis’ Election?” LifeSite News, 27 June 2018.
169 Pope Francis, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation on Love in the Family Amoris laetitia, (19 March 2016), no. 297.
170 Pope Francis, Amoris laetitia, nos. 301, 303, 305 and footnotes at 329 and 351.
171 In Amoris Laetitia, no. 303, Pope Francis states that a sinful act as a “most generous response which can be given to God . . . is what God himself is asking.” This suggests that God is asking for an objectively sinful act that “does not correspond objectively to the overall demands of the Gospel.” Some have sought to justify this language by appealing to Saint Thomas Aquinas in the Summa theologiae I-II q. 19, art. 5, which reads: “but when erring reason proposes something as being commanded by God, then to scorn the dictate of reason is to scorn the commandment of God.” In Amoris 303, however, Francis does not speak of conscience wrongly thinking that “something is commanded by God”; he speaks of something “that does not correspond objectively to the overall demands of the Gospel.”
So, according to Saint Thomas, if a man truly thinks that having two wives is what God commands, and he marries two wives, he is not culpable. If he knows, however, that God commands monogamy and nonetheless chooses to have two wives, he cannot (as Francis suggests) justify this as “the most generous response” possible at the moment, claim that this is what God asks at the moment,” and keep two wives.
172 “The pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings. [El pluralismo y la diversidad de religión, color, sexo, raza y lengua son expresión de una sabia voluntad divina, con la que Dios creó a los seres humanos.] This divin
e wisdom is the source from which the right to freedom of belief and the freedom to be different derives. Therefore, the fact that people are forced to adhere to a certain religion or culture must be rejected, as too the imposition of a cultural way of life that others do not accept.” Pope Francis, “Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together” (5 February 2019).
173 Pope Francis’s remarks to the participants in the International Conference “Religions and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Listening to the Cry of the Earth and of the Poor,” organized by the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Vatican’s New Synod Hall, 8 March 2019. Lydia O’Kane, “Pope: Sustainable Development Rooted in Ethical Values,” Vatican News, 8 March 2019.
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Solving the Current Crisis
Where does the scheming of the Sankt Gallen Mafia and the election and teaching of Pope Francis leave us?
There are several options for Catholics attempting to make sense of this.
Become a Modernist Catholic
The most popular and widespread solution is simply to grant that Pope Francis and the Modernist tendency since the late 1950s is the true and correct path desired by Almighty God. Prior popes rejected ecumenism and burned heretics at the stake; Pope Francis, however, teaches that God wills the plurality and diversity of religions. Since the Catechism of Trent, Pope Pius XI, Pope Leo XIII, and Pope Pius XII affirmed and defended the death penalty, why not admit that Pope Francis has rightly contradicted previous popes by teaching that the death penalty is inadmissible?
Pope Francis teaches that divorced and civilly remarried people may remain Catholic and receive the Holy Eucharist and the other sacraments. Yet Pope Clement VII vigorously opposed King Henry VIII’s attempt at remarriage and endured the friction that would create the Church of England and the loss of the entire European nation to Protestantism. Pope Pius V further resisted the Church of England and created a strong animosity that led to wars and a string of martyrdoms.
The Modernist Catholic says Pope Francis is right and Pope Clement VII and Pope Pius V were dead wrong. And when Pope Leo X and his successors condemned Martin Luther, they did so wrongly, as Pope Francis has publicly commended Luther and even issued a Vatican City stamp in his honor. All this requires that we recognize that Pope Francis formally disagrees with previous popes and previous Councils and that he is correct. In other words, why not confess that the spirit of Vatican II is none other than the Holy Spirit? The Modernist truly believes that the new liturgy, the new code of canon law, the new theology, and the new popes are superior to those of the previous nineteen hundred years. Why not rejoice to live in the age of the New Pentecost?
Most serious and informed Catholics cannot swallow this pill.
Catholicism is a perennial religion, and by its nature it cannot change or contradict itself. Certain cardinals and bishops may act as if Catholicism after the Council is a “new advent” in the history of the Church, but to be deep in history is to cease to be Modernist. So, if one refuses to accept the Modernist version of Catholicism as intellectually dishonest, he must find a new narrative.
I present the following solutions to the current ecclesial crisis.
Become an Atheist
Since there is an apparent rupture between recent papacies and previous papacies and councils, one may simply relent and confess that Catholicism and Christianity as a whole were merely accidents of Western history and the most successful world religion to date. Catholicism was able to endure and envelop the globe by running off the fumes of the fallen Roman Empire. Recent advances in science and sociology reveal that concepts such as creation, original sin, healings, demonic possession, resurrection, and life after death are premodern man’s attempt to understand his mysterious prescientific world. Instead of trying to foist our modern scientific view on a medieval system such as Catholicism, why not simply reject it altogether? Atheism easily and swiftly accounts for the disjunction experienced by contemporary Catholics.
For myself, I cannot accept atheism because I have personally encountered Christ, His Blessed Mother, and the saints in my life. I also remain fully convinced of the existence of God and His full revelation of Himself in the incarnate Person of our Lord Jesus Christ. So, the remaining options are the following.
Accept the Protestant Position
The next possibility is to accept the ancient biblical testimony about Jesus Christ found in Sacred Scripture but to reject the historical apparatus that we identify with the institution of the Catholic Church. As Martin Luther taught, we can enjoy a direct encounter with Jesus Christ through faith alone, without the mediation of popes, priests, or sacraments. The teaching authority for the Christian is found not in ancient councils, papal bulls, or encyclicals but only in the pure Word of God.
For reasons explained in my books The Crucified Rabbi and The Catholic Perspective on Paul, I converted from Protestantism to Catholicism because of the patent testimony of Sacred Scripture for the mediated redemption of Christ through the sacraments He instituted and through the clergy in apostolic succession ordained by Him. Moreover, Christ clearly instituted a Church prior to the composition and canonization of the Holy Bible. For this reason, Protestantism is not a valid option.
Accept the Eastern Orthodox Position
Another tempting option before us is to accept that the Eastern Orthodox are correct about the papacy — that the papacy has erred in the past and continues to err. The papacy never was infallible and never possessed universal supreme jurisdiction. The First Vatican Council was gravely wrong on this subject. Instead, magisterial authority in the Orthodox Church is established only by ecumenical councils including the pope as patriarch of Rome in union with the ancient patriarchal sees of the East. In this way, biblical ecclesiology and sacraments are retained, but the bishop of Rome is knocked down from his ultramontane pedestal.
This position is untenable for the reasons I set out in my book The Eternal City. The supremacy and universal role of the city of Rome is not an accident of history. Rather, the Roman origin and structure of the Catholic Church is explicitly prophesied in the Old Testament by the prophet Daniel regarding the Son of Man and his saints receiving the Fourth Kingdom of Rome as His own kingdom for the Church. As demonstrated in The Eternal City, the Church of Rome assumed universal jurisdiction from the second century, even presuming to excommunicate dozens of sees in Anatolia over the Quartodeciman Controversy. Eastern Orthodoxy, while attractive in our contemporary situation, does not account for Scripture or history. Moreover, the Orthodox have already ecclesiastically approved divorce and remarriage and contraception. It seems apparent to me that Pope Francis actually holds the Eastern Orthodox position on the papacy, collegiality, divorce, and the “pastoral” notion of economia revamped as being true to conscience.
Accept the Sedevacantist Position
One position with growing and enthusiastic support is that of sedevacantism. The sedevacantists hold that the papal conclave of 1958 was irregular, since the white smoke and ringing bells indicated a papal election, but no pope appeared on that occasion. They point to this oddity and suspect that Cardinal Siri was validly elected but falsely pressured to resign. No one knows exactly what happened within the conclave of 1958, but sedevacantists resolutely affirm that Cardinal Roncalli was not validly elected as Pope John XXIII — either because he was a Freemason and a heretic or because the election itself was invalid. They also note that the Third Secret of Fatima was to be revealed in 1960 and that John XXIII refused to reveal it because it indicated that he was an antipope or warned the Church of an impending false and heretical council.
Sedevacantism is attractive because, in one swoop, all the problems of infiltration, Modernism, Vatican II, Paul VI’s new liturgies, and a pope kissing a Koran disappear. When the Catholic asks “How could Pope [insert a pope’s name since 1958] do or say such a thing?” the sedevacantist coolly replies, “Because he
is not and never was a true pope. The answer is that a true pope would never do or say such a thing.”174 I have noticed an increasing number of young men, weary of the effeminacy of the post-conciliar liturgy and doctrine, rallying to sedevacantism as a logical, calm, and stoic solution to ecclesial chaos.
Sedevacantism originated chiefly in the late 1970s, when the Thomistic theologian Father Michel-Louis Guérard des Lauriers proposed the “Cassiciacum Thesis,” otherwise known as sedeprivationism. Guérard des Lauriers had served as a theological consulter to Pope Pius XII on the dogma of the Assumption of Mary in 1950. He was the sacramental confessor of Pope Pius XII before being replaced by Cardinal Bea. He was a contributing author to the Ottaviani Intervention, and he was an early collaborator with Archbishop Lefebvre. His hypothesis suggested that Paul VI was, in fact, the pope materially and functionally, but due to heresy, he lacked the formal charism of the papacy. The pope was deprived of something, and hence his position became known as sedeprivationism.
By 1980, many were enthusiastic about this Cassiciacum Thesis, but not Archbishop Lefebvre. By 1981, Guérard des Lauriers parted from Lefebvre and received episcopal consecration. By 1984, nine SSPX priests in the United States had broken with Lefebvre and were espousing not just sedeprivationism (the belief that the current pope lacks the formal papacy) but full-blown sedevacantism (the belief that the current pope is not valid at all).
My objection to sedevacantism is twofold: sedevacantists do not present a consistent theological narrative for the origin of a crisis (without a pope), and they also lack a consistent solution for the formal restoration of the papacy on earth. Sedevacantism teaches that, from 1958 until around 1980, 100 percent of the cardinals who were present in the 1958 conclave, 100 percent of the bishops, and 100 percent of the laity were duped into submitting to antipopes and their doctrine without a true pope on earth as a valid rival. According to the sedevacantist, every Catholic bishop, including Cardinal Ottaviani, Archbishop Lefebvre, and their own Archbishop Thuc followed and submitted to an antipope for their entire lives or at least for several years.
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