Infiltration

by Taylor Marshall

Pietro Parolin (15 October 2013–)

  Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita

  by Piccolo Tigre

  Reproduced in English translation in the lecture by Right Rev. Msgr. 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.

  Ever since we have established ourselves as a body of action, and that order has commenced to reign in the bosom of the most distant lodge, as in that one nearest the center of action, there is one thought which has profoundly occupied the men who aspire to universal regeneration. That is the thought of the enfranchisement of Italy, from which must one day come the enfranchisement of the entire world, the fraternal republic, and the harmony of humanity. That thought has not yet been seized upon by our brethren beyond the Alps. They believe that revolutionary Italy can only conspire in the shade, deal some stabs to cops or traitors, and tranquilly undergo the yoke of events which take place beyond the Alps for Italy, but without Italy.

  This error has been fatal to us on many occasions. It is not necessary to combat it with phrases, which would only propagate it. It is necessary to kill it by facts. Thus, amidst the cares which have the privilege of agitating the minds of the most vigorous of our lodges, there is one which we ought never to forget.

  The papacy has always exercised a decisive action upon the affairs of Italy. By the hands, by the voices, by the pens, by the hearts of its innumerable bishops, priests, monks, nuns and people in all latitudes, the papacy finds devotedness without end ready for martyrdom, and that to enthusiasm. Everywhere, whenever it pleases to call upon them, it has friends ready to die or lose all for its cause. This is an immense leverage which the popes alone have been able to appreciate to its full power, and as yet they have used it only to a certain extent.

  Today there is no question of reconstituting for ourselves that power, the prestige of which is for the moment weakened. Our final end is that of Voltaire and of the French Revolution, the destruction forever of Catholicism and even of the Christian idea which, if left standing on the ruins of Rome, would be the resuscitation of Christianity later. But to attain more certainly that result, and not prepare ourselves with gaiety of heart for reverses which adjourn indefinitely, or compromise for ages, the success of a good cause, we must not pay attention to those braggarts of Frenchmen, those cloudy Germans, those melancholy Englishmen, all of whom imagine they can kill Catholicism, now with an impure song, then with an illogical deduction; at another time, with a sarcasm smuggled in like the cottons of Great Britain. Catholicism has a life much more tenacious than that. It has seen the most implacable, the most terrible adversaries, and it has often had the malignant pleasure of throwing holy water on the tombs of the most enraged. Let us permit, then, our brethren of these countries to give themselves up to the sterile intemperance of their anti-Catholic zeal. Let them even mock at our Madonnas and our apparent devotion. With this passport we can conspire at our ease and arrive little by little at the end we have in view.

  Now the Papacy has been for seventeen centuries inherent to the history of Italy. Italy cannot breathe or move without the permission of the Supreme Pastor. With him she has the hundred arms of Briareus; without him she is condemned to a pitiable impotence. She has nothing but divisions to foment, hatreds to break out, and hostilities to manifest themselves from the highest chain of the Alps to the lowest of the Apennines. We cannot desire such a state of things. It is necessary, then, to seek a remedy for that situation. The remedy is found.

  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.

  We do not mean to win the Popes to our cause, to make them neophytes of our principles, and propagators of our ideas. That would be a ridiculous dream, no matter in what manner events may turn. Should cardinals or prelates, for example, enter, willingly or by surprise, in some manner, into a part of our secrets, it would be by no means a motive to desire their elevation to the See of Peter. That elevation would destroy us. Ambition alone would bring them to apostasy from us. The needs of power would force them to immolate us. That which we ought to demand, that which we should seek and expect, as the Jews expected the Messiah, is a Pope according to our wants.

  Pope Alexander VI, with all his private crimes, would not suit us, for he never erred in religious matters. Pope Clement XIV, on the contrary, would suit us from head to foot. Borgia was a libertine, a true sensualist of the eighteenth century strayed into the fifteenth. He has been anathematized, notwithstanding his vices, by all the voices of philosophy and incredulity, and he owes that anathema to the vigor with which he defended the Church. Ganganelli gave himself over, bound hand and foot, to the ministers of the Bourbons, who made him afraid, and to the incredulous who celebrated his tolerance, and Ganganelli is become a very great Pope.

  He is almost in the same condition that it is necessary for us to find another, if that be yet possible. With that we should march more surely to the attack upon the Church than with the pamphlets of our brethren in France, or even with the gold of England. Do you wish to know the reason? It is because by that we should have no more need of the vinegar of Hannibal, no more need of the powder of cannon, no more need even of our arms. We have the little finger of the successor of St. Peter engaged in the plot, and that little finger is of more value for our crusade than all the Innocents, the Urbans, and the Saint Bernards of Christianity.

  We do not doubt that we shall arrive at that supreme term of all our efforts; but when? but how? The unknown does not yet manifest itself. Nevertheless, as nothing should separate us from the plan traced out; as, on the contrary, all things should tend to it — as if success were to crown the work scarcely sketched out tomorrow — we wish in this instruction which must rest a secret for the simple initiated, to give to those of the Supreme Lodge, counsels with which they should enlighten the universality of the brethren, under the form of an instruction or memorandum. It is of special importance, and because of discretion, the motives of which are transparent, never to permit it to be felt that these counsels are orders emanating from the Alta Vendita. The clergy is put too much in peril by it, that one can at the present hour permit oneself to play with it, as with one of these small affairs or of these little princes upon which one need but blow to cause them to disappear.

  Little can be done with those old cardinals or with those prelates, whose character is very decided. It is necessary to leave them as we find them, incorrigible, in the school of Consalvi, and draw from our magazines of popularity or unpopularity the arms which will render useful or ridiculous the power in their hands. A word which one can ably invent, and which one has the art to spread amongst certain honorable chosen families by whose means it descends into the cafés and from the cafés into the streets; a word can sometimes kill a man. If a prelate comes to Rome to exercise some public function from the depths of the provinces, know presently his character, his antecedents, his qualities, his defects above all things. If he is in advance a declared enemy, an Albani, a Pallotta, a Bernetti, a Della Genga, a Riverola, envelop him in all the snares which you can place beneath his feet; create for him one of those reputations which will frighten little children and old women; paint him cruel and sanguinary; recount, regarding him, some traits of cruelty which can be easily engraved in the minds of people. When foreign journals shall gather for us these recitals, which they will embellish in their turn (inevitably because of their respect for truth), show, or rather cause to be shown, by some respectable fool those papers where the names and the excesses of the personages implicated are related. As France and England, so Italy will never be wan
ting in facile pens which know how to employ themselves in these lies so useful to the good cause. With a newspaper, the language of which they do not understand, but in which they will see the name of their delegate or judge, the people have no need of other proofs. They are in the infancy of liberalism; they believe in liberals, as, later, they will believe in us, not knowing very well why.

  Crush the enemy whoever he may be; crush the powerful by means of lies and calumnies; but especially crush him in the egg. It is to the youth we must go. It is them we must seduce; it is them we must bring under the banner of the secret societies. In order to advance by steps, calculated but sure, in that perilous way, two things are of the first necessity. You ought to have the air of being simple as doves, but you must be prudent as the serpent. Your fathers, your children, your wives themselves, ought always to be ignorant of the secret which you carry in your bosoms. If it pleases you, in order the better to deceive the inquisitorial eye, to go often to confession, you are as by right authorized to preserve the most absolute silence regarding these things. You know that the least revelation, that the slightest indication escaped from you in the tribunal of penance, or elsewhere, can bring on great calamities and that the sentence of death is already pronounced upon the revealer, whether voluntary or involuntary.

  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. Never speak in their presence a word of impiety or impurity. Maxima debetur puero reverentia. Never forget these words of the poet for they will safeguard you from every license which it is absolutely essential to guard against for the good of the cause. In order to reap profit at the home of each family, in order to give yourself the right of asylum at the domestic hearth, you ought to present yourself with all the appearance of a man grave and moral. Once your reputation is established in the colleges, in the gymnasiums, in the universities, and in the seminaries — once you shall have captivated the confidence of professors and students, so act that those who are principally engaged in the ecclesiastical state should love to seek your conversation. Nourish their souls with the splendors of ancient Papal Rome. There is always at the bottom of the Italian heart a regret for Republican Rome. Excite, enkindle those natures so full of warmth and of patriotic fire. Offer them at first, but always in secret, inoffensive books, poetry resplendent with national emphasis; then little by little you will bring your disciples to the degree of cooking desired. When upon all the points of the ecclesiastical state at once, this daily work shall have spread our ideas as the light, then you will be able to appreciate the wisdom of the counsel in which we take the initiative.

  Events that in our opinion precipitate themselves too rapidly, go necessarily in a few months’ time to bring on an intervention of Austria. There are fools who in the lightness of their hearts please themselves in casting others into the midst of perils, and, meanwhile, there are fools who at a given hour drag on even wise men. The revolution which they meditate in Italy will only end in misfortunes and persecutions. Nothing is ripe, neither the men nor the things, and nothing shall be for a long time yet; but from these evils you can easily draw one new chord and cause it to vibrate in the hearts of the young clergy. That is the hatred of the stranger. Cause the German to become ridiculous and odious even before his foreseen entry. With the idea of the Pontifical supremacy, mix always the old memories of the wars of the priesthood and the Empire. Awaken the shouldering passions of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, and thus you will obtain for yourselves the reputation of good Catholics and pure patriots.

  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; 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 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 to 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 corners of the world on fire.

  Let each act of your life tend then to discover the Philosopher’s Stone. The alchemists of the middle ages lost their time and the gold of their dupes in the quest of this dream. That of the secret societies will be accomplished for the simplest of reasons, because it is based on the passions of man. Let us not be discouraged then by a check, a reverse, or a defeat. Let us prepare our arms in the silence of the lodges, dress our batteries, flatter all passions the most evil and the most generous, and all lead us to think that our plans will succeed one day above even our most improbable calculations.

  Both Versions of the Secret of La Salette

  Secret of Our Lady of La Salette to Mélanie (1851 Version)

  1. “Secret given to me by the Blessed Virgin on La Salette Mountain on September 19, 1846”

  2. Secret

  3. “Mélanie, I’m going to tell you something you will not tell anyone:

  4. “The time of God’s wrath has come!

  5. “If, when you have told the people what I told you earlier, and what I will tell you to say again, if, after that, they do not convert (if we do not do penance, and if one does not stop working on Sunday, and if one continues to blaspheme the Holy Name of God), in a word, if the face of the earth does not change, God will take revenge against the ungrateful and slave people of the devil.

  6. “My Son is going to burst his power!

  7. “Paris, this city soiled with all sorts of crimes, will perish infallibly.180

  8. “Marseille will be destroyed in a short time.181

  9. “When these things happen, the disorder will be complete on the earth.

  10. “The world will surrender to its impious passions.

  11. “The Pope will be persecuted on all sides: he will be shot at, he will be put to death, but nothing will be done to him. The Vicar of God will triumph again this time.

  12. “The priests and nuns, and the true servants of my Son, will be persecuted, and many will die for the faith of Jesus Christ.

  13. “A famine will reign at the same time.

  14. “After all these things have come, many people will recognize the hand of God on them, will convert, and will do penance for their sins.

  15. “A great king will ascend the throne, and reign for a few years.

  16. “Religion will flourish and spread through all the earth and fertility will be great, the happy world to not miss anything will start its disorders, abandon God, and indulge in his criminal passions.

  17. �
�Among the ministers of God and the Brides of Jesus Christ, there will be those who will indulge in disorder, and that is what will be terrible.

  18. “Finally, hell will reign on the earth. It will be then that the Antichrist will be born of a nun: but woe to her! Many people will believe him, because he will say he came from heaven, woe to those who believe him! The time is not far; it will not happen twice 50 years.

  19. “My child, you will not say what I just told you. (You will not tell anyone, you will not say if you have to say it one day, you will not say what it concerns), finally you will not say anything until I tell you to say it!

  20. “I pray Our Holy Father the Pope to give me his holy blessing.”

  21. Mélanie Mathieu, bergère of La Salette

  22. Grenoble July 6, 1851

  Secret of Our Lady of La Salette to Mélanie (1879 Version)

  1. “Melanie, what I am about to tell you now will not always be a secret. You may make it public in 1858.

  2. “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, and the priests have become cesspools of impurity. Yes, the priests are tempting vengeance, and vengeance is hanging over their heads. Woe to the priests and to those dedicated to God who by their unfaithfulness and their wicked lives are crucifying my Son again! The sins of those dedicated to God cry out toward Heaven and call for vengeance, and now vengeance is at their door, for there is no one left to beg mercy and forgiveness for the people. There are no more generous souls; there is no one left worthy of offering a spotless sacrifice to the Eternal for the sake of the world.

  3. “God will strike in an unprecedented way.

  4. “Woe to the inhabitants of the earth! God will exhaust His wrath upon them, and no one will be able to escape so many afflictions together.