THE BROKEN CROSS (La croix cassée) par Piers Compton

For the sake of providing a still more startling climax, let us look back to the year 1970,
when a Progressive Theological Congress was held in a Franciscan church in Brussels.
The principle subject discussed, in flat contradiction of the Congress’s programme as
indicated by its title, was sex, and it was expounded to an almost exclusively youthful
gathering.

It was rightly anticipated, because of the theme, that Cardinal Suenens would be present;
apart from which, as Primate of Belgium, he was on his home ground.

The Congress opened with the entry of girls, dressed in white and, as they twisted this
way and that, waving cords and bits of broken chain to show that they were free. In an
interval after the dancing, pieces of bread and glasses of wine were passed round,
followed by grapes and cigarettes. Then, just as the young conference members thought
all was over, their eyes were drawn towards the altar from which something was
beginning to rise and to take on an unbelievable shape. 6

It was at first greeted with gasps, then giggles, and finally pandemonium broke loose as
the transparent plastic forming the shape was seen to represent a gigantic penis. The
delegates screamed themselves hoarse, feeling that it was a challenge to – a recognition
of – their virility. It was the sort of climax that had never been imagined and might only
figure in the most extravagant of bawdy dreams. The presence of the Cardinal gave a
permissive glamour to a setting that they would never again regard with awe.


It is well in place here, as part of our thesis, to look somewhat more closely at the scene
that occurred in the Brussels church, and at the word Hallelujah, which has never been in
everyday use, as a spoken expression of praise, within the Seven Hills. As an offering of
praise to Jehovah, it has always been commonly used by religious revivalists rather than
by Latins. But now we find 'Pope' Paul using it.

What made him? And why did Cardinal Suenens, before an altar, preside over an
amazing exhibition of carnal tomfoolery that many, especially the church-bound, will
find difficult or impossible to believe?

There is one explanation. Neither of those named, while wearing the robes, vestments,
and all the outward signs of Catholic prelacy, were Christian men. They had passed, by
preparatory stages, into the highest echelon of occult understanding. They had been
tutored, signed for, and guaranteed by the Masters of Wisdom in one of the foremost
temples where atavistic rites, all with sexual undertones, take the place of religion.

When the adolescent girls shrieked with delighted embarrassment as the large plastic
penis rose up before them, Cardinal Suenens knew perfectly well that they were, as he
intended, commemorating the heathen god Baal whose name, divided into its Sumerian
root words, has several meanings. Among them are lord, master, possessor, or husband,
while others refer to a controlling male’s penis with its forceful boring and thrusting.

So what the Cardinal arranged for the young, mostly girls, of Brussels, was a show of
phallic worship, which symbolises the generative power contained in the semen, or life
juice, which streamed down upon all life and nature from the mighty penis of Baal. An
exaggerated phallus was also a symbol of Yesed, the sphere of the moon, and also of the
horned god Dionysius, or Bacchus.

The praise chant voiced by 'Pope' Paul has its origin in the same fount of heathen worship,
as its meaning, again according to its Sumerian construct, refers to the strong water of
fecundity, or semen. During the public displays of mass sexual intercourse, which go by
the name of fertility rites, this semen, when ejaculated, was caught in the hands of the
officiating priests, who held it up for the approval of Yahweh (Jehovah) and then
proceeded to smear it upon their bodies.

So much was implied by 'Pope' Paul when he raised his arms and uttered a heartfelt
'Hallelujah!'

TBC...
6. Report from the Belgian News Service, quoted in Il Giornale d'Italia, September 17th, 1970.

Part Ten

"One is always wrong to open a conversation with the Devil, for however he goes about it, he always insists
on having the last word." Andre Gide.


It is hoped that possible readers of this book, who may not be acquainted with the
Catholic story, will by now have grasped one essential fact – that the general decline of
the Church was brought about by the Council that goes by the name of Vatican Two.
Furthermore, that the Council was called by John XXIII who, like several of the prelates
and many of lesser title under his Papal wing, were clandestine members of secret
societies, and who were, according to the age-long ruling of the Church, excommunicated
and therefore debarred from fulfilling any legitimate priestly function. The disastrous
results of their being allowed to do so, with Papal approbation (since both the Popes who
followed Pius XII were part of the over-all conspiracy, while the recent John Paul I and
John Paul II are subject to suspicion) are apparent to the most superficial observer. Such
results are the outcome of Paul VI’s main wish regarding the implementation of Vatican
II, as expressed in his last will and testament, and repeated more than once by John Paul
II: ‘Let its prescriptions be put into effect.’

Those prescriptions were defined years ago in the policies of Adam Weishaupt, Little
Tiger, Nubius, and others (already quoted) for their trained disciples to infiltrate, and then
to wear down the authority, practices, and very life of the Church. This they have
accomplished, under the guise of progress or liberation.

Every aspect of the Church, spiritual and material, has been taken over, from Peter’s
Chair, with its once regal dignity, to a faldstool in the most insignificant parish church.
The few priests who recognised this were kept in the background, or, if they managed to
get a hearing, were exposed to ridicule; and surveying the scene, with its disorders, the
exhibitions of profanity, and sexual aberrations staged in some of its most revered
buildings, including St. Peter’s, one is tempted to think of a once highly disciplined
Guards brigade being transformed into a mob of screaming hooligans.

One may pass from the truism, that little things are little things, to a more comprehensive
realisation that little beginnings are not little things; and it is by working precisely on that
principle that the modern controllers of the Church achieved their ends without producing
too much alarm among the populace at large.

They began by relaxing formal disciplines and inhibitions, such as keeping Friday as a
meatless day. Then certain symbols, rituals, and devotions went. The old liturgical
language of Latin practically disappeared. The nun’s habit, which had never failed to
inspire respect even in the most irreligious, went out of use, as did the cassock. The latter
was sometimes replaced by jeans, as was demonstrated by two novices who, in Rome,
went up to the altar to receive the blessing of their Father-General looking more like
hippies than future Jesuits. A small cross, worn in the lapel of a jacket, was fast becoming
the only sign that the wearer was a priest.

TBC...

The old idea of priestly authority, whether exercised by a simple cleric or by the Pope,
was effectively destroyed; and voices were always ready to applaud whenever the Church
squandered this or that of its inheritance. ‘The priest is today no longer a special being’,
cried the exultant Yves Marsaudon, a member of the Masonic Supreme Council of
France. A congress of moral theologians, held at Padua, went much further: ‘The
individual conscience is the Christian’s supreme authority above the Papal magisterium.’

It was becoming generally accepted that ‘one day the traditional Church must disappear
or adapt itself.’ It was to become one of many institutions, with the accumulated legacies
of two thousand years being cast away as things of little worth.

A quick glance at available statistics, over those years, shows a startling falling off in all
the relative departments of Church life. Vocations, baptisms, conversions, and church
marriages, took a downward plunge. The only increase was in the number of those who
walked out of the Church. Many preferred to read the liturgy of the Mass in their homes,
on Sundays and days of obligation, rather than see its once dignified movements
parodied, and hear the historic language cheapened, in church.

In England, between the years 1968 and 1974, it has been reckoned that some two and a
half million people fell away; and, if one may add to that the selling of Catholic journals,
the most popular of these, The Universe, had an average weekly circulation of nearly
three hundred and twelve thousand in 1963. Nine years later that figure had dropped to
under a hundred and eighty thousand.

In France, with eighty-six per cent of the population officially Catholic, ten per cent put
in an appearance at Mass; while a similar figure from 1971 to 1976, applied even to
Rome. During the same period, in South America, once regarded as one of the toughest
nuts for anti-clericals to crack, and where the people were commonly regarded as being
steeped in superstition, an estimated twenty-five thousand priests renounced their vows.
Vatican sources reported that there were three thousand resignations a year from the
priesthood, and that figure took no account of those who dropped out without troubling to
get ecclesiastical approval.

The Catholic part of Holland, where the new teaching was paramount, was in a truly
parlous condition. Not a single candidate applied for admission to the priesthood in 1970,
and within twelve months every seminary there was closed. In the United States, in the
seven years prior to 1974, one in every four of the seminaries put up their shutters.

The traffic was all one way, for apart from the recorded drop in church attendance, a
regular procession of priests and nuns, in the spirit of the new freedom, were deciding
that marriage offered a more comfortable daily round than life in the presbytery or
cloister. ‘Rebel priest, aged fifty, weds girl of twenty-five’ – so ran a typical headline in
the Daily Express of 9th September, 1973. The marriage was celebrated in a Protestant
church, where the attendance was brightened by priests and nuns who were all
professionally geared to add their blessings to the confetti.

TBC...

Many priests had passed beyond the hinting stage and were now openly declaring in
favour of abortion. As for the Sacrament of Matrimony, as more and more couples tired
of encountering the same face at breakfast, the Church discovered that it had been wrong
in pronouncing them man and wife. Pleas of consanguinity, non-consummation, or that
neither party had been validly baptised, were the order of the day, and the granting of
annulments became quite a flourishing business.

By 1972, a few years after the rot had set in, Pope Paul personally disposed of some four
thousand cases. Thus encouraged, a veritable flood of applications followed. Very few of
those in search of ‘freedom’ were definitely refused, but were advised to try again or to
come back later. In Trenton, New Jersey, Bishop Reiss was so overworked that he
nominated seventeen extra priests to help him (I quote his own words) ‘beef up’ the
number of annulments.

2.

In March 1981 the Vatican took the quite superfluous step, so it seemed to many, of
reiterating its Canon Law 2335, which stated that any Catholic who joined a secret
society faced excommunication. To the man in the street, who was unaware that dozens
of clerics, some in the highest offices of the Church, had already broken that law, it
seemed a mere formality. But the Vatican, acting on information received, knew very
well what it was doing. It was protecting itself, in advance, from any likely effects of a
scandal that broke in May of the same year.

The Government of the country, headed by Christian Democrats, was formed of a
coalition that included Socialists, Social Democrats, and Republicans. But the
Communists were now demanding a place in the coalition, for political ends that left no
doubt of their intentions. ‘The problem is’, they said, ‘to remove democratic institutions,
the State apparatus, and economic life from the Christian Democratic power structure.’

But their efforts failed. The Christian Democrats held firm. So their enemies resorted to a
weapon that has proved no less deadly in political warfare than assassination. They
brought about a far reaching scandal which, they hoped, would topple the existing order
of government in Italy.

It was made to appear, as part of the repercussions which, following the break-up of
Michele Sindona’s financial empire, had rumbled through the early summer of 1981, that
the activities of a widespread and dangerous secret society, known as Propaganda Two
(P2 for short) had come to light. But in the confused world of politics and finance things
do not happen as simply as that. The people who, when compelled to do so, cry out
against the machinations most loudly, have invariably been part of the backstairs
conspiracy. The fact of frauds being brought into the open may be through personal spite,
disappointed blackmail, or the probing of some over-zealous underling – ‘why couldn’t
he keep quiet?’ And the self-righteous profiteers who, from their lofty moral pedestals
but with their pockets suffering, cannot do less than publicise the swindle, have to fume
in private.

The exposure of P2 began when the police received a mysterious call advising them to
search the home of Licio Gelli, a prestigious name in secret societies, and to investigate
his relationship with the erstwhile barrow-trundler Michele Sindona.

The mere mention of Sindona made the implicated members of the Curia think of how to
avoid being caught up in the scandal. Hence their apparently unnecessary reminder to the
world at large that Canon 2335 was still valid. Meanwhile the police had come upon a
suitcase in Gelli’s house containing the names of nine hundred and thirty-five members
of P2.

There were many prominent politicians, including three Cabinet ministers and three
under-secretaries; army generals and navy chiefs; leading bankers and industrialists,
secret service heads, diplomats, judges, and magistrates; civil servants in foreign affairs,
defence, justice, finance, and the treasury; top names in radio and television, and the
managing director, editor and publisher of Italy’s leading newspaper, Corriere Della
Sera.

Many others resigned, while a whole host of others came crashing down, like so many
Humpty Dumpties, when the lists were published. More sizeable litter followed as the
government of Arnaldo Forlani, in its entirety, was swept off the wall. The accusers and
their victims were, of course, all members of the same gang. It was a case of ‘Brothers
falling out’ with a vengeance. The usual accusations and recriminations followed,
involving every degree of crime, even murder. The falsification of accounts, espionage,
and official stealing, passed as minor considerations.

Through it all the Vatican reacted with only a mild fluttering of hearts. For although the
Church had shed its aura of reverence, and its prestige had been reduced to a shadow, it
remained inscrutable. The ghost of its former self was still potent. The fatally loaded guns
might be levelled against its walls, but there was no cannoneer to apply the match.

It was a wise cynic who said: ‘In Italy religion is a mask.’

TBC...

3.

Although no churchman had been named in the scandal, the breaking of the Sindona
story indirectly led to the Church reviewing its attitude to the secret societies. This had,
according to orthodox belief, been settled by the said Canon Law 2335, which forbade
any Catholic, on pain of excommunication, to join one. But in spite of that, because so
many clerics, including members of the Curia, had broken that law, negotiations between
the two sides, started in 1961, had been carried on for eleven years, with Cardinal Bea,
the Pope’s Secretary of State (whose name was as doubtful as his nationality), assisted by
Cardinal Konig of Vienna, and Monsignor J. de Toth, putting forward a more amenable
version of the Church’s viewpoint.

These prolonged talks were more concerned with ironing out past differences than with
formulating any future policy. But they managed to keep off the subject of hidden
designs against the Church, which had partly prompted the latter’s ban. Then came
further discussions at Augsburg in May, 1969, where consideration was given to Papal
pronouncements that roundly condemned the societies; and there was more apprehension
in conservative quarters when such equivocal terms as placing Papal Bulls in their
‘historical context’, and the removal of past injustices, were used to explain the purpose
of the assemblies.

The outcome of this newly founded relationship fully justified the doubts of those who
feared that the Church was giving ground, and going back on its judgments that had been
defined as final; and that the thin end of the wedge was being imposed became apparent
in July of the same year, after a meeting at the monastery of Einsiedeln, Switzerland.

It was there confidently anticipated, by Professor Schwarzbaver, that no reference to the
seamy side of secret societies would be made. Neither was it. Instead it was announced
that Rome’s previous rulings on relationship between the Church and secret societies had
not been contained in Papal Bulls or Encyclicals but in Canon Law which, as every
‘updated’cleric knew, was being revised.

This occasioned more serious doubt in orthodox quarters. It was recalled that Canon Law
refers to a body of laws, authorised by the Church, and ‘binding to those who are subject
to it by baptism.’ Could it mean that such terms as binding, revision, and alterations, were
on the point of being subjected to new interpretations? Moreover, more than one Papal
Bull had certainly contained a condemnation of the societies.

The societies (and this must be repeated) had no intention of refuting their original
intention of undermining the Church. They had no need. They had so far succeeded in
their design. Their own men had infiltrated and taken over the Church at every level; and
to such an extent that the Church seemed in a hurry to abandon what was left of its
original claims, its historic rites, and majesty; and now the societies waited for their
picked men, Cardinals and others, to present themselves before the world, cap in hand,
and cry aloud their past errors of judgments.

TBC...

A definite move towards this came from the once highly orthodox centre of Spain, where
Father Ferrer Benimeli put forward the extraordinary plea that Papal Bulls, condemning
the societies, could no longer be regarded as valid.

An undertaking that strictures imposed by Canon Law on secret societies in the past
would not again be invoked, was given by Cardinal Konig when Church and secular
representatives met at Lichtenau Castle in 1970. Then came the statement that Canon
Law and Papal Bulls had been all very well in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but
such documents now had a mainly historical significance, and their import could not be
enacted by a Church that was preaching the more significant doctrine of ‘brotherly love’
which, together with friendship and morality, ‘provided one of the most excellent tenets
of the societies’.

The critics of these ‘get together’ tactics saw in this a concession to the fraternal spirit
inspired by the societies, and also a virtual endorsement of the Cult of Man that Pope
Paul had preached in the United States, and in which he had been confirmed by the
Masters of Wisdom.

The general result of these contacts, on the Church side, was submitted for examination
by the Congregation for the Faith; and the outcome was decided in advance by the
remarks and reservations that accompanied them. It was no use looking back at what the
Church had formerly decided. Comparison showed that its past attitude was old-fashioned,
and properly belonged to a time when it had taught ‘no salvation outside the Church’.

That slogan too was outmoded; and the world’s Press, including most Catholic organs,
again went to work with a will as it always did when it came to propagating views that
undermined tradition and reinforced the designs of those secret society members who
wore mitres in the Vatican.

With the Holy Office continuing to bend over backwards to confirm the changes, the
process of secularisation gained momentum from the autumn of 1974 onwards. It was
made clear that the bar against secret societies had become a dead letter, and that its
abrogation was bringing relief ‘to a number of good people who joined them merely for
business or social reasons’. They no longer presented a danger to the Church.

The dismay occasioned by this in some quarters was summed up by Father Pedro Arrupe,
General of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), who saw it as a concession to organized
‘naturalism’ which, he said, had entered into the very territory of God and was
influencing the minds of priests and religious. Naturalism, by dogmatically asserting that
human nature and human reason alone must be supreme in all things, was another echo of
the Cult of Man.


To be continued...

The Church’s changing attitude towards secret societies was reflected in this country by
John Cannel Heenan, who was appointed Archbishop of Westminster in 1963 and created
Cardinal two years later. In keeping with his hopeful expectation that the Church’s ban
on the societies would soon be abolished, some of his senior clergy were authorised to
negotiate with them. The Cardinal was then informed that a publication repeating the
differences between the two sides was on sale in Catholic bookshops in his diocese.



He expressed his concern. ‘If, as I suspect, it is misleading, I shall see that it is
withdrawn.’ He did so, and that publication, together with all similar ones, disappeared.


An interested inquirer who wrote to the Cardinal on the matter received, in reply, an
assurance that the Cardinal conveyed his blessing. The same inquirer, on calling at the
Catholic Truth Society bookshop, near Westminster Cathedral, was told that there had
been no dealings with the Cardinal, and that the booklets had been withdrawn ‘through
lack of public interest’.


The growing belief that Canon 2335 would not appear in any revised edition of Church
law, together with the fact that orthodox elements were being out-manoeuvred, as they
had been at Vatican II, led to the Church and the societies expressing a more open
relationship.


There was, for instance, a ‘dedication breakfast’ at the New York Hilton Hotel in March,
1976, presided over by Cardinal Terence Cooke, seconded by Cardinal Kroll, of
Philadelphia, and attended by some three thousand members of secret societies. Cardinal
Brandao Vilela of San Salvador de Bahia, represented Brazil.


In his speech, Cardinal Cooke referred to this ‘joyous event’ as marking a further stage
‘on the road to friendship’. He regretted ‘past estrangements’, and hoped that his
presence there signified that the new understanding between the two sides would never
again be compromised. To the Cardinals and the Masters it was not so much an outsize
breakfast party as a momentous union, effected by opponents who had never before at
any time come (openly) together.


Cardinal Kroll, as President of the United States Bishops’ Conference, had previously
been approached by Cardinal Seper, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith, who voiced the fears of those who regretted the signs of vital changes in the
Church. Seper was informed that no alteration had been made, and that none was pending
within the area of central legislation.


‘It is still, and in all cases’, said Kroll, in a statement that even to read causes a raising of
the eyebrows, ‘forbidden for clerics, religious, and members of secular institutes to
belong to a secret society organization.... Those who enrol their names in associations of
the same kind which plot against the Church, or the legitimate civil authorities, by this
very fact incur excommunication, absolution from which is reserved for the Holy See.’


It was true that no active plot against the Church was then in motion. The societies could
well afford to sit back and to take breath; not through any decisive change of heart, but
because the first stage of the plot had been successfully accomplished. Two of the
societies’ choosing, in the persons of John XXIII and Paul VI, had occupied Peter’s
Chair. Others of their kind, who had received a red hat or a Bishop’s mitre, had
dominated their counsels. The next move in the plot against the Church was being
reserved for the future, when the innovations in doctrine and practice had been accepted
by a generation who had never known what it was to respond to the guiding hands of
Popes such as the now belittled Pius XII.


To be continued...

The rearguard, for so the anti-Liberals may be called, made what capital it could by
harking back to Canon 2335, and to the Sindona scandal as illustrating the widespread
disasters brought about by contact with a secret society. As part of this campaign, a
German Episcopal Conference of Bishops was held in the middle of 1981, where it was
stressed, without any qualification, that ‘simultaneous membership of the Catholic
Church and of a secret society is impossible.’1


This was followed by the Italian Government approving a Bill to outlaw and dissolve all
secret societies, and reminding Catholics that excommunication was still the Church’s
penalty for joining one.


But both the German and Italian pronouncements were merely smoke screens; and none
recognised this more than the societies, who were not in the least impressed. That Canon
2335, if it appeared at all in any revised edition of Church law, would be shorn of its
urgency, had passed from being rumour and newspaper gossip to becoming an imminent
fact. An English prelate, Cardinal Heenan, had said more than that, and had even
anticipated it being abolished. While a leading official of the societies in Rome,
unruffled, said he had it on good authority that Canon Law was being revised, as it was,
in fact, by a Commission of Cardinals that had been set up by John XXIII and continued
under Paul VI.


The official went on to say that the still apparent differences between the Church and the
societies were all part of the conflict in the Vatican between the traditionalists and the
progressives. ‘This may well have been’ – and he could well afford to shrug it off – ‘their
last attack upon us.’


That pronouncement, like every other emanating from the same quarter, has proved to be
correct.

For it has now to be accepted, according to a statement from the Holy See, that ‘The
Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has ruled that Canon 2335 no longer
automatically bars a Catholic from membership of Masonic groups.’



1. The full text is given in Amtsblatt des Ezzbistums, Cologne, June 1981 issue.


To be continued...

4.


It had probably been by Pope Paul’s own wish, in defiance of a custom that was part of a
Christian’s, and especially a Catholic’s, second nature, that, after his death in 1978, there
was no crucifix, nor even the most common religious symbol, a cross, on the catafalque
when his body was placed for veneration in St. Peter’s piazza.

Was it a silent acknowledgment that his work, in compliance with the secret counsel
enjoined upon him since the time he became Archbishop of Milan, had been well and
truly done?


To be continued...