THE PHANTOM CHURCH IN ROME - T. Stanfill Benns

THE PHANTOM CHURCH IN ROME - T. Stanfill Benns


The Phantom Church in Rome
How neo-Modernists corrupted the Church to establish Antichrist’s kingdom



Definition of phantom

Webster’s Seventh Collegiate Dictionary, 1941
1a. Obs…Illusion b. a delusion …3. Something in appearance
but not in reality

Merriam-Webster online
1a. Something apparent to sense but with no substantial existence
1c. — An object of continual dread or abhorrence
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/phantom

Synonyms, Roget’s Thesauras, 1942
Shadow, fancy, fantasy

“The man that giveth heed to lying visions is like to him that catcheth at a
shadow, and followeth after the wind.” — Ecclesiasticus 34: 2


The author explicitly disavows anything whatsoever stated in this
work which might unintentionally be opposed to the doctrines of the
One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church. This work in its
entirety is humbly submitted to the future Roman Pontiff, canonically
elected. The author swears to abide by his judgment concerning all
that is written here should Our Lord in His wisdom and mercy see fit
to provide us with one.

TBC...

Dedicated to Christ the King and to the
Immaculate Conception,
Mary Most Holy, Patroness of America and
vanquisher of all heresies


PREFACE

This book is a compilation of a lifetime of study that began in the
1980s and continues to the present. Had it been written four years
ago, the proofs presented would still have been just as compelling,
but the evidence for the case would have remained largely
circumstantial. Thanks to the issuance of a monumental work by
David Wemhoff, published in 2015, the landscape has changed
dramatically. The evidence has arrived, and it is mind-blowing. In
fact it is reflected in the headlines today, as the liberal media
continues to pump out even more propaganda, just as they have done
for over 100 years. If Catholics and God-fearing men of good will
only knew the role the media — not to mention the American
government — has played in manipulating the news and destroying
the Church, they would be hard-pressed to believe it. And even if
they managed to believe it, they still would not be able to draw from
it the enormous theological consequences that have cascaded
relentlessly around us through the past five decades of our existence.
It is the purpose of this book to draw out these consequences and
demonstrate how we have arrived at where we are today and where
we go from here.

Wemhoff’s work, John Courtney Murray, Time/Life, and the
American Proposition: How the C.I.A.’s Doctrinal Warfare Program
Changed the Catholic Church is the itemized documentation, taken
largely from declassified material, of just how the American
government set out to infiltrate, subvert and subjugate the Catholic
Church — and other more orthodox Christian churches — using
religion as a means of building empire under the guise of combating
Communism. As Wemhoff explains, it was an intense psychological
campaign harnessing the print and broadcast media — employing
government officials, professors, priests, ministers and American
business leaders — to make it appear that the Church had abandoned
Her condemnation of Americanism as a heresy. It involved active
infiltration and subversion. This out-and-out warfare was declared in
order to coerce Catholics worldwide into embracing the Americanist
conception of religious liberty. This was accomplished in large part
long before Vatican 2 convened; in fact, it was this very protracted
campaign that paved the way for the modernization of the Church,
largely carried out by its own clergy and liberal members of the
educated laity.

Those living in the 1940s-50s had to know there was an
ideological war going on, even if they were only the sort of Catholics
who seldom did any more than attend Mass on Sunday. It was in the
air, and publications from that time period clearly reflect this. But as
it turns out, they cannot be blamed entirely for not being able to pin it
down, or effectively resist it. When an intelligence agency sets out to
deliberately wage psychological warfare on an entire segment of the
population, it successfully distorts reality and actually reprograms
brains., Edward Hunter, a C.I.A. propaganda operator who worked
undercover as a journalist, wrote in his 1956 work:

The highly educated person who bends medical discoveries
to the practice of mind attack is incalculably more evil than
any savage using potions, trances, and incantations… The
word brain-changing became obscured as brainwashing
and began to embrace all the available pressures that could
be utilized to bend a man's will and change his attitudes
fundamentally. Brain-changing specifically refers to the
complete job in all its wickedness. Cardinal Mindszenty
underwent a brain-changing. That was how his vigorous
mind was bent. A man's memory can be physically
eliminated, if at all possible, only at the price of permanent
damage to the brain. In such a brain-changing, drugs have
to be used to destroy the natural alertness and strong
character of the individual, and hypnotism must be
employed, too, to help in breaking down resistance.
Information obtained through the most persistent inquiry
by every possible channel reveals that drugs and hypnotism
were used on the cardinal. 1

And techniques today have been further perfected to anticipate all
possibilities and eventualities and to better bind captives to the
particular mindset at play.

TBC...

Hunter spoke at length with servicemen and others who were
victims of brainwashing; individuals who, following their release,
clung to the beliefs they had imbibed while prisoners of the
Communists. He became convinced that at some deep level, all who
had experienced “brain-changing” had the tentative idea they were
deluded and even could be brought to this conclusion through
intensive debriefing. “If truth can linger in the mind in spite of the
strongest hallucinations, and the evidence I have accumulated
indicates it can, the reason is clear why the Reds cannot be sure of
even their completest victories, their Mindszentys. They never
capture their minds completely!” And this remark is very revealing.
The primary difference between those who were the initial lab rats
for brain-changing then and those who experienced it years later is
this: Hunter and others noticed that Americans were far more
susceptible to these tactics, for some reason, than others, and this
cannot have improved with the passage of time. Those wishing to use
these tactics always look for the weakest, most vulnerable links —
the elderly, the young, the disoriented, the uneducated, the grieving,
and those emotionally or mentally unstable, for whatever reason. We
read everywhere that prior to the false Vatican 2 council, Catholics in
general were not well instructed in their faith and tended to lay undue
emphasis on external religion. (*Nota de Javier: En efecto,
¡la ignorancia espiritual es el peor de los males! Todo fiel católico debería estar
instruido en su religión, o al menos, ¡hacer el esfuerzo de instruirse para no ser
víctima fácil de los engaños y tentaciones del mundo, del demonio y de la carne!)
They certainly never possessed the level of faith and spiritual formation of a Cardinal Mindszenty.
And so it is not surprising that they became sitting ducks for those
wishing to finish the destruction of the juridical Church once and for all.

Despite the fact that Mindszenty was entirely broken by his
captors and his brain thoroughly changed or “washed” — even to the
extent that he appeared to deny his faith and concede to all
Communist demands — Pope Pius XII neither condemned nor
deserted him for these forced concessions. Pope Pius XII’s example
concerning Cardinal Mindszenty should indicate the mind of the
Church in this matter. His behavior in Mindszenty’s case should
prompt us to be more open-minded in dealing with those who have
experienced what modern experts adjudge to be even worse and more
seductive torments than Mindszenty himself experienced. It is
interesting that one of the last constitutions Pope Pius XII wrote
contained a section on brain-changing and its evils. In Ad
Apostolorum Principis, (June 29, 1958) he taught:

17. There should also be noted those courses of instruction
by which pupils are forced to imbibe and embrace…false
doctrine. Priests, religious men and women, ecclesiastical
students, and faithful of all ages are forced to attend these
courses. An almost endless series of lectures and
discussions, lasting for weeks and months, so weaken and
benumb the strength of mind and will that by a kind of
psychic coercion an assent is extracted which contains
almost no human element, an assent which is not freely
asked for as should be the case.

18. In addition to these there are the methods by which
minds are upset — by every device, in private and in
public, by traps, deceits, grave fear, by so-called forced
confessions, by custody in a place where citizens are
forcibly ‘reeducated,’ and those ‘Peoples’ Courts’ to which
even venerable bishops are ignominiously dragged for trial.

19. Against methods of acting such as these, which violate
the principal rights of the human person and trample on the
sacred liberty of the sons of God, all Christians from every
part of the world, indeed all men of good sense cannot
refrain from raising their voices with Us in real horror and
from uttering a protest deploring the deranged conscience
of their fellow men.

20. And since these crimes are being committed under the
guise of patriotism, We consider it Our duty to remind
everyone once again of the Church's teaching on this
subject. 2

TBC...

Sadly, the doctrinal warfare conducted by the C.I.A. against
Catholics and conservative non-Catholics alike continues even
following Vatican 2, but in subtler forms.It is waged today by the
successors of those infiltrators implanted during the 1950s-60s, to
corral those who weren’t complying with the norms set down at the
false Vatican 2 council. These individuals, both those belonging to
the church of Rome and those known as Traditionalists, believe
themselves to be Catholics. They follow some of the teachings and
traditions of the Church prior to Vatican 2, but they are as much the
victims of brain-changing as those living in the 1940s-50s. The
intelligence sector in that time employed scholars and other experts
to twist and manipulate Catholic doctrine. They presented this
warped version as authoritative teaching in order to compel
acceptance of it and obedience to it. The Catholics of this time
naturally passed on their adherence to this manipulated Church
doctrine to their unwitting children.

Wemhoff explains in his work how these change agents insisted
on misinterpreting the papal teachings to fit their own skewed view
of Christ’s message. Even though American theological giants such
as Monsignor Joseph C. Fenton and Reverend Francis Connell of
Catholic University of America fame vigorously refuted their
assertions, others with greater power and all the money needed were
assisting the enemy from the other side. These two men’s valiant
defense of magisterial teaching serves today as the illuminating
beacon guiding true Catholics out of their brain-changed darkness.
And just because Fenton and Connell lost the battle, this doesn’t
mean Catholics won’t win the war.

The cunning and devious method employed to approach those
wishing to remain Catholic has not been appreciated nor properly
understood. Using a strategy which Hunter describes in
Brainwashing, the C.I.A. provided Traditionalists with a straw man
on which to project their rightful suspicions they had been toyed with
and duped. Working with the Jesuits, the C.I.A. allowed the “Jewish
menace” to be used as the perfect scapegoat on which Traditionalists
could project all their anger and frustrations. This served the dual
purpose of demonizing Traditionalists as an unhealthy and anti-Semitic sect,
while distracting them from the real source of the problem.
Books were even written to this purpose and circulated by
those Jesuits presumably placed in the service of the C.I.A.
Traditionalists who did not blame the Jews, or at least not primarily,
blamed the Communists or secret societies. While this blame was not
misplaced, those wishing to remain Catholic failed to comprehend
the entire scope of what had actually occurred. Nor was it possible to
fully understand what had happened until only recently.

It is the author’s hope that what is written in this work will
resonate with all sincere Catholics everywhere, despite the mental
torture to which they have been subjected; that this book will help
finally and completely dislodge any residual cognitive dissonance in
order to liberate that “truth [which] can linger in the mind in spite of
the strongest hallucinations.” After all, this cognitive dissonance is in
all likelihood the result of that operation of error spoken of by St.
Paul:

And then that wicked one shall be revealed…Whose
coming is according to the working of Satan, in all power,
and signs, and lying wonders, and in all seduction of
iniquity to them that perish: because they receive not the
love of the truth that they might be saved. Therefore God
shall send them the operation of error, to believe a lie.
That all may be judged, who have not believed the truth,
but have consented to iniquity. 3

This passage is a chilling and accurate description of exactly what
took place. The C.I.A. agents were operatives engaging in an actual
operation. God Himself sent that operation to see if the faithful
would believe the lie of Americanism; and they did.

True Catholics then — if they love the truth — will seek the
meaning of what they have been calling themselves all these years. A
description can be found in the Catholic Encyclopedia (1911) under
“Tradition,” 4 where Catholics will learn that to live up to the name,
they must accept all the truths contained in the continual
magisterium. This, Holy Scripture avers in this same book of St.
Paul, is the only remedy for escaping the operation of error, as the
apostle teaches in verse 14: “Therefore, brethren, stand firm; and
hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word, or by
our epistle.” And those traditions, the Catholic Encyclopedia article
explains, are the teachings of Our Lord as conveyed by the popes
from St. Peter to Pope Pius XII.

TBC...

A word here to our non-Catholic brethren: all Catholics have
ever wanted is to be re-united with those who, they believe, truly
love Christ but have been seduced by the very people described in
this work. Non-Catholics too, although by different means, have been
targeted with perverted doctrines and coerced into believing a false
interpretation of Scripture. This in addition to being misled by the
ecumenists who worked with the Americanist forces to implement
doctrinal warfare. A Protestant author writing in the 1980s was one
of the many authors who alerted this writer to the true nature of what
has now come to pass, and some of the prognostications in her work
have proven to be truly prophetic.

Authors Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman remarkably describe the
very phenomenon we are witnessing across America today — the
subjection of Americans to endless streams of what amounts to
propaganda, “pouring out a constant flow of information to the
American public, designed to stimulate the consumers guilts, fears,
weaknesses, insecurities and fantasies” — and then reward each
individual in immediate physical and emotional terms for
succumbing to them. This simple ploy is carried out on Americans
literally hundreds of times each day, stunning them with a barrage of
false promises, distorted values and jumbled personal priorities, then
urging them to give into every whim and impulse. This propaganda
campaign is accompanied by

a cultural confusion of new goals, shifting values and
collapsing traditions…It could be that in subtle ways, these
stresses and techniques which shape our modern lives have
started every American down the sloping catastrophe curve
of snapping and information disease. Television may be
our country’s primary contributor to snapping in everyday
life…

And this state of affairs was described before cell phones, computers
and social media! Still, Conway and Siegelman note that

Even under conditions of impaired awareness, delusion and
domination, there is always the possibility they will snap
out of it. After years have passed, these robots may still
regain their freedom of thought, their responses as
individuals may be restored, and the skeleton of their
personalities may drop back into place. 5

At least for some, then, it may not be too late; there may yet be hope.
St. Paul reminds us that “snapping back” is essential to salvation: “It
is now the hour for us to arise from sleep. For now our salvation is
nearer than when we believed…Cast off the works of darkness, and
put on the armour of light” (Rom. 13: 11, 12).

T. Stanfill Benns
Easter Sunday, 2017


Preface Endnotes

1 Edward Hunter, Brainwashing: The Story of Men Who Defied It, Farrar,
Strauss and Cudahy, New York, N.Y., 1956
2 http://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius12/p12apost.htm
3 Douay-Rheims edition of Holy Scripture, 2 Thess. 2:8, 9-11
4 http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15006b.htm
5 Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, Snapping: America’s Epidemic of
Sudden Personality Change, Dell Publishing Co., New York, N.Y., 1978

INTRODUCTION - THE MOST DIABOLICAL DECEPTION ON EARTH

The hijacking of the Roman Catholic Church


“He that readeth, let him understand.” (Matt. 24:15)


In 1948, a high-profile member of the U.S. hierarchy predicted
the imminent collapse of the Catholic Church. Despite his superb
oratory skills, those predictions obviously were lost in the
pandemonium that followed the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958.
Incredibly, in the span of only one decade, this popular archbishop
would cast aside his prognostications to become a part of the bogus
replacement for the Church he described so accurately, and in such
lurid terms.

[Satan] will set up a counterchurch which will be the ape of
the [Catholic] Church … It will have all the notes and
characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of
its divine content. We are living in the days of the
Apocalypse, the last days of our era. The two great forces –
the Mystical Body of Christ and the Mystical Body of the
anti-Christ – are beginning to draw battle lines for the
catastrophic contest.

The ‘false prophet’ will have a religion without a cross. A
religion without a world to come. A religion to destroy
religions…or a politics which is a religion, one that renders
unto Caesar even the things that are God’s…There will be
a counterfeit ‘Church.’ Christ’s Church, the Catholic
Church, will be One; and the false ‘prophet’ will create the
other.

The false ‘Church’ will be worldly, ecumenical, and
global. It will be a loose federation of ‘churches’ and
religions, forming some type of global association. A
world parliament of ‘churches.’ It will be emptied of all
Divine content; it will be the mystical body of the
Antichrist. The Mystical Body on Earth today will have its
Judas Iscariot, and he will be the false ‘prophet.’ Satan will
recruit him from our bishops.

The Antichrist will not be so called; otherwise he would
have no followers. He will not wear red tights, nor vomit
sulphur, nor carry a trident nor wave an arrowed tail as
Mephistopheles in Faust. This masquerade has helped the
devil convince men that he does not exist. When no man
recognizes, the more power he exercises. God has defined
Himself as “I Am Who I Am,” and the Devil as “I am who
I am not.

In the midst of all his seeming love for humanity, and his
glib talk of freedom and equality, he will have one great
secret, which he will tell to no one. He will not believe in
God. Because his religion will be brotherhood without the
fatherhood of God, he will deceive even the elect. He will
set up a counterchurch… a mystical body of the Antichrist
that will in all externals resemble the Mystical Body of
Christ. 1

Archbishop Fulton Sheen only echoes Reverend E. Sylvester
Berry, who wrote: “Satan will imitate the Church of Christ to deceive
mankind; he will set up a church of Satan in opposition to the Church
of Christ.” 2 As Sheen also notes, Catholics of the 20th century will
join the counterchurch because it claims to be infallible “when its
visible head speaks ex cathedra…in matters of economics and
politics.” 3 Ironically, Sheen’s description of the counterchurch was
first found in the writings of the Freemason Limouisin, who had
written over 50 years earlier: “Freemasonry is a Church: it is the
counter-Church, counter-Catholicism. It is the other church — the
church of heresy, of free thought. The Catholic Church is the
archetype church, the first church, church of dogmatism and
orthodoxy.” 4

Sheen’s inexplicable adherence to the very church he foretold,
following the death of Pope Pius XII, only crystallized the sum total
of Catholic teaching regarding Antichrist’s deceits and his ability to
master the art of doublespeak. The truly diabolical nature of those
who would later embrace this counterchurch lay hidden until the very
end. Once Pius XII died, Sheen effectively helped implement the
very evils he foretold, successfully placing stumbling blocks of
immense proportions along the path of those who would later try to
prove his scenario had come to pass.

TBC...

Presenting the case

There is nothing more demeaning or more effectively
dismissive, in the literary world, than the styling of an historical
account of an event as a baseless conspiracy theory or a hack job
pulled off by those lacking credentials and sufficient evidence. That
is why it is so intellectually dishonest to pretend that a considerable
body of theological evidence concerning the anticipated destruction
of the Roman Catholic Church and the coming of Antichrist does not
exist. The diligent researcher can easily disprove this, but doing so
takes time and dedication, which few seem willing to devote to
matters of faith. To venture the opinion today that the true Church of
Christ has long since disappeared is tantamount to inviting an on-the-spot
excommunication or taunts for being a conspiracy theorist, at
best. Some might even suggest a strait jacket and a padded cell.

But a careful look at what the Heads of the Church themselves
have to say about what to expect and when — and the authority with
which Christ Himself invested them to say it — tells a
straightforward tale and leaves no wiggle room from a doctrinal
standpoint. Nor does it need to be anything but an anthology of
authoritative writings by the hierarchy and Church-approved
theologians, taking it out of the realm of any conspiracy or
hypothetical meanderings. For those who genuinely value both
history and theology, this is far more credible — especially from a
theological standpoint — than the mere opinion of present-day
laypeople or the purported possessors of the Roman See and their
modern-day appointees.

Of course, those denigrating conspiracy theorists forget the term
conspiracy has legal connotations. In legal terms it is defined as, “An
agreement between two or more persons to engage jointly in an
unlawful or criminal act, or an act that is innocent in itself but
becomes unlawful when done by the combination of actors; a secret
plan or agreement to carry out an illegal or harmful act, especially
with a political motivation (plot)…The act of making such plans in
secret.” 5 This is the very definition of what is described in the
preface of this work. Certainly, in the political and governmental
sphere there are many combinations of such incidents that were never
proven and prosecuted. It is actually, however, a matter of faith for
Catholics to believe in certain “conspiracy theories” and failure to so
believe costs them Church membership. Furthermore, Catholics owe
a firm and irrevocable assent to infallible papal teaching, even if it
issues only from the Pope’s ordinary magisterium, (i.e., his teaching
delivered worldwide to all the bishops, to be passed on to the
faithful).

The $64,000 question is this: since the Catholic Church has
always and everywhere maintained and demonstrated that Her
teachings are irreformable and incapable of adaptation to modern
ideas and moral standards, how does one account for the evident
changes in doctrine and discipline articulated at the Vatican 2 council
(1962-65)? Can it really be said that the teachings and standards
proposed as Catholic teaching by the “church” in Rome since
Vatican 2 are the same as those held prior? Or, since the reign of
Angelo Roncalli (John 23, omitting the Roman numerals to
distinguish him from the others as a non-pope), has the church in
Rome, once synonymous with unchangeable teaching, violated the
ideals it professed and held for nearly 20 centuries?

Catholics cannot believe the latter, so they must cite the reply of
St. Thomas More to his Anglican interrogators prior to his death:

For I doubt not, but of the learned and virtuous men now
alive — I do not speak only of this Realm, but of all
Christendom — there are ten to one of my mind in this
matter; but if I should take notice of those learned Doctors
and virtuous Fathers that are already dead, many of whom
are Saints in Heaven, I am sure there are far more, who all
the while they lived thought in this Cause as I do now.
And therefore, my Lord, I do not think myself bound to
conform my Conscience to the Counsel of one Kingdom,
against the general Consent of all Christendom. 6

It is precisely the general consent of all 20 centuries of Christendom
that those calling themselves Catholics today are being asked to
discount — and demonstrating that is the purpose of this present work.

Since Jorge Bergoglio’s election as “Pope Francis,” murmurings
that he is not a true pope have been making the rounds. Remarkably,
similar murmurings have circulated for many decades, beginning
with the election of Angelo Roncalli as “Pope John XXIII.” Those
asking questions about the validity and liceity of these men are
categorized as kooks and their objections discredited out of hand, and
this by some members of the same generation of college graduates
and “erudite scholars” who have demonstrated publicly, on camera,
how little they know about American history, far less world or
Church history. Never mind that a total of 31 antipopes have
previously reigned in the Church, with no guarantee this
phenomenon could not occur again. In fact, the Church actually
teaches that there will be an unprecedented time when the Church
will suffer the pretensions of a papal usurper. Saints, popes,
theologians, holy people — all have spoken of it, and their testimony
is compelling. This doctrine is reflected in Church law and the
teachings of ecumenical councils concerning the content of Divine
revelation, but most importantly it issues from infallible decrees of
the Roman Pontiffs, the significance of which cannot be
underestimated. Even faithful Catholics who believe themselves well
versed in Church teaching are unlikely to appreciate the full extent of
the binding power of such decrees.

TBC...

Culture shock


Consider the psychological impact alone the changes in the
Church had on the faithful. Over a brief period of time, everything
about the Church that Catholics had come to know, love and cherish
disappeared into thin air. The churches were rearranged and the altars
obscured by new, modern altars facing the people. Gregorian chant
was gone; Latin was gone. Already some of the older and more
conservative priests and nuns had either retired or left their orders.
Catholics became trapped in the inescapable maze of Vatican 2 with
no guides to help them. Those who welcomed the ecumenical
changes to the Church which began in the 1950s worked feverishly
to advance the Church’s modernization or aggiornamento; the rest
simply dropped out and many, in the 1960s, unfortunately, “turned
on.” Foolishly some began “looking” for the Church they lost and
found it in “Traditional” mass chapels (men calling themselves
priests who set up chapels independent of the Holy See, forbidden by
the Church). But this was only another blind alley. Figuring out what
happened was like peeling successive layers of paint and wallpaper
off the walls of a very old home. Just when you think you’ve peeled
off the final layer, another one appears.

Traditionalists tended to bounce from one “Trad” sect to the
other, in search of what they had lost. They often found each
Traditional “priest” or leader was worse than the first, and in a
different way. The amount of research and study it took in order to
determine that these men were the wolves in sheep’s clothing and
false christs about whom Our Lord had warned in the Gospels was
staggering. This bizarre odyssey sometimes entailed cult (sect)
involvement. At the very least it consisted in the manipulation of
information by these clerics and self-proclaimed lay leaders to suit
the mindset of their particular Traditional sect and justify their own
position among other warring sects. Not surprisingly, these leaders’
techniques involved the suppression of that very information
necessary to make educated decisions regarding the faith. The toll it
took on families and personal relationships was heartbreaking; the
guilt felt at having been so mistaken for so long, crippling. Perhaps
the dropouts had it right after all, (sans the turned-on part). By the
time Catholics realized what had taken place, it was too late to turn
back, too late to prevent the damage to themselves and others. In the
end, they chose their own pathways and walked on alone, sometimes
not even in the company of loved ones. They bowed their heads and
accepted their fate, knowing they were destined to share in Christ’s
own suffering and Passion, still being reenacted in the Passion of His
Church.

Imagine the trauma that (orthodox) Catholics endure when
hateful invective is aimed against the organization to which they
believe that they belong, but which in fact is not that organization at
all. The sexual abuse horrors in the Novus Ordo church, 7 the money
scandals, abominable perversions of the liturgy, the departure from
dogma, all the lies flung at the Church, revived and refined from the
past — everything has been employed to make her a laughingstock,
defame Her in the eyes of the world and ultimately destroy Her.

But that “church” is not in reality the Catholic Church, but only the
empty shell, Her external trappings and grandeur, which yet
represents Her glorious past. These knives have been thrust to the hilt
in the Mystical Body of Christ, over and over again. And those at
least trying to be true members of that Body are penetrated by these
instruments of torture as well. The all-too-acute agony of the
situation is the knowledge of the faithful that they cannot properly
defend the Church they love because so few believe what has
happened to Her could be true. They are faceless bodies with hands
raised in supplication to Heaven, deprived of any voice.


COMING NEXT... The Church that disappeared

The Church that disappeared

It is astounding that in less than a century, the carefully guarded
and transmitted teachings of nearly 2,000 years could so completely
disappear that no one today would accept or believe them as the
integral body of truths that Christ imparted to His Church. An enemy
has done this. That enemy, the creator of all political and historical
revisionist propaganda — all public opinion now prevailing today —
has succeeded in convincing the last few generations that the
Catholic Church was the primary historical source of religious
tyranny, political machinations, underhanded financial dealings,
slavery, anti-feminism, sexual perversion, even covert Satanism.
What was once revered as sound moral teachings and faithfulness to
the Gospels has long been cast aside as foolishness unsuited to the
times, even out and out fanaticism. All that is left of the Church is
Her external rites, manipulated by so-called Traditionalists who can
only simulate what once was the sacrificial reality.

There is an explanation for all this, but no one wishes to consider
it. It would raise the possibility that just as easily as the
transformation came in less than a century, the world could return to
what existed before. The old moral code would prevail once again
and the Church would be unhindered in her activities. All would be
open to the truth, and true conversions would be possible. This the
powers that be today would prevent at all costs. Most would readily
die defending their freedom to sin rather than live to lead a life
serving God who created them and His Divine Son who redeemed
them. That such evil would exist in the world was foretold in Holy
Scripture. That this particular time is described in those verses is
something the enemy has gone to great lengths to conceal. Many
calling themselves Catholic clergy know full well we live in what is
described as the latter days or end times, yet they want none of the
deprivations and call to sacrifice that go with it. They have allowed
themselves to be convinced that they live at the bare beginning of
these times, not the end of them; and they have succeeded in
convincing their followers of the same. But for that “success” they
have paid a great price.

These leaders have committed a grievous sin against the Holy
Ghost by rejecting the known truth, a truth that can easily be
demonstrated and proven. Only objective truth can set them free, but
first it will make those accepting it miserable, as one sage observed.
And it is that very misery they wish most of all to avoid. No one
wants to champion an unpopular cause. The misery of being set
apart, of being different — of being mocked and derided, jeered at
and shunned; the naked terror of being alone — it is these fears
which keep them huddled together with their followers, clinging to
the make-believe shreds of a security blanket that doesn’t even exist.
All these years they believed that the primary purpose for the
Church’s existence was all about them and their needs, not the
preservation, whole and entire, of the sacred truths Christ entrusted to
His Church; and they cannot look like fools in the eyes of their
followers now and run it back. Those truths are essential to salvation,
and once they are fully demonstrated and understood, the true nature
of the Church — who She really is and has always been and how it
has been made to appear that She could ever change — will become
abundantly clear.

While those who quietly mouth the possibility that Francis in
Rome is not a true pope may believe they are entertaining a novel
idea, Catholics today have good reason to question not only Francis’
validity as pope, but also the validity of all popes since the death of
Pope Pius XII. The reason is simple: Catholic truth never changes;
yet beginning years before the reign of Angelo Roncalli as John 23 in
1958, many things changed in the Church. From the earliest ages of
Catholicity, novelty has been recognized as a sure sign of departure
from Catholic faith. And novelty, which abounded a full decade and
more before the advent of the false Vatican 2 Council (V2) —
convened by John 23 October 11, 1962 and closed by his successor,
Giovanni Battista Montini (“Pope” Paul 6) in December of 1965 —
was only concluded at that council. But more importantly, those
currently in positions of authority in Rome and even those who
pretend to reject that authority do not employ the methods sanctioned
by the Church to demonstrate the truth of what they are doing. In
fact, they generally ignore these methods, which in itself is a
rejection of Church teaching condemned by several popes, resulting
in the loss of Church membership. Christ Himself designated the
popes as the teachers of His divine message. Theologians, priests,
and even bishops are authorized to teach only if they are in
communion with a validly and canonically elected pope. This has
been the constant teaching of the Church since Her inception. For
nearly 60 years the Church has existed in an acephalic or leaderless
state, not non-existent as some might assume, but merely comatose,
so to speak. For Christ, Her true Head (the brain or intellect of the
Mystical Body, with the Holy Ghost as Her soul, since She cannot be
brain-dead or soulless), keeps Her alive, and at some juncture He will
see either that She is restored to health or He will return as Eternal
Judge. While most may be oblivious to the Church’s current
predicament, it is very real. The fact that it would be met with such
disbelief and scorn is the very proof that it does indeed exist.
Here, perhaps, is the place where the players in this tragedy
should be introduced.

COMING NEXT... False sects and the appearance of truth

False sects and the appearance of truth

Those remaining with the new church in Rome following the
death of Pope Pius XII will be called here Novus Ordo (NO)
catholics but are not really Catholics as the Church of all time has
always understood the word. They range on the belief scale from
ultra-liberal to conservative. They attend the “new mass” introduced
in 1969 by Paul 6, attenuated somewhat by “Pope” Benedict 16.
They receive the new rites of the sacraments also approved by Paul 6
in 1968. They also accept the heretical idea of religious liberty as
taught by the suspected Modernist John Courtney Murray, and a host
of other heresies and errors propagated at the false Vatican 2 council.
Most people today consider these NO catholics to belong to the
established Church of all time, but this is not the case. It is important
that non-Catholics, especially, understand that just because Rome
retains the name Catholic, and their followers call themselves
Catholics, that doesn’t mean they are what they say they are. The
same applies to those presenting below as “traditional” Catholics,
that is, as heirs to all the Catholic Church once was, for they do not
correspond to the meaning of the word Catholic, either.

Since the conclusion of Vatican 2 in 1965, but especially
following the abrogation of the Latin Mass in 1969, “Traditional”
Catholics came into existence. These individuals exited the church in
Rome sometime after the completion of the council in 1965 or the
introduction of the Novus Ordo Missae or “New Mass” (NOM) in
1969. Some Traditionalists believe that the present leader of the
church in Rome is a true pope but is not to be obeyed wherever he
departs from the faith. Sedevacantists believe that the Church has
been without a true pope since the death of either Pius XII or John
23. There are many sects within the Traditionalist fold. All claim to
be Catholic but none can prove their Catholicity, and their “clerics”
cannot prove any claim to apostolicity. 8

One particular traditionalist-like sect was established in the
1940s within the Church itself, although its co-founder was not
formally excommunicated until the 1950s. This is the St. Benedict
Center legitimately founded by Catherine Goddard in Boston in 1940
to instruct college students. In 1942, the Jesuit Leonard Feeney
became a lecturer at the center. Feeney was excommunicated for his
crusade on the doctrine “outside the Church no salvation.” Pope Pius
XII warned him many times he was wrong in his teaching on this
subject and tried to reconcile him to the Church’s true teaching, but
Feeney would not budge. At one point, he even called Pope Pius XII
a heretic. Following Feeney’s excommunication, St. Benedict’s
Center also broke with Rome. This group today is reconciled with the
Novus Ordo church but some Traditionalists (and even some calling
themselves stay-at-home Catholics) still hold Feeney’s teachings as
Catholic, claiming his excommunication was only a “disciplinary”
matter.

There also are lay “conclavists” who have elected various
“popes” throughout the world, an act condemned as heretical by the
Church. 9 For want of proper form and subject matter, none of these
groups are Catholic. Some claim the successor to Pope Pius XII was
Cardinal Giuseppe Siri, now deceased, and that his successor is now
pope somewhere in Europe. There are no proofs accepted as such by
Catholic standards that his election ever occurred, and abundant
proof that Siri was loyal to the Novus Ordo church until his death. As
will be demonstrated below, very few of those cardinals casting votes
in the 1958 election were even Catholic, and therefore could not have
validly elected anyone. They had long before fallen away without the
faithful even realizing it.

Finally, there is the vast sea of non-Catholics who identify
themselves as Christians, some of whom are validly baptized and,
according to Church teaching, are actually subject to Church teaching
and laws. The majority of this population is what the Church would
describe as invincibly ignorant (a prejudice against Catholicism
unable to be overcome) and indeed, it is believed many of them are
in good faith. Since Vatican 2, many denominations believe the
Church has come more to their way of thinking and is not the
intolerant organization that once sought to convert them to “Romish
ways.” Their ministers are often accepted as equals by some NO
officials and after all, they were invited to be consultants during
Vatican 2. Therefore, they now count these “Catholics” as Christians
in the full sense. Other denominations, however, are not as forgiving.
They yet believe the Church, as She existed throughout history and
up to the present, is the Antichrist, the Scarlet Whore of Revelations.
This is often accompanied by the teaching that Rome is behind the
creation of a New World Order, which is certainly true of the anti-
Church now reigning in Rome but is entirely untrue of the Church as
She existed prior to the death of Pope Pius XII.

While the primary purpose of this book is to demonstrate how
the Catholic Church was infiltrated and destroyed from within by
sinister forces and how Her continual teaching was perverted, the
infiltration was not limited to the Catholic Church. It was simply
accommodated to Protestant beliefs, targeting mainly biblical
teaching and interpretation. In addition, Wemhoff’s book relates that
it was actually a Presbyterian minister and missionary, John Mackay,
who on the Protestant side worked with fellow Presbyterian minister
Robert Speer and YMCA founder John Mott to advance religious
liberty as the concept was understood and promoted by Murray.
Mackay was a huge proponent of ecumenism and evangelism. He
was also active in the Federal Council of Churches, forerunner of the
World Council of Churches. The influence of these men within the
Protestant church helped those working to destroy the Catholic
Church accomplish their desired end. And yet not all Protestants
agreed at the time with their ideology. Nevertheless, the biblical view
of non-Catholics was successfully skewed and their basic
understanding of Scripture perverted, regardless of which
denomination they were affiliated with.


COMING NEXT... Phenomenalism and Modernism

Phenomenalism and Modernism

The philosophy underlying the belief systems of both
Traditionalists and the Novus Ordo can be classified as
Phenomenalism. Phenomenalism (Gr., phainomenon, from
phainesthai, to appear) literally means any system of thought that has
to do with appearances. It is the theory that knowledge is limited to
phenomena including (a) physical phenomena or the totality of
objects of actual and possible perception and (b) mental phenomena,
the totality of objects of introspection. Phenomenalism assumes two
forms according as it (a) denies reality behind the phenomena
(Renouvier, Shadworth, Hodgson), or (b) expressly affirms the
reality of things-in-themselves but denies their knowability (Kant,
Comte, Spencer). 10 They accept the shadow, not its substance; the
appearance of truth, not truth itself. For according to Reverend A.C.
Cotter, “Error is impossible unless it has the appearance of being
true.” 11 Pope St. Pius X condemns this Modernist teaching as
follows: “Human reason is entirely restricted to phenomena, namely
things that appear, and that appearance by which they appear…” 12

Phenomenalism is actually condemned by Christ Himself in
Holy Scripture, where He warns: “Judge not according to the
appearance, but judge just judgment” 13 And in St. Matthew, “For by
the fruit the tree is known” 14 and such fruit means what a man reaps
through his works or actions. According to the Catholic
Encyclopedia (1911), this heresy is related to errors regarding the
attainment of certitude and to pragmatism, which teaches that an
unproved hypothesis or hypothetical cause, if it explains the facts
observed, fulfills the same purpose and serves the same ends as a
true cause or established law; truth perpetually evolves,
(evolutionism). Phenomenalism is also associated with dialectical
materialism, the foundational philosophical system of Communism.

Marxism, as we have seen, believes that the mind acquires
an imperfect and obscure knowledge of reality by the very
fact that it receives a sense-image. It bases this contention
on its belief that there is no difference between the
accidents or phenomena of a thing and its nature. It is
sufficient to point out here that Marxism's identification of
the phenomena and the nature of a thing is an error
common to many materialistic philosophies. 15

Because Traditionalists and others falsely perceive reality, they are
unable to arrive at truth. Instead, needs and impulses dictate their
actions and fuel their experience. Pope St. Pius X condemned this
error as Modernism:

For them the Sacraments are the resultant of a double need,
for...everything in their system is explained by impulses or
necessities...The first need is that of giving some
manifestation to religion; the second is that of propagating
it, which could not be done without some sensible forms
and consecrating acts, and these are called Sacraments...
The Sacraments are mere symbols and signs, though not
devoid of a certain efficacy…What the phrases are to the
ideas, the Sacraments are to the religious sentiment — that
and nothing more.

Modernists claim to arrive at knowing by experiencing a
“kind of intuition of the heart which puts man in immediate
contact with the very reality of God… [But] everything
that leads the heart captive proves a hindrance instead of a
help to the discovery of the truth…The vast majority of
mankind hold and always will hold firmly that sentiment
and experience alone, when not enlightened and guided by
reason, do not lead to the knowledge of God.” 16


To be continued...

Reverend A.C. Cotter S.J. teaches that “Truth is conformity of the
mind to reality…Reality means...that which exists, did exist, will
exist.” 17 As St. Thomas Aquinas expounds, man must be able to
express what is in his mind in words and then convert knowing and
believing to action (“thought, word and deed”). This is true reality.
But Traditionalists perceive God and His Church only in terms of
what satisfies their insatiable needs and makes them feel good, not
the obedience owed to God and His vicar on earth. “If you love Me,
keep my commandments” has no meaning for them. All they know is
that they have rights to the Church’s spiritual goods, and they believe
that God loves them so much that He would never deprive them of
these goods. It doesn’t matter that the Church teaches otherwise on
this subject, or that others have been deprived of Mass and
Sacraments for decades and still kept their faith. These facts do not
apply to Traditionalists, even though among those who have been
deprived of Mass and Sacraments are today’s “stay-at-home” or
catacomb Catholics, who follow only the popes up to and including
Pius XII, say their prayers at home, study and defend their faith and
perform good works, as they are able. (*Nota de Javier: Nosotros, mis amados
hermanos de TE DEUM y Mi Ca El !?, formamos parte de este muy pequeño grupo
de verdaderos católicos de estos Últimos Tiempos; nosotros somos el Pequeño Rebaño de Ntro.
Señor Jesucristo, nosotros somos los últimos restos de la Santa Iglesia Católica,
y lucharemos hasta el final con la ayuda y la gracia de Dios por preservar INTACTA nuestra FE)

Separating these purported Catholics into several distinct groups
effectively destroys any pretension to the necessary mark of unity
required for the Catholic Church’s existence, for unity is achieved
only when the faithful and hierarchy are in communion with a true
and canonically elected pope.

But who would ever believe the once most renowned religious
body in the world could be the victim of a hostile takeover right
under everyone’s noses, and with few objections whatsoever from
Catholics? It is an imposture so outrageous that even to contemplate
the possibility seems to qualify one for inclusion in the lunatic fringe.
Yet what if such an imposture had been predicted in Holy Scripture
for the end times? And what if it had been perpetrated in such a way
that results, as Sheen indicates above, in the very surreal experience
that Catholics have been enduring for decades? “And he did great
signs…and he seduced them that dwell on the earth by the signs.” 18
St. Paul describes these signs as “lying wonders.” 19 That great
Doctor of the Church, St. Francis de Sales taught: “The miracles of
Antichrist will be simply an illusion… [They will be] unnatural and
will not endure.” 20 What greater lie or illusion than to pretend to be
something one is not and could never be, without being detected or
called out? To pose as the world’s most prestigious religious leader,
head of the ancient and venerable Roman Catholic Church, while
violating its most sacred principles and being accepted universally as
the genuine article?!


Coming up next... False prophets and wolves in sheep’s clothing

False prophets and wolves in sheep’s clothing


How did this happen? The entire collapse of the Church cannot
be explained alone by the implementation of doctrinal warfare.
Already in the late 1800s, false teachers had penetrated the Church
and began disseminating error in Catholic schools during the
Modernist infestation. So a certain number of Catholics received a
false education in the faith without even realizing it. Others chose not
to educate themselves or to learn only the basics concerning the faith.
In short, Catholics had grown lax, worldly and careless. Pope St. Pius
X was able to halt this cancer (Modernism) for a time in the first
decade of the 20th century, but it resurged again in the 1920s. The illeducated,
the willfully uneducated and the semi-educated who came
of age in the 1940s-50s were not equipped to repulse the predations
of government-funded change agents, who began actively lobbying
for doctrinal change by subverting the clergy. These poor rubes
didn’t have anything close to the background needed to unravel the
sophisticated arguments of the Modernists.

Had they engaged in Catholic Action, as the popes commanded
them to do, they might have had a fighting chance. But as will be
explained below, already they had been effectively sidelined. Like
the Apostles in the Garden of Gethsemane, Catholics were asleep
when the enemy arrived. It would never have occurred to them to
question a papal election. Their perception of the Church’s attribute
of indefectibility would not allow them to countenance treachery
within the Church itself, even though the early history of the papacy
is replete with examples of turmoil in seating the pope and keeping
him in office, including kidnapping and even death. The only thing
they knew about the popes and the possibility they could err as pope
and lead the Church astray came from Protestants calling the Church
the Antichrist, and this they understandably dismissed out of hand. If
anything, it made them less likely than ever to even allow such a
thought to cross their minds.

Books have been written portraying the Church as the Scarlet
Whore of Rome 21 and the popes as perpetual Antichrists persecuting
down through the ages. Many of these authors also have linked
today’s church in Rome with the New World Order; and if they
would limit their theory to the past nearly six decades and abandon
their verifiably unsubstantiated claim (according to both Protestant
and Catholic Scripture scholars) of a perpetual Antichrist
persecuting, they would definitely be onto something. For in so doing
they would discover a wealth of comparisons and proofs that would
solidly establish their case and perhaps prepare the way for a true
understanding of the evil times we experience today. Unbeknownst
to Catholics today, the Protestant teaching on a papal Antichrist was
a perversion of a long-held tradition in the Church. Following papal
teaching, certain saints and theologians identify the Man of Sin as a
false pope reigning as a true pope. Catholic theologians as recently as
the 1800s also interpret St. Paul’s “he who withholdeth” 22 as the
pope and the papacy itself.

Some Catholics despise the Roman church as the whore of
Babylon along with many Protestants, yet with this distinction: that
this whore is NOT the authentic Catholic Church of antiquity. For
how could she be the true Church and be drunk with the blood of
saints and martyrs? 23 On her forehead is inscribed the word
“mystery,” 24 which the angel explains as the beast “that was and is
not” 25 — pagan Rome reborn. The true Catholic Church was
dispersed among the nations decades ago following Vatican 2, as
foretold in Holy Scripture. For the remnant is commanded to separate
themselves from the Babylonish whore 26 (St. Paul refers to pagan
Rome as Babylon), lest they partake of her sins and receive her
plagues. This command was issued to the universal Church, meaning
it would apply to faithful in all parts of the world who would
potentially heed it. Catholics also must remember that Christ warned
the faithful that when the Shepherd (Himself and by analogy His
Vicar) was struck, the flock would be dispersed. 27


COMING UP NEXT... Ecumenism: the visible Church’s death gasp

Ecumenism: the visible Church’s death gasp

Ecumenism was deliberately fostered and manufactured by those
secretly waging doctrinal warfare around the world, but especially in
America, following World War II. It is interesting to note that John
Foster Dulles, leader of the Federal Council of Churches in the 1940s
and chairman of a commission headed by ecumenical proponent John
Mackay, was the brother of Allen Dulles, future head of the C.I.A.
Avery Dulles, the son of John Foster Dulles and nephew of Allen
Dulles, later worked his way up through the clerical ranks of the
Novus Ordo church to become a “cardinal.”

The president of the Federal Council of Churches was a
Methodist Bishop, Bromley Oxnam, who by all reports was fiercely
anti-Catholic. When the ecumenical movement matured in the 1960s,
it spelled the end for both Catholicism and any remaining “Christian”
orthodoxy. The Church of previous ages may have been perceived as
oppressive and unyielding, Her Latin liturgy condemned as
mummery and papal infallibility billed only as an attempt to enforce
the dictates of a man with pretensions to Godhead. Yet Catholics are
well aware that even non-Catholics respected the Church; the Pope’s
assistance in worldly matters was tolerated, even welcomed in some
cases, despite these widespread prejudices. Prior to Pope Pius XII’s
death in 1958, they definitely did not enter as the all-embracing,
doctrinally bereft popular heroes as today’s “popes” have done.

Pope Pius XI described what happened to papal authority as
“moral, juridical and social Modernism…an (outward) profession of
loyalty to Catholic social doctrine plus a disregard for the encyclicals
as though they were ‘out of date’.” 28 Indifferentism thinly disguised
as ecumenism, deliberately foisted on society by deceptive means,
has failed to bring non-Catholics into the fold as promised; one flock
under one shepherd. Instead it has unleashed a moral and spiritual
calamity that will soon culminate in the inevitable punishment of
those who, while passing as the elect, have savaged Christ’s eternal
plan for all mankind. True freedom comes not from being able to
believe and to act as one wishes, but in knowing which beliefs and
behaviors will please God and obtain salvation. Christ instructs in
His mention of the abomination of desolation in Matt. 24:15, “He
that readeth, let him understand.” Because Christ granted St. Peter
and his successors the charism of infallibility in matters of faith and
morals, this means the Church alone can impart that understanding:
She alone possesses the unchangeable truth that releases man from
the bondage of sin and error and sets him free to pursue eternal
happiness. Even if none other than Catholics ever believe this, no one
has the right to force them to believe otherwise. And if Catholics
claim that right only to be psychologically manipulated to deny or
doubt the very beliefs they are bound to hold in order to remain
Catholic, then “freedom of religion” is exposed for the lie that it truly
is.

In order to be able to understand the Church’s true teachings
throughout the ages, the following chapters are dedicated to helping
those who have been so confused all these years discern what
constitutes Catholic truth, and what they must believe in order to
enjoy happiness in heaven with the Blessed Trinity and the Church
Triumphant.


_______________________________________________________

Introduction Endnotes


1 Fulton J. Sheen, Communism and the Conscience of the West,
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1948), 24-25.
2 Fr. E. Sylvester Berry, D.D., The Church of Christ, (St. Louis, Mo. and
London: B. Herder Book Co., 1927), 119.
3 Sheen, Communism and the Conscience of the West, 24-25.
4 First edition of the Masonic review L'Acacia, 1902
5 Free Dictionary online, http://www.thefreedictionary.com/conspiracy.
6 From The Trial of Sir Thomas More, May 7, 1535 in A Complete
Collection of State Trials and Proceeding Upon Impeachments for High
Treason, etc. (London, 1719),
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/more/moretrialreport.html.
7 Please see the book information posted at www.betrayedcatholics.com on
the articles page under Phantom Church references. The majority of the
incidents that have occurred with minors over the past 65 years were the
result of deliberate infiltration of the Church by Her enemies, with the
intent to degrade Her in the eyes of the world and ruin any chances the
next generation would remain Catholic. Pope St. Pius V’s constitution
Horrendum illud scelus is still in effect, save for the conclusion he arrives
at regarding the intent of secular governments to put priests perverting
young boys to death. Randy Engel’s work, The Rite of Sodomy, explains
that the Church has fought this plague for centuries and regularly turned
over clerics guilty of sex crimes to the authorities for the death sentence
even before the issuance of Pope St. Pius V’s constitution. The efforts
made to eradicate sexual abuse in seminaries and religious insititutes was
not generally made public, in order that the faithful not be scandalized. So
it is unfair to intimate that in the past this problem has existed, but the
Church has ignored it.
8 However, it should be noted that those men claiming to be Traditional
priests, while not priests of the Catholic Church, are indeed ministers of a
non-Catholic religion. No one here is disputing their ministry as such.
What is denied categorically here is their claim to possess the apostolicity
guaranteed the priests and bishops of the Catholic faith. For these men were
never ordained or consecrated according to the infallible precepts of that
faith, i.e., in accordance with Canon Law and Catholic dogma. See
http://www.betrayedcatholics.com/free-content/reference-links/7-recentarticles/
binding-power-of-papacy-voids-traditionalist-acts/.
9 Henry Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, 30th Edition, (Powers
Lake, N.D.: Marian House, 1957 (DZ 960, 967.)
10 Dagobert Runes, Dictionary of Philosophy, (New York: Littlefield,
Adams and Co., 1942)
11 Rev. A.C. Cotter, ABC of Scholastic Philosophy (Weston, Mass.: Weston
College Press, 1949), 282. (Emph. Cotter’s.)
12 “Pascendi Domenici Gregis,” (Sept. 8, 1907) in Denzinger, The Sources
of Catholic Dogma, (DZ 2072.)
13 Douay-Rheims version of Holy Scripture, John 7:24.
14 Douay-Rheims version of Holy Scripture, Matt. 12: 33; commentary
compiled by Rev. George Leo Haydock, reprint 1859, (Monrovia Calif.:
Catholic Treasures, 1991).
15 Charles J. McFadden, O.S.A., Ph.D. The Philosophy of Communism;
(New York, Cincinnati, Chicago: Benziger Brothers, printers to the Holy
See, 1939), 194.
16 “Pascendi Domenici Gregis,” (Sept. 8, 1907) in Denzinger, The Sources
of Catholic Dogma. (DZ 2081, 2089.)
17 Cotter, ABC of Scholastic Philosophy, 269.
18 Douay-Rheims version of Holy Scripture, Apoc. 13: 13-14.
19 Ibid., 2 Thess. 2: 9.
20 Rev. Henry Ryder, The Catholic Controversy, (New York: Burnes and
Oates, Catholic Publication Society, 1886), 183.
21 Douay-Rheims version of Holy Scripture, Apoc. 17: 3-6.
22 Ibid., 2 Thess. 2: 6-9.
23 Ibid., Apoc. 17:6.
24 Ibid., Apoc. 17:7.
25 Ibid., Apoc. 17:8.
26 Ibid., Apoc. 18: 4.
27 Ibid., Matt. 26: 30.
28 “On Reconstructing the Social Order,” para. 46 (May 15, 1931) in The
Church and the Reconstruction of the Modern World, The Social
Encyclicals of Pius XI, Quadregessimo Anno, (Garden City, N.Y.: Image
Books, Doubleday and Co., 1957), 234.

PART ONE: THE OPERATION OF ERROR AND CATHOLIC TRUTH


Chapter I — The City of God
The Church as a Divine Society headed by the
Roman Pontiff

A. The Church established by Christ

In his classic work City of God, St. Augustine of Hippo
described two cities, one the City of God, and the other the City of
this World (or of the Devil, who is lord of this world). Just as there
was the clash of the two camps in Heaven when St. Michael
dispatched Lucifer to Hell, this same battle continues on earth. In his
foreword to St. Augustine’s City of God, Etienne Gilson addresses
the subject of organizing a universal society, a topic popular even in
his day. He writes:

Our contemporaries aspire after a complete unity of all
peoples: one world. They are right. The universal
society…they are endeavoring to organize aims at being a
political and temporal society. In this regard, they again are
right. Perhaps their most serious mistake is in
imagining…a universal and purely natural society of men
is possible without a universal religious society, which
would unite men in the acceptance of the same
supernatural truth and in the love of the same supernatural
good…The desire of the worldwide unity which fills the
heart of man will, in all likelihood, never die…[But] the
only force capable of preserving a thing is the force which
created it. It is completely useless to pursue a Christian end
except by Christian means. If we really want one world, we
must first have one Church, and the only Church that is one
is the Catholic Church…One world is impossible without
one God and one Church. In this truth lies the ever-timely
message conveyed to man by St. Augustine. 1

If the Devil were to construct a one-world society, he would first
need to preclude any possibility that the City of God would be the
religion governing that world. In order to assure this, he would need
to wipe all memory of that city from the face of the earth and model
something as similar as possible in its place to serve as the necessary
religion. It would need to amalgamate all aspects of each religion
rolled into one, representing all religions ever practiced by any
society. This is the democratic model of true religious equality
enforced by world governments today, a model all true Catholics
must reject as heresy (religious indifferentism). The Catholic Church
is the only true religion; it has no equal because truth is one. This has
been the perpetual bone of contention between the City of God and
the Devil’s city, and the City of God gives no quarter. So the City of
God had to be cleverly undermined and attenuated, its dogmas
obscured, its authority and dignity destroyed. It had to be made
acceptable to all people to appear to embrace the religious traditions
of all societies across the world unconditionally rather than on the
condition of conversion. The worship of God had to be reduced to
the worship of that “Divine spark” present in all men — secular
humanism — and then God’s city would become the city of men
alone, and God a mere anachronism. The head of that society would
appear to be a pope. But in embracing such heresies that head would,
in reality, be Antichrist.

To be continued...

Every society must have a head; this is true even in the animal
world. As Catholics know, the Head of the Catholic Church is Christ
Himself; but the Vicars of His Church on earth, acting in His stead,
are the Roman Pontiffs: “He that heareth you, heareth Me.” 2 If it
seems to some that the Catholic Church has assigned a sort of deity
to the popes, it is only in the sense that Christ has invested them with
His own power concerning matters of faith and morals. In those
things, which initially came from His own mouth, Christ could not
help but guarantee his Vicars the privilege of infallibility. No pope
could ever teach heresy as pope, ex cathedra, (i.e., in any official
document intended for the entire Church). This teaching was
guaranteed as issuing from Divine faith at the (only) Vatican
Council, for Christ promised the gates of Hell would never prevail
against His Church. That ecumenical council taught how Catholics
are actually required to view their Church and why they believe the
Roman Pontiffs’ teachings must be followed to the letter. This is best
explained below by Reverend W. Wilmers, S.J., an advisor to the
Vatican Council:

The very nature of religion requires that its members form
a society. For where one and the same end is pursued, there
is one of the conditions requisite for a society. The
existence of one common object naturally awakens the
desire to secure it by united effort and common means. The
multitude will therefore, if there exist no common bond of
authority, create such, however imperfect it may be; and
thus a religious society naturally will spring up. The
Church has been founded directly by Christ; it is beyond
all doubt that [it] is the work of Christ Himself. He is the
sole author of the Christian religion…also the immediate
founder of the Church. He directly instituted that authority
which is the soul, or principle, of life, that binds together in
one body all those who profess His religion. It is easily
shown that it was Christ Himself, not His followers or even
His Apostles, who created that external bond of authority
which was intended to unite all the Church’s
members…[For] Christ declared His intention of founding
a Church, and that by institution of a living authority, when
he said to Simon Peter: “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock
I will build my Church and the gates of hell shall not
prevail against it. 3


Now if Christ intends personally to build His Church, it is not to
be the work of men but a truly divine society. He promised to bind
and loose in Heaven whatever Peter and His successors bound and
loosed upon earth. He fulfilled the promise to establish Peter as the
sole head of the Church following his Resurrection, when He
commissioned him to “Feed my lambs; feed my sheep.” 4

So since this Church is founded directly by Christ, who lent His
own authority to Peter, guaranteeing it would never fail, in obeying
Peter true Catholics are only obeying Christ who speaks through His
vicar: “He that heareth you, heareth Me.” 5


Coming up... Where do we find the Deposit of Faith?

B. Where do we find the Deposit of Faith?

St. Francis de Sales teaches:

The Christian Faith is grounded on the Word of God. This
is what places it in the sovereign degree of certainty, as
having the warrant of that eternal and infallible truth...
Faith which rests on anything else is not Christian...The
Word of God, the formal rule of faith, is either in
Scripture or Tradition. The Church, the rule of application,
expresses Herself, by a general belief of all Christians...by
a consent of her pastors and doctors; in a general council;
[and by] Her head minister...And these are four explaining
and applying rules of our faith; the Church as a whole
[continual magisterium], the General Council, the consent
of the Fathers, the Pope. 6

Lest St. Francis de Sales’ teaching be misconstrued as placing
other authorities above the pope, he states in another section of his
work: “For it is usual that the head should speak for the whole body,
and what the head says is considered to be said by all the rest.” 7
Catholics must follow the long-accepted order known to students of
sacred theology as the loci theologici, compiled by Reverend
Melchior Cano O.P., which serves as the foundation for the
scholastic method, consisting of:

i. Holy Scripture, contained in the canonical books;
ii. The oral Traditions of Christ and the Apostles, rightly
called oracles of the living voice;
iii. The Catholic Church, (the continual extraordinary and
ordinary magisterium);
iv. The General Councils specifically, but also the regional
councils;
v. The Roman Church, called by divine privilege Apostolic
(the Holy See and the Sacred Congregations)
vi. The authority of the ancient Fathers;
vii. The authority of scholastic theologians, to whom the
teachers of Canon Law are joined;
viii. Natural reason, contained in all the naturally acquired
sciences;
ix. The authority of philosophers following the natural light
of human reason and the masters of the civil law;
x. The authority of human history written by trustworthy
authors or expressed in serious, national tradition. 8


To be continued...

The Vatican Council thus teaches:

This supernatural revelation, according to the faith of the
universal Church, as declared by the holy synod of Trent, is
contained ‘in the written books and in the unwritten
traditions which have been received from the apostles from
the mouth of Christ Himself; or through the inspiration of
the Holy Ghost, have been handed down to us by the
apostles themselves, and have thus come to us,’ (DZ
783)...The books of the Old and New Testament...have
God as their author, and as such have been handed down to
the Church Herself...In matters of faith and morals
pertaining to the instruction of Christian Doctrine, that
must be considered as the true sense of Sacred Scripture
which Holy Mother Church has held and holds...No one is
permitted to interpret Sacred Scripture itself contrary to
this sense, or even contrary to the unanimous opinions of
the Fathers. 9

As Monsignor Joseph C. Fenton (whose orthodoxy was
personally commended by Pope Pius XII) noted:

Every dogmatic definition is the statement of a truth given to the
Church before the death of the last Apostle. The expressed
acceptance of the body of truth within which the defined doctrine
belongs constitutes the profession of faith necessary for
membership in the true Church of Jesus Christ. 10

Reverend Peter Finlay, S.J., professor of Catholic theology at the
National University of Ireland, writes:

Every truth set forward distinctly in Holy Scripture, every
article of the Catholic Creeds, every solemn dogmatic
definition of a Pope or of a General Council is included in
the Deposit...The Church not only defines infallibly the
Articles of Faith, She determines infallibly the meaning of
the Sacred texts in which an article is enshrined...She is
infallible in Her judgments and teachings on matters so
intimately connected with [Divine Faith] that they must
stand or fall, be accepted or rejected, together...We cannot
doubt or deny, or even withhold assent, from any doctrine
which it is certain God reveals to us; and it is of Divine and
Catholic Faith that the Church is infallible when She
teaches that any given Doctrine is contained in the Divine
Deposit. We must believe, and we are prepared to believe
firmly all Divinely revealed truth; and the teaching of the
Church makes clearly and infallibly certain for us what has
been divinely revealed. 11



Coming up... Divine Faith

C. Divine Faith

During a series of lectures on Divine Faith later gathered into a
book and presented at the National University of Ireland, Reverend
Peter Finlay, S.J. describes the Divine Faith Christ entrusted to St.
Peter and the Apostles. He explains its nature and expounds on its
necessity as preceding all other grades of belief. And he makes it
clear that without Divine Faith and all its prerequisites, one cannot
claim to be a Catholic possessing membership in Christ's Church.

Reverend Finlay writes:

In treating of ‘The Church of Christ, its Foundation and
Constitution’ [a book written by Reverend Finlay], we
have had occasion repeatedly to make mention of...the
Deposit of Faith, which the Church has been divinely
commissioned to teach and preserve...And this whole body
of revelation is spoken of as a ‘Deposit’ because it is
entrusted to the Church's keeping; ‘of faith’ because its
whole content, all the truths contained in it, are to be
accepted and believed by the members of the Church...
Divine faith is an intellectual...and unhesitating...assent to
revealed truths on the ground that God Himself has
revealed them; and acceptance and an assertion of their
truth on the grounds that God Himself declares them to be
true...The Council of the Vatican...in the Dogmatic
Constitution on Catholic Faith declares: ‘This faith is a
supernatural virtue by which we, with the aid and
inspiration of God, believe that the things revealed by Him
are true, not because the intrinsic truth of the revealed
things has been perceived by the natural light of reason, but
because of the authority of God revealing them — of God,
who can neither deceive nor be deceived.’ And, in the
corresponding Canon: ‘If anyone shall say that Divine
Faith is not to be distinguished from natural knowledge of
God and morals, and therefore Divine Faith does not
require that revealed truth shall be believed because of the
authority of God revealing it: Let him be anathema.’...And
the teaching of the Vatican is the perpetual tradition of the
Church... 12


To be continued...