SELECTIONS BY PAULY FONGEMIE
Pernicious Adversaries
Vatican II, as an event, is directly responsible for the resurgence and current ascendancy of Modernism within the Church, not because there is any explicit heresy within its official documents but because it brought the neo-modernists together, enabled them to obtain key positions within the conciliar commissions and to minimize, as far as possible, the extent to which the official documents would impede their aims. By bringing them together the Council gave their movement the impetus and organization which has led to the present situation where it is the Magisterium and not the Modernists which is on the defensive. The Modernists are, as St. Pius X warned us in Pascendi Gregis, "the most pernicious of all the adversaries of the Church" and they propagate "the poisonous doctrines" taught by her enemies "by arts entirely new and full of deceit" in a manner that is "to be most dreaded and deplored, in her very bosom ..." Their aim is simple: "to destroy the vital energy of the Church, and, as far as in them lies, utterly subvert the very Kingdom of Christ." [Pascendi Gregis, Burnes and Oates, pp. 3/4]
Examples have already been given of some of the sources of the pressure exerted upon the Fathers which contributed directly or indirectly to the Modernist ascendancy within the Council - the press, Protestantism, and Communism. All played their part in loosing upon the Church in the so-called "Spirit of Vatican II" what St. Pius X designated as the principal doctrine of Modernism - that of evolution. "To the laws of evolution everything is subject under penalty of death - dogma, Church worship, the Books we revere as sacred, even faith itself." [Ibid., p. 31]
Now the very notion of evolution means that something is evolving and that there is a point to which it is evolving. St. Pius X revealed this in a prophetic sentence: "The error of Protestantism made the first step on this path; that of Modernism makes the second; Atheism makes the next." [Ibid., p. 51]
"Atheism makes the next" - the Church on the road to atheism? That this is indeed the case is the thesis of a book by Dr. Rudolph Graber, consecrated Bishop of Regensburg by Pope John XXIII in 1962. [Athanasius and the Church of our Times, Mgr. R. Graber, London, 1974] (The fact that this book has been written by a German bishop is, like the presence of theologians of irreproachable orthodoxy among the periti, a warning against making sweeping generalizations.) Bishop Graber is one of the outstanding theologians in the German episcopate and his stature is such that the German government wished to honor him with its Order of Merit in 1974. He declined to receive any honor from a government which had approved such anti-Christian abortion laws. His book provides one of the very rare instances to which the overworked adjective "sensational" could be applied with perfect accuracy. It has not created a sensation and is unlikely to do so because the liberal press is predictably using its most effective technique of ignoring any work which could harm the liberal cause. The liberal Catholic establishment never tires of demanding the free circulation of ideas within the Church but means, of course, only those ideas which it considers acceptable.
It is probable that even many traditionally minded Catholics would be inclined to dismiss what Bishop Graber has written as too incredible to merit serious consideration. Such Catholics should first consider that what the Bishop alleges has also been taught by popes and that to dismiss the case as incredible is precisely the reaction desired by the enemies of the Church he wishes to expose. Catholic liberals are particularly zealous in ridiculing the very idea that there could be organized groups of evil men working to destroy Christ's Church. It needs to be stated that the task of discrediting the conspiracy theory is made much easier by some of its proponents who carry it to ridiculous lengths and make allegations which they are quite unable to substantiate, sometimes against named individuals.
However, given the existence of Satan, it would be in credible if such groups did not exist - and no one is more zealous than the Catholic progressive in ridiculing the idea that Satan does exist. The most consistent tactic of the progressive, and he uses it consistently because it is successful, is to present those who oppose him as rather pathetic figures, men with closed minds, men who fear change, men who live in the past and cannot adjust themselves to contemporary developments and insights. "There is little reason to wonder," wrote St. Pius X in Pascendi, "that the Modernists vent all their bitterness and hatred on Catholics who zealously fight the battles of the Church. There is no species of insult which they do not heap upon them, but their usual course is to charge them with ignorance or obstinacy." [Op. cit., Note 1, pp. 54/55] Thus the French Catholic apologist for Freemasonry, A. Mellor, writes that Catholics who oppose a reconciliation with Freemasonry are "represented by those who refuse to change their habits of thought and by the sort of intellectuals rightly or wrongly known as integralists.
"The latter are sometimes very competent theologians. In the depth of their being they no doubt feel an anxiety which will not let them rest. Any idea which is in the least degree new, in their eyes, smacks of heresy, irenicism, or syncretism. The hierarchy are traitors. The Pope himself is not immune from their criticisms." [Cited in Freemasonry & the Vatican, L. de Poncins, p. 17]
When the newly appointed Jesuit General, Fr. Pedro Arrupe, made a speech during the Council warning Catholics of the forces ranged against the Church he was ridiculed by progressive journalists. Robert Nowell writing in The Tablet, commented:
But the call to battle was most clearly sounded by the new Jesuit General, Fr. Pedro Arrupe, in his maiden speech, which can have served only to encourage the lunatic fringe on the right while disappointing, if not actually scandalizing everyone else. [Oct. 2, 1965, p. 1081]
This is what Fr. Arrupe actually said:
The contrast between what the Church possesses and what she succeeds in imparting to men has become very obvious in this modern world, which ignores God - when it does not try to destroy the very notion of the Divinity. This mentality and the cultural environment that nourishes it is atheistic, at least in practice. It is like the City of Man of St. Augustine; and it not only carries on the struggle against the City of God from outside the walls, but even crosses the ramparts and enters the very territory of the City of God, insidiously influencing the minds of believers (including even religious and priests) with its hidden poison, and producing its natural fruits in the Church: naturalism, distrust, rebellion ...
This new godless society operates in an extremely efficient manner, at least in its highest levels of leadership. It makes use of every possible means at its disposal, be they scientific, technical, social, or economic. It follows a perfectly mapped out strategy. It holds almost complete sway in international organizations, in financial circles, in the fields of mass communications: press, cinema, radio and television. [The Tablet, Oct. 30, 1965, p. 1225]
Nothing could be in greater contrast than Fr. Arrupe's assessment of the world and the optimistic picture found in Gaudium et Spes (the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World).
The "Naturalism" referred to by Fr. Arrupe was designated as the animating spirit of Freemasonry by Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Humanum Genus, condemning Masonry.
The fundamental doctrine of the Naturalists is that human nature and human reason must be in all things mistress and guide. This decided, they either ignore man's duties towards God or pervert them by vague and erroneous opinions. For they deny that anything has been revealed by God; they do not admit any religious dogma or any truth that cannot be understood by the human intelligence; they deny the existence of any teacher who ought to be believed by reason of the authority of his office. Since, however, it is the special and exclusive function of the Catholic Church to preserve from any trace of corruption and to set forth in their integrity the truths divinely entrusted to her keeping, including her own authority to teach them to the world, and the other heavenly aids to salvation, it is against the Church that the rage of the enemies of the supernatural and their most ferocious attacks are principally directed. [The full text of Humanum Genus is available in The Kingship of Christ and Organised Naturalism, by Fr. D. Fahey. Page numbers refer to this edition, p.63]
In this encyclical the Pope speaks of the age-long war between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan which he considers to have been aptly described by St. Augustine under the image of two cities - citing St. Augustine directly:
"Two loves have formed two cities: the love of self reaching to contempt of God, an earthly city; the love of God, reaching to contempt of self, a heavenly one." [Ibid., p. 56, quoting The City of God, Ch. 17]
"In our day," writes Pope Leo, "the partisans of evil seem to be drawing closer together and, as a body, appear to be animated with extraordinary energy, under the leadership and with the assistance of the widely diffused and strongly organized associations known as Freemasonry. No longer concealing their designs, they are now, with the greatest audacity, preparing to rise up against God Himself. They are planning the utter destruction of Holy Church publicly and openly, with the intention of completely despoiling the Christian Nations of the benefits procured for them by Jesus Christ, Our Savior, if that were possible." [Ibid.] Pope Leo insists that no matter how benign a particular branch or particular lodge of Freemasons may be, under no circumstances could Catholics ever become members. "Let nobody be deceived by a false appearance of honesty. It may appear to some that Freemasons do not demand anything that is openly opposed to religion and good morals. Nevertheless, since the fundamental animating principle of Freemasonry is vicious and immoral, to ally oneself with Masons or help them in any way cannot be lawful." [Ibid., p. 76] This prohibition has been incorporated into Canon Law which rules that those who join a Masonic sect or other societies of the same sort, which plot against the Church or any legitimate civil authority, incur ipso facto an excommunication simply reserved to the Holy See (Canon 2335). Incredible as it may seem, this prohibition was modified in 1974 on the grounds that it only forbids Catholics to join Masonic associations which plot against the Church and that they may, therefore, join those that do not. Leaving aside the question of plots against the Church, those who are initiated into Freemasonry participate in quasi-religious rituals which are incompatible with a profession of Christian faith. Walter Hannah proves this conclusively in his book Christian by Degrees [Britons, 1956]. In a foreword to this book, Dr. E. L. Mascall, a leading Anglican theologian, writes: "I have been amazed and shocked at the idea of a Christian, and above all of a Christian priest, taking part in some of the ceremonies he describes." [p.6] Dr. Mascall is, of course, referring to the fact that large numbers of Anglican clergy, including bishops, are also Masons.
St. Pius X has been quoted as claiming that poisonous doctrines intended to destroy the Church are being propagated in her very bosom in a deceitful manner - and that this is all part of a process which will end in atheism. Bishop Graber's thesis is that the secret societies which have been plotting to destroy the Church for centuries (as we have been warned by some of the greatest of modern popes) have long abandoned a policy of open confrontation for one of infiltration, with the object of destroying the Church from within as part of an evolutionary process which will terminate in a politico-religious collectivist world state which they would control. Such a state would, for all practical purposes, be atheistic - what religion remained would be little more than a form of pantheistic-syncretism. In the chapter on Communism it was shown how Marxists make no secret of their aims or the tactics they employ to achieve them. Nor do the secret societies.
Bishop Graber documents the manner in which the secret societies, basically Masonic (although it is arguable that the Masons themselves were and are being manipulated by far more sinister forces) were responsible for the French Revolution which, more than any other single factor, launched the concepts and movements which, if successful, will destroy the Judeo-Christian basis of western civilization. Bishop Graber does not argue that the French Revolution was directly planned and controlled by the Masons, many of whom remained loyal to the Crown. "Freemasonry does not conduct revolutions: it prepares the way for them and continues them." [Athanasius and the Church of our Times, Mgr. R. Graber, London, 1974, p. 31]
It is important to emphasize the fact that, particularly in Britain and the U.S.A., most Masons are ordinary, law-abiding, and often religious people - no more concerned with subverting society than the average Catholic. This is particularly true of those in the lower grades or degrees. Pope Leo XIII took pains to stress this in the interests of justice when he wrote in Humanum Genus:
Our remarks do not apply to each of the individual members of the Masonic body. Amongst these there may be some and even many, who though they have incurred the guilt of having enrolled themselves in such an association, yet do not personally take a vicious part in the crimes perpetrated by the organization and are ignorant of the final purpose for which it is working. [Op. cit., Note 9, p. 62]
No revolution is spontaneous. "They are preceded by a subterranean phase" in which the seeds of revolt are sown: this is followed by a period of "incubation" and then comes the "eruption." [Athanasius and the Church of our Times, Mgr. R. Graber, London, 1974, p. 32]
Bishop Graber shows that since the Council the main ideas of the Revolution have been spreading openly within the Church:
the liberty to rebel against power structures in the Church, the equality in the democratization introduced through the council system in the parishes, and the fraternity in the horizontal neighborliness in which the vertical aspect, God and transcendency as a whole, is left out of consideration. The extent to which the Second Vatican Council is associated with the French Revolution is clearly evident in remarks made at the 11th Congress of the Italian Communist Party in 1964. [Athanasius and the Church of our Times, Mgr. R. Graber, London, 1974, p. 31]
The poisoned seeds planted within the Church by the secret societies "first came to the surface in the Modernism which appeared at the beginning of the twentieth century but which was immediately kept from developing by the energetic steps taken by Pope St. Pius X." [Athanasius and the Church of our Times, Mgr. R. Graber, London, 1974, p. 32] Bishop Graber considers it horrifying, when the writings of the secret societies are examined, "to see that in them all the ideas already appear towards the end of the century which are testing the Church to breaking point in the post-conciliar period." [Ibid.] The ultimate aim of these societies is the integration of all financial and social forces under a world government in which: "Catholicism like all religions would consequently be absorbed into a universal syncretism ... In its final stages the completely achieved synarchy would represent the anti-Church." They aim to create "an anti-Church or a 'new' church by undermining and changing the function of the old Church and of achieving this less by an attack from the outside than by what is nowadays called in the political sphere the 'march through institutions.' " [Athanasius and the Church of our Times, Mgr. R. Graber, London, 1974, p. 33] Their ideas, without being specifically named, "are absorbed into the spiritual circulation of the Church through the process of evolution ..." in order to "deprive the Church of its supernatural character, to amalgamate it with the world instead of letting them run side by side as separate confessions, and thus to pave the way for a standardized world religion in a centralized world state." [Ibid., pp. 33 & 37] The Masons announce quite openly: "The goal is no longer the destruction of the Church but rather to make use of it by infiltrating it." [Ibid., p. 39] One of their spokesmen, a former canon and "an apostate of the worst kind," prophesied that "the Divine cult in the form directed by the liturgy, ceremonial, ritual and regulations of the Roman Church will shortly undergo a transformation at an ecumenical council which will restore it to the venerable simplicity of the golden age of the Apostles in accordance with the dictates of conscience and modern civilization." [Ibid., p. 35] (The first of the general norms laid down for liturgical reform by Vatican II was that: "The rites should be distinguished by a noble simplicity.")
The absolute conformity of the post-conciliar liturgical reform with this prediction made simple coincidence seem far too naive an explanation. Whatever his intentions, it was clear that even had Archbishop Bugnini been trying to destroy the Roman liturgy, destroy the Mass, he could not have done so more effectively. It became obvious that evidence of exceptional gravity concerning Archbishop Bugnini must have been brought before the Pope when, to the dismay of the liberals, he was not only dismissed from his position as secretary to the Congregation for Divine Worship but the Congregation itself was dissolved and merged with the Congregation for the Sacraments. Liberals made no secret of the fact that they regarded this as a most retrogade step which could endanger the future of the Bugnini reform. [The Tablet, Aug. 30, 1975, p. 828] Suspicion was heightened when he was packed off to Iran as Pro-Nuncio and it came as no great surprise when, in April 1976, Tito Casini, Italy's leading Catholic writer, was able to make public the fact that: "The reform has been conducted by this Bugnini who has been unmasked at last; he is indeed what we have long suspected: a Freemason." [Nel Fumo di Santana, Florence, 1976, p. 150] No institution is more adept at hiding its secrets than the Vatican but information linking other important prelates, cardinals included, with Masonry has started to emerge. Archbishop Lefebvre commented, in March 1976, "Now, when we hear in Rome that he who was the heart and soul of the liturgical reform is a Freemason, we may think that he is not the only one. The veil covering the greatest deceit ever to have mystified the clergy and baffled the faithful, is doubtless beginning to be torn asunder." [Letter to Friends and Benefactors, No. 10]
Mgr. Lefebvre reminds us that Pope Pius IX ordered the documents of the Alta Vendita to be published in order to alert the faithful to the plans of the Masons to infiltrate the Vatican and destroy the Church from within. Interestingly enough, the documents of the Alta Vendita, highest lodge of the Carbonari, an Italian secret society, were later published in Dublin in 1885 by Mgr. George F. Dillon as a response to the exhortation of Pope Leo XIII to "tear away the mask from Freemasonry." When the Pope was presented with a copy of Mgr. Dillon's book he was so impressed that he ordered an Italian version to be completed and published at his own expense. Providentially, this book is still available in English and the unmasking of Archbishop Bugnini proves that the warning it contains has never been more pertinent. [Grand Orient Unmasked, London, 1965] The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita, included as Chapter XIV, contains the following: "Our final end is that of Voltaire and of the French Revolution, the destruction forever of Catholicism and even of the Christian idea which, if left standing on the ruins of Rome, would be the resuscitation of Christianity later on." They seek "a Pope according to our wants" - not necessarily a bad one, in fact, a good man would suit them better, but one whom they will be able to manipulate. "The Pope, whoever he may be, will never come to the secret societies. It is for the secret societies to come first to the Church, in the resolve to conquer the two.
"The work which we have undertaken is not the work of a day, nor of a month, nor of a year. It may last many years, a century perhaps, but in our ranks the soldier dies and the fight continues." The hour of the Alta Vendita will have come when its agents "have, by the force of events, invaded all the functions. They will govern, administer and judge. They will form the council of the Sovereign. They will be called upon to choose the Pontiff who will reign; and that Pontiff, like the greater part of his contemporaries, will be necessarily imbued with the Italian and humanitarian principles which we are about to put into circulation . . Let the clergy march under your banner in the belief always that they march under the banner of the Apostolic Keys. You wish to cause the last vestige of tyranny and oppression to disappear? Lay your nets like Simon Bar-jona. Lay them in the depth of sacristies, seminaries, and convents, rather than in the depths of the sea, and if you will precipitate nothing you will give yourself a draught of fishes more miraculous than his. The fisher of fishes will become a fisher of men. You will bring yourselves as friends around the Apostolic Chair. You will have fished up a Revolution in Tiara and Cope, marching with Cross and banner - a Revolution which needs only to be spurred on a little to put the four quarters of the world on fire."
Those who might feel that it is impossible to take such a document seriously should bear in mind that it was published on the instructions of the Sovereign Pontiff in the hope of preventing the plans of the Alta Vendita from reaching fulfillment. It should also be noted that they did not hope to place one of their number upon the papal throne but to secure the election of an idealistic pope inspired by humanitarian ideals whom they would be able to manipulate. The clergy would not resist orders coming to them from the Vatican, no matter how distressing, because they would consider that in obeying they were marching "under the banner of the Apostolic Keys."
Archbishop Bugnini may now be banished to Iran, and his congregation dissolved, but his new Mass remains and, as recently as May 1976, Pope Paul made it quite clear that he is not yet willing to repudiate it and urged the faithful to accept it without resistance. [Address to the Consistory of Cardinals, May 24, 1976. The full text will be included in the third book of this series, Pope Paul's New Mass.]
The secret societies which planned to destroy the Church by "reforming" it from within, did not simply want a new Mass, as Bishop Graber makes clear. Everything is to be "new": there will be a "new religion," a "new dogma," a "new priesthood" in which the new priests will be called "progressists," the soutane will be abolished, and marriage introduced. [Athanasius and the Church of our Times, Mgr. R. Graber, London, 1974, p. 36]
An appeal to sensualism is to be a key weapon: "Create hearts full of vice and you will no longer have any Catholics. That is the corruption on a large scale, which we have undertaken, the corruption of the people by the clergy and that of the clergy by us, the corruption which leads the way to our digging the Church's grave." [Athanasius and the Church of our Times, Mgr. R. Graber, London, 1974, p. 40]
The prime aim must be to win over the young: "Leave the older and more mature generations aside: go to the youth and if possible to the children." Particular attention must be paid to seminary students and "within a few years this same young clergy will, thanks to the force of events, take over all functions ..." [Ibid.]
To what extent did the secret societies influence Vatican II? Bishop Graber clearly believes their influence to have been considerable without, of course, being able to produce explicit evidence. Even though, as will be shown below, the Council most certainly did not achieve all that some Masons had hoped, Bishop Graber is able to demonstrate that the present orientations in the Church correspond very closely with those at which the strategy of the secret societies had aimed. Should these orientations continue to develop unchecked in their present direction the end result would most certainly be the very goal aimed at by the secret societies. As the case of Archbishop Bugnini proves, it would be stretching coincidence a little too far to insist that the correspondence of what is happening now with what the secret societies have been aiming at is mere chance. And those who will not take the word of Dr. Graber that these were their intentions would do well to read Humanum Genus. What Bishop Graber does provide evidence of is the satisfaction expressed by some branches of Masonry at the state of the Church following the Council. An article in L 'Humanisme, journal of the Grand Orient of France, stated quite openly in 1968:
Among the pillars which collapsed most easily we note the Magisterium; the infallibility, which was held to be firmly established by the First Vatican Council and which has just had to face being stormed by married people on the occasion of the publication of the encyclical Humanae Vitae; the Real Eucharistic Presence, which the Church was able to impose on the medieval masses and which will disappear with the increasing inter-communion and inter-celebration of Catholic priests and Protestant pastors; the hallowed character of the priest, which comes from the institution of the Sacrament of Ordination and which will be replaced by a decision for the priesthood for a trial-period; the differentiation between the direction-giving Church and the black-clad (lower) clergy, whereas from now on the directions will proceed from the base of the pyramid upwards as in any democracy ... [Ibid., p. 70]
In a case of the kind put forward by Dr. Graber no one piece of evidence can be decisive. The strength of the case comes from the cumulative effect of his evidence - and the few brief examples cited here only hint at this. In the interests of objectivity it is important to make it clear that the documents of the Council are regarded as very far from totally satisfactory by some leading Masons. The satisfaction of Grand Orient Masonry at the state of the Church following the Council has just been illustrated. However, Jacques Mitterrand, a former Grand Master of the French Grand Orient, finds much to displease him in the finalized documents. He has some good words to say about the progressive attitudes of Pope John and Pope Paul, a heartening contrast with the 'reactionary' outlook of Pope Pius XII. [J. Mitterrand, La Politique Des Francs-Macons, Paris, 1973, p. 167] But he makes it very clear that he considers Cardinal Ottaviani to be the arch-villain in the Vatican today so that, as this book has shown, this fine Cardinal has been singled out for particular and often venomous censure by Catholic progressives, Protestants, Communists, and Freemasons. There could certainly be no more impressive tribute to his orthodoxy, as the hatred of the world is designated in the gospels as the mark of a true Christian.
Mitterrand shows by citations from the documents of Vatican II, the Declaration on Religious Freedom in particular, that the Council came nowhere near to meeting the demands of his particular brand of Masonry. He is particularly incensed at the statement in the Declaration that: "The Church is, by the will of Christ, the teacher of the truth. It is her duty to give utterance to, and authoritatively to teach, that Truth which is Christ Himself, and also to declare and confirm by her authority those principles of the moral order which have their origin in human nature itself." Although this particular Declaration is very far from perfect, every Catholic owes a debt of gratitude to the small but dedicated group of Fathers who left no effort unspared to fight for the inclusion of such fine traditional teaching and did all in their power to challenge and amend those sections of the original schema that did not conform with tradition. They achieved far less than they wished, but without their efforts the form that the Declaration would have taken does not even bear thinking about.
... There is a vast literature devoted to the subject of the secret societies and a few titles are suggested in the list of recommended publications. While it would be foolish to ignore the possibility of these societies having exercised an influence during the Council it would be equally foolish to exaggerate its extent. Some Catholics are too inclined to attribute all the ills of the Church to conspirators who have infiltrated her ranks - sometimes Marxist, sometimes Jewish, sometimes Masonic, sometimes a combination of all three. The great danger here is to begin with a theory and then find the facts to prove it while ignoring evidence that points in another direction. St. Pius X warned us that the Church is under attack from internal enemies determined to destroy her from within but we would be foolish to presume that most or even many of the leading progressives are deliberately conspiring to destroy the Church. Indeed, were they doing so they would hardly make such a spectacle of themselves by making public attacks on Catholic doctrinal and moral teaching at every opportunity. This is not how conspirators behave, as the case of Archbishop Bugnini makes clear. My own experience of the leading Catholic progressives in England has convinced me that most of them are not sinister but silly, not men of intellect and cunning following a pre-arranged plan to destroy the Church but truly pathetic individuals, men of shallow intellect and weak personality whose one ambition is to appear in line with modern thinking.
Given that there is an organized conspiracy within and against the Church, nothing could be more likely to serve its purposes than the practice of those who interpret every event in the light of an obsessive conspiracy theory and hence create a climate in which an important warning, such as that given by Fr. Arrupe, can be ridiculed simply for stating that a conspiracy exists.
The value of Bishop Graber's book is that he does not overstate his case and it is one which every Catholic concerned at the decomposition of the Church should study, reading it in conjunction with Humanum Genus and Pascendi. Pope Paul VI assures us that the present destruction of the Church is self-destruction; St. Pius X warned that this was the intention of the Modernists whose aims and beliefs approximate so closely with what Dr. Graber has shown to be the strategy of the secret societies. Such men are, as St. Pius X writes:
the most pernicious of all the adversaries of the Church for, as we have said, they put into operation their designs for her undoing, not from without but from within. Hence the danger is present almost in the very veins and heart of the Church, whose injury is the more certain from the very fact that their knowledge of her is more intimate. Moreover, they lay the axe not to the branches and the shoots, but to the very root, that is to the faith and its deepest fibers. And once having struck at this root of immortality, they proceed to diffuse poison through the whole tree, so that there is no part of Catholic Truth which they leave untouched, none that they do not strive to corrupt. [Pascendi, pp. 4/5]
The state to which they have reduced the Roman liturgy, the greatest glory of the Church and of western civilization, bears a heartrending testimony to the efficacy with which these pernicious adversaries do their work.
Footnote. On 8 October 1976, Le Figaro published a report stating that Archbishop Bugnini denies that he has ever had any Masonic connections, and in fairness to the Archbishop this denial must be considered when examining the claim that he is a Freemason, which is reported in this chapter and elsewhere in the book. In addition to the public accusation made by Tito Casini in April 1976, in a work sold in Catholic bookshops all over Italy [referred to above - The Web Master], and not denied until six months later in October, I have made my own investigation and can vouch personally for the authenticity of the following facts. A priest placed what he claimed was documentary evidence proving that Mgr. Bugnini was a Mason into the hands of the Pope himself and warned that if drastic action was not taken he would be bound in conscience to make the facts public. The sequence of events described on pp. 165/6 then followed. I owe this account to a Roman priest of the highest integrity who obtained the facts at first hand from the priest who gave the evidence to the Pope, and I have yet to see any alternative coherent explanation. However, the case against the liturgical reform made in Pope John's Council is based, not in any way on Mgr. Bugnini being a Mason or even on the existence of a Masonic conspiracy, but solely upon the reform itself and its effects.
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