Second in a Series
Dr. Rudolf Graber, Bishop of Regensburg, Germany and one of the "Council Fathers" of Vatican II, sent shockwaves around the world when on May 2, 1973, the 1600th anniversary of the death of St. Athanasius, he issued a short book entitled, Athanasius and the Church of Our Time. In this brief work, Dr. Graber revealed the true roots of the Council and the "diabolical plot" of the enemies of the Catholic Church to infiltrate her ranks and attempt to destroy her from within. The book has been largely ignored, but fortunately an English translation was published.
Having set the stage in the first part of his book, Dr. Graber then gets into the meat of the matter:
During the age of enlightenment a series of anti-ecclesiastic associations came into being, of which only two are to be mentioned here: the Freemasons, founded in London in 1717, and the Illuminati, founded in Ingolstadt on May 1, 1776 by the Professor of Canon Law, Adam Weishaupt. Here we touch on the problem of secret societies and their influence on society and the Church. It is frequently to be read that Freemasonry was responsible for the French Revolution. However, a recent work formulates it as follows: "Freemasonry does not conduct revolutions: it prepares the way for them and continues them" (Berhard Fay, Freemasonry and the Intellectual Revolution of the 18th Century, Paris, 1961.) Whatever the case may be, it was in the lap of this and similar secret societies that the seeds were sown for what was later called "synarchy," i.e. a centralized world state with a centralized government planned as an anti-church. But more of that later. At all events the French Revolution represents an important element in Lucifer's plan. It would not be going too far to maintain that many spheres of Catholicism have just begun to adopt its main ideas: the liberty to rebel against the authority of the Church, the equality in the democratization introduced through the council system in the parishes, and fraternity in the horizontal neighborliness in which the vertical aspect, God and the supernatural as a whole, is left out of consideration. The extent to which Vatican II is associated with the French Revolution is clearly evident in remarks made at the 11th Congress of the Italian Communist Party in 1964, which we shall return to later.
But here we are already very close to the direct causes of the crisis within the Church in the latter half of the 20th century. It should be noted in this context that "the great revolutions – and we are in the middle of one – do not come about spontaneously, but have their precursors, often only clandestinely, their prophets sowing around themselves the seeds of revolt, and finally their leaders and executors. They are preceded by a subterranean phase, which is followed by a second, that of incubation" (Pierre Virion, Le Complot, Paris), before the revolution takes place. With this quotation we have already countered an objection which might be raised when we now come to discuss certain secret societies and their spokesmen in the 19th century. It is true that many of these names are not even to be found in encyclopedias, but this does not alter the fact that the poisoned seed continued to have its effect and first came to the surface in the Modernism which appeared at the beginning of the 20th century, but which was resisted by the energetic steps taken by Pope St. Pius X.
Pierre Virion above all is to be thanked for his service in drawing attention to these secret societies in his works. If one has read but a fraction of all that Virion has collected from the secret spokesmen's writings, which have more or less disappeared today, one is surprised, amazed and horrified to see that in them all the ideas already appear toward the end of the 19th century which are testing the Church to the breaking-point in the post-conciliar period. One must nevertheless bear in mind that all these destructive ideas are secretly orientated towards a common goal: that of creating 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 outside than by what is nowadays called in the political sphere the "march through the institutions." We have already mentioned the term of French origin for all these aspirations, namely "synarchy." What we are faced with here is the sum-total of the secret forces of all the "orders" and schools which have joined together to set up an invisible world government. In the political sense synarchy aims at the integration of all the financial and social forces which the world government, under socialist leadership naturally, has to support and promote. Catholicism, like all religions, would consequently be absorbed into a universal syncretism. Far from being suppressed, it would be integrated, a course which is already being steered in the principle of fellowship between clerics (of different religions). Precisely this latter principle shows what consequences can be lurking under the surface when such words are coined. In its final stage the completely achieved synarchy would represent the anti-church. Once again we must counter the potential objection that associations of this kind rest purely on an external identity of terms and that they are far-fetched as far as identity of content are concerned. But let us listen to what Alphonse Rosenberg has to say on the matter: "...all these (and other) groups exert an influence, even though this is mostly invisible, on the course of ecclesiastical reform. Their ideas, without being specifically named, are absorbed into the spiritual circulation of the blood of the Church through the process of evolution and a careful sifting by the theologians and pastorate... (Der Republikaner, Sept. 26th, 1963.) These words ought to be regarded as some of the strongest and most unambiguous evidence of the methods of infiltration aimed at by the enemy camp, and the necessary conclusions should be drawn from them. Is this being done?
The plan for the synarchy was worked out during the years 1880-1890. Without going into detail about the various groupings such as, for example, the Rosicrucians, Martinists and Symbolists, let it be mentioned that the Jesuits Riquet and d'Alec Mellor, who advocated that the Church should approach the Freemasons, maintained close contact with these groups (Mellor, Our Divided Brothers – the Freemasons). The founder of the first group, the ex-priest Stanislas de Guaita (1861-1897) was, incidentally, the author of a hymn to Satan.
Nevertheless it is worth giving special mention to the ex-canon Roca (1830-1893), whose name is not to be found in either theological and ecclesiastical dictionaries or the Freemasons' Dictionary. He was born in Perpignan in France, where he attended the Carmelite school, was ordained to the priesthood in 1858 and made an honorary canon in 1869. He traveled to Spain, the U. S., Switzerland and Italy. He was very well-versed in the occult sciences and disseminated extensive propaganda, in particular among the youth. Because of this he came into conflict with Rome. Despite being excommunicated he continued his activities, preached revolution and proclaimed the coming of the "divine synarchy" under a "pope" converted to scientific Christianity. He speaks of a new, enlightened Church influenced by the socialism of Jesus and the Apostles. According to Virion's appraisal of him, Roca is "an apostate of the worst kind," but all the same one is inclined to consider what he demands and forecasts to be almost prophetic.
In order to understand his language to some extent one must realize that he retains the most common Catholic terminology but fills it with a different meaning (as is the practice today, incidentally). He declares point-blank: "My Christ is not the Christ of the Vatican." Or when he speaks of God, he means man, who, that is, takes the place of God. For him the word "reform" means "revolution." "The new social order will (therefore) be founded outside Rome, in spite of and in opposition to Rome." But now a statement follows which, as has been said, shakes us to the core and numbs us: "The new church, which might not be able to retain anything of Scholastic doctrine and the original form of the former Church, will nevertheless receive consecration and canon jurisdiction from Rome."
In the following we shall quote various passages from Roca's works (in Franquerie, loc. cit.) which throw light on our present crisis. With reference to the future liturgy he believes "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 to it the venerable simplicity of the golden age of the Apostles in accordance with the dictates of conscience and modern civilization." And Roca continues: "There is a sacrifice in the offing which represents a solemn act of expiation... The Papacy will fall; it will die under the hallowed knife which the fathers of the last council will forge. The papal Caesar is a Host crowned for the sacrifice."
(To be continued in future issues.)
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