Crisis and Corruption in the Catholic Church

"A Vatican-based bishop observed somewhat ruefully, 'these rules [on the paedophile scandals] are going to give the appearance of a "cover-up". That's because they are a cover-up.' "

This article is just an attempt to speculate on how the Vatican intends to juggle the competing interests of the two streams of thought within the Catholic Church.

There is obviously right now two wings or instincts within the Catholic Church, one traditionalist and one modernist. Obviously modernists feel that the church should build on the openness and reconstruction of the Vatican II period ('glasnost' and 'peristroika' !) and continue to modernise those old and maybe superstitious practices like the unique role of male unmarried priests and opposition to contraception etc. Maybe it could also be said that modernists feel that the church should move with the times and be in step with its flock even if the latter is outside the normal parameters of traditional Christian teaching.

Until maybe the last year or two the traditionalist wing wasn't as well known and might be worth looking at in more detail. It might seem a strange way to approach this but I think the easiest way to see how the traditional movement looks at things is to see their religion as in a kind of permanent state of war against Satan and Satanism, which would be I think in contrast to the modernist approach. In the same way that Satanists use symbols, language, colours, feast days and elaborate rites the traditional church tries to use the exact words, symbols etc in their rites that were handed down over the centuries since biblical times. (Just to digress in case people don't believe that Satanists - and followers of Pagan or esoteric religions which I apologise in advance for lumping in together here, just for the sake of simplicity (1) - use symbols etc quite a lot I would point out the use of: hand signals, like the horned hand, and 'V' shapes (2); monuments, like obelisks and obelisk type structures especially with lights on top because Lucifer is considered the light bearer; colours, like Black and Red according to the experienced journalist Piers Compton anyway (3); feast days, Equinoxes, Solstices, Lammas (1st Aug), Walpurgnis (1st May) etc; geometric shapes, like star shapes (especially if upside down of course) and triangles (including a small triangle made from three dots); phrases, like reborn or regeneration and symbols associated with that type of rebirth; and numbers like 666 obviously.) In a way there is an ancient spiritual war going on here that the wider public is not much aware of. Its interesting too that Satanists often use Christian institutions or rituals and twist them around so as to mock them (like the upturned cross) showing again the importance of symbols and words in this ancient war. Therefore traditional Catholics want to feel armed in this battle with all their symbols and rites that traditionally aided them, for example what they consider the true rite of the mass (4), the myriad symbols and images in old churches (5) and the true apostolic succession from biblical times.(6)

Again I appreciate thats not exactly the normal way of looking at this modernist/traditionalist split and I'm not trying to minimise the importance of other things to traditionalists like e.g. the well known and, not symbolic, teachings of old catechisms etc its just that the above description captures the atmosphere of this split better than any other way of looking at it? Traditionalists feel more comfortable looking at it as a kind of supernatural phenomenon than modernists I think. Maybe Irish people in general have always looked upon it like that too, in Ireland its always been a kind of supernatural fight over souls like this, with great traditions about holy wells, high crosses, pattern days, Marian shrines, and ancient prayers and sayings (like 'Dia dhuit' and 'Dia 's Muire dhuit') helping to fight off evil rather than the purely scientific and rational approach that maybe was more common elsewhere. Every turn of the page of Irish history brings out some English commentator complaining about the priest ridden superstitious Irish, about their supposed lack of reason and practicality about these things, but the Irish people always ignored them and stuck to the religion that St Patrick brought to them all those years ago at Tara. This way of looking at it then explains maybe things like traditionalists insisting on male celibate clergy - celibacy being one of the traditional cardinal virtues in the Catholic Church - because thats the only true way the rite of the mass was to be performed according to ancient tradition while the modernist group might talk about inclusiveness and practical issues like loneliness among the clergy.

The Catholic Church in the Vatican is now being assailed by both these viewpoints. On the one hand the modernists, and most of the establishment in the West, are pressing for the advent of things like women clergy and married priests while the traditionalist movement, which rejects this position, is growing increasingly influential. Since the latter party is not as well known it might be instructive to look at it in more detail. Like Gaul - as traditionalists will recognise! lol - the Catholic traditionalist movement can be divided into three parts:

1) Independents. There are small organisations, and many individual priests, who celebrate the old mass completely outside the orbit of the Vatican and who do not recognise Benedict XVI as a legitimate Pope. This includes organisations like the SSPV - which broke off from the SSPX in the US - and IMRI and a few others. Its hard to generalise but many of these groups believe in a 'sedevacationist' position which means that they recognise no Pope, that the seat of the Papacy is vacant.

2) Indults. At various times since Vatican II the Catholic church has authorised some groups to continue to say the old Latin mass, a permission that's known as an indult. In some cases there are Latin masses held in dioceses with the permission of the local bishop (e.g. Cardinal O'Connell gave permission for such a mass to be held at St Audeons in Dublin, before Archbishop Martin handed over that well attended building to the Polish church) as indult masses - and are served by the local clergy or normal religious orders - as well as masses held by special indult orders like the FSSP. Now of course there is much talk that the Pope's Motu Proprio has granted a kind of universal indult, but this is much disputed (7) and anyway its clear by now that it has not led to any great enthusiastic embracing of the Latin mass by the established dioceses or Orders.

3) The Society of St Pius the X (SSPX). This is a group that was founded by Archbishop Lefebvre in Switzerland and is one of the oldest and by far the biggest of the traditional groups. In practise, and cutting through a whole pile of complications !, this group falls somewhere between the other two positions. It is not officially part of the established Catholic church - Archbishop Lefebvre and the four SSPX bishops were excommunicated by the Vatican - but in truth cordial enough relations seem to exist here and very significantly SSPX recognise Benedict XVI as a true Pope and pray for him in their masses. For these reasons it is treated with some suspicion by some in the independent camp, and anyway regularly comes under fire for what its critics consider its dictatorial disciplinary atmosphere.(8)

It would be nice I think to write an article speculating how the holy Cardinals in the Vatican were going to conscientiously navigate their flock around these conflicting positions in the years ahead, but my heart isn't in it. Speaking for myself I think that the current leadership of the international Catholic church is simply completely corrupt, I apologise for being so blunt but that's the only conclusion that I can arrive at anyway, based on the experiences of the last few years. (And meaning no disrespect to the many good priests and the, somewhat fewer(?), good bishops and Cardinals out there.)

Look at their relationship to the mafia for starters. The Vatican bank, which is totally controlled by the Pope - known as the 'Pope's piggy bank' !(9) - for decades now has been part and parcel of mafia operations worldwide. This is described here by Tony Gambino from the famous mafia family in New York, and a grandson of Lucky Luciano :

"The Vatican officials, federal judges, top politicians all used to get regular pay-offs from the Gambino Family and, in fact, the Vatican and U.S. government make more money off the illegal drug trade then we did.

"That is why I am talking after just getting out of jail after 20 years. I am talking because people need to know the U.S. government and the Vatican are more dangerous and corrupt then the Mafia ever was.

"For example, I know for a fact the Cardinal in Palermo runs the Sicilian mob and former Cardinal Spellman of New York was considered the Vatican's American Godfather since he pulled the strings and had his hands deep into organized crime."(10)

Also a recent book by the highly respected David Yallop elaborates further on these type of connections:

"The 'privileged citizens' [who had Vatican bank accounts] also included the Mafia family Corleone. Their bagman to the Vatican bank was the 'Puppet Master' himself, Licio Gelli. Francesco Mannoia, the chief heroin-refining expert for the Corleone family, was one of a number of the family who learned of this arrangement from the then Godfather of Sicily, Stefano Bontate. He would later testify to this further link between the Mafia and the Vatican bank."(11)

It is furthermore very difficult to make excuses for the Vatican leaders with respect to these scandals because after all there is pretty much only one international bank based in the Vatican and it was headed by Archbishop Markinkus, John Paul II's former bodyguard and probably close friend. For decades this Pope kept him on as head of the bank and refused to hand him over to answer the numerous court proceedings taken against him in the US and Italy. Incidentally it goes without saying that throughout this time the mafia were involved in a full range of horrible goings on like murder, kidnapping, torture, prostitution, loan sharking, drug dealing etc etc., and this must have been well known to everybody at the Vatican. Unfortunately maybe the only logical way of looking at this blind eye approach by the Vatican officials is to consider that they were also corrupt?

Then you have the huge paedophile scandals that everybody knows about. Considering the incredible scale of these scandals it is surely a mystery how the church authorities couldn't have rooted out this abuse long since, as the Belfast priest Fr Patrick McCafferty remarks:

"The institution of the Catholic Church is - in so many ways - sinful, sick and dysfunctional. ...
Those predators who happened to be priests and religious - along with their conspiring and conniving superiors and bishops - have actually abused and betrayed Christ Himself in the persons of His little ones.

Jesus is very explicit in what He thinks of those who have scandalised "any of these my little ones". (Matthew Ch. 18:5-6 and verses 10-11). How could so many cardinals, archbishops, bishops, priests and religious have behaved so scandalously in the face of innocent suffering?

How could they have so negated the essential message of the Gospel - both clerical abusers and those in positions of authority who sought to cover up their crimes - by the way they behaved towards the victims?"(12)

Again how could this have gone on so long and at such a scale without the protection of senior Church officials? I would suggest that only people like the Papal Nuncios and the heads of important congregations in Rome could have had the power to protect those paedophiles over the years, maybe because they themselves were guilty of that type of activity? Of course we are told that there were administrative failures etc that have all been ironed out now e.g. by the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland appointing a special Child Protection Office to deal swiftly with these cases. But it turns out that not long ago a Village article (13) described how the Director of that office, Paul Bailey, systematically covered up details of the abuse of Peter McCloskey, so you'd have to wonder at how sincere these changes really are. In the US meanwhile the Catholic bishops in 2002 set up a National Review Board to oversee their treatment of these issues chaired by the former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating, only to find that the latter resigned the following year calling the bishops: "a Mafia, a criminal organization, not my Church."(14)

My guess is that the position of the Papacy in the West mimics what happened to the Orthodox church in the East under Communism. At that time obviously the Soviets were oppressing the Christian religion and confiscating their churches and all that but at the same time they managed to infiltrate the Orthodox church and it is well known now that many of the Russian Orthodox patriarchs were secretly KGB agents. The KGB's control over the church became such a scandal that Russian emigrants were forced to launch a schism in their church in order to try and preserve a true and authentic Orthodox church, a schism which has only now being healed in the last few years. Clearly the Vatican commanded a very strategic position during the Cold War and just like the Orthodox church must have become the focus of efforts by intelligence agencies to try and control it. There is quite a lot of evidence out there that the church was infiltrated like this at a high level starting from around the 50s and continuing especially since Vatican II.(15) Don't be fooled by their public opposition to Communism during the Cold War! There is even talk of a secret agreement between the Vatican and the USSR signed at Metz in France before Vat.II and anyway all you have to do is look at the treatment of Cardinal Mindszenty in Hungary to see the real instincts of the modern Vatican.(16) As Det. Jim Rothstein points out in one of the links mentioned these Cold War intelligence agencies - from East and West - had a vested interest in fostering these scandals - financial and sexual - because it helped them in blackmailing church officials and in the long run discredits the church which might also have been their aim. In any case for what its worth that is this writers opinion on why all those church leaders were so negligent in allowing those scandals to occur, because at a high level they had all been compromised long ago.

I think too that the actions of uncorrupt forthright church leaders would look a lot different to the current atmosphere. For me such a person would be bending over backwards to expose all these scandals and fire out of the church anyone remotely guilty of such horrific activities. Its interesting in that regard to see the short papacy of Pope John Paul I. There have been countless well informed reports (17) that that Pope was on the verge of clearing out corruption in the Vatican bank, sacking all church figures connected to Freemasonry - traditional enemies of the Catholic church and currently said to be very powerful in the Vatican (18) - before his highly suspicious death only 33 days after taking office. Its now said as well that this Pope was in contact with a priest in New York who was trying to expose some of the paedophile problems. The Pope was reported to have personally telephoned the priest begging him to step up his activities and promising him indulgences if he did so.(19) Is there not a huge gulf here between that type of leadership and what we have seen from the recent Popes?

Hence, depressing as it is to admit it!, this writer's tuppence worth is that the modern Catholic church is a paid up member of the corrupt global forces that are so powerful and so evident in the modern age. It emphasises things like climate change, see for example the importance Trocaire put on this in its Lenten campaign (20) - which is very much part of the globalists agenda because it provides an intellectual excuse for a world government ; it has been accused of aggressively encouraging migration inflows - an aim of the globalists because it weakens the internal cohesion of nation states - into the US (21) and is quite prominent in supporting the big influx into Ireland especially from Poland, for example with suspicious speed it set up 125 regular Polish mass sites and established Polish chaplaincies in all dioceses (22) ; and the Pope also seemed to go out of his way a number of times to offend Muslims as if he was agreeing with the new neo-con talk of a 'clash of civilisations' war between the great religions. Furthermore I think its intended that the Catholic church will be the core of a new globalised church for a new globalised - and corrupt - world. The instinct then of the bigwigs in the Vatican is not to preserve those truths that Irish people have been so attached to for centuries but rather to crush them in order to create an oecumenical world religion. The current Pope after all was a member of a mysterious oecumenical group in Switzerland that even included Neil Bush the brother of the US President!(23) This process has progressed quite a bit too since Vatican II as Catholicism has begun to resemble Protestantism. The new mass after all very much resembles an Anglican service and the new reordered - some would say wrecked - Catholic churches are indistinguishable from their Protestant counterparts.

But now they have a problem. You see up to this the Catholic Church could safely ignore the traditionalist leanings of many of their congregation because basically those people had no where to go to if they were unhappy with the Church. The traditional Catholic movement, up to very recently, was minuscule when compared to the size of the official Catholic church. It is hard to get exact figures but I would suggest that the whole traditionalist movement worldwide, until about the mid 90s, was probably smaller than a mid sized Irish diocese in terms of numbers of priests etc.(24) Think of a flea buzzing around an elephant and you get the general idea! But this is now changing dramatically because all the traditionalist groups continue to grow, some exponentially some by bits and pieces, while the established Catholic church is almost collapsing, in the first world at any rate. For example to compare the two you could take the Florida based Most Holy Trinity Seminary which was established in 1995 by about 4 traditional priests led by Rev Sanborn. Although still quite a penniless group - they are currently housed in trailers as they build a proper seminary - they nonetheless ordain about 1 or 2 priests a year and now have 19 seminarians and five more to join next year.(25) Even this very small group could then be compared very favourably to the whole Archdiocese of Dublin which, to service its 200 parishes and 1 million people, ordained only 16 priests in the 8 years from 1999 to 2006, including none at all in 2005 for the first time in its long recorded history.(26) Again looking at this rapid contraction in the Catholic Church consider that in the US in 1965, at the time of Vatican II, there were 49,000 seminarians studying for the priesthood and in 2002 there were only 4,700.(27) Meanwhile in Ireland in 1965 there was 1,375 ordinations (28) while the current situation is that:

"In 2005, 199 Irish priests died, whereas only eight priests were ordained (Intercom magazine, July/August2006). And this does not take into account clergy who have left the active ministry. These statistics are catastrophic. And they will get only worse......And the other tragedy for the church is that there is no short or medium-term solution to this crisis. The number of seminarians in training is tiny and, unless something entirely unexpected happens, will not increase any time soon."(29)

Compare that to the growth of the traditionalist movement, breaking it down into the three categories noted above:

Independent
The Istituto Mater Boni Consilii, or the Institute of the Mother of Good Counsel, which broke off from SSPX in 1985 starting with four priests now "the Mass is celebrated in 15 different places in Italy (including Rome), 6 in France, 1 in Belgium, 1 in Netherlands and [an]other in Argentina."(30)
Congregatio Mariae Reginae Immaculatae (CMRI) headquartered at Spokane, Washington State, founded between 1967 and 1970 with about 6 priests (31), currently: "The Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen serves 29 churches and chapels in the United States, Canada and New Zealand. They also operate a seminary in Omaha, Nebraska, while the Sisters' motherhouse is located in Spokane, Washington."(32)
Based originally in New York the Society of St. Pius V (SSPV) had 6 priests - including Kelly - in 1993 when Fr Kelly was consecrated a bishop.(33) Now they celebrate masses at some 23 locations across the US.(34) Most of these religious groups also have orders of nuns and brothers affiliated to them which have also expanded, like the Daughters of Mary attached to the SSPV which was founded in 1984 on 14 acres in the Catskill Mountains. They started with 3 novices and 7 postulants and now have 49 members based in 3 locations.(35)
In the late 1970s three traditional priests formed the Union Catholica Trento in Mexico sometime before 1976. Later known as the Priestly Society of Trent they founded a seminary in 1985 with 5 seminarians and are now said to have "around 30 priests, 20 seminarians, 50 sisters, 12 priories and 20 churches and many more missions served on an irregular basis."(36)

Indult
The Priestly Fraternity of St Peter (FSSP), headquartered in Fribourg, Switzerland, started with 12 priests in 1988 and in 2005 it was reported to have "194 priests and 115 seminarians in 50 dioceses spread among Australia, Austria, Benin, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Nigeria, Poland, Switzerland, and the USA.".(37)
The Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, based near Florence, was originally started by only two priests in Gabon in 1990 and now their website boasts that they have: "Thirty-five houses in ten countries, fifty priests, and over sixty seminarians in fifteen years are perhaps sufficient proof that the Institute is on the right path within the Church."(38)

SSPX
In 1977 SSPX had some 40 priests (39) in one seminary, Écone in Switzerland, while "today, the society has six seminaries and more than 500 priests in its ranks worldwide. It is active in 60 countries, including Ireland, and claims more than a million followers. In Ireland, the society has churches in Athlone, Dun Laoghaire and Cork, and its priests celebrate regular Masses in six other chapels."(40)

Bottom line is that the established Catholic church is almost collapsing in some areas while the traditionalist groups are, in places anyway (especially France), growing at a dramatic rate. This means that in the last few years the Vatican has felt the need, for the first time, to address the wishes of the traditionalists firstly for fear that their whole flock could disappear in that direction. Secondly, and more importantly, they need to crush the traditionalist opposition before they can turn wholeheartedly in this globalist direction that they are headed in. Put simplistically what they are doing, I think, is stamping out the opposition, and potential opposition, coming from their right before they can safely turn to their left. What they might hope for is that the SSPX could deepen their control over the independent traditionalist camp and that then in time the Society could rejoin the church, bringing this group under the control of these, unfortunately, corrupt powers. Once they are safely back under the Vatican's wing they can always destroy the ancient liturgy and practices by a thousand bureaucratic cuts and edicts like some say they are already doing to the FSSP via Rule 1411.(41) After all the Motu Proprio mass has only been used for a few months and has already been changed (the Good Friday prayers) to accommodate oecumenical sensitivities and anyway this rate of change is all of a piece with a church that has recently abolished Limbo (which dates from St Gregory Nanzianzus of the 4th century) and updated the seven Cardinal Sins (unchanged since Pope Gregory in the 5th century.) looking at this it is surely a stretch to say then that Benedict XVI is a traditionalist and hence he must have had some other agenda with his much ballyhooed supposed support for the Latin mass? Maybe that was designed as simply a hook to pull in the SSPX which again would leave traditionalist Catholics with no home to go to if they opposed any new changes that the church might be considering? (42) The Catholic congregation, and maybe some priests, could not then leave the church in response to any dramatic changes that might be in the offing because there would be no, large anyway, organisation that they could join?

So that then is the crafty plan they have in mind imho !:-), and with that kind of leadership coming from Rome it surely leaves the Catholic Church here in a sorry state. But there is no more Lazarus institution in the world than the Catholic Church in Ireland which is well known to have preserved the faith even when the whole of Europe had lost it at the end of the Barbarian invasions. Elizabethan executions and laws, Cromwellian devastations and 18th century Penal laws didn't wipe out the Catholic Church in Ireland so it remains to be seen if corruption and an anti-clerical world view can flatten it this time! This writers tuppence worth is that ordinary Irish Catholics will have to start looking a lot more skeptically about the activities and motivation of the leaders of this Church, and what they are being asked to do with respect to updating old churches for example, if they want it to survive for much longer. I thought I would close with this quotation from a French nurse that treated a high up Communist agent in the Vatican and who was inspired in part by the famous adherence of the Irish to their old faith:

"Which, for example has kept the Irish Catholics in ghettos for four centuries, where laws pretending to be legitimate and sacred acted as a barbed wire fence.

Not that I am Irish ....But the Irish, without being aware of it, have helped me to show some courage.....
No, the very holy virtue of obedience is today the extremely powerful weapon that our enemies, who pretend to be our friends, make use of against what we were, to put up in its stead, what they have decided to have us become.

In short, this word "become" can be described, because it is known; it already has four centuries of existence, and it is called Protestantism.

There it is: We are invited bit by bit, little obedience by little obedience, from false humility to false remorse, from deceitful charity to deceptive ambiguity, from words disguised as a double-edged word, of which "yes" is "no" and "no" is "yes" - we are invited, I say, to pretend to remain good Catholics all the while becoming perfect Protestants."(43)

Footnotes
The quote at the beginning is from David Yallop, "The Power and the Glory" (London, 2007), p.315.
1. Again I don't wish to cause offence by this but I think traditional Catholicism would see itself at war with all these disparate esoteric and pagan religions which is why it makes sense to put them together here, even though its really too simplistic to group them like this.

2. http://www.truecatholic.org/pope/car-200412.htm#hands quoting mostly from Dr Cathy Burns, "Masonic and Occult Symbols Illustrated" (Mt Carmel, PA , 1999).

3. http://www.catholicvoice.co.uk/brokencross/PartTwo.htm .

4. For a description of how the new Catholic church is systematically stripping out those old symbols from Irish churches see " reorganisation and destruction of irish catholic churches" at http://www.archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=4691&...e=153 , which is an article with 153 pages, and http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/ukcorrespondents/holysmoke...h.htm .

5. For a look at the doctrinal and liturgical criticisms that traditionalists make against the new mass see e.g. the statement by the SSPV in 1984: http://www.geocities.com/orthopapism/sspv.html , the letter of Cardinals Ottaviani - the then head of the Vatican's Holy Office, the office in charge of protecting the faith - and Bacci written to the Pope on 25 September 1969: http://www.stjosephschurch.net/OttavianiIntervention.htm , and the Easter 1982 statement signed by 25 priests in Campos, Brazil http://www.geocities.com/SSPXCath/campos.html , and here the modern mass is compared to the Anglican Service: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Rhodes/3543/novus.htm . Another important critic of the post Vatican II church is Dr Rama Coomaraswamy, one of his articles is available here: http://www.wandea.org.pl/arianism.html , and also you can see these articles by Bishop Sanborn: http://www.catholicrestoration.org/faq.htm . See also Fr James F Wathen, "The Great Sacrilege" (Rockford, 1971), available at http://www.dailycatholic.org/2004tgs.htm and Patrick Henry Omlor, "Questioning the Validity of the Masses using the New, All-English Canon" (Reno, 1968), available at http://www.novusordowatch.org/omlor/index.htm , and also see the writings of Fr Paul Trinchard like this one: http://www.dailycatholic.org/issue/07Apr/apr22tre.htm . For ongoing commentary from the traditionalist perspective see http://www.novusordowatch.org/archive.htm , and http://www.traditio.com/comment/com0710.htm .

6. http://www.rore-sanctifica.org/texts-in-english.html .

7. For a critical look at the Moto Proprio see the article on it by Rev Kevin Vaillancourt in The Catholic Voice September 2007 http://www.strc.org/September%202007.pdf and Fr. Basilio Meramo, "Under the Appearance of Good, the Devil Poses as an Angel of Light" (Orizaba, Mexico, 13 Dec 2007), available at http://www.traditio.com/comment/com0802.htm .

8. The fact that it recognises Benedict XVI clearly puts it in an awkward and maybe self contradictory position. This is in contrast to the other two groups who can more easily shrug off the charge of schism: the independents see the existing Catholic church as usurped by some anti-Catholic group (its frequently said to be the Freemasons) and generally recognise no Pope after Pius XII as legitimate and hence they aren't in schism with a church that they don't recognise anyway; while the indult groups recognise, and are in full accord with, the established Roman church so their position is very clear too. But SSPX see Benedict XVI as the true Pope and yet still do not consider themselves in schism despite the fact that their bishops are excommunicated and they don't abide by Papal edicts. You cannot help thinking that this position makes them overly anxious to reach some accord with the Vatican. I mean absolutely no disrespect to the SSPX but this position is so remarkable that you'd wonder was the SSPX split designed all along as the controlled opposition to the changes in the Catholic church?
(This 1997 letter by a former SSPX priest shows the contradictions in their position: http://www.catholicrestoration.org/library/letter_nevil...e.htm . This is also Bishop Sanborn's view: "Many Catholics have accepted their line of recognizing Wojtyla as pope, but at the same time acting as if he does not exist. This is not a Catholic position, and it induces people, especially the young, to have a contempt for the Roman Pontiff....the principles upon which Archbishop Lefebvre founded the SSPX lead ultimately to their reunion with the Novus Ordo [meaning the Catholic church as governed from the modern Vatican]."( http://www.catholicrestoration.org/newsletter/02_may.htm ) According to Fr Michel Marchiset, a former SSPX and now independent priest, Bishop's Fellay and Williamson are now involved in a good cop bad cop routine as they both aim to bring SSPX into the Vatican's orbit, the latter operating under cover of claiming to do the opposite.( http://www.virgo-maria.org/D-Mgr-Williamson-leurre/inde...e.htm )) Maybe in the longrun the much maligned Archbishop Thuc - the brother of the Vietnamese leader Diem - could emerge as a more important figure in the Traditionalist movement than Archbishop Lefebvre (For Thuc see http://www.dailycatholic.org/issue/06Jul/jul26ttt.htm ).

9. As stated by Attorney Jonathan Levy who was interviewed on the Investigative Journal on 27 Feb 2006 http://mp3.rbnlive.com/Greg/0602/20060227_Mon_Greg2.mp3 . He is taking a case against the Vatican representing the government of Ukraine, and others including many from Croatia, relating to gold taken at the end of WWII. He describes there the origin of the Vatican bank as "the perfect money laundering machine." The CIA also uses the Vatican bank according to him. He describes how "some people say satanists" have even infiltrated the Vatican.

10. http://www.arcticbeacon.com/articles/26-Sept-2007.html and http://firstamendmentradio.com/mp3/GSIJ_WED2.MP3 . Det Jim Rothstein had many run ins with Cardinal Spellman when he was working for the NYPD and he concludes that that Cardinal was "probably the biggest criminal I ever ran into."
(Jim Rothstein interviewed by Greg Szymanski on the Investigative Journal Monday 15 Oct 2007.)

11. Continuing the quotation:
"This mutually convenient arrangement came to a dramatic halt in 1981 when police officers raided Gelli's palatial villa in Arezzo and his office at the Gio-Le textile factory. What they found was a pandora's box of corruption and scandal. In Gelli's safe were the names and Masonic codes of 962 members of P2. There were also numerous dossiers and secret government reports. The list of P2 members was a veritable Who's Who of Italy: fifty generals and admirals, present and past Cabinet members, industrialists, and journalists, including the editor of Italy's most prestigious newspaper 'Corriere Della Sera' and several of his staff. There were also thirty six parliamentarians, pop stars, pundits and police officers and members of every single Italian Secret Service. It was a state within a state.

Many have said that Gelli was planning to take over Italy. They are wrong; he had taken over Italy."(David Yallop, "The Power and the Glory" (London, 2007), p.118.)
Another reference from the same book p.34:
"According to the terms under which the Vatican Bank was created by Pius XII during the Second World War, the accounts should have been very largely confined to religious orders and religious institutes. At the time Karol Wojtyla gave the green light to 'business as usual' only 1,047 accounts came into this category. A further 312 belonged to parishes and a further 290 to dioceses. The remaining 9,351 were owned by diplomats, prelates, and 'privileged citizens'. Among the privileged citizens were criminals of every hue.

The exalted personages included leading politicians of every political persuasion, a wide variety of members of P2 (the Italian Masonic Lodge), industrialists, reporters, editors, and members of such Mafia families as the Corleone, the Spatola, and the Inzerillo. Also included were members of the Neapolitan crime organization, the Camorra. All of them used the Vatican bank for recycling the profits of their various criminal activities. Licio Gelli [head of P2] assisted the Corleone family with their Vatican investments and members of the Magliana gang serviced the Vatican bank accounts of the Mafia's chief financial operator Pippo Calo. The Santa Anna Gate was a very busy thoroughfare as suitcases of money representing profits from the illegal narcotics industry went in past the Swiss Guards and up the stairs to the Bank. A number of the Mafia were traditionalists. They did not trust electronic transfers."

For a more detailed description of Catholic Church/mafia connections in Sicily see http://www.illuminaticonfessions.webfriend.it/ under 1/3/2008.

12. http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A10BJO5EFZ6...eview .
Fr McCafferty has said that he was abused by three different unconnected people as he was growing up. In his opinion the "Catholic Church had shown 'wicked contempt for survivors of clerical abuse'. He said that when he had tried to highlight it through the pulpit he had been regarded as a troublemaker by certain ecclesiastical grandees, who had refused to be influenced."
Later he gave more details of his experiences:
"Fr Paddy alleges that the abuse took place while he was a seminarian. In 2003, he wrote to his bishop, Patrick Walsh of Down and Connor diocese, and told him that a priest still in pastoral ministry within his diocese abused him repeatedly. The bishop did not reply to his letter. Two months later, Fr Paddy wrote again; this time he copied a letter he had just sent to the alleged abuser. The bishop replied and requested a meeting. Fr Paddy was given the impression by a senior priest that the police were informed of the allegations. But he has not been contacted by the police in the three years since; indeed, he claims, he has been "blanked" and ignored by those in responsible positions within the church. The alleged abuser is still a priest under the authority of the diocese, but is currently not in active ministry. Fr Paddy wants the church to laicise the priest; he would also like to know if the police were informed about the allegations three years ago -- and, if not, why not? "
(The first quote is from http://www.rte.ie/news/2002/1216/abuse01.html and the second from http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/2006/09/a_scandal_within_....html . See also http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/3295077.stm . He was interviewed on RTE radio at the time of the publication of the Ferns report, during which he outlined that much of this abuse was by Catholic priests, both during and after he was in the seminary.)

You can read about a similar case in the Scottish seminaries as related by Fr Steven Gilhooley:
"I went public [over the abuse] at great personal cost to myself, and reported my abuser to the police. He was given a jail sentence. Led by Cardinal Ratzinger, Rome's response was to deliver a threat to my archbishop that if he didn't silence me, they'd discipline him.

"I was treated as the perpetrator rather than the victim. You can imagine how prayerful I found Cardinal Law's Mass on the eve of the conclave!"
Cardinal Law was given the much prized honour of saying that mass despite the fact that very serious allegations are made about him with respect to these paedophile scandals.
( http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=174&id=616882005 and see under 7 June 2005 at http://www.traditio.com/comment/com0506.htm) . Also David Yallop's book op.cit. details countless examples of where detailed descriptions of this abuse were put directly in the hands of John Paul II (and also the then Cardinal Ratzinger) who did nothing whatsoever to stop it.

13. Village magazine 20th April 2006 p.5.

14. http://www.traditio.com/comment/com0705.htm . He offered no apology later for comparing the church to the mafia, rather he said it was 'deadly accurate' as you can see from a cbs article here: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/13/national/main...shtml . From his resignation letter:
"As I have recently said, and have repeated on several occasions, our Church is a Faith institution. A home to Christ's people. It is not a criminal enterprise. It does not condone and cover up criminal activity. It does not follow a code of silence. My remarks, which some bishops found offensive, were deadly accurate. I make no apology. To resist grand jury subpoenas, to suppress the names of offending clerics, to deny, to obfuscate, to explain away; that is the model of a criminal organization, not my church."
( http://www.usccb.org/comm/archives/2003/03-128.shtml )
If you would like to read about some very serious allegations of corruption in the Vatican see "Shroud of Secrecy" a recent exposé book published in Italy: http://www.trosch.org/bks/rvw/millenari.html . That book even describes how Black Masses and Satanism are apparently practiced in the Vatican which is also alleged in David Yallop's best selling book 'The Power and the Glory' op.cit.:
"There is even evidence that Satanism is alive and well within the Vatican."(p.456-7) and
"Satanic masses have happened regularly with hooded semi-naked participants and porn videos have been shown to very carefully selected audiences."(p.464)

There is actually a shocking comment too at the end of this article on indymedia from Mark in the Donegal Gaelteacht who discusses Vatican corruption: http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=68750#com...09926 . I wish him the best of luck whatever happens.
As regards even more mysterious political goings on it still remains an unexplained fact that someone in the Vatican strategically edited a wikipedia article on Gerry Adams:
"The site [that tracks wikipedia contributors IP's] also indicates that Vatican computers were used to remove content from a page about the leader of the Irish republican party Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams.

The edit removed links to newspaper stories written in 2006 that alleged that Mr Adams' fingerprints and handprints were found on a car used during a double murder in 1971.

The section, titled "Fresh murder question raised" is no longer part of the main online encyclopaedia entries."
( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6947532.stm )

More curious wikipedia changes by someone in the Vatican include this paragraph on Cardinal Tomas O Fiaich:
"The appointment was credited to the Papal Nuncio in Ireland, Archbishop Alibrandi, a controversial figure whom the Fine Gael and Labour National Coalition had already sought to have removed due to his perceived closeness to Irish republicans."
which was changed to:
"The appointment was credited to the Papal Nuncio in Ireland, Archbishop Gaetano Alibrandi, a noted exponent of political dialogue with all sides and none in the heated Irish politico-cultural context of the 1970s and 1980s. Dr Alibrandi's efforts were not always appreciated by Garret Fitzgerald and the less democratically minded elements of the former Irish fascist party, Fine Gael, and Labour." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=297...93555 )

15. See http://www.indymedia.ie/article/84203.htm in the 'Value System' bit at the end footnotes 1-3.

16. The Metz agreement of 1962 is described at http://www.traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/a007ht.htm and for Cardinal Mindszenty see http://www.trawlr.com/items/2507840 .

17. See for example David Yallop's earlier book "In God's Name" (London, 1984).

18. For the question of Freemasonry in the modern Catholic Church see these two articles by John Kenneth Weiskittel, "The Bugnini File" available at http://www.novusordowatch.org/bugnini.pdf , and "Freemasonry in the Catholic Church" located at http://www.novusordowatch.org/freemasons.pdf . See also the list of Freemasons in the Catholic church leaked in 1976 and published in the "Bulletin de l'Occident Chrétien Nr.12, July, 1976" available at http://www.aculink.net/~catholic/masonlst.htm . For allegations that the church was taken over by Secret Societies at the time of the Second Vatican Council see Piers Compton, "Broken Cross" (St Helier, 1983), passim available at http://www.walkinthelight.ca/the_broken_cross_part_one.htm .
This Piers Compton was a well travelled 83 year old former editor of the 'Universe'. He wrote this book in 1983 and had been born c.1900 so he probably had known personally many of the early 20th century figures that he mentions. The editor of that Catholic weekly for some 14 years he clearly knew a lot of the gossip in the Vatican and he was also a poet and the author of numerous histories on subjects like the French Revolution, Queen Elizabeth I and the Crimean War. This is a short bio on this curious character, the author of a pretty shocking book:

"Piers Compton's first book was published before he was twenty. Since then he has spent his life writing, but he has interspersed this with a remarkable number of sidelines.

He was a copywriter and "ideas man" for American humour strips and films; was a "ghost writer" for eminent medical specialists; he spent five years on the stage in London and the provinces, and acted in the last of the silent films.

After becoming a Catholic he tried his vocation at monasteries in England and France; he was a political propagandist for different Parties in turn (and says, as a result, "wild horses would never drag me to a polling booth."); he soldiered abroad in anti-Communist causes. For several years he was Literary Editor of the Catholic weekly 'The Universe'.

His biographical studies, in which the military element has been marked, have always aimed at presenting popular but authentic historical reconstruction. He is at present working on a book dealing with Victorian social life.

Piers Compton is married, has a son Blaise and a young daughter Venetia, and lives at Marlow, Bucks." (Piers Compton, "The last days of General Gordon" (London, 1974), dustjacket.)

Here are a few quotes from his book on the curiously favourable media reaction that the later Popes have received (previously Pope's were usually ignored or slandered in the British and US media), starting with the election of Pope John XXIII:
"Seasoned Catholics could not account for the warmth and admiration that greeted him as journalists, correspondents, broadcasters, and television crews from almost every country in the world swarmed into Rome. For very little had hitherto been known to the outside world about Angelo Roncalli beyond the fact that he was born in 1881, had been Patriarch of Venice, and that he held diplomatic posts in Bulgaria, Turkey, and France. As for his humble background, there had been peasant popes before. The Church could absorb them as easily as it had her academic and aristocratic Pontiffs.

But the secular world, as evidenced by some of the most ‘popular’ publications in England, insisted that something momentous had happened in Rome, and that it was only the promise of still greater things to come; while informed Catholics, who for years had pleaded the Church’s cause, continued to scratch their heads and wonder. Had some information gone forth, not to them who had always supported religion, but to those who have served up snippets of truth, or no truth at all, to titillate and mislead the public?

An Irish priest who was in Rome at the time said of the clamour for intimate details regarding Roncalli: ‘Newspapers, and radio, television, and magazines, simply could not get enough information about the background and career, the family and the doings of the new Holy Father. Day after day, from the close of the conclave to the coronation, from his first radio message to the opening of the Consistory, the remarks and the activities of the new Pope were dealt out in flamboyant detail for all the world to see.'" (http://www.walkinthelight.ca/the_broken_cross_part_two.htm)

The calling of the Second Vatican Council:
"The same measure of unexampled publicity that marked the election of John XXIII, welcomed the plan. It was made to appear a matter of moment not only to the non-Catholic world, but to elements that had always strongly opposed Papal claims, dogma, and practice. But few wondered at this sudden show of interest on the part of agnostics; still fewer would have suspected a hidden motive. And if a small voice expressing doubt managed to be heard it was soon silenced as preparations for the first session of the Council went ahead." (http://www.walkinthelight.ca/the_broken_cross_part_thre...e.htm)
"The same voices that had eulogised the Rosicrucian John XXIII now clamoured for Montini, Montini of Milan. Anglicans, who had no time for a Pope of any or of no policy whatever, agreed that Montini was the man."(http://www.walkinthelight.ca/the_broken_cross_part_thre...e.htm)

On the subject of Masonic Lodges I guess a lot of readers don't see that much wrong with their being located in the Vatican but this goes against 100s of years of strongly held Catholic dogma as you can see in these pretty fierce quotes from Pope Leo XIII's Encyclical Humanum Genus:
"At this period, however, the partisans of evil seems to be combining together, and to be struggling with united vehemence, led on or assisted by that strongly organized and widespread association called the Freemasons. No longer making any secret of their purposes, they are now boldly rising up against God Himself. They are planning the destruction of holy Church publicly and openly, and this with the set purpose of utterly despoiling the nations of Christendom, if it were possible, of the blessings obtained for us through Jesus Christ our Saviour.
...
In consequence, the sect of Freemasons grew with a rapidity beyond conception in the course of a century and a half, until it came to be able, by means of fraud or of audacity, to gain such entrance into every rank of the State as to seem to be almost its ruling power. This swift and formidable advance has brought upon the Church, upon the power of princes, upon the public well-being, precisely that grievous harm which Our predecessors had long before foreseen. Such a condition has been reached that henceforth there will be grave reason to fear, not indeed for the Church - for her foundation is much too firm to be overturned by the effort of men - but for those States in which prevails the power, either of the sect of which we are speaking or of other sects not dissimilar which lend themselves to it as disciples and subordinates.

For these reasons We no sooner came to the helm of the Church than We clearly saw and felt it to be Our duty to use Our authority to the very utmost against so vast an evil. We have several times already, as occasion served, attacked certain chief points of teaching which showed in a special manner the perverse influence of Masonic opinions. Thus, in Our encyclical letter, Quod Apostolici Muneris, We endeavoured to refute the monstrous doctrines of the socialists and communists; afterwards, in another beginning "Arcanum," We took pains to defend and explain the true and genuine idea of domestic life, of which marriage is the spring and origin; and again, in that which begins ''Diuturnum,"(11) We described the ideal of political government conformed to the principles of Christian wisdom, which is marvellously in harmony, on the one hand, with the natural order of things, and, in the other, with the well-being of both sovereign princes and of nations. It is now Our intention, following the example of Our predecessors, directly to treat of the masonic society itself, of its whole teaching, of its aims, and of its manner of thinking and acting, in order to bring more and more into the light its power for evil, and to do what We can to arrest the contagion of this fatal plague.
....
For, from what We have above most clearly shown, that which is their ultimate purpose forces itself into view - namely, the utter overthrow of that whole religious and political order of the world which the Christian teaching has produced, and the substitution of a new state of things in accordance with their ideas, of which the foundations and laws shall be drawn from mere naturalism.
....
Again, as all who offer themselves are received whatever may be their form of religion, they thereby teach the great error of this age-that a regard for religion should be held as an indifferent matter, and that all religions are alike. This manner of reasoning is calculated to bring about the ruin of all forms of religion, and especially of the Catholic religion, which, as it is the only one that is true, cannot, without great injustice, be regarded as merely equal to other religions.
....
For, since generally no one is accustomed to obey crafty and clever men so submissively as those whose soul is weakened and broken down by the domination of the passions, there have been in the sect of the Freemasons some who have plainly determined and proposed that, artfully and of set purpose, the multitude should be satiated with a boundless license of vice, as, when this had been done, it would easily come under their power and authority for any acts of daring.
....
To wish to destroy the religion and the Church which God Himself has established, and whose perpetuity He insures by His protection, and to bring back after a lapse of eighteen centuries the manners and customs of the pagans, is signal folly and audacious impiety. Neither is it less horrible nor more tolerable that they should repudiate the benefits which Jesus Christ so mercifully obtained, not only for individuals, but also for the family and for civil society, benefits which, even according to the judgment and testimony of enemies of Christianity, are very great. In this insane and wicked endeavor we may almost see the implacable hatred and spirit of revenge with which Satan himself is inflamed against Jesus Christ. - So also the studious endeavour of the Freemasons to destroy the chief foundations of justice and honesty, and to co-operate with those who would wish, as if they were mere animals, to do what they please, tends only to the ignominious and disgraceful ruin of the human race.
....
Yea, this change and overthrow is deliberately planned and put forward by many associations of communists and socialists; and to their undertakings the sect of Freemasons is not hostile, but greatly favours their designs, and holds in common with them their chief opinions." ( http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/....html )

19. As described by Detective Jim Rothstein (he overheard the phonecall) in an interview on the Investigative Journal 27 March 2007 http://www.republicnewsradio.com/station/archives/17?page=2 . The priest was Fr Bruce Ritter O.F.M. who ran a homeless shelter in New York. Like a lot of dissidents he was later accused on false charges of being a paedophile himself. (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940CE0D8...58260)

20. Note how remarkable it is that environmental issues feature as one of the new deadly sins, see also http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20548340/ . For speculation that globalists are looking to exploit this issue to advance their agenda see http://www.oldthinkernews.com/Articles/oldthinker%20new...a.htm , http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/200...94021 and AFP 12 March 2007 http://www.oldthinkernews.com/Articles/brown_wants_new_...r.htm .

21. http://lonewacko.com/blog/archives/004408.html . The attorney Jonathan Levy has also said that the famous investigative journalist Gary Webb exposed some of the Catholic Church's sponsoring of illegal immigration to the US: "Illegal immigration [into the US] ..financed in part by the US bishops conference." (The Investigative Journal on 27 Feb 2006 http://mp3.rbnlive.com/Greg/0602/20060227_Mon_Greg2.mp3 .)

22. http://www.polish-chaplaincy.ie/index.php?lang=en&site=msze .

23. The Foundation for Interreligious and Intercultural Research and Dialogue in Geneva ( http://www.oilempire.us/pope.html ).

24. A history of the post Vatican II Catholic Traditional Movement can be read online in Griff Ruby "The Resurrection of the Roman Catholic Church" ( http://www.the-pope.com/library.html ).

25. http://www.mostholytrinityseminary.org/buildingproject.htm .

26. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archdiocese_of_Dublin_(Roman_Catholic) and http://www.abc.net.au/rn/religionreport/stories/2006/16...5.htm .

27. http://cmri.org/vatican2_stats.html .

28. http://www.irish-association.org/archives/david_stephen....html .

29. Article by Fr Gerard Moloney in the Irish Times 20th Nov 2006 http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/opinion/2006/1120/1163....html .

30. http://www.sodalitiumpianum.com/index.php?pid=1 .

31. http://www.the-pope.com/church06.html .

32. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congregation_of_Mary_Immac...Queen .

33. http://www.geocities.com/orthopapism/mendez.html .

34. http://www.traditio.com/comment/com0701.htm .

35. http://www.daughtersofmary.net/about.php .

36. http://www.angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11275&h...22b20 , founded by Frs Arriaga, Zamora and Carmona. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joaquin_Saenz_Arriaga and also see the two articles by Father Daniel Perez Gomez available at http://www.wandea.org.pl/priestly-society.htm and http://www.wandea.org.pl/church-mexico.html .

37. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priestly_Fraternity_of_St....Peter .

38. http://www.institute-christ-king.org/getToKnow.html .

49. http://www.the-pope.com/church07.html .

40. Sunday Business Post 16th Sept 2007 http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqt=NEWS+...1.asp . As pointed out accurate figures are hard to come by, this article is the only one that attempts to 'very roughly' look at the numbers for the congregations:
"There are estimated to be around one billion Catholics worldwide today, meaning Catholics make up around one sixth of the planet. Recent official Vatican figures estimated support of the Society of St. Pius X to be at around one million. Very roughly, would suggest that the entire Roman Catholic traditionalist world must number somewhere around the six or seven million mark. The biggest groups are indult and independent [meaning mostly SSPX I think], which collectively make up about four fifths of the traditionalist movement as a whole, Sedevacantists [what are called independents in this article] and other groups make up the remaining fifth." (http://www.geocities.com/catholic_traditionalist/)

41. http://www.latinmassmagazine.com/articles/articles_1999....html .

42. As regards what they might be about to change next its curious that Cardinal Hummes, the new head of the clergy congregation in Rome, said:
"Celibacy is a discipline, not a dogma of the church. ... Certainly, the majority of the apostles were married. In this modern age, the church must observe these things, it has to advance with history." Although he 'clarified' all that shortly after he took up the job in Rome its still curious that he was given that post despite holding those opinions. (http://www.cwnews.com/offtherecord/offtherecord.cfm?tas...=3963) It is noteworthy too I think that Cardinal O'Brien of Scotland is in favour of married clergy: http://www.scottishchristian.com/news/catholic/2005_05_...shtml .
Here is a good site on the question of women priests which could be in the offing in the long run: http://www.womenpriests.org/welcome.asp .

43. Marie Carré, "AA-1025 / The Memoirs of an Anti-Apostle" (Rockford Illinois, first edition 1972 this 1991), first quote p.xi, the next from p.xiv.