Jorge and The Ba'al Bunch of Idolaters

Although I check the Vatican website now and again, there is little that is truly newsworthy. This is especially the case with the Jorge Mario Begoglio’s daily screeds at the Ding Dong School Of Apostasy in the Casa Santa Marta inside the walls of the Occupied Vatican on the West Bank of the Tiber River. This wretched little pest with a blasphemous, vulgar tongue is in so much in love with his Modernist clichés that he is under seeming compulsion, all too possibly inspired by the demons that surround and inspire him, to repeat them endlessly. His daily “homilies” in 2017 are interchangeable with ones he gave in 2015 and 2013 as the readings at the weekday stagings of the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service come from “Year I” in this false liturgy’s cycle of readings. This means, of course, Jorge’s daily “homilies” in 2014 and 2016 were the same, albeit with a little bit of variation, as those screeds were based upon the readings used in “Year II.” Adding to Jorge’s redundancy is the fact that Gospel readings are the same in both cycles.

Although it is beyond the scope of this article, suffice it to say for the moment that the Catholic Church, guided by God the Holy Ghost, provides us with a simple annual cycle of readings. She does this as she is mindful of the fact that repetition is the mother of learning. She has thus arranged the liturgy so that the faithful, perhaps wearied by their daily duties and the distractions of the world, may have recalled to their minds the truths of the Holy Faith in such a way that they will come to understand and appreciate them more over the course of the passing years.

Additionally, most parishes used to have a cycle of preaching on the basic every year to serve as a catechesis about the Holy Faith and they would have a visiting priest preach an annual parish mission to wake up the slumbering and the lukewarm. This was done to afford the faithful an opportunity to get slapped in the face about spiritual truths in a manner that many pastors did not have the courage to do as they feared offending parishioners who donated large sums of money. Many religious communities, including the Passionists, Redemptorists and Dominicans, trained priests specifically to give parish missions.

Bergoglio’s repetitions on the hand are based upon a rejection of the basic truths of the Holy Faith and to mock those who believe in them without any kind of qualification or reservation. Bergoglio has said the same thing so many times that, as has been noted before in previous articles, I find no useful purpose in having to comment on them ad nauseam, ad infinitum. What more can be written to demonstrate that the counterfeit church of conciliarism is not the Catholic Church, she who is the spotless, immaculate mystical spouse of her Divine Founder, Invisible Head and Mystical Bridegroom, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ?

There are times, however, when Jorge Mario Bergoglio provides us with easy-to-comprehend visual proofs that he and his false church have helped to bring about a pan-religious movement that is nothing other Antichrist’s own One World Ecumenical Church.

The following graphic, which was found on Novus Ordo Watch Wire, speaks for itself in this regard:

As found at Novus Ordo Watch Wire

As one who is in his sixty-five and one-half years of age and watched far too much television in his childhood and adolescence, there is only one similar image that came to mind when I saw this on Saturday, June 17, 2017.

Yes, the first image that came to my mind after seeing Jorge’s irreverent mug in a square along with photographs of the representatives of twenty-one other false religions, all but four of which, deny the Sacred Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (noting that there re a few Anglican “bishops” and “priests” who effectively deny Our Lord’s Sacred Divinity), was that of The Hollywood Squares, which was hosted by Ralph Pierre La Cock, Sr., whose stage name was “Peter Marshall,” on the National Broadcasting Company television network from October 17, 1966 (I saw the first show as I was hospitalized for minor surgery at the time) until June 20, 1980:

On second though, however, perhaps the most apt image to convey the sappy apostasy of the "Elijah Initiative" is the following one:

No, I never watched The Brady Bunch, but I do know about it, and that is why it's more of a fit for the "Elijah Initiative" than The Hollywood Squares, admitting that both feature the same kind of photographic sqaures as featured at Novus Ordo Watch Wire.

The conciliar revolutionaries have descended to such a degree of mockery about the true Faith that the only proper response at times is to mock them.

The so-called “Elijah Initiative” that has received the endorsement of “Pope Francis” is of particular note for the fact that three of those pictured in the photographic squares represent are members of various branches of Talmudism. This is no accident as the ancient enemies of the Catholic Faith have long sought to foster “interreligious” enterprises in order to supersede the Holy Cross of the Divine Redeemer, Christ the King, and His true Church with a spirit of “coexistence” that is based on the assertion that men can “work together” to build the “better world” without any reference to “divisive” things such as the Holy Name of Jesus.

In this regard the men pictured in the photograph are also mocking Elias (Elijah) by institutionalizing pan-religious activity that denies Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in Whose transfigured presence Elias and Moses appeared on Mount Thabor:

And after six days Jesus taketh unto him Peter and James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart: [2] And he was transfigured before them. And his face did shine as the sun: and his garments became white as snow. [3] And behold there appeared to them Moses and Elias talking with him. [4] And Peter answering, said to Jesus: Lord, it is good for us to be here: if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles, one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias. [5] And as he was yet speaking, behold a bright cloud overshadowed them. And lo, a voice out of the cloud, saying: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: hear ye him.

[6] And the disciples hearing, fell upon their face, and were very much afraid. [7]And Jesus came and touched them: and said to them, Arise, and fear not. [8] And they lifting up their eyes saw no one but only Jesus. [9] And as they came down from the mountain, Jesus charged them, saying: Tell the vision to no man, till the Son of man be risen from the dead. [10] And his disciples asked him, saying: Why then do the scribes say that Elias must come first?

[11] But he answering, said to them: Elias indeed shall come, and restore all things.[12] But I say to you, that Elias is already come, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they had a mind. So also the Son of man shall suffer from them. [13] Then the disciples understood, that he had spoken to them of John the Baptist. (Matthew 17: 1-13.)

Elias, who will be the herald of Our Lord before His Second Coming in glory at the end of time, was the greatest of the prophets, and he appeared with Our Lord as He was transfigured in glory to confirm Saint Peter, the head of the apostolic college, Saint James, who would be the first apostle to be martyred, and Saint John, who would be the last living apostle to confirm their Faith in the truth he had prepared the way for the coming Our Lord.

This is made clear in Father George Leo Haydock’s commentary:

Ver. 3. Moses and Elias. Jesus Christ had been taken by the people for Elias, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. He therefore chose the chief of all the prophets to be present, that he might shew his great superiority over them, and verify the illustrious confession of Peter. The Jews had accused Christ of blasphemy, and of breaking the sabbath; the presence of Moses and Elias refuted the calumny; for the founder of the Jewish laws would never have sanctioned him who was a transgressor of those laws; and Elias, so full of zeal for the glory of God, would never have paid homage to one who made himself equal to God, had he not really been the Son of the Most High. (St. Chrysostom, hom. lvii.) --- St. Hilary thinks that Moses and Elias (who represent the law and the prophets, and who here bear witness to the divinity of Jesus Christ,) will be the precursors of his second coming, alluded to in Revelations, chap. xi, though the general opinion of the Fathers is, that the two witnesses there mentioned are Enoch and Elias. (Jansenius) --- It is hence evident, that the saints departed can and do, with the permission of God, take an interest in the affairs of the living. (St. Augustine, de curâ pro mort. chap. xv. 16.) --- For as angels elsewhere, so here the saints also, served our Saviour; and as angels, both in the Old and New Testament, were frequently present at the affairs of men, so may saints. (Bristow) --- All interpreters agree, that Elias appeared in his own body, but various are their opinions with regard to the apparition of Moses. (Haydock) (http://haydock1859.tripod.com/id35.html.)

Father Haydock also explained the sense in which Saint John the Baptist incarnated the spirit of Elias, which in no way is to claim that Elias the Prophet will not in person to herald the Second Coming of Our Lord to judge the living and dead at the end of time:

Ver. 10. Elias must come first. The prophet Elias will come again in person before my second coming to judgment, and will re-establish all things, by the conversion of the Jews to the Christian faith, according to the common opinion. But John the Baptist who was Elias in spirit, is already come. See Matthew xi. 14. (Witham) --- This was a vulgar error spread by the Scribes among the Jewish people. It proceeded from an erroneous interpretation of Scripture. They confounded the two comings of our Saviour. The Baptist was the precursor of Christ at his first coming, and was styled by our Lord Elias, because he performed the office of Elias; and he shall go before Him in the spirit and power of Elias. (Luke i. 17.) --- But this prophet in person will be the precursor of the second coming of Christ. Whereby Malachias, predicting this coming of Christ, says: I will send to you Elias the Thesbite; thus evidently distinguishing him from the Baptist, who was also Elias in spirit and in the dignity of his office. (St. Chrysostom, hom. lviii.) --- Jesus Christ here confirms the literal sense of the prophecy; (Malachias iv. 5,) but, in the next verse, he shews a prior, though less perfect accomplishment of the same in the person of John the Baptist, who was raised by God to prepare the ways of the Lord. (http://haydock1859.tripod.com/id35.html.)

This is important to consider as the Talmudists responsible for helping to form the “Elijah Initiative” are using Bergoglio to convince Catholics that the greatest of all the prophets is perfectly content to reaffirm them in the utter falsehood that all religions please God equally. The Jews know that the Catholic Church teaches that Elias will come to convert Jews to Our Lord and His true Faith, thereby reestablishing all things in Christ, before he is slain. Talmudists have labored long and hard in the past fifty-nine years into sow the seeds of falsehoods into the minds of Catholics by using the conciliar “popes” and “bishops” as their willing mouthpieces. One of those falsehoods is that is opposed to Catholicism to see the conversion of anyone, especially Jews, to the true Church, outside of which there can be no salvation and without which there can be no true social order.

To be sure, of course, as noted recently, the esteemed historian William Thomas Walsh explained that Jews have had a hand in every Christian heresy since the First Century A.D., and they also played a crucial role in Martin Luther’s Protestant Revolution, thereby turning millions upon millions of baptized Catholics away from the true Faith to embrace lives of error and moral dissolution. Jews were also at the forefront of trying overthrow Catholicism in Spain, and they were almost successful. (See the appendix below for a reprise of Walsh's documentation of this fact)

Walsh had made it clear in his biography of Queen Isabella that Jews had married into many of the wealthiest and most influential families of Spain, to say nothing religious communities, and it was these families that began to spread Lutheranism before The Inquisition:

Meanwhile the Emperor made an appalling discovery in Spain. While he and his son had been defending the Catholic Church in far places, the heresy they were hunting in England, Germany, and (by counsel to the French king) in France, had secretly invaded Spain, and had become a menace to the political and religious unity so dearly won by Ferdinand and Isabella. Hence, although the Inquisition had lapse into comparative inactivity again after the exposure of Magdalena the Alumbrada, the Emperor ordered it to resume all its original vigor, and to purge Spain of every anti-Catholic conspiracy. The result was the discovery of plots in which even some of his favorite chaplains and court preachers were involved with members of some of the richest and most influential families in Spain.

Philip at the same time was alarmed to find Fray Bartoleme Carranza de Miranda, confessor to his wife, and his nominee for Archbishop of Toledo, suspected of holding Lutheran views: and he allowed him, after a long investigation, to be arrested by the Inquisition. An eloquent court preacher, Doctor Constantino Ponce de la Fuente, was found to be not only a secret Lutheran, but a bigamist, and committed suicide in prison. In Seville, the heresy had roots in the lax Jeronymite monastery of Saint Isidore, whence is spread to nuns and monks elsewhere, and to laymen and women throughout the city. In Valladolid the Lutherans were holding meetings in the middle of the night at the home of Don Austin Cazalla, doctor of the University of Salamancea and one of the Emperor's most esteemed chaplains, until their activities were discovered by the jealous wife of one of their number.

The political as well as religious danger in all this for a Spain restored to independence and unity only a generation before, is indicated by the grim boast that doctor Cazalla is said to have made in the prison of the Holy Office: “If they had waited four months to persecute us, we should have been as many as they: and in six months we should have done to them what they are doing to us.” The history of Protestant movements elsewhere suggest that when Philip II ordered the Holy Office to take the swiftest and sternest measures against the conspirators in Valladolid and elsewhere, he saved his country from one of those civil wars that devastated France for half a century, and destroyed Germany in the Thirty Years' War.

Philip was still in the Low Countries, but his sister and regent, the Princess Juana, carried out his instructions to cooperate in every way with the Inquisitors. When Cazalla and thirty others were found guilty, she and Don Carlos, heir to the throne, together with Don Juan of Austria, attended a great auto de fe in Valladolid on May 21, 1559. Nothing so terrible had happened in Spain in years. A crowd of more than 200,000 assembled to see the brilliant and somber procession, at the end of which, in yellow sanbenitos, walked so many persons of high social position, headed by the famous Doctor Cazalla himself. Sixteen who repented or had extenuating circumstances in their favor abjured their errors and were absolved by the Archbishop and reconciled to the Church. Fourteen others were handed over by the Inquisition to the royal officials as impenitent and dangerous heretics: and as heresy was considered a form of high treason (and worse) they were taken outside the city walls after the auto, and burned by the secular officials. Thus perished Dr. Cazalla and his brother, Francisco de Vivero, both priests who had secretly betrayed the Faith they professed; their two sisters, a knight of the Order of Saint John; a knight of Zamora; a judge named Herrera; the Bachelor Herrezuelo; and three other women. All but one were strangled before being burned. Some of the women were nuns who, until their hypocrisy was uncovered, had been considered holy.

When King Philip arrived from the Netherlands early in the autumn, one of his first public acts was to attend a second great auto de fe, October 8, in the same city. Of the twenty-eight condemned on that occasion, fourteen, including a nobleman name Don Carlo de Seso, were burned after the auto. The King did not attend the executions; his supposed love of such spectacles is part of the legend created about him by enemies of Spain and of the Church.

In Sevilla fifty were burned, including a venerable Dominican who under cover of a great reputation for sanctity was found teaching Protestantism to his noble penitents and lending them Lutheran books in Spanish. In the following year, twenty-nine Catholics who had secretly been teaching Judaism were burned.

To the Spanish Catholic, whose ancestors had suffered so much for the Faith, the dogma of Luther on good works was only a new version of the semioriental pessimism underlying the tenets of the Illuminates and other Manichaean heretics. The odium that had been bestowed upon the Alumbrados was now transferred, therefore, to the propagators of Lutheranism. An element of race hatred was added when many of the, like Cazalla, were found to be descended from families whose secret attempts to destroy the Catholic Church while pretending to belong to it had led los reyes catolicos to establish the Spanish Inquisition. (William Thomas Walsh, St. Teresa of Avila, published originally in 1943 by The Bruce Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and republished in 1987 by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 141-143.)

The effort to bring us to the point of the Great Apostasy, which includes a general falling away from the Catholic Faith, had begun when the Jews were expelled from Jerusalem when Our Lord used the pagan Romans to chastise them for their persistence in unbelief. What we are witnessing at this time is simply the openly public manifestation of a diabolical plan that is centered upon convincing Catholics that heretics can serve legitimately as Successors of Saint Peter and that it is necessary to forget about converting non-Catholics in order to establish a world of “mutual respect.”

The sort of Judeo-Masonic “respect” that has defined conciliarism in general and the entire life of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who has worked so closely with his pro-abortion, pro-perversity pal Abraham Skorka (see On the Road to Gehenna With Jorge, Abe and Omar, part one, Inspired by the Same Scriptwriter, On the Road to Gehenna with Jorge, Abe and Omar, part two, On the Road to Gehenna with Jorge, Abe and Omar, part three, On the Road to Gehenna with Jorge, Abe and Omar, part four (the end, at last), Antichrist and His Anti-Pentecost and Antichrist Has Shown Us His Calling Card? Do You Care?) over the years, is being repackaged now as the “Elijah Initiative.” In this, however, the conciliar revolutionaries and their partners in creating a One World Religion are mocking and blaspheming Elias, who destroyed the idols of Ba’al atop Mount Carmel:

The prophet Elias destroyed the devils of Ba’al atop Mount Carmel, signifying a direct connection between the Brown Scapular that Our Lady gave to Saint Simon Stock and firm opposition to any kind of false ecumenism, including any kind of recognition of “worth” accorded to any false religion and its beliefs, rituals and practices:

“‘Nevertheless send now, and gather unto me all Israel, unto Mount Carmel, and the prophets of Baal four hundred and fifty, and the prophets of the groves four hundred, who eat at Jezebel’s table.’

“Achab sent to all the children of Israel, and gathered together the prophets unto Mount Carmel.

“And Elias coming to all the people, said: ‘How long do you halt between two sides? If the Lord be God, follow Him: but if Baal, follow him.’ And the people did not answer him a word.

“And Elias said again to the people: ‘I only remain a prophet of the Lord: but the prophets of Baal are four hundred and fifty men. Let two bullocks be given us, and let them choose one bullock and cut it in pieces and lay it upon wood, but put no fire under: and I will dress the other bullock, and lay it on wood, and put no fire under it. Call ye the names of your gods, and I will call on the name of my Lord; and the God that shall answer by fire, let him be God.’ And all of the people answering said: ‘A very good proposal.’

“Then Elias said to the prophets of Baal: ‘Choose you one bullock and dress it first, because you are many; and call on the names of your gods, but put no fire under.’

“And they took the bullock which he gave them, and dressed it; and they called on the name of Baal from morning even till noon, saying: ‘O Baal, hear us.’ But there was no voice, nor any that answered: and they leaped over the altar that they had made.

“And when it was now noon, Elias jested at them, saying: ‘Cry with a louder voice: for he is a God, and perhaps he is talking, or he is in an inn, or on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep, and must be awaked.’

“So they cried with a loud voice, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till they were covered with blood. And after midday was past, and while they were prophesying, the time was come of offering sacrifice, and there was no voice heard, nor did any one answer, nor regard them as they prayed: Elias said to the people: ‘Come ye unto me.’ And the people coming near unto him, he repaired the altar of the Lord, that was broken down:

“And he took twelve stones according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord came, saying: ‘Israel shall be thy name.’ And he built with the stones an altar to the name of the Lord: and he made a trench for water, of the breadth of two furrows round about the altar. And he laid the wood in order, and cut the bullock in pieces, and laid it upon the wood.

“And he said: “Fill four buckets with water, and pour it upon the burnt offering, and upon the wood.’ And again he said: ‘Do the same the second time.’ And when they had done it the second time, he said: ‘Do the same also the third time.’ And they did so the third time. And the water run about the altar, and the trench was filled with water.

“And when it was now time to offer the holocaust, Elias the prophet came near and said: ‘O Lord God of Abraham and Isaac, and Israel, show this day that thou art the God of Israel, and I thy servant, and that according to they commandment I have done all these things. Hear me, O Lord, hear me: that this people may learn, that thou art the Lord God, and that thou hast turned their heart again.’

“Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the holocaust, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw this, they fell on their faces, and they said: ‘The Lord he is God, the Lord he is God.’ And Elias said to them: ‘Take the prophets of Baal, and let not one of them escape.’ And when they had taken them, Elias brought them down to the torrent Cison, and killed them there” (3 Kings 18:19-40)

It was from Mount Carmel that many of the disciples of Elias and Eliseus were called by Our Lady to be present in Jerusalem on Pentecost Sunday, and thus to be added to the ranks of Holy Church to sing her own praises on Mount Carmel, as Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B. related in The Liturgical Year:

They saw this second Eve, they conversed with her, they felt for her that filial affection wherewith she inspired all of the disciples of Jesus. The Liturgy will speak to us at another season of these favoured ones. The promise is fulfilled to-day. In the lessons of the feast the Church tells us how the disciples of Elias and Eliseus became Christians at the first preaching of the Apostles, and being permitted to hear the sweet words of the Blessed Virgin and enjoy an unspeakable intimacy with her, they felt their veneration for her immensely increased. Returning to the loved mountain, where their less fortunate fathers had lived but in hope, they built, on the very spot where Elias had seen a little cloud rise up out of the sea, an oratory to the purest of virgins; hence they obtained the name of the Brothers of Blessed Mary of Mount Carmel. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year.)

The readings for the Divine Office for the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel contains the following description of this call:

When on the holy day of Pentecost the apostles, through heavenly inspiration, spoke divers tongues and worked many miracles by the invocation of the most holy name of Jesus, it is said that many men who were walking in the footsteps of Elias and Eliseus, and had been prepared for the coming of Christ by the preaching of John the Baptist saw and acknowledged the truth, and at once embraced the faith of the Gospel. These new Christians were so happy as to be able to enjoy familiar intercourse with the Blessed Virgin, and venerated her with so special an affection, that they, before all others, built a chapel to the purest of Virgins on that very spot of Mount Carmel where Elias of old had seen the cloud, a remarkable type the Virgin ascending.

Many times each day they came together to the new oratory, and with pious ceremonies, prayers and praises honoured the most Blessed Virgin as the special protectress of their Order. For this reason, people from all parts began to call them the Brethren of the Blessed Mary of Mount Carmel; and the Sovereign Pontiffs not only affirmed this title, but also granted special indulgences to whoever called either the whole Order or individual Brothers by that name.  (Matins, The Divine Office, Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, July 16.)

It was on Mount Carmel that Elias, who was battling King Achab's false ecumenism of worshiping false idols, thereby betraying the true religion of the time, Judaism, by violating the First Commandment, slew the prophets of Baal (3 Kings 18:19-40).

As a Catholic priest noted nearly seven years ago now, Eliseus, the disciple of Elias, asked for a "double spirit" from his master prior to Elias's being taken up in a fiery chariot (4 Kings 2: 6-13). Elias's mantle fell on Eliseus as he, Elias, was being whisked away in the fiery chariot  Elias's mantle was to protect Eliseus from the spirit of false ecumenism that had prevailed on Mount Carmel and was sponsored by the king himself, who as a figure of the Antichrist.

The priest also said that it was that same "double spirit" of Elias was given by Our Lady when she gave Saint Simon Stock her Brown Scapular of Mount Carmel on July 16, 1251, as a protection against all spiritual dangers, including the false ecumenism of our own day which so offends God in our day as it offended Him as it was practiced on Mount Carmel when Elias slew the prophets of Baal. False ecumenism makes a mockery of His First Commandment. The Brown Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is thus a paramount protection against the false ecumenism of the Modernists that has been practiced with such abandon by the conciliar "popes" and their minions.

The only difference between Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his predecessors in the counterfeit church of conciliarism is that he is making no effort to mask his belief that all religions please God and provide a sure path to salvation. His false religion, conciliarisim, is one of “feelings” and “universal salvation” based on a false concept of “mercy” that reaffirms hardened sinners, including those guilty of unbelief in Our Lord’s Sacred Divinity and/or guilty of unbelief in the Catholic Church as the true Church founded by God Himself.

Yes, the apostasies of conciliarism has its roots in Judeo-Masonry, which served as progenitor of sorts to Modernism’s embrace of religious indifferentism and of reaffirming all hardened sinners in their sins, something that Pope Clement XII pointed out in In Eminenti, April 28, 1738, which was the first papal encyclical letter that condemned Freemasonry, which was then in its nascent stages after emerging in England in the year 1717:

Therefore, bearing in mind the great harm which is often caused by such Societies or Conventicles not only to the peace of the temporal state but also to the well-being of souls, and realizing that they do not hold by either civil or canonical sanctions; and since We are taught by the divine word that it is the part of faithful servant and of the master of the Lord's household to watch day and night lest such men as these break into the household like thieves, and like foxes seek to destroy the vineyard; in fact, to prevent the hearts of the simple being perverted, and the innocent secretly wounded by their arrows, and to block that broad road which could be opened to the uncorrected commission of sin and for the other just and reasonable motives known to Us; We therefore, having taken counsel of some of Our Venerable Brothers among the Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, and also of Our own accord and with certain knowledge and mature deliberations, with the plenitude of the Apostolic power do hereby determine and have decreed that these same Societies, Companies, Assemblies, Meetings, Congregations, or Conventicles of Liberi Muratori or Francs Massons, or whatever other name they may go by, are to be condemned and prohibited, and by Our present Constitution, valid for ever, We do condemn and prohibit them. (Pope Clement XII, In Eminenti, April 28, 1738.)

True popes have always condemned the efforts to create anything approaching a “respect” for false religions, although they have always taught us to bear ourselves kindly who are caught up in the errors that their leaders have propagated.

Pope Leo XIII condemned any and all efforts to do the work of Belial under the cover of the Gospel, which is precisely what Jorge Mario Bergoglio is doing:

Everyone should avoid familiarity or friendship with anyone suspected of belonging to masonry or to affiliated groups. Know them by their fruits and avoid them. Every familiarity should be avoided, not only with those impious libertines who openly promote the character of the sect, but also with those who hide under the mask of universal tolerance, respect for all religions, and the craving to reconcile the maxims of the Gospel with those of the revolution. These men seek to reconcile Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the state without God. (Pope Leo XIII, Custodi Di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892.)

No one should have any doubt that what has been preached about false “ecumenism” and its respect for false religions—a preaching that the conciliar “popes” have caused to be inserted into the Acta Apostlicae Sedis and are thus binding upon all Catholics to accept without reservation (see Memo from Two Popes and Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton to Bishop Richard Williamson: No One Can Resist a True and Legitimate Successor of Saint Peter)—is anything other than the antithesis of Catholicism, which makes no terms with error.

Consider the words of Pope Saint Pius X in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910:

And now, overwhelmed with the deepest sadness, We ask Ourselves, Venerable Brethren, what has become of the Catholicism of the Sillon? Alas! this organization which formerly afforded such promising expectations, this limpid and impetuous stream, has been harnessed in its course by the modern enemies of the Church, and is now no more than a miserable affluent of the great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world (if such a Church could overcome) the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of all those who toil and suffer. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

Jorge’s One Word Church cares not for dogmas, is anti-hierarchical and has neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions. It is not now nor can ever be the Catholic Church.

As we continue to keep close to Our Lady, especially through her Most Holy Rosary, it especially opportune during this month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (where has this month gone?) to pray this prayer to her under the title of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart of Jesus:

Remember, Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, what ineffable power thy Divine Son hath given thee over His Own adorable Heart. Full of trust in thy merits, we come before thee and beg thy protection. O heavenly Treasurer of the Heart of Jesus, that Heart which is the inexhaustible source of all graces, which thou mayest open to us at thy good pleasure, in order that from it may flow forth upon mankind the riches of love and mercy, light and salvation, that are contained therein; grant unto us, we beseech thee, the favors which we seek (make your intentions here). We can never, never be refused by thee, and since thou art our Mother, O our Lady of the Sacred Heart, graciously hear our prayers and grant our request. Amen. (The Raccolta: A Manual of Indulgences, Prayers and Devotions Enriched with Indulgences, approved by Pope Pius XII, May 30, 1951, and published in English by Benziger Brothers, New York, 1957, pp. 334.)

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, pray for us.

Saint Juliana Falconieri, who was so tenderly devoted to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, pray for us.

Saints Gervase and Protase, pray for us.

Appendix

William Thomas Walsh on the Influence of Jews on the Protestant Revolution and Its Spread

In Spain to which Philip had returned, the instinct of a society to preserve itself had been sharpened by a keen awareness of the pattern of crucifixion running through the whole living epic of Christianity, especially in a country than had groaned and struggled under the violence of so many heretical movements. To the descendants of Iberian crusaders Protestantism was not the new and forward- looking institution that many of its new advocated in the north imagined. To Spaniard it was rather the recurrence of something as old as the Church.

The Spanish mystic felt about heresy as the Jews had always felt about idolatry. Against the iterated calvary of human endeavor he saw the eternal Christ as the heart, the foundation (as He said, the cornerstone) of the Catholic Church, the human member of the which might always be a fallible as the little group constituting the primitive Church – the materialistic and plausibly dishonest as Judas, as angry as James, as sluggish as Thomas, as uninteresting as Andrew, as ambitious as the youthful John, as rash and self-confident and mendacious, as penitent and long-suffering as Peter – this Church would welcome sinners worse than Mary Magdalen and publicans more despised than Levi before he was Saint Mathew; it would even stretch out its net to include rich Simon the Pharisee, if possible, and would pluck hard-handed centurions from under the eagles of Caesar redivivus a thousand times.

Nevertheless, in its vast and complex ramifications, as it grew to take in the whole world, there would always be a central and unchanging unity of doctrine, always the Holy Spirit, always Christ, daily renewed in the Eucharist. Also, in literal fulfillment of the prophecies of Christ, the hatred that had mocked, slandered and baited Him, misrepresented His teachings and actions, sought repeatedly to kill Him, and finally, by trickery, induced the power of Caesar to crucify Him – this too would always remain. There would always be a Caiaphas, the spiritually blind Abet Din, misleading the synagogue, always some crafty Anna, the Nasi or political Prince directing and corrupting the Sanhedrin. To these the Judases would flee when the Church rejected them, and these the Caesars of every age would use and despise. Even as good Jews would help furnish the sinews of the Church in many ages, so men remarkably like those scribes and pharisees whom Christ had called the children of the devil would perpetuate the hatred that had once crucified Incarnate Love.

No philosophy of history that leaves out of account this gigantic aspect of reality can be considered realistic. It is for this reason that the best hints for a philosophy of history may be found in the encyclicals of various Popes.

The intense hatred that Jesus foretold would follow all who sincerely believed in Him was manifested in the earliest days of the Church. When Saint Paul went to Rome to preach “One Lord, one faith, one baptism” he encountered such opposition from his own race that he somewhat bitterly wrote of “the Jews, who both killed the Lord Jesus, and the prophets, and have persecuted us and please not God, and are adversaries to all men; prohibiting us to speak to the Gentiles, that they may be saved.” It must be noted however, that later on he sent a letter to the Christians at Rome sternly warning them against the wickedness of Jew-baiting. The Acts of the Apostles abundantly testify that most of the first Christian converts were Jews. Jews of good-will formed the sinews of the Church. Everywhere another type of Jew, perhaps in a small minority, refused even to listen to the arguments he condemned, and prevented well-meaning Jews, as well as Gentiles from hearing the Gospel.

The author of the Apocalypse, too, adverts more than once to the same astonishing concentration of hate that followed the children of Christ as they scattered through the Roman world: “I know thy tribulation, and thy poverty, but thou art rich; and thou art blasphemed by them that say they are Jews and are not, but are of the synagogue of Satan.” And “Behold I will bring a synagogue of Satan, who say they are Jews and are not but do lie. Behold, I will make them to come and adore  before thy feet. And they shall know that I have loved thee.” The first major persecution of Christians in the Gentile world, that of Nero, was probably set in motion at the instance of the Jews surrounding his wife Poppaea.

There were Judases in every age to attempt to pervert the Church from within. Not a few of the later scandals of Christendom were the result of their work. Simon Magus, perhaps a precursor of Gnosticism, was only the first to attempt to purchase the gifts of the Holy Ghost. Arius, the Catholic Jew, would yet made an insidious attack on the divinity of Christ that would divide the Christian world for centuries. Valentinus, called the chief of the Gnostics by Saint Irenaeus, was a Jew of Alexandria.

As the colossal struggle continued century after century, the chief means employed by the Annas and the Caiaphas of each age to keep the mass of the Jewish people in ignorance of the true nature of Christianity, and to fan their misunderstanding of it to hatred, was the Talmud. This melange of wisdom, tradition and superstition contained the most scurrilous and vindictive blasphemies against Christ. Wherever its true character became known, it was condemned by Christian authorities; as in France under Saint Louis, and in Rome under Pope Paul IV, who had thousands of copies burned. Yes it survived, to carry into the modern world the spirit of the Pharisees who rejected Christ, with those rabbinical interpretations which made it, as Lazare noted, “the creator of the Jewish nation and the mold of the Jewish soul.” The most vituperative parts were omitted in translation. In dangerous times they were handed down orally by the rabbis.

The historical importance of this book may be judged from the opinion of the Jewish historian Graetz, whose inaccuracies, omissions and wrong judgments have poisoned the whole Jewish world, but whose interpretations of that world cannot be ignored. He goes so far to say, “We can boldly assert that the war for and against the Talmud aroused German consciousness and created a public opinion without which the Reformation, like many other efforts, would have died in the hour of birth, or perhaps would never have been born at all.

In the Middle Ages it was customary for Jews to deny that the Talmud contained anti-Christian libels. Pretense in the modern world is no longer necessary. The Talmud is recognized as a sort of link between the early Gnostic onslaught on the Catholic Church, and the even more serious modern assault behind the mask of Freemasonry. Celsus the Gnostic may or may not have been a Jew. “Yet there are connections between Celsus and Judaism that must be emphasized,” says a Jewish authority; “for example, he asserts that Jesus was the illegitimate son of a certain Panthera, and again that he had been a servant in Egypt, not when a child as according to the New Testament, but when he was grown, and that he learned there the secret arts. These statements are frequently identical with those of the Talmud. Celsus might have heard this from the Jews.” From this it is not difficult to guess the source of the modern legend of freemasons seeking to disparage Christ the Redeemer in subtle fashion by claiming him as one of their “initiates.”

Another Jewish book that had a powerful effect not only on Jews but on the history of the world was the Kabbala. Originally that part of the Mosaic Law which was handed down by tradition, it had become by the thirteenth century, a collection of occult and esoteric doctrines borrowed from Buddhism, Gnosticism, the neo-Platonists and all manner of eastern pseudo-mystics. Out of the dark labyrinth of its imagery came many heresies and revolutions; rosicrucianism, theosophy, and all modern freemasonry. As Rabbi Benamozegh wrote, “It is quite certain that Masonic theology is at root nothing else than Theosophy, and that it corresponds to the theology of the Kabbala.” [Droleskey note: You don't think that Ivanka Trump Kushner's and Jared Kushner's practice of Kabbala matters? Think again.]

For a thousand years after she had emerged from the Catacombs – say roughly from the time of Constantine in the fourth century to the middle of the fourteenth – the Catholic Church successfully defended herself from such attacks both within and without. At times the very existence of the State and of society was threatened. In such crises, the Church not only permitted the use of force to avert worse evils, but even cooperated with it.

The Crusades were the defense of Christian homes, Christian women and children, Christian civilization, against an Islam deliberately bent upon exterminating them. A crusade ended the anti-social insanity of the Cathari who opposed marriage but taught suicide in that part of southern France known as Juea Secunda. The Inquisition followed them to Spain, and later saved the Christian Spanish State from the secret treachery of the pretended Catholics who were in league with the Moors in the war of liberation. As the ancient Jews had fought and slain idolaters, and had stoned spiritualists and similar dark heretics to death, so the Catholic Church, heir of the Jewish revelation, protected her children from destruction of body and soul while they were building the happiest and most balanced culture and civilization that have ever existed in this world.

The turning point in this vast drama (so far as our vantage point in time allows us to see) was the Black Death in 1346. It seemed to men as if Satan himself had burst the chains that had bound him for a thousand years. More than half the priests in the world died. Christendom was still staggering under this blow when other blows fee, one after another: the papal exile at Avignon, the Great Western Schism, the return of paganism under the guise of the Renaissance – all these onslaughts in the City of God itself while the Turks struck from without, gaining and laying waste on Christian country after another. Corruption and disorder were inevitable under these circumstances. Confusion became so widespread that only a divine institution could have survived it.

At the very moment when Columbus was claiming the new western world for Christianity and announcing the beginning of the Last Age of which he thought God had made him the harbinger, the stage was set for the most serious and widespread disaster the Church had yet had to face. It was something more important than the mere preaching of an exasperated monk against the abuse of indulgences; it was deeper than even the discontent of saintly men like More and Ignatius Loyola.

In the Protestant Revolt there was something more than the mere breaking away of the northern communities from the jurisdiction of Rome; much more that the nationalism to which Professor Carlton Hayes ascribes perhaps too much importance. There was a spirit of Protestantism in its first phase that sought something more than freedom; it sought nothing less (and this was more evident in Calvinism than in Lutheranism) than the utter destruction of the Catholic Church. Here was a hatred that began manifesting itself by the burning of churches and convents, the violation of nuns, the torture and execution of priests, the defiling of the Cross and the unspeakable desecration of the Blessed Sacrament.

It was an old and international hatred. It was the hatred of the church-burning Donatist, the hatred of Islam, the hatred that had opposed Saint Paul in Rome and Saint James in Jerusalem, the hatred of Annas and the scribes and pharisees crying, “Come down from the Cross, and we will believe!” There was nothing new about it except the form it took; but the preparation and organization were better, and the time was ripe.

Nor was this Protestant phase of the revolt a peculiarly northern or German product, though it has been convenient to make it appear so. It might have happened in southern Europe. In fact, it almost did happen in France, especially in southern France, before it happened in Germany. Lefevre, under the patronage of Marguerite of Angouleme and other of the anti-Catholic House of Navarre, taught justification by grace before Luther did, and profoundly influenced Beza, Farel, Rousel, and other leaders who passed quickly through a Lutheran phase to the more radical organization of Calvinism. The roots of the revolution went deeper that the German affair. It was not local, but international.

If we may believe Graetz and other Jewish historians, the Jews played a much more important part in all this than Christians, for some mysterious reason, have generally admitted. Incalculable was the number of this virile and gifted race who had settled in all countries of Europe during the so-called Dark Ages and the Middle Ages; incalculable the number who were assimilated as sincere Catholics, or who, as pretended Catholics, formed the nucleus for any international revolt. They were everywhere, in communication with one another and with the Jews of the Synagogue. There were so many of the latter in England and France that one Jewish writer of the sixteenth century, often cited by modern Jews, attributed to this fact, “the inclination of the English and the French” to Protestantism. Dispersion, secrecy and organization gave them a power out of all proportion to their numbers, a power so remarkable that Napoleon Bonaparte suspected that the political structure of the Jewish State had survived under cover for eighteen centuries. Was there any historical foundation for such a theory?

There may or may not be significance in the fact that the title of Nasi (Prince or King of the Jews) which belonged at the time of the Crucifixion to Annas, father-in-law of the High Priest, or Ab et Din, Caiaphas, was assumed by one of the bitterest, most intelligent and more persistent enemies of King Phillip II – Joseph Miques or Menes, the Jewish international banker of the Spice Trust of Portugal and Antwerp, who had in his debt William of Orange and many other noblemen of the Low Countries. About the time when Philip was returning to Spain, this millionaire was establishing himself in Turkey, throwing off the last pretense of Christianity and assuming the antique and princely title of Nasi.

He was not the first rich Jew after the dispersion to be so designated. Every now and then, like a bell-wether among the stray sheep of Israel, there appeared some grave and powerful man who took this title. There was, for example, the learned Jew of Babylon, Machir, who settled at Narbonne in the time of Charlemagne. If it is only a legend, as the Jewish Encyclopedia affirms that he was appointed head of the Jewish community by the Emperor at the request of the Calif Haroun al-Rashid, there is no doubt, according to the same authority, “that he soon acquired great influence over his coreligionists. It is not certain, however, whether he himself bore the title of Nasi (Prince or King of the Jews) as his descendants did, who continued to direct the affairs of the Jewish community.” There was, for instance, a Nasi Levi who presided over a meeting of delegated from all the Jewish communities in southern France in 1215, as Annas had presided over the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem.

Even then, among the Jewish communities of southern France, the anti-Christian Revolution was being silently prepared. Prosperity and wealth had reward the industry and intelligence of the exiles in Montpelier, Nimes, Tarbes, Carcassone – a score of places in that part of France where later the Huguenots would flourish – until they almost rivaled the medieval empery of their brethren in Spain. Slave-traders, purveyors of silks and other luxuries, usurers – they excelled generally in the commerce of intangibles, in the handling of money per se. Culture and power followed upon wealth. It was their great-tragedy that, having failed to understand Who Christ was, they could not get rid of the messianic consciousness for which they had been chosen and consecrated. Finding closed to them the only spiritual door to salvation, they were constantly driven to seek redemption in the here and now, in the resources of matter, in gold and power, in anything, anywhere but Christ. When all their kingdom had turned to dust in their patience hands, and the inevitable scourge of persecution came to scatter them again and again, they still followed leaders who kept them blind, and remained missionaries of what Saint John called “the spirit that dissolves Christ.”

In the thirteenth century, when the Catholic Church rejoiced in the full burgeoning of that rich and generous civilization she had reanimated and purified, the Jews were creating at Troyes a remarkable school of exegesis in which were being forged most of the arguments to be used by Protestant preachers against the Church and to be turned by the “higher critics” of later times aginst the heart of Christ Himself. The center and master of the group was a very rich Jew named Isaac Chatelain, better known now as Isaac of Troyes; a man learned in the Talmud, author of elegiac poems, endowed with many of the great Jewish virtues, such as deep and passionate loyalty to family and to race, but cursed with the intransigence of ancestors who perhaps had cried in a black hour, “His blood be upon us and our children.” He and his family incurred the wrath of the Christian populace, for the usual reasons. On Good Friday April twenty-fourth, 1288, the mode seized them, spurned their offers of gold and burned them.

The shocking holocaust avenged a long period of exploitation and of undermining of the foundation of Church and State. The heroism of some of the victims makes one regret the more that they were not in Italy, where the Pope or the hierarchy would undoubtedly have protected them. The wife of Isaac through herself into the flames. Her two sons and her son-in-law followed. Her two daughters also were burned, as was the wife of her son Alakadmenath, with Simeon the Scribe of Chatillon, Isaac Cohen, Baruch Tob Elem d-Avirey, and some others.

Rabbie Salamon, the son of this hapless Isaac, became famous inter the name of Raschi as founder of the Talmudic school of Champagne and the chief rival of Maimonides. Through Raschi the ideas of Isaac were transmitted to Protestantism. They were adopted early  in the fourteenth century by a Franciscan monk of Jewish descent, Nicholas of Lyra. The arguments of this Nicholas of Lyra powerfully influenced Luther, Calvin and Zwingli. “Raschi and the Toraphists made Nicholas of Lyra,”  wrote the nineteenth-century Christian apostate Renan, whose writings were financed and published by Jews, and who borrowed many of his brilliant sophistries from the arsenal of Narbonne, "and Nicholas of Lyra made Luther.” this has been said more wittily in the familiar epigram.

Si Lyra non lyrasset, Lutherus no saltasset.

Another Jew who did valiant spade work for Luther's sowing was Elias Levita, founder of the modern Hebrew grammar and teacher of many Christians. “He, with Jacob Loans and Obadiah Sforno,” observes a Jewish historian, “must be allowed a large share in producing the Protestant Reformation.” Sforno was the teacher of Reuchlin and many others. The so-called Reformation, adds Abrahams, “drew its life blood from a rational Hebraism.” Luther naturally employed Jews in preparing his German Bible. Jews were the most successful agents in the printing and distribution of Protestant Bibles and tracts in all parts of Europe.

Not only the ideas of Luther, but the very occasion for their dissemination, was furnished by the fertile activity of Jewish minds. The Battle of the Books, preliminary skirmish in the way of ideas about to commence at Wittenberg, could never have occurred if the Talmud and the Kabbala had not first done their deadly work. There sat on the throne of Saint Peter at that time a Pope, Leo X, for whom very little is to be said from the Catholic point of view, except that, like all the Popes, he was orthodox in his pronouncements on matters of faith and morals. He was also a patron of literature, music and art; the employer of Raphael.

His chief concern, however, was not the welfare, much less the needed reform, of the Church, but his own amusement and gratification. There is evidence in Leo's conduct to lend color to the assertion that on being elected, he remarked jovially, “Let us enjoy the Papacy, since God has given it to us.”

In the most critical and decisive age of the Church, this descendant of Florentine usurers, this son of Lorenzo de' Medici, kind and generous intellectual, Cardinal at thirteen, Pope at thirty-seven, was too busy with his pictures, his hunting and his plays to give sufficient attention to the ruin of the world. The Jews have always been well pleased with him. Like all the Medici, he surrounded himself with them and showered them with favor and protection, even to the extent of allowing the printing and dissemination of the Talmud, of whose true nature he was perhaps in ignorance. This genial collector, to whom Luther was only a joke, went to his death (too suddenly for the last sacraments) with little more than a suspicion of his own share in the business, not only by the abuses permitted in connection with indulgences, but by his long negligence and vacillation in the matter of the Jewish books.

Johann Reuchlin, a friend of Erasmus, started the famous Battle. Saturated, like young Pico della Miranola, with the imagery and fanatical theosophy of the Kabbala, which he imagined he understood, he urged all Christians to study this and other Jewish books, for a better understanding of their own religion. A Dominican of Cologne, Jakob Hochstraten, replied to him publicly in 1519, protesting against the notion that the pseudo-judaism of the Jewish mind in revolt against its own Messias could possible cast anything but a baleful light on Christianity. As the controversy continued, there entered into the lists against Reuchlin another Dominican monk, Johan Pfefferkorn. This man was a Jewish convert to the Faith. Graetz calls him, with more vigor that truth, “an ignorant, thoroughly vile creature, the scum of the Jewish people.” Reuchlin, who defended the Jewish books, was of course, “a pure, upright character,” with admirable love of truth and a soft heart.” The fact was the Pfefferkorn was a good sincere man, a none too brilliant student, who carried the zeal of the convert to the verge of fanaticism; his vileness apparently consisting of his being a true Jew in the sense in which the Apostles understood the term. He recognized the divinity of Christ and the untruthful obscenity of the Talmud. Urging the people of his race to turn from the man-made books of the rabbis to the living Christ in the Catholic Church, he defended the Jews, against the worst charges made against them, including the ritual murder accusation. This did not save him from the lasting enmity of the Annases of his day. As for Reuchlin, Graetz might have added that he had not only a soft heard but a rather soft head.

Pfefferkorn accused his, in a pamphlet called Handspiegel, of having been paid by the Jews to disseminate their propaganda. Reuchlin replied with a violent denial in his Augenspiegel and after further vituperation, pro and con, appealed to the Pope. By means of a flattering letter, he gained the favor of the influential Jew, Bonet de Lattes, physician to Pope Leo X. The physician naturally had no objection to interceding with the Holy Father in such a cause. The upshot was the pleasure-loving Pope handed over this mere squabble of monks, as he considered it, to the Bishop of Spires, a youth of twenty-seven, who in turn passed it on to Canon Truchsess, a disciple of Reuchlin; who gave the decision to his friend, completely exonerating the Augespiegel.

The more discerning friends of the Catholic Church were highly alarmed. The Inquisition, better aware from long experience of what was going on among the Jews, appealed from the verdic to the Pope. Leo summoned both disputants to Rome in 1514. delay followed delay, until Reuchlin, by a false statement, got the case transferred to another judge at Spires, who again exonerated him. Another appeal was filed. The Pope continued to delay, however, as various rich patrons of Reuchlin, and such liberal but not very profound Catholics as Erasmus, brought pressure to bear upon him; as did also the Emperor Maximilian I. It was not until the Lutheran bombshell exploded in 1517, on the hard-fought field of the Battle of the Books, that the real significance of Reuchlin's proposals became generally evident. Even then the easy-going Pope made no decision.

At last, in 1520 the finding at Spires were reversed. The Pope forbade the Augenspiegel as a scandalous and offensive book, unlawfully favorable to the Jews, and condemned Reuchlin to pay the costs of litigation. By that time it was too late to stop the avalanche. The young humanists were now united behind Reuchlin. One of them, Hutten, attacked even the Holy See. These men became the nucleus of Luther's party. The real anti-Christian Revolution (for such time would reveal it to be in essence) appeared full-panoplied on the stage of Christendom.

I have not been able to find any evidence to Dr. Margolis's assertion that Luther was drawn into the controversy on the side of Reuchlin, or of Lewis Browne's, echoing that of Hyamson, that Luther was “a disciple of Reuchlin.” If Reuchlin had never existed, Luther might well have challenged the preachings of Eck. What is certain is that the bull-necked Augustinian, who despaired of human nature because he could not at once achieve perfection in his cell, found the soil well ploughed for him for such men as Franz von Sickingen and other pupils of Reuchlin; without which he might have made no more disturbance than Huss or Wycliff had. What is equally certain, but strangely kept well in the background of most historical research, is that the Protestant Revolt, far from being an “advance” or a “progressive step,” was a long retrogression toward the moribund Judaism of the Pharisees of the time of Christ. Its multitudinous offspring of more than 200 sects would lead in the course of time to a return of the dismal skepticism of the Sadducees. Caiaphas was a Pharisee, Annas a Sadducee. It was old Annas, the Nasi, who would have the last word.

If there is exaggeration in that astonishing but almost unnoticed statement of Cabrera, himself of a Spanish Marrano family, that “most of the heresiarchs and heretics of this present century have been of those people.” it is beyond question, as a Jewish historian says, that the first leaders of the Protestant sects were called semi-Judaei, or half-Jews, in all parts of Europe.and that men of Jewish descent were as conspicuous among them as they had been among the Gnostics and would later be amog the Communists.

The origin of Calvin (whose real name was Chaurvin) is obscure, as is that of his chief aide and successor, Theodore Beza. But Farel, Rousel and others of the stormiest preachers who carried their propaganda through Europe were of Jewish descent. Michael Servetus may have been, and was certainly influenced by Jews. At Antwerp in 1566 the chief minister of the Calvinist synod, which was the center of the most telling Protestant intrigue and propaganda in the Netherlands, was a Spanish Jew.

Modern research by Jewish historians has made it clear that in the sixteenth century large numbers of the English Protestants (and doubtless the most active in propaganda and organization) were Jews who had put on the convenient mask of Calvinism at Antwerp. For example, “from an early period,” says Dr. Lucien Wolf, “the Marranos in Antwerp had taken an active part in the Reformation movement, and had given up their mask of Catholicism for a not less hollow pretense of Calvinism. The change will readily be understood. The simulation of Calvinism brought them new friends, who, like them, were enemies of Rome, Spain and the Inquisition. It helped them in their fight against the Holy Office, and for that reason was very welcome to them. Moreover, it was a form of Christianity which came nearer to their own simple Judaism. The result was that they became zealous and valuable allies of the Calvinists.”

There was something more in most Calvinists teaching than the desire for religious freedom and the reform of abuses. It was more like the ancient hatred which had followed the Catholic Church from her cradle, seeking not her reform but her utter destruction. Calvin himself was as ruthless in this regard as Mohammed. One of his letters to English Protestants declares that those who refuse to give up the Roman Catholic faith must be put to the sword. Calvinism quickly became an international movement, with a world capital at Geneva and with Calvin as a Pope ruling over a city with a regimentation uncomfortably suggestive of some totalitarian state of the future.

The most active intelligence, liaison officers and propagandists of this international army were the Jews. Only four years after Luther's first outburst, Cardinal Aleander, papal nuncio, reported that Jews were printing and circulating the German monk's books in Flanders. From the Netherlands they sent Bibles even to Spain, concealed in double-bottomed wine-casks. In Ferrara, a great Jewish financial center, they printed heretical bibles for distribution in Italy and elsewhere. No less a person than Carranza, now languishing in the prisons of the Inquisition in Spain, said that this was the reason why the church had to discourage the reading of the Bible in the vernaculars, save in approved versions. Even Jewish physicians and men of business were spies and propaganda agents. In the very year after Philip returned to Spain to stamp out Protestantism there, the Jewish Doctor Rodrigo Lopez, who was to find so unhappy an end in England, was passing over from Antwerp to London as a good Protestant.

A new spirit was abroad in the world, surely. It was not the regenerated Christian thing that Luther imagined it to be. It was the reappearance, in the most formidable array, of something older and far more terrible. The Cambridge Modern History tells us its effect was “to transfer the allegiance of the human spirit from clerical to civil authority,” or to put it more bluntly, to deliver Christ once more into the hands of Caesar. The Jewish historian Graetz expresses it otherwise: “the interest of the marketplace had driven the interests of the church into the background.” Is this not a way of saying that after the great betrayal the money changers were flocking back into the Temple from which they had been ousted by the medieval Church when she was most free and vigorous.

That was the thing, the old and evil thing, the insidious and destructive thing, that Philip was resolved to destroy, if possible, before it ruined the world. It would be far-fetched to say that he saw all its potentialities in 1559. He could hardly have seen what Pope Pius IX saw in 1849, when he declared that all the evils of the modern world (including Communism and its attendant miseries) had their origin in the tragic sixteenth-century assault on the Catholic Faith in the name of Protestantism.

Did Philip imagine, then, that the Jews were to blame for all the ills of humanity? Not even his bitterest enemies could fairly accuse him of that. A Jew-baiter in the vulgar sense he certainly was not. When an attempt was made to introduce into Spain an organization know as the Order of the White Sword aimed against Jews as Jews, he put his foot down against it.  He knew and employed too many excellent men of Jewish ancestry to be taken in by any stupid and vicious theory of “Nordic” or “Aryan” superiority. It must have been apparent to a man of his shrewd common sense (in most matters) that even those Jews who persisted in the iniquity of attempting to destroy the Church could have accomplished very little without collaboration from within, from unworthy Christians. It always takes a Judas to complete the work of Annas and Caiaphas. (William Thomas Walsh, Philip II, published originally in 1937 by Sheed and Ward and republished by TAN Books and Publishers, 1987, pp. 239-252.)