By J. J. Murphy

This article is from the Converted Catholic Magazine of which former Roman Catholic priest, Leo Herbert Lehmann (also known as L.H. Lehmann) is the editor. It was first put online in PDF format by the LutheranLibrary.org.

The reason I am sharing this article is because I believe most if not all antisemitism comes from Catholic sources, and primarily the Jesuits. And why? Because they are using the Jews as scapegoats and blaming them for what they themselves have done and are doing! The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were written by Jesuits! How can I say that? A quote from this article sheds light on the matter:

The spurious anti-Jewish Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that depict Jewry as the essence of evil and the Catholic church as the essence of virtue, have been spread throughout the country by the followers of Father Coughlin and other Fascist priests.

Who would say the Jews are evil and the Catholic church is the essence of virtue? Not Protestants! Only Catholics could say such a thing!

EVEN A PROMINENT Catholic layman like Dr. George N. Shuster of Hunter College could not deny that the anti-Semitism of his church, rooted in paper pronouncements of the past, is much in evidence in this country. He rightly added, however, that it is “seldom voiced above a whisper.”¹

A good illustration of how a Catholic whispering campaign works is found in the book Under Cover (p. 453) where the author quotes Irish-Catholic Francis P. Moran, Boston Christian Front leader:

The Roman Catholic hierarchy is, of course, much too shrewd to come out openly in favor of anti-Semitism. It can work much more safely and effectively behind such stooges as Fathers Coughlin, Curran, Brophy and Duffee. For years these priests and their organizations have carried on anti-Semitic campaigns with the full but tacit approval of the hierarchy, without whose permission they could neither write for publication nor speak in public.

In the re-editing of the Roman Catholic New Testament in English, two years ago, a footnote to Revelation 2:9 was inserted by the American bishops that did not appear in the previous edition that had been in use for many generations. It said that “the Jews are the Synagogue of Satan.” A clearer example of the anti-Semitic policy of the Catholic church is scarcely needed.

Pierre Laval was well aware of this historical and unchanging attitude of the Roman church. Speaking to a group of journalists on September 13, 1942, he justified the anti-Semitism of the Vichy regime as follows: “I am only applying to the Jews the same treatment prescribed centuries ago by the Catholic Church.” To realize how true this statement of Laval is one has only to read “How the Popes Treated the Jews.”²

The spurious anti-Jewish Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that depict Jewry as the essence of evil and the Catholic church as the essence of virtue, have been spread throughout the country by the followers of Father Coughlin and other Fascist priests. But the Catholic hierarchy never protested against this mass calumny organized within their own church. If they were at all interested in stopping this defamation of Jews they could have used their 332 publications to ridicule these vicious Protocols out of existence. They prefer instead to pretend that they know nothing about this libelous Catholic campaign.

As if there were not enough anti-Semitism in this country, several Catholic bishops invited leaders of Catholic Fascism in Mexico, known as SINARQUISTS, to come to the United States to lecture. Chicago was one of the several episcopal sees that sponsored the series of talks. The newspaper PM of last January 3 said:

A Catholic layman, Emmanuel Chapman, founded in 1939 a layman’s COMMITTEE OF CATHOLICS TO COMBAT ANTI-SEMITISM. Before it got thoroughly organized, a little over a year after its foundation, it was suddenly disbanded — a thing that often happens to “false front” organizations in the Catholic church if they start to become really effective. Similar repression overtakes Catholic laymen, who start to fight strenuously against Fascism or anti-Semitism, as the recent case of Professor McMahon illustrates.

Irish-Catholic Boston has been one of the worst centers of anti-Jewish terrorism. As in New York the Catholic police force looked on with indifference. Sworn affidavits are on record in Boston where the policemen even arrested Jewish boys for defending themselves against young Coughlinites. Boston newspapers, notorious for their subservience to Clerical pressure, made no mention of these outrages. Finally, this past winter, a New York liberal newspaper forced Governor Saltonstall, an appeaser of Cardinal O’Connell, to reverse his stand and order a State investigation. IrishCatholic Police Commissioner Timilty was made whipping-boy and forced to resign, though the rest of the police force and higher politicians were as guilty as he was. Such hypocrisy promises little or no permanent relief from a disastrous un-American situation.

Anti-Jewish terrorism has occurred only in cities that are centers of Roman Catholicism, such as Boston, New York, Chicago, Providence, Bridgeport, Hartford, etc. In New York during recent months liberal newspapers exposed many hotbeds of anti-Jewish sadism. Everyone of them was a Roman Catholic neighborhood. Not only synagogues were defaced, but also several Protestant churches. No Catholic was molested, of course. New York City Commissioner of Investigation Herlands made a 170-page report on 52 anti-Semitic cases he investigated. It showed that all but three of the culprits attended church, and that all came from areas where Father Coughlin’s CHRISTIAN FRONT had flourished.³

The Rev. Allan E. Claxton of the Protestant Broadway Temple in New York City, which had been desecrated by Catholic youths, was quoted in the New York Post of last December 30 as follows:

In the same newspaper in the issue of the preceding day, the Rev. Kenneth MacKenzie of the United Presbyterian Church in the Washington Heights district of New York City said in an interview:

After describing the desecration of his own church, the Rev. Mr. MacKenzie went on to say of the perpetrators of these crimes: “I assume they are Roman Catholics because the section is predominantly Catholic.”

The same issue of the N. Y. Post quoted the following affidavit of an ll-year-old Jewish boy who was attacked by Roman Catholic ruffians, who betrayed their parochial school training by their familiarity with Roman Catholic doctrine. We quote it in part:

The most anti-Semitic district in New York City is Police Precinct No. 40, in the Bronx, where only 8 percent of the inhabitants are Jewish. In this district 333 public Coughlinite meetings were held within less than a two-year period, many of them in the open, according to Herlands’ report. There are four parochial schools in this small district. Catholic police captain John Collins, in charge of this precinct, “estimated that 85 to 90 percent of the people there are Catholics,” according to the N. Y. Post of January 11, 1944. The Herlands report observed that this mile-and-a-half area, constituting the 40th Precinct, has 279 bars and taverns and a very high rate of child delinquency.

No lasting security against anti-Semitic terrorism in New York City can be expected as long as Roman Catholics continue to monopolize the police force, especially its key positions. A showy spurt of self-interested activity against street hoodlumism first began among police officers after recent newspaper publicity. It can be expected to last only as long as the publicity campaign that occasioned it.

Algernon B. Black, well-known head of the New York ETHICAL CULTURE SOCIETY, in a broadcast over station WHN on January 2 said:

Mayor La Guardia, an inveterate politician, is extremely responsive to Catholic political pressure. He refused for months to make public the report of Commissioner of Investigation Herlands until forced to do so under threat of a City Council investigation. He did nothing about information given him a few years ago by J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI concerning the presence of 1,500 CHRISTIAN FRONTERS that were already on the New York police force at that time.

Catholic Lewis J. Valentine is Commissioner of Police in New York City and a member of Our Lady of Guadalupe parish in Brooklyn. Coughlinite policemen have always been able to rely on him for protection. Last year unquestionable evidence was brought before him to show that Catholic patrolman John Drew was a fellow-traveler of the CHRISTIAN FRONT, and active anti-Semite and a contributor to four organizations now under Federal indictment for sedition. Valentine, after a departmental hearing, dismissed all charges against Drew, and restored him to active service with back pay without even giving him a reprimand. The following day Commissioner of Investigation Herlands publicly denounced Valentine’s action as “contrary to the evidence and to sound public policy.” But Catholic political power, which stood behind Valentine and the CHRISTIAN FRONTERS, never allowed the proceedings of the Drew trial to be published. It was able to laugh at the protests of Jews and liberals. As late as January 16, it “persuaded” Mayor La Guardia to have Drew on the City radio program as his “guest star” to tell the public what a broad-minded fellow he is.

The Catholic hierarchy countered recent protests over anti-Semitism by indulging in the ballyhoo that is usually featured on such occasions. Even Bishop Molloy of Brooklyn, superior over the ill-famed Brooklyn Tablet as well as over anti-Semitic Fathers Curran and Brophy, had the nerve to make an airy protest against anti-Semites! No practical move, of course, was made to remedy conditions through the Catholic press and parochial schools.

The most foreboding fact in American anti-Semitism is that prominent and wealthy Jews, as well as the Jewish organizations they dominate, contribute heavily to organizations that make a deliberate policy of appeasing political Catholicism. THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF CHRISTIANS AND JEWS, with its back-slapping interfaith conferences, from which the Catholic church is the sole gainer, is just such an organization.⁴

A Disease With Many Symptoms by Bernard Heller

It is very difficult for a non-Jew to realize the insecurity and the anguish which American Jews experienced after one of Hitler’s anti- Jewish harangues preceding the Nazi invasion of Poland. The American Jew attended to his mercantile or professional duties, strove to give his children ample opportunities for education. rejoiced when they selected desirable life mates. After the Fuehrer’s vindictive address, however, all his strivings and aspirations seemed unavailing. Life became despair.

The recent recurrent outbreaks of hoodlumism in the United States aroused similar emotions. Incidents of hoodlum attacks on Jewish youngsters and adults in New York City appear in a report of former Commissioner William B. Herlands. Reading the Herlands report, alarmed Jews regarded the attacks as omens of a gathering storm — and possible harbingers of the fate which befell their co-religionists in Germany.

Their thoughts can be summarized in words such as the following:

From The Humanist, Autumn, 1944 1. “The Conflicts Among Catholics” by George N. Shuster in the Winter 1940 issue of the Phi Beta Kappa quarterly, The American Scholar.↩
2. A pamphlet published by The Converted Catholic Magazine giving lengthy quotations of papal decrees against the Jews that served as a blueprint for Hitler’s anti-Semitism. 15c a copy. 229 W. 48th St., N. Y. 9. N. Y. [Also included in this present volume. —Ed.]↩
3. Mr. Kenneth Leslie. Editor of The Protestant, speaking to more than 100 Protestant ministers in New York City recently branded as sinister the attempt to whitewash the CHRISTIAN FRONT elements in the New York Police Department. Also, for a pointed distinction opposing the anti-Semitism of Catholics and being anti-Catholic see Mr. Leslie’s editorial “Is The Protestant Anti-Catholic” in the January issue of his publication.↩
4. Joseph Brainin in “The American Jewish Committee Betrays Democracy.” (The Protestant, January and March, 1944, 521 Fifth Ave, N. Y.). examines the record of appeasement of that organization in articles that support Dr. Murphy’s contended — Editor.↩

Foreword from the Webmaster:

As Christians, we should not support Zionist Antichrist Israel, but neither should we hate the Jews as a people! The Apostle Paul loved his people the Jews and went out of his way to preach the Gospel to them. I believe all antisemitism comes from non-Christians, those who don’t know true salvation by grace in Jesus Christ.

This article is from the Converted Catholic Magazine of which former Roman Catholic priest, Leo Herbert Lehmann (also known as L.H. Lehmann) is the editor. It was first put online in PDF format by the LutheranLibrary.org.

IT HAS BEEN ESTIMATED that after the war the Jewish people in Europe, as a result of wholesale slaughter by the Nazi-Fascists, will be so reduced in numbers that they will never recover from their losses. Germany, even if it loses 20 percent of its population, can make up for its losses in another generation. But not the Jews.

This wholesale extermination of a people in the twentieth century, simply because of their religious background, is something that both Protestants and Catholics have much to be concerned about. For anti-Semitism is a religious problem, intimately bound up with the most fundamental belief of Christians. It stems from the death of Christ, the central and essential point of Christian soteriology. It is only in Protestant countries since the Reformation that Jews have ceased to be regarded as the ‘scapegoat’ for the responsibility and blame in connection with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Even in the United States, while the ruthless slaughter of Jews has been taking place in Europe, the Catholic press has kept up this accusation that the Jews killed Christ — as the picture (below), syndicated by the American Catholic hierarchy’s official N.C.W.C. News Service, shows. Implicit in this false accusation is an “explanation” of the horrors being meted out to Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe at that time.

It must seem impossible to Jews, and to Christians themselves if they give time to consider it, that the same death of Christ on the cross could bring the inestimable gift of salvation to one section of the human race, and at the same time be made the curse of another. Yet it has been officially pronounced by the Popes of Rome for centuries that the death of Christ forever made the Jews actual slaves of Christians whom the death of Christ made free. Here is how the great Pope Innocent III, and other popes for centuries after him, put it:¹

It must first be asked, is this true Christian teaching? Did Christ so plan that one part of the human race would be saved and made free and another part be made the slaves of those thus freed — all by one and the same act of his saving work? This teaching was dogmatized into the history of Europe by the Popes of Rome up till the time of the Protestant Reformation, and is the root cause of the slaughter of millions of innocent Jewish people that has taken place under Nazi-Fascist domination of Europe during the past five years. It must further be remembered that this ruthless slaughter was carried out by the Nazi-Fascist regimes to which the Vatican allied itself by solemn concordats — and to which it remains allied to this date. But it is not, and could never be, true Christian teaching.

The Protestant Reformation, out of which came democratic freedoms and equality before God of all human beings, put an end to this Roman Catholic teaching and established it so that the Jews, even while remaining Jews by race and religion, are the equal of Christians in their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is thus that Jesus Christ himself would have it, so that by justice, equality, love and kindness, the Jews might eventually be led to accept Jesus Christ as their Savior. Christ himself was born a Jew and all his apostles and followers were Jews. He was put to death by Roman soldiers after sentence by a Roman judge. The priests of the Jewish religion — who played politics with the officials of the Roman government over the heads of their people, much as the Vatican does today — conspired to have Jesus put to death by the Romans. “It is not lawful for us to put any man to death,” they told Pilate (John 18:31). But the Jewish people had no more to do with it than the Roman Catholic people in America have had to do with the political intrigues of the Vatican with Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and other Fascist dictators.

Saint Paul was a Jew, though he claimed Roman citizenship. He taught no such doctrine that Jews were the slaves of Christians because they conspired in the death of Christ. In his desire to bring all to Christ he declared (Gal. 3:28): “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” But that was before the Romans took over control of the Christian church and established their juridical concepts of ‘interdict’, ‘delict,’ and hierarchical authority.

Jesus Christ died to save all who truly accept him as Savior. He died to set all men free, and by his death could have enslaved no one. No true Christian, grateful for having been made free himself by the death of Christ, could ever bring himself to believe that the act that made him free made his Jewish neighbor his slave. But it is only in predominantly Protestant countries that Jews have been able to exercise their equal rights with Christians before the law.

The solution of the problem of anti-Semitism awaits official recognition of similar rights for Jews from the Roman Catholic church and governments of Roman Catholic countries.

1. cf. Migne, Patrologia, Vol. 27, p. 1291. For other decrees of the Popes against the Jews, see our pamphlet: “How the Popes Treated the Jews.” [Available from LutheranLibrary.org —Ed]↩

The title of this article is what pastor Charles A. Jennings gave to his “The 13-point biblical description of the Antichrist” at the beginning of the YouTube below entitled, “70 Weeks and Logical Conclusions – Part 3. I hope you see the entire video and the first two parts as well. I am transcribing from the video only what pastor Jennings has to say about the Antichrist.

Transcript

I would like to read a description of, “The Antichrist.” And I have entitled this short article “Will the Real Antichrist Please stand up.”

So I’m going to mention several possibilities, and which man or group best fits the biblical description of the Antichrist, or the man of sin down through time.

Bible scholars and preachers have have suggested several different men to be the Antichrist, starting with Nero, Domitian, Diocletian, Mohammad, Charlemagne, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Woodrow Wilson, Mussolini, Hitler, – naturally, of course, they got to get those in there – Stalin, FDR, JFK, Armand Hammer, Henry Kissinger, Saddam Hussein, President Obama, Ahmadinejad, a Jew or the Papal dynasty.

Let me read you a 13 point description of the Man of Sin. (I added the Scriptures that go with the points.)

1. As the little horn must come out of the Roman Empire.
   Daniel 7:8  I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things.
2. Prevail over the saints or the body of Christ.
   Revelation 13:7  And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.
3. Sits in the temple or the Church of God.
   2 Thessalonians 2:4  Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.
4. Pretends to be God or the Vicar of Christ.
   Ibid. 2 Tess 2:4
5. Is “that Wicked,” that is, the direct successor of Rome’s chief religious ruler.
   2 Thessalonians 2:8  And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:
6. His position and power comes from the succession of the previous four world empires.
7. Speaks great things and blasphemies against God.
   Revelation 13:5  And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.
8. Possessed power over all nations.
   Revelation 13:7  And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.
9. Declared war on the saints, that is the true body of Christ.
   Ibid. Rev. 13:7
10. Demands worship.
    Revelation 13:8  And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
11. Is the supreme ruler of the apostate church system known as the Great Whore.
12. Represents the apostate church that is drunken with the blood of the saints and the martyrs of Jesus.
    Revelation 17:6  And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration.
13. Represents the apostate church that is rich, yet full of filthiness.
    Revelation 17:4  And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:

Now, who would you say fits that category or fits that description of the Antichrist? There is only one logical conclusion, and that is the papal dynasty.

(End of comments from Charles Jennings.)

Men die but Satan lives on in the spirit world. He rules the world thorough the most powerful and influential man in the world at the time, and when that one dies, Satan goes to that man’s successor or the next most powerful and influential man. I think anyone should be able to understand that concept.

The leaders of the Protestant Reformation starting with Martin Luther all recognized the office of the papacy as the seat of the Man of Sin, the Antichrist. Why are most Christians guessing today who he might be? It’s because of the work of the Jesuits and the Counter-Reformation! Jesuit Francesco Ribera circa 1585 cooked up the false interpretation of Daniel 9:27 saying the Antichrist is going to make a covenant with the Jews when in fact it was Jesus the Messiah Who confirmed the covenant that God made with Abraham, the covenant of grace though faith! I wrote extensively on this subject on this website.

This article is from, “Out of the Labyrinth: The Conversion of a Roman Catholic Priest“, by Leo Herbert Lehmann. It was published in 1947 and made available online by The Lutheran Library Publishing Ministry LutheranLibrary.org.

THE DOGMATIC BELIEFS and ritualistic ceremonials of the Roman Catholic Church are sustained by a thinly-intellectual veneer, called the Scholastic system of reasoning. Everything taught to and practiced by Catholics is supposed to be proved by the syllogisms of this specialized system of philosophy. It was borrowed from the Greek philosopher Aristotle, but has been so corrupted that it now has only a bare resemblance to what Aristotle taught.

Nothing has contributed more to discredit belief in God and the redemptive work of Christ than this attempt of Roman Catholic theologians to prove them by their trick syllogistic reasoning. It has driven many to atheism or complete agnosticism. Worst of all, it has caused many millions of well-intentioned and sincere seekers after God to lapse into religious indifferentism. Of all the inadequate metaphysical yardsticks to measure the immeasurable immensity of the deity and explain Christ’s way of salvation, none is less satisfying and more harmful than the Scholastic syllogism of the Roman Catholic medieval reasoners. It proves nothing beyond what is already known or believed. It begins with the assumption of the proof it pretends to show. It uses the old trick of the stage magician who only takes out of the hat what he first puts into it unknown to the audience. But it suits perfectly the structure of Roman Catholic law and theology, since nothing in Catholic teaching and practice must ever be proved to be different from what has been already established. In this way Catholic Church dogmas remain forever immutable and unquestionable.

No one was more opposed to the absurdity of trying to convert people to Christianity by trick syllogisms than Cardinal Newman, who is boosted as the Catholic Church’s greatest convert in modern times. In his Grammer of Assent he says:

Few Roman Catholics know that Cardinal Newman was very unhappy after he became a Roman Catholic. He made honest efforts to awaken Roman Catholics to the need of finding first-hand proof of God’s existence and knowledge of salvation from the Bible. For this he was distrusted and persecuted by the Roman inquisitors. In his Life of Cardinal Newman, his Catholic biographer¹ quotes from a letter of Newman to H. Wilberforce as follows:

The chief engineer of this structure of Roman Catholic philosophy was St. Thomas Aquinas, who lived in the thirteenth century. It was he who fixed the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church in their syllogistic molds, as they are known and used to this day. He gathered together all the beliefs and practices that had developed in the Roman Catholic Church throughout the preceding centuries and tried to prove them all by his special system of medieval reasoning. He called his finished work the Summa Theologica. His aim was not to find out the truth about the teaching of Christ as contained in the Bible and New Testament. His task was to find reasons (or excuses) for the beliefs and practices already existing in the Catholic Church and to fix them forever as immutable dogmas that must never be questioned. He sought for conclusions to the logic of words, not for the spiritual power that makes men the children of God through Christ. Like the logicians Cardinal Newman berated, he was more set on concluding rightly than upon right conclusions.

The lack of true spirituality in the religion of Rome to this day can be traced to this juggling of words by Thomas Aquinas to sustain the corrupt practices of the Catholic Church. Like Anselm before him, Aquinas was a clever apologist for the paganization of the Christian religion before his time. He made no attempt to reform the abuses that had multiplied in the Church for over a thousand years. All he did was to brace up the structure of the papacy by the formulations of syllogistic logic. He closed his eyes to the fact that the entire foundation of the Roman religion was corrupted and eaten away. The patch-work of Aquinas made the task all the more difficult for the Protestant reformers, three centuries later, when they set forth to restore the true teachings of Christ to the world. It made it necessary for them to overturn the whole structure of the papacy from its very foundations.

The philosophical formulations of Aquinas’ work were concerned particularly with sustaining the main dogmas on which the Roman Catholic Church rests — the sacrifice of the mass, with its doctrine of transubstantiation; purgatory; confession; saint worship, and indulgences. His plan of the Incarnation and Redemption was borrowed from St. Anselm of Canterbury (A. D. 1033). To Aquinas alone goes the praise for the elaboration of such peculiar doctrines as transubstantiation. The very word itself was his own invention. Against all the principles of physical laws, he laid it down that in the mass, the substance of the wafer of bread is transmuted by the words of a priest into the living flesh of Jesus Christ. Neither Aquinas nor anyone who has come after him has ever explained how this happens, or what becomes of the substance of the bread in the wafer. It was something that was believed long before the time of Aquinas, and he found a magic word for it. He reasoned out and proved the other great dogmas of the Roman Catholic religion in the same way. Papal specifications called for an actual corporeal presence of Jesus Christ in the wafer of bread. Aquinas made up the formula, into which certain quotations from the Bible were conveniently fitted. His papal masters also called upon him to supply syllogistic formulas to substantiate the Catholic practice of confession and priestly absolution for sins, for the existence of purgatory, and saint worship. Aquinas gave them all they asked for. His magic syllogism, like the prestidigitator’s hat, produced them all — because they were all first put into it.

It was this engineering of an unreal and forced alliance of Christianity with the mere chance historical development of power in the Roman Catholic Church that has been responsible for the three great perversions of Christ’s true teachings. These three perversions are: ecclesiasticism, sacramentalism and dogmatism. They are three aspects of the papacy’s betrayal of the redemptive work of Christ. They are the three means by which the people have been robbed of religious and civil sovereignty. For these three perversions have sustained religious and civil dictatorship for nearly two thousand years. They destroy the innate rights of the common people to form a true Christian democracy.

Christianity, as rightly taught, can have nothing to do with autocracy of any kind, ecclesiastical or civil. Its development can never be stilted by cramping dogmatism. It is also opposed to sacramentalism, which injects into religion an un-Christlike notion of sacrifice with an accompanying priestly caste.

The teaching of Christ disclaimed all compromise with autocracy, and denied all need of further sacrifice after His universal sacrifice on the cross. The only sacrifice it demands is the collective burnt-offering of all the ignorance, superstition, conventional formalism, of the mass of half-truths and compromise which have heretofore stood in the way of man’s liberation. “You shall know the truth,” said Christ, “and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:22). Man’s redemption and liberation is not a problem that can be solved by metaphysics. If it were it would be unjustly confined to a favored few. Christianity is the spirit of adventure, free to all men in the great open spaces where men congregate. It ought never to have been shut up within the academic circle of the classroom, nor in the choir stalls of cathedrals.

The Christian Gospel proclaimed the good news that a man had been born who was of the same nature as God. Accompanying this message was the assurance that all men might, if they would, share the life of this man, even to the partaking of his flesh and blood. “As many as received, him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name; which were bom, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12,13).

It was by this road that liberty came into the world, not as the privilege or the accomplishment of superior persons or of any ecclesiastical trust or monopoly, but as the right of every man by virtue of his very humanity. This is the pivotal point of Christianity and of all human history. If a man is just a mere creature of God, the quintessence of dust, he must be ruled, like the animals, forever by external law and dictatorship. In that case, the sovereignty of absolutism, based upon the foundations of economic and defensive necessity, would be irrevocably established. This is what Fascism and Nazism tried to make the world believe, and it is thus no wonder that their contentions were supported by the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church.

On the other hand, if it be true, as Christ taught, that a man may become the kin of God, then for a certainty the sovereignty of the people will be established, even though it may take many more centuries of tragedy and failure to make it come to pass. It can never be established, however, by brute force, but only by the free association of enlightened and spiritually consecrated people.

The allotted work of the Christian Church was to attain this end by coordinating and ‘catholicizing’ the wills of the people for their ultimate governance of the world. It had a duty gradually to reduce the economic and police forces to a relation of organic subordination to this ideal. It would in the end abolish forever the infidel empire of musts and must-nots, since all the people, having been “born again” as sons of God would need no outside force to keep order among individuals or nations. Christianity was therefore intended to establish a universal order in the spirit of democracy, to be, in other words, the genesis of the American ideal.

The fact that Christianity has so far failed in this is the tragedy of history. And the blame for this tragedy rests on the Roman Catholic Church, which has persisted in preserving the absolutism of an imperial Christianity. In the beginning, it took the place of the decayed Roman Empire, and acted as the necessary carrier-body of man’s redemptive spirit. But it has become a monster in this, that, being only a body, it has usurped unto itself the functions of spirit. Its head, the pope, claims to be the mouthpiece of the Holy Ghost and the vicar of Jesus Christ. It naturally could not produce the fruits of the spirit. Instead, it produced, as it only could, the fruits of legalism, externalism and a mere corporate unity welded together by the evil force of papal absolutism. Bound to the Roman curia, Christianity could not be expected to bring forth the truth and freedom promised to mankind by its founder Jesus Christ. Truth and freedom are correlative: truth cannot be obtained by force and metaphysical reasoning; neither can liberty be granted by charter of any corporate system.

The modern democratic conception of liberty is nothing newer than the Christian teaching of inalienable individual rights and the mystery and awe of co-creatorship with, and sonship of God. More than ever before, it is now being realized that such an idea of liberty cannot come to terms with any kind of ecclesiastical trust or spiritual monopoly. Only recently have thinking people begun to understand that real liberty cannot be created by any system of government or legal corporate entity; that it can never be a thing hammered into shape by obscure, undefined terminology and clamped down upon people in the mass. They are beginning to see that not upon the fixity of philosophical and theological codes, but upon the sound relations of a lot of private individuals to the universe as made by God, can the expectations of the coming justice and beauty for men on earth be realized.

Liberty can only be built up synthetically by units, by individuals brave enough to find God for themselves; who do not try to shift the responsibility for their salvation to priests of any Church; who are courageous enough to reject the claims of priests that the Church is a kind of ‘spiritual insurance society’ that can guarantee them against loss of salvation in the next world; who are fully convinced that there is no human person or power, religious or legal, that is able to assume their souls. This liberty will increase when enough people fully understand that God has appointed no earthly agents with power of attorney to act for him, and that the only true sovereignty is in their own souls, not in those who sit on the thrones of kings or popes. In spite of all its grandiose claims, a Church system like the Roman papacy can excommunicate but can never exclude from salvation; the State likewise can execute, but cannot convict. A true Christian obtains the grace of salvation by himself through Christ; the sinner convicts himself by his own crimes.

The Roman Catholic Church is irrevocably bound to its medieval philosophical and theological code, which denies this conception of liberty. Its autocratic, juristic system is the enemy of every true witness of this spirit of liberty the moment he attempts to assert it. Christian democracy therefore cannot stop even to argue with the Roman papacy. Nor should it fear its threats or hesitate to prevent repetition of its political intrigues with those who, even after the defeat of Fascism and Nazism, may still try to rob the common man again of hard-won religious, economic and civil liberties.

For a fuller treatment of the development of Christianity into the communal ideology of modern democracy, see The Religion of Democracy, and The Affirmative Intellect, by Charles Ferguson, published by Funk & Wagnalls Co., 1906.

1. Cf. Ward’s Life of Cardinal Newman, Vol. II, p. 252.↩

This article is from, “Out of the Labyrinth: The Conversion of a Roman Catholic Priest“, by Leo Herbert Lehmann. It was published in 1947 and made available online by The Lutheran Library Publishing Ministry LutheranLibrary.org.

NO ONE can fail to notice how much idolatry is flaunted in the faces of Christians today. Pictures of people suppliant before images abound in the secular press, and on tens of thousands of movie screens idolatrous displays and worshiping before images have become the regular diet of the American public. Protestants have become so accustomed to these things that they are beginning to lose the sense of shock to their Christian sensibilities. Our American cities, like Athens as Saint Paul saw it, are given over to idolatry, and the revived cult of Jezebel, both crude and cultured, finds an eager following.

Paganization of the life of a people is a gradual process. Satan does not make his initial attack in the open. He uses the ‘softening up’ process first, by introducing a disintegrating element, the evil of which, however, is hidden under a feeling of security and special privilege. He seduces the people of God with the attractive leaven of idolatry and its fond deceptions. He uses the evil and artful promoter of idolatrous teaching who has always been symbolized by the woman Jezebel.

The historic Jezebel was the idolatrous queen of the weak and wicked Ahab. She brought into Israel all the abominations of her heathen land. Cruel boasting and scheming, she boldly seized the God-given inheritance of Naboth after causing his death. She feasted at her table the infamous prophets of Baal, and by cunning and cruelty silenced the true prophets and worshipers of the Lord. So successful was she in this, that Elijah thought he was the only worshiper of the true God left in Israel.

This seducing Jezebel has been brought into our midst in America. The abominations she has carried with her from her heathen land have permeated all the institutions of American life. they are to be seen on the higher levels of art and literature as well as on the low levels of base pleasure and amusement. Everything is, as it were, encrusted with it. In religion, where she ranks as a prophetess, Jezebel sets forth her fascinating deceptions — a monstrous mingling of pagan and Christian elements, thus corrupting sound doctrine and perverting the truth. In the Roman Catholic Church she holds an exalted place and her teaching is authoritative. There she is adept at disguising her pagan ancestry under a thin veneer of Christian phraseology.

Converts to Roman Catholicism like Mrs. Clare Luce, prompted by Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen and other priest-tutors, put forth specious arguments in an effort to prove that Roman Catholics are not taught to worship or pray to statues and images; that they only pray before them and to the saints thus worshiped. Despite such plausible excuses, it cannot be denied that Roman Catholicism has made the second commandment of God of no effect among its people, and teaches for Christian doctrine the precepts of its Church, which are the commandments of men. In fact, it has entirely eliminated the wording of the second commandment from its version of the Decalogue in its catechisms and textbooks.¹

On Mt. Sinai God, through Moses, spoke saying: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them”

In order to explain the absence of the above commandment in Roman Catholic listings of the Decalogue, Catholic apologists will tell you, of course, that it is implicitly contained in the first commandment. But no matter what specious reasons they concoct, they cannot deny that they teach their people to make graven images and to bow down before them. This is a direct violation of the second commandment of God which specifically says: “Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image… Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them…” Roman Catholics do both. They not only make the images, but also bow down on bended knees before them, light candles to them and burn incense before them.

As a student and a priest in Rome, I had to officiate on Christmas night at the ceremony of carrying in procession a gorgeously dressed doll-image (bambino) of the infant Jesus under a Japanese umbrella.

The image was placed on the high altar, hymns were sung to it and a priest, on bended knees, offered up incense before it. Then the little doll was presented to the congregation and each one kneeling kissed its stomach, inside of which we believed was a piece of the manger in which Christ was born. When we visited St. Peter’s Basilica we were told that an indulgence could be gained by kissing the foot of a huge metal statue, supposed to be that of Saint Peter, but said to be actually an ancient image of Marcus Aurelius. All semblance of a foot had long disappeared, since it had been kissed away until only a smooth, polished piece of shapeless metal remained. Reporting the ceremonies in Ottawa, Canada, at the Marian Congress in June, 1947, Life magazine drew attention to the fact that a long procession of devout people knelt and kissed the foot of the giant statue of Mary “until the paint wore off its toes.”

Pictures in an illustrated Italian newspaper of recent (in 1947 date² show that devout Catholic people in Naples still crawl prostrate on their stomachs before the images of their Madonnas and lick the ground with their tongues on their way to the statues. The New York Department of Health was obliged some years ago to put a stop to this practice among Italian people in the Bronx, because so many cases of tetanus resulted from it.

Down in their hearts, these Roman Catholic apologists know well enough that to bow down to an image is to confess worship to it. To all outward appearance and intent, this Roman Catholic practice of kneeling and bowing before images, lighting candles before them and offering up incense to them, differs in no way from the same practice of the Buddhists in India and of pagan people in other lands.

It is easy enough to understand how such corruption of religion begins and develops, and how God’s awful prohibition and condemnation are eventually sidestepped. The natural heart of man is prone to the worship of images, is attracted to the tangible creature that in the end completely takes the place of God. This tendency springs from an aversion in the unregenerate heart to the perfect purity of God, despite a sense of dependence and guilt before God. The nearer man gets to the Holy One, the deeper becomes his sense of guilt. He naturally turns aside from a direct fellowship with One so much higher and holier than himself. He wants to be cleansed, but is unwilling either to confess himself a sinner, or to believe that God has so loved him that He gave His only-begotten Son as an all- sufficient Saviour from sin. He turns instead to what the apostle Paul calls the “beggarly elements” (Gal. 4:9) and offers worship to an inferior creature, superior, however, to himself, in order to intercede for him. He feels that he can fellowship with this creature, who is inferior to God but much higher than himself, but still a creature on the same level with himself.

In this way all idolatry and paganization of religion are explained. And of this the Roman Catholic Church has taken profitable advantage. Its apologists make excuses for the worship of images and the use of inferior mediators by teaching that sinful man is not worthy to approach directly to God. Jesus Christ, they say, only brought justice, not mercy on earth, and that we must look to His mother and His special friends, the saints, to obtain mercy for us. Thus Mary is made the “Mediatrix of all graces,” and they quote Saint Jerome that “God will not save us without the intercession of Mary.”

Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen, in his book, Preface to Religion,³ makes the same excuse to uphold the doctrine of purgatory. “The necessity of purgatory,” he says, (p. 138),“is grounded upon the absolute purity of God… If there were no purgatory, then the justice of God would be too terrible for words, for who are they who would dare assert themselves pure enough and spotless enough to stand before the Immaculate Lamb of God?”

Here can be seen Satan’s deceptive teaching that no one can dare expect such mercy from God that all his sins can be completely forgiven, or that he can be saved “to the uttermost.” This is true, of course, according to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church that man can and must earn his own salvation. If by our own works we are saved, then indeed would we have to tremble and fear that we could never adequately atone for our sins. Then indeed would it be presumptuous to dare assert ourselves, as Monsignor Sheen says, pure enough and spotless enough to stand before the Immaculate Lamb of God! Then indeed would we have to seek and look to creatures higher than us in sanctity who have earned more than we can, and to whom we could turn to intercede for us.

But that is the pagan way, the way of Jezebel. The true Christian way is, as Paul tells us (Rom. 5:1, 2): “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” And again Paul flatly contradicts Monsignor Sheen (Heb. 10:19-20): “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which He hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh.”

The Scripture teaching here clearly answers Monsignor Sheen’s question and assures us that we can dare to enter into the holiest of holies, because of this “new and living way” of Christian teaching. Monsignor Sheen prefers the old pagan way, and he is logical and correct in saying that, by this pagan way of the unregenerate human heart, we can never be pure and spotless enough to stand before the terrifying presence of the Immaculate Lamb of God. But he surely is not so blind that he does not see the vast difference between the two. Complete spiritual blindness alone can excuse his failure to see it. If he is not spiritually blind, then he must be downright dishonest. He stands convicted of either one or the other by the above text of Hebrews.

I consider it a most extraordinary thing now that these defenders of saints and their images should seize upon the “absolute purity of God” as excuse for focusing the worship of their people downward to things of earth. By doing so, they are actually playing upon the aversion in the unregenerate heart of man to this perfect purity of God. They pander to the tendency in sinful man to spurn and reject the love of God as manifested in Christ, the one mediator and all-sufficient Saviour. This also serves to enhance and protect the power of the priest. It makes it necessary to set up an image which the people can see and which the priest can handle. For vain man must be master of his God. Priests in all religions have made it a cardinal principle of their teaching to make sure that the power of God they worship does not get out of their control. For this reason they made victims of their Gods so that they could handle and sacrifice them at will.

To be pitied therefore are the faithful followers of the priests of the Roman Catholic Church who are taught to reject the love of God and his plan of Christian redemption whereby they can be so purified by “a new and living way” that they can stand before God holy and blameless. Instead they are provided with idols and told that they dare not hope to have the boldness to enter into the holiest and have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. They are not taught that our Lord has consecrated that new way for them through the shedding of his blood in his all-sufficient sacrifice on Calvary. Instead of that one great sacrifice of Calvary, they are given the idolatrous sacrifice of the mass, an affair of the hands and the magic of the breath of a priest whereby a sinful creature is believed to be able to create the God who made him!

Thus the wafer of bread in the Roman Catholic mass, made by human hands as all bread is made, is called God and adored on bended knees. This is the climax of the abominations of Jezebel. Without this caricature of Calvary, the Roman Catholic Church could not survive. “Jezebel… painted her face and tired her head, and looked out at a window.” (2 Kings 9:30).

Today this same Jezebel has taken her place at the window. She is in the public eye. She is bold, for her time is short. She has painted her face, thus masking all the coarseness and vileness of her withered soul. She is defiant. She has decked her head, given herself a magnificent triple crown. Arrayed in her own pagan splendor she stands in the way of those who have a right to the crown of life and to receive the crown of glory. Jezebel derides the people of God — and Elijah has fled. He who stood on Mount Carmel and exposed the prophets of Baal for the miserable impostors they were and brought down the fierce judgment of God upon them, has quailed and fled before the threat of Jezebel. There is here, I think, a lesson for the timid Protestant leaders of our day, a picture of the people of God standing in awe in the face of onrushing idolatry, with few dissenting voices, all afraid of Jezebel!

But now that she flaunts her painted face from her lofty eminence, Jezebel’s destruction, as of old, will be certain and swift. The fury of God will come up in his face and he will cast her down. For Christ, the image of the invisible God — the only image and only rightful object of worship — must conquer in the end. Jezebel, the idolatrous teacher of vanities and deceptions, will in due time be cast down and utterly consumed. Like the historical Jezebel who was eaten of dogs, all idolatrous systems of worship shall be found no more — “so that they shall not say, This is Jezebel.”

1. See, for example, My Sunday Missal, by Father Joseph Stedman, p. 299, and the versions of the Catholic Baltimore Catechism, taught in all parochial schools.↩
2. L’Europeo, April 5, 1947.↩
3. P. J. Kenedy and Sons, 1946.↩

This is from the June 1944 edition of the Converted Catholic Magazine.

THOSE who insist that Peter was the first Pope entirely disregard the fact that he left in writing, as part of the Bible, instructions as to how the Christian church should be ruled. They read intently the encyclical letters of Pope Pius XII. but either ignore or are unaware of the letters of the Apostle Peter, which no Pope today would dare to emphasize.

For Peter preached and put into writing the principles of the real New Order of the Christian dispensation. He would have been untrue to his Master had he taught that one man could be an autocrat over other men, either in spiritual or political matters. “Ye are a chosen generation,” he told the early Christians, “a royal (kingly) priesthood.” (I Peter 2:9). Peter’s doctrine is that each one is his own king and his own priest. This is democracy with a vengeance! In civil government each one was to possess the highest governing power, and, as in our American democracy, merely delegate this power by election, for a limited time, to those he chooses to represent him in the work of governing.

Most important of all, Peter taught that in religious matters each one is his own priest, a member of “a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.” (I Peter 2:5)

Peter furthermore expressly forbids the ministers of the Christian religion to lord it over the flock. He exhorts them as elders, as he himself is just an elder, not to use force in the ordering of things within the church. How then can the Pope of Rome, who claims to be Peter’s successor, consider himself an autocratic king in temporal affairs and the sole mouthpiece of God on earth? The history of the Popes is in direct contradiction to the teaching of Peter. Instead of following Peter, the Popes have imitated the Caesars of the Roman empire and the Pontifex Maximus of the pagan religion of Rome, whose title they appropriated. They have always supported tyrannical monarchs and brutal dictators who oppressed the people, who are true priests and kings in the Christian sense. They have killed this right of the people by condemning it as “socialism” and “communism.” No doubt, if Peter were on earth today, the Pope would brand him too as a Communist — and a Jewish Communist at that.

This is from the October 1921 edition of the Converted Catholic Magazine.

In a sermon published in “The Western Watchman” (St. Louis) of June 27, 1912, the editor, Rev. D. S: Phelan, LL.D., then dean of the Papal press propagandists in this country, said: (Italics ours. Bold, the webmaster’s.)

“We Are Catholics First”

Just how far this Papal writer’s statements were accurate in respect of the individuals making up the lay membership of the Church, there is, of course, no means of knowing. But he received no censure from his superiors for these utterances so far as the public knew at the time. Nor did he retract or modify them in any way in consequence of remonstrances from individual Catholics.

An important point to bear in mind is that we must assume that all the teachers in Catholic educational establishments stand for these pronouncements of the authorities of their Church, especially those of the Popes, and that fact in the opinion of many of our readers makes the continuance of their work with the young a menace to this Republic and its free institutions.

(End of text from the Converted Catholic Magazine.)

In my opinion, this article clearly identifies the Roman Catholic Church as a political organization. If you would say, “The Christians of the world love Jesus Christ more than they do their own governments” I would certainly agree with that. We are indeed supposed to love the Lord more than anything. But we don’t go to war with the government or commit acts of violence toward the government, we just refuse to obey any government mandate that go against our conscience, things we know are morally wrong and against what the Bible says. That’s what all the martyrs throughout the centuries did.

Acts 5:29  Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.

Introduction by the webmaster.

This is from the December 1920 edition of the Converted Catholic Magazine. If the Vatican wielded so much power in 1920 according to the article, think how much it wields 104 years later in this present day. In my previous article The Vatican’s Immigration War, Christian J. Pinto says the following:

So there you have it, the Jesuit / Vatican plan for America in a nutshell. I believe it. That’s how I see it. And I also think those who may not believe it are the ones who don’t know history! This is why I am posting a lot of history on this website. A friend tells me we don’t need to know history to correctly interpret Scripture, all we need is the Bible. I disagree. I think knowing history is very important. The Bible indicates in 1 Corinthians 10:11 that knowing the history of how God dealt with people in the past is important!

Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.

So this article is more history for you to be able to correctly understand the present a little better.

The Vatican is again (in 1920) a great power in world politics. It has been my business to examine many of the manifestations of this immense revival, and not in one, but in practically every country in Europe, and to a considerable extent in Canada and America. There are certain phenomena that are occurring all over the globe in which the Church of Rome is playing indubitably a prominent part after some years of comparative political extinction, and it is impossible not to put together the various movements and events and come to the conclusion that once bound Romanism has become a huge force to be reckoned with.

It always has been necessary to take Romanism seriously into the reckoning, but never anything like so much as now, and the Vatican is out to capture more and more control of world affairs. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the Vatican controls the world in a much more real and widespread way than any other individual Government. Governments are striving, each from its own center, to control the world, and are keenly realizing how powerless they are in the confusion of things—how their writ does not run far or effectively beyond their own realm; whereas the Vatican, which has no territorial realm, which has only a center, has its spiritual kingdom everywhere.

Power of the Vatican

To it politicians, no matter what their creed, are turning for help. Apparently, the statesmen find it impossible to preserve order in the complex and topsy-turvy universe without its influence. It is so vital a factor in restoration that even Protestant (or rather agnostic) Englishmen like Mr. Arthur Balfour are asking that the moral authority of the Vatican be utilized on the League of Nations in order to make the League something of a reality; that even the anti-Catholic rulers of France are willing to make any concessions that public opinion would stand to enlist the diplomatic support of the Pope in the government of Alsace-Lorraine and the formation of a great Catholic bloc in Central Europe to counterbalance the aggressive and Protestant Prussia; that even the Italian King and authorities are seeking something more than “frozen enmity”—a real reconciliation—with the Pope, who regards them as usurpers on his proper territory, because without Papal assistance they may be swallowed up in the revolutionary vortex; that even—but we shall see how manifold are these manifestations of a new respect for the political power of the Curia (the body of congregations, tribunals, and offices through which the pope governs the Roman Catholic Church).

Before proceeding to elaborate on these statements and show their practical importance for America, let us consider for a moment how inevitable is this revival. There have been bad blunders made by the political directors of the Holy See, and there has been great opposition to them, with some reversals of fortune perhaps not altogether deserved. But nothing could rob this tremendous organization, with its 300,000,000 of adherents forming a solid bloc in almost every civilized country, of its influence on affairs. The Church, unlike others except the Mohammedan Church, is a worldwide institution. All other forms of Christianity are essentially national. Rome stands eternal, and if the Papal possessions are gone, the influence of Rome transcends all questions of territory. It has no frontiers. The orders of Rome mean more than the orders of any other outside authority, and often more than the orders of the inside authority, and this power goes everywhere. It is shut up in no watertight department of State.

It would be strange, indeed, if no use were made in the political sphere of this might. Its powers, transmitted from one center through an endless chain of functionaries, an unbroken, trained hierarchy, will have an amazing potency.

Power in United States

The Czech can be affected by the same decision of the same authority as the Irish-born American. There is certainly no other power to compare with that of the Vatican, in spite of its vicissitudes of the last hundred years or so. And in point of numbers the Church controlled from Rome is growing at an incredible rate. Take the case of America. There were in 1910 something over 12,000,000 members; in 1915 nearly 14,000,000, and in the last year 16,000,000. I am giving official figures. It would be hard to match this progress, and if the Church has grown so remarkably in America it has always been far and away the largest individual Church, the Protestant bodies being broken up into a score of sects.

Sixteen million active adherents! What a wonderful voting organization, and how could the Vatican fail to direct in some measure the policies of candidates, of the eventual President? That in fact this pressure was used is well known. Individual priests like Dr. Mannix, of course, mean something, but prove nothing. He helped the fiery crusade; but he is a single and rather compromising person; and it is perhaps good tactics to repudiate him. What is much more important is the general attitude of Catholic agents of all kinds, an attitude that is not expressed in wild gestures, but in quiet work.

Influence in Ireland

In Ireland itself the influence of the priesthood may be more clearly discerned. All who have had occasion to visit that unhappy country have borne testimony to the responsibility of the priests for the strength of the national movement. It is not my purpose to assess the moral values of the fact; but that the Vatican could have exercised a decisive influence —and in fact did—on events is obvious. The interest of the Vatican as conceived by Cardinal Gasparri, who is the astute political director, is to obtain the largest measure of liberty for Roman Catholic populations everywhere in the world, in order that Romanism itself may be strengthened in a religious sense and in its diplomatic relations with the Courts and foreign offices.

For many ages [we may quote from the Statesman’s Year Book] until Pius IX.’s reign, with some comparatively short breaks, the Popes or Roman Pontiffs bore temporal sway over a territory stretching across Mid-Italy from sea to sea and comprising an area of some 16,000 square miles, with a population finally of some 3,125,000 souls. Of this dominion the whole has been incorporated with the Italian Kingdom. Furthermore, by an Italian law dated May 13, 1871, there was guaranteed to his Holiness and his successors for ever, besides possessions of the Vatican and Lateran palaces and the villa of Castel Gandolfo, a yearly income of 3,225,000 lire, or £129,000, which allowance (whose arrears would in 1915 amount to 145,125,000 lire, or £5,805,000, without interest) still remains unclaimed and unpaid.

The central administration of the Roman Catholic Church is carried on by a number of permanent committees called Sacred Congregations, composed of Cardinals, with consultors and officials. There are now eleven Sacred Congregations, viz., Holy Office, Consistorial, Discipline of the Sacraments, Council, Religious, Propaganda Fide, Index, Rites, Ceremonial, Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, Studies. Besides these there are several permanent commissions, for example, one for Biblical studies, another for historical studies, another for preservation of the faith, in Rome, another for codification of canon law. Furthermore, the Roman Curia contains three tribunals, to wit, the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signature, and the Sacred Roman Rota; and, lastly, various offices, as the Apostolic Chancery, the Apostolic Datary, the Angaiglic Chamber, the Secretariate of State, etc.

The States wherewith the Holy See maintains diplomatic relations were (before the break-up of Europe) Austria-Hungary, Bavaria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, Prussia, Russia, Spain and the United Kingdom (1914), together with most of the American republics, except the United States and Mexico.

Thus it will be observed that there is, in spite of the alleged loss of temporal, or rather territorial, power, a State Department at the Vatican to which are attached Ambassadors. Now, it is precisely the number of Ambassadors or other Ministers attached to the Holy See which will serve to prove the reality of the diplomatic power of the Pope and the extent of that power.

France and the Vatican

One of the outstanding facts for me in European politics —if not in its ultimate results and its multiple reactions altogether the most important fact—is the renewal of French relations with the Vatican. As I write, this resumption of relations is practically accomplished. There is a strange reversal of policy in France—for France has been for two generations bitterly anti-Clerical, The triumph of the Vatican is one of the most surprising events for all who have known the violent opposition of France, and of the very Ministers who are now turning to Rome, to anything that savored of Vaticanism. The explanation is simple. It is that French diplomacy imperatively calls for the aid of the Vatican for its fulfillment, and the Vatican in return, of course, demands French recognition and French representation. Almost without a murmur, France, for whom republicanism has always meant anti-Clericalism, has accepted this new orientation. The man in the café may not always understand the complicated machinery, he may not know why the diplomatic wheels turn as they do, but he does understand that conditions have changed, and he is inclined to forget past quarrels with a dim belief that it is better for France to turn Rome-ward.

What the man in the café does not altogether comprehend, the politician knows. He knows what are the guiding lines of French policy. He knows that it may be regarded as influenced by four main considerations—especially in Central Europe—social, commercial, military and Catholic, and the greatest of these is Catholic. It is upon Catholicism that all the rest depend, and the Vatican saw its opportunity and made its bargain. In Middle Europe it is supreme.

Alliance Against Bolshevism

First, France is anti-Bolshevist as is no other country in the world. That is to say, she is actively and consistently so. There have been attempts to make peace with Bolshevism in every other country: in France, never. It is the Catholic Party—the Bloc National contains many elements, all republican, most of them now impregnated with Catholicism, which is the most implacable opponent of Bolshevism—that directs this resistance. M. Jacques Bainville, one of the ablest of all writers on foreign affairs in France, wrote the other day these words, which certainly deserve quotation:

“Will France not dare to be that which she really is, and that which she has appeared to all the world since her rupture with Bolshevism—that is to say, the country of resistance and of counter-revolution? Why pretend, why blush? It is a fact so clear that the epithet reactionary is applied to us everywhere. In the present state of the world it is for us to guard that description. It brings us sympathetic agreement more and more, since there is only France which will consent to bear that name, since there is a growing need of order that only France can satisfy.”

She was led by this anti-Bolshevist spirit to attempt to form a ring of States around Russia. The idea of a Roman Catholic confederation was bound to arise. Immediately there grew up at the Quai d’Orsay the notion that the Danubian States might be welded together. Unfortunately interests clashed. Romania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, formed what is known as the Petite Entente, because they were afraid of the proposed French grouping of Catholic Bavaria, Austria and Hungary. That only helped to give body to the idea. France established herself in Hungary, as her Danubian headquarters; and quickly commercial considerations reinforced the social consideration, for the advantages of controlling that magnificent waterway, which is the key to the commerce of a dozen countries, are obvious, There was also the military, that is to say the more strictly political, consideration, All these things fit in with the Roman Catholic conception which now impels French policy.

Policy in Central Europe

We shall understand why the Vatican is so valuable to France if we remember that France considers that there are two political necessities in the new Europe. The first is the dismemberment of Germany—that chimera which haunts many minds; and the second is the construction of some solid geographical unity in Central Europe, where the sledgehammer policy of pounding Austria-Hungary into a powder of little states is believed to have been a blunder. The capital fault of the Versailles Treaty was to grind Austria to dust and to assure at the same time the unity of the Reich. That the treaty consecrated this unity is perhaps the greatest grievance that France has against M. Clemenceau. There is little hostility, indeed there is much sympathy, felt for docile Austria, and it is clear that Austria’s junction with Bavaria and Bavaria’s detachment from Germany would satisfy at once the two parts of the present French political conception.

Under M. Millerand, in spite of the treaty, there has been, and there will continue to be, this return to the ancient French plan of denying the Bismarckian unity, of attempting to destroy it, by means of a rapprochement under French auspices of the Roman Catholic populations of Southern Germany and the Roman Catholic population of Austria. If this were accomplished, certainly German hegemony would be gone forever. Indeed, one might look for French hegemony to be definitely established.

It will, I trust, now be clear why France for its Middle Europe policy has need of the Vatican, and time alone will show how the project will develop. There dovetail into each ether so many advantages—a bulwark against Bolshevism, a control of the commercial waterway of the Danube, the smashing of the power of Germany, and the putting together and consolidation of jig-saw Middle-Europe.

France and Catholic Germans

The general idea, though not all its political consequences, is sustained in Parliament and in the press by M. Maurice Barrés. M. Barrés expounds and defends the theme with his accustomed eloquence, though often with a strange absence of logic. With regard to Germany he would detach all the Roman Catholic States without annexing them. Political annexation of the Rhenish provinces, for example, however much it may be desired, is impossible. But M. Barrés would have a sort of intellectual annexation. France herself must be regarded as a Roman Catholic country; the quarrel with the Vatican is better gradually closed, and there is a distinct poussée (thrust) in the direction of reconciliation.

Nowhere has Roman Catholicism regained something of its lost empire so much as in Middle Europe and in France. The present French Ministry is officially represented at functions in which it would not have taken part a few years ago. The return of Alsace-Lorraine, faithful Roman Catholic provinces, has also helped, as I myself pointed out in the English diplomatic review, “The New Europe,” in this new orientation toward Rome. Just as President Wilson distinguished between the German rulers and the German people, the Roman Catholic party (whatever may be its name) is beginning to distinguish between Prussia and the rest of Germany. An intense propaganda is proceeding both sides of the frontiers. Some surprising statements have been made in the most important journals respecting the part that was taken by Southern Germany in the war. One would be tempted to believe that Southern Catholic Germany had always been on the side of the Allies!

Forces Working for Austria

Let me quote by way of showing that always this Austrian idea—this Roman Catholic idea—was working in France even during the war, a remarkable passage in the remarkable book of M. Jean de Pierrefeu, the writer of the French daily communiqué, entitled “G. Q. G.” M. de Pierrefeu was at headquarters and heard the views of Marshal Pétain and other high officers freely expressed. He writes:

“Pétain was not a partisan of the dissolution of Austria. After the necessary reforms that the Entente should impose regarding the autonomy of peoples, for example, he considered that the empire was alone capable of maintaining union and order between races naturally hostile who, delivered to themselves, would not cease to make war and compromise peace in Europe. He believed in a policy of alliances between France, England and Austria to counterbalance Germany, especially if Germany were not divided. As we can no longer lean on Russia, which is in a state of anarchy for twenty years, he held, it is necessary to put our money on Austria. France must always have a friend in the East!”

The friend in the East is at present Hungary, but there must be an extension of the scheme and always the good offices of the Pope are needed. Is it surprising, then, that there should be the appointment of an Ambassador after so many years of rupture? One should remember, too, that Poland, another friend in the East, is Catholic. Why, even in her diplomacy in Asia Minor France is dependent on the good-will of the Pope. It is the French Catholic community of Beirut that gives her the greatest moral claim to control Syria. Certainly France has the largest interests in Europe, and all her interests are bound together diplomatically by Catholicism; and at the center of all the strings is the Vatican.

Situation in Italy

An entirely new situation has arisen in the world, of which Cardinal Gasparri—for he is the political genius of the Vatican—knows how to take legitimate advantage. The Vatican had lost practically all its power; as by a miracle it has regained its old power and more. (Note: Could this be the fulfillment of Revelation 13:3?  And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.) In Italy the Church of Rome has tried desperately hard to stay the tide of Red Socialism. It formed the Partito Popolare Italiano, or Catholic People’s Party, as a counter-blow to revolution, and it held the balance of power, making and unmaking Ministries. I have written much of it, but I am content on this subject to quote from that reputed observer, E. Sefton Delmer. He says:

“The party, with its 103 members, after the Socialists, is the best organized and best disciplined party in the Italian Parliament. Like the German Centrum it is the tongue of the parliamentary balance.”

This article is a transcription of an audio on Christian J. Pinto’s Noise of Thunder Radio program which was posted on February 20, 2024. On this website I have many articles what the Jesuits and the Vatican did centuries ago. The post is what the Jesuits and Vatican are doing today!

There is a lot of information I never knew in this article! It contains insights into the current border crisis that have historical roots from the 19th century.

Okay, praise the Lord you guys and welcome. I’m Chris Pinto. This is Noise of Thunder Radio.

Today on the show, we are going to talk about the Vatican’s immigration warfare against the United States of America. This situation is very rapidly progressing in our country and over in Europe as well. It’s really unbelievable. I mean, I don’t know how much longer we have as a nation.

And who knows what’s going to happen here in 2024, especially if President Trump is not reelected. I think he’s about the only politician who would at least slow down the rapid takeover of the United States of America.

This open borders warfare has gone on where they’re just bringing in millions and millions of these migrants that are being brought in. And if you study some of the cases, they’re talking about how now they’re trying to talk people into allowing the migrants to come and live in their homes. And they had a case of a woman up in Massachusetts who agreed to this and they showed the so-called migrant family that had come in. And these were people who didn’t look like migrants at all. I mean, they were wearing designer clothing. They looked like they were well-to-do people. They didn’t look like refugees at all.

These refugees, most of them now, there are some families. There are some women and children, but that’s really a small percentage. Most of them we’ve heard over and over and over again are fighting age, males, age 18 to 45 or so. There are exceptions, of course, but that’s the vast majority of them. And you’ve got people who are very, very suspicious, especially the guys that work down on the border.

Now, the reason I wanted to talk about this today, and of course, you guys have noticed I have not done a Noise Of Thunder radio episode for several weeks. And the reason is that I have just been focused on editing our new film, American Jesuits, bringing it to that completion point. We are almost there. Our projection now is to be able to ship copies in March next month. And that’s a very, very realistic expectation. We’ve already been setting it up with the duplicator. But for those who have pre-ordered the film, you’re going to get a lot more information.

Right now, the film is right at about two and a half hours. I’m trying to make sure we don’t go to three hours. But it’s a good lengthy presentation. Of course, most of our films are. There’s lots of information. You’re going to learn a lot of things about the Jesuit order through the 19th and 20th centuries that most people don’t know. And we’re going to show you really how the plan, the Vatican’s plan and the Jesuit plan back during the American Civil War to try and really destroy our Republic, because that was their ambition, to destroy our Republic. During the time of the Civil War, we’re going to show you how that plan unfolded. What happened? I’ve already kind of tested the waters by talking to people about some of this information. People have no idea what went on. And when we show it to you and we document it for you, it’s all going to suddenly make sense as to what is happening today.

What’s happening today with our southern border is a continuation of what went on during the American Civil War. That’s what it is. It’s a modern continuation of it. It’s plan B. Plan A did not work out for the Vatican and the powers of Europe. That didn’t work. So they’ve gone to plan B. Plan B is to try and invade our country with all of these immigrants. And they’re not trying. They’re doing it right now.

But here’s something that I wanted to point out, a new story that I saw. And this is something that a lot of us have been waiting for. This is, this is very, very disturbing. And when I say waiting for it, what I mean by that is we knew that things were moving in this direction. Anybody who grew up back in the 1970s and 80s, if you saw the film, Doctor Zhivago (1965) which is about the communist takeover of Russia, where Zhivago goes off to war. He was this doctor. He had a nice home with his family. He goes off to war. When he comes back, now communism has completely taken over the country. He walks into his house, and his wife and his family are there. But then there are also several other families living in his home. The communist leaders come in and they tell him that his home was big enough for more than one family. And so they’ve moved people into his home. And he really doesn’t have any choice because that’s what happens under communism. That’s why it’s one of the reasons why they abolish private property. So you don’t have control over your own house anymore. The state does and they decide who’s going to live in your home.

This is why both the Third and Fourth Amendments are so important in our Constitution, folks. It’s also why Castle Doctrine is so important. Why the writings of Sir Edward Cook, Sir Edward Cook who developed the Petition of Right of 1628, Sir Edward Cook who said, “A man’s home is his castle” for his protection and his defense as well as his repose.

In English law, it was always the case. Well, it was certainly since the time of the Reformation and since the time of Sir Edward Cook and that whole generation forward, that private property was protected from the government. The government did not have the right to violate a person’s private property. That’s why we have the tradition here.

Well, now we have a story here. And I saw this on Infowars. They picked it up from the Daily Mail. But the headline on Infowars is, “Elderly UK couple ordered to sell home to house migrants.” This elderly couple over in the UK got a letter telling them that basically their property was going to be given to migrants. They need to get out supposedly. Now, the story is a little bit more complicated than that when you go and get the whole story. But let me play you just some of the audio of a discussion from a journalist interviewing this elderly couple and listen to some of the dialogue about what’s happened, the letter that came to them. And I’m reading this off the Daily Mail website. Let me just read you part of this letter. The letter that they got says this:

“The resettlement team at North North Hampshire Council supports asylum seekers and refugees across three different projects, homes for Ukraine, Afghan resettlement, and asylum dispersal. At present, we are seeing a considerable increase in positive immigration decisions being made in favor of asylum seekers, mainly single men.”

That’s what it says. Asylum seekers, mainly single men. This is back to what we’re hearing coming through the Mexican border. This mainly fighting age men are the ones. These are the so-called asylum seekers. And it goes on from there.

All right, so let me play you some of the audio from this elderly couple there in the UK and their discussion with a journalist. Here it is.

Okay. So that gives you an overview of what’s happening over there, at least with this, with this elderly couple. Now, as a follow-up to this, you read the whole story. Apparently, once they communicated with the council and complained about this, the council said that they made a mistake somehow and that they were sorry that they got that letter, that they were troubled by it. But they’re also saying that the apology that they’ve given does not go far enough. We’re not sure exactly what that means just yet.

This story will be one to watch for people over in the UK and people right here in the United States of America. Because what they are doing in Western Europe and in the UK is what they are planning to do right here in the United States. Remember, the UK journalist Katie Hopkins warned about two years before it began in the United States. She was at a conservative gathering here in the US, and she was talking about how the schools over in the UK were transitioning children, boys to girls and girls to boys in the schools without parental consent. And she said at the time, this is coming to the United States of America. They’re planning to do the same thing in the US. And within about two years, at least based on my recollection, that’s when it began.

The open borders problem has only just begun. They have flooded our country with millions and millions of these illegals that they brought in. And now they’re trying to get people to volunteer to accept these migrants in their homes. It’s going to be very interesting to see what happens as the migrants come into people’s homes and how long they stay there. Right now, the people who are saying yes to this, I’ve seen at least one story where a woman welcomed a migrant family into her home and everything appears to be very positive in this sort of thing right now. It should be interesting to see what’s going to happen six months and a year from now, maybe two years. Are these migrants going to then leave the homes that they’ve been welcomed into? And where will they go? And who will pay for it? And how’s all that going to work? Or are there going to be situations where the migrants do not leave? They stay in the home and then the homeowners can’t get them out, you know, and the courts won’t allow them to expel the migrants from their homes? Again, we don’t know what’s going to happen. We’re going to have to wait and see. But it’s obvious that the direction that this communist movement is headed is to completely abolish private property.

They’ve already told us through their commercial ads and this kind of thing, what the World Economic Forum and the globalist powers are planning to do. They’ve already told us you’ll own nothing. You’ll pay rent. And supposedly you’re going to be perfectly happy. How are people going to own nothing? I believe this is a step in that direction. They are moving things in the direction of a Dr. Zhivago-type scenario right here in the United States of America.

Now, the title of this program has to do with the Vatican’s involvement, the Vatican’s immigration warfare. And I am convinced that that’s what is going on. Because the number one player in this whole illegal immigration game of irredentism, which is immigration warfare, is Rome and the Catholic bishops and the Jesuits right here in America. And I’m going to play you some audio when we come back from the break and you’re going to listen to a Catholic bishop explain Catholic social teaching and how they have a right, so they believe, to violate our border laws.

(Station break.)

We are going over the Vatican’s immigration warfare against the United States of America. And that’s really what I believe this is, as we’re going to show you in this new documentary, American Jesuits.

Many people don’t realize what happened during the American Civil War. We have a whole section on the American Civil War, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, which was really just one event. A lot of Americans don’t realize today what was going on south of the border.

Now, there is a book that we are quoting in the film called An Inquiry into the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln by a Catholic priest in the 20th century named Emmett McLoughlin. And he really became an ex-Catholic priest. But he published this book back in 1963. And he obviously agreed with the writings of Charles Chiniquy, the Catholic priest who knew Abraham Lincoln, because when he’s writing about the assassination of Lincoln, he has on one of the early pages a drawing of John Surratt, the son of Mary Surratt, dressed as a Papal Zouave, one of the Pope’s soldiers during that time. And we explain all of that to you in the film.

Anyway, that’s part of what he talks about. But then he has a chapter, chapter four in his book. Chapter four is called Conspiracy South of the Border. He says,

“It is impossible to grasp the relationship between Rome and Washington, Vatican and presidency, ecclesiastical power and secular strength without viewing what was taking place south of the Rio Grande. The ultimate aims of their Catholic apostolic magistrates, including the conniving empresses, and Pope Pius IX, as well as Secretary of State Cardinal Antonelli, were summarized by the historian A.R. Turnour.”

He talks about the occupation of Mexico by the French army under the emperor Napoleon III, who was in charge of France at that time. He was in cahoots with Pope Pius IX, and then they were in cahoots with the monarchy in Austria, who set up one of their guys, Maximilian I, to become the new emperor in Mexico, in the country of Mexico, just south of our border. This is back in the 1860s. This was all part of a greater plan to create a Roman Catholic empire from Mexico up through the United States, including Texas, California, and potentially all the way up to Canada. All right, this was the plan.

So what they did was they literally had the French army invade Mexico to take it over. Now the original plan was they were going to get control of Mexico, and then from Mexico send French troops up into the southern part of the U.S. to help the Confederacy defeat Lincoln and the Union. Now their purpose wasn’t really so much that they loved the Confederacy, although as we show in the film, the Pope was the only world leader to officially acknowledge Jefferson Davis as the president of the Confederate States of America. And we even show you the letter in the film. And this is all real history, but the purpose of it was to help the Confederacy. And yet all these Catholics involved in the Confederacy that a lot of people don’t know about today, but we go over that in the film, and to use the Confederacy really to defeat Lincoln, that was part of the plan, and from there, to really destroy the United States of America, that was their ambition. It wasn’t so much that they loved the Confederacy. They wanted to use it as an instrument to destroy the United States. That was their plan. And that’s what Emmett McLoughlin talks about here.

Also, we have quotes from General Thomas Mayley Harris, who was a Union general who served on the committee that investigated the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. We go over all of that with you. I mean, this is powerful information. Now, I’m not going to go over all of it on the program today, simply because I want you guys to be able to see it in the film and all the details.

But what actually happened was the French army invaded Mexico. They tried to conquer Mexico but were stopped short at the historic Battle of Puebla in 1862, the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. The Mexican army to everyone’s surprise, actually defeated the French army that invaded. And this is the reason why every year you have the celebration Cinco de Mayo. A lot of people don’t know that, but that’s the reason Cinco de Mayo is celebrated the 5th of May, because of the defeat of the French army that invaded Mexico.

Now, what happens is afterward they have a temporary victory. They stopped them short. But what happened was they delayed the French by about a year. And so that prevented France and the Pope from getting military aid to the Confederacy to help them fight the North. This is part of, I mean, if you go and you start looking this up online, you find historians who speculate what would have happened if the Mexicans had lost and the French army had continued. Could that have turned the tide of the Civil War? That’s a question people ask anyway. But that didn’t happen. They were defeated at the Battle of Puebla.

They came back later on and won at the second Battle of Puebla. And then they took Mexico City and they installed their emperor Maximilian I, this Austrian guy. Because they wanted this to be a European monarchy in Mexico that would then stretch up into the rest of North America. But this was a violation of the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine from James Monroe was to the powers of Europe – “Don’t try to colonize in North America.” Remember, we had had a number of wars. We had the French and Indian War. We fought the Spanish. Then of course we fought England. So we’d already fought European powers over this territory, and claimed it, and basically said to the powers of Europe, “Look, this is the United States. This is our country. It’s our territory. Keep out! You can come here and visit and send some tourists, but don’t try to colonize here.”

Now, what’s happening is 150 years later, according to Charles Chiniquy, who wrote two books, Fifty Years in the Church of Rome, that’s where he describes the assassination of Lincoln, along with his life as a Catholic priest and so on, then he wrote another book afterward called Forty Years in the Church of Christ. In that book, this is where he goes into more detail about the attempt to invade America through Mexico. And the purpose is to destroy the United States of America, that’s the purpose, it is really to destroy our republic. Because they hate the idea of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. That is what they hate. I believe they also hate the fact that when Samuel Adams signed the Declaration of Independence, he said, I trust from this day forward, the reign of political Protestantism shall commence. Because they know that our government is based on the principles of Protestantism. And so that just doesn’t sit well with the powers in Rome.

Now Chiniquy in his writings then goes on to warn that there was a meeting of Catholic bishops who basically came up with Plan B. The French invasion didn’t work, so Plan B is to flood our country with Catholic immigrants and send them into the major cities primarily. And then from there to get control of the country eventually. And really for the last hundred years and more, that is what Rome has been trying to do. And that’s what she’s been doing. That’s why so many Catholic immigrants came from Ireland back in the late 19th century. And then into the 20th century, you had so many that were coming in through New York and so on.

Now I have to be honest, I have to make full disclosure here. My father’s side of the family, my grandfather came into this country who was Catholic, came from a Catholic background, came from Sicily in the early part of the 20th century.

(Webmaster: Both my Catholic grandparents came from Poland in the early part of the 20th century. My grandmother was an illegal immigrant for 50 years! :-))

So yes, my father’s family were Catholic immigrants from Sicily, and then my grandmother was from Italy, her family. So yes, half my family are Catholic immigrants. So we have nothing against Catholic immigrants, but of course, they came here, they obeyed the laws, and they respected our Constitution Republic. My father served in the US military for 23 years in the US army, as I’ve told you guys before.

Now on my mother’s side of the family, I’ve talked about my grandfather Ziggy, Zigman Zadarowski. He was our adopted grandfather, he had come from Poland, and he was also Catholic. My biological family on my mother’s side was the Bowens, my grandfather’s last name was Bowen, and my grandmother’s maiden name was Pullen. So the Bowens and the Pullens actually came from England and Wales back in either the 1700s, I’ve traced them back that far, possibly earlier, but at least by the 1700s we had family members that served during the time of the American Revolution. But again, they came over from Wales and from England, Northern England, from what I understand, the Pullens. But anyway, I’ve never gone and gotten all the details on that, I’ve just kind of seen an overview of the history of those family names.

But anyway, so I have Catholic immigrants in my family. I don’t think anybody is really against Catholic immigrants. Nobody’s against legal immigrants coming into the country. The problem is the massive flood of illegal immigrants that are being brought in deliberately by the Jesuit Joe Biden and by the Jesuit (Alejandro) Mayorkas. Mayorkas who’s been impeached now, thankfully, is a Jesuit through and through. You research that guy, he’s a Jesuit. And he is doing this on behalf of Rome. There is no question about it. This is all part of the Vatican’s agenda that goes back 100 years, more than 100 years.

There have been a few people like Steve Bannon in at least one interview, even though Steve Bannon is Catholic, he’s confronted the Catholic hierarchy because he knows that they are behind a lot of this illegal immigration.

Now, what I want to do is play some audio. This is from EWTN, the Catholic channel. And they interview the Catholic Bishop, Bishop Mark Seitz, S E I T Z, who I believe is a Jesuit. He’s not a Jesuit priest, but you find him being interviewed on the AMDG podcast, Breaking Bread and Borders with Bishop Mark Seitz on the Jesuit border podcast. Okay. So at Jesuits.org, breaking bread and borders. Just think of how bold they are. “Oh, we’re just breaking the border.” And they have a picture of Bishop Seitz wearing a rainbow scarf around his neck, which kind of gives you, although it, I guess could look like it’s Mexican. Maybe that’s it. But definitely pro-Mexico, pro-illegal immigrant. And you’re going to from this interview, you’re going to hear them because there’s a Catholic host, a woman, and then this Catholic Bishop openly declaring that they believe they have a right to bring illegal immigrants into our country because that’s what the Pope says they can do.

Here it is. Listen.

Lady interviewer: Joining us now is Bishop Mark Seitz of the Diocese of El Paso, Texas, and the chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Migration. Your Excellency, thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate it. The topic of migration certainly seems to be a hot topic in the United States and is even causing a divide. However, Catholic social teaching has been rather clear on its stance on the issue. Can you talk to us about that?

Bishop Mark Seitz: Yes. Well, thank you very much for having me. And you’re right. Catholic social teaching, of course, is just an elaboration of what we find in the gospel. As a matter of fact, for those who went to Mass today or read today’s gospel reading, we have a pretty good example of Jesus’ teaching. The question comes to Jesus, who is my neighbor? And then he gives the parable of the good Samaritan. So that is the basis for everything we do. As Catholic Christians, we try to set aside some of our own, you know, inbuilt kind of fears of the person that we don’t know so that we can do what Jesus has called us to do. And we find that when we take the risk, if you will, and follow him, very often there are great blessings in that experience.

Lady interviewer: Yeah, and Saint Pope John Paul II said that we should defend against, you know, the unjust restriction of migration and give attention to the rights of migrants, even those doing so illegally. That being said, how do we adhere to that? When the volume of migrants and their needs really seem to be stretching many cities thin, we heard from Eric Adams in New York and then also the mayor of your city in El Paso recently said that they’ve reached the breaking point. So how do we find a balance?

Bishop Mark Seitz: Well, we have to do things smart, right? We’re not going to serve people well if we’re not really trying to think about big-picture issues and trying to adapt the flow in such a way that we can do it in an orderly manner, and that people can go to places that have expressed a real need for people to help them in various jobs that are going on. We’ve been simply sending people to places like New York that have, as they say, reached their capacity and not thinking about how we might help migrants find places where in fact they will have a better reception and opportunity to work and to live, which is all that you really, really want.

(End of the audio interview with Mark Seitz.)

Okay, so you heard what I consider to be Jesuitical sophistry from both the Catholic reporter who’s interviewing this bishop and the bishop himself. If you research this guy, you’ll see that even though he’s not apparently a member of the Jesuit order per se, there are videos where he’s closely associated with Jesuits online. There’s even one where he’s giving a presentation to Boston College, which is a Jesuit institution. So he has that association. And the Jesuits, of course, are right in the middle of this whole illegal immigration movement because this is the continuation of a program that the Vatican initiated over a hundred years ago to try and get control of the United States of America. That is what they are working to do. And now they are using this slow, steady immigration tactic, but somewhere here, once they got Joe Biden into the White House, they’ve just decided to open the floodgates and try and get as many people in here as possible.

Let’s address very quickly, and then I want to talk about this story with Governor Greg Abbott and the Constitution. Very quickly, the bishop’s claim about being a good Samaritan, and that supposedly the message of the good Samaritan. Noticed how everything is wrapped with, “Oh, we’re just promoting the gospel and the message of Jesus and being a good Samaritan. That’s why they’re bringing in illegal aliens into our country,” supposedly. There’s nothing in the parable of the good Samaritan that has anything to do with illegal immigration or the idea that the illegals who are really guilty of committing crimes are somehow or other in the position of the victim of the parable, who is a man. If you go to Luke chapter 10, that’s where we find the parable, in verse 30, we read,

A man went down from Jerusalem. What that is generally understood to mean is that he was Jewish. He was a Jewish man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. Jericho at that point, and for generations, was seen as a very treacherous area. If you read the commentaries on it, it was said to be a haunt of thieves and robbers and bandits and so on. That there were caves and there was kind of a rocky, rough terrain and wilderness around it. So it was a place where it was easy for bandits to hide and lie and wait for people traveling by. It was sometimes called, according to one commentary, the red or bloody land because of all the blood that was shed by robbers against innocent people passing through. So the person who’s being attacked by thieves is not a criminal. He’s not an illegal alien. He’s not breaking the law. There are no laws that he’s breaking. The people who are breaking the law are the bandits who attack him.

All right, so then verse 31:

Meaning that they just basically saw the guy and moved around him. Now the priest and the Levite are presumably Jewish, just like he is. So this is one of their fellow Jewish citizens who has been set upon by thieves, beaten up, and left for dead, and they’re seeing their fellow citizen, their fellow Jew there, and they refuse to help him. They just move on.

Verse 33,

And then the story goes on from there. So let’s just talk about the relationships here. You have a Jewish man traveling. He’s set upon by thieves and bandits and so on. They beat him, strip him, leave him for dead. Then two other Jewish citizens, one a priest, and another one a Levite, pass by him and they do nothing. They’re apathetic about what’s happened to him. And here a foreigner, a Samaritan, really, and the Samaritans were from the northern kingdom. This goes back to the division between the North and the South. After Solomon passed away, God had said he was going to give 10 parts of the kingdom to Jeroboam. They had a civil war. So Jeroboam took the north and Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, continued in the south, which was called, from that point Judah in the south, and then the north was called either Samaria or Israel.

And so the Samaritans now, what Jeroboam did was he set up the alternative temple, which was against God’s law. God punished him severely for it. And there they began worshiping the golden calves and they blended the worship of the golden calves, apparently with the worship of the Lord. And so they were seen as apostates with a corrupted faith. That’s why the Jews in Judah looked down upon the Samaritans.

So here’s what’s happening. You have a priest and Levite who know the law of God and they should know better than to abandon one of their own people. They should reach out and help this man, try to find a way to help him, but they don’t. They just passed by. So all the theology that they had was not such that they would reach out and help somebody who had been wrongly harmed by these bandits and their own countrymen at that. But a Samaritan had compassion on him and helped him.

Now this bishop is trying to suggest that the parable of the good Samaritans somehow or other applies to this situation of illegal immigration and that we as a country are supposed to just be taking tens of millions and millions and millions, an unending train of immigrants with cell phones and designer clothing who are supposedly the equivalent of this Jewish man who was set upon by thieves. Now, I’m going to argue that there’s nothing to support what the Catholic Church is and the Catholic hierarchy is arguing about illegal immigration, nothing in the story of the good Samaritan.

That’s actually quite the opposite because the bandits are these illegals who are coming into our country. They’re coming and they are basically robbing the resources of the American people, which they are not entitled to. And they’re going into neighborhoods, they’re going into towns and cities and so on, and they are committing many, many crimes against the American people.

It’s the American people who are in the position of the guy set upon by thieves. They’re the ones who are being raped, robbed, murdered, killed in these vehicular homicide situations. They’re the ones who are being victimized by these illegal bandits that are being brought in. And what’s happening? What are their fellow countrymen doing? When Americans are suffering at the hands of these criminal bandits that are coming in, how do their fellow Americans respond? Do they respond in a charitable manner? No, not at all.

You look at how people have suffered, how the families and the victims of these illegal aliens have suffered, how do all of our leaders, how do the Democrat leaders treat them? Just like the Levite and the priests, they walk right past them. They could care less. Your loved one was killed by an illegal alien. Well, who cares? They just walk right by. You were victimized by the illegals? We’re not interested. Doesn’t matter. We don’t care. They don’t care about anything.

Even the news media pays very little attention to the thousands and thousands of U.S. citizens, tens of thousands of U.S. citizens who have been victimized by illegal immigration into our country. So the news media pays no attention to it. They put all of their focus on the bandits, on the illegals, the criminals who are breaking the law.

And let’s bear in mind, border laws are not some strange, unusual law that America came up with. Every nation on the earth has border laws. It’s part of the common laws of all the nations of the earth. It’s a common law issue. So the story of the Good Samaritan really does not support in any way what these bishops are telling us, not at all.

But you can hear all the stuff about Catholic social teaching, really social justice or socialism. We have a whole section in the new film where we’re going to show you right from the word go, how the Jesuits and ultimately the Vatican developed social justice, socialism and communism back in the 19th century. And we show you the origins of it. We show you also that the association of Rome with communism and socialism is not something that is some new relationship. This goes back to the very beginning of it in the 19th century. And we show you one quote after another, after another from ministers and historians and researchers back in the 19th century who saw what was happening.

And I think it’s very, very important because people are acting today. They find out that Pope Francis is a communist and they’re all surprised. They’re shocked that he’s a communist. They find America magazine promoting communism, the Jesuit magazine, and they’re shocked. And the only reason anybody’s shocked, the only people who are shocked are people who don’t know history. If you know the history, then you know that that is simply all part of Rome’s agenda that goes back more than 150 years where communism is concerned.

So let’s look at this post from Governor Greg Abbott in Texas. Governor Abbott. I keep hearing mixed reviews on Governor Abbott. Some people say he’s, he’s ultimately going to support the World Economic Forum. Other people say, no, he’s a patriot who’s pushing back against the flood of illegals coming through Texas.

So here’s a post on Twitter or X rather that says it’s by Greg Abbott. He says Texas has the constitutional right to defend itself from invasion. What Texas is doing is exactly what James Madison said would be protected by the Constitution.

“One of the most crucial rights granted in the US Constitution is a state’s ability to secure its own border. James Madison, the father of the Constitution, emphasized that article one, section 10, clause three would allow Virginia state militia, ‘to be called forth to suppress smugglers who had endangered their state.'”

Smugglers are basically illegals. They smuggle stuff into your territory. And of course, the drug smugglers, that’s what they’re doing. They are smuggling drugs. They’re also smuggling people with human trafficking. I think that fits perfectly the situation they’re dealing with. And we could even argue that the Democratic Party is smuggling illegal voters into our country by bringing them in because they don’t just want to bring them in. They want to bring them in and give them the right to vote.

So, Governor Abbott’s post continues. He says, quote,

“Those smugglers were bringing contraband into the state and threatened the sovereignty of Virginia’s borders. Madison knew that states must have the means to defend themselves. John Marshall reinforced this right held by states. He too was an important advocate for ratifying the Constitution and later a Chief Justice on the Supreme Court. Marshall explained that Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3 clearly proves that the states can use the militia when they find it necessary to respond to an invasion or imminent danger. Today, Texas faces a similar but starker threat than Virginia smugglers with Mexican drug cartels that operate as paramilitary forces on our border. The criminal smuggling activity faced by Texas far exceeds Madison’s criteria for use of a state militia.

We completely agree with that. He finally says, quote,

We will continue to build barriers that deny illegal entry into our state, arrest immigrants that cross illegally and fulfill our duty to secure our border.

I have always liked Governor Greg Abbott. I hear that he has these globalist leanings, which I hope is not true. But even if it is true, what he’s doing right now, if he’s protecting the border now, I think Americans should support him now. I mean, really, what else can you do? Hopefully, somebody’s going to find a way to turn this whole thing around.

If perhaps Trump gets elected, if we can get a fair and legal honest election, that I think Trump will be elected overwhelmingly against Joe Biden, despite what the naysayers are saying. I think he’s going to get a huge majority. All they’ve done by attacking him is to show that the globalists and the Deep State in Washington consider Trump to be a threat.

I still don’t think that four years, another four-year Trump administration is not going to solve all the problems of our country any more than the first four years did. That’s my opinion. But I’d rather have Trump in there than somebody like Biden, at least a Trump administration will, I think, slow down the radical left progression in our country and hopefully prevent us from going over the cliff into full-blown socialism and communism. Although right now you’ve got people arguing that we already live in a communist country based upon how the courts are operating, based upon how the Deep State and the government and everything else is operating, some people argue that we are full-blown communism. Now, I don’t agree with that. The reason I don’t agree with it is, if the communists had complete control, they would not be pushing for further destabilization. You see, once they get complete control, they don’t destabilize everything anymore. They crack down and they demand law and order and everybody has to be obedient.

So if they were fully in control of the country, they would not be allowing this open borders situation. The reason they’re doing it is because they need more destabilization. They need to build up a foreign population in our country to counter constitutional Americans who believe in our heritage, our history, and our faith. In order to overturn our culture and our history, they need to bring in foreigners who cannot relate to that history and then teach an alternative history to them. That’s, I believe, where they’re headed with all of this.

I just want to follow up once more on the new film on American Jesuits. And we just hope and pray that this film will be a blessing to many people, and also be a warning to the American church about having a relationship with Rome. And we hope, hearken to the warning of Scripture, which is come out of her, my people, lest you be partaker of her sins and that you receive not of her plagues.

I would argue that America’s joining hands with popery after World War II has everything to do with the many of the problems that we’re suffering in our country. The problems of the Deep State, the problems of illegal immigration, you can trace these things directly to Rome. But we’ll talk more about that as things move forward. In the meantime, we trust the Lord one day at a time. We believe Bible prophecy is being fulfilled. And that’s always good news because it demonstrates to us that the Word of God is true, which we believe, praise God. All right, brethren, that is going to do it for us today. That is our show. We’ll stop it there. But we will be back next time as the Lord leads us. Until then, God bless you guys. I’m Chris Pinto and you’ve been listening to Noise of Thunder Radio.

Listen to the audio!

By WALTER A. LIMBRICK, F. R. HIST. S., LONDON, ENGLAND.

This is from the July 1920 edition of The Convert Catholic Magazine.

“Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.”— Luke 23: 43.

Beyond all question the Christian religion is supremely important in connection with the subject of Death. The universality | of the fear of death makes it so. Death to the unconverted man is a terror.

Death subjects man to an ordeal through which countless millions have passed, but which none can explain. No wonder that nature trembles before it. Reason justifies the fear; religion never makes light of it; and he who does, instead of ranking with heroes, can hardly deserve to rank with a brute.

It teaches us that a believer’s death is the departure from defiling corruptions into perfect purity; from heart-sinking sorrows into perfect joy; from entangling persecutions into everlasting freedom ; from distressing persecutions into full rest; from pinching wants into universal supplies; from distracting fears into highest security; from deluding shadows into substantial good. If this be, as it must assuredly be, the message of Christ to our hearts as we stand by the open grave, how serious a thing it is for any religious system calling itself Christian to oppose such a precious truth. And yet this is precisely what the Church of Rome does. She claims to be exclusively the one true Church of Christ, and advances as a doctrine to be held on peril of everlasting damnation the entry of the righteous at death into a flaming Purgatory. She indefinitely delays the entrance of the believer into the joys of Paradise, and makes merchandise of the miseries which she alleges the believer is enduring.

Let us look at this doctrine of Purgatory in its origin and development.

1—Purgatory is a Pagan, and Not a Christian, Conception.

You will search in vain for anything like it in the Scriptures, or in the primitive writers of Christianity. For the origin of horrors of Purgatory the pages of heathen poets like Virgil must be consulted. In their imaginings-of the life after death you will find the miseries of those who pass hence fully in accordance with medieval Roman teaching. Like so many of the doctrines and practices that are peculiar to the Roman Church, Purgatory finds its source in the darkness of heathendom and in that vain effort to “make merit” which is common to the religions of Pagan and Papal Rome.

2—Purgatory Was Developed as a Doctrine and Promulgated in the Middle Ages, and Not in the Days of Primitive Purity.

This tenet finds no advocate among the early Christian writers. Its first cautious sponsor is said to be Pope Gregory, whose Pontificate closed the sixth century of the Roman Church’s history; although it should be added that there is some doubt as to whether the work in which the doctrine is advanced is really his. As we advance farther into the spiritual night of the Dark Ages, so the old idea of giving thanks to God for the bright example of brave Christians, was the primitive practice, is left behind, and prayers for the dead are substituted. At last the belief in such prayers was everywhere held, and its inevitable corollary, Purgatory, was officially taught.

Here is the formal language of the Creed of Pius IV.: “I constantly believe that there is a Purgatory, and that the souls confined therein are helped by the suffrages of the faithful.”

And here are some further words which have the seal of the Roman Church on them: “There is a purgatorial fire, tormented in which the souls of the pious make expiation for a certain period, that an entrance may be opened for them into that eternal country where nothing that defileth can enter.”

3—And for Whom is This Place of Torment Intended?

Does the Roman Church offer, as many foolishly suppose, a “second chance” to those who are careless about their spiritual state here? By no means. For the Romanist who dies “in mortal sin” there is no hope. For the Protestant who refuses to submit to the Roman Church there is nothing but eternal hell. Purgatory is not for such. It is, as you have seen from what I have said, for “the souls of the pious.” It always seems to me a ghastly caricature of Christianity that confronts one on entering a Roman Catholic Church. “Of your charity,” the notices run, “pray for the soul of” such a person, it may be a Pope or a cardinal, or a priest, or the superior of a convent, who died fortified by the last rites of the Church. Purgatory is, you see, for good Romanists, not for the unconverted or the wicked. At the dying bed of the poor Romanist the priest attends with his holy oils, his prayers, his last absolutions; there is much ritual and ceremonial.

But what a mockery it all appears when one remembers that its utmost value is to set the departing soul on its way to terrors which are, so a great Roman theologian asserts, as awful as hell, only not eternal! I will not detain you by examining the few texts in the Old and New Testaments upon which this dogma is said to rest. It is-sufficient to say that they have no real bearing upon the matter of the state of the departed, and the more serious and learned of Roman Catholic controversialists have abandoned them as proofs. Nor does the apocryphal passage from the 2d Maccabees help the Roman Church. Indeed, it cuts clean against her teaching, for the persons on whose behalf she asserts (as I think wrongly) that Judas Maccabeus prayed for died in mortal sin, the sin of idolatry.

This is from the June 1920 edition of The Convert Catholic Magazine.

When I was a kid and saw little Protestant churches in my largely Catholic Chicago neighborhood, I used to look down at them thinking how much greater and unified the Catholic Church is. After I got saved, I sought out and fellowshipped with members of all the different non-Catholic churches I could find. I wanted to see how they differ from each other. I learned true Christian Church unity is solely in Jesus Christ and the Bible-based doctrine of the Gospel.

I like the insights in this article and am inspired to share it.

It is constantly urged by Roman Catholic priests that the Church of Rome has one faith, and one practice: We deny the former, while we partly admit the latter. The reverse is the case with Evangelical Protestantism; which in a great measure holds “one faith,” although its various churches differ from each other in their forms of government and public ordinances. It has considerable unity, though not uniformity.

Christian unity must be free. The congruity (points of agreement) of the Church of Rome is dependent on mental apathy.

If an order comes from the Vatican, that some new dogma is to be received by the masses, some novel ordinance to be practiced, or some additional forms and ceremonies to be observed, all must, at what time they hear “the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of music,” (Please read Daniel 3 to understand this in context) immediately conform to the decrees that “Our Lord God the Pope” hath set up. No approval of the understanding is asked, no consent of the will is obtained. Implicit obedience is sternly required; and if it is withheld—anathematizes it. The new decree or canon may be in flat contradiction to a former one, but no questions upon the subject are allowed, no freedom of opinion is permitted.

The dogmatic authority of the Church of Rome produces the uniformity of an inert, listless, involuntary mass of mind, which will not think because it dares not differ. Here is no union of soul. It is the fellowship of a gang of convicts, who conform to the rules imposed upon them with sullen apathy. It is the uniformity of the dead, who are moved about by others offering no resistance. How different is this forced sameness of appearance from the agreement of an active and vigorous company, all bent on pursuit, though not taking the same way to accomplish their common object! The minds of men cannot be dulled like the instincts of brute creatures. The compulsory uniformity of Romanism either deprives its votaries of all conscience in matters of religion, or makes them put on a mask of hypocrisy, which tends ultimately to drive them into infidelity. If minds are to expand, they must have free play. Rome has persecuted her best philosophers, fearing the development of the human faculties.

It is not the object of this editorial to enumerate the schisms which have taken place in the Church of Rome, the conflicting decrees of different councils, and the changes that they have made in the articles of faith and practice; the oppositions of contemporary Popes and Councils, their mutual anathemas, and the bloody wars that they waged; the rise of hostile sects and orders of monks, differing in creed and manners, hating each other, and engaging in bitter controversies; or that detestation of the priesthood which has frequently pervaded a great mass of the people, so that only some political reason, or the presence of an armed force has kept them subject to a yoke under which they have groaned and writhed.

All these are matters of history: and the millions of men and women, including every age and rank, and episcopacy itself, who have been put to death, imprisoned, or banished for their alleged heresies, yield evident proof that Rome has been far from having unity in herself.

Rome has no cause to glory in her pretended unity. When weighed in the balances, it is found wanting. Even its claims to uniformity must be conceded with some limitations. It contains many elements of internal discord, and bears many marks of outward disagreement. It is uniform, however, in its arrogant claims of superiority, its intolerant spirit, its grasping covetousness, its despotic government, and the relentless cruelty with which it persecutes the true Church of Christ. It is uniform in its tyranny over the judgment and conscience of its adherents, and in repressing every free thought and noble aspiration of the human soul. It is uniform in trying to prolong the night of ignorance, to veil the mental sight by superstition, and shut out every gleam of spiritual light that would harbinger an approaching day of evangelical righteousness. It invariably opposes the spread of Divine truth, which would expose the falsity of its pretensions, the corruption of its manners, and the heavy chains with which it has succeeded in binding so many captive to the decrees of a soul-destroying power.

abomination /ə-bŏm″ə-nā′shən/
noun

1. Abhorrence; disgust.
2. A cause of abhorrence or disgust.
3. The feeling of extreme disgust and hatred; abhorrence; detestation; loathing.

This morning on Facebook I commented on a friend’s post who says, “The Abomination of Desolation is Jewish Temple Worship.” I took issue with that because they Bible doesn’t explicitly say so.

The phrase, “abomination of desolation” appears only twice in the Bible.

They are both referring to the same thing, the abominable Roman army desolating Jerusalem and the Second Temple. How do I know that? Because it’s a fulfillment of the latter parts of the prophecies of Daniel 9:26 and 27! Daniel 9:26 is the clearest:

And if that’s not clear enough for you what the Abomination of Desolation really means, the Gospel writer Luke makes it as clear as crystal in Luke 21:20!

Luke wrote his Gospel to the Greek Gentiles who did not read Daniel chapter 9. He interpreted for them the meaning of “abomination of desolation” as “Jerusalem compassed with armies,” the armies of Rome which were an abomination to the Jews! And what do armies do? Make desolation of every place they fight a war at.

This discussion inspired me to list all the verses in the Bible to see how the word “abomination” is used. In the KJV that word occurs 76 times in 69 verses in 54 chapters in 18 books. The plural of the word, “abominations,” is not included in this Bible study.

Abominations to the Egyptians

• Genesis 43:32 And they set on for him by himself, and for them by themselves, and for the Egyptians, which did eat with him, by themselves: because the Egyptians might not eat bread with the Hebrews; for that is an abomination unto the Egyptians.
• Genesis 46:34 That ye shall say, Thy servants’ trade hath been about cattle from our youth even until now, both we, and also our fathers: that ye may dwell in the land of Goshen; for every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians.
• Exodus 8:26 And Moses said, It is not meet so to do; for we shall sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians to the LORD our God: lo, shall we sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians before their eyes, and will they not stone us?

It’s interesting to me that the first three times the word abomination is used, it’s something that was abominable about God’s people to the Egyptians. In the Bible Egypt is sometimes used as a metaphor for the world, the Establishment, the Powers that Be.

Abominations to you

• Leviticus 11:10 And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you:
• Leviticus 11:11 They shall be even an abomination unto you; ye shall not eat of their flesh, but ye shall have their carcases in abomination.
• Leviticus 11:12 Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.
• Leviticus 11:13 And these are they which ye shall have in abomination among the fowls; they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, and the ossifrage, and the ospray,
• Leviticus 11:20 All fowls that creep, going upon all four, shall be an abomination unto you.
• Leviticus 11:23 But all other flying creeping things, which have four feet, shall be an abomination unto you.
• Leviticus 11:41 And every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth shall be an abomination; it shall not be eaten.
• Leviticus 11:42 Whatsoever goeth upon the belly, and whatsoever goeth upon all four, or whatsoever hath more feet among all creeping things that creep upon the earth, them ye shall not eat; for they are an abomination.

Abominations to God

• Leviticus 7:18 And if any of the flesh of the sacrifice of his peace offerings be eaten at all on the third day, it shall not be accepted, neither shall it be imputed unto him that offereth it: it shall be an abomination, and the soul that eateth of it shall bear his iniquity.
• Leviticus 18:22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.
• Leviticus 20:13 If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.
• Deuteronomy 7:25 The graven images of their gods shall ye burn with fire: thou shalt not desire the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it unto thee, lest thou be snared therein: for it is an abomination to the LORD thy God.
• Deuteronomy 7:26 Neither shalt thou bring an abomination into thine house, lest thou be a cursed thing like it: but thou shalt utterly detest it, and thou shalt utterly abhor it; for it is a cursed thing.
• Deuteronomy 12:31 Thou shalt not do so unto the LORD thy God: for every abomination to the LORD, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods.
• Deuteronomy 13:14 Then shalt thou enquire, and make search, and ask diligently; and, behold, if it be truth, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought among you;
• Deuteronomy 17:1 Thou shalt not sacrifice unto the LORD thy God any bullock, or sheep, wherein is blemish, or any evilfavouredness: for that is an abomination unto the LORD thy God.
• Deuteronomy 17:4 And it be told thee, and thou hast heard of it, and enquired diligently, and, behold, it be true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought in Israel:
• Deuteronomy 18:12 For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee.
• Deuteronomy 22:5 The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.
• Deuteronomy 23:18 Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of the LORD thy God for any vow: for even both these are abomination unto the LORD thy God.
• Deuteronomy 24:4 Her former husband, which sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after that she is defiled; for that is abomination before the LORD: and thou shalt not cause the land to sin, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.
• Deuteronomy 25:16 For all that do such things, and all that do unrighteously, are an abomination unto the LORD thy God.
• Deuteronomy 27:15 Cursed be the man that maketh any graven or molten image, an abomination unto the LORD, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and putteth it in a secret place. And all the people shall answer and say, Amen.
• 1 Kings 11:5 For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.
• 1 Kings 11:7 Then did Solomon build an high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon.
• 2 Kings 23:13 And the high places that were before Jerusalem, which were on the right hand of the mount of corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel had builded for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Zidonians, and for Chemosh the abomination of the Moabites, and for Milcom the abomination of the children of Ammon, did the king defile.
• Proverbs 3:32 For the froward is abomination to the LORD: but his secret is with the righteous.
• Proverbs 6:16 These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him:
• Proverbs 8:7 For my mouth shall speak truth; and wickedness is an abomination to my lips.
• Proverbs 11:1 A false balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is his delight.
• Proverbs 11:20 They that are of a froward heart are abomination to the LORD: but such as are upright in their way are his delight.
• Proverbs 12:22 Lying lips are abomination to the LORD: but they that deal truly are his delight.
• Proverbs 15:8 The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD: but the prayer of the upright is his delight.
• Proverbs 15:9 The way of the wicked is an abomination unto the LORD: but he loveth him that followeth after righteousness.
• Proverbs 15:26 The thoughts of the wicked are an abomination to the LORD: but the words of the pure are pleasant words.
• Proverbs 16:5 Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the LORD: though hand join in hand, he shall not be unpunished.
• Proverbs 17:15 He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, even they both are abomination to the LORD.
• Proverbs 20:10 Divers weights, and divers measures, both of them are alike abomination to the LORD.
• Proverbs 20:23 Divers weights are an abomination unto the LORD; and a false balance is not good.
• Proverbs 21:27 The sacrifice of the wicked is abomination: how much more, when he bringeth it with a wicked mind?
• Proverbs 28:9 He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abomination.
• Isaiah 1:13 Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.
• Isaiah 41:24 Behold, ye are of nothing, and your work of nought: an abomination is he that chooseth you.
• Isaiah 44:19 And none considereth in his heart, neither is there knowledge nor understanding to say, I have burned part of it in the fire; yea, also I have baked bread upon the coals thereof; I have roasted flesh, and eaten it: and shall I make the residue thereof an abomination? shall I fall down to the stock of a tree?
• Isaiah 66:17 They that sanctify themselves, and purify themselves in the gardens behind one tree in the midst, eating swine’s flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse, shall be consumed together, saith the LORD.
• Jeremiah 2:7 And I brought you into a plentiful country, to eat the fruit thereof and the goodness thereof; but when ye entered, ye defiled my land, and made mine heritage an abomination.
• Jeremiah 6:15 Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore they shall fall among them that fall: at the time that I visit them they shall be cast down, saith the LORD.
• Jeremiah 8:12 Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore shall they fall among them that fall: in the time of their visitation they shall be cast down, saith the LORD.
• Jeremiah 32:35 And they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin.
• Ezekiel 16:50 And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good.
• Ezekiel 18:12 Hath oppressed the poor and needy, hath spoiled by violence, hath not restored the pledge, and hath lifted up his eyes to the idols, hath committed abomination,
• Ezekiel 22:11 And one hath committed abomination with his neighbour’s wife; and another hath lewdly defiled his daughter in law; and another in thee hath humbled his sister, his father’s daughter.
• Ezekiel 33:26 Ye stand upon your sword, ye work abomination, and ye defile every one his neighbour’s wife: and shall ye possess the land?
• Daniel 11:31 And arms shall stand on his part, and they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate.
• Daniel 12:11 And from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days.
• Malachi 2:11 Judah hath dealt treacherously, and an abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem; for Judah hath profaned the holiness of the LORD which he loved, and hath married the daughter of a strange god.
• Luke 16:15 And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.
• Revelation 21:27 And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

Abomination to others

• 1 Samuel 13:4 And all Israel heard say that Saul had smitten a garrison of the Philistines, and that Israel also was had in abomination with the Philistines. And the people were called together after Saul to Gilgal.
• Psalms 88:8 Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me; thou hast made me an abomination unto them: I am shut up, and I cannot come forth.
• Proverbs 13:19 The desire accomplished is sweet to the soul: but it is abomination to fools to depart from evil.
• Proverbs 16:12 It is an abomination to kings to commit wickedness: for the throne is established by righteousness.
• Proverbs 24:9 The thought of foolishness is sin: and the scorner is an abomination to men.
• Proverbs 29:27 An unjust man is an abomination to the just: and he that is upright in the way is abomination to the wicked.
• Matthew 24:15 When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)
• Mark 13:14 But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, (let him that readeth understand,) then let them that be in Judæa flee to the mountains:

World War I Pope Benedict XV

This is from the June 1920 edition of The Convert Catholic Magazine. I never heard this before! Pope Benedict XV was the Pope of the Catholic Church from 1914 to 1922. When he blessed certain people his “blessings” turned into curses on every one he blessed! The Devil empowered the Antichrist Pope to curse the people he blessed!

The Pope of Rome sent the Golden Rose and his apostolic blessing to Bomba, King of Naples, and within four days he lost his crown and kingdom.

His Holiness (sarcasm) sent his blessing to the Emperor of Austria, and shortly afterward he lost Venetia and was defeated at Sadowa.

The Pope sent a very special blessing to Queen Isabella, of Spain, and about two weeks afterward she lost her crown,

The Vicar of Christ on earth sent his blessing to Empress Eugenie, of France, and in less than a year France was overthrown by Germany, the emperor lost his crown and died in exile.

The Pope blessed General Boulanger, and in less than two weeks he was an exile, and later committed suicide.

The-Empress of Brazil was specially blessed by the Pope. She broke her leg three days later, and the emperor lost his crown, dying in exile.

The Emperor Maximilian, of Mexico, was blessed by the Pope, and was soon afterward shot by his people. His widow went to Rome, received the Papal blessing, and afterward became an incurable lunatic.

In 1895 the Archbishop of Damascus, at Vittoria, delivered the Pope’s blessing upon the Spanish troops and fleet, with the result that Spain lost two fleets and two armies.

The Empress of Austria received the Golden Rose. She was murdered in Switzerland. Her only son committed suicide.

The Papal Nuncio blessed a grand bazaar in Paris. Within five minutes the building was in flames and nearly 150 of the “aristocracy” of France perished, including the sister of the Empress of Austria.

The Queen Regent of Spain and King Alfonso were blessed by the Pope. They promptly lost Cuba and the Philippines.

King Edward VII visited the Pope and received, as a mark of favor, a signed photograph of Leo XIII. At once came the news of a reverse of the British troops in Somaliland.

The Pope blessed Lord Denbigh, the Special Envoy of the King of England. That very day disaster fell on the British Army in South Africa, Lord Methuen being severely wounded.

Major Archibald Butt, principal aide to Taft, sent to Rome on a private mission by the President, went down on the ill-fated “Titanic.” Before leaving Rome the Major was “specially blessed” by the Pope, who also sent his special blessing to the President. Taft was ignominiously defeated at the next election.

The former German Kaiser received an autograph photograph of the Pope, together with a special blessing—“Our apostolic blessing to our royal and holy Kaiser.” Well, you know what happened. (Forced to abdicate his throne and spent the rest of his life in exile.)

In a New Year’s message to America, given on Dec. 31, 1918), Pope Benedict expressed the hope that the Peace Conference might result in a new world order, with a League of Nations. That was the beginning of the end of the League of Nations joke.

On Jan. 2, 1919, Pope Benedict invoked the Divine blessing on President Wilson, and since that hour we have been under the impression that Mr. Wilson, because of a grave physical breakdown, has been unable to attend to affairs of State.

My wife tells me I’m posting too much stuff about the popes of Rome! What do you think. I’ll seek from the Lord another subject to work on.

This is from a May 1920 publication of the Converted Catholic Magazine.

BY REV. ALEXANDER ROBERTSON, D.D., VENICE.

The late William Arthur, in his book, “The Pope, the Kings and the People,” tells us that when he was in Rome he happened to say in company: “I began the study of this subject as a religious question, but . . .” He got no further, for a resident diplomatist broke in: “Yes, but—you find it is all politics, and the further you get into it the more purely political will you find it.” The diplomatist spoke the truth. So political is the Church that its religious aspect is a negligible quantity. In the Vatican the religious aspect of any question is little thought of. The officials of the Church there are not interested in true religion. No question, no problem is ever considered there on its religious side, but only on its political. The only concern of the Church officials is to increase the power of the Church, so as to bring gain to itself. It wants to get men into its grasp so as to advance its own selfish ends.

In Italy, previous to the overthrow of the Pope’s temporal power, people everywhere during long centuries were terrorized by the priest when they were dying, into leaving money to the Church for the poor and for masses to be said for the purpose of getting their souls out of Purgatory. This money accumulated, and accumulated until it amounted to a tremendous sum. After the Union of Italy, when the power of the Church was broken, the Church began to use this money for political purposes. That is to say, it would give tens of thousands of people in cities and towns a small sum monthly in order to have a hold upon them, enabling the Church to use them against the Italian Government in the interests of its own political ends.

To put an end to this the “Legge delle Opere Pie” was passed in 1890, which took all this money from the Church. Fortunately the Church had invested it in real property, so that the transfer of the money left in trust for the poor was easily effected. But in spite of this and of other laws, passed by the Italian Legislature, the political work of the Church goes on. That is the be-all and the end-all of its existence. And, of course, the saddest feature of it is that all the political intriguing of the Church is done under the cloak of religion.

The Vatican Professes Not to Acknowledge the Kingdom of Italy.

Pope Pius IX issued his non-expedit, forbidding “the faithful” to recognize the King of the Kingdom of Italy, forbidding them to go to the poll, or to take any part in political affairs. In harmony with this, neither he nor his successors ever call the Sovereign “King of Italy,” but “King of Sardinia.” The popes refuse the subsidy allowed them by the Italian Exchequer, and decline to be recognized in any way as Italian subjects.

But the Church in this matter, as in so many others, says one thing and does another. Before elections “the faithful” are instructed by the priests to vote, are urged to vote, are directed how to vote, are menaced if they did not vote as directed. All this is done in private; not publicly, or they would be liable to fine and imprisonment were they shown to influence a voter unduly. Not only Catholics but priests go to the roll. The Church brings all its influence to bear on the Clerical party to vote for its own candidates, men unpatriotic enough to pledge themselves to advance the interests of the Church, which, of course, are diametrically opposed to those of the country. When the election is over, the usual denials take place. The Pope says: “I sanction the recognition of the Kingdom of Italy! I forsake the glorious traditions of the Church! Impossible.” And the Vatican organs publish similar denials and official instructions to “the faithful” not to vote.

Anything is Lawful if it Advances the Interests of Holy Mother Church

I shall quote a few sentences from Signor Ferdinando Martini, a late Governor of Eritrea. He say: “Is it exercising legitimate priestly influence to deceive the simple-minded peasant by attributing opinions to a candidate which are not his? In other words, is it legitimate to lie? Is it legitimate for priests to threaten the poor people with eternal punishment if they do not vote for this or for that candidate? Is it exercising legitimate priestly influence to secure votes by distributing freely bank notes? Christianity, morality and the law say NO. Yet these, and none other, were the means used in the exercise of priestly influence in the provinces.” ‘And yet,” Signor Martini adds, “The Clerical said, we are the instruments of Providence! With those who thus speak I will not attempt to contend, for it repels me to mix up Providence with illicit dealings of Clerical elections. It seems to me that to give to the people the spectacle of priests who are liars, corrupt, and corrupters of the soul, and who make merchandise of the conscience, is sufficient to kill faith and religion.”

This is from a March 1920 publication of the Converted Catholic Magazine which was not found in the Lutheran Library. It’s been 104 years since then and I wondered if indulgences are still being sold today in 2024. Here’s what I found:

The Catholic Church does not now nor has it ever approved the sale of indulgences. This is to be distinguished from the undeniable fact that individual Catholics (perhaps the best known of them being the German Dominican Johann Tetzel [1465-1519]) did sell indulgences–but in doing so they acted contrary to explicit Church regulations. This practice is utterly opposed to the Catholic Church’s teaching on indulgences, and it cannot be regarded as a teaching or practice of the Church. – Source: https://www.catholic.com/qa/does-the-catholic-church-still-sell-indulgences

This is certainly false information from a Catholic source! Those statements are contrary to what I know from reliable sources, insiders, former priests on the subject!

Many people assume that the Catholic Church stopped granting indulgences after Luther’s famous rejection of them. Indeed, nearly 50 years later, Pope Pius V put a stop to their sale. However, Pius V also affirmed the validity of indulgences themselves so long as no money was exchanged. – Source: https://theconversation.com/the-catholic-view-on-indulgences-and-how-they-work-today-193066

This sounds closer to the truth, but it still contradicts the article below what a former Catholic priest, Joseph McCabe, wrote in his article. He says “And indulgences are sold by the million all over Spain today (1920), under the direct and annual authority of the Vatican!” Let’s search the Internet a bit more. Here’s something that was written as late as 2016:

Those of us who know our liturgical calendars are reminded that November is specially devoted to the souls in purgatory—where all the souls whose sins are forgiven but who have not fully remitted the attaching temporal penalty receive a final purification before entering heaven. This is a fitting time for us to re-introduce ourselves to the tradition of indulgences—not only for our own benefit but also for the building up of the Church’s treasury. – Source: https://catholicexchange.com/church-still-believes-indulgences/

LOL! “…the building up of the Church’s treasury” means an exchange of MONEY! This was written only 8 years ago by Stephen Beale who says he was raised as an evangelical Protestant and converted to Catholicism. That’s sad. Any Protestant who converts to Catholicism is a person who does not know the Bible or a person who takes the authority of institution with a corrupt history over the authority of the Bible.

I think it’s quite possible the sale of indulgences is being done covertly today in the confessional box. The priest tells the confessor to give a certain amount of money to the Church, and he or she gets a certain amount of years less of suffering in Purgatory. Nothing said in the confessional box goes out of the confessional box. I went 8 years to a Catholic school in Chicago. The concept of obtaining indulgences to shorten my time in Purgatory was taught to me by Catholic nuns.

This is very interesting history for me about the Catholic Church in Spain and Italy. I hope you appreciate it too.

Are Indulgences Still Being Sold?

By Joseph McCabe, formerly the very Rev. Father Antony, of the Franciscan Order.

Nearly 400 years ago a rebellious monk set Europe aflame with revolt against the authority of Rome. Corrupt, sensual, skeptical, laughing at its own devices, the Court of Rome ruled a densely ignorant world with a levity born of ten centuries of secure domination. The world was growing, however, and the sonorous appeal of Luther brought it to a sudden manhood.

As is well known, one of the historic abuses that fired the indignation of Luther was the sale of indulgences. Scornfully he tossed aside the priestly casuistry that would represent the transaction as no “sale,” but the “giving” of a spiritual favor—in return for a sum of money.

Half of Europe followed the Saxon monk. But for the armies of Spain and Austria the Papacy would probably been erased from the map of Europe 200 years ago. Sell indulgences! Protestants look back with amazement on the Papal audacity, and take it as a measure of the dense ignorance of the Middle Ages that even the attempt should be made. It is a test of medieval conditions, a plumbing of the depths of ignorance. And indulgences are sold by the million all over Spain today (1920), under the direct and annual authority of the Vatican!

Indulgences Still Being Sold.

The sale of indulgences is so historic a symbol of Papal corruption that I can not do other than take it as the first point in my indictment of the Spanish Church. I refused to believe the fact when it was first brought to my notice, long after I had quitted the Catholic ministry. My informant, an American gentleman who had lived in Spain for more than ten years, forwarded to me copies of these “bulas,” as they are called, and the truth was evident. I have since made full inquiries, written on the subject, been “answered” by an English Jesuit—who explained that the indulgence was a pure gift from the Church, in return for a specific sum of money, much as (he did not say this) your soap or your butter is and have lost all doubt on the subject.

On the windows of Catholic bookshops in Spain one often sees the words “Bulas” (the Spanish word for indulgences) in large type. You enter and ask for a “bula”—or you may go to the nearest priest’s house for one —and find that there are four species, at two different prices. Lay a peseta on the counter, and demand the ordinary “bula de la Santa Cruzada.” A flimsy piece of paper, much sealed and impressed, about a foot square, and with the signature of the Archbishop of Toledo, is handed to you, with your change of twenty-five centimos. You have not bought it. You gave an “alms” of seventy-five centimos (about ten cents) to the Church (minus the shopman’s commission), and the Church graciously accorded you—but it would occupy too much of my space even to enumerate the extraordinary spiritual privileges which you can purchase for ten cents in that favored land. The central grace is a “plenary indulgence.”

The Passion for Pelf.

pelf /pĕlf/
noun

1. Wealth or riches, especially when dishonestly acquired.
2. Money; riches; lucre; gain; — generally conveying the idea of something ill-gotten or worthless. It has no plural.

Catholic theology teaches that there are two alternatives to Heaven, two unfathomable pits of fire—Hell and Purgatory. If you die in serious, un-absolved sin, you go to Hell; but few Catholics ever think of going there. It is so easy to get one’s self drafted into the second department. But the second department, Purgatory, is exceedingly unpleasant; the fire and other horrors are the same; the duration is uncertain. Here, again, however, the Church comes to the rescue. Confession and sorrow have relieved you of the first danger; something may be done to avoid the second. In earlier and harder times one went on the Crusades to achieve this. Some Spaniards offered the Papacy money instead, and received the comforting assurance that the Purgatory debt was canceled (a “plenary indulgence”). The sum has sunk with the course of centuries, and now in Spain you gain this gorgeous assurance, with a dozen others, for an “alms” of a dime! But attempt to give your alms to the poor, and you get no bula.

That is the common bula of Spanish church life. The rich, of course, pay more than the small sum stated on the paper; and as the ignorant peasants find frequent need of this comforting assurance, since it only lasts until they sin again, the amount that the church derives annually from this sordid source of revenue can be imagined. Another bula, of the same price, gives you the same comforting assurance in regard to any deceased friend to whom you may wish to apply it. Since, however, it is never quite sure that your “disposition” came up to the required altitude, you do well to continue buying and trying. A third bula is even cheaper, yet more substantial in its advantages. For fifty centimos (less than ten cents) you obtain permission to eat meat on Fridays and most of the days on which Catholics in less favored countries must not eat meat. Unfortunately, you find that the bula is invalid unless you buy the other bula as well; but twenty or twenty-five cents is fairly cheap for a year’s permission to disregard the fast-days.

The Conniving “Composition.”

The fourth bula is the most infamous, unless the reader chooses to regard it with humor. Technically, it is known as the “composition’—an excellent word. It says that if you have any stolen property of which you can not discover the rightful owner; the purchase of this bula makes the property yours. The pickpocket does not usually know the address of his victim; and though the bula declares that the theft must not be committed in view of the bula, the practised conscience of a Spanish thief easily negotiates that difficulty. But this is not the full enormity or the full justification of the title “composition.” One bula costs about twenty-five cents, and covers three dollars’ worth of ill-gotten goods. For every additional three dollars’ worth you have stolen you must give twenty-five cents to the Church—in other words, take out a fresh bula. And—let me quote the incredible words of the document— “in the event of the sum due exceeding seven hundred thirty five pesetas fifty centimos (one hundred twenty-five dollars), the amount compoundable by fifty Summaries, application must be made to Us for a fitting solution of the case!” The priest will take his tithe of your knavery on a scale he thinks fit to determine.

The Finger of the Pope.

Let it be clearly understood that I am not reproducing the statements of writers, travelers or residents; I am describing, or translating, the very words of the bulas, copies of which lie before me. Incredible as the facts will seem to most readers, there is only one quibble which the zealous Catholic, in his misguided wish to defend the Spanish Church, can raise: he will demur at the phrases “bought” and “sold.” I may safely leave that question of casuistry to the reader. From this appalling traffic the Spanish Church draws millions upon millions of pesetas every year—from the rich, who thus pay for its political support, and from the densely ignorant peasantry, whose hardbwon centimos are stolen by this abominable chicanery.

English Roman Catholics who heard of the traffic for the first time, innocently drew the attention of the Vatican to it, and were, after repeated letters, snubbed for their intrusion. The truth is that the whole traffic is under the control of the Vatican. These bulas are no bits of medieval parchment that have lingered into the dawn of the Twentieth Century; they are printed afresh every year, and they can not be issued until an annual permission comes from Rome. Then a procession of heralds marches through the streets of Madrid announcing the glad news that Spain’s unique privilege has been renewed. What a spectacle! Through streets equipped with the latest achievements of modern science there still marches the medieval troop, crying in the ears of educated Madrid that Spain still lives in the Fifteenth Century. I have only to add that until Eighteen Hundred Seventy the Vatican openly took a percentage on this sordid traffic. In these days of inquisitive American and English converts we do not know what the understanding is between the Papacy and the Archbishop of Toledo, who issues and seals those symbols of the Spanish Church’s degradation.

Holy Beggars.

From the sale of indulgences I pass to other features of Spanish Church life which are hardly less repellent. One of the most offensive practices that the traveler notices in modern Spain is the persistent begging. There are more than ninety one thousand beggars in Spain, and they regard themselves as practicing a profession which has the peculiar sanction of the Church. A resident in Spain informed me that he was boldly accosted for alms by a man whom he knew to have a flourishing market-garden near his own residence. Mrs. Bates, in her “Spanish Highways and Byways,” tells a story of a German lady who was accosted by a beggar. With modern feeling she explained to him that she would do something more pleasant than give him alms; she would give him an opportunity to earn the money. He drew his cloak about him with the dignity Of a hidalgo (a member of the Spanish or Portuguese nobility), as he replied, “Madam, I am a beggar, not a laborer.” The Church is directly responsible for this tribe of repulsive idlers. Her edifices are thrown open periodically that pious ladies may distribute bread, wine and cigarettes to the sitting crowd of professional beggars.

Catholicism and Education.

Far heavier, however, is the guilt of the clergy in regard to the atrocious proportion of illiterates in Spain. We are urged to regard the Catholic Church as the great founder of schools, the educator of Europe. The claim is easily tested. There are still two parts of Europe where her power is practically unbroken—Spain and Southern Italy. In Spain the proportion of illiterates is sixty-eight per cent., and in Southern Italy—in Calabria—it is seventy-nine per cent of the population.

Under Liberal pressure, a law of compulsory education was passed in Spain. By Eighteen Hundred Seventy-seven, four millions out of sixteen millions could read and write, and in the subsequent thirty years the ratio has only risen to six millions in eighteen and one-half million people. The teacher is awarded a salary of about a hundred dollars a year, so that the character of such instruction as is given may easily be conjectured. But the State will not even provide this sum, and schoolmasters are thrown on the voluntary donations of parents. The result is that the vast majority of the children get no instructions, and the schoolmaster is the butt of Spanish wit. The Madrid papers gave a case in Nineteen Hundred Three of a master who canvassed a district to find how many parents would contribute if he opened a school. Three families in one hundred promised to contribute. In another place, not far from Madrid, the alcalde (the traditional Spanish municipal magistrate) endeavored to enforce the law, which is universally disregarded, that there should be no bullfights where the master’s salary was not paid. The infuriated people drove the teacher to the plaza and there baited him. Thousands of children in Madrid itself have no school accommodation.

The Blessing of Illiteracy.

For this state of uncivilization the guilt must be equally divided between the Church and the State. Neither wishes to see the people educated. In one important respect, however, the Church has the greater guilt. Poor the State is, undoubtedly, though no sane social student will fail to see how profitably a large part of its expenditure would be diverted to education. But the Church is wealthy, immensely wealthy. The vast revenue already mentioned, together with all parochial dues and collection, goes to the secular (or parochial) clergy, in whose larger churches and cathedrals immense treasure has accumulated. While the workers in parts of Spain must labor for about five pesetas (ninety cents) a week, and while despairing schoolmasters must set their hands to whatever incongruous employment they can discover to augment their fifty to a hundred dollars a year for teaching in barn-like structures, the wealthier churches house incalculable treasure, and the clergy usually live in great comfort. The wardrobe of the image of the Virgin at Toledo would alone suffice to build hundreds of fine schools. “One robe bears,” says Mrs. Bates, “eighty-five thousand large pearls, and as many sapphires, amethysts and diamonds.” The crown used to decorate the statue is worth twenty-five thousand dollars, and the bracelets ten thousand dollars. The total value of this useless and senseless jewelry in the great churches of Spain is beyond calculation; and the country is too poor to educate more than a part of its children, and that with ridiculous inadequacy. Cordova alone has six hundred priests to fifty-five thousand people; and Cordova is on the verge of bankruptcy.

“Blind Mouths.”

But this overwhelming sufficiency of parochial clergy, with its incalculable wealth, is not the chief source of offense to enlightened Spaniards. A vast population of monks and nuns and Jesuits, who do no parochial work, is spread over the land, and amasses wealth with even greater success than the secular clergy. In the heated conflicts of the two bodies the truth is suffered to leak out. A Spanish prelate, Monsignor Jose Veleda de Gunjado, has recently declared that these regulars (monks and nuns) own two-thirds of the money of the country and one-third of the wealth in property, etc. While they flaunt vows of poverty before the ignorant peasantry, they draw out of the healthy circulation of the impoverished country a colossal proportion of its resources. A “religious review (the “Revista Christiana”) gave the income of the Jesuit body at Manresa alone as more than seventy-five thousand dollars a year, and this is only one among a thousand instances of an immensely wealthy community. Before the Phillippine Islands were taken from Spain, the Church drew one hundred thirteen million pesetas a year from the Islands (Note: To this day, the Philippines is still a developing country with mostly bad roads), the State being content with a further sixty-six millions. Barcelona had one hundred sixty-five convents until the recent riots, many of them worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Province of Catalonia supported two thousand three hundred of these institutions.

Popery and Decency.

Nor must the reader be misled by audacious Catholic assurances that these wealthy communities represent the voluntary piety of the faithful, and are holy retreats to which the timid may retire from “the world.” Even in this country the Catholic clergy generally–I am not speaking at random: I have been a priest and a monk—disdain and detest the communities of monks. The idleness and petty hypocrisy to which their ascetic professions lead is fully described in my “Twelve Years in a Monastery.” As I had the further advantage of living in monasteries in a “Catholic” country (Belgium), I obtained some idea of the real nature of such institutions under more or less normal conditions. The appalling laziness of the vast majority, the gross ignorance which masquerades as humility, the enormous consumption of alcohol behind closed doors, the all-pervading hypocrisy and very widespread immorality, would if they were fully appreciated by the educated laity of Belgium, turn the smoldering anti-clericalism into a fierce blaze of anger. Not one monk in twenty merited respect, even in his superstitions. The great majority were grossly sensual, lazy and hypocritical. But even in Belgium there is a large body of critical observers, and the monasteries of Spain have the same corruption in a far greater degree.

A Salacious Clergy.

salacious /sə-lā′shəs/
adjective

1. Appealing to or stimulating sexual desire.

The gross animality (characteristics or nature of an animal) of the monks, the unscrupulousness of the Jesuits—for the Jesuit in Spain is a Jesuit—and the widespread immorality of the clergy are well known to Spaniards. Any who imagine that the charge of flagrant immorality against the Spanish clergy is a Protestant or Rationalist calumny should read “The Priest and the People in Spain,” written by an Irish Roman Catholic, Mr. Doran, who wisely chooses to disassociate his co-religionists severely and emphatically from the Roman Catholicism of Spain. “I can remember the time,” he says, “when I would have dropped the acquaintance of my best friend had he but said, or hinted, half the things I now know to be true in regard to the condition of the Church in Spain.” He states that on one occasion, when he was dining with a number of Spanish priests, he remarked, “without giving the least offense,” that “if some of them ventured to say Mass in Ireland, they would be dragged off the altar.” They replied, genially, that they always confessed to a companion before Mass. He found a state of immorality among the clergy “which it takes an Irishman half a lifetime to understand and an eternity to forgive.” The sister of the gentleman at whose house he was staying was the mistress of a priest. He adds that the Spanish clergy will marry uncles to nieces readily, “given a sufficient amount of money,” and that “nine Spaniards out of ten will tell you that the desire to earn an easy living is the motive which induces so many to join the clergy.”

A Trained Hierarchy.

After this Catholic testimony I need not linger over the morality of the Spanish clergy. As an ex-priest I have always refused to create prejudice against my late co-religionists by discussing this side of their affairs; but when, in their corrupt interests, a body of priests like those of the Spanish Church egg on the civic or military officials to murder, it is time to speak. There is immorality enough even among the priests of this country. Sordid cases came to my personal knowledge. In Belgium the condition—a condition that any candid person will expect from their enforced celibacy and good living—is far worse. In Spain and the South of Italy it is flagrant, nor is it confined to the lower clergy and the monks. A writer in the “Church Quarterly” relates how an Italian prelate calmly discussed with him the fact, which he neither resented nor denied, that one of the candidates for the papal throne, one of the most distinguished cardinals in the Church, was a man of “conspicuous immorality.” The cardinal in question, whose life was described to me in Rome, kept a mistress in a villa not many miles from the Vatican. The hypocrisy that asks English people to shudder over the very intelligible and quite open conduct of Ferrer, whom the Church of Spain prevented from marrying when he wished, and cheerfully acquiesces in this sordid condition of the clergy wherever the mass of the people are still Catholic, is too revolting to characterize.

“Free Unions.”

It must not be imagined, however, that this condition of the clergy in Spain is one of the popular charges against them. For many centuries, in the Latin countries, the clergy have withheld their strictures on the conduct of their followers, and the greatest laxity prevails. In Seville, a town renowned for its Catholicism, a French Catholic writer, M. Bazin, was told by a priest that more than half the unions of men and women were “free unions.” While the Church parades before the world its high ideal of chastity, and speaks hypocritically of the growth of immorality in the wake of heresy, it is precisely in those regions where it retains enormous power today, and has held absolute sway for ages, that we find the most immoral parts of Europe. Northern Italy, predominant in rebellion against the Church, has a ratio of illegitimate births of only six percent; the Roman province has a ratio of twenty percent, and the Southern provinces much the same. It is a foolish superstition, encouraged by Catholics, that the laxity of the Latin races is a matter of temperature. The Northern races were just as bad before the Reformation. That notorious laxity is due solely to the fact that an immoral clergy never dared to press on the people their theoretic gospel of chastity.

Enlightened Spaniards Are Bitter.

But if the bulk of the Spaniards smile at the immorality of their priests, those more enlightened Spaniards who see the lifeblood of their country being drained to sustain such a system feel a pardonable bitterness. Let me give one detail by which one may measure the whole monstrosity. Diercks relates that the “Revista Christiana” at one time made a calculation of the value of the wax and incense burned in Spanish churches in the course of a year. The total reached the extraordinary sum of seven million five hundred thousand dollars-a sum little short of what Spain spends on education! And this is one small item of the total cost to the country of its religious system. Add to this the millions obtained in the ordinary way of fees and collections, the millions received for bulas, the millions charged (on one pretext or another) for scapulars, rosaries, bullet-proof prayers, agnus-deis, and the whole medieval magazine of charms, the millions received for obtaining dispensations to marry, for baptisms, funerals, masses (each of which costs from two to twenty pesetas), and other ceremonies, the millions acquired by wills, by taking over the goods of monastic aspirants, and in other ways. And the whole of this vast proportion of an impoverished circulation goes to feed the parasitic growth, with no spiritual vitality or social usefulness, which I have described.

Let the light fall upon the mind of Spain, and this decrepit and corrupt agglomeration of medieval vices and abuses will be swept ruthlessly away. Rebellion against the Vatican has followed immediately upon the extension of popular enlightenment in France, in Northern Italy, and in those South American republics which have dared to educate. Beyond all question, it is following the same course in Spain.

Will this effete and corrupt body, with all its dependent industries, contemplate impartially the spread of education in Spain? Will that colossal revenue from bulas and other medieval barbarities continue when Spain is Europeanized-— to use the phrase of its own social students?

How Can These Things Be?

But if Spain is so largely anti-clerical, how comes the Church to retain the power it does? Spain is seething with anti-clericalism. Mr. Isaacson, in his “Rome in Many Lands,” quotes an orthodox Spanish paper, “El Correo Espanol,” to the effect that only one million five hundred thousand men and three million five hundred thousand women, in a population of eighteen million five hundred thousand, now obey the clergy in Spain. I have dealt thoroughly with the question in my “Decay of the Church of Rome.” If that be so, how can we explain the power of the Church?

Here we come to another and not less sordid aspect of Spanish life, which it is absolutely necessary to understand if we wish to understand the murder of Ferrer. The political system is not less corrupt than the clerical, and the two corruptions support each other with despairing unscrupulousness. Many who are willing to admit the corruption of the Church will hesitate here, but it is a platitude of recent Spanish literature, and in fact is so well recognized by responsible Spanish statesmen as to make one wonder why any representative government treats the Spanish Government as a civilized Power.

This is the opportunity of the clergy. Driven from other lands, they make their last stand in Spain. From France, from Portugal, from Cuba, from the Philippines, they have concentrated on the land where only a few millions can read and write, and the political power is manipulated by a system as corrupt as their own. Within a few years, probably, they will be reinforced by the exiled monks of Italy. So long as Spain is ignorant, or only taught a smattering of letters and a vast amount of terrifying superstition in their own schools, they are safe. But they can not wholly shut out the light from France and England, and they play a desperate game. Jesuitry is Jesuitry in Spain. From the boudoir of the Queenmother, and now, I am informed, from the boudoir of the Queen, whom they have won, they rule Spain and swoop down with ferocity on all eruptions of revolt.

By Rev. C. R. Macfaul, M. A., OTTAWA, CANADA.

This is from a March 1920 publication of the Converted Catholic Magazine which was not found in the Lutheran Library. This article talks about the history of the Roman Catholic Church condemning Joan of Arc to death, burning her alive at the stake, and then canonizing her as a saint 488 years later!

Roman Catholic papers have announced that one of the great events of 1920 will be the formal canonization of Joan of Arc. In view of her being one day made a Roman Catholic saint, on April 18, 1909, in the presence of 30,000 French pilgrims, many cardinals, clergy, and others, the ceremonies of the beatification of Joan of Arc were carried out in St. Peter’s, Rome. A Roman Catholic Press report says: “The Papal Decree, ‘De Tuto,’ which is the formal act of ratifying the Canonization was publicly read in the presence of the Holy Father on June 8, 1919. Nothing is now required but the formal canonization, which is a ceremony of imposing grandeur. Invitations will be issued to all nations, France being prominently represented. As this ceremony takes some months to organize, it will probably be May or June next year before it takes place.”

This action on the part of the Roman Church has caused new interest in the history of this wonderful maid, and should lead every intelligent person to ask a few pertinent questions.

Who Was Responsible for Her Death?

Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, conducted her trial. He was a favorite of Cardinal Beaufort, who had shortly before the trial, recommended him to the Pope for the Bishopric of Rouen. It was Bishop Beauvais who negotiated the ransom of 6,000 francs whereby Joan came under his care when she was to be judged by the Church. In the chapel of the Castle of Rouen, on Feb. 21, 1431, the trial began. The judges present numbered about forty, and on the third day of the trial sixty-two. They are carefully classed, in the report of the trial, as doctors of theology, abbots, canons, doctors in canonical and civil law, with the Bishop of Beauvais at their head. Of the long public trial and private examination and re-examination of Joan, in which not a rule was omitted, “except those of justice, fairness and truth,” space will not permit us to mention. Suffice it to say that, with no advocate, no counsel, no one to conduct her defense, the maid was condemned to the stake.

On May 30, 1431, in the old Market Place of Rouen, surrounded by bishops, ecclesiastics and notables, she was burnt alive. Below the stake where Joan was sacrificed were written these words: “Jeanne, called the Maid, Liar, Abuser of the People, Soothsayer, Blasphemer of God, Pernicious, Superstitious, Idolatrous, Cruel, Dissolute, Invoker of Devils, Apostate, Schismatic, Heretic.”

The responsibility for the death of Joan rests therefore with the Roman Church. Let it be remembered that the faithful of the Church are taught to put faith in the appearance of saints and angels, in visions and dreams. Lourdes, in France, is founded on the visions of the child Bernadette. Jeanne was but following the teachings of her Church when she believed in the visions and voices which she said constrained her to seek to save France for the French, and yet her Church condemned her as a sorceress.

The moment she appealed directly to God and not to the Pope, she was a Protestant, although that word had not then been coined, and a heretic, and the stake had to follow; and even though she at one time appeared to submit to the Church, she had relapsed again into error, therefore she must be burnt. Only the Church that has always refused the individual the right of his thoughts and speech, the author of The Infernal Inquisition, could have so cruelly sacrificed this pure girl who, free from all thought of self-seeking had never any other motive but to serve her God and deliver her country.

After denouncing the Maid as a sorceress, heretic, apostate, idolater, blasphemer of God, and an invoker of devils, Rome will solemnly invite Catholic France to offer to the Vatican their humble and grateful thanks for the honor that the sovereign Pontiff will heap upon that country by canonizing the Maid of Orleans.

If one could believe that the Roman Church had no special part to play to her advantage in canonizing Joan of Arc, we would all greatly rejoice in the acknowledgment that it erred greatly in condemning her to death.

Rome had no intention of stopping with the beatification of the Maid of Orleans. They have been hunting up the records of Joan’s life to find if she ever wrought any special miracles, an essential condition, generally, of a person being canonized. No doubt they have succeeded in their hunt to Rome’s satisfaction.

The Roman Catholic Church will have a most difficult task ahead of hunting up past records to discover the saints it so foully murdered, and declaring it erred in burning and beheading them. It will never possess enough candles and incense to honor all the unknown and authentic saints that it, “the Scarlet Beast of the Tiber,’ has devoured while drunk “with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.”

Why Was She Canonized?

France, the elder daughter of the Church, has refused to submit any longer to her cruel and crafty Roman mother. The Maid of Orleans is now one of France’s greatest heroines and patriots. She was a peasant, a child of the common people. Rome has seized this opportunity to honor her with a view of winning the favor, especially of the people in the humbler walks of life, hoping thus to regain to some extent its lost power in the government of the country, and to recover its lost prestige in France owing to her pretended neutrality during the war. In the Roman Church, as among the heathen, female saints have always been the most popular, and the Pope thinks it wise to add the name of the maid to the list of saints, believing that she will be most welcome to the people.

The Church has been a long time coming to this decision. It dared not do it sooner lest its people be scandalized at its placing in her calendar of saints one that she condemned as a heretic and burnt at the stake. It is over 488 years since it committed the cruel deed. It hopes that the great majority of her people, ignorant of the history of the world at that time, will never learn that it was guilty of the crime, and if any do it has decided, because of the advantage it hopes to gain, to run the risk of their accepting its explanation of the part she played.

For duplicity, Rome has no equal on the face of the earth.