"Infiltration" Book Review

This moment in history has been shaped by ideas. 

And ideas fluctuate. They change between people, and with time. They are reinterpreted and misinterpreted. They are sound and they are flawed, and their usefulness depends on their moment. We are living in a history that was both created, and destroyed, by ideas.  

Truth seems like an idea. Like an idea, truth can guide history. But unlike ideas, truth is absolute and guides history toward the good. 

As the Son of God, Jesus Christ spoke the truth and was crucified for it. Then he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. This truth, recorded by faithful eyewitnesses, spread. Christ's mystical body and the Catholic Church became the same entity. It became the duty of the Catholic Church to uphold the truth of Christ because like Christ, it was the sacrament of the world.

We are living at a point in history when truth is optional. This 'optional truth' idea is no longer just coming from Freemasons, modernists, or secularists, but the Vicar of Christ, the Roman Bishop, the Pope himself. 

Dr. Taylor Marshall has written a book about how these ideas could have possibly infiltrated the Catholic Church. The book, called 'Infiltration' was written for Cultural Catholics under the spell of secularism. (Traditional Catholics would be more familiar with the events Dr. Marshall outlines.) That the Church is reneging on the truth is made sadder by the fact that many people are unaffected by it. Some are jumping from what they consider a sinking ship, believing incorrectly that they will fare better in the ocean. 

Dr. Marshall writes subjectively about the methods and reasons for this infiltration of the Catholic Church. I don't mean that Dr. Marshall cannot be believed, but the takeaway cannot only be that 'some Bishops were Freemasons.' Some Bishops believed ideas over the truth they were expected to protect. It is therefore undoubtedly true that some of the leadership of the Church was corrupted by certain aspects of Modernist ideas. But to place them firmly inside the sect of Freemasons requires a Caro-esque approach to this material, which is shrouded in secrecy. It would also make the book the length of a few Bibles and take the Pontificate of a few Popes to complete.

Nevertheless, the current Church leaders are officially changing Church doctrines to better fit ideas that are popular for this particular moment in history. Dr. Marshall argues that this is by design.

(His book is a rather quick survey for a conspiracy that involves the salvation of the souls of mortal man, just as this review doesn't do justice to cover the extent of his research.)

Dr. Marshall begins this story with the dissolution of the Papal States: The Papal States of Rome were established in the year 800 when the Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas. For the next 1,000 years the Pope would be the spiritual pastor and temporal governor of the states as the embodiment of Christ. Charlemagne would hold the security. 

There were many historical events that lead to the dissolution of the Papal States in 1870. The revolution in France--a traditionally Catholic country influenced by ideas of the Enlightenment--and the unification of the Italian peninsula by conquest just to name two. Rome was then occupied by Napoleon, and Italy declared war against the Pope, who was confined to the Vatican quarter of Rome.

The rise of the plot of Freemasonry to conquer the Catholic Church was published in the Alta Vendita and then predicted by an apparition of the blessed Virgin Mary in La Salette.

(A later apparition of  an angel appeared to three children in Fatima, Portugal in 1916 and predicted the fall of Russia.)

As the Freemasons formed and grew powerful they had goals of influencing the doctrines of the Church to reflect the pantheistic, naturalistic and relativistic worldview of their natural religion, itself opposed to Catholicism, a supernatural religion. 

Freemasonry fought Catholicism "behind-the-scenes" with ideas to justify the "evolution" of its dogma through belief of modernism. Masonic modernism had a Catholic veneer by reinterpreting the Bible and Jesus's teachings through rationalist post-enlightenment philosophy. Supernatural miracles of the Bible were given a natural explanation. They should have always been interpreted theologically.

The secularist belief in ideas like relativism have created excuses for secularists to practice beliefs of their own curation. 

Catholicism is challenging. Adherents accepting the challenge move closer to the goodness that God offers through Jesus Christ. The plot of the Freemasons, if successful, would relinquish the Church of its moral power over people. 

Pope Pius X opposed this new secularized Italian rule over Rome. He also opposed modernism, which he saw as incompatible with Catholic Dogma. 

Pope Pius XI signed the Lateran Treaty, which regulated the state of Italy with the Vatican by its Prime Minister, Benito Mussolini, and granted the Vatican independent sovereignty to the Holy See. A newly united Italian peninsula also decided to award the Vatican with financial compensation for the loss of its territory in the Papal States. 

These secular governments helped to make official this separation of Church and State. This weakened state of Rome made future Popes susceptible to a desire for relevance among changing public attitudes in the secular European States. Popes like John Paul II and Pope Francis are the latest in a long line of Popes who have slowly changed the definition of truth as a reaction to modernist dilemmas.

Every Pope since Pope Pius X has varied in their conservatism and changed the doctrines of Catholicism over time. Archbishop Montini, who would later resume Vatican II as Pope Paul VI (despite Canon Law to discontinue councils with the death of a pope) had provable meetings with the organizer Saul Alinsky! That a Pope would come to know and respect a man like Alinsky, whose radical methods of artificially stimulated conflict were suspect. Not Freemasonry necessarily, but definitely not Catholic.

Not since the Council of Trent had there been discussed Church changes as there were in the years leading up to Vatican II. Dr. Marshall discusses the details for the justification of Vatican II. It is very political, and cannot be summed up in anything less than a book.

Another architect of Vatican II, Prelate Bugnini, is accused of Freemasonry by Dr. Marshall, but he doesn't definitively prove it. It would be nice though, since Bugnini was Secretary of the Commission that worked on the reform of the Liturgy for Vatican II. For Traditional Catholics he is a controversial figure. The lack of his association with Freemasonry doesn't discount Bugnini's actions. He may not have been acting for Freemasonry and Protestantism by changing the oldest Liturgy in the world for a personal experiment, but he did violate his faith in the truth by changing the oldest Liturgies in the world. 

When it came time for Vatican II there were only 10% of council bishops were resistant to modernism. Vatican II council focused on unity with non-christians by compromising beliefs. Laypeople need to be able to perform rites, reducing to utility the traditional Roman Rite. 

(The book goes into much more detail, but the astute reader can also research more.)

As predicted by the apparition, the fall of Russia resulted in the Communist takeover. Communism, much like capitalism, was considered by the Church to be a looming, evil threat.

According to ex-Communist Bella Dodd there were communists that infiltrated the seminaries and rising in the ranks of the Church! But for the same reason Senator McCarthy had a hard time proving that accused Americans were indeed communists for the same reason that Dr. Marshall has a hard time providing evidence that Archbishop Bugnini, architect of Vatican II, was a Freemason. The same reason that anti-racists haven't produced evidence against Donald Trump: it can be assumed with the evidence, but it cannot be proven. No one can prove thought. 

Unlike dogma, beliefs are fluid. Bishops should not believe anything but the truth--that is what we rely on them for--but beliefs can be uncontrollable.

The rejection of Goodness, Truth and Beauty for the Relativism of Freemasonry does not make them change. Sliding standards means subjective standards....different standards means no standards. No standards, no truth. No truth, no beauty, no goodness. Man has the natural ability to choose truth, and he can heal through the redemption of sin if he so chooses. 

The inability of the leadership of the Catholic Church to respond to modernism with truth and instead embrace it has caused this crisis. The Church needs to fix itself, and a faithful clergy can only pray for it. Let us pray that modernism exposes itself as the empty ideology that it is.