May 28, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Dr. Taylor Marshall, a well-known theologian and expert in Thomism as well as a supporter of the Traditional Latin Mass, has written a book on the infiltration of the Catholic Church by anti-Catholic forces. The book is titled Infiltration: The Plot to Destroy the Church From Within, and it is published by Sophia Institute Press.
Marshall starts his book with the apparition of Our Lady of La Salette in France and her warnings against Satan’s reign in Rome and with the Alta Vendita instructions that were attributed to Freemasonry and published with the explicit support of several Popes in the 19th century. This document explains that, in order to undermine the Catholic Church, one has to infiltrate her, rather than fight against her from the outside. For this purpose, they would aim at influencing the head of the Catholic Church, the Pope.
“Now then, in order to secure to us a Pope according to our own heart, it is necessary to fashion for that Pope a generation worthy of the kingdom of which we dream. Leave on one side old age and middle life, go to the youth, and, if possible, even to children.” These Masons set out to introduce into Catholic thinking liberal ideas that finally would also reach to the top of the Church.
“The plan,” writes Marshall, “doesn’t include pamphlets, guns, bloodshed, or even political elections. It requires a step-by-step infiltration, first of the youth, next of the clergy, and then, as time passes, of those youth and clergy who become cardinals and then the pope.”
Since this Alta Vendita document might not be known to many people, LifeSiteNews received permission to publish Marshall’s chapter on it in its entirety here, as a sort of introduction (read here).
In the following chapters of his 300-page book which has been published just now by Sophia Press, the author deals with the history from the middle of the 19th century until our days, showing how Pope Pius X vigorously fought the modernist ideas that were spreading, at the beginning of the 20th century, within the Catholic Church. In the Sankt Gallen Group – the group of progressivist prelates who were disappointed with the reign of Pope John Paul II and who tried, after his death, to get a Pope of their liking elected – this modernist stream finds it pivotal point, also because those prelates who reigned over the Catholic Church in Europe – and effectively contributed to the watering down of the Faith in this region of the world – were the key figures of the Sankt Gallen Group. Here, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, Cardinal Basil Hume, and Cardinal Godfried Danneels come to mind.
Dr. Marshall also presents in detail how some of these modernist ideas affected the Second Vatican Council, as well as the Novus Ordo Mass. In the end, he touches upon Pope Francis’ election and shows some of his “problematic teachings” that now affect the Catholic Church in a negative manner. Here, the author – himself a father of eight children – points to Francis’ apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia and its statement that “no one is condemned forever,” but also to such statements such as the Abu Dhabi Document: “Francis also has taught that God divinely and wisely wills the ‘diversity and plurality of religions’ with the same will ‘by which he created human beings.’”
Here, Dr. Marshall concludes: “Saint Pius X would have placed Pope Francis under the ban of Modernism. How can we have two popes in theological contradiction?”
Marshall also discusses the Fatima apparitions and the question of the Third Secret given to seer Sister Lúcia.
In a recent May 24 podcast, Marshall revealed that, during his visit in Rome a week ago, he was able to meet shortly with Pope Francis and that he gave him the first copy of his new book, with an inscription for the Pope. He had written this book during Lent. “I fasted my entire Lent for him.” The book, the author adds, “was a labor of love.” Marshall said that he would “love for the man [Pope Francis] to be one of the greatest sanctified popes of all times, who steers the Church right through this whole crisis. It is not too late.”
Bishop Athanasius Schneider, the auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, wrote a Foreword to Dr. Marshall’s book (read here). He praises the book, stating that “In Infiltration: The Plot to Destroy the Church from Within, Taylor Marshall touches on a topic that is deliberately ignored today. The issue of a possible infiltration of the Church by forces outside her does not fit into the optimistic picture that Pope John XXIII and particularly the Second Vatican Council unrealistically and uncritically drew of the modern world.” Schneider wonders how it comes that today, “not a few high- ranking members of the Catholic Church’s hierarchy have not only yielded to the relentless demands of the modern world; they are, with or without conviction, actively collaborating in the implementation of its principles in the daily life of the Church in all areas and on all levels.”
Here, Dr. Marshall’s book might well help to shed some light on how the Church got to this point. In order to understand this crisis, Schneider adds, we must examine the very roots of the crisis.” This crisis can be seen “as an infiltration of the Church by the unbelieving world, and especially by Freemasons – an infiltration that, by human standards, could effectively succeed only through a long, methodical process.” However, at the end of his introduction, Bishop Schneider reminds us that “even the most perfidious plot to destroy the Church from within will not succeed.”
Among traditional Catholics, some of these documents presented by Dr. Marshall have already been studied and incorporated into the understanding of today’s Church crisis (we might remember here, for example, Arnaud de Lassus’ book Unholy Craft: Freemasonry and the Roots of Christophobia, or John Vennari’s book on the Alta Vendita.)
It is Dr. Marshall’s contribution to have updated this understanding – including the role of the Sankt Gallen Group – and to have placed all the relevant documents into one compendium.
