The Battle for the Reign of Christ the King

The Ultramontanes Versus The Americanists

Pius X is probably best known for his encyclical, "Pascendi Dominici Gregis", against the "doctrines" of the Modernists.  (Just exactly what a "Modernist" is remains elusive to this day.  Supposedly, Modernism is the "Synthesis of All Heresies".  I submit that "Modernism" is decidedly something much more old fashioned:  It is the calculated subversion of language by the use of equivocal jargon whereby truth is conflated with error.)  The tone of this epochal document is quickly established from the onset: "That We make no delay in this matter is rendered necessary... by the fact that the partisans of error are to be sought... in her [the Church's] very bosom and heart... many who belong to the Catholic laity... more lamentable, to... the priesthood itself... lacking the firm protection of philosophy and theology... thoroughly imbued with the poisonous doctrines taught by the enemies of the Church, and lost to all sense of modesty, vaunt themselves as reformers of the Church... assail all that is most sacred..."  The encyclical then gives an excellent synopsis of the attack against the foundations of religion then in vogue, especially as emanating from the schools of Rudolf Karl Bultmann, professor of Marburg.  Tragically, it is mainly an epistemological and dogmatic synopsis, and gives utterly no historical context.  Moreover, equally tragically, the document cites not one example of modernism then raging especially in the sciences of archaeology, astronomy, or cosmology, nor condemns one of the partisans.  Instead, the document remains wholly in the abstract realm.  Moreover, Pius X acts as though "Modernism" is a relatively recent phenomenon, festering in the colleges and seminaries, but by no means propagated from the Roman Curia. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

"Modernism" was born in the Grand Lodge of London in 1717.  But before continuing, perhaps this Wolf should do a brief exposition of Freemasonry for dummies.  Most "Freemasons" receive only the first Three Degrees of the Blue Lodge.  In each of these, they, during a somewhat elaborate ceremony where their stripped chest is pieced by a compass while surrounded by the accoutrements of solemn ritual, swear to uphold "the secrets of the lodge" under pain of very tortures and death, and then having their remains subjected to the most humiliating treatment.  While many are probably taken aback by the ceremonial, they probably conclude that such is the price of convincing their comrades that they take politics and the Brotherhood seriously, and that the oaths themselves are largely symbolic, with no metaphysical consequences.  After all, the "secrets" most are asked to keep is that the lodge has no windows, or the tableware is imitation silver.  Only when they are invited higher up, to, say, the Ordo Templi Orientis, do they realize that Speculative Masonry involves Animal and Human Sacrifice amid rituals too grisly to detail here.  Only then do they realize that what Masons worship is not the Protestant Christian God, but Lucifer.  As Albert Pike would put it in his "Morals and Dogma", the most erudite tome of Masonic theology: "Doubt it not!"

More than likely, most of the American "Founding Fathers" were of the former variety, despite some of them having attained to the "33rd Degree".  They saw the Lodges as largely a philanthropic organization dedicated to the betterment of the material status of the "common man" here below, and as battling against "popery" and "monkish superstitions", which were the bane of "progress".  Probably all of the Founding Fathers, exempting perhaps Benjamin Franklin, who does appear to have at least known of some of the strange practices of his doctor friend in London, were just Useful Idiots aiding the cause of Enlightened Progress, Thomas Jefferson most especially by "demythologizing" the Gospels, rendering them bereft of the miracles of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  

Meanwhile, not much "religious freedom" existed in the American Colonies circa 1776.  Most of them were Protestant Confessional States, where the civil law obliged attendance at service on Sunday.  (Just imagine the Town Constable knocking on the door inquiring if the husband had a serious reason- say, an illness- for his absence that past Sunday, as the Adjitor had noticed the vacancy in the pew.  And if no qualifying excuse was tendered, the accused was hauled off to the stocks, or jail.) Though worst in Puritanical New England, the South was not exempt.  Only in Maryland, originally founded by Catholics, was the indifferentism that was to become prevalent soon throughout the United States dominant.  In Maryland all denominations were welcome- except Catholics.  Laws were on the books forbidding public processions of the Blessed Sacrament, or Catechism Lessons in Schools.  A Catholic had better be very private about their affairs.  (One does wonder how the Carrolls, particularly John and Daniel, were able to prosper in this environment, but that is a story for another time...)  Of course, it was not that these Protestants were necessarily dogmatic.  Just a few decades hence, the Unitarian Movement would be holding committees across New England Congregations to debate on whether God was A Most Blessed Trinity, or just a Cosmic Sugardaddy.  (In most places, the latter won, and the Unitarians would set up shop while the conservative minority would build a smaller church on the other side of the town square, while the children of both sects would be trained in the School of American Indifferentism.)

Meanwhile, the "American Catholic Church", whose Patriarch was the Aforementioned Bishop John Carroll, would quickly learn to accommodate itself to this atmosphere of "religious freedom".  Enjoying numerous papal indults, it was able to cancel the majority of Holy Days of Obligation, such as Epiphany, Candlemass, Corpus Christi, and Michaelmas, just to name a few.  Corpus Christi was "transferred" to Sunday, so that processions might not impede those Protestants busily pursuing happiness in the world of filthy lucre.  The "American Catholic Church", for the most part, also neglected to evangelize, preferring instead to keep its proverbial light under the bushel basket of segregated ghettos and towns established in the hinterlands far afield of Protestant civilization.  Only through sheer force of numbers, did Irish immigrants begin to have an impact on places such as Boston, where in Colonial times the Blessed Sacrament was kept aboard the ships of the French Fleet lest it be desecrated by the Pious Puritans.  And needless to say. the "American Catholic Church" became the seedbed of Indifferentism.  More on this shortly.


Meanwhile, Cardinal Gueseppe Sarto, newly crowned with the triple Tiara as Pope Pius X, had this to say to Cardinal Gibbons shortly after his coronation in 1903:  "I Love These Americans.  They are the Blooming Youth of Catholicism.  Tell them I gladly give my Apostolic Blessing to their whole country."  Did Pius X know who he was addressing, or was he a complete ignoramus? Cardinal Gibbons was the close associate of Cardinal Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro, whose interesting associations with Freemasonry in general, and the Ordo Templi Orientis in particular, have been aptly chronicled elsewhere.  Cardinal Gibbons also had an interesting sidekick, one Bishop John Ireland, just recently having concluded his evangelization of the Gospel of American Progress to the Philippines, until very recently benighted by Popery and Monkish Superstitions, courtesy of the Spanish Franciscan Friars.

But let us turn back the clock just one decade to September 11th, 1893,  where we find Cardinal James Gibbons opening the "Parliament of World Religions".  This was also heartilly endorsed by Archbishop John Ireland and Bishop John Keane.

At the event, Italian Cardinal Francesco Satolli, the first Apostolic Delegate to the United States, said that laymen must go into the world “in one hand bearing the Book of Christian Truth and in the other the Constitution of the United States.”  I suppose by the "Book of Christian Truth" the good cardinal was referring to the Holy Bible, more specifically, the Latin Vulgate of St Jerome.  But one really cannot take too much for granted the more one studies, to one's chagrin.  He might just as handily have been referring to the King James Canon.  Meanwhile, one can certainly make the case this Italian Cardinal was a zealous apostle of the "manifest destiny" of America to bring the Gospel of Enlightened Progress to the backwards European colonials.

Bishop Keane had this to say concerning the event: "It is only by a friendly and brotherly comparison of convictions that reasonable men can ever come to an agreement about the all-important truths which are the foundation of religion, and that an end can be put to the religious divisions and antagonisms which are a grief to our Father in Heaven. Such an assemblage of intelligent and conscientious men, presenting their religious convictions without minimizing, without acrimony, without controversy, with love and truth and humanity, will be an honorable event in the history of religion and cannot fail to accomplish much good."  One does suppose that Bishop Keane would have fit right in during the deliberations with the Separated Brethren at Vatican II.


But, luckily, we still had a few mitered Catholics back then.   Bishop Bernard John McQuaid remained unconvinced. Two years after the parliament, he wrote, “of late years, a spirit of liberalism is springing up in our body . . . that if not checked in time, will bring disaster on the Church. Many a time Catholic laymen have remarked that the Catholic Church they once knew seems to be passing away, so greatly shocked are they at what they see passing around them.”  Prophetic words indeed.

Some years later, the problem concerning the "friarlands" in the Philippines following the American conquest after the 1899 war against Spain more than likely was a recurring theme in the 29 letters written by President Theodore Roosevelt to Cardinal Gibbons.  (This was by far the greatest bulk of correspondence between any American President and a high ranking prelate of the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church.)


A letter of protest addressed to President Roosevelt, dated July 10th, 1902, and signed by Archbishop William Henry Elder of Cincinnati, Bishop Michael Tierney of Hartford, and the priests of their dioceses, set forth the debate, and the Catholic position, succinctly:  "We respectfully submit that the clause of the Constitution which requires the absolute separation of Church and State was intended by the framers of the document to meet the conditions in the United States of America and not those which obtain in the Orient and among a people unanimously of one form of religious belief. Your Excellency, we are profoundly convinced that the Filipino people, deeply Catholic at heart, will deem it an unjust invasion of their rights to be taxed for the maintenance of a system of education which cannot command the free and full approval of their conscience."

In other words, the good catholic People of the Philippines were somewhat less than enthusiastic about being evangelized by progressivists calling their way of life backwards and their children being taught to resent and despise their heritage in the newly inaugurated public school system.

But then again, Bishop Ireland was just heartilly implementing that which his Pope had lauded just some years before:  "We traverse in spirit and thought the wide expanse of ocean...  We highly esteem and love exceedingly the young and vigorous American nation, in which We plainly discern latent forces for the advancement alike of civilization and of Christianity."  Pope Leo XIII, Longingua, 1895.

Apparently, Good Pope Leo had not gotten the memo concerning Abraham Lincoln's Crusade to preserve the Union, where Sherman and Sheridan made Georgia and Virginia, respectively, howl.  He had not been apprised that the soldiers of the "young and vigorous American nation" had, on multiple occasions, desecrated Catholic sanctuaries and made priestly vestments and consecrated vessels the occasion of mockery and sport.  He was obviously not informed how the armies had deprived men of their estates, women of their decency, and even children of cherished toys, all in the name of "liberty and progress".  Was Pope Leo merely delusional, or was he in on it?

Pope Pius X would die in August 1914, just a few days after World War One was underway.  Many claimed that he died of a broken heart, contemplating the certain horrors to come.  But perhaps he died of a broken conscience.  The case can be made that the events leading up to the outbreak of war were pure theatre, and that the war itself had been planned years beforehand, by Cecil Rhodes and his band of associates.  Perhaps Pius X knew, or at least suspected, what we now know, and yet kept silent, as part of a promise.  Perhaps his conscience assailed him, and he was torn by two conflicting currents- his oath and his latent faith.  We will not know for sure until the Terrible Day of the Lord.

What this Wolf does suspect is that the more one looks at the history of the Vatican in retrospect, the more one can ascertain that the magnificent victories of the partisans of religious indifferentism, the inane theories of Darwin, and, in short, what Pascedi would describe as the Modernists, were due more to the silence and complicity of the Vatican, than to the arguments of the partisans themselves.  Something deep and dark and dirty was lurking in the Vatican long before Our Lady came to Fatima in 1917.