Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Infiltration: Sex, Conspiracies, Apparitions and Prophecies Sell Ink

Edit: a reader received this article from a friend who thought it would fit in here. It originally appeared at the blog, The American Proposition, on July 30th.  Communism, Judeo-Freemasonry is, as ever, a serious problem which some people try to downplay for various reasons. I found it hard to continue in light of some assertions in the beginning, but the remainder of his observations about Marshall's apparent Americanism and stepping around the Jewish Problem are noteworthy.  Judeo-Freemasonry is and always has been the problem facing the Church since the Jews killed Christ as they killed prophets of old and continue in their rebellion against God.  Since Vatican II, a cease fire has been declared and the Church has remained largely silent against her enemies with predictable results.  There are a few voices in the wilderness, but Taylor Marshall isn't one of them.
Taylor R. Marshall is well rewarded for keeping disaffected Catholics on the American reservation. Gaining bestseller status on Amazon is a great honor. It also takes skill to be able to identify and push all the hot button items of a target audience just the right way. But then conspiracy stories involving secret societies and sex always sell and they sell bigger when you mix in apparitions, conversations with Satan, and predictions. It’s the same genre that Dan Brown used in The Davinci Code and associated works, it worked there, it works here. Unfortunately, stories don’t help people realize the problem and usually don’t help to solve the problem, and in the case of the Catholic Church, a big part of the problem is America (which equates to rule by the wealthy) and Americanism.
There is no doubt that the Catholic Church is really messed up these days. To Marshall’s credit, he attributes this ongoing mess to the leadership which means the priests and the prelates.   He claims that we got there over the course of about 175 years because of Communists, Masons, and homosexuals, and he tries to support that claim in 224 pages, with a lot fewer footnotes. It is too much with too little that leaves out a whole lot, and leaves much unexplained.  As a result, the book resembles an anthology of well-known stories.
For instance, the Communists are long gone. [Neo-cons like William Kristol, James Burnham, disciples of Leo Strauss and so on, not to mention faculties of most western educational institutions.  Cuba? China? Venezuela? South Africa?  I found it hard to continue at this point, but ok.] The Masons are fading away. [It may be so that established Masonic lodges in the US are declining in membership, but everyone's a Mason in America.] All that remains are the homosexuals, or gays. [They're foot soldiers of a much deeper agenda.] Homosexuals have always existed throughout history but Marshall says that they have somehow been weaponized to destroy the Church. [I would suggest that this is amply obvious when you consider the way in which the Church has not only lost tremendous amounts of credibility since the cultural revolution of 1968 and Vatican II, but has lost a great deal of its real-estate and financial resources due to lawsuits against its protection and promotion of many aberrosexual predator clergy, which is still in place with continued dramatic results.]  That should be enough to ask the question, Who benefits now from this state of affairs in the Church? He starts to crack that case open in Chapter 27 when he mentions a wealthy businessman becoming McCarrick’s patron, and that Francis Cardinal Spellman, or “Nellie” as Marshall says he was called, of New York was a powerful leader of the homosexuals in the Church, but that is as far as he goes ignoring Spellman’s connections with the most powerful Americans of the day. Marshall mentions Bella Dodd for the proposition that nearly 1,100 men were put into the priesthood by the Communists. What he doesn’t bother to follow up on his her statements that the Communist Party in New York had to wait for orders from the Kremlin which in turn waited for orders from people who worked in skyscrapers in New York City.[i] He mentions John Courtney Murray, SJ in passing as a priest working for Augustin Cardinal Bea to write the Declaration of Religious Liberty but ignores Murray’s long association with Henry Luce who was associated with Spellman and also ignores how Murray, who was also a world renown theologian thanks to Luce’s backing, throughout his career elevated the American system of social organization, particularly the First Amendment. And along those lines, John Cardinal Gibbons is mentioned in passing as obtaining permission from Pope Leo XIII to build a Cathedral to the Immaculate Conception in Washington DC while Gibbons’ support of the First Amendment against the encyclicals of Leo XIII is well documented in two biographies of the prelate. [Spellman was thought to be a champion of traditionalism in the 70s at least.]

Who benefits? The answer is the Americans (again, and throughout this piece, that refers to the wealthy), and Marshall is careful to keep the black hat off the Americans. In Chapter 18, Marshall takes pains to list by European country all the theologians involved in the New Theology, and of course no Americans are mentioned though certainly Murray and other American Jesuits could have been listed as theologians supporting the New Theology. In Chapter 19, Marshall engages in a discussion of Nostra Aetate and mentions in any detail the Hindus and, of course, the Moslems but totally avoids referencing the Jews. That in itself is strong evidence that Marshall is covering up the American involvement in the corruption of the Church leadership because Jews, more than ever now in 2019, are associated with Americans.[!!]
Marshall uncovers evidence of American penetration of the Vatican, or at least he was put on notice of that penetration, when he references Paul G Williams, an “FBI consultant”, in chapter 14 when discussing the 1958 conclave in which Cardinal Siri was supposedly elected pope but then was forced to decline it.   There is a lot of open source material on how the American intelligence agencies regularly communicated with high level Vatican officials, and unlike Saul Alinsky who couldn’t guess who the next pope would be after Pius XII, records from the Library of Congress clearly show that American intelligence, through the work of Klaus Dohrn who infiltrated the highest circles of the Vatican, were able to predict the two popes after Pius XII – Roncalli and Montini in that order. That kind of intelligence came after years of American work to penetrate, or infiltrate, the Catholic Church. It is well known that Catholic priests provided valuable intelligence to the American OSS during World War II and after about conditions in their respective geographical areas. If there has been any infiltration of the Church, it has been by the Americans and it has been a long time in happening.
Pope Leo XIII issued Testem Benevolentaie on January 22, 1899 in which he decried Americanism, and Cardinal Gibbons is certainly one such prelate who felt the sting of that Papal warning. The Archives at the University of Notre Dame contain an entire section on Americanism that details the network American prelates had in reaching into the Church’s headquarters. Added to that growing network was the American victory in World War II after which America became the ideal in the minds of hundreds of millions around the globe. Much of Marshall’s book takes place in the shadow of that great event giving Americans unprecedented influence over the world and the Church, and Marshall fails to examine the effect of this crucial historical fact. Vatican II was convened about 17 years after the end of the bloodiest war in history that was waged largely in Europe, and the Church leadership was heavily, and decisively, influenced by the kind of society America was and by the American media which sought to change the Church to be like America thereby recruiting it not only as a weapon against Soviet Communism during the Cold War, but also using it as an ally to spread the American ideology around the globe even after that war was over.
Which brings us to Archbishop Athanasius Schneider, the author of the Forward to Marshall’s book.  Given the Archbishop’s history of growing up in a Communist country and suffering persecution there along with his family, it is understandable that he is ready to blame the Communists for the problems in the Church. It is even more understandable that he has a blind spot as to the Americans since his family resettled during the Cold War to West Germany, a country shaped by American media and entertainment as I have previously discussed in explaining how Josef Ratzinger, a/k/a Pope Benedict XVI, came to have an American mind.  Archbishop Schneider, if his Wikipedia page is correct and complete, came to champion the favorite issues of one segment of the Church, the traditionalists. That is the very crowd that Marshall targets and that is targeted by his publisher, Sophia Press, and so the Marshall-Schneider-Sophia Press collaboration is a natural fit and becomes a propaganda instrument. Recall that from my book, John Courtney Murray, Time/Life, and the American Proposition, American ideological warfare or doctrinal warfare targeted the intellectuals and opinion shapers in societies to include priests and writers and businessmen, all of which takes us to Sophia Press.
Sophia Institute is described on its website as “a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization that nurtures the spiritual, moral, and cultural life of souls and spreads the Gospel of Christ in conformity with the authentic teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Sophia Institute operates several apostolates which include the following:.” One of its apostolates includes Sophia Institute Press which “publishes and distributes faithful Catholic classics and new texts by the great enduring figures of the Catholic intellectual tradition. In 30 years, we have published 300 titles and distributed 3 million books worldwide to hundreds of thousands of individuals, bookstores, and institutions.  Sophia’s authors include St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Therese of Lisieux, Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Dietrich von Hildebrand, and many others.” Admitting to publish books in the “Catholic intellectual tradition,” this organization is open to the kind of doctrinal use contemplated by the American planners more than 65 years ago.
The President of Sophia Institute is Charlie McKinney. According to his Linkedin profile, he has been president since October, 2012 . Prior to that he held positions in development or fundraising for The Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), and The Bill of Rights Institute. The latter bills itself as “Educating Individuals About a Free Society” while ISI has long been known as a bastion of American conservatism, with the emphasis on American. McKinney’s history is one of advocating on behalf of America and its principles of organization.
Another one of the apostolates of Sophia Institute is Catholic Exchange. According to its website, it “publishes a series of accessible articles and helpful tools for spiritual growth each day that enriches and strengthens hundreds of thousands of Catholics in the Faith. We seek to make saints in our own time, especially among those who live busy lives but still seek to grow in friendship with Christ.”
Years ago, when I was involved with the pro-life movement, I wrote an article about abortion for National Right to Life News that was published. That article ended up on Catholic Exchange under my name as a Catholic writer or author. A few years later, I asked Catholic Exchange to remove the article, which they did. After addressing the Society of Catholic Social Scientists in October 2016 with my talk arguing that the Catholic Church is an arm of American power, I asked Catholic Exchange repeatedly to post that article in my spot on their website. They simply never responded. So, abortion articles are all right, but more important ones questioning the relationship of the Church to America, if not also the very goodness of America, are not.
This is the organization that published and marketed Marshall’s book. What about Marshall? We know precious little about him which is a common thing amongst Catholic chatterers. He started out an Anglican priest, then proceeded to obtain a Master’s Degree and a Doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Dallas. At some point in time, he converted to Catholicism, married and fathered eight children which thereby sends him to the stratosphere of Catholics, traditional Catholics in particular, because Catholics just love the family and babies.  Also on LinkedIn he bills himself as a “writer, professor and public speaker” with specialties in fundraising, public speaking, writing, and non-profits to name a few. All of this means that Marshall has to be able to write and speak in such a way as to be entertaining and appealing to his audience so as to get them to buy and read his books and articles, and to get them to contribute money. That requires the ability to sell which means knowing the hot buttons of the audience. He has to provide a living, and a good one, for his large family, so now there exists motive and means for what he does.
Non-profits present an interesting phenomenon. They have been around for a long time but philanthropic organizations, to which contributions could be deducted from taxes, were established with the Revenue Act of 1918. This is quite significant and it has practical ramifications. If a corporation or a wealthy person wants to reduce their tax liability, and at the same time control the message of a philanthropy, they are encouraged to do so with the laws establishing nonprofits, in particular those designated Section 501(c)(3) under the Internal Revenue Code. This law was a masterstroke in keeping the conversation in society in the hands of the wealthy thereby making sure nothing changes, other than the faces and the voices of the few that get to be the front man of one cause or another which means the American system with its ideology remains strong and in place. Hanging over the heads of the non-profits is the threat that they could lose the non-profit status, and were that to happen, back taxes are due and payable which is something that would be devastating to the company and also to the front men. Even the threat of this happening is sufficient to scare these organizations into muting their message, and in the case of Catholic organizations, pulling their punches when it comes to explaining what is really going on in society. Hence, the absence of any mention in Marshall’s book about America’s role in changing the Church because to do so would be to call into question the legitimacy and validity of America, a society founded by Masons and in contravention of the numerous encyclicals of Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Pius X. Catholic chatterers know not to criticize America’s foundational principles, which is something that I found out first hand from another chatterer and from his wealthy backer who reiterated that no one is to criticize America.
And I say changing the Church because despite what people say, to include Marshall, the object of Christ’s enemies is not to destroy the Church but to use it for their own purposes. Conspiracies of secret societies involving sex mixed in with visions and apparitions are much more alluring if one talks about destroying instead of changing or co-opting the Church. This was the idea and the purpose of the Americans as I detail in my book John Courtney Murray, Time/Life and the American Proposition. 
Which brings us to Inter Mirifica the first document produced by the Vatican II Council. The English title is “On the Means of Social Communication” and was a direct response to the American press and media coverage of the Council. The Council Fathers were troubled by the mischaracterizations of the American media and called all the faithful to combat these. John Courtney Murray, Michael Novak, Robert Blair Kaiser, and theologian Jean Danielou, SJ all lead the protest against the promulgation of Inter Mirifica. These and others said the document “seems to give the state…an authority over mass media which is dangerous to political liberty everywhere and which in some countries like the United States is proscribed by constitutional law,” that “it was a `threat to the integrity of the media’”.[ii] Inter Mirifica, section 5, extended requirements to both the secular and the Catholic media that the “proper exercise of this right demands that the content of the communication be true and – within the limits set by justice and charity – complete.”[iii]Historical accounts that leave out important parties, are simply not the proper exercise of the right to information, and so a failure of Marshall’s book and Sophia Institute Press.
The pastors of the Church, in other words, the leaders or the priests are supposed to make sure that the Catholic chatterers are telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Again, we turn to Inter Mirifica which states “Pastors of souls have the task of instructing and directing the faithful how to use these media in a way that will ensure their own salvation and perfection and that of all mankind.”[iv]
Americanism infects the Church leadership and so they refuse to lead. Believing that America has the better idea, is the ideal, and afraid of the opprobrium of the rich and the powerful, the leadership lets people write and speak as they will. Instead of policing her children and instructing them, the pastors are lectured to by the children, the laity. With hundreds of years of information, thousands of years of accumulated wisdom, and the observations of cultures, peoples and societies across the globe, the Catholic Church’s leadership should be formulating the responses and the message to the world and explaining the world if not themselves then by properly guiding her authors and thinkers and approving works that are true and complete. Marshall as well as the other Catholic chatterers that reside and operate out of Liberal societies, especially America, are unchecked in what they write and say and forwards written by prelates like Archbishop Schneider, the favorite of a faction in the Church, is not the same as approval by the Church leadership that a writing is free of error and otherwise in accordance with the requirements of the Catholic Faith when it comes to the employment of the social media. For the leadership to truly implement Inter Mirifica, they must first reject the idea that America teaches the Church, the leadership must explicitly condemn the principles forming America, and they must resume the authoritarianism that is necessary for people to live good lives in this world and be saved.  The price is high for the Church to return to its mission, but the price of not doing so is higher still.
Marshall presents some good points. Marshall offers a good response to the prelates who now are in place to insure heterodoxy in the Church and the Church’s submission to the rich and powerful. He correctly observes that the critics of the Church, and the founders of Modernism, were writing at a time that the Church and Catholicism had been around for centuries and so the response to the Modernists is to repudiate, and not work with as did St Paul with the pagans nineteen centuries ago, what they claim. Marshall is correct that the liturgy is disturbing and anyone attending a Mass realizes that they are now almost all high masses with insipid irritating singing of hymns that no one joins in and that ruin the solemnity and holiness of the Mass. The documents from Vatican II are confusing and lend themselves to many misinterpretations, but, as Marshall mentions in quoting Paul VI on January 12, 1966, there are no doctrinal changes in those documents so one is to read them only in terms of sustaining Catholicism with its eternal and unchanging doctrine and dogma, and with the understanding that the Council Fathers sought to be positive in their approach to find the good in society around them and build on it. Unfortunately, that good, to the extent it actually existed and was not just a creation of the American media, was fleeting at best, and more importantly, the good in one aspect of something or another can only be maintained and grown if the whole good is instilled in that something and that whole good is protected by the Catholic Church. That requires that the Church be established in every society, to include America, and that Catholicism form the basis of public policy. Religious liberty should not be the goal of the Catholic leadership, but rather the Christianization of society should be that goal.  That is the death knell of America which is dedicated to the service of Mammon, and America will persecute those who pursue the mission of the Church and that persecution will come from the rich and powerful who seek to be tyrants and remove all hope from human life except what false hope they want to give.
The Catholic chatterers, Marshall included, are not up to the task. They have conflicting obligations to family, God, their nonprofits, and their American masters. They are seduced by the spirit of Liberalism with its individualism that whispers in their ear that they too can be like God.  The pastors or leaders of the Church are the priests and prelates.  They have an obligation to lead the Church, and to enforce its doctrine amongst the faithful.  That includes enforcing Inter Mirifica and exercising proper leadership with fidelity to the Faith, for in doing so, the priests and prelates protect the souls of the faithful (and lead others to the Faith) especially that of Taylor Marshall whose work, like all the other Catholic chatterers, places him in danger of succumbing to pride.  The priests and prelates, to love Christ, must obey Him and pursue the mission given the Church.  That requires that they speak and act with authority, which is something Americanism rejects and which the Americans dislike.  The Church leadership has the information they need and they can commission the faithful to gather more information and formulize what they have.  They have those willing to advance the mission of the Church such as Taylor Marshall and so many other chatterers who are, deep down inside, earnest Catholics who are called to serve Mother Church and the Faith.  These people need the guidance and care, and most importantly, leadership of the priests and prelates.  The pastors and prelates should be writing the history of the Church and of the times, or they should be directly overseeing the writing of those histories.  They have the authority to give approval to projects and works.  That will build unity in the Church and go a long way to eliminating error with the evil that follows from that.  This will also avoid the power and influence of the wealthy and powerful private interests and their non-profit philanthropic paradigm that is used so effectively and subtly to muffle the message.
But God can use everything.  He is able to turn water to wine, failure to success, evil to good all for His glory, and for those who love Him, forever and ever.
[i] In School of Darkness, chapter 16, she wrote: “There had been many things I had not really understood. I had regarded the Communist Party as a poor man’s party, and thought the presence of certain men of wealth within it accidental. I now saw this was no accident. I regarded the Party as a monolithic organization with the leadership in the National Committee and the National Board. Now I saw this was only a facade placed there by the movement to create the illusion of the poor man’s party; it was in reality a device to control the “common man” they so raucously championed.”
[ii] David A Wemhoff, John Courtney Murray, Time/Life and the American Proposition, (Fidelity Press, 2015), 734.
[iii] “Inter Mirifica,” Vatican Council II: The Conciliar And Post Conciliar Documents, Austin Flannery, OP, editor, (Costello Publishing Company, Northport, New York, 1992), 286.
[iv] Ibid., 285.

AMDG

58 comments:

  1. Your commentary is quite astute.
    Look into what Bella Dodd actually said in public (congressional testimony and her autobiography), nary a word about infiltrating the Church with communists.

    It’s easier for people to blame the communists than themselves. Ottaviani is seen as an opponent of calling the Council. However, Cardinal Krol revealed that it was Ottaviani who persuaded John XIIl to call it because of the dual threat posed by the Soviet Bloc and America. Regrettably, the original
    Schema was quickly rejected.
    Plenty of strange examples exist like this. Eg: Planned Parenthood coined the phrase Natural Family Planning as a way to get it’s members to stop mocking “open minded” Catholics. Now, you can’t tune in to Catholic TV 📺 or radio 📻 and not hear it less than every thirty minutes. This showed how their marketing sense was better than moral theologians. All of which is detailed in The McHugh Chronicles
    I do think David was too quick to dismiss the role of freemasonry though. It is the glue which holds all of this together and without which you
    just have formless, directionless anti-Catholicism. In America, whether or not you have a Lodge in your neighborhood is irrelevant. Here, even traditional Catholics have internalized the principles of The Craft.

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  2. Natural Family Planning versus Periodic Continence?

    Even a hippie could embrace the former without seeking to be moral in his behavior. The latter is for doctors and theologians.

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  3. David Wemhoff has a good argument backed by solid historical citations. A lot of what he does in his book is look at the statements of John Courtney Murray made with his friend Henry Luce, the powerful media magnate that ran the Time/Life media empire. These are statements in public writings that don't rely on speculation.

    Catholics need to be historically grounded to understand the crisis that the Church has entered since the 20th century. Dr. John Rao, an actual historian makes a similar claim to Wemhoff, that America has exerted much influence on the Church during and after the council. Not many people have examined this deeply. I know from my experience of academic theology that this is a very neglected area of study for self-critical reflection. People don't realize the opportunity America had to reshape Europe in its image after WWII, and this includes the Church because the cultural center of the Church is Western Europe. Europe was absolutely devastated after WWII intellectually, materially, and spiritually. Many were very drawn to the American ideal because it was prosperous and victorious when Europe was devastated, and seem primed to bring a new golden age to the world.

    On Freemasons, one needs to understand that America was founded on the ideals of freemasonry. When the American government and culture are completely focused on spreading these ideas, it's hardly necessary to have secret lodges calling the shots. America stands solely for the worldly end of gaining wealth. You don't need an active conspiracy against the Church. It's enough for the Church to be against worldly wealth for those dedicated to gaining wealth to fight the Church as opposed to their interests.

    On communism, it only existed as a world cultural power with the USSR. It's only as a world wide cultural power that a group can try to influence the Church as a whole. The other communist countries that exist do not have much ability to influence what happens beyond their borders culturally. Take for example China. China while they produce a ton of stuff, do not exert much cultural influence (this is not to say they may not start to in the future, but that is a different question).

    In the Cold War, both the US and USSR were waging an ideological war to influence the cultures of other countries so that they would be on the their side. The US has clearly prevailed other the Soviets this ground, as is seen by the ubiquitous presence of American media all over the world.

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    1. That being said, actual Masons have never the less infiltrated all levels of the institutional Catholic Church.

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    2. On China... they regularly exert their influence in the US in terms of how China is portrayed in films and in terms of their growing economic might. All Liberal Arts departments are dominated by instructors who aren’t necessarily Communist Party members, but are useful idiots, and then we have people involved in politics all the way up to the national level who were Weathermen in the 60s....

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  4. And let’s not forget the poor Catholics in China. Are we going to blame them for their persecution at the hands of Bergoglio and his Communist friends in Peking?

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  5. It is becoming obvious that Roncalli was a freemason. I do not believe that Ottaviani was a leader in calling the council. He was manipulated like all the rest.

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    1. How can grown men like Cardinal Ottaviani be manipulated?
      He was very intelligent educated and erudite.
      Bishops Kurz,Thuc,Lefebvre,etc...
      went on to keep Tradition alive while the rest stayed in line with Paul VI's plan.
      -ANDREW

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  6. JBQ: "It is becoming obvious that Roncalli was a freemason."
    Where is your evidence? Hearsay and/or assertion don't cut it in a court, civil or ecclesiastical.

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  7. Vatican II was the key turning point when the Catholic Church made the decision to Protestantise itself. We are living with the ensuring catastrophe.

    Vatican II must be abrogated in it's entirety if the Church is to recover her mission. The likelihood is that this will not happen. Rather there will be a schism between the Protestant and Catholic components of the Church. This could happen as soon as the next conclave.

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  8. The schism began in earnest at the Council of Constance. Vatican II just flushed out the catholic jihadists who confuse doctrine with the Church and it continues apace.

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  9. Hey PW: That is what Malachi Martin wrote. From 1958 to 1964, he walked all over the Vatican in his job with Cardinal Bea.---@Andrew: Ottaviani was manipulated by his loyalty to the cross. He believed falsely that a pope was insulated by the Holy Spirit. Once Roncalli called three little children of 8,9,10 "propehts of doom" and insinuated that they were of the devil, then you knew that there was something wrong with the guy.

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  10. JBQ,
    Not good enough. You'll have to do much better to convince any reputable court that your third hand hearsay comes within a country mile of hard evidence.
    Try again.

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  11. Poncey Organist with a Philosophy DegreeAugust 1, 2019 at 9:31 PM

    The court was out in 1964 when millions jumped ship after senior clergy said it didn’t matter if you were Catholic. Even Blair Kaiser pissed off....

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  12. People started jumping ship in droves after Jan Hus was burned alive.

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  13. I think, the author of this article has made a very good assessment of the present state of the paralysis in the Church and society. It is as if the soldiers on a battle field were led by catatonic officers. The soldiers in the trenches ask for leadership, and reasoned commands that direct them toward defeating their enemies, to which their captains reply with a thousand yard- silent stare and indifference. Meanwhile they are being over run and slaughtered by the enemy.

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  14. You military image does not reflect reality. Certainly in the Church of the developed countries, the Catholics are walking or drifting away from participation and have been in vast numbers since the fourteenth century. Post Reformation, the modern disengagement began in the mid 1950s. The Vat II argument is a confected Trad rationalization for what they argue was a heretical departure from Tradition.
    I am happy to continue this discussion if you have the ticker.

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    1. I actually agree that the present crisis of the Catholic Church did not begin at V II but with late 19th century theologians who incorporated a philosophy that assumed that truth is grounded in consciousness, that existence proceeds essence, that essences are mutable, that truth itself is in flux, that revelation is unknowable. And that man is the metaphysical and ethical ultimate rendering theology as anthropology. The Church will not recover until we clear the air from the fog of hyper-subjectivist and the dumb idea that truth is constructed by the human mind. Classical Realism is the only way forward.

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    2. Start with the Symbolik and the faculty of Tübingen.

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    3. Quite true, the Form Criticism that migrated from Gottingen to Tubingen used the sociology knowledge to wreak havoc. Most don't see the inherent contradiction in such a theory. If all my beings and valuations are a product of my social condition and historical circumstance, then so too is the theory is the sociology and theorist, therefore, the Form Critic can make no truth claim. Most notably, Bultman, Gunkel, and the Catholic theologians who followed them, just cast aspersions on the realist scholastics rather than refute them. They couldn't, so they just ignored them. The neo-scholastics Maintain, Marcel, and von Hildebrand in the 20th century toke these existentialist to the woodshed for an intellectual beat-down.

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    4. The autocorrect on my phone wreaks havoc on spelling, I meant beliefs not beings and valuations. Sorry

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  15. Have a look at Newman who bamboozled the Romans because he articulated a Christian humanist theology of Church and Faith that was not even remotely connected with Scholasticism or its roots in Aristotle's floating Universals.

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    1. The scholasticism of Aquinas and Scotus is Christian humanism par excellence!

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  16. Even Lord Acton thought Newman was a scoundrel.

    I agree.

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  17. Perhaps so but that is Acton's private view. History will show, however, that Newman's theology saved the Church from the tyranny of a madman in Pius IX. Acton would have approved of that after his nostrum on 'absolute power corrupts absolutely.'

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  18. The Acton dictum is of course false. God is Allpowerful. Yet weakling Satan is Allcorrupt.

    Pio Nono was and is a Saint. He gets the nod over the Ven. Cardinal Newman on all points. And even more so on so-called ‘saint’ John 23rd.

    Pius IX declared the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception De Fidei, endorsed 4 years later at Lourdes by Our Lady herself.

    Unlike John 23, who disobeyed abdirect command of Our Lady—to reveal the Third Secret—Pio Nono was a Holy Pope who believed in Christ and supernatural reality.

    It is doubtful modernists—like J XXIII and perhaps @ PW—do.

    “Rejoice! O Virgin Mary, alone thou hast destroyed all heresies throughout the world!”

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  19. Newman was a spiteful gay. When Manning called in him to patch things up, he had his boyfriend inform Manning he wasn’t at home.

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  20. When all is lost, regress to the cowardly, unsubstantiated 'gay' allegation about Newman as if this cheap shot absolves the slinger from rational thought. That's the Mundabor lazy thinking solution.

    gm, it's not only your spell check that isn't functioning. You obviously don't have a clue about what Form Criticism is and how it is just one area of a comprehensive system of scientific biblical (and broader, literary) criticism. Ambit sprays consisting of fragments from Wikipedia are not persuasive arguments.

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    1. No normal man is as catty and malevolent as you and Newman.

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  21. @PW, then you should know that Form Criticism has largely been discredited.

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  22. gm, it's crystal clear that you haven't a clue what Form Criticism is gm so how do you know it's finished?
    Have a quick check to see if you know the difference between fact or fiction, poetry or prose, op.ed or report.

    And Tancred still demonstrates a profound inability to engage at any level above and beyond the teenage reactionary dismissal.

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    1. The evidence pointing to Newman’s deranged sexuality far outweighs the evidence cited by simplistic troglodytes like Gaybrielle and other venomous gays attacking Cardinal Burke.

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  23. It is interesting that most of the comments have nothing to do with Fr.Wemhoff's article which says the problem with the Church is that it has become Americanized worshiping mammon rather than God.

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    1. @Micheal if the problem is Americanism and it's influence on the Vatican, then it our discussion on the philosophical errors, many of which I already listed are apropos and interconnected with the Catholic Church in America. The most significant being that reality and morality are mere constructions of human consciousness- God is to be found and brought forth within our inner conscious state, which is also a product of one own bio-psycho-social-cultural structure.

      Case in point, when I went to confession recently, a Novus Ordo priest told me that he only tells people to confess what their conscience tells them is wrong. This statement bypasses the Catholic insight that some moral acts, no matter how you feel about them are instrisic evils and should be confessed- even if your conscience is not troubled by it. This is what a traditional minded priest would say. These are some of the problems with the Church in America referred to in the article.

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    2. But of course PW being sympathetic to the neo-modernists will say that in failing to note the profound subtlties of modern theologians, I'm being overly legalistic pining away for an ancient suppressive medieval idealism spun out from my own tautological syllogisms.

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  24. You make the ambit claim Tancred, so now the onus is on you to prove conclusively that Bl John Henry Newman was of 'deranged sexuality.' The Congregation for the Saints cleared him absolutely for canonization later in the year. Have you personally brought your 'evidence' to their attention?

    Let the reader know how you fared.

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  25. gm. I agree with what you say about reality, morality and conscience. To say these are constructions of human consciousness is false in that, if it were true, would lead to utter chaos, which, of course, hasn't happened. The world would have blown up by now.

    My point on Dave Wemhoff's article is that I see no discussion (or I missed it) on whether anyone thinks what he said is true, i.e., that Americans influenced the Catholic Church in any way that didn't already exist. I have purchased his book but it hasn't arrived. So I don't know the arguments he makes. But I don't know what he says could be true in that the Vatican has, since the time of Constantine, been power hungry and materialist--just like Kings and Capitalists.

    In order for the Church to redeem itself it must become poor and politically powerless just like the poor folks (like us) it is supposed to serve.

    I would appreciate any comment on these points.

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    1. @Michael Dowd, I was merely summarizing the modernist philosophy that reality is grounded in the human mind (psychologism), not that I agree with it. You rightly point out the disastrous consequences of holding to such erroneous ideas. On your point,about the Vatican being power hungry, I think that not all relationships are simply about temporal power. While there have been some abuses, i.e. the Medici's during the Renaissance, the Vatican exists for the glorification of God. If a pope were to sell off all the Vatican artistic and architectural treasures and give it to the poor, I think history would judge him to be barbaric. Rome is a visible sign to the truth of Christ and the Apostolic succession. The Vatican's operational budget is much less than an average American state university. They are rich because they protect art that is priceless. The poor, as Catholic pilgrims, have access to the Vatican, a place of unfathomable beauty that the contemplation of which aids in our salvation.

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  26. Newman was also an Anglicanist.

    The US intelligence service had a close relationship with JPII in the 80s until JPII grew closer to Mossad.

    Poisonous American influence could be felt going all the way back to the mid-nineteenth century. Just look at the way Michael Mueller was silenced and destroyed. It all centers around Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus and the Church’s true mission to men.

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  27. @gm. Thanks for your comments. What we have been reading about the Vatican since the coming of Pope Francis is that it is utterly corrupt full of active homosexuals, focused more on politics than religion, worldly more than holy, advocating heresy, etc. etc. In other words, utterly corrupt and an enemy of Christ. I think these observations are true and have been long before Francis.

    Accordingly, I think we need a materially poor and politically weak (elimination of Vatican State) Church that focuses exclusively on helping folks lead a holy and spiritual life in preparation for eternity. The Church must return to its status prior to Constantine.

    The only likely way this can be effectuated is by divine intervention.

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  28. Those propositions have been specifically condemned.

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  29. 76. The abolition of the temporal power of which the Apostolic See is possessed would contribute in the greatest degree to the liberty and prosperity of the Church. — Allocutions “Quibus quantisque,” April 20, 1849, “Si semper antea,” May 20, 1850.

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  30. Taylor Marshall is a blowhard narcissist who loves to self-promote and loves to hear himself expounding. That's been my impression of him ever since I took notice of him in the first place and my opinion hasn't changed over the years.

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  31. Tancred said...

    Those propositions have been specifically condemned.
    August 5, 2019 at 6:09 AM

    Yes, SYLLABUS ONE - POPE PIUS IX's SYLLABUS OF ERRORS.

    But is there any reason eliminating the Vatican State cannot be reconsidered? My understanding from Pope Benedict's remarks that Vatican II superseded the Syllabus of Errors, and, in fact, was called an anti-syllabus of errors.

    Anyway, it is high time to put everything on the table regarding the administration of the Church.

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    1. You also assume that Christians renounced all political influence. This is clearly not the case, since Christians occupied all levels of influence including administration, commerce, political offices and the army. Romans were mightily impressed with the loyalty Christians showed to the Roman State and its representatives. That is the way we should go, not some ineffective accommodation to the errors of Freemasons which have already been condemned.

      If the syllabius of errors was revoked by Vatican II, maybe these princes of the church need to explain how that’s possible without abandoning the mission of the Church for the salvation of all souls, even the perfidious j-word ones.

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  32. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  33. In my book, John Courtney Murray, Time/Life and the American Proposition, I explain how the American leadership targeted the Catholic Church, and other religions, to spread the American ideology or Liberalism around the globe. The threat posed by Soviet Communism was the catalyst and stated reason for the American efforts to get the religious leaders to approve of the American system of social organization the heart of which is the First Amendment – private ownership of the media or cultural engines and non-establishment of any church or religion. These two factors are consistent with Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and are essential to keeping real power with private interests, not the civil authorities. Without an established Catholic Church and without the Catholic religion with its moral code established in a society to form the basis of public policy, there is no check on the government and more importantly there is no check on the powerful private interests.

    The American effort during the Cold War was phenomenally successful as to the Catholic Church. Dignitatis Humanae was interpreted by John Courtney Murray, SJ and others as meaning that the First Amendment was the Catholic ideal and approved by Catholicism in principal as being good. That is not nor has it ever been Catholic doctrine but the leadership believes it is.

    Former ambassador to the Vatican, Francis Rooney, in his book The Global Vatican, explains that the essence of America is the First Amendment religion clause. The US-Vatican relationship is “of vital importance” he writes and that America and the Catholic Church are fellow travelers these days – meaning that the Catholic Church leadership approves of the American system of social organization thereby assisting with its implementation around the globe. The American system of social organization is based on an ideology or Liberalism which is condemned by Catholic doctrine. In May, 2016, the guy who is currently pope publicly denounced the confessional state thereby denouncing Catholic doctrine.

    The Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. The People’s Republic of China has a Communist government but Communism in the PRC is nationalist. Venezuela is charged with being socialist. Recently I completed a master of laws at Indiana University and the professors are rabidly capitalist. Communism is no longer an international problem or bogeyman but in any event, Bella Dodd (one of many) pointed the way to who was responsible for and benefitted from Communism – powerful private interests. The same with the Masons – who benefits from their work and doctrines? The powerful private interests because they eliminate any sort of religious (i.e., Catholic) check to their appetites and ambitions. The gay identity is a group identity created by these wealthy interests and many people instinctively know that the gays are approved by the wealthy. So many people conclude that if one wants to advance in society, or keep from getting demoted, one has to go along with the gay agenda because it is the agenda of the wealthy and powerful. The Catholic leadership refuses to call this out for what it is.

    --David Wemhoff

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  34. I presume your book is on permanent fire sale. At the heart of Dignitatis Humanae Nostrae is a core affirmation and confirmation of the primacy of conscience and therefore the basis for human identity, dignity and freedom. This doctrine is rooted in the teaching of St Paul in Galatians 3:27-28, 5:1-15, 1 Cor 10: 23-11:1 el al and informs the teaching of St Thomas Aquinas which has become the standard articulation of Catholic moral theology for the past eight hundred years.

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  35. Peter Watson the book is $ 59 plus shipping etc. Have a nice day.

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  36. Thanks David. I purchased your book for $59.00 from Amazon but it has not arrived yet.

    The reason I bought it was my quest to find the sources of Vatican II. From what you have said here it sure appears that the Vatican and the U.S.A. are in bed together. The problem is that in the process of integration the moral authority of the Church has collapsed and now seen as a significant political player around the world.

    The moral collapse, due in large part to the Catholic Church, has had a devastating effect on worldwide morality. The latest shootings in Texas and Ohio are testimony to our corrupt culture as noted:https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/hold-the-teddy-bears-and-candles/

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  37. Peter Watson is probabaly jealous, since his books are in a bin at the front of a book shop in Newcastle marked “Please, take as many as you like. Great kindling!”

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  38. Michael Dowd you may want to CNCL your order (unless you're an opus devil shill yourself).
    Wow Tancred! How Opus Devilish of you! Get some poor guy to plop down $60 bucks to E M Jones - the opus devil who sponsored the AIDS Virus (and seems to be sponsoring another AIDS Virus in Ireland down to the boyish mousekeeter earplugs--another sodomite to tell us how degraded we are for $10 a month!).

    http://eponymousflower.blogspot.com/2019/07/ireland-has-become-gay-disco.html

    This past weekend, as you may know, Church Militant held our annual Strength and Honor conference — a shindig we sponsor every year for men to help them reinforce their spirituality. [yup, go an annual"shindig" to reinforce your "spirituality"]

    https://www.churchmilitant.com/video/episode/vortex-liars-thieves-murderers

    http://www.newengelpublishing.com/all-the-men-behind-the-opus-dei-curtain/

    Fidelity Press
    is the work of the inimitable E. Michael Jones, publisher of Culture Wars magazine, and, as the name implies, publishes work on Catholic culture and history with all the verve and interest that the journal is famous for.
    https://www.staugustine.net/our-books/distributed-companies/fidelity-press/

    https://culturewars.com/


    P.S. Speaking of Masonic Jewish Infiltration, I wonder how many readers of this article would be interested in the book on Opus Devil cited in the links below and does anyone know if Randy Engle ever published on the rest of the work (as indicated in the email exchange at the bottom of the first link)?

    https://cognitivegateway.wordpress.com/2018/02/24/conciliar-religions-pederast-saint/

    19 . Escrivá kept an open secret. What everyone thought, that many have insinuated without daring to say in public. Escrivá had an obsession, a "defect", a tare related to his sexual behavior. He was homosexual, delicate and faint hearted.
    32 In the beginning of his adventure Escrivá was fascinated by two famous organizations: The Society of Jesus and Freemasonry. When studying Masonry closely it is curious to discover step by step the flagrant parallelism with Opus Dei. It is like a copy. Everything is similar: recruitment by proselytizing, initiation, varying degrees of affiliation, progressive and slow progress in the possession of "secrecy," behavior among members and with laymen, the technique of penetration in all circles, but mainly among the intellectuals and among the bourgeois, the inferior role granted to women, etc., etc.
    33 . The oratory attached to the residence on Jenner Street in Madrid was adorned with Kabbalistic and Masonic signs. In addition, the SOCOIN society, an initiative linked to the Work, was pointed out as a Masonic derivation of an international Jewish organization (see in the book the true meaning of the acronym SOCOIN according to a Hebrew dictionary).
    35 Freemasonry, via Opus, has been embedded in the core of the Church. It is a fifth column that operates, masonically, at the service of other interests that have nothing to do with the Christian faith.
    44 . The crucifixes of Opus Dei do not have the body of Christ.They do not revere or worship the figure of Christ, but praise the scaffold, his last gallows, venerate the instrument of torture and torment. Another element that appears everywhere in Opus Dei is the rose. If we peel the rose cross we have the rose-cross. Kabalistic alchemy cannot be more explicit and perfect.
    45 Following in the search and in the finding of kabalistic elements, we note that Escrivá's book, Camino, has exactly 999 maximums or points, a figure that inverted gives us the apocalyptic 666. Its historical mission seems clearly indicated.
    https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=https://www.gnosisprimordial.com/%3Ftag%3Dopus-dei&prev=search

    anything by any of these people is part of the Jewish Masonic Sodomite Opus Devil infiltration of the Catholic Church
    https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/upcoming-vatican-conference-to-address-questions-confronting-amazon-synod

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  39. @Tancred

    "If the syllabius of errors was revoked by Vatican II, maybe these princes of the church need to explain how that’s possible without abandoning the mission of the Church for the salvation of all souls, even the perfidious j-word ones."

    The mission of the Church was abandoned at Vatican II. All religions will get you heaven and pretty much everyone goes there. Kind of makes the Catholic religion pointless and archaic which is how it appears to be treated by the Vatican which is now into more important things like the environment and the justification of homosexuality.

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    1. If the Church’s mission was abandoned, you probabably gave some church shopping to do.

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  40. Whoever keeps seeing Opus Dei under every table and chair, get a life.

    David Hobson, I presume?

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  41. Bow-double-Wow, tancred! Are u now saying taylor marshall ain't opus devil? He's being featured over there at accurate, reliable deathblindlies. Taylor Marshall took a $300k salary from Fisher More college (trying to bankrupt it probably on orders from the Neumayr-Bethell Opus Devil lay college cabal) and then when they went exclusively to the traditional Latin mass, he created a big stink and ran to the bishop w/his Opus Devil pals to close them down. He's a cheap ignorant huckster. You say you are for the traditional latin mass, but you must be for it like he is: prolife as long as abortion is legal and common. The way the episcopal church is for tradition--as long as it's in a pantheon of devils and under state control (and of course you folks are the deep bush state). No wonder you and your friends cry so loud when commonweal and ncr say they are going to eliminate ALL the Latin Masses (u probably pay them to do it to whip up contributions)--we must have one or two Latin Masses in a diocese (as u work to destroy the church for the deep bush state)!

    https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/taylor-marshall-discusses-the-plot-to-destroy-the-church-from-within

    https://twitter.com/InstaurareInXto/status/1061295054202028033

    You are a shill for opus devil propaganda.

    What do you all need God or priests or sacraments for anyway? "Of course we must draw strength and courage from prayer and the Sacraments. These are the source of supernatural faith and courage." [This sinless opus devil pharisee is a pure protestant and doesn't even know it. Religion is a socio-cultural construct (a big pageant w/the hapsburgs as they bury the adulteress diana after they murdered her)--not for salvation as in the Catholic faith: "The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ preserve thy soul unto life everlasting. Amen"]
    http://restore-dc-catholicism.blogspot.com/2019/07/lay-people-stiffen-your-spines-and.html

    Like Hilary Black who goes from deathblindlies to the remnant to tell everyone (like E.M. Jones) we are too degraded for monasteries, but we have the printing press (I mean the opus devil internet) and no pope can stop us from consecrating ourselves to Jesus.

    "In a conversation by email this weekend, a well known Traditionalist monastic (WHO?????) told me …we are in such a state of degradation..At its very core... the life of the Christian, in any state of life, “is ... self-consecration of your life and entire being to Our Lord. Nobody can stop you. No order has control of it. No bishop. No Pope. Jesus gave every person the power and right to do it....And if the internet doesn’t have it posted for free, you can buy it online and have it shipped to your house [all opus devils have houses and money to buy $60 EM jones propaganda]." [And Door Matt (for OD money to go from rome to chartres to lake cuomo to hong kong) that lay shill for Bethell gives Black the platform]
    https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/4530-the-monastic-propositum-and-the-way-through-the-desert-putting-the-horse-before-the-cart

    And poor AIDS Virus. Here's what he's doing w/Opus Devil Money (he's gpt the chapel destroyed and is building a pit): "The selection of generally young men to be seminarians rarely has any input from faithful laity. So Church Militant is responding to the crisis, which men like Donald Wuerl lied through their teeth about, by marshaling our resources through your ongoing generosity. With the chapel moved into the extension, the entire inside will be able to be gutted and rebuilt, Church Militant Media Pit. exciting because it will greatly increase our efficiency, our internal work, what we call the "sausage-making," which most of the time, people don't want to see."
    https://www.churchmilitant.com/video/episode/vortex-demolition-restoration

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  42. Insane. Where have I denied that Marshall Roberts has a connection with Opus Deli? I’ve featured about a dozen stories about Opus and all of them are negative but you think I’m Opus.

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