"The Ways of Evil" is the name of Roberto de Mattei's new book and sheds light on actual and alleged conspiracies, plots and conspiracies of the past 500 years.
By Veronica Rasponi
A few weeks after the "Breve Trattato sulla Divina Provvidenza" ("Short Treatise on Divine Providence"), published by the Roman publisher Fiducia (158 pages, 13 euros), a new book by Roberto de Mattei has been published by the Milanese publisher Sugarco: "I sentieri del male. Congiure, complotti, cospirazioni" ("The Ways of Evil. Plots, Intrigues, Conspiracies", 160 pages, 16 Euro).
"The Ways of Evil", the new book
The two books complement each other in a way. The "Short Treatise" attempts to prove the existence of Divine Providence, which is the manifestation of the wisdom, omnipotence and love of God in history, which faces the radical disorder that is the free creature's futile attempt to destroy the divine order of the universe. This attempt is a revolutionary process due to the social nature of man, who can join forces with his fellow human beings to do good or achieve evil, which he often does in secret. "The Ways of Evil" is a concise reconstruction of the actual or supposed conspiracies, plots and machinations of the past five centuries, carried out with the rigor of the historian. Above all, it is intended to provide a guide that is less about information and more about the criteria for orienting oneself in the dark labyrinth of evil.
The terms plots, intrigues, and conspiracies are often used as synonyms, but through their semantic and conceptual difference, they can help us better understand the occult dimension of the history of the past five centuries. While plots are collusion limited to a few people and aimed at eliminating a monarch or politician – often for reasons of power – conspiracies are broader projects of an ideological nature. The golden age of plots and political murders stretches from the poisons of the Renaissance to the 18th century. In the 18th century, with the emergence of Freemasonry, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution, an era began in which, in addition to traditional plots, conspiracies of an ideological and political nature developed. There is a conspiratorial tradition that extends from the Bavarian Illuminati, the Alta Vendita, and communism to the present day. Many historians have proven the existence of these anti-Christian plots and brought the documents to light. The intrigue, on the other hand, is an elusive and opaque structure in which neither the identity of the actors nor the concrete modus operandi are revealed. The difference between conspiracies and intrigues is that the former belongs to the world of history, the latter to the world of fantasy. The contemporary neo-conspiracy – from the Aquarius Conspiracy to the Reptilians to the Great Reset – has nothing to do with the exploration of anti-Christian secret societies, which has always been part of Catholic historiography and apologetics, but seems to play into the hands of all those interested in the psychological, intellectual and moral destabilization of the West. Today there is a tendency to trace every event back to man according to a deterministic key, ignoring the role of Divine Providence, which allows evil but draws good from it. History, according to Roberto de Mattei, does not follow a compelling course and can change due to unpredictable events that are such for people, but not for God, because there is no coincidence and everything is regulated by Divine Providence, including the realization and failure of the plans of the anti-Christian revolution. It is God, and He alone, who supernaturally guides history for His glory and the sanctification of the elect.
"A history of humanity that ignores the heights of holiness," the author writes in the introduction to his study, "would be distorted, but equally distorted would be a story that ignores the existence of the abyss of evil. He who does not abhor evil cannot love good. And if you can't love the good you don't know, you can't hate the evil whose existence you don't suspect. That is the reason that has led me to shed some light on the 'ways of evil' after dedicating a book to Divine Providence, the supreme order of good."
Translation: Giuseppe Nardi Image: Corrispondenza Romana
While a muzzle seems to have been imposed in Rome, Cardinal Eijk of Utrecht spoke out today and called for the Flemish bishops to stop their intention to introduce gay blessings.
(Rome) When the Flemish bishops presented a liturgy for gay couples a week ago, which is in obvious contradiction to the Church's teaching on homosexuality and to the recent guidelines of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Santa Marta apparently gave the order to remain silent on the matter. No one in the Roman Curia has spoken out since then, which can be interpreted as "submissive silence." Cardinal Willem Jacobus Eijk, Archbishop of Utrecht in the Netherlands, spoke today. Since the Flemish are also ethnically Dutch, Cardinal Eijk is the hjighest-ranking, closest neighbour to the Flemish bishops of Belgium, who have gone astray. Today, La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana (NBQ) exclusively published the statement by the Dutch cardinal. The headline was chosen by the Catholic online daily newspaper.
Edit: apparently, Chesterton is no longer the sole province of low-t EWTN and Catholic Answers expositors like cucky, failed Baptist minister, Dale Alquist, or the enthusiast for the abortion industry and sodomy party, with his effeminate squeaky voice, Marcy Shea.
Pope Francis received the apostolic nuncios on September 8 and made an unusual confession.
(Rome) Does Pope Francis have an ideologized knee which dislikes certain journeys? This ironically meant question is being discussed among Vaticanists and bloggers. What is meant by this is whether Francis' knee problems increase before certain trips in order to prevent them.
Francis' knee problems worsened when, for example, he was supposed to go to Florence last spring, meaning that he would only have had to travel a relatively short distance within Italy. An exact program was coordinated with the Holy See and organized down to the last detail. The knee problems disappeared when he had to embark on a transatlantic journey to complete a "penitential pilgrimage" to Canada.
It later became known that the visit to Florence was due less to knee problems than to an ideological problem. In truth, the cancellation was based on misinformation: Francis wrongly believed that he had to meet someone in Florence whom he did not want to meet. The result was the aforementioned knee problems, which justified the cancellation of the entire visit.
This "ideological" knee problem has already prevented other appointments and trips. It was Francis himself who recently confessed this to the nuncios who gathered at the Vatican on September 8 for their triennial meeting. Vatican scholar Franca Giansoldati wrote yesterday in Messaggero:
“It was the Pope himself who confirmed to his 200 apostolic nuncios, who had been called to the Vatican ten days ago, that he would not travel to Kyiv for the time being in order to advance the dialogue with Moscow and would rather wait for better times. During the meeting he added that fortunately the knee problems he has been suffering from for some time help him to find plausible excuses to postpone the trip to Ukraine. This leak about the closed talks that took place in the Vatican with diplomatic representatives of the Holy See, and confirmed by various sources, began to circulate after he announced on his return flight from Kazakhstan that his next trip abroad would be to Bahrain in November and that a project for a return to Africa, Congo and South Sudan, will be examined in the early months of next year.”
Bishop de Smedt, an influential protagonist of the Second Vatican Council, became the smasher of his bishopric of Bruges
By Ferdinand Boischot
On May 19, 1966, the Belgian bishops, led by Cardinal Suenens and Bishop De Smedt, blew up the Catholic Church in Flanders
From the beginning of the 1960s there was a huge crisis in Belgium: the Dutch-speaking Flemings, who had been neglected and discriminated against since the founding of Belgium (1830), fought harder than ever for their self-determination and equality, the coal and steel region in the Borinage collapsed, the state groaned beneath enormous financial burdens, the Belgian establishment was frustrated by the rapid and unsuccessful decolonization of the Congo, the liberals and socialists on the one hand and the Christian Democrats on the other, eyed each other suspiciously after the "school fight" (1954), in the university town of Leuven things were seething among the students, and a military coup threatened. As part of a local laissez-aller under the cloak of Vatican II, all Christian leadership evaporated. During strikes in the Limburg coal mines in 1966, the gendarmerie shot two young men (Zwartberg crisis) and the more neutral army had to be deployed.
The Belgian bishops were well informed. They were closely associated with the Christian Democrat leadership and ruled over a wide range of Catholic schools, hospitals, unions and charities and senior citizens' associations.
The Great Protagonist
Bishop De Smedt was the main protagonist here. Vice-rector of the Catholic University of Leuven since 1959 was the “very young” Guido Maertens (then 29 years old) from Bruges, who was ordained a priest by Bishop De Smedt and, at the age of 30, had been appointed monsignorand “prelate of His Holiness” like a meteor.
The heated situation in Louvain was well known, as was the dislike of Flemish students towards the aloof Brussels Cardinal Suenens.
Inauguration of Bishop De Smedt
Despite this, or probably precisely because of this, the Belgian bishops' conference published its notorious mandate on May 19, 1966, which immediately triggered civil war-like conditions in Leuven. The gendarmerie reacted exaggeratedly. Great destruction ensued, and centralized Belgium fell apart. The university and its institutions were split head over heels to the point of criminality (an impossible division of books in the library). The government fell. And suddenly a quarter of all believers disappeared from the churches.
The bishops immediately went into hiding.
Without the disturbing looks of critical believers, the Christian Democrat-led iconoclasm and liturgical killing spree could be carried out smoothly.
Bishop De Smedt followed suit with perfidious intelligence on February 2, 1968: In an interview (of course published immediately and widely) he said that "at that time (1966) he had made a serious mistake by sticking to the unity of two wings (of the Catholic University Louvain).
As a result, no Flemish Catholics went to church, but the relationship with the French-speaking bishops in the Belgian bishops' conference was strained for the next 20 years.
The isolation of the Christian-democratic-modernist, de facto former Catholic Church in northern Belgium, without disturbing observers from outside, was perfect.
The Diocese of Bruges as a laboratory and hotspot
The Bruges diocese was here, together with Leuven, the Wagenburg alias laboratory and hotspot for a particularistic North Belgian Christian Democratic morality with exploding homosexuality and pedosexuality.
De Smedt never published much: before the Council and as a prime example of an evangelizing bishop, he published a small booklet on Catholic “Evangelization in the Neighborhood”, which was also translated into French and Spanish.
After the Council, he produced a booklet on “The Priesthood of All Believers”, which was significantly published abroad (France) and remained unknown in Belgium (easily understandable after the events of 1966-1968) because the context was too incoherent and was obviously hypocritical.
Existing biographical notes on the post-1966 period are very sparse, even remarkably sparse. In the diocese of Bruges, the vast majority of priests were ordained and the seminary there was the northern Belgian "cadre factory".
Here Roger Vangheluwe (later pedosexual Bishop) became Dean and Professor at the Major Seminary; here Frans Lefevre, a friend of Danneels and editor of the infamous Roeach series of books on religious education, was ordained and also a professor at the seminary; here Johan Bonny (later homophilic bishop of Antwerp) was ordained a priest. Auxiliary Bishop Paul Lanneau, Danneels' aide and sentenced to prison for covering up pedophilia, was co-consecrated by De Smedt.
Emiel Jozef De Smedt 1909-1995
The Bruges Major Seminary became a super-social hotspot, although this 'social' does not (of course) refer to the Flemish aspirations.
In 1979, the booklet "As man and woman he created them " with the subtitle "Ethical Orientations in Sex Education" was published by the publishing house Lannoo (Tielt), which is traditionally associated with the diocese, under the authorship of De Smedt.
It's written in a boring way, in the style of the bombast of northern Belgian modernism. Already in the foreword by Bishop De Smedt it is expressly said: "... because many young people have difficulties and questions, and I want to help them..." (sic).
Just four pages with some thoughts on Christian education, then a great many pages to: "It's about the happiness of the people" ("sinful man and the forgiving love" - this topos was literally used by Cardinal Danneels in the Vangheluwe scandal; "Danneels-tapes"), then the jump is made to: "Development of ethical action and feeling" (typical for the University of Louvaine 1970-2020). Finally, the central piece follows: “Love and Sexuality”. This is the full program of the Danneels Epoch 1983-2009.
It is significant that the first part on sexuality in general (5.5 pages) is immediately followed by the part on homosexuality (also 5.5 pages).
Nota bene: Homosexuality had not been criminalized in Belgium until eight years earlier (although this action was led in large part by a “worker priest”).
It is only in the last chapter “Growing in Love” that there are five pages about marriage and parallel to that also about renunciation (the word celibacy is used twice, the word council once, and the word monastery twice).
As stated at the end of the preface, the booklet is composed of papers from a study group set up by Bishop De Smedt.
Linguistically smoothed out by Mark Vandevoorde, later spokesman and speechwriter for senior Christian Democrat politicians, also well acquainted with Vangheluwe and a seminary professor, plus Guido Maertens (former Vice-Rector of Louvaine and "ethicist"), a Christian Democrat sociologist (WD) and four professors from the Major Seminary in Bruges, apart from Maertens (later at KULAK in Kortrijk) and the sociologist, will all continue to work seamlessly under Vangheluwe.
They are all "rewarded" with induction into the Chapter of St. Salvator's Cathedral in Bruges.
The booklet is not very attractive from the outside (in my case "3rd impression").
The new sexual morality
At the same time, a slimmed-down version was printed for young people as a large, colorful brochure on glossy paper (52 pages, 50,000 copies of the 1st edition). Lots of large format photos of brick walls and a sandy beach, a bicycle handlebar with a bell, door handles, traffic signs and similar nonsense.
The title is "Ontmoeten" "to meet", with small subtitles "a letter to young people and their companions about relationship building, love and sexuality".
The chapter on homosexuality has been removed, and an extra section on masturbation and sinful thoughts have been added, and that too is spoken in flat language...
The whole body of thought of the Danneels and Vangheluwe epoch with their sex fixation and the complete loss of faithful Catholic morality is already there. The professor protagonists of the Danneels and Vangheluwe eras are also already present.
As said, almost all of them can be found in the list of canons of the cathedral chapter of St. Salvatore in Bruges.
Even now (2022) Vangheluwe's "companions" and cronies are sitting there in large numbers.
The biographical notes on Bishop De Smedt then become fewer and fewer.
He wrote another thin, large format pamphlet about Europe aka the EU, on pink and black porous paper and with no Christian content.
In 1984 De Smedt retired; he was succeeded by Roger Vangheluwe.
De Smedt withdrew to a convent in Bruges and no longer appeared in public.
In 1985, during the visit of Pope John Paul II, he stayed in the background. Pretty strange for one of the most crucial figures of Vatican II.
Apparently, Bishop De Smedt's activities were viewed very critically in Rome at the time.
It is said that De Smedt suffered from dementia at a fairly early age (75 years old). He died in 1994 at the age of 85.
Nothing is known of a reaction by bishop emeritus De Smedt to the article about the “establishment of a working group to promote the interests of pedophiles in the church” (sic) in 1985 in the Church newspaper “Kerk en Leven” (notabene printed by the diocesan publisher in Bruges).
Neither De Smedt nor his “ethical study group” are aware of a reaction to the “religious instruction book” Roeach3 with pedophile texts and illustrations (1992).
It would be another 20 years before the authors and staff were either dead or retired.
The mafia-like wagon company of the Bruges diocese held out for a very long time (until 2017).
Conclusion
Under Bishop Emiel Jozef De Smedt, the homo- and pedophile impregnation of the diocese of Bruges was initiated in terms of personnel and content, and this was probably in close connection with the ideas of the Second Vatican Council.
It continued seamlessly under his successors Vangheluwe and De Kesel, and spilled over to the whole of northern Belgium.
Terra devastata - scorched earth.
References:
MGR. EJ De Smedt: Man en vrouw schep Hij hen : ethical orientations in de seksuele opvoeding , Tielt , 1979
MGR. E.J. De Smedt: "Ontmoeten" : a brief aan jongeren en hun daughters over relational, delivered in seksualiteit" , Tielt-Amsterdam 1979
Cardinal Walter Brandmüller laments Pope Francis' gag order for the cardinals who are supposed to advise him.
By Roberto de Mattei*
There is a relationship between grace and nature analogous to that between faith and reason. There is an imbalance when there is faith without reason or grace without nature and vice versa, but the perfect balance is not in putting these realities on an equal footing. On the contrary, it consists in bringing them into their legitimate order, subordinating nature to grace, of which the former is the premise, just as the premise of faith is the reason, but which is subordinate to faith.
This helps us understand what "spirit of faith" or "supernatural spirit" means, depending on whether we are referring to the primacy of faith over reason or grace over nature. It means not renouncing the indispensable role of reason and nature, but seeing everything through the eyes of faith and expecting even the impossible from the work of grace.
Today that spirit of faith has been lost in the Christian people, beginning with their church leaders. The spirit of faith and the supernatural has been replaced by the political spirit with which Christians claim to understand and intervene in reality through reason alone, without resorting to the decisive action of grace.
Pope Francis has repeatedly recalled that the true reformers of the Church are the saints, yet his approach to the world's great issues always appears political and therefore "worldly" rather than "supernatural" and moved by a spirit of faith. This “political” approach dominated the recent consistory, held August 29-30th in the Vatican in the presence of some 180 cardinals, which missed a great opportunity to address the serious problems afflicting the Church today. The focus of the meeting of the cardinals was officially the reform of the Curia, which is contained in the new Apostolic Constitution Praedicate Evangelium being proposed, but the Pope has prevented the cardinals from expressing themselves in joint session on this and other subjects, as it were, he muzzled them.
The consistory is a meeting of the pope with the cardinals, who according to the code of canon law (canons 349-359) are his first advisers. For at least seven years, Pope Francis has not allowed the cardinals to speak and express their opinions at this solemn gathering. Everyone had expected this to happen at the end of the August meeting, but the consistory was fragmented into language groups at the behest of the pope, paralyzing the cardinals and preventing the open and direct dialogue that last took place in February 2014.
We are reminded of this truth by an important cardinal and great historian, Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, whose voice, which was not allowed to be heard in the consistory hall, echoes outside the hall. The Vaticanist Sandro Magister has allowed us to get to know them by publishing the speech that the cardinal had prepared but was not allowed to deliver.
Cardinal Brandmüller recalls in his document the function of cardinals anchored in canon law, which in ancient times found its symbolic expression in the rite of the "aperitio oris", the opening of the mouth. A rite, the cardinal explained, which “meant the duty to speak openly one's convictions, one's advice, especially in consistory. This openness – Pope Francis speaks of 'parrhesía' – was particularly important to the Apostle Paul. At the moment, unfortunately, that openness has been replaced by a strange silence. The other ceremony of closing the mouth, which followed the 'aperitio oris', referred not to truths of faith and morals, but to official secrets”.
"Today, however," Cardinal Brandmüller added, "we should emphasize the right, indeed the duty, of cardinals to speak clearly and frankly, especially when dealing with the truths of faith and morals, the 'bonum commune' of the Church. The experiences of the last few years have been very different. In the consistories - which were convened almost exclusively for the canonization processes - cards were distributed to ask for the floor and of course spontaneous interventions followed on any subject, and that was it. There was never a debate, an exchange of arguments on any particular subject. Apparently a completely useless procedure", although the primacy of the Successor of Peter in no way "precludes a fraternal dialogue with the cardinals, who are obliged to cooperate conscientiously with the pope” (can. 356). The more serious and urgent the problems of pastoral leadership, the more necessary is the involvement of the College of Cardinals”.
The cardinal, who is a Church historian, continues:
“When Celestine V wanted to renounce the papacy in 1294, recognizing the special circumstances of his election, he did so after intensive discussions and with the consent of his electors. A completely different view of the relationship between pope and cardinals was represented by Benedict XVI, who - a unique case in history - renounced the papal office for personal reasons without the knowledge of the college of cardinals that elected him. There were only 70 electors until Paul VI, who increased the number of electors to 120. This increase in the size of the electoral college, almost doubling it, was motivated by an intention to conform to the hierarchy of lands far from Rome and to honor those churches with the Roman purple. The inevitable consequence was that cardinals were installed who had no experience with the Roman Curia and thus with the problems of the pastoral leadership of the universal Church. All of this has serious consequences when these cardinals from the periphery are called to elect a new pope.”
Currently, it is like this:
“(...) many, if not the majority, of the voters do not know each other. Yet they are there to elect the Pope, one of them. It is obvious that this situation makes it easier for operations of cardinal groups or classes to favor one of their candidates. In this situation one cannot rule out the danger of simony in its various forms.”
The Cardinal's document concludes with a suggestion:
"Finally, it seems to me that the idea of restricting voting rights in the conclave, for example, to cardinals resident in Rome deserves serious consideration, while the other cardinals could share the 'status' of cardinals above octogenarian."
These are clear, unmistakable words that should make the entire College of Cardinals think.
Pope Francis' refusal to give the floor to the cardinals stems from the political and secular perspective of his pontificate. He fears that free and open discussion will weaken the exercise of his power, unaware that the truth can never harm the Church and the souls subject to Her. The spirit of faith, which is opposed to the spirit of politics, consists precisely in seeking in all things what is highest and most sublime, what is best for the glory of God and the good of souls, always looking to the commandments of the Gospel.
The alternative is between the truth of the Gospel and the power of the world. Proclaiming the truth of the Gospel does not mean talking about immigration or the climate emergency, but about the novissima- Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell - and the divine providence that governs all events of the created universe. Preaching the Gospel means using the voice of the Church to condemn sin, especially public sin, foremostly abortion and LGBT doctrines, which the world considers “civil rights achievements”. It means speaking of holiness and not of synodality, because it is from holiness and not from political mechanisms that the necessary reform (renewal) proceeds within the Church: a renewal of the people who form Her and not of Her divine ones and immutable constitution.
A cloak of silence has now fallen over the consistory. And the silence of those who should speak is the greatest punishment our Lord can inflict on His Church.
* Roberto de Mattei , historian, father of five children, professor of modern history and history of Christianity at the European University of Rome, chairman of the Lepanto Foundation, author of numerous books, most recently in German [Possibly English] translation: Defense of Tradition: The Insurmountable Truth of Christ, with a foreword by Martin Mosebach, Altötting 2017 and The Second Vatican Council. A Hitherto Unwritten Story, 2nd ext. Edition, Bobingen 2011.
