Infiltration and Lord of the World: Some Thoughts about Roman Catholicism
What follows - musings upon Roman Catholic ecclesiology - will not be to everyone’s taste.
That’s okay. Remember what it says on the About section of this blog: this is my world and these are the kinds of things that go on in my head - along with various thoughts about how I might be able to book tickets to go and see (or even, one day, play for) Tottenham Hotspur!
I also don’t want to annoy my Roman Catholic readers some of whom have been my greatest supporters over the last few years. So, please bear with me as I share my thoughts stemming from two recent pieces of reading I have completed. And, please, object away. This is a dialogue of course.
I read Roman Catholic traditionalist Taylor Marshall’s book Infiltration: The Plot to Destroy the Church from Within and have also recently finished Robert Benson’s 1907 novel Lord of the World. Benson was an Anglican - the son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, no less - who turned Roman Catholic. More on the latter shortly.
Marshall’s thesis is that, beginning in the Early Modern Period, Freemasons have infiltrated the Roman Catholic Church in order to infect it with the disease of Modernism. This process has eventually culminated in the election of the liberal Jesuit Pope Francis to the office of Supreme Pontiff. I think this book is a few years old but, no doubt, Marshall would consider his thesis to be further confirmed by the events of the last few months.
Now, suffice to say, that I don’t think Marshall brings much evidence to bear as to the extent of the freemasonic influence within the Roman Catholic Church itself. Most of the book is really about liberalising trends within the Church that could perfectly well have happened without the influence of Freemasonry. (The slight caveat here could be that everyone is influenced by Freemasonry in Modernity because Freemasons have had such an enormous influence upon the development of the modern world, but that is really a separate point.) To an outsider like me, some of this is more convincing than other bits. I’m not sure that the acceptance of the confiscation of the Papal States was as serious a bit of apostasy as Marshall says but I do find aspects of the theology of Vatican II, the suppression of the Latin Mass both then and recently, and, of course, the scandalous behaviour of Roman priests up to the very highest level regarding sexual perversion and, particularly, child abuse and paedophilia, concerning. The latter is clearly far beyond concerning and constitutes a straight-out satanic infiltration of the Church. Whether that is due to Freemasonry or to other explicable factors is another question really.
Anyway, Marshall finishes the book with a sort of “What do we do?” type meditation. He doesn’t try and get out of the difficulty by, for example, claiming that Pope Francis or anyone else has not been duly elected as the Pope and faces the reality full in the face. His answer is really that true Roman Catholics need to continue in faithfulness and in seeking the Lord for repentance and renewal in their church. And that’s a very good answer, as far as I’m concerned. It’s the same thing that I hope for in the Church of England.
But…and there is big “but” here, this highlights for me what I think of as my central difficulty with Roman Catholicism, which is its ecclesiology, that is, it’s understanding of the Church itself. In the Roman view, the Roman Catholic Church simply is the Christian Church, constituted by the Papacy with the episcopate and the priesthood. Thus, to be out of communion with the Pope is to be out of communion with the Church. Further, the Roman Church holds that it has an authoritative teaching magisterium and a Pope that can rule infallibly in certain circumstances.
One of the things I find sad about this is that it seems unnecessary. Imagine if Rome dropped these views and said that there are other types of legitimate small-c catholic churches such as the Anglican and Orthodox. And that there are legitimate Christians elsewhere, albeit who are out of communion with the historic episcopate and are thus cut off from the grace of the sacraments excepting baptism. Imagine if they admitted that both the teaching magisterium and the Papacy make errors at times because they are constituted by flawed human beings who are capable of sin and folly. What would really be lost as far as Rome is concerned? The only thing that would be lost is its exclusivism, which is the least attractive thing about it in my view (…well, apart from the perverted behaviour of some of its clerics, I suppose).
And Marshall’s book doesn’t help because it illustrates so well how deeply flawed, sinful, and in error so much of the Roman Catholic Church is. I can’t see how it’s an empirically plausible statement to say that Rome, for example, constitutes some kind of living voice issuing authoritative teaching on sound doctrine and practice. Just one example would be, as Marshall points out, that Pope Francis has completely reversed the teaching of multiple other popes on the death penalty. This one example demonstrates that the Pope and the teaching magisterium do not issue universally consistent and authoritative doctrine. Objectors will say, perhaps, that Francis is rogue and that he is going against the tradition in an illegitimate way. But, he’s the Pope and it’s now been included in the Catechism, so it’s an official part of the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. They might say that he’s not teaching infallibly, but that doesn’t seem to matter here because he is still teaching with the authoritative voice of the Supreme Pontiff. And there are many other examples besides, including (again, as Marshall points out) Vatican II and the clear changes in direction that were made by that council, such as its teaching on the other world religions, which is, however one might object, not the same as what was taught before.
Perhaps someone can straighten me out on all of this but I just find very unconvincing. It seems to be a kind of ecclesiological fundamentalism that wants to insist upon the purity and spotlessness of the Roman Church whilst not being able to deny that the Roman Church (like other churches) is deeply flawed, at times in error, and certainly at other times at odds with its own teaching. These observations are not a problem for other types of Christians, such as Anglicans, because we say that the Church is not pure and spotless but is constituted by saints and sinners, wisdom and folly. Thus, in this age, the Church is, to an extent, a contested territory: we must contend for the truth and for what is right against heresy, error, and sin, of which there is much. Our authority is Scripture - and that is flawless - and the tradition of the Church is a guide to sound interpretation. That just makes so much more sense to me. I’m sorry Roman Catholic readers. I do love the Roman Church but this is something I can’t get my head around. As I say, please do let me have your pushback on that.
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