By Michael Davies

The pontificate of Pope Zosimus lasted for one year only, from 417-418. "His knowledge and prudence were insufficient for his task of governing the Church, and he was a weak man who blustered and yielded. Within a few days of consecration he conferred on Patroceles, Bishop of Aries, a usurper of the see, unscrupulous in his methods, what amounted to legatine authority over all the bishops of southern Gaul, and reprimanded them harshly when they defended their rights . . . Zosimus ordered the rehabilitation of an African priest, Apiarius, degraded by his bishop for his immoral life."

Pope Boniface II (530-532) attempted to nominate his successor, "an ambitious and unscrupulous deacon named Vigilius. His action however, met with such general disapprobation that he rescinded the decree."

Pope Adrian II (867-872) caused scandal by allowing his wife and daughter to live in the Lateran Palace.

Pope Sergius III (904-911) "certainly took the papacy by force, but he is customarily regarded as a legitimate pope. Legitimate he may have been but suitable he certainly was not . . . This unscrupulous man who ruled the Church so arrogantly held a Roman Council which overturned the acts of the council of 898 . . . the execration of some undoubted popes by this terrible man was enough to cause scandal. Many of the better men of the day resisted and a bitter conflict arose."

Pope John XII was "a scandal to the whole Church . . . John conducted himself in the manner of a layman, preferring hunting to church ceremonies, and largely indifferent to Church matters . . . It was said that he was struck with paralysis while visiting his mistress. He died on 14 May 964, without confession or receiving the sacraments."

Pope Alexander II (1061-1073) made a sincere effort to introduce much needed reforms into the Church. "Both in northern Italy, and to a lesser extent in England, reform had served as the cloak for dirty politics without the Pope realizing he was being used by men less scrupulous than himself."

St. Gregory VII (1073-1085) was able to humiliate the Emperor Henry IV "but it proved to be a political mistake."

Pope Gregory IX (1227-1241) "commissioned a convert from heresy, the Dominican Robert le Bougre, a sadistic monster who was later burned himself, as his inquisitor in France."

The French pope, Martin IV (1281-1285) had served the King of France before Pope Urban IV called him to the Curia. "An ardent patriot, Martin IV, was the devoted servant of Charles, and all else was now sacrificed to the French interest. Charles was made senator of Rome for life. Seven new cardinals were created, four of them Frenchmen. Those appointed to offices in the Papal States by the previous pope were now displaced in favor of Frenchmen."

Pope Boniface IX (1389-1404) "increased the taxation of the Church and sold provisions and expectatives for ready cash. Indulgences were multiplied, to be gained by an offering of money with little regard paid to the essential spiritual conditions. In the year 1400 the Pope proclaimed a Holy Year and allowed would-be pilgrims to the shrines of Rome to forego the arduous journey for a sum roughly equivalent to what they would otherwise have spent. The bankers of Europe were called in to collect the offerings which they divided equally with the Pope. There can be little doubt that Boniface IX who treated the whole business simply as a political problem, was guilty of simony on a massive scale."

Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484) had one dominating idea, "the desire to advance his family and obtain for it a leading position in Italy. Other popes had engaged in nepotism, some out of family loyalty and others from political considerations but under him it became the chief influence in papal policy."

Pope Innocent VIII (1484-1492) was "a kindly and genial man, he lacked the personality and intellectual capacity for the office of pope. His morals were equally unsuitable, and he openly avowed his illegitimate children ... To the open scandals caused by the Pope's morals and policies—the advancement of his bastard Franceschotto, and his collaboration with the heathen—were added the results of corruption in the Curia. Administrative incompetence and the expenses of foreign policy in the early years of his pontificate led both to an increase in the sale of offices and to the creation of new posts in order that they might be sold. The number of papal secretaries was increased to twenty-six and the new posts sold for 62,400 ducats, while fifty-two Plumbatores were appointed to seal bulls, each of whom paid 2,500 ducats for his appointment."

Many Catholics will understandably be shocked to read these statements regarding popes. If true, they reveal that popes have been corrupt, immoral and incompetent. They reveal that men totally unsuited for the highest position to which a human being can rise have been elected to the office of the Sovereign Pontiff. They reveal that popes have appointed unworthy officials; that popes have been deceived by unscrupulous men; that policies they initiated have done harm to the Church; that they have subordinated the good of the Church to political policies, to the interests of a particular country or their family. They also reveal that there were occasions when good Catholics needed to resist the pope and that the pope changed harmful policies as a result of this resistance. If true, these statements reveal that to be elected the pope guarantees neither impeccability nor inerrancy.

As a matter of fact, the Church has never taught that the popes are impeccable or inerrant. Reputable theologians have taught that popes can even fall in schism or heresy and therefore depose themselves. Why then should faithful Catholics be disturbed by the statements that have just been cited? The answer is simple. Throughout living memory and long before the Church has been blessed with a succession of popes who combined great personal holiness with wisdom and prudence so that, to the ordinary Catholic, it began to appear that the popes were impeccable and inerrant. In countries with a Protestant majority, defending the person of the reigning Pope was seen as synonymous with defending the Faith. Criticism of any papal policy was seen as an attack upon the Church. What had happened was that for practical purposes the Pope had come to be regarded as an oracle, and no evident harm derived from this attitude as long as the Popes pursued wise policies, upheld sound doctrine, and guarded the liturgy as a sacred trust. But in reality this attitude was fraught with danger. It was based on a false concept of the papacy. An attitude which is not based on truth can work for a time, for a very long time, but not forever. This obvious danger of accepting the Pope as an oracle was that great harm could be done to the Church if a pope were elected whose policies would not be prudent and in accord with tradition. Catholics would consider anything and everything decreed or approved by their oracle to be self-evidently beneficial to the Church. Papal policies would not be examined in the light of tradition, they would be accepted as true simply because they were papal policies. In Chapter XII of my book Pope John's Council I have shown that for a century the aim of the Secret Societies has been to secure the election of a Pope who would initiate policies which would enable them to destroy the Church or transform it into something radically different from the institution founded by Jesus Christ. It would be a Church which would not condemn but serve the world, a Church which would content itself with echoing whatever platitudes those who manipulated public opinion wished to have endorsed; it would be a Church whose bishops in California would tell Catholic voters to reject Proposition 6 in the fall of 1978.¹

Note well, the Masons did not hope to have one of their own elected as Pope. "The Pope, whoever he may be, will never come to the secret societies. It is for the secret societies to come first to the Church, in the resolve to conquer the two." They hoped for a pontiff imbued with the "humanitarian principles" which they were about to put into circulation. Such a pontiff would be followed by the clergy and the clergy would be followed by the people "in the belief always that they march under the banner of the Apostolic Keys". This would result in "a Revolution in Tiara and cope, marching with the Cross and banner—a Revolution which needs only to be spurred on a little to put the four quarters of the world on fire." Such a pontiff was Pope Paul VI. It is my firm conviction that the pontificate of Pope Paul VI will prove to have been the most disastrous in the entire history of the Church. Every policy he undertook proved disastrous, whether it was his Ostpolitik (relations with the Communist world), ecumenism, reforming the liturgy of the Mass and the sacramental rites, and above all his facile optimism, his underlying conviction that men are all basically good at heart and that while retaining incompatible religious and political convictions we can all work together to build a better world.

This is the fallacy which invalidates Jacques Maritain's seemingly impressive philosophy of Integral Humanism. This is the philosphy which pervades the Vatican II Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes (Joy and Hope) on the Church in the Modern World. Writing in the October 1978 issue of Christian Order, Professor J. P. M. van der Ploeg, O. P., one of Europe's foremost theologians, noted that:

It is clear that, in the document, the scriptural idea of "world" (i.e. humanity lying in sin and under the dominion of the Prince of evil) is not particularly stressed though not totally absent (cf. No. 37, where even Rom. 12:2 is quoted; see also Nos. 79-82 on war and the prevention of it). But as a whole the document is pervaded by optimism and by great confidence in purely human possibilities and values, which one is at a loss to find in Holy Scripture or in the writings of the Fathers and the documents of the Magisterium. This is not meant as a criticism but as a statement of fact. The document speaks with admiration, and in many words, of the progress of human science and technology and emphasizes the duty of Christians to collaborate with others in the promotion of purely human culture. "We witness the birth of a new humanism," it says, "in which man is before all defined (definitur) by his responsibilities towards his brothers and towards history" (No. 55). It is not clear what these last words mean, but the word "humanism" is there and those who drafted the document wished it to be pronounced: this humanism is described as a Christian attitude.

Perhaps the most sickening example of this policy in practice was Pope Paul VI's betrayal of Cardinal Mindszenty in the interests of better relations with Janos Kadar, the Soviet puppet whose behaviour after the patriotic rising in Hungary made his subsequent reception by Pope Paul a public scandal. Pope Paul assured this loathsome creature that his arrival in the Vatican gave "the promise of new progress in the way of mutual contacts, of mutual understanding and of positive cooperation in the service of noble causes which are not only of interest for the Hungarian people, but for other peoples and the whole of humanity, particularly in the defense of peace and in the promotion of the social, economic, cultural and moral progress of the nations . . ." (L'Osservatore Romano, Italian edition, 10-11 June 1977, p. 1.)

The fact that in Pope John's Council, I stated that the policies of Pope Paul VI were advantageous to Communism has brought me no little criticism. Father Cornelius O'Brien, Chaplain to Christendom College, has accused me of saying that Pope Paul is a Marxist. He accused me of being "mean and cheap and unfair" in my "treatment of the person of Pope Paul VI". Those who have read my book will know that I did not accuse Pope Paul of being a Marxist but actually went out of my way to quote statements by him showing that from a personal standpoint he was an anti-communist. I have also always endeavored to follow the precept and example of Archbishop Lefebvre in never speaking or writing disrespectfully of the person of the Pope. What I did in Pope John's Council was to cite facts, the same facts cited by such eminent scholars as Dietrich von Hildebrand, facts which prove the Pope's Ostpolitik to have been a disaster. As the matter is dealt with in detail in my book I will not repeat the information here. What is significant is that no one has attempted to refute me by proving either that the information I provide is false or that the conclusions which I draw from it are unjustified. I am considered to be wrong because I criticize the Pope and the Pope is an oracle who is always considered right. What arguments can be effective with those who base their case on such an untenable axiom? It is as futile to try and reason with them as it is to reason with those who have been deceived by the many spurious revelations which are doing the devil's work among good Catholics.

However, Pope Paul VI is now dead. He belongs to history and so perhaps a more objective attitude can be hoped for among conservative Catholics who will allow no word of criticism of the reigning pontiff. This brings me back to the examples from history with which this article began. They are all taken from The Popes, edited by Eric John and published in London in 1964 by Burns & Oates, Publishers to the Holy See. The book has an imprimatur and was widely praised in all the Catholic journals. Not one reviewer accused the distinguished authors who compiled this study of being "mean and cheap and unfair" for being historically objective. I might add that the examples I have given provide only a minute fraction of those which could be provided and I have deliberately refrained from citing cases where serious doctrinal error was involved, e.g. Liberius, Vigilius, and Honorius. The case of the latter would have posed a particular problem for Father O'Brien. Pope Honorius I was not only condemned by the Council of Constantinople in 681 because he "followed the wicked teaching of the heretics" but the acts of the Council were signed by the papal legate and duly authenticated by Pope Leo II. Fr. O'Brien's dilemma would arise from the fact that although anyone who criticizes a pope is ipso facto "mean and cheap and nasty" Pope Leo II couldn't be "mean and cheap and nasty" because he was the Pope himself.

The basis of my criticism of Pope Paul VI was that his policies favored those forces most inimical to the Church, forces which had the destruction of the Church as their motivating forces. These forces are Protestantism,² Masonry and Communism. In their present form they certainly represent what Professor van der Ploeg described as the scriptural idea of the "world" which is opposed to the Church. The term "world" is used in different senses in the Bible—not all are pejorative. Remember that God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son to save it. A very profound analysis of the term "world" can be found in Cardinal Newman's sermon "The World Our Enemy".³

Cardinal Newman is extremely severe on those who are praised by the world. "To become a hero, in the eyes of the world, it is almost necessary to break the laws of God and man. Thus the deeds of the world are matched by the opinions and principles of the world: it adopts bad doctrine to defend bad practice; it loves darkness because its deeds are evil."

St. John tells us that the hatred of the world would be a characteristic of the true Christian. "If the world hate you, know ye that it hath hated Me before you. If you had been of the world, the world would love its own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you."

What then is the verdict of the world upon the pontificate of Pope Paul VI? Let me clarify my position once more. I claim that the world in the sense condemned in the Bible is epitomized by the World Council of Churches, by Freemasonry and by Communism. I claim that the policies of Pope Paul VI favored the interests of the World Council of Churches, Masonry and Communism. I do not claim, and have never claimed, that Pope Paul was a "crypto-Protestant" (to quote Father O'Brien again), a Mason or a Marxist. I also think that it is not unreasonable to claim that those best placed to decide whether Pope Paul's policies favored the W.C.C., Masonry, and Communism are the W.C. C., the Masons, and the Communists themselves. Their tributes to Pope Paul VI provide a striking and terrifying corroboration of the case I have put forward in Pope John's Council—there can be no more terrible indictment of his pontificate.

A TRIBUTE FROM THE WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES

On 7 August 1978 the World Council of Churches published a tribute to Pope Paul VI which included the following:

We recall with special gratitude the visit of His Holiness to Geneva in 1969 and the keen interest he showed in all our activities . . . the foundation has been laid for a new and lasting communion among all Christian churches. The openness towards other churches so strongly desired by the Second Vatican Council and expressed in the decree on ecumenism has become an irreversible reality. Pope Paul VI constantly sought to promote and deepen mutual understanding among the churches; this was evinced by his great enthusiasm for the establishment of a Joint Working Group between the Roman Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches . . . Pope Paul VI understood his ministry as an instrument in the service of peace in the world and indefatigably recalled the duty of the church and indeed of every member of the church to contribute to overcoming the menace of war. He encouraged a more vigorous witness to justice for the poor and the oppressed. The encyclical Populorum Progressio found a strong echo in the hearts of all Christians concerned with the destructive forces of injustice . . . His pontificate will be remembered as the period in which many Roman Catholic Christians have discovered new perspectives of witness and action in the life of society.

 

Canon DuBois, a prominent Episcopalian clergyman in the U.S.A., has described the W.C.C. as Anti-Christ. Readers of THE ANGELUS will hardly need to have the W.C.C. jargon explained as its true meaning is well known. None of the apparently innocuous phrases mean what they appear to mean. For example, by "justice for the poor and oppressed" the W.C.C. means supplying funds to terrorist groups in Africa which have now murdered countless Africans and Europeans, often accompanied by mutilation and other practices of a nature so bestial that even the secular press must omit the details.

A MASONIC TRIBUTE

The Italian Masonic journal, Rivista Massonica (No 5, July 1978, Vol. LXIX-XIII della nuova seria), published a tribute to Pope Paul VI which included the following:

For other people, it (the death of Pope Paul VI) is the death of a pope, an event which is proverbially rare, but which still happens at a distance of years and decades. For us it is the death of Him who has put an end to the condemnation of Clement XII and of his successors. For the first time in the history of modern Masonry, the head of the largest religion in the West dies not in a state of hostility towards Freemasons (non in istato di ostilita coi Massoni). And for the first time in history the Freemasons can pay homage to the sepulchre of a Pope, without ambiguity or contradiction. (Emphasis in the original.)

 

HOMAGE FROM COMMUNISTS

The Italian Communist Party has good cause to be grateful to Pope Paul VI and Vatican II, not to mention Pope John XXIII. As a direct result of the modification of Vatican hostility towards Communism the Italian Communist Party is now poised to take power in Italy. Nonetheless, many eyebrows were still raised in surprise when after the Pope's death the walls of Rome were plastered with a Communist poster paying tribute to the late pontiff. The full text read:

The Yugoslav dictator, President Tito, paid a tribute to the Pope which was published in Politika, Belgrade's leading Communist daily. According to the London Universe (25 August 1978):

In a special message President Tito spoke of Pope Paul as a convinced partisan of peace and understanding between different peoples. "Pope Paul," says President Tito, "undertook a continual combat for international cooperation in equality and peace. His conception of a world without war in which problems of racial discrimination, famine and under-development . . . must be rapidly solved, was of considerable support to the efforts of the international community ..."

Readers of THE ANGELUS will not need a translation of this Communist jargon. They will know that what a Communist describes as "working for peace" means following a policy that will bring worldwide Communist rule one step nearer. In his open letter to Father Arrupe, published in the February 1979 issue of THE ANGELUS, Hamish Fraser addressed a question to the Jesuit Order. Not a single Jesuit journal has yet published this letter, not a single Jesuit has attempted to answer his question.

If you suggest that any Christian purpose is served by your advocacy of 'honest and open collaboration' with any brand whatever of revolutionary Marxism, I defy you or any other member of the Society of Jesus to cite a single instance where such collaboration has not redounded to the advantage of revolutionary Marxism and to the disadvantage of Christians and the Church.

In its issue of 17 August 1978, The Wanderer published page after page of glowing tributes to the late Pope, tributes which give the impression that this was possibly the greatest pontificate in history. One headline reads: "A Truly Great Pontificate." This is a sentiment echoed by the World Council of Churches, Freemasons, and Marxists. Can a pontificate considered "great" by "the world" be great in the eyes of God?

Cardinal Newman remarked in a sermon (which is not included in the collection mentioned earlier):

St. John says: "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world the love of my Father is not in him" (1 John, 2:15). Let us be quite sure then that the confederacy of evil which Scripture calls the world, that conspiracy against Almighty God of which Satan is the secret instigator, is something wider, and more subtle, and more ordinary, than mere cruelty or craft, or profligacy; it is that very world in which we are; it is not a certain body or party of men, but it is human society itself. ("Faith and the World").

As a final thought, it is worth reflecting upon the fact that if there is one man who is hated by the world because he is clearly not of the world, a man whose beliefs and standards virtually the whole of contemporary society—Marxist, Masonic, Protestant and Catholic—is united in rejecting, that man is Archbishop Lefebvre..

1. See THE ANGELUS, Feb. 1979, p. 23.

2. In no way do I wish to offend sincere Protestants here. I am referring to the direction taken today by Protestantism as an "ism", which is that of the World Council of Churches' socio-politicization of religion. The mainstream Protestant bodies are now fully in step with the world, and the Vatican was racing to catch us during the pontificate of Pope Paul VI. Despite the serious and fundamental errors of Protestantism, particularly with regard to the nature of the Church, of grace, and of the Mass, it is only fair to admit that some conservative Protestant denominations accept far more Catholic doctrine in practice than many nominal Catholics, bishops included. To their credit, many Californian Protestants supported Proposition 6.

3.Available with 24 other sermons by Cardinal Newman in Newman Against the Liberals, edited by Michael Davies with an introduction by Msgr. Philip Flanagan, available from the Angelus Press, $11.