The Church and Freemasonry: the Secret February 16 Meeting in Milan -- by Roberto de Mattei

On Feb. 16, 2024, representatives of the main Italian Masonic lodges and a number of influential Catholic prelates gathered in Milan for a day of study. The seminar, sponsored at the Ambrosianum Foundation by the Gris (Group for Socio-Religious Research and Information), was attended by the three Grand Masters of Italian Freemasonry: Stefano Bisi for the Grand Orient of Italy (GOI), Luciano Romoli for the Grand Lodge of Italy of the ALAMs (GLDI,  and Fabio Venzi (in connection) for the Grand Regular Lodge of Italy (GLRI). On the Catholic side, Archbishop Mario Delpini of Milan, Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, former president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, Franciscan theologian Father Zbigniew Suchecki, and Bishop Antonio Staglianò, president of the Pontifical Academy of Theology, participated in the meeting. Archbishop Delpini gave the opening address and Cardinal Coccopalmerio the closing one. The meeting was behind closed doors, but the relevance of the participants leaked its contents, which Riccardo Cascioli first brought to light in The New Daily Compass on Feb. 19.

Announcing Fr. Charles Murr’s new book of memoirs, Murder in the 33rd Degree: The Gagnon Investigation into Vatican & Freemasonry

In Catholic discourse today, one notices two extremes when the question of Freemasonry and its (past or present) penetration into the Church hierarchy is raised.

“We must love the Church more than ever”: Interview with Dr. Alice von Hildebrand (Rorate Exclusive)

Rorate is grateful to Annemarie and Thomas Thimons for providing this transcript of an interview they conducted with Dr. Alice von Hildebrand on September 3, 2018, shortly after the Viganò revelations about former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, about whom the long-delayed and long-awaited Vatican dossier is supposed to appear imminently — though it remains to be seen whether it will, in fact, expose the many actual and suspected connections, which ought to bring down many powerful members of the hierarchy. This interview with Dr. von Hildebrand has not been published until now.

The interviewers begin by sharing that McCarrick had been stripped of his red hat by Pope Francis a month prior to our meeting and required to live a life of penance.

Alice von Hildebrand [AVH]. That was a good decision.

 

The new encyclical "Fratelli Tutti" is basically an ode to Fraternity, in the French revolutionary concept of the word (Updated: Full text of the Encyclical)

 

Liberté - Égalité - Fraternité : Hall of the Grand Lodge of France (GODF), Paris

The Spanish text of the newest papal encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, which will be released in a couple of hours, was leaked by Spanish website Infovaticana.

The main point of the text, a long text, 123-pages long, we can now reveal, is its inspiration by the Abu Dhabi document (the "Statement on Human Fraternity"), which itself established an institution of flabbergasting name: The Higher Committee for Human Fraternity.

It's all based on the notion of "Fraternity" inspired by the French Revolution. Whether this is good or bad, we'll let you decide for yourself.

UPDATE: Sunday, Oct. 4 - Full text of Fratelli Tutti in English.

BOMBSHELL: New historical evidence emerges in support of Bugnini’s association with Freemasonry — Names are named

The latest edition of the magazine of the Latin Mass Society of England & Wales, Mass of Ages, contains a review by Kevin Symonds of Taylor Marshall’s book Infiltration: The Plot to Destroy the Church from Within. (The review as published may be viewed in a PDF of the magazine, starting at page 40, as well as on the author’s personal website; it has been reproduced in full here.) 

Pursuing hints in the book, Symonds goes much beyond the conclusions of Marshall regarding Bugnini, having uncovered new material on Bugnini that decisively moves the question of his association with Freemasonry from the realm of shadowy speculation, where it remained even as recently as the scholarly biography by Yves Chiron, to the level of reasonable certainty. Instead of “unnamed sources,” where the matter was left by Michael Davies, we finally have named sources, with a plausible paper trail.

New Evidence on the Freemasonic Membership of Annibale Bugnini

Kevin Symonds

In this book, Taylor Marshall firmly maintains that the Catholic Church has been literally infiltrated by her enemies, thereby experiencing a massive campaign of disruption and distortion. A particular area in which Marshall advances this thesis pertains to the influence of the Vincentian priest, and later Archbishop, Annibale Bugnini (1912-1982) in the liturgical reforms of the mid-twentieth century. This review focuses on Marshall’s presentation of Bugnini’s influence upon these reforms and in particular of Marshall’s claim that Bugnini was involved with Freemasonry. It will be argued that, despite his eagerness to find evidence of ‘infiltration’ and his animus against Bugnini, Marshall actually misses some important evidence in favor of Bugnini’s membership of the Italian Freemasons.

"Vatican News"? No, Freemasonry News

Paranoia? Conspiracy theory?

Well, you tell us what this official Vatican News headline looks like:

Fatima, the Sun, the Black Banner and a Friar’s Prophecy: “We can bring you down and we will. ”

David Murgia

Il Segno di Giona

This illumination is taken from the Taymouth Hours, circa ARSH 1325.  (H/T to Ann Barnhardt for image)

Poland. At the end of the second decade of the 20^th century. A young, conventual, Franciscan Friar is seated at his desk trying to organize his thoughts. On the desk there is only a small image of Our Lady.  For some months now there has been talk of a “beautiful Lady” appearing to three little illiterate shepherds in Portugal. All the newspapers had reported it. They had reported the strange apparitions and the Miracle of the Sun, a prodigy previously foretold by the little shepherds.  

"DEAR BROTHER MASONS" - Full Article on Catholic-Masonic Dialogue by Cardinal Ravasi -- And, exclusive, an answer by Card. Ravasi

A few days ago, we published a few excerpts of the article published by Cardinal Ravasi, President of the Pontifical Council for Culture, in the Italian paper Il Sole 24 Ore last Sunday, February 14, 2016, calling for dialogue with Freemasons. We now have the full text of the article -- followed by a response given by the Cardinal to a reader who asked him for a clarification.

***

DEAR BROTHER MASONS

Over and above our different identities, there is no lack of common values: a sense of community, charitable works and the fight against materialism

by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi

I read some time ago in an American magazine that the international bibliography on Freemasonry exceeds more than a 100,000 articles. Certainly contributing to this interest is its aura of secrecy and mystery, more or less with good reason, its different “obediences” and Masonic “rites” shrouded in a sort of murkiness, not to mention its origins, which, according to the English historian Frances Yates, “are one of the most discussed and questionable problems in the entire field of historical research” (curiously the scholar’s study was dedicated to the Rosicrucian Enlightment, translated by Einaudi in 1976).

Cardinal Ravasi calls for Dialogue with Freemasonry - Excerpts

Dear Brother Masons 
[Full article here]

Over and above our different identities, there is no lack of common values: a sense of community, charitable work and the fight against materialism.

50 Years Ago: Dietrich von Hildebrand Confronts Pope Paul VI

The following excerpts are taken from a fascinating 2001 interview with Dr. Alice von Hildebrand (the full text is available here) that is required reading for every Catholic who wants to understand what has happened in the Church since the mid-20th century. I found myself thinking once again about this interview because Alice mentions a private meeting that her husband had with Pope Paul VI on June 21, 1965, 50 years ago this Sunday (right before the very last, October-December session of the Second Vatican Council), which was followed up with a manuscript that really ought to be published someday. Read on…

*          *          *

TLM: Dr. von Hildebrand, at the time that Pope John XXIII summoned the Second Vatican Council, did you perceive a need for a reform within the Church?

AVH: Most of the insights about this come from my husband. He always said that the members of the Church, due to the effects of original sin and actual sin, are always in need of reform. The Church’s teaching, however, is from God. Not one iota is to be changed or considered in need of reform.

TLM: In terms of the present crisis, when did you first perceive something was terribly wrong?

AVH: It was in February 1965. I was taking a sabbatical year in Florence. My husband was reading a theological journal, and suddenly I heard him burst into tears. I ran to him, fearful that his heart condition had suddenly caused him pain. I asked him if he was all right. He told me that the article that he had been reading had provided him with the certain insight that the devil had entered the Church. Remember, my husband was the first prominent German to speak out publicly against Hitler and the Nazis. His insights were always prescient.

[…]

TLM: Did your husband think that the decline in a sense of the supernatural began around that time, and if so, how did he explain it?

AVH: No, he believed that after Pius X’s condemnation of the heresy of Modernism, its proponents merely went underground. He would say that they then took a much more subtle and practical approach. They spread doubt simply by raising questions about the great supernatural interventions throughout salvation history, such as the Virgin Birth and Our Lady’s perpetual virginity, as well as the Resurrection, and the Holy Eucharist. They knew that once faith – the foundation – totters, the liturgy and the moral teachings of the Church would follow suit. My husband entitled one of his books The Devastated Vineyard. After Vatican II, a tornado seemed to have hit the Church. … The aversion to sacrifice and redemption has assisted the secularization of the Church from within. We have been hearing for many years from priests and bishops about the need for the Church to adapt herself to the world. Great popes like St. Pius X said just the opposite: the world must adapt itself to the Church. …

There have been two books published in Italy in recent years that confirm what my husband had been suspecting for some time; namely, that there has been a systematic infiltration of the Church by diabolical enemies for much of this century. My husband was a very sanguine man and optimistic by nature. During the last ten years of his life, however, I witnessed him many times in moments of great sorrow, and frequently repeating, “They have desecrated the Holy Bride of Christ.” He was referring to the “abomination of desolation” of which the prophet Daniel speaks.

TLM: This is a critical admission, Dr. von Hildebrand. Your husband had been called a twentieth-century Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius XII. If he felt so strongly, didn’t he have access to the Vatican to tell Pope Paul VI of his fears?

Who needs conspiracy theories when the Freemasons openly celebrate Vatican II in the Eternal City?

The largest and most influential Masonic organization in Italy is the Grand Orient of Italy [Grande Oriente d'Italia]. Yes, it is the very same Grand Lodge whose Grand Masters always worked for the humiliation of the Apostolic See, from the battles against Pius IX to symbolic acts of effrontery (such as Giordano Bruno's statue in Campo de' Fiori, a response to Leo XIII); it was also the Grand Lodge that once had jurisdiction over the well-known Propaganda Due lodge, the P2, including during the crucial years of the Vatican II Council and immediate aftermath.

This Grande Oriente d'Italia hosted a conference on June 12, 2014, at Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Via Milano, Rome, to promote the book “Il Concilio Segreto” (The Secret Council), by Ignazio Ingrao. On the panel of guests invited to present the book were Marco Politi, journalist and Vaticanist for “La Repubblica” and “Il Fatto Quotidiano”; Alberto Melloni, the very influential historian and a leader of the famous “Bologna School” founded by Giuseppe Alberigo, whose purpose was to establish forevermore the "Spirit of the Council" as the official interpretation of the conciliar documents; Marinella Perroni, theologian, professor at the Pontifical Atheneum of St. Anselm, Rome (the Anselmianum, the Pontifical Benedictine university in Rome), specializing in New Testament Studies; and, last but certainly not least, Stefano Bisi, the newly elected Grand Master of the Grand Lodge. The author, Ignazio Ingrao, a highly relevant Vaticanist, was also present. 

The meeting was recorded and can be found here in Radio Radicale in its entirety. To give a general idea of the festive and relaxed ambience, Grand Master Bisi in his remarks is proud to say that a priest he consulted told him he certainly "could receive communion." (Obviously, no contradiction from anyone in the room.)

Below is a translation of the flyer the Grand Orient of Italy produced to promote the event:

The Church of Dialogue,

from the Second Vatican Council to Pope Francis

“There is a Council that has never been told, the one that took place far from the limelight, in the secret conferences among bishops and cardinals, in diplomats’ meetings, in reunions among the editorial staff of newspapers, in sections of [political] parties and even among “007’s”[…] There are hosts of Russian, Polish, English, American and of course - Italian spies, who camouflage themselves amidst prelates and listeners, compiling dossiers and even able to influence the conclave that elects Paul VI. Letters from priests who ask Montini to abolish sacerdotal celibacy materialize . There is a theologian who denounces, with courage, the scandal of pedophilia in the Church, but his cry of alarm, remains, alas, unheard.” [*] [**]

To understand an event as innovative and paradigmatic as the Second Vatican Council was, and to do so through a non–official reading, based, however, on testimonies and many unpublished, documents, means having the opportunity of getting to the heart of what is happening in the Church today. The revolutionary act of Benedict XVI, the abdicating Pope, in renouncing the throne, makes [the Pope] a bishop among bishops and fulfills that collegial spirit that had strongly permeated Vatican II; the “surprise” election of Pope Francis, the first bishop in the history of the Church to come from South America to guide the people of Christ - preacher of spiritual renewal, in humility and poverty, a strategic figure in a Church that seems to have lost its center in Old Europe, but is rediscovering itself, alive and fecund, in “the south of the world”, are all developments whose origins are generally recognizable in the unprecedented event, which marked the life of the universal Church between the pontificates of John XXIII and Paul VI.

Unfortunately, the ‘putting into effect’ of the Second Vatican Council during the course of the last fifty years of Church history has met obstacles and difficulties. The Church outlined by the conciliar meetings, i.e. outgoing and open to the world, willing to dialogue and sensitive to those positives seeds of modernity, has not always had an easy life. Fears, resistance and shortsightedness at times, have slowed down this necessary evolution. Many of the reforms on the agenda of Bergoglio’s pontificate refer back to the themes already discussed during the Council: from the family to the role of women, from priestly celibacy to the “poverty” of the Church, to cite just a few.

In short, studying the Council of yesterday will help us to anticipate the Church of tomorrow. Pope Francis has gathered together the testimony of his predecessors and is strongly and decisively committed to the up-to-date implementation of the Council. The Church in a dialogue which is focused on the peripheries, as the Argentine Pope wants, re-proposes the model that the Council Fathers desired. Therefore, a new season of confronting themes which were left hanging has opened up.

An important point of dialogue, even with the secularized and non-believers, is the one of human rights. The commitment to justice, based on the acknowledgement of the fundamental principles of natural law, characterizes the action of the Church on all latitudes and involves, not rarely, a high price to pay, even in terms of attacks and persecutions. The defense of human rights and the acknowledgement of the principles of natural law which guide the common good, may be, therefore, a useful platform to confront and discuss, for all those who have the promotion of the human person at heart.

[The last paragraph is a short presentation of Ignazio Ingrao.]

Apparently, that is the Grand Lodge's position: the Second Vatican Council was an "innovative and paradigmatic" highly positive event, which was not "put into effect" very well -- but the "revolutionary abdication" of Benedict XVI that made the pope "a bishop among bishops" set the stage for its "strong and decisive implementation" by Pope Francis. Grand Master Gustavo Riffi, leader of the Grand Lodge at the time, had set the tone in his congratulating message for the election of Pope Francis: "With Pope Francis, nothing will be as before. The choice of fraternity for a Church of dialogue is clear, uncontaminated by the logic and temptations of temporal power." (March 14, 2013) This was the same Grand Master who had criticized the Italian Episcopal Conference in the 2006 Italian election campaign, in the previous pontificate, for daring to speak up against... abortion, euthanasia, marriage during the campaign. Those days are gone for good, presumably.