Book Review: Alta Vendita - The Masonic plot against the Church

Until his untimely death a year ago, John Vennari+ was the editor of Catholic Family News, a popular speaker at Catholic conferences, and the author of many articles and books on the Catholic Faith. I had the pleasure of working with him, off and on, for many years. I enjoyed his sharp sense of humour, and was inspired by his devotion to the True Faith and, especially, Our Lady of Fatima.

To commemorate his life and work, the Fatima Center has just published a second edition of The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita: A Masonic blueprint for the subversion of the Catholic Church.

Mr Vennari wrote the first edition (TAN Books, 1999) as a translation and commentary on a document, originally published in Italian in 1859, written by "Piccolo Tigre" (the code name of Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini) for the highest lodge of the Italian Carbonari, a network of secret revolutionary societies active in Italy in the 19th century. It is a blueprint for revolution against the state, and against Holy Mother Church -- a revolution which continues in the mainstream Roman Catholic Church of the 21st century.

The 19th-century revolution in the Church, fomented by Mazzini and others intent on Her destruction, was condemned by Pope St. Pius X in his famous encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis (On the Doctrines of the Modernists), published in 1907.

Following the Saint's motu proprio of 1910, requiring the Oath Against Modernism to be taken by "all clergy, pastors, confessors, preachers, religious superiors, and professors in philosophical-theological seminaries", the virus of revolution lay dormant for half a century, only to be given new life in the 1960s, when the architects of Vatican II -- many of them secret Freemasons -- told us the Church must "reform itself" and "get with the times".

Thus began the jettisoning of all that has given the Church Her character and constant teaching. The diabolical disorientation which the Church and the faithful are now experiencing has not happened by chance. In The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita, John Vennari shows that the disasters of the mainstream Church -- e.g. the questioning of the existence of Hell by the Pope himself! -- are the culmination of a long process of patient planning by a Masonic group that has infiltrated the Church, not to take over its government openly, but to transform it from within.

According to the booklet (only 43 pages), their goal is to turn the Church from its mission of supernatural salvation to a focus on saving the world. Thus Her mission becomes "social justice" rather than salvation. All we hear from the Church's leaders -- up to and including the Pope -- these days is globalism, immigration, open borders and other ideals of secular humanism. There is lots about helping our neighbours, but little about helping ourselves to save our own souls.

Can there be any doubt that the revolution Mr Vennari describes is in "progress" -- the word itself has a distored meaning -- right now? We must fight it, but to fight it, we must first recognize it. To get your copy of The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita, click here to e-mail the Fatima Center or call (toll-free in North America) 1-800-263-8160. Tell `em Walt sent you!