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!

VIDEO: Michael Matt and Christopher Ferrara visit Fatima

Assiduous readers of WWW will know that Walt is a believer in the Apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima, Portugal, in 1917. Our Lady of Fatima, known also as Our Lady of the Rosary came to warn us of the Great Chastisement which will befall the world unless we repent of our sins and turn back to the Gospel and the True Faith handed down to us through the Church by Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Our Lady of Fatima also requested the Consecration of Russia, by name, to Her Immaculate Heart, by which means that nation will be converted and the world will have a period of peace. This is the essence of the Message of Fatima which Father Nicholas Gruner and other like-minded Catholics worked so hard to make known.

In this video, Michael Matt (editor of The Remnant) and Christopher Ferrara, noted Catholic author and speaker, visit the Fatima shrine and comment on the 100th anniversary of Our Lady's most public and important Apparition. In 2006, Walt had the pleasure and blessing of visiting Fatima along with Father Gruner, Mr Ferrara and our late friend, John Vennari. 11 years later, as Messrs Matt and Ferrara explain, the Consecration of Russia has still not been done, and the crisis in the Church is graver than ever in modern times. Yet the Catholic Faith the love for the Mother of God live on.

John Vennari, RIP

With heavy heart, I pass along the sad news of the death of Joseph John Vennari, (24 February 1958 - 4 April 2017) editor of Catholic Family News and a leader of the struggle for the Restoration of the Catholic Faith. This video clip, featuring Michael Matt, is from The Remnant Underground.

Please keep the repose of John's soul in your Masses, Holy Communions, prayers and sacrifices. May his soul, and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen.

FUNERAL ARRANGEMENTS

Wake
Visitation will be from 3-9 PM EDT on Friday, April 7th, at the Amigone Funeral Home (Tonawanda Chapel), 2600 Sheridan Drive, Tonawanda, New York, 14150.
The Holy Rosary will be prayed at 7 PM.

Solemn Requiem Mass
The Solemn Requiem Mass will be offered at 9:30 AM EDT on Saturday, April 8th, by Rev. Fr. Adam Purdy, at Corpus Christi Church, 199 Clark Street
Buffalo, New York, 14212.

Burial
Immediately following the Requiem Mass, the interment will take place at Mount Calvary Cemetery, 800 Pine Ridge Boulevard, Cheektowaga, New York, 14225.
Weather permitting, the Holy Rosary will be prayed at this time.
Thank you and God bless you.

Your prayers, please, for John Vennari

Dear Catholic friends, in your prayers today, please remember John Vennari, editor of Catholic Family News, a beloved husband, a father and dear friend. He was told by his doctors yesterday that he is now in the "active stages of dying," and may not live to see his birthday tomorrow.

John wishes everyone to know that he's not in pain. He wishes us all to know that "either we believe in Divine Providence or we don't. I believe in it, and I know that God has known for all eternity that I would be here in this hospital today, ready to die."

John also believes in miracles, as do I. Anything is possible with God. He wants us all to know that he's ready, that he loves God, and that his faith is so much stronger than his body just now. He wants our prayers.

Please pray also for his dear wife, Susan, seen here with his children and some Catholic friends at the Vigil of Our Lady of Fatima, in Portugal in 2006. And please pray for John's beloved young daughters, Elizabeth and Philomena, and for his loyal son, Benedict, but especially for their dad who they love and cherish and respect deeply.

Thank you, John, for everything. God is with you, Mary is at your side and thousands of your brothers and sisters in Christ are with you right now, every step of the way, united with you in prayer. You are not alone, and your unshakable faith shines like a beacon for us all. Pray for us, John. God bless you, and Mary keep. St. Philomena and Our Lady of Fatima—please pray for our brother John.

PS from Walt: This text has been adapted from an e-mail received from Michael Matt, editor of The Remnant. Thank you, Michael, for passing this along.

"Semi-heretical" prelates leading faithful astray, says Catholic bishop

The Catholic Church is ubiquitous. You could say it's catholic. But is it big-C Catholic any more? Does it still hold and teach the Faith of our Fathers, the traditional Catholic Faith handed down to us through the apostles by Our Lord Himself? Many say not. Many, beginning with Pope Paul VI, say "the smoke of Satan" entered the Church through the window of Vatican II, and that we are now experiencing the Great Apostasy foretold in the Apocalypse.

Many say that those who lead the Church, from Pope Francis on down, are guilty of leading the faithful astray, of teaching and promoting a neo-Catholicism which is at odds with the traditional Faith and therefore heretical. That's the point being made by Michael Matt and Christopher Ferrara in "Luther's Revenge: The Surrender of Pope Francis", the must-see video posted here yesterday.

Messrs Matt and Ferrara are "scary Traditionalists", targets of constant criticism by the likes of Jimmy Akin (see yesterday's post) and Jeff Mirus, neo-Catholic publisher of The Daily Pope (aka Catholic World News), who think that the sun, moon and stars shine out from under the Holy Father's cassock. When Rome speaks, they tell us, we must not only listen, but jump through the hoop which the Pope holds out for us. Thank God for the Protestant Revolt? "Yes, Holy Father!" Stop praying for the conversion of the Jews? "Yes, Holy Father!" And so on, ad nauseam.

Not all Catholics agree. And not all who disagree are dreaded Traditionalists. A Roman Catholic prelate who has serious reservations about the direction in which the Pope and certain Cardinals are leading the Church is Most Reverend Athanasius Schneider, auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Astana, Kazakhstan.

In a wide-ranging interview with Rorate Caeli, he charges that many "semi-heretical" Church leaders are misleading the faithful, and must take responsibility for the crisis of faith evident in the mainstream Catholic Church. Here are some excerpts from the interview; the Bishop's words are in purple.

The very crisis of the Church in our days consists in the ever growing phenomenon that those who don’t fully believe and profess the integrity of the Catholic faith frequently occupy strategic positions in the life of the Church, such as professors of theology, educators in seminaries, religious superiors, parish priests and even bishops and cardinals. And these people with their defective faith profess themselves as being submitted to the Pope. [Hello, Jeff Mirus!]

...The very source of the current crisis in the Church, the crisis of marriage, of the family and of the morality in general is not the liturgical reform, but the defects in faith, the doctrinal relativism, from which flows the moral and liturgical relativism. For, if I believe in a defective manner, I will live a defective moral life and I will worship in a defective, indifferent manner. It is necessary first to restore the clearness and firmness of the doctrine of faith and of morals in all levels and, from there, start to improve the liturgy. The integrity and the beauty of the faith demands the integrity and the beauty of one’s moral life and this demands the integrity and the beauty of the public worship.

Bishop Schneider laments the decision by Pope Francis to allow the washing of women’s feet in Holy Thursday services, saying that the move “generates confusion” regarding the all-male priesthood; he adds that it is “improper and even indecent” for a bishop or priest to wash or kiss a woman’s feet.

Bishop Schneider also speaks of the Society of St. Pius X. He describes Bishop Bernard Fellay, the head of the SSPX as an exemplary and true Catholic bishop.... Those who have fear of the Priestly Society of St. Pius X ultimately have fear of the perennial Catholic truths and of its demands in the moral and the liturgical domain.

When the SSPX tries to believe, to worship and to live morally the way our fore-fathers and the best-known Saints did during a millennial period, then one has to consider the life and the work of these Catholic priests and faithful of the SSPX as a gift for the Church in our days – even as one of the several instruments which the Divine Providence uses to remedy the enormity of the current general crisis of the faith, of the morals and of the liturgy inside the Church.

Although not referring to Traditionalists like Messrs Matt and Ferrara et al. [Hello, John Vennari!] directly, Bishop Schneider had something to say about the right of faithful Catholics to question the pronouncements of their leaders, even the Pope. If the Pope would tell the entire church to do something, which would directly damage an unchangeable Divine truth or a Divine commandment, every Catholic would have the right to correct him in a due respectful form, moved out of reverence and love for the sacred office, and person of the Pope.

I think in a time in which a great part of the holders of the office of the Magisterium are negligent in their sacred duty, the Holy Spirit calls today, namely the faithful, to step into the breach and defend courageously with an authentic sentire cum ecclesia the Catholic Faith.

One can think that the Church in our days is being flagellated as our Lord, is being denuded as was Our Lord, on the tenth Cross station. The Church, our mother, is being bound in cords not only by the enemies of Christ but also by some of their collaborators in the rank of the clergy, even sometimes of the high clergy.

All good children of Mother Church as courageous soldiers we have to try to free this mother – with the spiritual weapons of defending and proclaiming the truth, promoting the traditional liturgy, Eucharistic adoration, the crusade of the Holy Rosary, the battle against the sin in one’s private life and striving for holiness.

We have to pray that the Pope may soon consecrate explicitly Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, then She will win, as the Church prayed since the old times: "Rejoice O Virgin Mary, for thou alone have destroyed all heresies in the whole world."

Click here to read the interview in full, on the Rorate Caeli website.

VIDEO: Getting down at the Synod - satire by John Vennari

Perhaps, gentle reader, you've forgotten the scandalous Synod of Bishops which unfolded in Rome last fall. If only we (those of us who hold to the Faith of Our Fathers) could forget! This was the "Synod on the Family" at which Pope Francis and his liberal fellow bishops tried to push through changes in the law of the Church which would make it more welcoming to the LGBT crowd.

They also proposed admitting divorced and remarried Catholics -- objectively living in sin -- to Holy Communion. Understandable though that idea may be from a humanitarian viewpoint, it would fly in the face of the Church's dogma on marriage, based on the teachings of Jesus Christ Himself.

For details and comments, see "Catholic bishops say "interim report" asking Church to welcome homosexuals grossly misrepresented by pro-LGBT media" and "Even a liberal Cardinal calls pro-LGBT Synod report 'worthless'".

In spite of a lot of arm-twisting by the Pope, Cardinal Kasper and other misguided bishops, the proposals to change the unchangeable Dogma of the Church were rejected. But stay tuned, because the modernists -- dare I say heretics! -- in the upper echelons of the Church will bring these novelties back again... and again and again until they succeeded in making Holy Mother Church conform to the wishes of the secular humanists who dominate our formerly Christian Western world.

Next time these ideas come up for discussion, you might refresh your memory by reference to a little satire composed, played and sung by Walt's old friend, John Vennari. Here it is.

VIDEO: "Scary Catholic right-winger" gives Pope Francis a FAIL

John Vennari, editor of Catholic Family News, has been identified by RawStory as one of "5 scary ultra-right wing Catholics who are outraged by the cool Pope".

Seems like Mr. Vennari doesn't agree with the Party Pope's off-the-cuff "pronouncements" which have delighted liberal Catholics, secular humanists and "progressive thinkers" in the world at large. In Catholic Family News, Mr. Vennari has written "[Pope Francis] seems to have a good heart and some good Catholic instincts, but theologically he is a train wreck -- remarkably sloppy." [Walt's emphasis] He goes on to say, "Though this might shock some readers, I must say that I would never allow Pope Francis to teach religion to my children."

John told us, in a recent e-mail, that he's pleased to find himself in good company! The other four "scary Catholic right-wingers" named in the RawStory article are Raymond Cardinal Burke (now in exile in Malta), American pundit Pat Buchanan, Father Dwight Longenecker, and Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia.

Good company indeed! To make his views more accessible, in this age where people would rather watch a video than read, John Vennari recently launched "CFN Media", a series of short videos (10 minutes or so) in which he comments on recent developments in the Catholic Church and what passes for Catholic theology.

Here's the second in the series, published late in January, in which Mr. Vennari contrasts Pope St. Pius X's understanding of Papal duty as opposed to that of Pope Francis. What should Catholics understand from the words and actions of Pope Bergoglio? What should they do? How should they respond? Watch and learn.

Who will defend the Church? New York Catholic leaders fail to respond to Cuomo attack - Radio interview with John Vennari

A month ago, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo -- a pro-abortion, LGBT-loving, womaniser who dares to call himself a Catholic -- declared, in his "state of the state" address, that New York is not big enough for those who want to defend the sanctity of human life against his abortion-expansion plans. See "Pro-Life? Now Welcome in Andrew Cuomo's New York", by Kathryn Jean Lopez in the National Review Online.

That's what Mr. Cuomo said. Here's the exact quote, only slightly edited by Walt: "Who are [the Republican candidates running aginst the SAFE Act]? Are they extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay? Is that who they are? Because if that’s who they are...they have no place in the state of New York."

"They" would presumably include all good Catholics who accept the teaching of the Church that abortion is murder -- a mortal sin that cries to Heaven for vengeance. Another such sin is sodomy. Source: "Crying to Heaven for Vengeance", by Dr. Jeff Mirus in Catholic Culture.

Yet, a month later, the response of the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church in New York has been virtually inaudible. Why? Where are the Bishop Hubbards, the Cardinal Dolans, and others who should be defending the Faith with all their might? John Vennari, editor of Catholic Family News, discussed this in the context of the diabolical disorientation following Vatican II in a recent interview on Voice of Catholic Radio. Here it is -- audio only, running time 47:19.