We all must know that the Catholic Church has used fear of demons and so-called sin to make a great deal of their power. I hope to illustrate the inner workings of the separation of church and state that is not a reality and that the state uses the same techniques. In the words of the deservedly respected historians Will and Ariel Durant we visit with the technocrats of the Jesuit Order who John Ralston Saul holds up as the forerunners of the lobbyists and other courtesans of this present enlightened age. The quotation from Rousseau and Revolution does not elucidate the agreement Charles of Spain made before giving the Jesuits he expelled from Spain a small stipend. That agreement called for silence on the matters relating to their attempts to inform the people of his true nature. But during this silent period I suggest there were some Jesuits like Adam Weishaupt who decided enough was enough. It is this moment in history that we find a significant change in the world took place. America was created in the same year the Illuminati were re-organized and Russia celebrated the founding day of these Illuminati in their May Day celebration.
Various accounts say they intended to have him killed and the truth may never be known because the rest of the Catholic world allowed these hundreds of good Catholics to nearly die on a boat going from port to port seeking refuge. This was (as you will see) a time when muggers and crooks were given ’sanctuary’ in the churches. Gregory of Tours in an earlier time notes how this ’sanctuary’ often led to the priests making money from charging the supposed crook or the parties wishing to kill them through secret agreements. The Jesuits so expelled lived a miserable existence on a meager pension but kept their mouths shut because if even one talked all would lose their pension. In short there really is no mystery here at all - but it does dovetail with the possibilities of why we are seldom allowed to hear what really went on in the annals of what we improperly call history.
“II. POPES, KINGS, AND JESUITS
The power of the Catholic Church rested on the natural super-naturalism of mankind, the recognition and sublimation of sensual impulses and pagan survivals, the encouragement of Catholic fertility {Read baby-factories and ‘barefoot in the kitchen’ .}, and the inculcation of a theology rich in poetry and hope, and useful to moral discipline and social order. In Italy the Church was also the main source of national income, and a valued check upon a people especially superstitious, pagan, and passionate. Superstitions abounded; as late as 1787 witches were burned at Palermo–and refreshments were served to fashionable ladies witnessing the scene. (2) Pagan beliefs, customs, and ceremonies survived with the genial sanction of the Church. ‘I have arrived at a vivid conviction,’ wrote Goethe, ‘that all traces of original Christianity are extinct here’ in Rome. (3) There were, however, many real Christians left in Christendom, even in Italy. Conte Caissotti di Chiusano, bishop of Asti, gave up his rich inheritance, lived in voluntary poverty, and traveled only on foot. Bishop Testa of Monreale slept on straw, ate only enough to subsist, kept only 3,000 lire of his revenues for his personal needs, and devoted the remainder to public works and the poor. (4)
{But the majority of prelates were not so inclined as they engaged in concubinage and fathering children of the parishioners wives as the church owned the majority of farms and land throughout Italy while collecting alms for the poor. The bulk of church wealth comes from guilt and estates where upon death promises of salvation are tied to a good deed by giving the wealth to the church rather than the justly deserving heirs.}
The Church responded in some measure to the Enlightenment. The works of Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Helvétius, d’Holbach, La Mettrie, and other freethinkers were of course placed on the Index Expurgatorius, but permission to read them might be obtained from the pope. {This is a perfect example of what we said about practicing one thing while excluding others access to what works. The pope also became promoted as a source of the right to learn. Is this like the situation we have in public education before reaching university?} Monsignor Ventimiglio, bishop (1757-73) of Catania, had in his library full editions of Voltaire, Helvetius, and Rousseau. The Inquisition was abolished in Tuscany and Parma in 1769, in Sicily in 1782, in Rome in 1809. {Witches were still outlawed no doubt. It took until 1951 to rescind the laws against being a witch in England. There are movements afoot to re-institute blasphemy laws.} In 1783 a Catholic priest, Tamburini, under the name of his friend Trauttmansdorff, published an essay On Ecclesiastical and Civil Toleration, in which he condemned the Inquisition, declared all coercion of conscience to be un-Christian, and advocated toleration of all theologies except atheism. (5)
It was the misfortune of the popes, in this second half of the eighteenth century, that they had to face the demand of Catholic monarchs for the total dissolution of the Society of Jesus. The movement against the Jesuits was part of a contest of power between the triumphant nationalism of the modern state and the internationalism of a papacy weakened by the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the rise of the business class. {Cardinal Biffi of Bologna thinks there is an anti-Christ among us today who is a philanthropist of great wealth. This ‘anti-Christ’ supports ecological, animal - and women’s right while destroying the tenets of Catholicism. Biffi was a leading contender to take John Paul II’s place from the conservative faction of this supranational elite. Apparently this anti-Christ is well versed in the Bible and maybe even a better Christian than Biffi, as I see it.} The Catholic enemies of the Society did not openly press their chief objection, that it had persistently upheld the authority of the popes as superior to that of kings, but they were keenly resentful that an organization acknowledging no superior except its general and the pope should in effect constitute, within each state, an agent of foreign power. They acknowledged the learning and piety of the Jesuits, {Were they jealous of their ‘brothers’ who actually knew more?} their contributions to science, literature, philosophy, and art, their sedulous and efficient education of Catholic youth, their heroism on foreign missions, their recapture of so much territory once lost to Protestantism. But they charged that the Society had repeatedly interfered in secular affairs, that it had engaged in commerce to reap material gains, that it had inculcated casuistic principles excusing immorality and crime, condoning even the murder of kings, that it had allowed heathen customs and beliefs to survive among its supposed converts in Asia, and that it had offended other religious orders, and many of the secular clergy, by its sharpness in controversy and its contemptuous tone. The ambassadors of the Kings of Portugal, Spain, Naples, and France insisted that the papal charter of the Society be revoked, and that the organization be officially and universally dissolved.
The expulsion of the Jesuits from Portugal in 1759, from France in 1764-67, from Spain and Naples in 1767, had left the Society still operative in Central and North Italy, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in Catholic Germany, Silesia, and Poland. On February 7, 1768, they were expelled from the Bourbon duchy of Parma, and were added to the congestion of Jesuit refugees in the states of the Church. Pope Clement XIII protested that Parma was a papal fief; he threatened Duke Ferdinand VI and his ministers with excommunication of the edict of expulsion should be enforced {But Hitler, or should I say Schicklgruber/Rothschild, was never excommunicated and probably not even threatened. Why?!}; when they persisted he launched a bull declaring the rank and title of the Duke forfeited and annulled. The Catholic governments of Spain, Naples, and France opened war upon the papacy: {One of my ancestors was Miles Keogh who fought with the Vatican Army before his horse was the only survivor of Custer’s Last Stand at the Little Big Horn. Many people have a hard time thinking of a supranational theological armed superpower in so recent a time. I suspect he became a Martinist when he was engaged to a Martin of political importance.} Tanucci seized the papal cities of Benevento and Pontecorvo, and France occupied Avignon. On December 10 1768, the French ambassador at Rome, in the name of France, Naples, and Spain, presented to the Pope a demand for the retraction of the bull against Parma, and for the abolition of the Society of Jesus. The seventy-six-year-old pontiff collapsed under the strain of this ultimatum. He summoned for February 3, 1769, a consistory of prelates and envoys to consider the matter. On February 2 he fell dead through the bursting of a blood vessel in his brain.
The cardinals who were called to choose his successor were divided into two factions: ‘zelanti’ who proposed to defy the kings, and ‘regalisti’ who favored some pacific accommodations. As the Italian cardinals were almost all ‘zelanti’, and soon gathered in Rome, they tried to open the conclave before the regalist cardinals from France, Spain, and Portugal could arrive. {Does any of this seem the least bit divinely inspired?} The French ambassador protested, and the conclave was deferred. Meanwhile Lorenzo Ricci, general of the Jesuits, compromised their case by issuing a pamphlet questioning the authority of any pope to abolish the Society. (6) In March Cardinal de Bernis arrived from France, and began to canvass the cardinals with a view to ensure the election of a pope willing to satisfy their Catholic Majesties. Later rumors (7) that he or others bribed, or otherwise induced, Cardinal Giovanni Ganganelli to promise such action if chosen have been rejected by Catholic (8) and anti-Catholic historians (9) alike. {Many apparently ‘anti’ positions are actually managed or double agents.} Ganganelli, by common consent, was a man of great learning, devotion, and integrity; however, he belonged to the Franciscan order, which had often been at odds with the Jesuits, {Such as the treatment of North Americas who Franciscans brutalized in ways no devil would imagine.} both in missions and in theology. (10) On May 19, 1769, he was elected by the unanimous vote of the forty cardinals, and took the name of Clement XIV. He was sixty-three years old.
He found himself at the mercy of the Catholic powers. France and Naples held on to the papal territory they had seized; Spain and Parma were defiant; Portugal threatened to establish a patriarchate independent of Rome, even Maria Theresa, hitherto fervently loyal to the papacy and the Jesuits, but now losing authority to her freethinker son Joseph II, answered the Pope’s appeal that she could not resist the united will of so many potentates. Choiseul, dominating the government of France, instructed Bernis to tell the Pope that ‘if he does not come to terms he can consider all relations with France at an end.’ (11) Charles III of Spain had sent a similar ultimatum on April 22. Clement, playing for time, promised Charles soon to ’submit to the wisdom and intelligence of your Majesty a plan for the total extinction of the Society.’ (12) He ordered his aides to consult the archives and summarize the history, achievements, and alleged offenses of the Society of Jesus. He refused to surrender to Choiseul’s demand that he decide the issue within two months. He took three years, but finally yielded.
On July 21, 1773, he signed the historic brief ‘Dominus ac Redemptor Noster’. It began with a long list of religious congregations that had, in the course of time, been suppressed by the Holy See. It noted the many complaints made against the Jesuits, and the many efforts of divers popes to remedy the abuses so alleged. ‘We have observed with the bitterest grief that these remedies, and others applied afterward, had neither efficacy or strength to put an end to the troubles, the charges, and the complaints.’ (13)
The brief concluded:
‘Having recognized that the Society of Jesus could no longer produce the abundant fruit and the great good for which it was instituted and approved by so many popes, our predecessors, who adorned it with so many most admirable privileges, and seeing that it was almost–and indeed absolutely–impossible for the Church to enjoy a true and solid peace while this order existed,… we do hereby, after a mature examination, and of our certain knowledge, and by the plenitude of our Apostolic power, suppress and abolish the Society of Jesus. We nullify and abrogate all and each of its offices, functions, administrations, houses, schools, colleges, retreats, refuges, and other establishments which belong to it in any manner whatever, and in every province, kingdom, or state in which it may be found.’ (14)
The brief went on to offer pensions to those Jesuits who had not yet taken holy orders, and who wished to return to lay life; it permitted Jesuit priests to join the secular clergy or some religious congregation approved by the Holy See; it allowed professed Jesuits, who had taken final and absolute vows, to remain in their former houses provided they dressed like secular priests and submitted to the authority of the local bishop…
This is not generally the fashion here. A murderer killing himself, in Naples; the murderer usually makes for the nearest church; once there is quite safe. Every church gave the criminal ’sanctuary’-immunity from arrest so long as he remained under its roof.
The law attempted to deter crime rather by severity of punishment than by efficiency of police. Under the laws of the gentle Benedict XIV blasphemy was punished by flogging, and, for a third offence, five years in the galleys. Unlawful entry of a convent at night was a capital crime. The solicitation or public embrace of an honorable woman brought condemnation to the galleys for life. Defamation of character, even if it spoke nothing but the truth, was punishable with death and confiscation of goods.” (15)
One can easily imagine these people were well behaved and civilized… right?! Is my sense of disgust at the deprecation of the ’savages’ and ‘pagans’ unwarranted?
About the Author
Author of Diverse Druids, Columnist for The ES Press Magazine, Guest writer at World-Mysteries.com