
LibTrad pseudo-clergy and its Communist ties
+St. Scholastica+
Introduction
For over 175 years, the Catholic Church has condemned the system of atheistic Communism. The first official warning against this system was issued November 9, 1846, by Pope Pius IX in his encyclical Qui pluribus. But over 100 years before that encyclical appeared, Pope Clement XII condemned anyone joining or associating with Freemasons or any like societies. The two would not appear to be related, but their relationship has become quite clear with the issuance of the Alta Vendita and the establishment of the Soviet Republic. Both share the same goals and both work for the same master. So exactly how does Communism relate to Freemasonry? The Masonic pyramid found in Lady Queenborough’s Occult Theocrasy ranks Communism at the upper level of the Masonic ”degrees.” And we read in the conclusion to her book just how Freemasonry and Communism intersect:
1 — Owing to their union, all secret societies, whether political, philanthropic or occult in appearance, serve a political purpose unknown to the majority of their members.
2 — The power wielded by such societies is real and its character is international.
3 — Regardless of their exoteric objects, the esoteric aims of most societies are all directed towards the same end — namely: the concentration of political, economic and intellectual power into the hands of a small group of individuals, each of whom controls a branch of the international life, material and spiritual, of the world today.
The main branches thus controlled are:
— The international banking groups and their subsidiaries.
— International, industrial and commercial control groups with their interlocking directorates.
— Education, art, literature, science, and religion as vehicles of intellectual and moral perversion.
4 — The groups already organized throughout different countries for the study of international affairs: political, financial and economic.
5 — The international press, the medium used to mold public opinion.
6 — The political party organizations of each nation, whether conservative, liberal, radical, socialist etc. existing in every country with parliamentary administration.
7 — Internationally organized corruption, the white-slave traffic, vice and drug-rings, etc.
The Communist International and Soviet Russia stand today as monuments to the Masonic ideal of Albert Pike, symbolized by the three:
Destruction — Its organization of the Terror.
Materialism — Its assault on Religion.
Imposition — Its Communist state.
“By every means, whatever they may be, one must impose first on the family, and then on the nation in order to achieve the aim of imposing on humanity.”
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Destruction of supernaturalism, there where the conscience has not been reached by Masonic materialism.
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The destruction of authority, there where education has not been reached by Masonic materialism.
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The destruction of anti-Masonry, there where the state has not been reached by Masonic materialism. (End of Queenborough quote)
Msgr. George E. Dillon, D.D, in his Freemasonry Unmasked: The Secret Power Behind Communism, confirms the above, as does Rev. Denis Fahey, Jose Maria Cardinal Caro of Chile, Vicomte Leon de Poncins and many other Catholic writers. Freemasonry is the vehicle used to carry the passengers to their destination; it travels along a road that steadily inclines (gradualism). The signposts along that road are Liberalism, Modernism, Americanism and Socialism. Communism is the ultimate destination. All that remains once Communism is realized is Grand Orient Freemasonry, focused on the perversion of morals, then the council of 33 and the Illuminati council of 13. with its the worldwide rule of the Antichrist at the pyramid’s pinnacle. World War I and World War II paved the way to Communism. Communism then not only set the stage for the final destruction of the Church; it engineered it in such a way that it also provided the template from which the survivors of that destruction, and finally those who exited Vatican 2, would be subverted and controlled. What follows below will explain this phenomena.
LibTrad lies
In her 2023 work, When the Sickle Swings, Novus Ordo author Kristen Van Uden describes the sufferings of those valiantly preserving their faith behind the Iron Curtain. In the process, she also affords us an amazing look at the factors that played into the founding of “Traditional Catholicism” — the LibTrad scam. Before we begin, let us first repeat how misleading the title that this movement chose for itself truly is. First of all, it corresponds quite well with the heresy of Traditionalism, condemned by Pope Pius IX. This heresy, related to Fideism, pretends that Catholics are imbued with a sense of divine revelation that will guide them in discerning truths of faith; that they need not study these truths to arrive at certitude concerning what is and is not revealed. And that is exactly how many of those in the LibTrad sect think and believe.
Then there is the injury done to the Church’s true definition of Tradition as defined by Rev. Adolphe Tanquerey in his Dogmatic Theology, used to instruct seminarians for many decades. Tanquerey writes: “In a strict sense, Tradition is a revealed doctrine pertaining to faith or morals which is not referred to in the Sacred Scriptures but which through legitimate pastors of the Church has been infallibly transmitted from age to age. The object of Tradition is solely the teaching which has been made known supernaturally by God to the human race. The means or organ of Tradition is the infallible teaching authority of the legitimate pastors of the Church” (Vol. I, p. 170). So in pretending to champion Tradition, LibTrad pseudo-clergy imply they are legitimate pastors continuing to represent Christ’s Church on earth, a patent lie. (More on this below.)
Communist goals and a history of Traditionalists
Van Uden prefaces her work with the following goals of a Communist regime:
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Outlaw the public worship of the Church
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Round up the clergy and religious
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Seize and control Church property
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Control the laity
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Infiltrate the clergy and the faithful
If this doesn’t ring a bell with readers, it should. When I asked my mother why we didn’t go to Mass anymore, she told me it was because the Communists had taken over the Church. She was spot on. We can say it was the Modernists or the Freemasons or whatever other group we wish to assign it to. But in the middle of the Cold War, when Communist “awareness” was at its highest, almost no one shouted that the Catholic Church had been seized by the Communists, using classic tactics that had been employed for nearly 50 years. The Latin Mass was abolished. Clergy and religious who opposed the changes either left their positions, retired or were reassigned. Those protesting the changes were shut out of their own churches. The laity were counseled to accept the changes as a matter of obedience and those who dared asked questions were shunned, subjected to harsh criticism or penalized in other ways.
The infiltration of the clergy and educated laity began in the 1800s, and as seen at the election of John 23 and the Vatican Council, by then all but a very few Cardinals and bishops were dedicated Modernists or exhibited Modernist leanings.
But it didn’t stop there. Control of the laity extended to those among the clergy organizing the resistance; we will call them the clean-up crew. The resistance was well anticipated and plans were made accordingly, using the lessons learned from schismatic and heretical sects and from Communist countries. The “soft” approach was taken, meaning no deaths, no serious physical injuries — at least none anyone could prove. But the actual progression of the Traditionalist movement was very predictable. By avoiding any determination of whether the usurpers in Rome were true popes, Traditionalism was able to focus solely on replacing the Church and convincing followers that all that really mattered was Mass and Sacraments. They also were able to subtly undermine the papacy based on the “bad behavior” of the anti-popes.
All that changed with the advent of Sedevacantism, first promoted by Rev. Joaquin Saenz-Arriaga of Mexico, a covert Freemason who helped found the Orthodox Roman Catholic Movement (ORCM) in America. When then Novus Ordo affiliated Peter Martin Ngo-dinh-Thuc endorsed Sedevacantism and consecrated Guerard des Lauriers and the Thuc bishops, two of whom were Mexicans affiliated with Saenz, the spits began in earnest with des Lauriers’ development of the material-formal hypothesis. Lefebvre’s insistence on upholding the John 23 missal, also the discovery of the fact he had been both ordained and consecrated by a Freemason, peeled members from the Society of Pope St. Pius X. The “Bp.” Shuckhardt scandals in Washington state also resulted in further factionalization.
Independent groups abounded and doctrinal integrity was non-existent. Conditional consecrations and ordinations also multiplied, as rivalry and distrust increased among the various sets. There was no center of organization, no standard of orthodoxy. At least the underground Church still recognized the occupant of Rome as pope, even after Pius XII’s death, though they had little or no access to him. Papal allegiance among LibTrads amounted to lip service only, with many even openly criticizing Pope Pius XII. In the LibTrad movement, personality cults abounded and every man became his own mini-pope. Attempts at papal election by several groups in the 1990s to remedy the situation only further fragmented Traditionalists.
Clergy in the underground Church
Those suffering the loss of their clergy in Communist countries faced a different set of circumstances than we face today. They were persecuted physically and psychologically; some were thrown into prison. Many among the clergy were herded into work camps or imprisoned and an untold number of both clergy and laity were martyrs for the faith. Even so, they managed to form Catholic Action groups to promote the faith and advocate for a return of their right to publicly practice the faith. They had intermittent access to valid Sacraments and the Mass, at least until Roncalli’s election in 1958, and possibly longer, since their clergy did not have regular communications with the Vatican and may have been ignorant of the true conditions in the Church. They seemed to have held to pre-Vatican 2 standards, at least until the 1980s. Their nemesis was the ”national churches “ set up by the Communists, as was done in France. This has never been the case with us, nor have we ever been actively persecuted for the faith.
When the Communists set up these national churches in various countries, “Good Catholics often knew to avoid these collaborator priests as they had avoided the “juring” priests of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror,” Van Uden writes. Often these “juring” priests were hard to identify, for “sometimes priests would collaborate with the government on certain occasions or to certain degrees but not entirely. They would share different opinions with different people. Who could be trusted, how much vetting could the laity realistically be expected to do before attending mass, receiving the sacraments. Being flooded with these graces — was that not the priority?” And of course we know now that Pope Pius VI invalidated the actions of these priests constitutional priests in France in almost identical circumstances. And Pope Pius XII excommunicated as a vitandus one Jan Deschet in Czechoslovakia, who the Communists appointed as a diocesan administrator in one region following the death of the bishop there. (Canon Law Digest, Can. Vol. III).
Like us today, Van Uden reports that when the Mass was unavailable, they recited their Mass prayers and undoubtedly offered a perfect Act of Contrition and Spiritual Communion. And her book illustrates how the victims of Communism wrestled with identifying who their legitimate pastors truly were. “Czechoslovak Catholics faced almost insurmountable struggles in locating the sacraments. Not only did they have to avoid the national priests but they had to be wary in discerning and approaching men who claimed to be clandestine clergy as well. After the Pius XII mandates, secret consecrations abounded. Due to the secretive nature of the consecrations, the identities, episcopal lineage and supporting documentation of the secret clergy were often obscured if available at all. This secretive, chaotic atmosphere presented unique challenges in vetting candidates ensuring doctrinal orthodoxy and personal virtue and keeping track of sacramental lineages.
“Ordinations occurred discreetly, often in plain clothes, in hotel rooms, parks or private residences. As a security measure witnesses were rarely present. Historian Felix Corley has written that the candidates for the priesthood or the episcopate would sometimes not even be informed of the identity of their ordaining bishop, as an added layer of protection should one of them be arrested. In reality, the chaos that ensued in the underground church exemplifies the Scripture ‘Strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered’ (Zach. 13:7). In the absence of direct lines of communication with the Vatican and under the constant pressure of state surveillance, the underground church was by its very nature not a monolithic, organized force. Within the circles that comprised the clandestine church, several competing factions arose, of varying degrees of reliability and certainty in sacramental validity.”
Desperation for clergy and its dangers
She mentions the renegade Czech bishop Felix Maria Davidek, secretly consecrated a bishop in 1967 by an underground bishop (who, under VAS, was therefore doubtfully valid at best). Davidek created his own faction and established what Udon identifies as “a personality cult.” He then proceeded to consecrate women, “[using] the emergency as an excuse to undertake increasingly unorthodox measures. He cut off ties with underground church members who did not agree with his maverick approach and doctrinally liberal views. He essentially created his own faith, his own church, in which priesthood took on a novel definition.” Davidek ordained one Oliver Oravec in February 1968, who later emigrated to the U.S. to serve as a “Traditional” priest. “Bp.” Robert McKenna “consecrated” Oravec on Oct. 21, 1988. According to the National Catholic Reporter, Davidek consecrated some 17 bishops without Vatican approval (and a total of 68 priests altogether). “Serious doubts exist about the validity of some ordinations, particularly those performed by Davidek,” the article stated. “Davidek suffered from schizophrenia… and doubted the validity” of several of his ordinations.”
What is most interesting about all of this is what Van Uden writes next: “The convoluted story of the factional underground church shows the dangers endemic to operating outside of ordinary jurisdiction… This chaos caused many laymen to doubt the VALIDITY of their sacraments. This confusion continued into the 21st century as the church in the former Czechoslovakia reorganized itself… Approximately 250 priests had been secretly ordained from 1949 to 1989… In the year 2000, John Paul 2 required the majority of these priests to undergo conditional ordinations.” Van Uden remarks that those suffering behind the Iron Curtain had already renounced their money, their status and even given their lives for the faith. They had been discerning enough to see through the lies of the national church. But what brought them down in the case of Davidek and others was “their desperation for clergy” to provide Mass and Sacraments, and this she calls a temptation of Satan. Those enemy elements operating following the death of Pope Pius XII, then, knew just what to do. Catholics may have been discerning enough to exit the Novus Ordo church, but they would not forego their Mass and Sacraments.
Sacramental validity and supremacy of bishops
It was perhaps in the underground church that the faithful first became accustomed to the idea that the bishops and priests were the ones who assured the survival of the juridic Church, not the papacy. Van Uden writes: “The clergy are the lifeblood of the Church: their Apostolic succession ensures they are acting in persona Christi in providing sacraments, leading and administering to the faithful. No clergy, no mass, no Real Presence, no absolution, no sacrament of any kind, no visible Church. The faith lives on in extraordinary circumstances even when the faithful are deprived of the sacraments but governments certainly try to smother it.” And yet the necessary sacraments remain, and the visible Church, the Mystical Body with Christ as its Head, with visible members adhering to the dogmas of the Church, also remain. Even if all the bishops apostatized, which they have, if a true pope existed, he alone (with any remaining faithful) would constitute the visible Church as Mystici Corporis Christi infallibly teaches.
Why would many of the laity have doubted the validity of the sacraments from underground priests? Why not just their “liceity”? Because those members of the Church persecuted, unlike the LibTrad sects, fully realized that they lived among the enemy, who had infiltrated the ranks even of the underground clergy. They doubted them and avoided them because they could not verify the lineage of their consecrators with any degree of certainty. Liciety never entered into the picture. Van Uden talks about those who would go “church hopping,” when in doubt of certain questionable priests or those affiliated with the national church. They did this also because they could not even trust their fellow Catholics, some of whom were merely posing as Catholics to inform on them or effectively scatter and neutralize their Catholic Action cells and prayer groups. Van Uden quotes one Cuban refugee who explained that “Due to [an] atmosphere of distrust and uncertainty, many Cubans who felt called to resistance preferred to take renegade individual action rather than become entangled with [a] group… It may not have been as effective a strategy as organized resistance but it was safer… This strategy is still employed today as the culture of informing and infiltration still reigns supreme in Cuba.”
Apostolicity and its three elements
So if we are not experiencing Communism today in our own ranks, why does so much of this sound so familiar?! The bishops in the underground church basically ruled in the stead of the pope because communication with Rome was difficult and at times impossible. The faithful in the underground church were presumably unaware of the destruction caused by Vatican 2 and the abolition of Pope St. Pius V’s Latin Mass, at least for a time. They simply followed their bishops, those they felt they could trust. They may have suspected something was brewing but their investigation into the situation, if possible at all, was greatly hampered. Not so with those in free countries. They fell into the same trap as their underground church fellows — their desperation for the clergy and the Mass and Sacraments was their downfall.
Catholics did not realize, or perhaps had never known, that there are three elements, (not just one), to apostolicity. “According to Catholic teaching, Christ’s Church essentially and necessarily enjoys a triple sort of apostolicity: apostolicity of doctrine, government, and membership. 1) Apostolicity of doctrine means the Church always retains and teaches the very same doctrine which it received from the apostles. Doctrine, as the term is used at this point, includes also the sacraments. It was the apostles and no one but the apostles that Christ commissioned to teach all nations. 2) Apostolicity of government or mission or authority means the Church is always ruled by pastors who form one, same juridical person with the apostles. In other words, it is always ruled by pastors who are the Apostles’ legitimate successors… 3) Apostolicity of membership means that the Church, in any given age, is and remains numerically the same society as that planted by the Apostles. The College of Bishops who rule it always forms one and the same juridical person with the Apostolic College. Here it is asserted that the entire membership of the Church is likewise apostolic. Apostolicity of membership follows as an inescapable consequence of apostolicity of government” (Msgr. Van Noort, Christ’s Church, 1959, pgs. 151-155). And that Apostolic College must always include the pope.
And As Rev. Adolphe Tanquerey teaches, in his Dogmatic Theology, (Vol. I, 1959), used as a textbook in seminaries worldwide, “In order that an adult be in the full membership of the Church, he must be subject exteriorly to the rule of legitimate pastors and in a particular way to the rule of the Roman Pontiff, who has been constituted the head of the body of the Church.” We read here legitimate pastors, just as stated in the Council of Trent’s anathema against those who “come from some other source,” (DZ 968). And certitude must be had concerning this legitimacy, just as Van Uden mentioned was lacking in the evaluation of the underground clergy. If one is not under the rule of legitimate pastors or the Roman Pontiff, one cannot be a full member of the Church. So recusants, in this sense validity doesn’t matter: you are outside the Church for recognizing these men as valid because when they are not in communion with the Roman Pontiff.
It was the divorce of doctrine and church membership from this mark of the Church that put LibTrad clergy firmly in the driver’s seat. The assault on religion, the destruction of authority, which includes the “re-education” of the faithful through the molding of Catholic public opinion —funded by the CIA with the help of Felix Morlion — was hugely successful. The de-emphasis (minimization) of doctrine in favor of the liturgy and exterior religion had been carried out for years with the help of Modernist bishops who had already infiltrated the Church (see The Phantom Church in Rome). These were all lessons learned from the underground churches in Communist countries, who split into factions, Van Uden reports, just as the LibTrad sects themselves. It also was modeled on the Masonic-Gnostic sects proliferating for the past two centuries, as explained HERE.
So for those falsely claiming that “There will always be bishops,” the verdict is in: Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis (VAS) and Canon Law infallibly precludes this. But Van Uden’s work and that of others writing on the same topic show that in addition to VAS, history demonstrates that the episcopal lines were deliberately corrupted by the Communists long ago and their validity cannot be verified with any certainty. Moreover, the Novus Ordo church claimed virtually all the underground priests and bishops for their own, following the “fall” of Communism, according to Van Uden and news reports from the 1990s.
Conclusion
So why is it important to know that Communist tactics destroyed the Church? Because it signaled the final realization of all Freemasonry’s goals and allowed them to run the Church themselves from the apex of the pyramid. This is the best argument for the fact that Antichrist long ago arrived. The minute Roncalli took office he began pandering to Freemasons and Communists, continuing the course he set as a Cardinal. This is documented by Vicomte Leon de Poncins in his Freemasonry and the Vatican, (1968). It fulfills the necessary destruction of “anti-Freemasonry,” a goal of the secret societies that could only be accomplished once the destruction of religious and monarchical authority was accomplished. By focusing on Communism and not its driving force, by promoting world peace without identifying the spiritual source of world unrest — the denial of the Incarnation — a false scenario was created that even those considering themselves devout Catholics bought into.
But it was not primarily the bishops, as Van Uden assumes, that Communists targeted — it was the papacy. Masonic documents, especially the Alta Vendita, also Modernist literature, in a more subtle way, make it clear that their ultimate goal was to first destroy or manipulate the papacy, then create their own version/imitation of the Catholic Church minus its doctrinal structure. Van Uden credits creation of a church of their own making as the goal of all Communists. And this counterfeit Church would then pass as Catholic while being run from the top as a Communist front operation, on different levels — the Novus Ordo and the LibTrad movement among them.
The Church living in the virtual catacombs — those praying at home who follow all that the popes, the Holy Office, the Councils and Canon Law teach — are still subject to the attacks of the infiltrators, who pretend to be faithful to the continual magisterium for a time, stir up hatred and discontent, then depart. But we know that even though living as solitaires is a lonely existence, it is the safest way to practice the faith, just as Cuban Catholics living under Castro’s rule and others behind the Iron Curtain discovered. Japanese Catholics survived without clergy for over 200 years, under severe persecution. So surely God is not asking us to do the impossible, as some pretend, since we are not under physical persecution. Speaking on the great need for individuals strong in their faith who can operate independently, — and on the dangers of Communism, which he witnessed firsthand — Fr. Francois Dufay wrote in the 1940s:
“The Church of the Catacombs…[will] need profound dogmatic and spiritual formation, especially on the theology of the Church, the meaning and value of persecution and suffering, and should be steeped in the remembrance of the great saints and martyrs of the past. Thus armed, the Christian faith will use its bad times for growth in charity… Actually it’s solitaries who must be found and trained, in other words, Christians capable of living their faith all alone, amid the strongest pressures, the most painful happenings and the most forbidding of deserts.” And this is the hard lesson those persecuted in Communist countries learned. It is one we ourselves must take to heart, and despite the vicious attacks from without, we must remember this quote from St. John Chrysostom: “He who can never love Christ enough, will never give up fighting against those who hate Him.”