The great king, the Priory of Sion and the mystery of the bees

by T. Stanfill Benns | Dec 3, 2025 | New Blog

+St. Francis Xavier+

Prayer Society Intentions for December, Month of Christ’s Holy Birth

“Eternal Father, I offer to Thine honor and glory for my eternal salvation and for the salvation of the whole world the sufferings of Jesus in the Manger… the cold He suffered, the tears He shed and His tender infant cries.” — Raccolta

Introduction

A reader recently alerted me to a very interesting article on the Tradition in Action site. While this is definitely not a recommended site, the article should be read given the past information provided here on British Israel and its connections to Zionism and Communism. (See it HERE.) The article relates the establishment of a throne in the Vatican for no less than King Charles III of England, whose ancestors slaughtered tens of thousands of Catholics and defrauded them of their property, not to mention the wholesale destruction of Catholic architecture and culture throughout Great Britain. But the full significance of this cannot be understood without a deep dive into the history of Freemasonry and secret societies in general, particularly that society most responsible for the infiltration of the clergy and the establishment of “traditional Catholicism” — The Priory of Sion.

I first sounded the alarm on this organization in my 1990 book, Will the Catholic Church Survive…? where both Angelo Roncalli and Marcel Lefebvre were pinpointed as high-ranking members of the Priory and collaborators in the destruction of the Church. And while the Priory has since been debunked as a non-entity, a fraud and a deliberately created rabbit hole, current events and additional discoveries only serve to confirm it was very much what it was portrayed to be. In the last several years I have pointed out in this blog the fact that every Traditionalist movement founded in this country can be linked to a Masonic sect known as St. John Knights of Jerusalem, and this included Marcel Lefebvre’s St. Pius X Society. As noted in the 1990 book, Lefebvre’s various branches of his Society were called “priories,” as were those of Schuckhardt, Wathen and others. Lefebvre’s seminary was located in the diocese of Sion, Switzerland. He was ordained and consecrated by the Freemason Lienart. The Holy Blood, Holy Grail authors identify him as a Priory member.

Not so well known is Angelo Roncalli’s probable affiliation with the Priory. But certainly his pre-election history — his friendship with French Masonic characters such as Marsaudon, Herriot, Auriol — and his pandering to Freemasons as “pope” was a dead giveaway. Below are excerpts from Will the Catholic Church Survive…? that explain the nature of the Priory, its relation to what we see unfolding today and Roncalli’s role as a member.

The Priory of Sion: a history

“Roncalli’s behavior was consistent with that of a man who had received a mission. Knowing the extent of masonic influ­ence and infiltration in the Vatican, it has undoubtedly crossed the minds of many good Catholics that Brother Angelo was carrying out the orders of the Satanic Pontiff, the equivalent of Pope of all Masonry. Piers Compton, in his book The Broken Cross, relates the alleged initiation of Roncalli into the Masonic lodge of the Rose Croix. Pier Carpi’s book The Prophecies of John XXIII, divulges that Roncalli took the name “Johannes” at his initiation, which apparently took place while he served as Apostolic Delegate to Istanbul, Turkey, in 1935. The connection of Roncalli with the Rosicrucians could per­haps be put aside if it were not for the fact that many of Roncalli’s subsequent actions can be seen to confirm such an affiliation. His remark concerning the unimportance of bap­tism and conversion in the case of the Jews he helped to escape during World War II certainly is in keeping with Masonic doctrine. And his later appointment as Nuncio to France, combined with his anti-Catholic behavior there, pro­vides us with a clue to the source of his Masonic affiliations.

“In his work Satan in the Modern World, Monsignor L. Cristiani quotes the heretic and satanist Giovanni Papini as having written: “…the promised land of Satanism is France.”(!) (p. 164.) How can it be that the eldest daughter of the Church should become the promised land of Satanism? The answer lies in the history of France and the pervasive influ­ence of Albigensianism or Catharism, which took much deeper root there than was ever realized by the Church. That Albigensianism became the basis for Freemasonry is documented in the book Holy Blood. Holy Grail. (Delacourte Press; 1982.) This book presents no less than a believable collection of heretical horrors that is far and away the best exposition and condemnation of the secret societies ever written, although it is presented as a vindication of that particular ruling force of all the secret societies: the Priory of Sion.

“It will be sufficient here to offer a brief synopsis of this organization, its history and its aims, since a detailed analysis of it is beyond the scope of this book. The Priory first came into existence with the creation of the Knights Templar in 1090, by one Godfroi deBoullion. Its official headquarters was Notre Dame du Mont de Sion in Jerusalem. This occurred nine years before the founding of the Knights Templar by Hugues de Payon, a vassal of the count of Champagne. In 1188, the Templar Knights separated from deBouillion’s Order of Zion which then officially changed its name to the Priory of Zion. Its first Grand Master, Jean de Gisor, founded the Rosicrucians (Holy Blood, Holy Grail). The Priory remained a vital and moving force, which operated underground once the Templars were condemned and disbanded, and has grown phe­nomenally in power and influence over the centuries.

“In order to properly understand the premises on which the Priory bases its operation, it is necessary to delve somewhat into the history behind their devilish beliefs. Holy Blood, Holy Grail, relates that the Templars and the Priory were created to protect and reestablish on the throne of France an ancient bloodline. This hideous bloodline is said to be that of Christ and Mary Magdalene. The Priory legend has it that Mary Magdalene escaped to France with Joseph of Arimathea and Jesus, who did not die on the cross, but falsified his entire death and resurrection. (It is reluctantly, and with great sorrow, that we relate such blasphemy and vile heresy, even in way of proof.) This “bloodline” then, supposedly, was continued through the line of Merovingian kings, who ruled from the fifth to seventh century in an area known as the Languedoc.

This area is said to have been the site of a Jewish colony even prior to the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, and subsequent exodus of many of the Jews from the Holy Land to other areas of the world. The Merovingian kings were surrounded by mystery. They were never crowned or anointed, but were considered kings as if by divine right, on the advent of their twelfth birthday. They were known as the sorcerer or thaumatergic kings. They were “…occult adepts, initiates in arcane sciences, and practitioners of the esoteric arts …they were said to be capable of clairvoyant or telepathic communication …miraculous curative powers …and bore a distinctive birthmark which distinguished them from all other men, and …which attested to their semi-divine or sacred blood.” (Holy Blood, Holy Grail, p. 210.)

“Although this book keeps the reader in suspense forever, it is not long before it becomes apparent that this “bloodline” the Templars and the Priory protect to this day is heretically presented as that of Christ and Mary Magdalene. Eventually, the Merovingians intermarried with nearly all the royal bloodlines of Europe, which makes their descendants “divine” as well. This inheritance is said to be especially centered in the British, French and German thrones. In fact, British Israelism, currently known as the Aryan Nations or “Identity” movement, can be seen to allude to this fact, since it suggests that the ancient bloodline of David is continued in the succession to Britain’s throne.

“It has been speculated that Hitler was linked to the Priory in some way, and may even have attempted to secede from it, thus bringing the wrath of Europe on his head. But if he attempted to secede, it was not owing to his moral sense, but rather to his burning desire to rule all and be subject to none. The upper echelon Nazis were immersed in the Grail legends and pre-Christian religious practices. (The “Search for the Holy Grail” is a veiled allegory imitative of the Gospel parables. It is used by the degrees of masonry to symbolize the search for man who became God; i.e., the bloodline. This is the mirror reverse of God’s Son, who as God, assumed a human body.) In her book The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow, Constance Cumbey relates that Hitler was influenced early in his school years by the abbot of a Benedictine monastery school he attended near his home. The abbot “…was fascinated by the lore of the Albigensians or Cathars, who could probably be accurately classified as early New Agers, in that they believed man could gain the powers of a god.” It was here, Cumbey notes, that Hitler “…was initiated into the finer mysteries of the occult.” (p. 100.) Cumbey further instructs us, on page 102, as to the origin of the “Aryan” nations obsession of Hitler. She writes: “…one of the seven Atlantean races was that of the Aryans …the Aryans were the master race, or supermen of the Atlantean races.”

“As we have already learned, the Jewish settlement to which Mary Magdalene and Jesus “fled,” produced the Merovingian kings and the “bloodline” eventually. The founding of this line of kings has behind it a myth. Sup­posedly, a queen pregnant by her husband went swimming in the ocean and was impregnated a second time by some sort of sea creature. When the child Merovie (founder of the Merovingian dynasty) was born, the blood of both fathers ran in his veins. This could allude to an intermingling of Atlantean blood, for as Cumbey notes, the Atlanteans were known to have “…magical powers over …nature and psychic development.” (p. 100.) This would then account for the psy­chic and healing powers attributed to the Merovingians, who like Samson, wore their hair long and credited it as the secret of their power. (The sea creature might also have been Leviathon, the “sea serpent,” spoken of in Isaias 27:1 and elsewhere, and identified in the Douay-Rheims’s footnote to this text as the Devil.) However it is interpreted, it necessarily implies a link between the New Age and the Priory; Masonry and the New Age, and the Albigenses or Cathars as the progenitors of all the above.

The papacy and the Priory

“Can all this somehow be traced to Roncalli and/or Montini? Cumbey, an evangelical Protestant lawyer, fingered Roncalli in 1983 (Hidden Dancers of the Rainbow), when she wrote: “If there has been a single Catholic Pope who permitted the New Ager’s plan to take root within the Roman Catholic Church, it was Pope John XXIII, who is spoken of reverentially by New Agers and ‘Catholic’ modernists.” (p. 160.) This mammoth conspiracy has obviously covered all bases. Today, it is headquartered somewhere in France, probably the Languedoc region. Its surname indicates that it may have successfully penetrated all of the Catholic sects and factions, for it is given as Chivalry of Catholic Rules and Institutions of the Independent and Traditionalist Union or CIRCUIT, from a Priory publication of the same name. It is also called “The Rose-Croix Veritas.”

“Its meetings and method of operation are shrouded in secrecy, but since 1956, the Priory has been said to have experienced phenomenal growth. It has also been connected with the society known as “Hieron du Val d’Or,” characterized by the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail as being “…more Catholic than the Pope…,” but which, in fact, attempted to fuse Catholicism and Masonic principles. Action Francais, condemned by Pius XI, who placed all books pub­lished by its proponents on the Index, was no less than an attempt to place a Merovingian king on the throne of France. Today’s attempt to consolidate Europe politically and economically into a “United States of Europe,” is but a studied effort to create a modern empire to be ruled by “the descendants of Jesus.”(!)

“From Holy Blood, Holy Grail, we read: “This dynasty could not only occupy a throne of political power, but quite conceivably, the throne of St. Peter,” (p. 385.) Could the occupant of any such throne really be a pope, or would he rule a kingdom other than Christ’s? For those who loudly proclaim that Roncalli was a dear, sweet man and is being libeled; or sneeringly state that “no one can prove” he was a freemason, we would like to observe that masonry operates secretly for a reason. That reason is obvious: no one will then be able to determine who is on the up and up. For our purposes, we must content ourselves with the fact that Roncalli is a heretic, but the following infor­mation should prove he was, without a doubt, more.

1. Since the Priory’s inception, according to Holy Blood, Holy Grail, “…every grand master, on assuming his position, has adapted the name Jean (French for John) …This succession was clearly intended to imply an Hermetic papacy based on John, in contrast (and perhaps, opposition) to the esoteric one based on Peter …Roncalli caused considerable consternation when he chose the name John XXIII, anathematized since it was last used … by an anti-pope … In 1958 (Jean) Cocteau held the grand mastership …(when) Pope Pius XII died …and the assembled cardinals elected Roncalli. …Cocteau did not die until 1963.” (pp. 132-133.) Roncalli was only a transitional Pope, [as arranged by no less than the CIA] and his death coincided with that of Cocteau. If both “thrones” fell vacant at the same time, did Montini alone fall heir to the “throne?” Was the “transition” Roncalli was designated to make the deliverance of the papacy into the hands of the “Satanic Pontiff?” …
2. Roncalli has been said to be obsessed with John the Baptist. Thus, he gave us the reason for selecting the name John as his love for Christ’s cousin. (See “Urbi et Orbi,” Oct. 1958.) Actually, John the Baptist and John the Evangelist are held in high esteem by Freemasons, who Piers Compton reports, make a point of meeting on their feast days (Dec. 27 and June 24). It is said by some that both John the Baptist and John the Divine were Essenes, although the Catholic Church denies this. (See Essenes; Catholic Encyclopedia, 1911 ed.) Since the Essenes were a Jewish sect, the Church sees no need to bother with them. …Holy Blood, Holy Grail, however, gives us the real reasons behind Roncalli’s use of the name John on page 55: “…the Templars were infected with the Johannite or Mandian heresy, which denounced Jesus as a false prophet and acknow­ledged John as the true Messiah.”
3. “So Roncalli was honoring Masonic tradition. And Roncalli’s “mission,” mentioned earlier, was to act in a capacity which coincided with the role of his idol, John the Baptist. For Roncalli was the precursor; the voice crying in the modernist wilderness; the one who would prepare the way for the “Rex Mundi.” Further reason for Roncalli’s choice of name as Pope is given by Jean Bardet in his Les Clefs De La Recherche Fondamentale. On page 72, he writes: “…Roncalli…was elected the 28th of October [and] took the name of John XXIII, in honor of France, for John XXIII was the last Pope of Avignon.” According to authors Lincoln, Leigh and Baigent, in their work Holy Blood, Holy Grail, The Hieron du Val d’Or admitted the existence of a hidden pope and his entourage, which of course would include bishops, waiting in the wings to act either as a replacement for or an alternative to the current church in Rome:
4. “’The Hiéron’s agenda was the creation of a new Habsburg and Catholic Holy Roman Empire with a French temporal and spiritual head in the manner of the Grand Monarch, an association of Europeans bound by common law and dedicated to advancing the mission of Christ the King.” (Here they cite sources linked to the “Catholic” secret society Marcel Lefebvre reportedly belonged to, the Priory of Sion.) “They [the Hieron] claim the existence of a secret parallel Catholic tradition called l’Eglise d’Avignon (Church of Avignon), which they trace to the medieval Papacy installed in Avignon from 1309 to 1378. The claim is that it continued in secret with a Pope who represents the esoteric aspects of the Catholic Church. L’Eglise d’Avignon is said to serve as an intermediary between the Roman Church and the Eastern Orthodox tradition.’
5. This is an interesting comment when we consider that the first John XXIII was elected at Pisa (a council never considered ecumenical by the Church) and was later deposed at Constance. It seems that the plan to unite the papacy and the monarchy was conceived long ago, but was dealt a setback once Martin V was elected at Constance and the papacy permanently established in Rome, once again. Roncalli’s contribution to the “bloodline,” as “pope” was to insert the “precious blood” into the divine Praises that the God-man might become a man-God, as surely it did when Montini (Paul VI) embarked on his campaign to deify man.
6. In St. Malachy’s prophecies, John XXIII is designated as “Pasteur et Nautionner” (Shepherd and Navigator). The official title of the Priory’s Grand Master is “Nautionnier. Whether these prophecies are truly genuine, or clever forgeries as some have suggested, they accurately identified Roncalli’s dual personality while “pope.” And, the objection cannot be made that Roncalli’s identification with Malachy’s “motto” affords him legitimacy, for Malachy’s list contains mottoes for several anti-popes.
7. Roncalli was the first “pope” to contradict the excom­munication of his predecessors for membership in a Masonic sect. His relaxation of this application of Canon Law came with “Pacem in Terris,” which extolled the United Nations and granted a general relaxation of discipline begun at the start of Roncalli’s reign. In her Son of Perdition, C. Lereux relates: “John XXIII …allowed a revision of Canon Law to be expected. While awaiting these ‘new laws,’ everyone proceeded to do and say whatever they wished.” (p. 36.)
8. In June of 1960, Roncalli issued an apostolic letter on the “Precious Blood.” The authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grailclaim that he attached “…a hitherto unprecedented significance to that blood. It emphasized Jesus’ suffering as a human being and maintained that the redemption of mankind had been effected by the shedding of His blood … If man’s redemption was achieved by the shedding of Jesus’ blood, his death and resurrection become incidental.” (p. 135.) How strange that Roncalli would attach such significance to the very reason for the Priory’s existence if he was not a member. One would need to be very blind, indeed, to fail to make the connection between Roncalli and Freemasonry in the face of such damning evidence.

The false prophet and the Great Monarch

“It is difficult to see, in light of what we know today, how Roncalli could have been anything OTHER than the false prophet spoken of in Apocalypse 13, vs. 11. E.S. Berry, in his Apocalypse of St. John, writes: “The beast arising from the earth is a false prophet, the prophet of Antichrist …the false prophet …will be endowed with the plenitude of satanic powers to deceive the nations, as indicated by his resemblance to the lamb. The prophet will probably set himself up in Rome as a sort of anti-pope,” (p. 135). Reverend P. Huchede, in his little work The History of AntiChrist, tells us: “…this false prophet will be an individual person … he will not be a king, or a general of an army, but a clever apostate fallen from the episcopal dignity… he will become the first preacher of the false messiah,” (p. 24). C.C. Martindale quotes Father Allo on the false prophet in his commentary on the Apocalypse: “…the false prophet represents that vague, solvent ‘toleration,’ which was then going to become Gnosticism…the lazy, flattering notion that all creeds are finally of a muchness is, indeed, as modern as it was prevalent in ancient but decadent days. There could then, be two ‘foci’ of anti-Christianity–the openly persecuting state and the vague, subservient ‘religion,’ which the state could patronize without damage to itself.” (A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture, p. 1206.) (End of Will the Catholic Church Survive…? quotes)

Tying the British and French monarchies into all this, Tim Cohen writes in his Antichrist and a Cup of Tea (1998): “The Priory of Zion has in fact been more an historical tool of the English monarchy and nobility than of the French. It is of significant interest therefore that the Priory of Zion, the Temple Knights and the Rosicrucians, all of which ultimately derive from the earlier Order of Zion, together gave rise to English and French Freemasonry. Moreover in 1348…the order of the Garter became the major control point from which the English monarchy exercised its global influence… The supposed Protocols of the Elders of Zion appears not to be a Judaic work but a modified work of the Priory of Zion possibly having been altered for public consumption with the complicity of the illuminati. Nevertheless with much contrivance the work was later advanced as proof of a Jewish conspiracy…

“From 1188 to the present day, the Priory of Zion has been the benefactor of a struggle for dominance between English and French royalty and nobility. Originally a French-English oligarchical order and secret society from which came the Knights Templar and the Rosicrucians, its control came to rest largely with the English side even while a number of its grandmasters resided in France… The Merovingians and the Priory of Zion have long-awaited what the false prophet Nostradamus (also the Protestant John Locke and many Catholic prophecies so-called, which cannot always prove to be reliable) referred to as the ‘great monarch,’ the ultimate Prince of Lorraine and priest-king who would work with the Pope to establish a New World Order.” From what has been said in the opening paragraph of this blog, it appears that the identity of this “great monarch” has now been revealed by the Novus Ordo heresiarch and usurper Leo 14, who apparently has provided a throne for Charles III in what was once the Holy Place itself.

Conclusion

So now we can add to the British Israel mix the “French Connection,” something Candace Owens has recently been exploring in her podcasts after reports emerged that she was threatened with assassination by the French government for her exposure of French first lady Brigitte Macron as a biological man. She also has raised the possibility that Charlie Kirk’s assassination can be traced to French and Israeli operatives. She has noted that there seems to be some association with certain underground group symbols, namely bees, and says she has dreamt of bees. Utah’s state symbol is a beehive, as Owens has mentioned, and the state’s population is predominantly Mormon. According to the Encyclopedia of Mormonism:

“Nineteenth-century leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints consciously created symbols to buttress their community. The most persistent of these pioneer symbols was the beehive.” As Tim Cohen notes, “At the highest degrees and levels Freemasonry and its plethora of cult and occult branches, which include Mormonism, Theosophy, the New Age movement and even Anton Lavey’s Church of Satan not only openly deride Christ and his work but explicitly advocate the worship and adoration of Lucifer (Satan) as a means to achieve individual godhood and World Peace.” And there are those who have labeled the New Apostolic Reformation as a sort of neo-Mormonism.

Owens tells us that the Bolsheviks have infiltrated this country and we soon will be at war. She says she does not expect to see her children grow up. She blames the Masonic founding of this country for its demise, telling us her British “priest” informed her about this. She has so much of it figured out. And yet the bees surrounding her in her dreams are frantic little messengers warning that she is caught in the web of the very thing she is trying to expose.

According to online sources, the official emblem of the Priory of Sion is partly based on the fleur-de-lis, which is found throughout Saint Sulpice (a society associated with the Priory). The emblem represents a bee, and the tradition of long-haired kings of France known as the Merovingian dynasty, including Childeric, who was found with 300 gold bees in his tomb.

Roncalli’s invalid election smoothly segued into the ascent of Paul 6 as the next usurper of the papal throne. Who was the successor of Priory Grand Master Jean Cocteau following his death in 1963? Giovanni Battista Montini, and he brazenly displayed the proofs of his Priory affiliation on his coat of arms below. Note the three fleur-de-lis bees. And what is beneath them? The beehive — even Montini’s tiara resembled a beehive, unlike that of previous true popes. The coat of arms tells us the Priory had finally captured the papacy, but that is not all

Owens’ other observations regarding Zionism and its true driving force are also realized in Paul 6. All the answers she is searching for can be satisfied in the spiritual, not the political or secular realm. But the “priests” handling her today will never reveal this. Civil governments would never have toppled had the Church not been destroyed first. Unless the abomination of desolation had entered in as Pope Paul IV predicted in Cum ex Apostolatus Officio in 1559, we would not be witnessing the wholesale triumph of Freemasonry today.

If it is really truth that Owens thirsts for, as she claims — if that is what really matters, as it should matter to all of us — then all avenues must first be exhausted to find it. She owes her listeners the true explanation for why we are facing war, the loss of our freedoms, the annihilation of our religion and culture. Faith alone will survive, Our Lady told the children at La Salette, not a mad scramble of political conspiracies mixed with what passes for that faith. Removing the linchpin that will unleash on the world the real reason why we find ourselves in this predicament is the only pathway to truth. The papal see has been usurped.  Antichrist has come, the Mass has ended, and without Christ offered on our altars daily, as Dr. Nicholas Gihr wrote in 1897, the world is doomed:

“It is by Christ’s Blood in the Mass that the anger of God is daily placated, the vengeance of the Divine judgment disarmed, that He no more curses the earth on account of man, whose mind and thoughts are prone to evil from his youth (Gen. 8:21). When this “Sacrifice for sins” shall be no longer celebrated, then ‘there remains but a certain dreadful expectation of judgment and the rage of a fire which shall consume the adversaries’ (Heb. 10: 26-27).”

Could the attack on Pope Leo XIII be a harbinger of an even greater evil?

by T. Stanfill Benns | Jul 3, 2022 | New Blog

+God Have Mercy on Our Nation+

Prayer Society Intention for July

“Eternal Father, I offer thee the Most Precious Blood of Jesus Christ, the merits, love and sufferings of the Sacred Heart, the tears and Sorrows of His Immaculate Mother, for the return of those now opening Thy Son’s precious wounds anew by evil publications.”

My apologies for a late posting of the Prayer Society Intention. It has already been an incredibly busy month. I also would like to wish everyone a happy Independence Day, understood in the spirit of Pope Leo XIII, so greatly calumniated recently as a false pope, who wrote: “We are bound to love dearly the country whence we have received the means of enjoyment this mortal life affords, but we have a much more urgent obligation to love with ardent soul the Church to which we owe the life of the soul, a life that will endure forever.” Please see Robert Robbins latest at https://catholiceclipsed.com/2022/07/03/thoughts-on-the-fourth-of-july/ for a wonderful commentary on true patriotism today.

It is difficult to address the broad scope of what all the denial of papal supremacy entails, but one thing is certain: it begins with the tendency to question or criticize the actions and decisions of the popes, to favor and tolerate critical accounts of them written in secular works and in the press, to allow doubts to creep in, perhaps even without realizing it, about their legitimacy or orthodoxy, or the belief that one can put limits on what they may or may not say or do in disciplinary matters. If not immediately resolved or rejected, (if one is not able to satisfactorily answer them), they then become doubts of faith in the perpetuity of the Apostolic Succession.

Those accusing Pope Leo and the other popes of heresy committed while in office — an impossibility condemned as heresy at the Vatican Council — have produced nothing even approaching real evidence to prove their miserable case. And it must be remembered: in pointing out the invalidity of Roncalli’s election on this site, he is not being judged AS A POPE. What was being judged was his pre-election disposition — whether or not he was even a Catholic, and thus qualified for election. Public statements and his behavior pre-election prove he was not a Catholic, and as St. Robert Bellarmine teaches — and all Catholics know this to be true — a man not a Catholic could never be validly elected pope. Some of those accusing Pope Leo XIII, Pope St. Pius X et al. now have even turned their venom against Pope Pius IX (oh how they would love to wipe out the Vatican Council). And this was where they were headed all along.

The individuals first beginning the campaign to defame Pope Leo XIII, an (ex?)-Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) couple living in St. Mary’s, Kansas, founded their movement by launching what appeared to be a Catholic website several years back. Some good information, interesting articles and downloads, an appealing design, but hiding beneath all that were various layers of poison. (This website no longer seems to be online although some report it is operating under a different domain name, so beware.) And forgive me if I am somewhat suspicious of the origins of this group, given its location. There could be more here than meets the eye, depending on who these “anonymous” people may be working with and what their real agenda is. They later issued a salacious and defamatory book on Fatima, mentioned in our last blog. This poison has now seeped into the minds of fringe-element Catholics praying at home, who already disbelieved in Fatima and harbored doubts about the legitimacy of various popes.

We must remember that the SSPX itself reported on its own website that its founder, Marcel Lefebvre, was the Grandmaster of the Priory of Sion, whose subtitle is the “Independent and Traditionalist Union.” Is a there yet a connection between this SSPX couple and this ideology? The Priory claims an ancient history and is known for its monarchical restoration aspirations. These aspirations could afford us a sinister reason why those defaming these popes are attempting to deceive the faithful, a reason not even yet considered. These people may be merely advance men, so to speak, sent to test the water to see what floats. The realization of this strategy explains many things and puts us on full alert about what may really be evolving among the Traditionalist sects. It has been developing for awhile, but is now showing itself for what it really is. It may be only a tendency.

A frightening scenario

The Book of Job reminds us that life is a warfare, and it is definitely spiritual warfare which we are waging. It is one thing to have doubts about the validity of the Roman Pontiff, but only IF such doubts are serious and can be sufficiently proven to have existed pre-election. Then and only then can a doubtful pope not be any pope at all. Hard proofs would need to be gathered that show Leo XIII was definitely a heretic prior to his election as pope, because he could NOT have become one if validly elected, which he undoubtedly was; this is the teaching of the Vatican Council, Pope Paul IV in Cum ex Apostolatus Officio, St. Bellarmine and the theologian Capello. No proof of any sort to even suggest Cardinal Pecci was a heretic pre-election has ever been presented nor could be gathered today from anything but anti-papal sources. Has anyone bothered to draw out the logical consequences of what these defamers of Pope Leo XIII, Pope St. Pius X and now Pope Pius IX, are saying? This is not just about presenting all these venerable popes as mere heretics, thus moving forward the beginning of the Great Apostasy; far from it. Here is what we are REALLY being asked to believe:

1. The re-interpretation of the Vatican Council and the redefining of papal supremacy and infallibility, already begun in the last century prior to Pope Pius XII‘s death;
2. Lifting of the bans on Freemasonry, Americanism, definitions of the Christian state
3. Pope St. Pius X ‘s condemnation of the Sillon and Modernism no longer exists.
4. The 1917 Code of Canon Law was never promulgated, leaving the Sacred Canons in the hands of those who would like nothing better than to abolish and reinterpret them.
5. Pope Pius XI’s encyclicals on marriage, Communism, racism and the social order;
6. Pope Pius XII’s much hated infallible decrees such as his election constitution Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis, Mystici Corporis and Ad Sinarum Gentum on the authority of bishops, Mediator Dei, Humani Generis and Ad Apostolorum Principis, not to mention the hated Holy Week changes, would all be non-existent.

Perhaps this Catholic Restoration business is finally starting to make some sense! NOW we know where they are probably going with all of this, if all of them can ever agree on anything. The only way to discredit the claims made on this site is to take the axe to the root of the tree and destroy the sources from which they issue — the Roman Pontiffs. Is this their preliminary attempt to seduce pray-at-home Catholics? We believe it could well be, as we stand in the way of their success. They wish to leave no exits open for those who decide not to go along with their Great Monarch, Holy Pope, restored Gallican Church fantasy.

For this would be a dream come true for (the Independent Union of) Traditionalist and Gallicanist Monarchists wishing to completely refashion and take over the Church in yet another Vatican 2 style coup, forever redefining infallibility to suit their lust for power. This could well be what “uniting the clans” is all about — a pretended attempt to “restore all things in Christ,” while reconstructing the Church according to Gallicanist/Old Catholic plans long in the making. So what are these Pope Leo XIII defamers really up to and who else might they be working for or with? Dupes or send-ins? It may be that the Gallicanists of the 19^th century, frustrated to the max at the definition of infallibility, decided to try and make an end run to establish themselves more securely in France, as they already had in Germany. Through their pre-established “Catholic” secret societies, aligned with the Monarchists, they hoped to gain papal favor and get a leg up in order to establish a more secure base for themselves, to work under the cover of papal approval. But Leo XIII was quite savvy when it came to these societies. He instead supported the Masonic-inspired government of the French Republic and ordered Catholics there to do the same. https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_16021892_au-milieu-des-sollicitudes.html

French history lesson

France had gone through a century of torments, political and religious upheaval, persecution of the faithful, exile of her clergy, the martyrdoms of her monarchs, religious, and Catholic laity, fierce infighting between Catholic factions. The battle had long been waged to restore the monarchy, but Leo could see that there was little hope of doing this, and feared a Gallicanist might even possibly come to power. He didn’t cave-in to liberalism; he merely advised Catholics to make the best of a terrible situation which he could not change or control. And for this he is condemned? How dare common peasants, totally ignorant of not only of history, but of the perspicacity necessary to govern and the inner workings of the Church judge a mere man, not to mention a pope, who was superbly well-educated, skilled in diplomacy, unbelievably intelligent and fervent in his faith, kind-hearted and talented in so many other ways; a man beset by so many difficulties and weighed down with so many responsibilities and spiritual burdens! Read his biographies! They will give the lie to everything written in that disgusting Fatima book. But we will see below exactly why Pope Leo did what he did.

Those supporting the Monarchists questioned his decision and he rebuked them, reminding them that they owed him obedience whether they agreed with him or not, and of course some of them sincerely did, while others who were secret “Catholic Freemasons” did a nod-nod, wink-wink. We have in support of this assessment the following quote:

“These two parties [those supporting the Republic called Rallies and those supporting royalist interests] were poles apart in sentiment, in personal interest, in philosophy of life. They represented two distinct and hostile views of man and society, two mutually antagonistic civilizations. Too often it appeared that religion was employed for political purposes and politicians were more intent upon destroying the Church than upon building up the state. The Catholic side was encumbered by an aristocratic group, royalist and Gallican by conviction as well as by tradition. The Church was their church, as it had been the subservient tool of their ancestors in the old regime. The anticlerical camp was Masonic, Jacobin, Rosseauvian. It exalted it’s omnipotent omni-competent state to absurd heights under any name Republic… They thought only in terms of their own peculiar type of government, of a party state, of a state controlled by gangster methods in the interests of a clique.

“In such circumstances it was difficult for Leo to make his voice heard and the valiant Frenchman who did hear him had to meet discouraging odds in their fight for order, justice and liberty when Leo declared that forms of government were relatively unimportant, Monarchists pointed to the revolutionary origins of the Republic. When he insisted that all Catholics align themselves under the constitution to combat iniquitous laws, they still clung to the phantom of kingship and disdainfully sneered at democracy. Social Catholics might argue the futility of adhering to the fetish of monarchy… There were monarchists who were anti-liberal in both politics and economics. There were now Rallies opposed to economic liberalism and, in obedience to papal instructions, neutral in politics, as well as Rallies whose economic theories were in conflict with needed social legislation; there were Progressists sincerely devoted to the Republic, who hoped to inject the leaven of tolerance into law and administration. There were Christian Democrats more democratic than Christian. There was finally the formless, inert mass of the indifferent, too discouraged and/or too indolent to deserve more than a passing glance of contempt” (The Church in the 19^th Century, Raymond Corrigan, S.J., Ph.D, 1938).

So that’s what Pope Leo XIII had to deal with; a convoluted mess long in the making that even would have defied resolution by the most skilled statesman ever born. Yet his decision that France must support their civil government, to at least attempt to enjoy some kind of political stability, is the very thing these defamers are pointing at to support their claims — that he was a liberal, that he overstepped his bounds, interfered in politics and even favored Freemasons. But no, clever man that he was, and inspired by the Holy Ghost, he decided to deal with the devil he at least knew, rather than admit seven devils worse than the first to the fray. The Gallicanists were up to no good and he knew it. They were the depository of the upper levels of Freemasonry — the Priory — and in the very time period that Pope Leo issued his decision on France, a group we have mentioned before was already moving forward with their plans.

What Pope Leo was trying to do

According to authors Lincoln, Leigh and Baigent, in their work Holy Blood, Holy Grail, The Hieron du Val d’Or admitted the existence of a hidden pope and his entourage, which of course would include bishops, waiting in the wings to act either as a replacement for or an alternative to the current church in Rome: “The Hiéron’s agenda was the creation of a new Habsburg and Catholic Holy Roman Empire with a French temporal and spiritual head in the manner of the Grand Monarch, an association of Europeans bound by common law and dedicated to advancing the mission of Christ the King.” (Here they cite sources linked to the “Catholic” secret society Marcel Lefebvre reportedly belonged to, the Priory of Sion.) “They [the Hieron] claim the existence of a secret parallel Catholic tradition called l’Eglise d’Avignon (Church of Avignon), which they trace to the medieval Papacy installed in Avignon from 1309 to 1378. The claim is that it continued in secret with a Pope who represents the esoteric aspects of the Catholic Church. L’Eglise d’Avignon is said to serve as an intermediary between the Roman Church and the Eastern Orthodox tradition.”

Pope Leo issued his encyclical Au milieu de solicitudes to the French in 1892. Wikipedia states the Hieron organization existed from 1873-1926, when it was doubtless absorbed into other groups. “It was allied to concepts of royalism and was culturally conservative; it sought to erect a Catholic hermetic freemasonry, contrary to the anti-clerical Freemasonry of Grand Orient de France and was particularly devoted to Christ the King.” Among contributors to a publication sponsored by the group was the traditionalist Rene Guenon, later supporting Muslim philosophy and one Le Coeur, author of The Age of Aquarius, promoting New Age beliefs. So Pope Leo was pro-Masonic in not supporting the Royalists who had been infiltrated by this bunch?! Pope Leo’s personal letter of correction to Cardinal Gibbons, addressing his participation in the interfaith conference and condemning Americanism was not enough for these people? In his work The Americanist Heresy in Roman Catholicism, 1895-1900, Thomas T. McAvoy, C.S.C, writes:

“If there was doubt about the meaning of the prohibition of congresses of religion, a chronicle of events in the United States that appeared in the Civilta Cattolica January 4, 1896 was sufficient warning that the triumph of the progressives had been short-lived and that with the shift of [Cardinal] Satolli, the conservatives were beginning to regain lost ground. This chronicle of the year 1895 in the United States claimed that year had ended a period of confusion thanks to the action of Sattoli. The evil tendencies in the United States which the chronicle says were checked by Sattolli was Pelagianism… and this has been checked by two actions: the condemnation of the secret societies and the action against the Congress of Religions. It is the second of these that the chronicle emphasized… Continuing, the chronicle said that a third element in the American scene which had grown up from a wrong interpretation of American political traditions was a kind of Gallicanism, a lack of sympathy for the Pope in his efforts to regain his temporal power. But under the leadership of Sattolli, the American Catholics had clearly demonstrated their loyalty to the pontiff in a series of public demonstrations of loyalty on September 20,1895” (page 84-85).

So Gallicanism was making its rounds in America as well, and eventually this heresy first revealed itself in the Liturgical Movement, which began in Germany. Rev. Albert Kaiser observed in his December 1953 article for The American Ecclesiastical Review: “The Gallican and Febronian pretension of limiting Papal jurisdiction in favor of episcopal equality was more or less a cover-up for an underground movement to nationalize the Church. The ‘Free from Rome’ movement in a sense dove-tailed with the Nazi political movement. As the French Revolution’s disastrous effects helped bring the dissident clergy back to the Pope, so Hitler’s providential defeat contributed to help the Pope reclaim the ‘German nationalists.’” And it is no coincidence that at the same time the Priory of Sion’s existence was revealed, by a professed neo-Nazi, a secret society affiliated with the Priory was founded in the U.S. by a friend of the Priory’s modern-day historian (Pierre Plantard) also reported to be aligned with neo-Nazi factions. Doesn’t this sound suspiciously like the Sedevacantists and other Traditionalists, many of whom are blatantly anti-Semitic and block any effort to restore the papacy?

But the antics of Traditionalists are relevant only insofar as we know their agenda and stay far away from any of their sects. What needs to be addressed here is what caused this unfortunate break with the faith in the first place and how it can be prevented in the future. The answer to this is the absolute prohibition of the Church to read anything on religious topics written by non-Catholics, especially in this day and age. Likewise the use of social media regarding religious topics or discussions and unrestricted Internet surfing for videos and articles that touch on matters of faith. There are certain sites that are relatively safe; I have listed some of these on the articles page. Traditionalists sites are to be avoided as a general rule, although they sometimes contain pertinent information. But they also can be very dangerous; the authors of the anti-Fatima book initially appeared to operate a legitimate Catholic site. Even videos that are primarily about political matters often contain defamatory and erroneous information about the Church and Her role in the worldwide conspiracy.

Because they failed to investigate the information they were being fed and reconcile what was being presented to them with beliefs of faith, they were led astray. This is how many Catholics have succumbed to error, and below an Irish priest, a beloved theologian and catechist in his own country, tells us why.

From Our Greatest Treasure by Rev. John Kearney, 1942

Indiscriminate reading

“Beware of false prophets,” says Christ, “they come to you in sheep’s clothing.” This is a solemn warning. A prophet is a teacher. A book is a teacher. A bad book may be attractive — the charm of the style is the sheep’s clothing. The warning of Christ applies in our days especially to books.

To realize the danger of indiscriminate reading consider the following:

• Your limited knowledge of religion. A medical man has five years professional study. A priest has at least six years professional study.
• The power of a clever barrister to present a bad case to an ignorant juryman. [Lawyers have 4-6 years of study].You are not experts in theology while many of the enemies of the Church are clever and the devil helps them.
• The natural law which binds us to preserve our faith is supported by a law of the Church which forbids the reading of dangerous books.
• Compare the Church’s law with the following: the law limiting the sale of poisons to qualified persons; the appointment of a public analyst to secure pure food and pure water; the locking up in an asylum of all who attempt suicide.

General warning against indiscriminate reading

It is a fact that cannot be denied that very many literary works are prejudicial to the faith. Their tendency is to weaken it imperceptibly. The naturalistic philosophy, irreligious views and materialistic outlook contained in them is so subtle as not to be noticed. It is like a poison that is imbibed in very small doses. But its presence in the mind of the readers are such works which will be detected later on, when a situation arises for them to which they should simply apply the truths of the faith e.g., on the occasion of a tempting offer of worldly gain, through a mixed marriage, a cleverly concealed dishonest financial transaction, an illicit friendship, etc. It will be seen that owing to false teaching assimilated through indiscriminate reading the Pearl of Great Price will be sacrificed for mere temporal advantage. And the result like unto Hymaneus and Alexander of old, they run serious risk of making shipwreck concerning the faith.

The law of the Church and dangers to face from indiscriminate reading

From what has been said it should be obvious to any loyal Catholic that the Church and her restrictive legislation concerning certain books acts as a wise mother. With maternal solicitude She warns her children against two dangerous classes of publications: those that are subversive of faith and those that are opposed to Catholic teaching regarding good morals, which teaching is based upon the faith and upon the law of God. It is a grave duty for every Catholic to obey the laws of the Church forbidding the reading of certain kinds of books (Canons 1384 and 1399). Apart from these enactments of positive law binding on all, it is the bounden duty of every Catholic to avoid all reading that would constitute a danger for the individual in question. Even though a person may feel himself firmly established in the faith it is not lawful to take risks. And such risks are inevitable. The reading, especially when habitual, of books that either by subtle suggestion, ridicule, or positive erroneous pleading advocate principles opposed to the faith cannot failed to saturate the mind so assimilative of ideas with the seeds of unbelief. Our Lord issued a solemn warning against false prophets: “Beware of false prophets” (Matthew 7:15).

Who are they in our days? They are legion in number.  They are to be met with in the cinema, on the stage, on the radio, in factories and workshops, but above all in books and newspapers. These ravening wolves come very often in the clothing of sheep. They do not directly and openly attack the Catholic faith and morals but they do so indirectly in a very effective way…. In this matter of safeguarding our Catholic faith and morals no one should presume to say that his faith is so strong and his morals so firmly established as to be proof against all attack, no matter how subtly or systematically directed. Neither good intentions nor experience in life can render anyone absolutely immune to painful surprises. it may be taken as a practical rule of guidance that indulgence and evil reading will end in spiritual disaster. This is what usually happens owing to the inherent weakness of human nature. Temptations are sure to rise. Moral lapses will follow. Then the false ideas and ideals that have been imperceptibly absorbed in the reading will be appealed to in order to justify or palliate the lapses.

Indiscriminate discussions

A person who wishes to ask you for information on teachings of the Church and honestly desires to know should be answered and you should be able to answer. But you are not required to prove the doctrine from Scripture. A person who wishes to discuss religion simply for the sake of argument or for the purpose of confounding you should not be answered. All these discussions do no good. The code of Church law forbids public discussions without permission [and] you perhaps have not made the studies required for defending your religion. It is one thing to be able to know the teaching of the Church and another to be able to defend it. The danger of discussion for those whose opportunities have not permitted them to make a very profound study of their religion, is due to the fact they may find themselves in the hands of a very clever man who misrepresents things and whose errors their limited knowledge is not able to detect. Look what a clever barrister can do when he has a bad case to defend; how he can put interpretations on the facts, misrepresent their different importances and in the end completely persuade those that are ignorant. The illustrations we have given show clearly the imprudence and the disloyalty to Our Lord manifested by indiscriminate reading and discussion. From this follows the diminution of the actual graces which we need to exercise our faith.

Faults that alienate our hearts and wills

In the second place are the sins which tend to draw the heart, the will, to earth and away from God. The most deadly of these senses is the sin of pride. Pride leads many to the loss of faith. We have spoken of pride as an obstacle to the grace of faith for those outside the Church. We must now show its danger for those who have the faith. It is our will that commands our intellect to believe. We believe because we wish to believe and we wish to believe because we wish to honor God by submitting to His Word. Hence anything that turns our will away from God makes our act of faith more difficult. On the act of faith we believe a doctrine which we do not see and which we cannot prove, simply because God says it is true. This involves humility. We bend down our mind before the authority of God. We pay God the homage of our understanding. We acknowledge we are creatures and that therefore we are limited. We acknowledge that we are children of our Father in Heaven and we wish to please Him. This is humility.

Pride is the obvious opposite of humility. The proud man trusts his own mental powers and in an inordinate way he forgets his own mental limitations. He is inclined to accept only what he can see and what he can prove. He easily shuts his eyes to the evidence that God is speaking through the Church. Hence pride leads easily to the loss of faith. The loss of faith through pride appears especially in those who criticize the Church, who criticize Her laws, who criticize the actions and words of those appointed to speak and act in Her name. Many lose the faith through this sin of criticizing. In this sin they make themselves the judges of the words of the Bride of Christ. Like to the sin of criticism of the Church is the sin committed by marked want of reverence for sacred things. These sins in addition to their own malice generally involve the sin of scandal and scandal of a serious kind. It is easy to see that complacency in our superiority — pride — is at the root of all these sins. The loss of grace through pride follows frequently from positive disregard of the laws of the Church… These sins easily lead to the loss of Faith. In all this it is our will that is wrong. We do not want to submit. Submission means accepting our inferiority or dependence. Our pride resists this.

In the third place, culpable ignorance is a cause of the loss of faith. This is a special kind of disloyalty to God because man’s first duty is to know God. Ignorance evidently impedes the correct judgment of the intelligence especially when our imagination or picture making power is impressed by a difficulty. Ignorance is culpable when it is due to indolence and not acquiring knowledge when we can and should. It shows a want of esteem for the gift of Faith and this is a disloyalty to God who has given us the faith. Hence it leads to a diminution of grace. Culpable ignorance, which may injure our faith, is of various kinds:

• ignorance of the motive of credibility i.e. the proofs that God has testified to the divine authority of the church;
• ignorance which does not distinguish in dogma what one must believe and what one may believe;
• ignorance which confounds what is essential and what is accessory in worship. Prayer is essential; certain prayers are accessory. Devotion is essential; certain devotions are accessory.
• In moral matters, likewise ignorance confounds interior personal reform, which is essential, with certain external works which are only a means unless commanded explicitly.

Faith once lost is seldom regained

The gift of faith may be lost. This is an undoubted fact. It is also a fact that once lost, the gift of faith is seldom regained. God gives it once easily. It is most precious. If we lose it no doubt it may be got again but the dispositions of heart that prepare the soul for this new grace are not easily acquired. Hence it is that faith is seldom regained. Saint Paul puts this very clearly. “It is impossible,” he says, “for those who were once illuminated (the gift of faith) have tasted also the heavenly gift (the most Holy Sacrament) and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost (Confirmation and grace) have moreover tasted the good word of God (instruction) and the powers of the world become (Heaven and Hell), and are fallen away to be renewed again to penance, crucifying again to themselves the Son of God and making Him a mockery” (Heb. 6:4-6). Impossible here means very difficult, morally impossible, impossible without a miracle of grace.

To help us understand better these words of Saint Paul we shall keep it in mind that faith is always a gift of God, but it is a gift that God gives a second time to those only who ask it with humility and perseverance. Here indeed is the difficulty of recovering a lost faith. Humble and persevering petition is not easy for those who have lost the faith. We can say it is almost impossible for them because humble and persevering petition means going back on and reversing their own pride and independence of mind which independence was the cause of the refusal to submit to God and believe His Word. In other words, this new act of faith, this new paying to God the homage of their understanding, means acknowledging that the little Catholic child was right while they were wrong. All this is difficult. It needs an extraordinary grace of childlike humility through which they cast themselves that God meet and recognize their absolute dependence on him for their present life and continued existence” (end of Rev. Kearney quotes).

Conclusion

Fr. Kearney called the faith “Our Pearl of Great Price.” But do we really think every time we reach for our phones or surf the Internet that something just a click away could rob us of this precious jewel? Do we use due discretion in using these communication tools? Or do we fall into the sin of curiosity and read or listen to things that could easily endanger our faith? In the end will we allow the Modernist hype on social media and the Internet to claim our faith after all we have done to preserve it?

Spiritual survival manual update, Unity Octave prayers

by T. Stanfill Benns | Jan 16, 2026 | New Blog

(Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, Rome.)

+St. Marcellus, Pope, Martyr+

In past blogs we have spoken about the katechon, a Greek word for the restraining power mentioned by St. Paul in 2 Thess. 2: 6-7: “He who withholdeth,” what and who prevents the arrival of Antichrist. LibTrad pseudo-clergy have acted as the katechon for decades, pretending to perpetuate the Church and provide the Mass and Sacraments, so it will appear as though they still exist and Antichrist has not yet come. For if they once admitted that the Mass could no longer be validly offered, then the question of how it could cease would need to be answered, even though that question was raised and answered long ago. And that Antichrist alone could take away the Sacrifice was answered in the same breath as the disappearance of the papacy.  Had Catholics consulted approved sources and not those false christs and hirelings sent to deceive them they would have known this.

It has been pointed out that various political entities are now vying for the katechon title, but the katechon is not a political entity. And he is not future tense, but past tense. For Antichrist has already come and gone; what we see today is the destruction wrought by his antichrist successors in the false papacy and their associates now running the world. But to appear as though one is the restraining power and Antichrist is yet in the future is a useful tool to promote the idea of some man on a white horse, riding in to save the day and promote world peace, the “Great Monarch,” fable we have spoken about before. But private prophecy and pagan fables won’t save us either. Nothing in Holy Scripture speaks of a such a thing.

Why are so many podcasters and so-called intellectuals so anxious to voice opinions about who Antichrist might be?  Is it in order to position their katechon and appear to have prevented his coming? Given the current pseudo-Christian climate, that would not be difficult to do. Or is it because they know full well who Antichrist was and they are trying to see if anyone else has identified him, anyone, that is, who could establish the fact with reasonable certainty that he has already reigned? What is baffling is how so many non-Catholics dedicated to sola scriptura or even those identifying as Catholic believe the Second Coming is just around the corner.  This could scarcely be the case if what precedes Antichrist’s coming has not yet occurred (great apostasy, removing of restraining power or katechon, Antichrist’s actual reign). It is absolutely nonsensical, for if Antichrist is living today, and we must identify him, the katechon has already been taken out of the way. So much for Holy Scripture!

Those trying to determine the meaning of Holy Scripture from political events have it backwards. It is the spiritual happenings in the Church that determine the course of political events in these times. Some think I am playing into the scenarios spun by Candace Owens (and others), but it was my intention from the beginning only to see where she is taking her investigation and it has highlighted quite a few things that needed to be pointed out. I have noted that she missed the real reason Kirk was murdered — his identification of the current “popes” as Commies.  She identifies as (an NO) Catholic who is at odds with Israel and Jewish belief and practice, even identifies Zionists as the synagogue of Satan, yet fails to acknowledge Paul 6 and her church as the reason for Jewish ascendency. I will continue to monitor her podcasts, because I want to see where she is going with all this and correct her errors for those who may be watching. But this should not be taken by readers as any endorsement of her assessment of the chaos, since she takes the political over spiritual approach. Spiritual must come first, because it alone explains the chaos.

Among other things, Owens stresses the alternative reality in which we now live. Alternative reality is defined as: A state of things that does not really exist (Cambridge Dictionary); or any[thing] that deviates from the [Catholic-Ed.] perception of reality” (VocabDictionary). As we have pointed out often in the past, only the laws generated by the scholastics teaching formal logic can put us in touch with reality (Rev. Michael J. Mahony, S.J, Essentials of Formal Logic, 1918). All other presentations of reality are false. This is why false forms of logic among LibTrads have been repeatedly exposed here; they are attempting to justify their alternative reality. Another thing noted by Owens is the omission or change in essential wording regarding historical and other events (“all” for “many; Holy “Spirit” for Holy “Ghost,” etc). But that began long ago in the Church, not the secular world and only accelerated with the false Vatican 2 council. The same can be said of certain pronunciations such as “pahpacy” rather than “paypacy,” first noticeable in the early days among LibTrads. The traditional pronunciation is the latter, as all dictionaries show. I consider it a form of disrespect to pronounce it otherwise.

Why do I bother trying to “interpret” it? Because young people genuinely seeking the truth are listening to her. Some of them are even Traditionalists, and yes, there are pray at home Catholics among her audience.  Owens claims to attend a Latin Mass, and yet we know the Mass ended long ago. She consults her “priests.” She complains of handlers, not realizing her own spiritual advisor is most likely one of them. She mentions CIA psychological warfare ops by name, but fails to mention the CIA’s “Psychological Strategy Plan for the Use of Doctrinal Warfare,” PSB D-33, launched June 29, 1953, on the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul. The program goal was “to breakdown worldwide doctrinaire thought patterns…” and “foster a worldwide understanding and sympathetic acceptance of the traditions and viewpoints of America and the free world… paving the way from deviations from and schisms in totalitarian thought patterns.”  It was to be applied to a group “likely to include priests as commissars” (David Wemhoff, John Courtney Murray, Time/Life and the American Proposition, Ch. 33).

This was the prelude to Vatican 2, undertaken during the very year Pope Pius XII found himself near death’s door after being poisoned for months. Coincidence? I don’t think so.  This was the final blow, after decades of Modernist poison had coursed through the veins of the Church and Communists and Freemasons had infiltrated Her ranks. We know that the coming of Christ is near because we have seen all of the signs in Holy Scripture fulfilled.  The only way that the chaos and descent into the pit of depravity in the world today can possibly be explained is by admitting the Holy Sacrifice has ceased, and no longer can any reparation be made on earth for the sins of men. That explains all. But these pseudo-intellectuals want to entertain their own explanations, products of their own Godless minds, so lacking in discernment, true knowledge and spirituality.

Satan is most active now because he knows his time is short. He cannot escape the fact that Christ will come to end it all and send him back to hell forever, bringing to a close his failed attempt to destroy the last vestiges of the Church. For we must be those vestiges, and the only thing left for us to do now is to try and leave our children and grandchildren instructions on what they must believe and how they must conduct themselves after we are gone, at least as far as we are able to assemble them. We cannot anticipate every possible development, but we can give them the basics of the faith to cling to after we have left this earth.

Several years ago, I wrote When There Is No Priest, a Survival Guide for Remnant Catholics. It is in desperate need of updating, and on the request of readers I am slowly accomplishing this. Please review the contents page below and feel free to suggest in the comments section any additions, changes or corrections to any subject you feel should be included.  It is vital that this guide be complete, as a legacy to our children. Many on this site are in their 70s and even 80s. We are the ones who best remember what our Church once was, what She taught and what happened to Her in the 1960s. As Owens notes, the entire history of this country is being rewritten and omitted by the powers that be to introduce the age of Satan. We must do what we can, while we can, to see that a printed copy of the truth is available to all.

Part I — Flocks Without Shepherds —————————-13

How Catholics kept their Faith without clergy, Arianism and St. Hermenegild,

The Protestant Reformation, No Mass or Sacraments on the American frontier,

The Japanese Church, The French Revolution, Kulturkampf, Ruthenians

refused to receive Sacraments from schismatics, Romanians warned by Our

Lady about schismatic priests, Even Orthodox refused to attend Communist

church services, Catholic Uniates in Ukraine, We ARE the Church of today

Part II — The Sacraments and Their Substitutes ———— 32

Baptism

Valid baptism, Illicit Baptism, “Of the Time and Place of Baptism”  

Confirmation ——————————————————————————– 37

Holy Eucharist/Spiritual Communion ——————————————– 38

The Saints on Spiritual Communion “The Spiritual Combat” by Fr. Dom Lorenzo Scupoli “The Blessed Eucharist,” by Rev. Michael Mueller, The Blue Army,

St. Michael and the Fatima children  

Penance/Act of Perfect Contrition ————————————————— 42

Obligation of eliciting the Act of Contrition, Heaven Open to Souls, No

forgiveness with Perfect Contrition a Jansenist heresy

Extreme Unction —————————————————————————- 49

Plenary indulgence at the hour of death, Spiritual and practical aids for the dead and dying *

Matrimony ————————————————————————————- 51

Comments on the matrimonial decrees of the Holy Office, Why Traditionalists kept these decrees from the faithful, circumstances that nullify marriage, what constitutes invalidity, Canon Law provides a remedy, documenting invalidity, separation and divorc 

Part III — The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass

Cessation of the Continual Sacrifice

and the Abomination of Desolation ————————————- 63 

The Abomination, what or who is the abomination? The cessation of the Continual Sacrifice, consequences of fruitless sacrifices

But what about the Mass? ————————————————– 73

General comments on the Mass, St. Thomas Aquinas on the Sacraments, dry Mass, home church, history of home church

How do I explain to my family we must say Mass at home?

They Have Taken Away My Lord —————————————– 82

Sacraments, Rule of Conduct, Confession, The Holy Eucharist, Last Sacrament

Part IV — Three Methods of St. John’s Mass ——————- 95

Examination of Conscience,* Methods one, two and three

Part V — The Rosary, Fast and Abstinence, the Scapular — 114

            How to say the Rosary, Fast and abstinence laws, The Brown Scapular

Part VI — Catechetical Instruction and Homeschool ——— 120

Part VII — The Lay Apostolate ———————————— 121

Epilogue ——————————————————————- 124

Appendix I – Child’s Examination of Conscience ————————— 125

Appendix II – Marriage Decree from Canon Law Digest, Can. 1098 — 128

Appendix III – Lay Exorcism and Possession ——————————— 134

Appendix IV – Practical and Spiritual Preparation

for Death and Burial ——————————————————————- 143

Please begin the Unity Octave here on January 18.

(Scroll to bottom of this article for the Unity Octave prayers.)

The hidden power behind Zionism and false anti-Semitism

by T. Stanfill Benns | Dec 12, 2025 | New Blog

+Our Lady of Guadalupe+

Introduction

Most Traditionalists assume the Great Monarch prophecies are of Catholic origin, since approved authors writing before 1958 seem to endorse these prophecies as genuine. But doctrine, not prophecy is the bedrock of belief; prophecy and private revelations are proposed for belief on human, not Catholic faith. In fact, Catholics need not even profess belief in revelations of this nature, even when they come from the mouths of saints, and in doing so they commit no sin. Even though a number of saints foresaw the advent of a Great Monarch, many alternate explanations can be offered for their various predictions. Some can be categorized as affected by political interpolations of the various time periods in which these saints lived. Others may easily apply to some other personage not accounted for by the one commenting on the prophecy. Theologians teach that a seer or “prophet” can incorrectly interpret a revelation from God or unintentionally misapply it. Mistakes can be made relaying the message and existing prejudices can affect the transmission of the message, interfering with its accuracy. Mistranslation and misquotation are not uncommon. And errors of the time may be reflected in the prophecy.

Anytime the specific interpretation of a prophecy of any kind interferes with the Church’s ordinary teaching, that prophecy is not to be trusted, Pope Benedict XIV says. To properly evaluate the Great Monarch prophecies, we must keep these exceptions foremost in our minds. The Protestant philosopher John Locke relates that the legend concerning the great monarch-holy pope alliance first began to circulate during the late Middle Ages both in France and Germany, independent of any then-existing “private prophecies.” (Later the visionary Michel Nostradamus popularized the Great Pope/Great King prophecies, possibly owing to his clandestine relations with Satanic members of the royal de Medici family.) Bonnie Prince Charlie’s efforts to regain the English throne and the periodic appearance of pretenders to the throne of France explain the popularity of the Great Monarch predictions.

The Teutonic knights, a German order modeled on the Templars is said to have secretly continued that order in conjunction with their English and French counterparts, the Knights Hospitaller. The Teutonic Knights admitted only racially pure Germans of noble ancestry and cultivated the Great Monarch legend to promote the belief that a long-awaited emperor from imperial Germany was destined to rule Europe. In a similar manner, a French secret society today known as the Priory of Sion was carefully guarding the ancient bloodlines of England and France with the help and approval of certain French prelates. The Priory used the romantic legends of King Arthur’s Court and the Holy Grail to conceal their work in wrappings appealing to the common man. It was these pseudo-Catholic prelates embroiled in the work of the Priory that Our Lady came to La Salette to warn us against.

Ancient history is filled with examples of the anticipation of savior kings allied with holy priests, both in pagan and pre-Christian literature. But it was the Israelites who in Christ’s time looked for a glorious earthly king and therefore rejected Him, even though he was of the Davidic line as Scripture foretold. This is because they preferred the “second Messiah” of their own understanding to the true Messiah sent by God. “For the Jews believed that Zacharias 1:20 foretold two Messiahs, one a suffering Messiah, descended from the tribe of Joseph, Elias and the priest Zadok, and the other a glorious messiah, son of David. The Chosen People of Christ’s time were a carnal people who had little use for suffering; they believed they already had suffered enough. They longed for a return to the time of the kings of earlier Israelitic centuries — not unlike the medievalism of the German people — and their leaders obliged them by creating a projection of a second Messiah to satisfy this longing. Therefore, they denied Christ as Eternal High Priest in favor of this earthly king yet to come.

The Priory and La Salette

In mentioning the Secret of La Salette above, some will point out that the seer Maximin gave a lengthy testimony regarding the Great Monarch. Maximin’s secret,  that a Great Monarch will rule in the end times, was never published; he released it only to Pope Pius IX, and now it seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth. Easily influenced by others but always a fierce supporter of the apparition, Maximin obviously confided some details to an acquaintance with Monarchist convictions, who then published an unofficial version of the boy’s secret. Although Maximin strongly renounced this publication and forced its retraction, the secret was published as his own by many different commentators.  Melanie’s secret was likewise embellished and misrepresented by her own confessor.

It is interesting that there appear to be connections between those who wrongfully published Maxmin’s secret and one of the key figures of the Priory of Sion, Abbe Berengar Sauniere of Rennes le-Chateau in the Pyrenees. Author Philip Coppens says that Sauniere and the founder of the Mariavite schism, the excommunicate Abbe Boullan, both Monarchists, were in contact with each other. Like Sauniere, Boullan had accumulated wealth that no one could quite account for. He was a follower of the Theosophist Madame Blavatsky and also frequented Rosicrucian circles according to Mgr. Cristiani. Boullan lived with a woman, Adele Chevalier, who was a former friend of Melanie Calvat’s.

Sauniere, Coppens relates, was very interested in the Secret of La Salette, as was Boullan. It is even rumored that Sauniere had an affair with a distant actor relative of Melanie Calvat’s. During this same time period another Monarchist, the alleged convert Leon Bloy (championed by Maritain, Montini’s close friend) also was a patron of these same circles. Bloy was obsessed with La Salette throughout his lifetime. Sauniere, Boullan and Bloy all frequented the (Priory) Chapel of San Sulpice; it is impossible to believe that they never connected with each other. Bloy’s curious fascination with La Salette is confirmed by the 1908 publication of his book, She Who Weeps, an anthology of his writings on the apparition. Despite the defense of his friends who swore to his orthodoxy, Mgr. Cristiani calls Bloy nothing less than a Satanist: for his writings reveal that he believed the Holy Ghost and Lucifer were one and the same. That no Great Monarch of a truly Catholic heritage has ever appeared can be explained by what the female La Salette seer Melanie said: that many things would come about only if morals improved and the people did penance. The same message was delivered at Fatima. Needless to say, no penance was done and morals only disintegrated.

Another item worth noting is that all those predicting a Great Monarch place him as ruling prior to the reign of Antichrist. This is evidenced in Rev. Holzhauser’s comments: “The Sixth Age of the Spirit commences with the powerful Monarch and the Holy Pontiff as previously mentioned and will last until the appearance of the Antichrist… Antichrist and his army will conquer Rome, kill the Pope and take the throne. He will restore the Turkish regime destroyed by the Great Monarch.  The Jews, knowing from the Bible that Jerusalem will be the seat of the Messiah, will come from everywhere and accept Antichrist as the Messiah.”

Antichrist’s armies did conquer Rome and usurp the papacy, but it was a quiet and totally clandestine takeover. It was known however amongst the secret societies, who broadcast their triumph by popularizing Nero’s Cross, the well-known universal “peace” symbol. According to ancientsymbols.org, “Though the Cross of Nero became known as a peace symbol in the 1960s, it began as a mockery of the Christian Cross and a symbol of Christianity’s failure. [The Saracens in the early centuries A.D. emblazoned it on their shields.] The sign depicts a circle containing an inverted Cross with its anchor shattered, denoting Nero’s idea that world peace might be achieved without Christianity. The Dead Man’s Rune is another name for the emblem.” And of course, since St. Perter was crucified upside down, this also translates to the death of the papacy itself. The peace symbol was first advanced as such for the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1958.

All this was done to prepare the world for the usurpation of the Holy See and the final war to banish Christianity. By setting up a throne for Charles III in the Vatican, the Roman usurpers are preparing the way for the eventual reign of their version of Antichrist. But as has been stated here before, how could any version of the Man of Sin correspond to Scriptural prophecies today? Paul 6 undoubtedly accomplished all that Holy Scripture attributed to Antichrist. How destroy the Church and Catholic culture now? How dethrone a true pope and take away the true Latin Mass, not the ones falsely celebrated by LibTrad pseudo-clergy and some Novus Ordo outlets? By presenting as the high priest of an apostate religion, as will be seen below.

Should we assume, given the above, that the seers who predicted a Great Monarch were not reliable or that their message was deliberately corrupted? Not necessarily. We have said that the Great Monarch’s arrival was conditional, provided that Catholics performed sufficient prayer and penance, which was not the case. It also is possible that in seeing things as in a vision, some seers saw what appeared to be priests and bishops dressed in clerical garb functioning after the arrival of Antichrist, but who were not actually what they appeared to be. And the enemy used their prophecies to redirect Catholics into the “Traditionalist” sects and other channels. Meanwhile, Paul 6 reigned in Rome as the high priest of Zionism.

Paul 6: True champion of Zionism and false claims of antisemitism

 It seems enough to point to the fact that Paul 6 publicly wore the Jewish High Priest’s Ephod or rationale (hanging between each side of Paul 6’s stole in this photo at left), to prove that he indeed was at least an agent or a secret son of some sort to those Jews working in concert with Freemasonry. Was he their Messiah? No one pretends to know Freemasonry’s secrets, but their pyramid boasts Antichrist as its pinnacle. That they considered him a sort of Jewish savior is clear from these links:

https://legallegacy.wordpress.com/2020/10/28/october-28-1965-pope-paul-vi-absolves-jews-of-collective-guilt-for-the-crucifixion-of-jesus-christ/; https://www.ajc.org/news/from-regret-to-acclaim-a-jewish-reaction-to-nostra-aetate;  https://mysteriuminiquitatis-2thessalonians2.blogspot.com/2023/08/paul-vi-wearing-jewish-freemasonic.html

What is the significance of the ephod? The Biblehub site relates: “The ephod was a sacred vestment worn by the high priest… serving as a symbol of the high priest’s role as a mediator between God and the people. The ephod was fastened with a skillfully woven waistband and had two shoulder pieces, each set with an onyx stone engraved with the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. This design signified the high priest’s representation of the entire nation before God, bearing their names on his shoulders as he performed his duties (Exodus 28:12)… As the high priest wore the ephod, he acted as an intermediary between God and the Israelites, offering sacrifices and prayers on their behalf… In addition to its role in mediation, the ephod was also associated with divine guidance. The high priest used the ephod in conjunction with the Urim and Thummim, mysterious objects placed in the breastpiece of judgment, to discern God’s will in important matters (Exodus 28:30)… Beyond its immediate function, the ephod also appears in other biblical contexts, sometimes associated with idolatry or improper worship. For example, Gideon made an ephod that became a snare to him and his family (Judges 8:27). This misuse of the ephod serves as a cautionary tale about the potential for sacred symbols to be corrupted when removed from their intended purpose and divine instruction.

Paul 6, then, in wearing the ephod, officially announced to the Jews and those among the public who recognized its significance, the Judaization of what once was the Church and the direction of all its corrupted ceremonies and prayers to the benefit of the Jewish people.  That it also signified the idolatrous nature of the Novus Ordo Missae at the same time indicates the extent of Montini’s wickedness and that of his fellow conspirators. Jewish officials flocked to Rome to consult with Roncalli and Montini during their time there. As Vicomte Leon de Poncins and many others have fully documented, John 23 and Paul 6 openly schemed with the Jews to so arrange and conduct Vatican 2 that the resulting remodeled “church” could in no way offend their beliefs. The oft-quoted 1966 article in Look magazine, How the Jews Changed Catholic Thinking offers clear testimony to this. The Jews demanded and received the removal of any reference to their guilt in Christ’s death, openly stated during Good Friday services. And it is no coincidence that they were assisted in their quest by none other than Pro Deo University’s Felix Morlion, arch-conspirator and champion of religious liberty.

As a result, the false Vatican 2 council taught that the Jews of yesterday and today, as a whole, cannot be blamed for Christ’s death and are not to be reviled or persecuted by Catholics — they intimated that this was only a reiteration of the teachings of Mit brenunder sorge and other papal documents. It is Paul 6’s insistence that the Jews not be considered as reprobate, i.e., incapable of salvation that compromised the faith. Already John 23 had removed reference to the “perfidious” (unbelieving) Jews in the Good Friday liturgy. Paul 6 strengthened this decision of his predecessor by further revisions, calling for the removal of any references to the “conversion of the Jews,” the existence of a “veil over their hearts” and the need for deliverance “from their darkness.” And this contrary to the commonly accepted interpretation of these Scriptural passages as indicative, at least, of the complicity of the Jewish elders in Christ’s crucifixion.

The primary author of Nostra Aetate, Gregory Baum, was a convert to Catholicism. His father was a Jewish professor, his mother a Protestant. He was ordained to the priesthood sometime in the 1950s and served as an advisor at the false Vatican 2 council. He later left the priesthood and married an ex-nun, all the while proclaiming his bi-sexuality. He was an early proponent of gay rights, (Wikipedia). In promulgating Nostra Aetate, Paul 6 inferred, contrary to the clear teaching of Holy Scripture and the Church for 2,000 years, THAT THE JEWS COULD ANTICIPATE SALVATION WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CONVERSION. This is a clear denial of Scriptural truth. Was he not then their Messiah, by “saving” them from their previous fate?! And certainly John Paul 2 strengthened this notion beyond the Jews’ fondest dreams.

All this is contrary to the truths of faith prescribed by Pope St. Pius X in his Oath Against Modernism which reads, in part: “With a firm faith I believe that the Church, guardian and mistress of the revealed word, was instituted proximately and directly by the true and historical Christ Himself, while He sojourned among us, and that the same was built upon Peter, the chief of the apostolic hierarchy, and his successors till the end of time… I accept sincerely the doctrine of faith transmitted from the apostles through the orthodox fathers, always in the same sense and interpretation, even to us…” And from the Council of Trent: “…No one who distorts the Sacred Scripture, according to his own opinions, shall dare to interpret the said Sacred Scriptures contrary to the sense which is held by holy mother Church, whose duty it is to judge regarding the true sense and interpretation of holy Scriptures, or even contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers…,” (DZ  786).

So not only did Paul 6 deny the clear words of Holy Scripture in his pronouncement on the Jews, he also broke with the unanimous opinion of the Fathers and the common and constant teaching of his predecessors, violating that “same sense and interpretation” ever maintained by the continual magisterium. He obliterated Tradition by altering the liturgy and its condemnation of the Jews, but then that paled in comparison to his abrogation of the Latin Mass. But we need not insist that Paul 6 be formally identified as the Jewish Messiah for the prophecies on Antichrist to be fulfilled. Rev. Denis Fahey in his The Kingship of Christ and Conversion of the Jewish Nation identifies this point as only probable, not certain. At least part of this point is fulfilled, however, for Fahey says the Jews will assist Antichrist in setting up his kingdom and certainly this was the case. A probable opinion is not binding on anyone. One, it is only an opinion; two, probability is measured in degrees. Acclamation as their actual Messiah would mean little, Fahey explains, since some 25 men have enjoyed this same distinction over the course of Jewish history. It seems then that even without an actual affirmation, Montini served them well in this role.

Conclusion

The Great Monarch prophecy certainly cannot be fulfilled by King Charles III. It was a conditional prophecy, a grace to be earned only by prayer, reformed morals and penance. But the Zionist goal of seizing the papacy for their own definitely was fulfilled in Montini, the restored high priest of Judaism. Those decrying Bibbi Netanyahu and Zionism, especially members of the Novus Ordo sect, are deluded if they believe the real enemy is any ruler of present-day Israel. The spiritual leader of Israel, the power behind the throne, continues to reign through his successors in Rome. He clearly told us who he was. Anyone seeing this who remains in the Novus Ordo or Traditionalist sects and oppose the aims of Zionism are complicit in the takeover of the Church for not speaking out. Anytime an apostate openly reveals himself as such and the source of his apostasy is not investigated and fully revealed, silence and a lack of due diligence imply consent. The first photo of Paul 6 above has been in existence since the late 1970s. It triggered all of our own research and conclusions.

So those condemning Zionism who present as Catholic, even though they may rightly link it to a worldwide conspiracy — to Freemasonry and the Illuminati — are guilty of obscuring the truth. They may not be fully aware of it or know it at all; they may know it and dismiss it as impossible or capable of a rational explanation. Most likely, if they dismiss it, they do so because they have bought the lie that the Church can never lose her hierarchy, even though the Church Herself has never taught this and Holy Scripture contradicts this false assumption. And that includes those who are exposing the conspiracy behind the assassination of Charlie Kirk and what has developed since his death in September.

The one thing about Kirk that has been missed altogether is the comments he made about Francis and Leo 14 before he died. He styled them as Marxists and unworthy pastors and suggested Catholics should find someone else to lead them. He then joined this observation with a condemnation of Israel’s conduct in the war with Gaza. And that, my friends, is why he was executed. If the significance of these comments is not properly appreciated, the real reason for his death will never be fully explored and exposed. Those advocating for Kirk re-echo his cry “Go max.” It’s time that all of those who really wish to stand for truth not just mouth those words, but actually put them into action. Viva Cristo Rey!