Cardinal Manning, the Pope, and the Antichrist
Catholic experts say the title “Peter the Roman” is potent in that it indicates the last pope may satisfy the desires of Rome and its dominionist pals in America by reviving an authoritarian Babylonian State Religion. On this order, the man who in 2002 correctly predicted that the pope succeeding John Paul II would be named Benedict XVI, Ronald L. Conte Jr., believes the next pope will take the name Pius XIII, and that “Peter the Roman” implies this pope “will reaffirm the authority of the Roman Pontiff over the Church” and “will emphasize the supremacy of the Roman Catholic Faith and the Roman Catholic Church above all other religions and denominations, and its authority over all Christians and all peoples of the world.” To this, Conte adds, “During the reign of Pope Peter the Roman, the great apostasy begins” and this pope will mark “the first part of the tribulation, during our generation.”[i]
Conte's eschatology seems to stem all the way back to Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning who was Lord Archbishop of Westminster from 1865–1892. Before conversion to Catholicism he was an influential Anglican cleric but lost faith in the Church of England in 1850, when, “in the so-called Gorham judgment, the Privy Council successfully ordered the Church to institute an Evangelical clergyman who denied that the sacrament of baptism had an objective effect of baptismal regeneration. The denial of the objective effect of the sacraments was to Manning and many others a grave heresy.” This contradicting of tradition within the church by order of a civil, secular court was too much for Manning, who viewed it as evidence the Anglican Church “was merely a man-made creation of the English Parliament.”[ii]
After departing the Church of England, Manning converted to Catholicism and entered the seminary. He was ordained a priest June 14, 1851, and by 1865, had risen to Archbishop of Westminster. He was a significant presence in setting the direction of the modern Catholic Church, and achieved particular fame for his doctrine of papal infallibility (the dogma that the pope is preserved from even the possibility of error when he speaks “ex cathedra”), which became dogma during the First Vatican Council of 1870. Manning’s unrelenting emphasis on the prerogatives and powers of the pope, including authority over local temporal and spiritual hierarchies such as local bishops, defined ultramontanism in his day—the idea that papal superiority should exist even over councils and kings.
Historians view the nineteenth-century revival of ultramontanism as progressing through three distinct stages:
1814. The revival of the Jesuit Order, which was always the mainstay of curial as opposed to local authority.
1864. The issuing by Pius IX of the Syllabus, in which Catholicism and any form of liberalism were held to be incompatible.
1870. The declaration by the First Vatican Council that the Pope is infallible when he makes, by virtue of his office, a solemn pronouncement on faith or morals. This declaration, though not conceding the claim of administrative infallibility which many Ultramontanes would have wished, marked a substantial triumph for their point of view.[iii]
These facts make Manning all the more remarkable given how during the 1800–1900s a series of scholarly opinions were published outlining how events in the Roman Catholic Church combined with long-time anti-papist goals by secret Masonic infiltrators would give rise in the last days to great apostasy in Rome and the advent of Antichrist. Among the strongest proponents of this eschatology was Cardinal Manning himself, who delivered a series of lectures in 1861 under the title “The Present Crises of the Holy See Tested by Prophecy” (later incorporated into a larger study entitled “The Temporal Power of the Vicar of Jesus Christ”) in which Manning foresaw a future crises in the Roman Catholic Church initiated by the type of ecumenism and flexible dogma that many modern conservative Catholics have loathed following the Second Vatican Council (October 1962 through December 1965). Manning believed this change to orthodoxy would undermine the authority of the Church and finally result in a departure of the profession of Catholic faith by the nations together with the displacement of the true pope by a false prophet, thus ushering in the Antichrist and global apostasy. Manning also believed secret societies like the Freemasons were part of this conspiracy. “The secret societies have long ago undermined and honeycombed the Christian society of Europe, and are at this moment struggling onward towards Rome, the center of all Christian order in the world,”[iv] he wrote. But when he looked at the prophecy in Revelation 18 concerning the end-time destruction of Mystery Babylon, Manning saw it was the hand of God in judgment of worldwide apostasy emanating from Rome:
We read in the Book Apocalypse, of the city of Rome, that she said in the pride of her heart, “I sit as a queen, and am no widow, and sorrow I shall not see. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day: death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be burned with fire, because God is strong who shall judge her.” Some of the greatest writers of the Church tell us that…the great City of Seven Hills…the city of Rome will probably become apostate…and that Rome will again be punished, for he will depart from it; and the judgment of God will fall…[v]
Thus, just as the Prophecy of the Popes and numerous other Catholic visionary conveyances do, Manning foresaw the destruction of the city of Rome as a result of its partnership with the Antichrist. This doctrine would have been unfamiliar to most Catholics in those days, so Manning explained how Catholicism’s greatest theologians agreed with this point of view:
The apostasy of the city of Rome…and its destruction by Antichrist may be thoughts so new to many Catholics, that I think it well to recite the text of theologians, of greatest repute. First, Malvenda, who writes expressly on the subject, states as the opinion of Ribera, Gaspar Melus, Viegas, Suarez, Bellarmine, and Bosius, that Rome shall apostatize from the faith, drive away the Vicar of Christ, and return to its ancient paganism. Malvenda’s words are:
But Rome itself in the last times of the world will return to its ancient idolatry, power, and imperial greatness. It will cast out its Pontiff, altogether apostatize from the Christian faith, terribly persecute the Church, shed the blood of martyrs more cruelly than ever, and will recover its former state of abundant wealth, or even greater than it had under its first rulers.
Lessius says: “In the time of Antichrist, Rome shall be destroyed, as we see openly from the thirteenth chapter of the Apocalypse;” and again: “The woman whom thou sawest is the great city, which hath kingdom over the kings of the earth, in which is signified Rome in its impiety, such as it was in the time of St. John, and shall be again at the end of the world.” And Bellarmine: “In the time of Antichrist, Rome shall be desolated and burnt, as we learn from the sixteenth verse of the seventeenth chapter of the Apocalypse.” On which words the Jesuit Erbermann comments as follows: “We all confess with Bellarmine that the Roman people, a little before the end of the world, will return to paganism, and drive out the Roman Pontiff.”
Viegas, on the eighteenth chapter of the Apocalypse says: “Rome, in the last age of the world, after it has apostatized from the faith, will attain great power and splendor of wealth, and its sway will be widely spread throughout the world, and flourish greatly. Living in luxury and the abundance of all things, it will worship idols, and be steeped in all kinds of superstition, and will pay honor to false gods. And because of the vast effusion of the blood of martyrs which was shed under the emperors, God will most severely and justly avenge them, and it shall be utterly destroyed, and burned by a most terrible and afflicting conflagration.”[vi]
Throughout history including recent times, numerous Catholic priests have built on the foundation laid by Cardinal Manning and have often been surprisingly outspoken on their agreement regarding the inevitable danger not only of apostate Rome but of the False Prophet rising from within the ranks of Catholicism itself as a result of secret satanic “Illuminati-Masonic” influences. (The term “Illuminati” as used here is not strictly a reference to the Bavarian movement founded May 1, 1776, by Jesuit-taught Adam Weishaupt, but as indicative of a modern multinational power elite, an occult hierarchy operating behind current supranatural and global political machinations.) According to Catholic priests such as Father E. Sylvester Berry, whose book The Apocalypse of Saint John foretold the usurpation of the Papacy by a false prophet; Father Herman Bernard Kramer, whose work The Book of Destiny painted a terrifying scenario in which Satan enters the church and assassinates the true pope (possibly during conclave) in order that his false pope can rise to rule the world; as well as similar beliefs by priests like Father John F. O’Connor, Father Alfred Kunz, and Father Malachi Martin, this will happen because secret-society and sinister false Catholic infiltrators understand the geopolitical influence of Rome in the world is indispensable for controlling future global elements in matters of church and state. The Roman Catholic Church represents one-sixth of the world’s population and over half of all professing Christians, has its own diplomatic corps of ambassadors posted in industrialized nations globally, and over one hundred eighty nations of the world send their ambassadors to the capital city, the Vatican.
In a two-hour presentation (available on DVD), Father O’Connor gave a homily titled “The Reign of the Antichrist,” in which he described how changes within society and in the institution were already at work before his death to provide for the coming of Antichrist. In this sermon and elsewhere, O’Connor outlined the catalyst for this scheme unfolding as a result of “Masonic Conspirators” within the organization whose plan, called “Alta Vendita,” would essentially take control of the papacy and help the False Prophet deceive the world’s faithful (including Catholics) into worshipping Antichrist.
The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita (or simply the Alta Vendita) is a nineteenth-century Italian document, allegedly written by the highest lodge of the Italian Carbonari—a secret revolutionary society associated with Freemasonry—both of which had been publically condemned by Rome. The document clearly maps out a blueprint for infiltrating the Catholic Church in order to slowly turn it into an instrument of propaganda for the society’s principles and goals, ultimately seeking to produce Catholic laity, clergy, and finally a pope who would be warm to the ideas of the Enlightenment—the eighteenth-century philosophical view of man as held by naturalists, atheists, deists, and Freemasons, who sought to reform society by elevating science and intellect over religion.
In the nineteenth century, Pope Pius IX and Pope Leo XIII both asked for the Alta Vendita to be published. In 1859, Jacques Crétineau-Joly did so in his book, L’Église romaine en face de la Révolution, and in 1885 it was published in English by Monsignor George F. Dillon in The War of Anti-Christ with the Church and Christian Civilization. Due to its importance to this chapter, we have provided a significant portion of the text below:
PERMANENT INSTRUCTION OF THE ALTA VENDITA
The Papacy has at all times exercised a decisive action upon the affairs of Italy. By the hands, by the voices, by the pens, by the hearts of its innumerable bishops, priests, monks, nuns and people in all latitudes, the Papacy finds devotedness without end ready for martyrdom, and that to enthusiasm. Everywhere, whenever it pleases to call upon them, it has friends ready to die or lose all for its cause. This is an immense leverage which the Popes alone have been able to appreciate to its full power, and as yet they have used it only to a certain extent. Today there is no question of reconstituting for ourselves that power, the prestige of which is for the moment weakened. Our final end is that of Voltaire and of the French Revolution, the destruction forever of Catholicism and even of the Christian idea which, if left standing on the ruins of Rome, would be the resuscitation of Christianity later on. But to attain more certainly that result, and not prepare ourselves with gaiety of heart for reverses which adjourn indefinitely, or compromise for ages, the success of a good cause, we must not pay attention to those braggarts of Frenchmen, those cloudy Germans, those melancholy Englishmen, all of whom imagine they can kill Catholicism, now with an impure song, then with an illogical deduction; at another time, with a sarcasm smuggled in like the cottons of Great Britain. Catholicism has a life much more tenacious than that. It has seen the most implacable, the most terrible adversaries, and it has often had the malignant pleasure of throwing holy water on the tombs of the most enraged. Let us permit, then, our brethren of these countries to give themselves up to the sterile intemperance of their anti-Catholic zeal. Let them even mock at our Madonnas and our apparent devotion. With this passport we can conspire at our ease, and arrive little by little at the end we have in view.
Now the Papacy has been for seventeen centuries inherent to the history of Italy. Italy cannot breathe or move without the permission of the Supreme Pastor. With him she has the hundred arms of Briareus, without him she is condemned to a pitiable impotence. She has nothing but divisions to foment, hatreds to break out, and hostilities to manifest themselves from the highest chain of the Alps to the lowest of the Appenines. We cannot desire such a state of things. It is necessary, then, to seek a remedy for that situation. The remedy is found. The Pope, whoever he may be, will never come to the secret societies. It is for the secret societies to come first to the Church, in the resolve to conquer the two.
The work which we have undertaken is not the work of a day, nor of a month, nor of a year. It may last many years, a century perhaps, but in our ranks the soldier dies and the fight continues.
We do not mean to win the Popes to our cause, to make them neophytes of our principles, and propagators of our ideas. That would be a ridiculous dream, no matter in what manner events may turn. Should cardinals or prelates, for example, enter, willingly or by surprise, in some manner, into a part of our secrets, it would be by no means a motive to desire their elevation to the See of Peter. That elevation would destroy us. Ambition alone would bring them to apostasy from us. The needs of power would force them to immolate us. That which we ought to demand, that which we should seek and expect, as the Jews expected the Messiah, is a Pope according to our wants…. Do you wish to know the reason? It is because by that we should have no more need of the vinegar of Hannibal, no more need of the powder of cannon, no more need even of our arms. We have the little finger of the successor of St. Peter engaged in the plot, and that little finger is of more value for our crusade than all the Innocents, the Urbans, and the St. Bernards of Christianity.
We do not doubt that we shall arrive at that supreme term of all our efforts; but when? but how? The unknown does not yet manifest itself. Nevertheless, as nothing should separate us from the plan traced out; as, on the contrary, all things should tend to it – as if success were to crown the work scarcely sketched out tomorrow – we wish in this instruction which must rest a secret for the simple initiated, to give to those of the Supreme Lodge, councils with which they should enlighten the universality of the brethren, under the form of an instruction or memorandum. It is of special importance, and because of a discretion, the motives of which are transparent, never to permit it to be felt that these counsels are orders emanating from the Alta Vendita….
It is to the youth we must go. It is that which we must seduce; it is that which we must bring under the banner of the secret societies.…
Now then, in order to secure to us a Pope in the manner required, it is necessary to fashion for that Pope a generation worthy of the reign of which we dream. Leave on one side old age and middle life, go to the youth, and, if possible, even to infancy. Never speak in their presence a word of impiety or impurity. Maxima debetur puero reverentia. Never forget these words of the poet for they will preserve you from licences which it is absolutely essential to guard against for the good of the cause. In order to reap profit at the home of each family, in order to give yourself the right of asylum at the domestic hearth, you ought to present yourself with all the appearance of a man grave and moral. Once your reputation is established in the colleges, in the gymnasiums, in the universities, and in the seminaries – once that you shall have captivated the confidence of professors and students, so act that those who are principally engaged in the ecclesiastical state should love to seek your conversation. Nourish their souls with the splendours of ancient Papal Rome. There is always at the bottom of the Italian heart a regret for Republican Rome. Excite, enkindle those natures so full of warmth and of patriotic fire. Offer them at first, but always in secret, inoffensive books, poetry resplendent with national emphasis; then little by little you will bring your disciples to the degree of cooking desired. When upon all the points of the ecclesiastical state at once, this daily work shall have spread our ideas as the light, then you will be able to appreciate the wisdom of the counsel in which we take the initiative.
Events, which in our opinion, precipitate themselves too rapidly, go necessarily in a few months’ time to bring on an intervention of Austria. There are fools who in the lightness of their hearts please themselves in casting others into the midst of perils, and, meanwhile, there are fools who at a given hour drag on even wise men. The revolution which they meditate in Italy will only end in misfortunes and persecutions. Nothing is ripe, neither the men nor the things, and nothing shall be for a long time yet; but from these evils you can easily draw one new chord, and cause it to vibrate in the hearts of the young clergy. That is the hatred of the stranger. Cause the German to become ridiculous and odious even before his foreseen entry. With the idea of the Pontifical supremacy, mix always the old memories of the wars of the priesthood and the Empire. Awaken the smouldering passions of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, and thus you will obtain for yourselves the reputation of good Catholics and pure patriots.
That reputation will open the way for our doctrines to pass to the bosoms of the young clergy, and go even to the depths of convents. In a few years the young clergy will have, by the force of events, invaded all the functions. They will govern, administer, and judge. They will form the council of the Sovereign. They will be called upon to choose the Pontiff who will reign; and that Pontiff, like the greater part of his contemporaries, will be necessarily imbued with the Italian and humanitarian principles which we are about to put in circulation. It is a little grain of mustard which we place in the earth, but the sun of Justice will develop it even to be a great power, and you will see one day what a rich harvest that little seed will produce.
In the way which we trace for our brethren there are found great obstacles to conquer, difficulties of more than one kind to surmount. They will be overcome by experience and by perspicacity; but the end is beautiful. What does it matter to put all the sails to the wind in order to attain it. You wish to revolutionize Italy? Seek out the Pope of whom we give the portrait. You wish to establish the reign of the elect upon the throne of the prostitute of Babylon? Let the clergy march under your banner in the belief always that they march under the banner of the Apostolic Keys. You wish to cause the last vestige of tyranny and of oppression to disappear? Lay your nets like Simon Barjona. Lay them in the depths of sacristies, seminaries, and convents, rather than in the depths of the sea, and if you will precipitate nothing you will give yourself a draught of fishes more miraculous than his. The fisher of fishes will become a fisher of men. You will bring yourselves as friends around the Apostolic Chair. You will have fished up a Revolution in Tiara and Cope, marching with Cross and banner – a Revolution which needs only to be spurred on a little to put the four quarters of the world on fire.
Let each act of your life tend then to discover the Philosopher’s Stone. The alchemists of the middle ages lost their time and the gold of their dupes in the quest of this dream. That of the secret societies will be accomplished for the most simple of reasons, because it is based on the passions of man. Let us not be discouraged then by a check, a reverse, or a defeat. Let us prepare our arms in the silence of the lodges, dress our batteries, flatter all passions the most evil and the most generous, and all lead us to think that our plans will succeed one day above even our most improbable calculations.[vii]
In the wake of Vatican II, traditionalist Roman Catholic groups see evidence that the Alta Vendita has indeed succeeded “above even the most improbable calculations.” As a result, some have developed a critical attitude toward church hierarchy in the belief that post-Vatican II teachings contradict and infect solemn Catholic dogmas with modernism, ecumenism, collegiality, and religious liberty, which are clearly reminiscent of the secret society’s objectives. Such secessionists point to examples like John Paul II’s 1982 prayer meeting at Assisi with over one hundred religious leaders including pagans, his meetings with the Dalai Lama (who placed a Buddhist statue on the altar in the Church of St. Francis), his receiving the mark of the adorers of the Hindu god Shiva, his meetings with devil worshipping voodoo high-priests (during which he even justified voodoo as possessing “truth and good, seeds of the Word”) and so on, all in accordance with the principles of Vatican II. Radical Catholic groups like the Sedevacantists (Latin: sede vacante, “the seat being vacant”) consider such activity evidence that the popes following Vatican II are illegitimate heretics and that the Holy See of Rome has been technically “vacant” since the death of either Pope Pius XII in 1958 or Pope John XXIII in 1963 (with some classifying John XXIII a Modernist antipope).
Some believe this has even paved the way for a showdown during the next period of vacancy in the papal office that could witness frustrated traditionalists among the College of Cardinals desperate to elect a sitting Bishop of Rome as apostolic successor of Saint Peter (Petrus Romanus) who will institute a vigilant revival and reinstitution of pre-Vatican II authoritarianism. This conflict seems to be boiling under the surface, largely unknown to the public, but seen by such mystics as Father Herman Bernard Kramer (mentioned earlier) in his work, “The Book of Destiny.” During a strange interpretation he made of the twelfth chapter of the Book of Revelation concerning “the great wonder” mentioned in verse one, Father Kramer writes:
The ‘sign’ in heaven is that of a woman with child crying out in her travail and anguish of delivery. In that travail, she gives birth to some definite ‘person’ who is to RULE the Church with a rod of iron (verse 5). It then points to a conflict waged within the Church to elect one who was to ‘rule all nations’ in the manner clearly stated. In accord with the text this is unmistakably a PAPAL ELECTION, for only Christ and his Vicar have the divine right to rule ALL NATIONS… But at this time the great powers may take a menacing attitude to hinder the election of the logical and expected candidate by threats of a general apostasy, assassination or imprisonment of this candidate if elected.”[viii]
Although we disagree with Kramer’s interpretation of the book of Revelation, the idea that a specific “person” was born and is now of the appropriate age to fulfill the incarnation of St. Malachy’s Prophecy of the Popes, is without question. Whatever one makes of the Petrus Romanus prediction--and its divine or demonic inspiration--the pope following Benedict XVI is the last on the list. Furthermore, Kramer’s fear that “great powers may take a menacing attitude to hinder the election of the logical and expected candidate” echoes the sentiment of priests mentioned elsewhere in the upcoming book Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope is Here who see a crises for the Church coming, and the Man of Sin rising as a result.
Tom Horn
Raidersnewsupdate.com
