The Undermining of the Catholic Church

221 Pages·1998·0.973 MB·English

by  Mary Ball Martinez

MARY BALL MARTÍNEZ
of the
CATHOLIC
CHURCH
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Pagination Note
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in the 4th edition of book
All pages in this file
conform to book pages
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MARY BALL MARTÍNEZ
The
UNDERMINING
of the
CATHOLIC
CHURCH
Christian Book Club of America
Post Office Box 900566
Palmdale, California 93590-0566
2007
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By the same author:
FROM ROME URGENTLY
Copyright © 1991 by Mary Ball Martínez
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced without written permission from the publisher,
except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in
connection with a review.
Library of Congress Catalog Card (U.S.A.)
Number 91-090355
ISBN 3-929170-29-9
First edition, February 1991
Second edition, August 1991
Third edition, August 1998
Fourth edition, 2007
This Fourth Printing/Edition is produced
with permission and without any changes
made to the preceding edition.
C.B.C., 2007
Printed in the United States of America
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CONTENTS
I METAMORPHOSIS...........................................................9
II CHRONICLE: 1903-1963..............................................29
Forming an Alliance...............................................................31
Suffering a Setback ................................................................40
Starting Again.........................................................................45
Quelling the French ................................................................52
Quelling the Mexicans ...........................................................56
Heading Toward War .............................................................63
Digging Deeper ......................................................................73
Safeguarding the Marxists .....................................................78
Quashing the Mind .................................................................89
Savaging Tradition .................................................................95
Gathering for the Kill ............................................................106
Collecting the Signatures ......................................................112
III MEN AT THE TOP.........................................................121
John XXIII................................................................... 123
Pius XII ....................................................................... 127
Paul VI.....................................................................................133
John Paul I................................................................... 137
John Paul II .............................................................................145
IV REALITY IN THE NINETIES................................................161
Control ..................................................................................163
Anathema...............................................................................171
Diaspora.................................................................................180
New Catholic, Old Catholic ..................................................191
Postscript............................................................................. 204
Sources................................................................................ 210
Bibliography ....................................................................... 211
Index...................................................................................................214
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To the Traditionalists,
those Roman Catholics
scattered over the world
who are resisting every effort
to take from them
the Faith of their fathers
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I
METAMORPHOSIS
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In Rome the hours before dawn are never really warm,
even in summer. It was the vigil of Pentecost and virtually
summer (the great movable feasts came late in the year
1971) when some four thousand men and women from many
parts of the world knelt through the night on chill
flagstones below the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica. In the
immense circle of the piazza, only dimly lit by an
uncertain moon and a few electric bulbs hidden high
among the all-embracing Bernini columns, they would
have looked from above, even in such numbers, like small
huddled shadows.
Ahead, as if it were the object of their prayers, the
great facade, secure atop its thirty-eight steps, immutable
now for four hundred years, its magnificent stones
successors to lesser stones, said to cover the bones of the
Galilean fisherman, Simon called Peter. Here was the
core of Christendom, the Rock and the tangible sign of
Christian permanence. For the kneeling pilgrims the darkness
itself added dimension and wonder to the wall the Basilica
made, a wall to hold back not just the dawn that would soon
come out of the East, but a wall to hold back all the false
doctrines on earth. Hardly a handful among the crowd
would have known that already behind the brave facade a
hollowing-out process, an eating away of strength and
substance, had been going on for more than half a century,
that the Catholic Church had been undermined.
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All of them knew that something was wrong; otherwise
they would not have joined the pilgrimage. In France, in
Germany, England, Argentina, the United States, Australia,
each in his own parish, had been stricken by sudden
change, by orders to worship in a strange new way. Nearly
half of the pilgrims were French, having arrived on
chartered trains from Paris and all had come to plead with the
Holy Father to give them back the Mass, the Sacraments and
a Catechism for their children.
Had any of them looked beyond the pillars and high
over to the right, they could have made out the shuttered
windows of the papal apartments. Was the Pope asleep?
Could he sleep, knowing they were there? From where
he lay, the murmured Aves and Paters of the fifteen decades
of the rosary cannot have sounded much louder than the
play of water on the ancient fountain in the piazza.
In Latin a French priest led one decade, a lawyer from
Canada the second, a farmer from Bavaria the third. At
midnight everyone rose to make “the way of the Cross”.
Holding lighted candles, they cast long shadows as they
moved in slow procession between the enormous columns.
With no painting to remind them of the suffering of Christ
they listened as a young man from one, then another, of the
main language groups, read a description of each “station”.
When the air grew more chilly, kettles of hot coffee
were provided. Someone carried cups to the carabinieri
sitting in their Fiat at a discreet distance. It was noted that
the shutters behind which Paul VI slept, or did not sleep,
remained tightly shut.
Months later it became known that the bishop who would
give resounding voice to the entreaty of these pilgrims, had
slept soundly through that June night in a modest convent
cell somewhere in the labyrinth of medieval streets on the
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