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Monsignor Dillon outlines how the Papacy has been attacked since
the French Revolution by the Enemies of the Church, including the
Freemasons and even Atheists. Dillon then describes in detail the
Office for the Propagation of the Faith, also called the Propaganda
and its holy work.
Italy is still preeminently a land of faith and fervour. Invasions,
secret societies, revolutions, and persecutions have done their
worst to make it otherwise during the past hundred years. Writers
of books of travel, newspaper correspondents, and others who cater
for the prevailing anti-Catholic prejudices of the majority of
those who speak the English language, generally represent it as
having grown at least indifferent, if not worse, under these
trials. But the truth is that at no past period of its Christian
history were the mass of the inhabitants of the country more
attached to their religion, more firmly fixed in its principles, or
more devoted to its practices than at the present moment. The
writer of the following pages upon one of the most beautiful and
useful manifestations of the faith of Italy, has had ample
opportunity of witnessing what he here asserts. He visited that
country for the first time early in the spring of the past year;
and he confesses, he was prepared to see everywhere a great decay
of religion in a nation where the Church had been universally
plundered, where the Supreme Pontiff was dethroned and imprisoned,
where the religious orders were suppressed, where the public
observance of the Lord's Day and of many Christian practices had
been legally abolished, where the recognition of Catholicity by the
State was made a cruel farce, and where, in fine, the most
formidable atheism the world has ever seen was, with supreme
political power in its hands, astutely planning the eradication of
Christianity from the social, political, and even individual life
of the people.
The first lecture, which he has entitled the war of Antichrist with
the Church and Christian Civilization, is intended to treat, in as
brief space as possible, the whole question of Secret, Atheistic
Organization, its origin, its nature, its history in the last
century and in this, and its unity of satanic purpose in a
wonderful diversity of forms. To do this with effect, it was
necessary to go over a large area of ground, and to touch upon a
great variety of topics. The writer was conscious that much of this
ground and many of these topics would be very much better known to
a large n umber of his readers than to himself. Nearly every matter
he had to speak about had been already very frequently handled ably
and exhaustively in our Catholic revews, magazines and newspapers.
But notwithstanding this fact, very few, if any, attempts have been
made in our language to treat the subject as a whole. Many articles
which he has seen, proposed to treat some one feature only of the A
theistic conspiracy-for example, Freemasonry; or the Infidel war
upon COhristian education and Christian InstItutions; or the
Revolution in Italy; or the efforts of sectaries against the
Temporal Power of the Pope, and ag inst the welfare of Christian
States generally. Several writers appeared to assume as known that
which was really unknown to very many; and few touched at all upon
the fact-a fact, no doubt, difficult to prove from the strict and
ably guarded secrecy which protects it-of the supreme direction
given to the universality of secret societies from a guiding,
governing, and even to the rank and file of the members of the
secret societies themselves-unknown and invisible junta ceaselessly
sitting in dark conclave and guiding the whole mass of the secret
societies of the world. The Holy Father, in his late celebrated
Bull, Humanum Genus, has, therefore, manifested his desire that the
bishops, the clergy, and even the laity of the Church should join
in exposing Freemasonry and other such societies. But without a
proper knowledge of the conspiracy as a whole that cannot be done.
The author attempts to give such knowledge; but he hopes that his
efforts may be improved upon by others more able than himself, and
that he may have the happiness before long of seeing some
compendium of the whole subject in English which might form a text
book for seminarists and others to whom the future fate of the
people of God in dangerous days is to be committed.
The original title of this book, which was compiled from a series
of lectures delivered in Edinburgh in October, 1884 by Mgr. Dillon,
was The War of Antichrist with the Church and Christian
Civilization. The author wrote it "in order to do his part in
carrying out the instruction given by the Sovereign Pontiff in the
Encyclical Humanum Genus when he called upon the pastors of souls,
to whom it was addressed, to 'instruct the people as to the
artifices used by societies of this kind in seducing men and
enticing them into their ranks, and as to the depravity of their
opinions and the wickedness of their acts'. Mgr. Dillon's work has
already been honoured by the Holy Father himself with so marked and
so unusual an approbation that there is no need for us to accord it
any further praise than merely to take note of the fact. The book
was presented to His Holiness, accompanied by an Italian version of
its table of contents, and of long extracts from its principal
sections, and Leo XIII was pleased to order that the Italian
version should be completed, and the book printed and published at
Rome at his own expense." (The Month, Sept. 1885). Despite the fact
that the lectures were delivered by a Catholic prelate to an
audience composed mainly of members of his own faith, we feel that
the subject of international political skullduggery is one which
cannot fail to interest Catholic and non-Catholic alike, the more
so indeed since events in the course of the decades following the
original publication of this book have confirmed the lecturer's
thesis. The last four editions have appeared under the title of
Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked. Mgr. Dillon does not speak
explicitly of the two currents of thought and action proceeding
from the Masonic French Revolution, namely, the current of
Rousseauist-LockianMasonic Liberalism and the current of Socialism
and Communism. Implicitly, however, he does so when, on the one
hand, he foreshadows the United States of Europe and World
Federalism and, on the other, quotes the infamous Declaration of
the International in 1868. This Declaration, formulated at the
International Congress held at Geneva in 1868 and quoted by Mgr.
Dillon in his preface, is well worth reproducing, at least in part.
It runs as follows: "The object of the International Association of
Workmen, as of every other Socialist Association, is to do away
with the parasite and the pariah. Now what parasite can be compared
to the priest. "God and Christ, these citizen-Providences, have
been at all times the armour of Capital and the most sanguinary
enemies of the working classes. It is owing to God and to Christ
that we remain to this day in slavery. It is by deluding us with
lying hopes that the priests have caused us to accept all the
sufferings of this earth. It is only after sweeping away all
religion, and after tearing up even to the last roots every
religious idea that we can arrive at our political and social
ideal. "Down, then, with God and with Christ Down with the despots
of heaven and earth Death to the priests Such is the motto of our
grand crusade." In a note on page 20 of the original edition Mgr.
Dillon returned to the question of the direction of Freemasonry,
which he had mentioned in his preface. He there says: "The Jewish
connection with modern Freemasonry is an established fact
everywhere manifested in its history. The Jewish formulas employed
by Freemasonry, the Jewish traditions which run through its
ceremonial, point to a Jewish origin, or to the work of Jewish
contrivers .... Who knows but behind the Atheism and desire of gain
which impels them to urge on Christians to persecute the Church and
destroy it, there lies a hidden hope to reconstruct their Temple,
and in the darkest depths of secret society plotting there lurks a
deeper society still which looks to a return to the land of Judah
and to the rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem?"
And Of The Wonderful Apparition And Miraculous Translation Of Her
Sacred Image From Scutari In Albania To Genazzano In 1467, With An
Appendix.
And Of The Wonderful Apparition And Miraculous Translation Of Her
Sacred Image From Scutari In Albania To Genazzano In 1467, With An
Appendix.
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