Freemasonry and Society of Jesus: from Tribulation to Subversion
In the 18th century, the Society of Jesus was suppressed under the pressures of Freemasonry. Today, it has risked being suppressed due to Masonic infiltrations.
“La Civiltà Cattolica” (a prestigious fortnightly Italian Catholic magazine published by the Jesuits in Rome. It has been published continuously since 1850 and is among the oldest of Catholic Italian periodicals. (Ed.)) issue no. 4029 dated May 5, 2018, published an article by the director Father Antonio Spadaro titled "The Doctrine of Tribulation," which cites a letter to the Brothers from 1987 by the then Provincial Father Bergoglio, commenting on some letters from Superiors of the Society involved in the dramatic events of the suppression and subsequent reconstitution of the Society between the 18th and 19th centuries.
The article is fascinating because it shows us the significant historical changes within the Society from the 18th century to the present day. At that time, the Jesuits were indeed a hindrance to the rise of Enlightenment and Freemasonry, which led to the French Revolution. Thus, the sovereigns infected by these ideologies sought the suppression of the Society.
The Jesuits were fighting for an authentic "Catholic civilization," on the one hand against Masonic, Rousseauian, and anti-monarchical liberalism, while on the other hand against the enlightened despotism of European sovereigns. However, these foolish sovereigns failed to realize that the Jesuits defended their true interests before God. Consequently, with their intellectual shortsightedness and foolish conduct, they dug their graves, as they would be miserably brought down by the Enlightenment and Freemasonry to which they were pandering, enemies instead of persecutors of the Society.
It's interesting how Orthodox Russia, remaining immune to Enlightenment influence and faithful to Christianity, was the only European country not to reject the Jesuits, unlike the traditionally Catholic states, corrupted by Enlightenment. This paradoxical fact honors the Society, which continued to be faithful to the Pope and a bulwark of the Christian faith in a country that did not recognize Peter’s primacy
Today things are very different, unfortunately, due to a modernist distortion of the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, and especially due to the influence of Rahner, the Society has allowed itself to be corrupted by modernism, to the point that Blessed Pope John Paul I [1] and Saint John Paul II intended to suppress the Society.
While Pope John Paul I didn't have time to implement his plan due to his sudden death just one month after he was elected Pontiff, Saint John Paul II expressed his intention to his collaborators from the beginning of his pontificate but was dissuaded by the intervention of his Secretary of State, Cardinal Agostino Casaroli [2].
As for Pope Luciani, it is known that he was struck by death while preparing a strongly worded speech that he intended to deliver to the Congregation of the Society, which would meet in a few weeks, unfortunately, it approached the issue of atheism in a way that distorted the intentions of Pope Paul VI [3].
So, if Pope Clement XIV reluctantly yielded to the pressures of European sovereigns, suppressing the Society, two afore-mentioned Popes, though with great sorrow, had observed how the influential leadership of the Society, embracing Rahnerism, had taken a path that put it at odds with the spirit of St. Ignatius and therefore with the Magisterium of the Church and the post-conciliar Popes.
Today, it is the same anti-Catholic, modernist, and secularist world, both inside and outside the Church, it is the same Freemasonry that supports the Society in its Rahnerian current. But thanks be to God, in the Society, there are not only Rahnerians but also those who remain faithful to the Magisterium of the Church and the Pope [4]. They are the ones who have achieved something never before seen in the Society: the election of a Jesuit Pope!
There is no doubt that, now, the Rahnerians are pressing Pope Francis to yield to their requests. But the Pope, one can say, turns a deaf ear. With great skill and discernment, without ever mentioning Rahner, he has adopted some valid elements of Rahnerism, that have contributed to the doctrines of the Second Vatican Council. But the Pope is careful not to support the modernistic interpretation given by the Rahnerians to the Council an follows the interpretation given by his predecessors and by the Catechism of the Catholic Church. In this way, Pope Francis, without openly entering into conflict with the Rahnerians, disarms them, at the moment when he recovers what is good in Rahner's thought.
Pope Francis openly professes epistemological realism in the encyclical Evangelii Gaudium, by supporting the primacy of reality over the idea, and this profession is already evident in some of his notes from 1987-88, which I have recently commented on this blog, where he affirms that the object of metaphysics is being, entity, reality, the thing itself as it is, and not thought, the self, consciousness, God, athematic experience, all things of an idealistic nature.
The problem of Gnosticism
No Pope had ever felt the need to condemn Gnosticism, although it was a highly dangerous phenomenon for Christianity in the early centuries. But for the Christians of that time, it was so evident that these were aberrant ideas that the Popes did not feel the need to intervene.
However, Gnosticism is an insidious spiritual disease that continually resurfaces because it is an expression of that intellectual pride that always lurks in the heart of man, under the influence of the demon, and drives some gifted individuals to believe they have an extraordinary mind, far above the common people, possessing, by their intelligence, an absolute and salvific knowledge, based on which they can enjoy absolute self-awareness and divine freedom, a liberating and divinizing knowledge that they, mercifully or ostentatiously, communicate in limited doses and an esoteric manner to a few chosen ones capable of elevating themselves, with absolute docility to the revelations of the Gnostic, from the common and naive imagination of the masses to participate in his highest wisdom [5].
Discussions on Gnosticism have become lively again, especially among biblical scholars, after the discovery in the last century of numerous Gnostic texts that could be of interest to biblical exegesis. There has been much debate on how to define Gnosticism, and opinions have been conflicting because instead of trying to get to the essence of Gnosticism, there has been a focus on dealing with its varied contents, which are indeed very contrasting with each other. These range from extravagant or absurd mythological visions to dualistic views that oppose spirit to matter, to monistic visions of a pantheistic nature.
The problem of Gnostic infiltration in the Church is certainly not new, but it explodes with modernism, even though St. Pius X did not use the term "Gnosticism," he could very well have used it, because modernism is influenced by Hegelian idealism, which, as Maritain rightly judged, is nothing but the gnosis of modern thought, with its claim to an "absolute science" superior to the doctrine of the Church, revealed theology, and on par with divine science itself.
Pope Francis had the stroke of genius to tackle the issue head-on with a strong pastoral sense without delving into doctrinal details and to slay the monster with a few well-placed blows befitting the Successor of Peter. In his Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate, the Pope characterizes Gnosticism in its fundamental pretense of absorbing being into thought and trying to put the ocean in a glass. Under the pretext of knowledge (gnosis) and due to its voracious hunger for totality, the Gnostic excludes ignorance and partial knowledge. Due to an immoderate desire for the infinite, he does not realize that it is only in a finite way that we can know the Infinite.
The Condemnation of Gnosticism
With a few skillful strokes, the Pontiff, describing Gnosticism, essentially outlines the background of the Rahnerian system, albeit without mentioning Rahner. But for me, who has been familiar with this theologian for 40 years, I have no difficulty recognizing his signature. Here are some judgments of Pope Francis:
"Gnosticism presupposes a faith enclosed in subjectivism, where only a certain experience or a series of reasonings and knowledge that is believed to comfort and illuminate is of interest, but where the subject ultimately remains enclosed in the immanence of one's reason or feelings" (n.36).
Rahner's God is not transcendent, not beyond human nature, but is the "ultimate horizon of human self-transcendence," because human nature itself is conceived as infinitely determinable, as a divine potentiality that infinitely actualizes itself in what we call "God." Furthermore:
"Gnosticism manages to subjugate some with a deceptive charm because gnostic balance is formal and presumes to be aseptic and can assume the appearance of a certain harmony or an order that encompasses everything" (n.41).
If, as Rahner says, "the essence of being is to know and be known in an original unity, which we want to call consciousness or transparency, 'subjectivity,' 'knowledge' of the being of every entity," [6] it means, as Pope Francis points out to us, that for the Gnostic all being gathers, unifies, and immanentizes itself in his self, in an apparent formal and global harmony, "aseptic," as the Pope calls it, that is, free from contaminations.
But this celestial vision rather corresponds to the purity of divine self-consciousness, certainly not to the reality of knowledge of frail and sinful man, who confronts being, but not primarily with a being coinciding with his thought or with his consciousness, but rather daily with a material, obscure, and impenetrable being, resistant to thought, a thought deceived by appearances, stumbling in the path that leads to truth, disturbed by passions, a companion on the journey of a will certainly oriented towards good by its nature, but then indeed often inclined to that denial of being which is evil!
Perhaps the Pope could have added the opposite risk of agnosticism and false mysticism, which in Rahner nullify the function of dogmatic concepts and fundamental values of practical and speculative reason, to appeal to an "absolute mystery" so inconceivable and inexpressible that it is not even clear what it is talking about. Nevertheless, the Pope continues:
"One thing is a healthy and humble use of reason to reflect on the theological and moral teaching of the Gospel; another thing is to pretend to reduce the teaching of Jesus to a cold and harsh logic that seeks to dominate everything" (n.39).
Rahner resolves the transcendent into the transcendental: not a reason subservient to the message of Christ, but rather the message and indeed the very essence of Christ, subjected to a rational category such as the transcendental, which is a metaphysical category and of Kantian idealistic metaphysics and therefore is not a theological category, and even less a category of divine revelation, as would be appropriate when dealing with the mystery of Christ [7].
In this way, Rahner - like Hegel - subordinates religion to philosophy, the datum of faith to the rational datum, which for him is the "transcendental experience." Hence emerges his "transcendental Christology,"[8] a typically Gnostic operation, which transforms the datum of faith, namely Christ, into a datum of reason. For this reason, for Rahner, ecclesial dogmatic Christology would be nothing more than the variable, relative, and inadequate conceptual and verbal explication of the prior athematic transcendental Christology, known “since forever” aprioristically by everyone in the "transcendental experience."
Thus, the dogmas of the Catholic faith are relativized to the transcendental experience, thus the Gnostic sufficiency with which Rahner allows himself to consider himself above the Christological dogma of Chalcedon, merging with Hegelian Christology, another example of Gnosticism. While according to Rahner, the dogmas would be immersed in history, the transcendental experience transcends history because it is the pure experience of being, of the self, and of God. The Pope continues:
"Gnosticism is one of the worst ideologies because, while unduly exalting knowledge or a certain experience, it considers its vision of reality to be perfection. In this way, perhaps without realizing it, this ideology feeds itself and becomes even more blind. Sometimes it becomes particularly deceptive when it disguises itself as disembodied spirituality. Indeed, Gnosticism, by its very nature, seeks to domesticate mystery, both the mystery of God and His grace and the mystery of the lives of others" (n.40).
Rahner reaches a peak of Gnostic arrogance when in one of his books he dares to threaten the Magisterium of the Church with a tone of menace, urging it to adopt "modern philosophy" if it does not want to lag behind the progress of humanity. The expression "modern philosophy" in itself is valid, and it is true that rejecting it does lag behind the progress of knowledge. But what does Rahner mean by "modern philosophy"? He explains it himself: the succession of philosophers, starting from Descartes, passing through Kant, and then to German idealism up to Heidegger. At this point, however, we cannot fail to notice the defect detected in the Gnostics by Pope Francis.
As for disembodied spirituality, at first glance, Pope Francis's severe criticism does not seem to strike at Rahnerian spirituality, so attentive to its historical incarnations, its pastoral applications, the diversity of its institutional or charismatic forms, and its development in moral life. Yet it is possible to notice in Rahnerian ethics, despite its attention to changing situations, beyond its need for concreteness and insistence on the existential, a reluctance to view man as a rational animal, whose life is governed by objective, universal, and immutable moral norms and directed towards God as the ultimate natural end.
Indeed, we see Rahner incapable of moving with confidence and competence, in fidelity to the Magisterium of the Church, in the field of personal, family, and social ethics. But worse still, Rahner shows here a reprehensible agnosticism, relativism, and historicism, which underlie an idea of human action, whereby the person or the human spirit, in the name of freedom, would have the faculty to shape their bodily nature and to enact their concrete being, so that it becomes problematic how in these conditions man can still consider himself a creature and not rather the creator of himself, according to the Fichtean model of the ego that "sets" (setzt) itself. Here emerges the disturbing shadow of pantheism, which, as a consequence of its idealism, pervades as a fundamental theme of all of Rahner's thought.
Therefore, we can certainly see in this powerful passage of the encyclical Fratelli tutti the condemnation of Rahner's ethical subjectivism:
"That every human being possesses an inalienable dignity is a truth corresponding to human nature beyond any cultural change. Therefore, human beings possess the same inviolable dignity in any historical epoch, and no one can feel authorized by circumstances to deny this belief or not to act accordingly. Intelligence can thus scrutinize the reality of things through reflection, experience, and dialogue, to recognize such reality that transcends it as the basis of certain universal moral demands.
To agnostics, this foundation may seem sufficient to confer a firm and stable universal validity to basic and non-negotiable ethical principles, to prevent new catastrophes" (n. 213-214).
But the Pope speaks of Gnosticism, and it is clear that the theme of agnosticism, which we indeed find in Rahner, remains outside of his discourse, although truthfully, they both refer to each other because both are the effect of human reason, which on one hand, arrogantly attempts to resolve the divine being into its ideas, and on the other hand, with false humble resignation, closes in on itself and its small ideas, as if they were the totality of reality, asserting that it knows nothing of God and cannot say anything, simply because it refuses to open itself to the horizon, to thought, and to the intelligible light of being, an openness that allows the divine reality, absolute being, analogically conceivable, to fertilize the mind, to make it conceive and capable of giving birth, that is, to produce a concept, so that it can express in words this concept, which is the concept of God and His attributes.
All this does not exclude mystical silence, which however, to be meaningful and eloquent, must be silence about something that has been spoken about, and not empty silence for which one does not verbally express what is being silent about. Silence speaks when it is silent about what has been spoken. It is the word of silence because it is the silence that arises from the word; it is the silence of the word.
The silence after Holy Communion at Mass is significant because it refers to the previous words of the liturgy. The silence of monks at the table is not the silence of the sullen or those who have nothing to say to each other, but it is spiritual communication without words and perhaps more eloquent than words. The mystic is silent. His words are insufficient to express what he feels because he communicates without the need for words.
Fontanellato, May 6, 2021
Also read this post and the following linked ones, which you can find on Ora et Cogita: A new study on Freemasonry - How does Freemasonry act today?
[1] A priest, his friend, reported it to me when Luciani was Patriarch of Venice. "If they make me Pope," he said, "I will suppress the Society of Jesus."
[2] The events are narrated in the book The Jesuits: The Power and the Secret Mission of the Society of Jesus in the World where Faith and Politics Clash, SugarCo Editions, Milan 1988, Part One - The Accusation, written by the Jesuit Malachi Martin, distinguished American theologian and master of spirituality, expelled from the Society for disturbing the modernist group.
[3] The events are narrated by the illustrious Jesuit Antonio Caruso, a former collaborator of Saint John Paul II, in his book Between Greatness and Squalor, Viverein Editions, Monopoli (BA) 2008, pp.165-186.
[4] One of these was Father Giandomenico Mucci, recently deceased (November 23, 2020. The well-known Jesuit father, who since 1988 had been the spiritual father of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy in Rome, exercised this high ministry in many -sometimes unsuspected - ecclesiastical and existential "peripheries" Cf.: https://it.aleteia.org/2020/12/03/giandomenico-mucci-spiritualita-del-morire-civilta-cattolica/ (Ed.)) former writer for La Civiltà Cattolica, with whom I maintained, for several years and in an atmosphere of profound friendship, a fruitful correspondence. He had frequent personal contacts with Pope Francis, offering him with frankness and generosity the contribution of his wisdom and his great love for the Church.
[5] The danger of the revived Gnosticism for almost two centuries had been signaled to the Church, but not even the most zealous Popes for sound doctrine until Pope Francis had taken into consideration the alarmed report coming from scholars of the phenomenon. Cf for example the following authors: Hans Jonas, Gnosticism, SEI, Turin, 1973; Giovanni Filoramo, The Awakening of Gnosis or Becoming God, Laterza, Bari 1990; Emanuele Samek Ludovici, Metamorphoses of Gnosis, Ares Editions, Milan 1991; La gnose, une question philosophique (Gnosis, a philosophical question), edited by N.Depraz and J.-F.Marquet, Cerf, Paris 2000; Julio Meinvielle, Influence of Jewish Gnosticism in Christian Environment, edited by Ennio Innocenti, Editions of the Sacred Fraternity Aurigarum in Urbe, Rome 1988 (here the affinity of Rahnerian theology with Masonic thought is indicated); Ennio Innocenti, Gnostic Influences in Today's Church (same report on Rahner), Editions of the Sacred Fraternity Aurigarum in Urbe, Rome 2000; also Father Paolo Spano, Franciscan of the Immaculate and scholar of Freemasonry, has pointed out the affinity of Rahner's thought with Freemasonry in his article Karl Rahner "Masonic"? Karl Rahner's thought and Masonic culture compared, in Fides Catholica, 2, 2007, pp.315-360.
[6] Listeners of the Word, Borla, Rome 1977, p.66.
[7] For this reason, it is profaning the mystery of Christ to speak, as X. Tilliette does, of a "philosophical Christology" (cf The Christ of philosophy. Prolegomena to a philosophical Christology, Morcelliana, Brescia 1997). Christ is a divine mystery, he is not the object of philosophy. Christ reduced to an object of philosophy is the typical operation of Gnosticism. It is a different matter, however, to speak of a metaphysics of Christ, as I did in my book Jesus Christ Foundation of the World, L'Isola di Patmos Editions, Rome 2019. Here it is not a question of making Christ an object of metaphysics, but of showing Christ as the master of metaphysics. At this point, metaphysics can very well and with excellent results be the object of its interest in the metaphysical doctrine of Christ. That metaphysics is necessary to understand who Christ is, I agree. But here metaphysics has only an introductory function to true Christology, which is part not of metaphysics, but of dogmatic theology.
[8] Cf K. Rahner - W. Thüsing, Christology. Systematic and Exegetical Perspective, Morcelliana, Brescia 1974.