Infiltration: The Plot to Destroy the Church from Within

I was raised in a very orthodox Episcopal family & church in a small town in the South. I studied philosophy & history at a small private liberal arts college in an even smaller village in the Mid-West. I felt a calling to purse ordination, so I attended divinity school at an Ivy League university in the 1980’s. There I experienced a monumental crisis of faith. I dropped out of divinity school, got a psychology degree, embraced agnostic Buddhism (Tibetan & Zen), deeply immersed myself in occult practices & groups, and began work as a psychotherapist. Twenty-five years later, another series of crises led to my return to Christianity. I naturally turned back to the Episcopal church, but it was no longer the denomination of my younger years. Female deacons became female priestesses became homosexual bishops, gay marriage, abortion support, transgender rebaptisms, extreme moral relativism, neo-Marxist identity politics, and a church no longer rooted in Christ’s teachings. The very things that had led me to have an inner and outer life of such moral decay and disarray was now mainstream in the Episcopal Church of America. Thankfully I came home to Rome, and my fiancée & I entered the RCIA at a local parish. There were so many incongruencies that I could not make wrap my mind around. Instead of catechesis & rubrics of Catholic practice, we were doing mainstream Protestant critical theory Bible study, talking about personal encounters with Jesus like a Pentecostal, and being told that belief in Satan, the power of the Rosary, and Guardian Angels was superstitious non-sense from a dark & clericalized past. I sat down to study deeply what exactly was going on and how it had come to be. Why did it seem like there were two different “faiths” at odds in the Catholic Church today? Why were the teachings of Pope Francis so confusing and often at odds with previous teachings of the Church & Popes? Why was I seeing a push for the exact same things that had destroyed the mainstream Protestant churches over the last few decades? And most importantly why was the liturgical music so awful?! This is where Dr. Marshall’s new book comes in. First of all, let me state that I have watched some of the videos on his YouTube channel, and I have even taken classes at his New Saint Thomas Institute. As a new convert to Catholicism, his solid presentation of perennial Catholic teachings rooted in the Thomist & Liguorian traditions have deepened my understanding of the faith. His book is presented in exactly the same way. It is obvious he is a doctoral level writer, yet he is able to present complex ideas and copious amounts of factual information in a very approachable way. Infiltration at times reads like a well written historical novel. However, it is not fiction but rather a stark presentation of the truth. Dr. Marshall goes well beyond the standard criticisms of the failures of Vatican II, but rather takes us back to the early 19th century where the enemies of the Church began to seek a different method of taking Her down. Instead of attacks from without, they sought to attack from within. The Protestant schism, the Enlightenment obsession with humanism, and the obsession with occult power led Masonic organizations and early Socialists to start seeding their numbers into the priesthood, then the seminaries, and finally the Vatican itself in order to realize their vision of a man-made & man-ruled Utopia without the counter of the Catholic Church. While it sounds like a grand conspiracy theory, Dr. Marshall presents a solid time-line of events in true Thomistic fashion. He details the natural events & facts while also clearly sharing the supernatural realities occurring at the same time. We see this come to a head in the early 20th century with the Russian Revolution, the start of World War I, and the Apparitions at Fatima mirroring each other and the influence of the Satanic & the Divine upon our world. Yes, I said Satanic. Christians and Catholics know this reality even if modern atheist humanists mock it and deny it. There is a battle between the forces of light and dark going on around us daily. It is reflected in our real-world events as history has unfolded, even more so in the last two centuries. Dr. Marshall never veers, however, into the sensational, the hyperbolic, the over-emotional, or the despondent so often found in books & articles on this topic. He presents facts & details with extensive footnotes. He admits when something simply can’t be known or even trusted as verifiable. Yet the picture he paints is one that is at times depressing & terrifying. One such chapter for me that stood out in this way was on the three Cardinals surrounding Pope Pius XII at the end of his life while he was quite ill -- Cardinals Bea, Montini, and Bugnini. These three men were obvious products of this infiltration. They were Modernists hell-bent on slowly but surely dismantling the Catholic faith from within. During my years away from the faith, I considered myself an independent leftist. I began to question much of what I had been taught and frankly indoctrinated in thereby discovering the influence of neo-Marxist thought in the 1950’s and 1960’s on philosophy, psychology, education, religion, & most importantly politics. I abhorred Saul Alinsky as he seemed to epitomize the worst of this Post-Modernist ideology, though I never considered how satanic it truly was. Dr. Marshall details how Alinsky through his close friendship with Maritain (whom I now see in a very different light!) made connections with Cardinal Montini who would later become Pope Paul VI. Under Pope Paul VI, Vatican II was completed, the liturgy was “reformed”, and much of the traditional teachings of the Church began to slip away. At the same time, I saw that incongruence again. This was also the Pope who promulgated Humanae Vitae which was eerily prescient in its descriptions and predictions of a modern society overcome by the sexual revolution and the damage it would do to men, women, children, and the family unit. As we progress forward in time, we end up with Pope Francis. He seems to embody everything that the earliest conspirators had in mind when it came to a Pope who could fracture the Church from within. He denies previous Magisterial teachings, denigrates the orthodox & the traditional, pushes heretical ideas (so many of which are accepted tacitly by millions of Catholics today), promotes division & conflict, and embraces Socialist ideologies, pantheistic understandings of God & the other religions of the world, and provides a mouthpiece for neoliberal globalist politics. The very things that have been destroying our Western Culture have now appeared to have fully entered the Catholic Church. The “smoke of Satan” truly has entered the Vatican expressed in our current Pope, so many of the Cardinals, and sadly many, many priests throughout the world. Dr. Marshall does not leave us in a state of despair. He reminds us of the other crises points in the Church’s history while extolling us to “recognize & resist” the modern errors of today with an embrace of the teachings, practices, and traditions that are perennial to the Church. I wish he had gone into deeper detail on those things but I realize truly that is another book unto itself. Overall, I highly recommend Infiltration to all Catholics, all Christians, and especially those who want to understand the incongruencies & crisis in the Church today. I think that all converts should read it as well it because we learn what it is that we left, why we did so, and how it is trying to worm its way into Catholic Church. We are called then to be warriors arming ourselves with knowledge, prayer, and most importantly liturgically sound Masses that raise our minds, bodies, & soul to God so that we faithful may survive this infiltration & the damage it has done & is sadly still doing to the Church.

Dr Taylor Marshall is concerned about the direction of the Roman Catholic Church that is lurching toward materialism and modernism. Church attendance and acceptance of Church dogma, among Catholics is dwindling. If we believe her, Nancy Pelosi seriously believes that despite her stance on abortion she is a good Catholic and all she needs is a note from Rome to make her position theologically sound. Not according to Dr Marshall, or many others, but with the current Pope who knows what will be said to her? This march toward perdition begins in the mid-19th century. As far as conspiracy theories go, this cabal is playing the long game. The Church cannot be destroyed from the outside. Napoleon learned this as have others. Therefore, if its destruction is the goal, it has to be accomplished from the inside, hence the book's title, "Infiltration." The plot for the infiltration begins with an Italian secret society in the mid-19th century. They issued a secret document, obtained by the Church in 1859 titled "The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vedita." The society, was called "the Carbonari." They aligned themselves with Freemasonry and the Freemasons took up this document and the cause. The long-term goal was to place a Freemason on the throne of St. Peter. Marshall takes us through the ups and downs of the papacy from the mid-19th century until the election of Pope Francis - mission accomplished. I'm not a fan of conspiracy theories, but this one is a bit different. The author describes actual, verifiable historical events - usually the actions of particular pontiffs and their subordinates that all seem to be aimed at this long-term goal. Unlike most conspiracy theories, this one has ups and downs, successes and failures and some successes possibly turned into failures only to ultimately rise again. In parts, this book reads like a first-rate political thriller. It also filled a lot of gaps in my (pretty pathetic) knowledge of the history of the Catholic Church. My question, as always when it comes to conspiracy theories, are these people really that smart? Is it possible to put in motion 160 years ago a plan that would ultimately succeed, at least temporarily? Who has that kind of foresight? Who would think that switching from some Latin in the mass to all vernacular would result in so much abandonment of the Church? Who would think that after 60 years of failure, dwindling attendance, loss of faith, worship of nature and the material, none of which anyone in authority notices, as they fight for a continuation of what has clearly failed? Marshall can answer that, too. He says ultimately this is the work of Satan and his attempt to destroy the one true Church. Is he 100% persuasive? I don't know. I don't disagree that what is happening is detrimental to the Church and to the faithful. But I see the same sort of thing in the secular world. There are otherwise intelligent people who look at a failed policy and think the answer is more of the same. Why not in the ecclesiastical world? If I can't accept his thesis 100%, why give it five stars? Fair question. I gave it five stars because I think any book that can result in the reader thinking about what he has read over and over even to the point of looking up things to enhance what he's just learned is a damn good book. It is well worth reading and learning.

How we pray directly influences how we believe, and how we believe has a direct impact on how we live. This is a meticulously researched, well written account of what has happened to and within the Roman Catholic Church for the past 150 years. I'm a convert to the Roman Catholic faith, and for almost 30 years I have wrestled with my conscience regarding what I would call a bizarre, duplicitous Church magisterium who at one moment will promulgate perennial Catholic teaching, and the next moment prima facie heresy. Dr. Marshall has done an excellent job putting the puzzle pieces together, and unfortunately the image that is revealed is of a Church that has been betrayed from within. This is a book that you will need to read, and re-read due to the level of detail that is articulated regarding the Marian prophecies, the Freemasonic agenda, and the inter-ecclesial politics that have taken place to bring us to this point in Church history. At the heart of this account, Dr. Marshall demonstrates that the enemies of the Church knew precisely how to undermine her ministry - namely, that if they could slowly subvert the priests and religious who were young, they could thus grow a contingent within the Church who would then ravage the liturgical prayers (the Mass being the highest form of prayer). Once they were able to undermine the prayer life of the Church, it didn't take long to corrupt the faith of the young, and thus introduce a diabolical agenda. What is commonly accepted today (contraception, abortion, euthanasia, religious indifference, etc.) would have been completely abhorrent a generation or two prior to that. The question that has always come to my mind has been: how did this happen in one generation of the Church? How could the Church be so easily corrupted? Dr. Marshall answers that question - it didn't happen in one generation. It happened over the course of many generations, and in spite of the valiant attempts of 19th and early 20th century papacies to prevent this from happening. The magisterium since John XXIII has in one form or another been corrupted, and each and every papacy has to a greater or lesser extent further entrenched Modernism in the minds of most Roman Catholics - priests, religious and lay Catholics alike. This book clearly demonstrates that this did not begin with Vatican II. Vatican II was a crowning achievement for the Modernist heresies, not their beginning. While this book is full of important details that the thoughtful reader should ponder, I almost think that this is just scratching the surface. Once the Enlightenment ideas took hold in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, they created fertile ground for secret societies such as the Freemasons - the world turned from the divine to the mundane. We now live under a magisterium that has essentially turned the Roman Catholic Church into a secular NGO (non-governmental organization) that supports every anti-Christian agenda under the sun, including philosophical, religious and moral relativism. This is a book that should be read by all Catholics who care deeply about their faith, and are committed to recognizing and resisting theological and moral error even if it is taught by priests and bishops (including the Pope). Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us!

This was a great read. As someone with very minimal understanding of how the Vatican is organized and holds councils, this book helped me develop a much better understanding of it and its history of the last 100 years.

28 June 2019 Sacred Heart of Jesus Dear Brothers in Christ, In his new book Infiltration: The Plot to Destroy the Church from Within, Dr. Taylor Marshall presents evidence to support his main conclusion; over the last 175 years, demonic forces have deeply infiltrated the Catholic Church with modernist and anti-Catholic ideals. Dr. Marshall supports his conclusion with an abundant blend of historical facts, theology, and reasoning. He also mentions several hypothetical sub-conclusions. These hypotheses may help or hurt book sales depending on the way you look at it, but most importantly, despite the lesser speculative portions, Dr. Marshall still proves his main point. The majority of this well documented book is made up of many historical and theological facts that readers will find hard to dispute. The author also incorporates hypothetical arguments for a variety of possible reasons. First, the events in this book are relatively recent. Time and awareness to the topics will only bring forth more evidence to either prove or disprove these hypotheses. It seems that on a daily basis, new information is brought to the public’s attention, that only goes to support Dr. Marshall's points. Furthermore, for better or for worse, the Vatican’s archives, just like the data of most functioning organizations, is not completely transparent. Then, there is the lack of honest effort and/or resources by the journalistic community. However, when Dr. Marshall gives his personal belief on a topic, he generally supports his belief with facts and common sense reasoning. If there is a danger in this style of blending fact with hypothesis, then the danger is for the careless reader; who after putting the book down for some time, will start to blur fact with speculation. To this point, critics could then accuse Dr. Marshall of appealing to the emotions of the masses in order to stir up rebellion. This would be bad, if after doing so, Dr. Marshall then advises readers to grab pitchforks and take to the halls of the Vatican in order to return evil for evil. On the contrary, at the end of his book, Dr. Marshall rightly guides the reader's emotions to ethical responses. The modern skeptic, requiring unrealistic levels of proof on every detail, will undoubtedly write Dr. Marshall off for being a conspiracy theorist and want to disregard the book as a whole. This idea must be resisted because it will only contribute to the persistence of evil within the Church. Take away the fewer speculative parts of the narrative, and you are still left with enough historical and theological evidence to prove Dr. Marshall’s main conclusion. The clear thinking and courageous voice of Dr. Marshall is welcomed and refreshing in our current times. Dr. Marshall maintains a filial tone of respect for the Holy Catholic Church and the Office of Peter. The book charitably criticizes certain popular speculative or schismatic ideas that either lack evidence or are unreasonable. After reading this book a faithful Catholic can easily recognize a demonic infiltration of anti-Catholic ideals into the Catholic Church. Dr. Marshall will leave you encouraged and free to respond practically and effectively to the current crisis within the Church. Today we remember the Sacred Heart of Jesus. A heart filled with suffering. First, at the hands of Roman Soldiers, with their whips and spears; and continually to this day, at the hands of some Roman Catholic prelates, with their descent from the true faith and lack of virtue. Roman Catholic priest and laymen alike can no longer, in good conscience, stand by and just watch the fire destroying the Church. Therefore, for the sake of the heart of Jesus which thirst so ardently for souls, for the sake of our own souls, our loved ones, the Church and the whole world let us no longer be ignorant and stand idle, but let us Rise Up, O Men of God! Your Brother in Christ, Jack Our Lady of Sorrows, Pray for Us.

I agree with many of the comments posted by other reviewers. Taylor Marshall has produced a readable and well documented book on a subject of great importance to Christians. His book is a valuable resource that I know I will consult in the coming days (for example, his appendix including the text of the Secret of La Sallette). Although I am in general sympathetic with the author's views about how to solve the present crisis, I do have have some issues with his book. This is why I only gave it four stars. I hope Taylor Marshall sees this review! 1. I was disappointed that the author neglects (see chapter 25) to credit Pope John Paul I for courageously attempting to clean up the Vatican Bank. It was a daunting challenge, and one that cost John Paul his life. I am persuaded by David Yallop's research (see his book, In God's Name) that Vatican insiders murdered the new pope within weeks or days of his taking on the unpleasant but urgent challenge of reforming the corrupt bank. Nor has the task yet been successfully concluded. Evidently, the bank remains a blot on the papacy to this day. 2. The author suggests (p. 97) that our Lady of Fatima was incorrect in prophesying that World War II would break out "during the Pontificate of Pope Pius XI." As we know, Pius XI passed away on February 10, 1939. Marshall writes that WW II did not officially start until later that year with the Nazi invasion of Poland in September 1939. Marshall is mistaken, however. World War II actually started in 1931 with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. So, Lucia and our Lady were correct after all. The second world war had already been underway for years before events exploded in Europe. 3. The author asserts (p. 117-118) that Pope John XXIII disobeyed the instruction of your Lady when he read the Third Secret on August 17, 1959. Lucia had indicated that the secret should "be opened and read to the world either at her death or in 1960." Did John XXIII open and read it a year early as the author claims? Apparently the author is unaware of the considerable evidence that sometime after 1959 an imposter was introduced and began posing as Lucia. The available photographs of Lucia taken before 1959 do not match the photos of her taken in the 1960s. Not only does her face not match, in the available shots she appears conspicuously younger in the 1960s than in the 1950s. This suggests that Lucia may have passed away in 1959 (or thereabouts) and the fact was kept secret. This would explain why John Paul XXIII read the Third Secret in 1959. This of course raises a number of new and troubling questions. 4. The author fails to understand other religions. Marshall incorrectly refers to Hinduism as polytheistic (p. 139). But it is not true! I know this because, although I was raised Catholic I became an agnostic in my college days. Being a seeker, I began to investigate eastern religions. I was initiated by the HIndu saint Maharaj Ji, and in subsequent years was a disciple of two other great Hindu saints, Gurumayi (the heir of Muktananda), and Amma (also known as the hugging saint). Despite appearances to the contrary, Hindus are as monotheistic as Christians. There is only one God! The author's failure to do his homework on this undermines his credibility when pontificating about the the superiority of Roman Catholicism. It is vitally important that Christians get this right. The fact is, I rediscovered my Christian roots through Hinduism. (Anyone curious is invited to check out my book about the Naassenes and a recent article about the lost years of Jesus. Find it easily by Googling keywords: my name (see below) and "The Lost Years of Jesus") Mark H. Gaffney author of Gnostic Secrets of the Naassenes, (2004), published by Inner Traditions.

Infiltration: The Plot to Destroy the Church from Within is an incredibly and intricately woven historical view illuminating exactly how and who has infilitrated the Catholic Church over the past century and a half. It is filled with punctuated commentary and conclusions by Dr. Taylor Marshall that are well-supported by the factual narrative. Finally, a book that faithful Catholics can trust! Carefully crafted to bring clarity and comfort to today’s confused Catholics, this is THE BOOK where Catholics can read the unadulterated truth of developments in the Catholic faith for the last 150 years with a footnoted road map of how Catholism has evolved from the richness of the Mystical Body of Christ to notions of globalism, ecumenism and modernism. Containing a contemporary commentary on the state of Vatican affairs and its impact on local dioceses worldwide, it will leave the reader with eyes wide open with pragmatic solutions “for such a time as this.” If you believe in the Church-approved apparitions of our Lady of Fatima, the prophecies of which are carefully explained in rich and fantastical detail, this book was written for you. As a an ardent lover of Our Lady of Fatima and her prophetic messages to the shepherd children, the explanation of the prophecies was particularly attractive for me as a reader. Lucia’s carefully guarded secrets, the prophecies of Our Lady of LaSalette and Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, Vatileaks, trouble at the Vatican Bank, clerical sexual abuse and homosexual scandal at every level of the priesthood, are all encountered in the pages of this book. There is simply something for everyone in this book. Mark Twain enunciated, “Truth is stranger than fiction because we don’t meet it as often.” You will confront truth face-first ihisn t page turner that will keep you up at night. No Catholic or non-Catholic should miss this book! This book would be spectacular for the 75% of Catholics who are no longer attending Mass or have become lukewarm in their faith. All should follow its recommended remedies! Purchase it today for everyone you know!

*From my Facebook review.* There is a new book out which attempts the near-impossible: divining a path of faithfulness to the firmly established, readily accessible Tradition of the Catholic Church prior to, say, 1958 and, simultaneously, to a post-conciliar Church which at times rather glibly sidesteps this Tradition. It is only just now possible for a popular Catholic publisher like Sophia to present such a book. Two years ago, it would have been considered a kind of camouflaged Sedevacantism. "That way lies madness," the publisher would have said. And that would be that. But the cognitive dissonance which at least some Catholics have experienced during the papacy of Pope Francis shows no sign of abating. So such a book becomes tenable — if only in the Self Help section. At the heart of Dr. Marshall's thesis is a historically verifiable to plan to demolish the Church from within — set in motion a generation ago by secret societies. Why secret societies? Isn't that comic book stuff? Not two hundred years ago. The set of beliefs we call secular humanism and which can be heard quite publically in our day was not always welcomed in polite society. If you wanted to speak with like-minded individuals who favored contraception, abortion, the dissolution of marriage, the ultimate divinity of man — you know, the usual — you needed a secret society. Especially if you wanted to foster genuine change in society reflecting such beliefs — you needed a secret society. Likewise, with the help of mass media, it became possible to manipulate the public on a massive scale. No membership drive for the Freemasons was necessary. An entire generation could find itself speaking openly what secret societies once espoused in secret. Better still, a generation could be taught to treat such ideas as the unquestioned givens of existence. What sort of priests, bishops, and cardinals might such a generation produce? To crib from Criswell: "The incidents, the places... My friend, we cannot keep this a secret any longer. Let us punish the guilty. Let us reward the innocent. My friend, can your heart stand the shocking facts?" Obviously, such a thesis could easily veer into conspiracy theory. In fact, let's put that differently. Obviously, this thesis has been put forth before and rejected as a conspiracy theory. So what is different about this book? Dr. Marshall has taken on a very real challenge. His conclusions draw only upon points of history supported by credible, verifiable sources. This paper trail does not include tin foil hats. That's tricky. Often the people willing to delve into these matters — the people somehow possessed of a constitution capable of tolerating cognitive dissonance while at the same time steadily maintaining "A does not equal non-A" — are not normal people. They assign credibility to sources which normal people find incredible. Some turn out to be of the caliber of, say, Dr. Jaques Vallée. Others turn out to be more of Criswell's stripe. If Dr. Marshall privately references more outré resources, he doesn't let on. In order to make a case to you, my friend — yes, you with the craft beer and the ironic "Cheech and Chong" t-shirt — he limits himself to sources which the average person will accept. Were I to attempt such a thing — not that I could — the result would be thousands of pages long. I would try to anticipate every little objection. I would attempt to contrive a clever means of defusing those objections. In each and every chapter, it might be several pages before I found myself actually addressing the core argument. Strangely enough — and it really is rather strange — Dr. Marshall avoids this entirely. Though "Infiltration" is about the average length of a non-fiction book, individual chapters are remarkably concise. This brought me up short a few times. "Wait. Is that it? I mean, I appreciate all these references in the footnotes, but is that it?" However, scanning through the chapter again, I found Dr. Marshall had hit the main points and it was time to move on. Adding this concern or that question might have sent the discussion into a different orbit. Thus, in the end even if you disagree with Dr. Marshall, the argument itself is cogent and simply stated.