Infiltration: The Plot to Destroy the Church from Within

Conservative Catholics have taken a dislike to Pope Francis, a liberal Pope. But this book is far outside the mainstream of conservative Catholic criticism of Francis. The author, Dr. Taylor Marshall, armed with his degree in philosophy and just over a dozen years as a Catholic convert, proposes that evil conspiracies have succeeded in destroying the doctrine and discipline of the Church from within, not only by the conspiracy that supposedly elected Francis, but also by Vatican II, by the new code of Canon law promulgated by Pope Saint John Paul II, and by many other elements of supposed modernism in the Church. Whenever the Church deviates from the understanding of Dr. Marshall as to the best course, he concludes She has fallen prey to a conspiracy from modernists, Communists, freemasons, and others.

The author proposes that faithful Catholics should imitate Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and resist the teachings and decisions of Pope Francis, Vatican II, the Novus Ordo Mass, Ecumenism and anything else contrary to a traditionalist view of Catholicism. The title of the book is its conclusion: evil conspiracies have succeeded in infiltrating the Church and in perverting Her doctrine and discipline. This conclusion contradicts the teaching of Christ that the gates of Hell will never prevail over the indefectible Church. Marshall concludes that the Church has defected, and that the faithful should accept his teachings over those of Vatican II and recent Popes.

Please see also the review of this book by Dr. Jeff Mirus at Catholic Culture: Infiltration: An idiot’s guide to the problems of the Church.

This is a very easy read, could not put the book down.

Dr Taylor Marshall clearly explains with numerous historical facts how Satan and his demons have Infiltrated the Catholic Church by way of Freemasons, Communists, Modernists, Gloabalists, and others in hopes to destroy her from within.

He brings us from before the turn of the century (where the Infiltration started), through the Fatima miracle and three secrets, Russian communism and two world wars, leading up to Vatican II (Novus Ordo) with Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI, then all the recent crisis in the Catholic Church up to present times (Pope St John Paul II, Pope Emritus Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis).

Dr Marshall points out that to "Recognize and Resist" (as did Cardinal Ottaviani and Archbishop Lefebvre) is one of the best approaches for all Good Catholics in order to help restore the Church of Jesus Christ.

Blessed Mother gave to Saint Dominic the Holy Rosary, and at Fatima she asked us to pray the Rosary daily for the reparation of sins against God. When Pope Leo XIII saw demons gather on Rome (the Smoke of Satan), he asked for DAILY prayer to the Mother of God and to Saint Michael, the Prince of the Heavenly Host.

Praying the Rosary of our Holy Mother Mary daily, praying to Saint Michael, along with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, these are our most powerful weapons against the “wickedness and snares of the devil.”

[Matt 16:18] "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

Like so many Catholics of the Baby Boom generation, I assumed that the decline of the Catholic Church could be traced directly back to the Second Vatican Council. The evidence seemed overwhelming. But according to Dr. Taylor Marshall the roots of the problem actually go back more than 100 years. In 1886, Pope Leo XIII saw a "vision of demonic spirits" who were gathering in the Eternal City. Even then, there were forces at work bound and determined to adulterate and ultimately destroy the Catholic Church. In his compelling new book "Infiltration: The Plot to Destroy the Catholic Church from Within" Dr. Marshall presents a plethora of disturbing evidence that a coalition of Freemasons, Communists and Modernists have largely succeeded in diminishing the influence the Catholic Church all over the world. It is a sad state of affairs.

A couple of years ago I discovered that a number of pontiffs prior to Pope John XXIII actively resisted efforts to convene a Second Vatican Council. These popes well understood that progressive forces within the church would use such a meeting to transform the Church into one they would not recognize. Dr. Marshall contends that is precisely what happened. He believes that the stage had been set for these events when control of the Papal States was wrestled from the Pope in 1870. In workmanlike fashion, Taylor Marshall describes in stunning detail the events that have caused so much damage to our Church. He is not afraid to point fingers and name names. Personally, I was flabbergasted by some of the individuals who have been complicit in this conspiracy. But take a look around you and you will see that the Catholic Church is a shell of its former self. It seems to me that for a variety of reasons Pope Paul VI had a great deal to do with the decimation of traditional Catholicism. But he has had an awful lot of help over the decades. Most will be shocked by the changes Pope John Paul II made to the Code of Canon Law early in his pontificate. The new Code was actually much more lenient to sexually immoral priests. Meanwhile, Pope Francis has been busy promoting his agenda of ecumenism, environmentalism and globalism.

For those Catholics who are totally clueless about these issues “Infiltration: The Plot to Destroy the Catholic Church from Within" would be a great way to get up to speed. What has happened to our Church is now happening to our nation. Progressives destroy everything they touch. At times this book reads more like a spy novel that a non-fiction book. There are secret societies, clandestine meetings and plenty of unsavory characters. Progressive clergy at all levels and nameless, faceless individuals in the church bureaucracy had been busy for decades undermining our beloved Catholic Church. It is high time that faithful Catholics return to the public square to defend the faith we hold so dear. I found “Infiltration” to be a largely a well-written and meticulously documented book. Recommended.

I'm a big fan of Taylor's, having followed him since his Canterbury tales blogging days, and I was a member of NSTI til I went back to school and was just cutting expenses wherever I could. I say this because I really do respect him and his work.

I was excited to get a copy of Infiltration, based on what Taylor had mentioned about the book on his podcast. Overall, I was let down by the book, but let me first say what I found helpful.

Taylor provides a ton of helpful historical timelines, particularly with respect to internal ecclesiastical governance and papal decision-making around issues of liturgy and doctrine. His coverage of the voting for papal conclaves is fascinating and illuminates much of the way these things are decided. He also shows that the tendency to run into sedevacantism as a solution to the present crisis is a poor choice.

But what the book really lacked is evidence of his research and claims. There are footnotes occasionally, but at least in the Kindle version, there was not a full bibliography. At times, he does make it clear that there is an element of conjecture or speculation, but often he makes very strong claims and does not show how he is building his case.

Another fault was that the book was simply too short. Topics that deserved a much fuller consideration were given very little attention. I think my critiques here are related. To substantiate some of his claims, Taylor needed more space and more space backed up by properly documented research.

I do realize he was writing for a popular audience and not for academics, but for the way he talked up the book as full of research, it came up a bit short.

I appreciate so much, though, the work be did put in, and his encouraging notes toward the end about how the laity can support the priests and help to aid the Church through prayer and fasting.

History is the continual story of man’s rise and fall, punctuated with moments of grace breaking into the mundane and redeeming what is darkened, weakened, and sinful. There has been no golden age, even in Church history. All has been tainted by original sin. From the beginning, the history of the Church has been one of money, sex, and power - vices shared equally among clergy and laity alike. Taylor Marshall’s book, Infiltration, seeks to narrate the history of the Church’s struggle with money, sex, and power from the nineteenth century until the present, proposing that during this time “Satan uniquely entered the Catholic Church”; nevertheless, in telling us that the root of the agenda of Modernism, Liberalism, and Freemasonry in the Church only dates back to a century before Vatican II (at one point he explicitly says 1852), Marshall implicitly establishes an imaginary golden age of a once glorious Church. It is only by establishing a conspiracy-type narrative that Marshall can sustain his argument. He forgets, however, that there is nothing new under the sun.

My complaint is not that this work is bad, that Marshall has argued poorly, no. Marshall’s work can be described in one word: inadequate. This is not to say that it’s not well written or not engaging. Indeed, the narrative is quite the page turner, especially when it gives the details of the nineteenth and twentieth century papal conclaves. I enjoyed the mysterious history behind La Salette and the true motivation behind Leo XIII’s prayer to St Michael. (While the retelling of the Fatima apparitions is helpful, Marshall opens by saying that Fatima is “the most important Marian apparition in the history of the Church” — I’m not sure what millions of devotees to la Virgen de Guadalupe would say to that!) The history of Sankt Gallen, the connection of Saul Alinsky to Paul VI Montini via Jacques Maritain, and the intricacies of the sordid Vatican Bank were favorites in the book. When I say that the book is inadequate, I direct readers to the extreme lack of footnotes, the absence of a bibliography, and the disappointment experienced when, having found the rare footnote, I see that it references a website, an online journal article, or some other secondary or tertiary source.

The inadequacy of Marshall’s Infiltration is not found uniquely or even mostly in his lack of documentation; rather, the inadequacy lies in the lack of consideration for the history of ideas which converge in the lives and writings of the Modernists. Marshall rightly notes that Pius X understood that the Church’s enemies “would undermine her from within with ideas,” but he fails to document that stream of ideas or their sources. Marshall points us to George Tyrrell and Alfred Loisy (albeit in only five terse paragraphs), but he completely omits the names of Friedrich von Hügel, Maude Petre, and Maurice Blondel. Also absent, shockingly, is the name of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (except a single mention in a list of ressourcement theologians - Teilhard was no theologian but a crackpot geologist!), whose dangerous (if not outright anti-Christian) ideas and evolutionary worldview can be traced through Roger Martín du Gard to Marcel Hébert, the grandfather of Modernism. Indeed, the very project of Modernism, namely, to replace dogmas with a program of secular human betterment while maintaining the veneer of Christianity, can find its literary and philosophical origins in the Savoyard vicar of Rousseau’s Émile. (We can draw a pretty straight line to Teilhard de Chardin from Rousseau to Maine de Biran to Henri Bergson). Why does Marshall omit these thinkers, many of whom were members of the clergy? Perhaps it muddles his own narrative? But Paul VI, Benedict XVI, and Francis (in Laudato si’) all quote approvingly from Teilhard. This does fit Marshall’s narrative; so his absence is truly puzzling, even if Marshall doesn’t wish to wade into the origins of Modernism.

Likewise puzzling is the absence of a discussion of transcendental Thomism when treating Karl Rahner. Marshall makes the common error of tracing Rahner’s intellectual pedigree to “the poisonous philosophy of Heidegger,” rather than more accurately finding the source of his ideas in both Joseph Maréchal, the founder of transcendental Thomism, and Pierre Rousselot (who also influenced Henri de Lubac), and through them both to the common source of Maurice Blondel. While Marshall’s Infiltration isn’t an intellectual history of Modernism, tracing the thoughts of the very men (and women) who were so very key to the development of modern and Modernist theology and ecclesiology would have greatly broadened the view of Marshall’s work beyond the conspiratorial, as well as bolstered his arguments. Wading into such topics would be no more tedious than the lengthy conclave discussions or the history of Fatima.

A few other omissions and inaccuracies also perplexed me. Yves Chiron’s recent biography of Annibale Bugnini would have been helpful background reading for Marshall, for Chiron shows us that Bugnini “never exerted a decisive influence” in his role as secretary of the Commissio Piana founded in 1948, a year after Pius XII’s own encyclical Mediator Dei, which called for limited liturgical vernacularization and reversed the ordering of the perennial liturgical axiom lex orandi/lex credendi. History would seem to show that Pius XII, both in his liturgical changes and in his completely gratuitous and unnecessary definition of the Assumption in 1950, sought and attained the highest of papal power since Pius IX. No doubt, Marshall would find this a great thing. Marshall shows his ultramontanism when he writes, “Perhaps the most glorious depictions of the papacy in human history are photos of Pius XII.” Marshall also glosses over another papal liturgical innovation set in motion by a hero of the modern papal cult of personality, Pius X, who completely dismantled the Roman Divine Office and reordered the psalter which had been used in the West since at least the time of St Benedict. To paraphrase what Marshall frequently says in his podcasts, perhaps it’s time we get “red pilled” on the conception of the papacy that has been festering, not just for several decades, but for centuries! Finally, I found Marshall’s omission of the Synod of Pistoia perplexing, since its decrees sound like they came from the minutes of a meeting of the post-Vatican II Consilium.

Marshall’s book is intriguing and provokes one to do some hard thinking but perhaps not the same thinking that Marshall might recommend. His solution is to “recognize and resist.” I myself find that the best answer can be summarized in the words of Adam DeVille some seven months into Francis’s pontificate: “we all need to stop talking about the pope; he is not worth fretting over.” Marshall, toward the conclusion of his book, identifies Pope Francis as the pope according to the heart of the supposed Freemason conspiracy outlined in Alta Vendita. At the very beginning of the book, he describes the diabolical infiltration as a “patient plan to establish a Satanic revolution with the pope as puppet.” Is Jorge Bergoglio a Freemasonic plant, a pawn in a massive, century-long conspiracy, a puppet of the evil one, or just one man among hundreds of saints and scoundrels chosen by the clergy of Rome to be its bishop? Perhaps Marshall should have waited until the next man in white ventures out from the loggia to make that decision.

Some amazing connections pulled together to make a good story of the complex web of intrigue, fortune and misfortune, battles for the soul of the Church. I wish there were even more concrete proof of some pieces of evidence, but such is history: much is lost. Still, that doesn't really matter. The struggle stands right before us. Ours is to diagnose the best response and act. Marshall runs us through (most of) our options, leaving us with but one sound choice, it would seem. Read, and see if you come to the same conclusion. I have.

I am not new to Dr. Marshall or his work, so I went into this expecting a great read. I was not disappointed. Very factual and informative, the book read like almost like a novel, telling of history in a story format. I loved the extra detail in the stories I knew, mainly in the Marian apparitions, and when I got to a part of the story I didn't know, I felt on the edge of my seat, wondering what happened to get us where we are now. It's a fair representation of the state of the Church now and in the past, giving credit where it's due and not trying to sweep the problems under a rug. A variety of solutions are offered at the end in order to combat this infiltration, with only one of them being feasible (admittedly so). The solution that works has been the choice of the saints and is the solemn duty of all Catholics. The book inspires and encourages us to take our place in the battle, as we've always been called to do.

Dr. Taylor Marshall, a devout and learned Catholic, expertly treats the Marian apparitions of La Salette (19-26) and Fatima (55-73) and their corresponding revelations (he correctly notes the inconsistency in the third vision of Fatima, and delves into reasons for doubting the recent release of said vision by the Church nearly two decades ago; 119-25) and discusses relevant nineteenth and twentieth century Church events (e.g., elections of popes John Paul I and II, the conception of the Novus Ordo Mass, Pope Leo XIII's inspirations for creating and integrating the St. Michael the Archangel prayer at Mass, etc.) to understand the "substantiated and corroborated fact" that "Satan uniquely entered the Catholic Church at some point over the last century, or even before that" (3). In a traditionalist lens, Marshall finds that the infiltration of the Freemasons, humanists, and the modernistic "nouvelle" theologians (e.g., Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Walter Kasper, Joseph Ratzinger, Edward Schillebeeckx, Johann Baptist Metz, etc.; 134-35) who introduced the Novus Ordo Mass and highly influenced the Second Vatican Council, led to the perversion of the "supernatural religion of the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ" of the Church into the "natural religion" that emphasizes the Human over the Divine (i.e., Satanism; 4).

Although there are some merits to his concerns regarding an unnecessary update to a working liturgical model (along the lines of the proverb "if it ain't broke, don't fix it") and other suspicious events in the twentieth century papacy (i.e., the loss of large sums from the Vatican Bank, or the intriguing case of a letter from a Freemason addressed to Archbishop Bugnini found in his unattended briefcase), I find his overall message that Satan infiltrated the Church some time ago to be worrisome and dangerous to those who have weak faith lives, are anti-Catholics, or those interested in joining the Faith, as it may damage their hopes of attaining the joy that we have when at Mass now. Furthermore, I wish that Marshall attended to his citations better (there are nowhere near the amount of citations necessary for the seemingly radical claims he is making), as some of his claims regarding Freemasons and the banking fiasco were very intriguing for me and I would like to know more about it myself.

Dr. Marshall reverse engineers the current moral crisis infecting the Catholic Church. He puts the pieces of the nefarious puzzle, the freemasons and communists have implemented to subvert the Church over the last 170 years, together. Citing his sources convincingly he explains the multifaceted attack the Church has undergone including the many warnings from various Marian apparitions. Taylor gives context for marian apparitions that remove the cloud of ambiguity modernism sows. Dr. Marshall picks apart modernism and succinctly explains how it happened, what it means to us, and how we might respond. Very insightful and simply spelled out.

This is a great overview, tying all the loose strands of history together in a coherent way detailing how modernism attempts to destroy the Church. After presenting the hard facts of how the infiltration has occurred, Dr. Marshall's detailed analysis at the end of how to respond is something I hadn't considered and provides hope for faithful catholics to persevere.

I just couldn’t put it down! This is a must read for every faithful, disheartened, &/or confused Catholic. Dr. Marshall presents the facts and results of his extensive research succinctly to make it an easy read. I’ve learned so much about the timelines and how the Church has gotten to where we are today.
I love that he meticulously lays out the evil plan to subvert the Church with all its twists and turns. And how the perpetrators have patiently continued to take down the Catholic Church. He doesn’t take liberties with truth, he tells it like it is. The book is obviously written with great conviction and his love of the Church shows throughout. Knowledge and discernment are the keys to ending confusion. Dr. Marshall is providing the keys.
I will be sharing this book with friends and family. Buy it today!