Two sides to the story on the Vatican and the Jesuits

Subject of a message to me initiated by a woman (whom we will call “Priscilla”) raised Protestant and now Eastern Orthodox:

Secret societies explained on you tube

Priscilla Nelson Priscilla.Nelson@gmail.com (not a real email address)
Dec 22 (4 days ago)
to me
The Secret Behind Secret Societies, part 1
Search for it on you tube and watch every segment if you can. It seems to provide a large number of the answers I have been looking for about the underworld stuff.
It leads me to want to suggest you consider what it might mean for you personally.
In all sincerity and Christian love,
Priscilla

John McGuire
Dec 22 (4 days ago)
to Priscilla
Thank you, Priscilla. There is no reason for you to be timid. By now I know your sincerity. As to the video, I’ve viewed it. This may sound cynical, but I don’t believe it’s new, just dazzlingly presented with a British accent. (BTW, we were actually just talking about “Dominus Iesus.”) I fail (not for want of Googling) to find any basis for his claim about the Vatican seal, but if you can find anything else supporting it, that would help. F.Y.I.: if I’m not mistaken this is the sort of thing the Reformation was based on (if not word-for-word the exact thesis our jolly friend Luther posited to where this presentation borders on plagiarism), the only thing that (if intellectually plausible, which again it is not that I have been able to find so far) could conceivably justify splitting from the Church (that is, from the Papal Communion), though it is entirely negative (“Zen”) in nature and only finds a magic island of cataphatic theology in Mormonism (which I think is also patently false). (Statement to the savvy: there is a very Anti-Catholic reason the Mormon Church campaigns so heavily and the media helps them. Mormonism is the only stable isotope divorced from Catholicism because it uses all the same elements of classical Catholicism to the opposite end. It is the definitive Anti-Church. The upshot is that, in a universe where Catholicism isn’t true, Mormonism looks pretty appealing even to pure souls.) But for those who have not yet graduated from schism to Neo-Mohammedist (or Anglo-Mohammedist) Mormonism, it must beg the question, “Why have a church at all?” And that brings us to Daniel Leach’s present stance.
Why don’t you guys come join a little discussion group we’re forming with Daniel and some of my liberty-minded fellow-Catholics? I am sure we could continue to sharpen each other’s habits and views considerably.
[…] God love you all.

John McGuire
Dec 22 (4 days ago)
to Priscilla
(A studious Catholic priest is quoted in a Mormon PowerPoint presentation as making the observation I source above, that basically it’s either Catholicism or Mormonism, that nothing else has a leg to stand on. [Of course one could well question whether he’d considered Orthodoxy or generally whether he was too intellectualistic {to which some would even add secret-society oriented} in his approach.])

John McGuire
Dec 22 (4 days ago)
to Priscilla
One thing you right away noticed about me was that I was an enthusiastic Catholic. This is because (no doubt partly thanks to my neuroatypicality) I always tend to hear not style but substance, not what is presented but what is said, not innuendo but, if you will, platitude. And I sensed already that among Western Christian denominations only Catholics seemed to have much interest in the Incarnation (nor for that matter in love! but we’ll touch on that later). Plus, while Evangelicals spoke of Chrst’s death as saving us, Catholics added that his Resurrection was pretty critical in achieving that end. There are many other areas besides where Protestants offer a sort of crude proposition loosely based on the Bible and where their (ostensibly purely legalistic) suppositions took them, whereas Catholics offer something that (in my view) grows right out of Scripture’s testimony. It seems like the same presumption vs. trust issue you get with the I am saved soteriologoy vs. God help me love him more. Where love is mentioned frequently rather than divorced from the work of salvation and sanctification – now here’s a cavalier-sounding criterion if ever there was one – where love is mentioned frequently I tend to think the theological legwork is done. Because God commanded nothing apart from love, so much so that Jesus sums up all his commandments as Love. Occultists don’t tent to get around to touching on “love.” Those who speak for Jesus speak of “love.” That is how I follow the Good Shepherd’s voice. Pretty simplistic, right? Well, that’s the wellspring of joy. I don’t doubt that both our respective communions have their secrets, their worldly-minded fraternities, their public relations think tanks, and yes, their exaggerated ways of speaking of other sects so that they may keep their members by fear if not by love. But what is really the best way to combat these? I want to suggest that it is by doing our Gospel duty. And of in doing that, love prompts you to search YouTube for everything you can on secret societies, then please keep on doing it! Because love is not separate from information, not the “love” the world wants which is banal and apathetic. Love births zeal, and love also births trust. I am sorry not to be in your group. I can understand why you believe I should be. But perhaps in spite of this you can assent to something I’ve said, supposing I speak the truth. (It is almost Christmastime.)

Priscilla Nelson Priscilla.Nelson@gmail.com
Dec 22 (4 days ago)
to me
All I needed to see was the blood-thirsty oath taken by Jesuits. The pope sanctions the Jesuits. There are pagan statues all over the vatican. What more do I need to know? I am confused by your statements of loyalty to such a church.

John McGuire
Dec 23 (3 days ago)
to Priscilla
Were the Blood Oath taken by Jesuits whom the pope sanctions I would be alarmed. But the oath originated during a political campaign in the United States which is why it is in the Library of Congress. There are pagan statues all over all ancient pagan cities. What more do you need to know? I am confused by your statements of credence to such nonsensical theories. You are way smarter than that. :-)

Priscilla Nelson Priscilla.Nelson@gmail.com
Dec 23 (3 days ago)
to me
Where was I to get this information you have added? How may I substantiate it? There are pagan statues all over pagan cities, yes, but in the vatican? The Vatican is not ancient-pagan. I may be smart, but I lack complete information, evidently. I don’t find the theories nonsensical in the slightest. The dots connect.

John McGuire
Dec 23 (2 days ago)
to Priscilla
Well, for starters the Blood Oath would be laughable if it weren’t actually accepted by so many as credible. There is nothing to substantiate it, therefore any honest person discards it however he may feel toward the Jesuits or Catholics or Spaniards or whatever prejudice you can name. Every group is somewhat secretive. (And that’s no secret!) That is how it sustains its groupness. Larger groups have more secrets. Global groups have the most secrets. Then consider that the Jesuit Order is the largest Catholic priestly order. But s to the Blood Oath, its real origins are painfully obvious even just looking at how it’s written. Is a Spanish original ever cited? Are these people interested in credible facts or just feelings? I mean, I love a good ghost story at least as much as anyone, but this is just sad. See, if you knew David Higbee who really serves the “everyman’s history,” you may understand the American tradition of making things up about Catholics lest the naturally unappealing Protestant sects hemorrhage members. They got rid of the stuff people stopped believing. Thus, for instance, you may not be acquainted with The Confessions of Maria Monk, an over-the-top work of fiction passed off as factual for the sake of indoctrination. (Incidentally, what a sick “Christianity.” And Catholics are told we have to defend ourselves against total blind-siding fiction? We’re guilty until proven innocent? We are second-class citizens, and the culprit is Frenchophobia.) Foxe’s Book of Martyrs? (This is the famous “second-only-to-the-Bible”!) The Book of Mormon? The Jesuits Blood Oath falls squarely in this genre, and it’s really that simple. :-) Have you had occasion to meet a Jesuit?
But paranoia goes a long way in playing on our imagination and making a group that is different from or even just separate from one’s own seem evil. And anything that’s big enough–anything that’s big enough–generates conspiracy theories that seem credible because, who knows, they could have covered it up because they’re big and powerful…and truthfully I want to feel kind of big and powerful (calls for unsparing introspection [which is a Christian duty anyway]: inferiority complex some?), so I’ll shut my eyes and make believe they’re plotting my demise because, in spite of what I may tell myself about my heavenly beliefs and loves, that’s the only way I have found to really feel that rush of significance. As for the Vatican’s art collection, everything can be seen as pagan through the right Puritanical lens. As for Catholic worship, it is not in any wise pagan. So we have ancient pagan stuff lying around. It’s history. Semitic Christians retain Jewish stuff. Ultimately Jesus saves all cultures. The is even a cross atop the obelisk. This shows (to those who care to understand the symbolism) who conquers whom. Very poignant. I understand the hype, i.e. the lines connecting the dots according to predetermined hatred. What you would be missing is the history of how things in the West developed. Because being raised Protestant you bore the brunt of it. So sick, so sad, so toxic. Not everything is fact, and not every fact is presented in historical context because to do so would simply destroy certain groups out there. I mean, you can feel however you want toward whomever you want, but maybe I am not possessed of the polarity needed to share those feelings.

Priscilla Nelson Priscilla.Nelson@gmail.com
Dec 24 (2 days ago)
to me
John:
I try to associate myself with groups that serve God not man. The Orthodox Church does not have or condone secret societies, nor does it have any secrets of its own. It is very transparent and open to all. In doing so, we have not lost any “groupness”.
The sources I was learning from were primary sources. I don’t know how to decide which primary sources to discard or what formula to use to decide that the catholic church is more innocent than it looks. The doctrine of Papal supremacy is an absolute heresy, and the statues of Peter as Jupiter and King David as Pan and Moses with HORNS(!) are not just ancient artifacts that were lying around when the church showed up. That’s hogwash.
Pagan godesses adorning the Sistine chapel ceiling are pagan goddesses. They are not anything else. They don’t belong in church. I don’t know what the book of Mormon and Foxe’s stupid book of martyrs have to do with this since I am neither Mormon nor Protestant and care for neither book.
I have no way to “tell” that this or that document is or is not authentic. What is the rule for that? How am I to tell? What makes it so obvious to you?
Did you join some lay order or something? Was there an oath involved? Are you absolutely sure it is not something that is trapping you? I’m talking about spiritual entrapment and I am dead serious. That is the only reason I brought all this up in the first place.

John McGuire
Dec 24 (2 days ago)
to Priscilla
Well, speaking of transparency, this latest message really refreshes me, and I thank you for it.
First of all, I have left off Knights of Columbus meetings since the Fall because those I now trust (as opposed to those I used to trust, i.e. family and priest acquaintances I happened to have) consistently have no use for them. I had considered becoming a Lay Carmelite or a Secular Carmelite, because this is a spirituality that has resonated with me, but I never moved on that mostly due to the age difference and my then-inability to keep up rigorous daily prayers. So I am bound by no oath, vow or promise beyond that of Christian initiation which we share in common.
I didn’t know you were referring to statues and paintings of angels and saints when you were talking about “pagan” Vatican objects. I’ll speak to the one concern you expressed that actually resonated with me because it seemed more concrete than speculative. The Hebrew word for “rays” and “horns,” as I understand it, are identical. Moses is said to have had two of them coming out of his head. Hence artists, fearful of heresy, portray him with something ambiguous enough that it might be interpreted either way. So this, by contrast, is not an example of inculturation but actually of simple scriptural fidelity. Keep the specific questions coming! :-)

John McGuire
Dec 24 (2 days ago)
to Priscilla
On second thought, the KofC vows may be said to bind me still, particularly the vow to secrecy. How would I get that treated?

John McGuire
Dec 24 (2 days ago)
to Priscilla
A Facebook friend made the following suggestion on my KofC severance project: “If I were renouncing an oath, I’d send the private renunciation via the ‘real mail’: an actual letter, and take out an ‘ad’ in the local newspaper for the public part. Think of it like a divorce: you serve the parties with papers, and put [it] in the ‘public record.’ “

Priscilla Nelson Priscilla.Nelson@gmail.com
Dec 24 (2 days ago)
to me
This may sound extreme, but if it were me, I’d get an exorcism.

John McGuire
9:49 PM (21 hours ago)
to Priscilla
Do you mean that I should begin with an exorcism, or that that’s the ace-in-the-hole on this?

Priscilla Nelson Priscilla.Nelson@gmail.com
10:51 PM (20 hours ago)
to me
Wait, what about that Society of Jesus group? Didn’t you say that was pretty rough?
Whatever else you need to do is great, but I would not fail to get one. You should google and read Orthodox exorcism prayers for context.

Priscilla Nelson Priscilla.Nelson@gmail.com
10:55 PM (20 hours ago)
to me
While it is nice that you have an answer for Moses’s horns, what about Peter and David? And the Sistine chapel. I just don’t get how all that doesn’t bug the heck out of you. It is not ambiguous.

John McGuire
11:06 PM (20 hours ago)
to Priscilla
The vows I took with the Legion of Christ are expired. Good things have been happening for me lately. I don’t know if you’re back in town now, but if you are I’d be open to discussing this.

John McGuire
11:11 PM (20 hours ago)
to Priscilla
The short answer on Peter and David is that I never for a moment thought of them as anything except what Sacred Scripture and Tradition tell us, not in terms of any Pagan archetypes of Zeus and whoever. Just because they’re statues and not icons, or are there other reasons this afflicts you so? The Sistine Chapel, while not my idea of beauty, is a scriptural work. Your paradigms seem polarized.

John McGuire
3:13 AM (16 hours ago)
to Priscilla
The Secret Behind Secret Societies loses all credibility when its opening statement (directed presumably at people who have no experience with anything Vatican apart from stark raving mad Romophobic libel), asserts that there is this seal that the Vatican uses on all its official (public) documents…except no one has ever seen it anywhere. This is just silly, infantile, laughable from head to toe, you have to to agree. And I do like a good laugh just like a good ghost story. But the buzz or rush something gives me doesn’t make me consider it profitable research automatically. On which side are the demons here? Are they all on my side that I need to be exorcised until I come to hearken to such lunacy as YouTube “research” proffers? Am I playing Satan, accuser, or is rather this man on The Secret Behind Secret Societies? Anything to divert attention away from Anglicanism, under whose patronage Masonry was brought to world-class refinement, because their histories are full of holes, but the Catholic Church doesn’t see it as her mission to be Satan and lash out against every other group out there. The sheep will instinctively follow the Good Shepherd. I realize that Protestants need to think the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon, not only because their pope Luther says she is, but because it’s the only way they can explain to themselves why they, though completely in the right, have been unable to wrench all the Church’s children away from her. It’s much easier to repeat juicy Biblical interpretations than admit to being human and wrong. Besides, it’s more fun. The only thing it isn’t is Christian.
But I generally wish groups would break that dirty habit of bad-mouthing other groups, be it aggressively or passively. And here is something I wrote about secret societies: “If I live in the Gospel I have no use for damnable secret societies or for damnable empire because all my secrets and my power are in God where they are safe, not in my imperfect fellow-men (whom my secrets and my power would only overburden without some extraordinary grace which I must not ordinarily presume upon). The secret society fronts a false anthropology. The secret society showboats a hollow interpretation of the term “brotherhood.” The secret society, whatever its flowery platitudes, does of its very nature invite perversion and corruption. The secret society gets its energy from the demonically calculated relaxation of all morals and ideals and the slow, sickening rotting of the soul. The secret society is an overgrown clique in defiance of the universal. The secret society is a hyperdeveloped faction in contempt of the community. The secret society, at the very least, traps dirt in the soul and makes us freaky strangers to those who ought to be our brothers (i.e. everyone). The secret society claims to be charitable (“haughtily condescending” would be nearer the mark) but is ultimately the cruelest thing there is because, due to its Occult nature, it is the quintessential denial of the Incarnation. And yes, I am talking about the Knights of Columbus, because just because a secret society claims to belong to my Church (and by all accounts that’s the only noticeable difference between them and the Freemasons) does not make it okay but all the more worthy of your and my sharpest rebuke!”
There are plenty of reasons to be torqued at the Church, so there’s really no need not to stick to plain ol’ known reality. Don’t build on sand; build on that other material, whatever Jesus called it…

Priscilla Nelson Priscilla.Nelson@gmail.com
11:11 AM (8 hours ago)
to me
I’m not interested in bad-mouthing anyone. I’m interested in the truth.
Forget I brought it up, since it’s obviously not helpful to you to consider what is or is not going on in Rome. I’m personally unable to see what is so glorious about the RC church. Do what you wish. Merry Christmas.

John McGuire
12:53 PM (6 hours ago)
to Priscilla
“I’m not interested in bad-mouthing anyone…I’m personally unable to see what is so glorious about the RC church.” I know. I know. I have more which I anticipate will be enlightening, but the epistle must wait. God love you all!

Communication both intra- and interpersonal.

John McGuire
7:18 PM (10 minutes ago)
to Priscilla
Okay, it is well enough that we pause the dialogue: I want to explore what has hidden in plain sight long enough, and once you’ve this message carefully you can tell me if I’m just projecting or if we’re really making progress in a direction you’re itching deep down to go. (I’m fully aware that I’m probably going about this all wrong, but as G. K. Chesterton encourages, “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.”)
Now it pains me to see anyone “wiggle out” so undignified like that, especially after (I naïvely thought) my showing them so many alternatives. (The Catholic Church’s members are all imperfect.) I hate to read how, as a last resort and in spite of all, you curtly vie to ensure that – flying in the face all the foregoing points made – I sound like the opinionated “bad guy” and you the heroic martyr (as your coreligionists have occasionally done as in the California “martyrdom” by the Jesuits you implicitly admitted was a fabrication); you make these unnatural contortions in a – believe me – truly vain attempt to force me into a position of covering myself even after I’ve set such a lush feast of verifiable facts without your even conceding one of them. You may have an appetite just for a certain kind of “information” as a child only wants certain foods, but it is your health that will suffer in the long-run. In the short-run I am hurt. But angry I is the last thing I am, because I seem to have a notion of what really afflicts you beneath your deceptively agile verbiage. So my best guess (based on what you’ve given me to work with) is this: you have a victim’s way of reading everything Catholic, and you are simply not emotionally ready to understand anything pope-related. So without wanting to put words in your mouth, I feel duty-bound to propose – truly for your health – that you consider coming out and saying (if only to yourself) that this is the case, that you have a habit of playing beyond your game then resenting the victor. And that is why I know it is not really your intention to be unfairly plaintive in your written expression, and I know this partially because, if you take my meaning, I’ve seriously been there.
Now you take this our dialogue as a case study. Even supposing your conclusions were correct, the fact remains that your your style, coupled with the kind of sources you reference, brutalizes the facts and forces one to imagine that the unbiased truth simply is not something on your radar screen (even though, paradox of paradoxes, having spent time with you in person, I know in the core of my being that it absolutely is!). This is doubly bittersweet (as I alluded to in one of my earlier responses) in the case of such a gifted person as yourself, but my sure hope is sky-high about the ultimate outcome. I have never believed in miracles as much as I do today. (I really haven’t.) And (again, if you take my meaning) I have so been there! And this brings me to probably what keeps you wanting to initiate communication with me: you and I have suffered some of the same emotional brutalizations. If we could find a space where it were appropriate, we should most likely just talk openly about those. That is totally your look-out.
Either way, I would like you to behold that it’s going to continue to hurt your proselytism with your current profile, though there truly are people you can reach even in the place where you presently. (Examples include that Protestant friend of yours.) But I think you want to be more, don’t you?
In our dialogue hitherto I have (I naïvely supposed) gone out of my way to be express on out where you are correct and where this dialogue has helped me to grow. In case I not make this sufficiently clear, it has helped me grow. But, like most people in this season, you seem to be putting yourself under undue Holy Day pressure and sound to be on your last nerve here, passively lashing out at me because, even though you cannot disagree with the premises of my argument, you are under so many layers of prejudice that you think nothing of denouncing the conclusions. On the one hand, this shows me how genuine your concern for my well-being is, and I won’t even try to express in an email how this fills me with warmth. But if the only guiding rule appears to be your own will (your “right to feel” if you will), if when you’re exhausted with too many facts you have already predetermined are “irrelevant” you your purpose and you must never integrate into your world-view, you leap over continents to the conclusion that I’m the same way, this makes (written) communication an ordeal at best from my end. In your defense, it’s good to have a focused purpose; that’s what living the Gospel is all about!
I draw a definite line between fact and fancy, God help me. That part of me won’t change (at least I hope it doesn’t), so if you had your hopes pinned on that happening then you are right to now “throw up your hands.” Only God do I allow to bypass my rational faculties, and this is something He does sparingly. But if you can yet state your case without wandering speculations – which is what I want you to do for both our sakes – this dialogue has real potential from my end. But either way, and whatever your present opinion of me, I would request that you please not insinuate I am acting by my own predetermined goals and then follow that so immediately with a “Merry Christmas.” Do not bury your prejudices under pleasantries. That is also unfair – to you mainly – and you generally give the impression that this is the sort of habit you may have cultivated for years hitherto, and I think that’s a significant part of the problem we’re having. (Or not.)
On a positive note, your honesty in these recent days is unprecedented. If you don’t mind my saying so, I’m glad to have given you a bit of a run for your mind. I am grateful for others who have done this to me. The progress in our communication is (in my view) palpable. But I shall not insist on continuing the dialogue if you are unwilling. The choice, then, is 100% yours. But if you’re too busy, I don’t think anyone holds that against you. I don’t.
Afterthought: you have a strongly developed intuitive, subconscious, subjective, emotive mind. This is important. But this is not all of the Gospel (not even of Saint John’s for my money), all of reality or all of you. You offer so much, yet ignoring those certain facts that don’t speak to your feelings does you less credit than you may believe, yet I’m telling myself that we’ve tapped into why you do it. Can you see how far this is from “Forget I brought it up”? I want so much for you to escape from your escapism: all the suffering and all the glory this metanoia has to offer.
I am not being generous but brutally sincere when I say that you are a wonderful person with much to teach me. A Happy Nativity Season to you and yours.