Robert Barbry

Recognize and resist. In Dr. Marshall’s ‘Infiltration’ he presents as tentpoles the ‘Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita’, the testimony of former communist agent Bella Dodd, and the revelation of the Sankt Gallen Mafia. The book demonstrates, verifiably I might add, that it was the express goal of both the Freemasonic secret societies and the Communist Party to infiltrate and infect the Roman Catholic Church. In the proceeding chapters, Marshall then lays out the symptoms – also verifiable, as Marshall is generous in citing his sources – that the Church may have, in fact, been infiltrated according to the desired ends of the Free Masons and the Communists. He points to high-ranking clerics, including Cardinals, who have been discovered as documented members of the Freemasonic order, and others who espouse positions sympathetic to the pursuits of a Marxist utopia.

The Achilles’ heel of this book is that there is no formal proof throughout much of the work that the symptoms of infiltration, in the liturgy and elsewhere, were in fact due to the successful implementation of the ‘Permanent Instruction’ or the seminary scheme as corroborated by Dodd. What Marshall does, instead, is draw logical conclusions. He points out time and time again that much of what is going on in the Church, and at the highest levels of the hierarchy, would be the logical outcomes of infiltration. He makes a strong case, and it is for this reason that the weakness of his work is hardly a weakness at all. Recorded admissions of guilt might be what’s needed to verify some of Marshall’s conclusions – but those admissions we’ll certainly never get.

The themes of the book appear to converge on the work of the Sankt Gallen Mafia, the Vatileaks scandal, the sudden resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, and the papal election of Bergoglio, now Pope Francis. In an almost poetic fashion, the supposed progression of this infiltration of the Church in recent history is shown to have prepared the soil for the state of the Church today; one wrought with confusion and infighting.

I never got the sense that Marshall was being dishonest or that he was concocting this piecemeal conspiracy theory to increase his own clout as a YouTube personality. In Infiltration, Taylor speaks plainly as a concerned Catholic layman. Even his prescription does not lend itself to sedevacantism or schism, but to prayer and penance. Infiltration is the type of book that you hope is not true, but if you’re honest with yourself, struggle to come up with a more compelling explanation for the state of the Church today.

It was during the fallout of the McCarrick scandal when I, as Marshall would say, “red pilled” to just how diseased the institution is. Even still, I strive to be a faithful son of the Church which is why I agree that we must recognize AND resist.

I’d rate his book 8.5/10.