Philip Lawler is a famous face in the Catholic world. Known for his hard-hitting writings and respected stance in intellectual circles, he recently made a statement that shocked many Catholics, which was that Pope Francis’s Vatican was promoting homosexuality:
The interview begins at 22:23, and the controversial statement begins at 36:35 to 37:00
Pope Francis has deliberately created confusion to allow for Catholic teaching to be circumvented, a longtime Catholic commentator has said, and Francis’ inner circle contains people more radical in their beliefs than him.
Further, five years into Francis’ papacy, the mandate the pope was given to reform the Curia and Vatican finances has not been satisfied, Catholic World News Editor Philip Lawler said, because it’s not high on Francis’ agenda.
Intervention is needed in the direction Francis is taking the Church, Lawler said in a discussion on The World Over centering on some of the confusing and controversial aspects of the Francis pontificate.
EWTN anchor and Managing Editor Raymond Arroyo welcomed Lawler Thursday for a discussion of Lawler’s just released book “Lost Shepherd: How Pope Francis is Misleading His Flock” (2018) Regnery.
“Pope Francis has created enough confusion so that there is a huge space for maneuver for people who want to one way or another take an end around around Church moral teachings,” Lawler told Arroyo at the start of their conversation. Arroyo assented this has been done through the Francis pontificate’s much-touted notions of accompaniment and mercy.
Released February 26, Arroyo pointed out the book has earned criticism for Lawler. Others noted prior to his book’s release the significance of Lawler, not at all known as an explosive Catholic observer, feeling compelled to write in criticism of the pope.
Lawler clarified for Arroyo that he did not want to write the book critical of Francis when asked what moved him to do so. It came after an essay he’d written a year ago for CatholicCulture.com when he’d reached a boiling point of frustration with the confusion.
Titled “This Disastrous Papacy,” Lawler recounted that the post prompted more reaction than anything else he’s written in 30 years of journalism. In working on the book, Lawler said he found people in need of reassurance amid the concerning direction of the papacy, along with being beset by the question of whether they were alone in feeling this.
“And I said, that tells me there’s a hunger out there,” recalled Lawler. “There are people who are very much confused and dismayed and feeling betrayed, and wondering, “Is something wrong with them, is something wrong with the faith?”
“And I found that as I spoke with these people, oddly enough they felt reassured by what I was saying,” Lawler said. “Because if you say, “No you’re not crazy, yes, there is a problem, we have a problem with the pope,” (people then understand it’s not just them thinking this).
The pope’s apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia was the final straw for Lawler, who told Arroyo he was originally very enthusiastic about Pope Francis, but over time became more and more concerned, dismayed and disoriented.
“When I saw what happened with the manipulation of the Synod and then with Amoris laetitia coming after it, I said, “This is more than simply imprudence in expression,”’ Lawler explained. “This is a deliberate effort to confuse.”
AL achieves the opposite of the Synod’s expressed intent
“The problem is that Amoris laetitia is intentionally unclear on the one question that everybody had topmost in their mind going into both meetings of the Synod,” Lawler reminded Arroyo, “which is, “Will the Church change her perennial teaching that Catholics who are divorced and remarried illicitly cannot receive Communion?”’
“The general impression certainly created by the apostolic exhortation is that the Church has changed her teaching,” stated Lawler.
Arroyo and Lawler discussed the conflicting interpretations of the pope’s document throughout the world, with some bishops saying the Church’s pastoral practice has changed and others saying it had not – and the faithful being left in the middle. They talked as well about how, when pastoral practice is changed, the result is doctrine no longer matters anymore because “the lived doctrine” has become unrecognizable – which is the same end result as changing Church teaching.
“That’s precisely the point,” Lawler told Arroyo. “Why else would Pope Francis have declined to answer the dubia – the perfectly legitimate questions from four cardinals asking him for clarity?”
“Why would you not want clarity?” asked Lawler. “Unless your intent was to provide that fuzzy space in which people can maneuver around Church teaching.”
Arroyo asked Lawler to respond to comments made in 2015 by one member of the pope’s circle, Archbishop Victor Fernandez, that Francis is aiming at irreversible reform in the Church.
Lawler responded that he didn’t know why Francis would have this as his goal.
“But there’s something inherently wrong with the idea of irreversible reform unless what you mean by reform is back to the fundamentals of the Catholic faith,” he added, “because the role of the pope is inherently to conserve, to protect the deposit of the faith.”
Arroyo quizzed Lawler on the provocative nature of his book and its title, and whether he was at all reticent about it.
Intervention needed
“I don’t enjoy criticizing the pope,” Lawler told him. “But there’s a point at which in a loving family, if the father has a problem, you have to confront it. Eventually there has to be an intervention – And we need an intervention.”
The men talked about the odd nature of the Francis’ election, and whether there’s any validity to rumors that his election was orchestrated.
Lawler said some cardinals had given the clear impression that they were lobbying for Francis, which is not licit. This did not shock him, and he wished it weren’t the case.
Sharing an excerpt from the book in which Lawler details coming to the troubling conclusion that Francis was a radical leading the Church away from the ancient sources of the faith, Arroyo asked Lawler why Francis would think he could get away with this, or whether the problem is more one of his advisors and confidants.
“I do believe there are people surrounding this pope who are much more radical in their beliefs than he is,” Lawler said. “It is suggestive, again, that with Amoris laetitia Pope Francis does not directly contradict Church teaching – it’s in footnotes, it’s in the space between the lines.”
Because of the confusion that has spread throughout the Church, Lawler shared with Arroyo that people in the last week since his book has come out have asked him a lot of questions about whether the Church has changed its teaching on various things.
“And I say, No,” Lawler said. “But they had that impression; Why? Because the lid is off.”
An absence of authentic reform
Asked by Arroyo if there was a conflict between Francis’ public persona and the means of governing under his pontificate, Lawler said, “yes”.
The cardinals before him were talking about the need for reform of the curia and the economic workings of the Vatican, said Lawler, and for accountability and responsibility.
“But as far as the mandate for reform – it simply hasn’t happened,” he stated. “The curia has not been significantly reformed. There have been some shuffling of responsibilities, but we’re now five years in, and there’s not substantial reform. As far as the economic reform that has tumbled and fallen apart completely.”
“He had a mandate for reform and it’s not happening,” added Lawler. “It’s not at the top if his agenda. He’s doing different things.”
What’s unfortunately happened, he said, is that the old guard at the Vatican has become even more entrenched, “And there’s less accountability than there was five year ago.”
Lawler called upon Catholics to pray, both for the pope and for those around him.
“And as a practical matter, you ask your own bishop to stand up and help bring clarity back in an age of confusion,” Lawler concluded. “If that means saying unpopular things, I’m sorry, well, say unpopular things.” (source)
Philip Lawler’s statements are accurate and necessary at this time in the Church, when it would seem that the Vatican has been turned into a gay bath house and a small but growing number of people want to admit this. The fact that such statements were made on EWTN, which is the largest Catholic television station in the world, and clearly agreed with by Raymond Arroyo, the host and possibly the most famous person in the world of Catholic Media, comparable to say Pat Robertson (in terms of fame, NOT theology) for Protestants, means that there is a major perception shift taking place for the better.
But there is something else about this story that is not so obvious, yet very sinister. It was only mentioned briefly in the interview, but says something even more serious than the homosexuality.
It was that Lawler’s book was published by Regnery.
Regnery publishing is a CIA front. This is not an assumption or claim- it is a long-known fact that William Regnery’s company was funded by the CIA as a part of Operation Mockingbird, which was the CIA’s attempt beginning in the 1950s to shape public perception of issues through the use of media.
Shoebat.com discussed the influence of Regnery and the formation of the “counter-jihad” movement in a story from July 2017:
Casey was involved with Regnery, the very publishing house that publishes much Counterjihad literature. Almost all of Robert Spencer’s books are published by Regnery, a publishing house founded by Henry Regnery, a pro-Nazi who was subsidized by the CIA to produce books that would be used to battle Communism. There is a report from 1985 which was archived by the CIA, recounting how in a Wednesday evening dinner in the Mayflower Hotel in honor of Henry Regnery, there were major big-wigs present such as General William Westmoreland and CIA Director William Casey.
Henry Regnery’s nephew, William Regnery, inherited the wealth of his uncle and is now the major funder behind the National Policy Institute, which is one of the biggest promoters of eugenist Alt-Right ideology. Since Regnery was working with the CIA, more specifically the CIA director William Casey, and William Casey worked with the Center for Security Policy, and Regnery published most of Robert Spencer’s books, and William Regnery funds the Alt-Right, then there must be a network between the Counterjihad and the current day eugenist movements.
William Regnery with Richard Spencer
(source)
Since Lawler published this book through Regnery and his previous book The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston’s Catholic Culture through Encounter Books, which carries a large amount of Regnery’s books (and as such appears to be a subsidiary of Regnery), this brings up another question: Who is Philip Lawler?
According to biographies on him available from various websites, Lawler graduated from University of Chicago, and then went on to work for the Heritage Foundation from 1979 to 1984. After the Heritage foundation he then worked for Crisis magazine and the Catholic World Report before starting Catholic World News.
The University of Chicago, like many “elite” universities, have a long history of recruiting for government agencies, including the CIA. However, the Heritage Foundation connection is the most incriminating piece of evidence, for as we documented, the Heritage Foundation was founded by Paul Weyrich, a man who collaborated directly with National Socialists such as the Hungarian Nazi Laszlo Pastor and was funded by Richard Mellon Scaife, a man who has poured endless amounts of money into “conservative” as well as eugenics-based causes at the direct encouragement of the CIA:
The Heritage Foundation, while it is probably the most politically influential Right-wing organization in the US, and is praised as a beacon of conservative and family values, is a eugenist organization. When the Heritage Foundation was founded by Paul Weyrich, its biggest funder was the American industrialist billionaire, Richard Mellon Scaife, one of the biggest eugenists in American history. Scaife was the financial founder of major Right-wing think tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Center for Security Policy which organized the 2007 Counterjihad Summit in Brussels, the meeting that would commence the Counterjihad as a significant international movement.
Scaife also served as the vice-chairman for the Heritage Foundation. Scaife, while supporting the Heritage Foundation, donated millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion organizations. What this proves is that a eugenist Nazi was the financier behind these think-tanks, and by this, behind the institutions that would direct the formation of the Counterjihad.
…
The Center for Security Policy, alongside numerous other Right-wing organizations like the Heritage Foundation, were indeed funded by a private investor — Richard Mellon Scaife — who worked directly with the CIA, which was encouraging Scaife’s funding. So, these think-tanks were financed by third party investors motivated by CIA requests. The Director of the CIA at this time, William J. Casey, worked directly with Roger Robinson to form the William J. Casey Institute branch of the Center for Security Policy. (source)
The Heritage Foundation was formed by former Nazis because it was a part of Operation Gladio, which was the umbrella program for a series of sub-programs in which former national socialists from Europe as well as Japanese imperialists who constituted the brains and engineers of the German and Japanese war machines were brought over to America and given high-level positions in government in order to help shape US foreign and domestic policy. These people were war criminals, except they did not go to prison or face execution because they were deemed “valuable” for national or military purposes, as immediately after World War II ended, the US Government turned to support national socialist movements across Europe and the USA as part of a plan to create a “hedge” against the Soviet Union. Whereas the USSR pushed International Socialism, i.e. Communism, the USA pushed for National Socialism.
Lawler was employed at the Heritage Foundation from 1979 to 1984 in the capacity of the Director of Studies and was involved in research. During this time in 1981 and 1984 respectively, the Heritage Foundation published the conservative “Mandate for Leadership,” of which the self-stated purpose was to “turn the government as fast as possible to the right” (source). While Lawler’s name is not mentioned as an author of the report, given that he was the Director of Studies and oversaw research for the Foundation, it is inevitable that he played a critical role in producing the research for the reports during his tenure.
Interestingly, Philip Lawler’s name can be found online in the Declassified CIA archives between a meeting with a man named “Daniel Cassidy” and the Director of the CIA on January 26th, 1985:
One does not easily get a meeting with anybody from the CIA, much less the head of the CIA. What were they talking about? Nobody knows. Did they meet more times with the CIA? It is possible, but this is all that we know from the archives that has so far been declassified.
So who is “Daniel Cassidy”?
Daniel Cassidy is an American Catholic “conservative” writer who has been involved in conservative politics for the last three decades. He now writes for Renew America where he promotes “conservative” Catholicism as well as an anti-immigration and anti-multiculturalism position in his articles and has talked about the return of “Christian” civilization and was heavily involved with the Bush administration. He also writes for his blog Sunlit Uplands.
Make no mistake, there are many real issues with both the abuse of immigration policy and multiculturalism taking place today that must be addressed. However, one must note that as we have also said, both immigration and multiculturalism are often used by national socialists in order to further their own politics, for after pointing out real issues they then use the legitimate problems in order to present their solution, which is nationalism leading to militarism. Likewise, talk of Christianity, while important and good, is used to cover a nationalism or nationalist goals that when made apparent are subjugated to them instead of being the first principle by which the nation is governed. I do not say that this IS what is happening in the case of Mr. Cassidy- what I am pointing out is a pattern of common behavior that in this case seems to be repeating but would obviously need more evidence to definitively confirm.
While a further relationship between Lawler and Cassidy’s relationship is yet to be established, we do know that Lawler went on to work for Crisis Magazine, which is subsidiary of Sophia Institute Press. Afterwards, he went to found the website Catholicculture.org in 1995, which was the first Catholic News source online and has worked for them since.
Catholicculture.org is designated as a subsidiary of Trinity Communications, which lists its address in Manassas, VA and upon further inspection is the personal home of Dr. Jeffrey Mirus, who founded Trinity in 1985. Mirus was one of the co-founders of Christendom College with Dr. Warren H. Carroll, who was a CIA operative working as an “anti-communist” propaganda analyst per Christendom College’s website for a time. During part of his time with the CIA, Warren was also the scriptwriter for a local conservative radio show called “Lifeline” at the time of the Kennedy assassinations. The show was sponsored by H.L. Hunt, a oil tycoon and who was closely tied to then vice president Johnson and the Conservatives USA Movement (CUSA) of which Warren was also a member. It is said that H.L. Hunt met with LBJ, J. Edgar Hoover, and then former VP Richard Nixon on November 21st, 1963, one day before the assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald and promised that Kennedy would never again “embarrass him”:
It was a party, she said, attended not only by LBJ, but FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, former Vice President Richard Nixon, the late oil tycoons H.L. Hunt and Sid Richardson, and a handful of other rich and famous men.
Brown said several of the men met in a private room at the Murchison home on the evening of Nov. 21, 1963. Afterward, she said, LBJ took her hand and growled into her ear: “After tomorrow, those [expletive] Kennedys will never embarrass me again. That’s no threat. That’s a promise.”
Hours later, on Nov. 22, Kennedy was dead.
Brown’s allegations, denied by several close LBJ associates, still reverberated amid the Kennedy conspiracy crowd. “See,” chortled several who had written conspiracy-tinged books about the case, “we told you Oswald didn’t act alone.” (source)
Interestingly, a copy of the script for “Lifeline” was found in Jack Ruby’s car seat the day he killed Oswald:
In 1967 Carroll went on to work for the Presidential Candidate John Schmitz, father of the infamous Mary Kay Letourneau who had an affair with 12-year-old Samoan student Vili Fulaau when she was 34, after which she went to jail, divorced her husband, and then married Fulaau in 2005 (they divorced in 2017). Carroll converted to the Catholic Faith in 1968 and began writing for Triumph magazine, where he began talk of starting a Catholic University and called on Catholics to “convert their own people” just as how the Faith had won over the pagans of Rome in accordance with the ‘spirit’ of the second Vatican council:
Triumph’s militant apostolate was derived from their view that secular-liberal America was fiercely anti-Christian, but their missionary zeal was precipitated also by the Second Vatican Council, which called on Catholics “to penetrate and perfect the temporal order with the spirit of the Gospel,” which the editors viewed as nothing less than a “summons to restore Christendom.”
“Vatican II was first of all . . . a call for the true sons and daughters of the Church of the West,” contributor Warren H. Carroll wrote, “to convert their own people, to go out into the ‘secular city’ and win it back to Christ as their long-ago forefathers in the Faith had won over pagan Rome, by penetrating and transforming the lifeand character of its civilization.” (source)
Carroll started Christendom College with Mirus in 1977, but little information is available (at least on the Internet) about how the two met. However, what is not for dispute is that the Nazi collaborator and GLADIO operative Paul Weyrich was deeply involved with Christendom College, even serving on the Board of Directors and is lauded by the college as a “good friend” of the college and Political Science and Economics departments and highly influential in the department’s projects:
It is also true that Carroll maintained his CIA contacts during his time at Christendom. In February 1983, Carroll and Dr. Patrick Fagan, who is also a member of Paul Weyrich’s Free Congress and listed on Christendom’s website, asked to speak with then CIA Director William J. Casey for an unspecified reason:
After Director Casey’s death in 1987, Christendom College created a Scholarship fund as well as dedicated a room at the college in honor of Casey for his efforts at “fighting communism”:
Interestingly, Dr. Carroll stepped down as President in 1985 to serve as Chairman of the History Department until 2002, the same year that Dr. Mirus left to found Trinity Communications:
Trinity Communications went through “soul searching” from 1985 until 1992, but little more is available from its website. Then in 1992 it began establishing itself on the nascent BBS systems of the Internet. In 1995 it began its “real history” by designing a website for EWTN and a year later, the now defunct Petersnet.net. Interestingly, 1995 is the same year that Philip Lawler says he founded Catholicculture.org.
Catholicculture.org receives donations but does not report the sources, and does not have to by law. It’s donor form shows an income of $322,000, and according to its IRS statements it pulled in just over $388,000 USD in 2016:
According to the records, $100,000 was paid in compensation to Dr. Mirus:
Additionally, another $150,000 was paid to “Domus Enterprises” as an independent contractor:
“Domus Enterprises” has been investigated and corresponds with Philip Lawler- this is the compensation paid to him.
The question we have is, naturally, who are the donors to Catholicculture.org? Legally, they do not have to disclose who they are, and this is not a cause for suspect in itself. However, what is highly curious is that the unifying person between Lawler and Mirus is Paul Weyrich, for they both worked with or for Weyrich under different organizations or titles but towards the same end. It is similar to standing on two opposite ends of a ball- it is the same object, just different points on it. Therefore, the coming together of Lawler and Mirus should not be a surprise, as they all operated in the same circles.
What influence still persists between Lawler, Mirus, and the CIA or CIA-related groups? The fact that Lawler published his last two books by Regnery and Encounter Books respectively, both who have strong ties to the “conservative” movement and through their associates Gladio, and given the past history with Christendom College and the connections between members of Gladio and the CIA, one must inquire as to the source of many of the donations received by Catholicculture.org, as well as of the purpose of founding the site and even college itself.
Recall that Operation Gladio’s purpose was to fund national socialist movements in Europe in order to create a “hedge” against communism. While the USSR funded “international” socialist movements, the USA/NATO funded nationalist movements with aims no different than those of the Third Reich. Both are socialist in nature and both lead to the same ends, with the difference being minor emphases between.
This is not to say that the college or website is bad, untrue, deceitful, or is unhelpful. Indeed, they have been helpful for many people and done beneficial work for the Church. The question is if and if so, how these connections fit into the larger place of Operation Gladio, because there clearly are connections here. Likewise, it is also an opportunity to recall again a running theme in national socialist propaganda, which is that the national socialists do not attempt to fight (most of the time) truth, and to the contrary will embrace the most controversial of truths in so far as to make themselves the undisputed champion of them in the fact of all hostility. This is done not because they believe in the truth, but that by holding to unpopular truths in times of difficulty, with time they establish themselves as reputable sources with a record of speaking truth when few wanted to hear it, and so they attract long-term believers to hear them. It is at this point when the movement delivers its message, which is to say that the conclusion to the problems so vocally raised by them is national socialism. It is highly effective and deceives even very intelligent people or people of good will.
It is true that the Catholic Church was severely persecuted by the Communists and that the Catholic Church had to navigate the morass of European politics as well as fight of infiltration from within by Soviet Communists, which was a serious problem. For example, it is a known fact that up to 15% of all priests in Poland were on the KGB payroll. This does not even include the Russian Orthodox Church, of which it is estimated that at least half of all priests were either KGB agents or were on the KGB payroll.
The US Government naturally recognized the threat of Communism, and hence was the purpose of Gladio. However, the fact always is that evil is not overcome by evil, but by good. Two wrongs do not make a right, and the evil of socialism in the international form is not defeated by applying socialism in a nationalized form. Both lead to the same ends, but just with different actors. It is a struggle for power at all costs with respect to none in such a case, for the end result is not the triumph of truth but simply of a different form of the previous evil.
Clearly, there was a systematic attempt on some level of pulling the Catholic Church into the world of cover operations in the name of fighting the Russians. However, what was the cost? What extents did the government and other groups go to in the Church in order to “stop communism?” Did they imitate the same tactics as the communists did, but simply under an American instead of a Soviet name? Were there good Catholics who were pulled into this world, thinking they could create a hedge but found themselves furthering, even if not intending to, an agenda meant to drive the creation of a new world war?
Have the US Government, like the Soviets of old attempted to influence Papal elections, even so recently as the last papal election?
The truth is, that like many items, there is support for many of these points, as they would seem to compliment or support each other. As it is so often in matters of deception, the truth is once again often caught between a morass of overlapping, competing, and confused interests mixed with human pride and error that one must sort out one piece at a time, striving to recreate a clean picture that has been soiled so to hide its original face.
What we can say for sure is that the connections are too close to assume it arose from natural circumstances, and the evidence today is but one part of uncovering a larger puzzle that in time will be made clear.