Chapter 67. From Trent to Vatican II: Counter-Reformation, the Jesuits and Modern Catholicism

Between the opening of the Council of Trent in 1545 and the close of the Second Vatican Council in 1965, the Roman Catholic Church defined itself twice: first against the Protestant Reformation, then against, or towards, the modern world. The Society of Jesus, approved in 1540, sits at the centre of both stories. In the library it is also the most mythologised religious order. The scholarly shelf (Young, Freeman, Kerrigan, Glendon, Benedict XVI) and a large conspiracist shelf (Phelps, The Black Pope, The Secret Terrorist, the Monita Secreta, Hendrie, Pinay, Zagami) describe the same events in very different terms. This chapter reports both, with attribution, and ends with Keshe’s challenge to Catholic doctrine itself.

Trent and the Catholic Response

Francis Young warns against treating Trent as the whole Counter-Reformation: “although the Council of Trent (1545–63) was central to the Counter-Reformation, the Counter-Reformation began before Trent and continued after the Council” [Young, A History of Exorcism in Catholic Christianity, #62758, “Exorcism in Counter-Reformation Europe”]. In his account the period “saw the consolidation and clarification of Catholic practices rather than unqualified” innovation. Exorcism is his example: the rite’s modern diagnostic criteria and safeguards “lie in the early modern period”, and the Church was divided over it again in the twentieth century “by interpretation of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65)” [Young, #62758, “The Catholic Response”; “Introduction”]. Young therefore treats Trent and Vatican II as two linked moments of Catholic self-definition, not as a simple before and after.

The council’s cultural reach shows in art. A survey of Western art records that Michelangelo’s nudes in the Sistine Last Judgment were “considered obscene by the Council of Trent”, and “the nudes’ genitalia were painted over with folds of drapery” [Unknown, Art That Changed the World, #67387]. A history of erotic art cites the same overpainting as proof that the line between art and pornography “depends on contemporary attitudes” [Döpp & Thomas, 1000 Erotic Works of Genius, #86280].

Loyola, Laynez and the Society of Jesus

The reference shelf gives the neutral biography. Diego Laynez (1512–1565) was “a Spanish Jesuit priest and theologian, a New Christian (of converted Jewish descent), and the second Superior General of the Society of Jesus” after Ignatius of Loyola. He was one of the first companions at Montmartre and served as “a papal theologian during each of the three periods of the Council of Trent”. He was granted three hours to speak in debate where others had one, and his speech of 26 October 1546 against Seripando’s “double justice” was entered into the council’s Acta [Wikipedia: Diego Laynez].

The anti-Jesuit literature takes this record further. Eric Jon Phelps writes that “the Council of Trent was dominated by Diego Laynez, a Jew by race and destined to be the Second Jesuit General (1558-1565)”, and that Trent condemned the Reformers’ doctrines, “including Freedom of Conscience” [Phelps, Vatican Assassins, #87949, ch. 1, “#23 The Jesuit General’s Council of Trent, 1545-1563”]. Phelps calls the order “the Gestapo of the Vatican” [Phelps, #87949]. Edward Hendrie turns the New Christian ancestry into a theory: “Crypto-Jew James Lainez … was the most influential member of the Council of Trent”, he “succeeded crypto-Jew Ignatius Loyola”, and “the Jesuit order is a crypto-Jewish priesthood” [Hendrie, Solving the Mystery of Babylon the Great, #67001, ch. 28 “Coded Language”]. The documented fact is Laynez’s converso descent, which the encyclopedia records. “Crypto-Jew”, the claim about Loyola and the “priesthood” thesis are Hendrie’s own.

The Black Pope states the order’s purpose: “The purpose of the Jesuit Order, formally established by the Pope in 1540, is to destroy the Protestant Reformation.” It quotes Nicolini of Rome: “The Jesuits, by their very calling, by the very essence of their institution, are bound to seek, by every means, right or wrong, the destruction of Protestantism” [Unknown, The Black Pope, #71464, “Their Purpose and Oath”]. The same pamphlet claims that “millions of ‘heretics’ had been ‘extirpated’ pursuant to the Jesuit Oath and the Council of Trent” [#71464].

The Secret Instructions, Suppression and Restoration

The core text of the anti-Jesuit tradition is the Monita Secreta. The library holds an 1860 edition, which says it revises “a translation published in London in the year 1723 by John Walthoe” and prints with it “the four vows of the Jesuits, the oath of secrecy of 1680, and Tetzel’s indulgence” [Anonymous, The Secret Instructions of the Jesuits, #71935]. The Black Pope treats the text as genuine, a guidebook “disclosed to the world twice: once in the 1600s and once in the 1800s” [#71464]. The reference shelf gives the opposing view. Scholars attribute the Monita to Jerome Zahorowski, a Pole “expelled for disciplinary matters in 1613”, and date its first printing to Kraków (1614/1615). Writers who called it a hoax include Bishop Lipski of Cracow (1616) and Bernhard Duhr, and also enemies of the Jesuits such as Pascal and Döllinger [Wikipedia: Monita Secreta]. On the reference shelf’s account, then, doubts about the text were voiced by the order’s opponents as well as its defenders.

Its political history is better documented. Freeman records that in Paul V’s quarrel with Venice in 1606, the local clergy led by Paolo Sarpi sided with the Republic, and “among the clergy only the Jesuits supported the pope”. He presents this as an episode in which the papacy had “lost much of their influence within Europe” [Freeman, The Reopening of the Western Mind, #64786]. The Catholic monarchies later expelled the order: Portugal in 1759 and France in 1764, events Phelps connects with the Paraguay Reductions [Phelps, #87949, ch. 1]. Clement XIV’s brief Dominus ac Redemptor (21 July 1773) suppressed the Society, and Pius VII restored it in 1814 [Wikipedia: Dominus ac Redemptor]. The Secret Terrorist reads the suppression as proof that the order had become “so formidable to the world, threatening the entire subversion of all social order, that even the Pope … was compelled to dissolve them” (its editor’s note: “[Pope Clement suppressed the Jesuit Order in 1773.]”). It then argues that the Congress of Vienna (1815) and the congresses that followed united “the European monarchs and the Jesuit Order” against the American republics [Unknown, The Secret Terrorist, #79644, ch. 1]. That thesis is advanced by the book and its quoted nineteenth-century sources (Senator Owen, Montholon); the reference shelf’s account of the suppression and restoration does not make it.

Missions, Pius IX and the Twentieth-Century Papacy

Kerrigan’s Dark History covers the missionary side. Christ’s command “Go and teach all nations” was “a sacred trust – and a charter for paternalism and oppression” [Kerrigan, Dark History of the Catholic Church, #71131, ch. 9 “Missions and Massacres”]. He describes St Francis Xavier, “a protégé of Ignatius Loyola”, and the Goa Inquisition, which was not wound up until 1812. He also gives the conquistadors’ own figures for the dead at Cholula (30,000) and Tenochtitlán (some 200,000) [#71131, ch. 9].

In the nineteenth century, Kerrigan writes, Pius IX’s “Syllabus of Errors”, “an index of ills in the modern world”, “included free speech and religious toleration”. It was part of an “intellectual retreat he’d been making since the 1860s” as nationalism and middle-class liberalism advanced even in Catholic countries [#71131]. On the twentieth century, Kerrigan says the 1933 Concordat was negotiated by Eugenio Pacelli, “a conservative through and through”. He adds that as Pius XII Pacelli steered the Church through the war, “wrecking its moral reputation, many have suggested”, and he calls the label “Hitler’s Pope” a characterisation, “caricaturing, even” [#71131]. The opposite case is made in Disinformation, attributed to the former Romanian intelligence chief Pacepa. It cites Lapide’s finding that “Pius XII had saved half a million Jews from the Nazis” and describes a Soviet-bloc operation to smear him [Unknown, Disinformation, #76607].

Avro Manhattan reads the period through money. His chapter titles include “The Vatican Invests Millions in War Industries – Transfers Most of Them to the U.S.A.” He argues that the Lateran millions of 1929–30 were invested in Fascist industry so that they “should become the best guarantors of her support for Fascism” [Manhattan, The Vatican Billions, #64831, chs. 19, 36].

Vatican II Read Three Ways

Aggiornamento. The Council met from 11 October 1962 to 8 December 1965 under John XXIII and Paul VI. It produced sixteen documents, including the four constitutions Sacrosanctum Concilium, Lumen gentium, Dei verbum and Gaudium et spes [Wikipedia: Second Vatican Council]. Mary Ann Glendon, a former US ambassador to the Holy See, writes that “the council fathers, recognizing that the modern world presented Christianity with formidable new complexities, committed the Church to a process that Pope John XXIII had called aggiornamento”. She stresses that the Council “made clear that it was up to lay men and women, not the clergy, to imbue political” and secular life, the “hour of the laity” [Glendon, In the Courts of Three Popes, #72280, Part III, Epilogue]. John Paul II’s Tertio Millennio Adveniente “emphasized the link between the Jubilee and the Second Vatican Council”, and his closing letter for the Jubilee insisted that the Council texts “need to be read correctly … within the Church’s Tradition” [#72280, Part I]. Benedict XVI gives the insider’s correction:

“In the years following the Second Vatican Council, I became conscious once again of the priority of God and of the Divine Liturgy. The misunderstanding of the liturgical reform that spread widely in the Catholic Church led to an increasing prominence of the aspect of instruction and of one’s own activity and creativity. The doings of men almost made us forget the presence of God.” [Benedict XVI, What Is Christianity, #73099]

Betrayal. Diabolical calls Vatican II the start of “a liberalizing movement” whose results “have been a disaster: an implosion of discipline and the corruption of the liturgy”. It claims that the “KGB-created Christian Peace Conference” pushed Latin American bishops towards Marxist liberation theology at the 1968 conference in Colombia, and that “Team Francis” (O’Connor, Kasper, Danneels, Lehmann) made an electoral pact “explicitly forbidden by the apostolic constitution” [Unknown, Diabolical, #71209]. Leo Zagami writes: “New Mass, a new religion … Gregorian chant and Mozart were kicked to the curb and replaced with insipid hymns” [Zagami, Confessions of an Illuminati, #367409]. The Romanian Orthodox pamphlet Romano-Catolicii în spatele propriilor declarații criticises the 1964 schema on the Jews, attributing it to Augustin Bea and Abraham J. Heschel, and condemns John Paul II’s interreligious gestures [Unknown, Romano-Catolicii în spatele propriilor declarații, #20228]. Maurice Pinay’s The Plot against the Church, summarised in Romanian, says it was completed in August 1962 and distributed to the Council fathers. Its purpose was to warn them that “communism, freemasonry and the Jews” intended to force a declaration that the Jews were not guilty of deicide and even to control “future papal elections”. The Romanian editors admit they “could not verify the accuracy of the quotations” [Pinay, Complotul împotriva Bisericii, #17760]. It is reported here because it circulated among the Council fathers during the conciliar debates.

Money and power. Paul L. Williams describes Vatican finance, the Mafia and the IOR. He says of one pontiff: “He decided alone, as if the Second Vatican Council had never taken place”, and he describes conclave efforts to elect a pope “who would permit the Vatican to return to business as usual” [Williams, The Vatican Exposed, #67453]. David Yallop’s inquiry into John Paul I’s death covers the same ground [Yallop, In God’s Name, #61893]. Keshe goes further: he says that “Church business is a financial business, has nothing to do with religion”, that “when you create a war, it is a long term investment”, and that in Ukraine the “Vatican has already paid for it” [Keshe, Knowledge Seekers Workshop 422, #378134].

Keshe’s Challenge to Catholic Doctrine

In KSW 486 (18 May 2023) Keshe attacks the dogma of the Ascension. The workshop index reads: “Ascension of Christ … made up by clergy”, “where is heaven – all of us ascend”, “Heaven means freedom from P[hysicality]”, and “at death STM [Soul of the Man] takes position according to the strength gathered while alive”. It also says the “clergy made new terminology to gain reputation – created fallacies”. Keshe’s Christology is: “Jesus is the man and Christ is the Soul of the Creator within the man” [Keshe, Knowledge Seekers Workshop 486, #378198]. Trent fixed salvation in the sacramental economy and Vatican II recast the Church as the people of God. Keshe sets both aside: in his teaching each soul rises by knowledge and conduct, with no need for intermediaries.

Key points

• Young: the Counter-Reformation began before Trent (1545–63), continued after it, and consolidated rather than invented Catholic practice.
• The reference shelf records Laynez’s New Christian descent and his large role at Trent. “Crypto-Jew” and “crypto-Jewish priesthood” are Hendrie’s claims, and “dominated” Trent is Phelps’s.
• Scholars attribute the Monita Secreta to the expelled Jesuit Zahorowski, and enemies of the order such as Pascal and Döllinger also called it a hoax. The anti-Jesuit shelf treats it as authentic.
• The documented Jesuit political record includes Venice in 1606, expulsions from Catholic kingdoms (1759, 1764), suppression in 1773 and restoration in 1814.
• Kerrigan and Pacepa’s Disinformation disagree over Pius XII. Manhattan claims Vatican investment in Fascist and war industries.
• Vatican II (1962–65) is aggiornamento and the “hour of the laity” for Glendon. Benedict XVI regrets a post-conciliar misreading of the liturgy. Traditionalist and Orthodox critics, and Pinay’s tract on “communism, freemasonry and the Jews”, call it betrayal or infiltration.
• Keshe calls heaven and the Ascension clerical constructs and separates Jesus (the man) from Christ (the Soul of the Creator within).