Vatican II: Jewish-Masonic conspiracy

Archive: Catholic • Archive: Religious Intolerance

Back in the mid-60s the Roman Catholic Church made a few gestures toward modernity and relevance. Collectively the small reforms are known as Second Vatican Council. I remember reading of the dismay many older Catholics when rites and funerals were conducted in a language they could understand. That priests had hitherto been conducting mass with their back to their parishioners has always - don't know why - struck me as funny. It was even allowed that Protestants might be able to get into heaven. Most importantly the church abandoned centuries of anti-Semitic "Christ Killer" rhetoric.

Unsurprisingly some conservative Catholics think that was all the work of the Devil. Called traditionalist Catholics, they are the equivalent of the far right Baptists cranks. Mel Gibson may be one of them, he won't say.

There are no such ambiguities surrounding the affiliation of the actor's father, Hutton Gibson, who told The New York Times Magazine for a March article that the council was "a Masonic plot backed by the Jews." ...

The movement is as diverse as the many splinter groups it has generated, from moderates who maintain some contact with the Vatican to the more militant who rejected outright the authority of the late Pope John XXIII -- who convened the council -- and every pope elected thereafter.

There is another, even more extreme faction that believes the council was a conspiracy between Jews and Masons to destroy the church. Some go as far as considering all the popes elected since that meeting "precursors to the anti-Christ," according to Michael Cuneo, a Fordham University sociologist who wrote "The Smoke of Satan," a book on traditionalists.

Ultraconservative sect worhips without changes imposed by Second Vatican Council