By Timothy Fitzpatrick

In Michael Hoffman’s latest book, he implicates Pope Leo XIII in a centuries-long conspiracy by the papacy to hermeticize the Church through infusion with the Jewish Kabbalah.

Leo XIII, a favourite of traditional Catholics, is guilty because he did not include the Kabbalah in his exposure of Freemasonry in Papal Encyclical Humanum Genus, according to Hoffman in his 2017 book The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome.

“Both the New Age occultist, the Protestant Fundamentalist, and the ‘conservative’ Catholic believe that the Church of Rome in the Renaissance period under study, was the nemesis of all that Judaism represented, when in truth it was the vessel into which Judaism poured its Talmudic and Kabbalistic sorceries and iniquities,” writes Hoffman. 

“After these had been fully absorbed into the corpus of the Church at the highest levels, only then did  the Renaissance and post-Renaissance pontiffs mount their theatre of ostentious ‘persecution’ of Judaics, which was still so much of a charade that when Pope Leo XIII issued his encyclical contra Freemasonry (Humanum Genus, 1884), he scrupulously omitted all mention of the Brotherhood’s most virulent source of inspiration and direction, the rabbinic Kabbalah.”

Hoffman essentially accuses Pope Leo XIII of gatekeeping for the Synagogue of Satan and their gnostic infiltration of the Vatican, which Hoffman pins as beginning sometime in the 15th century, or even before (I will do a full review of Occult Renaissance in the near future).

Speaking further on Humanum Genus, Hoffman writes,

“…the encyclical constitutes a colossal act of misdirection…millions of Catholics have been misdirected away from knowledge of the true root of the masonic order.”

But Hoffman is incorrect that Pope Leo’s pontificate gatekept for the Synagogue’s foundational occult book, the Kabbalah (also, Cabala). Sure, Leo XIII may have omitted the Kabbalah by name from Humanum Genus, but he attacked central themes of Kabbalah via Freemasonry. Furthermore, under Leo XIII, the papal-approved Jesuit periodical La Civilta Cattolica specifically named the Kabbalah six years after Leo XIII issued Humanum Genus.

“Thus, the bonds that unite modern Judaism to Freemasonry are now evident, and ought to put to rest any doubts. The study of the so-called Semitic question, in France, in Germany, in Italy, and elsewhere, once only able to be seen in the light of shadows, inscrutable, has now come out of the shadows. It is now known how the Talmudic Cabala was introduced into the rites, the mysteries, symbols, and allegories of Masonic degrees…everything in Freemasonry is ordained by a Jewish Sanhedrin….” —The Jewish Question in Europe: The Causes, The Effects, The Remedies, La Civila Cattolica, Vol. VII, no. XIV, 1890 (English translation)

Quite emphatic. It seems that any of Humanum Genus’ alleged shortcomings were certainly fulfilled in The Jewish Question.

Now, one may argue that the Jesuit periodical, then edited by Matteo Liberatore, was speaking out of line with the Papacy; however, at the time of this periodical it was generally perceived as being a voice of the Papacy. Speaking of La Civilta Cattolica, Pope Pius XI wrote, “…from the journal’s very beginning, the authors set for themselves that sacred and immutable duty of defending the rights of the Apostolic See and the Catholic faith….”, while historian Richard Webster described the journal as reflecting the views of the Pontiff.

Lastly, Leo XIII had requested an outline of his Rerum Novarum (the Rights and Duties of Capital and Labour) from Liberatore, so clearly there was at least a professional relationship between the Pope and La Civilta Cattolica’s editor.

What seems more plausible than Hoffman’s thesis of gatekeeping is that Humanum Genus was placed as a stepping stone to the full truth revealed not only in La Civilta Cattolica’s The Jewish Question in Europe but also in Monsignor George F. Dillon’s The War of AntiChrist with the Church and Christian Civilization, delivered in Edinburg October, 1884, six months following Humanum Genus. It was later translated and renamed Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked As the Secret Power Behind Communism. The work, which was dedicated to Pope Leo XIII, devotes considerable time to exposing the Kabbalah (for example, in chapter VIII. Cabalistic Masonry or Masonic Spiritism).

Was Leo XIII gatekeeping when he had Dillon’s work published in Italian and in Rome at the Pope’s own expense? Hardly not. Pope Leo XIII signed a letter of endorsement for Dillon’s work, granted him the title of Monsignor, and made the him an official member of the Famiglia Pontificia (Pontifical Family).

If that weren’t enough to convince Leo XIII sceptics, consider that this Pope expanded on the Vatican’s book prohibitions (Index Expurgatorius) by going above and beyond Pope Pius IV’s previous prohibition on the Talmud and including with it “Cabalistic and other nefarious books of the Jews….”. Leo XIII’s revised index (Index Leonianus) was issued in 1897.

Hoffman may be correct that some post-Renaissance popes were double agents and/or gatekeepers, but it seems that, if true, Leo XIII was not one of them and was, instead, countering that infiltration of the Papacy, at least regarding Freemasonry, Jewry, and Kabbalah (Hoffman claims Leo XIII also gatekept for the usurers by not sealing up alleged loopholes for usury left by proceeding popes. Click here for my review of Hoffman’s book Usury in Christendom.).

Once again, we see with Michael Hoffman a tendency towards reductionism (see author Jude Duffy’s series on Hoffman) and apparent ongoing attempts to undermine the authority and holiness of the Roman Catholic Church. This is not to dismiss Hoffman’s overall analysis in the book of what he calls Hermetic, neo-platonic infiltration of the Papacy, but we will deal with that in my general review.

By Timothy Fitzpatrick

Michael Hoffman’s Usury in Christendom is a thought-provoking and challenging elucidation on the gradual acceptance of the mortal sin of usury in the Catholic Church contrasted with the supposed stern stand against usury by early Puritans—the supposed inheritors of medieval Catholicism.

The first couple hundred pages are fairly straight forward and illustrate the Biblical and Early Church teaching on usury, which appears uncompromising (no amount of interest is permitted under the sin of usury, according to traditional Church teaching). Hoffman starts with Medici Pope Leo X as the beginning of the Church leadership’s slide into apostasy (the love of money being the root of all evil). It was Leo X who, as Hoffman contends, created the loophole for moderate rates of interest with the institution of the monte di pieta, a Florentine bank supposedly designed to offer relief to the poor from the excessive interest rates of Jewish and gentile loansharks thriving in the region. Hoffman argues that the loophole of Leo X and those of Popes thereafter has absolutely no moral justification and is a contravention of Biblical teaching. A fair point by Hoffman that’s difficult to counter, especially considering that Leo X threatened excommunication to anyone publicly expressing doubts over his 1515 Bull. However, on page 226, Hoffman seems to inadvertently provide his own loophole when he writes, “Few churches today exhort against interest on loans beyond the rate of inflation….” How is Hoffman’s exception of inflation any more permissible than the monte di pieta’s exception of circumventing Jewish loansharking by way of low-rate fees required to keep the bank in operation? Hoffman then shows that the loopholes eventually led to mass acceptance of differing forms of usury, persecution of anti-usury dissidents (within the Church and outside of it), and the Catholic Church’s lending of its own money at interest. He claims encyclicals of post-Renaissance popes, like Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum of 1891, were merely rhetoric to placate the masses while Church-sanctioned usury continued unabated.

The latter half of Usury in Christendom ramps up the book’s overall polemical tone and uplifts the early Puritans—unlike the supposedly wayward later Puritans—as the harbingers of anti-usury, anti-capitalist Biblical economic practices. And even when he does discuss those wayward Protestants, like crypto-Jew John Calvin, he can’t help but blame their permittance of usury on the influence of “Roman Catholic nominalists”. Catholics are somehow solely responsible for all usury in the modern world, it seems. Hoffman clearly suggests that the apostate Roman Catholic leadership is primarily responsible for modern usurious capitalism, not Jews or Protestants. The latter have been unfairly scapegoated, although they are involved, Hoffman insists. The Catholics must also be responsible for the early Puritan’s usurist loophole, with which Hoffman seems to have no problem, of permitting usury on commercial investment.

“The early Puritans were capitalism’s worst nightmare; how they came to be made synonymous with its ‘spirit’ is an act of legerdemain by way of a malignant prejudice.”

John Cotton is one such early Puritan to whom Hoffman frequently refers.

Hoffman seems to feel that he must—in the name of historical truth, I suppose—correct Catholic “ignoramuses” in their prejudicial views on the early Puritans and, to a lesser degree, anti-usurist Calvinists. After all, it seems according to Hoffman, Catholics ought to look to Protestant reformers (heretics) to correct Catholic apostasy.
A rather absurd conclusion, if in fact, it is his. Hoffman’s championing of the early Puritans is set up early on in his book as he leaves them out of his list of the guilty parties involved in usury. “Modern Protestants, Catholics, Mormons, and Mennonites are all guilty of this grotesque disobedience to God.” He seems to suggest, as he does with the early Puritans, that early Protestants were obedient to Biblical teaching on usury. It was only modern Protestants that got it wrong. While Hoffman be be correct that many Catholics throughout the ages have levelled unfair and/or exaggerated charges against early Protestants of usury and Shylockian economic practices, he comes across as quite angry and reactionary—the same way he does with his critics in public discussions (online comments, etc.).

Hoffman’s yearning for an Amish-like economic system may be ideal for the Church, but it is completely impractical in a time when Satanic communism co-opts any legitimate anti-capitalist movements. It may be even more impractical now because of the no-return-like state of the world economy (it seems the banksters have created a system by which only further usury and quantitative easing can keep it going). At times, Hoffman seems to embrace Soviet critiques of Western “colonialism”, particularly in the following mocking tone:

“Was it Puritan Conquistadors who, in an orgy of greed unprecedented in the annals of the western hemisphere, contracted a gold fever that burned so hot it plundered and enslaved the helpless indigenous nations at their mercy?”

Regardless, Hoffman does correctly point out that capitalism and communism are two dialectical forces that both serve the purpose of the money power. They are both based in materialism.

He also equates the “social justice” in Fr. Charles E. Coughlin’s The National Union for Social Justice with the same kind of modern “social justice” against which pundits like Glen Beck rail. Hoffman may be correct that Beck is a hopeless predatory capitalist, but I doubt very much that Coughlin’s social justice is the same as that expressed by the radical Left today.

Critics of Hoffman have pointed out his inconsistent reasoning when accepting mainstream media narratives in one instance and rejecting them as “cryptocracy” propaganda in the next instance. The following Hoffman polemic illustrates this:

“Are these fables about the first Puritans seeded by the Cryptocracy to keep us from studying the radical Protestant roots of resistance to the authority of money? With the virtual collapse of the credibility of popery in the 21st century—with its melange of institutionalized child molestation and ‘infallible’ canonization of ‘Blessed’ John Paul II, patron saint of Voodoo in Benin and Koran-kissing in Rome—an alternative to papalolatry is intensely to be desired.”

Hoffman’s refusal to publicly acknowledge to which Church authority he subscribes only further provides ammunition for his critics. But perhaps we can glean something from a small footnote on page 259. Is he Protestant? Catholic? Schismatic?

“In our protest of the idolization of mere human beings (Romans 3:10; Matt. 20:25-28), we meant to take nothing away from the esteem due to faithful and saintly pre-Renaissance pontiffs who upheld the integrity and authority of the Word of God.”

Completely left out of Usury in Christendom’s equation, oddly, is the history of usury and capitalism—for or against—in Eastern Orthodoxy, particularly as it pertains to the great and prosperous Byzantine Empire (the Eastern Orthodox position is the same anti-usury teaching of the traditional Roman Catholic Church). Was this an historiographical blunder or does Hoffman think it irrelevant? Apparently he feels that the relatively short Puritan period warrants more attention than 1,000 years of Byzantium—through which to learn lessons on usury.

On a minor note, the book has no index, which is unusual and inconvenient.

Putting aside Hoffman’s frequent Puritan apologetics, his book makes solid points about the apostasy of Catholic leadership since the Middle Ages when it comes to usury. His logic and standards are sometimes inconsistent, but his points on usury in the Catholic Church are valid and important. His theory on loopholes is plausible and should not be ignored, despite his biases.

“Contraception, abortion, and homosexuality are, in part, derived from the corruption of a society that has legalized the crime of usury.”