War of Anti-Christ with the Church and Christian Civilization

Included within the scope of the book is material on the Illuminati, Kabbalism, Jacobinism, the French Revolution, the Carbonari and Fenianism. The Carbonari Alta Vendita document was given wider exposure in the English-speaking world after being first translated for the book and then placed within a historical context. The book was influential to Catholic integralism in Ireland, Britain and the United States, as well as national conservative politics. Fahey, who republished the book in the 1950s, founded the Maria Duce political movement, critical of Fenianism and associating it with Communism. It instead proposed an Irish National Catholicism under the social and spiritual reign of Christ the King. The company which republished it, the Britons Publishing Society, described the book as "of worldwide importance".

Background

Hypothesis on the French Revolution

Following the French Revolution society and politics across Europe began to change in a very radical way by the end of the 18th century. In an attempt to explain and understand this, several prominent authors and theorists released books on the topic. For instance Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) and Joseph de Maistre's Considerations on France (1796). Some asserted vividly that the French Revolution was the result of a deliberate conspiracy or plot to overthrow the monarchy, the Church and aristocratic society in Europe, allegedly hatched by a coalition of philosophes, Freemasons and the Order of the Illuminati. The conspirators created a system that was inherited by the Jacobins who operated it to its greatest potential.

The two best-known authors of the latter "New World Order" theory are French Jesuit priest Augustin Barruel, who authored the Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism in 1799. As well as John Robison a respected British academic and inventor who was a professor of philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and Secretary to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Robison's book released in 1797 was called Proofs of a Conspiracy against All the Religions and Governments of Europe, carried on in the Secret Meetings of the Free Masons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies.

Bonaparte and the Revolutions of 1848

Essentially the book published by George F. Dillon is a continuation of the latter tradition, reiterating the points but filling in the gaps of events since. Between the late 18th century and the release of the book in 1885, there had been several more political developments, including the rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte out of the French Revolution, creating the First French Empire. There had also been numerous secular radical nationalist rebellions during the Revolutions of 1848, some of which were successful such as the unification of Germany, while others failed. Some European countries also experienced a rise in clandestine radical groups like the Carbonari in the various Italian states and Fenianism in Dillon's native Ireland, which was then part of the United Kingdom with Great Britain.

Generally, most of Dillon's other book releases dealt with religious topics. He wrote a book about the Virgin Mother of Good Counsel, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, as well as a short piece on Irish history, specifically about Irish monasticism. Dillon was a Doctor of Divinity, an advanced academic degree in divinity, giving him license to teach Christian theology. He is known to have worked as a Catholic missionary in the Australian bush, where he founded a mission for the aboriginals at Burragorang, a place about 65 mi from Sydney.

In recent memory, the Papal States had been invaded and annexed by the new Kingdom of Italy, which left the Pope a prisoner in the Vatican. The Church had become aware of the secret societies such as the Carbonari and warned the public against them in encyclicals for their strongly anticlerical and antisocial nature.

A document was unveiled named the Alta Vendita, purportedly produced by the highest lodge of the Carbonari. It detailed a plan for long-term subversion of the Catholic Church by political liberalism, with the goal of promoting religious indifferentism, gradually eating away at Catholic dogma from within, to leave the Church a mere shell. Both Pope Pius IX and Pope Leo XIII requested for the document to be published to the general public. Indeed, Leo XIII called for the faithful to "tear away the mask from Freemasonry" in his encyclical Humanum genus published in 1884. It was that year that Dillon put together what would become the contents of this book for a lecture in Edinburgh named the Spoliation of Propaganda.