Another Invitation to See the Events of the Day Through the Eyes of the True Faith

“One Set of Rules for All” Jack Smith, who lives in The Netherlands although is a native-born American, has struck again by adding four new counts in a superseding indictment against Deep State’s favorite whipping boy, former President Donald John Trump, who has always been and remains his own worst enemy as he hands much ammunition to his enemies to execute him politically in the classified documents case just one day after United States District Court Judge for the District of Delaware Maryellen Noreika refused to accept the unprecedented plea agreement between Sonny Corleone (aka Hunter Biden) and Don Vito Corleone’s (Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr’s) saldatos (soldiers) in Consigliere Merrick Garland’s Ministry of Injustice that would have immunized Sonny from any Federal crimes he committed between 2014 and 2023.

The timing of the superseding indictment against Trump, who is alleged to have ordered the erasure of surveillance tapes at Mar-a-Lago that are said to show the movement of classified documents that had been subpoenaed by a Federal grand jury, is rather transparent, but not as transparent as Consigiliere Garland’s efforts to intimidate and discredit Sonny Corleone’s former business partner, Devon Archer, just two days before he is scheduled to testify behind closed doors before the House Oversight Committee today, Monday, July 31, 2023, the Feast of Saint Ignatius of Loyola:

The Justice Department is pushing for Devon Archer to report to prison — just days ahead of the former Hunter Biden business partner’s hotly anticipated congressional testimony, according to new court documents.

Manhattan federal prosecutors on Saturday filed a letter requesting a judge set a date for Archer to start his one-year sentence in a fraud case unrelated to the first son’s various scandals.

The request came after the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Archer’s 2018 conviction last Tuesday on two felony charges for his role in a conspiracy to defraud a Native American tribe.

Archer — who is set to deliver closed-door testimony to the House Oversight Committee on Monday about Biden — had been challenging the conviction.

His attorney, Matthew Schwartz, said he would be filing a formal response to the request from the US Attorney’s Office by Wednesday — and noted that his client would still testify as planned despite allegations the DOJ letter was an intimidation tactic.

“We are aware of speculation that the Department of Justice’s weekend request to have Mr. Archer report to prison is an attempt by the Biden administration to intimidate him in advance of his meeting with the House Oversight Committee,” Schwartz said in a statement, per Politico.

“To be clear, Mr. Archer does not agree with that speculation,” Schwartz added. “In any case, Mr. Archer will do what he has planned to do all along, which is to show up on Monday and to honestly answer the questions that are put to him by the Congressional investigators.”

Schwartz has argued it was “premature” to pick a jail date as the 58-year-old mulls potential appeal options.

Back in 2009, Archer, Biden, and Christopher Heinz co-founded investment and advisory firm Rosemont Seneca Partners, which the first son used as a vehicle for many of his overseas business endeavors.

Archer is expected to testify that Hunter Biden would dial-in his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden during various meetings with overseas partners, as The Post exclusively reported.

This is a key development in the GOP-led inquiries of the Biden family, because it potentially ties the president to his son’s business affairs.

President Biden has previously said, “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.”

The White House now says the president “was never in business with his son,” an apparent shift in verbiage downplayed by press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

For months, Biden administration officials have pummeled Republicans over their probe of the first family’s business dealings and have sought to drive home the notion that the president hasn’t been directly implicated.

“Just last week his fellow GOP colleague on the Oversight Committee said this on camera for all to see: ‘I’ve heard over and over that President Biden has not been implicated or proven for any wrongdoing here, and I acknowledge that,'” White House spokesperson Ian Sams tweeted last Tuesday.

Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), who has been the point-person on the GOP inquiries of the first family, has repeatedly shrugged off the Biden administration’s various defensives, highlighting the questions Biden activity his panel has uncovered so far.

Comer subpoenaed Archer in June and called the timing of the jail request letter “odd.”

“I don’t want to put words in Devon Archer’s mouth,” Comer said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” “but I’ll say this: He has an opportunity to come tomorrow to the House Oversight Committee and tell the truth.”

Other Republicans also seized on the DOJ letter.

“The DOJ is now actively committing the crime of obstructing a congressional investigation,” Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz charged in a tweet.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) shared Gaetz’s tweet, adding: “This is getting to be Banana Republic territory. They are moving from indicting their opponents to throwing witnesses in jail on the eve of Congressional testimony.”

Last week, Hunter Biden’s planned plea agreement with federal prosecutors burned down in flames after a Trump-appointed judge raised constitutionality concerns and found daylight between the two parties.

He then pleaded not guilty to two tax misdemeanors charges, to which he was initially expected to plead guilty.

Attorneys from the two sides are expected to head back to the drawing board to iron out their differences. (DOJ tries to jail key Hunter Biden witness Devon Archer on eve of congressional testimony.)

What a coincidence! 

On the eve of Devon Archer’s bombshell testimony to the House Oversight Committee, the Department of Justice tried to put him in jail. 

If you don’t suspect that’s an attempt to intimidate Hunter Biden’s former best friend before he reveals damaging secrets about the president, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. 

It’s another example of a DOJ gone astray. 

Coming hot on the heels of the first son’s dubious plea deal in Delaware collapsing last week, and amid allegations from senior IRS whistleblowers of political favoritism by prosecutors to protect Joe Biden, you have to wonder how far a weaponized, all-powerful, unaccountable justice system can go. 

Two more examples from the past week tell you the sky’s the limit — and they’re not even bothering to hide it anymore. 

On Wednesday, federal prosecutors dropped campaign-finance violation charges against cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, who just so happens to have been Biden’s second-biggest donor.

On Thursday, new charges against Biden’s chief political rival, Donald Trump, were filed by special counsel Jack Smith over the former president’s handling of classified files. 

‘Obstruction of justice’ 

It’s impossible not to view the gratuitous intervention in Archer’s case by Damian Williams, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, through the same prism of suspicion and distrust. 

Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer describes the letter as “obstruction of justice.” 

In an interview with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on Sunday, he decried “the lengths to which the Biden legal team has gone to try to intimidate our witnesses, to coordinate with the DOJ and certainly to coordinate with the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee to encourage people not to cooperate with our investigation.” 

Williams’ extraordinary letter was sent to Judge Ronnie Abrams on Saturday, two days before Archer was to tell the Republican-controlled committee what he had witnessed of then-Vice President Joe Biden’s involvement in his son Hunter’s overseas business dealings. 

The letter asks Abrams to set a date for Archer, 58, to report to prison to serve a one-year sentence for his role in a $60 million bond fraud; he was convicted in 2018.

His appeal failed two months ago.

In his letter, Williams explicitly rejects a request he received from Archer’s lawyer to postpone any decision until Wednesday. So, he wants the date set sooner. 

But why the big hurry? 

Archer is scheduled to testify at 10 a.m. Monday that he witnessed Hunter dial in his father on speakerphone during meetings with his overseas business partners, including executives of the corrupt Ukrainian energy company Burisma, who paid Hunter $83,000 a month during his father’s vice presidency and cut the payments in half weeks after Joe left office.

Archer, who served on the Burisma board with Hunter, also will be able to testify about dinners Hunter organized at Georgetown’s Café Milano for his father to meet his shady benefactors from Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan. 

The claims are devastating to the president’s credibility after he repeatedly has claimed that he knew nothing about the millions of dollars Hunter raked in from corrupt countries where his father wielded power as veep. 

“I’ve never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” Joe Biden famously told Fox News in September 2019. 

White House press secretaries have repeated the line ad nauseam for almost three years, until last week, in the wake of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, when the phrasing changed. 

“The president was never in business with his son,” declared Karine Jean-Pierre. 

Big difference. They’ll soon be parsing the meaning of “in business.” 

In return for his cooperation, Archer will be hoping for a letter from the Oversight Committee to Abrams urging leniency, perhaps in the form of home detention.

But any decisions about his sentence are a matter for the judge to decide, not for the SDNY. 

It is “highly unusual” for a US attorney to pressure a judge over a surrender date, says Bob Costello, former Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division of the SDNY. 

“The Southern District shouldn’t be involved,” Costello said. “They’re allowed to be but there’s no need. 

“Why are they suddenly interested in a surrender date right on the eve of his testimony? 

“They want to put pressure on him. They want this to be weighing on his mind.” 

Costello sees the letter to Abrams as “a psychological operation on Archer to see . . . how it affects his ability to recollect [damning details during his testimony]. 

“I think what the SDNY has done borders on obstructing justice, by interfering with a congressional witness. While they might technically be allowed to do this, it exhibits bad form at the very least.” 

Archer’s ordeal 

The pressure on Archer already was torturous when Williams’ letter dropped.

The father of three has been receiving death threats and was forced to go into hiding last week. 

Saturday’s SDNY letter carries a double whammy.

Firstly, it serves to intimidate the witness, although Archer’s lawyer, Matthew Schwartz, a managing partner at Boies Schiller, the firm where Hunter once was “of counsel,” denied any deleterious effect on his client Sunday. 

We are aware of speculation that the DOJ’s weekend request to have Mr. Archer report to prison is an attempt by the Biden administration to intimidate him in advance of his meeting with the House Oversight Committee,” Schwartz said in a statement to Politico. “To be clear, Mr. Archer does not agree with that speculation.” 

Secondly, the letter serves to pre-discredit Archer’s testimony by highlighting his fraud conviction.

However, Archer may flip the advantage by using his moment in the spotlight (albeit behind closed doors) to place on the record his belief that he is innocent.

There is evidence to bolster his claim that he was a victim of fraud by his co-defendants, since he personally lost millions of dollars, and Abrams declared “an unwavering concern that Archer is innocent” when she initially overturned his conviction. 

In any case, Hunter Biden’s former best friend has nothing to lose by testifying, and every hope that the truth will set him free.

Shame on you, GOP RINOs of the Senate 

Senate Republicans rushed out last week to sabotage House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s efforts to hold Joe Biden accountable. 

Why else would they join Adam Schiff in criticizing McCarthy for raising the prospect of an impeachment inquiry in the face of an avalanche of evidence and allegations of corruption against the president?

If Senate RINOs think impeachment is a bad idea, they should counsel their House colleagues in private.

Why carry water for Biden? 

It’s a stab in the back to House Republicans who finally are doing what the DOJ and the FBI have failed to do for a decade. 

If the DOJ can’t be trusted, then Congress has its own powers and a duty to investigate alleged high crimes and misdemeanors of the executive branch. 

But Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) last week warned his House colleagues against following the lead of Democrats who “cheapened” the impeachment process under Trump.

Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-SD) told reporters it was better to “be making an argument for why we need to have the majority in the House, the Senate and the White House come Jan. 2025.” 

That’s all very well. But Democrats don’t care about niceties.

Joe Biden sicced the DOJ onto his main political rival, for crying out loud. Thune and Tillis haven’t exactly been railing against that “cheapening” of the justice system. 

If GOP senators can’t support their House colleagues in the difficult task of investigating Biden family corruption, they should at least keep their mouths shut. Voters didn’t send them to Washington to support Joe Biden. (DOJ can't sink any lower after attempted jailing of Hunter Biden's ex-partner Devon Archer.)

United States Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) is entirely correct in his characterization of the letter sent to Devon Archer by the United States Department of Justice on a Saturday despite Archer’s attorney’s refusal to accept such a characterization as valid. Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., and his band of thugs who might as well have come from the casting department of Desilu Production’s The Untouchables. This is, as House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer noted, obstruction of justice. It is one of the boldest forms of political intimidation and is worthy, if one can use that word, of comparisons with the governments of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, East Germany, Cuba, and, of course, Red China. 

Those interested in all the pertinent details of matters upon which I have commented recently in "Hands Off My Family" Won't Work for the "Big Guy" with Christ the King at the Particular Judgment and Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.'s., Ultimate Treason is Against Christ the King can read the following secular commentaries: Pro-Biden PAC disbursed thousands to family friend who discussed business opportunities with Hunter, Judge Rejects Hunter Biden's Dirty Plea Deal, One DOJ Official Could Have Stopped Biden Family Crime Racket Years Ago: Jack Smith, Hunter Biden's laptop full of secret agreements and contracts, BOTH Trump and Biden can be crooks, How DOJ, Hunter lawyers tried to sweet-talk judge into accepting sweeping plea deal, Republicans in frenzy over timing of 'brazen' new charges against Trump: 'We cannot allow this to stand', The fix was in for Hunter Biden — until a hero judge stepped up, Joe Biden's new claim about Hunter's business deals reveals what he really thinks of voters, and Hunter Biden plea deal wording: DOJ sought to protect Joe.

For my part, however, I see no good reason to belabor points about this remarkable display of chutzpah from lifelong political thugs who even managed to send Jill Biden’s true husband to jail over, get this, tax charges after he refused to turn over his house to the future Mrs. Biden (see Jill Biden's ex-husband slams 'Biden crime family'). Those who do not want to see the truth about the Catholic apostate and moral reprobate who lives in the White House while others, most especially the capo of all capos, Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro, pulls many of the strings in what is, in effect, his third term as president, at this point will never do so.

Over and above all the criminal activity, including acts that border upon if not actually constitute treason against the United States of America, and over and above all the serial, sociopathic lying, which includes Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.’s appropriating a story that had been told to him by a friend as his own just minutes after being told the story and then using in a speech in front of his friend (talk about chutzpah!—see Jill Biden ex: Joe stole my story — minutes after I told it), the fact remains that Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., whom I questioned about abortion after a speech he game at the then named Allentown College of Saint Francis de Sales in Center Valley, Pennsylvania, in the Spring of 1980, is disqualified from public office solely because he supports the slaughter of the innocent preborn by chemical and surgical means and has been in the vanguard of supporting every manner of indecency and perversity spread by the homosexual collective for the past eleven years since he preempted Obama/Soetoro’s own “coming out” in favor of absurdity that is “marriage” between two persons of the same gender.

We cannot live our lives in constant states of agitation, especially over events in the absurd world of naturalism that require us to suspend rational judgments while the supposed “lesser of two evils” advances various evils (much of the homosexual agenda, including the appointment of a “married” sodomite as Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany, the wanton, public and profligate use of profanity, including blasphemous phrases taking the Holy Name of God in vain, vulgar jokes, advancing an agenda for “peace” in the Middle East that has been in perfect conformity to the desires of the Zionist State of Israel, referring to Jerusalem as the “eternal capital of the Jewish people, profligate Federal spending, including in the two stimulus packages that are completely unconstitutional and continue to be back door means of advancing socialism, which thrives upon creating dependency classes that cannot function without government assistance, and complete support of the “palliative care” program) that would have “conservatives” up in arms and protesting in open opposition if they had been proposed by William Jefferson Clinton or Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro. The very same “conservatives” who are still indemnifying Donald John Trump as he has supported policies that were, in effect, a “back door” to socialism by profligate Federal spending, including the “funny money” that the Federal government does not have and cannot fund to pay us poor goofs a few shekels to make us believe that “something” is being done for us, have been  up in arms since January 20, 2021, as Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., and the anti-Catholic Kamala Harris have pursued many of the same policies while, of course, advancing a socialist, internationalist, globalist agenda that has eroded, if not entirely eclipsed, national sovereignty, authentic personal liberty, restricted, botched up the nation's transportation system, restricted private property rights, stopped most domestic petrolenum and natural gas exploration and development, have gone soft on Red China, promoted the sodomite agenda with ready abandon, and has sought to use Big Tech as a means to censor all opposition to their "transformative" policies (see, for example, Biden Asked Censors To Nuke Memes, Tucker Carlson Videos ).

Unlike the opposites of the false opposite of the naturalist “right,” most of whom are afraid to offend the “swing” voters, the members of the organized crime family of the naturalist “left” take no prisoners when advancing and imposing policies that benefit them, the ruling oligarchy, of make of the people so many little peons who must be lectured and controlled. In other words, the “left” is more committed to evil than those in the “right” are rhetorically committed to what they believe is “good.” Leftists never compromise. Most “conservatives” see compromise as their first and only plan of action.

Thus, to conform oneself to the exigences of the so-called “lesser evil” by keeping silent about (or even willfully ignorant of) policies that they would otherwise oppose loudly if the “greater evil” proposed them is a surrender of one’s authentic civic duties on a merely natural level and, objectively speaking, nothing other than cowardice on the part of Catholics, who have been baptized and confirmed to bear witness to the Catholic Faith, not serve as the willing lackeys of public officials whom they believe to be holding back a “tide of evil” all the while promoting evils incrementally that thereupon become institutionalized and accepted as irreversible facts of political life.

Alas, as I have noted so many hundreds upon hundreds of times before on this website, evils that become “tolerated” and then institutionalized bring with them more and more of God’s just chastisement down upon the heads of us all.

The more closely the temporal power of a nation aligns itself with the spiritual, and the more it fosters and promotes the latter, by so much the more it contributes to the conservation of the commonwealth. For it is the aim of the ecclesiastical authority by the use of spiritual means, to form good Christians in accordance with its own particular end and object; and in doing this it helps at the same time to form good citizens, and prepares them to meet their obligations as members of a civil society. This follows of necessity because in the City of God, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, a good citizen and an upright man are absolutely one and the same thing. How grave therefore is the error of those who separate things so closely united, and who think that they can produce good citizens by ways and methods other than those which make for the formation of good Christians. For, let human prudence say what it likes and reason as it pleases, it is impossible to produce true temporal peace and tranquillity by things repugnant or opposed to the peace and happiness of eternity. (Silvio Cardinal Antoniano, quoted by Pope Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)

Moreover, Pope Saint Pius X reminded Catholics that they can never just "put aside" their Holy Faith to think, speak or act as naturalists:

3. These are fundamental principles: No matter what the Christian does, even in the realm of temporal goods, he cannot ignore the supernatural good. Rather, according to the dictates of Christian philosophy, he must order all things to the ultimate end, namely, the Highest Good. All his actions, insofar as they are morally either good or bad (that is to say, whether they agree or disagree with the natural and divine law), are subject to the judgment and judicial office of the Church. (Pope Saint Pius X, Singulari Quadam, September 24, 1912.)

There is never a time, no matter the urgency, that requires a Catholic to think as a naturalist and to act as though the greatest evil in the world is Mortal Sin and for a person to die in its wretched stench is of no consequence to nations. Catholicism is the only and only foundation of personal and social order. Why, please tell me why, this is so difficult to understand?

No, Venerable Brethren, We must repeat with the utmost energy in these times of social and intellectual anarchy when everyone takes it upon himself to teach as a teacher and lawmaker - the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants. Omnia instaurare in Christo. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15 , 1910.)

Here we have, founded by Catholics, an inter-denominational association that is to work for the reform of civilization, an undertaking which is above all religious in character; for there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical fact. The new Sillonists cannot pretend that they are merely working on “the ground of practical realities” where differences of belief do not matter. Their leader is so conscious of the influence which the convictions of the mind have upon the result of the action, that he invites them, whatever religion they may belong to, “to provide on the ground of practical realities, the proof of the excellence of their personal convictions.” And with good reason: indeed, all practical results reflect the nature of one’s religious convictions, just as the limbs of a man down to his finger-tips, owe their very shape to the principle of life that dwells in his body. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

To point out these facts is to say that nations which indemnify the sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance can never be made "great" or "secure" again by those support the nonexistent "right" of citizens who are immerse in them to be recognize as a legitimate category of human beings. Never means precisely that. Never.

God the Holy Ghost saw fit to instruct us in Sacred Scripture, including in the passage from the Book of Proverbs:

[34] Justice exalteth a nation: but sin maketh nations miserable. (Proverbs 14: 34.)

Christ the King will not be mocked. He will suffer the sins of men so that they and their nations might be brought to repentance. He is not, however, indifferent that which Him to suffer in His Sacred Humanity during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross, sin, and that wounds the Church Militant on earth and impedes the pursuit of the true common temporal good of men and their nations.

As Pope Pius XI noted in Casti Connubii, December 31, 1929:

Those who hold the reins of government should not forget that it is the duty of public authority by appropriate laws and sanctions to defend the lives of the innocent, and this all the more so since those whose lives are endangered and assailed cannot defend themselves. Among whom we must mention in the first place infants hidden in the mother's womb. And if the public magistrates not only do not defend them, but by their laws and ordinances betray them to death at the hands of doctors or of others, let them remember that God is the Judge and Avenger of innocent blood which cried from earth to Heaven." (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, December 30, 1930.)

Catholicism is the Only Foundation of National Greatness

Contrary to what those consumed with partisan politics believe, there is only one source of true national greatness, Catholicism. Nothing else.

Orestes Brownson, who converted to the Holy Faith in 1844 at the age of forty-three, wrote the following about true national greatness in the Brownson Quarterly Review a year later:

What, then, is true national greatness? We answer, that nation is greatest in which man may most easily and effectually fulfil the true and proper end of man. The nation, under the point of view we here consider the subject, is in the people. Its greatness must, then, be in the greatness of the people. The people are a collection or aggregation of individuals, and their greatness taken collectively is simply their greatness taken individually. Consequently the greatness of a nation is the greatness of the individuals that compose it. The question of national greatness resolves itself, therefore, into the question of individual greatness. The greatness of the individual consists in his fulfilling the great ends of his existence, the ends for which Almighty God made him and placed him here. No man is truly great who neglects life's great ends, nor can one be said in truth to approach greatness any further than he fulfils them.

In order, then, to determine in what true national greatness consists, we must determine in what consists true individual greatness; and in order to determine in what true individual greatness consists, we must determine what is the true end of man; that is, what is the end to which Almighty God has appointed man, and which he is while here to labor to secure. What, then, is the end of man?  For what has our Maker placed us here? To what has he bidden us aspire? Were we placed here merely to be born and to die,-to live for a moment, continue our species, toil, suffer, drop into the grave to rot, and be no more for ever? If this be our end, true greatness will consist in living for this life only, and in being great in that which pertains to this life. The greatest man will be he who succeeds best in amassing the goods of this world, in securing its honors and luxuries, or simply in multiplying for himself the means of sensual enjoyment. In a word, the greatest man will be he who most abounds in wealth and luxury.

We mean not to say, that, in point of fact, wealth and luxury, worldly honors and sensual gratifications, are the chief goods of even this life; but simply that they would be, if this were our only life, if our destiny were a destiny to be accomplished in this world. It is because this world is not our home, because we are merely travellers through it, and our destination is a world beyond it, that the life of justice and sanctity yields us even here our truest and most substantial pleasure. But confine man to this life, let it be true that he has no destiny beyond it, and nothing could, relatively to him, be called great or good, not included under the heads of wealth and luxury. Nothing could be counted or conceived of as of the least value to him that does not directly or indirectly minister to his sensual enjoyment. No infidel moralist has ever been able, without going out of his own system, or want of system, to conceive of any thing higher, nobler, more valuable, than sensual pleasure.

But this life is not our only life, and our destiny is not accomplished here. The grave is not our final doom; this world is not our home; we were not created for this world alone; and there is for us a life beyond this life. But even this, if we stop with it, does not answer our question. We may conceive of a future life as the simple continuation of our present natural life, and such the future life is conceived to be by not a few among us, who nevertheless flatter themselves that they are firm believers in the life and immortality brought to light through the Gospel. Every being may be said to have a natural destiny or end, which its nature is fitted and intended to gain. The Creator, in creating a being with a given nature, has given that being a pledge of the means and conditions of fulfilling it, of attaining to its natural end. Man has evidently been created with a nature that does not and cannot find its complete fulfilment in this life. He has a natural capacity for more than is actually attainable here. In this capacity he has the promise or pledge of his Maker that he shall live again.

The promises of God cannot fail. Man therefore must and will live again. But this is only the pledge, so to speak, of a natural immortality, and reveals to us only a natural destiny. It is only a continuation of our natural life in another world. The end we are to labor for, and the means we are to adopt to gain it, must be precisely what they would be in case our life were to terminate at the grave. Our future life being still a natural life, what is wisest and best for that portion we are now living would be wisest and best for that portion we are hereafter to live. Hence, what is wisest and best for time would be wisest and best for eternity.

Hence it is that we find so many who, though professing belief in a future life, judge all things as if this life were our only life. They look to the future life only as the continuation of the present, and expect from it only the completion of their natural destiny. They agree in all their moral judgments, in all their estimates of the worth of things or of actions, with those who believe in no future life at all. They profess to hope for a future life, but live only for time; because their future life is to be only a continuation of time. Hence they say, as we ourselves were for years accustomed to say, He who lives wisely for time lives wisely for eternity; create a heaven here, and you will have done your best to secure your title to a heaven hereafter.

Hence it is that the morality of many who profess to be Christians is the same which is adopted and defended by infidels. This is so obviously the case, that we not unfrequently find men who call themselves Christians commending downright unbelievers in Christianity as good moral men, and who see no reason why the morality of the infidel should not be the same in kind as the morality of the Christian. Hence it is supposed that morality may be taught in our schools, without teaching any peculiar or distinctive doctrine of Christianity. Morality, we are told, is independent of religion, and not a few regard it as sufficient without religion. So common has this mode of thinking and speaking become amongst us, that we heard the other day a tolerably intelligent Catholic, who would by no means admit himself to be deficient in the understanding or practice of his Catholic duties, say, that, if a man were only a good moral man, he did not care what was his distinctive religious belief. Many who go further, and contend that religion is necessary to morality, contend for its necessity only as a sort of police establishment. It is necessary, be cause the natural sanctions of the moral law are not quite sufficient to secure obedience, and religion must be called in by its hopes and fears to strengthen them.

Now all this is perfectly consistent and right, if it be true that man has only a natural destiny. We ought, in such a case, to judge all things which concern us precisely as if this were our only life. Religion could be of no value further than it strengthened the police, kept people from picking one another's pockets or cutting one another's throats. But man's destiny is not natural, but supernatural. Almighty God created him with a specific nature, but not for an end in the order of that nature, or to be attained by its simple fulfilment. He created him to his own image and likeness, but appointed him to a supernatural destiny,-to an end above what is attainable by the fulfilment of his nature,- to an end not promised in his nature, and which is not be stowed as the reward of fulfilling it. This end is to know and love God; but in a sense far higher than we can know and love him by our natural powers, and as he is now beheld through a glass, darkly, or seen dimly through the medium of his works, as we see the cause in the effect. It is to see him face to face, and to know and love him with a knowledge and love the same in kind, though not in degree, with which God knows and loves himself ;-this is the end for which man was intended, and which it is made his duty and his high privilege to seek. But this end surpasses the utmost capacity of our nature, and requires not only a supernatural revelation of God, but the supernatural elevation of our nature itself. It consists in our being made partakers of the divine nature in an ineffable sense, and in a sense above that in which we partake of it in being created after the image and likeness of God. Hence, St. Peter says, "By whom [Jesus Christ] he hath given us very great and precious promises, that by these you may be made partakers of his divine nature." So also St. John :-" We are now the sons of God, and it hath not yet appeared what we shall be. We know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; because we shall see him as he is."

This fact in these times is overlooked. Men have wished to rationalize the Gospel, to find a philosophic basis for the mysteries of faith. In attempting this, they have labored to bring the whole of divine revelation, within the domain of reason, and have been led to exclude, as no part of it whatever they found themselves unable to bring within that domain. Reason is necessarily restricted to the order of nature, and can in no instance, of itself, go out of that order. Hence, revelation has come very widely to be regarded as only a republication of the natural law, as at best 'only a running commentary on it, designed simply to explain the natural order, and not to reveal any thing above it.

Men who claim to be Christians, and even ministers of the Gospel, everywhere abound, who have no faith in the supernatural order, scarcely a conception of it. We spent nearly two hours the other day trying to enable a Protestant minister, and him by no means a weak or ignorant one, even to conceive of the supernatural; but in vain. So perverted had his mind become by the false theologies of modern times, that he could attach no meaning to the assertion, "There is a supernatural order." He could use the word supernatural, but it had no meaning for his mind not within the order of nature. Thousands are in the same sad condition. To them nature is all, and all is nature. Indeed, the word nature itself has no definite meaning for them. If a man by a word raise the dead, it is natural; if Moses smite the rock and living waters gush forth, it is natural,-all by a natural power, a natural law. Travelling in the same direction, they lose themselves in a wilderness of absurdities.

Natural laws cease to be laws imposed on nature, laws she must obey, and from which she cannot withdraw herself, and become forces, agents, creators. It is not strange, then that they lose sight of the supernatural destiny of man, and look only for a natura1 destiny, to be obtained not as a reward for obedience to grace, but as the natural consequence of the cultivation or development of our natural powers.  Read the writings of the celebrated Dr. Channing, or of the school which he founded or to which he was attached, and you shall never find a single recognition of the supernatural order, properly so called,-any allusion to a supernatural destiny. The highest end you will find presented is that to which we may attain by the unfolding of our higher nature, of our natural sentiments of love and reverence. The school goes so far as to contend that our nature is susceptible of an unbounded good, and that our natural sentiments of love and reverence are capable of an infinite expansion. Yet these are rational Christians, and they boast of their reason! They talk of the absurdities of Catholic theology, and see no absurdity in supposing that a finite nature may be infinitely expanded, or that a nature can be something more than it is without any thing super-natural.

But this by the way. The true end for which man is to live is the supernatural end to which we are appointed, the beatitude which God hath promised to all that love and serve him here. His true end is not the fulfilment of nature, but what the sacred Scriptures term "eternal life"; and "This is life eternal, that they may know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." We cannot know God, without loving him. Hence we say, the end of man is to know and love God. But to know him intuitively, as he knows himself; for we are to see him as he is, -not as he appears through the medium of his works, but as he is in himself. We cannot thus know him naturally, for thus to know him exceeds the power of the highest possible created intelligence. We must be like him, before we can see him as he is,-be made, in a supernatural sense, partakers of his divine nature. To know him intuitively as he is in himself, is, however, the glorious destiny to which we are appointed, and to which we may attain, if we will. A more glorious destiny we cannot desire. In it we possess God himself, who is the sovereign good. Even here we find our highest good in knowing the truth and loving goodness, dim as is our view of the one, and feeble as is our hold of the other. What must it be, then, when we come to behold, by the light of glory, our God face to face, with no cloud intervening to obscure his infinite beauty, no distance between us and his ineffable love? Well may it be said, "Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive what our God hath prepared for them that love him." He will reward them with no inferior, no created good; but will give them himself, will himself be their portion for ever.

But this supernatural destiny, since it is supernatural, is not naturally attainable. We may cultivate all our natural powers, we may fill up the highest and broadest capacities of our nature, realize the highest ideal, and yet be infinitely, -we use the word in its strict sense,-infinitely below it. It is not attained to by "self-culture," by the development and exercise of our highest natural powers, including even the boasted sentiments of love and reverence. It is nothing that is due, or ever can be due, to our nature. It is a gift, and can be obtained only as bestowed. But it will be bestowed only on the obedient, and is bestowed as the reward of obedience. Our destiny is eternal life, and the condition of obtaining it is obedience. Obedience is not, as some of the sects teach, the end for which we were made. We were made not that we might obey God, but that we might possess God, and we obey him as the condition of possessing him. (National Greatness. This was written when Orestes Brownson was fresh with enthusiasm for the Holy Faith. After his insistence that Holy Mother Church has primacy over the civil state got him in big trouble with the American bishops, he eventually became a supporter of the Americanist notions of religious liberty, freedom of conscience, and he also became a critic of The Syllabus of Errors. The early phase of Brownson’s Catholic years represented his best grasp of the Holy Faith, therefore.)

True national greatness requires an adherence to the Holy Faith. There are no shortcuts. None.

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Nothing now is really substantially different than in the past except that we are only witnessing the manifestation of the perfection of inherent degeneracy of the American founding principles, which in themselves represent a rejection of Divine Revelation, the authority of Holy Mother Church and of the necessity for men to have their intellects truly enlightened and their wills strengthened by having belief in, access to and cooperation with Sanctifying Grace.

There is no secular, naturalistic or electoral means to hold back a tide of evil that has been gathering strength since the Renaissance and, most especially, after Martin Luther tacked those ninety-five theses onto the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, on October 31, 1517. 

Entire nations of men, including the United States of America, of course, cannot keep offending Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by continuing to kill the innocent preborn by surgical and chemical means, promote perversity and its multifaceted vices as "human rights," speak profanely and blasphemously, dress immodestly and indecently, and pursue one material pleasure after another without calling down upon themselves His Holy wrath. 

This is the time that God has known from all eternity that we would be alive, meaning, of course, that the ineffable graces His Divine Son won for us by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flows forth into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of His Most Blessed Mother, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces, are sufficient for the moment.

Popes Gregory XVI, Pius IX, and Leo XIII warned us what happens to nations when they ignore the truths of the Holy Faith by adhering to the anti-Incarnational errors of Modernity that are some of the most essential building blocks for Modernism’s Dignitatis Humanae and Gaudium et Spes, December 7, 1965:

This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. “But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error,” as Augustine was wont to say. When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin. Then truly “the bottomless pit” is open from which John saw smoke ascending which obscured the sun, and out of which locusts flew forth to devastate the earth. Thence comes transformation of minds, corruption of youths, contempt of sacred things and holy laws — in other words, a pestilence more deadly to the state than any other. Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for wealth, dominion, and glory perished as a result of this single evil, namely immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire for novelty. (Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.)

For you well know, venerable brethren, that at this time men are found not a few who, applying to civil society the impious and absurd principle of “naturalism,” as they call it, dare to teach that “the best constitution of public society and (also) civil progress altogether require that human society be conducted and governed without regard being had to religion any more than if it did not exist; or, at least, without any distinction being made between the true religion and false ones.” And, against the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church, and of the Holy Fathers, they do not hesitate to assert that “that is the best condition of civil society, in which no duty is recognized, as attached to the civil power, of restraining by enacted penalties, offenders against the Catholic religion, except so far as public peace may require.” From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an “insanity,” viz., that “liberty of conscience and worship is each man’s personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way.” But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching “liberty of perdition;” and that “if human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of human wisdom; whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling.”

And, since where religion has been removed from civil society, and the doctrine and authority of divine revelation repudiated, the genuine notion itself of justice and human right is darkened and lost, and the place of true justice and legitimate right is supplied by material force, thence it appears why it is that some, utterly neglecting and disregarding the surest principles of sound reason, dare to proclaim that “the people’s will, manifested by what is called public opinion or in some other way, constitutes a supreme law, free from all divine and human control; and that in the political order accomplished facts, from the very circumstance that they are accomplished, have the force of right.” But who, does not see and clearly perceive that human society, when set loose from the bonds of religion and true justice, can have, in truth, no other end than the purpose of obtaining and amassing wealth, and that (society under such circumstances) follows no other law in its actions, except the unchastened desire of ministering to its own pleasure and interests?” (Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864.)

So, too, the liberty of thinking, and of publishing, whatsoever each one likes, without any hindrance, is not in itself an advantage over which society can wisely rejoice. On the contrary, it is the fountain-head and origin of many evils. Liberty is a power perfecting man, and hence should have truth and goodness for its object. But the character of goodness and truth cannot be changed at option. These remain ever one and the same, and are no less unchangeable than nature itself. If the mind assents to false opinions, and the will chooses and follows after what is wrong, neither can attain its native fullness, but both must fall from their native dignity into an abyss of corruption. Whatever, therefore, is opposed to virtue and truth may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law. A well-spent life is the only passport to heaven, whither all are bound, and on this account the State is acting against the laws and dictates of nature whenever it permits the license of opinion and of action to lead minds astray from truth and souls away from the practice of virtue. To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from the business of life, from the making of laws, from the education of youth, from domestic society is a grave and fatal error. A State from which religion is banished can never be well regulated; and already perhaps more than is desirable is known of the nature and tendency of the so-called civil philosophy of life and morals. The Church of Christ is the true and sole teacher of virtue and guardian of morals. She it is who preserves in their purity the principles from which duties flow, and, by setting forth most urgent reasons for virtuous life, bids us not only to turn away from wicked deeds, but even to curb all movements of the mind that are opposed to reason, even though they be not carried out in action. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

In the midst of all this, however, we must remain ever in the hands of Our Lady and ever reliant upon her Most Rosary as the consecrated slaves of her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, through her own Sorrowful  and Immaculate Heart. This is a time for Catholic heroes who are willing to pray and to fast for the conversion of men and their nations to the true Faith, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order, and for the restoration of a true pope on the Throne of Saint Peter.

Although it may sound trite as I have repeated this endlessly in my writing over the past few decades, this is the time that God has known from all eternity that we would be alive. The graces His Co-Equal, Co-Eternal Divine Son won for us by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday in atonement for our sins and that flow into our souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces, are more than sufficient for us to prosper under the yoke of overt persecution and censorship.

Remember, the Sanhedrin demanded that the Apostles be silent about the Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ. They refused to do and rejoiced that we were deemed worthy to suffer for sake of His Holy Name.

What are we afraid of now?

Remember, the first Catholics were told by Roman emperors and their minions to make sacrifices to idols and abandon the Catholic Faith. According to Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, nearly eleven million Catholics gave up their lives in order to avoid even the appearance of doing apostatizing.

What’s wrong with us?

Remember, Catholics in England and Ireland hid priests in priest-holes and were willing to lose everything they hand, including their lives, to remain faithful to the true Church during the persecutions of King Henry VIII and his own daughter and granddaughter, Elizabeth I, whose mother, Anne Boleyn, was Henry’s illegitimate daughter.

We are afraid of the Red Chinese-bought and paid for high priests and priestesses of Silicon Valley?

To quote the “big guy” whose wallet got very fat from Chinese Communist Party front companies, “Come on, man.”

Remember, Catholics suffered during the French Revolution, under Otto von Bismarck’s Kulturkampf in Germany, and the suffered at the hands of the Soviet Bolsheviks, the Chinese Maoists, the Cuban Castroists and the Mexican Freemasons.

With Our Lady and Saint Joseph so near to us every day, why are we so agitated and afraid?

Remember, Christ the King is more powerful than Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., and Kamala Harris (and Pelosi, Schumer, et al.), and that this country must be punished for its sins as the time has come for Americans to make an accounting unto Him of how they have squandered their goods (God's graces) on material pursuits to the exclusion of the supernatural life.

Father Frederick William Faber explained the allure of naturalism in his own day in the middle of the Nineteenth Century, an allure that is no less enticing today to Catholics all across the vast expanse of the ecclesiastical divide than it was one hundred fifty years ago now:

All devotions have their characteristics; all of them have their own theological meanings. We must say something, therefore, upon the characteristics of the devotion to the Precious Blood. In reality the whole Treatise has more or less illustrated this matter. But something still remains to be said, and something will bear to be repeated. We will take the last first. Devotion to the Precious Blood is the devotional expression of the prominent and characteristic teaching of St. Paul. St. Paul is the apostle of redeeming grace. A devout study of his epistles would be our deliverance from most of the errors of the day. He is truly the apostle of all ages. To each age doubtless he seems to have a special mission. Certainly his mission to our is very special. The very air we breathe is Pelagian. Our heresies are only novel shapes of an old Pelagianism. The spirit of the world is eminently Pelagian. Hence it comes to pass that wrong theories among us are always constructed round a nuclear of Pelagianism; and Pelagianism is just the heresy which is least able to breathe in the atmosphere of St. Paul. It is the age of the natural as opposed to the supernatural, of the acquired as opposed to the infused, of the active as opposed to the passive. This is what I said in an earlier chapter, and here repeat. Now, this exclusive fondness for the natural is on the whole very captivating. It takes with the young, because it saves thought. It does not explain difficulties; but it lessens the number of difficulties to be explained. It takes with the idle; it dispenses from slowness and research. It takes with the unimaginative, because it withdraws just the very element in religion which teases them. It takes with the worldly, because it subtracts the enthusiasm from piety and the sacrifice from spirituality. It takes with the controversial, because it is a short road and a shallow ford. It forms a school of thought which, while it admits that we have an abundance of grace, intimates that we are not much better for it. It merges privileges in responsibilities, and makes the sovereignty of God odious by representing it as insidious. All this whole spirit, with all its ramifications, perishes in the sweet fires of devotion to the Precious Blood.

The time is also one of libertinage; and a time of libertinage is always, with a kind of practical logic, one of infidelity. Whatever brings out God's side in creation, and magnifies his incessant supernatural operation in it, is the controversy which infidelity can least withstand. Now, the devotion to the Precious Blood does this in a very remarkable way. It shows that the true significance in every thing is to be found in the scheme of redemption, apart from which it is useless to discuss the problems of creation. (Father Frederick Faber, The Precious Blood, written in 1860, republished by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 258-259.)

This is just as much a description of our own days as it was of Father Faber's. Indeed, Father Faber was merely describing naturalism's hatred for the Holy Faith, a hatred that is from Hell and that is meant to send souls there for all eternity as disorder is sown into the hearts and souls of men to be spread abroad in one nation after another as even well-meaning people come to believe that there is some naturalistic "remedy" for the evils of naturalism that are at the proximate root of our personal and social problems today.

We must reject the traps posed by the devil in the camps of false opposites of the "left" and of the "right." We must stand fast with Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen as we pray as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits, taking as our consolation the fact that God Himself permits us to suffer during this time of apostasy and betrayal so as to give Him through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of His Most Blessed Mother whatever merit we might earn by remaining faithful to Him despite the false currents of Modernity in the world and Modernism in the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

May we never flag in our commitment to the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary as the fruit of the perfect fulfillment of her Fatima Message by the proper consecration of Russia to that same Immaculate Heart by a true pope with all of the world's true bishops.

We simply need to cling to Our Lady and to pray her Most Holy Rosary for perseverance during these years ahead, remembering that the eleven million martyrs of Holy Mother Church’s first three centuries made no compromises with the Faith and were ready to suffer all things for the love of the Most Holy Trinity and for the sanctification and salvation of their own immortal souls. Their courage and our reliance upon Our Lady should us confidence to lifted up out of the muck and mire of naturalism and its absurdities while elevating our minds to the glories of Heaven that await all those Catholics who persevere until the end in a state of Sanctifying Grace, upon which the whole of social order depends.

Pray the Rosary daily.

Wear a blessed Brown Scapular.

Display a blessed Miraculous Medal of Grace.

The month of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus, the month of July, ends today, July 31, 2023, the Feast of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, However, we must always maintain a firm and abiding devotion to the Laver of our Redemption as it is the means of our sanctification and salvation, We must pray to Our Lady to send us the graces we need to make better and more efficaciouse of Our Lord's Most Precious Blood, which we receive in Holy Communion whenever it is our privilege to assist at a true offering of Holy Mass, and the merits of which are poured into our souls whenever we receive Absolution from a true priest after having made a good confession of our sins in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance.

May we beg Our Lord for the blessing of the King of Kings and Prince of Peace, Whose rightful place as the King of men and their nations will be restored not at the ballot box and not with bullets nor with madding crowds but by the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary 

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, we love you! Save souls!

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, may we breathe forth our souls in peace to you.

Our Lady of the Rosary pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola, S.J., pray for us.