First Ladies of Baby Butchery

Let me stipulate at the outset of this commentary that Kamala Harris Emhoff and Timothy James Walz are completely disqualified from holding any position of public trust, whether elected or appointed, solely because they support the daily slaughter of the innocent preborn by chemical and surgical means.

To wit, James David Vance inexcusably and shamelessly equivocated on baby-killing during his debate with Timothy James “I Was Near Tiananmen Square” Knucklehead Walz on Tuesday, October 1, 2024. However, he did point out that Walz, who is the Governor of the People’s Republic of Minnesota, signed into law a bill that permits a doctor to “choose” to decide whether to provide medical care to a baby who survives an attempt on his life in this mother’s womb. This is precisely what the many pagans of antiquity did after a child was born:

“Infanticide” is a big word that hides the Latin word “cide” in it. Cide in Latin means “killer, the act of killing.” “Infanticide” is the “killing/murder of children.” “Suicide’ is the act of killing oneself—sui in Latin means “oneself” “Homicide” is the act of a human killing another human—homo is Latin for “man.” Then there’s the word for murdering your living son or daughter—“filicide” from the Latin word for son (filius) and for daughter (filia).

Roman law, religion and the entire ethos of the ancient world saw nothing morally wrong with infanticide or with abandoning their newborns on the dung heaps or garbage dumps of cities.

Romulus, the founder of Rome, had decreed back in the 8th century BC that no child could be killed “before” his third year “unless” he was deformed. However Romulus and his twin brother Remus (whom he killed, an act called “fratricide” from Latin words frater meaning “brother” and cide) were themselves abandoned by their mother to die, but a she-wolf suckled them until they were adopted by the shepherd Faustulus and his wife.

Even the so-called refined and educated Cicero (106-43 BC) in his On the Laws 3.8 states: “Deformed infants shall be killed.” The “deformity” could be an unwanted child (Latin exposti—“left without shelter”), a sickly child, a deformed child or simply a wrong sex child. The Stoic philosopher Seneca (4 BC-65 AD) comments casually in On Anger 1.15: “…mad dogs we knock on the head…unnatural progeny we destroy; we drown even children at birth who are weakly and abnormal.”

Even the preeminent and to this day influential Greek philosopher Aristotle recommends that parents should be compelled by law to expose deformed or handicapped babies. In Politics 7.1335b Aristotle says:

“As to exposing or rearing the children born, let there be a law that no deformed child shall be reared;  but on the ground of number of children, if the regular customs hinder any of those born being exposed, there must be a limit fixed to the procreation of offspring, and if any people have a child as a result of intercourse in contravention of these regulations, abortion must be practiced on it (the child).”

Plutarch in Lives: Lycurgus 16 writes that in State-controlled Sparta:

“Nor was it in the power of the father to dispose of the child as he saw fit (as was his right in most heathen societies). He was obliged to carry (the newborn) child before certain men at a place called Lesche; these men were some of the elders of the tribe to which the child belonged; their business was to carefully view the infant, and, if they found it stout and well made, they gave order for its rearing and allotted to it one of the nine thousand shares of land above mentioned for its maintenance, but, if they found it puny and ill-shaped, ordered it to be taken to what was called the Apothetae (“depository”), a (large cave) under Mt. Taygetus (in the Peloponnese); as thinking it neither for the good of the child itself, nor for the public interest, that it should be brought up, if it did not, from the very outset, appear to be healthy and vigorous.”

The catacombs are filled with very tiny graves with the epitaph “adopted daughter of…” or “adopted son of…” inscribed on them. These inscriptions refer to the many babies and young children Christians rescued from the trash over the centuries. Tertullian says Christians sought out the tiny bodies of newborn babies from the refuse and dung heaps and raised them as their own or tended to them before they died or gave them a decent burial.

The Christian idea that each individual person has worth because they were created by God was foreign to the lies of pagan society where the State, the tribe, the collective was the only value they knew. There are numerous tombs of small dimensions in the catacombs. Out of a total of 111 burials in one gallery of the Catacomb of Panfilo, 83 are of children and only 5 have inscriptions.

But to all the exposti, the dead, the murdered, the abandoned, the anonymous little ones:

“Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’” Matthew 19:14 (As found at: Infanticide In The Ancient World - EARLY CHURCH HISTORY.)

Yes, it is only the Holy Faith that showed forth the inherent worth of every human being no matter whatever physical or mental disabilities with which he may be afflicted as vestigial after-effects of Original Sin. It was the first Catholics who showed mercy unto those who were forgotten and to those who had discarded much in the same manner as is happening today as babies are butchered for any reason through the course of their development within what should be the sanctuaries of their mothers’ wombs.

No innocent human life is disposable.

No mother has any authority from the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Holy Trinity, to do anything with the fruit of her womb other to give her baby the love and care that are his due.

An unexpectant mother never has any “choice” to make about giving birth to an innocent child who has committed no crime, but she has an obligation to welcome life and to give love even if she must put her child up for adoption.

There is never any exception to the absolute inviolability of an innocent human life.

Sure, these are points that have been covered hundreds upon hundreds of times on this website in the past twenty years and, even before that, in college classrooms, in my various campaigns for public office on the New York State Right to Life Party line, in lectures around the country, and in scores upon scores of articles in The Wanderer, Celebrate Life, and The Remnant.

Why bring all this up again?

Well, here’s why:

Former President and current Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said Thursday he gave his blessing for his wife Melania Trump to endorse a “fundamental right” to abortion in her upcoming memoir, at a time when relations are already strained between the GOP ticket and the party’s pro-life base.

Earlier this week, an advance excerpt of the former First Lady’s book was published, in which she declares that a “woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes. Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body.”

Following disapproving reactions from various pro-lifers, Fox News’s Bill Melugin asked the former president about the matter in an interview that aired Thursday.

“We spoke about it. And I said, you have to write what you believe,” Trump said. “I’m not going to tell you what to do. You have to write what you believe. She’s very beloved, our former First Lady, I can tell you that.”

“But I said you have to stick with your heart. I’ve said that to everybody, you have to go with your heart,” he went on, echoing a common refrain he has been using in his appeals for rape, incest, and medical exceptions to pro-life laws. “There are some people who are very, very far right on the issue, meaning without exceptions, and then there are other people who view it a little bit differently than that.”

Mrs. Trump’s pro-abortion declaration comes the same week her husband clarified he “would not support a federal abortion ban, under any circumstances, and would, in fact, veto it,” and continues a steady transformation of his abortion stance from his 2016 campaign and first term.

Trump now opposes further federal action on abortion, supports letting abortion pills be distributed by mail, and has criticized states for overly “harsh” abortion bans. Through this work, he has taken credit for making the GOP “less radical” on abortion, including by having the national Republican Party platform rewritten to reflect his more liberal position. (Trump encouraged Melania to 'write what you believe' on abortion in upcoming memoir.)

Melania Knauss Trump is an ignorant woman. She is so ignorant about so many things that she used her upcoming memoir to defend her exhibitionism by posing without clothing in her years of professional modeling. She knows nothing about objective truth and even less about the fact that women are called to bear themselves after the modest and chaste femininity of Our Lady, the August Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, the very Mother of God Himself.

Melania Knauss Trump believes in slogans about the direct, intentional killing of innocent life and clearly demonstrates that she cannot believe in binding precepts of the Fifth Commandment as she has not been taught to think in supernatural terms and to live with the futurity of eternity mind in mind.

Then again, this is hardly new as I have it made it a point over the decades to document how each of the First Ladies of the United States of America have supported the killing of innocent human beings in their mothers’ wombs even before the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the case of Roe v. Wade, January 22, 1973.

There is no need to provide any documentation about how the likes of Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, Michelle Robinson Obama, and Jill Jacobs Stevenson Biden have advanced the pro-death, pro-sodomite agenda. However, it is useful for present purposes to examine the statements of Republican presidents’ First Ladies as they are very consistent with those of Melanie Knauss Trump, starting with Thelma Catherine Ryan “Pat” Nixon:

Now, before I comment on the former president’s equivocations on the inviolability on the issue of baby-killing, which will never satisfy those who are fully pro-death while angering those in his political base who understand that it is not to be part of the “far right” to oppose “exceptions” to the binding precepts of the Fifth Commandment forbidding the deliberating taking of all innocent human life, permit me, if you would be so kind, to reiterate the following so that those who read this commentary will not mistake my continued criticism of the State of Israel’s greatest enabler of their wanton genocide against innocent civilians in the Middle East for any sympathy whatsoever for the authoritarian statists and pro-everything evil Kamala Harris Emhoff and Timothy James Walz, let me stipulate the following.

First, Kamala Harris Emhoff and Timothy James Walz are, both individually and collectively, disqualified from the holding any position of public trust, whether elected or appointed, solely, although far from exclusively, because they support the destruction of the innocent preborn in their mothers’ wombs as a matter of public policy in the name of a nonexistent “right” to “choose” to engage in such destruction.

Second, it is no accident that the current administration of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., and Kamala Harris Emhoff has felt to misappropriate taxpayer dollars earmarked for genuine natural disasters such as the tragedy caused by Hurricane Helene in parts of Florida, western North Carolina, and eastern Tennessee to provide shelter and services to illegal immigrants. It is very easy to denigrate the safety and the lives of one’s own citizens when one denies the humanity of babies in their mothers’ wombs whose only “crime” is to have been conceived during, in most cases, the misuse of the gift that God has given unto men for the continuation of the species for their own pleasure.

Third, those who indemnify a veritable genocide of innocent children, as well as the various permutations and variations of perversity associated with the sin of Sodom, become more prone to all other acts of mendacity, including outright lies about themselves and, especially, about the persons and policies of their political opponents, who must be demonized according to the play book of Sol Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals:

Opening page - Dedication

“Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history... the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.”

"An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent... He must create a mechanism that can drain off the underlying guilt for having accepted the previous situation for so long a time. Out of this mechanism, a new community organization arises.... 

"The job then is getting the people to move, to act, to participate; in short, to develop and harness the necessary power to effectively conflict with the prevailing patterns and change them. When those prominent in the status quo turn and label you an 'agitator' they are completely correct, for that is, in one word, your function—to agitate to the point of conflict." p.117

11. "If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside... every positive has its negative."

12. "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative."

13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.  In conflict tactics there are certain rules that [should be regarded] as universalities. One is that the opposition must be singled out as the target and 'frozen.'...

 "...any target can always say, 'Why do you center on me when there are others to blame as well?' When your 'freeze the target,' you disregard these [rational but distracting] arguments.... Then, as you zero in and freeze your target and carry out your attack, all the 'others' come out of the woodwork very soon. They become visible by their support of the target...'

"One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other." (Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals.)

Alinsky, a willing tool of the devil, thus identified how the adversary seeks to agitate men into hating the “other side.” This is the defining characteristic of all revolutions as each has been based in what can be called the “ideology of hatred,” starting with a fundamental hatred of God and all that He has revealed to us through His true Church.

All this having been duly noted and stipulated, I want to reiterate the fact that a Catholic has the obligation to state the truth without regard to persons.

While Donald John Trump has great natural courage and a physical stamina that most men half his age, he is incapable of understanding that he is not infallible and also incapable of accepting any kind of informed criticism on matters about which he demonstrates his ignorance repeatedly Trump is compelled to respond responding viscerally by using epithets of one kind or another in an attempt to discredit and bring shame upon those who dare to so criticize him so as to bring to heed.

I am sorry. This is a statement of truth, and the fact that he is so hated by the denizens of the false opposite of the naturalist “left” can never

Although it is her successor and friend Betty Ford who is the First Lady most closely associated with several women’s issues that dominated the national dialogue in the 1970s, Pat Nixon was the first to express her views. She did so not out of a motivation to weigh in on the issues, but in response to questions posed to her at a 1972 press conference, whereas Betty Ford became an outspoken activist on behalf of gender equality issues.

Mrs. Nixon’s support of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which was part of the platform of the 1968 National Republican Convention, as well as her support of what would be the Supreme Court’s final decision on Roe v. Wade emerged from a press conference in the summer of 1972, as she was campaigning on her own on behalf of the President’s re-election campaign.

In mid-September of 1972, the First Lady made a one-week campaign tour on her own, starting in Chicago.

On the afternoon of September 19, 1972, following a stop at a ceremony where immigrants were undergoing their naturalization ceremony, and accompanied by Illinois Governor Richard Ogilivie, she held an informal press conference.

In her meeting with reporters, they asked her a series of politically sensitive questions, including amnesty for those who had left the U.S. to avoid being drafted to the war in Vietnam, the pending Supreme Court case on abortion, the Equal Rights Amendment, the growing Watergate scandal, and the claims that the Attorney General’s wife, Martha Mitchell, had been held against her will by FBI agents.

During that conference, she affirmed her support of the ERA and belief that abortion should be a legally considered a “personal matter” (although a final decision on Roe v. Wade was not delivered by the Supreme Court until January 22, 1973, arguments had begun on December 13, 1971, and the issue was one of widespread public discourse all through 1972).

Apart from Mrs. Nixon’s responses to reporters that September day in 1972, she apparently gave the matter no further consideration in public.

here is a subtle but important distinction, however, that Mrs. Nixon made on the issue of abortion. While she supported an individual’s right to make this choice, she did not support what she called “wholesale abortion on demand,” thus suggesting she anticipated a moderated pro-choice Republican view that emerged in the early 1990s. (Pat Nixon and Women’s Issues of the 70s.)

There is no such thing as a “moderated” position about the chemical and surgical assassination of the innocent preborn.

Mrs. Nixon’s husband, President Richard Milhous Nixon, also spoke in favor of “moderated” position on baby-killing while speaking with aides within the Oval Office after the decision of the high court in Roe v. Wade:

On Jan. 22, 1973, when the Supreme Court struck down laws criminalizing abortion in Roe v. Wade, President Richard M. Nixon made no public statement. But the next day, newly released tapes reveal, he privately expressed ambivalence.

Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster “permissiveness,” and said that “it breaks the family.” But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases — like interracial pregnancies, he said.

“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he told an aide, before adding, “Or a rape.” (Nixon Comments Disclosed on Abortion and Watergate) 

So much for Blessed Martin de Porres, whose father was a white Spaniard, and his mother was a Negro from Lima, Peru. Nixon's stand was hideous and reprehensible. It would be interesting to hear how those who defend the nonexistent "right" of a woman to "choose" to kill her baby explain on what grounds they could deny a woman the "right" to kill her baby according to Nixon's racist standard. Are there "limits" to the "right to choose"?

As is the case with almost everyone else in public life in a country founded in false, naturalistic, anti-Incarnational, religiously indifferentist and semi-Pelagian principles, Richard Nixon was making it all up as he went along, oblivious to the fact that a statement of his about abortion on April 3, 1971, made it appear as though he was opposed to abortion as a means of "population control" without mentioning his support of abortion for eugenic reasons:

HISTORICALLY, laws regulating abortion in the United States have been the province of States, not the Federal Government. That remains the situation today, as one State after another takes up this question, debates it, and decides it. That is where the decisions should be made.

Partly for that reason, I have directed that the policy on abortions at American military bases in the United States be made to correspond with the laws of the States where those bases are located. If the laws in a particular State restrict abortions, the rules at the military base hospitals are to correspond to that law.

The effect of this directive is to reverse service regulations issued last summer, which had liberalized the rules on abortions at military hospitals. The new ruling supersedes this--and has been put into effect by the Secretary of Defense.

But while this matter is being debated in State capitals and weighed by various courts, the country has a right to know my personal views.

From personal and religious beliefs I consider abortion an unacceptable form of population control. Further, unrestricted abortion policies, or abortion on demand, I cannot square with my personal belief in the sanctity of human life--including the life of the yet unborn. For, surely, the unborn have rights also, recognized in law, recognized even in principles expounded by the United Nations.

Ours is a nation with a Judeo-Christian heritage. It is also a nation with serious social problems--problems of malnutrition, of broken homes, of poverty, and of delinquency. But none of these problems justifies such a solution.

A good and generous people will not opt, in my view, for this kind of alternative to its social dilemmas. Rather, it will open its hearts and homes to the unwanted children of its own, as it has done for the unwanted millions of other lands. (Nixon Statement on Abortion, April 3, 1971.)

The beginning of this statement from fifty-three years ago is very much in line with the beliefs that have been expressed over the past year by former President Donald John Trump. However, the killing of babies is not a matter of “states’ rights” but of the immutable laws of God, about which mere vessels of clay, whether acting individually on their own or collectively with others, have no authority to contravene.

Although President Nixon’s successor, Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr./Leslie Lynch King, Jr., played a pro-life game to curry favor in 1976 with the American bishops, which consisted of both true and false bishops at the time, he was always pro-death, and so was his wife, Elizabeth Bloomer Warren Ford, who made no pretense whatsoever as to where she stood about baby-killing as early as when she was the Second Lady of the United States of America in an interview in 1974 with Barbara Walters

The following documentation about Betty Ford’s pro-death activism was written was provided by pro-life activist Jill Stanek at the time of “Betty” Ford’s death on May 2, 2011:

Betty Ford was an unapologetic abortion activist. In her roles as First Lady and world dignitary, Betty Ford was, thus, partially responsible for untold thousands, perhaps millions, of their deaths. Watch with revulsion 2:15-2:45 on this Fox News video…

Of course, Ford’s vision that legalizing abortion would “bring it out of the backwoods and into the hospitals where it belonged” proved unsound. All the Supreme Court did in 1973 was take abortion from the back alley into the front alley.

As I said, Ford was a pro-abortion activist…

From that Los Angeles Times piece:

Former First Lady Betty Ford and several other Republicans announced today that they have formed a new political action committee to support GOP candidates who oppose President Bush’s anti-abortion stance.

The committee, calling itself Pro-Choice America, said it has “only one purpose – to support courageous pro-choice Republicans who face anti-choice opponents.”…

[T]he PAC will concentrate only on races in which a Republican who favor abortion rights is opposed by another Republican or a Democrat who is opposed to abortion.

Two other influential pro-abortion activists, Bill and Hillary Clinton, released a sadly ironic joint statement of condolence upon learning of Ford’s death:

As a staunch advocate for women’s and equal rights, Betty paved the way for generations of women to follow.

No, Ford helped make it impossible for generations of women to follow because she promoted killing them. (Betty Ford's pro-abortion legacy.)

There was one time when Jerry and Betty Ford appeared together in a television spot that featured the by then former president saying in his own inimitable halting manner: “Betty and I are strongly pro-choice.” Such is the shallowness of those bereft of the Holy Faith and, in the former president’s  case, poisoned by his years in Freemasonry as he rose through lodge ranks to the thirty-third degree.

The Fords’ bitter rivals during the 1976 Republican presidential primary process, former California Governor Ronald Wilson Reagan and Nancy Davis Reagan were divided on the issue of baby-killing, although it was well-known from Ronald Reagan’s days as Governor of California, a time during which he signed what was supposed to be an “expansion” of “therapeutic abortion” into law in 1967 but turned out to be much broader than that in actual practice, something that Reagan came to regret during even before his 1980 campaign for the presidency, that Nancy Davis Reagan supported baby-killing in principle during her husband’s time as president, and she showed particular disdain for pro-life leaders in the process:

Anti-abortion activists expressed disappointment today at Nancy Reagan’s reported declaration that “I don’t give a damn about the right-to-lifers,” but they praised President Reagan’s steadfast support for their cause.

The First Lady was quoted by former White House chief of staff Donald T. Regan in his new book, “For the Record: From Wall Street to Washington.”

Regan wrote that during a telephone conversation from Washington with Mrs. Reagan at Camp David, Md., on Jan. 24, 1987, the First Lady demanded that all mention of the abortion issue be eliminated from the draft text of her husband’s State of the Union address.

“I pointed out that the President had particularly wanted some language on this subject included in his address,” Regan said he responded.

He quoted Mrs. Reagan as saying: “I don’t give a damn about the right-to-lifers.”

The State of the Union speech that the President delivered three days later contained no references to abortions.

White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater told reporters today that “I don’t have any knowledge at all” whether Mrs. Reagan actually made such a statement. (Nancy Reagan Disdain Told for Right-to-Lifers)

The late Mrs. Reagan, who used an astrologist to help plan her husband’s schedule, took her pro-abortion beliefs public when she was answering a question from Barbara Walters in an interview that took place after the Reagans had left the White House in 1989, a little time Ronald Reagan had surgery to relieve swelling in his skull after he fallen off a horse he was riding (one side of his head had been shaved to reveal the stubble of his gray hair that he always covered with hair dye). Nancy Reagan stated her pro-death position and had even tapped her husband gently on the knee when he tried to object before she continued. (I cannot find the video for this. However, I watched the interview when it was aired on the 20/20 program on the American Broadcasting Network at the time. The scene was quite striking and memorable.)

Perhaps aware of the fact that her husband had Alzheimer’s Disease before the matter was revealed publicly in November of 1994, Nancy Regan restated her support for baby-killing while expressing “reservations” about the procedure:

“I agree with the California abortion law passed by under husband, however, I believe it has been terribly abused.”

I don’t believe in abortion,” Nancy Reagan said.

“On the other hand I believe in a woman’s choice. That puts me somewhere in the middle, but I don’t know what to call that,” she added. (https://www.liveaction.org/news/nancy-reagans-confusing-abortion/.)

One calls that a willful ignorance of the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law, an ignorance shared by the son of the late Senator Prescott Bush (The Bushes and Planned Parenthood), George Herbert Walker Bush, and his wife, Barbara Bush, Although George Herbert Walker Bush changed his position in 1980 and mouthed partly pro-life rhetoric during the four years of his presidency without really doing anything of substance (don’t mention the Mexico City Policy as they were so many loopholes through which pro-abort organizations working overseas could exploit to have made it useless as a means of saving innocent lives—see the appendix below), Barbara Bush was as outspoken as Betty Ford about supporting the nonexistent “choice” of women to butcher the fruit of their wombs, especially in 1992 as her husband sought a second term in the election against Arkansas Governor William Jefferson Blythe Clinton and billionaire Henry Ross Perot, it is useful to reminder readers that both President George Herbert Walker Bush and his wife came from Protestant blue blood families who were complete supporters of Planned Barrenhood:

Barbara Bush, in stunning contrast with the position her husband has maintained for the last 12 years, contends that abortion is "a personal choice" and that Republicans should drop the rigid anti-abortion plank from the party platform.

In an interview released yesterday with three news magazines, Mrs. Bush described abortion and homosexuality as "a personal choice . . . (a) personal thing." She said, "The personal things should be left out of, in my opinion, out of platforms and conventions."

And in another interview yesterday with the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers, Mrs. Bush also leveled a blast at Republican National Committee chairman Rich Bond for his recent attacks on Hillary Clinton, wife of Democratic nominee Bill Clinton.

"I don't like it," Mrs. Bush said of Bond's allegation that Hillary Clinton is "anti-family."

"I'm not going to lie to you about that," the first lady said. "I don't like attacking. . . . She's not running for office."

Mrs. Bush has seldom spoken out on policy matters and is almost never at variance with her husband. It was not known whether she had cleared her remarks with him.

But Nancy Sternoff of the National Republican Coalition for Choice saw it as a message from the Bush campaign: "I have no doubt that the campaign has given Mrs. Bush permission to respond to a platform that is punitive and denigrating to women. It is clear that this is a plea to pro-choice women not to defect in November."

Political analysts have suggested that the GOP's intolerant anti-abortion stance could cost Bush votes - particularly from women and GOP moderates.

Some political strategists have also suggested that harsh personal attacks on the Democrats, while effective in appealing to some voters, could offend others at a time of intense public dissatisfaction with the state of the nation.

President Bush is opposed to abortion with three exceptions: incest, rape and saving the life of the mother. He also says homosexuality is not normal. But the first lady's comments, combined with the president's remarks earlier in the week about abortion and homosexuality, appear to have at least the potential for defusing the explosive moral issues. The president said he would support his granddaughter if she were to choose abortion, and that he would still love a family member if he or she were homosexual.

The fact that the president himself seems less than rigid on abortion, and that he and his wife seem not in accord, may serve to make Bush himself seem more human to voters who are weighing their choice for president against their own inner conflicts.

Mrs. Bush criticized zealots on both sides of the abortion debate, saying that neither was entitled to claim a monopoly on morality. "Any moral superiority bothers me on either side, and I've certainly seen it on both . . . ," she said. "Both sides yell at me. . . . I don't think that's healthy for the country when anyone thinks their morals are better than anyone else's.

"The major issues ought to be peace, security, economy, health care, (the president's) crime package, schools."

Pro-choice advocates applauded her remarks. Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion Rights Action League, said, "Most Americans believe that abortion is a personal choice. Unfortunately, the radical anti-choice plank in the Republican Party platform is entirely consistent with President Bush's extreme anti-choice actions as president."

The president was pro-choice in 1980, switching only after Ronald Reagan, who is anti-abortion, tapped him as running mate.

A draft of the GOP platform approved yesterday calls for a constitutional amendment to ban abortion.

Mrs. Bush told the magazine writers she was neither pro nor con on abortion, noting the president had supporters on both sides.

"We should be working on the commonness underneath this umbrella," she said. "And, fine, you're pro-choice. I understand that. Great, you're pro-life. I understand that, too. And I know that you can argue yourself blue in the face, and you're not going to change each other's minds, and it's a waste of your time and my time to try to change minds. People feel very strongly both ways."

She was then asked whether abortion and homosexuality were issues of personal preference. "Indeed they are," she said.

Mrs. Bush's position is identical to that taken by "Unity Platform '92," a group of moderate Republicans who tried, without success, to persuade the GOP platform committee to drop all mention of abortion from the platform. (Barbara Bush Calls Abortion `Personal Choice'.)

Not to be outdone by her mother-in-law, Laura Bush, the wife of then-President-elect George Walker Bush, used an interview with Katie Couric televised on January 19, 2001, to explain that she did not want to see Roe v. Wade overturned:

Laura Bush, the wife of President-elect George W. Bush, said in an interview broadcast today that she did not think that the 1973 Supreme Court decision declaring a woman's constitutional right to an abortion should be overturned.

''I don't think that it should be overturned,'' Mrs. Bush said in an interview with NBC News.

Her brief remarks, part of a larger pre-inaugural interview scheduled to be shown on Friday, went well beyond anything she said during her husband's presidential campaign, when she repeatedly took a pass on any discussion of her views on abortion.

Her remarks also seemed to contradict the position of her husband, who supports a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion except in cases of rape, incest or danger to the life of a pregnant woman. (TRANSITION IN WASHINGTION: THE ABORTION ISSUE; Laura Bush Says Roe v. Wade Should Not Be Overturned.)

Although I wrote an article about this on the vey day of the interview that was published in the printed pages of Christ or Chaos featured on the Griffin Internet Syndicate website (which has since dropped the articles of mine that were archived there) at a time I had been eased out of The Wanderer because of my criticism of the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical abomination, suffice it to say for present purposes that the Bushes were playing a cynical game to appear as divided about baby-killing as many other American families. Bush the Lesser was not pro-life and his phony “pro-life” record has been documented on this site enough in the past to obviate the need to repeat the facts here in the body of this commentary. (By the way, it was while promoting her memoir in 2010, a year after her war mongering national security state husband left the White House, that Laura Bush explained she was pro-death and pro-sodomite “marriage”: Laura Bush Opens Up About Disagreements with Husband on Gay Marriage, Abortion.)

Additionally, two wannabe First Ladies, Mrs. Cindi McCain and Mrs. Ann Romney, both made it clear in, 2008 and 2012, respectively, that they did not want to see Roe v. Wade overturned:

Where do you stand on abortion?

McCain: I'm pro-life. I'm on the record as being pro-life, like my husband.

Couric: So do you oppose it even in cases of rape and incest?

McCain: No.

Couric: So that's where you two differ in terms of your position on that.

McCain: Uh-huh

Couric: And do you believe Roe V. Wade should be overturned?

McCain: No. no.

Couric: No. Why not? Your husband does.

McCain: No. I don't think he does.

Couric: He believes it should be overturned. That's what he told me, and that it should go to the states.

McCain: Well, in that respect. Yes, yeah, I do. I understand what you're saying now. It's a states issue.

Couric: So, you believe it should be overturned or shouldn't be overturned.

McCain: I believe it's a states issue. That I do believe. (Cindy McCain On Abortion, Creationism. Oy, such utter confusion caused by a total ignorance of truth. Pure irrationality.)

“Explain that to me,” Barbara Walters said to Ann Romney, who had just said something that has needed a bit of explaining, about her husband’s changing position on abortion at the stage in his career when Massachusetts voters mattered—and also about why, in her view, people should stop asking. “The good news is, I’m not running for office and I don’t have to say what I feel! But I am pro-life. I’m happy to say that. Mitt has always been a pro-life person. He governed, when he ran, as, um, pro-choice.” It was, she said, “a tender, tender issue”—but not that this was anything to vote about:

Women are going to have a choice. I mean, it’s clear. If you really want to make a choice and if those choices are about reproductive rights, that’s your choice. If they’re about economic issues and making a better future for your children and making sure that we have this—and that’s the beauty of what we have in this country, is being able to have those choices. (Ann Romney’s View.)

To quote the fictional law professor Charles Kinsgfield, “Skulls full of much.”

There is no need to repeat here what I have written about Flip-Flopping, Carpetbagging Willard Mitt Romney's Self-Serving Hypocrisy except to note the contradictions inherent in the minds of Cindy McCain and Ann Romney are simply the product of a world that denies the Social Reign of Christ the King and has replaced the faith and reason of Catholicism with the irrationality and sentimentality of Judeo-Masonic religious indifferentism.

Thus, Mrs. Melania Knauss Trump’s “revelation,” which would not have been made unless the former president thought it to be his political advantage. Melania Knauss Trump did not speak out about the issue when her husband was president because did not want to damage his standing with pro-lifers, but, as the Trumps see things, it is to their advantage now to highlight their differences, if any truly exist, in the aftermath of the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the case of Thomas Dobbs, Mississippi State Health Officer v. Jackson Women’s Organization, June 22, 2022. Donald John Trump has positioned himself as a “moderate,” providing his third wife with the opportunity to express herself with his full approval.

As noted in Truth Can Never Be Sacrificed on the Altar of Political Expediency three months ago, Donald John Trump has succeeded in removing the “social issues” from the minds of most Republican voters where the likes of the late Lee Atwater, Richard Bond, William Kristol, Robert Joseph Dole, Jr., Karl Rove, John Sidney McCain III, and Willard Mitt Romney had either failed or were forced to abandon the effort that Trump has now brought to a sad conclusion.

To be sure, we are in this sorry mess because the conciliar “popes” and their “bishops” preferred “dialogue” with pro-abortion Catholics in public life rather than to use the corrective measure of discipline for their persistence in the support of crimes to Heaven for vengeance under the cover of the civil law. This lack of discipline in the past has led to the situation with the putative “pope,” Jorge Mario Bergoglio, has sought to actively embrace and indemnify all those in public life, whether Catholic or non-Catholic, who support these heinous evils while condemning those who insist that such reprobates are unfit for public office.

Thus, no matter the incontestable fact that the ticket of Kamala Harris Emhoff and Timothy James Walz would complete the job of “transforming” the United States of America into a technocratic authoritarianism that rewards the wicked and punishes the good, it is also true that the ticket of Donald John Trump and James David Vance can never “save America” as no country, including this one, can be made better unless its people are converted to the true Faith and conform their own lives and public policy to the standard of the Holy Cross of the Divine Redeemer, that Holy Cross which is the sole standard of authentic human liberty:

20. Every true and lasting reform has ultimately sprung from the sanctity of men who were driven by the love of God and of men. Generous, ready to stand to attention to any call from God, yet confident in themselves because confident in their vocation, they grew to the size of beacons and reformers. On the other hand, any reformatory zeal, which instead of springing from personal purity, flashes out of passion, has produced unrest instead of light, destruction instead of construction, and more than once set up evils worse than those it was out to remedy. No doubt "the Spirit breatheth where he will" (John iii. 8): "of stones He is able to raise men to prepare the way to his designs" (Matt. iii. 9). He chooses the instruments of His will according to His own plans, not those of men. But the Founder of the Church, who breathed her into existence at Pentecost, cannot disown the foundations as He laid them. Whoever is moved by the spirit of God, spontaneously adopts both outwardly and inwardly, the true attitude toward the Church, this sacred fruit from the tree of the cross, this gift from the Spirit of God, bestowed on Pentecost day to an erratic world. (Pope Pius XI, Mit Brennender Sorge, March 17, 1937.)

Yes, we must reform our own lives with every beat of our hearts, consecrated as they must be to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. In order to do this, of course, we love God as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His Catholic Church with our whole mind, our whole soul, our whole body, our whole heart and our whole strength. We must love others for love of Him, Who wills the good of all men, which is the salvation of their immortal souls as members of the Catholic Church.

As Pope Pius XI wrote in his first encyclical letter, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922:

24. The inordinate desire for pleasure, concupiscence of the flesh, sows the fatal seeds of division not only among families but likewise among states; the inordinate desire for possessions, concupiscence of the eyes, inevitably turns into class warfare and into social egotism; the inordinate desire to rule or to domineer over others, pride of life, soon becomes mere party or factional rivalries, manifesting itself in constant displays of conflicting ambitions and ending in open rebellion, in the crime of lese majeste, and even in national parricide.

25. These unsuppressed desires, this inordinate love of the things of the world, are precisely the source of all international misunderstandings and rivalries, despite the fact that oftentimes men dare to maintain that acts prompted by such motives are excusable and even justifiable because, forsooth, they were performed for reasons of state or of the public good, or out of love for country. Patriotism -- the stimulus of so many virtues and of so many noble acts of heroism when kept within the bounds of the law of Christ -- becomes merely an occasion, an added incentive to grave injustice when true love of country is debased to the condition of an extreme nationalism, when we forget that all men are our brothers and members of the same great human family, that other nations have an equal right with us both to life and to prosperity, that it is never lawful nor even wise, to dissociate morality from the affairs of practical life, that, in the last analysis, it is "justice which exalteth a nation: but sin maketh nations miserable." (Proverbs xiv, 34)

26. Perhaps the advantages to one's family, city, or nation obtained in some such way as this may well appear to be a wonderful and great victory (this thought has been already expressed by St. Augustine), but in the end it turns out to be a very shallow thing, something rather to inspire us with the most fearful apprehensions of approaching ruin. "It is a happiness which appears beautiful but is brittle as glass. We must ever be on guard lest with horror we see it broken into a thousand pieces at the first touch." (St. Augustine de Civitate Dei, Book iv, Chap. 3)

27. There is over and above the absence of peace and the evils attendant on this absence, another deeper and more profound cause for present-day conditions. This cause was even beginning to show its head before the War and the terrible calamities consequent on that cataclysm should have proven a remedy for them if mankind had only taken the trouble to understand the real meaning of those terrible events. In the Holy Scriptures we read: "They that have forsaken the Lord, shall be consumed." (Isaias i, 28) No less well known are the words of the Divine Teacher, Jesus Christ, Who said: "Without me you can do nothing" (John xv, 5) and again, "He that gathereth not with me, scattereth." (Luke xi, 23)

28. These words of the Holy Bible have been fulfilled and are now at this very moment being fulfilled before our very eyes. Because men have forsaken God and Jesus Christ, they have sunk to the depths of evil. They waste their energies and consume their time and efforts in vain sterile attempts to find a remedy for these ills, but without even being successful in saving what little remains from the existing ruin. It was a quite general desire that both our laws and our governments should exist without recognizing God or Jesus Christ, on the theory that all authority comes from men, not from God. Because of such an assumption, these theorists fell very short of being able to bestow upon law not only those sanctions which it must possess but also that secure basis for the supreme criterion of justice which even a pagan philosopher like Cicero saw clearly could not be derived except from the divine law. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

That last paragraph, number twenty-eight, says it all. The gist of the two hundred thirty-seven articles linked at the top of this article can be summarized in the following words written by Pope Pius XI nearly eighty-eight years ago:

They waste their energies and consume their time and efforts in vain sterile attempts to find a remedy for these ills, but without even being successful in saving what little remains from the existing ruin. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

No nation can be “saved” by means merely secular, and no nation can know any kind of true national greatness by sacrifice the lives of innocent children on the altar of political expediency as the so-called “lesser evil” becomes almost entirely indistinguishable from the supposed “greater evil.”

We need to pray to Our Lady through her Most Holy Rosary every day, but especially during this month of the Holy Rosary, October, for our own daily conversion as well for the conversion of all men and all nations to the true Faith, outside of which there can be found no salvation and without which a true social order that is based upon a subordination of all things that pertain to the common temporal good to the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law as taught by Holy Mother Church.

There is no shortcut.

It really is Christ or chaos.

We must view all things through the eyes of the Holy Faith at all times.

We must never allow the events of the world to agitate us as agitation is from the devil.

We must rest secure in our absolute trust in Our Lord’s Divine Providence, remembering that we are living at the exact time which He has ordained from all eternity for us to live and thus to give Him honor and glory as His consecrated slaves through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Is it not the case today that most “Catholics work, act, in a word, live as if they had neither a Creator to obey, a Saviour to love, nor a soul to save”?

Well, it cannot be that way with us.

We must think supernaturally at all times, and we must give thanks at all times that we have been given the gratuitous gift of the Catholic Faith so that we can see the world and everything in it clearly through the eyes of the true Faith. Our gratitude must express itself especially in the midst of personal trials and those tragedies in the world as we give thanks to Our Lord and Our Lady that we can rise about naturalism and as we pray for the gift of perseverance to continue doing so.

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!

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 Bridget of Sweden, pray for us.

Appendix A

The Prophecies of Saint Bridget of Sweden: A Warning for Us All

The Feast of Saint Bridget of Sweden is celebrated on Tuesday, October 8, 2024. This holy Swedish widow was given many private revelations by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ about the nature of His Passion, Death, and Resurrection, and she was also given revelations about future events, including the despoiled state of Catholic priests, thereby providing a warning to us all and not only to apostates such the layman Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who believes himself to be a priest, bishop, and pope:

About how, in the presence of the heavenly host and of the bride, the Divinity spoke to the Manhood against the Christians, just as God spoke to Moses against the people of Israel, and about how damned priests love the world and despise Christ, and about their condemnation and damnation.

Chapter 48

A great host was seen in Heaven and God said to it: “My friends, who know and understand and see all things in me, I am speaking in your presence, for the sake of my bride standing here, like someone who speaks to himself, for in this way does my Divinity converse with my Humanity. Moses was with God on the mountain forty days and nights, and when the people saw that he had been gone so long, they took gold and threw it into the fire and shaped a calf out of it, calling it their god.

Then God said to Moses: ‘The people have sinned. I will wipe them out, just like something written is erased from a book.’ Moses answered: ‘No, my Lord, do not. Remember that you led them up from the Red Sea and worked wonders for them. If you erase and destroy them, where is your promise then? I beg you, do not do this, for then your enemies will say: The God of Israel is evil who led the people up from the sea but killed them in the desert.’ And God was appeased by these words.

I am this Moses, figuratively speaking. My Divinity speaks to my Manhood just as to Moses, saying: ‘Behold what your people have done and see how they have despised me. All the Christians shall be killed and their faith eradicated.’ My Humanity answers: ‘No, Lord. Remember that I led the people through the sea in my blood when I was bruised from the top of my head to the sole of my foot. I have promised them eternal life; have mercy on them for the sake of my suffering.’ After hearing these words the Divinity was appeased and said: ‘Thy will be done, for all judgment is given to you.’ See what love, my friends!

But now in your presence, my spiritual friends, angels and saints, and in the presence of my bodily friends who are in the world and yet not in the world except with their body, I complain that my people are gathering firewood and lighting a fire, throwing gold into the fire so that a calf emerges for them to adore and worship as a god. It stands like a calf on four feet having a head, a throat, and a tail. When Moses delayed on the mountain a long time without returning, the people said: ‘We do not know what may have happened to him after this long time.’ And they were displeased that he had led them out of captivity and slavery, and they said: ‘Let us find another god to go before us.’

This is what these damned priests are now doing to me. For they say: ‘Why should we have a more austere life than others? What is our reward for this? It is better for us to live in peace and as we want. Let us love the world that we are certain about, for we are uncertain about his promise.’ Then they gather firewood when they devote all their senses to the love of the world. They light a fire when they have a complete desire for the world. They burn when their lust glows in their mind and proceeds in an act. They throw in gold, which means that all the honor and love they should show to me, they show to get the honor of the world.

Then the calf emerges, which means a complete love of the world. It has four feet of sloth, impatience, superfluous rejoicing, and greediness. For these priests who should be my servants are slothful in honoring me, impatient in suffering anything for my sake, excessive in rejoicing, and never satisfied with the things they have. This calf also has a head and throat, which means a complete will for gluttony that can never be satisfied, not even if the whole sea were to flow into it. The tail of the calf is their malice, for they do not let anyone keep his property if they can take it from him. By their bad example and their contempt, they injure and pervert everyone who serves me. Such is the love for the calf that is in their hearts, and in such they rejoice and lust. They think about me as those others did about Moses, and say: ‘He has been gone for a long time. His words appear vain and his deeds burdensome. Let us have our own will, let our power and will be our god.’ And they are not even satisfied by these things and forget me entirely, but instead, they have me as their idol.

The heathens used to worship wood and stones and dead men, and among others, an idol called Beelzebub was worshipped whose priests used to offer him incense with devotional genuflections and shouts of praise. And everything in their offering that was useless, they dropped on the ground, and the birds and flies ate it up. But everything that was useful, the priests hid away for themselves. They locked the door on their idol and kept the key for themselves so that nobody could go in.

This is what the priests are doing to me in this time. They offer me incense, that is, they speak and preach beautiful words in order to win praise for themselves and some temporal benefit, but not out of love of me. Just as the scent of the incense cannot be captured but only felt and seen, so their words do not attain any benefit for souls so that it can take root and be kept in their hearts, but they are only heard and seem to please for a short time. They offer me prayers, but not the kind that are pleasing to me. Like those who shouts praise with their mouths and are silent in their hearts, they stand next to me shouting with their mouths while in their hearts and thoughts they wander around in the world. But if they were speaking with a mighty or powerful man, then their hearts would follow their own speech and words so that no one would be able to remark on them.

But in my presence the priests are like men who are mentally deranged, for they say one thing with their mouths and have another in their hearts. No one who hears their words can be certain about their meaning. They bend their knees for me, that is, they promise me humility and obedience, but in truth, their humility is as Lucifer’s, and they are obedient to their own desires and not me. They also lock me in constantly and keep the key for themselves. They open up for me and praise me when they say: ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ But then they lock me in again by fulfilling their own will, while my will is as an imprisoned and powerless man who can neither be seen nor heard. They keep the key for themselves when they, by their bad example, also lead astray others who want to do my will. And, if they could, they would gladly forbid my will from being fulfilled and accomplished, except when it suits their own will. They also hide anything in the offering that is necessary and useful to them, that is, they demand all their honor and privileges, but the human body, who falls to the ground and dies and for which they should offer the best sacrifice, him they consider as useless and leave the body to the flies, that is, to the worms on the ground. They do not care or bother about their obligation for the salvation of souls.

But what was said to Moses? ‘Kill those who made this idol!’ And some were killed, but not all. In the same way, my words will now come and kill them, some in body and soul by eternal damnation, others unto life so that they should convert and live, others through a fast death, for these priests are altogether abhorrent to me. But what shall I liken them to? They are indeed like the fruit of the thorn-bush, which is beautiful and red on the outside, but inside is full of impurity and stinging thorns. In the same way, these come to me as men who are red with love, and they seem to be pure to men, but inside they are full of all filth. If this fruit is laid in the earth, other thorn-bushes grow up from it. In the same way, these hide their sin and malice in their heart as in the earth, and they become so rooted in evil that they do not even blush to appear in public and boast about their sin. Hence other men not only find a reason to sin but also become deeply wounded in their souls, thinking thus to themselves: ‘If priests do this, it is even more permitted for us to do it.’ And they are not only like the fruit of the thorn-bush, but also the thorns, for they disdain to be moved by reproach and admonition, and they consider no one to be as wise as them and think that they can do everything they want.

Therefore, I swear by my Divinity and Manhood, in the hearing of all the angels, that I shall break down the door they have closed on my will, and my will shall be fulfilled, and their will shall be annihilated and locked in eternal torment and anguish. For as it was once said: ‘I shall begin my judgment with the priests and at my altar.’” (St. Bridget (Birgitta) of Sweden - Prophecies and Revelations.)

Appendix B

Father Francis X. Weninger, S.J., on the Feast of Saint Bridget of Sweden

St. Bridget, known in the entire Church of God, on account of the many divine revelations with which she was graced, was born in Sweden, of noble and pious parents. Shortly before the birth of Bridget, her mother was in great danger of shipwreck, but was miraculously saved. In the following night, a venerable old man appeared to her, who said: "God has saved your life on account of the child to whom you will give birth. Educate it carefully; for it will arrive at great holiness." This command was faithfully followed by the pious mother as long as she lived. After her death, Bridget, then only seven years old, was given into the charge of a very devout aunt, who brought her up most piously. When ten years of age, she heard a sermon on the bitter passion and death of our Lord, which made a deep impression on her young and tender heart. In the following night, Christ appeared to her, hanging on the Cross, while streams of blood flowed from His wounds. Bridget, deeply moved, cried out: "O, Lord, who has so maltreated thee?" "Those who despise my love," answered Christ, that is, those who transgress my laws and are ungrateful for my immeasurable love to them. This vision remained in Bridget's memory, and caused her, from that hour, to manifest the most tender devotion to the passion and death of the Saviour, of which she could never think without shedding tears.

This vision was followed by many others, especially during her prayers, which the Saint loved so well that it seemed as if no other occupation could give her joy or contentment. She often rose quietly during the night and passed hours in pious meditation. She also used many ways and means to mortify her delicate body, so as to resemble, in silently enduring pain, Him who had suffered so infinitely more for her. In obedience to her father, she at the age of thirteen gave her hand to Ulpho, prince of Nericia, whose heart she won so entirely by her amiability and sweetness of manners, that she weaned him, in a short time, from gaming, immoderate luxury in dress and other similar faults, and induced him to lead a life pleasing to God, by his assiduity in prayer and in going to confession. She lived with him in undisturbed love and harmony. She was also very solicitous for her domestics, and allowed nothing that might offend the Almighty or prevent His blessing from coming upon her house.

She became the mother of four sons and as many daughters. Two of her sons died in their innocence; two while travelling in the Holy Land. Two of her daughters lived at court, and became models of all virtues. The third became a nun and led a holy life, and the fourth, Catherine, was numbered among the Saints; which is evidence of the pious care with which St. Bridget educated her children. She herself instructed them in religion and in the way of living piously, and led them, from their most tender years, to practise works of charity and mortification, being an example to them in all virtuous deeds. With the consent of Ulpho, she founded a hospital and waited daily, at certain hours, like a servant, on the poor and sick, who were in it. She often washed their feet, kissing them most reverentially. Her husband became dangerously ill on his return from Compostella, whither he had gone with St. Bridget, to visit the tomb of the holy Apostle St. James. But St. Dionysius, who appeared to Bridget, announced to her, besides other future events, that Ulpho would soon recover. She soon saw this prophecy fulfilled, and had also the joy to perceive that Ulpho was disgusted with the world and desired to end his life in retirement. With the permission of his pious spouse, he went into a Cistercian monastery, where he ended his life most holily.

Bridget lived thirty years after her husband had entered a monastery, and being free from many former cares and anxieties, she devoted herself with great zeal to a most perfect and penitential life. Her temporal possessions she gave to her children, clothed herself in a penitential robe, and unweariedly practised acts of devotion, charity and penance. She fasted four times in the week, and on Friday, took only water and bread. She gave the greater part of the night to prayer, spending whole hours prostrate before the Crucifix or the Blessed Sacrament. Every Friday she let fall a few drops of boiling wax into a wound which she had, to remember, by the pain this gave her, the suffering of our Lord. She daily fed twelve poor persons and served them at table. She founded a convent for sixty nuns, and gave them a rule which she had received from Christ Himself. These regulations were afterwards adopted by many houses of Religious men. This was the origin of the celebrated Brigittine Order. St. Bridget herself entered a convent which she had founded, and was a shining light to all in the practice of virtue.

Having lived there two years, she was commanded, in a vision, to make a pilgrimage to Rome, with her daughter Catherine, and thence to the Holy Land. On her return, a malignant fever seized her, which greatly increased when she had arrived at Rome, and lasted a whole year. The great pains she suffered were made easy to her by the thought of the bitter passion of our Saviour; and for love of Him, she was willing to endure much more. She derived the greatest comfort from a vision in which God appeared to her and assured her of her salvation. The hour of her death was also made known to her by divine revelation. She prepared herself most carefully for her end, and after receiving the holy sacraments, she breathed her last in the arms of her holy daughter, and, rich in merits and virtues, went to receive her reward in heaven, in the 71st. year of her age, in the year 1373. Before and after her death God wrought many and great miracles by her intercession.

Practical Considerations

I. Christ appeared to St. Bridget, wounded over His whole body, saying that those who had despised His love, and had shown themselves ungrateful for His mercies, had thus maltreated Him. Are you not also one of those who despise the Saviour's love and show themselves ungrateful to Him? Are you not, perhaps, even one of those who, according to the words of St. Paul, crucify Him anew? "You crucify the Lord anew as often as you become guilty of a mortal sin," says Hugh, the Cardinal. And how often has this happened? And what were your reasons for so doing? What could you answer, if Christ would address you, as St. Bernard introduces Him speaking: " Am I not yet wounded enough for you? Have I not yet sufficiently suffered for your misdeeds? why do you still add new pains to the old ones? The wounds of your sins are much more painful to me than the wounds of my body."

What, I ask, could you answer, if Christ spoke thus to you? Oh! prostrate yourself before your crucified Saviour, humbly ask His pardon and promise Him that in future you will show yourself grateful and not offend Him. In every temptation to sin, remember your crucified Lord, and address yourself in the words of St. Bernard: "My God hangs on the Cross, and shall I submit to lust?" Shall I sin? Shall I, for a miserable gain, for a short sensual pleasure, offend my God? "How can I do this wicked thing, and sin against my God?" said the chaste Joseph, when tempted to sin (Genesis, xxxix.). He meant by this, that it was impossible for him to offend so great and so good a God. "How can I sin against my God?" Speak thus to yourself, when Satan or men tempt you to sin. How dare I do it? How can I thus offend my good God? How thus offend my kind Redeemer, and open afresh all His wounds? But your acts must correspond with these words, and as Joseph rather drew upon himself the anger of his mistress and all that might follow it, than offend God, so in the same manner must you act.

II. St. Bridget, in a most gentle manner, reformed her husband of many faults, such as gaming and immoderate love of dress. She taught her children to pray, to perform works of mercy, and mortification. Oh! that all wives would so act to their husbands; all mothers adopt the same plan in the education of their children! How great would their merit be on earth, and how inexpressible their joy at meeting their children in a happy eternity! But on the contrary, how heavy will be the account which those women will have to render before God, and how excruciating their pain in hell, who have incited their husbands to pride, to hatred, and to enmity, to oppression and persecution of their neighbor, to all kinds of fraud, injustice, and other vices! And terrible too will be the punishment of those mothers who take not proper care in the instruction of their children, who do not correct their faults, who do not lead them, by precept and example, to piety, but to frivolous vanities, to love of dress and of the world and all kinds of sinful amusements. What has here been said applies also to husbands and fathers.

Married people should love each other; and what is more opposed to Christian love, than for one to be to the other an occasion of sin, and thus injure one who should be shielded from all evil? Both parents are obliged to lead their children, by word and example, in the path to heaven, and to teach them those lessons which God gives so emphatically by the Psalmist: "That they may put their hope in God and may not forget the works of God." (Psalm lxxvii.) If they neglect this, and perhaps do the contrary, what Origen says will happen to them: " The parents will have to render account of the sins of their children, if they have not instructed them well, and punished them duly; for, it is they who are guilty of the eternal perdition of their children, and they condemn themselves for all eternity." (As found at: St. Bridget, Widow.)