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God's Laws Take Precedence Over States' Rights
Although it may seem like a minor point to emphasize about a candidate, United States Senator Randal Paul (R-Kentucky), who has no foreseeable “path” to the Republican Party presidential nomination, it is, I believe, nevertheless important to demonstrate falsehoods about the penchant of some “conservatives” and “libertarians” to defend “states’ rights” while neglecting entirely the binding nature of God’s eternal, immutable laws as the foundation of all human action, whether undertaken individually or collectively in the institutions of civil governance.
Christopher Wallace, one of the moderators of the open-borders, Israeli-occupied and “gay friendly” Fox News Channel, which is part of the empire under the control of the thirty-third degree Freemason and John Paul II “papal knight” (nominated by Roger “Cardinal” Mahony in 1997), on Thursday, January 28, 2016, the Feast of Saint Peter Nolasco and the Second Feast of Saint Agnes, asked Senator Paul a question about abortion, which Paul did not answer directing, prompting a follow-up from Wallace.
Here is the exchange:
WALLACE: Senator Paul, in May on the campaign trail you, said you didn’t get into politics to fight about abortion. You said you were more concerned about the national debt. Your answer is to turn abortion back to the states the way it was before Roe v. Wade.
Does that mean that if a liberal state, let’s say, wants to make abortion legal, that you’re okay with that and what do you say to conservative voters who believe deeply that abortion is murder?
PAUL: You know, I think abortion is always wrong. I’ve supported a variety of solutions, both state as well as federal. In fact, just last week, I introduced the Life at Conception act, which would say that the 14th amendment would defend an individual even in the womb.
But I think on the broader question of religion and politics, you know, I think liberty, itself requires a virtue — requires a virtuous people. In fact, Washington said that democracy requires a virtuous people.
Os Guinness, the theologian, said that liberty requires restraint but the only restraint consistent with liberty is self-restraint. There’s a lot packed into that statement. But the bottom line is we must have virtue, we must have a religious bearing as a nation. The government is not always going to save us and it’s not always going to come from government.
But if we don’t know right and wrong, I think we have lost our way. I think we become unmoored and I think without the religious foundation that guides us all, I think we have a great risk of going horribly in the wrong direction.
WALLACE: Just 30 seconds to answer my specific question. Do you favor the idea that abortion should be a states’ rights issue and if a liberal state wants to make it legal, that that’s their choice? Yes or no?
PAUL: Both. No, both the federal and a state approach. I have said that we could leave it to the states but I’ve also introduced a federal solution as well. So the federal solution would be the Life at Conception act which is an act that would federalize the issue.
But I’ve also said for the most part, these issues would be left back to the states. So there might be an occasion if we did overturn Roe v. Wade — Roe v. Wade nationalized the issue. If you had the court reverse Roe v. Wade, it would become a state issue once again.
I think it would be better the more — the less abortions we have, so the more states that we have that made abortion illegal, the better, as far as trying to save and preserve lives. (Republican Presidential Debate Transcript, January 28, 2016, Des Moines, Iowa.)
A nation whose founding principles were informed by Protestant and Judeo-Masonic falsehood must continue to produce men who propagate the same falsehoods of naturalism over and over and over again.
Here is a newsflash for Senator Randal Paul: The one and only true Church founded by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order, teaches men that the only standard of authentic human liberty is the Holy Cross. Men have been liberated from the power of sin and eternal death by Our Lord’s Redemptive Act on the wood of the Holy Cross, making it possible for them to use their free will responsibly in accord with the dictates of right reason, guided as it must be by the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law as they been entrusted to and explicated infallibly by Holy Mother Church, and by cooperating with Sanctifying Graces to resist sin and grow in sanctity.
In other words, Randal Paul is a quintessential Americanist even though he does not know this to be so. That is, Paul believes that men can be virtuous on their own without belief in, access to or cooperation with Sanctifying Grace. This is an Americanist myth that is nothing other than a recrudescence of Pelagianism, the heresy that contends that human beings are more or less self-redemptive, capable of resolving whatever problems come their way by stirring up within themselves the graces or abilities to achieve their goals.
Writing in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899, Pope Leo XIII exploded Paul’s reliance on a Protestant “theologian’s” supposed “insights” about the necessity of self-restraint in the exercise of free will to pursue virtue, which was, after all, a rather consistent theme of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, by explaining that men need the work of an exterior guide, namely, the Catholic Church, to persevere in virtue and, of course, to scale the heights of personal sanctity:
Coming now to speak of the conclusions which have been deduced from the above opinions, and for them, we readily believe there was no thought of wrong or guile, yet the things themselves certainly merit some degree of suspicion. First, all external guidance is set aside for those souls who are striving after Christian perfection as being superfluous or indeed, not useful in any sense -the contention being that the Holy Spirit pours richer and more abundant graces than formerly upon the souls of the faithful, so that without human intervention He teaches and guides them by some hidden instinct of His own. Yet it is the sign of no small over-confidence to desire to measure and determine the mode of the Divine communication to mankind, since it wholly depends upon His own good pleasure, and He is a most generous dispenser ‘of his own gifts. “The Spirit breatheth whereso He listeth.” — John iii, 8.
“And to each one of us grace is given according to the measure of the giving of Christ.” — Eph. iv, 7.
And shall any one who recalls the history of the apostles, the faith of the nascent church, the trials and deaths of the martyrs and, above all, those olden times, so fruitful in saints-dare to measure our age with these, or affirm that they received less of the divine outpouring from the Spirit of Holiness? Not to dwell upon this point, there is no one who calls in question the truth that the Holy Spirit does work by a secret descent into the souls of the just and that He stirs them alike by warnings and impulses, since unless this were the case all outward defense and authority would be unavailing. “For if any persuades himself that he can give assent to saving, that is, to gospel truth when proclaimed, without any illumination of the Holy Spirit, who gives unto all sweetness both to assent and to hold, such an one is deceived by a heretical spirit.”-From the Second Council of Orange, Canon 7.
Moreover, as experience shows, these monitions and impulses of the Holy Spirit are for the most part felt through the medium of the aid and light of an external teaching authority. To quote St. Augustine. “He (the Holy Spirit) co-operates to the fruit gathered from the good trees, since He externally waters and cultivates them by the outward ministry of men, and yet of Himself bestows the inward increase.”-De Gratia Christi, Chapter xix. This, indeed, belongs to the ordinary law of God’s loving providence that as He has decreed that men for the most part shall be saved by the ministry also of men, so has He wished that those whom He calls to the higher planes of holiness should be led thereto by men; hence St. Chrysostom declares we are taught of God through the instrumentality of men.-Homily I in Inscrib. Altar. Of this a striking example is given us in the very first days of the Church.
For though Saul, intent upon blood and slaughter, had heard the voice of our Lord Himself and had asked, “What dost Thou wish me to do?” yet he was bidden to enter Damascus and search for Ananias. Acts ix: “Enter the city and it shall be there told to thee what thou must do.”
Nor can we leave out of consideration the truth that those who are striving after perfection, since by that fact they walk in no beaten or well-known path, are the most liable to stray, and hence have greater need than others of a teacher and guide. Such guidance has ever obtained in the Church; it has been the universal teaching of those who throughout the ages have been eminent for wisdom and sanctity-and hence to reject it would be to commit one’s self to a belief at once rash and dangerous.
A thorough consideration of this point, in the supposition that no exterior guide is granted such souls, will make us see the difficulty of locating or determining the direction and application of that more abundant influx of the Holy Spirit so greatly extolled by innovators. To practice virtue there is absolute need of the assistance of the Holy Spirit, yet we find those who are fond of novelty giving an unwarranted importance to the natural virtues, as though they better responded to the customs and necessities of the times and that having these as his outfit man becomes more ready to act and more strenuous in action. It is not easy to understand how persons possessed of Christian wisdom can either prefer natural to supernatural virtues or attribute to them a greater efficacy and fruitfulness. Can it be that nature conjoined with grace is weaker than when left to herself?
Can it be that those men illustrious for sanctity, whom the Church distinguishes and openly pays homage to, were deficient, came short in the order of nature and its endowments, because they excelled in Christian strength? And although it be allowed at times to wonder at acts worthy of admiration which are the outcome of natural virtue-is there anyone at all endowed simply with an outfit of natural virtue? Is there any one not tried by mental anxiety, and this in no light degree? Yet ever to master such, as also to preserve in its entirety the law of the natural order, requires an assistance from on high. These single notable acts to which we have alluded will frequently upon a closer investigation be found to exhibit the appearance rather than the reality of virtue. Grant that it is virtue, unless we would “run in vain” and be unmindful of that eternal bliss which a good God in his mercy has destined for us, of what avail are natural virtues unless seconded by the gift of divine grace? Hence St. Augustine well says: “Wonderful is the strength, and swift the course, but outside the true path.” For as the nature of man, owing to the primal fault, is inclined to evil and dishonor, yet by the help of grace is raised up, is borne along with a new greatness and strength, so, too, virtue, which is not the product of nature alone, but of grace also, is made fruitful unto everlasting life and takes on a more strong and abiding character. (Pope Leo XIII, Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899.)
In all fairness to Randal Paul, of course, the man most people in the world think is “Pope Francis” thinks that Pope Leo XIII’s discourse on the difficulty of maintaining true virtue absent Sanctifying Grace is unrealistic, pious nonsense. Why should Randal Paul know anything about authentic Catholic teaching when most Catholics who are attached to the counterfeit church of conciliarism are just as uncritically supportive of "religious liberty" as is the partly pro-life, partly pro-abortion United States Senator Marco Antonio Rubio (R-Florida), a Catholic who is as ignorant of authentic Catholic teaching as is Senator Paul.
Bergoglio, of course, celebrates his version of the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service in a “liberated manner,” and his ally and ghost-writer, “Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernandez, the rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina, does not even believe in the existence of Natural Law. Both of these apostates really believe that is neither possible nor advisable for people to practice self-restraint in the fulfillment of carnal desires as the only thing that matters is “lover” and “mercy.” Randal Paul most certainly can be forgiven for having to rely upon a Protestant “theologian” named Os Guinness rather than the teaching of Holy Mother Church and her holy doctors, especially Saint Thomas Aquinas himself.
Human law must be in accord with the Divine Positive Law (which refers to those laws revealed definitively by the true God of Divine Revelation as they have been entrusted to and explicated by Holy Mother Church) and the Natural Law (those laws exist in the nature of things and are knowable, albeit imperfectly, by the light of human reason), upon which depends the right ordering of nations themselves, and one of functions of human law, known also as positive law (human positive laws are those ordinances established by duly constituted bodies of men to provide for social order in advance of the common temporal good), is to serve as a coercive tool to deter potential malefactors from wrongdoing. The other important function of human positive law is to punish malefactors according to the nature of their offenses and, at least at times, the circumstances in which they were committed, thus rendering justice to the malefactor and protecting those at risk because of the malefactor’s crimes.
Although there are different strains of libertarians, many among this group of individuals believe that all laws, including God’s laws, represent unjust restrictions on the exercise of free will and the “pursuit of happiness,” which they believe is defined by each individual. Those who believe this lie have permitted themselves to confuse liberty with license (unrestrained physical freedom). Alas, there are limits that exist in the very nature of things that no human being, whether acting individually or collectively, may transgress deliberately. That is, no one is morally free to do everything that he is physically capable of doing.
To deny that such limits exist—or to contend that such limits might exist but need to be defined anew by each succeeding generation—is to deny these words of Pope Leo XIII in Libertas Praestantissimum, June 20, 1888:
2. We have on other occasions, and especially in Our encyclical letter lmmortale Dei,[2] in treating of the so-called modern liberties, distinguished between their good and evil elements; and We have shown that whatsoever is good in those liberties is as ancient as truth itself, and that the Church has always most willingly approved and practiced that good: but whatsoever has been added as new is, to tell the plain truth, of a vitiated kind, the fruit of the disorders of the age, and of an insatiate longing after novelties. Seeing, however, that many cling so obstinately to their own opinion in this matter as to imagine these modern liberties, cankered as they are, to be the greatest glory of our age, and the very basis of civil life, without which no perfect government can be conceived, We feel it a pressing duty, for the sake of the common good, to treat separately of this subject.
3. It is with moral liberty, whether in individuals or in communities, that We proceed at once to deal. But, first of all, it will be well to speak briefly of natural liberty; for, though it is distinct and separate from moral liberty, natural freedom is the fountainhead from which liberty of whatsoever kind flows, sua vi suaque sponte. The unanimous consent and judgment of men, which is the trusty voice of nature, recognizes this natural liberty in those only who are endowed with intelligence or reason; and it is by his use of this that man is rightly regarded as responsible for his actions. For, while other animate creatures follow their senses, seeking good and avoiding evil only by instinct, man has reason to guide him in each and every act of his life. Reason sees that whatever things that are held to be good upon earth may exist or may not, and discerning that none of them are of necessity for us, it leaves the will free to choose what it pleases. But man can judge of this contingency, as We say, only because he has a soul that is simple, spiritual, and intellectual -- a soul, therefore, which is not produced by matter, and does not depend on matter for its existence; but which is created immediately by God, and, far surpassing the condition of things material, has a life and action of its own -- so that, knowing the unchangeable and necessary reasons of what is true and good, it sees that no particular kind of good is necessary to us. When, therefore, it is established that man's soul is immortal and endowed with reason and not bound up with things material, the foundation of natural liberty is at once most firmly laid.
4. As the Catholic Church declares in the strongest terms the simplicity, spirituality, and immortality of the soul, so with unequaled constancy and publicity she ever also asserts its freedom. These truths she has always taught, and has sustained them as a dogma of faith, and whensoever heretics or innovators have attacked the liberty of man, the Church has defended it and protected this noble possession from destruction. History bears witness to the energy with which she met the fury of the Manicheans and others like them; and the earnestness with which in later years she defended human liberty at the Council of Trent, and against the followers of Jansenius, is known to all. At no time, and in no place, has she held truce with fatalism.
5. Liberty, then, as We have said, belongs only to those who have the gift of reason or intelligence. Considered as to its nature, it is the faculty of choosing means fitted for the end proposed, for he is master of his actions who can choose one thing out of many. Now, since everything chosen as a means is viewed as good or useful, and since good, as such, is the proper object of our desire, it follows that freedom of choice is a property of the will, or, rather, is identical with the will in so far as it has in its action the faculty of choice. But the will cannot proceed to act until it is enlightened by the knowledge possessed by the intellect. In other words, the good wished by the will is necessarily good in so far as it is known by the intellect; and this the more, because in all voluntary acts choice is subsequent to a judgment upon the truth of the good presented, declaring to which good preference should be given. No sensible man can doubt that judgment is an act of reason, not of the will. The end, or object, both of the rational will and of its liberty is that good only which is in conformity with reason.
6. Since, however, both these faculties are imperfect, it is possible, as is often seen, that the reason should propose something which is not really good, but which has the appearance of good, and that the will should choose accordingly. For, as the possibility of error, and actual error, are defects of the mind and attest its imperfection, so the pursuit of what has a false appearance of good, though a proof of our freedom, just as a disease is a proof of our vitality, implies defect in human liberty. The will also, simply because of its dependence on the reason, no sooner desires anything contrary thereto than it abuses its freedom of choice and corrupts its very essence. Thus it is that the infinitely perfect God, although supremely free, because of the supremacy of His intellect and of His essential goodness, nevertheless cannot choose evil; neither can the angels and saints, who enjoy the beatific vision. St. Augustine and others urged most admirably against the Pelagians that, if the possibility of deflection from good belonged to the essence or perfection of liberty, then God, Jesus Christ, and the angels and saints, who have not this power, would have no liberty at all, or would have less liberty than man has in his state of pilgrimage and imperfection. This subject is often discussed by the Angelic Doctor in his demonstration that the possibility of sinning is not freedom, but slavery. It will suffice to quote his subtle commentary on the words of our Lord: "Whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin."[3] "Everything," he says, "is that which belongs to it naturally. When, therefore, it acts through a power outside itself, it does not act of itself, but through another, that is, as a slave. But man is by nature rational. When, therefore, he acts according to reason, he acts of himself and according to his free will; and this is liberty. Whereas, when he sins, he acts in opposition to reason, is moved by another, and is the victim of foreign misapprehensions. Therefore, 'Whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin'."[4] Even the heathen philosophers clearly recognized this truth, especially they who held that the wise man alone is free; and by the term "wise man" was meant, as is well known, the man trained to live in accordance with his nature, that is, in justice and virtue.
7. Such, then, being the condition of human liberty, it necessarily stands in need of light and strength to direct its actions to good and to restrain them from evil. Without this, the freedom of our will would be our ruin. First of all, there must be law; that is, a fixed rule of teaching what is to be done and what is to be left undone. This rule cannot affect the lower animals in any true sense, since they act of necessity, following their natural instinct, and cannot of themselves act in any other way. On the other hand, as was said above, he who is free can either act or not act, can do this or do that, as he pleases, because his judgment precedes his choice. And his judgment not only decides what is right or wrong of its own nature, but also what is practically good and therefore to be chosen, and what is practically evil and therefore to be avoided. In other words, the reason prescribes to the will what it should seek after or shun, in order to the eventual attainment of man's last end, for the sake of which all his actions ought to be performed. This ordination of reason is called law. In man's free will, therefore, or in the moral necessity of our voluntary acts being in accordance with reason, lies the very root of the necessity of law. Nothing more foolish can be uttered or conceived than the notion that, because man is free by nature, he is therefore exempt from law. Were this the case, it would follow that to become free we must be deprived of reason; whereas the truth is that we are bound to submit to law precisely because we are free by our very nature. For, law is the guide of man's actions; it turns him toward good by its rewards, and deters him from evil by its punishments. (Pope Leo XIII, Libertas Praestantissimum, June 20, 1888.)
The “virtue” to which Randal Paul referred on Thursday, January 28, 2016, in Des Moines, Iowa, is illusory as it is premised upon the belief that men can be virtuous by their merely willing to be so. This is false.
While it is not the function of the civil law to penalize every sin that one might commit in violation of the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law, it is the function of the civil law to serve as the means to enforce those precepts in matters pertaining to the common good, starting with the honor and glory due the Most Blessed Trinity and a due submission to Holy Mother Church in all that pertains to the good of souls and extending to the absolute legal protection that must be accorded to all innocent human life from the first moment of conception through all subsequent stages until natural death.
Pope Leo XIII made this distinction in Libertas Praestantissimum as he explained that Holy Mother Church would tolerate such modern liberties to preserve her ability to teach and sanctify her children while continuing to condemn false ideas as injurious to men and to their nations:
33. Yet, with the discernment of a true mother, the Church weighs the great burden of human weakness, and well knows the course down which the minds and actions of men are in this our age being borne. For this reason, while not conceding any right to anything save what is true and honest, she does not forbid public authority to tolerate what is at variance with truth and justice, for the sake of avoiding some greater evil, or of obtaining or preserving some greater good. God Himself in His providence, though infinitely good and powerful, permits evil to exist in the world, partly that greater good may not be impeded, and partly that greater evil may not ensue. In the government of States it is not forbidden to imitate the Ruler of the world; and, as the authority of man is powerless to prevent every evil, it has (as St. Augustine says) to overlook and leave unpunished many things which are punished, and rightly, by Divine Providence.[10] But if, in such circumstances, for the sake of the common good (and this is the only legitimate reason), human law may or even should tolerate evil, it may not and should not approve or desire evil for its own sake; for evil of itself, being a privation of good, is opposed to the common welfare which every legislator is bound to desire and defend to the best of his ability. In this, human law must endeavor to imitate God, who, as St. Thomas teaches, in allowing evil to exist in the world, "neither wills evil to be done, nor wills it not to be done, but wills only to permit it to be done; and this is good.''[11] This saying of the Angelic Doctor contains briefly the whole doctrine of the permission of evil.
34. But, to judge aright, we must acknowledge that, the more a State is driven to tolerate evil, the further is it from perfection; and that the tolerance of evil which is dictated by political prudence should be strictly confined to the limits which its justifying cause, the public welfare, requires. Wherefore, if such tolerance would be injurious to the public welfare, and entail greater evils on the State, it would not be lawful; for in such case the motive of good is wanting. And although in the extraordinary condition of these times the Church usually acquiesces in certain modern liberties, not because she prefers them in themselves, but because she judges it expedient to permit them, she would in happier times exercise her own liberty; and, by persuasion, exhortation, and entreaty would endeavor, as she is bound, to fulfill the duty assigned to her by God of providing for the eternal salvation of mankind. One thing, however, remains always true -- that the liberty which is claimed for all to do all things is not, as We have often said, of itself desirable, inasmuch as it is contrary to reason that error and truth should have equal rights.
35. And as to tolerance, it is surprising how far removed from the equity and prudence of the Church are those who profess what is called liberalism. For, in allowing that boundless license of which We have spoken, they exceed all limits, and end at last by making no apparent distinction between truth and error, honesty and dishonesty. And because the Church, the pillar and ground of truth, and the unerring teacher of morals, is forced utterly to reprobate and condemn tolerance of such an abandoned and criminal character, they calumniate her as being wanting in patience and gentleness, and thus fail to see that, in so doing, they impute to her as a fault what is in reality a matter for commendation. But, in spite of all this show of tolerance, it very often happens that, while they profess themselves ready to lavish liberty on all in the greatest profusion, they are utterly intolerant toward the Catholic Church, by refusing to allow her the liberty of being herself free. (Pope Leo XIII, Libertas Praestantissimum, June 20, 1888.)
No human legislature has any authority to permit the deliberate, intentional taking of innocent life at any time for any reason. To assert that such is the case is to reinforce the popular misconception that it is up to the “people” to decide matters of right and wrong.
While men are free to discuss which specific criminal penalties should be imposed after due process of law (arrest, indictment or preliminary hearing, trial, sentencing, appeals), they are not free to discuss any circumstance in which the direct, intentional killing of innocent human beings may be "permitted" under cover of law any more than they are free to discuss whether to permit people of the same gender to "marry" each other. These things are simply "off the table" to the free will of men to decide. God has decided these things. He has given men the ability to know these things through the rational nature of the immortal souls He has created, providing them with a definitive source, the Catholic Church, by which any questions in this regard may be decided by and with His own Divine authority. End of argument. God as He has revealed Himself exclusively through the Catholic Church is God. Not "states' rights." Not "the people."
State governments are not "demigods" able to do anything not specifically forbidden them in the Constitution of the United States of America. They are not free, as noted above, to act contrary to God's laws and thus contrary to the good of souls. They must attempt, despite the frailties of fallen human nature, to make decisions that are just.
Is a particular new roadway really needed? Will the contractor hired to build the roadway use durable materials?
Is a particular real-estate zoning law just? Indeed, a state government run by Catholics would seek to keep its power as limited as that of a national or a central government, restricting legitimate private property rights in very rare circumstances. And a state government founded on Catholic principles and run by Catholics would recognize that there is no "civil right" for anyone to kill babies, no "civil right" to promote pornography or perversity openly, no "civil right" to charge usurious interest to indenture citizens for years on end as they purchase automobiles and refrigerators, and no "civil right" of the civil state to impose and to mandate a curriculum of study for the education of the young, no "civil right" of any governmental agency to open a "public" school, which must of its perverse nature descend to the worship of the state itself and of the prevailing ideologies of the moment.
The arch-legal positivist named Oliver Wendell Holmes, who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America from 1902 to 1932, who was appointed to the Court by the “progressive” Republican, Theodore Roosevelt, once called the states "grand laboratories" of social experimentation. Holmes explained how one such "experimentation," the Commonwealth of Virginia's mandatory sterilization of mentally retarded citizens, in the case of Buck v. Bell, May 2, 1927:
The judgment finds the facts that have been recited and that Carrie Buck "is the probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring, likewise afflicted, that she may be sexually sterilized without detriment to her general health and that her welfare and that of society will be promoted by her sterilization," and thereupon makes the order. In view of the general declarations of the legislature and the specific findings of the Court, obviously we cannot say as matter of law that the grounds do not exist, and if they exist they justify the result. We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11. Three generations of imbeciles are enough. (Justice Holmes's Opinion in the Case of Buck v. Bell.
Twelve other states used the odious, unjust, immortal decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in Buck v. Bell to pass their own eugenic sterilization laws. Anyone who thinks that the United States of America was morally superior to the Weimar Republic in Germany or to the Third Reich that succeeded it does not know history. No government at any level at any time has the "right" to pass eugenic sterilization laws. States' rights. Please! Let's hear about God's rights, my friends. Let's raise up the standard of His Holy Cross as the one and only standard of true human liberty.
States' rights?
What about the efforts of the various state legislatures to impose "Blaine Laws," which forbade state aid to parochial schools and parochial school students as their parents were being forced to pay taxes to support the public schools of pluralism and religious indifferentism, upon their people?
States' rights?
What about the efforts of the Freemasons in the State of Oregon to mandate all children to attend public schools?
This was too much even for the Supreme Court of the United States of American (Pierce v. Society of Sisters, June 1, 1925), although the Court maintained that the civil state had a "right" to mandate a curriculum of study, which it does not possess.
States' rights?
What about the forcible segregation of the races and the resulting injustices to human beings whose immortal souls were made in the image and the likeness of God and who had been redeemed by the shedding of every single drop of His own Most Precious Blood? Blessed Martin de Porres would have had a tough time with the states' rights crowd back in the years between 1877 and the late-1960s.
States' rights?
What about the anti-garb law passed by the North Dakota State Legislature at the behest of Freemasons in 1947 (and stayed on the books, although not enforced at the time, until the year 2001!) that forbade priests and consecrated religious to wear their religious attire in certain public places? Aping the Freemasons in Mexico who slaughtered nearly a quarter of a million Catholics between the second and fourth decades of the Twentieth Century?
States' rights?
Think again.
Think real hard before reciting this mindless mantra.
States' rights?
What about the simple fact that the expansion of then-existing "exceptions" to laws restricting surgical baby-killing began in the states in the 1960s?
California.
Colorado.
Hawaii.
New Jersey.
New York.
Surgical baby-killing would remain legal in most states even if the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the case of Roe v. Wade, January 22, 1973, was overturned. (See Life Legal Defense Fund for a comprehensive, detailed listing of what the baby-killing picture would look like in this country in the case Roe was overturned.)
States' rights?
Would King Herod the Great have been justified to slaughter the Holy Innocents if he had been the governor of an American state and was enforcing a "law" approved by the "people" of that state?
The absurdities to which the Americanists lead people are incredible to contemplate.
States' rights?
Perverted "marriages"?
Not only did the perverse concept of “marriage” between people of the same gender originate at the state level, it is at the state and local levels that all manner of persecution is being waged against those who refuse to accord recognition to that which is an abomination in the eyes of God.
Remember also that it is at the state level that bans have been enacted to prohibit licensed therapists from seeking to use what is called “conversion therapy” to undo the brainwash of same-gender attraction and/or behavior in minors. Indeed, it was none other than Governor Christopher Christie of the State of New Jersey who signed a bill on April 9, 2013, to ban such therapy in the Garden State. Similar laws are in effect in California, Illinois, Oregon and the District of Columbia.
States’ rights, Senator Paul.
No, God’s laws trump (we can still use this word, right?) states’ rights.
States' rights?
What about God's laws?
What about the rights of Christ the King and those of His Most Blessed Mother, she who is our Immaculate Queen?
This litany of abuses associated with the demigod of American state governments could be expanded by quite a bit. This partial listing, however, has been provided to attempt the seemingly ever-futile task of convincing some readers that they must stop thinking and acting according to the terms of naturalists who are not the least bit interested in subordinating everything in civil law and popular culture to the Deposit of Faith, recognizing that there is one and only one way to order personal and social life: Catholicism. There are no short-cuts to the restoration of social order other than the slow, methodical process of planting the seeds for the conversion of individuals to the true Faith, a process of conversion that results, either over the course of time or as a result of a miraculous intervention (as happened with Our Lady of Guadalupe), in the conversion of entire nations. This happened once in Europe. It happened in Americas. Why do we doubt that it can happen again?
Oh, there are some who incant the "states' rights" slogan who will say that they want only to return to the state governments those functions that have been usurped over the past century by presidential "executive orders," laws passed by the United States Congress (including categorical and block grant programs that did, at least for a period of four to five decades, restrict the rights of the state governments to regulate matters that are solely within their purview), decisions of various Federal courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States of America, and regulations issued by Federal cabinet departments and independent and quasi-independent regulatory bodies.
Fine.
I, a political scientist who majored in American political systems at the doctoral level and had as one of my specialties state and local governments and federalism itself, will grant that particular point. No problem. This is certainly quite true as far as it goes. An entire series of graduate courses on this subject would not exhaust the examples of Federal usurpation of the legitimate powers of state governments.
That point having been ceded, however, this does not mean, as some of those who are currently running for the President of the United States of America contend, that state governments are autonomous, sovereign governing units that are exempt from observing the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law as they have been entrusted to and explicated by the infallible authority of the Catholic Church that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. They are not. God's rights trump (there’s that word again) everything else at all times.
Many states' rights advocates also ignore the unconfident little truth that there are times when the intervention of a national government is necessary. Section 10 of Article I of the Constitution of the United States of America imposes specific limitations upon the states:
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing its inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Control of the Congress.
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.
Further restrictions were placed upon the states by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-third, and Twenty-sixth Amendments to the Constitution (the Eighteenth Amendment, which imposed "prohibition" upon the states in 1919, was repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment in 1933). Indeed, a case could be made on purely constitutional grounds that the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution prohibit Congress and state legislatures from permitting any form of baby-killing, chemical or surgical, under cover of law.
Lacking an ultimate arbiter, namely, the teaching authority of the Catholic Church, by which such things may be determined definitively, arguments about whether the Constitution does nor does not permit abortion is a waste of time. Something decided one way at one time in a pluralist, religiously-indifferentist state can just as easily be decided another way at another time. A no-exceptions constitutional amendment to protect innocent preborn human life from chemical and/or surgical attack that was ratified and became law at one time could be repealed at another.
A nation that does not have the Catholic Faith as its guiding force is lost in an abyss of confusion, a sorry state to which the ethos of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, which accepts the pluralist model of "democracy" as the "only" one to provide justice and respect civil and religious "freedom," has made its most unhappy "reconciliation."
Those who think that they are "building for the future" by enabling naturalists of whatever political persuasion are deluding themselves.
Who is coming out of public schools and colleges and universities these days?
Future voters who care about "states' rights" and "conservatism" and "libertarianism?"
Hardly.
Neo-barbarians steeped in personal pleasure and coarseness are coming out of these marvelous institutions. These people will be more than happy to vote for future Senator Chelsea Clinton for President of the United States of America at some point in the not-too-distant future (and she is contemplating following her parents’ corruption-stained footprints into politics)
You want to "build for the future?"
Why waste your time on naturalism in the ever-delusional expectation that "things" will change because of naturalist-based efforts?
Why not speak out in defense of Christ the King and His Most Blessed Mother,our Immaculate Queen?
Why not take seriously these words of Pope Saint Pius X, contained in Notre Charge Apostolique and these words of Pope Leo XIII in Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890?
This, nevertheless, is what they want to do with human society; they dream of changing its natural and traditional foundations; they dream of a Future City built on different principles, and they dare to proclaim these more fruitful and more beneficial than the principles upon which the present Christian City rests.
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.)
But in this same matter, touching Christian faith, there are other duties whose exact and religious observance, necessary at all times in the interests of eternal salvation, become more especially so in these our days. Amid such reckless and widespread folly of opinion, it is, as We have said, the office of the Church to undertake the defense of truth and uproot errors from the mind, and this charge has to be at all times sacredly observed by her, seeing that the honor of God and the salvation of men are confided to her keeping. But, when necessity compels, not those only who are invested with power of rule are bound to safeguard the integrity of faith, but, as St. Thomas maintains: "Each one is under obligation to show forth his faith, either to instruct and encourage others of the faithful, or to repel the attacks of unbelievers.'' To recoil before an enemy, or to keep silence when from all sides such clamors are raised against truth, is the part of a man either devoid of character or who entertains doubt as to the truth of what he professes to believe. In both cases such mode of behaving is base and is insulting to God, and both are incompatible with the salvation of mankind. This kind of conduct is profitable only to the enemies of the faith, for nothing emboldens the wicked so greatly as the lack of courage on the part of the good. Moreover, want of vigor on the part of Christians is so much the more blameworthy, as not seldom little would be needed on their part to bring to naught false charges and refute erroneous opinions, and by always exerting themselves more strenuously they might reckon upon being successful. After all, no one can be prevented from putting forth that strength of soul which is the characteristic of true Christians, and very frequently by such display of courage our enemies lose heart and their designs are thwarted. Christians are, moreover, born for combat, whereof the greater the vehemence, the more assured, God aiding, the triumph: "Have confidence; I have overcome the world." Nor is there any ground for alleging that Jesus Christ, the Guardian and Champion of the Church, needs not in any manner the help of men. Power certainly is not wanting to Him, but in His loving kindness He would assign to us a share in obtaining and applying the fruits of salvation procured through His grace.
The chief elements of this duty consist in professing openly and unflinchingly the Catholic doctrine, and in propagating it to the utmost of our power. For, as is often said, with the greatest truth, there is nothing so hurtful to Christian wisdom as that it should not be known, since it possesses, when loyally received, inherent power to drive away error. So soon as Catholic truth is apprehended by a simple and unprejudiced soul, reason yields assent. (Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890.)
We must proclaim Catholic doctrine in public, not waste our times on naturalist lies and mindless slogans that arrogate unto "the people" and particular forms of civil governance "rights" that they do not possess whatsoever. Our Lord became Man in Our Lady's Virginal and Immaculate womb by the power of the Holy Ghost and was born in poverty and humility and anonymity in Bethlehem to be King not only of the hearts of individual men but to be the King of nations. The Three Kings of the East bowed down before Him when He was but a Babe. Should not all civil rulers in all ages do so without any exception whatsoever?
It must be remembered that Antichrist is using the agents of Modernity in the world and those of Modernism in the counterfeit church of conciliarism to do his bidding for him until the time comes for him to do away with them all prior to his final battle with the remnant Catholic Church that is kept alive at this time by believing Catholics (clergy, consecrated religious, the laity) who make no concessions at all to the falsehoods of conciliarism and who try to protect themselves as far as is possible from the influences of the world, the flesh and the devil.
The time of the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary will occur in God’s good time, not ours. It is a triumph about which we can neither “strategize” to expedite or ignore in the Jansenist believe that it is an irrelevancy. It is a triumph that has been promised to us, and only fools dare not to believe the promises of the Mother of God herself, she who brought Divine Son to birth and placed him in the cradle in the stable in the cave in Bethlehem.
Every Rosary that we pray well helps to plant seeds for this triumph.
What are we waiting for?
Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!
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 John Bosco, pray for us.