Live by "Popular Sovereignty," Die by "Popular Sovereignty"

As I have tried to note hundreds upon hundreds of times on this website, the American electoral system is based on the farcical belief of “popular sovereignty” wherein everything is up for grabs according to the “will” of the people as determined in plebiscites, executive decrees, legislative enactments, or judicial pronouncements. A constitutional system which admits of no higher authority the texts of written documents must become the prisoner of either statist brute force or the tyranny of whatever majority forms on a particular issue without regard for due submission to Christ the King and His Catholic Church in all that pertains to the good of souls, upon which the salvation of men and the right ordering of their nations depends.

Indeed, it was in the midst of all the pro-life jubilation following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the case of Thomas E. Dobbs, Mississippi State Health Officer v. Jackson Women’s Organization, June 24, 2022, that I wrote the following concerning the reliance of Associate Justice Samel Alito upon the concept of “popular sovereignty” by which he returned “decision-making” on an issue upon which no “decisions” are to be other than to choose to obey the Divine and Natural Laws that forbid the direct, intentional taking of all innocent human life without any exception, qualification, or reservation whatsoever:

Once again, while it is good that Roe v. Wade was overturned in the case of Thomas E. Dobbs, State Health Officer v. Jackson Women’s Organization, it may very well turn out to be the case that it is on just as much a collision course with itself as was Roe v. Wade as to ignore the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law and to vest all “decision-making” on things about which there is nothing to decide in the very nature of things with the “people” means that nothing is ever “settled” and that, in this instance, the forces of evil will prevail to greater or lesser degree depending upon the circumstances of the times. Such must ever be the pernicious logic of governmental systems that make no room for Christ the King and His true Church in all that pertain to the good of souls.

Roe v. Wade is gone, but this does not mean that it is gone for good nor that the surgical execution of the preborn will stop, which is why we must be ever vigilant in prayer, especially asking Our Lady to send her graces into the souls of women who are seeking to kill their children so that they will come to understand that there they have no “decision” to make, only maternal life offered in imitation of Our Lady herself to give.

Third, however, even well-meaning justices such as Samuel Alito must work with the parameters of a secular constitution that forces them to engage in feats of sophistry to prove that what they know to be true does not conflict with various legal precedents and/or is consonant with what the late Associate Justice Benjamin Cardozo called “ordered liberty.”

Moreover, Catholic jurists such as Alito are infected with the spirit of American “popular sovereignty,” which is such a firmly held myth that Alito based his whole overturning of Roe v. Wade and William Casey v. Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania on the “right” of the “people” to decide a matter upon which they have nothing to “decide”:

We end this opinion where we began. Abortion presents a profound moral question. The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives.

Pope Leo XIII put the lie to popular sovereignty, and he explained that Catholics had an obligation to oppose to civil ordinances that conflicted with moral truth and/or the rights of Holy Mother Church:

The sovereignty of the people, however, and this without any reference to God, is held to reside in the multitude; which is doubtless a doctrine exceedingly well calculated to flatter and to inflame many passions, but which lacks all reasonable proof, and all power of insuring public safety and preserving order. Indeed, from the prevalence of this teaching, things have come to such a pass that may hold as an axiom of civil jurisprudence that seditions may be rightfully fostered. For the opinion prevails that princes are nothing more than delegates chosen to carry out the will of the people; whence it necessarily follows that all things are as changeable as the will of the people, so that risk of public disturbance is ever hanging over our heads.

To hold, therefore, that there is no difference in matters of religion between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, most clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and practice. And this is the same thing as atheism, however it may differ from it in name. Men who really believe in the existence of God must, in order to be consistent with themselves and to avoid absurd conclusions, understand that differing modes of divine worship involving dissimilarity and conflict even on most important points cannot all be equally probable, equally good, and equally acceptable to God. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1900.)

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. (Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890.)

A system of morality based exclusively on human reason robs man of his highest dignity and lowers him from the supernatural to the merely natural life. Not but that man is able by the right use of reason to know and to obey certain principles of the natural law. But though he should know them all and keep them inviolate through life-and even this is impossible without the aid of the grace of our Redeemer-still it is vain for anyone without faith to promise himself eternal salvation. "If anyone abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire, and he burneth" john xv., 6). "He that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mark xvi., 16). We have but too much evidence of the value and result of a morality divorced from divine faith. How is it that, in spite of all the zeal for the welfare of the masses, nations are in such straits and even distress, and that the evil is daily on the increase? We are told that society is quite able to help itself; that it can flourish without the assistance of Christianity, and attain its end by its own unaided efforts. Public administrators prefer a purely secular system of government. All traces of the religion of our forefathers are daily disappearing from political life and administration. What blindness! Once the idea of the authority of God as the Judge of right and wrong is forgotten, law must necessarily lose its primary authority and justice must perish: and these are the two most powerful and most necessary bonds of society. Similarly, once the hope and expectation of eternal happiness is taken away, temporal goods will be greedily sought after. Every man will strive to secure the largest share for himself. Hence arise envy, jealousy, hatred. The consequences are conspiracy, anarchy, nihilism. There is neither peace abroad nor security at home. Public life is stained with crime.

So great is this struggle of the passions and so serious the dangers involved, that we must either anticipate ultimate ruin or seek for an efficient remedy. It is of course both right and necessary to punish malefactors, to educate the masses, and by legislation to prevent crime in every possible way: but all this is by no means sufficient. The salvation of the nations must be looked for higher. A power greater than human must be called in to teach men's hearts, awaken in them the sense of duty, and make them better. This is the power which once before saved the world from destruction when groaning under much more terrible evils. Once remove all impediments and allow the Christian spirit to revive and grow strong in a nation, and that nation will be healed. The strife between the classes and the masses will die away; mutual rights will be respected. If Christ be listened to, both rich and poor will do their duty. The former will realise that they must observe justice and charity, the latter self-restraint and moderation, if both are to be saved. Domestic life will be firmly established (by the salutary fear of God as the Lawgiver. In the same way the precepts of the natural law, which dicttates respect for lawful authority and obedience to the laws, will exercise their influence over the people. Seditions and conspiracies will cease. Wherever Christianity rules over all without let or hindrance there the order established by Divine Providence is preserved, and both security and prosperity are the happy result. The common welfare, then, urgently demands a return to Him from whom we should never have gone astray; to Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and this on the part not only of individuals but of society as a whole. We must restore Christ to this His own rightful possession. All elements of the national life must be made to drink in the Life which proceedeth from Him- legislation, political institutions, education, marriage and family life, capital and labour. Everyone must see that the very growth of civilisation which is so ardently desired depends greatly upon this, since it is fed and grows not so much by material wealth and prosperity, as by the spiritual qualities of morality and virtue. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)

. . . . for there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion; it is a proven truth, a historical fact. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1950.)

The words of our true popes are either true or they are not. If they are true, which they are, of course, then they are merely expressions of what is in fact true and thus binding upon all men in all places at all times.

There is no moral liberty to do that which is wrong.

Civil law must conform to the Divine and Natural Laws.

Contrary to what naturalists who label themselves as "liberals" or "libertarians" or even many "conservatives" contend, such things as baby-killing, whether chemical or surgical or both, or perverse sins against nature cannot be made "legal" by a decision or a court or by a legislative enactment or executive order or by a plebiscite to reflect "the will of the people," which is considered by many naturalists, especially the libertarians, as the "will of God" that must govern legislative enactments. In other words, human beings are demigods who are "free" to act as they desire, with a few exceptions here and there, of course, as long as the "will of the people" is observed. Naturalists of the liberal bent believe that judges and other potentates can do what they want no matter what the "people" may desire.

This is all erroneous as contingent beings who did not create themselves and whose bodies are destined one day for the corruption of the grave until the General Resurrection of the Dead on the Last Day do not "determine" moral truth any more than they determine the physical laws of nature.

The law of gravity cannot be "repealed" by a decision of a judge or of a president or of a government or a mayor.

The law of gravity cannot be "repealed" by a majority vote of a human legislature or the majority vote of the "people" in a plebiscite (a referendum on a particular issue that is put to the voters at a general or a special election for their approval or rejection, sometimes originating as a result of legislative initiative or state constructional mandate and sometimes originating as a result of a grass roots petition drive to place a particular question on the ballot, which is called an "initial." one of the "good government" reforms of the Progressive Era). It is also true that the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law cannot be repealed by the pronouncement of any judge, executive, legislative or popular enactments.

Such are the shifting sands of “popular sovereignty,” however, there is no guarantee that a “pro-life” amendment, if one is needed, would be approved in a general election, especially when one considers the money that would flow into the commonwealth from the coffers of the likes of George Soros and the fearmongering that would be used by pro-death forces.

Similarly, there is no guarantee that an amendment seeking to enshrine the chemical and surgical butchery of innocent preborn babies up to and including (and even after) the day of birth would not obtain the approval of the multitudes. Sadly, a majority of voters in the State of Ohio voted to do precisely that on Tuesday, November 7, 2023, as over fifty-six percent of those who cast ballots voted to approve an amending making unrestricted baby-killing (until “fetal viability” except when the health of the mother is said to be at risk, meaning that baby-killing can be done up to and including the day of birth) part of the Ohio State Constitution. Live by popular sovereignty, good readers, and one will die by popular sovereignty:

Issue 1 - Reproductive rights amendment in state constitution

"Yes" is projected to win. An estimated 99 percent of votes have been counted.

As found at: Ohio Issue 1 election results 2023 on baby-killing

There are eighty-eight counties in the State of Ohio. Only twenty-two of those counties voted in favor of “Amendment 1,” but several of those twenty-two counties are where most of the people in the State of Ohio live (Cuyahoga, Franklin, Hamilton, Butler, Wood, Lake, Lorrain, Summit, Delaware, Mahoning). According to statistics nearly two decades old, eighteen percent of the total population in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati is Catholic and about twenty-eight percent within the Diocese of Cleveland, although Catholics only make up ten percent of the total population within the Diocese of Columbus (see USA, Statistics by Diocese, by Catholic Population [Catholic-Hierarchy]). According to a survey in 2017, Catholics comprise just under twenty precent of the statewide population in the Buckeye State, not that that really matters as many of those Catholics support all manner of moral evils under the cover of the civil law. 

The Ohio vote on "Issue 1" was held in full accord of Associate Justice Samuel Alito's false contention that the "people" can "decide" that which is beyond their authority to "decide." Alito could have made the case the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments provide full legal protection to unborn children. However, he decided throw the issue of the surgical assassination of children back to the states, which is precisely where the problem began in the first place in the 1960s. We must adhere to God's laws, not "states' rights."

Republicans, as always, will learn all the wrong lessons from the votes in Ohio, the re-election of the pro-abortion Andrew Beshear as the Governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and the failure of Glenn “Let’s have a consensus” Youngkin, the Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, to gain a majority of seats in the Virginia State Senator while losing the majority in the Virginia House of Delegates by claiming that a “consensus” must be reached on the killing of the innocent preborn. The only “consensus” that Catholics seek is to obey God’s laws. The pro-aborts are most absolute in their support of baby-killing than most so-called “pro-life” politicians, most of whom support “exceptions” to the binding precepts of the Fifth Commandment’s injunction against the direct taking of innocent human life. The pro-aborts are the moral absolutists while most “pro-life” politicians are moral equivocators par excellence because they are not rooted in right principles and are ever concerned about the next election.

Moreover, there is no one but no one in public life today who is concerned about the direct, intentional killing of innocent human beings by means of “brain death” to facilitate the vivisection of living human beings in the name of “giving the gift of life” (a shallow slogan used by shallow people with shallow minds that, sadly, is even incanted by priests and presbyters all across and up and down the vast expanse of the ecclesiastical divide at this time), the starvation and dehydration of brain damaged and other chronically ill human beings, and “palliative care”/hospice, and there are many politicians today who support direct euthanasia and suicide under the cover of the civil law. Most of these crimes that cry out to Heaven for vengeance are never discussed in the public venue as they are considered part of “private medical decisions” that are beyond the realm of public discussion, and this is to say nothing of the crimes being committed by Big Pharma with their “salvific” vaccines that have caused autism in the young and, in the case of those poisons developed during Donald John Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, are killing hundreds, if not thousands, of people globally even though the phenomenon of “sudden death,” “died suddenly,” “died unexpectedly,” “died after a short illness” is plain for anyone possessed with a modicum of intellectual honesty to see. The linkage is not hard to discern, especially as one empirical study after another is proving this linkage between the vaccines and these “sudden deaths” to be quite real.

Insofar as the surgical killing of the preborn is concerned, I have tried to note over the years, at least three different generations of Americans have now grow up having unlimited access to the killing of the innocent preborn. Those who have grown up since January 22, 1973, have been able to live more licentiously than at any other time in world history, perhaps even exceeding the debauchery of the Roman Empire in its declining years and even that of the barbaric peoples of Europe prior to their conversion to the true Faith at the hands of the Apostles or the Catholic missionaries who continued the work of the evangelization of the known world.

Our situation is such today that carnal licentiousness has such a firm grip on the lives of so many, many people in the United States of America and elsewhere in the so-called “developed” world that even Catholics who are older than I am (seventy-two beckons in but fifteen days) are not in the least bothered when they learn that their children, grandchildren, or great grandchildren are living with members of the opposite sex outside of wedlock or when they learn that their progeny are engaged in the one more or more unnatural vices related to the sin of sodomy and all its never-ending mutations. It is very difficult for people who are either devoid of the true Faith and/or who do not have belief in, access to, and cooperation with Sanctifying Grace to relinquish their lives of impurity, indecency, immodesty, and shameless even though they are acting against their own best interests naturally and, much more importantly, supernaturally. It is very hard for people who have grown used to obeying the siren sounds of unrestrained lust to desire chastity, harder still for people to consider not have recourse to the surgical killing of babies if they have an “accident,” as they call it, and become parents of children who will require them to love something other than themselves, perhaps for the first time in their lives.

Moreover, we have politicians of both major organized crime families of the false opposites of the naturalist “left” and the naturalist “right” who are shameless in their own personal conduct, whether is talking about clueless Lauren Boebert or the even more clueless Susanna Gibson. Indeed, no one among “conservative” Catholics seem to care that Donald John Trump has been “married” three times and that one of his sons is living with a woman out of wedlock nor that some Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.’s own children have led lives of carnal licentiousness. This is all now considered to be “par the course” in a world of degradation that is celebrated in motion pictures, television programs, magazines, books, online programming, and other forms of mass communication.

Those who persist in the delusion—and it is nothing other than a delusion—that the battle for the restoration of legal protection for all innocent human beings from conception until death is going to be won at the “ballot box” are, despite all their claims of being ‘realistic,” are about as unrealistic as those who believe that the next “pope” is going to be better than the current “pope.” This is not the 1980s. Most of the people who voted for Ronald Wilson Reagan are as dead as he is. This is not the same world as forty years ago, not that the world of forty years ago was substantially different than it is now nor that Reagan’s presidency pursued the common temporal good in light of man’s Last End.

The world of utter self-indulgence in which we live has become such that the use of the hallucinogen called marijuana, which dulls the senses, blunting one’s capacity to accept reality as it impedes decision-making, especially when operating machinery or a motor vehicle, and has a long half-life within the human brain, has become so accepted that the “people” are deciding to make decriminalize a substance that has long been and will ever continue to be the pathway to all other hallucinogenic substances as the body graves more and more “pleasure” once it has become used to marijuana. Despite all this—or perhaps because of it—Ohioans also passed “Issue 2” legalizing so-called "recreational marijuana” by the same margin by which they approved “Issue 1,” 56% to 44%:

Ohioans voted Tuesday to approve Issue 2, making the Buckeye State the 24^th to legalize adult-use marijuana.

The Associated Press called the election around in favor of the measure at around 9:25 p.m. with 56% of voters supporting it.  

Issue 2, which goes into effect Dec. 7, will allow adults 21 and older to buy, possess and grow cannabis. Products would be taxed 10% on top of the state sales tax, with revenue going into four pots: a social equity and jobs program, municipalities with dispensaries, a substance abuse fund and administrative costs. 

• Allow medical marijuana businesses in Ohio to grow, process or sell recreational products.
• Award cultivation and dispensary licenses through the social equity program, which aims to help business owners who have been disproportionately affected by prohibition. That includes those who have been arrested or convicted of marijuana crimes.
• Task the Division of Cannabis Control with setting rules for licensing, testing, product standards and more. As part of that, the division would set a THC content cap of at least 35% for plant material and 90% for extracts.
• Prohibit driving while high and sales to people under 21.

Tuesday’s vote was a victory for marijuana business leaders who spent years pushing for a recreational program. Ohio voters rejected a constitutional amendment to legalize marijuana in 2015 that would have limited cultivation to 10 properties. Critics panned the measure as a way for select people to control the industry, and voters simultaneously approved an amendment to keep monopolies out of the Constitution.  

Ohio legalized medical marijuana the following year, but the program has its share of problems. Patients often complain about the cost of products and maintaining their registration, opting instead to drive to Michigan. Operators say the stagnant demand created an oversupply of cannabis that’s affecting their bottom line.

Proponents of Issue 2 contend the law will not only open the door for casual consumption, but it will help frustrated patients and people with health problems who don’t qualify for the medical cannabis program.

They also touted research from Ohio State University that found the program could produce between $276 million and $403 million in revenue by its fifth year. 

Opponents of the measure – which include top Republican leaders – failed to convince Ohioans that legal marijuana will endanger children, increase traffic accidents and create headaches for employers trying to hire. Senate President Matt Huffman, R-Lima, and House Speaker Jason Stephens, R-Kitts Hill, have already signaled the Legislature will look at the new law and make changes. 

“This ticking time bomb crafted in secret by a Columbus law firm will now be cracked open by the legislature in the full light of day so they can defuse it in an open, public process before it blows up in Ohio’s face,” said Scott Milburn, spokesman for Protect Ohio Workers and Families. “It’s a guarantee that wholesale changes await – if not an outright repeal. That would only benefit Ohioans and spare us all a bad case of buyer’s remorse.” 

The coalition backing Issue 2 came out on top despite a low-profile campaign that flew under the radar and, to some degree, rode the coattails of Issue 1. As of mid-October, the group had spent over $818,000 and relied largely on donors from the marijuana industry. That’s a stark contrast to 2015, when ResponsibleOhio spent over $20 million and sent a mascot named Buddie around the state.  

But the campaign against Issue 2 wasn’t particularly robust, either. Protect Ohio Workers and Families spent $230,000 and raised just $343,000 – not nearly enough to sell their arguments to voters. 

The landscape for legalization has also changed dramatically since 2015. Nearly 60% of Americans support marijuana for recreational and medicinal use, according to a 2022 Pew Research Center survey, and just 10% think it shouldn’t be legal. Eighteen states have approved adult-use programs in the past eight years. (Ohio Issue 2 live results: State votes on recreational marijuana.)

Marijuana is now what it has always been: an escape from carrying one’s daily crosses. It glorifies morbid self-indulgence and allows one to inhabit alternative universes without realizing that the binding precepts of the Fifth Commandment prohibit us from destroying our rational faculties and even our bodies, which are meant to be temples of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost.

Voters want to have their unlimited array of pleasures even though one study after another have proved the long-term deleterious effects of marijuana on the human body:

Older adults who don’t smoke tobacco but do use marijuana were at higher risk of both heart attack and stroke when hospitalized, while people who use marijuana daily were 34% more likely to develop heart failure, according to two new non-published studies presented Monday at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in Philadelphia.

“Observational data are strongly pointing to the fact that … cannabis use at any point in time, be it recreational or medicinal, may lead to the development of cardiovascular disease,” Robert Page II, chair of the volunteer writing group for the 2020 American Heart Association Scientific Statement: Medical Marijuana, Recreational Cannabis, and Cardiovascular Health, said in a statement. He was not involved in either of the new studies.

The AHA recommendations advise people refrain from smoking or vaping any substance, including cannabis products, because of the potential harm to the heart, lungs and blood vessels.

“The latest research about cannabis use indicates that smoking and inhaling cannabis increases concentrations of blood carboxyhemoglobin (carbon monoxide, a poisonous gas), tar (partly burned combustible matter) similar to the effects of inhaling a tobacco cigarette, both of which have been linked to heart muscle disease, chest pain, heart rhythm disturbances, heart attacks and other serious conditions,” said Page, a professor in the department of clinical pharmacy and physical medicine/rehabilitation at the University of Colorado Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences in Aurora, Colorado.

“You need to treat this just like you would any other risk factor (for heart disease and stroke), and honestly understand the risks that you were taking,” he said.

Marijuana use is on the rise among older adults. A 2020 study found the numbers of American seniors over age 65 who now smoke marijuana or use edibles increased two-fold between 2015 and 2018. A 2023 study found past month binge drinking and marijuana use among the over-65 crowd rose by 450% between 2015 and 2019.

Nearly three of every 10 marijuana users develop a dependence on weed called cannabis use disorder. A person is considered dependent on weed when they feel food cravings or a lack of appetite, irritability, restlessness, and mood and sleep difficulties after quitting, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Marijuana use becomes an addiction when a person is unable to quit using weed even though it interferes with many aspects of life.

Chronic conditions and weed

Older adults often develop a number of chronic conditions by age 65 which appear to make the impact of marijuana worse, according to one of the studies that examined hospital records for adults over 65 with cannabis use disorder who did not smoke tobacco.

“What is unique about our study is that patients who were using tobacco were excluded because cannabis and tobacco are sometimes used together, therefore, we were able to specifically examine cannabis use and cardiovascular outcomes,” said lead study author Dr. Avilash Mondal, a resident physician at Nazareth Hospital in Philadelphia, in a statement.

Researchers found the 8,535 adults who abused weed had a 20% higher risk of having a major heart or brain event while hospitalized, compared to over 10 million older hospitalized adults who did not use marijuana.

Both abusers and non-users had already been diagnosed with high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes or high cholesterol. The study found that having high blood pressure readings of over 130/80 mm Hg and high cholesterol were key predictors of major adverse heart and brain events in the marijuana users.

“We know acute use can lead to a drop in blood pressure and therefore, particularly when this is vaped or when it is smoked and or combusted. And so therefore, that plays into the … understanding the potential risk for stroke,” Page said. “But what’s interesting is if you look at individuals who’ve used cannabis daily over very long periods of time, it’s actually been associated with an increase in blood pressure which is also a risk factor for numerous other cardiovascular conditions.”

Risk of heart failure rose

A second study presented Monday followed nearly 160,000 adults with a median age of 54 for about four years to see if use of cannabis would impact their risk of developing heart failure. Heart failure doesn’t mean the heart has stopped working, but that the heart isn’t pumping oxygenated blood as well as it should, according to the AHA.

At the end of the study, researchers found people who reported daily marijuana use had a 34% increased risk of developing heart failure, compared to those who reported never using marijuana.

Age, sex at birth and smoking history did not appear to impact the risk. The study researchers did not know if the marijuana was smoked or eaten.

A study published earlier this year also found using marijuana every day can raise a person’s risk of coronary artery disease by one third compared with those who never partake. Coronary artery disease is caused by plaque buildup in the walls of the arteries that supply blood to the heart. Also called atherosclerosis, CAD is the most common type of heart disease, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Prior research shows links between marijuana use and cardiovascular disease like coronary artery disease, heart failure and atrial fibrillation, which is known to cause heart failure,” said Dr. Yakubu Bene-Alhasan, a resident physician at Medstar Health in Baltimore, who was lead author of the heart failure study, in a statement

“Our results should encourage more researchers to study the use of marijuana to better understand its health implications, especially on cardiovascular risk,” Bene-Alhasan said. (Marijuana use raises risk of heart attack, heart failure and stroke, studies say.)

Marijuana is not a “harmless” drug, and it was never a “victimless” crime. It is harmful to body, mind, and soul.

Even a researcher in the State of New York has sounded the alarm about how marijuana is affecting the cognitive abilities of teenagers:

One morning in June, barely 5 months after the first dispensary for recreational cannabis opened in New York state, neuroscientist Yasmin Hurd spoke via Zoom to an audience of educators and specialists who work with or run programs for children. The session’s organizers, alarmed by how many children in their South Bronx community were now getting their hands on cannabis, had sought Hurd’s expertise on the drug’s effects.

Hurd put up a slide of the human brain, its bumps and grooves tinged blue, green, yellow, and red to indicate the distribution of the receptors to which tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, binds. She showed how they exist throughout the brain—in the folds of the cerebral cortex, where much of cognition lies; the cauliflower-shaped cerebellum, the seat of motor coordination; the hippocampus, Grand Central for memory; and the amygdala, a crucial hub for emotional regulation.

The receptors, said Hurd, who heads an addiction research lab at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, are “really critical for so many processes in the brain.” And when a person uses cannabis—in any of its edible, dabbable, smokable forms—the drug overwhelms them and disrupts their ability to calibrate neuronal activity.

That, in turn, can be profoundly problematic for the developing brain, Hurd’s research suggests. She sees growing evidence in the field that cannabis use puts children and adolescents at risk for a variety of psychiatric problems, from dependence on that drug and others to schizophrenia. In utero exposure, she believes, can ignite mental health problems in childhood and beyond. In studies with rats, human fetal tissue, and children, her lab has begun to uncover changes in gene expression, as well as alterations in the brain’s chemical communication systems and wiring, that may underlie some of these effects.

Hurd’s work is especially compelling because she has been able to link results across species, colleagues say. “It’s so hard to be able to go back and forth between animal models and effects in humans,” says Susan Tapert, an addiction researcher at the University of California, San Diego. “She’s really one of the leaders in the field in being able to pull those very different kinds of studies together.” Tapert agrees the evidence for harmful effects on the developing brain are concerning, although she says the harm likely varies widely from one individual to another. The risks for adults are lower, she says, as the drug’s influences on memory, mood, sleep, and motivation tend to wane within about a month of discontinued use.

Research on cannabis’ developmental effects has grown in recent years, but Hurd “definitely pioneered this field,” says Miriam Melis, a neuroscientist at the University of Cagliari. Hurd also had to prove herself as a Black woman in a discipline then dominated by white men, Melis says. “For me she’s an inspiration of a woman in science.”

Her work has become increasingly relevant, as U.S. states—23 so far, plus Washington, D.C.—legalize cannabis for adult recreational use. Hurd’s findings raise “big red caution flags,” says Eric Nestler, an addiction researcher and director of the Friedman Brain Institute, which Hurd’s lab is a part of. Legalization is “not a free decision. It is a decision that, according Yasmin’s data—and I would agree with her data—will bring costs.”

Some adults might be able to use cannabis quite safely, experts say, yet the legalization trend has made the drug increasingly accessible to pregnant people and also children, who may ask adults to buy it, take it from parents, or use fake IDs to get it. In the Bronx, kids as young as age 11 or 12 know which shops will sell to minors, according to Davon Russell, president of the Women’s Housing and Economic Development Corporation, a Bronx community development organization, who invited Hurd to speak. At the same time, the potency of the products on offer has risen sharply (see graphic, below) and is only loosely regulated by states. Customers “have no clue about the substances they are consuming,” Hurd says. She has seen the consequences firsthand: Besides running her lab, she directs Mount Sinai’s Addiction Institute, overseeing inpatient and outpatient treatment centers, as well as programs for kids.

Although Hurd opposes the criminalization of cannabis use and possession, she believes legalization has come with underappreciated downsides. She’s concerned it has fanned a permissive culture and a perception that the drug is generally safe. “I am worried about how cavalier we’re becoming and that there is a cannabis smoke shop now practically, in some places, on every other block,” she says. “I feel frustrated that people are willing to sacrifice kids and young people for their quote-unquote right to get high.” Her science, she hopes, will foster a greater awareness of the potential harms.

HURD REMEMBERS HER FIRST science experiment. At about age 6, she set up tin pans with rice outside her home in Jamaica, varying the amounts of water and shade to see how using sunlight to cook rice under differing conditions affected its quality. She was an inquisitive child who liked to question the rules. Why, she recalls asking her parents, did she have to drink milk? Did they know that humans are the only species that drinks other species’ milk?

In the early 1970s, when Hurd was about 10, her parents divorced and she moved to New York City with her mother and siblings. She loved it from day one. “I’m definitely not a stereotypical Jamaican, in that some Jamaicans are just like, ‘No problem man, tomorrow, tomorrow.’ I came to New York, and everyone was moving, moving, moving,” she says, and thought: “This is my place!”

At South Shore High School in Brooklyn, she was the only Black person in her honors classes. “You are a Black girl and they are always challenging you that you really know anything,” she says. Yet she excelled in her science classes and studied German so she could read classic experiments in their original language. Hurd says her family valued education, and their high expectations helped propel her to college.

At Binghamton University, she convinced administrators to create a new degree for her: a B.A. in biochemistry and behavior. It was meant to blend her two main interests, chemistry and behavior—but she now jokes that it was essentially a neuroscience major before that became a thing. In graduate school at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, her colleagues gave her another lesson in expectations—this one not based on her skin color. “They said, ‘You’re American; therefore, you must be the best,’” Hurd says. Their high expectations motivated her to measure up.

In grad school, Hurd helped develop techniques for measuring neurotransmitters in the rat brain. In some of her experiments, she used amphetamine or cocaine to artificially raise dopamine levels. She was fascinated to see a mild-mannered rat suddenly become hyperactive, and at higher doses, aggressive and ready to pounce. “If you’ve never seen a paranoid rat,” she says, “it was just ferocious.”

As a postdoc at the National Institute of Mental Health in the early 1990s, she learned some of the then-new molecular biology tools to study how cocaine affected cells and receptors in rodent brains. But she wasn’t satisfied. “I needed it to have a human relevance,” Hurd recalls.

After finding a National Institutes of Health pathologist who had started a brain bank that included cocaine users, she set out to measure messenger RNA (mRNA) transcripts lingering in the tissue after death, hoping to gauge gene expression in the users’ brains. Other scientists told her she was on a fool’s errand because, they said, mRNA becomes unstable after death. But she proved them wrong, and was able to identify molecular changes in humans that matched findings in rats exposed to cocaine, as well as some key species differences in reward regions of the brain.

When Hurd returned to Karolinska as an assistant professor in the early 1990s, she set up her own brain bank, consisting primarily of users of amphetamine and heroin. “She was really a pioneer in using human brain tissue to understand the neurobiology of drug addiction,” Nestler says. Her brain collection, which she expanded at Mount Sinai, “provided assurance that mechanisms scientists study in the lab, say in rodent models, really focused on things that had human relevance.”

It was rodents alone, however, that enabled Hurd to make her first mark on the broader debate about cannabis. Epidemiological studies had suggested people who use cannabis early in life are more likely to later become addicted to drugs such as cocaine and heroin, inspiring the so-called gateway hypothesis. Many scientists and laypeople believed the effect was strictly environmental—that is, using cannabis is likely to introduce people to a drug-using crowd and to a dealer who also hawks harder drugs. But Hurd thought there might also be a biological connection. What if, she thought, cannabis changes the developing brain in a way that made some people vulnerable to addictive substances more generally?

To investigate, Hurd’s team exposed adolescent rats to THC and found the rodents later self-administered heroin at increasing rates, reaching dosages far higher than controls. Early THC exposure also altered gene expression in a reward center of the brain, they found, suggesting the drug can alter the brain’s endogenous opioid system, which is involved in the perception of reward, stress, and pain. Reviewers were skeptical, Hurd says, but the manuscript finally came out in 2007 in Neuropsychopharmacology, the year after she became a professor at Mount Sinai.

It was some of the first strong biological support for the gateway hypothesis, Nestler says, helping convince researchers, educators, and policymakers that biology was part of the picture.

SPEAKING TO THE AUDIENCE of educators in June, Hurd painted cannabis dependence as a biological condition. “Many people think, ‘Oh you can’t become addicted to cannabis,’” she says, “but when you look at the numbers out there, cannabis use disorder is actually quite common.” Estimates vary widely, but up to 30% of users become unable to stop using the drug despite negative effects on their health and well-being, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Adolescents are especially vulnerable, Hurd told the Zoom audience, because the endocannabinoid system—a network of natural signaling molecules structurally similar to THC, along with their receptors—plays a central role in brain development. It fine-tunes the maturation of the prefrontal cortex, a brain area involved in self-control and decision-making. In 2019, Hurd and her colleagues reported that repeated THC exposure during adolescence in rats changed the shape and function of neurons in the animals’ prefrontal cortex. In her presentation, Hurd showed a neon green–and–yellow neuron with sparse, stunted branches next to its much bushier normal counterpart. The simpler structure, Hurd explained, means fewer contacts with other neurons. (As cannabis laws relax, neuroscientist warns of its dangers for developing brain. Alo see Marijuana use may cause cognitive impairment even when no longer high and Marijuana Debunked: A Handbook for Parents, Pundits and Politicians Who Want to Know the Case AGainst Legalization.)

Some Catholics might contend that is all a debate matter not subject to the moral law. I beg to differ:

As noted eleven years now in First-Hand Evidence Of Fraud, many of the priests of the Society of Saint Pius X are, leaving aside their false ecclesiology that has caused its very foundation stones to be shattered in recent years, among the most reliable guides on moral issues today as, unlike others, they have been trained in a systematic manner wherein they can use actual reason rather than rely on the rote memorization of 1950s textbooks, not a few of whose authors were just champing at the bit for Papa Pacelli, Pope Pius XII, to die so that the “envelope” of the novel moral teaching they were pushing as far as was possible then could be pushed to its next phase of "evolution." Here, therefore, are two fine statements about marijuana that were published originally in The Angelus: 

“Neither the effeminate, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards...will possess the kingdom of God” (I Cor. 6:10). Drunkenness is a deliberate excess in the use of intoxicating drink or drugs to the point of forcibly depriving oneself of the use of reason for the sake of gratifying an inordinate desire for such drink and not for the sake of promoting health. This is contrary to the virtue of temperance, and specifically sobriety. Sobriety regulates man’s desire and use of intoxicants, and is vitally necessary for an upright moral life. The evil of intoxication lies in the violence committed against one’s nature by depriving it of the use of reason. He deprives himself of that which makes him specifically human - his ability to think. The drunk, or in this case the drug user, desires this loss of reason because of the feeling of liberation which accompanies it precisely from this lack of control of the will over the reason. It is unnatural, contrary to sleep, which also deprives one of the use of reason but in a natural manner.

Drug use gives an illicit means of escape. Besides being a sin, it also manifests an immaturity on the part of the user. Through an act of violence against himself, he escapes from the responsibility of decision making and control in his life. When this deprivation is complete, e.g., actions totally contrary to normal behavior, incapability of distinguishing between good and evil, etc., it is a grave sin. “In vino veritas,” said the Romans, not without reason. Any state short of complete drunkenness, without sufficient reason, is of itself venially sinful, but even in this case it may be a mortal sin if it causes scandal, injury to health, harm to one’s family, etc. It is important also to note that a man is responsible for all the sinful actions committed while intoxicated which he had, or ought to have, foreseen.

According to Jone-Adelman in Moral Theology, the use of drugs in small quantities and only occasionally is a venial sin if done without sufficient reason. This could be the case, for example, with sleeping pills. Obviously, deprivation of the use of reason through narcotics is to be judged as alcohol. The use of most drugs is complicated by the fact that they are illegal. This also signifies the will of the user to break the law, an offense against social justice. This compounds the sin. The speed with which a drug alters one’s consciousness also aggravates its use. This rapidity risks a greater potential to deprive oneself of the use of reason and thus to pass on to stronger intoxicants for increased effect. Therefore, adding to the violation of the virtue of justice, the grave scandal caused, the grave danger of addiction, and the stronger consciousness-altering ability of marijuana, it is difficult to excuse one of mortal sin. Moreover, experience tells us that its use is frequently an occasion of mortal sin, especially sins of the flesh and the use of narcotic drugs. But to willingly and knowingly place oneself in an unnecessary proximate occasion of mortal sin is to commit a mortal sin. Fr. James Doran, September 1993.

The old text books [on moral theology] do not speak of this new problem of the modern world. However, the immorality of drug abuse can be clearly deduced from the principles which allow an evaluation of the malice of alcohol abuse. The distinction is made between imperfect drunkenness, the fact of making oneself tipsy deliberately, which can only be a venial sin, and perfect drunkenness, which is drinking until one is drunk. This is a mortal sin because a drunken person loses the use of reason. This is St. Thomas Aquinas’s response to the objection that the quantity of wine drunk is but a circumstance, which cannot make a venial sin into a mortal sin:

With regard to drunkenness we reply that it is a mortal sin by reason of its genus: for that a man, without necessity, and through the mere lust of wine, makes himself unable to use his reason, whereby he is directed to God and avoids committing many sins, is expressly contrary to virtue. That it be a venial sin is due to some sort of ignorance or weakness, as when a man is ignorant of the strength of the wine, or of his own unfitness, so that he has no thought of getting drunk, for in that case the drunkenness is not imputed to him as a sin, but only the excessive drink…. (ST, I-II, q. 88, art. 5, ad1)

The consumption of illegal drugs, even those called soft drugs, is comparable not to becoming tipsy on a little wine but to perfect drunkenness. For these drugs have their effect by causing a “high,” that is, an emotional experience when a person escapes from the demands of reality. For a brief period he lives in an unreal, euphoric world. All the other effects, such as relaxation, come as a consequence of this “high,” or unreal euphoria. If this state does not always prohibit all use of reason, it most certainly does always impede the most important use of reason, which St. Thomas just explained to us “whereby he is directed to God and avoids committing many sins.” All drugs deaden the conscience, and obscure the practical judgment as to right and wrong and what we must do. With respect to morality, their effect is consequently equivalent to the removal of the use of reason, and is a practical refusal to direct all of man’s acts to God through reason.

Drug abuse is consequently much worse than the pure seeking of pleasure or relaxation that some claim it to be. It is a denial of the natural and supernatural order, according to which God has created us in His image and likeness that our acts might be ordered to His honor and glory. Moreover, it goes without saying that the abuse of drugs is directly opposed to the Catholic spirit, which spirit of sacrifice, the practical application of the spirit of the cross, is essential to the living of our faith.

As previously mentioned, the principal evil of drug abuse is the destruction of moral conscience. It follows that the atrocious consequences of drug abuse are inseparable from it, and are willed together with the drugs themselves. This includes the breaking of the law in the consumption of drugs; and in the means of obtaining them, such as theft; and in the effort to sell them in turn to others, often minors or children. Other consequences include the incredible self-indulgence which accompanies the almost insatiable desire for always more titillating experiences, sins of blasphemy, the often satanic rock music, and the sins against purity and chastity, which are the consequence of the loss of shame and conscience. Sins against charity and justice abound, such as disobedience to parents and refusal to do one’s duty at school or work, not to mention the bad company-keeping which is the breeding ground of all vices. Long term results are also willed in their cause, and they include such things as emotional and physical addiction, the passage from soft to hard drugs, the damage done to the body and to general health by prolonged drug use, culminating in the “fried” brains of the person who cannot even reason clearly, let alone make a moral judgment. It is a mortal sin to place one’s physical and spiritual health in such proximate danger, even if a person is to pretend that he is immune from this danger and that “it could not happen to me.”

Even the often liberal and ambiguous Catechism of the Catholic Church, published in 1994 in application of the principles of Vatican II, acknowledges this:

The use of drugs inflicts very grave damage on human health and life. Their use, except on strictly therapeutic grounds, is a grave offense. Clandestine production of and trafficking in drugs are scandalous practices. They constitute direct co-operation in evil, since they encourage people to practices gravely contrary to the moral law. (§2291)

This does not, however, exclude the use of narcotic drugs for therapeutic reasons. Their use, under medical supervision, is justified by a sufficiently grave and proportionate reason, even if they do deprive a person temporarily of the use of reason. (Cf. Merkelbach, Summa Theologiae Moralis, II, 925). For it is not the loss of reason which is willed. It is only an indirect consequence, so that there is not necessarily a disorder with respect to the final end of man. The typical example is pain control.

In conclusion, therefore, the use of marijuana, like any hard or soft drug, must be considered a mortal sin. If on occasion some people might be in ignorance as to the gravity of this sin, it is clearly evident that the matter is objectively serious. Consequently, it must be confessed as a mortal sin, and a person is obliged to confess drug abuse under pain of a bad or sacrilegious confession. If he forgot to confess the sin, he must then confess it at the first possible opportunity that he has. The priest who claimed that this was not a mortal sin has fallen into the trap of laxity. Fr. Peter Scott, January 1999 (Is smoking marijuana a sin? What about taking drugs?.)

Yet it is that in this country where the universal franchise has indeed led to the “universal madness” prophesied in 1872 by Pope Pius IX the people get to “vote” on “legalizing” various Mortal Sins that have gained widespread acceptance culturally and whose use is considered to be, as noted above, just as commonplace as anything else. Alas, Christ the King will not ignore the use of the "universal franchise" to support sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance, and there will come a day when the United States of America and other Western nations will pay dearly for deifying the "people" in the place of His solemn sovereignty over men and their nations in all that pertains to the good of souls.

As horrific as the votes in Ohio in favor of one of the four crimes that cry out to Heaven for vengeance, willful murder, and the decriminalization of a substance is detrimental to the health of both the body and soul, we must remember that these developments are two of the many consequences caused the Protestant Revolution’s overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King that made possible the rise of the religiously indifferentist Judeo-Masonic civil state Modernity, which is led by men who, if not moral reprobates in their own lives, celebrate all manner of perversity, indecency, and the outright killing of the innocent without hardly a word of protest from most of the officials within the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

Admitting, of course, that Original Sin is the root cause of all personal and social problems in the world and that our own Actual Sins, it is no accident whatsoever that there have been an exponential increase in social problems caused by men’s Actual Sins in the wake of the offenses given to God by men pretending to be clerics, bishops, and popes who have denied the immutable nature of dogmatic truth, which is an attack upon the immutability of God Himself, claimed that the ”Church of Christ” is no coextensive with the Catholic Church, refused to seek with urgency the conversion of non-Catholics to the Holy Faith, without which is not possible to sanctify and thus save one’s immortal soul, inverted the ends proper to Holy Matrimony, devised and then promulgated sacrilegious and liturgically invalid sacramental rites that are barren of Sanctifying Grace, deconstructed the plain words of Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Fathers and Doctors of Holy Mother Church, endorsed the Judeo-Masonic concepts of “religious liberty,” and the ”separation of Church and State,” and have engaged in “interreligious” “prayer” services that confer legitimacy upon false religions, each of which is hideous in the sight of the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Holy Trinity. Offenses against God and His Sacred Deposit of Faith are graver in the hierarchy of evils than sins against His rational creatures, and it is precisely because such offenses have been promoted regularly by the lords of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, many of whom today are open supporters of sodomy, pantheists who worship created matter, and enablers of Marxism-Leninism who downplay the evil of the surgical execution of innocent children, that social evils have spread and become institutionalized under cover of the civil law and celebrated widely in almost every aspect of what is called “popular culture.” The counterfeit church of conciliarism has made its “official reconciliation” with a world that was shaped by the Protestant Revolution and Judeo-Masonry.

To wit, writing in the Creator and the Creature, Father Frederick Faber explained how perniciously the pluralism born of the Protestant Revolution against the Divine Plan that God Himself instituted to effect man's return to Him through the Catholic Church and to order societies rightly according to the binding precepts contained in the Deposit of Faith seeps into the consciousness of men and blinds them to the insidious nature of theological and philosophical errors:

This forgetfulness that we are creatures, which prevails in that energetically bad portion of the world which is scripturally called the world, affects multitudes of persons, who are either less able to divest themselves of the influences of old traditions and early lessons, or are happily less possessed with the base spirit of the world. It leads them to form a sort of religion for themselves which singularly falls in with all the most corrupt propensities of our hearts: a religion which in effect teaches that we can live two lives and serve two masters. Such persons consider that religion has its own sphere, and worldly interests their sphere also, and that the one must not interfere with the other. Thus their tendency is to concentrate all the religion of the week into Sunday, and to conceive that they have thereby purchased a right to a large conscience for the rest of the week. The world, they say, has its claims and God has His claims. Both must be satisfied; God first, and most scrupulously; then the world, not less exactly, though it be indeed secondary. But it is not a "reasonable service" to neglect one for the other. God and the world are coordinate powers, coordinate fountains of moral duty and obligation. He is really the religious man who gives neither of them reason to complain. We must let our common sense hinder us from becoming over-righteous. Men who hold this doctrine, a doctrine admirably adapted for a commercial country, have a great advantage over the bolder men of whom we spoke before. For they enjoy all the practical laxity of unbelievers, without the trouble or responsibility of disbelieving; and besides that, they enjoy a certain good humor of conscience in consequence of the outward respect they pay, in due season and fitting place, to the ceremonies of religion.

Hitherto we have spoken of classes of persons in whom we take no interest, further than the sorrow which all who love God must feel at seeing Him defrauded of His honor, and all who love their fellow-men in seeing so much amiability, so much goodness, with a millstone round its neck which must inevitably sink it in the everlasting deeps. Let us come now to those with whom we are very much concerned; and for whom we have ventured to compose this little treatise. Errors filter from one class of men into another, and appear in different forms according to the new combinations into which they enter. We are all of us more affected by the errors which prevail around us than we really suppose. Almost every popular fallacy has its representative even among the children of faith; and as when a pestilence is raging, many are feeble and languid though they have no plague-spot, so  is it in matters of religion. The contagion of the world does us a mischief in many ways of which we are hardly conscious; and we often injure ourselves in our best and highest interests by views and practices, to which we cling with fatal obstinacy, little suspecting the relationship in which they stand to widely spread evils, which we behold in their naked deformity in other sections of society, and hold up to constant reprobation. The forgetfulness that we are creatures, which produces the various consequences already mentioned, is an error which is less obviously hateful than a direct forgetfulness of God, and consequently it wins its way into holy places where the other would find no admittance, or want hospitality. Good Christians hear conversations around them, catch the prevailing tone of society, read books, and become familiarized with certain fashionable principles of conduct; and it is impossible for their minds and hearts not to become imbued with the genius of all this. It is irksome to be always on our guard, and from being off our guard we soon grow to be unsuspicious. When a catholic enters into intimate dealings with protestants, he most not forget to place his sentries, and to act as if he was in an enemy's country; and this is unkindly work, and as miserable as it is unkindly. Yet so it is. When newspapers tell us that catholicism is always more reasonable and less superstitious when it is in the immediate presence of protestantism, they indicate something that they have observed, namely, a change. Now if our religion be changed by protestantism, we can have little difficulty in deciding whether it has changed for the better or the worse. All this illustrates what we mean. The prevailing errors of our time and country find their way down to us, and corrupt our faith, and lower our practice, and divide us among ourselves. This unstartling error of forgetting that we are creatures is thus not without grave influence upon conscientious catholics; and it is to this point that we are asking your attention. (Father Frederick Faber, The Creator and the Creature, written in 1856 and republished by TAN Books and Publishers in 1978, pp. 27-29.) 

These two paragraphs summarize most succinctly how Catholics have come to make their "peace" with the evils represented by the errors of Modernity and Modernism, starting with the Protestant Revolution itself.

The errors flowing the various strains of the Protestant Revolution are hateful in the sight of God. Yes, true, God alone judges the souls of individual adherents of the Protestant sects, as He alone judges our own immortal souls. Protestantism, however, is evil of its nature. God hates all false religions. He hates all falsehoods. Why? Because theological falsehoods blaspheme Him and make a mockery of His work of Redeeming us by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross.

Protestantism has given impetus to a new wave of radical individualism, anticlericalism and semi-Pelagianism in the past four hundred ninety-five years that has made possible the triumph of naturalism in the midst of the world and thus in the hearts and minds of so many hundreds of millions of Catholics yet attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. It has been a relatively easy thing for Catholics who have made these accommodations to the spirit of Protestantism to have acted likewise as the counterfeit church of conciliarism has adopted and implemented much of the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic spirit, starting with the abominable Novus Ordo service. There is no need to do battle with the "world" when its false spirit has been enshrined in what purports to be the Catholic liturgy and is defended in the "official" documents issued by and under the authority of the conciliar "pontiffs."

The blithe acceptance of the evils of Protestantism has led to the blithe acceptance of evils in the popular culture. It is, after all, a relatively easy thing to be sanguine about cultural evils once one has convinced himself that false religions are not hated by God and that the false, blasphemous tenets of these false religions do not pose a grave and immediate threat to the eternal good of souls and to the temporal good of society, making it easier for those who deny entirely the Incarnation of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in Our Lady's Virginal and Immaculate Womb by the power of God the Holy Ghost to be about their demonic business of promoting immodesty of dress, indecency in speech and impurity in thought, word, and action.

As noted just above, the counterfeit church of conciliarism has aided and abetted this sanguine attitude of Catholics concerning the world and the evils abroad in its popular culture, admitting, of course, that a few "peeps," squeaked in the tones of "human dignity" and "human rights" absent any reference at all to the Social Reign of Christ the King, have passed from the lips of conciliar "pontiffs" and their "bishops," especially concerning surgical abortion, albeit without recognizing the fact that social evils protected under cover of law are the precise result of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King wrought by the Protestant Revolt.

Yes, it is an easy thing to accommodate oneself to the prevailing cultural trends once one accepts the "benign" nature of the Protestant Revolt and accepts the pluralistic, religiously indifferentist civil state as a "benefit" to Catholicism rather than a deadly poison.

We are not here to indulge ourselves, no less to dispose of innocent human beings who are believed to “interfere” with such self-indulgence, nor to enter in states of "altered consciousness."

We are here to save our souls as members of the Catholic Church, which means that we must carry the Cross with love and gratitude as the consecrated slaves of the Divine Redeemer Who hung thereon, Christ the King, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of His Most Blessed Mother, she who stands at the foot of each one of our crosses as she did atop Golgotha and as she does at every true offering of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition, that which is the unbloody re-presentation or perpetuation of that same bloody Sacrifice of the Cross.

The United States of America was placed under the patronage of Our Lady under the title of her Immaculate Conception in 1846, sixteen years after the apparitions of Our Lady to Saint Catherine Laboure and eight years before the solemn proclamation of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception by Pope Pius IX. Our Lady, who was conceived without any stain of Original or Actual Sin, is indeed here to help us in this land of one "accepted" evil after another. We simply need to be heroic in spreading devotion to her so that all men and women will be converted to the true Faith as the fruit of the triumph of her Fatima Message.

We need to pray that all men in this country and around the world will yoke themselves to her Immaculate Heart by means of Total Consecration according to the formula of Saint Louis de Montfort. There will be no talk of "rock music" or indecency or immodesty or marijuana or "gay marriage" or the surgical and chemical assassination of innocent preborn children. We would never want to grieve Our Blessed Mother's Immaculate Heart again by means of our sins and by means of being indifferent to the protection of sin in the civil law and its promotion and spread in the popular culture.

As we pray this day for the conversion of our nation to the true Faith, may we never be tempted to accept yesterday's evils as today's "norms." May we pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit, giving Our Lady whatever merits we earn by our prayers and sufferings and indulgenced acts and worthy receptions of her Divine Son in Holy Communion so that we can plant a few seeds for the birth of true liberty in the United States of America, the liberty that comes only from the work of Redemption wrought for us by her Divine Son on the wood of the Holy Cross in which she participated fully as our Co-Redemptrix, Mediatrix and Advocate.

O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us! 

Saint Joseph, Patron of Departing Souls, 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 Theodore, pray for us.