MAHA: Make America HOLY Again by Making America Catholic Again!

The “Make America Healthy Again” movement began during last year’s presidential campaign when Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr., abandoned his independent campaign for the presidency to endorse then former President Donald John Trump in his race against then Vice President Kamala Harris “Word Salad” Emhoff and her even more vacuous running mate, Minnesota Governor Timothy “I love Red China” Walz. The MAHA movement was meant to be—and indeed has become—an adjunct of Trump’s own “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement from which the current president accepts no dissent as he readily dismisses those supporters do not accept everything he says as being beyond criticism as “my former supporters.”

To be sure, United States Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr., has been very courageous in his campaign to combat the poisoning of children with up to seventy-two doses of various vaccines from infancy through childhood, to terminate the “emergency use authorization” for the killer Wuhan Virus jabs, to challenge Big Pharma’s hold on members of the Congress of the United States of America, to discuss America’s crisis with obesity and prescription opioid drug addiction, and to demand the American food industry stop pollution our food by overprocessing it inserting chemical preservatives and flavor enhancers into their products that designed to addict us to sweet and/or salty foods and drink and that continue to cause numerous health problems. There is no excuse for this country’s overreliance on prescription drugs and for the continuing production of overprocessed food products as the food in Europe, for example, is closer to being “farm to fork” there than is the case here (cheese tastes like cheese, meat tastes like meat, eggs taste like eggs).

Kennedy is, of course, taking great flack from those whose pockets have been lined with Big Pharma dollars for decades, but he has been unafraid to fight back against these stooges who have been blind to the facts about the harm caused by “vaccines” and to the fact that Big Pharma’s lobbyists have been calling the shots of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention since its inception.

This is how Secretary Kennedy handled himself in a United States Senate hearing held by the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday, September 4, 2025:

In a contentious Senate hearing today, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. engaged in fiery exchanges with senators on both sides of the aisle who questioned his record in office, the administration’s vaccine policies, and the ouster of top officials and advisers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

During the hearing held by the Senate Finance Committee, which has oversight over the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), many senators used their allotted five minutes to make impassioned speeches and air their grievances, often leaving Kennedy little or no time to respond.

The New York Times described Kennedy, who was visibly annoyed at times, as “remarkably salty and dismissive with senators at times today.”

“You don’t want to talk,” Kennedy told Sen. Elizabeth Smith (D-Minn.). “You want to harangue and have partisan politics. I want to solve these problems.”

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) called for Kennedy to resign or be fired by President Donald Trump during the hearing. This morning, Democratic senators on the committee issued a statement calling for his resignation.

Kennedy clashed with senators over the administration’s recent firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) narrowing of the COVID-19 vaccine approvals, the recent cancellation of $500 million in research funding for mRNA vaccines, Kennedy’s restructuring of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices) and the upcoming agenda for that committee, which will address the universal hepatitis B vaccine  recommendations.

Several senators also pressed Kennedy on whether Operation Warp Speed was a great accomplishment, and raised concerns about cuts to Medicaid and funding for rural hospitals.

Kennedy shot back at his critics, promising to fix the “malpractice” within the public health agencies, and touting his agency’s many accomplishments since he took the helm.

He blasted the CDC, which he said, “is the most corrupt agency in HHS,” for its history of failing to protect Americans’ health, particularly during the COVID-19 crisis, during which the U.S. “did worse than any country in the world.”

“The people at CDC who oversaw that process, who put masks on our children, who closed our schools, are the people who will be leaving,” he said, adding, “That’s why we need bold, competent and creative new leadership at CDC. People who are able and willing to chart a new course.”

Wyden called Kennedy a liar, Kennedy accused Wyden of doing nothing to prevent chronic disease

After Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) kicked off what he predicted would be a “spirited debate,” ranking member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) attacked Kennedy for the “costs, chaos and corruption” he allegedly brought to the agency.

That was also the title of a report Wyden co-authored with Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) and submitted to the record, summarizing their take on Kennedy’s tenure at HHS.

Wyden called Kennedy a liar and made what he called an “unprecedented” request that Kennedy be formally sworn in, presumably so the committee could later prove he lied under oath. Crapo refused the request, which isn’t customary in Senate hearings.

Wyden then launched a long attack on Kennedy’s “agenda,” which he said is “fundamentally cruel and defies common sense.”

Kennedy shot back:

“Senator, you’ve sat in that chair for how long? 20, 25 years? While the chronic disease in our children went up to 76%, and you said nothing. You never asked the question, why it’s happening. ‘Why is this happening?’ Today, for the first time in 20 years, we learned that infant mortality has increased in our country. It’s not because I came in here. It’s because of what happened during the Biden administration that we’re going to end.”

Kennedy says Monarez lied in WSJ Op-Ed

Several senators referred to an op-ed written by Monarez and published this morning in The Wall Street Journal. Monarez, who was fired last week by Trump, claimed Kennedy pressured her “to compromise science itself.”

“I was told to preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric,” Monarez wrote.

When asked, Kennedy disputed Monarez’s account of her firing. “I told her that she had to resign because I asked her, ‘Are you a trustworthy person?’ And she said ‘no,’” he said.

Wyden quoted Monarez to Kennedy and asked whether he had pressured her to preapprove recommendations. “No, I did not say that to her,” Kennedy responded.

So she’s lying today to the American people in the Wall Street Journal?” Wyden asked.

“Yes, sir,” Kennedy responded.

Kennedy said the opposite was true. Monarez indicated she would refuse to endorse any CDC vaccine panel recommendations even before the committee met to make them, he said. He said he asked her to walk back that stance so she would hear the recommendations and their rationale before making any decision, but Monarez refused.

Taking away vaccines?

Several senators, including Smith and Warren, accused Kennedy of going back on his commitment and “taking away vaccines” from the American people.

Warren cited the FDA’s decision to end emergency use authorization of COVID-19 vaccines and limit approvals of the vaccines to people at high risk. However, HHS also confirmed the vaccines would be available for anyone who decided they wanted them anyway.

Defending the move, Kennedy told Warren, “We’re not going to recommend a product for which there’s no clinical data for that indication, is that what I should be doing?”

“I know you’ve taken $855,000 from pharmaceutical companies, Senator,” he later told Warren.

Operation Warp Speed — worthy of a Nobel Prize

Senators accused Kennedy of holding a contradictory position on Operation Warp Speed, which Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said deserved a Nobel Prize, but few gave him time to respond to the accusations.

Several senators also lambasted Kennedy for not acknowledging that the COVID-19 vaccines saved millions of lives.

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), a physician who supported Kennedy and spent much of his five minutes questioning why the hepatitis B vaccine is given to all babies, asked Kennedy to respond.

Kennedy said that when the COVID-19 vaccines were first rolled out, they were necessary because the virus was dangerous, but that the vaccines were significantly less necessary now.

“The virus has mutated, it’s much less dangerous, where there’s a lot of natural immunity and herd immunity, and so the calculus is different, and it’s complicated.”

Kennedy added:

“They think I’m being evasive because I won’t make a kind of a statement that’s almost religious in nature, ‘it saved a million lives.’ Well, there is no data to support that. There’s no study. There’s modeling studies. There’s faulty data.”

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who thanked Kennedy for “putting up with this abuse,” backed Kennedy’s statements on the dangers of the COVID-19 vaccines and said federal health agencies hid the early signals for myo and pericarditis.

At the end of the hearing, Crapo offered Kennedy the floor to make a statement if there were things he wanted to clarify.

“I think I’ll have mercy on everybody here,” Kennedy said. “Let’s adjourn.” (Sparks Fly as RFK Jr. Tells Senators CDC Failed Americans During COVID.)

Ours is supposed to be a system of representative democracy (the republican form of government in which elected officials represent voters as opposed to a pure democracy where the citizens govern themselves as in the ancient Greek city-state of Athens or, today, in New England Town meetings that take the places of city or village councils) but it is actually an oligarchy and, in all too many cases, it is a gerontocracy of geezers who have never had any contact with the real world as to understand reality one must see the world through the supernatural eyes of the Holy Faith, twhich is the whole purpose of this commentary (and this website), by the way. Those who are ideologues blinded by their commitment to falsehoods and hostile to even being challenged about their errors will, baring a miracle of Our Lady’s graces, persist in their blindness until they die and the know only the darkness of the eternal abyss and thus deprived of the very purpose for which they were created, namely, to die in a state of Sanctifying Grace as members of the Catholic Church to enjoy the glory of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity in an unending Easter Sunday of glory in Paradise.

Without discounting for a minute the importance of caring for our bodies as Temples of God the Holy Ghost by seeking sound medical advice and being open to alternative treatments of one kind or another while recognizing at all times that it may very well be God’s Holy Will for us to suffer various pains from this or that condition and illness with gratitude as each cross we are asked to bear is a blessed gift sent to us to sanctify and thus save our immortal souls by making reparation for our sins and thus offer whatever merit we might gain by so doing back to Him as the consecrated slaves of His Co-Equal, Co-Eternal Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Thus, far, far more important than the Make America Healthy Again movement is what I would call the Make America Holy Again movement, and that starts with our own efforts to be holy as week Our Lady’s help to conform our lives at all times to everything that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ teaches us through His One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.

Unlike what poor Donald John Trump believes in all of his earnest ignorance, one cannot get to Heaven by making “peace” between Ukraine and Russia, not that the Russians are particularly interested in any kind of peace except the pieces of the traditionally Russian parts of Ukraine that its troops already hold. And no one, Catholic or non-Catholic alike, who is abjectly silent about the systematic Israeli destruction of Gaza and the genocide being against Palestinians by Israel troops and the decision of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to effectively starve innocent Palestinians by liming the flow of humanitarian aid has a ghost of a chance of going to Heaven.

Similarly, a man who puts out a fund-raising letter  (see Trump fundraiser asks for $15 donations so he can ‘try and get to Heaven’) based on a desire to have his supporters donate money so that he, President Donald John Trump, can make peace between Ukraine and Russia and thus increases his chances of going to Heaven has any clue that no one, including no Catholic, who rails at his enemies (and he does have enemies rather than praying for them)—see Trump goes on a tear over ‘psychopathic nut job’ Jerry Nadler after veteran Democrat announces retirement—understands anything about the precepts of fraternal charity, which including praying for those who persecute, hate, and calumniate us, according to these words of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount:

43 You have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thy enemy.  44 But I say to you, Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you:  45 That you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who maketh his sun to rise upon the good, and bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust.

 46 For if you love them that love you, what reward shall you have? do not even the publicans this?  47 And if you salute your brethren only, what do you more? do not also the heathens this?  48 Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5: 43-48.)

Making it as basic as possible, the Council of Florence, which met under the authority of Pope Eugene IV, summarized Catholic about salvation as follows in Cantate Domino, February 4, 1442:

It [the Holy Roman Church] firmly believes, professes, and teaches that the matter pertaining to the law of the Old Testament, of the Mosaic law, which are divided into ceremonies, sacred rites, sacrifices, and sacraments, because they were established to signify something in the future, although they were suited to the divine worship at that time, after our Lord's coming had been signified by them, ceased, and the sacraments of the New Testament began; and that whoever, even after the passion, placed hope in these matters of the law and submitted himself to them as necessary for salvation, as if faith in Christ could not save without them, sinned mortally. Yet it does not deny that after the passion of Christ up to the promulgation of the Gospel they could have been observed until they were believed to be in no way necessary for salvation; but after the promulgation of the Gospel it asserts that they cannot be observed without the loss of eternal salvation. All, therefore, who after that time observe circumcision and the Sabbath and the other requirements of the law, it declares alien to the Christian faith and not in the least fit to participate in eternal salvation, unless someday they recover from these errors. Therefore, it commands all who glory in the name of Christian, at whatever time, before or after baptism, to cease entirely from circumcision, since, whether or not one places hope in it, it cannot be observed at all without the loss of eternal salvation. Regarding children, indeed, because of danger of death, which can often take place, when no help can be brought to them by another remedy than through the sacrament of baptism, through which they are snatched from the domination of the Devil and adopted among the sons of God, it advises that holy baptism ought not to be deferred for forty or eighty days, or any time according to the observance of certain people, but it should be conferred as soon as it can be done conveniently, but so ,that, when danger of death is imminent, they be baptized in the form m”of the Church, early without delay, even by a layman or woman, if a priest should be lacking, just as is contained more fully in the decree of the Armenians. . . .

It firmly believes, professes, and proclaims that those not living within the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics cannot become participants in eternal life, but will depart "into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels" [Matt. 25:41], unless before the end of life the same have been added to the flock; and that the unity of the ecclesiastical body is so strong that only to those remaining in it are the sacraments of the Church of benefit for salvation, and do fastings, almsgiving, and other functions of piety and exercises of Christian service produce eternal reward, and that no one, whatever almsgiving he has practiced, even if he has shed blood for the name of Christ, can be saved, unless he has remained in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church. (Pope Eugene IV, Cantate Domino, Council of Florence, February 4, 1442.)

Our true popes have always exhorted non-Catholics to convert to the bosom of Holy Mother Church, and Pope Pius IX, recognizing his duties to all the souls of the world, exhorted Protestants to make use of the upcoming [First] Vatican Council to enter into the One Sheepfold of Christ, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true order within nations nor a just peace among them:

It is for this reason that so many who do not share 'the communion and the truth of the Catholic Church' must make use of the occasion of the Council, by the means of the Catholic Church, which received in Her bosom their ancestors, proposes [further] demonstration of profound unity and of firm vital force; hear the requirements [demands] of her heart, they must engage themselves to leave this state that does not guarantee for them the security of salvation. She does not hesitate to raise to the Lord of mercy most fervent prayers to tear down of the walls of division, to dissipate the haze of errors, and lead them back within holy Mother Church, where their Ancestors found salutary pastures of life; where, in an exclusive way, is conserved and transmitted whole the doctrine of Jesus Christ and wherein is dispensed the mysteries of heavenly grace.

It is therefore by force of the right of Our supreme Apostolic ministry, entrusted to us by the same Christ the Lord, which, having to carry out with [supreme] participation all the duties of the good Shepherd and to follow and embrace with paternal love all the men of the world, we send this Letter of Ours to all the Christians from whom We are separated, with which we exhort them warmly and beseech them with insistence to hasten to return to the one fold of Christ; we desire in fact from the depths of the heart their salvation in Christ Jesus, and we fear having to render an account one day to Him, Our Judge, if, through some possibility, we have not pointed out and prepared the way for them to attain eternal salvation. In all Our prayers and supplications, with thankfulness, day and night we never omit to ask for them, with humble insistence, from the eternal Shepherd of souls the abundance of goods and heavenly graces. And since, if also, we fulfill in the earth the office of vicar, with all our heart we await with open arms the return of the wayward sons to the Catholic Church, in order to receive them with infinite fondness into the house of the Heavenly Father and to enrich them with its inexhaustible treasures. By our greatest wish for the return to the truth and the communion with the Catholic Church, upon which depends not only the salvation of all of them, but above all also of the whole Christian society: the entire world in fact cannot enjoy true peace if it is not of one fold and one shepherd. (Pope Pius IX, Iam Vos Omnes, September 13, 1868.) 

It was a mere sixty years after Pope Pius IX issued Iam Vos Omnes as an exhortation for Protestants to convert to the true Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order, that Pope Pius XI issued a similar exhortation while reminding the bishops of the world that the only way that “the union for Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those wo are separated from it and not by Catholics participating in the assemblies of non-Catholics”:

So, Venerable Brethren, it is clear why this Apostolic See has never allowed its subjects to take part in the assemblies of non-Catholics: for the union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for in the past they have unhappily left it. To the one true Church of Christ, we say, which is visible to all, and which is to remain, according to the will of its Author, exactly the same as He instituted it. . . .  Let, therefore, the separated children draw nigh to the Apostolic See, set up in the City which Peter and Paul, the Princes of the Apostles, consecrated by their blood; to that See, We repeat, which is 'the root and womb whence the Church of God springs,' not with the intention and the hope that 'the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth' will cast aside the integrity of the faith and tolerate their errors, but, on the contrary, that they themselves submit to its teaching and government. Would that it were Our happy lot to do that which so many of Our predecessors could not, to embrace with fatherly affection those children, whose unhappy separation from Us We now bewail. Would that God our Savior, "Who will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth," would hear us when We humbly beg that He would deign to recall all who stray to the unity of the Church! In this most important undertaking We ask and wish that others should ask the prayers of Blessed Mary the Virgin, Mother of divine grace, victorious over all heresies and Help of Christians, that She may implore for Us the speedy coming of the much hoped-for day, when all men shall hear the voice of Her divine Son, and shall be 'careful to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.'" (Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928.)

Just consider two of the statements quoted above, one from Pope Pius IX's Iam Vos Omnes and the other from Pope Pius XI's Mortalium Animos:

. . . .the entire world in fact cannot enjoy true peace if it is not of one fold and one shepherd. (Pope Pius IX, Iam Vos Omnes.)

To the one true Church of Christ, we say, which is visible to all, and which is to remain, according to the will of its Author, exactly the same as He instituted it. (Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos.)

None of this has mattered to any of the seven conciliar “popes,” including Robert Francis Prevost (see Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV: A True Son of Conciliarism's Reconcilation with False Religions and Another Memorandum to Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV: The Primary of the Roman Pontiff is Universal and Eternal), thereby doing non-Catholics such as President Donald John Trump a grave disservice.

Unity exists in the Catholic Church. It is one of her Four Marks. No other religion except Catholicism pleases the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Blessed Trinity:

Actually only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith, and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of the Body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed. "For in one spirit" says the Apostle, "were we all baptized into one Body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free." As therefore in the true Christian community there is only one Body, one Spirit, one Lord, and one Baptism, so there can be only one faith. And therefore, if a man refuse to hear the Church, let him be considered - so the Lord commands - as a heathen and a publican. It follows that those who are divided in faith or government cannot be living in the unity of such a Body, nor can they be living the life of its one Divine Spirit. (Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis, June 29, 1943.) 

Donald John Trump is one of the approximately seven hundred million Protestants in the world who “cannot be living in the unity’ of the true Church of Christ, which means that, despite their false beliefs to the contrary, they are “not living the life of its one Divine Spirit.”

It is our duty, therefore, to pray for the conversion of Donald John Trump and his entire family to the Catholic Church, but to do this effectively we must strive for the highest levels of sanctity in our own lives and by imitating the examples of the Saints of the Americas who were detached from the things, people, and pleasures of this world and sought to love God as He has revealed themselves to us exclusively through His Catholic Church with their own hearts, minds, bodies, and souls.

In order, therefore, to Make America Holy Again we must also pray, work, fast, and sacrifice to Make America Catholic Again as true national greatness begins and ends with Catholicism, which is why Our Lady herself confirmed the missionary work of the New World begun by the priests who sailed with Christopher Columbus when she appeared to Juan Diego atop Tepeyac Hill in 1531, after which nearly nine million indigenous peoples converted to the Holy Faith in the Americas, almost person for the person the number of people lost to the Church in Europe because of the Protestant Revolution.

Our Lady wanted the millions upon millions of people steeped in the savagery of the pagan superstitions of the Americas to be converted. They were. A thriving Catholic civilization arose in Latin America in a short period of time. Think of all of the great saints that lived in the first century or so after the apparition of Our Lady to Juan Diego atop Tepeyac Hill: Saint Turibius Alfonso de Mogrovejo, Archbishop of Lima, who died in 1606; Saint Francis Solano, who died in 1610; Saint Rose of Lima, O.P., who died in 1617, the very first native-born saint of the Americas; Blessed Martin de Porres, who died in 1639; Blessed John de Massias, who died in 1645. The case of Juan Diego, a simple peasant of such great humility that he tried to avoid Our Lady after missing her on December 10, 1531, to care for his grievously ill uncle, will be clarified when a true pope is restored to the Throne of Saint Peter. A man of such humility and love, who subjected himself to the assaults of Monsignor de Zumarraga's Spanish guards when he tried to present himself to report the news of Our Lady's apparitions, Juan Diego must certainly have had his Heavenly reward.

Catholic universities were established in Mexico City and Lima within decades of Our Lady's apparition to Juan Diego. Our Lady appeared to Mother Mariana Jesus de Torres in Quito, Ecuador, sixty years after she had appeared to Juan Diego, asking Mother Mariana to offer her life in penances for the sins of the Twentieth Century!

An American Christendom arose, something that displeased the devil mightily. Oh, yes, some of the Spanish conquistadors and colonial settlers and their descendants were cruel to the indigenous peoples, treating them beneath contempt and subjecting them to various indignities. The missionaries, however, showed for their great love of the peoples whose very salvation Our Lady had appeared to Juan Diego in 1531 to effect so that their daily lives could live in conformity to the Deposit of Faith that her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, had entrusted exclusively to the Catholic Church and so that they could be given supernatural helps in the sacraments to help them live in accord with the precepts contained in that Deposit of Faith as they attempted to scale the heights of personal sanctity.

The first true "thanksgiving day" was celebrated by Spanish Catholics in Saint Augustine, Florida, on September 8, 1565, the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It included a Mass of Thanksgiving for their safe arrival in Florida, which had no bad billboards at the time, thank you, and a meal following the Mass, which was offered by Father Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales. The Americas were Catholic and they belonged to Our Lady long before those horrible Catholic-hating, Mass-hating Calvinists, who had particular contempt for the Mother of God, thus placing themselves in full communion with the devil as people to be pitied but never once to extolled for any "contributions" to "American" life whatsoever, arrived here to chart their course in a land where they believed, albeit quite falsely, there had been no "corruption" caused by Catholicism.

The first Mass on the mainland of the Americas had been offered in Honduras in 1502. The first Mass in New Mexico was offered in Mission San Gabriel in 1598. The first Mass offered by French missionaries in New France was in 1615 by Father Denis Jamay, O.F.M., and it was in Quebec that the first Mass in honor of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus was offered and where the cult of the Holy Family, begun under the pioneering Bishop Francois de Montmorency Laval. The first Mass in Texas was on October 12, 1680, 188 years after Christopher Columbus had landed on the Island of San Salvador in the Bahamas Islands. The North American Martyrs, each of whom was so tenderly devoted to the Mother of God, offered their lives between 1642 and 1649 to Catholicize their part of the Americas, and Saint Peter Claver, the True Liberator of South Africa, personally baptized over 300,000 souls to the true Faith in New Granada (Colombia) and, much like Saint Anthony Mary Claret in Cuba two centuries later, worked to exhort those living impure lives to give up their sins and to live according to the liberating law of the Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ as members of His Catholic Church.

We also have the examples of countless missionary priests, bishops, consecrated religious who came to this country to work assiduously for the sanctification and salvation of Catholic souls and to seek out the lost sheep in the Protestant sects and Indian tribes here in the United States of America, including Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini and her Sisters, who sought to serve both bodies and souls, most especially by helping Italian immigrants to the United States of America to avoid the pitfalls of this country’s materialistic and hedonistic culture, and Father Francis X. Weninger, native of Austria,  gave scores upon scores of parish missions in the Eastern and Midwestern sections of this country. Father Weninger even wrote a book entitled Protestantism and Infidelity to attempt to bring Protestants into the true Church.

Father Pierre de Smet, S.J., left his native Belgium to minister to souls in this country, finding great success among the Indian tribes of the inland Northwest after ministering to souls in the Midwestern United States, including near Cleveland, Ohio.

Father Demetrius Gallitzin came from Russia to sanctify and to save souls, including the souls of Protestants. His  Defence of Catholic Principles in A Letter to A Protestant Minister was a rebuke not only to a Protestant minister in his own day, but also to those in our own day during the reign of the late  Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI who contended then and are still contending under Jorge Mario Bergoglio that not all of the teaching given us by true popes is protected by the charism of infallibility, thereby conceding the belief of Protestants that the Catholic Church can give us errors:

If the church could possibly teach damnable errors, then the gates of hell could prevail against her, contrary to the above promise. "Go ye therefore and teach all nations -- baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost --teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world" -- Matt. xxviii, 19, 20. Christ addressing his twelve apostles on the present occasion, evidently speaks to all his ministers, successors of the apostles to the end of time; which sound logic will find correct. Christ promises that he himself will be with his apostles, baptizing, preaching and teaching all nations until the consummation of time: now Christ cannot tell a lie; therefore it is evident that Christ has fulfilled his promise; and that during these 1815 years past, Christ has always been with his ministers, the pastors of the holy catholic church, and that he will continue to be with them to the end of time; and that he will accompany and guide them, when they preach his word and administer his sacraments.

Is it possible for the Catholic Church to teach damnable errors?

Of course not!

Father Gallitzin knew that which is being denied by “defenders” of Catholic orthodoxy against heretical “popes.” Such defenders knew Jorge Mario Bergoglio to be a heretic while making it appear that a true pope can believe in, no less profess, heresy and error and that he can be ignored at their say so. Holy Mother Church is indefectible, and Saint Robert Bellarmine reminded us that the there has never been a single pope who has erred in matters of the Faith.

"And I will ask the Father, and he shall give you another paraclete, that he may abide with you forever, the spirit of truth" -- John xiv, 16, 17. It appears that Christ asked his heavenly Father to bless his ministers, the pastors of his church, with the spirit of truth forever: Pray sir, did Christ offer up any prayer in vain? And if his prayer was heard, how could the pastors of the church ever preach false doctrine?

The conciliar “popes,” of course, have believed and taught that the Catholic Church has preached false doctrine and has “persecuted” heretical sects (Waldensians, Hussites, Protestants, the Orthodox) by insisting on the conversion of all non-Catholics to the true Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order. These men have been the antithesis of Father Demetrius Gallitzin, who reminded Protestants that God the Holy Ghost always directs the Catholic Church in “the whole truth, an nothing but the truth”:

"But when he, the spirit of truth, shall come, he will teach you all truth," John xvi, 13; "the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth," 1 Tim. iii, 15. If the church itself, as it comes out of the hands of God, is the very ground and pillar of truth, it will hardly want the reforming hand of corrupted man to put it right; it will always teach the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and instead of attempting to reform this the most precious of all the works and institutions of God, you and I must be reformed by it. To quote all the texts that prove the holy church of Jesus Christ to be infallible, or invested by Christ with a supreme and unerring authority in matters of faith, would be endless. I said this unerring authority even in the dictates of common sense. Yes, sir; common sense tells us that the works of God are perfect in their kind. Now the church being most emphatically the work of God, it most assuredly must be perfect: the church however, must be very imperfect indeed, if it wants the main perfection, which as our guide and director to Heaven it must have, that of always teaching truth, that of always supplying the wants of our limited and corrupted reason, that of always carrying before our eyes the bright and divine light of revelation.

Shew us a church which is not infallible, which owns itself fallible, wanting of course the main perfection which the church of Christ must have, and you shew us a church of corrupted man, not the church of Christ. Common sense tell us, that, without an infallible tribunal, unanimity in faith is a thing impossible. Without a centre unity, a fixed standard, and absolute and infallible tribunal, a living oracle to determine the mind, it is absolutely impossible, that men framed as they are, should ever come to one and the same way of thinking. Whoever renounces this infallible authority of the church, has no longer any sure means to secure him against uncertainties, and to settle his doubts: he is in a sad and perplexed situation, tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine. (Defence of Catholic Principles in A Letter to A Protestant Minister.)

This applies to the entire agenda of conciliarism in general as Catholics are are served an endless variety of Kool Aid, filled with each sip with plenty of calories but no a gram of Catholic nutrition. The conciliar “popes” have not believed what Father Gallitzin believed and they have reaffirmed Protestants and other non-Catholics in their false beliefs.

Consider how the following passage from Father Gallitzin’s apologia in defense of the Catholic Faith describes the true teaching on the nature of Holy Mother Church’s Divine Constitution:

We are confirmed in the above suggestions of common sense, by our observation. Unity in faith we find no where but in the catholic church. Above a hundred millions of catholics, scattered over the face of the earth, are perfectly once in matters of faith, -- We meet from the most distant parts of the globe, ignorant of one another’s language, manners, customs, &c. yet our thoughts and principles about religious and its mysteries are exactly alike. Pray, sir, is that unity to be found among those who have shaken off the authority of the church? Since they have presumed to reform (as they call it) the catholic church, what do we see but one reformation or another -- hundreds and hundreds of different churches, one rising on the ruins of another, all widely differing from one another; each styling itself the church of Christ; each appealing to the gospel for the orthodoxy of her doctrine; each calling her ministers, ministers of Christ; each calling the sermons of her ministers, the word of God, &c. &c. (Gallitzin, Demetrius A.  1816.  Defence of Catholic Principles in A Letter to A Protestant Minister.) 

Consider, once again, this sentence from Defense of Catholic Principles in a Letter to A Protestant Minister:

And if his prayer was heard, how could the pastors of the church ever preach false doctrine? 

Only the willfully deluded or those steeped in rank intellectual dishonesty can say that the conciliar “popes,” including Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli/John XXIII, Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VU, Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, and Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV have never preached any false doctrine. The conciliar “popes” have been ceaseless in their teaching of false doctrines. They are opposed to the spiritual health of Catholics and non-Catholics alike just as much as Bergoglio and Prevost are opposed to the actual physical health of human beings by endorsing “vaccine mandates and the anti-population transhumanists of the envirofascist movements.

The first Mass on the mainland of the Americas had been offered in Honduras in 1502. The first Mass in New Mexico was offered in Mission San Gabriel in 1598. The first Mass offered by French missionaries in New France was in 1615 by Father Denis Jamay, O.F.M., and it was in Quebec that the first Mass in honor of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus was offered and where the cult of the Holy Family, begun under the pioneering Bishop Francois de Montmorency Laval. The first Mass in Texas was on October 12, 1680, 188 years after Christopher Columbus had landed on the Island of San Salvador in the Bahamas Islands. The North American Martyrs, each of whom was so tenderly devoted to the Mother of God, offered their lives between 1642 and 1649 to Catholicize their part of the Americas.

As Father Frederick Faber noted, "Where there is no Mass, there is no Christianity." Protestants do not have the Mass. They do not have Christianity, although some of them may be Christians by virtue of having been baptized validly. "Where there is no Mass, there is no Christianity." The Mother of God wants all people to have access to the Mass, to love Holy Mass, to hear it daily, to spend time on their knees n prayer before her Divine Son's Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament after Mass, to bring others to Mass on a daily basis, which is why the Cowboy Priests of Texas rode on horseback in the late Nineteenth Century to offer Holy Mass and other Catholics in the Lone Star State:

(Source: Cavalry of Christ: The Heroic and Pioneering Cowboy Priests of Texas.)

The devil does not want this, which is why he has attacked the Mass by means of the Protestant Revolt and Judeo-Masonry and the potpourri of anti-Incarnational and anticlerical political ideologies that have arisen in the past five hundred years. Social order is dependent upon the Mass, which is why there has been such disorder in the world in the years since the promulgation of the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical abomination, something that claims it is the Mass but is in fact an abomination in the sight of God that has denied so many millions of well-meaning Catholics, myself among them for many years, the true sacraments. It is no wonder that the vestiges of Catholicism that were able to be maintained in the Americas for so long despite hostile cultural conditions and despite how fully many Catholics immersed themselves in that culture have been almost totally eclipsed as a result of the Novus Ordo.

Look at the savagery of the modern Americas, where a breed of barbarism and crudity exists that puts the Aztecs and Mayans of yesteryear to shame. Four thousand preborn babies are killed by means of surgical abortion. Thousands more are killed every day by means of chemical abortifacients. More and more random killings are taking place in public places. The capitalism of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry has created a monstrous world of economics and finance that rewards dishonesty, undermines legitimate national sovereignty, traffics in usury and keeps whole categories of people in conditions of near-servitude for almost their entire lives.

What is not robbed by the merchants of capital is taken by the apparatchiks of state, eager to control how much disposable income citizens can keep for themselves and how they can use their own private land for just purposes in order to aggrandize their own power in a manner that would make Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin blanche. Due process of law rights that were enshrined in the Magna Carta in Catholic England in the Thirteenth Century are scoffed at as "law enforcement" agencies hide crimes in order to advance the careers of upper level captains, inspectors and chiefs and as the guilty go free and as the innocent are frequently subjected to unjust arrest and prosecution for simply adhering to the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law.

The open savagery of the modern Americas is visible in the bread and circuses of professional and collegiate and even scholastic sports, where the drive to "win" becomes so encompassing that athletes will break just laws in order to gain a competitive "advantage" by cheating. This savagery is demonstrated by spectators, many of whom dress immodestly, yell profanities, and some of whom even congregate in parts of arenas to taunt women to do things opposed to the Virtue of Modesty, as is happening, press reports indicated some years ago, at home games of the New York Jets football team at the now-demolished Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. How many of these "gentlemen" were Catholic? Can anyone say that such behavior would have characterized young Catholic men seventy years go?

We must do our part to make sure that they are reclaimed for her and that the seeds be planted for the restoration of Christendom in the Americas. There was once a Christendom in the Americas. It flourished. Souls prospered. This angered the devil, who attacked the Cross of the Divine Redeemer with fury in Latin America and who made sure that it would not be planted in the United States of America and Canada (after the Battle of Montreal in 1763) as a result of the Protestant Revolt and the so-called age of the Enlightenment. As noted before, the devil is powerless. He has schemes. He can implement them all he wants. We have the power to thwart them if only we rely upon the woman who made possible our salvation by her perfect Fiat to the will of the Heavenly Father at the Annunciation, the woman who appeared to Juan Diego with the unborn Baby Jesus in the tabernacle of her Virginal and Immaculate Womb, Mary Immaculate, Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Our Lady told Juan Diego the following on December 9, 1531:

“Know and understand well, you the most humble of my son, that I am the ever virgin Holy Mary, Mother of the True God for whom we live, of the Creator of all things, Lord of heaven and the earth. I wish that a temple be erected here quickly, so I may therein exhibit and give all my love, compassion, help, and protection, because I am your merciful mother, to you, and to all the inhabitants on this land and all the rest who love me, invoke and confide in me; listen there to their lamentations, and remedy all their miseries, afflictions and sorrows. And to accomplish what my clemency pretends, go to the palace of the bishop of Mexico, and you will say to him that I manifest my great desire, that here on this plain a temple be built to me; you will accurately relate all you have seen and admired, and what you have heard. Be assured that I will be most grateful and will reward you, because I will make you happy and worthy of recompense for the effort and fatigue in what you will obtain of what I have entrusted. Behold, you have heard my mandate, my humble son; go and put forth all your effort.” (Our Lady Of Guadalupe | Relation of the Apparitions.)

Our Lady told the privileged seer the following on this day, December 12, in the year 1531:“Hear me and understand well, my son the least, that nothing should frighten or grieve you. Let not your heart be disturbed. Do not fear that sickness, nor any other sickness or anguish. Am I not here, who is your Mother? Are you not under my protection? Am I not your health? Are you not happily within my fold? What else do you wish? Do not grieve nor be disturbed by anything. Do not be afflicted by the illness of your uncle, who will not die now of it. be assured that he is now cured." (Our Lady Of Guadalupe | Relation of the Apparitions.)

Can we not take comfort in these words, being inspired by them to trust Our Immaculate Mother and Queen as never before, praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit? Can we not offer her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart all of our sufferings and sorrows and humiliations and penances and mortifications to given by her to the Most Sacred Heart of her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ for the good of souls?

The state of the world depends upon the state of our souls. As we prepare continue to celebrate the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary tomorrow, Monday, September 8, 2025, may we avail ourselves more frequently of the Sacrament of Penance and receive Our Lord in Holy Communion more fervently at Masses offered by true bishops and true priests who make no concessions to conciliarism or to the nonexistent legitimacy of its false shepherds, recognizing that our next reception of Holy Communion might be our last reception of Holy Communion.

On the Thirteenth after Pentecost

Catholics are taught at an early age to be grateful for being made spiritually whole in the Baptismal font and thus to be incorporated into the Mystical Body of Christ that is the Catholic Church.

We were spiritual lepers before we were baptized, which is why we must always give thanks to Our Lord for having the privilege of being Catholic. We cannot be like the nine lepers who did not return to give thanks to Him after He had healed them of their leprosy as we read in the Gospel read at Holy Mass today, the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost and the Commemoration (in some places) of Saint Cloud. We must imitate the Samaritan, the stranger, who returned thanks, and never take our Catholic Faith nor our salvation, which can be lost with just one Mortal Sin, for granted.

We must pray to Our Lady through her Most Holy Rosary to avoid company with men who desire to spread the foul leprosy of their sins to us as it is far easier for bad company to corrupt a person striving for holiness than it is for a person striving for holiness to convert those steeped in their souls. A promiscuous association with unrepentant sinners can lead those who care more about human respect to be indifferent about sin in the lives of others and to even come to make excuses for their sins. This has always been one of the chief dangers of Catholics living here in the pluralistic United States of America.

Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., provided a wonderful exegesis on today’s Gospel in The Liturgical Year. Here is an excerpt (the entire reflection is found in the appendix below):

Let us now resume the literal explanation of our Gospel. As we were observing on a previous Sunday, our Jesus here again wishes rather to give us a useful teaching than to manifest his divine power. It is for this purpose that he does not cure these ten lepers who besought him to have mercy on them, as on another occasion he cured one who was suffering from the same misery. To this latter, who besought Him, he restored cleanliness by a few words: this was at the beginning of his public life; he said: “Be thou made clean!” and forthwith the leprosy was cleansed. (Matthew 8:3) But the lepers of our Gospel is an event that took place in the latter portion of our Lord’s sojourn amongst men: and they are made clean only while on their way to show themselves to the priests; Jesus sends them to the priests, just as he had done in the previous case; and thus from the beginning to the close of his mortal life, he gives an example of the respect which was to be paid to the Old Law, so long as it was not abrogated. That Law gave to the sons of Aaron the power not of curing, but of discerning leprosy, and passing judgment on its being cured or not. (Leviticus 13)

The time, however, is now come for a Law that is to be far above that of Sinai; and it has a priesthood, whose judgments are not to be concerning the state of the body, but by pronouncing the sentence of absolution, is to effectually remove the leprosy of souls. The cure which the ten lepers felt coming upon them before they had reached the priests ought to have sufficed to show them, in Jesus, the power of the new priesthood, which had been foretold by the Prophets; (Isaiah 66:21-23) the power which, by thus forestalling it in their favor, surpasses the authority of the ancient ministration is, or should be, evidence enough of the superior dignity of Him who exercises it. If only they were in suitable dispositions for the sacred rites, which are going to be used in the ceremony of their purification (Leviticus 14:1-15) —the Holy Ghost, who heretofore had inspired the prophetic details of the mysterious function about to be celebrated, would enable them to understand the signification of the expiatory sparrow, whose blood, being sprinkled upon the living water, sets free, by the wood, its fellow sparrow. The first bird typifies our Lord Jesus Christ, who likens himself, in the psalm, to the lonely sparrow; (Psalm 101:8) his immolation on the Cross, which gives to water the power of cleansing souls, communicates to the other sparrows, his Brethren, (Psalm 83:4) the purity of the Blood divine.

But the Jew is far from being ready for understanding these great mysteries. And yet the Law had been given to him, that it might serve as a hand leading him to Christ, and without exposing him to err. (Galatians 3:24) It was a signal favor, granted him, not from any merits of his own, but because of his Fathers. (Deuteronomy 4:37, 9:4-6) The favor was all the more precious, inasmuch as it was bestowed at a time when the tradition regarding a future Redeemer was almost entirely lost by the bulk of mankind. Gratitude should have been uppermost in the heart of Juda; but pride took its place. He was so taken up with the honor that had been put on him, that it made him lose all desire for the Messiah. He cannot endure the thought that a time will come when the Sun of Justice having risen for the whole earth, the limited advantage which was given to a few during the hours of night, shall be eclipsed by the bright noon of a light which all vie to enjoy. He therefore proclaims that the Old Law is definitive, though the Law protests itself to be but transitory; he therefore insists on the perpetuity of the reign of types and shadows. He lays it down as a dogma that no divine intervention can ever equal that made on Sinai; that every future prophet, every Sent of God, must be inferior to Moses; that all possible salvation is in the Law, and that from it alone flows every grace.

This explains to us how it was that of the ten men cured of the leprosy by Jesus, nine of them are found who have not even the remotest thought of coming to their Deliverer to thank him: these nine are Jews; Jesus, to their minds, is a mere disciple of Moses, a bare instrument of favors holding his commission from Sinai; and as soon as they have gone through the legal formality of their purification, they take it that all their obligations to God are paid. The Samaritan, the despises gentile whose sufferings have given him that humility which makes the sinner clear-sighted—he is the only one who recognizes God by his divine works and gives him thanks for his favors. How many ages of apparent abandonment, of humiliation and suffering, must pass over Juda too, before he will recognize and adore his God, and confess to him his sins, and give him his devoted love and, like this stranger, hear Jesus pronounce his pardon, and say: Arise! Go thy way! thy faith hath made thee whole and saved thee!  (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost.)

Pray to Our Lady every to be made clean frequently in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance so that, being absolved of our sins by a true priest, our prayers to her for the conversion of sinners will help Make America Holy Again by Making American Catholic Again.

Viva Cristo Rey!

Viva La Virgen de Guadalupe!

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us

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

Saint Cloud, pray for us.

Appendix A

Dom Prosper Gueranger on the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

The Samaritan Leper, cured of that hideous malady which is an apt figure of sin, in company with nine lepers of Jewish nationality, represents the despised race of Gentiles, who were at first admitted, by stealth, so to say, and by extraordinary privilege, into a share of the graces belonging to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. (Matthew 15:24) The conduct of these ten men, on occasion of their miraculous cure, is in keeping with the attitude assumed by the two people they typify, regarding the salvation offered to the world by the Son of God. It is a fresh demonstration of what the Apostle says: All are not Israelites that are of Israel; neither are all they who are the seed of Abraham, children; “but,” says the Scripture, “in Isaac shall thy seed be called,” (Genesis 21:12) that is to say, not they who are the children of the flesh, are the children of God: but they that are the children of the promises are counted for the seed; they are born of the faith of Abraham and are, in the eyes of the Lord, his true progeny. (Romans 9:8)

Our holy Mother the Church is never tired of this subject, the comparison of the Two Testaments, and the contrast here is between the two people. We deem it our duty, before proceeding further, to explain how this is, for there are many persons who cannot understand what benefit can come to us Christians from hearing this subject preached to us. The kind of spirituality which, with many of us, has nowadays been substituted for the liturgical life so thoroughly lived in, and so precious to our Catholic ancestors, gives a certain disrelish for the ideas which the Church so perseveringly brings before them during so many of her Sundays. They have become habituated to live in an atmosphere of very limited truth; it is all subjective, as well as little; and they consider it a very excellent thing to forget all other teaching, except what they happen to possess, and beyond which it is a trouble to go. With Christians of this class, it is not surprising that they feel puzzled at finding the Church continually urging them to take an interest in a long past, which they call of no practical utility to them! But the interior life, truly worthy of the name, is not what these good people imagine. No school of spirituality, either now or ever, made the ideal of virtue consist in indifference for those great historic facts which are evidently so precious in the eyes of the Church and of God himself. And what is the usual result of this isolating themselves from their Mother’s most cherished appreciations? It is that by this determined shutting themselves up in their own private prayers, they, by a just punishment, lose sight of the true end of prayer, which is union with and love of God. Their meditation is deprived of that element of intimate and fruitful converse with God, which is assigned it by all the masters of the spiritual life; it soon becomes an unproductive exercise of analysis and reasoning, in which there is nothing but abstract conclusions.

Now, when God mercifully invited men to the divine nuptials by manifesting to them his Word, it was not by abstraction that he gave to our earth this the Son of his own eternal Substance. As to his divinity, men could not, in their present state, see it in a direct way. Had then God shown us, in this pretended abstract way, that eternal Son of his, in whom are found all beauty and warmth and life—it would have been imperfect and cold. This he did not do; but as St. Paul tells us, he manifested, he shewed, the great mystery of godliness in the Flesh; (1 Timothy 3:16) the Word became a living soul; (Genesis 2:7) eternal Truth assumed to himself a Body, that so he might converse with men; (Baruch 3:38) and grow up like one of themselves. (Luke 2:52) And when that Body, which eternal Truth was to hold as his own forever, was taken up in glory, (1 Timothy 3:16)—the Church, the Bride of this Man-God, the bone of his bones, and flesh of his flesh, (Ephesians 5:30-32) continued in the world this manifestation of God, by the member of Christ; she continued that historic development (Ephesians 1:23) of the Word, which is only to cease when time is no more. This manifestation, this development, surpasses all human calculations and reveals fresh aspects of the Wisdom of God even to the Angels themselves. (Ephesians 3:10) Undoubtedly, a real regard is to be had for those axioms to which great minds have reduced the principles of science in an abstract logical order, quite independently of history and facts: but neither with God nor with man has this sort of petrified theorizing anything in it of the life, the influence, the activity of substantial truth. In the Church, as in God, truth is life and light; (John 1:4) her grand Credo would never ring so triumphantly as it does through our churches, it would never make its way so irresistibly up to heaven, if it were but a bare series of true definitions and phrases: its superhuman power comes from each of its articles, almost each of its words, teeming with the blood of martyrs upon it, and radiant, for the Church and for God, with the splendor of toils and sufferings and combats of thousands of sainted Confessors and Doctors, the very aristocracy, that is, of human nature ennobled by Baptism, whose living is to be the completing the Body of Christ here below. (Colossians 1:24, 2:19)

The subject is too full to be treated of here; but this much is irresistible—that after the master-fact of the Incarnation of the Word, who came upon our earth to manifest God, through the ages of time, by Christ and his members, (2 Corinthians 4:10-11) there is not one which is more important, not one which has been and still is so dear to God, as the vocation of the two people that were successively called by Him to the blessing of an alliance with him. The gifts and vocations of God are, as the Apostle expresses it without repentance, or regret, on his part. Those Jews, who are now his enemies because they reject the Gospel, are still called charissimi, they are still the beloved and dearly beloved, because of their Fathers. (Romans 11:28-29) For the same reason, a time will come and the whole world is waiting for it, when the denial of Juda being revoked and his iniquities blotted out, the promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, will be literally fulfilled. (Romans 11:25-27) The divine unity of the two Testaments will be made evident; and the two peoples themselves will be made one under their one head Christ Jesus. (Romans 2:14) The covenant of God with man being then fully realized, such as he had designed it in his eternal wisdom—the earth having yielded its fruit (Psalm 66:7) —the world having done its work—the sepulchers will give back their dead, (Romans 11:15) and History cease here on earth, leaving glorified human nature to bloom in unreserved fullness of life, under God’s complacent eye.

The truths, then, which are again brought before our notice by today’s Gospel, are anything but dry or old-fashioned; nothing is so grand; and we must add, though superficial minds will wonder at it—there is nothing more practical in this season of the year, for it is the season that is consecrated to the mysteries of the Unitive Life. After all, in what, primarily, does union between God and man consist, but in unanimity of the divine and human minds? Now, we know that the divine mind has manifested all its designs in the respective history of the two Testaments and the two Peoples; and that the final result, which is to bring these two histories to their close, is the one only end which infinite Love was in the beginning and it now, and will forever be, proposing to fulfill. The Church, therefore, far from showing herself to be not up to the present age by recurring continually to truths such as these, is but clearly proving herself to be the most intelligent Bride of Jesus—is but evincing the changeless lovely youthfulness of a heart which ever beats in unison with that of her Spouse.

Let us now resume the literal explanation of our Gospel. As we were observing on a previous Sunday, our Jesus here again wishes rather to give us a useful teaching than to manifest his divine power. It is for this purpose that he does not cure these ten lepers who besought him to have mercy on them, as on another occasion he cured one who was suffering from the same misery. To this latter, who besought Him, he restored cleanliness by a few words: this was at the beginning of his public life; he said: “Be thou made clean!” and forthwith the leprosy was cleansed. (Matthew 8:3) But the lepers of our Gospel is an event that took place in the latter portion of our Lord’s sojourn amongst men: and they are made clean only while on their way to show themselves to the priests; Jesus sends them to the priests, just as he had done in the previous case; and thus from the beginning to the close of his mortal life, he gives an example of the respect which was to be paid to the Old Law, so long as it was not abrogated. That Law gave to the sons of Aaron the power not of curing, but of discerning leprosy, and passing judgment on its being cured or not. (Leviticus 13)

The time, however, is now come for a Law that is to be far above that of Sinai; and it has a priesthood, whose judgments are not to be concerning the state of the body, but by pronouncing the sentence of absolution, is to effectually remove the leprosy of souls. The cure which the ten lepers felt coming upon them before they had reached the priests ought to have sufficed to show them, in Jesus, the power of the new priesthood, which had been foretold by the Prophets; (Isaiah 66:21-23) the power which, by thus forestalling it in their favor, surpasses the authority of the ancient ministration is, or should be, evidence enough of the superior dignity of Him who exercises it. If only they were in suitable dispositions for the sacred rites, which are going to be used in the ceremony of their purification (Leviticus 14:1-15) —the Holy Ghost, who heretofore had inspired the prophetic details of the mysterious function about to be celebrated, would enable them to understand the signification of the expiatory sparrow, whose blood, being sprinkled upon the living water, sets free, by the wood, its fellow sparrow. The first bird typifies our Lord Jesus Christ, who likens himself, in the psalm, to the lonely sparrow; (Psalm 101:8) his immolation on the Cross, which gives to water the power of cleansing souls, communicates to the other sparrows, his Brethren, (Psalm 83:4) the purity of the Blood divine.

But the Jew is far from being ready for understanding these great mysteries. And yet the Law had been given to him, that it might serve as a hand leading him to Christ, and without exposing him to err. (Galatians 3:24) It was a signal favor, granted him, not from any merits of his own, but because of his Fathers. (Deuteronomy 4:37, 9:4-6) The favor was all the more precious, inasmuch as it was bestowed at a time when the tradition regarding a future Redeemer was almost entirely lost by the bulk of mankind. Gratitude should have been uppermost in the heart of Juda; but pride took its place. He was so taken up with the honor that had been put on him, that it made him lose all desire for the Messiah. He cannot endure the thought that a time will come when the Sun of Justice having risen for the whole earth, the limited advantage which was given to a few during the hours of night, shall be eclipsed by the bright noon of a light which all vie to enjoy. He therefore proclaims that the Old Law is definitive, though the Law protests itself to be but transitory; he therefore insists on the perpetuity of the reign of types and shadows. He lays it down as a dogma that no divine intervention can ever equal that made on Sinai; that every future prophet, every Sent of God, must be inferior to Moses; that all possible salvation is in the Law, and that from it alone flows every grace.

This explains to us how it was that of the ten men cured of the leprosy by Jesus, nine of them are found who have not even the remotest thought of coming to their Deliverer to thank him: these nine are Jews; Jesus, to their minds, is a mere disciple of Moses, a bare instrument of favors holding his commission from Sinai; and as soon as they have gone through the legal formality of their purification, they take it that all their obligations to God are paid. The Samaritan, the despises gentile whose sufferings have given him that humility which makes the sinner clear-sighted—he is the only one who recognizes God by his divine works and gives him thanks for his favors. How many ages of apparent abandonment, of humiliation and suffering, must pass over Juda too, before he will recognize and adore his God, and confess to him his sins, and give him his devoted love and, like this stranger, hear Jesus pronounce his pardon, and say: Arise! Go thy way! thy faith hath made thee whole and saved thee! (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost.)

Appendix A

An Excerpt from Orestes Brownson’s National Greatness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But this supernatural destiny, since it is supernatural, is not naturally attainable. We may cultivate all our natural powers, we may fill up the highest and broadest capacities of our nature, realize the highest ideal, and yet be infinitely, -we use the word in its strict sense,-infinitely below it. It is not attained to by "self-culture," by the development and exercise of our highest natural powers, including even the boasted sentiments of love and reverence. It is nothing that is due, or ever can be due, to our nature. It is a gift, and can be obtained only as bestowed. But it will be bestowed only on the obedient, and is bestowed as the reward of obedience. Our destiny is eternal life, and the condition of obtaining it is obedience. Obedience is not, as some of the sects teach, the end for which we were made. We were made not that we might obey God, but that we might possess God, and we obey him as the condition of possessing him. (National Greatness)