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Religious Indifferentism and the Rise of Modern Atheism
The anti-Catholic rag that bills itself as the “newspaper of record,” The New York Times, published an op-ed commentary by a former Orthodox Jewish man, Shalom Auslander, entitled “Pass Over God.” It is remarkable so many people are taking this utterly shallow screed as something serious when it is nothing other than a biased screed written by a man who knows nothing of the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Blessed Trinity, and who believes that there could be “peace” among men if only the mention of God were blotted out entirely.
What most of those commenting on this simple-minded piece of ignorance and unbelief do not realize, however, is that the very fact that such an article has been received with so much shock and revulsion in some quarters is itself a demonstration of the extent of ignorance of the effects of American religious indifferentism that exists among the American populace.
Religious indifferentism (the belief that one religion is as good as another and/or that no religion is as good as any religion) was unheard of in any country prior to the founding of the United States of America on religiously principles that are of the essence of Judeo-Masonry regardless of which founders were or were not members of the sect. As Pope Leo XIII pointed out in Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884, one does not have to be a card-carrying member of a Masonic lodge to adhere to Masonic principles, and religious indifferentism is of the essence of Judeo-Masonry.
The Judeo-Masonic spirit insists that the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity in Our Lady's Virginal and Immaculate Womb and His Redemptive Act on the wood of the Holy Cross are matters of complete indifference to personal and social order, that men can organize themselves, both individually and collectively in the institutions of civil governance, without any reference to the Deposit of Faith that Our Lord entrusted exclusively to His true Church and without any reliance at all upon Sanctifying Grace to root out personal sins and to grow in holiness. This Judeo-Masonic spirit is not of God. It is of the devil himself as the devil seeks to make belief in Our Lord's Incarnation and Redemptive Act a matter of complete indifference so that men will come to the false and thoroughly Pelagian conclusion that they themselves are more or less self-redemptive, that they can remake the world on their own without the teaching and sanctifying offices of the Catholic Church. (This is the foundation of John Locke’s liberalism.)
It is this Judeo-Masonic spirit that has been shared by each of the forty-five men who have served as president of the United States of America, yes, including the late John Fitzgerald Kennedy and, of course, the pro-abort reprobate named Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.
Although some presidents have been formally enrolled members in Masonic lodges, each has believed in the Judeo-Masonic spirit, each has believed in the lie that the civil state does not need to recognize the true religion and that Holy Mother Church possesses the right, exercised judiciously and only as a last resort following the exhausting of her Indirect Power of teaching and preaching and exhortation, to interpose herself with its officials at times when the good of souls demands her motherly intervention. The influence of the Judeo-Masonic spirit in the United States of America thus has been very insidious, convincing even most believing Catholics that it is neither prudent or necessary to even pray for the conversion of our country, which the Natural Law enjoins us to love with a fervent love of filial piety, to the true Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order.
The Judeo-Masonic spirit has been insidious in that most people, including most Catholics, are unaware of its influence upon them. This has led some Americanist Catholics, including those who are sedevacantists and those who are in the "resist and recognize" camp, to state that American Masonry is “different” from European Masonry, which attacked the Faith with violence. This is true, but not in the sense that Americanist Catholics would like to believe.
European Masonry had to attack the Faith with violence in once proudly Catholic Europe as the Cross of the Divine Redeemer was implanted so firmly there. This is the same reason that Masonry in Latin America, aided by the funds of Masonic lodges in the nascent United States of America, had to attack the Faith with such violence there in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.
There was, however, no need for Masons in the United States of America to attack the Church head on, although there were indeed times when Masons did so, to be sure. Members of Masonic lodges in the United States of America in the late-Eighteenth and then the Nineteenth Centuries knew that many Catholics would be so grateful merely for the opportunity to practice their religion openly here without the overt persecution that had taken place in England and Ireland following the Protestant Revolt in the Sixteenth Century that they would come to terms with religious indifferentism and religious liberty and cultural pluralism, the net effect being the neutralization of their Catholicism in the public arena.
Pope Leo XIII, writing in his Apostolical Letter Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899, to the longtime Americanist Archbishop of Baltimore, James Cardinal Gibbons, saw this very danger at the end of the Nineteenth Century:
But, beloved son, in this present matter of which we are speaking, there is even a greater danger and a more manifest opposition to Catholic doctrine and discipline in that opinion of the lovers of novelty, according to which they hold such liberty should be allowed in the Church, that her supervision and watchfulness being in some sense lessened, allowance be granted the faithful, each one to follow out more freely the leading of his own mind and the trend of his own proper activity. They are of opinion that such liberty has its counterpart in the newly given civil freedom which is now the right and the foundation of almost every secular state.
In the apostolic letters concerning the constitution of states, addressed by us to the bishops of the whole Church, we discussed this point at length; and there set forth the difference existing between the Church, which is a divine society, and all other social human organizations which depend simply on free will and choice of men.
It is well, then, to particularly direct attention to the opinion which serves as the argument in behalf of this greater liberty sought for and recommended to Catholics.
It is alleged that now the Vatican decree concerning the infallible teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff having been proclaimed that nothing further on that score can give any solicitude, and accordingly, since that has been safeguarded and put beyond question a wider and freer field both for thought and action lies open to each one. But such reasoning is evidently faulty, since, if we are to come to any conclusion from the infallible teaching authority of the Church, it should rather be that no one should wish to depart from it, and moreover that the minds of all being leavened and directed thereby, greater security from private error would be enjoyed by all. And further, those who avail themselves of such a way of reasoning seem to depart seriously from the over-ruling wisdom of the Most High-which wisdom, since it was pleased to set forth by most solemn decision the authority and supreme teaching rights of this Apostolic See-willed that decision precisely in order to safeguard the minds of the Church's children from the dangers of these present times.
These dangers, viz., the confounding of license with liberty, the passion for discussing and pouring contempt upon any possible subject, the assumed right to hold whatever opinions one pleases upon any subject and to set them forth in print to the world, have so wrapped minds in darkness that there is now a greater need of the Church's teaching office than ever before, lest people become unmindful both of conscience and of duty. (Pope Leo XIII, Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899.)
Pope Leo XIII was clearly and prophetically condemning the conciliarist view of Church-State relations that was presaged in no small measure by the Americanist heresy, the desire to accommodate the Faith to the Judeo-Masonic spirit rather than the desire to convert the nation to the Faith.
Pope Leo XIII had written in Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884, to describe the Judeo-Masonic spirit of indifference to religious truth as the foundation of social order, an indifference:
For, from what We have above most clearly shown, that which is their ultimate purpose forces itself into view -- namely, the utter overthrow of that whole religious and political order of the world which the Christian teaching has produced, and the substitution of a new state of things in accordance with their ideas, of which the foundations and laws shall be drawn from mere naturalism.
What We have said, and are about to say, must be understood of the sect of the Freemasons taken generically, and in so far as it comprises the associations kindred to it and confederated with it, but not of the individual members of them. There may be persons amongst these, and not a few who, although not free from the guilt of having entangled themselves in such associations, yet are neither themselves partners in their criminal acts nor aware of the ultimate object which they are endeavoring to attain. In the same way, some of the affiliated societies, perhaps, by no means approve of the extreme conclusions which they would, if consistent, embrace as necessarily following from their common principles, did not their very foulness strike them with horror. Some of these, again, are led by circumstances of times and places either to aim at smaller things than the others usually attempt or than they themselves would wish to attempt. They are not, however, for this reason, to be reckoned as alien to the masonic federation; for the masonic federation is to be judged not so much by the things which it has done, or brought to completion, as by the sum of its pronounced opinions. (Pope Leo XIII, Humanum Genus, April 20, 1888.)
Yes, it is the sum of the "pronounced opinions" of Judeo-Masonry that matters, not any specific program or line of action, although there have been programs and lines of action (the establish of public schools and the mandating of curricula of study, legislation liberalizing divorce, attempts at imposing laws forbidding the wearing of clerical garb in public and of the operation of parochial schools, the promotion of contraception and abortion and licentiousness in civil law and public culture) that members of the lodges have undertaken over the course of this nation's history that were meant to be detrimental to the Faith. The Judeo-Masonic spirit convinces even believing Catholics that the social encyclical letters of our true popes don't apply to the United States of America, and that simple statements of Catholic truth, including the one below from Pope Saint Pius X's Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910, have been made "obsolete" over the course of time:
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, 1910.)
Some Americanist Catholics, especially those of the libertarian bent, have been so bold as to assert that the Church has no business at all in pronouncing that she has universal principles for the governance of men and their nations that are binding upon the consciences of all men at all times, thus showing themselves to defect from the Faith by refusing to accept these plain words of Pope Pius XII in Ad Apostolorum Principis, June 29, 1958:
Assuming false and unjust premises, they are not afraid to take a position which would confine within a narrow scope the supreme teaching authority of the Church, claiming that there are certain questions -- such as those which concern social and economic matters -- in which Catholics may ignore the teachings and the directives of this Apostolic See.
This opinion -- it seems entirely unnecessary to demonstrate its existence -- is utterly false and full of error because, as We declared a few years ago to a special meeting of Our Venerable Brethren in the episcopacy:
"The power of the Church is in no sense limited to so-called 'strictly religious matters'; but the whole matter of the natural law, its institution, interpretation and application, in so far as the moral aspect is concerned, are within its power.
"By God's appointment the observance of the natural law concerns the way by which man must strive toward his supernatural end. The Church shows the way and is the guide and guardian of men with respect to their supernatural end."
This truth had already been wisely explained by Our Predecessor St. Pius X in his Encyclical Letter Singulari quadam of September 24, 1912, in which he made this statement: "All actions of a Christian man so far as they are morally either good or bad -- that is, so far as they agree with or are contrary to the natural and divine law -- fall under the judgment and jurisdiction of the Church." (Pope Pius XII, Ad Apostolorum Principis, June 29, 1958.)
Pope Pius XII was condemning the so-called Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association's (the rump "church" created by the Red Chinese government that was more or less recognized in a de facto manner by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's letter to Chinese Catholics in 2007 that was reiterated in 2009—see Red China: Workshop for the New Ecclesiology—and to which Jorge Mario Bergoglio sold out entirely nine years—see Doubly Betrayed by Jorge and His False Church, Neville Bergoglio's Appeasement of the Chicom Monsters, and Jorge Mario Bergoglio: Front Man for the Lockdown State's New World Order, part two) rejection of the authority of the Catholic Church in matters of social and economic matters. His condemnation applies just as much to anyone else, including Americanist Catholics, who reject the Social Reign of Christ the King and the authority of the Catholic Church to enunciate the moral principles that must guide governance and economics. No naturalist philosophy or program takes place of the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted exclusively to the Catholic Church that He Himself created upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, for its infallible explication and eternal safekeeping.
Alas, the modern world is founded in a rejection of this simple truth. "Hope" is then to be placed in all manner of naturalists, whether they be of the "Enlightenment" or of the American founding or the French Revolution or Marxism-Leninism or any of the dozens of others of ideologies and "philosophies" claiming the ability to "improve" the world by means of the naturalistic formulae of Judeo-Masonry, many of which are embraced by various false religions, including that of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, as worthy of at least some respect in the practicalities of the "real" world. This is precisely the goal of the Judeo-Masonic spirit that Pope Leo XIII explicated in Humanum Genus:
But the naturalists go much further; for, having, in the highest things, entered upon a wholly erroneous course, they are carried headlong to extremes, either by reason of the weakness of human nature, or because God inflicts upon them the just punishment of their pride. Hence it happens that they no longer consider as certain and permanent those things which are fully understood by the natural light of reason, such as certainly are -- the existence of God, the immaterial nature of the human soul, and its immortality. The sect of the Freemasons, by a similar course of error, is exposed to these same dangers; for, although in a general way they may profess the existence of God, they themselves are witnesses that they do not all maintain this truth with the full assent of the mind or with a firm conviction. Neither do they conceal that this question about God is the greatest source and cause of discords among them; in fact, it is certain that a considerable contention about this same subject has existed among them very lately. But, indeed, the sect allows great liberty to its votaries, so that to each side is given the right to defend its own opinion, either that there is a God, or that there is none; and those who obstinately contend that there is no God are as easily initiated as those who contend that God exists, though, like the pantheists, they have false notions concerning Him: all which is nothing else than taking away the reality, while retaining some absurd representation of the divine nature.
When this greatest fundamental truth has been overturned or weakened, it follows that those truths, also, which are known by the teaching of nature must begin to fall -- namely, that all things were made by the free will of God the Creator; that the world is governed by Providence; that souls do not die; that to this life of men upon the earth there will succeed another and an everlasting life.
When these truths are done away with, which are as the principles of nature and important for knowledge and for practical use, it is easy to see what will become of both public and private morality. We say nothing of those more heavenly virtues, which no one can exercise or even acquire without a special gift and grace of God; of which necessarily no trace can be found in those who reject as unknown the redemption of mankind, the grace of God, the sacraments, and the happiness to be obtained in heaven. We speak now of the duties which have their origin in natural probity. That God is the Creator of the world and its provident Ruler; that the eternal law commands the natural order to be maintained, and forbids that it be disturbed; that the last end of men is a destiny far above human things and beyond this sojourning upon the earth: these are the sources and these the principles of all justice and morality.
If these be taken away, as the naturalists and Freemasons desire, there will immediately be no knowledge as to what constitutes justice and injustice, or upon what principle morality is founded. And, in truth, the teaching of morality which alone finds favor with the sect of Freemasons, and in which they contend that youth should be instructed, is that which they call "civil," and "independent," and "free," namely, that which does not contain any religious belief. But, how insufficient such teaching is, how wanting in soundness, and how easily moved by every impulse of passion, is sufficiently proved by its sad fruits, which have already begun to appear. For, wherever, by removing Christian education, this teaching has begun more completely to rule, there goodness and integrity of morals have begun quickly to perish, monstrous and shameful opinions have grown up, and the audacity of evil deeds has risen to a high degree. All this is commonly complained of and deplored; and not a few of those who by no means wish to do so are compelled by abundant evidence to give not infrequently the same testimony.
Moreover, human nature was stained by original sin, and is therefore more disposed to vice than to virtue. For a virtuous life it is absolutely necessary to restrain the disorderly movements of the soul, and to make the passions obedient to reason. In this conflict human things must very often be despised, and the greatest labors and hardships must be undergone, in order that reason may always hold its sway. But the naturalists and Freemasons, having no faith in those things which we have learned by the revelation of God, deny that our first parents sinned, and consequently think that free will is not at all weakened and inclined to evil. On the contrary, exaggerating rather the power and the excellence of nature, and placing therein alone the principle and rule of justice, they cannot even imagine that there is any need at all of a constant struggle and a perfect steadfastness to overcome the violence and rule of our passions.
Wherefore we see that men are publicly tempted by the many allurements of pleasure; that there are journals and pamphlets with neither moderation nor shame; that stage-plays are remarkable for license; that designs for works of art are shamelessly sought in the laws of a so-called verism; that the contrivances of a soft and delicate life are most carefully devised; and that all the blandishments of pleasure are diligently sought out by which virtue may be lulled to sleep. Wickedly, also, but at the same time quite consistently, do those act who do away with the expectation of the joys of heaven, and bring down all happiness to the level of mortality, and, as it were, sink it in the earth. Of what We have said the following fact, astonishing not so much in itself as in its open expression, may serve as a confirmation. For, since generally no one is accustomed to obey crafty and clever men so submissively as those whose soul is weakened and broken down by the domination of the passions, there have been in the sect of the Freemasons some who have plainly determined and proposed that, artfully and of set purpose, the multitude should be satiated with a boundless license of vice, as, when this had been done, it would easily come under their power and authority for any acts of daring.
What refers to domestic life in the teaching of the naturalists is almost all contained in the following declarations: that marriage belongs to the genus of commercial contracts, which can rightly be revoked by the will of those who made them, and that the civil rulers of the State have power over the matrimonial bond; that in the education of youth nothing is to be taught in the matter of religion as of certain and fixed opinion; and each one must be left at liberty to follow, when he comes of age, whatever he may prefer. To these things the Freemasons fully assent; and not only assent, but have long endeavored to make them into a law and institution. For in many countries, and those nominally Catholic, it is enacted that no marriages shall be considered lawful except those contracted by the civil rite; in other places the law permits divorce; and in others every effort is used to make it lawful as soon as may be. Thus, the time is quickly coming when marriages will be turned into another kind of contract -- that is into changeable and uncertain unions which fancy may join together, and which the same when changed may disunite.
With the greatest unanimity the sect of the Freemasons also endeavors to take to itself the education of youth. They think that they can easily mold to their opinions that soft and pliant age, and bend it whither they will; and that nothing can be more fitted than this to enable them to bring up the youth of the State after their own plan. Therefore, in the education and instruction of children they allow no share, either of teaching or of discipline, to the ministers of the Church; and in many places they have procured that the education of youth shall be exclusively in the hands of laymen, and that nothing which treats of the most important and most holy duties of men to God shall be introduced into the instructions on morals.
Then come their doctrines of politics, in which the naturalists lay down that all men have the same right, and are in every respect of equal and like condition; that each one is naturally free; that no one has the right to command another; that it is an act of violence to require men to obey any authority other than that which is obtained from themselves. According to this, therefore, all things belong to the free people; power is held by the command or permission of the people, so that, when the popular will changes, rulers may lawfully be deposed and the source of all rights and civil duties is either in the multitude or in the governing authority when this is constituted according to the latest doctrines. It is held also that the State should be without God; that in the various forms of religion there is no reason why one should have precedence of another; and that they are all to occupy the same place.
That these doctrines are equally acceptable to the Freemasons, and that they would wish to constitute States according to this example and model, is too well known to require proof. For some time past they have openly endeavored to bring this about with all their strength and resources; and in this they prepare the way for not a few bolder men who are hurrying on even to worse things, in their endeavor to obtain equality and community of all goods by the destruction of every distinction of rank and property.
What, therefore, sect of the Freemasons is, and what course it pursues, appears sufficiently from the summary We have briefly given. Their chief dogmas are so greatly and manifestly at variance with reason that nothing can be more perverse. To wish to destroy the religion and the Church which God Himself has established, and whose perpetuity He insures by His protection, and to bring back after a lapse of eighteen centuries the manners and customs of the pagans, is signal folly and audacious impiety. Neither is it less horrible nor more tolerable that they should repudiate the benefits which Jesus Christ so mercifully obtained, not only for individuals, but also for the family and for civil society, benefits which, even according to the judgment and testimony of enemies of Christianity, are very great. In this insane and wicked endeavor we may almost see the implacable hatred and spirit of revenge with which Satan himself is inflamed against Jesus Christ. -- So also the studious endeavor of the Freemasons to destroy the chief foundations of justice and honesty, and to co-operate with those who would wish, as if they were mere animals, to do what they please, tends only to the ignominious and disgraceful ruin of the human race.
The evil, too, is increased by the dangers which threaten both domestic and civil society. As We have elsewhere shown, in marriage, according to the belief of almost every nation, there is something sacred and religious; and the law of God has determined that marriages shall not be dissolved. If they are deprived of their sacred character, and made dissoluble, trouble and confusion in the family will be the result, the wife being deprived of her dignity and the children left without protection as to their interests and well being. -- To have in public matters no care for religion, and in the arrangement and administration of civil affairs to have no more regard for God than if He did not exist, is a rashness unknown to the very pagans; for in their heart and soul the notion of a divinity and the need of public religion were so firmly fixed that they would have thought it easier to have city without foundation than a city without God. Human society, indeed for which by nature we are formed, has been constituted by God the Author of nature; and from Him, as from their principle and source, flow in all their strength and permanence the countless benefits with which society abounds. As we are each of us admonished by the very voice of nature to worship God in piety and holiness, as the Giver unto us of life and of all that is good therein, so also and for the same reason, nations and States are bound to worship Him; and therefore it is clear that those who would absolve society from all religious duty act not only unjustly but also with ignorance and folly. . . .
Would that all men would judge of the tree by its fruit, and would acknowledge the seed and origin of the evils which press upon us, and of the dangers that are impending! We have to deal with a deceitful and crafty enemy, who, gratifying the ears of people and of princes, has ensnared them by smooth speeches and by adulation. Ingratiating themselves with rulers under a pretense of friendship, the Freemasons have endeavored to make them their allies and powerful helpers for the destruction of the Christian name; and that they might more strongly urge them on, they have, with determined calumny, accused the Church of invidiously contending with rulers in matters that affect their authority and sovereign power. Having, by these artifices, insured their own safety and audacity, they have begun to exercise great weight in the government of States: but nevertheless they are prepared to shake the foundations of empires, to harass the rulers of the State, to accuse, and to cast them out, as often as they appear to govern otherwise than they themselves could have wished. In like manner, they have by flattery deluded the people. Proclaiming with a loud voice liberty and public prosperity, and saying that it was owing to the Church and to sovereigns that the multitude were not drawn out of their unjust servitude and poverty, they have imposed upon the people, and, exciting them by a thirst for novelty, they have urged them to assail both the Church and the civil power. Nevertheless, the expectation of the benefits which was hoped for is greater than the reality; indeed, the common people, more oppressed than they were before, are deprived in their misery of that solace which, if things had been arranged in a Christian manner, they would have had with ease and in abundance. But, whoever strive against the order which Divine Providence has constituted pay usually the penalty of their pride, and meet with affliction and misery where they rashly hoped to find all things prosperous and in conformity with their desires. (Pope Leo XIII, Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884.)
It is thus important not to get lost in the "trees" to find this or that particular document as the “key” to understanding the world today as each of those documents (the Declaration of Independence, the French Revolution’s Declaration of the Rights of Man, the Communist Manifesto, the Protocols of the “Sage and Learned” Elders of Zion, etc.) as being most responsible for the shape of the world today. The anti-Incarnational world of Modernity is only the logical consequence of Martin Luther’s overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King and his hateful, self-contradictory, and illogical rejection of the Catholic Church as the only instrument of human salvation and thus of a true social order founded on right principles,
The Judeo-Masonic spirit of naturalism that has existed from the very beginning of the United States of America as the first secular, non-confessional state in the history of mankind long ago convinced believing Catholics that it is “good enough” for any public official, Catholic or non-Catholic, to have sincere intentions and to invoke the name of God, at least generically, now and again in his public utterances, no matter the fact that his policies may be inimical to the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and Natural Law and thus injurious to souls, thereby undermining the pursuit of the common temporal good. “Good” and “sincere” intentions do not redeem false premises. “Good” and “sincere” intentions can never make morally licit that which is proscribed by the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law. No number of generic references to God (or to a “Supreme Being of the Universe,” “Great Architect,” “Divine Master,” “The Other”0 can replace a fealty to the Catholic Faith, something that Pope Pius XI warned about very specifically in Mit Brennender Sorge, March 17, 1937:
Take care, Venerable Brethren, that above all, faith in God, the first and irreplaceable foundation of all religion, be preserved in Germany pure and unstained. The believer in God is not he who utters the name in his speech, but he for whom this sacred word stands for a true and worthy concept of the Divinity. Whoever identifies, by pantheistic confusion, God and the universe, by either lowering God to the dimensions of the world, or raising the world to the dimensions of God, is not a believer in God. Whoever follows that so-called pre-Christian Germanic conception of substituting a dark and impersonal destiny for the personal God, denies thereby the Wisdom and Providence of God who "Reacheth from end to end mightily, and ordereth all things sweetly" (Wisdom viii. 1). Neither is he a believer in God.
Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community -- however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things -- whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds.
Beware, Venerable Brethren, of that growing abuse, in speech as in writing, of the name of God as though it were a meaningless label, to be affixed to any creation, more or less arbitrary, of human speculation. Use your influence on the Faithful, that they refuse to yield to this aberration. Our God is the Personal God, supernatural, omnipotent, infinitely perfect, one in the Trinity of Persons, tri-personal in the unity of divine essence, the Creator of all existence. Lord, King and ultimate Consummator of the history of the world, who will not, and cannot, tolerate a rival God by His side. (Pope Leo XIII, Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884.)
The Incarnation of the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity made Man in the Virginal and Immaculate Womb of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary by the power of God the Holy Ghost has taken place. Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, and He redeemed the human race by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday. Our Divine Redeemer then gloriously manifested His Easter Victory over the power of sin and death by His Resurrection on Easter Sunday. No human being on the fact of this earth can be “indifferent” to these facts. We must understand that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is meant to be King of each man and each nation, including the United States of America, and that it is a work of true patriotism to plant the seeds for the conversion of this land in which we were born (or, for those naturalized as citizens, have taken up residence) to the true Faith so that she can enjoy a true measure of temporal prosperity undertaken in light of man's Last End, the possession of the glory of the Beatific Vision of God, the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity in Heaven.
Pope Leo XIII explained that the trajectory of religious indifferentism leads straight to the triumph of the atheistic spirit if not atheism in fact:
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.
So, too, the liberty of thinking, and of publishing, whatsoever each one likes, without any hindrance, is not in itself an advantage over which society can wisely rejoice. On the contrary, it is the fountain-head and origin of many evils. Liberty is a power perfecting man, and hence should have truth and goodness for its object. But the character of goodness and truth cannot be changed at option. These remain ever one and the same, and are no less unchangeable than nature itself. If the mind assents to false opinions, and the will chooses and follows after what is wrong, neither can attain its native fullness, but both must fall from their native dignity into an abyss of corruption. Whatever, therefore, is opposed to virtue and truth may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law. A well-spent life is the only way to heaven, whither all are bound, and on this account the State is acting against the laws and dictates of nature whenever it permits the license of opinion and of action to lead minds astray from truth and souls away from the practice of virtue. To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from the business of life, from the making of laws, from the education of youth, from domestic society is a grave and fatal error. A State from which religion is banished can never be well regulated; and already perhaps more than is desirable is known of the nature and tendency of the so-called civil philosophy of life and morals. The Church of Christ is the true and sole teacher of virtue and guardian of morals. She it is who preserves in their purity the principles from which duties flow, and, by setting forth most urgent reasons for virtuous life, bids us not only to turn away from wicked deeds, but even to curb all movements of the mind that are opposed to reason, even though they be not carried out in action. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)
As men are made by God to know, love and to serve Him as He has revealed Himself exclusively through His Catholic Church, which alone provides men with the means of their interior sanctification and is thus the sole means of human salvation, it opposed to the very Will of God to permit those who believe in false religions and false philosophies the "civil" right to propagate them openly. God does not want the souls for whom He shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood deceived about First and Last Things. He wants all men and all nations to honor Him as their King, which is one of the lessons He was teaching us as Saints Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar worshiped Him at the Epiphany. The Protestant and Judeo-Masonic and conciliarist notion of "religious liberty," having such tremendous roots in the Constitution of the United States of America, and of separation of Church and State thus are at odds with Divine Revelation itself, as Pope Saint Pius X noted in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906:
That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. The same thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies. Both of them, the civil and the religious society, although each exercises in its own sphere its authority over them. It follows necessarily that there are many things belonging to them in common in which both societies must have relations with one another. Remove the agreement between Church and State, and the result will be that from these common matters will spring the seeds of disputes which will become acute on both sides; it will become more difficult to see where the truth lies, and great confusion is certain to arise. Finally, this thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions touching the rights and the duties of men. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.)
The Modern, religiously indifferentist, anti-Incarnational civil state thus becomes a breeding ground for the propagation and multiplication of errors and heresies and blasphemies, none of which have any "civil" right to exist as they offend Our Lord and wound the souls for whom He offered up His life to the Father in Spirit and in Truth on the wood of the Holy Cross. Pope Gregory XVI elaborated on these points in Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832:
Now We consider another abundant source of the evils with which the Church is afflicted at present: indifferentism. This perverse opinion is spread on all sides by the fraud of the wicked who claim that it is possible to obtain the eternal salvation of the soul by the profession of any kind of religion, as long as morality is maintained. Surely, in so clear a matter, you will drive this deadly error far from the people committed to your care. With the admonition of the apostle that "there is one God, one faith, one baptism" may those fear who contrive the notion that the safe harbor of salvation is open to persons of any religion whatever. They should consider the testimony of Christ Himself that "those who are not with Christ are against Him," and that they disperse unhappily who do not gather with Him. Therefore "without a doubt, they will perish forever, unless they hold the Catholic faith whole and inviolate." Let them hear Jerome who, while the Church was torn into three parts by schism, tells us that whenever someone tried to persuade him to join his group he always exclaimed: "He who is for the See of Peter is for me." A schismatic flatters himself falsely if he asserts that he, too, has been washed in the waters of regeneration. Indeed Augustine would reply to such a man: "The branch has the same form when it has been cut off from the vine; but of what profit for it is the form, if it does not live from the root?"
This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. "But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error," as Augustine was wont to say. When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin. Then truly "the bottomless pit" is open from which John saw smoke ascending which obscured the sun, and out of which locusts flew forth to devastate the earth. Thence comes transformation of minds, corruption of youths, contempt of sacred things and holy laws -- in other words, a pestilence more deadly to the state than any other. Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for wealth, dominion, and glory perished as a result of this single evil, namely immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire for novelty.
Here We must include that harmful and never sufficiently denounced freedom to publish any writings whatever and disseminate them to the people, which some dare to demand and promote with so great a clamor. We are horrified to see what monstrous doctrines and prodigious errors are disseminated far and wide in countless books, pamphlets, and other writings which, though small in weight, are very great in malice. We are in tears at the abuse which proceeds from them over the face of the earth. Some are so carried away that they contentiously assert that the flock of errors arising from them is sufficiently compensated by the publication of some book which defends religion and truth. Every law condemns deliberately doing evil simply because there is some hope that good may result. Is there any sane man who would say poison ought to be distributed, sold publicly, stored, and even drunk because some antidote is available and those who use it may be snatched from death again and again? (Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, Auguat 15, 1832.)
A civil state that is open to all religions and to irreligion is a manifestly dangerous place for souls. How can Mohammedans or Communists or Talmudic Jews or Freemasons or Socialists or Wiccans or Satanists be excluded from public office in such a system. They cannot, especially when one considers the words of Article VI of the Constitution of the United States of America:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
Defenders of all things American contend that the “no religious test” clause permitted Catholics, who had been disenfranchised in the United Kingdom and Ireland, to hold public office. Isn't that nice?
What the “no religious test” clause of Article VI of the Constitution of the United States permits also is for atheists and deists and Freemasons and Mohammedans and Wiccans or anyone else to hold public office and thus to seek to use the civil laws as the means to enshrine their false beliefs. Once again, there is no rational, coherent basis to oppose the advances made by baby-killers and perverts when a civil government admits that there is no Divinely instituted authority to which it must submit itself when the good of souls demands such submission. Everything contained in the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law becomes negotiable. Everything. And given the fact that the devil never rests, those who seek to defend society in a non-denominational or even secular manner against various objective evils begin to look upon "compromise" as a sign of progress, thereby institutionalizing evil more and more by means of civil law and in the nooks and crannies of popular culture, a point made very tellingly by Pope Leo XIII in Libertas Praestantissimum, June 20, 1888:
But, to judge aright, we must acknowledge that, the more a State is driven to tolerate evil, the further is it from perfection; and that the tolerance of evil which is dictated by political prudence should be strictly confined to the limits which its justifying cause, the public welfare, requires. Wherefore, if such tolerance would be injurious to the public welfare, and entail greater evils on the State, it would not be lawful; for in such case the motive of good is wanting. And although in the extraordinary condition of these times the Church usually acquiesces in certain modern liberties, not because she prefers them in themselves, but because she judges it expedient to permit them, she would in happier times exercise her own liberty; and, by persuasion, exhortation, and entreaty would endeavor, as she is bound, to fulfill the duty assigned to her by God of providing for the eternal salvation of mankind. One thing, however, remains always true -- that the liberty which is claimed for all to do all things is not, as We have often said, of itself desirable, inasmuch as it is contrary to reason that error and truth should have equal rights.
And as to tolerance, it is surprising how far removed from the equity and prudence of the Church are those who profess what is called liberalism. For, in allowing that boundless license of which We have spoken, they exceed all limits, and end at last by making no apparent distinction between truth and error, honesty and dishonesty. And because the Church, the pillar and ground of truth, and the unerring teacher of morals, is forced utterly to reprobate and condemn tolerance of such an abandoned and criminal character, they calumniate her as being wanting in patience and gentleness, and thus fail to see that, in so doing, they impute to her as a fault what is in reality a matter for commendation. But, in spite of all this show of tolerance, it very often happens that, while they profess themselves ready to lavish liberty on all in the greatest profusion, they are utterly intolerant toward the Catholic Church, by refusing to allow her the liberty of being herself free. (Pope Leo XIII in Libertas Praestantissimum, June 20, 1888.)
This is not a matter of ethereal speculation having nothing to with the real lives of human beings. Not at all. The heresy of religious liberty, which is at the heart of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, devastates souls. The belief that those who belong to false religions have a "civil right" to propagate themselves and that their false beliefs can contribute to the betterment of society make it impossible to exclude those false religions from making their presence felt everywhere in society, especially in "educational" institutions, where the tender souls of the young become ready prey to false ideas that are propagandized by charismatic professors. This is true in the United States of America and elsewhere in the allegedly "free" world of "democratic republics.
Yes, religious indifferentism leads to the atheism, and atheism leads in turn to the sort of anti-Theism exhibited in The New York Times op-ed piece mentioned at the beginning of this commentary. Atheism and anti-Theism lead men into the abyss of licentiousness, which is the pathway to kind of violence that has been unleashed in cities and localities all throughout the United States of America.
A Long Descent Into the Abyss
Yes, of course, the remote cause for all human problems, both personal and social, is Original Sin. The proximate cause of human problems, both personal and social, is Actual Sin.
Human beings are wounded by Original Sin. Those of us who are baptized suffer from the vestigial after-effects of Original Sin (the darkened intellect, the weakened will, a disordering of the balance between our higher rational faculties and lower sensual passions). Those who are unbaptized suffer all the ravages of Original Sin in their immortal souls that are captive to the devil and his minions. There is no legal, political, constitutional, electoral, interdenominational, nondenominational, secular, philosophical, ideological, naturalistic way to solve problems that are caused by the sin of Adam and the sins of us all. Men will descend into the depth of madness and violence over the course of time as men and their societies move more and more away even from the vestigial influences of Catholicism in the world.
It is indeed true that there were social problems during the era of Christendom in Europe. The difference between then and now is simple: most men understood that they were sinners in need of cooperating more fully with the graces won for them on the wood of the Holy Cross by the shedding of every single drop of the Most Precious Blood of Our Divine Redeemer, Christ the King, and that flow into their hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces. Men knew that they had to amend their lives, that social order depended upon order within their own souls. Is there any such understanding today?
Consider Pope Pius XII's concise description of the difference between Christendom and Modernity, contained in his first encyclical letter, Summi Pontificatus, October 10, 1939:
It is true that even when Europe had a cohesion of brotherhood through identical ideals gathered from Christian preaching, she was not free from divisions, convulsions and wars which laid her waste; but perhaps they never felt the intense pessimism of today as to the possibility of settling them, for they had then an effective moral sense of the just and of the unjust, of the lawful and of the unlawful, which, by restraining outbreaks of passion, left the way open to an honorable settlement. In Our days, on the contrary, dissensions come not only from the surge of rebellious passion, but also from a deep spiritual crisis which has overthrown the sound principles of private and public morality. (Pope Pius XII, Summi Pontificatus, October 10, 1939.)
The errors of pluralism divide people needlessly into warring camps as a permanently established political class, composed of competing sets of naturalists, each of which believes that the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity in the Virginal and Immaculate Womb of His Most Blessed Mother by the power of God the Holy Ghost at the Annunciation is, at best, a matter of complete indifference to personal and social order. So many Americans live from election to election, always believing that "change," whether it be in the direction of "progress" for naturalists of the "left" or in the direction of "constitutionalism" or "liberty" or "limited government" for naturalists of the "right." Although divisions on some matters will always occur until the General Judgment of the Living and the Dead on the Last Day at the Second Coming of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, it is also true that men today have been needlessly divided about matters pertaining to First and Last Things, oblivious to the fact that they have been given a spotless mother, Holy Mother Church, to serve as their mater and magister (mother and teacher) in this passing, mortal vale of tears. Most men today believe that they are automatons, either independent of any concept of God or "free" from the "dictates" of a hierarchical church.
Personal and social disaster cannot but be the result of such a brew of error. Men resort more and more to violence today because they do not know of the tender mercies of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. They do not know that they have a Blessed Mother who made possible their salvation by her perfect fiat to the will of God the father at the Annunciation. They do not realize that the supernatural helps they need to overcome all sin in their lives and to pray for the conversion of those who are promoting evil in society flow through the loving hands of that same Blessed Mother, who gave the Rosary with her own blessed hands to Saint Dominic de Guzman so that we could be more closely united to her Divine Son, Christ the King, through the mysteries contained in her psalter, the Rosary.
Most men today do not realize that there is nothing that any of us can suffer, whether personally or socially, that is equal of what one of our least Venial Sins caused Our Lord to suffer in His Sacred Humanity on the wood of the Holy Cross and that caused those Seven Swords to be thrust through and through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. They tend, therefore, to dwell on their own pain, whether real or imagined, and to stew in their own juices as they conjure up hatred for their fellow human beings, each of whom is made in the image and likeness of the Most Blessed Trinity and for whose salvation we must pray fervently as one of the Spiritual Works of Mercy.
Living in a world that has been deprived of a superabundance of Sanctifying and Actual Graces as a result of the barren liturgical rites of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, most men today are "catechized" by television or the internet or what passes for "entertainment" in popular culture. They are tossed about from one thing to another without having any clear, coherent understanding of they identity as redeemed creatures and that each of us will have to make an accounting of our lives at the moment of our Particular Judgments. Men who lack the Catholic Faith, you see, must descend more and more into a coarseness of life and culture that produces a class of neo-barbarians who are not only at the gates but who are well inside of the fort of the city.
As been noted exhaustively on this site and for more than a decade before that in printed journals (and for decades in my college classrooms), the descent into neo-barbarism just did not happen suddenly. It has been gradual, almost imperceptible at times. Having ridden the shock waves of the Protestant Revolution, which was a violent and very blood revolution against the Divine Plan that God Himself instituted to effect man's return to Him through His Catholic Church as they order their own lives and the laws of their nations in accord with His Deposit of Faith, men descended by steps into theological relativism, religious indifferentism and the worldliness that feeds on a ethos of naturalism and an unbridled licentiousness that passes for what libertarians tell us is "civil liberty."
Among the many factors that contributed to the creation of a religiously indifferent nation out of the British Colonies along the Atlantic coastline in the late-Eighteenth Century was, of course, the influence of Jewish colonists, who introduced Freemasonry to the English colonists. The adversary has long used those who deny the Sacred Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as his singular vessel of perdition to blot out the Holy Name of Jesus from public view.
Writing in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record ninety-three years ago now, that is, in 1929, the late Father Edward Cahill, S.J., the great champion of the Social Reign of Christ the King who wrote The Framework of the Christian State and was a contemporary of Father Denis Fahey, C.S.Sp., provided a good history of the influence of Talmudic influence in Freemasonry.
Father Cahill’s series of articles in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record were subsequently published as a book under the title of Freemasonry and the anti-Christian Movement.
On March 28, 1928, the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office issued an important decision of the Holy See on ‘the nature and purpose of the Association called Friends of Irsael and on the pamphlet entitled Pax super Israel, edited by the directors of the Association. Although ‘many priests, bishops and even cardinal gave their adhesion to this association,’ the Sacred Congregation condemns and completely suppresses it, by reason of ‘its mode of acting and speaking which is out of harmony with the traditional sense of the Church, the mind of the Fathers and even the Sacred liturgy itself.
The secularist Press, which is mostly controlled by the great Jewish financiers, immediately showed its appreciation for the importance of the decree by striving in the decree by striving to misrepresent it as a gesture of disapproval on the part of the Holy See of Catholic anti-masonic writes, whereas the contrary is the case. The decree is an authoritative reassertion of the traditional attitude of the Church towards the Jewish people. The Church desires sincerely the conversion of the Jews to the true Faith. But she cannot compromise with them any more than she can with the Modernists or even with the so-called Anglo-Catholics. Hence, in the present decree, the Holy See takes measures against the Masonic and Jewish infiltrations into the Church, which were being attempted through the medium of the condemned association and pamphlet. On the other hand she also reprobates as contrary to the Christian spirit and teaching Anti-Semitism, properly so-called, just as she reprobates anti-Germanism or any other similar anti-ism that would imply ‘racial or national hatred.’ But to follow the direction of Leo XIII and ‘tear away the mask from Freemasonry and let it be seen as it really is,’ is not anti-Semitism even when Freemasons in question are Jews; and needless to say, the Holy See does not follow the example of the Masonic sectaries in misapplying the term. (Father E. Cahill, S.J., “Freemasonry: VI: The Jewish Element in Freemasonry, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 1929.)
First, Father Cahill pointed out that the Holy Office had suppressed the “Friends of Israel” association because it had a “mode of acting and speaking which is out of harmony with the traditional sense of the Church, the mind of the Fathers and even the Sacred liturgy itself.” Yet it is that the counterfeit church of conciliarism has adopted this very mode of “acting and speaking” in a manner that is “out of harmony with the traditional sense of the Church, the mind of the Fathers and even the Sacred liturgy.” Father Cahill defended Catholic doctrine. The conciliarists promote that which is anti-Christ, placing them in league with the Talmudists, who have long sought to eradicate all mention of the Holy Name of Jesus from public life.
Second, Father Cahill pointed out that the decree of the Holy Office against the Friends of Israel association defended Catholic doctrine concerning the Jews that has been abandoned by the conciliarists, who have termed it “anti-Semitic” even to speak about any necessity of seeking the conversion of the Jews to the true Faith before they die or to oppose their schemes for the further de-Christianization.
Consider the following words once again:
The decree is an authoritative reassertion of the traditional attitude of the Church towards the Jewish people. The Church desires sincerely the conversion of the Jews to the true Faith. But she cannot compromise with them any more than she can with the Modernists or even with the so-called Anglo-Catholics. Hence, in the present decree, the Holy See takes measures against the Masonic and Jewish infiltrations into the Church, which were being attempted through the medium of the condemned association and pamphlet. (Father E. Cahill, S.J., “Freemasonry: VI: The Jewish Element in Freemasonry, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 1929.)
Have the conciliar “popes” sought the conversion of the Jews?
Indeed, we have been by the likes of conciliar revolutionaries that the Catholic Church has no “organized mission” to convert the Jews, who somehow get “saved” all on their own. Putative “popes” have gone into Talmudic synagogues content to be treated as inferiors as they have treated this false religion with respect and esteemed its symbols that belong to the devil himself (see Saint Peter and Anti-Peter.)
Moreover, the conciliar “popes” have indeed compromised with Talmudism and Anglicanism as they have promoted one Modernist precept after another, something that Father Cahill notes is impossible for the Catholic Church to do of her very Divine Constitution.
Why is it so difficult for those in the “resist while recognize” movement to understand and accept these truths.
Third, Father Cahill’s reminder that it is not anti-Semitic to seek the conversion of the Jews or to oppose the schemes of some of their number to blot out the Holy Name of our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and spit on His Sacred Deposit Faith and His Holy Church herself is very similar to one provided by Father Denis Fahey in 1949, eight years after his, Father Cahill’s, death:
As I was not able to bring out this book when it was originally written, it has been laid aside for years. In the meantime, the need for setting forth the full doctrine of the Kingship of Christ has been forcibly brought home to me by the confusion created in minds owing to the use of the term “Anti-Semitism.” The Hitlerite naturalistic or anti-supernatural régime in Germany gave to the world the odious spectacle of a display of Anti-Semitism, that is, of hatred of the Jewish Nation. Yet all the propaganda about that display of Anti-Semitism should not have made Catholics forget the existence of age-long Jewish Naturalism or Anti-Supernaturalism. Forgetfulness of the disorder of Jewish Naturalistic opposition to Christ the King is keeping Catholics blind to the danger that is arising from the clever extension of the term “Anti-Semitism,” with all its war-connotation in the minds of the unthinking, to include any form of opposition to the Jewish Nation’s naturalistic aims. For the leaders of the Jewish Nation, to stand for the rights of Christ the King is logically to be “anti-Semitic.”
In March, 1917, Pope Benedict XV wrote to the Archbishop of Tours: “In the midst of the present upheavals, it is important to repeat to men that by her divine institution the Catholic Church is the only ark of salvation for the human race . . . . Accordingly, it is more seasonable than ever to teach . . . that the truth which liberates, not only individuals, but societies, is supernatural truth in all its fulness and in all its purity, without attenuation, diminution or compromise: in a word, exactly as Our Lord Jesus Christ delivered it to the world.” These sublime words of the Vicar of Christ have nerved me to do all in my power to set forth the opposition of every form of Naturalism, including Jewish Naturalism, to the supernatural Reign of Christ the King. In addition, for over twenty years I have been offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass every year, on the Feasts of the Resurrection, Corpus Christi, SS. Peter and Paul and the Assumption of Our Blessed Mother, for the acceptance by the Jewish Nation of the Divine Plan for order. Thus I have been striving to follow the example of our Divine Master. Blessed Pius X insists that “though Jesus was kind to those who had gone astray, and to sinners, He did not respect their erroneous convictions, however sincere they appeared to be.”the need of combining firmness in the proclamation of the integral truth with loving charity towards those in error is insisted on, even more emphatically, by Pope Pius XI: “Comprehending and merciful charity towards the erring,” he writes, “and even towards the contemptuous, does not mean and can not mean that you renounce in any way the proclaiming of, the insisting on, and the courageous defence of the truth and its free and unhindered application to the realities about you. The first and obvious duty the priest owes to the world about him is service to the truth, the whole truth, the unmasking and refutation of error in whatever form or disguise it conceals itself.”
A day will come when the Jewish Nation will cease to oppose order and will turn in sorrow and repentance to Him Whom they rejected before Pilate. That will be a glorious triumph for the Immaculate Heart of Our Blessed Mother. Until that day dawns, however, their naturalistic opposition to the True Supernatural Order of the world must be exposed and combated. (Father Denis Fahey, Foreword, The Kingship of Christ and the Conversion of the Jewish Nation.)
It is not to “hate” anyone to seek their unconditional conversion to the true Faith or to oppose their schemes to undermine It and to persecute those who defend It despite their own sins and failings. Indeed, it is a Spiritual Work of Mercy to seek with urgency the unconditional of non-Catholics to the true Faith (see (see Chopped Liver No More, To Advocate Christ The King, Nothing Else and Chopped Liver No More Update).
The next passage from Father Cahill’s article in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record provided a history of the Jewish role in Freemasonry in summary form. Although there are contemporary writers who have specialized in matters pertaining to the Talmud and have more expertise in the field than did Father Cahill, it is nevertheless the case that the late Jesuit’s historical summary is very good, providing as it does a readable means to put our current situation in its proper historical frame of reference:
Although the Jewish role in Freemasonry is for many reasons difficult to deal with, some acquaintance with that aspect of the subject is essential for an intelligent grasp of the whole. Hence, anyone that undertakes to convey even a summary idea of Freemasonry cannot afford to omit it. The present writer has made no study of the Jewish colony in Dublin or in Ireland. He knows, however, that the Jews in Ireland are a comparatively small body, although increasing considerably in recent years; and that the old resident Jews have the reputation of being, on the whole, industrious, law-abiding and charitable. He has not had them in mind when writing the present sketch.
It is, however, a common belief among Catholics and others that Freemasonry is somehow associated with modern Judaism. Our present purpose is to discuss how far such a belief is well-founded, an what is the nature between the two. We may say at once that the available evidence points to the following general conclusions:–
(1) That much of the external trappings of Freemasonry, such as its ritual, its terminology, its legends, etc., are of Jewish origin;
(2) that the philosophy or religion of esoteric Freemasonry (that is, of the inner circle and controlling power) is practically identical with the doctrines of the Jewish Cabala, which is the religion or the philosophy of a certain section of the Jews;
(3) that a certain group of Jews, probably very few in number, but of immense influence and power, are leading Freemasons; and
(4) that a somewhat larger group of very influential Jews pursue the same ends as Freemasons, and use similar means, and are at least in close alliance with them.
Hence, although the Jewish element in Freemasonry is of predominant influence, and although it is true that the Masonic Jewish leaders do often exploit for their own evil purposes Jewish solidarity an internationalism, and the age-long antipathy between Judaism and Christianity one cannot on that account justly accuse or condemn the Jewish people as a whole. Indeed, the facts of the case point to the conclusion that the rank and file of the Jews suffer no less, possibly even more, than the Christians from the unscrupulous and altogether wicked activities of its ruling Masonic junta.
A few words on modern Judaism by way of preliminary explanation will be acceptable to those of our readers who are not familiar with the subject. The two main sources of the religious system of modern Judaism are the Talmud and the Cabala (Kabalah). The former, which is founded upon the religious and moral teaching of the Pharisees of Our Lord’s time, is made up principally of the rabbinical interpretations of the law of Moses, and the traditions that have gathered round it. With the vast majority of modern orthodox Jews the Talmud has almost entirely supplanted the Old Testament. B. Lazare, the Jewish apologist, refers to the Talmud as the creator of the Jewish nation, and the mould of the Jewish soul. The Talmud has, in fact, been the principal factor in forming the national character of the modern Jewish nation, and of holding the Jews together as one people.
The Talmudic compilation is deeply impregnated with opposition to Christianity. In medieval times not only was the Talmud forbidden to all Catholics, but the possession of Talmudic books was regarded, before the Protestant revolt, as a criminal offense in most of the States of Europe. The most offending and anti-Christian passages passages of the Talmud are, however, apparently omitted in the ordinary English translations and hand-books; and, probably, are unknown to most Jews brought up and educated in these countries, just as the esoteric teachings and real objects of Freemasonry are unknown to the vast majority of those that adhere to the Masonic sect or lend it their support. (Father E. Cahill, S.J., “Freemasonry: VI: The Jewish Element in Freemasonry, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 1929.)
Jorge Mario Bergoglio reads prayers from the Talmud. He has participated in Talmudic liturgical rites in Jewish synagogues, thus giving his endorsement of a book that his blasphemous of its nature and opposed to the Faith and thus to eternal good of souls and to the right ordering of men in their nations, whose civil leaders are supposed to pursue the common temporal good in light of man’s Last End, the possession of the glory of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity in Heaven.
Even the words of the Old Testament, written in the Divine inspiration of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, matter less than those of the blasphemous Talmud to those who adhere to this false religion that is admired and endorsed by none other than “Pope” Francis” himself.
Father Cahill spent much time explaining the influence of the Kabala on the rise of Freemasonry, which is at the essence of the American founding and also of the Sillonist spirit of conciliarism:
The second main source of the religion of modern Judaism, or at least of a certain section of modern Jews, is the Cabala. The term Cabala (Kabalah) was originally used to indicate that portion of the Mosaic Law which was handed down by tradition, and consigned to writing b the Jewish prophets and others. Since the thirteenth century, however, this ancient use of the term has fallen into desuetude, so that in modern times the Cabala means the colonization of the esoteric or occult doctrines of Judaism. These latter are mainly founded on the Neo-Platonic philosophy and the doctrines of the early Gnostics, and are closely connected with the occult worship of the Eastern sectaries of both ancient and modern times, which have continued since the the early ages of the Christian era and even before that period, to infiltrate through the medium of the rabbinical writings of the Jewish religious system. The philosophic and religious teachings of the Cabala illustrate and explain the strong tendency to occultism and false mysticism, which a section of the Jews have always manifested, and which they and the Freemasons have helped so much to propagate in the modern world.
The whole system of occultism, which is so elusive and difficult to define, is sometimes called Hermeticism, from Hermes, the Greek name of the go of wisdom–partially corresponding to the Latin god Mercury–to whom was ascribed the authorship of the sacred books of Eastern occultism. Hermeticism is commonly taken to include Theosophism, Christian Scientism, Neo-Platonism, Philonic Judaism and Jewish and pagan Cabalism. It is in a large part a revival of the heresies of of the Gnostics, Maniceans, Albigenses, Waldenses, etc., and aims at providing the modern European race with some acceptable substitute for Christianity.
The evidence of a connexion between Freemasonry and certain aspects of Judaism, refer principally to the Calabla and the Cabalistic section of the Jews. That there exists a close affinity between the Cabala and the doctrines and practices of esoteric Freemasonry is clear form what we have written in a previous article of the nature of the latter. One school of writers indeed maintains that Freemasonry is an instrument invented and utilized by the Jewish leaders for the destruction of Christianity. This view of anti-Jewish writers, and many Catholic apologists, hardly accords with well-known facts, and is almost certainly false as regards the origin of Freemasonry. For a long time the Jews were excluded from most of the German, English, and French lodges; and up to the end of the eighteenth century the total number of Jewish Freemasons was quite inconsiderable. Again, the assertion that the real founders of German Illuminism and French Martinism, which are the sources of the worst and most destructive elements in Freemasonry, has not been and, probably, cannot be proved. Elias Ashmole (1617-1646), the celebrated English antiquarian, and the founder of the Oxford Museum to whom is probably due the first introduction of Hermeticism into the English lodges in the seventeenth century, long before the formal inauguration of speculative Freemasonry was not a Jew. Again, it cannot be proved that Weishaupt, or Martinez, Pasqualis, or Joseph Balsamo, commonly known as Cagilostro, were Jews, although to these were large due the Illuminist and Martinist influences in the Freemasonry of the eighteenth century. Even at the present day it is well-known (although the fact does not prove much) that many Masonic lodges refuse to admit Jews, as they fear their dominating influence, and find by experience that Jews, once admitted, soon acquire the mastery of the lodge.
On the other hand, it is certain that the Jewish Cabalistic tradition was one of the principal mediums through which Eastern occultism (which has so many times come to the surface in European history) has been transmitted to modern Europe; and that many, if not all, of the recognized founders of the eighteenth-century Illuminism (including Weishaupt, Pasqualis, and Cagliostro) were initiated into its secrets by Jewish Cabalists or drew their inspiration and their methods from the Jewish esoteric writings. The Jewish apologist, Bernard Lazare, states that ‘there were Cabalistic Jews around the cradle of Freemasonry, as certain rites still in existence conclusively show.’
From Pike’s Morals and Dogma of Freemasonry, which we have already referred to as one of the most authoritative works on Masonic teaching, it is clear that the doctrines of esoteric Freemasonry, on such subjects as the nature of God, and his supposed identity with the universe, the nature of the human soul, the true interpretation of the these subjects contained in the Jewish Cabala. The authoritative works of Ragon, ‘the sacred author’ of Masonry, who was himself a Jew, illustrate the same theme. So do many other Jewish writings.
Are we to wonder [writes the pious Jewish rabbi, Benamozegh] that Judaism has been accused of forming a branch of Freemasonry? It is quite certain that Masonic theology is at root nothing else than Theosophy, and that it corresponds to the theology of the Cabala. Besides, a deep study of the rabbinical movements of the early ages of the Christian era supply numerous proofs that the aggada was the popular form of an esoteric science, which presents, in its methods of initiation, the most striking resemblance to the Masonic system. Those willing to go to the trouble of carefully examining the question of the relations between Judaism and philosophic Freemasonry, Theosophy, and occultism in general, will, we are convinced, lose their superb disdain for the Cabala. They will no longer smile in pity at the suggestion that the Cabalistic theology may have a role to play in the religious transformation of the future.
Besides the existence of the Cabalistic element in Masonic morals and dogma there are numerous other indications which point to the important influence of Judaism on the early formation and development of Freemasonry. We mention a few. The Masonic coat-of-arms still used by the Grand Lodge of England is of Jewish design. Some of the more important legends of Freemasonry, especially the Legend of Hiram, on which much of Masonic rite is founded, are Jewish.’ The technical language, symbolism, and rites of Masonry are full of Jewish ideas and terms. . . . In the Scottish rite, the dates of all the official documents are given according to the Hebrew month and the Jewish era ; and use is made of the older forms of the Jewish alphabet.’ Hence, approved Jewish writers generally recognize that the Masonic ritual is of Jewish origin.
Although during the eighteenth century the number of Jews in the Masonic lodges were few, the prejudice against them was lessened or eliminated as a result of the movement towards Jewish emancipation, which was itself largely due to Liberal and Masonic influence; and since the middle of the nineteenth century the Cabalistic Jewish element has become predominant at least in Continental Freemasonry. Thus, while Jews are still excluded from the so-called ‘Christian’ lodges of Germany, the influence of the latter is now overshadowed by those lodges which admit Jews, and in which the Jewish element more or less prevails. Even in 1900 there were at least 800 such lodges in the German Empire exclusive of the B’ne Berith lodges, which are entirely Jewish. So marked, indeed, is the dominance of the Jewish element in German Freemasonry that the Masonic Journal Latomia (February, 1928) quotes a saying of Ludendorf: ‘The Freemasons are the henchmen of the Jews.’
It was Jews that introduced Freemasonry into the United States of America; and Jews have always been a powerful influence in the American Masonic organizations. Again, the Masonic rite of Mizraim which includes no less than ninety degrees and is, perhaps, the most esoteric and highly elaborated of all the Masonic rites, has been founded by Jews. So also has been the order of B’ne Berith (‘Sons of the Alliance ‘), and several other organizations of a similar type. The Masonic rite of Mizraim belongs mainly to Europe, and some of its lodges are exclusively Jewish. The order of B’ne Berith, which is altogether Jewish, is (or rather was up to some twenty years ago) mainly American, and if not formally and professedly Masonic, bears a striking resemblance to Freemasonry, in its organization and avowed objects, and is in intimate alliance with Masonry.
The indications of a close connexion or working alliance between Freemasonry and important sections of the Jews are innumerable.
Masonry [writes the Jewish Chronicle (October 29, 1889) ] tolerates everything except a narrow clericalism [viz. Catholicisim] and it possesses a special attraction for the Jews. . . . Clericalism has always persecuted Masonry everywhere it can . . . and the spirit of persecution has attracted the Jews towards Masonry by an invisible but potent bond of sympathy. There exists between them a natural alliance against a common enemy, . . . Together they fight, oftentimes with success, against religious fanaticism and racial antipathies. In London there are no less than five Jewish lodges. There are some also at Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester.
It is nearly half a century ago since a well-known British review called attention to the dominant influence of the Jews, not only in politics, the press, and international finance, but also in the revolutionary outbreaks of the century.
The influence of the Jews at the present time is more noticeable than ever. That they are at the head of European capitalism, we are all aware. … In politics many of the Jews are in the front rank. . . . That their excessive wealth, used as it has been, acts as a solvent influence in modern society cannot be questioned. . . . But while on the one hand the Jews are thus beyond dispute the leaders of the autocracy of Europe . . . another section of the same race form the leaders of that revolutionary propaganda which is making way against that very capitalist class, representing their own fellow Jews. Jews, more than any other men . . . are acting as the leaders in the revolutionary movement which I have endeavoured to trace. (Father E. Cahill, S.J., “Freemasonry: VI: The Jewish Element in Freemasonry, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 1929.)
Father Cahill was merely echoing in the highlighted material at the end of this lengthy passage what others had said before him. Among those who were astute enough and courageous enough to point out the role of the Universal Israelite Alliance to shape electoral politics, public policy, civil law, education and culture in the United States of America were two French clerics, Louis Edouard “Cardinal” Pie, who was the Bishop of Poitiers, France, from May 23, 1849, to the time of his death on May 18, 1880, and Monsignor Henri Delassus.
To Cardinal Pie, first as quoted in Father Théotimede Saint Just’s book that was translated from French into English by Mr. Daniel Leonardi and published by the Catholic Action Center:
Accordingly, the Bishop of Poitiers had always fought against THE SEPARATION OF Church and State. Moreover, he opposed all separations, that of reason and faith, of nature and grace, of natural religion and revealed religion, the separation of the philosopher and the Christian, of private man and public man. He saw in all these [separations] a resurgence of Manichean dualism and he had fought all these with, the supreme argument, the law formed by Christ. Therefore, it is in all truth, writing to [Minister of the Interior] the Count of Presigny, that he could render this testimony:
‘We have nothing in common with the theorists of disunion and opposition of two orders, temporal and spiritual, natural and supernatural. We struggle, on the contrary, with all our strength against these doctrines of separation which is leading to the denial of religion itself and of revealed religion.'”
Fr. de St. Just returns at this point and introduces us to what is perhaps Msgr. Pie’s strongest language, with regard to this entire subject:
“To this doctrine of the Church, which Msgr. Pie brought to the mind of the rulers of nations, the liberals would oppose acts favoring separation.
“Certain countries, Belgium and America, for example, haven’t they proclaimed the separation of Church and State, and doesn’t the Church enjoy a more complete liberty under such a system?”
Cardinal Pie responded firmly to this question:
‘THE AMERICAN AND BELGIUM SYSTEM, this system of philosophical-political indifference, shall eternally be a bastard system” (pp. 122-124 in Fr. de St. Just’s book) (Selected Writings of Selected Writings of Cardinal Pie of Poitiers, Catholic Action Resource Center, Orlando, Florida, October, 2007, pp. 21-23.)
Echoing Cardinal Pie and anticipating the work of Fathers Cahill and Fahey in Ireland, Monsignor Henri Delassus saw the direction connection between Talmudism and the rot the modern religiously indifferentist civil state of Modernity that has been embraced with such zeal by the conciliar “popes,” including Jorge Mario Bergoglio.
As Monsignor Delassus demonstrated, the spirit of Father Isaac Thomas Hecker, the founder of the Society of Saint Paul, and other Americanists fit very well into the goals of Talmudic Judaism to undermine the Faith of individual Catholics so that their first loyalties would be to the false concepts of Modernity, including Americanism, and then to their Church, which, if all went according to the plan, would itself one day “adopt” the false concepts of Modernity and make its “peace” with the revolutions of 1776 and 1789:
How so? Fr. Hecker tells us: “A call is made to men who possess this new synthesis of truth who are able to solve the problems of eliminating antagonisms, of being reconciled with the need of our era; of men who will take hold of all the aspirations of modern genius effected by science, of social activity, of politics, of spirituality (accordingly, spirituality itself would be called upon to defend the Church and to procure her universal triumph), of religion, and of the transformation of everything by means of the defense and universal triumph for the Church” (The Life of Fr. Hecker.)
Those who are not made aware of the world’s current direction by the information that they derive from the newspaper–and this is the vast majority–will undoubtedly be surprised, in speaking to them of “Americanism” and of an “American Catholicism,” we begin by calling their attention to the “Universal Israelite Alliance,” entering through there upon a question, the Jewish Question, that presently fascinates the world and that is studied under every point of view, but which does not take into account, appears to be removed from, American Catholicism. This is nevertheless not imaginary on our part. The Universal Israelite Alliance is the center, the home, the bond of the antichristian conspiracy, by which Americanism seems to us to provide a support that it is not aware of which would not be given if it were understood and upon which this book is determined to direct its attention …
One of the most malicious men of this [19th] century, the Jew [Jules Isaac] Cremieux, who was made grand Master of the French Grand Orient, who profited by the Revolution of 1848 [in France] by being raised to the Ministry of Justice, and by the disasters of 1870 which gave French citizenship to all the Jews of Algeria, founded in 1860 a cosmopolitan society which he endowed with the name of Universal Israelite Alliance. This association is not, as its name would have one believe, one of international Jewry, a bond to better facilitate links between Jews scattered around the surface of the globe; its aims bear upon something much more higher. It is an association open to all men without distinction of nationality nor of religion, under the high direction of Israel.
In order to be convinced of this, it is sufficient to open the publication that represents it, The Israelite Archives. “The Universal Israelite Alliance,” it says there (xxx, pp. 514-515, for the year 1861), “must enter into all religions as it has penetrated all countries. I call to our association the brothers of every religion, that they would come to us! … That enlightened men of all cults will unite themselves with this Universal Israelite Alliance” (ibid.) And why? “To break down the barriers which separate that which ONE DAY MUST BE UNITED. See there, Messieurs, the beauty, the great mission of Our Universal Israelite Alliance“ (ibid.)
Profiting from their dispersion over every point of the globe, the Jews wish to be in humanity as a sort of leaven, in order to make of human society, presently divided into nations and various religions, “one sole and solid fraternity,”–the Israelite Archives say it less hypocritically: “A Jerusalem of new order, a holy extension from the East to the West, that must EXIT IN ITSELF in the double city of the Caesars and the Popes” (XXV, PP. 600-651, 1861) …
The Jewish race “Jerusalem” intends to establish its reign over the entire world. “East and West,” by establishing its authority upon the ruins of all existing powers. “Caesars and Popes.” All authority must disappear in order to make way for the domination of Juda, which “will take the place” of all the existing powers in the spiritual order as well as in the temporal order …
… We see here that other idea advanced, the idea of the United States of Europe, parallel to the United States of America …
Here again, one could compare a strange accord between the ideas of the Americanists and the tendencies of those who obey the promptings given by the Universal Israelite Alliance. A most ardent promoter of Americanism, in a discourse given in 1894 to the International Scientific Congress of Catholics at Brussels, had this to say:
“We have thought that the opportunity has been provided us of giving to the ENTIRE WORLD a great lesson. When we study the map of Europe, we see there, marks of small divisions. Lines traversing these maps in every sense. They do not indicate only territorial divisions, they signify also: jealousy, hatred, hostility, divisions of hearts, that commits God knows how many millions of armed men for the destruction of the world. Thus, from all these nations, Providence has allowed immigration among us. All nations find themselves at home here [in the USA]; they have been living among themselves, fraternally, without any hostility. This is the privilege that God has granted to America, that of destroying the traditions of national jealousies that of that you have perpetuated in Europe, by melting them down in America unity.”
Read on: “Americanism” [this pompous Americanist continues] “has received from God the mission of giving to the entire world this lesson: the time has come to put an end to the past: abolish frontiers, place all the people in the melting pot of the rights of man by the molding of united humanity, as we [in America] have been founded, we emigrants from all countries, in American unity. And peace shall reign in the world.”
Yes, the peace of the slave under the tyranny of one man or of one race.
As of all the other ideas of the Americanists, that of he abolition of frontiers seems to appeal to our Christian democrats. . . .
So then, if the Talmudists [Orthodox Jews] differ from the liberals [Reform Jews], it is only upon knowing which is the better means to employ in order to accomplish the mission that Israel claims to have received … The Talmudists continue to await a messiah of flesh and bone, who will make them masters of the universe; the liberals say that they do not have any other messiah to expect than the Revolution, “the principles” of which are dissolving of all society and preparing it for their rule. In order to spread these modern “principles,” in order to have them bring about the fruits that they are awaiting, they deem it necessary to separate themselves from those observances to which their fathers had been attached, when they believed that their fidelity would hasten the coming of the personal messiah. This is a cumbersome burden, and what’s more the Jew of this old way could not “make himself acceptable.” He would nevertheless make himself acceptable in the eyes of the people among whom he wished to exercise a “proselytization.”
And in what does this conversion consist? Is it to encourage the faithful of various religions to enter into Judaism? The Jews have never had the thought of making a conversion of this sort; they are a people a race apart, “the premier aristocracy of the world,” the only ones who are truly men; they would never hear of elevating beings such as those who are human only in appearance …
In the first place [The Universal Israelite Alliance] acts upon kings and parliaments in order to apply pressure on them, “this singular, indefatigable influence” that [Gourgenot] des Mousseaux already noted in 1869 [see, The Jew, Judaism and The Judaization of the Christian People, by Mousseaux].
What over and above does it demand? LAICIZATION.
There is no person, who is not blind, who cannot fail to see the prodigious efforts that are being made over the last century towards secularization, that is to say, efforts to remove all religious character from everywhere and everyone. Already, on the very origin of the Revolution, [Count Joseph] de Maistre, had remarked that his had been its essential character. “Examine,” he said, “all the enterprises of this century, you have to see (these men of the Revolution) constantly occupied in the separation from divinity.” It would take too long to show here the many aspects under which the question of laicization or secularization is presented: it spreads itself among all, and in every governmental organ, accordingly, all the forces of society are employed in the success of this work …
Could Americanism, itself also, have come to lend itself to this work that is certainly not intentional? This is what we have already said is to be feared. It is well to examine this thing more closely.
What is certain, what is incontestable, is that between the Jewish spirit and the Americanist spirit there is a point of contact with the principles of ’89 [i.e., the principles of the French Revolution].
We have heard the Jews proclaim and declare the course they are drawing. For the Americans their social and even religious state rests entirely upon these principles; they highly praise them, and the Americanists themselves would have us that “American ideas are those in which GOD wants all the civilized people of our time to be at home.” So they conscientiously make of themselves evangelists.” ( Monsignor Henri Delassus, Americanism and the Anti-Christian Conspiracy, translated by Mr. Daniel Leonardi and published by Mr. Hugh Akins of Catholic Action Resources Center, Orlando, Florida, October, 2007–first printing in France, 1899, pp. 2-8.)
Those who deny the role of the “American experience” in serving as an essential building block of conciliarism’s “reconciliation” with a “new world order” is choosing to believe in nationalistic myths rather than the cold, hard facts as brought out by the likes of Fathers Edward Cahill and Denis Fahey in Ireland and Louis Edouard “Cardinal” Pie, Monsignor Henri Delassus and Father Theotime de Just in France. Anyone who does this is also turning a blind eye to the fact that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is as much as an end product of the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic spirit of Americanism that he will be celebrating in just two days in Jordan and Israel.
While it is true, as Father Edward Cahill, S.J., pointed out in his series on Freemasonry in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record eighty-five years ago now, that not all those who adhere to Judaism are responsible for this warfare against the true teachings of the Catholic Church or support the prevailing evils of the day, we must remember that unbelief in the Sacred Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is a sin. Those who persist in unbelief in the Catholic Faith must be reminded that their own false beliefs, whether they be religious or philosophical or both, cannot save their souls or serve as any kind of foundation for true social order within countries or peace among them.
Saint Thomas Aquinas taught us in his Summa Theologica that unbelievers do not merit anything before God for their good works and thus cannot please Him:
Objection 1. It would seem that each act of an unbeliever is a sin. Because a gloss on Romans 14:23, “All that is not of faith is sin,” says: “The whole life of unbelievers is a sin.” Now the life of unbelievers consists of their actions. Therefore every action of an unbeliever is a sin.
Objection 2. Further, faith directs the intention. Now there can be no good save what comes from a right intention. Therefore, among unbelievers, no action can be good.
Objection 3. Further, when that which precedes is corrupted, that which follows is corrupted also. Now an act of faith precedes the acts of all the virtues. Therefore, since there is no act of faith in unbelievers, they can do no good work, but sin in every action of theirs.
On the contrary, It is said of Cornelius, while yet an unbeliever (Acts 10:4-31), that his alms were acceptable to God. Therefore not every action of an unbeliever is a sin, but some of his actions are good.
I answer that, As stated above (I-II, 85, 2,4) mortal sin takes away sanctifying grace, but does not wholly corrupt the good of nature. Since therefore, unbelief is a mortal sin, unbelievers are without grace indeed, yet some good of nature remains in them. Consequently it is evident that unbelievers cannot do those good works which proceed from grace, viz. meritorious works; yet they can, to a certain extent, do those good works for which the good of nature suffices.
Hence it does not follow that they sin in everything they do; but whenever they do anything out of their unbelief, then they sin. For even as one who has the faith, can commit an actual sin, venial or even mortal, which he does not refer to the end of faith, so too, an unbeliever can do a good deed in a matter which he does not refer to the end of his unbelief.
Reply to Objection 1. The words quoted must be taken to mean either that the life of unbelievers cannot be sinless, since without faith no sin is taken away, or that whatever they do out of unbelief, is a sin. Hence the same authority adds: “Because every one that lives or acts according to his unbelief, sins grievously.”
Reply to Objection 2. Faith directs the intention with regard to the supernatural last end: but even the light of natural reason can direct the intention in respect of a connatural good.
Reply to Objection 3. Unbelief does not so wholly destroy natural reason in unbelievers, but that some knowledge of the truth remains in them, whereby they are able to do deeds that are generically good. With regard, however, to Cornelius, it is to be observed that he was not an unbeliever, else his works would not have been acceptable to God, whom none can please without faith. Now he had implicit faith, as the truth of the Gospel was not yet made manifest: hence Peter was sent to him to give him fuller instruction in the faith. (Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Question 10, Article 4.)
Judeo-Masonry is the celebration of agnosticism and religious indifferentism as the foundation for personal happiness and social order
Father Edward Cahill made the same point in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record in those series of articles that were published later as Freemasonry and the anti-Christian Movement:
We have already referred to Rationalism and Hermeticism (including Theosophy, Christian Scientism, Spiritism, etc.) as characteristic of the Masonic religion and philosophy, These, which are put forward as a substitute for real religion, are fast becoming more and more widespread in England and throughout the English-speaking world. They are the most powerful dissolvents of whatever elements of true Christianity are being attempted. This element is perhaps the most deadly and dangerous aspect of the whole Masonic movement; for it cuts deeper than anything into Christian life, whose very foundation it attacks.
The immediate aim of the practical policy of Freemasonry is to make its naturalistic principles effective in the lives of the people; and first of all to enforce them in every detail of public life. Hence its political and social programme includes:
(1) The banishment of religion from all departments of government, and from all public institutions; and as a mark of the triumph of this policy, the removal of the Crucifix and all religious emblems from the legislative assemblies, the courts of justice, the public hospitals, the schools and university colleges, etc. (Father Edward Cahill, S.J., Freemasonry and the anti-Christian Movement, Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged, published originally by M. H. Gill and Son, Ltd., in Dublin, Ireland, 1930, and republished by Kessinger Legacy Reprints, pp. 156-157.)
It is very telling that the conciliar revolutionaries have applauded these “developments” as most of their own colleges and universities have divested themselves of official control of what is purported to be the Catholic Church and have removed the Crucifix and other religious emblems from most of their classrooms. Formerly Catholic hospitals have done the same. Indeed, many of them, participating fully in the medical industry’s manufactured, money-making myth of “brain death”), have merged with secular corporations. And most Catholics in public life are fully supportive of various evils under cover of the civil law, and none of them is reprobated by Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who, quite instead, praises those of them that he meets as “servants of the poor.”
To return to Father Cahill’s enumeration of the Judeo-Masonic program:
(2) The secularization of marriage.
(3) The establishment of a State system of so-called education which, at least in its primary stages, will be obligatory and conducted by the laity.
(4) Complete freedom of worship (at least for all except the true one.) (Father Edward Cahill, S.J., Freemasonry and the anti-Christian Movement, Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged, published originally by M. H. Gill and Son, Ltd., in Dublin, Ireland, 1930, and republished by Kessinger Legacy Reprints, p. 157.)
To the final two points of the Judeo-Masonic program as outlined by Father Edward Cahill:
(5) Unrestrained liberty of the Press even in the propagation of irreligious doctrines and of principles subversive of morality; similar freedom for the stage, the cinema, and all manner of public activities, even when injurious to the public interest, such as the operation of the betting and gambling agencies, the drink traffic, etc.
(6) The elimination of all distinction between the sexes in education and in all departments of public life and the promotion or encouragement of radical feminism.
The same programme usually includes or favours a (so-called) Democratic or Republican form of government, indiscriminate universal suffrage, and the centralization of political and administrative authority in the hands of a bureaucracy. It is opposed on the other hand to all to the national distinctions which are associated with the Christian virtue of patriotism, to the ideal of strongly organized rural communities settled permanently on the land; and finally to the organization of society in classes bound together by ties of common interest and mutual service. Hence its policy tends towards commercialism, a false internationalism and extreme individualism.
It is clear that in a social system organized according to these Masonic ideals, the masses of the people, while nominally free, and in theory the source of all authority in the State, would inevitably become degraded and enslaved. Demoralized by indulgence, deprived of the guidance and help which Christian principles give, isolated and unorganized, mostly bereft of permanent property, having a smattering of literacy, but without real education, they would have little or no power of resistance against the tyranny of bureaucracies or financial combines controlling the Press and the economic life of the country. The substantial freedom, prosperity, and true civilization which accompany or result from the Christian regime would give way to social conditions akin to those of pre-Christian Rome. (Father Edward Cahill, S.J., Freemasonry and the anti-Christian Movement, Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged, published originally by M. H. Gill and Son, Ltd., in Dublin, Ireland, 1930, and republished by Kessinger Legacy Reprints, pp. 157-159.)
Nothing that I said in college classrooms between 1974 and 2007 (and for a brief time in the Fall of 2014) or in campaigns for public office or in lectures around the nation or wrote in various publications or have written on this site contains an ounce of originality concerning the state of Western civilization as it spirals into the lowest reaches of the abyss possible, making ancient Rome seem truly tame by way of comparison. We have been given the prescient insights of such giants of Catholic scholarship as Fathers Edward Cahill and Denis Fahey in Ireland and defenders of the immutable Catholic doctrine of the Social Reign of Christ the King as Louis Edouard “Cardinal” Pie, Monsignor Henri Delassus and Father Theotime de Just in France.
The Protestant and Judeo-Masonic ethos that is at the heart of the American founding and has precipitated many errors and the conflicts between false opposites of naturalism ever since was described as follows by William Thomas Walsh in Characters of the Inquisition:
(1) The isolation of the human soul from God. The indifference and godlessness of our day are directly traceable to the triumph of Manicheanism under the guise of Sixteenth Century Protestantism. Many thoughtful Protestants are now beginning to see that the Revolt inflicted a ghastly wound upon Christianity without adding anything to it. Such positive Christian elements as the Reformers taught were already in Catholicism. As for the aberrations – Luther's doctrine of grace, Calvin's predestination – how many who call themselves Protestants today believe in the divinity of Christ; a Methodist will say he believes in the existence of some vague Life Force, not a personal God. With each generation the descendants of the men and women who were led from the Catholic fold by plausible reformers promising them primitive Christianity, become less and less concerned with any religion, and more the prey of Communism, Fascism or some other panacea with new false hopes of creating something permanently good on the frail structure of human nature alone. These will not even listen to the ancient wisdom of the Catholic Church; as Mr. Chesterton wrote somewhere, “They are tired of hearing what they have never heard.”
(2) Moral confusion and nihilism. There is and can be no objective and eternal standard of conduct, except that of Christ, as interpreted by His Church. All the old sins and follies that the Church began to drive into exterior darkness two thousand years ago, have come back to destroy the peace of individuals and the harmony of society. Divorce is destroying the family, murder the individual. The free love of the Beghards and the Alumbrados is corrupting the young. What is the prevalent craze for self-destruction but a manifestation of the old Manichean despair of life? And what is the fatal race-suicide known euphemistically as “birth control” but the old nastiness of the Manichees, born of cowardice, sensuality, distrust of life itself and the Author of life? Usury, which the medieval schoolmen called theft, and capitalism, which in its reprehensible form they identified as one of the seven deadly sins (greed), are defended by dull college professors in the name of economic law; while the enslaved masses everywhere pay tribute to the modern Mammon.
(3) Intellectual confusion. The Catholic Church speaks with authority in our world in defense of the human reason against a thousand sophistries having their origin in obscure feelings or prejudices. It has become the fashion in certain academic circles to speak disdainfully of logic itself, and of the law of cause and effect, as if these were relics of medieval barbarism. It was not merely a coincidence that a Manichean thought, or rather feeling has appeared extensively in our literature, and in some of the best of it, wherever the Protestant Revolt has prepared for the return of darkness and slavery. Consider the Manichean attitudes in some of Thomas Hardy's work – especially in Jude the Obscure, in The Return of the Native, and in that frightful sneer at the end of Tess; in Ibsen's Master Builder and Hedda Gabler; in Shelley's Defense of Poetry; in the Autobiography of Mark Twain; in such plays as the Piper of Josephine Preston Peabody, The Scarecrow of Percy Mackaye, and a great deal of O'Neill's work; even in that calm Victorian, Tennyson, who puts into the mouth of a Catholic King a sentiment that would have set Bernard Gui on the trail of any Albigensian:
“For why is all around us here,
As if some lesser god has made the world,
but had not force to make it as he would,
Until the High God enter from beyond . . .?”
Not to press the point too far – for some liberty must be allowed the facies of poets! – this and much more that could be mentioned is clearly symptomatic of the sickness which afflicts a world which will not turn to Christ.
(4) Totalitarianism. Is not the present evolution of government a retrogression toward heresies that the medieval Inquisitors combatted with all their might? Communism, first propagated by the Freemasons on the ruins of Protestantism, finally set up in Russia the absolute state which the Fraticelli had invoked (in so far as the state of science and communications would permit them to envisage it): it was a perversion also of their concept of primitive Christianity, without private property. The Nazi State, set up partly in imitation of Mussolini's Fascism, as a natural reaction to Communism, had also another parentage. The ideal of the omnipotent absolute state, for whose sake the individual exists, was expressed in very similar terms on behalf of Kaiserism by Bernhardi, in 1911; and Bernhadi's teacher was Treitchke, who in turn acknowledged his indebtedness to Martin Luther. (I have developed this idea further in an article published in The Sign, with quotations from Luther and others, in February, 1940.) Thus in two different directions we trace the origins of the Totalitarian State, toward which, by imitation or reaction, the governments of the whole world are tending, to breaches made by medieval heretics in the walls of the City of God, in despite of the watchdogs of the Inquisition.
The list could be extended. All the evils that the Inquisition sought to repress, and did in great measure repress, have returned to the modern world, grown great and ravening, to feed upon our children. What then of the evils incidental to the Inquisition itself – torture, loss of liberty and even life, occasional deceit and hypocracy? Are we better in those regards? Can anyone think of the torture cells maintained by the Reds in Spain in 1936-7 to drive their victims mad, (the cells constructed by the “Loyalist” Reds “were described as hollow cement blocks four feet height and containing a cement chair and bed, built in a slanting position so that it was impossible for a prisoner to sit or lie down for more than a minute at a time. Raised cement blocks were arranged in a crazy-quilt fashion on the floor to prevent prisoners from standing up. The prosecutor (in the Cik trial) charged that the Loyalists placed rings in the eyelids of prisoners to keep them open in the glare of powerful lights. Some of the witnesses testified that the prisoners were denied food and water and were flogged, sometimes while suspended head down from the ceiling or while cold water was showered upon them. Witnesses said the cells were pained with hundreds of yellow spots, broad black lines and scores of black and white cubes.” – Associated Press, dispatch from Barcelona, June 13, 1939, published in the New York Sun and other newspapers, Torquemada would have shrunk from the very idea of such diabolical ingenuity.) of the unspeakable butcheries of civilians and priests by both Germans and Russians in Poland in 1939, of the unrestrained villainy of modern warfare, of all our nightmare of hypocrisy, abortion, child-suicide, unpunished murder, and what is worse even that all these monstrosities, disdain for the Deity Himself, without wondering whether we have really progressed to a point where we can look patronizingly upon the memory of a Torquemada?
All the worst miseries which men everywhere endure today, while they begin “withering away for fear and expectations of what shall come? – famine and pestilence and civil wars whose shadows may already be discerned on the dim walls of the futre – all these have been foretold by the Popes of modern tomes, on after another pointing out the causes that must lead to such effects, and pleading with mankind to turn away from them to the only possible remedy, held forth by Christ in the Catholic Church. Against all the progressive steps in the disintegration of the European Order, from the Manichees to the Communists and other state worshippers, The Vicars of Christ have uttered solemn and deliberate warnings, based upon ample information. Very soon after the reorganization of the Freemasonry by the Grand Lodge of England, in Spain, the situation was clearly seen at Rome; and in 1738, Pope Clement XII uttered the first formal denunciation of this particular heresy, this oriental dissolvent in modern guise. “If they were not doing evil, they would not fear the light,” he said of all societies, without any exception, of the Masonic type or affiliation. He forbade Catholics to join them, favor, support, shelter, or defend them in any way, or even to receive the members into their homes. Any Catholic so doing was excommunicated by the very fact, and the ban could be removed only by the Pope himself, save in the danger of death. This, as we have seen, did not deter vain, ambitious or stupid Catholics, even among the clergy here and there, from being drawn into an organization which pretended to be social and philanthropic, and masked its real aims and nature from all its neophytes, from all except a few initiates. The Popes of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries continued to raise their voices against the stealthy advances of this mystery of iniquity. Pius XII accused the Freemasons of being the chief causes of the revolutionary upheavals (antichristian in their direction) of Europe. Gregory XVI said they were guilty of sacrilege, infamy and blasphemy, and promoted heresy and revolution. Pius IX applied to them the words that Christ addressed to the scribes and pharisees who sought His destruction, “You are of your father the devil, and the works of your father you will do.” He called them the wolves in sheep's clothing against whom Our Lord and the Apostles had warned the first Christians. In another letter he referred to them as “the Synagogue of Satan . . . whose object is to blot out the Church of Christ, were it possible from the face of the Universe.” Renewing the condemnations of his predecessors, he explicitly included Freemasons in America “and in whatever part of the world they may be.”
Pope Leo XIII warned the world that Freemasonry was the real source and center of Communist and Atheist propaganda. “In this insane and wicked endeavor,” he wrote, “we may almost see the implacable hatred and spirit of revenge with which Satan himself is inflamed against Jesus Christ.” In that same magnificent encyclical he cried out to all Catholics, laymen as well as priests, to “tear the mask off the face? Of the hidden menace. If not, he said, “the ruin and overthrow of all things must necessarily follow.: (Encyclical, Humanum genus, 1884.)
This tremendous prophecy, deliberately uttered by the Vicar of Christ, and now being fulfilled with terrible literalness as the flimsy structure built of the sands of the great apostacy of the Sixteenth Century comes crashing down about us, has of course been generally disregarded by the world, as the prophecies of Christ were disregarded. Other profound observations from Leo and his successors have met the same characteristically Christian fate; nevertheless they remain as truth.
It was Pius XI who pointed out the close spiritual affinity of Liberalism and Socialism, even when they waged a sham battle across the arena of the world. “Let us bear in mind,” he wrote in Quadragesimo Anno, “that the parent of this cultural Socialism was Liberalism, and that its offspring will be Bolshevism.” He had no more regard for one of these antichristian aberrations than for the other. Liberalism, he said, had shown as early as 1891 “its utter impotence to find a right solution of the social question,” while Socialism “would have exposed human society to still graver dangers by offering a remedy much more disastrous than the evil it designed to cure.” (Quadragesimo Anno, 1931)
This great Pope remarked that since the time of Leo XIII the “capitalistic economic regime” had “penetrated everywhere”; and that:
“It is patent that in our days not alone is wealth accumulated, but immense power and despotic economic domination are concentrated in the hands of a few, and that those few are frequently not the owners, but only the trustees and directors of invested funds, who administer them at their good pleasure. This power becomes particularly irresistible when exercises by those who, because they hold and control money, are able also to govern credit and determine its allotment, for that reason supplying, so to speak, the lifeblood to the entire economic body, and grasping, as it were, in their hands the very soul of production, so that no one dare breathe against their will. This accumulation of power, the characteristic note of the modern economic order, is a natural result of limitless free competition which permits the survival of those only who are the strongest, which often means those who fight most relentlessly, who pay least heed to the dictates of conscience. This concentration of power has led to a threefold struggle for domination. First, there is the struggle for dictatorship in the economic sphere itself; then, the fierce battle to acquire control of the state, so that its resources and authority may be abused in the economic struggles. Finally, the clash between states themselves. . . The state, which should be the supreme arbiter, ruling in kingly fashion far above all party contention, intent only upon justice and the common good, has become instead a slave, bound over to the service of human passion and greed.” (Quadragesimo Anno, 1931)
Elsewhere, of course, Pius condemned the totalitarian theory which, reacting against the evil here described, rushed to the opposite extreme, and erroneously hald that the individual existed for the benefit of the state. None of these panaceas could reach the center of the disorder; they were all, inf fact, so many forms of Socialism, one fighting the other, but all tending toward a common end. With characteristic acuteness, Pius noticed that since the time of Leo XIII Socialism had broken up into various forms, of which he condemned even the most moderate.
“The question arises, or is unwarrantably proposed in certain quarters, whether the principles of Christian truth also could not be somewhat moderated and attenuated, so as to meet Socialism, as it were, halfway upon a common ground. Some are engaged by the empty hope of gaining Socialists in this way to our cause. But such hope are vain. Those who wish to be apostles among the Socialists should preach the Christian truth whole and entire, openly and sincerely, without any connivance with error. If they wish in truth to be heralds of the Gospel, let them convince Socialists that their demands, in so far as they are just, are defended much more cogently by the principles of Christian faith, and are promoted much more efficaciously by the power of Christian charity . . . Whether Socialism be considered as a doctrine or as an historical fact, or as a movement, if it really remain socialism, it cannot be brought into harmony with the dogmas of the Catholic Church, even after it has yielded to truth and justice in the points. We have mentioned; the reason being that it conceives human society in a way utterly alien to Christian truth.
“According to Christian doctrine, Man, endowed with a social nature, is place here on earth in order that he may spend his life in society, and under authority ordained by God, that he may develop and evolve to the full all his faculties to the praise and glory of his Creator; and that, by fulfilling faithfully the duties of his station, he may attain to temporal and eternal happiness. Socialism, on the contrary, entirely ignorant of or unconcerned about his sublime end both of individuals and of society, affirms that living in community was instituted merely for the sake of advantages which it brings to mankind. Goods are produced more efficiently by a suitable distribution of labor than by the scattered efforts of individuals. Hence the Socialist argue that economic production, of which they see only the material side, must necessarily be carried on collectively, and that because of this necessity men must surrender and submit themselves wholly to society with a view to the production of wealth. Indeed, the possession of the greatest possible amount of temporal goods is esteemed so highly, that man's higher goods, not excepting liberty must, they claim, be subordinated and even sacrificed to the exigencies of efficient production. They affirm that the loss of human dignity, which result from these socialized methods of production, will be easily compensated for by the abundance of good produced in common and accring to the individual who can turn them at his will to the comforts and culture of life. Society, therefore, as the Socialist conceives it, is, on the one hand, impossible and unthinkable without the use of compulsion of the most excessive kind: on the other it fosters a false liberty, since in such a scheme no place if found for true social authority, which is not based on temporal and material advantages, but descends from God alone, the Creator and Last End of all things. If, like all errors, Socialism, contains a certain element of truth (and this founded upon a doctrine of human society peculiarly its own, which is opposed to true Christianity . . . No one can be at the same time a sincere Catholic and a true Socialist." (Quadragesimo Anno, 1931)
Since Pius XI wrote those words in 1931, the nations of the world generally have taken long steps toward various forms of Socialism which, however different they appeared on first view, are more and more revealing themselves as essentially the same. Communism, the most radical and patently godless form was not too remote ideologically from its pretended rival Nazi-Socialism, to lie down beside it in the same foul nest, when it suited both to beget a second great war. Other nations, loving freedom, have been conquered and drawn into the two Socialist orbits. Still others have imitated Socialist regimes by reaction, or by military necessity. Few have been able to maintain fully the sacredness of human personality. The tiny nations of Portugal and Ireland, both thoroughly Catholic, are glorious exceptions. Of Spain, I have high hopes; may the Catholic spirit of General Franco prevail, and not certain others, very different and very crafty, which still exist in the country and even in high places, hungry for power. England, while fighting Hitler, has kept a friendly hand mysteriously outstretched toward his partner, Stalin; and whatever the outcome of the present war, is likely to emerge from it shackled to some form of Socialism.
Here in the United States Socialism has made more cautious but not the less evident gains. It is rather amusing, and at the same time depressing, to see that likable Socialist Mr. Norman Thomas denouncing both Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Wilkie as champions of peace-time conscription, which he says (and I think rightly) must lead toward dictatorship, and to realize at the same time that both these gentlemen are fundamentally (that is to say spiritually) as Socialistic as he is. If we judge not by what a man says he is or even believes he is, but by the antithesis set up by Pope Pius XI as a test of spirits, this conclusion becomes inescapable. Mr. Roosevelt has tried to save the country by curtailing production. Mr. Wilkie proposes to do it by speeding up curtailing production, Yet both these Liberals, as they proudly call themselves, are interested primarily in production; in the material, in the things of this world. It is difficult, of course, to see how a politician could wholly free himself from such concerns, and I am not criticising either, or discussing any issues, political or economic, between them – whoever is elected will be entitled to our obedience, under the Constitution, and no doubt, will do his best according to his lights. I would only suggest that neither has the lights necessary to solve the social problem. (It is true that both have spoken reverently in public of Divine Providence; but so, for that matter has Hitler; so have the politicians of every country, except godless Russian.) Not too much must be expected from these well-meaning statesmen. They are children of a Liberalism evolving rapidly into Socialism. Both are high in the ranks of a secret society proscribed and abhorred by the Catholic Church and denounced by Pope Leo XIII as the true source of Socialism and Communism, and the general corruption of European and world society. They are servants of the same invisible masters, to whose obedience they are bound by oaths – masters who may not even be in America, but in Europe or Asia; masters of whose exact identity they may themselves be ignorant. When they speak of “Democracy,” one must remember this background, and the fact that the elastic word has been used by many Liberals to include even the tyranny of Soviet Russia. Can Democracy be anything but a farce among men, when some of them, including the most influential, belong to a secret society whose real aims and principles have been repeatedly disclosed as political and anti-Christian? The French Catholics, in the sad clarifying light of catastrophe, have recently found the answer to this question. As Our Holy Father Pope Pius XII said in welcoming the French Ambassador after the tragedy of last summer, “Like lightening which flashes through heavy clouds, the devastating lights of war . . . have torn from the eyes of all careful and sincere observers that veil of prejudices which for half a century the voice of the Church, and especially the reiterated warnings of the last Popes, Our venerated predecessors, did not succeed in penetrating . . . May the lessons of this bitter period in acts which permit us to hope in the future for a revival of Christian spirit, particularly in the education of youth . . .” and “the creation of a new Christian order . . . When will this desired hour arrive? God preserves the secret of it; but We beseech Him to hasten its advent.”
All this is part of a universal conflict between the church of Christ and the Prince of This World. All other conflicts are either subsidiary to this or camouflages for it. Just now there seems to be a deadly strife between international capitalism, intrenched in the United States and gradually leading this country toward a State Socialism or (what amounts to the same thing) toward a State Capitalism, and on the other side, the seemingly more godless and godless forms of Socialism beyond the seas. Yet if Nazi-Socialism and Bolshevism, after so violent a sham battle, could so speedily come to terms, for a purpose convenient to both, what is to prevent this American Socialism, now in the making and already accepted and propagated by the dominant educational forces of this county, from arriving at mutually agreeable arrangements with both the Soviet and the Nazi forms of Socialism, whenever it may suit the real leaders on both sides to do so? Within a generation we have seen our Liberal politicians denounce the Soviet, cultivate friendly relations with it, and denounce it again – this time more coyly. As the world grows smaller in time, may not all the forms of Socialism be gathered together by skilful hands into a World Sate, such as many Masonic writers have advocated, and the League of Nations sought to achieve? It is not only conceivable, but probable; for all forms of Socialism (even if some still call themselves Democracies) will be animated by a single obscure but powerful principle: the worship of the material, which is and always must be the negation of Christianity. Here, then, by a masterly antithesis, Pius XI has cast a strong light upon the shapes of things to come. It is all the more revealing when it shows us only the recurrence upon a larger stage of a deathless drama that happened long ago. Christ still lives in His Mystical Body, the Church, as truly as in the human body he took from Our Lady; and when the time comes for Him to be crucified again in His Church, depend upon it, Pilate and Herod that day will find a way to patch up their differences, some Caiaphas will cry, “Crucify Him! We have no king but Caesar!” and there will always be found some Judas to give the kiss of death.
Admittedly (perhaps my wish is father to this thought) we may by some miracle escape that fate, here in America. Perhaps despite their affiliations, Mr. Roosevelt or Mr. Wilkie, as political Catholic admirers of each will tell us, will be led in the right direction by a divine hand. Again, perhaps not. Only the future can reveal this. Meanwhile this much is certain: the United States, in a very few years, will be either a Catholic country (and therefore a free country) or a Socialist country, (and therefore a slave country). “He who is not with Me is against Me.” History demonstrates the unfailing truth of this dilemma.
Here on the last edge and in the twilight of the world, the stage is set for the reenactment of an ancient tragedy – or can it this time be a comedy? Here are all the actors who have appeared over and over again in that tragedy in Europe. Here we have most of the Freemasons of the world, the Jews, most of the gold and its masters; Parthians and Medes and Elamites – men gathered together from all nations under the sun, speaking one language, leading a common life; and among them heirs of all the isms and heresies that the Catholic Church has denounced throughout the centuries, and some millions of good bewildered folk who have ceased to believe much in anything, and do not know what they believe, or whether anything be worth believing; and, scattered among these millions with their roots in such movements of the past, some twenty-five millions of Catholics.
Now, either the Catholic body will come into sharp conflict with those about them, or they will not.
If they do not, it will be the first time in history that the Mystical Body of Christ (and American Catholics, like all others, are “cells” of that Body) has not aroused violent and unreasoning antagonism. This has been so uniformly a characteristic of the life of Christ and the life of the Catholic Church, that when persons calling themselves Christian or Catholic do not meet with oppositions, and strong opposition, one may well begin to wonder whether they are profoundly Christian and truly Catholic. Perhaps then it is a reflection upon us American Catholics that we have inspired so little antagonism (comparatively) thus far. Perhaps we have not been telling our neighbors the truth, the strong truth, the hard saying they will not like: that the real test of our republican experiment here must ultimately be whether it accepts or opposes the Church of Christ; that it must become either a Catholic state, or a slave state.
A great many Catholics, influenced by the Protestant or Liberal environments in which they have lived, have sincerely and deliberately set out to propagate Christianity in such ways as to never arouse antagonism. They have compromised with Socialism, they have compromised with the economy theory of history, they have emphasized the importance of various material elements. It is a sad evidence of the lack of unity into which we have been betrayed when a Catholic Justice of the Supreme Court [Frank Murphy] can publicly proclaim that “Democracy” is more important than religion; when a Catholic priest, who has taught for some years at the Catholic University at Washington and has filled our country with his disciples, openly goes to address a Jewish Masonic lodge (though Catholics are still forbidden by Canon 2335 to cooperate with or condone Masonry in any way)—and this, according to the press, not to remind his hearers of their true home in the Church Catholic, but to confirm them in their sense of injured innocence; or when a Catholic journalist burns a little incense on the altar of the economic theory of history, or a Catholic college professor condones usury, or defends the Communist cause in Spain.
Now all these gentlemen, these liberal broad-minded Catholics, many of whom are teaching the next generation of American Catholics no doubt think that they are doing a service to God in smoothing out our differences with others, and neglecting to utter the challenge which Christianity has uttered everywhere else in the world, until the opposed gnashed its teeth, and took up stones to cast. Perhaps they hope in this way to avert persecution, and gradually to bring about the conversion of the country they love to the true Faith. I do not impugn their motives or their sincerity; indeed, they are often animated by a great, if misguided charity. But if the history of Christianity teaches anything, it fairly cries out from the stones of desecrated and stolen churches that if they have their way, they will do just the opposite to what they intend, and even worse. They will lead us, if we are foolish enough, to follow them, to that abyss over which English Catholics fell, one by one and family by family, in the Sixteenth Century. The English Catholics, a huge majority, were kept comparatively silent and inactive in the face of an intolerable but gradual oppression by a small rich crafty minority, in the hope that if they ever compromised on this point and that point, they would ultimately prevail, since they were more numerous, and had truth on their side. The result was the almost complete extinction of Catholicism in England for centuries—perhaps forever. (William Thomas Walsh, Characters of the Inquisition, New York, P.J. Kenedy & Sons, 1940 pp. 281-294.)
That last paragraph summarized the theme that I have tried to hammer home in hundreds upon hundreds of lengthy commentaries on this site—and in countless hours of lectures around the country and online. William Thomas Walsh’s prophetic vision of what would happen to Catholicism in the United States of America has been accomplished by conciliar revolutionaries, many of whose American predecessors before the “Second” Vatican Council sought to pave the way for the triumph of Americanist “ideals.”
Yes, the United States of America has become a slave state controlled by the same set of forces that the Inquisition sought to eliminate from within Holy Mother Church. This is because the United States of America was founded on false principles, including those of “religious liberty” and “religious indifferentism” that contributed to the rise of counterfeit church of conciliarism, whose very false spirit was being pioneered by Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America Frank Murphy and the others, including that nameless priest who taught at the Catholic University of America, described by Mr. Walsh above.
Rest Secure In Our Lady's Loving Embrace
The true victims of the past two millennia have been those Catholics who have been martyred, frequently by the brute power of the civil state, for their steadfast witness to the truths of the Catholic Faith and to the Social Reign of Christ the King. Saint Alphonsus de Liguori wrote that over thirteen million Catholics were put to death by the authorities of the Roman Empire between the time of Nero in 67 A.D. and the Edict of Milan in the year 313 A.D. Millions upon millions of others have been put to death in the centuries since. These true victims who offered themselves to the Chief Priest and Victim of Calvary, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, did not feel sorry for themselves. They did not castigate their torturers or their executioners, although some exhorted their torturers and executioners to convert to the true Faith.
This is the time for martyrdom. Yes, for heroic martyrdom, certainly white martyrdom, and possibly even actual red martyrdom itself.
The stirring letter, quoted below and written by a Claretian priest Spain during the Spanish Revolution (1936-1939) just before he (and others with him) were martyred, demonstrates the difference between hiding the Faith in public life, whether as a matter of supposedly “clever” calculation or as a matter of habitual reluctance to speak the truth clearly no matter the cost, and being a victim for Christ the King at all times without any exception or equivocation:
We all die praying to God that the blood from our wounds may not be a vengeful blood, but that it run red and full of life in your veins, to stimulate your growth and development all over the world. Good-bye, dear Congregation! Your sons, the martyrs of Barbastro, salute you from prison and offer you our sorrow and anguish as a holocaust to expiate our faults, our weaknesses, and as a testimony of our faithful, generous and eternal love. The martyrs of tomorrow, the 14th, are mindful of the fact that they die on the eve of the Assumption. What a remembrance that will be! We die for the right to wear the cassock and we die on the very anniversary of the day on which we were clothed in it. (Quoted in Warren H. Carroll, The Last Crusade, Christendom Press, 1996, p. 110.)
Dr. Carroll went on to quote a member of the civil guard's testimony to the constancy of the Faith of the Claretian martyrs of Barbastro:
These [blasphemous expletive deleted] fools! No one could shut them up! All the way they sang and praised Christ the King. One of them fell dead when he hit him with the butt of a gun, and this is no lie. But the more we hit them, the more they sang and shouted: "Viva Cristo Rey! ("Quoted in Warren H. Carroll, The Last Crusade, Christendom Press, 1996, p. 110.)
We must strive to be victims for Christ the King and for Mary our Immaculate Queen as we make reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary for our own sins and those of the whole world.
Yes, we must strive to be victims for Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen as we pray as many Rosaries as our states-in-life permit.
The petty tyrants of today will fade from view soon enough. God is more powerful than any of the fools who think that their grand ideas and schemes can "save" society and make our own lives "easier" and "more comfortable" (sort of like they want to create a huge "national hospice" for us). A country that has killed over sixty million innocent preborn human beings by surgical abortion alone, no less the truly countless number of souls its wars have taken out of the Catholic Church and placed into Protestant "churches" and Masonic lodges, owes God a tremendous debt that might be repaid only by the extinction of its national existence
We must, therefore, embrace the Cross as never before, hoping that our lives of prayer and penance and fasting and mortification and almsgiving and total consecration to Jesus through Mary will help, especially by means of Eucharistic piety and our devotion to Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary, to plant just a few seeds for the day when all men will hail the Chief Victim and Priest, the One Who become Man for us to die on the wood of the Cross so that we might know an unending Easter Sunday of glory in Paradise.
Moreover, we must always remember that we have much reparation to make to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary for our sins and for those of the whole world. We have so very much reparation to make, especially as we approach the Paschal Triduum of Our Lord’s Passion, Death and Resurrection.
Yes, you see, the truth is this: we, wounded by the vestigial aftereffects of Original Sin and effects of our Actual Sins, some which have been calculated quite deliberately, have at times all too tragically overthrown the Reign of Christ the King in our own souls, thus making it less possible for us to bear witness to His Social Reign over men and nations. We have shown ourselves to be far more dangerous, far more cunning. and far more effective in undermining the cause of Our Lord and His true Church as we have tried to undo the effects of Our Lord's Redemptive Act in our own souls!
Our Lord told Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque that His Most Sacred Heart was more grieved by the faithless of Catholics than It had been by the Jews who were our agents in putting him to death:
Consider that it was no less afflicting and sad for Jesus Christ to see the ingratitude of the majority of the faithful, who would have only coldness and indifference for Him in the Sacrament of His love. He saw the little esteem, nay, even the contempt with which they would treat this greatest proof of His love. He saw that no matter what He might do to be loved by the faithful, even dwelling always amongst them in the Blessed Eucharist, neither this excess of His love, nor His benefits, nor His very presence would be capable of making the greater part of them love Him or would prevent them from forgetting Him. he saw that those churches in which He was to be sacramentally present would be left for most of the time without adorers. He saw what little reverence, nay, what disrespect would be shown in His presence. He saw clearly how the greater part of His followers, who spend long hours in vain amusement and useless visits and complete idleness, would rarely find a quarter of an hour to spend before Him in the Blessed Sacrament. He knew how many others would visit Him only under compulsion and without either devotion or reverence. And finally, He saw the very small number who would eagerly visit Him and devoutly adore Him. He saw clearly that the greater number take no more notice of Him than if He were not really present in the Blessed Sacrament or than if He were a person of no consequence.
The harsh treatment which He received from the Jews, Gentiles and heretics was indeed very painful to Him, but they were His open enemies. But could we ever thought it possible that those who recognize His benefits, that those who make profession of being faithful to Him, that His own children should not only be insensible to His benefits and in no way touched with compassion at the sight of the grief caused by such contempt, but that they should treat Him with contempt by their irreverences and sacrileges? Our Saviour might well say: "If pagans and Turks and infidels had treated Me so, I might have endured it." "for if my enemy had reviled me, I would verily have borne it". (Ps. 54:13), but that Christians, Catholics whom I have not only redeemed, but have fed and nourished with my Body and Blood, should have nothing but contempt for Me, that they should treat Me with ingratitude, is too much. "But thou a man of one mind, my guide and my familiar: who didst take sweetmeats together with me! (Ps. 54: 14-15)
What must be the sentiments of this most generous and tender Heart of Jesus which has so loved men, and which finds in the hearts of those men only coldness and contempt? "I am become a reproach among my enemies." (Ps. 30: 12). If after exposing Myself to the contempt and hatred of My enemies in the midst of the outrages which I suffer, I could at least find a large number of faithful friends who would console Me! But it is quite the contrary: "They that saw me without fled from me." (Ps. 30:12) The greater number, seeing that I have disguised Myself under the feeble appearance of bread in order to have the pleasure of dwelling among men, abandon Me and forget Me as a person who has no place in their hearts, "I am forgotten as one dead from the heart." (Ps. 30:13) (Father John Croiset, The Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, republished by TAN Books and Publishers.)
Thus, we should recognize full well that we bear a great share of the guilt and of the responsibility for the state of the world and for the state of the Church Militant on earth as it is at this time.
With Our Lady, as our sure guide and intercessor, may we indeed be ever earnest about making reparation for our own many sins, each of has contributed to the worsening of the state of the Church Militant here on earth and of the world-at-large.
Once again, though, make no mistake about it: our own sins and our ingratitude and our lukewarmness have exacerbated, that is, worsened, the state of the Church Militant on earth. We cannot be content to wallow in spiritual mediocrity. We must accept whatever penances and humiliations that God chooses to send us so that we can give them back to His Most Sacred Heart through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of His Most Blessed Mother as her consecrated slaves, especially by means of praying as many Rosaries as our states-in-life permit, thus planting seeds for the glorious day of the Triumph of her Immaculate Heart and thus of the restoration of all things in Christ the King.
Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!
Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?
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.