Six In A Row

Although I will be giving Donald John Trmp’s acceptance address on Thursday, July 21, 2016, the Feast of Saint Praxedes, at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, a bit of attention by Thursday, July 28, 2016, at which point the miscreant pro-aborts of the organized crime family of the false opposite of the naturalist “left” will be on the verge of concluding their jamboree in support of statism and moral evils, including an unapologetic celebration of the butchers of Planned Barrenhood, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Jorge Mario Bergoglio will have arrived in Poland for the jamboree known as “World Youth Day,” former First Lady/United States Senator/United States Secretary of State and consistent mocker of the laws of God and men Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton’s selection of United States Senator Timothy Kaine (D-Virginia) to be her vice presidential running mate demands a bit of attention. Timothy Kaine is a Catholic. Timothy Kaine supports abortion-on-demand as a constitutional “right.” Thus it is that the Democratic Party will feature a pro-abortion Catholic on its national ticket for the fourth consecutive election. What was that business about Catholics having “arrived” in American politics fifty-six years ago with the election of United States Senator (D-Massachusetts) as president of the United States of America on Tuesday, November 8, 1960? Some “arrival.”

Think about it.

United States Senator John F. Kerry (D-Massachusetts) was the unapologetically pro-abortion political party’s presidential nominee in the general election that took place on Tuesday, November 2, 2004.

United States Senator Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. (D-Delaware), was the unapologetically pro-abortion political party’s vice presidential nominee in the general election that took place on Tuesday, November 4, 2008. It was as Vice President Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., that he was re-nominated as that organized crime family’s vice presidential nominee in the general election that took place on Tuesday, November 6, 2012.

Alaska Governor Sarah Heath Palin, a baptized Catholic whose father, Charles Heath, took her out of the Catholic Church when she was twelve years old in 1976 for reasons that are unclear (although the aftermath of the “Second” Vatican Council may have been a factor), was the vice presidential nominee of the organized crime family of the false opposite of the naturalist “right” in the general election that took place on Tuesday, November 4, 2008. Her debate with then Senator Biden represented the first time that two baptized Catholics had faced each other in a national election. (By the way, Mrs. Palin whose son Track just entered a guilty plea to domestic abuse charges—just another chink in the “conservative” armor of the “idyllic” “American family” as some Catholic publications heralded eight years ago—was not at the Republican National Convention this past week. Trump himself said it was because Alaska was a faraway place. Sure. Right. I report, you decide.)

United States Representative Paul Davis Ryan (R-Wisconsin), who is partly pro-life and partly pro-abortion and is a wholly owned subsidiary of the United States Chamber of Commerce and the international banking community, was the vice presidential nominee of the Republican Party in the general election that took place on Tuesday, November 6, 2012. Ryan’s low-key and ineffective debate with Biden represented the first time that two candidates who were practitioners of what they believe to be Catholicism had ever debated each other at the national level, although such debates are fairly common in state and local elections.

Although Governor Michael Richard Pence (R-Indiana) will be mentioned briefly later in this commentary, he, like Palin, is a baptized Catholic. Unlike Palin, however, he apostatized all of his own when he was in Hanover College in Indiana at the age of eighteen in 1975. 

That's six for six, although it should be noted that the first Catholic to be selected by a Democratic presidential nominee to serve as a vice presidential running mate, United States Senator Edmund Muskie (D-Maine), was selected by then Vice President Hubert Horatio Humphrey at the riotously tumultuous Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, that I watched unfold with own my own nearly-seventeen year-old peepers in August of 1968.  Muskie had become a complete supporter of contraception and abortion as the years wore on, and it was as a pro-abort that he served as James Earl Carter, Jr.'s, Secretary of State from May 8, 1980, to January 20, 1981. 

Ironically, the man who gave the Democratic Party a platform in support of surgical baby-killing in 1972, United States Senator George S. McGovern (D-South Dakota), selected two Catholics to serve as his vice presidential running mate that year, both of whom were pro-life. United States Senator Thomas Eagleton (D-Missouri) was chosen, but had to withdraw after his selection once it had been disclosed that he had undergone electroshock therapy for depression. His replacement, the late President John Fitzgerald Kennedy's brother-in-law, Robert Sarger Shriver, a scion of the Maryland Shrivers whose participation in the American way goes all the way back to the Seventeenth Century, was also opposed to abortion, as was his wife, Eunice Kennedy Shriver. 

The first pro-abortion Catholic to be nominated for the vice presidency was the late United States Representative Geraldine Anne Ferraro-Zaccarro (D- Forest Hills, Queens, New York), who was the selectee of the hapless former Vice President of the United States of America, Walter Frederick "Fritz" Mondale, in 1984.

Catholics have been on a "roll" since 2004, however, and thus it is that we can behold the fruits of Americanism, which produced men in the past six years alone such as Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., and John F. Kerry, and its rotten fruit, conciliarism, as exhibited, albeit in different ways, by Timothy Michael Kaine and Michael Richard Pence.

As has been noted so frequently in the past on this site, including in Do Not Expect Injustice From Those Who Are Unjust, part two, four days ago now, Catholic immigrants to the United States of America in the Nineteenth Century faced overt hostility, up to and including violence, from thugs of Protestant and Judeo-Masonic nativists. Father Pierre Jean De Smet, S.J., who had to sneak away from his family in Belgium to study for the priesthood in the United States of America, where he was ordained and was especially beloved by the Indians of the Northwest, experienced the violent state of affairs facing Catholic immigrants in the Nineteenth Century:

The Carbonari, then numerous in America, received their orders direct from European lodges. They edited a paper, L’Eco d’Italia, and labored unceasingly to prejudice the people against the Church and trammel the authority of the Bishops. In the hope of recovering their waning influence, the Protestant ministers made common cause with the revolutionaries. This was the beginning of a vast conspiracy, which imperiled, for a time, Catholic liberty in the United States.

The Know-Nothings, a new society, began to be organized about 1852. Theirs was a secret order, which bound its members by a solemn oath. It was formed, ostensibly, to defend the rights of the poor against European invasion. “America is for Americans” was its slogan. With this object in view, they endeavored to have severe naturalization laws enacted against the new arrivals from Europe, and exclude citizens born of foreign parents from holding public offices. In reality, these fanatics combated no so much the foreign immigration as the fidelity of Europeans, especially the Irish, to the Church of Rome. To base calumnies they added murder, pillage, incendiarism, and, before long, found an occasion for opening the campaign. In the spring of 1853 the Papal Nuncio to Brazil, Archbishop Bedini, arrived in New York, bringing the Sovereign Pontiff’s blessing to the faithful in the United States. He was charged, moreover, to investigate the conditions of Catholicism in the great Republic.

The Know-Nothings saw in this mission a grave attack upon American liberties. Their newspapers denounced the perfidious and ambitious intrigues of Rome. The apostate priest Gavazzi came from London and placed his eloquence at the service of his follow-socialists and friends. For several months he followed the Envoy form one city to the other, vomiting forth lies, threatening him with dire reprisals, and through fiery denunciation endeavored to stir up the masses against the “Papists.”

From vituperation and abuse there was but one step to action. On Christmas day in Cincinnati a band of assassins attempted to do away with the Nuncio. Driven off by the police, they revenged themselves by burning him in effigy. This odious scene was enacted in several towns. Conditions pointing to renewed attacks, Archbishop Bedini was forced to depart after a short sojourn in the United States. But the hostilities did not cease with the departure of the Nuncio. The campaign lasted for three years, attended by violent outrages and attacks, and armed forces had presently to interfere to defend life and property. A witness of these disorders, Father De Smet draws a gloomy picture of existing conditions in his letters. “The times are becoming terrible for Catholics in these unhappy States. Nowhere in the world do honest men enjoy less liberty.”

“European demagogues, followers of Kossuth, Mazzini, etc., have sworn to exterminate us. Seven Catholic churches have been sacked and burned; those courageous enough to defend them have been assassinated.” “The future grows darker, and we are menaced from every side. If our enemies succeed in electing a President from ranks–until now the chances have been in their favor–Catholics will be debarred from practicing their religion; our churches and schools will be burned and pillaged, and murder will result from these brawls. During this present time [1854] over twenty thousand Catholics have fled to other countries seeking refuge from persecution, and many more talk of following them. The right to defame and exile is the order of the day in this great Republic, now the rendezvous of the demagogues and outlaws of every country.”

No laws were enacted for the protection of Catholics, and in some States the authorities were openly hostile. “The legislators of New York and Pennsylvania are now busy with the temporal affairs of the Church, which they wish take out of the hands of the Bishops. These States have taken the initiative, and others will soon follow. In Massachusetts, a mischief-making inquisition has just been instituted, with the object of investigating affairs in religious houses. In Boston, a committee of twenty-four rascals, chosen from among the legislators, of which sixty are Protestant ministers, searched and inspected a convent of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur.”

While making a tour of the Jesuit houses with the Provincial, Father De Smet more than once braved the fury of the fanatics. In Cincinnati, a priest could not show himself in the street without being insulted by renegade Germans, Swiss, and Italians. In Louisville, thirty Catholics were killed in an open square and burned alive in their houses. Those who attempted to flee were driven back into the flames at the point of pistols and knives. Even in St. Louis, several attempts were made in one week upon the lives of citizens. The Jesuits were not spared. At Ellsworth, Maine, Father Bapst was taken by force from the house of a Catholic where he was hearing confessions, was covered with pitch, rolled in feathers, tied, swung by his hands and feet to a pole, and carried through the city to the accompaniment of gross insults. (Father E. Lavaille, S.J., The Life of Father De Smet, S.J. (1801-1873): Apostle of the Rocky Mountains, published originally in 1915 by P. J. Kenedy & Sons, New York, New York, and reprinted by TAN Books and Publishers in 2000 with the additions and the subtitle, “Apostle of the Rocky Mountains.” pp. 262-265.)

This was not taught in American history classes fifty years ago when I was in high school, and it is certainly not being taught today, is it?

Interestingly, the aforementioned the Know Nothing Party (or American Party), was actually formed in 1845 by the first Talmudist elected to Congress, Lewis Charles Levin. Levin formed the Know Nothings not to oppose immigration in general but to to protest the influx of German and Irish Catholic immigrants to the United States of America. In other words, the Know Nothing Party was founded by a Jew to oppose the immigration of Catholics to this country because he wanted to preserve the "American way," which, of course, provides plenty of space for the devil and his false religions, starting with Talmudism, of course, while seeking to intimidate Catholics in this country from knowing anything about, no less proclaiming openly, the Social Reign of Christ the King over men and their nations. Americanism is thus an expression of the Talmudic ethos that celebrates error while scorning the truth incluing Truth Incarnate Himself. 

Part of the larger "Know Nothing" movement (named not for fictional Sergeant Hans Schultz of Hogan's Heroes, but for members of this movement saying that they "knew nothing" about its activities when questioned) that sponsored mob riots against Catholics in various areas, including the attacking and killing of individual Catholics and the burning of Catholic church buildings and schools. Know Nothings won control of the Massachusetts General Court in the elections of 1854, being successful as well in electing their candidates as mayors of the cities of Chicago, Illinois, and San Francisco, California. Ohio was a particular stronghold of the Know-Nothings, who nominated former President Millard Fillmore, who had succeeded to the presidency of the United States of America upon the death of President Zachary Taylor on July 9, 1850, and served the remainder of Taylor's term (which ended on March 4, 1853), for president in 1856.

The Blaine amendments, named after the virulently anti-Catholic James G. Blaine (R-Maine), who, in additional to being the Republican Party nominee for President of the United States of America in 1884, served in the United States House of Representatives (where he was the Speaker of the House from 1869 to 1875) and the United States Senate and served two different terms in two different presidencies as the United States Secretary of State, prohibited the use of public funding of any kind to subsidize schools operated by religious organizations.

Members of the Grand Orient Masonic lodge of Oregon, using all of their considerable clout, joined forces with their great ally, the Ku Klux Klan, and others to sponsor an initiative (a referendum that, if approved by voters, becomes law as though it had been passed by a state legislature) to amend the Compulsory Education Act to, in effect, outlaw Catholic schools in the State of Oregon by mandating that all children be "educated" in public schools. This effort was rendered unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the case ofPierce v. Society of Sisters, June 1, 1925. (See America's Concentration Camps).

The State of North Dakota, long a den of Masonic activity (Freemasons in the newly formed state legislature in 1889 sought to "liberalize" existing divorce laws as a means of destabilizing the family, something that was fought by the founding bishop of the Diocese of Jamestown (later Fargo), North Dakota, John Shanley), passed an anti-garb law in 1947 to require priests and consecrated religious to wear lay clothing when teaching in public schools. The Freemasons of North Dakota hoped to force a crisis of conscience for priests and religious that would prompt the two bishops of North Dakota from prohibiting their clergy and religious to teach in public schools. Bishops Leo Dworschak of Fargo and Vincent Ryan of Bismarck got permission from the Holy See for the clergy and the religious to wear lay clothing, thereby avoiding that crisis of conscience:

When the "anti-garb" campaign was waged in North Dakota in 1948, Bishop Ryan led in the defense of the rights of those wearing religious garb to teach in the public schools of the state. The opposition was well organized and had carried on vigorous campaign before the Catholics of the state were aware of their activities. Bishop Ryan rose to the challenge, and his efforts to defeat this measure were very nearly successful. In conjunction with Bishop Leo Dworschak of the Fargo Diocese, he appealed to the Holy See for permission for the sisters to teach in lay clothing. The victory for the anti-Catholics and the bigots was rendered empty when the Holy See granted their request. Friends and enemies alike had a new admiration for Bishop Ryan following this campaign. (History of Bishop Vincent J. Ryan.)

Thus it is that most. athough far from all, Catholics in the United States of America in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century saw partisan politics as the means of upward social, political and economic mobility. Leaders of the Democratic Party saw in these immigrants and their children the means to win elections, thus welcoming them with open arms and making it relatively easy for them to advance the ranks of ward politics. There was a price to be paid for this, of course: one could not be confessionally Catholic in his public discourse. One had to speak in generic, inter-denominational or non-denominational terms, thus advancing the agenda of Judeo-Masonry as the Incarnation and Redemptive Act of the God-Man, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, was held to be of no account whatsoever in public life.

The "identification" of Catholics with the Democratic Party was such that a story was told in the 1930s of a woman in Boston, Massachusetts, who was praying a Novena to Saint Monica for the return of her son to the Faith. A friend asked her what had happened to her son. The woman praying the Novena said in great distress, "He's become a Republican!" Yes, being a Democrat and being a Catholic were considered to be inseparable by the lion's share of Catholics in the Nineteenth and early-Twentieth Centuries.

This alliance of Catholics with the Democratic Party was such that they overlooked the blatant anti-Catholicism of the likes of Thomas Woodrow Wilson and the thirty-third degree Freemason named Franklin Delano Roosevelt time and time again. After all, it was the "party" that mattered. Oh, it was too bad that Wilson supported the slaughter of Catholics in Mexico. Catholics just voted for the Democratic Party, which permitted Franklin Roosevelt, who, unlike his statist predecessor, Woodrow Wilson, in whose administration he worked as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, cultivated friendships with Catholic prelates in order to coopt them into supporting his own statist plans, to unleash a veritable campaign team of Catholic bishops and priests to denounce any "conservative" Catholic who dared to criticize his policies. As noted in We're Not in Kansas Any More seven and one-half years ago now, Roosevelt unleashed the "Right Reverend New Dealer," Monsignor John A. Ryan, to denounce the courageous Father Charles Coughlin for him during his re-election campaign in 1936. And Francis Cardinal Spellman was known as "FDR's errand boy in a miter."

It was, however, after World War II that fissures began to break in the solid Catholic support for the Democratic Party. The threat posed by the spread of the Soviet Union into Eastern Europe and the fall of China to the forces of Mao Zedong in 1949 led some Catholics to turn more and more to the Republican Party, convincing themselves that they could purge that stronghold of anti-Catholic Masons and nativists and transform it into a bastion of "conservatism" to turn back the New Deal and to win the Cold War.

The fissures in Catholic support became more pronounced in the years after the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, January 22, 1973, especially during the years of the administration of President Ronald Wilson Reagan. Having convinced themselves that electoral politics was the means to "transform" the country, well-meaning Catholics of the "conservative" bent engaged in what could be termed a Manichean struggle with Catholics of the "leftist" bent, each side armed with "bishops" who supported their own particular brand of Americanism, each convinced that the "other" side was composed of "bad guys" as they represented the '"true" interpretation of the Constitution and the "rights" of Catholics in a pluralistic society.

Just as Democrats and Republicans agree on the basic naturalistic, anti-Incarnational, religiously indifferentist and semi-Pelagian principles of the American founding, disagreeing on the specifics as to the conduct of public policy in light of those principles, so is it the case that "liberal" and "conservative" Catholics accept those same false principles as they diverge on the specifics of public policy according to the political "camp" which they believe represents the best means of achieving various goals. Both "liberal" and "conservatives" Catholics are as one in rejecting these simple truths of the Catholic Faith as binding upon their consciences and that they apply to the concrete circumstances to be found in the United States of America, believing that their naturalistic or non-denominational ideas and plans and strategies can "win the day" for their respective cause.

The fissures between the false opposites of the “left” and the “right” were reflected after the “Second” Vatican Council in the “hierarchy” of the counterfeit church of conciliarism here in the United States of America as the “social justice” “bishops” fought the “pro-life” “bishops” at the annual meetings of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops/United States Catholic Conference (now called the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops). The “social justice” types (Joseph Bernardin, Francis Mugavero, Howard Hubbard, John Dearden, Thomas Gumbleton, Roger Mahony, Peter Rosazza, Donald Wuerl, Raymond Hunthausen, Rembert Weakland, Matthew Clark, Joseph Sullivan of Brooklyn, John Raymond McGann, Joseph Imesch, Daniel Leo Ryan, Joseph Fiorenza, William Borders, Thomas Kelly, John Roach, John May, et al.) made sure to hire all manner of lay bureaucrats who were of like mind, including many who supported the agenda of the homosexual collective or were active participants in it, femnists, and out-and-out pro-aborts. Each was a statist to the core in support of an increase in the size, the scope, and the power of the Federal government of the United States of America.

These “social justice” bishops enabled one pro-abortion Catholic politician after another in the decades after the decisions of the Supreme Court in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, January 22, 1973. Actually, the process of soothing the consciences of Catholic in public life who wanted to remain au courant and not pose as a sign of contradiction by their complete fidelity to the Sign of Contradiction, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His Catholic Church has deep roots in the heresy of Americanism, although the groundwork for moral relativism began a year before the Supreme Court’s decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, June 7, 1965, as a number of leading Modernists, including the late Father Robert “Father Death” Drinan, S.J., himself met at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport, Massachusetts, to discuss how the Kennedys could accept the chemical and surgical execution of innocent preborn children under cover of the civil law while still claiming to be “good Catholics” who were simply following their “consciences”:

For faithful Roman Catholics, the thought of yet another pro-choice Kennedy positioned to campaign for the unlimited right to abortion is discouraging. Yet if Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of Catholics John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, is appointed to fill the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Hillary Clinton, abortion-rights advocates will have just such a champion.

Ms. Kennedy was so concerned to assure pro-abortion leaders in New York, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported on Dec. 18, that on the same day Ms. Kennedy telephoned New York Gov. David Patterson to declare interest in the Senate seat, "one of her first calls was to an abortion rights group, indicating she will be strongly pro-choice."

Within the first week of her candidacy, Ms. Kennedy promised to work for several causes, including same-sex marriage and abortion rights. In responding to a series of 15 questions posed by the New York Times on Dec. 21, Ms. Kennedy said that, while she believes "young women facing unwanted pregnancies should have the advice of caring adults," she would oppose legislation that would require minors to notify a parent before obtaining an abortion. On the crucial question of whether she supports any state or federal restrictions on late-term abortions, Ms. Kennedy chose to say only that she "supports Roe v. Wade, which prohibits third trimester abortions except when the life or health of the mother is at risk." Presumably Ms. Kennedy knows that this effectively means an unlimited right to abortion -- including late-stage abortion -- because the "health of the mother" can be so broadly defined that it includes the psychological distress that can accompany an unintended pregnancy.

Ms. Kennedy's commitment to abortion rights is shared by other prominent family members, including Kerry Kennedy Cuomo and Maryland's former Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. Some may recall the 2000 Democratic Convention when Caroline and her uncle, Sen. Ted Kennedy, addressed the convention to reassure all those gathered that the Democratic Party would continue to provide women with the right to choose abortion -- even into the ninth month. At that convention, the party's nominee, Al Gore, formerly a pro-life advocate, pledged his opposition to parental notification and embraced partial-birth abortion. Several of those in attendance, including former President Bill Clinton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, had been pro-life at one time. But by 2000 nearly every delegate in the convention hall was on the pro-choice side -- and those who weren't simply kept quiet about it.

Caroline Kennedy knows that any Kennedy desiring higher office in the Democratic Party must now carry the torch of abortion rights throughout any race. But this was not always the case. Despite Ms. Kennedy's description of Barack Obama, in a New York Times op-ed, as a "man like my father," there is no evidence that JFK was pro-choice like Mr. Obama. Abortion-rights issues were in the fledgling stage at the state level in New York and California in the early 1960s. They were not a national concern.

Even Ted Kennedy, who gets a 100% pro-choice rating from the abortion-rights group Naral, was at one time pro-life. In fact, in 1971, a full year after New York had legalized abortion, the Massachusetts senator was still championing the rights of the unborn. In a letter to a constituent dated Aug. 3, 1971, he wrote: "When history looks back to this era it should recognize this generation as one which cared about human beings enough to halt the practice of war, to provide a decent living for every family, and to fulfill its responsibility to its children from the very moment of conception."

But that all changed in the early '70s, when Democratic politicians first figured out that the powerful abortion lobby could fill their campaign coffers (and attract new liberal voters). Politicians also began to realize that, despite the Catholic Church's teachings to the contrary, its bishops and priests had ended their public role of responding negatively to those who promoted a pro-choice agenda.

In some cases, church leaders actually started providing "cover" for Catholic pro-choice politicians who wanted to vote in favor of abortion rights. At a meeting at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport, Mass., on a hot summer day in 1964, the Kennedy family and its advisers and allies were coached by leading theologians and Catholic college professors on how to accept and promote abortion with a "clear conscience."

The former Jesuit priest Albert Jonsen, emeritus professor of ethics at the University of Washington, recalls the meeting in his book "The Birth of Bioethics" (Oxford, 2003). He writes about how he joined with the Rev. Joseph Fuchs, a Catholic moral theologian; the Rev. Robert Drinan, then dean of Boston College Law School; and three academic theologians, the Revs. Giles Milhaven, Richard McCormick and Charles Curran, to enable the Kennedy family to redefine support for abortion.

Mr. Jonsen writes that the Hyannisport colloquium was influenced by the position of another Jesuit, the Rev. John Courtney Murray, a position that "distinguished between the moral aspects of an issue and the feasibility of enacting legislation about that issue." It was the consensus at the Hyannisport conclave that Catholic politicians "might tolerate legislation that would permit abortion under certain circumstances if political efforts to repress this moral error led to greater perils to social peace and order."

Father Milhaven later recalled the Hyannisport meeting during a 1984 breakfast briefing of Catholics for a Free Choice: "The theologians worked for a day and a half among ourselves at a nearby hotel. In the evening we answered questions from the Kennedys and the Shrivers. Though the theologians disagreed on many a point, they all concurred on certain basics . . . and that was that a Catholic politician could in good conscience vote in favor of abortion."  ( See WSJ.com - Opinion: How Support for Abortion Became Kennedy Dogma. David Paterson, a pro-abortion Catholic, ultimately chose another pro-abortion Catholic, Kirsten Gillibrand, who has been the junior senator of the State of New York since January 26, 2009. For a review of David Paterson's moral corruption, see Little Caesars All (Pizza! Pizza!)

Even these notorious Modernist theologians, though, had received inspiration of a sort from two true archbishops, one of the, Francis Cardinal Spellman, had been a prince of the Catholic Church prior to the dawning of the age of conciliarism on October 28, 1958, the Feast of Saints Simon and Jude. Accompanied by the notorious Kennedy-family sycophant, Richard “Cardinal” Cushing, Spellman used a visit of Puerto Rico to cut the legs out from under the Catholic bishops of Puerto Rico at a time they were opposing a popular referendum to endorse contraceptives and sterilization:

In 1960, the Puerto Rico hierarchy decided to make one last concerted effort to drive the Sangerite forces from the island. The Catholic resistance was led by two American Bishops--James F. Davis of San Juan and James E. McManus of Ponce. The Catholic Church in Puerto Rico helped to organize a national political party--the Christian Action Party (CAP). The new political front was composed primarily of Catholic laymen and its platform included opposition to existing permissive legislation on birth control and sterilization.

When increasing numbers of CAP flags began to fly from the rooftops of Puerto Rico's Catholic homes, the leaders of the opposition parties, who favored turning Puerto Rico into an international Sangerite playground for massive U.S.-based contraceptive/abortifacient/sterilization experimental programs, became increasingly concerned for their own political futures. Then unexpected help arrived in the unlikely person of His Eminence Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York.

One month before the hotly contested national election, Spellman arrived in Puerto Rico ostensibly to preside over two formal Church functions. While on the island, Spellman agreed to meet with CAP's major political rival, Governor Luis Munoz Marin, leader of the Popular Democratic Party (PDP) and a supporter of federal population control programs for Puerto Rico.

In an interview that followed his meeting with Munoz, Spellman, known for years as FDR's errand boy with a miter, claimed that politics were outside his purview. The cardinal's statement was interpreted by the press as an indictment of the partisan politics of Bishops Davis and McManus. To underscore his message, as soon as Spellman returned to the States he made a public statement in opposition to the latest directives of the Puerto Rico bishops prohibiting Catholics from voting for Munoz and his anti-life PDP cohorts. Catholic voters in Puerto Rico should vote their conscience without the threat of Church penalties, Spellman said.

Boston's Cardinal Cushing, John F. Kennedy's "political godfather," joined Spellman in expressed "feigned horror" at the thought of ecclesiastical authority attempting to dictate political voting. "This has never been a part of our history, and I pray God that it will never be!" said Cushing. Cushing's main concern was not the Puerto Rican people. His main worry was that the flack caused by the Puerto Rican birth control affair might overflow into the upcoming presidential campaign and hurt John Kennedy's bid for the White House.

The national election turned out to be a political disaster for CAP. Munoz and the PDP won by a landslide. Bishop Davis was forced to end the tragic state of confusion among the Catholic laity by declaring just before the election that no penalties would be imposed on those who voted for PDP.  

Two years later, with the knowledge and approval of the American hierarchy and the Holy See, the Puerto Rican hierarchy was pressured into singing a secret concordat of "non-interference" in government-sponsored birth control programs--a sop being that the programs would now include instruction in the "rhythm method." While insisting on their right to hold and express legitimate opposition to such programs, the Puerto Rican bishops promised they would "never impose their own moral doctrines upon individuals who do not accept the Catholic teaching."

When the Sangerite storm hit the mainland in the late 1960s, AmChurch would echo this same theme song, opening the floodgates to a multi-billion dollar federal-life-prevention (and destruction) program. (Randy Engel, The Rite of Sodomy, pp. 647-649)

It was five years after this travesty that “Cardinal” Cushing told a Boston radio station that he could not interfere with the “consciences” of state legislators as they considered whether to support or to oppose a bill in the Massachusetts General Court (the state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts). This made it far easier for the Kennedys and the Careys and Cuomos and the Bidens and the O’Neills, among others, to support the chemical and surgical execution of the innocent preborn in the 1970s with the full support of the ultra-progressives in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, one of whose leaders, Archbishop Joseph Bernardin, another true bishop, invented the “consistent ethic of life” (“the seamless garment) slogan to provide pro-abortion Catholics with the cover of “respectability” as long as they opposed the death penalty and supported one statist measure after another to confiscate wealth and then to redistribute it to the poor while “empowering” illegal immigrants at the same time:

Early in the summer of 1965, the Massachusetts legislature took up a proposal to repeal the state's Birth Control law, which barred the use of contraceptives. (As a matter of historical interest, the repeal effort was sponsored by a young state representative named Michael Dukakis, who would be the Democratic Party's candidate for the US presidency 23 years later.) In a state where Catholics constituted a voting majority, and dominated the legislature, the prospects for repeal appeared remote. Then on June 22, Cardinal Cushing appeared on a local radio program, "An Afternoon with Haywood Vincent,” and effectively scuttled the opposition.

Cardinal Cushing announced:

“My position in this matter is that birth control in accordance with artificial means is immoral, and not permissible. But this is Catholic teaching. I am also convinced that I should not impose my position—moral beliefs or religious beliefs—upon those of other faiths.”

Warming to the subject, the cardinal told his radio audience that "I could not in conscience approve the legislation" that had been proposed. However, he quickly added, "I will make no effort to impose my opinion upon others."

So there it was: the "personally opposed" argument, in fully developed form, enunciated by a Prince of the Church nearly 40 years ago! Notice how the unvarying teaching of the Catholic Church, which condemned artificial contraception as an offense against natural law, is reduced here to a matter of the cardinal's personal belief. And notice how he makes no effort to persuade legislators with the force of his arguments; any such effort is condemned in advance as a bid to "impose" his opinion.

Cardinal Cushing conceded that in the past, Catholic leaders had opposed any effort to alter the Birth Control law. "But my thinking has changed on that matter," he reported, "for the simple reason that I do not see where I have an obligation to impose my religious beliefs on people who just do not accept the same faith as I do."

(Notice that the Catholic position is reduced still further here, to a matter of purely sectarian belief—as if it would be impossible for a non-Catholic to support the purpose of the Birth Control law. The cardinal did not explain why that law was enacted in 1899 by the heirs of the Puritans in Massachusetts, long before Catholics came to power in the legislature.)

Before the end of his fateful radio broadcast, Cardinal Cushing gave his advice to the Catholic members of the Massachusetts legislature: "If your constituents want this legislation, vote for it. You represent them. You don't represent the Catholic Church."

Dozens of Catholic legislators did vote for the bill, and the Birth Control law was abolished. Perhaps more important in the long run, the "personally opposed" politician had his rationale. (Cushing's Use of The "Personally Opposed" Argument.)

Today’s Pontius Pilates had lots and lots of help from true bishops and true priests in the 1960s abd 1970s as their consciences were massaged to make it possible for them to support each of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance.

It is no accident that the “peace and justice” crowd at the now-named United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, whose work had been “divided,” so they say, in 1966 between the so-called National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the United States Catholic Conference, associated with one pro-abortion and pro-sodomite group after another, many of which received funding from both Catholic Charities and the “Catholic Campaign for Human Development (see the following two news stories of the past decade, although like examples abound today all around the world: Signs of Apostasy Abound and Randy Engel on Catholic Relief Services.)

The list of Catholics in public life who have run for and won elected office while supporting the chemical and surgical execution of the innocent preborn is long and exhaustive, and I am too exhausted shortly after Midnight on the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost and the Commemoration of Saint Christina and, in some places, the Commemoration of Saint Francis Solano, to provide a detailed list yet again. Suffice it to say that that some of the more notorious baptized Catholics in public life currently who support baby-killing are, obviously, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., Sonia Sotomayor, Thomas Vilsack, Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Loretta Sanchez Brixey, Richard Durbin, Terence Richard McAuliffe, Kirsten Gillibrand, Andrew Mark Cuomo, Christopher Murphy, Daniel Malloy, Barbara Mikulski, John F. Kerry, Jack Reed, Gina Marie Raimondo, Julian Castro, Thomas Perez, Susan Collins, Robert Menendez, Nancy Patricia D’Alesandro Pelosi, Charles Rangel, Martin O’Malley, Patricia Murray and, among so many others, Anthony MacLeod Kennedy. This is not even to mention deceased Catholic pro-aborts of the past who have faced Christ the King at the moment of their Particular Judgment (Edward Moore Kennedy, Mario Matthew Cuomo, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, William Brennan, Geraldine Anne Ferraro-Zaccaro, Edward Speno, Thomas P. O’Neill, Thomas Foley, Peter Rodino, et al.) or those who no longer hold a governmental position (Christopher Dodd, Gray Davis, Thomas Ridge, Rudolph William Giuliani, Carol Mosely Braun, who became an Episcopalian after leaving the United States Senate in defeat on January 3, 1999, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Thomas Harkin, Thomas Daschle, Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Elmer Pataki, David Paterson, William Richardson, George Mitchell, James Florio, Robert Torricelli, Donna Shalala, Janet Reno, et al.). Those among the living on this list have maintained their “good standing” in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, and each of those who are among the deceased listed were able to receive their “Mass of Christian Burial” in the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service.

Oh, yes, just as an aside, the woman who will replace the United States Representative Deborah Wasserman Schultz (D-Florida) as the Chairwoman and chief toady for the Clinton family crime family, Donna Brazile, a longtime Clinton confidante and operative, is a pro-abortion Catholic who has maintained her own "good standing" in Donald "Cardinal" Wuerl's lavender-colored playpen known as the Archdiocese of Washington. 

A deliberate omission on the list provided just above, however, was the name of Timothy Michael Kaine, who will be formally nominated this week at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This omission was deliberate as it is now time to explain that this poor man is, despite his occasional votes to support the “expanded” version of the Hyde Amendment, first passed by Congress in 1977 and signed into law by the otherwise egregious President James Earl Carter, Jr., that has prohibited the use of Medicaid funding for surgical abortions except in cases where it was alleged that a mother’s life was “endangered” by her preborn baby (one “exception,” of course, leads to demands for more “exceptions, and thus it was that in 1993 the late United States Representative Henry Hyde, Republican—Illinois, agreed to include “exceptions” for rape and incest), has taken the “soup” throughout his political career to support the nonexistent “right” of mothers to murder their own preborn children under the cover of the civil law. Timothy Michael Kaine (it is not to write “Dolan” after the sequence of the names “Timothy” and “Michael”—speaking of Happy “Cardinal” Dolan, boy, you should don’t hear about much him anymore) sold his soul to the devil decades ago in order to support the prevailing evils of the day.

Here is an article detailing some of Timothy Michael Kaine’s pro-abortion record:

Democrat presumptive presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has chosen Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine as her running mate, a man who shifted to a fully pro-abortion stance in order to be in sync with Clinton, who believes an unborn baby – up until its birth – has no constitutional rights and can be aborted if that is the choice of his or her mother.

Though Kaine has described himself as a pro-life Catholic in the past, the Huffington Postreported that he has moved toward a pro-abortion position since he has been considered a primary contender for the vice president’s position on the Democrat ticket.

According to HuffPo: “Senator Tim Kaine (D-Va.) has had a mixed record on abortion throughout much of his political career, but in the past week has made a series of subtle moves toward a solid pro-choice position as he becomes an increasingly likely pick as Hillary Clinton’s running mate.”

Though, as a senator, Kaine has opposed defunding Planned Parenthood and restrictions on abortion, in 2009, as governor of Virginia, he signed a bill that created the “Choose Life” license plates that raise funds for pro-life causes. Kaine now says, however, that – in his professional life – he is a strong advocate for abortion rights.

Kaine has adopted the stance common among some Catholics in public office: “I’m pro-life in my personal life, but support abortion in my public life.”

“I have a traditional Catholic personal position, but I am very strongly supportive that women should make these decisions and government shouldn’t intrude,” Kaine told CNN. “I’m a strong supporter of Roe v. Wade and women being able to make these decisions. In government, we have enough things to worry about. We don’t need to make people’s reproductive decisions for them.”

In addition to stating that unborn babies have no constitutional rights, Clinton has vowed to work to repeal the Hyde Amendment, a longstanding federal provision that prohibits taxpayer funding of most abortions.

Kaine’s full embrace of the pro-choice position is important since abortion will take center stage at the Democrats’ convention this coming week. For the first time, the Party’s platform specifically mentions its defense of Planned Parenthood, the abortion business that is being investigated by Congress for its apparent practice of selling the body parts of babies it aborts on the open market.  (Timothy Michael Kaine Dropped All "Personal Opposition" to Abortion to become Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton' Vice Presidential Selectee.)

Timothy Michael Kaine took the soup as have so many others, including a non-Catholic by the name of Jesse Louis Jackson, in order to be “acceptable” to those who support the pro-death, pro-perversity policies of the organized crime family of the naturalist “left,” the Democratic Party (see Appendix A below.)

“I have a traditional Catholic personal position”?

Well, this false “tradition” dates all the way to 1973, noting the plotting that had begun nine years before at the Kennedy family compound in Hyannisport, Massachusetts, when Catholics in public life, starting most infamously with the late United States Senator Edward Moore Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) and the junior senator from Delaware at that time, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., and United States Representative Hugh Leo Carey (D-Brooklyn, New York), man who mentored the formerly “pro-life” attorney with an office on Court Street in Brooklyn, New York, Mario Matthew Cuomo, into mouthing the words “I am personally opposed to abortion, but . . . .” that were condemned by Pope Leo XIII eighty-four years, two months, twenty-one days before the decisions of the Supreme Court in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, January 22, 1973:

Hence, lest concord be broken by rash charges, let this be understood by all, that the integrity of Catholic faith cannot be reconciled with opinions verging on naturalism or rationalism, the essence of which is utterly to do away with Christian institutions and to install in society the supremacy of man to the exclusion of God. Further, it is unlawful to follow one line of conduct in private life and another in public, respecting privately the authority of the Church, but publicly rejecting it; for this would amount to joining together good and evil, and to putting man in conflict with himself; whereas he ought always to be consistent, and never in the least point nor in any condition of life to swerve from Christian virtue. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

Timothy Michael Kaine, you are busted, no matter all of the pretense you show by attending what you think is Holy Mass at Saint Elizabeth's Church, in a predominantly black area of Richmond, Virginia. You are busted. 

The false “traditional Catholic” position that had been taken by United States Timothy Michael Dolan Kaine (D-Virginia) prior to becoming unreservedly pro-abortion on Friday, July 22, 2016, the Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene, when the lawless co-capo of the Clinton Crime Family, Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton (D-Illinois-Yale-Washington, D.C., Little Rock, Arkansas, Washington, D.C., Chappaqua, New York) “tweeted” out the news of his being selected to serve as her attack dog in the general election and then her lapdog if she is elected on Tuesday, November 6, 2016, is not only not “traditional,” it has been condemned by a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter. 

Moreover, Pope Pius XI spoke of the dreadful fate that awaited pro-abortion public officials and magistrates, no matter their particular religious beliefs, for enabling the direct, intentional taking of innocent preborn human life:

Those who hold the reins of government should not forget that it is the duty of public authority by appropriate laws and sanctions to defend the lives of the innocent, and this all the more so since those whose lives are endangered and assailed cannot defend themselves. Among whom we must mention in the first place infants hidden in the mother's womb. And if the public magistrates not only do not defend them, but by their laws and ordinances betray them to death at the hands of doctors or of others, let them remember that God is the Judge and Avenger of innocent blood which cried from earth to Heaven. (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, December 30, 1930.)

Such, however, is not the position taken by the current universal public face of apostasy, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who is a friend of all pro-aborts in public life, including Catholics, if they are in favor of statism and of “saving the world” by means of the “Sustainable Development Goals” that are inherently anti-family and anti-life:

VATICAN CITY, July 22, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Francis reaffirmed the Vatican’s support for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at a June pontifical conference on human trafficking that featured an address by abortion and population control advocate Jeffrey Sachs.

“We can also count an important and decisive collaboration with the United Nations,” the Holy Father told the Judges Summit Against Human Trafficking and Organized Crime, organized by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.

Added the pope: “I am grateful for the fact that the representatives of the 193 UN member states unanimously approved the new Sustainable Development Goals.”

In his turn, Sachs, a Harvard-educated economist, bestselling author, previous director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute and high-level UN consultant who is currently Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on SDGs, praised Laudato si’.

The pope’s encyclical on the environment “in very important ways,” said Sachs, “made possible” not only the acceptance of the SDGs in September 2015, but the December 2015 Paris climate agreement which “established a framework to implementing a path to climate safety.”

But the pro-family and pro-life groups which lobby the UN have long warned that the UN’s SDGs provide cover for a population control agenda that seeks to enshrine a global “right” to abortion and contraception under the guise of reducing poverty and protecting the environment.

Target 3.7 of the SDGs explicitly calls for “universal access to sexual and reproductive health care services.” The UN defined these terms at the 1994 Cairo conference to mean providing women with “modern contraception” for “family planning” and with “safe abortion” where it is legal.  

Last September, Holy See representative Archbishop Bernardito Auza had made formal “reservations” clarifying that the Holy See interprets these terms only in a way that accords with the Church’s teachings. However, pro-family groups were surprised when the Vatican subsequently called for and welcomed the passage of the SDGs, without reservation.

Pro-family activists had also raised alarm when the Vatican invited Sachs — who indefatigably promotes population control with abortion as its cornerstone as essential to sustainable development — to co-host an April 2015 conference on climate change in the lead-up to the release of Laudato si’.

Among those objecting to the conference were UK-based Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), Voice of the Family, and New York- and Washington-based Centre for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam).

But despite these protests, Sachs was conspicuously present at the June event, as The Remnant’s Elizabeth Yore noted. In an analysis of Sach’s influence at the Holy See, she asserts that the economist’s address to the summit was the latest of “over nine appearances and speeches at the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy in the last three years.”

Sánchez Sorondo considered Sach’s link to Vatican

Seated between Sachs and the Holy Father was Monsignor Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, the Argentine bishop who is chancellor of both the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.

Sánchez Sorondo is regarded as Sach’s connection to the Vatican, according to C-Fam’s Stefano Gennarini, who in a May 2015 report noted that the prelate sits on Leadership Council of Sach’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

Sánchez Sorondo dismissed concerns about the UN’s population agenda last July, telling reporters that the “Holy See does not see the United Nations as the devil as certain right-wing thinkers do.”

And in a notable response to Gennarini, Sánchez Sorondo stated that the SDGs “do not even mention abortion or population control” while at the same time conceding they “speak of access to family planning and sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights.” But, he added, “the interpretation and application of these depends on governments.”

In defending his contentious climate conference, Sánchez Sorondo stated that far from criticizing him, his “superiors” had “authorized me, and several of them participated.”

At this June’s summit, Pope Francis praised the chancellor’s efforts and noted that a “number of prestigious external collaborators – to whom I offer my heartfelt thanks – have engaged in important activities in defence of human dignity and freedom in our day.”

Sachs took the opportunity to laud Laudato si’ as “a remarkable eye-opening to the world” that “called for an integral human and sustainable development. It called for what Pope Francis called a ‘common plan for our common home’.”

He stated that “if we can remember the least among us, we not only dignify each individual but we protect all of humanity.”

However, Sachs’ published works, and arguably, his entire career trajectory and ambitions, demonstrate that for him, the “least among us” does not include the child in the womb, and that his preferred method to eliminate poverty is to eliminate people who are poor through abortion and contraception.

Sachs on the record

Indeed, Gennarini describes Sachs as “the heir-apparent of the discredited population alarmists of the twentieth century who warned against the ‘population bomb’ and developed the concept of the Earth’s limited ‘caring capacity’.”

In his 2008 book Commonwealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, Sachs argues for legalized abortion as a cost-effective means to “eliminate unwanted children” when contraception fails. He also “praises the widespread adoption of family planning programs in the 60s and 70s, even though they are widely recognized as having been coercive and dehumanizing,” writes Gennarini.

Sachs regards abortion as a “lower-risk and lower-cost option” than having a child, and asserts that “high fertility rates are deleterious to economic development,” and that “legalization of abortion reduces a country’s total fertility rate significantly, by as much as half a child on average.”

As main architect of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, Sachs was part of the successful push to re-insert the phrases “sexual and reproductive health” and “reproductive rights” in the MDG’s implementation strategy, despite these having been initially omitted and despite protests by the United States and the Holy See at the time, noted Gennarini.

Sachs: “Amazing things happen” at the Holy See

SPUC’s Patrick Buckley echoed the fears of pro-life advocates when, on behalf ofVoice of the Family, he protested the Vatican-Sachs-Ki Moon collaboration for the April 2015 climate conference.

“Unfortunately, pro-life and pro-family advocates who lobby at the UN have witnessed the environmental issues become an umbrella to cover a wide spectrum of attacks on human life and the family,” stated Buckley.

The UN SDGs “include strong attacks on life and family” and “will determine the direction and financial aid for the third world countries for the next 15 years,” he warned.

Added Buckley: “Understandably the population control, pro-abortion lobby must be feeling very much empowered by the influence being exercised in the Vatican by two of the culture of death’s leading figures, Ban Ki Moon and Professor Jeffrey Sachs.”

Perhaps that’s why, when addressing the June summit at the Holy See, Sachs seemed almost giddy with enthusiasm.

“For me, this is one of the most remarkable rooms in the whole world,” he effused. “I can only share my sense that when we get together amazing things happen … It’s always a thrill to be here.” (Jorge's Ecocyclical Made Possible Passage of Pro-Abortion SDGs.)

No, no conciliar “bishop,” at least none who are “ordinaries” in the conciliar hierarchy, of the United States of America are going to condemn Timothy Michael Kaine’s support for the chemical and surgical execution of the innocent preborn as he, Kaine, has been described as a “Pope Francis” Catholic. He is a “Pope Francis” Catholic quite indeed, which means that he is no Catholic at all.

Kaine has spent all but one year of his life in the counterfeit church of concilarism. He was catechized as a child during the “Second” Vatican Council and was not even fifteen years of age when the Supreme Court of the United States of America had handed down its decisions in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, January 22, 1973. He has known nothing but conciliarism throughout his formative years, and thus it is that he could have considered the “personally opposed to abortion, but” . . . . stance that he took prior to three days ago now something was an expression of “traditional” Catholicism.

Alas, Pope Leo XIII explained that Catholics have a solemn duty to oppose evils and to profess openly the Catholic Faith no matter what consequences might befall them at the hands of mere mortals in this passing, mortal vale of tears:

But in this same matter, touching Christian faith, there are other duties whose exact and religious observance, necessary at all times in the interests of eternal salvation, become more especially so in these our days. Amid such reckless and widespread folly of opinion, it is, as We have said, the office of the Church to undertake the defense of truth and uproot errors from the mind, and this charge has to be at all times sacredly observed by her, seeing that the honor of God and the salvation of men are confided to her keeping. But, when necessity compels, not those only who are invested with power of rule are bound to safeguard the integrity of faith, but, as St. Thomas maintains: "Each one is under obligation to show forth his faith, either to instruct and encourage others of the faithful, or to repel the attacks of unbelievers.'' To recoil before an enemy, or to keep silence when from all sides such clamors are raised against truth, is the part of a man either devoid of character or who entertains doubt as to the truth of what he professes to believe. In both cases such mode of behaving is base and is insulting to God, and both are incompatible with the salvation of mankind. This kind of conduct is profitable only to the enemies of the faith, for nothing emboldens the wicked so greatly as the lack of courage on the part of the good. Moreover, want of vigor on the part of Christians is so much the more blameworthy, as not seldom little would be needed on their part to bring to naught false charges and refute erroneous opinions, and by always exerting themselves more strenuously they might reckon upon being successful. After all, no one can be prevented from putting forth that strength of soul which is the characteristic of true Christians, and very frequently by such display of courage our enemies lose heart and their designs are thwarted. Christians are, moreover, born for combat, whereof the greater the vehemence, the more assured, God aiding, the triumph: "Have confidence; I have overcome the world." Nor is there any ground for alleging that Jesus Christ, the Guardian and Champion of the Church, needs not in any manner the help of men. Power certainly is not wanting to Him, but in His loving kindness He would assign to us a share in obtaining and applying the fruits of salvation procured through His grace.

The chief elements of this duty consist in professing openly and unflinchingly the Catholic doctrine, and in propagating it to the utmost of our power. For, as is often said, with the greatest truth, there is nothing so hurtful to Christian wisdom as that it should not be known, since it possesses, when loyally received, inherent power to drive away error. So soon as Catholic truth is apprehended by a simple and unprejudiced soul, reason yields assent. (Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890.) 

Is it any surprise that the man whom Timothy Michael Kaine will debate in less than three months, Governor of Indiana Michael Richard Pence (R-Indiana), who is just a year younger than Kaine, left what he thought was the Catholic Church, much to the chagrin of his mother and siblings, who have long equated Catholicism with being members of the Democratic Party, for the heresy of “evangelical Christianity" (see Pence Left Catholicism in College, Much to the Chagrin of His Family.) Pence was seeking a “personal relationship” with Our Lord which he did not find in his parish, which, unbeknownst to Pence or to many others of us until much later, lacked a true offering of Holy Mass and thus lacked the Real Presence of the Divine Redeemer in the Most Blessed Sacrament. Timothy Michael Kaine is a product of Americanism and its offshoot, conciliarism, and Michael Richard Pence is the victim of Americanism and of conciliarism’s “reconciliation” with the very principles that have nurtured and sustained the likes of Kaine.

As will be explained in greater detail in a few days, it will come as no surprise to longtime readers of my writing that my criticism and utter rejection of the Democratic Party, committed as it is to statism, the chemical and surgical slaughter of the innocent preborn, perversity, the surrender of American national sovereignty to bodies of “global governance, excessive taxation, state-sponsored coercion to intimidate into silence and submission anyone who opposes these evils, does not mean that I am a Trumpster. It should be clear by now that I am not, especially after Donald John Trump’s “loving” mention of the “LGBTQ” (a friend of mine informed me that the “Q,” which I thought stood for Queer, stands for “Questioning”) on Thursday evening, July 21, 2016, the Feast of Saint Praxedes.

The purpose of this commentary, though, has been to remind older readers—and to inform newer ones—that we live in the midst of a diabolical trap, the likes of which were described so accurately by Father Edward Leen, S.J., sixty-three years ago (see the home page of this site for my latest citation of Father Leen’s observations). The devil continues to raise up men and women who are so completely committed to evil that anyone, including those who support the sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance, which can never be the foundation of making any nation “great” or “safe,” no matter the protestations of the man who believes that he “alone” can “fix” problems that have been caused by this nation’s promotion of sin and many of citizens’ unrepentant persistence in it, are said to look “better” by comparison.

Believe what you want. This diabolical trap remains what it has been since July 4, 1776, no amount of projecting one’s fondest Catholics onto secular saviours can make them into instruments of justice when they are, objectively speaking, unjust in their own lives and supportive of injustice God and the good of souls in the public realm. This is simple truth. Those who reject it prefer to believe in an illusion of their own making as there no semblance of rationality to believe that men will be different once elected to office than they had been beforehand.

Alas, the problems that we face are supernatural, not merely natural, which means there is no merely natural solution for them. Saint Paul reminded us of this in his Epistle to the Ephesians:

Put you on the armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the deceits of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and power, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high place. Therefore take unto you the armour of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and to stand in all things perfect. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of justice, And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace:

In all things taking the shield of faith, wherewith you may be able to extinguish all the fiery darts of the most wicked one. And take unto you the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit (which is the word of God). By all prayer and supplication praying at all times in the spirit; and in the same watching with all instance and supplication for all the saints. (Ephesians 6: 11-18.)

We should not fear anything in this world, not from the civil state and not from the counterfeit church of conciliarism. We must be prepared for martyrdom, both figuratively and literally, in order to remain steadfast apostles of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen, trusting that our few acts of reparation, offered in love to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, especially by praying as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits, will help to plant a few seeds for the end of this era of chastisement and the resurrection of the Church Militant on earth.

Today is the Feast of Saint James the Greater, who was privileged to taken atop Mount Thabor for Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s Transfiguration and to be with Him, albeit fast asleep, during His fearful Agony in Garden, and whose Epistle was rejected by the heretic Martin Luther because of its emphasis of the necessity of good works to manifest our Faith. Although there is an account of this son of Zebedee’s life in Archbishop Jacobus Vorgine. O.P.’s The Golden Legend that is included in Appendix B, it is useful for present purposes to include a reflection on the life of Saint James the Greater that was written by Saint John Chrysostom and included in the readings for Matins in today’s Divine Office:

Let no man be troubled if we say that the Apostles were still imperfect, for the mystery of the Cross was not yet finished, the grace of the Spirit had not yet been shed abroad in their hearts. If thou wilt behold them in their strength, consider them such as they became after the grace of the Spirit was given them, and thou wilt perceive that they had trodden under foot every vain desire. This is the cause wherefore their present imperfection is made known unto us, that is, that thou mayest see how great a change could be forthwith wrought by grace. But nevertheless let us now look how they came unto Christ, and what they said. Master, they said, we would that Thou shouldest do for us whatsoever we shall desire. Mark x. 35. And He said unto them: What would ye that I should do for you? Mark X. 36.not, surely, that He knew not what their wish was, but that He would make them answer, and so uncover the wound, to lay a plaster upon it.

Their wish proceeded from earthly motives, and they were shy and ashamed to express it, and therefore they took Christ apart, and so asked Him. The Evangelist saith: For they were gone apart, that they might not be discovered of them and then they told Him what they sought. To me it seemeth most likely that they had heard how that the disciples should sit upon twelve thrones; they were fain to obtain for themselves the chiefest places at this enthronement; they knew that the Lord loved them better than the most of the others; but they feared that Peter would still be preferred before them; and therefore they made bold to say: Grant unto us that we may sit, one at thy right Hand, and the other at thy left Hand, in thy glory. Mark x. 37. They were even instant with Him, saying: Say that we may. And what answered He? To show that they were asking no spiritual gift, nor even knew for themselves what they were asking, nor would have asked it if they had known what it was, Jesus said unto them: Ye know not what ye ask, ye know not how great a thing, how wonderful a thing this is, a thing which even is not Mine to give.

And He said moreover: Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? Behold how He turneth their thoughts at once another way, speaking to them of things altogether different, as though He said, Ye come unto Me treating of honours and crowns, but I speak unto you of the wrestling and the sweat. This is not yet the time of reward, neither is My glory immediately to be revealed; but now death and danger are present with you. But consider how, by the manner of His questioning, He doth both exhort and invite them. He saith not Are ye able to bear death? Are ye able to shed your blood? but: How are ye able to drink the cup whereto He presently inviteth them, saying: the cup that I shall drink of; that He may make them readier for the strife by knowing that it is a strife which they are to share with Him. (Matins, The Divine Office, July 25, Feast of Saint James the Greater.)

Saint James, known as Santiago Matamoras—Saint James the Moorslayer—in Spain, desires us to work hard to save our souls and to view all of the events of the world through the supernatural eyes of the Holy Faith. It is indeed very interesting that the Mexican city in the State of Tamualipas just across the Rio Grande River from Brownsville, Texas, through thousands of illegal immigrants, including Mohammedan “refugees”—aka terrorists—continue to pass into the United States of America, Matamoras, is named after Santiago Matamoras. Yes, the “open borders” policies of the current lawless administration are affront not only to Congressional law and national sovereignty, they are a diabolically-inspired attack upon the work of Santiago Matamoras in Spain, and that is something you are not going to hear from any naturalist of the false opposite of the naturalist “right.”

Remember, the way out of this mess runs through Our Lady’s Sorrowful and Immaculate, and may we beg our dear Blessed Mother, whose own mother’s feast day is tomorrow, July 26, 2016, never to forget that this is so.

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

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

Saint James the Greater, pray for us.

Saint Christopher, pray for us.

Appendix A

On Jesse Louis Jackson And Others Who "Took the Soup" To Sell Out Truth for Political Expediency

Jesse Louis Jackson gave an address to the National Right to Life Committee in 1977 that is quoted below and then was the subjected to scrutiny and commentary in article on this site in 2013. This appendix begins with Jackson's address, which coupled support for "family planning" with opposition to abortion

The question of "life" is The Question of the 20th century. Race and poverty are dimensions of the life question, but discussions about abortion have brought the issue into focus in a much sharper way. How we will respect and understand the nature of life itself is the over-riding moral issue, not of the Black race, but of the human race.

The question of abortion confronts me in several different ways. First, although I do not profess to be a biologist, I have studied biology and know something about life from the point of view of the natural sciences. Second, I am a minister of the Gospel and therefore, feel that abortion has a religious and moral dimension that I must consider.

Third, I was born out of wedlock (and against the advice that my mother received from her doctor) and therefore abortion is a personal issue for me. From my perspective, human life is the highest good, the summum bonum . Human life itself is the highest human good and God is the supreme good because He is the giver of life. That is my philosophy. Everything I do proceeds from that religious and philosophical premise.

Life is the highest good and therefore you fight for life, using means consistent with that end. Life is the highest human good not on its own naturalistic merits, but because life is supernatural, a gift from God. Therefore, life is the highest human good because life is sacred. Biologically speaking, thousands of male sperms are ejaculated into the female reproductive tract during sexual intercourse, but only once in a while do the egg and sperm bring about fertilization. Some call that connection accidental, but I choose to call it providential. It takes three to make a baby: a man, a woman and the Holy Spirit.

I believe in family planning. I do not believe that families ought to have children, as some people did where I was growing up, by the dozens. I believe in methods of contraception -- prophylactics, pills, rhythm, etc. I believe in sex education. We ought to teach' it in the home, the school, the church, and on the television. I think that if people are properly educated sexually they will appreciate the act and know its ultimate function, purpose and significance.

In the abortion debate one of the crucial questions is when does life begin. Anything growing is living. Therefore human life begins when the sperm and egg join and drop into the fallopian tube and the pulsation of life take place. From that point, life may be described differently (as an egg, embryo, fetus, baby, child, teenager, adult), but the essence is the same. The name has changed but the game remains the same.

Human beings cannot give or create life by themselves, it is really a gift from God. Therefore, one does not have the right to take away (through abortion) that which he does not have the ability to give.

Some argue, suppose the woman does not. want to have the baby. They say the very fact that she does not want the baby means that the psychological damage to the child is reason enough to abort the baby'. I disagree. The solution to that problem is not to kill the innocent baby, but to deal with her values and her attitude toward life that have allowed her not to want the baby. Deal with the attitude that would allow her to take away that which she cannot give.

Some women argue that the man does not have the baby and will not be responsible for the baby after it is born, therefore it is all right to kill the baby. Again the logic is off. The premise is that the man is irresponsible.

If that is the problem, then deal with making him responsible. Deal with what you are dealing with, not with the weak, innocent and unprotected baby. The essence of Jesus' message dealt with this very problem -- the problem of the inner attitude and motivation of a person. "If in your heart . . ." was his central message. The actual abortion (effect) is merely the logical conclusion of a prior attitude (cause) that one has toward life itself. Deal with the cause not merely the effect when abortion is the issue.

Some of the most dangerous arguments for abortion stem from popular judgments about life's ultimate meaning, but the logical conclusion of their position is never pursued. Some people may, unconsciously, operate their lives as if pleasure is life's highest good, and pain and suffering man's greatest enemy. That position, if followed to its logical conclusion, means that that which prohibits pleasure should be done away with by whatever means are necessary. By the same rationale, whatever means are necessary should be used to prevent suffering and pain. My position is not to negate pleasure nor elevate suffering, but merely to argue against their being elevated to an ultimate end of life. Because if they are so elevated, anything, including murder and genocide, can be carried out in their name.

Often people who analyze and operate In the public sphere (some sociologists, doctors, politicians, etc.) are especially prone to argue in these ways. Sociologists argue for - population control on the basis of a shortage of housing, food, space, etc. I raise two issues at this point: (1) It is strange that they choose to start talking about population control at the same time that Black people in America and people of color around the world are demanding their rightful place as human citizens and their rightful share of the material wealth in the world. (2) People of color are for the most part powerless with regard to decisions made about population control. Given the history of people of color in the modern world we have no reason to assume that whites are going to look out for our best interests.

Politicians argue for abortion largely because they do not want to spend the necessary money to feed, clothe and educate more people. Here arguments for in-convenience and economic savings take precedence over arguments for human value and human life. I read recently where a politician from New York was justifying abortion because they had prevented 10,000 welfare babies from being born and saved the state $15 million. In my mind serious moral questions arise when politicians are willing to pay welfare mothers between $300 to $1000 to have an abortion, but will not pay $30 for a hot school lunch program to the already born children of these same mothers.

I think the economic objections are not valid today because we are confronted with a whole new economic problem. The basic and historic economic problem has been the inability to feed everyone in the world even If the will were there to do so. They could not produce enough to do the job even if they wanted to. An agrarian and disconnected world did not possess the ability to solve the basic economic problem. That was tragic, but hardly morally reprehensible. Today. however, we do not have the same economic problem. Our world is basically urban, industrial, interconnected, and technological so that we now, generally speaking, have the ability to feed the peoples of the world but lack the political and economic will to do so. That would require basic shifts of economic and political power in the world and. we are not willing to pay that price -- the price of justice. The problem now is not the ability to produce but the ability to distribute justly.

Psychiatrists, social workers and doctors often argue for abortion on the basis that the child will grow up mentally and emotionally scared. But who of us is complete? If incompleteness were the criteria for taking life we would all be dead. If you can justify abortion on the basis of emotional incompleteness then your logic could also lead you to killing for other forms of incompleteness -- blindness, crippleness, old age. (How we respect life is the over-riding moral issue:Right to Life News, January 1977)

Yes, Jesse, "incompleteness" could lead people of color to kill those whom they have been taught by professional race-baiters to hate and blame for their personal problems. And your support for contraception, Jesse, is offensive to God in se as it denies His Sovereignty over the sanctity and fecundity of marriage, which he has ordained for the propagation and education of children, education, by the way, which is to be supervised by the parents and not by your pal Obama/Soetoro's 'common core" curriculum (see Common Core: From Luther To Mann To Bismarck To Obama). "Family planning" is not only offensive to God. It is injurious to men and their temporal and eternal good (see Forty-Three Years After Humanae Vitae, Always Trying To Find A Way and Planting Seeds of Revolutionary Change).

Jesse Louis Jackson got "inoculated," if you will, from all such talk in the 1983-1984 Democratic Party presidential cycle as he made surprisingly strong showings against former Vice President of the United States Walter F. Mondale (D-Minnesota) and United States Senator Gary Hart (D-Colorado), later to have some difficulties in his 1987 run for the 1988 Democratic Party presidential nomination because of "monkey business" of some sort.  Jesse Jackson got the presidential bug, and that is what killed the integrity that he had once demonstrated on the life issue.

Then again, why should Jesse Louis Jackson be concerned about personal integrity when the integrit of the true Faith, about which he knows nothing, has been under attack by the conciliar "popes" and their "bishops" for well-neigh five and one-half decades now.

The very men who should have been speaking to the world about the necessity of seeking to restore the Social Reign of Christ the King and of Mary our Immaculate Queen have made their "reconciliation" with the falsehoods of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry, thereby becoming active accomplices in the degeneration of the world around us by the daily offenses they have committed against the integrity of the Sacred Deposit of Faith and their sacramentally barren liturgical rites.

The conciliar "popes" and their "bishops" and many of their clergy and professed religious have blasphemed God by personally esteeming the symbols of false religions, by treating the "clergy" of such religions as having a mission from God to serve Him and by entering into the temples of false worship that they call "sacred' and in which they are content to be treated as inferiors. They have promulgated false doctrines aplenty and instituted revolutionary pastoral practices that have robbed most Catholics worldwide of even a modicum of the sensus fidei, which is why they are happy participants in the evils protected under cover of the civil law and promoted with abandon in what passes for "popular culture."

Yet it is that Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis does not believe that it is necessary, prudent or advisable to speak about abortion because Catholics supposedly "know" that it is wrong, stressing that this is the time for "mercy":

Patricia Zorzan: Speaking on behalf of Brazilians. The society has changed, young people have changed, and we see many young people in Brazil. You have spoken to us about abortion, matrimony between persons of the same gender. In Brazil a law has been approved which extends the right of abortion and has allowed matrimony between persons of the same gender. Why didn’t you speak about this? [Repeated in Italian]

Francis: The Church has already expressed herself perfectly on this. It wasn’t necessary to go back to this, nor did I speak about fraud or lies or other things, on which the Church has a clear doctrine.[Repeated in Italian]

Patricia Zorzan: But it’s an issue that interests young people…

[Repeated in Italian]

Francis: Yes, but it wasn’t necessary to talk about that, but about positive things that open the way to youngsters, isn’t that so? Moreover, young people know perfectly well what the position of the Church is.

[Repeated in Italian]

Patricia Zorzan: What is the position of Your Holiness, can you tell us?

[Repeated in Italian]

Francis: That of the Church. I’m a child of the Church. (Press Conference in English.)

Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis is not a child of the Catholic Church. He is a son of perdition who refuses to teach simple moral truths by asserting gratuitously that there is no "need" to do so because young Catholics know all about them.

Really?

Ah, yes, I guess this is why Catholics by the boat loads have voted for the likes of Christine Kirchner in Argentina, Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, Francois Hollande in France, Tony Blair in the United Kingdom, Angela Merkel in Germany, Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., Nancy Patricia D'Alsesandro Pelosi, Richard Durbin, Patrick Quinn, Thomas Harkin, Andrew Mark Cuomo, Mario Matthew Cuomo, Rudolph William Giuliani, Christopher Dodd, Daniel Malloy, John F. Kerry, Elizabeth Warren, Martin Malloy, Christopher Murphy, Edmud G. Brown, Jr., Loretta Sanchez-Brixey, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Thomas Ridge, the late Edward Moore Kennedy, George Elmer Pataki, Elliot Spitzer, Christine Quinn, Jennifer Granholm, Patricia Murray, Susan Collins, Harry Reid, Bill Richardson, Mary Landrieu, William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Charles Schumer, Barbara Mikulski and countless of other public officials who support sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance, including the chemical and surgical assassination of innocent preborn children and the provision of special "rights," including "marriage," for those engaged in acts of unspeakable perversity in violation of the binding precepts of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis's gratuitously and completely fallacious belief that young Catholics "know" Church teaching obscures the fact that a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter would understand that he has an obligation to speak to the entire world, that upon his immortal soul is the solemn responsibility to see to it that the Gospel of Christ the King is preached and that errors and moral evils are denounced in no uncertain terms. That Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis refuses to do this for the sake of emphasizing his Marxist view of "serving the poor" by means of statist programs that reduce both the poor and everyone to the status of the slaves of the caesars and their administrative minions while seeking to restrict their legitimate "liberties" is yet another sign that he is does not belong to the bosom of Holy Mother Church and that he is not a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter.

True popes have never hesitated to denounce evils as the circumstances required to do so, and the circumstances of the late Eighteenth, Nineteenth and early to middle Twentieth Centuries saw a continuous train of popes from Pope Pius VI through Pope Pius XII do precisely that.

Appendix B

The Golden Legend on the Life of Saint Sames the Greater

This James the apostle is said James the son of Zebedee, brother of S. John the Evangelist and Boanerges, that is the son of thunder, and James the More. He was said James, son of Zebedee, not only in flesh but in the exposition of the name, for Zebedee is interpreted giving or given, and James gave himself to God by martyrdom of death, and he is given to us of God for a special patron. He is said James, brother of John, not only by flesh but by semblance of manners. For they both were of one love and of one study and of one will. They were of one love for to avenge our Lord, for when the Samaritans would not receive Jesu Christ, James and John said: If it please thee Lord let fire descend from heaven and destroy them. They were of like study for to learn, for these two were they that demanded of our Lord of the day of judgment, and of other things to come. And they asked that one of them might sit at the right side of him and that other on his left side. He was said the son of thunder, because of the sound of his predication, for he feared the evil and excited the slothful, and by the highness of his preaching he did marvels in converting them to the faith; whereof Bede saith of S. John, that he thundered so high, that if he had thundered a little higher, all the world might not have comprised him. He is said James the More, like as that other James is said James the Less. First by reason of his calling, for he was first called of Jesu Christ, secondly by reason of familiarity, for Jesu Christ was seen to have greater familiarity with him than with the Less James. Like as it appeareth at the raising of the maid, and at his holy transfiguration. Thirdly, by reason of his passion. For among all the apostles he was the first that suffered death, and he may be said More because he was first called to be an apostle, so he was first called to the glory perdurable.

Of S. James the More, and Apostle.

James the apostle, son of Zebedee, preached after the ascension of our Lord in the Jewry and Samaria, and after, he was sent into Spain for to sow there the word of Jesu Christ. But when he was there he profited but little, for he had converted unto Christ's law but nine disciples, of whom he left two there, for to preach the word of God, and took the other seven with him and returned again into Judea. Master John Beleth saith that he converted there but one man only, and when after he preached the word of God in Judea, there was an enchanter named Hermogenes with the Pharisees, which sent Philetus his disciple to S. James for to overcome him tofore all men, and to prove his preaching false. But the apostle overcame him tofore all men reasonably, and did many miracles tofore him. Philetus then returned to Hermogenes, and approved the doctrine of James to be true, and recited to him his miracles, and said that he would be his disciple, and desired and counselled Hermogenes in like wise to be his disciple. Then Hermogenes was wroth, and by his craft and enchantments he made Philetus in such wise that he might not move, and said: Now we shall see if thy James may save thee. Then Philetus sent his child to S. James and let him have knowledge hereof. Then S. James sent to him his sudary or keverchief and said: Say to him that our Lord redresseth them that be hurt, and unbindeth them that be empeshed; and as soon as he said so, and touched the sudary, he was unbound and loosed from all the enchanting of Hermogenes, and arose up and went joyfully to S. James. Then Hermogenes was angry, and called many devils, and commanded them that they bring to him S. James bound, and Philetus with him, for to avenge him on them, lest his disciples afterwards address them against him. Then when the devils came towards S. James, they cried, howling in the air, saying: James the apostle of God have pity on us, for we burn tofore our time come. To whom James said: Wherefore come ye to me? And they said: Hermogenes hath sent us to thee and to Philetus for to bring you to him, and the angel of God hath bound us with chains of fire and tormenteth us. And James said: The angel of God shall unbind you and bring him to me bounden, but hurt him not. Then they went and took Hermogenes and bound his hands, and brought him so bound to S. James, and they said to Hermogenes: Thou hast sent us thither where we were strongly tormented and grievously bound. And then said they to S. James: Give to us power against him that we may avenge the wrongs and our embracements. And James said to them: Lo! here is Philetus tofore you, why take ye him not? They answered: We may not touch him, ne as much as a flea that is in thy couch. Then said James to Philetus: To the end that thou do good for evil, like as Christ bade us, unbind him. And then Hermogenes was all confused. And James said to him: Go thy way freely where thou wilt, for it appertaineth not to our discipline that any be converted against his will, and Hermogenes said to him: I know well the ire of the devils, but if thou give to me somewhat of thine that I may have with me, they shall slay me. Then S. James gave to him his staff. Then he went and brought to the apostle all his books of his false craft and enchanting for to be burnt. But S. James, because that the odour of the burning might do evil or harm to some fools, he made them to be cast into the sea. And after he had cast his books into the sea he returned, and holding his feet said: O thou deliverer of souls, receive me penitent, and him that hath sustained till now missaying of thee. And then began he to be perfect in the dread of God our Lord, so that many virtues were done by him afterward.

And when the Jews saw Hermogenes converted they were all moved of envy, and went unto S. James and blamed him because that he preached Christ crucified. And he approved clearly the coming and passion of our Lord Jesu Christ in such wise that many believed in our Lord. Abiathar, which was bishop that year, moved the people against him, and then they put a cord about his neck and brought him to Herod Agrippa. And when he was led to be beheaded by the commandment of Herod, a man having the palsy cried to him. And he gave him health and said: In the name of Jesu Christ, for whom I am led to be beheaded, arise thou and be all whole, and bless our Lord thy Maker. And anon he arose and was all whole. A scribe named Josias, which put the cord about his neck and drew him, seeing this miracle fell down to his feet and demanded of him forgiveness and that he might be christened; and when Abiathar saw that, he made him to be taken, and said to him: But if thou curse the name of Christ thou shalt be beheaded with him. To whom Josias said: Be thou accursed, and accursed be all thy Gods, and the name of our Lord Jesu Christ be blessed world without end. Then Abiathar commanded to smite him on the mouth with fists, and sent a message to Herod, and gat consent that he should be beheaded with James. And when they should be beheaded both, S. James desired a potful of water of him that should smite off their heads, and therewith he baptized Josias, and then anon they were both beheaded and suffered martyrdom. S. James was beheaded the eighth kalends of April on our Lady's day of the Annunciation, and the eighth kalends of August he was translated to Compostella. And the third kalends of January he was buried, for the making of his sepulchre was from August unto January, and therefore the church hath established that his feast shall be hallowed in the eighth kalends of August, whereas is most convenable time. And as Master John Beleth saith, which made this translation diligently: When the blessed S. James was beheaded, his disciples took the body away by night for fear of the Jews, and brought it into a ship, and committed unto the will of our Lord the sepulture of it, and went withal into the ship without sail or rudder. And by the conduct of the angel of our Lord they arrived in Galicia in the realm of Lupa. There was in Spain a queen that had to name, and also by deserving of her life, Lupa, which is as much to say in English as a she-wolf. And then the disciples of S. James took out his body and laid it upon a great stone. And anon the stone received the body into it as it had been soft wax, and made to the body a stone as it were a sepulchre. Then the disciples went to Lupa the queen, and said to her: Our Lord Jesu Christ hath sent to thee the body of his disciple, so that him that thou wouldest not receive alive thou shalt receive dead, and then they recited to her the miracle by order; how they were come without any governaile of the ship and required of her place convenable for his holy sepulture. And when the queen heard this, she sent them unto a right cruel man, by treachery and by guile, as Master Beleth saith, and some say it was to the king of Spain, for to have his consent of this matter, and he took them and put them in prison. And when he was at dinner the angel of our Lord opened the prison and let them escape away all free. And when he knew it, he sent hastily knights after, for to take them, and as these knights passed to go over a bridge, the bridge brake and overthrew, and they fell in the water and were drowned. And when he heard that he repented him and doubted for himself and for his people, and sent after them, praying them for to return, and that he would do like as they would themselves. And then they returned and converted the people of that city unto the faith of God. And when Lupa the queen heard this, she was much sorrowful, and when they came again to her they told to her the agreement of the king. She answered: Take the oxen that I have in yonder mountain, and join ye and yoke them to my cart or chariot, and bring ye then the body of your master, and build ye for him such a place as ye will, and this she said to them in guile and mockage, for she knew well that there were no oxen but wild bulls, and supposed that they should never join them to her chariot, and if they were so joined and yoked to the chariot, they would run hither and thither, and should break the chariot, and throw down the body and slay them. But there is no wisdom against God. And then they, that knew nothing the evil courage of the queen, went up on the mountain, and found there a dragon casting fire at them, and ran on them. And they made the sign of the cross and he brake it on two pieces. And then they made the sign of the cross upon the bulls, and anon they were meek as lambs. Then they took them and yoked them to the chariot, and took the body of S. James with the stone that they had laid it on, and laid on the chariot, and the wild bulls without governing or driving of any body drew it forth unto the middle of the palace of the queen Lupa. And when she saw this she was abashed and believed and was christened, and delivered to them all that they demanded, and dedicated her palace into a church and endowed it greatly, and after ended her life in good works.

Bernard, a man of the bishopric of Mutina, as Calixtus the pope saith, was taken and enchained and put into a deep tower, and called always the blessed S. James, so that S. James appeared to him and said: Come and follow me into Galicia, and then his bonds brake and S. James vanished away. And he went up into the high tower, and his bonds in his neck, and sprang down without hurting, and it was well sixty cubits of height. And as Bede saith: There was a man that had done a foul sin, of which the bishop doubted to assoil him, and sent him to S. James with a schedule in which the sin was written; and when he had laid the schedule upon the altar, on the day of S. James he prayed S. James, that by his merits his sin might be forgiven and defaced. And after, he opened the schedule and found the sin effaced and struck out. And then he thanked God and S. James.

Thirty men of Lorraine went together on pilgrimage to S. James about the year of our Lord a thousand and sixty-three, and all made faith to other that every man should abide and serve other in all estates that shall happen by the way, except one, that would make no covenant. It happed that one of them was sick and his fellows abode and awaited on him fifteen days, and at last they all left him, save he that promised not, which abode by him and kept him at the foot of the Mount St. Michael. And when it drew to night the sick man died, and when it was night, the man that was alive was sore afraid for the place which was solitary, and for the presence of the dead body, and for the cruelty of the strange people, and for the darkness of the night that came on. But anon S. James appeared to him in likeness of a man on horseback and comforted him and said; Give me that dead body tofore me, and leap thou up behind me on my horse. And so they rode all that night fifteen days journey that they were on the morn to see the sun rising at Montoia, which is but half a league from S. James. Then S. James left them both, commanding him that was alive, that he should assemble the canons of S. James to bury this pilgrim, and that he should say to his fellows, because they had broken their faith their pilgrimage availed them not. And he did his commandment, and when his fellows came they marvelled how he had so fast gone, and he told to them all that S. James had said and done.

And as Calixtus the pope rehearseth, there was a man of Almaine, and he went to S. James about the year one thousand four score and three, and came to Toulouse for to be lodged, and their host made them drunk. Then the host took a cup of silver and put it in their malle. And on the morn, when they were gone, he followed them as thieves, and bare them on hand that they had stolen his cup, and said that they should be punished if the cup were found on them. And he found it in the malle, and anon they were brought to judgment. And then the sentence was given, that all that they had should be given to the host, and that one of them should be hanged. And then the father would have died for his son and the son for the father. At last the son was hanged, and the father went forth weeping on his pilgrimage to S. James, and came again thirty-six days after, and then went for to see his son, and cried and wept, but the son which was hanged, began to comfort and said to his father: Right sweet father, weep no more, for I was never so well at ease, for the blessed S. James hath alway sustained me and held me up, and hath fed me with sweetness of heaven; and when the father heard him speak, he ran anon to the city and did so much that the people came, and his son was taken down all whole, as though he had never had harm, and the host was hanged which had put the cup in the malle.

Hugo de S. Victor rehearseth that the devil appeared in likeness of S. James to a pilgrim, and told to him many things of the unhappiness of the world, and said to him that he should be well blessed if he slew himself in the honour of him. And anon he took a knife and slew himself; and then the host in whose house he was lodged was held suspect, and was sore afraid to be put therefor to death. Then he that was dead revived again, and said that the devil had caused him to slay himself, and brought him into great torments. And S. James ran, and brought him tofore the throne of the judge, and when the devils accused him, he gat that he should be restored to his life.

There was a young man of the country of Lyons, as Hugh the abbot of Cluny witnesseth, that was accustomed to go oft to S. James, and the night tofore he should go thitherward he fell in fornication. And the next day he went forth. On a night it happed that the devil appeared to him in likeness of S. James, and said to him: Knowest thou who I am? And he answered: Nay. And the devil said to him: I am James the apostle, whom thou hast used to visit every year, and I am glad for thy devotion. But it is not long sith that thou, in going out of thy house, fellest in fornication, and hast presumed to come, not confessed thereof, wherefore thy pilgrimage may neither please God ne me. It appertaineth not to do so, for who that will come to me in pilgrimage, he must first show his sins by contrition and by confession, and after, by going on pilgrimage, punish them and make satisfaction. And this said, the devil vanished away. Then the young man was in great anguish, and disposed him to return home again to his house and confess him of his sins, and then to begin again his journey. And then the devil appeared to him again in likeness of the apostle, and warned him in no wise to do so, but said to him: This sin may in no wise be forgiven but if he cut off his members generative. But yet he should be more blessed if he killed himself, and be a martyr for the sake of him. And he, that same night, when his fellows slept, took a knife and cut off his genitals, and with the same knife smote himself into the belly. And his fellows awoke, and when they saw this thing they were sore afraid, and anon fled away lest they should be taken as suspect of the homicide. And after, as they made ready his pit, to bury him in, he revived again, and then all they were abashed and fled away. And he called them again, and told all that was befallen to him, saying: When I at the suggestion of the devil had slain myself, the devils took me and led me towards Rome, and anon S. James came after us, and blamed strongly the devils of their fallacy. And when they had long strived together, S. James constrained them to come into a meadow, where the Blessed Virgin sat speaking with many saints. And the blessed S. James complained for me, and then she blamed strongly the devils, and commanded that I should be restored again to my life. And then S. James took me, and rendered to me my life again, like as you see. And three days after his wounds were whole, and there appeared nothing but the traces where the wounds were, and then he reprised again his journey, and found his fellows, and recited to them all this by order.

And as Calixtus the pope rehearseth, there was a Frenchman, about the year of our Lord eleven hundred, would eschewe the mortality that was in France, and would visit S. James, and he took his wife and children and went thither. And when they came to Pampelona his wife died, and his host took from him all his money and his jument, upon which his children were borne. And this man, that thus went all discomforted, and bare his children on his shoulders, and led one after him, was in great anguish and sorrow. Then came a man to him, upon an ass, which had pity on him, and lent to him his ass for to bear his children. And when he came to S. James, and had done what he would, and prayed, S. James appeared to him, and demanded if he knew him, and he said nay. And S. James said to him: I am James the apostle, which have lent to thee mine ass, and yet I shall lend him to thee for to return. And I let thee wit that thine host is fallen from a soler and is dead. And thou shalt have again all that he hath taken from thee. And when all this was done, he returned joyous, with his children to his house. And as soon as his children were taken off from the ass, it was not known where it became.

A merchant was detained of a tyrant, and all despoiled, was wrongfully put in prison. And he called much devoutly S. James into his help. And S. James appeared to him tofore them that kept him, and they awoke, and he brought him into the highest of the tower, and anon the tower bowed down so low that the top was even with the ground. And he went, without leaping, and unbound of his irons. Then his keepers followed after, but they had no power to see him.

Three knights of the diocese of Lyons went to S. James, and that one was required of a poor woman for the love of S. James to bear her sack upon his horse; and he bare it. After, he found a man sick, and set him on his horse, and took the burden off the man, and the sack off the said woman, and followed his horse afoot. But he was broken with the heat of the sun, and with labour to go afoot, that when he came to S. James in Galicia, he was strongly sick. And his fellows prayed three days for the health of his soul, which three days he lay speechless, and his fellows abiding his death. The fourth he sighed greatly, and said: I thank God and S. James, for I am delivered by his merits when I would have done that which ye warned and admonished me. But the devils came to me and strained me so sore that I might not do nothing that appertained to the health of my soul. And I heard you well but I might not answer. And then the blessed S. James came, and brought in his left hand the sack of the woman, and in the right hand the bourdon of the poor pilgrim that I helped by the way, and held the bourdon for a spear, and the sack for a shield, and so assailed the devils as all angry, and lift up the bourdon, and feared the devils that they fled away; and thus the blessed S. James hath delivered me by his holy grace, and hath rendered to me my speech again. Call me the priest, for I may not be long in this life, it is time to amend our trespasses toward our Lord. And then he turned him to one of his fellows, and said to him: Friend, ride no more with thy lord, for certainly he is damned, and shall perish shortly by evil death, and therefore leave his company, and then he died. And when he was buried, his two fellows, knights, returned, and that other said to his master this that he had said to him, and he set not thereby, and had despite to amend him. And anon after he was smitten with a spear in battle and died.

And as Calixtus the pope saith, that there was a man of Viriliac went to S. James, and his money failed him by the way. And he had shame for to beg and ask alms, and he laid him under a tree, and dreamed that S. James fed him. And when he awoke he found a loaf, baked under ashes, at his head, and with that loaf he lived fifteen days till that he came again to his own place, and ate sufficiently twice a day of the same loaf, and always on the morn he found it whole in his satchel.

Also the same Calixtus rehearseth that a burgess of the city of Barcelona went to S. James about the year of our Lord eleven hundred, and required only that he should never be taken of any enemies, and as he returned by Sicily he was taken in the sea of Saracens, and led ofttimes to fairs for to be sold, but alway the chains with which he was bounden loosed. And when he had been sold fourteen times he was bound with double chains. Then he called S. James to his help, and S. James appeared to him and said: Because thou wert in my church, and thou settest nothing by the health of thy soul, but demandedst only the deliverance of thy body, therefor thou hast fallen in this peril. But because that our Lord is merciful, he hath sent me for to buy thee. And anon his chains brake, and he, bearing a part of the chains, passed by the countries and castles of the Saracens, and came home into his own country in the sight of all men, which were abashed of the miracle. For when any man would have taken him, as soon as they saw the chain they were afeard and fled. And when the lions and other beasts would have ran on him, in the deserts whereon he went, when they saw the chain they were afeard that they fled away.

It happed in the year twelve hundred and thirtyeight in a castle named Prato, between Florence and Pistoia, a young man deceived of simplesse by counsel of an old man, set fire in the corn of his tutor, which had charge to keep him, because that he would usurp to himself his heritage. Then he was taken, and confessed his trespass, and was judged to be drawn and burnt. Then he confessed him, and avowed to S. James. And when he had been long drawn in his shirt upon a stony way, he was neither hurt in his body ne in his shirt. Then he was bound to a stake, and fagots and bushes were set about him, and fire put thereto, which fire burnt atwo his bonds, and he always called on S. James, and there was no hurt of burning found in his shirt nor in his body, and when they would have cast him again into the fire, he was taken away from them by S. James, the apostle of God, to whom be given laud and praising. (lThe Golden Legend on the Life of Saint James the Greater.)

Appendix C:

The Golden Legend on the Life of Saint Christopher

Here followeth of Saint Christopher and first of his name.

Christopher tofore his baptism was named Reprobus, but afterwards he was named Christopher, which is as much to say as bearing Christ, of that that he bare Christ in four manners. He bare him on his shoulders by conveying and leading, in his body by making it lean, in mind by devotion, and in his mouth by confession and predication.

Of Saint Christopher.

Christopher was of the lineage of the Canaanites, and he was of a right great stature, and had a terrible and fearful cheer and countenance. And he was twelve cubits of length, and as it is read in some histories that, when he served and dwelled with the king of Canaan, it came in his mind that he would seek the greatest prince that was in the world, and him would he serve and obey. And so far he went that he came to a right great king, of whom the renomee generally was that he was the greatest of the world. And when the king saw him, he received him into his service, and made him to dwell in his court. Upon a time a minstrel sang tofore him a song in which he named oft the devil, and the king, which was a christian man, when he heard him name the devil, made anon the sign of the cross in his visage. And when Christopher saw that, he had great marvel what sign it was, and wherefore the king made it, and he demanded of him. And because the king would not say, he said: If thou tell me not, I shall no longer dwell with thee, and then the king told to him, saying: Alway when I hear the devil named, I fear that he should have power over me, and I garnish me with this sign that he grieve not ne annoy me. Then Christopher said to him: Doubtest thou the devil that he hurt thee not? Then is the devil more mighty and greater than thou art. I am then deceived of my hope and purpose, for I had supposed I had found the most mighty and the most greatest Lord of the world, but I commend thee to God, for I will go seek him for to be my Lord, and I his servant. And then departed from this king, and hasted him for to seek the devil. And as he went by a great desert, he saw a great company of knights, of which a knight cruel and horrible came to him and demanded whither he went, and Christopher answered to him and said: I go seek the devil for to be my master. And he said: I am he that thou seekest. And then Christopher was glad, and bound him to be his servant perpetual, and took him for his master and Lord. And as they went together by a common way, they found there a cross, erect and standing. And anon as the devil saw the cross he was afeard and fled, and left the right way, and brought Christopher about by a sharp desert. And after, when they were past the cross, he brought him to the highway that they had left. And when Christopher saw that, he marvelled, and demanded whereof he doubted, and had left the high and fair way, and had gone so far about by so aspre a desert. And the devil would not tell him in no wise. Then Christopher said to him: If thou wilt not tell me, I shall anon depart from thee, and shall serve thee no more. Wherefor the devil was constrained to tell him, and said: There was a man called Christ which was hanged on the cross, and when I see his sign I am sore afraid, and flee from it wheresoever I see it. To whom Christopher said: Then he is greater, and more mightier than thou, when thou art afraid of his sign, and I see well that I have laboured in vain, when I have not founden the greatest Lord of the world. And I will serve thee no longer, go thy way then, for I will go seek Christ. And when he had long sought and demanded where he should find Christ, at last he came into a great desert, to an hermit that dwelt there, and this hermit preached to him of Jesu Christ and informed him in the faith diligently, and said to him: This king whom thou desirest to serve, requireth the service that thou must oft fast. And Christopher said to him: Require of me some other thing, and I shall do it, for that which thou requirest I may not do. And the hermit said: Thou must then wake and make many prayers. And Christopher said to him: I wot not what it is; I may do no such thing. And then the hermit said to him: Knowest thou such a river, in which many be perished and lost? To whom Christopher said: I know it well. Then said the hermit, Because thou art noble and high of stature and strong in thy members, thou shalt be resident by that river, and thou shalt bear over all them that shall pass there, which shall be a thing right convenable to our Lord Jesu Christ whom thou desirest to serve, and I hope he shall show himself to thee. Then said Christopher: Certes, this service may I well do, and I promise to him for to do it. Then went Christopher to this river, and made there his habitacle for him, and bare a great pole in his hand instead of a staff, by which he sustained him in the water, and bare over all manner of people without ceasing. And there he abode, thus doing, many days. And in a time, as he slept in his lodge, he heard the voice of a child which called him and said: Christopher, come out and bear me over. Then he awoke and went out, but he found no man. And when he was again in his house, he heard the same voice and he ran out and found nobody. The third time he was called and came thither, and found a child beside the rivage of the river, which prayed him goodly to bear him over the water. And then Christopher lift up the child on his shoulders, and took his staff, and entered into the river for to pass. And the water of the river arose and swelled more and more: and the child was heavy as lead, and alway as he went farther the water increased and grew more, and the child more and more waxed heavy, insomuch that Christopher had great anguish and was afeard to be drowned. And when he was escaped with great pain, and passed the water, and set the child aground, he said to the child: Child, thou hast put me in great peril; thou weighest almost as I had all the world upon me, I might bear no greater burden. And the child answered: Christopher, marvel thee nothing, for thou hast not only borne all the world upon thee, but thou hast borne him that created and made all the world, upon thy shoulders. I am Jesu Christ the king, to whom thou servest in this work. And because that thou know that I say to be the truth, set thy staff in the earth by thy house, and thou shalt see to-morn that it shall bear flowers and fruit, and anon he vanished from his eyes. And then Christopher set his staff in the earth, and when he arose on the morn, he found his staff like a palmier bearing flowers, leaves and dates.

And then Christopher went into the city of Lycia, and understood not their language. Then he prayed our Lord that he might understand them, and so he did. And as he was in this prayer, the judges supposed that he had been a fool, and left him there. And then when Christopher understood the language, he covered his visage and went to the place where they martyred christian men, and comforted them in our Lord. And then the judges smote him in the face, and Christopher said to them: If I were not christian I should avenge mine injury. And then Christopher pitched his rod in the earth, and prayed to our Lord that for to convert the people it might bear flowers and fruit, and anon it did so. And then he converted eight thousand men. And then the king sent two knights for to fetch him to the king, and they found him praying, and durst not tell to him so. And anon after, the king sent as many more, and they anon set them down for to pray with him. And when Christopher arose, he said to them: What seek ye? And when they saw him in the visage they said to him: The king hath sent us, that we should lead thee bound unto him. And Christopher said to them: If I would, ye should not lead me to him, bound ne unbound. And they said to him: If thou wilt go thy way, go quit, where thou wilt. And we shall say to the king that we have not found thee. It shall not be so, said he, but I shall go with you. And then he converted them in the fatth, and commanded them that they should bind his hands behind his back, and lead him so bound to the king. And when the king saw him he was afeard and fell down off the seat, and his servants lifted him up and releved him again. And then the king inquired his name and his country; and Christopher said to him: Tofore or I was baptized I was named Reprobus, and after, I am Christopher; tofore baptism, a Canaanite, now, a christian man. To whom the king said: Thou hast a foolish name, that is to wit of Christ crucified, which could not help himself, ne may not profit to thee. How therefore, thou cursed Canaanite, why wilt thou not do sacrifice to our gods? To whom Christopher said: Thou art rightfully called Dagnus, for thou art the death of the world, and fellow of the devil, and thy gods be made with the hands of men. And the king said to him: Thou wert nourished among wild beasts, and therefore thou mayst not say but wild language, and words unknown to men. And if thou wilt now do sacrifice to the gods I shall give to thee great gifts and great honours, and if not, I shall destroy thee and consume thee by great pains and torments. But, for all this, he would in no wise do sacrifice, wherefore he was sent in to prison, and the king did do behead the other knights that he had sent for him, whom he had converted. And after this he sent in to the prison to Saint Christopher two fair women, of whom that one was named Nicæa and that other Aquilina, and promised to them many great gifts if they could draw Christopher to sin with them. And when Christopher saw that, he set him down in prayer, and when he was constrained by them that embraced him to move, he arose and said: What seek ye? For what cause be ye come hither? And they, which were afraid of his cheer and clearness of his visage, said: Holy saint of God, have pity of us so that we may believe in that God that thou preachest. And when the king heard that, he commanded that they should be let out and brought tofore him. To whom he said: Ye be deceived, but I swear to you by my gods that, if ye do no sacrifice to my gods, ye shall anon perish by evil death. And they said to him: If thou wilt that we shall do sacrifice, command that the places may be made clean, and that all the people may assemble at the temple. And when this was done they entered in to the temple, and took their girdles, and put them about the necks of their gods, and drew them to the earth, and brake them all in pieces, and said to them that were there: Go and call physicians and leeches for to heal your gods. And then, by the commandment of the king, Aquilina was hanged, and a right great and heavy stone was hanged at her feet, so that her members were much despitously broken. And when she was dead, and passed to our Lord, her sister Nicæa was cast into a great fire, but she issued out without harm all whole, and then he made to smite off her head, and so suffered death.

After this Christopher was brought tofore the king, and the king commanded that he should be beaten with rods of iron, and that there should be set upon his head a cross of iron red hot and burning, and then after, he did do make a siege or a stool of iron, and made Christopher to be bounden thereon, and after, to set fire under it, and cast therein pitch. But the siege or settle melted like wax, and Christopher issued out without any harm or hurt. And when the king saw that, he commanded that he should be bound to a strong stake, and that he should be through-shotten with arrows with forty knights archers. But none of the knights might attain him, for the arrows hung in the air about, nigh him, without touching. Then the king weened that he had been throughshotten with the arrows of the knights, and addressed him for to go to him. And one of the arrows returned suddenly from the air and smote him in the eye, and blinded him. To whom Christopher said: Tyrant, I shall die to-morn, make a little clay, with my blood tempered, and anoint therewith thine eye, and thou shalt receive health. Then by the commandment of the king he was led for to be beheaded, and then, there made he his orison, and his head was smitten off, and so suffered martyrdom. And the king then took a little of his blood and laid it on his eye, and said: In the name of God and of Saint Christopher! and was anon healed. Then the king believed in God, and gave commandment that if any person blamed God or Saint Christopher, he should anon be slain with the sword.

Ambrose saith in his preface thus, of this holy martyr: Lord, thou hast given to Christopher so great plenty of virtues, and such grace of doctrine, that he called from the error of paynims forty-eight thousand men, to the honour of christian faith, by his shining miracles. And Nicæa and Aquilina, which long had been common at the bordel, under the stench of lechery, he called and made them serve in the habit of chastity, and enseigned them to a like crown of martyrdom. And with this, he being strained and bounden in a seat of iron, and great fire put under, doubted nothing the heat. And all a whole day during, stood bounden to a stake, yet might not be through-pierced with arrows of all the knights. And with that, one of the arrows smote out the eye of the tyrant, to whom the blood of the holy martyrre-established his sight, and enlumined him in taking away the blindness of his body, and gat of the christian mind and pardon, and he also gat of thee by prayer power to put away sickness and sores from them that remember his passion and figure. Then let us pray to Saint Christopher that he pray for us, etc. (The Golden Legend on the Life of Saint Christopher.)