Sober Up, part four

“He’s a believer.”

Thus remarked President-elect Donald John Trump as he looked at a man who was cheering him on at the US Bank Arena in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Thursday, December 1, 2016, as the nation’s future forty-fifth president began his “thank you tour.”

No, I am not a “believer” in Donald John Trump.

I believe in Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as He has revealed Himself to us through His Catholic Church. I do not political in the illusion of secular salvation. No country can be “great” again by means merely natural, and they can never pursue the temporal common good if their laws promote sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance and as their citizens choose to live in states of wanton sin.

All of the president-elect Donald John Trump’s chest-pounding in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Thursday, December 1, 2016, about how he defied the pundits and naysayers to defeat the nefarious Madame Defarge, Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, who has not gone gently into that good night, cannot change the simple fact that he lost the national popular vote by a significant margin, most of which has been (and continues to be) amassed from the “blue states” in the Northeast and Pacific Coast (along with Colorado, Illinois, and Minnesota).  While presidents are not elected by means of the national popular vote, there have now been two elections within a space of sixteen years (2000, 2016) that produced an electoral college winner who had not received a plurality of the popular vote. To put this in a little bit of perspective, the last time that this had happened prior to 2000 was in 1876 when Indiana Governor Benjamin Harrison won the presidency despite losing the popular vote to President Stephen Grover Cleveland, who reclaimed the presidency from Harrison in 1892.

Moreover, there has been only one time since 1988 that a Republican presidential candidate has received a majority (that is, fifty percent plus one) of the national popular vote total, and that was in 2004 when the hapless numbskull Skull and Bonesman named President George Walker Bush won 50.73% against the hapless numbskull Skull and Bonesman named John F. Kerry’s 48.26%. Donald John Trump actually won less of a percentage (46.13%) of the national popular vote than did the hapless flip-flopper named Willard Mitt Romney (47.15%).  (For a very good website, albeit one using the color blue for states won by Republicans and the color red for those won by Democrats, that is a treasure trove of election statistics throughout this nation’s history, please see US Election Atlas.)

Additionally, only three Democratic presidential nominees have won a majority of the popular vote since President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s landslide victory on Tuesday, November 5, 1964, over United States Senator Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona), namely, former Georgia Governor James Earl Carter, Jr., in 1976 and Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro in 2008 and 2012. William Jefferson Blythe Clinton received a plurality of the popular vote in 1992 and 1996, principally because of the presence of Henry Ross Perot on the ballot. Yes, the United States of America is needlessly divided by error, and it is not going to get any better in the years ahead.

Now, to be sure, Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton’s margin victory in the national vote total, which now stands at 2,553,439 votes, is not the measure by which a President of the United States of America is elected nor in any way does it make Trump’s election any less significant as a political accomplishment without any parallel in the country’s history. Trump, who really does not believe in very much other than himself and his abilities, caught a wave of frustration and anger against the “inside the Beltway” elites and media that propelled him to a sizeable victory in the State of Ohio, a small but nevertheless clear victory in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and very narrow victories in the States of Wisconsin of Michigan to win three hundred six electoral votes to Madame Defarge’s two hundred thirty-two.

It was not clear either before the election—or on election day itself—that such a victory was going to occur. Trump himself sounded pretty downcast when he was interviewed by Sean Hannity, whose program I happened upon when trying to find some election day news as I was driving to run errands for the family (I gave up the blathering of “talk radio” a long time ago). He did not sound very confident at all as the exit polls, which turned out to be very skewed in behalf of Madame Defarge, were not filled with good news for the future president-elect. It was only later on the evening of Tuesday, November 8, 2016, that Trump’s victories in Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio indicated that he would wind up the winner. Although Pennsylvania’s twenty electoral votes alone would have given him a victory, Trump’s victories in Wisconsin and Michigan put an end to the political career of the horrible elitist from Chappaqua, New York, by way of Oak Lawn, Illinois, Wellesley College, Yale Law School, Washington, District of Columbia, and Little Rock, Arkansas.

Now, all of this having been noted, it must be remembered that the purpose of this series of commentaries is to “sober up” the few people who read these articles.

Although Donald John Trump is very correct to reject the agenda of the globalists who seek to eradicate borders and the legitimate sovereignty of nations, he remains what he has always been: a big government, high-spending Democrat who, despite rightly rejecting the wars of regime change that Pappy Bush and Dubya Bush instituted in the Middle East, has no intention of reining in the Federal government’s entitlement programs or to do anything substantive to retard the growth of the national debt, which now stands at a staggering amount of $19.7 trillion (U.S. Debt Clock.) Proposing to spend a trillion dollars on "infrastructure" repairs is no way to curb the growth of the national debt, which eats up six percent of the annual Federal budget.

Donald John Trump is still a creature of those who have had the most influence on him over the years, and most of them are believing, practicing Talmudists. Although I have documented this before, The Times of Israel did so in an article published a week after the election, that is, on Tuesday, November 15, 2016. One of those mentioned in that article was Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs official (gee, what a surprise), who, of course, is the president-elect’s nominee to serve as the Secretary of the Treasury. Another is Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who will continue to exercise great sway over his father-in-law after he is sworn in as the forty-fifth President of the United States of America on Friday, January 20, 2017, the Feast of Saints Fabian and Sebastian.

Remember, Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump Kushner, “prayed” at the tomb of a Talmudic rabbi, Menachem Schneerson, prior to the election. As detailed in a Forbes magazine profile, Kushner’s use of data mining permitted the Trump campaign to target specific voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, the three states that gave “The Donald” his margin of victory. Kushner’s role in the campaign—and the role he will probably play in the next administration—cannot be understated. A lifelong Democrat who gave thousands of dollars in donations to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaigns in the past, Kushner takes his Talmudism very seriously, and Talmudists play to win at all costs:

"Jared understood the online world in a way the traditional media folks didn't. He managed to assemble a presidential campaign on a shoestring using new technology and won. That's a big deal," says Schmidt, the Google billionaire. "Remember all those articles about how they had no money, no people, organizational structure? Well, they won, and Jared ran it."

CONTROLLED, UNDERSTATED and calm, Jared Kushner couldn't be more different from his father-in-law in personality and style. Take Twitter. While Trump's impulsive tweeting to his 15.5 million followers reportedly forced his staff to withhold his phone during parts of the campaign, Kushner--who has had a verified account since April 2009--has never posted a single tweet.

And whereas Trump's office is wall-to-wall Donald, a memorabilia-stuffed shrine to ego, the headquarters for the Kushner Companies is sparse and sober. A leather-bound copy of Jewish teachings, the Pirkei Avot, sits on a wooden pedestal in the reception room, and identical silver mezuzahs adorn the side of each office door. The only decoration in his large, terraced boardroom is an oil painting of his grandparents, Holocaust survivors who immigrated to the U.S. after World War II. But enter Kushner's corner office and you see--under a painting with the words "Don't Panic" over a canvas of New York Observer pages--two critical commonalities that unite the pair: columns of real estate deal trophies and framed photos of Ivanka. If you are looking for a consistent ideology from either Kushner or Trump, it can be summarized in a word: family. (How Jared Kushner Won Trump the White House.)

Those who believe that Jared Kushner would not exercise such influence on his father-in-law when he becomes president on Friday, January 20, 2017, should consider the fact he is moving his wife, Ivanka Trump Kushner, and their children to the Washington, District of Columbia area (see Ivanka Trump Kushner and Jared Kushner Plan Move to Nation's Capital).

President Donald John Trump will continue to be guided in the White House by the same kinds of people—who have helped to guide him in his various business dealings over the decades. What works for Trump and those around him is what works, that is, the president-elect is a product of the American spirit of “pragmatism,” which contends that problems can be “fixed” without understanding their root causes. This is a fatal disease of the American psyche as it appeals both to the spirit of religious indifferentism and to the Pelagian spirit of “self-reliance,” that is, that Americans can do anything they “put their minds” to doing.

This explains the disjointed nature of Trump’s belief that he can “solve” the problems facing the country, most of which are the direct result of the licentiousness that has characterized his own life of wanton debauchery, on a piecemeal basis.

It is impossible, for example, to make Americans “safe” again when Americans have grown accustomed to the daily slaughter of the innocent preborn in their mothers’ wombs to such an extent that no thought is ever given to the price that a nation must pay for the shedding of innocent blood under the cover of the civil law. Moreover, the sin of Sodom has been accepted rather passively by most the American electorate after decades of aggressive promotion by the lords of popular culture, most of whom are, of course, Talmudists. This is not a foundation of either national greatness or of national security.

Readers should make no mistake about this fact as the election of 2016, although certainly a rejection of the prevailing cultural elites by voters in a wide swath of the nation’s mid-section, mountain west and south, was not a mandate to move on the “cultural issues”:

Despite his electoral victory, a majority of Americans do not support President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign promises to overturn Roe v. Wade, build a border wall with Mexico or cut off the path to citizenship for undocumented workers, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll.

“Two of President-elect Donald Trump’s signature campaign mantras get hearty thumbs down,” Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University poll, said. “Voters to Trump: No way on reversing Roe v Wade and not a chance on building that wall.”

Sixty-four percent of those surveyed said they agreed with the landmark Supreme Court case that legalized abortion. Of those that supported it, 26 percent said that it should be legal in “all cases,” while 38 percent said it should be legal in “most cases.” Ten percent said it should be illegal in all cases.

When it comes to immigration, 55 percent of those polled oppose building a wall along the Mexican border. Sixty percent also say they support a path to citizenship. Another 12 percent of American voters say illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay in the country but not become citizens, while 25 percent say they should be deported. (Voters Still Support Baby-Killing Despite Trump's Victory.)

What makes this even more disturbing is that the incoming administration will throw the same kind of “crumbs” to pro-life Americans that were thrown to them by the administrations of Ronald Wilson Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush and George Walker Bush.

Some of those crumbs will include a repeal of the ObamaCare contraception mandate, something that will probably be announced at  or in conjunction with the March for Life on Thursday, January 22, 2017, the Feast of Saints Vincent and Anastasius and the forty-fourth anniversary of the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. There will also be efforts, I am sure, to legislatively enact or to administratively promote protections for physicians who do not want to be coerced into referring women to baby-killers. And the porous “Mexico City” policy that bans the use of American taxpayer dollars for international “family planning” programs that provide and/or refer for surgical abortions, although those who work for “family planning” organizations in foreign countries are free to arrange a time to “consult” with women off of their organization’s premises without losing funding, will be reinstated.

Obviously, efforts will be made to strip Planned Barrenhood of Federal funding for domestic “family planning” programs, although such efforts will meet the stern resistance of the new Senate Minority Leader, United States Senator Charles H. Schumer (D-New York), but, it should be noted, wind up shifting funding to eight hundred over “community organizations” whose employees distribute chemical abortifacients and perform sterilizations. This illogical shell game was dissected seventeen months ago in Shifting Funding From One Evil Organization To Many Others.

Other than that, however, my few readers, Donald John Trump will focus almost exclusively on “the money, the money, and the money,” which is why he won the presidency and what has been responsible for the outcome of the lion’s share of American elections.

How can I say this?

Well, look at how the president-elect handled the issue of baby-killing when questioned about it by the seventy-five year-old Lesley Stahl the November 13, 2016, telecast of 60 Minutes:

Lesley Stahl: One of the things you’re going to obviously get an opportunity to do, is name someone to the Supreme Court. And I assume you’ll do that quickly?

Donald Trump: Yes. Very important.

Lesley Stahl: During the campaign, you said that you would appoint justices who were against abortion rights. Will you appoint-- are you looking to appoint a justice who wants to overturn Roe v. Wade?

Donald Trump: So look, here’s what’s going to happen-- I’m going to-- I’m pro-life. The judges will be pro-life. They’ll be very—

Lesley Stahl: But what about overturning this law--

Donald Trump: Well, there are a couple of things. They’ll be pro-life, they’ll be-- in terms of the whole gun situation, we know the Second Amendment and everybody’s talking about the Second Amendment and they’re trying to dice it up and change it, they’re going to be very pro-Second Amendment. But having to do with abortion if it ever were overturned, it would go back to the states. So it would go back to the states and--

 Lesley Stahl: Yeah, but then some women won’t be able to get an abortion?

 Donald Trump: No, it’ll go back to the states.

Lesley Stahl: By state—no some --

 Donald Trump: Yeah.

 Donald Trump: Yeah, well, they’ll perhaps have to go, they’ll have to go to another state.

 Lesley Stahl: And that’s OK?

Donald Trump: Well, we’ll see what happens. It’s got a long way to go, just so you understand. That has a long, long way to go.  (60 Minutes Interview With Donald Trump and Family.)

In other words, you see, despite his occasional rhetoric about the matter, President-elect Donald John Trump has no intention of being proactive to lead the overturning of the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, January 22, 1973. The status quo ante will prevail during his administration, which will fully fund both domestic and international “family planning” programs, the latter of which started under the administration of President Richard Milhous Nixon (see Appendix B below) and was near and dear to the ninety-three year-old darkened heart of Henry Alfred Kissinger, who made the trek to Trump Tower on Thursday, November 17, 2016, the Feast of Saint Gregory Thaumaturgus, while he focuses on the economy and national security.

Although some might say that Trump will do something substantive to help restore legal protection to innocent preborn babies if he wins a second term in office on Tuesday, November 3. 2020, may I be so impertinent as to point out that this is the same delusional thought that so many had about Ronald Wilson Reagan and George Walker Bush? How many years must pass and how many babies must be killed under the cover of the civil law to disabuse Catholics of this delusion.

Others might contend that Trump can move on the life issue if he gets the economy going again and can “utterly destroy ISIS.”

Yawn.

Sigh.

Please, I’ve heard this song and dance before.

A man with whom I had bee in school at Saint John's University from 1970 to 1972 said in early-1982 when I complained that President Reagan was squandering the opportunity provided him by what appeared to be a "pro-life" United States Senate, "Tom, they'll give him anything he wants if he gets the economy going again." And John "Cardinal" O'Connor noted to me in a private meeting in October of 1986 when I was running for lieutenant governor of New York, "We could have gotten somewhere if the President had moved on the abortion issue as strong as he has moved in support of the Contras in Nicaragua." (This is also the point of a piece published in 2007, Selective Use of Executive Power, which discusses how the George Walker Bush administration used executive power to assert nonexistent presidential prerogatives to prosecute the Global War Against Terror, which is supported by "conservative" "patriots" no matter the moral outrages that take place in its prosecution to make the world safe for America's "only ally" in the Middle East, the State of Israel, which pursues all manner of murderous policies of its very own. See Worthy Successors of Herod the Great, Moral Monsters, and Just One Hail Mary.)

Sober up, Trumpsters.

Nothing substantive is going to change about the restoration of full legal protection to the innocent preborn in the administration of Donald John Trump and Michael Richard Pence any more than it did under the administrations of Ronald Wilson Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush, George Herbert Walker Bush and James Danforth Quayle (who paid the president-elect a visit a Trump Tower on Tuesday, November 29, 2016, the Vigil of Saint Andrew the Apostle (see Quayle Drops In To Congratulate Trump on His Victory; maybe an ambassadorship in the offing?) and George Walker Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney.  (Hey speaking of former presidents, even I was astounded to learn this afternoon, Monday, December 5, 2016, that Albert Arnold Gore, Jr., made the pilgrimage to Trump Tower to meet with Ivanka Trump on "climate change" before meeting with the president-elect himself. Can anyone say Trojan Horse? Talk about false opposites. See Gore Meets With Ivanka and The Donald.)

Here is another sobering thought for you to ponder: Even if Trump nominated a reliable jurist to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States and could get him confirmed by the United States Senate, something that is not guaranteed by any stretch of the imagination, it is highly unlikely that the Court, as currently constituted, would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton as Associate Justice Anthony McLeod Kennedy, an appointee of President Ronald Wilson Reagan, has been a firmly reliable of in behalf of the daily slaughter of the innocent preborn as a constitutional “right.”

Moreover, it is not clear that Chief Justice John Glover Roberts, an appointee of President George Walker Bush, would vote to overturn a standing judicial precedent, and his confirmation hearings from September 12-15, 2005 (Roberts Confirmation Hearings), provide no real foundation to make a conclusion. What we do know is that John Glover Roberts has saved the so-called Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on two different occasions (see Here To Stay and Arguing Who Decides That Which is Beyond Humans To Decide, part four).

Remember, my friends, the decisions in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Wade were rendered with the support of five justices who had been appointed by two different Republican presidents, Dwight David Eisenhower and Richard Milhous Nixon: William Brennan and Potter Stewart (Eisenhower) and Warren Burger, Harry Blackman and Lewis Powell (Nixon). And the decisions in these two cases have been upheld thanks to three other Republican appointees: Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony MacLeod Kennedy (Ronald Wilson Reagan) and David Souter (George Herbert Walker Bush). Oh, I invite one and all to read Appendix A lest anyone claim that Reagan and Bush “41” did not anything about their pro-abortion appointees such as Sandra Day O’Connor and David Souter.

Donald John Trump’s answer to Lesley Stahl twenty-two days ago now was a very clumsy way of saying that it’s up to the courts to decide the fate of Roe v. Wade, not that a very unlikely overturning of this decision is going to occur anytime soon, and that he will not use the bully pulpit of the presidency to say anything about the matter. He has other fish to fry, and it is not at all insignificant that one of those mentioned in the Times of Israel story, Lewis Eisenberg, is a founding member of the Republican Leadership Council, whose sole purpose has been to elect pro-abortion Republicans to office:

Eisenberg is a liberal, pro-abortion activist millionaire investment banker who raised millions of dollars for George W. Bush’s presidential campaign. He is a close associate of former Governor of New Jersey, Christine Todd Whitman, who is currently chairman of the Environmental Protection Agency in the Bush administration and whose pro-abortion views are well known. Eisenberg, together with Whitman, organized the Republican Leadership Council and the Committee for Responsible Government, to raise large sums of money for pro-abortion candidates in Republican primaries. They are committed to removing the pro-life plank from the Republican National Platform. Lew Eisenberg appears to be even-handed in his support of pro-abortion politicians. While he has supported Republicans in the recent past, he has also contributed to liberal Democrats Walter Mondale, Dick Gephardt, Tim Wirth, Chris Dodd, Bruce Babbitt and Joe Biden, among others. In the early 90's Lew Eisenberg lost his job at Goldman Sachs due to a sexual harassment lawsuit brought against him by a young woman named Kathy Abraham with whom he had a 7-year affair. Eisenberg is married with 3 children. Ms. Abraham accused Eisenberg of making sexual demands of her in order to keep her job. "Eisenberg even suggested that she have sex with other Goldman Sachs partners," according to The Times. Now, on the eve of the 29th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, as pro-life Americans sadly commemorate the 48 million or more babies who have been killed through abortion, will the Republican Party deliver to us the incredible insult of installing this man in a high Party position? One wonders what the [George Walker] Bush leadership can be thinking. After all, if they want a great fund raiser who is a pro-abortion liberal with a sleazy reputation concerning women, Bill Clinton is available! Surely there are numerous Republicans who are capable of raising money for the Party. According to the Times story, Ralph Reed, former executive director of Christian Coalition and now a professional political consultant and chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, plans to nominate Eisenberg for for the position, "a move intended to make his election more acceptable to the right." To the contrary, a move like this will only serve to alienate more pro-life conservatives from the Party and swell the ranks of those who did not vote in the 2000 election.

We have learned that many members of the Republican National Committee were not aware that they would be asked to vote for Lew Eisenberg this weekend. Indeed, many have never heard of him and know nothing about him. Those who have learned of this scheme deeply resent the tactics being used. People are supposed to run for Party positions and be duly elected. Not anointed from above and rubber-stamped. (See: SPECIAL ALERT - OF THE UTMOST IMPORTANCE - January 17, 2002.)

Ah yes, another Goldman Sachs employee with a record worthy of the new president-elect. 

Here's another fact for you: Goldman Sachs is a huge contributor to Planned Barrenhood, which Donald John Trump has said "does good work" even though it has been evil from its very inceptions.

No, you deceive yourself if you think that Donald John Trump will do anything other than provide pro-life Americans with the crumbs mentioned above. His will be a typical Republican administration in this regard.

A final sobering fact about Trump’s answer to Lesley Stahl concerning abortion is this: baby-killing under cover of the civil law would remain legal in most states even if Roe v. Wade is overturned at some point in the future. For a review of the status of state laws in the event of such an overturning, please see Status of State Laws If Roe v. Wade Is Overturned.

No nation is going to know any true economic prosperity or national security over the long term if its laws permit the slaughter of the preborn, to say nothing of the genocide of thousands of sick, wounded, and elderly human beings in hospitals and hospices under the aegis of the medical industry’s manufactured myth of “brain death.”

Also, of course, no nation is going to know any true economic prosperity or national security as long as its laws sanction and its citizenry accept with passivity the sin of Sodom as a “normal” fact of life that has become what Donald John Trump believes to be a “settled” matter:

Lesley Stahl: One of the groups that’s expressing fear are the LGBTQ group. You--

Donald Trump: And yet I mentioned them at the Republican National Convention. And--

Lesley Stahl: You did.

Donald Trump: Everybody said, “That was so great.” I have been, you know, I’ve been-a supporter.

Lesley Stahl: Well, I guess the issue for them is marriage equality. Do you support marriage equality?

Donald Trump: It-- it’s irrelevant because it was already settled. It’s law. It was settled in the Supreme Court. I mean it’s done.

Lesley Stahl: So even if you appoint a judge that--

Donald Trump: It’s done. It-- you have-- these cases have gone to the Supreme Court. They’ve been settled. And, I’m fine with that. (60 Minutes Interview With Donald Trump and Family.)

Please note that Donald John Trump is very sanguine about so-called “marriage equality,” calling himself a “supporter” of the “LGTBQ” agenda. A supporter.

I am not a supporter. I am not a “believer.”

Trump also told Lesley Stahl that the decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015, is now a matter that has been “settled” by the Supreme Court of the United States of America. This poor naturalist has no clue that no human institution can make legitimate that which contravenes the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law. Perhaps more significantly, he does not think that there is anything intrinsically evil about sodomy in general or “gay marriage” in particular as he has spent his entire life around those engaged in wanton sins of perversity that cry out to Heaven for vengeance. There is more common ground between the president-elect and Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who is already launching salvos against Donald John Trump, than the false “pontiff” and his “bishops” realize is the case.

Settled law?

Well, law “settled” wrongly needs to be “unsettled.”

Who says so?

Well, consider Pope Leo XIII for one:

10. But, if the laws of the State are manifestly at variance with the divine law, containing enactments hurtful to the Church, or conveying injunctions adverse to the duties imposed by religion, or if they violate in the person of the supreme Pontiff the authority of Jesus Christ, then, truly, to resist becomes a positive duty, to obey, a crime; a crime, moreover, combined with misdemeanor against the State itself, inasmuch as every offense leveled against religion is also a sin against the State. Here anew it becomes evident how unjust is the reproach of sedition; for the obedience due to rulers and legislators is not refused, but there is a deviation from their will in those precepts only which they have no power to enjoin. Commands that are issued adversely to the honor due to God, and hence are beyond the scope of justice, must be looked upon as anything rather than laws. You are fully aware, venerable brothers, that this is the very contention of the Apostle St. Paul, who, in writing to Titus, after reminding Christians that they are "to be subject to princes and powers, and to obey at a word," at once adds: "And to be ready to every good work."Thereby he openly declares that, if laws of men contain injunctions contrary to the eternal law of God, it is right not to obey them. In like manner, the Prince of the Apostles gave this courageous and sublime answer to those who would have deprived him of the liberty of preaching the Gospel: "If it be just in the sight of God to hear you rather than God, judge ye, for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." (Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890.)

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

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

Those with long memories will recall that the business of accepting an unjust decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of America as “settled law” was the means by which Dubya Bush’s “Architect,” the amoral Karl Rove, bludgeoned former United States Senator John Ashcroft (R-Missouri) into using when testifying before the Committee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate on January 15, 2001:

Another issue merits specific mention in these opening remarks, and that is the issue that we would identify with the case of Roe v. Wade, which established a woman's constitutional right to an abortion. As is well known, consistent with Republican United States attorneys general before me, I believe Roe v. Wade, as an original matter, was wrongly decided. I am personally opposed to abortion.

But as I have explained this afternoon, I well understand that the role of attorney general is to enforce the law as it is, not as I would have it. I accept Roe and Casey as the settled law of the land. If confirmed as attorney general, I will follow the law in this area and in all other areas. The Supreme Court's decisions on this have been multiple, they have been recent and they have been emphatic.  (Text: John Ashcroft' s Senate Confirmation Hearing, January 20, 2001.)

Ashcroft looked sullen and had his eyes fixed downwards as he mouthed these words that he had been coached to give by Bush the Lesser’s “architect,” Karl Rove, who went to war against United States Representative Todd Aiken (R-Missouri) in 2012 when the latter attempted to defend, albeit clumsily, his opposition to the surgical execution of the innocent preborn in cases where it is alleged that a child had been conceived as a result of a forcible assault upon his mother (see Karl Rove: Self-Anointed Political Godfather.)

I fully expect that President-elect Trump’s nominee to be the next Attorney General of the United States of America, United States Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama), will use the “settled law” slogan in reference to both Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges. Other nominees who are known to be partly pro-life and partly pro-death such as United States Representative Thomas Edmunds Price (R-Georgia), who belongs to the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, which correctly and courageously takes issue with various vaccinations (most of which are filled with parts of executed babies), will be instructed use the same canard during their own confirmation hearings.

Donald John Trump does personally support the sodomite agenda, and he will say nothing when there are demands to "legalize" sins against purity committed against children who give their "consent" to participate in them. After all, he is a friend of the notorious Jeffrey Epstein, if you will recall. (The following article,Trump's Friendship With Billionaire Abuser of Children, contains some of the details, although caution is advised as the those details are not very pleasant.)                                  .

Remember this and remember it well: nothing is ever "settled" in a pluralistic country filled with a rich diversity of error until it is "settled" according to the dictates of the "left," who seek to denounce anyone who would "unsettle" such things as "legalized" baby-killing and "gay marriage" despite having sought for decades beforehand to "overturn" laws that they did not "like." They, the high priests and priestesses of Modernity, must be obeyed without dissent.  

Pope Pius IX explained in Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864, that modern civil law, divorced from the true Faith, is based on accepted facts, not on truth:

And, since where religion has been removed from civil society, and the doctrine and authority of divine revelation repudiated, the genuine notion itself of justice and human right is darkened and lost, and the place of true justice and legitimate right is supplied by material force, thence it appears why it is that some, utterly neglecting and disregarding the surest principles of sound reason, dare to proclaim that "the people's will, manifested by what is called public opinion or in some other way, constitutes a supreme law, free from all divine and human control; and that in the political order accomplished facts, from the very circumstance that they are accomplished, have the force of right." But who, does not see and clearly perceive that human society, when set loose from the bonds of religion and true justice, can have, in truth, no other end than the purpose of obtaining and amassing wealth, and that (society under such circumstances) follows no other law in its actions, except the unchastened desire of ministering to its own pleasure and interests? (Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864.)

Donald John Trump believes that accomplished facts determine moral right. By the way, so does Jorge Mario Bergoglio. These two have more in common than either realize.

It goes without saying, although the mania of the moment requires me to repeat myself in this regard, that, yes, Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton would have been super-aggressive in her promotion of evil had seen won the electoral college vote on Tuesday, November 8, 2016.

All right?

Fine.

I am glad to have made myself clear one more time.

That having been stated—again, though, what is very troubling to me is that many Catholics, no matter where they fall across the vast expanse of the ecclesiastical divide in this time of apostasy and betrayal, are falling into the same traps that they have fallen into during past Republican administrations. Despite the fact that it is wonderful to have seen the Clintons defeated, at least for now, that is, it is also true that it is far easier for evil to be promoted by a false friend than by an open enemy.

Donald John Trump has spent his entire adult life around Talmudists who have supported some of the very evils that he believes are matters of “settled law,” which is why it is simply wrong to believe that God has granted us a respite. Hardly.

To be sure, the moral evils that prevail today have been aided and abetted by the indifference, if not active support, of the lord of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, and the few among these doctrinal, liturgical and moral revolutionaries who have tried to oppose these evils have done so by using the false premises of Modernity, including “religious liberty,” thus helping to institutionalize these evils as part of the very fabric of everyday life.

Actually, there is a common thread that ties the lords of Modernity in the world with the lords of Modernism in the counterfeit church of conciliarism: respect for Talmudism and its influence in the world.

This “respect,” however, must overlook the long history of how Jews insinuated themselves in power in various places in Europe in the immediate aftermath of the Protestant Revolution, an how they placed themselves within the highest reaches of the Church and civil society in Spain before their expulsion in 1492 by the great heroes of the Social Reign of Christ the King, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella:

In medieval Spain the Jews came nearer to building a New Jerusalem than at any time or place since their dispersion after the Crucifixion. Had they succeeded – and several times they came perilously near success – they might conceivably have managed, with Mohammedan aid, to destroy the Christian civilization of Europe. Their ultimate failure was caused chiefly by the life work of Isabel. (William Thomas Walsh, Isabella of Spain: The Last Crusader, published originally by Robert McBride and Company in 1930 and republished by TAN Books and Publishers in 1987, pp. 195.)

To minimize the influence of the ancient enemies of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His Holy Church upon the decisions of Donald John Trump is a tragic mistake, especially when one considers that most of his appointees are strong supporters of the Zionist State of Israel and hold to a conception of the civil state in this country that mirrors Israel’s domestic policies, especially as regards to the surveillance of ordinary citizens.

It is one thing, therefore, to rejoice in the defeat of Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, but is quite another to fall headlong into the cult of personality that President-elect Trump cultivates to his great pleasure. Although you make think me daft, his performance—and it was a performance—at the US Bank Arena in Cincinnati, Ohio, four days ago evoked images of Benito Mussolini congratulating himself during his speeches—and applauding himself thereafter. This is how Antichrist continues his hold on power, and to believe that one can do anything, no less make a nation "great," without Our Lord is indeed a work of Antichrist whether or not the next president realizes that this is so, and in this regard he is no different than any of his predecessors (see Not A Mention of Christ the King .)

We must always recall these words of our true popes as our goal must be to plant the seeds for the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ the King, not to serve as cheerleading lapdogs for a naturalist who is “fine” with evils that cry out to Heaven for vengeance:

But, on the contrary, by ignoring the laws governing human nature and by breaking the bounds within which they operate, the human person is lead, not toward progress, but towards death. This, nevertheless, is what they want to do with human society; they dream of changing its natural and traditional foundations; they dream of a Future City built on different principles, and they dare to proclaim these more fruitful and more beneficial than the principles upon which the present Christian City rests.

No, Venerable Brethren, We must repeat with the utmost energy in these times of social and intellectual anarchy when everyone takes it upon himself to teach as a teacher and lawmaker - the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants. Omnia instaurare in Christo.

Here we have, founded by Catholics, an inter-denominational association that is to work for the reform of civilization, an undertaking which is above all religious in character; for there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical fact. The new Sillonists cannot pretend that they are merely working on “the ground of practical realities” where differences of belief do not matter. Their leader is so conscious of the influence which the convictions of the mind have upon the result of the action, that he invites them, whatever religion they may belong to, “to provide on the ground of practical realities, the proof of the excellence of their personal convictions.” And with good reason: indeed, all practical results reflect the nature of one’s religious convictions, just as the limbs of a man down to his finger-tips, owe their very shape to the principle of life that dwells in his body. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

Most Catholics in the United States of America were recruited by Antichrist to be his apologists precisely because of the "reconciliation" that Archbishop John Carroll and those who followed him made with the heresy of "religious liberty" as a "protection" of the life of the Catholic Church in a pluralistic society.

Most Catholics thus have been completely unaware that the very thing they exalted as a "protection" was, in truth, a trap to accustom them to think, speak and act as members of any Judeo-Masonic lodge, that is, naturalistically. And it was this very trap, which had different variations in Europe, of course, that helped to ensnare the minds of Modernists at home and abroad into becoming apologists of Judeo-Masonry in order to speak of that mythical "civilization of love" rather than to build up the Catholic City. 

Each of us, of course, contributes to the cause of a genuine world peace, the peace of Christ the King, by growing the more in Sanctifying Grace with every beat of our hearts, consecrated as those hearts must be to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Each of us, impedes the cause of a genuine world peace, that of Christ the King, the more that we persist in our sins and refuse to make reparation for them as the consecrated slaves of Our Lord through Our Lady's Immaculate Heart. And in His ineffable Mercy, Our Lord Himself has sent us His Most Blessed Mother to give us her Fatima Peace Plan, Heaven's Peace Plan, whereby the errors of Russia, which are on full display in the United States of America at the present time in the outgoing administration of Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro (as they were in the administration of George Walker Bush), will be thwarted when a true pope consecrates Russia with all of the world's true bishops to Our Lady's Immaculate Heart, ushering in the Reign of Mary as the Social Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ is restored (see Our Lady Does Not Act on Her Own and Two Last Remedies).

The fate of nations rests in the state of individual souls, and there can be no order or peace in souls when men persist in warfare with God by means of persisting in unrepentant sins.

There can be no "peace" in a world where innocent babies in their mothers' wombs are killed by the millions every year by means of chemical and surgical abortions.

There can be no "peace" in a world where men promote sin under cover of the civil law and in every aspect of the popular culture.

There can be no "peace" in a world where God is offended so regularly and with such impunity by putative "popes" and putative "bishops" and as these spiritual robber barons are defended, either by acts of omission or commission, in their blasphemous offenses against God by those seeking to claim that one, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who believes in the ability of false religions to "contribute" to the cause of world peace is a restorer of the Church Militant in this time of apostasy and betrayal.

We must have patience in these trying times, recognizing that God has known from all eternity that we would be alive now, meaning that His graces are sufficient for the moment of these trials. We show forth our true love for our nation by praying for her ultimate good, that is, her conversion to the true Faith and thus the Social Reign of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen as we pray at the same time for the restoration of the Church Militant on earth and the vanquishing of conciliarism once and for al, praying as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits.

We need to keep close to Our Lady through her MostHoly Rosary and as we lift high the standard of the Holy Cross.

What are waiting for?

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now.

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!

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

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

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

Saint Sabbas, pray for us.

Appendix A

The Facts About Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony McLeod Kennedy and David Souter Were Known When They Were Nominated

Although defenders of all things "Republican" have contended for years that Presidents Ronald Wilson Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush "did not know" about the pro-abortion records of the above-listed nominees to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States of America, the facts are otherwise.

Here is a brief excerpt from the late Howard. Phillips's (the Calvinist who founded the Conservative Caucus Foundation in 1974) testimony against Ronald Wilson Reagan's nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor in 1981:

As an Arizona State Senator, she voted twice for abortion on demand through the ninth month of pregnancy; she co-sponsored a proposal to permit abortion without parental consent; she promoted ERA; she opposed the Human Life Amendment; and she failed to oppose abortions at a taxpayer-funded facility." (The Supreme Court Watch - A Public Service of The Conservative Caucus.) 

Judie Brown, the founder and President of the American Life League, similarly testified against Sandra Day O'Connor's nomination in 1981, also documenting O'Connor's solid pro-abortion record as the majority leader of the Arizona State Senate. Anyone who claims that they were "surprised" by O'Connor's opinions, summarized below by a pro-abortion organization, is dealing in a world of fanciful delusions. Howard Phillips and Judie Brown documented Sandra Day O'Connor's pro-abortion record openly and publicly. The documentation provided by Mr. Phillips and Mrs. Brown meant nothing to Ronald Wilson Reagan or Attorney General William French Smith or to the "pro-life" Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee or in the rest of the United States Senate.

Here is that summary of the retired Sandra Day O'Connor's pro-abortion record a found on a pro-abortion website:

Justice Sandra O'Connor has played a very influential role on the Supreme Court on the issue of abortion. In both Planned Parenthood v. Casey and Stenberg v. Carhart (Carhart I), O'Connor's single vote in support of a woman's right to choose ensured the survival of Roe v. Wade.

Justice O'Connor, with Justices Kennedy and Souter, wrote the controlling plurality opinion in Casey which upheld a woman's right to a safe and legal abortion in a case many feared would overturn Roe v. Wade:

"After considering the fundamental constitutional questions resolved by Roe, principles of institutional integrity, and the rule of stare decisis, we are led to conclude this: the essential holding of Roe v. Wade should be retained and once again reaffirmed."

"Some of us as individuals find abortion offensive to our most basic principles of morality, but that cannot control our decision. Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code."

While Justice O'Connor's opinions have changed in the way abortion cases are analyzed, lowering the standard of review from strict scrutiny to an undue burden analysis, she has prevented the conservative members of the Supreme Court from destroying the central provisions of Roe.

In Stenberg v.Carhart (Carhart I), the Court's most recent decision concerning abortion rights, Justice O'Connor joined Justice Breyer's majority opinion affirming Roe and Casey:

"...[t]his Court, in the course of a generation, has determined and then redetermined that the Constitution offers basic protection to the woman's right to choose. We shall not revisit those legal principles."

In Hill v. Colorado, Justice O'Connor voted uphold Colorado's law creating a buffer zone around health facilities. Inside the 100-foot buffer zone, a patient cannot be approached within eight feet without consent for the purpose of leafleting, displaying a sign, or engaging in conversation. (National Abortion Federation: O'Connor's Legacy.)

What about Anthony McLeod Kennedy?

I am glad that you asked as I present to you his own words in his confirmation testimony before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary:

The CHAIRMAN. And this may save some time, because I had a  whole round of questions on this. Let me put it to you very bluntly. Do you think Griswold was reasoned properly?

Judge KENNEDY. I really think I would like to draw the line and not talk about the Griswold case so far as its reasoning or its result. I would say that if you were going to propose a statute or a hypothetical that infringed upon the core values of privacy that the Constitution protects, you would be hard put to find a stronger case than Griswold.   

The CHAIRMAN. That doesn't answer the question. Is there a marital right to privacy protected by the Constitution?   

Judge KENNEDY. Yes—pardon, is there a   

The CHAIRMAN. Marital right to privacy.

Judge KENNEDY. Marital right to privacy; that is what I thought you said. Yes, sir.   

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. (Questioning of Judge Anthony Kennedy by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., December 15, 1987)  

The then Judge Anthony Kennedy had been asked by Senator Biden the day before about a conversation he had had with United States Senator Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina, now deceased), who drew the inference that Kennedy's calling himself a "practicing Catholic" and that he, Kennedy, "admired" Helm's pro-life position was an indication that Kennedy would use his religious beliefs as a foundation of judicial decision-making. This concerned the pro-abortion Catholic, Biden, who had just helped to torpedo the nomination of another "strict constructionist" positivist, Judge Robert Bork:

Judge KENNEDY: Now it would be highly improper for a judge to allow his, or her, own personal or religious views to enter into a decision respecting a constitutional matter. There are many books that I will not read, that I do not let, or these days do not recommend, my children read. That does not prohibit me from enforcing the first amendment because those books are protected by the first amendment. A man's, or a woman's, relation to his, or her, God, and the fact that he, or she, may think they are held accountable to a higher power, may be important evidence of a person's character and temperament. It is irrelevant to his, or her, judicial authority. When we decide cases we put such matters aside, and as—I think it was—Daniel Webster said, "Submit to the judgment of the nation as a whole." 

The CHAIRMAN. SO Judge, when you said—if it is correct—to Senator Helms: "Indeed I do, and I admire it, I am a practicing Catholic," you were not taking, at that point a position on the constitutional question that has been and continues to be before the Court?  

Judge KENNEDY. TO begin with, that was not the statement.   

The CHAIRMAN. Will you tell us what   

Judge KENNEDY. We had a wide-ranging discussion and those two matters were not linked.  

The CHAIRMAN. Those two matters were not linked. So the article is incorrect?

Judge KENNEDY. In my view, yes.

The CHAIRMAN. That is fine. I thank you. My time is up. (Questioning of Judge Anthony Kennedy by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.)  

Anyone who believes in the delusion that the heresy of Americanism was "phantom" in nature, that is, that it never existed, ought to re-read Anthony Kennedy's testimony before the now Vice President of the United States of America, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., on December 14 and 15, 1987. Kennedy's answers reek of Americanism and Americanism's acceptance of legal positivism of one form or another as the foundation of law and jurisprudence.

Anthony McLeod Kennedy distinguished himself as a supporter of the chemical and surgical execution of the innocent preborn long before he ruled in such cases as United States v. Windsor, June 26, 2013, the Feast of Saints John and Paul, and Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015, two years to the day after the Windsor case. This is what Kennedy, joined by the President Ronald Wilson Reagan’s first Supreme Court nominee, Sandra Day O’Connor and by President George Herbert Walker Bush’s first Court nominee, David Souter, wrote in the case of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v William Casey, June 29, 1992:

Although Roe has engendered opposition, it has in no sense proven unworkable, representing as it does a simple limitation beyond which a state law is unenforceable. P. 835.

(e) The Roe rule's limitation on state power could not be repudiated without serious inequity to people who, for two decades of economic and social developments, have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail. The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives. The Constitution serves human values, and while the effect of reliance on Roe cannot be exactly measured, neither can the certain costs of overruling Roe for people who have ordered their thinking and living around that case be dismissed. Pp. 855-856. (Text of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey.)

Go ahead, try to argue that President Reagan did not know about Sandra Day O’Connor’s consistent support of baby-killing in the Arizona State Senate when he nominated. Try, try again.

Here is Howard Phillips’s actual testimony against David Souter before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary on September 19, 1990, the Feast of Saint Januarius:

In considering David Souter’s suitability to cast what, in many cases, will be the deciding opinion on the Supreme Court of the United States, it is necessary to go beyond Mr. Souter’s intellectual capacity and his stated opinions, and to assess his character and moral courage in their relationship to the responsibilities of a Supreme Court Justice.

DAVID SOUTER His pro-abortion record was there for those who wanted to know the truth. One moment of truth for Mr. Souter came in February, 1973 when, as a member of the board of trustees of Concord Hospital, he participated in a unanimous decision that abortions be performed at the hospital.

Advocacy of, or even acquiescence in, such a decision is morally distinguishable from the judicial conclusion, profoundly incorrect in my view, that women have a constitutional right to destroy their unborn children.

It is also distinguishable from and far more troubling than the political argument by politicians who maintain that they are “personally opposed” to abortion, even as they advocate its decriminalization.

It is one thing to intellectually rationalize the case for permitting legal abortions, while still opposing the exercise of such legal authority. It is quite another - something far more invidious, morally - to actually join in a real world decision to cause abortions to be performed, routinely, at a particular hospital.

Those abortions whose performance was authorized by David Souter were not mandated by law or court opinion. In fact, laws have remained to this day on the books in New Hampshire which provide criminal penalties for any “attempt to procure miscarriage” or “intent to destroy quick child.” Indeed, section 585:14 of the New Hampshire Criminal Code establishes the charge of second degree murder for the death of a pregnant woman in consequence of an attempted abortion. Nor were those abortions which Mr. Souter authorized performed merely to save the life of the mother, nor were they limited to cases of rape or incest.

If the unborn child is human, and if innocent human life is to be defended and safeguarded, why did Mr. Souter acquiesce in those abortions? Why did he not speak out against them? Why did he, through twelve years on the Concord Hospital board, in a position of responsibility, help cause those abortions to be performed, and invest his personal reputation in clearly implied approval of those abortions?

The overarching moral issue in the political life of the United States in the last third of the 20th Century is, in my opinion, the question of abortion. Is the unborn child a human person, entitled to the protections pledged to each of us by the Founders of our Nation?

The issue is much more than one of legal or judicial philosophy. There are men and women in the legal profession, in elected office, and on the bench who acknowledge abortion to be morally repugnant, but who assert that, in present circumstances, it cannot be constitutionally prohibited.

Whatever Mr. Souter’s legal and judicial philosophy may be - and, on the record, it seems to be one which rejects the higher law theories implicit in the Declaration of Independence - it is a chilling fact which the Senate must consider that Judge Souter has personally participated in decisions resulting in the performance of abortions, where such abortions were in no way mandated or required by law or court decision.

By his own account, Mr. Souter served as a member of the board of trustees for the Concord Hospital from 1971 until 1985. Following service as board secretary, he was president of the board from 1978 to 1984.

In 1973, shortly after the Supreme Court’s January 22 Roe v. Wade decision, the Concord Hospital trustees voted to initiate a policy of performing abortions at Concord Hospital.

Similarly, Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital, which is associated with the Dartmouth Medical School, of which Judge Souter has been an overseer, has performed abortion up to the end of the second trimester.

During the period of Mr. Souter’s tenure as a decision-maker of these two institutions, many hundreds of abortions were performed under his authority, with no indication that he ever objected to or protested the performance of these abortions. Even though the Roe v. Wade decision did, in fact, authorize abortions through the ninth month of pregnancy, nothing in the Supreme Court’s decision required or obliged any hospital to conduct abortions, whether in the ninth month, the sixth month, or even in the first month of pregnancy.

If Judge Souter is confirmed as a Justice of the Supreme Court, he will, in all likelihood, be given the opportunity to address not only the issue of Roe v. Wade, but broader issues involving the sanctity of innocent human life.

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in the 1986 Thornburgh case, “there is a fundamental and well-recognized difference between a fetus and a human being. Indeed, if there is not such a difference, the permissibility of terminating the life of a fetus could scarcely be left to the will of the State legislatures.”

Justice Stevens was wrong in a very deadly way. If an unborn child is not human, I would ask Justice Stevens, what is he, what is she? But as least Mr. Stevens was logical in defending his support for the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court said that, “If the personhood of the unborn child is established, the pro-abortion case collapses, for the fetus’s right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the Fourteenth Amendment.”

As Notre Dame law professor Charles Rice has pointed out, “This is so, because the common law does not permit a person to kill an innocent non-aggressor, even to save his own life.”

Does David Souter believe that the unborn child - the fetus in the mother’s womb - is a human person, deserving of all the protections which are guaranteed to human beings after the moment of birth?

Seemingly, Mr. Souter’s answer is an unequivocal “no.” by agreeing that abortions be performed at institutions under his authority, Mr. Souter established clearly that he did not recognize the personhood of the unborn child. For surely, if he did acknowledge the unborn child to be a human person, Mr. Souter would not have agreed to authorize the extinguishment of so many precious lives at medical facilities for which he bore responsibility.

One must conclude that either Mr. Souter accepts the view that the life of the unborn child is of less value than the convenience and profit of those who collaborate in the killing of that child, or that, despite his recognition of the fact that each unborn child is human, a handiwork of God’s creation, he lacked the moral courage or discernment to help prevent the destruction of so many innocent human lives when he had the authority, indeed, the responsibility, to do so.

Either way, in such circumstances, unless there are mitigating factors or extenuating considerations which have not yet been brought to public attention, it is difficult to regard Mr. Souter as one suitable for participation in judicial decisions at the highest level of our Nation.

If, during his years of responsibility at Concord Hospital and Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital, Mr. Souter believed each fetus to be a human person, and failed to act against the performance of abortion, he was morally delinquent.

If, on the other hand, he justified himself by denying the human qualities of the unborn child, then he placed himself in the ambit of those who have argued against the very philosophy which his sponsor, President George Bush, purported to embrace during his 1988 presidential campaign.

On the basis of the information now available, Mr. Souter, in my opinion, should not be confirmed. (Testimony of: HOWARD PHILLIPS Chairman, The Conservative Caucus Foundation.)  

Did this factual presentation matter to any of the "pro-life" senators, including two future Republican presidential nominees, Robert Joseph Dole, Jr., and John Sidney McCain III?

Not one little bit.

To this day, these craven careerists have hid behind the abject lie that they were "misled" by then President George Herbert Walker Bush's White House Chief of Staff, John Sununu, the former Governor of the State of New Hampshire, about David Souter. This is a lie. An abject lie. Howard Phillips presented incontrovertible evidence about David Souter's support for abortion. This did not matter one little bit to Bob Dole or to John McCain. Not one little bit. The facts were presented. They did not care. Not one little bit.   

What about John Glover Roberts?

Well, I can help you out in his case as well.

Let me put this into context. People say you can't tell how a Supreme Court nominee will turn out once on the bench. I respectfully disagree. In most cases, it'' very clear. I opposed the nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor because it was very clear that she had a pro-abortion record in the Arizona state senate and as a judge in Arizona. She was also allied with Planned Parenthood. I opposed David Souter because I read his senior thesis at Harvard in which he said he was a legal positivist and one of his heroes was Oliver Wendell Holmes and that he rejected all higher law theories, such as those spelled out in our Declaration of Independence. In addition, he was a trustee of two hospitals: Dartmouth Hitchcock and Concord Memorial. He successfully changed the policy of those two hospitals from 'zero abortion' to 'convenience abortion.' I testified against Ruth Bader Ginsburg because her record was clear. She saw the Supreme Court as a Supreme Legislature. She was on the far Left of virtually every issue. Yet, only three members of the U.S. Senate voted in opposition to her confirmation. Only eight voted in opposition to Breyer. With respect to Judge Roberts, I'm in the midst of an extensive and intensive study of his record. Several things become clear, although I'm not ready to reach a final conclusion. It is clear that while he claims to have no overarching judicial philosophy he does have a point of view on most of the big issues. But that point of view is overshadowed by his pragmatism and his desire to stay within what is perceived as the mainstream. (Flynn Files - Howard Phillips Interview Part I.) 

Wasn’t that an accurate observation of John Glover Roberts eleven years ago now?

Sure was.

You think that things will be different with Donald John Trump?

To quote Briscoe Darling, "More power to ya."

Appendix B

Nixon and Kissinger's Anti-Life Agenda

Nixon, for example, embarked on an aggressive campaign of "population control." His first Secretary of State, William Pierce Rogers, who had been the Attorney General of the United States of America from October 13, 1957, to January 20, 1961, was responsible for implementing President Richard Milhous Nixon's July 18, 1969, Special Message to Congress on the Problems of Population Growth. Nixon's special message contained the following passage that should send shivers up the spine of any believing Catholic who loves God as He has revealed Himself to men exclusively through the Catholic Church as a very clear indication of the extent to which the leaders of both organized crime families of naturalism in the United States of America, have been committed to anti-life and anti-family policies that mock God and lead to social and international chaos:

It is my view that no American woman should be denied access to family planning assistance because of her economic condition. I believe, therefore, that we should establish as a national goal the provision of adequate family planning services within the next five years to all those who want them but cannot afford them. This we have the capacity to do.

Clearly, in no circumstances will the activities associated with our pursuit of this goal be allowed to infringe upon the religious convictions or personal wishes and freedom of any individual, nor will they be allowed to impair the absolute right of all individuals to have such matters of conscience respected by public authorities.

In order to achieve this national goal, we will have to increase the amount we are spending on population and family planning. But success in this endeavor will not result from higher expenditures alone. Because the life circumstances and family planning wishes of those who receive services vary considerably, an effective program must be more flexible in its design than are many present efforts. In addition, programs should be better coordinated and more effectively administered. Under current legislation, a comprehensive State or local project must assemble a patchwork of funds from many different sources--a time-consuming and confusing process. Moreover, under existing legislation, requests for funds for family planning services must often compete with requests for other deserving health endeavors. (Special Message to Congress on the Problems of Population Growth.)

In other words, Nixon did not want the government to force religiously run institutions to adopt policies to their beliefs. He only wanted every American taxpayer, regardless of religious convictions, to fund the evil of "family planning."

Nixon's second Secretary of State, Dr. Heinz Alfred Kissinger, who served succeeded William Pierce Rogers on September 3, 1973, was a thorough supporter of abortion and contraception. Kissinger

Kissinger, a former aide to the arch supporter of contraception and abortion, the late adulterous former Governor of New York and Vice President of the United States, Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, and Nixon sought to issue a National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM-200) in 1974 which would have encouraging countries to impose a one-child-per family policy in order to receive American foreign aid. The Nixon Administration authorized the writing of National Security Study Memorandum 200 in 1974 that was designed to implement a variety of the “population control” measures that had been recommended by the Rockefeller Commission, a panel appointed by President Nixon in 1969 following his own Special Message to Congress on July 18, 1969, on the “necessity” of controlling population growth.

This particular Memorandum, which was the brainchild of Nixon and Henry Kissinger and presidential counselor Donald D. Rumsfeld, included such draconian measures as encouraging countries to develop a one child per family policy and to regulate the control of food to developing nations. As a result of pressure brought by several Catholic cardinals in the United States, this NSSM was classified until 1989, at which point its terms were released.

It still amazes my friends, that the Nixon administration, whose officials believed in the abject immorality of the whole panoply of “population control” measures recommended in NSSM 200, including encouraging parents to have “one child per family,” can be praised and defended by any Catholic to this very day. Have we no love for God? Have we no regard for the horror of sin and  how it is an evil thing to promote sin under cover of law?

Nixon, ever the practitioner of amorality, was favorably inclined to the surgical dismemberment of children in their mothers' wombs under "some conditions," stating clearly during the presidential election of 1992 that it was time to get the issue of abortion out of electoral politics, that other issues were more important. Nixon also believed in eugenic abortions, especially in cases of interracial marriages.

Oblivious to the fact that a statement of his about abortion on April 3, 1971, made it appear as though he was opposed to abortion as a means of "population control" without mentioning his support of abortion for eugenic reasons. Nixon's stand was hideous and reprehensible. It would be interesting to hear how those who defend the nonexistent"right" of a woman to "choose" to kill her baby explain

HISTORICALLY, laws regulating abortion in the United States have been the province of States, not the Federal Government. That remains the situation today, as one State after another takes up this question, debates it, and decides it. That is where the decisions should be made.

Partly for that reason, I have directed that the policy on abortions at American military bases in the United States be made to correspond with the laws of the States where those bases are located. If the laws in a particular State restrict abortions, the rules at the military base hospitals are to correspond to that law.

The effect of this directive is to reverse service regulations issued last summer, which had liberalized the rules on abortions at military hospitals. The new ruling supersedes this--and has been put into effect by the Secretary of Defense.

But while this matter is being debated in State capitals and weighed by various courts, the country has a right to know my personal views.

From personal and religious beliefs I consider abortion an unacceptable form of population control. Further, unrestricted abortion policies, or abortion on demand, I cannot square with my personal belief in the sanctity of human life--including the life of the yet unborn. For, surely, the unborn have rights also, recognized in law, recognized even in principles expounded by the United Nations.

Ours is a nation with a Judeo-Christian heritage. It is also a nation with serious social problems--problems of malnutrition, of broken homes, of poverty, and of delinquency. But none of these problems justifies such a solution.

A good and generous people will not opt, in my view, for this kind of alternative to its social dilemmas. Rather, it will open its hearts and homes to the unwanted children of its own, as it has done for the unwanted millions of other lands. (Nixon Statement on Abortion, April 3, 1971.)

Such confusion, starting with the fact that there is no such thing as a "Judeo-Christian" heritage. Truth can never be mixed in with error. Catholicism is the sole means of personal and social order. Nothing else. Not Talmudic Judaism Not the thousands of permutations of Protestantism, each of which is founded on a rejection of the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has revealed exclusively to His true Church that He founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope.

Then President Nixon told the nation in 1971 that he considered surgical baby-killing to be "an unacceptable form of population control" and that he opposed "abortion on demand" at the same time he permitted babies to be slaughtered by surgical means on the ground of American military bases in those states that permitted abortion-on-demand. Nixon was oblivious as to the simple truth that no human institution of civil governance has any authority to dispense with the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law so as to permit any direct, intentional taking of an innocent human life from the first moment of conception through all subsequent stages until the day of natural death under cover of the civil law. Nixon was saying, in effect, "I am personally opposed to abortion-on-demand, but I will permit surgeons in the employ of the government of the United States of America on American military bases to kill babies in those states that permit abortion-on-demand. Perhaps Nixon was prophetically anticipating the Apostate Emeritus Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict's XVI logically absurd and dogmatically condemned "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity" that stands the the principle of non-contradiction on its head.

Richard Nixon, who, as will be noted below, accepted the abject moral evil of contraception in order to advance the goals of "population control," reiterated his confused views about abortion following the release of the report on population control that was issued by a commission headed by John D. Rockefeller III, the brother of the then Governor of the State of New York, the pro-abortion Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, and the father of the junior United States senator from West Virginia, John D. "Jay" Rockefeller IV, that supported abortion-on-demand:

While I do not plan to comment extensively on the contents and recommendations of the report, I do feel that it is important that the public know my views on some of the issues raised.

In particular, I want to reaffirm and reemphasize that I do not support unrestricted abortion policies. As I stated on April 3, 1971, when I revised abortionpolicies in military hospitals, I consider abortion an unacceptable form of population control. In my judgment, unrestricted abortion policies would demean human life. I also want to make it clear that I do not support the unrestricted distribution of family planning services and devices to minors. Such measures would do nothing to preserve and strengthen close family relationships.

I have a basic faith that the American people themselves will make sound judgments regarding family size and frequency of births, judgments that are conducive both to the public interest and to personal family goals--and I believe in the right of married couples to make these judgments for themselves.

While disagreeing with the general thrust of some of the Commission's recommendations, I wish to extend my thanks to the members of the Commission for their work and for having assembled much valuable information.

The findings and conclusions of the Commission should be of great value in assisting governments at all levels to formulate policy. At the Federal level, through our recent reorganization of the Executive Office of the President, we have the means through the Domestic Council and the Office of Management and Budget to follow up on the Commission's report. The recommendations of the Commission will be taken into account as we formulate our national growth and population research policies, and our agency budgets through these processes for the years ahead.

Many of the questions raised by the report cannot be answered purely on the basis of fact, but rather involve moral judgments about which reasonable men will disagree. I hope that the discussions ahead will be informed ones, so that we all will be better able to face these questions relating to population in full knowledge of the consequences of our decisions. (Statement About the Report of the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future.)

The confusion inherent in this statement is as mind-boggling as anything contained in Ratzinger's Principles of Catholic Theology.

Nixon believed in "the right of married couples to make these judgments for themselves" when, of course, no human being has any right to use contraceptive pills or devices at any time for any reason as to do so is to violate the Sovereignty of God over the sanctity and fecundity of marriage. Although most contraceptives abort and abort most of the time, contraception is in and of itself a violation of the immutable laws of God that bind the consciences of all human beings at all times in all places and under all circumstances without any exception, reservation or qualification whatsoever. One who supports "family planning" as a matter of principle does not believe in God as He has revealed Himself through His true Church and is thus incapable of serving as a agent in behalf of the common temporal good undertaken as it must be in light of man's Last End.

Moreover, "reasonable men" are not free to disagree about the binding nature of the immutable laws of God. Contingent beings who did not create themselves and whose bodies are destined one day for the corruption of the grave until the General Resurrection on the Last Day must obey God as He has revealed Himself through His true Church. This is not  subject to debate or "legitimate" disagreement. Richard Nixon's belief that men could disagree about moral judgments concerning "population control" was very similar to the canards mouth by one of his successors as President of the United States of America, George Walker Bush, who said constantly in 1999 and 2000 during his campaign for the Republican Party presidential nomination and in the general election against then Vice President Albert Arnold Gore, Jr., that abortion was "a difficult" issue about which "good people" may disagree legitimately. Wrong. No one has any "right" to "disagree" with the laws of their Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier.

Appendix C

The Influence of the Jews in Spain Prior to Their Expulsion in 1492

In medieval Spain the Jews came nearer to building a New Jerusalem than at any time or place since their dispersion after the Crucifixion. Had they succeeded – and several times they came perilously near success – they might conceivably have managed, with Mohammedan aid, to destroy the Christian civilization of Europe. Their ultimate failure was caused chiefly by the life work of Isabel. 

The date of their first migrations to the peninsula is disputed. But the evidence appears to indicate that they arrived not long after Saint James the Greater first preached the gospel of Christianity in Saragossa in 42 A. D. Some of those expelled from Rome by Claudius may have settled in Spain. Certain it is that they spread through the country very early in the Christian era, and multiplied so rapidly that their presence constituted a serious problem for the Arian (unorthodox Christian) Visigoths. They were not at first persecuted by the Christians; but after the discovery that they were plotting to bring the Arabs from Africa for the overthrow of the Gothic kingdom, they were condemned to slavery by one of the councils of Toledo. Nevertheless by the beginning of the eighth century they were numerous in all the chief cities, enjoyed power and wealth, and even obtained though bribery certain privileges denied to Christians.

That they played an important part in bringing the Saracens from Africa in 709 is certain. In the invading army there were many African Jews. Everywhere the Spanish Jews opened the gates of cities to the conquerors, and the Moslems rewarded them by turning over to them the government of Granada, Seville and Cordoba. “Without any love for the soil where lived, without any of those affections that ennoble a people, and finally withoput sentiments of generosity,” says Amador de los Rios, “they apired only to feed their avarice and to accomplish the ruin of the Goths; taking the opportunity to manifest their rancor, and boasting of the hatreds that they had hoarded up so many centuries.” This is a severe indictment and it would be most unfair to place all the blame for the Mussulmen invasion at the door of the Jews. Neither their intrigues not the Moorish arms could nave prevailed, perhaps, if the Christian Visigoth monarchy had not fallen first into heresy and then into decadence. King Witiza led an unsavory life, published an edict permitting priests to marry, and so far flouted the Christian beliefs of his subjects that he denied the authority of the Pope. His successor, Roderigo, violated the daughter of Count Julian, who thereupon crossed into Africa and joined the Jews in prevailing upon the Moors to conquer Spain. The sons of Witiza, persecuted by Roderigo, also joined the enemy. And at the critical moment of the battle of Jerez de la Frontery, Bishop Oppas, who had a grudge against Roderigo, went over to the Saracens and gave them the victory.

In the new Moslem state the Jews found themselves highly esteemed. It was under the caliphs that they attained the height of their prosperity. They studied and taught in the Arab universities excelling particularly in astrology and medicine. Through their connection with Asiatic Jews, they were able to get the best drugs and spices; and through their wealth, acquired chiefly through usury, barter and the huge traffic in slaves, they obtained leisure for the pursuit and diffusion of culture. They expounded the philosophy of Aristotle, which flourished among the Arabs, before the Stagirite was known in Christian Europe.

In Granada the Jes became so numerous that is was called “the city of the Jews.” But Saracens persecuted them at times, On December 30, 1066, the Moslems of Granada, infuriated by their exploitations, arose against them and slew 4,000. One of the caliphs expelled all Jews from Granada.

The gradual reconquest of the peninsula by the Christians did not at first trouble their marvelous prosperity. When Saint Fernando took Seville in 1224, he gave the Jews four Moorish mosques to convert into synagogues; he allowed them one of the pleasantest sections for their homes, and imposed to conditions except to refrain from proselytising among Christians and from insulting the Christian religion. The Jews observed neither of these conditions. Yet several of the later kings, usually those of lukewarm faith or those especially in need of money, showed them high favor. Alfonso VIII made one of them his treasurer.

In spite of persecution now and then, they multiplied and prospered until, toward the end of the thirteenth century, they were a power almost a state within the state, gradually re-halting the reconquest. In Castile alone they paid a poll tax of 2,561,855 maravedis in 1284. As each adult male Jew was taxed three gold maravedis, there must have been 853,951 men alone; hence the total Jewish population may well have been from four to five millions – and this leaves out of account large communities in Aragon and other sections. There are no accurate figures for the total population of Spain, but most of the estimates generally accepted are ridiculously low. More probably there were at least 25,000,000 and perhaps as many as 30,000,000 people in all the Spanish kingdoms at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Probably a fifth, or even a fourth were Jews – a large minority, and they possessed an influence out of proportion to their numbers. They became so powerful that the laws against blasphemy could not be enforced against them. It was so plain that they were above the law that the Cathari of Leon used to circumcize themselves that they might freely teach as Jews the heresy for which they would be punished as Christians.

The capital and commerce of the country were largely in their hands, for they were almost the only bankers and money lenders in as age when usury was forbidden by the Church. In Aragon they generally charge twenty per cent, in Castile thirty-three and one-third per cent. During the famine of 1326 the Jewish alhama of Cuenca refused to lend money or wheat for sowing, unless they received forty pecent interest, and the town council was compelled by the distress of the people to pay it. Carlos III of Navarre paid thirty-five per cent for a loan of 2,000 florins in 1401, and in 1402 his wife, Queen Leona, paid her Jewish physician four florins a month for a loan of 70 florins, giving him her silver plate as security. As the interest if the 70 florins amount to 84 florins after twenty-one months, she protested, and the Jew accepted 30 florins. The citizen with taxes to pay, the farmer with no money to buy seed for his planting, the burgher held for ransom by a turbulent noble, turned in desperation to the Jewish money-lender and became his economic slave.

The government gradually passed in Jewish hands. Though the common people, the debtor class, hated them, the kings and great feudatories protected them, since it was convenient at times to borrow from them. Whenever the Jews made a loan, however, they asked for security, and frequently for some political concession. For example, a Jew would ask the king to “farm out” to him the taxes of a certain city or district; or the King, in desperate needs of funds, would offer the privilege to the highest bidder, and a Jew usually got it. The profit of farming the taxes depended on the amount that the collectors could extort from the people. Isabel's brother Enrique carried the hated policy so far that he gave two of his Jewish tax collectors the power of life and death over citizens whom they exploited. The Church in vain attempted to prevent the employment of Jews in public offices. The services they rendered to the monarchs as money-lenders, administrators, physicians and scientists made them indispensable. The people protested; the kings promised relief, but seldom gave it.

Confident and secure, the Jews lived with all the oriental ostentation of which their luxurious nature is capable. They took no particular pains to conceal their contempt for the lesser breeds without the law, who paid them tribute; they overdressed, they lived in grand houses, they entertained lavishly. Alfonso V of Portugal once said to Rabbi Ibn Yachia, “Why don't you stop your people from displaying a magnificence that Christians attribute to thefts committed at their explense: But you needn't answer me! I know that nothing but a massacre can cure them of that fatal pride of theirs!

With the reign of Pedro the Cruel in the middle of the fourteenth century, the history of the Jews in Castile enters on a new phase. Pedro, who was intensely hated, was popularly believed to have been a Jewish child, substituted in the cradle of the lawful heiress by Queen Maria, whose husband had threatened to kill her if she did not bear a boy. He was denounced by Pope Urban I as a rebel to the Church, “a fautor of Jews and Moors, a propagator of infidelity, and a slayer of Christians.” He gave the Jews complete comtrol of his government. They finance his was with his bastard brother Henry of Trastamara, Isabel's great-great-grandfather. The moors also recognized a friend in Pedro, for 87,000 of them marched from Granada to help him in 1368. When Henry slew him – calling him el fi de puta judio – it was an unlucky day for both Jews and Moors.

As if their wealth and ostentation were not sure sooner or later to cause a repetition of their sad history, there fell on the Israelites a terrible misfortune such as no man could have predicted. All men suffered from it, but the Jews more cruelly than the rest.

The Black Death, killing 25,000,000 people in two years –  at least half the population of Europe – was probably the worst catastrophe that had ever befallen Christendom. But the Jews suffered doubly. For they had hardly buried their dead when the populace, half crazed with fear and grief revived the old cry, “Down with the Jews! The Jews did it! The Jews poisoned the wells!”

Straightway, all over Europe, the Israelites were put to the sword. In vain did Pope Clement VI attempt by pleadings and threats of excommunication to stay the fanatic, particularly in Germany. Following the example, as he said, of Calixtus II, Innocent III, Gregory IX, Nicholas III, Honorius IV, and Nicholas IV, he denounced the tales attributing the calamity to the Jews as lies, and pointed out that the plague had been just a virulent in lands where no Jews lived. The massacres, however, continued.

In Castile, the Jews escaped the major persecution until the Archdeacon of Eci ja, Ferran Martinez preached against them. In June, 1391, there was a general uprising in Seville; the mob rushed into the juderia, slew 4,000 and compelled the survivors to accept baptism. The furor spread to other cities. The total number of victims has been estimate as high a 50,000, probably, as Lea says, an exaggeration.

These massacres created a new class of citizen: the Conversos, or Marranos when referred to derisively. Thirty-five thousand were converted by the eloquence of Saint Vincent Ferrer, 4,000 being baptized in Toledo in one day. What his sermons and his miracles failed to accomplish, the fear of further atrocities effected. The Jewish population in Isabel's time had shrunk from some 5,000,000 or more to about 200,000.

What had become of the 4,800,000? If the Black Death slew, say 2,000,000, another two and a half million, at least had become “New Christians.” Some conversions were sincere, more of them were actuated by fear under persecution, or by motives of self-interest. “Their conversion was, however, only external, or feigned; at heart they adhered loyally to their ancestral religion. Though outwardly Christians, they secretly observed the tenets of the Jewish faith.” With the intelligence of their race, they saw that as acknowledged Jews they would be segregated, forced to wear a badge of inferiority and pay a poll tax, forbidden to have social or business relations with Christians, or to hold office in Church or State. But as professing Christians who heard Mass on Sunday, even though they privately attended the synagogue on Saturday, they could hold office, they could follow any career for which their abilities fitted them, they could even intermarry with the noble (but sometimes needy) families of Spain.

By the time of Isabel and Fernando, a great many of the ancient houses of the peninsula had Jewish relatives. Limpias sangre, “clean blood,” was a distinction which many claimed, but not all had. The de Lunas, the Mendoza, the Guzmans, the Villahermosas, all had Hebrew strains. Certain Jewish traditions have gone so far as to include even the maternal grand-mother of King Fernando; but the claim is based upon a misunderstanding, as Zurita and Mariana clearly prove.

What cannot be questioned, however, is that Conversos and their kin everywhere controlled business, government, taxation, all that was valuable, just as their ancestors had as Jews. Thus the massacres had only substituted for one problem another and much more intricate one. For as Conversos, the Jews were now capable of doing greater injury to Christianity through their influence upon the “Old Christians” with who they mingled.

Even the Catholic Church in Spain was being directed and exploited to an astonishing extent by Jews when Isabel became Queen. As “Christians” They could now become priests, if otherwise eligible. A Jewish “convert” anxious to show his loyalty to his new religion, would dedicate one of his sons to the Church. And in the Church the Jews excelled just as they did in other fields; they mounted the hierarchy so rapidly that in Isabel's reign an impressive number of the bishops were of Jewish descent. Every church, every chapter, every monastery had influential Jewish connections; and in some dioceses Jews collected the ecclesiastical revenues.

To attribute all the corruption in the Church to them, as their enemies did, was of course unfair. Clerical discipline had broken down in other countries where the Jews were few; the Church had had to lover the standards of her priesthood after the Black Death; and the seventy-five year exile of the popes at Avignon as prisoners of the French Kings, had paralyzed the whole structure. But in Spain there was an additional cause of laxity and immorality, of cynicism and hypocrisy, in the presence of so many priests who did not believe the doctrines they taught.

It is not difficult to understand the indignation of Catholics against priests who made a mockery of the sacraments they pretended to administer. “No many could tell how many priests there were like Andres Gomalz, parish priest of San Martin de Talavera, who, on his trial at Toledo in 1486, confessed that for fourteen years he had been secretly a Jew, that he had no 'intention' when he celebrated Mass, nor had he granted absolution to the penitents who confessed to him.”

And there were others like Fray Garcia de Tapate, prior of the Jeronymite monastery of Toledo, who, when he elevated the Host at Mass, used to say, “Get up, little Peter, and let the people look at you,” instead of the words of consecration; and who always turned his back on his penitents while he pretended to give them absolution.

The “New Christians,” by another irony, became the bitterest persecutors of the poor despised Jews who had clung to the law of Moses at the risk of their lives. The Cortes of 1405, directed by ambitious Conversos, passed new and cruel laws against the people of the juderias. All bonds of Christians held by Jews were declared void; debts due them were reduced one-half; they must wear red circles on their clothing except when traveling. The ordinance of Queen Catalina in 1412 forbade them to shave or cut the hair round, to change abodes, to be farmers or collectors of taxes, physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, peddlers, blacksmiths, furriers, carpenters, tailors, barbers, or builders; to carry arms; to hire Christians; to eat with or bathe with Christians. “From the earliest times,” says Lea, “the hardest blows endured by Judaism had always been dealt by its apostate children whose training had taught them the weakest points to assail, and whose necessity of self-justification led them to attack these mercilessly.” Converted Jews had egged on the mobs in 1391. Conversos would be found high in the coucil of the Inquisition, directing its activities. Sometimes the Jews avenged themselves on the “New Christians” by falsely testifying against them before the Inquisition and getting them burned as heretics. Isabel proceeded against such false witnesses with the utmost rigor. As an example she had eight of them executed, their flesh having been torn first with red hot pincers.

The Conversos were hated by the Old Christians even more than the Jews were. Bernaldez expresses his aversion to them in a famous passage that is, no doubt, a faithful reflection on the public opinion of his time.

“Those who can avoid baptizing their children, do so, and those who have them baptized wash them off as soon as they return home . . . You must know that the customs of the common people before the Inquisition were neither more nor less those of the ill-smelling Jews, on account of the continual communication they have with them; thus they are gluttons and feeders, who never lose the judaical habit of eating delicacies of onions and garlic fried in oil, and they cook their meat in oil, using it in place of lard or tat, to avoid pork; and oil with meat is a thing that makes the breath smell very bad, and so their houses and doorways smell most offensively from those tit-bits; and hence they have the odor of the Jews, as a result of their food and their not being baptized. And not withstanding that some have been baptized, yet the virtue of the baptism having been destroyed in them by their credulity and by judaizing, they smell like Jews. They do not eat pork unless they are compelled to; they eat meat in Lent and on the vigils of feasts and on ember days; they keep the Passover and the Sabbath as best they can. They send oil to the synagogues for the lamps. They have Jews who preach to them secretly in their houses, especially to the women very secretly; and they have Jewish rabbis whose occupation is to slaughter their beasts and fowls for them. They eat unleavened bread during the Jewish holidays, and meat chopped up. They follow all the judaical ceremonies secretly so far as they can.

“The men as well as the women always avoid receiving the sacraments of Holy Church voluntarily. When they confess, they never tell the truth; and it happened that one confessor asked a person of this tribe to cut off a piece of his garment for saying, 'Since you have never sinned, I should like to have a bit of your garment for a relic to heal the sick.' There was a time in Seville when it was commanded that no meat be weighed on Saturday, because all the Conversos ate it Saturday night, and they ordered it weighed Sunday morning.

“Not without reason did Our Redeemer call them a wicked and adulterous generation. They do not believe that God rewards virginity and chastity. All their endeavor is to increase and multiply. And in the time when this heretical iniquity flourished, many monasteries were violated by their wealthy men and merchants, and many professed nuns were ravished and mocked, some through gifts and some through the lures of panderers, they not believing in or fearing excommunication; but they did it to injure Jesus Christ and the Church. And usually, for the most part, they were usurious people, of many wiles and deceits, for they all live by easy occupations and offices, and in buying and selling they have no conscience where Christians are concerned. Never would they undertake the occupations of tilling the soil or digging or cattle-raising, nor would they teach their children any except holding public offices, and sitting down to earn enough to eat with little labor. Many of them in these realms in a short time acquired very great fortunes and estates, since they had no conscience in their profits and usuries, saying that they only gained at the expense of their enemies, according to the command of God in the departure of the people of Israel to rob the Egyptians . . . Of all this the King and Queen were assured while they were at Seville.

To some extent, at least, Isabel must have shared these views, so that in yeilding to an overwhelming pressure of public opinion in the early fall of 1480 she was doing no violence to her own convictions. Mendoza's catechism had failed to accomplish the miracle he had hoped for; it had only stirred the Conversos to new laughter and blasphemies, and the Cardinal was compelled to agree that no way remained but force.

Finally on a cool day in September, the Queen unlocked one of the cunningly carved wooden chests in which her state papers were kept, and drew from it a document that had reposed there in profound secrecy since the last days of 1478. It was a piece of parchment, with a leaden seal hung on threads of colored silk. It was a bull issued at Rome on November 1, 1478, by Pope Sixtus IV. From its text it is possible to form an intelligent conjecture as to how the Spanish envoy at Rome had represented the situation to the Holy Father. After the usual preamble, the Pope wrote:

“The genuine devotion and sound faith manifested in your reverence for us and the Roman Church demand that, as far as we can in the sight of God, we grant your requests, particularly those which concern the exaltation of the Catholic Faith and the salvation of souls. We learn from your letter recently shown to us that in various cities, sections and regions of the Spanish kinddoms, many of those who of their own accord were born anew in Christ in the sacred waters of Baptism, while continuing to comport themselves externally as Christians, yet have secretly adopted or returned to the religious observances and customs of the Jews, and are living according to the principles and ordinances of Jewish superstition and falsehood, thus renouncing the truths of the orthodox faith, its worship, and belief in its doctrines, and incurring, without hesitation or tear, the censures and penalties pronounced against followers of heretical perversity, in accordance with the constitutions of Pope Boniface VIII, our predecessor of happy memory. Not only do they persist in their blindness but their children and their associates are infected with the same perfidy, and thus their numbers increase not a little. Due to the crimes of these men and as is piously believed, to the forbearance of this Holy See and of those ecclesiastical prelates whose duty it is to examine into such matters, with God's permission, was and homicide and other misfortunes are oppressing those same regions to the offense of the Divine Majesty, the contempt of the aforesaid Faith, the danger of souls and the scandal of many. On this account you have humbly implored our apostolic kindness to extirpate this dangerous sect root and branch from out your kingdoms . . .”

“We rejoice in the Lord over your praiseworthy zeal for the Faith and for the salvation of souls and express the hope that you will exert every effort not only to drive this perfidy from your realms, but also in our own times to subject to your rule the kingdom of Granada and the territories that border on it. We likewise trust that you will strive through the workings of Divine Mercy to bring about the conversion to the true faith of the infidels who are in these territories. Thus, what your predecessors, owing to various obstacles, found impossible of accomplishment you will bring to pass unto the prosperity of the same true faith, the salvation of souls, your own great glory, and the assurance of eternal happiness, for which you so earnestly pray. We wish to grant your petitions and to apply suitable remedies to the evils you mention. Yielding therefore to your entreaties, we willingly permit the appointment of three, or at least two bishops or archbishops or other approved men, who are secular priests, or religious of the mendicant or the non-mendicant orders, above forty years of age, of good conscience and exemplary life, masters of bachelor in theology, or doctors in canon law or licentiates carefully examined, God-fearing men, whom you shall consider worthy to be chosen, for the time being, in each city and diocese of the aforesaid kingdoms according to the needs of the places . . . Furthermore to the men thus designated we grant, in regard to those accused of these crimes, and in regard to all who aid and abet the, the same judicial authority, peculiar rights and jurisdiction as law and custom allow to Ordinaries and Inquisitors of heretical perversity.

This text makes it clear that Isabel's agent in Rome had represented the Inquisition to the Pope as a necessary war measure during a Crusade; a temporary one – “For the time being”; and one that would be conducted in cooperation with the bishops according to the practice that experience had taught was needed, to prevent abuses. As the royal petition reached the Pope, the only new feature of it appeared to be the request that he permit the sovereigns to name the Inquisitors. That was unusual, but so were the conditions in Spain. Sixtus could have had no ida that the Spanish tribunal would exist for three centuries to come.

During the panic over the fall of Ottranto – on September 26, 1480 – the King and Queen published the bull as part of an edict establishing the Inquisition in Castile. The text of this document shows that their purpose was not merely to punish or to persecute for the sake of intolerance; it was in part as least to prevent a repetition of the ghastly massacres of the Conversos. The aim of the new court, the edict stated, was not only to punish judaizers who sought to draw simple-minded Christians from the true faith, fut also “to protect faithful Christians” among the Conversos “from unjust suspicions and persecutions.” Two Inquisitors were appointed: Fray Juan de San Martin, bachelor of theology, and Fray Miguel de Morillo, master of theology. They were given to understand in the plain language of the edict that their responsibility was no longer to the Pope but to the royal Crown. “We command you,” said the edict, “to accept this office,” Failure on their part to carry out the royal commands, would be punished by the confiscations of their goods, and the loss of their citizenship; they could be removed at any time by the King and Queen.

Isabel and Fernando may not have been aware at this state that their ambassador at Rome had in reality tricked the Pope into granting them powers that would be used to the glory of the state and the discredit of the Church. Isabel, at least despised all double-dealing; and it may be significant that her name appears less frequently than the King's on the correspondence with Sixtus. “Fernando had so contrived that the duty, which the Church was bound to perform, and which the Pope could neither refuse or evade, of declaring where errors in faith existed, should be made subservient to the state purpose of detecting high treason, then identical with Judaism; while the Church itself could exercise no controlling influence whatsoever to stay the terrible retributions awarded by the criminal courts of the realm.” In short, the Inquisition, as Fernando arranged matters, was religious inf form only; in spirit and purpose it was the instrument of the new Caesarism to which events had gradually led him Its judges were to be Dominican monks; but the monks were servants of the State, not of the Church.

It is entirely possible that Fernando carried Isabel, as well as Sixtus, into deeper waters than she realized. Nevertheless, the Queen never shirked her share of the responsibility for the Holy Office. And there is no contemporary evidence to support the theory by which most of her biographers, anxious to reconcile her natural kindness and rectitude with her severity against the Conversos, have attributed her long delay to what would now be called “humanitarian” motives. All such well-intentioned efforts arise from a failure to understand the perilous conditions in which she labored – the war psychology of Spain, the challenge of the secret Jews allied to a nation within the new nation, the intensity of the popular distrust of them, and the extent to which the Queen probable shared it. She was, after all, the daughter of that uncompromising Queen who had pursued de Luna, the friend of Jews and Conversos, to his doom. She was the girl who had turned with digust from the immoralities of Enrique's court where the Conversos held the palm, who had shuddered at the bare though of being embraced by that lecherous Converso Don Pedro Giron, who had sickened on hearing men accuse that other Converso Juan Pacheco of poisoning her brother Alfonso. She had in her, after all, the blood of those Plantagenets who were so ruthless that men called them devils, of William the Conqueror, who, when his wife reminded him once too often of his bastardy, was said to have tied her long hair to the tail of his horse and to have dragged her about, to teach her the duty of a wife.

Isabel, the maid, had resolved to complete the reconquest and rehabilitation of Spain, and only the Moors and the Conversos stood in her way. And the mature woman who had calmly ordered the executions of so many thieves and murderers in the Jew-ridden city of Seville would hardly hesitate to exact conformity from those who were guilty of an offense which she considered even worse than theft or murder – heresy. To most people of the twentieth century the word “heresy” connotes merely an independence of thought, a difference of opinion. We are likely to forget that the mass of men in the Middle Ages nearly always associated it with some group whose tenets and activities appeared anti-social. In a dominantly Christian society, as Europe once was, heresy seemed something monstrous, diabolical. Med though of heretics as respectable middle-class folk of our day think of militant anarchists. Even so gently and charitable a woman as Saint Teresa of Avila considered heresy worse that any other sin. Comparing the human soul to a mirror, she wrote, “When a soul is in mortal sin, this mirror becomes clouded with a thick vapor, and utterly obscured, so that Our Lord is neighter visible nor present, thous He is always present in the conservation of its being. In heretics, the mirror is, as it were, broken in pieces, and that is worse that being dimmed.” Isabel would have agreed with this statement; it would have seemed to her only a logical conclusion from the premises contained in the teachings of Christ in her hand-illuminated New Testament.

In associating Conversos with the traditions foes, the sensual Mussulmans, Spanish Christians, even to this day, have imputed to them certain vices against which Christian communities have always reacted with severity. A modern Spanish scholar writes that “these unworthy practices, always existent have epochs of recrudescence, as in the fifteenth century, through contact with the Moors, making necessary the cedula of the Catholic Queen, with the terrible chastisement of the bonfire.” A popular tract written by a converted Jew during the first years of the Inquisition went so far as to make the ridiculous assertion that “the Marranos invented Sodomy.” In the very nature of the case it was impossible for the Spanish Christian to be fair to the Converso; he saw in his only the ally of his anceint enemy. And it must be said that the deeds of the Conversos and of the Jews from time to time lent some color to the popular prejudices. After the massacres of 1473 the Conversos of Cordoba had attempted to purchase Gilbralta from King Enrique. It was generally believed that they intended using it as a base to bring hordes of Moors from Africa to reconquer all Spain.

Another reason for Isabel's delay was probably the simple fact that she did not feel herself quite strong enough to proceed until after the conclusion of peace with Portugal and the Cortes of Toledo. And it may be inferred that the Conversos who were so powerfully entrenched in the court did not see the royal hand raised above their heads without making strenuous efforts to avert the blow. Her closest friend, Beatriz, had married a Converso. Her confessor was of Jewish descent. Almost all her privy councillors and secretaries had Jewish ancestors on the one side or the other – or both. Fernando's escribano de racion, a sort of treasurer, was the acute lawyer Luis de Santangel, one of a great family with ramifications all over Aragon and Castile. He was descended from the Jewish rabbi Azarias Zinello; an uncle Petro Martin, had been Bishop of Mallorca; other members of the family were farmers of taxes and of the royal salt works. King Fernando's government, in fact, was virtually in the hands of the Conversos. His maestre racional or Chief Treasurer, Sancho de Paternoy, his confidential friends and advisers, Jaime de la Caballeria and Juan de Cabrero; his cup-bearer Guilleo Sanchez, his steward Francisco Sanchez, his treasurer Gabriel Sanchez – all were of the seed of Abraham. It would have been strange if these shrewd and powerful politicians had not made every effort to dissuade the King and Queen from the step they were contemplating. (William Thomas Walsh, Isabella of Spain: The Last Crusader, published originally by Robert McBride and Company in 1930 and republished by TAN Books and Publishers in 1987, pp. 195-201.)