Sober Up, part thirteen

As usual, readers expecting to find any kind of frenzied reaction to the tepid report issued by United States Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz on Thursday, June 14, 2018, the Feast of Saint Basil the Great, will be greatly disappointed. Commentaries on this website about events in the farcical world of naturalism are written to provide supernatural perspectives on matters that are but a logical consequence of a world shaped by the lies of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonic naturalism.

This having been noted, however, I will provide a bit of commentary on Mr. Horowitz’s whitewash of the FBI and Depart of Justice’s successful effort to protect the “next president,” Madame Defarge (aka Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton), mindful of the fact that, as I explained in Sober Up, part whatever (eleven, actually), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.) has a long history of suppressing legitimate political dissent and of doing the bidding of various office-holders while at the same time protecting its abuses of power by keeping unauthorized files on politicians of both major organized crime families of naturalism in the United States of America.

To wit, it was not for nothing that one of the first things that the Clinton Family Crime Syndicate did in 1993 was to gain access to the FBI’s files of hundreds of  Republicans:

Remember ''Filegate''? Three years [1995] ago we learned that the White House had been regularly pulling the files from the F.B.I. on hundreds of Republicans -- ostensibly for security clearance, but including hundreds of former Reagan and Bush appointees never being considered for jobs.

Even Clinton partisans shuddered at shades of an ''enemies list.'' White House spokesmen dismissed it as a ''bureaucratic snafu,'' caused by a Secret Service that couldn't keep its lists straight.

Suspicion fell on D. Craig Livingstone, a Democratic advance man unqualified for his sensitive security post. Because some Clinton appointees had drug problems in their pasts, White House operatives may have felt that a supply of political mud was needed to drive off potential critics.

The F.B.I. admitted wrongdoing in being so complaisant, apologized and said it would never again ship files over without proper paperwork. But it was obviously not qualified to investigate White House abuse of its files; Janet Reno asked for independent counsel, and the matter was assigned to Ken Starr, who had an organization up and running.

Starr has never come to closure. Years passed; Livingstone, seeking no immunity, testified to Congress that everybody and therefore nobody was to blame. Starr's investigation languished.

Fortunately for the public interest in privacy, an organization called Judicial Watch launched a class-action suit in behalf of people whose files had been unlawfully examined. This week it provided The Washington Times with an expanded list of names of those whose most intimate affairs were examined by this political operative and his bosses.

The list, still growing, is up to 900 names; some, like Linda Tripp, were holdovers, but at least 400 were not -- from James Brady to James Baker, John Whitehead to James Carville. (Some White House snoop probably said merrily, ''Let's see what they've got on Carville.'')

If the prosecutor cannot indict after all this time, he should issue a report. Here are questions that need answering:

Was Livingstone hired at Hillary Clinton's suggestion? Who gave this former bar bouncer the names of the targets of White House curiosity -- names that he then ordered up from a roundheeled F.B.I.? Did the F.B.I. send over only summaries, as the White House claims, or were raw files or letters sometimes included?

Before being returned to the F.B.I., were the contents of these confidential files typed into White House computer data bases? ''I can see a secretary or some poor intern being relegated to typing up somebody's information on the computer,'' Livingstone told the reporter Bill Sammon of The Washington Times this week, ''. . . so that the President could read it or the chief of staff could read it.''

Here is this serial invader of privacy blithely envisioning the transmission of F.B.I. files loaded with hearsay smears being fed to the President himself, for reading amusement on his computer screen.

We know that Whodb, pronounced ''who-to-be,'' the White House Office Data Base, has on it tens of thousands of potential contributors and people who owe the Clintons favors, accessible by name, affiliation, race and religion. We do not yet know what else is in these unprecedented political dossiers.

Who in the White House cooked up the excuse offered when Filegate first surfaced, that the Secret Service was to blame for providing an outdated list of names? After Secret Service agents testified to Congress that this was untrue, and that the names of former White House aides were clearly marked ''inactive,'' Clinton's Treasury harassed the agents with a costly investigation.

The Senate counter-investigated that harassment; the agents were exonerated and their legal bills paid. Now, ironically, the White House is posing as the big friend of a Secret Service reluctant to testify -- while clinging to the canard that an inefficient Secret Service was the cause of hundreds of invasions of privacy.

As Clinton stonewallers talk about the President's privacy, and as White House spinmeisters seize the issue of privacy on the Internet, think about Livingstone's eye to the keyhole of more than 400 Republican bedrooms. If Starr cannot indict, he should report forthwith; then, if necessary, Congress should act. (Remember the Filegate Scandal?.)

Unsurprisingly, of course, there was never a really satisfactory explanation as to why officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation handed over hundreds of files about the Clintons’ political opponents. Everyone in the matter was exonerated. Such has ever been the case with William Jefferson Blythe Clinton and his wife, Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton. The Clintons established in Arkansas that they were above the laws of God and man, and they cemented that legacy in the White House and ever after in the past seventeen and one-half years. The FBI did the bidding of the Clintons in Filegate, and its senior officials did the bidding of the Clintons in Emailgate.

As noted above, Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s voluminous report was nothing but a heavily-qualified whitewash of the facts, which show conclusively that there was institutional bias in favor of Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton and against Donald John Trump during the investigation of the former and at present in the ongoing endless series of investigations against the latter. This whitewash was described in pretty exacting terms by former Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York Andrew McCarthy:

You’ve got to hand it to Michael Horowitz: The Justice Department inspector general’s much-anticipated report on the Clinton-emails investigation may be half-baked, but if it is, it is the most comprehensive, meticulously detailed, carefully documented, thoughtfully reasoned epic in the history of half-bakery.

Why say do I say the report “may be half-baked”? Why don’t I just come out and declare, “The report is half-baked”? Well, I figure if I write this column in the IG’s elusive style, we’ll have the Rosetta Stone we need to decipher the report.

See, you probably sense that I believe the report is half-baked. But if I say it “may be” half-baked . . . well, technically that means it may not be, too. I mean, who really knows, right?

If that annoys you, try wading through 568 pages of this stuff, particularly on the central issue of the investigators’ anti-Trump bias. The report acknowledges that contempt for Trump was pervasive among several of the top FBI and DOJ officials making decisions about the investigation. So this deep-seated bias must have affected the decision-making, right? Well, the report concludes, who really knows?

Not in so many words, of course. The trick here is the premise the IG establishes from the start: It’s not my job to draw firm conclusions about why things happened the way they did. In fact, it’s not even my job to determine whether investigative decisions were right or wrong. The cop-out is that we are dealing here with “discretionary” calls; therefore, the IG rationalizes, the investigators must be given very broad latitude. Consequently, the IG says his job is not to determine whether any particular decision was correct; just whether, on some otherworldly scale of reasonableness, the decision was defensible. And he makes that determination by looking at every decision in isolation.

But is that the way we evaluate decisions in the real world?

In every criminal trial, the defense lawyer tries to sow reasonable doubt by depicting every allegation, every factual transaction, as if it stood alone. In a drug case, if the defendant was photographed delivering a brown paper bag on Wednesday, the lawyer argues, “Well, we don’t have X-ray vision, how do we really know there was heroin in the bag?” The jurors are urged that when they consider what happened Wednesday, there is only Wednesday; they must put out of their minds that text from Tuesday, when the defendant told his girlfriend, “I always deliver the ‘product’ in paper bags.”

Fortunately, the judge ends up explaining to the jury that, down here on Planet Earth, common sense applies. In our everyday lives, we don’t look at related events in isolation; we view them in conjunction because they read on each other. Let’s say on Monday I confide to my friend that I can’t stand Bob, and on Tuesday I tell Bob I can’t join him for dinner because I have other plans. It may or may not be true that I have other plans, but common sense tells you my disdain for Bob has factored into the decision — even if I don’t announce that fact to Bob.

For all his assiduous attention to detail, IG Horowitz has weaved a no-common-sense report.

n August 8, 2016, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, borderline hysterical, texts her lover, agent Peter Strzok, about GOP candidate Donald Trump: “He’s not ever going to become president, right? Right?!”

Strzok replies, “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.”

Now mind you, Page isn’t just any old lawyer; she is counsel to the FBI’s deputy director (Andrew McCabe) and involved in virtually every significant decision the bureau makes. And Strzok is not any old agent; he is deputy assistant director and one of the FBI’s top counterespionage agents — and he steered both relevant investigations, Clinton-emails and Trump-Russia.

This August 8 text exchange does not occur in a vacuum. It is part of ceaseless stream of anti-Trump bile. It is, moreover, just a week before the infamous text in which we learn that top-level bureau officials met in the deputy director’s office to discuss what they saw as the harrowing possibility of a Trump presidency; Strzok urged that, though highly unlikely, this prospect was so intolerable that the bureau needed an “insurance policy” against it — i.e., the Russia investigation.

The August 8 text also occurs against a backdrop in which the FBI has rushed to close the Clinton-emails investigation on an arbitrary deadline for patently political reasons — no other criminal investigation is guided by the electoral calendar. And it occurs at the moment the FBI is moving aggressively to turn its counterintelligence powers against the Trump campaign: An informant has already been deployed, intelligence agents are mobilizing, foreign intelligence contacts have been tapped, and the bureau will soon submit to the FISA court an application to surveil Trump adviser Carter Page — an application that breaks every rule in the book: anonymous foreign sources spouting multiple hearsay, no corroboration, no disclosure to the court that it comes from the opposition presidential campaign, no explanation that the foreigner who supplied the unverified allegations has been booted from the investigation for lying, etc.

Yet you’re not supposed to string any of that together. On August 8, Strzok vows that the FBI will “stop” Trump, but if you’re asked to evaluate the agents’ motivation for actions that helped Clinton on a different day, you’re supposed to pretend that August 8 never happened — that the striving for a case against Trump at the same time the case against Hillary was being buried never happened.

How does the IG pull this off? Two ways.

The first, as mentioned above, is methodology. By disavowing any intention to pass judgment on the rightness of any particular investigative decision, by announcing upfront that he is confining himself to an assessment of whether the decisions were rational, Horowitz reads motivation out of the equation. If there were two investigative options — e.g., (1) give immunity to Paul Combetta (the service technician for Clinton’s server who lied to the FBI and destroyed evidence) or (2) prosecute him for false statements — the IG says his analysis is limited to whether the option chosen was objectively defensible.

This turns out to be an abstract analysis with a lot of gobbledygook about whether the prosecution would have served federal interests, whether Combetta was undermined by bad lawyering, etc. The IG is going to tell you that while immunity might not have been the best choice, it was a defensible choice — it enabled the FBI to get his testimony faster (i.e., to lie to them in a more timely fashion on the artificially compressed deadline they’d established for closing the case without charges). What is Horowitz not going to consider? That a hundred times out of a hundred, in cases not involving Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy, most normally aggressive federal prosecutors, including Trump-Russia prosecutor Robert Mueller, would have charged Combetta and squeezed him to roll over on his confederates.

Instead, Horowitz says it was a rational decision, so we’re done with that one. Whoa, whoa, wait a second. Was it an appropriate decision? Was it made because they were in a rush to close the case so that Clinton (their preferred candidate) could run against Trump (whom they were determined to “stop”) without the cloud of an investigation hanging over her?

The IG won’t answer that question — not without a canyon’s worth of wiggle room. Utterly biased people may have made manifestly flawed decisions, he tells us, but as long as they were not blatantly irrational decisions, we’re going to call them justifiable and move on. But were the decisions politicized? If a biased person makes a less than optimal decision, isn’t there an itty-bitty possibility that the bias clouded his judgment?

In essence, the IG answers, “Who really knows?” . . . except he says it in a way that enables the FBI to pretend he has found no evidence of bias at all. Observe this gem, from the report’s executive summary:

We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative decisions.

Directly affected? What does that mean? Do the FBI and Obama Justice Department have to stamp the “I’m with Her” logo on Combetta’s immunity agreement before we can say bias directly affected the decision? Could bias have indirectly affected the decision?

Who really knows, right?

The IG’s second tack involves the facts he chooses to present. The report is truly half-baked because it omits half the story — all Clinton emails, no Trump-Russia. Of course, that’s neither how the cases evolved, nor how the investigators looked at them.

When Ted Cruz dropped out of the GOP presidential race, making Trump the de facto nominee, the very first thing Strzok said upon hearing the news from Page was, “Now the pressure really starts to finish MYE” — i.e., “Mid Year Exam,” the code name for the Clinton caper. The best way to “stop” Trump was to free Hillary to beat him. So, the bureau simultaneously labored to close the case on her and invent a case on him.

In the blink of an eye, then-director Comey was briefing Obama’s National Security Council on Carter Page; the Obama intelligence agencies were tapping their foreign partners, targeting Trump-campaign advisers to run informants at, and internalizing the Steele dossier. While the FBI scooped up the last laptops it needed to complete the predetermined closing of the emails probe, Attorney General Lynch had her convenient tarmac chat with Bill Clinton, and the bureau conducted the perfunctory interview with Hillary — an interview so pointless that the FBI and Justice Department did not object to the presence of Mrs. Clinton’s co-conspirators in the room, even though the IG report concedes that this flouted elementary investigative protocols.

Meanwhile, here is Strzok, having finished the Clinton interview and closed out the emails case, preparing to wing his way to London to conduct some real interviews — interviews with witnesses who might help him “stop” Trump:

And damn this feels momentous. Because this matters. The other one did, too, but that was to ensure that we didn’t F something up. This matters because this MATTERS.

Get it? This, the Trump case, “MATTERS” in comparison to the Clinton case. The only thing that mattered in the Clinton case was that the FBI avoid doing anything too grossly indefensible in implementing the months-long strategy to close the case without charges after appearing to do an energetic investigation. But the Trump case matters because it “MATTERS” — because in the Trump case, Strzok and Page and the others actually get to do what the FBI usually does: make a case on a bad guy we have to “stop” — informants, wiretaps, subpoenas, predawn search warrants with guns drawn, charging people who lie to us, threatening decades of imprisonment against witnesses we’re trying to flip.

How do you best evaluate the FBI’s approach to the Clinton case? Well, if I may invoke that term again, common sense says you look at how the same agents handled another case which bore on the same event that informed their every decision, the 2016 election. The question is not whether every Clinton-case decision was defensible considered in isolation; it is whether the quality of justice afforded to two sides of the same continuum by the same agents at the same time was . . . the same.

It wasn’t. One was kid gloves, the other was scorched earth. The candidate they hoped would win got the former; the candidate they needed to “stop” got the latter. The candidate they were almost certain would win got the case dropped; the candidate they needed an “insurance policy” against . . . well, whaddya know — the case against him is still going . . . and going . . . and going.

Did bias have anything to do with that? In 568 pages that leave out the Trump half of the story, we’re told the answer is, “Who really knows?”

I think we know. (FBI's No Bias Finding May Not be Supported by the Facts. For a sardonic look at the FBI's setup job in creating the "Russian Collusion" drama, see Sheryl Atkisson's The FBI's Fractured Fairy Tale. The title of this sardonic commentary refers to the "Fractured Fairy Tales" segment of Rocky and His Friends/The Bullwinkle Show. The segments were narrated by the late Edward Everett Horton.)

In plain English, Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s long-anticipated, five hundred sixty-eight page report contains all the evidence to prove the very thing that its author said could not be proved: political bias in the conduct of the investigation of Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton’s serial violations of Federal laws to shield her from criminal investigation and, simultaneously, political bias against Donald John Trump designed to keep him out of the White House and then to hamper his administration after he got into the White House despite their best efforts to “stop it.”

Is there really anything more to say about the specifics of this matter, especially in light of the fact that the facts were pretty well-known even before Mr. Horowitz issued his whitewash?

No Concern for Justice at the Department of Justice

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Modernity is that injustice must become the norm in matters of investigation and law enforcement. A series of articles from three years ago (Do Not Expect Justice From Those Who Are Unjust, part one and Do Not Expect Injustice From Those Who Are Unjust, part two) attempted to make this point during the time that the United States Senate was considering the nomination of Loretta Lynch to succeed Eric Himpton Holder as the Attorney General of the United States of America. Mrs. Lynch was no more interested in pursuing authentic justice (rendering unto each person that which is his due) in a dispassionate search for the truth than was her predecessor, Holder, who was a master of covering-up the multiple crimes (Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative advocacy groups filing for tax-exempt status, Fast and Furious, the Benghazi cover-up, the refusal to investigate the crimes of the Clinton Foundation) of the administration of Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro from January 20, 2009, to January 20, 2017. Mind you, the parenthetical summary of the Obama/Soetoro’s scandals and crimes (see A Complete Guide to Obama's Scandals, Gaffes, and Power Grabs) did not include the unleashing of the intelligence community against Donald John Trump.

This should have come as no surprise as both Eric Himpton Holder and Loretta Lynch were committed to the institutionalized injustice represented by the daily slaughter of the innocent preborn by chemical and surgical means and the nonexistent “right” of those who commit the sin of Sodom and its related vices to “marry.” Those who are personally committed to sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance can never be instruments of pursuing justice in the natural order of things as their intellects are darkened by their support for moral evils, which winds up weakening their wills to follow the path of amorality in the belief that their “cause” is “righteous” and thus justifies the use of double standards in the administration of justice.

Perhaps even more the point, odious individuals such as James Brien Comey, Robert Mueller, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Bruce Ohr, John Brennan, James Clapper, Sally Yates, et al., can pervert the due process of law to suit their own ends because they share one essential trait with the man whose election they tried to thwart and whose presidency that have sought to undermine and overthrow, Donald John Trump: a failure to take into any consideration at all how their personal and professional actions look in light of eternity. Neither President Trump nor any of his tormentors and antagonists give any thought to the moment when they will have to make an accounting of their lives to Christ the King at the Particular Judgment. Men and their nations must fall more and more into the abyss when no thought is given to eternity, and it is this lack of thought about eternity that leads the neopagans of our time to act in lawless ways against those who hold proscribed views and/or pose a threat to them personally.

Pope Leo XIII put the matter as follows in Tametsi Futuris Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900:

From this it may clearly be seen what consequences are to be expected from that false pride which, rejecting our Saviour's Kingship, places man at the summit of all things and declares that human nature must rule supreme. And yet, this supreme rule can neither be attained nor even defined. The rule of Jesus Christ derives its form and its power from Divine Love: a holy and orderly charity is both its foundation and its crown. Its necessary consequences are the strict fulfilment of duty, respect of mutual rights, the estimation of the things of heaven above those of earth, the preference of the love of God to all things. But this supremacy of man, which openly rejects Christ, or at least ignores Him, is entirely founded upon selfishness, knowing neither charity nor selfdevotion. Man may indeed be king, through Jesus Christ: but only on condition that he first of all obey God, and diligently seek his rule of life in God's law. By the law of Christ we mean not only the natural precepts of morality and the Ancient Law, all of which Jesus Christ has perfected and crowned by His declaration, explanation and sanction; but also the rest of His doctrine and His own peculiar institutions. Of these the chief is His Church. Indeed whatsoever things Christ has instituted are most fully contained in His Church. Moreover, He willed to perpetuate the office assigned to Him by His Father by means of the ministry of the Church so gloriously founded by Himself. On the one hand He confided to her all the means of men's salvation, on the other He most solemnly commanded men to be subject to her and to obey her diligently, and to follow her even as Himself: "He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me" (Luke x, 16). Wherefore the law of Christ must be sought in the Church. Christ is man's "Way"; the Church also is his "Way"-Christ of Himself and by His very nature, the Church by His commission and the communication of His power. Hence all who would find salvation apart from the Church, are led astray and strive in vain.

As with individuals, so with nations. These, too, must necessarily tend to ruin if they go astray from "The Way." The Son of God, the Creator and Redeemer of mankind, is King and Lord of the earth, and holds supreme dominion over men, both individually and collectively. "And He gave Him power, and glory, and a kingdom: and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve Him" (Daniel vii., 14). "I am appointed King by Him . . . I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thy inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession" (Psalm ii., 6, 8). Therefore the law of Christ ought to prevail in human society and be the guide and teacher of public as well as of private life. Since this is so by divine decree, and no man may with impunity contravene it, it is an evil thing for the common weal wherever Christianity does not hold the place that belongs to it. When Jesus Christ is absent, human reason fails, being bereft of its chief protection and light, and the very end is lost sight of, for which, under God's providence, human society has been built up. This end is the obtaining by the members of society of natural good through the aid of civil unity, though always in harmony with the perfect and eternal good which is above nature. But when men's minds are clouded, both rulers and ruled go astray, for they have no safe line to follow nor end to aim at. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)

I am really tempted to end my commentary with this quotation as this is a perfectly prophetic summary of what happens to men and the world in which they live when they do not acknowledge the reign of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in their own personal lives nor His Social Kingship over their nations. Each of the players in the “Midyear Examination” (the FBI’s code for Emailgate) and the trumped-up investigations of Donald John Trump, including Trump himself, have no thought of eternity, less yet that there is a law above human law that governs us at all times and in all circumstances. However, there are just two additional points that I believe must be made.

Sobering Facts to Consider

First, as has been mentioned several times before on this site, Donald John Trump, though certainly the victim of a vast conspiracy against him that was launched and is still being directed by Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro and the intelligence community figures who served under our Caesar-emeritus (Comey, Brennan, Clapper), has himself to blame for not preparing to govern on January 20, 2017. His lack of knowledge about the structure and operation of the Executive Office of the President and of the vast number of political appointees within the Executive Branch caused him to listen to the advice of swamp dwellers, which is how Deputy Attorney General Rod Jay Rosenstein got to be in the position of appointing former FBI Director Robert Mueller to be a “special counsel” after the man who has become a hapless captive to the swamp, United States Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, recused himself from the “Russia collusion” investigation. Trump flies by the seat of his pants, and his improvisational nature of acting has enabled an effort that began after he announced his candidacy on June 17, 2015.

Second, the fact that Donald John Trump remains the victim of an elaborate conspiracy to indemnify Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton and to make him appear guilty of colluding with the Russians to steal the November 8, 2016, presidential election must not be an excuse for anyone to be blind to the fact that all manner of evils continues to be spread in the administration of 2016’s “lesser or two evils”. Naturalism is evil and must produce evil in its wake.

While, as has been noted in other commentaries in the past three years, no Catholic in his right mind can ignore the fact that a “President” Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton would have spread evils and engaged in repression of dissenting speech and activity even more boldly than had been the case under Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro, one must also not be deaf, dumb and blind to the fact that evils are still being advanced by President Donald John Trump both in his person and through his policies.

Indeed, one of the most troubling aspects of the Trump phenomenon is his shameless use of vulgarity and profanity, which has helped to let loose the few remaining restraints about the use of long-forbidden words in public discourse. It is now common to read formerly unprintable words in news stories and commentaries. How is this not the work of the adversary? I mean, the thrice-married, serial adulterer Trump and his thrice-married and soon-to-be thrice divorced lead counsel in the "collusion" case, Rudolph William Giuliani, outdo each other in their use of expletives, blasphemies, vulgarity and profanity:

As there is no need to reinvent the wheel, this is what I wrote in 2016 when Donald John Trump was running for the Republican Party presidential nomination:

That having been noted, however, I must reiterate points that have been made on this site many times before in the past few months concerning the fact that the coarseness and vulgarity that Donald John Trump uses so freely in his stream-of-consciousness discourses on current events that pass for “speeches” at his rallies are a reflection of the thoroughly naturalistic world in which we live. Although even many Catholics find Trump’s crude and vulgar language to be “refreshing” and “authentic” characteristics, I am afraid that such “uninhibited” language, no matter how commonly used in private by politicians and their advisers, makes it more acceptable for the average person to use out-and-out profanity in public even within the earshot of children. This is not a cause for celebration, and it is not something that one can say is a minor flaw. It is wrong to think that one needs to resort to vulgarity, crudity, and profanity in order to be “authentic” and “refreshing.”

The rise of vulgarity in our times, however, has been expedited by the manner which many conciliar “bishops” and priests/presbyters have conducted themselves publicly, and it is no exaggeration to state that Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who once boasted of having taught his nephew to use profane language, is actually a more dangerous exponent of vulgarity and coarseness than Donald John Trump, who knows nothing of First or Last Things and is thus ignorant of the fact that he must make an accounting to Christ the King for his use of the gift of speech. Bergoglio has no such excuse.

Indeed, “Pope Francis” is an open rebel against all norms of propriety and decency. He revels in being a rebel. Trump is but a product of the world in which he grew up and a reflection of times in which we live at present. We are thus eyewitnesses to the fulfillment of the following prophetic insight offered by Pope Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos, August 15 1832, concerning what happens when licentiousness of speech and conduct reign supreme in nations:

This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. “But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error,” as Augustine was wont to say. When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin. Then truly “the bottomless pit” is open from which John saw smoke ascending which obscured the sun, and out of which locusts flew forth to devastate the earth. Thence comes transformation of minds, corruption of youths, contempt of sacred things and holy laws — in other words, a pestilence more deadly to the state than any other. Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for wealth, dominion, and glory perished as a result of this single evil, namely immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire for novelty. (Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.)

Donald Trump is an earthy, uninhibited New Yorker. Alas, even New Yorkers are called to follow Christ the King, which is why our speech must reflect the dignity befitting our status as redeemed creatures, not as self-indulgent enablers of a world gone mad.

Saint Alphonsus de Liguori put the matter this way in his sermon for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost:

First Point. The man who speaks immodestly does great injury to others who listen to him.

1. In explaining the 140th Psalm, St. Augustine calls those who speak obscenely “the mediators of Satan," the ministers of Lucifer; because, by their obscene language, the demon of impurity gets access to souls, which by his own suggestions he could not enter. Of their accursed tongues St. James says: "And the tongue is a fire,... being set on fire by hell." (James iii. 6.) He says that the tongue is a fire kindled by hell, with which they who speak obscenely burn themselves and others. The obscene tongue may be said to be the tongue of the third person, of which Ecclesiasticus says: ”The tongue of a third person hath disquieted many, and scattered them from nation to nation." (Eccl. xxviii. 16.) The spiritual tongue speaks of God, the worldly tongue talks of worldly affairs; but the tongue of a third person is a tongue of hell, which speaks of the impurities of the flesh; and this is the tongue that perverts many, and brings them to perdition.

2. Speaking of the life of men on this earth, the Royal Prophet says: "Let their way become dark and slippery." (Ps. xxxiv. 0.) In this life men walk in the midst of darkness and in a slippery way. Hence they are in danger of falling at every step, unless they cautiously examine the road on which they walk, and carefully avoid dangerous steps that is, the occasions of sin. Now, if in treading this slippery way, frequent efforts were made to throw them down, would it not be a miracle if they did not fall? "The Mediators of Satan," who speak obscenely, impel others to sin, who, as long as they live on this earth, walk in the midst of darkness, and as long as they remain in the flesh, are in danger of falling into the vice of impurity. Now, of those who indulge in obscene language, it has been well said: ”Their throat is an open sepulchre." (Ps. v. 11.) The mouths of those who can utter nothing but filthy obscenities are, according to St. Chrysostom, so many open sepulchres of putrified carcasses. ”Talia sunt ora hominum qui turpia proferunt." (Hom, ii., de Proph. Obs.) The exhalation which arises from the rottenness of a multitude of dead bodies thrown together into a pit, communicates infection and disease to all who feel the stench.

3. ”The stroke of a whip," says Ecclesiasticus, "maketh a blue mark; but the stroke of a tongue will break the bones." (Eccl. xxviii. 21.) The wounds of the lash are wounds of the flesh, but the wounds of the obscene tongue are wounds which infect the bones of those who listen to its language. St. Bernardino of Sienna relates, that a virgin who led a holy life, at hearing an obscene word from a young man, fell into a bad thought, and afterwards abandoned herself to the vice of impurity to such a degree that, the saint says, if the devil had taken human flesh, he could not have committed so many sins of that kind as she committed.

4. The misfortune is, that the mouths of hell that frequently utter immodest words, regard them, as trifles, and are careless about confessing them: and when rebuked for them they answer: ”I say these words in jest, and without malice." In jest! Unhappy man, these jests make the devil laugh, and shall make you weep for eternity in hell. In the first place, it is useless to say that you utter such words without malice; for, when you use such expressions, it is very difficult for you to abstain from acts against purity. According to St. Jerome, ”He that delights in words is not far from the act. ” Besides, immodest words spoken before persons of a different sex, are always accompanied with sinful complacency. And is not the scandal you give to others criminal? Utter a single obscene word, and you shall bring into sin all who listen to you. Such is the doctrine of St. Bernard. ”One speaks, and he utters only one word; but he kills the souls of a multitude of hearers." (Serm. xxiv., in Cant.) A greater sin than if, by one discharge of a blunderbuss, you murdered many persons; because you would then only kill their bodies: but, by speaking obscenely, you have killed their souls.

5. In a word, obscene tongues are the ruin of the world. One of them does more mischief than a hundred devils; because it is the cause of the perdition of many souls. This is not my language; it is the language of the Holy Ghost. ”A slippery mouth worketh ruin." (Prov. xxvi. 28.) And when is it that this havoc of souls is effected, and that such grievous insults are offered to God? It is in the summer, at the time when God bestows upon you the greatest temporal blessings. It is then that he supplies you for the entire year with corn, wine, oil, and other fruits of the earth. It is then that there are as many sins committed by obscene words, as there are grains of corn or bunches of grapes. O ingratitude! How does God bear with us? And who is the cause of these sins? They who speak immodestly are the cause of them. Hence they must render an account to God, and shall be punished for all the sins committed by those who hear them. "But I will require his blood at thy hand." (Ezec. iii. 11.) But let us pass to the second point.

Second Point. He who speaks immodestly does great injury to himself.

6. Some young men say: ”I speak without malice." In answer to this excuse, I have already said, in the first point, that it is very difficult to use immodest language without taking delight in it; and that speaking obscenely before young females, married or unmarried, is always accompanied with a secret complacency in what is said. Besides, by using immodest language, you expose yourself to the proximate danger of falling into unchaste actions: for, according to St. Jerome, as we have already said, ”he who delights in words is not far from the act." All men are inclined to evil. "The imagination and thought of man‟s heart are prone to evil." (Gen. viii. 21.) But, above all, men are prone to the sin of impurity, to which nature itself inclines them. Hence St. Augustine has said, that in struggling against that vice”the victory is rare," at least for those who do not use great caution. ”Communis pugna et rara victoria." Now, the impure objects of which they speak are always presented to the mind of those who freely utter obscene words. These objects excite pleasure, and bring them into sinful desires and morose delectations, and afterwards into criminal acts. Behold the consequence of the immodest words which young men say they speak without malice.

7. "Be not taken in thy tongue," says the Holy Ghost. (Eccl. v. 16.) Beware lest by your tongue you forge a chain which will drag you to hell. ”The tongue," says St. James, ”defileth the whole body, and inflameth the wheel of our nativity." (St. James iii. 6.) The tongue is one of the members of the body, but when it utters bad words it infects the whole body, and "inflames the wheels of our nativity ;" it inflames and corrupts our entire life from our birth to old age. Hence we see that men who indulge in obscenity, cannot, even in old age, abstain from immodest language. In the life of St. Valerius, Surius relates that the saint, in travelling, went one day into a house to warm himself. He heard the master of the house and a judge of the district, though both were advanced in years, speaking on obscene subjects. The saint reproved them severely; but they paid no attention to his rebuke. However, God punished both of them: one became blind, and a sore broke out on the other, which produced deadly spasms. Henry Gragerman relates (in Magn. Spec., dist. 9, ex. 58), that one of those obscene talkers died suddenly and without repentance, and that he was afterwards seen in hell tearing his tongue in pieces; and when it was restored he began again to lacerate it

8. But how can God have mercy on him who has no pity on the souls of his neighbours?”Judgment without mercy to him that hath not done mercy." (St. James ii. 13.) Oh! what a pity to see one of those obscene wretches pouring out his filthy expressions before girls and young married females! The greater the number of such persons present, the more abominable is his language. It often happens that little boys and girls are present, and he has no horror of scandalizing these innocent souls! Cantipratano relates that the son of a certain nobleman in Burgundy was sent to be educated by the monks of Cluni. He was an angel of purity; but the unhappy boy having one day entered into a carpenter’s shop, heard some obscene words spoken by the carpenter’s wile, fell into sin, and lost the divine grace. Father Sabitano, in his work entitled”Evangelical Light," relates that another boy, fifteen years old, having heard an immodest word, began to think of it the following night, consented to a bad thought, and died suddenly the same night. His confessor having heard of his death, intended to say Mass for him. But the soul of the unfortunate boy appeared to him, and told the confessor not to celebrate Mass for him that, by means of the word he had heard, he was damned and that the celebration of Mass would add to his pains. O God! how great, were it in their power to weep, would be the wailing of the angel-guardians of these poor children that are scandalized and brought to hell by the language of obscene tongues! With what earnestness shall the angels demand vengeance from God against the author of such scandals! That the angels shall cry for vengeance against them, appears from the words of Jesus Christ: ”See that you despise not one of these little ones; for I say to you, that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father." (Matt, xviii. 10.)

9. Be attentive, then, my brethren, and guard your selves against speaking immodestly, more than you would against death. Listen to the advice of the Holy Ghost: ”Make a balance for thy words, and a just bridle for thy mouth; and take heed lest thou slip with thy tongue and thy fall be incurable unto death." (Eccl. xxvhi. 29, 30.)”Make a balance" you must weigh your words before you utter them and”a bridle for thy mouth" when immodest words come to the tongue, you must suppress them; otherwise, by uttering them, you shall inflict on your own soul, and on the souls of others, a mortal and incurable wound. God has given you the tongue, not to offend him, but to praise and bless him. ”But, ” says St. Paul, “fornication and all uncleanness, let it not so much as be named among you, as becometh saints." (Ephes. v. 3.) Mark the words”all uncleanness. ” We must not only abstain from obscene language and from every word of double meaning spoken in jest, but also from every improper word unbecoming a saint that is, a Christian. It is necessary to remark, that words of double meaning sometimes do greater evil than open obscenity, because the art with which they are spoken makes a deeper impression on, the mind.  

10. Reflect, says St. Augustine, that your mouths are the mouths of Christians, which Jesus Christ has so often entered in the holy communion. Hence, you ought to have a horror of uttering all unchaste words, which are a diabolical poison. ”See, brethren, if it be just that, from the mouths of Christians, which the body of Christ enters, an immodest song, like diabolical poison, should proceed." (Serm. xv., de Temp.) St. Paul says, that the language of a Christian should be always seasoned with salt. ”Let your speech be always in grace, seasoned with salt. ”(Col. iv. 6.) Our conversation should be seasoned with words calculated to excite others not to offend, but to love God. ”Happy the tongue," says St. Bernard, ”that knows only how to speak of holy things!" Happy the tongue that knows only how to speak of God! brethren, be careful not only to abstain from all obscene language, but to avoid, as you would a plague, those who speak immodestly. When you hear any one begin to utter obscene words, follow the advice of the Holy Ghost: ”Hedge in thy ears with thorns: hear not a wicked tongue." (Eccl. xxviii. 28.) "Hedge in thy ears with thorns" that is, reprove with zeal the man who speaks obscenely; at least turn away your face, and show that you hate such language. Let us not be ashamed to appear to be followers of Jesus Christ, unless we wish Jesus Christ to be ashamed to bring us with him into Paradise.(Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, Sermon for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost.)

No matter Donald John Trump’s remarkable thrashing of the Republican political establishment, committed as it has long been to conserving the welfare state, plundering the national treasury, refusing to protect the innocent preborn or to secure our borders, and to engaging in one needless, immoral, unjust and unconstitutional war after another, none of this will matter to him at the moment of his Particular Judgment as he is accountable for the example that he sets for others. A presidential candidate whose throat is an open sepulcher in public helps to reinforce the acceptability of profanity and indecency that is so widespread today in every aspect of what is called “popular culture.” The innocence of children is thus further undermined and reinforced.

No one can "make America great again" by speaking profanely.

So sorry to be that proverbial ant at the picnic again. 

Donald Trump’s appeal to the over ten million voters, including many tens of thousands of voters who are either registered Democrats or unaffiliated with any political party, has hinged principally on the money, the money, the money, and, of course, the money.

Yes, Trump served as a lightning rod to highlight the reckless disregard both for existing laws and for the public health and safety of American citizens that has been exhibited by President Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro and his enablers in the organized crime family of the false opposite of the naturalist “right,” the Republican Party, represented by the waves of migrants entering the United States of America illegally, and he has denounced the unjust, immoral and unconstitutional wars and military actions that have been waged by the likes of George Walker Bush and Obama/Soetoro. Additionally, Trump’s denunciation of such surrenders of American national sovereignty represented by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has struck a responsive chord of support with many Americans, especially as more and more American jobs have been shifted to other countries in this hemisphere and around the world.

In doing this, of course, Donald John Trump has shown himself willing to blow up the pretense of “opposition” political parties in Washington, District of Columbia, as each is in the grip of Wall Street financiers, K Street lobbyists, bankers and other special interests that have consummate contempt for the economic well-being of American citizens or the national security and sovereignty of any country, including the United States of America.

Trump has thus tapped into a motherlode of anger and resentment that has been boiling for a long time among thirty to forty percent of the nation’s voters, including many who are either unemployed or underemployed.

This is all undeniably true.

Alas, the economic bottom line is really the only thing that matters to Donald John Trump as he has been a businessman his entire life. Money is what has mattered to him.

It is because Donald John Trump’s lifelong focus has been on economic issues that his initial response to the needless controversy generated by a bill in the State of North Carolina that would require those who believe that they have had their gender “changed” by means of surgical and chemical mutilation to use public bathrooms of the gender with which they were born was one of opposition. As a complete bottom-line secularist, Donald John Trump cannot imagine why anyone would want to suffer the effects of an economic boycott waged by the fascistic cabal of homosexuals, lesbians, bisexuals and mutants. Making money is the ultimate raison d’etre for Donald John Trump. He is simply an American secularist. (From Exposing the Farce Once and for All.)

Nothing has changed. Indeed, private and public discourse is more vulgar now than it was two years ago. This advance of evil is neither “refreshing” nor in the interests of the common temporal good of a nation even on a purely natural level.

Similarly, the agitation over the efforts on part of the thugs, barbarians and brutes of the naturalist “left” to overturn the results of the November 8, 2018, can never be an excuse to ignore the fact that the agenda of homosexualism still being promoted by the Federal government of the United States of America, including by President Trump himself directly and by his appointees.

Take, for example, the statement issued by United States Secretary of State Michael Richard Pompeo, an apostate Catholic, that reaffirmed the commitment of the government of the United States of America in behalf of the “rights” of “lesbian gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex” persons, meaning that it is the policy of the Trump Administration to recognize that human beings who have chosen to identify themselves on the basis of their proclivity to comment perverse acts against nature as constitution a special “civil rights” category:

The United States stands for the protection of fundamental freedoms and universal human rights. Our nation was founded on the bedrock principle that we are all created equal – and that every person is entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Around the world, far too many governments continue to arrest and abuse their citizens simply for being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex (LGBTI). Fear and bigotry are enshrined in laws that criminalize LGBTI status or conduct in more than 70 countries. In some, being LGBTI is punishable by death.

The United States firmly opposes criminalization, violence and serious acts of discrimination such as in housing, employment and government services, directed against LGBTI persons. We use public and private diplomacy to raise human rights concerns, provide emergency assistance to people at risk, and impose visa restrictions and economic sanctions against those who persecute them.

On the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia, the United States stands with people around the world in affirming the dignity and equality of all people regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or sex characteristics. Human rights are universal, and LGBTI people are entitled to the same respect, freedoms, and protections as everyone else. (Remarks of the United States Secretary of State, Michael Richard Pompeo.)

There is no such thing as “homophobia.”

Those who choose to base their identities on the basis of their desire to commit sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance do not constitute a special category of human beings. All human beings are entitled to the full protection and benefit of the civil law and can never be the object of a direct, intentional attack upon their bodily safety, the civil law can never recognize and accept that those who are moral deviants are entitled to special protections and considerations because of their deviancy.

In other words, Michael Richard Pompeo’s statement is an exercise in insanity, but it is one that is shared fully by his boss, who appointed a “married” homosexual man, Richard Grennell, to be the United States Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany. Grennell was sworn-in by the Catholic apostate named Vice President Michael Richard Pence (he calls himself an “Evangelical Catholic”—how’s that for trying to please everyone but God?) on May 4, 2018, with Grennell’s “partner” holding a Bible, whose words condemn sodomy in no uncertain terms:

The Trump administration’s highest-profile openly gay official, Richard ‘Ric’ Grenell, was sworn in Thursday as the new U.S. ambassador to Germany by Vice President Mike Pence — controversial in the LGBT community for his conservative stance on gay rights.

"With Ambassador Grenell leading our diplomatic mission to Germany, we're going to confront shared challenges, seize our shared opportunities, and work together to build a shared future with our allies and friends in Germany," Pence said.

Grenell — a Republican operative, a foreign affairs commentator frequently on Fox News, and a former aide to newly-minted National Security Adviser John Bolton — was nominated to the diplomatic position in September 2017.

Grenell was spokesman for the U.S. mission at the U.N. from 2001 to 2008 — serving under four U.S. ambassadors, including Bolton, during former President George W. Bush's administration.

He was confirmed last week after facing vigorous opposition from Senate Democrats.

Democrats objected to Grenell assuming the role of U.S. envoy to Berlin — not for partisan reasons they said — but for what they called derogatory comments he posted on Twitter, since deleted, targeting several notable women including former first lady Michelle Obama. (Pence Swears In Trump's Most Prominent Practitioner of Sodomy.)

Similarly, although the National Institutes of Health, which is part of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, makes decisions somewhat autonomously of presidential administrations, it is neverthless telling that $1,000,000 of our taxpayer dollars is being spent on a project to promote "transgenderism" and its related vices:

June 8, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – The U.S. federal government has awarded a pro-transgender activist $1 million to study transgenderism in kids in a study critics say is already fundamentally biased.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) gave the University of Washington’s pro-LGBT Kristina Olsen the five-year grant.

“In 2013, [Olsen] organized and began leading a 20-year longitudinal research study of early childhood gender development,” the NSF announced in April. “The study currently follows more than 1,000 children aged 3-12 from 45 U.S. states. The project will enable researchers to track social and behavioral influences on health, and evaluate the importance of childhood identity and the support children receive to lifelong health and well-being.”

The taxpayer money will support Olsen running the TransYouth Project (TYP), a “large-scale, national longitudinal study of more than 300 socially-transitioned transgender children that started in 2013. These children were recruited when they were 3-12 years of age and we are hoping to follow them for 20 years.”

“The first red flag concerning TYP is the orientation of the lead researcher, Olson, who is firmly on the side of affirming the child’s mistaken gender identity,” Jane Robbins and Erin Tuttle wrote at The Federalist.

And, “through TYP, Olson is focusing only on a particular type of child with a particular type of family,” they explained. “Participant children had to impersonate the opposite sex in all facets of their everyday life, and their parents had to agree and play along with the impersonation. Participants were recruited from transgender clinics, conferences, and support groups, further ensuring that only families that already accept the concepts Olson and her colleagues embrace would be studied.”

Robbins and Tuttle continued:

...the results will be evaluated based primarily on self-reporting of parents. Probably with no training in assessing anxiety and depression, parents will report how well their children are doing in those areas. The likelihood that parents will admit that what they’re doing to their children is having an adverse effect is pretty small. Olson even admits that this reporting mechanism may reflect “a desire to have their children appear healthier than they are.” But not to worry: “we have no reasons to believe this was an issue.”

The Free Beacon recently broke the news that National Institutes of Health is spending almost $350,000 to study the contraceptive habits of lesbians. That study aims to help women “fully realize the social, economic, and health benefits” of not having children. (https://wwUS Government Gives Pro-Pervesity Research $1 million to encouage "transgenderism".)

No nation can know the favor of God when the daily killing of innocent human beings is taken for granted and when the sin of Sodom has become firmly cemented as part of a nation’s landscape.

While we pray for the good of our nation, we must recognize that the current President of the United States of America does not realize that public recognition and facilitation of sin is a cause for the ruin of nations, not the means by which to restore a “greatness” that never existed in the first place. No nation can be made if its people are at war with God by means of their sins. Man does not live on bread alone, and the security of nations can never be assured by means of economic prosperity when its laws and popular culture promote that which caused Our Blessed Lord and Saviour, Christ the King, to suffer in His Sacred Humanity once in time on the wood of the Holy Cross and that wound His Mystical Body, the Church Militant on earth, today. No nation can know the favor of God when the daily killing of innocent human beings is taken for granted and when the sin of Sodom has become firmly cemented as part of a nation’s landscape.

No human accomplishment can stand the test of time if it is written on the sands of naturalism. Sooner or later—and it will be sooner rather later given the demographic trends at work in the world at present—the works of men must collapse under the weight of the mass delusion that public life does not need to be informed and directed by the Catholic Faith and that men need to be sanctified by the supernatural helps provided them by Holy Mother Church.

As Pope Leo XIII noted in Rerum Novarum, May 15, 1891, men will be unable to distinguish good from evil and the imperishable from the perishable when they lose all sight of futurity, that is, their Last End:

But the Church, with Jesus Christ as her Master and Guide, aims higher still. She lays down precepts yet more perfect, and tries to bind class to class in friendliness and good feeling. The things of earth cannot be understood or valued aright without taking into consideration the life to come, the life that will know no death. Exclude the idea of futurity, and forthwith the very notion of what is good and right would perish; nay, the whole scheme of the universe would become a dark and unfathomable mystery. The great truth which we learn from nature herself is also the grand Christian dogma on which religion rests as on its foundation -- that, when we have given up this present life, then shall we really begin to live. God has not created us for the perishable and transitory things of earth, but for things heavenly and everlasting; He has given us this world as a place of exile, and not as our abiding place. As for riches and the other things which men call good and desirable, whether we have them in abundance, or are lacking in them -- so far as eternal happiness is concerned -- it makes no difference; the only important thing is to use them aright. Jesus Christ, when He redeemed us with plentiful redemption, took not away the pains and sorrows which in such large proportion are woven together in the web of our mortal life. He transformed them into motives of virtue and occasions of merit; and no man can hope for eternal reward unless he follow in the blood-stained footprints of his Savior. "If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him." Christ's labors and sufferings, accepted of His own free will, have marvelously sweetened all suffering and all labor. And not only by His example, but by His grace and by the hope held forth of everlasting recompense, has He made pain and grief more easy to endure; "for that which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation, worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory."

Therefore, those whom fortune favors are warned that riches do not bring freedom from sorrow and are of no avail for eternal happiness, but rather are obstacles; that the rich should tremble at the threatenings of Jesus Christ -- threatenings so unwonted in the mouth of our Lord -- and that a most strict account must be given to the Supreme Judge for all we possess. The chief and most excellent rule for the right use of money is one the heathen philosophers hinted at, but which the Church has traced out clearly, and has not only made known to men's minds, but has impressed upon their lives. It rests on the principle that it is one thing to have a right to the possession of money and another to have a right to use money as one ills. Private ownership, as we have seen, is the natural right of man, and to exercise that right, especially as members of society, is not only lawful, but absolutely necessary. "It is lawful," says St. Thomas Aquinas, "for a man to hold private property; and it is also necessary for the carrying on of human existence.'' But if the question be asked: How must one's possessions be used? -- the Church replies without hesitation in he words of the same holy Doctor: "Man should not consider his material possessions as his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without hesitation when others are in need. Whence the apostle saith, 'Command the rich of this world . . to offer with no stint, to apportion largely'." True, no one is commanded to distribute to others that which is required for his own needs and those of his household; nor even to give away what is reasonably required to keep up becomingly his condition in life, "for no one ought to live other than becomingly." But, when what necessity demands has been supplied, and one's standing fairly taken thought for, it becomes a duty to give to the indigent out of what remains over. "Of that which remaineth, give alms." It is duty, not of justice (save in extreme cases), but of Christian charity -- a duty not enforced by human law. But the laws and judgments of men must yield place to the laws and judgments of Christ the true God, who in many ways urges on His followers the practice of almsgiving -- "It is more blessed to give than to receive"; and who will count a kindness done or refused to the poor as done or refused to Himself -- "As long as you did it to one of My least brethren you did it to Me. "To sum up, then, what has been said: Whoever has received from the divine bounty a large share of temporal blessings, whether they be external and material, or gifts of the mind, has received them for the purpose of using them for the perfecting of his own nature, and, at the same time, that he may employ them, as the steward of God's providence, for the benefit of others. "He that hath a talent," said St. Gregory the Great, "let him see that he hide it not; he that hath abundance, let him quicken himself to mercy and generosity; he that hath art and skill, let him do his best to share the use and the utility hereof with his neighbor."

As for those who possess not the gifts of fortune, they are taught by the Church that in God's sight poverty is no disgrace, and that there is nothing to be ashamed of in earning their bread by labor. This is enforced by what we see in Christ Himself, who, "whereas He was rich, for our sakes became poor''; and who, being the Son of God, and God Himself, chose to seem and to be considered the son of a carpenter -- nay, did not disdain to spend a great part of His life as a carpenter Himself. "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?"

From contemplation of this divine Model, it is more easy to understand that the true worth and nobility of man lie in his moral qualities, that is, in virtue; that virtue is, moreover, the common inheritance of men, equally within the reach of high and low, rich and poor; and that virtue, and virtue alone, wherever found, will be followed by the rewards of everlasting happiness. Nay, God Himself seems to incline rather to those who suffer misfortune; for Jesus Christ calls the poor "blessed"; He lovingly invites those in labor and grief to come to Him for solace; and He displays the tenderest charity toward the lowly and the oppressed. These reflections cannot fail to keep down the pride of the well-to-do, and to give heart to the unfortunate; to move the former to be generous and the latter to be moderate in their desires. Thus, the separation which pride would set up tends to disappear, nor will it be difficult to make rich and poor join hands in friendly concord.

But, if Christian precepts prevail, the respective classes will not only be united in the bonds of friendship, but also in those of brotherly love. For they will understand and feel that all men are children of the same common Father, who is God; that all have alike the same last end, which is God Himself, who alone can make either men or angels absolutely and perfectly happy; that each and all are redeemed and made sons of God, by Jesus Christ, "the first-born among many brethren"; that the blessings of nature and the gifts of grace belong to the whole human race in common, and that from none except the unworthy is withheld the inheritance of the kingdom of Heaven. "If sons, heirs also; heirs indeed of God, and co-heirs with Christ." (Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, May 15, 1891.)

Although Holy Mother Church is not only not indifferent to temporal peace and prosperity but very eager to see Christian principles of justice recognized and accepted as the means to achieve these legitimate ends, she nevertheless wants men to seek first the Kingdom of God lest they become totally reliant upon their own unaided powers in the pursuit of earthly riches, power and influence. Once men lose the ability to distinguish between good and evil and between the imperishable goods of Heaven and the perishable things of this earth here below they will live a world where public life is stained by crime of the sort that that we see sanctioned by the cover of the law and what passes for ordinary behavior in the omnipotent intelligence agencies whose apparatchiks believe that we exist to do as they desire:

God alone is Life. All other beings partake of life, but are not life. Christ, from all eternity and by His very nature, is "the Life," just as He is the Truth, because He is God of God. From Him, as from its most sacred source, all life pervades and ever will pervade creation. Whatever is, is by Him; whatever lives, lives by Him. For by the Word "all things were made; and without Him was made nothing that was made." This is true of the natural life; but, as We have sufficiently indicated above, we have a much higher and better life, won for us by Christ's mercy, that is to say, "the life of grace," whose happy consummation is "the life of glory," to which all our thoughts and actions ought to be directed. The whole object of Christian doctrine and morality is that "we being dead to sin, should live to justice" (I Peter ii., 24)-that is, to virtue and holiness. In this consists the moral life, with the certain hope of a happy eternity. This justice, in order to be advantageous to salvation, is nourished by Christian faith. "The just man liveth by faith" (Galatians iii., II). "Without faith it is impossible to please God" (Hebrews xi., 6). Consequently Jesus Christ, the creator and preserver of faith, also preserves and nourishes our moral life. This He does chiefly by the ministry of His Church. To Her, in His wise and merciful counsel, He has entrusted certain agencies which engender the supernatural life, protect it, and revive it if it should fail. This generative and conservative power of the virtues that make for salvation is therefore lost, whenever morality is dissociated from divine faith. A system of morality based exclusively on human reason robs man of his highest dignity and lowers him from the supernatural to the merely natural life. Not but that man is able by the right use of reason to know and to obey certain principles of the natural law. But though he should know them all and keep them inviolate through life-and even this is impossible without the aid of the grace of our Redeemer-still it is vain for anyone without faith to promise himself eternal salvation. "If anyone abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire, and he burneth" john xv., 6). "He that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mark xvi., 16). We have but too much evidence of the value and result of a morality divorced from divine faith. How is it that, in spite of all the zeal for the welfare of the masses, nations are in such straits and even distress, and that the evil is daily on the increase? We are told that society is quite able to help itself; that it can flourish without the assistance of Christianity, and attain its end by its own unaided efforts. Public administrators prefer a purely secular system of government. All traces of the religion of our forefathers are daily disappearing from political life and administration. What blindness! Once the idea of the authority of God as the Judge of right and wrong is forgotten, law must necessarily lose its primary authority and justice must perish: and these are the two most powerful and most necessary bonds of society. Similarly, once the hope and expectation of eternal happiness is taken away, temporal goods will be greedily sought after. Every man will strive to secure the largest share for himself. Hence arise envy, jealousy, hatred. The consequences are conspiracy, anarchy, nihilism. There is neither peace abroad nor security at home. Public life is stained with crime. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)

Although the readership of this site is miniscule and without any kind of worldly influence in the slightest (again, a statement of fact, not a complaint), I will never cease reminding the few people who access these articles that Catholicism is the one and only source of personal and social order:

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 any manner the help of men. Power certainly is not wanting to Him, but in His loving kindness He would assign to us a share in obtaining and applying the fruits of salvation procured through His grace.

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

Just as Christianity cannot penetrate into the soul without making it better, so it cannot enter into public life without establishing order. With the idea of a God Who governs all, Who is infinitely wise, good, and just, the idea of duty seizes upon the consciences of men.  It assuages sorrow, it calms hatred, it engenders heroes. If it has transformed pagan society--and that transformation was a veritable resurrection--for barbarism disappeared in proportion as Christianity extended its sway, so, after the terrible shocks which unbelief has given to the world in our days, it will be able to put that world again on the true road, and bring back to order the states and peoples of modern times. But the return of Christianity will not be efficacious and complete if it does not restore the world to a sincere love of the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. In the Catholic Church Christianity is Incarnate. It identifies itself with that perfect, spiritual, and, in its own order, sovereign society, which is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ and which has for Its visible head the Roman Pontiff, successor of the Prince of the Apostles. It is the continuation of the mission of the Savior, the daughter and the heiress of His Redemption.  It has preached the Gospel, and has defended it at the price of its blood, and strong in the Divine assistance and of that immortality which has been promised it, it makes no terms with error but remains faithful to the commands which It has received, to carry the doctrine of Jesus Christ to the uttermost limits of the world and to the end of time, and to protect it in its inviolable integrity. Legitimate dispenser of the teachings of the Gospel It does not reveal itself only as the consoler and Redeemer of souls, but It is still more the internal source of justice and charity, and the propagator as well as the guardian of true liberty, and of that equality which alone is possible here below. In applying the doctrine of its Divine Founder, It maintains a wise equilibrium and marks the true limits between the rights and privileges of society. The equality which it proclaims does not destroy the distinction between the different social classes  It keeps them intact, as nature itself demands, in order to oppose the anarchy of reason emancipated from Faith, and abandoned to its own devices. The liberty which it gives in no wise conflicts with the rights of truth, because those rights are superior to the demands of liberty.  Not does it infringe upon the rights of justice, because those rights are superior to the claims of mere numbers or power. Nor does it assail the rights of God because they are superior to the rights of humanity. (Pope Leo XIII, A Review of His Pontificate, March 19, 1902.)

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.

Accept no naturalist shortcuts even when things appear to be “better” than they would have been under a “greater evil. Remember that, as noted before, everything “accomplished” by one presidential administration can be undone by next. Ours is a house of cards built on sand as sooner or later:

These are the names of the children of Israel, that went into Egypt with Jacob: they went in, every man with his household: [2] Ruben, Simeon, Levi, Juda, [3] Issachar, Zabulon, and Benjamin, [4] Dan, and Nephtali, Gad and Aser. [5] And all the souls that came out of Jacob's thigh, were seventy: but Joseph was in Egypt.

[6] After he was dead, and all his brethren, and all that generation, [7] The children of Israel increased, and sprung up into multitudes, and growing exceedingly strong they filled the land. [8] In the mean time there arose a new king over Egypt, that knew not Joseph: [9] And he said to his people: Behold the people of the children of Israel are numerous and stronger than we. [10] Come, let us wisely oppress them, lest they multiply: and if any war shall rise against us, join with our enemies, and having overcome us, depart out of the land. (Exodus 1: 1-10.)

This is not to say that good in the temporal order is not being accomplished by the Trump administration. However, it is to say that whatever good, especially as regards curbing the regulatory powers of the administrative state, efforts to secure the integrity of the United States border with Mexico, the reassertion of American sovereignty in trade and against global governance bodies and in the appointment of worthy nominees to the Federal bench, can be wiped away by the administrative actions of some future president. It is also to say that the fear of the “greater evil” is never an excuse to minimize or to excuse the evils being advanced by the so-called “lesser evil.

Indeed, as I have often noted on this site, it is frequently the case that the adversary is perfectly content to rile up supporter of the “lesser evil” because of the assaults waged against him by his opponents in the camp of the “greater evil” of naturalists” to provide a convenient cover for the advancement and institutionalization of evils with the silence of men who would otherwise be furious if the representatives of “greater evils” had done the same things. This happened during the administration of President George Walker Bush and is what is happening at present. It is also what happened during the false “pontificate” of Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI after he issued Summorum Pontificum and the “spirits” of semi-traditional Catholics were “pacified” thereafter as he, Ratzinger/Benedict, esteemed the symbols of false religions and preached an endless series of heretical statements, starting with his constant warfare against the nature of dogmatic truth.

This is a time of profound prayer, penance, mortification and reparation as we must strive to give the difficulties of the moment, both civilly and ecclesiastically, to the throne of the Most Blessed Trinity as the consecrated slaves of Christ the King through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, especially by spending time, if at all possible in an era of Eucharistic barrenness, before the Most Blessed Sacrament in prayer  and by praying as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits.

The saint whose holy life we celebrate today (Saints Gervase and Protase are commemorated), Saint Julian of Falconieri (whose Christian name is the same as Blessed Juliana of Liege, the great promoter of public acts of Eucharistic adoration), was the first woman religious of the Order of Servites. She devoted herself tirelessly to Eucharistic piety and in meditating upon the Dolors of Our Lady. The account provided in Matins for today’s Divine Office provides us with a glimpse into her life of sacrifice, service and love for Our Lord Crucified and His Sorrowful Mother:

Juliana was a daughter of the noble family of the Falconieri, and was born in the year 1270. Her father was the same who at his own costs so splendidly built from the foundations the Church of Our Lady of the Annunciation as it now standeth at Florence. Her mother's name was Reguardata. They were both well stricken in years, and, until the birth of Juliana, had been childless. From her very cradle she gave tokens of the holiness of life to which she afterwards attained. And from the murmuring of her baby lips was caught the sweet sound of the names of Jesus and Mary. As she entered on her girlhood, she delivered herself up entirely to the pursuit of Christian godliness, and so excellently shone therein, that her uncle, the Blessed Alexius, scrupled not to tell her mother that she had given birth to an Angel rather than to a woman. So modest was her carriage, and so clean her soul from the lightest speck of indiscretion, that she never in her whole life stared a man in the face, and that the very mention of sin made her shiver, and when the story of a grievous crime was told her, she dropped down nearly fainting. Before she had finished her fifteenth year, she renounced her inheritance, although a rich one, and all prospect of an earthly marriage, and made to God a vow of virginity, before holy Philip Benizi, from whom she was the first to receive the religious habit of what are called the mantled nuns.

She put herself for instruction under her daughter. Thus in a little while their number increased, and she became the foundress of the Order of Mantled nuns, to whom she gave a rule of life full of wisdom and godliness. Holy Philip Benizi, having thorough knowledge of her excellence, chose her above all living to whom at his death to leave the care not of the women only but of the whole of the Order of the Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary, of which he had been the propagator and director. Juliana, who deemed ever lowly of herself, even when she was the mistress of the others, ministered to her sisters in the meanest offices of the work of the house. She passed whole days in incessant prayer, and was often rapt in spirit, and the remainder of her time she toiled to make peace among the citizens, who were at variance together, to recall transgressors from the ways of iniquity, and to nurse the sick, to cure whom she would sometimes even use her tongue to remove the matter that ran from their sores. It was her custom to afflict her own body with whips, knotted cords, iron girdles, watching, and sleeping upon the ground. Upon Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, she ate very sparingly some unpalatable food, upon Fridays she took nothing except the Bread of Angels, and upon Saturdays, besides the Holy Communion, only bread and water.

The self-inflicted hardships of her life brought upon her a disease of the stomach, whereby, when she was seventy years of age, she was brought to the point of death. She bore the daily sufferings of her illness with a smiling face and a brave heart. The only thing of which she was heard to complain was that, her stomach being so weak that she could not keep down any food, she was withheld by reverence for the Sacrament from drawing near to the Lord's Table. Finding herself in these straits she begged the Priest to bring the Bread of God, and, as she dared not take It into her mouth, to put It as near as possible to her heart. The Priest did as she wished, and, to the amazement of all present, the Divine Bread at once disappeared from sight, and at the same instant a smile of joyous peace crossed the face of Juliana, and she gave up the ghost. All were confounded until the virgin body was being laid out after death in the accustomed manner. Then there was found upon the left side of the bosom a mark like the stamp of a seal, reproducing the form of the Sacred Host, the mould of which was one of those that bear a figure of Christ crucified. The noise of this and other wonders got for Juliana a reverence not only from Florence, but from all parts of the Christian world, which so increased through the course of four hundred years, that Pope Benedict XIII. commanded an office in her honour to be said by the whole Order of Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and Clement XII., a munificent Protector of the same Order, finding new signs and wonders shedding lustre upon her memory every day, numbered her among Holy Virgins. (Matins, The Divine Office, Feast of Saint Juliana Falconieri.)

May the peace of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and the love for Our Sorrowful Mother that were exhibited by Saint Juliana Falconieri keep us at peace in the midst of all the agitation of world that is the victim of its own iniquities, mindful that we ourselves need to call on  Our Lady to help us make reparation for the many ways in which our own sins have worsened the state of the world-at-large and the state of the Church Militant on earth.

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

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

Saint Juliana Falconieri, pray for us.

Saints Gervase and Protase, pray for us.