We Must Live and Die for Christ the King

Today's republished article, A King Whose Sovereignty is Universal and Eternal, provided a brief summary of Pope Pius XI's rationale for establishing this feast, which was first celebrated on October 31, 1926, following the issuance of his encyclical letter, Quas Primas on December 11, 1925.

The purpose of this article is to emphasize yet again that we must rise above the devil's agitation engendered by the naturalist farce that keeps people looking for "solutions" to the problems that have arisen specifically as a result of the revolution against Christ the King that was begun by Father Martin Luther when he posted his ninety-five theses on the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, on October 31, 1517, that has been the cause of great celebration by Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his band of revolutionaries in the past year.  Martin Luther's coup agaiinst Christ the King and His true Church is what has made possible the farce of our own situation at this time in the United States of America as "special counsel" Rober Mueller is engineering a coup d'etat of his very own against a fellow naturalist who he believes is on the "wrong" side of the naturalist divide. Error divides, Catholicism unites.

All manner people get distracted by various naturalist sideshows that are premised upon accepting some kind of "strategy" to fight the evils associated with whatever boogeyman of the false opposite of the naturalist "left" happens to be the latest manifestation of the false, Protestant/Judeo-Masonic premises upon which the modern civil state, including the United States of America, is founded. So many well-meaning people, including many Catholics, do not want realize or to accept that there no secular, political, religiously indifferentist way to fight the evils that have spread as a result of the Protestant Revolution, Judeo-Masonry and the counterfeit church of conciliarism's "reconciliation" with the very false principles that have overthrow and mocked Christ the King just as our sins had inspired the Roman soldiers to do so as they crowned Him with thorns on Good Friday.

We must live and die and for Christ the King.

The devil does not want Christ to reign as the King of men in their own individual lines, and he does not want Him to reign as the King of nations.

Time and time again, starting with Martin Luther and Henry Tudor and John Calvin and Elizabeth I in the Sixteenth Century, the devil has raised up the agents of one social revolution after another to attack Christ the King with one violent assault after another.

The American Revolution and the French Revolution and the Mexican Revolution and the Italian Risorgimento and the Kulturkampf of Otto von Bismarck and the Bolshevik Revolution and the Spanish Revolution and the Cuban Revolution and the Chinese Revolution and the Sandinista Revolution have all had one thing in common: a thorough rejection of Christ the King and His true Church as paramount in the lives of men and their societies. The differences are only in degrees and methods. The American Revolution coopted Catholics subtly over course of time while the others used violence and/or state coercion to silence Catholics. No matter the differences in degrees and methods, the results are the same: a world where men believe that they can order themselves, both individually and socially, without even praying that Our Lord Himself reign over them and their nations as He has revealed Himself to them through His Catholic Church.

It is important for all believing Catholics to stand fast with Christ the King and His Social Reign over nations, especially in this time, shaped as it has been by the forces of Modernity, when the men who pose falsely as officials of the Catholic Church preach "separation of Church and State" and "religious liberty" even those these twin, inter-related evil have been condemned by the authority of the Catholic Church and are directly responsible for the situation in which we find ourselves today. Yet it is that the conciliar authorities, including Jorge Mario Bergoglio, keep calling for the "spread" of religious liberty" as they hail separation of Church and State.

Here is just a brief review of some of what our true popes have taught concerning the obligation that the civil state has to recognize the true Church as its official religion and for its leaders to pursue the common temporal good in light of man's Last End, the possession of the glory of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity in Heaven:

Nor can We predict happier times for religion and government from the plans of those who desire vehemently to separate the Church from the state, and to break the mutual concord between temporal authority and the priesthood. It is certain that that concord which always was favorable and beneficial for the sacred and the civil order is feared by the shameless lovers of liberty.

But for the other painful causes We are concerned about, you should recall that certain societies and assemblages seem to draw up a battle line together with the followers of every false religion and cult. They feign piety for religion; but they are driven by a passion for promoting novelties and sedition everywhere. They preach liberty of every sort; they stir up disturbances in sacred and civil affairs, and pluck authority to pieces. (Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.)

But, although we have not omitted often to proscribe and reprobate the chief errors of this kind, yet the cause of the Catholic Church, and the salvation of souls entrusted to us by God, and the welfare of human society itself, altogether demand that we again stir up your pastoral solicitude to exterminate other evil opinions, which spring forth from the said errors as from a fountain. Which false and perverse opinions are on that ground the more to be detested, because they chiefly tend to this, that that salutary influence be impeded and (even) removed, which the Catholic Church, according to the institution and command of her Divine Author, should freely exercise even to the end of the world -- not only over private individuals, but over nations, peoples, and their sovereign princes; and (tend also) to take away that mutual fellowship and concord of counsels between Church and State which has ever proved itself propitious and salutary, both for religious and civil interests.

For you well know, venerable brethren, that at this time men are found not a few who, applying to civil society the impious and absurd principle of "naturalism," as they call it, dare to teach that "the best constitution of public society and (also) civil progress altogether require that human society be conducted and governed without regard being had to religion any more than if it did not exist; or, at least, without any distinction being made between the true religion and false ones." And, against the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church, and of the Holy Fathers, they do not hesitate to assert that "that is the best condition of civil society, in which no duty is recognized, as attached to the civil power, of restraining by enacted penalties, offenders against the Catholic religion, except so far as public peace may require." From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an "insanity," viz., that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way." But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching "liberty of perdition;" and that "if human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of human wisdom; whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling." (Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864.)

55. The Church ought to be separated from the .State, and the State from the Church. -- Allocution "Acerbissimum," Sept. 27, 1852. (Condemned Proposition in The Syllabus of Errors, 1864.)

As a consequence, the State, constituted as it is, is clearly bound to act up to the manifold and weighty duties linking it to God, by the public profession of religion. Nature and reason, which command every individual devoutly to worship God in holiness, because we belong to Him and must return to Him, since from Him we came, bind also the civil community by a like law. For, men living together in society are under the power of God no less than individuals are, and society, no less than individuals, owes gratitude to God who gave it being and maintains it and whose everbounteous goodness enriches it with countless blessings. Since, then, no one is allowed to be remiss in the service due to God, and since the chief duty of all men is to cling to religion in both its teaching and practice-not such religion as they may have a preference for, but the religion which God enjoins, and which certain and most clear marks show to be the only one true religion -- it is a public crime to act as though there were no God. So, too, is it a sin for the State not to have care for religion as a something beyond its scope, or as of no practical benefit; or out of many forms of religion to adopt that one which chimes in with the fancy; for we are bound absolutely to worship God in that way which He has shown to be His will. All who rule, therefore, would hold in honor the holy name of God, and one of their chief duties must be to favor religion, to protect it, to shield it under the credit and sanction of the laws, and neither to organize nor enact any measure that may compromise its safety. This is the bounden duty of rulers to the people over whom they rule. For one and all are we destined by our birth and adoption to enjoy, when this frail and fleeting life is ended, a supreme and final good in heaven, and to the attainment of this every endeavor should be directed. Since, then, upon this depends the full and perfect happiness of mankind, the securing of this end should be of all imaginable interests the most urgent. Hence, civil society, established for the common welfare, should not only safeguard the wellbeing of the community, but have also at heart the interests of its individual members, in such mode as not in any way to hinder, but in every manner to render as easy as may be, the possession of that highest and unchangeable good for which all should seek. Wherefore, for this purpose, care must especially be taken to preserve unharmed and unimpeded the religion whereof the practice is the link connecting man with God.

Now, it cannot be difficult to find out which is the true religion, if only it be sought with an earnest and unbiased mind; for proofs are abundant and striking. We have, for example, the fulfillment of prophecies, miracles in great numbers, the rapid spread of the faith in the midst of enemies and in face of overwhelming obstacles, the witness of the martyrs, and the like. From all these it is evident that the only true religion is the one established by Jesus Christ Himself, and which He committed to His Church to protect and to propagate. . . . To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from the business of life, from the making of laws, from the education of youth, from domestic society is a grave and fatal error(Pope Leo XII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

There are others, somewhat more moderate though not more consistent, who affirm that the morality of individuals is to be guided by the divine law, but not the morality of the State, for that in public affairs the commands of God may be passed over, and may be entirely disregarded in the framing of laws. Hence follows the fatal theory of the need of separation between Church and State. But the absurdity of such a position is manifest. Nature herself proclaims the necessity of the State providing means and opportunities whereby the community may be enabled to live properly, that is to say, according to the laws of God. For, since God is the source of all goodness and justice, it is absolutely ridiculous that the State should pay no attention to these laws or render them abortive by contrary enactments. Besides, those who are in authority owe it to the commonwealth not only to provide for its external well-being and the conveniences of life, but still more to consult the welfare of men's souls in the wisdom of their legislation. But, for the increase of such benefits, nothing more suitable can be conceived than the laws which have God for their author; and, therefore, they who in their government of the State take no account of these laws abuse political power by causing it to deviate from its proper end and from what nature itself prescribes. And, what is still more important, and what We have more than once pointed out, although the civil authority has not the same proximate end as the spiritual, nor proceeds on the same lines, nevertheless in the exercise of their separate powers they must occasionally meet. For their subjects are the same, and not infrequently they deal with the same objects, though in different ways. Whenever this occurs, since a state of conflict is absurd and manifestly repugnant to the most wise ordinance of God, there must necessarily exist some order or mode of procedure to remove the occasions of difference and contention, and to secure harmony in all things. This harmony has been not inaptly compared to that which exists between the body and the soul for the well-being of both one and the other, the separation of which brings irremediable harm to the body, since it extinguishes its very life  (Pope Leo XIII, Libertas, June 20, 1888.)

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.)

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.)

That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. The same thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies. Both of them, the civil and the religious society, although each exercises in its own sphere its authority over them. It follows necessarily that there are many things belonging to them in common in which both societies must have relations with one another. Remove the agreement between Church and State, and the result will be that from these common matters will spring the seeds of disputes which will become acute on both sides; it will become more difficult to see where the truth lies, and great confusion is certain to arise. Finally, this thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions touching the rights and the duties of men. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. Our illustrious predecessor, Leo XIII, especially, has frequently and magnificently expounded Catholic teaching on the relations which should subsist between the two societies. "Between them," he says, "there must necessarily be a suitable union, which may not improperly be compared with that existing between body and soul.-"Quaedam intercedat necesse est ordinata colligatio (inter illas) quae quidem conjunctioni non immerito comparatur, per quam anima et corpus in homine copulantur." He proceeds: "Human societies cannot, without becoming criminal, act as if God did not exist or refuse to concern themselves with religion, as though it were something foreign to them, or of no purpose to them.... As for the Church, which has God Himself for its author, to exclude her from the active life of the nation, from the laws, the education of the young, the family, is to commit a great and pernicious error. -- "Civitates non possunt, citra scellus, gerere se tamquam si Deus omnino non esset, aut curam religionis velut alienam nihilque profuturam abjicere.... Ecclesiam vero, quam Deus ipse constituit, ab actione vitae excludere, a legibus, ab institutione adolescentium, a societate domestica, magnus et perniciousus est error." (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.)

But it is not only within her own household that the Church must come to terms. Besides her relations with those within, she has others with those who are outside. The Church does not occupy the world all by herself; there are other societies in the world., with which she must necessarily have dealings and contact. The rights and duties of the Church towards civil societies must, therefore, be determined, and determined, of course, by her own nature, that, to wit, which the Modernists have already described to us. The rules to be applied in this matter are clearly those which have been laid down for science and faith, though in the latter case the question turned upon the object, while in the present case we have one of ends. In the same way, then, as faith and science are alien to each other by reason of the diversity of their objects, Church and State are strangers by reason of the diversity of their ends, that of the Church being spiritual while that of the State is temporal. Formerly it was possible to subordinate the temporal to the spiritual and to speak of some questions as mixed, conceding to the Church the position of queen and mistress in all such, because the Church was then regarded as having been instituted immediately by God as the author of the supernatural order. But this doctrine is today repudiated alike by philosophers and historians. The state must, therefore, be separated from the Church, and the Catholic from the citizen. Every Catholic, from the fact that he is also a citizen, has the right and the duty to work for the common good in the way he thinks best, without troubling himself about the authority of the Church, without paying any heed to its wishes, its counsels, its orders -- nay, even in spite of its rebukes. For the Church to trace out and prescribe for the citizen any line of action, on any pretext whatsoever, is to be guilty of an abuse of authority, against which one is bound to protest with all one's might. Venerable Brethren, the principles from which these doctrines spring have been solemnly condemned by Our predecessor, Pius VI, in his Apostolic Constitution Auctorem fidei  (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

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. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

Let the Princes and Rulers of peoples remember this truth, and let them consider whether it is a prudent and safe idea for governments or for states to separate themselves from the holy religion of Jesus Christ, from which their authority receives such strength and support. Let them consider again and again, whether it is a measure of political wisdom to seek to divorce the teaching of the Gospel and of the Church from the ruling of a country and from the public education of the young. Sad experience proves that human authority fails where religion is set aside. The fate of our first parent after the Fall is wont to come also upon nations. As in his case, no sooner had his will turned from God than his unchained passions rejected the sway of the will; so, too, when the rulers of nations despise divine authority, in their turn the people are wont to despise their human authority. There remains, of course, the expedient of using force to repress popular risings; but what is the result? Force can repress the body, but it cannot repress the souls of men. (Pope Benedict XV, Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum, November 1, 1914.)

When, therefore, governments and nations follow in all their activities, whether they be national or international, the dictates of conscience grounded in the teachings, precepts, and example of Jesus Christ, and which are binding on each and every individual, then only can we have faith in one another's word and trust in the peaceful solution of the difficulties and controversies which may grow out of differences in point of view or from clash of interests. An attempt in this direction has already and is now being made; its results, however, are almost negligible and, especially so, as far as they can be said to affect those major questions which divide seriously and serve to arouse nations one against the other. No merely human institution of today can be as successful in devising a set of international laws which will be in harmony with world conditions as the Middle Ages were in the possession of that true League of Nations, Christianity. It cannot be denied that in the Middle Ages this law was often violated; still it always existed as an ideal, according to which one might judge the acts of nations, and a beacon light calling those who had lost their way back to the safe road.

There exists an institution able to safeguard the sanctity of the law of nations. This institution is a part of every nation; at the same time it is above all nations. She enjoys, too, the highest authority, the fullness of the teaching power of the Apostles. Such an institution is the Church of Christ. She alone is adapted to do this great work, for she is not only divinely commissioned to lead mankind, but moreover, because of her very make-up and the constitution which she possesses, by reason of her age-old traditions and her great prestige, which has not been lessened but has been greatly increased since the close of the War, cannot but succeed in such a venture where others assuredly will fail. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

Every true and lasting reform has ultimately sprung from the sanctity of men who were driven by the love of God and of men. Generous, ready to stand to attention to any call from God, yet confident in themselves because confident in their vocation, they grew to the size of beacons and reformers. On the other hand, any reformatory zeal, which instead of springing from personal purity, flashes out of passion, has produced unrest instead of light, destruction instead of construction, and more than once set up evils worse than those it was out to remedy. No doubt "the Spirit breatheth where he will" (John iii. 8): "of stones He is able to raise men to prepare the way to his designs" (Matt. iii. 9). He chooses the instruments of His will according to His own plans, not those of men. But the Founder of the Church, who breathed her into existence at Pentecost, cannot disown the foundations as He laid them. Whoever is moved by the spirit of God, spontaneously adopts both outwardly and inwardly, the true attitude toward the Church, this sacred fruit from the tree of the cross, this gift from the Spirit of God, bestowed on Pentecost day to an erratic world.

In your country, Venerable Brethren, voices are swelling into a chorus urging people to leave the Church, and among the leaders there is more than one whose official position is intended to create the impression that this infidelity to Christ the King constitutes a signal and meritorious act of loyalty to the modern State. Secret and open measures of intimidation, the threat of economic and civic disabilities, bear on the loyalty of certain classes of Catholic functionaries, a pressure which violates every human right and dignity. Our wholehearted paternal sympathy goes out to those who must pay so dearly for their loyalty to Christ and the Church; but directly the highest interests are at stake, with the alternative of spiritual loss, there is but one alternative left, that of heroism. If the oppressor offers one the Judas bargain of apostasy he can only, at the cost of every worldly sacrifice, answer with Our Lord: "Begone, Satan! For it is written: The Lord thy God shalt thou adore, and Him only shalt thou serve" (Matt. iv. 10). And turning to the Church, he shall say: "Thou, my mother since my infancy, the solace of my life and advocate at my death, may my tongue cleave to my palate if, yielding to worldly promises or threats, I betray the vows of my baptism." As to those who imagine that they can reconcile exterior infidelity to one and the same Church, let them hear Our Lord's warning: -- "He that shall deny me before men shall be denied before the angels of God" (Luke xii. 9).(Pope Pius XI, Mit Brennender Sorge, March 17, 1937.)

This is, of course, just a partial listing of the constant teaching (God cannot contradict Himself, ladies and gentlemen; the Catholic Church can never be spotted by any taint of error or contradiction) of the Catholic Church on the absolute necessity of the civil state recognizing her as the true religion and of the Social Reign of Christ the King that such a recognition makes possible.

Sure, as has been noted on this site most repeatedly, Holy Mother Church must make concessions to the actual realities of a given situation where she is not favored with the protection of the law, doing so without ever conceding the nonexistent validity of the separation of Church and State and without ever once relenting in teaching her children what the correct doctrine is and exhorting them to plant the seeds for the restoration of the Catholic City. Pope Leo XIII made this point clear in Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895:

Yet, though all this is true, it would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced. The fact that Catholicity with you is in good condition, nay, is even enjoying a prosperous growth, is by all means to be attributed to the fecundity with which God has endowed His Church, in virtue of which unless men or circumstances interfere, she spontaneously expands and propagates herself; but she would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority. (Pope Leo XIII, Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895.)

In other words, the Catholic Faith grew in the Nineteenth Century despite the American constitutional provisions that failed recognize the Catholic Church as the true religion, not because of those provisions. She grew because of the "fecundity with which God had endowed" her, namely, the graces won for us by her Divine Bridegroom and Invisible Head, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross. The Faith will grow, Pope Leo noted, wherever Holy Mother Church is not impeded in her efforts to teach and to sanctify her children. Do not, Pope Leo was explaining to James Cardinal Gibbons, the Americanist archbishop of Baltimore, Maryland, from October 3, 1877, to March 24, 1921, attribute the growth of the Faith to the religious indifferentism of the American Constitution.

Alas, the conciliar "popes," including Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and Jorge Mario Bergoglio do indeed consider the very thing condemned by Pope Leo XIII as not a model for the rest of the world as being exactly that, a model for the rest of world even though the American model has resulted in the corruption of most Catholics in the United States of America by the Americanist ethos of religious indifferentism, cultural pluralism and democratic egalitarianism into viewing the Church through the eyes of the world rather than viewing the world through the eyes of the true Faith. The conciliar revolutionaries are incapable of realizing that the social relativism they have decried is the product of the rejection of the one and only true Faith, Catholicism, as the sole foundation of personal and social order, refusing to accept the truth that the anti-Incarnationalism of Modernity is but the logical result of the forces let loose by the Protestant Revolt and by the subsequent rise of the naturalism of Judeo-Masonry.

Anyone who does not believe that the "Second" Vatican Council and the "magisterium" represented a revolution against the nature of truth and thus the very nature of God, aided and abetted by the revolutionary "periti" such as Fathers John Courtney Murray, S.J., Karl Rahner, S.J., and Joseph Ratzinger, among so many others, and the Protestant "observers" is not seeing things very clearly. And the revolutionaries from the Rhine who gathered near the Tiber between 1962 and 1965 had great assistance from the revolutionaries from the Potomac, men who believed in the false, naturalistic, religiously indifferentist and semi-Pelagian principles of the modern civil state, men who rejected the Social Reign of Christ the King and who refused to teach about his sacred rights over men and their nations. These revolutionaries had to make use of various Hegelian devices in order to obviate the statements contained in this compendium proving the perpetually binding nature of Catholic Social Teaching, The Binding Nature of Catholic Social Teaching.

We, though, must be reminded of the truths taught by such great apostles of Christ the King as the late Louis-Edouard-François-Desiré Cardinal Pie, whose writing had the support of Popes Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X and Benedict XV (the latter two long after Cardinal Pie's death, having studied his writings in great depth and approving of them without any complaint), wrote in the Nineteenth Century:

"If Jesus Christ," proclaims Msgr. Pie in a magnificent pastoral instruction, "if Jesus Christ Who is our light whereby we are drawn out of the seat of darkness and from the shadow of death, and Who has given to the world the treasure of truth and grace, if He has not enriched the world, I mean to say the social and political world itself, from the great evils which prevail in the heart of paganism, then it is to say that the work of Jesus Christ is not a divine work. Even more so: if the Gospel which would save men is incapable of procuring the actual progress of peoples, if the revealed light which is profitable to individuals is detrimental to society at large, if the scepter of Christ, sweet and beneficial to souls, and perhaps to families, is harmful and unacceptable for cities and empires; in other words, if Jesus Christ to whom the Prophets had promised and to Whom His Father had given the nations as a heritage, is not able to exercise His authority over them for it would be to their detriment and temporal disadvantage, it would have to be concluded that Jesus Christ is not God". . . .

"To say Jesus Christ is the God of individuals and of families, but not the God of peoples and of societies, is to say that He is not God. To say that Christianity is the law of individual man and is not the law of collective man, is to say that Christianity is not divine. To say that the Church is the judge of private morality, but has nothing to do with public and political morality, is to say that the Church is not divine."

In fine, Cardinal Pie insists:

"Christianity would not be divine if it were to have existence within individuals but not with regard to societies."

Fr. de St. Just asks, in conclusion:

"Could it be proven in clearer terms that social atheism conduces to individualistic atheism?" (Selected Writings of Cardinal Pie of Poitiers, Catholic Action Resource Center.)

Some might protest that Cardinal Pie's "views" were "private" and that they did not express the mind of Holy Mother Church even in the late Nineteenth Century. Such a patently absurd contention flies in the face of the fact that Pope Leo XIII elevated him to the College of Cardinals shortly before Cardinal Pie's death and that Pope Saint Pius X studied the Bishop of Poitier's writing practically every single day:

Barbier, Histoire du catholicisme liberal es du catholicisme social en France, vol. IV, p. 4, observed that the motto of the pontificate and a large part of the first encyclical letter [E Supremi, October 4, 1903] were taken from the Pastoral Letter published by Msgr. Pie when he took possession of his See of Poitiers in 1849. There is nothing strange about this. We have seen that, since his time in Treviso, Msgr. Sarto was acquainted with the writings of this great French anti-Liberal bishop. If we compare the text of the Encyclical with that of the Pastoral Letter (Euvres de Msgr. l'eveque de Poitiers), there is a clear literary dependence in the first part of the Encyclical. On the other hand, the three-point program set forth by Pius X is his own. On two other occasions, at least, direct literary dependence can be seen between the writing of Msgr. Pie and a pontifical act of Pius X. (Yves Chiron, Saint Pius X: Restorer of the Church. Translated by Graham Harrison. Angelus Press, 2002, p. 134n.)

"[St.] Pius X, giving audience in the French seminary, declared to have 'often read and re-read' the works of Cardinal Pie . . . . This veneration of [St.] Pius X for the great Bishop of Poitiers is demonstrated for us by this account found in Canon [Paul] Vigue's 'Select Pages of Cardinal Pie': "A priest from Poitiers has recalled that one day he had the honor of having been introduced into the cabinet of the Supreme Pontiff, [St.] Pius X, in the company of a religious who as also from Poitiers. 'Oh! the diocese of Poitiers," the Holy Father exclaimed, raising his hands, when he heard the name Poitiers mentioned. "I have almost the entire works of your Cardinal,' the saintly Pontiff continued, 'and, for years, there has hardly been a day that I have not read some of its pages.' (Selected Writings of Selected Writings of Cardinal Pie of Poitiers, Catholic Action Resource Center, Orlando, Florida, October, 2007, testimonial pages.)

We must take heart on this great Feast of Christ the King from these words of Pope Saint Pius X, contained in his very first encyclical letter, E Supremi, October 4, 1903:

But, Venerable Brethren, we shall never, however much we exert ourselves, succeed in calling men back to the majesty and empire of God, except by means of Jesus Christ. "No one," the Apostle admonishes us, "can lay other foundation than that which has been laid, which is Jesus Christ." (I. Cor., iii., II.) It is Christ alone "whom the Father sanctified and sent into this world" (Is. x., 36), "the splendor of the Father and the image of His substance" (Hebr. i., 3), true God and true man: without whom nobody can know God with the knowledge for salvation, "neither doth anyone know the Father but the Son, and he to whom it shall please the Son to reveal Him." (Matth. xi., 27.) Hence it follows that to restore all things in Christ and to lead men back to submission to God is one and the same aim. To this, then, it behoves Us to devote Our care -- to lead back mankind under the dominion of Christ; this done, We shall have brought it back to God. When We say to God We do not mean to that inert being heedless of all things human which the dream of materialists has imagined, but to the true and living God, one in nature, triple in person, Creator of the world, most wise Ordainer of all things, Lawgiver most just, who punishes the wicked and has reward in store for virtue.

Now the way to reach Christ is not hard to find: it is the Church. Rightly does Chrysostom inculcate: "The Church is thy hope, the Church is thy salvation, the Church is thy refuge." ("Hom. de capto Euthropio," n. 6.) It was for this that Christ founded it, gaining it at the price of His blood, and made it the depositary of His doctrine and His laws, bestowing upon it at the same time an inexhaustible treasury of graces for the sanctification and salvation of men.

You see, then, Venerable Brethren, the duty that has been imposed alike upon Us and upon you of bringing back to the discipline of the Church human society, now estranged from the wisdom of Christ; the Church will then subject it to Christ, and Christ to God. If We, through the goodness of God Himself, bring this task to a happy issue, We shall be rejoiced to see evil giving place to good, and hear, for our gladness, " a loud voice from heaven saying: Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God and the power of his Christ." (Apoc. xii., 10.) But if our desire to obtain this is to be fulfilled, we must use every means and exert all our energy to bring about the utter disappearance of the enormous and detestable wickedness, so characteristic of our time -- the substitution of man for God; this done, it remains to restore to their ancient place of honor the most holy laws and counsels of the gospel; to proclaim aloud the truths taught by the Church, and her teachings on the sanctity of marriage, on the education and discipline of youth, on the possession and use of property, the duties that men owe to those who rule the State; and lastly to restore equilibrium between the different classes of society according to Christian precept and custom. This is what We, in submitting Ourselves to the manifestations of the Divine will, purpose to aim at during Our Pontificate, and We will use all our industry to attain it. It is for you, Venerable Brethren, to second Our efforts by your holiness, knowledge and experience and above all by your zeal for the glory of God, with no other aim than that Christ may be formed in all.  (Pope Saint Pius X, E Supremi, October 4, 1903.)

Jorge Mario Bergoglio might say that our true popes were "obsessed" about "moralistic ideology" when the truth is that they taught nothing other than that which Christ the King Himself had revealed to men and entrusted to the infallible authority of His Catholic Church for their faithful explication until He comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead.

Father Robert Mader, a Swiss priest who published articles in Das Neus Volk in Switzerland between 1926 and 1934, explained what happen in the sort of world desired by the conciliar authorities, a word where the Social Reign of Christ the King has been replaced by the totalitarianism of the "civilization of love" that is nothing other than the reign of Satan himself:

The world is a book. Every creature is a sentence in it. The Author and Publisher is the Triune God, with the co-operation of the angels and the human beings. It is the task of human intelligence to read God's thoughts from this book.

Every book has its basic theme, its dominant idea, its soul, a word that says everything, because it contains everything. The word that represents theme and content of the entire creation and the history of the world is called Jesus the King.

One can only understand this completely when the book has been read to the end and one can look back. Only Judgment Day, the final chapter of the book, will bring complete clarity as to the meaning of creation. Only when the Sign of Man appears in the heavens, when the lightning flashes from the beginning to the end, shall we understand the mysterious why and wherefore of all that happens in Jesus, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the immortal King of the centuries.

When the Sign of the Son of Man does not shine in heaven, then the world is robbed of its Light. Sun, moon and stars are of no use. One sees nothing, one understands nothing. One stumbles about in the dark and trips on all the paths. It is like a spiritual eclipse of the sun over the universe.

St. John painted for us the image of the eclipse of the sun as the great fact of the world without Christ in masterful strokes. Through Jesus, the Word, "all things were made...and without him was made nothing that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it" (Jn. 1:3-5).

Certainly the spiritual eclipses applies to the time before Jesus. Yet despite two thousand years of Christianity, it exists still today for a great part of Christendom. The words of St. John the Baptist are still valid: "...there hath stood one in the midst of you, whom you know not" (Jn. 1:26).

Jesus is by no means so well-known and loved as one ought to expect after nineteen centuries. Oh yes, they preach and talk and write a great deal about religious problems in our days. But the central Truth of our Religion: Jesus the Redemption of the world, the Life of souls and of nations, the Head and the Heart of society, Jesus the King, is perceived in the immense, general, exclusively saving implications of that Truth only barely and only by a few.

The sign of the Son of Man indeed can still be found in the churches, in the homes of Christian families, in the cemeteries and on the breasts of a few pious souls. However, it is not, as it once was, the sun that lights the day, that directs and influences all of public life, the thoughts and works of people. We are living in a period of spiritual night, cold, Christ-less night.

This ignorance is a world disaster. For it is always a precursor of serious catastrophes when leaders of the peoples have become so blind that they cannot distinguish between day and night, true and false, the path and the chasm. Even worse than blindness, not being able to see, is not wanting to see anymore.

Right now this is the state of a large part of the human race. Whatever name it may carry, whether liberalism, neutrality, non-denominationalism or laicism, the sin of the modern world is that it does not want to see the Sign of the Son of Man in the heavens anymore.

Jesus is no longer recognized as public, commanding, life-giving Power. According to the valid constitutions, He has officially nothing more to say in the parliaments, in the halls of ministries, in the courts, in the schools and in the workshops. At most His participation in the discussion is occasionally tolerated.

If one knows Who Jesus is: the Creator and the Conserver, the Savior, the Owner of the earth, then one must regard the liberal sin, that of fundamental social refusal to recognize the spiritual monarchy of Christ over society, as the most grievous sin committed since Good Friday. It is deicide, God-murder, committed in the name of law and of Satan, true Antichristianity. Cardinal Mercier therefore rightly called the official apostasy of the nations the greatest crime of our times.

At present this is the situation of the Sign of the Son of Man. They do not want it to shine in the heavens. Just like back then on Good Friday: We will not have Him reign over us!

But someday it will be otherwise. The world will not remain liberal forever. The artificial stars of earthly dimensions that want to eclipse the Sun of Our Lord will fall from heaven. Then will the Sign of the Sun of Man flare up in the heavens, and they shall see "the Son of man sitting on the right hand of the power of God, and coming in the clouds of heaven" (Mt. 26:64).

The Judgment Day will be the day of great revelations, not only in the sense that there will be no secrets anymore between persons, but also because it will reveal the secret of Jesus the King to all of the world. It will be a sort of new Epiphany, a Feast of the Appearing of the Lord, but more grandiose, more general than the Feast of the Three Kings. It will be a sort of Coronation before all the nations of the earth and all the hosts of heaven.

The notion of the absolute, exclusive, unlimited Kingship of Jesus over the entire human race and the entire universe is one of the most noble, but unfortunately also one of the most forgotten truths of our faith.

We have called the world a book. In this book, Jesus is not only the most interesting and most beautiful chapter, but also the central, dominating idea of the book in its entirety. We must search out this Holy Name on every page and regard everything in its light. When God wanted to call creation into being, He had only one great thought, an immense plan, a dominant idea, one Word: the Word Jesus Christ. Everything that exists has value and meaning in God, only insofar as it is member and organ of the holy Humanity of Jesus, an ornament of the robe of His glory, an image of His perfection, or a footstool for His feet.

St. Paul described the central thought of creation in firm strokes at the beginning of his Epistle to the Colossians: He "is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For in him were all things created on heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominations, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him and in him. And he is before all, and by him all things consists" (1 Col. 1: 14-17).

Similar expressions are used in the Epistle to the Hebrews: "God...hath spoken to us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the world...For in that he heath subjected all things to him, he left nothing not subject to him" (Heb. 1:1-2; 2-8).

This language leaves us in no doubt. The Kingship of Jesus is not just one chapter, but rather the whole theme of the history of creation and the world. Jesus is all in all.

This idea is even more sharply delineated in St. Paul's teaching on the Church. The Church is the Body of Christ, Christ the Head of the Church. Head and Body together form an inseparable, mystical, mysterious Unity. The name of this inseparable, mystical Unity is (because it is taken from the Head) Christ. Christ and HIs Church, Head and Body bound to one another, says St. Augustine, are only one being, a single Christ. We have not only become Christians. "We are Christ."

"Church" is just another name of Christ united with the members. The Church has its being only in and with and through Him. Christ is all in all, Way, Truth and Life in the Church. The same is true of Church history.

Jesus will be all in all in the fullest sense on Judgment Day. From that day on there will be no more lords and no more kings, there will not even be any more popes. Only one will be Lord, one will be King, one will be the High Priest, "when he shall have brought to nought principality, and power, and virtue" (I Cor. 15:24). Even the temple will be superfluous in the City of God. "For the Lord God Almighty is the temple thereof, and the Lamb. And the city hath no need of the sun, nor of the moon, to shine in it. For...the Lamb is the lamp thereof" (Apoc. 21: 22-23). So it is written. Everything belongs to Christ. Jesus is all in all. The theme of creation will have reached its completion. Cosmology will become Christology, the study of the world will become the teaching of Christ.

Creation is a a book about Jesus the King. "And i saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne, a book written within and without, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel, proclaiming with a loud voice: Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof? And no man was able, neither in heaven, nor on earth, nor under the earth, to open the book, nor to look on it. And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open the book, nor to see it. And one of the ancients said to me: Wee not, behold the lion of Juda, the root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, an to loose the seven seals thereof.

"An the Lamb...came and took the book out of the right hand of him that son on the throne. And when he had opened the book...they sung a new canticle, saying: Thou art worthy, O Lord, to take the book, and to open the seals thereof; because thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God, in thy blood, out of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation...And every creatures, which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them: I heard all saying: To the Lamb benediction, and honor, and glory, and power, for ever and ever" (Apoc. 5: 1-5, 7, 9, 13).

Either science will humbly return to Jesus, or the book of creation and history will remain for science an absolute riddle. For they tell of Christ. May the song of creation become also the song of mankind: Jesus my King! My Jesus, my All!

Come, let us go there and make Him King, Him alone, King of minds and hearts, the King of the nations as well! Do you hear the bells ringing for the immortal King of the centuries? The world is gradually growing tired of being liberal, far from God and shy of Christ. It is seeking the Sign of the Son of Man. It is the seeking the King. (Father Robert Mader, Cross and the Crown, edited and translated by Dr. Eileen Kunze, Sarto House, 1999, pp. 51-55.)

Father Mader was merely echoing the voice of our true popes, who spoke as one concerning the necessity of the Social Reign of Christ the King and what must happen to men when It is not recognized and obeyed. They must fall apart.

We must live and die for Christ the King and His Social Reign over men and their nations.

Father Denis Fahey, writing in his The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World, explained that we cannot be neutral in the battle between the reign of man and the Social Reign of Christ the King:

We can thus easily see that the entrance of Christianity into the world has meant two things. Primarily and principally, it has meant the constitution of a supernatural society, the Mystical Body of Christ, absolutely transcending every natural development of culture and civilisation. Secondly, it has had as result that this supernatural society, the Catholic Church, began to exercise a profound influence upon culture and civilisation and modified in a far-reaching way the existing temporal or natural social order. The indirect power of the Church over temporal affairs, whenever the interests of the divine life of souls are involved, presupposes, of course, a clear distinction of nature between the ecclesiastical authority, charged with the care of divine things, and the civil authority, whose mission is concerned with purely temporal matters. In proportion as the Mystical Body of Christ was accepted by mankind, political and economic thought and action began to respect the jurisdiction and guidance of the Catholic Church, endowed, as she is, with the right of intervention in temporal affairs whenever necessary, because of her participation in the spiritual kingship of Christ. Thus the natural or temporal common good of states came to be sought in a manner calculated to favour the development of true personality, in and through the Mystical Body of Christ, and social life came more and more under the influence of the supreme end of man, the vision of God in the three divine Persons.

Accordingly, the divine plan for order in our fallen and redeemed world comprises, primarily, the supernatural social organism of the Catholic Church, and then, secondarily, the temporal or natural social order resulting from the influence of Catholic doctrine on politics and economics and from the embodiment of that influence in social institutions. From the birth of the Catholic Church on Calvary and the solemn promulgation of her mission at the first Pentecost, the Kingdom of God in its essence has been present in the world. As a result of the gradual acceptance of the role of the Church by the temporal representatives of Christ the King, the social institutions of states and nations became deeply permeated with the influence of the supernatural life of Christ. Then, and only then, could the Kingdom of God in its integrity or the rule of Christ the King in its integrity, be said to exist. The Kingdom of God or the rule of Christ the King is present in its integrity only in so far as the whole social life of states, political and economic, is permeated with the influence of the Church. To put it in other terms, Christ fully reigns only when the programme for which He died is accepted as the one true way to peace and order in the world, and social structures in harmony with it are evolved.

The Kingdom of God in its essence is always with us, but the influence of the Church on politics and economics, in other words, the extension of the Kingdom of God in its integrity, has varied with the centuries. Broadly speaking, the thirteenth century has been, so far, the high water mark of that influence. Since then, until recently, there has been steady decay. No particular temporal social order, of course, will ever realise all that the Church is capable of giving to the world. Each of them will be defective for several reasons.

First of all, the action of the Church, welcomed by some Catholics, will be opposed by the ignorance, incapacity and perversity of others.

Secondly, even if all Catholics did accept fully, they could only reflect some of the beauty of the Gospel as the saints reflected some of the infinitely imitable holiness of Christ.

Thirdly, there would still remain the vast number of non-Catholics to be won for Christ and have their social life organised under His rule. It is towards this latter goal that every generation of Catholics is called upon to work. The aim is not, needless to say, to bring back the Middle Ages, for the river of time does not turn back in its course, but the aim is to impregnate a new epoch with the divine principles of order so firmly grasped in the thirteenth century. The result of the so-called Reformation and the French Revolution has been to obscure the rights of God proclaimed by our Lord Jesus Christ and to diffuse naturalism.

Naturalism consists in the negation of the possibility of the elevation of our nature to the supernatural life and order, or more radically still, in the negation of the very existence of that life and order. In our day owing to the progress of the anti-Christian revolt, the more radical meaning has become common. Naturalism may be defined therefore as the attitude of mind which denies the reality of the divine life of grace and of our Fall therefrom by original sin. It rejects our consequent liability to revolt against the order of the divine life, when this life has been restored to us by our membership of Christ, and maintains that all social life should be organized on the basis of that denial. We must combat that mentality and proclaim the rights of God.

In his Encyclical letter on Freemasonry, Pope Leo XIII teaches authoritatively: “From what we have already set forth, it is indisputably evident that their [the Freemasons’] ultimate aim is to uproot completely the whole religious and political order of the world, which has been brought into existence by Christianity, and to replace it by another in harmony with their way of thinking. This will mean that the foundation and the laws of the new structure of society will be drawn from pure naturalism.” Now, it is historically certain that the Declaration of the Rights of Man had been conceived and elaborated in the Masonic lodges before it was presented to the States-General of France. Accordingly, the infamous Declaration, a naturalistic or anti-supernatural document, is in reality a declaration of war on membership of Christ and on the whole structure of society based on that supernatural dignity. The same naturalistic hostility to membership of Christ and the supernatural life of grace runs through all the documents concerning human rights drawn up under the influence of the organised forces that were responsible for the Declaration of 1789. That is the real struggle going on in the world, and in it every member of Christ is called upon to play his or her part. There can be no neutrality. “He that is not with me is against me ” (St. Matthew XII, 30.)  (Father Denis Fahey, The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World.)

Father Edward Leen explained that Communism and Judeo-Calvinist capitalism are just different sides of the same naturalist coin minted by the adversay to deceive even Catholics in these latter days.

A shudder of apprehension is traversing the world which still retains its loyalty to Jesus expressing Himself through the authority of His Church. That apprehension has not its sole cause the sight of the horrors that the world has witnessed in recent years in both hemispheres. Many Christians are beginning to feel that perhaps all may not be right with themselves. There is solid reason for this fear. The contemplation of the complete and reasoned abandonment of all hitherto accepted human values that has taken place in Russia and is taking place elsewhere, causes a good deal of anxious soul-searching. It is beginning to be dimly perceived that in social life, as it is lived, even in countries that have not as yet definitely broken with Christianity, there lie all the possibilities of what has become actual in Bolshevism. A considerable body of Christians, untrained in the Christian philosophy of life, are allowing themselves to absorb principles which undermine the constructions of Christian thought. They do not realise how much dangerous it is for Christianity to exist in an atmosphere of Naturalism than to be exposed to positive persecution. In the old days of the Roman Empire those who enrolled themselves under the standard of Christ saw, with logical clearness, that they had perforce to cut themselves adrift from the social life of the world in which they lived--from its tastes, practices and amusements. The line of demarcation between pagan and Christian life was sharp, clearly defined and obvious. Modern Christians have not been so favorably situated. As has been stated already, the framework of the Christian social organisation has as yet survived. This organisation is, to outward appearances, so solid and imposing that it is easy to be blind to the truth that the soul had gradually gone out of it. Under the shelter and utilising the resources of the organisation of life created by Christianity, customs, ways of conduct, habits of thought, have crept in, more completely perhaps, at variance with the spirit of Christianity than even the ways and manners of pagan Rome.

This infiltration of post-Christian paganism has been steady but slow, and at each stage is imperceptible. The Christian of to-day thinks that he is living in what is to all intents and purposes a Christian civilisation. Without misgivings he follows the current of social life around him. His amusements, his pleasures, his pursuits, his games, his books, his papers, his social and political ideas are of much the same kind as are those of the people with whom he mingles, and who may not have a vestige of a Christian principle left in their minds. He differs merely from them in that he holds to certain definite religious truths and clings to certain definite religious practices. But apart from this there is not any striking contrast in the outward conduct of life between Christian and non-Christian in what is called the civilised world. Catholics are amused by, and interested in, the very same things that appeal to those who have abandoned all belief in God. The result is a growing divorce between religion and life in the soul of the individual Christian. Little by little his faith ceases to be a determining effect on the bulk of his ideas, judgments and decisions that have relation to what he regards as his purely "secular" life. His physiognomy as a social being no longer bears trace of any formative effect of the beliefs he professes. And his faith rapidly becomes a thing of tradition and routine and not something which is looked to as a source of a life that is real.

The Bolshevist Revolution has had one good effect. It has awakened the averagely good Christian to the danger runs in allowing himself to drift with the current of social life about him. It has revealed to him the precipice towards which he has was heading by shaping his worldly career after principles the context of which the revolution has mercilessly exposed and revealed to be at variance with real Christianity. The sincerely religious--and there are many such still--are beginning to realise that if they are to live as Christians they must react violently against the milieu in which they live. It is beginning to be felt that one cannot be a true Christian and live as the bulk of men in civilised society are living. It is clearly seen that "life" is not to be found along those ways by which the vast majority of men are hurrying to disillusionment and despair. Up to the time of the recent cataclysm the average unreflecting Christian dwelt in the comfortable illusion that he could fall in with the ways of the world about him here, and, by holding on to the practices of religion, arrange matters satisfactorily for the hereafter. That illusion is dispelled. It is coming home to the discerning Christian that their religion is not a mere provision for the future. There is a growing conviction that it is only through Christianity lived integrally that the evils of the present time can be remedied and disaster in the time to come averted. (Father Edward Leen, The Holy Ghost, published in 1953 by Sheed and Ward, pp. 6-9.)

As has been noted in the past, no, it's just not this former professor who writes these things. I have only attempted to give voice, however poorly, to the simple Catholic truth summarized so clearly by Pope Saint Pius X in Notre Charge Apostolique on August 15, 1910:

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. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

Father Edward Leen was simply giving expression in 1953 to simple, timeless and immutable truths that true pope after true pope had reiterated time and time again in the last three centuries now. No Catholicism, no social order. It's that simple.

We must have confidence in Our Lady of the Rosary and her Fatima Message, especially in these waning days of October and as the liturgical year draws to an end in but thirty-three days, consecrating ourselves to her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life. We must live and die for Christ the King at all times as He has revealed Himself to us through His true Church as there is no other path to Heaven.

This is our destiny, please God and by the graces that flow forth from the loving hands of His Most Blessed Mother we persevere to the points of our dying breaths in states of Sanctifying Grace.

No matter the difficulties of the moment or how many people may reject us for refusing to making compromises with Modernity in the world and Modernism in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, we can be assured that our efforts to restore the Social Reign of Christ the King by means of our total consecration to Him through Mary our Immaculate Queen will help to plant a few seeds for the conversion of men and their nations to the true Faith as we, recidivist sinners that we are, attempt to make reparation for our sins and those of the whole world, remembering to say each day:

"O Jesus, it is for love of Thee, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary."

With full confidence in Our Lady's Immaculate Heart, may we rise above the histrionics, the silliness, the emotionalism and the apoplexy engendered by naturalism to pray and to work for the restoration of the Catholic City as the fruit of the triumph of that same Immaculate Heart. 

We may not see the results with our own earthly eyes. Please God and by the intercession of Our Lady, especially by means of her Most Holy Rosary, that we die in states of Sanctifying Grace, may it be our privilege to see the results from eternity, where those who have won the only election that matters, God's favor for all eternity, will praise and glorify Christ the King forever in Heaven.

A blessed Feast of Christ the King to you all!

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

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.