Fear Not Those Who Can Destroy the Body, Fear Not the Likes of Merrick Garland

As has been noted on this site so many times in the past, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., is a master demagogue. This serial plagiarist turned cognitively challenged political hack who looked for a Republican members of the United States House of Representatives, Jacqueline Walorski, at an event on September 28, 2022, even though she had been killed in an automobile accident on August 3, 2022, has long sought to divide Americans for reasons of political opportunism. An intellectual cipher without an original thought in his skull who has used his name and contacts to enrich himself and his family, thus becoming world’s leading family of grifter millionaires, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., has inflamed people already divided by the errors of a nation founded on one Judeo-Masonic error after another to such an extent as to encourage deranged denizens of the false opposite of the naturalist “left” to attack Biden’s chosen targets, namely, anyone who disagrees with him in general and, quite specifically, those who support Donald John Trump and his policies.

Here is a pretty good summary of some of the violence engendered by Demagogue Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr’s., September 1, 2002, paramilitary speech in which he condemned the so-called “Make America Great Again” movement and its supporters as “fascistic,” claiming that they pose a threat to “democracy,” which the “left” defines as accepting its ever-evolving statist, globalist, Marxist agenda rife with the abject insanity of reverse discrimination and the psychotic belief that there are more than two genders:

Several instances of political violence, many with victims supporting conservative causes, have occurred since President Biden warned of the alleged threat that supporters of former President Trump pose to the country, including attacks on anti-abortion activists and political canvassers and the murder of an 18-year-old in North Dakota.

"Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic," President Biden said during a September 1 speech in Philadelphia that earned widespread criticism from conservatives and even some on the left.

"They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country," Biden said of supporters of the MAGA agenda in his speech.

In the days leading up to the Philadelphia speech, Biden said that MAGA Republicans "embrace political violence" and their "entire philosophy" is "almost like semi-fascism.

In the weeks following those comments, several instances of political violence have taken place, including an elderly woman in her 80s being shot in Michigan as she canvassed in support of a right-to-life group last week. 

Michigan State Police told Fox News Digital Saturday that the elderly woman was shot after a "verbal altercation while she was passing out pamphlets." 

Another violent incident occurred last weekend in Texas when two volunteers on Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott’s re-election campaign were reportedly assaulted while knocking on doors in a Houston suburb.

"Political violence is never acceptable. Mark Miner, a spokesperson for Texans for Greg Abbott, said in a statement on Sunday. "With just over a month until Election Day, the passion to win should never bubble over into something more dangerous. There is no place for this in Texas." 

Multiple reports of GOP offices being vandalized have also been reported this month, including the offices of the Larimer County Republican Party in Fort Collins, Colorado, and the Ottawa County Republican Party in Hudsonville, Michigan.

"(We) came out and found that all of the signs had been hacked to pieces, our building had been vandalized, our permanent sign on the outside of the building had been torn up," Keith den Hollander, the interim chairman and vice chairman for Ottawa County GOP, said about the vandalism incident over the weekend. "Really disappointed to see this."

A GOP office in Seminole County Florida was vandalized in graffiti with the phrase “fascists" days after Biden called MAGA Republicans "semi-fascists," WOFL-TV reported.

Weeks later, a Democratic office in Seminole County was also vandalized with the word "Nazi" written in graffiti.

Last week, WJBK-TV reported that a pregnancy center in Oakland County, Michigan was vandalized with the message "'If abortion is not safe neither are you" which represents the second time this year the building has been targeted with authorities investigating whether the leftist pro-abortion group Jane's Revenge is linked to the crimes.

Earlier this month, 18-year-old Cayler Ellingson was killed when a 41-year-old allegedly struck him with his vehicle and later told a 911 dispatcher that he believed Ellingson was part of a Republican "extremist" group that was coming after him.

"President Biden condemns these attacks and has been clear that violence, threats of violence and vandalism are absolutely unacceptable – regardless of who is committing such acts or why," White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates told Fox News Digital.

Bates continued, "Like he said in Philadelphia, ‘There is no place for political violence in America. Period. None. Ever.’ The President believes that leaders in both parties should uphold that same principle, including when violence and threats are targeted against women seeking health care, members of law enforcement like the Capitol Police and the FBI, or the previous Vice President." 

Conservatives have openly blasted Biden in the wake of Ellingson’s death and suggested his rhetoric in Philadelphia inflamed the political divide in the country.

"Words can have violent consequences," Kentucky Republican Rand Paul, who was the victim of political violence along with his wife outside the Republican National Convention in 2020, told Fox News Digital in a statement last week. "President Biden needs to realize that his vilification of his opponents is inflaming some of his supporters to violence. As a victim of political violence, both sides need to recognize the consequences of heated rhetoric."

"Every chance they get, Joe Biden and Democrats divide, duck blame, and show how radical they have become," RNC spokesperson Emma Vaughn told Fox News Digital. "With Biden as the divider-in-chief, Americans are united in their concern about Democrats' tax increases, soft-on-crime agenda and the rising prices caused by their reckless spending."  (Republicans, pro-lifers victimized by political violence since Biden called Trump supporters ‘threat’ to U.S..)

This is what happens when men do not see the Divine impress in themselves or in others.

This is what happens when fallen men, who are always prone, of course, to disputes of one sort or another, are not fearful of losing their Last End—the salvation of their immortal souls as members of the Catholic Church—and not bound together by the ties of the one, true, Faith and a recognition that they will be held accountable everything they do and say in this passing, mortal vale of tears at the moment of their Particular Judgments.

This is what must happen when men dehumanize each other as a consequence of religious indifferentism and the inevitable rise of practical atheism.

This is what must happen when those who govern are committed to the protection of sins and sinful behavior in the name of “human rights” and “diversity” rather than seeking to advance 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.

This what happens when men sin unrepentantly and look for “salvation” in politics and, being at war with God, Who is their First Cause and Last End, are thus at war with their own nature, which is made to know, love, and serve God as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His Catholic Church. Men who are at war with God by means of their own unrepentant sins will be all too ready to go to war against those they hate, those they deem responsible for their problems, whether real or imagined, those who their exploitive, demagogic civil leaders tell them are threats to a “democracy” that they, the demagogic civil leaders, believe is jeopardized if anyone opposes their plans or, worse yet, actually wins election to public office.

This is what happens when are enveloped in a fog of errors that is so dense as to convince even believing Catholics that it is necessary to be agitated by every breaking news story and to think, most apocalyptically, that the “next” election is the “most important election of our lifetimes” even though, to cite two examples, nothing happened to roll back the “left’s” agenda of evil when Republicans won both majorities in both houses of Congress for the first time in forty-two years or when they recaptured both houses of Congress in 2016 when Donald John Trump was elected. ObamaDeathCare was not repealed and it is only within the last week that the denizens of the false opposite of the naturalist “right” have made their peace with this monstrous government takeover of the so-called healthcare industry. As I noted ten years ago, ObamaDeathCare is here to stay.

Thus, the efforts of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.’s own Heinrich Himmler, Merrick Garland to use the Federal Bureau of Investigation to intimidate law-abiding citizens with no criminal record by the use of veritable storm trooper tactics replete with guns drawn and special weapons and tactics teams deployed has become a trademark of how the senile old pro-abort from Delaware intends to deal with the “semi-fascists,” especially those who seek to save the lives of innocent preborn babies from being butchered by serving as a peaceful, prayerful presence in front of abortuaries as they engage in sidewalk counseling:

The wife of the Catholic pro-life activist who was arrested in front of their children by dozens of heavily armed federal agents told Fox News on Wednesday that the “devastating” raid has left their family traumatized and in need of counseling.

Mark Houck, an outspoken pro-life activist and author from Pennsylvania, was arrested early last Friday in front of his wife and seven children at his rural Kintnersville home in Bucks County after dozens of FBI agents showed up on his lawn and began pounding on their front door. In an exclusive interview on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” Wednesday, Houck’s wife, Ryan-Marie, recounted the moment she looked out her front window to find roughly 25 uniformed agents with guns and shields surrounding her front door.

“My entire front yard, you could barely see it, it was covered with at least 15 big trucks and cars,” the mother of seven said. “There were 20, 25, 30, men, women, completely in jackets with shields and helmets and guns. They were behind cars. It was something I would never expect to see on my front lawn.”

Ryan-Marie said the agents raided their home with “guns drawn,” on her family, describing in an earlier interview how they put her husband in “shackles” while her children watched in fear.

“It was devastating,” she told host Tucker Carlson. “As you can imagine, it’s hard to even express the victimization and how traumatized we all are due to this unnecessary thing that happened to us.”

Ryan-Marie said her children have been “crying” and are afraid to sleep alone since her husband’s arrest.

“The older ones, we can talk, we can cry. We’ve had some counseling, we have more counseling to do,” she told Tucker Carlson. “And the little ones, they’re scared. There’s a lot of crying and a lot of unrestful sleep. A lot of kids in our bed at night and in the morning.”

The raid and subsequent arrest reportedly stemmed from an altercation Houck, 48, had with a Planned Parenthood escort in Philadelphia in October 2021, when he was accused of pushing a 72-year-old man outside the clinic after the escort allegedly verbally harassed Houck’s 12-year-old son. The pro-life father, who routinely engages in prayerful protests outside abortion clinics, is co-founder and president of The King’s Men, a Catholic ministry that aims to spiritually mentor young men.

The Philadelphia Police Department confirmed to Fox News Digital that officers responded to the Planned Parenthood on the afternoon of October 13 last year, but that no charges were filed against Houck, and he was not arrested. The Philadelphia district attorney also declined to prosecute Houck over the incident.

But for reasons unknown, Houck’s case caught the attention of the Justice Department. In May, he received a “target letter” from the DOJ telling him he was being investigated by a grand jury for violating the Freedom of Access Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE Act, which makes it a federal crime to use force with the intent to injure, intimidate and interfere with anyone because that person provides reproductive health care.

Houck’s attorney and senior counsel at the Thomas More Society, Peter Breen, condemned the arrest as an abuse of power from President Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) during the “Tucker Carlson Tonight” interview, where he accused the department of trying to intimidate pro-life Americans.

“This was not a federal crime. We have controlling case law on that, strong defenses, but instead, they’ve taken an innocent man and made an example out of him, presumably to send a message to pro-life people and people of faith across this country,” he said.

After the Philadelphia district attorney declined to prosecute Houck over the incident, Breen said the man involved brought a private criminal complaint against Houck. However, that man never showed up to his own court hearings that he initiated. Houck’s lawyer said they have considered taking legal action for abuse of process.

“This was reckless and outrageous,” Breen told Carlson. “It put the Houck family in unnecessary danger. We’ve offered to bring him in. Didn’t get a response. Even if you’re going to arrest a regular person, you just send a couple of agents, they knock on the door, not dragging the head of the family out, violating the sanctity of the home, pointing guns at them. This was outrageous and uncalled for.”

Breen said Thomas More Society has retained some of the best legal talent in Philadelphia to assist in the case.

“If we can push back against the Justice Department here, we can get them to stop and not do this to someone else,” he said.

Houck pleaded not guilty to two counts associated with the charges against him related to the alleged assault of the escort. (Wife of pro-life activist Mark Houck speaks out after FBI arrest.)

(LifeSiteNews) – A well-known pro-life author, sidewalk counselor, and father of seven was the latest victim of a U.S. Department of Justice-sponsored SWAT raid and arrest — for supposed “FACE Act” violations — at his rural home as his children looked on “screaming.”

Mark Houck is the founder and president of The King’s Men, which promotes healing for victims of pornography addiction and promotes Christian virtues among men in the United States and Europe.

According to his wife Ryan-Marie, who spoke with LifeSiteNews, he also drives two hours south to Philadelphia every Wednesday to sidewalk counsel for six to eight hours at two different abortion centers.

Ryan-Marie, who is a homeschooling mother, described how the SWAT team of 25 to 30 FBI agents swarmed their property with around 15 vehicles at 7:05 a.m. this morning. Having quickly surrounded the house with rifles in firing position, “they started pounding on the door and yelling for us to open it.”

Before opening the door, she explained, her husband tried to calm them, saying, “‘Please, I’m going to open the door, but, please, my children are in the home. I have seven babies in the house.’ But they just kept pounding and screaming,” she said.

When he opened the door, “they had big, huge rifles pointed at Mark and pointed at me and kind of pointed throughout the house,” Ryan-Marie described.

When they came in, they ordered the kids to stay upstairs. “Our staircase is open, so [the kids] were all at the top of the stairs which faces the front door, and I was on the stairs as well, coming down.”

“The kids were all just screaming. It was all just very scary and traumatic,” she explained.

After asking them why they were at the house, the agents said they were there to arrest Mark. When Ryan-Marie asked for their warrant, “they said that they were going to take him whether they had a warrant or not.”

When Ryan-Marie protested, saying that is kidnapping, “you can’t just come to a person’s house and kidnap them at gunpoint,” they agreed to get the warrant for her from one of their vehicles.

At this point, Mark asked her to get him a sweatshirt and his rosaries, but when she returned, they already had loaded him into a vehicle.

They provided the first page of the warrant and said they were taking him to “the federal building in downtown Philadelphia.”

“After they had taken Mark, and the kids were all screaming that he was their best friend, the [FBI agents on her porch] kind of softened a bit. I think they realized what was happening. Or maybe they actually looked at the warrant,” Ryan-Marie explained. “They looked pretty ashamed at what had just happened.”

As a result, the homeschool mother said her kids were “really sad and stressed. So, I’ve already reached out to some psychiatrists or psychologists to try and help us through this. I don’t really know what’s going to come of it when you see guns pointed at your dad and your mom in your house when you first wake up in the morning,” she lamented.

The warrant charged Mark with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, due to a claimed “ATTACK OF A PATIENT ESCORT.”

Ryan-Marie stated this charge comes from an incident that had already been thrown out of the District Court in Philadelphia but was somehow picked up by Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice.

On several occasions when Mark went to sidewalk counsel last year, he took his eldest son, who was only 12 at the time, she explained. For “weeks and weeks,” a “pro-abortion protester” would speak to the boy saying “crude … inappropriate and disgusting things,” such as “you’re dad’s a fag,” and other statements that were too vulgar for her to convey.

Repeatedly, Mark would tell this pro-abortion man that he did not have permission to speak to his son and please refrain from doing so. And “he kept doing it and kind of came into [the son’s] personal space” obscenely ridiculing his father. At this point, “Mark shoved him away from his child, and the guy fell back.”

“He didn’t have any injuries or anything, but he tried to sue Mark,” and the case was thrown out of court in the early summer.

Since the Biden administration has taken power in January 2021, Garland’s Department of Justice and the FBI have committed dozens of SWAT team raids that have been characterized as a political “weaponization” of the federal agencies against pro-lifers, Trump supporters, conservative Christians, and medical freedom advocates.

For example, in contrast to left-wing rioters who caused enormous damage in cities across the nation in 2020, and the vandals who have attacked dozens of pro-life centers this year with little or no legal ramifications, the Department of Justice implemented the harshest of consequences for those they identified as having anything to do with the disturbance at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. These actions have included early morning SWAT team arrests, ransacked homes, confiscation of property, indefinite pre-trial solitary confinement without bail in a dedicated D.C. prison, significant physical abuse, and the violation of the Constitutional right to a speedy trial.

In March, the FBI rounded up 10 pro-life activists, including Joan Andrews Bell, with SWAT team raids that serve to intimidate and humiliate the accused through an exercise of excessive force.

A surfaced video of one of these raids shows armed agents holding pro-lifers at gunpoint and ordering them to put their hands up, drop to their knees and scoot backward out their front door in the middle of the night. The pro-lifers are respectful and compliant throughout.

After the FBI’s unprecedented August 8 raid on President Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago home, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called it “another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents.”

Soon after Joe Biden’s September 1 speech where he declared war on conservative Christians, dozens of Trump allies had their homes raided by the FBI, which Steve Bannon referred to as “a Gestapo tactic,” and said it was “all about intimidation.”

In response to the raid on the Houck residence this morning, however, local pro-life advocates don’t seem to be intimidated, but energized. In addition to sponsoring a fundraiser for this family, they will be holding a prayer rally at the “Philadelphia Women’s Center” abortion facility at 777 Appletree St. from 10:30 a.m. to noon on Saturday, September 24. All are invited to come and pray peacefully and make a financial donation as well. (FBI raids home of Catholic pro-life speaker, author with guns drawn as his terrified kids watch.)

Merrick Garland, who is the Minister of American Injustice, has referred to parents opposed to the implantation of “critical race theory” in public schools as “domestic terrorists” and has labeled “right wing extremism” as the most urgent threat to public safety, knows full well what he is doing. Mark Houck must be accused of interfering with a baby-killing escort in violation of the “Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act” (FACE) that was passed by Congress in 1994 during the administration of William Jefferson Blythe Clinton and Albert Arnold Gore, Jr., to shut down Operation Rescue once and for all when all he was doing was protecting his son from an obscene bully. It is pretty bad when the George Soros bought-and-paid-for district attorney of the City of Philadelphia, Larry Krasner, declines to prosecute a case concerning a pro-life advocate, but not even that discourages the efforts of Merrick Garland to use the FBI as a means to shut up all those who dare to stand up on behalf of the binding precepts of the Fifth Commandment to protect the inviolability of all human life.

It is clear at this point that Merrick Himmler Garland is personally directing these acts of rank, Soviet-style intimidation upon pro-life Americans who make their presence felt at America’s baby-killing mills by praying Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary and attempting to counsel women not to kill their babies. Garland has decided to “up the ante,” so to speak, by organizing and authorizing these raids. Frustrated that he did not get to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States of America after being nominated by then President Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro after the death of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia February 13, 2016, and thus was not able to preserve the decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Roe v. Wade, Heinrich Garland is pulling out all the stops to blunt pro-life activists following the Court’s 5-4 decision in the case of Thomas E. Dobbs, Mississippi State Health Officer v. Jackson Women’s Organizations, June 24, 2022, to use these paramilitary raids to scare ordinary Americans into staying home and keeping their mouths shut about the American genocide of the innocent preborn by chemical and surgical means.

Emboldened by the FBI’s raid of Mark Houck’s home even though the Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote to him to ask why the FBI had to use such a show of force, Garland, knowing that Republicans have no authority to compel him to testify at this time and that he could stonewall them next year if they recapture control of the United States Senate just as Eric Himpton Holder stonewalled them over their investigation of the Department of Justice’s “Fast and Furious” scandal that resulted in the murder of United States Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry by a Mexican drug lord, Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes, on December 14, 2010, to the point of being cited for contempt of Congress and ignored with utter impunity, has, as they say today, “double down” on his crusade to protect the killing of innocent children by authorizing yet another raid on a pro-life activist:

The FBI has raided the home of another pro-life advocate, this time targeting a pro-life man and his family after he prayed and sang outside an abortion business last year.

This is the second time in recent weeks that the FBI has raided the home of a pro-life family — with the first case involving pro-life advocate Mark Houck, whose family was raided after an altercation at a Philadelphia abortion business last year where he accidentally pushed down a man who was verbally accosting his 12-year-old son.

This time, FBI officials raided the home of pro-life advocate Chet Gallagher after he peacefully advocated for the protection of unborn babies at an abortion facility in Tennessee last year.

Gallagher participated in a “rescue” at the Carafem abortion facility in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee where he and other pro-life advocates prayed and sang in a hallway of a building that houses multiple medical business but also the abortion company.

Gallagher was out of state when the FBI arrived with guns drawn and entered his home. FBI officers demanded his whereabouts from Gallagher’s family and reportedly have asked other pro-life advocates to face charges under for allegedly violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which makes it a federal crime to use force with the intent to injure, intimidate and interfere with anyone trying to access either abortion at an abortion business or medical care at a pregnancy center.

According to a Live Action report, the event Gallagher and other pro-life advocates participated in was peaceful — so much so that they were released by local police on minor trespassing charges.

The event in March 2021 was reportedly peaceful, with participants lining the inside hallway of a shared general medical office building which, in one area, houses the Carafem abortion facility. The rescuers who were gathered that day prayed and sang, and the event was nonviolent. Some recorded the events on video. Several participants were arrested by local police that day and were later released after posting bail for misdemeanor trespass charges. (Read more here and here.)

Hurley said other individuals were “called by the FBI telling them they had arrest warrants and had to turn themselves in.” Those individuals were named by Hurley as Paul Place, Renee Davis, Dr. Coleman Boyd, Dennis Green, and Heather Idoni. One other individual is also believed to have been charged, but for now remains unidentified.

With regard to Houck, there are concerns that Attorney General Merrick Garland is doing the investigations and ordering the FBI to raid pro-life advocates — weaponizing the agency so he can make political decisions to go after pro-life Americans.

With regard to Houck, there are concerns that Attorney General Merrick Garland is doing the investigations and ordering the FBI to raid pro-life advocates — weaponizing the agency so he can make political decisions to go after pro-life Americans.

Live Action’s report indicates that could be the case here.

“The FBI isn’t even performing the investigations,” said Hurley. “The DOJ is doing their own investigations and using the FBI as their arm of that organization… Normally the FBI does an investigation, and if they find someone guilty of federal crimes, they issue warrants.” Instead, he says, “the DOJ is… sending local branches of the FBI with arrest warrants to be their strong arm.”

Hurley notes that pro-life activists have recently been charged with FACE as well as conspiracy (to rob someone of a constitutional right), which could result in up to 10 years in prison. “This is a new tactic the DOJ has been thawing at pro-lifers to see if the charges stick,” he says.

With the help of pro-life attorneys during an appearance in federal court, Houck pleaded not guilty in Pennsylvania federal court to violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act.

Houck’s attorney, Peter Breen, said that the case already made its way through the state court process and was thrown out, but the Biden Department of Justice took up the matter nearly a year later as a form of “political prosecution.”

“If he was truly a danger to the community, they wouldn’t have waited a year to prosecute,” Breen, VP senior counsel of the Thomas Moore Society, said outside the courthouse. “Serious questions need to be asked of the Attorney General. What was he thinking? Why did they do this obscene show of force against a peaceful pillar of the community?”

“It put officers’ lives in danger. It put the Houck family in danger. And it was an utter waste of judicial resources and taxpayer resources,” Breen said.

As Fox News reports:

Breen said his team contacted the DOJ and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in June to inform them they had no case based on controlling precedent but if they decided to indict, defense would present Houck willingly in response to a summons. Breen said the next notice he received was that his client was in custody.

“This is a political prosecution,” Breen said. “And what’s clear from the Department of Justice at its highest levels which is directing this case that they are trying to send a message to pro-life and people of faith – ‘don’t mess with us.’ They want to intimidate — they want to cause good people like Mark to stop praying and counseling at the abortion clinics of our country. And that’s not going to happen.”

The U.S. government alleges that Houck assaulted and “forcefully shoved” Bruce Love, a 72-year-old volunteer at a Philadelphia Planned Parenthood.

Breen, however, categorized the abortion escort as “extremely aggressive,” saying Love was “harassing” Houck’s 12-year-old son before an “altercation ensued.”

“What in the world would possess the Department of Justice to send 20 or so heavily armed agents to this family’s home, violate the sanctity of that home, frighten the children and then drag their father away instead of allowing us to present him peacefully – which we had offered to do?” Breen said on Tuesday.

Fortunately, pro-life Americans have stepped up and are helping the Houck family in this battle:

More than 4,000 donations have been offered to Houck and his family, totaling $251,810 by Tuesday afternoon.

GiveSendGo, an alternative to GoFundMe, allows users to submit prayers, too. So far, more than 3,500 prayers have been offered to the family.

Pennsylvania pro-life activist Ashley Garecht and her husband Joe Garecht created the crowdfunding page. Notably, the couple’s daughters in 2019, then just 13 and 15 years old, were harassed by then-state Rep. Brian Sims (D) for several minutes as they prayed for unborn children outside a Pennsylvania abortion clinic. 

Garecht told The Daily Wire over the weekend that Houck was protecting his son from an aggressive Planned Parenthood escort harassing the boy. She said the case was dismissed by a federal court in Philadelphia when the escort tried to press charges, but Biden’s DOJ picked it up anyway.

“Last year, Mark and his son were praying in front of the [Planned Parenthood] at 12th and Locust,” the GiveSendGo account says. “When one of the escorts began harassing Mark’s son they walked down the street away from the entrance to the building. The escort followed them, and when he continued yelling at Mark’s son, Mark pushed him away.”

The Garechts say the funds raised through the campaign “will go to help the family with any necessary expenses.”

“Your generosity is greatly appreciated,” the couple adds. “Let’s show the Houck family they are not alone, while we show Planned Parenthood and its militant pro-abortion allies that the pro-life community will not be silenced by fear and intimidation.”

Houck, a father of seven, is frequently seen sidewalk counseling in front of Philadelphia abortion businesses to help women choose pro-life alternatives.

In October 2021, Houck was involved in an incident outside a Philadelphia abortion business where a pro-abortion clinic escort had repeatedly bullied and intimidated his 12-year-old son who was with him to help sidewalk counsel and encourage women to choose pro-life alternatives. After multiple verbal assaults and the abortion activist getting into his son’s face, Houck pushed him away and he fell.

Houck, who regularly prays the rosary outside the clinic, maintains he was defending his 12-year-old son from the escort’s verbal harassment, a family spokesman, Brian Middleton, told CNA. The man fell when Houck pushed him away, Middleton said. The incident was so minor that charges were never pressed and a court ultimately dismissed a complaint the abortion activist filed.

Houck agreed months ago to turn himself in voluntarily.

In June 2022, Thomas More Society attorneys notified the Biden Department of Justice that the FACE Act does not cover one-on-one altercations like the one involving Houck, which was initiated by the abortion proponent who was harassing Houck’s son. The Department of Justice was also advised that if the decision was made to bring a charge against Houck despite lack of legal foundation, Houck would appear voluntarily.

“Rather than accepting Mark Houck’s offer to appear voluntarily, the Biden Department of Justice chose to make an unnecessary show of potentially deadly force, sending twenty heavily armed federal agents to the Houck residence at dawn this past Friday,” explained Breen. “In threatening form, after nearly breaking down the family’s front door, at least five agents pointed guns at Mark’s head and arrested him in front of his wife and seven young children, who were terrified that their husband and father would be shot dead before their eyes.”

“This case is being brought solely to intimidate people of faith and pro-life Americans,” stated Breen. “Mark Houck is innocent of these lawless charges, and we intend to prove that in court.”

The case has drawn condemnation from pro-life members of Congress like Senator Josh Hawley and Congressman Chip Roy.

If the DOJ pursue the charges, it will be going agaisnt court precedent. In June 2019, Thomas More Society attorneys won a case in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, establishing that a one-off altercation, like the one in which the Biden Department of Justice is levying two counts against Houck, cannot form the basis for a FACE claim.

As CNA reports, the incident at the abortion center was so minor that local charges were never filed.

When both the city police and the district attorney declined to file charges against Houck, the escort filed a private criminal complaint in Philadelphia municipal court, Middleton said. The case was dismissed in July when the man repeatedly didn’t show up in court, Middleton said.

Just days later, Houck received a “target letter” from the U.S. Attorney’s Office informing him that he was the focus of a federal criminal probe into the same incident, Middleton said.

Through his attorney at the time, Houck tried to contact the U.S. Attorney’s Office to discuss the case but never received a response, Middleton said.

“The next time they heard anything was Friday morning,” he said.

Biden’s Justice Department is now charging Houck with violating the FACE Act and Houck is now facing a maximum sentence of 11 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and fines of up to $350,000 for merely defending his son from being attacked.

However, Houck never blocked access to the abortion center, which is what the law is designed to stop, and the incident was nothing more than a minor scuffle.

The Houck family is now panicked about what will happen to Mark from here. A GiveSendGo has been set up to help raise funds to support them and to assist with Mark’s legal defense.

Mark Houck was taken to “the federal building in downtown Philadelphia,” his wife told the outlet.

As a result of the incident, the children were “really sad and stressed,” Ryan-Marie said. “I don’t really know what’s going to come of it when you see guns pointed at your dad and your mom in your house when you first wake up in the morning.” (FBI Raids Home of Pro-Life Advocate Who Prayed and Sang Outside Abortion Biz.)

Merrick Garland is absolutely committed to the intimidation of those who want to end the p/decriminalized slaughter of innocent children within their mothers’ wombs. No one in the administration of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., believes that there should be any limits on the killing children from the moment of conception until the day of birth and most of them believe that a child who survives his attempted execution in the womb can be killed with absolute moral and legal impunity, and they are seeking to enshrine this in Federal law even though, as I have discussed in a few recent commentaries, the Congress of the United States of America has no authority to pass such legislation, which will never be passed by the United States Senate any sooner than would an effort on the part of phony pro-life Republicans to conditionally ban, rife with exceptions, the surgical killing of unborn children after the fifteenth week of growth within their mothers’ wombs even though eighty-seven percent of preborn children are killed before the fifteenth week. The Democrats are full-bore, unapologetic pro-aborts who believe in unrestricted killing of babies, but the Republican are focus-group driven careerists intent on seeking “consensus” on matters about which human beings are not free to “decide” anything except what civil and/or criminal punishment to mete out to those who have, procure, preform, or assist in the direct, intentional slaughter of an innocent baby.

Pro-aborts hate sidewalk counseling. They hate it because it is effective. As the late Joseph Scheidler demonstrated over his pioneering work in sidewalk counseling, many expectant mothers are pressured by boyfriends, husbands, social workers, parents, friends, teachers, or others, including those working the killing centers, into killing their preborn children. They are scared, and it is sometimes the case that the children who are saved by sidewalk counselors grow up to thank them for saving their lives.

(We know of one woman in Rhode Island, now eighty-nine years of age, who received such a letter to attest to the power of Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary in the effort to persuade mothers to let their children be born so that they can live their lives and give honor and glory to the Most Holy Trinity as members of His One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, We also know of another woman, now in her nineties, who has won the hearts of the children she helped to save by opening homes for unwed mothers and crisis pregnancy centers. The adversary knows that efforts made to save children from the clutches of the baby-killers work, which is why he is using his minions in the Biden administration to escalate its all-out assault upon the liberty of those who oppose its unmitigated agenda of moral and temporal evils.)

Meanwhile, no one has been arrested in the various attacks made by the domestic terrorist organization named “Jane’s Revenge,” whose anarchists have targeted pro-life pregnancy centers and Catholic churches since the leaker on the Supreme Court of the United States of America released Associate Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion in the case of Thomas E. Dobbs, Mississippi State Health Officer v. Jackson Women’s Organization:

Not a single arrest has been made in the more than a dozen attacks on pro-life organizations across the country claimed by left-wing pro-abortion group Jane’s Revenge.

Jane’s Revenge has claimed responsibility for at least 18 arson and vandalism attacks on crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) and other faith-based organizations throughout the U.S. since the May 2 leak of the Supreme Court draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation first told Fox News Digital in June that it had launched an investigation into the targeted vandalism. The FBI said in a Sept. 7 statement that it was still investigating the "series of attacks and threats targeting pregnancy resource centers, faith-based organizations, and reproductive health clinics across the country, as well as to judicial buildings, including the US Supreme Court," but it made no mention of Jane’s Revenge specifically.

"The incidents are being investigated as potential acts of domestic violent extremism, FACE (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances) Act violations or violent crime matters, depending on the facts of each case," the FBI told Fox News Digital in an email. "The FBI takes all violence and threats of violence very seriously, and we are working closely with our law enforcement partners at the national, state and local levels to investigate these incidents."

Jane’s Revenge, formed this year, has claimed responsibility for at least 18 acts of vandalism and arson nationwide in the name of abortion rights.

The first of the attacks occurred on May 8 at Wisconsin Family Action in Madison, which was firebombed and vandalized with the threat, "If abortions aren't safe, then you aren't either." No arrests have been made in the case, which is still considered active, police told Fox News Digital.

"Not only have no arrests been made, but to the best of my knowledge, no person of interest as even been apprehended or brought in for questioning," Wisconsin Family Action President Julaine Appling told Fox News Digital on Monday.

Appling said she hasn’t heard from any federal or local authorities regarding the case since early June.

The same day of the attack in Madison, Jane's Revenge posted its first communiqué on the anonymous blogging host noblogs.org with a picture of the vandalism and demanding "the disbanding of all anti-choice establishments, fake clinics, and violent anti-choice groups within the next thirty days."

In another online statement on June 15, Jane's Revenge suggested it had local cells operating around the country and would continue its violence, calling it "open season."

"Your thirty days expired yesterday. We offered an honourable [sic] way out. You could have walked away. Now the leash is off. And we will make it as hard as possible for your campaign of oppression to continue. We have demonstrated in the past month how easy and fun it is to attack. We are versatile, we are mercurial, and we answer to no one but ourselves," the statement said.

Since the Madison attack, Jane’s Revenge has claimed to have carried out more than a dozen additional acts of vandalism on pro-life organizations. Fox News Digital has reached out to the police departments investigating each incident and found that not a single arrest has been made or publicized.

Jane’s Revenge claimed it carried out the vandalism on May 14 at Alpha Pregnancy Center in Reisterstown, Maryland.

Jane’s Revenge claimed responsibility for the smashed windows and graffiti at Next Step Pregnancy Services on May 25 in Lynnwood, Washington.

"No arrests have been made," Lynnwood Police Department told Fox News Digital.

On May 30, vandals targeted the Dove Medical Center in Eugene, Oregon, in a rowdy demonstration organized by Jane’s Revenge. While multiple arrests were made that night for disorderly conduct, no one was arrested for spray-painting "ABORTION IS HEALTHCARE" on the building.

"We didn’t make subsequent arrests or have investigations after the incident on June 24/25 was over," the Eugene Police Department told Fox News Digital. "There were no arrests made for property destruction that night."

Jane’s Revenge claimed responsibility for two attacks on June 2, one on the Agape Pregnancy Resource Center in Des Moines, Iowa, and another at the Capitol Hill Pregnancy Center in Washington, D.C. No arrests were made in either case, police told Fox News Digital.

The Metropolitan Police Department told Fox News Digital that the case in D.C. is currently classified as "suspended," which means every reasonable avenue of investigation has been pursued and exhausted, and the case is no longer active until and unless any additional information is presented.

Jane’s Revenge claimed credit for two more attacks on June 7, one on CompassCare Pregnancy Services in Amherst, New York, which resulted in the injuries of two firefighters, and one at the Mountain Area Pregnancy Services in Asheville, North Carolina. No arrests have been made in either case and the investigations are ongoing, police told Fox News Digital.

There have been no arrests in the June 8 attack at Options360 Women's Clinic in Vancouver, Washington, which is still being investigated, police told Fox News Digital. Vandals splattered the building with red paint and spray-painted it with "Jane’s Revenge."

On June 14, Jane’s Revenge claimed responsibility for smashing windows and spray-painting "ABORTION IS LIBERATION" at Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life in Minneapolis. Police told Fox News Digital no arrests were made, and the case is currently "closed."

Jane’s Revenge claimed credit for the June 20 vandalism at Redford Pregnancy Care Center in Michigan. No arrests have been made and the investigation is ongoing, police told Fox News Digital.

The Respect Life Ministry office in Hollywood, Florida, the Lennon Pregnancy Center in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, the Life Choices clinic in Longmont, Colorado, the Blue Ridge Pregnancy Center in Lynchburg, Virginia, and Clearway Clinic in Worcester, Mass., were also hit with vandalism on May 30, June 19, June 25, June 25, and July 8, respectively, in separate attacks claimed by Jane’s Revenge. Those police departments did not respond to Fox News Digital’s inquiries, but the five clinics said they’re not aware of any arrests being made.

"The FBI is continuing to follow leads," a Blue Ridge spokesperson told Fox News Digital.

Jane’s Revenge also claimed responsibility for the Aug. 18 vandalism at Bethlehem House in Easthampton, Mass. The center and the police department investigating the case did not respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.

Fox News Digital compiled only the attacks specifically claimed by Jane’s Revenge and not the dozens of additional attacks that are attributed to the group due to similar tactics and messaging.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, in June demanded that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland resign over the Biden administration Justice Department’s inaction on prosecuting Jane's Revenge members for the wave of attacks.

Cotton, who is the ranking member for the subcommittee on Criminal Justice and Counterterrorism, the Intelligence Committee and the Armed Services Committee, has called on the DOJ to investigate Jane’s Revenge as a "domestic terrorist organization." (Zero arrests in at least 17 Jane's Revenge attacks on pro-life organizations.)

Although the current administration’s crackdowns on its political opponents has taken its pro-baby-killing rhetoric into the realm of rank Soviet-style paramilitary intimidation, I am here to remind the very limited readership that the path to Merrick Garland’s use  of naked aggression against a man with no criminal record for an action to protect his own son that not even the “woke” District Attorney of Philadelphia County believed was prosecutable began on January 20, 1993, when William Jefferson Blythe Clinton was inaugurated as the forty-second president of the United States of America. It was at his behest that Congress, then firmly in the control of his band of leftists, passed the so-called Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act
(FACE) on May 12, 1994, by a roll-call vote of 69 to 30 (one senator did not vote). Seventeen Republican senators voted in favor of this monstrous act, including a supposedly “pro-life” senator from the Commonwealth of Kentucky, Addison Mitchell McConnell. Ever hear of him? Well, I think that this is one of many reasons that the country club Republican who did, to his credit, keep Merrick Garland off of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in 2016 and who did get former President Donald John Trump’s Supreme Court nominees confirmed (not that this has meant very much insofar as stopping Biden’s vaccine mandate for healthcare workers who are employed by facilities receiving Federal funding—see Supreme Court Declines to Review Vaccine Mandate Case for Health-Care Workers). The Old Crow from Kentucky will never speak out in defense of Mark Houck of Chet Gallagher. Neither will the flip-flopping, flimflam, preeningly self-righteous Willard Mitt Romney (R-Utah by way of Michigan and Massachusetts) or Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-South Dakota).

FACE was designed to shut down Operation Rescue and to give the United States Department of Justice, then headed by Attorney General Janet Reno, a pro-abortion, pro-perversity Catholic, of course, a wedge by which its Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.) could use to intimidate to shut down pro-life activities outside of America’s killing centers.  Reno organized the Violence Against Abortion Providers Conspiracy (VAAPCON) Task Force under the authority of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)  to intimidate pro-life Americans, including a woman in Toledo, Ohio, who was visited by FBI agents after she had written to a baby-killer to tell her that she was praying for her conversion, an act that was deemed by the agents to have constituted a "violent threat" against the baby-killer (see FBI's VAAPCON Spies on Pro-Lifers for more information about the Clinton-Reno war against pro-lifers).

It was also during the administration of William Jefferson Blythe Clinton that the Chairman of the Federal Election Commission, a woman by the name of Lois Lerner, sought to intimidate former Illinois State Representative Al Salvi by seeking to bring charges against him that were found by a federal judge to be without merit whatsoever.

Here is a report that was published in 2013:

CHICAGO - The IRS scandal may have its roots in Illinois politics. Specifically, the 1996 U.S. Senate race between Democrat Congressman Dick Durbin and conservative Republican State Rep. Al Salvi.

More than a decade before his 2010 letter to IRS officials urging the agency to target conservative organizations, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin's political career crossed paths with Ms. Lerner when she was head of the Enforcement Division of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), and directly involved in the 1996 Illinois U.S. Senate race.

Soon after the IRS story broke, Al Salvi told Illinois Review that it was IRS official Lois Lerner who represented the FEC in the 1996 Democrat complaint against him. According to Salvi, Lerner was, without question, politically motivated, and went so far as to make him an offer: "Promise me you will never run for office again, and we'll drop this case."

Salvi declined her offer. In fact he ran for Illinois Secretary of State in 1998.

But when he saw Lerner plead the Fifth Amendment before Congress last week, he recognized her. "That's the woman," Salvi said. "And I didn't plead the Fifth like she did."

In 2000, a federal judge dismissed the FEC case against him, clearing Salvi's name and reputation.

Now with the revelations about Lerner, the IRS, and the intriguing connection to Durbin, Salvi shared with Illinois Review his experience with Lois Lerner.

The 1996 FEC Complaint against Salvi

During the last several weeks of the 1996 Illinois U.S. Senate campaign, two FEC complaints were filed against Salvi - one by Illinois Democrats about the way he reported a loan he made to himself, and another by the Democratic Senatorial Committee about a reported business donation.

Salvi made a personal loan to his campaign for $1.1 million to fund the last campaign ads in the expensive Chicago television ad market. News of that loan and the filed FEC complaint dominated Chicago media headlines towards the end of the campaign, suffocating the life out of Salvi's threatening momentum.

"We couldn't get our message out because day after day, the media carried story after story about the FEC complaint," Salvi told Illinois Review in an exclusive interview. 

After Salvi lost to Durbin, he was left to face the FEC complaints. The Commission alleged that the Salvi committee:

• Reported bank loans to Mr. Salvi as personal loans from the candidate, never identifying the source of the funds;
• Failed to report debts to the candidate;
• Failed to file 48-hour notices for personal advances from the candidate; and
• Failed to disclose campaign-related payments by the candidate to vendors and a bank.

A federal district court dismissed the case against Salvi in 1999, and the FEC appealed it to the 7th U.S. District Court of Appeals.

The FBI was called in at one point to gather evidence on the case. According to Salvi, two FBI agents unexpectedly visited the Salvis' home, and interrogated his elderly mother about her $2,000 check to her son's campaign and where she got "that kind of money." 

Salvi says he saw the visits as nothing but intimidation, making it clear the FEC intended to use his case as a example to others.

At the same time, Salvi said, other conservative groups such as the Christian Coalition were besieged by the FEC demands. One time, representatives from several investigated conservative groups even convened on a conference call to compare notes on how the Clinton Administration was scouring their organizations' financial and activity records.

In fact, Salvi's case (and name) was highlighted as an example several times in the FEC's monthly publication until the case was finally dismissed in 2000.

It was while dealing with the FEC complaint that Salvi says he first met Lois Lerner, then the head of the FEC Enforcement Division.

During one conversation with Lerner, she offered a deal Salvi says he'll never forget, and neither will his brother and attorney, Mike Salvi.

"She said, 'If you promise to never run for office again, we'll drop this case,'" Salvi recalled.

At the time, Salvi said, he figured it was probably just Dick Durbin's way of getting him out of politics. 

Salvi said he refused Lerner's offer because he knew he had done nothing wrong and wanted to leave the door open for future campaigns. In 1998, Salvi ran for Illinois Secretary of State while the 1996 FEC case against him continued.

Nearly four years and a hundred thousand dollars in legal fees later, federal judge George Lindbergh dismissed the FEC case against him, leaving the FEC attorney Lois Lerner -- who was present and actively arguing before the judge -- shocked. 

"The judge said to Lerner, 'Let me get this straight - Mr. Salvi loaning himself money is legal, and you have no complaint against that, is that right?'" Salvi said. "Ms. Lerner agreed. Then the judge said, 'You just don't like the way his attorneys filled out the report?' Lerner agreed."

Case dismissed, the judge said shaking his head and pounding his gavel, as Lerner objected.

"We never lose!" Lerner said to Salvi afterwards.

Despite all the Democrats' efforts, Salvi never paid the FEC a dollar in fines or penalties.

Congressional Hearings On IRS Scandal 

Salvi, now 53, said when he saw Lerner on television last week, those FEC hearings all came back to his memory -- 13 years later. "I didn't plead the Fifth," Salvi said.

And the taxpayers had no choice but to pay for Lerner's legal trail that lasted for over four years.

Durbin Asks IRS For Help in 2010

After the U.S. Supreme Court decided the Citizens United case, many incumbent politicians became concerned about the activities of organizations like Crossroads GPS, which had announced it would be running issue ads against Illinois' Democrat candidate for U.S. Senate Alexi Giannoulias, who was campaigning to succeed Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate.

In October 2010, Durbin wrote IRS Commissioner Shulman about the tax exemption status of Crossroads - a job that would find its way to IRS official Lois Lerner.

I write to urge the Internal Revenue Service to examine the purpose and primary activities of several 501(c)(4) organizations that appear to be in violation of the law.

One organization whose activities appear to be inconsistent with its tax status is Crossroads GPS, organized as a (c)(4) entity in June. The group has spent nearly $20 million on television advertising specific to Senate campaigns this year. If this political activity is indeed the primary activity of the organization, it raises serious questions about the organization's compliance with the Internal Revenue Code.

Other 2010 letters to the IRS with similar requests from elected officials may be included in four Congressional investigations now scheduled to take place in the next few weeks.

Salvi says it will be interesting to see how Lois Lerner, Dick Durbin, the FEC, IRS, and Illinois politics intersect as these investigations continue. (Lerner intrigue goes back to '96 Durbin/ Salvi.)

Unfortunately for Mr. Salvi, however, he did knuckle under to the then Chairman of the Republican National Senatorial Campaign Committee after he had told him to quit talking about abortion or lose the committee's financial support. Oh, yes, you want the name of that individual? I will happily give it to you as it is none other than the now-former United States Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato (R-New York), against whom I ran, unsuccessfully, of course, for the senatorial nomination of the Right to Life Party of the State of New York in 1998. (See Blood Money Talks Loud And Clear, part two, for details.)

As longtime readers of this site might call, former United States Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson had submitted an amicus curiae brief for the United States Department of Justice in 2002 to argue that the aforementioned Joseph Scheidler, the founder of the Pro-Life Action League who has saved thousands of babies by means of sidewalk counseling, was a “bandit” under the Hobbs Act of 1946 as his activities interfered with the ability of a business, a baby-killing mill, to make money, thereby “robbing” the proprietor:

"It is irrelevant under the Hobbs Act whether the defendant is motivated by an economic purpose, as the lower courts that have addressed the issue have correctly recognized. The text of the Hobbs Act contains no requirement of an economic motive. As explained, when a person uses force or threats to compel a business to cede control over what goods or services the business will offer, the defendant obtains the victim's property by acquiring the power to decide how the business will be conducted. That conclusion holds true whether or not the defendant has a profit-making objective.

"A contrary conclusion would allow a defendant to hijack legitimate businesses by wrongful acts of violence, threats, or fear simply because the defendant had a non-economic objective. That result would defeat the government's strong interest in protecting interstate commerce under the Hobbs Act by prosecuting extortionists who are motivated by causes other than financial gain. For instance, an economic motive requirement would immunize a defendant from prosecution under the Hobbs Act even though the defendant threatened acts of murder against a bank that loaned money to foreign nations whose policies the defendant opposed, against a retail store that sold products to which the defendant objected, or against any other business that used its land or other valuable property for a purpose that the defendant found unpalatable.

"Those acts have deleterious effects on interstate commerce, whether or not the defendant directs the use of such property for his own financial gain. To exempt such conduct from the Hobbs Act would retreat from the Act's purpose to 'protect the right of citizens of this country to market their products without any interference from lawless bandits.' In sum, when the defendant uses wrongful force or threats to wrest control over the victim's business decisions, the defendant obtains that property interest." (Brief of United States Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson in the case of Joseph Scheidler v. National Organization for Women, December 4, 2002.) 

Yes, the "pro-life" George Walker Bush administration authorized its Solicitor General to argue before the Supreme Court of the United States of America that abortuaries are legitimate businesses whose economic well-being was "threatened" by the sidewalk counseling activities of Joe Scheidler. Do you see how the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic system of government is a farce from beginning to end? And even though the Supreme Court of the United States of America rendered the correct decision in the case of Joseph Scheidler v. National Organization for Women on February 26, 2003 (see Justice for a True Pro-Life Hero), the ever-mercurial nature of American jurisprudence guarantees nothing about the future as such jurisprudence, both for "strict constructionists" and "liberal judicial activists" is founded in an interpretation of the words of men in written documents without making any reference at all to the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law as these have been entrusted exclusively to the infallible teaching authority of the Catholic Church.

Not to be outdone, the contemptible Eric Himpton Holder also made war upon pro-life Americans during his time as Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro’s own Minister of Injustice:

Holder's own Department of Justice sought to persecute a woman, Mary Susan Pine, who did sidewalk counseling in the State of Florida, an act of rank administration tyranny and a gross miscarriage of justice and abuse of civil power that was denounced as such by Judge Kenneth Ryskamp, the senior judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida:

The Department of Justice has given up its bid to prosecute a pro-life counselor and agreed to pay her $120,000 in a case a judge said never should have been brought:

Mary Susan Pine, who stands outside abortion clinics and advises women not to have the procedure, was accused of blocking a car from entering a Florida abortion clinic in 2009. In December, a judge threw out the case, in which the government sought $10,000 in fines and a permanent injunction barring Pine from counseling women outside the Presidential Women's Center in West Palm Beach, Fla. The government had been appealing the ruling until it was announced Monday it would no longer pursue the case.

Pine's lawyer said she was a victim of a politically-driven prosecution.

"It is irresponsible for the U.S. Department of Justice to place politics above principle when deciding to prosecute, and thus attempt to silence, a pro-life sidewalk counselor without any evidence of wrongdoing," Mathew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, said in a statement. "When the nation’s highest law enforcement officer files suit against any citizen, the suit must be based on the law coupled with compelling evidence. Anything less is an abuse of the high office."

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice defended prosecution decision as "based on the facts presented during our investigations and the applicable federal laws." In Pine's case, "the department made a decision to settle with the defendant rather than continue with costly litigation."

Florida District Judge Kenneth Ryskamp said in December the case appeared to be part of a "concerted effort" between the government and the Presidential Women's Center.

"The Court is at a loss as to why the government chose to prosecute this particular case in the first place,” Ryskamp wrote in a summary judgment order against the feds. “The court can only wonder whether this action was the product of a concerted effort between the government and PWC, which began well before the date of the incident at issue, to quell Ms. Pine’s activities rather than to vindicate the rights of those allegedly aggrieved by Ms. Pine’s conduct."

Under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) federal law, DOJ officials alleged that Pine obstructed a car from entering the Florida abortion clinic on Nov. 19, 2009.

Pine, who could not be reached for comment, had denied obstructing any vehicle from entering the clinic. (DOJ officials drops appeal, pays Florida pro-life sidewalk counselor.)

Janet Reno, Eric Himpton Holder, Loretta Lynch, and Merrick Garland have all played the same pro-baby-killing tunes. All that Merrick Garland is doing is turning up the volume, something that he is able to because most Catholics today, living in a milieu of religious indifferentism (“one religion is a good as another or no religion at all;” “it does not matter what one believes, if anything, as long as he is a ‘good person’) and of a secularized version of Calvinist materialism, do not care what happens to pro-life activists because do not care about the daily slaughter of innocent unborn children by chemical and/or surgical means.

No rational, sane Catholic can look at the sobering facts below and still conclude that there is any chance to restore full and unconditional protection to all innocent human lives, including those threatened at present by the medical industry’s manufactured profit-making myth called “brain death” to facilitate human organ vivisection and transplantation, starvation and dehydration, and by “quality of life” standard that is the basis  of global health care and thus serves as the foundation of “palliative care” and “hospice.” Interjections will be made as deemed pertinent:

He wears a rosary on his wrist, attends Mass weekly, and remains the only Catholic president in United States history other than John F. Kennedy. And yet, a clear majority of Catholic voters would prefer that President Biden not return to the Oval Office.

Interjection Number One:

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., does not attend Holy Mass weekly. He thinks he attends Holy Mass. Most Catholics around the world think that he attends Holy Mass. What Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., and other Catholics think is irrelevant as the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service is not the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass (see, for example, G.I.R.M. Warfare: The Conciliar Church's Unremitting Warfare Against Catholic Faith and Worship.)

When asked if the president should run for a second term, 58.4% replied “no.” Only 22.2% said “yes.” Rough results, but Biden shouldn’t take them too personally.

According to a recent RealClear Opinion Research survey done in concert with Catholic television network EWTN, these voters would like to see a change in the leadership of both major political parties. Catholics have also soured on Biden’s predecessor, and another clear majority, 63.3%, report that they do not want to see Donald Trump on the ballot in 2024.

The results are telling, given that Catholics were a key demographic in the last presidential election. And while they continue to be a significant subset of the electorate, representing roughly one-fourth of U.S. voters, their views increasingly mirror the concerns of non-Catholics.

Like the rest of the country, the Catholic view of the Catholic president is split. They might worship the same way on Sunday, but then this demographic diverges over the way Biden does his job the rest of the week. A slight majority, 51.8%, disapprove of his performance. Another 46.2%, meanwhile, approve. There is a notable difference in intensity of feeling: 47.2% report "strong disapproval” of the president compared to just 14.2% who “strongly approve” of him.

Those numbers might sting when the White House reads them. The survey won’t shock them, though. Biden World has had to develop thick callouses to handle overwhelmingly negative polling. In fact, the president has been underwater since last summer, a position that has improved somewhat but not completely. Today in the RealClearPolitics Average, Biden has an approval rating of just 42.4%.

Interjection Number Two:

Keep in mind that these poll numbers were tabulated in survey sponsored by the Eternally Wishful Television Network (EWTN), and it is very telling that nearly half of the Catholics of voting age in the United States of America approve of the way in which Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., has advanced a militantly pro-abortion agenda, calumniated Americans who voted against him in 2020, opened the borders, turned his Minister of Injustice Merrick Garland loose to claim that parents complaining about Marxism’s “critical race theory” are “domestic terrorists” and to terrorize believing Catholics who are working to save the lives of the innocent preborn while slow-walking an investigation into First Grifter Hunter Biden’s trafficking of the Biden family name to get make deals with Red Chinese, Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs, cancelled the leases on Federal lands for the drilling of shale oil and natural gas, and advanced such insanity as “gender equity.” Inflation and violent crime in the nation’s cities are out of control. Yet it is that nearly half the Catholic population of voting age in the United States of America support a moral reprobate who has weaponized his Ministry of Injustice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation against those who oppose him because they are disseminating what he claims is “disinformation.”

That nearly half of Catholic voters approve Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr’s., disastrous job performance is, however, but a consequence of Americanism, which is an important, foundational building block of conciliarism, and of the counterfeit church of conciliarism’s indemnification of Catholics in public life who support grave moral evils that cry out to Heaven for vengeance.

The story, though, gets worse:

Catholic voters are obviously concerned about the economy like everyone else. Inflation, according to 34.2% of respondents, was the top problem facing the country. The economy and jobs were a related but distant second with 19.7%.

An overwhelming majority, 53.9%, ranked those intertwined challenges as their top concern. Abortion and immigration tied for a distant third place in the minds of Catholic voters, with 10% each.

Interjection Number Three:

Only ten percent of Catholics believe that the daily slaughter of the innocent preborn by chemical or surgical means is a top problem facing the United States of America even though the American genocide and dehumanization of innocent children has led directly to the dehumanization and victimization of innocent human beings minding their own business in the safety of their homes, when walking on the streets, driving in their cars, waiting for a subway, and, of course, in the supposedly “professional” environment of hospitals, nursing homes, and other “healthcare” facilities by means of “brain death”/human organ vivisection, the starvation and dehydration of patients, and by the entire “quality of life” standard that is meant to lead patients into agreeing to the expediting of their own deaths by means of “palliative care”/hospice.

Ten percent of Catholics believe that the killing of innocent children should determine the electoral choices they make when voting.

Ten percent.

Ten lousy percent.

How is this possible?

Well, as noted earlier, most Catholics in the United States of America have been so immersed in the ethos of pluralism and so deceived by religious indifferentism that they view the Faith through the eyes of Americanism rather than viewing the world through the eyes of the Holy Faith, something that Pope Leo XIII himself noted in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899, seventy-three years to the day before the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton:

The underlying principle of these new opinions is that, in order to more easily attract those who differ from her, the Church should shape her teachings more in accord with the spirit of the age and relax some of her ancient severity and make some concessions to new opinions. Many think that these concessions should be made not only in regard to ways of living, but even in regard to doctrines which belong to the deposit of the faith. They contend that it would be opportune, in order to gain those who differ from us, to omit certain points of her teaching which are of lesser importance, and to tone down the meaning which the Church has always attached to them. It does not need many words, beloved son, to prove the falsity of these ideas if the nature and origin of the doctrine which the Church proposes are recalled to mind. The Vatican Council says concerning this point: “For the doctrine of faith which God has revealed has not been proposed, like a philosophical invention to be perfected by human ingenuity, but has been delivered as a divine deposit to the Spouse of Christ to be faithfully kept and infallibly declared. Hence that meaning of the sacred dogmas is perpetually to be retained which our Holy Mother, the Church, has once declared, nor is that meaning ever to be departed from under the pretense or pretext of a deeper comprehension of them.” -Constitutio de Fide Catholica, Chapter iv. Pope Leo XIII, Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899.)

Far from being a “phantom heresy,” Americanism was one of the most insidious heresies of all time and its spirit is, as mentioned earlier, at the very foundation of the counterfeit church of conciliarism’s “reconciliation” with the Judeo-Masonic anti-Incarnation spirit of Modernity, and it had a committed progenitor, Father Thomas Isaac Hecker, and fervent episcopal evangelists in the persons of Archbishop John Ireland and James Cardinal Gibbons.

As Monsignor Henri Delassus demonstrated, the spirit of Father Isaac Thomas Hecker, the founder of the Society of Saint Paul, and other Americanists fit very well into the goals of Talmudic Judaism to undermine the Faith of individual Catholics so that their first loyalties would be to the false concepts of Modernity, including Americanism, and then to their Church, which, if all went according to the plan, would itself one day “adopt” the false concepts of Modernity and make its “peace” with the revolutions of 1776 and 1789:

How so? Fr. Hecker tells us: “A call is made to men who possess this new synthesis of truth who are able to solve the problems of eliminating antagonisms, of being reconciled with the need of our era; of men who will take hold of all the aspirations of modern genius effected by science, of social activity, of politics, of spirituality (accordingly, spirituality itself would be called upon to defend the Church and to procure her universal triumph), of religion, and of the transformation of everything by means of the defense and universal triumph for the Church” (The Life of Fr. Hecker.)

Those who are not made aware of the world’s current direction by the information that they derive from the newspaper–and this is the vast majority–will undoubtedly be surprised, in speaking to them of “Americanism” and of an “American Catholicism,” we begin by calling their attention to the “Universal Israelite Alliance,” entering through there upon a question, the Jewish Question, that presently fascinates the world and that is studied under every point of view, but which does not take into account, appears to be removed from, American Catholicism. This is nevertheless not imaginary on our part. The Universal Israelite Alliance is the center, the home, the bond of the antichristian conspiracy, by which Americanism seems to us to provide a support that it is not aware of which would not be given if it were understood and upon which this book is determined to direct its attention …

One of the most malicious men of this [19th] century, the Jew [Jules Isaac] Cremieux, who was made grand Master of the French Grand Orient, who profited by the Revolution of 1848 [in France] by being raised to the Ministry of Justice, and by the disasters of 1870 which gave French citizenship to all the Jews of Algeria, founded in 1860 a cosmopolitan society which he endowed with the name of Universal Israelite Alliance. This association is not, as its name would have one believe, one of international Jewry, a bond to better facilitate links between Jews scattered around the surface of the globe; its aims bear upon something much more higher. It is an association open to all men without distinction of nationality nor of religion, under the high direction of Israel.

In order to be convinced of this, it is sufficient to open the publication that represents it, The Israelite Archives. “The Universal Israelite Alliance,” it says there (xxx, pp. 514-515, for the year 1861), “must enter into all religions as it has penetrated all countries. I call to our association the brothers of every religion, that they would come to us! … That enlightened men of all cults will unite themselves with this Universal Israelite Alliance” (ibid.) And why? “To break down the barriers which separate that which ONE DAY MUST BE UNITED. See there, Messieurs, the beauty, the great mission of Our Universal Israelite Alliance“ (ibid.)

Profiting from their dispersion over every point of the globe, the Jews wish to be in humanity as a sort of leaven, in order to make of human society, presently divided into nations and various religions, “one sole and solid fraternity,”–the Israelite Archives say it less hypocritically: “A Jerusalem of new order, a holy extension from the East to the West, that must EXIT IN ITSELF in the double city of the Caesars and the Popes” (XXV, PP. 600-651, 1861) …

The Jewish race “Jerusalem” intends to establish its reign over the entire world. “East and West,” by establishing its authority upon the ruins of all existing powers. “Caesars and Popes.” All authority must disappear in order to make way for the domination of Juda, which “will take the place” of all the existing powers in the spiritual order as well as in the temporal order  …

… We see here that other idea advanced, the idea of the United States of Europe, parallel to the United States of America  …

Here again, one could compare a strange accord between the ideas of the Americanists and the tendencies of those who obey the promptings given by the Universal Israelite Alliance. A most ardent promoter of Americanism, in a discourse given in 1894 to the International Scientific Congress of Catholics at Brussels, had this to say:

“We have thought that the opportunity has been provided us of giving to the ENTIRE WORLD a great lesson. When we study the map of Europe, we see there, marks of small divisions. Lines traversing these maps in every sense. They do not indicate only territorial divisions, they signify also: jealousy, hatred, hostility, divisions of hearts, that commits God knows how many millions of armed men for the destruction of the world. Thus, from all these nations, Providence has allowed immigration among us. All nations find themselves at home here [in the USA]; they have been living among themselves, fraternally, without any hostility. This is the privilege that God has granted to America, that of destroying the traditions of national jealousies that of that you have perpetuated in Europe, by melting them down in America unity.”

Read on: “Americanism” [this pompous Americanist continues] “has received from God the mission of giving to the entire world this lesson: the time has come to put an end to the past: abolish frontiers, place all the people in the melting pot of the rights of man by the molding of united humanity, as we [in America] have been founded, we emigrants from all countries, in American unity. And peace shall reign in the world.”

Yes, the peace of the slave under the tyranny of one man or of one race.

As of all the other ideas of the Americanists, that of he abolition of frontiers seems to appeal to our Christian democrats. . . .

So then, if the Talmudists [Orthodox Jews] differ from the liberals [Reform Jews], it is only upon knowing which is the better means to employ in order to accomplish the mission that Israel claims to have received … The Talmudists continue to await a messiah of flesh and bone, who will make them masters of the universe; the liberals say that they do not have any other messiah to expect than the Revolution, “the principles” of which are dissolving of all society and preparing it for their rule. In order to spread these modern “principles,” in order to have them bring about the fruits that they are awaiting, they deem it necessary to separate themselves from those observances to which their fathers had been attached, when they believed that their fidelity would hasten the coming of the personal messiah. This is a cumbersome burden, and what’s more the Jew of this old way could not “make himself acceptable.” He would nevertheless make himself acceptable in the eyes of the people among whom he wished to exercise a “proselytization.”

And in what does this conversion consist? Is it to encourage the faithful of various religions to enter into Judaism? The Jews have never had the thought of making a conversion of this sort; they are a people a race apart, “the premier aristocracy of the world,” the only ones who are truly men; they would never hear of elevating beings such as those who are human only in appearance …

In the first place [The Universal Israelite Alliance] acts upon kings and parliaments in order to apply pressure on them, “this singular, indefatigable influence” that [Gourgenot] des Mousseaux already noted in 1869 [see, The Jew, Judaism and The Judaization of the Christian People, by Mousseaux].

What over and above does it demand? LAICIZATION.

There is no person, who is not blind, who cannot fail to see the prodigious efforts that are being made over the last century towards secularization, that is to say, efforts to remove all religious character from everywhere and everyone. Already, on the very origin of the Revolution, [Count Joseph] de Maistre, had remarked that his had been its essential character. “Examine,” he said, “all the enterprises of this century, you have to see (these men of the Revolution) constantly occupied in the separation from divinity.” It would take too long to show here the many aspects under which the question of laicization or secularization is presented: it spreads itself among all, and in every governmental organ, accordingly, all the forces of society are employed in the success of this work …

Could Americanism, itself also, have come to lend itself to this work that is certainly not intentional? This is what we have already said is to be feared. It is well to examine this thing more closely.

What is certain, what is incontestable, is that between the Jewish spirit and the Americanist spirit there is a point of contact with the principles of ’89 [i.e., the principles of the French Revolution].

We have heard the Jews proclaim and declare the course they are drawing. For the Americans their social and even religious state rests entirely upon these principles; they highly praise them, and the Americanists themselves would have us that “American ideas are those in which GOD wants all the civilized people of our time to be at home.” So they conscientiously make of themselves evangelists.” (Monsignor Henri Delassus, Americanism and the Anti-Christian Conspiracy, translated by Mr. Daniel Leonardi and published by Mr. Hugh Akins of Catholic Action Resources Center, Orlando, Florida, October, 2007–first printing in France, 1899, pp. 2-8.)

Those who deny the role of the “American experience” in serving as an essential building block of conciliarism’s “reconciliation” with a “new world order” is choosing to believe in nationalistic myths rather than the cold, hard facts as brought out by the likes of Fathers Edward Cahill and Denis Fahey in Ireland and Louis Edouard “Cardinal” Pie, Monsignor Henri Delassus and Father Theotime de Just in France. Anyone who does this is also turning a blind eye to the fact that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is as much as an end product of the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic spirit of Americanism that he will be celebrating in just two days in Jordan and Israel.

Thus, that only ten percent of Catholics in the United States of America believe that the daily slaughter of the innocent preborn is the most important issue facing the nation is unsurprising given the fact that the spirit of Americanism inculcated a complete separation of the Faith from public life. This separation of the Faith from public life produced the likes of Mario Matthew Cuomo, Edward Moore Kennedy, Geraldine Ferraro Zaccaro, Christopher Dodd, Edmond Gerald Brown, Jr., Thomas Harkin, Carol Mosely Braun, William Brennan, Patricia Murray, John Kerry, David Patterson, George Elmer Pataki, Rudolph William Giuliani, Richard Durbin, Barbara Mikulski, Hugh Leo Carey, Thomas Ridge, Susan Molinari, Gavin Newsom, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Nancy Patricia D’Alesandro Pelosi, and a veritable cast of other thousands, and this separation of the Holy Faith and public life is at the bedrock of even supposedly “pro-life” Catholics in public life who rarely, if ever, speak in supernatural terms or even bother to oppose all abortions unconditionally, showing themselves to be less committed to the good than the pro-aborts are to their unconditional, no exceptions and no reservations commitment to evil.

As Pope Leo XIII noted in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae:

We cannot consider as altogether blameless the silence which purposely leads to the omission or neglect of some of the principles of Christian doctrine, for all the principles come from the same Author and Master, “the Only Begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father.”-John i, I8. They are adapted to all times and all nations, as is clearly seen from the words of our Lord to His apostles: “Going, therefore, teach all nations; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you all days, even to the end of the world.”-Matt. xxviii, 19. Concerning this point the Vatican Council says: “All those things are to be believed with divine and catholic faith which are contained in the Word of God, written or handed down, and which the Church, either by a solemn judgment or by her ordinary and universal magisterium, proposes for belief as having been divinely revealed.”-Const. de fide, Chapter iii.

Let it be far from anyone’s mind to suppress for any reason any doctrine that has been handed down. Such a policy would tend rather to separate Catholics from the Church than to bring in those who differ. There is nothing closer to our heart than to have those who are separated from the fold of Christ return to it, but in no other way than the way pointed out by Christ.

The rule of life laid down for Catholics is not of such a nature that it cannot accommodate itself to the exigencies of various times and places. (VOL. XXIV-13.) The Church has, guided by her Divine Master, a kind and merciful spirit, for which reason from the very beginning she has been what St. Paul said of himself: “I became all things to all men that I might save all.”

History proves clearly that the Apostolic See, to which has been entrusted the mission not only of teaching but of governing the whole Church, has continued “in one and the same doctrine, one and the same sense, and one and the same judgment,” — Const. de fide, Chapter iv. . . .

But, beloved son, in this present matter of which we are speaking, there is even a greater danger and a more manifest opposition to Catholic doctrine and discipline in that opinion of the lovers of novelty, according to which they hold such liberty should be allowed in the Church, that her supervision and watchfulness being in some sense lessened, allowance be granted the faithful, each one to follow out more freely the leading of his own mind and the trend of his own proper activity. They are of opinion that such liberty has its counterpart in the newly given civil freedom which is now the right and the foundation of almost every secular state.

In the apostolic letters concerning the constitution of states, addressed by us to the bishops of the whole Church, we discussed this point at length; and there set forth the difference existing between the Church, which is a divine society, and all other social human organizations which depend simply on free will and choice of men.  (Pope Leo XIII, Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899.)

Pope Leo XIII saw these problems clearly one hundred twenty-three years ago. It is a telling failure on the part of most, although not quite all, American bishops prior to the “Second” Vatican Council and almost every single American “bishop” thereafter not only failed to comprehend the Americanist heresy that undermined the Faith’s influence upon ordinary Catholics insofar as electoral politics is concerned but were active apologists for its false precepts.

This is why the issue of the chemical and surgical slaughter of the innocent babies in the sanctuaries, of their mothers’ wombs is of so little account in the mind of most Catholics and why they almost evenly divided about baby-killing in the wake of the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the case of Thomas E. Dobbs, Mississippi State Health Officer v.  Jackson Women’s Organization:  

Abortion tied with immigration as the third most important concern on the mind of Catholic voters. Despite the teaching of the church, however, Catholics remain split. On the question of abortion restrictions post-Roe, 46.2% said that each state should determine its own abortion policy, while another 47.8% were in line with the White House, reporting that abortion should instead be a federally protected right.

Framing the question in light of the coming midterms didn’t change the result. Pollsters asked voters if they were more or less likely to support a candidate who agreed with overturning Roe, allowing each state to determine abortion policy.

Exactly 42% said they would be “more likely” to do so. Roughly 42% said they were “less likely” . . . .

A contingent of conservative bishops had begun organizing to deny communion to politicians who support abortion, until the Vatican voiced its disapproval late last year. A minority of Catholic voters, 36.7%, disagreed and reported that politicians who are not in line with church teaching on abortion should get out of line for communion. A near majority, however, 49.3%, said that politics should not interfere with a believer partaking of the Eucharist.

The president hardly ever misses Mass. (Key Catholic Demographic Split on Support for Biden.)

Final Interjection:

First, as mentioned earlier in this commentary, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., may think that he is attending Mass every Sunday. Most Catholics in the world may think that he is doing so. However, the objective truth of the matter is that neither most Catholics nor Biden are attending anything other than a sacrilegious exercise in communitarian self-congratulations that has not been in the past, is not now nor can ever be the same thing as the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Second, abortion is not a matter of “politics,” It is a matter of moral truth, and truth does not depend upon human acceptance for its binding force or validity. Truth is. Truth exists, and the truth of the binding precepts of Fifth Commandment are not matters of debate or discussion of any kind.

God has commanded.

We must obey.

It is that simple.

Third, that Catholics are in any way divided about the binding precepts of the Fifth Commandment is nothing other than a scandalous indictment of the American “bishops’” constant refusal to impose the medicinal balm of excommunication upon Catholics in public life who support grave moral evils despite the occasional Bert Lahr-like growls that some of them make now and again about denying such reprobates what purports to be Holy Communion in the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical travesty.”

Fourth, additionally, there are all too many American “bishops” who have sought to downplay the sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance by having resource to the late Joseph “Cardinal” Bernardin’s “consistent ethic of life” (seamless garment) that has sought to equate the direct, intentional taking of an innocent human life with opposition to the death penalty, which just happens to be part of the Natural Law, support for every manner of Marxist program of income redistribution by means of confiscatory taxing power of the civil state in the name of “ending poverty,” and, of late, protecting “saving the planet” while souls are lost for all eternity.

Fifth, that this division among Catholics exists now is a particularly damning indictment of the entirety of the conciliar system of miseducating Catholics from Kindergarten through colleges/universities, professional schools and seminaries.

The world that existed forty years ago when Ronald Wilson Reagan was President of the United States of America no longer exists. There are no longer relatively large numbers of believing Catholics who are single-issue pro-life voters. Indeed, the numbers of such voters today are miniscule and the numbers of those who remain single-issue pro-life voters who oppose the chemical and surgical execution of innocent children without any exception or qualification is even more miniscule than that as to be infinitesimally microscopic.

The paucity of Catholics who care enough about the American genocide of innocent human beings is such as to embolden the likes of Merrick Garland and his weaponized Ministry of Injustice to unleash the politicized Federal Bureau of Investigation upon those who pose as stumbling blocks to unrestricted baby-killing up to and including the date of birth if not for a time thereafter. These merchants of death, for whose conversion we must pray daily, know that virtually no one cares about reports of the FBI’s storm trooper tactics against Mark Houck or Chet Gallagher any more than they care to know how many babies are put to death in America’s killing mills each day. People are distracted by the plethora of bread and circuses available to them. The terrorization of innocent Americans who are opposed to the prevailing moral evils of the day is just not on the “radar screen” of most people.

Rather than be divided over matters that exist in the nature of things and are thus inarguable, human beings are supposed to be bound together by the common bonds of the Catholic Faith, not to break into warring tribes along ethnic or racial or geographic lines, seething with hatred and resentment at those who have "more" (power, money, fame, prestige, accomplishment) than they do. We are to help each other get home to Heaven as members of the Catholic Church who aspire to make reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary for our sins, fulfilling these words of Saint Paul in his Epistle to the Ephesians as we seek to build up each other as members of the Mystical Body of Christ on earth:

[16] From whom the whole body, being compacted and fitly joined together, by what every joint supplieth, according to the operation in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body, unto the edifying of itself in charity. This then I say and testify in the Lord: That henceforward you walk not as also the Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind, [18] Having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their hearts. [19] Who despairing, have given themselves up to lasciviousness, unto the working of all uncleanness, unto the working of all uncleanness, unto covetousness. [20] But you have not so learned Christ;

[21] If so be that you have heard him, and have been taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus: [22] To put off, according to former conversation, the old man, who is corrupted according to the desire of error. [23] And be renewed in the spirit of your mind: [24] And put on the new man, who according to God is created in justice and holiness of truth. [25] Wherefore putting away lying, speak; ye the truth every man with his neighbour; for we are members one of another.

[26] Be angry, and sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your anger. [27] Give not place to the devil. [28] He that stole, let him now steal no more; but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have something to give to him that suffereth need. [29] Let no evil speech proceed from your mouth; but that which is good, to the edification of faith, that it may administer grace to the hearers. [30] And grieve not the holy Spirit of God: whereby you are sealed unto the day of redemption.

[31] Let all bitterness, and anger, and indignation, and clamour, and blasphemy, be put away from you, with all malice. [32] And be ye kind one to another; merciful, forgiving one another, even as God hath forgiven you in Christ.  (Ephesians 4: 16-32.)

This spirit of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, He Who is the King of all men and all nations whether or not they know or accept Him as such, is far, far from the wretched, darkened hearts of haters such as Bidens and Garland, people intent on "remedying" every past injustice imaginable as they seek to persecute those who disagree with what they believe to be their "infallible" ideological agenda that they pursue relentlessly in behalf of one objectively grave evil after another.

As a consequence of this warfare, Catholics all across and up and down the vast expense of the ecclesiastical divide are prone to live in fear of the statists who are attempting to control all aspects of national life as they monitor a good deal of our own daily activities. This fear is very misplaced.

Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ told us not to fear those who can kill the body but who cannot kill the soul. We have only to fear the devil, who can destroy both body and soul and throw us into Hell for all eternity. In other words, the only thing we have to fear is dying in a state of unrepented Mortal Sin, dying in a state of final impenitence:

Behold I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves. Be ye therefore wise as serpents and simple as doves. But beware of men. For they will deliver you up in councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues. And you shall be brought before governors, and before kings for my sake, for a testimony to them and to the Gentiles: But when they shall deliver you up, take no thought how or what to speak: for it shall be given you in that hour what to speak. For it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you.

The brother also shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the son: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and shall put them to death. And you shall be hated by all men for my name's sake: but he that shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved. And when they shall persecute you in this city, flee into another. Amen I say to you, you shall not finish all the cities of Israel, till the Son of man come. The disciple is not above the master, nor the servant above his lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord. If they have called the goodman of the house Beelzebub, how much more them of his household?

Therefore fear them not. For nothing is covered that shall not be revealed: nor hid, that shall not be known. That which I tell you in the dark, speak ye in the light: and that which you hear in the ear, preach ye upon the housetops. And fear ye not them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and not one of them shall fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.

Fear not therefore: better are you than many sparrows. Every one therefore that shall confess me before men, I will also confess him before my Father who is in heaven. But he that shall deny me before men, I will also deny him before my Father who is in heaven. Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

And a man's enemies shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not up his cross, and followeth me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life, shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for me, shall find it. He that receiveth you, receiveth me: and he that receiveth me, receiveth him that sent me. (Matthew 10: 16-40.) 

The Cross is ever present in our lives. There is never any fleeing from the Cross. If we truly understand the Faith and reject all naturalistic influences, we will come to accept the fact that the Cross is waiting for us at every moment of our lives. No matter what decisions we might make as to which fork in the road to take at a given time, we can be sure of one thing: the Cross will be waiting for us all along either path. The Cross is our hope. The Cross is the means of our salvation. The Cross of the Divine Redeemer is the glory of our Catholic Faith. Catholics glory in that Cross. They do not shrink from it, and they recognize that every difficulty, every misunderstanding, every physical or emotional or spiritual pain, every humiliation, every calumny, and every rejection is meant to give us a share in the Cross of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as we give whatever merit we earn to Him through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. And we must recognize the simple truth that there is more merit for us when the crosses that we are asked to bear are hidden from public view and others make judgments about us based on a complete ignorance of those hidden crosses that are meant to be revealed only on the Last Day at the General Judgment of the Living and the Dead.

It is certainly true that Catholics in previous times of persecution took prudent measures to protect themselves. Catholics during the episodic persecutions undertaken against them by Roman emperors and their minions between 67 A.D. and 313 A.D. (and for a while longer in some parts of the Roman Empire) assisted at Holy Mass in the catacombs. Catholics during the time of the Protestant Revolt in England in the Sixteenth Century had Holy Masses offered in their homes clandestinely. Some of those Catholics had what were known as "priest holes" in their homes, hiding places to keep their priests from the minions of King Henry VIII or his immediate successor, his son, King Edward VI, or, very notoriously, his daughter by the Jezebel known as Anne Boleyn, Queen Elizabeth I, who hired the wretched Richard Topcliffe, known as the "priest-catcher," who captured and tortured numerous priests, including Blessed Robert Southwell, S.J. Among Elizabeth I's other famous Jesuit victims was, of course, Blessed Edmund Campion, S.J., who used various disguises to stave off what he knew would be his inevitable arrest and execution. And, of course, Japanese Catholics maintained the Faith for a period of two hundred fifty years in the underground with only the Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Matrimony following the persecutions against them at the end of the Sixteenth Century and the beginning of the Seventeenth Century.

Although Catholics in these—and many other—periods of persecutions took prudent measures to protect themselves, they were ever willing to embrace the Cross and to accept martyrdom with joy as the means by which they could glorify the Most Blessed Trinity and to save their immortal souls as they bore witness to the one and only true Faith, Catholicism. Catholics in each of these periods of persecution knew that the civil authorities and/or enemies of the Cross of the Divine Redeemer in various false religions employed sophisticated networks of spies to try to catch them in a "forbidden" act of worship or some "forbidden" speech that sought to proselytize in behalf of the true Faith. These Catholics did not leave in fear of the spies. Neither should we.

That is, there are far, far more sophisticated and intrusive means today by which the enemies of the Faith can spy upon us. Even the very instrument on which these words are being typed, a computer, can be used against us. Although there are various "spy-busting" software programs designed to "catch" efforts to plant "bugs" in our computer that monitor our use of the internet, it is a fact of life that those intent on gaining knowledge about us and our beliefs can do so more readily than ever before.

What can we do?

Go into a cocoon?

No.

We must recognize that the intrusiveness that exists at this time is part of the Chastisement that is being visited upon us for our own sins—and some of us deserve a Chastisement far worse that God in His infinite and ineffable Mercy permits us to suffer!—and those of the whole world.

Our first Pope, Saint Peter, writing under the inspiration of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, has given us our marching orders about how to deal with the statist spies who have a variety of different--and mostly subtle, at least up to now--ways of applying pressure upon us to conform to the "received wisdom" of their statist paymasters:

Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, to refrain yourselves from carnal desires which war against the soul, Having your conversation good among the Gentiles: that whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may, by the good works, which they shall behold in you, glorify God in the day of visitation. Be ye subject therefore to every human creature for God's sake: whether it be to the king as excelling; Or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of the good: For so is the will of God, that by doing well you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men:

As free, and not as making liberty a cloak for malice, but as the servants of God. Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king. Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. For this is thankworthy, if for conscience towards God, a man endure sorrows, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if committing sin, and being buffeted for it, you endure? But if doing well you suffer patiently; this is thankworthy before God.

For unto this are you called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example that you should follow his steps. Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth. Who, when he was reviled, did not revile: when he suffered, he threatened not: but delivered himself to him that judged him unjustly. Who his own self bore our sins in his body upon the tree: that we, being dead to sins, should live to justice: by whose stripes you were healed. For you were as sheep going astray; but you are now converted to the shepherd and bishop of your souls. (1 Peter 2: 11-25.)

There are countless examples of saints who converted unbelievers or apostates to the Faith during the midst of persecutions. The confident bravery of Catholics who weathered torture with trust in Our Lord and His Most Blessed Mother, the Acts of Faith, Hope, and Charity, and Contrition uttered by Catholics facing execution for their beliefs as they refused to pay any esteem whatsoever to the very false religions that are esteemed so readily today by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and his conciliar "bishops," the quiet acceptance of the loss of friends and even family members for the love of the true God Who has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His Catholic Church, the kind words offered to their jailers by Catholics who have been imprisoned for the Faith, the performance of the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy in the midst of the most excruciating torments imaginable, yes, all of these and so many other means have been used by Catholics in the midst of being spied upon and persecuted simply because they desired to obey God rather than men and would not give up the Catholic Faith.

Holy Mother Church gives us these saints to be our intercessors, yes. She also gives them to us to be our examples as to how to accept our daily crosses, whether large or small, and to give thanks to God for each and every one of them, rejoicing that He loves us so much as to give us opportunities to manifest our love for Him as He has revealed Himself to us through His true Church as we make reparation for our sins and those of the whole world by giving all of our prayers and sufferings and humiliations and penitential acts that are seen and known only by Him to Him through His Most Blessed Mother's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

The first Successor of Saint Peter as the Bishop of Rome and the Vicar of Christ, Saint Linus, gave up his life willingly in imitation of the One Whose Vicar he was, imitating as well the martyrdom of Saint Peter himself. The Chief Shepherd of the flock of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ gave up his very life for the sheep for whom his Divine Master had shed every single drop of His Most Blessed Blood to redeem. We should pray to Saint Linus every day to help us to cooperate with the graces that Our Lady sends to us that have been won for us by the shedding of Our Lord's Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross, which must be our glory each day of our lives, just as Saint Paul taught us in his First Epistle to the Corinthians:

But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumblingblock, and unto the Gentiles foolishness: But unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. (1 Cor. 1: 23-25.)

According to Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, over eleven million Catholics gave up their lives between 67 A.D. and 313 A.D. rather than to renounce the Faith and/or to partake in false worship. Pope Saint Linus and Saint Thecla were two of these saints, each of whom should inspire us not to take lightly these words of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ that were included in the quotation at the beginning of this brief article that came from the Gospel according to Saint Matthew:

And fear ye not them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell. (Matthew 10: 28.)

We fear not them that the kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul, and this includes all of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.’s., minions such as Merrick Garland. Once again, we must pray for our persecutors and do good to those who persecute us, but we do not fear them in their crusade to make it appear that those who defend the Catholic Faith are enemies of the state worthy of being dehumanized in the same manner that preborn babies have been dehumanized.

Pope Leo XIII recounted the fact that Catholics were considered by the caesars of yore to be enemies of the state and called to mind Saint Augustine of Hippo’s refutation of this false charge that has been repeated almost constantly since the time of the Protestant and French Revolutions:

The Catholic Church, that imperishable handiwork of our all-merciful God, has for her immediate and natural purpose the saving of souls and securing our happiness in heaven. Yet, in regard to things temporal, she is the source of benefits as manifold and great as if the chief end of her existence were to ensure the prospering of our earthly life. And, indeed, wherever the Church has set her foot she has straightway changed the face of things, and has attempered the moral tone of the people with a new civilization and with virtues before unknown. All nations which have yielded to her sway have become eminent by their gentleness, their sense of justice, and the glory of their high deeds.

2. And yet a hackneyed reproach of old date is leveled against her, that the Church is opposed to the rightful aims of the civil government, and is wholly unable to afford help in spreading that welfare and progress which justly and naturally are sought after by every well-regulated State. From the very beginning Christians were harassed by slanderous accusations of this nature, and on that account were held up to hatred and execration, for being (so they were called) enemies of the Empire. The Christian religion was moreover commonly charged with being the cause of the calamities that so frequently befell the State, whereas, in very truth, just punishment was being awarded to guilty nations by an avenging God. This odious calumny, with most valid reason, nerved the genius and sharpened the pen of St. Augustine, who, notably in his treatise, “The City of God,” set forth in so bright a light the worth of Christian wisdom in its relation to the public wealth that he seems not merely to have pleaded the cause of the Christians of his day, but to have refuted for all future times impeachments so grossly contrary to truth. The wicked proneness, however, to levy like charges and accusations has not been lulled to rest. Many, indeed, are they who have tried to work out a plan of civil society based on doctrines other than those approved by the Catholic Church. Nay, in these latter days a novel conception of law has begun here and there to gain increase and influence, the outcome, as it is maintained, of an age arrived at full stature, and the result of progressive liberty. But, though endeavors of various kinds have been ventured on, it is clear that no better mode has been devised for the building up and ruling the State than that which is the necessary growth of the teachings of the Gospel. We deem it, therefore, of the highest moment, and a strict duty of Our apostolic office, to contrast with the lessons taught by Christ the novel theories now advanced touching the State. By this means We cherish hope that the bright shining of the truth may scatter the mists of error and doubt, so that one and all may see clearly the imperious law of life which they are bound to follow and obey. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

This what is happening here and now in the United States of America and elsewhere in the world. The Protestant Revolution’s overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King and the subsequent rise and triumph, albeit temporary, of Judeo-Masonry cannot be stopped by means merely natural. We are being chastised for our sins, our lukewarmness, our lack of fidelity to our prayers, and our constant compromises with worldliness. It is thus necessary to be fortified by the armor of the Holy Faith by doing penance for our sins and praying for our own daily conversion as well as that of all others without fearing the powers of the civil state as our battle is not with them but with the principalities and powers of the lower world:

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

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

We just have to be about the business each day of pleasing God as He has revealed Himself to us through His true Church, seeking, wherever possible, to get to true offerings of Holy Mass by true bishops and true priests who make no concessions to conciliarism, spending time in prayer before Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament, praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit, praying to our Guardian Angels, who behold the very Beatific Vision of the Most Blessed Trinity as they serve us here on earth, to help us keep aware of the Divine Presence at all times, praying to Saint Joseph, the Patron of the Universal Church and the Protector of the Faithful, to help us see the Providence of God in all of the events of our lives, recognizing that our lives could be demanded of us this night (cf. Luke 12: 20: " But God said to him: Thou fool, this night do they require thy soul of thee: and whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?").

The devil and his minions are spying on us every day to find ways to trap us into losing our souls.

An unkind word to a family member.

A thoughtless act of impatience.

A refusal to forgive some injury that we believe was done to us in the past by another.

The nursing of a grudge as a result of that refusal to forgive another as we are forgiven so freely in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance.

The hardness of heart that refuses to see in others the Divine impress.

Sloth in our work and in our family duties.

Our unwillingness to bear crosses willingly.

Our failure to remember that our homes our enthroned to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary and to fulfill the obligations that comes with that home enthronement.

Our resentment at being criticized or rejected.

The pride born of naturalism and semi-Pelagianism that convinces us we can "solve" our own problems and those of society absent a complete subordination to everything taught by the Catholic church.

Oh, yes, our true enemies are spying on us at all times, and these true enemies do not need electronic devices to do so. We should be concerned about these spies as we pray for the conversion of the statists and their corporate sycophants and enablers who might be monitoring our words and actions.

This is a time of suffering, my friends, suffering, and we must suffer as bravely as our martyrs have done in the past.

Consider the examples provided us by some of the Japanese martyrs in the year 1598: 

In the year 1598, at the age of sixty-four, the emperor Taicosama died, well deserving the fires of hell, since he had shed so much blood of the faithful servants of Jesus Christ. He had given orders that after his death he should be ranked among the gods. As his successor he left a son scarcely six years old, under the tutelage of six regents of the empire. At the head of this regency was Daifusama, who profited by his position gradually to usurp the imperial power, and, as we shall see, surpassed his predecessor in cruelty

Daifusama at first believed it to be the best policy to treat the Christians like the rest of his subjects until he could see his authority well established. During the first years of his reign there were only local persecutions that were carried on by secondary tyrants. In 1603, the king of Fingo, named Canzugedono, wishing to compel the nobility of Jateudixiro to deny the Christian faith, the magistrates of this city forcibly dragged into the house of a bonze, a gentleman named John Minami, in order to place upon his head the book of his sect; for this was a sign of apostasy. Magdalen, the wife of the persecuted gentleman, a fervent Christian, followed her husband, crying out: " Take care, my dear John, what you do; if you become faithless to your religion, I will neither speak to you nor see you any more, and I will renounce you as my husband." When the bonze, who was seated on a kind of throne, raised the volume to place it on John s head, the servant of God, not being able to do anything else, spit upon the infamous book.

One of his friends by the name of Simon Taquenda offered a similar resistance, and refused to go to the house of the bonze. The king being informed of what had happened, ordered the governor to have them beheaded, and to have all the members of their families crucified.

As soon as Minami heard of the fate that was awaiting him, he presented himself to the governor. The latter made every effort to gain him over, but could not shake his constancy; he then showed him the order of the the king, and saintly man declared that he desired nothing so much as to sacrifice his life for the God whom he adored. Whereupon he was led into a large hall, where he had to leave his sword; passing then still farther, he was taken in charge by three soldiers, and there appeared upon the scene two executioners armed with cutlasses.

John knelt down, presented his neck, and pronounced the holy names of Jesus and Mary; he received four blows that cut off his head, December 8, in the thirty-first year of his age.

On the same day the governor went to the house of Simon Taquenda, who was his intimate friend, to persuade him to show some sign of submission to the will of the king. As soon as the governor saw him he burst into tears ; Simon, greatly moved, could not restrain his own, and they thus remained for some time without speaking. The governor tried in vain to shake his friend, when Jane, the mother of Simon, entering, he said to her: " Your son refuses to follow my counsel, preserve him and his whole family from death, and do not force me to imbrue my hands in his blood." But his noble mother replied to him with firmness: "If there were questions only of terrestrial goods, your counsel would be good; but, when eternal goods are in question, we must not prefer a transitory life to a felicity that has no end. I envy the happiness of my son, and if I could I would follow him with joy."

This language stung the governor to the quick, and took away from him all hope of overcoming the constancy of his friend. He thereupon withdrew and communicated to an officer, a relative of Simon, that this gentleman had been condemned to death, and that he charged him on the part of the king with the duty to go and behead him in his house. This officer went to the house of his relative, rapped at the door, for it was already night, found the servant of God in prayer, and made known to him the contents of the written order of which he was the bearer. " You could not have brought me," said Simon to him, "more pleasant news; only allow me a few moments to prepare myself for death." This delay was granted him.

The pious gentleman went at once to prostrate himself before an image of our Lord crowned with thorns. After his prayer he visited his mother and his wife, and apprised them of his approaching death. These women, without being disturbed, ordered the domestics to prepare some water, according to the custom the Japanese had of washing themselves when they were invited to a banquet. Simon, having finished his ablutions, put on his richest garments and took leave of his mother and of his wife, not forgetting his servants. When the latter began to cry and utter lamentations, he said to them: "What! do you not rejoice at my happiness? where is your faith ? where is the Christian virtue of which you have shown proofs up to the present time?"

Then his wife, whose name was Agnes, throwing herself at his feet, begged him to cut off her hair. "In this way," she said, "if I survive you, people may not think that I ever wish to have another husband." Simon at first refused the request, but finally yielded at the entreaties of his mother.

He afterwards arranged that three members of the confraternity of Mary should meet him, and to them he spoke thus: " My dear confreres, what a happiness is mine to be able to die as a martyr of Jesus Christ ! What have I done to merit this grace ? " " Yes," replied one of them, named Joachim, " you are happy. Pray to God, when you are in heaven, to make us share in your glory." All knelt down; Simon recited the Confiteor, and the Our Father and Hail Mary three times; then he remained silent for some time, conversing interiorly with his God. His prayer finished, he arose, had the crucifix brought in and the candle lit, took his mother by one hand and his wife by the other, and spoke to them the following words: "I bid you a final farewell; I shall no longer see you in this world, but I count upon seeing you soon in heaven. I go before you to pave the way for you; I shall pray God to permit you to participate in this happiness, and to call you soon to paradise." After this they proceeded to the hall where the sacrifice was to be consummated. One of the associates carried the crucifix, the two others accompanied him with burning candles, and the martyr followed them, holding by the hand his mother and his wife. Then followed the domestics, plunged in the deepest sorrow.

Having reached the hall, the martyr fell upon his knees before the image of the Saviour; his mother and his wife withdrew a little aside; then all made the sign of the, Cross and recited the Confiteor, and three times the Our Father and Hail Mary. At this moment a gentleman, a friend of Simon, entered to bid him farewell; his name was Figida, and he had unfortunately denied his faith. Filled with remorse on witnessing this spectacle, although he did not dare to confess his repentance at that time, he asked his friend as a favor for a bead of a blessed rosary. Simon gave it to him on condition that he would return to Jesus Christ; this the gentleman promised to do. Finally, the martyr having recommended himself to God for the last time, pulled down the collar of his garment, saluted the image of the Saviour by bowing down with his forehead to the ground, and, pronouncing the names of Jesus and Mary, offered his head to the executioner, who cut it off with one blow. One of the associates took it up at once, and placed it upon his own as a mark of veneration. All those that were present uttered a cry at the moment the fatal blow was struck; but the mother and the wife of the martyr appeared to be unmoved, and were silent. Some time afterwards, the mother took the head of her son, kissed it several times, and said: "O beautiful head, now crowned with glory ! O happy Simon, you have given your life to Him who gave his own for you ! My God, who didst sacrifice Thy Son for the love of me, receive my son, who sacrificed himself for Thee." Agnes also approached, kissed the head of her dear husband while moistening it with her tears, and said: " As for myself, I am satisfied; I have a martyr husband who is now in heaven. O Simon ! call me as soon as possible to you, to see and praise with you the Lord our God."

Simon Taquenda died, like John Minami, at the age of thirty-five, December 9, two hours before daybreak. The soldiers who guarded his body testified to having seen, during that same night, a great light descending from heaven and resting above the house of the martyr.

When the two women, Jane and Agnes, had withdrawn, Figida, the converted gentleman, came to visit them; and finding them in tears, said to them: " How is it that you, who showed so much constancy while seeing your dear Simon die, now when he is no more you give your selves up to lamentations?" They answered that what made them weep was because they were still in this life, and because they feared that they would not be thought worthy of martyrdom. Figida, in order to console them, informed them that Magdalen, the widow of Minami, had already been condemned to death, and added that they should not expect to receive better treatment. On hearing this news both fell on their knees to thank God, and their sorrow disappeared. They now had the courage to ask the governor to let them die with the virtuous Magdalen, and this request was granted them.

In fact, towards evening Magdalen was led into the house with a child of about seven years of age, named Louis, who was a nephew of Minami, and whom she had adopted as her son. When they found themselves together, they tenderly embraced each other, happy to die like Jesus Christ on the Cross, according to the order given by the emperor. Then Magdalen, turning towards little Louis, who had been condemned to die with her, told him to prepare himself to depart for heaven, and recommended to him above all not to cease, when he would be on the cross, to repeat till his death the words: "Jesus and Mary." The child answered: "My dear mother, I will not forget to do so as long as I am alive."

At night they were informed that they would have to start for the place of execution. They appeared attired in their finest garments, recommended themselves to God, and set out on the journey. Three palanquins, each carried by two men, were awaiting them at the door. Little Louis was placed with his mother. When they approached the place where the crosses had been prepared, Agnes said: "Jesus, my Saviour, went on foot to Mount Calvary, and should I be carried thither in a litter!" She wished to descend from the palanquin, but she was prevented from doing so, as she was told that the officers would not permit such a thing. Having finally reached their crosses they knelt down to venerate them.

The first that was crucified was the heroic Jane, the mother of Simon. She spoke thus from the height of the cross to the crowd that had surrounded her: "About to appear before God to render to him an account of all my actions, I confess that the Christian religion is the only one in which you can save your soul; open your eyes, and renounce the false divinities. And you, O Christians, do not allow yourselves to be unsettled by the spectacle of our death; there is nothing sweeter than to die for him who died for us." The executioner interrupted her at these words by striking her with the lance. The first blow to her was not mortal, but the second deprived her of life, and thus enabled her to receive the heavenly crown.

It was then Magdalen's turn. Little Louis, seeing his mother bound, offered himself to be also bound to the cross. The executioners raised him on the small cross prepared for him opposite to his mother, who then said to him: "My son, we are going to heaven; take courage, and always say: Jesus! Mary!" While the child was repeating these sacred names, the executioner struck at him with his lance, but missed him; and the little lamb received tranquilly the second blow, which caused his death. Immediately afterwards, the same executioner withdrawing the iron, quite red with the blood of the child, plunged it into the heart of the mother, and thus united the two victims.

There remained yet the innocent Agnes, who having descended from the palanquin, remained kneeling before her cross, and recommended herself to God. The executioners, moved to tears, had not the heart to approach and to tie her to the cross, although she begged them to discharge their duty, and while waiting for them placed herself on that cruel instrument. Then some idolaters, urged on by the inducement of receiving a reward, took courage to take the place of the executioners, but when it became necessary to pierce the victims, not having had any experience, they succeeded in taking away her life only by repeated blows.

Many persons worthy of belief attested having seen a resplendent light over the bodies of the four martyrs at the moment in which they gave up their souls to God. Their history was written by Louis Cerqueyra, Bishop of Japan.

After their death the governor was more enraged than before against the Christians; but God permitted that he should fall into disgrace with the king, who deprived him of his office, and ordered him to appear to render an account of his actions. It is thus that the Lord punishes those who, to please princes, sully their souls; they lose at the same time their souls and the favor of their master. (Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, Victories of the Martyrs, Redemptorist Fathers, 1954 edition, pp. 329-3226. Available also online at: Full text of "The complete ascetical works of St. Alphonsus de Liguori.)

Why do we fear anything that happens to us?

No, we must not fear the caesars of the moment, and we must not fear the lords of Modernism in the counterfeit church of conciliarism who do not believe that it is opportune to spit and revile the images of false religions, each of which they praise as worthy in and of themselves because to do otherwise would be to offend he sensibilities of their adherents, and who have embraced the statism of their counterparts in the world of Modernity with exceptional enthusiasm and zeal.

Indeed, we have nothing to fear at all save dying in a state of Mortal Sin, a state of final impenitence.

It is enough us for, however, to think first, last and always about eternity, accepting whatever kind of suffering God has ordained for us with love, joy, serenity and total gratitude to Him for His generous in helping us erring sinners to make reparation for our sins and thus better save our souls despite our own best efforts, mine included, to go to Hell for all eternity. May please Christ the King to permit us to suffer the loss of our very lives for Him and for His Holy Church. We must have no fear. We must live in peace in these times that God has chosen for us to live and in which we must serve Him as His consecrated slaves through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of His Most Blessed Mother..

Devotion to Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary will help us to be better prepared for eternity and to bear with the crosses of the present time.

Yes, my friends, it is the Rosary that is, after Holy Mass and Eucharistic piety, the chief means by which the evils of the present day will be retarded, and the seeds planted for the Triumph of Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

Instead of babbling on about one naturalistic "solution" after another in alleged "debates" over the issues of the day, we ought to be to be promoting Our Lady's Holy Rosary, which speaks more powerfully of our total reliance upon Christ the King and upon her, Our Immaculate Queen, than all of the meaningless verbiage that passes out like so much gas from the mouth and is typed into computers before it is then lost in the fogs of the minds of men.

Pope Leo XIII, writing in Laetitiae Sanctae, September 8, 1893, noted:

The third evil for which a remedy is needed is one which is chiefly characteristic of the times in which we live. Men in former ages, although they loved the world, and loved it far too well, did not usually aggravate their sinful attachment to the things of earth by a contempt of the things of heaven. Even the right-thinking portion of the pagan world recognized that this life was not a home but a dwelling-place, not our destination, but a stage in the journey. But men of our day, albeit they have had the advantages of Christian instruction, pursue the false goods of this world in such wise that the thought of their true Fatherland of enduring happiness is not only set aside, but, to their shame be it said, banished and entirely erased from their memory, notwithstanding the warning of St. Paul, "We have not here a lasting city, but we seek one which is to come" (Heb. xiii., 4).

When We seek out the causes of this forgetfulness, We are met in the first place by the fact that many allow themselves to believe that the thought of a future life goes in some way to sap the love of our country, and thus militates against the prosperity of the commonwealth. No illusion could be more foolish or hateful. Our future hope is not of a kind which so monopolizes the minds of men as to withdraw their attention from the interests of this life. Christ commands us, it is true, to seek the Kingdom of God, and in the first place, but not in such a manner as to neglect all things else. For, the use of the goods of the present life, and the righteous enjoyment which they furnish, may serve both to strengthen virtue and to reward it. The splendor and beauty of our earthly habitation, by which human society is ennobled, may mirror the splendor and beauty of our dwelling which is above. Therein we see nothing that is not worthy of the reason of man and of the wisdom of God. For the same God who is the Author of Nature is the Author of Grace, and He willed not that one should collide or conflict with the other, but that they should act in friendly alliance, so that under the leadership of both we may the more easily arrive at that immortal happiness for which we mortal men were created.

But men of carnal mind, who love nothing but themselves, allow their thoughts to grovel upon things of earth until they are unable to lift them to that which is higher. For, far from using the goods of time as a help towards securing those which are eternal, they lose sight altogether of the world which is to come, and sink to the lowest depths of degradation. We may doubt if God could inflict upon man a more terrible punishment than to allow him to waste his whole life in the pursuit of earthly pleasures, and in forgetfulness of the happiness which alone lasts for ever.

It is from this danger that they will be happily rescued, who, in the pious practice of the Rosary, are wont, by frequent and fervent prayer, to keep before their minds the glorious mysteries. These mysteries are the means by which in the soul of a Christian a most clear light is shed upon the good things, hidden to sense, but visible to faith, "which God has prepared for those who love Him." From them we learn that death is not an annihilation which ends all things, but merely a migration and passage from life to life. By them we are taught that the path to Heaven lies open to all men, and as we behold Christ ascending thither, we recall the sweet words of His promise, "I go to prepare a place for you." By them we are reminded that a time will come when "God will wipe away every tear from our eyes," and that "neither mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow, shall be any more," and that "We shall be always with the Lord," and "like to the Lord, for we shall see Him as He is," and "drink of the torrent of His delight," as "fellow-citizens of the saints," in the blessed companionship of our glorious Queen and Mother. Dwelling upon such a prospect, our hearts are kindled with desire, and we exclaim, in the words of a great saint, "How vile grows the earth when I look up to heaven!" Then, too, shall we feel the solace of the assurance "that which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory" (2 Cor. iv., 17).

Here alone we discover the true relation between time and eternity, between our life on earth and our life in heaven; and it is thus alone that are formed strong and noble characters. When such characters can be counted in large numbers, the dignity and well-being of society are assured. All that is beautiful, good, and true will flourish in the measure of its conformity to Him who is of all beauty, goodness, and truth the first Principle and the Eternal Source. (Pope Leo XIII, Laetitiae Sanctae, September 8, 1893.) 

I will never tire of reminding the readers of this site that Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order.

I will never tire of opposing the lies of naturalism and of documenting the various ways in which the naturalists of the false opposites of the "right" and of the "left" agree on the same basic anti-Incarnational and semi-Pelagian principles upon which the Modern state is based and with which conciliar revolutionaries have made their "official reconciliation" and even help to propagate by means of the "new evangelization."

And I will never tire of reminding readers of this site that we must, as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, use the shield of the Brown Scapular and the weapon of the Most Holy Rosary to combat the forces of the world, the flesh and the devil in our own lives so that we might be able to plant a few seeds for the glorious day when all men and all women everywhere will exclaim:

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady, Refuge of Sinners, 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 John Leonard, pray for us.

Saints Dionysius, Rusticus, and Eleutherius, pray for us.

Appendix

Dom Prosper Gueranger on the Feasts of Saints Dionysius, Eleutherius, and Rusticus

Ushered in by Bridget the northern prophetess, Dionysius appears as the brightest star in that constellation of mystics, which illumines the close of the cycle with the first glimmers of eternal union. Soon we shall salute Teresa of Jesus, and her guide Peter of Alcantara; while from the shades of his Obscure night, John of the cross will rise in glory next month near to the great St. Gertrude.

The Man-God began to do and to teach, gave us first example then doctrine; so too the Church, in her liturgical year, first sets before us the examples of the saints, and afterwards teaches us the rules of sanctity as formulated by these holy ones themselves. Strong in the results she has obtained, she now seems to rest in the security gained by experience, and, as in the proper of the time, of which that of the saints is the faithful echo, she yields to her desire of seeing her children able to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth. To know also the charity of Christ, which surpasseth all knowledge, that they may be filled unto all the fullness of God. Is not this the good work which the apostle prays may be perfected in us by that last day, for which these weeks after Pentecost are preparing us, viz: the perfect justice, the fruit of love in its full development? But this development of love cannot be without the progress of the soul in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; and that approving of better things, of which St. Paul speaks, can be acquired only by the imitation of the saints or the study of their works.

Today the incomparable teacher Dionysius presides over the assembly of the faithful. With east and west let us keep silence; for it behooveth the master to speak and teach, and it beseemeth the disciple to hold his peace and listen.

“Every best gift, and every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights. Every emanation of splendor overflowing from the divine goodness upon man, reacts in him as a principle of spiritual simplification and of heavenly union; and by its own power leads him back towards the sovereign unity and godlike simplicity of the Father. For all things come from God, and return to God.

“By the very fact that they exist, inanimate objects partake of God, who, by the sublimity of His Essence, is the being of all that is. Living things partake of His vital energy, which is superior to all life. Rational and intellectual creatures partake of His wisdom, which surpasses all reason and intelligence. The various beings approach nearer to the Divinity, in proportion as they partake of It in more ways.

“It is a general law, that divine graces are communicated to the lower orders through the ministry of the higher. The indivisible Trinity, who possesses Divinity by nature, has established the hierarchy of the deification of all beings, whether rational or purely spiritual. For salvation is possible only to deified spirits. As deification is nothing else but the attainment of union with God, and resemblance to Him, the aim of the hierarchy is to assimilate and unite to God; first of all by the absolute retrenchment of all that is contrary to His love; then by the knowledge of sacred truths; by the participation in the simplicity of Him who is One, and by the nuptial banquet of the vision.

“The order of all hierarchy is therefore this: that some should be purified, and others should purify; that some should be enlightened, and others should enlighten; that some should be perfected, and others should work that perfection. Every function it imposes, tends to the twofold end of receiving and of giving purity, light, and perfect holiness.

“The first hierarchy of blessed spirits receives the first influx of the virtues of Jesus the supreme initiator, and imitates Him in the highest manner. This first hierarchy is obeyed by the second, the second by the third, and the third by the hierarchy of men. And thus, by a divine harmony they rise, one by means of another, towards Him who is the beginning and the end of all beautiful order.

“As each hierarchy includes Powers of three different ranks, the same wonderful harmony exists between these several ranks. Moreover, in every intelligence, human or angelic, are to be found faculties corresponding to the three orders of each hierarchy. It is by passing through these successive degrees, that spirits partake, according to their capacity, of purity, light, and unlimited perfection. For nothing is perfect in itself; nothing is incapable of further progress, save Him who is the primitive and infinite perfection.

“The blessed inhabitants of heaven, who have nothing sensible or corporeal, God attracts and raises to divine things, not by exterior means; He causes the pure rays and intelligible splendors of His adorable will to shine within them. What is thus imparted to them directly and in unity, is transmitted to us as it were in fragments, under the multiplicity of varied symbols: in the holy Scripture; in the figures wherein our hierarchy, adapting itself to human nature, shrouds for us the mystery of divine regeneration and all the other holy mysteries; and again, in the harmony of the universe, which shows forth the images and footprints of the divine ideas.

“Though all things speak of God to man, not one of them speaks aright. God is accessible to the understanding, to reason, to science; He is discerned by the sensibility, by thought, by the imagination; in a word, He can be named; nevertheless He is incomprehensible, ineffable, nameless. Everything reveals Him to all men, and yet nothing manifests Him to anyone. Everything may be predicated of Him, as being the universal cause; but as He is beyond all expression, everything may be more truly denied of Him.

“Hence many, in their progress towards God, are not content with passing beyond the starting point of exterior senses necessary to our nature, but rise beyond the manifold operations of reasoning and argumentation. As the senses are a hindrance, when the soul applies herself to intelligible things by the pure understanding; so the intellectual faculty itself becomes useless when the divinized soul, sublimely ignorant, forgetful of all things, plunges herself into the abyss of unfathomable wisdom. The simple adhesion of the angelic natures to Him who surpasses all knowledge, has become the property of these souls; emulating the angels, they have attained the aim of all hierarchy, by becoming as entirely as possible united with God.

“Guide of Christians in sacred wisdom, O Trinity, sovereignly good, lead us to that height, where all light is outshone by a darkness which coruscates in brilliant lightnings, and, though it can be neither seen nor grasped, inundates with the beauty of its fires the blessedly blinded spirits.”

Could we presume to add anything? As we have already remarked, the Church herself, at this season which prepares the world for the last coming of the Spouse, moderates her voice. Especially ought we to imitate her today, when the divinely inspired Areopagite, oppressed with the weight of his own powerlessness, cries out: “Our language is the more redundant in proportion as it is less pertinent to God. As man rises nearer to heaven, the glance he casts upon the spiritual world becomes simplified and his speech abridged; nigh to the summit, not only do words grow fewer, but all language, nay thought itself, at length fails. Formerly our discourse expanded in proportion to the height whence it descended; as it ascends, it must equally diminish, until, arrived at the full term, it will altogether cease and be lost in the ineffable.”

Meanwhile, Rome will tell us how the revealer of the heavenly hierarchies, coming from Athens into the west, watered with his generous blood the seed he sowed in the future capital of France. Enriched with his sacred body, the humble borough now known as Saint-Denis long surpassed in renown its neighbor Lutetia (Paris). France repaid her apostle’s devotedness by the glory wherewith she surrounded him; it would seem as if, by a chivalrous inspiration, she had undertaken to compensate him for having abandoned his native country for her sake. Immense was the concourse of people to his holy tomb; and still greater was the piety of the kings. The martyr’s banner, the oriflamme, was their standard, Mountjoy St. Denys their battle cry, in every clime whither victory led them. As in life they never quitted the kingdom without entrusting it to the protector of France in his abbey, so at death they bequeathed to him their mortal remains. In spite of sacrilegious profanations, what a sublime spectacle will the holy necropolis present to the world on the last day, when, before the eyes of Adrian and his prefects, he whom they executed at Montmartre and condemned to infamy, will rise from his tomb escorted by three dynasties of monarchs proud to form, at the resurrection, the court of him whom they deemed it an honor to surround in death. Thy friends, O God, are made exceedingly honorable!

The account given by Rome of St. Dionysius and his companions, is the same as that in the Menæa of the Greek Church, though the latter keeps their Feast on October 3.

Dionysius, an Athenian, was one of the judges of the Areopagus, and a man learned in every science. It is related of him that, on the day Christ our Lord was crucified, he, though still a pagan, on perceiving the unnatural eclipse of the sun, cried out: “Either the God of nature is suffering, or the world is coming to an end.” Paul the apostle, coming to Athens, was brought before the Areopagus, to give an account of the doctrine he preached. He there proclaimed that Christ our Lord had risen from the tomb, and that the dead would all live again. Many thereupon believed in Christ, and among them Dionysius.

He was baptized by St. Paul, and appointed to govern the Church of Athens. Later on he came to Rome; whence Pope Clement sent him to preach the Gospel in Gaul; Rusticus a priest, and Eleutherius a deacon, accompanying him as far as Paris. As he converted many in that town to Christianity, Fescennius the prefect commanded him and his companions to be beaten with rods; but continuing to preach the faith as zealously as before, they were placed on hot gridirons, and suffered several other tortures.

They all endured the torments bravely and joyfully. Finally Dionysius, who was a hundred and one years old, was beheaded with his companions, on the seventh of the Ides of October. It is related of Dionysius, that after his decapitation, he took up his head and carried it in his hands for two miles. He wrote some wonderful and truly heavenly books on the divine names, on the celestial and the ecclesiastical hierarchy, on mystical theology, and several others.

Honor to thee on this day of thy triumph! Honor to the apostle of the Gentiles, who comes to meet thee, as his noble conquest, on the threshold of eternity. From early youth how thy soul yearned for that unknown God, whom the apostle at length revealed to the longing aspirations of thy grand, upright nature! To the darkness of polytheism, to the doubts of philosophy, to the vague glimmers of confused traditions, suddenly succeeded the light of truth; and its triumph was complete. Thou, O Christian Plato, didst enlarge the horizon of philosophy, and didst so rectify its formulas that in them truth could be fittingly clothed. Thou, in thy turn, didst become an apostle; the distinction of Greek and barbarian, that law of the ancient world, was lost in the common origin assigned by St. Paul to all peoples; to the eyes of thy faith, slaves and freemen were equal in that nobility which makes the human race the race of God; while the charity, which overflowed in thy heart, filled it with the immense pity of God Himself for the long ages of ignorance in which mankind had been plunged.

Thus in thy zeal, obeying the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, thou, like a cloud laden with the blessings of the Lord, didst bring fertility to the far west. The people of Gaul learned from thee to seek God, to find Him, and to live in Him; and this new church had no reason to envy the earlier ones built on the foundations of prophets and apostles. O chosen stone, good for the foundations, so intimately united to the Corner-Stone that every construction thou upholdest becomes a holy temple of the Lord: the church of France built upon thee, is also the house of God.

 

O Dionysius, quicken again the divine seed thou didst sow. Restore to Paris and to France their traditions, now forgotten in the fever of gain and pleasure. Bring back Athens to the communion of Christ’s vicar, the indispensable condition of union with our Lord. For every church under heaven obtain such pastors as thou didst describe in the following lines which reveal thyself: “By the holy love which draws us to Him, Jesus calms the tempest of distracting cares; and recalling our souls to the unity of the divine life, He confirms us in the permanent fruitfulness of this noble ministry. Soon, by the exercise of the sacred functions, we draw nigh to the angels, striving to set ourselves, like them, in the fixed state of unchangeable holiness. Thence, gazing upon the divine splendors of the blessed Jesus, and enriched with the profound knowledge of mystical contemplation, we become fitted to be ourselves consecrated in order that we may consecrate, to receive light in order to communicate it, to become perfect in order to lead others to perfection.” (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Feast of Saints Dionysius, Eleutherius, and Rusticus, October 9.)