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Republished: Christ the King Wants Us to Avoid the Chronic Fear and Agitation of Naturalism
Our situation today has degenerated so much that many well-meaning Catholics continue to believe in the farce of naturalism as the means to retard social evils even though there have been increasingly higher and higher doses of the so-called “lesser evil” with each passing election cycle to the extent that Republican candidates who are openly in favor of the chemical and surgical execution of innocent preborn children are considered something akin to secular saviors in the effort to stem the advance of evils under cover of law after they have first gained currency in all the nooks and crannies of popular culture. This constant rearguard effort to thwart the advance of evils always overlooks root causes and in doing so is helpless to do anything but surrender in the face of the evils that have become institutionalized incrementally over time about which it is said that most Americans “accept” by means of some sort of ill-defined "consensus."
Yet it is that truth is not a matter of consensus. Truth is. Truth exists, and it does not depend upon human acceptance for its binding force or validity.
As is recalled today in the Gospel that is read at Holy Mass on this Feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Universal King—the Feast of Christ the King, Pontius Pilate sought the “consensus” of the crowd on Good Friday as Our King, Who is Truth Incarnate, permitted Himself to be judged by this careerist in the bureaucracy of the Roman Empire after the crowd, having been motivated in large part by our own sins having transcended time, had called out for the release of Barabbas, the insurrectionist and murderer who was promising them the illusion of freedom from the tyranny of the Roman occupiers:
At that time, Pilate said to Jesus, Are You the King of the Jews? Jesus answered, Do you say this of yourself, or have others told you of Me? Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Your own people and the chief priests have delivered You to me. What have You done? Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My followers would certainly have fought that I might not be delivered to the Hebrews. But, as it is, My kingdom is not from here. Pilate therefore said to Him, You are then a King? Jesus answered, You say it: I am a King. This is why I was born, and why I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice. (John 18: 33-37.)
Archbishop Alban Goodier, S.J., explained how Christ the King sought to win over Pilate before He told this Roman procurator, who wanted to do nothing to offend his Roman superiors and thus jeopardize his own career nor to offend the Pharisees whose cooperation he needed in the governance of Judea, that, yes, He is a King, but not of this world:
And again he failed. Once more the reminder of the truth did but aggravate them; the will not to believe is hard to convince, the determination not to accept what is known to be true is invincible. Indeed to attempt to convince is to rouse the most violent kind of enmity. Hitherto the accusers had only clamoured for the condemnation of Jesus. They had asked that somehow He should be put to death, apparently it mattered not how; how, since they had been taught with His being their Christ, their anointed King, they went to a further extreme. He must not only die; he must die the most shameful death that even the Roman world knew. He must die the death of a guilty slave, of a convicted criminal; though to be a Roman citizen would save even a criminal from such a fate. Their Anointed? Let Him be crucified. Then it would be known what they thought of Him, then even such men as Pilate would check their sarcastic tongues: ‘But they all cried out, Crucify him, crucify him, let him be crucified.’
This was indeed a climax of hatred, so that more than ever Pilate was amazed. He had seen passion roused to blind fury before; in his own city it was cultivated as an amusement. He had seen, in Rome, eyes glittering and faces taut, as women round the arena turned down their thumbs demanding a gladiator’s death. He had seen his own soldiers, brutalized and hardened till they were scarcely human any longer, laughing and turning to sport the slaughter of the helpless. He had watched an Asiatic mob, more deliberate and merciless than any European, show its white teeth and express dread purpose in its eyes as it pursued some deed of callous cruelty. He had himself a heart hardened enough to pass suffering by, to inflict it if need be, and to be moved no more than if he plucked a lily. But this sight before him was different from all these. It was not fury, it was not blind; it was cold, deliberate, determined. There was too much hatred now even for mockery or laughter. Never before had a Jew, or a Jewish mob, demanded that a Jew should be crucified, no matter what might have been his crime.
Pilate himself feared; if he persisted, he himself might incur their vengeance, for this was a hatred that would not be baulked, that would not count the cost of its deeds. Weakly he repeated what he had said before. The Man was innocent; He had done nothing in any way deserving of death; if He were chastised it would be punishment enough: ‘And Pilate said to them the third time, Why? What evil hath he done?’ I find no cause of death in him. I will chastise him, therefore, and let him go.’
The words, the repeated sentence, the unjust concession, the yet feebler opening question, only confirmed to the enemy that their cause was won. They had only to persist in their demand and all would be secured according to their will. Legality was now thrown to the winds; its very forms could be set aside. They had a found a formula which admirably suited their purpose, and they needed but to repeat it till the very sound would seem its vindication. ‘But they were the more instant with loud voices, Crucify him, let him be crucified. And their voices prevailed.’
‘Their voices prevailed!’ Pilate had gone through many phases before he had come to this. Never before in his life had he been so utterly tried and found wanting. He was Roman Governor of Palestine; he had held the office for years; in the eyes, then, of the authorities of Rome he was suited for the purpose. Judaea was province not easy to rule, yet with all his mistakes Pilate had succeeded in ruling it. On other occasions he had done as he would with this people and they had submitted; he had learnt to despise them, as he had deemed a strong Roman should. When that morning they had brought Jesus before him he had treated them with that same contempt; when they had urged their demand, he had sent them to another, a more petty judge, to settle their claim for them. Yet all the time he had wavered; something had told him from the first that this was no ordinary mob affair. He had seen Jesus alone, and the interview had convinced him that he was dealing with a just and innocent Man. Then his contempt had begun to change to fear. Then he knew that this was a case, not of justice, but of hatred; and hatred is always unjust and merciless, and cruel.
During all this time Jesus had stood before them all, submissive till submission became weird, saying not a word on His own behalf, making no sign that showed indignation, or protest, or insult, or weakness, scarcely even concern; He stood there, the only one calm and self-possessed in that gathering. By His manner alone a keen judge would have known Him to be guiltless; it seemed to prove more, that there was within Him a power which He could use if He would, but which, for some reason that Pilate could not understand, He refused to exercise. Pilate feared the mob howling in the street beneath him; he feared too this silent Being standing on the steps beside him, the like of whom he had never had to judge in all his experience of men. He dared not yet pass the final sentence; before he yielded he must save himself from the consequences of an unjust act, whether from Caesar in Rome, or from this mysterious King whose kingdom was not of this world. Like all unbelievers, Pilate was superstitious; brave it as he might, in his heart he feared he knew not what.
Meanwhile the clamour in the street grew louder. It had risen so as to the threatening, and must needs be appeased. It was true he could have turned his soldiers on the crowd and dispersed it, but he hesitated. He had done something of the king before, and had been made to repent his indiscretion; these Asiatics were a people that not forgive and forget. Somehow he must humour them; at the same time he must justify himself in his own mind. So far as he could he would free himself from all responsibility. This he had endeavoured to do during all the morning; since there now seemed to be no escape, since in the end it seemed inevitable that he must speak the final word, he would throw the responsibility for the word on others. He argued with himself. These violent disturbers of the peace insisted. It was his duty to keep the peace, especially at such a time as this, when Jerusalem was full of strangers from everywhere, and was not the public peace of far greater importance than the life any single man? Let Jesus go free, and many lives might be lost in the disturbance; almost certainly the life of Jesus Himself, in any case. Let Him die, and many would be saved, peace would be restored and the Paschal season would be pass off tranquility. He would yield, it would be better in the end; thus did Pilate, by another route, arrive at the conclusion of Caiaphas: ‘It were better that one man should die for the people.’
But this yielding should be all with the formality that become one in his position. A Roman judge, whatever he might decree, must not be accused of injustice; a Roman judge could do no wrong. So he went through an empty form. As Caiphas long ago had settled the scruples of the priests by the invention of a formula, so would Pilate settle the scruples of his own worldly conscience by the invention of a form. He would wash his hands of the whole affair; he little dreamt that his act would establish a metaphor for all time to come. He called an attendant boy; he bade him bring water and a basin, as if for some ablution which would have seemed nothing strange. As he put his hands into the water, he spoke words which made his action symbolic. He had already declared his Prisoner innocent; now he would absolve himself also from all guilt. If guilt rested on anyone, it lay on those who were driving him to do what he abhorred.
‘And Pilate, seeing that he prevailed nothing, but seeing that a tumult was made, having taking water, washed his hands before the people saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just man. Look you to it.’
Pilate the poor worldling, keeping up appearances at any cost before the eyes of men! The coward affecting to be brave, the anxious affecting to be careless, the grossly cruel affecting to be just, the brutally cruel affecting to be humane, the guilty affecting to be honest, the self-seeking affecting to eaten up with zeal for law and order; whatever he may be in his own heart and conscience, outwardly his hands must be clean, he must sand well and be approved before the tribunal of men. We cannot hate Pilate, he is too weak and worldly-wise for hatred. But it is hard not to despise him for a cunning self-deceiver, one who in the end might persuade himself that any deed was good. Yet when we condemn him, how many of us at the same time pronounce in some degree our own condemnation? The world is a liar and a deceiver; in nothing more contemptible than in its constant affectation of truth and honesty, and the service of men. Of all the characters in the Passion, Pilate has always had most imitators.
Yet even when Pilate little suspected the response his self-exculpation would evoke. He had declared himself innocent in the eyes of men; his victorious adversaries in the street below had no such scruples. Let men them of them what they liked; they would have this Man’s blood at any cost, though it were to be upon them for all time. If that were all Pilate wanted that he might pass the final sentence, let him have it. He had shifted the guilt upon their shoulders; they had understood the travesty he had gone through well enough. They would willingly accept the burthen. The cry they poured out is one of those terrible prophecies which cannot have been invented; its significance is too deep for any man to have dared, its fulfillment too manifest for anyone to doubt. ‘And all the people answering said, His blood be upon us and upon our children.’
The worlds were the closing of another act in the drama. For a moment there was a dread silence, as if the crowd itself were appalled at the self-condemnation it had uttered: ‘What has thou done? The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth to me from the earth.’
It was misery indeed, cold and clammy, that enshrouded their hearts. It must be killed; the drama must go on; by noise, if by no other means, the cry in the heart must be stifled in the crowd. Men talked loudly to one another, boasting, careless, losing themselves in ribaldry; what mattered any consequence, they had gained their end. Up above, around the seat of judgment, officials moved up to and fro; documents were produced and duly signed. Barabbas was brought out and handed over to the crowd, wondering that this confusion meant, how he came to be the hero of this heated moment. He knew himself to be a convicted murderer, and therefore the hand of every man should be against him. He knew himself to have been condemned as a provoker of sedition, and therefore could expect no mercy from the Roman Governor. He had been cast into prison, tried, proved guilty, and condemned, and could only await the hour of his execution, probably that very day. Yet now on a sudden he was told that his people had demanded his release, and that the Roman Governor had consented. What had happened? Had the Roman been made to yield before the threats of Jewry? Had the kingdom come? But even it had, what could have made his people choose him for its favour? Murderers were never forgiven, highwaymen were always feared. Such kindness could be nothing but a mockery. Barabbas: the son of the Father! Was there no one who noticed the significance of that name?
Barabbas, the highwayman and murderer, and promoter of sedition and revolt, was set at liberty, and Jesus, the way, the truth, and the life, who had done all things well, whom no man could convict of a sin, of whom His enemies had said for His good works they accused Him not, was delivered over to the servants of the law. There was nothing now left to be done but or the preliminaries of the execution to begin. (Archbishop Alban Goodier, S.J., The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, pp. 268-274.)
Barabbas always wins in our world of naturalism, aided, and abetted by eager enthusiasm of many Catholics no matter where they fall across the vast expanse of the ecclesiastical divide in this time of apostasy and betrayal. Barabbas wins to such an extent now that, after a popular “consensus” accepting the degeneracy represented by “marriage” between persons of the same gender, it is now considered by many to be a “victory” to prevent the homosexual collective from proselytizing on behalf of their perversely wicked agenda in pre-school programs and to prevent morally corrupt fiends posing as “guidance counselors” to urge children confused by the ideological brainwashing to which they are being subjected to take all manner of drugs in an attempt to do the impossible, namely, to “change” their gender.
Additionally, all manner of time is spent discussing the thoroughly disqualifying cognitive disabilities of Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Governor John Fetterman and the Grifter in Chief, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., who said recently that there are fifty-four states, prompting one observer to note that we lost three states since Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro once said that there were fifty-seven states (see Biden mocked for claiming there are ’54 states’: ‘This guy is completely senile’), while overlooking the simple fact that no one, including the Mohammedan named Mehmet Oz, who supports the direct, intentional killing of a single innocent human being under cover of the civil law or who is sanguine about the “established fact” of “gay marriage” is qualified to hold any position of public trust, including, to quote the late Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School, Dr. Charles E. Rice, serving as a trustee on a mosquito abatement district:
Sen. D'Amato will face a pro-abortion Democratic opponent in the fall. While a voter could morally vote for a pro-abortion candidate who is less objectionable on abortion than his opponent, he should not. The tactic of voting for the less objectionable of two pro-abortion candidates is a tactic of incremental surrender. The incremental strategy of accepting the legalization of abortion in some cases concedes that some innocent human life is negotiable after all. The pro-death movement is a guaranteed winner against an opposition that qualifies its own position by conceding that there are some innocent human beings whom it will allow to be directly and intentionally killed. That approach in practice has mortgaged the pro-life effort to the interests and judgment of what Paul Johnson called "the great human scourge of the 20th century, the professional politician." (Modern Times, 1985, p. 510.)
When a politician says he favors legalized abortion in life of the mother, rape and incest, or other cases, he affirms the nonpersonhood of the unborn child by proposing that he be subjected to execution at the discretion of another. The politician's pro-life rhetoric will be drowned out by the loud and clear message of his position, that he concedes that the law can validly tolerate the intentional killing of innocent human beings. Apart from exceptions, of course, Sen. D'Amato is objectionable as well for some of his other stands on abortion and for his positions on other issues, including especially the homosexual issue.
Pro-lifers could increase their political impact if they were single-issue voters, treating abortion as an absolutely disqualifying issue. Any candidate who believes that the law should treat any innocent human beings as nonpersons by tolerating their execution is unworthy to hold any public office, whether President, trustee of a mosquito abatement district, or senator. (Dr. Charles E. Rice, "Pro-Life Reflections on Sen. D'Amato, The Wanderer, August 27, 1998.)
Evils have advanced under cover of law in the United States of America and around the world because men long ago rejected the Social Reign of Christ the King in favor of a “religiously neutral” approach to civil governance that ignores the true purpose for which the civil state exists: to advance the common moral good in light of man’s Last End, which is 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. Those who govern must understand that they will be judged by Christ the King Himself for how well (or poorly) the sought to foster those conditions in civil society that are conductive to the sanctification and salvation of the souls for which Our King shed every single drop of His Most Blessed Blood to redeem.
Pope Saint Pius X summarized the purpose of civil governance very clearly in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906:
That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. The same thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies. Both of them, the civil and the religious society, although each exercises in its own sphere its authority over them. It follows necessarily that there are many things belonging to them in common in which both societies must have relations with one another. Remove the agreement between Church and State, and the result will be that from these common matters will spring the seeds of disputes which will become acute on both sides; it will become more difficult to see where the truth lies, and great confusion is certain to arise. Finally, this thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions touching the rights and the duties of men. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.)
The civil state has an obligation to recognize the true Faith and to pursue the common temporal good in light of man's Last End: the possession of the glory of the Beatific Vision of Father, Son and Holy Ghost in Heaven for all eternity. This obligation is immutable even though the anti-Incarnational civil state of Modernity is founded in a revolution against it. That which is true does not cease being true simply because men reject it and then base their social structures upon its rejection.
Pope Pius XI, writing in Quas Primas, December 11, 1925, which instituted this very feast ninety-seven years ago, explained the meaning of Our Lord’s Kingship and its sway over all men, including unbelievers:
5. This kingdom is spiritual and is concerned with spiritual things. That this is so the above quotations from Scripture amply prove, and Christ by his own action confirms it. On many occasions, when the Jews and even the Apostles wrongly supposed that the Messiah would restore the liberties and the kingdom of Israel, he repelled and denied such a suggestion. When the populace thronged around him in admiration and would have acclaimed him King, he shrank from the honor and sought safety in flight. Before the Roman magistrate he declared that his kingdom was not of this world. The gospels present this kingdom as one which men prepare to enter by penance, and cannot actually enter except by faith and by baptism, which, though an external rite, signifies and produces an interior regeneration. This kingdom is opposed to none other than to that of Satan and to the power of darkness. It demands of its subjects a spirit of detachment from riches and earthly things, and a spirit of gentleness. They must hunger and thirst after justice, and more than this, they must deny themselves and carry the cross.
16. Christ as our Redeemer purchased the Church at the price of his own blood; as priest he offered himself, and continues to offer himself as a victim for our sins. Is it not evident, then, that his kingly dignity partakes in a manner of both these offices?
17. It would be a grave error, on the other hand, to say that Christ has no authority whatever in civil affairs, since, by virtue of the absolute empire over all creatures committed to him by the Father, all things are in his power. Nevertheless, during his life on earth he refrained from the exercise of such authority, and although he himself disdained to possess or to care for earthly goods, he did not, nor does he today, interfere with those who possess them. Non eripit mortalia qui regna dat caelestia.[27]
18. Thus the empire of our Redeemer embraces all men. To use the words of Our immortal predecessor, Pope Leo XIII: “His empire includes not only Catholic nations, not only baptized persons who, though of right belonging to the Church, have been led astray by error, or have been cut off from her by schism, but also all those who are outside the Christian faith; so that truly the whole of mankind is subject to the power of Jesus Christ.”[28] Nor is there any difference in this matter between the individual and the family or the State; for all men, whether collectively or individually, are under the dominion of Christ. In him is the salvation of the individual, in him is the salvation of society. “Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given to men whereby we must be saved.”[29] He is the author of happiness and true prosperity for every man and for every nation. “For a nation is happy when its citizens are happy. What else is a nation but a number of men living in concord?”[30] If, therefore, the rulers of nations wish to preserve their authority, to promote and increase the prosperity of their countries, they will not neglect the public duty of reverence and obedience to the rule of Christ. What We said at the beginning of Our Pontificate concerning the decline of public authority, and the lack of respect for the same, is equally true at the present day. “With God and Jesus Christ,” we said, “excluded from political life, with authority derived not from God but from man, the very basis of that authority has been taken away, because the chief reason of the distinction between ruler and subject has been eliminated. The result is that human society is tottering to its fall, because it has no longer a secure and solid foundation.”[31]
19. When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony. Our Lord’s regal office invests the human authority of princes and rulers with a religious significance; it ennobles the citizen’s duty of obedience. It is for this reason that St. Paul, while bidding wives revere Christ in their husbands, and slaves respect Christ in their masters, warns them to give obedience to them not as men, but as the vicegerents of Christ; for it is not meet that men redeemed by Christ should serve their fellow-men. “You are bought with a price; be not made the bond-slaves of men.”[32] If princes and magistrates duly elected are filled with the persuasion that they rule, not by their own right, but by the mandate and in the place of the Divine King, they will exercise their authority piously and wisely, and they will make laws and administer them, having in view the common good and also the human dignity of their subjects. The result will be a stable peace and tranquillity, for there will be no longer any cause of discontent. Men will see in their king or in their rulers men like themselves, perhaps unworthy or open to criticism, but they will not on that account refuse obedience if they see reflected in them the authority of Christ God and Man. Peace and harmony, too, will result; for with the spread and the universal extent of the kingdom of Christ men will become more and more conscious of the link that binds them together, and thus many conflicts will be either prevented entirely or at least their bitterness will be diminished. (Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas, December 11, 1925.)
Here you have summarized all the proximate reasons why the world is a mess today. Admitting full well that fallen human nature is the remote cause of all problems or conflicts, whether personal or social, the proximate reason that the world has fallen into an abyss of lawlessness, anarchy, and abject violence is because the Protestant Revolution’s overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King made it possible for civil rulers to govern in a Machiavellian manner without fear of being reprimanded by the authority of the Catholic Church if they propose to undertake or have in fact undertaken policies inimical to the good of souls and thus to the whole of social order.
These are points that I have made in numerous articles over the last thirty years, whether in print in The Wanderer between 1992 and 2001, The Arlington Catholic Herald between 1992 and 1994, the printed pages of Christ or Chaos between 1996 and 2004 prior to the launching of this site on February 20, 2004, The Daily Catholic website between 2001 and 2004, The Seattle Catholic website between 2001 and 2004, The Remnant between December 2002 and April 2006, and Catholic Family News between 2004 and 2006. I see no good purpose at this point prior to the biennial “most important election of our lifetimes” to descend into details about the specifics of the various races and controversies as I have already spilled too much ink in one election cycle after another on those details, which are designed by the adversary to keep people, especially Catholics, in constant states of fear and agitation.
The lists below contain links to articles that I have written about the farce of naturalism in 2011-2012, 2015-2016, and January 2021 to the present. (Time did not permit me to collect the hundreds of articles written during the administrations of George Walker Bush, Barrack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro, and Donald John Trump. Included in the lists are several video lectures.)
A Case Against Obama and Romney, part 1, A Case Against Obama and Romney part 2, and A Case Against Obama and Romney part 3, A Case Against Obama and Romney, part four, A Case Against Obama and Romney, part five, A Case Against Obama and Romney, part six, A Case Against Obama and Romney part seven and A Case Against Obama and Romney, part eight and the following, partial listing of articles from 2011 to early 2016:
Lightweights Each, Right This Way--See Midget Naturalists Flip, See Midget Naturalists Flop, See Midget Naturalists Squirm, And The Winner Is. . . ., Midget Apostates Endorsing Midget Naturalists, Attention! Attention! Calling All Lemmings! Calling All Lemmings! Drink Your Naturalist Kool-Aid Before Following The Lead Lemming Over the Cliff and Into the Abyss., Men Of Truly Midget Intellects, Still Trying To Win It Ugly, Blind Midgets Pretending That They Can See, Midget Naturalists To Be Mowed Down By A Lord Of The World, It's Not The "Message," It's The Man, Step By Step Yet Again, Illusions Die Hard, Truth Resistant Strains of Naturalist Bacteria, Etch-A-Sketch Midget Candidates and Voters, Another Reason Why Romney Will Lose, Naturalists In Self-Parody, Germany Is Our Future, Conserving The Welfare State, Yadda, Yadda, Yadda, Heard It All Before, Devils Without Tails, Blood Money Talks Loud And Clear, Blood Money Talks Loud And Clear, part two, Blood Money Talks Loud and Clear, part three, Only So Much Tolerance In The Republican Big Tent, Bombast From A Literal High Priest of the Devil, Karl Rove: Self-Anointed Political Godfather, One Party Mocks God, The Other Boos Him, Divided By Error, Period, Ugh!, He's Just A Mormon, Thursday Night At The Fights, Choosing To Live In States Of Apoplexy, Timmy's In The Well (Of Americanism, That Is), Without Any Rational Foundation, As If To Add An Exclamation Point, Naturalism's End Game: Naturalism, Too Bad for the Babies, Too Bad for Christ the King, Good News for Barabbas, The Republican Waffle House on Defending the Innocent Preborn, part one, Here To Stay, June 29, 2012, Taking Refuge In Racism To Break the Laws of God and Man, Exposing the Farce Once and For All, Exposing the Farce Once and For All, part two, Trying to Hold Back the Gates of Hell By Natural Means Never Succeeds.
The Winner of the 2016 Republican Presidential Nomination Will Be A Naturalist, Gee, What A Surprise, Truth Must Be Surrendered In A World Awash With Sentimentality, Determined Not To Accept the Truth of Truth Himself, Christ the King, part one, Determined Not To Accept the Truth of Truth Himself, Christ the King, part two, Determined Not To Accept the Truth of Truth Himself, Christ the King part three, Determined Not To Accept the Truth of Truth Himself, Christ the King, part four, Determined Not To Accept the Truth of Truth Himself, Christ the King, part five, the end, Arguing About Who Decides That Which Is Beyond Humans To Decide, part one,Arguing About Who Decides That Which Is Beyond Humans To Decide, part two, Arguing About Who Decides That Which Is Beyond Humans To Decide, part three, Arguing Who Decides That Which is Beyond Humans To Decide, part four,Planned Barrenhood: Evil From Its Very Inceptions, Living in a Completely Post-Legal World,"Civility," Jeb?, Killing the Messengers Yet Again,Shifting Funding From One Evil Organization To Many Others, Blood-Stained Villains All Over The Map, The 1990s Show That Won't End, Role Reversal, Role Reversal, part two, Hypocrisy and Vapidity Abound from Antichrist's Minions, Still Enabling Statism, Antichrist's Interchangeable Spare Parts, part one, Antichrist's Interchangeable Spare Parts, part two: False Opposites Within False Opposites, Death Panels Really Exist, Ever Lowering the Bar of Truth in Public Discourse, Error Divides, Catholicism Unites (2010), God's Laws Take Precedence Over States' Rights, Continuing to Believe in the Ilusion of Secular Salvation, These Are the Guys in the White Hats?, Still Selling the Rope After All These Years, part one, Too Bad for the Babies, Too Bad for Christ the King, Good News for Barabbas, The Republican Waffle House on Defending the Innocent Preborn, part one, The Republican Waffle House on Defending the Innocent Preborn, part two, Exposing the Farce Once and For All, Exposing the Farce Once and For All, part two, No Human Being Is A Vegetable, One Scandal Too Many?, Sin: The Forgotten Terrorism, The Real "Brexit" Occurred In 1534, Skating In July, Exploiting Tragedies for Nefarious Ends, Do Not Expect Justice From Those Who Are Unjust, part one, Do Not Expect Injustice From Those Who Are Unjust, part two, Six In A Row, Jorge and the Dems: See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Just Promote It As Good, As Antichrist Deceives Catholics To Maintain His Hold on Civil Power, Medically Induced and Judicially Sanctioned Sorrow, Deplorably Demagogic and Blasphemous, "Civilized" Monsters, Antichrist Continues To Have His Way With Believing Catholics, part one, Jorge's Kind of Catholics, Antichrist Continues To Have His Way With Believing Catholics, part two, The System Has Been Rigged Since July 4, 1776, and Four Years Later: Still the Most Dangerous Person at the Al Smith Dinner)
Put Not Your Trust in Princes: In the Children of Men in Who There is No Salvation, From August 24, 2008: Lest We Forget About Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., From August 27, 2008: Memorandum to Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., and Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi, From June 10, 2011: Just A Personal Visit [Between Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., and Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI], From May 9, 2012: Abiding Biden and His Counsel, From August 16, 2012: Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., Update, Jorge and Joe: A Jacobin/Bolshevik Mutual Admiration Society, Men Who Are At War With God By Means of Their Sins Will be At War With Each Other, Red China’s Burgeoning Hegemony Over the West and the Conciliar Vatican, Jorge Orders Protection for His Pro-Abortion, Pro-Perversity Statist Comrades, Modernity's Religion of the Brave New World Has No Room for Dissenters, Caesars Gain More Power While Dopes Get Doped Up, Supreme Masters of Sophistry, Aberrant Civil Leaders and Aberrant Pastors of an Aberrant Religion Reaffirm Men in Their Aberrant Affections, As the Revenge Killings in Afghanistan Commence, Beyond the Headlines: Making Catholic Sense of New Efforts to End Surgical Baby-Killing, Naturally Absurd, part six: Welcome to East Germany, After the Meeting of the Killer B's--Biden and Bergoglio, Video Presentation: To Rise Above the Agitation, part one, Video Presentation: To Rise Above the Agitation, part two, Video Presentation: To Rise Above the Agitation, part three, Video Presentation: To Rise Above the Agitation, part four, Irrelevant to Rioters, Looters and Their Apologists: The Binding Precepts of the Divine and Natural Laws, The Supreme Masters of Sophistry: Unable to Admit the Fifth Commandment Exists (Combined Parts One and Two), The Mental Illness Card: Refuge of the Bullies of Latter Day Paganism, True Last Year, True This Year, True Forever: Put Not Your Trust in Princes, in the Children of Men in Whom There is No Salvation, 2022 Edition, Naturally Absurd, part seven: Naturalism Produces Demagoguery and Totalitarianism Over Time, As Always, Pro-Aborts Are More Perfectly Committed to Evil Than So-Called “Pro-Life” Pols Are In Opposing Those Evils, Men and their Nations Who Submit Not to Christ the King Must Always Live Under the Tyranny of the Adversary, Wars and Rumors of Wars, Wars and Rumors of Wars, part two, Wars and Rumors of Wars, part three, Religious Indifferentism and the Rise of Modern Atheism, Revised and Expanded: An Inversion of Truth: Big Tech and the Deep State Go Full Bore Orwellian, Merchants of Murder and Mendacity, part one, More Tragic Victims of Modernity's Hatred of Christ the King, Merchants of Murder and Mendacity, part two, The Future Conversion of Russia Does Not Indemnify Its Current (and Past) Attacks on Innocent Civilians, A “Lesser Evil” Here, A Lesser “Evil” There, Soon One Gets Quite Comfortable with All Evil, Evade Justice in This Life, Prepare to Meet Up with Divine Justice in the Next, Roe v. Wade is Gone, Baby-Killing Will Continue, part one, Roe v. Wade is Gone, Baby-Killing Will Continue, part two, Roe v. Wade is Gone, Baby-Killing Will Continue, part three, As Forgettable Naturalists Fight Each Other Over Forgettable Things, It Is Never Advisable to Die as the Leader of a False Religion, Fear Not Those Who Can Destroy the Body and Fear Not the Likes of Merrick Garland.
There is no need for me to repeat here what I have stated hundreds of times before,
Our salvation is not to be had in the farce of the clash between the members of the organized crime families of the false opposites of the naturalist “left” and “right,” which is why is why it is important for readers of this site to remember that it is impossible to produce the conditions conductive to social comity while men continue to live as the enemies of the King of Kings Who was made manifest to the Kings of the Gentiles on the Feast of the Epiphany. Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar worshiped the Baby King, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, but the lords of Modernity want us to worship them and to obey their “infallible” commands and diktats without complaint. We are undergoing a chastisement that is long overdue, a chastisement that, if we are honest with ourselves, we deserve solely for our own sins of lethargic self-indulgence, worldliness, and the countless numbers of invisible compromises we have made with the world and its false allures.
This chastisement is long overdue as a world bereft of a due submission to the Catholic Church in all that pertains to the good of souls is a world that has descended into the depths of madness in which contingent beings who did not create themselves and whose bodies are destined one day for the corruption of the grave have determined that they can play God with impunity and, quite indeed, be heralded for their being “champions” of scientific research. No one, of course, is supposed to notice that the “research” being conducted at this time is identical to what was being done by mad scientists in the German “Weimar Republic” between 1919-1933 and under the so-called “Third Reich” of Adolph Hitler between 1933 and 1945.
Most of the people alive today are so distracted with bread and circuses that they have grown “comfortable” with and/or “indifferent” to the daily slaughter of the innocent preborn by surgical means and completely ignorant of the fact that, to quote the late Father Paul Marx, O.S.B., “most contraceptives abort, and most contraceptives abort all the time.” There is near-universal support for the myth of “brain death”/human organ vivisection and transplantation and “palliative”/hospice “care.” Even sadder still, most people alive today think nothing of blasphemy, immodesty, indecency, impurity, or “little” acts of dishonesty in their own daily lives.
God the Holy Ghost Himself inspired these words that apply to the situation that faces us today:
[34] Justice exalteth a nation: but sin maketh nations miserable. (Proverbs 14: 34.)
The United States of America has long sanctioned sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance under cover of the civil law and in every nook and cranny of what passes for popular culture.
Yet it is that even many fully traditional Catholics in the catacombs continue to believe that this or that election is going to retard the advance of the grave evils that are the product of the natural degeneration of the welter of naturalistic, anti-Incarnational, religiously indifferent, semi-Pelagian errors of the founders, some of whom had a founding hatred for Christ the King.
The denial of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s Incarnation and of His Redemptive Act on the wood of the Holy Cross is at the foundation of both the theory and the praxis of the modern civil state, including the United States of America. Popes Gregory XVI and Pius IX explained quite prophetically that a world resting on such falsehoods would wind up crashing upon their rocky shoals:
"This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. "But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error," as Augustine was wont to say. When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin. Then truly "the bottomless pit" is open from which John saw smoke ascending which obscured the sun, and out of which locusts flew forth to devastate the earth. Thence comes transformation of minds, corruption of youths, contempt of sacred things and holy laws -- in other words, a pestilence more deadly to the state than any other. Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for wealth, dominion, and glory perished as a result of this single evil, namely immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire for novelty.
Here We must include that harmful and never sufficiently denounced freedom to publish any writings whatever and disseminate them to the people, which some dare to demand and promote with so great a clamor. We are horrified to see what monstrous doctrines and prodigious errors are disseminated far and wide in countless books, pamphlets, and other writings which, though small in weight, are very great in malice. We are in tears at the abuse which proceeds from them over the face of the earth. Some are so carried away that they contentiously assert that the flock of errors arising from them is sufficiently compensated by the publication of some book which defends religion and truth. Every law condemns deliberately doing evil simply because there is some hope that good may result. Is there any sane man who would say poison ought to be distributed, sold publicly, stored, and even drunk because some antidote is available and those who use it may be snatched from death again and again? (Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.)
"But, although we have not omitted often to proscribe and reprobate the chief errors of this kind, yet the cause of the Catholic Church, and the salvation of souls entrusted to us by God, and the welfare of human society itself, altogether demand that we again stir up your pastoral solicitude to exterminate other evil opinions, which spring forth from the said errors as from a fountain. Which false and perverse opinions are on that ground the more to be detested, because they chiefly tend to this, that that salutary influence be impeded and (even) removed, which the Catholic Church, according to the institution and command of her Divine Author, should freely exercise even to the end of the world -- not only over private individuals, but over nations, peoples, and their sovereign princes; and (tend also) to take away that mutual fellowship and concord of counsels between Church and State which has ever proved itself propitious and salutary, both for religious and civil interests.
"For you well know, venerable brethren, that at this time men are found not a few who, applying to civil society the impious and absurd principle of "naturalism," as they call it, dare to teach that "the best constitution of public society and (also) civil progress altogether require that human society be conducted and governed without regard being had to religion any more than if it did not exist; or, at least, without any distinction being made between the true religion and false ones." And, against the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church, and of the Holy Fathers, they do not hesitate to assert that "that is the best condition of civil society, in which no duty is recognized, as attached to the civil power, of restraining by enacted penalties, offenders against the Catholic religion, except so far as public peace may require." From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an "insanity," viz., that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way." But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching "liberty of perdition;" and that "if human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of human wisdom; whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling."
"And, since where religion has been removed from civil society, and the doctrine and authority of divine revelation repudiated, the genuine notion itself of justice and human right is darkened and lost, and the place of true justice and legitimate right is supplied by material force, thence it appears why it is that some, utterly neglecting and disregarding the surest principles of sound reason, dare to proclaim that "the people's will, manifested by what is called public opinion or in some other way, constitutes a supreme law, free from all divine and human control; and that in the political order accomplished facts, from the very circumstance that they are accomplished, have the force of right." But who, does not see and clearly perceive that human society, when set loose from the bonds of religion and true justice, can have, in truth, no other end than the purpose of obtaining and amassing wealth, and that (society under such circumstances) follows no other law in its actions, except the unchastened desire of ministering to its own pleasure and interests?" (Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864.)
Anything who thinks that these words do not apply to our world today is not thinking very clearly whatsoever.
Father Denis Fahey pointed out that the rejection of the Divine Plan that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the High Priest and King of redeemed mankind, by the modern world results in the divination of humanity, of man, which is what we are witnessing very clearly today:
By the grace of the Headship of the Mystical Body, our Lord Jesus Christ is both Priest and King of redeemed mankind and, as such, exercises a twofold influence upon us. Firstly, as a Priest, He communicates to us the supernatural life of grace by which we, while ever remaining distinct from God, can enter into the vision and love of the Blessed Trinity. We can thus become one with God, not, of course, in the order of substance or being, but in the order of operation, of the immaterial union of vision and love. The Divine Nature is the principle of the Divine Vision and Love, and by grace we are ‘made partakers of the Divine Nature.’ This pure Catholic doctrine is infinitely removed from Masonic pantheism. Secondly, as King, our Lord exercises an exterior influence on us by His government of us. As King, He guides and directs us socially and individually, in order to dispose all things for the reception of the Supernatural Life which He, as Priest, confers.
Society had been organized in the thirteenth century and even down to the sixteenth, under the banner of Christ the King. Thus, in spite of deficiencies and imperfections, man’s divinization, through the Life that comes from the sacred Humanity of Jesus, was socially favoured. Modern society, under the influence of Satan, was to be organized on the opposite principle, namely, that human nature is of itself divine, that man is God, and, therefore, subject to nobody. Accordingly, when the favourable moment had arrived, the Masonic divnization of human nature found its expression in the Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789. The French Revolution ushered in the struggle for the complete organization of the world around the new divinity–Humanity. In God’s plan, the whole organization of a country is meant to aid the development of a country is meant to aid the development of the true personality of the citizens through the Mystical Body of Christ. Accordingly, the achievement of true liberty for a country means the removal of obstacles to the organized social acceptance of the Divine Plan. Every revolution since 1789 tends, on the contrary, to the rejection of that plan, and therefore to the enthronement of man in the place of God. The freedom at which the spirit of the revolution aims is that absolute independence which refuses submission to any and every order. It is the spirit breathed by the temptation of the serpent: ‘For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened; and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.’ Man decided then that he would himself lay down the order of good and evil in the place of God; then and now it is the same attitude. (Father Denis Fahey, The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World, p. 27.)
As Pope Leo XIII noted at the beginning of Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae:
The world has heard enough of the so-called "rights of man." Let it hear something of the rights of God. That the time is suitable is proved by the very general revival of religious feeling already referred to, and especially that devotion towards Our Saviour of which there are so many indications, and which, please God, we shall hand on to the New Century as a pledge of happier times to come. But as this consummation cannot be hoped for except by the aid of divine grace, let us strive in prayer, with united heart and voice, to incline Almighty God unto mercy, that He would not suffer those to perish whom He had redeemed by His Blood. May He look down in mercy upon this world, which has indeed sinned much, but which has also suffered much in expiation! And, embracing in His loving-kindness all races and classes of mankind, may He remember His own words: "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to Myself" (John xii., 32). (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)
Pope Leo XIII’s successor, Pope Saint Pius X, explained in his first encyclical letter, E Supremi, October 4, 1903, that he, though considering himself unworthy to be a Successor of Saint Peter, accepted the vote of the college of cardinals to do the work of “restoring all things in Christ. His Holiness explained that men had indeed put themselves in the place of God, which is why it was necessary for him to exhort Catholics to pray for the restoration that is to come:
Then again, to omit other motives, We were terrified beyond all else by the disastrous state of human society today. For who can fail to see that society is at the present time, more than in any past age, suffering from a terrible and deep-rooted malady which, developing every day and eating into its inmost being, is dragging it to destruction? You understand, Venerable Brethren, what this disease is — apostasy from God, than which in truth nothing is more allied with ruin, according to the word of the Prophet: “For behold they that go far from Thee shall perish” (Ps. 1xxii., 17). We saw therefore that, in virtue of the ministry of the Pontificate, which was to be entrusted to Us, We must hasten to find a remedy for this great evil, considering as addressed to Us that Divine command: “Lo, I have set thee this day over the nations and over kingdoms, to root up, and to pull down, and to waste, and to destroy, and to build, and to plant” (Jerem. i., 10). But, cognizant of Our weakness, We recoiled in terror from a task as urgent as it is arduous.
4. Since, however, it has been pleasing to the Divine Will to raise Our lowliness to such sublimity of power, We take courage in Him who strengthens Us; and setting Ourselves to work, relying on the power of God, We proclaim that We have no other program in the Supreme Pontificate but that “of restoring all things in Christ” (Ephes. i., 10), so that “Christ may be all and in all” (Coloss. iii., 2). Some will certainly be found who, measuring Divine things by human standards will seek to discover secret aims of Ours, distorting them to an earthly scope and to partisan designs. To eliminate all vain delusions for such, We say to them with emphasis that We do not wish to be, and with the Divine assistance never shall be aught before human society but the Minister of God, of whose authority We are the depositary. The interests of God shall be Our interest, and for these We are resolved to spend all Our strength and Our very life. Hence, should anyone ask Us for a symbol as the expression of Our will, We will give this and no other: “To renew all things in Christ.” In undertaking this glorious task, We are greatly quickened by the certainty that We shall have all of you, Venerable Brethren, as generous co-operators. Did We doubt it We should have to regard you, unjustly, as either unconscious or heedless of that sacrilegious war which is now, almost everywhere, stirred up and fomented against God. For in truth, “The nations have raged and the peoples imagined vain things” (Ps. ii., 1.) against their Creator, so frequent is the cry of the enemies of God: “Depart from us” (Job. xxi., 14). And as might be expected we find extinguished among the majority of men all respect for the Eternal God, and no regard paid in the manifestations of public and private life to the Supreme Will — nay, every effort and every artifice is used to destroy utterly the memory and the knowledge of God. (Pope Saint Pius X, E Supremi, October 3, 1904.)
Brief Comment Number One:
The enemies of God cry out more “Depart from us” more loudly today than at any time prior to us as the monstrous developments discussed in this commentary amply demonstrate. Every effort has been and continues to be made to destroy “utterly the memory and knowledge of God,” that is, the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Holy Trinity. These enemies of Divine Revelation have been hard at work in the past one hundred seventeen years, and they have been quite successful at preparing the way for the “Son of Perdition,” Antichrist, of whom Pope Saint Pius X wrote in the next paragraph of E Supremi:
5. When all this is considered there is good reason to fear lest this great perversity may be as it were a foretaste, and perhaps the beginning of those evils which are reserved for the last days; and that there may be already in the world the “Son of Perdition” of whom the Apostle speaks (II. Thess. ii., 3). Such, in truth, is the audacity and the wrath employed everywhere in persecuting religion, in combating the dogmas of the faith, in brazen effort to uproot and destroy all relations between man and the Divinity! While, on the other hand, and this according to the same apostle is the distinguishing mark of Antichrist, man has with infinite temerity put himself in the place of God, raising himself above all that is called God; in such wise that although he cannot utterly extinguish in himself all knowledge of God, he has contemned God’s majesty and, as it were, made of the universe a temple wherein he himself is to be adored. “He sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself as if he were God” (II. Thess. ii., 2). (Pope Saint Pius X, E Supremi, October 4, 1903.)
Brief Comment Number Two:
Man has indeed put himself in the place of God as the very people who deny the existence of truths that exist in the nature of things or have been revealed positively Him and taught by His true Church believe in their own infallibility as they pursue policies that mock His Omnipotence and make pronouncements that defy His eternal laws, which are the foundation of order within the souls of men and thus the foundation of just social orders.
Moreover, Big Pharma and their bought-and-paid-for “scientists” have created poisons that have been marketed as “vaccines” and sold in the midst of an hysteria about a virus that has been used by statists as the means to impose a Red Chinese-style dictatorship upon us all, a dictatorship that views dissent as “insurrection” and that views those who hold proscribed views as “thought criminals” worthy of prosecution and incarceration.
Meanwhile, of course, American concentration camps and centers of public indoctrination (public schools) have inculcated students in the ways of moral relativism, atheism, utilitarianism, statism, racialism, feminism, egalitarianism, evolutionism, and globalism, producing large numbers of hedonistic atheists who are ignorant of First and Last Things and any concept of true history, and have been taught to hate those who do believe in that which is deemed to be responsible for “injustices,” mostly imagined, of one sort or another.
We must turn to our true popes for guidance. Pope Leo XIII’s immediate successor, Pope Saint Pius X, amplified Pope Leo XIII’s Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus in E Supremi, October 4, 1903:
6. Verily no one of sound mind can doubt the issue of this contest between man and the Most High. Man, abusing his liberty, can violate the right and the majesty of the Creator of the Universe; but the victory will ever be with God — nay, defeat is at hand at the moment when man, under the delusion of his triumph, rises up with most audacity. Of this we are assured in the holy books by God Himself. Unmindful, as it were, of His strength and greatness, He “overlooks the sins of men” (Wisd. xi., 24), but swiftly, after these apparent retreats, “awaked like a mighty man that hath been surfeited with wine” (Ps. Ixxvii., 65), “He shall break the heads of his enemies” (Ps. Ixvii., 22), that all may know “that God is the king of all the earth” (Ib. Ixvi., 8), “that the Gentiles may know themselves to be men’ (Ib. ix., 20).
7. All this, Venerable Brethren, We believe and expect with unshakable faith. But this does not prevent us also, according to the measure given to each, from exerting ourselves to hasten the work of God — and not merely by praying assiduously: “Arise, O Lord, let not man be strengthened” (Ib. ix., 19), but, more important still, by affirming both by word and deed and in the light of day, God’s supreme dominion over man and all things, so that His right to command and His authority may be fully realized and respected. This is imposed upon us not only as a natural duty, but by our common interest. For, Venerable Brethren, who can avoid being appalled and afflicted when he beholds, in the midst of a progress in civilization which is justly extolled, the greater part of mankind fighting among themselves so savagely as to make it seem as though strife were universal? The desire for peace is certainly harbored in every breast, and there is no one who does not ardently invoke it. But to want peace without God is an absurdity, seeing that where God is absent thence too justice flies, and when justice is taken away it is vain to cherish the hope of peace. “Peace is the work of justice” (Is. xxii., 17). There are many, We are well aware, who, in their yearning for peace, that is for the tranquillity of order, band themselves into societies and parties, which they style parties of order. Hope and labor lost. For there is but one party of order capable of restoring peace in the midst of all this turmoil, and that is the party of God. It is this party, therefore, that we must advance, and to it attract as many as possible, if we are really urged by the love of peace. (Pope Saint Pius X, E Supremi, October 4, 1903.)
Extensive Comment Number Three:
Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., explained the allure of the world’s concept of false liberty in his reflection on the Feast of Pope Saint Eleutherius (commemorated on the Feast of Saint Philip Neri, May 26):
Thy name, O Eleutherius, is the name of every Christian that has risen with Christ. The Pasch has delivered us all, emancipated all, made us all freemen. Pray for us, that we may ever preserve that glorious Liberty of the Children of God, of which the Apostle speaks. By it were we freed from the chains of sin, which consigned us to death; from the slavery of Satan, who would fain have robbed us of our Last End; and from the tyranny of the world, which was deceiving us by its false maxims. The New Life given to us by our Pasch is one that is all of heaven, where our Jesus is awaiting us in glory; to lose it would be to return to slavery. Holy Pontiff! pray for us, that, when the Pasch of next year comes, it may find us in that happy Liberty which the fruit of our having been redeemed by Christ.
There is another kind of Liberty of which the world boasts, and for the acquiring which it sets men at variance with men. It consists in avoiding as a crime all subjection and dependence, and in recognizing no authority except the one appointed by our own elections, which we can remove as soon as we please. Deliver us, O holy Pontiff, from this false Liberty, which is so opposed to the Christian Spirit of obedience, and is simply the triumph of human pride. In its frenzy, it sheds torrents of blood; and with its pompous cant of what it calls the Rights of Man, it substitutes egoism for duty. It acknowledges no such thing as Truth, for it maintains that Error has its sacred rights; it acknowledges no such thing as Good, for it has given up all pretension to preventing Evil. It puts God aside, for it refuses to recognize him in those who govern. It puts upon man the yoke of brute force: it tyrannizes over him by what it calls a “Majority;” and it answers every complaint, that he may make against injustice, by the jargon of “Accomplished Facts.” No—this is not the Liberty into which we are called by Christ, our Deliverer. We are Free, as St. Peter says, and yet make not Liberty a cloak for malice.
O holy Pontiff! show thyself still a Father to the world. During thy peaceful reign, thy throne was near to that of the Cæsars, who governed the Seven Hilled City. They were the Rulers of the world, and yet thy name was revered in every part of their Empire. While the material power held the sword suspended over thy head, the Faithful of various distant lands were flocking to Rome, there to venerate the Tomb of Peter, and pay homage to thee his Successor. When Lucius sent ambassadors from his Island, they turned not their steps to the Emperor’s Palace, but to thine humble dwelling. They came to tell that that a people was called by divine grace, to receive the Good Tidings, and become a portion of the Christian family. The destinies of this people, which thou wast the first to evangelize, were to be great in the Church. The Island of the Britains is a daughter of the Roman Church; and the attempts she is now making to disown her origin are useless. Have pity on her, O thou that wast her first Apostle! Bless the efforts which are being everywhere made to bring her back to unity with the Church. Remember the faith of Lucius and his people; and show thy paternal solicitude for a Country which thou didst lead to the Faith. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Feast of Pope Saint Eleutherius, May 26.)
The truth of the matter, of course, is that false premises always lead to bad results, whose full consequences manifest themselves over the course of time. To make any kind of concessions in the name of a “results-oriented” pragmatism without addressing the fallacy of fundamental premises to consign oneself to a prison of thinking and praxis from which there is, humanly speaking, no escape. It is truly astounding to see “conservatives” in the ecclesiastical realm and in the realm of politics and policymaking keep making the same mistakes repeatedly as they continue to believe that they will obtain different results than they had in the past. Obviously, this is insanity.
Alas, however, despite all of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent during the dog and pony shows called elections, Democrats and Republicans in the United States of America agree on the basic naturalistic, anti-Incarnational, religiously indifferentist and semi-Pelagian principles of the American founding, disagreeing on the specifics as to the conduct of public policy in light of those principles. Thus it is that "liberal" and "conservative" Catholics accept those same false principles as they diverge on the specifics of public policy according to the political "camp" which they believe represents the best means of achieving various goals. Both "liberal" and "conservative" Catholics are as one in rejecting the simple truths of the Catholic Faith as binding upon their consciences and that they apply to the concrete circumstances to be found in the United States of America, believing that their naturalistic or non-denominational ideas and plans and strategies can "win the day" for their respective causes.
Such beliefs are delusional.
Our true popes have taught why this is so:
To hold, therefore, that there is no difference in matters of religion between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, most clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and practice. And this is the same thing as atheism, however it may differ from it in name. Men who really believe in the existence of God must, in order to be consistent with themselves and to avoid absurd conclusions, understand that differing modes of divine worship involving dissimilarity and conflict even on most important points cannot all be equally probable, equally good, and equally acceptable to God. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)
But in this same matter, touching Christian faith, there are other duties whose exact and religious observance, necessary at all times in the interests of eternal salvation, become more especially so in these our days. Amid such reckless and widespread folly of opinion, it is, as We have said, the office of the Church to undertake the defense of truth and uproot errors from the mind, and this charge has to be at all times sacredly observed by her, seeing that the honor of God and the salvation of men are confided to her keeping. But, when necessity compels, not those only who are invested with power of rule are bound to safeguard the integrity of faith, but, as St. Thomas maintains: "Each one is under obligation to show forth his faith, either to instruct and encourage others of the faithful, or to repel the attacks of unbelievers." To recoil before an enemy, or to keep silence when from all sides such clamors are raised against truth, is the part of a man either devoid of character or who entertains doubt as to the truth of what he professes to believe. In both cases such mode of behaving is base and is insulting to God, and both are incompatible with the salvation of mankind. This kind of conduct is profitable only to the enemies of the faith, for nothing emboldens the wicked so greatly as the lack of courage on the part of the good. Moreover, want of vigor on the part of Christians is so much the more blameworthy, as not seldom little would be needed on their part to bring to naught false charges and refute erroneous opinions, and by always exerting themselves more strenuously they might reckon upon being successful. After all, no one can be prevented from putting forth that strength of soul which is the characteristic of true Christians, and very frequently by such display of courage our enemies lose heart and their designs are thwarted. Christians are, moreover, born for combat, whereof the greater the vehemence, the more assured, God aiding, the triumph: "Have confidence; I have overcome the world." Nor is there any ground for alleging that Jesus Christ, the Guardian and Champion of the Church, needs not in any manner the help of men. Power certainly is not wanting to Him, but in His loving kindness He would assign to us a share in obtaining and applying the fruits of salvation procured through His grace.
The chief elements of this duty consist in professing openly and unflinchingly the Catholic doctrine, and in propagating it to the utmost of our power. For, as is often said, with the greatest truth, there is nothing so hurtful to Christian wisdom as that it should not be known, since it possesses, when loyally received, inherent power to drive away error. (Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890.)
A system of morality based exclusively on human reason robs man of his highest dignity and lowers him from the supernatural to the merely natural life. Not but that man is able by the right use of reason to know and to obey certain principles of the natural law. But though he should know them all and keep them inviolate through life-and even this is impossible without the aid of the grace of our Redeemer-still it is vain for anyone without faith to promise himself eternal salvation. "If anyone abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire, and he burneth" john xv., 6). "He that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mark xvi., 16). We have but too much evidence of the value and result of a morality divorced from divine faith. How is it that, in spite of all the zeal for the welfare of the masses, nations are in such straits and even distress, and that the evil is daily on the increase? We are told that society is quite able to help itself; that it can flourish without the assistance of Christianity, and attain its end by its own unaided efforts. Public administrators prefer a purely secular system of government. All traces of the religion of our forefathers are daily disappearing from political life and administration. What blindness! Once the idea of the authority of God as the Judge of right and wrong is forgotten, law must necessarily lose its primary authority and justice must perish: and these are the two most powerful and most necessary bonds of society. Similarly, once the hope and expectation of eternal happiness is taken away, temporal goods will be greedily sought after. Every man will strive to secure the largest share for himself. Hence arise envy, jealousy, hatred. The consequences are conspiracy, anarchy, nihilism. There is neither peace abroad nor security at home. Public life is stained with crime.
So great is this struggle of the passions and so serious the dangers involved, that we must either anticipate ultimate ruin or seek for an efficient remedy. It is of course both right and necessary to punish malefactors, to educate the masses, and by legislation to prevent crime in every possible way: but all this is by no means sufficient. The salvation of the nations must be looked for higher. A power greater than human must be called in to teach men's hearts, awaken in them the sense of duty, and make them better. This is the power which once before saved the world from destruction when groaning under much more terrible evils. Once remove all impediments and allow the Christian spirit to revive and grow strong in a nation, and that nation will be healed. The strife between the classes and the masses will die away; mutual rights will be respected. If Christ be listened to, both rich and poor will do their duty. The former will realise that they must observe justice and charity, the latter self-restraint and moderation, if both are to be saved. Domestic life will be firmly established ( by the salutary fear of God as the Lawgiver. In the same way the precepts of the natural law, which dictates respect for lawful authority and obedience to the laws, will exercise their influence over the people. Seditions and conspiracies will cease. Wherever Christianity rules over all without let or hindrance there the order established by Divine Providence is preserved, and both security and prosperity are the happy result. The common welfare, then, urgently demands a return to Him from whom we should never have gone astray; to Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and this on the part not only of individuals but of society as a whole. We must restore Christ to this His own rightful possession. All elements of the national life must be made to drink in the Life which proceedeth from Him- legislation, political institutions, education, marriage and family life, capital and labour. Everyone must see that the very growth of civilisation which is so ardently desired depends greatly upon this, since it is fed and grows not so much by material wealth and prosperity, as by the spiritual qualities of morality and virtue. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)
. . . . for there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical fact. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1950.)
The words of our true popes are either true or they are not. If they are true, which they are, of course, then they are merely expressions of what is in fact true and thus binding upon all men in all places at all times without exception.
Yes, true, we live in the midst of a world where these truths are rejected by most Catholics, principally because they (and their parents and grandparents and great grandparents) were never taught anything about them by the true bishops of the past or by their worthy successors in the Americanist heresy, the faux bishops of the United States of America.
Some might argue that we have do “what we can” to retard evils, making whatever compromises in the practical order of things that appear to be justified by the circumstances, including voting for odious candidates who will not only not retard evils but will make sure that they become more and more institutionalized and as they themselves become willing enablers and accomplices in the growth of the “soft” totalitarianism of the modern police state.
There is nothing that I can write that will dissuade people form believing what they want to believe.
As one who has followed politics since the presidential election of 1956 when I was five years of age and who has made its study my life’s work as a college professor, writer and speaker, I know all too well that the trajectory of degeneration that has occurred in the past six decades despite all of the most well-intentioned efforts to “stop” this or that boogeyman or to oppose or to support this or that Congressional legislation. Futility awaits those who put their hopes in the ability of naturalists to combat the evils that are caused by naturalism.
Pope Pius XI, writing in his first encyclical letter Ubi Arcano Dei Consiliio, December 23, 1922, explained the nature of most political parties with great exactitude, an analysis whose truth has been demonstrated repeatedly in the last ninety-two years:
To these evils we must add the contests between political parties, many of which struggles do not originate in a real difference of opinion concerning the public good or in a laudable and disinterested search for what would best promote the common welfare, but in the desire for power and for the protection of some private interest which inevitably result in injury to the citizens as a whole. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)
Fools continue to ignore the teaching of our true popes, and fools there are aplenty in the midst of the madness that is the civil world of Modernity and the ecclesiastical world of Modernism in the counterfeit church of conciliarism.
As Silvio Cardinal Antoniano noted in the Sixteenth Century:
The more closely the temporal power of a nation aligns itself with the spiritual, and the more it fosters and promotes the latter, by so much the more it contributes to the conservation of the commonwealth. For it is the aim of the ecclesiastical authority by the use of spiritual means, to form good Christians in accordance with its own particular end and object; and in doing this it helps at the same time to form good citizens, and prepares them to meet their obligations as members of a civil society. This follows of necessity because in the City of God, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, a good citizen and an upright man are absolutely one and the same thing. How grave therefore is the error of those who separate things so closely united, and who think that they can produce good citizens by ways and methods other than those which make for the formation of good Christians. For, let human prudence say what it likes and reason as it pleases, it is impossible to produce true temporal peace and tranquillity by things repugnant or opposed to the peace and happiness of eternity. (Silvio Cardinal Antoniano, as quoted by Pope Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)
Once again, it is important to note that God the Holy Ghost saw fit to instruct us in Sacred Scripture, including in the passage from the Book of Proverbs that was quoted at the beginning of this commentary:
[34] Justice exalteth a nation: but sin maketh nations miserable. (Proverbs 14: 34.)
Christ the King will not be mocked. He will suffer the sins of men so that they and their nations might be brought to repentance. He is not, however, indifferent that which Him to suffer in His Sacred Humanity during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross, sin, and that wounds the Church Militant on earth and impedes the pursuit of the true common temporal good of men and their nations.
On this Feast of Christ the King on Sunday, October 30, 2022, perhaps it would be good to consider the following words from Pope Pius XII’s encyclical letter on the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus in order to contrast the spirit of hatred that motivates the leaders of this passing world with the tender mercies of the Divine Redeemer, Christ the King, Who was made manifest to the Gentile Kings on the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6, that is still observed as octave in those chapels that adhere to the General Roman Calendar of 1954.
Pope Pius XII emphasized that devotion to the Most Sacred Heart is not “burdensome” and is at the heart of fighting for Christ the King and His rights in the midst of a world that is cold and hostile to Him:
8. The Church has always valued, and still does, the devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus so highly that she provides for the spread of it among Christian peoples everywhere and by every means. At the same time she uses every effort to protect it against the charges of so-called “naturalism” and “sentimentalism.” In spite of this it is much to be regretted that, both in the past and in our own times, this most noble devotion does not find a place of honor and esteem among certain Christians and even occasionally not among those who profess themselves moved by zeal for the Catholic religion and the attainment of holiness.
9. “If you but knew the gift of God.”[7] With these words, venerable brethren, We who in the secret designs of God have been elected as the guardians and stewards of the sacred treasures of faith and piety which the divine Redeemer has entrusted to His Church, prompted by Our sense of duty, admonish them all.
10. For even though the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus has triumphed so to speak, over the errors and the neglect of men, and has penetrated entirely His Mystical Body; still there are some of Our children who, led astray by prejudices, sometimes go so far as to consider this devotion ill-adapted, not to say detrimental, to the more pressing spiritual needs of the Church and humanity in this present age. There are some who, confusing and confounding the primary nature of this devotion with various individual forms of piety which the Church approves and encourages but does not command, regard this as a kind of additional practice which each one may take up or not according to his own inclination.
11. There are others who reckon this same devotion burdensome and of little or no use to men who are fighting in the army of the divine King and who are inspired mainly by the thought of laboring with their own strength, their own resources and expenditures of their own time, to defend Catholic truth, to teach and spread it, to instill Christian social teachings, to promote those acts of religion and those undertakings which they consider much more necessary today. (Pope Pius XII, Haurietis Aquas, May 15, 1956.)
A Brief Comment:
Paragraph 11, above, summarizes the beliefs of so many Catholics who permit themselves to be drawn into the agitation of the conflicts between the false opposites of the naturalist “left” and “right” that are simply manifestations of the anti-Incarnational Judeo-Masonic spirit of Modernity and can never be in the service of promoting a genuine social order.
Pope Pius XII went on to explain the attitude of those who consider devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus to be suited only for women and not for “educated men” even though it is a strong antidote to the sophistries of Modernity:
12. Again, there are those who so far from considering this devotion a strong support for the right ordering and renewal of Christian morals both in the individual’s private life and in the home circle, see it rather a type of piety nourished not by the soul and mind but by the senses and consequently more suited to the use of women, since it seems to them something not quite suitable for educated men.
13. Moreover there are those who consider a devotion of this kind as primarily demanding penance, expiation and the other virtues which they call “passive,” meaning thereby that they produce no external results. Hence they do not think it suitable to re-enkindle the spirit of piety in modern times. Rather, this should aim at open and vigorous action, at the triumph of the Catholic faith, at a strong defense of Christian morals. Christian morality today, as everyone knows, is easily contaminated by the sophistries of those who are indifferent to any form of religion, and who, discarding all distinctions between truth and falsehood, whether in thought or in practice, accept even the most ignoble corruptions of materialistic atheism, or as they call it, secularism.
14. Who does not see, venerable brethren, that opinions of this kind are in entire disagreement with the teachings which Our predecessors officially proclaimed from this seat of truth when approving the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.? Who would be so bold as to call that devotion useless and inappropriate to our age which Our predecessor of immortal memory, Leo XIII, declared to be “the most acceptable form of piety?” He had no doubt that in it there was a powerful remedy for the healing of those very evils which today also, and beyond question in a wider and more serious way, bring distress and disquiet to individuals and to the whole human race. “This devotion,” he said, “which We recommend to all, will be profitable to all.” And he added this counsel and encouragement with reference to the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus: “. . .hence those forces of evil which have now for so long a time been taking root and which so fiercely compel us to seek help from Him by Whose strength alone they can be driven away. Who can He be but Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God? ‘For there is no other name under heaven given to men whereby we must be saved.’[8] We must have recourse to Him Who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”[9]
15. No less to be approved, no less suitable for the fostering of Christian piety was this devotion declared to be by Our predecessor of happy memory, Pius XI. In an encyclical letter he wrote: “Is not a summary of all our religion and, moreover, a guide to a more perfect life contained in this one devotion? Indeed, it more easily leads our minds to know Christ the Lord intimately and more effectively turns our hearts to love Him more ardently and to imitate Him more perfectly.”[10]
16. To Us, no less than to Our predecessors, these capital truths are clear and certain. When We took up Our office of Supreme Pontiff and saw, in full accord with Our prayers and desires, that the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus had increased and was actually, so to speak, making triumphal progress among Christian peoples, We rejoiced that from it were flowing through the whole Church innumerable and salutary results. This We were pleased to point out in Our first encyclical letter.[11]
17. Through the years of Our pontificate — years filled not only with bitter hardships but also with ineffable consolations these effects have not diminished in number or power or beauty, but on the contrary have increased. Indeed, happily there has begun a variety of projects which are conducive to a rekindling of this devotion. We refer to the formation of cultural associations for the advancement of religion and of charitable works; publications setting forth the true historical, ascetical and mystical doctrine concerning this entire subject; pious works of atonement; and in particular those manifestations of most ardent piety which the Apostleship of Prayer has brought about, under whose auspices and direction local gatherings — families, colleges, institutions — and sometimes nations have been consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. To all these We have offered paternal congratulations on many occasions, whether in letters written on the subject, in personal addresses, or even in messages delivered over the radio.[12]
18. Therefore when We perceive so fruitful an abundance of healing waters, that is, heavenly gifts of divine love, issuing from the Sacred Heart of our Redeemer, spreading among countless children of the Catholic Church by the inspiration and action of the divine Spirit; We can only exhort you, venerable brethren, with fatherly affection to join Us in giving tribute of praise and heartfelt thanks to God, the Giver of all good gifts. We make Our own these words of the Apostle of the Gentiles: “Now to Him Who is able to do all things more abundantly than we desire or understand, according to the power that worketh in us, to Him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations world without end. Amen.”[13]
19. But after We have paid Our debt of thanks to the Eternal God, We wish to urge on you and on all Our beloved children of the Church a more earnest consideration of those principles which take their origin from Scripture and the teaching of the Fathers and theologians and on which, as on solid foundations, the worship of the Sacred Heart of Jesus rests. We are absolutely convinced that not until we have made a profound study of the primary and loftier nature of this devotion with the aid of the light of the divinely revealed truth, can we rightly and fully appreciate its incomparable excellence and the inexhaustible abundance of its heavenly favors. Likewise by devout meditation and contemplation of the innumerable benefits produced from it, we will be able to celebrate worthily the completion of the first hundred years since the observance of the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was extended to the Universal Church. (Pope Pius XII, Haurietis Aquas, May 15, 1956.)
Our last true Holy Father thus far explained the spirit of the hatred of God that was at work in the world sixty-six years ago and can be said to be at the foundation of modern politics as nihilists of the “left” and the “right” eschew the life-giving waters of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and the truths of the Holy Faith that can and do lift the minds and hearts of men to the things that eternal, in the light of which all things earthy must be judged:
117. And there is more. For if We experience bitter sorrow at the feeble loyalty of the good in whose souls, tricked by a deceptive desire for earthly possessions, the fire of divine charity grows cool and gradually dies out, much more is Our heart deeply grieved by the machinations of evil men who, as if instigated by Satan himself, are now more than ever zealous in their open and implacable hatred against God, against the Church and above all against him who on earth represents the Person of the divine Redeemer and exhibits His love towards men, in accordance with that well-known saying of the Doctor of Milan: “For (Peter) is being questioned about that which is uncertain, though the Lord is not uncertain; He is questioning not that He may learn, but that He may teach the one whom, at His ascent into Heaven, He was leaving to us as ‘the representative of His love.'”[116]
118. But, in truth, hatred of God and of those who lawfully act in His place is the greatest kind of sin that can be committed by man created in the image and likeness of God and destined to enjoy His perfect and enduring friendship for ever in heaven. Man, by hatred of God more than by anything else, is cut off from the Highest Good and is driven to cast aside from himself and from those near to him whatever has its origin in God, whatever is united with God, whatever leads to the enjoyment of God, that is, truth, virtue, peace and justice.[117]
119. Since then, alas, one can see that the number of those whose boast is that they are God’s enemies is in some places increasing, that the false slogans of materialism are being spread by act and argument, and unbridled license for unlawful desires is everywhere being praised, is it remarkable that love, which is the supreme law of the Christian religion, the surest foundation of true and perfect justice and the chief source of peace and innocent pleasures, loses its warmth in the souls of many? For as our Savior warned us: “Because iniquity hath abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold.”[118]
120. When so many evils meet Our gaze — such as cause sharp conflict among individuals, families, nations and the whole world, particularly today more than at any other time — where are We to seek a remedy, venerable brethren? Can a form of devotion surpassing that to the most Sacred Heart of Jesus be found, which corresponds better to the essential character of the Catholic faith, which is more capable of assisting the present-day needs of the Church and the human race? What religious practice is more excellent, more attractive, more salutary than this, since the devotion in question is entirely directed towards the love of God itself?[119] (Pope Pius XII, Haurietis Aquas, May 15, 1956.)
Pope Pius XII was referring to the false slogans of materialism being spread by Communists sixty-six years ago, but we know only too well that Communist apologists, if not actual Communists, hold the levers of global power today, including here in the United States of America, where many “respected” opinion-makers believe that the time has come for a formal censorship of any speech that is opposed to “democracy,” meaning opposed to the statist/globalist program for the New World Order. The charity of men hath indeed grown cold because of men’s hatred of God, and it is an easy thing to hate His rational creatures if one hates the very Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Hence the reason for so much violent crime today and its indemnification by prosecutors who care not for the protection of innocent life but do everything imaginable to defend and excuse the guilty so that they can kill and maraud again and again.
Linking devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus with devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Pope Pius XII explained that a rekindling of a love for God in the hearts of men would lead to the reconstruction of a just social order on the right principles of the true Faith:
123. Finally, moved by an earnest desire to set strong bulwarks against the wicked designs of those who hate God and the Church and, at the same time, to lead men back again, in their private and public life, to a love of God and their neighbor, We do not hesitate to declare that devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is the most effective school of the love of God; the love of God, We say, which must be the foundation on which to build the kingdom of God in the hearts of individuals, families, and nations, as that same predecessor of pious memory wisely reminds us: “The reign of Jesus Christ takes its strength and form from divine love: to love with holiness and order is its foundation and its perfection. From it these must flow: to perform duties without blame; to take away nothing of another’s right; to guide the lower human affairs by heavenly principles; to give the love of God precedence over all other creatures.”[124]
124. In order that favors in greater abundance may flow on all Christians, nay, on the whole human race, from the devotion to the most Sacred Heart of Jesus, let the faithful see to it that to this devotion the Immaculate Heart of the Mother of God is closely joined. For, by God’s Will, in carrying out the work of human Redemption the Blessed Virgin Mary was inseparably linked with Christ in such a manner that our salvation sprang from the love and the sufferings of Jesus Christ to which the love and sorrows of His Mother were intimately united. It is, then, entirely fitting that the Christian people — who received the divine life from Christ through Mary — after they have paid their debt of honor to the Sacred Heart of Jesus should also offer to the most loving Heart of their heavenly Mother the corresponding acts of piety affection, gratitude and expiation. Entirely in keeping with this most sweet and wise disposition of divine Providence is the memorable act of consecration by which We Ourselves solemnly dedicated Holy Church and the whole world to the spotless Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary.[125] (Pope Pius XII, Haurietis Aquas, May 15, 1956.)
Turn away from the conflicts between the false opposites of the naturalist “left” and “right” that are nothing other than sideshows concocted in the laboratories of hell and designed to convince men that it is through violent confrontations that injustices can be remedied and a sense of “liberty” that has always been licentiousness and not true liberty can be “enjoyed” again.
No, it is only by adherence to our Catholic Faith as we prostrate ourselves before Our Eucharistic King and pledge ourselves to Him through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary to His own Most Sacred Heart that we can find a remedy in the souls of individual men to help them overcome the conflicts and agitations of the moment and thus rise to the heights of personal sanctity.
This world in which we live is passing away. The triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary will be made manifest ‘ere long. We must be focused on the sanctification and salvation of our own immortal souls as we keep our First Friday devotions with fervor and pray Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary every day, including on each First Saturday for the intentions specified by the Mother of God in the Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal, and to Sister Lucia dos Santos in Tuy, Spain.
The following prayer, found in hy, is one that we should pray today in addition to the Consecration of Mankind to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus as mandated by Pope Pius XI in Quas Primas, and I should add that we should pray the following prayer every day:
O Christ Jesus, I acknowledge Thee as the King of the universe; all that has been made hath been created for Thee. Exercise over me all Thy sovereign rights. I hereby renew the promises of my Baptism, renouncing Satan and all his works and pomps, and I engage myself to lead henceforth a truly Christian life.And in an especial manner do I undertake to bring about the triumph of the rights of God and Thy Church, so far as in me lies. Divine Heart of Jesus, I offer Thee my poor actions to obtain the acknowledment of every heart of Thy sacred kingly power. In such wise may the Kingdom of Thy peace be firmly established throoughout all the earth. Amen. (As found in (The Raccolta: A Manual of Indulgences, Prayers and Devotions Enriched with Indulgences, approved by Pope Pius XII, May 30, 1951, and published in English by Benziger Brothers, New York, 1957, Number 272, p. 149.)
Put your trust in the Most Sacred Heart of Christ the King and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, praying as many Rosaries each day as one’s state-in-life permits.
Vivat Christus Rex!
Vivat Regina Mariae Immaculate!
Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.
Saint Joseph, pray for us.
Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.
Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.
Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.
Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.
Appendix
A Reminder of Simple Catholic Truths Concerning the Social Reign of Christ the King
Here is a summary of the major principles that explain why naturalism is incapable of providing the framework for social order and must yield to the forces of barbarism over the course of time:
1) There are limits that exist in the nature of things beyond which men have no authority or right to transgress, whether acting individually or collectively in the institutions of civil governance.
2) There are limits that have been revealed positively by God Himself in his Divine Revelation, that bind all men in all circumstances at all times, binding even the institutions of civil governance.
3) A divinely-instituted hierarchy exists in man’s most basic natural unit of association: the family. The father is the head of the family and governs his wife and children in accord with the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law. Children do not have the authority to disobey the legitimate commands of their parents. Parents do not have the authority to issue illegitimate and/or unjust commands.
4) Our Lord Himself became Incarnate in Our Lady’s virginal and immaculate womb, subjecting Himself to the authority of His creatures, obeying his foster-father, Saint Joseph, as the head of the Holy Family, thus teaching us that all men everywhere must recognize an ultimate authority over them in their social relations, starting with the family.
5) Our Lord instituted the Catholic Church, founding it on the Rock of Peter, the Pope, to be the means by which His Deposit of Faith is safeguarded and transmitted until the end of time. The Church is the mater, mother, and magister, teacher, of all men in all nations at all times, whether or not men and nations recognize this to be the case.
6) The Pope and the bishops of the Church have the solemn obligation to proclaim nothing other than the fullness of the truths of the Faith for the good of the sanctification and salvation of men unto eternity and thus for whatever measure of common good in the temporal real, which the Church desires earnestly to promote, can be achieved in a world full of fallen men.
7) It is not possible for men to live virtuously as citizens of any country unless they first strive for sanctity as citizens of Heaven. That is, it is not possible for there to be order in any nation if men do not have belief in access to and cooperation with sanctifying grace, which equips them to accept the truths contained in the Deposit of Faith and to obey God’s commands with diligence in every aspect of their lives without exception.
8) The rulers of Christendom came to understand, although never perfectly and never without conflicts and inconsistencies, that the limits of the Divine positive law and the natural law obligated them to exercise the powers of civil governance with a view towards promoting man’s temporal good in this life so as to foster in him his return to God in the next life. In other words, rulers such as Saint Louis IX, King of France, knew that they would be judged by Our Lord at the moment of his Particular Judgment on the basis of how well they had fostered those conditions in their countries that made it more possible for their subjects to get to Heaven.
9) The rulers of Christendom accepted the truth that the Church had the right, which she used principally through her Indirect Power over civil rulers by proclaiming the truths of the Holy Faith, to interpose herself in the event that a civil ruler proposed to do something or had indeed done something that violated grievously the administration of justice and thus posed a grave threat to the good of souls.
10) The Social Kingship of Jesus Christ may be defined as the right of the Catholic Church to see to it that the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law are the basis of the actions of civil governance in all that pertains to the good of souls and that those who exercise civil power keep in mind man’s last end, the salvation of his immortal soul as a member of the Catholic Church. Civil leaders must, therefore, recognize the Catholic Church as the true Church founded by God Himself and having the right to reprimand and place interdicts upon those who issue edicts and ordinances contrary to God’s laws.
This is but a brief distillation of the points contained in the brilliant social encyclical letters of Popes Leo XIII, St. Pius X, and Pius XI, in particular, although Popes Gregory XVI and Pius IX also contributed to their reiteration and explication. I have spent much time in the past twenty-five years or so illustrating these points with quotations from these encyclical letters, which contain immutably binding teachings that no Catholic may dissent from legitimately (as Pope Pius XI noted in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio in 1922).
The Modern State, including the United States of America, is founded on a specific and categorical rejection of each of these points. Consider the following:
1) Martin Luther himself said that a prince may be a Christian but that his religion should not influence how he governs, giving rise to the contemporary notion of “separation of Church and state,” condemned repeatedly by Popes in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries.
2) Martin Luther planted the seeds of contemporary deconstructionism, which reduces all written documents to the illogical and frequently mutually contradictory private judgments of individual readers, by rejecting the Catholic Church as the repository and explicator of the Deposit of Faith, making the “private judgment” of individuals with regard to the Bible supreme. If mutually contradictory and inconsistent interpretations of the Bible can stand without correction from a supreme authority instituted by God, then it is an easy thing for all written documents, including a Constitution that makes no reference at all to the God-Man or His Holy Church, to become the plaything of whoever happens to have power over its interpretation
3) The sons of the so-called Enlightenment, influenced by the multifaceted and inter-related consequences of the errors of the Renaissance and the Protestant Revolt, brought forth secular nations that contended the source of governing authority was the people. Ultimately, all references to “God” were in accord with the Freemasonic notion of a “supreme intelligence” without any recognition of the absolute necessity of belief in and acceptance of the Incarnation and of the Deposit of Faith as it has been given to Holy Mother Church for personal happiness and hence al social order.
4) The Founding Fathers of the United States of America did not believe that it was necessary to refer all things in civil life to Christ the King as He had revealed Himself through His true Church, believing that men would be able to pursue “civic virtue” by the use of their own devices and thus maintain social order in the midst of cultural and religious pluralism. This leads, as Pope Leo XIII noted of religious indifferentism, to the triumph of the lowest common denominator, that is, atheism.
5) As the Constitution of the United States of America admits of no authority higher than its own words, it, like the words of Holy Writ are for a Protestant or to a Modernist, is utterly defenseless when the plain meanings of its words are distorted and used to advance ends that its framers would have never thought imaginable, no less approved in fact. The likes of Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro and Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton have no regard for the words of the Constitution or for the just laws passed by Congress, and Donald John Trump is plainly ignorant of some of the fact that there are seven articles in the Constitution and twenty-seven amendments to it since its ratification in 1788. We are governed by men who are contemptuous or law or wholly ignorant of it. Quite a state of affairs.
6) This is but the secular version of Antinomianism: the belief advanced by those who took the logic of Luther’s argument of being “saved by faith alone” to its inexorable conclusion that one could live a wanton life of sin and still be saved. Luther himself did not see where the logic of his rejection of Catholic doctrine would lead and fought against the Antinomians. In like manner, you see, the Constitutionalists and Federalists of today do not see that what is happening today in Federal courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States, is the inexorable result of a Constitution that rejects Christ the King and the Catholic Church. These Constitutionalists and Federalists will fight time and time again like Sisyphus pushing the bolder up a hill. They will always lose because they cannot admit that the thing they admire, the Constitution, is the proximate problem that has resulted in all of the evils they are trying to fight.
A nation founded on false premises, no matter the "good intentions" of those whose intellects were misinformed by several centuries of naturalist lies and Protestant theological heresies and errors, is bound to degenerate more and more over time into a land of materialism and hedonism and relativism and positivism and utilitarianism and naturalism and paganism and atheism and environmentalism and feminism and barbarism. Many evils, including the daily carnage against the preborn, both by surgical and chemical means, continue to be committed in this country. American "popular culture" destroys souls and bodies both here and abroad. Full vent is given each day to a panoply of false ideas that are from Hell and confuse even believing Catholics no end as they try to find some "naturalist" hero or idea by which to win the "culture wars," oblivious to the fact that it is only Catholicism that can do so.
Widespread vote fraud must, you see, become even more widespread and universal. After all, Americans who are not concerned about the daily slaughter of the preborn have shown themselves all too willing to overlook such "minor" things as undeclared wars, unconstitutional executive orders and directives, unjust judicial decisions, a ceasless surrender of legitimate national sovereignty, and illegal actions that put into jeopardy the nation's national security interests. Why should vote fraud matter at all to people willing overlook crimes against God and man from which they, whether or not they realize it, must suffer as the state of the nation worses over time?
It was in his first encyclical letter, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922, that Pope Pius XI described the true nature of modern political parties:
To these evils we must add the contests between political parties, many of which struggles do not originate in a real difference of opinion concerning the public good or in a laudable and disinterested search for what would best promote the common welfare, but in the desire for power and for the protection of some private interest which inevitably result in injury to the citizens as a whole. From this course there often arise robberies of what belongs rightly to the people, and even conspiracies against and attacks on the supreme authority of the state, as well as on its representatives. These political struggles also beget threats of popular action and, at times, eventuate in open rebellion and other disorders which are all the more deplorable and harmful since they come from a public to whom it has been given, in our modern democratic states, to participate in very large measure in public life and in the affairs of the government. Now, these different forms of government are not of themselves contrary to the principles of the Catholic Faith, which can easily be reconciled with any reasonable and just system of government. Such governments, however, are the most exposed to the danger of being overthrown by one faction or another. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)
We must remember that Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order, a point made by so many of our true popes in the past two hundred years, including Pope Pius XI in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio:
Because the Church is by divine institution the sole depository and interpreter of the ideals and teachings of Christ, she alone possesses in any complete and true sense the power effectively to combat that materialistic philosophy which has already done and, still threatens, such tremendous harm to the home and to the state. The Church alone can introduce into society and maintain therein the prestige of a true, sound spiritualism, the spiritualism of Christianity which both from the point of view of truth and of its practical value is quite superior to any exclusively philosophical theory. The Church is the teacher and an example of world good-will, for she is able to inculcate and develop in mankind the "true spirit of brotherly love" (St. Augustine, De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae, i, 30) and by raising the public estimation of the value and dignity of the individual's soul help thereby to lift us even unto God.
Finally, the Church is able to set both public and private life on the road to righteousness by demanding that everything and all men become obedient to God "Who beholdeth the heart," to His commands, to His laws, to His sanctions. If the teachings of the Church could only penetrate in some such manner as We have described the inner recesses of the consciences of mankind, be they rulers or be they subjects, all eventually would be so apprised of their personal and civic duties and their mutual responsibilities that in a short time "Christ would be all, and in all." (Colossians iii, 11)
Since the Church is the safe and sure guide to conscience, for to her safe-keeping alone there has been confided the doctrines and the promise of the assistance of Christ, she is able not only to bring about at the present hour a peace that is truly the peace of Christ, but can, better than any other agency which We know of, contribute greatly to the securing of the same peace for the future, to the making impossible of war in the future. For the Church teaches (she alone has been given by God the mandate and the right to teach with authority) that not only our acts as individuals but also as groups and as nations must conform to the eternal law of God. In fact, it is much more important that the acts of a nation follow God's law, since on the nation rests a much greater responsibility for the consequences of its acts than on the individual.
When, therefore, governments and nations follow in all their activities, whether they be national or international, the dictates of conscience grounded in the teachings, precepts, and example of Jesus Christ, and which are binding on each and every individual, then only can we have faith in one another's word and trust in the peaceful solution of the difficulties and controversies which may grow out of differences in point of view or from clash of interests. An attempt in this direction has already and is now being made; its results, however, are almost negligible and, especially so, as far as they can be said to affect those major questions which divide seriously and serve to arouse nations one against the other. No merely human institution of today can be as successful in devising a set of international laws which will be in harmony with world conditions as the Middle Ages were in the possession of that true League of Nations, Christianity. It cannot be denied that in the Middle Ages this law was often violated; still it always existed as an ideal, according to which one might judge the acts of nations, and a beacon light calling those who had lost their way back to the safe road.
There exists an institution able to safeguard the sanctity of the law of nations. This institution is a part of every nation; at the same time it is above all nations. She enjoys, too, the highest authority, the fullness of the teaching power of the Apostles. Such an institution is the Church of Christ. She alone is adapted to do this great work, for she is not only divinely commissioned to lead mankind, but moreover, because of her very make-up and the constitution which she possesses, by reason of her age-old traditions and her great prestige, which has not been lessened but has been greatly increased since the close of the War, cannot but succeed in such a venture where others assuredly will fail. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)
This site exists to promote Catholic truth in order to help its few remaining readers to rise above the agitation.
We must remember these words, inspired directly by the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, contained in Saint Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians:
Put you on the armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the deceits of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and power, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high place. Therefore take unto you the armour of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and to stand in all things perfect. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of justice, And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace:
In all things taking the shield of faith, wherewith you may be able to extinguish all the fiery darts of the most wicked one. And take unto you the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit (which is the word of God). By all prayer and supplication praying at all times in the spirit; and in the same watching with all instance and supplication for all the saints. (Ephesians 6: 11-18.)
Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary is a weapon and her Brown Scapular of Mount Carmel is our shield in this time when the forces of Antichrist in the worlds of Modernity and Modernism have rigged things against the Holy Faith and those who adhere to it despite their own sins.
The worst thing that can happen to us is the loss of our immortal souls for all eternity, not the transitory schemes of those whose ascent to power has been rigged by the devil himself to tempt us into the throes of despair.
A system of false opposites has evolved over time that attempts to convince voters that they face “real” choices in every election, each of which is said to be the “most important election of our lifetimes,” when the fact is that adherents of the “left” and the “right” are in total agreement about the underlying premise of the American “experiment,” namely, that religious truth is a matter of complete indifference to the welfare of the “well-ordered” republic.
Let me reprise an explanation that has appeared on this site a number of times before:
I refer to the "false opposites" of the "left" and the "right" because, despite their differences over the powers "government" over that of the "individual," both the "left" and the "right" reject Catholicism as the one and only foundation of personal and social order. The adherents of the "left" and the "right" believe that it is neither prudent or necessary to acknowledge that the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity in the Virginal and Immaculate Womb of His Most Blessed Mother has changed human history. Such adherents also reject any suggestions that both men and their nations must be subordinate to Christ the King and the authority of His true Church on all that pertains to the good of souls and that the civil government has an obligation to pursue the common temporal good in light of man's Last End.
No matter the differences between "conservatives" and "liberals," my friends, they both have one mind and one heart in the belief that man does not need the teaching and sanctifying offices of the Catholic Church to guide them in their private and social lives. This is, of course, the triumph of the Judeo-Masonic spirit of naturalism that was dissected so well by Pope Leo XIII. It matters little as to who is or is not a formally enrolled member of the "lodges" when most Catholics and non-Catholics alike are infected with the ethos of naturalism.
Similarly, any civil leader who believes that can, either by himself or with others, pursue genuine order without the help of Our Lady and the use of her Most Holy Rosary is a fool. We must give public honor to Christ the King and to Mary our Immaculate Queen.
That's the point I try to make repeatedly on this site.