"The Mutable Will of the People"

Wednesday’s commentary dealt with Donald John Trump’s “official” statement about the chemical and surgical execution of children under the cover of the civil law that, in effect, sought to “neutralize” the perceived advantage that Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., and his band of unapologetic pro-aborts in the organized crime family of the false opposite of the naturalist “left” are said to possess on the issue. Trump’s shortsighted, utilitarian approach, which is based on the false assertation that the “people” possess the “right” to permit, restrict, or prohibit the direct, intentional killing of innocent human beings, was meant to brush the issue aside during the presidential election on November 5, 2024, which is just a little less than seven months away.

As God’s Holy Providence would have it, though, the issue of the surgical killing of the innocent preborn made its way back to the headlines and thus into the presidential campaign less than a day after the former president, who is certain the victim of an ongoing Soviet-style lawfare against him and many of his allies on many fronts, thought that he had defused it with his usual bravado. Not so. God is seeing to it that the voice of the voiceless whose innocent blood cry out to Heaven for vengeance is going to heard in this election year here in the United States of America no matter who is discomfited in the process:

Arizona’s top court revived a law dating to 1864 on April 9 that bans abortion in virtually all instances, another setback for reproductive rights in a state where the procedure already was barred starting at 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The Arizona Supreme Court ruled 4-2 in favor of an anti-abortion obstetrician and a county prosecutor who took up defense of the law after the state’s Democratic attorney general had declined to so.

Justice John Lopez, who like all of the court’s members was appointed by a Republican governor, wrote that to date, the state’s legislature “has never affirmatively created a right to, or independently authorized, elective abortion.”

“We defer, as we are constitutionally obligated to do, to the legislature’s judgment, which is accountable to, and thus reflects, the mutable will of our citizens,” Mr. Lopez wrote. (Arizona Supreme Court revives 1864 law that bans nearly all abortions.)

Although many secular commentators are discussing the history of the Arizona statute that forbade all abortions except “save” the life of the mother while providing penalties for those who executed babies that was passed initially when Arizona was a territory, not a state, and then codified in 1901 and 1913 after Arizona had gained statehood in 1912, the focus on this brief commentary is on Justice John Lopez’s opinion that he was merely upholding the “mutable will of our citizens” as codified in the statute banning most abortions in Arizona as expressed by the 1864, 1901, and 1913 legislative enactments. “The mutable will of our citizens.”

As has been noted repeatedly on this website in the past twenty years—and for thirty years before that in my college teaching career, campaigns for public office on the Right to Life Party of the State of New York line, hundreds of articles on The Wanderer and other publications, and scores of lectures to Catholic audiences in the United States of America and Canada, “the people” have no authority from the true God of Divine Revelation to “decide” anything about inviolability of innocent huma life other than to enact laws and ordinances decreeing penalties upon those who procure, perform and, according the circumstances, mothers who seek out and consent to the execution of their own children. Period.

Pope Leo XIII put the lie to popular sovereignty, and he explained that Catholics had an obligation to oppose to civil ordinances that conflicted with moral truth and/or the rights of Holy Mother Church:

The sovereignty of the people, however, and this without any reference to God, is held to reside in the multitude; which is doubtless a doctrine exceedingly well calculated to flatter and to inflame many passions, but which lacks all reasonable proof, and all power of insuring public safety and preserving order. Indeed, from the prevalence of this teaching, things have come to such a pass that may hold as an axiom of civil jurisprudence that seditions may be rightfully fostered. For the opinion prevails that princes are nothing more than delegates chosen to carry out the will of the people; whence it necessarily follows that all things are as changeable as the will of the people, so that risk of public disturbance is ever hanging over our heads.

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, 1900.)

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 dicttates 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.

There is no moral liberty to do that which is wrong.

Civil law must conform to the Divine and Natural Laws.

Contrary to what naturalists who label themselves as "liberals" or "libertarians" or even many "conservatives" contend, such things as baby-killing, whether chemical or surgical or both, or perverse sins against nature cannot be made "legal" by a decision or a court or by a legislative enactment or executive order or by a plebiscite to reflect "the will of the people," which is considered by many naturalists, especially the libertarians, as the "will of God" that must govern legislative enactments. In other words, human beings are demigods who are "free" to act as they desire, with a few exceptions here and there, of course, as long as the "will of the people" is observed. Naturalists of the liberal bent believe that judges and other potentates can do what they want no matter what the "people" may desire.

This is all erroneous as contingent beings who did not create themselves and whose bodies are destined one day for the corruption of the grave until the General Resurrection of the Dead on the Last Day do not "determine" moral truth any more than they determine the physical laws of nature.

The law of gravity cannot be "repealed" by a decision of a judge or of a president or of a government or a mayor.

The law of gravity cannot be "repealed" by a majority vote of a human legislature or the majority vote of the "people" in a plebiscite (a referendum on a particular issue that is put to the voters at a general or a special election for their approval or rejection, sometimes originating as a result of legislative initiative or state constructional mandate and sometimes originating as a result of a grass roots petition drive to place a particular question on the ballot, which is called an "initial." one of the "good government" reforms of the Progressive Era). It is also true that the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law cannot be repealed by the pronouncement of any judge, executive, legislative or popular enactments.

Such are the shifting sands of “popular sovereignty,” however, there is no guarantee that a “pro-life” amendment, if one is needed, would be approved in a general election, especially when one considers the money that would flow into the commonwealth from the coffers of the likes of George Soros and the fearmongering that would be used by pro-death forces.

Similarly, there is no guarantee that an amendment seeking to enshrine the chemical and surgical butchery of innocent preborn babies up to and including (and even after) the day of birth would not obtain the approval of the multitudes. Sadly, a majority of voters in a number of states have approved amendments to their state constitutions to codify baby-killing under cover of the law. It was on Tuesday, November 7, 2023, that over fifty-six percent of those who cast ballots voted to approve an amending making unrestricted baby-killing (until “fetal viability” except when the health of the mother is said to be at risk, meaning that baby-killing can be done up to and including the day of birth) part of the Ohio State Constitution. Voters in Kansas and Kentucky rejected amendments to their respective states’ constitutions. Similar results obtained in California, Michigan, and Vermont in the wake of the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the case of Thomas E. Dobbs, Mississippi State Health Officer v. Jackson Women’s Organization, June 24, 2022.

This is why former President Donald John Trump, ever a “realist” and a “deal-maker,” is making sure his voice is heard about his opposition to the Arizona State Supreme Court ruling and he has also stated that he would not a national ban on surgical baby-killing, even with “exceptions,” in the completely improbable event that such a bill would be passed by Congress and sent to his desk as presidential to sign:

Former President and presumptive Republican White House nominee Donald Trump came out against Arizona’s newly-enforceable near-total abortion ban on Wednesday, expressing confidence it will swiftly be “straightened out” and undermining defenders who denied that his new rhetorical focus on federalism reflected a deeper aversion to pro-life laws.

On Tuesday, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled 4-2 that a law codified in 1913 that long predates Roe v. Wade was legally enforceable now that Roe has been overturned and that Arizona’s far more recent 15-week abortion ban was not intended to invalidate it. The decision means that abortion is now illegal in the state for any reason except when allegedly necessary to save a mother’s life in the Grand Canyon State.

The next day, when asked if Arizona went “too far,” the 45th president answered, “yeah they did. That’ll be straightened out. As you know, it’s all about states’ rights. It’ll be straightened out. I’m sure that the governor and everybody else are gonna bring it back into reason, and I think that will be taken care of very quickly.”

To a follow-up question, “What do you think about Florida?” where a proposed constitutional amendment creating a virtually unlimited “right” to abortion will be on the November ballot, Trump added, “Florida’s probably, maybe gonna change also. See, it’s all [inaudible] the will of the people, this is what I’ve been saying, it’s a perfect system.”

“So for 52 years, people have wanted to end Roe v. Wade, to get it back to the states,” he continued. “We did that. It was an incredible thing, an incredible achievement, we did that, and now the states have it, and the states are putting out what they want, it’s the will of the people. So Florida’s probably gonna change, Arizona’s going to definitely change, everybody wants that to happen, and you’re getting the will of the people, and pretty amazing, when you think.” (Trump says Arizona went ‘too far’ in reviving near-total abortion ban, will be ‘straightened out’. Also see Trump says he will refuse to sign federal abortion ban if elected president.)

Oy!

It is beyond belief that Donald John Trump can say that “everybody” wants the anti-abortion laws in Florida and Arizona to change.

Everybody?

Everybody?

No.

Florida Governor Ronald Desantis does not.

Many truly pro-life Floridians do not, except to eliminate the existing “exceptions” and the permission of surgical baby-killing up to six weeks following a baby’s conception.

Many truly pro-life Arizonans do not, except to eliminate the existing “exceptions” and the permission of surgical baby-killing up to fifteen weeks following a baby’s conception.

No, not “everybody” wants what Donald John Trump says they do.

Not even the pro-aborts want what Donald John Trump says "everybody" wants as even they never wanted Roe v. Wade to be overturned in the first place, no less to give the "people" a "say" about baby-killing, although they are gleefully exploiting baby-butchery's legal and cultural institutionalization in the fifty-one years since January 22, 1973, to curry favor with the masses who believe that women have a "choice" to do that which no human being has authority to do anything other than to obey God and to give love to children, not submit them to a baby butcher for their execution. 

Sure, many of the so-called "federalists," "constitutionalists," and "libertarians" advising former President Donald John Trump to speak as he has been doing in the past year are content to live with baby-butchery if that is what the "people" decide, but so what?

Is it necessary to point out that the decriminalization of baby-butchery began in state legislatures in the 1960s?

I suppose that it is, so here goes.

The move for decriminalized baby-killing by surgical means started in earnest in the early-1960s as a result of the "Thalidomide babies," that is, those babies born with birth defects as a result of their mothers having taken the drug Thalidomide to help them with their morning sickness during pregnancy. It was, as Dr. Doris Graber pointed out in a very matter-of-fact way in her Mass Media and American Politics text, in 1963 that the phenomenon of the "Thalidomide babies" produced calls for "therapeutic" surgical abortions to be made "legal."

The anti-family movement, which started with efforts on the part of Masonically-controlled state legislatures to liberalize existing divorce laws in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century, gained great impetus with Margaret Sanger's Birth Control League in 1919 and numerous organizations devoted to "eugenics" in the 1920s, some of which were successful in convincing state legislatures ton enact mandatory sterilization laws for criminals and the retarded (once again, thank you states' rights). That anti-family movement, which comes from the devil and is designed to lead souls to Hell for all eternity as social order is disrupted as a result of the breakup of the family, had been given its "wedge" issue as a result of the Thalidomide babies, giving its leaders a "cause" to try to open the legal floodgates to surgical abortion-on-demand to complement the chemical abortions being produced by the "pill" and other abortifacient contraceptives. Indeed, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists issued a statement in 1965, shortly after the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), that declared in a most positivistic manner that drugs that stopped the life of a child after fertilization but before implantation in a mother's womb were to be called "contraceptives" instead of "abortifacients."

As I have noted in many other articles on this site, Roe v. Wade did not "start" the genocide of the preborn in this country that has taken over fifty million innocent human lives since 1965. The move for the decriminalization of surgical baby-killing began at the state level (so much for demigod of states' rights) as pro-abortion leaders such as Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a founder of the National Repeal of Abortion Laws (now called NARAL-Pro Choice), and Lawrence Lader and William Baird, among others used the existence of various "exceptions" in abortion legislation then on the books as the means of "liberalizing" "access" to baby-killing for all women in all circumstances. The move for decriminalized baby-killing under cover of law started at the state level, moving into the Federal court system only when pro-death advocates believed that it was propitious for them to challenge the laws of those states which prohibited or restricted "access" to baby-killing.

It is useful to review some of the history of decriminalizing surgical baby-killing under cover of civil law prior to Roe v. Wade. Those who contend that the "people" in the various states have the "right" to determine whether to permit or prohibit surgical baby-killing would have no problem with the pre-Roe legislation, nor would they be bothered by the fact that many states have "trigger laws" in effect to "protect" baby-killing in the event that Roe v. Wade is reversed at some point by a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

The State of Colorado was the first to "liberalize" its existing legislation, doing so in 1967:

The pre-Roe abortion statute was based upon § 230.3 of the Model Penal Code.  Under the statute, an abortion could be performed at any stage of pregnancy (defined as “the implantation of an embryo in the uterus”) when continuation of the pregnancy was likely to result in the death of the woman, “serious permanent impairment” of her physical or mental health, or the birth of a child with “grave and permanent physical deformity or mental retardation. An abortion could be performed within the first sixteen weeks of pregnancy (gestational age) when the pregnancy resulted from rape (statutory or forcible) or incest, and the local district attorney confirmed in writing that there was probable cause to believe that the alleged offense had occurred Pursuant to Roe v. Wade, the limitations on circumstances under which abortions could be performed and the requirement that all abortions be performed in hospitals were declared unconstitutional by the Colorado Supreme Court in People v. Norton. Enforcement of the statute was not enjoined.

The pre-Roe statute has not been repealed, and would be enforceable if Roe v. Wade were overruled.  The broad exceptions in the statute, however, in particular the exception for mental health, would allow almost all abortions to be performed. Colorado, Life Legal Defense Fund. These links no longer work. This site appears to be the current source for the information that used to appear at Life Legal Defense Fund.

The State of California, then headed by Governor Ronald Wilson Reagan, followed suit in 1967, passing the Therapeutic Abortion Act, has long been a haven for baby-killing:

The pre-Roe abortion statutes were based upon § 230.3 of the Model Penal Code. The California Penal Code prohibited abortions not performed in compliance with the “Therapeutic Abortion Act” of 1967, and made a woman’s participation in her own abortion a criminal offense (subject to the same exception).  The Therapeutic Abortion Act authorized the performance of an abortion on a pregnant woman if the procedure was performed by a licensed physician and surgeon in an accredited hospital, and was unanimously approved in advance by a medical staff committee.  An abortion could not be approved unless the committee found that there was a “substantial risk that continuance of the pregnancy would gravely impair the physical or mental health of the mother,” or that “[t]he pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.”  An abortion could not be performed on grounds of rape or incest unless there was probable cause to believe that the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.  No abortion could be approved after the twentieth week of pregnancy for any reason.

In a pre-Roe decision, the California Supreme Court declared substantial provisions of the Therapeutic Abortion Act unconstitutional on state and federal due process grounds (vagueness).  Sections 274 and 275 of the Penal Code were repealed in 2000, the Therapeutic Abortion Act was repealed in 2002.  None of these statutes would be revived by a decision overruling Roe v. Wade. Abortions could be performed for any reason before viability, and for virtually any reason after viability.

Finally, regardless of Roe, any attempt to enact meaningful restrictions on abortion in California would be precluded by the California Supreme Court’s 1981 decision in Committee to Defend Reproductive Rights v Myers.  In Myers, the state supreme court struck down restrictions on public funding of abortion on state constitutional grounds (privacy).  In the course of its decision, the court stated that under the privacy guarantee of the state constitution,  “all women in this state–rich and poor alike–possess a fundamental constitutional right to choose whether or not to bear a child." California, Life Legal Defense Fund

The State of Oregon, whose Masonically-controlled state legislature once compelled the attendance of all children of school age in state-run schools, effectively prohibiting parochial and other privately-run schools from operating (a law that was struck down by the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the case of Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 1925), passed its own pro-death legislation in 1969:

The pre-Roe statutes were based on § 230.3 of the Model Penal Code.  The statutes allowed an abortion to be performed before the one hundred fiftieth day of pregnancy when (1) there was “substantial risk that continuance of the pregnancy [would] greatly impair the physical or mental health of the mother,” (2) “the child would be born with serious physical or mental defect,” or (3) the pregnancy resulted from felonious intercourse.  After the one hundred fiftieth day, abortion was permitted only if “the life of the pregnant woman [was] in imminent danger.”

Pursuant to Roe, most of these statutes were declared unconstitutional in an unreported decision of a three-judge federal court, and were later repealed.  The pre-Roe statutes would not be revived by a decision overruling Roe v. Wade.  Abortions could be performed for any reason at any stage of pregnancy. Oregon, Life Legal Defense Fund. 

The State of New York passed legislation in 1970, albeit by one vote in the State Senate (cast by a Catholic, State Senator Edward Speno of East Meadow, Long Island, New York), to permit baby-killing through the twenty-fourth week of pregnancy.

The pre-Roe statutes allowed abortion on demand through the twenty-fourth week of pregnancy.  After the twenty-fourth week, an abortion could be performed on a pregnant woman only if there was “a reasonable belief that such is necessary to preserve her life.  In a pre-Roe decision, the New York Court of Appeals rejected a challenge to the law brought by a guardian ad litem for unborn children  The legality of abortion would not be affected by the overruling of Roe v. Wade.  The pre-Roe statutes, which have not been repealed, allow abortion on demand through the twenty-fourth week of pregnancy.  After the twenty-fourth week, however, abortions could be performed only to preserve the woman’s life.

Regardless of Roe, any attempt to prohibit abortion (at least before viability) in New York probably would be barred by language in the New York Court of Appeals’ decision in Hope v. Perales, a challenge to the New York Prenatal Care Assistance Program.  In Hope, the court of appeals noted in passing that “it is undisputed by defendants that the fundamental right of reproductive choice, inherent in the due process liberty right guaranteed by our State Constitution, is at least as extensive as the Federal constitutional right [recognized in Roe v. Wade].” New York, Life Legal Defense Fund.  (Please see my own From Emperor Rocky to Emperor Andy: An Empire State of Killing Innocent Human Beings for my own review of surgical baby-killing's institutionalization in my own native state.)

The movement to decriminalize baby-killing in the United States of America, ladies and gentlemen, started in the states, and it has remained perfectly legal in most of those states following the decision in the caes of Thomas E. Dobbs, Mississippi State Health Officer v. Jackson Women's Organization, June 24, 2022.  Those who think that entire generations of children who have been raised in the culture of ready access to contraception and abortion are going to have an "epiphany" during adulthood about the errors of their past training are not thinking clearly about the state of affairs in which we find ourselves as the pro-aborts are taking full advantange of "popular sovereignty" to "protect" that child-killing in one state after another.

The “people” have no sovereignty over the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural law.

Christ the King has such sovereignty, and He forbids the direct, intentional taking of all innocent human life whether by chemical or surgical baby-killing, homicide, suicide, euthanasia, the starvation and dehydration of “brain damaged” patients, the medical industry’s manufactured, profit-making myth of “brain death,” and “palliative care”/hospice.

We have not been baptized and confirmed to trim our sails for the sake of electoral expedience but to give a visible witness to Our Lord Jesus Christ and His true Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order no matter what might happen to us for so doing. We must speak the truth in love and pray to Our Lady that she, the Mystical Spouse of God the Holy Ghost, will send the graces to convert all those who might be hostile to what we say or write. Period.

Sure, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., is a complete reprobate, a veritable Manchurian Candidate, a demagogue by dint of his own ingrained habit, a plagiarist and fabulist, and an unreconstructed supporter of the execution of innocent babies by chemical and surgical means as well as of every rank moral depravity that passes as part of the lavender collective’s ever-mutating agenda. It is by no means to indemnify Biden, who has come under relentless criticism on this site for decades and, as I have noted, whom I directly confronted about his support for baby-killing in a question-and-answer session when I was teaching at Allentown College of Saint Francis de Sales forty-four years ago, to criticize Donald John Trump. I have written article after article criticizing Biden recently, including Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.'s., Ultimate Treason is Against Christ the King, Biden Banks on Baby Butchery to Keep His Nominal Job, Forgetful Biden Never Forgets to Use Demagoguery, part one, Forgetful Biden Never Forgets to Use Demagoguery, part two, Biden and Friends Despoil, Profane, and Mock Easter Sunday, and Biden and Friends Despoil, Profane, and Mock Easter Sunday. Catholics have the duty to point out falsehoods without being respecter of persons, whether persons belong to this or that political party or whether they are likeable (as a New Yorker by birth and residency during more than half of my life, if not more, I find the former president to be very humorous and likeable most of the time) or unlikeable (Biden falls into that category, of course). Truth must take us where it will without regard for persons and without regard for the consequences. We trust in Divine Providence, not in electoral expediency.

While, as to be expected, Biden issued his own statement criticizing the Arizona State Supreme Court decision about the 1864 anti-baby-killing law, but no one expects him to do anything other than pander to pro-aborts, perverts, and the Chicoms. This is what he does.

Donald John Trump, on the other hand, who boasts of being “pro-life” despite promoting “exceptions” to the binding precepts of the Fifth Commandment, is openly showing his contempt for pro-life Americans by telling then, in essence, “I’m the only game or town. Shut up, fall in line and be like ‘everybody’ else who is ‘happy’ about accepting the ‘will of the people.’”

No, a believing Catholic does accept the “will of the people” as the foundation of social order. A believing Catholic understands that the only proper foundation of social order is a happy union between Holy Mother Church and the civil state wherein those who exercise authority in the latter readily defer to the former in all that pertains to the good souls, upon which rests the fate of men and their nations. The ultimate purpose of the civil authority is to foster those conditions in a polity wherein its subjects/citizens can better sanctify and save their immoral souls as members of the true Church as those in civil authority seek to pursue the common temporal good in light of man’s Last End, the possession of the glory of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity in an ending Easter Sunday of glory in Heaven.

Nothing I write is going to convince those who want to believe in the political equivalent of the tooth fairy from thinking that “things” will change if November 5, 2024, elections go the “right way” when the truth is that “things” will continue to get worse as all rhetoric about saving all innocent lives without exception will be seen as “extreme” and as a rank deviancy becomes more widely accepted with “conservative” ranks than it is already, and it is very much embedded within those ranks as it stands now.

Our cause is not the Republican cause.

Our cause is not the conservative cause.

Our cause is not the “make America great again” cause.

Our cause is the Catholic cause, the cause of Christ the King and of His Most Blessed Mother, she who is our Immaculate Queen. Nothing else.

As Pope Pius XI noted in Quas Primas, December 11, 1925:

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.

20. If the kingdom of Christ, then, receives, as it should, all nations under its way, there seems no reason why we should despair of seeing that peace which the King of Peace came to bring on earth — he who came to reconcile all things, who came not to be ministered unto but to minister, who, though Lord of all, gave himself to us as a model of humility, and with his principal law united the precept of charity; who said also: “My yoke is sweet and my burden light.” Oh, what happiness would be Ours if all men, individuals, families, and nations, would but let themselves be governed by Christ! “Then at length,” to use the words addressed by our predecessor, Pope Leo XIII, twenty-five years ago to the bishops of the Universal Church, “then at length will many evils be cured; then will the law regain its former authority; peace with all its blessings be restored. Men will sheathe their swords and lay down their arms when all freely acknowledge and obey the authority of Christ, and every tongue confesses that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.”[33]

21. That these blessings may be abundant and lasting in Christian society, it is necessary that the kingship of our Savior should be as widely as possible recognized and understood, and to the end nothing would serve better than the institution of a special feast in honor of the Kingship of Christ. For people are instructed in the truths of faith, and brought to appreciate the inner joys of religion far more effectually by the annual celebration of our sacred mysteries than by any official pronouncement of the teaching of the Church. Such pronouncements usually reach only a few and the more learned among the faithful; feasts reach them all; the former speak but once, the latter speak every year — in fact, forever. The church’s teaching affects the mind primarily; her feasts affect both mind and heart, and have a salutary effect upon the whole of man’s nature. Man is composed of body and soul, and he needs these external festivities so that the sacred rites, in all their beauty and variety, may stimulate him to drink more deeply of the fountain of God’s teaching, that he may make it a part of himself, and use it with profit for his spiritual life.

22. History, in fact, tells us that in the course of ages these festivals have been instituted one after another according as the needs or the advantage of the people of Christ seemed to demand: as when they needed strength to face a common danger, when they were attacked by insidious heresies, when they needed to be urged to the pious consideration of some mystery of faith or of some divine blessing. Thus in the earliest days of the Christian era, when the people of Christ were suffering cruel persecution, the cult of the martyrs was begun in order, says St. Augustine, “that the feasts of the martyrs might incite men to martyrdom.”[34] The liturgical honors paid to confessors, virgins and widows produced wonderful results in an increased zest for virtue, necessary even in times of peace. But more fruitful still were the feasts instituted in honor of the Blessed Virgin. As a result of these men grew not only in their devotion to the Mother of God as an ever-present advocate, but also in their love of her as a mother bequeathed to them by their Redeemer. Not least among the blessings which have resulted from the public and legitimate honor paid to the Blessed Virgin and the saints is the perfect and perpetual immunity of the Church from error and heresy. We may well admire in this the admirable wisdom of the Providence of God, who, ever bringing good out of evil, has from time to time suffered the faith and piety of men to grow weak, and allowed Catholic truth to be attacked by false doctrines, but always with the result that truth has afterwards shone out with greater splendor, and that men’s faith, aroused from its lethargy, has shown itself more vigorous than before.

23. The festivals that have been introduced into the liturgy in more recent years have had a similar origin, and have been attended with similar results. When reverence and devotion to the Blessed Sacrament had grown cold, the feast of Corpus Christi was instituted, so that by means of solemn processions and prayer of eight days’ duration, men might be brought once more to render public homage to Christ. So, too, the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was instituted at a time when men were oppressed by the sad and gloomy severity of Jansenism, which had made their hearts grow cold, and shut them out from the love of God and the hope of salvation.

24. If We ordain that the whole Catholic world shall revere Christ as King, We shall minister to the need of the present day, and at the same time provide an excellent remedy for the plague which now infects society. We refer to the plague of anti-clericalism, its errors and impious activities. This evil spirit, as you are well aware, Venerable Brethren, has not come into being in one day; it has long lurked beneath the surface. The empire of Christ over all nations was rejected. The right which the Church has from Christ himself, to teach mankind, to make laws, to govern peoples in all that pertains to their eternal salvation, that right was denied. Then gradually the religion of Christ came to be likened to false religions and to be placed ignominiously on the same level with them. It was then put under the power of the state and tolerated more or less at the whim of princes and rulers. Some men went even further, and wished to set up in the place of God’s religion a natural religion consisting in some instinctive affection of the heart. There were even some nations who thought they could dispense with God, and that their religion should consist in impiety and the neglect of God. The rebellion of individuals and states against the authority of Christ has produced deplorable consequences. We lamented these in the Encyclical Ubi arcano; we lament them today: the seeds of discord sown far and wide; those bitter enmities and rivalries between nations, which still hinder so much the cause of peace; that insatiable greed which is so often hidden under a pretense of public spirit and patriotism, and gives rise to so many private quarrels; a blind and immoderate selfishness, making men seek nothing but their own comfort and advantage, and measure everything by these; no peace in the home, because men have forgotten or neglect their duty; the unity and stability of the family undermined; society in a word, shaken to its foundations and on the way to ruin. We firmly hope, however, that the feast of the Kingship of Christ, which in future will be yearly observed, may hasten the return of society to our loving Savior. It would be the duty of Catholics to do all they can to bring about this happy result. Many of these, however, have neither the station in society nor the authority which should belong to those who bear the torch of truth. This state of things may perhaps be attributed to a certain slowness and timidity in good people, who are reluctant to engage in conflict or oppose but a weak resistance; thus the enemies of the Church become bolder in their attacks. But if the faithful were generally to understand that it behooves them ever to fight courageously under the banner of Christ their King, then, fired with apostolic zeal, they would strive to win over to their Lord those hearts that are bitter and estranged from him, and would valiantly defend his rights.

25. Moreover, the annual and universal celebration of the feast of the Kingship of Christ will draw attention to the evils which anticlericalism has brought upon society in drawing men away from Christ, and will also do much to remedy them. While nations insult the beloved name of our Redeemer by suppressing all mention of it in their conferences and parliaments, we must all the more loudly proclaim his kingly dignity and power, all the more universally affirm his rights. (Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas, December 11, 1925.)

You have any better ideas?

I do not.

I, for one, am praying to Our Lady, especially through her Most Holy Rosary, for the conversion of all men and nations to the Catholic Church and thus of the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ the King as the fruit of the reign of His Most Sacred Heart in the hearts of individual men, consecrated as they should be to that Heart through the Sorrowful and Immaculate of Mary.

Viva Cristo Rey!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us! 

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

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