Victor Manuel Fernandez's Anthropocentric Decree on Human Dignity, part six

The anthropocentric nature of Dignitatis Infinita, which has been examined in the previous five parts of this series, is seen very clearly in its treatment of surrogate parenthood:

Surrogacy

48. The Church also takes a stand against the practice of surrogacy, through which the immensely worthy child becomes a mere object. On this point, Pope Francis’s words have a singular clarity: “The path to peace calls for respect for life, for every human life, starting with the life of the unborn child in the mother’s womb, which cannot be suppressed or turned into an object of trafficking. In this regard, I deem deplorable the practice of so-called surrogate motherhood, which represents a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child, based on the exploitation of situations of the mother’s material needs. A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract. Consequently, I express my hope for an effort by the international community to prohibit this practice universally.”[92]

49. First and foremost, the practice of surrogacy violates the dignity of the child. Indeed, every child possesses an intangible dignity that is clearly expressed—albeit in a unique and differentiated way—at every stage of his or her life: from the moment of conception, at birth, growing up as a boy or girl, and becoming an adult. Because of this unalienable dignity, the child has the right to have a fully human (and not artificially induced) origin and to receive the gift of a life that manifests both the dignity of the giver and that of the receiver. Moreover, acknowledging the dignity of the human person also entails recognizing every dimension of the dignity of the conjugal union and of human procreation. Considering this, the legitimate desire to have a child cannot be transformed into a “right to a child” that fails to respect the dignity of that child as the recipient of the gift of life.[93]

50. Surrogacy also violates the dignity of the woman, whether she is coerced into it or chooses to subject herself to it freely. For, in this practice, the woman is detached from the child growing in her and becomes a mere means subservient to the arbitrary gain or desire of others. This contrasts in every way with the fundamental dignity of every human being and with each person’s right to be recognized always individually and never as an instrument for another.

Comment Number One:

This is pure naturalism. There is not a word about the fact that what is called surrogate parenthood is a violation of the Sovereignty of God over the sanctity and fecundity of Holy Matrimony. While it is certainly true that no one has a “right to a child,” this is so not because of “human dignity” but because but because men are supposed to obey God. Who has ordained that a child be generated only in context of a valid marriage between one man and one woman and not by any other means. Surrogate parenthood is an offensive the Author of Life and involves, in most instances, the killing of embryonic human beings and/or the collection of a man’s biological matter that is gathered only by immoral means.

The whole concept of surrogacy is sinful and is based upon sinful actions to produce a child.

Where does Dignitatis Infinita speak on sin this regard?

It does not as the text of totally anthropocentric.

Similarly, Dignitatis Infinita’s treatment of euthanasia and assisted suicide is entirely anthropocentric and it is also based upon the fallacious belief that “palliative care” and “hospice” are nothing other than not-so-thinly disguised forms of euthanasia:

Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

51. There is a special case of human dignity violation that is quieter but is swiftly gaining ground. It is unique in how it utilizes a mistaken understanding of human dignity to turn the concept of dignity against life itself. This confusion is particularly evident today in discussions surrounding euthanasia. For example, laws permitting euthanasia or assisted suicide are sometimes called “death with dignity acts.” With this, there is a widespread notion that euthanasia or assisted suicide is somehow consistent with respect for the dignity of the human person. However, in response to this, it must be strongly reiterated that suffering does not cause the sick to lose their dignity, which is intrinsically and inalienably their own. Instead, suffering can become an opportunity to strengthen the bonds of mutual belonging and gain greater awareness of the precious value of each person to the whole human family.

52. Certainly, the dignity of those who are critically or terminally ill calls for all suitable and necessary efforts to alleviate their suffering through appropriate palliative care and by avoiding aggressive treatments or disproportionate medical procedures. This approach corresponds with the “enduring responsibility to appreciate the needs of the sick person: care needs, pain relief, and affective and spiritual needs.”[94] However, an effort of this nature is entirely different from—and is indeed contrary to—a decision to end one’s own life or that of another person who is burdened by suffering. Even in its sorrowful state, human life carries a dignity that must always be upheld, that can never be lost, and that calls for unconditional respect. Indeed, there are no circumstances under which human life would cease from being dignified and could, as a result, be put to an end: “Each life has the same value and dignity for everyone: the respect of the life of another is the same as the respect owed to one’s own life.”[95] Therefore, helping the suicidal person to take his or her own life is an objective offense against the dignity of the person asking for it, even if one would be thereby fulfilling the person’s wish: “We must accompany people towards death, but not provoke death or facilitate any form of suicide. Remember that the right to care and treatment for all must always be prioritized so that the weakest, particularly the elderly and the sick, are never rejected. Life is a right, not death, which must be welcomed, not administered. And this ethical principle concerns everyone, not just Christians or believers.”[96] As mentioned above, the dignity of each person, no matter how weak or burdened by suffering, implies the dignity of us all.

Comment Number Two:

There is no mention of the theology of redemptive suffering in these passages. None.

Human beings are called to bear with bodily sufferings as befits redeemed creatures who desire to make reparation for their own sins as well as those of others by uniting their suffering with that of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself. Suffering is a Christian’s vocation, which is to be borne for love of God and with a serene acceptance of His Holy Will for us. This is no longer taught by the lords of conciliarism as almost everything in their false teaching revolves around “human dignity."

As has been noted in past articles on this subject, the triumph of emotionalism over the serene acceptance of redemptive suffering as the means to expiate the debt owed to God for our own sins and as the means to gain merit to help provide a salutary example to others in the midst of suffering that we suffer with Our Crucified Redeemer and His Sorrowful Mother, she who is the Co-Redemptrix of the human race, is the result of Protestantism and the subsequent rise of Judeo-Masonry. It is no accident that the Protestant Revolution abandoned crucifixes in honor of the barren cross as Protestantism eschews redemptive suffering, thus leading its adherents into believing that pain and suffering must be anesthetized whenever possible. Conciliarism itself has embraced the barren cross in many of its church buildings, symbolic of its own doctrinal and sacramental barrenness that has robbed many Catholics themselves of any understanding of redemptive suffering.

Our Lord never permits us to suffer beyond our capacity. In His ineffable Mercy, you see, He never really makes us suffer as our sins truly deserve. We would die of sheer fright if we knew exactly how our sins had wounded Our Lord once in time and how they wound His Mystical Body, the Church Militant, today.

Mercifully, Our Lord gives us an opportunity to pay Him back in this mortal life for the debt that we owe Him for each one of our sins.

Mercifully, Holy Mother Church permits us to gain indulgences for our souls and those of others. Those of us who are totally consecrated to Our Lady’s Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart give her freely all of the merits our indulgenced acts we gain each day, trusting that she will apply some of those merits to benefit us now and at the hour of our deaths. Our Lady, who stood by the foot of her Divine Son’s Holy Cross so valiantly, helps us to carry our own crosses so that we can truly “lift high the Cross” as the great Lenten hymn reminds us.

There is no other path to Heaven than the Cross, which we are called to take up in our own lives and in the larger life of the Church and in the world. Each cross that comes our way is perfectly fitted just for us. We can walk the royal road that leads to eternal victory as the sons of Mary Immaculate, never counting the cost and always considering a privilege to suffer with her and to offer it to her Divine Son through her Immaculate Heart.

Additionally, Catholics were taught years ago to pray daily to accept the death that God has ordained for them to undergo with all of its pains so that we can give Him the greater honor and glory that are His due and we can, as noted above, help expiate the debt of our own sins. Death is a punishment for Original Sin, and we must accept the pains that accompany our own death as being the particular means by which God gives us to help avoid Purgatory altogether or to lessen the time spent there by accepting our final agony with love, gratitude, and joy.

Euthanasia and any form of suicide, not only “assisted suicide,” are mortal sins against the binding precepts of the Fifth Commandment’s injunction “Thou shalt not kill.” Human beings do not have sovereignty over their own lives. God does. No one is to play God in his life or in the lives of others. Euthanasia and any form of suicide are offenses against God and an escape from the very means He has given us to save our souls by accepting the crosses, large and small, that He sends to us now, and at the hour of our death.

Dignitatis Infinita makes much of euthanasia as an offense against “human dignity,” which makes Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s abject silence about the enactment of laws permitting euthanasia in the cases of terminal illnesses, alleged or actual, and, as been happening in Belgium since 2014 and in The Netherlands, child euthanasia for eugenic reasons.

Many articles on this website have discussed the “legalization” of euthanizing disabled children in such “civilized countries” as The Netherlands, copying what was done in the Kingdom of Belgium in 2014, which two years ago expanded the killing of children after birth from the age of one year of age to any time thereafter if the child is said to suffer from some condition from which there is supposedly no hope of recovery:

The Netherlands is to widen its euthanasia regulations to include the possibility of doctors assisting in the death of terminally ill children aged between one and 12.

The new rules would apply to between five and 10 children a year who suffer unbearably from their disease, have no hope of improvement and for whom palliative care cannot bring relief, the government said on Friday.

“The end of life for this group is the only reasonable alternative to the child’s unbearable and hopeless suffering,” it said in a statement.

The Netherlands became the first country in the world to legalise euthanasia under strict conditions in 2002. All cases must be reported to medical review boards. The law already provided possibilities for euthanasia involving terminally ill babies until their first birthday and for children over 12.

Only one instance of euthanasia for a minor aged between 12 and 16 was reported in 2022, figures from regional review boards show.

The Netherlands will not be the first to allow doctors to assist in the death of children of all ages. Belgium has allowed it since 2014. (Netherlands to broaden euthanasia rules to cover children of all ages | Assisted dying.)

What was Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s reaction to all this?

As noted earlier, silence. Abject silence. Not a word of condemnation from “Pope Francis” against these legislative enactments. Not one word.

Yes, yes, yes. The “infinity dignity” of the human being, except when Senor Jorge does not want to interfere with the plans of his fellow statists and globalists.

This is all the direct result of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King wrought by the Protestant Revolution and the subsequent of rise of the anti-Incarnational, religiously indifferentist Judeo-Masonic civil state of Modernity. There can never be any lasting restraints against those who believe that suffering has purpose and that is thus “merciful” either to kill a child in his mother’s womb before birth and now to kill him at any time after birth for a whole variety of “quality of life” judgments by moral monsters who love to have the power of life and death of other human beings.

Although direct child euthanasia is not yet “legal” in the United States of America, the use of amniocentesis to diagnose possible physical abnormalities in preborn children has given many in the medical profession the pretext to urge parents to “terminate” their child’s life, which is why amniocentesis and ultrasound when used by pro-abortion medical practitioners can be turned into a “search and destroy” mission. It is all too frequently the case that false diagnoses are made to pressure women to kill their unborn baby and/or that efforts are made to paint draconian scenarios about the sort of life that a baby born with this or that condition would have if he was brought to birth.

Rightly formed mothers and fathers know that they are to surround their children with love as they sacrifice for them in the pattern of the Divine Redeemer Himself and that to provide for the needs of a disabled child is a privilege, not a burden, for which they stand to receive an eternal reward if they persevere until death in a state of Sanctifying Grace as a member of the Catholic Church. It matters not that a woman might be rendered infertile or even if she might lose her life as the love of the Most Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ teaches us to accept every cross as occurring within the Providence of God and, yes, to consider a joy to lay down our very life for others.

Additionally, readers of this site should be very familiar with the fact that Jorge Mario Bergoglio has been in the forefront of promoting vital organ “donation” and “palliative care”/“hospice”.

Vital organs obtained from a cadaver are useless for purposes of transplantation, which is why the myth of “brain death” was invented in 1968 by a committee at the Harvard University:

Editor: When we speak of vital organs, what organs are we talking about? 

Dr. Byrne: Vital organs (from the Latin vita, meaning life) include the heart, liver, lungs, kidneys and pancreas. In order to be suitable for transplant, they need to be removed from the donor before respiration and circulation cease. Otherwise, these organs are not suitable, since damage to the organs occurs within a brief time after circulation of blood with oxygen stops. Removing vital organs from a living person prior to cessation of circulation and respiration will cause the donor’s death.

Editor: Are there some vital organs which can be removed without causing the death of the donor? 

Dr. Byrne: Yes. For example, one of two kidneys, a lobe of a liver, or a lobe of a lung. The donors must be informed that removal of these organs decreases function of the donor. Unpaired vital organs however, like the heart or whole liver, cannot be removed without killing the donor.

Editor: Since vital organs taken from a dead person are of no use, and taking the heart of a living person will kill that person, how is vital organ donation now possible? 

Dr. Byrne: That’s where “brain death” comes in. Prior to 1968, a person was declared dead only when his or her breathing and heart stopped for a sufficient period of time. Declaring “brain death” made the heart and other vital organs suitable for transplantation. Vital organs must be taken from a living body; removing vital organs will cause death.

Editor: I still recall the announcement of the first official heart transplant by Dr. Christian Barnard in Cape Town, South Africa in 1967. How was it possible for surgeons to overcome the obvious legal, moral and ethical obstacles of harvesting vital organs for transplant from a living human being?

Dr. Byrne: By declaring “brain death” as death.

Editor: You mean by replacing the traditional criteria for declaring death with a new criterion known as “brain death”? 

Dr. Byrne: Yes. In 1968, an ad hoc committee was formed at Harvard University in Boston for the purpose of redefining death so that vital organs could be taken from persons declared “brain dead,” but who in fact, were not dead. Note that “brain death” did not originate or develop by way of application of the scientific method. The Harvard Committee did not determine if irreversible coma was an appropriate criterion for death. Rather, its mission was to see that it was established as a new criterion for death. In short, the report was made to fit the already arrived at conclusions.

Editor: Does this mean that a person who is in a cerebral coma or needs a ventilator to support breathing could be declared “brain dead”?

Dr. Byrne: Yes.

Editor: Even if his heart is pumping and the lungs are oxygenating blood?

Dr. Byrne: Yes. You see, vital organs need to be fresh and undamaged for transplantation. For example, once breathing and circulation ceases, in five minutes or less, the heart is so damaged that it is not suitable for transplantation. The sense of urgency is real. After all, who would want to receive a damaged heart?

Editor: Did the Harvard criterion of “brain death” lead to changes in state and federal laws? 

Dr. Byrne: Indeed. Between 1968 and 1978, more than thirty different sets of criteria for “brain death” were adopted in the United States and elsewhere. Many more have been published since then. This means that a person can be declared "brain dead" by one set of criteria, but alive by another or perhaps all the others. Every set includes the apnea test. This involves taking the ventilator away for up to ten minutes to observe if the patient can demonstrate that he/she can breathe on his/her own. The patient always gets worse with this test. Seldom, if ever, is the patient or the relatives informed ahead of time what will happen during the test. If the patient does not breathe on his/her own, this becomes the signal not to stop the ventilator, but to continue the ventilator until the recipient/s is, or are, ready to receive the organs. After the organs are excised, the “donor” is truly dead.

Editor: What about the Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA)? 

Dr. Byrne: According to the UDDA, death may be declared when a person has sustained either “irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions” or “irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem.” Since then, all 50 states consider cessation of brain functioning as death.

Editor: How does the body of a truly dead person compare with the body of a person declared “brain dead”?

Dr. Byrne: The body of a truly dead person is characterized in terms of dissolution, destruction, disintegration and putrefaction. There is an absence of vital body functions and the destruction of the organs of the vital systems. As I have already noted, the dead body is cold, stiff and unresponsive to all stimuli.

Editor: What about the body of a human being declared to be “brain dead”?

Dr. Byrne: In this case, the body is warm and flexible. There is a beating heart, normal color, temperature, and blood pressure. Most functions continue, including digestion, excretion, and maintenance of fluid balance with normal urine output. There will often be a response to surgical incisions. Given a long enough period of observation, someone declared “brain dead” will show healing and growth, and will go through puberty if they are a child.

Editor: Dr. Byrne, you mentioned that “brain dead” people will often respond to surgical incisions. Is this referred to as “the Lazarus effect?”

Dr. Byrne: Yes. That is why during the excision of vital organs, doctors find the need to use anesthesia and paralyzing drugs to control muscle spasms, blood pressure and heart rate changes, and other bodily protective mechanisms common in living patients. In normal medical practice, a patient’s reaction to a surgical incision will indicate to the anesthesiologist that the anesthetic is too light. This increase in heart rate and blood pressure are reactions to pain. Anesthetics are used to take away pain. Anesthesiologists in Great Britain require the administration of anesthetic to take organs. A corpse does not feel pain. (The Michael Fund Newsletter.)

A recent article amplified Dr. Paul Byrne’s own opposition to the myth of “brain death” as the means to harvest vital bodily organs for the profit-making enterprise of transplantation:

 In 1968, without any tests, studies, or evidence, doctors began declaring certain comatose people “brain dead.” This diagnosis has always been controversial, as from its inception, the concept of brain death has lacked a clear basis in fact. In 2023, “Because of the lack of high-quality evidence on the subject […],” the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) actually used a majority vote, not the scientific method, in determining its new brain death diagnosis guideline. 

The world-renowned neurologist and one-time supporter of brain death as death, Dr. D. Alan Shewmon, was not invited to cast his vote. He now opposes the brain death dogma on scientific grounds and recently published a paper addressing the fact that the new AAN guideline was written without any debate over the fundamental concept underlying brain death:

We clinicians are generally not particularly knowledgeable about philosophy. We are generally content to check off items in a diagnostic algorithm promulgated by a consensus committee and move on to the next patient. Whether human life is best understood in terms of thermodynamics and biological emergence, or in terms of a Cartesian mind, or in terms of vital work—that is a question on which neurologists have no monopoly of expertise.

After Jahi McMath survived her brain death diagnosis and started to recover brain function, more people began questioning brain death as death. In fact, brain death has been described as a legal fiction. Historically, this diagnosis has been a way of removing civil rights from vulnerable, brain-injured people, allowing the removal of their valuable, viable organs. Doctors Joseph Verheijde, Mohamed Rady, and Joan McGregor describe it this way:

The scientific uncertainty of defining and determining states of impaired consciousness including brain death have been neither disclosed to the general public nor broadly debated by the medical community or by legal and religious scholars. Heart-beating or non-heart-beating organ procurement from patients with impaired consciousness is de facto a concealed practice of physician-assisted death, and therefore, violates both criminal law and the central tenet of medicine not to do harm.

What will be the outcome as people’s awareness of the brain death fallacy increases? The first possibility is that draconian laws will be passed, forcing people to accept the AAN’s dictates. Recently, the AAN petitioned the Uniform Law Commission (ULC) to change American brain death laws so that they would match the AAN brain death guideline. After over two years of meetings and debate, the ULC could not obtain consensus and tabled its work on revising the Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA) last year. If this push is resumed, one possibility is that death will be legally defined to be whatever the AAN says it is.

This is already the case in Nevada. After the Nevada Supreme Court’s 2015 unanimous decision that the AAN brain death guideline did not comply with the law under the UDDA, the Nevada legislature simply changed Nevada’s death laws. Now, the AAN, a private medical organization, and not Nevada citizens, determines who is dead in Nevada. Following this statute, insurance companies may not pay for the care of people with a brain death diagnosis unless they consent to organ donation. If this system is adopted nationwide, people would be forced by the law, the medical system, and the fear of bankruptcy into accepting a brain death diagnosis, regardless of their conscience or convictions. 

A second possibility is that the public will wake up to the fact that doctors are using a brain death guideline that does not comply with the law under the UDDA. The UDDA mandates that there be “irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brainstem.” The AAN guideline only checks for loss of consciousness (an impossibility, since doctors have no tests for conscious awareness, only for the ability to respond), loss of breathing, and loss of certain brainstem reflexes. Because of this mismatch between the way doctors are diagnosing brain death and the law, anyone challenging a brain death diagnosis in a court of law today can expect a reasonable likelihood of success. The recent proceedings of the Uniform Law Commission provide more than sufficient evidence that brain death, as currently diagnosed, does not conform with U.S. law (except in Nevada). Doctors who use the AAN brain death guideline are opening themselves to legal action. 

An escalating number of lawsuits will have a chilling effect on doctors’ willingness to declare brain death. Additionally, there could be lawsuits for the pain and suffering of families who will be devastated upon learning that their mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers were still alive when they were murdered by the surgical removal of their organs. Spiritual care will be needed, not only for those injured by unethical organ harvesting practices but also for the millions who unknowingly received an organ procured in a way that violates most people’s consciences.

People with organ failure will still have options. Living donation, in which both the organ donor and recipient remain alive following the procedure, is already available for all organs except the heart. And the good news is that a totally implantable artificial heart is currently in clinical trials. 

A third scenario is that the public remains largely asleep to the horrors of brain dead organ harvesting until new technologies make such transplants outmoded. It is wonderful to anticipate a future when all of our replacement parts might be 3D printed from our own cells. If that should occur, historians will look back with revulsion at the barbaric transplantation era of today. Very likely the legal action and spiritual care described above would still have to take place to heal this national wound. 

Recently, news sites have been trumpeting the transplantation of organs from human-pig chimeras into people with organ failure. Combining human and animal genetics to form a new patented “subspecies” opens another Pandora’s box of ethical questions. Where are the human genes for these creatures coming from? Is aborted fetal tissue involved? What is the quality of life for the human-pig chimera? Will endogenous pig diseases enter the human population through these immune-suppressed pig organ recipients?

In the meantime, everyone must take steps to protect themselves from unethical organ harvesting. Dr. Eelco Wijdicks, a neuro-critical care specialist at Mayo Clinic, stated in 2006, “I do not think that brain death examination now, in practice, would have much if any meaning if it were not for the sake of transplantation.” The best way to protect yourself is to refuse to be a registered organ donor. We also need to pursue ethical laws for the determination of death. New Jersey already has a religious exemption to brain death in their legal code. All states should implement opt-out laws for people who object, for any reason, to a diagnosis of brain death. (‘Brain death’ is a fallacy used to prop up the organ harvesting industry.)

This is what happens when anthropocentricity takes hold of the minds of those men who desire to play God, and this is what happens when apostates such as Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Victor Manuel Fernandez oppose on naturalistic grounds euthanasia and assisted suicide while supporting the “science” of “brain death.”

Finally, for all of Dignitatis Infinita’s stated opposition to euthanasia and assisted suicide as offenses to “human dignity” and not sins against God Himself, Jorge Mario Bergoglio is a firm supporter of “palliative care” and “hospice,” which are, as mentioned above, linguistically disguised forms of euthanasia (see Chronicling the Adversary's Global Takeover of the Healthcare Industry and Life, Death, and Truth: Under Attack by Medicine and Law):

In the complexity resulting from the influence of these various factors on clinical practice, but also on medical culture in general, the supreme commandment of responsible closeness, must be kept uppermost in mind, as we see clearly from the Gospel story of the Good Samaritan (cf. Lk 10:25-37). It could be said that the categorical imperative is to never abandon the sick. The anguish associated with conditions that bring us to the threshold of human mortality, and the difficulty of the decision we have to make, may tempt us to step back from the patient. Yet this is where, more than anything else, we are called to show love and closeness, recognizing the limit that we all share and showing our solidarity. Let each of us give love in his or her own way—as a father, a mother, a son, a daughter, a brother or sister, a doctor or a nurse. But give it! And even if we know that we cannot always guarantee healing or a cure, we can and must always care for the living, without ourselves shortening their life, but also without futilely resisting their death. This approach is reflected in palliative care, which is proving most important in our culture, as it opposes what makes death most terrifying and unwelcome—pain and loneliness. (Bergoglio Address to Soros Confederates.)

“Palliative care” does indeed shorten life because it is aimed to specifically to end the life of a human being whose “quality of life,” defined by those who assess his psychological stability, financial security, emotional “support system,” and the overall condition of physical health even if he is suffering only from a chronic illness and is not terminally ill. “Palliative care” provides a custom-designed “plan” that is proposed by the healthcare “team” in a supposedly “collaborative” consultation with patient, if he is able to speak or communicate for himself, and/or his designated healthcare “decision-makers. It is murder. Plain and simple.

So much for laws of God.

So much for redemptive suffering, and all in the need of “huma dignity.”

The conciliar revolutionaries support the medical industry’s manufactured, profit-making myth of “brain death” for purposes of vital organ vivisection and they support “palliative care,” which is “euthanasia in fact if not in name. This ought to give those fully Catholic clergy who have long supported these evils and have encouraged their parishioners to act accordingly a bit of pause as it is generally not a good thing to be on the same side as those who are eager to use a variety of purely utilitarian reasons to negate the plain words of the Fifth Commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.”

These antipapal agents of anti-Catholic teaching are in league with the adversary, who is using the counterfeit ape of the Catholic Church, the conciliar sect, to mock Holy Mother Church, to discourage the faithful, and to drive as many as possible in the waiting arms of Protestant sects and of the ranks of complete disbelief. While we must pray to Our Lady for their conversion, we must always recognize that none of this can come from the Catholic Church, she who is the spotless mystical bride of her Divine Founder, Invisible Head, and Mystical Bridegroom, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

We turn now to the next part of Dignitatis Infinita:

The Marginalization of People with Disabilities

53. One criterion for verifying whether real attention is given to the dignity of every individual in society is the help given to the most disadvantaged. Regrettably, our time is not known for such care; rather, a “throwaway culture” is increasingly imposing itself.[97] To counter this trend, the condition of those experiencing physical or mental limitations warrants special attention and concern. Such conditions of acute vulnerability[98]—which feature prominently in the Gospels—prompt universal questions about what it means to be a human person, especially starting from the condition of impairment or disability. The question of human imperfection also carries clear socio-cultural implications since some cultures tend to marginalize or even oppress individuals with disabilities, treating them as “rejects.” However, the truth is that each human being, regardless of their vulnerabilities, receives his or her dignity from the sole fact of being willed and loved by God. Thus, every effort should be made to encourage the inclusion and active participation of those who are affected by frailty or disability in the life of society and of the Church.[99]

54. In a broader perspective, it must be remembered that “this charity, which is the spiritual heart of politics, is always a preferential love shown to those in greatest need; it undergirds everything we do on their behalf. […] ‘To tend those in need takes strength and tenderness, effort, and generosity in the midst of a functionalistic and privatized mindset that inexorably leads to a ‘throwaway culture’ […]. It involves taking responsibility for the present with its situations of utter marginalization and anguish, and being capable of bestowing dignity upon it.’ It will likewise inspire intense efforts to ensure that ‘everything be done to protect the status and dignity of the human person.’”[100]

Comment Number Three:

While this section of Dignitatis Infinita recognizes that those with disabilities receive their “dignity from the sole fact of being willed and loved by God,” it fails to state clearly that we are to treat those with long term or short-term illnesses, conditions, and disabilities as we would treat Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the very Flesh. Disabilities can come with birth and they come as a result of accidents, heart attacks, strokes, or other sudden conditions, especially recently with the adverse effects of the “vaccines” developed during the plandemic that still have the full support of “Pope Francis,” who refuses quite stubbornly to admit the truth of the matte while insulting those who have had the good sense to refuse to be victimized by the jabs as “foolish.”

This section of Dignitatis Infinita also takes no note of redemptive suffering nor does it state that the only kind of deformity that matters to God is the disfigurement of our souls caused by our own sins. There is also no mention that all the infirmities and disabilities that chosen souls are called to bear in this passing, mortal vale of tears will be wiped way if they die in a state of Sanctifying Grace as their bodies will be brought to perfection, free of all deformities, at the General Resurrection on the Last Day.

Finally in this regard, charity is not political. Charity is not governmental.

Let me reprise the teaching of both Giuseppe Melchiorre Cardinal Sarto and Pope Saint Pius X on the fact that charity is personal, not governmental, not political:

In August 1896 in Padua, the second Congress of the Catholic Union for Social Studies took place. We have already seen that this organization had been created seven years before by Professor Giuseppe Toniolo, in the presence of the Bishop of Mantua [Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto]. This time, eight bishops were present and several directors of the Opera del Congressi took part. All the eminent representatives of the Italian Catholic Movement were present (Medolago Pagnuzzi, Alessi and others). Cardinal Sarto's address attracted considerable notice. Faced with "ardent enemies" (unbelief and revolution) "...menacing and trying to destroy the social fabric," the Patriarch of Venice invited the participants to make Jesus Christ the foundation of their work: "the only peace treaty is the Gospel." He warned them against what is now called the "welfare state," the state which provides everything and provides all socialization: "substituting public almsgiving for private almsgiving involves the complete destruction of Christianity and it is a terrible attack on the principle of ownership. Christianity cannot exist without charity, and the difference between charity and justice is that justice may have recourse to laws and even to force, depending on the circumstances, whereas charity can only be imposed by the tribunal of God and of conscience." If public assistance and the redistribution of wealth are institutionalized, "poverty becomes a function, a way of life, a public trade..." (Yves Chiron, Saint Pius X: Restorer of the Church. Translated by Graham Harrison. Angelus Press, 2002, p. 100)

We wish to draw your attention, Venerable Brethren, to this distortion of the Gospel and to the sacred character of Our Lord Jesus Christ, God and man, prevailing within the Sillon and elsewhere. As soon as the social question is being approached, it is the fashion in some quarters to first put aside the divinity of Jesus Christ, and then to mention only His unlimited clemency, His compassion for all human miseries, and His pressing exhortations to the love of our neighbor and to the brotherhood of men. True, Jesus has loved us with an immense, infinite love, and He came on earth to suffer and die so that, gathered around Him in justice and love, motivated by the same sentiments of mutual charity, all men might live in peace and happiness. But for the realization of this temporal and eternal happiness, He has laid down with supreme authority the condition that we must belong to His Flock, that we must accept His doctrine, that we must practice virtue, and that we must accept the teaching and guidance of Peter and his successors. Further, whilst Jesus was kind to sinners and to those who went astray, He did not respect their false ideas, however sincere they might have appeared. He loved them all, but He instructed them in order to convert them and save them. Whilst He called to Himself in order to comfort them, those who toiled and suffered, it was not to preach to them the jealousy of a chimerical equality. Whilst He lifted up the lowly, it was not to instill in them the sentiment of a dignity independent from, and rebellious against, the duty of obedience. Whilst His heart overflowed with gentleness for the souls of good-will, He could also arm Himself with holy indignation against the profaners of the House of God, against the wretched men who scandalized the little ones, against the authorities who crush the people with the weight of heavy burdens without putting out a hand to lift them. He was as strong as he was gentle. He reproved, threatened, chastised, knowing, and teaching us that fear is the beginning of wisdom, and that it is sometimes proper for a man to cut off an offending limb to save his body. Finally, He did not announce for future society the reign of an ideal happiness from which suffering would be banished; but, by His lessons and by His example, He traced the path of the happiness which is possible on earth and of the perfect happiness in heaven: the royal way of the Cross. These are teachings that it would be wrong to apply only to one's personal life in order to win eternal salvation; these are eminently social teachings, and they show in Our Lord Jesus Christ something quite different from an inconsistent and impotent humanitarianism.  (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

The care of the disabled and the sick is a duty of families and of Holy Mother Church. Governments only have a role to play according to the Natural Law principle of subsidiarity in the event that family circumstances prevent them from receiving the care that need at home.

All righty, it is time to move onto the ideologically loaded section concerning “gender theory”:

Gender Theory

55. The Church wishes, first of all, “to reaffirm that every person, regardless of sexual orientation, ought to be respected in his or her dignity and treated with consideration, while ‘every sign of unjust discrimination’ is to be carefully avoided, particularly any form of aggression and violence.”[101] For this reason, it should be denounced as contrary to human dignity the fact that, in some places, not a few people are imprisoned, tortured, and even deprived of the good of life solely because of their sexual orientation.

Comment Number Four:

STOP!

There is no such thing as “sexual orientation” any more than such things as “theft orientation,” “blasphemy orientation,” “envy orientation,” “gluttony orientation,” or “homicide orientation.” Human self-identify is not based on a proclivity to commit any sins, no less unnatural acts that cry out to Heaven for vengeance. The use of the phrase “sexual orientation” by the conciliar revolutionaries and their opposition to laws that justly discriminate against sodomites is founded on an abject rejection of the punishment that God sent down upon the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and of the plain words of Saint Paul the Apostle in his Epistle to Romans, in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, and of Saint Jude’s Epistle:

For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections. For their women have changed the natural use into that use which is against nature. And, in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men working that which is filthy, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error. And as they liked not to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness, full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, malignity, whisperers, Detractors, hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, foolish, dissolute, without affection, without fidelity, without mercy. Who, having known the justice of God, did not understand that they who do such things, are worthy of death; and not only they that do them, but they also that consent to them that do them. (Romans 1: 18-32.)

[9] Know you not that the unjust shall not possess the kingdom of God? Do not err: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, [10] Nor the effeminate, nor liers with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners, shall possess the kingdom of God. (1 Cor. 6: 9)

[6] And the angels who kept not their principality, but forsook their own habitation, he hath reserved under darkness in everlasting chains, unto the judgment of the great day. [7] As Sodom and Gomorrha, and the neighbouring cities, in like manner, having given themselves to fornication, and going after other flesh, were made an example, suffering the punishment of eternal fire. [8] In like manner these men also defile the flesh, and despise dominion, and blaspheme majesty. [9] When Michael the archangel, disputing with the devil, contended about the body of Moses, he durst not bring against him the judgment of railing speech, but said: The Lord command thee. [10] But these men blaspheme whatever things they know not: and what things soever they naturally know, like dumb beasts, in these they are corrupted.  (Jude 1 6-10.)

The use of the “sexual orientation” phrase is insidious, and it is designed to presage the kind of changes in Catholic teaching about the intrinsically disordered nature of homosexual acts that was spoken about by Victor Manuel Fernandez in a press conference just the day after the official release of Dignitatis Infinita nearly three weeks ago.

To the next part of Dignitatis Infinita’s treatment of “gender theory”:

56. At the same time, the Church highlights the definite critical issues present in gender theory. On this point, Pope Francis has reminded us that “the path to peace calls for respect for human rights, in accordance with the simple yet clear formulation contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, whose seventy-fifth anniversary we recently celebrated.

Comment Number Five:

The path to peace does not call for a respect for “huma rights” in accordance “with the simple yet clear formulation contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” The path to peace starts with individual souls who are peace with the Most Blessed Trinity by being in a state of Sanctifying Grace. Peace among men depends upon the right ordering of their souls produced by Sanctifying Grace, which provides men with the means to overcome concupiscence and to pursue sanctity as befits redeemed creatures who seek to observe all that is contained within the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law in spite of their own fallen natures.

The path to peace runs through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary and leads to the Peace of Christ in the Kingship of Christ as taught by Pope Pius XI in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio:

One thing is certain today. Since the close of the Great War individuals, the different classes of society, the nations of the earth have not as yet found true peace. They do not enjoy, therefore, that active and fruitful tranquillity which is the aspiration and the need of mankind. This is a sad truth which forces itself upon us from every side. For anyone who, as We do, desires profoundly to study and successfully to apply the means necessary to overcome such evils, it is all-important that he recognize both the fact and the gravity of this state of affairs and attempt beforehand to discover its causes. This duty is imposed upon Us in commanding fashion by the very consciousness which We have of Our Apostolic Office. We cannot but resolve to fulfill that which is so clearly Our duty. This We shall do now by this Our first encyclical, and afterward with all solicitude in the course of Our sacred ministry.

Since the selfsame sad conditions continue to exist in the world today which were the object of constant and almost heartbreaking preoccupation on the part of Our respected Predecessor, Benedict XV, during the whole period of his pontificate, naturally We have come to make his thoughts and his solutions of these problems Our own. May they become, too, the thoughts and ideals of everyone, as they are Our thoughts, and if this should happen we would certainly see, with the help of God and the co-operation of all men of good will, the most wonderful effects come to pass by a true and lasting reconciliation of men one with another.

The inspired words of the Prophets seem to have been written expressly for our own times: "We looked for peace and no good came: for a time of healing, and behold fear," (Jer. viii, 15) "for the time of healing, and behold trouble." (Jer. xiv, 19) "We looked for light, and behold darkness . . . we have looked for judgment, and there is none: for salvation, and it is far from us." (Isaias lix, 9, 11)

The belligerents of yesterday have laid down their arms but on the heels of this act we encounter new horrors and new threats of war in the Near East. The conditions in many sections of these devastated regions have been greatly aggravated by famine, epidemics, and the laying waste of the land, all of which have not failed to take their toll of victims without number, especially among the aged, women and innocent children. In what has been so justly called the immense theater of the World War, the old rivalries between nations have not ceased to exert their influence, rivalries at times hidden under the manipulations of politics or concealed beneath the fluctuations of finance, but openly appearing in the press, in reviews and magazines of every type, and even penetrating into institutions devoted to the cultivation of the arts and sciences, spots where otherwise the atmosphere of quiet and peace would reign supreme.

Public life is so enveloped, even at the present hour, by the dense fog of mutual hatreds and grievances that it is almost impossible for the common people so much as freely to breathe therein. If the defeated nations continue to suffer most terribly, no less serious are the evils which afflict their conquerors. Small nations complain that they are being oppressed and exploited by great nations. The great powers, on their side, contend that they are being judged wrongly and circumvented by the smaller. All nations, great and small, suffer acutely from the sad effects of the late War. Neither can those nations which were neutral contend that they have escaped altogether the tremendous sufferings of the War or failed to experience its evil results almost equally with the actual belligerents. These evil results grow in volume from day to day because of the utter impossibility of finding anything like a safe remedy to cure the ills of society, and this in spite of all the efforts of politicians and statesmen whose work has come to naught if it has not unfortunately tended to aggravate the very evils they tried to overcome. Conditions have become increasingly worse because the fears of the people are being constantly played upon by the ever-present menace of new wars, likely to be more frightful and destructive than any which have preceded them. Whence it is that the nations of today live in a state of armed peace which is scarcely better than war itself, a condition which tends to exhaust national finances, to waste the flower of youth, to muddy and poison the very fountainheads of life, physical, intellectual, religious, and moral.

A much more serious and lamentable evil than these threats of external aggression is the internal discord which menaces the welfare not only of nations but of human society itself. In the first place, we must take cognizance of the war between the classes, a chronic and mortal disease of present-day society, which like a cancer is eating away the vital forces of the social fabric, labor, industry, the arts, commerce, agriculture -- everything in fact which contributes to public and private welfare and to national prosperity. This conflict seems to resist every solution and grows worse because those who are never satisfied with the amount of their wealth contend with those who hold on most tenaciously to the riches which they have already acquired, while to both classes there is common the desire to rule the other and to assume control of the other's possessions. From this class war there result frequent interruptions of work, the causes for which most often can be laid to mutual provocations. There result, too, revolutions, riots, and forcible repression of one side or other by the government, all of which cannot but end in general discontent and in grave damage to the common welfare.

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 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.

13. It is most sad to see how this revolutionary spirit has penetrated into that sanctuary of peace and love, the family, the original nucleus of human society. In the family these evil seeds of dissension, which were sown long ago, have recently been spread about more and more by the fact of the absence of fathers and sons from the family fireside during the War and by the greatly increased freedom in matters of morality which followed on it as one of its effects. Frequently we behold sons alienated from their fathers, brothers quarreling with brothers, masters with servants, servants with masters. Too often likewise have we seen both the sanctity of the marriage tie and the duties to God and to humankind, which this tie imposes upon men, forgotten.

14. Just as the smallest part of the body feels the effect of an illness which is ravaging the whole body or one of its vital organs, so the evils now besetting society and the family afflict even individuals. In particular, We cannot but lament the morbid restlessness which has spread among people of every age and condition in life, the general spirit of insubordination and the refusal to live up to one’s obligations which has become so widespread as almost to appear the customary mode of living. We lament, too, the destruction of purity among women and young girls as is evidenced by the increasing immodesty of their dress and conversation and by their participation in shameful dances, which sins are made the more heinous by the vaunting in the faces of people less fortunate than themselves their luxurious mode of life. Finally, We cannot but grieve over the great increase in the number of what might be called social misfits who almost inevitably end by joining the ranks of those malcontents who continually agitate against all order, be it public or private.

15. It is surprising, then, that we should no longer possess that security of life in which we can place our trust and that there remains only the most terrible uncertainty, and from hour to hour added fears for the future? Instead of regular daily work there is idleness and unemployment. That blessed tranquillity which is the effect of an orderly existence and in which the essence of peace is to be found no longer exists, and, in its place, the restless spirit of revolt reigns. As a consequence industry suffers, commerce is crippled, the cultivation of literature and the arts becomes more and more difficult, and what is worse than all, Christian civilization itself is irreparably damaged thereby. In the face of our much praised progress, we behold with sorrow society lapsing back slowly but surely into a state of barbarism.

16. We wish to record, in addition to the evils already mentioned, other evils which beset society and which occupy a place of prime importance but whose very existence escapes the ordinary observer, the sensual man — he who, as the Apostle says, does not perceive “the things that are of the Spirit of God” (I Cor. ii, 14), yet which cannot but be judged the greatest and most destructive scourges of the social order of today. We refer specifically to those evils which transcend the material or natural sphere and lie within the supernatural and religious order properly so-called; in other words, those evils which affect the spiritual life of souls. These evils are all the more to be deplored since they injure souls whose value is infinitely greater than that of any merely material object.

17. Over and above the laxity in the performance of Christian duties which is so widespread, We cannot but sorrow with you, Venerable Brothers, over the fact that very many churches, which during the War had been turned to profane uses, have not yet been restored to their original purpose as temples of prayer and of divine worship; moreover, that many seminaries whose existence is vital for the preparation and formation of worthy leaders and teachers of the religious life have not yet been reopened; that the ranks of the clergy in almost every country have been decimated, either because so many priests have died on the battlefield in the exercise of their sacred ministry or have been lost to the Church because they proved faithless to their holy vocation, due to the unfavorable conditions under which they were compelled to live for so long; and, finally, that in many places even the preaching of the Word of God, so necessary and so fruitful for “the edifying of the body of Christ” (Ephesians iv, 12) has been silenced.

18. The evil results of the Great War, as they affect the spiritual life, have been felt all over the world, even in out-of-the-way and lonely sections of far-off continents. Missionaries have been forced to abandon the field of their apostolic labors, and many have been unable to return to their work, thus causing interruptions to and even abandonment of those glorious conquests of the Faith which have done so much to raise the level of civilization, moral, material, and religious. It is quite true that there have been some worthwhile compensations for these great spiritual misfortunes. Among these compensations is one which stands out in bold relief and gives the lie to many ancient calumnies, namely, that a pure love of country and a generous devotion to duty burn brightly in the souls of those consecrated to God, and that through their sacred ministry the consolations of religion were brought to thousands dying on the fields of battle wet with human blood. Thus, many, in spite of their prejudices, were led to honor again the priesthood and the Church by reason of the wonderful examples of sacrifice of self, with which they had become acquainted. For these happy results we are indebted solely to the infinite goodness and wisdom of God, Who draws good from evil.

19. Our letter so far has been devoted to a recital of the evils which afflict present-day society. We must now search out, with all possible care, the causes of these disorders, some of which have already been referred to. At this point, Venerable Brothers, there seems to come to Us the voice of the Divine Consoler and Physician Who, speaking of these human infirmities says: “All these evil things come from within.” (Mark vii, 23.)

20. Peace indeed was signed in solemn conclave between the belligerents of the late War. This peace, however, was only written into treaties. It was not received into the hearts of men, who still cherish the desire to fight one another and to continue to menace in a most serious manner the quiet and stability of civil society. Unfortunately the law of violence held sway so long that it has weakened and almost obliterated all traces of those natural feelings of love and mercy which the law of Christian charity has done so much to encourage. Nor has this illusory peace, written only on paper, served as yet to reawaken similar noble sentiments in the souls of men. On the contrary, there has been born a spirit of violence and of hatred which, because it has been indulged in for so long, has become almost second nature in many men. There has followed the blind rule of the inferior parts of the soul over the superior, that rule of the lower elements “fighting against the law of the mind,” which St. Paul grieved over. (Rom. vii, 23)

Men today do not act as Christians, as brothers, but as strangers, and even enemies. The sense of man's personal dignity and of the value of human life has been lost in the brutal domination begotten of might and mere superiority in numbers. Many are intent on exploiting their neighbors solely for the purpose of enjoying more fully and on a larger scale the goods of this world. But they err grievously who have turned to the acquisition of material and temporal possessions and are forgetful of eternal and spiritual things, to the possession of which Jesus, Our Redeemer, by means of the Church, His living interpreter, calls mankind.

22. It is in the very nature of material objects that an inordinate desire for them becomes the root of every evil, of every discord, and in particular, of a lowering of the moral sense. On the one hand, things which are naturally base and vile can never give rise to noble aspirations in the human heart which was created by and for God alone and is restless until it finds repose in Him. On the other hand, material goods (and in this they differ greatly from those of the spirit which the more of them we possess the more remain to be acquired) the more they are divided among men the less each one has and, by consequence, what one man has another cannot possibly possess unless it be forcibly taken away from the first. Such being the case, worldly possessions can never satisfy all in equal manner nor give rise to a spirit of universal contentment, but must become perforce a source of division among men and of vexation of spirit, as even the Wise Man Solomon experienced: "Vanity of vanities, and vexation of spirit." (Ecclesiastes i, 2, 14)

23. The same effects which result from these evils among individuals may likewise be expected among nations. "From whence are wars and contentions among you?" asks the Apostle St. James. "Are they not hence from your concupiscences, which war in your members?" (James iv, 1, 2)

24. The inordinate desire for pleasure, concupiscence of the flesh, sows the fatal seeds of division not only among families but likewise among states; the inordinate desire for possessions, concupiscence of the eyes, inevitably turns into class warfare and into social egotism; the inordinate desire to rule or to domineer over others, pride of life, soon becomes mere party or factional rivalries, manifesting itself in constant displays of conflicting ambitions and ending in open rebellion, in the crime of lese majeste, and even in national parricide.

25. These unsuppressed desires, this inordinate love of the things of the world, are precisely the source of all international misunderstandings and rivalries, despite the fact that oftentimes men dare to maintain that acts prompted by such motives are excusable and even justifiable because, forsooth, they were performed for reasons of state or of the public good, or out of love for country. Patriotism -- the stimulus of so many virtues and of so many noble acts of heroism when kept within the bounds of the law of Christ -- becomes merely an occasion, an added incentive to grave injustice when true love of country is debased to the condition of an extreme nationalism, when we forget that all men are our brothers and members of the same great human family, that other nations have an equal right with us both to life and to prosperity, that it is never lawful nor even wise, to dissociate morality from the affairs of practical life, that, in the last analysis, it is "justice which exalteth a nation: but sin maketh nations miserable." (Proverbs xiv, 34)

26. Perhaps the advantages to one's family, city, or nation obtained in some such way as this may well appear to be a wonderful and great victory (this thought has been already expressed by St. Augustine), but in the end it turns out to be a very shallow thing, something rather to inspire us with the most fearful apprehensions of approaching ruin. "It is a happiness which appears beautiful but is brittle as glass. We must ever be on guard lest with horror we see it broken into a thousand pieces at the first touch." (St. Augustine de Civitate Dei, Book iv, Chap. 3)

27. There is over and above the absence of peace and the evils attendant on this absence, another deeper and more profound cause for present-day conditions. This cause was even beginning to show its head before the War and the terrible calamities consequent on that cataclysm should have proven a remedy for them if mankind had only taken the trouble to understand the real meaning of those terrible events. In the Holy Scriptures we read: "They that have forsaken the Lord, shall be consumed." (Isaias i, 28) No less well known are the words of the Divine Teacher, Jesus Christ, Who said: "Without me you can do nothing" (John xv, 5) and again, "He that gathereth not with me, scattereth." (Luke xi, 23)

28. These words of the Holy Bible have been fulfilled and are now at this very moment being fulfilled before our very eyes. Because men have forsaken God and Jesus Christ, they have sunk to the depths of evil. They waste their energies and consume their time and efforts in vain sterile attempts to find a remedy for these ills, but without even being successful in saving what little remains from the existing ruin. It was a quite general desire that both our laws and our governments should exist without recognizing God or Jesus Christ, on the theory that all authority comes from men, not from God. Because of such an assumption, these theorists fell very short of being able to bestow upon law not only those sanctions which it must possess but also that secure basis for the supreme criterion of justice which even a pagan philosopher like Cicero saw clearly could not be derived except from the divine law. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

That last paragraph, number twenty-eight, says it it all. The gist of the two hundred thirty-seven articles linked at the top of this article can be summarized in the following words written by Pope Pius XI one hundred years, four months ago:

They waste their energies and consume their time and efforts in vain sterile attempts to find a remedy for these ills, but without even being successful in saving what little remains from the existing ruin. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

Unlike Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Victor Manuel Fernandez, Pope Pius XI explained the path to peace was not to be found in the League of Nations in his day and, of couse, in the United Nations today:

It is possible to sum up all We have said in one word, "the Kingdom of Christ." For Jesus Christ reigns over the minds of individuals by His teachings, in their hearts by His love, in each one's life by the living according to His law and the imitating of His example. Jesus reigns over the family when it, modeled after the holy ideals of the sacrament of matrimony instituted by Christ, maintains unspotted its true character of sanctuary. In such a sanctuary of love, parental authority is fashioned after the authority of God, the Father, from Whom, as a matter of fact, it originates and after which even it is named. (Ephesians iii, 15) The obedience of the children imitates that of the Divine Child of Nazareth, and the whole family life is inspired by the sacred ideals of the Holy Family. Finally, Jesus Christ reigns over society when men recognize and reverence the sovereignty of Christ, when they accept the divine origin and control over all social forces, a recognition which is the basis of the right to command for those in authority and of the duty to obey for those who are subjects, a duty which cannot but ennoble all who live up to its demands. Christ reigns where the position in society which He Himself has assigned to His Church is recognized, for He bestowed on the Church the status and the constitution of a society which, by reason of the perfect ends which it is called upon to attain, must be held to be supreme in its own sphere; He also made her the depository and interpreter of His divine teachings, and, by consequence, the teacher and guide of every other society whatsoever, not of course in the sense that she should abstract in the least from their authority, each in its own sphere supreme, but that she should really perfect their authority, just as divine grace perfects human nature, and should give to them the assistance necessary for men to attain their true final end, eternal happiness, and by that very fact make them the more deserving and certain promoters of their happiness here below.

It is, therefore, a fact which cannot be questioned that the true peace of Christ can only exist in the Kingdom of Christ -- "the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ." It is no less unquestionable that, in doing all we can to bring about the re-establishment of Christ's kingdom, we will be working most effectively toward a lasting world peace. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

The path to peace is not to be found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights any more than it is in Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together. Such a contention is nothing other than Judeo-Masonic naturalism, which has helped enshrine the sort of anthropocentricity that is the basis of most of Dignitatis Infinita’s text:

These principles are self-evident and commonly accepted. Regrettably, in recent decades, attempts have been made to introduce new rights that are neither fully consistent with those originally defined nor always acceptable. They have led to instances of ideological colonization, in which gender theory plays a central role; the latter is extremely dangerous since it cancels differences in its claim to make everyone equal.”[102]

Comment Number Six:

Hold on there, Victor, hold on.

Aren’t you the same fellow who demanded equality between men and women in an earlier part of Dignitatis Infinita?

45. Pope St. John Paul II recognized that “much remains to be done to prevent discrimination against those who have chosen to be wives and mothers. […] [T]here is an urgent need to achieve real equality in every area: equal pay for equal work, protection for working mothers, fairness in career advancements, equality of spouses with regard to family rights and the recognition of everything that is part of the rights and duties of citizens in a democratic State.”[84] Indeed, inequalities in these areas are also various forms of violence. He also recalled that “the time has come to condemn vigorously the types of sexual violence which frequently have women for their object and to pass laws which effectively defend them from such violence. Nor can we fail, in the name of the respect due to the human person, to condemn the widespread hedonistic and commercial culture which encourages the systematic exploitation of sexuality and corrupts even very young girls into letting their bodies be used for profit.”[85] Among the forms of violence carried out on women, how can we not mention coercive abortions, which affect both mother and child, often to satisfy the selfishness of males? And how can we not also mention the practice of polygamy? As the Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us, polygamy is contrary to the equal dignity of women and men; it is also “contrary to conjugal love which is undivided and exclusive.”[86]

How is it that Diginitatis Infinita can call for “real equality” in every area without noting the distinctions and then gender theory ideologues for calling equality that ignores differences between men and women?

Oh well, consistency for the conciliar revolutionaries would require a grounding in Scholasticism, which they do not have and, of course, reject as “irrelevant to our times.”

Obviously, gender theory ideologues do call for “equality in all areas,” and this rightly criticized by Dignitatis Infinita despite its calling for such equality earlier in its text.

However, Dignitatis Infinita goes on to claim that the “scientific coherence” of gender theory is “the subject of considerable debate among experts.” This is entirely irrelevant as such debate is needless given the fact that, as Dignitatis Infinita recognizes, that “human life in all its dimensions, both physical and spiritual, is a gift of God”:

57. Regarding gender theory, whose scientific coherence is the subject of considerable debate among experts, the Church recalls that human life in all its dimensions, both physical and spiritual, is a gift from God. This gift is to be accepted with gratitude and placed at the service of the good. Desiring a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes, apart from this fundamental truth that human life is a gift, amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God, entering into competition with the true God of love revealed to us in the Gospel.

Comment Number Seven:

This paragraph is essentially sound, especially as it relates to recognize that the gender theory ideologues desire to “enter into competition” with the true God of love revealed to us in the Gospel” except to note that one can also reject “gender theory” on the basis of human reason unaided by the light of Divine Revelation. Divine Revelation ratifies and elevates what is knowable by reason, to be sure, and reveals truths that could never be known unless the true God had revealed them to us. It is also true, though, that gender theory has no scientific or philosophical basis whatsoever.

Moreover, while human life is at the service of the good, Dignitatis Infinita does not define man’s ultimate good: 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 unending Easter Sunday of glory in Heaven.

Also unnerving is that whenever Dignitatis Infinita states the truth of a matter there is usually some kind of concession made to those who are propagating the very errors it is criticizing:

58. Another prominent aspect of gender theory is that it intends to deny the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings: sexual difference. This foundational difference is not only the greatest imaginable difference but is also the most beautiful and most powerful of them. In the male-female couple, this difference achieves the most marvelous of reciprocities. It thus becomes the source of that miracle that never ceases to surprise us: the arrival of new human beings in the world.

All well and good.

All well and good until the next paragraph:

59. In this sense, respect for both one’s own body and that of others is crucial in light of the proliferation of claims to new rights advanced by gender theory. This ideology “envisages a society without sexual differences, thereby eliminating the anthropological basis of the family.”[103] It thus becomes unacceptable that “some ideologies of this sort, which seek to respond to what are at times understandable aspirations, manage to assert themselves as absolute and unquestionable, even dictating how children should be raised. It needs to be emphasized that ‘biological sex and the socio-cultural role of sex (gender) can be distinguished but not separated.’”[104] Therefore, all attempts to obscure reference to the ineliminable sexual difference between man and woman are to be rejected: “We cannot separate the masculine and the feminine from God’s work of creation, which is prior to all our decisions and experiences, and where biological elements exist which are impossible to ignore.”[105] Only by acknowledging and accepting this difference in reciprocity can each person fully discover themselves, their dignity, and their identity.

Comment Number Eight:

Legitimate aspirations?

Name one.

Gender theory ideologues have no legitimate aspirations as they want the world to be defined by their own psychoses and neuroses, not by the reality of world created by God.

Finally, the assertion that the only each person can “fully discover themselves, their dignity, and their identity,” is itself ideological as we do not need to “discover” anything about our identity, which is ours because we are creatures of God who have been redeemed by every single drop of His Most Precious Blood during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday.

We must remember that Modernists can sometimes speak the truth but it is also invariably the case that they insert drops of poison that colors and distorts how they state the truth:

18. This will appear more clearly to anybody who studies the conduct of Modernists, which is in perfect harmony with their teachings. In their writings and addresses they seem not unfrequently to advocate doctrines which are contrary one to the other, so that one would be disposed to regard their attitude as double and doubtful. But this is done deliberately and advisedly, and the reason of it is to be found in their opinion as to the mutual separation of science and faith. Thus in their books one finds some things which might well be approved by a Catholic, but on turning over the page one is confronted by other things which might well have been dictated by a rationalist. When they write history they make no mention of the divinity of Christ, but when they are in the pulpit they profess it clearly; again, when they are dealing with history they take no account of the Fathers and the Councils, but when they catechize the people, they cite them respectfully. In the same way they draw their distinctions between exegesis which is theological and pastoral and exegesis which is scientific and historical. So, too, when they treat of philosophy, history, and criticism, acting on the principle that science in no way depends upon faith, they feel no especial horror in treading in the footsteps of Luther and are wont to display a manifold contempt for Catholic doctrines, for the Holy Fathers, for the Ecumenical Councils, for the ecclesiastical magisterium; and should they be taken to task for this, they complain that they are being deprived of their liberty. Lastly, maintaining the theory that faith must be subject to science, they continuously and openly rebuke the Church on the ground that she resolutely refuses to submit and accommodate her dogmas to the opinions of philosophy; while they, on their side, having for this purpose blotted out the old theology, endeavor to introduce a new theology which shall support the aberrations of philosophers. (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

What’s so hard about saying that “gender theory” is insane and is but a part of the insanity called Marxism?

To the next-to-last topic covered by Dignitatis Infinita:

Sex Change

60. The dignity of the body cannot be considered inferior to that of the person as such. The Catechism of the Catholic Church expressly invites us to recognize that “the human body shares in the dignity of ‘the image of God.’”[106] Such a truth deserves to be remembered, especially when it comes to sex change, for humans are inseparably composed of both body and soul. In this, the body serves as the living context in which the interiority of the soul unfolds and manifests itself, as it does also through the network of human relationships. Constituting the person’s being, the soul and the body both participate in the dignity that characterizes every human.[107] Moreover, the body participates in that dignity as it is endowed with personal meanings, particularly in its sexed condition.[108] It is in the body that each person recognizes himself or herself as generated by others, and it is through their bodies that men and women can establish a loving relationship capable of generating other persons. Teaching about the need to respect the natural order of the human person, Pope Francis affirmed that “creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift. At the same time, we are called to protect our humanity, and this means, in the first place, accepting it and respecting it as it was created.”[109] It follows that any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception. This is not to exclude the possibility that a person with genital abnormalities that are already evident at birth or that develop later may choose to receive the assistance of healthcare professionals to resolve these abnormalities. However, in this case, such a medical procedure would not constitute a sex change in the sense intended here.

Comment Number Nine:

This is psychobabble.

Again, what is so difficult about saying that sex change is ontologically impossible and that the mutilation of one’s body by chemical and surgical means in the vain attempt to become something that he can never be is a violation of the binding precepts of the Fifth Commandment?

Human mutilation is a Mortal Sin as it is an act against the Omniscience and Omnipotence of the Most Blessed Trinity.

Dignitatis Infinita, however, does not refer to sin and it even qualifies its opposition to the chemical and surgical mutilation of one’s body by stating that “any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.”

As a rule?

Only “risks” threatening human dignity?

Only “risks.”

Human mutilation is always mortally sinful and those who undertake such debauchery are at grave risk of losing their immortal souls for all eternity.

There is also a critical omission in Dignitatis Infinita’s discussion of “sex change” as there is no mention nor condemnation of the institutionalization of so-called “gender theory” as the ideological basis for human mutilation, which it does not call by its proper name, and is being used aggressively to emotionally mutilate impressionable children to “question” whether are “identifying” with the right gender so that they can be taken to surgical mutilators to have their bodies dissected. This is a cruel form of child abuse that has the sanction of practically every leader in the Western world and its omission from the text of Dignitatis Infinita is inexcusable.

Dignitatis Infinita’s section on “sex change” also ignores the inconvenient little fact that, despite its conciliarspeak rejection of human mutilation “as a rule,” Jorge Mario Bergoglio has gone out of his way to reaffirm the “transgendered.” Herewith are two reminders:

Vatican City, January 26 - Pope Francis on Saturday received in a private audience a Spanish transsexual and his girlfriend after the man wrote to him saying he had been cast out of the church in his native city, Spanish daily Hoy reported Monday.

The transgender male, Diego Neria Lejarraga, a 48-year-old former woman, wrote to the pope some time ago saying he had been "marginalised" by Church officials in the city of Plasencia, in the southwestern region of Estremadura, Hoy said.

Neria, a believer and a practising Catholic, said he had been rebuffed by elements of the local clergy and claimed the parish priest had called him "the Devil's daughter", Hoy reported.

Francis phoned him twice in December, setting up Saturday''s meeting in St Martha's House, the Vatican guesthouse the pontiff lives in, Hoy said.

The pope has said the Catholic Church should be more accepting of gays but recently failed to muster a big enough majority of cardinals to change doctrine on the issue.

Asked about the reported meeting, official Vatican sources declined to comment. (receives Spanish Transsexual”)

This what I wrote at the time nine years, three months ago:

Well, I suppose that Federico Lombardi has finally learned—or has been told—to keep his mouth shut after one of Jorge’s “private” meetings or phone calls become a matter of public news once it is blabbed by the “private parties” being used by the false “pontiff” to “push the envelope” on his conciliar revolution to the uttermost limits of the LGBT agenda imaginable.

Some might protest that Bergoglio was only giving “comfort” to an aggrieved soul.

Really?

What’s the grievance?

The gender-mutilated woman is the devil’s daughter as to mutilate one’s body to change his gender is to play God with the very nature He has given to him and is a direct violation of the binding precepts that flow from the Fifth Commandment. Just as he really does not believe that there is anything inherently unnatural in “same-sex attraction,” so is it apparent that Jorge Mario Bergoglio does not believe that there is anything inherent wrong in undergoing gender-mutilation surgery. He is as perverted in his mind and in his soul as the woman who met with him in the company of the woman she intends to “marry” even though she is a “woman.” So much for Jorge’s supposed opposition to “same-sex marriage,” huh? What the mutilated woman, who believes herself to be a man, intends in reality to do is to “marry” another woman.

By giving a show of support and affirmation to the gender-mutilated woman, Jorge Mario Bergoglio is, in effect, communicating his belief that such a mutilation must be accepted as a fait accompli without any word of criticism or rebuke. Such a belief, though, is contrary even to the official teaching of his own Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which issued a “doctrinal note” on January 31, 2003, declaring that one who undergoes a “sex-change” operation does not change the gender that God gave to him:

VATICAN, Jan 31, 03 (CWNews.com) -- The Catholic Church cannot recognize the validity of a sex-change operation, the Vatican has declared.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has released a secret directive to bishops and religious superiors, indicating that an individual who has undergone a sex-change operation cannot be a candidate for the priesthood or religious life, and cannot enter into a valid marriage. The document also instructs pastors that they should not alter an individual's sacramental record to change the person's gender.

The Vatican document was released in 2000, but its existence and contents were tightly guarded until earlier this month. The directives were reportedly sent at first to papal delegates in each country, and later to the heads of episcopal conferences. Vatican officials confirmed the existence of the document after the Catholic News Service reported on it, but the full text is not available to the public.

The Note from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith explains that an individual's physical characteristics-- which can be altered surgically-- constitute only a part of his gender identity. While the body can be changed, the sexual identity cannot, the Congregation says.

The Vatican document indicates that if a bishop or religious superior learns that an individual has undergone a sex-change operation, "that person cannot validly be admitted into a religious institute or society of consecrated life." The document adds that if a transsexual is now living in a religious order, "he must, for the good of souls, be expelled from the religious house."

The Vatican document was reportedly given greater circulation after a query from an American bishop, prompted by a dispute within a religious order in his diocese. (SEX- CHANGE OPERATIONS RULED INVALID BY THE CONCILIAR VATICAN.)

Jorge Mario Bergoglio may or may not know about this “doctrinal note,” which would not matter to him even if he did know about it. The Argentine Apostate lives by pure viscera.

What Jorge Mario Bergoglio does know, however, is that one of his chief nemeses in the conciliar structures, Raymond Leo “Cardinal” Burke, whom he deposed as the head of the Apostolic Signatura in conciliar captivity, had himself given credence to the supposed “validity” of gender-mutilation surgery (the singular case is being used to refer to what are a series of grotesque surgeries performed by real-life sons of Dr. Frankenstein by way of Dr. Moreau’s Island of Lost Souls) by accepting a gender-mutilated man, who had started to call himself “Julie Green,” to found a religious community of women in the Diocese of La Crosse, Wisconsin, which is why Joseph “Cardinal” Ratzinger’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had been asked to issue the doctrinal note quoted just above.

Here is a review of the pertinent facts once again:

At times his theological allegiance with these orders placed Bishop Burke in some compromising positions. Most striking, perhaps, was the case of Sister Julie Green, a member of the Franciscan Servants of Jesus:

"Julie Green is living a lie!" writes Mary Therese Helmueller in an October 25, 2002, letter to Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, Papal Nuncio to the United States. "[She] is a transsexual, a biological male. He is really Joel Green, who had a sex operation to make him physically appear as a woman.... I fear that The Church in America will suffer another 'sex scandal' if Julie Green continues to be recognized as a Catholic Religious Sister, and if Bishop Raymond L. Burke receives his final vows, as a religious sister, on November 23rd, 2002."

Montalvo forwarded the letter to Burke, who on November 20, 2002, replied to Helmueller. "With regard to Sister Julie Green, F.S.J., the recognition of the association of the faithful which she and Sister Anne LeBlanc founded was granted only after consultation with the Holy See," he writes. "These are matters which are confidential and do not admit of any further comment.... I can assure you that Sister Julie Green in no way espouses a sex change operation as right or good. In fact, she holds it to be seriously disordered. Therefore, I caution you very much about the rash judgments which you made in your letter to the Apostolic Nuncio."

Adds Burke: "I express my surprise that, when you had questions about Sister Julie Green, you did not, in accord with the teaching of our Lord, address the matter to me directly." (Bishop Takes Queen.)

While it is nice that Joel Green believed the surgery that he had to become “Julie Green” is “seriously disordered,” such a disavowal does not annul the fact that he had underwent such surgery himself and was presenting himself as a woman, no less a woman desirous of starting a religious community with the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism within the Diocese of La Crosse with the approval of a man, Raymond Leo Burke, whom Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict transferred to the Archdiocese of Saint Louis, Missouri, and later brought him to Rome and elevated him the conciliar "college of cardinals."

This having been noted, it could very well be that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is crazy like a fox in this instance. That is, he appears to be daring Raymond Leo Burke to criticize him publicly for meeting with the “transgendered” Spanish woman who believes herself to be a man. At the same time, though, Jorge is showing his disregard for the work of the congregation many believe that he wants to dismantle while forcing Burke to say that he disagrees with Ratzinger for approving the “doctrinal note” that stopped him from proceeding with his plans for “Sister Julie Green."

What can be stated with certainty is that the Argentine Apostate has shown that he accepts the “reality” of the supposed effects of gender-mutilation and desires to blunt all efforts on the part of conciliar "bishops" and priests/presbyers to "exclude" them from the life of the conciliar sect.

Cheer up.

Things are only going to get worse under Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who is taking the conciliar revolution where no revolutionary at the "papal" level had gone before. (From Mutilating All Truth.)

Here is a report from two years ago about another example of the Argentine Apostate’s “concern” for the “rights” of those who have undergone the chemical and surgical mutilations of their bodies, which are Temples of God the Holy Ghost:

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis has met with a fourth group of transgender people who found shelter at a Rome church, the Vatican newspaper reported Thursday.

L’Osservatore Romano said the encounter took place Wednesday on the sidelines of Francis’ weekly general audience. The newspaper quoted Sister Genevieve Jeanningros and the Rev. Andrea Conocchia as saying the pope’s welcome brought their guests hope.

The Blessed Immaculate Virgin community in the Torvaianica neighborhood on Rome’s outskirts opened its doors to transgender people during the coronavirus pandemic.

Francis previously met with some of them on April 27, June 22 and Aug. 3, the newspaper said.

“No one should encounter injustice or be thrown away, everyone has dignity of being a child of God,” the paper quoted Sister Jeanningros as saying.

Francis has earned praise from some members of the LBGTQ community for his outreach. When asked in 2013 about a purportedly gay priest, he replied, “Who am I to judge?” He has met individually and in groups with transgender people over the course of his pontificate.

But he has strongly opposed “gender theory” and has not changed church teaching that holds that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered.” In 2021, he allowed publication of a Vatican document asserting that the Catholic Church cannot bless same-sex unions since “God cannot bless sin.”

Recently, Francis wrote a letter praising the initiative of a Jesuit-run ministry for LGBTQ Catholics, called Outreach. The online resource is run by the Rev. James Martin, author of “Building a Bridge,” a book about the need for the church to better welcome and minister to LGBTQ Catholics.

Francis praised a recent Outreach event at New York’s Jesuit Fordham University, and encouraged organizers “to keep working in the culture of encounter, which shortens the distances and enriches us with differences, in the same manner of Jesus, who made himself close to everyone.”

The first Jesuit pope of the Roman Catholic Church has spoken of his own ministry to gay and transgender people, insisting they are children of God, loved by God and deserving of accompaniment by the church. (Pope Francis meets transgender guests of Rome church        .)

Not to belabor the point (but meaning to do precisely that, of course), here is an example of Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s “outreach” to the “transgendered” that took place a little over a year ago:

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — The day before Easter this year, a group of transgender people came to the Vatican at the invitation of Pope Francis to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, according to an official who oversees the pope’s charitable works.

Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, the papal almoner, confirmed in a phone interview that about 50 individuals arrived at the Vatican on buses on April 3 from a parish in Torvaianica, near Rome, where the Rev. Andrea Conocchia has been ministering to a transgender community for several years. On April 24, the group returned for their second shot.

It has already been reported that Francis had asked Krajewski last year to provide food and financial support to members of the community who were struggling without work due to the pandemic. But as Easter approached this year, Krajewski reached out to Conocchia, suggesting that he bring the transgender individuals under his care to the Vatican to be vaccinated. (At Easter, Pope Francis invited transgender group to Vatican to receive COVID-19 vaccine.)

Here we find the false “pontiff” “ministering” to those who have undergone the chemical and surgical mutilation of their bodies by seeing to that their bodies are further poisoned by the coronavirus jab that is derived from the tissues of aborted babies, changes one’s own genetic structure by use of the mRNA technology, and contains poisons that are causing many recipients to suffer lifelong adverse effects, especially myocarditis, and to die suddenly without anyone being curious as to whether the vaccines caused their deaths.

“Papal” “charity”?

Dignitatis Infinita’s weak section on sex-change, therefore, is further vitiated by the way in which Jorge Mario Bergoglio has sought to show his support for those who have violated the binding precepts of the Fifth Commandment to have their bodies chemically and surgically mutilated.

The final section of Dignitatis Infinita deals with what it terms as “digital violence”:

Digital Violence

61. Although the advancement of digital technologies may offer many possibilities for promoting human dignity, it also increasingly tends toward the creation of a world in which exploitation, exclusion, and violence grow, extending even to the point of harming the dignity of the human person. Consider, for example, how easy it is through these means to endanger a person’s good name with fake news and slander. On this point, Pope Francis stresses that “it is not healthy to confuse communication with mere virtual contact. Indeed, ‘the digital environment is also one of loneliness, manipulation, exploitation, and violence, even to the extreme case of the ‘dark web.’ Digital media can expose people to the risk of addiction, isolation, and gradual loss of contact with concrete reality, blocking the development of authentic interpersonal relationships. New forms of violence are spreading through social media, for example, cyberbullying. The internet is also a channel for spreading pornography and the exploitation of persons for sexual purposes or through gambling.’”[110] In this way, paradoxically, the more that opportunities for making connections grow in this realm, the more people find themselves isolated and impoverished in interpersonal relationships: “Digital communication wants to bring everything out into the open; people’s lives are combed over, laid bare and bandied about, often anonymously. Respect for others disintegrates, and even as we dismiss, ignore, or keep others distant, we can shamelessly peer into every detail of their lives.”[111] Such tendencies represent a dark side of digital progress.

62. In this perspective, if technology is to serve human dignity and not harm it, and if it is to promote peace rather than violence, then the human community must be proactive in addressing these trends with respect to human dignity and the promotion of the good: “In today’s globalized world, ‘the media can help us to feel closer to one another, creating a sense of the unity of the human family which in turn can inspire solidarity and serious efforts to ensure a more dignified life for all. […] The media can help us greatly in this, especially nowadays, when the networks of human communication have made unprecedented advances. The internet, in particular, offers immense possibilities for encounter and solidarity. This is something truly good, a gift from God.’ We need constantly to ensure that present-day forms of communication are in fact guiding us to generous encounter with others, to honest pursuit of the whole truth, to service, to closeness to the underprivileged and to the promotion of the common good.”[112]

Comment Number Ten:

Here is a sound pastoral solution to these problems: tell parents to keep their children off of the internet and to monitor their use of it for study purposes.

Here is another sound pastoral solution: tell all people to unplug, pray more Rosaries, and spend time in reading good books about the Holy Faith and the lives of the saints.

While the problems noted in this section of Dignitatis Infinita are real, its approach is purely naturalistic. We do not need the internet to be “connected” to others. We are always “connected” to others by means of the Communion of the Saints. Our prayers for others, including those who no longer want us to be “connected” with them, are the most powerful ways by which we can be united to those in this life in preparation for a good, happy reconciliation for all eternity in Heaven.

Aw shucks.

I forgot.

I have to deal with Dignitatis Infinita’s conclusion.

Well,  I have stayed up this late. Another thirty minutes won’t make much difference:

Conclusion

63. On the 75th anniversary of the promulgation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), Pope Francis reaffirmed that this document “is like a master plan, from which many steps have been taken, but many still need to be made, and unfortunately, at times, steps backward have been taken. The commitment to human rights is never finished! In this regard, I am near to all those who, without fanfare, in concrete daily life, fight and personally pay the price for defending the rights of those who do not count.”[113]

Comment Eleven:

The Catholic Church does not need a secular document as her “master plan” to defend “human rights.”

The Catholic Church was founded by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to sanctify and save the souls for whom He offered Himself to His Co-Equal, Co-Eternal God the Father on the wood of the Holy Cross in spirit and in truth to atone for our sins.

As Pope Saint Pius X noted in a citation I used earlier in this commentary, our only “peace treaty is the Gospel.”

64. In this spirit, the Church, with the present Declaration, ardently urges that respect for the dignity of the human person beyond all circumstances be placed at the center of the commitment to the common good and at the center of every legal system. Indeed, respect for the dignity of each person is the indispensable basis for the existence of any society that claims to be founded on just law and not on the force of power. Acknowledging human dignity forms the basis for upholding fundamental human rights, which precede and ground all civic coexistence.[114]

Comment Twelve:

The center of the common good and of every legal system is an adherence to all that pertains to the good of souls as taught by Holy Mother Church by advancing that common good in light of man’s First Cause and Last End for the love of the Most Holy Trinity and in accord with the binding precepts of the Divine and Natural Laws.

65. Each individual and also every human community is responsible for the concrete and actual realization of human dignity. Meanwhile, it is incumbent on States not only to protect human dignity but also to guarantee the conditions necessary for it to flourish in the integral promotion of the human person: “In political activity, we should remember that ‘appearances notwithstanding, every person is immensely holy and deserves our love and dedication.’”[115]

Comment Thirteen:

It is incumbent on states to submit to the Social Reign of Christ the King as It is exercised by Holy Mother Church in all that pertains to the good of souls after she has discharged her Indirect Power of teaching, preaching, and exhortation to avoid all that is injurious souls and thus offensive to God Himself.

66. Even today, in the face of so many violations of human dignity that seriously threaten the future of the human family, the Church encourages the promotion of the dignity of every human person, regardless of their physical, mental, cultural, social, and religious characteristics. The Church does this with hope, confident of the power that flows from the Risen Christ, who has fully revealed the integral dignity of every man and woman. This certainty becomes an appeal in Pope Francis’ words directed to each of us: “I appeal to everyone throughout the world not to forget this dignity which is ours. No one has the right to take it from us.”[116]

Comment Fourteen:

There are violations against the legitimate rights of human beings today because men, both collectively in their institutions of civil governance and individually, do not live for the honor and glory God.

Our “master plan” is to be found in the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes. The rightly ordered society depends upon rightly ordered souls, and it in this way that the Catholic Church alone can provide the supernatural helps that can help men respect each other for love of God as fellow redeemed creatures and thus realize a form of citizenship here below that is but a foretaste of the citizenship that belongs to the souls of the elect in Heaven.

Trusting, as always, in the intercessory power and protection of Our Lady, especially through her Most Holy Rosary, we continue to pray for the day when a true pope will be restored to the Throne of Saint Peter and documents such as Dignitatis Infinita will be consigned to the dustbin of history where it belongs.

Our Lady will come to vanquish the conciliar revolutionaries, and to this end we must use the weapon of her Most Holy Rosary which Saint Louis Grignion de Montfort used so successfully to soften the hardened hearts of Jansenists and to spread True Devotion to Mary by means of total consecration to her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, through her own Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

May we beg Our Lady through her Most Holy Rosary to vanquish the enemies of our own salvation within our lives so that we may be better able to witness to Divine truth in this life and then to enjoy the rewards for remaining faithful until the end by means of the graces she sends to us to follow her Divine Son at all times and in all things as He has entrusted Himself exclusively to His Catholic Church.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us. 

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us. 

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

Saint Paul of the Cross, pray for us.

Saint Vitalis, pray for us.

Saint Louis Grignion de Montfort, pray for us.

Saint Peter Chanel, pray for us.

Appendix

From the Divine Office on the Feast of Saint Paul of the Cross

Paul of the Cross was sprung of a noble family of the Danei, at Castellazzo, hard by Alessandria, in the Province of Acqui, in the territory of the then Republic of Genoa, but was born at Ovada, in the same province. The holiness with which he was afterwards to shine was foreshown by a strange light which filled his mother's chamber while she was in labour, and by the remarkable help which was bestowed upon him by the great Queen of Heaven, who delivered him unhurt from certain destruction when he was fallen into a river as a lad. From the first use of reason he burnt with love for Jesus crucified, and began to spend long times in contemplating Him. He chastised his innocent flesh with watching, scourging, fasting, and all severe hardships, and on Friday he drank vinegar mingled with gall. He was seized with a desire for martyrdom, and enlisted in the army which was being raised at Venice to fight against the Turks but in consequence of the Will of God, made known to him while he was in prayer, he left the army in order to serve in a more exalted regiment whose duty it should be to defend the Church and to toil for the eternal salvation of men. When he returned home he refused a very honourable marriage, and also the inheritance which was bequeathed to him by his father's brother, and would fain enter upon a straiter way of the cross and be clad by his own Bishop with a rough tunic. By command of the Bishop, on account of his eminent holiness of life and knowledge of the things of God, he began, even before he became a clerk, to toil in the Lord's field with great profit of souls by preaching the Word.

He betook himself to Rome, and when he had there studied a regular course of theology he was ordained Priest in obedience to the command of the Supreme Pontiff Benedict XIII., who also gave him permission to gather comrades around him. He withdrew to the solitude of Mount Argentaro, whither he had been already called by the Blessed Virgin, at which same time she also showed him in vision a black habit marked with the emblems of the sufferings of her Son. At Mount Argentaro, he laid the foundations of his new Congregation, which under the blessing of God grew quickly, through the labors of Paul, and attracted to it eminent men. It received the confirmation of the Apostolic See more than once, with the rules which Paul himself had received from God in prayer and the addition of a fourth vow, that, namely, to promote the blessed remembrance of the sufferings of the Lord. He founded a congregation of holy virgins also, who should dwell constantly upon the overflowing love of the Divine Bridegroom. Amid all these works his untiring love for souls caused him never to weary in the preaching of the Gospel, and he led into the path of salvation men almost countless, among whom were some of the most lost, or those who had fallen into heresy. The greatest and most wonderful power of his preaching was how he told of the sufferings of Christ, so that he himself and his hearers would alike burst into tears, and hardened hearts were cloven by repentance.

The fire of the love of God burnt so in his heart that the part of his under-garment which was next thereto often presented the appearance of having been scorched, and two of his ribs seemed to be raised. He could not withhold his tears, more especially when he was saying Mass, and when he was in a state of trance, as oftentimes befell, his body was sometimes seen to be raised into the air, and his face to shine as with light from heaven. Sometimes when he was preaching a heavenly voice was heard prompting him, or his words became audible at the distance of several miles. He was eminent for the gifts of prophecy, of speaking with tongues, of reading the heart, and of power over evil spirits, over diseases, and over the inanimate elements of nature. The Supreme Pontiffs themselves regarded him as dear and venerable, but he held himself to be but an unprofitable servant, and a sinful wretch upon whom devils might well trample. He held to the bitter hardships of his life, even unto a great age, and passed to heaven from Rome, (upon the 18th day of October,) being the day which he had himself foretold, in the year 1775, after he had addressed to his disciples noble exhortations which are as the heritage of his spirit, and had been comforted by the sacraments of the Church, and by an heavenly vision. The Supreme Pontiff Pius IX. numbered his name among those of the blessed, and then, after renewed signs and wonders, among those of the Saints. (Matins, The Divine Office, Feast of Saint Paul of the Cross, April 28.)