All Because Those Want to Save Democracy Lost an Election

The latest effort to assassinate President Donald John Trump was thwarted only because a United States Secret Service agent happened to come upon a man pointing a rifle through a chain link fence that divided a Trump golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, from the street on which it is located. The suspect is a man, Ryan Wesley Routh, who regurgitated the hatred directed at the former president of the United Stats of America, who is considered to be a “threat” to the demigod of “democracy,” by the likes of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., Kamala Harris, Timothy James Walz, Nancy Patricia D’Alesandro Pelosi, Robert DiNiro, Keith Oberman, and so many others who populate the precincts of the false opposite of the naturalist “left”:

The alleged gunman who authorities said targeted former President Trump while he golfed in Florida Sunday afternoon previously declared on social media that “Democracy is on the ballot” this year, and “we cannot lose” — echoing the anti-Trump rhetoric used by Vice President Kamala Harris and President Biden.

Law enforcement sources identified the suspect as Ryan Wesley Routh, 58. 

Routh, who has a lengthy criminal record from North Carolina, frequently posted about politics and exclusively donated to Democratic candidates and causes dating back to 2019.

He also bashed Trump in an April 22 post on X in which he declared, “DEMOCRACY is on the ballot and we cannot lose.”

He advised Biden, 81, in an April 22 X post when he was still running for reelection, to run a campaign around keeping “America democratic and free.”

He claimed Trump wants to “make Americans slaves against master.”

“DEMOCRACY is on the ballot and we cannot lose,” he wrote, a similar slogan commonly used by President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. 

“We cannot afford to fail,” Routh continued. “The world is counting on us to show the way.”

This is similar to language that Harris continues to use on the campaign trail.  On Aug. 29, she said at a rally in Savannah, Ga., “We are fighting for our democracy.”

On July 31, she said at an event in Houston that “our fundamental freedoms are on the ballot and so is our democracy” — after using identical wording at a sorority event the same day.

Tom Fitton, president of the conservative legal group Judicial Watch, told The Post: “It is no coincidence that Routh repeated Kamala’s and Joe’s extremist rhetoric against Trump. At this point it is inexcusable incitement.”

Spokespeople for Biden and Harris did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Following the Trump assassination attempt in July where the GOP nominee was wounded in the ear, he tweeted at Biden that he should visit the victims of the Pennsylvania rally where Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire and attend the funeral of the 50-year-old volunteer firefighters who was killed.

“You should visit the victims in the hospital of the trump rally victims and attend the funeral of the fireman that died; Trump certainly never would. SHOW THE WORLD WHAT REAL LEADERS DO,” he posted on July 16.

He also tweeted at Trump in June 2020 that while he supported the Republican in 2016, he was left disappointed by his tenure in the Oval Office.

“I and the world hoped that president Trump would be different and better than the candidate, but we all were greatly disappointment and it seems you are getting worse and devolving; are you retarded; I will be glad when you gone,” he wrote.

Routh chipped in money for Democrats running for office and liberal causes since 2019. Between September of that year and March 2020, he contributed more than $140 on the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue, Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings show.

The records did not list an employer.

His LinkedIn shows that he attended North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, but relocated to Hawaii sometime around 2018.

Routh describes on LinkedIn as “mechanically minded” and enjoying “ideas and invention and creative projects with artistic flair.”

Routh was spotted by Secret Service agents near the Trump International Golf Club West Palm Beach with a Soviet-style SKS assault rifle, according to sources.

The agents opened fire on him, but he fled. Routh was later arrested on I-95 by local police.

His social media account was also filled with nonsensical tweets and replies while also voicing strong support for Ukraine in its war against Russia and Taiwan in its struggle against China.

One reply to X’s owner Elon Musk seemed to entertain purchasing a rocket from the billionaire.

“I would like to buy a rocket from you. I wish to load it with a warhead for Putin’s Black Sea mansion bunker to end him. Can you give me a price please. It can be old and used as not returning,” Routh wrote.

He claimed on X that he tried to “sell” the idea of having former Afghanistan troopers fight for Ukraine in Russia, but was denied multiple times before giving up after six months.

He also said that he visited Kyiv and claimed that he would be willing to fight on the front lines, if he were permitted to.

Routh was a supporter of Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley, according to one of his posts in which he encouraged the Republican presidential candidates to continue their races.

“You cannot quit. Why. You must stay on the ballot to the end. You must fight. You must continue giving speeches and push all the way to election day no matter the election results. Do not give in. Join Nikki and keep working. Never give up,” he wrote to Ramaswamy. (Would-be Trump assassin Ryan Routh, 58, of Hawaii echoed Harris, Biden’s anti-Trump rhetoric as he backed Dem candidates.)

This reminds me of what the fictional William “Hopalong” Cassidy (William Boyd) said to his sidekick, California Jack Carlson (Andy Clyde), in Leather Burners when overhearing a madman named Sam Bucktoe (George Givot), the mastermind of a cattle rustling operation while living in a cave, boast to his front man, Dan Slack (Victor Jory), that he was going to be “Governor Sam Bucktoe, Senator Sam Bucktoe, President Sam Bucktoe,” at which Hoppy said to California, “That man is insane.”

To think that one who is going to convince Elon Musk to sell a missile to use against Russia is insanity.

Then again, there is a great deal of that when it concerns Donald John Trump, and it is all because he had the audacity to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, beating out a field of sixteen other candidates, including the putting the end to the hopes of any more Bushes in the White House, and then defeating the presumed heir to Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro, Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, and thus preventing a seamless continuation of the former’s “transformative” policies that were continued after the Trump interregnum during the administration of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., and Kamala Harris. Donald John Trump’s ultimate crime was that he defeated Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton.

In other words, only Democrats work for “democracy” while their hapless opponents are “threats to it because they continue to oppose Democratic candidates and policies. This is totalitarianism of the sort practiced in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and that is being practiced today in Red China, which is, of course so near and dear to the Chicom stooge known as Timothy James “Let Minneapolis Burn” Walz.

Columnist and investigative reporter Miranda Devine commented about the excessive rhetoric against Trump used by his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris:

Donald Trump was targeted Sunday in a second apparent assassination attempt in as many months.

An eagle-eyed Secret Service agent reportedly spotted the barrel of a gun in bushes a few hundred yards from where the former president was playing golf and shot at the would-be assassin, who was later arrested.

It’s a frightening development that highlights the recklessness of the hateful rhetoric constantly aimed at Trump by his political opponents, even after he was shot at a rally in Pennsylvania in July.

Last week Kamala Harris falsely accused Trump of calling Nazis “fine people”, promising a “bloodbath,” and being responsible for “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”

She and Biden and surrogates constantly exaggerate the J6 Capitol riot and use it to frame Trump as a “threat to democracy.”

Joe Biden has labeled Trump and “MAGA Republicans” as “semi-fascists” and domestic terrorists.

Tim Walz called Trump a “fascist” and “threat to Democracy” who will “put people’s lives in danger.”

On Saturday Democratic Senator Chris Murphy described Trump as “a candidate explicitly running on the promise of political violence.”

In Orwellian fashion they accuse Trump and his supporters of stoking violence, when the evidence is almost all the other way.

Conveniently, whenever Democrats are feeling the heat on a damaging issue, there are always bomb threats or phony-looking racist leaflets to distract the media and get maximum publicity. 

In Springfield, Ohio, where Trump’s “They’re eating the pets” riff and a thousand memes focused attention on the plight of locals overwhelmed by a sudden 30 percent increase in their population due to thousands of Haitian migrants ushered in by “Border Tsar” Harris and Biden.

Having ignored the border crisis for three years, the media is now demonizing long-suffering Springfield citizens and portraying anyone who highlights their plight as a violent bigot.

CNN host Dana Bash even accused Trump’s running mate JD Vance on Sunday of “causing the hospitals, the schools, the government buildings to be evacuated because of bomb threats” in Springfield.

What will it take for these demented partisans to lower the temperature? (Reckless rhetoric from Dems and media to blame for second Trump assassination attempt.)

The demented partisans of the false opposite of the naturalist “left” will never lower the temperature as it is their goal to inflame passions to win elections and they to use lawfare against their political opponents and the most vocal supporters of their opponents. This lawfare has inflamed at least two people, Matthew Thomas Crooks and Ryan Wesley Routh, to plot assassination attempts against the object of their ire, former President Donald John Trump.

To be sure, the former president does say and tweet out things that can be misconstrued as seeking to use the full force of the government against those who have been using lawfare against him, and he is utterly incapable of accepting even constructive criticism from those who like him personally even though they have principled disagreements with him on matters that pertain directly to the good of souls. Donald John Trump has always been and will ever be his own worst enemy, which is why all the fears stoked about him by the likes of Biden, Harris, Walz, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies, as he, Trump, is thoroughly capable of ruining his own chances to get re-elected.

In this regard, although every sane individual who wills the temporal and eternal good of others is grateful that the former president is safe despite the lack of perimeter security that those in the upper echelons of the Secret Service have denied him the protection he deserves because their DEI hire placed in charge of the detail in Butler, Pennsylvania, was unqualified after having failed no less three examinations (see Why hasn't the Secret Service given Trump the security he PLAINLY merits?), it is nevertheless mystifying as to why in the world DONALD JOHN TRUMP WAS GOLFING DURING THE MIDDLE OF A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION THAT IS JUST OVER SEVEN WEEKS AWAY INSOFAR AS IN-PERSON VOTING IS CONCERNED, noting that mail-in voting begins this week.

Why is a presidential candidate golfing when he should be out campaigning?

Does Trump want to be compared with the presidential beach-bum who has spent so much of his alleged presidency in a beach chair on Rehoboth Beach in Delaware for weeks at a time?

This makes utterly no sense to who has campaigned for public office three times, is a political scientist with an earned doctorate who has taught many courses, including at the graduate level, on political parties and elections, and was an active volunteer who served as surrogate speaker for presidential candidate Patrick Joseph Buchanan at the specific request of his sister, Angela “Bay” Buchanan, between December 8, 1995, and the time he withdrew from the race at the end of March in 1996. It is generally speaking a very nifty thing to campaign if one wants to influence voters.

Even though these are very important considerations, the fact remains that violence is the only answer that many voices belonging to those in the false opposite of the naturalist “left” can muster after all the efforts at using lawfare against Donald John Trump have either come a cropper or are hold until after the election on November 5, 2024. This lawfare, as noted above, has been employed for the sole reason that Trump won an election on November 8, 2016, and then announced shortly after the midterm elections on November 8, 2022, that he would be seeking a second, nonconsecutive term as president.

The errors of pluralism have divided people needlessly into warring camps as a permanently-established political class, composed of competing sets of naturalists, each of which believes that the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity in the Virginal and Immaculate Womb of His Most Blessed Mother by the power of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost at the Annunciation is, at best, a matter of complete indifference to personal and social order. So many Americans live from election to election, always believing that "change," whether it be in the direction of "progress" for naturalists of the "left" or in the direction of "constitutionalism" or "liberty" or "limited government" for naturalists of the "right."

Although divisions on some matters will always occur until the General Judgment of the Living and the Dead on the Last Day at the Second Coming of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, it is also true that men today have been needlessly divided about matters pertaining to First and Last Things, oblivious to the fact that they have been given a spotless mother, Holy Mother Church, to serve as their mater and magister (mother and teacher) in this passing, mortal vale of tears. Most men today believe that they are automatons, either independent of any concept of God or "free" from the "dictates" of a hierarchical church.

Personal and social disaster cannot but be the result of such a brew of error. Men resort more and more to violence today because they do not know of the tender mercies of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. They do not know that they have a Blessed Mother who made possible their salvation by her perfect fiat to the will of God the father at the Annunciation. They do not realize that the supernatural helps they need to overcome all sin in their lives and to pray for the conversion of those who are promoting evil in society flow through the loving hands of that same Blessed Mother, who gave the Rosary with her own blessed hands to Saint Dominic de Guzman so that we could be more closely united to her Divine Son, Christ the King, through the mysteries contained in her psalter, the Rosary.

Most men today do not realize that there is nothing that any of us can suffer, whether personally or socially, that is equal of what one of our least Venial Sins caused Our Lord to suffer in His Sacred Humanity on the wood of the Holy Cross and that caused those Seven Swords to be thrust through and through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. They tend, therefore, to dwell on their own pain, whether real or imagined, and to stew in their own juices as they conjure up hatred for their fellow human beings, each of whom is made in the image and likeness of the Most Blessed Trinity and for whose salvation we must pray fervently as one of the Spiritual Works of Mercy.

Living in a world that has been deprived of a superabundance of Sanctifying and Actual Graces as a result of the barren liturgical rites of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, most men today are "catechized" by television or the internet or what passes for "entertainment" in popular culture. They are tossed about from one thing to another without having any clear, coherent understanding of their identity as redeemed creatures and that each of us will have to make an accounting of our lives at the moment of our Particular Judgments. Men who lack the Catholic Faith, you see, must descend more and more into a coarseness of life and culture that produces a class of neo-barbarians who are not only at the gates but who are well inside of the fort of the city.

We are living a world that was born of Modernity’s bloody revolution against the true Church five hundred years ago and has been nurtured and sustained in blood as one social revolution after another has based its particular prescriptions for a “just world” on hate.

Hatred of God.

Hatred of His true Church.

Hatred of those who profess the Holy Faith publicly.

Hatred of anyone who refuses to submit to the Judeo-Masonic “new world order” that was made possible by Martin Luther’s Protestant Revolution five centuries ago.

Modernity has produced a veritable bloodbath of victims, including the unseen victims of the chemical and surgical abortions and, as noted last month (see Chronicling the Adversary's Global Takeover of the Healthcare Industry), the untold tens of millions of innocent human beings who are being killed in hospitals, hospices, nursing homes and even in their own homes.

Modernity has produced a world predicated upon the tensions of conflicts between differing sets of “false opposites” that have now reached such a fever pitch as to incite adherents of the false opposite of the naturalist “left” to support theatrical productions that depict the assassination of former President Donald John Trump and to actually seek to kill “as many Republicans as possible.” We are, as I have noted so many times before, we are needlessly divided by error.

James Hodginkson, the man who shot the Majority Whip of the United States House of Representatives, Steven Scalise (R-Louisiana), and four other people (one Congressional aide, two Capitol Police officers, one lobbyist for Tyson Foods) was a committed hater of the “right.” He was a campaign volunteer for the old class warfare warrior and hater of Christ the King, Bernard John Sanders, who was the subject of the previous original article on this website, Bernie Sanders Makes America Safer for Atheism.

The hatred of many of those on the “left” for former President Donald John Trump and for all other Republicans is irrational. Trump, who is no friend of Christ the King, is so reviled that the denizens of the false opposite of the naturalist “left” who have long mocked and denounced conspiracy theories claimed that Trump won the election on November 8, 2016, because he directed a vast collusion with the government of Russia to corrupt the electoral process.

This lawfare did not begin with Donald John Trump, though, as a certain Jack Smith, sought to derail the presidential hopes of then Virginian Governor Robert McDonnell by bringing bogus charges against him in 2012 that were overturned by the Supreme Court of the United States of America after McDonnell had been convicted, his marriage shattered, and his poltical career in shambles.

Efforts were also made in the past by local Texas prosecutors in Travis County to bring down former House Majority Leader Thomas DeLay, who was convicted in 2011 of taking illegal money laundering before the conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court of the State of Texas in 2013—see Tom DeLay conviction reversed by Texas court; Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was accused of taking illegal campaign donations prior to a 2012 recall election he was forced to face because of the opposition to him by state employee unions before the Wisconsin Supreme Court ended a criminal inquiry in 2015—see Scott Walker: Wisconsin Supreme Court rules campaign didn't violate finance laws; and it was simultaneously in the State of Texas that the then Democratic district attorney in Travis County, Texas, Rosemary Lehmberg, had then Texas Governor indicted on “abuse of power” charges stemming from Perry’s efforts to force her from office after she had been arrest for drunk driving and for being belligerent upon her arrest—see Charges against Rick Perry dismissed in abuse of power case. The bogus charges were brought against Perry just before he announced a second run for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination four years after his “oops” moment in a debate with Willard Mitt Romney, Newton Leroy Gingrich, Herman Cain Ronald Paul, and Richard John Santorum in 2011.

The denizens of the organized crime family of the naturalist “left” believe all opposition to them and to their policies in in se illegitimate. They must, therefore, hate those who dare to oppose them with a fierceness that comes directly from hell as the only things that Catholics are permitted to hate are the devil, sins—especially one’s own, heresy, falsehood, blasphemy, apostasy, and sacrilege while maintaining a persevering charity towards those who are steeped in and/or promote these evils, remembering that it is a fundamental Spiritual Work of Mercy to admonish the sinner. It is, however, forbidden to express hatred for any human being as hatred is of the adversary, who hates us because we are the zenith of the handiwork of the One he hates and against Whom he rebelled before being shut up in the bowels of hell, the Most Blessed Trinity.

Sadly, though, Ryan Wesley Houth’s son said the following when questioned about the arrest of his father after he attempted to assassinate former President Donald John Trump:

The son of the alleged gunman who targeted former President Trump on his Florida golf course Sunday said his dad hates Trump like “every reasonable person does” — but claimed he’s not a violent person, according to a report.

Oran Routh told the Daily Mail that his father, Ryan Routh, who was arrested in the alleged assassination attempt, isn’t a fan of the Republican nominee.

“I don’t like Trump either,” he added.

But the younger Routh, 35, insisted his dad is not violent and was shocked to hear about the allegations. (Son of alleged would-be Trump assassin Ryan Routh claims father hates ex-president but is ‘not a violent person’: ‘I don’t like Trump either’.)

No “reasonable person” hates anyone, which is why it is asinine for Trump himself to stoop to saying the following after some person named Taylor Swift, about whom I know absolutely nothing except that she is noted for immorality, impurity, immodesty and indecency, after she endorsed Kamala Harris for president:

Former President Donald Trump took aim at Taylor Swift in a Truth Social post Sunday, declaring his distaste for the superstar after she endorsed his opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris. 

"I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!" Trump wrote in the post. (Donald Trump says "I hate Taylor Swift!".)

What utter stupidity.

Who cares about anything some so-called “celebrity” says or does?

A mature, secure, stable grown man just two years away from his eightieth birthday should have the common sense and moral decency to ignore any kind of needless provocation and/or to litigate on social media every perceived offense, slight and/or criticism.

Alas, behold the madness of a world gone mad because men have rebelled against Christ the King and His true Church, which compels me once again to quote from Pope Pius XI’s Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922:

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 all:

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.)

While we continue to pray to Our Lady for the physical safety of former President Donald John Trump, we must increase our fervor in praying for his conversion to the true Faith, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order, as it will only be upon such a conversion that he will come to recognize that each innocent human life is inviolable without exception and that his own life is at risk now as men have become so used to dehumanizing innocent preborn children to such an extent to as put everyone at risk for any reason at any time and at any place. There is a logical path from becoming desensitized to the killing of the innocent preborn by chemical and surgical means to the wanton killing of others after the hatred that seethes within their immortal souls impels them to dehumanize the objects of their hatred at will.

Words of Wisdom from Pope Leo XIII

Writing as Gioacchino Vincenzo Raffaele Luigi Cardinal Pecci in 1850, twenty-eight years before his election as the successor to then-reigning pope, Pope Pius IX, explained how the world would suffer if the temporal power of the pope were overthrown by the Masons in Italy, a warning that went unheeded just twenty years before the overthrow of the Papal States on September 20, 1870:

"The Church is the Kingdom of Christ; . . . can the head of this kingdom, without unreason, become the subject of a mere earthly potentate?  . . ." The church has for its function to direct humanity toward its supernatural destiny, its last end; the civil power is only charged with providing and securing the immediate purpose of the present life -- peace, security, order, plenty. Is it in accordance with the dictates of reason that what is final should be made subordinate to what is intermediary -- that the end should be made to accord with the means, not the means with the end? "It is a truth attested by faith, by reason by our own experience, that the happiness of the present life, over which preside the kings of the earth, . . . is only a means for procuring the life eternal . . . .For procuring the sure attainment of this life eternal watches evermore this High-Priest, who hath received from Christ the mission of guiding humanity toward the everlasting felicity . . .  . . . .See, then, what upsetting of ideas it would be to make of this High-Priest of the Catholic Church, the Roman Pontiff, the subject of any earthly power."

This is a most admirable sketch of the development of the temporal power of the Papacy. Christ wished to make the world understand that the foundation and propagation of His Church was not the work of any human power. Hence in the early ages

"the Popes had not the independence of sovereignty, but that of martyrdom only . . . . During the first centuries they were in fact the subjects of lay sovereigns; but we cannot conceive a single instant during which this state of subjection was imposed on them by right. The supreme spiritual power of the Pontificate power. With the spontaneous development of the former, the latter also continued to develop itself in space and time, in accordance with the external condition amid which it grew.  . . .

"We see in history how the ample donations, the vast possessions, and the acts of civil jurisdiction exercised by the Roman Pontiffs are things which are traced back so far as to bring us to the first centuries of our era. In no other way can we explain the extraordinary phenomenon of a power which came to be placed in their hands, without their knowing it, against their will even, as the celebrated Count de Maistre expresses and proves it. Wherefore those who would have the Pope stripped of his civil principality would like to see the Church brought back to her infant condition, to the first stage of her existence. And this they would have done without considering that in their conception, the ordinary condition corresponding to the nature of Christianity is that first initial stage which developed into that grandeur for-ordained by Providence, who from out the Catacombs and the prisons led the Popes through the bloody path of martyrdom to the throne of the persecuting Caesars."

Passing from a right conception of the spiritual primacy of the Popes to its free and full exercise, Cardinal Pecci shows that this at present is not possible without the possession of a temporal sovereignty rendering the Pontiff independent of the influence of any on superior. 

"The Pope has to guard intact in its integrity the deposit of the Faith; he must preserve revealed truth from error and corruption among the faithful peoples . . . He must be free to communicate without impediment with bishops, sovereign, subjects, in order that his word, the organ and expression of the divine will, may have a free course all over the earth, and be there canonically announced.

"Now, imagine the Holy Father become the subject of a government, and deprived for a time fo the liberty to exercise his apostolic ministry. Whenever his non licit or any decision of his sounded harsh to the ears of whoever was sovereign over him, or was opposed to that sovereign's views, or to what they call 'the reason of state,' forwith should we hear of threats, or decrees, of imprisonment, of exile, in order to strangle the voice of truth at its birth.

"Need we recall Liberius, sent into banishment by the Emperor Constantius for refusing to sanction the sentence against Saint Athanasius? Or John I., imprisoned by Theodosius for not favoring the Arians? or Silverius, exiled by the Empress Theodora because he would not receive to communion the heretical Anthimus? or Martin I., torn away from the Basilica of the Saviour in Rome, and sent to die among the barbarians of Pontus by the Emperor Constans, a Monothelite? or, in fact, all the Pontiffs of the first centuries, who had no other way to fulfil their ministry that the courage to endure martyrdom?" Then come the recent instances of Pius VI. and Pius VII.

"But, in truth, there is no need of prisons or decrees of banishment to bind the hands of Popes who have become the subjects of another power.  Everybody knows how easily a government can, even by indirect means, close up every avenue to publicity, cut of all means of communication, put all sorts of obstacles in the way of truth, and give falsehood a free field. In such a situation how is the Pope to superintend the affairs without number of all the churches, to promote the extension of God's kingdom to regulate worship and discipline, to publish bulls and encyclicals, to convent councils, to grant or to refuse canonical institution to bishops, to have at his command the congregations and courts which are necessary for the management of som many wighty affairs, to keep of schism, to prevent the spread of public heresies, to decide religious disputes, to speak freely to rulers and peoples, to send nuncios and ambassadors, to conclude concordats, to employ censures, to regulate, in fact, the consciences of two hundred millions of Catholics scattered all over the earth, to preserve inviolate dogmas and morals, to receive appeals from all parts of the Christian world, to judge the causes thus submitted, to enforce the execution of the sentences pronounced -- to fulfil, in one word, all his duties, and to maintain all the sacred rights of his primacy?

"Here, then, is what they are aiming at by taking from the Pope his temporal power; they mean to render it impossible for him to exercise his spiritual power."

The demonstration is a complete one. But there is another side to the question. If the Pope, as the supreme teacher and ruler of the Church in spirituals, has both his teacher and ruler of the Church in spirituals, has both his rights to maintain and his duties to fulfil with respects to the Christian world, Christians, in part, have also their indefeasible rights with regard to the free exercise of the Papal Primacy.

"From the Sovereign Pontiff proceed decisions which directly concern what is deepest and most sacred in our consciences, our faith, our hope of eternal felicity. Every Catholic has a right, in matters of such an exalted nature, which transcend all the things of earth and of the present life, which nearly touch the interests of his own immortal soul, that the sentence of the judge who is to guide him toward eternal life shall come freely from his lips -- so freely that no one may hint at the possibility of such a decision having been obtained through the dictation of another, or forced from the giver by sheer violence.

"Every Catholic, therefore, demands that the Pope shall be placed in such a well-known condition of freedom that not only he shall be independent, but that it shall be clear to the eyes of all that he is so. Now, how can the Catholics of all nations believe that the decisions of their parent and guide are thus free when he is the subject of an Italian, a German, a French, or a Spanish sovereign?"

To complete this triumphant demonstrations Cardinal Pecci quotes from the acknowledged leaders and organs of the long conspiracy against Christianity and the temporal power of the Papacy in the last and the present centuries. Mazzini, writing to the London Globe in August, 1850, says: "The abolition of the temporal power manifestly carries along with it the emancipation of the human mind from the spiritual power." This, the Cardinal remarks, Mazzini frequently repeats in his "Pensiero e Azione." Frederick II. wote to Voltaire: "All the potentates of Europe, being unwilling to recognize the Vicar of Christ in a man subject to another sovereign, will each create himself a patriarch in their own dominions.  . . . Thereby every one of them will by degrees fall away from the unity of the Church, and end by having in his kingdom a religion of his own, just as he has a language of his own."

To clear away the last vestige of doubt on this point the Cardinal quotes the official declaration of the Central Lodge of Carbonarism in Italy: "'Our final purpose is that of Voltaire and the French Revolution -- the total annihilation of Catholicism and of the Christian idea itself.' This is the result aimed at by the anti-christian schools opened in various Italian cities; this what is meant by the hostility fostered against the clergy; this is what is intended by freeing (as they say) from all theocratic tyranny the legislation, public instruction, marriage -- the entire social body, in a word. This is the real significance of the resurrection of the country, of progress, and of liberty, as they understand them: to abolish Catholic worship, to suppress the religion of Christ, to stamp out from all hearts the Christian faith, and to plunge us once more in the darkness of heathenism.

"The conspirators' plan is no longer a thing to be doubted of, except by such as wish to remain wilfully blind. But in what way is it to be carried out? In this-- and note it well, if you would not fall into the snares of these evil men: by giving loud assurances, protestations, and solemn oaths that in no wise whatsoever do they intend to touch or to injure religion."

The conclusion is a most eloquent appeal to the ancestral faith and the ancestral devotion of the Perugians to the Holy See and its Pontiffs:

"There is no middle course. Either we have to stand faithful to Christ, to His Church, to that Church's visible Head, and against the enemies of our religion, or to take part with these against God and His Church.

"It is no longer a matter of policy; it is a matter of conscience. We cannot continue to hesitate between Christ and Belial . . . .” (Bishop Bernard O’Reilly, D.D., L.D., Life of Pope Leo XIII from an Authentic Memoir, published originally in 1903 in London, England, by S. Low, Marston & Company, and republished by Refuge of Sinners Publishing, New Pekin, Indiana, pp. 202-207.)

We are living in the sort of world prophesied by Cardinal Giocchino Vincenzo Rafaele Luigi Pecci of Perugia in 1850. Hedonism and irreligion abound. Most men’s minds have been “liberated” from the truths of the Catholic Faith as the voice of the Vicar of Christ the King has been muted and has been replaced by false men who, as vicars of the devil, have made their official “reconciliation” with the anti-Incarnation, Judeo-Masonic principles of the Modern civil state while dismissing as archaic the temporal power of the papacy that always attempted to hold civil rulers in check so as to protect both the temporal and eternal good of the souls for which Our King shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood to redeem.

One of the supreme ironies of the time in which we are living is that neither those who hate Donald John Trump with a violent ferocity nor Trump himself are concerned with First and Last Things, which is why were are consigned to ever increasing rounds of violence (do we really think that the left will accept it if Donald John Trump reclaims the presidency on November 5, 2024, and will not do everything possible to prevent his inauguration?) no matter who wins elections. The cycle of violence is such that, as noted above, the dehumanization of the innocent preborn has led to the dehumanization of us all (see As Utilitarian as the Nuremburg Laws Themselves and Always Prowling About the World to Seek the Ruin of Us All).

No, we are not voting ourselves out of this madness in the voting booth.

The only way out of this madness runs through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary as we pray her Most Holy Rosary fervently and meditatively every day of our lives so that we can hold high the Holy Cross of her Divine Son, Christ the King, Our Lord and Redeemer, and never be afraid to exclaim:

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.

Pope Saint Cornelius, pray for us.

Saint Cyprian, pray for us.

Saints Lucy, Euphemia, and Gemianus, pray for us.

Appendix

Dom Prosper Gueranger on the Feast of Pope Saint Cornelius and Saint Cyprian

There is a peculiar beauty in the meeting of these two Saints upon the sacred Cycle. Cyprian, in a famous dispute (On the question of the validity of Baptism conferred by heretics), was once opposed to the Apostolic See: Eternal Wisdom now offers him to the homage of the world, in company with one of the most illustrious successors of St. Peter.

Cornelius was, by birth, of the highest nobility; witness his tomb, lately discovered in the family crypt, surrounded by the most honourable names in the patrician ranks. The elevation of a descendant of the Scipios to the sovereign Pontificate linked the past grandeurs of Rome to her future greatness. Decius, who "would more easily have suffered a competitor in his empire than a Bishop in Rome (Cyprian. Epist. x. ad Antonianum, ix.)," had just issued the edict for the seventh general persecution. But the Caesar bestowed upon the world's capital by a village of Pannonia, could not stay the destinies of the Eternal City. Beside this blood-thirsty emperor, and others like him, whose fathers were known in the city only as slaves or conquered enemies, the true Roman, the descendant of the Cornelii, might be recognized by his native simplicity, by the calmness of his strength of soul, by the intrepid firmness belonging to his race and wherewith he first triumphed over the usurper, who was soon to surrender to the Goths on the borders of the Danube (Cyprian Dips. x. ad Antonianum, viii. ix). And yet, O holy Pontiff, thou art even greater by the humility which Cyprian, thy illustrious friend, admired in thee, and by that purity of thy virginal soul, through which, according to him, thou didst become the elect of God and of His Christ (Ibid. viii).

At thy side, how great is Cyprian himself! What a path of light is traced across the heavens of holy Church by this convert of the priest Caecilius! In the generosity of his soul, when once conquered to Christ, he relinquished honours and riches, his family inheritance, and the glory acquired in the field of eloquence. All marveled to see in him, as his historian says, the harvest gathered before the seed was sown (Pontius Diac. De vita et pass. Cypr. ii). By a justifiable exception, he became a pontiff while yet a neophyte. During the ten years of his episcopate, all men, not only in Carthage and Africa, but in the whole world, had their eyes fixed upon him; the pagans crying: Cyprian to the lions! the Christians only awaiting his word of command in order to obey. Those ten years represent one of the most troubled periods of history. In the empire, anarchy was rife; the frontiers were the scene of repeated invasions; pestilence was raging everywhere: in the Church, a long peace, which had lulled men's souls to sleep, was followed by the persecutions of Decius, Gallus, and Valerian. The first of these, suddenly bursting like a thunderstorm, caused the fall of many; which evil, in its turn, led to schisms, on account of the too great indulgence of some, and the excessive rigour of others, towards the lapsed.

Who, then, was to teach repentance to the fallen, the truth to the heretics, unity to the schismatics, and to the sons of God prayer and peace? Who was to bring back the virgins to the rules of a holy life? Who was to turn back against the Gentiles their blasphemous sophisms? Under the sword of death, who would speak of future happiness, and bring consolation to souls? Who would teach them mercy, patience, and the secret of changing the venom of envy into the sweetness of salvation? Who would assist the martyrs to rise to the height of their divine vocation? Who would uphold the confessors under torture, in prison, in exile? Who would preserve the survivors of martyrdom from the dangers of their regained liberty.

Cyprian, ever ready, seemed in his incomparable calmness to defy the powers of earth and of hell. Never had flock a surer hand to defend it under a sudden attack, and to put to flight the wild boar of the forest. And how proud the shepherd was of the dignity of that Christian family, which God had entrusted to his guidance and protection! Love for the Church was, so to say, the distinguishing feature of the Bishop of Carthage. In his immortal letters to his most brave and most happy brethren, confessors of Christ, and the honour of the Church, he exclaims: "Oh I truly blessed is our mother the Church, whom the divine condescension has so honoured, who is made illustrious in our days by the glorious blood of the triumphant martyrs; formerly white by the good works of our brethren, she is now adorned with purple from the veins of her heroes; among her flowers, neither roses nor lilies are wanting (Epist. viii. Ad martyres et confessores)."

Unfortunately this very love, this legitimate, though falsely applied, jealousy for the noble Bride of our Saviour, led Cyprian to err on the serious question of the validity of heretical baptism. "The only one," he said, "alone possesses the keys, the power of the Spouse; we are defending her honour, when we repudiate the polluted water of the heretics (Epist. ad Jubaianum, i. xi)." He was forgetting that, although, through our Lord's merciful liberality, the most indispensable of the Sacraments does not lose its virtue when administered by a stranger, or even by an enemy of the Church; nevertheless, it derives its fecundity, even then, from and through the Bride; being valid only through union with what she herself does. How true it is, that neither holiness nor learning confers upon man that gift of infallibility, which was promised by our Lord to none but the successor of St. Peter. It was, perhaps, as a demonstration of this truth, that God suffered this passing cloud to darken so lofty an intellect as Cyprian's. The danger could not be serious, nor the error lasting, in one whose ruling thought is expressed in these words: "He that keeps not the unity of the Church, does he think to keep the faith? He that abandons the See of Peter whereon the Church is founded, can he flatter himself that he is still in the Church?"

Great in his life, Cyprian was still greater in death. Valerian, had given orders for the extermination of the principal clergy; and in Rome, Sixtus II., followed by Laurence, had led the way to martyrdom. Galerius Maximus, proconsul of Africa, was then holding his assizes at Utica, and commanded Thascius Cyprian to be brought before him. But the bishop would not allow the "honour of his Church to be mutilated," by dying at a distance from his Episcopal city. He therefore waited till the proconsul had returned to Carthage, and then delivered himself up by making a public entrance into the town.

In the house which served for a few hours as his prison, Cyprian, calm and unmoved, gathered his friends and family for the last time round his table. The Christians hastened from all parts to spend the night with their pastor and father. Thus, while he yet lived, they kept the first vigil of his future feast. When, in the morning, he was led before the proconsul, they offered him an arm-chair draped like a bishop's seat. It was indeed the beginning of an Episcopal function, the pontiff's own peculiar office being to give his life for the Church, in union with the eternal High-Priest. The interrogatory was short, for there was no hope of shaking his constancy; and the judge pronounced sentence that Thascius Cyprian must die by the sword. On the way to the place of execution, the soldiers formed a guard of honour to the bishop, who advanced calmly, surrounded by his clergy as on days of solemnity. Deep emotion stirred the immense crowd of friends and enemies who had assembled to assist at the sacrifice. The hour had come. The pontiff prayed prostrate upon the ground; then rising, he ordered twenty-five gold pieces to be given to the executioner, and, taking off his tunic, handed it to the deacons. He himself tied the bandage over his eyes; a priest, assisted by a subdeacon, bound his hands; while the people spread linen cloths around him to receive his blood. Not until the bishop himself had given the word of command, did the trembling executioner lower his sword. In the evening, the faithful came with torches and with hymns to bury Cyprian. It was the 14th September, in the year 258. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Feast of Saints Cornelius and Cyprian, September 16.)