- GmarShops Marketplace , Air Jordan 1 Retro Low Og Neutral Grey , Jordan 12 Field Purple
- nike air jordan 1 low outlet
- Jordan 10 Retro Light Smoke Grey310805-062 , 602 Release Date - Verse 555088 - Air Jordan 1 Origin Story Spider - IetpShops
- adidas Pacer 3-Stripes Woven , Украина #151574940 , Укороченная футболка adidas — цена 260 грн в каталоге Футболки ✓ Купить женские вещи по доступной цене на Шафе
- The Global Destination For Modern Luxury
- air jordan 1 mid linen
- kanye west 2019 yeezy boot black
- air jordan 1 low unc university blue white AO9944 441 release date
- air jordan 1 atmosphere white laser pink obsidian dd9335 641 release date
- Air Jordan 1 Electro Orange 555088 180
- Home
- Articles Archive, 2006-2016
- Golden Oldies
- 2016-2025 Articles Archive
- About This Site
- As Relevant Now as It Was One Hundred Six Years Ago: Our Lady's Fatima Message
- Donations (February 10, 2025)
- Now Available for Purchase: Paperback Edition of G.I.R.M. Warfare: The Conciliar Church's Unremitting Warfare Against Catholic Faith and Worship
- Ordering Dr. Droleskey's Books
Behold the State of the Union When Most Men Are Not in a State of Sanctifying Grace
No, I did not watch President Donald John Trump’s fifth State of the Union address to a special joint meeting of the Congress of the United States of America on Tuesday, March 4, 2025, the Feast of Saint Casimir and the Commemoration of Pope Saint Lucius I (as well as the Feast of the Holy Face of Our Lord Jesus Christ, a feast appointed by Pope Pius XII to be celebrated optionally on the Shrove Tuesday prior to Ash Wednesday) as I was praying at the time.
Well, I should make a small correction as I was shocked to find out that when I returned to my phone shortly before 11:00 p.m. to discover that the forty-seventh president was just then concluding his address. I did not realize until a few minutes later that the start of the speech had been interrupted by “pro-democracy” Democrats who cannot seem to understand that the modern concept of “democracy” includes winners and losers, and that they, the Democrats, were decisive losers at the presidential level, a fact that President Trump was making when he was interrupted by a shouts of a maniacal Representative Alexander N. Green (D-Texas), who yelled “You don’t have a mandate.” Perhaps Representative Green took outcome-based arithmetic when he was in grammar school from 1952 to 1961 as the then former president defeated then Vice President Kamala Harris Word Salad Emhoff by 2,284,967 votes while winning every single “swing” state (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin).
However, reality matters little to the denizens of the false opposite of the naturalist “left” as, has been mentioned so many times before on this site, “democracy” for them is an ideological belief that only they have the right to hold office, staff the permanent government that is the bureaucracy (see The Only Path to Responsible Governance: The Social Reign of Christ the King), and staff the courts with legal positivists who have been trained to indemnify them, the leftists at every turn, and to make it very difficult, if not impossible, for the members of the false opposite of the naturalist “right” to actually govern according to the dictates of the Constitution of the United States of America if they win by such margins as to negate the leftists’ election fraud in the so-called “blue” states.
Only those who have not been following politics and governance for a long time and/or who do have not followed it closely can fall into the Judeo-Masonic trap of believing that one party is “good”, and the other party is “evil” and thus become needlessly agitated thereby. As those who read this website should understand by now, despite all of the huffing and puffing, posturing and preening, and churlish displays of defiant “resistance” on the part of the “left,” the two organized crime families of naturalism are united on one essential belief that leads to all their truly needless conflicts and endless agitations:
I refer to the "false opposites" of the "left" and the "right" because, despite their differences over the powers "government" over that of the "individual," both the "left" and the "right" reject Catholicism as the one and only foundation of personal and social order. The adherents of the "left" and the "right" believe that it is neither prudent or necessary to acknowledge that the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity in the Virginal and Immaculate Womb of His Most Blessed Mother has changed human history. Such adherents also reject any suggestions that both men and their nations must be subordinate to Christ the King and the authority of His true Church on all that pertains to the good of souls and that the civil government has an obligation to pursue the common temporal good in light of man's Last End.
No matter the differences between "conservatives" and "liberals," my friends, they both have one mind and one heart in the belief that man does not need the teaching and sanctifying offices of the Catholic Church to guide them in their private and social lives. This is, of course, the triumph of the Judeo-Masonic spirit of naturalism that was dissected so well by Pope Leo XIII. It matters little as to who is or is not a formally enrolled member of the "lodges" when most Catholics and non-Catholics alike are infected with the ethos of naturalism.
Similarly, any civil leader who believes that he can, either by himself or with others, pursue genuine order without the help of Our Lady and the use of her Most Holy Rosary is a fool. We must give public honor to Christ the King and to Mary our Immaculate Queen.
No one in American public life has ever understood these simple truths.
Elected officials must seek to do the will of Christ the King in all that pertains to the good souls as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His true Church as He, not the “people,” is the Sovereign over both individual men and their civil societies.
The two governments of the United States of America (Articles of Confederation, 1781-1789; the Constitution, 1789-present) represented the first governments on the face of this earth to be based on the principles of Judeo-Masonic religious indifferentism and on the Pelagian principles of human self-redemption. There has never been any place for Christ the King and His Most Blessed Mother in public life and, as Pope Leo XIII noted in Tametsi Futura Prospicentibus, November 1, 1900, public life has been stained by crime as a consequence:
God alone is Life. All other beings partake of life, but are not life. Christ, from all eternity and by His very nature, is "the Life," just as He is the Truth, because He is God of God. From Him, as from its most sacred source, all life pervades and ever will pervade creation. Whatever is, is by Him; whatever lives, lives by Him. For by the Word "all things were made; and without Him was made nothing that was made." This is true of the natural life; but, as We have sufficiently indicated above, we have a much higher and better life, won for us by Christ's mercy, that is to say, "the life of grace," whose happy consummation is "the life of glory," to which all our thoughts and actions ought to be directed. The whole object of Christian doctrine and morality is that "we being dead to sin, should live to justice" (I Peter ii., 24)-that is, to virtue and holiness. In this consists the moral life, with the certain hope of a happy eternity. This justice, in order to be advantageous to salvation, is nourished by Christian faith. "The just man liveth by faith" (Galatians iii., II). "Without faith it is impossible to please God" (Hebrews xi., 6). Consequently Jesus Christ, the creator and preserver of faith, also preserves and nourishes our moral life. This He does chiefly by the ministry of His Church. To Her, in His wise and merciful counsel, He has entrusted certain agencies which engender the supernatural life, protect it, and revive it if it should fail. This generative and conservative power of the virtues that make for salvation is therefore lost, whenever morality is dissociated from divine faith. A system of morality based exclusively on human reason robs man of his highest dignity and lowers him from the supernatural to the merely natural life. Not but that man is able by the right use of reason to know and to obey certain principles of the natural law. But though he should know them all and keep them inviolate through life-and even this is impossible without the aid of the grace of our Redeemer-still it is vain for anyone without faith to promise himself eternal salvation. "If anyone abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire, and he burneth" john xv., 6). "He that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mark xvi., 16). We have but too much evidence of the value and result of a morality divorced from divine faith. How is it that, in spite of all the zeal for the welfare of the masses, nations are in such straits and even distress, and that the evil is daily on the increase? We are told that society is quite able to help itself; that it can flourish without the assistance of Christianity, and attain its end by its own unaided efforts. Public administrators prefer a purely secular system of government. All traces of the religion of our forefathers are daily disappearing from political life and administration. What blindness! Once the idea of the authority of God as the Judge of right and wrong is forgotten, law must necessarily lose its primary authority and justice must perish: and these are the two most powerful and most necessary bonds of society. Similarly, once the hope and expectation of eternal happiness is taken away, temporal goods will be greedily sought after. Every man will strive to secure the largest share for himself. Hence arise envy, jealousy, hatred. The consequences are conspiracy, anarchy, nihilism. There is neither peace abroad nor security at home. Public life is stained with crime.
So great is this struggle of the passions and so serious the dangers involved, that we must either anticipate ultimate ruin or seek for an efficient remedy. It is of course both right and necessary to punish malefactors, to educate the masses, and by legislation to prevent crime in every possible way: but all this is by no means sufficient. The salvation of the nations must be looked for higher. A power greater than human must be called in to teach men's hearts, awaken in them the sense of duty, and make them better. This is the power which once before saved the world from destruction when groaning under much more terrible evils. Once remove all impediments and allow the Christian spirit to revive and grow strong in a nation, and that nation will be healed. The strife between the classes and the masses will die away; mutual rights will be respected. If Christ be listened to, both rich and poor will do their duty. The former will realise that they must observe justice and charity, the latter self-restraint and moderation, if both are to be saved. Domestic life will be firmly established (by the salutary fear of God as the Lawgiver. In the same way the precepts of the natural law, which dictates respect for lawful authority and obedience to the laws, will exercise their influence over the people. Seditions and conspiracies will cease. Wherever Christianity rules over all without let or hindrance there the order established by Divine Providence is preserved, and both security and prosperity are the happy result. The common welfare, then, urgently demands a return to Him from whom we should never have gone astray; to Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life,-and this on the part not only of individuals but of society as a whole. We must restore Christ to this His own rightful possession. All elements of the national life must be made to drink in the Life which proceedeth from Him- legislation, political institutions, education, marriage and family life, capital and labour. Everyone must see that the very growth of civilisation which is so ardently desired depends greatly upon this, since it is fed and grows not so much by material wealth and prosperity, as by the spiritual qualities of morality and virtue. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)
Almost no one today understands that the “growth of civilization” “grows not so much by material wealth and prosperity, as but the spiritual qualities of morality and virtue.”
Those opposing President Donald John Trump with profane ferocity do not understand this, and Donald John Trump and those advising him do not understand this, which is why there will never be any “resolution” to the endless conflict between the warring parties of naturalism until and unless men convert unconditionally to the true Faith, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no truly just order within nations nor a genuine peace among them, a point made specifically by Pope Pius IX in Iam Vos Omnes, September 13, 1868:
It is for this reason that so many who do not share 'the communion and the truth of the Catholic Church' must make use of the occasion of the Council, by the means of the Catholic Church, which received in Her bosom their ancestors, proposes [further] demonstration of profound unity and of firm vital force; hear the requirements [demands] of her heart, they must engage themselves to leave this state that does not guarantee for them the security of salvation. She does not hesitate to raise to the Lord of mercy most fervent prayers to tear down of the walls of division, to dissipate the haze of errors, and lead them back within holy Mother Church, where their Ancestors found salutary pastures of life; where, in an exclusive way, is conserved and transmitted whole the doctrine of Jesus Christ and wherein is dispensed the mysteries of heavenly grace.
It is therefore by force of the right of Our supreme Apostolic ministry, entrusted to us by the same Christ the Lord, which, having to carry out with [supreme] participation all the duties of the good Shepherd and to follow and embrace with paternal love all the men of the world, we send this Letter of Ours to all the Christians from whom We are separated, with which we exhort them warmly and beseech them with insistence to hasten to return to the one fold of Christ; we desire in fact from the depths of the heart their salvation in Christ Jesus, and we fear having to render an account one day to Him, Our Judge, if, through some possibility, we have not pointed out and prepared the way for them to attain eternal salvation. In all Our prayers and supplications, with thankfulness, day and night we never omit to ask for them, with humble insistence, from the eternal Shepherd of souls the abundance of goods and heavenly graces. And since, if also, we fulfill in the earth the office of vicar, with all our heart we await with open arms the return of the wayward sons to the Catholic Church, in order to receive them with infinite fondness into the house of the Heavenly Father and to enrich them with its inexhaustible treasures. By our greatest wish for the return to the truth and the communion with the Catholic Church, upon which depends not only the salvation of all of them, but above all also of the whole Christian society: the entire world in fact cannot enjoy true peace if it is not of one fold and one shepherd. (Pope Pius IX, Iam Vos Omnes, September 13, 1868.)
Yes, the entire world cannot enjoy “true peace if it is not of one fold and one shepherd. Non-Catholics must convert or return to the “truth and the communion with the Catholic Church.
It is that simple, and not even any Catholic in public life understands that this is so.
Nations Must Devolve into Barbarism Without the Holy Faith
We have been warned by our true popes as to what happens when nations permit licentiousness in the name of "civil liberty," when their laws not only do not punish but actually and encourage widespread indecency and immorality, and when men do not see in others the Divine impress and thus treat each other as they would treat the Divine Redeemer, Christ the King, Himself in the very Flesh:
This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. "But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error," as Augustine was wont to say. When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin. Then truly "the bottomless pit" is open from which John saw smoke ascending which obscured the sun, and out of which locusts flew forth to devastate the earth. Thence comes transformation of minds, corruption of youths, contempt of sacred things and holy laws -- in other words, a pestilence more deadly to the state than any other. Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for wealth, dominion, and glory perished as a result of this single evil, namely immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire for novelty. (Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.)
For you well know, venerable brethren, that at this time men are found not a few who, applying to civil society the impious and absurd principle of "naturalism," as they call it, dare to teach that "the best constitution of public society and (also) civil progress altogether require that human society be conducted and governed without regard being had to religion any more than if it did not exist; or, at least, without any distinction being made between the true religion and false ones." And, against the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church, and of the Holy Fathers, they do not hesitate to assert that "that is the best condition of civil society, in which no duty is recognized, as attached to the civil power, of restraining by enacted penalties, offenders against the Catholic religion, except so far as public peace may require." From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an "insanity," viz., that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way." But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching "liberty of perdition;" and that "if human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of human wisdom; whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling."
And, since where religion has been removed from civil society, and the doctrine and authority of divine revelation repudiated, the genuine notion itself of justice and human right is darkened and lost, and the place of true justice and legitimate right is supplied by material force, thence it appears why it is that some, utterly neglecting and disregarding the surest principles of sound reason, dare to proclaim that "the people's will, manifested by what is called public opinion or in some other way, constitutes a supreme law, free from all divine and human control; and that in the political order accomplished facts, from the very circumstance that they are accomplished, have the force of right." But who, does not see and clearly perceive that human society, when set loose from the bonds of religion and true justice, can have, in truth, no other end than the purpose of obtaining and amassing wealth, and that (society under such circumstances) follows no other law in its actions, except the unchastened desire of ministering to its own pleasure and interests? (Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864.)
Yes, of course, the remote cause for all human problems, both personal and social, is Original Sin. The proximate cause of human problems, both personal and social, is Actual Sin. Human beings are wounded by Original Sin. Those of us who are baptized suffer from the vestigial after-effects of Original Sin (the darkened intellect, the weakened will, a disordering of the balance between our higher rational faculties and lower sensual passions). Those who are unbaptized suffer all of the ravages of Original Sin in their immortal souls that are captive to the devil and his minions. There is no legal, political, constitutional, electoral, interdenominational, nondenominational, secular, philosophical, ideological, naturalistic way to solve problems that are caused by the sin of Adam and the sins of us all. Men will descend into the depth of madness, hatred, and violence over the course of time as men and their societies move more and more away even from the vestigial influences of Catholicism in the world.
It is indeed true that there were social problems during the era of Christendom in Europe. The difference between then and now is simple: most men understood that they were sinners in need of cooperating more fully with the graces won for them on the wood of the Holy Cross by the shedding of every single drop of the Most Precious Blood of Our Divine Redeemer, Christ the King, and that flow into their hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces. Men knew that they had to amend their lives, that social order depended upon order within their own souls.
Is there any such understanding today?
Consider Pope Pius XII's concise description of the difference between Christendom and Modernity, contained in his first encyclical letter, Summi Pontificatus, October 10, 1939:
It is true that even when Europe had a cohesion of brotherhood through identical ideals gathered from Christian preaching, she was not free from divisions, convulsions and wars which laid her waste; but perhaps they never felt the intense pessimism of today as to the possibility of settling them, for they had then an effective moral sense of the just and of the unjust, of the lawful and of the unlawful, which, by restraining outbreaks of passion, left the way open to an honorable settlement. In Our days, on the contrary, dissensions come not only from the surge of rebellious passion, but also from a deep spiritual crisis which has overthrown the sound principles of private and public morality. (Pope Pius XII, Summi Pontificatus, October 10, 1939.)
The errors of pluralism divide 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 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 hatred, meanness, and 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.
As been noted exhaustively on this site and for more than a decade before that in printed journals (and for three decades in my college classrooms), the descent into neo-barbarism just did not happen suddenly. It has happened gradually, almost imperceptibly at times. Having ridden the shock waves of the Protestant Revolution, which was a violent and very bloody revolution against the Divine Plan that God Himself instituted to effect man's return to Him through His Catholic Church as they order their own lives and the laws of their nations in accord with His Deposit of Faith, men descended by steps into theological relativism, religious indifferentism and the worldliness that feeds on a ethos of naturalism and an unbridled licentiousness that passes for what libertarians tell us is "civil liberty."
The libertarian concept of "civil liberty" as the antidote to the totalitarian monster state of the "left" is in and of itself a perversion the true gift of liberty that Our Lord has won for us on the wood of the Holy Cross, freedom from enslavement to Original Sin and the eternal death of the soul if we use our free will to follow Him through His true Church. No one has a "civil right" to sin or to promote sin under cover of the civil law and throughout what passes for popular culture. Men who live in such a flood of errors and lies become, whether or not they realize it (and most do not), living poster children of Pelagianism, the heresy that contends men can more or less stir up graces within their own souls to be good and virtuous and thus to save themselves and their societies, and even in times when men were more “decent,” it was only because of the superabundance of Sanctifying and Actual Graces that flowed out of true offerings of the true Mass, which offerings have become scarcer and scarcer as a consequence of the death of relatively scarcity of true priests in comparison to the number that existed, say, sixty years ago.
Less Decency, the Same Pelagianism
There is quite a stark contrast between the indecency of the hateful members of the false opposite of the naturalist “left” in regard to their contemptuous treatment of President Donald John Trump and the genuine outpouring of bipartisan support and compassion for then President Ronald Wilson Reagan when addressed a special joint meeting of the Congress of the United States of America on April 28, 1981, just four weeks after he was shot and seriously wounded by the deranged John Hinckley, Jr., on March 30, 1981 (Ronald Reagan's address to joint session of Congress (April 28, 1981) and of Reagan’s own deep friendship with and personal affection for then Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Thomas P. O’Neill (D-Massachusetts) when Reagan gave the State of the Union Message on February 4, 1986 (two days before his own seventy-fifth birthday) and noted that O’Neill, who was opposed to all of Reagan’s policies and was quite vocal in expressing this opposition, was presiding over his tenth and final State of the Union address after having announced that he would not seek re-election nine months to his House seat nine months later (President Reagan's State of the Union Address to Congress and the Nation on February 4, 1986). And, although the Persian Gulf War in 1991 was unnecessary and fought without a Congressional Declaration of War (of which there have been only five—War of 1812, Mexican-American War, Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II), President George Herbert Walker Bush was greeted warmly by then House Speaker Thomas Foley (D-Washington) as Bush addressed a special joint meeting of Congress on March 6, 1991, after the victory of the “coalition” forces (March 6, 1991, George H.W. Bush Addresses Congress on the end of the Persian Gulf War. The speech itself was pure Judeo-Masonic naturalism as "Bush 41" promised to usher in a “New World Order.” Twenty months later, however, George Herbert Walker Bush, whose public opinion approval rating on March 6, 1991, stood around ninety-one percent, gathered supporters in a very small conference room in a Houston, Texas, hotel to concede the November 3, 1992, presidential election to Arkansas Governor William Jefferson Blythe Clinton. His "new world order" did not last long.)
The bipartisan receptions accorded Presidents Ronald Wilson Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush are a thing of the past as they did not only not threaten the existence of the national security state but enhanced it at every turn. Members of the organized crime family of the naturalist "left” thought that then candidate Donald John Trump posed such a threat in 2016, which is why in addition to believing after the election of Barack Hussein Obama on November 4, 2008, ended all possibility of Republicans ever winning the presidency again, they sought to prevent Trump’s election and then to do everything possible to undermine his first term and to use lawfare to prevent him from regaining the presidence in 2024.
The battle lines were hardened then and they will remain that way because men who lack the clarity given them by the true Faith will always fall into the devil’s trap of thinking solely about their power and their ideologies and not about how to pursue the common temporal good in light of man’s end as summarized so brilliantly by Pope Saint Pius X as follows in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906:
That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. The same thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies. Both of them, the civil and the religious society, although each exercises in its own sphere its authority over them. It follows necessarily that there are many things belonging to them in common in which both societies must have relations with one another. Remove the agreement between Church and State, and the result will be that from these common matters will spring the seeds of disputes which will become acute on both sides; it will become more difficult to see where the truth lies, and great confusion is certain to arise. Finally, this thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions touching the rights and the duties of men. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.)
The civil state has an obligation to recognize the true Faith and to pursue the common temporal good in light of man's Last End: the possession of the glory of the Beatific Vision of Father, Son and Holy Ghost in Heaven for all eternity. This obligation is immutable even though the anti-Incarnational civil state of Modernity is founded in a revolution against it. That which is true does not cease being true simply because men reject it and then base their social structures upon its rejection.
Pope Pius XI, writing in Quas Primas, December 11, 1925, which instituted this very feast ninety-seven years ago, explained the meaning of Our Lord’s Kingship and its sway over all men, including unbelievers:
5. This kingdom is spiritual and is concerned with spiritual things. That this is so the above quotations from Scripture amply prove, and Christ by his own action confirms it. On many occasions, when the Jews and even the Apostles wrongly supposed that the Messiah would restore the liberties and the kingdom of Israel, he repelled and denied such a suggestion. When the populace thronged around him in admiration and would have acclaimed him King, he shrank from the honor and sought safety in flight. Before the Roman magistrate he declared that his kingdom was not of this world. The gospels present this kingdom as one which men prepare to enter by penance, and cannot actually enter except by faith and by baptism, which, though an external rite, signifies and produces an interior regeneration. This kingdom is opposed to none other than to that of Satan and to the power of darkness. It demands of its subjects a spirit of detachment from riches and earthly things, and a spirit of gentleness. They must hunger and thirst after justice, and more than this, they must deny themselves and carry the cross.
16. Christ as our Redeemer purchased the Church at the price of his own blood; as priest he offered himself, and continues to offer himself as a victim for our sins. Is it not evident, then, that his kingly dignity partakes in a manner of both these offices?
17. It would be a grave error, on the other hand, to say that Christ has no authority whatever in civil affairs, since, by virtue of the absolute empire over all creatures committed to him by the Father, all things are in his power. Nevertheless, during his life on earth he refrained from the exercise of such authority, and although he himself disdained to possess or to care for earthly goods, he did not, nor does he today, interfere with those who possess them. Non eripit mortalia qui regna dat caelestia.[27]
18. Thus the empire of our Redeemer embraces all men. To use the words of Our immortal predecessor, Pope Leo XIII: “His empire includes not only Catholic nations, not only baptized persons who, though of right belonging to the Church, have been led astray by error, or have been cut off from her by schism, but also all those who are outside the Christian faith; so that truly the whole of mankind is subject to the power of Jesus Christ.”[28] Nor is there any difference in this matter between the individual and the family or the State; for all men, whether collectively or individually, are under the dominion of Christ. In him is the salvation of the individual, in him is the salvation of society. “Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given to men whereby we must be saved.”[29] He is the author of happiness and true prosperity for every man and for every nation. “For a nation is happy when its citizens are happy. What else is a nation but a number of men living in concord?”[30] If, therefore, the rulers of nations wish to preserve their authority, to promote and increase the prosperity of their countries, they will not neglect the public duty of reverence and obedience to the rule of Christ. What We said at the beginning of Our Pontificate concerning the decline of public authority, and the lack of respect for the same, is equally true at the present day. “With God and Jesus Christ,” we said, “excluded from political life, with authority derived not from God but from man, the very basis of that authority has been taken away, because the chief reason of the distinction between ruler and subject has been eliminated. The result is that human society is tottering to its fall, because it has no longer a secure and solid foundation.”[31]
19. When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony. Our Lord’s regal office invests the human authority of princes and rulers with a religious significance; it ennobles the citizen’s duty of obedience. It is for this reason that St. Paul, while bidding wives revere Christ in their husbands, and slaves respect Christ in their masters, warns them to give obedience to them not as men, but as the vicegerents of Christ; for it is not meet that men redeemed by Christ should serve their fellow-men. “You are bought with a price; be not made the bond-slaves of men.”[32] If princes and magistrates duly elected are filled with the persuasion that they rule, not by their own right, but by the mandate and in the place of the Divine King, they will exercise their authority piously and wisely, and they will make laws and administer them, having in view the common good and also the human dignity of their subjects. The result will be a stable peace and tranquillity, for there will be no longer any cause of discontent. Men will see in their king or in their rulers men like themselves, perhaps unworthy or open to criticism, but they will not on that account refuse obedience if they see reflected in them the authority of Christ God and Man. Peace and harmony, too, will result; for with the spread and the universal extent of the kingdom of Christ men will become more and more conscious of the link that binds them together, and thus many conflicts will be either prevented entirely or at least their bitterness will be diminished. (Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas, December 11, 1925.)
Here you have summarized all the proximate reasons why the world is a mess today. Admitting full well that fallen human nature is the remote cause of all problems or conflicts, whether personal or social, the proximate reason that the world has fallen into an abyss of lawlessness, anarchy, and abject violence is because the Protestant Revolution’s overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King made it possible for civil rulers to govern in a Machiavellian manner without fear of being reprimanded by the authority of the Catholic Church if they propose to undertake or have in fact undertaken policies inimical to the good of souls and thus to the whole of social order.
Corrupt Culture Produces Corrupt Minds
Alas, a culture informed by the perennial truths of the Catholic Faith, a culture that glorifies sin with abandon and protects such glorification under cover of the civil law, must perforce fall completely into the hands of the devil, the master of violence against God and man himself, who wants human beings to wallow in dark, macabre thoughts of bloodshed. A steady diet of the macabre leads so many who live in a land of materialism and relativism and hedonism to be completely isolated from reality, including the reality of the humanity of fellow human beings.
We live in a world where men have become mad. They refuse to see any spark of humanity in others because they do not recognize that they bear within their own immortal souls the very image and likeness of the Most Blessed Trinity, in Whose image they have been made. Deluded by one naturalist lie after another and harmed immeasurably by the paucity of Sanctifying and Actual Graces as a result of the sacramentally barren liturgical rites of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, men are now suffering the effects of a world that knows not the soothing laver of redemption that is the Most Precious Blood of Jesus, seeking instead to shed as much innocent blood as possible, staring with the innocent preborn.
The world in which we live was described very prophetically by Father Frederick Faber in The Precious Blood one hundred sixty-five years ago now:
The increase of sin, without the prospects which the faith lays open to us, must lead to an increase of despair, and to an increase of it upon a gigantic scale. With despair must come rage, madness, violence, tumult, and bloodshed. Yet from what quarter could we expect relief in this tremendous suffering? We should be imprisoned in our own planet. The blue sky above us would be but a dungeon-roof. The greensward beneath our feet would truly be the slab of our future tomb. Without the Precious Blood there is no intercourse between heaven and earth. Prayer would be useless. Our hapless lot would be irremediable. It has always seemed to me that it will be one of the terrible things in hell, that there are no motives for patience there. We cannot make the best of it. Why should we endure it? Endurance is an effort for a time; but this woe is eternal. Perhaps vicissitudes of agony might be a kind of field for patience. But there are no such vicissitudes. Why should we endure, then? Simply because we must; and yet in eternal things this is not a sort of necessity which supplies a reasonable ground for patience. So in this imaginary world of rampant sin there would be no motives for patience. For death would be our only seeming relief; and that is only seeming, for death is any thin but an eternal sleep. Our impatience would become frenzy; and if our constitutions were strong enough to prevent the frenzy from issuing in downright madness, it would grow into hatred of God, which is perhaps already less uncommon than we suppose.
An earth, from off which all sense of justice had perished, would indeed be the most disconsolate of homes. The antediluvian earth exhibits only a tendency that way; and the same is true of the worst forms of heathenism. The Precious Blood was always there. Unnamed, unknown, and unsuspected, the Blood of Jesus has alleviated every manifestation of evil which there has ever been just as it is alleviating at this hour the punishments of hell. What would be our own individual case on such a blighted earth as this? All our struggles to be better would be simply hopeless. There would be no reason why we should not give ourselves up to that kind of enjoyment which our corruption does substantially find in sin. The gratification of our appetites is something; and that lies on one side, while on the other side there is absolutely nothing. But we should have the worm of conscience already, even though the flames of hell might yet be some years distant. To feel that we are fools, and yet lack the strength to be wiser--is not this precisely the maddening thing in madness? Yet it would be our normal state under the reproaches of conscience, in a world where there was no Precious Blood. Whatever relics of moral good we might retain about us would add most sensibly to our wretchedness. Good people, if there were any, would be, as St. Paul speaks, of all men the most miserable; for they would be drawn away from the enjoyment of this world, or have their enjoyment of it abated by a sense of guilt and shame; and there would be no other world to aim at or to work for. To lessen the intensity of our hell without abridging its eternity would hardly be a cogent motive, when the temptations of sin and the allurements of sense are so vivid and strong.
What sort of love could there be, when we could have no respect? Even if flesh and blood made us love each other, what a separation death would be! We should commit our dead to the ground without a hope. Husband and wife would part with the fearfullest certainties of a reunion more terrible than their separation. Mothers would long to look upon their little ones in the arms of death, because their lot would be less woeful than if they lived to offend God with their developed reason and intelligent will. The sweetest feelings of our nature would become unnatural, and the most honorable ties be dishonored. Our best instincts would lead us into our worst dangers. Our hearts would have to learn to beat another way, in order to avoid the dismal consequences which our affections would bring upon ourselves and others. But it is needless to go further into these harrowing details. The world of the heart, without the Precious Blood, and with an intellectual knowledge of God, and his punishments of sin, is too fearful a picture to be drawn with minute fidelity.
But how would it fare with the poor in such a world? They are God's chosen portion upon the earth. He chose poverty himself, when he came to us. He has left the poor in his place, and they are never to fail from the earth, but to be his representatives there until the doom. But, if it were not for the Precious Blood, would any one love them? Would any one have a devotion to them, and dedicate his life to merciful ingenuities to alleviate their lot? If the stream of almsgiving is so insufficient now, what would it be then? There would be no softening of the heart by grace; there would be no admission of of the obligation to give away in alms a definite portion of our incomes; there would be no desire to expiate sin by munificence to the needy for the love of God. The gospel makes men's hearts large;and yet even under the gospel the fountain of almsgiving flows scantily and uncertainly. There would be no religious orders devoting themselves with skilful concentration to different acts of spiritual and corporal mercy. Vocation is a blossom to be found only in the gardens of the Precious Blood. But all this is only negative, only an absence of God. Matters would go much further in such a world as we are imagining.
Even in countries professing to be Christian, and at least in possession of the knowledge of the gospel, the poor grow to be an intolerable burden to the rich. They have to be supported by compulsory taxes; and they are in other ways a continual subject of irritated and impatient legislation. Nevertheless, it is due to the Precious Blood that the principle of supporting them is acknowledged. From what we read in heathen history--even the history of nations renowned for political wisdom, for philosophical speculation, and for literary and artistic refinement--it would not be extravagant for us to conclude that, if the circumstances of a country were such as to make the numbers of the poor dangerous to the rich, the rich would not scruple to destroy them, while it was yet in their power to do so. Just as men have had in France and England to war down bears and wolves, so would the rich war down the poor, whose clamorous misery and excited despair should threaten them in the enjoyment of their power and their possessions. The numbers of the poor would be thinned by murder, until it should be safe for their masters to reduce them into slavery. The survivors would lead the lives of convicts or of beasts. History, I repeat, shows us that this is by no means an extravagant supposition.
Such would be the condition of the world without the Precious Blood. As generations succeeded each other, original sin would go on developing those inexhaustible malignant powers which come from the almost infinite character of evil. Sin would work earth into hell. Men would become devils, devils to others and to themselves. Every thing which makes life tolerable, which counteracts any evil, which softens any harshness, which sweetens any bitterness, which causes the machinery of society to work smoothly, or which consoles any sadness--is simply due to the Precious Blood of Jesus, in heathen as well as in Christian lands. It changes the whole position of an offending creation to its Creator. It changes, if we may dare in such a matter to speak of change, the aspect of God's immutable perfections toward his human children. It does not work merely in a spiritual sphere. It is not only prolific in temporal blessings, but it is the veritable cause of all temporal blessings whatsoever. We are all of us every moment sensibly enjoying the benignant influence of the Precious Blood. Yet who thinks of all this? Why is the goodness of God so hidden, so imperceptible, so unsuspected? Perhaps because it is so universal and so excessive, that we should hardly be free agents if it pressed sensibly upon us always. God's goodness is at once the most public of all his attributes, and at the same time the most secret. Has life a sweeter task than to seek it, and to find it out?
Men would be far more happy, if they separated religion less violently from other things. It is both unwise and unloving to put religion into a place by itself, and mark it off with an untrue distinctness from what we call worldly and unspiritual things. Of course there is a distinction, and a most important one, between them; yet it is easy to make this distinction too rigid and to carry it too far. Thus we often attribute to nature what is only due to grace; and we put out of sight the manner and degree in which the blessed majesty of the Incarnation affects all created things. But this mistake is forever robbing us of hundreds of motives for loving Jesus. We know how unspeakably much we owe to him; but we do not see all that it is not much we owe him, but all, simply and absolutely all. We pass through times and places in life, hardly recognizing how the sweetness of Jesus is sweetening the air around us and penetrating natural things with supernatural blessings.
Hence it comes to pass that men make too much of natural goodness. They think too highly of human progress. They exaggerate the moralizing powers of civilization and refinement, which, apart from grace, are simply tyrannies of the few over the many, or of the public over the individual soul. Meanwhile they underrate the corrupting capabilities of sin, and attribute to unassisted nature many excellences which it only catches, as it were by the infection, by the proximity of grace, or by contagion, from the touch of the Church. Even in religious and ecclesiastical matters they incline to measure progress, or test vigor, by other standards rather than that of holiness. These men will consider the foregoing picture of the world without the Precious Blood as overdrawn and too darkly shaded. They do not believe in the intense malignity of man when drifted from God, and still less are they inclined to grant that cultivation and refinement only intensify still further this malignity. They admit the superior excellence of Christian charity; but they also think highly of natural philanthropy. But has this philanthropy ever been found where the indirect influences of the true religion, whether Jewish or Christian, had not penetrated? We may admire the Greeks for their exquisite refinement, and the Romans for the wisdom of their political moderation. Yet look at the position of children, of servants, of slaves, and of the poor, under both these systems, and see if, while extreme refinement only pushed sin to an extremity of foulness, the same exquisite culture did not also lead to a social cruelty and an individual selfishness which made life unbearable to the masses. Philanthropy is but a theft from the gospel, or rather a shadow, not a substance, and as unhelpful as shadows are want to be. (Father Frederick Faber, The Precious Blood, published originally in England in 1860, republished by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 53-59.)
Today's cadre of leftists is consumed with hate as they are, as noted before earlier in this commentary, the products of a world that has been robbed of a superabundance of Sanctfying and Actual Graces (for a fuller discussion of this, please obtain G.I.R.M. Warfare: The Conciliar Church's Unremitting Warfare Against Catholic Faith and Worship if you have done not so already.)
Pelagianism Writ Large
Although well-delivered with his usual New York sarcasm and biting humor and certainly well-intentioned, President Donald John Trump’s March 4, 2025, State of the Union Address was filled with the belief that men can do things on their own because they are Americans and not because of the graces sent to them by Our Lady that have been won for us all by her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, as He shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood to redeem us during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday.
As heartwarming as the stories involving the lives of ordinary Americans who either gave up their lives or who have overcome great tragedies and illnesses (as in the remarkable case of Devarjaye "DJ" Daniel—see Trump speech: DJ Daniel named Secret Service agent) undoubtedly are, though, these stories of personal triumph are not the result only of human efforts but of the tender mercies of the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Whose mercy and love extends to all in order to draw them to Himself through His Holy Catholic Church.
Unfortunately, though, as well-intentioned and personally generous that Donald John Trump has been throughout his life, he is the same man whose Calvinist-Americanist belief system is essentially that of Pelagian self-redemption, something that has infected almost every president of the United States of America (Reagan constantly used John Winthrop’s “shining city on a hill” sermon to refer to the United States of America as the “last best hope of man on earth” when that shining city on a hill is the Catholic Church) and is the basis of both Lockean liberalism and its logical, although entirely unintended, consequence, Marxism. Each political ideology, whether of the naturalist “left” or the naturalist “right” is a system of secular salvation that ignores Special Creation, the Fall from Grace, Original Sin, and Our Lord’s Redemptive Act on the wood of the Holy Cross while treating with indifference or outright contempt the necessity of belonging to the Catholic Church for their be order within the souls of men, which is the precondition (although never, given the vagaries of fallen human nature, an infallible guarantor of) for a truly just social order.
Father Frederick William Faber explained the effect of Pelagianism on the world as follows over one hundred sixty years ago:
All devotions have their characteristics; all of them have their own theological meanings. We must say something, therefore, upon the characteristics of the devotion to the Precious Blood. In reality the whole Treatise has more or less illustrated this matter. But something still remains to be said, and something will bear to be repeated. We will take the last first. Devotion to the Precious Blood is the devotional expression of the prominent and characteristic teaching of St. Paul. St. Paul is the apostle of redeeming grace. A devout study of his epistles would be our deliverance from most of the errors of the day. He is truly the apostle of all ages. To each age doubtless he seems to have a special mission. Certainly his mission to our is very special. The very air we breathe is Pelagian. Our heresies are only novel shapes of an old Pelagianism. The spirit of the world is eminently Pelagian. Hence it comes to pass that wrong theories among us are always constructed round a nuclear of Pelagianism; and Pelagianism is just the heresy which is least able to breathe in the atmosphere of St. Paul. It is the age of the natural as opposed to the supernatural, of the acquired as opposed to the infused, of the active as opposed to the passive. This is what I said in an earlier chapter, and here repeat. Now, this exclusive fondness for the natural is on the whole very captivating. It takes with the young, because it saves thought. It does not explain difficulties; but it lessens the number of difficulties to be explained. It takes with the idle; it dispenses from slowness and research. It takes with the unimaginative, because it withdraws just the very element in religion which teases them. It takes with the worldly, because it subtracts the enthusiasm from piety and the sacrifice from spirituality. It takes with the controversial, because it is a short road and a shallow ford. It forms a school of thought which, while it admits that we have an abundance of grace, intimates that we are not much better for it. It merges privileges in responsibilities, and makes the sovereignty of God odious by representing it as insidious. All this whole spirit, with all its ramifications, perishes in the sweet fires of devotion to the Precious Blood.
The time is also one of libertinage; and a time of libertinage is always, with a kind of practical logic, one of infidelity. Whatever brings out God's side in creation, and magnifies his incessant supernatural operation in it, is the controversy which infidelity can least withstand. Now, the devotion to the Precious Blood does this in a very remarkable way. It shows that the true significance in every thing is to be found in the scheme of redemption, apart from which it is useless to discuss the problems of creation. (Father Frederick Faber, The Precious Blood, written in 1860, republished by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 258-259.)
Thus, good readers, recognize good political theater for what it is but do not mistake it as having any relationship to the permanent vanquishing of the so-called “greater evils” as no man, no matter how well-intentioned he is, can at one and the same time support such evils as “Trump Gaza” (see King Donald John Nabuchodonosor) or in vitro fertilization (see Immoral Promises Made, Immoral Promises Kept) and then accomplish anything of a lasting value unless he repents of his errors and turns himself entirely over to Christ the King and His Catholic Church:
4. If we weigh carefully the causes of today’s crises and those that are ahead, we shall soon find that human plans, human resources, and human endeavors are futile and will fail when Almighty God — He who enlightens, commands, and forbids; He who is the source and guarantor of justice, the fountainhead of truth, the basis of all laws — is esteemed but little, denied His proper place, or even completely disregarded. If a house is not built on a solid and sure foundation, it tumbles down; if a mind is not enlightened by the divine light, it strays more or less from the whole truth; if citizens, peoples, and nations are not animated by brotherly love, strife is born, waxes strong, and reaches full growth.
5. It is Christianity, above all others, which teaches the full truth, real justice, and that divine charity which drives away hatred, ill will, and enmity. Christianity has been given charge of these virtues by the Divine Redeemer, who is the way, the truth, and the life,[2] and she must do all in her power to put them to use. Anyone, therefore, who knowingly ignores Christianity — the Catholic Church — or tries to hinder, demean, or undo her, either weakens thereby the very bases of society, or tries to replace them with props not strong enough to support the edifice of human worth, freedom, and well-being.
6. There must, then, be a return to Christian principles if we are to establish a society that is strong, just, and equitable. It is a harmful and reckless policy to do battle with Christianity, for God guarantees, and history testifies, that she shall exist forever. Everyone should realize that a nation cannot be well organized or well ordered without religion. (Pope Pius XII, Meminisse Iuvat, July 14, 1958.)
We would never be arguing about the inarguable (the inviolability of innocent human life, the fact that there are only two genders, that the sin of Sodom and its related vices are abhorrent and can never enjoy the favor of the civil law nor be celebrated within civil society, etc.) in a country that recognizes the Sovereignty of Christ the King and that acknowledges the authority of the Catholic Church to interpose herself with the civil authorities in all that pertains to the good of souls after exhausting her Indirect Powers of teaching, preaching, exhortation, and admonition to warn such authorities of the consequences for defying the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law.
We place our hope only in Christ the King and His Most Blessed Mother, remembering that we can plant the seeds for the conversion of our fellow citizens and thus of the nation if we remain faithful to Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary and accept everything that happens to us, whether individually or socially, with equanimity as the consecrated slaves of Our King’s Most Sacred Heart through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.
Yes, my friends, it is the Rosary that is, after Holy Mass and Eucharistic piety, the chief means by which the evils of the present day will be retarded, and the seeds planted for the Triumph of Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.
Pope Leo XIII, writing in Laetitiae Sanctae, September 8, 1893, noted:
The third evil for which a remedy is needed is one which is chiefly characteristic of the times in which we live. Men in former ages, although they loved the world, and loved it far too well, did not usually aggravate their sinful attachment to the things of earth by a contempt of the things of heaven. Even the right-thinking portion of the pagan world recognized that this life was not a home but a dwelling-place, not our destination, but a stage in the journey. But men of our day, albeit they have had the advantages of Christian instruction, pursue the false goods of this world in such wise that the thought of their true Fatherland of enduring happiness is not only set aside, but, to their shame be it said, banished and entirely erased from their memory, notwithstanding the warning of St. Paul, "We have not here a lasting city, but we seek one which is to come" (Heb. xiii., 4).
When We seek out the causes of this forgetfulness, We are met in the first place by the fact that many allow themselves to believe that the thought of a future life goes in some way to sap the love of our country, and thus militates against the prosperity of the commonwealth. No illusion could be more foolish or hateful. Our future hope is not of a kind which so monopolizes the minds of men as to withdraw their attention from the interests of this life. Christ commands us, it is true, to seek the Kingdom of God, and in the first place, but not in such a manner as to neglect all things else. For, the use of the goods of the present life, and the righteous enjoyment which they furnish, may serve both to strengthen virtue and to reward it. The splendor and beauty of our earthly habitation, by which human society is ennobled, may mirror the splendor and beauty of our dwelling which is above. Therein we see nothing that is not worthy of the reason of man and of the wisdom of God. For the same God who is the Author of Nature is the Author of Grace, and He willed not that one should collide or conflict with the other, but that they should act in friendly alliance, so that under the leadership of both we may the more easily arrive at that immortal happiness for which we mortal men were created.
But men of carnal mind, who love nothing but themselves, allow their thoughts to grovel upon things of earth until they are unable to lift them to that which is higher. For, far from using the goods of time as a help towards securing those which are eternal, they lose sight altogether of the world which is to come, and sink to the lowest depths of degradation. We may doubt if God could inflict upon man a more terrible punishment than to allow him to waste his whole life in the pursuit of earthly pleasures, and in forgetfulness of the happiness which alone lasts for ever.
It is from this danger that they will be happily rescued, who, in the pious practice of the Rosary, are wont, by frequent and fervent prayer, to keep before their minds the glorious mysteries. These mysteries are the means by which in the soul of a Christian a most clear light is shed upon the good things, hidden to sense, but visible to faith, "which God has prepared for those who love Him." From them we learn that death is not an annihilation which ends all things, but merely a migration and passage from life to life. By them we are taught that the path to Heaven lies open to all men, and as we behold Christ ascending thither, we recall the sweet words of His promise, "I go to prepare a place for you." By them we are reminded that a time will come when "God will wipe away every tear from our eyes," and that "neither mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow, shall be any more," and that "We shall be always with the Lord," and "like to the Lord, for we shall see Him as He is," and "drink of the torrent of His delight," as "fellow-citizens of the saints," in the blessed companionship of our glorious Queen and Mother. Dwelling upon such a prospect, our hearts are kindled with desire, and we exclaim, in the words of a great saint, "How vile grows the earth when I look up to heaven!" Then, too, shall we feel the solace of the assurance "that which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory" (2 Cor. iv., 17).
Here alone we discover the true relation between time and eternity, between our life on earth and our life in heaven; and it is thus alone that are formed strong and noble characters. When such characters can be counted in large numbers, the dignity and well-being of society are assured. All that is beautiful, good, and true will flourish in the measure of its conformity to Him who is of all beauty, goodness, and truth the first Principle and the Eternal Source. (Pope Leo XIII, Laetitiae Sanctae, September 8, 1893.)
I will never tire of reminding the readers of this site that Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order.
I will never tire of opposing the lies of naturalism and of documenting the various ways in which the naturalists of the false opposites of the "right" and of the "left" agree on the same basic anti-Incarnational and semi-Pelagian principles upon which the Modern state is based and with which conciliar revolutionaries have made their "official reconciliation" and even help to propagate by means of the "new evangelization."
And I will never tire of reminding readers of this site that we must, as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, use the shield of the Brown Scapular and the weapon of the Most Holy Rosary to combat the forces of the world, the flesh and the devil in our own lives so that we might be able to plant a few seeds for the glorious day when all men and all women everywhere will exclaim:
Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!
Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!
Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.
Saint Joseph, pray for us.
Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.
Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.
Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.
Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.
Saint John of God, pray for us.