Forever Litigating Common Sense and Truth

Writing in Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884, Pope Leo XIII explained what must happen when men and their nations adhere to false Judeo-Masonic principles of jurisprudence that admit of no laws above human laws as the foundation of genuine justice according to the truths of the supernatural and natural order:

But the naturalists go much further; for, having, in the highest things, entered upon a wholly erroneous course, they are carried headlong to extremes, either by reason of the weakness of human nature, or because God inflicts upon them the just punishment of their pride. Hence it happens that they no longer consider as certain and permanent those things which are fully understood by the natural light of reason, such as certainly are -- the existence of God, the immaterial nature of the human soul, and its immortality. The sect of the Freemasons, by a similar course of error, is exposed to these same dangers; for, although in a general way they may profess the existence of God, they themselves are witnesses that they do not all maintain this truth with the full assent of the mind or with a firm conviction. Neither do they conceal that this question about God is the greatest source and cause of discords among them; in fact, it is certain that a considerable contention about this same subject has existed among them very lately. But, indeed, the sect allows great liberty to its votaries, so that to each side is given the right to defend its own opinion, either that there is a God, or that there is none; and those who obstinately contend that there is no God are as easily initiated as those who contend that God exists, though, like the pantheists, they have false notions concerning Him: all which is nothing else than taking away the reality, while retaining some absurd representation of the divine nature.

When this greatest fundamental truth has been overturned or weakened, it follows that those truths, also, which are known by the teaching of nature must begin to fall -- namely, that all things were made by the free will of God the Creator; that the world is governed by Providence; that souls do not die; that to this life of men upon the earth there will succeed another and an everlasting life.

When these truths are done away with, which are as the principles of nature and important for knowledge and for practical use, it is easy to see what will become of both public and private morality. We say nothing of those more heavenly virtues, which no one can exercise or even acquire without a special gift and grace of God; of which necessarily no trace can be found in those who reject as unknown the redemption of mankind, the grace of God, the sacraments, and the happiness to be obtained in heaven. We speak now of the duties which have their origin in natural probity. That God is the Creator of the world and its provident Ruler; that the eternal law commands the natural order to be maintained, and forbids that it be disturbed; that the last end of men is a destiny far above human things and beyond this sojourning upon the earth: these are the sources and these the principles of all justice and morality.

If these be taken away, as the naturalists and Freemasons desire, there will immediately be no knowledge as to what constitutes justice and injustice, or upon what principle morality is founded. And, in truth, the teaching of morality which alone finds favor with the sect of Freemasons, and in which they contend that youth should be instructed, is that which they call "civil," and "independent," and "free," namely, that which does not contain any religious belief. But, how insufficient such teaching is, how wanting in soundness, and how easily moved by every impulse of passion, is sufficiently proved by its sad fruits, which have already begun to appear. For, wherever, by removing Christian education, this teaching has begun more completely to rule, there goodness and integrity of morals have begun quickly to perish, monstrous and shameful opinions have grown up, and the audacity of evil deeds has risen to a high degree. All this is commonly complained of and deplored; and not a few of those who by no means wish to do so are compelled by abundant evidence to give not infrequently the same testimony. (Pope Leo XIII, Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884.)

Yes, there is no “knowledge” of what constitutes justice and injustice in a land that gives full rein to blasphemy and sacrilege, a land where even the adversary himself has “rights” as it is considered to be something akin to a “hate” crime to mention the Holy Name of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, which was been banned by United States Department of Defense and its military services from being invoked outside of chaplaincy use during the administration of President Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro and Vice President Joseph Robinette “Accounts Receivable from Xi Jinping” Biden, Jr.

Things have gotten so bad in the past few decades that, apart from not having not having any knowledge as to what constitutes justice and injustice, executives, legislators, judges, educators, commentators, and many ordinary citizens can no longer say with certainty that there are only two genders as is plainly observable in the Order of Nature (Creation) as well as in the Order of Grace (Redemption):

[26] And he said: Let us make man to our image and likeness: and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth. [27] And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them. [28] And God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth. [29] And God said: Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed upon the earth, and all trees that have in themselves seed of their own kind, to be your meat: [30] And to all beasts of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to all that move upon the earth, and wherein there is life, that they may have to feed upon. And it was so done. (Genesis 1: 26-30.)

A Constitution that admits of no higher authority is defenseless against a madness that grown men and women who serve as justices on the Supreme Court of the United States of America straining at gnats about whether parents can opt out their children from the homosexual collective’s indoctrination in the centers of ideological deformation known as public schools. Although a majority of six justices (Chief Justice John Glover Roberts, Jr., and Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Michael Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett) decided in the case of Mahmoud v. Taylor, June 27, 2025, that parents could opt-out their grade school children from being instructed in perversity during so-called “story time” reading sessions, the very fact that such reading sessions are permitted at all indicates one of the many truly fatal flaws in a jurisprudential system that not only does not recognize the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law but must force otherwise rational human beings to argue against policies that are opposed to the sanctification and salvation of human beings and thus are injurious to the whole of social order. Common sense and truth have no place in a pluralist “republic” wherein even satanism itself is deemed to be part of the “free exercise of religion.”

Then again, it was ten years ago that a majority of justices on the Supreme Court of the United States of America decided in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015, that “same sex marriage” was a constitutionally guaranteed “right.” Even the dissenting justices, though, made sophistic arguments by claiming that it was up to the “people,” not to an “unelected committee of nine,” to “decide” that which is beyond the authority of human beings to “decide”:

Understand well what this dissent is about: It is not about whether, in my judgment, the institution of marriage should be changed to include same-sex couples. It is instead about whether, in our democratic republic, that decision should rest with the people acting through their elected representatives, or with five lawyers who happen to hold commissions authorizing them to resolve legal disputes according to law. The Constitution leaves no doubt about the answer. (Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015.)  

I join THE CHIEF JUSTICE’s opinion in full. I write separately to call attention to this Court’s threat to American democracy. The substance of today’s decree is not of immense personal importance to me. The law can recognize as marriage whatever sexual attachments and living arrangements it wishes, and can accord them favorable civil consequences, from tax treatment to rights of inheritance.

Those civil consequences—and the public approval that conferring the name of marriage evidences—can perhaps have adverse social effects, but no more adverse than the effects of many other controversial laws. So it is not of special importance to me what the law says about marriage. It is of overwhelming importance, however, who it is that rules me. Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact—and the furthest extension one can even imagine—of the Court’s claimed power to create “liberties” that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves. (Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015.)

In other words, “same-sex marriage” was a matter of complete indifference to these two Catholic legal positivists just as the true religion was a matter of complete indifference to the framers of the Constitution themselves. It is the “right” of the “people,” acting through their elected representatives, to govern themselves that matters, not the Sovereignty of Christ the King over men individually and their nations collectively, which is the exact same reasoning that Associate Justice Samuel Alito used in the case of Thomas E. Dobbs, Mississippi State Health Officer v. Jackson Women’s Organization, June 24, 2022, to overturn the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the case of Roe v. Wade, January 22, 1973:

One may disagree with this belief (and our decision is not based on any view about when a State should regard prenatal life as having rights or legally cognizable interests).  . . .

Our opinion is not based on any view about if and when prenatal life is entitled to any of the rights enjoyed after birth. The dissent, by contrast, would impose on the people a particular theory about when the rights of personhood begin.

Samuel Alito knows full well when life begins. He is an observant Catholic, albeit one deceived into thinking that that the Catholic Church is synonymous with the false entity headed at present by Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

Third, however, even well-meaning justices such as Samuel Alito must work with the parameters of a secular constitution that forces them to engage in feats of sophistry to prove that what they know to be true does not conflict with various legal precedents and/or is consonant with what the late Associate Justice Benjamin Cardozo called “ordered liberty.”

Moreover, Catholic jurists such as Alito are infected with the spirit of American “popular sovereignty,” which is such a firmly held myth that Alito based his whole overturning of Roe v. Wade and William Casey v. Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania on the “right” of the “people” to decide a matter upon which they have nothing to “decide”:

We end this opinion where we began. Abortion presents a profound moral question. The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives.

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

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

To hold, therefore, that there is no difference in matters of religion between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, most clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and practice. And this is the same thing as atheism, however it may differ from it in name. Men who really believe in the existence of God must, in order to be consistent with themselves and to avoid absurd conclusions, understand that differing modes of divine worship involving dissimilarity and conflict even on most important points cannot all be equally probable, equally good, and equally acceptable to God. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1900.)

But in this same matter, touching Christian faith, there are other duties whose exact and religious observance, necessary at all times in the interests of eternal salvation, become more especially so in these our days. Amid such reckless and widespread folly of opinion, it is, as We have said, the office of the Church to undertake the defense of truth and uproot errors from the mind, and this charge has to be at all times sacredly observed by her, seeing that the honor of God and the salvation of men are confided to her keeping. But, when necessity compels, not those only who are invested with power of rule are bound to safeguard the integrity of faith, but, as St. Thomas maintains: "Each one is under obligation to show forth his faith, either to instruct and encourage others of the faithful, or to repel the attacks of unbelievers." To recoil before an enemy, or to keep silence when from all sides such clamors are raised against truth, is the part of a man either devoid of character or who entertains doubt as to the truth of what he professes to believe. In both cases such mode of behaving is base and is insulting to God, and both are incompatible with the salvation of mankind. This kind of conduct is profitable only to the enemies of the faith, for nothing emboldens the wicked so greatly as the lack of courage on the part of the good. Moreover, want of vigor on the part of Christians is so much the more blameworthy, as not seldom little would be needed on their part to bring to naught false charges and refute erroneous opinions, and by always exerting themselves more strenuously they might reckon upon being successful. After all, no one can be prevented from putting forth that strength of soul which is the characteristic of true Christians, and very frequently by such display of courage our enemies lose heart and their designs are thwarted. Christians are, moreover, born for combat, whereof the greater the vehemence, the more assured, God aiding, the triumph: "Have confidence; I have overcome the world." Nor is there any ground for alleging that Jesus Christ, the Guardian and Champion of the Church, needs not in any manner the help of men. Power certainly is not wanting to Him, but in His loving kindness He would assign to us a share in obtaining and applying the fruits of salvation procured through His grace.

The chief elements of this duty consist in professing openly and unflinchingly the Catholic doctrine, and in propagating it to the utmost of our power. For, as is often said, with the greatest truth, there is nothing so hurtful to Christian wisdom as that it should not be known, since it possesses, when loyally received, inherent power to drive away error. (Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890.)

A system of morality based exclusively on human reason robs man of his highest dignity and lowers him from the supernatural to the merely natural life. Not but that man is able by the right use of reason to know and to obey certain principles of the natural law. But though he should know them all and keep them inviolate through life-and even this is impossible without the aid of the grace of our Redeemer-still it is vain for anyone without faith to promise himself eternal salvation. "If anyone abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire, and he burneth" john xv., 6). "He that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mark xvi., 16). We have but too much evidence of the value and result of a morality divorced from divine faith. How is it that, in spite of all the zeal for the welfare of the masses, nations are in such straits and even distress, and that the evil is daily on the increase? We are told that society is quite able to help itself; that it can flourish without the assistance of Christianity, and attain its end by its own unaided efforts. Public administrators prefer a purely secular system of government. All traces of the religion of our forefathers are daily disappearing from political life and administration. What blindness! Once the idea of the authority of God as the Judge of right and wrong is forgotten, law must necessarily lose its primary authority and justice must perish: and these are the two most powerful and most necessary bonds of society. Similarly, once the hope and expectation of eternal happiness is taken away, temporal goods will be greedily sought after. Every man will strive to secure the largest share for himself. Hence arise envy, jealousy, hatred. The consequences are conspiracy, anarchy, nihilism. There is neither peace abroad nor security at home. Public life is stained with crime.

So great is this struggle of the passions and so serious the dangers involved, that we must either anticipate ultimate ruin or seek for an efficient remedy. It is of course both right and necessary to punish malefactors, to educate the masses, and by legislation to prevent crime in every possible way: but all this is by no means sufficient. The salvation of the nations must be looked for higher. A power greater than human must be called in to teach men's hearts, awaken in them the sense of duty, and make them better. This is the power which once before saved the world from destruction when groaning under much more terrible evils. Once remove all impediments and allow the Christian spirit to revive and grow strong in a nation, and that nation will be healed. The strife between the classes and the masses will die away; mutual rights will be respected. If Christ be listened to, both rich and poor will do their duty. The former will realise that they must observe justice and charity, the latter self-restraint and moderation, if both are to be saved. Domestic life will be firmly established ( by the salutary fear of God as the Lawgiver. In the same way the precepts of the natural law, which dictates respect for lawful authority and obedience to the laws, will exercise their influence over the people. Seditions and conspiracies will cease. Wherever Christianity rules over all without let or hindrance there the order established by Divine Providence is preserved, and both security and prosperity are the happy result. The common welfare, then, urgently demands a return to Him from whom we should never have gone astray; to Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and this on the part not only of individuals but of society as a whole. We must restore Christ to this His own rightful possession. All elements of the national life must be made to drink in the Life which proceedeth from Him- legislation, political institutions, education, marriage and family life, capital and labour. Everyone must see that the very growth of civilisation which is so ardently desired depends greatly upon this, since it is fed and grows not so much by material wealth and prosperity, as by the spiritual qualities of morality and virtue. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)

. . . . for there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion; it is a proven truth, a historical fact. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1950.)

The words of our true popes are either true or they are not. If they are true, which they are, of course, then they are merely expressions of what is in fact true and thus binding upon all men in all places at all times.

Fourth, Justice Alito’s view that the Constitution of the United States of America makes no mention about abortion is the canard that was repeated endlessly by the late admirer of the Talmud, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, and this canard is nothing more than yet another example of one of the Constitution’s chief inherent weaknesses. As has been noted thousands of times of this site, a constitution that admits of no higher than the text of its own words as the final arbiter of jurisprudence is as malleable in the hands of judicial positivists as are the words of Holy Writ in the hands of Protestants and Modernists.

Moreover, jurists who are trained to ignore the Divine and Natural Laws in their legal reasoning must resort to all manner of sophistry to argue merely that it is not unreasonable for civil law to prohibit that which, of course, is prohibited in the nature of things while at the same time making the Faustian concession that it is eminently “reasonable” for men to “permit” that which is prohibited in the nature of things. This, in a nutshell, is precisely what Samuel Alito did, when arguing repeatedly and at length that the “people” are free to prohibit, restrict, or permit the slicing and dicing of innocent human beings within their mothers’ wombs.

Although perhaps a moot point given the fact that no justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America has never been willing to make it, a sound case has been made been made by many constitutional scholars that the innocent unborn life is protected by the due process of law clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Justice Alito’s belief that the Constitution of the United States leaves the matter of abortion to the people is gratuitous. More to the point, however, a constitution that is capable of leaving to the “people” that over which they have no authority to “decide” is in direct conflict with the Divine Lawgiver Himself, and those who defend a document that does so must answer to the Divine Judge, Christ the King, Himself. (From Roe v. Wade is Gone, Baby-Killing Will Continue, part one.)

Even the justices who know what is right in the objective order of things cannot state common sense and truth plainly because they are straitjacketed by a secular constitution that is as susceptible to manipulation and deconstructionism by legal positivists of both the false opposites of the naturalist “left” and “right” as Sacred Scripture is in the hands of Protestants of any stripe and, of course, of their misbegotten Catholic kith and kin, Modernists.

Thus, no one can state in cases such as Mahmoud v. Taylor that sodomy is evil and that no entity of the civil state, including a so-called “school,” has any authority to promote it, no less to mandate its acceptance.

This legal unwillingness to “know” common sense and truth results in a denial reality, which is of the essence of first Christian heresy, gnosticism, that still has its adherents even in some traditional Catholic circles.

It is no accident that Gnosticism arose in the First Century A.D. and was rife with sodomy as it grew out of the prevailing practices in the Roman Empire and created an alternative universe replete with “secret” knowledge. Eschewing the natural for the unnatural, Gnostics practiced perversity as it was very much a part of a “reality” that was suited to their own subjective purposes that had no correlation whatsoever to the actual world created by God as above:

Gnosticism does not accept the evidence of reality. It is not a matter of what Gnostics do not know, but of what they refuse to acknowledge. Composer Igor Stravinsky wrote that “the old original sin was one of knowledge, the new original sin is one of non-acknowledgment.” It is the refusal to acknowledge anything outside the operation of the human will—most especially “the good” toward which the soul is ordered. The Gnostic is not interested in conforming his mind to reality but in conforming reality to his wishes. Joseph Pieper defined self-deception as an unobjective perception of reality dictated by the will. It is the sheer willfulness of the homosexual movement that is notable. What are its consequences? Charles DeKonick said: “By a disordered love of one’s private good one rejects…the common good as something alien and judges it to be incompatible with one’s individual status…one freely abdicates the dignity proper to the rational creature in order to establish oneself as a radically independent whole.”ⁱⁱⁱThe common good is the casualty.

In saying that the homosexual ideology is an unobjective perception of reality, one should note at the same time that the active homosexual does not intend to perform a purely subjective act. He wants to say and believe that his actions are ordered objectively. This is what requires the reconstitution of reality so that it will conform to his will and transform his subjective acts into ones ordered to objective good. To succeed in this endeavor, the homosexual ideologue relocates the source of good from what is to his will. Only then can he successfully rationalize his moral misbehavior. (The New Gnosticism of the Homosexual Movement.)

There are many elements of Gnosticism in contemporary society today, and it is no exaggeration to state that the late Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his fellow Modernist revolutionaries created their own alternative realities, starting with an alternative to the Catholic Church that preaches a false gospel entirely alien to that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ entrusted exclusively to the Catholic Church for Its infallible explication and eternal safekeeping. It is important to remember these words of Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907:

It may be, Venerable Brethren, that some may think We have dwelt too long on this exposition of the doctrines of the Modernists. But it was necessary, both in order to refute their customary charge that We do not understand their ideas, and to show that their system does not consist in scattered and unconnected theories but in a perfectly organised body, all the parts of which are solidly joined so that it is not possible to admit one without admitting all. For this reason, too, We have had to give this exposition a somewhat didactic form and not to shrink from employing certain uncouth terms in use among the Modernists. And now, can anybody who takes a survey of the whole system be surprised that We should define it as the synthesis of all heresies? Were one to attempt the task of collecting together all the errors that have been broached against the faith and to concentrate the sap and substance of them all into one, he could not better succeed than the Modernists have done. Nay, they have done more than this, for, as we have already intimated, their system means the destruction not of the Catholic religion alone but of all religion. With good reason do the rationalists applaud them, for the most sincere and the frankest among the rationalists warmly welcome the modernists as their most valuable allies. (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

As the synthesis of all heresies, therefore, it should as no surprise to readers of this site that Modernism and its contemporary exponents in the counterfeit church of conciliarism is so favorably disposed to sodomy and its perverse practices.

Mind you, not all heretics of the past and the Modernists of this time have been homosexuals. Of course not. Heresy of its very nature, however, is a corruption of Catholic truth and as such is impure in the sight of the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Blessed Trinity, and even those heresies not directly liked to carnal impurity wind up making excuses for and/or promoting with the passage of time. (Please see the Appendix for a review of Albigensians/Cathari practices that predisposed them to sodomy.)

Thus, how can we expect there to be any concept of justice even on the natural level when their nations promote public worship of the devil while mocking Christ the King?

How can we expect there to be any concept of justice even on the natural level when the civil law sanctions the killing of the innocent preborn and the vivisection of anyone after birth under the aegis of the medical industry’s manufactured, profit-making myth called “brain death”?

How can we expect there to be any concept of justice even on the natural level when so many people are unjust in their own personal dealings, when relativism and positivism have become the accepted norms of social conduct?

As has been noted before on this site, we are called by the binding precepts of the Fourth Commandment and of the Natural Law itself to love our country. Authentic love of one's nation, however, wills her good, the ultimate expression of which is her Catholicization, that is, the subordination of everything in her national life to that which redounds to the good of the souls of her citizens as that good as been entrusted to and defined by the one and only true Church, the Catholic Church that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope.

Quite specifically, you see, a nation that is not founded on right principles must degenerate into the barbarism of our present era, having no immutable teaching authority to guide it, choosing to be "guided" by the demigods of national founding fathers and/or by the shifting winds of majoritarian sentiment at any particular point in time. Contradiction and instability are bound to result, as we can see with great clarity today. It is very much beside the point to argue that the "founders" would have opposed this or that social evil. They premised the entire fabric of national life under the Constitution upon the false belief that men could sort out their differences by means of a cumbersome process of negotiation and debate in the national legislative process, believing that there was no single belief that could unite men and guide them in the pursuit of the common good as the supreme and eternal good each man was kept in mind. There is no way, therefore, for naturalists to use a naturalist Constitution to defend against various evils. Evil must win when man does not subordinate himself to the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour entrusted exclusively to the Catholic Church and when men do not have belief in, access to or cooperation with Sanctifying Grace.

Here is a summary of the major principles that explain why naturalism is incapable of providing the framework for social order and must yield to the forces of barbarism over the course of time:

1) There are limits that exist in the nature of things beyond which men have no authority or right to transgress, whether acting individually or collectively in the institutions of civil governance.

2) There are limits that have been revealed positively by God Himself in his Divine Revelation, that bind all men in all circumstances at all times, binding even the institutions of civil governance.

3) A divinely-instituted hierarchy exists in man’s most basic natural unit of association: the family. The father is the head of the family and governs his wife and children in accord with the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law. Children do not have the authority to disobey the legitimate commands of their parents. Parents do not have the authority to issue illegitimate and/or unjust commands.

4) Our Lord Himself became Incarnate in Our Lady’s virginal and immaculate womb, subjecting Himself to the authority of His creatures, obeying his foster-father, Saint Joseph, as the head of the Holy Family, thus teaching us that all men everywhere must recognize an ultimate authority over them in their social relations, starting with the family.

5) Our Lord instituted the Catholic Church, founding it on the Rock of Peter, the Pope, to be the means by which His Deposit of Faith is safeguarded and transmitted until the end of time. The Church is the mater, mother, and magister, teacher, of all men in all nations at all times, whether or not men and nations recognize this to be the case.

6) The Pope and the bishops of the Church have the solemn obligation to proclaim nothing other than the fullness of the truths of the Faith for the good of the sanctification and salvation of men unto eternity and thus for whatever measure of common good in the temporal realm, which the Church desires earnestly to promote, can be achieved in a world full of fallen men.

7) It is not possible for men to live virtuously as citizens of any country unless they first strive for sanctity as citizens of Heaven. That is, it is not possible for there to be order in any nation if men do not have belief in access to and cooperation with sanctifying grace, which equips them to accept the truths contained in the Deposit of Faith and to obey God’s commands with diligence in every aspect of their lives without exception.

8) The rulers of Christendom came to understand, although never perfectly and never without conflicts and inconsistencies, that the limits of the Divine positive law and the natural law obligated them to exercise the powers of civil governance with a view towards promoting man’s temporal good in this life so as to foster in him his return to God in the next life. In other words, rulers such as Saint Louis IX, King of France, knew that they would be judged by Our Lord at the moment of his Particular Judgment on the basis of how well they had fostered those conditions in their countries that made it more possible for their subjects to get to Heaven.

9) The rulers of Christendom accepted the truth that the Church had the right, which she used principally through her Indirect Power over civil rulers by proclaiming the truths of the Holy Faith, to interpose herself in the event that a civil ruler proposed to do something or had indeed done something that violated grievously the administration of justice and thus posed a grave threat to the good of souls.

10) The Social Kingship of Jesus Christ may be defined as the right of the Catholic Church to see to it that the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law are the basis of the actions of civil governance in all that pertains to the good of souls and that those who exercise civil power keep in mind man’s last end, the salvation of his immortal soul as a member of the Catholic Church. Civil leaders must, therefore, recognize the Catholic Church as the true Church founded by God Himself and having the right to reprimand and place interdicts upon those who issue edicts and ordinances contrary to God’s laws.

This is but a brief distillation of the points contained in the brilliant social encyclical letters of Popes Leo XIII, St. Pius X, and Pius XI, in particular, although Popes Gregory XVI and Pius IX also contributed to their reiteration and explication. I have spent much time in the past thirty years or so illustrating these points with quotations from these encyclical letters, which contain immutably binding teachings that no Catholic may dissent from legitimately (as Pope Pius XI noted in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio in 1922).

The Modern State, including the United States of America, is founded on a specific and categorical rejection of each of these points. Consider the following:

1) Martin Luther himself said that a prince may be a Christian but that his religion should not influence how he governs, giving rise to the contemporary notion of “separation of Church and state,” condemned repeatedly by Popes in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries.

2) Martin Luther planted the seeds of contemporary deconstructionism, which reduces all written documents to the illogical and frequently mutually contradictory private judgments of individual readers, by rejecting the Catholic Church as the repository and explicator of the Deposit of Faith, making the “private judgment” of individuals with regard to the Bible supreme. If mutually contradictory and inconsistent interpretations of the Bible can stand without correction from a supreme authority instituted by God, then it is an easy thing for all written documents, including a Constitution that makes no reference at all to the God-Man or His Holy Church, to become the plaything of whoever happens to have power over its interpretation

3) The sons of the so-called Enlightenment, influenced by the multifaceted and inter-related consequences of the errors of the Renaissance and the Protestant Revolt, brought forth secular nations that contended the source of governing authority was the people. Ultimately, all references to “God” were in accord with the Freemasonic notion of a “supreme intelligence” without any recognition of the absolute necessity of belief in and acceptance of the Incarnation and of the Deposit of Faith as it has been given to Holy Mother Church for personal happiness and hence al social order.

4) The Founding Fathers of the United States of America did not believe that it was necessary to refer all things in civil life to Christ the King as He had revealed Himself through His true Church, believing that men would be able to pursue “civic virtue” by the use of their own devices and thus maintain social order in the midst of cultural and religious pluralism. This leads, as Pope Leo XIII noted of religious indifferentism, to the triumph of the lowest common denominator, that is, atheism.  

5) As the Constitution of the United States of America admits of no authority higher than its own words, it, like the words of Holy Writ are for a Protestant or to a Modernist, is utterly defenseless when the plain meanings of its words are distorted and used to advance ends that its framers would have never thought imaginable, no less approved in fact. The likes of Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro, Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. (and his puppeteers Jill Jacobs Stevenson Biden, Anthony Bernal, Ronald Klain),  Kamala Harris Emhoff, and Ketanji Brown Jackson have no regard for the words of the Constitution or for the just laws passed by Congress, and Donald John Trump is plainly ignorant of some of the fact that there are seven articles in the Constitution and twenty-seven amendments to it since its ratification in 1788. We are governed by men who are contemptuous or law or wholly ignorant of it. Quite a state of affairs.

6) This is but the secular version of Antinomianism: the belief advanced by those who took the logic of Luther’s argument of being “saved by faith alone” to its inexorable conclusion that one could live a wanton life of sin and still be saved. Luther himself did not see where the logic of his rejection of Catholic doctrine would lead and fought against the Antinomians. In like manner, you see, the Constitutionalists and Federalists of today do not see that what is happening today in Federal courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States, is the inexorable result of a Constitution that rejects Christ the King and the Catholic Church. These Constitutionalists and Federalists will fight time and time again like Sisyphus pushing the boulder up a hill. They will always lose because they cannot admit that the thing they admire, the Constitution, is the proximate problem that has resulted in all of the evils they are trying to fight.

A nation founded on false premises, no matter the "good intentions" of those whose intellects were misinformed by several centuries of naturalist lies and Protestant theological heresies and errors, is bound to degenerate more and more over time into a land of materialism and hedonism and relativism and positivism and utilitarianism and naturalism and paganism and atheism and environmentalism and feminism and barbarism. Many evils, including the daily carnage against the preborn, both by surgical and chemical means, continue to be committed in this country. American "popular culture" destroys souls and bodies both here and abroad. Full vent is given each day to a panoply of false ideas that are from Hell and confuse even believing Catholics no end as they try to find some "naturalist" hero or idea by which to win the "culture wars," oblivious to the fact that it is only Catholicism that can do so.

American "civil liberty" has given, therefore, free "rein" to errors of every type imaginable, spreading poisons in this country and throughout the world. Having first been founded on the false premises of the "sovereignty of the people" rather on the Sovereignty and the Sacred Rights of Christ the King, the government of the United States of America has become oppressive to an extent that makes King George III seem like a member of the Libertarian Party. There is only one answer to this madness of secularism and naturalism and pluralism and religious indifferentism: the conversion of the United States of America to become the Catholic States of America.

Yes, the work of converting individual men and their nations is a continuous one. Each of us could lose the Faith if we do not keep close to the Mass of the ages and accuse ourselves regularly—if at all possible in this time of apostasy and betrayal--in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance. Those who are privileged to live near a chapel where Our Lord’s Real Presence resides for their adoration and petition should seek to do visit Him regularly. And as is noted so consistently on this site, we must close to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary by offering as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permit. This having been noted, however, we must seek the conversion of others and of the nation in which we live and are called to love without looking for results.

Remember the great missionaries who worked for the conversion of the peoples of Americas. Saint Francis Solano, whose feast day is commemorated on Thursday, July 24, 2025 (the Vigil of Saint James the Greater and of Saint Christina, Blessed John Masias, Saint Turibius Mogrovejo, The North American Martyrs, The Venerable Marie of New France, Father Antonio de Jesus Margil, the Apostle of Texas, Father Pierre Jean De Smet, Blessed Rose Philippine Duchesne, Father Junipero Serra, Father Eusebio Keno, Saint Francis Xavier Cabrini, and among so many others, Mother Katherine Drexel. When was the last time Catholics in the United States of America were exhorted en masse to pray and to work for the conversion of the nation?

Well, there is nothing to stop us from doing so in our own homes today by refusing to participate in a celebration of a history of rebellion against the authority of Our Lord and His Holy Church, of the promotion of the most vile evils imaginable under cover of law and in every aspect of our popular culture in the name of "freedom."

We must make reparation for the sins of a nation founded on false principles that has influenced most Catholics in this country to think in worldly, naturalist terms rather than in the supernatural terms of the true Faith as they wrapped up in the endless battles between “left” and “right” as well as the fratricidal battles taking place now in the so-called “Make America Great Again” movemet.

We should mourn the millions of babies killed under cover of law by chemical and surgical means in this nation as most Americans celebrate their “freedoms,” which are fast disappearing, of course, without giving the daily carnage of the preborn a moment's thought.

We should mourn the degradation of a culture wherein the young are formed by the prevailing fashions of the moment and wherein parents who attempt to educate their children at home are carefully monitored by the civil authorities.

We should mourn the fact that those who promote perverse sins against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments can be accorded "civil rights" and be permitted to march openly in their degrading displays of indecency.

We should mourn the wars, both domestic and foreign, that have been fought to cement the power of the Federal government and/or to serve the interests of the organized forces of naturalism here and abroad, and we should mourn the fact that it must be forever necessary to litigate common sense and truth in a land that does not recognize the Social Reign of Christ the King as it must be exercised by His true Church.

With the same unshakeable faith and the peace of Christ that abided in the soul and animated the work of the great missionaries named earlier in this commentary, may we pray to Our Lady in these troubling times to see our hope only in the Catholic Faith and to abide in the peace of her Divine Son no matter what happens in the world and no matter what kind of persecutions may come our way in the future.

Our Lady told us that her Immaculate Heart would triumph in the end. We must ever confident that this is so and thus be content to do our daily duties with peace of mind and with hearts that are consecrated to her Divine Son’s Most Sacred Heart through her own Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!  

Our Lady, Mother of God, 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.

Saints Processus and Martinian, pray for us.

Appendix

Examples of the Spread of Perversity in the Three Centuries Before the Protestant Revolution

Rather than include the material below in the main commentary and thus make its reading difficult, I decided that it would be best to present it in this appendix. The indented material comes from other sources. My own commentary, both original and excerpted from other articles, is not indented.

As noted in the main part of this commentary, heresies have an inherent logic that leads them to manifest the perfections of their inherent degeneracy over time. William Thomas Walsh’s description of the heretical believes of the neo-Manicheans, the Albigenisans/Catharis, provides a glimpse into that process:

Something very similar happened when the Manichees began migrating to various parts of Europe, taking with them, not an intellectual protest against the tenets of the Church, not a mere refusal to believe or to practice (there were always unbelievers in Europe, and people who did not go to Mass, yet no coercion was applied to them), but something quite positive and quite sinister, which was felt to be a virus injected into the bloodstream of human society. As most of them came from Bulgaria, they were called Bulgars, Bougres, and finally Buggers.

The Manichees, originally followers of Mani, were oriental dualists who believed virtually in two gods, one good, the other evil. The Father, or Spiritus Vivens, had created the universe, but when he summoned three spirits to carry on the work of creation, one of them, the Great Architect, apparently designed the future paradise, without any thought of man’s attaining it.

Adam and Eve, on the contrary, were the result of intercourse of the Devil, the creator and master of the world: and though Adam had light in him, Eve was all darkness — a notion which perhaps helped to color the Mohammedan concept of the essential inferiority of women. All life on this planet, being the work of the Devil, was evil. Marriage, since it propagated the curse of life, was evil. Suicide, since it ended the crime of living, was good and desirable. There was a horrible logic in all this, granting the initial premise that all matter was evil per se. There was even a germ of truth likely to appeal to a simple-minded person who had noticed that the world was full of miseries and disillusionments, and was either ignorant of or indifferent to the Church’s explanation: that man, having sinned, was under the shadow of evil unless he accepted the redemption of Christ: but that all life, all creation, all being is good in itself, as the work of an all-beneficent God.

Toward the end of the twelfth century, many thousands of Manichees had settled in the cities of Lombardy and Languedoc. In the latter, especially, they were numerous, and, in spite of their professed aversion to the marriage relation, were increasing in numbers. Perhaps the south of France offered them a more congenial environment than they could have found anywhere else in Europe. It was not only fertile and sunny, but it had long been a refuge for unbelievers. There the

Saracens had settled after their invasion of Spain and their defeat at Tours. There, as usual, large Jewish communities had assembled, finding the atmosphere of Islam more congenial, in general, than that of Christendom. There, in the course of centuries, had developed a semi-oriental civilization, easy-going, prosperous, sensual and colorful, with a veneer of Christianity which at times wore very thin. In such surroundings the Manichees probably found more encouragement than in most other lands of the West. “If the truth were known,” says Lewis Browne, “probably it would be found that the learned Jews in Provence were in large part responsible for this freethinking sect. The doctrines which the Jews had been spreading throughout the land for years could not but have helped to undermine the Church’s power;” 3 and another modern Jewish writer goes even further, and considers it “indubitable” that the heretical doctrines of Southern France “were largely the result of friendly intercourse between Christians and Jews.” 4

Once the dissident movement was under way, however, the Jews quickly dissociated themselves from it. They were too intelligent to give up the sublime tradition of Moses, and their sane and well ordered family life, for any such grotesque nonsense as the various sects of Manichees preached. For grotesque nonsense it was, and vicious nonsense, too, that the Albigenses (the name usually given to the French Manichees, from their populous town of Albi) believed and practiced.

Nothing could be further from the truth than the theory of certain liberal historians that the “noble Albigenses” were a harmless and highly cultured people, persecuted by the Catholic Church out of sheer bigotry and intolerance.

Although these noble heretics lived in the land of troubadours, they themselves achieved nothing intellectually or artistically noteworthy. They called themselves the Cathari, or the Pure (Puritans). They were a secret society with an inner circle of initiates known as the Perfected. To join their True Church, as they called it, one must promise 1) to renounce the Catholic Faith (for they held that the Mass was idolatry, the Eucharist a fraud and an abomination, since bread and wine were creations of the evil spirit, the Church of Rome the whore of Babylon, and the Pope Antichrist) and 2) to receive, before death, their only sacrament, the consolamentum. After a year’s probation, a member became one of the Perfected by a curious ceremony. He promised, among other things, never to touch a woman, never to kill an animal, never to eat meat, eggs, milk or any other food that came from animals (to which the souls of human beings might have transmigrated — besides, animals were the result of sexual intercourse), never to take an oath, never to travel or pass the night without a socius, never to take off his clothes upon retiring. When he had bound himself to all this and more, he was kissed twice on the mouth by each of the Perfected who were present, and he in turn kissed the next man, who passed the salutation along. If the candidate were a woman, she was not kissed, but merely touched with a book of the Gospels. Indeed, the aversion to women seemed to be the chief and common characteristic of those sects, and the one, naturally, which sane and healthy men were likely to look upon with ribald scorn. The Cathari called marriage prostitution, and held that carnal intercourse between the sexes was the original sin of Adam and Eve, and the greatest of all sins, since it begot children. Even perversion, therefore, was preferable, in their eyes, to marriage. Perhaps the prevalence of abnormal vice among them was exaggerated by their neighbors; yet, human nature being what it is, their tenets could hardly fail to lead in that direction. (William Thomas Walsh, Characters of the Inquistion.)

Even if the estimable William Thomas Walsh understated the prevalence of perversion amongst the Manicheans (Cathari/Albigensians), it is nevertheless true that perverse practices did indeed follow from their false and heretical beliefs. Is it any wonder that Jorge Mario Bergoglio has lavished praise upon the Waldensians repeatedly?

Among the different “charisms” of the Waldensians, who number less than 50,000 worldwide, must be included a rejection of the Christology, Ecclesiology, Eschatology and Mariology taught by the Catholic Church and, as mentioned earlier, its reliance upon subjectivism as the means to practice moral vice with impunity.

Yes, one can see full well why this heretical sect, which has “ordained” women and has endorsed “marriage” between people of the same gender, is held in such high regard by Jorge Mario Bergoglio. Indeed, fornication and sodomy, sins about which the false “pope” makes light, have been practiced by Waldensians since the sect’s formation. After all, “anything goes” once one rejects the true Faith and embraces subjectivism. Sins of impurity, whether natural or unnatural, are frequently the underlying causes of heresies and the formation of heretical sects.

Unlike Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Pope Innocent III and the Fourth Lateran Council condemned the doctrines of the Albigensians and the Waldensians as follows:

We firmly believe and openly confess that there is only one true God, eternal and immense, omnipotent, unchangeable, incomprehensible, and ineffable, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; three Persons indeed but one essense, substance, or nature absolutely simple; the Father (proceeding) from no one, but the Son from the Father only, and the Holy Ghost equally from both, always without beginning and end. The Father begetting, the Son begotten, and the Holy Ghost proceeding; consubstantial and coequal, co-omnipotent and coeternal, the one principle of the universe, Creator of all things invisible and visible, spiritual and corporeal, who from the beginning of time and by His omnipotent power made from nothing creatures both spiritual and corporeal, angelic, namely, and mundane, and then human, as it were, common, composed of spirit and body. The devil and the other demons were indeed created by God good by nature but they became bad through themselves; man, however, sinned at the suggestion of the devil. This Holy Trinity in its common essence undivided and in personal properties divided, through Moses, the holy prophets, and other servants gave to the human race at the most opportune intervals of time the doctrine of salvation.

And finally, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God made flesh by the entire Trinity, conceived with the co-operation of the Holy Ghost of Mary ever Virgin, made true man, composed of a rational soul and human flesh, one Person in two natures, pointed out more clearly the way of life. Who according to His divinity is immortal and impassable, according to His humanity was made passable and mortal, suffered on the cross for the salvation of the human race, and being dead descended into hell, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven. But He descended in soul, arose in flesh, and ascended equally in both; He will come at the end of the world to judge the living and the dead and will render to the reprobate and to the elect according to their works. Who all shall rise with their own bodies which they now have that they may receive according to their merits, whether good or bad, the latter eternal punishment with the devil, the former eternal glory with Christ. (Fourth Lateran Council, Against the Albigensians, Joachim, Waldensians, etc., 1215. A different translation is found at Denziger, pp. 168-169.)

Jorge Mario Bergoglio is forever apologizing for the infallible guidance provided by the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, to our true popes and the fathers of Holy Mother Church’s true general councils, which is why he must blaspheme the Holy Ghost by making Him out to be a aimless force that blows whichever way men, steeped in their sins and false beliefs, want Him to blow. How can any believing Catholic accept the claim that such a man as Jorge Mario Bergoglio is a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter or that the church he claims to head is anything other than a counterfeit ape of the Catholic Church?

Writing in Characters of The Inquisition, William Thomas Walsh explained how inquisitors such as Bernard Gui, the Inquisitor of Toulouse, France, understood that the Waldensians were masters of evading direct questions put to them, meaning that they, the Waldensians, questioned by Holy Mother Church’s duly-appointed inquisitors, were guided by the forces of darkness itself. Gee, who has avoided any and all personal reply to the Dubia put to him by four conciliar “cardinals” about Amoris Laetitia? Methinks that the name Jorge Mario Bergoglio should come to mind.

A careful reading of the following text from Characters of the Inquisition will reveal that the subjective spirit of the conciliar revolutionaries and their mastery of ambiguity and evasion had been exhibited over eight centuries ago in the form of the Waldensians:

The Waldenses or Poor Men of Lyons, wrote Bernard [Gui], first appeared about the year 1170, making a claim similar to that of the Manichees, that they were the true Christians and successors of Christ's apostles. They believed in Heaven and Hell, but denied that there was a Purgatory. They would take no oaths, and would obey no authority but that of God, which they claimed to receive directly, as holy and perfected men; by the same token denying the authority of the Church, the validity of her sacraments, and the priestly functions of her ministers. Every holy person, they said (including women), was a priest, and their sect alone was holy; hence they absolved one another’s sins. Yet in spite of their aversion to ecclesiastical organization and obedience, they imposed both organization and obedience on all who joined their society, “which they call a fraternity,” added Brother Bernard. The members had to promise strict obedience to thir superiors. (Some of these dissenters had a hierarchy, even a sort of Pope, of their own.) They promised to live in evangelical poverty, with no private property, and in chastity. Theoretically, at least, they owned all things in common, and lived on the alms given to them; “and he who is greater among them distributes and dispenses to any one according to his need.” They were Communists of a sort, these Waldenses, and like many radicals, held somewhat unconventional views of sexual morality. “The Waldeneses praise continency to their believers,” said Bernard, “yet they grant that one ought to satisfy a burning lust by any manner of shamefulness whatsoever, their apostles explaining this by saying it is better to marry than to burn (Medius est nubere quam uri), for it is better, they say, to satisfy lust by any act of shame whatsoever than to be tempted in the heart within; this, however, they keep very secret indeed.” 

(William Thomas Walsh, Characters of the Inquisition, New York, P.J. Kenedy & Sons, 1940 pp. 60-61.)

What did I say a short while ago about most heresies being caused by a desire to engage in sins against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments, both by natural and unnatural means?

Look at Martin Luther.

Look at Henry VIII.

Look at the Waldensians and their admirer, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who seeks to “accompany” fornicators and sodomites rather than exhorting them to quit their sins. This hideous apostate seeks out heretics steeped in perversion whose worldwide following could not fill Dodger Stadium (Chavez Ravine) in Los Angeles, California, or Yankee Stadium III in The Bronx, New York, to capacity while castigating believing Catholics who take Catholic doctrine seriously and are trying, despite their own sins and failings, to save their immortal souls.

Quoting from Bernard Gui’s manual to instruct inquisitors as to how to deal with the Waldensians, William Thomas Walsh provided readers of Characters of the Inquisition with an explanation concerning how heretics such as Bergoglio are skilled in evading direct answers to questions about the Holy Faith:

Twice a year the members of this sect would quietly assemble to hold a general chapter or convention in some town where they were met by some believer, and led, as if they were merchants, to the house of a member, where they would elect officers and carry on other business. They made a great point of visiting churches and hearing sermons, and always maintained a very devout exterior. “Commonly they call themselves brothers, and say they are the Paupers of Christ or the Poor Men of Lyons.” Those who had achieved perfection never worked with their hands. Married men, on joining the sect, gave up their wives when initiated.

Considering the ease with which these self-canonized saints could pervert, the hell fire with which Saint Paul threatened fornicators into the flame of lust, Bernard felt it necessary to warn his readers that the Waldenses were the hardest of all heretics to trap and expose. He furnished the Inquisitors with an account of a typical cross-examination, based upon his own experience:

“When one of them is arrested and brought forward for questioning, he comes as if fearless, and conscious of no evil in himself, and secure. Asked if he knows why he is arrested, he answers very calmly, with a smile, 'Sir, I will gladly tell you the reason.'

He is never at a loss. When the Inquisitor asks what his faith is, he answers,

“I believe all that a good Christian ought to believe.”

“And what do you consider a good Christian?”

“He who believes as the Holy Church teaches to believe and hold.”

“What do you call the Holy Church?”

“Lord, what you say and believe to be the Holy Church.”

“I believe the Holy Church to be the Roman Church, over which the Pope presides as lord, and other prelates under him.”

“And I believe it.” answers the suspect promptly (meaning, “I believe that you believe it,” explains Bernard).

Asked about the particular articles of faith, such as the incarnation of Christ, His resurrection and ascension, he replies,

“Firmly I believe it.”

Does he believe that the bread and wine are changed in the Mass, at the words of the priest, into the body and blood of Our Lord”

“Ought I not indeed to believe that?” he demands innocently.

“I do not ask whether you ought to believe it, but do you believe it?”

“I believe whatever you and other good doctors order me to believe.”

The Inquisitor asks if the “other good doctors” are not the masters of the man's sect, and the real dictators of his opinions.

“I believe you also, willingly,” replies the prisoner, “if you teach me anything that may be good for me.”

Inquisitor: “You judge a thing to be good for you, if I teach you what those other masters teach you. But answer simply, if you believe the body of the Lord Jesus Christ to be on the altar.”

Heretic: “I believe.” (He means says Bernard, that “there is a body, and all bodies are of the Lord Jesus Christ.”)

Inquisitor: “Do you believe that there is that body of the Lord which was born of the Virgin and hung on the cross, and arose from the dead and ascended into Heaven?”

Heretic: “And you, Lord, don't you believe it?”

Inquisitor: “I believe it absolutely.”

Heretic: “And I believe it in the same way (meaning, “I want you to believe that I so believe it.”)

Urged again to answer explicitly and directly, he tries another tack. “If you wish to interpret everything I say as otherwise than plainly and simply, then I don't know what I ought to answer to you. I am a simple man, and uneducated. Please don't try to trip me up in my words.”

Inquisitor: “If you are a simple man, reply and act simply, without any cloak of words.”

Heretic: “Willingly.”

Inquisitor: “Then you are willing to swear that you have never taught anything against the faith . . . ?”

Heretic: (trembling a little): “If I ought to swear, I will swear willingly.”

Inquisitor: “You are not asked whether you ought, but whether you are willing to swear.”

Heretic: “If you order me to swear, I will swear.”

Inquisitor: “I don't compel you to swear, because since you believe an oath to be unlawful, you will try to shift the blame to me for compelling you; but if you swear, I will hear.”

Heretic: “What then shall I swear, if you don't order me?”

Inquisitor: “In such a way as to dispel the suspicion that is against you, because you will be counted as a Waldensian heretic, believing and holding that every oath is unlawful and sinful.”

Heretic: “How ought I to speak when I swear?”

Inquisitor: “Swear as you know.”

Heretic: “Lord, I don't know unless you teach me!”

“Then I say to him,” wrote Bernard, forgetting for the moment to be impersonal, “If I had to swear, then, I would raise my hand and touch the holy gospel of God, and say, “I swear by this holy Gospel of God that I have never taught and believed anything that might be against the true faith that the holy Roman Church believes and holds.”

The heretic, “shuddering, and almost like a man who does not know how to form even the words,” mumbles something rather verbose which he intends to have sound like an oath, but not to have the form of an oath; or something in the way of prayer meant to simulate an oath; such as, “If God will aid me, and this holy Gospel, (to show) that I am not a heretic, or have not been one, or have said this or that.”

Inquisitor: “Well, will you swear?”

Heretic: “Didn't you hear me swear?”

Finally, when the heretic is straightened by questions, and at the end of his resources of evasion, he pretends to weep, or flatters the Inquisitor, saying that he will perform any penance to free himself from the infamous charge of which he, a simple man, is wholly innocent.

Sometimes, however, he will say he is ready to swear a simple and straightforward oath. At this point the Inquisitor must answer no doubt with a show of sternness, “If you now swear so that you may go free, take notice that one oath will not be enough for me, nor two, nor ten, nor a hundred, but I shall ask for tociens quociens, for I know that among you dispense from and allow for a certain number of oaths, when necessity compels, to set yourselves or others free. But I will require oaths without number, and especially if I have witnesses against you, your oaths will not be of any good to you, and then you will stain your conscience swearing against him, and on that account you shall not escape.”

Bernard adds, “In the anxiety of such a moment I have seen some of them confess their errors, that they might go free.”

This page from the great Inquisitor's notebook reads like a scene from a comedy; yet often a man's life, yes, and the fate of his soul, hung upon the outcome of the conversation.

Sometimes the Waldenses pretended to be simple-minded or insane, sicut David coram Achis, and they had a thousand other ways of prolonging their examination, in the hope that the Inquisitor might weary of the seemingly endless task and let them go, or that they might discredit him among the Catholic laity, “because he seemed to trouble simple men without cause, and to seek a pretext for destroying them in a too cautious examination.” (William Thomas Walsh, Characters of the Inquisition, New York, P.J. Kenedy & Sons, 1940 pp. 61-64.)

This is a very accurate summary of how the conciliar revolutionaries themselves have sought to excuse themselves when they have tried to justify their multiple departures from the Holy Faith and their embrace of aspects of practically every heresy that has arisen from the Apostolic era to the present day.

William Thomas Walsh’s description of a heretic applies to the Waldensians, to be sure, but it applies as well to the conciliar revolutionaries of the past and the present, starting with Jorge Mario Bergoglio himself:

A heretic is a professing Christian who takes the parts that he likes, and rejects what he dislikes, without considering that truth is not a subjective thing, but has an objective and eternal validity outside of him and independent of his very existence. (William Thomas Walsh, Characters of the Inquisition, New York, P.J. Kenedy & Sons, 1940 p. 95.)

The late Jorge Mario Bergoglio, of course, disliked and rejected almost everything to do with the Catholic Faith, which is why he had such a great affinity for heretics such as the Waldensians, who were precursors of Protestantism and of Modernism itself.