Arguing About Who Decides That Which Is Beyond Humans To Decide, part three

As has been noted on this site many times, including in each of the first two parts of this current series, the Constitution of the United States of America is the victim of its framers’ belief that nothing more than a commitment to “civic virtue” and/or some generic sense of religiosity were good enough to maintain social order in land divided by religious, geographic, commercial, and philosophical differences. Such a belief is false as it is impossible for men to be truly united in the pursuit of the common temporal good, which must be undertaken in light of man’s Last End (the possession of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity in Heaven), except by a belief in and faithful adherence to the true religion, Catholicism:

Here we have, founded by Catholics, an inter-denominational association that is to work for the reform of civilization, an undertaking which is above all religious in character; 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, 1910.)

It is importance to emphasize once again as all manner of naturalists of the “conservative” variety rend their garments and gnash their teeth over judicial activism. These naturalists, many of whom make millions upon millions of dollars each year for spending hours on end engaged in what Pope Pius IX called “insane babbling,” believe that the words of a constitution devised by mere mortals will have its text revered and hallowed by future generations. Such a belief arrogates unto the framers of the Constitution of the United States of America the status of virtual demigods whose work was guided, perhaps infallibly, by the hand of God Himself.

Alas, it is delusional to expect that the words of a mere human document will be hallowed and revered by succeeding generations if one considers the plain fact that the modern civil state came to birth as a result of the Protestant Revolution, and Protestantism is founded on the belief that the very words of Holy Writ, written as they were under the Divine inspiration and assistance of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, are subject to "private interpretation" according to the dictates of the "believer's" understanding of the text. How can a mere human document be entitled to more respect than Sacred Scripture?

After praising what he could of the natural virtues of George Washington and of a constitution that was understood at the time to permit Catholics the “freedom” to practice their Faith without state hindrance, Pope Leo XIII reminded the American bishops that the growth of the Faith in the United States of America was not the result of the country’s constitutional structures but of the very fecundity of God’s graces, which could produce even more abundant fruits if the Catholic Church was accorded the favor and protection of the civil state:

The main factor, no doubt, in bringing things into this happy state were the ordinances and decrees of your synods, especially of those which in more recent times were convened and confirmed by the authority of the Apostolic See. But, moreover (a fact which it gives pleasure to acknowledge), thanks are due to the equity of the laws which obtain in America and to the customs of the well-ordered Republic. For the Church amongst you, unopposed by the Constitution and government of your nation, fettered by no hostile legislation, protected against violence by the common laws and the impartiality of the tribunals, is free to live and act without hindrance. Yet, though all this is true, it would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced. The fact that Catholicity with you is in good condition, nay, is even enjoying a prosperous growth, is by all means to be attributed to the fecundity with which God has endowed His Church, in virtue of which unless men or circumstances interfere, she spontaneously expands and propagates herself; but she would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority. (Pope Leo XIII, Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895.)

As has been examined this site endlessly, the conciliar revolutionaries, following the example of the American bishops of yore, most of whom ignored the Catholic truth of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical letters, continue to draw what His Holiness called the erroneous “conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced.”

None other than that great “restorer of tradition,” Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, explained on December 22, 2005, that the American model of “religious liberty” and “separation of Church and State” is indeed the model for the counterfeit church of concilarism, something that had to be “learned” over the course of time:

In the meantime, however, the modern age had also experienced developments. People came to realize that the American Revolution was offering a model of a modern State that differed from the theoretical model with radical tendencies that had emerged during the second phase of the French Revolution. (Christmas greetings to the Members of the Roman Curia and Prelature, December 22, 2005.)

Although the "model of a modern State" that emerged from the American Revolution did indeed differ from the "theoretical model with radical tendencies that had emerged during the second phase of the French Revolution," that difference was only a matter of degree, not of kind. The anti-Theism of the French Revolution even in its first phase from 1789 to 1792 was direct, open and violent, although not as bloodthirsty as the second phase's Reign of Terror under Maximilian Robespierre and The Directory. The American Revolution's anti-Theism was more subtle in that it paved the way for our current circumstances of complete chaos by bestowing irreligion with protected "constitutional rights," thus making it impossible to stop such things as the open worship of the devil (as opposed to the more subtle forms of devil worship found in other false religions) in the chapels of the armed forces of the United States of America and elsewhere, and of the advances of the adversary’s agenda (divorce, contraception, abortion, “population control,” “family planning,” environmentalism, statism, and a whole array of unnatural vices.

Pope Leo XIII noted in Libertas Praestantissimum, June 20, 1888, that Holy Mother Church will accommodate herself to the concrete realities in which her children find themselves in the modern civil state in order to continue her work of sanctification and instruction. Holy Mother Church, however, never concedes as a matter of principle the false premises of the modern civil state as she seeks to exhort her children to know their obligations to pray and to work for the conversion of their nations to the true Faith, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order:

But, to judge aright, we must acknowledge that, the more a State is driven to tolerate evil, the further is it from perfection; and that the tolerance of evil which is dictated by political prudence should be strictly confined to the limits which its justifying cause, the public welfare, requires. Wherefore, if such tolerance would be injurious to the public welfare, and entail greater evils on the State, it would not be lawful; for in such case the motive of good is wanting. And although in the extraordinary condition of these times the Church usually acquiesces in certain modern liberties, not because she prefers them in themselves, but because she judges it expedient to permit them, she would in happier times exercise her own liberty; and, by persuasion, exhortation, and entreaty would endeavor, as she is bound, to fulfill the duty assigned to her by God of providing for the eternal salvation of mankind. One thing, however, remains always true -- that the liberty which is claimed for all to do all things is not, as We have often said, of itself desirable, inasmuch as it is contrary to reason that error and truth should have equal rights.

And as to tolerance, it is surprising how far removed from the equity and prudence of the Church are those who profess what is called liberalism. For, in allowing that boundless license of which We have spoken, they exceed all limits, and end at last by making no apparent distinction between truth and error, honesty and dishonesty. And because the Church, the pillar and ground of truth, and the unerring teacher of morals, is forced utterly to reprobate and condemn tolerance of such an abandoned and criminal character, they calumniate her as being wanting in patience and gentleness, and thus fail to see that, in so doing, they impute to her as a fault what is in reality a matter for commendation. But, in spite of all this show of tolerance, it very often happens that, while they profess themselves ready to lavish liberty on all in the greatest profusion, they are utterly intolerant toward the Catholic Church, by refusing to allow her the liberty of being herself free. (Pope Leo XIII, Libertas Praestantissimum, June 20, 1888.)

This is not a matter of ethereal speculation having nothing to with the real lives of human beings. Not at all. The heresy of religious liberty, which is at the heart of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, devastates souls. The belief that those who belong to false religions have a "civil right" to propagate themselves and that their false beliefs can contribute to the betterment of society make it impossible to exclude those false religions from making their presence felt everywhere in society, especially in "educational" institutions, where the tender souls of the young become ready prey to false ideas that are propagandized by charismatic professors. This is true in the United States of America and elsewhere in the allegedly "free" world of "democratic republics.

Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015, is just a logical result of what happens when men believe that “religious freedom” can result in a “discovery of truth.” It is no accident that the “truth” of “religious freedom” was “discovered by the bishops present at the “Second” Vatican Council, and it is this “discovery that helped to create the “perfect storm,” so to speak, for the coalescence of the forces of Antichrist to march triumphantly to our present day, and those coalesced forces have much on their “do list” before their time expires. Much more, ultimately including the dispossession of “dissenters” from their homes, the confiscation of their property and bank accounts, the forfeiting of social benefits such as Social Security and Medicare, their imprisonment, “enhanced interrogation” during incarceration, and of course, execution if these “undesirables” do not “reform.”

Oh, you don’t think that this is possible?

What do you think happened from 67 A.D. to 313 A.D. (and beyond in some places) in the Roman Empire?

What do you think happened during the Protestant Revolution in England and Ireland?

What do you think happened during the French Revolution?

What do you think happened during the Bolshevik Revolution and Maoist Revolutions and their aftermath?

What do you think happened in Mexico in the early-Twentieth Century?

Unlike the Catholic Church, which makes concessions to the realities of the concrete cirumstances in which her children live without endorsing the errors of the moment, the counterfeit church of conciliarism concedes the licitness of the false principles, which its lords consider to be "good" in and of themselves. This is one of the reasons that chemical and surgical baby-killing under cover of law continues unabated and that the agenda of perversion will become more and more institutionalized over the course of time. One cannot fight moral evils with false principles.

The counterfeit church of conciliarism rejects the truth that Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order. Its "conservative" 'bishops" in the United States of America have been content, at least up until now, to ally themselves with phony "pro-life" politicians in the organized agency of naturalism known as the Republican Party, most of whom support surgical baby-killing in some instances and the assassination of the innocent preborn by chemical means in all instances, thus falling into the same naturalist trap as their predecessors in the Catholic Church who served as lackeys for the likes of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Their “red and green” “pope,” however, is seeing to it that this alliance is at an end once and for all, something that will serve as the foundation of the concluding part of this series.

The logic of the falsehoods of Modernity and Modernity is such, though, that the so-called "ultra-progressive" conciliar "bishops" of the United States of America have believed that it is their "moral duty" to "help the poor" and illegal immigrants by means of statist policies, thus serving as the enablers of the current statist, Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro, who has indeed received their active support, especially at a time when it is impossible to distinguish between the speeches and policies of the reigning caesar and the agenda of his enabling cheerleader at the Casa Santa Marta, Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis. They are joined at the hip in support of every error of Modernity imaginable. Both believing in a variation of the “evolution of dogma.” Obama/Soetoro believes in a “living constitution;” Bergoglio, taking Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II’s “living tradition” and Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI’s “hermeneutic of continuity” to its ultimate conclusion, endlessly preaches an “openness to where the spirit is leading us.”

To wit, Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro said the following to describe the sort of person he would seek to nominate when the pro-abortion, pro-perversity Associate Justice David H. Souter (see Suiting Disorder Quite Consistently), an appointee of President George Herbert Walker Bush, on May 1, 2009:

"I will seek someone who understands that justice isn't about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book. It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people's lives. I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes."  (Obama hopes to replace Souter by October - More politics- msnbc.com.)

Obama/Soetoro elaborated on this twenty-five days later when announcing the nomination of baptized Catholic Sonia Sotomayor to replace Souter:

First and foremost is a rigorous intellect -- a mastery of the law, an ability to hone in on the key issues and provide clear answers to complex legal questions.  Second is a recognition of the limits of the judicial role, an understanding that a judge's job is to interpret, not make, law; to approach decisions without any particular ideology or agenda, but rather a commitment to impartial justice; a respect for precedent and a determination to faithfully apply the law to the facts at hand.

These two qualities are essential, I believe, for anyone who would sit on our nation's highest court.  And yet, these qualities alone are insufficient.  We need something more.  For as Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience."  Experience being tested by obstacles and barriers, by hardship and misfortune; experience insisting, persisting, and ultimately overcoming those barriers.  It is experience that can give a person a common touch and a sense of compassion; an understanding of how the world works and how ordinary people live.  And that is why it is a necessary ingredient in the kind of justice we need on the Supreme Court. (Remarks of Caesar Obamus.)

Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro's use of "respect for precedent" had nothing to do with a respect for the words of the Constitution of the United States of America in the things that appertain to Caesar and thus are within the realm of men to determine for themselves, keeping mind, as men must do at all times and in all circumstances, the greater honor and glory of God and the good of souls. No, Obama/Soetoro's invocation of a "respect for precedent" (stare decisis, "let the decision stand") hadeverything to do with "respect" the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, January 22, 1973.

The reigning caesar’s invocation of the penultimate legal positivist, Oliver Wendell Holmes (I always preferred Oliver Wendell Douglas of Green Acres), is quite a telling commentary as Holmes believed the majority had the "right" to enforce its "will" upon the minority by "force" if necessary. He made this abundantly clear in the case of Buck v. Bell, May 2, 1927, in which he wrote a thoroughly utilitarian opinion justifying a compulsory sterilization law that has been passed by the state legislature of the Commonwealth of Virginia:

The judgment finds the facts that have been recited and that Carrie Buck 'is the probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring, likewise afflicted, that she may be sexually sterilized without detriment to her general health and that her welfare and that of society will be promoted by her sterilization,' and thereupon makes the order. In view of the general declarations of the Legislature and the specific findings of the Court obviously we cannot say as matter of law that the grounds do not exist, and if they exist they justify the result. We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 , 25 S. Ct. 358, 3 Ann. Cas. 765. Three generations of imbeciles are enough. [274 U.S. 200, 208]   But, it is said, however it might be if this reasoning were applied generally, it fails when it is confined to the small number who are in the institutions named and is not applied to the multitudes outside. It is the usual last resort of constitutional arguments to point out shortcomings of this sort. But the answer is that the law does all that is needed when it does all that it can, indicates a policy, applies it to all within the lines, and seeks to bring within the lines all similarly situated so far and so fast as its means allow. Of course so far as the operations enable those who otherwise must be kept confined to be returned to the world, and thus open the asylum to others, the equality aimed at will be more nearly reached. (See the text of the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the case of  Buck v. Bell)

Oliver Wendell Holmes's view of law was indeed based on "experience" and not "logic." He used the discredited, diabolical precepts of utilitarianism (public policy must be based upon the "greatest good" for the "greatest number" even if "traditional" concepts of morality are violated in the process) and the sort of Social Darwinism that was near and dear to the heart of the woman who started the Birth Control League, Margaret Sanger (whose motto was, "More from the fit, less from the unfit; that is the chief issue of birth control"), as the foundation for his decision in the case of Buck v. Bell. Indeed, Holmes's overt rejection of the Natural Law as the foundation of jurisprudence (legal reasoning) and the civil law in favor of legal positivism extended quite explicitly to a rejection of the inviolability of innocent human life under of cover of the civil law, as Holmes made clear in a 1918 essay against the Natural Law in the Harvard Law Review:

The most fundamental of the supposed preexisting rights—the right to life—is sacrificed without a scruple not only in war, but whenever the interest of society, that is, of the predominant power in the community, is thought to demand it. Whether that interest is the interest of mankind in the long run no one can tell, and as, in any event, to those who do not think with Kant and Hegel it is only an interest, the sanctity disappears. I remember a very tender-hearted judge being of opinion that closing a hatch to stop a fire and the destruction of a cargo was justified even if it was known that doing so would stifle a man below. It is idle to illustrate further, because to those who agree with me I am uttering commonplaces and to those who disagree I am ignoring the necessary foundations of thought. The a priori men generally call the dissentients superficial. But I do agree with them in believing that one’s attitude on these matters is closely connected with one’s general attitude toward the universe. Proximately, as has been suggested, it is determined largely by early associations and temperament, coupled with the desire to have an absolute guide. Men to a great extent believe what they want to—although I see in that no basis for a philosophy that tells us what we should want to want.

Now when we come to our attitude toward the universe I do not see any rational ground for demanding the superlative—for being dissatisfied unless we are assured that our truth is cosmic truth, if there is such a thing—that the ultimates of a little creature on this little earth are the last word of the unimaginable whole. If a man sees no reason for believing that significance, consciousness and ideals are more than marks of the finite, that does not justify what has been familiar in French skeptics; getting upon a pedestal and professing to look with haughty scorn upon a world in ruins. The real conclusion is that the part cannot swallow the whole—that our categories are not, or may not be, adequate to formulate what we cannot know. If we believe that we come out of the universe, not it out of us, we must admit that we do not know what we are talking about when we speak of brute matter. We do know that a certain complex of energies can wag its tail and another can make syllogisms. These are among the powers of the unknown, and if, as may be, it has still greater powers that we cannot understand, as Fabre in his studies of instinct would have us believe, studies that gave Bergson one of the strongest strands for his philosophy and enabled Maeterlinck to make us fancy for a moment that we heard a clang from behind phenomena—if this be true, why should we not be content? Why should we employ the energy that is furnished to us by the cosmos to defy it and shake our fist at the sky? It seems to me silly. (Natural Law by Oliver Wendell Holmes)  

One of the many paradoxes found in a system where a nation's constitution and civil laws, whether passed at the Federal or state levels, do not explicitly acknowledge the primacy of the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law as these have been entrusted to the infallible teaching authority of the Catholic Church, is that it spawns competing teams of naturalists and positivists to vie with each other as to whether they will be bound by a "strict constructionist" approach to the interpretation of the words of the United States Constitution or bound only by a general, Roussean sense of "experience," referred to quite specifically by the legal positivist Barack Hussein Obama, that was described as follows by the late Father Denis Fahey in The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World:

Rousseau carries on the revolution against the order of the world begun by Luther. Luther’s revolt was that of our individuality and sense-life against the exigencies of the supernatural order instituted by God. It was an attempt to remain attached to Christ, while rejecting the order established by Christ for our return to God. Rousseau’s revolt was against the order of natural morality, by the exaltation of the primacy of our sense-life.  

The little world of each one of us, our individuality, is a divine person, supremely free and sovereignly independent of all order, natural and supernatural. he state of Liberty or of sovereign independence is the primitive state of man, and the nature of man demands the restoration of that state of liberty. It is to satisfy this-called exigency that ‘Father of modern thought’ invented the famous myth of the Social Contract.    

The Social Contract gives birth to a form of association in which each one, while forming a union with all the others, obeys only himself and remains as free as before. Each one is subject to the whole, but he is not subject to any man, there is no man above him. He is absorbed in the common Ego begotten in the pact, so that obeying the law, he obeys only himself. Each citizen votes in order, that by the addition of the number of votes, the general will, expressed by the vote of the majority, is, so to say, a manifestation of the ‘deity’ immanent in the multitude. The People are God (no wonder we have gotten used to writing the word with a capital letter). The law imposed by this ‘deity’ does not need to be just in order to exact obedience. In fact, the majority vote makes or creates right and justice. An adverse majority vote can not only overthrow the directions and commands of the Heads of the Mystical Body on earth, the Pope and the Bishops, but can even deprive the Ten Commandments of all binding force.  

To the triumph of those ideals in the modern world, the Masonic denial of original sin and the Rousseauist dogma of the natural goodness of man have contributed not a little. The dogma of natural goodness signifies that man lived originally in a purely natural paradise of happiness and goodness and that, even in our present degraded state, all our instinctive movements are good. We do not need grace, for nature can do for what grace does. In addition, Rousseau holds that this state of happiness and goodness, of perfect justice and innocence, of exemption from servile work and suffering, is natural to man, that is, essentially demanded by our nature. Not only then is original sin nonexistent, not only do we not come into the world as fallen sons of the first Adam, bearing in us the wounds of our fallen nature, is radically anti-natural. Suffering and pain have been introduced by society, civilization and private property. Hence we must get rid of all these and set up a new form of society. We can bet back the state of the Garden of Eden by the efforts of our own nature, without the help of grace. For Rousseau, the introduction of the present form of society, and of private property constitute the real Fall. The setting up of a republic based on his principles will act as a sort of democratic grace which will restore in its entirety our lost heritage. In a world where the clear teaching of the faith of Christ about the supernatural order of the Life of Grace has become obscured, but were men are still vaguely conscious that human nature was once happy, Rousseau’s appeal acts like an urge of homesickness. We need not be astonished, then, apart from the question of Masonic-Revolutionary organization and propaganda, at the sort of delirious enthusiasm which takes possession of men at the thought of a renewal of society. Nor need we wonder that men work for the overthrow of existing government and existing order, in the belief that they are not legitimate forms of society. A State not constructed according to Rosseauist-Masonic principles is not a State ruled by laws. It is a monstrous tyranny, and must be overthrown in the name of "Progress" and of the "onward march of democracy.’ All these influences must be borne in mind as we behold, since 1789, the triumph in one country after another or Rousseauist-Masonic democracy. (Father Denis Fahey, The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World.)

As I will explain in a future article, “global infantilism” prevails in the whole world. Most people want to be reaffirmed in their own lives of sin and selfishness, and a whole vast array of the world’s civic and religious leaders, starting with Obama/Soetoro and Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis themselves, of course, play to this global infantilism to massive applause. To even stand up in opposition to the prevailing evils of the day is to engage in “hatred” and “bigotry.”

In much the same manner, of course, Jorge Mario Bergoglio denounces those who want to “tame the spirit”:

1. The disease of thinking we are “immortal”, “immune” or downright “indispensable”, neglecting the need for regular check-ups. A Curia which is not self-critical, which does not keep up with things, which does not seek to be more fit, is a sick body. A simple visit to the cemetery might help us see the names of many people who thought they were immortal, immune and indispensable! It is the disease of the rich fool in the Gospel, who thought he would live forever (cf. Lk 12:13-21), but also of those who turn into lords and masters, and think of themselves as above others and not at their service. It is often an effect of the pathology of power, from a superiority complex, from a narcissism which passionately gazes at its own image and does not see the image of God on the face of others, especially the weakest and those most in need.[8] The antidote to this plague is the grace of realizing that we are sinners and able to say heartily: “We are unworthy servants. We have only done what was our duty” (Lk 17:10).

2. Another disease is the “Martha complex”, excessive busy-ness. It is found in those who immerse themselves in work and inevitably neglect “the better part”: sitting at the feet of Jesus (cf. Lk 10:38-42). Jesus called his disciples to “rest a while” (cf. Mk 6:31) for a reason, because neglecting needed rest leads to stress and agitation. A time of rest, for those who have completed their work, is necessary, obligatory and should be taken seriously: by spending time with one’s family and respecting holidays as moments of spiritual and physical recharging. We need to learn from Qohelet that “for everything there is a season” (3:1-15).

3. Then too there is the disease of mental and spiritual “petrification”. It is found in those who have a heart of stone, the “stiff-necked” (Acts 7:51-60), in those who in the course of time lose their interior serenity, alertness and daring, and hide under a pile of papers, turning into paper pushers and not men of God (cf. Heb 3:12). It is dangerous to lose the human sensitivity that enables us to weep with those who weep and to rejoice with those who rejoice! This is the disease of those who lose “the sentiments of Jesus” (cf. Phil 2:5-11), because as time goes on their hearts grow hard and become incapable of loving unconditionally the Father and our neighbour (cf. Mt 22:34-35). Being a Christian means “having the same sentiments that were in Christ Jesus” (Phil 2:5), sentiments of humility and unselfishness, of detachment and generosity.[9]

4. The disease of excessive planning and of functionalism. When the apostle plans everything down to the last detail and believes that with perfect planning things will fall into place, he becomes an accountant or an office manager. Things need to be prepared well, but without ever falling into the temptation of trying to contain and direct the freedom of the Holy Spirit, which is always greater and more flexible than any human planning (cf. Jn 3:8). We contract this disease because “it is always more easy and comfortable to settle in our own sedentary and unchanging ways. In truth, the Church shows her fidelity to the Holy Spirit to the extent that she does not try to control or tame him… to tame the Holy Spirit! … He is freshness, imagination, and newness”.[10] (To the Roman Curia on the occasion of the presentation of Christmas greetings, 22 December 2014) 

Similar Paths of Destruction and Deceit

Similarly, there has been a long period of “evolution” in the meaning of the words in the first Ten Amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America, which were written to be limitations on the power of the Federal government, not the state governments, in the past ninety years, dating back to the case of Pierce v. Society of Sisters, June 1, 1925, at which point various provisions of the Bill of Rights started to be “applied” as limitations upon the powers of the state governments by means of the Fourteenth Amendment’s “due process of law clause.” This has resulted in an avalanche of the “application” (or “incorporation” of various provisions in the Bill of Rights through the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process of law clause as applicable to the state governments; the words “application” and “incorporation” are used interchangeably by those who teach constitutional law as I once did back in the days when I was employable as a college professor) of actual provisions within the Bill of Rights and the outright judicial invention of “rights” that are said to “emanate” from “penumbrae” of the Ten Amendments without being actually enumerated.

After a long series of cases that applied various provisions of the Bill of Rights in an incremental manner to the state governments between 1925 to 1965 (at a time that the Supreme Court of the United States of America overturned precedents with ready abandon), the uber-positivists of the Court under the direction of the Freemason Earl Warren (Dwight Eisenhower once said that he had made two mistakes while president, and both of them were sitting on the Supreme Court, namely, Warren and William Brennan, who is mentioned again later in this commentary) began to invent every “right” imaginable, and thus make it binding upon the state governments by means of the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process of law clause.

The landmark case in this regard was Griswold v. Connecticut, June 7, 1965, which invalidated a long-unenforced law on the statute books in the State of Connecticut that forbade the sale of contraceptives to married couples. that invented so-called penumbrae that emanate from shadows or emanations of various provisions in the Fourth, Sixth, Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America to justify a so-called "right of privacy" that was used to overturn a long unenforced law on the statute books in the State of Connecticut that prohibited the sale of contraceptives to married couples. Even Associate Justice Hugo Black, the Freemason and former member of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama who became a court liberal on many matters, found that kind of judicial activism too much to stomach, denouncing it very plainly even though he did not like the law, which we know as Catholics is objectively just and good of its nature, in question:

The Court talks about a constitutional 'right of privacy' as though there is some constitutional provision or provisions forbidding any law ever to be passed which might abridge the 'privacy' of individuals. But there is not. There are, of course, guarantees in certain specific constitutional provisions which are designed in part to protect privacy at certain times and places with respect to certain activities. Such, for example, is the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against 'unreasonable searches and seizures.' But I think it belittles that Amendment to talk about it as though it protects nothing but 'privacy.' To treat it that way is to give it a niggardly interpretation, not the kind of liberal reading I think any Bill of Rights provision should be given. The average man would very likely not have his feelings soothed any more by having his property seized openly than by having it seized privately and by stealth. He simply wants his property left alone. And a person can be just as much, if not more, irritated, annoyed and injured by an unceremonious public arrest by a policeman as he is by a seizure in the privacy of his office or home.

One of the most effective ways of diluting or expanding a constitutionally guaranteed right is to substitute for the crucial word or words of a constitutional guarantee another word or words, more or less flexible and more or less restricted in meaning. This fact is well illustrated by the use of the term 'right of privacy' as a comprehensive substitute for the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against 'unreasonable searches and seizures.' 'Privacy' is a broad, abstract and ambiguous concept which can easily be shrunken in meaning but which can also, on the other hand, easily be interpreted as a constitutional ban against many things other than searches and seizures. I have expressed the view many times that First Amendment freedoms, for example, have suffered from a failure of the courts to stick to the simple language of the First Amendment in construing it, instead of invoking multitudes of words substituted for those the Framers used. See, e.g., New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 293, 84 S.Ct. 710, 733, 11 L.Ed.2d 686 (concurring opinion); cases collected in City of El Paso v. Simmons, 379 U.S. 497, 517, n. 1, 85 S.Ct. 577, 588, 13 L.Ed.2d 446 (dissenting opinion); Black, The Bill of Rights, 35 N.Y.U.L.Rev. 865. For these reasons I get nowhere in this case by talk about a constitutional 'right or privacy' as an emanation from one or more constitutional provisions.[1] I like my privacy as well as the next one, but I am nevertheless compelled to admit that government has a right to invade it unless prohibited by some specific constitutional provision. For these reasons I cannot agree with the Court's judgment and the reasons it gives for holding this Connecticut law unconstitutional.. . .

I repeat so as not to be misunderstood that this Court does have power, which it should exercise, to hold laws unconstitutional where they are forbidden by the Federal Constitution. My point is that there is no provision of the Constitution which either expressly or impliedly vests power in this Court to sit as a supervisory agency over acts of duly constituted legislative bodies and set aside their laws because of the Court's belief that the legislative policies adopted are unreasonable, unwise, arbitrary, capricious or irrational. The adoption of such a loose, flexible, uncontrolled standard for holding laws unconstitutional, if ever it is finally achieved, will amount to a great unconstitutional shift of power to the courts which I believe and am constrained to say will be bad for the courts and worse for the country. Subjecting federal and state laws to such an unrestrained and unrestrainable judicial control as to the wisdom of legislative enactments would, I fear, jeopardize the separation of governmental powers that the Framers set up and at the same time threaten to take away much of the power of States to govern themselves which the Constitution plainly intended them to have.[16]

I realize that many good and able men have eloquently spoken and written, sometimes in rhapsodical strains, about the duty of this Court to keep the Constitution in tune with the times. The idea is that the Constitution must be changed from time to time and that this Court is charged with a duty to make those changes. For myself, I must with all deference reject that philosophy. The Constitution makers knew the need for change and provided for it. Amendments suggested by the people's elected representatives can be submitted to the people or their selected agents for ratification. That method of change was good for our Fathers, and being somewhat old fashioned I must add it is good enough for me. And so, I cannot rely on the Due Process Clause or the Ninth Amendment or any mysterious and uncertain natural law concept as a reason for striking down this state law. The Due Process Clause with an 'arbitrary and capricious' or 'shocking to the conscience' formula was liberally used by this Court to strike down economic legislation in the early decades of this century, threatening, many people thought, the tranquility and stability of the Nation. See, e.g., Lochner v. State of New York, 198 U.S. 45, 25 S.Ct. 539, 49 L.Ed. 937. That formula, based on subjective considerations of 'natural justice,' is no less dangerous when used to enforce this Court's views about personal rights than those about economic rights. I had thought that we had laid that formula, as a means for striking down state legislation, to rest once and for all in cases like West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 300 U.S. 379, 57 S.Ct. 578, 81 L.Ed. 703; Olsen v. State of Nebraska ex rel. Western Reference & Bond Assn., 313 U.S. 236, 61 S.Ct. 862, 85 L.Ed. 1305, and many other opinions.[17] See also Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45, 74, 25 S.Ct. 539, 551 (Holmes, J., dissenting). (Associate Justice Hugo Black, Dissenting Opinion, Griswold v. Connecticut, June 7, 1965.)

The late Associate Justice Hugo Lafayette Black, a Freemason and former member of the Ku Klux Klan in his native Alabama, who had was fellow Freemason Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first appointee to the Supreme Court of the United States of America on August 13, 1937, did not like the Connecticut statute under review in the case of Griswold v. Connecticut. Indeed, he defended a fellow Klansman who had murdered Father James Coyle in 1921 when he, Black, a thirty-five year-old attorney in private practice. Nonetheless, though, Black understood the principles of just constitutional interpretation, articulating very clearly what would happen if the Court continued to “invent” “rights” that had no foundation in the Constitution of the United States of America whatsoever.

It is no accident whatsoever that Associate Justice Michael Kennedy specifically cited Griswold v. Connecticut in the Court’s majority opinion in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges:

A second principle in this Court’s jurisprudence is that the right to marry is fundamental because it supports a two-person union unlike any other in its importance to the committed individuals. This point was central to Griswold v. Connecticut, which held the Constitution protects the right of married couples to use contraception. 381 U. S., at 485. Suggesting that marriage is a right “older than the Bill of Rights,” Griswold described marriage this way:

“Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association for as noble a purpose as any involved in our prior decisions.” Id., at 486.

A third basis for protecting the right to marry is that it safeguards children and families and thus draws meaning from related rights of childrearing, procreation, and education. See Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510 (1925); Meyer, 262 U. S., at 399. The Court has recognized these connections by describing the varied rights as a unified whole: “[T]he right to ‘marry, establish a home and bring up children’ is a central part of the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause.” Zablocki , 434 U. S., at 384 quoting Meyer, supra , at 399). Under the laws of the several States, some of marriage’s protections for children and families are material. But marriage also confers more profound benefits. By giving recognition and legal structure to their parents’ relationship, marriage allows children “to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives.” Windsor, supra, at (slip op., at 23). Marriage also affords the permanency and stability important to children’s best interests. See Brief for Scholars of the Constitutional Rights of Children as Amici Curiae 22–27. (Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015.)

As is the case so notoriously in Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s Laudato Si, May 24, 2015, wherein the Argentine Apostate referenced his own work and that of his predecessors who have sat in the chair of the conciliar “Petrine Ministry” with only a smattering of other citations misrepresenting the work of saints while including the “insights” of a Mohammedan and other non-Catholics, Anthony McLeod Kennedy’s majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges relied principally upon cases decided in the wake of Griswold v. Connecticut, distorting the meaning of other cases to suit his purposes. In other words a Catholic lord of the world, Kennedy, used the exact same methodological tools to project into the defenseless constitution a meaning that has been used by the conciliar “popes” and their apologists, doing so in pursuit of the same ideological ends advanced by the lords of Modernism. There is, you see, quite a connection of methodology and purpose that unite the lords of Modernity in the world and the lords of Modernism in the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

Anthony McLeod Kennedy also relied heavily—and almost to the point of exclusively—on the “insights” found in amici curiae briefs that had been submitted by one pro-sodomite advocacy group after another, thus aping Jorge’s relying exclusively upon the ideologically-driven conclusions of junk scientists/ideologues to demean authentic scientists whose research has debunked the “evidence” used to support the line of “reasoning” in Laudato Si. Tony Kennedy, as he is called, treated pro-sodomite friend-of-the-court briefs with the same kind of near-infallible reverence that Jorge and his fellow fiends have accorded socialist-evolutionist-environmentalist-feminist-homosexualist “evidence” as determinative of theological and moral truth.

Consider how Anthony McLeod Kennedy praised the ability of “gays” to raise children: 

As all parties agree, many same-sex couples provide loving and nurturing homes to their children, whether biological or adopted. And hundreds of thousands of children are presently being raised by such couples. See Brief for Gary J. Gates as Amicus Curiae 4. Most States have allowed gays and lesbians to adopt, either as individuals or as couples, and many adopted and foster children have same-sex parents, see id., at 5. This provides powerful confirmation from the law itself that gays and lesbians can create loving, supportive families. Excluding same-sex couples from marriage thus conflicts with a central premise of the right to marry.

Without the recognition, stability, and predictability marriage offers, their children suffer the stigma of knowing their families are somehow lesser. They also suffer the significant material costs of being raised by unmarried parents, relegated through no fault of their own to a more difficult and uncertain family life. The marriage laws at issue here thus harm and humiliate the children of same-sex couples. See Windsor. supra, at ___ (slip op., at 23). (Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015.)

Children are to be raised by a father and a mother who seek to educate them in the truths of the Holy Faith as members of the Catholic Church so that they can save their souls and go to Heaven to enjoy the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity. No one “loves” another human being authentically if he does or says anything contrary to that person’s eternal good, the ultimate expression of which is the salvation of his immortal soul. Those engaged in perversely sinful lives are disqualified from “adopting” children as their very relationship is unnatural, odious in the sight of the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Blessed Trinity, and an abomination to the good of society. Such “couples”

That attorneys representing the states that defended their respective states bans on “gay marriage” conceded the falsehood that “same-sex couples provide loving and nurturing homes their children” demonstrates once again what happens when one uses naturalism to oppose naturalism: Naturalism wins. No battle to defend faith and morals can be fought on the terms of the adversary, who has done a pretty good job of convincing most people in the “developed” world to reject what is natural and pleasing to God in favor that which is unnatural and an abomination in His sight.

Thus it is that the process of reading the Constitution in light of “contemporary circumstances” has been occurring for a very long time now. It is nothing new at all. We are merely witnessing the end result of the perfection of the document’s inherent degeneracy and the absolute defenselessness of the clearly intended meaning of its own text in the hands of those had grown used to the “demythologization” of Sacred Scripture, first by Protestant “scholars” and then by Modernists in the Catholic Church. If Holy Writ can be deconstructed of its plain meaning, my good readers, then so can every other written document. Why is this so difficult for some of you out there to understand and accept? Stability of constitutional interpretation in a pluralistic nation is as impossible as stability of doctrine in a false church, including, of course, the counterfeit church of conciliarism itself.

Longtime Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America William Brennan, who was appointed by President Dwight David Eisenhower on October 15, 1956, and served until his retirement on July 24, 1990, seventeen years after he, a Catholic who was one of the seven justices to vote to permit baby-killing-on-demand until the day of birth in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, January 22, 1973, explained the notion of a “living Constitution,” thereby elaborating upon Oliver Wendell Holmes’s own positivistic views six decades before:

To remain faithful to the content of the Constitution, therefore, an approach to interpreting the text must account for the existence of these substantive value choices, and must accept the ambiguity inherent in the effort to apply them to modern circumstances. The Framers discerned fundamental principles through struggles against particular malefactions of the Crown; the struggle shapes the particular contours of the articulated principles. But our acceptance of the fundamental principles has not and should not bind us to those precise, at times anachronistic, contours. Successive generations of Americans have continued to respect these fundamental choices and adopt them as their own guide to evaluating quite different historical practices. Each generation has the choice to overrule or add to the fundamental principles enunciated by the Framers; the Constitution can be amended or it can be ignored. Yet with respect to its fundamental principles, the text has suffered neither fate. Thus, if I may borrow the words of an esteemed predecessor, Justice Robert Jackson, the burden of judicial interpretation is to translate "the majestic generalities of the Bill of Rights, conceived as part of the pattern of liberal government in the eighteenth century, into concrete restraints on officials dealing with the problems of the twentieth century." Board of Education v. Barnette, [319 U.S. 624, 639 (1943),] We current Justices read the Constitution in the only way that we can: as Twentieth Century Americans. We look to the history of the time of framing and to the intervening history of interpretation. But the ultimate question must be, what do the words of the text mean in our time. For the genius of the Constitution rests not in any static meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs. What the constitutional fundamentals meant to the wisdom of other times cannot be their measure to the vision of our time. Similarly, what those fundamentals mean for us, our descendants will learn, cannot be the measure to the vision of their time. This realization is not, I assure you, a novel one of my own creation. Permit me to quote from one of the opinions of our Court, Weems v. United States, [217 U.S. 349,] written nearly a century ago:

"Time works changes, brings into existence new conditions and purposes. Therefore, a principle to be vital must be capable of wider application than the mischief which gave it birth. This is peculiarly true of constitutions. They are not ephemeral enactments, designed to meet passing occasions. They are, to use the words of Chief Justice John Marshall, 'designed to approach immortality as nearly as human institutions can approach it.' The future is their care and provision or events of good and bad tendencies of which no prophesy can be made. In the application of a constitution, therefore, our contemplation cannot be only of what has been, but of what may be."

Interpretation must account for the transformative purpose of the text. Our Constitution was not intended to preserve a preexisting society but to make a new one, to put in place new principles that the prior political community had not sufficiently recognized. Thus, for example, when we interpret the Civil War Amendments to the charter—abolishing slavery, guaranteeing blacks equality under law, and guaranteeing blacks the right to vote—we must remember that those who put them in place had no desire to enshrine the status quo. Their goal was to make over their world, to eliminate all vestige of slave caste. ("Constitutional Interpretation by Justice William J. Brennan, Jr")

A Common Ideological Thread: Evolution of Thought and Praxis

This is exactly what the conciliar “popes” have taught about Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. It is what Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who remains completely silent about Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015, by the way, and his “brain trust” of Commissars and elder brethren in Modernism such as Walter Kasper. It is what both Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II, who elevated Bergoglio to the conciliar “episcopacy,” and Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI themselves taught:

5. Today the Church rejoices at the renewed confirmation of the prophet Joel's words which we have just heard: "I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh" (Acts 2:17). You, present here, are the tangible proof of this "outpouring" of the Spirit. Each movement is different from the others, but they are all united in the same communion and for the same mission. Some charisms given by the Spirit burst in like an impetuous wind, which seizes people and carries them to new ways of missionary commitment to the radical service of the Gospel, by ceaselessly proclaiming the truths of faith, accepting the living stream of tradition as a gift and instilling in each person an ardent desire for holiness.

Today, I would like to cry out to all of you gathered here in St Peter's Square and to all Christians: Open yourselves docilely to the gifts of the Spirit! Accept gratefully and obediently the charisms which the Spirit never ceases to bestow on us! Do not forget that every charism is given for the common good, that is, for the benefit of the whole Church.  (Meeting with ecclesial movements and new communities.)

It is not therefore a matter of inventing a "new programme". The programme already exists: it is the plan found in the Gospel and in the living Tradition, it is the same as ever. Ultimately, it has its centre in Christ himself, who is to be known, loved and imitated, so that in him we may live the life of the Trinity, and with him transform history until its fulfilment in the heavenly Jerusalem. This is a programme which does not change with shifts of times and cultures, even though it takes account of time and culture for the sake of true dialogue and effective communication. This programme for all times is our programme for the Third Millennium.

But it must be translated into pastoral initiatives adapted to the circumstances of each community. The Jubilee has given us the extraordinary opportunity to travel together for a number of years on a journey common to the whole Church, a catechetical journey on the theme of the Trinity, accompanied by precise pastoral undertakings designed to ensure that the Jubilee would be a fruitful event. I am grateful for the sincere and widespread acceptance of what I proposed in my Apostolic Letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente. But now it is no longer an immediate goal that we face, but the larger and more demanding challenge of normal pastoral activity. With its universal and indispensable provisions, the programme of the Gospel must continue to take root, as it has always done, in the life of the Church everywhere. It is in the local churches that the specific features of a detailed pastoral plan can be identified — goals and methods, formation and enrichment of the people involved, the search for the necessary resources — which will enable the proclamation of Christ to reach people, mould communities, and have a deep and incisive influence in bringing Gospel values to bear in society and culture.

I therefore earnestly exhort the Pastors of the particular Churches, with the help of all sectors of God's People, confidently to plan the stages of the journey ahead, harmonizing the choices of each diocesan community with those of neighbouring Churches and of the universal Church. (Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte.)

It should be noted furthermore that Karol Joseph Wojtyla/John Paul II noted specifically in Ecclesia Dei Adflicta, July 2, 1988, that Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre had placed the  Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X (more commonly known as the Society of Saint Pius X) into schism with what is purported to be the Catholic Church by consecrating four priests as bishops without a “papal” mandate and for refusing to accept what the “canonized pope” said was “the living character of tradition”:

4. The root of this schismatic act can be discerned in an incomplete and contradictory notion of Tradition. Incomplete, because it does not take sufficiently into account the living character of Tradition, which, as the Second Vatican Council clearly taught, "comes from the apostles and progresses in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. There is a growth in insight into the realities and words that are being passed on. This comes about in various ways. It comes through the contemplation and study of believers who ponder these things in their hearts. It comes from the intimate sense of spiritual realities which they experience. And it comes from the preaching of those who have received, along with their right of succession in the episcopate, the sure charism of truth".(5)

But especially contradictory is a notion of Tradition which opposes the universal Magisterium of the Church possessed by the Bishop of Rome and the Body of Bishops. It is impossible to remain faithful to the Tradition while breaking the ecclesial bond with him to whom, in the person of the Apostle Peter, Christ himself entrusted the ministry of unity in his Church.(6)

5. Faced with the situation that has arisen I deem it my duty to inform all the Catholic faithful of some aspects which this sad event has highlighted.

a) The outcome of the movement promoted by Mons. Lefebvre can and must be, for all the Catholic faithful, a motive for sincere reflection concerning their own fidelity to the Church's Tradition, authentically interpreted by the ecclesiastical Magisterium, ordinary and extraordinary, especially in the Ecumenical Councils from Nicaea to Vatican II. From this reflection all should draw a renewed and efficacious conviction of the necessity of strengthening still more their fidelity by rejecting erroneous interpretations and arbitrary and unauthorized applications in matters of doctrine, liturgy and discipline.

To the bishops especially it pertains, by reason of their pastoral mission, to exercise the important duty of a clear-sighted vigilance full of charity and firmness, so that this fidelity may be everywhere safeguarded.(7)

However, it is necessary that all the Pastors and the other faithful have a new awareness, not only of the lawfulness but also of the richness for the Church of a diversity of charisms, traditions of spirituality and apostolate, which also constitutes the beauty of unity in variety: of that blended "harmony" which the earthly Church raises up to Heaven under the impulse of the Holy Spirit.

b) Moreover, I should like to remind theologians and other experts in the ecclesiastical sciences that they should feel themselves called upon to answer in the present circumstances. Indeed, the extent and depth of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council call for a renewed commitment to deeper study in order to reveal clearly the Council's continuity with Tradition, especially in points of doctrine which, perhaps because they are new, have not yet been well understood by some sections of the Church. (Karol Wojytla/John Paul II, Ecclesia Dei Adflicta, July 2, 1988.)

Wojtyla/John Paul II was absolutely correct to state that the teaching of the universal magisterium of the Catholic Church cannot be contrary to Tradition. Some in the Society of Saint Pius X have posited a nonexistent conflict between the “authoritative magisterium” and the “governing magisterium.” There is no such distinction as no such division in the magisterium exists. It is a fabrication. The universal ordinary magisterium of the Catholic Church cannot teach error, something that was reviewed most recently in Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton Calls Out Tricks of Shoddy Minimism.

Unfortunately, for “Saint John Paul II,” however, his very argument in favor of the continuity between the “Second” Vatican Council and the Tradition of the Catholic Church is based upon an admission that that false council’s texts might be too obscure to understand properly “especially in points of doctrine which, perhaps because they are new, have not yet been well understood by some sections of the Church.” Holy Mother Church teaches clearly. There is nothing “new” in her teaching. The “Polish Pope” was trying to have it both ways by referring to the “living character of Tradition” to call the Society of Saint Pius X to obedience while at the same time unwittingly admitting that that there are “new” points of doctrine that need to be “understood.” This is not from the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, Who is immutable. (Obviously, the Society of Saint Pius X is still trying to having both ways by claiming fealty to the man they believe is the Vicar of Christ on earth while disobeying him openly and refusing to accept the orthodoxy of at least some of his teachings. See the post at Novus Ordo Watch Wire: Twelve Inconvenient Questions for the Society of Saint Pius X.)

1971: "In theses 10-12, the difficult problem of the relationship between language and thought is debated, which in post-conciliar discussions was the immediate departure point of the dispute. 

The identity of the Christian substance as such, the Christian 'thing' was not directly ... censured, but it was pointed out that no formula, no matter how valid and indispensable it may have been in its time, can fully express the thought mentioned in it and declare it unequivocally forever, since language is constantly in movement and the content of its meaning changes." (Fr. Ratzinger: Dogmatic formulas must always change.)

1990: "The text [of the document Instruction on the Theologian's Ecclesial Vocation] also presents the various types of bonds that rise from the different degrees of magisterial teaching. It affirms - perhaps for the first time with this clarity - that there are decisions of the magisterium that cannot be the last word on the matter as such, but are, in a substantial fixation of the problem, above all an expression of pastoral prudence, a kind of provisional disposition. The nucleus remains valid, but the particulars, which the circumstances of the times influenced, may need further correction.

In this regard, one may think of the declarations of Popes in the last century [19th century] about religious liberty, as well as the anti-Modernist decisions at the beginning of this century, above all, the decisions of the Biblical Commission of the time [on evolutionism]. As a cry of alarm in the face of hasty and superficial adaptations, they will remain fully justified. A personage such as Johann Baptist Metz said, for example, that the Church's anti-Modernist decisions render the great service of preserving her from falling into the liberal-bourgeois world. But in the details of the determinations they contain, they became obsolete after having fulfilled their pastoral mission at their proper time."

(Joseph Ratzinger, "Instruction on the Theologian's Ecclesial Vocation," published with the title "Rinnovato dialogo fra Magistero e Teologia," in L'Osservatore Romano, June 27, 1990, p. 6, cited at Card. Ratzinger: The teachings of the Popes against Modernism are obsolete)

Secondly, it was necessary to give a new definition to the relationship between the Church and the modern State that would make room impartially for citizens of various religions and ideologies, merely assuming responsibility for an orderly and tolerant coexistence among them and for the freedom to practise their own religion.

Thirdly, linked more generally to this was the problem of religious tolerance - a question that required a new definition of the relationship between the Christian faith and the world religions. In particular, before the recent crimes of the Nazi regime and, in general, with a retrospective look at a long and difficult history, it was necessary to evaluate and define in a new way the relationship between the Church and the faith of Israel.

These are all subjects of great importance - they were the great themes of the second part of the Council - on which it is impossible to reflect more broadly in this context. It is clear that in all these sectors, which all together form a single problem, some kind of discontinuity might emerge. Indeed, a discontinuity had been revealed but in which, after the various distinctions between concrete historical situations and their requirements had been made, the continuity of principles proved not to have been abandoned. It is easy to miss this fact at a first glance.

It is precisely in this combination of continuity and discontinuity at different levels that the very nature of true reform consists. In this process of innovation in continuity we must learn to understand more practically than before that the Church's decisions on contingent matters - for example, certain practical forms of liberalism or a free interpretation of the Bible - should necessarily be contingent themselves, precisely because they refer to a specific reality that is changeable in itself. It was necessary to learn to recognize that in these decisions it is only the principles that express the permanent aspect, since they remain as an undercurrent, motivating decisions from within.  

On the other hand, not so permanent are the practical forms that depend on the historical situation and are therefore subject to change.

Basic decisions, therefore, continue to be well-grounded, whereas the way they are applied to new contexts can change. Thus, for example, if religious freedom were to be considered an expression of the human inability to discover the truth and thus become a canonization of relativism, then this social and historical necessity is raised inappropriately to the metaphysical level and thus stripped of its true meaning. Consequently, it cannot be accepted by those who believe that the human person is capable of knowing the truth about God and, on the basis of the inner dignity of the truth, is bound to this knowledge.

It is quite different, on the other hand, to perceive religious freedom as a need that derives from human coexistence, or indeed, as an intrinsic consequence of the truth that cannot be externally imposed but that the person must adopt only through the process of conviction.

The Second Vatican Council, recognizing and making its own an essential principle of the modern State with the Decree on Religious Freedom, has recovered the deepest patrimony of the Church. By so doing she can be conscious of being in full harmony with the teaching of Jesus himself (cf. Mt 22: 21), as well as with the Church of the martyrs of all time. The ancient Church naturally prayed for the emperors and political leaders out of duty (cf. I Tm 2: 2); but while she prayed for the emperors, she refused to worship them and thereby clearly rejected the religion of the State.

The martyrs of the early Church died for their faith in that God who was revealed in Jesus Christ, and for this very reason they also died for freedom of conscience and the freedom to profess one's own faith - a profession that no State can impose but which, instead, can only be claimed with God's grace in freedom of conscience. A missionary Church known for proclaiming her message to all peoples must necessarily work for the freedom of the faith. She desires to transmit the gift of the truth that exists for one and all. (Christmas greetings to the Members of the Roman Curia and Prelature, December 22, 2005.)

What was that Pope Pius XII wrote in Humani Generis about how the "new theologians" deny that the true meaning of doctrines may be known and understood with metaphysical certitude?

Let me remind you:

34. It is not surprising that these new opinions endanger the two philosophical sciences which by their very nature are closely connected with the doctrine of faith, that is, theodicy and ethics; they hold that the function of these two sciences is not to prove with certitude anything about God or any other transcendental being, but rather to show that the truths which faith teaches about a personal God and about His precepts, are perfectly consistent with the necessities of life and are therefore to be accepted by all, in order to avoid despair and to attain eternal salvation. All these opinions and affirmations are openly contrary to the documents of Our Predecessors Leo XIII and Pius X, and cannot be reconciled with the decrees of the Vatican Council. It would indeed be unnecessary to deplore these aberrations from the truth, if all, even in the field of philosophy, directed their attention with the proper reverence to the Teaching Authority of the Church, which by divine institution has the mission not only to guard and interpret the deposit of divinely revealed truth, but also to keep watch over the philosophical sciences themselves, in order that Catholic dogmas may suffer no harm because of erroneous opinions. (Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, August 12, 1950.)

For the likes of men such as the conciliar revolutionaries to be correct, the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity not only hid the true meaning of doctrines for over nineteen hundred years, He permitted true popes and the Fathers of Holy Mother Church's twenty true general councils to condemn propositions that have, we are supposed to believe, only recently been "discovered" as having been true. Blasphemous.

Well, as was noted earlier in this article, the framers of the Constitution of the United States of America were not divinely-inspired, although various Talmudic political scientists such as Daniel Elazar, who claimed to have been descended from the Biblical Eleazar, Harry Jaffa, and Martin Diamond, each of whom is deceased, believed that the hand of God Himself guided the men who had gathered at what is known now as the Constitutional Convention from May 25, 1787, to September 17, 1787 (it was known as the “Philadelphia Convention” at the time). Sadly, many Catholics still believe this is so. Sadder still is that I used to believe it prior to being told in no uncertain terms at a meeting of scholars in September of 1987 to read the encyclical letters about Church-State relations, thus providing a necessary corrective to my own uncritical Americanist beliefs.

The fact remains, though, that the result of Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2915, was as much a consequence of the utterly defenseless nature of the Constitution’s text as the “openness” that is being displayed prior to Jorge’s October 2015 revolution against the family is the result of the utterly defenseless nature of even residual Catholicism in the hands of heretic and apostates. The lords of Modernity in the world and of Modernism in the counterfeit church of conciliarism specialize in deciding about things beyond the ability of mere creatures to decide, things that are part of the immutable Order of Creation (Nature) and the Order of Redemption (Grace).

The hour is late, and I have been falling asleep while writing the last few paragraphs.

The concluding part in this series will focus on the political and social consequences of Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015.

This is the First Friday of the month of July, the month of the Most Precious Blood of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. We must beg Our Lord to be the beneficiaries of the ineffable riches that are stored up in the deepest most recesses of His Sacred Heart so that we may persevere in our defense of the Holy Faith without fear of the consequences for doing so, offering up to that Sacred Heart, which pumped the very Most Precious Blood that was shed to redeem us, all of the difficulties of the present moment as well as those that are ahead of us, giving Him our all as His consecrated slaves through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary and as we pray as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits.

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.

Pope Saint Leo II, pray for us.