Twenty-Five Years Later: We Continue Doing This to Ourselves

Twenty-five years is one quarter of a century. It is also one-third of my own nearly seventy-five-year-old lifetime.

It was on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, that I left our motor home, which was parked in Battle Row Campground in Old Bethpage, New York, around 8:30 a.m. to drive twelve miles to campus of what was then called the C. W. Post Campus of Long Island University (now called “LIU—Post”) to hold office hours prior to a 10:00 a.m. to 11:20 a.m. upper division course in political science.

As was my custom when I was single and continued after marrying Sharon on June 7, 2001, I stopped at Bagel Boss bagelry on Woodbury Road and South Oyster Bay Road in Hicksville, New York, to get an everything bagel smeared with sun dried tomato cream cheese to go.

Before I got to Bagel Boss, however, I heard reports broadcast on the now defunct WCBS Newsradio 880 about a plane that had flown into one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. “This is not an accident,” I thought to myself as I turned into the parking lot from South Oyster Bay Road. (Here is a link to what I heard while driving to the C. W. Post of Long Island University twenty-five years ago yesterday: WCBS 880 New York - 9/11 Broadcast - World Trade Center Attack Coverage - September 11, 2001.)

Indeed, it was not.

Everyone in Bagel Boss was clued to one of several televisions showing black smoke billowing out of the gaping hole at the top of the World Trade Center’s south tower. I glanced up at the television before I left the store and then prayed for the victims in the planes and the building. It was not until I got into Hoxie Hall, where the Department of Political Science and International Studies, at which point the secretary, the late Mrs. Barbara Zahra, who served the Department of History as well as the political science department, said that the north tower had been hit as well.

Obviously, I knew that my 10:00 a.m. class was not going to run its full eighty minutes and offered a few remarks before answering a few questions from my students, each of whom was very worried. Some were frightened. I explained the whole matter in supernatural terms and urged the Catholics among my students to pray Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary. It was evident that the United States of America had become a victim a deliberate terrorist attack.

Although I had tried to reach Sharon back in the motor home via cellphone, my bride of three months was still fast asleep as she was about seven weeks along with Lucy and did not get to see her until I got back to our home on wheels. She was awake but unaware of what had happened.

It was a few days later that I learned from our dear friend, John W. Blewett, about whom I had written With A Heart Of Pure Catholic Gold following his death on February 8, 2013, at the age of eighty-four, was aboard a plane bound for Los Angeles, California, that was on the tarmac at Newark International Airport ready to take off when the Federal Aviation Administration ordered a full stop of air traffic around the New York City metropolitan area.

"Tom," he told me as he voice crackled with emotion, "I saw those tower collapse with my own eyes." He also said that a man sitting next to him on the airplane appeared to be speaking into a cellular phone in a very low voice in Arabic. He reported the man to the authorities, who appeared interested in the information as it might have been possible that that airplane was also scheduled to be hijacked. John was delayed for a week in New Jersey before he could return home to California once the restrictions on commercial air traffic were lifted. As Sharon noted, "Our Lady did not want that plane to go down with John Blewett." Yes, John was praying Rosaries throughout his time on the airplane before it returned to the gate.

About a week later, restauranteur Bruce Murphy, who ran the Milleridge Inn in Jericho, Long Island, New York, told us that one of his first cousins was in one of the towers when it was hit. Curiously, Bruce said that his cousin reported that everyone in the building was told to stay in place and not to attempt to exit. This information was identical to what we learned later on September 11, 2001, from one of my own longtime friends, a pioneering pro-life champion and home-schooling mother, that one of her sons, a fireman, had heard from those exiting the buildings that they were told to stay where they were. Why would such instructions be given unless someone wanted to see as many people as possible inside those buildings die? (Answer: Because our minders wanted there to be as many fatalites as possible.)

Bruce Murphy’s cousin decided to defy the instructions to leave his office and get out of the building when saw a body fall from a floor above his own office and avoided becoming one of the 2,996 souls who were killed in New York City, at the Pentagon, and on United Airlines Flight 93 that was crashed into the ground eight miles west of Shanksville, Pennsylvania. (This total includes over three hundred people who have died over time because of the toxic smoke from the debris in lower Manhattan, although the actual toll is probably much larger that the official figures provide.)

Although I will describe some of the aftermath of what we saw a few days and months after the attacks a bit later in this commentary, I want to reprise an article I wrote on the evening of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, to provide my own initial reaction, mindful that, although an indulterer at the time, I was still attending what I thought was Holy Mass in Catholic parishes under conciliar control and that I came to be convinced about a year later that the twin towers did not come down because of the impact made by the planes that hit them. Those towers pancaked down floor by floor because of a controlled explosion from within them. Engineers have testified about the impossibility of those buildings being taken down by the impact made by those planes.

Herewith, therefore, is “We’ve Done This to Ourselves,” which was published on the Daily Catholic website and in the printed pages of Christ or Chaos:

A plume of smoke was visible thirty-five miles east of lower Manhattan.

My wife Sharon and I were driving back from a 5:15 p.m. Mass at Saint Matthew's Church in Dix Hills, Long Island, when we saw the flume of smoke clearly visible from the direction of where the twin towers of the World Trade Center stood until early on the morning on September 11, 2001. It is one thing to hear reports of the act of warfare launched against this nation by disciples of Osama bin Laden (does anyone believe bin Laden is not responsible?). It is quite another to see the remnants of the carnage rising from the ground as far as over thirty-five miles away from the scene.

The mind cannot even begin to fathom the thousands upon thousands of lives affected by the cowardly acts perpetrated by the suicide attackers. If an anecdotal sampling of a few Catholic parishes on Long Island is accurate, it does appear as though a number of ordinary people are directly affected by the loss of loved ones in the attacks on the World Trade Center. Scores of people are on their knees in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament and on lines to go to Confession. Special Masses are being celebrated this very evening for the repose of the souls of those killed and for the recovery of survivors. After giving a few remarks on the matter to students at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University this morning, I went back to get my wife to go to Confession ourselves. For there is nothing to fear from any act of war or terrorism as long as we are in a state of sanctifying grace.

Believing Catholic knows how to respond to acts of warfare and terrorism.

Indeed, it is only a believing Catholic who has the ability to see the world clearly through the eyes of the true Faith, thereby permitting him to step back from the specifics of a horrific tragedy in order to understand the remote and proximate causes of the terror and destruction which have visited the United States of America with such fury. A review of these causes is important to help us realize that there is nothing we can endure in this passing vale of tears, including such wanton acts of destruction, which is the equal of what our sins did to our Lord and Savior in His Sacred Humanity on the wood of the Holy Cross, and that it is precisely the promotion of sin under cover of law in this country and in the world which is what makes people believe that they can avenge injustices, whether real or imagined, by killing and maiming those they blame for their problems.

1. Original Sin. All of the problems of the world are caused by Original Sin. Human nature was irreparably wounded by Adam's sin in the Garden of Eden. Although human beings are not evil, they are inclined to do that which is evil. The Second Person - Jesus Christ - of the Blessed Trinity became Man in Our Lady's virginal and immaculate womb to pay back in His own Sacred Humanity the blood debt of Adam's sin. Our Lord's redemptive act on the wood of the Holy Cross makes it possible for sinful men to overcome the vestigial after-effects of Original Sin (the darkened intellect and the weakened will) to scale the heights of sanctity by cooperating with the graces He won for us by the shedding of His Most Precious Blood and administered to us by the working of the Holy Ghost in the sacraments Jesus Christ entrusted to the Church He created upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. There is no programmatic or ideological solution to the problems which face us. Individuals must endeavor on a daily basis to live in such a way so as to be prepared to die a holy death, seeking to please God with every beat of their hearts by adhering to the revelation He deposited in His true Church.

2. The ramifications of sin. If human beings do not see themselves and the world through the eyes of the true Faith, then hardness of heart inevitably results. Those of us who have been the unmerited beneficiaries of Divine Mercy understand that we have the obligation to extend that mercy to all others, including those who have injured us or our loved ones. We have the obligation to pray for the conversion of our persecutors, praying especially that our Lady's Immaculate Heart will triumph and that everyone on the face of this earth will come to see in her Son's Sacred Heart the fountain of mercy from which we must drink. If people do not see themselves in this light, however, then they seek to exact revenge upon others. A person whose soul is captive to the devil by means of Original Sin is therefore especially prone to calculated violence (as is a person whose soul is dead by means of mortal sin). Although those who fomented the violence on September 11, 2001, may have believed they were involved in a holy cause, the plain truth of the matter is that they were seeking to avenge injustices by spilling the blood of the ones they blame for their problems.

3. A culture of death begets death. There are unspeakable truths which must be spoken. A nation which kills over 4,400 human beings under cover of law by means of surgical abortion, to say nothing of the thousands of others which are killed by means of chemical abortifacients, cannot escape having death visited upon it by others. If we devalue the sanctity of innocent human life in the womb, then why should it surprise us that others devalue the lives of ordinary Americans as they go about their business in their workplaces? We cannot continue to take innocent human life under cover of law and be immune from the attacks of others who view Americans in the same utilitarian manner that many Americans view innocent life in the womb.

4. The overthrow of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ. The modern nation state was born in a specific rejection of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ and the authority of His true Church. The belief that it is possible to pursue justice in the framework of religious indifferentism and cultural relativism and legal positivism is delusional. A world which rejects the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ and the authority of His true Church descends into abject barbarism. Just as our Lord submitted Himself in humility to the authority of His own creatures in the Holy Family in Nazareth, so is it the case that all men and all nations are called to submit themselves in humility and in docility to the authority of the Catholic Church for the sanctification and salvation, as well for the right ordering of human societies by the subordination of human law and human culture to the immutable precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law.

5. Abandonment of devotion to the Blessed Mother. Our Lady told us at Fatima that we had to be consecrated to her Immaculate Heart in order to make reparation for our sins and those of the whole world. St. Maximilian Kolbe stressed the importance of Mary Immaculate as the key to restoring all things in Christ. It is necessary for souls to consecrate themselves to our Lady in order for them to understand that authentic peace, the peace of Christ, consists of being in a state of grace. Souls which are not in a state of grace are in a state of warfare against the Blessed Trinity, predisposing them to acts of violence and warfare against others. "In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph." The fact that many priests and dioceses do not promote devotion to our Lady by means of her Most Holy Rosary and total consecration to her explains to a very large extent why many Catholics embrace the culture of death which has taken so many innocent lives in the womb and has now reached the lives of ordinary citizens.

Proximate Causes

Fallen human nature manifests itself in many ways. Although we may never know the exact number of the proximate causes which resulted in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, it is certainly possible at this early stage to list some of those causes.

1. Lax immigration laws. Patrick J. Buchanan has been warning us for over a decade about the laxity of our immigration laws. He has been denounced as a racist and xenophobe. However, Patrick Buchanan has been right all along. One of the terrorists convicted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center listed his occupation as "terrorist" when he presented his A-95 immigration card to officials at Kennedy International Airport in Queens, New York, when he entered this country. No one bothered to look at his card. There is a network of terrorists well in place in this country. We've done this to ourselves. Disciples of Osama bin Laden and other terrorist masterminds are everywhere in this country. Alas, a country pledged to pluralism and religious indifferentism lacks the political will to do such politically incorrect things as to say that certain people are in se undesirable and threats to the national security and that they should not be admitted to this country (or deported out of this country if they are already here).

2. Lax airport security. A lot of the personnel who man airport security counters in this nation are recent arrivals to this country. Could it be that the well-orchestrated attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were made possible by confederates who were placed in security positions at Boston's Logan Airport and Newark International Airport? Could it be that these putative confederates were given the signal that September 11, 2001, would be the day of the long-awaited Jihad against the dreaded Satan, the United States of America? And if this scenario proves to be correct, we have to face the rather uncomfortable fact that the infrastructure of this nation has become dependent upon immigrant workers as a direct result of contraception and abortion. There are not enough native-born Americans to staff the American labor force, including security counters at our airports. True, human sloth could be at work here. Some security personnel might have been asleep at the switch. However, circumstantial evidence militates against that as the sole explanation. Either the suicide murderers devised clever ways to conceal their weapons, or they had help on the ground.

3. American intelligence is in shambles. It is never possible to protect a free society completely against acts of warfare and terrorism. However, American intelligence should have done a better job of gathering the information about bin Laden's activities. The plan executed on September 11, 2001, had to be a year or more in the making. The timing was coordinated and exquisitely accurate. Answers will have to be sought as to how an attack which involved such planning and coordination occurred under the radar screen of American intelligence. * [See the commentary below to amend my perception from twenty-five years ago.]

4. The iron will of those who reject the Mercy of Jesus Christ. This country's unqualified support for the policies of the State of Israel has no doubt hardened the resolve of anti-American zealots, people who are willing to give up their lives in the quest to punish the United States for what are believed to be crimes against the Palestinian people. While it is doubtlessly the case, as many others have documented over the years, that this country has turned a blind eye to the suffering of those whose lands were taken from them in 1948 and forced into refugee camps as though they were so much cattle, one does not advance the cause of justice in the Middle East by targeting innocent Israeli citizens for random acts of violence or by rejoicing in the deaths of innocent Americans in New York and in the Pentagon across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. However, the iron will of those who reject the Mercy of Jesus Christ is one of the proximate causes that should give us pause for reflection: such people are in a state of war against us and they are not going to give up any time soon.

Bringing Good out of Evil

 God does not cause evil. As noted earlier, human beings introduced evil into the world as a result of Original Sin. God permits evil in order to bring good out of it. We may never be able to see the totality of the good God brings out of specific acts of evil until the Last Day, when the intentions of all hearts will be laid bare for all to see. However, it is possible to outline a few ways by which good can be brought out of the evil which took place on September 11, 2001.

1. An increase in Faith among Catholics. As noted at the beginning of this reflection, thousands of ordinary Catholics flocked to churches throughout the metropolitan area in the immediate aftermath of the downing of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. The baptismal embers of many souls have been stirred as a result of this unprecedented tragedy. This could very well result in a reawakening of the faith lives of Catholics who have been steeped in our culture of relativism and secularism and positivism. Moreover, this tragedy may help many Catholics to actually meditate on the Four Last Things (Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell) before they go to bed every night. We do not know when the Master will call for us. He comes like a thief in the night. Perhaps there will be more and more Catholics who will come to understand that the most horrible thing that can happen in the world is to be unprepared for the moment of their Particular Judgments by being in a state of mortal sin at the hour of their individual deaths. It could lead Catholics to come to understand that the graces won for us by the shedding of our Lord's Most Precious Blood on Calvary are sufficient for us to handle every cross we are asked to bear, including acts of warfare and terrorism. And it could lead us to understand that we have the obligation to pray for those who have fomented such acts of violence, as our Lord enjoined us to do in the Sermon on the Mount.

2. Conversion of souls to the true Church. Many priests and presbyters risked their very lives to try to anoint the bodies of those wounded in Manhattan. At least one priest, a chaplain to the New York City Fire Department, died as a result of his valiant efforts to minister to the souls of those entrusted to his pastoral care. The valor and pastoral zeal of these priests will no doubt inspire at least a few souls to convert to the true Faith. Indeed, even non-Catholics are drawn to pray in Catholic churches during times of emergency. Although they may not understand that they are being drawn there by Our Lord's Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament, they are responding an actual grace given them by the Holy Ghost. Perhaps this tragedy will help non-Catholic Christians and unbelievers see that it is only the Catholic Church which offers fallen creatures the means to scale the heights of sanctity and to be prepared for a good, holy death.

3. A re-examination of our uncritical acceptance of our culture of death. It is about time for some Catholic prelate to call a spade a spade: the killing of innocent human babies in their mothers' wombs under cover of law makes us more vulnerable to attacks such as the ones which occurred on September 11, 2001. People have got to be confronted with the reality of what is happening in our midst every single day by the cold-blooded killing of the innocent unborn. Someone has got to raise these issues in order to help to prompt a reexamination of this country's uncritical acceptance of our culture of death. There is a connection between the taking of innocent life in the womb and the acts of warfare and terrorism which took place in our skies and in our cities on September 11, 2001.

4. Acts of charity and heroism. Ordinary citizens lined up to donate blood at hospitals and blood centers throughout the New York City metropolitan area in the immediate aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center. Such acts of charity, as well as the heroism of the several hundred police officers and fire fighters who gave up their lives in an attempt to rescue their fellow human beings, can help people on the natural level to see the Divine impress in each other. It can help them to reject the secularism of the world in which we live. Only creatures who bear within them the spark of Divinity are capable of such acts of charity and heroism. And it is only when we live in the shadow of the Holy Cross that we can come to see that we are called to move beyond mere natural acts of charity and heroism in order to become motivated by the supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and charity to live lives of heroic sanctity in the midst of this passing vale of tears.

Putting Things in Perspective

 A Catholic does not live in fear. Our Lord told us to "be not afraid.” Although we must avoid the sins of presumption and despair, we are called to live in the confident hope that we are loved by Love Himself, the Blessed Trinity. We are called to live quite consciously in an awareness of our eternal destiny to possess the Beatific Vision of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost in an unending Easter Sunday of glory in Paradise. And we are called to be serious about the business of getting ourselves straight with God in the Sacrament of Penance if we have been negligent or slothful about our interior lives. We are called to realize that the only way we can deal with the terrorism visited upon us by wealthy madmen is to defeat the terrorism of satan against our souls by striving ever more readily to cooperate with the graces won for us by our Lord and Calvary and by entrusting ourselves ever more fully to the patronage of our dear Blessed Mother and her chaste spouse, Saint Joseph, the Patron of the Universal Church.

 With prayers for the souls of those who have been killed, as well for the recovery of the survivors, and prayers for the survivors of those killed and wounded, may this moment of national horror help us to become resolved to subordinate our own individual lives and the greater life of our nation to the reign of Christ the King and Mary our Queen, the only sure antidote to the forces of darkness and terror that seek to envelop us ever more fully in a culture of both physical and eternal death.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord. And let perpetual light shine unto them. May their souls-and all the souls of the faithful departed-rest in peace. Amen.

All right, it’s September 12, 2026, the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary, again, and I will only note here before continuing that it was very strange being in Manhattan just four days after the attacks upon the World Trade Center as we went to an indult Mass, offered by a true priest, at the since sold and demolished Church of Saint Ann on East Twelfth Street as the smoke from the debris still billowed out from the ruins where the towers had stood. It was even stranger driving past what became known as “Ground Zero” after nightfall had settled in on a late Saturday afternoon in early December of 2001 as floodlights beamed into the deep holes formed by the buildings as they pancaked down deep into the towers’ foundations seventy feet below street level.

It is clear now, twenty-five years later, that American intelligence did have most of the necessary information but it either never its way to the White House or, more likely, then Vice President Richard Cheney had been informed enough to give the idiot named President George Walker Bush (“we’re gonna get those folks”) room to be as startled as the average American citizens was about the attacks. Cheney wanted some pretext to push the United States of American into a war with Iraq and the then of focus of the “axis of evil” du jour, Saddam Hussein:

With the twenty-fifth anniversary of “9/11” this week, it is important to remember all the warning signs that were evident in the months leading up to the events of that terrible day and the anthrax attacks that followed. Despite their obviousness, the Bush administration, after the fact, denied that they were aware of them. They claimed they were taken by surprise by Al Qaeda terrorists led by Osama bin Laden.

They were lying.

The bitter truth – hard to swallow – is that not only were they aware of the signs but had laid them out like breadcrumbs to create a false trail to those upon whom they would pin the crimes, while claiming it was a surprise attack – “another Pearl Harbor,” as they and their media stenographers shouted from the rooftops in concordance with Pearl Harbor, the action film of that summer.

The bitter truth – hard to swallow – is that not only were they aware of the signs but had laid them out like breadcrumbs to create a false trail to those upon whom they would pin the crimes, while claiming it was a surprise attack – “another Pearl Harbor,” as they and their media stenographers shouted from the rooftops in concordance with Pearl Harbor, the action film of that summer. (Why I Still Don’t Talk About 9/11 While Talk of Trump Using Nukes Increases. Also see C.I.A. Releases Intelligence Sent to Clinton and Bush on Al Qaeda Before 9/11 Attacks.)

The tragic events of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, were preventable, noting, of course, that everything happens within the Providence of God.

President George Walker Bush to use the tragic events of September 11, 2001, as the pretext to launch an immoral, unjust, unconstitutional invasion of a sovereign nation that posed no immediate or any kind of real, legitimate threat to the national security of the United States of America.

However, it was also clear within a short period of time that the tragic events of twenty-five years ago were going to be used by our civil minders as the pretext for altering the farce known as American “liberty” even more than had been the case previously and the so-called "Patriot Act" exploited the tragic events of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, to make every single one of us potential "terrorists" in the all-seeing-eyes of Big Brother State by means of the so-called Patriot Act (short for the act's official Orwellian title, Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001), which President George Walker Bush gladly signed into law on October 26, 2001, and which remains part of the United States Code to this very day, and President Donald John Trump has not done one thing to remove this perversion of law from the books as he is too busy waging his own unnecessary, immoral and unconstitutional war against another foreign country threat posed no immediate threat to the security of the United States of America, the so-called Islamic Republic of Iran.

Another interesting fact that is little discussed by the mainslime news media is that the government of the genocidally murderous Zionist State of Israel told all their nationals to stay away from the tWorld Trade Center complex on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, and, as a complete “coincidence,” you understand, an Israeli film crew just happening to filming lower Manhattan from Liberty Park across the Hudson River in New Jersey as the planes crashed into the twin towers.

Then again, as I noted twenty-five years ago, what happened on September 11, 2001, was a chastisement no matter the details of who knew how much and when and no matter the fact that the government of Saudi Arabia continues to be indemnified to this day about the role members that country’s royal family were involved either with the United States Central Intelligence, Osama bin Laden, a Saudi national, or both. President Trump has been particularly solicitous of the Saudis, whose leaders have been known to be as murderous as the Israelis when the situation “requires.”

The tragic events of September 11, 2001, were but the prelude to the exercise of authoritarianism we experienced from all levels of government during the scamdemic in 2020 and 2021. The scamdemic further increased the surveillance powers of the civil state and, at the same time, sought to use “vaccine” mandates to coerce citizens into endangering their health and their very lives in order to hold various jobs, go out to eat in restaurants, attend sporting events or the like or even, in some instances, to travel.

Worse chastisements are yet to come our way and as I not any kind of “end times prophet,” I have no idea when those chastisements will come or what they will look like, although I can tell you that paying a penny less than four dollars a gallon at the gasoline pump is certainly an economic chastisement to those of us who do not have a lot of the means of this passing world. However, a whole lot worse than economic chastisements are sure to come our way in a land that has never recognized Christ the King and His true Church, no less submitted to the binding precepts of the Divine and Natural Laws by pursuing the common temporal good in light of man’s Last End.

Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ taught us to remain calm in every circumstance of our lives, explaining that there will be chastisements, wars and rumors of wars but that the end is not yet to come. We must remain ever calm in the loving arms of Our Lady, who told Juan Diego the following as his uncle was suffering from an illness from which Juan Diego thought he was going to die:

"Listen and take heed, least of my sons," she said quietly. "There is nothing which thou needst dread. Let not thy heart be troubled. Do not fear this illness, neither any other illness or affliction. Am I not here beside thee; I, thy Merciful Mother? Am I not thy hope and salvation? Of what more dost thou have need? Let nothing distress or harass thee. As to the illness of thy uncle, he will not die of it. Indeed, I ask thee to accept as a certainty my assurance that he is already cured." (Frances Parkinson Keyes, The Grace of Guadalupe, published in 1941 by Julian Messner, Inc., pp. 47-48.)

We are not to fear any illness or affliction. There is no suffering, nor any world crisis, that we can bear in this life that is the equal of what one of our least Venial Sins caused Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to suffer in His Sacred Humanity during His fearful Passion and Death as those Seven Swords of Sorrow were plunged through and through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Need it be pointed that it will there will be a battle between Antichrist and the forces of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Just Christ at the Armageddon?

Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection. In these the second death hath no power; but they shall be priests of God and of Christ; and shall reign with him a thousand years.  7 And when the thousand years shall be finished, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go forth, and seduce the nations, which are over the four quarters of the earth, Gog, and Magog, and shall gather them together to battle, the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.  8 And they came upon the breadth of the earth, and encompassed the camp of the saints, and the beloved city.  9 And there came down fire from God out of heaven, and devoured them; and the devil, who seduced them, was cast into the pool of fire and brimstone, where both the beast 10 And the false prophet shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever. (Apocalypse 20: 6-10.)

God the Holy Ghost saw fit to instruct us in Sacred Scripture, including in the passage from the Book of Proverbs that was quoted at the beginning of this commentary:

[34] Justice exalteth a nation: but sin maketh nations miserable. (Proverbs 14: 34.)

Christ the King will not be mocked. He will suffer the sins of men so that they and their nations might be brought to repentance. He is not, however, indifferent that which Him to suffer in His Sacred Humanity during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross, sin, and that wounds the Church Militant on earth and impedes the pursuit of the true common temporal good of men and their nations.

The plain truth from twenty-five years ago is that, despite the passage of a quarter of a century, the laws of the United States of America have codified more and more licentiousness while more and more young people live in ways that would have shamed some of the worst barbarians whose tribes in Europe were convered the First and into the early party of the Second Millennia. Yes, we continue doing this to ourselves.

On this Feast of the Holy Name of Mary, perhaps it would be good to consider the following words from Pope Pius XII’s encyclical letter on the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus in order to contrast the spirit of hatred that motivates the leaders of this passing world with the tender mercies of the Divine Redeemer, Christ the King, Who was made manifest to the Gentile Kings on the Feast of the Epiphany that is still being observed as octave in those chapels that adhere to the General Roman Calendar of 1954.

Pope Pius XII emphasized that devotion to the Most Sacred Heart is not “burdensome” and is at the heart of fighting for Christ the King and His rights in the midst of a world that is cold and hostile to Him:

8. The Church has always valued, and still does, the devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus so highly that she provides for the spread of it among Christian peoples everywhere and by every means. At the same time she uses every effort to protect it against the charges of so-called “naturalism” and “sentimentalism.” In spite of this it is much to be regretted that, both in the past and in our own times, this most noble devotion does not find a place of honor and esteem among certain Christians and even occasionally not among those who profess themselves moved by zeal for the Catholic religion and the attainment of holiness.

9. “If you but knew the gift of God.”[7] With these words, venerable brethren, We who in the secret designs of God have been elected as the guardians and stewards of the sacred treasures of faith and piety which the divine Redeemer has entrusted to His Church, prompted by Our sense of duty, admonish them all.

10. For even though the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus has triumphed so to speak, over the errors and the neglect of men, and has penetrated entirely His Mystical Body; still there are some of Our children who, led astray by prejudices, sometimes go so far as to consider this devotion ill-adapted, not to say detrimental, to the more pressing spiritual needs of the Church and humanity in this present age. There are some who, confusing and confounding the primary nature of this devotion with various individual forms of piety which the Church approves and encourages but does not command, regard this as a kind of additional practice which each one may take up or not according to his own inclination.

11. There are others who reckon this same devotion burdensome and of little or no use to men who are fighting in the army of the divine King and who are inspired mainly by the thought of laboring with their own strength, their own resources and expenditures of their own time, to defend Catholic truth, to teach and spread it, to instill Christian social teachings, to promote those acts of religion and those undertakings which they consider much more necessary today. (Pope Pius XII, Haurietis Aquas, May 15, 1956.)

A Brief Comment:

Paragraph 11, above, summarizes the beliefs of so many Catholics who permit themselves to be drawn into the agitation of the conflicts between the false opposites of the naturalist “left” and “right” that are simply manifestations of the anti-Incarnational Judeo-Masonic spirit of Modernity and can never be in the service of promoting a genuine social order.

Pope Pius XII went on to explain the attitude of those who consider devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus to be suited only for women and not for “educated men” even though it is a strong antidote to the sophistries of Modernity:

12. Again, there are those who so far from considering this devotion a strong support for the right ordering and renewal of Christian morals both in the individual’s private life and in the home circle, see it rather a type of piety nourished not by the soul and mind but by the senses and consequently more suited to the use of women, since it seems to them something not quite suitable for educated men.

13. Moreover there are those who consider a devotion of this kind as primarily demanding penance, expiation and the other virtues which they call “passive,” meaning thereby that they produce no external results. Hence they do not think it suitable to re-enkindle the spirit of piety in modern times. Rather, this should aim at open and vigorous action, at the triumph of the Catholic faith, at a strong defense of Christian morals. Christian morality today, as everyone knows, is easily contaminated by the sophistries of those who are indifferent to any form of religion, and who, discarding all distinctions between truth and falsehood, whether in thought or in practice, accept even the most ignoble corruptions of materialistic atheism, or as they call it, secularism.

14. Who does not see, venerable brethren, that opinions of this kind are in entire disagreement with the teachings which Our predecessors officially proclaimed from this seat of truth when approving the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.? Who would be so bold as to call that devotion useless and inappropriate to our age which Our predecessor of immortal memory, Leo XIII, declared to be “the most acceptable form of piety?” He had no doubt that in it there was a powerful remedy for the healing of those very evils which today also, and beyond question in a wider and more serious way, bring distress and disquiet to individuals and to the whole human race. “This devotion,” he said, “which We recommend to all, will be profitable to all.” And he added this counsel and encouragement with reference to the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus: “. . .hence those forces of evil which have now for so long a time been taking root and which so fiercely compel us to seek help from Him by Whose strength alone they can be driven away. Who can He be but Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God? ‘For there is no other name under heaven given to men whereby we must be saved.’[8] We must have recourse to Him Who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”[9]

15. No less to be approved, no less suitable for the fostering of Christian piety was this devotion declared to be by Our predecessor of happy memory, Pius XI. In an encyclical letter he wrote: “Is not a summary of all our religion and, moreover, a guide to a more perfect life contained in this one devotion? Indeed, it more easily leads our minds to know Christ the Lord intimately and more effectively turns our hearts to love Him more ardently and to imitate Him more perfectly.”[10]

16. To Us, no less than to Our predecessors, these capital truths are clear and certain. When We took up Our office of Supreme Pontiff and saw, in full accord with Our prayers and desires, that the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus had increased and was actually, so to speak, making triumphal progress among Christian peoples, We rejoiced that from it were flowing through the whole Church innumerable and salutary results. This We were pleased to point out in Our first encyclical letter.[11]

17. Through the years of Our pontificate — years filled not only with bitter hardships but also with ineffable consolations these effects have not diminished in number or power or beauty, but on the contrary have increased. Indeed, happily there has begun a variety of projects which are conducive to a rekindling of this devotion. We refer to the formation of cultural associations for the advancement of religion and of charitable works; publications setting forth the true historical, ascetical and mystical doctrine concerning this entire subject; pious works of atonement; and in particular those manifestations of most ardent piety which the Apostleship of Prayer has brought about, under whose auspices and direction local gatherings — families, colleges, institutions — and sometimes nations have been consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. To all these We have offered paternal congratulations on many occasions, whether in letters written on the subject, in personal addresses, or even in messages delivered over the radio.[12]

18. Therefore when We perceive so fruitful an abundance of healing waters, that is, heavenly gifts of divine love, issuing from the Sacred Heart of our Redeemer, spreading among countless children of the Catholic Church by the inspiration and action of the divine Spirit; We can only exhort you, venerable brethren, with fatherly affection to join Us in giving tribute of praise and heartfelt thanks to God, the Giver of all good gifts. We make Our own these words of the Apostle of the Gentiles: “Now to Him Who is able to do all things more abundantly than we desire or understand, according to the power that worketh in us, to Him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations world without end. Amen.”[13]

19. But after We have paid Our debt of thanks to the Eternal God, We wish to urge on you and on all Our beloved children of the Church a more earnest consideration of those principles which take their origin from Scripture and the teaching of the Fathers and theologians and on which, as on solid foundations, the worship of the Sacred Heart of Jesus rests. We are absolutely convinced that not until we have made a profound study of the primary and loftier nature of this devotion with the aid of the light of the divinely revealed truth, can we rightly and fully appreciate its incomparable excellence and the inexhaustible abundance of its heavenly favors. Likewise by devout meditation and contemplation of the innumerable benefits produced from it, we will be able to celebrate worthily the completion of the first hundred years since the observance of the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was extended to the Universal Church. (Pope Pius  XII, Haurietis Aquas, May 15, 1956.)

Our last true Holy Father thus far explained the spirit of the hatred of God that was at work in the world sixty-six years ago and can be said to be at the foundation of modern politics as nihilists of the “left” and the “right” eschew the life-giving waters of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and the truths of the Holy Faith that can and do lift the minds and hearts of men to the things that eternal, in the light of which all things earthy must be judged: 

117. And there is more. For if We experience bitter sorrow at the feeble loyalty of the good in whose souls, tricked by a deceptive desire for earthly possessions, the fire of divine charity grows cool and gradually dies out, much more is Our heart deeply grieved by the machinations of evil men who, as if instigated by Satan himself, are now more than ever zealous in their open and implacable hatred against God, against the Church and above all against him who on earth represents the Person of the divine Redeemer and exhibits His love towards men, in accordance with that well-known saying of the Doctor of Milan: “For (Peter) is being questioned about that which is uncertain, though the Lord is not uncertain; He is questioning not that He may learn, but that He may teach the one whom, at His ascent into Heaven, He was leaving to us as ‘the representative of His love.'”[116]

118. But, in truth, hatred of God and of those who lawfully act in His place is the greatest kind of sin that can be committed by man created in the image and likeness of God and destined to enjoy His perfect and enduring friendship for ever in heaven. Man, by hatred of God more than by anything else, is cut off from the Highest Good and is driven to cast aside from himself and from those near to him whatever has its origin in God, whatever is united with God, whatever leads to the enjoyment of God, that is, truth, virtue, peace and justice.[117]

119. Since then, alas, one can see that the number of those whose boast is that they are God’s enemies is in some places increasing, that the false slogans of materialism are being spread by act and argument, and unbridled license for unlawful desires is everywhere being praised, is it remarkable that love, which is the supreme law of the Christian religion, the surest foundation of true and perfect justice and the chief source of peace and innocent pleasures, loses its warmth in the souls of many? For as our Savior warned us: “Because iniquity hath abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold.”[118]

120. When so many evils meet Our gaze — such as cause sharp conflict among individuals, families, nations and the whole world, particularly today more than at any other time — where are We to seek a remedy, venerable brethren? Can a form of devotion surpassing that to the most Sacred Heart of Jesus be found, which corresponds better to the essential character of the Catholic faith, which is more capable of assisting the present-day needs of the Church and the human race? What religious practice is more excellent, more attractive, more salutary than this, since the devotion in question is entirely directed towards the love of God itself?[119] (Pope Pius XII, Haurietis Aquas, May 15, 1956.)

Pope Pius XII was referring to the false slogans of materialism being spread by Communists sixty-six years ago, but we know only too well that Communist apologists, if not actual Communists, hold the levers of global power today, including here in the United States of America, where many “respected” opinion-makers believe that the time has come for a formal censorship of any speech that is opposed to “democracy,” meaning opposed to the statist/globalist program for the New World Order. The charity of men hath indeed grown cold because of men’s hatred of God, and it is an easy thing to hate His rational creatures if one hates the very Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier.

Linking devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus with devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Pope Pius XII explained that a rekindling of a love for God in the hearts of men would lead to the reconstruction of a just social order on the right principles of the true Faith:

123. Finally, moved by an earnest desire to set strong bulwarks against the wicked designs of those who hate God and the Church and, at the same time, to lead men back again, in their private and public life, to a love of God and their neighbor, We do not hesitate to declare that devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is the most effective school of the love of God; the love of God, We say, which must be the foundation on which to build the kingdom of God in the hearts of individuals, families, and nations, as that same predecessor of pious memory wisely reminds us: “The reign of Jesus Christ takes its strength and form from divine love: to love with holiness and order is its foundation and its perfection. From it these must flow: to perform duties without blame; to take away nothing of another’s right; to guide the lower human affairs by heavenly principles; to give the love of God precedence over all other creatures.”[124]

124. In order that favors in greater abundance may flow on all Christians, nay, on the whole human race, from the devotion to the most Sacred Heart of Jesus, let the faithful see to it that to this devotion the Immaculate Heart of the Mother of God is closely joined. For, by God’s Will, in carrying out the work of human Redemption the Blessed Virgin Mary was inseparably linked with Christ in such a manner that our salvation sprang from the love and the sufferings of Jesus Christ to which the love and sorrows of His Mother were intimately united. It is, then, entirely fitting that the Christian people — who received the divine life from Christ through Mary — after they have paid their debt of honor to the Sacred Heart of Jesus should also offer to the most loving Heart of their heavenly Mother the corresponding acts of piety affection, gratitude and expiation. Entirely in keeping with this most sweet and wise disposition of divine Providence is the memorable act of consecration by which We Ourselves solemnly dedicated Holy Church and the whole world to the spotless Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary.[125] (Pope Pius XII, Haurietis Aquas, May 15, 1956.)

Turn away from the conflicts between the false opposites of the naturalist “left” and “right” that are nothing other than sideshows concocted in the laboratories of hell and designed to convince men that it is through violent confrontations that injustices can be remedied and a sense of “liberty” that has always been licentiousness and not true liberty can be “enjoyed” again.

No, it is only by adherence to our Catholic Faith as we prostrate ourselves before Our Eucharistic King and pledge ourselves to Him through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary to His own Most Sacred Heart that we can find a remedy in the souls of individual men to help them overcome the conflicts and agitations of the moment and thus rise to the heights of personal sanctity.

This world in which we live is passing away. The triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary will be made manifest ‘ere long. We must be focused on the sanctification and salvation of our own immortal souls as we keep our First Friday devotions with fervor and pray Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary every day, including on each First Saturday for the intentions specified by the Mother of God in the Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal, and to Sister Lucia dos Santos in Tuy, Spain.

Put your trust in the Most Sacred Heart of Christ the King and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, praying as many Rosaries each day as one’s state-in-life permits.

Vivat Christus Rex!

Vivat Regina Mariae Immaculate!

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.