Exposing the Farce Once and For All

One of the most difficult things for a writer to do is to find new ways of saying the same thing that he has written hundreds of times before.

Although I am very mindful of the fact that readers forget much, if not most, of what they read on a daily basis, especially given the overwhelming amount of material that gets published on the internet on never-ending basis, I am also at a loss to know how to explain to the unconvinced that the American political system is now what it has been from its very beginnings, a gigantic farce of naturalism that is premised upon the falsehoods that men can pursue the common temporal good without acknowledging the Social Kingship of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as It must be exercised by His Holy Catholic Church and that men can be virtuous without belief in, access to and cooperation with Sanctifying Grace. We are merely witnessing the inevitable degeneration of a system based on one false naturalistic principle after another.

A system based on false premises must unravel more and more over the course of time, especially when the world is suffering from a paucity of a superabundance of Sanctifying and Actual Graces as a result of the sacramental barrenness of the false liturgical rites of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. We have now reached such a state of utter moral degradation that it is now considered to be a matter of “civil rights” for men and women who have paid to have their bodies surgically and chemically mutilated to choose which lavatory facility to use. As I have noted for decades now, we cannot fight secularism and all of its attendant evils with secularism. We can only fight secularism with Catholicism. Nothing.

Yes, everything must fall apart absent the Social Reign of Christ the King. Those who do not want to see this by now will never be convinced that this is so, and the Humpty Dumpty egg hatched by Protestantism and its logical offshoot—Judeo-Masonry—that has fallen off the great façade of Modernity can never be put back together again. No, not even by Donald John Trump.

Mind you, this is meant in no way to disparage Donald Trump’s remarkable blasting apart of the political establishment that toppled five former state governors (John Ellis “JEB!” Bush, James Richard Perry, James Gilmore, George Elmer Pataki, Michael Dale Huckabee), two incumbent state governors (Scott Walker, Christopher Christie), one former United States Senator (Richard John Santorum), four incumbent United States Senators (Raphael Edward Cruz, Marco Antonio Rubio, Lindsey Graham, Randal Howard Paul), one former businesswoman (Cara Carleton Sneed Fiorina), and one retired neurosurgeon (Benjamin Solomon Carson) in the past eleven months. As one who has followed politics since the age of five in 1956 as then President Dwight David Eisenhower opposed Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson and holds an earned doctorate in American Political Systems (apart from having run for office three times and participated in two presidential campaigns), I find Donald Trump’s completely unconventional, unscripted successes, accomplished without internal pollsters or seasoned political operatives, to be nothing short of astounding. Trump has taken apart every textbook ever written on the pursuit of an American political party’s presidential nomination. His accomplishment is real and without any kind of precedent.

A Reflection of the Vulgar Times in Which We Live

That having been noted, however, I must reiterate points that have been made on this site many times before in the past few months concerning the fact that the coarseness and vulgarity that Donald John Trump uses so freely in his stream-of-consciousness discourses on current events that pass for “speeches” at his rallies are a reflection of the thoroughly naturalistic world in which we live. Although even many Catholics find Trump’s crude and vulgar language to be “refreshing” and “authentic” characteristics, I am afraid that such “uninhibited” language, no matter how commonly used in private by politicians and their advisers, makes it more acceptable for the average person to use out-and-out profanity in public even within the earshot of children. This is not a cause for celebration, and it is not something that one can say is a minor flaw. It is wrong to think that one needs to resort to vulgarity, crudity, and profanity in order to be “authentic” and “refreshing.”

The rise of vulgarity in our times, however, has been expedited by the manner which many conciliar “bishops” and priests/presbyters have conducted themselves publicly, and it is no exaggeration to state that Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who once boasted of having taught his nephew to use profane language, is actually a more dangerous exponent of vulgarity and coarseness than Donald John Trump, who knows nothing of First or Last Things and is thus ignorant of the fact that he must make an accounting to Christ the King for his use of the gift of speech. Bergoglio has no such excuse.

Indeed, “Pope Francis” is an open rebel against all norms of propriety and decency. He revels in being a rebel. Trump is but a product of the world in which he grew up and a reflection of times in which we live at present. We are thus eyewitnesses to the fulfillment of the following prophetic insight offered by Pope Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos, August 15 1832, concerning what happens when licentiousness of speech and conduct reign supreme in nations:

This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. “But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error,” as Augustine was wont to say. When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin. Then truly “the bottomless pit” is open from which John saw smoke ascending which obscured the sun, and out of which locusts flew forth to devastate the earth. Thence comes transformation of minds, corruption of youths, contempt of sacred things and holy laws — in other words, a pestilence more deadly to the state than any other. Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for wealth, dominion, and glory perished as a result of this single evil, namely immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire for novelty. (Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.)

Donald Trump is an earthy, uninhibited New Yorker. Alas, even New Yorkers are called to follow Christ the King, which is why our speech must reflect the dignity befitting our status as redeemed creatures, not as self-indulgent enablers of a world gone mad.

Saint Alphonsus de Liguori put the matter this way in his sermon for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost:

First Point. The man who speaks immodestly does great injury to others who listen to him.

1. In explaining the 140th Psalm, St. Augustine calls those who speak obscenely “the mediators of Satan," the ministers of Lucifer; because, by their obscene language, the demon of impurity gets access to souls, which by his own suggestions he could not enter. Of their accursed tongues St. James says: "And the tongue is a fire,... being set on fire by hell." (James iii. 6.) He says that the tongue is a fire kindled by hell, with which they who speak obscenely burn themselves and others. The obscene tongue may be said to be the tongue of the third person, of which Ecclesiasticus says: ”The tongue of a third person hath disquieted many, and scattered them from nation to nation." (Eccl. xxviii. 16.) The spiritual tongue speaks of God, the worldly tongue talks of worldly affairs; but the tongue of a third person is a tongue of hell, which speaks of the impurities of the flesh; and this is the tongue that perverts many, and brings them to perdition.

2. Speaking of the life of men on this earth, the Royal Prophet says: "Let their way become dark and slippery." (Ps. xxxiv. 0.) In this life men walk in the midst of darkness and in a slippery way. Hence they are in danger of falling at every step, unless they cautiously examine the road on which they walk, and carefully avoid dangerous steps that is, the occasions of sin. Now, if in treading this slippery way, frequent efforts were made to throw them down, would it not be a miracle if they did not fall? "The Mediators of Satan," who speak obscenely, impel others to sin, who, as long as they live on this earth, walk in the midst of darkness, and as long as they remain in the flesh, are in danger of falling into the vice of impurity. Now, of those who indulge in obscene language, it has been well said: ”Their throat is an open sepulchre." (Ps. v. 11.) The mouths of those who can utter nothing but filthy obscenities are, according to St. Chrysostom, so many open sepulchres of putrified carcasses. ”Talia sunt ora hominum qui turpia proferunt." (Hom, ii., de Proph. Obs.) The exhalation which arises from the rottenness of a multitude of dead bodies thrown together into a pit, communicates infection and disease to all who feel the stench.

3. ”The stroke of a whip," says Ecclesiasticus, "maketh a blue mark; but the stroke of a tongue will break the bones." (Eccl. xxviii. 21.) The wounds of the lash are wounds of the flesh, but the wounds of the obscene tongue are wounds which infect the bones of those who listen to its language. St. Bernardino of Sienna relates, that a virgin who led a holy life, at hearing an obscene word from a young man, fell into a bad thought, and afterwards abandoned herself to the vice of impurity to such a degree that, the saint says, if the devil had taken human flesh, he could not have committed so many sins of that kind as she committed.

4. The misfortune is, that the mouths of hell that frequently utter immodest words, regard them, as trifles, and are careless about confessing them: and when rebuked for them they answer: ”I say these words in jest, and without malice." In jest! Unhappy man, these jests make the devil laugh, and shall make you weep for eternity in hell. In the first place, it is useless to say that you utter such words without malice; for, when you use such expressions, it is very difficult for you to abstain from acts against purity. According to St. Jerome, ”He that delights in words is not far from the act. ” Besides, immodest words spoken before persons of a different sex, are always accompanied with sinful complacency. And is not the scandal you give to others criminal? Utter a single obscene word, and you shall bring into sin all who listen to you. Such is the doctrine of St. Bernard. ”One speaks, and he utters only one word; but he kills the souls of a multitude of hearers." (Serm. xxiv., in Cant.) A greater sin than if, by one discharge of a blunderbuss, you murdered many persons; because you would then only kill their bodies: but, by speaking obscenely, you have killed their souls.

5. In a word, obscene tongues are the ruin of the world. One of them does more mischief than a hundred devils; because it is the cause of the perdition of many souls. This is not my language; it is the language of the Holy Ghost. ”A slippery mouth worketh ruin." (Prov. xxvi. 28.) And when is it that this havoc of souls is effected, and that such grievous insults are offered to God? It is in the summer, at the time when God bestows upon you the greatest temporal blessings. It is then that he supplies you for the entire year with corn, wine, oil, and other fruits of the earth. It is then that there are as many sins committed by obscene words, as there are grains of corn or bunches of grapes. O ingratitude! How does God bear with us? And who is the cause of these sins? They who speak immodestly are the cause of them. Hence they must render an account to God, and shall be punished for all the sins committed by those who hear them. "But I will require his blood at thy hand." (Ezec. iii. 11.) But let us pass to the second point.

Second Point. He who speaks immodestly does great injury to himself.

6. Some young men say: ”I speak without malice." In answer to this excuse, I have already said, in the first point, that it is very difficult to use immodest language without taking delight in it; and that speaking obscenely before young females, married or unmarried, is always accompanied with a secret complacency in what is said. Besides, by using immodest language, you expose yourself to the proximate danger of falling into unchaste actions: for, according to St. Jerome, as we have already said, ”he who delights in words is not far from the act." All men are inclined to evil. "The imagination and thought of man‟s heart are prone to evil." (Gen. viii. 21.) But, above all, men are prone to the sin of impurity, to which nature itself inclines them. Hence St. Augustine has said, that in struggling against that vice”the victory is rare," at least for those who do not use great caution. ”Communis pugna et rara victoria." Now, the impure objects of which they speak are always presented to the mind of those who freely utter obscene words. These objects excite pleasure, and bring them into sinful desires and morose delectations, and afterwards into criminal acts. Behold the consequence of the immodest words which young men say they speak without malice.

7. "Be not taken in thy tongue," says the Holy Ghost. (Eccl. v. 16.) Beware lest by your tongue you forge a chain which will drag you to hell. ”The tongue," says St. James, ”defileth the whole body, and inflameth the wheel of our nativity." (St. James iii. 6.) The tongue is one of the members of the body, but when it utters bad words it infects the whole body, and "inflames the wheels of our nativity ;" it inflames and corrupts our entire life from our birth to old age. Hence we see that men who indulge in obscenity, cannot, even in old age, abstain from immodest language. In the life of St. Valerius, Surius relates that the saint, in travelling, went one day into a house to warm himself. He heard the master of the house and a judge of the district, though both were advanced in years, speaking on obscene subjects. The saint reproved them severely; but they paid no attention to his rebuke. However, God punished both of them: one became blind, and a sore broke out on the other, which produced deadly spasms. Henry Gragerman relates (in Magn. Spec., dist. 9, ex. 58), that one of those obscene talkers died suddenly and without repentance, and that he was afterwards seen in hell tearing his tongue in pieces; and when it was restored he began again to lacerate it.

8. But how can God have mercy on him who has no pity on the souls of his neighbours?”Judgment without mercy to him that hath not done mercy." (St. James ii. 13.) Oh! what a pity to see one of those obscene wretches pouring out his filthy expressions before girls and young married females! The greater the number of such persons present, the more abominable is his language. It often happens that little boys and girls are present, and he has no horror of scandalizing these innocent souls! Cantipratano relates that the son of a certain nobleman in Burgundy was sent to be educated by the monks of Cluni. He was an angel of purity; but the unhappy boy having one day entered into a carpenter’s shop, heard some obscene words spoken by the carpenter’s wile, fell into sin, and lost the divine grace. Father Sabitano, in his work entitled”Evangelical Light," relates that another boy, fifteen years old, having heard an immodest word, began to think of it the following night, consented to a bad thought, and died suddenly the same night. His confessor having heard of his death, intended to say Mass for him. But the soul of the unfortunate boy appeared to him, and told the confessor not to celebrate Mass for him that, by means of the word he had heard, he was damned and that the celebration of Mass would add to his pains. O God! how great, were it in their power to weep, would be the wailing of the angel-guardians of these poor children that are scandalized and brought to hell by the language of obscene tongues! With what earnestness shall the angels demand vengeance from God against the author of such scandals! That the angels shall cry for vengeance against them, appears from the words of Jesus Christ: ”See that you despise not one of these little ones; for I say to you, that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father." (Matt, xviii. 10.)

9. Be attentive, then, my brethren, and guard your selves against speaking immodestly, more than you would against death. Listen to the advice of the Holy Ghost: ”Make a balance for thy words, and a just bridle for thy mouth; and take heed lest thou slip with thy tongue and thy fall be incurable unto death." (Eccl. xxvhi. 29, 30.)”Make a balance" you must weigh your words before you utter them and”a bridle for thy mouth" when immodest words come to the tongue, you must suppress them; otherwise, by uttering them, you shall inflict on your own soul, and on the souls of others, a mortal and incurable wound. God has given you the tongue, not to offend him, but to praise and bless him. ”But, ” says St. Paul, “fornication and all uncleanness, let it not so much as be named among you, as becometh saints." (Ephes. v. 3.) Mark the words”all uncleanness. ” We must not only abstain from obscene language and from every word of double meaning spoken in jest, but also from every improper word unbecoming a saint that is, a Christian. It is necessary to remark, that words of double meaning sometimes do greater evil than open obscenity, because the art with which they are spoken makes a deeper impression on, the mind.  

10. Reflect, says St. Augustine, that your mouths are the mouths of Christians, which Jesus Christ has so often entered in the holy communion. Hence, you ought to have a horror of uttering all unchaste words, which are a diabolical poison. ”See, brethren, if it be just that, from the mouths of Christians, which the body of Christ enters, an immodest song, like diabolical poison, should proceed." (Serm. xv., de Temp.) St. Paul says, that the language of a Christian should be always seasoned with salt. ”Let your speech be always in grace, seasoned with salt. ”(Col. iv. 6.) Our conversation should be seasoned with words calculated to excite others not to offend, but to love God. ”Happy the tongue," says St. Bernard, ”that knows only how to speak of holy things!" Happy the tongue that knows only how to speak of God! brethren, be careful not only to abstain from all obscene language, but to avoid, as you would a plague, those who speak immodestly. When you hear any one begin to utter obscene words, follow the advice of the Holy Ghost: ”Hedge in thy ears with thorns: hear not a wicked tongue." (Eccl. xxviii. 28.) "Hedge in thy ears with thorns" that is, reprove with zeal the man who speaks obscenely; at least turn away your face, and show that you hate such language. Let us not be ashamed to appear to be followers of Jesus Christ, unless we wish Jesus Christ to be ashamed to bring us with him into Paradise.(Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, Sermon for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost.)

No matter Donald John Trump’s remarkable thrashing of the Republican political establishment, committed as it has long been to conserving the welfare state, plundering the national treasury, refusing to protect the innocent preborn or to secure our borders, and to engaging in one needless, immoral, unjust and unconstitutional war after another, none of this will matter to him at the moment of his Particular Judgment as he is accountable for the example that he sets for others. A presidential candidate whose throat is an open sepulcher in public helps to reinforce the acceptability of profanity and indecency that is so widespread today in every aspect of what is called “popular culture.” The innocence of children is thus further undermined and reinforced.

No one can "make America great again" by speaking profanely.

So sorry to be that proverbial ant at the picinic again. 

The Bottom Line is the Bottom Line

Donald Trump’s appeal to the over ten million voters, including many tens of thousands of voters who are either registered Democrats or unaffiliated with any political party, has hinged principally on the money, the money, the money, and, of course, the money.

Yes, Trump served as a lightning rod to highlight the reckless disregard both for existing laws and for the public health and safety of American citizens that has been exhibited by President Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro and his enablers in the organized crime family of the false opposite of the naturalist “right,” the Republican Party, represented by the waves of migrants entering the United States of America illegally, and he has denounced the unjust, immoral and unconstitutional wars and military actions that have been waged by the likes of George Walker Bush and Obama/Soetoro. Additionally, Trump’s denunciation of such surrenders of American national sovereignty represented by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has struck a responsive chord of support with many Americans, especially as more and more American jobs have been shifted to other countries in this hemisphere and around the world.

In doing this, of course, Donald John Trump has shown himself willing to blow up the pretense of “opposition” political parties in Washington, District of Columbia, as each is in the grip of Wall Street financiers, K Street lobbyists, bankers and other special interests that have consummate contempt for the economic well-being of American citizens or the national security and sovereignty of any country, including the United States of America.

Trump has thus tapped into a motherlode of anger and resentment that has been boiling for a long time among thirty to forty percent of the nation’s voters, including many who are either unemployed or underemployed.

This is all undeniably true.

Alas, the economic bottom line is really the only thing that matters to Donald John Trump as he has been a businessman his entire life. Money is what has mattered to him.

It is because Donald John Trump’s lifelong focus has been on economic issues that his initial response to the needless controversy generated by a bill in the State of North Carolina that would require those who believe that they have had their gender “changed” by means of surgical and chemical mutilation to use public bathrooms of the gender with which they were born was one of opposition. As a complete bottom-line secularist, Donald John Trump cannot imagine why anyone would want to suffer the effects of an economic boycott waged by the fascistic cabal of homosexuals, lesbians, bisexuals and mutants. Making money is the ultimate raison d’etre for Donald John Trump. He is simply an American secularist.

It is because I am an impoverished broken-record of a writer that I will remind the few readers of this site that true national greatness has nothing to do with the acquisition, retention and increase of material wealth as ends that define human existence and a nation’s very identity:

What, then, is true national greatness? We answer, that nation is greatest in which man may most easily and effectually fulfil the true and proper end of man. The nation, under the point of view we here consider the subject, is in the people. Its greatness must, then, be in the greatness of the people. The people are a collection or aggregation of individuals, and their greatness taken collectively is simply their greatness taken individually. Consequently the greatness of a nation is the greatness of the individuals that compose it. The question of national greatness resolves itself, therefore, into the question of individual greatness. The greatness of the individual consists in his fulfilling the great ends of his existence, the ends for which Almighty God made him and placed him here. No man is truly great who neglects life's great ends, nor can one be said in truth to approach greatness any further than he fulfils them.

In order, then, to determine in what true national greatness consists, we must determine in what consists true individual greatness; and in order to determine in what true individual greatness consists, we must determine what is the true end of man; that is, what is the end to which Almighty God has appointed man, and which he is while here to labor to secure. What, then, is the end of man?  For what has our Maker placed us here? To what has he bidden us aspire? Were we placed here merely to be born and to die,-to live for a moment, continue our species, toil, suffer, drop into the grave to rot, and be no more for ever? If this be our end, true greatness will consist in living for this life only, and in being great in that which pertains to this life. The greatest man will be he who succeeds best in amassing the goods of this world, in securing its honors and luxuries, or simply in multiplying for himself the means of sensual enjoyment. In a word, the greatest man will be he who most abounds in wealth and luxury.

We mean not to say, that, in point of fact, wealth and luxury, worldly honors and sensual gratifications, are the chief goods of even this life; but simply that they would be, if this were our only life, if our destiny were a destiny to be accomplished in this world. It is because this world is not our home, because we are merely travellers through it, and our destination is a world beyond it, that the life of justice and sanctity yields us even here our truest and most substantial pleasure. But confine man to this life, let it be true that he has no destiny beyond it, and nothing could, relatively to him, be called great or good, not included under the heads of wealth and luxury. Nothing could be counted or conceived of as of the least value to him that does not directly or indirectly minister to his sensual enjoyment. No infidel moralist has ever been able, without going out of his own system, or want of system, to conceive of any thing higher, nobler, more valuable, than sensual pleasure.

But this life is not our only life, and our destiny is not accomplished here. The grave is not our final doom; this world is not our home; we were not created for this world alone; and there is for us a life beyond this life. But even this, if we stop with it, does not answer our question. We may conceive of a future life as the simple continuation of our present natural life, and such the future life is conceived to be by not a few among us, who nevertheless flatter themselves that they are firm believers in the life and immortality brought to light through the Gospel. Every being may be said to have a natural destiny or end, which its nature is fitted and intended to gain. The Creator, in creating a being with a given nature, has given that being a pledge of the means and conditions of fulfilling it, of attaining to its natural end. Man has evidently been created with a nature that does not and cannot find its complete fulfilment in this life. He has a natural capacity for more than is actually attainable here. In this capacity he has the promise or pledge of his Maker that he shall live again.

The promises of God cannot fail. Man therefore must and will live again. But this is only the pledge, so to speak, of a natural immortality, and reveals to us only a natural destiny. It is only a continuation of our natural life in another world. The end we are to labor for, and the means we are to adopt to gain it, must be precisely what they would be in case our life were to terminate at the grave. Our future life being still a natural life, what is wisest and best for that portion we are now living would be wisest and best for that portion we are hereafter to live. Hence, what is wisest and best for time would be wisest and best for eternity.

Hence it is that we find so many who, though professing belief in a future life, judge all things as if this life were our only life. They look to the future life only as the continuation of the present, and expect from it only the completion of their natural destiny. They agree in all their moral judgments, in all their estimates of the worth of things or of actions, with those who believe in no future life at all. They profess to hope for a future life, but live only for time; because their future life is to be only a continuation of time. Hence they say, as we ourselves were for years accustomed to say, He who lives wisely for time lives wisely for eternity; create a heaven here, and you will have done your best to secure your title to a heaven hereafter.

Hence it is that the morality of many who profess to be Christians is the same which is adopted and defended by infidels. This is so obviously the case, that we not unfrequently find men who call themselves Christians commending downright unbelievers in Christianity as good moral men, and who see no reason why the morality of the infidel should not be the same in kind as the morality of the Christian. Hence it is supposed that morality may be taught in our schools, without teaching any peculiar or distinctive doctrine of Christianity. Morality, we are told, is independent of religion, and not a few regard it as sufficient without religion. So common has this mode of thinking and speaking become amongst us, that we heard the other day a tolerably intelligent Catholic, who would by no means admit himself to be deficient in the understanding or practice of his Catholic duties, say, that, if a man were only a good moral man, he did not care what was his distinctive religious belief. Many who go further, and contend that religion is necessary to morality, contend for its necessity only as a sort of police establishment. It is necessary, be cause the natural sanctions of the moral law are not quite sufficient to secure obedience, and religion must be called in by its hopes and fears to strengthen them.

Now all this is perfectly consistent and right, if it be true that man has only a natural destiny. We ought, in such a case, to judge all things which concern us precisely as if this were our only life. Religion could be of no value further than it strengthened the police, kept people from picking one another's pockets or cutting one another's throats. But man's destiny is not natural, but supernatural. Almighty God created him with a specific nature, but not for an end in the order of that nature, or to be attained by its simple fulfilment. He created him to his own image and likeness, but appointed him to a supernatural destiny,-to an end above what is attainable by the fulfilment of his nature,- to an end not promised in his nature, and which is not be stowed as the reward of fulfilling it. This end is to know and love God; but in a sense far higher than we can know and love him by our natural powers, and as he is now beheld through a glass, darkly, or seen dimly through the medium of his works, as we see the cause in the effect. It is to see him face to face, and to know and love him with a knowledge and love the same in kind, though not in degree, with which God knows and loves himself ;-this is the end for which man was intended, and which it is made his duty and his high privilege to seek. But this end surpasses the utmost capacity of our nature, and requires not only a supernatural revelation of God, but the supernatural elevation of our nature itself. It consists in our being made partakers of the divine nature in an ineffable sense, and in a sense above that in which we partake of it in being created after the image and likeness of God. Hence, St. Peter says, "By whom [Jesus Christ] he hath given us very great and precious promises, that by these you may be made partakers of his divine nature." So also St. John :-" We are now the sons of God, and it hath not yet appeared what we shall be. We know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; because we shall see him as he is."

This fact in these times is overlooked. Men have wished to rationalize the Gospel, to find a philosophic basis for the mysteries of faith. In attempting this, they have labored to bring the whole of divine revelation, within the domain of reason, and have been led to exclude, as no part of it whatever they found themselves unable to bring within that domain. Reason is necessarily restricted to the order of nature, and can in no instance, of itself, go out of that order. Hence, revelation has come very widely to be regarded as only a republication of the natural law, as at best 'only a running commentary on it, designed simply to explain the natural order, and not to reveal any thing above it.

Men who claim to be Christians, and even ministers of the Gospel, everywhere abound, who have no faith in the supernatural order, scarcely a conception of it. We spent nearly two hours the other day trying to enable a Protestant minister, and him by no means a weak or ignorant one, even to conceive of the supernatural; but in vain. So perverted had his mind become by the false theologies of modern times, that he could attach no meaning to the assertion, "There is a supernatural order." He could use the word supernatural, but it had no meaning for his mind not within the order of nature. Thousands are in the same sad condition. To them nature is all, and all is nature. Indeed, the word nature itself has no definite meaning for them. If a man by a word raise the dead, it is natural; if Moses smite the rock and living waters gush forth, it is natural,-all by a natural power, a natural law. Travelling in the same direction, they lose themselves in a wilderness of absurdities.

Natural laws cease to be laws imposed on nature, laws she must obey, and from which she cannot withdraw herself, and become forces, agents, creators. It is not strange, then that they lose sight of the supernatural destiny of man, and look only for a natura1 destiny, to be obtained not as a reward for obedience to grace, but as the natural consequence of the cultivation or development of our natural powers.  Read the writings of the celebrated Dr. Channing, or of the school which he founded or to which he was attached, and you shall never find a single recognition of the supernatural order, properly so called,-any allusion to a supernatural destiny. The highest end you will find presented is that to which we may attain by the unfolding of our higher nature, of our natural sentiments of love and reverence. The school goes so far as to contend that our nature is susceptible of an unbounded good, and that our natural sentiments of love and reverence are capable of an infinite expansion. Yet these are rational Christians, and they boast of their reason! They talk of the absurdities of Catholic theology, and see no absurdity in supposing that a finite nature may be infinitely expanded, or that a nature can be something more than it is without any thing super-natural.

But this by the way. The true end for which man is to live is the supernatural end to which we are appointed, the beatitude which God hath promised to all that love and serve him here. His true end is not the fulfilment of nature, but what the sacred Scriptures term "eternal life"; and "This is life eternal, that they may know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." We cannot know God, without loving him. Hence we say, the end of man is to know and love God. But to know him intuitively, as he knows himself; for we are to see him as he is, -not as he appears through the medium of his works, but as he is in himself. We cannot thus know him naturally, for thus to know him exceeds the power of the highest possible created intelligence. We must be like him, before we can see him as he is,-be made, in a supernatural sense, partakers of his divine nature. To know him intuitively as he is in himself, is, however, the glorious destiny to which we are appointed, and to which we may attain, if we will. A more glorious destiny we cannot desire. In it we possess God himself, who is the sovereign good. Even here we find our highest good in knowing the truth and loving goodness, dim as is our view of the one, and feeble as is our hold of the other. What must it be, then, when we come to behold, by the light of glory, our God face to face, with no cloud intervening to obscure his infinite beauty, no distance between us and his ineffable love? Well may it be said, "Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive what our God hath prepared for them that love him." He will reward them with no inferior, no created good; but will give them himself, will himself be their portion for ever.

But this supernatural destiny, since it is supernatural, is not naturally attainable. We may cultivate all our natural powers, we may fill up the highest and broadest capacities of our nature, realize the highest ideal, and yet be infinitely, -we use the word in its strict sense,-infinitely below it. It is not attained to by "self-culture," by the development and exercise of our highest natural powers, including even the boasted sentiments of love and reverence. It is nothing that is due, or ever can be due, to our nature. It is a gift, and can be obtained only as bestowed. But it will be bestowed only on the obedient, and is bestowed as the reward of obedience. Our destiny is eternal life, and the condition of obtaining it is obedience. Obedience is not, as some of the sects teach, the end for which we were made. We were made not that we might obey God, but that we might possess God, and we obey him as the condition of possessing him. (National Greatness) 

Orestes Brownson was singularly devoted to Our Lady, explaining in an essay the social effects of devotion her (Moral nd Social Influence of Devotion to Mary) as he knew that the Mother of God had showered great graces upon him to convert to Catholicism. Brownson seemed to have absorbed the entirety of the Church's Social Teaching at the moment of his conversion to the Faith in 1844. Brownson's understanding that the true measure of national greatness is the measure by which a citizenry advances in sanctity and is thus better to able to pursue the common temporal good in light of man's Last End, the possession of the glory of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity, was, of course but a precise summary of the Church's teaching.

Donald Trump does not understand any of this.

Why should he?

So few Americans, including Catholics, understand one word of what Orestes Brownson wrote one hundred seventy years ago this year, and Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his fellow conciliar revolutionaries reject it outright.

This is why the presumptive Republican nominee will continue to pay as little heed to the daily slaughter of the innocent preborn by chemical or surgical means as the supposedly pro-life “champions” of past campaigns (George Herbert Walker Bush, George Walker Bush, John Sidney McCain III, Willard Mitt Romney). These great midgets of past natualistic circuses ran away from the "moral issues" as fast as they could once they got the nomination. Trump simply didn't discuss the life issues much at all except in debates and, confusedly, in interviews (see The Republican Waffle House on Defending the Innocent Preborn, part one and The Republican Waffle House on Defending the Innocent Preborn, part two.) It is thus rather interesting to see these hypocrites choose not to attend the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, in two months to protest the nomination of Doanald John Trump, who agrees with them on a number of issues. Some of these past losers might even endorse the professional liar named Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton.  Trump, a man who does not understand morality even on a natural level, has exposed this farce once and for all, and that is no small accomplishment.

Accomplishment or not, however, Trump, if elected, will govern as he has campaigned, which means that none of the “moral issues” are on the top of a putative President Donald John Trump’s agenda for his first one hundred days:

While professing some surprise at his success, Mr. Trump increasingly sounds like a man who thinks he knows where he will be eight months from now, and the unrivaled power he will hold. He talked of turning the Oval Office into a high-powered board room, empowering military leaders over foreign affairs specialists in national security debates, and continuing to speak harshly about adversaries. He may post on Twitter less, but everyone will still know what he thinks.

“As president, I’ll be working from the first day with my vice president and staff to make clear that America will be changing in major ways for the better,” Mr. Trump said in a telephone interview on Saturday. “We can’t afford to waste time. I want a vice president who will help me have a major impact quickly on Capitol Hill, and the message will be clear to the nation and to people abroad that the American government will be using its power differently.”

But Mr. Trump pledged in the interviews to deliver on his campaign promises, even if they prove disruptive or explosive.

On his first day in office, he said, he would meet with Homeland Security officials, generals, and others — he did not mention diplomats — to take steps to seal the southern border and assign more security agents along it. He would also call the heads of companies like Pfizer, the Carrier Corporation, Ford and Nabisco and warn them that their products face 35 percent tariffs because they are moving jobs out of the country. Democrats and some Republicans have warned that financial markets would react poorly and that Mr. Trump’s protectionist stances might plunge the country into recession, but he insisted that trade is “killing the country” and “the markets would be fine.”

“Bilateral talks with Mexico would start pretty quickly on the wall, and I would have chief executives into the Oval Office soon, too,” he said. “The Oval Office would be an amazing place to negotiate. It would command immediate respect from the other side, immediate understanding about the nation’s priorities.”

As for which foreign leader he would call first as president, he said “they would not necessarily be a priority.”

“We have to take a tougher stand with foreign countries,” Mr. Trump said. “We’re like the policemen of the world right now. So I wouldn’t be calling them up right away and getting more entangled.”

For good or ill, he would command the nation’s attention unlike any modern president, and not simply because of his penchant for redecorating in gold and renaming planes and buildings after himself. (For the record, he said he had no ambitious renovation plans.) (Trump's Firs One Hundred Days in the White House.)

Donald John Trump’s entire fortune has been built on shrewd deal-making, which involves a good deal of negotiating. He believes that this would be an advantage if he is unable to overcome the currently prevailing conventional wisdom, namely, that he cannot defeat Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton on November 8, 2016, and becomes the forty-fifth president of the United States of America:

But Trump has not been entirely disingenuous with his supporters.

He has repeatedly emphasized throughout the campaign that he believes in negotiation and compromise in governance -- playing up his own deal-making abilities and slapping down his then-rival Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for favoring ideological purity over consensus-building.

"Compromise is not a dirty word, but we have to get a much better part of the compromise," Trump told CNN's Anderson Cooper in February.

And when he took heat from the right over a report claiming he suggested in an off-the-record meeting with The New York Times that his immigration views are more flexible than the hardline stances he has adopted, Trump didn't entirely refute the allegation.

"Everything is negotiable," he said. (How Donald Trump is Morphing Into a General Election Candidate.)

No, moral truth and its defense are never negotiable.

Catholicism is the one and only foundation of social order. Nothing else. And that's a truth that is completely non-negotiable even though a supposed "pope" believes in religious indifferentism.

Exposing the Farce Once and For All

All of this having been noted, though, Donald John Trump, aided by the specter of a President Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, has stripped away the pretense that this presidential election cycle involves any desire to restore legal protection to the innocent preborn. As noted just above, Trump has accomplished what those in the past (Robert Joseph Dole, Jr., George Walker Bush, John Sidney McCain III, Willard Mitt Romney) who believed themselves to be shackled by the “pro-life” position that they had taken for purposes of political expediency could only dream about doing when they ran for president.

That is, Trump has so marginalized the life issues that it would be entirely unsurprising to see him say during the course of the general election campaign and in his three debates with former First Lady/United States Senator/United States Secretary of State Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton that he is not in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade, that while he is “pro-life,” the law is the way it is and that it is up to the courts to decide what, if anything to do with the issue.

Trump has never been tied to the so-called National Right to Life Committee and its political action committee the way that careerists Republicans have been in the past forty years, and he knows that the base of his political support transcends “single issues” to such an extent that otherwise intelligent human beings are willing to suspend whatever disagreements they have with him to keep Madame Clinton out of the White House. That is, Trump has a freedom of movement, if you will, that Dole, Bush (pick either, Pappy or Dubya), McCain or Romney would have liked to have had in their own campaigns, admitting that each ran away from the issue during their general election campaigns.

This is a long way of saying that no Catholic in his right mind can claim that the election for president of the United States of America that will take place on Tuesday, November 8, 2016, is about restoring legal protection to the innocent preborn. It is not. The current election will be openly what all the others have been without too many people realizing was the case. The current election, you see, will be about the money, the money, the money, and the money. It’s also about the money. Did I tell you that before?

Indeed, one of the reasons that Trump thrashed the baptized Catholic named Raphael Edward Cruz was that the latter’s supposed base of support among Protestant “evangelicals” found themselves more attracted to Trump’s authenticity than to Cruz’s supposed pro-life “constitutionalism.” Cruz discovered that the so-called “conservative” base he thought was his for the taking is not as large a percentage of the voting bloc as he believed it to be. Trump’s “populism” had far broader appeal among Republican voters that Cruz’s “conservative” orthodoxy (which included, of course, support for contraception and the slicing and dicing of innocent preborn babies in the “hard cases,” to say nothing of his adamant support for the Zionist State of Israel). Donald John Trump’s candidacy proved beyond question that there is no great “conservative” majority ready to lay claim to the country again. Those who voted for him just want to “win.”

Whether Donald John Trump will win the White House in six months, two days (say hey, today is the eighty-fifth birthday of Willie Howard Mays) is anyone’s guess. Most of the well-paid pundits who kept saying that Trump could not win the Republican presidential nomination are saying now that Clinton will win in landslide, aided and abetted as she will be by many high-profile establishment Republicans and by most of the conciliar “bishops” of the United States of America (and Jorge may find it hard to resist adding fuel to the campaign fire by saying something along the lines of it would be great for a woman to be elected to the American presidency) and their claque of far-left socialist policy advisers. Trump could, however, defy the odds once again and win the White House, but, noting a few differences, some of them major, between his presidency and that of Clinton the Sequel, his policies on Federal interference in our daily lives, especially as pertains to education policy, will be quite indistinguishable from that of the woman who has contempt for everything and everyone but the visage she sees in the mirror every morning. Homeschooling parents should have great concerns no matter who is elected in six months, two days.

No matter who wins, though, the devil is the ultimate winner as more and more people become more and more convinced that it is necessary to subordinate even a meek articulation of the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law to the exigencies of various secular saviors. No country ever “wins” with naturalism. It is because of naturalism, which has arisen because of the Protestant Revolution’s overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King, that we are facing the problems that exist at this time.

The hour is late for the United States of America.

Over sixty million babies have been killed by surgical means in the past forty-nine years since the State of California legalized so-called “therapeutic abortions,” a bill that was signed into law by Governor Ronald Wilson Reagan, and since other states permitted abortion-on-demand at various stages of pregnancy in the years prior to the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton.

Countless hundreds of millions of other babies have been killed by all manner of chemical and mechanical abortifacients.

Untold numbers of human beings have been dispatched by means of the medical-industry’s manufactured money-making myth of “brain death” so that the vital organs of living human beings can be snatched to provide what is said to be the “gift of life” to others

Public indoctrination (referred to by most as “public education”) programs have helped to create and nurture sentiments of Anti-Theism to such an extent that a sizable number of young Americans today have no religious affiliation whatsoever, a product both of Modernity and of Modernism, to be sure.

Indecency, immodesty and perversity are celebrated openly.

Crimes of government-sponsored economic injustice by corporations and banks have kept large numbers of working Americans in poverty and made it impossible for others to get jobs.

Government regulations have placed a stranglehold on small-business owners.

De facto socialized medicine has turned the American health-care industry into even more of monstrous maze of bureaucracy than it was before ObamaCare become the law of the land six years ago.

Actual crimes against persons and property are excused because they are committed by those who believe that the color of their skin indemnifies them from the laws of God the just laws of men.

This country has a great price to pay for its crimes against Christ the King that have laid waste the souls of so many both here and around the world.

Sure, Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton would do lots of terrible things as president of the United States of America. She is completely unqualified to serve in this nation’s highest office for no other reason than she supports the slaughter of the innocent preborn without any kind of restriction whatsoever. A President Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton will force our daughters to register with the Selective Service (although Donald Trump, who is very influenced by the policies that exist in Israel, also might very well listen to the advice of those generals who want this to become a reality next year), and she will seek to eradicate opposition voices and to regulate the internet even more than Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro has done. She will be pro-active in promoting perversity and penalizing those who speak out against it.

Please, I want to remind younger readers, some of whom might think that I want to elect this habitual liar and shameless pro-abort to the American presidency, that I wrote hundreds of articles for The Wanderer in the 1990s lambasting the Clintons. I am not indifferent to the dangers of Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton. To point out the reality of Donald John Trump’s secularism is not in any way to overlook or to minimize the evils that would be perpetrated by the wife of the man whose administration persecuted pro-life Americans and that permitted the marketing of the human pesticide, RU-486, the French abortion pill.

What I do want to point out is that our system is one gigantic diabolical trap that is designed to convince truly good and patriotic citizens to swallow higher and higher and higher doses of a supposedly “lesser evil” to prevent a “greater evil” from having its way. In the end, though, evil wins in such a diabolical trap, and the end result of evil, no matter its degrees and the various masks the adversary uses to disguise it, is a greater and greater toleration of ever higher doses of evil.

As I noted in my two-part video series last month, people are free to do whatever they want, but one thing that I hope readers of this site will do is to recognize the man with the orange hair and the loose tongue is not going to be our friend in the White House. I understand full well the reasons why people support Donald John Trump. I find it hard, though, to understand how so many Catholics do so with enthusiasm. I, for one, can never be enthusiastic about one who believes that “Planned Parenthood does good things” and that one can be “pro-life” “with exceptions” or that “everything is negotiable.”

Pope Leo XIII put matters this way in Tametsi Futura Prospicientius, November 1, 1900:

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

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

As Silvio Cardinal Antoniano noted in the Sixteenth Century:

The more closely the temporal power of a nation aligns itself with the spiritual, and the more it fosters and promotes the latter, by so much the more it contributes to the conservation of the commonwealth. For it is the aim of the ecclesiastical authority by the use of spiritual means, to form good Christians in accordance with its own particular end and object; and in doing this it helps at the same time to form good citizens, and prepares them to meet their obligations as members of a civil society. This follows of necessity because in the City of God, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, a good citizen and an upright man are absolutely one and the same thing. How grave therefore is the error of those who separate things so closely united, and who think that they can produce good citizens by ways and methods other than those which make for the formation of good Christians. For, let human prudence say what it likes and reason as it pleases, it is impossible to produce true temporal peace and tranquillity by things repugnant or opposed to the peace and happiness of eternity. (Silvio Cardinal Antoniano, as quoted by Pope Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)

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.

As Pope Pius XI noted in Casti Connubii, December 31, 1929:

Those who hold the reins of government should not forget that it is the duty of public authority by appropriate laws and sanctions to defend the lives of the innocent, and this all the more so since those whose lives are endangered and assailed cannot defend themselves. Among whom we must mention in the first place infants hidden in the mother's womb. And if the public magistrates not only do not defend them, but by their laws and ordinances betray them to death at the hands of doctors or of others, let them remember that God is the Judge and Avenger of innocent blood which cried from earth to Heaven. (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, December 30, 1930.)

Today is the Feast of Saint John the Evangelist before the Latin Gate. Although it was not God’s will for the only bishop who remained faithful to Him during His Passion and Death to die a martyr’s death, Saint John the Evangelist was willing to do so as he was plunged into a cauldron of boiling oil at the site of the future Roman archbasilica built in his honor, the Basilica of San Giovanni di Laterano, which is the cathedral of a true pope in his capacity as the Bishop of Rome. Saint John the Evangelist, by then an old man during the reign of Emperor Domitian, emerged from the cauldron of boiling oil stronger than when he had been placed into it, convincing Domitian to send him into exile on the Island of Patmos.

We must be willing to die a martyr’s death, if only the white or the dry martyrdom of humiliation, to defend the Faith. And to this end, of course, we must call upon the help of the Queen of Martyrs, Our Lady, especially by means of using the spiritual weapon that is her Most Holy Rosary to keep us close to her as we are clothed in the garment of her Brown Scapular and adorned with her Miraculous Medal. The graces which she sends us daily from the Treasury of Grace won for us by her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, are sufficient helps to remain strong in the Catholic Faith, not the false religion of conciliarism, until the end. Never doubt that this is so. Never.

This time of chastisement will pass. The Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary will be made manifest.  

True, we may not be alive to witness this triumph. We can, however, plant the seeds for it by our patient endurance of the crosses of the moment as we make whatever sacrifice necessary and endure whatever calumny, humiliation and hardship that is required in order to make no concessions to falsehoods, whether of Modernity or Modernism, of any kind at any time for any reason.

The final victory belongs to Our Lady’s Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart as she manifests a true restoration when a true pope consecrates Russia with all of the bishops of the world to her in fulfillment of Our Lady’s Fatima Message.  

It is important therefore to give all of the penances and sufferings and humiliations of this present life through that same Immaculate Heart to the Most Sacred Heart of her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

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 Beloved, 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.