"Don't Bother Me Today, Man, I'm on Jupiter"

"Don't bother me today, man, I'm on Jupiter"

"Don't bother me today, man, I'm on Jupiter" is what a student of mine in a state and local government course at Nassau Community College, Garden City, New York, said to me when I asked her during class why she was sleeping on the desk on top of her notebook  in the back of a classroom during the Spring 1983 Semester.

The young lady's pupils were larger than her eyeballs. She was obviously spaced on a combination of hallucinogens, including marijuana, somethin she admitted to me a few weeks later. She was a good student and a very nice person, but she was addicted to drugs as so many young people were then and, sadly, are now. This young lady, who was probably twenty or twenty-one at the time, was a victim of a cultural revoution to which even many baptized Catholics readily surrendered, and I should note, there was more than a handful of students I saw over the years who were wearing sunglasses during class to hide the fact that they in drugged-up stupor. 

So Catholics have gotten so accustomed to cultural trends contrary to God's Holy Laws and thus to the good of their own immortal souls that they have become, at least for the most part, incapable of seeing the world clearly through the eyes of the true Faith and of expressing even the slightest bit of outrage when the latest offense to God is given by the scions of popular culture and/or those in the realm of public policy and electoral politics, no less react at all when outrages are given to God by the scions of the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

An attitude of “ho-hum” greets this or that new descent into the abyss. Some might give a shrug of the shoulder or even grimace a little bit as they ask for extra gravy or more stuffing for their Thanksgiving turkey each year. However, most Catholics in the world today, including most Catholics in the United States of America, have made their peace with the “world,” happy to be immersed in the midst of its profanities and blasphemies.

Some Catholics believe that there is no need to oppose the evils of the day as “progress” must take its place and that it is “enough” for us to be “free” to believe and to worship as we please.

Other Catholics believe that the advances made by pluralism are so irreversible that we must get on with the business of our lives in the world without worrying about things that are, they convince themselves, out of their control to such an extent that it is “useless” even to pray for the miraculous conversion of those steeped in the errors of Modernity and Modernism.

We have seen many traditionally-minded Catholics abandon all efforts to resist the world, plunging headlong into the rot of the popular culture, including dressing their daughters in masculine attire and patronizing the propaganda of the Judeo-Masonic Disney company’s animated features of the past thirty years or so. “Why not live it up, eh.” You don't want to "stand out," do you?

All of this permits the devil to advance his agenda of evil on an incremental basis to such an extent that is imperceptible for the average Catholic to see or to admit.

Even sadder still is that most people today are so distracted by the bread and circuses of this passing world that they are blind to the realities of the disappearance of the myth of “liberty” as it has existed in the modern civil state as they live for “relaxation,” leisure time, carnal pleasure and an endless array of entertainment spectacles that numb the mind and blind the eyes of the soul to any consideration of the supernatural.

Father Frederick Faber, writing in the Creator and the Creature, explained how perniciously the pluralism born of the Protestant Revolution against the Divine Plan that God Himself instituted to effect man's return to Him through the Catholic Church and to order societies rightly according to the binding precepts contained in the Deposit of Faith seeps into the consciousness of men and blinds them to the insidious nature of theological and philosophical errors:

This forgetfulness that we are creatures, which prevails in that energetically bad portion of the world which is scripturally called the world, affects multitudes of persons, who are either less able to divest themselves of the influences of old traditions and early lessons, or are happily less possessed with the base spirit of the world. It leads them to form a sort of religion for themselves which singularly falls in with all the most corrupt propensities of our hearts: a religion which in effect teaches that we can live two lives and serve two masters. Such persons consider that religion has its own sphere, and worldly interests their sphere also, and that the one must not interfere with the other. Thus their tendency is to concentrate all the religion of the week into Sunday, and to conceive that they have thereby purchased a right to a large conscience for the rest of the week. The world, they say, has its claims and God has His claims. Both must be satisfied; God first, and most scrupulously; then the world, not less exactly, though it be indeed secondary. But it is not a "reasonable service" to neglect one for the other. God and the world are coordinate powers, coordinate fountains of moral duty and obligation. He is really the religious man who gives neither of them reason to complain. We must let our common sense hinder us from becoming over-righteous. Men who hold this doctrine, a doctrine admirably adapted for a commercial country, have a great advantage over the bolder men of whom we spoke before. For they enjoy all the practical laxity of unbelievers, without the trouble or responsibility of disbelieving; and besides that, they enjoy a certain good humor of conscience in consequence of the outward respect they pay, in due season and fitting place, to the ceremonies of religion.

Hitherto we have spoken of classes of persons in whom we take no interest, further than the sorrow which all who love God must feel at seeing Him defrauded of His honor, and all who love their fellow-men in seeing so much amiability, so much goodness, with a millstone round its neck which must inevitably sink it in the everlasting deeps. Let us come now to those with whom we are very much concerned; and for whom we have ventured to compose this little treatise. Errors filter from one class of men into another, and appear in different forms according to the new combinations into which they enter. We are all of us more affected by the errors which prevail around us than we really suppose. Almost every popular fallacy has its representative even among the children of faith; and as when a pestilence is raging, many are feeble and languid though they have no plague-spot, so  is it in matters of religion. The contagion of the world does us a mischief in many ways of which we are hardly conscious; and we often injure ourselves in our best and highest interests by views and practices, to which we cling with fatal obstinacy, little suspecting the relationship in which they stand to widely spread evils, which we behold in their naked deformity in other sections of society, and hold up to constant reprobation. The forgetfulness that we are creatures, which produces the various consequences already mentioned, is an error which is less obviously hateful than a direct forgetfulness of God, and consequently it wins its way into holy places where the other would find no admittance, or want hospitality. Good Christians hear conversations around them, catch the prevailing tone of society, read books, and become familiarized with certain fashionable principles of conduct; and it is impossible for their minds and hearts not to become imbued with the genius of all this. It is irksome to be always on our guard, and from being off our guard we soon grow to be unsuspicious. When a catholic enters into intimate dealings with protestants, he most not forget to place his sentries, and to act as if he was in an enemy's country; and this is unkindly work, and as miserable as it is unkindly. Yet so it is. When newspapers tell us that catholicism is always more reasonable and less superstitious when it is in the immediate presence of protestantism, they indicate something that they have observed, namely, a change. Now if our religion be changed by protestantism, we can have little difficulty in deciding whether it has changed for the better or the worse. All this illustrates what we mean. The prevailing errors of our time and country find their way down to us, and corrupt our faith, and lower our practice, and divide us among ourselves. This unstartling error of forgetting that we are creatures is thus not without grave influence upon conscientious catholics; and it is to this point that we are asking your attention. (Father Frederick Faber, The Creator and the Creature, written in 1856 and republished by TAN Books and Publishers in 1978, pp. 27-29.)

These two paragraphs summarize most succinctly how Catholics have come to make their “peace” with the evils represented by the errors of Modernity and Modernism, starting with the Protestant Revolution itself.

The errors flowing the various strains of the Protestant Revolution are hateful in the sight of God.

Yes, true, God alone judges the souls of individual adherents of the Protestant sects, as He alone judges our own immortal souls. Protestantism, however, is evil of its nature. God hates all false religions. He hates all falsehoods. Why? Because theological falsehoods blaspheme Him and make a mockery of His work of Redeeming us by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross.

Protestantism is a revolution against the fact that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ founded but one Church upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, to be the sole repository of the Deposit of Faith, the sole and infallible teacher of all that is contained in that Deposit of Faith, the sole means of human sanctification an salvation on the face of this earth. This is not a "minor" matter.

Protestantism is a revolution against the fact that Divine Revelation consists of both Sacred Scripture and Apostolic or Sacred Tradition, making of each “believer” his own “interpreter" of the "Word," an absurdity that leads to a gazillion different "interpretations as to the meaning of various Scriptural passages and, ultimately, to unbelief itself.

Catholics have nothing to “learn” from Protestantism.

Nothing.

Protestantism gave impetus to a new wave of radical individualism, anticlericalism and semi-Pelagianism in the past five hundred years has made possible the triumph of naturalism in the midst of the world and thus in the hearts and minds of so many hundreds of millions of Catholics yet attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. It has been a relatively easy thing for Catholics who have made these accommodations to the spirit of Protestantism to have acted likewise as the counterfeit church of conciliarism has adopted and implemented much of the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic spirit, starting with the abominable Novus Ordo service. There is no need to do battle with the “world” when its false spirit has been enshrined in what purports to be the Catholic liturgy and is defended in the “official” documents issued by and under the authority of the conciliar “pontiffs.”

The blithe acceptance of the evils of Protestantism has led to the blithe acceptance of evils in popular culture. It is, after all, a relatively easy thing to be sanguine about cultural evils once one has convinced himself that false religions are not hated by God and that the false, blasphemous tenets of these false religions do not pose a grave and immediate threat to the eternal good of souls and to the temporal good of society, making it easier for those who deny entirely the Incarnation of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in Our Lady's Virginal and Immaculate Womb by the power of God the Holy Ghost to be about their demonic business of promoting immodesty of dress, indecency in speech and impurity in thought, word, and action.

The counterfeit church of conciliarism has aided and abetted this sanguine attitude of Catholics concerning the world and the evils abroad in its popular culture, admitting, of course, that a few "peeps," squeaked in the tones of "human dignity" and "human rights" absent any reference at all to the Social Reign of Christ the King, have passed from the lips of conciliar "pontiffs" and their "bishops," especially concerning surgical abortion, albeit without recognizing the fact that social evils protected under cover of law are the precise result of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King wrought by the Protestant Revolt.

Yes, it is an easy thing to accommodate oneself to the prevailing cultural trends once one accepts the "benign" nature of the Protestant Revolt and accepts the pluralistic, religiously indifferentist civil state as a "benefit" to Catholicism rather than a deadly poison.

Thus it is that many of the social evils that came to the surface of popular culture in the 1960s have been "mainstreamed" into daily life. Our immortal souls are bombarded in supermarkets and other retail stores with the horrors of “rock music.” We must put up with this assault upon our senses as shopping is a necessity, although we should not subject our children to this assault if it is possible to do so. We must not subject ourselves to the devil's “music” voluntarily. There are, for example, restaurants that do not play “rock "music” and it is these that should be patronized.

“Rock music,” however, is one of those evils that has been “mainstreamed” in the past seventy years. What was one an eclectic preserve of teenagers and college students that aroused the condemnation of at least a few solid Catholic bishops and priests is now an “accepted norm,” especially as the “baby boomers” of the 1950s and 1960s have become older and serve now as the decision-makers of the corporations that make the marketing decisions, based on the same kind of focus-group polling that has been adapted for use by the organized crime families of naturalism in the political realm, as to what “music” to play in various retail outlets.

As is the case with any other evil, such as Protestantism, that becomes “accepted” over time simply because most people, including most Catholics have come to believe that past judgments were too “harsh” and that we must seek to find the “good” in something that has become so widespread and institutionalized, “rock music” has become “accepted” precisely because most people are used to it after decades of being exposed to it day in and day out without cease.

That which is evil does not become “good” as it is accepted more and more with the passage of time. That which is evil does not become “less evil” simply because other evils have arisen that are said to be “worse” by means of comparison. This is what Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his band of conciliar vipers believe about adultery, fornication and the sin of Sodom and its perverted and ever-mutating vices.

The same is true of the growing acceptance and rather blasé attitudes that have developed even among many Catholics about the use of marijuana. No matter how many people, including libertarians, try to rationalize the use of this substance, principally because of the guilty consciences caused by using it in the past or doing so at present, the smoking of marijuana for so-called "recreational" use remains what it has always been, a Mortal Sin. It is an effort to avoid one’s daily crosses and to “relax” in some kind of alternative universe that is a figment of one’s own deluded and drugged imagination.

The fact that States of Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and the District of Columbia now permit the legal sale, possession and use of so-called "recreational" marijuana shows that the long, gradual process of accepting the use of the cannabis weed as nothing unusual or intrinsically immoral has resulted in an electorate more willing to accept what was unthinkable sixty years ago prior to the arrival of the "Beatles," who helped to popularize this mind-numbing drug.

Indeed, the late Gary Crosby, son of the late Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby, related that his father told him to try “grass” in order to learn how to “relax.” “Der Bingle,” the “Pride of Gonzaga University” in Spokane, Washington, learned about “grass” from Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong. It is no accident that New Orleans, Louisiana, the “birthplace of the blues,” was a hotbed of marijuana use in the second decade of the Twentieth Century after it had first gained acceptance in the city's district of ill-repute in which Louis Armstrong himself had been born in 1901.

Marijuana use in New Orleans was linked from its inception in 1909 with the immoral activity of the selling of human bodies. Thus, it was only logical for New Orleans to serve as one of the cradles of jazz music, whose very sensuality is a celebration of “cool” passivity and the sort of mindless self-indulgence for which marijuana is used and into which it plunges so many of its users into lives wasted in darkened rooms while their intellects are dulled and their wills weakened to commit various other sins. Virtue, the building block of personal sanctity, becomes replaced by mindless self-indulgence and escapism that lowers one's span of attention and is in many instances the “highway” to stronger, even more addictive substances in pursuit of the “high” that becomes the very raison d’etre of daily life. The mortification to worldliness that is so necessary in order to carry one’s crosses—whether heavy or light, big or small—with joy and gratitude as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary has become replaced with endless avenues for self-indulgence and sensual gratification.

Although there are even some traditionally minded Catholics, including clergymen, who believe that the civil state has no business illegalizing marijuana, the truth of the matter is that marijuana stays in the body longer than does alcohol, which is water soluble whereas marijuana is fat soluble, where it is stored, not eliminated, cumulatively. One’s ability to drive a motor vehicle or to perform in school as a student or in one's position of employment becomes dangerously impaired as a result, frequently with deadly results.

To wit, sixteen people died on January 4, 1987, in Chase, Maryland, when the marijuana-influence crew of a Conrail freight train ignored track signals warning them to stop, causing Amtrak passenger train 94 to crash into it. You better believe that the civil government has a role to play in its assurance of public safety by illegalizing such a substance, whose short-term and long-term effects are denied by its advocates but are all too clear in the lives of those who have been maimed or had their loved ones killed in marijuana-related accidents.

Indeed, a recent study emphasized that roads are becoming more dangerous because of the widespread decriminalization and use of the hallucinogenic substance that is marijuana:

Marijuana legalization is killing a lot of people. Not slowly — though some studies suggest that it may be doing that, too — but quickly, in car crashes. It’s one more symptom of the disastrous rush by lawmakers to capitalize on cannabis sales without doing the hard work needed to keep the public safe.

In Canada, which legalized recreational marijuana in 2018, one study found a 475% increase in emergency-room visits for cannabis-related crashes in Ontario between 2010 and 2021. Many more cases likely went undetected, owing to a dearth of reliable testing for driving while high.

In the US, the proportion of motor-vehicle fatalities involving cannabis use soared to 21.5% in 2018, up from 9% in 2000. One analysis found a 10% increase in vehicular deaths, on average, following legalization by states. In California, the increase was 14%; in Oregon, it was 22%.

This suggests that more than 1,000 Americans could be dying annually because of marijuana-related accidents — and that’s just in states where legalization has occurred. Given the ease of transporting the drug across state lines, the real number could be far higher.

The cause of these deaths isn’t just the drug itself. It’s ignorance. A recent study found that about half of marijuana users thought they were OK to drive 90 minutes after inhaling or ingesting the drug, yet their driving performance in a simulated vehicle was as bad as it had been after 30 minutes. The best available evidence suggests that people should wait a minimum of four hours before getting behind the wheel; some experts recommend eight to 12 hours.

That people don’t know this is the fault of governments, which have rushed headlong into legalization without doing the required research or adopting necessary safeguards. In effect, they’re conducting live experiments on their own citizens. To address this unfolding crisis, voters should hold officials accountable for taking two steps: boosting public awareness and developing better detection technology.

The fight against drinking and driving offers a useful precedent. After widespread government-sponsored campaigns helped stigmatize such conduct, drunk-driving fatalities were cut in half. Stronger enforcement also played a part. For a long time, roadside tests were limited to walking in a straight line and other basic exercises. The advent of Breathalyzers made drinkers think twice before getting behind the wheel.

So far, marijuana users don’t face the same disincentive, partly because the technology for roadside testing isn’t as reliable or widespread as it should be. Governments can help overcome this hurdle by supporting basic scientific research into such tools. Fear of arrest is a powerful public-policy lever — that’s why police departments often announce drunken-driving spot checks in advance — but right now, many drivers are getting high with impunity, and the public is paying a high price.

A pharmacologist who has studied the effects of marijuana offered a grim assessment of the state of road safety. In Colorado, where he teaches, traffic fatalities rose by 16% after the drug was legalized, according to one study. “When I’m on the road,” he says, “I assume everybody’s stoned.”

Increasingly, that’s a reasonable assumption.

Of the many egregious mistakes governments have made in legalizing marijuana — including ignoring the drug’s impact on youth brain development, which could be damaging an entire generation — failing to take road safety seriously is among the worst. Until it’s addressed, many more people will be killed, and their families left to wonder what their elected leaders were smoking. (Marijuana Legalization Has Made US Roads More Leathal.)

One sees signs for “CBD” and “Cannabis” all across the country, including in those states where the growing, sale, possession and use of marijuana remains illegal, to entice drivers to go their local dispensaries or, in the case of those too states that have not decriminalized this dangerous drug, to drive across state lines to pick up their stash. Not only have the roads been made more dangerous but there are now more scientific studies in the past that demonstrate the harm marijuana causes of a user’s physical health, especially as it relates to cardiovascular health:

Using marijuana as little as once per month is associated with a higher risk of both heart attack and stroke, according to a large study published Wednesday by researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital. The risks rose sharply the more frequently marijuana was used. 

The paper, which was published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, adds to the growing body of evidence suggesting marijuana may be harmful to the cardiovascular system. 

Scientists analyzed data on nearly 435,000 patients, ages 18 to 74, to see whether there was a link between marijuana use and a higher risk of heart disease, stroke or heart attack. The data came from a behavioral risk factor survey collected from 2016 to 2020 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Compared with people who had never used marijuana, daily cannabis users had 25% higher likelihood of heart attacks and 42% higher risk of strokes. People who used marijuana just once a week had a 3% increased likelihood of a heart attacks and 5% higher risk of strokes during the study time frame.

The study is among the largest to show a connection between marijuana use and cardiovascular health in people who don’t also smoke tobacco, said lead researcher Abra Jeffers, a data scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital. 

Nearly 75% of people in the study reported smoking as the most common way they got high. They also consumed edibles and vaped. The study did not specifically look at the risks of smoking marijuana compared to edibles.  

It’s unclear from the paper whether marijuana directly causes heart attacks and strokes or whether people who are already at risk are more likely to use it. 

Historically, some have dismissed studies looking at marijuana and heart problems because participants often use both tobacco and marijuana products, making it hard to determine which substance is really to blame, Jeffers said.

Robert Page, a clinical pharmacist who specializes in heart disease at the University of Colorado Skaggs School of Pharmacy, is worried about the emerging connections between marijuana consumption and the heart. Page was the lead author of a comprehensive statement on cannabis released by the American Heart Association in 2020.

“I think we’re beginning to see the same things we saw with smoking cigarettes back in the ’50s and ’60s — that this is a signal,” Page said. “I feel like we’re repeating history.”

Ultimately, it will take more rigorous studies to draw any firm conclusion, he said, which would involve following people for years and monitoring their marijuana use. That type of research is difficult to conduct because marijuana is still a Schedule 1 substance under the Controlled Substances Act. 

What if I just use marijuana occasionally? 

The new research found that the risks of heart attacks and strokes became higher the more days per month people used marijuana, which is called a “dose-response relationship.”

“If something is really bad or a toxin, you’d expect more of it to be worse,” said Dr. Deepak Bhatt, the director of Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital in New York, who was not involved with the research. “The fact that there’s a dose response makes it seem like it probably is, in fact, the cannabis that is causing the bad outcome.”

The president of the American Heart Association, Dr. Joseph Wu, the director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute, drew a comparison to other common substances. 

“It’s the same dose response as somebody who smoked tobacco or as somebody who drinks alcohol,” he said. “The more you drink, the more problems you are going to have, because these are toxins.”

Ultimately, the researchers concluded that the people who really should be avoiding marijuana smoking altogether are those with pre-existing heart disease, estimated at 1 in 20 Americans. 

That marijuana is associated with heart problems is a very urgent message for Americans to be aware of, Wu said, as 1 in 5 people over age 12 now report having used marijuana in the last year, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. 

“Just because something’s been legalized doesn’t mean it’s safe,” he said.

Are edibles safer?

Smoking was the most common way cannabis was consumed in the new paper, although edibles are not necessarily safe, either.

“If you force me to answer I would say not smoking is a better way of consuming it,” Bhatt said. “When you smoke things, that makes them more toxic, but that doesn’t mean that we can say it’s definitely safe to consume it as an edible.”

Laboratory studies have shown that THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, can cause an increase in inflammation in the blood vessels, so edibles aren’t necessarily risk-free, Wu said.

“If you’re smoking marijuana it’s probably doing double the damage compared to just using edibles,” Wu said. “When you eat the edible, the THC goes into your body and can cause vascular inflammation. Whereas when you smoke, there is damage from the particulate matter and then the THC gets absorbed into your body, as well.” 

It’s not yet known why smoking marijuana affects the cardiovascular system, but there are a few possibilities, Bhatt said.  

A phenomenon called oxidative stress, an imbalance between free radicals and antioxidants in the body, can cause inflammation and damage to blood vessels. Other reasons could include marijuana’s triggering abnormal heart rhythms or even activating platelets, cells in the body that can make blood more likely to clot, leading to a heart attack or stroke. 

Should young healthy people be concerned?

The paper found that among younger adults, defined as men younger than 55 and women younger than 65, cannabis use was significantly associated with 36% higher combined odds of coronary heart disease, heart attack and stroke, regardless of whether or not they also used traditional tobacco products. 

“I’ve seen it through the years with clinical practice many times where sometimes we bang our heads thinking, ‘Why [is] this person in their 20s, or 30s or 40s [coming] in with a heart attack?” Bhatt said. While it can often be attributed to things like extremely high cholesterol or cocaine use, he said, sometimes there’s only one factor they have in common. 

“The only thing I can find after asking and asking again and again in terms of potential risk factors is marijuana,” he said. “So the smart thing to do would be not to smoke marijuana, but I realize it’s extremely popular and that’s advice that may not be well received by all.” (Marijuana use as little as once per month linked to heart attack and stroke risk in new study. Also see: Marijuana users found to have lead in their blood and urine.)

As one who has always been opposed to the use of marijuana, I have always sought to point out that marijuana was harmful, that it dulls senses, lowers the ability to concentrate, and accustoms one to living a life of morbid self-indulgence.

Furthermore, as John Randolph Webb noted in his portrayal of the fictional Sergeant Joe Friday on the radio and television program he created, Dragnet (1951-1959, 1967-1970), marijuana is the highway to all other hallucinogenic substances. This is so because many users find that it takes higher and higher usage of marijuana to achieve their “high,” thereby making them susceptible to succumb to other hallucinogens that are far more potent and have the capacity for oneself annihilation during a psychotic episode:

Over the last decade of diagnosing countless young patients with new psychotic disorders, one striking result has stuck out for New York City psychiatrist Dr. Ryan Sultan.

“Of all the people I’ve diagnosed with a psychotic disorder,” he said, “I can’t think of a single one who wasn’t also positive for cannabis.” 

Sultan, an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia Irving Medical Center, is one of many experts raising serious concerns about the increasing marijuana use by adolescents and young adults.

And the evidence is growing of marijuana’s association with psychiatric disorders such as depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, especially in young men. 

New research published this month, involving millions of people worldwide over decades, is adding to worries that heavy use of high-potency cannabis and legalization of recreational weed in many U.S. states could exacerbate the nation's mental health crisis in young adults.

“There is a big sense of urgency not just because more people are smoking marijuana, but because more people are using it in ways that are harmful, with higher and higher concentration of THC,” Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), said in an interview. 

One of the studies, from researchers in Denmark in collaboration with the U.S. National Institutes of Health, found evidence of an association between cannabis use disorder and schizophrenia. The finding was most striking in young men ages 21-30, but was also seen in women of the same age. 

The paper, published in the journal Psychological Medicine, looked at data from almost 7 million men and women in Denmark over the course of a few decades to look for a link between schizophrenia and cannabis use disorder. 

The magnitude of the connection between cannabis and schizophrenia for young men surprised study author Volkow, who was expecting the number to be closer to 10%.

“This is worrisome,” she said. 

There are now 22 states that allow recreational use of marijuana, with Minnesota likely to become the next state to legalize it. 

Whether recreational cannabis laws contribute to underage consumption is unclear, but Volkow has made addressing cannabis use among teenagers one of NIDA’s top priorities. Daily marijuana use among young adults has risen to record highs, with more than 1 in 10 of young adults ages 19-30 now reporting daily use, and almost half reporting use within the last year, according to the agency's most recent data.

Another study, led by Sultan and Columbia researchers published earlier this month, found that teenagers who use cannabis only recreationally are two to four times more likely to develop psychiatric disorders, including  depression and suicidality, than teenagers who don’t use cannabis at all.

Because research to date has been observational and doesn’t directly prove cause and effect, the connection between marijuana and psychiatric disorders is controversial. It’s unclear whether people who already have or are developing psychiatric conditions are more likely to turn to cannabis as a way to self-medicate or whether cannabis use triggers mental problems.

Volkow is optimistic that a large ongoing study on adolescent brain development at the National Institutes of Health can help answer this question.

Sultan acknowledged the limitations of the evidence. “It’s sort of this circular feedback where they’re kind of just feeding off each other,” he said. 

Dr. Deepak D’Souza, a psychiatrist at Yale University who has been studying cannabis for 20 years, insists there are too many lines of evidence to ignore. 

“We may be grossly underestimating the potential risks associated with cannabis,” he said. 

Given increasing legalization and rising potency in cannabis products, D’Souza has never been more worried about the mental health effects of cannabis use among youth.

“This is a massive concern,” he said. “We have been woefully inept in educating the public and influencing policy.” 

Is legalization affecting rates of marijuana use?

Early data suggests that in young adults ages 18-25, legalization is leading to higher rates of cannabis use, particularly in Oregon and Washington, according to an analysis published earlier this month in the journal Substance Abuse.

The research, led by researchers from McMaster University in Canada, found the evidence in other age groups a little less clear, and more research is needed to understand how legalization is affecting rates of cannabis use.  

In areas where marijuana becomes legal and easier to access, Volkow’s concern is the ease with which products can be mixed, leading to a high total dose of marijuana consumed. 

One of the biggest issues, she says, is the lack of regulation on the concentration of THC in products.

Marijuana consumed decades ago had concentrations of THC, the main psychoactive ingredient, of 2 to 3%, but cannabis products today can have THC levels as high as 90%.

“That’s not even the case for alcohol as you cannot put more than a certain percent alcohol into liquor,” she said. “The same thing with tobacco cigarettes, you regulate how much nicotine they have. Here, we have no regulation.”

THC potency is significant, Volkow said, because cannabis is more likely to be linked to psychosis with higher doses consumed. 

What age is the most vulnerable?

Research has shown that the human brain is the last organ to fully develop and doesn’t finish until the mid-to-late 20s. That makes adolescents and young adults particularly vulnerable to the effects of cannabis as their brains continue to mature. 

“Really, the ideal time to consider using weed — if you’re going to use it — is 26 or later,” Sultan said. 

People who wait until at least age 26 are much less likely to become addicted or develop mental disorders, said Dr. Sharon Levy, a pediatrician and addiction specialist at Boston Children’s Hospital. 

“The greatest risks are clearly in the adolescent and young adult age range,” she said.

However, people with a family history of a psychotic disorder shouldn’t use cannabis at all, Sultan cautioned

What does cannabis do to the brain?

Although scientists are still learning about the effects of marijuana on developing brains, studies so far suggest marijuana use in teenagers may affect functions such as attention, memory and learning, multiple studies have found.

“It’s somehow interfering with the connections that we use in our brain to distinguish between what’s going on in our heads and what’s going on outside of our heads,” Levy said in reference to the psychotic symptoms that can happen. 

D’Souza added that cannabis use can have serious impacts on the developing brain because of its effects on the endocannabinoid system, a complex signaling system in the brain that marijuana targets. 

“Endocannabinoid systems play an important role in sculpting the brain during adolescence, which is when schizophrenia usually manifests itself,” he said.

Disturbing that system with cannabis use could have “far reaching complex implications on brain development. (Marijuana use linked to mental health risks in young adults Also see High potency marijuana highlights the risk of cannabis-induced psychiatric disorders.)

There is nothing “safe” or “fun” about marijuana, which is harmful to the body and to the soul. It is an addictive substance that robs users of their rationality and leads to immoral conduct of many kinds, including sloth and impurity.

Yes, it is an easy thing to accommodate oneself to the prevailing cultural trends once one accepts the "benign" nature of the Protestant Revolt and accepts the pluralistic, religiously indifferentist civil state as a "benefit" to Catholicism rather than a deadly poison.

Thus it is that many of the social evils that came to the surface of popular culture in the 1960s have been "mainstreamed" into daily life. Our immortal souls are bombarded in supermarkets and other retail stores with the horrors of “rock music.” We must put up with this assault upon our senses as shopping is a necessity, although we should not subject our children to this assault if it is possible to do so. We must not subject ourselves to the devil's “music” voluntarily. There are, for example, restaurants that do not play “rock "music” and it is these that should be patronized.

“Rock music,” however, is one of those evils that has been “mainstreamed” in the past sixty years. What was one an eclectic preserve of teenagers and college students that aroused the condemnation of at least a few solid Catholic bishops and priests is now an “accepted norm,” especially as the “baby boomers” of the 1950s and 1960s have become older and serve now as the decision-makers of the corporations that make the marketing decisions, based on the same kind of focus-group polling that has been adapted for use by the organized crime families of naturalism in the political realm, as to what “music” to play in various retail outlets.

As is the case with any other evil, such as Protestantism, that becomes “accepted” over time simply because most people, including most Catholics have come to believe that past judgments were too “harsh” and that we must seek to find the “good” in something that has become so widespread and institutionalized, “rock music” has become “accepted” precisely because most people are used to it after decades of being exposed to it day in and day out without cease.

That which is evil does not become “good” as it is accepted more and more over the passage of time. That which is evil does not become “less evil” simply because other evils have arisen that are said to be “worse” by means of comparison. This is what Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his band of conciliar vipers believe about adultery, fornication and the sin of Sodom and its perverted and ever-mutating vices.

The same is true of the growing acceptance and rather blasé attitudes that have developed even among many Catholics about the use of marijuana. No matter how many people, including libertarians, try to rationalize the use of this substance, principally because of the guilty consciences caused by using it in the past or doing so at present, the smoking of marijuana for so-called "recreational" use remains what it has always been, a Mortal Sin. It is an effort to avoid one’s daily crosses and to “relax” in some kind of alternative universe that is a figment of one’s own deluded and drugged imagination.

The fact that States of Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Vermont, Virginia, Washington and the District of Columbia now permit the legal sale, possession and use of so-called "recreational" marijuana shows that the long, gradual process of accepting the use of the cannabis weed as nothing unusual or intrinsically immoral has resulted in an electorate more willing to accept what was unthinkable fifty years ago prior to the arrival of the "Beatles," who helped to popularize this mind-numbing drug.

There are a number of other states (Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, and Rhode Island) which have “decriminalized” the possession and use of marijuana to varying degrees, which is, to be honest, simply making it legal on a de facto rather than a de jure basis. Thus, a total of thirty-one states and the District of Columbia have got to pot.

Indeed, the late Gary Crosby, son of the late Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby, related that his father told him to try “grass” in order to learn how to “relax.” “Der Bingle,” the “Pride of Gonzaga University” in Spokane, Washington, learned about “grass” from Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong. It is no accident that New Orleans, Louisiana, the “birthplace of the blues,” was a hotbed of marijuana use in the second decade of the Twentieth Century after it had first gained acceptance in the city's district of ill-repute in which Louis Armstrong himself had been born in 1901.

Marijuana use in New Orleans was linked from its inception in 1909 with the immoral activity of the selling of human bodies. Thus it was only logical for New Orleans to serve as one of the cradles of jazz music, whose very sensuality is a celebration of “cool” passivity and the sort of mindless self-indulgence for which marijuana is used and into which it plunges so many of its users into lives wasted in darkened rooms while their intellects are dulled and their wills weakened to commit various other sins. Virtue, the building block of personal sanctity, becomes replaced by mindless self-indulgence and escapism that lowers one's span of attention and is in many instances the “highway” to stronger, even more addictive substances in pursuit of the “high” that becomes the very raison d’etre of daily life. The mortification to worldliness that is so necessary in order to carry one’s crosses—whether heavy or light, big or small—with joy and gratitude as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary has become replaced with endless avenues for self-indulgence and sensual gratificaition.

Although there are even some traditionally-minded Catholics, including clergymen, who believe that the civil state has no business illegalizing marijuana, the truth of the matter is that marijuana stays in the body longer than does alcohol, which is water soluble whereas marijuana is fat soluble, where it is stored, not eliminated, cumulatively. One’s ability to drive a motor vehicle or to perform in school as a student or in one's position of employment becomes dangerously impaired as a result, frequently with deadly results.

To wit, sixteen people died on January 4, 1987, in Chase, Maryland, when the marijuana-influence crew of a Conrail freight train ignored track signals warning them to stop, causing Amtrak passenger train 94 to crash into it. You better believe that the civil government has a role to play in its assurance of public safety by illegalizing such a substance, whose short-term and long-term effects are denied by its advocates but are all too clear in the lives of those who have been maimed or had their loved ones killed in marijuana-related accidents.

No ill-effects from smoking marijuana?

Sorry, you can save your propaganda from Hell for someone else as I have been opposed to this diabolical trap from the devil ever since it surface “above ground,”  if you will, with the advent of the “Beatles” in the 1960s, and I exaggerate not when I state that my firm, unequivocal opposition to it in high school did not make me popular in the slightest (I seem to have had a problem with that “popularity” business over the course of seventy-two years, six twenty-one days of life.). And, to put it mildly, I was shocked in 1974, five years after graduating from high school, to discover some of the people with whom I had been friendly years before actually used it, smoking it openly in the house of school board member, who was not there at the time. I just could not believe my eyes, and the resultant shock and disapproval, which I expressed in typewritten letters, estranged me from several people for a few years. I may have been an adolescent in the 1960s. However, I was not a participant in the “rock music” and “drug” culture of that era.  

Yes, save your argumentative e-mails on this one as I have no time to waste on those who want to advocate the “harmless” nature of this terrible drug or who want to make a “libertarian” argument for its “decriminalization.” I am completely inflexible, as in totally rigid, on this issue. No compromise. No concessions of any kind. None. Ever. Not one little bit, especially so many people today are drunk, drugged up, doped up or otherwise so immersed in an endless array of pleasures of one sort or another as to be oblivious to the erosion of their own liberties. Indeed, some of these very same people welcomed the plandemic’s “mask up” and lockdown mandates and have lined up to get their gene-altering jabs to accompany the mind-altering nature of their “recreational grass.”

Indeed, a protracted discussion took place between then-United States Representative Stanley Lundine (D-Jamestown, New York) and Ulster County, New York, District Attorney Michael Kavanagh about the relatively new phenomenon of crack cocaine during a debate among candidates for lieutenant governor of the State of New York held at The New York Times building in the Borough of Manhattan in the City of New York, New York, on Tuesday, October 14, 1986. The two went back and forth for what seemed like an eternity. When it came my time to speak as the candidate of the Right to Life Party I simply said that the problem we faced was not crack cocaine, it was the glorification and decriminalization of marijuana, the highway that leads to all other hallucinogenic substances. My opponents had to nod their heads in agreement. A society that loses sight of the Cross will look inevitably to pills and substances to take away the pain of a world that is in the grip of the devil himself. And the devil is, after all, the author of all novelties, seeking to tickle the ears of men by things that look and sound “new” to appeal to their pride and their vanity (see Big Pharm Trumps the Holy Cross).

Oh well, some might say, it's no “sin” to “relax” a little bit.

Relaxation is one thing. Marijuana is by its very nature the antithesis of the Cross of the Divine Redeemer as no one needs to "escape" from his crosses by the uses of a substance that lessens his ability to reason and thus diminishes his capacity to engage in cognitive activities and to make moral choices consonant with the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law.

As noted twelve years now in First-Hand Evidence Of Fraud, many of the priests of the Society of Saint Pius X are, leaving aside their false ecclesiology that has caused its very foundation stones to be shattered in recent years, among the most reliable guides on moral issues today as, unlike others, they have been trained in a systematic manner wherein they can use actual reason rather than rely on the rote memorization of 1950s textbooks, not a few of whose authors were just champing at the bit for Papa Pacelli, Pope Pius XII, to die so that the “envelope” of the novel moral teaching they were pushing as far as was possible then could be pushed to its next phase of "evolution." Here, therefore, are two fine statements about marijuana that were published originally in The Angelus: 

“Neither the effeminate, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards...will possess the kingdom of God” (I Cor. 6:10). Drunkenness is a deliberate excess in the use of intoxicating drink or drugs to the point of forcibly depriving oneself of the use of reason for the sake of gratifying an inordinate desire for such drink and not for the sake of promoting health. This is contrary to the virtue of temperance, and specifically sobriety. Sobriety regulates man’s desire and use of intoxicants, and is vitally necessary for an upright moral life. The evil of intoxication lies in the violence committed against one’s nature by depriving it of the use of reason. He deprives himself of that which makes him specifically human - his ability to think. The drunk, or in this case the drug user, desires this loss of reason because of the feeling of liberation which accompanies it precisely from this lack of control of the will over the reason. It is unnatural, contrary to sleep, which also deprives one of the use of reason but in a natural manner.

Drug use gives an illicit means of escape. Besides being a sin, it also manifests an immaturity on the part of the user. Through an act of violence against himself, he escapes from the responsibility of decision making and control in his life. When this deprivation is complete, e.g., actions totally contrary to normal behavior, incapability of distinguishing between good and evil, etc., it is a grave sin. “In vino veritas,” said the Romans, not without reason. Any state short of complete drunkenness, without sufficient reason, is of itself venially sinful, but even in this case it may be a mortal sin if it causes scandal, injury to health, harm to one’s family, etc. It is important also to note that a man is responsible for all the sinful actions committed while intoxicated which he had, or ought to have, foreseen.

According to Jone-Adelman in Moral Theology, the use of drugs in small quantities and only occasionally is a venial sin if done without sufficient reason. This could be the case, for example, with sleeping pills. Obviously, deprivation of the use of reason through narcotics is to be judged as alcohol. The use of most drugs is complicated by the fact that they are illegal. This also signifies the will of the user to break the law, an offense against social justice. This compounds the sin. The speed with which a drug alters one’s consciousness also aggravates its use. This rapidity risks a greater potential to deprive oneself of the use of reason and thus to pass on to stronger intoxicants for increased effect. Therefore, adding to the violation of the virtue of justice, the grave scandal caused, the grave danger of addiction, and the stronger consciousness-altering ability of marijuana, it is difficult to excuse one of mortal sin. Moreover, experience tells us that its use is frequently an occasion of mortal sin, especially sins of the flesh and the use of narcotic drugs. But to willingly and knowingly place oneself in an unnecessary proximate occasion of mortal sin is to commit a mortal sin. Fr. James Doran, September 1993.

The old text books [on moral theology] do not speak of this new problem of the modern world. However, the immorality of drug abuse can be clearly deduced from the principles which allow an evaluation of the malice of alcohol abuse. The distinction is made between imperfect drunkenness, the fact of making oneself tipsy deliberately, which can only be a venial sin, and perfect drunkenness, which is drinking until one is drunk. This is a mortal sin because a drunken person loses the use of reason. This is St. Thomas Aquinas’s response to the objection that the quantity of wine drunk is but a circumstance, which cannot make a venial sin into a mortal sin:

With regard to drunkenness we reply that it is a mortal sin by reason of its genus: for that a man, without necessity, and through the mere lust of wine, makes himself unable to use his reason, whereby he is directed to God and avoids committing many sins, is expressly contrary to virtue. That it be a venial sin is due to some sort of ignorance or weakness, as when a man is ignorant of the strength of the wine, or of his own unfitness, so that he has no thought of getting drunk, for in that case the drunkenness is not imputed to him as a sin, but only the excessive drink…. (ST, I-II, q. 88, art. 5, ad1)

The consumption of illegal drugs, even those called soft drugs, is comparable not to becoming tipsy on a little wine but to perfect drunkenness. For these drugs have their effect by causing a “high,” that is, an emotional experience when a person escapes from the demands of reality. For a brief period he lives in an unreal, euphoric world. All the other effects, such as relaxation, come as a consequence of this “high,” or unreal euphoria. If this state does not always prohibit all use of reason, it most certainly does always impede the most important use of reason, which St. Thomas just explained to us “whereby he is directed to God and avoids committing many sins.” All drugs deaden the conscience, and obscure the practical judgment as to right and wrong and what we must do. With respect to morality, their effect is consequently equivalent to the removal of the use of reason, and is a practical refusal to direct all of man’s acts to God through reason.

Drug abuse is consequently much worse than the pure seeking of pleasure or relaxation that some claim it to be. It is a denial of the natural and supernatural order, according to which God has created us in His image and likeness that our acts might be ordered to His honor and glory. Moreover, it goes without saying that the abuse of drugs is directly opposed to the Catholic spirit, which spirit of sacrifice, the practical application of the spirit of the cross, is essential to the living of our faith.

As previously mentioned, the principal evil of drug abuse is the destruction of moral conscience. It follows that the atrocious consequences of drug abuse are inseparable from it, and are willed together with the drugs themselves. This includes the breaking of the law in the consumption of drugs; and in the means of obtaining them, such as theft; and in the effort to sell them in turn to others, often minors or children. Other consequences include the incredible self-indulgence which accompanies the almost insatiable desire for always more titillating experiences, sins of blasphemy, the often satanic rock music, and the sins against purity and chastity, which are the consequence of the loss of shame and conscience. Sins against charity and justice abound, such as disobedience to parents and refusal to do one’s duty at school or work, not to mention the bad company-keeping which is the breeding ground of all vices. Long term results are also willed in their cause, and they include such things as emotional and physical addiction, the passage from soft to hard drugs, the damage done to the body and to general health by prolonged drug use, culminating in the “fried” brains of the person who cannot even reason clearly, let alone make a moral judgment. It is a mortal sin to place one’s physical and spiritual health in such proximate danger, even if a person is to pretend that he is immune from this danger and that “it could not happen to me.”

Even the often liberal and ambiguous Catechism of the Catholic Church, published in 1994 in application of the principles of Vatican II, acknowledges this:

The use of drugs inflicts very grave damage on human health and life. Their use, except on strictly therapeutic grounds, is a grave offense. Clandestine production of and trafficking in drugs are scandalous practices. They constitute direct co-operation in evil, since they encourage people to practices gravely contrary to the moral law. (§2291)

This does not, however, exclude the use of narcotic drugs for therapeutic reasons. Their use, under medical supervision, is justified by a sufficiently grave and proportionate reason, even if they do deprive a person temporarily of the use of reason. (Cf. Merkelbach, Summa Theologiae Moralis, II, 925). For it is not the loss of reason which is willed. It is only an indirect consequence, so that there is not necessarily a disorder with respect to the final end of man. The typical example is pain control.

In conclusion, therefore, the use of marijuana, like any hard or soft drug, must be considered a mortal sin. If on occasion some people might be in ignorance as to the gravity of this sin, it is clearly evident that the matter is objectively serious. Consequently, it must be confessed as a mortal sin, and a person is obliged to confess drug abuse under pain of a bad or sacrilegious confession. If he forgot to confess the sin, he must then confess it at the first possible opportunity that he has. The priest who claimed that this was not a mortal sin has fallen into the trap of laxity. Fr. Peter Scott, January 1999 (Is smoking marijuana a sin? What about taking drugs?.)

Why is it that so many traditionally-minded Catholics all across and up and down the vast expanse of the ecclesiastical divide in this time of apostasy and betrayal make excuses for that which is mortally sinful or, even worse yet, deny that such things as smoking marijuana is mortally sinful?

The United States of America has “gone to pot” precisely because it was founded on false, naturalistic, religiously indifferentist, anti-Incarnational and Pelagian principles that destined it to devolve into the sort of abyss prophesied by Pope Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832, and by Pope Pius IX in Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864. No explanation of the triumph of the "pot culture" that ignores this papal wisdom is worth the paper on which it has been written.

We are not here to indulge ourselves and to enter in states of “altered consciousness.”

We are here to save our souls as members of the Catholic Church, which means that we must carry the Cross with love and gratitude as the consecrated slaves of the Divine Redeemer Who hung thereon, Christ the King, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of His Most Blessed Mother, she who stands at the foot of each one of our crosses as she did atop Golgotha and as she does at every true offering of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition, that which is the unbloody re-presentation or perpetuation of that same bloody Sacrifice of the Cross.

The United States of America was placed under the patronage of Our Lady under the title of her Immaculate Conception in 1846, sixteen years after the apparitions of Our Lady to Saint Catherine Laboure and eight years before the solemn proclamation of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception by Pope Pius IX. Our Lady, who was conceived without any stain of Original or Actual Sin, is indeed here to help us in this land of one "accepted" evil after another. We simply need to be heroic in spreading devotion to her so that all men and women will be converted to the true Faith as the fruit of the triumph of her Fatima Message.

We need to pray that all men in this country and around the world will yoke themselves to her Immaculate Heart by means of Total Consecration according to the formula of Saint Louis de Montfort. There will be no talk of “rock music” or indecency or immodesty or marijuana or “gay marriage” or the surgical and chemical assassination of innocent preborn children we would never want to grieve Our Blessed Mother's Immaculate Heart again by means of our sins and by means of being indifferent to the protection of sin in the civil law and its promotion and spread in the popular culture.

Pope Leo XIII explained that we cannot love the world to extent that men love it today and go home to Heaven and that the remedy for the worldliness of Modernity is to be found in Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary:

The third evil for which a remedy is needed is one which is chiefly characteristic of the times in which we live. Men in former ages, although they loved the world, and loved it far too well, did not usually aggravate their sinful attachment to the things of earth by a contempt of the things of heaven. Even the right-thinking portion of the pagan world recognized that this life was not a home but a dwelling-place, not our destination, but a stage in the journey. But men of our day, albeit they have had the advantages of Christian instruction, pursue the false goods of this world in such wise that the thought of their true Fatherland of enduring happiness is not only set aside, but, to their shame be it said, banished and entirely erased from their memory, notwithstanding the warning of St. Paul, "We have not here a lasting city, but we seek one which is to come" (Heb. xiii., 4).

When We seek out the causes of this forgetfulness, We are met in the first place by the fact that many allow themselves to believe that the thought of a future life goes in some way to sap the love of our country, and thus militates against the prosperity of the commonwealth. No illusion could be more foolish or hateful. Our future hope is not of a kind which so monopolizes the minds of men as to withdraw their attention from the interests of this life. Christ commands us, it is true, to seek the Kingdom of God, and in the first place, but not in such a manner as to neglect all things else. For, the use of the goods of the present life, and the righteous enjoyment which they furnish, may serve both to strengthen virtue and to reward it. The splendor and beauty of our earthly habitation, by which human society is ennobled, may mirror the splendor and beauty of our dwelling which is above. Therein we see nothing that is not worthy of the reason of man and of the wisdom of God. For the same God who is the Author of Nature is the Author of Grace, and He willed not that one should collide or conflict with the other, but that they should act in friendly alliance, so that under the leadership of both we may the more easily arrive at that immortal happiness for which we mortal men were created.

But men of carnal mind, who love nothing but themselves, allow their thoughts to grovel upon things of earth until they are unable to lift them to that which is higher. For, far from using the goods of time as a help towards securing those which are eternal, they lose sight altogether of the world which is to come, and sink to the lowest depths of degradation. We may doubt if God could inflict upon man a more terrible punishment than to allow him to waste his whole life in the pursuit of earthly pleasures, and in forgetfulness of the happiness which alone lasts for ever.

It is from this danger that they will be happily rescued, who, in the pious practice of the Rosary, are wont, by frequent and fervent prayer, to keep before their minds the glorious mysteries. These mysteries are the means by which in the soul of a Christian a most clear light is shed upon the good things, hidden to sense, but visible to faith, "which God has prepared for those who love Him." From them we learn that death is not an annihilation which ends all things, but merely a migration and passage from life to life. By them we are taught that the path to Heaven lies open to all men, and as we behold Christ ascending thither, we recall the sweet words of His promise, "I go to prepare a place for you." By them we are reminded that a time will come when "God will wipe away every tear from our eyes," and that "neither mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow, shall be any more," and that "We shall be always with the Lord," and "like to the Lord, for we shall see Him as He is," and "drink of the torrent of His delight," as "fellow-citizens of the saints," in the blessed companionship of our glorious Queen and Mother. Dwelling upon such a prospect, our hearts are kindled with desire, and we exclaim, in the words of a great saint, "How vile grows the earth when I look up to heaven!" Then, too, shall we feel the solace of the assurance "that which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory" (2 Cor. iv., 17).

Here alone we discover the true relation between time and eternity, between our life on earth and our life in heaven; and it is thus alone that are formed strong and noble characters. When such characters can be counted in large numbers, the dignity and well-being of society are assured. All that is beautiful, good, and true will flourish in the measure of its conformity to Him who is of all beauty, goodness, and truth the first Principle and the Eternal Source.

These considerations will explain what We have already laid down concerning the fruitful advantages which are to be derived from the use of the Rosary, and the healing power which this devotion possesses for the evils of the age and the fatal sores of society. These advantages, as we may readily conceive, will be secured in a higher and fuller measure by those who band themselves together in the sacred Confraternity of the Rosary, and who are thus more than others united by a special and brotherly bond of devotion to the Most Holy Virgin. In this Confraternity, approved by the Roman Pontiffs, and enriched by them with indulgences and privileges, they possess their own rule and government, hold their meetings at stated times, and are provided with ample means of leading a holy life and of laboring for the good of the community. They are, are so to speak, the battalions who fight the battle of Christ, armed with His Sacred Mysteries, and under the banner and guidance of the Heavenly Queen. How faithfully her intercession is exercised in response to their prayers, processions, and solemnities is written in the whole experience of the Church not less than in the splendor of the victory of Lepanto. (Pope Leo XIII, Laetitiae Sanctae, September 8, 1893.)

As we pray this day for the conversion of our nation to the true Faith, may we never be tempted to accept yesterday's evils as today's "norms."

May we pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit, giving Our Lady whatever merits we earn by our prayers and sufferings and indulgenced acts and worthy receptions of her Divine Son in Holy Communion so that we can plant a few seeds for the birth of true liberty in the United States of America, the liberty that comes only from the work of Redemption wrought for us by her Divine Son on the wood of the Holy Cross in which she participated fully as our Co-Redemptrix, Mediatrix and Advocate.

Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.

Our Lady of the the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, 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 Balthazar, pray for us.

Saint Anthony of Padua, pray for us.