Jorge Mario Bergoglio Would Have Urged Catholics to "Dialogue" with Diocletian, part two

Although fast-breaking events in a world gone mad occupy the attention of so many these days, the purpose of this website is to help those who access it to see the world more clearly through the eyes of the true Faith without becoming overwrought with the histrionics into which so many Catholics, no matter where they may fall along the vast expanse of the ecclesiastical divide during this time of apostasy and betrayal, become so engrossed as they lose sight of all supernatural perspective and thereby exhibit little if any understanding that God has known from all eternity that we would be living at this time and that the graces His Co-Equal, Co-Eternal Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, won for us during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross are more than sufficient for us to suffer well as His consecrated slaves through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. While I still write about the madness of a world gone mad and will do so yet again after this commentary is completed, I take a much longer view of things than many other commentators who are obsessed with the here and now.

This particular commentary continues a survey of some of our more recent true popes responded to attacks on the Faith in general and upon believing Catholics in particular.

It should be noted at the outset that the decisions made by a true Successor of Saint Peter on matters of discipline and diplomacy are not protected by the charism of Papal Infallibility. Popes can be bad judges of character and place their trust in cardinals, bishops, and priests who are unworthy of it, and they can make bad decisions about how to respond to various threats made against Holy Mother Church’s liberties and attacks upon individual Catholics. Although Catholics are not free to publicly criticize a pope during his lifetime, which is why Pope Leo XIII issued Epistola Tua, June 17, 1885, and Est Sane Molestum, December 17, 1888, when he was being criticized by French royalists because of his policy of rapprochement with the French Third Republic, it is possible for Catholic historians to review such decisions after a pope’s death. Pope Leo XIII’s use of diplomacy to deal with Otto von Bismarck and the leaders of the anticlerical French Third Republic, to say nothing of his trust in Cardinal Mariano Rampolla, whose longtime personal secretary, Giacomo della Chiesa, became Pope Benedict XV, who temporized Pope Saint Pius X’s firmness against Modernism, has been the subject of much historical debate since his, Pope Leo’s death. Similarly, Pope Pius XI’s trust in the “good intentions” of Plutarco Elias Calles in Mexico, which he came to regret bitterly, and Pope Pius XII’s personnel decisions have been the subject of much discussion and debate over the years.

Thus, as noted just above, Pope Leo XIII, trained in the Holy See’s diplomatic service, believed that the French Third Republic was a legitimate government to which French Catholics had an obligation to accept even though it had come to power after the French Revolution of 1871 during which the Archbishop of Paris, Georges Darboy, was executed:

18. And how are these political changes of which We speak produced? They sometimes follow in the wake of violent crises, too often of a bloody character, in the midst of which preexisting governments totally disappear; then anarchy holds sway, and soon public order is shaken to its very foundations and finally overthrown. From that time onward a social need obtrudes itself upon the nation; it must provide for itself without delay. Is it not its privilege — or, better still, its duty — to defend itself against a state of affairs troubling it so deeply, and to re-establish public peace in the tranquillity of order? Now, this social need justifies the creation and the existence of new governments, whatever form they take; since, in the hypothesis wherein we reason, these new governments are a requisite to public order, all public order being impossible without a government. Thence it follows that, in similar junctures, all the novelty is limited to the political form of civil power, or to its mode of transmission; it in no wise affects the power considered in itself. This continues to be immutable and worthy of respect, as, considered in its nature, it is constituted to provide for the common good, the supreme end which gives human society its origin. To put it otherwise, in all hypotheses, civil power, considered as such, is from God, always from God: “For there is no power but from God.”[9]

19. Consequently, when new governments representing this immutable power are constituted, their acceptance is not only permissible but even obligatory, being imposed by the need of the social good which has made and which upholds them. This is all the more imperative because an insurrection stirs up hatred among citizens, provokes civil war, and may throw a nation into chaos and anarchy, and this great duty of respect and dependence will endure as long as the exigencies of the common good shall demand it, since this good is, after God, the first and last law in society.

20. Thus the wisdom of the Church explains itself in the maintenance of her relations with the numerous governments which have succeeded one another in France in less than a century, each change causing violent shocks. Such a line of conduct would be the surest and most salutary for all Frenchmen in their civil relations with the republic, which is the actual government of their nation. Far be it from them to encourage the political dissensions which divide them; all their efforts should be combined to preserve and elevate the moral greatness of their native land.

21. But a difficulty presents itself. “This Republic,” it is said, “is animated by such anti-Christian sentiments that honest men, Catholics particularly, could not conscientiously accept it.” This, more than anything else, has given rise to dissensions, and in fact aggravated them…. These regrettable differences would have been avoided if the very considerable distinction between constituted power and legislation had been carefully kept in view. In so much does legislation differ from political power and its form, that under a system of government most excellent in form legislation could be detestable; while quite the opposite under a regime most imperfect in form, might be found excellent legislation. It were an easy task to prove this truth, history in hand, but what would be the use? All are convinced of it. And who, better than the Church, is in position to know it — she who has striven to maintain habitual relations with all political governments? Assuredly she, better than any other power, could tell the consolation or sorrow occasioned her by the laws of the various governments by which nations have been ruled from the Roman Empire down to the present. (Pope Leo XIII, Au Milieu des Sollicitudes, February 16, 1892.)

Pope Leo XIII made a distinction between the acceptance of the fact of a particular government and a rejection of any false principles upon which it might be based and upon which it might operate, noting in particular the falsehood that is the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic principle of “separation of Church and State” that has been accepted as virtuous by the conciliar revolutionaries:

We shall not hold to the same language on another point, concerning the principle of the separation of the State and Church, which is equivalent to the separation of human legislation from Christian and divine legislation. We do not care to interrupt Ourselves here in order to demonstrate the absurdity of such a separation; each one will understand for himself. As soon as the State refuses to give to God what belongs to God, by a necessary consequence it refuses to give to citizens that to which, as men, they have a right; as, whether agreeable or not to accept, it cannot be denied that man’s rights spring from his duty toward God. Whence if follows that the State, by missing in this connection the principal object of its institution, finally becomes false to itself by denying that which is the reason of its own existence. These superior truths are so clearly proclaimed by the voice of even natural reason, that they force themselves upon all who are not blinded by the violence of passion; therefore Catholics cannot be too careful in defending themselves against such a separation. In fact, to wish that the State would separate itself from the Church would be to wish, by a logical sequence, that the Church be reduced to the liberty of living according to the law common to all citizens….It is true that in certain countries this state of affairs exists. It is a condition which, if it have numerous and serious inconveniences, also offers some advantages — above all when, by a fortunate inconsistency, the legislator is inspired by Christian principles — and, though these advantages cannot justify the false principle of separation nor authorize its defense, they nevertheless render worthy of toleration a situation which, practically, might be worse.

29. But in France, a nation Catholic in her traditions and by the present faith of the great majority of her sons, the Church should not be placed in the precarious position to which she must submit among other peoples; and the better that Catholics understand the aim of the enemies who desire this separation, the less will they favor it. To these enemies, and they say it clearly enough, this separation means that political legislation be entirely independent of religious legislation; nay, more, that Power be absolutely indifferent to the interests of Christian society, that is to say, of the Church; in fact, that it deny her very existence. But they make a reservation formulated thus: As soon as the Church, utilizing the resources which common law accords to the least among Frenchmen, will, by redoubling her native activity, cause her work to prosper, then the State intervening, can and will put French Catholics outside the common law itself. . . In a word: the ideal of these men would be a return to paganism: the State would recognize the Church only when it would be pleased to persecute her. (Pope Leo XIII, Au Milieu des Sollicitudes, February 16, 1892.)

Pope Leo XIII’s trust in the willingness of the French Third Republic’s leaders to work with believing Catholics proved to be misplaced, causing his successor, Pope Saint Pius X, to issue two different encyclical letters, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906, and Une Fois Encore, January 6, 1907, within eleven months of each other following the French law of separation in 1905 that violated both the spirit and the letter of the Concordat to which Pope Leo XIII had made reference in Au Milieu des Sollictudes.

No matter his solicitude towards the French Third Republic, Pope Leo XIII was very militant in his opposition to the anti-clerical government of the Kingdom of Italy to such an extent that, contrary to his exhortation to French Catholics to participate in the affairs of their republic, he banned Catholics from voting in Italian elections and from cooperating in any way with the anticlerical Masons who had overthrown the Papal States two decades earlier:

The war began by the overthrow of the civil power of the Popes, the downfall of which, according to the secret intentions of the real leaders, afterwards openly avowed, was, under a political pretext, to be the means of enslaving at least, if not of destroying the supreme spiritual power of the Roman Pontiffs. — That no doubt might remain as to the true object of this warfare, there followed quickly the suppression of the Religious Orders; and thereby a great reduction in the number of evangelical laborers for the propagation of the faith amongst the heathens, and for the sacred ministry and religious service of Catholic countries. — Later, the obligation of military service was extended to ecclesiastics, with the necessary result that many and grave obstacles were put to the recruiting and due formation even of the secular Clergy. Hands were laid upon ecclesiastical property, partly by absolute confiscation, and partly by charging it with enormous burdens, so as to impoverish the Clergy and the Church, and to deprive the Church of what is necessary for its temporal support and for carrying on institutions and works in aid of its divine apostolate. This the sectaries themselves have openly declared. To lessen the influence of the Clergy and of clerical bodies, one only efficacious means must be employed: to strip them all their goods, and to reduce them to absolute poverty. So also the action of the State is of itself all directed to efface from the nation its religious and Christian character. From the laws, and from the whole of official life, every religious inspiration and idea is systematically banished, when not directly assailed. Every public manifestation of faith and of Catholic piety is either forbidden or, under vain pretenses, in a thousand ways impeded.-From the family are taken away its foundation and religious constitution by the proclaiming of civil marriage, as it is called; and also by the entirely lay education which is now demanded, from the first elements to the higher teaching of the universities, so that the rising generations, as far as this can be effected by the State, have to grow up without any idea of religion, and without the first essential notions of their duties towards God. This is to put the ax to the root. No more universal and efficacious means could be imagined of withdrawing society, and families, and individuals, from the influence of the Church and of the faith. To lay Clericalism (or Catholicism) waste in its foundations and in its very sources of life, namely, in the school and in the family: such is the authentic declaration of Masonic writers. (Pope Leo XIII, Dall’Alto Dell’Apostolico Seggio, October 15, 1890.)

Brief Interjection:

As indulgent as Pope Leo XIII was to the leaders of the French Third Republic, men who believed in the exact same errors as the Masonic anti-clerical leaders of the Kingdom of Italy, he was unstinting in his explicit enumeration of the evils that Masonry and its diabolical spirit had wrought in his homeland. These evils are universal in nature, perhaps none more so that state-sponsored efforts to “cancel” public expressions of the Catholic Faith and to stigmatize those who attempt to use their Faith as the foundation of public policy which Pope Leo had summarized as follows in the paragraph above: “Every public manifestation of faith and of Catholic piety is either forbidden or, under vain pretenses, in a thousand ways impeded.” This is true in all so-called “civilized” nations of the Western world and it is being practice in a virulent form today by the Red Chinese and by Daniel Ortega’s thugs in Nicaragua while Jorge Mario Bergoglio says nothing in the midst of open persecutions against Catholics.

Pope Leo XIII understood that what was happening in his beloved Italy (and was also happening in France) would provide a model for the rest of the world:

This description applies to the United States of America today just as much as it did to Italy one hundred thirty-two years ago.

Pope Leo XIII, who had condemned the use of boycotting in Ireland to gain independence from England and urged Catholics in Spain to cooperate with the authorities there, was so concerned about the situation in Italy that he issued Custodi de Quella Fede, December 8, 1892, to amplify his opposition to the Masonic schemes in his native land that existed also in France, Spain, Germany, and Portugal.

The following two paragraphs explain the social ruin to which must befall men and their nations when the license of error and the banishment of the true Faith from public life provide the basis of governments and public policy:

6. We do not wish to exaggerate the masonic power by attributing to its direct and immediate action all the evils which presently preoccupy Us. However, you can clearly see its spirit in the facts which We have just recorded and in many others which We could recall. That spirit, which is the implacable enemy of Christ and of the Church, tries all ways, uses all arts, and prevails upon all means. It seizes from the Church its first-born daughter and seizes from Christ His favored nation, the seat of His Vicar on earth and the center of Catholic unity. To see the evil and efficacious influence of this spirit on our affairs, We have more than a few fleeting indications and the series of facts which have succeeded themselves for thirty years. Proud of its successes, the sect herself has spoken out and told us all its past accomplishments and future goals. It regards the public powers as its instruments, witting or not, which is to say that the impious sect boasts as one of its principal works the religious persecution which has troubled and is troubling our Italy. Though often executed by other hands, this persecution is inspired and promoted by masonry, in an immediate or mediate, direct or indirect manner, by flattery or threats, seduction or revolution.

7. The road is very short from religious to social ruin. The heart of man is no longer raised to heavenly hopes and loves; capable and needing the infinite, it throws itself insatiably on the goods of this earth. Inevitably there is a perpetual struggle of avid passions to enjoy, become rich, and rise. Then we encounter a large and inexhaustible source of grudges, discords, corruptions, and crimes. In our Italy there was no lack of moral and social disorders before the present events — but what a sorrowful spectacle we see in our days! That loving respect which forms domestic harmony is substantially diminished; paternal authority is too often unrecognized by children and parents alike. Disagreements are frequent, divorce common. Civil discords and resentful anger between the various orders increase every day in the cities. New generations which grew up in a spirit of misunderstood freedom are unleashed in the cities, generations which do not respect anything from above or below. The cities teem with incitements to vice, precocious crimes, and public scandals. The state should be content with the high and noble office of recognizing, protecting, and helping divine and human rights in their harmonious universality. Now, however, the state believes itself almost a judge and disowns these rights or restricts them at will. Finally, the general social order is undermined at its foundations. Books and journals, schools and universities, clubs and theaters, monuments and political discourse, photographs and the fine arts, everything conspires to pervert minds and corrupt hearts. Meanwhile the oppressed and suffering people tremble and the anarchic sects arouse themselves. The working classes raise their heads and go to swell the ranks of socialism, communism, and anarchy. Characters exhaust themselves and many souls, no longer knowing how to suffer nobly nor how to redeem themselves manfully, take their lives with cowardly suicide.

8. Such are the fruits which the masonic sect has borne to us Italians. And after that it yearns to come before you, extolling its merits towards Italy. It likewise yearns to give Us and all those who, heeding Our words, remain faithful to Jesus Christ, the calumnious title of enemies of the state. The facts reveal the merits of this guilty sect toward our peninsula, “merits” which bear repeating. The facts say that masonic patriotism is no less than sectarian egotism which yearns to dominate everything, particularly the modern states which unite and concentrate everything in their hands. The facts say that in the plans of masonry, the names of political independence, equality, civilization, and progress aimed to facilitate the independence of man from God in our country. From them, license of error and vice and union of faction at the expense of other citizens have grown. The easy and delicious enjoyment of life by the world’s fortunate is nurtured in the same source. A people redeemed by divine blood have thus returned to divisions, corruptions, and the shames of paganism. (Pope Leo XIII, Custodi di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892.)

The license of error and union of faction have indeed grown while men and their nations have become characterized by the sorts of divisions and corruptions that demagogues such as Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., seek to exploit and to use as justification for the suppression of dissent while totalitarianism is imposed in the name of “saving” the demigod of democracy.

Quite unlike the conciliar “popes,” who have preached “solidarity” with the merchants of error and have treated false religions with respect and familiarity, Pope Leo XIII warned the Catholics of Italy to avoid precisely what the conciliar revolutionaries have endorsed and practiced with ready abandon:

15. Everyone should avoid familiarity or friendship with anyone suspected of belonging to masonry or to affiliated groups. Know them by their fruits and avoid them. Every familiarity should be avoided, not only with those impious libertines who openly promote the character of the sect, but also with those who hide under the mask of universal tolerance, respect for all religions, and the craving to reconcile the maxims of the Gospel with those of the revolution. These men seek to reconcile Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the state without God.

16. Every Christian should shun books and journals which distill the poison of impiety and which stir up the fire of unrestrained desires or sensual passions. Groups and reading clubs where the masonic spirit stalks its prey should be likewise shunned. (Pope Leo XIII, Custodi di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892.)

This is one of the best proofs that the counterfeit church of conciliarism cannot be the Catholic Church as it has made its peace with the precepts of the revolution and have indeed sought to “reconcile Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the State without God.”

Additionally, longtime readers of this website know that Pope Leo XIII went to great lengths in Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895, to condemn the framework of Church-State relations in the United States of America and to condemn the heresy of Americanism in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899, which is nothing than an effort to reconcile “Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the State without God.”

Lest critics assert that Pope Leo XIII’s Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895, contained uncritical praise of the Constitution of the United States of America, it is important to note yet again that His Holiness only noted that there was no overt hostility to the Faith and that the American republic was well-ordered at that time. He was not endorsing the American scheme of religious neutrality, noting very specifically that the growth of the Catholic Church in the United States of America was the result of the working of the fecundity of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, not the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America:

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

The late Dr. Justin Walsh understood James Cardinal Gibbons' 1887 sermon in the Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere for exactly what it was: heresy in the making. Dr. Walsh explained in an article in The Angelus magazine how Pope Leo XIII's Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895, was a complete repudiation of the Gibbons view of religious liberty:

It was clear by 1895 that Americanist views were incompatible with orthodox Catholicism. In the spiritual realm [Bishop John] Keane was hell-bent on fostering interdenominational congresses. In the temporal realm Ireland, and to a lesser extent Gibbons, had peculiar penchants for meddling in things better left alone by Churchmen. In such a situation action by Rome was inevitable. It came on January 6 when Leo XIII addressed Longinqua Oceani to American bishops.

The Pope began by noting that the United States had a "good Constitution" and as a result Catholicism was unhindered, protected alike by law and the impartial administration of justice. Nonetheless the Holy Father warned...:

...it would be an error to conclude that America furnishes an example of the ideal condition for the Church or that it is always lawful and expedient that civil and religious affairs should be disjoined and kept apart....

According to the Pope, in a formal letter addressed to all American bishops, it would be an error to say that religious liberty and the separation of Church and State were beneficial to the Catholic Church. In explicit refutation of Gibbons's notion that American liberty caused the Church to "blossom like a rose," the Pope asserted that if the Catholic religion "is safe among you and is even blessed with increase" it was "entirely due to the divine fruitfulness of the Church." He concluded tellingly that "the fruit would be still more abundant if the Church enjoyed not only liberty but the favor of...laws and...protection of the public power."13

Few, if any, heeded the Holy Father's warnings. They redoubled their efforts, with immediately dire consequences for Denis O'Connell and John Keane. O'Connell fell first when, in the summer of 1895, he was removed as rector of the North American College. His cohorts unsuccessfully defended him, although Gibbons did succeed in keeping him in Rome as rector of the Cardinal's titular church. From this vantage point O'Connell became "a kind of liaison officer of the American hierarchy, and more particularly its left wing" until he returned to the US in 1903. Catholic liberals claim that "the suppositious liberalism of the Catholic University" was responsible for the dismissal in 1896 of John J. Keane. In fact the liberalism of neither the CUA nor its rector was "suppositious." As the California Volksfreund noted, "It was clear enough from the beginning that Americanism was interwoven with the plan for the...University." This newspaper called instead for something that Keane could never provide: "a Catholic University with Catholic professors [where] the doctrine of the Catholic, and not of an American Church, is taught. (Dr. Justin Walsh, Heresy Blossoms Like a Rose.)

As has been noted on this site many times, whatever framework of order existed under the Constitution of the United States of America was bound to collapse over the course of time. This is especially the case as it was the Actual Graces that flowed out into the world from the Masses offered by countless thousands of true priests that upheld as much social order and comity that existed prior to the spigot of such graces being shut off as a result of the liturgical barrenness of the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service.

Moreover, Pope Leo XIII explained later in Longiqua Oceani, which contained subtle rebukes on various points, that the American bishops had to teach his encyclical letters on the civil state and human liberty that he knew were not being taught from Catholic pulpits or in Catholic schools, colleges or universities:

15. As regards civil affairs, experience has shown how important it is that the citizens should be upright and virtuous. In a free State, unless justice be generally cultivated, unless the people be repeatedly and diligently urged to observe the precepts and laws of the Gospel, liberty itself may be pernicious. Let those of the clergy, therefore, who are occupied with the instruction of the multitude, treat plainly this topic of the duties of citizens, so that all may understand and feel the necessity, in political life, of conscientiousness, self restraint, and integrity; for that cannot be lawful in public which is unlawful in private affairs. On this whole subject there are to be found, as you know, in the encyclical letters written by Us from time to time in the course of Our pontificate, many things which Catholics should attend to and observe. In these writings and expositions We have treated of human liberty, of the chief Christian duties, of civil government, and of the Christian constitution of States, drawing Our principles as well from the teaching of the Gospels as from reason. They, then, who wish to be good citizens and discharge their duties faithfully may readily learn from Our Letters the ideal of an upright life. In like manner, let the priests be persistent in keeping before the minds of the people the enactments of the Third Council of Baltimore, particularly those which inculcate the virtue of temperance, the frequent use of the sacraments and the observance of the just laws and institutions of the Republic. (Pope Leo XIII, Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895.)

To amplify this point, it should be pointed out again that the Governor of the State of New York, Alfred Emanuel Smith, responded as follows in 1927 when he had heard that a Protestant lawyer, Charles Marshall, who was very well-acquainted with papal encyclical letters on the civil state even though he rejected their content and authority entirety, had written an article stating that Smith, who was considering a second bid for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party in 1928, was bound to obey Pope Pius XI’s encyclical letter on the Social Kingship of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Quas Primas:

“What the hell is an encyclical?” (Vatican II and American Politics.)

When informed of the teachings contained in those encyclical letters that were critical of the religiously neutral civil state and unfettered civil liberty, Smith wrote a response to Marshall’s article that was mostly the work of the decorated Catholic priest, Father Francis Duffy, who had served with valor as a military chaplain during World War I but was nonetheless a firm Americanist:

Al Smith’s response to Charles Marshall appeared in the next issue of The Atlantic Monthly under the title “Catholic and Patriot: Governor Smith Replies.” The words were Smith’s, but the ideas were Duffy’s. To be on the safe side, Judge Proskauer first showed the text to Cardinal Patrick Hayes, who read it and pronounced it “good Catholicism and good Americanism.” Marshall had raised the issue of the teaching in papal encyclicals. “By what right do you ask me to assume responsibility for any statement that may be made in any encyclical letter?” With transparent sincerity, he added: “I and all my children went to a parochial school. I never heard of any such stuff being taught or of anybody who claimed that it was.” (Vatican II and American Politics.)

Pope Leo XIII knew what he was doing when he wrote Longiqua Oceani thirty-two years before Smith’s response to Charles R. Marshall in The Atlantic Monthly, a response that was very similar to then United States Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s famous speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on September 12, 1960, the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary.

Yet it is that the text of Longiqua Oceani reiterated Pope Leo XIII’s concern, expressed in Immortale Dei, on November 1, 1885, that Catholics in public life refuse to treat their Faith as a “private” matter. Moreover, Pope Leo reminded the American bishops to warn Catholics of the dangers of reading non-Catholic newspapers and journals of opinion, which today would extend as well to neoconservative columnists and commentators who combine a supposed concern for limited government with full-throated support for the murderous policies of the State of Israel. His Holiness also reiterated and applied to the United States of America the warnings he had issued to Catholic writers and journalists in Epistola Tua, June 17, 1885, and Est Sane Molestum, December 17, 1888, to obey their bishops:

Let them, however, seriously reflect that their writings, if not positively prejudicial to religion, will surely be of slight service to it unless in concord of minds they all seek the same end. They who desire to be of real service to the Church, and with their pens heartily to defend the Catholic cause, should carry on the conflict with perfect unanimity, and, as it were, with serried ranks, for they rather inflict than repel war if they waste their strength by discord. In like manner their work, instead of being profitable and fruitful, becomes injurious and disastrous whenever they presume to call before their tribunal the decisions and acts of bishops, and, casting off due reverence, cavil and find fault; not perceiving how great a disturbance of order, how many evils are thereby produced. Let them, then, be mindful of their duty, and not overstep the proper limits of moderation. The bishops, placed in the lofty position of authority, are to be obeyed, and suitable honor befitting the magnitude and sanctity of their office should be paid them. Now, this reverence, "which it is lawful to no one to neglect," should of necessity be eminently conspicuous and exemplary in Catholic journalists. For journals, naturally circulating far and wide, come daily into the hands of everybody, and exert no small influence upon the opinions and morals of the multitude. (Pope Leo XIII, Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895.)

In other words, the spirit of the “resist while recognize” movement has both Gallicanist and Americanist roots. To quote the late Melvin Allen Israel, better known as “Mel Allen” (even those who rooted against the incarnation of all evil in the world, the New York Yankees, respected the broadcasting skills of Mel Allen in his prime in the 1950s and early-1960s), “How ‘bout that, sports fans.”

The American bishops, of course, did not take Pope Leo XIII’s subtle but nevertheless clear rebukes in Longiuqa Oceani with any degree of seriousness, which is why Pope Leo XIII wrote Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae to James Cardinal Gibbons, the Americanist Archbishop of Baltimore, Maryland, between 1877 and 1921, in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899, to explain that Catholics in this country faced dangers of a more subtle but nonetheless grave kind as those that had been faced by Catholics who lived during periods of overt persecution and martyrdom:

But, beloved son, in this present matter of which we are speaking, there is even a greater danger and a more manifest opposition to Catholic doctrine and discipline in that opinion of the lovers of novelty, according to which they hold such liberty should be allowed in the Church, that her supervision and watchfulness being in some sense lessened, allowance be granted the faithful, each one to follow out more freely the leading of his own mind and the trend of his own proper activity. They are of opinion that such liberty has its counterpart in the newly given civil freedom which is now the right and the foundation of almost every secular state. (Pope Leo XIII, Apostolical Letter to James Cardinal Gibbons, Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, January 22, 1899.)

In other words, Pope Leo XIII understood that Catholics were being converted by the ethos of Americanism to view Holy Mother Church through the eyes of the world rather than to view the world through the eyes of the Holy Faith even though they did not realize that this was the case, making the matter all the graver to souls and even for the common temporal good of the nation itself. The Americanist bishops believed that there had to be an “accommodation” with the spirit of the world, a point, of course, that has been made on this site endless numbers of times and is the thesis of volume one of Conversion in Reverse: How the Ethos of Americanism Converted Catholics.)

Pope Leo XIII’s condemnation of the errors of Modernity was firm no matter his indulgence towards those errors as they manifested themselves in France as he trusted in the ability of Catholics to work within the framework of the Third Republic to be a force for mitigating the anticlerical spirit there.

Ironically, Pope Leo XIII’s successor, Pope Saint Pius X, was more indulgent of the situation in Italy and more condemning of the one in France that he had been.

Pope Saint Pius X reversed Pope Leo XIII’s ban on Catholics voting in Italian elections according to the judgments of their diocesan bishops as he emphasized the importance of Catholic Action to restore all things in Christ the King:

7. For Catholic Action to be most effective it is not enough that it adapt itself to social needs only. It must also employ all those practical means which the findings of social and economic studies place in its hands. It must profit from the experience gained elsewhere. It must be vitally aware of the conditions of civil society, and the public life of states. Otherwise it runs the risk of wasting time in searching for novelties and hazardous theories while overlooking the good, safe and tried means at hand. Again, perhaps it may propose institutions and methods belonging to other times but no longer understood by the people of the present day. Or, finally, it may go only half way, failing to use, in the measure in which they are granted, those civil rights which modern constitutions today offer all, and therefore also Catholics. In particular, the present constitution of states offers indiscriminately to all the right to influence public opinion, and Catholics, with due respect for the obligations imposed by the law of God and the precepts of the Church, can certainly use this to their advantage. In such a way they can prove themselves as capable as others (in fact, more capable than others) by cooperating in the material and civil welfare of the people. In so doing they shall acquire that authority and prestige which will make them capable of defending and promoting a higher good, namely, that of the soul.

18. These civil rights are of various kinds, even to the extent of directly participating in the political life of the country by representing the people in the legislative halls. Most serious reasons, however, dissuade Us, Venerable Brethren, from departing from that norm which Our Predecessor, Leo XIII, of blessed memory, decreed during his Pontificate. According to his decree it was universally forbidden in Italy for Catholics to participate in the legislative power. Other reasons equally grave, however, founded upon the supreme good of society which must be preserved at all costs demand that in particular cases a dispensation from the law be granted especially when you, Venerable Brethren, recognize the strict necessity of it for the good of souls and the interest of your churches, and you request such a dispensation.

19. This concession places a duty on all Catholics to prepare themselves prudently and seriously for political life in case they may be called to it. Hence it is of the utmost importance that the same activity (previously so praiseworthily planned by Catholics for the purpose of preparing themselves by means of good electoral organization for the administrative life of common and provincial councils) be extended to a suitable preparation and organization for political life. This was already recommended by the Circular of December 3, 1904, issued by the general Presidency of Economic Works in Italy. At the same time the other principles which regulate the conscience of every true Catholic must be inculcated and put into practice. Above all else he must remember to be and to act in every circumstance as a true Catholic, accepting and fulfilling public offices with the firm and constant resolution of promoting by every means the social and economic welfare of the country and particularly of the people, according to the maxims of a truly Christian civilization, and at the same time defending the supreme interests of the Church, which are those of religion and justice. (Pope Saint Pius X, Il Fermo Proposito, June 11, 1905.)

Unlike the conciliar revolutionaries, who are most content with the anti-Incarnational civil state of Modernity, Pope Saint Pius X premised his concession to permit Catholics to participate in the political life of an Italian government that had been hostile to Holy Mother Church for over four decades upon their acting in ever circumstance as true Catholics. This is quite a distinction, of course, from “Pope Francis” reaffirming Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., and Nancy Patricia D’Alesandro Pelosi in their support for surgical baby-killing under cover of the civil law if that is what their “conscience” tells them to do. Pope Saint Pius X knew that a Catholic’s conscience must be formed by the truth and that he had a duty to promote Catholic truth as the foundation for a just social order. Any kind of participation in public life that does not tend to the promotion of Catholic truth in matters pertaining to the good of souls is inauthentic and of little use even in the practical order to pursue the common temporal good.

When it came to France, though, Pope Saint Pius X was absolutely unstinting in his complete rejection of the law of separation Holy Mother Church’s eldest daughter, and he noted in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906, how French officials violated both the spirit and the letter of the Concordat they had made with Pope Leo XIII:

Our soul is full of sorrowful solicitude and Our heart overflows with grief, when Our thoughts dwell upon you. How, indeed, could it be otherwise, immediately after the promulgation of that law which, by sundering violently the old ties that linked your nation with the Apostolic See, creates for the Catholic Church in France a situation unworthy of her and ever to be lamented? That is, beyond question, an event of the gravest import, and one that must be deplored by all the right-minded, for it is as disastrous to society as it is to religion; but it is an event which can have surprised nobody who has paid any attention to the religious policy followed in France of late years. For you, Venerable Brethren, it will certainly have been nothing new or strange, witnesses as you have been of the many dreadful blows aimed from time to time by the public authority at religion. You have seen the sanctity and the inviolability of Christian marriage outraged by legislative acts in formal contradiction with them; the schools and hospitals laicized; clerics torn from their studies and from ecclesiastical discipline to be subjected to military service; the religious congregations dispersed and despoiled, and their members for the most part reduced to the last stage of destitution. Other legal measures which you all know have followed: the law ordaining public prayers at the beginning of each Parliamentary Session and of the assizes has been abolished; the signs of mourning traditionally observed on board the ships on Good Friday suppressed; the religious character effaced from the judicial oath; all actions and emblems serving in any way to recall the idea of religion banished from the courts, the schools, the army, the navy, and in a word from all public establishments. These measures and others still which, one after another really separated the Church from the State, were but so many steps designedly made to arrive at complete and official separation, as the authors of them have publicly and frequently admitted.

2. On the other hand the Holy See has spared absolutely no means to avert this great calamity. While it was untiring in warning those who were at the head of affairs in France, and in conjuring them over and over again to weigh well the immensity of the evils that would infallibly result from their separatist policy, it at the same time lavished upon France the most striking proofs of indulgent affection. It has then reason to hope that gratitude would have stayed those politicians on their downward path, and brought them at last to relinquish their designs. But all has been in vain-the attentions, good offices, and efforts of Our Predecessor and Ourself. The enemies of religion have succeeded at last in effecting by violence what they have long desired, in defiance of your rights as a Catholic nation and of the wishes of all who think rightly. At a moment of such gravity for the Church, therefore, filled with the sense of Our Apostolic responsibility, We have considered it Our duty to raise Our voice and to open Our heart to you, Venerable Brethren, and to your clergy and people-to all of you whom We have ever cherished with special affection but whom We now, as is only right, love more tenderly than ever.

3. That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man’s eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man’s supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. The same thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies. Both of them, the civil and the religious society, although each exercises in its own sphere its authority over them. It follows necessarily that there are many things belonging to them in common in which both societies must have relations with one another. Remove the agreement between Church and State, and the result will be that from these common matters will spring the seeds of disputes which will become acute on both sides; it will become more difficult to see where the truth lies, and great confusion is certain to arise. Finally, this thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions touching the rights and the duties of men. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. Our illustrious predecessor, Leo XIII, especially, has frequently and magnificently expounded Catholic teaching on the relations which should subsist between the two societies. “Between them,” he says, “there must necessarily be a suitable union, which may not improperly be compared with that existing between body and soul.-“Quaedam intercedat necesse est ordinata colligatio (inter illas) quae quidem conjunctioni non immerito comparatur, per quam anima et corpus in homine copulantur.” He proceeds: “Human societies cannot, without becoming criminal, act as if God did not exist or refuse to concern themselves with religion, as though it were something foreign to them, or of no purpose to them…. As for the Church, which has God Himself for its author, to exclude her from the active life of the nation, from the laws, the education of the young, the family, is to commit a great and pernicious error. — “Civitates non possunt, citra scellus, gerere se tamquam si Deus omnino non esset, aut curam religionis velut alienam nihilque profuturam abjicere…. Ecclesiam vero, quam Deus ipse constituit, ab actione vitae excludere, a legibus, ab institutione adolescentium, a societate domestica, magnus et perniciousus est error.”[1]

4. And if it is true that any Christian State does something eminently disastrous and reprehensible in separating itself from the Church, how much more deplorable is it that France, of all nations in the world, would have entered on this policy; France which has been during the course of centuries the object of such great and special predilection on the part of the Apostolic See whose fortunes and glories have ever been closely bound up with the practice of Christian virtue and respect for religion. Leo XIII had truly good reason to say: “France cannot forget that Providence has united its destiny with the Holy See by ties too strong and too old that she should ever wish to break them. And it is this union that has been the source of her real greatness and her purest glories…. To disturb this traditional union would be to deprive the nation of part of her moral force and great influence in the world.”[2]

5. And the ties that consecrated this union should have been doubly inviolable from the fact that they were sanctioned by sworn treaties. The Concordat entered upon by the Sovereign Pontiff and the French Government was, like all treaties of the same kind concluded between States, a bilateral contract binding on both parties to it. The Roman Pontiff on the one side and the Head of the French Nation on the other solemnly stipulated both for themselves and their successors to maintain inviolate the pact they signed. Hence the same rule applied to the Concordat as to all international treaties, viz., the law of nations which prescribes that it could not be in any way annulled by one alone of the contracting parties. The Holy See has always observed with scrupulous fidelity the engagements it has made, and it has always required the same fidelity from the State. This is a truth which no impartial judge can deny. Yet to-day the State, by its sole authority, abrogates the solemn pact it signed. Thus it violates its sworn promise. To break with the Church, to free itself from her friendship, it has stopped at nothing, and has not hesitated to outrage the Apostolic See by this violation of the law of nations, and to disturb the social and political order itself — for the reciprocal security of nations in their relations with one another depends mainly on the inviolable fidelity and the sacred respect with which they observe their treaties.

6. The extent of the injury inflicted on the Apostolic See by the unilateral abrogation of the Concordat is notably aggravated by the manner in which the State has effected this abrogation. It is a principle admitted without controversy, and universally observed by all nations, that the breaking of a treaty should be previously and regularly notified, in a clear and explicit manner, to the other contracting party by the one which intends to put an end to the treaty. Yet not only has no notification of this kind been made to the Holy See, but no indication whatever on the subject has been conveyed to it. Thus the French Government has not hesitated to treat the Apostolic See without ordinary respect and without the courtesy that is never omitted even in dealing with the smallest States. Its officials, representatives though they were of a Catholic nation, have heaped contempt on the dignity and power of the Sovereign Pontiff, the Supreme Head of the Church, whereas they should have shown more respect to this power than to any other political power — and a respect all the greater from the fact that the Holy See is concerned with the eternal welfare of souls, and that its mission extends everywhere.

7. If We now proceed to examine in itself the law that has just been promulgated, We find, therein, fresh reason for protesting still more energetically. When the State broke the links of the Concordat, and separated itself from the Church, it ought, as a natural consequence, to have left her independence, and allowed her to enjoy peacefully that liberty, granted by the common law, which it pretended to assign to her. Nothing of the kind has been done. We recognize in the law many exceptional and odiously restrictive provisions, the effect of which is to place the Church under the domination of the civil power. It has been a source of bitter grief to Us to see the State thus encroach on matters which are within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Church; and We bewail this all the more from the fact that the State, dead to all sense of equity and justice, has thereby created for the Church of France a situation grievous, crushing, and oppressive of her most sacred rights.

8. For the provisions of the new law are contrary to the constitution on which the Church was founded by Jesus Christ. The Scripture teaches us, and the tradition of the Fathers confirms the teaching, that the Church is the mystical body of Christ, ruled by the Pastors and Doctors (I Ephes. iv. II sqq.) — a society of men containing within its own fold chiefs who have full and perfect powers for ruling, teaching and judging (Matt. xxviii. 18-20; xvi. 18, 19; xviii. 17; Tit. ii. 15; 11. Cor. x. 6; xiii. 10. & c.) It follows that the Church is essentially an unequal society, that is, a society comprising two categories of per sons, the Pastors and the flock, those who occupy a rank in the different degrees of the hierarchy and the multitude of the faithful. So distinct are these categories that with the pastoral body only rests the necessary right and authority for promoting the end of the society and directing all its members towards that end; the one duty of the multitude is to allow themselves to be led, and, like a docile flock, to follow the Pastors. St. Cyprian, Martyr, expresses this truth admirably when he writes: “Our Lord, whose precepts we must revere and observe, in establishing the episcopal dignity and the nature of the Church, addresses Peter thus in the gospel: “Ego dico tibi, quia tu es Petrus,” etc. Hence, through all the vicissitudes of time and circumstance, the plan of the episcopate and the constitution of the Church have always been found to be so framed that the Church rests on the Bishops, and that all its acts are ruled by them. — “Dominus Noster, cujus praecepta metuere et servare debemus, episcopi honorem et ecclesiae suae rationem disponens, in evangelio loquitur et dicit Petro: Ego dico tibi quia tu es Petrus, etc…. Inde per temporum et successionum vices Episcoporum ordinatio et Ecclesiae ratio decurrit, ut Ecclesia super Episcopos constituatur et omnis actus Ecclesiae per eosdem praepositos gubernetur” (St. Cyprian, Epist. xxvii.-xxviii. ad Lapsos ii. i.) St. Cyprian affirms that all this is based on Divine law, “divina lege fundatum.” The Law of Separation, in opposition to these principles, assigns the administration and the supervision of public worship not to the hierarchical body divinely instituted by Our Savior, but to an association formed of laymen. To this association it assigns a special form and a juridical personality, and considers it alone as having rights and responsibilities in the eyes of the law in all matters appertaining to religious worship. It is this association which is to have the use of the churches and sacred edifices, which is to possess ecclesiastical property, real and personal, which is to have at its disposition (though only for a time) the residences of the Bishops and priests and the seminaries; which is to administer the property, regulate collections, and receive the alms and the legacies destined for religious worship. As for the hierarchical body of Pastors, the law is completely silent. And if it does prescribe that the associations of worship are to be constituted in harmony with the general rules of organization of the cult whose existence they are designed to assure, it is none the less true that care has been taken to declare that in all disputes which may arise relative to their property the Council of State is the only competent tribunal. These associations of worship are therefore placed in such a state of dependence on the civil authority that the ecclesiastical authority will, clearly, have no power over them. It is obvious at a glance that all these provisions seriously violate the rights of the Church, and are in opposition with her Divine constitution. Moreover, the law on these points is not set forth in clear and precise terms, but is left so vague and so open to arbitrary decisions that its mere interpretation is well calculated to be productive of the greatest trouble.

9. Besides, nothing more hostile to the liberty of the Church than this Law could well be conceived. For, with the existence of the associations of worship, the Law of Separation hinders the Pastors from exercising the plenitude of their authority and of their office over the faithful; when it attributes to the Council of State supreme jurisdiction over these associations and submits them to a whole series of prescriptions not contained in the common law, rendering their formation difficult and their continued existence more difficult still; when, after proclaiming the liberty of public worship, it proceeds to restrict its exercise by numerous exceptions; when it despoils the Church of the internal regulation of the churches in order to invest the State with this function; when it thwarts the preaching of Catholic faith and morals and sets up a severe and exceptional penal code for clerics — when it sanctions all these provisions and many others of the same kind in which wide scope is left to arbitrary ruling, does it not place the Church in a position of humiliating subjection and, under the pretext of protecting public order, deprive peaceable citizens, who still constitute the vast majority in France, of the sacred right of practicing their religion? Hence it is not merely by restricting the exercise of worship (to which the Law of Separation falsely reduces the essence of religion) that the State injures the Church, but by putting obstacles to her influence, always a beneficent influence over the people, and by paralyzing her activity in a thousand different ways. Thus, for instance, the State has not been satisfied with depriving the Church of the Religious Orders, those precious auxiliaries of hers in her sacred mission, in teaching and education, in charitable works, but it must also deprive her of the resources which constitute the human means necessary for her existence and the accomplishment of her mission.

10. In addition to the wrongs and injuries to which we have so far referred, the Law of Separation also violates and tramples under foot the rights of property of the Church. In defiance of all justice, it despoils the Church of a great portion of a patrimony which belongs to her by titles as numerous as they are sacred; it suppresses and annuls all the pious foundations consecrated, with perfect legality, to divine worship and to suffrages for the dead. The resources furnished by Catholic liberality for the maintenance of Catholic schools, and the working of various charitable associations connected with religion, have been transferred to lay associations in which it would be idle to seek for a vestige of religion. In this it violates not only the rights of the Church, but the formal and explicit purpose of the donors and testators. It is also a subject of keen grief to Us that the law, in contempt of all right, proclaims as property of the State, Departments or Communes the ecclesiastical edifices dating from before the Concordat. True, the Law concedes the gratuitous use, for an indefinite period, of these to the associations of worship, but it surrounds the concession with so many and so serious reserves that in reality it leaves to the public powers the full disposition of them. Moreover, We entertain the gravest fears for the sanctity of those temples, the august refuges of the Divine Majesty and endeared by a thousand memories to the piety of the French people. For they are certainly in danger of profanation if they fall into the hands of laymen.

11. When the law, by the suppression of the Budget of Public Worship, exonerates the State from the obligation of providing for the expenses of worship, it violates an engagement contracted in a diplomatic convention, and at the same time commits a great injustice. On this point there cannot be the slightest doubt, for the documents of history offer the clearest confirmation of it. When the French Government assumed in the Concordat the obligation of supplying the clergy with a revenue sufficient for their decent subsistence and for the requirements of public worship, the concession was not a merely gratuitous one — it was an obligation assumed by the State to make restitution, at least in part, to the Church whose property had been confiscated during the first Revolution. On the other hand when the Roman Pontiff in this same Concordat bound himself and his successors, for the sake of peace, not to disturb the possessors of property thus taken from the Church, he did so only on one condition: that the French Government should bind itself in perpetuity to endow the clergy suitably and to provide for the expenses of divine worship.

12. Finally, there is another point on which We cannot be silent. Besides the injury it inflicts on the interests of the Church, the new law is destined to be most disastrous to your country. For there can be no doubt but that it lamentably destroys union and concord. And yet without such union and concord no nation can live long or prosper. Especially in the present state of Europe, the maintenance of perfect harmony must be the most ardent wish of everybody in France who loves his country and has its salvation at heart. As for Us, following the example of Our Predecessor and inheriting from him a special predilection for your nation, We have not confined Ourself to striving for the preservation of full rights of the religion of your forefathers, but We have always, with that fraternal peace of which religion is certainly the strongest bond ever before Our eyes, endeavored to promote unity among you. We cannot, therefore, without the keenest sorrow observe that the French Government has just done a deed which inflames on religious grounds passions already too dangerously excited, and which, therefore, seems to be calculated to plunge the whole country into disorder.

13. Hence, mindful of Our Apostolic charge and conscious of the imperious duty incumbent upon Us of defending and preserving against all assaults the full and absolute integrity of the sacred and inviolable rights of the Church, We do, by virtue of the supreme authority which God has confided to Us, and on the grounds above set forth, reprove and condemn the law voted in France for the separation of Church and State, as deeply unjust to God whom it denies, and as laying down the principle that the Republic recognizes no cult. We reprove and condemn it as violating the natural law, the law of nations, and fidelity to treaties; as contrary to the Divine constitution of the Church, to her essential rights and to her liberty; as destroying justice and trampling underfoot the rights of property which the Church has acquired by many titles and, in addition, by virtue of the Concordat. We reprove and condemn it as gravely offensive to the dignity of this Apostolic See, to Our own person, to the Episcopacy, and to the clergy and all the Catholics of France. Therefore, We protest solemnly and with all Our strength against the introduction, the voting and the promulgation of this law, declaring that it can never be alleged against the imprescriptible rights of the Church. (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1905.)

These passages summarize the correct relationship between Holy Mother Church and the civil state, and they note the Holy Father’s bitterness at seeing the trust that Pope Leo XIII had placed in the French anti-clericalists shattered shortly after he, Pope Saint Pius X, had ascended to the Throne of Saint Peter. Pope Saint Pius X manfully articulated right principles while at the same time enumerating the specific ways in which the leaders of the French Third Republic were attempting to subjecting everything about the life of the Church in France to their own arbitrary whims. The religiously indifferentist civil state, including the government of the United States of America, leads to spiritual and temporal ruin as practical atheism becomes the lowest common denominator over time. Anyone who thinks that one is voting oneself out of a chastisement is a fool. One must know the signs of the times, and those who ignore the fact that even most “conservatives” support at least some surgical killings of innocent preborn children and overwhelming support the denial of the Sovereignty of God over the sanctity and fecundity of marriage by means of contraceptive pills and devices, to say nothing of speaking impurely and/or blasphemously, dressing indecently, and believing in religious indifferentism is not facing the world as it is. Sin maketh nations miserable. The restoration of a just social order cannot be built upon a foundation of unrepentant sins that multiply daily. With Pope Saint Pius X, you see, we pray and work for the restoration of all things in Christ the King.

The leaders of the French Third Republic, being French, of course, responded with arrogant indignation to Pope Saint Pius X’s Vehementer Nos, prompting Pope Saint Pius X to issue his second encyclical letter, Une Fois Encore, January 6, 1907:

Venerable Brethren and Beloved Sons, Health and Apostolic Benediction.

Once again the serious events which have been precipitated in your noble country compel Us to write to the Church of France to sustain her in her trials, and to comfort her in her sorrow. When the children are suffering the heart of the Father ought more than ever to go out to them. And so, now that We see you suffer, from the depths of our fatherly heart floods of tenderness break forth more copiously than ever, and flow to you with the greater comfort and sweetness.

2. These sufferings, Venerable Brethren and beloved sons, now find a sorrowful echo throughout the whole Catholic Church; but We feel them more deeply still and We sympathize with a pity which grows with your trials and seems to increase day by day.

3. But with these cruel sorrows the Master has, it is true, mingled a consolation than which none can be dearer to our heart. It springs from your unshakable attachment to the Church, from your unfailing fidelity to this Apostolic See, and from the firm and deeply founded unity that reigns amongst you. On this fidelity and union We confidently reckoned from the first, for we were too well aware of the nobleness and generosity of the French heart to have any fear that on the field of battle disunion would find its way into your ranks. Equally great is the joy that We feel at the magnificent spectacle you are now giving to the world; and with our high praise of you before the whole Church, We give thanks from the depths of Our heart to the Father of mercies, the Author of all good.

4. Recourse to God, so infinitely good, is all the more necessary because, far from abating, the struggle grows fiercer and expands unceasingly. It is no longer only the Christian faith that they would uproot at all costs from the hearts of the people; it is any belief which lifting man above the horizon of this world would supernaturally bring back his wearied eyes to heaven. Illusion on the subject is no longer possible. War has been declared against everything supernatural, because behind the supernatural stands God, and because it is God that they want to tear out of the mind and heart of man. (Pope Saint Pius X, Une Fois Encore, January 6, 1907.)

Brief Interjection:

The late Father Vincent Miceli called the French Revolution the first anti-Theistic revolution of Modernity. All subsequent forms of anti-Theism (Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, Castroism, Titoism, Sandinistas, the “woke” and “critical race theory” movements, Globalism, Environmentalism, Statism, Evolutionism, etc.) have carried on the work of the French Revolution. Warfare upon the supernatural has been a hallmark of so-called “public education” (actually, compulsory state imposed indoctrination—see Public Schools Are Fatal to Men and Their Nations), which has served as the means by which the following Judeo-Masonic principles as summarized by the late Father Edward Cahill, S.J., have become institutionalized:

We have already referred to Rationalism and Hermeticism (including Theosophy, Christian Scientism, Spiritism, etc.) as characteristic of the Masonic religion and philosophy, These, which are put forward as a substitute for real religion, are fast becoming more and more widespread in England and throughout the English-speaking world. They are the most powerful dissolvents of whatever elements of true Christianity are being attempted. This element is perhaps the most deadly and dangerous aspect of the whole Masonic movement; for it cuts deeper than anything into Christian life, whose very foundation it attacks.

The immediate aim of the practical policy of Freemasonry is to make its naturalistic principles effective in the lives of the people; and first of all to enforce them in every detail of public life. Hence its political and social programme includes:

(1) The banishment of religion from all departments of government, and from all public institutions; and as a mark of the triumph of this policy, the removal of the Crucifix and all religious emblems from the legislative assemblies, the courts of justice, the public hospitals, the schools and university colleges, etc. (Father Edward Cahill, S.J., Freemasonry and the anti-Christian Movement, Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged, published originally by M. H. Gill and Son, Ltd., in Dublin, Ireland, 1930, and republished by Kessinger Legacy Reprints, pp. 156-157.)

It is very telling that the conciliar revolutionaries have applauded these “developments” as most of their own colleges and universities have divested themselves of official control of what is purported to be the Catholic Church and have removed the Crucifix and other religious emblems from most of their classrooms. Formerly Catholic hospitals have done the same. Indeed, many of them, participating fully in the medical industry’s manufactured, money-making myth of “brain death”), have merged with secular corporations. And most Catholics in public life are fully supportive of various evils under cover of the civil law, and none of them is reprobated by Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who, quite instead, praises those of them that he meets as “servants of the poor.”

To return to Father Cahill’s enumeration of the Judeo-Masonic program:

(2) The secularization of marriage.

(3) The establishment of a State system of so-called education which, at least in its primary stages, will be obligatory and conducted by the laity.

(4) Complete freedom of worship (at least for all except the true one.) (Father Edward Cahill, S.J., Freemasonry and the anti-Christian Movement, Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged, published originally by M. H. Gill and Son, Ltd., in Dublin, Ireland, 1930, and republished by Kessinger Legacy Reprints, p. 157.)

To the final two points of the Judeo-Masonic program as outlined by Father Edward Cahill:

(5) Unrestrained liberty of the Press even in the propagation of irreligious doctrines and of principles subversive of morality; similar freedom for the stage, the cinema, and all manner of public activities, even when injurious to the public interest, such as the operation of the betting and gambling agencies, the drink traffic, etc.

(6) The elimination of all distinction between the sexes in education and in all departments of public life and the promotion or encouragement of radical feminism.

The same programme usually includes or favours a (so-called) Democratic or Republican form of government, indiscriminate universal suffrage, and the centralization of political and administrative authority in the hands of a bureaucracy. It is opposed on the other hand to all to the national distinctions which are associated with the Christian virtue of patriotism, to the ideal of strongly organized rural communities settled permanently on the land; and finally to the organization of society in classes bound together by ties of common interest and mutual service. Hence its policy tends towards commercialism, a false internationalism and extreme individualism.

It is clear that in a social system organized according to these Masonic ideals, the masses of the people, while nominally free, and in theory the source of all authority in the State, would inevitably become degraded and enslaved. Demoralized by indulgence, deprived of the guidance and help which Christian principles give, isolated and unorganized, mostly bereft of permanent property, having a smattering of literacy, but without real education, they would have little or no power of resistance against the tyranny of bureaucracies or financial combines controlling the Press and the economic life of the country. The substantial freedom, prosperity, and true civilization which accompany or result from the Christian regime would give way to social conditions akin to those of pre-Christian Rome. (Father Edward Cahill, S.J., Freemasonry and the anti-Christian Movement, Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged, published originally by M. H. Gill and Son, Ltd., in Dublin, Ireland, 1930, and republished by Kessinger Legacy Reprints, pp. 157-159.)

Nothing that I said in college classrooms between 1974 and 2007 (and for a brief time in the Fall of 2014) or in campaigns for public office or in lectures around the nation or wrote in various publications or have written on this site contains an ounce of originality concerning the state of Western civilization as it spirals into the lowest reaches of the abyss possible, making ancient Rome seem truly tame by way of comparison. We have been given the prescient insights of such giants of Catholic scholarship as Fathers Edward Cahill and Denis Fahey in Ireland and defenders of the immutable Catholic doctrine of the Social Reign of Christ the King as Louis Edouard “Cardinal” Pie, Monsignor Henri Delassus and Father Theotime de Just in France.

The Protestant and Judeo-Masonic ethos that is at the heart of the American founding and has precipitated many errors and the conflicts between false opposites of naturalism ever since was described as follows by William Thomas Walsh in Characters of the Inquisition:

(1) The isolation of the human soul from God. The indifference and godlessness of our day are directly traceable to the triumph of Manicheanism under the guise of Sixteenth Century Protestantism. Many thoughtful Protestants are now beginning to see that the Revolt inflicted a ghastly wound upon Christianity without adding anything to it. Such positive Christian elements as the Reformers taught were already in Catholicism. As for the aberrations – Luther's doctrine of grace, Calvin's predestination – how many who call themselves Protestants today believe in the divinity of Christ; a Methodist will say he believes in the existence of some vague Life Force, not a personal God. With each generation the descendants of the men and women who were led from the Catholic fold by plausible reformers promising them primitive Christianity, become less and less concerned with any religion, and more the prey of Communism, Fascism or some other panacea with new false hopes of creating something permanently good on the frail structure of human nature alone. These will not even listen to the ancient wisdom of the Catholic Church; as Mr. Chesterton wrote somewhere, “They are tired of hearing what they have never heard.”

(2) Moral confusion and nihilism. There is and can be no objective and eternal standard of conduct, except that of Christ, as interpreted by His Church. All the old sins and follies that the Church began to drive into exterior darkness two thousand years ago, have come back to destroy the peace of individuals and the harmony of society. Divorce is destroying the family, murder the individual. The free love of the Beghards and the Alumbrados is corrupting the young. What is the prevalent craze for self-destruction but a manifestation of the old Manichean despair of life? And what is the fatal race-suicide known euphemistically as “birth control” but the old nastiness of the Manichees, born of cowardice, sensuality, distrust of life itself and the Author of life? Usury, which the medieval schoolmen called theft, and capitalism, which in its reprehensible form they identified as one of the seven deadly sins (greed), are defended by dull college professors in the name of economic law; while the enslaved masses everywhere pay tribute to the modern Mammon.

(3) Intellectual confusion. The Catholic Church speaks with authority in our world in defense of the human reason against a thousand sophistries having their origin in obscure feelings or prejudices. It has become the fashion in certain academic circles to speak disdainfully of logic itself, and of the law of cause and effect, as if these were relics of medieval barbarism. It was not merely a coincidence that a Manichean thought, or rather feeling has appeared extensively in our literature, and in some of the best of it, wherever the Protestant Revolt has prepared for the return of darkness and slavery. Consider the Manichean attitudes in some of Thomas Hardy's work – especially in Jude the Obscure, in The Return of the Native, and in that frightful sneer at the end of Tess; in Ibsen's Master Builder and Hedda Gabler; in Shelley's Defense of Poetry; in the Autobiography of Mark Twain; in such plays as the Piper of Josephine Preston Peabody, The Scarecrow of Percy Mackaye, and a great deal of O'Neill's work; even in that calm Victorian, Tennyson, who puts into the mouth of a Catholic King a sentiment that would have set Bernard Gui on the trail of any Albigensian:

“For why is all around us here,

As if some lesser god has made the world,

but had not force to make it as he would,

Until the High God enter from beyond . . .?”

Not to press the point too far – for some liberty must be allowed the facies of poets! – this and much more that could be mentioned is clearly symptomatic of the sickness which afflicts a world which will not turn to Christ.

(4) Totalitarianism. Is not the present evolution of government a retrogression toward heresies that the medieval Inquisitors combatted with all their might? Communism, first propagated by the Freemasons on the ruins of Protestantism, finally set up in Russia the absolute state which the Fraticelli had invoked (in so far as the state of science and communications would permit them to envisage it): it was a perversion also of their concept of primitive Christianity, without private property. The Nazi State, set up partly in imitation of Mussolini's Fascism, as a natural reaction to Communism, had also another parentage. The ideal of the omnipotent absolute state, for whose sake the individual exists, was expressed in very similar terms on behalf of Kaiserism by Bernhardi, in 1911; and Bernhadi's teacher was Treitchke, who in turn acknowledged his indebtedness to Martin Luther. (I have developed this idea further in an article published in The Sign, with quotations from Luther and others, in February, 1940.) Thus in two different directions we trace the origins of the Totalitarian State, toward which, by imitation or reaction, the governments of the whole world are tending, to breaches made by medieval heretics in the walls of the City of God, in despite of the watchdogs of the Inquisition.

The list could be extended. All the evils that the Inquisition sought to repress, and did in great measure repress, have returned to the modern world, grown great and ravening, to feed upon our children. What then of the evils incidental to the Inquisition itself – torture, loss of liberty and even life, occasional deceit and hypocracy? Are we better in those regards? Can anyone think of the torture cells maintained by the Reds in Spain in 1936-7 to drive their victims mad, (the cells constructed by the “Loyalist” Reds “were described as hollow cement blocks four feet height and containing a cement chair and bed, built in a slanting position so that it was impossible for a prisoner to sit or lie down for more than a minute at a time. Raised cement blocks were arranged in a crazy-quilt fashion on the floor to prevent prisoners from standing up. The prosecutor (in the Cik trial) charged that the Loyalists placed rings in the eyelids of prisoners to keep them open in the glare of powerful lights. Some of the witnesses testified that the prisoners were denied food and water and were flogged, sometimes while suspended head down from the ceiling or while cold water was showered upon them. Witnesses said the cells were pained with hundreds of yellow spots, broad black lines and scores of black and white cubes.” – Associated Press, dispatch from Barcelona, June 13, 1939, published in the New York Sun and other newspapers, Torquemada would have shrunk from the very idea of such diabolical ingenuity.) of the unspeakable butcheries of civilians and priests by both Germans and Russians in Poland in 1939, of the unrestrained villainy of modern warfare, of all our nightmare of hypocrisy, abortion, child-suicide, unpunished murder, and what is worse even that all these monstrosities, disdain for the Deity Himself, without wondering whether we have really progressed to a point where we can look patronizingly upon the memory of a Torquemada?

All the worst miseries which men everywhere endure today, while they begin “withering away for fear and expectations of what shall come? – famine and pestilence and civil wars whose shadows may already be discerned on the dim walls of the futre – all these have been foretold by the Popes of modern tomes, on after another pointing out the causes that must lead to such effects, and pleading with mankind to turn away from them to the only possible remedy, held forth by Christ in the Catholic Church. Against all the progressive steps in the disintegration of the European Order, from the Manichees to the Communists and other state worshippers, The Vicars of Christ have uttered solemn and deliberate warnings, based upon ample information. Very soon after the reorganization of the Freemasonry by the Grand Lodge of England, in Spain, the situation was clearly seen at Rome; and in 1738, Pope Clement XII uttered the first formal denunciation of this particular heresy, this oriental dissolvent in modern guise. “If they were not doing evil, they would not fear the light,” he said of all societies, without any exception, of the Masonic type or affiliation. He forbade Catholics to join them, favor, support, shelter, or defend them in any way, or even to receive the members into their homes. Any Catholic so doing was excommunicated by the very fact, and the ban could be removed only by the Pope himself, save in the danger of death. This, as we have seen, did not deter vain, ambitious or stupid Catholics, even among the clergy here and there, from being drawn into an organization which pretended to be social and philanthropic, and masked its real aims and nature from all its neophytes, from all except a few initiates. The Popes of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries continued to raise their voices against the stealthy advances of this mystery of iniquity. Pius XII accused the Freemasons of being the chief causes of the revolutionary upheavals (antichristian in their direction) of Europe. Gregory XVI said they were guilty of sacrilege, infamy and blasphemy, and promoted heresy and revolution. Pius IX applied to them the words that Christ addressed to the scribes and pharisees who sought His destruction, “You are of your father the devil, and the works of your father you will do.” He called them the wolves in sheep's clothing against whom Our Lord and the Apostles had warned the first Christians. In another letter he referred to them as “the Synagogue of Satan . . . whose object is to blot out the Church of Christ, were it possible from the face of the Universe.” Renewing the condemnations of his predecessors, he explicitly included Freemasons in America “and in whatever part of the world they may be.”

Pope Leo XIII warned the world that Freemasonry was the real source and center of Communist and Atheist propaganda. “In this insane and wicked endeavor,” he wrote, “we may almost see the implacable hatred and spirit of revenge with which Satan himself is inflamed against Jesus Christ.” In that same magnificent encyclical he cried out to all Catholics, laymen as well as priests, to “tear the mask off the face? Of the hidden menace. If not, he said, “the ruin and overthrow of all things must necessarily follow.: (Encyclical, Humanum genus, 1884.)

This tremendous prophecy, deliberately uttered by the Vicar of Christ, and now being fulfilled with terrible literalness as the flimsy structure built of the sands of the great apostacy of the Sixteenth Century comes crashing down about us, has of course been generally disregarded by the world, as the prophecies of Christ were disregarded. Other profound observations from Leo and his successors have met the same characteristically Christian fate; nevertheless they remain as truth.

It was Pius XI who pointed out the close spiritual affinity of Liberalism and Socialism, even when they waged a sham battle across the arena of the world. “Let us bear in mind,” he wrote in Quadragesimo Anno, “that the parent of this cultural Socialism was Liberalism, and that its offspring will be Bolshevism.” He had no more regard for one of these antichristian aberrations than for the other. Liberalism, he said, had shown as early as 1891 “its utter impotence to find a right solution of the social question,” while Socialism “would have exposed human society to still graver dangers by offering a remedy much more disastrous than the evil it designed to cure.” (Quadragesimo Anno, 1931)

This great Pope remarked that since the time of Leo XIII the “capitalistic economic regime” had “penetrated everywhere”; and that:

“It is patent that in our days not alone is wealth accumulated, but immense power and despotic economic domination are concentrated in the hands of a few, and that those few are frequently not the owners, but only the trustees and directors of invested funds, who administer them at their good pleasure. This power becomes particularly irresistible when exercises by those who, because they hold and control money, are able also to govern credit and determine its allotment, for that reason supplying, so to speak, the lifeblood to the entire economic body, and grasping, as it were, in their hands the very soul of production, so that no one dare breathe against their will. This accumulation of power, the characteristic note of the modern economic order, is a natural result of limitless free competition which permits the survival of those only who are the strongest, which often means those who fight most relentlessly, who pay least heed to the dictates of conscience. This concentration of power has led to a threefold struggle for domination. First, there is the struggle for dictatorship in the economic sphere itself; then, the fierce battle to acquire control of the state, so that its resources and authority may be abused in the economic struggles. Finally, the clash between states themselves. . . The state, which should be the supreme arbiter, ruling in kingly fashion far above all party contention, intent only upon justice and the common good, has become instead a slave, bound over to the service of human passion and greed.” (Quadragesimo Anno, 1931)

Elsewhere, of course, Pius condemned the totalitarian theory which, reacting against the evil here described, rushed to the opposite extreme, and erroneously hald that the individual existed for the benefit of the state. None of these panaceas could reach the center of the disorder; they were all, inf fact, so many forms of Socialism, one fighting the other, but all tending toward a common end. With characteristic acuteness, Pius noticed that since the time of Leo XIII Socialism had broken up into various forms, of which he condemned even the most moderate.

“The question arises, or is unwarrantably proposed in certain quarters, whether the principles of Christian truth also could not be somewhat moderated and attenuated, so as to meet Socialism, as it were, halfway upon a common ground. Some are engaged by the empty hope of gaining Socialists in this way to our cause. But such hope are vain. Those who wish to be apostles among the Socialists should preach the Christian truth whole and entire, openly and sincerely, without any connivance with error. If they wish in truth to be heralds of the Gospel, let them convince Socialists that their demands, in so far as they are just, are defended much more cogently by the principles of Christian faith, and are promoted much more efficaciously by the power of Christian charity . . . Whether Socialism be considered as a doctrine or as an historical fact, or as a movement, if it really remain socialism, it cannot be brought into harmony with the dogmas of the Catholic Church, even after it has yielded to truth and justice in the points. We have mentioned; the reason being that it conceives human society in a way utterly alien to Christian truth.

“According to Christian doctrine, Man, endowed with a social nature, is place here on earth in order that he may spend his life in society, and under authority ordained by God, that he may develop and evolve to the full all his faculties to the praise and glory of his Creator; and that, by fulfilling faithfully the duties of his station, he may attain to temporal and eternal happiness. Socialism, on the contrary, entirely ignorant of or unconcerned about his sublime end both of individuals and of society, affirms that living in community was instituted merely for the sake of advantages which it brings to mankind. Goods are produced more efficiently by a suitable distribution of labor than by the scattered efforts of individuals. Hence the Socialist argue that economic production, of which they see only the material side, must necessarily be carried on collectively, and that because of this necessity men must surrender and submit themselves wholly to society with a view to the production of wealth. Indeed, the possession of the greatest possible amount of temporal goods is esteemed so highly, that man's higher goods, not excepting liberty must, they claim, be subordinated and even sacrificed to the exigencies of efficient production. They affirm that the loss of human dignity, which result from these socialized methods of production, will be easily compensated for by the abundance of good produced in common and accring to the individual who can turn them at his will to the comforts and culture of life. Society, therefore, as the Socialist conceives it, is, on the one hand, impossible and unthinkable without the use of compulsion of the most excessive kind: on the other it fosters a false liberty, since in such a scheme no place if found for true social authority, which is not based on temporal and material advantages, but descends from God alone, the Creator and Last End of all things. If, like all errors, Socialism, contains a certain element of truth (and this founded upon a doctrine of human society peculiarly its own, which is opposed to true Christianity . . . No one can be at the same time a sincere Catholic and a true Socialist." (Quadragesimo Anno, 1931)

Since Pius XI wrote those words in 1931, the nations of the world generally have taken long steps toward various forms of Socialism which, however different they appeared on first view, are more and more revealing themselves as essentially the same. Communism, the most radical and patently godless form was not too remote ideologically from its pretended rival Nazi-Socialism, to lie down beside it in the same foul nest, when it suited both to beget a second great war. Other nations, loving freedom, have been conquered and drawn into the two Socialist orbits. Still others have imitated Socialist regimes by reaction, or by military necessity. Few have been able to maintain fully the sacredness of human personality. The tiny nations of Portugal and Ireland, both thoroughly Catholic, are glorious exceptions. Of Spain, I have high hopes; may the Catholic spirit of General Franco prevail, and not certain others, very different and very crafty, which still exist in the country and even in high places, hungry for power. England, while fighting Hitler, has kept a friendly hand mysteriously outstretched toward his partner, Stalin; and whatever the outcome of the present war, is likely to emerge from it shackled to some form of Socialism.

Here in the United States Socialism has made more cautious but not the less evident gains. It is rather amusing, and at the same time depressing, to see that likable Socialist Mr. Norman Thomas denouncing both Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Wilkie as champions of peace-time conscription, which he says (and I think rightly) must lead toward dictatorship, and to realize at the same time that both these gentlemen are fundamentally (that is to say spiritually) as Socialistic as he is. If we judge not by what a man says he is or even believes he is, but by the antithesis set up by Pope Pius XI as a test of spirits, this conclusion becomes inescapable. Mr. Roosevelt has tried to save the country by curtailing production. Mr. Wilkie proposes to do it by speeding up curtailing production, Yet both these Liberals, as they proudly call themselves, are interested primarily in production; in the material, in the things of this world. It is difficult, of course, to see how a politician could wholly free himself from such concerns, and I am not criticising either, or discussing any issues, political or economic, between them – whoever is elected will be entitled to our obedience, under the Constitution, and no doubt, will do his best according to his lights. I would only suggest that neither has the lights necessary to solve the social problem. (It is true that both have spoken reverently in public of Divine Providence; but so, for that matter has Hitler; so have the politicians of every country, except godless Russian.) Not too much must be expected from these well-meaning statesmen. They are children of a Liberalism evolving rapidly into Socialism. Both are high in the ranks of a secret society proscribed and abhorred by the Catholic Church and denounced by Pope Leo XIII as the true source of Socialism and Communism, and the general corruption of European and world society. They are servants of the same invisible masters, to whose obedience they are bound by oaths – masters who may not even be in America, but in Europe or Asia; masters of whose exact identity they may themselves be ignorant. When they speak of “Democracy,” one must remember this background, and the fact that the elastic word has been used by many Liberals to include even the tyranny of Soviet Russia. Can Democracy be anything but a farce among men, when some of them, including the most influential, belong to a secret society whose real aims and principles have been repeatedly disclosed as political and anti-Christian? The French Catholics, in the sad clarifying light of catastrophe, have recently found the answer to this question. As Our Holy Father Pope Pius XII said in welcoming the French Ambassador after the tragedy of last summer, “Like lightening which flashes through heavy clouds, the devastating lights of war . . . have torn from the eyes of all careful and sincere observers that veil of prejudices which for half a century the voice of the Church, and especially the reiterated warnings of the last Popes, Our venerated predecessors, did not succeed in penetrating . . . May the lessons of this bitter period in acts which permit us to hope in the future for a revival of Christian spirit, particularly in the education of youth . . .” and “the creation of a new Christian order . . . When will this desired hour arrive? God preserves the secret of it; but We beseech Him to hasten its advent.”

All this is part of a universal conflict between the church of Christ and the Prince of This World. All other conflicts are either subsidiary to this or camouflages for it. Just now there seems to be a deadly strife between international capitalism, intrenched in the United States and gradually leading this country toward a State Socialism or (what amounts to the same thing) toward a State Capitalism, and on the other side, the seemingly more godless and godless forms of Socialism beyond the seas. Yet if Nazi-Socialism and Bolshevism, after so violent a sham battle, could so speedily come to terms, for a purpose convenient to both, what is to prevent this American Socialism, now in the making and already accepted and propagated by the dominant educational forces of this county, from arriving at mutually agreeable arrangements with both the Soviet and the Nazi forms of Socialism, whenever it may suit the real leaders on both sides to do so? Within a generation we have seen our Liberal politicians denounce the Soviet, cultivate friendly relations with it, and denounce it again – this time more coyly. As the world grows smaller in time, may not all the forms of Socialism be gathered together by skilful hands into a World Sate, such as many Masonic writers have advocated, and the League of Nations sought to achieve? It is not only conceivable, but probable; for all forms of Socialism (even if some still call themselves Democracies) will be animated by a single obscure but powerful principle: the worship of the material, which is and always must be the negation of Christianity. Here, then, by a masterly antithesis, Pius XI has cast a strong light upon the shapes of things to come. It is all the more revealing when it shows us only the recurrence upon a larger stage of a deathless drama that happened long ago. Christ still lives in His Mystical Body, the Church, as truly as in the human body he took from Our Lady; and when the time comes for Him to be crucified again in His Church, depend upon it, Pilate and Herod that day will find a way to patch up their differences, some Caiaphas will cry, “Crucify Him! We have no king but Caesar!” and there will always be found some Judas to give the kiss of death.

Admittedly (perhaps my wish is father to this thought) we may by some miracle escape that fate, here in America. Perhaps despite their affiliations, Mr. Roosevelt or Mr. Wilkie, as political Catholic admirers of each will tell us, will be led in the right direction by a divine hand. Again, perhaps not. Only the future can reveal this. Meanwhile this much is certain: the United States, in a very few years, will be either a Catholic country (and therefore a free country) or a Socialist country, (and therefore a slave country). “He who is not with Me is against Me.” History demonstrates the unfailing truth of this dilemma.

Here on the last edge and in the twilight of the world, the stage is set for the reenactment of an ancient tragedy – or can it this time be a comedy? Here are all the actors who have appeared over and over again in that tragedy in Europe. Here we have most of the Freemasons of the world, the Jews, most of the gold and its masters; Parthians and Medes and Elamites – men gathered together from all nations under the sun, speaking one language, leading a common life; and among them heirs of all the isms and heresies that the Catholic Church has denounced throughout the centuries, and some millions of good bewildered folk who have ceased to believe much in anything, and do not know what they believe, or whether anything be worth believing; and, scattered among these millions with their roots in such movements of the past, some twenty-five millions of Catholics.

Now, either the Catholic body will come into sharp conflict with those about them, or they will not.

If they do not, it will be the first time in history that the Mystical Body of Christ (and American Catholics, like all others, are “cells” of that Body) has not aroused violent and unreasoning antagonism. This has been so uniformly a characteristic of the life of Christ and the life of the Catholic Church, that when persons calling themselves Christian or Catholic do not meet with oppositions, and strong opposition, one may well begin to wonder whether they are profoundly Christian and truly Catholic. Perhaps then it is a reflection upon us American Catholics that we have inspired so little antagonism (comparatively) thus far. Perhaps we have not been telling our neighbors the truth, the strong truth, the hard saying they will not like: that the real test of our republican experiment here must ultimately be whether it accepts or opposes the Church of Christ; that it must become either a Catholic state, or a slave state.

A great many Catholics, influenced by the Protestant or Liberal environments in which they have lived, have sincerely and deliberately set out to propagate Christianity in such ways as to never arouse antagonism. They have compromised with Socialism, they have compromised with the economy theory of history, they have emphasized the importance of various material elements. It is a sad evidence of the lack of unity into which we have been betrayed when a Catholic Justice of the Supreme Court [Frank Murphy] can publicly proclaim that “Democracy” is more important than religion; when a Catholic priest, who has taught for some years at the Catholic University at Washington and has filled our country with his disciples, openly goes to address a Jewish Masonic lodge (though Catholics are still forbidden by Canon 2335 to cooperate with or condone Masonry in any way)—and this, according to the press, not to remind his hearers of their true home in the Church Catholic, but to confirm them in their sense of injured innocence; or when a Catholic journalist burns a little incense on the altar of the economic theory of history, or a Catholic college professor condones usury, or defends the Communist cause in Spain.

Now all these gentlemen, these liberal broad-minded Catholics, many of whom are teaching the next generation of American Catholics no doubt think that they are doing a service to God in smoothing out our differences with others, and neglecting to utter the challenge which Christianity has uttered everywhere else in the world, until the opposed gnashed its teeth, and took up stones to cast. Perhaps they hope in this way to avert persecution, and gradually to bring about the conversion of the country they love to the true Faith. I do not impugn their motives or their sincerity; indeed, they are often animated by a great, if misguided charity. But if the history of Christianity teaches anything, it fairly cries out from the stones of desecrated and stolen churches that if they have their way, they will do just the opposite to what they intend, and even worse. They will lead us, if we are foolish enough, to follow them, to that abyss over which English Catholics fell, one by one and family by family, in the Sixteenth Century. The English Catholics, a huge majority, were kept comparatively silent and inactive in the face of an intolerable but gradual oppression by a small rich crafty minority, in the hope that if they ever compromised on this point and that point, they would ultimately prevail, since they were more numerous, and had truth on their side. The result was the almost complete extinction of Catholicism in England for centuries—perhaps forever. (William Thomas Walsh, Characters of the Inquisition, New York, P.J. Kenedy & Sons, 1940 pp. 281-294.)

That last paragraph summarized the theme that I have tried to hammer home in hundreds upon hundreds of lengthy commentaries on this site—and in countless hours of lectures around the country and online. William Thomas Walsh’s prophetic vision of what would happen to Catholicism in the United States of America has been accomplished by conciliar revolutionaries, many of whose American predecessors before the “Second” Vatican Council sought to pave the way for the triumph of Americanist “ideals.”

Yes, the United States of America has become a slave state controlled by the same set of forces that the Inquisition sought to eliminate from within Holy Mother Church. This is because the United States of America was founded on false principles, including those of “religious liberty” and “religious indifferentism” that contributed to the rise of counterfeit church of conciliarism, whose very false spirit was being pioneered by Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America Frank Murphy and the others, including that nameless priest who taught at the Catholic University of America, described by Mr. Walsh above.

Pope Saint Pius X, therefore, summarized a situation in France that had already taken root gradually here in the United States of America but had to be instituted in France by means of a violent series of revolutions as, unlike the situation here in the United States of America, the Cross of Cross had been implanted deep in the soil of France and elsewhere in Europe, which is why I t had to be rooted out with unremitting hatred and violence.

We return now to Pope Saint Pius X’s Une Fois Encore. The passages below explain the distinction between accepting the fact of persecutions while emphasizing that Holy Mother Church does not seek such persecutions as it is her desire to be an instrument of the Prince of Peace in spreading peace within the souls of Catholics and hence throughout every fabric of human institutions:

5. The war will be bitter and without respite on the part of those who wage it. That as it goes on harder trials than those which you have hitherto known await you is possible and even probable. Common prudence calls on each of you to prepare for them. And this you will do simply, valiantly, and full of confidence, sure that however fiercely the fight may rage, victory will in the end remain in your hands.

6. The pledge of this victory is your union first of all amongst yourselves, and secondly with this Apostolic See. This twofold union will make you invincible, and against it all efforts will break.

7. Our enemies have on this been under no misapprehensions. From the outset, and with the greatest clearness of vision, they determined on their objective; first to separate you from Us and the Chair of Peter, and then to sow disorder among you. From then till now they have made no change in their tactics; they have pursued their end without rest and by every means; some with comprehensive and catching formulas; others with the most brutal cynicism. Specious promises, dishonorable bribes offered to schism, threats and violence, all these have been brought into play and employed. But your clear-sighted fidelity has wrecked all these attempts. There- upon, thinking that the best way to separate you from Us was to shatter your confidence in the Apostolic See, they have not hesitated, from the tribune and in the press, to throw discredit upon Our acts by misrepresenting and sometimes even by calumniating Our intentions.

8. The Church, they said, is seeking to arouse religious war in France, and is summoning to her aid the violent persecution which has been the object of her prayers. What a strange accusation! Founded by Him who came to bring peace to the world and to reconcile man with God, a Messenger of peace upon earth, the Church could only seek religious war by repudiating her high mission and belying it before the eyes of all. To this mission of patient sweetness and love she rests and will remain always faithful. Besides, the whole world now knows that if peace of conscience is broken in France, that is not the work of the Church but of her enemies. Fair-minded men, even though not of our faith, recognize that if there is a struggle on the question of religion in your beloved country, it is not because the Church was the first to unfurl the flag, but because war was declared against her. During the last twenty-five years she has had to undergo this warfare. That is the truth and the proof of it is
seen in the declarations made and repeated over and over again in the Press, at meetings, at Masonic congresses, and even in Parliament, as well as in the attacks which have been progressively and systematically directed against her. These facts are undeniable, and no argument can ever make away with them. The Church then does not wish for war, and religious war least of all. To affirm the contrary is an outrageous calumny.

9. Nor has she any desire for violent persecution. She knows what persecution is, for she has suffered it in all times and in all places. Centuries passed in bloodshed give her the right to say with a holy boldness that she does not fear it, and that as often as may be necessary she will be able to meet it. But persecution is in itself an evil, for it is injustice and prevents man from worshipping God in freedom. The Church then cannot desire it, even with a view to the good which Providence in its infinite wisdom ever draws out of it. Besides, persecution is not only evil, it is also suffering, and there we have a fresh reason why the Church, who is the best of mothers, will never seek it.

10. This persecution which she is reproached as having provoked, and which they declare they have refused, is now being actually inflicted upon her. Have they not within these last days evicted from their houses even the Bishops who are most venerable by their age and virtues, driven the seminarists from the grands and petits seminaries, and entered upon the expulsion of the cures from their presbyteries? The whole Catholic world has watched this spectacle with sadness, and has not hesitated to give the name which they deserved to such acts of violence.

11. As for the ecclesiastical property which we are accused of having abandoned, it is important to remark that this property was partly the patrimony of the poor and the patrimony, more sacred still, of the dead. It was not permissible to the Church to abandon or surrender it; she could only let it be taken from her by violence. Nobody will believe that she has deliberately abandoned, except under the pressure of the most overwhelming motives, what was confided to her keeping, and what was so necessary for the exercise of worship, for the maintenance of sacred edifices, for the instruction of her clergy, and for the support of her ministers. It was only when perfidiously placed in the position of having to choose between material ruin and consent to the violation of her constitution, which is of divine origin, that the Church refused, at the cost of poverty, to allow the work of God to be touched by her. Her property, then, has been wrested from her; it was not she that abandoned it. Consequently, to declare ecclesiastical property unclaimed on a given date unless the Church had by then created within herself a new organism; to subject this creation to conditions in rank opposition to the divine constitution of the Church, which was thus compelled to reject them; to transfer this property to third parties as if it had become "sans maitre," and finally to assert that in thus acting there was no spoliation of the Church but only a disposal of the property abandoned by her -- this is not merely argument of transparent sophistry but adding insult to the most cruel spoliation. This spoliation is undeniable in spite of vain attempts at palliating it by declaring that no moral person existed to whom the property might be handed over; for the state has power to confer civil personality on whomsoever the public good demands that it should be granted to, establishments that are Catholic as well as others. In any case it would have been easy for the state not to have subjected the formation of "associations cultuelles" to conditions in direct opposition to the divine constitution of the Church which they were supposed to serve.

12. And yet that is precisely what was done in the matter of the "associations cultuelles." They were organized under the law in such a way that its dispositions on this subject ran directly counter to those rights which, derived from her constitution, are essential to the Church, notably as affecting the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the inviolable base given to His work by the Divine Master himself. Moreover, the law conferred on these associations powers which are the exclusive prerogative of ecclesiastical authority both in the matter of the exercise of worship and of the proprietorship and administration of property. And lastly, not only are these associations withdrawn from ecclesiastical jurisdiction but they are made judicially answerable to the civil authority. These are the reasons which have driven Us in Our previous Encyclicals to condemn these "associations cultuelles" in spite of the heavy sacrifices which such condemnation involved.

13. We have also been accused of prejudice and inconsistency. It has been said that We had refused to approve in France what We had approved in Germany. But this charge is equally lacking in foundation and justice. For although the German law was blameable on many points, and has been merely tolerated in order to avoid greater evils, the cases were quite different, for that law contained an express recognition of the Catholic hierarchy, which the French law does not do.

14. As regards the annual declaration demanded for the exercise of worship, it did not offer the full legal security which one had a right to desire. Nevertheless -- though in principle gatherings of the faithful in church have none of the constituent elements proper to public meetings, and it would, in fact, be odious to attempt to assimilate them -- the Church could, in order to avoid greater evils, have brought herself to tolerate this declaration. But by providing that the "cure or officiating priest would no longer," in his church, "be anything more than an occupier without any judicial title or power to perform any acts of administration," there has been imposed on ministers of religion in the very exercise of their ministry a situation so humiliating and vague that, under such conditions, it was impossible to accept the declaration. There remains for consideration the law recently voted by the two Chambers.

15. From the point of view of ecclesiastical property, this law is a law of spoliation and confiscation, and it has completed the stripping of the Church. Although her Divine Founder was born poor in a manger, and died poor on the Cross, although she herself has known poverty from her cradle, the property that came to her was nonetheless hers, and no one had the right to deprive her of it. Her ownership, indisputable from every point of view, had been, moreover, officially sanctioned by the state, which could not consequently violate it. From the point of view of the exercise of worship, this law has organized anarchy; it is the consecration of uncertainty and caprice. Uncertainty whether places of worship, always liable to be diverted from their purpose, are meanwhile to be placed, or not placed, at the disposition of the clergy and faithful; uncertainty whether they shall be reserved from them or not, and for how long; whilst an arbitrary administrative regulates the conditions of their use, which is rendered eminently precarious. Public worship will be in as many diverse situations as the other. On the other hand, there is an obligation to meet all sorts of heavy charges, whilst at the same time there are draconian restrictions upon the resources by which they are to be met. Thus, though but of yesterday, this law has already evoked manifold and severe criticisms from men belonging indiscriminately to all political parties and all shades of religious belief. These criticisms alone are sufficient judgment of the law.

16. It is easy to see, Venerable Brethren and beloved sons, from what We have just recalled to you, that this law is an aggravation of the Law of Separation, and we can not therefore do otherwise than condemn it.

17. The vague and ambiguous-wording of some of its articles places the end pursued by our enemies in a new light. Their object is, as we have already pointed out, the destruction of the Church and the dechristianization of France, but without people's attending to it or even noticing it. If their enterprise had been really popular, as they pretend it to be, they would not have hesitated to pursue it with visor raised and to take the whole responsibility. But instead of assuming that responsibility, they try to clear themselves of it and deny it, and in order to succeed the better, fling it upon the Church their victim. This is the most striking of all the proofs that their evil work does not respond to the wishes of the country.

18. It is in vain that after driving Us to the cruel necessity of rejecting the laws that have been made -- seeing the evils they have drawn down upon the country, and feeling the universal reprobation which, like a slow tide, is rising round them -- they seek to lead public opinion astray and to make the responsibility for these evils fall upon Us. Their attempt will not succeed.

19. As for Ourselves, We have accomplished Our duty, as every other Roman Pontiff would have done. The high charge with which it has pleased Heaven to invest Us, in spite of Our unworthiness, as also the Christian faith itself, which you profess with Us, dictated to Us Our conduct. We could not have acted otherwise without trampling under foot Our conscience, without being false to the oath which We took on mounting the chair of Peter, and without violating the Catholic hierarchy, the foundation given to the Church by our Savior Jesus Christ.

We await, then, without fear, the verdict of history. History will tell how We, with Our eyes fixed immutably upon the defense of the higher rights of God, have neither wished to humiliate the civil power, nor to combat a form of government, but to safeguard the inviolable work of Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ. It will say that We have defended you, Our beloved sons, with all the strength of Our great love; that what We have demanded and now demand for the Church, of which the French Church is the elder daughter and an integral part, is respect for its hierarchy and inviolability of its property and liberty; that if Our demand had been granted religious peace would not have been troubled in France, and that, the day it is listened to that peace so much desired will be restored in the country.

20. And, lastly, history will say, that if, sure beforehand of your magnanimous generosity. We have not hesitated to tell you that the hour for sacrifice had struck, it is to remind the world, in the name of the Master of all things, that men here below should feed their minds upon thoughts of a higher sort than those of the perishable contingencies of life, and that the supreme and intangible joy of the human soul on earth is that of duty supernaturally carried out, cost what it may and so God honored, served and loved, in spite of all.

21. Confident that the Immaculate Virgin, Daughter of the Father, Mother of the Word, and Spouse of the Holy Ghost, will obtain for you from the most holy and adorable Trinity better days, and as a token of the calm which We firmly hope will follow the storm, it is from the depths of Our heart that We impart Our Apostolic Blessing to you, Venerable Brethren, as well as to your clergy and the whole French people.

Given at Rome, at St. Peter's on the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6, 1907, the fourth year of Our pontificate. (Pope Saint Pius X, Une Fois Encore, January 6, 1907.)

Pope Saint Pius X rose to the defense of French Catholics when they were under attack. Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s silence about the persecution of Catholics in Red China and Nicaragua betokens his belief that Catholics who have acted in what he thinks are “confrontational” ways with the Communist tyrants and murderers have brought the current persecutions upon themselves. He is a hideously wicked man who hates Catholic doctrine and worship and who has never met a baby-killing leftist he has not sought to praise and appease.

Pope Saint Pius X was not content to criticize the law of separation in France. He saw it as his duty to condemn the attempt by some French Catholics to use The Sillon movement as the means to “baptize” the principles of the French Revolution, a “baptism,” if you will, that later received the sanction of the counterfeit church of conciliarism in Gaudium et Spes, December 7, 1965:

Let us be content to say here that the text serves as a countersyllabus and, as such, represents on the part of the Church, an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789. (Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 382.)

Pope Saint Pius X, on the other hand, made clear that the Catholic Church would never make any kind of “reconciliation” with the false, anti-Theistic principles of the French Revolution:

We know only too well the dark workshops in which are elaborated these mischievous doctrines which ought not to seduce clear-thinking minds. The leaders of the Sillon have not been able to guard against these doctrines. The exaltation of their sentiments, the undiscriminating good-will of their hearts, their philosophical mysticism, mixed with a measure of illuminism, have carried them away towards another Gospel which they thought was the true Gospel of Our Savior. To such an extent that they speak of Our Lord Jesus Christ with a familiarity supremely disrespectful, and that – their ideal being akin to that of the Revolution – they fear not to draw between the Gospel and the Revolution blasphemous comparisons for which the excuse cannot be made that they are due to some confused and over-hasty composition.

We wish to draw your attention, Venerable Brethren, to this distortion of the Gospel and to the sacred character of Our Lord Jesus Christ, God and man, prevailing within the Sillon and elsewhere. As soon as the social question is being approached, it is the fashion in some quarters to first put aside the divinity of Jesus Christ, and then to mention only His unlimited clemency, His compassion for all human miseries, and His pressing exhortations to the love of our neighbor and to the brotherhood of men. True, Jesus has loved us with an immense, infinite love, and He came on earth to suffer and die so that, gathered around Him in justice and love, motivated by the same sentiments of mutual charity, all men might live in peace and happiness. But for the realization of this temporal and eternal happiness, He has laid down with supreme authority the condition that we must belong to His Flock, that we must accept His doctrine, that we must practice virtue, and that we must accept the teaching and guidance of Peter and his successors. Further, whilst Jesus was kind to sinners and to those who went astray, He did not respect their false ideas, however sincere they might have appeared. He loved them all, but He instructed them in order to convert them and save them. Whilst He called to Himself in order to comfort them, those who toiled and suffered, it was not to preach to them the jealousy of a chimerical equality. Whilst He lifted up the lowly, it was not to instill in them the sentiment of a dignity independent from, and rebellious against, the duty of obedience. Whilst His heart overflowed with gentleness for the souls of good-will, He could also arm Himself with holy indignation against the profaners of the House of God, against the wretched men who scandalized the little ones, against the authorities who crush the people with the weight of heavy burdens without putting out a hand to lift them. He was as strong as he was gentle. He reproved, threatened, chastised, knowing, and teaching us that fear is the beginning of wisdom, and that it is sometimes proper for a man to cut off an offending limb to save his body. Finally, He did not announce for future society the reign of an ideal happiness from which suffering would be banished; but, by His lessons and by His example, He traced the path of the happiness which is possible on earth and of the perfect happiness in heaven: the royal way of the Cross. These are teachings that it would be wrong to apply only to one’s personal life in order to win eternal salvation; these are eminently social teachings, and they show in Our Lord Jesus Christ something quite different from an inconsistent and impotent humanitarianism. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910).

We are living in the midst of an inconsistent and impotent humanitarianism today, one that is championed by the morbidly obese naturalist who dresses up to look like a pope but who is nothing other than an antipope and an agent, whether witting or unwitting, of Antichrist’s legions from hell.

Pope Saint Pius X gave Catholics their marching orders in Notre Charge Apostolique when he wrote the following:

To reply to these fallacies is only too easy; for whom will they make believe that the Catholic Sillonists, the priests and seminarists enrolled in their ranks have in sight in their social work, only the temporal interests of the working class? To maintain this, We think, would be an insult to them. The truth is that the Sillonist leaders are self-confessed and irrepressible idealists; they claim to regenerate the working class by first elevating the conscience of Man; they have a social doctrine, and they have religious and philosophical principles for the reconstruction of society upon new foundations; they have a particular conception of human dignity, freedom, justice and brotherhood; and, in an attempt to justify their social dreams, they put forward the Gospel, but interpreted in their own way; and what is even more serious, they call to witness Christ, but a diminished and distorted Christ. Further, they teach these ideas in their study groups, and inculcate them upon their friends, and they also introduce them into their working procedures. Therefore they are really professors of social, civic, and religious morals; and whatever modifications they may introduce in the organization of the Sillonist movement, we have the right to say that the aims of the Sillon, its character and its action belong to the field of morals which is the proper domain of the Church. In view of all this, the Sillonist are deceiving themselves when they believe that they are working in a field that lies outside the limits of Church authority and of its doctrinal and directive power. . . .

We know well that they flatter themselves with the idea of raising human dignity and the discredited condition of the working class. We know that they wish to render just and perfect the labor laws and the relations between employers and employees, thus causing a more complete justice and a greater measure of charity to prevail upon earth, and causing also a profound and fruitful transformation in society by which mankind would make an undreamed-of progress. Certainly, We do not blame these efforts; they would be excellent in every respect if the Sillonist did not forget that a person’s progress consists in developing his natural abilities by fresh motivations; that it consists also in permitting these motivations to operate within the frame of, and in conformity with, the laws of human nature. But, on the contrary, by ignoring the laws governing human nature and by breaking the bounds within which they operate, the human person is lead, not toward progress, but towards death. This, nevertheless, is what they want to do with human society; they dream of changing its natural and traditional foundations; they dream of a Future City built on different principles, and they dare to proclaim these more fruitful and more beneficial than the principles upon which the present Christian City rests.

No, Venerable Brethren, We must repeat with the utmost energy in these times of social and intellectual anarchy when everyone takes it upon himself to teach as a teacher and lawmaker - the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants. omnia instaurare in Christo. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

By separating fraternity from Christian charity thus understood, Democracy, far from being a progress, would mean a disastrous step backwards for civilization. If, as We desire with all Our heart, the highest possible peak of well being for society and its members is to be attained through fraternity or, as it is also called, universal solidarity, all minds must be united in the knowledge of Truth, all wills united in morality, and all hearts in the love of God and His Son Jesus Christ. But this union is attainable only by Catholic charity, and that is why Catholic charity alone can lead the people in the march of progress towards the ideal civilization.

Finally, at the root of all their fallacies on social questions, lie the false hopes of Sillonists on human dignity. According to them, Man will be a man truly worthy of the name only when he has acquired a strong, enlightened, and independent consciousness, able to do without a master, obeying only himself, and able to assume the most demanding responsibilities without faltering. Such are the big words by which human pride is exalted, like a dream carrying Man away without light, without guidance, and without help into the realm of illusion in which he will be destroyed by his errors and passions whilst awaiting the glorious day of his full consciousness. And that great day, when will it come? Unless human nature can be changed, which is not within the power of the Sillonists, will that day ever come? Did the Saints who brought human dignity to its highest point, possess that kind of dignity? And what of the lowly of this earth who are unable to raise so high but are content to plow their furrow modestly at the level where Providence placed them? They who are diligently discharging their duties with Christian humility, obedience, and patience, are they not also worthy of being called men? Will not Our Lord take them one day out of their obscurity and place them in heaven amongst the princes of His people? (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

The very false principles condemned by Pope Saint Pius X have become the cornerstone of the counterfeit church of conciliarism’s theological and pastoral acceptance of the religiously indifferentist civil state that, as noted above, leads only and inexorably to the triumph, however temporary until the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, of practical atheism as the lowest common denominator of social life and public policy.

Our last truly canonized Roman Pontiff also condemned the institutionalization of the separation of Church and State in Portugal precisely ninety-nine years before Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI praised it while on a anti-apostolic pilgrimage there in 2010:

2. Whilst the new rulers of Portugal were affording such numerous and awful examples of the abuse of power, you know with what patience and moderation this Apostolic See has acted towards them. We thought that We ought most carefully to avoid any action that could even have the appearance of hostility to the Republic. For We clung to the hope that its rulers would one day take saner counsels and would at length repair, by some new agreement, the injuries inflicted on the Church. In this, however, We have been altogether disappointed, for they have now crowned their evil work by the promulgation of a vicious and pernicious Decree for the Separation of Church and State. But now the duty imposed upon Us by our Apostolic charge will not allow Us to remain passive and silent when so serious a wound has been inflicted upon the rights and dignity of the Catholic religion. Therefore do We now address you, Venerable Brethren, in this letter and denounce to all Christendom the heinousness of this deed.

3. At the outset, the absurd and monstrous character of the decree of which We speak is plain from the fact that it proclaims and enacts that the Republic shall have no religion, as if men individually and any association or nation did not depend upon Him who is the Maker and Preserver of all things; and then from the fact that it liberates Portugal from the observance of the Catholic religion, that religion, We say, which has ever been that nation's greatest safeguard and glory, and has been professed almost unanimously by its people. So let us take it that it has been their pleasure to sever that close alliance between Church and State, confirmed though it was by the solemn faith of treaties. Once this divorce was effected, it would at least have been logical to pay no further attention to the Church, and to leave her the enjoyment of the common liberty and rights which belong to every citizen and every respectable community of peoples. Quite otherwise, however, have things fallen out. This decree bears indeed the name of Separation, but it enacts in reality the reduction of the Church to utter want by the spoliation of her property, and to servitude to the State by oppression in all that touches her sacred power and spirit. (Pope Saint Pius X, Iamdudum, May 24, 1911.)

That the Holy See made an accommodation to the reality caused by the Portuguese decree of separation of Church and State and had its property and many of its privileges restored in the Concordat of 1940 in no way justifies the revolution against the Social Reign of Christ the King in Portugal wrought by the Masonic and socialistic forces there one hundred tenyears ago. Holy Mother Church has long sought to accommodate herself to the concrete realities of any given situation in which her children find themselves so that she can continue her work of teaching and preaching and sanctification without the hindrance of the civil state. To reach a concordat that recognizes the reality of a forced separation of Church and State is not the same thing as endorsing that false thesis or to praise the free flow of false ideas and organizations that have occurred in its wake.

Pope Saint Pius X, far from praising a revolution that suppressed much of the Church's liberties for thirty years prior to the Concordat of 1940, understood that the life of the Church and thus the good of souls in Portugal would be irreparably harmed by the decree of separation of Church and State that was praised by Ratzinger/Benedict yesterday upon his arrival in Lisbon, Portugal:

The way in which the Portuguese law binds and fetters the liberty of the Church is scarcely credible, so repugnant is it to the methods of these modern days and to the public proclamation of all liberty. It is decreed under the heaviest penalties that the acts of the Bishops shall on no account be printed and that not even within the walls of the churches shall there be any announcement made to the people except by leave of the Republic. It is, moreover, forbidden to perform any ceremony outside the precincts of the sacred buildings without permission from the Republic, to go round in procession, to wear sacred vestments or even the cassock. Furthermore, it is forbidden to place any sign which savors of the Catholic religion not only on public monuments, but even on private buildings; but there is no prohibition at all against so exposing what is offensive to Catholics. Similarly, it is unlawful to form associations for the fostering of religion and piety; indeed societies of this sort are placed on a level with the criminal associations which are formed for evil purposes. And whilst on the one hand all citizens are allowed to employ their means according to their pleasure, on the other, Catholics are, against all justice and equity, placed under restrictions like these if they wish to bequeath something for prayers for the dead, or the upkeep of divine worship; and such bequests already made are impiously diverted to other purposes in utter violation of the wills and wishes of the testators. In fine, the Republic -- and this is harshest and gravest stroke of all -- goes so far as to invade the domain of the authority of the Church, and to make provisions on points which, as they concern the constitution of the priesthood, necessarily claim the special care of the Church. We speak of the formation and training of young ecclesiastics. For not only does the Decree compel ecclesiastical students to pursue their scientific and literary studies which precede theology in the public lycees where, by reason of a spirit of hostility to God and the Church, the integrity of their faith plainly is exposed to the greatest peril; but the Republic even interferes in the domestic life and discipline of the Seminaries, and arrogates the right of appointing the professors, of approving of the textbooks and of regulating the sacred studies of the Clerics. Thus are the old decrees of the Regalists revived and enforced; but what was grievous arrogance whilst there was concord between Church and State, is it not now, when the State will have nothing to do with Church, repugnant and full of absurdity? And what is to be said of the fact that this law is positively framed to deprave the morals of the clergy and to provoke them to abandon their superiors? For fixed pensions are assigned to those who have been suspended from their functions by the authority of the Bishops, and benefices are given to those priests who in miserable forgetfulness of their duty shall have dared to contract marriage; and what is still more shameful to record, it extends the same benefits to be shared and enjoyed by any children there may be of such a sacrilegious union. (Pope Saint Pius X, Iamdudum, May 24, 1911.)

The revolution praised by Ratzinger/Benedict yesterday did not open up a "new era of freedom for the Church" as the subsequent concordats (1940 and (2004) sought only to limit the effects of a revolution that had its inspiration from the same source as conciliarism, the devil himself. Unlike the concordat of 1940, which was negotiated under the pontificate of our last true pope thus far, Pope Pius XII, the concordat negotiated by the then Secretary of State of the Holy See, the late Angelo "Cardinal" Sodano (another of the troika that helped to deconstruct Our Lady's Fatima Message), specifically recognized and accepted the separation of Church and State in Portugal:

The Holy See and the Portuguese Republic, recognising that the Catholic Church and the State are, each and severally, autonomous and independent; taking into account the deep and historical ties between the Catholic Church and Portugal and bearing in mind the reciprocal responsibilities which bind them together, within the limits of religious freedom, and for the benefit of the common good and the duty of building a society which promotes the dignity of the mankind, justice and peace; recognising the Concordat of 7 May 1940, agreed between the Holy See and the Portuguese Republic, and its application has contributed to a considerable extent in to strengthen their historical ties and consolidate the activity of the Catholic Church in Portugal for the benefit of the faithful and for the Portuguese community in general; mindful of the need of an up-date in the light of profound changes on a national and international scale, and in particular as regards the Portuguese legal system, the new Democratic Constitution, revised provisions of European Community law and contemporary international law, and in so far as this affects the church, and the evolution of its relations with the political community; have agreed to stipulate the following Concordat in the terms laid down:

Article 1

The Holy See and the Portuguese Republic declare the commitment of the state and the Catholic Church to cooperate in promoting the dignity of mankind, justice and peace.

The Portuguese Republic recognises the legal status of the Catholic Church.

Relations between the Holy See and the Portuguese Republic are assured through the auspices of an Apostolic Nuncio, as attaché to the Portuguese Republic, and a Portuguese Ambassador to the Holy See. ( Church-State Concordat in Portugal 2004)

Circumstances within countries do change. Granted. Concordats may need to be amended from time to time. Certainly. Catholic teaching remains immutable, and one of the articles of Catholic teaching that remains immutable is the condemnation of the separation of Church and State:

Many believe in or claim that they believe in and hold fast to Catholic doctrine on such questions as social authority, the right of owning private property, on the relations between capital and labor, on the rights of the laboring man, on the relations between Church and State, religion and country, on the relations between the different social classes, on international relations, on the rights of the Holy See and the prerogatives of the Roman Pontiff and the Episcopate, on the social rights of Jesus Christ, Who is the Creator, Redeemer, and Lord not only of individuals but of nations. In spite of these protestations, they speak, write, and, what is more, act as if it were not necessary any longer to follow, or that they did not remain still in full force, the teachings and solemn pronouncements which may be found in so many documents of the Holy See, and particularly in those written by Leo XIII, Pius X, and Benedict XV.

There is a species of moral, legal, and social modernism which We condemn, no less decidedly than We condemn theological modernism.

It is necessary ever to keep in mind these teachings and pronouncements which We have made; it is no less necessary to reawaken that spirit of faith, of supernatural love, and of Christian discipline which alone can bring to these principles correct understanding, and can lead to their observance. This is particularly important in the case of youth, and especially those who aspire to the priesthood, so that in the almost universal confusion in which we live they at least, as the Apostle writes, will not be "tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the wickedness of men, by cunning craftiness, by which they lie in wait to deceive." (Ephesians iv, 14) (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

Pope Pius XII made it clear in Humani Generis, August 12, 1950, that we are duty bound to accept papal encyclical letters, something that Ratzinger/Benedict does not believe applies to the "older" encyclical letters condemning the separation of Church and State as he believes that those letters were conditioned by the historical circumstances in which they were written, thus making them subject to modification at a later time. Once again, however, this is false. Catholic truth is immutable, admitting that it may not be possible always in the circumstances of the world to realize this teaching with exactness. He is as bound as each of one us to accept and to preach the immutable teaching that the civil state has an obligation to recognize the Catholic Church and to accord her the favor and the protection of the laws:

Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent, since in writing such Letters the Popes do not exercise the supreme power of their Teaching Authority. For these matters are taught with the ordinary teaching authority, of which it is true to say: "He who heareth you, heareth me"; and generally what is expounded and inculcated in Encyclical Letters already for other reasons appertains to Catholic doctrine. But if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter up to that time under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according to the mind and will of the same Pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a question open to discussion among theologians. (Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, August 12, 1950.)

Unlike Ratzinger/Benedict, who praised the decree of the separation of Church and State as a "liberating" factor in the life of the Catholic Church, Pope Saint Pius X condemned it very vigorously:

Accordingly, under the admonition of the duty of Our Apostolic office that, in the face of such audacity on the part of the enemies of God, We should most vigilantly protect the dignity and honor of religion and preserve the sacred rights of the Catholic Church, We by our Apostolic authority denounce, condemn, and reject the Law for the Separation of Church and State in the Portuguese Republic. This law despises God and repudiates the Catholic faith; it annuls the treaties solemnly made between Portugal and the Apostolic See, and violates the law of nature and of her property; it oppresses the liberty of the Church, and assails her divine Constitution; it injures and insults the majesty of the Roman Pontificate, the order of Bishops, the Portuguese clergy and people, and so the Catholics of the world. And whilst We strenuously complain that such a law should have been made, sanctioned, and published, We utter a solemn protest against those who have had a part in it as authors or helpers, and, at the same time, We proclaim and denounce as null and void, and to be so regarded, all that the law has enacted against the inviolable rights of the Church. (Pope Saint Pius X, Iamdudum, May 24, 1911.)

The contrast cannot be much clearer.

Pope Saint Pius X had made it clear in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906, that the "Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State." The conciliar "popes" have endorsed what is opposed what our true popes have denounced as offensive to the rights of Christ the King and to the right ordering of men and their nations.

I don't why this is so difficult to understand or to accept, but the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, is immutable. He does not inspire Holy Mother Church to teach one thing for one thousand nine hundred years before changing course. To believe this is to disbelieve in the very nature of God Himself, and that, you see, is at the base of all that one needs to know about the counterfeit church of conciliarism and its willing subordination to the lords of the anti-Incarnational civil state of Protestant/Judeo-Masonic Modernity.

Pope Leo XIII explained that a generic belief in God leads to the acceptance of religious indifferentism, which is one of the chief goals of Judeo-Masonry:

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

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

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

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

To Remain Calm in the Midst of the Agitation

In the midst of all this, however, we must remain ever in the hands of Our Lady and ever reliant upon her Most Rosary as the consecrated slaves of her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, through her own Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. This is a time for Catholic heroes who are willing to pray and fast for the conversion of men and their nations to the true Faith, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order, and for the restoration of a true pope on the Throne of Saint Peter.

Although it may sound trite as I have repeated this endlessly in my writing over the past few decades, this is the time that God has known from all eternity that we would be alive. The graces His Co-Equal, Co-Eternal Divine Son won for us by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday in atonement for our sins and that flow into our souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces, are more than sufficient for us to prosper under the yoke of overt persecution and censorship.

Remember, the Sanhedrin demanded that the Apostles be silent about the Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ. They refused to do and rejoiced that we were deemed worthy to suffer for sake of His Holy Name.

What are we afraid of now?

Remember, the first Catholics were told by Roman emperors and their minions to make sacrifices to idols and abandon the Catholic Faith. According to Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, nearly eleven million Catholics gave up their lives in order to avoid even the appearance of doing apostatizing.

What’s wrong with us?

As noted a short while earlier in this commentary, Catholics in England and Ireland hid priests in priest-holes and were willing to lose everything they hand, including their lives, to remain faithful to the true Church during the persecutions of King Henry VIII and his own daughter and granddaughter, Elizabeth I, whose mother, Anne Boleyn, was Henry’s illegitimate daughter.

We are afraid of the Red Chinese-bought and paid for high priests and priestesses of Silicon Valley?

To quote the “big guy” whose wallet got very fat from Chinese Communist Party front companies, “Come on, man.”

Remember, Catholics suffered during the French Revolution, under Otto von Bismarck’s Kulturkampf in Germany, and the suffered at the hands of the Soviet Bolsheviks, the Chinese Maoists, the Cuban Castroists and the Mexican Freemasons.

With Our Lady and Saint Joseph so near to us every day, why are we so agitated and afraid?

As courageous as the truckers were in Canada before they were brutalized by the forces unleashed by Deng Xiaoping Trudeau, the commendable battle they waged was not for Christ the King and His Holy Church. While Catholics who participated in the effort certainly gained merit for enduring injustices and even violence wrought upon their own person, the coming battles will be about the Holy Faith, and that alone is condition for martyrdom as we the minions of the world have always required believing Catholics to deny the Faith before men or face severe consequences.

Living A World Devoid of a Superabundance of the Merits of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus: Prophetic Words from Father Frederick Faber and Father Henry James Coleridge, S.J.

We are looking at what happens in a world where most people, including most baptized Catholics, are devoid of contact with the Most Precious Blood of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, as Father Frederick Faber made this exact point in The Precious Blood:

It is plain that some millions of sins in a day are hindered by the Precious Blood; and this is not merely a hindering of so many individual sins, but it is an immense check upon the momentum of sin. It is also a weakening of habits of sin, and a diminution of the consequences of sin. If then, the action of the Precious Blood were withdrawn from the world, sins would not only increase incalculably in number, but the tyranny of sin would be fearfully augmented, and it would spread among a greater number of people. It would wax so bold that no one would be secure from the sins of others. It would be a constant warfare, or an intolerable vigilance, to preserve property and rights. Falsehood would become so universal as to dissolve society; and the homes of domestic life would be turned into wards either of a prison or a madhouse. We cannot be in the company of an atrocious criminal without some feeling of uneasiness and fear. We should not like to be left alone with him, even if his chains were not unfastened. But without the Precious Blood, such men would abound in the world. They might even become the majority. We know of ourselves, from glimpses God has once or twice given us in life, what incredible possibilities of wickedness we have in our souls. Civilization increases these possibilities. Education multiplies and magnifies our powers of sinning. Refinement adds a fresh malignity. Men would thus become more diabolically and unmixedly bad, until at last earth would be a hell on this side of the grave. There would also doubtless be new kinds of sins and worse kinds. Education would provide the novelty, and refinement would carry it into the region of the unnatural. All highly-refined and luxurious developments of heathenism have fearfully illustrated this truth. A wicked barbarian is like a beast. His savage passions are violent but intermitting, and his necessities of sin do not appear to grow. Their circle is limited. But a highly-educated sinner, without the restraints of religion, is like a demon. His sins are less confined to himself. They involve others in their misery. They require others to be offered as it were in sacrifice to them. Moreover, education, considered simply as an intellectual cultivation, propagates sin, and makes it more universal.

The increase of sin, without the prospects which the faith lays open to us, must lead to an increase of despair, and to an increase of it upon a gigantic scale. With despair must come rage, madness, violence, tumult, and bloodshed. Yet from what quarter could we expect relief in this tremendous suffering? We should be imprisoned in our own planet. The blue sky above us would be but a dungeon-roof. The greensward beneath our feet would truly be the slab of our future tomb. Without the Precious Blood there is no intercourse between heaven and earth. Prayer would be useless. Our hapless lot would be irremediable. It has always seemed to me that it will be one of the terrible things in hell, that there are no motives for patience there. We cannot make the best of it. Why should we endure it? Endurance is an effort for a time; but this woe is eternal. Perhaps vicissitudes of agony might be a kind of field for patience. But there are no such vicissitudes. Why should we endure, then? Simply because we must; and yet in eternal things this is not a sort of necessity which supplies a reasonable ground for patience. So in this imaginary world of rampant sin there would be no motives for patience. For death would be our only seeming relief; and that is only seeming, for death is any thin but an eternal sleep. Our impatience would become frenzy; and if our constitutions were strong enough to prevent the frenzy from issuing in downright madness, it would grow into hatred of God, which is perhaps already less uncommon than we suppose.

An earth, from off which all sense of justice had perished, would indeed be the most disconsolate of homes. The antediluvian earth exhibits only a tendency that way; and the same is true of the worst forms of heathenism. The Precious Blood was always there. Unnamed, unknown, and unsuspected, the Blood of Jesus has alleviated every manifestation of evil which there has ever been just as it is alleviating at this hour the punishments of hell. What would be our own individual case on such a blighted earth as this? All our struggles to be better would be simply hopeless. There would be no reason why we should not give ourselves up to that kind of enjoyment which our corruption does substantially find in sin. The gratification of our appetites is something; and that lies on one side, while on the other side there is absolutely nothing. But we should have the worm of conscience already, even though the flames of hell might yet be some years distant. To feel that we are fools, and yet lack the strength to be wiser--is not this precisely the maddening thing in madness? Yet it would be our normal state under the reproaches of conscience, in a world where there was no Precious Blood. Whatever relics of moral good we might retain about us would add most sensibly to our wretchedness. Good people, if there were any, would be, as St. Paul speaks, of all men the most miserable; for they would be drawn away from the enjoyment of this world, or have their enjoyment of it abated by a sense of guilt and shame; and there would be no other world to aim at or to work for. To lessen the intensity of our hell without abridging its eternity would hardly be a cogent motive, when the temptations of sin and the allurements of sense are so vivid and strong.

What sort of love could there be, when we could have no respect? Even if flesh and blood made us love each other, what a separation death would be! We should commit our dead to the ground without a hope. Husband and wife would part with the fearfullest certainties of a reunion more terrible than their separation. Mothers would long to look upon their little ones in the arms of death, because their lot would be less woeful than if they lived to offend God with their developed reason and intelligent will. The sweetest feelings of our nature would become unnatural, and the most honorable ties be dishonored. Our best instincts would lead us into our worst dangers. Our hearts would have to learn to beat another way, in order to avoid the dismal consequences which our affections would bring upon ourselves and others. But it is needless to go further into these harrowing details. The world of the heart, without the Precious Blood, and with an intellectual knowledge of God, and his punishments of sin, is too fearful a picture to be drawn with minute fidelity.

But how would it fare with the poor in such a world? They are God's chosen portion upon the earth. He chose poverty himself, when he came to us. He has left the poor in his place, and they are never to fail from the earth, but to be his representatives there until the doom. But, if it were not for the Precious Blood, would any one love them? Would any one have a devotion to them, and dedicate his life to merciful ingenuities to alleviate their lot? If the stream of almsgiving is so insufficient now, what would it be then? There would be no softening of the heart by grace; there would be no admission of of the obligation to give away in alms a definite portion of our incomes; there would be no desire to expiate sin by munificence to the needy for the love of God. The gospel makes men's hearts large;and yet even under the gospel the fountain of almsgiving flows scantily and uncertainly. There would be no religious orders devoting themselves with skilful concentration to different acts of spiritual and corporal mercy. Vocation is a blossom to be found only in the gardens of the Precious Blood. But all this is only negative, only an absence of God. Matters would go much further in such a world as we are imagining.

Even in countries professing to be Christian, and at least in possession of the knowledge of the gospel, the poor grow to be an intolerable burden to the rich. They have to be supported by compulsory taxes; and they are in other ways a continual subject of irritated and impatient legislation. Nevertheless, it is due to the Precious Blood that the principle of supporting them is acknowledged. From what we read in heathen history--even the history of nations renowned for political wisdom, for philosophical speculation, and for literary and artistic refinement--it would not be extravagant for us to conclude that, if the circumstances of a country were such as to make the numbers of the poor dangerous to the rich, the rich would not scruple to destroy them, while it was yet in their power to do so. Just as men have had in France and England to war down bears and wolves, so would the rich war down the poor, whose clamorous misery and excited despair should threaten them in the enjoyment of their power and their possessions. The numbers of the poor would be thinned by murder, until it should be safe for their masters to reduce them into slavery. The survivors would lead the lives of convicts or of beasts. History, I repeat, shows us that this is by no means an extravagant supposition.

Such would be the condition of the world without the Precious Blood. As generations succeeded each other, original sin would go on developing those inexhaustible malignant powers which come from the almost infinite character of evil. Sin would work earth into hell. Men would become devils, devils to others and to themselves. Every thing which makes life tolerable, which counteracts any evil, which softens any harshness, which sweetens any bitterness, which causes the machinery of society to work smoothly, or which consoles any sadness--is simply due to the Precious Blood of Jesus, in heathen as well as in Christian lands. It changes the whole position of an offending creation to its Creator. It changes, if we may dare in such a matter to speak of change, the aspect of God's immutable perfections toward his human children. It does not work merely in a spiritual sphere. It is not only prolific in temporal blessings, but it is the veritable cause of all temporal blessings whatsoever. We are all of us every moment sensibly enjoying the benignant influence of the Precious Blood. Yet who thinks of all this? Why is the goodness of God so hidden, so imperceptible, so unsuspected? Perhaps because it is so universal and so excessive, that we should hardly be free agents if it pressed sensibly upon us always. God's goodness is at once the most public of all his attributes, and at the same time the most secret. Has life a sweeter task than to seek it, and to find it out?

Men would be far more happy, if they separated religion less violently from other things. It is both unwise and unloving to put religion into a place by itself, and mark it off with an untrue distinctness from what we call worldly and unspiritual things. Of course there is a distinction, and a most important one, between them; yet it is easy to make this distinction too rigid and to carry it too far. Thus we often attribute to nature what is only due to grace; and we put out of sight the manner and degree in which the blessed majesty of the Incarnation affects all created things. But this mistake is forever robbing us of hundreds of motives for loving Jesus. We know how unspeakably much we owe to him; but we do not see all that it is not much we owe him, but all, simply and absolutely all. We pass through times and places in life, hardly recognizing how the sweetness of Jesus is sweetening the air around us and penetrating natural things with supernatural blessings.

Hence it comes to pass that men make too much of natural goodness. They think too highly of human progress. They exaggerate the moralizing powers of civilization and refinement, which, apart from grace, are simply tyrannies of the few over the many, or of the public over the individual soul. Meanwhile they underrate the corrupting capabilities of sin, and attribute to unassisted nature many excellences which it only catches, as it were by the infection, by the proximity of grace, or by contagion, from the touch of the Church. Even in religious and ecclesiastical matters they incline to measure progress, or test vigor, by other standards rather than that of holiness. These men will consider the foregoing picture of the world without the Precious Blood as overdrawn and too darkly shaded. They do not believe in the intense malignity of man when drifted from God, and still less are they inclined to grant that cultivation and refinement only intensify still further this malignity. They admit the superior excellence of Christian charity; but they also think highly of natural philanthropy. But has this philanthropy ever been found where the indirect influences of the true religion, whether Jewish or Christian, had not penetrated? We may admire the Greeks for their exquisite refinement, and the Romans for the wisdom of their political moderation. Yet look at the position of children, of servants, of slaves, and of the poor, under both these systems, and see if, while extreme refinement only pushed sin to an extremity of foulness, the same exquisite culture did not also lead to a social cruelty and an individual selfishness which made life unbearable to the masses. Philanthropy is but a theft from the gospel, or rather a shadow, not a substance, and as unhelpful as shadows are want to be. (Father Frederick Faber, The Precious Blood, published originally in England in 1860, republished by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 53-59.)

Father Faber described the very world in which we live today,

Father Faber noted in his The Precious Blood is characterized by the Pelagian spirit of human self-redemption and the libertinage that flows forth as a result merely from the pull of the world, which is so strong and very difficult for so many to resist in these days of apostasy and betrayal:

All devotions have their characteristics; all of them have their own theological meanings. We must say something, therefore, upon the characteristics of the devotion to the Precious Blood. In reality the whole Treatise has more or less illustrated this matter. But something still remains to be said, and something will bear to be repeated. We will take the last first. Devotion to the Precious Blood is the devotional expression of the prominent and characteristic teaching of St. Paul. St. Paul is the apostle of redeeming grace. A devout study of his epistles would be our deliverance from most of the errors of the day. He is truly the apostle of all ages. To each age doubtless he seems to have a special mission. Certainly his mission to our is very special. The very air we breathe is Pelagian. Our heresies are only novel shapes of an old Pelagianism. The spirit of the world is eminently Pelagian. Hence it comes to pass that wrong theories among us are always constructed round a nuclear of Pelagianism; and Pelagianism is just the heresy which is least able to breathe in the atmosphere of St. Paul. It is the age of the natural as opposed to the supernatural, of the acquired as opposed to the infused, of the active as opposed to the passive. This is what I said in an earlier chapter, and here repeat. Now, this exclusive fondness for the natural is on the whole very captivating. It takes with the young, because it saves thought. It does not explain difficulties; but it lessens the number of difficulties to be explained. It takes with the idle; it dispenses from slowness and research. It takes with the unimaginative, because it withdraws just the very element in religion which teases them. It takes with the worldly, because it subtracts the enthusiasm from piety and the sacrifice from spirituality. It takes with the controversial, because it is a short road and a shallow ford. It forms a school of thought which, while it admits that we have an abundance of grace, intimates that we are not much better for it. It merges privileges in responsibilities, and makes the sovereignty of God odious by representing it as insidious. All this whole spirit, with all its ramifications, perishes in the sweet fires of devotion to the Precious Blood.

The time is also one of libertinage; and a time of libertinage is always, with a kind of practical logic, one of infidelity. Whatever brings out God's side in creation, and magnifies his incessant supernatural operation in it, is the controversy which infidelity can least withstand. Now, the devotion to the Precious Blood does this in a very remarkable way. It shows that the true significance in every thing is to be found in the scheme of redemption, apart from which it is useless to discuss the problems of creation. (Father Frederick Faber, The Precious Blood, written in 1860, republished by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 258-259.)

Those words are even truer now than when Father Faber wrote them one hundred fifty-nine years ago.

A similarly prophetic reading of the signs of the times was made about eight later by Father Henry James Coleridge in Father Faber’s beloved England. A careful reading of this essay, which was delivered as a series of sermons, will reveal that Father Coleridge understood perfectly the destructive trajectory of Modernity, a world moored on the rocky shoals of the rationalism of Protestantism and the naturalism of Judeo-Masonry:

But yet the Son of Man when He cometh, shall He find, think you, faith on earth.

(Words taken from the 8^th verse of the 13^th chapter of St. Luke's Gospel.)

We have this description chiefly in two great documents – in St. Paul's speech at Athens to the philosophers, (Acts xivv. 22-31.) and in his account of the miseries of the heathendom in the Epistle to the Romans. (Rom. I. 18-32) I shall speak presently of a third great passage which I mean to compare with these, in which, years after his Epistle to the Roman, he describes the men of the latter times. Let us first deal with the account given by the Apostle of the heathenism among which he lived and worked. In his speech, then, at the Areopagus, St. Paul describes in brief God's ways of dealing with the world. He tells the Athenians, as you know, of the “unknown God,” whom they worshipped in ignorance, Who, nevertheless, was the Creator and the Father of all. He had made of one blood, of one stock, of one nature, all nations on the face of earth. He had given them, as is implied in this, one moral law, one promise, one primeval tradition, one common hope of future salvation. Then He had, as it were, withdrawn, and left them themselves, though still His providence ruled them appointing the whole course of what is called the world's history, the rise, and fall, and character, and vicissitudes of nations and empires, and giving to all men, as St. Paul had said before at Iconium, abundance of good gifts, “Giving rains and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.” (Acts xiv. 14-17) And the Apostle tells his hearers how the heathen had, as it were, to grope like blinded men, after God, although He was all the time so near to them, as to all of us – “for in Him we live and move and be.” (Acts xiv. 14-17) And he speaks in the same place, though gently and reservedly, of those terrible and lamentable errors into which the nations left to themselves had falling touching upon the crown and consummation of them all, the idolatrous worship of false gods.

And now we must turn to the other great passage, which must be compared with this of which I have been speaking, where, at the beginning of his Epistle to the Romans, the same Apostle gives what we may call a companion picture to the former, describing the manner in which the heathen nations had in return treated God, and the consequence to themselves in which that treatment had issued. He speaks of the inexcusable ingratitude of the heathen to so good and wonderful a Creator, of their refusal to acknowledge Him, notwithstanding the strong evidences concerning Himself which He had imprinted on the face and on the course of nature; of the punishment which fell on them – that of being given over to idolatry: and then again of the further punishment of this judicial delusion, by which they became the slaves of lusts which in their abominable degradation went even beyond the extreme indulgence of all natural animal appetites. You may remember, my brethren, that fearful picture, on the details of which it is not necessary that we should linger for any space of time this afternoon. The character of heathendom, as he describes it, is based, of course, on intense selfishness, woking itself out in an eager grasping after all the object of concupiscence, and so in avarice, in the reckless pursuit of pleasure at whatever cost to others, in the passionate love of earthly honour and position; then rising, as was only natural after this, into intense pride and haughtiness, into unending stubbornness of will and judgment, and, further still, wreaking itself on all who came across its path, in envy, contentiousness, violence, contumely, in malignant craft, or insolent and reckless cruelty. By the side of these save features of debased humanity, we find placed, as is always the case in reality, a voluptuousness and licentiousness that knew no bound. And these two great passions of lust and pride combine in the character of the heathen world, as drawn by St. Paul, to smother and destroy all those instincts of natural piety and goodness which are implanted in man by his Creator, to which his conscience witnesses, and which animate and sustain all that social and domestic life which is the fundamental condition of our being and our happiness as men. Hence we find in St. Paul's description of heathenism a number of traits which point to the want of all natural affection. The tie which binds parents to children, and children to parents, was dissolved; so again, the law of faithfulness and truthfulness, which is essential in order that we may trust one another in the common intercourse of life, was set aside, as also the rule of gratitude and honest, the law of respect for the characters of others in men's language, the observance of obligations, the habit of peaceableness, the practice of kindness, even the instinct of mercy to the conquered, the weak, the helpless, the afflicted – mercy, the one provision of God for the numberless and otherwise inconsolable miseries to which the world is given up !

Such, in brief, is this great description of the heathenism of his own time given us by St. Paul. And now I come to the point of our argument concerning the latter days. This great Apostle as I have already said, has dwelt in more than one place on the characteristics of the men of those future times, as he has so often dwelt on the characteristics of the old heathen. We have already had occasion to examine what he has said in some of these passages; but one great description remains, written, moreover, as I have said, at the very end of St. Paul's life, on the eve of his martyrdom, in his last Epistle to his beloved child Timothy. (2 Tim. iii. I seq.) This is the longest and most particular description given us by the Apostle, and striking as it is in itself, it is perhaps still more striking when it is compared with the earlier passage in the Epistle to the Romans, to which I have referred. If you will take that passage, in which the vices and degradation of the unconverted heathen world are described with so much indignant severity, and yet with a certain discriminating tenderness and largesness of sympathy, and if you will put it side by side with the other account which, by way of prophecy, St. Paul gives, so many years afterwards, of the corruptions of the latter days, you will find that with one or two striking differences, which I shall point out, the two passages tally exactly. The differences that exist are important in themselves, as we shall see; and they are precious also on another ground, because they show us, if that be needed, that St. Paul has weighed his every word, that he has nowhere made one single charge, either against the ancient heathenism or against its modern revival, without the fullest knowledge and the calmest deliberation. Bear with me, then, if I dwell for a few moments on the points of agreement and of differences between the two,.

In that old heathenism of the Roman world, into which it was the will of God that the Christian religion should be introduced by the Apostles, there were three diverse and often conflicting elements. There was a good element, which came from God; there was a thoroughly bad element, which came from Satan; and there was a corrupt element, which was the fruit of the workings of unregenerate human nature upon society, and upon the objects of sense and intelligence with which man is placed in relations. The good element we see embodied in great part of the laws and institutions of the ancient world, as also in much of the literature, the poetry, the philosophy of Greece and Rome, which literature consequently – after having been purified and as it were, baptized – has always been used by the Christian Church in the education of her children. This element, I say, was originally the gift of God, the Author of nature, to man, the offspring of reason and consicence, the tradition of a society of which God was Himself the founder. It enshrined whatever fragments of primeval truth as to God, the world, and man hiself, still lingered, in whatever shape among the far-wandering children of Adam. St. Paul alludes to this element in the first passage on which we dwelt to-day, and his words altogether seem to imply that God watched over it, supported it, and fostered it, as far as men were worthy of it, and that it might even have been expanded into a perfect system of natural religion and of reasonable virtue, had men been grateful enough to earn larger measure of grace from God, Who left not Himself without witness in His daily providence, and was “not far from” any one of His children.

But now we come to another element which just now I place the last of the three, the working of which we may distinguish in the heathen world. All flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth, and man had shut out the knowledge of God from his soul, and had let his passions lead him instead of his conscience. The unregenerate instincts of nature gradually overpowered the moral law in the heart of man, and their victory reflected itself in the rules of society, in the customs and maxims by which human life was guided. In proportion as man became more and more the master of the world, as wealth and power and knowledge and experience increased, as civilization (so to call it) and means of communication advanced, there grew up that great system of cruelty and immorality, of the godless pursuit of pleasure and worldly ends, which we call paganism. For paganism is not properly a religion, so much as a system of human life and human society, according to the impulses and unbridled lust of the natural man, checked only by what remained of strength in the law of right as written in men's hearts, in the voice of conscience, and in the old traditions of better days, and also by the law of necessity which made it imperative that society should in some way or other be kept alive and held together. St. Paul, in the passage to the Romans on which we have dwelt, has described to us, my brethren, what sort of men they were who were penetrated by this pagan spirit. And now, as I have already said, when the same Apostle comes to describe the men of the latter days, he paints them, as to all moral degradation, in the same colours as the pagans of his own time. The two passages correspond as to this word for word; the latter text is almost a repetition of the former. Thus far, the, we have St. Paul's authority for saying that the apostacy of the latter days will be a return to heathenism, understanding by the word that godless system of life and manners which is the fruit of the unrestrained development and reign of the lower instincts of human nature.

These thoughts bring us to the third element of paganism – that which I call the work of Satan, the enemy of God and man. As to this, also, we have St. Paul's authority, in that passage where in a few short words he tells us that the gods of the heathen were devils (I Cor. x. 20) We, my brethren, are often inclined to look upon the personages of which the heathen mythology is made up, as a number of poetic creations, as the powers of nature symbolized, or perhaps, at worst, as great men and famous heroes of fabulous times raised by a sort of natural canonization to the thrones of a higher world. This is the human part of the heathen religions, skillfully used by the authors of evil to disguise their own work for the delusion of men. But there was more behind the forms of apparent grace and beauty than the imagination of earthly poets. This might have been seen, we might truly say, by the base impurities in which they were steeped. No, my brethren, unless St. Paul is mistaken, unless thousands of Christian martyrs were mistaken who treated the heathen idols as the forms under which the apostate angels were adored, the gods of the heathen were Satan and his associates, permitted by the just judgment of God to draw to themselves the adoration which men had denied to Him; and taking care to deify in themselves every shape of human vice and passion, and to exact from their worshippers impure rites and filthy mysteries, that man made in the image God, might learn from them to degrade himself even beneath the level of the beasts of the field. Or, if we want a still more clear proof of the Satanic agencies which underlay the pagan religion we may find it in that other kind of worship which it exacted in the ancient world, and is still found to exact – in the ancient world, and is still found to exact – I mean the frightful tribute of human sacrifice, a custom widely spread and almost universal among pagan nations, some of whom have astonished even their Christian discoverers by their mildness and gentleness, their courtesy and simplicity, and yet have been found to be penetrated to the core by corruption, and to be in the habit of honouring their gods by the frightful homage of the tombs of human victims, a homage enough of itself to proclaim as its author the hater alike of man, and of God Who created him! (Father Henry James Coleridge, S.J.. Discourses on the Latter Days, 1883, pp. 28-40. Published by St. Pius X Press.)

Father Coleridge made the proper distinctions about the pagan world in which our spiritual ancestors lived and, all too frequently, shed their blood to plant the seeds for the rise of Holy Mother Church from the catacombs.

It is true, of course, that Holy Mother Church “baptized,” if you will, what was naturally good in pagan cultures. It is also true that human weakness, which is always at work in the lives of fallen men, undermined the naturally good and beautiful.

This having been noted, however, pagan cultures always do the bidding of satan and his legion of cohorts to seek both the temporal ruin of men and their nations, and it is this third aspect that is at work so fiercely in the world even more than it was in ancient times.

Father Colerdige continued:

Here, then my brethren, we have come to that part of the comparison as to which it need not be said that St. Paul's two descriptions are identical. We need not exaggerate the miseries of our own time, nor draw in darker colours than St. Paul the evil features of the last great apostacy. The Son of God, as another Apostle tells us, was “manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil,” (I St. John iii, S.) and I do not find, in any of the prophetic descriptions of the restored paganism of modern days, that the system of the worship of false gods is to revive, with its abominable rites of blood and its mysteries of licentiousness. Wherever the Cross has been once firmly planted, we may surely hope that the world has seen the last of the public worship of Satan. In St. Paul's description of the latter days, I find the blasphemy of the true God substituted for the worship of devils. But, my brethren, the Son of God was not manifested altogether to destroy the works of man. He came to raise man, change him, regenerate him, sanctify him, by uniting him to Himself. He did not come to take away man's free will, or to tear out of his nature those seeds of possible evil which produced all the human part of the paganism on which we have been reflecting. The empire of Satan has been overthrown, but alas! Man is still his own great enemy, and though our Lord has armed him against himself, He has still left him the power to mar the work of God in his own soul, and this power, which each one of us possesses in his own case, is always fearfully active in the corruption of the Christian society, the character of which is the result and the reflection of that of the parts of which it is made up.

And now, my brethren, what need have we of any subtlety of inquiry or refinement of speculation to tell us that this modern heathenism of which the prophecies speak is around us on every side? Mankind are in many sense far mightier, and the resources and enjoyments at their command are far ampler, than in the days of old. We are in possession of the glorious but intoxicating fruits of that advanced civilization and extended knowledge which has sprung up from the seeds which the Church of God has, as it were, dropped on her way through the world. Society has been elevated and refined, but on that very account it has become capable of a more penetrating degradation, of a more elegant and a more poisonous corruption. Knowledge has been increased, but on the increase of knowledge has followed the increase of pride. Science has unravelled the laws of nature and the hidden treasures of the material universe, and they place fresh combinations of power and new revelations of enjoyment in the hands of men who have not seen in the discovery increased reasons for self-restraint or for reverence for the Giver of all good gifts. The world, the home of the human race, has been opened to civilised man in all its distant recesses, and he has taken, or is taking, possession of his full inheritance; but his onward path is the path of avarice and greed, of lust and cruelty, and he seizes on each new land as he reaches it in the spirit of the merchant or the conqueror, not in that of the harbinger of peace, the bearer of the good tidings of God. At home, in Christendom itself, we hear, as our Lord said, of wars and rumours of wars, nation rising against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. In the Apostles' time, it was an unheard of thing that the majestic peace and unity of the Roman Empire should not absorb and keep in harmony a hundred rival nationalities. In our time it is not to be thought of that the supernatural bond of the christian church should be able to keep nations which are brethren in the faith from devouring one another.

Or, again, my brethren, let us turn from public to private life. Look at social life, look at domestic manners; consider the men and women of the present day in their amusements, their costumes, the amount of restraint they put upon the impulses of nature; compare them at their theatres and their recreations, compare them as to their treatment of the poor and the afflicted classes; compare them, again, as to the style of art which they affect, or the literature in which they delight, with the old heathen of the days of St. Paul. I do not say, God forbid! That there is not a wide and impassable gulf between the two, for that would be to say that so many centuries of Christendom had been utterly wasted, and that the Gospel law has not penetrated to the foundations of society, so that it is not true that our Lord rules as the Psalmist says, “in the midst of His enemies,” (Psalm cix, 2) even over the world, which would fain emancipate itself from His sway. But I do say, that if a Christian of the first ages were to rise from the dead, and examine our society, point by point, on the heads which I have intimated, and compare it, on the one hand, with the polished refined heathen whom he may have known at the courts of Nero or Domitian, and, on the other, with the pure strict holiness of his own brethren in the faith, who worshipped with him in the catacombs, he might find it difficult indeed to say that what he would see around him in London or Paris was derived by legitimate inheritance rather from the traditions of the martyr Church than from the customs of the persecuting heathen. He would miss the violence, the cruelty, the riotous and ruffianly lust, the extraordinary disrespect for humanity and human life which distinguished the later Roman civilization; but he would find much of its corruption, much of its licentiousness, much of its hardness of heart. The unregenerate instincts of human nature are surging up like a great sea all around us, society is fast losing all respect for those checks upon the innate heathenism of man which have been thrown over the surface of the world by the Church. It is becoming an acknowledged law that whatever is natural is right, and by nature is meant nature corrupted by sin, nature unilluminated by faith and unassisted by grace – that is, the lower appetites of man in revolt against conscience, looking for no home but earth and no satisfaction but in the present “having no hope of the promise, and without God in this world.” . . . . (Father Henry James Coleridge, S.J.. Discourses on the Latter Days, 1883, pp. 28-40. Published by St. Pius X Press.)

Time has proven Father Coleridge wrong on one point as a Christian from the first ages who would rise from the dead would indeed find “the violence, the cruelty, the riotous and ruffianly lust, the extraordinary disrespect for humanity and human life which distinguished the later Roman civilization.”

Over three thousand babies are killed surgically every day under cover of law in the United States of America alone, thousands more are killed “silently” by means of chemical abortifacients. Thousands of innocent human beings are dispatched every week in hospitals, nursing homes, hospices and even in the comfort of their homes by those who want to give them a “compassionate death” rather than to accept the death that God has willed for them from all eternity to endure, replete with all of its pains sufferings with which they can make final satisfaction for their sins.

Blasphemy is rampantly uncontrolled and seemingly uncontrollable.

All that is holy and just is mocked and reviled.

Believing Catholics are persecuted and denied employment and/or promotions because they are said to be “haters” who deny the “rights” of women to kill their babies or of those immersed in the sin of Sodom and its related vices to celebrate their iniquity publicly.

The world is awash with the blood of the innocent.

Yes, a visitor from Holy Mother Church’s first three centuries would recognize this world as being worse than that of Roman antiquity, because men, having heard the Gospel of the Divine Redeemer, have rejected the Holy Faith and prefer to live as brutes.

Father Coleridge’s remarkable essay concludes:

So then, in these our days, can we too often remind ourselves of the points of attack chosen by the enemies of faith and of society? Can we forget with what a wearisome sameness of policy the war is waged year after year, first in one place and then in another; how certain it is that as soon as we hear that some nation hitherto guided by Catholic instincts has become a convert to the enlightened ideas of our times, the next day will bring the further tidings that in that nation marriage is no longer to be treated as a sacrament and that education is to be withdrawn from the care of the church and her ministers? And, indeed, my brethren, we know not how soon we ourselves may be engaged in a deadly conflict, on one at least, of these points. Up to this time we, at least in England, have been able to train our children for ourselves. And, to give honour where honour is due, we have owed our liberty in great measure to the high value which certain communities outside the Church set upon distinctively Christian and doctrinal instruction. But we know not how soon the tide of war may come to our homes. We hear cry in the air – it says that the child belongs to the State, and that it is the duty of the State to take his education to itself. The cry is false; the child belongs to the parent, belongs to the Church, belongs to God. In that cry speaks the reviving paganism of our day. Surely it should teach us, if nothing else can, the paramount importance of Christian education. If we give in to that cry we are lost. Train up your children, my brethren, in the holy discipline and pure doctrine of the Church, and they are formed thereby to be soldiers of Jesus Christ in the coming conflict against the powers of evil. Train them up in indifference to religion and Christian doctrine, and if they are not at once renegades from their faith, at least they are far too weak and faint-hearted in their devotion to the Church, to range themselves courageously among her champions in her terrible battle against the last apostacy. (Father Henry James Coleridge, S.J.. Discourses on the Latter Days, 1883, pp. 28-40. Published by St. Pius X Press.)

Anyone who does not see we are living at a time when the consequences of the dreadful errors set upon the world by Niccolo Machiavelli, Martin Luther, et al. is a fool. The conditions described by Father Coleridge describe our conditions today. Sadly, there are still Catholics today who permit themselves to become agitated over the events of the world without realizing that there is no getting the “toothpaste back into the tube” by natural means. Men revel in their sins and they are evangelistic in behalf of their errors. Worse yet, obviously, is the fact that the false “pope” and his equally false “bishops” reaffirm them in their sins and are even more evangelistic than they in the spread of errors and heresies that fulfill the very prophecy of Saint Paul to Saint Timothy:

[1] I charge thee, before God and Jesus Christ, who shall judge the living and the dead, by his coming, and his kingdom: [2] Preach the word: be instant in season, out of season: reprove, entreat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine. [3] For there shall be a time, when they will not endure sound doctrine; but, according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears: [4] And will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables. [5] But be thou vigilant, labour in all things, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill thy ministry. Be sober. (2 Tim. 4: 1-15.)

Men prefer to have others tickle their itching ears rather than to consider the sweet entreaties of Christ the King and to respond to the motherly intercession of Our Blessed Mother in their behalves.

Men prefer to believe in naturalism of one sort or another, not Catholicism.

Men prefer to pursue material pleasure and well-being to the exclusion of all considerations of futurity, of where they will spend eternity, Heaven or Hell.

Men prefer to submit to the statists of Modernity rather than to the sweet yoke of Christ the King and to His true Church.

Men prefer to walk in the darkness rather than in the light of Christ the King.

To Flee from the Deceptions and Snares of a World Gone Mad

Catholics must reject the deceptions of a world gone mad, a world that has no more place for Christ the King than it did when He was born in a stable in a cave in Bethlehem as He was warmed by the breath of stable animals.

We must, as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, offer up the sacrifices of the moment, recognizing that this is the time that God has appointed for us from all eternity in which to live and to sanctify our souls.

We have been given the weapon of Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary and the shield of her Brown Scapular.

Conscious of our need to make reparation for our own many sins and to live in the world but without being of the world, we take seriously this instruction that Our Lady gave to the Venerable Mary of Agreda about the public manifestation of her Divine Son to Saint John the Baptist, His cousin, herald and precursor, at the Jordan River prior to embarking upon His Public Ministry to accept the sufferings of this time as redeemed creatures eager to make satisfaction in this life for how our sins have offended Divine Justice and thus worsened the state of the Church Militant and of the world-at-large:

272. My daughter, since in relating to thee the works of my most holy Son I so often remind thee how gratefully I appreciated them, thou must understand how pleasing to the Most High is the most faithful care and correspondence on thy part, and the hidden and great blessings enclosed within it. Thou art poor in the house of the Lord, a sinner, insignificant and useless as dust; yet I ask thee to assume the duty of rendering ceaseless gratitude for all the incarnate Word has done for the sons of Adam, and for establishing the holy and immaculate, the powerful and perfect law for their salvation. Especially must thou be grateful for the institution of Baptism by which He frees men from the tyranny of the devil, regenerates them as his children (Jn. 3:5), fills them with grace, clothes them with justice, and assists them to sin no more. This is indeed a duty incumbent upon all men in common, but since creatures neglect it almost entirely I enjoin thee to give thanks for all of them as if thou alone wert responsible for them. Thou art bound to special gratitude to the Lord for other things as well because He has shown Himself so generous to no one among other nations as He has with thee. In the foundation of his holy law and of his Sacraments thou wert present in his memory; He called and chose thee as a daughter of his Church, proposing to nourish thee by his own blood with infinite love.

273. And if the Author of grace, my most holy Son, as a prudent and wise Artificer, in order to found his evangelical Church and lay its first foundations in the sacrament of Baptism, humiliated Himself, prayed, and fulfilled all justice, acknowledging the inferiority of his human nature, and if, though at the same time God and man, He hesitated not to lower Himself to the nothingness of which his purest soul was created and his human being formed, how much must thou humiliate thyself, who hast committed sins and art less than the dust and despicable ashes? Confess that in justice thou dost merit only punishment, the persecution and wrath of all the creatures, and that none of the mortals who has offended his Creator and Redeemer can say in truth that any injustice or offense is done to them if all the tribulations and afflictions of the world from its beginning to its end were to fall upon them. Since all sinned in Adam (I Cor. 15:22), how deeply should they humiliate themselves when the hand of the Lord visits them (Job 19:21)? If thou dost suffer all the afflictions of men with the utmost resignation, and at the same time fulfill all that I enjoin upon thee by my teachings and exhortations with the greatest fidelity, thou nevertheless must esteem thyself as a useless and unprofitable servant (Lk. 17:10). How much then must thou humiliate thyself when thou dost fail in thy duty and in the return due to all the blessings received from God? Since I desire thee to make a proper return both for thyself and for others, think well how much thou art obliged to annihilate thyself to the very dust, not offering any resistance, nor ever being satisfied until the Most High receives thee as his daughter and accepts thee as such in his own presence and in the celestial vision of the triumphant Jerusalem. (New English Edition of The Mystical City of God: Book Five, The Transfixion, Chapter XXIV)

The Immaculate Heart of Mary will triumph in the end, and it will be upon this triumph that the words Our Lord spoke to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque will be fulfilled:

"I will reign in spite of all who oppose Me." (quoted in The Right Reverend Emile Bougaud. The Life of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, reprinted by TAN Books and Publishers in 1990, p. 361.)

Vivat Christus Rex!

Ave Maria! Salve Regina! Vivat Maria Regina! Vivat Christus Rex!

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 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 Cloud, pray for us.

Appendix A

Pope Leo XIII’s Dall’Alto Dell’Apostolico Seggio, October 15, 1890

The war began by the overthrow of the civil power of the Popes, the downfall of which, according to the secret intentions of the real leaders, afterwards openly avowed, was, under a political pretext, to be the means of enslaving at least, if not of destroying the supreme spiritual power of the Roman Pontiffs. — That no doubt might remain as to the true object of this warfare, there followed quickly the suppression of the Religious Orders; and thereby a great reduction in the number of evangelical laborers for the propagation of the faith amongst the heathens, and for the sacred ministry and religious service of Catholic countries. — Later, the obligation of military service was extended to ecclesiastics, with the necessary result that many and grave obstacles were put to the recruiting and due formation even of the secular Clergy. Hands were laid upon ecclesiastical property, partly by absolute confiscation, and partly by charging it with enormous burdens, so as to impoverish the Clergy and the Church, and to deprive the Church of what is necessary for its temporal support and for carrying on institutions and works in aid of its divine apostolate. This the sectaries themselves have openly declared. To lessen the influence of the Clergy and of clerical bodies, one only efficacious means must be employed: to strip them all their goods, and to reduce them to absolute poverty. So also the action of the State is of itself all directed to efface from the nation its religious and Christian character. From the laws, and from the whole of official life, every religious inspiration and idea is systematically banished, when not directly assailed. Every public manifestation of faith and of Catholic piety is either forbidden or, under vain pretenses, in a thousand ways impeded.-From the family are taken away its foundation and religious constitution by the proclaiming of civil marriage, as it is called; and also by the entirely lay education which is now demanded, from the first elements to the higher teaching of the universities, so that the rising generations, as far as this can be effected by the State, have to grow up without any idea of religion, and without the first essential notions of their duties towards God. This is to put the ax to the root. No more universal and efficacious means could be imagined of withdrawing society, and families, and individuals, from the influence of the Church and of the faith. To lay Clericalism (or Catholicism) waste in its foundations and in its very sources of life, namely, in the school and in the family: such is the authentic declaration of Masonic writers.

5. It will be said that this does not happen in Italy only, but is a system of government which States generally follow. — We answer, that this does not refute, but confirms what We are saying as to the designs and action of Freemasonry in Italy. Yes, this system is adopted and carried out wherever Freemasonry uses its impious and wicked action; and, as its action is widespread, so is this anti-Christian system widely applied. But the application becomes more speedy and general, and is pushed more to extremes, in countries where the government is more under the control of the sect and better promotes its interest.-Unfortunately, at the present time the new Italy is of the number of these countries. Not today only has it become subject to the wicked and evil influence of the sects; but for some time past they have tyrannized over it as they liked, with absolute dominion and power. Here the direction of public affairs, in what concerns religion, is wholly in conformity with the aspirations of the sects; and for accomplishing their aspirations, they find avowed supporters and ready instruments in those who hold the public power. Laws adverse to the Church and measures hostile to it are first proposed, decided, and resolved, in the secret meetings of the sect; and if anything presents even the least appearance of hostility or harm to the Church, it is at once received with favor and put forward. — Amongst the most recent facts We may mention the approval of the new penal code, in which what was most obstinately demanded, in spite of all reasons to the contrary, were the articles against the Clergy, which form for them an exceptional law, and even condemn as criminal certain actions which are sacred duties of their ministry. — The law as to pious works, by which all charitable property, accumulated by the piety and religion of our ancestors under the protection and guardianship of the Church, was withdrawn altogether from the Church’s action and control, had been for some years put forward in the meetings of the sect, precisely because it would inflict a new outrage on the Church, lessen its social influence, and suppress at once a great number of bequests made for divine worship. — Then came that eminently sectarian work, the erection of the monument to the renowned apostate of Nola, which, with the aid and favor of the government, was promoted, determined, and carried out by means of Freemasonry, whose most authorized spokesmen were not ashamed to acknowledge its purpose and to declare its meaning. Its purpose was to insult the Papacy; its meaning that, instead of the Catholic Faith, must now be substituted the most absolute freedom of examination, of criticism, of thought, and of conscience: and what is meant by such language in the mouth of the sects is well known. — The seal was put by the most explicit declarations made by the head of the government, which were to the following effect: — That the true and real conflict, which the government has the merit of understanding, is the conflict between faith and the Church on one side and free examination and reason on the other. That the Church may try to act as it has done before, to enchain anew reason and free-thought, and to prevail; but the government in this conflict declares itself openly in favor of reason as against faith, and takes upon itself the task of making the Italian State the evident expression of this reason and liberty: a sad task, which has just now been boldly reaffirmed on a like occasion.

6. In the light of such facts and such declarations as these, it is more than ever clear that the ruling idea which, as far as religion is concerned, controls the course of public affairs in Italy, is the realization of the Masonic program. We see how much has already been realized; we know how much still remains to be done; and we can foresee with certainty that, so long as the destinies of Italy are in the hands of sectarian rulers or of men subject to the sects, the realization of the program will be pressed on, more or less rapidly according to circumstances, unto its complete development. — The action of the sects is at present directed to attain the following objects, according to the votes and resolutions passed in their most important assemblies, — votes and resolutions inspired throughout by a deadly hatred of the Church. The abolition in the schools of every kind of religious instruction, and the founding of institutions in which even girls are to be withdrawn from all clerical influence whatever it may be; because the State, which ought to be absolutely atheistic, has the inalienable right and duty to form the heart and the spirit of its citizens, and no school should exist apart from its inspiration and control. — The rigorous application of all laws now in force, which aim at securing the absolute independence of civil society from clerical influence. — The strict observance of laws suppressing religious corporations, and the employment of means to make them effectual. — The regulation of all ecclesiastical property, starting from the principle that its ownership belongs to the State, and its administration to the civil power. — The exclusion of every Catholic or clerical element from all public administrations, from pious works, hospitals, and schools, from the councils which govern the destinies of the country, from academical and other unions, from companies, committees, and families, — an exclusion from everything, everywhere, and forever. Instead, the Masonic influence is to make itself felt in all the circumstances of social life, and to become master and controller of everything. — Hereby the way will be smoothed towards the abolition of the Papacy; Italy will thus be free from its implacable and deadly enemy; and Rome, which in the past was the center of universal Theocracy will in the future be the center of universal secularization, whence the Magna Charta of human liberty is to be proclaimed in the face of the whole world. Such are the authentic declarations, aspirations, and resolutions, of Freemasons or of their assemblies.

7. Without exaggeration, this is the present condition and the future prospect of religion in Italy. To shrink from seeing the gravity of this would be a fatal error. To recognize it as it is, to confront it with evangelical prudence and fortitude, to infer the duties which it imposes on all Catholics, and upon us especially who as Pastors have to watch over them and guide them to salvation, is to enter into the views of Providence, to do a work of wisdom and pastoral zeal. — As far as We are concerned, the Apostolic office lays upon Us the duty of protesting loudly once more against all that has been done, is doing, or is attempted in Italy to the harm of religion. Defending and guarding the sacred rights of the Church and of the Pontificate, We openly repel and denounce to the whole Catholic world the outrages which the Church and the Pontificate are continually receiving, especially in Rome, and which hamper Us in the government of the Catholic Church, and add difficulty and indignity to Our condition. We are determined not to omit anything on Our part which can serve to maintain the faith lively and vigorous amidst the Italian people, and to protect it against the assaults of its enemies. We, therefore, make appeal, Venerable Brethren, to your zeal and your great love for souls, in order that, possessed with a sense of the gravity of the danger which they incur, you may apply the proper remedies and do all you can to dispel this danger.

8. No means must be neglected that are in your power. All the resources of speech, every expedient in action, all the immense treasures of help and grace which the Church places in your hands, must be made use of, for the formation of a Clergy learned and full of the spirit of Jesus Christ, for the Christian education of youth, for the extirpation of evil doctrines, for the defense of Catholic truths, and for the maintenance of the Christian character and spirit of family life.

9. As to the Catholic people, before everything else it is necessary that they should be instructed as to the true state of things in Italy with regard to religion, the essentially religious character of the conflict in Italy against the Pontiff, and the real object constantly aimed at, so that they may see by the evidence of facts the many ways in which their religion is conspired against, and may be convinced of the risk they run of being robbed and spoiled of the inestimable treasure of the faith. — With this conviction in their minds, and having at the same time a certainty that without faith it is impossible to please God and to be saved, they will understand that what is now at stake is the greatest, not to say the only interest, which every one on earth is bound before all things, at the cost of any sacrifice, to put out of danger, under penalty of everlasting misery. They will, moreover, easily understand that, in this time of open and raging conflict, it would be disgraceful for them to desert the field and hide themselves. Their duty is to remain at their post, and openly to show themselves to be true Catholics by their belief and by actions in conformity with their faith. This they must do for the honor of their faith, and the glory of the Sovereign Leader whose banner they follow; and that they may escape that great misfortune of being disowned at the last day, and of not being recognized as His by the Supreme Judge who has declared that whosoever is not with Him is against Him. — Without ostentation or timidity, let them give proof of that true courage which arises from the consciousness of fulfilling a sacred duty before God and men. To this frank profession of faith Catholics must unite a perfect docility and filial love towards the Church, a sincere respect for their Bishops, and an absolute devotion and obedience to the Roman Pontiff. In a word, they will recognize how necessary it is to cease from everything that is the work of the sects, or that receives impulse or favor from them, as being undoubtedly infected by the anti-Christian spirit; and they will, on the contrary, devote themselves with activity, courage and constancy, to Catholic works, and to the associations and institutions which the Church has blessed, and which the Bishops and the Roman Pontiff encourage and sustain.-Moreover, seeing that the chief instrument employed by our enemies is the press, which in great part receives from them its inspiration and support, it is important that Catholics should oppose the evil press by a press that is good, for the defense of truth, out of love for religion, and to uphold the rights of the Church. While the Catholic press is occupied in laying bare the perfidious designs of the sects, in helping and seconding the action of the sacred Pastors, and in defending and promoting Catholic works, it is the duty of the faithful efficaciously to support this press,-both by refusing or ceasing to favor in any way the evil press; and also directly, by concurring, as far as each one can, in helping it to live and thrive: and in this matter We think that hitherto enough has not been done in Italy.-Lastly, the teaching addressed by Us to all Catholics, especially in the Encyclicals “Humanum genus” and “Sapientiae Christianae,” should be particularly applied to the Catholics of Italy, and be impressed upon them. If they have anything to suffer or to sacrifice through remaining faithful to these duties, let them take courage in the thought that the Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence and is gained only by doing violence to ourselves; and that he who loves himself and what is his own more than Jesus Christ, is not worthy of Him. The example of the many invincible champions who, throughout all time, have generously sacrificed everything for the faith, and the special helps of grace which make the yoke of Jesus Christ sweet and His burden light, ought to animate powerfully their courage and to sustain them in the glorious contest. (Pope Leo XIII, Dall’Alto Dell’Apostolico Seggio, October 15, 1890.)

Appendix B

Pope Leo XIII’s Custodi di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892

Guardians of that faith to which the Christian nations owe their morality and civil redemption, We must dutifully discharge each one of Our supreme tasks. Therefore We must raise Our voice in loud protestations against the impious war which tries to take such a precious treasure away from you, beloved children. Already taught by long and sorrowful experience, you know well the terrible trials of this war, you who deplore it in your hearts as Catholics and as Italians. Can one be Italian in name and sentiment and not resent these continual offenses against divine beliefs? These beliefs are the most beautiful of our glories, for they gave to Italy its primacy over the other nations and to Rome the spiritual scepter of the world. They likewise made the wonderful edifice of Christian civilization rise over the ruins of paganism and barbarism.

Can we be Catholic in mind and heart and gaze with dry eyes on that land where our wondrous Redeemer deigned to establish the seat of His kingdom? Now We see His teachings attacked and His reverence outraged, His Church embattled and His Vicar opposed. So many souls redeemed by His blood are now lost, the choicest portion of His flock, a people faithful to Him for nineteen centuries. How can We bear to look upon His chosen people exposed to a constant and ever-present danger of apostasy, pushed toward error and vice, material miseries, and moral degradation?

2. This war is directed at the same time against the heavenly and the earthly kingdoms, against the faith of our ancestors and the culture which they handed on to us. It is thus doubly evil, being guilty of a divine offense no less than a human one. Is its chief source not that very masonic sect which We discussed at length in the encyclical “Humanum genus” of April 20, 1884, and in the more recent one of October 15, 1890, addressed to the bishops, the clergy and the Italian people? With these two letters We tore from the face of masonry the mask which it used to hide itself and We showed it in its crude deformity and dark fatal activity.

3. We shall restrict Ourselves now to its deplorable effects on Italy. For a long time now it has bored its way under the deceitful guise of a philanthropic society and redeemer of the Italian people. By way of conspiracies, corruptions, and violences, it has finally come to dominate Italy and even Rome. To what troubles, to what calamities has it opened the way in a little more than thirty years?

4. Our country has seen and suffered great evils in such a short span of time, for the faith of our fathers has been made a sign for persecutions of every sort. The satanic intent of the persecutors has been to substitute naturalism for Christianity, the worship of reason for the worship of faith, so-called independent morality for Catholic morality, and material progress for spiritual progress. To the holy maxims and laws of the Gospel, they have imposed laws and maxims which can be called the code of revolution. They have also imposed an atheistic doctrine and a vile realism to school, science, and the Christian arts. Having invaded the temple of the Lord, they have squandered the booty of the Church’s goods, the greatest part of the inheritance necessary for the ministers, and reduced the number of priests by the conscription of clerics beyond the limits of extreme need. If the administration of the sacraments could not be impeded, they sought nonetheless to introduce and promote civil marriages and funerals. If they have not yet succeeded in seizing control of education and the direction of charitable institutions, they always aim with perseverance to laicize everything, which is to remove the mark of Christianity from it. If they could not silence the voice of the Catholic press, they made every effort to discredit and revile it.

5. In this battle against the Catholic religion, what partiality and contradictions there are! They closed monasteries and convents, but they let multiply at will masonic lodges and sectarian dens. They proclaimed the right of association, while the legal rights which all kinds of organizations use and abuse are denied to religious societies. They proclaim freedom of religion and reserve odious intolerance and vexations precisely for the religion of the Italians — which, for that reason, should be assured respect and a special protection. They made protests and great promises for the protection of the dignity and independence of the pope, but you see their daily contempt of Our person. All kinds of public shows find an open field; yet this or that Catholic demonstration is either prohibited or disturbed. They encourage schisms, apostasies, and revolts against legitimate superiors in the Church. Religious vows and especially religious obedience are rebuked as contrary to human dignity and freedom, while impious associations which bind their followers by wicked oaths and demand blind, absolute obedience in crime are allowed to flourish with impunity.

8. Such are the fruits which the masonic sect has borne to us Italians. And after that it yearns to come before you, extolling its merits towards Italy. It likewise yearns to give Us and all those who, heeding Our words, remain faithful to Jesus Christ, the calumnious title of enemies of the state. The facts reveal the merits of this guilty sect toward our peninsula, “merits” which bear repeating. The facts say that masonic patriotism is no less than sectarian egotism which yearns to dominate everything, particularly the modern states which unite and concentrate everything in their hands. The facts say that in the plans of masonry, the names of political independence, equality, civilization, and progress aimed to facilitate the independence of man from God in our country. From them, license of error and vice and union of faction at the expense of other citizens have grown. The easy and delicious enjoyment of life by the world’s fortunate is nurtured in the same source. A people redeemed by divine blood have thus returned to divisions, corruptions, and the shames of paganism.

9. That does not surprise Us. — After nineteen centuries of Christian civilization, this sect tries to overthrow the Catholic Church and to cut off its divine sources. It absolutely denies the supernatural, repudiating every revelation and all the means of salvation which revelation shows us. Through its plans and works, it bases itself solely and entirely on such a weak and corrupt nature as ours. Such a sect cannot be anything other than the height of pride, greed, and sensuality. Now, pride oppresses, greed plunders, and sensuality corrupts. When these three concupiscences are brought to the extreme, the oppressions, greed, and seductive corruptions spread slowly. They take on boundless dimensions and become the oppression, plundering and source of corruption of an entire people.

10. Let Us then show you masonry as an enemy of God, Church, and country. Recognize it as such once and for all, and with all the weapons which reason, conscience, and faith put in your hands, defend yourselves from such a proud foe. Let no one be taken in by its attractive appearance or allured by its promises; do not be seduced by its enticements or frightened by its threats. Remember that Christianity and masonry are essentially irreconcilable, such that to join one is to divorce the other. You can no longer ignore such incompatibility between Catholic and mason, beloved children: you have been warned openly by Our predecessors, and We have loudly repeated the warning.

11. Those who, by some supreme misfortune, have given their name to one of these societies of perdition should know that they are strictly bound to separate themselves from it. Otherwise they must remain separated from Christian communion and lose their soul now and for eternity. Parents, teachers, godparents, and whoever has care of others should also know that a rigorous duty binds them to keep their wards from this guilty sect or to draw them from it if they have already entered.

12. In a matter of such importance and where the seduction is so easy in these times, it is urgent that the Christian watch himself from the beginning. He should fear the least danger, avoid every occasion, and take the greatest precautions. Use all the prudence of the serpent, while keeping in your heart the simplicity of the dove, according to the evangelical counsel. Fathers and mothers should be wary of inviting strangers into their homes or admitting them to domestic intimacy, at least insofar as their faith is not sufficiently known. They should try to first ascertain that an astute recruiter of the sect does not hide himself in the guise of a friend, teacher, doctor or other benefactor. Oh, in how many families has the wolf penetrated in sheep’s clothing!

13. It is beautiful to see the varied groups which arise everywhere today in every order of social life: worker groups, groups of mutual aid and social security, organizations to promote science, arts, letters, and other similar things. When they are inspired by a good moral and religious spirit, these groups certainly prove to be useful and proper. But because the masonic poison has penetrated and continues to penetrate here also, especially here, any groups that remove themselves from religious influence should be generally suspect. They can easily be directed and more or less dominated by masons, becoming the sowingground and the apprenticeship of the sect in addition to providing assistance to it.

14. Women should not join philanthropic societies whose nature and purpose are not well-known without first seeking advice from wise and experienced people. That talkative philanthropy which is opposed to Christian charity with such pomp is often the passport for masonic business.

17. In addition, since we are dealing with a sect which has pervaded everything, it is not enough to remain on the defensive. We must courageously go out into the battlefield and confront it. That is what you will do, beloved children, opposing press to press, school to school, organization to organization, congress to congress, action to action.

18. Masonry has taken control of the public schools, leaving private schools, paternal schools, and those directed by zealous ecclesiastics and religious of both sexes to compete in the education of Christian youth. Christian parents especially should not entrust the education of their children to uncertain schools. Masonry has confiscated the inheritance of public charity; fill the void, then, with the treasure of private relief. It has placed pious works in the hands of its followers, so you should entrust those that depend on you to Catholic institutions. It opens and maintains houses of vice, leaving you to do what is possible to open and maintain shelters for honesty in danger. An anti-Christian press in religious and secular matters militates at its expense, so that your effort and money are required by the Catholic press. Masonry establishes societies of mutual help and credit unions for its partisans; you should do the same not only for your brothers but for all the indigent. This will show that true and sincere charity is the daughter of the One who makes the sun to rise and the rain to fall on the just man and sinner alike.

19. May this struggle between good and evil extend to everything, and may good prevail. Masonry holds frequent meetings to plan new ways to combat the Church, and you should hold them frequently to better agree on the means and order of defense. It multiplies its lodges, so that you should multiply Catholic clubs and parochial groups, promote charitable associations and prayer organizations, and maintain and increase the splendor of the temple of God. The sect, having nothing to fear, today shows its face to the light of day. You Italian Catholics should also make open profession of your faith and follow the example of your glorious ancestors who confessed their faith bravely before tyrants, torture, and death. What more? Does the sect try to enslave the Church and to put it at the feet of the state as a humble servant? You must then demand and claim for it the freedom and independence due it before the law. Does masonry seek to tear apart Catholic unity, sowing discord even in the clergy itself, arousing quarrels, fomenting strife, and inciting insubordination, revolt, and schism? By tightening the sacred bond of charity and obedience, you can thwart its plans, bring to naught its efforts, and disappoint its hopes. Be all of one heart and one mind, like the first Christians. Gathered around the See of Peter and united to your pastors, protect the supreme interests of Church and papacy, which are just as much the supreme interests of Italy and of all the Christian world. The Apostolic See has always been the inspirer and jealous guardian of Italian glory. Therefore, be Italians and Catholics, free and non-sectarian, faithful to the nation as well as to Christ and His visible Vicar. An anti-Christian and antipapal Italy would truly be opposed to the divine plan, and thus condemned to perish. (Pope Leo XIII, Custodi di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892.)

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Jorge Mario Bergoglio Would Have Urged Catholics to "Dialogue" with Diocletian, part two

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