"The Students Expect to Get About a B"

The world has changed substantially for the worse in the past fifty-three years since I graduated from Oyster Bay High School on June 22, 1969. Although I received a completely secular education replete with the typical anti-Incarnational errors of Modernity and the secular ideology of evolutionism, I was spared the propagandizing in behalf of the “Second” Vatican Council that I would have been subjected to at St. Dominic’s High School had I attended there between 1965 and 1969, thus leaving intact the catechetical formation that I had received at Saint Aloysius School in Great New York, between 1956 and 1962 just before the beginning of that nefarious robber council that began on October 11, 1962, and whose sixtieth anniversary will be the subject of an upcoming commentary on this site. Perhaps the poison pills fed to me in my social studies and biology classes at Oyster Bay High School were less dangerous than being indoctrinated in the ways of conciliarism,

This having been noted, however, the teachers at Oyster Bay High School were dedicated professionals. Most of them were superb classroom teachers who knew their subject matters and who trained us well to prepare for college studies, and the principal, the late Mr. Richard E. Nodell, was an old-fashioned disciplinarian who had run afoul of the school board in the 1960s when he tried put a boy in “isolation” because he had very long hair. However, he was permitted to right a tight ship, and many of us who were students under his leadership became friends with him for years after our graduation. The teachers themselves prepared their lessons well and they taught without much in the ways of “visual aids” (slide projectors, supposed documentary films, etc.) available in the middle to late-1960s. In other words, they could teach with their own ability to instruct as they wrote the now-obsolete object called the blackboard. One either learned to take good notes or fail to do as well as possible on examinations.

Indeed, one of the teachers I had during my sophomore year (1966-67), Mr. Richard Mason, a biology teacher (who left after that scholastic year to teach at Onteora High School in Ulster County, New York, from which Sharon graduated in 1981), said something that I have always remembered and repeated to my own college students on the first day of a new semester: “Seventy percent of what you learn is from listening attentively and taking good notes. The rest is from what you read.” Students in those days were expected to memorize what they learned and then be able to explicate the meaning of the material in detailed essays that were supposed to be written in such a manner as to “teach” the grader as though he or she knew nothing about the subject matter. This is the standard that I always used to grade essays as I told my students that memory was the first part of learning. What separated the “A” student from the rest was his ability to not only to know facts but to explain what they meant in great detail.  These are the things that used to be taught in secular high schools, and they mattered far more, obviously, than the largely erroneous content that was taught.

To be sure, the education that I received from 1965 to 1969 at Oyster Bay High School was not focused on First and Last Things. This was impossible given the fact public schooling of its very nature has been designed by its Protestant and Masonic founders to be the instrument of “Americanizing” students. Of particular concern to the architects of state control of public indoctrination was the “need,” as they saw it, to inculcate the ways of American religious indifferentism, civil liberty, egalitarianism and democracy as the standards of good citizenship. The children of immigrants from Catholic countries such as Ireland (in the early part of the Nineteenth Century) and, following the War Between the States and the age of industrialization in the United States of America, from Italy, Germany (especially during Freemason Otto von Bismarck’s Kulturkampf against the Holy Faith), Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, including a proud Catholic country that had been partitioned away to the German, Austro-Hungarian and Russia Empires, namely, Poland, were “at risk” of failing to become “good citizens” because of their loyalty to a “foreign power,” the Roman Pontiff. Secular education simply should not be. Period. However, there was a time when public schools prepared students to think critically, to write coherently and to compute arithmetical figures in one’s own mind without the aid of calculator of adding machine.

Those days are no more, of course. Despite all the billions upon billions of dollars that the Federal government has spent in educational funding in the past fifty-five years since the administration of President Lyndon Baines Johnson got Congress to enact grant programs that, though not exactly mandatory in nature, required states and localities to meet Federal standards if they wanted to receive grant monies, students have less basic skills than ever before, and what most of the little that they think they know is wrong.

Memorization?

Largely a thing of the past in most places today. Thus it is that the lure of Federal dollars that was too tempting for the state governments to refuse became the means of dumbing down secular education and making students the slaves of the social engineers in the then-named United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare (which became two separate departments—the United States Department of Health and Human Services and the United States Department of Education—under the great appeaser himself, James Earl Carter, Jr., who is now ninety-eight years of age, on October 17, 1979) and their stooges on the state boards of education. More than ever before in the past, textbook companies, which now have their own computer programs that have taken the place of any real teaching done in some high schools, provided texts to do what the governmental masters wanted done. It is no accident that so many graduates of high schools today are more illiterate, more ignorant and less trained in the listening and note-taking skills required to learn even on the natural level than at any time prior to now.

Public schooling is, noting some exceptions here and there, is focused upon producing graduates who believe what they are told to believe, to accept uncritically all that the popular culture and the mainslime media tell them, to behave as though the things of the Holy Faith are put human fantasies and to embrace every falsehood imaginable with religious fervor, and in so warping young souls to believe that life is defined by the pursuit of carnal and material pleases and can be ended any time they desire. After all, it’s their “choice." 

Public schooling and the state control over it were designed in the early-Nineteenth Century to produce “good” Americanist citizens. As nothing based on falsehood is stable and must degenerate over the course time, public schooling is now focused on produce “globalists” who are committed to open borders and climate control in the name of protecting the environment and “saving” the planet. Moreover, most of what passes for “education” in educational institutions under the control of the counterfeit church of conciliarism replicates most, if not all, the ideologized agenda in the public schools.

What passes for college “education” has become little more than the pampering of the illiterate, uninformed, miseducated products of secondary schools who are so “sensitive” to have their tender feelings hurt and so ready to pounce whenever they hear something that forces them to reassess their uncritical acceptance of sin and error that it any semblance of the American concept of “freedom of expression” is deemed to be enough to require the college-aged students with infantile emotional lives to demand “safe spaces” and the firing of any professor who might “threaten” them in such a manner.

Colleges and universities are filled with error as they teach, again noting a few exceptions here and there, junk science (evolutionism and climate change), junk history, junk philosophy, junk political science, junk economics, junk arts, junk music, junk just about everything. While noting that there are some professors in various places who are not part of the ideologized agenda of “diversity” that is so “inclusive” as to exclude any concept of objective truth as falsehoods assume are accepted and taught as “truths” beyond question, the reality is that most professors have accepted or acquiesced to what is called higher education as an instrument of refining the process of mind-control that had been undertaken in elementary and secondary schools. Truly, I suppose that the only relatively safe fields of study today would include engineering, mathematics, architecture and accounting. However, those are subjects that do not, properly speaking, belong as part of college education, something that I will explain later in this commentary.

Although there were a few times over the course of my thirty-plus years as a college professor of political science when a student complained to higher authorities about something I had said in class (one student who had complained about me to my chairman, the late Dr. Arthur Hughes, at Saint Francis College in Brooklyn, New York, later apologized near the end of the Spring 1986 Semester when she realized that she had been wrong about me and felt bad about the fact that her complaint was used as a reason by administrators, who did not like my “old-fashioned” Catholicism, not to renew my contract), most of the problems that I had in my college teaching career came from colleagues who disliked the fact that I dared to teach political science by stressing that it is impossible to understand politics without understanding human nature and that it was necessary to understand Original Sin to understand human nature. The situation is even worse now than during my teaching days, and while I will always miss the college classroom, the reality of the world today is that I would probably be shot. Everything happens in God’s Holy Providence, and I know that there is no possibility for resuming my teaching career as things are just too far gone.

Indeed, it was in 1978 that Dr. Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn made the following observation about the phenomenon that now goes by the time of “political correctness”:

Without any censorship in the West, fashionable trends of thought and ideas are fastidiously separated from those that are not fashionable, and the latter, without ever being forbidden have little chance of finding their way into periodicals or books or being heard in colleges. Your scholars are free in the legal sense, but they are hemmed in by the idols of the prevailing fad. There is no open violence, as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to accommodate mass standards frequently prevents the most independent-minded persons from contributing to public life and gives rise to dangerous herd instincts that block dangerous herd development.

In America, I have received letters from highly intelligent persons - maybe a teacher in a faraway small college who could do much for the renewal and salvation of his country, but the country cannot hear him because the media will not provide him with a forum. This gives birth to strong mass prejudices, to a blindness which is perilous in our dynamic era. (Dr. Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, A World Split Apart. June 8, 1978.)

This was not an exaggeration at the time nearly forty-one years ago, and the situation has worsened given the fact that the former student radicals of the 1960s and, in some cases, some of their grown children serve as college and university administrators and are determined to clamp down on dissenting voices, especially those that make students feel “unsafe” and that actually defend the existence of objective truths that do not depend upon human acceptance for their binding force or validity. Numerous are the examples today of professors who have had their tenure revoked or who have been given the “golden parachute” to get them out of the classrooms following some “provocative” statement that they had made in a class lecture.

Student Mobs Turn on Professors as the Logical Consequence of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry

Many of today's college students are so hostile to anything that contradicts their own erroneous preconceived and quite inchoate notions of entitlement that are but a convenient cover for the captial sin of Sloth are ever ready to strike out against a professor who goes against the grain of the ever-evolving Marxist agenda of "diversity" and/or who actually requires them to work hard at their studies.

A faculty member at uber-“progressive” Sarah Lawrence University in Bronxville, New York, atop the scenic Bronx River in Westchester County (native New Yorkers should recognize that my use of the word “scenic” to describe the Bronx River is meant in a very sardonic sense), wrote an essay three and one-half years ago to describe his own experiences with students who demanded that he be denied his academic freedom and to have his tenure stripped from him so that he could be fired:

Sarah Lawrence College claims that its mission is to graduate students who are, ‘diverse in every definition of the word.’ Unfortunately, recent events which have been in the national eye, suggest otherwise. And this story involves me.

Seizing on an op-ed I wrote for The New York Times a few months ago, in which I questioned the lack of ideological balance of the school’s extracurricular programming, a group of student protesters calling themselves the Diaspora Coalition labeled me a racist misogynist. They demanded that my ‘position at the College be put up to tenure review to a panel of the Diaspora Coalition and at least three faculty members of color.’

As a direct assault on academic freedom and free speech, this demand by the Diaspora Coalition should have sent shivers down the spines of all of my colleagues at Sarah Lawrence College and compelled an immediate and strong faculty response. That simply did not happen.

In fact, after the op-ed’s initial publication in October, there was a national media storm in which I was slandered and defamed, my family’s safety was threatened, and my personal property was destroyed on campus.

While the college president eventually issued a perfunctory statement noting that I had ‘every right, and the full support of the college, to pursue and publish this work,’ the faculty’s support was minimal.

The college’s faculty ‘Committee on the Conditions on Teaching’ attempted to draft a strong declaration supporting the right of all faculty to free speech, but it was eventually watered down to into a weak message that simply supported the official statement that had already been issued by the president. Only 27 members of the facultycommunity signed the document, roughly 7 percent of the total faculty. Thus, to my shock, a proclamation in defense of academic freedom, freedom of speech and mutual respect clearly was deemed controversial and not overwhelmingly supported by my own colleagues.

Now, six months later, with the Diaspora Coalition’s latest attempt to attack academic freedom, the Sarah Lawrence faculty could have redeemed themselves and been galvanized to support free expression. Instead, they opted for silence — and, what’s worse, many of them were supportive of the student protesters’ demands.

As of this writing, 40 professors signed on and endorsed the Diaspora Coalition’s demand list. While not a huge percentage, 12 percent of the faculty — more than the number who supported the general statement about free speech back in October — endorsed the students’ demand to challenge my tenure and my right to free speech and the expression of ideas. All this, mind you, because I wrote an opinion piece based on original survey data, which was vetted and published by the New York Times.

Two years ago, as controversies surrounding free speech began to flare up at American colleges, I surveyed close to 900 faculty members around the country to gauge their views on free speech. The data revealed a very positive picture: college faculty overwhelmingly support free speech along with open environments for learning on their campuses, and this support transcends traditional cleavages such as ideology and field of study. 93 percent of faculty agree with the statement that, ‘[U]niversity life requires that people with diverse viewpoints and perspectives encounter each other in an environment where they feel free to speak up and challenge each other.’ In other words, there is almost universal support for the exchange of ideas and open discourse.

While the data should prompt some optimism for the promotion of viewpoint diversity at a time when it is sorely lacking, it now appears that many faculty members do not stand up for free speech when that backing is needed most.

When Charles Murray visited Middlebury College about two years ago, violence erupted because of his visit and a group of faculty sent a letter before the event arguing that ‘To introduce him — even to critique his arguments — only lends legitimacy to his ideas as worth engaging with.’ However, only after some institutional soul searching and the school’s president stating that the college ‘failed to live up to our core values,’ did a letter emerge signed by many other faculty which asserted the core values that colleges are places which train students to think, question, debate, evaluate evidence, and listen to each other.

Freedom of expression is a core value of the academe and viewpoint diversity is essential for a healthy educational and democratic environment. Moreover, free speech and academic freedom is a privilege that academics have fought for over many decades. Yet it appears many staff members are simply unwilling to fight for it, especially if it means having to stand up and be the ‘adult in the room’ in the face of a student mob — even though in theory 93 percent of faculty members across the country support academic freedom. This is incredibly dangerous and irresponsible on the part of professors; faculty who have escaped the culture wars so far may suddenly find themselves in the sights of a mob and expect that their colleagues would be there to support them. Based on my experience, as well as those at Middlebury, Yale, Williams, Evergreen, and many others, faculty should not get too comfortable.

It is especially sad that Sarah Lawrence has joined the list of schools where freedom of speech has come under attack, because the school itself has a history of supporting academic freedom. Harold Taylor, a former president of the college, was so deeply troubled by the Cold War challenges to freedom of speech that he made the following statement to a group of Sarah Lawrence students in 1952: ‘The most important possession we have at Sarah Lawrence College is our political and intellectual independence and our freedom to carry out a democratic educational program. We can only preserve this independence and this freedom if we all stand together as students and faculty against the attacks on this freedom from whatever quarter they may come.’

With that heritage at Sarah Lawrence — and with the prior knowledge that, in theory, 93 percent of professors across the country support freedom of academic inquiry — I would have never expected my academic freedom to come under attack by my very colleagues. While I am astonished that so many of my colleagues would prefer to stay silent about its import or try to undermine it, I offer my story as a warning to those who teach on other college and university campuses across the country. Professors overwhelmingly claim to believe in free speech, but that is not enough. We need to act on it and speak up in support of real intellectual and viewpoint diversity. For if faculty oppose it or look away, they will help push academic freedom into its grave. ("Diversity" at Sarah Lawrence University.)

Among the many things that Dr. Samuel Abrams did not recognize is the fact that the punishment of faculty members in who are deemed to be “conservative,” no less those who teach unapologetically as Catholics has been ongoing in many colleges and universities for several decades now. I am not the only one who experienced this now and again, although it is perhaps useful to relate once again that several feminists at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa, wanted my signed contract to teach in the 1992-1993 academic year cancelled after they had learned that I had run for lieutenant governor of New York on the Right to Life Party line in 1986. The college’s president, the late Miles Tomeraasen, refused to knuckle under to the request, but suffice it to say that I was pretty much persona non grata during my one-year teaching there as almost no other faculty member spoke to me or acknowledge my presence when walking on the campus. Mind you, this is but one example of intolerance that I experienced from a few faculty members and administrators now and again over the course of three decades.

Dr. Samuel Abrams did not understand this, but mob role is the only thing that can result when men are not united by the common bond of the true Faith. The American concept of “free speech” has been an illusion from its inception as the only basis for authentic liberty is that the standard of the Holy Cross of Our Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, as it is held high by His Catholic Church, she who is the very mother of universities.

It is safe to say that Dr. Abrams had not acquainted himself with the teaching of our job popes about “freedom of conscience” and unfettered “free speech” that are supposed to guide social life, including the life of scholars and teachers, as everything we do and say is supposed to please the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Blessed Trinity, and to advance the good of souls in the service of truth, both natural and supernatural:

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

Here We must include that harmful and never sufficiently denounced freedom to publish any writings whatever and disseminate them to the people, which some dare to demand and promote with so great a clamor. We are horrified to see what monstrous doctrines and prodigious errors are disseminated far and wide in countless books, pamphlets, and other writings which, though small in weight, are very great in malice. We are in tears at the abuse which proceeds from them over the face of the earth. Some are so carried away that they contentiously assert that the flock of errors arising from them is sufficiently compensated by the publication of some book which defends religion and truth. Every law condemns deliberately doing evil simply because there is some hope that good may result. Is there any sane man who would say poison ought to be distributed, sold publicly, stored, and even drunk because some antidote is available and those who use it may be snatched from death again and again? (Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.)

"But, although we have not omitted often to proscribe and reprobate the chief errors of this kind, yet the cause of the Catholic Church, and the salvation of souls entrusted to us by God, and the welfare of human society itself, altogether demand that we again stir up your pastoral solicitude to exterminate other evil opinions, which spring forth from the said errors as from a fountain. Which false and perverse opinions are on that ground the more to be detested, because they chiefly tend to this, that that salutary influence be impeded and (even) removed, which the Catholic Church, according to the institution and command of her Divine Author, should freely exercise even to the end of the world -- not only over private individuals, but over nations, peoples, and their sovereign princes; and (tend also) to take away that mutual fellowship and concord of counsels between Church and State which has ever proved itself propitious and salutary, both for religious and civil interests.

"For you well know, venerable brethren, that at this time men are found not a few who, applying to civil society the impious and absurd principle of "naturalism," as they call it, dare to teach that "the best constitution of public society and (also) civil progress altogether require that human society be conducted and governed without regard being had to religion any more than if it did not exist; or, at least, without any distinction being made between the true religion and false ones." And, against the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church, and of the Holy Fathers, they do not hesitate to assert that "that is the best condition of civil society, in which no duty is recognized, as attached to the civil power, of restraining by enacted penalties, offenders against the Catholic religion, except so far as public peace may require." From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an "insanity," viz., that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way." But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching "liberty of perdition;" and that "if human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of human wisdom; whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling."

"And, since where religion has been removed from civil society, and the doctrine and authority of divine revelation repudiated, the genuine notion itself of justice and human right is darkened and lost, and the place of true justice and legitimate right is supplied by material force, thence it appears why it is that some, utterly neglecting and disregarding the surest principles of sound reason, dare to proclaim that "the people's will, manifested by what is called public opinion or in some other way, constitutes a supreme law, free from all divine and human control; and that in the political order accomplished facts, from the very circumstance that they are accomplished, have the force of right." But who, does not see and clearly perceive that human society, when set loose from the bonds of religion and true justice, can have, in truth, no other end than the purpose of obtaining and amassing wealth, and that (society under such circumstances) follows no other law in its actions, except the unchastened desire of ministering to its own pleasure and interests?" (Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864.)

As a consequence, the State, constituted as it is, is clearly bound to act up to the manifold and weighty duties linking it to God, by the public profession of religion. Nature and reason, which command every individual devoutly to worship God in holiness, because we belong to Him and must return to Him, since from Him we came, bind also the civil community by a like law. For, men living together in society are under the power of God no less than individuals are, and society, no less than individuals, owes gratitude to God who gave it being and maintains it and whose everbounteous goodness enriches it with countless blessings. Since, then, no one is allowed to be remiss in the service due to God, and since the chief duty of all men is to cling to religion in both its teaching and practice-not such religion as they may have a preference for, but the religion which God enjoins, and which certain and most clear marks show to be the only one true religion -- it is a public crime to act as though there were no God. So, too, is it a sin for the State not to have care for religion as a something beyond its scope, or as of no practical benefit; or out of many forms of religion to adopt that one which chimes in with the fancy; for we are bound absolutely to worship God in that way which He has shown to be His will. All who rule, therefore, would hold in honor the holy name of God, and one of their chief duties must be to favor religion, to protect it, to shield it under the credit and sanction of the laws, and neither to organize nor enact any measure that may compromise its safety. This is the bounden duty of rulers to the people over whom they rule. For one and all are we destined by our birth and adoption to enjoy, when this frail and fleeting life is ended, a supreme and final good in heaven, and to the attainment of this every endeavor should be directed. Since, then, upon this depends the full and perfect happiness of mankind, the securing of this end should be of all imaginable interests the most urgent. Hence, civil society, established for the common welfare, should not only safeguard the wellbeing of the community, but have also at heart the interests of its individual members, in such mode as not in any way to hinder, but in every manner to render as easy as may be, the possession of that highest and unchangeable good for which all should seek. Wherefore, for this purpose, care must especially be taken to preserve unharmed and unimpeded the religion whereof the practice is the link connecting man with God.

Now, it cannot be difficult to find out which is the true religion, if only it be sought with an earnest and unbiased mind; for proofs are abundant and striking. We have, for example, the fulfillment of prophecies, miracles in great numbers, the rapid spread of the faith in the midst of enemies and in face of overwhelming obstacles, the witness of the martyrs, and the like. From all these it is evident that the only true religion is the one established by Jesus Christ Himself, and which He committed to His Church to protect and to propagate. . . . To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from the business of life, from the making of laws, from the education of youth, from domestic society is a grave and fatal error (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

Again, the fact that it is impossible, in human terms, that is, to implement these principles in a world that has been ruined by “religious liberty” and “separation of Church and State, in no way lessens their veracity or their binding nature. Error has consequences that are fatal in nature to the eternal and temporal good of men and their nations.

Writing in Libertas Praestantissimum, June 20, 1888, Pope Leo XIII, while accepting the principle of the toleration of error without conceding anything to an assertion that people have an inherent right to embrace it and to profess it publicly, explained that situation to which a state is driven by the toleration of ever greater evils over the course of time:

Yet, with the discernment of a true mother, the Church weighs the great burden of human weakness, and well knows the course down which the minds and actions of men are in this our age being borne. For this reason, while not conceding any right to anything save what is true and honest, she does not forbid public authority to tolerate what is at variance with truth and justice, for the sake of avoiding some greater evil, or of obtaining or preserving some greater good. God Himself in His providence, though infinitely good and powerful, permits evil to exist in the world, partly that greater good may not be impeded, and partly that greater evil may not ensue. In the government of States it is not forbidden to imitate the Ruler of the world; and, as the authority of man is powerless to prevent every evil, it has (as St. Augustine says) to overlook and leave unpunished many things which are punished, and rightly, by Divine Providence. But if, in such circumstances, for the sake of the common good (and this is the only legitimate reason), human law may or even should tolerate evil, it may not and should not approve or desire evil for its own sake; for evil of itself, being a privation of good, is opposed to the common welfare which every legislator is bound to desire and defend to the best of his ability. In this, human law must endeavor to imitate God, who, as St. Thomas teaches, in allowing evil to exist in the world, "neither wills evil to be done, nor wills it not to be done, but wills only to permit it to be done; and this is good.'' This saying of the Angelic Doctor contains briefly the whole doctrine of the permission of evil.

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

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

Well, this is what is happening in the world-at-large—and all throughout what is said be “education”—today, and this is because the world must descend into the tyranny of the mob when do not think as one with the Divine Redeemer as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His true Church. We are simply witnessing the logical consequences of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King wrought by the Protestant Revolution and institutionalized by the subsequent rise and triumph of the naturalistic forces of Judeo-Masonry.  There is no putting the Humpty Dumpty of Modernity back together again as the big egg that was laid to replace Catholicism was bound to fall off its fake, phony, fraud wall sooner or later. Behold the results.

The results are so wretched that, as mentioned when prefacing the story of Dr. Samuel Adams, professors who are deemed by their students to be "too hard" and/or who teach subjects that are considered "hard" are being called upon to relax their standards or risk being fired, especially if the complaining students happen to to believe in their own personal sense of entitlement to receive good grades because they want to get them without doing the work and without understanding the material upon which they been assigned to study. As will be explained shortly, this is not a phenomenon at all as there has been a gradual descent into the academic abyss over the last few decades.

However, the rise of the Marxist-based "critical race theory" and its incorpor ation into every aspect of scholastic and academic life has made it possible for students to use the "race card" to claim that even courses such as organic chemistry that require students to learn facts and to commit them to memory are considered to "racist" because the professors who teach them demand correct answers to problems posed on examinations. Here is but one example that was featured recently in the New York Post:

New York University fired Maitland Jones Jr. because his organic chemistry course was “too hard.” The man wrote the textbook on the subject, now in its fifth edition, and had been a star teacher at Princeton. He went out of his way to tape his lectures, at his own cost, to mitigate some of the attendance problems attributed to the pandemic.

Yet students revolted because they feared, according to the New York Times, that “they were not given the grades that would allow them to get into medical school.”

The professor, meanwhile, saw a different problem: “They weren’t coming to class. … They weren’t watching the videos, and they weren’t able to answer the questions.” But the school terminated his employment rather than the students, who are on track to become physicians despite struggling to get into med school.

Every American should be worried because this kind of standard-lowering is becoming commonplace in medical school.

Organic chemistry is a very difficult subject. Doing well in the course in college has been a litmus test for medical-school suitability. It demands discipline, ability to think in three dimensions, memorizing complex structures, managing a series of chemical rules and solving intricate problems. Its intellectual demands and need for disciplined study are surrogates for the discipline and problem-solving physicians must demonstrate throughout their careers.

Jones could not be more correct in his judgment that his organic chemistry course should be tough. Entry into medical school these days is almost a guarantee that a student will one day have a medical degree and a license to practice medicine. Even struggling students are coached through to graduation. I know this as I was the associate dean for curriculum at Penn’s medical school. But until recently, the standards for admission were so high that one could be sure that at least students admitted had the potential to excel. Jones’ experience at NYU makes clear that assumption is no longer correct.

The leadership at most American medical schools have adopted many of the same tenets of critical race theory invading education for K-12 students. It calls for diversity above meritocracy and makes being sure a med-school class has racial diversity the No. 1 priority. That would be fine if meritocracy and diversity could be co-existent, but increasingly, they can’t. To get around this conundrum, admission standards are being abandoned; there has even been an initiative to do away with organic chemistry as a pre-med requirement, with schools like Harvard considering it.

The story of NYU and Professor Jones shows why. It will be much easier to fill the diversity quotas if organic chemistry and achievement tests are eliminated as admission requirements. Hence the recent decision to dilute the hard-science content of the MCAT, the achievement test generally required for medical school applicants.

Endless catering to the demands of students when it means diluting standards and reducing academic rigor is a prescription for disaster in American health care. Think about it: Would you want a surgeon doing your appendectomy who had admissions standards lowered and poor test performance disregarded to diversify his or her medical school class? Would you want that person caring for your family member during a stay in the ICU? Of course not.

We must never forget that the high standards required of future doctors reflect the complexity and high stakes of the work. They exist to protect future patients, period. That’s why physicians and patients alike should fight the imposition of diversity, equity and inclusion policies — which are inherently divisive and often discriminatory — in all aspects of medical care. The health and well-being of patients depends on pushing back and keeping standards high.

There are two applicants for every opening in American medical schools. We need to be sure students are accepted based on their academic potential and good character — and nothing else. This has been the standard up until the rise of woke medicine, and this is the standard we must still uphold. Anything less will damage our health care system, undermine the achievements of those minority students who truly deserve admission to medical school and allow in the sorts of unqualified students who couldn’t cut it in Professor Jones’ organic chemistry class at NYU.

I don’t want them as my future doctor, and neither should you. (NYU's firing of Professor Maitland Jones Jr. should frighten every American.)

Although lacking the racial context that now permeates college campuses these days, I can well identify with the experience of Dr. Matiland Jones, Jr., as I explained to my college students on the first day of a semester that they are required to attend my class regularly, to take assiduous notes during the lectures, to complete the reading assignments before the class in which the material covered therein is to be discussed, and to study their lecture notes on a regular basis as each class session after the first one builds on the ones that have preceded it.

It was by the Spring 1979 Semester at Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois, that I came to realize it was time to be explicit with students about study habits as I saw that, just five years after having begun my teaching career as a graduate assistant at the then-named State University of New York at Albany, many students were utterly unprepared for college studies. I spent the time visiting my parents in Harlingen, Texas, over the Christmas break in late-December 1978 to write a nine-page course outline that focused on the study skills one needed to develop in order to comprehend the course material so throughout as to be able to explain it in an essay to me, the reader, as though I knew nothing about the material. The students’ ability to do so separated the “A” from the “B” students and so forth.

I made it clear to the students on the first day that I had objective standards of academic excellence that I would not diminish for the sake of “grading on a curve.” Paraphrasing the late John Houseman’s line in his commercials for the Smith Barney investment firm, I said while doing a pretty decent imitation of Houseman’s voice, “Here in Droleskey’s political science course you get grades the old-fashioned way, you earn them!” It was my obligation, I explained to my students, to be prepared for my classes, to answer their questions whether during the lectures or during my office hours, and to assist them in every manner possible to comprehend the subject, telling not to worry about the grades as they would take care of themselves if the students applied themselves diligently.

Importantly, though, I made it clear to my students that not everyone is equally as intelligent as others nor able to do what others can do. Each person has gifts and abilities that are uniquely their own as redeemed creatures and that the personal worth comes from the fact of their being made in the image and likeness of the Most Blessed Trinity, not from grades. Not everyone is capable of doing college work, and it is no diminution of one’s worth as a redeemed creature if he lacks the ability to do so.

Learning from the example of one of my supervisors at SUNY Albany, I held multiple and quite extensive review sessions, lasting usually between ninety minutes to two hours, prior to my examinations, to summarize the material covered and to prepare them to view the subject comprehensively as an organic whole. As I was single and had the time to do this, I would sometimes hold multiple review sessions on the same day to accommodate the students’ work or study schedules. I did everything in my power to try to inspire the students to learn and then retain what had been taught to them so that they would not merely “get by” on an examination or in a course but to remember as much of the information as possible for the rest of their lives. I was supported in these efforts by many, although not all, of my departmental chairmen, especially the late Dr. Hibbert Roberts at Illinois State University (1977-1979, 1986-1987), and Dr. Roger Goldstein at the then named C. W. Post Center of Long Island University (Spring 1991-Summer Session II 1992, Summer Session II 1993 to Winter Intersession 2006-2007). Dr. Roberts called me a “task master” who expected nothing from my students that I did not do in my work on their behalf.

It was thus with a fair degree of stunned disbelief in late- September of 1992 when a superior at Morningside College approached me rather sheepishly to say, “On the midterms, Tom, the students expect to get about a B. We are worried about student retention.” My reply was immediate, “My students will get what they earn, and if I am expected to tailor my grading for the sake of retaining students and lowering academic standards in the process, then this is the not the place for me to be teaching.” The superior was a little taken aback as he did not disagree with me at all but had an obligation as he saw it to toe the line of his own superiors. (It was shortly thereafter that I made the decision not to seek reappointment for another year, especially after the college had instituted a policy of “co-educational” dormitories with vending machines to distribute the means by which fornicating students could avoid the consequence of their use of the generative gift outside the context of Holy Matrimony. While other institutions at which I taught in the 1990s had the same policy, I was not expected to serve as a recruiting agent for them, and I could not play an active role in placing the immortal souls of students in jeopardy by doing so. I was not a recruiting agent at the other colleges/universities where I had taught, and I would not be one simply for the sake of job security when to do so would be to become an accomplice, however remote, in the sins of others.)

Ah, but the coup-de-grace, so to speak, about lowered standards took place when I was teaching at a two-year college in Texas from August 25, 2014, to October 16, 2014. Perhaps the best way to explain what happened is paste the text of a letter that I sent to a former chairman to express my frustration with the lowered standards:

No time for anything other than a brief note as this day began at 4:15 a.m., C.D.T., after having gotten to sleep around 12:30 a.m. following the grading of truly horrific examinations that were taken by the dual-credit schools in high schools where I taught for the college.

The dual-credit program at the college is a farce, a complete and total farce. Professors teach only once a week. The rest is done online. I have recorded over thirty hours of class lectures thus far via video lectures. Obviously, this presupposes that students will actually watch such lectures and take notes while doing so. Moreover, I have gone to the trouble of, in essence, placing my lectures in written format, a project that is turning out to be a miniature textbook, which consists of over seventy-five pages at this time.

Not only haven't most of the students availed themselves of these resources, some have complained about having to do so. It was early on during the Semester that the man who hired me threw me under the bus because of the complaints, warning me about them in an e-mail without bothering to telephone me. I was also warned about maintaining "neutrality" on moral issues even though professors on the main campus openly promote all manner of things without any semblance of such "neutrality."

The principal in one of the high schools, however, told me today when I visited with him briefly that he backs me fully, understanding that many of his students have never been challenged, telling me that they had to live with the consequences of their bad grades, which they earned richly even though I provided them with study questions two weeks in advance of the exam. I intended all along to use those study questions on their midterm examination. Every question on the study sheet was answerable from the class notes, the lectures, and the written text that I had provided them. All that they had to do was a little bit of research even if they had not been studying the material on a daily basis. With the exception of seven of the thirty-eight students in the three high schools, none had been studying.

Adding insult to injury, about fifteen of the students could not identify Thomas Jefferson as the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. This is something that children used to learn from their parents even before they went to school. The levels of ignorance and sloth are worse now than they have been in the past.

Another course, taught on-campus in another location, ends tomorrow. The course has been taught on an eight-week basis. Rather than have the professors teaching twice a week for 160 minutes each time, classroom time is limited to eighty minutes twice a week. This means that half of the work was to be done online. As can be expected, of course, most of the students have not watched the videos or read the textual material that I have given them. 

This note was written in frustration, and it was in God’s Holy Providence that I pressed a button and inadvertently sent a copy of it to one of the college’s administrators! The rest, as they say, was history. I was toast. During the middle of a semester. It was immediately thereafter that I lost all online access to my class rosters and thus the ability to upload new material for the students to ignore.

However, I was at fault for having agreed to teach the classes in the first place as it was made to clear to me when I was hired that I was expected toadhere to the computer program that came with a grossly overpriced textbook replete with the usual leftist slogans and predilections. In other words, I was expected to be the administrator of computer-generated content and that my job was to be teach the students to choose the right “bubble” on an examination question. I should have refused the job offer then and there as I was a college professor and not a robot for a textbook company's computer program, which is why I told my told the students that they did not have to  to purchase the textbook if they could not afford to do so. Things went well at first, but the students were so dumbed down that they could not accept a genuine example of college instruction. Many of them compained to their parents about my being "too hard."

It was eighteen months after my brief time at the college came to an end that one of the complaining students wrote to me to state:

I am one of the kids you taught dual credit to at my high school and as I was scrolling through my emails this evening or night, I realized I may have never been as appreciative as I should have of your teachings while we had class with you. Now in my second semester in college I have realized that your class was never hard. I just never put the time in at as I should have. I want to thank you for teaching us and myself once again and teaching me personally to push myself harder as well as to study harder.

This was very gratifying to have received eighteen months after all the complaints that had been lodged against me by parents of the dual-credit students (high school students taking college courses for college credit on their own high school campuses) for being “too hard” as all a professor can do is to plant a few seeds and hope that they take root in the years thereafter. (Yes, I miss the college classroom. In today’s “woke” environment, though, the chances of my physical survival would be more negligent than my chances of being hired in the first place.)

The point of these examples from my own personal experience as a college professor is to illustrate that the experience of Dr. Maitland Jones at prestigious New York University, which used to have very high and exacting academic standards, is demonstrative of the fact that the corporate, educational, political, bureaucratic, technological, medical, and communications elites want people to enter in the work world who believe what they are told and who have been so dumbed down by catering to every perceived slight or offense that they will always do what their minders tell them to do, especially if this makes them incapable of thinking on their own.

It is mythological to believe that higher education in the United States of America and elsewhere in the supposedly “developed” world is committed to true learning. This is simply not so. True education can only be realized when it is guided by the truths of the Holy Faith so that every field of study is integrated in light of Our First Cause and Last End.

I am not unmindful of the fact that there are some fully Catholic venues today where a special point is made to publicize graduates’ admissions to prestigious universities and colleges. Such admissions, which have been granted on the basis of merit and not because of the recently-exposed scheme used by celebrities to gain them fraudulent by the use of their wealth, are inded laudatory. However, absent a clear-headed understanding that the perils that face Catholic college students in an environment of overt hostility to Holy Faith and of intolerance towards believing Catholics on the part of many administrators, faculty members and student mobs, some of whom in the United Kingdom are now emptying milk cartons in stores because they have been taught by their ideological masters to view cows as nothing more than contributors to "climate change" (see Teeens puting milk out of grocery stores in England), one can wind up infected with a welter of errors if one does not beg Our Lady for the graces to separate the wheat from the chaff. Whatever this is, though, it is not education as Holy Mother Church intends it to be.

Mind you, I still look at the listings for academic positions that come into my email’s inbox every morning. I do miss the classroom. However, I have enough self-knowledge to know that my “paper trail” is what it is despite excellent student and peer evaluations of my teaching and that any application I would submit would go to the “You’ve got to be kidding” pile that I saw on a table in Mohawk Tower at the then-named State University of New York at Albany in early-1975 when the curriculum and budget committee of the Department of Political Science was reviewing applications for a positions during the time I was a graduate teaching/research assistant and pursuing my doctorate.

To quote from one of many legions of former friends, “It’s ovvvvverrrr!”

The Catholic Church and Education

Our true popes have warned us that the attacks on the family are of the essence of Protestantism and the Judeo-Masonry that helped to spawn Marxism-Leninism in its wake.

Perhaps it would be useful once again to review how the lodge brothers and their fellow travelers in the world of the organized forces of naturalism sought to corrupt the young by seizing control of the education of their minds away from their parents and Holy Mother Church and by disseminating their filth in what passes for "popular culture." Pope Leo XIII noted the Masonic roots of public schooling in his encyclical letter on Freemasonry, Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884:

Wherefore we see that men are publicly tempted by the many allurements of pleasure; that there are journals and pamphlets with neither moderation nor shame; that stage-plays are remarkable for license; that designs for works of art are shamelessly sought in the laws of a so-called verism; that the contrivances of a soft and delicate life are most carefully devised; and that all the blandishments of pleasure are diligently sought out by which virtue may be lulled to sleep. Wickedly, also, but at the same time quite consistently, do those act who do away with the expectation of the joys of heaven, and bring down all happiness to the level of mortality, and, as it were, sink it in the earth. Of what We have said the following fact, astonishing not so much in itself as in its open expression, may serve as a confirmation. For, since generally no one is accustomed to obey crafty and clever men so submissively as those whose soul is weakened and broken down by the domination of the passions, there have been in the sect of the Freemasons some who have plainly determined and proposed that, artfully and of set purpose, the multitude should be satiated with a boundless license of vice, as, when this had been done, it would easily come under their power and authority for any acts of daring. . . .

With the greatest unanimity the sect of the Freemasons also endeavors to take to itself the education of youth. They think that they can easily mold to their opinions that soft and pliant age, and bend it whither they will; and that nothing can be more fitted than this to enable them to bring up the youth of the State after their own plan. Therefore, in the education and instruction of children they allow no share, either of teaching or of discipline, to the ministers of the Church; and in many places they have procured that the education of youth shall be exclusively in the hands of laymen, and that nothing which treats of the most important and most holy duties of men to God shall be introduced into the instructions on morals. (Pope Leo XIII, Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884) 

It was thirty-five years later that Father Edward Cahill, S.J., wrote the following in the Irish Ecclesiastical Review about the goals of Judeo-Masonry to subvert the family by means of state control of education and their own control of culture:

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.)

(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.)

So-called “public education,” including higher education (colleges, universities, professional schools), has been the adversary’s most effective weapon to advance and to institutionalize the Judeo-Masonic agenda outlined by Father Edward Cahill ninety years ago in a serialized manner before it was published subsequently in book form.

Father Frederick Faber had noted the paganizing tendencies of secular education seventy years before Father Cahill had written his series of articles in the Irish Ecclesiastical Review:

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. (Father Frederick Faber, The Precious Blood, published originally in England in 1860, republished by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 53-54.)

Mind you, this was written one hundred fifty-nine years ago. Father Faber’s prophetic words describe the world in which we live today with great accuracy at time when the conciliar revolutionaries’ sacramentally barren liturgical rites have dried up a superabundance of the outpouring of the Most Precious Blood into the souls of men. Father Faber’s description of what education would produce absent the direction of Holy Mother Church applies to all secular education today: “Moreover, education, considered simply as an intellectual cultivation, propagates sin, and makes it more universal.”

Recognizing all this, Pope Pius XI issued Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929, discussed the true purposes of education and explained the failure of naturalists to understand them:

This perfection they seek to acquire by means of education. But many of them with, it would seem, too great insistence on the etymological meaning of the word, pretend to draw education out of human nature itself and evolve it by its own unaided powers. Such easily fall into error, because, instead of fixing their gaze on God, first principle and last end of the whole universe, they fall back upon themselves, becoming attached exclusively to passing things of earth; and thus their restlessness will never cease till they direct their attention and their efforts to God, the goal of all perfection, according to the profound saying of Saint Augustine: "Thou didst create us, O Lord, for Thyself, and our heart is restless till it rest in Thee." (Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)

True education, wrote Pope Pius XI, must revolve around Our Lord as He has revealed Himself through His true Church: 

It is therefore as important to make no mistake in education, as it is to make no mistake in the pursuit of the last end, with which the whole work of education is intimately and necessarily connected. In fact, since education consists essentially in preparing man for what he must be and for what he must do here below, in order to attain the sublime end for which he was created, it is clear that there can be no true education which is not wholly directed to man's last end, and that in the present order of Providence, since God has revealed Himself to us in the Person of His Only Begotten Son, who alone is "the way, the truth and the life," there can be no ideally perfect education which is not Christian education. ( (Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)

(As a note of reference, it is important to bear in mind that the Popes of the Catholic Church, as opposed to the "pontiffs" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, used the word "Christian" to refer to the Catholic Faith. The reason for this is simple: although Protestants say that they are Christians, they do not truly know Our Lord since they reject His true Church and dissent from multiple articles He has revealed and deposited in His true Church. They do not represent Christianity at all. Only the Catholic Church represents Christianity. She alone has the right to use the appellation of "Christian.")

All other education is imperfect and thus must become a means to inculcate the very errors that gave rise to the existence of state-controlled schooling. The killing of human beings in public schools is but the consequence of a world born and nurtured to full demonic maturity by a series of revolutions against the Holy Faith and, in due course, against all truth. The murder of souls leads to the murder of human beings by those inculcated in the pathways of violence, confusion and error.

Pope Pius XI, the great exponent of the Social Reign of Christ the King, noted in Divini Illius Magistri that the fate of nations depended upon the education of youth in the truths of the Catholic Faith:

From this we see the supreme importance of Christian education, not merely for each individual, but for families and for the whole of human society, whose perfection comes from the perfection of the elements that compose it. From these same principles, the excellence, we may well call it the unsurpassed excellence, of the work of Christian education becomes manifest and clear; for after all it aims at securing the Supreme Good, that is, God, for the souls of those who are being educated, and the maximum of well-being possible here below for human society. And this it does as efficaciously as man is capable of doing it, namely by cooperating with God in the perfecting of individuals and of society, in as much as education makes upon the soul the first, the most powerful and lasting impression for life according to the well-known saying of the Wise Man, "A young man according to his way, even when he is old, he will not depart from it." With good reason therefore did St. John Chrysostom say, "What greater work is there than training the mind and forming the habits of the young?" (Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.) 

Man must always keep his mind his First Cause and Last End in all of his activities, whether he is acting individually or collectively with others in the pursuit of the common good of his nation. The state of a nation depends upon the state of souls, and the state of souls depends upon the extent to which individual citizens keep themselves in states of Sanctifying Grace and adhere completely to the Deposit of Faith, including the Church's immutable Social Doctrine on the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ, which does not worship at the altar of the false, mythological god of American "civil liberty."

The Church, therefore, must be free to pursue the entirety of the mission, including that of education, entrusted to her by her Divine Bridegroom, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, without any interference from the state. Parents, who form the domestic cell of the Church in their families, must be free to do so in the bosom of their homes.

Pope Pius XI noted this in Divini Illius Magistri:

Hence it is that in this proper object of her mission, that is, "in faith and morals, God Himself has made the Church sharer in the divine magisterium and, by a special privilege, granted her immunity from error; hence she is the mistress of men, supreme and absolutely sure, and she has inherent in herself an inviolable right to freedom in teaching.' By necessary consequence the Church is independent of any sort of earthly power as well in the origin as in the exercise of her mission as educator, not merely in regard to her proper end and object, but also in regard to the means necessary and suitable to attain that end. Hence with regard to every other kind of human learning and instruction, which is the common patrimony of individuals and society, the Church has an independent right to make use of it, and above all to decide what may help or harm Christian education. And this must be so, because the Church as a perfect society has an independent right to the means conducive to its end, and because every form of instruction, no less than every human action, has a necessary connection with man's last end, and therefore cannot be withdrawn from the dictates of the divine law, of which the Church is guardian, interpreter and infallible mistress.

This truth is clearly set forth by Pius X of saintly memory:

"Whatever a Christian does even in the order of things of earth, he may not overlook the supernatural; indeed he must, according to the teaching of Christian wisdom, direct all things towards the supreme good as to his last end; all his actions, besides, in so far as good or evil in the order of morality, that is, in keeping or not with natural and divine law, fall under the judgment and jurisdiction of the Church." (As quoted by Pope Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.) 

Only a fool would contend that Pope Saint Pius X was wrong, that there is ever a moment when something we do in the "order of the things of the earth" can overlook the supernatural. Those "conservatives" who believe that they can devise plans to combat liberalism and statism and socialism of the likes promoted by the likes of the organized crime family of the false opposite of the naturalist “left” without seeking to restore the Social Reign of Christ the King are indeed very mistaken, plain and simple. They tilt at windmills as they refuse, for whatever reason, usually involving a dogmatic adherence to a political philosophy that they contend pridefully contains the ability to "resolve" social problems, to state this simple truth: all things must be restored in Christ the King, both individually and collectively.

After delineating the rights of the Church and the family with respect to education—and discussing instances when a state ordered according to Catholic teaching might have to intervene to protect a child whose religious instruction was being ignored by his parents, Pope Pius XI wrote in Divini Illius Magistri about the simple fact that the welfare of the state itself depends entirely upon its submission to the truths of the Catholic Faith:

Whoever refuses to admit these principles, and hence to apply them to education, must necessarily deny that Christ has founded His Church for the eternal salvation of mankind, and maintain instead that civil society and the State are not subject to God and to His law, natural and divine. Such a doctrine is manifestly impious, contrary to right reason, and, especially in this matter of education, extremely harmful to the proper training of youth, and disastrous as well for civil society as for the well-being of all mankind. On the other hand from the application of these principles, there inevitably result immense advantages for the right formation of citizens. This is abundantly proved by the history of every age. Tertullian in his Apologeticus could throw down a challenge to the enemies of the Church in the early days of Christianity, just as St. Augustine did in his; and we today can repeat with him: 

"Let those who declare the teaching of Christ to be opposed to the welfare of the State, furnish us with an army of soldiers such as Christ says soldiers ought to be; let them give us subjects, husbands, wives, parents, children, masters, servants, kings, judges, taxpayers and tax gatherers who live up to the teachings of Christ; and then let them dare assert that Christian doctrine is harmful to the State. Rather let them not hesitate one moment to acclaim that doctrine, rightly observed, the greatest safeguard of the State."

While treating of education, it is not out of place to show here how an ecclesiastical writer, who flourished in more recent times, during the Renaissance, the holy and learned Cardinal Silvio Antoniano, to whom the cause of Christian education is greatly indebted, has set forth most clearly this well established point of Catholic doctrine. He had been a disciple of that wonderful educator of youth, St. Philip Neri; he was teacher and Latin secretary to St. Charles Borromeo, and it was at the latter's suggestion and under his inspiration that he wrote his splendid treatise on The Christian Education of Youth. In it he argues as follows:

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

How can public schools produce temporal peace and tranquility as sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance are protected by law, promoted in the culture and taught to school children?

The best citizens are well-informed and well-formed Catholics who are trying to save their immortal souls as Catholics in cooperation with the graces won for them by the shedding of Our Lord's Most Precious Blood and which flow forth from the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces, who has the absolute right to be honored as the Queen of all nations. It is that simple. Catholic truth reflects the simplicity of God Himself.

Penetratingly, Pope Pius XI eviscerated the theories that underlain the work of Horace Mann in the Nineteenth Century and were being promoted in his own day by the likes of the pragmatist John Dewey: 

Hence every form of pedagogic naturalism which in any way excludes or weakens supernatural Christian formation in the teaching of youth, is false. Every method of education founded, wholly or in part, on the denial or forgetfulness of original sin and of grace, and relying on the sole powers of human nature, is unsound. Such, generally speaking, are those modern systems bearing various names which appeal to a pretended self-government and unrestrained freedom on the part of the child, and which diminish or even suppress the teacher's authority and action, attributing to the child an exclusive primacy of initiative, and an activity independent of any higher law, natural or divine, in the work of his education. 

If any of these terms are used, less properly, to denote the necessity of a gradually more active cooperation on the part of the pupil in his own education; if the intention is to banish from education despotism and violence, which, by the way, just punishment is not, this would be correct, but in no way new. It would mean only what has been taught and reduced to practice by the Church in traditional Christian education, in imitation of the method employed by God Himself towards His creatures, of whom He demands active cooperation according to the nature of each; for His Wisdom "reacheth from end to end mightily and ordereth all things sweetly." 

But alas! it is clear from the obvious meaning of the words and from experience, that what is intended by not a few, is the withdrawal of education from every sort of dependence on the divine law. So today we see, strange sight indeed, educators and philosophers who spend their lives in searching for a universal moral code of education, as if there existed no decalogue, no gospel law, no law even of nature stamped by God on the heart of man, promulgated by right reason, and codified in positive revelation by God Himself in the ten commandments. These innovators are wont to refer contemptuously to Christian education as "heteronomous," "passive","obsolete," because founded upon the authority of God and His holy law. 

Such men are miserably deluded in their claim to emancipate, as they say, the child, while in reality they are making him the slave of his own blind pride and of his disorderly affections, which, as a logical consequence of this false system, come to be justified as legitimate demands of a so-called autonomous nature. (Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)

Ah, what did I say about slavery a while back?

Anyone who does not place himself under the sweet yoke of the Divine Redeemer through the Catholic Church is a slave to many people and things, including his own blind pride.

Any country which does not place itself under the sweet yoke of the Divine Redeemer's Social Kingship is a slave to the devil and becomes an oppressor of its people.

Who desires "pedagogic naturalism?"

Who desires "the withdrawal of education from every sort of dependence on the divine law?"

Not Our Lord, ladies and gentlemen.

It is the adversary himself who desires these things. It is he who has been in control of American popular culture from its very inception. The devil reigns as king if Our Lord does not do so through His true Church. It is that simple. Anyone care to dissent from this plain truth? I mean, George Soros is taking full advantage of this most recent tragedy to advance an agenda that already serves as the basis of many curricular programs throughout the United States of America, and he is a complete agent of Antichrist.

Pope Pius XI completely and utterly rejected the whole notion of public schooling, allowing for rare exceptions in certain cases given the actual realities facing Catholics in places like the United States of America. As a matter of principle, however, Pope Pius XI minced no words: public schooling is a menace to souls and harmful to nations because it does not proceed from man's First Cause nor lead man back to his Last End:

From this it follows that the so-called "neutral" or "lay" school, from which religion is excluded, is contrary to the fundamental principles of education. Such a school moreover cannot exist in practice; it is bound to become irreligious. There is no need to repeat what Our Predecessors have declared on this point, especially Pius IX and Leo XIII, at times when laicism was beginning in a special manner to infest the public school. We renew and confirm their declarations, as well as the Sacred Canons in which the frequenting of non-Catholic schools, whether neutral or mixed, those namely which are open to Catholics and non-Catholics alike, is forbidden for Catholic children, and can be at most tolerated, on the approval of the Ordinary alone, under determined circumstances of place and time, and with special precautions. Neither can Catholics admit that other type of mixed school, (least of all the so-called "école unique," obligatory on all), in which the students are provided with separate religious instruction, but receive other lessons in common with non-Catholic pupils from non-Catholic teachers. 

For the mere fact that a school gives some religious instruction (often extremely stinted), does not bring it into accord with the rights of the Church and of the Christian family, or make it a fit place for Catholic students. To be this, it is necessary that all the teaching and the whole organization of the school, and its teachers, syllabus and text-books in every branch, be regulated by the Christian spirit, under the direction and maternal supervision of the Church; so that Religion may be in very truth the foundation and crown of the youth's entire training; and this in every grade of school, not only the elementary, but the intermediate and the higher institutions of learning as well. To use the words of Leo XIII:

"It is necessary not only that religious instruction be given to the young at certain fixed times, but also that every other subject taught, be permeated with Christian piety. If this is wanting, if this sacred atmosphere does not pervade and warm the hearts of masters and scholars alike, little good can be expected from any kind of learning, and considerable harm will often be the consequence." (Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)

The Catholic Faith must be infused into every aspect of education without exception.

Do I mean to condemn Catholics who teach or serve as administrators in public schools?

No.

Do I mean to expose my readers to papal condemnations of these schools as illegitimate and thus harmful to the souls of their students and to the good of their nations?

Yes.

Moreover, I mean to remind my readers once again that there is no secular, naturalistic, non-denominational or religiously indifferentist way to "resolve" problems associated with public schooling. Just as the abuses witnessed by so many Catholics in the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service are the result of the Novus Ordo's s warfare against the Catholic Faith, so is it the case that the problems in public schooling, much like the problems with "judicial activism," are the result of the Protestant Revolt and of Judeo-Masonry. There is no expedient solution to problems that have been created by diabolically-inspired attacks against Our Lord and His Holy Church.

Those of us who are parents, no matter how old (in my case) or young we may be, have the obligation to avoid all contact with public schooling entirely.

We have the obligation also to avoid all contact with schools run by the institutions of the counterfeit church of conciliarism (diocesan or religious) given the influence of Modernism and the concomitant conciliarist ethos spawned in its sorry wake.

Similarly, we have the obligation to avoid contact with even a seemingly traditional school that makes any concession to the popular culture and/or does not demand a complete refusal on the part of parents and students to participate in any way with a culture that is from the devil and leads souls to Hell for all eternity. This is not Jansenism. This is Catholicism. The saints did not indulge the allurements of the world. They fled from them for love of God and for the love of souls for whom He offered His very life on the wood of the Holy Cross. No "traditional" school that does not inculcate in its students a manifest sense of resistance to the culture and which does not instill in its students an abiding commitment to restore the Social Reign of Christ the King is a fit place to send one's children.

Similarly, schools that purport to be traditional but which do not have teachers qualified to teach the subjects assigned (or who do not have the ability to teach in general) to them and/or who are not called upon by their superiors to challenge their students to pursue the heights of the rigors of academic excellence as befits redeemed creatures are unworthy of the souls of our children. Mediocrity is not of the Catholic Faith. Anyone who is content with educational mediocrity is content with the Capital Sin of Sloth.

Yet it is that the trillions of dollars that have been spent on what passes for "education" in the past fifty years have resulted in a nation of slothful ignoramuses who are moved by materialism, sentimentality and simple base instincts to conduct their daily lives.

Hundreds of millions of people in the United States of America and around the world who are ignorant of the following truths enunciated so clearly by Pope Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri:

The proper and immediate end of Christian education is to cooperate with divine grace in forming the true and perfect Christian, that is, to form Christ Himself in those regenerated by Baptism, according to the emphatic expression of the Apostle: "My little children, of whom I am in labor again, until Christ be formed in you."For the true Christian must live a supernatural life in Christ: "Christ who is your life," and display it in all his actions: "That the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal flesh." 

For precisely this reason, Christian education takes in the whole aggregate of human life, physical and spiritual, intellectual and moral, individual, domestic and social, not with a view of reducing it in any way, but in order to elevate, regulate and perfect it, in accordance with the example and teaching of Christ. 

Hence the true Christian, product of Christian education, is the supernatural man who thinks, judges and acts constantly and consistently in accordance with right reason illumined by the supernatural light of the example and teaching of Christ; in other words, to use the current term, the true and finished man of character. For, it is not every kind of consistency and firmness of conduct based on subjective principles that makes true character, but only constancy in following the eternal principles of justice, as is admitted even by the pagan poet when he praises as one and the same "the man who is just and firm of purpose." And on the other hand, there cannot be full justice except in giving to God what is due to God, as the true Christian does. (Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.) 

Children do not belong to the "community." They belong to God, Who has ordained that their parents are their principal educators, not the civil state:

On this point the common sense of mankind is in such complete accord, that they would be in open contradiction with it who dared maintain that the children belong to the State before they belong to the family, and that the State has an absolute right over their education. Untenable is the reason they adduce, namely that man is born a citizen and hence belongs primarily to the State, not bearing in mind that before being a citizen man must exist; and existence does not come from the State, but from the parents, as Leo XIII wisely declared: "The children are something of the father, and as it were an extension of the person of the father; and, to be perfectly accurate, they enter into and become part of civil society, not directly by themselves, but through the family in which they were born." "And therefore," says the same Leo XIII, "the father's power is of such a nature that it cannot be destroyed or absorbed by the State; for it has the same origin as human life itself." It does not however follow from this that the parents' right to educate their children is absolute and despotic; for it is necessarily subordinated to the last end and to natural and divine law, as Leo XIII declares in another memorable encyclical, where He thus sums up the rights and duties of parents: "By nature parents have a right to the training of their children, but with this added duty that the education and instruction of the child be in accord with the end for which by God's blessing it was begotten. Therefore it is the duty of parents to make every effort to prevent any invasion of their rights in this matter, and to make absolutely sure that the education of their children remain under their own control in keeping with their Christian duty, and above all to refuse to send them to those schools in which there is danger of imbibing the deadly poison of impiety." (Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)

Public schools kill souls, and it is dead souls that are more prone to acting upon demonic suggestions, including to seek to kill their own preborn children, whose very humanity is denied in these centers of miseducation and ideological mind-control.

Pope Pius XI knew full well that the rights of the family were under savage attack in the early Twentieth Century, noting the outcome of the Pierce v. Society of Sisters, June 1, 1925.

It must be borne in mind also that the obligation of the family to bring up children, includes not only religious and moral education, but physical and civic education as well, principally in so far as it touches upon religion and morality.

This incontestable right of the family has at various times been recognized by nations anxious to respect the natural law in their civil enactments. Thus, to give one recent example, the Supreme Court of the United States of America, in a decision on an important controversy, declared that it is not in the competence of the State to fix any uniform standard of education by forcing children to receive instruction exclusively in public schools, and it bases its decision on the natural law: the child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right coupled with the high duty, to educate him and prepare him for the fulfillment of his obligations. (Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)

The case of Pierce v. Society of Sisters, however, was not a complete victory for the cause of educational Justice James C. McReynolds wrote that while parents could not be forced to send their children to public schools, he did hold that the states had the right to compel attendance in some school and to establish educational standards, thereby providing the Supreme Court of the United States' imprimatur on the usurpation of the rights of parents and of the Church that had begun with Horace Mann eighty-eight years before. Consider the language of Justice McReynolds in this regard:

No question is raised concerning the power of the state reasonably to regulate all schools, to inspect, supervise and examine them, their teachers and pupils; to require that all children of proper age attend some school, that teachers shall be of good moral character and patriotic disposition, that certain studies plainly essential good citizenship must be taught, and that nothing be taught which is manifestly inimical to the public welfare. (Pierce v. Society of Sisters, June 1, 1925, Page 268 U. S. 534.) 

This is quite a loaded passage.

What constitutes "good citizenship?

Acceptance of American "values," including Calvinistic capitalism and religious indifferentism?

Being taught "the history and contributions" of those engaged in sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance? What is "manifestly inimical to the public welfare" if not this? 

Justice McReynolds, was, however, simply reaffirming what had become by his name an accepted article of the American "faith," that public schooling was the backbone of a "free" people.

Obviously, the very belief that we are a "free" people is itself a gigantic myth. We are not.

We are the slaves of the state and its arbitrary whims.

We are slaves of a Constitution that is indifferent to the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man in Our Lady's Virginal and Immaculate womb and hostile to the Deposit of Faith the God-Man has entrusted solely to His true Church for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication.

We are the slaves of career politicians who believe that we exist in order to enable them to pick our pockets to enlarge the powers of the state and thus increase their ability to control every aspect of the legitimate exercise of our human free wills.

We are the slaves of the corporate robber barons who contribute mightily to the coffers of these career politicians while they manufacture products to appeal to our greed and our desire to luxury, entrapping us into various snares of endless materialism and hedonism. 

We are the slaves of the powerful Judeo-Masonic machinery that controls our banking and our entertainment and our courts and our "educational" system.

We are the slaves of stupid myths about this country being the "guarantor of human liberty worldwide" when the truth is that anyone who points out the absurdity of these myths is denounced fascistically as unpatriotic.

We are the slaves of pharmaceutical companies who produce poisons to addict us to their "cures" for diseases that have been produced by lives of excess and by the very chemical additives placed in our food and our water to make us sick so as to make us dependent upon these poisons.

We are not a "free" people. We are slaves.

Pope Pius XI explained Holy Mother Church has always defended the rights of the family, especially when they are under attack by the civil state:

History bears witness how, particularly in modern times, the State has violated and does violate rights conferred by God on the family. At the same time it shows magnificently how the Church has ever protected and defended these rights, a fact proved by the special confidence which parents have in Catholic schools. As We pointed out recently in Our letter to the Cardinal Secretary of State:

The family has instinctively understood this to be so, and from the earliest days of Christianity down to our own times, fathers and mothers, even those of little or no faith, have been sending or bringing their children in millions to places of education under the direction of the Church.

It is paternal instinct, given by God, that thus turns with confidence to the Church, certain of finding in her the protection of family rights, thereby illustrating that harmony with which God has ordered all things. The Church is indeed conscious of her divine mission to all mankind, and of the obligation which all men have to practice the one true religion; and therefore she never tires of defending her right, and of reminding parents of their duty, to have all Catholic-born children baptized and brought up as Christians. On the other hand so jealous is she of the family's inviolable natural right to educate the children, that she never consents, save under peculiar circumstances and with special cautions, to baptize the children of infidels, or provide for their education against the will of the parents, till such time as the children can choose for themselves and freely embrace the Faith.

We have therefore two facts of supreme importance. As We said in Our discourse cited above: The Church placing at the disposal of families her office of mistress and educator, and the families eager to profit by the offer, and entrusting their children to the Church in hundreds and thousands. These two facts recall and proclaim a striking truth of the greatest significance in the moral and social order. They declare that the mission of education regards before all, above all, primarily the Church and the family, and this by natural and divine law, and that therefore it cannot be slighted, cannot be evaded, cannot be supplanted.

From such priority of rights on the part of the Church and of the family in the field of education, most important advantages, as we have seen, accrue to the whole of society. Moreover in accordance with the divinely established order of things, no damage can follow from it to the true and just rights of the State in regard to the education of its citizens.

These rights have been conferred upon civil society by the Author of nature Himself, not by title of fatherhood, as in the case of the Church and of the family, but in virtue of the authority which it possesses to promote the common temporal welfare, which is precisely the purpose of its existence. Consequently education cannot pertain to civil society in the same way in which it pertains to the Church and to the family, but in a different way corresponding to its own particular end and object.

Now this end and object, the common welfare in the temporal order, consists in that peace and security in which families and individual citizens have the free exercise of their rights, and at the same time enjoy the greatest spiritual and temporal prosperity possible in this life, by the mutual union and co-ordination of the work of all. The function therefore of the civil authority residing in the State is twofold, to protect and to foster, but by no means to absorb the family and the individual, or to substitute itself for them. (Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)

The modern civil state in the “free” United States of America is now the mirror image of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as envisioned by Vladimir Lenin and institutionalized with brute force by Joseph Stalin. We are all considered to be complete creatures of caesar and his minions. The entirety of human existence is under attack, starting with the Sovereignty of God over the sanctity and fecundity of marriage and thus the reduction of human beings to merely utilitarian objects who can be disposed of by means of abortion, dehydration and starvation or "palliative care" while living in the name of the "betterment" of society and to serve the "needs" of "compassion" as killing is performed to maintain the "human dignity," "reproductive rights" and, of course, "to give the gift of life" in the case of human vivisection (see Comparison of Living Body With Those Declared Brain Dead).

Dom Prosper Gueranger on Saint Cyril of Jerusalem and the True Purpose of Education

As a faithful son of Holy Mother Church, Dom Prosper Gueranger was uncompromisingly opposed to all error, including that of “civil education.” He summarized the essence of Catholic teaching on education in his reflection on the life of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, whose feast day is on March 18 annually unless downgraded to a commemoration on a Sunday in Lent or impeded by Holy Week (as happened in 2008 when March 18 fell on a Tuesday), as he was dedicated to the instruction of catechists. The Abbot of Solesmes by noting modern society had denied Our Lord and thus was striving by the “hypocritical neutrality of its laws to stifle the divine seed in the baptized soul before it can grow and bear fruit”:

It was right that the Church should honor, during these days devoted to the instruction of the catechumens, the Pontiff whose very name suggests the zeal and knowledge which pastors ought to show in preparing candidates for baptism. He has long had a place in the Martyrology of the Western Church, but to-day, in addition to expressing our gratitude for what he did fifteen hundred years ago, we ask him for aid, which is as necessary now as it was in the first ages of Christianity. It is that that baptism is now administered to infants. The gift of faith then infused puts man in possession of all truth before his intelligence has ever met with falsehood. But it too often happens in our days that children are deprived of the protection their weakness really needs. Modern society has denied Jesus Christ, and strives by the hypocritical neutrality of its laws to stifle the divine seed in the baptized soul before it can grow and bear fruit. Baptism, however, has is rights with regard to society as well as with regard to the individual, and our best way of honouring St. Cyril is to remind ourselves on his feast that this first Sacrament has just claims in respect of the education due to the baptized. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Volume V--Lent, p. 410.)

Comment:

As we know, stifling of the “divine seed in the baptized soul” is not only the basis of secular education in the world today as the same thing is done in most elementary and secondary schools under the control of the conciliar revolutionaries and in every “mainstream” college and university they or their secular administrators oversee.

Catholic collegiate and university education used to integrate the truths of the Faith into every aspect of their academic programs. While non-Catholics who had a specialty in mathematics or science might have been hired from time to time to teach in their fields of competency, they were expected to familiarize themselves with how the Catholic Faith imbues all fields of knowledge, as Pope Pius XI noted in Divini Illius Magistri in 1929. Such scholars were also expected to remember that they were never to place in doubt the truths of the Catholic Faith, never to use their classrooms as a forum to profess that which was contrary to what the Catholic Church held was received teaching of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man, Our Blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And Catholics who taught in Catholic universities and colleges understood that they had the obligation to be scholars who were faithful to the totality of the Deposit of Faith and to see in their students redeemed creatures who were looking to them, the faculty, for a model as to how to live the faith in the midst of one's own professional responsibilities. There was an integrity to the teaching of the Faith which flowed over into all aspects of a college or university.

Pope Pius XI noted the following in Divini Illius Magistri: 

This norm of a just freedom in things scientific, serves also as an inviolable norm of a just freedom in things didactic, or for rightly understood liberty in teaching; it should be observed therefore in whatever instruction is imparted to others. Its obligation is all the more binding in justice when there is question of instructing youth. For in this work the teacher, whether public or private, has no absolute right of his own, but only such as has been communicated to him by others. Besides every Christian child or youth has a strict right to instruction in harmony with the teaching of the Church, the pillar and ground of truth. And whoever disturbs the pupil's Faith in any way, does him grave wrong, inasmuch as he abuses the trust which children place in their teachers, and takes unfair advantage of their inexperience and of their natural craving for unrestrained liberty, at once illusory and false. 

In fact it must never be forgotten that the subject of Christian education is man whole and entire, soul united to body in unity of nature, with all his faculties natural and supernatural, such as right reason and revelation show him to be; man, therefore, fallen from his original estate, but redeemed by Christ and restored to the supernatural condition of adopted son of God, though without the preternatural privileges of bodily immortality or perfect control of appetite. There remain therefore, in human nature the effects of original sin, the chief of which are weakness of will and disorderly inclinations. (Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)

Pope Pius XI's words are very clear: "And whoever disturbs the pupil's Faith in any way, does him grave wrong, inasmuch as he abuses the trust which children place in their teachers, and takes unfair advantage of their inexperience and of their natural craving for unrestrained liberty, at once illusory and false." No one is free to lead himself or others into temptation. However, this is done every day in public and conciliar elementary and secondary schools, colleges, university and professional schools, and anyone who complains about this is said to be “intolerant.”

We pray every day in the Pater Noster that we will not be led into temptation (Et ne nos inducas in tentantionem). There is no "freedom" to deny or to put into question the truths contained in the Deposit of Faith. None. There is no "balancing" of the Faith and "academic freedom." "All sides" must must not be taught as equal to the Faith, as the late Richard Cardinal Cushing, an ardent Americanist and a fierce apologist for the Kennedys, argued during the first controversy involving Father Charles Curran in 1967 (Cushing on hearing all sides). Every Catholic must be faithful to the Deposit of Faith at all times. No one must be hired to teach in any Catholic education institution who dissents from even one iota of the truths of the Holy Faith. It is that simple.

What, then, is the Catholic understanding of academic freedom?

Again, the answer is simple. A Catholic understanding of academic freedom affords individual professors great latitude in presenting the truths of the Faith in accord with their own personalities and temperaments.

For example, we have different communities of religious men and women in the Church. Those communities, at least traditionally until they were infected with Modernism and the blight of perverse moral problems condemned in no uncertain terms by Saint Peter Damian, expressed the truths of the Faith in different ways. Each had different charisms and missions. The Benedictines, Cistercians, Servites, Blessed Sacrament Fathers, Holy Cross Fathers, Carmelites, Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits, Pallotines, Vincentians, Salesians of Saint John Bosco, Holy Ghost Father, Remptorists and the Passionists—and countless others—served the cause of the sanctification and salvation of human souls in many and varied ways. In like manner, you see, two Catholic professors of the same subject matter might teach the same course in very different ways without ever once putting any truths of the Faith into question. That's a legitimate understanding of academic freedom.

For example, one professor might prefer the Socratic method of instruction, peppering his students with questions during class time to get them to discern and to defend the truth. Others, including me, prefer the lecture method of instruction. Neither is received from the hand of God. Both are legitimate forms of instruction.

Similarly, some professors may prefer students to respond at length to essay questions in order to demonstrate a profound grasp of the subject matter, more or less forcing the students to "teach" the reader of their essay about a question as though the reader knew nothing about the subject. Other professors may prefer short-answer essays to cover to variety of topics. Still others might desire students to answer "objective" questions (multiple choice, true-false, fill-in-the-blank, which is one of my own favorite devices to test the breadth of student comprehension). Once again, none of these things are de fide. Professors and teachers should be given the widest latitude in the method of instruction and examination they believe will best inform and then challenge their students.

To be sure, there can be lively intellectual discussions and arguments among students and faculty members even when the Faith is transmitted in all of its purity and integrity. Catholic scholarship does not argue about what is true (no less about whether there is such a thing as truth). Rather, authentic Catholic scholars can and do argue, sometimes quite forcefully, about the application of received teaching in concrete circumstances.

What sort of governmental system is most conducive to the establishment of the Social Kingship of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ?

Is the contemporary state by its very definition and composition a threat to the life of the Faith?

What particular policies are the best way to protect the primacy of the Divine positive law and the natural law?

What is the correct interpretation of a particular philosopher or a passage from a piece of literature or the correct translation to be used in a piece of scholarship?

These, and many other areas, constitute legitimate forms of academic freedom as understood by the Catholic Church.

What is inarguable, however, is the fact that the Catholic Church is the true Church founded by our Lord upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, and that He has revealed truths which are clear, certain and immutable. Anyone who argues about that is an abject heretic. Anyone who contends that an "opposition" to the Catholic Faith must be presented on equal terms with the Faith, as opposed to examining errors so as to be able to recognize and refute them (which is a necessary part of the educational process), is in league with the devil. No one has to be "fair" to the "opposition," as the instigator of the secularized "Catholic" university, the late University of Notre Dame president Father Theodore Hesburgh noted some years ago in The New York Times. (For a review of Hesburgh’s notorious career of revolutionary destruction, please see Leaving Behind A Legacy of Incalcuable Devastation.)

We must not be "fair" to the devil, the progenitor of all falsehoods. We learn about errors to refute them. For Catholics, you see, must be faithful to each and every one of the truths of the Faith without giving a moment's credibility to anything that is in opposition to those truths and thus harmful to the souls for whom Our Lord shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood. Professors need to aspire to the holiness of Saint John Cantius, not the worldliness of our present day.

The late Father John A. Hardon, S.J,. said in a conference given at Saint Ignatius Loyola Church in New York, New York, in August of 1978 that the implantation of doubt in the souls of the young was a crime almost as great as that of killing an unborn child by abortion (whether by chemical or surgical means.) "To cause a young person to doubt the Faith is to help to abort that soul." Father noted, moving his head from side to side, looking straight as his audience for emphasis. Sadly, though, much of what passes for Catholic education (including elementary and secondary schools) in the conciliar structures does precisely this, doing so in the fallacious belief that there can be no true faith without doubt. While it is true that some people may have crises of faith in their own lives from time to time, we are not to encourage doubt. One of the spiritual works of mercy is precisely to counsel the doubting.

Contemporary Catholic higher education in conciliar captivity does more that encourage doubt. It actually does much to destroy the faith in the souls of students by the promotion of atheist, leftist, collectivist, relativist, statist, redistributionist, feminist, positivist, globalist, environmentalist, pantheistic, evolutionist, indifferentist and other naturalist ideologies, including those of the New Age ilk. Its participation in the rot of explicit instruction in matters pertaining to personal purity feeds the myth that human beings are beast who are incapable of controlling themselves by means of Sanctifying Grace, and more than a handful of practicing homosexuals and lesbians have been recruited into a lifestyle of perversity and self-destruction as a result of propaganda in favor of sodomy disseminated on the campuses of formerly Catholic colleges and universities (where openly pro-abortion and sodomite-friendly groups are permitted to meet and to participate in the life of those campuses).

Dom Prosper Gueranger’s observation, therefore, about the necessity of feeding the Faith in the souls of the baptized rather than stifling it has been turned on its head today as the conciliar revolutionaries have joined forces with the scions of Modernity to create a monstrous education system that mocks all things sacred and provides endless incentives to sin.

The Abbot of Solesmes then explained that the civil state supported the work of nurturing the seed of Baptismal Faith as this was important both to the individual and to the good of a well-ordered society that recognize the necessity of personal sanctity as the foundation of a just social order. Dom Prosper specifically noted that the “civil power joined with the Church to protect that plentitude of truth which was the greatest treasure of man”:

For fifteen centuries the western nations, whose social fabric rested on the solid rock of the faith of Rome, have enjoyed a happy ignorance of the difficulties experienced by a soul in rising out of the abyss of error into the pure light of truth. Our fathers, like ourselves, were baptized at their entrance into the world. They had, moreover, an advantage which we have not, for, in their day, the civil power joined with the Church to protect that plenitude of truth which was the greatest treasure of men, and the safeguard of the world. The protection of individuals is a duty binding upon all princes and rulers, whatever be their title, and this duty is greater in proportion to the interests to be safeguarded. But this protection gives greater glory to the power which exercises it, when it is extended to the lowly and the weak. The law of man never appears more majestic when standing beside a little child—a new-born babe or a defenceless orphan—to protect its name, its life or its inheritance. A newly-baptized child possesses advantages greater than all those given by noble birth, money or the richest natural gifts. He has a divine life within him; he is the equal of the angels in virtue of his name of Christian; his inheritance is that plentitude of truth of which we spoke above—God Himself, possessed by faith here below until the beatific vision opens out the possession of eternal love. What greatness there is in a little child! But what a responsibility for the world! If God does not wait for the age of reason before bestowing His gifts, this sublime haste is due to the impatience of His love, but at the same time He counts upon men to reveal in due time their dignity to these children of heaven, to form them to the duties incumbent upon them, and to educated them in a way befitting their divine lineage. The education of a king’s son corresponds to the dignity of his birth, and those who have the honor of being his tutors never forget that he is a prince. Instructions, common to all, are presented to him in a way which harmonizes with his exalted destiny, and everything is directed to rendering him capable of waring his crown with glory. Does the education of a child of God need less care? Is it right that his teachers should forget his birth and his destiny? (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Volume V--Lent, pp. 410-412.)

Comment:

Yes, the civil power was once joined to that of Holy Mother Church as the latter formed good Christians, which is the prerequisite for right order in a civil society. The Sacrament of Baptism makes priests, prophets and kings, thus making today’s utilitarian system of supposed education filled with the plenitude of truth but with that of every error imaginable. Every falsehood is proposed as true and everything that is true and holy is denied, scorned and reviled, which is why the world is replete with unhappy people, many of whom have mutilated their bodies with grotesque images about which they are not only totally shameless but defiantly proud.

Societies must collapse and men must become slaves of the civil state once there are miseducated into believing that they are descended from apes and need nothing more in life than money, an array of carnal pleasures and a multiplicity of diversions that make the old bread and circuses offered by the Roman ceasars and their minions seem amateurish by way of comparison.

As Dom Prosper Gueranger explained, everything about education must be guided by the Holy Mother Church, and it is the duty of educators to integrate its truths into every fabric of their curriculum and instruction:

It is true that the Church alone can explain to us the ineffable origins of the sons of God. She alone knows how to use the elements of human knowledge for the supreme end which dominates the life of a Christian. The natural conclusion is, that the Church is by right the first and principal teacher of the nations. When she founds schools, she is on her own ground in all branches of knowledge, and a mission to teach from her is of more value than any diploma. Further, with regard to diplomas, which she herself has not conferred, these official commissions to teach draw their legal value, in the eyes of Christians, from her approval, and they are always by right subject to her supervision. She is the mother of the baptized, and even when a mother does not teach her own children, she has the right to supervise their education.

But the Church is not only the Mother of the Faithful, she is the Bride of the Son of God and the guardian of His sacraments. It is her duty to see that the Precious Blood has not been shed in vain. Our Lord has entrusted these seven fountains to the care of the ministers of His Church, and they must not be opened except when there is good reason to hope that the sacramental grace will be well used. Baptism especially, which raises man out of his own nothingness to a supernatural nobility, must be safeguarded in its administration with a prudence and watchfulness corresponding to the sublime and ineffaceable character which it confers. A baptized Christian who, through his own or others’ fault, is ignorant of his rights and duties, of a descendant of a noble race who, knowing nothing of his family traditions, is despised by his kinsmen and drags out an aimless existence in a station of life below that to which by birth he is entitled.

The Church is no less vigilant to-day than she was in the time of Cyril. She has never admitted—she cannot admit—anyone to the sacred font without requiring from him a sufficient instruction. An adult must give proof of his knowledge before he receives the Sacrament, and if the Church consents to receive an infant into the Christian family, It is because she considers that the Christian faith of those who present him to her and of the society in which they live will assure to him an education comfortable to the supernatural life which is about to given him.

Thus the baptism of infants could not become a general custom until the age of Jesus Christ was finally established upon earth. We must not be surprised to find that, as the conversion of the nations was gradually completed, the Church found herself alone in the work of education. The barren classes of grammarians, philosophers, and rhetorician, who taught everything but the one thing necessary—the end for which man was created—were deserted for the episcopal and monastic schools, where the science of salvation held the first place, radiating its light upon all other branches of knowledge. Knowledge, thus made Christian, gave birth to the Universities, and produced a fruitful union of the sciences which, until then, had been quite unconnected, if not opposed to one another. The Universities were unknown before the establishment of Christianity, for it alone could solve the problem of the union, which is the essence of University life, and hence they remain the inalienable domain of the Church. The State, which to-day is pagan once more, may deny to the Mother of the nations and claim for itself the right to give the name of University to its higher schools, but peoples, which have lost their Christianity, can never have the right to found nor the power to maintain those glorious institutions in the true spirit of the name they bear. A state without faith cannot maintain any union among the sciences but that of Babel. This is already evident. The monument of a pride which rises against God and His Church will only serve to bring back that terrible confusion of tongues from which the Church had matched the pagan peoples. Any thief or robber can assume the titles of the victim he has robbed, but his inability to display the qualities, which these titles suppose in their bearer, only serves to show more clearly that a theft has been committed. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Volume V--Lent, p. 412-413.)

Comment:

The modern university did not exist until the Middle Ages, and it was founded by Holy Mother Church to provide that fruitful union of the sciences, which are unconnected once again in most colleges and universities around the world.

Yes, we have returned to Babel as we are surrounded by a terrible confusion of ideas, where most people are unwilling or unable to use their faculty of reason and, instead, live solely according to the passions. Most people today know nothing of truth but are filled with opinions, which they now have the capacity to “tweet” at will, that demonstrate that they possess the plentitude of ignorance.

Only the Holy Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted exclusively to the Catholic Church for its infallible explication and eternal safekeeping can provide men with a sober, clear-headed understanding of the world and their role in it.

Today’s scholars who live in ivory towers of Babel would are far removed from the Catholic understanding of a philosophy of history that is based entirely upon the integration of faith and reason, something that was elucidated by Father Denis Fahey in The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World:

History is concerned with individual and contingent facts. In order to discern the supreme causes and laws of the events which historians narrate, we must  stand out from, and place ourselves above these events. To do this with certainty one should, of course, be enlightened by Him Who holds all things in the hollow of His hand. Unaided human reason cannot even attempt to give an account of the supreme interests at stake in the world, for the world, as it is historically, these interests are supernatural.

Human reason strengthened by faith, that is, by the acceptance of the information God has given us about the world through His Son and through the Society founded by Him, can attempt to give this account, though with a lively consciousness of its limitations. It is only when we shall be in possession of the Beatific Vision that the full beauty of the Divine Plan which is being worked out in the world will be visible to us. Until then, we can only make an imperfect attempt at what is not the philosophy, but the theology of history. The theologian who has the Catholic Faith is in touch with the full reality of the world, and can therefore undertake to show, however feebly and imperfectly, the interplay of the supreme realities of life.

The philosopher, as such, knows nothing about the reality of the divine life of Grace, which we lost by the Fall of our First Parents, and nothing of the Mystical Body of Christ through which we receive back that life. The philosophy of history, if it is to be true philosophy, that is, knowledge by supreme causes, must therefore be rather the theology of history. Yet how few, even among those who have the Catholic Faith, think of turning to the instructions and warnings issued by the representatives of our Lord Jesus Christ on earth, when they wish to ascertain the root causes of the present chaotic condition of the world! (Father Denis Fahey, The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World.)

It is only possible to understand the events of the world through the eyes of the true Faith, not through the mainslime media nor through the prism of Protestant "conspiracy" theorists who do not view the world through the eyes of the true Faith and who fail to understand that our ultimate enemy is not so much this or that set of no-goodniks or government agents. No, the utimate enemy is the devil himself, who uses various human actors to effect his purpoes and to keep people so agitated by questions of "whodunit" that they become incapable of understanding the world tis in the mess that it is because of the Protestant Revolution's overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King and the subsequent rise and institutionalization of the various branches of naturalism that can be termed collectively as Judeo-Masonry.

This is not to say that non-Catholic scholars cannot write history books that contain accurate accounts of various sets of contingent events at one time or another.

It is to say, however, that most scholarship and contemporary commentary today is relatively worthless because of the various ideological and/or false theological perspectives that are brought to bear upon the subjects and/or events covered, and this includes most of the commentary on the farce of Judeo-Masonry that is politics and governance in a world that is based upon a denial of the fact that the Word became Flesh and dwelt amongst us.

This is not the say that the civil state cannot “educate” infidels, as Dom Prosper Gueranger noted, but it is say that the results of such “education” have proven to disastrous for individuals and nations throughout the Western world. Indeed, the Abbot of Solesmes prophesied these horrible consequences over one hundred fifty years ago:

Are we, then, to deny to a state which is pagan, or as they say nowadays neutral, the right to educate the infidels which it has produced after its own image? No, the protection which is the right and duty of the Church extends only to the baptized. Moreover, if the Church finds one day that the state of society is no longer a sufficient guarantee for baptism, she will return to the discipline of the early ages, when the grace of this initial Sacrament was not granted indiscriminately to all, but only to those adults who had shown themselves to be worthy of it, or to infants whose families could give an assurance on which she could rely. The nations will then be once more divided into two classes—on the one side the children of God, living His life and heirs of His Kingship; on the other those men who have basely preferred to remain the slaves of the King, although by His Incarnation He has made His palace among the sons of Adam and desires to number them all among His children. An education which is common and neutral will then appear more impossible than ever. A training designed for the servants of his palace can never be suitable for the princes of the blood-royal.  

Are we drawing near to those times when men whom circumstances have unfortunately excluded from baptism at their entrance into this world will have to gain for themselves the privilege of admission into the Christian family? God alone knows, but more than one sign seems to point to it. It is possible that the institution of today’s feast [of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem] is designed by divine Providence to correspond with the new situation which will then be created for the Church. A week ago we paid our homage to St. Gregory the Great, the Doctor of the Christian people; three days earlier our Christian students were honoring St. Thomas Aquinas, the Doctor of the Schools, who do we celebrate to-day, after fifteen centuries, the Doctor of the Catechumens, a class which has now disappeared, if not because the Church sees that St. Cyril of Jerusalem is called to render her new services by his immortal Catechetical Instruction? Even now many wandering Christians have no greater obstacle in the way of their return to God than an ignorance as desperate as, and more profound than, that of the Jews and pagans to the time of Cyril. (pp. 410-415.)

Comment:

In truth, of course, very few men today, including most baptized Catholics, want to life the life of the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity made Man on this very day in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary by the power of God the Holy Ghost at the Annunciation. Most people today prefer to remain the slaves of the world, the flesh and the devil. As quoted earlier in this country, Pope Pius XI noted in Divini Illius Magistri, secular education must end in ruin for men and their nations. Indeed, our days are characterized by baptized Catholics who are victims of the twin, interrelated revolutions and cataclysmic forces of Modernity and Modernist who are wandering  about the world in a world and who “have no greater obstacle in the way of their return to God than an ignorance as desperate as, and more profound than, that of the Jews and pagans to the time of Cyril.” Most Catholics today live—and, tragically, they are likely to die—as though the Incarnation of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the Immaculate and Virginal Womb of His Most Blessed Mother on this very day had never occurred.

“Education” as it exists in the world of Modernity has produced the exact results for which it has been designed, namely, to so corrupt public life and to throw it into such chaos and confusion that the masses will swoon when Antichrist’s One World Governance and One World Ecumenical Church become realities to which all are expected to submit or face fines, imprisonment and even execution.

Mindful always of the fact that this Lent which has, including Passiontide up the morning of Holy Saturday, still has three weeks, five days yet to go, might be our last, may we pray to Our Lady to shower us with the ineffable graces that her Divine Son won for us during His fearful Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday so that we will not become like unto those who live and die as though the Incarnation has not taken place.

It is thus vital for us to get ourselves to the Sacrament of Penance on a regular basis, if at all possible, confessing even our Venial Sins to a true priest in the Catholic catacombs where no concessions are made to conciliarism or to the nonexistent legitimacy of its false shepherds, making sure also to be enrolled in and to wear the mantle of the Brown Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and to fulfill its conditions faithfully. We never know when the next breath we take will be the last breath we ever take.

Those who think that "education" can be an instrument of producing "good citizens" while ignoring the teaching authority of the Catholic Church and the whole of mankind's utter dependence upon that teaching authority and upon her sanctifying offices ought to reckon with this dialogue that Saint Gertrude the Great, the great apostle of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, had with Our Lord Himself:

"For what fault have you suffered most?" He replied: "For self-will and self-opinionatedness; for when I did any kindness for others, I would not do as they wished, but as I wished myself; and so much do I suffer for this, that if the mental agonies of all mankind were united in one person, he would not endure more than I do at present." She replied: "And what remedy will be the most efficacious for you?" He answered: "To perform acts of the contrary virtue, and to avoid committing the same fault." "But, in the meantime," inquired Gertrude, "what will afford you the greatest relief?" He replied: "The fidelity which I practiced toward others when on earth consoles me most. The prayers which are offered continually for me by many friends solace me as good news would solace a person in affliction. Each tone of the chant at Mass, or in the vigils which are said for me, seem to me as a most delicious reflection. All that is done for me by others, with a pure intention for God's glory, such as working, and even sleeping or eating, affords me great relief and shortens my sufferings, on account of the fidelity with which I labored for others." (The Life and Revelations of Saint Gertrude the Great, republished by TAN Books and Publishers in 1987, p. 341.)

How willing are we to enslave ourselves to Christ the King through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary our Queen? How eager are we to carry our daily crosses, recognizing that there is nothing that we can suffer in this passing, mortal vale of tears that is the equal of what one of our least Venial Sins caused Our Lord to suffer during His Passion and Death and caused His Most Blessed Mother's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart to be pierced through and through with Seven Swords of Sorrow?

How willing are we to make time to pray as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permit?

How willing are we to be as generous with God as possible by voluntarily renouncing the world and its pleasures so as to seek first His Kingdom?

How ready are we to meet Him at the moment of our own Particular Judgments, which can occur at any time, especially in this world of neo-barbarism in which we find ourselves?

Our Lady stands ready to shelter us in the storms of the moment. Let us fly unto her patronage now and every moment of our lives so that we can serve her Divine Son, Christ the King and never fear for one moment to proclaim:

Viva Cristo Rey! 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 John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Hedwig, pray for us.

Appendix

Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B, on the Feast of Saint Hedwig

At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the plateau of Upper Asia poured down a fresh torrent of barbarians, more terrible than all their predecessors. The one fragile barrier, which the Græco-Slavonian civilization could oppose to the Mongols had been swept away by the first wave of the invasion; not one of the States formed under the protection of the Byzantine Church had any prospect for the future. But beyond this Ruthania, which had fallen into dissolution before being conquered, the Roman Church had had time to form a brave and generous people: when the hour arrived, Poland was ready. The Mongols were already inundating Silesia when, in the plains of Liegnitz, they found themselves confronted by an army of thirty thousand warriors, headed by the Duke of Silesia, Henry the Pious. The encounter was terrible; the victory remained long undecided, until at length, by the odious treason of some Ruthanian princes, it turned in favor of the barbarians. Duke Henry and the flower of the Polish knighthood was left upon the battlefield. But their defeat was equal to a victory. The Mongols retired exhausted, for they had measured their strength with the soldiers of the Latin Christianity.who believe what they are told and who have been so dumbed down by catering to every perceived slight or offense that they will always do what their minders tell them to do, especially if this makes them incapable of thinking on their own.

It is Poland’s happy lot that at each decisive epoch in its history a Saint appears to point out the road to the attainment of its glorious destiny. Over the battlefield of Liegnitz shines the gentle figure of St. Hedwige, mother of Duke Henry the Pious. She had retired, in her widowhood, into the Cistercian monastery of Trebnitz, founded by herself. Three years before the coming of the barbarians, she had had a revelation touching the future fate of her son. She offered her sacrifice in silence; and far from discouraging the young duke, she was the first to animate him to resistance.

The night following the bat Three days later the fatal news was confirmed. “It is the will of God,” said Hedwige; “what God wills, and what pleases him, must please us also.” And rejoicing in the Lord: “I thank thee, O my God,” said she, raising her hands and eyes to heaven, “for having given me such a son. He loved me all his life, always treated me with great respect, and never grieved me. I much desired to have him with me on earth, but I congratulate him with my whole soul, for that by the shedding of his blood he is united with thee in heaven, with thee his Creator. I recommend his soul to thee, O Lord my God.” No less an example was needed to sustain Poland under the new task it had just accepted.

At Liegnitz it had raised up again the sword of Christendom, fallen from the feeble hands of Ruthenia. It became henceforth as a watchful sentinel, ever ready to defend Europe against the barbarians. Ninety-three times did the Tartars rush upon Christendom, thirsting for blood and rapine: ninety-three times Poland repulsed them at the edge of the sword, or had the grief to see the country laid waste, the towns burnt down, the flower of the nation carried into captivity. By these sacrifices it bore the brunt of the invasion, and deadened the blow for the rest of Europe. As long as blood and tears and victims were required, Poland gave them unstintedly; while the other European nations enjoyed the security purchased by this continual immolation.

This touching page will be completed by the Church’s story, where the part played by the saintly duchess is so well brought forward.tle, she awoke one of her companions, and said to her: “Demundis, know that I have lost my son. My beloved son has fled from me, like a bird on the wing; I shall never see my son again in this life.” Demundis endeavored to console her; no courier had arrived from the army, and her fears were vain. “It is but too true,” replied the duchess; “but mention it to no one.”

Hedwige was illustrious for her royal descent, but still more so for the innocence of her life. She She would neither speak of wordly affairs nor hear them spoken of, unless they affected the interests of God or the salvation of souls. All her actions were governed by prudence, and it was impossible to find in them anything excessive or disorderly. She was full of gentleness and affability towards all. She triumphed completely over her flesh by afflicting it with fasting, watching, and rough garments. She was adorned moreover with the noblest Christian virtues; she was exceedingly prudent in giving counsel; pure and tranquil in mind; so as to be a model of religious perfection. Yet she ever strove to place herself below all the nuns; eagerly choosing the lowest offices in the house. She would serve the poor, on her knees, and wash and kiss the feet of lepers, so far overcoming herself as not to be repulsed by their loathsome ulcers. was maternal aunt to St. Elizabeth, the daughter of the king of Hungary; and her parents were Berthold and Agnes, Marquis and Marchioness of Moravia. From childhood she was remarkable for her self-control, for at that tender age she refrained from all childish sports. At the age of twelve, her parents gave her in marriage to Henry, Duke of Poland. She was a faithful and holy wife and mother, and brought up her children in the fear of God. In order the more freely to attend to God, she persuaded her husband to make with her a mutual vow of continency. After his death, she was inspired by God, whose guidance she had earnestly implored, to take the Cistercian habit; which she did with great devotion in the monastery of Trebnitz. Here she gave herself up to divine contemplation, spending the whole time from sunrise till noon in assisting at the Divine Office and the holy Sacrifice. The old enemy of mankind she utterly despised.

She would neither speak of wordly affairs nor hear them spoken of, unless they affected the interests of God or the salvation of souls. All her actions were governed by prudence, and it was impossible to find in them anything excessive or disorderly. She was full of gentleness and affability towards all. She triumphed completely over her flesh by afflicting it with fasting, watching, and rough garments. She was adorned moreover with the noblest Christian virtues; she was exceedingly prudent in giving counsel; pure and tranquil in mind; so as to be a model of religious perfection. Yet she ever strove to place herself below all the nuns; eagerly choosing the lowest offices in the house. She would serve the poor, on her knees, and wash and kiss the feet of lepers, so far overcoming herself as not to be repulsed by their loathsome ulcers.

Her patience and strength of soul were admirable; especially at the death of her dearly-loved son, Henry Duke of Silesia, who fell fighting against the Tartars; for she thought rather of giving thanks to God, than of weeping for her son. Miracles added to her renown. A child, that had fallen into a mill-stream and was bruised and crushed by the wheels, was immediately restored to life when the Saint was invoked. Many other miracles wrought by her having been duly examined, Clement IV enrolled her among the Saints; and allowed her feast to be celebrated on the fifteenth of October, in Poland, where she is very greatly honored as Patroness of the country. Innocent XI extended her Office to the whole Church, fixing it on the seventeenth of October. (The Divine Office, Matins, Feast of Saint Hedwig, October 16.)

Daughter of Abraham according to faith, thou didst imitate his heroism. Thy first reward was to find a worthy son in him thou offeredst to the Lord. Thy example is most welcome in this month, wherein the Church sets before us the death of Judas Machabeus. As glorious as his was the death of thy Henry; but it was also a fruitful death. Of thy six children he alone, the Isaac offered and immolated to God, was permitted to propagate thy race. And yet what a posterity is thine, since all the royal families of Europe can claim to be of thy lineage! I will make them increase exceedingly, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. This promise, made to the Father of the faithful, is fulfilled once more on thy behalf, O Hedwige. God never changes; he has no need to make a new engagement; a like fidelity in any age earns from him a like reward. Mayst thou be blessed by all, O Mother of nations! Extend over all thy powerful protection; but above all others, by God’s permission, may unfortunate Poland find by experience that thy patronage is never invoked in vain! (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Feast of Saint Hedwig, October 16.)