An Unsurprising Hatred of Catholic Truth, part one

An article in La Civilta Cattolica, “Evangelical Fundamentalism and Catholic Integralism: A Surprising Ecumenism,” attracted a great deal of attention in the mainslime media. Idiots who know nothing about anything but nevertheless masquerade as “journalists” and “commentators” proceeded to write a number of commentaries that demonstrated their utter ignorance of anything to do with authentic history and Catholic theology. Other than that, however, those articles were less than worthless.

A Brief Introductory Commentary

“Evangelical Fundamentalism and Catholic Integralism: A Surprising Ecumenism” was written by two men who have no understanding of the Catholic Faith.

The first, “Father” Antonio Spadaro, S.J., is the editor of La Civilta Cattolica and has gained a well-deserved reputation in recent years as a key mouthpiece of his fellow lay Jesuit revolutionary, Jorge Mario Bergoglio. Spadaro has happily advanced everything that “Pope Francis” has sought to accomplish in order to wipe out whatever remaining vestiges of recognizable Catholicism that exist within the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

The second, Marcelo Figueroa, is a Presybterian “pastor” who is the editor-in-chief of the Argentinian edition of L’Ossevatore Romano and is a very close personal friend of the Argentine Apostate himself, Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

In other words, “Evangelical Fundamentalism and Catholic Integralism: A Surprising Ecumenism” was written by two non-Catholics, which explains the completely ahistorical perspective that they employ to make it appear that their friend, “Pope Francis,” is breaking new ground when all this wretched antipope is doing is to give a final benediction of what appears to be the Catholic Church upon the revolution against the Social Reign of Christ the King that was begun five hundred years ago by the drunkard and lecher by the name of Father Martin Luther, O.S.A.

It is no wonder, therefore, that “Evangelical Fundamentalism and Catholic Integralism: A Surprising Ecumenism” is such a hodgepodge of theological error and factual untruth as those who are committed to their errors and untruths will come to view history through very warped lenses. Admitting that the article contains a decent description of the flaws of the Calvinist economic system that has nothing do with the true capitalism of the Eleventh Century in Catholic Europe, its text is replete with such sophomoric shibboleths and is devoid of any sound historical or theological references as to render it as useless as a means to explain our contemporary situation.

II. False Premises

The authors’ first of many errors came in their article’s very first paragraph and set the stage for each of the errors made thereafter, which are really only a variation of the theme established in that first paragraph:

In God We Trust. This phrase is printed on the banknotes of the United States of America and is the current national motto. It appeared for the first time on a coin in 1864 but did not become official until Congress passed a motion in 1956. A motto is important for a nation whose foundation was rooted in religious motivations. For many it is a simple declaration of faith. For others, it is the synthesis of a problematic fusion between religion and state, faith and politics, religious values and economy. (Evangelical Fundamentalism and Catholic Integralism: A Surprising Ecumenism.)

First error: Stating that the foundation of the United States of America was rooted in “religious motivations.”

This is false.

The principle influences on the founding of the United States of America two hundred forty-one years ago came from the so-called “Enlightenment,” which sought to provide a secular foundation of civil governments that meant to break the bond of Church and State that had grown organically in the First Millennium in Europe before realizing its apogee in the Thirteenth Century.

With a few exceptions, most of the founders of the United States of America believed that religious faith, especially that of even a generic Christianity, would die out over time as men became used to the ways of self-government unburdened of any ties to what John Adams called “holy water” and “pious superstitions.” As has been noted so many times on this site, many of the leading founders had an intense hatred and contempt for the Catholic Faith:

The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.

Unembarrassed by attachments to noble families, hereditary lines and successions, or any considerations of royal blood, even the pious mystery of holy oil had no more influence than that other of holy water: the people universally were too enlightened to be imposed on by artifice; and their leaders, or more properly followers, were men of too much honour to attempt it. Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind. (President John Adams: "A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America," 1787-1788)

"And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away {with} all this artificial scaffolding…" (11 April, 1823, John Adams letter to Thomas Jefferson, Adams-Jefferson Letters, ed. Lester J. Cappon, II, 594).

Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion? (John Adams, Letter to Thomas Jefferson, May 19, 1821)

I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced! (John Adams, Letter to Thomas Jefferson, quoted in 200 Years of Disbelief, by James Hauck)

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect."—James Madison, letter to William Bradford, Jr„ April I, 1774

". . . Freedom arises from the multiplicity of sects, which pervades America and which is the best and only security for religious liberty in any society. For where there is such a variety of sects, there cannot be a majority of any one sect to oppress and persecute the rest."—James Madison, spoken at the Virginia convention on ratification of the Constitution, June 1778

"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution."—-James Madison, "A Memorial and Remonstrance," addressed to the Virginia General Assembly, 1785

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes. (Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Alexander von Humboldt, December, 1813.)

May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them. (Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Roger Weigthman, June 24, 1826, ten days before Jefferson's death. This letter is quoted in its entirety in Dr. Paul Peterson’s now out-of-print Readings in American Democracy. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall-Hunt, 1979, pp. 28-29. )

These men blamed the Catholic Church for the abuses of power by English monarchs in the Eighteenth Century even though it was precisely because King Henry VIII had broken from the true Church that despotism of the sort that he embodied to murder over three percent of his ow people who remained faithful to the true Church that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, became so institutionalized. The very abuses they contended had been committed by King George III were made possible by what Henry VIII had wrought two hundred years before.

To be sure, most of the four million people who lived in the United States of America were practicing Protestants of one stripe or another. Protestantism, however, is not “religion.” There is only one true religion, Catholicism, something that Spadaro and Figueroa, of course, simply do not accept.

Furthermore, the motto “In God We Trust” is nothing other than an empty slogan as it does not refer to true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Blessed Trinity. Pope Pius XI warned very specifically about using the name of God in a generic manner:

Take care, Venerable Brethren, that above all, faith in God, the first and irreplaceable foundation of all religion, be preserved in Germany pure and unstained. The believer in God is not he who utters the name in his speech, but he for whom this sacred word stands for a true and worthy concept of the Divinity. Whoever identifies, by pantheistic confusion, God and the universe, by either lowering God to the dimensions of the world, or raising the world to the dimensions of God, is not a believer in God. Whoever follows that so-called pre-Christian Germanic conception of substituting a dark and impersonal destiny for the personal God, denies thereby the Wisdom and Providence of God who "Reacheth from end to end mightily, and ordereth all things sweetly" (Wisdom viii. 1). Neither is he a believer in God.

Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community -- however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things -- whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds.  

Beware, Venerable Brethren, of that growing abuse, in speech as in writing, of the name of God as though it were a meaningless label, to be affixed to any creation, more or less arbitrary, of human speculation. Use your influence on the Faithful, that they refuse to yield to this aberration. Our God is the Personal God, supernatural, omnipotent, infinitely perfect, one in the Trinity of Persons, tri-personal in the unity of divine essence, the Creator of all existence. Lord, King and ultimate Consummator of the history of the world, who will not, and cannot, tolerate a rival God by His side. (Pope Pius XI, Mit Brennender Sorge, March 17, 1937.) 

“In God We Trust” is Judeo-Masonic means of avoiding any reference to the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who has the right to rule over men and their nations.

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

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

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

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

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

Additionally, Pope Pius XI pointed out in Quas Primas that the Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ must be proclaimed by men and their parliamentary assemblies:

If We ordain that the whole Catholic world shall revere Christ as King, We shall minister to the need of the present day, and at the same time provide an excellent remedy for the plague which now infects society. We refer to the plague of anti-clericalism, its errors and impious activities. This evil spirit, as you are well aware, Venerable Brethren, has not come into being in one day; it has long lurked beneath the surface. The empire of Christ over all nations was rejected. The right which the Church has from Christ himself, to teach mankind, to make laws, to govern peoples in all that pertains to their eternal salvation, that right was denied. Then gradually the religion of Christ came to be likened to false religions and to be placed ignominiously on the same level with them. It was then put under the power of the state and tolerated more or less at the whim of princes and rulers. Some men went even further, and wished to set up in the place of God's religion a natural religion consisting in some instinctive affection of the heart. There were even some nations who thought they could dispense with God, and that their religion should consist in impiety and the neglect of God. The rebellion of individuals and states against the authority of Christ has produced deplorable consequences. We lamented these in the Encyclical Ubi arcano; we lament them today: the seeds of discord sown far and wide; those bitter enmities and rivalries between nations, which still hinder so much the cause of peace; that insatiable greed which is so often hidden under a pretense of public spirit and patriotism, and gives rise to so many private quarrels; a blind and immoderate selfishness, making men seek nothing but their own comfort and advantage, and measure everything by these; no peace in the home, because men have forgotten or neglect their duty; the unity and stability of the family undermined; society in a word, shaken to its foundations and on the way to ruin. We firmly hope, however, that the feast of the Kingship of Christ, which in future will be yearly observed, may hasten the return of society to our loving Savior. It would be the duty of Catholics to do all they can to bring about this happy result. Many of these, however, have neither the station in society nor the authority which should belong to those who bear the torch of truth. This state of things may perhaps be attributed to a certain slowness and timidity in good people, who are reluctant to engage in conflict or oppose but a weak resistance; thus the enemies of the Church become bolder in their attacks. But if the faithful were generally to understand that it behooves them ever to fight courageously under the banner of Christ their King, then, fired with apostolic zeal, they would strive to win over to their Lord those hearts that are bitter and estranged from him, and would valiantly defend his rights.

Moreover, the annual and universal celebration of the feast of the Kingship of Christ will draw attention to the evils which anticlericalism has brought upon society in drawing men away from Christ, and will also do much to remedy them. While nations insult the beloved name of our Redeemer by suppressing all mention of it in their conferences and parliaments, we must all the more loudly proclaim his kingly dignity and power, all the more universally affirm his rights. (Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas, December 11, 1925.)

As was pointed out in “Not A Mention of Christ the King,” the presidents of the United States of America have gone out of their way to avoid making any reference to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in their inaugural address and in their addresses to special joint meetings of the United States Congress.

You know who else refused to mention the Holy Name of Jesus in an address before a special joint meeting of the United States Congress?

You got it.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio in his September 24, 2015, address. (Bergoglio's Address to U.S. Congress.)

Obviously, this is no accident, as the second error in Spadaro and Figueroa’s sophomoric La Civilta Cattolica article concerns what they term a “problematic fusion between religion and state, faith and politics, religious values and economy.” Such a “fusion” just happened to be the foundation of all nations and kingdoms, including pagan ones, prior to the American founding, which gave citizens the “freedom” to practice their particular religious faith or to have none at all, and the French Revolution, which made open warfare against Christ the King and His true Church thirteen years later.

Spadaro and Figueroa tried to claim that a belief in the fusion of religion and state was the work of evangelical fundamentalist Protestants such as Lyman Stewart and Rousa John Rushdoony, who, despite their false religious beliefs, trying to recapture in the United States of America what had been rent asunder on the mainland of Europe by Martin Luther himself in 1517. The separation of Church and state and religious faith from statecraft was at the very heart of the Protestant Revolution, something that Luther himself took the time to state in no uncertain terms:

Judaeo-Protestant Capitalism to the opposite extreme error of the Judaeo-Masonic-Communism of Karl Marx. 

The uprise of individualism rapidly led to unbridled self-seeking. Law-makers who were arbiters of morality, as heads of the Churches, did not hesitate to favour their own enterprising spirit. The nobles and rich merchants in England, for example, who got possession of the monastery lands, which had maintained the poor, voted the poor laws in order to make the poor a charge on the nation at large. The enclosure of common lands in England and the development of the industrial system are a proof of what private judgment can do when transplanted into the realm of production and distribution. The Lutheran separation of Church from the Ruler and the Citizen shows the decay in the true idea of membership of our Lord's Mystical Body.

"Assuredly," said Luther, "a prince can be a Christian, but it is not as a Christian that he ought to govern. As a ruler, he is not called a Christian, but a prince. The man is Christian, but his function does not concern his religion." (Father Denis Fahey, The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World.)

Pope Leo XIII made a similar point in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:

But that harmful and deplorable passion for innovation which was aroused in the sixteenth century threw first of all into confusion the Christian religion, and next, by natural sequence, invaded the precincts of philosophy, whence it spread amongst all classes of society. From this source, as from a fountain-head, burst forth all those later tenets of unbridled license which, in the midst of the terrible upheavals of the last century, were wildly conceived and boldly proclaimed as the principles and foundation of that new conception of law which was not merely previously unknown, but was at variance on many points with not only the Christian, but even the natural law. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

The entire framework of the modern civil state is built upon the heresies and errors of Martin Luther that made possible the triumph of the naturalism that has been propagated and institutionalized since then by the interrelated, multifaceted forces of Judeo-Masonry, and this what Spadaro and Figueroa are celebrating. Indeed, they noted it later in their sophomoric article that it was the explicit desire of “Pope Francis” “to break the organic link between culture, politics, institution and Church.”

To call to mind a favorite phrase of Jethro Bodine, it is important to “cogitate on” Jorge’s desire to “break the organic link between culture, politics, institution and church.”

First, that which is organic grows naturally. Jorge Mario Bergoglio believes that it is his duty to uproot that which is natural. Then again, of course, the entire conciliar revolution has sought to uproot almost everything about Catholic Faith, Worship and Morals. Conciliarism is opposed in se to any concept of immutability and of any respect for traditions that have grown up organically from time immemorial. One word describes such an opposition: revolution.

Second, the currently reigning antipope’s desire to “break” an organic relationship that was, as noted just above in this commentary, broken first by Martin Luther and then by King Henry Tudor. The founders of the United States of America and the French revolutionaries were simply taking concrete advantage of what the Protestant Revolution had wrought. Thus it is, you see, that Spadaro and Figueroa, serving as the Argentine Apostate’s mouthpiece, are claiming a sense of originality to their “pope’s” desire to break a bond that has not existed for centuries in most of the countries of formerly Catholic Europe. There is nothing to break that has not been broken. The authors of “Evangelical Fundamentalism and Catholic Integralism: A Surprising Ecumenism” thus feed Bergoglio’s egotistical desire to be consider a leader in novelty even though there is absolutely nothing novel about his desire to break the organic bond that between Church and State that is part of the very nature of things according to the ordinances of God Himself.

In this regard, however, there is not only nothing original about Bergoglio’s desire to break the organic tie between Church and State that was rupture in a violent manner by Protestants and then all manner of political and social revolutionaries in various countries around the world, there is also nothing original about breaking with the Catholic Church’s immutable teaching on this relationship as his immediate predecessor, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, was one of the loudest and most forceful advocates of the falsehood that is separation of Church and State during his time as the prefect of the false religious sect’s “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith” and his time as “Pope Benedict XVI,” a span of over thirty years.

Consider, for example, what the then Joseph “Cardinal” Ratzinger said to Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the founder of the Society of Saint Pius X, thirty years ago at a time when “Pope John Paul II” was offering to “regularize” the Society:

Under pressure, Rome gave in. On July 14, Cardinal Ratzinger received Archbishop Lefebvre at the Holy Office. At first the Cardinal persisted in arguing that "the State is competent in religious matters."

"But the State must have an ultimate and eternal end," replied the Archbishop.

"Your Grace, that is the case for the Church, not the State. By itself the State does not know."

Archbishop Lefebvre was distraught: a Cardinal and Prefect of the Holy Office wanted to show him that the State can have no religion and cannot prevent the spread of error. However, before talking about concessions, the Cardinal made a threat: the consequence of an illicit episcopal consecration would be "schism and excommunication."

"Schism?" retorted the Archbishop. "If there is a schism, it is because of what the Vatican did at Assisi and how you replied to our Dubiae: the Church is breaking with the traditional Magisterium. But the Church against her past and her Tradition is not the Catholic Church; this is why being excommunicated by a liberal, ecumenical, and revolutionary Church is a matter of indifference to us."

As this tirade ended, Joseph Ratzinger gave in: "Let us find a practical solution. Make a moderate declaration on the Council and the new missal a bit like the one that Jean Guitton has suggested to you. Then, we would give you a bishop for ordinations, we could work out an arrangement with the diocesan bishops, and you could continue as you are doing. As for a Cardinal Protector, and make your suggestions."

How did Marcel Lefebvre not jump for joy? Rome was giving in! But his penetrating faith went to the very heart of the Cardinal's rejection of doctrine. He said to himself: "So, must Jesus no longer reign? Is Jesus no longer God? Rome has lost the Faith. Rome is in apostasy. We can no longer trust this lot!" To the Cardinal, he said:

"Eminence, even if you give us everything--a bishop, some autonomy from the bishops, the 1962 liturgy, allow us to continue our seminaries--we cannot work together because we are going in different directions. You are working to dechristianize society and the Church, and we are working to Christianize them.

"For us, our Lord Jesus Christ is everything. He is our life. The Church is our Lord Jesus Christ; the priest is another Christ; the Mass is the triumph of Jesus Christ on the cross; in our seminaries everything tends towards the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ. But you! You are doing the opposite: you have just wanted to prove to me that our Lord Jesus Christ cannot, and must not, reign over society.

Recounting this incident, the Archbishop described the Cardinal's attitude: "Motionless, he looked at me, his eyes expressionless, as if I had just suggested something incomprehensible or unheard of." Then Ratzinger tried to argue that "the Church can still say whatever she wants to the State," while Lefebvre, the intuitive master of Catholic metaphysics, did not lose sight of the true end of human societies: the Reign of Christ." Fr. de Tinguy hit the nail on the head when he said of Marcel Lefebvre: "His faith defies those who love theological quibbles." (His Excellency Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, The Biography of Marcel Lefebvre, Kansas City, Missouri: Angelus Press, 2004, pp. 547-548.) 

So much for Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s desire to break a bond that his predecessor had rejected when he was but a “street” presbyter in Buenos Aires, Argentina, who like to partake of the immoral Tango performances now and again when he had done his day’s duty on the streets. We must also remember that it was to defend the separation of Church and State and “religious liberty” that Ratzinger, then masquerading as “Pope Benedict XVI,” said the following in his infamous Christmas address to the conciliar curia by labeling Modernism’s belief in dogmatic evolutionism with a new name: the hermeneutic of continuity:

Secondly, it was necessary to give a new definition to the relationship between the Church and the modern State that would make room impartially for citizens of various religions and ideologies, merely assuming responsibility for an orderly and tolerant coexistence among them and for the freedom to practise their own religion.

Thirdly, linked more generally to this was the problem of religious tolerance - a question that required a new definition of the relationship between the Christian faith and the world religions. In particular, before the recent crimes of the Nazi regime and, in general, with a retrospective look at a long and difficult history, it was necessary to evaluate and define in a new way the relationship between the Church and the faith of Israel.

These are all subjects of great importance - they were the great themes of the second part of the Council - on which it is impossible to reflect more broadly in this context. It is clear that in all these sectors, which all together form a single problem, some kind of discontinuity might emerge. Indeed, a discontinuity had been revealed but in which, after the various distinctions between concrete historical situations and their requirements had been made, the continuity of principles proved not to have been abandoned. It is easy to miss this fact at a first glance.

It is precisely in this combination of continuity and discontinuity at different levels that the very nature of true reform consists. In this process of innovation in continuity we must learn to understand more practically than before that the Church's decisions on contingent matters - for example, certain practical forms of liberalism or a free interpretation of the Bible - should necessarily be contingent themselves, precisely because they refer to a specific reality that is changeable in itself. It was necessary to learn to recognize that in these decisions it is only the principles that express the permanent aspect, since they remain as an undercurrent, motivating decisions from within.

On the other hand, not so permanent are the practical forms that depend on the historical situation and are therefore subject to change. (Christmas greetings to the Members of the Roman Curia and Prelature, December 22, 2005.)

This means that God the Holy Ghost had permitted our true popes to teach error when they reiterated the bond between Church and State that the likes of Spadaro and Figueroa caricature deliberately as a “theocracy” but was defined best by Pope Saint Pius X in paragraph three of Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1907:

That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. The same thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies. Both of them, the civil and the religious society, although each exercises in its own sphere its authority over them. It follows necessarily that there are many things belonging to them in common in which both societies must have relations with one another. Remove the agreement between Church and State, and the result will be that from these common matters will spring the seeds of disputes which will become acute on both sides; it will become more difficult to see where the truth lies, and great confusion is certain to arise. Finally, this thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions touching the rights and the duties of men. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.) 

The civil state has an obligation to recognize the true Faith and to pursue the common temporal good in light of man's Last End: the possession of the glory of the Beatific Vision of Father, Son and Holy Ghost in Heaven for all eternity. This obligation is immutable even though the anti-Incarnational civil state of Modernity is founded in a revolution against it. That which is true does not cease being true simply because men reject it and then base their social structures upon its rejection.

While it is true that Holy Mother Church accommodates herself to the actual situations in which her children live, exhorting them to make use of existing laws to their benefit and thus to the good of souls, she never ceases to proclaim the truth even when men reject it.

Although the counterfeit church of conciliarism has embraced the falsehood of a "healthy secularity," the Catholic Church has taught from time immemorial that those who exercise authority in a civil government have an obligation to subordinate all things that pertain to the good of souls to the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted exclusively to the Catholic Church for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication. Yes, I well understand that even most Catholics, no less thorough-going naturalists or agnostics or atheists, find this to be utter madness to the point of frothing at the mouth as though they are suffering from hydrophobia.

It is nevertheless the case that the Catholic Church has indeed condemned the separation of Church and State has she has insisted that she has the authority from her Invisible Head and Divine Bridegroom, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, to interpose herself with civil officials in grave matters pertaining to the eternal good of souls after--and only after--the exhausting of her Indirect Power of teaching and preaching and exhortation Pope Leo XIII, writing in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885, made it abundantly clear that the civil state has an obligation to subordinate itself in all that pertains to the good of souls to the true religion:

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. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.) 

The confessional Catholic civil state is not a "theocracy," as Spadaro and Figueroa contend. The Catholic Church has long taught that those who exercise authority in the civil state have their own sphere of competency and that they are not be holders of ecclesiastical office. The confessional Catholic state that existed in the Middle Ages of Christendom recognized that there is a relationship between the ecclesiastical and civil authorities that has been established by God Himself. This means that those who govern understand that their pursuit of the common temporal good can in no way threaten the eternal good of the souls of their citizens and that the Church, as mentioned above, has the obligation use her Indirect Power of teaching and exhortation to remonstrate (encourage, plead, threaten, if necessary) with civil leaders in grave matters that concern the honor and glory of God and the eternal good of the souls for whom His Co-Equal and Co-Eternal Divine Son, Christ the King, shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross.

Speaking for Bergoglio, Spadaro and Figueroa believe that what is true is dictated by what exists. They are seeking to apply to the political realm the same kind of “realism” that their “pope” uses to “accompany” hardened sinners in their lives of perdition without ever seeking to exhort them to convert. What exists, therefore, must be “baptized,” so to speak, as being “good” in and of itself. This is all part of the process of “evolution” that must take place over the course of time as the “spirit” moves as he wills. This “spirit,” of course, is not the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost.

Pope Pius XI noted in his first encyclical letter, Ubi Aracano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922 that Catholic teaching on matters of Church and State are immutable no matter the concrete circumstances that exists in the world a given time:

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

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

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

No “pope” can change what is true and exists in the very nature of things.

The real purpose of “Evangelical Fundamentalism and Catholic Integralism: A Surprising Ecumenism” is to provide Jorge Mario Bergoglio with “theological cover” for refusing to speak out in opposition to politicians who support moral evils such as the chemical and surgical execution of the innocent preborn by tarring those who align themselves with “evangelical fundamentalists” in such opposition as purveyors of an “ecumenism of hate.” To this end, therefore, the authors must make it appear as though open opposition to moral evils is the work of “fundamentalists,” many of whose ancestors were biased against blacks, who have attracted unto themselves a strong following of Catholics, whom they must disparage as “integralists.”

Although part two of this commentary will focus on these particular points in great detail, especially since the authors’ double-standard and hypocrisy is quite glaring, suffice it to say for the moment that what Jorge Mario Bergolio desires to “break” is not a fusion between Church and State that he knows full well has not existed in centuries. No, what Bergoglio desires to break is the informal alliance with Protestants such as the late Jerry Falwell that he believes Karol Josef Wojytla/John Paul II formed in the 1980s that enabled, as he sees it, the election and the policies of President Ronald Wilson Reagan

In other words, Antonio Spadaro and Miguel Figueroa are attempting to justify their “pope’s” supposedly “apolitical” alliance with pro-abortion, pro-perversity statists who share his “concern” for “protecting the planet” and ending “inequality” in the world. This is why it is necessary to equate Catholics who oppose various grave moral evils with “evangelical fundamentalists” in order to discredit their work and their objectives.

Mind you, it is perfectly all right for “Papa Bergoglio” to align himself with Protestants, Jews, Mohammedans, the Orthodox and anyone else who supports his agenda of statism. Only those who align themselves with “evangelical fundamentalists,” who, of course, do believe in all manner errors that are rightly criticized by Spadaro and Figueroa in their article, are to be condemned. Too much time, their “pope,” believes, has been spent on “moral issues,” not on issues of “social” and “environmental” justice.

Ah, this will be explored a bit more fully in part two.

On the Feast of Saint Lawrence the Martyr

Today is the Feast of Saint Lawrence the Deacon, whose martyrdom in the Third Century gives us a salutary example to follow in these days when the same sort of prefects who demand his death believe that believing Catholics are “haters” who must be punished in some manner or another. The day is coming, if God does not intervene, when we may suffer something of the same fate as this holy martyr, whom Holy Church has honored with a simple octave for many centuries.

Here is the account of his life written by none other than Pope Saint Leo the Great as found in the readings for Matins in today’s Divine Office:

Then the fury of the heathen power was raging against Christ's choicest members, in aiming in especial at such as were of the Priestly Order, the wicked persecutor turned fiercely on the Levite Lawrence, who was remarkable, not only as a minister of the Sacraments, but also as distributor of the property of the Church, promising himself a double prey by the taking of this one man, namely, to make him betray the consecrated treasure, and apostatise from the true faith. The wretch was thus doubly fired by his greed for money and his hatred of the truth, his greed urging him to seize the gold, and his wickedness to rob a believer of Christ. He demanded of the upright keeper of the sacred treasury, to bring him the wealth of the Church, for which his rapacity longed. But the pureminded Levite showed him where these riches were stored, by bringing before him a great multitude of holy poor, by the feeding and clothing of whom he had laid up all. that he had, in such wise, that it could be lost no more, and was now all the safer, as the way of spending it had been the holier.

The baffled thief chafed, and his hatred for the godliness which had appointed such an use of riches, flaming forth, he attempted the robbery of a dearer treasure from him in whose hands he had found no coin, even to take from him that possession wherein he had holier wealth. He commanded Lawrence to deny Christ, and made ready to assail the immovable firmness of the Levite's soul with appalling tortures, of which the failure of the first was followed by the application of others more fearful still. When his limbs had been mangled and cut by many stripes, his tormentor ordered them to be roasted over a fire. He was laid on an iron grating, the bars of which by the continual fire below, became themselves burning hot, so that by turning and rearranging his limbs upon them, his agony was kept keener, and his suffering made to last longer.

Cruel savage! thou gainest nothing, and advancest nothing. That which can die passeth by degrees beyond the reach of thy tortures, and when Lawrence departeth to heaven, thou and thy fires are conquered. The love of Christ could not be overcome by the flames, and the glow that scorched the outward man was colder than that that burnt in the inner. Thou didst rage, O thou persecutor thou didst rage against the Martyr, but by making keener his agony, thou hast but made nobler his palm. What did thine imagination fail to discover that could minister to the glory of him who conquered thee, since even the means of his execution have turned to the honour of his triumph Wherefore, dearly beloved brethren, let us rejoice with spiritual joy, and make our boast in the Lord, Who is wonderful in His Saints, Ps. lxvii. 36, and hath given unto us, in them an help and an example let us, I say, make our boast of the extraordinary happiness of the illustrious Lawrence's end, in that same Lord Who hath so glorified the name of His servant throughout the whole world, that from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof, wheresoever the constellation of the Levitical lights shineth, even as Jerusalem is made glorious by Stephen, so Rome is made famous by Lawrence. (Pope Saint Leo the Great, Matins, The Divine Office, Feast of Saint Lawrence the Martyr.)

Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., described the scene as Saint Lawrence the Martyr gave up his life rather than to deny the Holy Faith after he had been scourged and torment on the rack prior to his being griddle alive on a hot gridiron:

The August sun has set behind the Vatican, and the life and animation which his burning heat, and had stilled for a time, began once more upon the seven hills. Lawrence was taken down from the rack about midday. In his prison, however, he had taken no rest, but wounded and bleeding as he was, he baptized the converts won to Christ by the sight of his courageous suffering. He confirmed their faith, and fired their souls with a martyr’s intrepidity. When the evening hour summoned Rome to its pleasures, the prefect recalled the executioners to their work, for a few hours’ rest ha sufficiently restored their energy to enable them to satisfy his cruelty.

Surrounded by this ill-favoured company, the prefect thus addressed the valiant deacon: ‘Sacrifice to the gods, or else the whole night long shall be witness of your torments.’ ‘My night has no darkness,’ answered Laurence. ‘and all things are full of light to me.’ They struck him on the mouth with stones, but he smiled and said: “I give Thee thanks, O Christ.’

The iron bed or gridiron with three bars was brought in and the saint was stripped of his garments and extended upon it while burning coals were placed beneath it. As they were holding him down with iron forks, Laurence said: ‘I offer myself as a sacrifice to God for an odour of sweetness.’ The executioners continually stirred up the fire and brought fresh coals, while they still held him down with their forks. Then the saint said: ‘Learn, unhappy man, how great is the power of my God; for your burning coals give me refreshment, but they will be your eternal punishment. I call Thee, O Lord, to witness: when I was accused, I did not deny Thee; when I was questioned, I confessed Thee, O Christ; on the red-hot coals I gave thanks.’ And with his countenance radiant with heavenly beauty, he continued: ‘Yea. I give Thee thanks, O Lord Jesus Christ, for that Thou has deigned to strengthen me.’ He then raised his eyes to his judge, and said: ‘See, this side is well-roasted; turn me on the other and eat.’ Then continuing his canticle of praise to God: ‘I give Thee thanks, O Lord, that I have merited to enter into Thy dwelling place.’ As he was on the point of death, he remembered the Church. The thought of the eternal Rome gave him fresh strength and he breathed forth this ecstatic prayer: ‘O Christ, only God, O Splendour, O Power of the Father, O Maker of heaven and earth, and builder of the city’s walls! Thou hast placed Rome’s sceptre high over all. Thou hast willed to subject the world to it, in order to unite under one law the nations which differ in manner, customs, language, genius, and sacrifice. Behold the whole human race has submitted to its empire, and all discord and dissensions disappear in its unity. Remember thy purpose: Thou didst will to bind the immense universe together under the Christian Kingdom. O Christ, for the sake of Thy Romans, make this city Christian; for to it Thou gavest the charge of leading all the rest to sacred unity. All its members in every place are united—a very type of Thy Kingdom; the conquered universe has bowed before it. Oh! may its royal head be bowed in turn! Send Thy Gabriel and bid him heal the blindness of the sons of Iulus that they may know the true God. I see a prince who is to come—an Emperor who is a servant of God. He will not suffer Rome to remain a slave; he will close the temples and fasten them with bolts for ever.’

Thus he prayed, and with these words he breathed forth his soul. Some noble Romans who had been conquered to Christ by the martyr’s admirable boldness, removed his body; the love of the most high God had suddenly filled their hearts and dispelled their former errors. From that day the worship of the infamous gods grew cold; few people went now to the temples, but hastened to the altars of Christ. Thus Laurence, going unarmed to the battle, had wounded the enemy with his own sword.’ (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Volume 13, Time after Penteocost, Book IV, pp. 307-308.)

“Make this city Christian.”

Jorge Mario Bergoglio is continuing conciliarism’s work of de-Christianizing the world, all in the name of the “new evangelization,” and Antonio Spadaro and Miguel Figueroa applaud him as a champion of “justice” as he does so.

There is a special irony on this in that the very name of the publication in which the Spadaro-Figurora article appeared, La Civilta Cattolica, means “the Catholic Civilization,” something that they do not believe should exist here on earth.

Pope Saint Pius X taught otherwise:

Here we have, founded by Catholics, an inter-denominational association that is to work for the reform of civilization, an undertaking which is above all religious in character; for there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical fact. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

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

There is nothing Catholic to be found in La Civilta Cattolica, and that is just the way that lay Jesuit revolutionaries such as Bergoglio and Spadaro want it, and in this—as in so many other things—they show themselves to be the haters of the Holy Faith and of the true God Who has entrusted to the Catholic Church His Sacred Deposit of Faith.

Dom Prosper Gueranger has given us a prayer with which to honor Saint Lawrence on this his feast day:

‘Thrice blessed are the Roman people, for they honour thee on the very spot where thy sacred bones repose! They prostrate in thy sanctuary, and watering the ground with their tears they pour out their vows. We who are distant from Rome, separated by the Alps and Pyrenees, how can we ever imagine what treasures she possesses, or how rich is her earth in sacred tombs? We have not her privileges; but from afar we gaze on the heavens. O holy Laurence! it is there we seek the memorial of thy passion; fo thou hast two dwelling-places, that of thy body on earth, and that of thy soul in heaven. In the ineffable heavenly city thou has been received to citizenship, and the civic crown adorns thy brow in its eternal Senate. So brightly shine thy jewels that it seemeth the heavenly Rome hath chosen thee perpetual Consul. The joy of the Quirites proves how great is thine office, thine influence, and thy power, for thou grantest their requests. Thou hearest all who pray to three, they ask what they will and none ever goes away sad.

‘Ever assist thy children of the queen city; give them the strong support of thy fatherly love, and a mother’s tender, loving care. Together with them, O thou honour of Christ, listen thy humble client confessing his misery and sins. I acknowledge that I am not worthy that Christ should hear me; but though the patronage of the holy martyrs, my evils can be remedied. Hearken to thy suppliant; in thy goodness free me form the fetters of the flesh and the world.’ (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Volume 13, Time after Penteocost, Book IV, pp. 307-308.)

May the Rosaries we pray in this month of August, the month of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, hasten the day when a true pope will fulfill Our Lady’s Fatima Message by consecrating Russia to the same Immaculate Heart of Mary with all of the world’s true bishops. In the meantime, we pray to the martyrs, including our dear, courageous Saint Lawrence the Martyr, to make no concessions to lords of Modernity in the world or to those of Modernism in the counterfeit church of conciliarism as to make any concessions is deny Christ the King before men. 

Vivat Christus Rex!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

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.

Saint Lawrence the Deacon, pray for us.