- Elemis kit: shrimps travel icons collection - легендарная коллекция бестселлеров у дизайнерской тревел косметичке — цена 3500 грн в каталоге Мужские подарочные наборы ✓ Купить товары для красоты и здоровья по доступной цене на Шафе , Украина #173122835
- Donald & Many Teen Boys – Argences News, kylie jenner stormi nike af1 travis scott baby fever, Barron Trump’s Height Is Taller Than Melania
- ArvindShops , Το Νο1 Ηλεκτρονικό Κατάστημα Αθλητικών ειδών στην Ελλάδα!, Αθλητικά Ρούχα , adidas Sandales Performance Own The Run Womens Tank Top , Παπούτσια & Αξεσουάρ
- air jordan 1 royal nike outlet
- images of nike lebron 6 low safari blue , Ja Morant Nike Ja 1 Colorways + Release Dates , IetpShops
- Miles Morales Shameik Moore Air Jordan 1 Spider Verse
- air jordan 1 high og bubble gum DD9335 641 atmosphere obsidian release date
- Air Jordan 12 University Blue Metallic Gold
- nike dunk low pro sb 304292 102 white black trail end brown sneakers
- new air jordan 1 high og osb dian blue chill white cd0463 401
- Home
- Articles Archive, 2006-2016
- Golden Oldies
- 2016-2024 Articles Archive
- About This Site
- As Relevant Now as It Was One Hundred Six Years Ago: Our Lady's Fatima Message
- Donations (December 6, 2024)
- Now Available for Purchase: Paperback Edition of G.I.R.M. Warfare: The Conciliar Church's Unremitting Warfare Against Catholic Faith and Worship
- Ordering Dr. Droleskey's Books
Dehumanize the Preborn, Dehumanize the Victims of Illegal Immigrants' Crimes
The devil’s hatred for God has always been such as to inspire in fallen creatures to rebel against their First Cause and Last End, and he has always inspired fallen creatures to forget that they are made in the image and likeness of the Most Holy Trinity and thus to hate and then to act violently against each other, starting with the murder of Abel by his brother Cain:
[1] And Adam knew Eve his wife: who conceived and brought forth Cain, saying: I have gotten a man through God. [2] And again she brought forth his brother Abel. And Abel was a shepherd, and Cain a husbandman. [3] And it came to pass after many days, that Cain offered, of the fruits of the earth, gifts to the Lord. [4] Abel also offered of the firstlings of his flock, and of their fat: and the Lord had respect to Abel, and to his offerings. [5] But to Cain and his offerings he had no respect: and Cain was exceedingly angry, and his countenance fell.
[6] And the Lord said to him: Why art thou angry? and why is thy countenance fallen? [7] If thou do well, shalt thou not receive? but if ill, shall not sin forthwith be present at the door? but the lust thereof shall be under thee, and thou shalt have dominion over it. [8] And Cain said to Abel his brother: Let us go forth abroad. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and slew him.[9]And the Lord said to Cain: Where is thy brother Abel? And he answered, I know not: am I my brother's keeper? [10] And he said to him: What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth to me from the earth.
[11] Now, therefore, cursed shalt thou be upon the earth, which hath opened her mouth and received the blood of thy brother at thy hand. [12] When thou shalt till it, it shall not yield to thee its fruit: a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be upon the earth. [13] And Cain said to the Lord: My iniquity is greater than that I may deserve pardon. [14] Behold thou dost cast me out this day from the face of the earth, and I shall be hidden from thy face, and I shall be a vagabond and a fugitive on the earth: every one, therefore, that findeth me, shall kill me. [15] And the Lord said to him: No, it shall not be so: but whosoever shall kill Cain, shall be punished sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, that whosoever found him should not kill him. (Genesis 4: 1-15.)
Husbands have battled wives, wives have battled husbands, parents and children have battled each other. King David himself was opposed by his own son Absalom. David, of whose own house Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was born of His Most Blessed Mother, wept over his rebellious son's death because he was concerned over the state of the poor's soul when died, knowing that he had rebelled against the Fourth Commandment itself:
[31] And when he bad passed, and stood still, Chusai appeared: and coming up he said: I bring good tidings, my lord, the king, for the Lord hath judged for thee this day from the hand of all that have risen up against thee. [32] And the king said to Chusai: Is the young man Absalom safe? And Chusai answering him, said: Let the enemies of my lord, the king, and all that rise against him unto evil, be as the young man is. [33] The king therefore being much moved, went up to the high chamber over the gate, and wept. And as he went he spoke in this manner: My son Absalom, Absalom my son: would to God that I might die for thee, Absalom my son, my son Absalom. (2 Kings 18: 31-33.)
Conflict between human beings is just part of the consequences of Original Sin and of the Actual Sins of men.
There was conflict aplenty even during the years of Christendom. Intrigue fueled by personal ambitions, rivalries of one sort or another or by motivations of revenge were all too common in royal courts, including the most important royal court on the face of the earth, the papal household. Christian kings and emperors made war upon each other. Infighting among generals and their officers of the same army shaped the outcome of battles. Indeed, as depicted fairly accurately in For Greater Glory there was great mistrust among the leaders of the Cristeros in Mexico.
Additionally, of course, human nature being what it is, sloth, one of the seven deadly or capital sins, manifested itself all too frequently even during the High Middle Ages as those who served at court or in various administrative capacities in the service of the crown and the enforcement of laws preferred to exert the least possible effort just to "get through" a given day.
All of this having been noted, however, it is also true that men in the era of Christendom were not divided on matters of Faith and Morals, on matters of First and Last Things. While they may have had great difficulties on occasion in keeping God's laws and thus of practicing the Holy Faith well, they nevertheless knew what was right and wrong and were united in their beliefs in the tenets of the Catholic Faith.
Pope Pius XII noted this in Summi Pontificatus, October 10, 1939:
It is true that even when Europe had a cohesion of brotherhood through identical ideals gathered from Christian preaching, she was not free from divisions, convulsions and wars which laid her waste; but perhaps they never felt the intense pessimism of today as to the possibility of settling them, for they had then an effective moral sense of the just and of the unjust, of the lawful and of the unlawful, which, by restraining outbreaks of passion, left the way open to an honorable settlement. In Our days, on the contrary, dissensions come not only from the surge of rebellious passion, but also from a deep spiritual crisis which has overthrown the sound principles of private and public morality. (Pope Pius XII, Summi Pontificatus, October 10, 1939.)
It was Martin Luther's rebellion against the Divine Plan that God Himself had instituted to effect man's return to Him through the Catholic Church that divided men over First and Last Things, thus paving the way for the triumph of secular substitutes for religious faith in general just as Luther had substituted his own heretical views of Christianity in the place of the true Faith, which is the only foundation of personal and social order.
Pope Leo XIII explained this very succinctly in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:
There was once a time when States were governed by the philosophy of the Gospel. Then it was that the power and divine virtue of Christian wisdom had diffused itself throughout the laws, institutions, and morals of the people, permeating all ranks and relations of civil society. Then, too, the religion instituted by Jesus Christ, established firmly in befitting dignity, flourished everywhere, by the favor of princes and the legitimate protection of magistrates; and Church and State were happily united in concord and friendly interchange of good offices. The State, constituted in this wise, bore fruits important beyond all expectation, whose remembrance is still, and always will be, in renown, witnessed to as they are by countless proofs which can never be blotted out or ever obscured by any craft of any enemies. Christian Europe has subdued barbarous nations, and changed them from a savage to a civilized condition, from superstition to true worship. It victoriously rolled back the tide of Mohammedan conquest; retained the headship of civilization; stood forth in the front rank as the leader and teacher of all, in every branch of national culture; bestowed on the world the gift of true and many-sided liberty; and most wisely founded very numerous institutions for the solace of human suffering. And if we inquire how it was able to bring about so altered a condition of things, the answer is -- beyond all question, in large measure, through religion, under whose auspices so many great undertakings were set on foot, through whose aid they were brought to completion.
A similar state of things would certainly have continued had the agreement of the two powers been lasting. More important results even might have been justly looked for, had obedience waited upon the authority, teaching, and counsels of the Church, and had this submission been specially marked by greater and more unswerving loyalty. For that should be regarded in the light of an ever-changeless law which Ivo of Chartres wrote to Pope Paschal II: "When kingdom and priesthood are at one, in complete accord, the world is well ruled, and the Church flourishes, and brings forth abundant fruit. But when they are at variance, not only smaller interests prosper not, but even things of greatest moment fall into deplorable decay."
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.
Amongst these principles the main one lays down that as all men are alike by race and nature, so in like manner all are equal in the control of their life; that each one is so far his own master as to be in no sense under the rule of any other individual; that each is free to think on every subject just as he may choose, and to do whatever he may like to do; that no man has any right to rule over other men. In a society grounded upon such maxims all government is nothing more nor less than the will of the people, and the people, being under the power of itself alone, is alone its own ruler. It does choose, nevertheless, some to whose charge it may commit itself, but in such wise that it makes over to them not the right so much as the business of governing, to be exercised, however, in its name.
The authority of God is passed over in silence, just as if there were no God; or as if He cared nothing for human society; or as if men, whether in their individual capacity or bound together in social relations, owed nothing to God; or as if there could be a government of which the whole origin and power and authority did not reside in God Himself. Thus, as is evident, a State becomes nothing but a multitude which is its own master and ruler. And since the people is declared to contain within itself the spring-head of all rights and of all power, it follows that the State does not consider itself bound by any kind of duty toward God. Moreover. it believes that it is not obliged to make public profession of any religion; or to inquire which of the very many religions is the only one true; or to prefer one religion to all the rest; or to show to any form of religion special favor; but, on the contrary, is bound to grant equal rights to every creed, so that public order may not be disturbed by any particular form of religious belief.
And it is a part of this theory that all questions that concern religion are to be referred to private judgment; that every one is to be free to follow whatever religion he prefers, or none at all if he disapprove of all. From this the following consequences logically flow: that the judgment of each one's conscience is independent of all law; that the most unrestrained opinions may be openly expressed as to the practice or omission of divine worship; and that every one has unbounded license to think whatever he chooses and to publish abroad whatever he thinks.
Now, when the State rests on foundations like those just named -- and for the time being they are greatly in favor -- it readily appears into what and how unrightful a position the Church is driven. For, when the management of public business is in harmony with doctrines of such a kind, the Catholic religion is allowed a standing in civil society equal only, or inferior, to societies alien from it; no regard is paid to the laws of the Church, and she who, by the order and commission of Jesus Christ, has the duty of teaching all nations, finds herself forbidden to take any part in the instruction of the people. With reference to matters that are of twofold jurisdiction, they who administer the civil power lay down the law at their own will, and in matters that appertain to religion defiantly put aside the most sacred decrees of the Church. They claim jurisdiction over the marriages of Catholics, even over the bond as well as the unity and the indissolubility of matrimony. They lay hands on the goods of the clergy, contending that the Church cannot possess property. Lastly, they treat the Church with such arrogance that, rejecting entirely her title to the nature and rights of a perfect society, they hold that she differs in no respect from other societies in the State, and for this reason possesses no right nor any legal power of action, save that which she holds by the concession and favor of the government. If in any State the Church retains her own agreement publicly entered into by the two powers, men forthwith begin to cry out that matters affecting the Church must be separated from those of the State. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)
The modern state has become a sort of secular church replete with its own creedal beliefs and possessing an insatiably voracious appetite to exercise a near total control over its citizens, who are subjected to a level of slavery by means of confiscatory tax powers and, more recently, by state-coerced censorship of those who dare to dissent from the state's orthodoxy du jour. However, the modern state is a corruption of the true nature of the state, which is not the same thing as a particular form of government that happens to constitute its civil authority, which must be founded on right principles in order for it to work properly in the pursuit of the common good here on Earth and to aid the true Church in the promotion of a cultural environment in which its citizens can best save their souls.
It is a very short step from Martin Luther's hatred for the Catholic Church, which is nothing other than a hatred of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself as He is indivisible from the Church he founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, to the anti-Theism of the French and Bolshevik Revolutions, to the hatred of human beings whose existence is an "inconvience," and from there to the diabolical dehumanization and depersonalization of human beings, who are the zenith of God's creative handiwork He has endowed them with a rational, immortal soul that has been redeemed by the shedding of every single drop of the Most Precious Blood of His Co-Equal, Co-Eternal Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday.
The Jacobins, in essence, denied the humanity of anyone they deemed to be "counterrevolutionaries," a group which included royalists, the clergy, and believing Catholics who resisted their anti-Theistic deification of man and the "goddess of reason," and the Bolsheviks turned their own "counterrevolutionaries" into "non-persons."
Alas, this dehumanization of others has not been confined to the the social revolutionaries of Europe as even long before Karl Marx and the British utilitarians in the so-called "civilized" West, many Americans dehumanized blacks and American Indians. Andrew Jackson, a Jacobin at heart despite the miracle that had been wrought for him by Our Lady of Prompt Succor at the Battle of New Orleans on January 15, 1815, hated both blacks and Indians, and he was far, far from alone in that hatred.
Indeed, a concomitant hared of Catholics among the nativists of the middle to the latter part of the Nineenth Century subjected many of of our religious ancestors on these shores. Catholic immigrants to the United States of America, first those from Ireland and then, after the War between the States and during the Kulturkampf in Germany and the Risorgimento in Italy, those from eastern and southern Europe, plunged headlong into this spectator sport of electoral politics as it provided them with the fastest means of upward social and economic mobility at a time when there was overt--and sometimes quite violent--discrimination against them on the part of know-nothings and other assorted naturalists associated with Freemasonry.
Catholic immigrants to the United States of America in the Nineteenth Century faced overt hostility, up to and including violence, from thugs of Protestant and Judeo-Masonic nativists. Father Pierre Jean De Smet, S.J., who had to sneak away from his family in Belgium to study for the priesthood in the United States of America, where he was ordained and was especially beloved by the Indians of the Northwest, experienced the violent state of affairs facing Catholic immigrants in the Nineteenth Century:
The Carbonari, then numerous in America, received their orders direct from European lodges. They edited a paper, L’Eco d’Italia, and labored unceasingly to prejudice the people against the Church and trammel the authority of the Bishops. In the hope of recovering their waning influence, the Protestant ministers made common cause with the revolutionaries. This was the beginning of a vast conspiracy, which imperiled, for a time, Catholic liberty in the United States.
The Know-Nothings, a new society, began to be organized about 1852. Theirs was a secret order, which bound its members by a solemn oath. It was formed, ostensibly, to defend the rights of the poor against European invasion. “America is for Americans” was its slogan. With this object in view, they endeavored to have severe naturalization laws enacted against the new arrivals from Europe, and exclude citizens born of foreign parents from holding public offices. In reality, these fanatics combated not so much the foreign immigration as the fidelity of Europeans, especially the Irish, to the Church of Rome. To base calumnies they added murder, pillage, incendiarism, and, before long, found an occasion for opening the campaign. In the spring of 1853 the Papal Nuncio to Brazil, Archbishop Bedini, arrived in New York, bringing the Sovereign Pontiff’s blessing to the faithful in the United States. He was charged, moreover, to investigate the conditions of Catholicism in the great Republic.
The Know-Nothings saw in this mission a grave attack upon American liberties. Their newspapers denounced the perfidious and ambitious intrigues of Rome. The apostate priest Gavazzi came from London and placed his eloquence at the service of his follow-socialists and friends. For several months he followed the Envoy form one city to the other, vomiting forth lies, threatening him with dire reprisals, and through fiery denunciation endeavored to stir up the masses against the “Papists.”
From vituperation and abuse there was but one step to action. On Christmas day in Cincinnati a band of assassins attempted to do away with the Nuncio. Driven off by the police, they revenged themselves by burning him in effigy. This odious scene was enacted in several towns. Conditions pointing to renewed attacks, Archbishop Bedini was forced to depart after a short sojourn in the United States. But the hostilities did not cease with the departure of the Nuncio. The campaign lasted for three years, attended by violent outrages and attacks, and armed forces had presently to interfere to defend life and property. A witness of these disorders, Father De Smet draws a gloomy picture of existing conditions in his letters. “The times are becoming terrible for Catholics in these unhappy States. Nowhere in the world do honest men enjoy less liberty.”
“European demagogues, followers of Kossuth, Mazzini, etc., have sworn to exterminate us. Seven Catholic churches have been sacked and burned; those courageous enough to defend them have been assassinated.” “The future grows darker, and we are menaced from every side. If our enemies succeed in electing a President from ranks–until now the chances have been in their favor–Catholics will be debarred from practicing their religion; our churches and schools will be burned and pillaged, and murder will result from these brawls. During this present time [1854] over twenty thousand Catholics have fled to other countries seeking refuge from persecution, and many more talk of following them. The right to defame and exile is the order of the day in this great Republic, now the rendezvous of the demagogues and outlaws of every country.”
No laws were enacted for the protection of Catholics, and in some States the authorities were openly hostile. “The legislators of New York and Pennsylvania are now busy with the temporal affairs of the Church, which they wish take out of the hands of the Bishops. These States have taken the initiative, and others will soon follow. In Massachusetts, a mischief-making inquisition has just been instituted, with the object of investigating affairs in religious houses. In Boston, a committee of twenty-four rascals, chosen from among the legislators, of which sixty are Protestant ministers, searched and inspected a convent of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur.”
While making a tour of the Jesuit houses with the Provincial, Father De Smet more than once braved the fury of the fanatics. In Cincinnati, a priest could not show himself in the street without being insulted by renegade Germans, Swiss, and Italians. In Louisville, thirty Catholics were killed in an open square and burned alive in their houses. Those who attempted to flee were driven back into the flames at the point of pistols and knives. Even in St. Louis, several attempts were made in one week upon the lives of citizens. The Jesuits were not spared. At Ellsworth, Maine, Father Bapst was taken by force from the house of a Catholic where he was hearing confessions, was covered with pitch, rolled in feathers, tied, swung by his hands and feet to a pole, and carried through the city to the accompaniment of gross insults. (Father E. Lavaille, S.J., The Life of Father De Smet, S.J. (1801-1873): Apostle of the Rocky Mountains, published originally in 1915 by P. J. Kenedy & Sons, New York, New York, and reprinted by TAN Books and Publishers in 2000 with the additions and the subtitle, “Apostle of the Rocky Mountains.” pp. 262-265.)
This was not taught in American history classes sixty years ago when I was in high school, and it is certainly not being taught today, is it?
Interestingly, the aforementioned-Know Nothing Party (or American Party), was actually formed in 1845 by the first Talmudist elected to Congress, Lewis Charles Levin. Levin formed the Know Nothings not to oppose immigration in general but to protest the influx of German and Irish Catholic immigrants to the United States of America. In other words, the Know Nothing Party was founded by a Jew to oppose the immigration of Catholics to this country because he wanted to preserve the "American way," which, of course, provides plenty of space for the devil and his false religions, starting with Talmudism, of course, while seeking to intimidate Catholics in this country from knowing anything about, no less proclaiming openly, the Social Reign of Christ the King over men and their nations. Americanism is thus an expression of the Talmudic ethos that celebrates error while scorning the truth including Truth Incarnate Himself.
Part of the larger "Know Nothing" movement (named not for fictional Sergeant Hans Schultz of Hogan's Heroes, but for members of this movement saying that they "knew nothing" about its activities when questioned) that sponsored mob riots against Catholics in various areas, including the attacking and killing of individual Catholics and the burning of Catholic church buildings and schools. Know Nothings won control of the Massachusetts General Court in the elections of 1854, being successful as well in electing their candidates as mayors of the cities of Chicago, Illinois, and San Francisco, California. Ohio was a particular stronghold of the Know-Nothings, who nominated former President Millard Fillmore, who had succeeded to the presidency of the United States of America upon the death of President Zachary Taylor on July 9, 1850, and served the remainder of Taylor's term (which ended on March 4, 1853), for president in 1856.
It is only the adversary who inspires men to hate each other in full violation of the following adminition of Our Blessed Lord Saviour Jesus Christ:
Give to him that asketh of thee and from him that would borrow of thee turn not away. 43 You have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thy enemy. 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you: 45 That you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who maketh his sun to rise upon the good, and bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust.
46 For if you love them that love you, what reward shall you have? do not even the publicans this? 47 And if you salute your brethren only, what do you more? do not also the heathens this? 48 Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5: 42-48.)
Well, the dethroning of God as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His true Church and the subsequent deification of man by the forces of Judeo-Masonry has led to a warfare against the humanity of the innocent child in the womb by the use of such dehumanizing terms as "miscellaneous mass of cells" or a "product" of conception.
Similarly, the medical industry's manufactured money-making myth of "brain death" has resulted in the dehumanization of a living human being every much as referring to a preborn baby merely as a "product of conception" or a "miscellaneous mass of cells" or "potential human being" even though there is nothing "potential" about a human being inside of his mother's womb who has his own specific DNA and whose growth to birth can be stopped by others only by killing him.
Also, to use the word fetus, which may be biologically accurate, to refer a preborn child is to make a living human being into a non-person, and it is the dehumanization of the innocent child in his mother's womb that is directly responsible for the upsurge in violent attacks against human beings throughout the world, especially here in some of this country's major cities. To fail to see the Divine impress in the unseen baby in the womb is but a short step to failing to see and thus respect the Divine impress in souls of everyone else, which is why we are all at risk today of some random attack by those who think nothing of killing other human beings for sport as so many mothers think nothing of killing their own flesh and blood.
These random attacks are on the increase, of course, because of the hordes of unvetted lawbreakers who have entered the United States of America illegally but have been nevertheless welcomed as "newcomers" or "asylum seekers" by the administration of the dementia-ridden octogenarian in the White House and his Secretary of Homeland Security, the truly despicable Alejandro Mayorkas, who could not bring himself to say the name of Rachel Morin after she had been killed by an illegal immigrant, a Salvadoran gang member, while hiking on a trail in Maryland:
Rachel Morin’ mother blasted Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ for referring to her daughter, who was murdered by an illegal migrant, as an “individual” instead of naming her in a Tuesday interview.
“It’s a completely political statement because they’re not even willing to acknowledge that she was a mother, a daughter,” Patty Morin told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on Wednesday night.
“It totally depersonalizes her and makes her an object,” said Patty, who also revealed no one from the Biden administration has reached out to her grieving family since her daughter’s alleged killer was arrested.
Alleged Salvadoran gang member Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez, 23, was busted Friday for allegedly killing the 37-year-old mom of five on a hiking trail in August in Harford County, Md.
Rachel’s death and Martinez-Hernandez’s arrest has sparked a new wave of outrage about migrants pouring over the southern border.
On Tuesday, Mayorkas appeared on CNN and was asked about Rachel’s murder and his response to critics blaming the administration’s policies for violent crimes committed by migrants.
He referred to Morin as “the individual” in his reply.
“First and foremost of course our hearts break for the children, the loved ones and the friends of the individual who was murdered — the woman, the mother,” Mayorkas told Jim Acosta.
“A criminal is responsible for the criminal act,” he added. “The criminal who committed this heinous act should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law and forcefully so.”
His response drew the ire of Morin’s family.
“They just seem to be disconnected completely from what is happening at the southern border and how it is affecting Americans,” Morin family attorney Randolph Rice said during Wednesday night’s interview on “The Ingraham Angle.”
“They are hemorrhaging at the southern border and they’re arguing about what kind of bandaid to put on it when instead they should be putting a tourniquet on it and stopping this flow so that we don’t have another Rachel Morin,” Rice added.
Rachel was snatched off the Ma and Pa hiking Trail in Bel Air, Md., and dragged into the woods, according to investigators.
Her body was found in a culvert Aug. 6.
Martinez-Hernandez had already been wanted in a previous killing in El Salvador and for assaulting a mom and young girl in a brutal home invasion in Los Angeles.
He’d been living in the country illegally since crossing through Mexico in 2023, officials said.
Authorities found the career criminal “casually sitting at the bar” Friday night in Tulsa, Oklahoma, cops said.
He has been charged with first-degree murder and first-degree rape in her death.
Rachel’s sister told The Post this week she believes her sister’s alleged killer may have additional victims. (Rachel Morin's mother blasts DHS Secretary for calling slain daughter 'individual'.)
Tone-deaf Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday shrugged off attempts to blame Biden’s border policy for the horrific slaughter of Americans at the hands of illegal migrants, saying, “The individual who is responsible for a heinous criminal act is the criminal.”
His comment during a press conference from a Border Patrol aircraft hangar in Tucson, Arizona — some 70 miles from the nearest border crossing — came in response to a question about 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, who was brutalized and murdered in Houston, allegedly by two Venezuelan migrants who were released into the US earlier this year.
“We screen and vet individuals when we encounter them,” he said.
Border agents quickly responded with skepticism to Mayorkas’ claims that the DHS was sufficiently vetting anybody crossing the US border, saying his comments Wednesday show he’s living in “fairytale land.”
“I don’t know what Mayorkas is smoking because it needs to be legalized,” one Border Patrol source told The Post.
“If by vetting he means fingerprinting and doing some half-a**ed background check that has access to almost nothing outside of the United States, then yeah it’s a great process.”
He defended the border vetting procedures — even while acknowledging at least eight ISIS-linked suspected terrorists managed to slip through US custody and enter the country.
The Post first reported on the ISIS suspects being arrested after traveling as far as Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and New York.
“We did not have derogatory information when they were first encountered,” Mayorkas said.
“Concerns were raised subsequently, we used our law enforcement authorities to apprehend and detain them and they are in removal proceedings as we speak,” he added — in the first press conference about the border since Senate Democrats blocked an impeachment trial against him, effectively acquitting him of the charges.
Mayorkas’ statement comes the same day that NBC News also reported DHS has identified more than 400 migrants who were brought to the US from Central Asia by an ISIS-affiliated human smuggling network — and that the whereabouts of more than 50 of them are unknown.
Sources said that not only are the background checks limited by many countries’ refusal to provide information on their citizens, the source explained, but agents are rarely given enough time to effectively screen people before they have to let them go – usually within three days.
“We run checks but unless they have an actual database hit or have interactions with law enforcement in the US we really don’t know,” one source said.
An ICE source echoed those concerns, adding that background checks often come back with errors or are totally incomplete.
The source said migrants often have to be released before border agents have time to fully see the checks through.
“Not all checks come back completed, or verified due to potential errors, in time before a subject could be released letting a potential criminal into the country prior to being completely vetted,” the source said.
“We run checks but unless they have an actual database hit or have interactions with law enforcement in the US we really don’t know,” one source said.
An ICE source echoed those concerns, adding that background checks often come back with errors or are totally incomplete.
The source said migrants often have to be released before border agents have time to fully see the checks through.
“Not all checks come back completed, or verified due to potential errors, in time before a subject
could be released letting a potential criminal into the country prior to being completely vetted,” the source said.
Two of the migrants had been in the country for months under surveillance by a Joint Terrorism Task Force.
The migrants hailed from Tajikistan, a central Asian country bordering Afghanistan that’s become a hotbed of extremist activity through ISIS.
In addition to the terror suspects, a string of high-profile crimes against women and girls have been linked to illegal migrants who were released into the US.
The suspects charged with killing Nungaray — who was lured under a bridge in Houston and assaulted for two hours and then had her hands and legs bound before being strangled to death and dumped in a Bayou — were stopped by border patrol officers and released just weeks before the crime.
Johan Jose Martinez-Rangel, 21, entered the US in March and was taken off a GPS monitoring program weeks before Nungaray’s murder after he was not deemed to be a threat, sources said.
Franklin Jose Peña Ramos, 26, entered the country last month and was still being monitored at the time of the crime.
Both men are being held on $10 million bail.
Such assurances meant little to the family of Rachel Morin, the Maryland mom-of-five raped and brutally murdered in August allegedly by 23-year-old Victor Martinez Hernandez, who illegally entered the US in February 2023 just a month after allegedly murdering a woman back home in El Salvador.
“It appears the tragic rape and murder of Rachel Morin wasn’t enough to spur action,” said Morin family attorney Randolph Rice. “Perhaps the danger of terrorists entering our country will finally make our government leaders realize the urgency of this situation and take action to protect American citizens.”
“What further tragedy needs to happen before our leaders in Washington wake up and say, ‘We have a disastrous problem; let’s shut the southern border down until we figure out a better way to do this?’” he added.
Morin is just one of several American women and girls who have been violently preyed on by predators who recently entered the country illegally.
Barely a week before Mayorkas’ conference, 12-year-old Jocelyn was bound, stripped half naked from the waist down, and strangled to death in Houston on the night of June 16.
The men accused of the brutal crime, 26-year-old Franklin Jose Pena Ramos and 21-year-old Johan Jose Rangel Martinez, both crossed the border in El Paso this spring and were fitted with ankle monitors by immigration officials.
Pena Ramos was still being monitored at the time of Jocelyn’s murder and cut his ankle bracelet two days later, while Rangel Martinez’s was officially removed weeks earlier after he was deemed to not be a threat.
Jocelyn’s family echoed the Morins’ disgust about current border security during an appearance on with Fox News’ Sean Hannity Tuesday night.
“We have to stop burying our kids, this is not right,” grandfather Kelvin Alvarenga said.
“We have to have more reinforcement when it comes to letting people in, this is not okay, it’s not okay,” he added. “It happens all over the country. We need a safer country.”
Days earlier across the country in NYC, a 13-year-old girl was raped in broad daylight in a Queens park allegedly by 25-year-old Ecuadorian migrant Christian Geovanny Inga-Landi, who has been in the country since he crossed at Eagle Pass in 2021.
In February, 22-year-old Georgia nursing student Laken Riley was brutally murdered while going for a run on campus. Venezuelan migrant Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, was charged with murder and kidnapping in her killing.
After insisting Biden’s border policies were sound, Mayorkas went on to blame congressional gridlock for the nation’s troubles while highlighting a major funding package which failed to pass in May.
“Executive actions are no substitute for congressional action. Only congress and deliver a full and lasting solution,” he said. “Only congress through legislation can fix what everyone agrees is a broke immigration system that was last updated almost 30 years ago. Only congress can give us the resources we need. We have been under resourced for decades.” (Mayorkas: Biden's border policy working despite letting in ISIS terrorists, killers.)
Republicans slammed the White House for its “pathetic” and “shameful” statements on the killings of Rachel Morin and Jocelyn Nungaray — which never mentioned they were murdered by illegal immigrants
Morin, 37, was raped and murdered on a Maryland hiking trail in August 2023.
Earlier this month, Victor Antonio Martinez Hernandez, 23, a native of El Salvador who entered the US illegally, was arrested and charged with the crime.
The body of Jocelyn Nungaray, 12, was found near a creek in Houston on Monday.
Johan Jose Rangel Martinez, 21, and Franklin Jose Pena Ramos, 26, both from Venezuela, were charged with the killing.
The White House issued statements on both incidents this week – failing to mention that all three suspects were in the US illegally.
Kim George, a Republican congressional candidate in Arkansas, slammed both statements as “pathetic.”
“Weak leadership is to blame for these senseless deaths. Nothing can be said to change what happened, but the families deserve better. They deserve #justice,” she wrote.
“Yet another American family is destroyed by Joe Biden’s open border.” wrote Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL).
“We MUST secure our border NOW.”
Donald Trump’s presidential campaign also chimed in on the controversy.
“Crooked Joe Biden is a disgrace,” the campaign’s “war room” account wrote on X.
“The brutal murders of these Americans is on the hands of Biden — and the evil Biden migrants he released into our country.”
A White House spokesperson told Fox News Digital on Tuesday “We extend our deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of Rachel Morin.”
“We cannot comment on active law enforcement cases. But fundamentally, we believe that people should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law if they are found to be guilty.”
On Friday, a White House spokesperson issued a nearly identical statement to NBC News about Nungaray.
“Our hearts go out to the family and loved ones of Jocelyn Nungaray,” the comment read.
We cannot comment on active law enforcement cases,” the spokesperson continued.
“But fundamentally, anyone found guilty of this type of heinous and shocking crime should be held accountable, to the fullest extent of the law.”
Rachel Morin’s mother said this week that former President Trump phoned her to express his condolences.
“I am deeply touched by President Trump’s kindness and concern,” Patty Morin said.
“He was genuine and truly wanted to know how our family was coping,” she added.
“He asked about Rachel and showed honest compassion for her untimely death.
The grieving mom also criticized the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorkas for referring to her daughter as an “individual” during an interview.
“It totally depersonalizes her and makes her an object,” Patty said, adding that no one from the Biden administration reached out to her family since her daughter’s alleged killer was arrested. (Family of Jocelyn Nungaray pleads for heightened border security: 'We have to stop burying our kids'.
Mrs. Morin is entirely correct, of course, as it is essential for the pro-abortion Mayorkas to dehumanize the victims of his refusing to enforce the Federal government's immigration laws as nameless peope who were simply the victims of one criminal rather than the victims of his own policies that turned lawbreaking border crossers loose upon the American public in places far, far away from the border with the United Mexican States to commit the same sort of crimes here that they had been committing in their own countries with impunity. It is very easy to dehumanize anyone and everyone after birth once his humanity within the sanctuary of his mother's womb has been denied.
Concluding Remarks
Human nature is wounded, although not entirely corrupted, by Original Sin, leaving the souls of the unbaptized in the grip of the devil and the souls of the baptized with its vestigial after-effects: a darkened intellect, weakened will and the overthrow of the rational, higher faculties in favor of the lower sensual appetites. The Actual Sins of men incline them to sin more and more and to blind them to anything other than what pleases them and their immediate self-interests, no matter how distorted or perverted those self-interests are in the objective order of things.
Men who do not seek to reform their lives by confessing their sins to a true priest in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance and then cooperating with the ineffable graces of the Divine Redeemer’s Most Precious Blood that flow into their souls once a priest utters the words of Absolution or, worse yet, do not even realize that there is any need to so will descend to barbarism over the course of time. There is no turning back the tide of the new barbarians who have been let loose as a direct and inevitable consequence of the fatally flawed belief that men can establish social order without reforming their lives in cooperation with the graces won for them by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday and without a due submission in all that pertains to Holy Mother Church in all that pertains to the good of souls, upon which the entirety of social order depends.
Pope Pius XI explained in his first encyclical letter, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922, that men no longer acted as brothers to other men, but “as strangers, and even enemies,” that should resonate with us at all times:
Men today do not act as Christians, as brothers, but as strangers, and even enemies. The sense of man's personal dignity and of the value of human life has been lost in the brutal domination begotten of might and mere superiority in numbers. Many are intent on exploiting their neighbors solely for the purpose of enjoying more fully and on a larger scale the goods of this world. But they err grievously who have turned to the acquisition of material and temporal possessions and are forgetful of eternal and spiritual things, to the possession of which Jesus, Our Redeemer, by means of the Church, His living interpreter, calls mankind.
22. It is in the very nature of material objects that an inordinate desire for them becomes the root of every evil, of every discord, and in particular, of a lowering of the moral sense. On the one hand, things which are naturally base and vile can never give rise to noble aspirations in the human heart which was created by and for God alone and is restless until it finds repose in Him. On the other hand, material goods (and in this they differ greatly from those of the spirit which the more of them we possess the more remain to be acquired) the more they are divided among men the less each one has and, by consequence, what one man has another cannot possibly possess unless it be forcibly taken away from the first. Such being the case, worldly possessions can never satisfy all in equal manner nor give rise to a spirit of universal contentment, but must become perforce a source of division among men and of vexation of spirit, as even the Wise Man Solomon experienced: "Vanity of vanities, and vexation of spirit." (Ecclesiastes i, 2, 14). . . .
There is over and above the absence of peace and the evils attendant on this absence, another deeper and more profound cause for present-day conditions. This cause was even beginning to show its head before the War and the terrible calamities consequent on that cataclysm should have proven a remedy for them if mankind had only taken the trouble to understand the real meaning of those terrible events. In the Holy Scriptures we read: "They that have forsaken the Lord, shall be consumed." (Isaias i, 28) No less well known are the words of the Divine Teacher, Jesus Christ, Who said: "Without me you can do nothing" (John xv, 5) and again, "He that gathereth not with me, scattereth." (Luke xi, 23)
28. These words of the Holy Bible have been fulfilled and are now at this very moment being fulfilled before our very eyes. Because men have forsaken God and Jesus Christ, they have sunk to the depths of evil. They waste their energies and consume their time and efforts in vain sterile attempts to find a remedy for these ills, but without even being successful in saving what little remains from the existing ruin. It was a quite general desire that both our laws and our governments should exist without recognizing God or Jesus Christ, on the theory that all authority comes from men, not from God. Because of such an assumption, these theorists fell very short of being able to bestow upon law not only those sanctions which it must possess but also that secure basis for the supreme criterion of justice which even a pagan philosopher like Cicero saw clearly could not be derived except from the divine law. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)
Paragraph number twenty-eight above says it all:
They waste their energies and consume their time and efforts in vain sterile attempts to find a remedy for these ills, but without even being successful in saving what little remains from the existing ruin. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)
Yet is that even believing Catholics, especially many younger Catholics who know nothing of American political history, permit themselves to be distracted by the bread and circuses and the dog and pony shows of naturalism in the belief that they can change a process that is corrupt to its core because it is based on the anti-Incarnational sin of religious indifferentism, which itself has led to the triumph of practical atheism as the lowest common social denominator.
Catholicism is the one and only foundation for all legitimate social order.
Pope Pius XI made the same point in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922:
Since the Church is the safe and sure guide to conscience, for to her safe-keeping alone there has been confided the doctrines and the promise of the assistance of Christ, she is able not only to bring about at the present hour a peace that is truly the peace of Christ, but can, better than any other agency which We know of, contribute greatly to the securing of the same peace for the future, to the making impossible of war in the future. For the Church teaches (she alone has been given by God the mandate and the right to teach with authority) that not only our acts as individuals but also as groups and as nations must conform to the eternal law of God. In fact, it is much more important that the acts of a nation follow God's law, since on the nation rests a much greater responsibility for the consequences of its acts than on the individual.
When, therefore, governments and nations follow in all their activities, whether they be national or international, the dictates of conscience grounded in the teachings, precepts, and example of Jesus Christ, and which are binding on each and every individual, then only can we have faith in one another's word and trust in the peaceful solution of the difficulties and controversies which may grow out of differences in point of view or from clash of interests. An attempt in this direction has already and is now being made; its results, however, are almost negligible and, especially so, as far as they can be said to affect those major questions which divide seriously and serve to arouse nations one against the other. No merely human institution of today can be as successful in devising a set of international laws which will be in harmony with world conditions as the Middle Ages were in the possession of that true League of Nations, Christianity. It cannot be denied that in the Middle Ages this law was often violated; still it always existed as an ideal, according to which one might judge the acts of nations, and a beacon light calling those who had lost their way back to the safe road.
There exists an institution able to safeguard the sanctity of the law of nations. This institution is a part of every nation; at the same time it is above all nations. She enjoys, too, the highest authority, the fullness of the teaching power of the Apostles. Such an institution is the Church of Christ. She alone is adapted to do this great work, for she is not only divinely commissioned to lead mankind, but moreover, because of her very make-up and the constitution which she possesses, by reason of her age-old traditions and her great prestige, which has not been lessened but has been greatly increased since the close of the War, cannot but succeed in such a venture where others assuredly will fail.
It is apparent from these considerations that true peace, the peace of Christ, is impossible unless we are willing and ready to accept the fundamental principles of Christianity, unless we are willing to observe the teachings and obey the law of Christ, both in public and private life. If this were done, then society being placed at last on a sound foundation, the Church would be able, in the exercise of its divinely given ministry and by means of the teaching authority which results therefrom, to protect all the rights of God over men and nations. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)
In other words, Catholicism is the sole source of human sanctification and the legitimate teacher of men, and thus possesses the sole ability to provide the foundation for a social order that can be as just as possible in a world filled with fallen men, a point that Pope Pius XI reiterated in his encyclical letter commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the issuance of Rerum Novarum, Quadregesimo Anno, May 15, 1931:
127. Yet, if we look into the matter more carefully and more thoroughly, we shall clearly perceive that, preceding this ardently desired social restoration, there must be a renewal of the Christian spirit, from which so many immersed in economic life have, far and wide, unhappily fallen away, lest all our efforts be wasted and our house be built not on a rock but on shifting sand.[62]
128. And so, Venerable Brethren and Beloved Sons, having surveyed the present economic system, We have found it laboring under the gravest of evils. We have also summoned Communism and Socialism again to judgment and have found all their forms, even the most modified, to wander far from the precepts of the Gospel.
129. "Wherefore," to use the words of Our Predecessor, "if human society is to be healed, only a return to Christian life and institutions will heal it."[63] For this alone can provide effective remedy for that excessive care for passing things that is the origin of all vices; and this alone can draw away men's eyes, fascinated by and wholly fixed on the changing things of the world, and raise them toward Heaven. Who would deny that human society is in most urgent need of this cure now?
130. Minds of all, it is true, are affected almost solely by temporal upheavals, disasters, and calamities. But if we examine things critically with Christian eyes, as we should, what are all these compared with the loss of souls? Yet it is not rash by any means to say that the whole scheme of social and economic life is now such as to put in the way of vast numbers of mankind most serious obstacles which prevent them from caring for the one thing necessary; namely, their eternal salvation. (Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, May 15, 1931.)
Most men today, however, are more concerned about the acquisition or possible loss of wealth once attained than they are about their immortal souls as they have “excessive care passing things that” are “the origin of all vices.” Only the true Faith can draw “men’s eyes, fascinated by and wholly fixated on the changing things of the world, and raise them toward Heaven.”
This world in which we live is passing away. The triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary will be made manifest ‘ere long. We must be focused on the sanctification and salvation of our own immortal souls as we keep our First Friday devotions with fervor and pray Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary every day, including on each First Saturday for the intentions specified by the Mother of God in the Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal, and to Sister Lucia dos Santos in Tuy, Spain.
The following prayer, found in The Raccolta is one that we should pray every day:
O Christ Jesus, I acknowledge Thee as the King of the universe; all that has been made hath been created for Thee. Exercise over me all Thy sovereign rights. I hereby renew the promises of my Baptism, renouncing Satan and all his works and pomps, and I engage myself to lead henceforth a truly Christian life.And in an especial manner do I undertake to bring about the triumph of the rights of God and Thy Church, so far as in me lies. Divine Heart of Jesus, I offer Thee my poor actions to obtain the acknowledment of every heart of Thy sacred kingly power. In such wise may the Kingdom of Thy peace be firmly established throoughout all the earth. Amen. (As found in (The Raccolta: A Manual of Indulgences, Prayers and Devotions Enriched with Indulgences, approved by Pope Pius XII, May 30, 1951, and published in English by Benziger Brothers, New York, 1957, Number 272, p. 149.)
Put your trust in the Most Sacred Heart of Christ the King and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, praying as many Rosaries each day as one’s state-in-life permits.
Vivat Christus Rex!
Vivat Regina Mariae Immaculate!
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.
Pope Saint Leo II, pray for us.
Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., On the Feast of Pope Saint Leo II
It were fitting that our attention should not be diverted, on this Vigil, from the august object which is occupying the Church in the preparation of her chants. But the triumph of Peter will shine out with all the more splendor in proportion as the testimony he rendered to the son of God is shown to have been maintained with all fidelity, during the long series of succeeding ages, by the Pontiffs, inheritors of his primacy. For a considerable time, the twenty-eighth of June was consecrated to the memory of Saint Leo the Great; it was the day chosen by Sergius I for the Translation of the illustrious Doctor, and indeed a more magnificent usher into tomorrow’s Solemnity could hardly be desired. From no other lips but his has Rome ever set forth, in such elevated language, the glories of these two Princes of the apostles and her own fame; never since the incomparable scene enacted at Cesarea Philippi, has the mystery of the Man-God been affirmed in manner so sublime, as on that day wherein the Church, striking the impious Eutyches at Chalcedon, received from Leo the immortal formula of Christian Dogma. Peter once more spoke by the mouth of Leo; yet far was the cause from being then ended: two centuries more were needed; and another Leo it was, even he whom we this day celebrate, who had the honor of ending it, at the Sixth Council.
The Spirit of God, ever watchful over the development of the sacred liturgy, by no means wished any change to be effected on this day in the train of thought of the faithful people. Thus when towards the beginning of the fourteenth century, the 11th of April was again assigned to Saint Leo I (for that was really the primitive place occupied by him on the cycle), Saint Leo II, the anniversary of whose death was this 28th of June, and who hitherto had been merely commemorated thereon, being now raised to the rank of a semi-double, came forward, as it were, to remind the Faithful of the glorious struggles maintained both by his predecessor and by himself, in the order of apostolic confession.
How was it that Saint Leo’s clear and complete exposition of the dogma and the anathemas of Chalcedon did not succeed in silencing the arguments of that heresy which refused to our nature its noblest title, by denying that it had been assumed in its integrity by the Divine Word? Because for Truth to win the day, it suffices not merely to expose the lie uttered by error. More than once, alas! history gives instances of the most solemn anathemas ending in nothing but lulling the vigilance of the guardians of the Holy City. The struggle seemed ended, the need of repose was making itself felt amidst the combatants, a thousand other matters called for the attention of the Church’s rulers; and so while feigning utmost deference, nay, ardor even, if needful, for the new enactments, error went on noiselessly, making profit of the silence which ensued after its defeat. Then did its progress become all the more redoubtable at the very time it was pretending to have disappeared without leaving a track behind.
Thanks, however, to the Divine Head, who never ceases to watch over his work, such trials as we have been alluding to, seldom reach to such a painful depth as that into which Leo II had to probe with steel and fire, in order to save the Church. Once only has the terrified world beheld anathema strike the summit of the holy mount. Honorius, placed on the pinnacle of the Church, “had not made her shine with the splendor of apostolic doctrine, but by profane treason, had suffered the faith, which should be spotless, to be exposed to subversion;” Leo II, therefore, sending forth his thunders, in unison with the assembled Church, against the new Eutychians and their accomplices, spared not even his predecessor. And yet, as all acknowledge, Honorius had otherwise been an irreproachable Pope; and even in the question at stake, he had been far from either professing heresy or teaching error. Wherein, then, did his fault lie?
The Emperor Heraclius, who, by victory had reached the height of power, beheld with much concern how division persistently lived on between the Catholics of his Empire and the late disciples of Eutyches. The Bishop of the Imperial City, the Patriarch Sergius, fostered these misgivings in his master’s mind. Vain of a certain amount of political skill which he fancied himself to possess, he now aimed at re-establishing, by his sole effort, that unity which the Council of Chalcedon and Saint Leo the Great had failed to obtain; thus would he make himself a name. The disputants agreed in acknowledging two Natures in Jesus Christ; hence to reply to these advances of theirs, one thing were needed, thought he, viz., to impose silence on the question as to whether there are him Him two Wills or only one. The enthusiasm with which this evident compromise was hailed by the various sects rebellious to the Fourth General Council showed well enough that they still preserved and hallowed all the venom of error; and the very fact of their denying, or (which came practically to the same thing) hesitating to acknowledge that in the Man-God there is any other Will than that proper to the Divine Nature, was equivalent to declaring that He had assumed but a semblance of Human Nature, since this Nature could by no means exist devoid of that Will which is proper to It. Therefore, the Monophysites, or partisans of the one Nature in Christ, made no difficulty in henceforth being called by the name of Monothelites, or partisans of the one Will. Sergius, the apostle of this novel unity, might well congratulate himself; Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, hailed with one accord the benefit of this “peace.” Was not the whole East here represented in her patriarchates? If Rome in her turn would but acquiesce, the triumph would be complete! Jerusalem, however, proved a jarring note in this strange concert.
Jerusalem, the witness of the anguish suffered by the Man-God in his Human Nature, had heard him cry out in the Garden of His Agony: Father, if it be possible, let this Chalice pass from me; yet, not My Will, but Thine be done! The City of dolors knew better than any other what to hold concerning these two Wills brought there face to face, yet which had, by the heroism of Incomparable Love, been maintained in such full harmony; the time for her to bear testimony was come. The Monk Sophronius, now her bishop, was by his sanctity, courage, and learning, up to the mark for the task that lay before him. But while, in the charity of his soul, he was seeking to reclaim Sergius, before appearing against him to the Roman Pontiff, the bishop of Constantinople already took the initiative; he succeeded thus, by a hypocritical letter, in circumventing Honorius, and in getting him to impose silence on the Patriarch of Jerusalem. Hence, when at last, Saint Sophronius, at the head of the bishops of his province assembled in council, thought it had become a positive duty on his own part to turn towards Rome, it was but to receive for answer a confirmation of the prohibition to disturb the peace. Woeful mistake! yet withal, it by no means directly implicated the Infallible Magistracy; it was a measure exclusively political, but one which was, all the same, to cost bitter tears and much blood to the Church, and was to result, fifty years later, in the condemnation of the unfortunate Honorius.
The Holy Ghost, indeed, who has guaranteed the infallible purity of the doctrine flowing officially from the Apostolic Chair, has not pledged himself to protect in a like degree, from all failure, either the virtue, or the private judgment, or even the administrative acts of the Sovereign Pontiff. Entering into the views of this marvellous solidarity which the Creator made to reign both upon earth and in heaven, the Man-God, when he founded the society of saints upon the authentic and immutable basis of the Faith of Peter, willed that to the prayers of all should be confided the charge of completing his work, by obtaining for the successors of Peter such preservative graces as do not of themselves necessarily spring from the divine Constitution of the Church.
Meanwhile Mahomet was just letting loose his hordes upon the world. Heraclius was now to learn the worth of his Patriarch’s lying peace, and was to come down lower in shame than he had been exalted in glory by his victories over the Persians, in the days when he had acted as the hero of the Cross. Palestine, Syria, and Egypt fell simultaneously beneath the blows of the lieutenants of the Prophet. Sophronius, placed as he was in the very midst of the scene of invasion, grew still greater under trial. Abandoned by the emperor, where the defense of the empire was at stake, disavowed by Rome, as regarded Faith, he alone intrepidly treated with Omar, as power opposed to power; and when about to die, still hoping against all hope in Rome, though thence had come a blow harder far to bear than that of the Caliph, he confided to Stephen of Dora the supreme, which the latter thus relates: “In his justice strong as a lion, contemning calumnies and intrigues, blessed Sophronius took me, unworthy as I am, and conducted me to the sacred spot of Calvary. There he bound me by an indissoluble engagement, in these words: Thou shalt have to render account to him who being God was voluntarily crucified for us according to the Flesh on this spot, when on the day of his terrible Coming he will appear in glory to judge the living and the dead, if thou defer or neglect the interests of his Faith now in peril. Well knowest thou, that I cannot in the body do this thing, being hindered by the incursion of the Saracens which our sins have deserved. But do thou set out as soon as possible, and go from these confines of the earth unto the furthest extremity, until thou reach the See Apostolic, there where are set the foundations of orthodox dogma. Go again and again, not once, not twice, but endlessly, and make known to the holy personages who reside in that place, the shock that these lands of ours have sustained. Importunately, ceaselessly, implore and supplicate, until Apostolic prudence at length determine, by its canonical judgment, the victory over these perfidious teachings.”
The Bishop of Dora was faithful to the behest of Sophronius. When, twelve years later, he gave this touching narrative at the Council of Lateran in 649, it was then the third time that despite the snares and other difficulties of the times, he could say: “We have taken the wings of a dove, as David speaks, and we have come to declare our situation to this See, elevated in the sight of all, this sovereign, this principal See, where is to be found remedy for the wound that has been made upon us.” Saint Martin I, who received this appeal, was one worthy to hear it; and soon afterwards he repaired by his own martyrdom the fault committed by Honorius, in suffering himself to be tricked by an impostor. His glorious death, followed by the tortures endured for the Truth by the saintly Abbot Maximus and his companions, prepared the victory which the heroic faith of Sophronius had announced to the Roman Pontiff. Admirable was this amends received by Holy Church for an odious silence: now were Her Doctors to be seen, with tongue plucked out, still continuing by divine power to proclaim that Christian dogma which cannot be enchained; still with lopped off hands, finding means, in their indomitable zeal, to affix to the mutilated arm the pen whose function, now made doubly glorious, continued thus to carry throughout the world the refutation of falsehood.
But it is time to come to the issue of this memorable contest. It is to be found in him whose feast we are this day celebrating. Saint Agatho had assembled the sixth General Council at Constantinople, at the request of another Constantine, an enemy of heresy and a victor over Islam. Faith and justice now did the work, hand in hand; and Saint Leo II could at last sing aloud: “O holy Mother Church, put off thy garb of mourning, and deck thee in robes of gladness. Exult now with joyous confidence: thy liberty is not cramped.” (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Feast of Pope Saint Leo II, July 3.)
Pope Saint Leo II fought against falsehood.
The conciliar "popes" have embraced it.
Do not be concerned about who sees the truth about the state of the Church Militant in this time of apostasy and betrayal. Family members may not see the truth. Former friends and acquaintances may not see the truth. We cannot ask why such people insist that the counterfeit church of conciliarism is the Catholic Church when it is in fact Antichrist’s Church of Lies and Sin. We must simply be grateful to Our Lady for sending us the graces that we need to see the true state of the Church Militant. We must beseech her daily, especially through Most Holy Rosary, entrusting all the crosses of the present moment as the consecrated slaves of her Divine Son, Christ the King, through her own Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, which will triumph in the end.
Seeing the truth does not make us one whit better than anyone else who does not. It is more than possible to see the truth and to lose one’s soul by being arrogantly self-righteous about having done so. We must be meek and humble of heart if we seek to take refuge in the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary and to pray her Most Holy Rosary assiduously every day.
We must rely upon Our Lady to help us to be ready for the call from her Divine Son whenever it comes, and we must rely upon the graces she sends to us to persevere in the truth no matter what it may cost us in human terms as we continue to pray for the restoration of a true pope on the Throne of Saint Peter and an end to the nefarious religious sect that dares to call itself the Catholic Church.
Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!