Don't Place Your Bets on Brett

Now, where was I?

Ah, yes, I remember. Thanks for waiting.

The subject of American jurisprudence and the retirement of Associate Justice Anthony McLeod Kennedy of the Supreme Court of the United States of America was discussed at length when last I had the opportunity to write an actual, honest-to-goodness article for this website before we became occupied with what continues to be an unresolved situation that has forced us to be extra cautious on our property and while driving on our local roadways. This is something of a very brief follow-up to that very long article.

This article’s title has nothing to do about whether President Donald John Trump’s nominee to replace the pro-abortion, pro-perversity Anthony McLeod Kennedy, Brett Kavanaugh, will be confirmed by a majority vote of the United States Senate. Kavanaugh will be confirmed despite all of the huffing and puffing by Senate Democrats and despite all of the well-organized “demonstrations” and “protests” that have been staged by groups associated with and funded by the tentacles of billionaire George Soros.

My own first reaction upon reading the news of Brett Michael Kavanaugh’s nomination was, “Great. Trump has nominated a somewhat more "conservative" version Anthony McLeod Kennedy to replace Anthony McLeod Kennedy. Wonderful.” Obviously, this was sarcasm on the part of a displaced New Yorker. The point, however, is this: Brett Michael Kavanaugh has been part of the Washington, District of Columbia, establishment since his birth on February 12, 1965. 

All right. Sure, Brett Michael Kavanaugh was raised in Bethesda, Maryland, but that is part of the District of Columbia metropolitan area, which is why it is in the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. Kavanaugh has spent his entire life influenced by powerful establishment Republicans. One of the last things that the Supreme Court of the United States of America needs is another establishment Republican and another product of an Ivy League university, and the very last thing that the high court needs is yet another cut his political and legal eye-teeth in the administration of the statist “conservative” named George Walker Bush.

Those who believe that Brett Michael Kavanaugh would vote to overturn the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, January 22, 1973, may find themselves surprised to find a jurist in the mode of both Chief Justice John Glover Roberts, who was appointed by Dubya in 2005, and of the man he has been nominated to replace, Anthony McLeod Kennedy.

It was in his current capacity as a judge on the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Kavanaugh wrote a dissenting opinion in the case of Priests for Life v. United States Department of Health and Human Services, May 15, 2015, that, while reaching the correct result, included the conviction that the government of the United States of America had a “compelling interest” in assuring that insurance companies provide coverage for contraceptives, which, of course, are evil of their very nature:

First, under Hobby Lobby, the regulations substantially burden the religious organizations’ exercise of religion because the regulations require the organizations to take an action contrary to their sincere religious beliefs (submitting the form) or else pay significant monetary penalties. Second, that said, Hobby Lobby strongly suggests that the Government has a compelling interest in facilitating access to contraception for the employees of these religious organizations.

Third, this case therefore comes down to the least restrictive means question. Under Hobby Lobby, Wheaton College, and Little Sisters of the Poor, requiring the religious organizations to submit this form is not the Government’s least restrictive means of furthering its interest in facilitating access to contraception for the organizations’ employees. Rather, the Government can achieve its interest even if it accepts the less restrictive notice that the Supreme Court has already relied on in the Wheaton College and Little Sisters of the Poor cases. Unlike the form required by current federal regulations, the Wheaton College/Little Sisters of the Poor notice does not require a religious organization to identify or notify its insurer, and thus lessens the religious organization’s complicity in what it considers to be wrongful. And even with just the Wheaton College/Little Sisters of the Poor notice, the Government can independently determine the identity of the organization’s insurer and thereby ensure that the same insurer continues to provide the same contraceptive coverage to the organization’s employees. Hence, the Wheaton College/Little Sisters of the Poor notice is a less restrictive way for the Government to achieve its compelling interest. (Priests for Life, Inc., v. United States Department of Health and Human Services.)

No government of any kind or at any level has any kind of “compelling interest” to assure that women have access to contraceptives. Once one concedes that there such a “compelling interest” exists, however, then one becomes trapped in a never-ending series of legal sophisms to “balance” “religious liberty” claims against the nonexistent “right” of women to frustrate the natural end for which God has given to rational beings the generative powers. Additionally, to call to mind the words of the late Father Paul Marx, O.S.B., the founder of Human Life International, most contraceptives abort, and most contraceptives abort most of the time.

The “conservative” creature of Washington, District of Columbia, Brett Michael Kavanaugh, thus used a tortured line of sophistic reasoning to reach a conclusion about a matter that is beyond the power of human beings to decide. However, he is far from alone in this as the associate justice who wrote the Court’s decision in the case of Hobby Lobby, Samuel Alito, used the exact same legal “reasoning” in the combined cases of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Connestoga Wood Specialities v Burwell, June 30, 2014.

Here is the essential reasoning of Justice Alito in the combined cases of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Connestoga Wood Specialities v Burwell:

We must decide in these cases whether the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), 107Stat. 1488, 42 U. S. C. §2000bb et seq., permits the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to demand that three closely held corporations provide health-insurance coverage for methods of contraception that violate the sincerely held religious beliefs of the companies’ owners. We hold that the regulations that impose this obligation violate RFRA, which prohibits the Federal Government from taking any action that substantially burdens the exercise of religion unless that action constitutes the least restrictive means of serving a compelling government interest.

In holding that the HHS mandate is unlawful, we reject HHS’s argument that the owners of the companies forfeited all RFRA protection when they decided to organize their businesses as corporations rather than sole proprietorships or general partnerships. The plain terms of RFRA make it perfectly clear that Congress did not discriminate in this way against men and women who wish to run their businesses as for-profit corporations in the manner required by their religious beliefs.

Since RFRA applies in these cases, we must decide whether the challenged HHS regulations substantially burden the exercise of religion, and we hold that they do. The owners of the businesses have religious objections to abortion, and according to their religious beliefs the four contraceptive methods at issue are abortifacients. If the owners comply with the HHS mandate, they believe they will be facilitating abortions, and if they do not comply, they will pay a very heavy price—as much as $1.3 million per day, or about $475 million per year, in the case of one of the companies. If these consequences do not amount to a substantial burden, it is hard to see what would.

Under RFRA, a Government action that imposes a substantial burden on religious exercise must serve a compelling government interest, and we assume that the HHS regulations satisfy this requirement. But in order for the HHS mandate to be sustained, it must also constitute the least restrictive means of serving that interest, and the mandate plainly fails that test. There are other ways in which Congress or HHS could equally ensure that every woman has cost-free access to the particular contraceptives at issue here and, indeed, to all FDA-approved contraceptives.

In fact, HHS has already devised and implemented a system that seeks to respect the religious liberty of religious nonprofit corporations while ensuring that the employees of these entities have precisely the same access to all FDA-approved contraceptives as employees of companies whose owners have no religious objections to providing such coverage. The employees of these religious nonprofit corporations still have access to insurance coverage without cost sharing for all FDA-approved contracep-tives; and according to HHS, this system imposes no net economic burden on the insurance companies that are required to provide or secure the coverage.

Although HHS has made this system available to religious nonprofits that have religious objections to the contraceptive mandate, HHS has provided no reason why the same system cannot be made available when the owners of for-profit corporations have similar religious objections. We therefore conclude that this system constitutes an alternative that achieves all of the Government’s aims while providing greater respect for religious liberty. And under RFRA, that conclusion means that enforcement of the HHS contraceptive mandate against the objecting parties in these cases is unlawful.

As this description of our reasoning shows, our holding is very specific. We do not hold, as the principal dissent alleges, that for-profit corporations and other commercial enterprises can “opt out of any law (saving only tax laws) they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs.” Post, at 1 (opinion of Ginsburg, J.). Nor do we hold, as the dissent implies, that such corporations have free rein to take steps that impose “disadvantages . . . on others” or that require “the general public [to] pick up the tab.” Post, at 1–2. And we certainly do not hold or suggest that “RFRA demands accommodation of a for-profit corporation’s religious beliefs no matter the impact that accommodation may have on . . . thousands of women employed by Hobby Lobby.” Post, at 2. The effect of the HHS-created accommodation on the women employed by Hobby Lobby and the other companies involved in these cases would be precisely zero. Under that accommodation, these women would still be entitled to all FDA-approved contraceptives without cost sharing(BURWELL v. HOBBY LOBBY STORES, INC.)

To decide that the application of the Religious Freedom Restoration to owners of closely-held companies does not cause an “undue burden” on women to realize the benefits mandated by  Department of Health and Human Service’s contraceptive mandate, which was, if you recall, written personally by the former Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, a nefarious pro-abort Catholic who was closely allied and took blood money from the murdered late-term baby-killer George Tiller (see Reichstag II) and remains a Catholic in good standing in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, is to use the exact same reasoning that Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy employed in the case of Gonzales v. Carhart, April 19, 2007.

To wit, Justice Kennedy argued that the Federal government’s ban on the the killing of babies by means of “partial-birth abortion,” known in the baby-killing trade as “dilation and extraction,” in cases except where it is alleged that a mother’s life is endangered represented no undue burden on women who wanted to kill their babies in the later stages of their development because other methods of late-term baby-killing (hysterotomy, dilation and evacuation, saline solution poisoning) remained perfectly legal:

Dr. Haskell’s approach is not the only method of killing the fetus once its head lodges in the cervix, and “the process has evolved” since his presentation. Planned Parenthood, 320 F. Supp. 2d, at 965. Another doctor, for example, squeezes the skull after it has been pierced “so that enough brain tissue exudes to allow the head to pass through.” App. in No. 05-380, at 41; see also Carhart, supra, at 866-867, 874. Still other physicians reach into the cervix with their forceps and crush the fetus’ skull. Carhart, supra, at 858, 881. Others continue to pull the fetus out of the woman until it disarticulates at the neck, in effect decapitating it. These doctors then grasp the head with forceps, crush it, and remove it. Id., at 864, 878; see also Planned Parenthood, supra, at 965.

Some doctors performing an intact D&E attempt to remove the fetus without collapsing the skull. See Carhart, supra, at 866, 869. Yet one doctor would not allow delivery of a live fetus younger than 24 weeks because “the objective of [his] procedure is to perform an abortion,” not a birth. App. in No. 05-1382, at 408-409. The doctor thus answered in the affirmative when asked whether he would “hold the fetus’ head on the internal side of the [cervix] in order to collapse the skull” and kill the fetus before it is born. Id., at 409; see also Carhart, supra, at 862, 878. Another doctor testified he crushes a fetus’ skull not only to reduce its size but also to ensure the fetus is dead before it is removed. For the staff to have to deal with a fetus that has “some viability to it, some movement of limbs,” according to this doctor, “[is] always a difficult situation.” App. in No. 05-380, at 94; see Carhart, supra, at 858.

D&E and intact D&E are not the only second-trimester abortion methods. Doctors also may abort a fetus through medical induction. The doctor medicates the woman to induce labor, and contractions occur to deliver the fetus. Induction, which unlike D&E should occur in a hospital, can last as little as 6 hours but can take longer than 48. It accounts for about five percent of second-trimester abortions before 20 weeks of gestation and 15 percent of those after 20 weeks. Doctors turn to two other methods of second-trimester abortion, hysterotomy and hysterectomy, only in emergency situations because they carry increased risk of complications. In a hysterotomy, as in a cesarean section, the doctor removes the fetus by making an incision through the abdomen and uterine wall to gain access to the uterine cavity. A hysterectomy requires the removal of the entire uterus. These two procedures represent about .07% of second-trimester abortions. Nat. Abortion Federation, 330 F. Supp. 2d, at 467; Planned Parenthood, supra, at 962-963. (Gonzales v. Carhart, April 19, 2007.)

In other words, Justice Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy both reasoned their way to conclusions that well-meaning pro-life Americans at the time would save babies by pointing out quite explicitly that those who felt “burdened” by the laws in question had other means available to kill their babies and, in the present instance, to obtain health insurance coverage for the abortifacients to do so.

While taking nothing away from the personal victory of the owners of Hobby Lobby Stores and Conestoga Wood Specialties, the fact remains that the baby-killing potions they refuse, correctly, of course, to provide coverage for directly have remained available to their employees by the alternatives provided by the Department of Health and Human Services. And while not seeking for one moment to castigate these courageous individuals who have suffered much at the hands of the anti-life anti-family, anti-Theistic statists, it is nevertheless true that their blithe acceptance of contraception in se and their willingness to provide it is offensive to God in the objective order of things and is detrimental to the eternal and temporal good of their employees and that of society-at-large.

Then again, Protestantism long ago made its “official reconciliation” with family planning. It was shortly after the Lambeth Conference met in England in 1930 that a federation of Protestant sects gathered to endorse the use of contraceptives in “limited” cases as being perfectly in accord with the Gospel of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. This caused The Washington Post, of all newspapers, to issue the following editorial on March 22, 1931:

The Federal Council of Churches in America some time ago appointed a committee on “marriage and the home,” which has now submitted a report favoring a “careful and restrained” use of contraceptive devices to regulate the size of families. The committee seems to have a serious struggle with itself in adhering to Christian doctrine while at the same time indulging in amateurish excursions in the field of economics, legislation, medicine, and sociology. The resulting report is a mixture of religious obscurantism and modernistic materialism which departs from the ancient standards of religion and yet fails to blaze a path toward something better.

The mischief that would result from an an attempt to place the stamp of church approval upon any scheme for “regulating the size of families” is evidently quite beyond the comprehension of this pseudo-scientific committee. It is impossible to reconcile the doctrine of the divine institution of marriage with any modernistic plan for the mechanical regulation of human birth. The church must either reject the plain teachings of the Bible or reject schemes for the “scientific” production of human souls. Carried to its logical conclusion, the committee’s report if carried into effect would lead to the death-knell of marriage as a holy institution, by establishing degrading practices which would encourage indiscriminate immorality. The suggestion that the use of legalized contraceptives would be “careful and restrained” is preposterous. If the churches are to become organizations for political and ‘scientific’ propaganda they should be honest and reject the Bible, scoff at Christ as an obsolete and unscientific teacher, and strike out boldly as champions of politics and science as substitutes for the old-time religion. (“Forgetting Religion,” Editorial, The Washington Post, March 22, 1933.)

Several objections might be raised to this commentary, starting with the belief that the decision in the combined Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores and Burwell v. Connestoga Wood Specialities cases four years ago dealt a severe blow to ObamaDeathCare’s “one size fits all” mandates, some of which received “waivers,” whose authorization is not to be found in the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act from the master of unconstitutional actions, former President Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro, It should be pointed out, though, that ObamaDeathCare is still with us despite the executive orders and presidential directives issued by President Donald John Trump to protect the Little Sisters of the Poor and Wheaton College.

Additionally, the decision in the Hobby Lobby case did not change the underlying reasons why what is, for all intents and purposes, government-mandated free contraception for everyone, is here to stay.  Remember, “conservative” jurists such as Samuel L. Alito and Brett Michael Kavanaugh have said that government does have a “compelling interest” to provide them to women.

Yes, it is important to recognize the limitations of the concrete circumstances in which we live, meaning that, as noted earlier in this commentary, concessions were made by Justices Alito, Scalia and Thomas to the government’s “right” to mandate health insurance for contraceptive services in order to make it possible to apply the provisions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to the owners of Hobby Lobby Stores and Conestoga Wood Specialties. Pope Leo XIII taught in Libertas Praestantissimum, June 20, 1888, that Holy Mother Church will make use of the legal means available to her children to protect themselves without ever conceding anything to the falsehoods of “protections” that would be part of rightly-formed state that flow naturally from the Social Reign of Christ the King. All well and good.

My point remains, however, that the very fact that we find ourselves in this situation of arguing over the inarguable is the precise, inevitable result of the Protestant Revolution’s overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King that institutionalized theological relativism as a normal part of social life. Indeed, the revolution begun by Father Martin Luther before spreading all over the kingdoms of western Europe was founded on a rejection of the inviolability of a ratified and consummated marriage in complete defiance of the following words of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ:

[11] And he saith to them: Whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another, committeth adultery against her. [12] And if the wife shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery. (Mark 10:11.)

The forces of naturalism that can be termed as Judeo-Masony exploited Protestantism’s theological relativism to make it possible for the triumph of moral relativism in every nook and cranny of everyday existence. Attacking the the inviolability and the sanctity and fecundity of marriage has been a goal of Judeo-Masonry from its very inception:

Writing in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885, Pope Leo XIII explained how the theological relativism of Protestantism made possible the rise and the triumph of the naturalism of Judeo-Masonry:

23. 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.)

Brett Michael Kavanaugh himself understands nor accepts any of this. He is a legal positivist in the mode of all the other justices, whether “originalists” or “activists,” who have ever sat on the Supreme Court of the United States of America, including the Talmudic-friendly legal icon of the false opposite of the naturalist “right,” the late Antonin Scalia, who, along with the mercurial savior of ObamaDeathCare, Chief Justice John Glover Roberts, based his dissent from the Court on an appeal to “democracy” and the need to have the “people” “decide” a matter that is beyond the ability of mere creatures to change:

Understand well what this dissent is about: It is not about whether, in my judgment, the institution of marriage should be changed to include same-sex couples. It is instead about whether, in our democratic republic, that decision should rest with the people acting through their elected representatives, or with five lawyers who happen to hold commissions authorizing them to resolve legal disputes according to law. The Constitution leaves no doubt about the answer. (Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015.)  

I join THE CHIEF JUSTICE’s opinion in full. I write separately to call attention to this Court’s threat to American democracy. The substance of today’s decree is not of immense personal importance to me. The law can recognize as marriage whatever sexual attachments and living arrangements it wishes, and can accord them favorable civil consequences, from tax treatment to rights of inheritance.

Those civil consequences—and the public approval that conferring the name of marriage evidences—can perhaps have adverse social effects, but no more adverse than the effects of many other controversial laws. So it is not of special importance to me what the law says about marriage. It is of overwhelming importance, however, who it is that rules me. Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact—and the furthest extension one can even imagine—of the Court’s claimed power to create “liberties” that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves. (Associate Justice Antonin Scalia,Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015.)

In other words, “same-sex marriage” is a matter of complete indifference to these two Catholic legal positivists just as the true religion was a matter of complete indifference to the framers of the Constitution themselves. It is the “right” of the “people,” acting through their elected representatives, to govern themselves that matters, not the Sovereignty of Christ the King over men individually and their nations collectively.

Similarly, it is my prediction that Brett Michael Kavanaugh, who will be confirmed as Anthony McLeod Kennedy’s successor by the United States Senate no matter the protestations and riots of the adherents, might use a similar line of sophistic reasoning with respect to Roe v. Wade by deferring to the “will of the people” as expressed in those states whose legislatures have enacted “trigger laws” to keep the killing of the innocent preborn in place even if Roe v. Wade itself is overturned. That is, Kavanaugh is capable of contending, I believe, that the matter of the inviolability of innocent human life belongs to the “people,” not to what Scalia had referred to three years ago as “an unelected committee of nine.”

Now, it is important to note as a matter of complete intellectual honesty that it is very clear that Brett Michael Kavanaugh believes that Roe v. Wade, January 22, 1973, was decided wrongly. Indeed, he praised the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist who, as an associate justice, was only one of two Supreme Court justices to vote against the decision in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, in a speech he gave at the American Enterprise Institute on September 18, 2017:

Fourth, the Court’s power to recognize unenumerated rights. A few months after he joined the Court in 1972, Justice Rehnquist faced an oral argument about the constitutionality of a state law prohibiting abortion in the case of Roe vs. Wade. Rehnquist, along with Justice Byron White, ultimately dissented from the Court’s seven-two holding recognizing a constitutional right to abortion.

Rehnquist’s dissenting opinion did not suggest that the Constitution protected no rights other than those enumerated in the text of the Bill of Rights. But he stated that under the Court’s precedents, any such unenumerated right had to be rooted in the traditions in conscience of our people. Given the prevalence of abortion regulations both historically and at the time, Rehnquist said he could not reach such a conclusion about abortion. He explained that a law prohibiting an abortion, even where the mother’s life was in jeopardy, would violate the Constitution, but otherwise he stated the states had the power to legislate with regard to this matter. (Judge Brett Michael Kavanaugh Speech at American Enterprise Institute, September 18, 2017.)

A law prohibiting the direct taking of innocent human life in his mother’s womb when it is alleged that the mother’s life is “endangered” would violate the Constitution?

Neither the late William Hubbs Rehnquist, a Lutheran who was buried in a Lutheran service held at Saint Matthew’s Cathedral of the Archdiocese of Washington, District of Columbia, on September 7, 2005, did not understand nor does his fervent admirer, Judge Brett Michael Kavanaugh, accept the fact that it is the duty of the civil law to protect every innocent human life from all acts of direct, intentional killing regardless of the circumstances. Unconstitutional? Preposterous.

As I noted in Confirmations of a Different Sort, it is my belief that the apostle of precedent, John Glover Roberts, would vote to sustain the high court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, but it would not be surprising if he came to the opposite decision by making recourse to the “popular sovereignty” argument he advanced in Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015, the Feast of Saints John and Paul. In other words, given the fact that the “conscience” of “the people” has changed, an Associate Justice Brett Michael Kavanaugh would rule that the “people” in the states have the “right” to decide matters pertaining to the inviolability of innocent human life over which they have no legitimate authority.

This having been noted, it must be remembered that Brett Michael Kavanaugh also used specious reasoning in the case of Garza v. Hargan, October 20, 2017, that involved an illegal immigrant who had sought to kill her preborn baby.

Kavanaugh, who issued a per curiam (for the court) order, ruled that an illegal immigrant of minor age had a “constitutional right” to kill her baby, stipulating only that it is not unreasonable for the petitioner in this case for the government to require said minor to find a sponsor or to return to her own country according to the controlling regulations of the United States Department of Health and Human Services:

The Government argues that, pursuant to standard HHS policy, a sponsor may be secured for a minor unlawful immigrant in HHS custody, including for a minor who is seeking an abortion.    The Government argues that this process by which a minor is released from HHS custody to a sponsor does not unduly burden the minor’s right under Supreme Court precedent to an abortion.    We agree, so long as the process of securing a sponsor to whom the minor is released occurs expeditiously. Cf. Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 899 (1992); Ohio v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, 497 U.S. 502, 513 (1990).   

The District Court is directed to allow HHS until Tuesday, October 31, 2017, at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time for a sponsor to be secured for J.D. and for J.D. [Jane Doe] to be released to the sponsor.  If a sponsor is secured and J.D. is released from HHS custody to the sponsor, HHS agrees that J.D. then will be lawfully able, if she chooses, to obtain an abortion on her own pursuant to the relevant state law. If a sponsor is not secured and J.D. is not released to the sponsor by that time, the District Court may re-enter a temporary restraining order, preliminary injunction, or other appropriate order, and the Government or J.D. may, if they choose, immediately appeal.  We note that the Government has assumed, for purposes of this case, that J.D. Ban unlawful immigrant who apparently was detained shortly after unlawfully crossing the border into the United States possesses a constitutional right to obtain an abortion in the United States. (Order Issued by Judge Kavanaugh in Garza v. Hargan)

Although Judge Brett Michael Kavanaugh has been lauded by neoconservatives for “faithfully applying the law,” laws and judicial decisions that are unjust are no laws at all. They must never be obeyed or “faithfully applied.”

It is especially wrong for a Catholic jurist to permit himself to live in a vacuum of “moral neutrality” whereby he can be said to wash his hands in a figurative sense of the shedding of innocent blood by taking shelter in his “obligations” to “follow the law.”

Defenders of Kavanaugh’s ruling contend that the newly nominated man to replace Anthony McLeod Kennedy on the Supreme Court of the United States of America was trying to apply existing Federal regulations to make it possible for Jane Doe to thoughtfully reconsider what he called a “momentous life decision” in his dissenting opinion after the full District of Columbia Circuit Court Appeals met on October 24, 2017, to overturn his initial ruling of October 20, 2017:

Today’s majority decision, by contrast, “substantially” adopts the panel dissent and is ultimately based on a constitutional principle as novel as it is wrong: a new right for unlawful immigrant minors in U.S. Government detention to obtain immediate abortion on demand, thereby barring any Government efforts to expeditiously transfer the minors to their immigration sponsors before they make that momentous life decision. The majority’s decision represents a radical extension of the Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence. It is in line with dissents over the years by Justices Brennan, Marshall, and Blackmun, not with the many majority opinions of the Supreme Court that have repeatedly upheld reasonable regulations that do not impose an undue burden on the abortion right recognized by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade. . . .

But if transfer does not work, given existing Supreme Court precedent and the position the Government has so far advanced in this litigation, it could turn out that the Government will be required by existing Supreme Court precedent to allow the abortion, even though the minor at that point would still be residing in a U.S. Government detention facility.  If so, the Government would be in a similar position as it is in with adult women prisoners in federal prison and with adult women unlawful immigrants in U.S.  Government custody.  The U.S. Government allows women in those circumstances to obtain an abortion.  In any event, we can immediately consider any additional arguments from the Government if and when transfer to a sponsor is unsuccessful.  In sum, under the Government’s arguments in this case and the Supreme Court’s precedents, the unlawful immigrant minor is assumed to have a right under precedent to an abortion; the Government may seek to expeditiously transfer the minor to a sponsor  before  the  abortion  occurs;  and  if  no  sponsor  is expeditiously  located,  then  it  could  turn  out  that  the Government  will  be  required  by  existing  Supreme  Court precedent to allow the abortion, depending on what arguments the Government can make at that point.  These rules resulting from the panel order are consistent with and dictated by Supreme Court precedent. (Full United States Circuit Court of Appeals overturning of Judge Brett Michael Kavanaugh's original order in the case of Garza v. Hargan.)

In other words, Judge Brett Michael Kavanaugh wrote in his dissenting opinion in the case of Garza v. Hargan as decided en banc by the full United States Circuit of Appeals for the District of Columbia on October 24, 2017, that he accepts the “state of law” concerning the “right” of an illegal immigrant woman to kill her baby under the cover of the civil law, believing only that such a woman is not entitled to kill her baby immediately upon making her “momentous life decision” to do so.

This is pure poppycock and sophistry.

Catholics have a duty before God to be faithful to His truth in all circumstances, and to concede that a civil law sanctioning the killing of an innocent human being, whether immediately or after a period of time, is valid and applicable is morally repugnant. This is the sort of false, positivistic “reasoning” that seeks to limit the killing of innocent babies without challenging the basic false premise that babies can be killed under the cover of the civil law.

Such “reasoning,” as noted above, was of the sort used by Samuel L. Alito in the Hobby Lobby case and by Chief Justice Roberts and the late Associate Justice Antonin Scalia in Obergefell v. Hodges. Everything including, jurisprudence, must be turned upside turn and inside out once mere mortals believe that they have the nonexistent authority to decide that which is beyond mere mortals to decide. Brett Michael Kavanaugh thus has a legal track record of specious reasoning to avoid addressing the simple fact that no human being or human institution of civil governance has any authority to “decide” anything about the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law. Period.

Beyond that, of course, those who enter a country illegally should be accorded no constitutional protections other than the assurance of a swift and orderly process of repatriation unless there is some legitimate reason (genuine asylum cases, not those of economic conditions nor those engineered by the many affiliates of George Soros to break down national borders, end all national sovereignty as the prelude to One World Governance and a One World Religion that would be subordinated to it) to permit the person to remain.

How can I say this?

Well, take a look at the language of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America:

1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. (Constitution of the United States of America.)

Those who enter the United States of America are not citizens of this country and are entitled only to those statutory protections granted them to assure their speedy repatriation to their home country or their imprisonment in this country if they have outstanding warrants for their arrest in connection with previous illegal entries. Any discussion of “constitutional” rights of any kind legitimate or judicially-invented, is legal positivism. Nothing else.

As if this is not enough—and I believe that it is indeed quite enough, Brett Michael Kavanaugh is one of the architects of the unconstitutional “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism [Patriot]Act of 2001” that was passed by Congress on October 26, 2001, at the behest of the statist “conservative” President George Walker Bush in the aftermath of the tragic events that unfolded on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. This unconstitutional act, whose full title is an Orwellian monstrosity, was created to give the government of the United States of America the full authority to spy on us all, thus bartering legitimate human liberties in the name of an illusory sense of “national security.” Such must ever be he work of Trotsykites, who are prone to curb legitimate freedoms and increase the surveillance powers of the civil state in increments.

Kavanaugh’s record in this regard was analyzed by Judge Andrew Napolitano, whose “libertarian” bent will be discussed below:

When Donald Trump started running for the Republican nomination for president in June 2015, he began by attacking the Republican establishment in Washington, and he began his attack by calling the establishment "the swamp."

His real target was the permanent government and its enablers in the legal, financial, diplomatic and intelligence communities in Washington. These entities hover around power centers no matter which party is in power.

Beneath the swamp, Trump argued, lies the deep state. This is a loose collection of career government officials who operate outside ordinary legal and constitutional frameworks and use the levers of government power to favor their own, affect public policy and stay in power. Though I did not vote for Trump -- I voted for the Libertarian candidate -- a part of me rejoiced at his election because I accepted his often repeated words that he would be a stumbling block to the deep state and he'd drain the swamp.

On Monday night, he rewarded the swamp denizens and deep state outliers by nominating one of their own to the Supreme Court.

Here is the back story.

The late Justice Antonin Scalia -- my friend during the final 10 years of his life -- and his neighbor and colleague Justice Anthony Kennedy often remarked to each other during the Obama years that each would like to leave the Supreme Court upon the election of a Republican president. Scalia's untimely death in February 2016 denied him that choice, but Kennedy bided his time.

When Trump was elected president, Kennedy told friends that he needed to await Trump's nominee to replace Scalia to gauge whether the judicially untested Trump could be counted upon to choose a nominee of Kennedy's liking and Scalia's standing.

Trump knew Kennedy's thinking, and that guided him in choosing Neil Gorsuch for Scalia's seat. Gorsuch believes in the primacy of the individual and natural rights and is generally skeptical of government regulators. He is also a former Kennedy clerk.

So the Gorsuch selection was intended to serve two purposes. The first was to pick a Scalia-like thinker for the court as candidate Trump had promised, and the second was to give Kennedy a comfort level so he could retire and give President Trump a second nominee. It worked.

When Kennedy paid an unprecedented visit to the Oval Office two weeks ago, ostensibly to tell the president of his intention to retire, he also had a secret purpose -- to recommend his replacement. The announcement of Kennedy's departure began a firestorm of lobbying in behalf of four people from a list of 25 potential nominees that Trump had published when searching for Scalia's replacement.

The idea of a published list is novel. But it cemented loyalty from conservatives to Trump, who, of course, had no track record in evaluating or appointing judicial nominees. The standards used to put names on the list involved examining academic credentials and published works and, with the exception of one person, requiring judicial experience with a traditionalist bent, even if brief.

Social and religious conservatives pushed the president to nominate Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a fiercely Catholic mother of seven and former Notre Dame Law School professor who is a known opponent of abortion. Intellectual conservatives pushed for Judge Raymond Kethledge, a philosopher like Justice Gorsuch who believes in the primacy of the individual and who recognizes natural rights. The president's sister Judge Maryanne Trump Barry had her brother convinced that her colleague Judge Thomas Hardiman, a blue-collar diamond-in-the-rough conservative, would fulfill his promise to his base.

But at the last minute, a gaggle of Washington lawyers and lobbyists -- called the establishment when you agree with them and the swamp when you don't -- persuaded the president to reject his commitment to his sister and nominate Judge Brett Kavanaugh. He is the man Justice Kennedy had asked the president to nominate and is another former Kennedy clerk.

The suspense over all this was palpable earlier this week. The showman in the president beat a drum so effectively last weekend that we all watched with excited pulse rates on Monday night. I was and remain extremely disappointed. Donald Trump -- whatever you think of him as a president -- has been utterly faithful to his campaign promises in foreign and domestic policy. Until now.

Now he has given us a nominee to the highest court in the land who typifies the culture he railed against when he claimed he'd drain the swamp. This man and this culture accept cutting holes in the Fourth Amendment because they don't believe that it should protect privacy. This man and this culture accept unlimited spying on innocent Americans by the National Security Agency because they don't believe that the NSA is subject to the Constitution.

This man and this culture even looked the other way in the face of deep state shenanigans against President Trump himself. This man and this culture accept the federal regulation of health care and its command that everyone buy health insurance, called Obamacare. This man and this culture embrace the Nixonian mantra that if the president does it, it is not illegal.

What happened here?

The Kavanaugh nomination is not a question of his qualifications; it is a question of his values. It is dangerous for judges to embrace values that diminish personal freedom rather than expand it. When they do that, they reveal their view that freedom comes from the government, not from within us. Thomas Jefferson and all the Founding Fathers profoundly rejected the government-as-source-of-freedom argument, but Judge Kavanaugh accepts it.

Jefferson once remarked that unless you pick someone's pocket or break someone's leg, no one should care how you exercise your freedom or pursue happiness. I wish the president had nominated a person who believes that, as well. But he didn't. (Why I Am Deeply Disturbed by Trump's Supreme Court Pick.)

This commentary makes many sound points despite the fact that its conclusion is completely wrong.

Before commenting upon Judge Napolitano’s incorrect conclusion, derived entirely from the falsehood that is libertarianism, it is useful to point out that the former host of Celebrity Apprentice, Donald John Trump, ran a scam in his cattle show of possible Supreme Court nominees. Brett Michael Kavanaugh was the choice all along.

This calls to mind the cattle show that was engineered by the then former Governor of Georgia, James Earl Carter, Jr., the Great Appeaser of international communism, back in 1976 when he became the first presumptive presidential nominee of a major political party to publicly showcase possible vice-presidential nominees. Then United States Senators John Glenn (D-Ohio), Edmund Muskie (D-Maine) and Walter Mondale (D-Minnesota) and then United States Representative Peter Rodino (D-New Jersey) all made the trip to Plains, Georgia, to visit the peanut man with the peanut brain. (Get the idea that I did not cotton to the huckster from Plains? I can still do a pretty good vocal impression of the shallow naturalist.) Additionally, Carter met former primary opponent United States Senate Henry Jackson (D-Washington) and United States Senator Adlai Stevenson III (D-Illinois) while in the City of New York at the Democratic National Convention.

The whole thing, though, was a sham as I learned from a former classmate of mine from Saint John’s University (who, ironically, had been in the same hospital room with me fifty years ago before I had spinal fusion surgery on February 14, 1968) whose family had deep connections to the Democratic Party that Carter had made a deal with former Vice President and then Senator Hubert Horatio Humphrey (D-Minnesota) that the latter would not mount a last-ditch “Stop Carter” campaign for the nomination if he chose his protégé, Mondale. Carter was, you see, the first host of “Vice Presidential Apprentice.”

Mind you, this is just an aside to provide a bit of background that American politics and governance is just an exercise in theatrics.

Now, Judge Napolitano is entirely correct to state his concerns, which are shared by United States Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), about Judge Brett Michael Kavanaugh’s tendency to restrict the privacy of citizens that is part of the Natural Law and is protected, at least in part, by the language of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. Kavanaugh is an absolute statist with respect to the ability of Federal intelligence agencies to have complete access to the conversations, banking transactions, travels and daily activities of innocent citizens who have no connection to Mohammedan terrorists.

However, Judge Napolitano’s conclusion suffers from its reliance upon the anti-Catholic libertine who is an icon to contemporary libertarians. Human beings are not morally free to anything they desire. The desire to do as one pleases without regard for the binding precepts of the Divine Law and the Natural Law and with a belief that the civil state can impose no external constraints upon anyone whose behavior is a threat to the good of souls is licentiousness, not liberty.

For example, I used to illustrate this point rather graphically back in the old days when I was an honest-to-goodness, employed professor of political science by holding up a folding chair and threatening to throw it at the students as I asked stated the following before asking a series of questions in a Socratic manner of instruction (I used the Socratic method when necessary, although my principle method was lecturing): “I have the physical freedom, the physical ability to throw this chair. Why can’t I throw this chair at you?”

Invariably, a student would respond by saying, “Because you would hurt someone,” to which I responded, “So what? What if I want to hurt someone? Who are you to tell me that I can’t hurt anyone? It’s going to make me free good. The Supreme Court has said that I have the right to choose to throw chairs at students. Why can’t I do this?”

It was usually the case that no student came up with the correct answer, which is that no one is morally free to do everything he wants to do. There are limits that exists in the nature of things that no human being has the authority to transgress legitimately. Truth exists independently of human acceptance of it, which is why that many, although not all, of course, who do that which I wrong of its nature suffer from guilty consciences as that which is wrong is a rebellion against their own nature and the very end for which they have been created whether or not they aware of this fact or accept it. A lot of the students “got it" during the course of my thirty-three years of college teaching (1974-2007--and an eight week reprise in the Fall of 2014).

Pope Leo XIII explained the truths of moral freedom as follows in Libertas Praestantissimum, June 20, 1888:

5. Liberty, then, as We have said, belongs only to those who have the gift of reason or intelligence. Considered as to its nature, it is the faculty of choosing means fitted for the end proposed, for he is master of his actions who can choose one thing out of many. Now, since everything chosen as a means is viewed as good or useful, and since good, as such, is the proper object of our desire, it follows that freedom of choice is a property of the will, or, rather, is identical with the will in so far as it has in its action the faculty of choice. But the will cannot proceed to act until it is enlightened by the knowledge possessed by the intellect. In other words, the good wished by the will is necessarily good in so far as it is known by the intellect; and this the more, because in all voluntary acts choice is subsequent to a judgment upon the truth of the good presented, declaring to which good preference should be given. No sensible man can doubt that judgment is an act of reason, not of the will. The end, or object, both of the rational will and of its liberty is that good only which is in conformity with reason.

6. Since, however, both these faculties are imperfect, it is possible, as is often seen, that the reason should propose something which is not really good, but which has the appearance of good, and that the will should choose accordingly. For, as the possibility of error, and actual error, are defects of the mind and attest its imperfection, so the pursuit of what has a false appearance of good, though a proof of our freedom, just as a disease is a proof of our vitality, implies defect in human liberty. The will also, simply because of its dependence on the reason, no sooner desires anything contrary thereto than it abuses its freedom of choice and corrupts its very essence. Thus it is that the infinitely perfect God, although supremely free, because of the supremacy of His intellect and of His essential goodness, nevertheless cannot choose evil; neither can the angels and saints, who enjoy the beatific vision. St. Augustine and others urged most admirably against the Pelagians that, if the possibility of deflection from good belonged to the essence or perfection of liberty, then God, Jesus Christ, and the angels and saints, who have not this power, would have no liberty at all, or would have less liberty than man has in his state of pilgrimage and imperfection. This subject is often discussed by the Angelic Doctor in his demonstration that the possibility of sinning is not freedom, but slavery. It will suffice to quote his subtle commentary on the words of our Lord: “Whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin.”[3] “Everything,” he says, “is that which belongs to it naturally. When, therefore, it acts through a power outside itself, it does not act of itself, but through another, that is, as a slave. But man is by nature rational. When, therefore, he acts according to reason, he acts of himself and according to his free will; and this is liberty. Whereas, when he sins, he acts in opposition to reason, is moved by another, and is the victim of foreign misapprehensions. Therefore, ‘Whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin.” [4] Even the heathen philosophers clearly recognized this truth, especially they who held that the wise man alone is free; and by the term “wise man” was meant, as is well known, the man trained to live in accordance with his nature, that is, in justice and virtue. . . .

11. Therefore, the nature of human liberty, however it be considered, whether in individuals or in society, whether in those who command or in those who obey, supposes the necessity of obedience to some supreme and eternal law, which is no other than the authority of God, commanding good and forbidding evil. And, so far from this most just authority of God over men diminishing, or even destroying their liberty, it protects and perfects it, for the real perfection of all creatures is found in the prosecution and attainment of their respective ends; but the supreme end to which human liberty must aspire is God. (Pope Leo XIII, Libertas Praestantissimum, June 20, 1888.)

Contrary to what Judge Andrew Napolitano and other libertarians believe, no one who does that which is sinful has the moral freedom to do so as there is a distinction between having the physical freedom to choose to do something and the moral right to do so. This distinction is a death knell to every false premise of libertarianism, which is why even Catholics who subscribe to this false ideology hate any reference to the Catholic Church as the only authoritative and infallible teacher of moral truth. Libertarians believe in the absolute “freedom” of human being to do as they please and they recoil from any mention of the fact “that the supreme end to which human liberty must aspire to God.”

Indeed, it is instructive in this regard to former United States Representative Ronald Paul (R-Texas) said the following in December of 2007:

It reminds me of what Sinclair Lewis once said. He says, “when fascism comes to this country, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross.” Now I don’t know whether that’s a fair assessment or not, but you wonder about using a cross, like he [fellow presidential 2008 Republican presidential aspirant Michael Dale Huckabee] is the only Christian or implying that subtly. So, I don’t think I would ever use anything like that. (Ron Paul on the Cross in Public Life.)

The Cross of the Divine Redeemer, Christ the King, is the only standard of true human liberty. To claim that any public illustration of the means of human redemption on which Our Lords shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood to pay back in His Sacred Humanity what was owed to Him in His infinity as God, the debt of human sin. The Holy Cross is the mean by which we can made free from our slavery to sin. To speak as Ron Paul did in 2007 is blasphemy.

Thus it is that American jurisprudence in enveloped in the fog of a multiplicity of errors (originalism or textualism as opposed to a “living constitution,” the “omniscience” of the civil state as opposed to libertarianism) that is but the product of has followed in the wake of Martin Luther’s overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ King and the rise of Judeo-Masonry thereafter.

To summarize, therefore, Brett Michael Kavanaugh will do the following during his confirmation hearings before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary:

  1. Kavanaugh will, following the examples set by Anthony McLeod Kennedy in 1988, John Glover Roberts in 2005, and Samuel L. Alito in 2006, deny that his Catholic Faith will influence him in any way in his judicial decision-making if confirmed to sit as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America. Expect that there will be yet another reference to then United States Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s endorsement of the falsehood that is “separation of Church and State” that he offered in his infamous speech to the Houston Ministerial Association on September 12, 1960, the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary.
  2. Kavanaugh will explain away his speech at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, District of Columbia, on September 18, 2017, by making advertence to the late Chief Justice William Hubbs Rehnquist’s “conscience of the people” standard to asset that the “precedent” established by Roe v. Wade is “worthy of all respect,” especially since the “conscience of the people” has changed in the past forty-five years. He will probably cite Anthony McLeod Kennedy’s opinion for the court in the case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, June 29, 1992, in which the retiring associate justice upheld the decision in Roe v. Wade by noting that many women had come to rely upon abortion in the event that “contraception should fail.”
  3. Kavanaugh will forcefully defend the power of the civil state to curb the legitimate freedom of the people against unreasonable searches and seizures on the grounds of “national security.”

If, as entirely expected, Brett Michael Kavanaugh is confirmed to succeed Anthony McLeod Kennedy as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, one can be reasonably assured that he will be a friend of economic freedom and of the brute power of the civil state to spy innocent citizens but will be cautious on matters of moral truth. It is possible that he could, as noted earlier in this commentary, vote to overturn Roe v. Wade by citing that the surgical execution of the innocent preborn would remain legal to one extent or another in forty-four states. It is in such matters that the man who will most resemble Anthony McLeod Kennedy’s support for Roe v. Wade will be Chief Justice John Glover Roberts, especially given his specious reasoning in the ObamaDeathCare cases.

Before anyone claims that a President Hillary Rodham Clinton would have nominated only rabid pro-aborts and pro-sodomites to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States of America had she been elected on Tuesday, November 8, 2016, a supposedly “pro-life” president should be expected to nominate a jurist who is not known for making correct judicial decisions on the basis of specious reasoning.

Then again, the entire framework of American jurisprudence is based on positivism and religious indifferentism, thus empowering “the people” and/or their institutions of civil governance to “decide” matters that belong to God alone. God is a majority of One.

Today is the Feast of Saint Alexius, whose desire to be hidden from the world, including his own parents, who did not recognize him as they gave him shelter for seventeen years under their staircase, is a shining example of humility that contrasts with the hubris and disingenuousness of those who serve in civil governance today:

Alexis was a member of one of the noblest Roman families. Through his exceeding great love for Jesus Christ, he received a particular command from God to leave his bride untouched upon his wedding night, and to undertake a pilgrimage to the most famous Churches of the world. For seventeen years he remained occupied in these journeys and utterly unknown. At the end of that time, his name was spoken from an image of the most holy Virgin Mary in the city of Edessa, in Syria, and when he found himself recognised he took ship from thence. He landed at Porto near Rome, and fared to the house of his own father, who gave him shelter as a strange beggar. He lived there unrecognised by any for seventeen years more, and then passed away to heaven, in the time of Pope Innocent I. He left behind him a writing giving his name, family, and the story of his life. (Matins, Divine Office, Feast of Saint Alexius.)

The Divine Office for today also contains a reflection on the Book of Job written by Pope Saint Gregory the Great, who exhorts us fourteen centuries later to embrace derision and suffering as the means to die to self and thus to grow in holiness. Pope Gregory the Great also contrasted the desire to suffer joyfully all that God sends us with the disingenuousness of the self-reliant and the mighty:

The simplicity of the righteous is made a subject of derision. The wisdom of this world hideth our true feelings by artifice, and useth language to conceal our thoughts this is the wisdom which demonstrated the truth of falsehood, and showeth the falsehood of the truth. This kind of shrewdness the young acquire by practice, and children pay for the learning it. Those who are good at this look down upon their neighbours those who are bad at it are humble and timid, and wonder at it in others they regard this astuteness too, wrong though it be, with wistful admiration, under softened epithets. Unstraightforwardness is called good breeding. The principles of the world teach those who entertain them, to try and rise to distinction, and when they have attained the bubble of glory which is so soon to pass away, to feel it sweet to have at their feet them on whom they may wreak rich revenge. These principles teach a man, as long as he is strong enough, to give way to nobody else, and, if he hath no chance by force, to try and attain his object by diplomacy.

The wisdom of the righteous is the contrary of all this. They seek to avoid deception, to give their thoughts a clear expression in their words, to love the truth because it is the truth, to avoid falsehood, and rather to suffer than to inflict evil. Such are they who seek not to avenge themselves for wrong, and deem it gain to be despised for the truth's sake. This their simplicity is made a subject of derision, for such as are wise in this world believe the purity of their virtue to be simple foolery. Whatsoever is done innocently, they consider without doubt stupid. Such works as the truth approveth are idiotic, when tried by carnal standards of wisdom. After all, what stupider thing is there in this world than to express our real thoughts in our words, to keep nothing quiet by skillful tact, to repay no injuries, to pray for them which curse us, to seek poverty, to give up property, to strive not with such as take from us, to turn the other cheek to the smiter? (Pope Saint Gregory the Great, Moral Reflections on Job, Matins, Divine Office, Feast of Saint Alexius.)

Yes, we must express “real thoughts in our words” and “to keep nothing quiet by skillful tact.” This applies to all those in public office, including those who serve at any level of the judiciary, and when they are seeking to be confirmed to exercise still greater power.

Remember the words of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself:

[26] For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul? Or what exchange shall a man give for his soul?" (Matthew 16: 27.)

We must enfold ourselves into the love of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus as we make reparation for our own many sins, which are so responsible for the worsening of the state of the Church Militant on earth and of the world-at-large, as we seek to restore all things in Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen.

The Rosary, the Rosary, the Rosary. Use it well. The enemies of Christ the King within in our souls and in the world-at-large will be defeated by Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary and the fulfillment of her Fatima Message.

Viva Cristo Rey!

Our Lady of  the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Alexius, pray for us.