The Amorality Industrial Complex, parts two and three

There are several areas from part one of this three-part series upon which I would like to amplify.

First, as noted in part one, Holy Mother Church has always sought the maximum amount of temporal well-being for children that is possible in this imperfect world where men stained with the vestigial after-effects of Original Sin (darkened intellect, weakened will, the concupiscence of the disorderly passions) are never free from temptations to commit various sins, including the Seven Capital Sins (pride, anger, greed, lust, envy, sloth, gluttony), and are thus prone to act unjustly in their personal and social lives.

However, the pursuit of the common temporal good is the secondary end for human beings in their personal and social lives as even those things in the temporal realm must be referred to the Holy Faith, including economic policy, as men and their nations build their houses on sandy ground if they do not pay heed to First and Last Things:

Accordingly, We first of all declare that all Catholics have a sacred and inviolable duty, both in private and public life, to obey and firmly adhere to and fearlessly profess the principles of Christian truth enunciated by the teaching office of the Catholic Church. In particular We mean those principles which Our Predecessor has most wisely laid down in the encyclical letter "Rerum Novarum." We know that the Bishops of Prussia followed these most faithfully in their deliberations at the Fulda Congress of 1900. You yourselves have summarized the fundamental ideas of these principles in your communications regarding this question.

These are fundamental principles: No matter what the Christian does, even in the realm of temporal goods, he cannot ignore the supernatural good. Rather, according to the dictates of Christian philosophy, he must order all things to the ultimate end, namely, the Highest Good. All his actions, insofar as they are morally either good or bad (that is to say, whether they agree or disagree with the natural and divine law), are subject to the judgment and judicial office of the Church. All who glory in the name of Christian, either individually or collectively, if they wish to remain true to their vocation, may not foster enmities and dissensions between the classes of civil society. On the contrary, they must promote mutual concord and charity. The social question and its associated controversies, such as the nature and duration of labor, the wages to be paid, and workingmen's strikes, are not simply economic in character. Therefore they cannot be numbered among those which can be settled apart from ecclesiastical authority. "The precise opposite is the truth. It is first of all moral and religious, and for that reason its solution is to be expected mainly from the moral law and the pronouncements of religion." (Pope Saint Pius X, Singulari Quadam, Sepetember 24, 1912.)

The modern world, shaped as it is by the anti-Incarnational lies of Judeo-Masonry and its hatred for the Social Reign of Christ the King and of the true Social Teaching of the Catholic Church, she who is our mater and magister (mother and teacher), is shaped by amorality in almost every aspect of public life and what passes for “popular culture” in these wicked times that celebrate every form of licentiousness, including wanton misuse of the gift that God has given to man to bring forth new souls to give Him honor and glory in this life and to spend all eternity with Him in Heaven after dying as faithful sons and daughters of Holy Mother Church and the subsequent killing off of children by self-centered parents who live without regard to their Particular Judgment and of outright perversity of the sort that destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gommorha.

Amorality is practiced by the members of each of the two major organized crime families of naturalism in the United States of America. Violations of the Seventh and Eighth Commandments are the norm, not the exception, today as politicians of the false opposites of the naturalist “right” and the “left” outdo each other in stealing what rightfully belongs to the taxpayers to aggrandize the power of the civil state and in lying about each other with a shameless disregard, borne of ignorance in many instances, of the fact that they will have to make an accounting of everything that they have ever thought, done or said when they face the Divine Judge, Christ the King, at the moment of their Particular Judgments.

Saint Alphonsus de Liguori explained that no one, including those who justify a fission between “private belief” and public action, will escape the strict scrutiny of every aspect of his life after he dies:

2. It is the common opinion of theologians, that at the very moment and in the very place in which the soul departs from the body, the divine tribunal is erected, the accusation is read, and the sentence is passed by Jesus Christ, the Judge. At this terrible tribunal each of us shall be presented to give an account of all our thoughts, of all our words, and of all our actions. "For we must all be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the proper things of the body, according as he hath done, whether it be good or evil." ( 2 Cor. v. 10.) When presented before an earthly judge criminals have been seen to fall into a cold sweat through fear. It is related of Piso, that so great and insufferable was the confusion, which he felt at the thought of appearing as a criminal before the senate that he killed himself. How great is the pain of a vassal, or of a son, in appearing before an angry prince or an enraged father, to account for some crime which he has committed! Oh! how much greater shall be the pain and confusion of the soul in standing, before Jesus Christ enraged against her for having despised him during her life! Speaking of judgment, St. Luke says: "Then you shall see the Son of Man." (Luke xxi. 27.) They shall see Jesus Christ as man, with the same wounds with which he ascended into heaven. "Great joy of the beholders!" says Robert the Abbot, "a great terror of those who are in expectation!" These wounds shall console the just, and shall terrify the wicked. In them sinners shall see the Redeemer’s love for themselves, and their ingratitude to him.

3. "Who," says the Prophet Nahum, "can stand before the face of his indignation ?" (i. 6.) How great, then, shall be the terror of a soul that finds herself in sin before this Judge, the first time she shall see him, and see him full of wrath! St. Basil says that she shall be tortured more by her shame and confusion than by the very fire of hell. ”Horridior quam ignis, erit pudor." Philip the Second rebuked one of his domestics for having told him a lie. ”Is it thus," said the king to him, ”you deceive me?" The domestic, after having returned home, died of grief. The Scripture tells us, that when Joseph reproved his brethren, saying: ”I am Joseph, whom you sold," they were unable to answer through fear, and remained silent. ”His brethren could not answer him, being struck with exceeding great fear." (Gen. xlv. 3.) Now what answer shall sinners make to Jesus Christ when he shall say to them: I am your Redeemer and your Judge, whom you have so much despised. Where shall the miserable beings fly, says St. Augustine, when they shall see an angry Judge above, hell open below, on one side their own sins accusing them, and on the other the devils dragging them to punishment, and their conscience burning them within? “Above shall be an enraged Judge below, a horrid chaos on the right, sins accusing him on the left, demons dragging him to punishment within, a burning conscience! Whither shall a sinner, beset in this manner, fly ?"Perhaps he will cry for mercy? But how, asks Eusebius Emissenus, can he dare to implore mercy, when he must first render an account of his contempt for the mercy which Jesus Christ has shown to him?” With what face will you, who are to be first judged for contempt of mercy, ask for mercy?" But let us come to the rendering of the accounts. . . .

11. How great shall be the joy of a soul when, at death, she hears from Jesus Christ these sweet words: ”Well done, good and faithful servant; because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will place thee over many things. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." (Matt. xxv. 21.) Equally great shall be the anguish and despair of a guilty soul, that shall see herself driven away by the Judge with the following words: ”Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire" (verse 41). Oh! what a terrible thunderclap shall that sentence be to her!”Oh! how frightfully," says the Carthusian, "shall that thunder resound!" Eusebius writes, that the terror of sinners at hearing their condemnation shall be so great that, if they could, they would die again. “The wicked shall be seized with such terror at the sight of the Judge pronouncing sentence that, if they were not immortal, they should die a second time." But, brethren, let us, before the termination of this sermon, make some reflections which will be profitable to us. St. Thomas of Villanova says, that some listen to discourses on the judgment and condemnation of the wicked with as little concern as if they they themselves were secure against these things, or as if the day of judgment were never to arive for them. "Heu quam securi hæc dicimus et audimus, quasi nos non tangeret hæc sententia, aut quasi dies hæc nunquam esset venturus!" (Conc, i., de Jud.) The saint then asks: Is it not great folly to entertain security in so perilous an affair? "Quæ est ista stulta securitas in discrimine tanto?" There are some, says St. Augustine, who, though they live in sin, cannot imagine that God will send them to hell. ”Will God," they say, ”really condemn us ?" Brethren, adds the saint, do not speak thus. So, many of the damned did not believe that they should be sent to hell; but the end came, and, according to the threat of Ezechiel, they have been cast into that place of darkness. "The end is come, the end is come... and I will send my wrath upon thee, and I will judge thee." (Ezec. vii. 2, 3.) Sinners, perhaps vengeance is at hand for you, and still you laugh and sleep in sin. Who will not tremble at the words of the Baptist: ”For now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree, therefore, that doth not yield good fruit shall be cut down and cast into the fire." (Matt, iii. 10.) He says, that every tree that does not bring forth good fruit shall be cut down and cast into the fire; and he promises that, with regard to the trees, which represent sinners, the axe is already laid to the roots that is, chastisement is at hand. Dearly beloved brethren, let us follow the counsel of the Holy Ghost "Before judgment, prepare thee justice." (Eccl. xviii. 19.) Let us adjust our accounts before the day of accounts. Let us seek God, now that we can find him; for the time shall come when we will wish, but shall not be able to find him. ”You shall seek me, and shall not find me." (John vii. 36.)” “Before judgment," says St. Augustine, ”the Judge can be appeased, but not in judgment." By a change of life we can now appease the anger of Jesus Christ, and recover his grace; but when he shall judge, and find us in sin, he must execute justice, and we shall be lost. (Sermons for All the Sundays in the Year by St Alphonsus Liguori in .pdf format; a sermon on the death of the sinner is appended at the end of this article.)

No one in public life today recognizes or accept this as true. More accurately, of course, almost no one in public life today knows of the terror that awaits them by their use of amorality in every aspect of their lives. Not Donald John Trump. Not Charles Schumer. Not Nancy Patricia D’Alesandro Pelosi. Not anyone, including many well-meaning Catholics who have been swept up in the falsehoods of the counterfeit church of conciliarism and its propagation of the heresy of universal salvation.

Permit me a slight digression as it is important to drive home the point that one cannot do whatever he wants without regard to the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law and expect to escape the fires of Hell for all eternity.

Even though Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross to redeem mankind, it is up to each person to avail himself of the merits of Our Lord’s Redemptive Act. Actually, of course, the number of those who are saved is very few:

Woe to you who command others! If so many are damned by your fault, what will happen to you? If few out of those who are first in the Church of God are saved, what will happen to you? Take all states, both sexes, every condition: husbands, wives, widows, young women, young men, soldiers, merchants, craftsmen, rich and poor, noble and plebian. What are we to say about all these people who are living so badly? The following narrative from Saint Vincent Ferrer will show you what you may think about it. He relates that an archdeacon in Lyons gave up his charge and retreated into a desert place to do penance, and that he died the same day and hour as Saint Bernard. After his death, he appeared to his bishop and said to him, "Know, Monsignor, that at the very hour I passed away, thirty-three thousand people also died. Out of this number, Bernard and myself went up to heaven without delay, three went to purgatory, and all the others fell into Hell."

Our chronicles relate an even more dreadful happening. One of our brothers, well-known for his doctrine and holiness, was preaching in Germany. He represented the ugliness of the sin of impurity so forcefully that a woman fell dead of sorrow in front of everyone. Then, coming back to life, she said, "When I was presented before the Tribunal of God, sixty thousand people arrived at the same time from all parts of the world; out of that number, three were saved by going to Purgatory, and all the rest were damned."

O abyss of the judgments of God! Out of thirty thousand, only five were saved! And out of sixty thousand, only three went to heaven! You sinners who are listening to me, in what category will you be numbered?... What do you say?... What do you think?...

I see almost all of you lowering your heads, filled with astonishment and horror. But let us lay our stupor aside, and instead of flattering ourselves, let us try to draw some profit from our fear.

Is it not true that there are two roads which lead to heaven: innocence and repentance? Now, if I show you that very few take either one of these two roads, as rational people you will conclude that very few are saved. And to mention proofs: in what age, employment or condition will you find that the number of the wicked is not a hundred times greater than that of the good, and about which one might say, "The good are so rare and the wicked are so great in number"? We could say of our times  what Salvianus said of his: it is easier to find a countless multitude of sinners immersed in all sorts of iniquities than a few innocent men. How many servants are totally honest and faithful in their duties? How many merchants are fair and equitable in their commerce; how many craftsmen exact and truthful; how many salesmen disinterested and sincere? How many men of law do not forsake equity? How many soldiers do not tread upon innocence; how many masters do not unjustly withhold the salary of those who serve them, or do not seek to dominate their inferiors? Everywhere, the good are rare and the wicked great in number. Who does not know that today there is so much libertinage among mature men, liberty among young girls, vanity among women, licentiousness in the nobility, corruption in the middle class, dissolution in the people, impudence among the poor, that one could say what David said of his times: "All alike have gone astray... there is not even one who does good, not even one." (Saint Leonard of Port Maurice, The Little Numbr of Those Who Are Saved.)

These are words that should terrify each one of us. The spiritually lax and outright moral reprobates do not enter the Kingdom of God. We must pray to Our Lady every day to help us to save our souls as it is far easier to go to Hell for all eternity than it is to go to Heaven. The conciliar revolutionaries preach the exact opposite.

The standard of one’s Particular Judgment becomes higher if he has authority over others. One duly invested with the authority to govern must do so justly as he seeks to foster the common temporal good in light of man’s Last End, namely, the possession of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity in Heaven. Yes, woe to those who govern who do not make provision for the eternal well-being of those entrusted to their governance.

Pope Saint Pius X summarized the entirety of the duties of just governance and statecraft as he condemned the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic precept of the “separation of Church and State” in Paragraph Three of Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906:

That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. The same thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies. Both of them, the civil and the religious society, although each exercises in its own sphere its authority over them. It follows necessarily that there are many things belonging to them in common in which both societies must have relations with one another. Remove the agreement between Church and State, and the result will be that from these common matters will spring the seeds of disputes which will become acute on both sides; it will become more difficult to see where the truth lies, and great confusion is certain to arise. Finally, this thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions touching the rights and the duties of men. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. Our illustrious predecessor, Leo XIII, especially, has frequently and magnificently expounded Catholic teaching on the relations which should subsist between the two societies. "Between them," he says, "there must necessarily be a suitable union, which may not improperly be compared with that existing between body and soul.-"Quaedam intercedat necesse est ordinata colligatio (inter illas) quae quidem conjunctioni non immerito comparatur, per quam anima et corpus in homine copulantur." He proceeds: "Human societies cannot, without becoming criminal, act as if God did not exist or refuse to concern themselves with religion, as though it were something foreign to them, or of no purpose to them.... As for the Church, which has God Himself for its author, to exclude her from the active life of the nation, from the laws, the education of the young, the family, is to commit a great and pernicious error. -- "Civitates non possunt, citra scellus, gerere se tamquam si Deus omnino non esset, aut curam religionis velut alienam nihilque profuturam abjicere.... Ecclesiam vero, quam Deus ipse constituit, ab actione vitae excludere, a legibus, ab institutione adolescentium, a societate domestica, magnus et perniciousus est error. (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.)

Human societies have, sadly, become criminal because most people, including those who govern, do indeed “act as if God did not exist or refuse to concern themselves with religion.” The consequences of such disorder are deadly to men and their nations. As has been noted many times previously in this website, we are witnessing the perfection of the inherent degeneracy of the false, naturalistic, Pelagian and religiously indifferentist principles of the American founding. Disorder in the souls of men leads to disorder in one’s nation and hence in the world. No nation will ever know a just social order domestically and the world-at-large will never enjoy a genuine peace as long most men are at war with the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Blessed Trinity, by means of unrepented sins and by enshrining grave sins as a “civil right” in public law and celebrating them throughout the nooks and crannies of “popular culture.”

As Silvio Cardinal Antoniano noted in the Sixteenth Century:

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

No, no one on the naturalist "right" understands this, which makes it impossible to turn back the tide of evil advance by their opposite numbers among the ranks of the naturalist "left," most of whom are proud to boast of their support for the very evils that undermine justice in their nations and peace in the world.

Pope Leo XIII, writing in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885, taught that it is impossible to produce a just social order if the civil law permits all kinds of licentiousness:

Whatever, therefore, is opposed to virtue and truth may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law. A well-spent life is the only way to heaven, whither all are bound, and on this account the State is acting against the laws and dictates of nature whenever it permits the license of opinion and of action to lead minds astray from truth and souls away from the practice of virtue. To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from life, from laws, from the education of youth, from domestic society is a grave and fatal error. A State from which religion is banished can never be well regulated; and already perhaps more than is desirable is known of the nature and tendency of the so-called civil philosophy of life and morals. The Church of Christ is the true and sole teacher of virtue and guardian of morals. She it is who preserves in their purity the principles from which duties flow, and, by setting forth most urgent reasons for virtuous life, bids us not only to turn away from wicked deeds, but even to curb all movements of the mind that are opposed to reason, even though they be not carried out in action. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

These points should be very familiar to longtime readers of this website.

However, as we do live in time and cannot but help to get caught up in the apparent “victories” in the natural realm that distract us from the only real victory that matters, namely, the daily vanquishing of the adversary in our souls by means of the ineffable graces that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ won for us during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Grace, and thus to be prepared at all times for our death and the fearful moment of the Particular Judgment so that we can, solely by the mercy of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the love of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, become partakes of Our King’s Easter victory over sin and death for all eternity.

Second, Pope Leo XIII explained in Rerum Novarum, May 15, 1891, that, quite unlike the ethic of Judeo-Calvinist capitalism, human worth is not defined by material success:

In any case we clearly see, and on this there is general agreement, that some opportune remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustlyon the majority of the working class: for the ancient workingmen's guilds were abolished in the last century, and no other protective organization took their place. Public institutions and the laws set aside the ancient religion. Hence, by degrees it has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition. The mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different guise, but with like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping men. To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself. (Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, May 15, 1891.) 

This analysis is even more relevant to our times as it was in 1891. 

Holy Mother Church recognizes the changes that take place in economic systems even though she may not approve of those changes or believe that they are optimal for the realization of man’s Last End. And thus it is that money, as opposed to land or some other tangible good, has become capital, meaning that there can be a just interest charged on those who lend it. There is thus no contradiction between the Catholic Church’s consistent condemnation of usury and Canon 1543 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law:

“If a commodity which is consumed by its first use (such as money, bread, etc.), be lent on the stipulation that it becomes the property of the borrower, who is bound to return to the lender not the thing itself but its equivalent only, the lender may not receive any payment by reason of the loan itself. In the giving or lending of such a commodity, however, it is not in itself unlawful to make an arrangement for the recovery of interest at the rate allowed by the civil law (de luco legali pacisi) unless that rate is clearly excessive: One may even arrange for a still higher rate of interest, if there be a just title for doing so, in proportion to the amount of the excess.” (Canon 1543, 1917 Code of Canon Law.) 

What has changed is the nature of the commercial transaction itself, not the Church’s condemnation of usury, which has been made many times, including the Tenth Session of the Fifth Lateran Council, May 4, 1515, which was presided over by Pope Leo X. 

Father Cahill explained the effects of the Church’s prohibition of usury in the Middle Ages, a practice that has been widespread in our own day as our world is governed by principles that are based upon rank profiteering and the exploitation of the weak and impoverished: 

The Church’s legislation [on usury] did not, it is true, succeed in completely preventing the practice of usury, especially on the part of the Jews. These laws and principles were, however, an immense check upon the unjust activities of money-lenders and speculators, so that anything approaching the systematised extortion and stock-gambling of modern times was impossible.   

Conclusion.–It is commonly admitted that the undue concentration of wealth under the control of the few is one of the radical causes of the social misery and unrest that prevail at the present day. Individuals controlling great wealth have excessive power in almost every phase of social activity, and following the tendency of human nature, they too often use their power unjustly and tyrannically. Those huge fortunes are usually amassed by unjust profiteering, artificially created monopolies, usury, unjust reduction of wages, the sudden fluctuations of the markets which play into the hands of greedy speculators. The mediaeval economic doctrines and legislation and the public opinion they produced and fostered made impossible, or at least kept in check, such methods of accumulating wealth, and so were a potent safeguard against one of the worst types of social injustice. (Father Edward Cahill, S.J., The Framework of a Christian State, p. 51.) 

The economics of the Middle Ages were also characterized in the Twelfth Century by the rise that made possible the training of masters in various fields of commerce (merchants and crafts) after first serving years of apprenticeships and then working as journeymen. The object of these guilds was to produce a cooperative spirit so that individual guild members could pursue their own interests without endangering the common interests of their mutual trades. It was the true spirit of Catholic charity that bound the guild members together to such an extent that they provided for each other what would be called “welfare” today, administering this assistance according to the Natural Law principle of subsidiarity that requires human problems to be remedied at the lowest levels of life, staring with the family. The guilds made it possible for those with needs that could not be meet by their families to receive assistance without the “strings” attached by the monster civil state of Modernity and without bankrupting the entire body politic: 

The greatest spirit of solidarity and mutual help animated the whole guild organisation. Thus money was advanced on easy terms to members who needed it. Those suffering from sickness, old age, accidents, etc., were liberally provided for. Even a guildman who might get into trouble with the municipal or state authorities had a right to the protection of the guild. If, after investigation by the council, his case was considered a deserving one he was defended in the courts at the common expense. Sick members were visited; and wine and food were sent from the public banquets to those whom illness or weakness prevent from attending. The dead, if the family was poor, was buried at the expense of their guild with all the honours befitting their position, and their daughters dowered for marriage or the convent. 

The Religious Character of the Guilds.–Another peculiarly Christian characteristic of—these guilds was their practical recognition of the intimate connection of religion with commercial relations and with all the activities of life. Although the primary object of the associations was economic, the guilds made every effort to secure good conduct and fidelity to religious duties on the part of the members. Individuals were punished or sometimes expelled from the guilds for immoral or irreligious conduct. 

Every guild was under the protection of a patron saint or was specially dedicated to the Holy Trinity or to the Blessed Mother of God under one of her titles. The portrait of the guild patron was painted on the banner of the guild which was borne in the public processions. Thus the guild of wood-workers was under the protection of St. Joseph. The shoemakers usually had on their banner paintings of SS. Crispin and Crispinian. Bakers were often under the patronage of St. Honorius, and so on. The association of the heavenly patron with the grade that belonged to the guild intensified the craftsmen’s pride in their work and the men’s esteem for the nobility of manual labour. The Church Feast of the patron was always the occasion of the great annual banquet of the guild. 

Many guilds had their own special chapels; and we commonly find provision made in the guild statutes for the support of a chaplain and sometimes of several chaplains. Some of the most beautiful mediaeval churches belonged to or were built by the guilds. Provision was also regularly made for the celebration of Masses for the intentions of the guild, and for the offering of candles at holy shrines. On the death of a member care was taken to have Masses offered and alms given for his eternal rest. Almsgiving, which was practiced even towards the poor outside the gild, was an important item of the ordinary guild expenditure. Oftentimes a guild gave feasts in its buildings to the poor of the whole town. (Father Edward Cahill, The Framework of a Christian State, pp. 79-80.) 

Christendom would continue beyond the Thirteenth Century. It was, however, at its height in the Thirteenth Century, which is why the devil used the weakness of men to embrace the world just a “little bit at a time” in the two centuries between its end and the beginning of the revolutions of Modernity that began with Father Martin Luther’s posting of his ninety-five theses on the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, on October 31, 1517, and one of Martin Luther’s principal goals was to separate Church and State, a separation that has been nothing other than disastrous for the right ordering of men and their nations.

It should be noted, however, that Luther also conversed with the adversary himself, something that he related in his own writings and quoted by Protestant historian William Cobbett in his superb A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland:

. . . . Martin Luther, who says in his own works that it was by the arguments of the devil (who, he says, frequently ate, drank and slept with him) that he was induced to turn Protestant; three worthy followers of that Luther who is by his disciple Melancthon called "a brutal man, void of piety and humanity, one more a Jew than a Christian . . . . (William Cobbett, A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland, written between 1824 and 1827 and published by Benziger Brothers, p. 209.)

Does anyone still want to deny that the world in which we live was inspired by the devil himself?

Protestantism Begets Capitalism with an Assist from Talmudic Principles

Although Martin Luther’s revolution, aided and abetted by Talmudic instigators, started the process that created the world of Modernity, it was the influence of John Calvin and his own brand of Judeo-Protestantism that has shaped the world of injustice and conflict today.

Among his many other false beliefs, John Calvin believed that those in the civil government could separate the "saved" from the "damned" was the degree of their material success here on earth. John Calvin believed that material success was a sign of "divine election." Thus it is that we have the Calvinist "work ethic" as those who subscribe to Calvin's warped, heretical views of God and man work hard not to give honor and glory to the Most Holy Trinity through the Immaculate Heart of Mary but to show to others that they are "saved" by virtue of their material "success" in this passing, mortal vale of tears. 

Calvin’s belief in material success as the sign of divine election or predestination that has provided the foundation for the modern economic system that has forced man off of the land and dehumanized him as he has been made a slave of "material success" by the captains of industry and banking. Calvinism, which is little more than Talmudic Judaism with a slight Christian gloss, has engendered all manner of economic abuses, not the least of which is the contemporary practice of usury, discussed earlier in this book, founded in the belief that men may ignore the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law in order to be "successful" in this world. 

The injustices engendered by this amoral, naturalistic view of the world helped to encourage open atheists and anti-Theists, such as Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, to postulate a utopian system of naturalism based upon a materialistic view of man that denied his supernatural essence. The diabolical lie of Marxism-Leninism is but the logical consequence of John Calvin's materialistic view of man that denied that there could be an Omnipotent and Omniscient God Who created rational beings with free wills to choose for or against Him as He has revealed Himself to us through His true Church.

Father Fahey elaborated on the effects of Protestantism, especially the warmed-over version of Talmudic Judaism that is Calvinism, in The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World: 

It was, however, the Calvinistic doctrine on predestination and the signs by which a man's divine election could be recognized, which specially favored the advent of the unlimited competition, unscrupulous underselling and feverish advertising of the present day. In his able work, from which a passage has already been quoted, Professor O'Brien shows that it was in the peculiarly British variety of Calvinism, known as Puritanism, that all the Calvinist doctrines of succession life as a sign of man's predestination, of the respect and veneration due to wealth, had their fullest development. 

When all is said and done, Calvinism remains the real nursing-father of the civic industrial capitalism of the middle classes. . . . Since the aggressively active ethic inspired by the doctrine of predestination urges the elect to the full development of his God-given powers, and offers him this sign by which he may assure himself of his election, work becomes rational and systematic. In breaking down the motive of ease and enjoyment, asceticism lays the foundation of the tyranny of work over men . . . production for production's sake is declared to be a commandment of religion." (Father Denis Fahey, The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World.)

This has great application in every aspect of contemporary life. Most people work not for the honor and glory of God, thus giving him the fruit of their labors as the consecrated slaves of His Most Blessed Mother's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, but for the sake of "success," to gain what is considered to be financial "wealth" and earthly "success" as ends that justify each and every method used to achieve such success. This has been the Calvinist "contribution" to the world, so enshrined in the ethos of the "American dream," which eschews the Holy Poverty of the Holy Family of Nazareth and of such great saints as Saint Francis of Assisi and his helper and fellow adorer of the Most Blessed Sacrament, Saint Clare of Assisi. Father Fahey quoted Gilbert Keith Chesterton's observation about the insidious influence of that wretched people known as the Puritans (or Pilgrims) in a footnote on page sixteen of The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World: 

"The Americans have established a Thanksgiving Day to celebrate the fact that the Pilgrim Fathers reached America. The English might very well establish another Thanksgiving Day to celebrate the happy fact that the Pilgrim Fathers left England." (Father Denis Fahey, The Mystical City of Christ in the Modern World.)

The Protestants, however, were not alone in helping to usher in the world of amorality in commerce and politics and statecraft and popular culture, including what has become known as competitive sports. Father Fahey explained the “Talmudic connection,” if you will, from which the Calvinist world-view is derived:

The learned writer, Werner Sombart, in his great work, Die Juden and das Wirtschafsleben ("The Jews in Economic Life"), attributes the great, if not the deciding, role in the formation of the modern economic outlook or mentality to the Jewish race, for to them he attributes the introduction of the ideas of "free commerce" and "unchecked competition" into a society with quite different ideas. He points out the contrast between this Jewish mentality and the ordered outlook of the Middle Ages in phrases that are worthy of citation:--

"When we examine matters more closely . . . we shall immediately see that the struggle between Jewish and Christian merchants is a struggle between two views of the world, or, at least, between two economic mentalities imbued with principles that are different or even opposed. In order to understand this statement we must represent to ourselves the spirit which inspired that economic life into which, since the sixteenth century, Jewish elements have forced their way in ever increasing volume. To this spirit they openly showed themselves so rudely opposed that they were everywhere felt to be interfering with the livelihood and subsistence of the people. During the whole time which I have designated as the period of incipient capitalism . . . the same fundamental outlook on economic relations prevailed as had been accepted during the Middle Ages. . . The unrestrained, unbridled striving after gain was considered by most people during this whole period as unlawful, as unchristian, because the spirit of the old Thomistic economic philosophy as yet swayed men's minds, at least officially." The Jewish mentality was opposed to the outlook on life impressed on society by the Catholic Church, for (:) "the Jew stands out as the business man pure and simple, as the man who, in business, takes account only of business, and who in conformity with the spirit of true capitalist economy, proclaims, in the presence of all natural ends, the supremacy of gain and profit." (Father Denis Fahey, The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World.) 

Has not the "supremacy of gain and profit" come to define almost every aspect of contemporary life, taking into account not at all the eternal good of our immortal souls? This "supremacy of gain and profit" results in the corruption of daily living, contributing to the naturalistic belief, which itself is founded in pantheism, as Father Fahey notes, that is, that man is "divine" and is above all. The achievement of our earthly goals is what defines us as human beings, and no "external" authority, such as the Catholic Church, had better get in our way of this achievement. 

A final passage from Father Fahey will underscore this point: 

The Jew it was, according to Sombart, who broke down the mentality of the Middle Ages and commercialized the relations of men. 

Professor O'Brien dissents from Werner Sombart's thesis that the growth of the capitalistic spirit, the spirit of subordination of all other considerations to that of profit, was due to the Jews. He admits, however, that Sombart's contention would be quite correct, if for the "Jews" we substituted "Judaism," and he points out the importance of Calvin's justification of usury in preparing the way for modern developments. The Puritans adopted Old Testament ideas: the Old Testament idea of the reward of virtue in this world fitted in with the Puritan teaching about the fulfillment of one's vocation.

It is unnecessary for the purpose of this work to apportion responsibility for the triumph of what we may call the does it pay? mentality in the world, between Jews and Puritans. At any rate, if the Puritans subordinated men to production, the Jews completed the process, by subordinating production itself to money. The right order, of money as a means for production and production subservient to man, is now, as we know, reversed. (Father Denis Fahey, The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World.)

Professor George O'Brien, cited in Father Fahey's The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World, summarized his judgment about the effects of Protestantism upon the contemporary world in An Essay on the Economic Effects of the Reformation (IHS Press, Norfolk, Virginia, 2003): 

The thesis we have endeavoured to present in this essay is, that the two great dominating schools of modern economic thought have a common origin. The capitalist school, which, basing its position on the unfettered right of the individual to do what he will with his own, demands the restriction of government interference in economic and social affairs within the narrowest possible limits, and the socialist school, which, basing its position on the complete subordination of the individual to society, demands the socialization of all the means of production, if not all of wealth, face each other today as the only two solutions of the social question; they are bitterly hostile towards each other, and mutually intolerant and each is at the same weakened and provoked by the other. In one respect, and in one respect only, are they identical--they can both be shown to be the result of the Protestant Reformation. 

We have seen the direct connection which exists between these modern schools of economic thought and their common ancestor. Capitalism found its roots in the intensely individualistic spirit of Protestantism, in the spread of anti-authoritative ideas from the realm of religion into the realm of political and social thought, and, above all, in the distinctive Calvinist doctrine of a successful and prosperous career being the outward and visible sign by which the regenerated might be known. Socialism, on the other hand, derived encouragement from the violations of established and prescriptive rights of which the Reformation afforded so many examples, from the growth of heretical sects tainted with Communism, and from the overthrow of the orthodox doctrine on original sin, which opened the way to the idea of the perfectibility of man through institutions. But, apart from these direct influences, there were others, indirect, but equally important. Both these great schools of economic thought are characterized by exaggerations and excesses; the one lays too great stress on the importance of the individual, and other on the importance of the community; they are both departures, in opposite directions, from the correct mean of reconciliation and of individual liberty with social solidarity. These excesses and exaggerations are the result of the free play of private judgment unguided by authority, and could not have occurred if Europe had continued to recognize an infallible central authority in ethical affairs. 

The science of economics is the science of men's relations with one another in the domain of acquiring and disposing of wealth, and is, therefore, like political science in another sphere, a branch of the science of ethics. In the Middle Ages, man's ethical conduct, like his religious conduct, was under the supervision and guidance of a single authority, which claimed at the same time the right to define and to enforce its teaching. The machinery for enforcing the observance of medieval ethical teaching was of a singularly effective kind; pressure was brought to bear upon the conscience of the individual through the medium of compulsory periodical consultations with a trained moral adviser, who was empowered to enforce obedience to his advice by the most potent spiritual sanctions. In this way, the whole conduct of man in relation to his neighbours was placed under the immediate guidance of the universally received ethical preceptor, and a common standard of action was ensured throughout the Christian world in the all the affairs of life. All economic transactions in particular were subject to the jealous scrutiny of the individual's spiritual director; and such matters as sales, loans, and so on, were considered reprehensible and punishable if not conducted in accordance with the Christian standards of commutative justice. 

The whole of this elaborate system for the preservation of justice in the affairs of everyday life was shattered by the Reformation. The right of private judgment, which had first been asserted  in matters of faith, rapidly spread into moral matters, and the attack on the dogmatic infallibility of the Church left Europe without an authority to which it could appeal on moral questions. The new Protestant churches were utterly unable to supply this want. The principle of private judgment on which they rested deprived them of any right to be listened to whenever they attempted to dictate moral precepts to their members, and henceforth the moral behaviour of the individual became a matter to be regulated by the promptings of his own conscience, or by such philosophical systems of ethics as he happened to approve. The secular state endeavoured to ensure that dishonesty amounting to actual theft or fraud should be kept in check, but this was a poor and ineffective substitute for the powerful weapon of the confessional. Authority having once broken down, it was but a single step from Protestantism to rationalism; and the way was opened to the development of all sorts of erroneous systems of morality.  Dr. George O’Brien, An Essay on the Economic Effects of the Reformation, IHS Press, Norfolk, Virginia, 2003.) 

Amintore Fanfani, who died in 1999 and had served as the Prime Minister of Italy on six different occasions of varying lengths between 1954 and 1987, noted in Catholicism, Protestantism, and Capitalism, that it is only when men keep a view on their eternal destiny that they can be just stewards of the this of this world. The success of the above-named Protestant revolutionaries and naturalistic "philosophers" and "theorists" was made possible by the overthrow of he authority of the Catholic Church. Unrestrained self-seeking replaced the authority of the Catholic Church:

Those who have followed our argument cannot fail to conclude, as we do, that in the Middle Ages it was the international trade ventures that did most to favour the rise of the capitalist spirit. In light of these considerations, the conception of trade in St. Thomas, the champion of the Catholic social ideal, appears only logical, "For, "says St. Thomas, "the city that for its subsistence has need of much merchandise must necessarily submit to the presence of foreigners. Now relations with foreigners, as Aristotle says in his Politics, very often corrupt national customs: the foreigners who have been brought up under other laws and customs, in many cases act otherwise than is the use of the citizens, who, led by their example, imitate them and so bring disturbance into social life. Moreover, if the citizens themselves engage in commerce, they open the way to many vices. For since the aim of merchants is wholly one of gain, greed takes root in the heart of the citizens, by which everything, in the city, becomes venal, and, with the disappearance of good faith, the way is open to fraud; the general good is despised, and each man will seek his own particular advantage; the taste for virtue will be lost when the honour which is normally the reward of virtue is accorded to all. Hence, in such a city civil life cannot fail to grow corrupt."

When these words are understood, and we bear in mind the ideal of a Catholic society and the aspirations of capitalism, we can easily see why the friar noted a tendency to reason only in a "venal" manner and ("despising the general good") to seek only "particular advantage."

The characteristics of capitalism are precisely the following: the adoption of an economic criterion as criterion of order; failure to consider third persons; a quest for purely individual profit. Nor did Aquinas exaggerate when he saw in the merchant the greatest danger in "civil life," as he understood it. It is not by chance that the first capitalistic figures presented to us are merchants--Godric, later St. Godric, presented by Pirenne; the Mariano by Heynen; the Bardi, the Peruzzi, the Del Bene by Sapori; Datini by Bensa; the Fugger by Sreider. Nor is it by chance that though opinions differ as to whether capitalism sprang from land-owners or traders, all agree that even land-owners first showed themselves capitalistic in the quality of merchants. In mediaeval economic society the only individual who could easily and often find himself in a position to act otherwise than in conformity with pre-capitalistic ideals was the merchant. Having left his city, exposed to risks of every kind, free from such ties as the laws of country or the opinion of his acquaintances, surrounded by intriguing people who saw in him only someone to be cheated, he had to defend himself against the cheaters by cheating, against competitors by sharpening his wits to find new methods of competition, and against adverse circumstances by learning to overcome them. Although he may have been a God-fearing man, if it was urgent for him to take back to the warehouse at least the equivalent of what he had brought away, he was obligated to throw overboard something of his pre-capitalistic ideas, even if in paradaisal conditions they might have appealed to him.

In another part of the present work we have pointed out that in a pre-capitalistic society if a single individual breaks away from the norm, the others will be forced to follow his example if only in self-defence. Let the reader then consider the vast significance of encounters either with merchants of another religion, or with subtle, equivocal, and unscrupulous merchants, always ready to take advantage of any opportunity. Faced with these, men's faithfulness to their own ideals will have begun to waver; their consequent actions will have produced such remarkable results that we doubt whether their conviction of wrong-doing will have been reinforced. To reason in terms of utility means a tangible result; to reason in terms of Paradise means hope of a result of which the certainty vanishes if faith weakens. We must not forget how much the capitalistic ideal has the advantage in being concrete, and, remembering this, we can more easily understand how a profitable infraction of pre-capitalist normality would rather lead men to repeat such infractions than arouse in them such remorse as to lead them back to the old path. We hold it a very significant fact that among mediaeval merchants remorse led to notable conversion even when in no danger of death. It is enough to quote St. Godric, St. Francis, Blessed Colombini. It led also to death-bed restitutions, often complete, and which were the more wonderful the harder it had been for the dying man to scrape together his hoard, and the more reluctant he had been in his life to give a penny to anyone who had not earned it twice over. Such conversions, implying a return to pre-capitalistic modes of life, continue so long as there is faith, but when faith weakens there is no longer thought of reparation.

It is the waning of faith that explains the establishment of a capitalistic spirit in a Catholic world, but in a certain sense it is the establishment of the capitalistic spirit that brings about a waning of faith. The effect of the weakening of faith is that the material factors we have mentioned change from momentary circumstances to permanent ones. With the weakening of faith, remorse becomes rare; the "is" is no longer compared with the "should-be," and that which is accepted and exploited in accordance with its own standards; the world is judged by purely worldly criteria.

All the circumstances that, in the Middle Ages, led to a waning of faith explain the progressive establishment of the capitalistic spirit, for the pre-capitalistic spirit rests on facts that are not seen, but must be held by faith. Those faithful to it sacrifice a certain result for a result that is not guaranteed by faith; they eschew a certain mode of action in the certainty of losing riches, but believing that they will gain a future reward in heaven. Let man lose this belief, and nothing remains for him, rationally speaking, but to act in a capitalistic manner. If there are no longer religious ties uniting man to man, there will be a growing number of audacious men whose sole end, in the words of Villari, is to be ahead of their fellows. Such men existed before the modern era began, and of such men it has been said that they showed "a complete lack of scruples and contempt for every moral law."

Men were particularly encouraged to sharpen their wits to acquire wealth, and moral obstacles were removed by the fact that, by a subversion of ancient custom, the highest offices no longer fell to those summoned to them by law or custom, but to those who could win them either by their own or others' wit, by their own or others' material strength, or by their own ability and others' baseness. In each case the stair of ascent was provided by economic means, from the moment that economic difficulties made all feel the need of goods. The Emperor no longer sought homage but money, the Cities widened their domains more by gold than by arms. Bankers became masters of cities without striking a blow. Gold paved the way and opened the gates to the new tyrants. Even the man who, from lofty motives, had no need of money could not do without it, if he did not wish to cut a poor figure at banquets and ceremonies, or be behind hand in public largesse.

It is a vicious circle. A man seeks goods because he no longer believes in a faith that bounded his desires, and he no longer believes  because he has experienced the pleasures of possession and influence. We need not enquire at what moment the former or the latter of these causes came into operation; we know that their working varied from country to country, from individual to individual, and that now a man might be tempted to discount morality by the attraction of goods, and now might be tempted to enrich himself because, he is no loner believed in divine penalties and rewards. And if in the case of an individual it would be hard to say which cause came first, it would be impossible in the case of society. We may take it for granted that in society as a whole both causes worked simultaneously, each stimulated by the other.

There were other phenomena that encouraged either acquisition action or incredulity. Leaving aside the less important and local ones, and confining ourselves to those of which the action was most general at the close of the pre-capitalistic period, we may say that the greatest contribution to the new economic spirit informing fifteenth-century men was brought by the humanist conception of life, of which the exponents, such as Alberti, took the most significant step towards the capitalist spirit by detaching their conception of wealth from its moral setting, and withdrawing the acquisition and use of goods from the influence of the rules and restrictions of religious morality. The advent of similar tendencies in the political field had the result that the State ceased to oppose the new mode of thought and life, and instead itself threw off the influence of Catholic ideals, often in order to exploit human vices, as we see in legislation on gambling. (Amintore Fanfani, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Capitalism, published originally by Sheed and Ward, 1935, republished in 2002 by IHS Press, pp. 135-138.)

Fanfani went on to note how Protestantism exploited this weakening of the Catholic Faith and built an entire economic system to suit its own heretical purposes:

Protestantism encouraged capitalism inasmuch as it denied the relation between earthly action and eternal recompense. From this point of view there is no real difference between the Lutheran and Calvinistic currents, for while it is true that Calvin linked salvation to arbitrary divine predestination, Luther made it depend on faith alone. Neither of the two connected it with works. Nevertheless, Calvin's statement was the more vigorous, and therefore better able to bear practical fruit in a capitalistic sense.

Such an assertion invalidates any supernatural morality, hence also the economic ethics of Catholicism, and opens the way to a thousand moral systems, all natural, all earthy, all based on principles inherent in human affairs. Protestantism by this principle did not act in a positive sense, as [Max] Weber believes, but in a negative sense, paving the way for the positive action of innumerable impulses, which--like the risks entailed by distant markets,  in the pre-Reformation period, the price revolution at the time of the Reformation, and the industrial revolution in the period following—led man to direct his action by purely economic criteria. Catholicism acts in opposition to capitalism by seeking to restrain these impulses and to bring various spheres of life into harmony on an ideal plane. Protestantism acted in favor of capitalism, for its religious teaching paved the way for it. (Amintore Fanfani, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Capitalism, published originally by Sheed and Ward, 1935, republished in 2002 by IHS Press, p. 151.)

The belief that social life is defined solely by economic criteria is what unites the false opposites of the naturalist “left” and right” even though they do not realize this. As I have noted so many times in the past on this site, the false opposites of the naturalist “right” and “left,” despite their differences on the margins of the errors of Modernity, are united in their belief that men can order their lives without any reference to religion at all, no less the true religion, and that men can do anything they want by means of their own unaided powers. In others, the adherents of the “left” and the “right” believe that men do not need Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ or His true Church and that it is not necessary for men to have belief in, access to and cooperation with Sanctifying Grace in order to create a better and more just world. The adherents of the “left and the “right” believe that the “better world” is defined by economics and not by the state of the souls of men.

The late Dr. George O'Brien stressed the fact that there is only one institution that can reorder the world properly, and it is not a secular, naturalistic international organization or a secular, naturalistic political party:

There is one institution and one institution alone which is capable of supplying and enforcing the social ethic that is needed to revivify the world. It is an institution at once intra-national and international; an institution that can claim to pronounce infallibly on moral matters, and to enforce the observance of the its moral decrees by direct sanctions on the individual conscience of man; an institution which, while respecting and supporting the civil governments of nations, can claim to exist independently of them, and can insist that they shall not intrude upon the moral life or fetter the moral liberty of their citizens. Europe possessed such an institution in the Middle Ages; its dethronement was the unique achievement of the Reformation; and the injury inflicted by that dethronement has never since been repaired. (George O'Brien, An Essay on the Economic Effects of the Reformation, first published in 1923, republished by IHS press in 2003, p. 132.) 

Father Edward Cahill, S.J., writing in The Framework of a Christian State, wrote the following about Luther and his revolution against the Church that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope: 

The assertion that Protestantism has introduced into Europe, or promoted, democratic freedom or real liberty of conscience is still more patently untrue. It is a fact, indeed, that at the beginning of the revolt Luther's professions were radically democratic. He promised to benefit the people at large by curtailing the power of both Church and State. But he and his followers ended up by supporting an irresponsible despotism such as Europe had not known since the days of the pagan Emperors of Rome.

Inspired by Luther's democratic professions and his denunciations of the "tyranny and oppression" of the rulers, the knights and the lesser nobility of many of the German States, and later on, the peasants rose in open revolt against the princes. When the revolution was crushed in blood (1525) the victorious princes, now without a rival and no longer kept in check by the moderating influence of the Catholic Church, used their augmented power to establish a despotism which they exceeded for their own personal advantage, in opposition to the interests of the people; while Luther, with unscrupulous inconsistency, now proclaimed the doctrine of the unlimited power of rulers. 

Soon even the Church in the Protestant States fell completely under the control of the ruling princes, who were thus established as the absolute masters of both Church and State. The wealth of the Church, which hitherto had been the patrimony of the poor; its authority; all the ecclesiastical institutions, including hospitals, schools, homes of refuge, etc., passed into the hands of the kings, princes, and the town magistrates. At the Peace of Augsburg (1555), which ended the first phase of the revolution in Germany, the principle was formally adopted that the prince of each state was free to dictate the religion of each and all of his subjects." (Father Edward Cahill, S.J., The Framework of a Christian State, published in 1932 in Ireland and republished by Roman Catholic books, pp. 93-94. William Cobbett, a Protestant historian who never converted to the Holy Faith, wrote a remarkably full and honest account of the plunder of monasteries and convents under King Henry VIII in England, thus beginning the rise of all economic miseries since that time as this plunder threw off the poor from their lands and consigned them to pauperism and vagabondage. For a fuller account of this plunder, please see Appendix B. Even most Catholics have no idea how the entirety of the modern economic system was the result of the Protestant Revolution, up to and including the concept of a “national debt” that has enriched Talmudic bankers and merchants in the past and that has reached such a point in the United States of America as to make this country’s resources a vassal of the Red Chinese tyrants, who are plundering the goods of the underground Church at this time with Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s full blessing and support.)

Thus began the rise of the statism that is upon us at this time. There is no way to regard the growth of statism by making advertence to some kind of “generic” Christianity and/or by relying upon the Judeo-Masonic principles of naturalism and its religious indifferentism. Catholicism is but the one and only foundation of personal and social order, which is why the devil worked very hard to plant the seeds of corruption in the two centuries leading up to Martin Luther’ revolution against God and His true Church. And far from being “peaceful,” Luther’s revolution was born in blood as Catholic churches and convents were plundered and ransacked.

Contemporary Capitalism Produced Socialism

Pope Leo XIII, writing at the very beginning of Rerum Novarum, May 15, 1891, explained how the "new things" of Modernity had invaded the precincts of economics, resulting in crushing conditions for workers. He rejected the false foundations of Calvinist capitalism while at the same time rejecting categorically the "alternative" of Socialism and its attack upon the Natural Law right of private property. Pope Leo understood that it is the right conduct of men in due submission to the laws of God and in cooperation with Sanctifying Grace that are at the foundation of a justly ordered economic system:

That the spirit of revolutionary change, which has long been disturbing the nations of the world, should have passed beyond the sphere of politics and made its influence felt in the cognate sphere of practical economics is not surprising. The elements of the conflict now raging are unmistakable, in the vast expansion of industrial pursuits and the marvelous discoveries of science; in the changed relations between masters and workmen; in the enormous fortunes of some few individuals, and the utter poverty of the masses; in the increased self-reliance and closer mutual combination of the working classes; as also, finally, in the prevailing moral degeneracy. The momentous gravity of the state of things now obtaining fills every mind with painful apprehension; wise men are discussing it; practical men are proposing schemes; popular meetings, legislatures, and rulers of nations are all busied with it -- actually there is no question which has taken a deeper hold on the public mind.

Therefore, venerable brethren, as on former occasions when it seemed opportune to refute false teaching, We have addressed you in the interests of the Church and of the common weal, and have issued letters bearing on political power, human liberty, the Christian constitution of the State, and like matters, so have We thought it expedient now to speak on the condition of the working classes. It is a subject on which We have already touched more than once, incidentally. But in the present letter, the responsibility of the apostolic office urges Us to treat the question of set purpose and in detail, in order that no misapprehension may exist as to the principles which truth and justice dictate for its settlement. The discussion is not easy, nor is it void of danger. It is no easy matter to define the relative rights and mutual duties of the rich and of the poor, of capital and of labor. And the danger lies in this, that crafty agitators are intent on making use of these differences of opinion to pervert men's judgments and to stir up the people to revolt.

In any case we clearly see, and on this there is general agreement, that some opportune remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class: for the ancient workingmen's guilds were abolished in the last century, and no other protective organization took their place. Public institutions and the laws set aside the ancient religion. Hence, by degrees it has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition. The mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different guise, but with like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping men. To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.

To remedy these wrongs the socialists, working on the poor man's envy of the rich, are striving to do away with private property, and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies. They hold that by thus transferring property from private individuals to the community, the present mischievous state of things will be set to rights, inasmuch as each citizen will then get his fair share of whatever there is to enjoy. But their contentions are so clearly powerless to end the controversy that were they carried into effect the working man himself would be among the first to suffer. They are, moreover, emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community. (Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, May 15, 1891.)

The abuses associated with Calvinist capitalism, which are the result of fallen human nature uninformed by the Deposit of Faith and unreformed by Sanctifying Grace, are not to be repaired by mythical, "self-correcting" "market forces" or by Socialism. The capitalist system, which places an emphasis upon the expansion of wealth as the means to personal happiness and national prosperity, reduce men ultimately to the acquisitive level, concerned mostly, if not exclusively, with the securing of "wealth" in this life without any regard to the life that lasts forever. How many of those involved in the ongoing "credit crisis" caused by a combination of forces (among these being the reckless policies of quasi-government lenders--Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and commercial lenders who encouraged and approved the issuance of subprime mortgages in a housing market that could not sustain itself) considered for a moment how any of their actions would be judged by Christ the King as the moment of their Particular Judgments? Most of these men and women were motivated only by greed and their desire to enjoy to excess more and more of this world's good no matter whose assets they put at risk in doing so.

Pope Pius XII, writing in his last encyclical letter, Ad Apostolorum Principis, June 29, 1958, explained that the Catholic Church does indeed have the right to lay down the principles that govern human conduct in the realm of economics:

Assuming false and unjust premises, they are not afraid to take a position which would confine within a narrow scope the supreme teaching authority of the Church, claiming that there are certain questions -- such as those which concern social and economic matters -- in which Catholics may ignore the teachings and the directives of this Apostolic See.

This opinion -- it seems entirely unnecessary to demonstrate its existence -- is utterly false and full of error because, as We declared a few years ago to a special meeting of Our Venerable Brethren in the episcopacy:

"The power of the Church is in no sense limited to so-called 'strictly religious matters'; but the whole matter of the natural law, its institution, interpretation and application, in so far as the moral aspect is concerned, are within its power.

"By God's appointment the observance of the natural law concerns the way by which man must strive toward his supernatural end. The Church shows the way and is the guide and guardian of men with respect to their supernatural end."

This truth had already been wisely explained by Our Predecessor St. Pius X in his Encyclical Letter Singulari quadam of September 24, 1912, in which he made this statement: "All actions of a Christian man so far as they are morally either good or bad -- that is, so far as they agree with or are contrary to the natural and divine law -- fall under the judgment and jurisdiction of the Church."

Moreover, even when those who arbitrarily set and defend these narrow limits profess a desire to obey the Roman Pontiff with regard to truths to be believed, and to observe what they call ecclesiastical directives, they proceed with such boldness that they refuse to obey the precise and definite prescriptions of the Holy See. They protest that these refer to political affairs because of a hidden meaning by the author, as if these prescriptions took their origin from some secret conspiracy against their own nation. (Pope Pius XII, Ad Apostolorum Principis, June 29, 1958.) 

And those Catholics, whether attracted to libertarianism or to some variant of Socialism, including Communism, who believe that they are exempt from the Catholic Church's social encyclical letters as the Church, according to their own dissenting "lights," do not bind them. They are most wrong, as Pope Pope Pius XI and Pope Pius XII noted conclusively:

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

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

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

Most men alive today, including even most believing Catholics, sadly, believe that Holy Mother Church has no role to play in the guiding of a just economic order, and thus it is that we have a conflict between a “free market” system that is not as “free” as is thought and the contemporary version of socialism that is serving as but yet another preparation for the coming of Antichrist. Greed and pride, two of the Seven Deadly Sins, must be triumphant when Our Lord and His true Church are banished from the hearts and minds of men and from the institutions and laws of their nations.

The combination of Pride and Greed are what make it absolutely poisonous for the latter day captains of industry and banking, many of whom have souls that steeped in the ravages of Original Sin and have contempt for the true Faith as they fund abortion and contraception and perversity in the United States and around the world, to be placed in positions of unbridled economic power without any understanding of their accountability to God for their actions. Any economic system, be it Calvinist capitalism or the variant of Socialism, that denies the authority of the Catholic Church over men and their nations is bound to make men prisoners of materialism by various means (profit and usury in the capitalist system; state control over private property and most aspects of the economy in socialism).

As Pope Pius XI noted in Quadragesimo Anno, May 15, 1931, issued on the fortieth anniversary of Rerum Novarum, the capitalist error of individualism cannot be "fixed" by the socialist error of collectivism. Men need the true Faith to guide them as they conduct their temporal affairs in light of their Last End:

But it is only the moral law which, just as it commands us to seek our supreme and last end in the whole scheme of our activity, so likewise commands us to seek directly in each kind of activity those purposes which we know that nature, or rather God the Author of nature, established for that kind of action, and in orderly relationship to subordinate such immediate purposes to our supreme and last end. If we faithfully observe this law, then it will follow that the particular purposes, both individual and social, that are sought in the economic field will fall in their proper place in the universal order of purposes, and We, in ascending through them, as it were by steps, shall attain the final end of all things, that is God, to Himself and to us, the supreme and inexhaustible Good. . . .

If Socialism, like all errors, contains some truth (which, moreover, the Supreme Pontiffs have never denied), it is based nevertheless on a theory of human society peculiar to itself and irreconcilable with true Christianity. Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist. (Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, May 15, 1931.)

There is no such thing as Christian socialism. “No one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.”

Pope Pius XI reminded the world's bishops in Quadragesimo Anno of the simple, plain truth that naturalists of the “left” and the “right” refuse to accept as they wonder why an economic system built on falsehoods and outright thefts (both from the corporate and governmental sectors) of what belongs rightly to the people, their private property.

The world in which we live, the world that is shaped by the aftereffects of Protestantism and the continuing influences of Judeo-Masonry and all of the naturalistic ideologies and theories spawned thereby, is one that is in desperate need of hearing the prophetic voice of the Catholic Church in calling all men and their nations to return to Christ the King through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, who is Our Queen and Our Mother. Alas, the conciliarists no longer call men and their nations to conversion, content to wax  about the "civilization of love" and a "healthy secularity" as the false foundations of the modern civil state with which it has reconciled itself are producing nothing but chaos, destruction and disarray in the United States of America and elsewhere in the world.

None of the adherents of the “left” or the “right” can admit that the modern world has been shaped by the forces unleashed by Martin Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Cranmer, John Knox, John Wesley, John Locke, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant,  Maximilian Robespierre and James Madison, who believed that the best way to guard against the "vice of factions" was to create the extended “commercial” republic. We must, however, listen to the sage analysis offered by Catholics about the shape of the modern world, which convinces men that they must be separated from their families for most of hours of the weeks and attempts to convince women that it unnatural for them to stay at home with their children, thereby maladjusting their children who want and need and deserve the loving attention of their mothers.

The late Father Vincent McNabb, O.P., writing in The Church and the Land, noted this exact phenomenon of the world created by the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King:

(3) How many mothers (women?) go out to work?

Stated in terms of industrialism, the home is the most important factory in the Commonwealth. Other factories make commodities called (often by a courtesy title) boots, hose furniture, jam, margarine (the Lord preserve us!), Boxo, and the whole inferno of tinned beastliness whose name is legion. The home alone makes boys and girls, men and women, good men and women, good Englishmen and good Englishwomen. And without these human commodities of what use are even the finest "canned goods".

(4) How many children are in the average family?

Read (3) over again. You will see that this efficient factory called the Home is the more efficient the more commodities it can produce, and the better the finish it can give them. Now the best of all training in the three essential civic virtues of Poverty, Chastity, Obedience, is in the large family. Experto credite Roberto. Trust Bob, at his job.

(5) How many mothers suckle their offspring?

To appreciate this question, read 3 and 4 over again. Then read a second time. If you don't see the point at the second reading—consult a doctor. (Father Vincent McNabb, O.P., The Church and the Land, published originally in London in 1925, republished in 2003 by IHS Press, pp. 40-41.)

There were many far-seeing Catholics a century ago who understood the road of destruction upon which the world had been set. However, not even many Catholics paid any attention then, and they continue to believe in the political and economic equivalent of the tooth fairy by genuflecting at the altars of their political champions, who are see as something approaching secular saviors.

Third, one of the greatest myths propagated by socialists, starting with the proto-socialists of Judeo-Masonry’s own French Revolution two hundred years ago, through the last nearly two centuries is that of egalitarianism, which rejects all authority above that which a “majority” of “reasonable men” decided is best for the unwashed masses. This egalitarianism, however, places authority in an elite who always seem to know “better” than the masses, thereby establishing a new class of high priests and priestesses from whom no one can dissent legitimately. Pope Leo XIII addressed the myth that is egalitarianism, explaining that inequality exists in the nature of things, starting with the very fact the created beings are inferior to their Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier:

6. Assuredly, the Church wisely inculcates the apostolic precept on the mass of men: “There is no power but from God; and those that are, are ordained of God. Therefore he that resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God. And they that resist purchase to themselves damnation.” And again she admonishes those “subject by necessity” to be so “not only for wrath but also for conscience’ sake,” and to render “to all men their dues; tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.”[9] For, He who created and governs all things has, in His wise providence, appointed that the things which are lowest should attain their ends by those which are intermediate, and these again by the highest. Thus, as even in the kingdom of heaven He hath willed that the choirs of angels be distinct and some subject to others, and also in the Church has instituted various orders and a diversity of offices, so that all are not apostles or doctors or pastors,[10] so also has He appointed that there should be various orders in civil society, differing indignity, rights, and power, whereby the State, like the Church, should be one body, consisting of many members, some nobler than others, but all necessary to each other and solicitous for the common good.

9. But Catholic wisdom, sustained by the precepts of natural and divine law, provides with especial care for public and private tranquillity in its doctrines and teachings regarding the duty of government and the distribution of the goods which are necessary for life and use. For, while the socialists would destroy the “right” of property, alleging it to be a human invention altogether opposed to the inborn equality of man, and, claiming a community of goods, argue that poverty should not be peaceably endured, and that the property and privileges of the rich may be rightly invaded, the Church, with much greater wisdom and good sense, recognizes the inequality among men, who are born with different powers of body and mind, inequality in actual possession, also, and holds that the right of property and of ownership, which springs from nature itself, must not be touched and stands inviolate. For she knows that stealing and robbery were forbidden in so special a manner by God, the Author and Defender of right, that He would not allow man even to desire what belonged to another, and that thieves and despoilers, no less than adulterers and idolaters, are shut out from the Kingdom of Heaven. But not the less on this account does our holy Mother not neglect the care of the poor or omit to provide for their necessities; but, rather, drawing them to her with a mother’s embrace, and knowing that they bear the person of Christ Himself, who regards the smallest gift to the poor as a benefit conferred on Himself, holds them in great honor. She does all she can to help them; she provides homes and hospitals where they may be received, nourished, and cared for all the world over and watches over these. She is constantly pressing on the rich that most grave precept to give what remains to the poor; and she holds over their heads the divine sentence that unless they succor the needy they will be repaid by eternal torments. In fine, she does all she can to relieve and comfort the poor, either by holding up to them the example of Christ, “who being rich became poor for our sake,[18] or by reminding them of his own words, wherein he pronounced the poor blessed and bade them hope for the reward of eternal bliss. But who does not see that this is the best method of arranging the old struggle between the rich and poor? For, as the very evidence of facts and events shows, if this method is rejected or disregarded, one of two things must occur: either the greater portion of the human race will fall back into the vile condition of slavery which so long prevailed among the pagan nations, or human society must continue to be disturbed by constant eruptions, to be disgraced by rapine and strife, as we have had sad witness even in recent times.

10. These things being so, then, venerable brethren, as at the beginning of Our pontificate We, on whom the guidance of the whole Church now lies, pointed out a place of refuge to the peoples and the princes tossed about by the fury of the tempest, so now, moved by the extreme peril that is on them, We again lift up Our voice, and beseech them again and again for their own safety’s sake as well as that of their people to welcome and give ear to the Church which has had such wonderful influence on the public prosperity of kingdoms, and to recognize that political and religious affairs are so closely united that what is taken from the spiritual weakens the loyalty of subjects and the majesty of the government. And since they know that the Church of Christ has such power to ward off the plague of socialism as cannot be found in human laws, in the mandates of magistrates, or in the force of armies, let them restore that Church to the condition and liberty in which she may exert her healing force for the benefit of all society.

11. But you, venerable brethren, who know the origin and the drift of these gathering evils, strive with all your force of soul to implant the Catholic teaching deep in the minds of all. Strive that all may have the habit of clinging to God with filial love and revering His divinity from their tenderest years; that they may respect the majesty of princes and of laws; that they may restrain their passions and stand fast by the order which God has established in civil and domestic society. Moreover, labor hard that the children of the Catholic Church neither join nor favor in any way whatsoever this abominable sect; let them show, on the contrary, by noble deeds and right dealing in all things, how well and happily human society would hold together were each member to shine as an example of right doing and of virtue. In fine, as the recruits of socialism are especially sought among artisans and workmen, who, tired, perhaps, of labor, are more easily allured by the hope of riches and the promise of wealth, it is well to encourage societies of artisans and workmen which, constituted under the guardianship of religion, may tend to make all associates contented with their lot and move them to a quiet and peaceful life. (Pope Leo XIII, Quod Apostolicis Muneris, December 28, 1878.)

One of the corollary proofs of the apostasies facing us at this time is the man who claims to be “Pope Francis,” is entirely supportive of socialism and its goals. His kinship with world leaders who embrace socialist policies and with George Soros, the world’s leading financier of all things wicked (contraception, abortion, “palliative care,” sodomy and all its related perverse vices, “open borders,” violence against opponents of the “enlightened” Soros agenda, socialism, statism, globalism, feminism, environmentalism, evolutionism, etc.) and his words of praise for them speak loudly about the fact that he is a fellow traveler who has as much contempt for papal condemnations of socialism and communism as his predecessors have had for the very immutable nature of dogmatic truth, noting that belief in biological evolutionism would lead to social and theological evolutionism. Jorge Mario Bergoglio is one of those hypocritical egalitarians who believe that the “enlightened” are more “equal” than all the rest. 

As the abuses caused by the Judeo-Calvinist capitalism grew in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century and as the agitation caused by socialists against those abuses grew louder and louder and attracted many Catholics to their cause, Pope Leo XIII elaborated on the relationship between labor and capital in his landmark encyclical letter, Rerum Novarum, May 15, 1891, that once again stressed that inequality exists in the very nature of things and that pain and suffering will have no end in this life, discussing the desire of socialists to gain control of children by placing them on a level of equality with the authority of their parents

14. The contention, then, that the civil government should at its option intrude into and exercise intimate control over the family and the household is a great and pernicious error. True, if a family finds itself in exceeding distress, utterly deprived of the counsel of friends, and without any prospect of extricating itself, it is right that extreme necessity be met by public aid, since each family is a part of the commonwealth. In like manner, if within the precincts of the household there occur grave disturbance of mutual rights, public authority should intervene to force each party to yield to the other its proper due; for this is not to deprive citizens of their rights, but justly and properly to safeguard and strengthen them.

But the rulers of the commonwealth must go no further; here, nature bids them stop. Paternal authority can be neither abolished nor absorbed by the State; for it has the same source as human life itself. “The child belongs to the father,” and is, as it were, the continuation of the father’s personality; and speaking strictly, the child takes its place in civil society, not of its own right, but in its quality as member of the family in which it is born. And for the very reason that “the child belongs to the father” it is, as St. Thomas Aquinas says, “before it attains the use of free will, under the power and the charge of its parents.”[4] The socialists, therefore, in setting aside the parent and setting up a State supervision, act against natural justice, and destroy the structure of the home.

15. And in addition to injustice, it is only too evident what an upset and disturbance there would be in all classes, and to how intolerable and hateful a slavery citizens would be subjected. The door would be thrown open to envy, to mutual invective, and to discord; the sources of wealth themselves would run dry, for no one would have any interest in exerting his talents or his industry; and that ideal equality about which they entertain pleasant dreams would be in reality the leveling down of all to a like condition of misery and degradation.

Hence, it is clear that the main tenet of socialism, community of goods, must be utterly rejected, since it only injures those whom it would seem meant to benefit, is directly contrary to the natural rights of mankind, and would introduce confusion and disorder into the commonweal. The first and most fundamental principle, therefore, if one would undertake to alleviate the condition of the masses, must be the inviolability of private property. This being established, we proceed to show where the remedy sought for must be found.

16. We approach the subject with confidence, and in the exercise of the rights which manifestly appertain to Us, for no practical solution of this question will be found apart from the intervention of religion and of the Church. It is We who are the chief guardian of religion and the chief dispenser of what pertains to the Church; and by keeping silence we would seem to neglect the duty incumbent on us. Doubtless, this most serious question demands the attention and the efforts of others besides ourselves — to wit, of the rulers of States, of employers of labor, of the wealthy, aye, of the working classes themselves, for whom We are pleading. But We affirm without hesitation that all the striving of men will be vain if they leave out the Church. It is the Church that insists, on the authority of the Gospel, upon those teachings whereby the conflict can be brought to an end, or rendered, at least, far less bitter; the Church uses her efforts not only to enlighten the mind, but to direct by her precepts the life and conduct of each and all; the Church improves and betters the condition of the working man by means of numerous organizations; does her best to enlist the services of all classes in discussing and endeavoring to further in the most practical way, the interests of the working classes; and considers that for this purpose recourse should be had, in due measure and degree, to the intervention of the law and of State authority.

17. It must be first of all recognized that the condition of things inherent in human affairs must be borne with, for it is impossible to reduce civil society to one dead level. Socialists may in that intent do their utmost, but all striving against nature is in vain. There naturally exist among mankind manifold differences of the most important kind; people differ in capacity, skill, health, strength; and unequal fortune is a necessary result of unequal condition. Such inequality is far from being disadvantageous either to individuals or to the community. Social and public life can only be maintained by means of various kinds of capacity for business and the playing of many parts; and each man, as a rule, chooses the part which suits his own peculiar domestic condition. As regards bodily labor, even had man never fallen from the state of innocence, he would not have remained wholly idle; but that which would then have been his free choice and his delight became afterwards compulsory, and the painful expiation for his disobedience. “Cursed be the earth in thy work; in thy labor thou shalt eat of it all the days of thy life.”[5]

18. In like manner, the other pains and hardships of life will have no end or cessation on earth; for the consequences of sin are bitter and hard to bear, and they must accompany man so long as life lasts. To suffer and to endure, therefore, is the lot of humanity; let them strive as they may, no strength and no artifice will ever succeed in banishing from human life the ills and troubles which beset it. If any there are who pretend differently — who hold out to a hard-pressed people the boon of freedom from pain and trouble, an undisturbed repose, and constant enjoyment — they delude the people and impose upon them, and their lying promises will only one day bring forth evils worse than the present. Nothing is more useful than to look upon the world as it really is, and at the same time to seek elsewhere, as We have said, for the solace to its troubles.

19. The great mistake made in regard to the matter now under consideration is to take up with the notion that class is naturally hostile to class, and that the wealthy and the working men are intended by nature to live in mutual conflict. So irrational and so false is this view that the direct contrary is the truth. Just as the symmetry of the human frame is the result of the suitable arrangement of the different parts of the body, so in a State is it ordained by nature that these two classes should dwell in harmony and agreement, so as to maintain the balance of the body politic. Each needs the other: capital cannot do without labor, nor labor without capital. Mutual agreement results in the beauty of good order, while perpetual conflict necessarily produces confusion and savage barbarity. Now, in preventing such strife as this, and in uprooting it, the efficacy of Christian institutions is marvelous and manifold. First of all, there is no intermediary more powerful than religion (whereof the Church is the interpreter and guardian) in drawing the rich and the working class together, by reminding each of its duties to the other, and especially of the obligations of justice. (Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, May 15, 1891.)

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 builded 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 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 Faitih can draw “men’s eyes, fascinated by and wholly fixated on the changing things of the world, and raise them toward Heaven.” Unfortunately, most men today, including many Catholics, do indeed deny that human society is in urgent need of the remedy that only Holy Mother Church can provide. Men who believe that they are descended from apes will come to act like them over the course of time. The ideology of biological evolutionism leads inexorably to the devolution of men and their societies into conditions of chaos, violence and the worst kind of self-seeking that the world has ever seen.

Pope Pius XI also explained in the degree of degradation to which men must fall once they are fixed on temporal goals to the exclusion of all supernatural considerations.

131. We, made Shepherd and Protector by the Prince of Shepherds, Who Redeemed them by His Blood, of a truly innumerable flock, cannot hold back Our tears when contemplating this greatest of their dangers. Nay rather, fully mindful of Our pastoral office and with paternal solicitude, We are continually meditating on how We can help them; and We have summoned to Our aid the untiring zeal of others who are concerned on grounds of justice or charity. For what will it profit men to become expert in more wisely using their wealth, even to gaining the whole world, if thereby they suffer the loss of their souls?[64] What will it profit to teach them sound principles of economic life if in unbridled and sordid greed they let themselves be swept away by their passion for property, so that "hearing the commandments of the Lord they do all things contrary."[65]

32. The root and font of this defection in economic and social life from the Christian law, and of the consequent apostasy of great numbers of workers from the Catholic faith, are the disordered passions of the soul, the sad result of original sin which has so destroyed the wonderful harmony of man's faculties that, easily led astray by his evil desires, he is strongly incited to prefer the passing goods of this world to the lasting goods of Heaven. Hence arises that unquenchable thirst for riches and temporal goods, which has at all times impelled men to break God's laws and trample upon the rights of their neighbors, but which, on account of the present system of economic life, is laying far more numerous snares for human frailty. Since the instability of economic life, and especially of its structure, exacts of those engaged in it most intense and unceasing effort, some have become so hardened to the stings of conscience as to hold that they are allowed, in any manner whatsoever, to increase their profits and use means, fair or foul, to protect their hard-won wealth against sudden changes of fortune. The easy gains that a market unrestricted by any law opens to everybody attracts large numbers to buying and selling goods, and they, their one aim being to make quick profits with the least expenditure of work, raise or lower prices by their uncontrolled business dealings so rapidly according to their own caprice and greed that they nullify the wisest forecasts of producers. The laws passed to promote corporate business, while dividing and limiting the risk of business, have given occasion to the most sordid license. For We observe that consciences are little affected by this reduced obligation of accountability; that furthermore, by hiding under the shelter of a joint name, the worst of injustices and frauds are penetrated; and that, too, directors of business companies, forgetful of their trust, betray the rights of those whose savings they have undertaken to administer. Lastly, We must not omit to mention those crafty men who, wholly unconcerned about any honest usefulness of their work, do not scruple to stimulate the baser human desires and, when they are aroused, use them for their own profit.  (Pope Pius XI, Quadregesimo Anno, May 15, 1931.)

The world around us continues to fall deeper and deeper into the abyss because most men alive today are controlled by the forces of the world, the flesh and the devil, ignoring any thought of divinely-revealed truths and a single means by which their actions may be rendered meritorious in the sight of God and thus redound to their eternal salvation. Even most Catholics rush headlong to one side or the other of the false opposites of naturalism and refuse to consider the simple truth that to see the world as it truly as it is we must see it exclusively through the eyes of the Holy Faith. The only kind of “realism” is Catholic realism, Catholic truth. Everything else is but an illusion, a mirage. 

Pope Pius XI’s Divini Redemptoris, March 19, 1937, continued the fifty-nine year-old papal condemnation of socialism that began with Pope Leo XIII in 1878 and explained yet again that socialism and communism are but the products of failure of liberalism and laicism. Indeed, the social consequences of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King are vast, starting with the destruction of the family, which has been rent asunder by divorce and contraception and feminism and materialism and positivism and utilitarianism and the organized forces of naturalism. The atomistic individualism of Calvinist capitalism and Lockean liberalism thus produce the same sort of societies as that produced by all forms Socialism, including that wrought by Bolshevism:

Communism, moreover, strips man of his liberty, robs human personality of all its dignity, and removes all the moral restraints that check the eruptions of blind impulse. There is no recognition of any right of the individual in his relations to the collectivity; no natural right is accorded to human personality, which is a mere cog-wheel in the Communist system. In man's relations with other individuals, besides, Communists hold the principle of absolute equality, rejecting all hierarchy and divinely-constituted authority, including the authority of parents. What men call authority and subordination is derived from the community as its first and only font. Nor is the individual granted any property rights over material goods or the means of production, for inasmuch as these are the source of further wealth, their possession would give one man power over another. Precisely on this score, all forms of private property must be eradicated, for they are at the origin of all economic enslavement .

Refusing to human life any sacred or spiritual character, such a doctrine logically makes of marriage and the family a purely artificial and civil institution, the outcome of a specific economic system. There exists no matrimonial bond of a juridico-moral nature that is not subject to the whim of the individual or of the collectivity. Naturally, therefore, the notion of an indissoluble marriage-tie is scouted. Communism is particularly characterized by the rejection of any link that binds woman to the family and the home, and her emancipation is proclaimed as a basic principle. She is withdrawn from the family and the care of her children, to be thrust instead into public life and collective production under the same conditions as man. The care of home and children then devolves upon the collectivity. Finally, the right of education is denied to parents, for it is conceived as the exclusive prerogative of the community, in whose name and by whose mandate alone parents may exercise this right.

What would be the condition of a human society based on such materialistic tenets? It would be a collectivity with no other hierarchy than that of the economic system. It would have only one mission: the production of material things by means of collective labor, so that the goods of this world might be enjoyed in a paradise where each would "give according to his powers" and would "receive according to his needs." Communism recognizes in the collectivity the right, or rather, unlimited discretion, to draft individuals for the labor of the collectivity with no regard for their personal welfare; so that even violence could be legitimately exercised to dragoon the recalcitrant against their wills. In the Communistic commonwealth morality and law would be nothing but a derivation of the existing economic order, purely earthly in origin and unstable in character. In a word. the Communists claim to inaugurate a new era and a new civilization which is the result of blind evolutionary forces culminating in a humanity without God. (Pope Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris, March 19, 1937.) 

A world devoid of God and of submission to His true Church is the only possible consequence of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ King. Naturalist liberals disagree with naturalist socialists, including communists, only about a few details. All forms of naturalism produce the godless world, which makes possible barbarism in "liberal" states and totalitarianism in "socialist" states. Indeed, the degree to which men fall into the naturalist trap will be the degree to which all states, liberal and socialist, get to increase their power over the lives of ordinary citizens in the name of "law and order" and "national security," you understand. The heresy of religious liberty makes it impossible for anyone to find any one overarching means by which social evils can be retarded, resulting in a new caste of dictators whose "infallible" pronouncements must be accepted without criticism or dissent. The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, for example, eviscerates the First Commandment by stating unequivocally that no religion, including the Catholic Faith, must be recognized by the civil state as indispensable for personal and social order, thus resulting in the triumph of the false religion of statism. A neat little trick of the devil, wouldn't you say?

Pope Pius XI alluded to some of these points in Divini Redemptoris:

But the enemies of the Church, though forced to acknowledge the wisdom of her doctrine, accuse her of having failed to act in conformity with her principles, and from this conclude to the necessity of seeking other solutions. The utter falseness and injustice of this accusation is shown by the whole history of Christianity. To refer only to a single typical trait, it was Christianity that first affirmed the real and universal brotherhood of all men of whatever race and condition. This doctrine she proclaimed by a method, and with an amplitude and conviction, unknown to preceding centuries; and with it she potently contributed to the abolition of slavery. Not bloody revolution, but the inner force of her teaching made the proud Roman matron see in her slave a sister in Christ. It is Christianity that adores the Son of God, made Man for love of man, and become not only the "Son of a Carpenter" but Himself a "Carpenter."[19] It was Christianity that raised manual labor to its true dignity, whereas it had hitherto been so despised that even the moderate Cicero did not hesitate to sum up the general opinion of his time in words of which any modern sociologist would be ashamed: "All artisans are engaged in sordid trades, for there can be nothing ennobling about a workshop."

Faithful to these principles, the Church has given new life to human society. Under her influence arose prodigious charitable organizations, great guilds of artisans and workingmen of every type. These guilds, ridiculed as "medieval" by the liberalism of the last century, are today claiming the admiration of our contemporaries in many countries who are endeavoring to revive them in some modern form. And when other systems hindered her work and raised obstacles to the salutary influence of the Church, she was never done warning them of their error. We need but recall with what constant firmness and energy Our Predecessor, Leo XIII, vindicated for the workingman the right to organize, which the dominant liberalism of the more powerful States relentlessly denied him. Even today the authority of this Church doctrine is greater than it seems; for the influence of ideas in the realm of facts, though invisible and not easily measured, is surely of predominant importance.

It may be said in all truth that the Church, like Christ, goes through the centuries doing good to all. There would be today neither Socialism nor Communism if the rulers of the nations had not scorned the teachings and maternal warnings of the Church. On the bases of liberalism and laicism they wished to build other social edifices which, powerful and imposing as they seemed at first, all too soon revealed the weakness of their foundations, and today are crumbling one after another before our eyes, as everything must crumble that is not grounded on the one corner stone which is Christ Jesus.

This, Venerable Brethren, is the doctrine of the Church, which alone in the social as in all other fields can offer real light and assure salvation in the face of Communistic ideology. But this doctrine must be consistently reduced to practice in every-day life, according to the admonition of St. James the Apostle: "Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves." The most urgent need of the present day is therefore the energetic and timely application of remedies which will effectively ward off the catastrophe that daily grows more threatening. We cherish the firm hope that the fanaticism with which the sons of darkness work day and night at their materialistic and atheistic propaganda will at least serve the holy purpose of stimulating the sons of light to a like and even greater zeal for the honor of the Divine Majesty. (Pope Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris, March 19, 1937.)

There can be no room for compromise: socialism is as antithetical to a just order on true Christian principles as are all forms of political ideology, including liberalism and conservatism and, as such, are sterile substitutes for Catholicism.

Part Three

Amorality has defined the life and work of most of those who have served in public life in the United States of America since its beginnings nearly two hundred fifty years ago. Those who live in light of First and Last Things and thus do not fear the moment when they face Christ the King and His Divine judgment on their immortal souls will come to believe that all laws, including the Divine Positive Law, the Natural Law, and the just laws of men, can be ignored if it suits their utilitarian ends.

To wit, the outgoing administration of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., and Kamala Harris Emhoff, which is so associated with its amoral violation of the laws of God and the just laws of men that it  would no surprise and see Biden’s photograph (preferably one that shows the empty look that has come to signify his lack of cognitive abilities) next to a dictionary entry for the with United States Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE), doing so just after the conviction of Venezuelan criminal Jose Ibarra for the brutal murder of college student Laken Riley after he and his brother had been flown to Georgia free of charge by the Alejandro Mayorkas’s United States Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement once they had been arrested—and, of course, released—after being charged with criminal acts in the City of New York but permitted by lawfare warrior Alvin Bragg to walk free and clear:

President Biden and Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas seem to think their border policies haven’t done enough damage to the country, so they’re racing to ensure even more harm after they leave.

With just two months to go before Team Trump takes over, the Biden crew is getting set to roll out an ICE app — starting in New York in December — that’ll let illegal migrants skip periodic, in-person check-ins that are required while they wait for court dates that could be years off.

Right now, those who miss in-person check-ins are subject to deportation. But those who “check in” by app won’t be, making it harder to deport (or even find) them.

Think about it: Migrants will be able to “check in” from anywhere, yet the software is reportedly unreliable on their locations, making them harder to find and track.

Yet those who fib about their location will nonetheless be considered “here” legally, since they’ve reported in virtually.

Team Biden will also let migrants appeal their ankle monitor requirements. Gee, what a great way to further clog the system, boost migrant crime and increase the odds of losing track of potential terrorists.

Worse: Experts say President-elect Donald Trump may find it hard to reverse these moves because of procedural and legal hurdles. Though he’ll certainly try, and quickly.

What could possibly be the goal here, other than to ensure that as many border-jumpers as possible can remain here after the Biden-Mayorkas crew is gone?

It’s a monstrous insult to the tens of millions of voters who re-elected Donald Trump in large part because of his vows to crack down and deport illegal border-crashers.

And it’ll just make a horrific situation worse.

Remember: Biden and Mayorkas have already allowed 10 million to 12 million migrants to flood the nation on their watch, nearly all illegal and without Congress’ OK.

They brought crime, drugs, sex trafficking and even the possibility of a terror attack along with them.

Cities and towns have scrambled to accommodate them, shelling out tens of billions of taxpayer dollars and surrendering hotels and valuable public space for the cause.

On Tuesday, one illegal migrant, Jose Ibarra, was convicted of murdering 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley.

Yet the White House can’t get enough of this madness.

If there’s ever been a more arrogant, lawless administration, we can’t think of one. (Biden, Alejandro Mayorkas race to lock in their migrant damage. Also see: Trafficking expert recounts migrant girl's abuse under Biden-Harris policies that lost track of 300K kids: 'Not an isolated case'.)

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., Kamala Harris Emhoff, Merrick Garland, and Alejandro Mayorkas are so contemptuous of the United States Code and Congress’s constitutional authority to oversee its enforcement that Mayorkas and Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray have decided not to give the end-of-the-year security findings to the United States House of Representatives:

The Democratic chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee blasted the heads of the FBI and Department of Homeland Security on Thursday, issuing a rare but sharp rebuke of the two officials for failing to appear for a public hearing.

Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) said both Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and FBI Director Christopher Wray “refused to appear” before the panel for its annual hearing about threats to the homeland, saying it was the first time in 15 years officials have done so.

“Americans deserve transparent, public answers about the threats we face. Secretary Mayorkas and Director Wray’s refusal to speak publicly about their department’s work will only increase the concerns that many Americans have about our nation’s security at a challenging time, flout the Committee’s efforts to conduct responsible oversight, and will deal a serious blow to trust in our government. Their claims that they can only relay such information and respond to questions in a classified setting are entirely without merit,” Peters said in a statement.

“It cannot be the practice of the Executive Branch to deny the public critical information and disregard Congress’ constitutionally recognized right to conduct oversight.”

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), in an interview on Fox News, also criticized the officials for not appearing at the public hearing. Lankford said the only reason given was that the officials did not want to offer the testimony in public.

In a statement to The Hill, the FBI also said Wray would have appeared in a classified setting for the hearing but did not want to testify in a public setting.

“The FBI has repeatedly demonstrated our commitment to responding to Congressional oversight and being transparent with the American people,” the FBI’s statement said.

“We remain committed to sharing information about the continuously evolving threat environment facing our nation and the extraordinary work the men and women of the FBI are doing — here at home and around the world — to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States. FBI leaders have testified extensively in public settings about the current threat environment and believe the Committee would benefit most from further substantive discussions and additional information that can only be provided in a classified setting.”

A spokesperson for DHS also said it had offered to discuss threats in a classified briefing.

“DHS and the FBI already have shared with the Committee and other Committees, and with the American public, extensive unclassified information about the current threat environment, including the recently published Homeland Threat Assessment. DHS takes seriously its obligation to respond to Congressional requests for testimony; in fact, Secretary Mayorkas has testified 30 times during his tenure,” the spokesperson said.

Speaking with reporters later Thursday, Peters said he “vigorously pursued them to be here,” noting that the panel would have kept the traditional closed session that follows the open hearing.

“Both of them said they did not want to testify in an open setting. That was unacceptable. The American people have a right to hear from them…. The Department of Homeland Security put out a 40-page document talking about threats to the homeland. There would be questions surrounding that document that members would want to ask,” Peters said, referring to DHS’s annual threat assessment.

“They are in key positions in the federal government, and their job is to respond to congressional oversight.”

Intelligence agencies in recent weeks have also issued a number of assessments warning about possible violence leading into and surrounding the inauguration that have not been as widely discussed.

Still, intelligence leaders often choose to offer more detailed responses on threats posed by China and Iran, as well as cybersecurity risks, in a classified setting.

The postponement of the hearing comes after the companion House panel likewise canceled its annual threats hearing.

But the Senate hearing remained on the calendar, even as Mayorkas’s public schedule for the week failed to indicate any testimony.

The hearing would have been Wray’s first congressional appearance since Vice President-elect JD Vance indicated the Trump transition team is meeting with candidates to oversee the FBI – an indication President-elect Trump plans to fire Wray before the end of his 10-year term in 2027. (Democratic chair blasts Mayorkas, Wray for failure to testify; threats hearing postponed.)

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., Kamala Harris Emhoff, Alejandro Mayorkas, Merrick Garland, and Christopher Wray, who is total captive of the politicized Federal Bureau of Investigation, care nothing for the brutal murders of Laken Riley, Rachel Morin, Lizbeth Medina, Kate Steinle, Jeremy Poou Caceres, Shannon Patricia Jungwirth, “her son, 20-year-old Jorge Alexander Reyes-Jungwirth, and her husband, 39-year-old Alberto Trejo Estrad,” “Melissa Powell, 47, and her son, 16-year-old Riordan Powell,” very notoriously, Joycelyn Nungary, among many, many others (see Laken Riley murder: Five other times illegal immigrants were charged with murder). Why should these statist ideologues care for the deaths of innocent human beings at the hands of illegal immigrants when they fully support the chemical and surgical slaughter of the innocent preborn?

Indeed, in this regard, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., who sold his soul to the devil over fifty years ago to support, albeit with “personal misgivings,” you understand, chemical and surgical baby slaughter before transforming himself into a full-fledged supporter of child-killing, child-mutilation, and every manner of perversity whose immoral bounds seeming are limitless in scope, stealthily presented Ceile Richards, the former director of the country’s largest baby-killing factory, Planned Barrenhood, the “Presidential Medal of Freedom”:

"Carrying her parents’ torch for justice, she’s led some of our Nation’s most important civil rights causes - to lift up the dignity of workers, defend and advance women’s reproductive rights and equality, and mobilize Americans to exercise their power to vote," the commendation stated. "A leader of utmost character, she has carved an inspiring legacy that endures in her incredible family, the countless lives she has made better, and a Nation seeking the light of equality, justice, and freedom.” (Biden awards Medal of Freedom to former Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards. Biden has had a busy few days as he issued a statement about a made-up celebration of human mutilation called “transgender remembrance day: Statement by President Joe Biden on Transgender Day of Remembrance.)

The likes of William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro, Joseph Robinette Biden. Jr., Janet Reno, Alberto Gonzales (who was pro-abortion, by the way), Eric Himpton Holder, Loretta Lynch, James Brien Comey, Christopher Wray, Alejandro Mayorkas, Xavier Becerra, Miguel Cardona, Kathleen Hochul, Philip Murphy, et. al. are all going to have to reckon for their amoral support of grave evils and the injustices that they have done to the administration of natural justice by their Soviet-style prosecutorial methods and secret police surveillance of ordinary citizens worthy of the old German Democratic Republic’s (East Germany’s) Stasi:

Those who hold the reins of government should not forget that it is the duty of public authority by appropriate laws and sanctions to defend the lives of the innocent, and this all the more so since those whose lives are endangered and assailed cannot defend themselves. Among whom we must mention in the first place infants hidden in the mother's womb. And if the public magistrates not only do not defend them, but by their laws and ordinances betray them to death at the hands of doctors or of others, let them remember that God is the Judge and Avenger of innocent blood which cried from earth to Heaven. (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, December 31, 1930. I know that I have cited this quotation several hundreds time before, but I am going to keep on using it as I am always aware that there might be a reader of two who accesses this site for the first time and then comes across this quotation.)

Furthermore, the amorality of the United States Department of Justice under luminaries as the late Janet Reno (who started the Violence Against Abortion Providers task force that has been discussed several times on this site in the past), Anthony Gonzales (who justified torture as a “enhanced interrogation), Eric Himpton Holder, Loretta Lynch, and Merrick Garland has been epic, perhaps surpassed only by the lawlessness by various Directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (Robert Mueller, James Brien Comey, and Christopher Wray), is thoroughly institutionalized in what the swamp calls “Main Justice, the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Security Administration (NSA) that the mere thought of former United States Representative Matthew Gaetz, who has been licentious in his personal life (something that was not impediment for William Jefferson Blythe Clinton), serving as the Attorney General of the United States of America has sent many key apparatchiks within the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation burnishing their resumes and seeking trips overseas:

As I reported last week, former and current apparatchiks for the Department of Justice are making plans to resign in advance of Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January.

Those headed for exits include Special Counsel Jack Smith and his top team of prosecutors, who just withdrew their appeal of Judge Aileen Cannon’s order dismissing the classified documents indictment in Florida and asked for a halt to the proceedings in the January 6-related case pending in Washington.

The resume-burnishing appears to extend to main Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (housed under the DOJ), and the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia office, which oversees the government’s ongoing prosecution of January 6 protesters. Anonymous “sedition hunters” who have aided the FBI in targeting and identifying hundreds of J6ers deleted their social media accounts over the weekend for fear of reprisal; the FBI reportedly paid the “sedition hunters” as FBI informants to help their pursuit of Trump supporters.

But the corrupt operatives in the DOJ are doing more than just looking for new jobs—some are looking for attorneys. The surprising nomination of former Representative Matt Gaetz as attorney general sent terror waves throughout the DOJ; Gaetz resigned his Florida House seat last week to prepare for a nasty confirmation fight and avoid release of a House Ethics report into debunked allegations about Gaetz’s conduct.

“Inside the Justice Department, some employees who had braced for the possibility of other names that had surfaced early in the transition were appalled when Trump made the Gaetz announcement,” CNN reported on Sunday. “One career official described hearing audible cries of ‘oh my God’ echoing down the hallway inside DOJ’s headquarters.”

NBC News also revealed that DOJ officials “wept” over Trump’s resounding victory. Why? Because they know their turn under the harsh lights of federal interrogators is coming next. “Multiple current and former senior Justice Department and FBI officials have begun reaching out to lawyers in anticipation of being criminally investigated by the Trump administration. The selection of former Rep. Matt Gaetz…to lead the department has sharply increased the sense of alarm.” One unnamed former top DOJ official admitted he “is bracing for a potentially long and costly legal battle, as well as the possibility of protracted congressional investigations.”

Creepy NeverTrumper and faux conservative Matt Lewis told MSNBC this morning reports that DOJ/FBI staffers are lawyering up demonstrates Trump’s desire to “weaponize” the department. “I think it’s real,” Lewis said about the likelihood of charges against corrupt government officials.

In fact, their criminal exposure is so serious that one longtime Democratic operative is advising top targets to leave the country. Mark Zaid, an attorney who represented self-described Ukrainian “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella, prompting the first impeachment of Trump in 2019, just told both CNN and Politico magazine that government officials worried they will be pursued by a Trump DOJ or Republican Congress should travel “outside of the country” right around Inauguration Day.

That appears to be the advice Zaid also is giving to Ciaramella, now a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

Further, anyone dismissing Trump’s threat to bring criminal elements inside the federal bureaucracy to justice are “naive and foolish,” Zaid said. Other retaliatory measures aside from prosecution, Zaid speculated, could include the revocation of security clearances or transfers to undesirable outposts such as Alaska.

The fear is so intense that Zaid also recommends that his clients seek mental health and other related services to deal with the stress of a potential prosecution. His team is “making sure we have lawyers, CPAs, psychiatrists and other experts in their fields ready and willing to volunteer their time for free to represent anyone who faces retaliation directly.”

Watching the Inauguration from The Hague? How Appropriate

So, who might flee the country? Smith and his top prosecutor, David Harbach, could return to the Hague in the Netherlands under the ruse of rejoining the war crimes trial against former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci. Attorney General Merrick Garland tapped Smith in November 2022 to leave that case and take on the special counsel’s role.

But why would anyone else leave the country around Inauguration Day? To wait and see if Trump signs an executive order authorizing an investigation of everything from the Russian collusion hoax and the Ukrainian impeachment operation to the coverup of the Biden family corruption ring? To wait and see if the acting attorney general appoints a special counsel to investigate Smith’s team as well as the events of January 6?

And therein lies the justified panic within the DOJ and national security state. The ground is fertile for multiple investigations with legitimate criminal liability for top officials including Smith, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and DC US Attorney Matthew Graves in addition to line prosecutors and investigators.

On the flip side, the same officials and talking heads who’ve insisted Trump should not have feared going to trial for any one of his politically-motivated indictments if he did nothing wrong certainly are singing a different tune now. (DOJ Apparatchiks Told to Lawyer Up and Flee the Country. Why?)

Well, the Matt Gaetz comet has come and gone. Although President-elect Donald John Trump’s second pick for Attorney General of the United States of America, former Florida Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi, would probably be more effective than the ethically challenged Gaetz if she gets confirmed by the Senate of the United States of America (she has a few ethical questions about favors for donors while attorney general of Florida that Democrats are bound to raise during her confirmation hearings).

Alas, even though investigations of one sort or another might be worthwhile, it should be remembered that  criminal trials of DOJ and FBI lawbreakers would nowhere if tried in or around the District of Columbia, where juries have consistently acquitted relatively low-level officials of criminal conduct concerning the fake Russian dossier, the Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton email scandal, the covering up of the Biden Family Crime Syndicate’s crimes, and the endless efforts to criminally charge former and now President-elected Donald John Trump. The likes of Jack Smith (see Christ the King Alone Has One Set of Laws That He Will Apply to Everyone When They Die) will slither back to The Netherlands at the International Court of Justice to plod along to do what he does best: persecute whomever he targets for prosecution.

We can never expect justice from those who are personally unjust, and we must always remember that what seems “settled” in one era can be unsettled in another as even though Donald John Trump won a significant victory everywhere excepting the coastal states, Minnesota. New Mexico, and Colorado, and increased his share of the vote from 2020 even the “blue” states he lost, victories come and go.

After all, the late President Lyndon Baines Johnson thought that his War on Poverty and Great Society programs could solve the problems of urban and rural poverty. However, the only people who were enriched financially by Johnson’s panoply of statist programs were the government bureaucrats who administered them and had a vested interest to maintain their positions and power by making sure that nothing of substance got done other than to issue grants to localities and states by conditioning them to conform to Federal policy lest these entities lose the grants. The goal of this was to create a de facto unitary system of national governance that would eclipse legitimate states’ rights and make authentic Federalism a thing of the past. And this is to say nothing about the fact  that most social problems extent then and now have been caused by the destruction of family stability in urban areas, especially among the families of black Americans, as a result of easy divorce in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century, contraception in the early Twentieth Century, each of which contributed to men abandoning their families and the feminization of poverty so that women would be forced into the workplace and/or become reliant upon the “largesse” of the taxpayers.

Cardinal Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto saw this trend in the last decade of the Nineteenth Century and responded to it as follows:

In August 1896 in Padua, the second Congress of the Catholic Union for Social Studies took place. We have already seen that this organization had been created seven years before by Professor Giuseppe Toniolo, in the presence of the Bishop of Mantua [Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto]. This time, eight bishops were present and several directors of the Opera del Congressi took part. All the eminent representatives of the Italian Catholic Movement were present (Medolago Pagnuzzi, Alessi and others). Cardinal Sarto's address attracted considerable notice. Faced with "ardent enemies" (unbelief and revolution) "...menacing and trying to destroy the social fabric," the Patriarch of Venice invited the participants to make Jesus Christ the foundation of the their work: "the only peace treaty is the Gospel." He warned them against what is now called the "welfare state," the state which provides everything and provides all socialization: "substituting public almsgiving for private almsgiving involves the complete destruction of Christianity and it is a terrible attack on the principle of ownership. Christianity cannot exist without charity, and the difference between charity and justice is that justice may have recourse to laws and even to force, depending on the circumstances, whereas charity can only be imposed by the tribunal of God and of conscience." If public assistance and the redistribution of wealth are institutionalized, "poverty becomes a function, a way of life, a public trade..." (Yves Chiron, Saint Pius X: Restorer of the Church. Translated by Graham Harrison. Angelus Press, 2002, p. 100)

Those were and remain prophetic words.

Writing at the height of the Great Depression, Pope Pius XI explained in Quadragesimo Anno, May 15, 1931, explained that government assistance programs must conform to the Natural Law principle of Subsidiarity, which teaches us that human problems are to be remedied at the lowest levels of life, starting with the family:

The supreme authority of the State ought, therefore, to let subordinate groups handle matters and concerns of lesser importance, which would otherwise dissipate its efforts greatly. Thereby the State will more freely, powerfully, and effectively do all those things that belong to it alone because it alone can do them: directing, watching, urging, restraining, as occasion requires and necessity demands. Therefore, those in power should be sure that the more perfectly a graduated order is kept among the various associations, in observance of the principle of “subsidiary function,” the stronger social authority and effectiveness will be the happier and more prosperous the condition of the State. (Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, May 15, 1931.)

Father Edward Cahill provided a history lesson about how subsidiarity was the guiding principle for the organization of social and economic life during the Middle Ages:

The guilds made it possible for those with needs that could not be meet by their families to receive assistance without the “strings” attached by the monster civil state of Modernity and without bankrupting the entire body politic: 

The greatest spirit of solidarity and mutual help animated the whole guild organisation. Thus money was advanced on easy terms to members who needed it. Those suffering from sickness, old age, accidents, etc., were liberally provided for. Even a guildman who might get into trouble with the municipal or state authorities had a right to the protection of the guild. If, after investigation by the council, his case was considered a deserving one he was defended in the courts at the common expense. Sick members were visited; and wine and food were sent from the public banquets to those whom illness or weakness prevent from attending. The dead, if the family was poor, was buried at the expense of their guild with all the honours befitting their position, and their daughters dowered for marriage or the convent. 

The Religious Character of the Guilds.–Another peculiarly Christian characteristic of—these guilds was their practical recognition of the intimate connection of religion with commercial relations and with all the activities of life. Although the primary object of the associations was economic, the guilds made every effort to secure good conduct and fidelity to religious duties on the part of the members. Individuals were punished or sometimes expelled from the guilds for immoral or irreligious conduct. 

Every guild was under the protection of a patron saint or was specially dedicated to the Holy Trinity or to the Blessed Mother of God under one of her titles. The portrait of the guild patron was painted on the banner of the guild which was borne in the public processions. Thus the guild of wood-workers was under the protection of St. Joseph. The shoemakers usually had on their banner paintings of SS. Crispin and Crispinian. Bakers were often under the patronage of St. Honorius, and so on. The association of the heavenly patron with the grade that belonged to the guild intensified the craftsmen’s pride in their work and the men’s esteem for the nobility of manual labour. The Church Feast of the patron was always the occasion of the great annual banquet of the guild. 

Many guilds had their own special chapels; and we commonly find provision made in the guild statutes for the support of a chaplain and sometimes of several chaplains. Some of the most beautiful mediaeval churches belonged to or were built by the guilds. Provision was also regularly made for the celebration of Masses for the intentions of the guild, and for the offering of candles at holy shrines. On the death of a member care was taken to have Masses offered and alms given for his eternal rest. Almsgiving, which was practiced even towards the poor outside the guild, was an important item of the ordinary guild expenditure. Oftentimes a guild gave feasts in its buildings to the poor of the whole town. (Father Edward Cahill, The Framework of a Christian State, pp. 79-80.) 

The British and American utilitarians of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, inspired in large measure by the social engineering of the Chancellor of the German Empire (the second Reich) from 1871 to 1890, Otto von Bismarck, began movements that borrowed from biological evolutionism and socialism to lay the foundation for the state as the replacement for religion in general, especially Catholicism, and for the family. Thus, these utilitarians paved the way for Thomas Woodrow Wilson’s “New Freedoms,” which were nothing other than “freedom” for the Federal government to enslave citizens by means of confiscatory taxes and regulation, which paved the way for Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” which paved the way one of Roosevelt’s proteges, Lyndon Baines Johnson, to create what his 1964 Republican presidential opponent, United States Senator Barry Goldwater, to call the “Big Daddy” approach to controlling the masses:

One thing we all know—and I assure you I do: That's a much easier way to get votes than my way. It always has been. It's political Daddyism and it's as old as demagogues and despotism.

You want something for nothing ? The Federal Government will give it to you.

You want to avoid responsibility for bringing up your children and educating them? The Federal Government will take over.

You want to duck the job of facing your local problems and solving them? The Federal Government will do it for you.

Never mind the fact that the power and the money to do these things has to be taken from you before the Federal Government can do them for you. Every step in this direction is a loss of freedom for you!

Relax. Don't worry. The Federal Government will do for you all those things you find unpleasant to do for youselves. And daily that government will grow more powerful. Daily it will enter new businesses and practices, new areas of private enterprise. where it has no place.

And daily its leaders will expand their power over you, the people, far beyond anything ever dreamed of by the framers of our Constitution. And daily freedom goes down the drain.

And always, they are driving and confusing you with the basic dishonesty that permeates so much political campaigning. (Text of Senator Goldwater's Address at Madison Sq. Garden in Only Campaign Appearance in city.)

Mind you, this is not to indemnify Barry Goldwater, whose first wife, Peggy, helped Maragaret Sanger establish the first “birth control clinic” in Arizona (see Sandra Day O'Connor: A Judge Whose Sangerite Background Meant Nothing to Ronald Wilson Reagan), only to show that even a secularist such as Goldwater understood that Lyndon Baines Johnson’s programs, which were not reversed by Republican Presidents Richard Milhous Nixon, Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr./Leslie Lynch King, Jr., Ronald Wilson Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush, George Walker Bush, nor even by Donald John Trump in his first term, would erode legitimate freedoms and, once established, would be neigh-well impossible to reverse.

This is a long, long way of saying that it is one thing to say, as Ronald Wilson Reagan did, that “government is not the solution; government is the problem” (and the “nine most scary words in the English language are, “I am from the government; I am here to help”), or that, as even William Jefferson Blythe Clinton said in his 1996 State of the Union address that the era of big government is over” (see President Clinton's 1996 State of the Union Address as delivered), but it is quite another retard its use of amorality by means merely natural as what is rejected by one generation of voters can be undone by another generation of voters. There is nothing in a system based upon false principles that is stable or enduring.

While President-elect Donald John Trumps’s efforts to crack the Deep State are commendable, to be sure, it must be remembered that the United States of America remains divided by error, which can never be a guarantor of just system of limited government whose leaders are informed by and conform themselves and their policies to the binding precepts of the Divine and Natural Laws as entrusted to Holy Mother Church in all that pertains to the good of souls. Given the vagaries of fallen human nature, anything not but on the rock-solid foundation of the Holy Faith is built upon sand and will always be subject to the vicissitudes of subjectivity and relativism.

Moreover, no country whose citizens sin wantonly and, mostly, without any understanding that they are doing so, can only enjoy the illusion of respites now and again as there can legitimate order and justice in the world if people do not first order their souls to all that is contained in the Sacred Deposit of Faith and seek to be at peace with the Most Blessed Trinity by striving to be and to remain in a state of Sanctifying Grace.

Even the pagan Plato said that “Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.”

But if our fraternal charity is to be Chrisitan, its prime motive must be the love of Christ. That is why theologians do not distinguish essentially a double precept of charity, one for God, and one for our neighbor; they only recognize one, the love of God. And that is why Saint John writes:

If any man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar. For he that loveth not his brother whom he seeth, how can he love God, whom he seeth not . . . . If we love one another, God abideth in us, and his charity is perfected in us. In this we know that we abide in him and he in us: because he hath given us of his spirit.   (I John iv, 12, 13,,20) Let us love one another, for charity is of God. And every one that loveth, is born of God, and knowth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is charity. (I John iv, 7, 8.)

Volumes could be written on these texts. One thing is clear: that to abide in God, one must love one's neighbor; fraternal charity is a necessary manifestation of love of God, which does not exist without it. In the practical part of this book we shall discuss the working of fraternal charity. Let it be noted here that charity does not compel us to like people, but to love them. And love is an act of the will wishing one well. Further what passes for fraternal charity is often not really Christian. Modern civilization is full of a humanitarianism which is not Christian charity, for its motive is not love of God, It may be a love of man, though it is more often a love of management. Whatever be its motive, unless it be derived from the love of God, it profiteth nothing. It is on this point that many Catholics -- even many Catholic religious -- make a fatal mistake that renders much of their works for their neighbor sterile and unprofitable; for their motives are human. To them can be applied that threefold warning of our Lord: Amen, I say unto you, they have received their reward. (Cf. Matt. vi, 2) Still we must not be too general in our condemnation, for when a man works according to what he believes to be his duty, God will not fail to have compassion on him, and will give  him the grace to rectify his outlook. But for a healthy Chrisitan life, all a man's work must be done with God for Gode, and in God; the love of God is at once its source, its end, and its principal value.

For the whole spiritual life is a love affair with God, and if that expression has associations that are out of place here, it is because of the abuse of it, not because of its proper use. As we shall see, God Himself uses human love to teach us the secrets of divine love. The love of God for us is shown forth in the Life and Passion and Death of our Lord. Our return is the influence of love for God in our own life, and that is especially shown by our fraternal charity. God not only gives us the power to love Him, He also gives us the opportunity of exercising that power. God is completely self-sufficient, and as we can add nothing to Him, our love at times seems hopeless and helpless. But God has so identified Himself with the needs of our neighbor, that what we do to others for God's sake, is done to God Himself.

The love of God then, and the love of our neighbor are one and the same virtue. This virtue is the effect of our incorporation in Christ, but it is also the means of fulfilling the law of our life in Christ. It is God who works in us both to love and to do the works of love. These works are many; and for their performance God has given us other virtues called the moral virtues, which depend upon the four cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude. These we need to regulate all our actions, to be honest with our neighbor, to control our lower appetites, and to overcome our weakness and fear, so that all actions which we perform may belong to the life of the Body of Christ.

In addition to these virtues, and to the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, our life in Christ needs a continual series of helps called actual graces, by which we are moved to do good, and we are sustained in all our actions. We cannot begin a single good act with the help of God. Without me, you can do nothing, said our Lord. (John xv, 5) But God is our Father, and He does not fail His children, and Christ is the Head of His Body and as the Church teaches: He constantly pours forth His grace (virtutem) upon those who have been justified as the head exercises its influence on the members and the vine on its branches; and this grace ever precedes, accompanies, and follows their good actions. (Council of Trent, Sess. vi, cap. xvi.) There is, so to speak a complete nervous system in the Mystical Body, which controls the actions of all its members, and without that vital initiation and guidance, they are paralyzed. the working of actual grace is of great importance in the spiritual life, but to examine the virtues of the different graces in greater detail here would make the treatment too theoretical, and would put us in danger of losing sight of the main outline of the Christian life, which is lived through Christ, with Christ, and in Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, for the glory of the Eternal God. (Father Eugene Boylan, O. Cist. R., This Tremendous Lover, published by The Newman Press, Westminster, Maryland, 1948, pp. 67-73.The entire passage from the cited pages can be found in the Appendix below.)

I think that is quite appropriate to highlight one paragraph from the text above:

Volumes could be written on these texts. One thing is clear: that to abide in God, one must love one's neighbor; fraternal charity is a necessary manifestation of love of God, which does not exist without it. In the practical part of this book we shall discuss the working of fraternal charity. Let it be noted here that charity does not compel us to like people, but to love them. And love is an act of the will wishing one well. Further what passes for fraternal charity is often not really Christian. Modern civilization is full of a humanitarianism which is not Christian charity, for its motive is not love of God, It may be a love of man, though it is more often a love of management. Whatever be its motive, unless it be derived from the love of God, it profiteth nothing. It is on this point that many Catholics -- even many Catholic religious -- make a fatal mistake that renders much of their works for their neighbor sterile and unprofitable; for their motives are human. To them can be applied that threefold warning of our Lord: Amen, I say unto you, they have received their reward. (Cf. Matt. vi, 2) Still we must not be too general in our condemnation, for when a man works according to what he believes to be his duty, God will not fail to have compassion on him, and will give  him the grace to rectify his outlook. But for a healthy Chrisitan life, all a man's work must be done with God for Gode, and in God; the love of God is at once its source, its end, and its principal value.

Father Frederick William Faber had written in a similar vain and so did Pope Saint Pius X in Notre Charge Apostolique and Pope Pius XI in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio as Father Eugene Boylan was only reiterating a truth that had been taught by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and by numerous Fathers and Doctors of the Church: Anything that is not done for the love of God and in His Holy Name will come to nothing and is not meritorius for those who live as citizens of this life below and not as citizens of Heaven. True progress is the progress of the interior life within our souls for love of God, and what is done by the members of the false opposite of the naturalist right and the naturalist left is done either in the name of ideology or the perversion of true patriotism that is nationalism.

True peace and happiness comes only from Christ the King through His Holy Catholic Church.

Father Francis X. Weninger, S.J., used a sermon for Low Sunday to discuss what Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ meant when He said to be Apostles, “Pax vobiscum,” “Peace be unto you”:

I say that the peace which Christ wishes us and which He imparts to us, is true peace; it is that peace which He alone is able to bestow. “My peace I give unto you! ” says the Lord; “not as the world giveth, do I give unto you.” No, it is a peace of which the world has no idea; it is a peace which the world can never bestow. It is that peace which we lost by the fall of our first parents, and which could not be restored to us but by the incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ, our Redeemer and Saviour.

Man, as he came from the hands of the Creator, was endowed with sanctifying grace, was at peace with God, at peace with himself, at peace with the whole outer world; but sin destroyed all this, and instead of peace came war, and instead of spiritual life came spiritual death. By sin man was set at variance with God, with himself, and with the outer world. As Holy Writ assures us: “There is no peace for the wicked,” at least no peace of soul. Though a man be on good terms with his fellow-men, yet as long as he lives in a state of sin he will enjoy no peace; for sin is a revolt against God, and every revolt brings with it trouble, anxiety, and war. Without Christ there is no true peace; no peace with God, the only peace which is worthy of the name, and which alone is able to calm our agitated hearts.

Listen to the warning of the prophet: “They cry: Peace, peace! and there is no peace.” There is no communion between light and darkness, between Christ and Belial. There is no place where the banner of Christ and that of antichrist wave together, nor where men desire to serve God and the devil at the same time.

Moreover, the peace which man enjoys with the world is not complete. But the peace, which Christ gives unto his own, is perfect. We shall understand this, if we regard one by one the results of the first sin and of all individual sin, and the relation in which soul and body stand to God. By his very nature man has a soul, reason, will, and heart. He thinks, he wills, he suffers or enjoys. Now, the fall ot Adam darkened the understanding of man, weakened his will, made his heart suffer; and but one can free him from the anxiety which all this causes: one alone, Christ Jesus our Lord.

I have said that understanding, and will, and heart, each has suffered: man’s understanding is beset with doubts in regard to his existence and to his relations to God; his will is weakened, and he frequently feels its moral feebleness and impotence. But, above all, it is the heart of man which is exposed to the stripes of adversity and to the stings of suffering; nor can it anywhere find comfort but in Christ but in Him Whom Holy Writ emphatically styles: “The Prince of peace!”

Before Him, before His Word and example, every cloud of anxiety vanishes, and perfect peace makes its dwelling in the soul.

I have already said that when the soul is left to itself it is disquieted in regard to its relations with God and concerning its fate for eternity; it is darkened by ignorance and beset with doubts. “Pax vobis!” “Peace be to you!” says Christ to all men. It is He who spoke through Moses and the prophets; it is He who came Himself into the world, and opening His mouth preached to us the Word of salvation, explaining all those questions and doubts in regard to the other world, which excite, frighten, and harass the mind of man.

He calls himself the Light of the world; and as the sun sends forth his rays, so Christ sent forth His Apostles, that by the light of their teaching day might break for all the nations upon earth; that all might open their hearts to the sweet influence of truth. And great, indeed, is the peace which is instilled into believing hearts with the word of faith spoken by the mouth of the infallible Church; it is felt by all her truly believing children.

The will of man also is enfeebled by the fall of Adam; hence he feels his weakness, his impotence in the light with temptation. Hence the anxiety which excites and torments him. How differently man feels when Christ greets him and calls to him “Pax vobis” Peace be to you! When the power of divine grace enters his heart, and he can say with St. Paul: “I can do all things in Him who strengthened me.” A calm conscience comforts his heart, from which all anxiety has lied; yes, all that anxiety which, the consequence of his sins, had for years tormented him.

After the fall of Adam the heart of man felt the burden of suffering and the insufficiency of every merely human consolation. How often a friend can only say: I can weep with you, but I can not console you! How differently a child of the Church feels when Christ who has Himself suffered upon earth calls to Him from the cross: “Pax vobis!” and when he recollects that the Lord Himself said to His disciples: “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and so enter into His Glory.” How inexpressibly great was the consolation which fell from the five wounds into the hearts of the disciples when Jesus suddenly appearing among them, gave them that Easter greeting: ” Pax vobis!” All truly believing children of the Church partake of this consolation in the midst of all the cares and sorrows of this life. For whatever we may suffer, one glance at Christ risen from the dead and marked with His wounds will cause us to cry out with St. Paul: “I exceedingly abound with joy in all our tribulation.”

But far more grievous does the anxiety of man’s heart become, if he has the misfortune to turn from the path of virtue, to precipitate himself into the abyss of sin, and if he is tormented day and night by the reproaches of his conscience. No one but Jesus can give him calmness and peace. He alone redeemed us, sinners! He alone gave His Apostles and their followers the power to forgive the repentant! a power which Christ bestowed upon His Church until the end of time, and of which we are solemnly reminded by the words of the Apostolic creed: “I believe in the holy Catholic Church, the forgiveness of sins.”

Into the breast of the greatest sinner there enters an inexpressible peace, if he receives the Sacrament of Penance as Christ has instituted it in His holy Church. Ah! what joy when the priest, the representative of Christ, says to his troubled soul: “My son, my daughter, your sins are forgiven!” Pax tibi! Peace be with you! Oh, the happy peace which then through Christ enters the heart reconciled to its God!

Finally, the heart of man is frequently pained by the fear: Shall I continue to the end? and what will become of me if Satan, in my last hour, should beset me with temptation, and place all the sins of my life before my eyes in order to drive me to despair? “Pax tibi,” says our Lord to the loving child of His Church. I shall complete in you my work of mercy. Trust!

Never can your own heart desire your salvation so ardently as I desire it: Peace be to you! Nor must we forget the consoling inspirations which Christ sends to all who bow, in suffering, to His holy will, and unite themselves to Him. Yes, yes, “Pax vobis!” I call in the name of the risen Christ to every soul here present.

“Pax vobis” the peace of Christ be and remain with you now, and for evermore! Amen! (3)

The one and only answer to the amorality industrial complex is Catholicism, noting else, and to is pray and work for its restoration as the guiding light in both our personal lives and in the larger life of a nation so that, at peace with Our Lord and each other, can know a measure of justice and good order in this passing, mortal vale of tears and thus be prepared for the glories of Heaven in the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity.

Entrusting ourselves to Christ the King through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary as we pray as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits, may with not be unduly distracted from making a good Advent, which begins one week from this evening at First Vespers for the First Sunday of Advent, by the events of this world and remain confident in, without being the least bit presumptuous of, the abiding help of Our Lady, Queen of Mercy, now, and at the hour of our death.

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 Clement I, pray for us.

Saint Felicity, pray for us.

Appendix

From Father Eugene Boylan's This Tremendous Lover

The necessary variety of members leads to a variety of operations, and Saint Paul enumerates a number of different offices that were found in the Church: apostles, prophets, doctors, workers of miracles, those gifted with tongues, those with the power of healing and with other remarkable gifts which were of great service in the building up of the church. But despite the value and the wonder of these gifts, Saint Paul exhorts the Corinthians in an address that is classical:

Be zealous for better gifts. And I show you a more excellent way. He then bursts into a paean of praise for charity, which is the best gift and the most excellent way, and finishes with the assertion And now there remain faith hope and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. {But not only is charity the most excellent, it is also the one essential virtue and way;for he writes:} If I speak with the tongues of angels, and have not charity, I am become as a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. 
And if I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing! And if I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor and if I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Cf. I Cor. xiii. 1-3

Those are Saint Paul's words; they are also the words of  God, who is the author of all the inspired Scripture. There is no evading their meaning; it is quite clear. No matter what we do, unless we do it in the love of God, it profits us nothing. God wants our love, He will be satisfied with nothing else. That is what He principally looks for in our works. The things we do or achieve are not of primary value to God, for He can create them by a mere thought; or with just as much ease He can raise up other free agents to do what we do. But the love of our hearts is something unique, something no one else can give Him.True, He could create other hearts to love Him, but once He has created us and given us free will, the love of our particular heart is something unique and in a way irreplaceable. In any case, it is not for His own sake that He wants our love, but because He desires to make us happy with Him for ever, and He can only do that if we are in love with Him.

It might seem that is something beyond our power or choice. One seaks in human relationship of "falling in love"; it is not, as it were, something deliberate, something that can be done at will. That peculiar acquiring of a new and special interest in another person, and the development of a new power to love that person, which raises the whole level of the life of a man or woman and opens the door to the highest form of human happiness, seems to be something fortuitous, and accident, a stroke of luck. Whether, that be so or not, there is a very close analogy between the human and the divine, which we intend to stress in this book. But there is one important difference in regard to the love of God. there, instead of speaking of a soul falling in love, it would be nearer the truth if one spoke of love falling into the soul. For God gives us the love with which we are to love Him; more than that, He gives us the gift of wisdom, by which we acquire a taste and a relish for God and for His friendship and His ways. Both the love and the wisdom come from God; this will help us to understand the otherwise seemingly harsh treatment of the guest who, in the Gospel parable, came to the wedding-feast, without the ceremonial garment. Unless one realizes that such garments were provided by the host, one will not understand the host's resentment at the guest's refusal to avail of his kindness, and one will completely miss the parallel with the man who comes to the service of God without love in his heart. For if there is one gift that is to be had for the asking-- and there are many-- it is the gift of love of God.

There is only one source of true happiness in this life or in the next, and that is to love and to be loved. Knowledge that does not lead to love is worse than vain and sterile. It is of course quite true that love expresses itself in many ways, and it is true that its reality can be questioned if it does not seek expression in some way; but for all that, it is love, and love alone, that matters. Saint Paul and all the saints knew that; our Lady knew that; our Lord knows that, and God Himself knows if and tells it to us in the Scripture. I have loved thee with an everlasting love.(Jer. xxxi, 3.) My son, give me thy heart.(Prov. xxiii, 26) Love is the culmination of the law. (Rom. xiii. 10)

But when we examine the Scriptures, we notice that God does not confine His commandment of love to love for Himself; He insists that we must also love our neighbor, and it soon appears that He speaks as if the two loves were inseparable, and, in fact, one and the same. We read such texts as: Thou shalt love thy neighbor for God, (Cf. Luke x, 28) All the other commandments are comprised in one word: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, (Cf. Rom. xiii, 9.) and the final exhortation of our Lord to His disciples was "His own commandment" to love one another as I have loved you (John xv, 12) This insistence on fraternal love and its identification with divine love seems surprising at first sight, but its significance becomes obvious if we remember the principles that govern the membership of the Mystical Body.

The organs of a human body are mutually dependent and operate for the benefit of each other and thereby for the good of the whole organism. Foreign matter lodged in the organism is distinguished from that in living union with the whole, by its failure to interact beneficially with the rest of the system. It is at best a nuisance. If we then do not interact beneficially with the rest of the members of Christ's body, our title to living membership is immediately compromised. And cannot distinguish completely between Christ and His members; we cannot love Crhist without being willing to love the whole Christ -- Head and members. What we do to our fellow members is done to Him -- for they are His Body. We have His own word for it: Amen, Amen, I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren -- you did it to me. (Cf. Matt. xxv, 40) It is Christ whom we serve, or injure, in the person of our neighbor.

But if our fraternal charity is to be Chrisitan, its prime motive must be the love of Christ. That is why theologians do not distinguish essentially a double precept of charity, one for God, and one for our neighbor; they only recognize one, the love of God. And that is why Saint John writes:

If any man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar. For he that loveth not his brother whom he seeth, how can he love 
God, whom he seeth not . . . . If we love one another, God abideth in us, and his charity is perfected in us. In this we know that we abide in him and he in us: because he hath given us of his spirit.   (I John iv, 12, 13,,20) Let us love one another, for charity is of God. And every one that loveth, is born of God, and knowth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is charity. (I John iv, 7, 8.)

Volumes could be written on these texts. One thing is clear: that to abide in God, one must love one's neighbor; fraternal charity is a necessary manifestation of love of God, which does not exist without it. In the practical part of this book we shall discuss the working of fraternal charity. Let it be noted here that charity does not compel us to like people, but to love them. And love is an act of the will wishing one well. Further what passes for fraternal charity is often not really Christian. Modern civilization is full of a humanitarianism which is not Christian charity, for its motive is not love of God, It may be a love of man, though it is more often a love of management. Whatever be its motive, unless it be derived from the love of God, it profiteth nothing. It is on this point that many Catholics -- even many Catholic religious -- make a fatal mistake that renders much of their works for their neighbor sterile and unprofitable; for their motives are human. To them can be applied that threefold warning of our Lord: Amen, I say unto you, they have received their reward. (Cf. Matt. vi, 2) Still we must not be too general in our condemnation, for when a man works according to what he believes to be his duty, God will not fail to have compassion on him, and will give  him the grace to rectify his outlook. But for a healthy Chrisitan life, all a man's work must be done with God for Gode, and in God; the love of God is at once its source, its end, and its principal value.

For the whole spiritual life is a love affair with God, and if that expression has associations that are out of place here, it is because of the abuse of it, not because of its proper use. As we shall see, God Himself uses human love to teach us the secrets of divine love. The love of God for us is shown forth in the Life and Passion and Death of our Lord. Our return is the influence of love for God in our own life, and that is especially shown by our fraternal charity. God not only gives us the power to love Him, He also gives us the opportunity of exercising that power. God is completely self-sufficient, and as we can add nothing to Him, our love at times seems hopeless and helpless. But God has so identified Himself with the needs of our neighbor, that what we do to others for God's sake, is done to God Himself.

The love of God then, and the love of our neighbor are one and the same virtue. This virtue is the effect of our incorporation in Christ, but it is also the means of fulfilling the law of our life in Christ. It is God who works in us both to love and to do the works of love. These works are many; and for their performance God has given us other virtues called the moral virtues, which depend upon the four cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude. These we need to regulate all our actions, to be honest with our neighbor, to control our lower appetites, and to overcome our weakness and fear, so that all actions which we perform may belong to the life of the Body of Christ.

In addition to these virtues, and to the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, our life in Christ needs a continual series of helps called actual graces, by which we are moved to do good, and we are sustained in all our actions. We cannot begin a single good act with the help of God. Without me, you can do nothing, said our Lord. (John xv, 5) But God is our Father, and He does not fail His children, and Christ is the Head of His Body and as the Church teaches: He constantly pours forth His grace (virtutem) upon those who have been justified as the head exercises its influence on the members and the vine on its branches; and this grace ever precedes, accompanies, and follows their good actions. (Council of Trent, Sess. vi, cap. xvi.) There is, so to speak a complete nervous system in the Mystical Body, which controls the actions of all its members, and without that vital initiation and guidance, they are paralyzed. the working of actual grace is of great importance in the spiritual life, but to examine the virtues of the different graces in greater detail here would make the treatment too theoretical, and would put us in danger of losing sight of the main outline of the Christian life, which is lived through Christ, with Christ, and in Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, for the glory of the Eternal God. (Father Eugene Boylan, O. Cist. R., This Tremendous Lover, published by The Newman Press, Westminster, Maryland, 1948, pp. 67-73.)There are several areas from part one of this three-part series upon which I would like to amplify.

First, as noted in part one, Holy Mother Church has always sought the maximum amount of temporal well-being for children that is possible in this imperfect world where men stained with the vestigial after-effects of Original Sin (darkened intellect, weakened will, the concupiscence of the disorderly passions) are never free from temptations to commit various sins, including the Seven Capital Sins (pride, anger, greed, lust, envy, sloth, gluttony), and are thus prone to act unjustly in their personal and social lives.

However, the pursuit of the common temporal good is the secondary end for human beings in their personal and social lives as even those things in the temporal realm must be referred to the Holy Faith, including economic policy, as men and their nations build their houses on sandy ground if they do not pay heed to First and Last Things:

Accordingly, We first of all declare that all Catholics have a sacred and inviolable duty, both in private and public life, to obey and firmly adhere to and fearlessly profess the principles of Christian truth enunciated by the teaching office of the Catholic Church. In particular We mean those principles which Our Predecessor has most wisely laid down in the encyclical letter "Rerum Novarum." We know that the Bishops of Prussia followed these most faithfully in their deliberations at the Fulda Congress of 1900. You yourselves have summarized the fundamental ideas of these principles in your communications regarding this question.

These are fundamental principles: No matter what the Christian does, even in the realm of temporal goods, he cannot ignore the supernatural good. Rather, according to the dictates of Christian philosophy, he must order all things to the ultimate end, namely, the Highest Good. All his actions, insofar as they are morally either good or bad (that is to say, whether they agree or disagree with the natural and divine law), are subject to the judgment and judicial office of the Church. All who glory in the name of Christian, either individually or collectively, if they wish to remain true to their vocation, may not foster enmities and dissensions between the classes of civil society. On the contrary, they must promote mutual concord and charity. The social question and its associated controversies, such as the nature and duration of labor, the wages to be paid, and workingmen's strikes, are not simply economic in character. Therefore they cannot be numbered among those which can be settled apart from ecclesiastical authority. "The precise opposite is the truth. It is first of all moral and religious, and for that reason its solution is to be expected mainly from the moral law and the pronouncements of religion." (Pope Saint Pius X, Singulari Quadam, Sepetember 24, 1912.)

The modern world, shaped as it is by the anti-Incarnational lies of Judeo-Masonry and its hatred for the Social Reign of Christ the King and of the true Social Teaching of the Catholic Church, she who is our mater and magister (mother and teacher), is shaped by amorality in almost every aspect of public life and what passes for “popular culture” in these wicked times that celebrate every form of licentiousness, including wanton misuse of the gift that God has given to man to bring forth new souls to give Him honor and glory in this life and to spend all eternity with Him in Heaven after dying as faithful sons and daughters of Holy Mother Church and the subsequent killing off of children by self-centered parents who live without regard to their Particular Judgment and of outright perversity of the sort that destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gommorha.

Amorality is practiced by the members of each of the two major organized crime families of naturalism in the United States of America. Violations of the Seventh and Eighth Commandments are the norm, not the exception, today as politicians of the false opposites of the naturalist “right” and the “left” outdo each other in stealing what rightfully belongs to the taxpayers to aggrandize the power of the civil state and in lying about each other with a shameless disregard, borne of ignorance in many instances, of the fact that they will have to make an accounting of everything that they have ever thought, done or said when they face the Divine Judge, Christ the King, at the moment of their Particular Judgments.

Saint Alphonsus de Liguori explained that no one, including those who justify a fission between “private belief” and public action, will escape the strict scrutiny of every aspect of his life after he dies:

2. It is the common opinion of theologians, that at the very moment and in the very place in which the soul departs from the body, the divine tribunal is erected, the accusation is read, and the sentence is passed by Jesus Christ, the Judge. At this terrible tribunal each of us shall be presented to give an account of all our thoughts, of all our words, and of all our actions. "For we must all be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the proper things of the body, according as he hath done, whether it be good or evil." ( 2 Cor. v. 10.) When presented before an earthly judge criminals have been seen to fall into a cold sweat through fear. It is related of Piso, that so great and insufferable was the confusion, which he felt at the thought of appearing as a criminal before the senate that he killed himself. How great is the pain of a vassal, or of a son, in appearing before an angry prince or an enraged father, to account for some crime which he has committed! Oh! how much greater shall be the pain and confusion of the soul in standing, before Jesus Christ enraged against her for having despised him during her life! Speaking of judgment, St. Luke says: "Then you shall see the Son of Man." (Luke xxi. 27.) They shall see Jesus Christ as man, with the same wounds with which he ascended into heaven. "Great joy of the beholders!" says Robert the Abbot, "a great terror of those who are in expectation!" These wounds shall console the just, and shall terrify the wicked. In them sinners shall see the Redeemer’s love for themselves, and their ingratitude to him.

3. "Who," says the Prophet Nahum, "can stand before the face of his indignation ?" (i. 6.) How great, then, shall be the terror of a soul that finds herself in sin before this Judge, the first time she shall see him, and see him full of wrath! St. Basil says that she shall be tortured more by her shame and confusion than by the very fire of hell. ”Horridior quam ignis, erit pudor." Philip the Second rebuked one of his domestics for having told him a lie. ”Is it thus," said the king to him, ”you deceive me?" The domestic, after having returned home, died of grief. The Scripture tells us, that when Joseph reproved his brethren, saying: ”I am Joseph, whom you sold," they were unable to answer through fear, and remained silent. ”His brethren could not answer him, being struck with exceeding great fear." (Gen. xlv. 3.) Now what answer shall sinners make to Jesus Christ when he shall say to them: I am your Redeemer and your Judge, whom you have so much despised. Where shall the miserable beings fly, says St. Augustine, when they shall see an angry Judge above, hell open below, on one side their own sins accusing them, and on the other the devils dragging them to punishment, and their conscience burning them within? “Above shall be an enraged Judge below, a horrid chaos on the right, sins accusing him on the left, demons dragging him to punishment within, a burning conscience! Whither shall a sinner, beset in this manner, fly ?"Perhaps he will cry for mercy? But how, asks Eusebius Emissenus, can he dare to implore mercy, when he must first render an account of his contempt for the mercy which Jesus Christ has shown to him?” With what face will you, who are to be first judged for contempt of mercy, ask for mercy?" But let us come to the rendering of the accounts. . . .

11. How great shall be the joy of a soul when, at death, she hears from Jesus Christ these sweet words: ”Well done, good and faithful servant; because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will place thee over many things. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." (Matt. xxv. 21.) Equally great shall be the anguish and despair of a guilty soul, that shall see herself driven away by the Judge with the following words: ”Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire" (verse 41). Oh! what a terrible thunderclap shall that sentence be to her!”Oh! how frightfully," says the Carthusian, "shall that thunder resound!" Eusebius writes, that the terror of sinners at hearing their condemnation shall be so great that, if they could, they would die again. “The wicked shall be seized with such terror at the sight of the Judge pronouncing sentence that, if they were not immortal, they should die a second time." But, brethren, let us, before the termination of this sermon, make some reflections which will be profitable to us. St. Thomas of Villanova says, that some listen to discourses on the judgment and condemnation of the wicked with as little concern as if they they themselves were secure against these things, or as if the day of judgment were never to arive for them. "Heu quam securi hæc dicimus et audimus, quasi nos non tangeret hæc sententia, aut quasi dies hæc nunquam esset venturus!" (Conc, i., de Jud.) The saint then asks: Is it not great folly to entertain security in so perilous an affair? "Quæ est ista stulta securitas in discrimine tanto?" There are some, says St. Augustine, who, though they live in sin, cannot imagine that God will send them to hell. ”Will God," they say, ”really condemn us ?" Brethren, adds the saint, do not speak thus. So, many of the damned did not believe that they should be sent to hell; but the end came, and, according to the threat of Ezechiel, they have been cast into that place of darkness. "The end is come, the end is come... and I will send my wrath upon thee, and I will judge thee." (Ezec. vii. 2, 3.) Sinners, perhaps vengeance is at hand for you, and still you laugh and sleep in sin. Who will not tremble at the words of the Baptist: ”For now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree, therefore, that doth not yield good fruit shall be cut down and cast into the fire." (Matt, iii. 10.) He says, that every tree that does not bring forth good fruit shall be cut down and cast into the fire; and he promises that, with regard to the trees, which represent sinners, the axe is already laid to the roots that is, chastisement is at hand. Dearly beloved brethren, let us follow the counsel of the Holy Ghost "Before judgment, prepare thee justice." (Eccl. xviii. 19.) Let us adjust our accounts before the day of accounts. Let us seek God, now that we can find him; for the time shall come when we will wish, but shall not be able to find him. ”You shall seek me, and shall not find me." (John vii. 36.)” “Before judgment," says St. Augustine, ”the Judge can be appeased, but not in judgment." By a change of life we can now appease the anger of Jesus Christ, and recover his grace; but when he shall judge, and find us in sin, he must execute justice, and we shall be lost. (Sermons for All the Sundays in the Year by St Alphonsus Liguori in .pdf format; a sermon on the death of the sinner is appended at the end of this article.)

No one in public life today recognizes or accept this as true. More accurately, of course, almost no one in public life today knows of the terror that awaits them by their use of amorality in every aspect of their lives. Not Donald John Trump. Not Charles Schumer. Not Nancy Patricia D’Alesandro Pelosi. Not anyone, including many well-meaning Catholics who have been swept up in the falsehoods of the counterfeit church of conciliarism and its propagation of the heresy of universal salvation.

Permit me a slight digression as it is important to drive home the point that one cannot do whatever he wants without regard to the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law and expect to escape the fires of Hell for all eternity.

Even though Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross to redeem mankind, it is up to each person to avail himself of the merits of Our Lord’s Redemptive Act. Actually, of course, the number of those who are saved is very few:

Woe to you who command others! If so many are damned by your fault, what will happen to you? If few out of those who are first in the Church of God are saved, what will happen to you? Take all states, both sexes, every condition: husbands, wives, widows, young women, young men, soldiers, merchants, craftsmen, rich and poor, noble and plebian. What are we to say about all these people who are living so badly? The following narrative from Saint Vincent Ferrer will show you what you may think about it. He relates that an archdeacon in Lyons gave up his charge and retreated into a desert place to do penance, and that he died the same day and hour as Saint Bernard. After his death, he appeared to his bishop and said to him, "Know, Monsignor, that at the very hour I passed away, thirty-three thousand people also died. Out of this number, Bernard and myself went up to heaven without delay, three went to purgatory, and all the others fell into Hell."

Our chronicles relate an even more dreadful happening. One of our brothers, well-known for his doctrine and holiness, was preaching in Germany. He represented the ugliness of the sin of impurity so forcefully that a woman fell dead of sorrow in front of everyone. Then, coming back to life, she said, "When I was presented before the Tribunal of God, sixty thousand people arrived at the same time from all parts of the world; out of that number, three were saved by going to Purgatory, and all the rest were damned."

O abyss of the judgments of God! Out of thirty thousand, only five were saved! And out of sixty thousand, only three went to heaven! You sinners who are listening to me, in what category will you be numbered?... What do you say?... What do you think?...

I see almost all of you lowering your heads, filled with astonishment and horror. But let us lay our stupor aside, and instead of flattering ourselves, let us try to draw some profit from our fear.

Is it not true that there are two roads which lead to heaven: innocence and repentance? Now, if I show you that very few take either one of these two roads, as rational people you will conclude that very few are saved. And to mention proofs: in what age, employment or condition will you find that the number of the wicked is not a hundred times greater than that of the good, and about which one might say, "The good are so rare and the wicked are so great in number"? We could say of our times  what Salvianus said of his: it is easier to find a countless multitude of sinners immersed in all sorts of iniquities than a few innocent men. How many servants are totally honest and faithful in their duties? How many merchants are fair and equitable in their commerce; how many craftsmen exact and truthful; how many salesmen disinterested and sincere? How many men of law do not forsake equity? How many soldiers do not tread upon innocence; how many masters do not unjustly withhold the salary of those who serve them, or do not seek to dominate their inferiors? Everywhere, the good are rare and the wicked great in number. Who does not know that today there is so much libertinage among mature men, liberty among young girls, vanity among women, licentiousness in the nobility, corruption in the middle class, dissolution in the people, impudence among the poor, that one could say what David said of his times: "All alike have gone astray... there is not even one who does good, not even one." (Saint Leonard of Port Maurice, The Little Numbr of Those Who Are Saved.)

These are words that should terrify each one of us. The spiritually lax and outright moral reprobates do not enter the Kingdom of God. We must pray to Our Lady every day to help us to save our souls as it is far easier to go to Hell for all eternity than it is to go to Heaven. The conciliar revolutionaries preach the exact opposite.

The standard of one’s Particular Judgment becomes higher if he has authority over others. One duly invested with the authority to govern must do so justly as he seeks to foster the common temporal good in light of man’s Last End, namely, the possession of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity in Heaven. Yes, woe to those who govern who do not make provision for the eternal well-being of those entrusted to their governance.

Pope Saint Pius X summarized the entirety of the duties of just governance and statecraft as he condemned the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic precept of the “separation of Church and State” in Paragraph Three of Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906:

That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. The same thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies. Both of them, the civil and the religious society, although each exercises in its own sphere its authority over them. It follows necessarily that there are many things belonging to them in common in which both societies must have relations with one another. Remove the agreement between Church and State, and the result will be that from these common matters will spring the seeds of disputes which will become acute on both sides; it will become more difficult to see where the truth lies, and great confusion is certain to arise. Finally, this thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions touching the rights and the duties of men. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. Our illustrious predecessor, Leo XIII, especially, has frequently and magnificently expounded Catholic teaching on the relations which should subsist between the two societies. "Between them," he says, "there must necessarily be a suitable union, which may not improperly be compared with that existing between body and soul.-"Quaedam intercedat necesse est ordinata colligatio (inter illas) quae quidem conjunctioni non immerito comparatur, per quam anima et corpus in homine copulantur." He proceeds: "Human societies cannot, without becoming criminal, act as if God did not exist or refuse to concern themselves with religion, as though it were something foreign to them, or of no purpose to them.... As for the Church, which has God Himself for its author, to exclude her from the active life of the nation, from the laws, the education of the young, the family, is to commit a great and pernicious error. -- "Civitates non possunt, citra scellus, gerere se tamquam si Deus omnino non esset, aut curam religionis velut alienam nihilque profuturam abjicere.... Ecclesiam vero, quam Deus ipse constituit, ab actione vitae excludere, a legibus, ab institutione adolescentium, a societate domestica, magnus et perniciousus est error. (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.)

Human societies have, sadly, become criminal because most people, including those who govern, do indeed “act as if God did not exist or refuse to concern themselves with religion.” The consequences of such disorder are deadly to men and their nations. As has been noted many times previously in this website, we are witnessing the perfection of the inherent degeneracy of the false, naturalistic, Pelagian and religiously indifferentist principles of the American founding. Disorder in the souls of men leads to disorder in one’s nation and hence in the world. No nation will ever know a just social order domestically and the world-at-large will never enjoy a genuine peace as long most men are at war with the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Blessed Trinity, by means of unrepented sins and by enshrining grave sins as a “civil right” in public law and celebrating them throughout the nooks and crannies of “popular culture.”

As Silvio Cardinal Antoniano noted in the Sixteenth Century:

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

No, no one on the naturalist "right" understands this, which makes it impossible to turn back the tide of evil advance by their opposite numbers among the ranks of the naturalist "left," most of whom are proud to boast of their support for the very evils that undermine justice in their nations and peace in the world.

Pope Leo XIII, writing in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885, taught that it is impossible to produce a just social order if the civil law permits all kinds of licentiousness:

Whatever, therefore, is opposed to virtue and truth may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law. A well-spent life is the only way to heaven, whither all are bound, and on this account the State is acting against the laws and dictates of nature whenever it permits the license of opinion and of action to lead minds astray from truth and souls away from the practice of virtue. To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from life, from laws, from the education of youth, from domestic society is a grave and fatal error. A State from which religion is banished can never be well regulated; and already perhaps more than is desirable is known of the nature and tendency of the so-called civil philosophy of life and morals. The Church of Christ is the true and sole teacher of virtue and guardian of morals. She it is who preserves in their purity the principles from which duties flow, and, by setting forth most urgent reasons for virtuous life, bids us not only to turn away from wicked deeds, but even to curb all movements of the mind that are opposed to reason, even though they be not carried out in action. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

These points should be very familiar to longtime readers of this website.

However, as we do live in time and cannot but help to get caught up in the apparent “victories” in the natural realm that distract us from the only real victory that matters, namely, the daily vanquishing of the adversary in our souls by means of the ineffable graces that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ won for us during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Grace, and thus to be prepared at all times for our death and the fearful moment of the Particular Judgment so that we can, solely by the mercy of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the love of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, become partakes of Our King’s Easter victory over sin and death for all eternity.

Second, Pope Leo XIII explained in Rerum Novarum, May 15, 1891, that, quite unlike the ethic of Judeo-Calvinist capitalism, human worth is not defined by material success:

In any case we clearly see, and on this there is general agreement, that some opportune remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustlyon the majority of the working class: for the ancient workingmen's guilds were abolished in the last century, and no other protective organization took their place. Public institutions and the laws set aside the ancient religion. Hence, by degrees it has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition. The mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different guise, but with like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping men. To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself. (Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, May 15, 1891.) 

This analysis is even more relevant to our times as it was in 1891. 

Holy Mother Church recognizes the changes that take place in economic systems even though she may not approve of those changes or believe that they are optimal for the realization of man’s Last End. And thus it is that money, as opposed to land or some other tangible good, has become capital, meaning that there can be a just interest charged on those who lend it. There is thus no contradiction between the Catholic Church’s consistent condemnation of usury and Canon 1543 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law:

“If a commodity which is consumed by its first use (such as money, bread, etc.), be lent on the stipulation that it becomes the property of the borrower, who is bound to return to the lender not the thing itself but its equivalent only, the lender may not receive any payment by reason of the loan itself. In the giving or lending of such a commodity, however, it is not in itself unlawful to make an arrangement for the recovery of interest at the rate allowed by the civil law (de luco legali pacisi) unless that rate is clearly excessive: One may even arrange for a still higher rate of interest, if there be a just title for doing so, in proportion to the amount of the excess.” (Canon 1543, 1917 Code of Canon Law.) 

What has changed is the nature of the commercial transaction itself, not the Church’s condemnation of usury, which has been made many times, including the Tenth Session of the Fifth Lateran Council, May 4, 1515, which was presided over by Pope Leo X. 

Father Cahill explained the effects of the Church’s prohibition of usury in the Middle Ages, a practice that has been widespread in our own day as our world is governed by principles that are based upon rank profiteering and the exploitation of the weak and impoverished: 

The Church’s legislation [on usury] did not, it is true, succeed in completely preventing the practice of usury, especially on the part of the Jews. These laws and principles were, however, an immense check upon the unjust activities of money-lenders and speculators, so that anything approaching the systematised extortion and stock-gambling of modern times was impossible.   

Conclusion.–It is commonly admitted that the undue concentration of wealth under the control of the few is one of the radical causes of the social misery and unrest that prevail at the present day. Individuals controlling great wealth have excessive power in almost every phase of social activity, and following the tendency of human nature, they too often use their power unjustly and tyrannically. Those huge fortunes are usually amassed by unjust profiteering, artificially created monopolies, usury, unjust reduction of wages, the sudden fluctuations of the markets which play into the hands of greedy speculators. The mediaeval economic doctrines and legislation and the public opinion they produced and fostered made impossible, or at least kept in check, such methods of accumulating wealth, and so were a potent safeguard against one of the worst types of social injustice. (Father Edward Cahill, S.J., The Framework of a Christian State, p. 51.) 

The economics of the Middle Ages were also characterized in the Twelfth Century by the rise that made possible the training of masters in various fields of commerce (merchants and crafts) after first serving years of apprenticeships and then working as journeymen. The object of these guilds was to produce a cooperative spirit so that individual guild members could pursue their own interests without endangering the common interests of their mutual trades. It was the true spirit of Catholic charity that bound the guild members together to such an extent that they provided for each other what would be called “welfare” today, administering this assistance according to the Natural Law principle of subsidiarity that requires human problems to be remedied at the lowest levels of life, staring with the family. The guilds made it possible for those with needs that could not be meet by their families to receive assistance without the “strings” attached by the monster civil state of Modernity and without bankrupting the entire body politic: 

The greatest spirit of solidarity and mutual help animated the whole guild organisation. Thus money was advanced on easy terms to members who needed it. Those suffering from sickness, old age, accidents, etc., were liberally provided for. Even a guildman who might get into trouble with the municipal or state authorities had a right to the protection of the guild. If, after investigation by the council, his case was considered a deserving one he was defended in the courts at the common expense. Sick members were visited; and wine and food were sent from the public banquets to those whom illness or weakness prevent from attending. The dead, if the family was poor, was buried at the expense of their guild with all the honours befitting their position, and their daughters dowered for marriage or the convent. 

The Religious Character of the Guilds.–Another peculiarly Christian characteristic of—these guilds was their practical recognition of the intimate connection of religion with commercial relations and with all the activities of life. Although the primary object of the associations was economic, the guilds made every effort to secure good conduct and fidelity to religious duties on the part of the members. Individuals were punished or sometimes expelled from the guilds for immoral or irreligious conduct. 

Every guild was under the protection of a patron saint or was specially dedicated to the Holy Trinity or to the Blessed Mother of God under one of her titles. The portrait of the guild patron was painted on the banner of the guild which was borne in the public processions. Thus the guild of wood-workers was under the protection of St. Joseph. The shoemakers usually had on their banner paintings of SS. Crispin and Crispinian. Bakers were often under the patronage of St. Honorius, and so on. The association of the heavenly patron with the grade that belonged to the guild intensified the craftsmen’s pride in their work and the men’s esteem for the nobility of manual labour. The Church Feast of the patron was always the occasion of the great annual banquet of the guild. 

Many guilds had their own special chapels; and we commonly find provision made in the guild statutes for the support of a chaplain and sometimes of several chaplains. Some of the most beautiful mediaeval churches belonged to or were built by the guilds. Provision was also regularly made for the celebration of Masses for the intentions of the guild, and for the offering of candles at holy shrines. On the death of a member care was taken to have Masses offered and alms given for his eternal rest. Almsgiving, which was practiced even towards the poor outside the gild, was an important item of the ordinary guild expenditure. Oftentimes a guild gave feasts in its buildings to the poor of the whole town. (Father Edward Cahill, The Framework of a Christian State, pp. 79-80.) 

Christendom would continue beyond the Thirteenth Century. It was, however, at its height in the Thirteenth Century, which is why the devil used the weakness of men to embrace the world just a “little bit at a time” in the two centuries between its end and the beginning of the revolutions of Modernity that began with Father Martin Luther’s posting of his ninety-five theses on the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, on October 31, 1517, and one of Martin Luther’s principal goals was to separate Church and State, a separation that has been nothing other than disastrous for the right ordering of men and their nations.

It should be noted, however, that Luther also conversed with the adversary himself, something that he related in his own writings and quoted by Protestant historian William Cobbett in his superb A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland:

. . . . Martin Luther, who says in his own works that it was by the arguments of the devil (who, he says, frequently ate, drank and slept with him) that he was induced to turn Protestant; three worthy followers of that Luther who is by his disciple Melancthon called "a brutal man, void of piety and humanity, one more a Jew than a Christian . . . . (William Cobbett, A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland, written between 1824 and 1827 and published by Benziger Brothers, p. 209.)

Does anyone still want to deny that the world in which we live was inspired by the devil himself?

Protestantism Begets Capitalism with an Assist from Talmudic Principles

Although Martin Luther’s revolution, aided and abetted by Talmudic instigators, started the process that created the world of Modernity, it was the influence of John Calvin and his own brand of Judeo-Protestantism that has shaped the world of injustice and conflict today.

Among his many other false beliefs, John Calvin believed that those in the civil government could separate the "saved" from the "damned" was the degree of their material success here on earth. John Calvin believed that material success was a sign of "divine election." Thus it is that we have the Calvinist "work ethic" as those who subscribe to Calvin's warped, heretical views of God and man work hard not to give honor and glory to the Most Holy Trinity through the Immaculate Heart of Mary but to show to others that they are "saved" by virtue of their material "success" in this passing, mortal vale of tears. 

Calvin’s belief in material success as the sign of divine election or predestination that has provided the foundation for the modern economic system that has forced man off of the land and dehumanized him as he has been made a slave of "material success" by the captains of industry and banking. Calvinism, which is little more than Talmudic Judaism with a slight Christian gloss, has engendered all manner of economic abuses, not the least of which is the contemporary practice of usury, discussed earlier in this book, founded in the belief that men may ignore the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law in order to be "successful" in this world. 

The injustices engendered by this amoral, naturalistic view of the world helped to encourage open atheists and anti-Theists, such as Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, to postulate a utopian system of naturalism based upon a materialistic view of man that denied his supernatural essence. The diabolical lie of Marxism-Leninism is but the logical consequence of John Calvin's materialistic view of man that denied that there could be an Omnipotent and Omniscient God Who created rational beings with free wills to choose for or against Him as He has revealed Himself to us through His true Church.

Father Fahey elaborated on the effects of Protestantism, especially the warmed-over version of Talmudic Judaism that is Calvinism, in The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World: 

It was, however, the Calvinistic doctrine on predestination and the signs by which a man's divine election could be recognized, which specially favored the advent of the unlimited competition, unscrupulous underselling and feverish advertising of the present day. In his able work, from which a passage has already been quoted, Professor O'Brien shows that it was in the peculiarly British variety of Calvinism, known as Puritanism, that all the Calvinist doctrines of succession life as a sign of man's predestination, of the respect and veneration due to wealth, had their fullest development. 

When all is said and done, Calvinism remains the real nursing-father of the civic industrial capitalism of the middle classes. . . . Since the aggressively active ethic inspired by the doctrine of predestination urges the elect to the full development of his God-given powers, and offers him this sign by which he may assure himself of his election, work becomes rational and systematic. In breaking down the motive of ease and enjoyment, asceticism lays the foundation of the tyranny of work over men . . . production for production's sake is declared to be a commandment of religion." (Father Denis Fahey, The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World.)

This has great application in every aspect of contemporary life. Most people work not for the honor and glory of God, thus giving him the fruit of their labors as the consecrated slaves of His Most Blessed Mother's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, but for the sake of "success," to gain what is considered to be financial "wealth" and earthly "success" as ends that justify each and every method used to achieve such success. This has been the Calvinist "contribution" to the world, so enshrined in the ethos of the "American dream," which eschews the Holy Poverty of the Holy Family of Nazareth and of such great saints as Saint Francis of Assisi and his helper and fellow adorer of the Most Blessed Sacrament, Saint Clare of Assisi. Father Fahey quoted Gilbert Keith Chesterton's observation about the insidious influence of that wretched people known as the Puritans (or Pilgrims) in a footnote on page sixteen of The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World: 

"The Americans have established a Thanksgiving Day to celebrate the fact that the Pilgrim Fathers reached America. The English might very well establish another Thanksgiving Day to celebrate the happy fact that the Pilgrim Fathers left England." (Father Denis Fahey, The Mystical City of Christ in the Modern World.)

The Protestants, however, were not alone in helping to usher in the world of amorality in commerce and politics and statecraft and popular culture, including what has become known as competitive sports. Father Fahey explained the “Talmudic connection,” if you will, from which the Calvinist world-view is derived:

The learned writer, Werner Sombart, in his great work, Die Juden and das Wirtschafsleben ("The Jews in Economic Life"), attributes the great, if not the deciding, role in the formation of the modern economic outlook or mentality to the Jewish race, for to them he attributes the introduction of the ideas of "free commerce" and "unchecked competition" into a society with quite different ideas. He points out the contrast between this Jewish mentality and the ordered outlook of the Middle Ages in phrases that are worthy of citation:--

"When we examine matters more closely . . . we shall immediately see that the struggle between Jewish and Christian merchants is a struggle between two views of the world, or, at least, between two economic mentalities imbued with principles that are different or even opposed. In order to understand this statement we must represent to ourselves the spirit which inspired that economic life into which, since the sixteenth century, Jewish elements have forced their way in ever increasing volume. To this spirit they openly showed themselves so rudely opposed that they were everywhere felt to be interfering with the livelihood and subsistence of the people. During the whole time which I have designated as the period of incipient capitalism . . . the same fundamental outlook on economic relations prevailed as had been accepted during the Middle Ages. . . The unrestrained, unbridled striving after gain was considered by most people during this whole period as unlawful, as unchristian, because the spirit of the old Thomistic economic philosophy as yet swayed men's minds, at least officially." The Jewish mentality was opposed to the outlook on life impressed on society by the Catholic Church, for (:) "the Jew stands out as the business man pure and simple, as the man who, in business, takes account only of business, and who in conformity with the spirit of true capitalist economy, proclaims, in the presence of all natural ends, the supremacy of gain and profit." (Father Denis Fahey, The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World.) 

Has not the "supremacy of gain and profit" come to define almost every aspect of contemporary life, taking into account not at all the eternal good of our immortal souls? This "supremacy of gain and profit" results in the corruption of daily living, contributing to the naturalistic belief, which itself is founded in pantheism, as Father Fahey notes, that is, that man is "divine" and is above all. The achievement of our earthly goals is what defines us as human beings, and no "external" authority, such as the Catholic Church, had better get in our way of this achievement. 

A final passage from Father Fahey will underscore this point: 

The Jew it was, according to Sombart, who broke down the mentality of the Middle Ages and commercialized the relations of men. 

Professor O'Brien dissents from Werner Sombart's thesis that the growth of the capitalistic spirit, the spirit of subordination of all other considerations to that of profit, was due to the Jews. He admits, however, that Sombart's contention would be quite correct, if for the "Jews" we substituted "Judaism," and he points out the importance of Calvin's justification of usury in preparing the way for modern developments. The Puritans adopted Old Testament ideas: the Old Testament idea of the reward of virtue in this world fitted in with the Puritan teaching about the fulfillment of one's vocation.

It is unnecessary for the purpose of this work to apportion responsibility for the triumph of what we may call the does it pay? mentality in the world, between Jews and Puritans. At any rate, if the Puritans subordinated men to production, the Jews completed the process, by subordinating production itself to money. The right order, of money as a means for production and production subservient to man, is now, as we know, reversed. (Father Denis Fahey, The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World.)

Professor George O'Brien, cited in Father Fahey's The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World, summarized his judgment about the effects of Protestantism upon the contemporary world in An Essay on the Economic Effects of the Reformation (IHS Press, Norfolk, Virginia, 2003): 

The thesis we have endeavoured to present in this essay is, that the two great dominating schools of modern economic thought have a common origin. The capitalist school, which, basing its position on the unfettered right of the individual to do what he will with his own, demands the restriction of government interference in economic and social affairs within the narrowest possible limits, and the socialist school, which, basing its position on the complete subordination of the individual to society, demands the socialization of all the means of production, if not all of wealth, face each other today as the only two solutions of the social question; they are bitterly hostile towards each other, and mutually intolerant and each is at the same weakened and provoked by the other. In one respect, and in one respect only, are they identical--they can both be shown to be the result of the Protestant Reformation. 

We have seen the direct connection which exists between these modern schools of economic thought and their common ancestor. Capitalism found its roots in the intensely individualistic spirit of Protestantism, in the spread of anti-authoritative ideas from the realm of religion into the realm of political and social thought, and, above all, in the distinctive Calvinist doctrine of a successful and prosperous career being the outward and visible sign by which the regenerated might be known. Socialism, on the other hand, derived encouragement from the violations of established and prescriptive rights of which the Reformation afforded so many examples, from the growth of heretical sects tainted with Communism, and from the overthrow of the orthodox doctrine on original sin, which opened the way to the idea of the perfectibility of man through institutions. But, apart from these direct influences, there were others, indirect, but equally important. Both these great schools of economic thought are characterized by exaggerations and excesses; the one lays too great stress on the importance of the individual, and other on the importance of the community; they are both departures, in opposite directions, from the correct mean of reconciliation and of individual liberty with social solidarity. These excesses and exaggerations are the result of the free play of private judgment unguided by authority, and could not have occurred if Europe had continued to recognize an infallible central authority in ethical affairs. 

The science of economics is the science of men's relations with one another in the domain of acquiring and disposing of wealth, and is, therefore, like political science in another sphere, a branch of the science of ethics. In the Middle Ages, man's ethical conduct, like his religious conduct, was under the supervision and guidance of a single authority, which claimed at the same time the right to define and to enforce its teaching. The machinery for enforcing the observance of medieval ethical teaching was of a singularly effective kind; pressure was brought to bear upon the conscience of the individual through the medium of compulsory periodical consultations with a trained moral adviser, who was empowered to enforce obedience to his advice by the most potent spiritual sanctions. In this way, the whole conduct of man in relation to his neighbours was placed under the immediate guidance of the universally received ethical preceptor, and a common standard of action was ensured throughout the Christian world in the all the affairs of life. All economic transactions in particular were subject to the jealous scrutiny of the individual's spiritual director; and such matters as sales, loans, and so on, were considered reprehensible and punishable if not conducted in accordance with the Christian standards of commutative justice. 

The whole of this elaborate system for the preservation of justice in the affairs of everyday life was shattered by the Reformation. The right of private judgment, which had first been asserted  in matters of faith, rapidly spread into moral matters, and the attack on the dogmatic infallibility of the Church left Europe without an authority to which it could appeal on moral questions. The new Protestant churches were utterly unable to supply this want. The principle of private judgment on which they rested deprived them of any right to be listened to whenever they attempted to dictate moral precepts to their members, and henceforth the moral behaviour of the individual became a matter to be regulated by the promptings of his own conscience, or by such philosophical systems of ethics as he happened to approve. The secular state endeavoured to ensure that dishonesty amounting to actual theft or fraud should be kept in check, but this was a poor and ineffective substitute for the powerful weapon of the confessional. Authority having once broken down, it was but a single step from Protestantism to rationalism; and the way was opened to the development of all sorts of erroneous systems of morality.  Dr. George O’Brien, An Essay on the Economic Effects of the Reformation, IHS Press, Norfolk, Virginia, 2003.) 

Amintore Fanfani, who died in 1999 and had served as the Prime Minister of Italy on six different occasions of varying lengths between 1954 and 1987, noted in Catholicism, Protestantism, and Capitalism, that it is only when men keep a view on their eternal destiny that they can be just stewards of the this of this world. The success of the above-named Protestant revolutionaries and naturalistic "philosophers" and "theorists" was made possible by the overthrow of he authority of the Catholic Church. Unrestrained self-seeking replaced the authority of the Catholic Church:

Those who have followed our argument cannot fail to conclude, as we do, that in the Middle Ages it was the international trade ventures that did most to favour the rise of the capitalist spirit. In light of these considerations, the conception of trade in St. Thomas, the champion of the Catholic social ideal, appears only logical, "For, "says St. Thomas, "the city that for its subsistence has need of much merchandise must necessarily submit to the presence of foreigners. Now relations with foreigners, as Aristotle says in his Politics, very often corrupt national customs: the foreigners who have been brought up under other laws and customs, in many cases act otherwise than is the use of the citizens, who, led by their example, imitate them and so bring disturbance into social life. Moreover, if the citizens themselves engage in commerce, they open the way to many vices. For since the aim of merchants is wholly one of gain, greed takes root in the heart of the citizens, by which everything, in the city, becomes venal, and, with the disappearance of good faith, the way is open to fraud; the general good is despised, and each man will seek his own particular advantage; the taste for virtue will be lost when the honour which is normally the reward of virtue is accorded to all. Hence, in such a city civil life cannot fail to grow corrupt."

When these words are understood, and we bear in mind the ideal of a Catholic society and the aspirations of capitalism, we can easily see why the friar noted a tendency to reason only in a "venal" manner and ("despising the general good") to seek only "particular advantage."

The characteristics of capitalism are precisely the following: the adoption of an economic criterion as criterion of order; failure to consider third persons; a quest for purely individual profit. Nor did Aquinas exaggerate when he saw in the merchant the greatest danger in "civil life," as he understood it. It is not by chance that the first capitalistic figures presented to us are merchants--Godric, later St. Godric, presented by Pirenne; the Mariano by Heynen; the Bardi, the Peruzzi, the Del Bene by Sapori; Datini by Bensa; the Fugger by Sreider. Nor is it by chance that though opinions differ as to whether capitalism sprang from land-owners or traders, all agree that even land-owners first showed themselves capitalistic in the quality of merchants. In mediaeval economic society the only individual who could easily and often find himself in a position to act otherwise than in conformity with pre-capitalistic ideals was the merchant. Having left his city, exposed to risks of every kind, free from such ties as the laws of country or the opinion of his acquaintances, surrounded by intriguing people who saw in him only someone to be cheated, he had to defend himself against the cheaters by cheating, against competitors by sharpening his wits to find new methods of competition, and against adverse circumstances by learning to overcome them. Although he may have been a God-fearing man, if it was urgent for him to take back to the warehouse at least the equivalent of what he had brought away, he was obligated to throw overboard something of his pre-capitalistic ideas, even if in paradaisal conditions they might have appealed to him.

In another part of the present work we have pointed out that in a pre-capitalistic society if a single individual breaks away from the norm, the others will be forced to follow his example if only in self-defence. Let the reader then consider the vast significance of encounters either with merchants of another religion, or with subtle, equivocal, and unscrupulous merchants, always ready to take advantage of any opportunity. Faced with these, men's faithfulness to their own ideals will have begun to waver; their consequent actions will have produced such remarkable results that we doubt whether their conviction of wrong-doing will have been reinforced. To reason in terms of utility means a tangible result; to reason in terms of Paradise means hope of a result of which the certainty vanishes if faith weakens. We must not forget how much the capitalistic ideal has the advantage in being concrete, and, remembering this, we can more easily understand how a profitable infraction of pre-capitalist normality would rather lead men to repeat such infractions than arouse in them such remorse as to lead them back to the old path. We hold it a very significant fact that among mediaeval merchants remorse led to notable conversion even when in no danger of death. It is enough to quote St. Godric, St. Francis, Blessed Colombini. It led also to death-bed restitutions, often complete, and which were the more wonderful the harder it had been for the dying man to scrape together his hoard, and the more reluctant he had been in his life to give a penny to anyone who had not earned it twice over. Such conversions, implying a return to pre-capitalistic modes of life, continue so long as there is faith, but when faith weakens there is no longer thought of reparation.

It is the waning of faith that explains the establishment of a capitalistic spirit in a Catholic world, but in a certain sense it is the establishment of the capitalistic spirit that brings about a waning of faith. The effect of the weakening of faith is that the material factors we have mentioned change from momentary circumstances to permanent ones. With the weakening of faith, remorse becomes rare; the "is" is no longer compared with the "should-be," and that which is accepted and exploited in accordance with its own standards; the world is judged by purely worldly criteria.

All the circumstances that, in the Middle Ages, led to a waning of faith explain the progressive establishment of the capitalistic spirit, for the pre-capitalistic spirit rests on facts that are not seen, but must be held by faith. Those faithful to it sacrifice a certain result for a result that is not guaranteed by faith; they eschew a certain mode of action in the certainty of losing riches, but believing that they will gain a future reward in heaven. Let man lose this belief, and nothing remains for him, rationally speaking, but to act in a capitalistic manner. If there are no longer religious ties uniting man to man, there will be a growing number of audacious men whose sole end, in the words of Villari, is to be ahead of their fellows. Such men existed before the modern era began, and of such men it has been said that they showed "a complete lack of scruples and contempt for every moral law."

Men were particularly encouraged to sharpen their wits to acquire wealth, and moral obstacles were removed by the fact that, by a subversion of ancient custom, the highest offices no longer fell to those summoned to them by law or custom, but to those who could win them either by their own or others' wit, by their own or others' material strength, or by their own ability and others' baseness. In each case the stair of ascent was provided by economic means, from the moment that economic difficulties made all feel the need of goods. The Emperor no longer sought homage but money, the Cities widened their domains more by gold than by arms. Bankers became masters of cities without striking a blow. Gold paved the way and opened the gates to the new tyrants. Even the man who, from lofty motives, had no need of money could not do without it, if he did not wish to cut a poor figure at banquets and ceremonies, or be behind hand in public largesse.

It is a vicious circle. A man seeks goods because he no longer believes in a faith that bounded his desires, and he no longer believes  because he has experienced the pleasures of possession and influence. We need not enquire at what moment the former or the latter of these causes came into operation; we know that their working varied from country to country, from individual to individual, and that now a man might be tempted to discount morality by the attraction of goods, and now might be tempted to enrich himself because, he is no loner believed in divine penalties and rewards. And if in the case of an individual it would be hard to say which cause came first, it would be impossible in the case of society. We may take it for granted that in society as a whole both causes worked simultaneously, each stimulated by the other.

There were other phenomena that encouraged either acquisition action or incredulity. Leaving aside the less important and local ones, and confining ourselves to those of which the action was most general at the close of the pre-capitalistic period, we may say that the greatest contribution to the new economic spirit informing fifteenth-century men was brought by the humanist conception of life, of which the exponents, such as Alberti, took the most significant step towards the capitalist spirit by detaching their conception of wealth from its moral setting, and withdrawing the acquisition and use of goods from the influence of the rules and restrictions of religious morality. The advent of similar tendencies in the political field had the result that the State ceased to oppose the new mode of thought and life, and instead itself threw off the influence of Catholic ideals, often in order to exploit human vices, as we see in legislation on gambling. (Amintore Fanfani, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Capitalism, published originally by Sheed and Ward, 1935, republished in 2002 by IHS Press, pp. 135-138.)

Fanfani went on to note how Protestantism exploited this weakening of the Catholic Faith and built an entire economic system to suit its own heretical purposes:

Protestantism encouraged capitalism inasmuch as it denied the relation between earthly action and eternal recompense. From this point of view there is no real difference between the Lutheran and Calvinistic currents, for while it is true that Calvin linked salvation to arbitrary divine predestination, Luther made it depend on faith alone. Neither of the two connected it with works. Nevertheless, Calvin's statement was the more vigorous, and therefore better able to bear practical fruit in a capitalistic sense.

Such an assertion invalidates any supernatural morality, hence also the economic ethics of Catholicism, and opens the way to a thousand moral systems, all natural, all earthy, all based on principles inherent in human affairs. Protestantism by this principle did not act in a positive sense, as [Max] Weber believes, but in a negative sense, paving the way for the positive action of innumerable impulses, which--like the risks entailed by distant markets,  in the pre-Reformation period, the price revolution at the time of the Reformation, and the industrial revolution in the period following—led man to direct his action by purely economic criteria. Catholicism acts in opposition to capitalism by seeking to restrain these impulses and to bring various spheres of life into harmony on an ideal plane. Protestantism acted in favor of capitalism, for its religious teaching paved the way for it. (Amintore Fanfani, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Capitalism, published originally by Sheed and Ward, 1935, republished in 2002 by IHS Press, p. 151.)

The belief that social life is defined solely by economic criteria is what unites the false opposites of the naturalist “left” and right” even though they do not realize this. As I have noted so many times in the past on this site, the false opposites of the naturalist “right” and “left,” despite their differences on the margins of the errors of Modernity, are united in their belief that men can order their lives without any reference to religion at all, no less the true religion, and that men can do anything they want by means of their own unaided powers. In others, the adherents of the “left” and the “right” believe that men do not need Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ or His true Church and that it is not necessary for men to have belief in, access to and cooperation with Sanctifying Grace in order to create a better and more just world. The adherents of the “left and the “right” believe that the “better world” is defined by economics and not by the state of the souls of men.

The late Dr. George O'Brien stressed the fact that there is only one institution that can reorder the world properly, and it is not a secular, naturalistic international organization or a secular, naturalistic political party:

There is one institution and one institution alone which is capable of supplying and enforcing the social ethic that is needed to revivify the world. It is an institution at once intra-national and international; an institution that can claim to pronounce infallibly on moral matters, and to enforce the observance of the its moral decrees by direct sanctions on the individual conscience of man; an institution which, while respecting and supporting the civil governments of nations, can claim to exist independently of them, and can insist that they shall not intrude upon the moral life or fetter the moral liberty of their citizens. Europe possessed such an institution in the Middle Ages; its dethronement was the unique achievement of the Reformation; and the injury inflicted by that dethronement has never since been repaired. (George O'Brien, An Essay on the Economic Effects of the Reformation, first published in 1923, republished by IHS press in 2003, p. 132.) 

Father Edward Cahill, S.J., writing in The Framework of a Christian State, wrote the following about Luther and his revolution against the Church that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope: 

The assertion that Protestantism has introduced into Europe, or promoted, democratic freedom or real liberty of conscience is still more patently untrue. It is a fact, indeed, that at the beginning of the revolt Luther's professions were radically democratic. He promised to benefit the people at large by curtailing the power of both Church and State. But he and his followers ended up by supporting an irresponsible despotism such as Europe had not known since the days of the pagan Emperors of Rome.

Inspired by Luther's democratic professions and his denunciations of the "tyranny and oppression" of the rulers, the knights and the lesser nobility of many of the German States, and later on, the peasants rose in open revolt against the princes. When the revolution was crushed in blood (1525) the victorious princes, now without a rival and no longer kept in check by the moderating influence of the Catholic Church, used their augmented power to establish a despotism which they exceeded for their own personal advantage, in opposition to the interests of the people; while Luther, with unscrupulous inconsistency, now proclaimed the doctrine of the unlimited power of rulers. 

Soon even the Church in the Protestant States fell completely under the control of the ruling princes, who were thus established as the absolute masters of both Church and State. The wealth of the Church, which hitherto had been the patrimony of the poor; its authority; all the ecclesiastical institutions, including hospitals, schools, homes of refuge, etc., passed into the hands of the kings, princes, and the town magistrates. At the Peace of Augsburg (1555), which ended the first phase of the revolution in Germany, the principle was formally adopted that the prince of each state was free to dictate the religion of each and all of his subjects." (Father Edward Cahill, S.J., The Framework of a Christian State, published in 1932 in Ireland and republished by Roman Catholic books, pp. 93-94. William Cobbett, a Protestant historian who never converted to the Holy Faith, wrote a remarkably full and honest account of the plunder of monasteries and convents under King Henry VIII in England, thus beginning the rise of all economic miseries since that time as this plunder threw off the poor from their lands and consigned them to pauperism and vagabondage. For a fuller account of this plunder, please see Appendix B. Even most Catholics have no idea how the entirety of the modern economic system was the result of the Protestant Revolution, up to and including the concept of a “national debt” that has enriched Talmudic bankers and merchants in the past and that has reached such a point in the United States of America as to make this country’s resources a vassal of the Red Chinese tyrants, who are plundering the goods of the underground Church at this time with Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s full blessing and support.)

Thus began the rise of the statism that is upon us at this time. There is no way to regard the growth of statism by making advertence to some kind of “generic” Christianity and/or by relying upon the Judeo-Masonic principles of naturalism and its religious indifferentism. Catholicism is but the one and only foundation of personal and social order, which is why the devil worked very hard to plant the seeds of corruption in the two centuries leading up to Martin Luther’ revolution against God and His true Church. And far from being “peaceful,” Luther’s revolution was born in blood as Catholic churches and convents were plundered and ransacked.

Contemporary Capitalism Produced Socialism

Pope Leo XIII, writing at the very beginning of Rerum Novarum, May 15, 1891, explained how the "new things" of Modernity had invaded the precincts of economics, resulting in crushing conditions for workers. He rejected the false foundations of Calvinist capitalism while at the same time rejecting categorically the "alternative" of Socialism and its attack upon the Natural Law right of private property. Pope Leo understood that it is the right conduct of men in due submission to the laws of God and in cooperation with Sanctifying Grace that are at the foundation of a justly ordered economic system:

That the spirit of revolutionary change, which has long been disturbing the nations of the world, should have passed beyond the sphere of politics and made its influence felt in the cognate sphere of practical economics is not surprising. The elements of the conflict now raging are unmistakable, in the vast expansion of industrial pursuits and the marvelous discoveries of science; in the changed relations between masters and workmen; in the enormous fortunes of some few individuals, and the utter poverty of the masses; in the increased self-reliance and closer mutual combination of the working classes; as also, finally, in the prevailing moral degeneracy. The momentous gravity of the state of things now obtaining fills every mind with painful apprehension; wise men are discussing it; practical men are proposing schemes; popular meetings, legislatures, and rulers of nations are all busied with it -- actually there is no question which has taken a deeper hold on the public mind.

Therefore, venerable brethren, as on former occasions when it seemed opportune to refute false teaching, We have addressed you in the interests of the Church and of the common weal, and have issued letters bearing on political power, human liberty, the Christian constitution of the State, and like matters, so have We thought it expedient now to speak on the condition of the working classes. It is a subject on which We have already touched more than once, incidentally. But in the present letter, the responsibility of the apostolic office urges Us to treat the question of set purpose and in detail, in order that no misapprehension may exist as to the principles which truth and justice dictate for its settlement. The discussion is not easy, nor is it void of danger. It is no easy matter to define the relative rights and mutual duties of the rich and of the poor, of capital and of labor. And the danger lies in this, that crafty agitators are intent on making use of these differences of opinion to pervert men's judgments and to stir up the people to revolt.

In any case we clearly see, and on this there is general agreement, that some opportune remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class: for the ancient workingmen's guilds were abolished in the last century, and no other protective organization took their place. Public institutions and the laws set aside the ancient religion. Hence, by degrees it has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition. The mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different guise, but with like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping men. To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.

To remedy these wrongs the socialists, working on the poor man's envy of the rich, are striving to do away with private property, and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies. They hold that by thus transferring property from private individuals to the community, the present mischievous state of things will be set to rights, inasmuch as each citizen will then get his fair share of whatever there is to enjoy. But their contentions are so clearly powerless to end the controversy that were they carried into effect the working man himself would be among the first to suffer. They are, moreover, emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community. (Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, May 15, 1891.)

The abuses associated with Calvinist capitalism, which are the result of fallen human nature uninformed by the Deposit of Faith and unreformed by Sanctifying Grace, are not to be repaired by mythical, "self-correcting" "market forces" or by Socialism. The capitalist system, which places an emphasis upon the expansion of wealth as the means to personal happiness and national prosperity, reduce men ultimately to the acquisitive level, concerned mostly, if not exclusively, with the securing of "wealth" in this life without any regard to the life that lasts forever. How many of those involved in the ongoing "credit crisis" caused by a combination of forces (among these being the reckless policies of quasi-government lenders--Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and commercial lenders who encouraged and approved the issuance of subprime mortgages in a housing market that could not sustain itself) considered for a moment how any of their actions would be judged by Christ the King as the moment of their Particular Judgments? Most of these men and women were motivated only by greed and their desire to enjoy to excess more and more of this world's good no matter whose assets they put at risk in doing so.

Pope Pius XII, writing in his last encyclical letter, Ad Apostolorum Principis, June 29, 1958, explained that the Catholic Church does indeed have the right to lay down the principles that govern human conduct in the realm of economics:

Assuming false and unjust premises, they are not afraid to take a position which would confine within a narrow scope the supreme teaching authority of the Church, claiming that there are certain questions -- such as those which concern social and economic matters -- in which Catholics may ignore the teachings and the directives of this Apostolic See.

This opinion -- it seems entirely unnecessary to demonstrate its existence -- is utterly false and full of error because, as We declared a few years ago to a special meeting of Our Venerable Brethren in the episcopacy:

"The power of the Church is in no sense limited to so-called 'strictly religious matters'; but the whole matter of the natural law, its institution, interpretation and application, in so far as the moral aspect is concerned, are within its power.

"By God's appointment the observance of the natural law concerns the way by which man must strive toward his supernatural end. The Church shows the way and is the guide and guardian of men with respect to their supernatural end."

This truth had already been wisely explained by Our Predecessor St. Pius X in his Encyclical Letter Singulari quadam of September 24, 1912, in which he made this statement: "All actions of a Christian man so far as they are morally either good or bad -- that is, so far as they agree with or are contrary to the natural and divine law -- fall under the judgment and jurisdiction of the Church."

Moreover, even when those who arbitrarily set and defend these narrow limits profess a desire to obey the Roman Pontiff with regard to truths to be believed, and to observe what they call ecclesiastical directives, they proceed with such boldness that they refuse to obey the precise and definite prescriptions of the Holy See. They protest that these refer to political affairs because of a hidden meaning by the author, as if these prescriptions took their origin from some secret conspiracy against their own nation. (Pope Pius XII, Ad Apostolorum Principis, June 29, 1958.) 

And those Catholics, whether attracted to libertarianism or to some variant of Socialism, including Communism, who believe that they are exempt from the Catholic Church's social encyclical letters as the Church, according to their own dissenting "lights," do not bind them. They are most wrong, as Pope Pope Pius XI and Pope Pius XII noted conclusively:

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

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

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

Most men alive today, including even most believing Catholics, sadly, believe that Holy Mother Church has no role to play in the guiding of a just economic order, and thus it is that we have a conflict between a “free market” system that is not as “free” as is thought and the contemporary version of socialism that is serving as but yet another preparation for the coming of Antichrist. Greed and pride, two of the Seven Deadly Sins, must be triumphant when Our Lord and His true Church are banished from the hearts and minds of men and from the institutions and laws of their nations.

The combination of Pride and Greed are what make it absolutely poisonous for the latter day captains of industry and banking, many of whom have souls that steeped in the ravages of Original Sin and have contempt for the true Faith as they fund abortion and contraception and perversity in the United States and around the world, to be placed in positions of unbridled economic power without any understanding of their accountability to God for their actions. Any economic system, be it Calvinist capitalism or the variant of Socialism, that denies the authority of the Catholic Church over men and their nations is bound to make men prisoners of materialism by various means (profit and usury in the capitalist system; state control over private property and most aspects of the economy in socialism).

As Pope Pius XI noted in Quadragesimo Anno, May 15, 1931, issued on the fortieth anniversary of Rerum Novarum, the capitalist error of individualism cannot be "fixed" by the socialist error of collectivism. Men need the true Faith to guide them as they conduct their temporal affairs in light of their Last End:

But it is only the moral law which, just as it commands us to seek our supreme and last end in the whole scheme of our activity, so likewise commands us to seek directly in each kind of activity those purposes which we know that nature, or rather God the Author of nature, established for that kind of action, and in orderly relationship to subordinate such immediate purposes to our supreme and last end. If we faithfully observe this law, then it will follow that the particular purposes, both individual and social, that are sought in the economic field will fall in their proper place in the universal order of purposes, and We, in ascending through them, as it were by steps, shall attain the final end of all things, that is God, to Himself and to us, the supreme and inexhaustible Good. . . .

If Socialism, like all errors, contains some truth (which, moreover, the Supreme Pontiffs have never denied), it is based nevertheless on a theory of human society peculiar to itself and irreconcilable with true Christianity. Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist. (Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, May 15, 1931.)

There is no such thing as Christian socialism. “No one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.”

Pope Pius XI reminded the world's bishops in Quadragesimo Anno of the simple, plain truth that naturalists of the “left” and the “right” refuse to accept as they wonder why an economic system built on falsehoods and outright thefts (both from the corporate and governmental sectors) of what belongs rightly to the people, their private property.

The world in which we live, the world that is shaped by the aftereffects of Protestantism and the continuing influences of Judeo-Masonry and all of the naturalistic ideologies and theories spawned thereby, is one that is in desperate need of hearing the prophetic voice of the Catholic Church in calling all men and their nations to return to Christ the King through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, who is Our Queen and Our Mother. Alas, the conciliarists no longer call men and their nations to conversion, content to wax  about the "civilization of love" and a "healthy secularity" as the false foundations of the modern civil state with which it has reconciled itself are producing nothing but chaos, destruction and disarray in the United States of America and elsewhere in the world.

None of the adherents of the “left” or the “right” can admit that the modern world has been shaped by the forces unleashed by Martin Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Cranmer, John Knox, John Wesley, John Locke, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant,  Maximilian Robespierre and James Madison, who believed that the best way to guard against the "vice of factions" was to create the extended “commercial” republic. We must, however, listen to the sage analysis offered by Catholics about the shape of the modern world, which convinces men that they must be separated from their families for most of hours of the weeks and attempts to convince women that it unnatural for them to stay at home with their children, thereby maladjusting their children who want and need and deserve the loving attention of their mothers.

The late Father Vincent McNabb, O.P., writing in The Church and the Land, noted this exact phenomenon of the world created by the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King:

(3) How many mothers (women?) go out to work?

Stated in terms of industrialism, the home is the most important factory in the Commonwealth. Other factories make commodities called (often by a courtesy title) boots, hose furniture, jam, margarine (the Lord preserve us!), Boxo, and the whole inferno of tinned beastliness whose name is legion. The home alone makes boys and girls, men and women, good men and women, good Englishmen and good Englishwomen. And without these human commodities of what use are even the finest "canned goods".

(4) How many children are in the average family?

Read (3) over again. You will see that this efficient factory called the Home is the more efficient the more commodities it can produce, and the better the finish it can give them. Now the best of all training in the three essential civic virtues of Poverty, Chastity, Obedience, is in the large family. Experto credite Roberto. Trust Bob, at his job.

(5) How many mothers suckle their offspring?

To appreciate this question, read 3 and 4 over again. Then read a second time. If you don't see the point at the second reading—consult a doctor. (Father Vincent McNabb, O.P., The Church and the Land, published originally in London in 1925, republished in 2003 by IHS Press, pp. 40-41.)

There were many far-seeing Catholics a century ago who understood the road of destruction upon which the world had been set. However, not even many Catholics paid any attention then, and they continue to believe in the political and economic equivalent of the tooth fairy by genuflecting at the altars of their political champions, who are see as something approaching secular saviors.

Third, one of the greatest myths propagated by socialists, starting with the proto-socialists of Judeo-Masonry’s own French Revolution two hundred years ago, through the last nearly two centuries is that of egalitarianism, which rejects all authority above that which a “majority” of “reasonable men” decided is best for the unwashed masses. This egalitarianism, however, places authority in an elite who always seem to know “better” than the masses, thereby establishing a new class of high priests and priestesses from whom no one can dissent legitimately. Pope Leo XIII addressed the myth that is egalitarianism, explaining that inequality exists in the nature of things, starting with the very fact the created beings are inferior to their Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier:

6. Assuredly, the Church wisely inculcates the apostolic precept on the mass of men: “There is no power but from God; and those that are, are ordained of God. Therefore he that resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God. And they that resist purchase to themselves damnation.” And again she admonishes those “subject by necessity” to be so “not only for wrath but also for conscience’ sake,” and to render “to all men their dues; tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.”[9] For, He who created and governs all things has, in His wise providence, appointed that the things which are lowest should attain their ends by those which are intermediate, and these again by the highest. Thus, as even in the kingdom of heaven He hath willed that the choirs of angels be distinct and some subject to others, and also in the Church has instituted various orders and a diversity of offices, so that all are not apostles or doctors or pastors,[10] so also has He appointed that there should be various orders in civil society, differing indignity, rights, and power, whereby the State, like the Church, should be one body, consisting of many members, some nobler than others, but all necessary to each other and solicitous for the common good.

9. But Catholic wisdom, sustained by the precepts of natural and divine law, provides with especial care for public and private tranquillity in its doctrines and teachings regarding the duty of government and the distribution of the goods which are necessary for life and use. For, while the socialists would destroy the “right” of property, alleging it to be a human invention altogether opposed to the inborn equality of man, and, claiming a community of goods, argue that poverty should not be peaceably endured, and that the property and privileges of the rich may be rightly invaded, the Church, with much greater wisdom and good sense, recognizes the inequality among men, who are born with different powers of body and mind, inequality in actual possession, also, and holds that the right of property and of ownership, which springs from nature itself, must not be touched and stands inviolate. For she knows that stealing and robbery were forbidden in so special a manner by God, the Author and Defender of right, that He would not allow man even to desire what belonged to another, and that thieves and despoilers, no less than adulterers and idolaters, are shut out from the Kingdom of Heaven. But not the less on this account does our holy Mother not neglect the care of the poor or omit to provide for their necessities; but, rather, drawing them to her with a mother’s embrace, and knowing that they bear the person of Christ Himself, who regards the smallest gift to the poor as a benefit conferred on Himself, holds them in great honor. She does all she can to help them; she provides homes and hospitals where they may be received, nourished, and cared for all the world over and watches over these. She is constantly pressing on the rich that most grave precept to give what remains to the poor; and she holds over their heads the divine sentence that unless they succor the needy they will be repaid by eternal torments. In fine, she does all she can to relieve and comfort the poor, either by holding up to them the example of Christ, “who being rich became poor for our sake,[18] or by reminding them of his own words, wherein he pronounced the poor blessed and bade them hope for the reward of eternal bliss. But who does not see that this is the best method of arranging the old struggle between the rich and poor? For, as the very evidence of facts and events shows, if this method is rejected or disregarded, one of two things must occur: either the greater portion of the human race will fall back into the vile condition of slavery which so long prevailed among the pagan nations, or human society must continue to be disturbed by constant eruptions, to be disgraced by rapine and strife, as we have had sad witness even in recent times.

10. These things being so, then, venerable brethren, as at the beginning of Our pontificate We, on whom the guidance of the whole Church now lies, pointed out a place of refuge to the peoples and the princes tossed about by the fury of the tempest, so now, moved by the extreme peril that is on them, We again lift up Our voice, and beseech them again and again for their own safety’s sake as well as that of their people to welcome and give ear to the Church which has had such wonderful influence on the public prosperity of kingdoms, and to recognize that political and religious affairs are so closely united that what is taken from the spiritual weakens the loyalty of subjects and the majesty of the government. And since they know that the Church of Christ has such power to ward off the plague of socialism as cannot be found in human laws, in the mandates of magistrates, or in the force of armies, let them restore that Church to the condition and liberty in which she may exert her healing force for the benefit of all society.

11. But you, venerable brethren, who know the origin and the drift of these gathering evils, strive with all your force of soul to implant the Catholic teaching deep in the minds of all. Strive that all may have the habit of clinging to God with filial love and revering His divinity from their tenderest years; that they may respect the majesty of princes and of laws; that they may restrain their passions and stand fast by the order which God has established in civil and domestic society. Moreover, labor hard that the children of the Catholic Church neither join nor favor in any way whatsoever this abominable sect; let them show, on the contrary, by noble deeds and right dealing in all things, how well and happily human society would hold together were each member to shine as an example of right doing and of virtue. In fine, as the recruits of socialism are especially sought among artisans and workmen, who, tired, perhaps, of labor, are more easily allured by the hope of riches and the promise of wealth, it is well to encourage societies of artisans and workmen which, constituted under the guardianship of religion, may tend to make all associates contented with their lot and move them to a quiet and peaceful life. (Pope Leo XIII, Quod Apostolicis Muneris, December 28, 1878.)

One of the corollary proofs of the apostasies facing us at this time is the man who claims to be “Pope Francis,” is entirely supportive of socialism and its goals. His kinship with world leaders who embrace socialist policies and with George Soros, the world’s leading financier of all things wicked (contraception, abortion, “palliative care,” sodomy and all its related perverse vices, “open borders,” violence against opponents of the “enlightened” Soros agenda, socialism, statism, globalism, feminism, environmentalism, evolutionism, etc.) and his words of praise for them speak loudly about the fact that he is a fellow traveler who has as much contempt for papal condemnations of socialism and communism as his predecessors have had for the very immutable nature of dogmatic truth, noting that belief in biological evolutionism would lead to social and theological evolutionism. Jorge Mario Bergoglio is one of those hypocritical egalitarians who believe that the “enlightened” are more “equal” than all the rest. 

As the abuses caused by the Judeo-Calvinist capitalism grew in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century and as the agitation caused by socialists against those abuses grew louder and louder and attracted many Catholics to their cause, Pope Leo XIII elaborated on the relationship between labor and capital in his landmark encyclical letter, Rerum Novarum, May 15, 1891, that once again stressed that inequality exists in the very nature of things and that pain and suffering will have no end in this life, discussing the desire of socialists to gain control of children by placing them on a level of equality with the authority of their parents

14. The contention, then, that the civil government should at its option intrude into and exercise intimate control over the family and the household is a great and pernicious error. True, if a family finds itself in exceeding distress, utterly deprived of the counsel of friends, and without any prospect of extricating itself, it is right that extreme necessity be met by public aid, since each family is a part of the commonwealth. In like manner, if within the precincts of the household there occur grave disturbance of mutual rights, public authority should intervene to force each party to yield to the other its proper due; for this is not to deprive citizens of their rights, but justly and properly to safeguard and strengthen them.

But the rulers of the commonwealth must go no further; here, nature bids them stop. Paternal authority can be neither abolished nor absorbed by the State; for it has the same source as human life itself. “The child belongs to the father,” and is, as it were, the continuation of the father’s personality; and speaking strictly, the child takes its place in civil society, not of its own right, but in its quality as member of the family in which it is born. And for the very reason that “the child belongs to the father” it is, as St. Thomas Aquinas says, “before it attains the use of free will, under the power and the charge of its parents.”[4] The socialists, therefore, in setting aside the parent and setting up a State supervision, act against natural justice, and destroy the structure of the home.

15. And in addition to injustice, it is only too evident what an upset and disturbance there would be in all classes, and to how intolerable and hateful a slavery citizens would be subjected. The door would be thrown open to envy, to mutual invective, and to discord; the sources of wealth themselves would run dry, for no one would have any interest in exerting his talents or his industry; and that ideal equality about which they entertain pleasant dreams would be in reality the leveling down of all to a like condition of misery and degradation.

Hence, it is clear that the main tenet of socialism, community of goods, must be utterly rejected, since it only injures those whom it would seem meant to benefit, is directly contrary to the natural rights of mankind, and would introduce confusion and disorder into the commonweal. The first and most fundamental principle, therefore, if one would undertake to alleviate the condition of the masses, must be the inviolability of private property. This being established, we proceed to show where the remedy sought for must be found.

16. We approach the subject with confidence, and in the exercise of the rights which manifestly appertain to Us, for no practical solution of this question will be found apart from the intervention of religion and of the Church. It is We who are the chief guardian of religion and the chief dispenser of what pertains to the Church; and by keeping silence we would seem to neglect the duty incumbent on us. Doubtless, this most serious question demands the attention and the efforts of others besides ourselves — to wit, of the rulers of States, of employers of labor, of the wealthy, aye, of the working classes themselves, for whom We are pleading. But We affirm without hesitation that all the striving of men will be vain if they leave out the Church. It is the Church that insists, on the authority of the Gospel, upon those teachings whereby the conflict can be brought to an end, or rendered, at least, far less bitter; the Church uses her efforts not only to enlighten the mind, but to direct by her precepts the life and conduct of each and all; the Church improves and betters the condition of the working man by means of numerous organizations; does her best to enlist the services of all classes in discussing and endeavoring to further in the most practical way, the interests of the working classes; and considers that for this purpose recourse should be had, in due measure and degree, to the intervention of the law and of State authority.

17. It must be first of all recognized that the condition of things inherent in human affairs must be borne with, for it is impossible to reduce civil society to one dead level. Socialists may in that intent do their utmost, but all striving against nature is in vain. There naturally exist among mankind manifold differences of the most important kind; people differ in capacity, skill, health, strength; and unequal fortune is a necessary result of unequal condition. Such inequality is far from being disadvantageous either to individuals or to the community. Social and public life can only be maintained by means of various kinds of capacity for business and the playing of many parts; and each man, as a rule, chooses the part which suits his own peculiar domestic condition. As regards bodily labor, even had man never fallen from the state of innocence, he would not have remained wholly idle; but that which would then have been his free choice and his delight became afterwards compulsory, and the painful expiation for his disobedience. “Cursed be the earth in thy work; in thy labor thou shalt eat of it all the days of thy life.”[5]

18. In like manner, the other pains and hardships of life will have no end or cessation on earth; for the consequences of sin are bitter and hard to bear, and they must accompany man so long as life lasts. To suffer and to endure, therefore, is the lot of humanity; let them strive as they may, no strength and no artifice will ever succeed in banishing from human life the ills and troubles which beset it. If any there are who pretend differently — who hold out to a hard-pressed people the boon of freedom from pain and trouble, an undisturbed repose, and constant enjoyment — they delude the people and impose upon them, and their lying promises will only one day bring forth evils worse than the present. Nothing is more useful than to look upon the world as it really is, and at the same time to seek elsewhere, as We have said, for the solace to its troubles.

19. The great mistake made in regard to the matter now under consideration is to take up with the notion that class is naturally hostile to class, and that the wealthy and the working men are intended by nature to live in mutual conflict. So irrational and so false is this view that the direct contrary is the truth. Just as the symmetry of the human frame is the result of the suitable arrangement of the different parts of the body, so in a State is it ordained by nature that these two classes should dwell in harmony and agreement, so as to maintain the balance of the body politic. Each needs the other: capital cannot do without labor, nor labor without capital. Mutual agreement results in the beauty of good order, while perpetual conflict necessarily produces confusion and savage barbarity. Now, in preventing such strife as this, and in uprooting it, the efficacy of Christian institutions is marvelous and manifold. First of all, there is no intermediary more powerful than religion (whereof the Church is the interpreter and guardian) in drawing the rich and the working class together, by reminding each of its duties to the other, and especially of the obligations of justice. (Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, May 15, 1891.)

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 builded 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 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 Faitih can draw “men’s eyes, fascinated by and wholly fixated on the changing things of the world, and raise them toward Heaven.” Unfortunately, most men today, including many Catholics, do indeed deny that human society is in urgent need of the remedy that only Holy Mother Church can provide. Men who believe that they are descended from apes will come to act like them over the course of time. The ideology of biological evolutionism leads inexorably to the devolution of men and their societies into conditions of chaos, violence and the worst kind of self-seeking that the world has ever seen.

Pope Pius XI also explained in the degree of degradation to which men must fall once they are fixed on temporal goals to the exclusion of all supernatural considerations.

131. We, made Shepherd and Protector by the Prince of Shepherds, Who Redeemed them by His Blood, of a truly innumerable flock, cannot hold back Our tears when contemplating this greatest of their dangers. Nay rather, fully mindful of Our pastoral office and with paternal solicitude, We are continually meditating on how We can help them; and We have summoned to Our aid the untiring zeal of others who are concerned on grounds of justice or charity. For what will it profit men to become expert in more wisely using their wealth, even to gaining the whole world, if thereby they suffer the loss of their souls?[64] What will it profit to teach them sound principles of economic life if in unbridled and sordid greed they let themselves be swept away by their passion for property, so that "hearing the commandments of the Lord they do all things contrary."[65]

32. The root and font of this defection in economic and social life from the Christian law, and of the consequent apostasy of great numbers of workers from the Catholic faith, are the disordered passions of the soul, the sad result of original sin which has so destroyed the wonderful harmony of man's faculties that, easily led astray by his evil desires, he is strongly incited to prefer the passing goods of this world to the lasting goods of Heaven. Hence arises that unquenchable thirst for riches and temporal goods, which has at all times impelled men to break God's laws and trample upon the rights of their neighbors, but which, on account of the present system of economic life, is laying far more numerous snares for human frailty. Since the instability of economic life, and especially of its structure, exacts of those engaged in it most intense and unceasing effort, some have become so hardened to the stings of conscience as to hold that they are allowed, in any manner whatsoever, to increase their profits and use means, fair or foul, to protect their hard-won wealth against sudden changes of fortune. The easy gains that a market unrestricted by any law opens to everybody attracts large numbers to buying and selling goods, and they, their one aim being to make quick profits with the least expenditure of work, raise or lower prices by their uncontrolled business dealings so rapidly according to their own caprice and greed that they nullify the wisest forecasts of producers. The laws passed to promote corporate business, while dividing and limiting the risk of business, have given occasion to the most sordid license. For We observe that consciences are little affected by this reduced obligation of accountability; that furthermore, by hiding under the shelter of a joint name, the worst of injustices and frauds are penetrated; and that, too, directors of business companies, forgetful of their trust, betray the rights of those whose savings they have undertaken to administer. Lastly, We must not omit to mention those crafty men who, wholly unconcerned about any honest usefulness of their work, do not scruple to stimulate the baser human desires and, when they are aroused, use them for their own profit.  (Pope Pius XI, Quadregesimo Anno, May 15, 1931.)

The world around us continues to fall deeper and deeper into the abyss because most men alive today are controlled by the forces of the world, the flesh and the devil, ignoring any thought of divinely-revealed truths and a single means by which their actions may be rendered meritorious in the sight of God and thus redound to their eternal salvation. Even most Catholics rush headlong to one side or the other of the false opposites of naturalism and refuse to consider the simple truth that to see the world as it truly as it is we must see it exclusively through the eyes of the Holy Faith. The only kind of “realism” is Catholic realism, Catholic truth. Everything else is but an illusion, a mirage. 

Pope Pius XI’s Divini Redemptoris, March 19, 1937, continued the fifty-nine year-old papal condemnation of socialism that began with Pope Leo XIII in 1878 and explained yet again that socialism and communism are but the products of failure of liberalism and laicism. Indeed, the social consequences of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King are vast, starting with the destruction of the family, which has been rent asunder by divorce and contraception and feminism and materialism and positivism and utilitarianism and the organized forces of naturalism. The atomistic individualism of Calvinist capitalism and Lockean liberalism thus produce the same sort of societies as that produced by all forms Socialism, including that wrought by Bolshevism:

Communism, moreover, strips man of his liberty, robs human personality of all its dignity, and removes all the moral restraints that check the eruptions of blind impulse. There is no recognition of any right of the individual in his relations to the collectivity; no natural right is accorded to human personality, which is a mere cog-wheel in the Communist system. In man's relations with other individuals, besides, Communists hold the principle of absolute equality, rejecting all hierarchy and divinely-constituted authority, including the authority of parents. What men call authority and subordination is derived from the community as its first and only font. Nor is the individual granted any property rights over material goods or the means of production, for inasmuch as these are the source of further wealth, their possession would give one man power over another. Precisely on this score, all forms of private property must be eradicated, for they are at the origin of all economic enslavement .

Refusing to human life any sacred or spiritual character, such a doctrine logically makes of marriage and the family a purely artificial and civil institution, the outcome of a specific economic system. There exists no matrimonial bond of a juridico-moral nature that is not subject to the whim of the individual or of the collectivity. Naturally, therefore, the notion of an indissoluble marriage-tie is scouted. Communism is particularly characterized by the rejection of any link that binds woman to the family and the home, and her emancipation is proclaimed as a basic principle. She is withdrawn from the family and the care of her children, to be thrust instead into public life and collective production under the same conditions as man. The care of home and children then devolves upon the collectivity. Finally, the right of education is denied to parents, for it is conceived as the exclusive prerogative of the community, in whose name and by whose mandate alone parents may exercise this right.

What would be the condition of a human society based on such materialistic tenets? It would be a collectivity with no other hierarchy than that of the economic system. It would have only one mission: the production of material things by means of collective labor, so that the goods of this world might be enjoyed in a paradise where each would "give according to his powers" and would "receive according to his needs." Communism recognizes in the collectivity the right, or rather, unlimited discretion, to draft individuals for the labor of the collectivity with no regard for their personal welfare; so that even violence could be legitimately exercised to dragoon the recalcitrant against their wills. In the Communistic commonwealth morality and law would be nothing but a derivation of the existing economic order, purely earthly in origin and unstable in character. In a word. the Communists claim to inaugurate a new era and a new civilization which is the result of blind evolutionary forces culminating in a humanity without God. (Pope Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris, March 19, 1937.) 

A world devoid of God and of submission to His true Church is the only possible consequence of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ King. Naturalist liberals disagree with naturalist socialists, including communists, only about a few details. All forms of naturalism produce the godless world, which makes possible barbarism in "liberal" states and totalitarianism in "socialist" states. Indeed, the degree to which men fall into the naturalist trap will be the degree to which all states, liberal and socialist, get to increase their power over the lives of ordinary citizens in the name of "law and order" and "national security," you understand. The heresy of religious liberty makes it impossible for anyone to find any one overarching means by which social evils can be retarded, resulting in a new caste of dictators whose "infallible" pronouncements must be accepted without criticism or dissent. The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, for example, eviscerates the First Commandment by stating unequivocally that no religion, including the Catholic Faith, must be recognized by the civil state as indispensable for personal and social order, thus resulting in the triumph of the false religion of statism. A neat little trick of the devil, wouldn't you say?

Pope Pius XI alluded to some of these points in Divini Redemptoris:

But the enemies of the Church, though forced to acknowledge the wisdom of her doctrine, accuse her of having failed to act in conformity with her principles, and from this conclude to the necessity of seeking other solutions. The utter falseness and injustice of this accusation is shown by the whole history of Christianity. To refer only to a single typical trait, it was Christianity that first affirmed the real and universal brotherhood of all men of whatever race and condition. This doctrine she proclaimed by a method, and with an amplitude and conviction, unknown to preceding centuries; and with it she potently contributed to the abolition of slavery. Not bloody revolution, but the inner force of her teaching made the proud Roman matron see in her slave a sister in Christ. It is Christianity that adores the Son of God, made Man for love of man, and become not only the "Son of a Carpenter" but Himself a "Carpenter."[19] It was Christianity that raised manual labor to its true dignity, whereas it had hitherto been so despised that even the moderate Cicero did not hesitate to sum up the general opinion of his time in words of which any modern sociologist would be ashamed: "All artisans are engaged in sordid trades, for there can be nothing ennobling about a workshop."

Faithful to these principles, the Church has given new life to human society. Under her influence arose prodigious charitable organizations, great guilds of artisans and workingmen of every type. These guilds, ridiculed as "medieval" by the liberalism of the last century, are today claiming the admiration of our contemporaries in many countries who are endeavoring to revive them in some modern form. And when other systems hindered her work and raised obstacles to the salutary influence of the Church, she was never done warning them of their error. We need but recall with what constant firmness and energy Our Predecessor, Leo XIII, vindicated for the workingman the right to organize, which the dominant liberalism of the more powerful States relentlessly denied him. Even today the authority of this Church doctrine is greater than it seems; for the influence of ideas in the realm of facts, though invisible and not easily measured, is surely of predominant importance.

It may be said in all truth that the Church, like Christ, goes through the centuries doing good to all. There would be today neither Socialism nor Communism if the rulers of the nations had not scorned the teachings and maternal warnings of the Church. On the bases of liberalism and laicism they wished to build other social edifices which, powerful and imposing as they seemed at first, all too soon revealed the weakness of their foundations, and today are crumbling one after another before our eyes, as everything must crumble that is not grounded on the one corner stone which is Christ Jesus.

This, Venerable Brethren, is the doctrine of the Church, which alone in the social as in all other fields can offer real light and assure salvation in the face of Communistic ideology. But this doctrine must be consistently reduced to practice in every-day life, according to the admonition of St. James the Apostle: "Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves." The most urgent need of the present day is therefore the energetic and timely application of remedies which will effectively ward off the catastrophe that daily grows more threatening. We cherish the firm hope that the fanaticism with which the sons of darkness work day and night at their materialistic and atheistic propaganda will at least serve the holy purpose of stimulating the sons of light to a like and even greater zeal for the honor of the Divine Majesty. (Pope Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris, March 19, 1937.)

There can be no room for compromise: socialism is as antithetical to a just order on true Christian principles as are all forms of political ideology, including liberalism and conservatism.

Amorality to the Left and to the Right, part three

Amorality has defined the life and work of most of those who have served in public life in the United States of America since its beginnings nearly two hundred fifty years ago. Those who live in light of First and Last Things and thus do not fear the moment when they face Christ the King and His Divine judgment on their immortal souls will come to believe that all laws, including the Divine Positive Law, the Natural Law, and the just laws of men, can be ignored if it suits their utilitarian ends.

To wit, the outgoing administration of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., and Kamala Harris Emhoff, which is so associated with its amoral violation of the laws of God and the just laws of men that it  would no surprise and see Biden’s photograph (preferably one that shows the empty look that has come to signify his lack of cognitive abilities) next to a dictionary entry for the with United States Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE), doing so just after the conviction of Venezuelan criminal Jose Ibarra for the brutal murder of college student Laken Riley after he and his brother had been flown to Georgia free of charge by the Alejandro Mayorkas’s United States Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement once they had been arrested—and, of course, released—after being charged with criminal acts in the City of New York but permitted by lawfare warrior Alvin Bragg to walk free and clear:

President Biden and Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas seem to think their border policies haven’t done enough damage to the country, so they’re racing to ensure even more harm after they leave.

With just two months to go before Team Trump takes over, the Biden crew is getting set to roll out an ICE app — starting in New York in December — that’ll let illegal migrants skip periodic, in-person check-ins that are required while they wait for court dates that could be years off.

Right now, those who miss in-person check-ins are subject to deportation. But those who “check in” by app won’t be, making it harder to deport (or even find) them.

Think about it: Migrants will be able to “check in” from anywhere, yet the software is reportedly unreliable on their locations, making them harder to find and track.

Yet those who fib about their location will nonetheless be considered “here” legally, since they’ve reported in virtually.

Team Biden will also let migrants appeal their ankle monitor requirements. Gee, what a great way to further clog the system, boost migrant crime and increase the odds of losing track of potential terrorists.

Worse: Experts say President-elect Donald Trump may find it hard to reverse these moves because of procedural and legal hurdles. Though he’ll certainly try, and quickly.

What could possibly be the goal here, other than to ensure that as many border-jumpers as possible can remain here after the Biden-Mayorkas crew is gone?

It’s a monstrous insult to the tens of millions of voters who re-elected Donald Trump in large part because of his vows to crack down and deport illegal border-crashers.

And it’ll just make a horrific situation worse.

Remember: Biden and Mayorkas have already allowed 10 million to 12 million migrants to flood the nation on their watch, nearly all illegal and without Congress’ OK.

They brought crime, drugs, sex trafficking and even the possibility of a terror attack along with them.

Cities and towns have scrambled to accommodate them, shelling out tens of billions of taxpayer dollars and surrendering hotels and valuable public space for the cause.

On Tuesday, one illegal migrant, Jose Ibarra, was convicted of murdering 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley.

Yet the White House can’t get enough of this madness.

If there’s ever been a more arrogant, lawless administration, we can’t think of one. (Biden, Alejandro Mayorkas race to lock in their migrant damage. Also see: Trafficking expert recounts migrant girl's abuse under Biden-Harris policies that lost track of 300K kids: 'Not an isolated case'.)

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., Kamala Harris Emhoff, Merrick Garland, and Alejandro Mayorkas are so contemptuous of the United States Code and Congress’s constitutional authority to oversee its enforcement that Mayorkas and Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray have decided not to give the end-of-the-year security findings to the United States House of Representatives:

The Democratic chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee blasted the heads of the FBI and Department of Homeland Security on Thursday, issuing a rare but sharp rebuke of the two officials for failing to appear for a public hearing.

Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) said both Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and FBI Director Christopher Wray “refused to appear” before the panel for its annual hearing about threats to the homeland, saying it was the first time in 15 years officials have done so.

“Americans deserve transparent, public answers about the threats we face. Secretary Mayorkas and Director Wray’s refusal to speak publicly about their department’s work will only increase the concerns that many Americans have about our nation’s security at a challenging time, flout the Committee’s efforts to conduct responsible oversight, and will deal a serious blow to trust in our government. Their claims that they can only relay such information and respond to questions in a classified setting are entirely without merit,” Peters said in a statement.

“It cannot be the practice of the Executive Branch to deny the public critical information and disregard Congress’ constitutionally recognized right to conduct oversight.”

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), in an interview on Fox News, also criticized the officials for not appearing at the public hearing. Lankford said the only reason given was that the officials did not want to offer the testimony in public.

In a statement to The Hill, the FBI also said Wray would have appeared in a classified setting for the hearing but did not want to testify in a public setting.

“The FBI has repeatedly demonstrated our commitment to responding to Congressional oversight and being transparent with the American people,” the FBI’s statement said.

“We remain committed to sharing information about the continuously evolving threat environment facing our nation and the extraordinary work the men and women of the FBI are doing — here at home and around the world — to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States. FBI leaders have testified extensively in public settings about the current threat environment and believe the Committee would benefit most from further substantive discussions and additional information that can only be provided in a classified setting.”

A spokesperson for DHS also said it had offered to discuss threats in a classified briefing.

“DHS and the FBI already have shared with the Committee and other Committees, and with the American public, extensive unclassified information about the current threat environment, including the recently published Homeland Threat Assessment. DHS takes seriously its obligation to respond to Congressional requests for testimony; in fact, Secretary Mayorkas has testified 30 times during his tenure,” the spokesperson said.

Speaking with reporters later Thursday, Peters said he “vigorously pursued them to be here,” noting that the panel would have kept the traditional closed session that follows the open hearing.

“Both of them said they did not want to testify in an open setting. That was unacceptable. The American people have a right to hear from them…. The Department of Homeland Security put out a 40-page document talking about threats to the homeland. There would be questions surrounding that document that members would want to ask,” Peters said, referring to DHS’s annual threat assessment.

“They are in key positions in the federal government, and their job is to respond to congressional oversight.”

Intelligence agencies in recent weeks have also issued a number of assessments warning about possible violence leading into and surrounding the inauguration that have not been as widely discussed.

Still, intelligence leaders often choose to offer more detailed responses on threats posed by China and Iran, as well as cybersecurity risks, in a classified setting.

The postponement of the hearing comes after the companion House panel likewise canceled its annual threats hearing.

But the Senate hearing remained on the calendar, even as Mayorkas’s public schedule for the week failed to indicate any testimony.

The hearing would have been Wray’s first congressional appearance since Vice President-elect JD Vance indicated the Trump transition team is meeting with candidates to oversee the FBI – an indication President-elect Trump plans to fire Wray before the end of his 10-year term in 2027. (Democratic chair blasts Mayorkas, Wray for failure to testify; threats hearing postponed.)

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., Kamala Harris Emhoff, Alejandro Mayorkas, Merrick Garland, and Christopher Wray, who is total captive of the politicized Federal Bureau of Investigation, care nothing for the brutal murders of Laken Riley, Rachel Morin, Lizbeth Medina, Kate Steinle, Jeremy Poou Caceres, Shannon Patricia Jungwirth, “her son, 20-year-old Jorge Alexander Reyes-Jungwirth, and her husband, 39-year-old Alberto Trejo Estrad,” “Melissa Powell, 47, and her son, 16-year-old Riordan Powell,” very notoriously, Joycelyn Nungary, among many, many others (see Laken Riley murder: Five other times illegal immigrants were charged with murder). Why should these statist ideologues care for the deaths of innocent human beings at the hands of illegal immigrants when they fully support the chemical and surgical slaughter of the innocent preborn?

Indeed, in this regard, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., who sold his soul to the devil over fifty years ago to support, albeit with “personal misgivings,” you understand, chemical and surgical baby slaughter before transforming himself into a full-fledged supporter of child-killing, child-mutilation, and every manner of perversity whose immoral bounds seeming are limitless in scope, stealthily presented Ceile Richards, the former director of the country’s largest baby-killing factory, Planned Barrenhood, the “Presidential Medal of Freedom”:

"Carrying her parents’ torch for justice, she’s led some of our Nation’s most important civil rights causes - to lift up the dignity of workers, defend and advance women’s reproductive rights and equality, and mobilize Americans to exercise their power to vote," the commendation stated. "A leader of utmost character, she has carved an inspiring legacy that endures in her incredible family, the countless lives she has made better, and a Nation seeking the light of equality, justice, and freedom.” (Biden awards Medal of Freedom to former Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards. Biden has had a busy few days as he issued a statement about a made-up celebration of human mutilation called “transgender remembrance day: Statement by President Joe Biden on Transgender Day of Remembrance.)

The likes of William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro, Joseph Robinette Biden. Jr., Janet Reno, Alberto Gonzales (who was pro-abortion, by the way), Eric Himpton Holder, Loretta Lynch, James Brien Comey, Christopher Wray, Alejandro Mayorkas, Xavier Becerra, Miguel Cardona, Kathleen Hochul, Philip Murphy, et. al. are all going to have to reckon for their amoral support of grave evils and the injustices that they have done to the administration of natural justice by their Soviet-style prosecutorial methods and secret police surveillance of ordinary citizens worthy of the old German Democratic Republic’s (East Germany’s) Stasi:

Those who hold the reins of government should not forget that it is the duty of public authority by appropriate laws and sanctions to defend the lives of the innocent, and this all the more so since those whose lives are endangered and assailed cannot defend themselves. Among whom we must mention in the first place infants hidden in the mother's womb. And if the public magistrates not only do not defend them, but by their laws and ordinances betray them to death at the hands of doctors or of others, let them remember that God is the Judge and Avenger of innocent blood which cried from earth to Heaven. (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, December 31, 1930. I know that I have cited this quotation several hundreds time before, but I am going to keep on using it as I am always aware that there might be a reader of two who accesses this site for the first time and then comes across this quotation.)

Furthermore, the amorality of the United States Department of Justice under luminaries as the late Janet Reno (who started the Violence Against Abortion Providers task force that has been discussed several times on this site in the past), Anthony Gonzales (who justified torture as a “enhanced interrogation), Eric Himpton Holder, Loretta Lynch, and Merrick Garland has been epic, perhaps surpassed only by the lawlessness by various Directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (Robert Mueller, James Brien Comey, and Christopher Wray), is thoroughly institutionalized in what the swamp calls “Main Justice, the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Security Administration (NSA) that the mere thought of former United States Representative Matthew Gaetz, who has been licentious in his personal life (something that was not impediment for William Jefferson Blythe Clinton), serving as the Attorney General of the United States of America has sent many key apparatchiks within the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation burnishing their resumes and seeking trips overseas:

As I reported last week, former and current apparatchiks for the Department of Justice are making plans to resign in advance of Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January.

Those headed for exits include Special Counsel Jack Smith and his top team of prosecutors, who just withdrew their appeal of Judge Aileen Cannon’s order dismissing the classified documents indictment in Florida and asked for a halt to the proceedings in the January 6-related case pending in Washington.

The resume-burnishing appears to extend to main Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (housed under the DOJ), and the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia office, which oversees the government’s ongoing prosecution of January 6 protesters. Anonymous “sedition hunters” who have aided the FBI in targeting and identifying hundreds of J6ers deleted their social media accounts over the weekend for fear of reprisal; the FBI reportedly paid the “sedition hunters” as FBI informants to help their pursuit of Trump supporters.

But the corrupt operatives in the DOJ are doing more than just looking for new jobs—some are looking for attorneys. The surprising nomination of former Representative Matt Gaetz as attorney general sent terror waves throughout the DOJ; Gaetz resigned his Florida House seat last week to prepare for a nasty confirmation fight and avoid release of a House Ethics report into debunked allegations about Gaetz’s conduct.

“Inside the Justice Department, some employees who had braced for the possibility of other names that had surfaced early in the transition were appalled when Trump made the Gaetz announcement,” CNN reported on Sunday. “One career official described hearing audible cries of ‘oh my God’ echoing down the hallway inside DOJ’s headquarters.”

NBC News also revealed that DOJ officials “wept” over Trump’s resounding victory. Why? Because they know their turn under the harsh lights of federal interrogators is coming next. “Multiple current and former senior Justice Department and FBI officials have begun reaching out to lawyers in anticipation of being criminally investigated by the Trump administration. The selection of former Rep. Matt Gaetz…to lead the department has sharply increased the sense of alarm.” One unnamed former top DOJ official admitted he “is bracing for a potentially long and costly legal battle, as well as the possibility of protracted congressional investigations.”

Creepy NeverTrumper and faux conservative Matt Lewis told MSNBC this morning reports that DOJ/FBI staffers are lawyering up demonstrates Trump’s desire to “weaponize” the department. “I think it’s real,” Lewis said about the likelihood of charges against corrupt government officials.

In fact, their criminal exposure is so serious that one longtime Democratic operative is advising top targets to leave the country. Mark Zaid, an attorney who represented self-described Ukrainian “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella, prompting the first impeachment of Trump in 2019, just told both CNN and Politico magazine that government officials worried they will be pursued by a Trump DOJ or Republican Congress should travel “outside of the country” right around Inauguration Day.

That appears to be the advice Zaid also is giving to Ciaramella, now a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

Further, anyone dismissing Trump’s threat to bring criminal elements inside the federal bureaucracy to justice are “naive and foolish,” Zaid said. Other retaliatory measures aside from prosecution, Zaid speculated, could include the revocation of security clearances or transfers to undesirable outposts such as Alaska.

The fear is so intense that Zaid also recommends that his clients seek mental health and other related services to deal with the stress of a potential prosecution. His team is “making sure we have lawyers, CPAs, psychiatrists and other experts in their fields ready and willing to volunteer their time for free to represent anyone who faces retaliation directly.”

Watching the Inauguration from The Hague? How Appropriate

So, who might flee the country? Smith and his top prosecutor, David Harbach, could return to the Hague in the Netherlands under the ruse of rejoining the war crimes trial against former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci. Attorney General Merrick Garland tapped Smith in November 2022 to leave that case and take on the special counsel’s role.

But why would anyone else leave the country around Inauguration Day? To wait and see if Trump signs an executive order authorizing an investigation of everything from the Russian collusion hoax and the Ukrainian impeachment operation to the coverup of the Biden family corruption ring? To wait and see if the acting attorney general appoints a special counsel to investigate Smith’s team as well as the events of January 6?

And therein lies the justified panic within the DOJ and national security state. The ground is fertile for multiple investigations with legitimate criminal liability for top officials including Smith, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and DC US Attorney Matthew Graves in addition to line prosecutors and investigators.

On the flip side, the same officials and talking heads who’ve insisted Trump should not have feared going to trial for any one of his politically-motivated indictments if he did nothing wrong certainly are singing a different tune now. (DOJ Apparatchiks Told to Lawyer Up and Flee the Country. Why?)

Well, the Matt Gaetz comet has come and gone. Although President-elect Donald John Trump’s second pick for Attorney General of the United States of America, former Florida Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi, would probably be more effective than the ethically challenged Gaetz if she gets confirmed by the Senate of the United States of America (she has a few ethical questions about favors for donors while attorney general of Florida that Democrats are bound to raise during her confirmation hearings).

Alas, even though investigations of one sort or another might be worthwhile, it should be remembered that  criminal trials of DOJ and FBI lawbreakers would nowhere if tried in or around the District of Columbia, where juries have consistently acquitted relatively low-level officials of criminal conduct concerning the fake Russian dossier, the Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton email scandal, the covering up of the Biden Family Crime Syndicate’s crimes, and the endless efforts to criminally charge former and now President-elected Donald John Trump. The likes of Jack Smith (see Christ the King Alone Has One Set of Laws That He Will Apply to Everyone When They Die) will slither back to The Netherlands at the International Court of Justice to plod along to do what he does best: persecute whomever he targets for prosecution.

We can never expect justice from those who are personally unjust, and we must always remember that what seems “settled” in one era can be unsettled in another as even though Donald John Trump won a significant victory everywhere excepting the coastal states, Minnesota. New Mexico, and Colorado, and increased his share of the vote from 2020 even the “blue” states he lost, victories come and go.

After all, the late President Lyndon Baines Johnson thought that his War on Poverty and Great Society programs could solve the problems of urban and rural poverty. However, the only people who were enriched financially by Johnson’s panoply of statist programs were the government bureaucrats who administered them and had a vested interest to maintain their positions and power by making sure that nothing of substance got done other than to issue grants to localities and states by conditioning them to conform to Federal policy lest these entities lose the grants. The goal of this was to create a de facto unitary system of national governance that would eclipse legitimate states’ rights and make authentic Federalism a thing of the past. And this is to say nothing about the fact  that most social problems extent then and now have been caused by the destruction of family stability in urban areas, especially among the families of black Americans, as a result of easy divorce in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century, contraception in the early Twentieth Century, each of which contributed to men abandoning their families and the feminization of poverty so that women would be forced into the workplace and/or become reliant upon the “largesse” of the taxpayers.

Cardinal Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto saw this trend in the last decade of the Nineteenth Century and responded to it as follows:

In August 1896 in Padua, the second Congress of the Catholic Union for Social Studies took place. We have already seen that this organization had been created seven years before by Professor Giuseppe Toniolo, in the presence of the Bishop of Mantua [Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto]. This time, eight bishops were present and several directors of the Opera del Congressi took part. All the eminent representatives of the Italian Catholic Movement were present (Medolago Pagnuzzi, Alessi and others). Cardinal Sarto's address attracted considerable notice. Faced with "ardent enemies" (unbelief and revolution) "...menacing and trying to destroy the social fabric," the Patriarch of Venice invited the participants to make Jesus Christ the foundation of the their work: "the only peace treaty is the Gospel." He warned them against what is now called the "welfare state," the state which provides everything and provides all socialization: "substituting public almsgiving for private almsgiving involves the complete destruction of Christianity and it is a terrible attack on the principle of ownership. Christianity cannot exist without charity, and the difference between charity and justice is that justice may have recourse to laws and even to force, depending on the circumstances, whereas charity can only be imposed by the tribunal of God and of conscience." If public assistance and the redistribution of wealth are institutionalized, "poverty becomes a function, a way of life, a public trade..." (Yves Chiron, Saint Pius X: Restorer of the Church. Translated by Graham Harrison. Angelus Press, 2002, p. 100)

Those were and remain prophetic words.

Writing at the height of the Great Depression, Pope Pius XI explained in Quadragesimo Anno, May 15, 1931, explained that government assistance programs must conform to the Natural Law principle of Subsidiarity, which teaches us that human problems are to be remedied at the lowest levels of life, starting with the family:

The supreme authority of the State ought, therefore, to let subordinate groups handle matters and concerns of lesser importance, which would otherwise dissipate its efforts greatly. Thereby the State will more freely, powerfully, and effectively do all those things that belong to it alone because it alone can do them: directing, watching, urging, restraining, as occasion requires and necessity demands. Therefore, those in power should be sure that the more perfectly a graduated order is kept among the various associations, in observance of the principle of “subsidiary function,” the stronger social authority and effectiveness will be the happier and more prosperous the condition of the State. (Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, May 15, 1931.)

Father Edward Cahill provided a history lesson about how subsidiarity was the guiding principle for the organization of social and economic life during the Middle Ages:

The guilds made it possible for those with needs that could not be meet by their families to receive assistance without the “strings” attached by the monster civil state of Modernity and without bankrupting the entire body politic: 

The greatest spirit of solidarity and mutual help animated the whole guild organisation. Thus money was advanced on easy terms to members who needed it. Those suffering from sickness, old age, accidents, etc., were liberally provided for. Even a guildman who might get into trouble with the municipal or state authorities had a right to the protection of the guild. If, after investigation by the council, his case was considered a deserving one he was defended in the courts at the common expense. Sick members were visited; and wine and food were sent from the public banquets to those whom illness or weakness prevent from attending. The dead, if the family was poor, was buried at the expense of their guild with all the honours befitting their position, and their daughters dowered for marriage or the convent. 

The Religious Character of the Guilds.–Another peculiarly Christian characteristic of—these guilds was their practical recognition of the intimate connection of religion with commercial relations and with all the activities of life. Although the primary object of the associations was economic, the guilds made every effort to secure good conduct and fidelity to religious duties on the part of the members. Individuals were punished or sometimes expelled from the guilds for immoral or irreligious conduct. 

Every guild was under the protection of a patron saint or was specially dedicated to the Holy Trinity or to the Blessed Mother of God under one of her titles. The portrait of the guild patron was painted on the banner of the guild which was borne in the public processions. Thus the guild of wood-workers was under the protection of St. Joseph. The shoemakers usually had on their banner paintings of SS. Crispin and Crispinian. Bakers were often under the patronage of St. Honorius, and so on. The association of the heavenly patron with the grade that belonged to the guild intensified the craftsmen’s pride in their work and the men’s esteem for the nobility of manual labour. The Church Feast of the patron was always the occasion of the great annual banquet of the guild. 

Many guilds had their own special chapels; and we commonly find provision made in the guild statutes for the support of a chaplain and sometimes of several chaplains. Some of the most beautiful mediaeval churches belonged to or were built by the guilds. Provision was also regularly made for the celebration of Masses for the intentions of the guild, and for the offering of candles at holy shrines. On the death of a member care was taken to have Masses offered and alms given for his eternal rest. Almsgiving, which was practiced even towards the poor outside the guild, was an important item of the ordinary guild expenditure. Oftentimes a guild gave feasts in its buildings to the poor of the whole town. (Father Edward Cahill, The Framework of a Christian State, pp. 79-80.) 

The British and American utilitarians of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, inspired in large measure by the social engineering of the Chancellor of the German Empire (the second Reich) from 1871 to 1890, Otto von Bismarck, began movements that borrowed from biological evolutionism and socialism to lay the foundation for the state as the replacement for religion in general, especially Catholicism, and for the family. Thus, these utilitarians paved the way for Thomas Woodrow Wilson’s “New Freedoms,” which were nothing other than “freedom” for the Federal government to enslave citizens by means of confiscatory taxes and regulation, which paved the way for Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” which paved the way one of Roosevelt’s proteges, Lyndon Baines Johnson, to create what his 1964 Republican presidential opponent, United States Senator Barry Goldwater, to call the “Big Daddy” approach to controlling the masses:

One thing we all know—and I assure you I do: That's a much easier way to get votes than my way. It always has been. It's political Daddyism and it's as old as demagogues and despotism.

You want something for nothing ? The Federal Government will give it to you.

You want to avoid responsibility for bringing up your children and educating them? The Federal Government will take over.

You want to duck the job of facing your local problems and solving them? The Federal Government will do it for you.

Never mind the fact that the power and the money to do these things has to be taken from you before the Federal Government can do them for you. Every step in this direction is a loss of freedom for you!

Relax. Don't worry. The Federal Government will do for you all those things you find unpleasant to do for youselves. And daily that government will grow more powerful. Daily it will enter new businesses and practices, new areas of private enterprise. where it has no place.

And daily its leaders will expand their power over you, the people, far beyond anything ever dreamed of by the framers of our Constitution. And daily freedom goes down the drain.

And always, they are driving and confusing you with the basic dishonesty that permeates so much political campaigning. (Text of Senator Goldwater's Address at Madison Sq. Garden in Only Campaign Appearance in city.)

Mind you, this is not to indemnify Barry Goldwater, whose first wife, Peggy, helped Maragaret Sanger establish the first “birth control clinic” in Arizona (see Sandra Day O'Connor: A Judge Whose Sangerite Background Meant Nothing to Ronald Wilson Reagan), only to show that even a secularist such as Goldwater understood that Lyndon Baines Johnson’s programs, which were not reversed by Republican Presidents Richard Milhous Nixon, Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr./Leslie Lynch King, Jr., Ronald Wilson Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush, George Walker Bush, nor even by Donald John Trump in his first term, would erode legitimate freedoms and, once established, would be neigh-well impossible to reverse.

This is a long, long way of saying that it is one thing to say, as Ronald Wilson Reagan did, that “government is not the solution; government is the problem” (and the “nine most scary words in the English language are, “I am from the government; I am here to help”), or that, as even William Jefferson Blythe Clinton said in his 1996 State of the Union address that the era of big government is over” (see President Clinton's 1996 State of the Union Address as delivered), but it is quite another retard its use of amorality by means merely natural as what is rejected by one generation of voters can be undone by another generation of voters. There is nothing in a system based upon false principles that is stable or enduring.

While President-elect Donald John Trumps’s efforts to crack the Deep State are commendable, to be sure, it must be remembered that the United States of America remains divided by error, which can never be a guarantor of just system of limited government whose leaders are informed by and conform themselves and their policies to the binding precepts of the Divine and Natural Laws as entrusted to Holy Mother Church in all that pertains to the good of souls. Given the vagaries of fallen human nature, anything not but on the rock-solid foundation of the Holy Faith is built upon sand and will always be subject to the vicissitudes of subjectivity and relativism.

Moreover, no country whose citizens sin wantonly and, mostly, without any understanding that they are doing so, can only enjoy the illusion of respites now and again as there can legitimate order and justice in the world if people do not first order their souls to all that is contained in the Sacred Deposit of Faith and seek to be at peace with the Most Blessed Trinity by striving to be and to remain in a state of Sanctifying Grace.

Even the pagan Plato said that “Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.”

But if our fraternal charity is to be Chrisitan, its prime motive must be the love of Christ. That is why theologians do not distinguish essentially a double precept of charity, one for God, and one for our neighbor; they only recognize one, the love of God. And that is why Saint John writes:

If any man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar. For he that loveth not his brother whom he seeth, how can he love God, whom he seeth not . . . . If we love one another, God abideth in us, and his charity is perfected in us. In this we know that we abide in him and he in us: because he hath given us of his spirit.   (I John iv, 12, 13,,20) Let us love one another, for charity is of God. And every one that loveth, is born of God, and knowth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is charity. (I John iv, 7, 8.)

Volumes could be written on these texts. One thing is clear: that to abide in God, one must love one's neighbor; fraternal charity is a necessary manifestation of love of God, which does not exist without it. In the practical part of this book we shall discuss the working of fraternal charity. Let it be noted here that charity does not compel us to like people, but to love them. And love is an act of the will wishing one well. Further what passes for fraternal charity is often not really Christian. Modern civilization is full of a humanitarianism which is not Christian charity, for its motive is not love of God, It may be a love of man, though it is more often a love of management. Whatever be its motive, unless it be derived from the love of God, it profiteth nothing. It is on this point that many Catholics -- even many Catholic religious -- make a fatal mistake that renders much of their works for their neighbor sterile and unprofitable; for their motives are human. To them can be applied that threefold warning of our Lord: Amen, I say unto you, they have received their reward. (Cf. Matt. vi, 2) Still we must not be too general in our condemnation, for when a man works according to what he believes to be his duty, God will not fail to have compassion on him, and will give  him the grace to rectify his outlook. But for a healthy Chrisitan life, all a man's work must be done with God for Gode, and in God; the love of God is at once its source, its end, and its principal value.

For the whole spiritual life is a love affair with God, and if that expression has associations that are out of place here, it is because of the abuse of it, not because of its proper use. As we shall see, God Himself uses human love to teach us the secrets of divine love. The love of God for us is shown forth in the Life and Passion and Death of our Lord. Our return is the influence of love for God in our own life, and that is especially shown by our fraternal charity. God not only gives us the power to love Him, He also gives us the opportunity of exercising that power. God is completely self-sufficient, and as we can add nothing to Him, our love at times seems hopeless and helpless. But God has so identified Himself with the needs of our neighbor, that what we do to others for God's sake, is done to God Himself.

The love of God then, and the love of our neighbor are one and the same virtue. This virtue is the effect of our incorporation in Christ, but it is also the means of fulfilling the law of our life in Christ. It is God who works in us both to love and to do the works of love. These works are many; and for their performance God has given us other virtues called the moral virtues, which depend upon the four cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude. These we need to regulate all our actions, to be honest with our neighbor, to control our lower appetites, and to overcome our weakness and fear, so that all actions which we perform may belong to the life of the Body of Christ.

In addition to these virtues, and to the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, our life in Christ needs a continual series of helps called actual graces, by which we are moved to do good, and we are sustained in all our actions. We cannot begin a single good act with the help of God. Without me, you can do nothing, said our Lord. (John xv, 5) But God is our Father, and He does not fail His children, and Christ is the Head of His Body and as the Church teaches: He constantly pours forth His grace (virtutem) upon those who have been justified as the head exercises its influence on the members and the vine on its branches; and this grace ever precedes, accompanies, and follows their good actions. (Council of Trent, Sess. vi, cap. xvi.) There is, so to speak a complete nervous system in the Mystical Body, which controls the actions of all its members, and without that vital initiation and guidance, they are paralyzed. the working of actual grace is of great importance in the spiritual life, but to examine the virtues of the different graces in greater detail here would make the treatment too theoretical, and would put us in danger of losing sight of the main outline of the Christian life, which is lived through Christ, with Christ, and in Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, for the glory of the Eternal God. (Father Eugene Boylan, O. Cist. R., This Tremendous Lover, published by The Newman Press, Westminster, Maryland, 1948, pp. 67-73.The entire passage from the cited pages can be found in the Appendix below.)

I think that is quite appropriate to highlight one paragraph from the text above:

Volumes could be written on these texts. One thing is clear: that to abide in God, one must love one's neighbor; fraternal charity is a necessary manifestation of love of God, which does not exist without it. In the practical part of this book we shall discuss the working of fraternal charity. Let it be noted here that charity does not compel us to like people, but to love them. And love is an act of the will wishing one well. Further what passes for fraternal charity is often not really Christian. Modern civilization is full of a humanitarianism which is not Christian charity, for its motive is not love of God, It may be a love of man, though it is more often a love of management. Whatever be its motive, unless it be derived from the love of God, it profiteth nothing. It is on this point that many Catholics -- even many Catholic religious -- make a fatal mistake that renders much of their works for their neighbor sterile and unprofitable; for their motives are human. To them can be applied that threefold warning of our Lord: Amen, I say unto you, they have received their reward. (Cf. Matt. vi, 2) Still we must not be too general in our condemnation, for when a man works according to what he believes to be his duty, God will not fail to have compassion on him, and will give  him the grace to rectify his outlook. But for a healthy Chrisitan life, all a man's work must be done with God for Gode, and in God; the love of God is at once its source, its end, and its principal value.

Father Frederick William Faber had written in a similar vain and so did Pope Saint Pius X in Notre Charge Apostolique and Pope Pius XI in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio as Father Eugene Boylan was only reiterating a truth that had been taught by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and by numerous Fathers and Doctors of the Church: Anything that is not done for the love of God and in His Holy Name will come to nothing and is not meritorius for those who live as citizens of this life below and not as citizens of Heaven. True progress is the progress of the interior life within our souls for love of God, and what is done by the members of the false opposite of the naturalist right and the naturalist left is done either in the name of ideology or the perversion of true patriotism that is nationalism.

True peace and happiness comes only from Christ the King through His Holy Catholic Church.

Father Francis X. Weninger, S.J., used a sermon for Low Sunday to discuss what Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ meant when He said to be Apostles, “Pax vobiscum,” “Peace be unto you”:

I say that the peace which Christ wishes us and which He imparts to us, is true peace; it is that peace which He alone is able to bestow. “My peace I give unto you! ” says the Lord; “not as the world giveth, do I give unto you.” No, it is a peace of which the world has no idea; it is a peace which the world can never bestow. It is that peace which we lost by the fall of our first parents, and which could not be restored to us but by the incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ, our Redeemer and Saviour.

Man, as he came from the hands of the Creator, was endowed with sanctifying grace, was at peace with God, at peace with himself, at peace with the whole outer world; but sin destroyed all this, and instead of peace came war, and instead of spiritual life came spiritual death. By sin man was set at variance with God, with himself, and with the outer world. As Holy Writ assures us: “There is no peace for the wicked,” at least no peace of soul. Though a man be on good terms with his fellow-men, yet as long as he lives in a state of sin he will enjoy no peace; for sin is a revolt against God, and every revolt brings with it trouble, anxiety, and war. Without Christ there is no true peace; no peace with God, the only peace which is worthy of the name, and which alone is able to calm our agitated hearts.

Listen to the warning of the prophet: “They cry: Peace, peace! and there is no peace.” There is no communion between light and darkness, between Christ and Belial. There is no place where the banner of Christ and that of antichrist wave together, nor where men desire to serve God and the devil at the same time.

Moreover, the peace which man enjoys with the world is not complete. But the peace, which Christ gives unto his own, is perfect. We shall understand this, if we regard one by one the results of the first sin and of all individual sin, and the relation in which soul and body stand to God. By his very nature man has a soul, reason, will, and heart. He thinks, he wills, he suffers or enjoys. Now, the fall ot Adam darkened the understanding of man, weakened his will, made his heart suffer; and but one can free him from the anxiety which all this causes: one alone, Christ Jesus our Lord.

I have said that understanding, and will, and heart, each has suffered: man’s understanding is beset with doubts in regard to his existence and to his relations to God; his will is weakened, and he frequently feels its moral feebleness and impotence. But, above all, it is the heart of man which is exposed to the stripes of adversity and to the stings of suffering; nor can it anywhere find comfort but in Christ but in Him Whom Holy Writ emphatically styles: “The Prince of peace!”

Before Him, before His Word and example, every cloud of anxiety vanishes, and perfect peace makes its dwelling in the soul.

I have already said that when the soul is left to itself it is disquieted in regard to its relations with God and concerning its fate for eternity; it is darkened by ignorance and beset with doubts. “Pax vobis!” “Peace be to you!” says Christ to all men. It is He who spoke through Moses and the prophets; it is He who came Himself into the world, and opening His mouth preached to us the Word of salvation, explaining all those questions and doubts in regard to the other world, which excite, frighten, and harass the mind of man.

He calls himself the Light of the world; and as the sun sends forth his rays, so Christ sent forth His Apostles, that by the light of their teaching day might break for all the nations upon earth; that all might open their hearts to the sweet influence of truth. And great, indeed, is the peace which is instilled into believing hearts with the word of faith spoken by the mouth of the infallible Church; it is felt by all her truly believing children.

The will of man also is enfeebled by the fall of Adam; hence he feels his weakness, his impotence in the light with temptation. Hence the anxiety which excites and torments him. How differently man feels when Christ greets him and calls to him “Pax vobis” Peace be to you! When the power of divine grace enters his heart, and he can say with St. Paul: “I can do all things in Him who strengthened me.” A calm conscience comforts his heart, from which all anxiety has lied; yes, all that anxiety which, the consequence of his sins, had for years tormented him.

After the fall of Adam the heart of man felt the burden of suffering and the insufficiency of every merely human consolation. How often a friend can only say: I can weep with you, but I can not console you! How differently a child of the Church feels when Christ who has Himself suffered upon earth calls to Him from the cross: “Pax vobis!” and when he recollects that the Lord Himself said to His disciples: “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and so enter into His Glory.” How inexpressibly great was the consolation which fell from the five wounds into the hearts of the disciples when Jesus suddenly appearing among them, gave them that Easter greeting: ” Pax vobis!” All truly believing children of the Church partake of this consolation in the midst of all the cares and sorrows of this life. For whatever we may suffer, one glance at Christ risen from the dead and marked with His wounds will cause us to cry out with St. Paul: “I exceedingly abound with joy in all our tribulation.”

But far more grievous does the anxiety of man’s heart become, if he has the misfortune to turn from the path of virtue, to precipitate himself into the abyss of sin, and if he is tormented day and night by the reproaches of his conscience. No one but Jesus can give him calmness and peace. He alone redeemed us, sinners! He alone gave His Apostles and their followers the power to forgive the repentant! a power which Christ bestowed upon His Church until the end of time, and of which we are solemnly reminded by the words of the Apostolic creed: “I believe in the holy Catholic Church, the forgiveness of sins.”

Into the breast of the greatest sinner there enters an inexpressible peace, if he receives the Sacrament of Penance as Christ has instituted it in His holy Church. Ah! what joy when the priest, the representative of Christ, says to his troubled soul: “My son, my daughter, your sins are forgiven!” Pax tibi! Peace be with you! Oh, the happy peace which then through Christ enters the heart reconciled to its God!

Finally, the heart of man is frequently pained by the fear: Shall I continue to the end? and what will become of me if Satan, in my last hour, should beset me with temptation, and place all the sins of my life before my eyes in order to drive me to despair? “Pax tibi,” says our Lord to the loving child of His Church. I shall complete in you my work of mercy. Trust!

Never can your own heart desire your salvation so ardently as I desire it: Peace be to you! Nor must we forget the consoling inspirations which Christ sends to all who bow, in suffering, to His holy will, and unite themselves to Him. Yes, yes, “Pax vobis!” I call in the name of the risen Christ to every soul here present.

“Pax vobis” the peace of Christ be and remain with you now, and for evermore! Amen! (3)

The one and only answer to the amorality industrial complex is Catholicism, noting else, and to is pray and work for its restoration as the guiding light in both our personal lives and in the larger life of a nation so that, at peace with Our Lord and each other, can know a measure of justice and good order in this passing, mortal vale of tears and thus be prepared for the glories of Heaven in the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity.

Entrusting ourselves to Christ the King through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary as we pray as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits, may with not be unduly distracted from making a good Advent, which begins one week from this evening at First Vespers for the First Sunday of Advent, by the events of this world and remain confident in, without being the least bit presumptuous of, the abiding help of Our Lady, Queen of Mercy, now, and at the hour of our death.

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 Clement I, pray for us.

Saint Felicity, pray for us.

Appendix

From Father Eugene Boylan's This Tremendous Lover

The necessary variety of members leads to a variety of operations, and Saint Paul enumerates a number of different offices that were found in the Church: apostles, prophets, doctors, workers of miracles, those gifted with tongues, those with the power of healing and with other remarkable gifts which were of great service in the building up of the church. But despite the value and the wonder of these gifts, Saint Paul exhorts the Corinthians in an address that is classical:

Be zealous for better gifts. And I show you a more excellent way. He then bursts into a paean of praise for charity, which is the best gift and the most excellent way, and finishes with the assertion And now there remain faith hope and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. {But not only is charity the most excellent, it is also the one essential virtue and way;for he writes:} If I speak with the tongues of angels, and have not charity, I am become as a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. 
And if I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing! And if I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor and if I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Cf. I Cor. xiii. 1-3

Those are Saint Paul's words; they are also the words of  God, who is the author of all the inspired Scripture. There is no evading their meaning; it is quite clear. No matter what we do, unless we do it in the love of God, it profits us nothing. God wants our love, He will be satisfied with nothing else. That is what He principally looks for in our works. The things we do or achieve are not of primary value to God, for He can create them by a mere thought; or with just as much ease He can raise up other free agents to do what we do. But the love of our hearts is something unique, something no one else can give Him.True, He could create other hearts to love Him, but once He has created us and given us free will, the love of our particular heart is something unique and in a way irreplaceable. In any case, it is not for His own sake that He wants our love, but because He desires to make us happy with Him for ever, and He can only do that if we are in love with Him.

It might seem that is something beyond our power or choice. One seaks in human relationship of "falling in love"; it is not, as it were, something deliberate, something that can be done at will. That peculiar acquiring of a new and special interest in another person, and the development of a new power to love that person, which raises the whole level of the life of a man or woman and opens the door to the highest form of human happiness, seems to be something fortuitous, and accident, a stroke of luck. Whether, that be so or not, there is a very close analogy between the human and the divine, which we intend to stress in this book. But there is one important difference in regard to the love of God. there, instead of speaking of a soul falling in love, it would be nearer the truth if one spoke of love falling into the soul. For God gives us the love with which we are to love Him; more than that, He gives us the gift of wisdom, by which we acquire a taste and a relish for God and for His friendship and His ways. Both the love and the wisdom come from God; this will help us to understand the otherwise seemingly harsh treatment of the guest who, in the Gospel parable, came to the wedding-feast, without the ceremonial garment. Unless one realizes that such garments were provided by the host, one will not understand the host's resentment at the guest's refusal to avail of his kindness, and one will completely miss the parallel with the man who comes to the service of God without love in his heart. For if there is one gift that is to be had for the asking-- and there are many-- it is the gift of love of God.

There is only one source of true happiness in this life or in the next, and that is to love and to be loved. Knowledge that does not lead to love is worse than vain and sterile. It is of course quite true that love expresses itself in many ways, and it is true that its reality can be questioned if it does not seek expression in some way; but for all that, it is love, and love alone, that matters. Saint Paul and all the saints knew that; our Lady knew that; our Lord knows that, and God Himself knows if and tells it to us in the Scripture. I have loved thee with an everlasting love.(Jer. xxxi, 3.) My son, give me thy heart.(Prov. xxiii, 26) Love is the culmination of the law. (Rom. xiii. 10)

But when we examine the Scriptures, we notice that God does not confine His commandment of love to love for Himself; He insists that we must also love our neighbor, and it soon appears that He speaks as if the two loves were inseparable, and, in fact, one and the same. We read such texts as: Thou shalt love thy neighbor for God, (Cf. Luke x, 28) All the other commandments are comprised in one word: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, (Cf. Rom. xiii, 9.) and the final exhortation of our Lord to His disciples was "His own commandment" to love one another as I have loved you (John xv, 12) This insistence on fraternal love and its identification with divine love seems surprising at first sight, but its significance becomes obvious if we remember the principles that govern the membership of the Mystical Body.

The organs of a human body are mutually dependent and operate for the benefit of each other and thereby for the good of the whole organism. Foreign matter lodged in the organism is distinguished from that in living union with the whole, by its failure to interact beneficially with the rest of the system. It is at best a nuisance. If we then do not interact beneficially with the rest of the members of Christ's body, our title to living membership is immediately compromised. And cannot distinguish completely between Christ and His members; we cannot love Crhist without being willing to love the whole Christ -- Head and members. What we do to our fellow members is done to Him -- for they are His Body. We have His own word for it: Amen, Amen, I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren -- you did it to me. (Cf. Matt. xxv, 40) It is Christ whom we serve, or injure, in the person of our neighbor.

But if our fraternal charity is to be Chrisitan, its prime motive must be the love of Christ. That is why theologians do not distinguish essentially a double precept of charity, one for God, and one for our neighbor; they only recognize one, the love of God. And that is why Saint John writes:

If any man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar. For he that loveth not his brother whom he seeth, how can he love 
God, whom he seeth not . . . . If we love one another, God abideth in us, and his charity is perfected in us. In this we know that we abide in him and he in us: because he hath given us of his spirit.   (I John iv, 12, 13,,20) Let us love one another, for charity is of God. And every one that loveth, is born of God, and knowth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is charity. (I John iv, 7, 8.)

Volumes could be written on these texts. One thing is clear: that to abide in God, one must love one's neighbor; fraternal charity is a necessary manifestation of love of God, which does not exist without it. In the practical part of this book we shall discuss the working of fraternal charity. Let it be noted here that charity does not compel us to like people, but to love them. And love is an act of the will wishing one well. Further what passes for fraternal charity is often not really Christian. Modern civilization is full of a humanitarianism which is not Christian charity, for its motive is not love of God, It may be a love of man, though it is more often a love of management. Whatever be its motive, unless it be derived from the love of God, it profiteth nothing. It is on this point that many Catholics -- even many Catholic religious -- make a fatal mistake that renders much of their works for their neighbor sterile and unprofitable; for their motives are human. To them can be applied that threefold warning of our Lord: Amen, I say unto you, they have received their reward. (Cf. Matt. vi, 2) Still we must not be too general in our condemnation, for when a man works according to what he believes to be his duty, God will not fail to have compassion on him, and will give  him the grace to rectify his outlook. But for a healthy Chrisitan life, all a man's work must be done with God for Gode, and in God; the love of God is at once its source, its end, and its principal value.

For the whole spiritual life is a love affair with God, and if that expression has associations that are out of place here, it is because of the abuse of it, not because of its proper use. As we shall see, God Himself uses human love to teach us the secrets of divine love. The love of God for us is shown forth in the Life and Passion and Death of our Lord. Our return is the influence of love for God in our own life, and that is especially shown by our fraternal charity. God not only gives us the power to love Him, He also gives us the opportunity of exercising that power. God is completely self-sufficient, and as we can add nothing to Him, our love at times seems hopeless and helpless. But God has so identified Himself with the needs of our neighbor, that what we do to others for God's sake, is done to God Himself.

The love of God then, and the love of our neighbor are one and the same virtue. This virtue is the effect of our incorporation in Christ, but it is also the means of fulfilling the law of our life in Christ. It is God who works in us both to love and to do the works of love. These works are many; and for their performance God has given us other virtues called the moral virtues, which depend upon the four cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude. These we need to regulate all our actions, to be honest with our neighbor, to control our lower appetites, and to overcome our weakness and fear, so that all actions which we perform may belong to the life of the Body of Christ.

In addition to these virtues, and to the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, our life in Christ needs a continual series of helps called actual graces, by which we are moved to do good, and we are sustained in all our actions. We cannot begin a single good act with the help of God. Without me, you can do nothing, said our Lord. (John xv, 5) But God is our Father, and He does not fail His children, and Christ is the Head of His Body and as the Church teaches: He constantly pours forth His grace (virtutem) upon those who have been justified as the head exercises its influence on the members and the vine on its branches; and this grace ever precedes, accompanies, and follows their good actions. (Council of Trent, Sess. vi, cap. xvi.) There is, so to speak a complete nervous system in the Mystical Body, which controls the actions of all its members, and without that vital initiation and guidance, they are paralyzed. the working of actual grace is of great importance in the spiritual life, but to examine the virtues of the different graces in greater detail here would make the treatment too theoretical, and would put us in danger of losing sight of the main outline of the Christian life, which is lived through Christ, with Christ, and in Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, for the glory of the Eternal God. (Father Eugene Boylan, O. Cist. R., This Tremendous Lover, published by The Newman Press, Westminster, Maryland, 1948, pp. 67-73.)