Another Victim of the Anti-Incarnational Errors of Modernity

Father Frederick William Faber wrote the following words one hundred sixty-five years ago about what the world would look like without the benefits of the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and they have turned out to be very prophetic words indeed:

It is plain that some millions of sins in a day are hindered by the Precious Blood; and this is not merely a hindering of so many individual sins, but it is an immense check upon the momentum of sin. It is also a weakening of habits of sin, and a diminution of the consequences of sin. If then, the action of the Precious Blood were withdrawn from the world, sins would not only increase incalculably in number, but the tyranny of sin would be fearfully augmented, and it would spread among a greater number of people. It would wax so bold that no one would be secure from the sins of others. It would be a constant warfare, or an intolerable vigilance, to preserve property and rights. Falsehood would become so universal as to dissolve society; and the homes of domestic life would be turned into wards either of a prison or a madhouse. We cannot be in the company of an atrocious criminal without some feeling of uneasiness and fear. We should not like to be left alone with him, even if his chains were not unfastened. But without the Precious Blood, such men would abound in the world. They might even become the majority. We know of ourselves, from glimpses God has once or twice given us in life, what incredible possibilities of wickedness we have in our souls. Civilization increases these possibilities. Education multiplies and magnifies our powers of sinning. Refinement adds a fresh malignity. Men would thus become more diabolically and unmixedly bad, until at last earth would be a hell on this side of the grave. There would also doubtless be new kinds of sins and worse kinds. Education would provide the novelty, and refinement would carry it into the region of the unnatural. All highly-refined and luxurious developments of heathenism have fearfully illustrated this truth. A wicked barbarian is like a beast. His savage passions are violent but intermitting, and his necessities of sin do not appear to grow. Their circle is limited. But a highly-educated sinner, without the restraints of religion, is like a demon. His sins are less confined to himself. They involve others in their misery. They require others to be offered as it were in sacrifice to them. Moreover, education, considered simply as an intellectual cultivation, propagates sin, and makes it more universal.

The increase of sin, without the prospects which the faith lays open to us, must lead to an increase of despair, and to an increase of it upon a gigantic scale. With despair must come rage, madness, violence, tumult, and bloodshed. Yet from what quarter could we expect relief in this tremendous suffering? We should be imprisoned in our own planet. The blue sky above us would be but a dungeon-roof. The greensward beneath our feet would truly be the slab of our future tomb. Without the Precious Blood there is no intercourse between heaven and earth. Prayer would be useless. Our hapless lot would be irremediable. It has always seemed to me that it will be one of the terrible things in hell, that there are no motives for patience there. We cannot make the best of it. Why should we endure it? Endurance is an effort for a time; but this woe is eternal. Perhaps vicissitudes of agony might be a kind of field for patience. But there are no such vicissitudes. Why should we endure, then? Simply because we must; and yet in eternal things this is not a sort of necessity which supplies a reasonable ground for patience. So in this imaginary world of rampant sin there would be no motives for patience. For death would be our only seeming relief; and that is only seeming, for death is any thin but an eternal sleep. Our impatience would become frenzy; and if our constitutions were strong enough to prevent the frenzy from issuing in downright madness, it would grow into hatred of God, which is perhaps already less uncommon than we suppose.

An earth, from off which all sense of justice had perished, would indeed be the most disconsolate of homes. The antediluvian earth exhibits only a tendency that way; and the same is true of the worst forms of heathenism. The Precious Blood was always there. Unnamed, unknown, and unsuspected, the Blood of Jesus has alleviated every manifestation of evil which there has ever been just as it is alleviating at this hour the punishments of hell. What would be our own individual case on such a blighted earth as this? All our struggles to be better would be simply hopeless. There would be no reason why we should not give ourselves up to that kind of enjoyment which our corruption does substantially find in sin. The gratification of our appetites is something; and that lies on one side, while on the other side there is absolutely nothing. But we should have the worm of conscience already, even though the flames of hell might yet be some years distant. To feel that we are fools, and yet lack the strength to be wiser–is not this precisely the maddening thing in madness? Yet it would be our normal state under the reproaches of conscience, in a world where there was no Precious Blood. Whatever relics of moral good we might retain about us would add most sensibly to our wretchedness. Good people, if there were any, would be, as St. Paul speaks, of all men the most miserable; for they would be drawn away from the enjoyment of this world, or have their enjoyment of it abated by a sense of guilt and shame; and there would be no other world to aim at or to work for. To lessen the intensity of our hell without abridging its eternity would hardly be a cogent motive, when the temptations of sin and the allurements of sense are so vivid and strong.

What sort of love could there be, when we could have no respect? Even if flesh and blood made us love each other, what a separation death would be! We should commit our dead to the ground without a hope. Husband and wife would part with the fearfullest certainties of a reunion more terrible than their separation. Mothers would long to look upon their little ones in the arms of death, because their lot would be less woeful than if they lived to offend God with their developed reason and intelligent will. The sweetest feelings of our nature would become unnatural, and the most honorable ties be dishonored. Our best instincts would lead us into our worst dangers. Our hearts would have to learn to beat another way, in order to avoid the dismal consequences which our affections would bring upon ourselves and others. But it is needless to go further into these harrowing details. The world of the heart, without the Precious Blood, and with an intellectual knowledge of God, and his punishments of sin, is too fearful a picture to be drawn with minute fidelity.

But how would it fare with the poor in such a world? They are God’s chosen portion upon the earth. He chose poverty himself, when he came to us. He has left the poor in his place, and they are never to fail from the earth, but to be his representatives there until the doom. But, if it were not for the Precious Blood, would any one love them? Would any one have a devotion to them, and dedicate his life to merciful ingenuities to alleviate their lot? If the stream of almsgiving is so insufficient now, what would it be then? There would be no softening of the heart by grace; there would be no admission of of the obligation to give away in alms a definite portion of our incomes; there would be no desire to expiate sin by munificence to the needy for the love of God. The gospel makes men’s hearts large;and yet even under the gospel the fountain of almsgiving flows scantily and uncertainly. There would be no religious orders devoting themselves with skilful concentration to different acts of spiritual and corporal mercy. Vocation is a blossom to be found only in the gardens of the Precious Blood. But all this is only negative, only an absence of God. Matters would go much further in such a world as we are imagining.

Even in countries professing to be Christian, and at least in possession of the knowledge of the gospel, the poor grow to be an intolerable burden to the rich. They have to be supported by compulsory taxes; and they are in other ways a continual subject of irritated and impatient legislation. Nevertheless, it is due to the Precious Blood that the principle of supporting them is acknowledged. From what we read in heathen history–even the history of nations renowned for political wisdom, for philosophical speculation, and for literary and artistic refinement–it would not be extravagant for us to conclude that, if the circumstances of a country were such as to make the numbers of the poor dangerous to the rich, the rich would not scruple to destroy them, while it was yet in their power to do so. Just as men have had in France and England to war down bears and wolves, so would the rich war down the poor, whose clamorous misery and excited despair should threaten them in the enjoyment of their power and their possessions. The numbers of the poor would be thinned by murder, until it should be safe for their masters to reduce them into slavery. The survivors would lead the lives of convicts or of beasts. History, I repeat, shows us that this is by no means an extravagant supposition.

Such would be the condition of the world without the Precious Blood. As generations succeeded each other, original sin would go on developing those inexhaustible malignant powers which come from the almost infinite character of evil. Sin would work earth into hell. Men would become devils, devils to others and to themselves. Every thing which makes life tolerable, which counteracts any evil, which softens any harshness, which sweetens any bitterness, which causes the machinery of society to work smoothly, or which consoles any sadness–is simply due to the Precious Blood of Jesus, in heathen as well as in Christian lands. It changes the whole position of an offending creation to its Creator. It changes, if we may dare in such a matter to speak of change, the aspect of God’s immutable perfections toward his human children. It does not work merely in a spiritual sphere. It is not only prolific in temporal blessings, but it is the veritable cause of all temporal blessings whatsoever. We are all of us every moment sensibly enjoying the benignant influence of the Precious Blood. Yet who thinks of all this? Why is the goodness of God so hidden, so imperceptible, so unsuspected? Perhaps because it is so universal and so excessive, that we should hardly be free agents if it pressed sensibly upon us always. God’s goodness is at once the most public of all his attributes, and at the same time the most secret. Has life a sweeter task than to seek it, and to find it out?

Men would be far more happy, if they separated religion less violently from other things. It is both unwise and unloving to put religion into a place by itself, and mark it off with an untrue distinctness from what we call worldly and unspiritual things. Of course there is a distinction, and a most important one, between them; yet it is easy to make this distinction too rigid and to carry it too far. Thus we often attribute to nature what is only due to grace; and we put out of sight the manner and degree in which the blessed majesty of the Incarnation affects all created things. But this mistake is forever robbing us of hundreds of motives for loving Jesus. We know how unspeakably much we owe to him; but we do not see all that it is not much we owe him, but all, simply and absolutely all. We pass through times and places in life, hardly recognizing how the sweetness of Jesus is sweetening the air around us and penetrating natural things with supernatural blessings.

Hence it comes to pass that men make too much of natural goodness. They think too highly of human progress. They exaggerate the moralizing powers of civilization and refinement, which, apart from grace, are simply tyrannies of the few over the many, or of the public over the individual soul. Meanwhile they underrate the corrupting capabilities of sin, and attribute to unassisted nature many excellences which it only catches, as it were by the infection, by the proximity of grace, or by contagion, from the touch of the Church. Even in religious and ecclesiastical matters they incline to measure progress, or test vigor, by other standards rather than that of holiness. These men will consider the foregoing picture of the world without the Precious Blood as overdrawn and too darkly shaded. They do not believe in the intense malignity of man when drifted from God, and still less are they inclined to grant that cultivation and refinement only intensify still further this malignity. They admit the superior excellence of Christian charity; but they also think highly of natural philanthropy. But has this philanthropy ever been found where the indirect influences of the true religion, whether Jewish or Christian, had not penetrated? We may admire the Greeks for their exquisite refinement, and the Romans for the wisdom of their political moderation. Yet look at the position of children, of servants, of slaves, and of the poor, under both these systems, and see if, while extreme refinement only pushed sin to an extremity of foulness, the same exquisite culture did not also lead to a social cruelty and an individual selfishness which made life unbearable to the masses. Philanthropy is but a theft from the gospel, or rather a shadow, not a substance, and as unhelpful as shadows are want to be. (Father Frederick Faber, The Precious Blood, published originally in England in 1860, republished by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 53-59.) 

This is perhaps the most cogent explanation as to why were are eyewitnesses to the glorification and benediction of sin within the world-at-large and within the lofty precincts of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, and Father Faber’s prescient words also explain why so many people in the world have descended into rank unbelief and thence into a barbaric hatred for both God and their fellow men.

The effects of the revolutions that have convulsed the world since Martin Luther posted his ninety-five theses on the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, on October 31, 1517, have proceeded in turn from hatred of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s true Church, the Catholic Church, to the hatred of God and everything holy in the French Revolution, to the hatred of even any semblance of moral truth on the natural level, to the seething hatred of those dare to believe and profess in the subjects of the world’s hatred: the Most Holy Trinity, the Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ, His Catholic Church, and everything contained in the binding precepts of the Divine and Natural Laws.

We have reached such a stage of degeneration as to be eyewitnesses to the triumph of abject insanity as many human beings claim that there are more than two sexes and that it is both possible and desirable that those who have been placed into a state of “confusion” about their so-called “gender identity” by perverted ideologues who are in the absolute grip of the adversary to do that which is ontologically impossible: to change one’s sex by having one’s body mutilated surgically and altered chemically to make it appear that they have become something that they are not and can never be.

Alas, to rebel against the way that God has made one is to sow the seeds for the hatred of Him and anyone who dares to point out the truth that perversion is evil and that the mutilation of one’s body is proscribed by the binding precepts of the Fifth Commandment and by the very Natural Law that is inscribed onto the very flesh of our hearts.

School shooters Audrey Hale (Covenant School, Nashville, Tennessee) and Robert Westerman (Annunciation Catholic Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota) dealt with the mental confusion caused by the diseased called “transgenderism, and Tyler Robinson, the now identied assassin of  conservative activist Charlie Kirk had “transgender” messages scrawled on the bullets inside of his high-powered rifle that authorities found in a wooded area after he escaped the scene where had been perched to commit his act of cold-blooded murder against a man, Kirk, who was merely debating students at the Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, in the presence of his wife and two children, mind you. Perhaps it was no accident at all that Kirk was fatally shot in the neck after he had been asked a question about “transgenderism” by an attendee.

Charlie Kirk, a Protestant who had recently begun to show great interest in and admiration for Catholicism and the Immemorial Mass of Tradition, saying also that while Catholics “go too far” in venerating Our Lady Protestants “under value” her (see Charlie Kirk before death: ‘I want to be remembered for courage for y faith’), was very well-intentioned. He was also very courageous, knowing full well that he stood the chance of being killed for opposing the surgical slaughter of the innocent preborn without exception and for opposing the president he admired, Donald John Trump, when he thought he was wrong, such as on a plan to decriminalize marijuana at the federal level and to refuse to release the files of Jeffrey Epstein, and for being outspoken against the “transgenderism” agenda.

To be sure, Mr. Kirk was also wrong about many things, including his exaltation of the American founding and the American concept of “freedom of speech” that has made possible the spread of philosophical, theological, moral, and political errors that have fed into what has been a violent phase of the endless battles between the false opposites of the naturalist “right” and the “naturalist “left.” His life was cut short before he could be convinced of those errors and become an apostle for Catholic teaching concerning the Social Reign of Christ the King that many of us cradle Catholics took far too long to study after years of embracing the American founding as being perfectly compatible with Catholicism. He appeared to be heading in the right direction when he was assassinated. Instead, though, he is being celebrated as a “martyr for freedom” (I saw one past that wished him “rest in freedom” rather than rest in peace!) even though it is the American concept of free speech and the Constitution’s religious indifferentism that has made the rise of violent nihilists, such as the cold-blooded assassin who plotted and then executed his assassination with great care, possible.

Tragically, though, Charlie Kirk, who lived and died as a Protestant despite his praise of Our Lady, was a Christian Zionist who mocked the survivors of the USS Liberty, the ship that had been deliberately attacked by Israeli war planes on June 8, 1967. Kirk’s ignorance on the truth of the matter (he was not alive at the time) reflected his “Christian Zionism” and received a stern rebuke from one of the Liberty’s surviving sailors in 2019:

Open Letter to Charlie Kirk

Please Forward to Addressee

October 29, 2019

Mr. Charlie Kirk, Founder
Turning Point USA
4940 East Beverly Road
Phoenix, Arizona 85044

Dear Mr. Kirk:

In the video above you condemned as “Conspiracy Theorists” the officers and crew of the USS Liberty (AGTR-5) who survived the June 8, 1967, Israeli attack on our ship.

Since the term is only used as a pejorative, since nothing could be further from the truth, and since your use of the term is a direct insult to the sacrifice of 34 of our shipmates, the effort of those of us who survived the attack and the suffering of the families of our fallen shipmates, I am compelled to write.

Mr. Kirk, over 52 years ago our “best friend and only ally in the Middle East” attacked us without warning and without provocation while we were steaming in international waters on a lawful mission for the United States.

Over 52 years ago military elements belonging to our “best friend and only ally in the Middle East” jammed our radios on both US Navy tactical and international maritime distress frequencies.

Over 52 years ago unmarked aircraft belonging to our “best friend and only ally in the Middle East” attacked us without warning.

Over 52 years fighter aircraft from our “best friend and only ally in the Middle East” reported the correct nationality of the USS Liberty to their headquarters only to be told to begin their attack.

Over 52 years ago The White House ordered the Sixth Fleet to abandon us while we were still under attack by our “best friend and only ally in the Middle East” and calling for help.

Over 52 years ago attacking elements of our “best friend and only ally in the Middle East” departed the scene immediately after they ceased hostilities only to return 90 minutes later in an obvious attempt to claim they were coming to our help to drive off the forces attacking our ship.

Over 52 years ago the Commander in Chief, US Naval Forces Europe (CINCUSNAVEUR) ADM John S. McCain, Jr., signed a qualified endorsement to a US Navy Court of Inquiry Report that his Legal Advisor, Capt. Merlin Staring, recommend he not sign since it was replete with many gross errors.

Over 52 years ago the attack on the USS Liberty became the only attack on a US Navy ship since the end of World War II NOT to be the subject of a US government investigation.  A mark that stands today despite the attacks on the USS Pueblo, USS Stark, and USS Cole all of which have been investigated by the US government.  Likewise, the USS Vincennes incident and the bombing of the US Marine Barracks in Beirut have been investigated by the US government.  Not so the attack on the USS Liberty.

For over 52 years USS Liberty survivors, our families and the families of our fallen shipmates have been waiting for the announcement that the US government has finally decided to investigate the attack on the USS Liberty.

Instead of being outraged at learning these facts about the attack on our ship as most patriotic Americans are, Mr. Kirk dismisses them as the rantings of a group of “Conspiracy Theorists.”

These are not baseless mutterings of a group of anti-Semitic bigots. Mr. Kirk.

These are proven facts being lived by the victims of Israeli War Crimes that were committed with the tacit approval and active participation of the United States government.

You can read them for yourself.

But you won’t.  Said simply, you don’t give a damn about us.  You don’t give a damn about the facts of the attack on our ship.

Your concern — and the concern of your audience — is for the forces who attacked us.  For those who killed 34 of our shipmates.

34 Americans — like you.

34 Patriotic Americans — unlike you.

You’re in good company, Mr. Kirk.

That is the same concern repeatedly expressed by every Member of Congress for over 52 years.

What you will do is stand behind your microphone and insult the sacrifice of 34 Americans who were killed during the attack on the USS Liberty, the suffering of their families, and the effort of the survivors of the USS Liberty attack to ensure that attack is finally investigated by the US government.

We’re open to an apology from you, Mr. Kirk.  But only if that apology is followed by a  public and ongoing effort from you and your organization to ensure the US government conducts the investigation that has been denied the attack on the USS Liberty for over 52 years.

My email address is joe@ussliberty.com.

We hope you will agree that it was improper for you to single out a military unit for condemnation simply because we were attacked by our “best friend and only ally in the Middle East.”

Respectfully,

Joe Meadors, USS Liberty Survivor
Director of Operations
USS Liberty Veterans Association
P.O. Box 689275
Marietta, GA 30068
https://usslibertyveterans.org
https://usslibertyveterans.blog

Joe Meadors was a signalman on the bridge of the USS Liberty during the attack. He and Francis Brown hauled up a second American Flag after the steaming colors were shot down early in the air attack. That flag can be seen here. Meadors was on the bridge throughout the attack and was one of several eyewitnesses to the machine-gunning of the life rafts.

Kirk’s “information” about Israel comes from two short trips he took to Israel that were sponsored by Israel.(Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk Insults USS Liberty Survivors.)

Charlie Kirk was a shill for the Zionist State of Israel at all times up to and including the moment of his assassination, yes, even in the midst of Benjamin Netanyahu’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza, which is why the Israelis are heaping such praise on him after his death:

Mere minutes after news broke out that American right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk was shot, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shared a social media post expressing his sympathy.

As Kirk was declared dead on Wednesday, Netanyahu and other Israeli officials rushed to eulogise the 31-year-old activist and emphasise his support for Israel.

“A lion-hearted friend of Israel, he fought the lies and stood tall for Judeo-Christian civilization,” the Israeli prime minister wrote on X. “I spoke to him only two weeks ago and invited him to Israel. Sadly, that visit will not take place.”

That push, to portray Kirk as a fallen champion of Israel as much as of the US conservative movement, comes as many influential right-wing commentators have been increasingly critical of Washington’s unconditional support for its Middle East ally.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar called Kirk an “incredible friend” of Israel.

“Charlie represented the Judeo-Christian values that unite Israel and America,” he said in a social media post. “Above all, he was a fearless warrior for truth and freedom. He was murdered for that.”

No suspect has been detained for the killing of Kirk, a close ally of United States President Donald Trump, and the motives behind the killing remain unclear.

“Charlie Kirk saw the danger and warned about it. But the bullets of the despicable murderer struck him.”

In some of his final public appearances, Kirk – who regularly bashed Islam and Muslims – promoted the unfounded conspiracy theory that Islam and the political left are working together to undermine the US and Europe.

“Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America,” he wrote in a social media post on Tuesday, a day before he was shot.

Several Israeli politicians underscored Kirk’s ties to Israel while lauding his views.

For example, former Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz described Kirk as a “voracious defender of Judeo-Christian values, America & the State of Israel”.

The term “Judeo-Christian values” appeals to mainstream US conservatives, but critics say it aims to exclude Muslims and other religious groups from Western societies. [Droleskey interjection: The term itself is false as Judaism and Mohammedanism are both of the devil.]

They also argue that it is ahistorical, given the hostility and anti-Semitism Jewish communities have faced in Christian societies in Europe over the past centuries.

But “Judeo-Christian values” were a recurring theme in the Israeli eulogies for Kirk.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich joined other Israeli officials in calling Kirk a “true friend of Israel”. (Israeli leaders heap praise on Charlie Kirk as a staunch ally of Israel. Also see:  RIP Charlie Kirk: American Patriot, Faithful Christian, Ardent Zionist.)

Although Charlie Kirk was opposed to American bombing of Iranian nuclear sites and was “concerned” about Israeli censorship of domestic Israeli opposition to its policies because of his commitment to “free speech," he was ignorant about the true facts concerning Israel’s creation and its seventy-seven year long war against non-Jews in the Holy Land. As courageous as he was on some matters, Mr. Kirk was also dangerously irresponsible by speaking “authoritatively" about the Middle East after he had been played like a fiddle by Netanyahu and his ilk. The one and only true Zion is the Catholic Church, not the Zionist State of Israel. Mr. Kirk, like so many other Protestants, misread Sacred Scripture into believing that it was a "moral imperative" to support the State of Israel.  It is not to demean him in way persoally simply to point out that he was wrong about this. Very wrong. The Holy Land belongs to Christ the King and His Catholic Church, not to the adversary's Zionist minions, for whose convesion we must pray every day.

Without for a moment taking anything away from the profound tragedy that took Charlie Kirk’s life and has left his wife widowed and his two young children, ages three and one, without their father and and the deep sense of shock and grief felt by those who knew Mr. Kirk personally and/or profited in one way or another from his work,  I believe that it is important to take a step back from the hysteria of the moment to consider the truth that men must go mad and societies must fall into ruin absent the Social Reign of Christ the King. We have been warned:

This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. "But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error," as Augustine was wont to say. When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin. Then truly "the bottomless pit" is open from which John saw smoke ascending which obscured the sun, and out of which locusts flew forth to devastate the earth. Thence comes transformation of minds, corruption of youths, contempt of sacred things and holy laws -- in other words, a pestilence more deadly to the state than any other. Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for wealth, dominion, and glory perished as a result of this single evil, namely immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire for novelty. (Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.)

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

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

This generative and conservative power of the virtues that make for salvation is therefore lost, whenever morality is dissociated from divine faith. A system of morality based exclusively on human reason robs man of his highest dignity and lowers him from the supernatural to the merely natural life. Not but that man is able by the right use of reason to know and to obey certain principles of the natural law. But though he should know them all and keep them inviolate through life-and even this is impossible without the aid of the grace of our Redeemer-still it is vain for anyone without faith to promise himself eternal salvation. "If anyone abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire, and he burneth" john xv., 6). "He that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mark xvi., 16). We have but too much evidence of the value and result of a morality divorced from divine faith. How is it that, in spite of all the zeal for the welfare of the masses, nations are in such straits and even distress, and that the evil is daily on the increase? We are told that society is quite able to help itself; that it can flourish without the assistance of Christianity, and attain its end by its own unaided efforts. Public administrators prefer a purely secular system of government. All traces of the religion of our forefathers are daily disappearing from political life and administration. What blindness! Once the idea of the authority of God as the Judge of right and wrong is forgotten, law must necessarily lose its primary authority and justice must perish: and these are the two most powerful and most necessary bonds of society. Similarly, once the hope and expectation of eternal happiness is taken away, temporal goods will be greedily sought after. Every man will strive to secure the largest share for himself. Hence arise envy, jealousy, hatred. The consequences are conspiracy, anarchy, nihilism. There is neither peace abroad nor security at home. Public life is stained with crime. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)

Indeed, as we see all too clearly from the daily headlines and instant news reports, public life is stained with crime.

Alas, public life is stained with crimes upon persons and property in a visible manner because most men, no matter where they stand along the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic naturalistic fault lines, sin, objectively speaking, with impunity in ways that do not make headlines against the binding precepts of the Divine Law and the Natural Law every day. These sins, which are very visible to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who shed droplets of His Most Precious Blood in his Agony in the Garden as He contemplated their number, gravity and enormity, make men more disposed to commit wanton acts of violence against others. Men whose lives are steeped in sin and whose only thoughts look downward upon the earth not upward towards Heaven will be prone to be agitated by the events of this passing world. Some such men will even go beyond agitation and seek to do bodily harm to others.

Yes, of course, the remote cause for all human problems, both personal and social, is Original Sin. The proximate cause of human problems, both personal and social, is Actual Sin. Human beings are wounded by Original Sin. Those of us who are baptized suffer from the vestigial after-effects of Original Sin (the darkened intellect, the weakened will, a disordering of the balance between our higher rational faculties and lower sensual passions). Those who are unbaptized suffer all of the ravages of Original Sin in their immortal souls that are captive to the devil and his minions. There is no legal, political, constitutional, electoral, interdenominational, nondenominational, secular, philosophical, ideological, naturalistic way to solve problems that are caused by the sin of Adam and the sins of us all. Men will descend into the depth of madness and violence over the course of time as men and their societies move more and more away even from the vestigial influences of Catholicism in the world.

It is indeed true that there were social problems during the era of Christendom in Europe. The difference between then and now is simple: most men understood that they were sinners in need of cooperating more fully with the graces won for them on the wood of the Holy Cross by the shedding of every single drop of the Most Precious Blood of Our Divine Redeemer, Christ the King, and that flow into their hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces. Men knew that they had to amend their lives, that social order depended upon order within their own souls. Is there any such understanding today?

Consider Pope Pius XII's concise description of the difference between Christendom and Modernity, contained in his first encyclical letter, Summi Pontificatus, October 10, 1939:

It is true that even when Europe had a cohesion of brotherhood through identical ideals gathered from Christian preaching, she was not free from divisions, convulsions and wars which laid her waste; but perhaps they never felt the intense pessimism of today as to the possibility of settling them, for they had then an effective moral sense of the just and of the unjust, of the lawful and of the unlawful, which, by restraining outbreaks of passion, left the way open to an honorable settlement. In Our days, on the contrary, dissensions come not only from the surge of rebellious passion, but also from a deep spiritual crisis which has overthrown the sound principles of private and public morality. (Pope Pius XII, Summi Pontificatus, October 10, 1939.)

The errors of pluralism divide people needlessly into warring camps as a permanently-established political class, composed of competing sets of naturalists, each of which believes that the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity in the Virginal and Immaculate Womb of His Most Blessed Mother by the power of God the Holy Ghost at the Annunciation is, at best, a matter of complete indifference to personal and social order. So many Americans live from election to election, always believing that "change," whether it be in the direction of "progress" for naturalists of the "left" or in the direction of "constitutionalism" or "liberty" or "limited government" for naturalists of the "right." Although divisions on some matters will always occur until the General Judgment of the Living and the Dead on the Last Day at the Second Coming of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, it is also true that men today have been needlessly divided about matters pertaining to First and Last Things, oblivious to the fact that they have been given a spotless mother, Holy Mother Church, to serve as their mater and magister (mother and teacher) in this passing, mortal vale of tears. Most men today believe that they are automatons, either independent of any concept of God or "free" from the "dictates" of a hierarchical church.

Personal and social disaster cannot but be the result of such a brew of error. Men resort more and more to violence today because they do not know of the tender mercies of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. They do not know that they have a Blessed Mother who made possible their salvation by her perfect fiat to the will of God the Father at the Annunciation. They do not realize that the supernatural helps they need to overcome all sin in their lives and to pray for the conversion of those who are promoting evil in society flow through the loving hands of that same Blessed Mother, who gave the Rosary with her own blessed hands to Saint Dominic de Guzman so that we could be more closely united to her Divine Son, Christ the King, through the mysteries contained in her psalter, the Rosary.

Error has never been, is not now and can never be any foundation of authentic unity.

Catholicism alone is the sole foundation of unity, something that our true popes taught without exception from time immemorial. Pope Leo XIII explained the matter as follows in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:

The sovereignty of the people, however, and this without any reference to God, is held to reside in the multitude; which is doubtless a doctrine exceedingly well calculated to flatter and to inflame many passions, but which lacks all reasonable proof, and all power of insuring public safety and preserving order. Indeed, from the prevalence of this teaching, things have come to such a pass that may hold as an axiom of civil jurisprudence that seditions may be rightfully fostered. For the opinion prevails that princes are nothing more than delegates chosen to carry out the will of the people; whence it necessarily follows that all things are as changeable as the will of the people, so that risk of public disturbance is ever hanging over our heads.

To hold, therefore, that there is no difference in matters of religion between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, most clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and practice. And this is the same thing as atheism, however it may differ from it in name. Men who really believe in the existence of God must, in order to be consistent with themselves and to avoid absurd conclusions, understand that differing modes of divine worship involving dissimilarity and conflict even on most important points cannot all be equally probable, equally good, and equally acceptable to God. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

The Catholic Church is the one and only foundation of personal and social order.

As I have noted so frequently in my writing and speaking, Catholicism is not an infallible guarantor of the just social order, but it is the necessary foundation of such order. That is, fallen men must choose to cooperate with the graces that they receive in the Sacraments and by means of the Actual Graces made available to them to perform their daily duties to grow in holiness and to avoid sin. Men will sin, granted, but they must be aware of their sins, have true contrition for them, seek absolution in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance from a true priest and then make reparation for their sins. It is one thing to sin. It is quite another to persist in one’s sins unrepentantly and then to make reparation for them.

Catholics during the High Middle Ages understood these truths. Father Denis Fahey, C.SS.Sp., a true son of Ireland, explained the working of the Social Reign of Christ the King in the glorious Thirteenth Century:

By the grace of the Headship of the Mystical Body, our Lord Jesus Christ is both Priest and King of redeemed mankind and, as such, exercises a twofold influence upon us. Firstly, as a Priest, He communicates to us the supernatural life of grace by which we, while ever remaining distinct from God, can enter into the vision and love of the Blessed Trinity. We can thus become one with God, not, of course, in the order of substance or being, but in the order of operation, of the immaterial union of vision and love. The Divine Nature is the principle of the Divine Vision and Love, and by grace we are ‘made partakers of the Divine Nature.’ This pure Catholic doctrine is infinitely removed from Masonic pantheism. Secondly, as King, our Lord exercises an exterior influence on us by His government of us. As King, He guides and directs us socially and individually, in order to dispose all things for the reception of the Supernatural Life which He, as Priest, confers.

Society had been organized in the thirteenth century and even down to the sixteenth, under the banner of Christ the King. Thus, in spite of deficiencies and imperfections, man’s divinization, through the Life that comes from the sacred Humanity of Jesus, was socially favoured. Modern society, under the influence of Satan, was to be organized on the opposite principle, namely, that human nature is of itself divine, that man is God, and, therefore, subject to nobody. Accordingly, when the favourable moment had arrived, the Masonic divnization of human nature found its expression in the Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789. The French Revolution ushered in the struggle for the complete organization of the world around the new divinity–Humanity. In God’s plan, the whole organization of a country is meant to aid the development of a country is meant to aid the development of the true personality of the citizens through the Mystical Body of Christ. Accordingly, the achievement of true liberty for a country means the removal of obstacles to the organized social acceptance of the Divine Plan. Every revolution since 1789 tends, on the contrary, to the rejection of that plan, and therefore to the enthronement of man in the place of God. The freedom at which the spirit of the revolution aims is that absolute independence which refuses submission to any and every order. It is the spirit breathed by the temptation of the serpent: ‘For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened; and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.’ Man decided then that he would himself lay down the order of good and evil in the place of God; then and now it is the same attitude. (Father Denis Fahey, The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World, p. 27.)

The United States of America was founded upon an open rejection of the Social Reign of Christ the King, which means that its whole ethos is satanically inspired. The evils that have been and continue to be advanced under the cover of law—evils that are celebrated in “popular culture” and enjoy widespread public support—are the logical consequence of the false principles upon which the whole enterprise of “American freedom” was premised. There is only one standard of human liberty: the Holy Cross, not the Declaration of Independence of the United States Constitution.

Elaborating on what he had written about civil states, Pope Leo XIII explained in Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896, that true unity among men must prescind from a unity in the same religion, the true religion, namely Catholicism:

Agreement and union of minds is the necessary foundation of this perfect concord amongst men, from which concurrence of wills and similarity of action are the natural results. Wherefore, in His divine wisdom, He ordained in His Church Unity of Faith; a virtue which is the first of those bonds which unite man to God, and whence we receive the name of the faithful - "one Lord, one faith, one baptism" (Eph. iv., 5). That is, as there is one Lord and one baptism, so should all Christians, without exception, have but one faith. And so the Apostle St. Paul not merely begs, but entreats and implores Christians to be all of the same mind, and to avoid difference of opinions: "I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no schisms amongst you, and that you be perfect in the same mind and in the same judgment" (I Cor. i., 10). Such passages certainly need no interpreter; they speak clearly enough for themselves. Besides, all who profess Christianity allow that there can be but one faith. It is of the greatest importance and indeed of absolute necessity, as to which many are deceived, that the nature and character of this unity should be recognized. And, as We have already stated, this is not to be ascertained by conjecture, but by the certain knowledge of what was done; that is by seeking for and ascertaining what kind of unity in faith has been commanded by Jesus Christ. (Pope Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896.)

There can no true national unity without unity in the Holy Faith, and it was the shattering of such unity in Sixteenth Century that produced both religious and civil pluralism, both of which were the breeding grounds for the triumph of Judeo-Masonic naturalism. 

Alas, the lies upon which the anti-Incarnational civil state of Modernity was based are responsible for spawning and sustaining the diabolical trap posed by the false opposites of the naturalist “left” and the naturalist “right,” which involves a never-ending series of agitations over matters about which human beings are not free to debate and, additionally, over problems caused by the destruction of family stability caused by the Protestant Revolution’s endorsement of divorce, which led in turn to the endorsement of contraception, abortion, sterilization, sodomy, and human gender mutilation, and the statist totalitarianism that cannot be stopped by means merely natural.

Perhaps one of the saddest aspects of Charlie Kirk’s assassination concerns the fact that there would have been no need for him to take up his work of public speaking to debate with young people about matters they had never thought through critically if the supposed “bishops” of the United States of America had taken up the call to do what Mr. Kirk had been doing with such evident success. A man who considers himself a true and legitimate Successor of the Apostles has an obligation to out and to oppose the prevailing moral errors of the day for the glory of God and the sanctification and salvation of the souls for which His Co-Equal, Co-Eternal Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood to redeem during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday.

With prayers to Our Lady on this Feast of her Holy Name of Mary, may we beg her most holy intercession through her Most Holy Rosary for the needs of the Kirk family as well as for the conversion of ourselves more fully to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through her own Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart so that we be unafraid to help those whom God’s Holy Providence places in our paths to see the world more clearly through the eyes of the Holy Faith and thus be ever ready to face Christ the King when we die.

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 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.