A Country Full of Boiled Frogs

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Almost everyone has heard the story of how to boil a frog alive while he sits in a pot of cold water. A frog's amphibious body adjusts itself to slight elevations of the temperature of the water in the pot. The frog's innards get cooked as the temperature is elevated to the boiling point as the happy, contented frog suspects not a thing is wrong. He is dead without ever realizing that he was in mortal danger in the pot of water in which he was reposing so comfortably.

Sure, the analogy is overused in many instances. Granted. However, the story of the frog being boiled alive in a pot of water temperature is elevated in slight gradations to the boiling point does apply in the instance of how the economy of the United States of America has been nationalized following the freezing of credit markets and the failure of several Wall Street brokerage firms and the near-collapse of several major banks, including the Bank of America. There has been a steady elevation of the water in the "pot" in which a country of frogs has been boiled alive ever since President Thomas Woodrow Wilson signed legislation into law on December 23, 1913, creating the Federal Reserve System.

That the United States has turned into a country of boiled frogs should surprise no one. The entire economic system of Modernity is based on one Protestant, naturalistic and materialistic falsehood after another, producing various forms of overt Socialism, including Bolshevism, and the much more insidious forms of Socialism that have been institutionalized in the United States of America in the past ninety-five years. An economic system based upon the multiple falsehoods of Protestantism and the naturalism spawned in its wake (see A Really Invisible Hand) must mutate into some form of statism as the inherent degeneracy of its inherent falsehoods is made manifest over the course of time.

The size and power and scope of the Federal government of the United States of America has grown exponentially no matter which organized crime family of naturalism, the Republican Party and the Democrat Party, has controlled the White House and the two Houses of Congress. Great "leaps" forward into the world of insidious Socialism in which we find ourselves today were made during the administrations of the aforementioned Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Clark Hoover, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Richard Milhous Nixon, William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, and George Walker Bush, whose own "stimulus" package five months ago made it clear that the United States of America was indeed embarked upon a nationalization of the banking system (see Socialism, Straight From Your "Pro-Life" Conservative) following years of his own profligate spending on needless, immoral wars abroad and on domestic programs that are in full and complete violation of the Natural Law principle of subsidiarity, which teaches us that human problems are to be resolved in the institution closest to those who are in need, starting with the family.

The initial $700 bailout (spending spree) legislation passed during the George Walker Bush administration to bail out various private sector financial firms failed as monies disappeared in the black hole of various corporate expense accounts with almost no Federal oversight into the expenditure of the "funny money" that is being printed by the United States Treasury to indenture future generations of American in perpetuity (if, that is, the whole house of cards does not come tumbling down in our empire as it did during the Roman Empire). Half of that initial printing of Bush's funny money was released into a sinkhole four months ago, on Friday, October 3, 2009. The other half was released down that same sinkhole on Thursday, January 15, 2009, five days before the inauguration of the Kenyan-born Barack Hussein Obama as President of the United States of America on January 20, 2009. That injection of artificial money into the economy failed to do "improve" the economy.

The solution? Print more "funny money" to fund the pet projects of members of the Congress of the United States of America and convince the American people that the economy will be "stimulated" as a result. What to do when a $700 billion stimulus/ bailout package fails? Simple. Pass a "compromise" $789 billion "stimulus (spending spree) package that President Barack Hussein Obama, who has revealed his "inner Marxist" during his nationally televised press conference on Monday, February 9, 2009, is contending before large crowds of adoring supporters (think Juan Peron) will help to "jump start" an economy that is in tatters, to "succeed" where the last "stimulus" package had failed. As has been noted on this site more than once in recent months, one of the definitions of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting "different" results.

The Secretary of the Department of the Treasury of the United States of America, Timothy Geithner, has suggested that the taxpayers of the United States of America will have to spend up to $2.5 trillion to "save" the American banking system (see Bailout Plan: $2.5 Trillion and a Strong U.S. Hand).The old Everett McKinley Dirksen line about spending during the "Great Society" of President Lyndon Baines Johnson ("A billion here and a billion there, sooner or later you're talking about real money") has to be revised, "A trillion here, a trillion here, sooner or later you're talking about real money." (Yes, I know. There is a dispute as to whether Dirksen, the Senate Minority leader from 1959 to the time of his death on September 7, 1969, ever uttered the exact phrase. Dirksen's fellow Mason, Robert Joseph Dole, Jr., quoted the line in 1980 during one of the Republican presidential primary debates that featured former California Governor Ronald Wilson Reagan, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency George Herbert Walker Bush, Senate Minority Leader Howard Baker, Dirksen's son-in-law, United States Representatives Philip Crane and John Anderson, both from the State of Illinois, and former Secretary of the Treasury John B. Connally. For a full discussion of the accuracy of the quote, see The Dirksen Congressional Center: [Dirksen] "A Billion Here, A Billion There" .) Indeed, United States Senator Susan Collins, R-Maine, a pro-abortion Catholic, made the following remarkable statement about the size of the "new and improved" spending spree" (stimulus) package:

In driving down the total cost of the stimulus bill — from $838 billion approved by the Senate and $820 by the House — legislators also sharply reduced proposed tax incentives for buyers of homes and cars that held huge public appeal. Senator Collins said getting the final number to under $800 billion was more than symbolic; it meant “a fiscally responsible number,” she said. (Senators Announce Stimulus Agreement.)

 

Since when does $789 billion of taxpayers' money for a further nationalization of the economy represent a "fiscally responsible number?" No one but absolutely no one--not from the Wizard of Obama in the White House or his Secretary of the Department of the Treasury, who could not give specifics to Wall Street investors about how his proposed $2.5 trillion plan to "rescue" the banking system, comprised in many instances of multinational entities that owe allegiances to no one nation, including the United States of America, would work, or other officials in the Wizard of Obama's administration--know whether this additional expenditure of funds will be any more successful than the initial "bailout" program, called TARP ("Troubled Assets Relief Program")? Statists only know how to spend money and to increase the size and power and scope of a central government as a "solution" to economic problems that have their underlying causes in the falsehoods of Modernity.

Those falsehoods of Modernity as part of the rotten fruit of the Protestant Revolt were summarized by Dr. George O'Brien in the early-Twentieth Century:

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 Efforts of the Reformation, IHS Press, Norfolk, Virginia, 2003.)

One of the fundamental naturalistic lies of Modernity is the belief in human self-redemption, the contention that contingent beings, creatures who did not create themselves and whose bodies are destined for the corruption of the grave until the General Judgment of the Living and Dead on the Last Day, can make themselves and the world "better" through their own desires, strategies, programs, plans and institutions. This belief, which is nothing other than semi-Pelagianism (the belief that we more or less stir up graces within ourselves to be good and virtuous), is a hallmark of the so-called "Enlightenment" which gave birth to one false, naturalistic philosophy after another, spawning as well, of course, Judeo-Masonry as an organized force to promote it under cover of civil law and in every aspect of popular culture. It is the belief that motivates naturalists of the false opposites of the "left" and the "right" to trust in "government" and governmental schemes and programs and institutions to solve problems that have their remote cause in Original Sin and their proximate causes in our own Actual Sins, including the Actual Sins of the men who overthrew the Social Reign of Christ the King and have enthroned the reign of man in His place.

When all is said and done, ladies and gentlemen, the fact of the matter is very simple: a world that rejects the Social Reign of Christ the King as it must be exercised by His Catholic Church must descend into the darkness of materialism and hedonism and crass commercial creed as governments themselves invert the teaching of Our King by making the pursuit of material well-being the ultimate raison d'etre of their existence.  Men and their instititutions must degenerate to the level of state-sponsored criminality when when men do not have recourse to the teaching and sanctifying offices that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted exclusively to His Catholic Church, as point that Pope Leo XIII made in Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900:

The whole object of Christian doctrine and morality is that "we being dead to sin, should live to justice" (I Peter ii., 24)-that is, to virtue and holiness. In this consists the moral life, with the certain hope of a happy eternity. This justice, in order to be advantageous to salvation, is nourished by Christian faith. "The just man liveth by faith" (Galatians iii., II). "Without faith it is impossible to please God" (Hebrews xi., 6). Consequently Jesus Christ, the creator and preserver of faith, also preserves and nourishes our moral life. This He does chiefly by the ministry of His Church. To Her, in His wise and merciful counsel, He has entrusted certain agencies which engender the supernatural life, protect it, and revive it if it should fail. 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.

Behold the criminal enterprises of the civil state and "private" sector as that which belongs to the people is taken to fund overt criminality.

Pope Saint Pius X noted in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906, that civil government must aid man in the pursuit of his Last End, namely, the possession of the glory of the Beatific Vision for all eternity. Governments must foster those conditions in civil society wherein citizens can better sanctify and thus save their immortal souls as members of the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order. Pope Saint Pius X put the matter in very plain, stark terms that are, of course, rejected by the naturalists who control the world's governments and financial institutions and rejected by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and his band of conciliarists:

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.

 

Alas, the governments of the "developed" world, including the United States of America, have placed obstacles in the pursuit of man's Last End, promoting various evils under cover of the civil law and within the larger content of their popular cultures, thereby serving as instruments of promoting disorder in the souls of citizens, who believe that human happiness is defined by various naturalistic measures of "success," including wealth and possessions. Governments and economic systems based on the glorification of the material to the opposition of the supernatural will collapse just as surely as failed enterprises in the past, such as the Roman Empire, collapsed.

No amount of the expenditure of "funny money" to attempt to rescue corporate entities that fund Planned Parenthood and related organizations can undo the debt owed to God for the multiple ways in which He has been offended by crimes against His own very honor and majesty and glory and against the rational creatures made in His own image and likeness that he redeemed by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross. No nation that offends God as it exploits His rational creatures and enslaves them in the midst of the various lies of naturalism is going to know long term economic prosperity at home or security from foreign aggressors.

Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order. The more that sin unrepentant sin abounds in the world and is promoted with abandon by the civil state will be the more chaos, disorder, confusion and economic array that will permeate the entirety of the world. As goes souls, so goes the world. No amount of "helter-skelter" socialism can put the "Humpty Dumpty" of the falsehoods of Modernity back together again when they have been the proximate source of our problems from the time they were posed as the replacement for the Social Reign of Christ the King nearly five hundred years ago.

Pope Pius XI, writing in Quadragesimo Anno, May 15, 1931, put the matter this way:

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.

 

How many of the boiled frogs in this country, diverted by their endless array of bread and circuses, understand that the way of our mess is the conversion of every American and of the country itself to the true Faith as we seek to do reparation for our sins--and for those of our nation--as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through His Most Blessed Mother's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

Writing in in Mirae Caritatis, his last encyclical letter, issued on May 28, 1902, Pope Leo XIII explained that it is necessary for those who govern states and those who are the captains of industry to have recourse to Eucharistic piety in order to enlighten their intellects and to strengthen their wills:

Some there are, no doubt, who will express their surprise that for the manifold troubles and grievous afflictions by which our age is harassed We should have determined to seek for remedies and redress in this quarter rather than elsewhere, and in some, perchance, Our words will excite a certain peevish disgust. But this is only the natural result of pride; for when this vice has taken possession of the heart, it is inevitable that Christian faith, which demands a most willing docility, should languish, and that a murky darkness in regard of divine truths should close in upon the mind; so that in the case of many these words should be made good: "Whatever things they know not, they blaspheme" (St. Jude, 10). We, however, so far from being hereby turned aside from the design which We have taken in hand, are on the contrary determined all the more zealously and diligently to hold up the light for the guidance of the well disposed, and, with the help of the united prayers of the faithful, earnestly to implore forgiveness for those who speak evil of holy things. . . .

Indeed it is greatly to be desired that those men would rightly esteem and would make due provision for life everlasting, whose industry or talents or rank have put it in their power to shape the course of human events. But alas! we see with sorrow that such men too often proudly flatter themselves that they have conferred upon this world as it were a fresh lease of life and prosperity, inasmuch as by their own energetic action they are urging it on to the race for wealth, to a struggle for the possession of commodities which minister to the love of comfort and display. And yet, whithersoever we turn, we see that human society, if it be estranged from God, instead of enjoying that peace in its possessions for which it had sought, is shaken and tossed like one who is in the agony and heat of fever; for while it anxiously strives for prosperity, and trusts to it alone, it is pursuing an object that ever escapes it, clinging to one that ever eludes the grasp. For as men and states alike necessarily have their being from God, so they can do nothing good except in God through Jesus Christ, through whom every best and choicest gift has ever proceeded and proceeds. But the source and chief of all these gifts is the venerable Eucharist, which not only nourishes and sustains that life the desire whereof demands our most strenuous efforts, but also enhances beyond measure that dignity of man of which in these days we hear so much. For what can be more honourable or a more worthy object of desire than to be made, as far as possible, sharers and partakers in the divine nature? Now this is precisely what Christ does for us in the Eucharist, wherein, after having raised man by the operation of His grace to a supernatural state, he yet more closely associates and unites him with Himself. For there is this difference between the food of the body and that of the soul, that whereas the former is changed into our substance, the latter changes us into its own; so that St. Augustine makes Christ Himself say: "You shall not change Me into yourself as you do the food of your body, but you shall be changed into Me" (confessions 1. vii., c. x.).

Moreover, in this most admirable Sacrament, which is the chief means whereby men are engrafted on the divine nature, men also find the most efficacious help towards progress in every kind of virtue. And first of all in faith. In all ages faith has been attacked; for although it elevates the human mind by bestowing on it the knowledge of the highest truths, yet because, while it makes known the existence of divine mysteries, it yet leaves in obscurity the mode of their being, it is therefore thought to degrade the intellect. But whereas in past times particular articles of faith have been made by turns the object of attack; the seat of war has since been enlarged and extended, until it has come to this, that men deny altogether that there is anything above and beyond nature. Now nothing can be better adapted to promote a renewal of the strength and fervour of faith in the human mind than the mystery of the Eucharist, the "mystery of faith," as it has been most appropriately called. For in this one mystery the entire supernatural order, with all its wealth and variety of wonders, is in a manner summed up and contained: "He hath made a remembrance of His wonderful works, a merciful and gracious Lord; He hath given food to them that fear Him" (Psalm cx, 4-5). For whereas God has subordinated the whole supernatural order to the Incarnation of His Word, in virtue whereof salvation has been restored to the human race, according to those words of the Apostle; "He hath purposed...to re-establish all things in Christ, that are in heaven and on earth, in Him" (Eph. i., 9-10), the Eucharist, according to the testimony of the holy Fathers, should be regarded as in a manner a continuation and extension of the Incarnation. For in and by it the substance of the incarnate Word is united with individual men, and the supreme Sacrifice offered on Calvary is in a wondrous manner renewed, as was signified beforehand by Malachy in the words: "In every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to My name a pure oblation" (Mal. i., 11). And this miracle, itself the very greatest of its kind, is accompanied by innumerable other miracles; for here all the laws of nature are suspended; the whole substance of the bread and wine are changed into the Body and the Blood; the species of bread and wine are sustained by the divine power without the support of any underlying substance; the Body of Christ is present in many places at the same time, that is to say, wherever the Sacrament is consecrated. And in order that human reason may the more willingly pay its homage to this great mystery, there have not been wanting, as an aid to faith, certain prodigies wrought in His honour, both in ancient times and in our own, of which in more than one place there exist public and notable records and memorials. It is plain that by this Sacrament faith is fed, in it the mind finds its nourishment, the objections of rationalists are brought to naught, and abundant light is thrown on the supernatural order.

But that decay of faith in divine things of which We have spoken is the effect not only of pride, but also of moral corruption. For if it is true that a strict morality improves the quickness of man's intellectual powers, and if on the other hand, as the maxims of pagan philosophy and the admonitions of divine wisdom combine to teach us, the keenness of the mind is blunted by bodily pleasures, how much more, in the region of revealed truths, do these same pleasures obscure the light of faith, or even, by the just judgment of God, entirely extinguish it. For these pleasures at the present day an insatiable appetite rages, infecting all classes as with an infectious disease, even from tender years. Yet even for so terrible an evil there is a remedy close at hand in the divine Eucharist. For in the first place it puts a check on lust by increasing charity, according to the words of St. Augustine, who says, speaking of charity, "As it grows, lust diminishes; when it reaches perfection, lust is no more" (De diversis quaestionibus, Ixxxiii., q. 36). Moreover the most chaste flesh of Jesus keeps down the rebellion of our flesh, as St. Cyril of Alexandria taught, "For Christ abiding in us lulls to sleep the law of the flesh which rages in our members" (Lib. iv., c. ii., in Joan., vi., 57). Then too the special and most pleasant fruit of the Eucharist is that which is signified in the words of the prophet: "What is the good thing of Him," that is, of Christ, "and what is His beautiful thing, but the corn of the elect and the wine that engendereth virgins" (Zach. ix., 17), producing, in other words, that flower and fruitage of a strong and constant purpose of virginity which, even in an age enervated by luxury, is daily multiplied and spread abroad in the Catholic Church, with those advantages to religion and to human society, wherever it is found, which are plain to see.

To this it must be added that by this same Sacrament our hope of everlasting blessedness, based on our trust in the divine assistance, is wonderfully strengthened. For the edge of that longing for happiness which is so deeply rooted in the hearts of all men from their birth is whetted even more and more by the experience of the deceitfulness of earthly goods, by the unjust violence of wicked men, and by all those other afflictions to which mind and body are subject. Now the venerable Sacrament of the Eucharist is both the source and the pledge of blessedness and of glory, and this, not for the soul alone, but for the body also. For it enriches the soul with an abundance of heavenly blessings, and fills it with a sweet joy which far surpasses man's hope and expectations; it sustains him in adversity, strengthens him in the spiritual combat, preserves him for life everlasting, and as a special provision for the journey accompanies him thither. And in the frail and perishable body that divine Host, which is the immortal Body of Christ, implants a principle of resurrection, a seed of immortality, which one day must germinate. That to this source man's soul and body will be indebted for both these boons has been the constant teaching of the Church, which has dutifully reaffirmed the affirmation of Christ: "He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day" (St. John vi., 55).

 

Holiness of life is a prerequisite to good stewardship of any unit of society, starting, of course, with our own families. No one reading this article can claim with a straight face that those in the civil government or in the corporate offices of banks and brokerage houses and the all-powerful Federal Reserve System are attempting to aspire to sanctity as a faithful member of the Catholic Church who is conscious of his need to make reparation for his own sins and those of the whole world by praying as many Rosaries as possible each day.

Yes, my friends, it is the Rosary that is, after Holy Mass and Eucharistic piety, the chief means by which the evils of the present day will be retarded and the seeds planted for the Triumph of Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. Instead of babbling on about one naturalistic "solution" after another as more and more funny money is printed to indenture future and current citizens before some catastrophic war is deemed necessary as the ultimate "economic stimulus" and population control measure, those who hold office in the civil state and who control the levers of corporations and financial institutions ought to be promoting Our Lady's Holy Rosary, which speaks more powerfully of our total reliance upon Christ the King and upon her, Our Immaculate Queen, than all of the meaningless verbiage that passes out like so much gas from the mouth and is then lost the fogs of the minds of men.

We need an end to political and economic systems based on the falsehoods of Protestantism and naturalism. We need the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ the King, praying as many Rosaries as possible each day to plant a few seeds for this restoration.

Some might ask what should be done in this time of economic dislocation. I have no answer to such a question. I do know, however, that it would be very helpful to calm the wrath of God to stop promoting sin under cover of law and in every aspect of popular culture, to stop killing the innocent preborn by chemical and surgical means, to stop preventing the conception of children by the means of various pills and devices and surgical procedures that deny the Sovereignty of God over the sanctity and fecundity of marriage, to stop taking the private property of the people to fund statist programs that promote these and many other evils, including the evil of usury that is the foundation of the Protestant/Judeo-Masonic economic ethos. Yes, it would be a useful thing to stop the promotion of sin and to start making reparation for our sins as a nation whose patroness is, after all, the Immaculate Conception herself.

Pope Leo XIII, writing in Laetitiae Sanctae, September 8, 1893, noted:

The third evil for which a remedy is needed is one which is chiefly characteristic of the times in which we live. Men in former ages, although they loved the world, and loved it far too well, did not usually aggravate their sinful attachment to the things of earth by a contempt of the things of heaven. Even the right-thinking portion of the pagan world recognized that this life was not a home but a dwelling-place, not our destination, but a stage in the journey. But men of our day, albeit they have had the advantages of Christian instruction, pursue the false goods of this world in such wise that the thought of their true Fatherland of enduring happiness is not only set aside, but, to their shame be it said, banished and entirely erased from their memory, notwithstanding the warning of St. Paul, "We have not here a lasting city, but we seek one which is to come" (Heb. xiii., 4).

When We seek out the causes of this forgetfulness, We are met in the first place by the fact that many allow themselves to believe that the thought of a future life goes in some way to sap the love of our country, and thus militates against the prosperity of the commonwealth. No illusion could be more foolish or hateful. Our future hope is not of a kind which so monopolizes the minds of men as to withdraw their attention from the interests of this life. Christ commands us, it is true, to seek the Kingdom of God, and in the first place, but not in such a manner as to neglect all things else. For, the use of the goods of the present life, and the righteous enjoyment which they furnish, may serve both to strengthen virtue and to reward it. The splendor and beauty of our earthly habitation, by which human society is ennobled, may mirror the splendor and beauty of our dwelling which is above. Therein we see nothing that is not worthy of the reason of man and of the wisdom of God. For the same God who is the Author of Nature is the Author of Grace, and He willed not that one should collide or conflict with the other, but that they should act in friendly alliance, so that under the leadership of both we may the more easily arrive at that immortal happiness for which we mortal men were created.

But men of carnal mind, who love nothing but themselves, allow their thoughts to grovel upon things of earth until they are unable to lift them to that which is higher. For, far from using the goods of time as a help towards securing those which are eternal, they lose sight altogether of the world which is to come, and sink to the lowest depths of degradation. We may doubt if God could inflict upon man a more terrible punishment than to allow him to waste his whole life in the pursuit of earthly pleasures, and in forgetfulness of the happiness which alone lasts for ever.

It is from this danger that they will be happily rescued, who, in the pious practice of the Rosary, are wont, by frequent and fervent prayer, to keep before their minds the glorious mysteries. These mysteries are the means by which in the soul of a Christian a most clear light is shed upon the good things, hidden to sense, but visible to faith, "which God has prepared for those who love Him." From them we learn that death is not an annihilation which ends all things, but merely a migration and passage from life to life. By them we are taught that the path to Heaven lies open to all men, and as we behold Christ ascending thither, we recall the sweet words of His promise, "I go to prepare a place for you." By them we are reminded that a time will come when "God will wipe away every tear from our eyes," and that "neither mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow, shall be any more," and that "We shall be always with the Lord," and "like to the Lord, for we shall see Him as He is," and "drink of the torrent of His delight," as "fellow-citizens of the saints," in the blessed companionship of our glorious Queen and Mother. Dwelling upon such a prospect, our hearts are kindled with desire, and we exclaim, in the words of a great saint, "How vile grows the earth when I look up to heaven!" Then, too, shall we feel the solace of the assurance "that which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory" (2 Cor. iv., 17).

Here alone we discover the true relation between time and eternity, between our life on earth and our life in heaven; and it is thus alone that are formed strong and noble characters. When such characters can be counted in large numbers, the dignity and well-being of society are assured. All that is beautiful, good, and true will flourish in the measure of its conformity to Him who is of all beauty, goodness, and truth the first Principle and the Eternal Source.

 

I am neither a prophet nor a prognosticator of future events. I do know, however, that men and their nations are lost without the Catholic Faith and that no amount of "stimulus" plans proposed by naturalists will save a nation from the catastrophe it deserves for its promotion of the very thing--sin--that caused Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to suffer in His Sacred Humanity during His Passion and Death and that thrust those Seven Swords of Sorrow into the Immaculate Heart of His Most Blessed Mother. The future is not bright for the United States of America and the rest of the "developed" world. We must make sure that the future of eternity is bring for us by redoubling our efforts to use the weapon of the Most Holy Rosary to combat the forces of the world, the flesh and the devil in our own lives so that we might be able to plant a few seeds for the glorious day when all men and all women everywhere will exclaim:

 

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon.

Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us!

 

Saint Joseph, Patron of Departing Souls, 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.

The Holy Seven Founders of the Order of Servites, pray for us.

Saint Bernadette Soubirous, priez pour nous!

See also: A Litany of Saints

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?