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                 June 9, 2007

A Creature of Their Own Making

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Lightning struck twice outside of the facility at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, where the ten candidates currently vying for the 2008 Republican Party presidential nomination were debating on Tuesday, June 5, 2007. The twin lightning strikes occurred as the Catholic pro-abortion, pro-perversity former Mayor of the City of New York, Rudolph William Giuliani, was attempting to answer a question about an article written by Thomas Tobin, the conciliar bishop of Providence, Rhode Island, who quite rightly compared Giuliani's stance in support of the legal "right" of mothers to "choose" to kill their innocent preborn children to Pontius Pilate's diffidence to Our Lord's innocence. Pilate, as we know, preferred to wash his hands and say, "I am innocent of the blood of this just man" (Mt. 27: 24) as Our Lord was condemned to death by the crowd, bowing to the "will of the majority." if you will.

This is exactly what Giuliani has been doing since the time he took $25,000 from Liberal Party of the State of New York Chairman Raymond Harding in 1989 and secured that party's nomination for Mayor of the City of New York in what would be his general election race against then City of New York City Clerk David N. Dinkins, who defeated three-term incumbent Mayor Edward Irving Koch in the Democrat Party primary that year. Giuliani has been firmly in the pro-abortion camp since that time. "Bishop" Tobin's condemnation of Giuliani's betrayal of Catholic truth was courageous and commendable. Unfortunately, however, "Bishop" Tobin does not realize that Rudolph Giuliani--and the long, long list of Catholics in public life who belong to both major political parties in the United States of America--is the creature of the American bishops' own making. These pro-abortion Catholics in public life are also the creature of conciliarism's refusal to seek with urgency the conversion of all men and all nations to the true Faith, preferring to believe that Catholics can "compete" in a pluralistic "marketplace of ideas" without insisting on a return to a world where each individual and each nation recognizes and is submissive to the authority of the Catholic Church in all that pertains to the eternal good of the souls for whom Our Blessed Lord and Saviour shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday.

Indeed, "Bishop" Tobin, who is not a real bishop at all, of course, wrote a column in the Diocese of Youngstown (Ohio) newspaper three years ago in which he discussed how he had been taught in Catholic school as a child to believe that it was necessary to convert people to the Catholic Faith in order for them to be saved. He wrote in his column, which was shown to us by some people in the Diocese of Youngstown at the time, that the "Second" Vatican Council had changed all that, helping us to "recognize" the "good" in other religions. This is the sort of confusion bred by conciliarism, which is a species of Modernism. One who is blinded by the Modernist lie of pluralism and the separation of Church and State will be unable to see and to admit the plain truth that the public promotion of sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance are the direct and inevitable result of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King wrought by the naturalistic forces of the so-called "Renaissance" and the Protestant Revolt and the rise of Freemasonry and all of the subsequent, inter-related naturalist, secular, religiously indifferentist (or religiously hostile) political ideologies, each of which is but a variation of the same naturalist theme, have been mutating for the better part of three hundred fifty years. A conciliarist such as Thomas Tobin (or the late John "Cardinal" O'Connor or the late Karol Wojtyla) can see well enough that baby-killing is wrong and ought to be condemned. He cannot see or admit, however, that the one and only antidote to the restoration of full legal protection to all innocent human life from the first moment of fertilization through all subsequent stages is the Catholicization of each and every nation.

Thus it is, ladies and gentlemen, that the efforts of the first Catholic bishop in the United States of America. John Carroll, to accommodate to the Faith as much as possible to the "spirit and the letter" of the Constitution of the United States of America were bound to lead to a situation where Catholics viewed the Church through the lens of pluralism and egalitarianism and majoritarianism and religious indifferentism and naturalism rather than viewing the world through the eyes of the true Faith. A land premised upon the belief that no one religion is true and that every religion (or no religion at all) contains the possibility of being true winds up convincing even Catholics that there is no necessity of being confessionally Catholic in public, that it is "good enough" to seek "common ground" with others without being professedly Catholic. This fundamentally false belief is a cornerstone of conciliarism's "healthy secularity" and its support for the heresy of "religious liberty," which contends that false religions have the civil right to propagate themselves in society and that their false beliefs can "contribute" to the betterment of that society.

Pope Leo XIII, writing in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885, explained that a widespread belief in religious indifferentism (that one religion--or no religion at all--is as good as another, that people can be "good" and "virtuous" merely on the natural level without any supernatural helps, that the civil state has no obligation to recognize the Catholic Church as the one and only true religion and then to be humbly and docilely submissive to her in all that pertains to the eternal good of souls) results inevitably in atheism being seen, at least in the practical order of things, as the "lowest common denominator" upon which to base public policy:

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.

 

Indeed, the American "way" of "freedom of speech" and "freedom of press" proselytizes people to such an extent that most citizens, including most Catholics, think nothing of putting into question the Received Teaching of Our Lord, including the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law that have been entrusted by Our Lord exclusively to the Catholic Church for their eternal safekeeping and infallible explication until He comes in glory to judge the Living and the Dead on the Last Day. It is worthwhile quoting, yes, once again, from Pope Gregory XVI's Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832, so as to provide a crystal clear contrast between the blithe Americanist acceptance of pluralism and naturalism and religious indifferentism with the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church, a teaching that is simply a proclamation of what Our Lord has entrusted to her and is irreformable given His own immutability:

Now We consider another abundant source of the evils with which the Church is afflicted at present: indifferentism. This perverse opinion is spread on all sides by the fraud of the wicked who claim that it is possible to obtain the eternal salvation of the soul by the profession of any kind of religion, as long as morality is maintained. Surely, in so clear a matter, you will drive this deadly error far from the people committed to your care. With the admonition of the apostle that "there is one God, one faith, one baptism" may those fear who contrive the notion that the safe harbor of salvation is open to persons of any religion whatever. They should consider the testimony of Christ Himself that "those who are not with Christ are against Him,"[17] and that they disperse unhappily who do not gather with Him. Therefore "without a doubt, they will perish forever, unless they hold the Catholic faith whole and inviolate." Let them hear Jerome who, while the Church was torn into three parts by schism, tells us that whenever someone tried to persuade him to join his group he always exclaimed: "He who is for the See of Peter is for me."A schismatic flatters himself falsely if he asserts that he, too, has been washed in the waters of regeneration. Indeed Augustine would reply to such a man: "The branch has the same form when it has been cut off from the vine; but of what profit for it is the form, if it does not live from the root?"

. 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.

Here We must include that harmful and never sufficiently denounced freedom to publish any writings whatever and disseminate them to the people, which some dare to demand and promote with so great a clamor. We are horrified to see what monstrous doctrines and prodigious errors are disseminated far and wide in countless books, pamphlets, and other writings which, though small in weight, are very great in malice. We are in tears at the abuse which proceeds from them over the face of the earth. Some are so carried away that they contentiously assert that the flock of errors arising from them is sufficiently compensated by the publication of some book which defends religion and truth. Every law condemns deliberately doing evil simply because there is some hope that good may result. Is there any sane man who would say poison ought to be distributed, sold publicly, stored, and even drunk because some antidote is available and those who use it may be snatched from death again and again?

The Church has always taken action to destroy the plague of bad books. This was true even in apostolic times for we read that the apostles themselves burned a large number of books. It may be enough to consult the laws of the fifth Council of the Lateran on this matter and the Constitution which Leo X published afterwards lest "that which has been discovered advantageous for the increase of the faith and the spread of useful arts be converted to the contrary use and work harm for the salvation of the faithful. This also was of great concern to the fathers of Trent, who applied a remedy against this great evil by publishing that wholesome decree concerning the Index of books which contain false doctrine."We must fight valiantly," Clement XIII says in an encyclical letter about the banning of bad books, "as much as the matter itself demands and must exterminate the deadly poison of so many books; for never will the material for error be withdrawn, unless the criminal sources of depravity perish in flames." Thus it is evident that this Holy See has always striven, throughout the ages, to condemn and to remove suspect and harmful books. The teaching of those who reject the censure of books as too heavy and onerous a burden causes immense harm to the Catholic people and to this See. They are even so depraved as to affirm that it is contrary to the principles of law, and they deny the Church the right to decree and to maintain it.

 

The authentic popes of the Catholic Church condemned the anti-Incarnational errors of Modernity in the world that mutated into the errors and heresies and apostasies of Modernism in the Church that were condemned in such a systematic way by Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907. Consider again Pope Gregory XVI's stirring denunciation of the very rationale used by conciliarists to justify the toleration, if not the promotion, of errors, both religious and civil, in public policy and popular culture:

Some are so carried away that they contentiously assert that the flock of errors arising from them is sufficiently compensated by the publication of some book which defends religion and truth. Every law condemns deliberately doing evil simply because there is some hope that good may result. Is there any sane man who would say poison ought to be distributed, sold publicly, stored, and even drunk because some antidote is available and those who use it may be snatched from death again and again?

 

John Carroll and his fellow Americanists believed that error had rights. All they wanted for the Catholic Church was the "freedom" to make her voice heard, nothing more. No effort was made to seek the conversion of this nation to the true Faith, resulting in the conversion of Catholics to the pluralism and religious indifferentism that stem from the anti-Incarnational basis of naturalism, which reduces the whole of human existence to the merely natural realm, contending that men can be "good" merely by their own unaided powers, propositions that were completely eviscerated by Pope Leo XIII in Testem Benevolentiae, January 22, 1899:

For one who examines the matter thoroughly, it is hard to see, if we do away with all external guidance as these innovators propose, what purpose the more abundant influence of the Holy Ghost, which they make so much of, is to serve. In point of fact, it is especially in the cultivation of virtue that the assistance of the Holy Ghost is indispensable; but those who affect these novelties extol beyond measure the natural virtues as more in accordance with the ways and requirements of the present day, and consider it an advantage to be richly endowed with them, because they make a man more ready and more strenuous in action.

It is hard to understand how those who are imbued with Christian principles can place the natural ahead of the supernatural virtues, and attribute to them greater power and fecundity. Is nature, then, with grace added to it, weaker than when left to its own strength? and have the eminently holy men whom the Church reveres and pays homage to, shown themselves weak and incompetent in the natural order, because they have excelled in Christian virtue?

Even if we admire the sometimes splendid acts of the natural virtues, how rare is the man who really possesses the habit of these natural virtues? Who is there who is not disturbed by passions, sometimes of a violent nature, for the persevering conquest of which, just as for the observance of the whole natural law, man must needs have some divine help? If we scrutinize more closely the particular acts We have above referred to, we shall discover that oftentimes they have more the appearance than the reality of virtue. But let us grant that these are real. If we do not wish to run in vain, if we do not wish to lose sight of the eternal blessedness to which God in His goodness has destined us, of what use are the natural virtues unless the gift and strength of divine grace be added? Aptly does St. Augustine say: 'Great power, and a rapid pace, but out of the course.' For as the nature of man, because of our common misfortune, fell into vice and dishonor, yet by the assistance of grace is lifted up and borne onward with new honor and strength; so also the virtues which are exercised not by the unaided powers of nature, but by the help of the same grace, are made productive of a supernatural beatitude and become solid and enduring.

 

We need more than natural virtue. Each human being on the face of this earth, including here in the semi-Pelagian (the heresy that contends we more or less stir up graces in ourselves) United States of America, needs the supernatural life of Sanctifying Grace to see the world clearly through the eyes of the true Faith and then to act in accordance with the precepts of that Holy Faith. There is no naturalistic, inter-denominational or non-denominational way to "view" the problems of the world and then to seek to ameliorate them by means of public policy proposals. The conversion of men and their nations to the true Faith is a necessity for the right ordering of men and their nations, something that numerous popes have written about, including Pope Saint Pius X in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906, an encyclical letter that "bishop" Thomas Tobin probably has never heard of, no less read, and would, most likely, dismiss as having been "superseded" by conciliarism's "healthy secularity" and the heresy of religious liberty:

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

 

Something that is "absolutely false" in 1906 cannot be absolutely true in 2007. This is a logical absurdity. Something that is absolutely false is absolutely false eternally. It cannot be "made" "true" at some later point, lest, of course, one is a disciple of Georg Hegel or Hans Urs von Balthasar and Teilhard de Chardin, each of which believed that ideas (or truth) evolved and that truth, especially in the case of Hegel and Von Balthasar, either gives rise to its own antithesis and/or can contradict itself. Such an insane, absurdity view of truth makes a mockery of the immutability of God and thus produces, quite inevitably, the situation where Catholics in public life, Rudolph William Giuliani being one among them, can thumb their noses in the face of the conciliarists when they attempt to defend moral truths. A defense of moral truth loses all of its force when one believes that the perennial truths of the Faith are subject to change and "reinterpretation." If it is possible for the conciliarists to reject past papal pronouncements reiterating the consistent teaching of the Catholic Church on the necessity of the civil state's recognizing her as the true religion (and to, at least minimally, seek the proper organization of the state under right principles if these do not obtain in a given place at a given time) why is it not possible for Catholics in public life to reject the binding precepts of the moral law?

Conciliarists fail to realize that their opposition to certain moral evils is vitiated by the basic premises of conciliarism concerning the mutable nature of doctrinal truth, which involves, quite importantly, a rejection of the very means by which men and nations can be ordered properly, that is by seeking with urgency the conversion of all men and all nations to the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation. No false religion, including Protestantism, is the foundation of personal or social order. No form of naturalistic irreligion is the foundation of personal or social order. Catholicism alone is the means by which men may know the truths contained in the Deposit of Faith and thus seek, by cooperating with the graces won for us on Calvary by the shedding of the Most Precious Blood of the Divine Redeemer and that flow into their hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces, to order their societies in light of the pursuit of their Last End, as Pope Saint Pius X explained in Vehementer Nos.

No one is free to reject the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church. Anyone who does so is a dissenter from the Catholic Faith. Pope Pius XI pointed this out in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922:

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

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

 

Over and above the fact that conciliarists have fallen from the Faith because of their belief in condemned propositions, as Pope Leo XIII explained in Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896, the conciliarists simply have lost their moral authority to remonstrate with anyone given their own rebellion against the perennial truths of the Catholic Faith. They are even at war with each other. After all, Rudolph William Giuliani has been enabled, at least in a de facto way, by the praise (and sometimes by the silence) of the late John "Cardinal" O'Connor and the very much alive Edward "Cardinal" Egan. Giuliani also has been enabled by his lifetime friend, Monsignor Alan Placa, a priest of the Diocese of Rockville Center, who has never, as far as can be determined, has uttered a word of criticism about Giuliani's public support for abortion and perversity under cover of law. Indeed, Placa was, at least for a time, an employee of Giuliani Partners. Placa took this job after serving as the Diocese of Rockville Centre's point man to squash publicity about allegations made against the diocese's priests. "Bishop" Tobin can fire away at Giuliani without recognizing that he, Giuliani, is a creature of Americanism and conciliarism. Giuliani can always take refuge in the comfort given him by others, including his boyhood friend, Alan Placa.

It has even been thus in the realm of conciliarism's precursor and prototype, the pluralist world of Americanism.

John Carroll was a cheerleader for the religiously indifferentist Constitution of the United States of America, whose First Amendment would pave the way to Dignitatis Humanae, the "Second" Vatican Councils document on "religious liberty. John Ireland, the longtime Americanist archbishop of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, enabled all of the myths of Americanism, including the "value" of public "education."

James Gibbons, the longtime Americanist archbishop of Baltimore, refused to listen to the wisdom contained in Pope Leo XIII's words to him in Testem Benevolentiae, going on to serve as the enabler of the the anti-Catholic Woodrow Wilson's madness of the American entry into World War I in 1917.

Francis Spellman, along with other American bishops, served as Franklin Delano Roosevelt's personal errand boy and helped to defeat candidates who were opposed to population control policies in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

Richard Cushing enabled the Kennedys at every turn, deciding in 1965 to tell legislators in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that they were under no obligation to "impose" the Church's "opinion" on birth control. (Each of these matters has been dealt with at length in different articles on this site)

And who can count the number of conciliar "bishops" who have enabled the likes of Mario Cuomo and Nancy Pelosi and Geraldine Ferraro and Joseph Biden and Tom Ridge and Richard M. Daley and Arnold Schwarzenegger, et al.?

A blithe acceptance of the false premises of the American founding (that men do not absolutely to be submissive to the Catholic Church, both individually and socially, in all that pertains to the good of souls) has resulted in a worldwide apostasy of epic proportions, convincing most Catholics that "my opinion" is as good as God's eternal truths. When you think about it, however, conciliarism itself teaches that its novelties are as good as the dogmatic condemnations of those very novelties.Why should Catholics in public life take conciliarists seriously when they refuse to take the entirety God's perennial, immutable truths seriously?

We must, as always, see beyond the "sound bites" of any given moment. Sound bites make for good theater. They make a very bad foundation for truly understanding the state of the world as it is. The state of the world depends upon the state of souls. It is thus important for each man and for each nation to be confessionally Catholics. The world rejects this. So does conciliarism, which is a de facto part of the One World Church prophesied by Pope Saint Pius X in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910:

We fear that worse is to come: the end result of this developing promiscuousness, the beneficiary of this cosmopolitan social action, can only be a Democracy which will be neither Catholic, nor Protestant, nor Jewish. It will be a religion (for Sillonism, so the leaders have said, is a religion) more universal than the Catholic Church, uniting all men become brothers and comrades at last in the "Kingdom of God". - "We do not work for the Church, we work for mankind."

And now, overwhelmed with the deepest sadness, We ask Ourselves, Venerable Brethren, what has become of the Catholicism of the Sillon? Alas! this organization which formerly afforded such promising expectations, this limpid and impetuous stream, has been harnessed in its course by the modern enemies of the Church, and is now no more than a miserable affluent of the great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world (if such a Church could overcome) the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of all those who toil and suffer.

Conciliarism is incapable of calling to correction those who support moral evils because it is steeped in doctrinal evils. Confusion of the mind is the result. Efforts to achieve some good are bound to be thwarted by the false Modernist premises upon whose those efforts are based. Pope Saint Pius X pointed this out in Pascendi Dominci Gregis:

Although they express their astonishment that We should number them amongst the enemies of the Church, no one will be reasonably surprised that We should do so, if, leaving out of account the internal disposition of the soul, of which God alone is the Judge, he considers their tenets, their manner of speech, and their action. Nor indeed would he be wrong in regarding them as the most pernicious of all the adversaries of the Church. For, as We have said, they put into operation their designs for her undoing, not from without but from within.

Hence, the danger is present almost in the very veins and heart of the Church, whose injury is the more certain from the very fact that their knowledge of her is more intimate. Moreover, they lay the ax not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that is, to the faith and its deepest fibers. And once having struck at this root of immortality, they proceed to diffuse poison through the whole tree, so that there is no part of Catholic truth which they leave untouched, none that they do not strive to corrupt. Further, none is more skillful, none more astute than they, in the employment of a thousand noxious devices; for they play the double part of rationalist and Catholic, and this so craftily that they easily lead the unwary into error; and as audacity is their chief characteristic, there is no conclusion of any kind from which they shrink or which they do not thrust forward with pertinacity and assurance To this must be added the fact, which indeed is well calculated to deceive souls, that they lead a life of the greatest activity, of assiduous and ardent application to every branch of learning, and that they possess, as a rule, a reputation for irreproachable morality. Finally, there is the fact which is all hut fatal to the hope of cure that their very doctrines have given such a bent to their minds, that they disdain all authority and brook no restraint; and relying upon a false conscience, they attempt to ascribe to a love of truth that which is in reality the result of pride and obstinacy.

Once indeed We had hopes of recalling them to a better mind, and to this end We first of all treated them with kindness as Our children, then with severity; and at last We have had recourse, though with great reluctance, to public reproof. It is known to you, Venerable Brethren, how unavailing have been Our efforts. For a moment they have bowed their head, only to lift it more arrogantly than before. If it were a matter which concerned them alone, We might perhaps have overlooked it; but the security of the Catholic name is at stake. Wherefore We must interrupt a silence which it would be criminal to prolong, that We may point out to the whole Church, as they really are, men who are badly disguised.. . .

It remains for Us now to say a few words about the Modernist as reformer. From all that has preceded, it is abundantly clear how great and how eager is the passion of such men for innovation. In all Catholicism there is absolutely nothing on which it does not fasten. They wish philosophy to be reformed, especially in the ecclesiastical seminaries. They wish the scholastic philosophy to be relegated to the history of philosophy and to be classed among absolute systems, and the young men to be taught modern philosophy which alone is true and suited to the times in which we live. They desire the reform of theology: rational theology is to have modern philosophy for its foundation, and positive theology is to be founded on the history of dogma. As for history, it must be written and taught only according to their methods and modern principles. Dogmas and their evolution, they affirm, are to be harmonized with science and history. In the Catechism no dogmas are to be inserted except those that have been reformed and are within the capacity of the people. Regarding worship, they say, the number of external devotions is to he reduced, and steps must be taken to prevent their further increase, though, indeed, some of the admirers of symbolism are disposed to be more indulgent on this head. They cry out that ecclesiastical government requires to be reformed in all its branches, but especially in its disciplinary and dogmatic departments They insist that both outwardly and inwardly it must be brought into harmony with the modern conscience which now wholly tends towards democracy; a share in ecclesiastical government should therefore be given to the lower ranks of the clergy and even to the laity and authority which is too much concentrated should be decentralized The Roman Congregations and especially the index and the Holy Office, must be likewise modified The ecclesiastical authority must alter its line of conduct in the social and political world; while keeping outside political organizations it must adapt itself to them in order to penetrate them with its spirit. With regard to morals, they adopt the principle of the Americanists, that the active virtues are more important than the passive, and are to be more encouraged in practice. They ask that the clergy should return to their primitive humility and poverty, and that in their ideas and action they should admit the principles of Modernism; and there are some who, gladly listening to the teaching of their Protestant masters, would desire the suppression of the celibacy of the clergy. What is there left in the Church which is not to be reformed by them and according to their principles?

It may, perhaps, seem to some, Venerable Brethren, that We have dealt at too great length on this exposition of the doctrines of the Modernists. But it was necessary that We should do so, both in order to meet their customary charge that We do not understand their ideas, and to show that their system does not consist in scattered and unconnected theories, but, as it were, in a closely connected whole, so that it is not possible to admit one without admitting all. For this reason, too, We have had to give to this exposition a somewhat didactic form, and not to shrink from employing certain unwonted terms which the Modernists have brought into use. And now with Our eyes fixed upon the whole system, no one will be surprised that We should define it to be the synthesis of all heresies. Undoubtedly, were anyone to attempt the task of collecting together all the errors that have been broached against the faith and to concentrate into one the sap and substance of them all, he could not succeed in doing so better than the Modernists have done. Nay, they have gone farther than this, for, as We have already intimated, their system means the destruction not of the Catholic religion alone, but of all religion. Hence the rationalists are not wanting in their applause, and the most frank and sincere among them congratulate themselves on having found in the Modernists the most valuable of all allies.

 

And what did Pope Leo XIII have to say about those who believe in just one proposition condemned by the Church? To Satis Cognitum yet again:

The Church, founded on these principles and mindful of her office, has done nothing with greater zeal and endeavour than she has displayed in guarding the integrity of the faith. Hence she regarded as rebels and expelled from the ranks of her children all who held beliefs on any point of doctrine different from her own. The Arians, the Montanists, the Novatians, the Quartodecimans, the Eutychians, did not certainly reject all Catholic doctrine: they abandoned only a certain portion of it. Still who does not know that they were declared heretics and banished from the bosom of the Church? In like manner were condemned all authors of heretical tenets who followed them in subsequent ages. "There can be nothing more dangerous than those heretics who admit nearly the whole cycle of doctrine, and yet by one word, as with a drop of poison, infect the real and simple faith taught by our Lord and handed down by Apostolic tradition" (Auctor Tract. de Fide Orthodoxa contra Arianos).

The practice of the Church has always been the same, as is shown by the unanimous teaching of the Fathers, who were wont to hold as outside Catholic communion, and alien to the Church, whoever would recede in the least degree from any point of doctrine proposed by her authoritative Magisterium. Epiphanius, Augustine, Theodore :, drew up a long list of the heresies of their times. St. Augustine notes that other heresies may spring up, to a single one of which, should any one give his assent, he is by the very fact cut off from Catholic unity. "No one who merely disbelieves in all (these heresies) can for that reason regard himself as a Catholic or call himself one. For there may be or may arise some other heresies, which are not set out in this work of ours, and, if any one holds to one single one of these he is not a Catholic" (S. Augustinus, De Haeresibus, n. 88).

 

Rudolph William Giuliani supports the slicing and dicing of children under cover of law. Thomas Tobin believes in ecumenism and religious liberty and all of the other condemned propositions that are part and parcel of conciliarism. Neither is a sure guide to follow. We must follow those shepherds who adhere to the totality of the Catholic Faith without making any concessions to conciliarism or to the legitimacy of those who, because they have given their assent to these and other heresies, "by the very fact cut" themselves "off from Catholic unity." While we pray for them with fervor, we must also recognize that efforts to oppose error with error are doomed. Such is the devil's cleverly concocted plans of naturalism and of conciliarism's "reconciliation" with naturalist principles.

Pope Leo XIII, writing in Custodi Di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892, explained that there can be no "reconciliation" with the principles of Belial:

Everyone should avoid familiarity or friendship with anyone suspected of belonging to masonry or to affiliated groups. Know them by their fruits and avoid them. Every familiarity should be avoided, not only with those impious libertines who openly promote the character of the sect, but also with those who hide under the mask of universal tolerance, respect for all religions, and the craving to reconcile the maxims of the Gospel with those of the revolution. These men seek to reconcile Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the state without God

 

In the midst of conciliarist efforts to fight naturalism with naturalism, we must intensify our prayer before the Blessed Sacrament and to the Mother of God, especially by means of her Most Holy Rosary. We must console the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, especially in these days before the Feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus next Friday, June 15, 2007, by offering all of our prayers, penances, sacrifices, mortifications, humiliations and daily actions to It through the Most Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary as her consecrated slaves. The seeds we plant by the grace of God may not bear fruit in our lifetimes. There will come a day, however, when conciliarism will be vanquished, the day when the forces of naturalism will be defeated, the day when all men and all nations, including the United States of America, will participated in the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, an essential component part of which will be the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ the King.

Our cause is not the "conservative" cause of inter-denominationalism and/or naturalism. Our cause is not the cause of American nationalism. Our cause is the Catholic cause. None other. A world fashioned according to the standard of the Holy Cross, at which stood Our Lady so valiantly as she watched in horror as each one of our own sins put her Divine Son to death so cruelly, will produce men and women of heroic sanctity, men and women who strive to be here below in this passing, mortal vale of tears what they need to be in order to be citizens of Heaven for all eternity in the Beatific Vision of Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

Viva Cristo Rey!

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.

 

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint Norbert, pray for us.

Saint Boniface, pray for us.

Saint Joan of Arc, pray for us.

Saint Angela Merici, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Philip Neri, pray for us.

Saint Augustine of Canterbury, pray for us.

Saint Athanasius, pray for us.

Saints Monica, pray for us.

Saint Jude, pray for us.

Saint John the Beloved, pray for us.

Saint Francis Solano, pray for us.

Saint John Bosco, pray for us.

Saint Dominic Savio, pray for us.

Saint  Scholastica, pray for us.

Saint Benedict, pray for us.

Saint Anthony of Padua, pray for us.

Saint Antony of the Desert, pray for us.

Saint Francis of Assisi, pray for us.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.

Saint Bonaventure, pray for us.

Saint Augustine, pray for us.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, pray for us.

Saint Francis Xavier, pray for us.

Saint Peter Damian, pray for us.

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, pray for us.

Saint Lucy, pray for us.

Saint Monica, pray for us.

Saint Agatha, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Saint Cecilia, pray for us.

Saint John Mary Vianney, pray for us.

Saint Vincent de Paul, pray for us.

Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.

Saint Athanasius, pray for us.

Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, pray for us.

Saint Isaac Jogues, pray for us.

Saint Rene Goupil, pray for us.

Saint John Lalonde, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel Lalemont, pray for us.

Saint Noel Chabanel, pray for us.

Saint Charles Garnier, pray for us.

Saint Anthony Daniel, pray for us.

Saint John DeBrebeuf, pray for us.

Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, pray for us.

Saint Dominic, pray for us.

Saint Hyacinth, pray for us.

Saint Basil, pray for us.

Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.

Saint Sebastian, pray for us.

Saint Tarcisius, pray for us.

Saint Bridget of Sweden, pray for us.

Saint Gerard Majella, pray for us.

Saint John of the Cross, pray for us.

Saint Teresa of Avila, pray for us.

Saint Bernadette Soubirous, pray for us.

Saint Genevieve, pray for us.

Saint Vincent de Paul, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius X, pray for us

Pope Saint Pius V, pray for us.

Saint Rita of Cascia, pray for us.

Saint Louis de Montfort, pray for us.

Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich, pray for us.

Venerable Pauline Jaricot, pray for us.

Father Miguel Augustin Pro, pray for us.

Francisco Marto, pray for us.

Jacinta Marto, pray for us.

Juan Diego, pray for us.

 

The Longer Version of the Saint Michael the Archangel Prayer, composed by Pope Leo XIII, 1888

O glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Prince of the heavenly host, be our defense in the terrible warfare which we carry on against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, spirits of evil.  Come to the aid of man, whom God created immortal, made in His own image and likeness, and redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the devil.  Fight this day the battle of our Lord, together with  the holy angels, as already thou hast fought the leader of the proud angels, Lucifer, and his apostate host, who were powerless to resist thee, nor was there place for them any longer in heaven.  That cruel, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil or Satan who seduces the whole world, was cast into the abyss with his angels.  Behold this primeval enemy and slayer of men has taken courage.  Transformed into an angel of light, he wanders about with all the multitude of wicked spirits, invading the earth in order to blot out the Name of God and of His Christ, to seize upon, slay, and cast into eternal perdition, souls destined for the crown of eternal glory.  That wicked dragon pours out. as a most impure flood, the venom of his malice on men of depraved mind and corrupt heart, the spirit of lying, of impiety, of blasphemy, and the pestilent breath of impurity, and of every vice and iniquity.  These most crafty enemies have filled and inebriated with gall and bitterness the Church, the spouse of the Immaculate Lamb, and have laid impious hands on Her most sacred possessions. In the Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck the sheep may be scattered.  Arise then, O invincible Prince, bring help against the attacks of the lost spirits to the people of God, and give them the victory.  They venerate thee as their protector and patron; in thee holy Church glories as her defense against the malicious powers of hell; to thee has God entrusted the souls of men to be established in heavenly beatitude.  Oh, pray to the God of peace that He may put Satan under our feet, so far conquered that he may no longer be able to hold men in captivity and harm the Church.  Offer our prayers in the sight of the Most High, so that they may quickly conciliate the mercies of the Lord; and beating down the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, do thou again make him captive in the abyss, that he may no longer seduce the nations.  Amen.

Verse: Behold the Cross of the Lord; be scattered ye hostile powers.

Response: The Lion of the Tribe of Juda has conquered the root of David.

Verse: Let Thy mercies be upon us, O Lord.

Response: As we have hoped in Thee.

Verse: O Lord hear my prayer.

Response: And let my cry come unto Thee.

Verse: Let us pray.  O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we call upon Thy holy Name, and as suppliants, we implore Thy clemency, that by the intercession of Mary, ever Virgin, immaculate and our Mother, and of the glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Thou wouldst deign to help us against Satan and all other unclean spirits, who wander about the world for the injury of the human race and the ruin of our souls. 

Response:  Amen.  

 





© Copyright 2007, Thomas A. Droleskey. All rights reserved.