Par for the Course in the Land of Pluralism: A Serial Blasphemer

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Apologists for the English-Dutch Protestant version of "America" that is the United States of America endlessly extol the "virtues" of living in a "pluralist" society, one in which no particular religion or "opinion" predominates and one in which people are "free" to "think" for themselves as they pursue the American "dream" of material well-being. The blindness caused by this religious indifferentism and naturalism results in the passive acceptance of actual blasphemies against Our Lord and Our Lady and Holy Mother Church as just part of the "freedoms" (speech and press) "guaranteed" by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. Even many believing Catholics just shrug their shoulders and sigh a diffident "ho-hum" when it is pointed out even the phrase "Oh, God!" is blasphemous and that it is indeed the goal of anti-Catholic screenwriters and producers to work this into so-called television "programming" and motion picture productions so as to desensitize everyone, especially Catholics, about the binding precepts of the Second Commandment. This is to say nothing, of course, about overt blasphemies which feature expressions of the Holy Name of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour and/or associate the Holy Name of God with a curse word. Most Catholics just go about their business of making money and/or indulging in a variety of "bread and circuses" without giving a moment's thought

Living in a land of pluralism is deadly for a Catholic's sensus Catholicus, especially when the "normative" "Mass" that Catholics in the conciliar structures "experience" is founded in the belief that it is "necessary" to "inculturate" the "values" of various "peoples" into the liturgy so as to make it "relevant" to the "needs" of the mythical entity known as "modern man." This makes it very difficult for the average Catholic to understand that the true Mass of the Roman Rite communicates the immutability of God and His transcendence over time and space, re-presenting the Sacrifice of the Cross in an unbloody manner that is not tied to any one time or place but transports us at one and the same time back to Calvary and ahead to the glories of Heaven. Indeed, as I noted in Easy for Blasphemers to Endorse Blasphemy and Conciliarism's Blindness Inducing Acid four months ago, the Novus Ordo Missae desensitizes Catholics to blasphemy as it blasphemes God by not rendering unto Him the worship that is His due and by omitting references to the miracles He wrought through the centuries at the hands of canonized saints and by including such blasphemies as "Jewish table prayers" in the place of the Offertory, among many other things. Catholics who are fed a steady diet of this over the years will think of nothing of "commonly accepted" blasphemies, especially when they are uttered by "funny" men and women who are simply exercising their "free speech" rights as citizens of the United States of America.

Thus we have the strange situation of conciliar Catholics using the self-made crisis that radio talk show host Don Imus has plunged himself into at the present time to compare the way he is being treated for his racially offensive comments to the way in which those who attack the Catholic Faith are treated as heroes in the mainstream media who are never forced to pay any penalty for their anti-Catholicism. Dr. William Donohue, the President of Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, has, for example, denounced Imus's racially offensive comments that have caused such a firestorm but noted the "free pass" that has been given to those who have insulted Catholics and mocked the Faith. This is all very well and good. There is certainly a "double-standard" in the media, something that Cincinnati attorney Thomas W. Condit and I tried to point out in 1999 when Major League Baseball Acting Commissioner Alan H. "Bud" Selig refused to publicly censure Ted Turner, then the single-largest shareholder in Time-Warner, Inc., the corporation that owned the Atlanta Braves at the time, for anti-Catholic comments while the late Mrs. Marge Schott was forced to sell the Cincinnati Reds after she had twice made what were deemed to be offensive to blacks and to Jews. No one disputes that there is a "double-standard" in the popular media: offending certain groups of people can cost one his career while offending Our Lord and Our Lady and the Catholic Church is defended as a matter of an American "civil right."

Alas, there is also a double-standard with respect to how some Catholics deal with blasphemies uttered against Our Lord by media figures. Don Imus would not be on the airwaves if we lived in a Catholic nation, one that submitted itself in every aspect of its popular culture (law, economics, politics, governance, entertainment, sports, education, family life) to the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law as they have been entrusted exclusively to the Catholic Church, which would be recognized by that nation's constitution as the official religion of the civil state. You see, Don Imus blasphemes Our Lord regularly, using His Holy Name as an epithet by which to express his disgust with this or that event or person or comment made by his equally blasphemous colleagues. This seems to escape the notion and attention and Dr. Donahue, who is every bit as duplicit  on occasion as those he criticizes. The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights blasted, for example, the play Late Night Catechism when it was produced Saint Luke's Lutheran Church in the City of New York in 1996, summarizing its efforts in its annual report of activities for 1996:

The off-Broadway play Late Night Catechism premiered at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church. The play ridiculed virtually every aspect of Catholicism including Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the Saints, the sacraments, Catholic schools, and Catholic customs. In particular, the sexual statements that the play made about Catholic beliefs and practices were unusually coarse. 1996 Report on Anti-Catholicism

 

Dr. Donohue, however, and the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights was rather mute when the same play was produced at Maria Regina Church in Seaford, New York, in 1997, which came a few weeks after it had been produced in a parish when a conciliar auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, Emil Wcela, who was created as a conciliar bishop by John Paul II in 1988 even though it was well-known that he was an open supporter of women's ordination, was in residence in Suffolk County, New York. Similarly, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights took no stand against the blasphemous portrayal of the Immaculate Mother of God, she who had perfect integrity of a human nature that was unstained by sin and thus had no disorderly passions or inclinations, in The Nativity Story. Well, yes, their hands were rather tied on that one even if they did see the blasphemy contained in that motion picture. After all, Benedict XVI had endorsed the blasphemous film and gave his blessing for its world premiere to take place at the Paul VI Audience Hall on November 26, 2006.

Double-standards abound in life, yes, even at the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, which should be making an issue of how Don Imus, a product of the lie of so-called "right" to "free speech and press" that is of the essence of Modernity in the world and Modernism in the conciliar church, thinks nothing of blaspheming Our Lord's Holy Name on a regular basis while none of his advertising sponsors have ever raised a single word in protest. That is the real story about what is happening with Don Imus right now. How can a man who regularly blasphemes Our Lord's Holy Name be permitted to stay on the air as Catholics, including Dr. Donohue and Patrick Joseph Buchanan, have gone on his program and given him further credibility in the eyes of Catholics?

Alas, here we see once again how Catholics across the ecclesiastical fault-lines, conciliar and traditional ("resist and recognize" and sedevacantist) alike, have been coopted by an uncritical acceptance of the naturalistic, religiously indifferentism basis of the American founding, believing that everyone has a "right" speak their "minds" and that it is not possible or even desirable to seek to eliminate the promotion of heresies and the utterance of blasphemies in public. As sensible beings, however, we are indeed influenced by what we see and hear in ways that may not be readily apparent to us at first blush. We tend to imitate--or least not be scandalized by--things that should offend our sensus Catholicus if we are exposed to them on a regular basis and do not make acts of reparation and flee from these occasions of grave offenses to God, which are also the near occasions of sin for those who can become all-too-accustomed to the ready acceptance of blasphemy and error as "natural" and "normal" parts of everyday life in a "free" society. We tend to forget that Our Lord Himself would not subject His Holy Ears to listening to blasphemies uttered about His Holy Name and His Most Blessed Mother. Who has given us permission as members of His Mystical Body, the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation, to act in ways that He would not? Would He be tolerant of "casual" and regular blasphemies uttered against Him? Why should we?

Mind you, this is not to beat up on Don Imus. Yes, he is sixty-six years old, no youngster to be sure. Who has ever taught him what is right and just and acceptable in the eyes of God? Who in the Catholic hierarchy, conciliar or authentically Catholic, has ever sought to correct him, no less to seek his conversion to the Catholic Church? The late Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen explained in his autobiography, Treasure in Clay, that he was once asked if he had ever tried to convert the famous journalist Heywood Broun. The then Monsignor Sheen said that he had not, whereupon he telephone Broun and said that he wanted to meet with him at 3:00 p..m. the next day. Broun asked what the subject of the meeting would be. Monsignor Sheen replied very directly, "Your soul." Broun converted to the Faith at the hands of Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen. Who has done this with Don Imus, who grew up with an alcoholic father in a country where each person has to fend himself without the Holy Cross serving as a constant signpost to direct men and their nations as was the case during the Christendom of the Middle Ages and when a substantial part of the Americas, including large parts of what is now the United States of America, was Catholic?

No, men like Don Imus have permitted to drift and to fend their entire lives because so many Catholics have not been challenged to think and to act and to speak as Catholics, causing them to be rather blase and passive in the wake of regular, repeated blasphemies spoken by public figures. This is not only true of Don Imus. It is true also of many "conservative" figures in the media who get a "free pass" from Catholics across the ecclesiastical fault-lines despite blasphemous speech, immodesty of attire or promotion of evils such as abortion, both chemical and surgical, under cover of law. Rush Limbaugh gets a free pass when he makes sophomoric, scatological remarks and references. Bob Grant, a talk show pioneer known for his caustic, combative style, got a free pass from many believing Catholics even though he supported the slicing and dicing of little babies in their mothers' wombs under cover of law. Indeed, Grant, whose real name is Robert Gigante, was feted by a group that included a prominent Catholic "conservative" and a Catholic priest in early-2006 upon his retirement from WOR Radio in New York. How can believing Catholics celebrate the career of a man who believed in abortion under cover of law as a woman's "right"? How many women who were wavering about whether to keep or to kill their children wound up killing their babies because they listened to Bob Grant telling them that it was their right to do so? If it was wrong for the man Grant criticized regularly and rightly as the "Sfachim," Mario Matthew Cuomo, to support abortion, then how could Catholics look the other way as Bob Grant did so? Does the naturalistic, religiously-indifferentist, multi-layered and sometimes mutually contradictory term of "conservatism" trump Catholicism?

Once again, you see, we are face to face with the fact that most Catholics in the United States of America do not understand the simple fact that each and every aspect of their lives--and of the lives of their nations--must be Catholic without any exception or equivocation whatsoever. There is no such thing as "free speech" and "free press." These are lies from the devil. Anyone who promotes these lies is, whether or not he realizes it, doing the work of the devil. This is what Pope Gregory XVI wrote in Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832:

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," 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.

 

Pope Leo XIII reiterated and amplified those points in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:

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.

So, too, the liberty of thinking, and of publishing, whatsoever each one likes, without any hindrance, is not in itself an advantage over which society can wisely rejoice. On the contrary, it is the fountain-head and origin of many evils. Liberty is a power perfecting man, and hence should have truth and goodness for its object. But the character of goodness and truth cannot be changed at option. These remain ever one and the same, and are no less unchangeable than nature itself. If the mind assents to false opinions, and the will chooses and follows after what is wrong, neither can attain its native fullness, but both must fall from their native dignity into an abyss of corruption. Whatever, therefore, is opposed to virtue and truth may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law. A well-spent life is the only way to heaven, whither all are bound, and on this account the State is acting against the laws and dictates of nature whenever it permits the license of opinion and of action to lead minds astray from truth and souls away from the practice of virtue. To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from life, from laws, from the education of youth, from domestic society is a grave and fatal error. A State from which religion is banished can never be well regulated; and already perhaps more than is desirable is known of the nature and tendency of the so-called civil philosophy of life and morals. The Church of Christ is the true and sole teacher of virtue and guardian of morals. She it is who preserves in their purity the principles from which duties flow, and, by setting forth most urgent reasons for virtuous life, bids us not only to turn away from wicked deeds, but even to curb all movements of the mind that are opposed to reason, even though they be not carried out in action.

 

A purely naturalistic system of person or social life leads to ruin, both personally and socially. Man needs the authority of the Catholic Church to guide him in his individual and social lives, one of those perennial teachings that has been eclipsed in the lives of most Catholics because of the very Judeo-Masonic, naturalist ethos of conciliarism, enshrined in Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae. Pope Leo XIII wrote in Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900, that personal and social life must be subordinated to the true Faith. Nothing that leads away from the pursuit of virtue and thus to Heaven has any "right" to be promoted or uttered in any medium of communication, as he had noted in Immortale Dei exactly fifteen years to the day before:

From this it may clearly be seen what con sequences are to be expected from that false pride which, rejecting our Saviour's Kingship, places man at the summit of all things and declares that human nature must rule supreme. And yet, this supreme rule can neither be attained nor even defined. The rule of Jesus Christ derives its form and its power from Divine Love: a holy and orderly charity is both its foundation and its crown. Its necessary consequences are the strict fulfilment of duty, respect of mutual rights, the estimation of the things of heaven above those of earth, the preference of the love of God to all things. But this supremacy of man, which openly rejects Christ, or at least ignores Him, is entirely founded upon selfishness, knowing neither charity nor selfdevotion. Man may indeed be king, through Jesus Christ: but only on condition that he first of all obey God, and diligently seek his rule of life in God's law. By the law of Christ we mean not only the natural precepts of morality and the Ancient Law, all of which Jesus Christ has perfected and crowned by His declaration, explanation and sanction; but also the rest of His doctrine and His own peculiar institutions. Of these the chief is His Church. Indeed whatsoever things Christ has instituted are most fully contained in His Church. Moreover, He willed to perpetuate the office assigned to Him by His Father by means of the ministry of the Church so gloriously founded by Himself. On the one hand He confided to her all the means of men's salvation, on the other He most solemnly commanded men to be subject to her and to obey her diligently, and to follow her even as Himself: "He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me" (Luke x, 16). Wherefore the law of Christ must be sought in the Church. Christ is man's "Way"; the Church also is his "Way"-Christ of Himself and by His very nature, the Church by His commission and the communication of His power. Hence all who would find salvation apart from the Church, are led astray and strive in vain.

As with individuals, so with nations. These, too, must necessarily tend to ruin if they go astray from "The Way." The Son of God, the Creator and Redeemer of mankind, is King and Lord of the earth, and holds supreme dominion over men, both individually and collectively. "And He gave Him power, and glory, and a kingdom: and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve Him" (Daniel vii., 14). "I am appointed King by Him . . . I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thy inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession" (Psalm ii., 6, 8). Therefore the law of Christ ought to prevail in human society and be the guide and teacher of public as well as of private life. Since this is so by divine decree, and no man may with impunity contravene it, it is an evil thing for the common weal wherever Christianity does not hold the place that belongs to it. When Jesus Christ is absent, human reason fails, being bereft of its chief protection and light, and the very end is lost sight of, for which, under God's providence, human society has been built up. This end is the obtaining by the members of society of natural good through the aid of civil unity, though always in harmony with the perfect and eternal good which is above nature. But when men's minds are clouded, both rulers and ruled go astray, for they have no safe line to follow nor end to aim at.

Just as it is the height of misfortune to go astray from the "Way," so is it to abandon the "Truth." Christ Himself is the first, absolute and essential "Truth," inasmuch as He is the Word of God, consubstantial and co-eternal with the Father, He and the Father being One. "I am the Way and the Truth." Wherefore if the Truth be sought by the human intellect, it must first of all submit it to Jesus Christ, and securely rest upon His teaching, since therein Truth itself speaketh. There are innumerable and extensive fields of thought, properly belonging to the human mind, in which it may have free scope for its investigations and speculations, and that not only agreeably to its nature, but even by a necessity of its nature. But what is unlawful and unnatural is that the human mind should refuse to be restricted within its proper limits, and, throwing aside its becoming modesty, should refuse to acknowledge Christ's teaching. This teaching, upon which our salvation depends, is almost entirely about God and the things of God. No human wisdom has invented it, but the Son of God hath received and drunk it in entirely from His Father: "The words which thou gavest me, I have given to them" john xvii., 8). Hence this teaching necessarily embraces many subjects which are not indeed contrary to reasonfor that would be an impossibility-but so exalted that we can no more attain them by our own reasoning than we can comprehend God as He is in Himself. If there be so many things hidden and veiled by nature, which no human ingenuity can explain, and yet which no man in his senses can doubt, it would be an abuse of liberty to refuse to accept those which are entirely above nature, because their essence cannot be discovered. To reject dogma is simply to deny Christianity. Our intellect must bow humbly and reverently "unto the obedience of Christ," so that it be held captive by His divinity and authority: "bringing into captivity every understanding unto the obedience of Christ" (2 Corinthians x., 5). Such obedience Christ requires, and justly so. For He is God, and as such holds supreme dominion over man's intellect as well as over his will. By obeying Christ with his intellect man by no means acts in a servile manner, but in complete accordance with his reason and his natural dignity. For by his will he yields, not to the authority of any man, but to that of God, the author of his being, and the first principle to Whom he is subject by the very law of his nature. He does not suffer himself to be forced by the theories of any human teacher, but by the eternal and unchangeable truth. Hence he attains at one and the same time the natural good of the intellect and his own liberty. For the truth which proceeds from the teaching of Christ clearly demonstrates the real nature and value of every being; and man, being endowed with this knowledge, if he but obey the truth as perceived, will make all things subject to himself, not himself to them; his appetites to his reason, not his reason to his appetites. Thus the slavery of sin and falsehood will be shaken off, and the most perfect liberty attained: "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" john viii., 32). It is, then, evident that those whose intellect rejects the yoke of Christ are obstinately striving against God. Having shaken off God's authority, they are by no means freer, for they will fall beneath some human sway. They are sure to choose someone whom they will listen to, obey, and follow as their guide. Moreover, they withdraw their intellect from the communication of divine truths, and thus limit it within a narrower circle of knowledge, so that they are less fitted to succeed in the pursuit even of natural science. For there are in nature very many things whose apprehension or explanation is greatly aided by the light of divine truth. Not unfrequently, too, God, in order to chastise their pride, does not permit men to see the truth, and thus they are punished in the things wherein they sin. This is why we often see men of great intellectual power and erudition making the grossest blunders even in natural science.

It must therefore be clearly admitted that, in the life of a Christian, the intellect must be entirely subject to God's authority. And if, in this submission of reason to authority, our self-love, which is so strong, is restrained and made to suffer, this only proves the necessity to a Christian of long-suffering not only in will but also in intellect. We would remind those persons of this truth who desire a kind of Christianity such as they themselves have devised, whose precepts should be very mild, much more indulgent towards human nature, and requiring little if any hardships to be borne. They do not properly under stand the meaning of faith and Christian precepts. They do not see that the Cross meets us everywhere, the model of our life, the eternal standard of all who wish to follow Christ in reality and not merely in name.

God alone is Life. All other beings partake of life, but are not life. Christ, from all eternity and by His very nature, is "the Life," just as He is the Truth, because He is God of God. From Him, as from its most sacred source, all life pervades and ever will pervade creation. Whatever is, is by Him; whatever lives, lives by Him. For by the Word "all things were made; and without Him was made nothing that was made." This is true of the natural life; but, as We have sufficiently indicated above, we have a much higher and better life, won for us by Christ's mercy, that is to say, "the life of grace," whose happy consummation is "the life of glory," to which all our thoughts and actions ought to be directed. 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.

So great is this struggle of the passions and so serious the dangers involved, that we must either anticipate ultimate ruin or seek for an efficient remedy. It is of course both right and necessary to punish malefactors, to educate the masses, and by legislation to prevent crime in every possible way: but all this is by no means sufficient. The salvation of the nations must be looked for higher. A power greater than human must be called in to teach men's hearts, awaken in them the sense of duty, and make them better. This is the power which once before saved the world from destruction when groaning under much more terrible evils. Once remove all impediments and allow the Christian spirit to revive and grow strong in a nation, and that nation will be healed. The strife between the classes and the masses will die away; mutual rights will be respected. If Christ be listened to, both rich and poor will do their duty. The former will realise that they must observe justice and charity, the latter self-restraint and moderation, if both are to be saved. Domestic life will be firmly established ( by the salutary fear of God as the Lawgiver. In the same way the precepts of the natural law, which dictates respect for lawful authority and obedience to the laws, will exercise their influence over the people. Seditions and conspiracies will cease. Wherever Christianity rules over all without let or hindrance there the order established by Divine Providence is preserved, and both security and prosperity are the happy result. The common welfare, then, urgently demands a return to Him from whom we should never have gone astray; to Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life,-and this on the part not only of individuals but of society as a whole. We must restore Christ to this His own rightful possession. All elements of the national life must be made to drink in the Life which proceedeth from Him- legislation, political institutions, education, marriage and family life, capital and labour. Everyone must see that the very growth of civilisation which is so ardently desired depends greatly upon this, since it is fed and grows not so much by material wealth and prosperity, as by the spiritual qualities of morality and virtue.

 

Our cause is not the "conservative" cause. Our cause is not the "American" cause. Our one only cause is the Catholic cause, the cause of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen, the cause that prompted so many missionaries to give up their lives of creature comforts in Europe and to sail to the New World to win new souls for the Catholic Church to seek to plant the seeds for the Catholicization of the Americas. It was to promote the Catholic cause that Our Lady, the Empress of the Americas, appeared to the Venerable Juan Diego in Tepeyac Hill in 1531. To be a patriotic American is to seek the conversion of every country in the Americas to the Catholic Faith. Such a conversion would therefore produce a civil state that recognizes the true Church, thereby affording its citizens with more of a possibility to subordinate every aspect of their daily lives in light of their Last End, as Pope Saint Pius X note din Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906:

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

 

As noted before, a civil state that is founded on the rejection of the necessity of recognizing the one and only true Church, the Catholic Church, as its official religion is bound to degenerate over the course of time into the abyss of naturalism, where people believe that everything is "up for grabs" in social life, including First and Last Things, which require no respect or reverence for us has having been revealed by God, giving vent to the anti-Incarnational thrust of Judeo-Masonry. Those of us who are Catholics, however, have the obligation to plant the seeds for the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ the King and of Mary our Immaculate Queen as the totally consecrated slaves of Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

It cannot matter to us that the conciliarists have made their own accommodation to the allegedly "irreversible" nature of the "secular" or "lay" state, claiming so gratuitously that the time of Christendom has passed and is never to be recaptured. This is to imply the graces that won for us by the shedding of every single drop of Our Lord's Most Blessed Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow into our immortal souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces, are simply no longer as efficacious as they were when the Apostles left the Upper Room in Jerusalem to seek the conversion of everyone, including Jews and Gentiles, to the true Church, that those graces are no longer as efficacious as they were when Christendom was built and re-built over the centuries in Europe, that Our Lady was wasting her time with Juan Diego, that the Church should have engaged the Mayans and the Aztecs in "inter-religious" dialogue rather than seeking their unconditional conversion to the true Church and the eradication of everything in their demonic cultures that was alien to the Deposit of Faith and thus to the eternal and temporal good of souls.

Indeed, the ethos of conciliarism, part of which is the rotten fruit of the heresy of Americanism (the exaltation of the American founding and of the pluralistic basis of American life as perfectly compatible with, if not actually beneficial, for the Catholic Church and for the life of ordinary Catholics), concerning the civil state and pluralism stands condemned by Pope Pius XI. Writing in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922, Pope Pius XI reminded Catholics that they were duty-bound to accept everything in the Social Teaching of his immediate predecessors. So are we. So are the apostates of conciliarism:

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.

 

We must be mindful, therefore, to make reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Imaculate Heart of Mary of the times in which we may have been all too casual in our own speech and actions. I am not blameless in this regard, especially in the early days of my teaching career thirty years ago when I had permitted myself to be influenced by the casual speech of colleagues. It took a stern tongue-lashing by a colleague of mine to remind me what was appropriate and what was not appropriate, that "everything" was not acceptable in order to get a laugh. Some of you may have had the same experience. It is easy to be influenced negatively by those around us. It is easy to be influenced negatively by listening to the mindless blathering of radio and television talk show hosts, which is why we have no need of such blathering, especially since it relates not one whit to the pursuit of sanctity and thus to the pursuit of our Last End.

It is, however, one thing to be sorry for one's past sins and to ever-mindful of making reparation for them after they have been confessed and Absolved by an alter Christus in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance. It is another to persist in sins unrepentantly, worse yet to promote them in every aspect of popular culture and/or to be indifferent to them as they assault our senses on a daily basis. There would not be a need for such a thing as the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights if we lived in a Catholic nation. The Catholic Church would so form citizens that no one would think of uttering blasphemies casually as he would corrected on the spot by his fellow Catholics if he did so. Popular culture would enhance and support the Faith, not attack it. Those who believed in false religions and ideas would have no civil right to promote them publicly. And although fallen man would sin with his tongue in the midst of heated debates on those things open to legitimate discussion in the civil realm and in the realm of legitimate speculative theology, he would recognize that he was wrong on his own. He would have what the ancients called a Catholic conscience, one informed by the true Faith, and would seek to do better for the sake of his own soul and for the souls of those whom God had placed in his life to help him get home to Heaven.

Until the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, however, I am afraid that serial blasphemers will be par for the course in the Pluralist States of America. We must simply avoid all contact with these blasphemers, praying for their conversion as we pray in reparation for our own sins and that we might seek ever more fully on a daily basis to conform every aspect of our lives to the standard of the Holy Cross, upon which our salvation was wrought for us, by keeping Our Lady company every day in the offering of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition in our time before her Divine Son's Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament, remembering to pray her Rosary daily for our own daily conversion and that of the whole world, including of the conciliarists, to the liberating joy that comes from living as Catholic for the honor and glory of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen.

Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

 

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, 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 Jude, pray for us.

Saint John the Beloved, pray for us.

Saint Francis Solano, pray for us.

Saint Francis of Paola, pray for us.

Saint Isidore of Seville, pray for us.

Pope Saint Leo the Great, pray for us.

Saint Hermenegild , pray for us.

Saint John Bosco, pray for us.

Saint Dominic Savio, pray for us.

Saint John of God, pray for us.

Saint  Scholastica, pray for us.

Saint Benedict, pray for us.

Saint Anthony of Padua, 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.

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.