Abort the Faith, Abort Babies
by Thomas A. Droleskey
One of the advantages of growing older is that one is able to profit from the memory of past experiences and events. If one cooperates with the graces won for us by the shedding of every single drop of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces, then one's life is not going to be a tabula rasa upon which is written nothing from the past. To ignore the past is to be condemned to repeat it, as the late Georges Santana noted, and I am afraid that a lot of earnest young defenders of all things conciliar are proving the truth of this observation more often than they realize.
Without minimizing for one second the true scandal caused by the actions of "Catholic" Charities in the Diocese of Richmond, Virginia, and those of "Bishop" Francis DiLorenzo in how an abortion was procured for pregnant teenaged girl from Guatemala, there is really substantially new about this horrific scandal. Many Officials in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have been playing "footsie" with the diabolical forces in support of contraception and abortion and perverse acts in violation of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments for decades now. Not a few "Catholic" hospitals, especially those that have undergone at least some kind of mergers with secular hospitals, have had instances of employees distributing contraceptive or counseling women where to get an abortion or giving hospital privileges to actual baby-killers to "heal" patients in these hospitals perhaps on the same day that their hands were bloodied by killing an innocent preborn human being.
Indeed, Mrs. Stephanie Block has for years chronicled the "Catholic" Campaign for Human Development's relationship with all manner of nefarious organizations, many of which support contraception and abortion and perversity and illegal immigration (see Catholic Campaign for Human Development). And countless, truly countless, are the cases of Catholic teachers and professors, some of them alleged priests and alleged consecrated religious sisters, who have counseled students to use contraception or to kill their babies, including a Vincentian priest at Saint John's University in Jamaica, New York, who informed a former student of mine in 1985 that it was up to her and her husband to use their "consciences" to determine whether to kill their unborn child. This priest used what is called in conciliarspeak "non-directional" counseling.
Coziness with pro-aborts, both Catholic and non-Catholic alike, in public life and with actual baby-killers is mot common among officials in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, including Roger Mahony, the infamous conciliar "archbishop" of Los Angeles (see my own Blood Money Talks from seven years ago now, long before I understood the true state of the ecclesiastical crisis facing the Church Militant at this time), and his protege, Sylvester Ryan, the now retired conciliar "bishop"of Monterrey, California, who had a baby-killer on his "advisory board" for dealing with priests accused of conduct in violation of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments (see Stonewalling from Another Bishop Ryan).
The interconnections that exist between many conciliar "bishops" and "priests" with Catholic pro-abort public officials are vast and extensive, leading some of them to state that the attack on the innocent preborn is simply "one issue of out of many" to be considered when a Catholic decides how to vote (for those who love participating in this futile exercise of Judeo-Masonic naturalism, cf. When Lesser is Greater). Federal Election Commission reports indicate that scores of conciliar "priests" and "religious" contributed money to the campaigns of various pro-aborts running for the Democrat Party presidential nomination, including Senator Barack Obama, D-Illinois, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-New York, and former Senator John Edwards, D-North Carolina.
How many people remember that it was only thirteen and one-half years ago that the conciliar "bishop" of Evreux, Normandy, France, Jacques Gaillot, was removed by Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II after years upon years of protests by Catholics about his words and actions, including his open and unapologetic support for the human pesticide, the French abortion pill, RU-486? (See Farley Clinton's February 2, 1995, article in The Wanderer, Gaillot Stripped of His Bishopric. I had my own commentary on the matter at the time that ran in the same newspaper. Computer crashes have eaten that article in my own files, and I don't think that The Wanderer is going to provide me with a copy anytime soon.) That it took something approaching a revolution from Catholics attached to the conciliar structures in France to effect Gaillot's removal after years of complaints--and even admonitions from Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II himself--speaks volumes about the paralysis caused by the conciliar novelty of episcopal collegiality, one of the triumphs of the Modernist spirit in favor of democracy that had been described so clearly by Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907:
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 is thus not really surprising at all that the case of the conciliar scandal du jour has arisen. It is really par for the conciliar course. A steady diet of aborting the Catholic Faith and blaspheming God by means of the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service and by endless acts of sacrilege associated with false ecumenism and inter-religious prayer services and the attacks upon the very nature of dogmatic truth, which are nothing other than attacks on the very nature of God Himself, will lead to diffidence in the wake of the daily slaughter of the he preborn. A mere shrug of the shoulders and the issuance of a very tightly phrased and legally parsed "statement" is the best that some of the most "progressive" of the revolutionaries can muster when their actions are revealed in news stories such as the two that follow below:
RICHMOND, VA, June 19, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Diocese of Richmond in Virginia is caught in the middle of a controversy surrounding workers at a Catholic charity, who helped procure an abortion for an abandoned immigrant. Richmond Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo, as well as two other bishops, wrote a letter to the 350 bishops nationwide addressing the situation, in which they indicated that the workers have since been fired.
According to the letter, in January, the unnamed 16-year old girl from Guatemala obtained the abortion by using a parental consent form signed by workers from the Commonwealth Catholic Charity, Richmond (CCR). Members from the charity also drove the girl to the abortion center and, two-months prior, issued her a contraceptive device. Consequently, four members of the CCR have been fired, and one supervisor from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishop's Migration and Refugee Services (MRS) agency has been suspended.
To add to the controversy, a federal investigation is in the works, given the fact that Virginian law states that only a parent, grandparent or adult sibling can give parental consent - not a social worker.
As reported by the Washington Times, the girl was a ward of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). For years the USCCB has received contracts from the HSS for the care of foster immigrants. The USCCB, namely their MRS arm, in turn subcontracts to Catholic Agencies such as the CCR.
As faithful Catholics are aware, any Catholic who procures or helps someone else procure an abortion is automatically excommunicated. Further, one who uses contraception is considered to be in a state of mortal sin.
Yet according to the bishops' letter, the employees behind the scandal were unaware of some or all of the Church's teaching on abortion and contraception: "Some members of the MRS staff were not sufficiently aware of church teaching and [USCCB] policy regarding these matters to take stronger and more appropriate actions."
In order to combat this ignorance, the letter said that all MRS employees will be trained on "the primacy of Catholic teachings and beliefs as they impact their work or professional ethics...to assure that such unacceptable incidents never happen again."
"This incident is a most regrettable stain on the record of excellence in the work both of MRS and of Catholic Charities," read the letter.
In a LifeSiteNews interview, Steve Neil, the spokesperson for the Richmond diocese, confirmed that, "all Catholic agencies are to uphold the Church's teachings."
Neil also said that it is "expected that all employees of Catholic Agencies are to adhere to these teachings and should be fired if they do not. Ultimately they are undermining the mission of the Church."
As expected, the USCCB has received considerable criticism for this incident because the organization chooses the agencies to which the foster immigrants are given to for protection and support.
David Siegel, acting director of the HHS Refugee Resettlement Office, issued his concerns via a letter to Johnny Young, executive director of the USCCB MRS agency.
"USCCB's inability to direct the actions of its sub-grantee was a failure of management, oversight and monitoring," stated the letter.
According to the Washington Times, HHS spokesman Kenneth Wolfe criticized the CCR directly, saying, "We were surprised and disappointed to learn of a chapter of Catholic Charities using this funding to facilitate a minor procuring an abortion."
In its defense, the CCR blamed Bishop DiLorenzo for the incident, pointing to the bishop's membership on the CCR's board as well as the fact that the agency is incorporated under direction of the Richmond Diocese.
However, in a press release regarding the event, the CCR admitted to the role their employees played and attempted to reassure the public that precautions were being taken to prevent such an incident from happening again, including the "ongoing education and training for all Catholic Charities employees to underscore the primacy of Catholic teachings and beliefs that impact their work and professional ethics." Catholic Charity Caught Helping Virginia Girl Obtain Abortion
WASHINGTON, DC (Washington Times) - The Roman Catholic bishop of Richmond was told that a diocesan charity planned to help a teenage foster child get an abortion in January and did not try to prevent the procedure.
Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo "was told erroneously that everything was in place and there was nothing he could do to stop it," said Steve Neill, Bishop DiLorenzo's communications officer. "He is very apologetic about the whole episode.
"It is very awkward, it is very embarrassing. A human life was taken. He certainly has not taken it lightly in any way. He is clearly opposed to abortion."
Mr. Neill said the bishop was informed Jan. 17, the day before an abortion was performed on the 16-year-old Guatemalan girl, who was a foster care client of Commonwealth Catholic Charities of Richmond (CCR), a group incorporated under the diocese.
CCR Executive Director Joanne Nattrass also knew about the planned abortion, Mr. Neill said.
"The director was very upset about it and it clearly went against all she stood for as a director of Catholic Charities," he said.
After The Washington Times revealed the abortion on June 18, Ms. Nattrass released a statement on June 19 saying the incident was "contrary to basic teachings of the Catholic Church."
Federal authorities are investigating CCR because the girl was a ward of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Department of Health and Human Services. HHS had contracted with CCR to take care of the girl, whose parents are not in the country.
Ms. Nattrass wrote that neither CCR nor diocesan funds paid for the abortion but did not say who did. Federal law forbids any federal funds to be used.
Ms. Nattrass' statement also said a CCR staff member signed the consent form necessary for a minor to have an abortion, even though Virginia law mandates parental consent for anyone younger than 18.
Martin Tucker, a spokesman for the Virginia attorney general's office, would not say whether a state investigation is under way.
After HHS officials learned of the abortion, they complained about the incident on April 23 to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), a parent agency to Catholic Charities.
Bill Etherington, an attorney for the diocese and CCR, said Bishop DiLorenzo was given bad information about whether the abortion could be prevented, but didn't elaborate as to how.
"He was told it could not be stopped," Mr. Etherington said. "It was erroneous information. He didn't have to sign off on it. He was not personally involved."
He added, without elaborating, that the underage abortion did not violate state law.
After learning of the federal investigation, Bishop DiLorenzo and two other bishops issued an April 29 letter to the nation's 350 Catholic bishops detailing the botched management decisions that led to the abortion.
"He wrote the letter with the intent that word was going to get out and they should be notified of the circumstances," Mr. Neill said.
Four CCR employees were fired over the incident, and one USCCB official who worked with its office of Migration and Refugee Services was suspended.
"They were so caught up with the plight of the young girl who already had a child," Mr. Neill said. "She was not a Catholic. She got pregnant by her boyfriend, and she was determined not to have the baby."
The unnamed girl had been implanted with a contraceptive device provided by CCR two months earlier, according to the April 29 letter.
Catholic doctrine condemns deliberate abortion and the use of contraception as mortal sins. Those who obtain an abortion or help someone else to do so can be excommunicated.
In this case, it was a volunteer, not CCR staff, who drove the girl to the abortion clinic, Mr. Neill said. CCR staff will be having "ongoing formation and education" regarding church teaching on the matter, he added.
The USCCB has refused to comment. A spokeswoman said the matter was a "personnel issue."
Additional comments by Bishop DiLorenzo are slated for release Monday in the diocesan newspaper at www.catholicvirginian.org. www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jun/30/bishop-knew-of-abortion-plan/.
Imagine this, my friends. Employees of "Catholic" Charities in the Diocese of Richmond, Virginia, under conciliar control were not sufficiently "informed" about the immutable precepts in the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law that forbid the direct, intentional taking of innocent human life at any time from conception to natural death. Oh, yes, these now fired employees, who are merely scapegoats for a culture of leftist political naturalism and full-throated support for feminism and perversity in the name of "human rights" and "social justice" that exists throughout almost every conciliar social service agency in the United States of America, were permitted to arrange for an immigrant teenager to secure "parental consent" to kill her baby with the full knowledge of Francis DiLorenzo, who was advised that he was powerless to stop the killing although he had said, according to a online report in the Wednesday evening, July 2, 2008, edition of The New York Times, "I forbid this happen" before being informed that there was "nothing" that could be done to stop the execution of the child.
Powerless to stop the killing? Powerless. This is, quite plainly, the direct effect of conciliarism's systematic attacks on the Faith in the past forty years. No one possessed of the sensus Catholicus is ignorant of the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law or our necessity to do discharge our duties before God to at least exhort someone about to kill her child to refrain from doing so.
Mind you, this "powerlessness" came was after officials in "Catholic" Charities gave the poor girl a contraceptive device to use by which she could keep on violating the Sixth and Ninth Commandments. No one in "CCR" (Conciliar Corruption Richmond) cared enough for this girl to discharge the Spiritual Works of Mercy by exhorting her to amend her life? Ah, this is the nub of the issue, you see: many employees of conciliar organizations do not believe in the reality of personal sin, believing only in "social sins" that violate the precepts of this or that naturalistic ideology (feminism, environmentalism, socialism, statism, the agenda of perversity promoted in the name of "human rights" and "dignity"). What's the big deal about giving this poor girl a contraceptive device and taking her to the abortuary.
"Bishop" DiLorenzo wrote to his brother apostates in the conciliar "hierarchy" over two months ago now. Just as the conciliar "bishops" kept the scandals of episcopal and presbyteral involvement in perversity under wraps for decades, a cover-up that involved none other than the former Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger (using careful discretion to avoid this material getting into the hands of tender eyes, you may view
[Perverted] Crimes and the Vatican, which has been linked on the The Novus Ordo Files News Archive and Analysis page), so is it the case that they try to prevent others of their scandals from emerging for as long as they can, issuing carefully crafted documents such as the one from one issued by "Bishop" DiLorenzo two days ago now: &
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As your Bishop, I want to express some of my personal thoughts and feelings on the monumental tragedy that we have experienced here in the Diocese. I join my sadness to yours at the loss of the life of an unborn child whose teenage mother was in the foster care of Commonwealth Catholic Charities. Because of the issues of privacy of those involved, and the ongoing legal investigations, there was, and is a need to be prudent in making any public statement.
There are many questions people have — why did it happen? Were there no checks and controls concerning hiring practices? Was there no on-going education and formation in Catholic Christian morality concerning pro-life issues and social justice questions? There are also questions about why this situation was not revealed sooner. These are some of the questions which need to be answered by the board, the administration and the staff of Commonwealth Catholic Charities.
Obviously, respect for the life of the unborn is a basic tenet of our Catholic faith and morality. I would ask all of you to pray that we correct what needs correcting and strengthen areas that need strengthening so that Catholic Charities might continue their mission of service to those in need.
The guilt and depression that many of us experience as a result of the behavior of a few is something that we will bear for a long time to come. Finally, I express my profound apology for the loss of the life of one of the most vulnerable among us, and I apologize for the profound embarrassment this has caused the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, and Catholics throughout the United States.
Profound embarrassment? Why was this a profound embarrassment on June 30, 2008, and not when it occurred in January of this year? If "Bishop" DiLorenzo wrote to his brother apostates in the conciliar "hierarchy" in the United States of America on April 29, 2008, did he also write to the apostate-in-chief in Rome who thinks nothing of embarrassing God Himself by the public acts of esteem he has shown to the symbols of false religions? Has this chief apostate, who rejects the official philosophy of the Catholic Church and has attacked the the very nature of dogmatic truth as he has promoted false ecumenism and religious liberty (about which conciliar apologists continue to be absolutely desperate--and I do mean desperate--to justify despite the fact that Pope Pius VII used the phrase "heresy" in Post Tam Diuturnas, April 29, 1814, to denounce this odious betrayal of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ) as he has denied the truth that the civil state has a positive obligation before God to recognize the true Church and to accord her the favor and the protection of the laws, said anything publicly about this scandal in the past two months since he undoubtedly heard of it. Or is he continuing the same spirit of arrogant defiance of truth that he did when covering up for so many years for bishops and priests who were permitted for decades to abuse souls and bodies wantonly and most unrepentantly?
The very fact that the killing of preborn babies exists under cover of civil law throughout the world at the present time is the direct, inevitable, inexorable result of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King wrought by the Protestant Revolt and institutionalized by the rise of Judeo-Masonry and the whole array of naturalistic ideologies and their ceaselessly mutating variations thereafter. The very fact that there is no recognition of this fact and that a culture favorable to abortion and contraception and perversity has arisen in the conciliar structures is the result, at least in very large measure, of conciliarism's own warfare against the Catholic Faith, especially by means of rejecting the necessity of the confessionally Catholic state as the means of establishing and maintaining a just social order.
As Modernism involves a mixture of truth and error, there is just enough room for some conciliar apologists to attempt to claim that such conciliar decrees as Dignitatis Humanae, December 7, 1965, do not reject the confessionally Catholic state outright, relying upon these passages of Dignitatis Humanae to make such a claim:
A sense of the dignity of the human person has been impressing itself more and more deeply on the consciousness of contemporary man,(1) and the demand is increasingly made that men should act on their own judgment, enjoying and making use of a responsible freedom, not driven by coercion but motivated by a sense of duty. The demand is likewise made that constitutional limits should be set to the powers of government, in order that there may be no encroachment on the rightful freedom of the person and of associations. This demand for freedom in human society chiefly regards the quest for the values proper to the human spirit. It regards, in the first place, the free exercise of religion in society. This Vatican Council takes careful note of these desires in the minds of men. It proposes to declare them to be greatly in accord with truth and justice. To this end, it searches into the sacred tradition and doctrine of the Church-the treasury out of which the Church continually brings forth new things that are in harmony with the things that are old.
First, the council professes its belief that God Himself has made known to mankind the way in which men are to serve Him, and thus be saved in Christ and come to blessedness. We believe that this one true religion subsists in the Catholic and Apostolic Church, to which the Lord Jesus committed the duty of spreading it abroad among all men. Thus He spoke to the Apostles: "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have enjoined upon you" (Matt. 28: 19-20). On their part, all men are bound to seek the truth, especially in what concerns God and His Church, and to embrace the truth they come to know, and to hold fast to it.
These passages do not prove what conciliar apologists want them to prove.
These two passages, which appear at the very beginning of Dignitatis Humanae, demonstrate once again the novelty of the conciliar approach to dogmatic truth. The Catholic Church has never "searched" into "the sacred tradition and doctrine" to bring forth "new things that are in harmony with the things that are old." The Catholic Church has always condemned novelty. The Fathers of the Church, for example, sought to be faithful to the teaching that Our Lord had given to the Apostles to transmit to us under the infallible guidance and protection of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost. They were not on a "treasure hunt," if you will, to find "new things" to respond to what was in "the minds of men." Similarly, the Church's twenty dogmatic councils, many of which responded to heresies, were not on "treasure hunts" of their own. Most condemned various errors and anathematized those who dared to defy their dogmatic definitions. To assert that any legitimate council of the Catholic Church wanted to respond to "the desires in the minds of men" is to ignore the fact that the Mind of the Divine Redeemer is that which must shape men's minds and that it is irrelevant to "respond" to the "minds of men" who have made up their minds to promote concepts inimical to the Deposit of Faith and thus to the good of souls and to the whole of social order.
Even though conciliarism permits the confessionally Catholic state in some circumstances, it rejects the confessionally Catholic state as a necessity for the right ordering of men and their nations to serve as a bulwark, although not an impregnable or infallible one, against the institutionalization of evil under cover of civil law as efforts are made to foster those conditions in which citizens could better sanctity and thus to save their souls as members of the true Church. Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II was a committed laicist who believe in the principles of what he called "healthy secularity," endorsing the condemned thesis of the separation of Church and State as a "protection" for both Church and State, presiding over the disestablishment of Italy as a confessionally Catholic state in the 1984 concordat between the conciliar Vatican and the Republic of Italy that modified the Lateran Concordat of 1929.
Italy, a predominantly Catholic country, although one that has become infected with Freemasons and Communists and Mohammedans, become the model whereby the "fruits" of Dignitatis Humanae could be realized, as can be seen in the preamble to the 1984 concordat and the "modifications" announced thereafter:
In the light of political and social changes which have occurred in Italy over the last decades and developments promoted by the Church since the Second Vatican Council;
Bearing in mind the principles sanctioned in the Constitution by the Italian Republic and, on behalf of the Holy See, the declarations of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council on religious freedom and relations between the Church and the government, including the new codification of Canon Law;
Considering furthermore that, in accordance with Article 7, paragraph 2 of the Constitution of the Italian Republic, the relations between the State and the Catholic Church are regulated by the Lateran Pacts, which, moreover, can by modified by mutual consent by both Parties without having recourse to any process of constitutional revision;
[The Parties] have recognised the opportunity to agree on the following mutually agreed amendments to the Lateran Concordat:. . . . (Modifications to the Lateran Concordat (1984) : text)
Upon the signing of the Accord which modifies the Lateran Concordat, the Holy See and the Republic of Italy, desirous of ensuring with fitting precision the application of the Lateran treaties and the agreed modifications, and of avoiding any difficulties of interpretation, declare with mutual interest:
1. With Reference to Article 1
The principle, normally stated in Lateran treaties, that the Catholic religion is the sole religion of the Italian state is no longer in force. (Supplement to Modifications to the Lateran Concordat (1984) : text)
Thank you very much, Dignitatis Humanae.
While it is true, as Pope Leo XIII noted in Libertas, June 20, 1888, that Holy Mother Church will adapt herself to those situations in which the Catholic Faith has never predominated without once ceasing to teach her children the truth about Church-State relations nor ceasing to exhort them to seek to convert their nations to the true Faith, the Catholic Church does not endorse the falsehood that it is preferable for the civil state to be without any official religion in order to better "respond" to the "realities" of a pluralistic world. The way to "respond" to a pluralistic world is to seek to spread Catholicism as the one and only foundation of social order. Chaos in the temporal order is the only thing that can result from the religiously neutral state that is favored by the conciliarists as an alleged "protection" to the Catholic Church and to all "other religions." And chaos in the temporal order is harmful ultimately to the eternal good of souls, as Pope Leo XIII noted in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:
As a consequence, the State, constituted as it is, is clearly bound to act up to the manifold and weighty duties linking it to God, by the public profession of religion. Nature and reason, which command every individual devoutly to worship God in holiness, because we belong to Him and must return to Him, since from Him we came, bind also the civil community by a like law. For, men living together in society are under the power of God no less than individuals are, and society, no less than individuals, owes gratitude to God who gave it being and maintains it and whose everbounteous goodness enriches it with countless blessings. Since, then, no one is allowed to be remiss in the service due to God, and since the chief duty of all men is to cling to religion in both its teaching and practice-not such religion as they may have a preference for, but the religion which God enjoins, and which certain and most clear marks show to be the only one true religion -- it is a public crime to act as though there were no God. So, too, is it a sin for the State not to have care for religion as a something beyond its scope, or as of no practical benefit; or out of many forms of religion to adopt that one which chimes in with the fancy; for we are bound absolutely to worship God in that way which He has shown to be His will. All who rule, therefore, would hold in honor the holy name of God, and one of their chief duties must be to favor religion, to protect it, to shield it under the credit and sanction of the laws, and neither to organize nor enact any measure that may compromise its safety. This is the bounden duty of rulers to the people over whom they rule. For one and all are we destined by our birth and adoption to enjoy, when this frail and fleeting life is ended, a supreme and final good in heaven, and to the attainment of this every endeavor should be directed. Since, then, upon this depends the full and perfect happiness of mankind, the securing of this end should be of all imaginable interests the most urgent. Hence, civil society, established for the common welfare, should not only safeguard the wellbeing of the community, but have also at heart the interests of its individual members, in such mode as not in any way to hinder, but in every manner to render as easy as may be, the possession of that highest and unchangeable good for which all should seek. Wherefore, for this purpose, care must especially be taken to preserve unharmed and unimpeded the religion whereof the practice is the link connecting man with God. . . . .
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 the business of life, from the making of 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.
Conciliarism's condemned view of Church-State relations is founded on the American model. Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has said this on a number of occasions. He, as "Cardinal" Ratzinger, explained to the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1987 that the state does not "know" religion, demonstrating a complete rejection of the Social Reign of Christ the King:
Under pressure, Rome gave in. On July 14 [1987], Cardinal Ratzinger received Archbishop Lefebvre at the Holy Office. At first the Cardinal persisted in arguing that "the State is competent in religious matters."
"But the State must have an ultimate and eternal end," replied the Archbishop.
"Your Grace, that is the case for the Church, not the State. By itself the State does not know."
Archbishop Lefebvre was distraught: a Cardinal and Prefect of the Holy Office wanted to show him that the State can have no religion and cannot prevent the spread of error. However, before talking about concessions, the Cardinal made a threat: the consequence of an illicit episcopal consecration would be "schism and excommunication."
"Schism?" retorted the Archbishop. "If there is a schism, it is because of what the Vatican did at Assisi and how you replied to our Dubiae: the Church is breaking with the traditional Magisterium. But the Church against her past and her Tradition is not the Catholic Church; this is why being excommunicated by a liberal, ecumenical, and revolutionary Church is a matter of indifference to us."
As this tirade ended, Joseph Ratzinger gave in: "Let us find a practical solution. Make a moderate declaration on the Council and the new missal a bit like the one that Jean Guitton has suggested to you. Then, we would give you a bishop for ordinations, we could work out an arrangement with the diocesan bishops, and you could continue as you are doing. As for a Cardinal Protector, and make your suggestions."
How did Marcel Lefebvre not jump for joy? Rome was giving in! But his penetrating faith went to the very heart of the Cardinal's rejection of doctrine. He said to himself: "So, must Jesus no longer reign? Is Jesus no longer God? Rome has lost the Faith. Rome is in apostasy. We can no longer trust this lot!" To the Cardinal, he said:
"Eminence, even if you give us everything--a bishop, some autonomy from the bishops, the 1962 liturgy, allow us to continue our seminaries--we cannot work together because we are going in different directions. You are working to dechristianize society and the Church, and we are working to Christianize them.
"For us, our Lord Jesus Christ is everything. He is our life. The Church is our Lord Jesus Christ; the priest is another Christ; the Mass is the triumph of Jesus Christ on the cross; in our seminaries everything tends towards the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ. But you! You are doing the opposite: you have just wanted to prove to me that our Lord Jesus Christ cannot, and must not, reign over society.
Recounting this incident, the Archbishop described the Cardinal's attitude" "Motionless, he looked at me, his eyes expressionless, as if I had just suggested something incomprehensible or unheard of." Then Ratzinger tried to argue that "the Church can still say whatever she wants to the State," while Lefebvre, the intuitive master of Catholic metaphysics, did not lose sight of the true end of human societies: the Reign of Christ." Fr. de Tinguy hit the nail on the head when he said of Marcel Lefebvre: "His faith defies those who love theological quibbles." (His Excellency Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, The Biography of Marcel Lefebvre, Kansas City, Missouri: Angelus Press, 2004, pp. 547-548.)
Dignitatis Humanae's and the conciliar "pontiffs'" support for the "right" of those who belong to false religions to propagate their falsehoods publicly and that their false beliefs can contribute to the betterment of society contradict directly Pope Pius VII's Post Tam Diuturnas and Pope Gregory XVI's Mirari Vos, which is why neither is cited in Dignitatis Humanae at all:
For how can We tolerate with equanimity that the Catholic religion, which France received in the first ages of the Church, which was confirmed in that very kingdom by the blood of so many most valiant martyrs, which by far the greatest part of the French race professes, and indeed bravely and constantly defended even among the most grave adversities and persecutions and dangers of recent years, and which, finally, that very dynasty to which the designated king belongs both professes and has defended with much zeal - that this Catholic, this most holy religion, We say, should not only not be declared to be the only one in the whole of France supported by the bulwark of the laws and by the authority of the Government, but should even, in the very restoration of the monarchy, be entirely passed over? But a much more grave, and indeed very bitter, sorrow increased in Our heart - a sorrow by which We confess that We were crushed, overwhelmed and torn in two - from the twenty-second article of the constitution in which We saw, not only that "liberty of religion and of conscience" (to use the same words found in the article) were permitted by the force of the constitution, but also that assistance and patronage were promised both to this liberty and also to the ministers of these different forms of "religion". There is certainly no need of many words, in addressing you, to make you fully recognize by how lethal a wound the Catholic religion in France is struck by this article. For when the liberty of all "religions" is indiscriminately asserted, by this very fact truth is confounded with error and the holy and immaculate Spouse of Christ, the Church, outside of which there can be no salvation, is set on a par with the sects of heretics and with Judaic perfidy itself. For when favour and patronage is promised even to the sects of heretics and their ministers, not only their persons, but also their very errors, are tolerated and fostered: a system of errors in which is contained that fatal and never sufficiently to be deplored HERESY which, as St. Augustine says (de Haeresibus, no.72), "asserts that all heretics proceed correctly and tell the truth: which is so absurd that it seems incredible to me." (Pope Pius VII, Post Tam Diuturnas, April 29, 1814.)
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 Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.)
To assert, as some have tried, that the encyclical letters of the past do not bind us as they were written by popes whose "views" were "conditioned" by the historical circumstances in which they wrote and in a language unique to the times in which they lived is to blaspheme God the Holy Ghost, Who cannot contradict Himself. The true popes of the Catholic Church spoke as with one voice prior to the dawning of the age of conciliarism in 1858. To deny the Social Reign of Christ the King as an absolute prerequisite for the right ordering of men and their nations and to endorse the heresy of religious liberty is to create the conditions that breed men so utterly bereft of the sensus Catholicus as Francis DiLorenzo and his cast of apostates who do not even know enough to take the Fifth Commandment seriously. And lest anyone think that the encyclicals of the past do not bind our consciences or that they can be "understood" in different ways at different times, I would urge a review of
Calling Poison Health Food Doesn't Make It So and
Reference Resource: The Binding Nature of Catholic Social Teaching.
Scandals there will always be. Each of us is a sinner. Some of us have caused more than our fair share of scandals, to be sure, doing and saying things for which we must make reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary on a daily basis, especially by means of praying as many Rosaries as our freely chosen states-in-life permit. Granted.
It is one thing to sin, even grievously, and to be sorry, seeking out the ineffable Mercy of the Divine Redeemer in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance. It is quite another to create a culture favorably disposed favorably to the promotion of sin under cover of law, something that has indeed occurred in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism despite all of the words by the conciliar "pontiffs" and at least some of the conciliar "bishops" against the very evils that are being promoted in the culture-at-large. How is it possible to retard these evils when the very employees of allegedly "Catholic" chancery offices and hospitals and schools and universities and colleges and seminaries and social service agencies are permitted for years on end to support them? Indeed, conciliarism's very strategy for opposing these evils is premised upon the interdenominationalism of The Sillon condemned by Pope Saint Pius X in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910, and is thus bound to fail as it is premised upon accommodations being made to the very forces of Hell itself.
Pope Saint Pius X explained that the only way to retard the evils of the Modernity was to re-establish and to defend the Catholic City:
This, nevertheless, is what they want to do with human society; they dream of changing its natural and traditional foundations; they dream of a Future City built on different principles, and they dare to proclaim these more fruitful and more beneficial than the principles upon which the present Christian City rests.
No, Venerable Brethren, We must repeat with the utmost energy in these times of social and intellectual anarchy when everyone takes it upon himself to teach as a teacher and lawmaker - the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants. omnia instaurare in Christo. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)
Anyone who thinks that this is the goal of the conciliarists is living quite volitionally in a alternate universe that corresponds not one bit to Catholic truth. This is where Francis DiLorenzo and his cronies live. This is the world that Joseph Ratzinger and his mentors and colleagues in the condemned New Theology helped in very large measure to create, a world that Joseph Ratzinger wants to fortify before he dies as he tears down more of the bastions of Catholicism as per the exhortations of the late Father Hans Urs von Balthasar. Behold the fruit of razing the bastions. Behold the fruit. It is everywhere to behold, on display at the present time in a particularly scandalous way in the Diocese of Richmond, Virginia.
Let those who want to defend conciliarism do so in their glossy magazines and other journals as they utter not one blessed word in defense of the honor and glory and majesty of God as he is blasphemed by acts in violation of the First Commandment committed by the currently reigning conciliar "pontiff." Catholics will continue to defend the Social Reign of Christ the King as they refuse to surrender to one little bit of the poisons of conciliarism as they cleave to true bishops and true priests in the catacombs, remembering also these words of Pope Pius XII in Ci Riesce, December 6, 1953:
Her deportment has not changed in the course of history, nor can it change whenever or wherever, under the most diversified forms, she is confronted with the choice: either incense for idols or blood for Christ. The place where you are now present, Eternal Rome, with the remains of a greatness that was and with the glorious memories of its martyrs, is the most eloquent witness to the answer of the Church. Incense was not burned before the idols, and Christian blood flowed and consecrated the ground. But the temples of the gods lie in the cold devastation of ruins howsoever majestic; while at the tombs of the martyrs the faithful of all nations and all tongues fervently repeat the ancient Creed of the Apostles.
We beseech Our Lady in this month of the Most Precious Blood of her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, that the merits won for us by the shedding of every single drop of this Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross will vivify us and fortify us to discharge our responsibilities to be champions of Christ the King and of her, Our Immaculate Queen, as we make reparation for our sins and those of the whole world as consecrating ourselves to Him through her own Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.
Our Lady gave us her Most Holy Rosary to fight heresy, not to make compromises with it, not to be silent in its wretched wake. Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary will vanquish the enemies of her Divine Son who dare to claim to represent Him as they offend Him and give scandal His little ones repeatedly. May we also remember to use that same weapon of the Rosary to vanquish the vices lurking in our own souls that are keeping us from being better witnesses to the cause of Christ the King and herself, Our Immaculate Queen.
Vivat Christus Rex!
Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?
Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.
