Always Looking for "Mister Democracy"
by Thomas A. Droleskey
There is no shortage of opinions concerning the Russian Federated Republic's invasion of the Republic of Georgia two weeks ago to come to the "rescue" of two breakaway regions in the former republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Some have blamed Russia. Some have blamed Georgia. Some have blamed the United States of America for providing arms and rhetorical support to Georgia's President, Mikheil
Saakashvili, thereby emboldening him in what was said to be an unrealistic and even provocative attempt to win back the two breakaway regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
There are "elements of truth," to borrow a phrase from conciliarism, in each of these views. There are, however, two overriding facts that most commentators continue to miss:
1) Russian Prime Minister Vladimir I. Putin was waiting for Georgian President
Saakashvili
to slip on a banana peel sooner or later in order to justify an invasion of the former Soviet republic and thus to teach a lesson or two about getting too close to Western powers.
2) The leaders of the government of the United States of America have been responsible for misreading the "democratic" intentions of various Russian leaders since the ostensible collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on December 25, 1991, and for projecting into the mind and heart of Mikheil Saakashvili their own fondest "democratic" aspirations.
To use the style of Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, to the first point:
Russia remains what Russia has been from time immemorial: a place of autocracy, privilege, suppression of internal dissent and a fierce hatred for the true Church that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. Although you will find no secular commentator discussing this fact, it is nevertheless true that hatred--and persecution--of the true Church leads men and their nations further and further into the grip of the devil. Why should those who have no regard for the very Mystical Body of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man on the face of this earth have any regard for the lives and property of their own citizens, no less those in countries they choose to consider as but mere puppets of their "spheres of influence"?
Most Russian leaders have been concerned about one thing during the course of the twists and turns of Russia's history: personal power and national aggrandizement. This was true during the era of the czars, especially in the Nineteenth Century, and it was true of the commissars of Bolshevism. It is true today of the autocrats of contemporary Russia, men who are nothing other than the same Communist thugs that they have always been.
Russia's claims to be the protector of the "national aspirations" of two regions of an independent nation, Georgia. This is interesting as Russia fought the rebels in Chechnya who desired autonomy from the Russian Federated Republic. This is also interesting as the Russian government denounced the certainly mistaken "recognition" of the "independence" of Kosovo from Serbia by various Western nations earlier this year. What about the "national aspirations" of the Kosavars?
Mind you, I am not asserting that the Chechens or the Kosavars were entitled to independence, only noting that anyone who thinks that the Soviets, I mean, the Russians, are interested in protecting the people of South Ossetia and Abkhazia are deceiving themselves quite badly. The Russians are interested in no such thing. They are interested in demonstrating that the Russian bear has awakened from his hibernation, which believing Catholics should understand is once again a manifestation of the simple truth that the errors of Russia keep spreading all along. There has been no conversion of Russia and there has been no collegial consecration of Russia to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart by a true pope with all of the world's bishops.
Second point: The American tendency to look for "Mister Democracy."
The late Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, who was himself, most tragically, a hater of the Catholic Church and a supporter of the evil of contraception, explained the consistent inability of Western leaders to understand other parts of the world, including his own native Russia:
But the blindness of superiority continues in spite of all and upholds the belief that vast regions everywhere on our planet should develop and mature to the level of present day Western systems which in theory are the best and in practice the most attractive. There is this belief that all those other worlds are only being temporarily prevented by wicked governments or by heavy crises or by their own barbarity or incomprehension from taking the way of Western pluralistic democracy and from adopting the Western way of life. Countries are judged on the merit of their progress in this direction. However, it is a conception which developed out of Western incomprehension of the essence of other worlds, out of the mistake of measuring them all with a Western yardstick. The real picture of our planet's development is quite different.
Anguish about our divided world gave birth to the theory of convergence between leading Western countries and the Soviet Union. It is a soothing theory which overlooks the fact that these worlds are not at all developing into similarity; neither one can be transformed into the other without the use of violence. Besides, convergence inevitably means acceptance of the other side's defects, too, and this is hardly desirable.(Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, "A World Split Apart," Solzhenitsyn's Harvard Address, June 8, 1978.)
The leaders of the United States of America, whether Republican or Democrat, have been looking in vain for "Mister Democracy" in parts of the world that have not been "Americanized." It is no wonder that the administrations of Presidents George Herbert Walker Bush and William Jefferson Blythe Clinton and George Walker Bush invested heavily in the effort to "democratize" Russia. And it is no wonder that the George Walker Bush administration sought to "neutralize" Russia by tying to making "democrats" out of the leaders of Georgia and the Ukraine following the "Rose Revolution of 2004. Looking for "Mister Democracy" has been a crusade for leaders of the United States of America from the time of President Abraham Lincoln, a man who went to great lengths to crush most brutally a secessionist movement in his own country.
Lincoln, that wonderful "democrat" who suppressed political dissent in his own country most brutally, supported Benito Juarez's overthrow of Emperor Maximilian I in Mexico, thus ushering in a period of episodic persecutions of the Catholic Church in Our Lady's country that was interrupted for a time by the presidency of Porfirio Diaz but would commence again, with the full support of the government of the United States of America. The administration of President William Howard Taft supported Diaz's successor, Francisco Madero, and President Thomas Woodrow Wilson, the ultimate "democratic crusader," involved his administration in Mexico's affairs, ultimately helping to bring into power one Venustiano Carranza, whose brutal socialist regime killed thousands of Catholics, murders that meant only the following to Woodrow Wilson:
"Wilson replied [to a Father, later Bishop, Clement Kelley, who was a representative of James Cardinal Gibbons, the Archbishop of Baltimore, for whom Wilson had such contempt that he addressed him as Mister Gibbons]: 'I have no doubt but that the terrible things you mention have happened during the Mexican revolution. But terrible things happened also during the French revolution, perhaps more terrible things than have happened in Mexico. Nevertheless, out of that French revolution came the liberal ideas that have dominated in so many countries, including our own. I hope that out of the bloodletting in Mexico some such good yet may come.'
"Having instructor his visitor as to the benefits which must perforce accrue to mankind out of the systematic robbery, murder, torture and rape of people holding a proscribed religious conviction, the professor of politics [Wilson] suggested that Father Kelley visit Secretary of State Williams Jennings Bryan, who expressed his deepest sympathy. Obviously, the Wilson administration was committed to supporting the revolutionaries (Robert Leckie, Catholic and American, p. 274.)
"I hope that out of the bloodletting in Mexico some such good yet may come." In other words, "democracy" was built in France and elsewhere on the blood of believing Catholics during the French Revolution and its aftermath. Perhaps "democracy" will be advanced in the Americas by the shedding of more Catholic blood. That is what the fiend Woodrow Wilson believed. And it is with those crimes on his soul that he met Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ when he died on February 3, 1924. The support for the "democratic" revolutionaries (Freemasons) of Mexico who persecuted Catholics so fiercely continued during the administrations of Presidents Warren Gamaliel Harding, John Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Clark Hoover. It was during the Coolidge administration that the murder of Father Miguel Augustin Pro, S.J., took place:
1) "Some Americans had tried to help--certain bishops, certain groups of laymen. But these had never been able to convince the bulk of American Catholics that the persecutions in Mexico were worth getting excited about, being angry about, losing their composure about, making nuisances of themselves about. Nor did the Masons of the United States fail to notice this lack of indignation, and to be emboldened by it. One example: Two days after Father Pro's murder, the American Ambassador to Mexico, Dwight Morrow, went about Calles' private train for a tour of the country; the recognized purpose of this gesture was "to demonstrate to Mexican Catholics that they could look for no help from Washington."--The Point.
2) The day after Fr. Pro's execution, the American Ambassador Dwight Morrow (Charles Lindbergh's future father-in-law) and the humorist Will Rogers, who had become famous as a common-sense mocker of U.S. government foolishness, took a trip with President Calles through Mexico on the presidential train. Calles had deliberately set up the trip as propaganda intended to convince Mexican Catholics that the United States would not help them. Morrow is reported to have known this, but believed he could use the influence thus gained over Calles to turn his government in a different direction. In the next few years, the government killed 250,000 to 300,000 people, many Catholic, even after a compromise had been worked out--The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century.
Bishop Clement Kelley's Blood Drenched Altars goes into the persecutions conducted by the Masonic revolutionaries in Mexico in a great deal of detail.
American policy makers, steeped in the delusion of the "democratic way," keep making the same mistakes over and over again. They even make mistakes when they try to correct the mistakes that have wound up enabling "democrats" who proved in the long run what they always had been, autocrats. Those steeped in the blindness of the "superiority" of American ethnocentricity wind up miscalculating the leaders of other nations and wind up not infrequently over promising"help" to people of nations that they, the American leaders, have no intention of assisting military if push actually came to shove, as it has now in the Russian-Georgia conflict.
Alas, even this is nothing new. Oh, no, not at all.
President Dwight David Eisenhower's Secretary of State from January 20, 1953, to April 22, 1959, just thirty-two days before his death on May 24, 1959, John Foster Dulles, promised "liberation" to the peoples of Communist nations if they rose up to help themselves:
"It is time to think in terms of taking the offensive in the world struggle for freedom and of rolling back the engulfing tide of despotism . . . Even today the Communist structure is overextended, overrigid and ill-founded. It could be shaken if the difficulties that are latent are activated."
"It is ironic and wrong that we who believe in the boundless power of human freedom should so long have accepted a static political role."
"To all those suffering under Communist slavery, to the timid and intimidated peoples of the world, let us say this: you can count upon us." (Who's Got the Ball? - TIME.)
Naturally, the Eisenhower administration did not come to the support of the Hungarians or the Poles when they revolted against Soviet puppet governments in October of 1956. Those behind the Iron Curtain who were duped into believing the "democratic" rhetoric they heard on Radio Free Europe and Voice of America found out the hard way that the talk of "democracy" and "freedom" meant nothing, that the leaders of the United States of America were not going to risk World War III over uprisings prompted in no small measure by their own empty rhetoric in behalf of the demigod of "democracy."
And wasn't the tragic misadventure started on March 20, 2003, when American forces invaded the sovereign country of Iraq supposed to produce loads of eager "democrats" to take the place of dictator Saddam Hussein? The neoconservatives who planned the Iraq invasion believed that Western-style "democracies" would spring up throughout the Mohammedan world, making it possible for America's "democratic" "ally," the Zionist State of Israel to be "secure" for future generations.
That "democratic" "ally," the State of Israel, has, of course, bombed the U.S. S. Liberty (see The USS Liberty: America's Most Shameful Secret) and spied repeatedly on the United States of America (Jonathan Pollard) while having, most curiously, told its nationals who worked in the World Trade Center in the Borough of Manhattan in the City of New York, New York, not to report to work on September 11, 2001, while an Israeli film crew "just happened" to be stationed across the lower part of the Hudson River in New Jersey as the twin towers collapsed that day. The leaders of the the "democratic" State of Israel that has been the beneficiary of so much American foreign aid and has been the cause of so many American deaths have aided the Red Chinese military with missile systems technology and played a not insignificant role in helping to provoke hostilities between Russian and Georgia by providing the latter with military advisers.
Oh, what crimes against God and man have been committed in the hallowed name of "democracy!" Then again, you see, contemporary "democracy" is Judeo-Masonic in origin, rooted in a rejection of the necessity of the Social Reign of Christ the King and of Mary our Immaculate Queen. Although the phrase is indeed a slogan, commitment to the propagation of "democracy" has made it possible for all manner of crimes to be committed that must be "blamed" on the leaders of "unfree" nations whose anti-Incarnational beliefs are absolutely identical with those of allegedly "free" nations.
Russia has its errors. American has its own errors. Both sets of errors, however, are premised upon Modernity's belief that it is not necessary for men or for their nations to subordinate themselves in all that pertains to the good of souls to the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted exclusively to His true Church for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explications. Both sets of errors make it impossible for those steeped in them to see the world clearly as it is impossible to see the world clearly except in light of First and Last Things. Russian leaders will always Russian mistakes until it is converted to the Catholic Faith as a result of the Triumph of Our Lady's Immaculate Heart as the fruit of the fulfillment of her Fatima Message, and American leaders will always make American mistakes, each of which flows from the false, naturalistic, anti-Incarnational, religiously indifferentist, and semi-Pelagian premieres of the founding of the United States of America, until America is converted to the true Faith. Russian mistakes and American mistakes are but the products of the same basic premises, and they might one day explode quite literally in mid-air.
Ah, go tell that to Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, the great champion of the "democratic" way. He believes that the time of Christendom has passed, and thankfully so. The time of "pluralism" has arrived, a time when it is "enough" for there to be a restoration of "faith and reason," not a restoration of the confessionally Catholic civil state. Alas, there is only one Faith, Catholicism. The Catholic Church alone is the queen and the mistress of the true Faith and teaches us infallibly how to use our reason in Its clear and holy light. Catholicism is but the one and only foundation of personal and social order.
Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI does not believe this. Neither do Americanist Catholics no matter where they might fall across the vast expanse of the ecclesiastical divide. It is "enough" for Ratzinger and his Americanist cohorts to advance the notions of "pluralism," content to believe that the "democratic way" makes it possible for people of different beliefs--or no beliefs at all--to live and to work together for the common temporal good of society without regard for their denominational differences as they rely upon the Natural Law and a generic sense of belief in "God" to help them as they do so. Such a belief is the essence of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry, and it has been condemned by the authority of the Catholic Church, with which the counterfeit church of conciliarism is in complete opposition on this one point alone.
While there is no recapturing the specifics of the past, the Middle Ages point out the ideal to which we must strive to realize in our own concrete circumstances, wherein Holy Mother Church will certainly adapt herself to different forms of government while she nevertheless continues to seek for the conversion of all men and all nations to the true Faith and thus to the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ the King. Catholicism is the only foundation of personal and social order. This is a truth that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI rejects, preferring the pluralism of the American model and the sort of inter-denominationalism that was condemned by Pope Saint Pius X in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910:
It was in Notre Charge Apostolique that Pope Saint Pius X explained that we must work for the restoration of all things in Christ, not in some kind of inter-denominational or non-denominational approach to "ethics" and public policy. The great saint put the matter very directly when he wrote:
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.
The Catholic City may take many forms. It did so in the Middle Ages as kingdoms had varied forms of government. Fine. However, the Catholic City is the goal for which we must strive, as theological heresy and error are no foundation for the salvation of the souls of individuals or for social order within nations or for peace among nations. And lest anyone assert that what Pope Saint Pius X wrote in merely reiterating the consistent Social Teaching of the Catholic Church does not bind our consciences today, let him consider once again the The Binding Nature of Catholic Social Teaching.
Pope Leo XIII explained in Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895, that the constitutional framework of Church-State relations in the United States of America was not the model for the rest of the world:
Yet, though all this is true, it would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced. The fact that Catholicity with you is in good condition, nay, is even enjoying a prosperous growth, is by all means to be attributed to the fecundity with which God has endowed His Church, in virtue of which unless men or circumstances interfere, she spontaneously expands and propagates herself; but she would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority. (Pope Leo XIII, Longiqua Oceani.)
Nearing the end of his life and his nearly twenty-five years on the Throne of Saint Peter, Pope Leo explained in A Review of His Pontificate, March 19, 1902, that Catholicism is the only foundation of social order:
Just as Christianity cannot penetrate into the soul without making it better, so it cannot enter into public life without establishing order. With the idea of a God Who governs all, Who is infinitely Wise, Good, and Just, the idea of duty seizes upon the consciences of men. It assuages sorrow, it calms hatred, it engenders heroes. If it has transformed pagan society--and that transformation was a veritable resurrection--for barbarism disappeared in proportion as Christianity extended its sway, so, after the terrible shocks which unbelief has given to the world in our days, it will be able to put that world again on the true road, and bring back to order the States and peoples of modern times. But the return of Christianity will not be efficacious and complete if it does not restore the world to a sincere love of the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. In the Catholic Church Christianity is Incarnate. It identifies Itself with that perfect, spiritual, and, in its own order, sovereign society, which is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ and which has for Its visible head the Roman Pontiff, successor of the Prince of the Apostles. It is the continuation of the mission of the Savior, the daughter and the heiress of His Redemption. It has preached the Gospel, and has defended it at the price of Its blood, and strong in the Divine assistance and of that immortality which has been promised it, It makes no terms with error but remains faithful to the commands which it has received, to carry the doctrine of Jesus Christ to the uttermost limits of the world and to the end of time, and to protect it in its inviolable integrity. Legitimate dispenser of the teachings of the Gospel it does not reveal itself only as the consoler and Redeemer of souls, but It is still more the internal source of justice and charity, and the propagator as well as the guardian of true liberty, and of that equality which alone is possible here below. In applying the doctrine of its Divine Founder, It maintains a wise equilibrium and marks the true limits between the rights and privileges of society. The equality which it proclaims does not destroy the distinction between the different social classes. It keeps them intact, as nature itself demands, in order to oppose the anarchy of reason emancipated from Faith, and abandoned to its own devices. The liberty which it gives in no wise conflicts with the rights of truth, because those rights are superior to the demands of liberty. Not does it infringe upon the rights of justice, because those rights are superior to the claims of mere numbers or power. Nor does it assail the rights of God because they are superior to the rights of humanity. (Pope Leo XIII, A Review of His Pontificate, March 19, 1902.)
Pope Saint Pius X explained in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906, that the thesis of the separation of Church and State was absolutely false, noting also that the civil state has an obligation to aid man in the pursuit of his Last End:
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." (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.)
Some, such as Ratzinger/Benedict himself (and any number of Catholic "conservative" commentators), might protest that a restoration of Christendom is not "possible." Says who? Are not the graces won for us by the shedding of every single drop of Our Blesed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Most Precious Blood and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces, as powerful now as they were on Pentecost Sunday when Saint Peter, the first pope, commenced the missionary work of Holy Mother Church? Did the conversion of most of the known world seem "possible" then? Do not all men and all nations have to recognize the true Faith? If this is so, as we the Catholic Church has taught us (she has defected, my friends, if the true popes of the past were wrong), then we must believe that the graces won for us on Calvary and that flow into our hearts and souls through Our Lady's loving hands are indeed sufficient to plant the seeds for the conversion of all men and all nations to the true Faith.
The Catholic Faith is absolutely necessary to guide men in their own personal lives and as they act together with other men in the institutions of civil governance. Pope Saint Pius X noted this in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910:
Here we have, founded by Catholics, an inter-denominational association that is to work for the reform of civilization, an undertaking which is above all religious in character; for there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical fact.
Perhaps some "conservative" Americanist might be bold enough to say that this statement of Catholic truth, made by a canonized saint, is erroneous and./or no longer applicable. This one statement from Notre Charge Apostolique, which condemned The Sillon's commitment to a "democracy" founded on inter-denominational (or pluralistic) premises, is enough to refute Joseph Ratzinger's lifelong Americanist views that have been defended recently by Sandro Magister (http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/196448?eng=y) and by a Lutheran, of all people, named Fred Hutchison. Actually, it makes perfect sense for a Lutheran to defend Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's belief in the thesis of separation of Church and State that had been condemned by pope after pope prior to 1958. It was, as noted by Father Denis Fahey in The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World, who was responsible for promoting the devil's revolution against the Social Reign of Christ the King:
The rending of the Mystical Body by the so-called Reformation movement has resulted in the pendulum swinging from the extreme error of Judaeo-Protestant Capitalism to the opposite extreme error of the Judaeo-Masonic-Communism of Karl Marx
The uprise of individualism rapidly led to unbridled self-seeking. Law-makers who were arbiters of morality, as heads of the Churches, did not hesitate to favour their own enterprising spirit. The nobles and rich merchants in England, for example, who got possession of the monastery lands, which had maintained the poor, voted the poor laws in order to make the poor a charge on the nation at large. The enclosure of common lands in England and the development of the industrial system are a proof of what private judgment can do when transplanted into the realm of production and distribution. The Luther separation of Church from the Ruler and the Citizen shows the decay in the true idea of membership of our Lord's Mystical Body.
"Assuredly," said Luther, "a price can be a Christian, but it is not as a Christian that he ought to govern. As a ruler, he is not called a Christian, but a price. The man is Christian, but his function does not concern his religion."
This teaching had its economic repercussion in the current that led to the doctrine laid down in Daniel Defoe's The Complete Tradesman, according to which a man must keep his religious and his business life apart and not allow one to interfere with the other.
"There is some difference," wrote Defoe, "between an honest man and an honest tradesman. . . . There are some latitudes, like poetical licences in other cases, which a tradesman must be and is allowed, and which by the custom and usage of a trade he may give himself a liberty in, which cannot be allowed in other cases to any men, no, nor to the tradesman himself out of the business."
No Protestant, you see has any authority to discourse on what constitutes "doctrinal orthodoxy" as the foundation of social order as he praises Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's multiple defections from the the authentic, irreformable Social Teaching of the Catholic Church concerning Church-State relations. While individual Protestants may be Christians if baptized validly, Protestantism is in no way to be identified with "Christianity," as Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ does not mix truth and error. As Father Frederick Faber has noted:
'Where there is no Mass, there is no Christianity, Where there is no Christianity, there a Christian can find no pleasure." (William Strang, Pastoral Theology, Benziger, 1897, p. 149.)
Catholics never look to a Protestant or Protestantism for elucidation on any theological points. Those who do not accept the entirety of the Deposit of Faith as It has been entrusted by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ exclusively to the infallible teaching authority of the Catholic Church have nothing to teach us. It is that simple.
Pope Pius XI explained this point at length in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922:
Because the Church is by divine institution the sole depository and interpreter of the ideals and teachings of Christ, she alone possesses in any complete and true sense the power effectively to combat that materialistic philosophy which has already done and, still threatens, such tremendous harm to the home and to the state. The Church alone can introduce into society and maintain therein the prestige of a true, sound spiritualism, the spiritualism of Christianity which both from the point of view of truth and of its practical value is quite superior to any exclusively philosophical theory. The Church is the teacher and an example of world good-will, for she is able to inculcate and develop in mankind the "true spirit of brotherly love" (St. Augustine, De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae, i, 30) and by raising the public estimation of the value and dignity of the individual's soul help thereby to lift us even unto God.
Finally, the Church is able to set both public and private life on the road to righteousness by demanding that everything and all men become obedient to God "Who beholdeth the heart," to His commands, to His laws, to His sanctions. If the teachings of the Church could only penetrate in some such manner as We have described the inner recesses of the consciences of mankind, be they rulers or be they subjects, all eventually would be so apprised of their personal and civic duties and their mutual responsibilities that in a short time "Christ would be all, and in all." (Colossians iii, 11)
Since the Church is the safe and sure guide to conscience, for to her safe-keeping alone there has been confided the doctrines and the promise of the assistance of Christ, she is able not only to bring about at the present hour a peace that is truly the peace of Christ, but can, better than any other agency which We know of, contribute greatly to the securing of the same peace for the future, to the making impossible of war in the future. For the Church teaches (she alone has been given by God the mandate and the right to teach with authority) that not only our acts as individuals but also as groups and as nations must conform to the eternal law of God. In fact, it is much more important that the acts of a nation follow God's law, since on the nation rests a much greater responsibility for the consequences of its acts than on the individual.
When, therefore, governments and nations follow in all their activities, whether they be national or international, the dictates of conscience grounded in the teachings, precepts, and example of Jesus Christ, and which are binding on each and every individual, then only can we have faith in one another's word and trust in the peaceful solution of the difficulties and controversies which may grow out of differences in point of view or from clash of interests. An attempt in this direction has already and is now being made; its results, however, are almost negligible and, especially so, as far as they can be said to affect those major questions which divide seriously and serve to arouse nations one against the other. No merely human institution of today can be as successful in devising a set of international laws which will be in harmony with world conditions as the Middle Ages were in the possession of that true League of Nations, Christianity. It cannot be denied that in the Middle Ages this law was often violated; still it always existed as an ideal, according to which one might judge the acts of nations, and a beacon light calling those who had lost their way back to the safe road.
There exists an institution able to safeguard the sanctity of the law of nations. This institution is a part of every nation; at the same time it is above all nations. She enjoys, too, the highest authority, the fullness of the teaching power of the Apostles. Such an institution is the Church of Christ. She alone is adapted to do this great work, for she is not only divinely commissioned to lead mankind, but moreover, because of her very make-up and the constitution which she possesses, by reason of her age-old traditions and her great prestige, which has not been lessened but has been greatly increased since the close of the War, cannot but succeed in such a venture where others assuredly will fail.
What I wrote a few months ago is apropos now in light of the deceptions posed by those who believe that "democracy" along the lines of that allegedly found in the system created by the Constitution of the United States of America is the "solution" to the world's problems, the veritable destroyer of autocrats and the protector of the downtrodden and oppressed:
The lie of Americanism is the lie of Martin Luther and Judeo-Masonry all rolled into one, that is, the lie that the true Church must not be recognized by the civil state as its official religion. This is false, as I quoted Pope Saint Pius X's firm declaration in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906, to this effect endless numbers of times on this site. This lie was also exploded by the late Louis-Edouard-François-Desiré Cardinal Pie, as can be see in this passage from Selected Writings of Cardinal Pie of Poitiers:
"If Jesus Christ," proclaims Msgr. Pie in a magnificent pastoral instruction, "if Jesus Christ Who is our light whereby we are drawn out of the seat of darkness and from the shadow of death, and Who has given to the world the treasure of truth and grace, if He has not enriched the world, I mean to say the social and political world itself, from the great evils which prevail in the heart of paganism, then it is to say that the work of Jesus Christ is not a divine work. Even more so: if the Gospel which would save men is incapable of procuring the actual progress of peoples, if the revealed light which is profitable to individuals is detrimental to society at large, if the scepter of Christ, sweet and beneficial to souls, and perhaps to families, is harmful and unacceptable for cities and empires; in other words, if Jesus Christ to whom the Prophets had promised and to Whom His Father had given the nations as a heritage, is not able to exercise His authority over them for it would be to their detriment and temporal disadvantage, it would have to be concluded that Jesus Christ is not God". . . .
"To say Jesus Christ is the God of individuals and of families, but not the God of peoples and of societies, is to say that He is not God. To say that Christianity is the law of individual man and is not the law of collective man, is to say that Christianity is not divine. To say that the Church is the judge of private morality, but has nothing to do with public and political morality, is to say that the Church is not divine."
In fine, Cardinal Pie insists:
"Christianity would not be divine if it were to have existence within individuals but not with regard to societies."
Fr. de St. Just asks, in conclusion:
"Could it be proven in clearer terms that social atheism conduces to individualistic atheism?"
Moving ahead several pages in Fr. de St. Just's The Kingship of Christ According to Cardinal Pie of Poitiers, we continue with Msgr. Pie's observations:
"There is no more public morality, no more justice, you will say. These results astonish you; it should have been easy to predict. Isn't this as a pagan saying has it, that it would be easier to build a city in the air than to have a society without God. Isn't this what the Roman orator [Cicero] had said, that the stability of commerce and the greatest of virtues, which in justice, would be undermined along with loss of respect for a strong faith in the divinity? Hasn't the Holy Ghost declared in the most energetic language that when impious men rule men can expect nothing other than ruin: 'When the wicked shall bear rule, the people shall mourn' (Prov. 9: 2)
"You add: all is going, all is in decline. And still you are astonished again, this should have been easy to foresee ... Because the legislation has made a profession of neutrality and of abstention concerning the existence of God, upon what foundation will its proper authority be established? In permitting me to not acknowledge God, am I not authorized to belittle God Himself? We have not elected to place dogma in the law, you tell me. And I reply: if the dogma of the existence of God is not found in the law, then the law is no longer so in the true sense of the word, it is nothing but a pipedream." (pp. 50-53, 63).
"Neither in His Person," Card, Pie said in a celebrated pastoral instruction, "nor in the exercise of His rights, can Jesus Christ be divided, dissolved, split up; in Him the distinction of natures and operations can never be separated or opposed; the divine cannot be incompatible to the human, nor the human to the divine. On the contrary, it is the peace, the drawing together, the reconciliation; it is the very character of union which has made the two things one: 'He is our peace, Who hat made both one. . .' (Eph. 2:14). This is why St. John told us: 'every spirit that dissolveth Jesus is not of God. And this is Antichrist, of whom you have heard that he cometh: and is now already in the world' (1 John 4:3; cf. also 1 John 2:18, 22; 2 John: 7). "So then, Card. Pie continues, "when I hear certain talk being spread around, certain pithy statements (i.e., 'Separation of Church and State,' for one, and the enigmatic axiom 'A free Church in a free State,' for another) prevailing from day to day, and which are being introduced into the heart of societies, the dissolvent by which the world must perish, I utter this cry of alarm: Beware the Antichrist."
Fr. de St. Just adds:
"Accordingly, the Bishop of Poitiers had always fought against THE SEPARATION OF Church and State. Moreover, he opposed all separations, that of reason and faith, of nature and grace, of natural religion and revealed religion, the separation of the philosopher and the Christian, of private man and public man. He saw in all these [separations] a resurgence of Manichean dualism and he had fought all these with, the supreme argument, the law formed by Christ. Therefore, it is in all truth, writing to [Minister of the Interior] the Count of Presigny, that he could render this testimony:
'We have nothing in common with the theorists of disunion and opposition of two orders, temporal and spiritual, natural and supernatural. We struggle, on the contrary, with all our strength against these doctrines of separation which is leading to the denial of religion itself and of revealed religion.'"
Fr. de St. Just returns at this point and introduces us to what is perhaps Msgr. Pie's strongest language, with regard to this entire subject:
"To this doctrine of the Church, which Msgr. Pie brought to the mind of the rulers of nations, the liberals would oppose acts favoring separation.
"Certain countries, Belgium and America, for example, haven't they proclaimed the separation of Church and State, and doesn't the Church enjoy a more complete liberty under such a system?"
Cardinal Pie responded firmly to this question:
'THE AMERICAN AND BELGIUM SYSTEM, this system of philosophical-political indifference, shall eternally be a bastard system" (pp. 122-124 in Fr. de St. Just's book) (Selected Writings of Selected Writings of Cardinal Pie of Poitiers, Catholic Action Resource Center, Orlando, Florida, October, 2007, pp. 21-23.)
Those looking for "Mister Democracy" as the means to realize the "better world" look in vain. The "better world" is the result only of the reform of individual lives in cooperation with Sanctifying Graces as men and nations seek to submit to the Deposit of Faith as It has been entrusted to Holy Mother Church, recognizing that error has no rights and that it is indeed to destroy all notion of social order to contend that sin, the very thing that caused Our Blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to suffer unspeakable horrors in His Sacred Humanity during His Passion and Death and cause His Most Blessed Mother's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart to be thrust through and through with Seven Swords of Sorrow, has any right to be protected under cover of law or promoted in any aspect of popular culture.
Pope Leo XIII explained in Immoratale Dei, November 1, 1885, that the civil law must do nothing to interfere with man's eternal salvation:
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.
Leaders of the United States of America and of the counterfeit church of conciliarism may be looking for "Mister Democracy." We must look to Christ the King and to Mary our Immaculate Queen as we seek to plant a few seeds for the conversion of men and nations to the true Faith, mindful that we must make reparation for our own sins and those of the whole world by offering all of our prayers and sufferings of this present moment to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Saint Louis de Montfort, that great apostle of the Rosary and of total consecration to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary wrote the following words three hundred years ago. They are more relevant today than they were when he wrote them:
There are several kinds of Wisdom. First there is true and false wisdom. True wisdom is fondness of truth, without guile of dissimulation. False wisdom is fondness of falsehood, disguised under the appearance of truth. This false wisdom is the wisdom of the world, which, according to the Holy Spirit, is threefold "Earthly, sensual and devilish wisdom" (Jas. 3: 15). True wisdom is natural and supernatural. Natural wisdom is knowledge, in an eminent degree, of natural things in their principles; supernatural wisdom is knowledge of supernatural and divine things in their origin.
But we must be aware of being mistaken in our choice, for there are several kinds of wisdom. There is the Wisdom of God--the only true Wisdom, that deserves to be loved as a great treasure. There is also the wisdom of the corrupt world, which must be condemned and detested as evil and pernicious. Moreover, there is the wisdom of the philosophers, which we must despise wen it is not true philosophy and because it is often dangerous to salvation.
So far, following the advice of St. Paul, we have spoken of the Wisdom of God to chosen souls, but lest they should be deceived by the false luster of worldly wisdom, let us expose its deceit and malice. The wisdom of the world is that of which it is written: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise" (1 Cor. 1: 19) according to the world. "The wisdom of the flesh is an enemy to God.... This is not the wisdom descending from above but earthly, sensual, devilish" (Rom. 8: 7, Jas. 3: 15).
This worldly wisdom consists in the exact compliance with the maxims and fashions of the world; in a continuous trend toward greatness and esteem. It is a secret and unceasing pursuit of pleasures and personal interests, not in a gross and open manner, so as to cause scandal, but in a secret, deceitful and scheming fashion. Otherwise, it would not be what the world calls wisdom, but rank licentiousness.
Those who process according to the wisdom of the world, are those who know how to manage well their affairs and to arrange things to their temporal advantage, without appearing to do so;
--who know the art of deceiving and how to cleverly cheat without it being noticed; who say or do one thing and have another in mind;
--who are thoroughly acquainted with the way and the flattery of the world;
--who know how to please everybody, in order to reach their goal, not troubling much about the honor and interests of God;
--who make a secret, but deadly, fusion of truth with untruth; of the Gospel with the world; of virtue with vice; of Jesus Christ with Satan;
--who wish to pass for honest people, but not as religious men; who despise and corrupt or readily condemn every religious practice which does not conform to their own.
In short, the worldly-wise are those, who being guided only by their human senses and reason, seek only to appear as Christian and honest folk, without troubling much to please God, or to do penance for the sins which they have committed against His divine Majesty. The worlding bases his conduct upon his honor, upon what people say, upon convention, upon good cheer, upon personal interest, upon refined manners, upon witty jokes. These are the seven innocent incentives, so he thinks, upon which he can rely, so that hey may lead an easy life. He has virtues of his own, for which is canonized by the world. These are manliness, finesse, diplomacy, tact, gallantry, politeness and sprightliness. He considers as serious sins such traits as lack of feeling, silliness, dullness and sanctimoniousness.
The Ten Commandments of the Worldly Man:
1. Thou shalt be well acquainted with the world.
2. Thou shalt appear to be an honest man.
3. Thou shalt be successful in business.
4. Thou shalt kept what is thine.
5. Thou shalt get on in the world.
6. Thou shalt make friends.
7. Thou shalt be a society man.
8. Thou shalt make merry.
9. Thou shalt not be a killjoy.
10. Thou shalt avoid singularity, dullness and an air of piety.
Never was the world so corrupt as it is now, because it was never so astute, so wise in its own conceit and so cunning. It is so skillful in deceiving the soul seeking perfection, that it makes use of truth to foster untruth, of virtue to authorize vice and it even distorts the meaning of Christ's own truths, to give authority to its own maxims. "The number of those who are fools, according to God, is infinite" (Eccles. 1: 15)
The earthly wisdom, spoken of by St. James, is an excessive striving for worldly goods. The worldly-wise make a secret profession of this type of wisdom when they allow themselves to become attached to their earthly possessions; when they strive to become rich; when they go to law and bring useless actions against others, in order to acquire or to keep temporal goods; when their every thought, word and deed is mainly directed toward obtaining or retaining something temporal. As to working out their eternal salvation and making use of the means to do so--such as reception of the Sacraments and prayer--they accomplish these duties only carelessly, in a very offhanded manner, once in a while and for the sake of appearances.
Sensual wisdom is a lustful desire for pleasures, The worldly-wise make a profession of it, when they seek only the satisfaction of the senses; when they are inordinately fond of entertainment; when they sun whatever mortifies and inconveniences the body, such as fasting and other austerities; when they continually think of eating, drinking, playing, laughing, amusing themselves and having an agreeable time; when they eagerly seek after soft beds, merry games, sumptuous feasts and fashionable society.
Then, after having unscrupulously indulged in all these pleasures--perhaps without displeasing the world or injuring their health--they look for the "least scrupulous" confessor (such is the name they give to those easy going confessors who shirk their duty) that they may receive from him, at little cost, the peaceful sanction of their soft and effeminate life, and a plenary indulgence for all their sins. I say, at little cost, for these, sensually wise, want, as penance, the recitation of only a few prayers, or the giving of an alms, because they dislike what afflicts the body.
Devilish wisdom consists in an unlawful striving for human esteem and honors. This is the wisdom which the worldly-wise profess when they aim, although not openly, at greatness, honors, dignities and high positions; when they wish to be seen, esteemed, praised and applauded by men; when in their studies, their works, their endeavors their words and their actions, they seek only the good opinion and praise of men, so that they may be looked upon as pious people, as men of learning, as great leaders, as clever lawyers, as people of boundless and distinguished merit, or deserving of high consideration; while they cannot bear an insult, or a rebuke; or they cover up their faults and make a show of their fine qualities.
With Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Wisdom, we must detest and condemn these three kinds of false wisdom if we wish to acquire the true one, which does not seek its own interest, which is not found on this earth, nor in the heart of those who lead a comfortable life, but which abhors all that which is great and high in the estimation of men.
To come to the perfect possession of Divine Wisdom, we must accept and follow His teaching. We must begin renouncing ourselves and keeping the great commandments of loving God and our neighbor. We must renounce the flesh, the world and its temporal goods. Above all we must renounce our self-will. To do this, we must humbly pray, we must do penance and suffer persecution. For all this we need the help of Divine Wisdom, Who invites us to go to Him.
With His help we need not fear, provided we be clean of heart. To succeed we must persevere and not look back; we must walk in the light and act according to the teachings of Divine Wisdom; we must be vigilant and avoid the maxims of the false prophets; we must not fear what may be done to our body and reputation, but only be solicitous about the kingdom of God, which we can only enter by the narrow gate. Therefore, we must keep in mind the Eight Beatitudes and we must be thankful to God for having taught us these heavenly truths. (St. Louis de Montfort's True Devotion: Consecration to Mary, Complete Five-Week Preparation, compiled by Father Helmuts Libietus, Angelus Press, 1998, pp. 31-36, taken from Saint Louis de Montfort's book, The Love of Eternal Wisdom.)
Praying our Rosaries, therefore, for the day that there will be a Catholic States of America, let us ask Our Lady of Guadalupe to help us exclaim with all of our hearts at all times Viva Cristo Rey! as we remind one and all that Catholicism--and nothing else--is the one and only foundation of personal and social order. And may Saint Joseph, the Patron of the Universal Church and the Protector of the Faithful, help us to cleave to true bishops and true priests in the Catholic catacombs where no concessions are made to any of the errors and apostasies of conciliarism, including Americanism, or to the nonexistent legitimacy of the shepherds who prefer the "wisdom" of Protestant apologists and Masonic activists to the truths of the Catholic Church.
