America's Concentration Camps

by Thomas A. Droleskey

The scene is tragic. Truly tragic. It is played out almost every weekday for a period of nine months out of every year. In some cases, however, it is played out on every work day of the year.

What scene is this? The scene of children being dropped off, either by their parents or by school bus drivers, at America's concentration camps, that is, public schools. Over a million parents each year voluntarily kill their children by means of surgical abortion. Millions more voluntarily kill their preborn children by chemical means. Tens of millions of parents kill their children's immortal souls by sending them to glorified detention centers, public schools, which fill them with disinformation as they prepare them to be the reflexive slaves of the state and mindless, robotic consumers in our land of consumption and eternal death. Young people, whose immortal souls have been purchased by the shedding of every single drop of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Most Precious Blood, are subjected to endless propaganda and brainwashing in order to eliminate from their all tendencies to engage in rational thought, no less aspire to the heights of personal sanctity. Every effort is made to reaffirm young people, most of whom are unrepentant participants in objectively sinful behavior, in beliefs and practices that can only wind up leading them to Hell for all eternity if they do not convert before they die.

As one whose career as a formal classroom professor of political science at the college and university level spanned three decades, I can attest to the utter rot that emanates from the public schools of this country. Mind you, I am not indemnifying Catholic schools, which have been the subject of numerous articles of mine in the past twenty-six years. Remember, we started Christ the King College to be the antidote to the Modernist poisons that pass for "Catholicism" in almost every Catholic college and university in this country today. However, the purpose of this article is remind readers that any proposal to "improve" public schools is bound to fail because public schooling (the word "education" must never be used in association with the vast criminal enterprise, funded by taxpayer dollars, known as public schools) is founded on many of the falsehoods of Modernity, including the Protestant Revolution and Freemasonry.

Pope Leo XIII noted the Masonic roots of public schooling in his encyclical letter on Freemasonry, Humanum Genus. April 20, 1884:

Wherefore we see that men are publicly tempted by the many allurements of pleasure; that there are journals and pamphlets with neither moderation nor shame; that stage-plays are remarkable for license; that designs for works of art are shamelessly sought in the laws of a so-called verism; that the contrivances of a soft and delicate life are most carefully devised; and that all the blandishments of pleasure are diligently sought out by which virtue may be lulled to sleep. Wickedly, also, but at the same time quite consistently, do those act who do away with the expectation of the joys of heaven, and bring down all happiness to the level of mortality, and, as it were, sink it in the earth. Of what We have said the following fact, astonishing not so much in itself as in its open expression, may serve as a confirmation. For, since generally no one is accustomed to obey crafty and clever men so submissively as those whose soul is weakened and broken down by the domination of the passions, there have been in the sect of the Freemasons some who have plainly determined and proposed that, artfully and of set purpose, the multitude should be satiated with a boundless license of vice, as, when this had been done, it would easily come under their power and authority for any acts of daring. . . .

With the greatest unanimity the sect of the Freemasons also endeavors to take to itself the education of youth. They think that they can easily mold to their opinions that soft and pliant age, and bend it whither they will; and that nothing can be more fitted than this to enable them to bring up the youth of the State after their own plan. Therefore, in the education and instruction of children they allow no share, either of teaching or of discipline, to the ministers of the Church; and in many places they have procured that the education of youth shall be exclusively in the hands of laymen, and that nothing which treats of the most important and most holy duties of men to God shall be introduced into the instructions on morals.

 

This description of the Masonic influence on society is just as relevant today as it was 122 years ago. Truth be told, however, the description provided by Pope Leo XIII in Humanum Genus of  the goals of public schooling apply equally to the very first in the United States of America to institute statewide control of public schooling, which began with the establishment of the State Board of Education by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1837. Statewide control of public schooling and its curriculum of "studies" was an effort undertaken by Horace Mann (1796-1859) to mandate the instruction of certain core American beliefs (civil liberty, religious indifferentism, egalitarianism, cultural pluralism) to the children of Irish Catholic immigrants who had made their way to Massachusetts. These children had to be Americanized, they had to be divested of their attachment to "concepts" that were foreign to the "American" way.

Here is a brief description of Horace Mann's principal goals in the creation of statewide educational standards:

1) Fifth Annual Report (1841). Mann argued successfully that economic wealth would increase through an educated public. It was therefore in the self interest of business to pay the taxation for public education.

(2) Seventh Annual Report (1843). Horace Mann inspected and appraised favorably the Prussian school system. This report led to widespread improvement .of education through the educational theories of Pestalozzi, Herbart and eventually Froebel.

(3) Tenth Annual Report (1846). Mann asserted that education was a natural right for every child. It is a necessary responsibility of the State to insure that education was provided for every child. This report led to the adoption of the first State law requiring compulsory attendance in school in 1852.

(4) Twelfth Annual Report (1848). He presented a rationale for the support of public education through taxation. Society improves as a result of an educated p public. He argued for non-sectarian schools, so the taxpayer would not be in the position of supporting any established religion with which he might disagree in conscience. (Educational Contributions of Horace Mann)

It was an easy step from there to where we are today, with even parents who are exercising their natural law rights as the principal educators of their children forced to submit to the unjust usurpation of their parental authority by the state. Thus, any Catholic who worships at the altar of the false god of "states' rights" had better reckon with the fact that a sophisticated warfare against the souls of young Catholics began at the state level in this country in 1837 and has taken root in every state from that time to the present with a particular vengeance. State governments are no more capable than a national or central government in pursuing the common good if those governments do not recognize and therefore submit themselves to the Social Reign of Christ the King as exercised by Holy Mother Church. Here is where the Protestant Revolt, which was founded by Martin Luther in a specific rejection of the Social Reign of Christ the King, and Freemasonry, which makes constant warfare against the true Faith, converged to produce a country where a mutual hatred of all things Catholic has been enshrined as the very foundation of American public schooling.

The State of Oregon, a den of Freemasonry which has championed "physician-assisted suicide" in recent years as a result of a voter initiative enacted into law by means of a popular referendum, became quite a laboratory to see how far the warfare against the Church could be taken. A voter initiative, sponsored by the Ku Klux Klan and the Oregon Scottish Rite Masons, was approved on November 7, 1922, to force all parents to send their children to public schools. A legal battle ensued, prompting the Supreme Court of the United States on June 1, 1925, to issue a decision in the case of Pierce v. Society of Sisters that invalidated the Oregon law, which would have become effective in 1926 had the Court not ruled against the law.

Writing for the Court, Associate Justice James C. McReynolds, an appointee of President Woodrow Wilson who served on the Court between 1914 and 1941, noted:

The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.

 

Although Justice McReynolds said that parents could not be forced to send their children to public schools, he did hold that the states had the right to compel attendance in some school and to establish educational standards, thereby providing the United State Supreme Court's imprimatur on the usurpation of the rights of parents and of the Church that had begun with Horace Mann eighty-eight years before. Consider the language of Justice McReynolds in this regard:

No question is raised concerning the power of the state reasonably to regulate all schools, to inspect, supervise and examine them, their teachers and pupils; to require that all children of proper age attend some school, that teachers shall be of good moral character and patriotic disposition, that certain studies plainly essential good citizenship must be taught, and that nothing be taught which is manifestly inimical to the public welfare.

 

This is quite a loaded passage. What constitutes "good citizenship? Acceptance of American "values," including Calvinistic capitalism and religious indifferentism? What is "manifestly inimical to the public welfare?" Advocating the Catholicization of one's nation? Justice McReynolds, was, however, simply reaffirming what had become by his name an accepted article of the American "faith," that public schooling was the backbone of a "free" people.

Obviously, the very belief that we are a "free" people is itself a gigantic myth. We are not. We are the slaves of the state and its arbitrary whims. We are the slave of a Constitution that is indifferent to the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man in Our Lady's virginal and immaculate womb and hostile to the Deposit of Faith the God-Man has entrusted solely to His true Church. We are the slaves of career politicians who believe that we exist in order to enable them to pick our pockets to enlarge the powers of the state and thus increase their ability to control every aspect of the legitimate exercise of our human free wills. We are the slaves of the corporate robber barons who contribute mightily to the coffers of these career politicians while they manufacture products to appeal to our greed and our desire to luxury, entrapping us into various snares of endless materialism and hedonism. We are the slaves of the powerful Judeo-Masonic machinery that controls our banking and our entertainment and our courts and our "educational" system. We are the slaves of stupid myths about this country being the "guarantor of human liberty worldwide" when the truth is that anyone who points out the absurdity of these myths is denounced fascistically as unpatriotic. We are the slaves of pharmaceutical companies who produce poisons to addict us to their "cures" for diseases that have been produced by lives of excess and by the very chemical additives placed in our food and our water to make us sick so as to make us dependent upon these poisons. We are not a free people. We are slaves.

Cognizant of the enslavement of mankind by the aftermath of the Protestant Revolt and by the rise of ideologies such as Marxism-Leninism, Pope Pius XI issued an encyclical letter on the subject of education, Divini Illius Magistri December 31, 1929, to direct the minds of Catholics in the midst of Modernity's savage war against the souls of Catholics in allegedly "free" nations. A few salient points from Divini Illius Magistri will indicate the simple Catholic truth that the state has no role to play in operating of schools, less yet in the mandating of a curriculum of studies on any student at any time.

Writing about the erroneous belief concerning the alleged power of "education" to improve the lot of man, Pope Pius XI noted:

This perfection they seek to acquire by means of education. But many of them with, it would seem, too great insistence on the etymological meaning of the word, pretend to draw education out of human nature itself and evolve it by its own unaided powers. Such easily fall into error, because, instead of fixing their gaze on God, first principle and last end of the whole universe, they fall back upon themselves, becoming attached exclusively to passing things of earth; and thus their restlessness will never cease till they direct their attention and their efforts to God, the goal of all perfection, according to the profound saying of Saint Augustine: "Thou didst create us, O Lord, for Thyself, and our heart is restless till it rest in Thee."

One of the chief pillars of Freemasonry (and of all aspects of Modernity) is precisely that man can solve all of his problems by the use of his "unaided" powers. That is, man does not need belief in the Deposit of Faith that Our Lord entrusted solely to the Catholic Church. He does not need belief in, access to, and cooperation with sanctifying grace to submit to the truths contained in the Deposit of Faith and to live fruitfully thereby.

True education, wrote Pope Pius XI, must revolve around Our Lord as He has revealed Himself through His true Church.

It is therefore as important to make no mistake in education, as it is to make no mistake in the pursuit of the last end, with which the whole work of education is intimately and necessarily connected. In fact, since education consists essentially in preparing man for what he must be and for what he must do here below, in order to attain the sublime end for which he was created, it is clear that there can be no true education which is not wholly directed to man's last end, and that in the present order of Providence, since God has revealed Himself to us in the Person of His Only Begotten Son, who alone is "the way, the truth and the life," there can be no ideally perfect education which is not Christian education.

(As a note of reference, it is important to bear in mind that the Popes of the Catholic Church, as opposed to the pontiffs of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, used the word "Christian" to refer to the Catholic Faith. The reason for this is simple: although Protestants say that they are Christians, they do not truly know Our Lord since they reject His true Church and dissent from multiple articles He has revealed and deposited in His true Church. They do not represent Christianity at all. Only the Catholic Church represents Christianity. She alone has the right to use the appellation of "Christian.")

Pope Pius XI, the great exponent of the Social Reign of Christ the King, noted in Divini Illius Magistri that the fate of nations depended upon the education of youth in the truths of the Catholic Faith:

From this we see the supreme importance of Christian education, not merely for each individual, but for families and for the whole of human society, whose perfection comes from the perfection of the elements that compose it. From these same principles, the excellence, we may well call it the unsurpassed excellence, of the work of Christian education becomes manifest and clear; for after all it aims at securing the Supreme Good, that is, God, for the souls of those who are being educated, and the maximum of well-being possible here below for human society. And this it does as efficaciously as man is capable of doing it, namely by cooperating with God in the perfecting of individuals and of society, in as much as education makes upon the soul the first, the most powerful and lasting impression for life according to the well-known saying of the Wise Man, "A young man according to his way, even when he is old, he will not depart from it." With good reason therefore did St. John Chrysostom say, "What greater work is there than training the mind and forming the habits of the young?"

Man must always keep his mind his First Cause and Last End in all of his activities, whether he is acting individually or collectively with others in the pursuit of the common good of his nation. The state of a nation depends upon the state of souls, and the state of souls depends upon the extent to which individual citizens keep themselves in states of Sanctifying Grace and adhere completely to the Deposit of Faith, including the Church's immutable Social Doctrine on the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ, which does not worship at the altar of the false, mythological god of American "civil liberty."

The Church, therefore, must be free to pursue the entirety of the mission, including that of education, entrusted to her by her Divine Bridegroom, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, without any interference from the state. Parents, who form the domestic cell of the Church in their families, must be free to do so in the bosom of their homes.

Pope Pius XI noted this in Divini Illius Magistri:

Hence it is that in this proper object of her mission, that is, "in faith and morals, God Himself has made the Church sharer in the divine magisterium and, by a special privilege, granted her immunity from error; hence she is the mistress of men, supreme and absolutely sure, and she has inherent in herself an inviolable right to freedom in teaching.' By necessary consequence the Church is independent of any sort of earthly power as well in the origin as in the exercise of her mission as educator, not merely in regard to her proper end and object, but also in regard to the means necessary and suitable to attain that end. Hence with regard to every other kind of human learning and instruction, which is the common patrimony of individuals and society, the Church has an independent right to make use of it, and above all to decide what may help or harm Christian education. And this must be so, because the Church as a perfect society has an independent right to the means conducive to its end, and because every form of instruction, no less than every human action, has a necessary connection with man's last end, and therefore cannot be withdrawn from the dictates of the divine law, of which the Church is guardian, interpreter and infallible mistress.

This truth is clearly set forth by Pius X of saintly memory:

"Whatever a Christian does even in the order of things of earth, he may not overlook the supernatural; indeed he must, according to the teaching of Christian wisdom, direct all things towards the supreme good as to his last end; all his actions, besides, in so far as good or evil in the order of morality, that is, in keeping or not with natural and divine law, fall under the judgment and jurisdiction of the Church."

 

Only a fool would contend that Pope Saint Pius X was wrong, that there is ever a moment when something we do in the "order of the things of the earth" can overlook the supernatural. Those "conservatives" who believe that they can devise plans to combat liberalism and statism and socialism without seeking to restore the Social Reign of Christ the King are indeed fools, plain and simple. They tilt at windmills as they refuse, for whatever reason, usually involving a dogmatic adherence to a political philosophy that they contend pridefully contains the ability to "resolve" social problems, to state this simple truth: all things must be restored in Christ the King, both individually and collectively.

After delineating the rights of the Church and the family with respect to education--and discussing instances when a state ordered according to Catholic teaching might have to intervene to protect a child whose religious instruction was being ignored by his parents, Pope Pius XI wrote in Divini Illius Magistri about the simple fact that the welfare of the state itself depends entirely upon its submission to the truths of the Catholic Faith:

 

Whoever refuses to admit these principles, and hence to apply them to education, must necessarily deny that Christ has founded His Church for the eternal salvation of mankind, and maintain instead that civil society and the State are not subject to God and to His law, natural and divine. Such a doctrine is manifestly impious, contrary to right reason, and, especially in this matter of education, extremely harmful to the proper training of youth, and disastrous as well for civil society as for the well-being of all mankind. On the other hand from the application of these principles, there inevitably result immense advantages for the right formation of citizens. This is abundantly proved by the history of every age. Tertullian in his Apologeticus could throw down a challenge to the enemies of the Church in the early days of Christianity, just as St. Augustine did in his; and we today can repeat with him:

"Let those who declare the teaching of Christ to be opposed to the welfare of the State, furnish us with an army of soldiers such as Christ says soldiers ought to be; let them give us subjects, husbands, wives, parents, children, masters, servants, kings, judges, taxpayers and tax gatherers who live up to the teachings of Christ; and then let them dare assert that Christian doctrine is harmful to the State. Rather let them not hesitate one moment to acclaim that doctrine, rightly observed, the greatest safeguard of the State."

While treating of education, it is not out of place to show here how an ecclesiastical writer, who flourished in more recent times, during the Renaissance, the holy and learned Cardinal Silvio Antoniano, to whom the cause of Christian education is greatly indebted, has set forth most clearly this well established point of Catholic doctrine. He had been a disciple of that wonderful educator of youth, St. Philip Neri; he was teacher and Latin secretary to St. Charles Borromeo, and it was at the latter's suggestion and under his inspiration that he wrote his splendid treatise on The Christian Education of Youth. In it he argues as follows:

"The more closely the temporal power of a nation aligns itself with the spiritual, and the more it fosters and promotes the latter, by so much the more it contributes to the conservation of the commonwealth. For it is the aim of the ecclesiastical authority by the use of spiritual means, to form good Christians in accordance with its own particular end and object; and in doing this it helps at the same time to form good citizens, and prepares them to meet their obligations as members of a civil society. This follows of necessity because in the City of God, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, a good citizen and an upright man are absolutely one and the same thing. How grave therefore is the error of those who separate things so closely united, and who think that they can produce good citizens by ways and methods other than those which make for the formation of good Christians. For, let human prudence say what it likes and reason as it pleases, it is impossible to produce true temporal peace and tranquillity by things repugnant or opposed to the peace and happiness of eternity."

 

In other words, ladies and gentlemen, the best citizens are well-informed and well-formed Catholics who are trying to save their immortal souls as Catholics in cooperation with the graces won for them by the shedding of Our Lord's Most Precious Blood and which flow forth from the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces, who has the absolute right to be honored as the Queen of all nations. It is that simple. Catholic truth reflects the simplicity of God Himself.

Penetratingly, Pope Pius XI eviscerated the theories that underlain the work of Horace Mann in the Nineteenth Century and were being promoted in his own day by the likes of the pragmatist John Dewey:

 

Hence every form of pedagogic naturalism which in any way excludes or weakens supernatural Christian formation in the teaching of youth, is false. Every method of education founded, wholly or in part, on the denial or forgetfulness of original sin and of grace, and relying on the sole powers of human nature, is unsound. Such, generally speaking, are those modern systems bearing various names which appeal to a pretended self-government and unrestrained freedom on the part of the child, and which diminish or even suppress the teacher's authority and action, attributing to the child an exclusive primacy of initiative, and an activity independent of any higher law, natural or divine, in the work of his education.

If any of these terms are used, less properly, to denote the necessity of a gradually more active cooperation on the part of the pupil in his own education; if the intention is to banish from education despotism and violence, which, by the way, just punishment is not, this would be correct, but in no way new. It would mean only what has been taught and reduced to practice by the Church in traditional Christian education, in imitation of the method employed by God Himself towards His creatures, of whom He demands active cooperation according to the nature of each; for His Wisdom "reacheth from end to end mightily and ordereth all things sweetly."

But alas! it is clear from the obvious meaning of the words and from experience, that what is intended by not a few, is the withdrawal of education from every sort of dependence on the divine law. So today we see, strange sight indeed, educators and philosophers who spend their lives in searching for a universal moral code of education, as if there existed no decalogue, no gospel law, no law even of nature stamped by God on the heart of man, promulgated by right reason, and codified in positive revelation by God Himself in the ten commandments. These innovators are wont to refer contemptuously to Christian education as "heteronomous," "passive","obsolete," because founded upon the authority of God and His holy law.

Such men are miserably deluded in their claim to emancipate, as they say, the child, while in reality they are making him the slave of his own blind pride and of his disorderly affections, which, as a logical consequence of this false system, come to be justified as legitimate demands of a so-called autonomous nature.

Ah, what did I say about slavery a while back? Anyone who does not place himself under the sweet yoke of the Divine Redeemer through the Catholic Church is a slave to many people and things, including his own blind pride. Any country which does not place itself under the sweet yoke of the Divine Redeemer's Social Kingship is a slave to the devil and becomes an oppressor of its people. Who desires "pedagogic naturalism?" Who desires "the withdrawal of education from every sort of dependence on the divine law?" Not Our Lord, ladies and gentlemen. It is the adversary himself who desires these things. It is he who has been in control of American popular culture from its very inception. The devil reigns as king if Our Lord does not do so through His true Church. It is that simple. Anyone care to dissent from this plain truth?

Pope Pius XI completely and utterly rejected the whole notion of public schooling, allowing for rare exceptions in certain cases given the actual realities facing Catholics in places like the United States of America. As a matter of principle, however, Pope Pius XI minced no words: public schooling is a menace to souls and harmful to nations because it does not proceed from man's First Cause nor lead man back to his Last End:

From this it follows that the so-called "neutral" or "lay" school, from which religion is excluded, is contrary to the fundamental principles of education. Such a school moreover cannot exist in practice; it is bound to become irreligious. There is no need to repeat what Our Predecessors have declared on this point, especially Pius IX and Leo XIII, at times when laicism was beginning in a special manner to infest the public school. We renew and confirm their declarations, as well as the Sacred Canons in which the frequenting of non-Catholic schools, whether neutral or mixed, those namely which are open to Catholics and non-Catholics alike, is forbidden for Catholic children, and can be at most tolerated, on the approval of the Ordinary alone, under determined circumstances of place and time, and with special precautions. Neither can Catholics admit that other type of mixed school, (least of all the so-called "école unique," obligatory on all), in which the students are provided with separate religious instruction, but receive other lessons in common with non-Catholic pupils from non-Catholic teachers.

For the mere fact that a school gives some religious instruction (often extremely stinted), does not bring it into accord with the rights of the Church and of the Christian family, or make it a fit place for Catholic students. To be this, it is necessary that all the teaching and the whole organization of the school, and its teachers, syllabus and text-books in every branch, be regulated by the Christian spirit, under the direction and maternal supervision of the Church; so that Religion may be in very truth the foundation and crown of the youth's entire training; and this in every grade of school, not only the elementary, but the intermediate and the higher institutions of learning as well. To use the words of Leo XIII:

"It is necessary not only that religious instruction be given to the young at certain fixed times, but also that every other subject taught, be permeated with Christian piety. If this is wanting, if this sacred atmosphere does not pervade and warm the hearts of masters and scholars alike, little good can be expected from any kind of learning, and considerable harm will often be the consequence."

Do I mean to condemn Catholics who teach or serve as administrators in public schools? No. Do I mean to expose my readers to papal condemnations of these schools as illegitimate and thus harmful to the souls of their students and to the good of their nations? Yes.

Moreover, I mean to remind my readers once again that there is no secular, naturalistic, non-denominational or religiously indifferentist way to "resolve" problems associated with public schooling. Just as the abuses witnessed by so many Catholics in the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service are the result of the Novus Ordo's s warfare against the Catholic Faith, so is it the case that the problems in public schooling, much like the problems with "judicial activism," are the result of the Protestant Revolt and of Judeo-Masonry. There is no expedient solution to problems that have been created by diabolically-inspired attacks against Our Lord and His Holy Church.

Those of us who are parents, no matter how old (in my case) or young we may be, have the obligation to avoid all contact with public schooling entirely. We have the obligation also to avoid all contact with schools run by the institutions of the counterfeit church of conciliarism (diocesan or religious) given the influence of Modernism and the concomitant conciliarist ethos spawned in its sorry wake. Similarly, we have the obligation to avoid contact with even a seemingly traditional school that makes any concession to the popular culture and/or does not demand a complete refusal on the part of parents and students to participate in any way with a culture that is from the devil and leads souls to Hell for all eternity. This is not Jansenism. This is Catholicism. The saints did not indulge the allurements of the world. They fled from them for love of God and for the love of souls for whom He offered His very life on the wood of the Holy Cross. No "traditional" school that does not inculcate in its students a manifest sense of resistance to the culture and which does not instill in its students an abiding commitment to restore the Social Reign of Christ the King is a fit place to send one's children.

Similarly, schools that purport to be traditional but which do not have teachers qualified to teach the subjects assigned (or who do not have the ability to teach in general) to them and/or who are not called upon by their superiors to challenge their students to pursue the heights of  the rigors of academic excellence as befits redeemed creatures are unworthy of the souls of our children. Mediocrity is not of the Catholic Faith. Anyone who is content with educational mediocrity is content with the Capital Sin of Sloth.

Are there schools that teach children to avoid the culture and promote the Social Reign of Christ the King? Yes. They are few and far between, however.

What, then, should parents do in those instances when a fully traditional Catholic school where no compromises are made with the popular culture is not available to them, admitting that some people's circumstances may not admit of the answer that follows? We home-school our children. No, not in "groups" with children who are still assisting at the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service. Not in "groups" with even our fellow traditional Catholics who believe that it is not necessary to oppose the errors of ecumenism and religious liberty and who refuse to remove themselves from any and all compromising tendencies. We home-school our children in our own homes. The grace-of-state exists in the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony to equip parents to teach their children well to pursue academic excellence for the greater honor and glory of God through Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart in a highly-structured atmosphere. This is being done consistently well in countless traditional Catholic homes across the nation and the world. Anyone, whether priest or lay man, who denies the good being done in Catholic homes to teach children about the perennial truths of the Faith and to thus seek excellence in all of their studies is denying reality and denigrating the graces, both sanctifying and actual, that flow from the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony.

Pope Pius XI summarized the essence of Catholic education. These words must shape the efforts of each one of us to teach our children unto their eternal welfare:

The proper and immediate end of Christian education is to cooperate with divine grace in forming the true and perfect Christian, that is, to form Christ Himself in those regenerated by Baptism, according to the emphatic expression of the Apostle: "My little children, of whom I am in labor again, until Christ be formed in you."For the true Christian must live a supernatural life in Christ: "Christ who is your life," and display it in all his actions: "That the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal flesh."

For precisely this reason, Christian education takes in the whole aggregate of human life, physical and spiritual, intellectual and moral, individual, domestic and social, not with a view of reducing it in any way, but in order to elevate, regulate and perfect it, in accordance with the example and teaching of Christ.

Hence the true Christian, product of Christian education, is the supernatural man who thinks, judges and acts constantly and consistently in accordance with right reason illumined by the supernatural light of the example and teaching of Christ; in other words, to use the current term, the true and finished man of character. For, it is not every kind of consistency and firmness of conduct based on subjective principles that makes true character, but only constancy in following the eternal principles of justice, as is admitted even by the pagan poet when he praises as one and the same "the man who is just and firm of purpose." And on the other hand, there cannot be full justice except in giving to God what is due to God, as the true Christian does.

To liberate the captives from America's concentration camps, therefore, we must, especially in this Season of Septuagesima, start to think about intensifying our lives of prayer, penance, fasting, mortification, and almsgiving during the Lenten season that starts on Ash Wednesday, February 21, 2007,, uniting each of our efforts to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart as her consecrated slaves. We must be Catholic in everything we say and do. We must give no quarter to the world, the flesh, and the devil, and those of us who did give such a quarter for far too long in our own lives must seek to live the rest of our lives in such a way as to undo the damage we did when we were too cavalier in our blithe acceptance of things contrary to the good of souls, including our own, and thus the good of our nation. Our efforts to "recover by penance what we have lost by sin" will help us to be better guides as we try to lead our children home to Heaven to gaze upon the glory of the Beatific Vision of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost for all eternity.

Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Romuald, pray for us.

Saint John Bosco, pray for us.

Saint Dominic Savio, pray for us.

Saint  Scholastica, pray for us.

Saint Benedict, pray for us.

Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, pray for us.

Saint Valentine, pray for us.

Saints Faustinus and Jovita, pray for us.

Saint Agnes, pray for us.

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, pray for us.

Saint Lucy, pray for us.

Saint Monica, pray for us.

Saint Andrew Corsini, pray for us.

Saint Agatha, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Saint Cecilia, pray for us.

Saint John Mary Vianney, pray for us.

Saint Vincent de Paul, pray for us.

Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.

Saint Athanasius, pray for us.

Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, pray for us.

Saint Isaac Jogues, pray for us.

Saint Rene Goupil, pray for us.

Saint John Lalonde, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel Lalemont, pray for us.

Saint Noel Chabanel, pray for us.

Saint Charles Garnier, pray for us.

Saint Anthony Daniel, pray for us.

Saint John DeBrebeuf, pray for us.

Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, pray for us.

Saint Dominic, pray for us.

Saint Hyacinth, pray for us.

Saint Basil, pray for us.

Saint Augustine, pray for us.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.

Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.

Saint Sebastian, pray for us.

Saint Tarcisius, pray for us.

Saint Bridget of Sweden, pray for us.

Saint Gerard Majella, pray for us.

Saint John of the Cross, pray for us.

Saint Teresa of Avila, pray for us.

Saint Bernadette Soubirous, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius X, pray for us

Pope Saint Pius V, pray for us.

Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich, pray for us.

Venerable Pauline Jaricot, pray for us.

Father Miguel Augustin Pro, pray for us.

Francisco Marto, pray for us.

Jacinta Marto, pray for us.

Juan Diego, pray for us.

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

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

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

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

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

Response: As we have hoped in Thee.

Verse: O Lord hear my prayer.

Response: And let my cry come unto Thee.

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

Response:  Amen.