Another Fine Mess

by Thomas A. Droleskey

As a result of efforts of a Catholic who had become acquainted with the work of this site (but is no longer supportive of it), I was invited to speak before a group of "conservatives" at a Golden Corral restaurant in Edmond, Oklahoma, on Thursday, February 15, 2006. Most of the attendees were Protestant evangelicals or fundamentalists of one stripe or another. One attendee was a Baptist "minister." Another was the "oldest living past Grand Master of the Siloam Lodge in Oklahoma," which was interesting as the talk I gave was about the Social Reign of Christ the King that had been overthrow as a result of the Protestant Revolt and the rise of Judeo-Masonry. Several men were seen pretending to "sharpen" their knives during my talk, expressing quite visibly their disapproval of my thirty minute presentation that would up exhorting the non-Catholics in attendance to convert to the true Faith.

There were, however, several thoughtful questions posed after my presentation. One of these came from a Protestant who was a former talk show host on a nearby Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, radio station. This man asked me why the Catholic Church had not disciplined the likes of Edward Moore Kennedy and John F. Kerry and other pro-abortion politicians. "Where is your 'true' Church when it will not discipline such men?" A very good question, obviously. The answer that I gave was, unfortunately, infected with some of the resist and recognize errors that would be corrected publicly just two months later when I first began to write about the possibility of the truth of the sedevacantist thesis.

What I did say that was correct was that the bad example given by some of the members, including the pro-abortion politicians and the conciliar "bishops" who refused to discipline them, were not reflective of the inherent validity of the Catholic Faith. I should have said that those pro-abortion politicians and conciliar "bishops" had expelled themselves from the Catholic Church. And I should have said to the Baptist minister, who asked me how "Pope" John Paul II could have supported the discredited ideology of evolutionism, that Karol Wojtyla's Modernism was a sign of his Modernism and that he was not a member of the true Church. That would have been a tough "sell" to people who don't even think that the Catholic Church is the true Church and who reject that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ had founded His Church upon the Rock of Peter, Pope. However, it would have been no tougher than trying to explain how men could claim to be Catholic while taking public positions contrary to the Catholic Faith.

The lords of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have indeed scandalized many Protestants, which is why so few of them are motivated to investigate the claims made by the Catholic apologists they might meet now and and again that they must convert to the true Faith. Why should a Protestant who believes, albeit in a distorted way, in Sacred Scripture as the Word of God take seriously the Catholic Faith as the one and only true voice of Christianity when the men who appear to be Its leaders support legislation conferring "domestic partnership" benefits upon unrepentant practitioners of perverse sins against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments and when they not only fail to discipline pro-abortion Catholic politicians but actually embrace advocates of chemical and surgical baby-killing with great fanfare? Why should a Protestant have any respect for what he thinks is the Catholic Church, which he knows is opposed to contraception, when hospitals in the control of the conciliarists actually sterilize women in full violation of the binding precepts of the Sixth Commandment?

Indeed, consider the scandal caused to Catholics and non-Catholics alike by the open admission made by the conciliar "bishop" of Tyler, Texas, Alvaro Corrada, that sterilizations were performed at Christus Saint Michael's Hospital in Texarkana, Texas:

Tyler, Texas, Nov 24, 2008 / 07:02 pm (CNA).- Bishop Alvaro Corrada of the Diocese of Tyler, Texas, has apologized for his lack of oversight following the confirmation of allegations that Catholic hospitals in Texas were performing direct sterilizations in contravention of Catholic medical ethics.

Writing in a November 21 public statement in the Catholic East Texas newspaper, Bishop Corrada referred to a whistleblower report charging that Catholic hospitals in the state had performed “a large number of tubal ligations.” The report’s findings were publicized in the July 13, 2008 issue of Our Sunday Visitor.

“Initially both Catholic hospitals in the Diocese of Tyler responded that they were in compliance with the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Services,” Bishop Corrada wrote. “Sadly, subsequent investigation reveals that there had been a serious mis-interpretation of the ERDs and that in fact many direct sterilizations had been done and continued to be done at the time of the article.”

His statement continued:

“As a Bishop, I am deeply saddened and upset by this news. As Bishop of the Diocese of Tyler, I have to admit my failure to provide adequate oversight of the Catholic Hospitals as regards their protection of the sacred dignity of each human person.”

Saying this “unacceptable situation” has “many causes and complications,” he noted he will continue to work with Catholic hospitals in his diocese and with the other bishops of Texas in order to “bring an end to immoral procedures and to put in place some method of ongoing accountability and transparency of monitoring both protocols and actual practices.”

Bishop Corrada added that Catholics must ensure that all people seeking health care at Catholic institutions will be treated “with respect and dignity as Jesus teaches us,” saying the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Services (ERDs) have been approved to ensure “the sacred dignity of each patient is protected and defended.”

His statement closed by noting Catholic hospitals’ response to the report.

“In response to their own investigation of the matter, CHRISTUS St. Michael's in Texarkana has discontinued all tubal ligations. They report a favorable response from their local medical community.”

Trinity Mother Frances had experienced a fifty percent reduction in its number of tubal ligations prior to the release of the report, the bishop stated. Bishop Corrada explained that Trinity Mother Frances is “a large health care system” and remarked that it is developing plans to comply with an “authentic interpretation of the ERDs,” especially ERD 53 which prohibits direct sterilization.

Bishop Corrada’s statement did not address the whistleblower report’s contention that abortions may have been performed at Catholic hospitals in Texas. According to Our Sunday Visitor, state data used in the report indicated 39 abortions were performed at Catholic hospitals during the period of 2000 to 2003, but such statistics may have recorded morally licit procedures such as the removal of a stillborn baby or emergency services for an abortion performed elsewhere.

CNA contacted the Diocese of Tyler for clarification on the abortion allegations and spoke with Father Gavin Vaverek, Promoter of Justice in the Diocese of Tyler.

“There was, I believe, only one possible abortion case in our diocese, at the Texarkana hospital,” he explained, noting the case involved complications resulting from an abortion.

“That case was of a woman who was admitted for an abortion, in the same way someone would be admitted for a gunshot wound. It was because of an abortion, not for an abortion,” he emphasized to CNA.

“That was the only case we had. There’s certainly no problem in taking care of someone who had an abortion.”

As for procedures classified as abortions at Catholic hospitals in other dioceses in Texas, Father Vavereck noted the ambiguity in the reports and said in those cases too “there will likely be extenuating circumstances.” (Texas bishop apologizes for Catholic hospitals’ unethical)

 

Those who read stories published by The Wanderer in the 1990s know that the phenomenon of conciliar hospitals playing games with the forces opposed to the eternal life of the soul and the physical life of the body is nothing new. The counterfeit church of conciliarism has produced such a loss of Faith that those who work in "Catholic" hospitals, some of which are headed by non-Catholic administrators, do not know the teaching of the Catholic Church concerning the inviolability of innocent preborn life and do not understand at all God's absolute Sovereignty over the sanctity and fecundity of marriage.

It was just a few months ago that the conciliar "bishop" of Richmond, Virginia, Francis X. DiLorenzo, admitted that some of his own diocesan employees were "negligent" in helping to secure an abortion for an illegal immigrant (see Abort the Faith, Abort Babies). The loss of the sensus Catholicus in the conciliar structures has been profound, and it has devastated not only souls but has resulted in the deaths of innocent human beings (as I alluded to recently in Lost in the Trees Without A King to Lead Them in October of this year). How is a poorly-formed Catholic in the conciliar structures going to resist the pressures of the world to engage in immoral behavior when his "shepherds" fail to teach the basic elements of the Catholic Faith? How are Protestants supposed to be attracted to such a "faith"?

The confusion in the conciliar structures is such that men who have presided over the systematic cover-up of spiritually and physically abusive priests are left in power to scandalize Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Such is the case with The Six Hundred Million Dollar Man, Roger Mahony, who remains in power in the conciliar structures as the "archbishop" of Los Angeles, California, after over twenty-three years of spiritual, liturgical, and moral malfeasance to "teach," albeit falsely, in the name of the Catholic Church, including as he "congratulates" the pro-abortion Marxist, Barack Hussein Obama, on his election to the Presidency of the United States of America, explaining how he, Mahony, was "impressed" with Obama's speeches in the past two years! No, once again, I am not making this up:

What else is new?

Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles has written president-elect Barack Hussein Obama a congratulatory message that fails to defend or intercede for the lives of God's little preborn babies.

I've only found the text of the Cardinal's letter in the print edition of the November 14 issue of The Tidings. I haven't found it in the online edition of that paper or on the Archdiocesan web site.

His Eminence tells Obama, "Your many speeches over the past two years have focused upon the needs of so many within our American society. All people of good will from coast to coast will want to work with you to achieve those goals..."

Then the Cardinal says, "There is one particular need, however, that will be best met in early 2009..."

Do you suppose this "particular need" that Cardinal Roger Mahony singles out is, say, "Putting an end to the aborting of 1.2 million babies a year in the USA?"

No, the need he brings up is how to regularize the situation of illegal aliens.

How do you think Obama and his transition team and potential staffers reacted to a letter from an American cardinal that completely lets him off the hook on aborting babies?

Do you suppose they laughed out loud and said, "Look at the free pass he's giving us! We don't have to worry about any trouble over abortion from him!"  ( LA Catholic: Cardinal Mahony congratulates abortion zealot Obama.)

 

This is, of course, the same Roger Mahony who welcomed the pro-abortion forty-second President of the United States of America, William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, to speak from the pulpit of the now former Saint Vibiana's Cathedral in Los Angeles on March 23, 1997, which happened to be Palm Sunday that year. Mahony has helped to enable the careers of various and sundry Catholic pro-abortion politicians, including former California Governor Gray Davis and the current Mayor of the City of Los Angeles, Anthony Villaraigosa. Roger Mahony plainly believes that one is not disqualified from holding public office, whether elected or appointed, if he supports the mystical dismemberment of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the persons of innocent preborn children under cover of law. Barack Hussein Obama understands the "needs" of no one as he does not understand that the civil government has an obligation to pursue the common temporal good in light of man's Last End, as Pope Saint Pius X made eminently clear in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906:

That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it

 

Roger Mahony does not believe this. Why should he? His boss, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, does not believe this. Such are the "joys" of the "religious liberty" engendered by the naturalistic, anti-Incarnational, religiously indifferentist and semi-Pelagian civil state that men who claim to be Catholic "shepherds" can claim publicly that individuals who are at war with God Himself by means of the open and public promotion of sin, the very thing that caused the God-Man to suffer during His Passion and Death and caused Seven Swords of Sorrow to be pierced through and through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, are fit holders of public office and actually can make "contributions" in behalf of the common temporal good. This is an astounding loss of the sensus Catholicus wrought by conciliarism's "reconciliation" with the false principles of 1787 and 1789. How many people, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, are bewildered and scandalized as those who support one of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance are, in effect, reaffirmed in their positions?

It is no wonder that Douglas Kmiec, a law professor at Pepperdine University School of Law in Malibu, California, spoke recently about his support of Barack Hussein Obama at that nest of doctrinal and moral corruption, Saint John's Seminary in Camarillo, California. Kmiec, whose position in support of Obama has been critiqued on this site in Trapped by Apostasy and Willfully Trapped by Apostasy, obviously had the support of Mahony during the recently concluded campaign between Obama and the partly pro-abortion/partly pro-life John Sidney McCain III. Mahony, who is at odds with some of his fellow conciliar "bishops" over his support of Obama, loves it when a putative "scholar," known for his work in the administration of the late President Ronald Wilson Reagan, can lend his intellectual "muscle" in behalf of a Democrat Party candidate who is completely pro-abortion and with whom Mahony is pleading to come to the assistance of those who have knowingly broken just civil laws providing for legal immigration to the United States of America.

The contradictions and paradoxes inherent in the conciliar structures such that there is more similarity between Mahony's support for the pro-abort Barack Hussein Obama and some of his brother conciliar "bishops'" more or less implicit support for John Sidney McCain III during this past election than one realizes. Mahony gives completely pro-abortion candidates a "free pass" as he believes that the leftist bent of naturalism possesses the means to provide "social justice" to the poor and the marginalized. Those of his brother "bishops" in the conciliar structures who supported McCain (as they supported George Walker Bush and Robert Joseph Dole, Jr.) gave the senior United States Senator from the State of Arizona a completely "free pass" as they overlooked entirely McCain's support for chemical abortions in all instances and his support for surgical baby-killing under cover of law in the so-called "hard" cases. The trap of apostasy that is Americanism enslaves those Catholics committed to the false, naturalistic and anti-Incarnational premises of the American founding to become adherents of one or the other of the two major organized crime families in the United States of America, the Republican Party or the Democrat Party, as their Catholicism is "suspended" in order to achieve short-sighted goals that are all too frequently inimical to the honor and glory of God and thus of the eternal good of the souls for whom He shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross.

The confusion extant in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism helps to provide well-meaning Protestant "ministers" with a platform to attempt to fill the vacuum caused by the conciliar "bishops'" embrace of "religious liberty" and "false ecumenism." These "ministers," who wander in the shadows of variety of their own theological errors and the errors of Modernity itself, attempt to make well-intentioned statements now and again, only to find that their efforts, wrapped in error and confusion, of course, can be thwarted by men who claim to be "representatives" of the Catholic Church.

Such was the case recently when a Protestant "minister" in Wichita, Kansas, named Mark Holick, posted a sign on the marquee outside of his false church which read:

"America, we have a Muslim president. This is sin against the Lord."

 

Politically incorrect signs such as this one do not remain unseen for long. Videos of such signs emerge on YouTube and various websites within a very short space of time. This is what happened to Mr. Mark Holick, who found himself being interviewed by some Cable News Network (CNN) anchorboy named Rick Sanchez, who demonstrated himself to be a regular genius concerning the Constitution of the United States of America during his interview with Mr. Holick.

As we live in a mess of a world that has been created by the multifaceted and inter-related consequences of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King wrought by the Protestant Revolt and cemented by the rise of Judeo-Masonry, it is useful, I believe, to examine the transcript of this interview to see once again how the conciliarists, wrapped up in their false ecumenism and their embrace of religious liberty and pluralism and inter-religious "dialogue," fail time and time again to evangelize the lost sheep, leaving those lost sheep and their own false "shepherds" steeped in a web of errors that only adds to the confusion extant in our land of false liberty.

I will interject comments after various passages in the transcript, which follows immediately:

SANCHEZ: We are joined now by pastor Mark Holick. Mark Holick is the pastor who had put up a sign in front of his business -- a sign that's been very much criticized by many of our viewers. There it is. It says, "America, we have a Muslim president. This is sin against the Lord."

So much to take into as we read this. But the first thing we want to do is we want to welcome Pastor Holick to our show.

Thank you, Pastor, for being with us, sir.

MARK HOLICK, SPIRIT ONE CHRISTIAN CENTER: Thank you, sir.

SANCHEZ: You know, you've had a lot of people criticizing on you. And I guess the first thing they'd want to know is why are you saying that Barack Obama is a Muslim if he has repeatedly said that he's not a Muslim?

HOLICK: Well, let me start out by saying that as a Christian pastor, I believe that God's word states "blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord." And that America became the most blessed nation on earth not because we're any smarter than any of the other peoples of the Earth, but because of the Lord and his laws.

 

Mr. Holick labors under the delusion that the United States of America is founded upon belief in the true God. It is not. Like so many Catholics across the ecclesiastical divide who have attempted over the years to project their Catholicism into the minds of the founding fathers (see Dr. John C. Rao's Founding Fathers vs. Church Fathers: 666-0.), Mr. Holick wants to project his allegedly "Bible-based" Protestantism into the minds of the founding fathers. He does not realize that no nation is "blessed" by the true God if it is founded upon a rejection of His true Church, the Catholic Church, and premised upon the false belief that it is possible for men to know personal and social order absent a firm reliance upon and submission to the Deposit of Faith that He has entrusted exclusively to that Catholic Church and absent a belief in, access to and cooperation with Sanctifying Grace. No land is "blessed by God" when its leaders have sought consistently to attack Catholic nations and to install by means of the conquest wrought by armed force Protestant sects and Masonic lodges. No land is "blessed by God" when it has funded and given its full support to the slaughter of Catholics in Our Lady's country, Mexico, by the Masonic revolutionaries there in the early part of the Twentieth Century.

SANCHEZ: Well, but you know -- well, let's get to that, because I think that intimating the question that so many people have about separation of church and state.

But before we get to that, let me read to you what Barack Obama says, you know, himself.

Let's put that up, if we can. He says: "I am a Christian, so I have a deep faith. I'm rooted in the Christian tradition. I believe that there are many paths to the same place. And that is a belief that there is a higher power -- a belief that we are connected as a people."

So he's saying he's a Christian, but it sounds like he's saying that he admits that there may be many paths to the same place.

That's his word.

Why not take him at his word?

HOLICK: Well, his very words that you just read to me is not a Christian belief. As a Christian, we do not believe there are many paths to the same place. In fact (INAUDIBLE)...

SANCHEZ: Well, as a matter of fact...

HOLICK: Hold on. Hold on.

SANCHEZ: Well...

HOLICK: Hold on.

SANCHEZ: OK. OK. I'm sorry.

HOLICK: In John, Chapter 14, Verse 6, Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the life and no man comes to the father but by me."

SANCHEZ: OK. Let me quote somebody who I think knows a little bit about theology himself -- Pope John Paul II: "It will be in the sincere practice of what is good in their own religious traditions and by following the dictates of their own conscience that the members of other religions respond positively to God's invitation and receive salvation in Jesus Christ, even while they do not recognize him or acknowledge him as their savior."

That's John Paul II.

HOLICK: Well, my goal is to tell people about the truth of -- what I believe the truth of the bible states. And that Acts 4:12, Jesus said, "There is no other name under heaven and Earth by which man may be saved except the name of Jesus."

SANCHEZ: But other pastors and other reverends and other theological experts disagree with you. I mean, Pope John Paul II is the leader of the Catholic Church.

You want another one?

Here's Billy Graham. Billy Graham -- one of the most respected reverends and theologians in this country -- says, and I quote: "I used to believe that pagans in far off countries were lost, were going to hell. I no longer believe that. I believe that there are other ways of recognizing the existence of God."

That's Billy Graham. Is Billy Graham wrong?

HOLICK: I cannot speak to Billy Graham or the pope or anyone else. I simply quoted you two references from God's word that states very clearly that there is only one path to heaven.

 

Mr. Holick is indeed correct when implying that Barack Hussein Obama does nothing about Christianity. This is most evident from the President-elect's 2004 interview with Cathleen Falsani of the Chicago Sun-Times. It is even admirable of Mr. Holick to refer to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as the "Way, the Truth and the Life," and to quote, although not from the true translation found in the Douay-Rheims Challoner Bible, used here, from the Acts of the Apostles that "there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved." Anchorboy Rick Sanchez used Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II's allocution in behalf of universal salvation, one of the late conciliar "pontiffs'" favorite themes, and a quote from The Fuller Brush Man himself, Billy Graham, to contradict Mr. Holick. (Oh, and please, Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II was not discussing the case of those who are invincibly ignorant of the Catholic Faith in that allocution. Wojtyla/John Paul II believed that is ordinarily or normally the case that those who are adherents of false religions will be saved.)

Mr. Sanchez, who referred to Wojtyla as "the leader of the Catholic Church" in the present tense, used the words of Wojtyla and Billy Graham to make it appear that anyone who insists upon a belief in the Sacred Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to be outside the pale of "mainstream" thought, meaning that Obama is well within the "mainstream." This is true, of course, as Obama, who knows nothing of the true Faith and learned only shadows of a distorted and perverted concept of Christianity from the "Reverend" Jeremiah Wright, does indeed have a great deal in common with many "mainstream" "bishops" in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, as witnessed above by Roger Mahony's full support of him.

SANCHEZ: Let's talk, then, about your first point. You made a point about the fact that this is part of why we are the most blessed or cherished nation on Earth. But we're also a nation whose forefathers were wise enough to make sure that we separated how we prayed with how we governed. It's that old adage we've always heard, separation of church and state.

Do you not believe in that?

HOLICK: No. And our founding fathers didn't believe in that, either.

Number one, separation of church and state is not found anywhere in the Constitution at all.

SANCHEZ: Well, but Thomas Jefferson had as much to do with that Constitution as anybody, sir. Both he and James Madison did.

Here's Thomas Jefferson: "I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act the whole American people, which declare that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state."

That's Thomas Jefferson saying that.

HOLICK: Well, what you're quoting is not the Constitution. You're quoting a letter. And the wall of separation was one way that the state would not interfere with the church. But certainly the church had every right and even a duty to its elected officials.

SANCHEZ: But I'm quoting the man who wrote the Constitution in that letter.

 

Here is where Rick Sanchez, a man I had never heard of before a link to this interview was sent to me by readers of this site, shows himself to be a regular genius concerning the Constitution of the United States of America. Let me address him directly:

MR. SANCHEZ, THOMAS JEFFERSON HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CONSITTUION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. HE WAS SERVING AS THE AMBASSADOR OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO THE COURT OF KING LOUIS XVI IN FRANCE WHEN THE CONSTIUTIION WAS WRITTEN BETWEEN MAY 25, 1787, AND SEPTEMBER 17, 1787, IN PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA. GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT, SIR.

That little fact having been noted, Mr. Holick is correct when stating that the words "separation of Church and State" do not appear in the Constitution of the United States of America. However, the words do not have to be there. The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America prohibits Congress from enacting any legislation that would establish a state religion, making the United States of America the first country in the history of the world without an official state religion. Although this subject has been much explored on this site, it is sufficient to quote from Pope Saint Pius X's Vehementer Nos to demonstrate that the religiously indifferentist foundation of the United States of America is opposed to Divine Revelation:

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.

 

Although Archbishop John Carroll and many of his successors in the American hierarchy insisted that the lack of a state church was a "protection" for Catholics to practice their Faith and to take their "rightful place" in society without the kind of persecution that took place in Protestant countries in the two and one-half centuries following the Protestant Revolt, the plain fact of the matter is that irreligion has just as much a place as any religion in the schema of Church-State relations under the United States Constitution, a schema that was rejected entirely by Pope Leo XIII in Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895:

The main factor, no doubt, in bringing things into this happy state were the ordinances and decrees of your synods, especially of those which in more recent times were convened and confirmed by the authority of the Apostolic See. But, moreover (a fact which it gives pleasure to acknowledge), thanks are due to the equity of the laws which obtain in America and to the customs of the well-ordered Republic. For the Church amongst you, unopposed by the Constitution and government of your nation, fettered by no hostile legislation, protected against violence by the common laws and the impartiality of the tribunals, is free to live and act without hindrance. 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.

 

Who believes that the American schema of Church-State relations, condemned by Pope Leo XIII in Longiqua Oceani, January 6, 1895, is indeed the model for the rest of the world? None other than Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI.

The net result of a the religiously indifferentist civil state, however, is the triumph of atheism as the lowest common denominator, something that Pope Leo XIII explained in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:

To hold, therefore, that there is no difference in matters of religion between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, most clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and practice. And this is the same thing as atheism, however it may differ from it in name. Men who really believe in the existence of God must, in order to be consistent with themselves and to avoid absurd conclusions, understand that differing modes of divine worship involving dissimilarity and conflict even on most important points cannot all be equally probable, equally good, and equally acceptable to God.

 

Defenders of the First Amendment (and I used to be one in my misspent Americanist youth) claim that the founding fathers of the United States of America did not meant to separate the expression of religious belief from the public market place of ideas, that, given the proliferation of sects then extant in the thirteen states, they wanted to provide each sect as well as "free thinkers" and outright unbelievers a place in the governing process in the name of "free speech" and "religious liberty." Such concepts, although certainly embraced by the counterfeit church of conciliarism, have been condemned by the Catholic Church, as I have quoted frequently from Pope Pius VII's Post Tam Diuturnas, April 29, 1814, and Pope Gregory XVI's Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832. As Saint Augustine note, "But the death of the soul is worse than the freedom of error. And the same Saint Augustine condemned religiously liberty" "asserts that all heretics proceed correctly and tell the truth: which is so absurd that it seems incredible to me." I'll stick with Saint Augustine and not the founding fathers or the conciliar "fathers," thank you so very much.

Back to the transcript:

SANCHEZ: I mean, wouldn't you think that he would be a -- in fact, here's a -- here's James Madison, probably the guy who wrote it himself. They say that actually Jefferson was the mind behind it, but Madison actually sat it down -- sat down and wrote it.

Madison says: "Strongly guarded, as is the separation between religion and government in the Constitution of the United States." He goes on the say, in another reference: "Religion and government will both exist in greater purity the less -- the less that they are mixed together."

These are people who disagree with you and they wrote the document that you're referring to.

HOLICK: Well, our very -- the very basics of our government are formed on the principles of God's word. For example, we have three branches of government -- not two, not four. We have three. That is based on Isaiah Chapter 3, Verse 22: "God is our judge, God is our law giver, God is our King."

So in order to separate ourselves from the bible in our government, we would have to change the very structure of our government. (CNN.com - Transcripts)

 

So much, error, so little time. Let's give this one a try nevertheless.

Rick Sanchez had just said, erroneously, that Thomas Jefferson had "written" the Constitution. He then goes on to credit, correctly in this instance, James Madison as being the principal father, if you will, of the process that resulted in the Constitution that emerged from the Constitutional Convention on September 17, 1787. It is Mr. Sanchez in this instance who has the better of the argument. For even though Jefferson was not an author of the Constitution, both he and his Secretary of State and immediate successor as President of the United States on March 4, 1809, were virulently opposed to any mixing of religion and public policy, as will be demonstrated below once again. This is where Mr. Holick, steeped in his own brand of Protestant Americanism, is projecting his Protestantism into the Constitution where it is not to be found.

Indeed, Mr. Holick is at his weakest point in the interview when he attempts to claim that the three branches of the Federal government are founded upon Chapter Three of the Book of the Prophet Isaias. This is not so. Our system of separation of powers is based upon the writings of Baron Charles de Secondat Montsequieu in his book L'Espirt des Lois, The Spirit of the Laws. Mr. Holick is engaged, whether or not he realizes it, in Protestant "special pleading" in this instance, attempting to make his Protestant beliefs service as the basis of the Constitution.

Additional, Mr. Holick is simply unaware of the profound hostility that John Adams, who was the American Ambassador to the Court of Saint James in the United Kingdom at the time of the Constitutional Convention, and Thomas Jefferson and James Madison had to any sort of Christianity in general and to the true Faith, Catholicism, in particular. Most of the founders of this nation were indeed overtly hostile to the true Faith, which is the one and only foundation of personal and social order:

The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.

Unembarrassed by attachments to noble families, hereditary lines and successions, or any considerations of royal blood, even the pious mystery of holy oil had no more influence than that other of holy water: the people universally were too enlightened to be imposed on by artifice; and their leaders, or more properly followers, were men of too much honour to attempt it. Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind. (President John Adams: "A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America," 1787-1788)

"And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away {with} all this artificial scaffolding…" (11 April, 1823, John Adams letter to Thomas Jefferson, Adams-Jefferson Letters, ed. Lester J. Cappon, II, 594).

Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion? (John Adams, Letter to Thomas Jefferson, May 19, 1821)

I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced! (John Adams, Letter to Thomas Jefferson, quoted in 200 Years of Disbelief, by James Hauck)

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect."—James Madison, letter to William Bradford, Jr„ April I, 1774

". . . Freedom arises from the multiplicity of sects, which pervades America and which is the best and only security for religious liberty in any society. For where there is such a variety of sects, there cannot be a majority of any one sect to oppress and persecute the rest."—James Madison, spoken at the Virginia convention on ratification of the Constitution, June 1778

"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution."—-James Madison, "A Memorial and Remonstrance," addressed to the Virginia General Assembly, 1785

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes. (Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Alexander von Humboldt, December, 1813.)

May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them. (Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Roger Weigthman, June 24, 1826, ten days before Jefferson's death.)

 

To truly love one's country so that it will be indeed deserving of God's blessings is to seek her Catholicization, which is the very reason that Our Lady appeared to Juan Diego on Tepeyac Hill near Mexico City nearly 477 years ago. The very Mother of God was claiming all of the Americas, bar none, for her Divine Son, Christ the King, and for herself, she who is our Immaculate Queen.

Alvaro Corrada, Roger Mahony, Douglas Kmiec, Mark Holick, Rick Sanchez, Billy Graham, Barack Hussein Obama, John Sidney McCain III, and Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI are products of the world of Modernity and Modernist, each is representative of the multifaceted and inter-related errors that have flowed forth from the Protestant Revolt, Judeo-Masonry, the "Enlightenment," and the welter of errors that transmigrated from "liberal" Protestant "theologians" in the post-Darwinian era of the Nineteenth Century to "liberal" Catholic theologians and philosophers at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. This welter of errors keeps mutating, having given birth to the "New Theology" through which Joseph Ratzinger views theological issues and thus distorts Catholic teaching by the use of a thousand noxious devices of contradiction and paradox.

The only way out of this "fine mess," as Oliver Norvell Hardy would put it to Arthur Stanley Jefferson (aka Stan Laurel) is through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

None of our own verbiage and argumentation is going to get us out of this mess. We need to make reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary as we seek to pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit and as we get ourselves into the Confessional at least once a week to root out our Venial Sins and to grow in grace as we grow in sorrow for each of our past sins, which have contributed mightily to the problems we face in the Church and in the world.

We must never slacken our efforts to oppose the heresies and apostasies and errors of the moment. As Father Frederick Faber noted in The Dolors of Mary/The Foot of the Cross:

he love of God brings many new instincts into the heart. Heavenly and noble as they are, they bear no resemblance to what men would call the finer and more heroic developments of character. A spiritual discernment is necessary to their right appreciation. They are so unlike the growth of earth, that they must expect to meet on earth with only suspicion, misunderstanding, and dislike. It is not easy to defend them from a controversial point of view; for our controversy is obliged to begin by begging the question, or else it would be unable so much as to state its case. The axioms of the world pass current in the world, the axioms of the gospel do not. Hence the world has its own way. It talks us down. It tries us before tribunals where our condemnation is secured beforehand. It appeals to principles which are fundamental with most men but are heresies with us. Hence its audience takes part with it against us. We are foreigners, and must pay the penalty of being so. If we are misunderstood, we had no right to reckon on any thing else, being as we are, out of our own country. We are made to be laughed at. We shall be understood in heaven. Woe to those easy-going Christians whom the world can understand, and will tolerate because it sees they have a mind to compromise!

The love of souls is one of these instincts which the love of Jesus brings into our hearts. To the world it is proselytism, there mere wish to add to a faction, one of the selfish developments of party spirit. One while the stain of lax morality is affixed to it, another while the reproach of pharisaic strictness! For what the world seems to suspect least of all in religion is consistency. But the love of souls, however apostolic, is always subordinate to love of Jesus. We love souls because of Jesus, not Jesus because of souls. Thus there are times and places when we pass from the instinct of divine love to another, from the love of souls to the hatred of heresy. This last is particularly offensive to the world. So especially opposed is it to the spirit of the world, that, even in good, believing hearts, every remnant of worldliness rises in arms against this hatred of heresy, embittering the very gentlest of characters and spoiling many a glorious work of grace. Many a convert, in whose soul God would have done grand things, goes to his grave a spiritual failure, because he would not hate heresy. The heart which feels the slightest suspicion against the hatred of heresy is not yet converted. God is far from reigning over it yet with an undivided sovereignty. The paths of higher sanctity are absolutely barred against it. In the judgment of the world, and of worldly Christians, this hatred of heresy is exaggerated, bitter, contrary to moderation, indiscreet, unreasonable, aiming at too much, bigoted, intolerant, narrow, stupid, and immoral. What can we say to defend it? Nothing which they can understand. We had, therefore, better hold our peace. If we understand God, and He understands us, it is not so very hard to go through life suspected, misunderstood and unpopular. The mild self-opinionatedness of the gentle, undiscerning good will also take the world's view and condemn us; for there is a meek-loving positiveness about timid goodness which is far from God, and the instincts of whose charity is more toward those who are less for God, while its timidity is searing enough for harsh judgment. There are conversions where three-quarters of the heart stop outside the Church and only a quarter enters, and heresy can only be hated by an undivided heart. But if it is hard, it has to be borne. A man can hardly have the full use of his senses who is bent on proving to the world, God's enemy, that a thorough-going Catholic hatred of heresy is a right frame of mind. We might as well force a blind man to judge a question of color. Divine love inspheres in us a different circle of life, motive, and principle, which is not only not that of the world, but in direct enmity with it. From a worldly point of view, the craters in the moon are more explicable things than we Christians with our supernatural instincts. From the hatred of heresy we get to another of these instincts, the horror of sacrilege. The distress caused by profane words seems to the world but an exaggerated sentimentality. The penitential spirit of reparation which pervades the whole Church is, on its view, either a superstition or an unreality. The perfect misery which an unhallowed  touch of the Blessed Sacrament causes to the servants of God provokes either the world's anger or its derision. Men consider it either altogether absurd in itself, or at any rate out of all proportion; and, if otherwise they have proofs of our common sense, they are inclined to put down our unhappiness to sheer hypocrisy. The very fact that they do not believe as we believe removes us still further beyond the reach even of their charitable comprehension. If they do not believe in the very existence our sacred things, how they shall they judge the excesses of a soul to which these sacred things are far dearer than itself? (Father Frederick Faber, The Foot of the Cross, published originally in England in 1857 under the title of The Dolors of Mary, republished by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 291-295.)

 

We must hate heresy with true Charity, praying for the conversion of those steeped in the errors of Modernity and Modernism, praying to Our Lady that we will persevere in our own lives in states of Sanctifying Grace to the point of our own deaths, which could, of course, occur at any time.

As noted in yesterday's original commentary, On the Last Day of the Year, we must be about the business of planting seeds for the conversion of all men and their nations, including the United States of America, to the true Faith without looking for results. The only thing that should matter to us is dying in a state of Sanctifying Grace as a member of the Catholic Church, and to this end may we cleave ever more closely to our true bishops and our true priests in the Catholic catacombs who make no concessions to conciliarism or to the nonexistent legitimacy of its false shepherds.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!

Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, pray for us!

 

Saint Joseph, Patron of Departing Souls, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Catherine Laboure, pray for us.

Saint Andrew the Apostle, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?