Another Infamous "John Paul"
by
Thomas A. Droleskey
"Just as the right to speak and the right to refrain from speaking are complementary components of a broader concept of individual freedom of mind, so also the individual's freedom to choose his own creed is the counterpart of his right to refrain from accepting the creed established by the majority. At one time, it was thought that this right merely proscribed the preference of one Christian sect over another, but would not require equal respect for the conscience of the infidel, the atheist, or the adherent of a non-Christian faith such as Islam or Judaism. But when the underlying principle has been examined in the crucible of litigation, the Court has unambiguously concluded that the individual freedom of conscience protected by the First Amendment embraces the right to select any religious faith or none at all. This conclusion derives support not only from the interest in respecting the individual's freedom of conscience, but also from the conviction that religious beliefs worthy of respect are the product of free and voluntary choice by the faithful, and from recognition of the fact that the political interest in forestalling intolerance extends beyond intolerance among Christian sects -- or even intolerance among 'religions' -- to encompass intolerance of the disbeliever and the uncertain. As Justice Jackson eloquently stated in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624, 319 U. S. 642 (1943):"
" If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."
"The State . . no less than the Congress of the United States, must respect that basic truth." (Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U. S. 38, 472 U. S. 52-55 (1985) (footnotes omitted). (Supreme Court of the United States of America Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, citing his own majority opinion from the case of Wallace v. Jaffree in his concurring and dissenting opinion in the case of Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, July 3, 1989, 492 U.S. 490.)
Although United States Supreme Court Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, who was nominated by the late President Richard Milhous Nixon to serve on the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 1970 and by Nixon's unelected successor, President Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr., to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States of America to replace Associate Justice William Oliver Douglas in 1975, is not a Freemason, the judicial philosophy that guided him in the past nearly thirty-five years on the Supreme Court was of the essence of Judeo-Masonry. That is, John Paul Stevens, as evidence above as he cited his own majority opinion in the case of Wallace v. Jaffree, did not believe that there was no "orthodox" view that could be established under cover of the civil law as the binding force of public policy and social order. While Stevens was correct in asserting that religious belief cannot be forced or coerced, he was wrong in asserting that there is no "orthodox" doctrine has been ordained by God to govern men, who must subordinate everything they do, whether acting individually or collectively with others in the institutions of civil governance, to the Deposit of Faith that God Himself has entrusted exclusively to His Catholic Church for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication.
Pope Leo XIII described the views that had been expressed by Associate Justice Robert Jackson, who was a Freemason, in 1943 and those expressed by John Paul Stevens in Wallace v. Jaffree in 1985 and Webster v. Reproductive Health Services in 1985 when he dissected the spirit of Freemasonry in Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884, and its consequences for the civil state in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:
For, from what We have above most clearly shown, that which is their ultimate purpose forces itself into view -- namely, the utter overthrow of that whole religious and political order of the world which the Christian teaching has produced, and the substitution of a new state of things in accordance with their ideas, of which the foundations and laws shall be drawn from mere naturalism.
What We have said, and are about to say, must be understood of the sect of the Freemasons taken generically, and in so far as it comprises the associations kindred to it and confederated with it, but not of the individual members of them. There may be persons amongst these, and not a few who, although not free from the guilt of having entangled themselves in such associations, yet are neither themselves partners in their criminal acts nor aware of the ultimate object which they are endeavoring to attain. In the same way, some of the affiliated societies, perhaps, by no means approve of the extreme conclusions which they would, if consistent, embrace as necessarily following from their common principles, did not their very foulness strike them with horror. Some of these, again, are led by circumstances of times and places either to aim at smaller things than the others usually attempt or than they themselves would wish to attempt. They are not, however, for this reason, to be reckoned as alien to the masonic federation; for the masonic federation is to be judged not so much by the things which it has done, or brought to completion, as by the sum of its pronounced opinions. . . .
But the naturalists go much further; for, having, in the highest things, entered upon a wholly erroneous course, they are carried headlong to extremes, either by reason of the weakness of human nature, or because God inflicts upon them the just punishment of their pride. Hence it happens that they no longer consider as certain and permanent those things which are fully understood by the natural light of reason, such as certainly are -- the existence of God, the immaterial nature of the human soul, and its immortality. The sect of the Freemasons, by a similar course of error, is exposed to these same dangers; for, although in a general way they may profess the existence of God, they themselves are witnesses that they do not all maintain this truth with the full assent of the mind or with a firm conviction. Neither do they conceal that this question about God is the greatest source and cause of discords among them; in fact, it is certain that a considerable contention about this same subject has existed among them very lately. But, indeed, the sect allows great liberty to its votaries, so that to each side is given the right to defend its own opinion, either that there is a God, or that there is none; and those who obstinately contend that there is no God are as easily initiated as those who contend that God exists, though, like the pantheists, they have false notions concerning Him: all which is nothing else than taking away the reality, while retaining some absurd representation of the divine nature.
When this greatest fundamental truth has been overturned or weakened, it follows that those truths, also, which are known by the teaching of nature must begin to fall -- namely, that all things were made by the free will of God the Creator; that the world is governed by Providence; that souls do not die; that to this life of men upon the earth there will succeed another and an everlasting life.
When these truths are done away with, which are as the principles of nature and important for knowledge and for practical use, it is easy to see what will become of both public and private morality. We say nothing of those more heavenly virtues, which no one can exercise or even acquire without a special gift and grace of God; of which necessarily no trace can be found in those who reject as unknown the redemption of mankind, the grace of God, the sacraments, and the happiness to be obtained in heaven. We speak now of the duties which have their origin in natural probity. That God is the Creator of the world and its provident Ruler; that the eternal law commands the natural order to be maintained, and forbids that it be disturbed; that the last end of men is a destiny far above human things and beyond this sojourning upon the earth: these are the sources and these the principles of all justice and morality.
If these be taken away, as the naturalists and Freemasons desire, there will immediately be no knowledge as to what constitutes justice and injustice, or upon what principle morality is founded. And, in truth, the teaching of morality which alone finds favor with the sect of Freemasons, and in which they contend that youth should be instructed, is that which they call "civil," and "independent," and "free," namely, that which does not contain any religious belief. But, how insufficient such teaching is, how wanting in soundness, and how easily moved by every impulse of passion, is sufficiently proved by its sad fruits, which have already begun to appear. For, wherever, by removing Christian education, this teaching has begun more completely to rule, there goodness and integrity of morals have begun quickly to perish, monstrous and shameful opinions have grown up, and the audacity of evil deeds has risen to a high degree. All this is commonly complained of and deplored; and not a few of those who by no means wish to do so are compelled by abundant evidence to give not infrequently the same testimony. (Pope Leo XIII, Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884.)
But that harmful and deplorable passion for innovation which was aroused in the sixteenth century threw first of all into confusion the Christian religion, and next, by natural sequence, invaded the precincts of philosophy, whence it spread amongst all classes of society. From this source, as from a fountain-head, burst forth all those later tenets of unbridled license which, in the midst of the terrible upheavals of the last century, were wildly conceived and boldly proclaimed as the principles and foundation of that new conception of law which was not merely previously unknown, but was at variance on many points with not only the Christian, but even the natural law.
Amongst these principles the main one lays down that as all men are alike by race and nature, so in like manner all are equal in the control of their life; that each one is so far his own master as to be in no sense under the rule of any other individual; that each is free to think on every subject just as he may choose, and to do whatever he may like to do; that no man has any right to rule over other men. In a society grounded upon such maxims all government is nothing more nor less than the will of the people, and the people, being under the power of itself alone, is alone its own ruler. It does choose, nevertheless, some to whose charge it may commit itself, but in such wise that it makes over to them not the right so much as the business of governing, to be exercised, however, in its name.
The authority of God is passed over in silence, just as if there were no God; or as if He cared nothing for human society; or as if men, whether in their individual capacity or bound together in social relations, owed nothing to God; or as if there could be a government of which the whole origin and power and authority did not reside in God Himself. Thus, as is evident, a State becomes nothing but a multitude which is its own master and ruler. And since the people is declared to contain within itself the spring-head of all rights and of all power, it follows that the State does not consider itself bound by any kind of duty toward God. Moreover, it believes that it is not obliged to make public profession of any religion; or to inquire which of the very many religions is the only one true; or to prefer one religion to all the rest; or to show to any form of religion special favor; but, on the contrary, is bound to grant equal rights to every creed, so that public order may not be disturbed by any particular form of religious belief.
And it is a part of this theory that all questions that concern religion are to be referred to private judgment; that every one is to be free to follow whatever religion he prefers, or none at all if he disapprove of all. From this the following consequences logically flow: that the judgment of each one's conscience is independent of all law; that the most unrestrained opinions may be openly expressed as to the practice or omission of divine worship; and that every one has unbounded license to think whatever he chooses and to publish abroad whatever he thinks. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America John Paul Stevens has been a man of his "times," a man of the anti-Incarnational spirit of Modernity. John Paul Stevens, who announced in a letter to President Barack Hussein Obama on Friday, April 9, 2010, that he is resigning his seat on the high court at the end of its current term in June, has been a complete legal positivist who believes that contingent beings who did not create themselves and whose bodies are destined one day for the corruption of the grave until the Last Day are the ultimate arbiters of moral right and moral wrong. Stevens believes that multiplicity of religious beliefs in the United States of America makes it impossible for the law to be guided by any one of those beliefs, thus leaving it to men to determine for themselves the standards of morality and legality.
One of the ironies in the concurring and dissenting opinion (justices may concur in part and dissent in part from decisions of the Supreme Court) written by John Paul Stevens in the case of Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, wherein a slim five to four majority upheld the right of the State of Missouri to prohibit public employees from counseling women from killing their babies and to prohibit the use of public funding for baby-killing (except when a mother's life was said to be "endangered"), is that he considered the law under consideration by the court in that case to have contained a preamble that violated the "freedom of religion" clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. The preamble of the Missouri statute under review in the case of Webster v. Reproductive Health Service stated that
the life of each human being begins at conception," noting as well that "unborn children have protectable interests in life, health, and well-being."
Stevens believed that the preamble was an "imposition" of a particular "religious belief" upon all of the citizens of the State of Missouri, going so far as to cite the writing of Saint Thomas Aquinas, as cited in an amicus curiae brief submitted by the nefarious "Catholics for a Free Choice" organization in the Webster case, that human life began forty days after conception and that ensoulment occurred at a later date. Stevens claimed that the contemporary Catholic teaching was at odds with that of the Angelic Doctor and thus demonstrated that there is a great "diversity" of belief about the matter even in the Catholic Church. This was, of course, a piece of total sophistry that served Stevens' complete commitment to naturalism as the foundation of personal and social order. The Catholic Church has consistently and without any deviation condemned all direct attacks on innocent preborn human life (see
Fact and Fiction).
The Catholic Church does not teach when human life begins. Biology does. We know more about biological facts than was known in the Thirteenth Century. Moreover, Saint Thomas Aquinas never endorsed the taking of a baby's life in the forty days following conception, discussing only the nature of the sin that would be incurred for doing so. For Stevens to have relied upon Catholic dissenters to justify the absurd assertion that a declaration that human life beings at conception is a "religious belief" and that thus there is no "united" religious teaching concerning the Fifth Commandment's absolute and unqualified prohibition against the direct taking of an innocent human life as the first object of a moral act was an act of rank intellectual irresponsibility.
Pope Pius XI, writing in Casti Connubii, December 30, 1930, explained that Saint Augustine, who took a similar view as to when life began as did Saint Thomas Aquinas Aquinas eight centuries after him, categorically condemned all efforts to extinguish a little baby in his mother's womb:
All of which agrees with the stern words of the Bishop of Hippo in denouncing those wicked parents who seek to remain childless, and failing in this, are not ashamed to put their offspring to death: "Sometimes this lustful cruelty or cruel lust goes so far as to seek to procure a baneful sterility, and if this fails the fetus conceived in the womb is in one way or another smothered or evacuated, in the desire to destroy the offspring before it has life, or if it already lives in the womb, to kill it before it is born. If both man and woman are party to such practices they are not spouses at all; and if from the first they have carried on thus they have come together not for honest wedlock, but for impure gratification; if both are not party to these deeds, I make bold to say that either the one makes herself a mistress of the husband, or the other simply the paramour of his wife." (as quoted by Pope Pius XI in Casti Connubii, December 30, 1930.)
Associate Justice John Paul Stevens has been a consistent vote on the Supreme Court of the United States of America to sustain its decisions in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, January 22, 1973, doing so in such cases as City of Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, June 15, 1983 (see
462 U.S. 416), Planned Parenthood Association of Kansas City, Missouri v. Ashcroft, June 15, 1983 (see
462 U.S. 476), Simopolous v. Virginia, June 15, 1983 (see
462 U.S. 506), Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, June 11, 1986 (see 476 U.S. 747)Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Robert J. Casey, June 29, 1992 (see 505 U.S. 833), Stenberg v. Carhart, June 28, 2000 (530 U.S. 914), and Gonzales v. Carhart, April 18, 2007 (550 U.S. 124). That's quite a legacy of blood, of carnage, of sophistry, of one legal absurdity after another.
As demonstrated in Associate Justice John Paul Stevens' concurring opinion in the case of Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, he understood full well that a declaration of personhood for the preborn child would be the death knell for Roe v. Wade as no state legislature would have any authority to authorize the killing of an innocent human being:
JUSTICE WHITE is also surely wrong in suggesting that the governmental interest in protecting fetal life is equally compelling during the entire period from the moment of conception until the moment of birth. Post, at 795. Again, I recognize that a powerful theological argument can be made for that position, but I believe our jurisdiction is limited to the evaluation of secular state interests. 7 I should think it obvious that the State's interest in the protection of an embryo - even if that interest is defined as "protecting those who will be citizens," ibid. - increases progressively and dramatically as the organism's capacity to feel pain, to experience pleasure, to survive, and to react to its surroundings increases day by day. The development of a fetus - and pregnancy itself - are not static conditions, and the assertion that the government's interest is static simply ignores this reality. [476 U.S. 747, 779]
Nor is it an answer to argue that life itself is not a static condition, and that "there is no nonarbitrary line separating a fetus from a child, or indeed, an adult human being," post, at 792. For, unless the religious view that a fetus is a "person" is adopted - a view JUSTICE WHITE refuses to embrace, ibid. - there is a fundamental and well-recognized difference between a fetus and a human being; indeed, if there is not such a difference, the permissibility of terminating the life of a fetus could scarcely be left to the will of the state legislatures. 8 And if distinctions may be drawn between a fetus and a human being in terms of the state interest in their protection - even though the fetus represents one of "those who will be citizens" - it seems to me quite odd to argue that distinctions may not also be drawn between the state interest in protecting the freshly fertilized egg and the state interest in protecting the 9-month-gestated, fully sentient fetus on the eve of birth. Recognition of this distinction is supported not only by logic, but also by history 9 and by our shared experiences. (John Paul Stevens Concurring Opinion in the case of Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.)
Well, at least it can be said that Stevens recognized that no state legislature could permit the destruction of a preborn baby IF it could be proved to him that the baby was a human being, something that is not, as noted earlier, a "theological" issue as something called
Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) has proved conclusively in biological terms that a newly fertilized human being has a genetic code of its very own. A human genetic code can only belong to a human being. There is no distinction between a "fetus" and a "human being." This is a matter of biological fact, not one of theology, although Stevens' obsession to make the issue of abortion a theological one has been a diversion to provide him with legal cover in a pluralistic nation where no one religion, no less the true religion, enjoys the favor and the protection of the civil authorities.
John Paul Stevens was even the lone dissenting vote in the case of Scheidler v. National Organization for Women, February 26, 2003, as he disagreed with the eight other justices on the Supreme Court of the United States of America who had determined that pro-life sidewalk counselor and activist Joseph Scheidler was not a "racketeer" as determined by the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization Act (R.I.C.O.) and that he was not depriving baby-killings of their livelihood by serving as a "bandit" as defined by the Hobbs Act of 1946, which the Solicitor General of the United States of America at the time, Theodore Olson, arguing in behalf of the "pro-life" George Walker Bush administration, should be applied against Scheidler's activities (see 537 U.S. 393; see also Of Slaves and Babies and Justice for a True Pro-Life Hero). Stevens did, however, vote with the seven other participating justices to end the National Organization for Women's persecution of Joe Scheidler in 2006 as the court declared unanimously that the Hobbs Act of 1946 could not be construed as to cover all forms of non-extortive "violence" (see Scheidler v. National Organization for Women, February 28, 2006, at 547 U.S. 9).
Although Associate Justice John Paul Stevens has exercised a great deal of influence in this world, he is going to find that that influence will count for nothing at the moment of his Particular Judgment. The words of Pope Pius XI, contained in Casti Connubii, speak very loudly to the possible fate that awaits the immortal soul of John Paul Stevens at the moment of his Particular Judgment:
Those who hold the reins of government should not forget that it is the duty of public authority by appropriate laws and sanctions to defend the lives of the innocent, and this all the more so since those whose lives are endangered and assailed cannot defend themselves. Among whom we must mention in the first place infants hidden in the mother's womb. And if the public magistrates not only do not defend them, but by their laws and ordinances betray them to death at the hands of doctors or of others, let them remember that God is the Judge and Avenger of innocent blood which cried from earth to Heaven.
Alas, John Paul Stevens is a victim of the Protestant Revolution's overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King that has been institutionalized in the modern civil state by the inter-related naturalistic forces of Judeo-Masonry. Justice Stevens simply cannot imagine a world where people pursue the common temporal good in light of man's Last End--the possession of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity--as they subordinate their personal and social activities to the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural as these have been entrusted to the infallible teaching authority of the Catholic Church. Anyone who believes that man can determine right and wrong infallibly on his own powers and that civil law does does not have to be referred to the Deposit of Faith in all that pertains to his eternal welfare is incapable of pursuing even temporal justice on the natural level.
Pope Leo XIII explained this in Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900:
This generative and conservative power of the virtues that make for salvation is therefore lost, whenever morality is dissociated from divine faith. A system of morality based exclusively on human reason robs man of his highest dignity and lowers him from the supernatural to the merely natural life. Not but that man is able by the right use of reason to know and to obey certain principles of the natural law. But though he should know them all and keep them inviolate through life-and even this is impossible without the aid of the grace of our Redeemer-still it is vain for anyone without faith to promise himself eternal salvation. "If anyone abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire, and he burneth" john xv., 6). "He that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mark xvi., 16). We have but too much evidence of the value and result of a morality divorced from divine faith. How is it that, in spite of all the zeal for the welfare of the masses, nations are in such straits and even distress, and that the evil is daily on the increase? We are told that society is quite able to help itself; that it can flourish without the assistance of Christianity, and attain its end by its own unaided efforts. Public administrators prefer a purely secular system of government. All traces of the religion of our forefathers are daily disappearing from political life and administration. What blindness! Once the idea of the authority of God as the Judge of right and wrong is forgotten, law must necessarily lose its primary authority and justice must perish: and these are the two most powerful and most necessary bonds of society. Similarly, once the hope and expectation of eternal happiness is taken away, temporal goods will be greedily sought after. Every man will strive to secure the largest share for himself. Hence arise envy, jealousy, hatred. The consequences are conspiracy, anarchy, nihilism. There is neither peace abroad nor security at home. Public life is stained with crime. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)
Most Catholics in the United States of America who are as of yet attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, influenced by Americanism and conciliarism's endorsement of this pernicious heresy, have as little acquaintance with the basic truths reiterated by Pope Leo XIII nearly one hundred ten years ago as does John Paul Stevens.
Indeed, the American "John Paul," Associate Justice John Paul Stevens was sworn in on Wednesday, December 17, 1975, just one day shy of a full thirty-four months before the "election" of Karol Wojtyla to be conciliar "Pope" John Paul II. The American "John Paul" did just as much damage to the concept of law and justice, both theoretically and practically, as the conciliar "John Paul" did to Catholic Faith and worship. Despite their many and profound differences, including, of course, on abortion itself, the American "John Paul" and the conciliar "John Paul" were of one mind and heart in accepting the twin errors of "religious liberty" and "separation of Church and State." The American "John Paul" used these errors as a means of justifying abortion in a religiously indifferentist, pluralistic civil state. The conciliar "John Paul" believed that these errors would serve the purpose of ending abortion under cover of law as "common ground" was found amongst "believers" and "unbelievers" alike to build a "culture of life."
Neither the American or the conciliar "John Paul" understood that they believed in abject falsehoods that can serve only the cause of social injustice and unrest. Pope Gregory XVI explained that there could be only one result from "religious liberty" and unfettered "liberty of conscience" in a society:
This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. "But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error," as Augustine was wont to say. When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin. Then truly "the bottomless pit" is open from which John saw smoke ascending which obscured the sun, and out of which locusts flew forth to devastate the earth. Thence comes transformation of minds, corruption of youths, contempt of sacred things and holy laws -- in other words, a pestilence more deadly to the state than any other. Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for wealth, dominion, and glory perished as a result of this single evil, namely immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire for novelty.
Here We must include that harmful and never sufficiently denounced freedom to publish any writings whatever and disseminate them to the people, which some dare to demand and promote with so great a clamor. We are horrified to see what monstrous doctrines and prodigious errors are disseminated far and wide in countless books, pamphlets, and other writings which, though small in weight, are very great in malice. We are in tears at the abuse which proceeds from them over the face of the earth. Some are so carried away that they contentiously assert that the flock of errors arising from them is sufficiently compensated by the publication of some book which defends religion and truth. Every law condemns deliberately doing evil simply because there is some hope that good may result. Is there any sane man who would say poison ought to be distributed, sold publicly, stored, and even drunk because some antidote is available and those who use it may be snatched from death again and again? (Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.)
Neither the American "John Paul" or the conciliar "John Paul" believed that Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order. Ah, these "John Pauls" stand condemned by the words of Pope Saint Pius X in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910:
Here we have, founded by Catholics, an inter-denominational association that is to work for the reform of civilization, an undertaking which is above all religious in character; for there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical fact. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)
We must continue to pray for the conversion of the living "John Paul," John Paul Stevens, to the true Faith before he dies, keeping in mind, of course, that we must continue to make reparation for our own many sins to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, conscious that our sins wounded Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ once in time and that they wound His Church Militant yet today. This is what we must avail ourselves on a frequent, if not weekly basis if at all possible, of the Sacred Tribunal of Penance that was instituted by Our Lord after His Resurrection from the dead on Easter Sunday with these precise words:
Peace be to you. As the Father hath sent me, I also send you. When he had said this, he breathed on them; and he said to them: Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained. (John 20: 21-23.)
Saint Thomas was not there when Our Lord instituted the Sacrament of Penance. He said that He would not believe that Our Lord had risen from the dead unless he put his fingers in Our Lord's nail marks and placed his hand in His Wounded Side. Our Lord ended that unbelief eight days later, that is, on this very day, Low Sunday, as follows:
Peace be to you. Then he saith to Thomas: Put in thy finger hither, and see my hands; and bring hither thy hand, and put it into my side; and be not faithless, but believing. Thomas answered, and said to him: My Lord, and my God. Jesus saith to him: Because thou hast seen me, Thomas, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed. (John 20: 26-29.)
We see Our Lord hidden under the aspects of the Eucharistic species every time we assist at Holy Mass. Do we believe? Do we believe that Our Crucified and Risen Saviour is the King of both men and their nations, including the United States of America, that every nation has the obligation to confess Him as its King and to acknowledge the authority that He has given to His Catholic Church to rule in His Holy Name, including to intervene as a last resort with civil officials when they undertake actions grievously contrary to the good of souls? The American and the conciliar "John Pauls" did not believe in the Social Reign of Christ the King. Do we? Are will willing, to paraphrase Pope Pius XI in Quas Primas, December 11, 1925, to "fight valiantly under the banner of Christ the King" for the sake of the conversion of our nation? Are we?
We turn to Our Lady with every beat of our hearts, consecrated as they must be to Most Sacred Heart of her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, through her own Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, pledging to her in this Paschaltide to as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit. We know that the final victory belongs to Our Lady's Immaculate Heart. We must consider it a privilege that we are alive in these times to plant a few seeds for the restoration of the Church Militant on earth and for the restoration of Christendom in the world by living more penitentially and as we accept all of the humiliations that must come our way for rejecting the anti-Incarnational errors of Modernity and Modernism.
Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!
Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.
